The Other Queen (17 page)

I am glad that this has all been done by me, without even the smallest help from Elizabeth. She is a fool.

If she had taken my part when I first came to England, she could have sponsored this marriage and restored me to my throne and I would have been forever in her debt. I would have loved her as her cousin twice over. We would have been friends for life. As it is, I will never forgive her. When I am on my throne again she will know that she has an enemy on her border, and that my friends are the Spanish who support me and the French who are my kin, the Northern lords who have been faithful and the Papists of England who wait for me to inherit and for the good days to come again. My new husband will come to see her as a reluctant friend and an unreliable cousin. I will prevail upon him to forget his loyalty to her and think only of himself and me. We will make a powerful royal couple and together we will free Scotland and make alliances with the great Papist powers. Then she will be sorry that she treated me with suspicion; then she will be sorry not to have treated me like a sister. Then she will sit alone in one of her cold palaces and know that everyone has left her to go to the court of her heir.

I go to my desk and write a letter to my betrothed to thank him for his ring and promise my love and fidelity. This is going to be a courtship at a distance: my letters are going to have to keep his attention until he can meet me. I promise him my heart, my fortune. I assure him of my love for him. I want to make him fall passionately in love with me by letter. I must seduce him with every word. I shall write letters which amuse and intrigue him, I shall make him laugh, and I shall prompt his desire. I shall feel truly safe only when I know he has fallen in love with me and wants me for desire as well as ambition.

I go to bed early. To tell the truth, even with my letters and my diamond ring, I am burning with secret resentment. I feel excluded from the dinner this evening, and I am deeply offended at Bess, the countess from nowhere, sitting at the high table with my friends Northumberland and Westmorland, and music playing and good wine being served, when I am here, practically alone with Mary and Agnes and only a dozen courtiers. I am accustomed to being the greatest lady in the room. In all my life I have always been the center of every occasion; never before have I been the one left out. Before I go to bed at midnight, I slip out of my rooms and go to the head of the stairs. In the great hall below the candles are still burning, and they are all still making merry. It is an outrage that I should not be invited; it is ridiculous that there should be dancing and I should not be there. I will not forget this exclusion. I will not forgive it. Bess may think it is her triumph but it is the upsetting of the proper order and she will regret it.

The Queen of Scots, waiting for the guard to escort her to Edinburgh, prevails upon me to walk with her in the gardens of Wingfield Manor. She knows nothing of gardening but she is a great lover of flowers and I tell her their names in English as we walk on the gravel paths between the low hedges. I understand why her servants and courtiers love her; she is more than charming, she is endearing. Sometimes she even reminds me of my daughter Frances, whom I married to Sir Henry Pierre-point and who now has my granddaughter, little Bessie. The queen asks me about my girl, and about my three boys and two other daughters.

“It is a great thing to have a large family,” she compliments me.

I nod. I do not even try to hide my pride. “And every one shall marry well,” I promise. “My oldest boy, Henry, is married already to my stepdaughter Grace Talbot, my husband’s daughter, and my daughter Mary is married to my stepson Gilbert Talbot.”

The queen laughs. “Oh, Bess! How clever of you to keep all the money in the family!”

“That was our plan,” I admit. “But Gilbert is a wonderful boy. I could not hope for a better husband for my daughter, and he is such good friends with my boy Henry; they are at court together. Gilbert will be the Earl of Shrewsbury when my lord is gone and it is nice to think of my daughter inheriting my title, and being a countess and living here, like me.”

“I should so love to have a daughter,” she says. “I should name her for my mother, I think. I lost my last babies. I had conceived twins, twin boys I should have had. But after the last battle, when they captured me, I lost my boys.”

I am aghast. “Bothwell’s children?”

“Bothwell’s boys,” she says. “Think what men they would have made! Twin boys, the sons of Bothwell and of Mary Stuart. England would never have slept soundly again!” She laughs, but there is a catch in her throat.

