The Other Queen (21 page)

I thought that if we lords of England saw a better way to rule this country than Cecil’s unending readiness for war, Cecil’s unending hatred of all Elizabeth’s heirs, Cecil’s unending terror of boggarts in shadows, Cecil’s mad fear of Papists, then we could topple Cecil and advise the queen. I thought we could show her how to deal justly with the Scots queen, befriend the French, and make alliances with Spain. I thought we could teach her how to live like a queen with pride, not like a usurper haunted with terror. I thought that we could give her such confidence in her right to the throne that she would marry and make an heir. But I was wrong. As Bess obligingly tells me, I was foolishly wrong.

Cecil is determined to throw all who disagree with him into the Tower. The queen listens only to him and fears treason where there was only dissent. She will not consult any one of the lords now; she mistrusts even Dudley. She would behead shadows if she could. Who knows what profit Cecil can make of this?

Norfolk is driven from his own cousin’s court, driven into rebellion; the Northern lords are massing on their lands. For me, so far, he reserves only the shame of being mistrusted and replaced.

Only shame. Only this deep shame.

I am beyond distress at the turn events have taken. Bess, who is frosty and frightened, may well be right and I have been a fool. My wife’s opinion of me is another slur that I must learn to accept in this season of coldness and dark.

Cecil writes to me briefly that two lords of his choosing will come to remove the Scots queen into their safekeeping and will take her away from me. Then I am to travel to London to face questioning. He says no more. Indeed, why should he explain anything to me? Does the steward explain to a copyholder? No, he simply gives his orders. If Queen Elizabeth thinks I cannot be trusted to guard the Scots queen, then she has decided that I am unfit to serve her. The court will know what she thinks of me; the world will know what she thinks of me. What cuts me to my heart, my proud unchanging heart, is that now I know what she thinks of me.

She thinks badly of me.

Worse than this is a private, secret pain, of which I can never complain, which I can never even acknowledge to another living soul. The Scots queen will be taken away from me. I may never see her again.

I may never see her again.

I am dishonored by one queen, and I will be bereft of the other.

I cannot believe that I should feel such a sense of loss. I suppose I have become so accustomed to being her guardian, to keeping her safe. I am so used to waking in the morning and glancing across to her side of the courtyard, and seeing her shutters closed if she is still asleep or open if she is already awake. I am in the habit of riding with her in the morning, of dining with her in the afternoon. I have become so taken with her singing, her love of cards, her joy in dancing, the constant presence of her extraordinary beauty, that I cannot imagine how I shall live without her. I cannot wake in the morning and spend the day without her. God is my witness, I cannot spend the rest of my life without her.

I don’t know how this has happened. I certainly have not been disloyal to Bess or to my queen, I certainly have not changed my allegiance either to wife or monarch, but I cannot help but look for the Scots queen daily. I long for her when I do not see her, and when she comes—running down the stairs to the stable yard, or walking slowly towards me with the sun behind her—I find that I smile, like a boy, filled with joy to see her. Nothing more than that, an innocent joy that she walks towards me.

I cannot make myself understand that they will come and take her away from me and that I must not say one word of protest. I will keep silent, and they will take her away and I will not protest.

They arrive at midday, the two lords who will take her from me, rattling into the courtyard, preceded by their own guards. I find a bitter smile. They will learn how expensive these guards are to keep: fed and watered and watched against bribery. They will learn how she cannot be guarded, whatever they pay.

What man could resist her? What man could refuse her the right to ride out once a day? What man could stop her smiling at her guardian? What power could stop a young soldier’s heart turning over in his chest when she greets him?

I go to meet them, shamed by their presence, and ashamed of the dirty little courtyard, and then I recoil, recognizing their standards and seeing the men that Cecil has chosen to replace me to guard this young woman. Dear God, whatever it costs me, I cannot release her to them. I must refuse.

“My lords,” I stammer, horror making me slow of speech. Cecil has sent Henry Hastings, the Earl of Huntingdon, and Walter Devereux, the Earl of Hereford, as her kidnappers. He might as well have sent a pair of Italian assassins with poisoned gloves.

“I am sorry for this, Talbot,” Huntingdon says bluntly as he swings down from his saddle with a grunt of discomfort. “All hell is on in London. There is no telling what will happen.”

“All hell?” I repeat. I am thinking quickly if I can say that she is ill or if I dare send her back in secret to Wingfield. How can I protect her from them?

“The queen has moved to Windsor for safety and has armed the castle for siege. She is calling all the lords of England to court, all of them suspected of ill-doing. You too. I am sorry. You are to attend at once, after you have helped us move your prisoner to Leicestershire.”

“Prisoner?” I look at Hastings’ hard face. “To your house?”

“She is no longer a guest,” Devereux says coldly. “She is a prisoner. She is suspected of plotting treason with the Duke of Norfolk. We want her somewhere that we can keep her confined. A prison.”

I look around at the cramped courtyard, at the one gate with the portcullis, at the moat and the one road leading up the hill. “More confined than this?”

Devereux laughs shortly and says, almost to himself, “Preferably a bottomless pit.”

“Your household has proved itself unreliable,” Hastings says flatly. “Even if you are not. Nothing proven.

Nothing stated against you, at any rate not yet. Talbot, I am sorry. We don’t know how far the rot has gone. We can’t tell who are the traitors. We have to be on guard.”

I feel the heat rush to my head and for a moment I see nothing, in the intensity of my rage. “No man has ever questioned my honor. Never before. No man has ever questioned the honor of my family. Not in five hundred years of loyal service.”

“This is to waste time,” young Devereux says abruptly. “You will be questioned on oath in London. How soon can she be ready to come?”

“I will ask Bess,” I say. I cannot speak to them; my tongue is dry in my mouth. Perhaps Bess will know how we can delay them. My anger and my shame are too much for me to say a word. “Please, enter.

Rest. I will inquire.”

Ihear the rattle of mounted men and I rush to the window, my heart pounding. I expect to see Norfolk in the courtyard or the Northern lords with their army, or even—my heart leaps up at the thought—what if it is Bothwell, escaped from prison, with a hard-riding group of borderers, come to rescue me?

“Who is that?” I ask urgently. The countess’s steward is beside me in my dining hall, both of us looking out the window at the two travel-stained men and their army of four dozen soldiers.

“That’s the Earl of Huntingdon, Henry Hastings,” he says. His gaze slides away from me. “I will be needed by my lady.”

He bows and steps to the door.

“Hastings?” I demand, my voice sharp with fear. “Henry Hastings? What would he come here for?”

“I don’t know, Your Grace.” The man bows and backs towards the door. “I will come back to you as soon as I know. But I must go now.”

I wave my hand. “Go,” I say, “but come back at once. And find my lord Shrewsbury and tell him that I want to see him. Tell him I want to see him urgently. Ask him to come to me immediately.”

Mary Seton comes to my side, Agnes behind her. “Who are these lords?” she asks, looking down at the courtyard and then at my white face.

“That one is what they call the Protestant heir,” I say through cold lips. “He is of the Pole family, the Plantagenet line, the queen’s own cousin.”

“Has he come to set you free?” she asks doubtfully. “Is he with the uprising?”

“Hardly,” I say bitterly. “If I were dead he would be a step closer to the throne. He would be heir to the throne of England. I must know what he is here for. It will not be good news for me. Go and see what you can find out, Mary. Listen in the stable and see what you can hear.”

As soon as she is gone I go to my desk and write a note.

Ross—

Greetings to you and to the Northern lords and their army. Bid them hurry to me. Elizabeth has sent her dogs and they will take me from here if they can. Tell Norfolk I am in terrible danger.

M

They can have her. They can take her and damn well have her. She has brought us nothing but trouble.

Even if they take her now, the queen will never pay us what she owes. To Wingfield and back, with a court of sixty people, perhaps forty more coming in for their meals. Her horses, her pet birds, her carpets and furniture, her gowns, her new lute player, hertapissier ; I have kept her household better than I have kept my own. Dinner every night with thirty-two courses served, her own cooks, her own kitchens, her own cellar. White wine, of the best vintage, just to wash her face. She has to have her own taster in case someone wants to poison her. God knows, I would do it myself. Two hundred pounds a week she costs us against an allowance of fifty-two, but even that is never paid. Now it will never be paid. We will be thousands of pounds the poorer when this is finished and they will take her away but not pay for her.