“Is that why you acknowledged the marriage to him?” I ask her very quietly. “Because you knew you were with child?”

She nods. “The only way to keep my reputation and my crown was to put a brave face on it, let Bothwell push the marriage through, and refuse ever to discuss it with anyone.”

“He should die for it,” I say fiercely. “Men are hanged for rape in England.”

“Only if the woman dares to name her rapist,” she says drily. “Only if she can prove that she did not consent. Only if a jury believes the word of a silly woman against a strong-minded man. Only if the jury does not believe in their hearts that all women are easily seduced and they say no but mean yes. Even in England the word of a man takes precedence. Who cares what a woman says?”

I put out my hand to her. I cannot help myself. I was born a poor girl; I know how dangerous the world can be for an unprotected woman. “Are you sure you can save your reputation and reclaim your throne?

Can you go back to Scotland and be safe this time? Will they not hold this shame against you?”

“I am queen,” she says with determination. “I shall annul the marriage to Bothwell and put it aside. I shall never mention it again and nor shall anyone else. It shall be as if it never happened. I shall return to Scotland as an anointed queen married to a great nobleman. That will be my safety and the rest of the scandals will be forgotten.”

“Can you decide what people say of you?”

“I am queen,” she says. “One of the talents of a queen is to make the people think well of you. If I am really gifted and lucky, I will make the histories think well of me too.”

Ilove this summer. It is my first in England, my last too, for next summer I will be in Scotland again; my escort will come for me any day now. I laugh at the thought that then I shall be longing for this heat, and looking back on this as a golden season of leisure. It reminds me of my childhood in France, when I was a French princess and heir to the three thrones of France, England, and Scotland, and in no doubt that I would inherit all three. We, the royal children of the privileged French court, used to spend the summer in the country and I was allowed to ride, and picnic, swim in the river, dance in the fields, and hunt under the big yellow summertime moon. We used to row out on the river and fish from the boats. We used to have archery competitions in the cool of the morning and then celebrate with a winners’ breakfast. My husband-to-be little Prince Francis was my playmate, my friend, and his father, the handsome King Henri II of France, was the hero of our days, the most handsome man, the most glamorous king, a charmer beyond all others. And I was his favorite. They called me “mignonette.” The beautiful princess, the most beautiful girl in France.

We were all indulged, we were all allowed anything that we wanted, but even among that richness and freedom the king singled me out as special. He taught me to amuse him, he taught me to delight him, he taught me—perhaps without knowing—that the most important skill a woman can learn is how to enchant a man, how to turn his head, how to swear him to her service, without his ever knowing he has fallen under her spell. He believed in the power of the women of the troubadours, and despite my tutors, and certainly despite his irritable wife, Catherine de Medici, he taught me that a woman can become the very pinnacle of a man’s desire. A woman can command an army if she is their figurehead, their dream: always desirable, never attainable.

When he was dead, and his son was dead, and my mother was dead and I came to Scotland, quite alone and quite desperate for advice as to how I would manage in this strange and savage country, it was his teaching that guided me. I thought I should be a queen that men could adore. I thought if I could be a queen that they could look up to, then we would find a way that I could rule them, and they could gladly submit.

This time at Wingfield, knowing that my future is unfolding before me, knowing that I shall return to Scotland as acknowledged queen, is like being a girl again, with no equal for charm or beauty or wit, confident that my kingdom will be my own, that everything must always be perfect for me. And just as in France, I am admired and petted. Shrewsbury’s servants cannot do enough for me. No luxury is too extravagant for me. And every day, when he comes to ride with me, he brings me a little token: the little cup of mud of a swallow’s nest, with two big pearls inside instead of eggs, a posy of roses with a gold chain twisted around the stems, a set of silver ribbons, a book of poems in French, scented leather gloves, a diamond brooch.