Well, they can have her, and I shall manage the debt. I shall write it at the bottom of the page as if it were the lost account of a dead debtor. Better that we are rid of her and us half-bankrupt, than she stays here and ruins me and mine. Better that I account of her as dead and there is no reckoning.

“Bess.” George is in the doorway of my accounting room; he is leaning against the door, his hand to his heart. He is white-faced and shaking.

“What is it?” I rise at once from the table, put down my pen, and take his hands. His fingers are icy.

“What is it, my love? Tell me. Are you ill?” Three husbands I have lost to sudden death. This, my greatest husband, the earl, is white as a corpse. At once I forget I have ever thought badly of him, at once dread of losing him clutches me like a pain of my own. “Are you ill? Do you have a pain? My love, what is it?

What’s the matter?”

“The queen has sent Hastings and Devereux to take her away,” he says. “Bess, I cannot let her go with them. I cannot send her. It is to send her to her death.”

“Hastings would not—” I start.

“You know he would,” he interrupts me. “You know that is why the queen has chosen him. Hastings is the Protestant heir. He will put her in the Tower, or in his own house, and she will never come out. They will announce that she is in frail health, and then that she is worse, and then that she is dead.”

The bleakness in his voice is terrible to me.

“Or they will kill her on the journey and say she fell from her horse,” he predicts. His face is wet with sweat, his mouth twisted with pain.

“But if the queen commands it?”

“I cannot let her go out to her death.”

“If it is the queen’s order—”

“I cannot let her go.”

I take a breath. “Why not?” I ask. I dare him to tell me. “Why can you not let her go?”

He turns away from me. “She is my guest,” he mutters. “A matter of honor…”

I turn a hard face to him. “You learn to let her go,” I say harshly. “Honor has nothing to do with it. You command yourself to let her go, even to her death. Bring yourself to it. We cannot stop their taking her, and if we protest we only look worse. They think you are disloyal already; if you try to save her from Hastings, they will be certain that she has turned you to her side. They will know you for a traitor.”

“This is to send her to her death!” he repeats, his voice breaking. “Bess! You have been her friend, you have spent day after day with her. You cannot be so heartless as to hand her over to her murderer!”

I glance back to my desk, to the figures in my book. I know to a penny what she has cost us so far. If we defend her against the queen we will lose everything. If the queen thinks we are overly fond of this other queen she will destroy us. If she charges us with treason we will lose our lands and every single thing we own. If we are found guilty of treason it is a hanging offense; we will both die for my husband’s tender heart. I cannot risk it. “Who cares?”

“What?”

“I said, Who cares? Who cares if they take her and behead her in a field and leave her body in a ditch?

Who cares about her?”

There is a terrible silence in the room. My husband looks at me as if I am a monster. The Fool and the Monster face each other and I wonder at what we have become. Twenty-one months ago we were a newly married man and wife, well pleased with the contract we had made, enjoying each other, the joint heads of one of the greatest families in the kingdom. Now we are ruined in our hearts and our fortunes.

We have ruined ourselves.

“I’ll go and tell her to pack,” I say harshly. “We can do nothing else.”

Still he won’t leave it. He catches my hand. “You cannot let her go with Hastings,” he says. “Bess, she is our guest; she has sewed with you and eaten with us and hunted with me. She is innocent of any wrongdoing, you know that. She is our friend. We cannot betray her. If she rides out with him, I am certain that she will never get to his house alive.”

I think of my Chatsworth, and my fortune, and that steadies me. “God’s will be done,” I say. “And the queen has to be obeyed.”

“Bess! Have pity on her as a young woman! Have pity on her as a beautiful, friendless young woman.”

“God’s will be done,” I repeat, holding tight to the thought of my new front door and the portico with the plasterwork flowers, and the marble entrance hall, thinking of the new stable block that I want to live to build. I think of my children, well married, and well placed at court in good positions already, of the dynasties I will found, of the grandchildren I will have and the marriages I will make for them. I think of how far I have come and how far I hope to go. I would go to hell itself rather than lose my house. “Long live the queen.”