The terms of my return to Scotland are finally and fully agreed. William Cecil, once my sworn enemy, has changed his mind—who knows why?—and taken my side. He has negotiated for me with my half brother, Lord Moray, and with Lord Maitland, and he has forged a good agreement that he is confident will hold. I am to return to Scotland as her true and recognized queen. I am to be free to practice my faith. The country will be Protestant, as they say they prefer, but there will be no persecution of either Papists or Puritans. My son will be raised as a Protestant.

Some of this I will change when I am back on the throne. I have no intention of raising a heretic child destined for nowhere but hell. The lords who sign for my restoration now were my enemies only last year and I will have revenge. I have a list of the men who swore together to murder my husband and I will bring them to justice; they need not think that they will escape. Bothwell will be at my side and he will have his own scores to settle. But I can sign this agreement for now, with a clear conscience, since it restores me to the throne. The Holy Father will forgive me any agreement I make, as long as it serves the greater good of getting me back on my throne. Actually I would sign an agreement with the devil himself if it would get me back to the throne. Nothing is more important to me, to the Holy Church, and to the future of Scotland than I am returned.

Once restored to my throne, I can punish my enemies and educate my people against heresy. Once there I can build my power with my friends and allies in England so that the moment Elizabeth dies, or when she faces invasion—and both are inevitable—then I am ready to move to take my second throne.

Cecil writes nothing about my betrothal with Howard, but he cannot be ignorant of it. I know that the Scots lords would never have agreed to have me back without a man at my side: they will have made my marriage a precondition of my return. They are so fearful of women in general and of me in particular that they would never rest until they had me wedded and bedded and sworn to wifely obedience. They would be in a terror that I would bring Bothwell down on them as king consort. They trust Thomas Howard in a way that they will never trust me, because he is a Protestant, because he is a man.

They will see. They will see their mistake. I will marry him and make him king consort, and they will still see that I shall have my own way, and I will still bring Bothwell down on them for my revenge.

I write faithfully to Thomas Howard, and my letters are as inviting and alluring as I can make them.

Thank God, I know one thing: how to entice a man. I was not a French princess for nothing; I do know how to make a man fall in love, even at hundreds of miles’ distance. I know how to lead him on and draw back, come forward, make promises, renege, enchant, puzzle, confuse, seduce. I am irresistible in person, and I can be enchanting on paper. I write to him daily and I bring him onward and onward to ensure that he is mine.

As part of this campaign of seduction and compromise, I have embroidered for him a special cushion, which I think will amuse him. It shows a barren vine being pruned with a billhook and he will know that I mean that the barren line of the Tudors can be cut down to let the new growth of our children take the throne. No one can blame me for the design—though it is such a sharp slap at the spinster Elizabeth!—since it is a quotation from the Bible. What could be more tasteful and innocent? “Virtue flourishes by wounding” is the quotation that I have embroidered around the picture. Norfolk will see the slyest hint of treason in it, and if he has anything of a man about him he will be stirred by that provocative word “wounding.”

Bess understood it at once and was deliciously scandalized and swore when she first saw the design that I would not dare to stitch it.

I dare! I dare anything! Let the barren vine be cut down. Let Elizabeth, the bastard, be struck down. I am a fertile woman of twenty-six; I have conceived nothing but boys. Howard is a man who has already fathered sons. Who can doubt that either my young son James or our future sons—Stuart-Howards—will take Elizabeth’s empty throne?

Anote from Cecil delivered in secret reads:

No, you are not mistaken in my intentions, dear Bess. I am as like to install her on the throne of Scotland as I am to point a pistol at the heart of England and destroy everything I love.

Every secret letter between her and our terrible enemies that comes to my hand convinces me of the greatness of the danger that she poses. How many letters elude me, only she will know, only the devil himself who directs her will know. Wait for news of her arrest for treason.

C

Oh God, I am a fool, a fool, and now a heartbroken fool. I am damned by my stars, and betrayed by my friends, and abandoned by my God.