The Other Queen (39 page)

“As good as,” he says. “Ridolfi has his promise. Ridolfi is the center of the Great Enterprise and will bring everything together. He won’t fail you, and nor will I.”

Places that I find hidden and treasonous letters to the Queen of Scots: 1. Under a stone in the garden, brought to me by the gardener’s lad who is too simple to understand that the shilling stuck on the outside of the letter was payment to take it in secret to her.

2. Baked inside special Christmas bread for her from my own pastry maker.

3. Sewn inside a gown of silk as a gift from friends in Paris.

4. Pasted into the leaves of a book from a spy in the Spanish Netherlands.

5. Folded into a bolt of damask from Edinburgh.

6. Flown in by one of her own homing pigeons from God knows where, but I am especially worried by this, for the bird was not spent from a long flight: whoever sent it out must be close at hand.

7. Tucked into her saddle where I find it as I lift her up to go riding. She laughed, as if it does not matter.

8. In the collar of her lapdog. These two last must be men in my household acting as couriers for her friends. The homing bird she trained herself, pretending to me that she wanted tame doves. I gave them to her myself, more fool I.

“This must stop,” I tell her. I try to sound stern but she has been washing her dog and she has a linen apron over her gown, her headdress is laid aside, and her hair is falling down from its pins. She is as beautiful as a laundry maid in a fairy story and she is laughing at the dog splashing in the bathwater and wriggling as she tries to hold him.

“Chowsbewwy!” she exclaims with pleasure at seeing me. “Here, Mary, take little Pêche, he is too naughty, and too wet.”

With a lunge the little dog struggles to be free and shakes himself vigorously, drenching us all. The queen laughs. “Take him! Take him!Vite! Vite! And get him dry!”

I regain my solemn expression. “I daresay you would not like it if I took him away from you for good.”

“Not at all,” she replies. “But why would you dream of doing such a cruel thing? How has Pêche offended you?”

“Or if I refused to give you books, or new material for a gown, or did not let you walk in the garden?”

She rises to her feet and strips off her linen apron, a gesture so domestic and ordinary that I almost catch her hand and kiss it as if we were newlyweds in our own little house. “My lord, are you offended with me for something?” she asks sweetly. “Why do you threaten me so? Is something wrong? Has Bess complained of me?”

I shake my head. “It is your letters,” I say. “You must authorize men to write to you. I find letters everywhere. The guards bring me one practically every day.”

She shrugs, a typical gesture which says, in her French way, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” “Pouf!

What can I do? England is full of people who want to see me free. They are bound to write to me to ask if they can help.”

“This will ruin us,” I say urgently to her. “Ruin you, as well as me. D’you not think that Cecil has a spy in this very castle? D’you not think he knows that you write every day, and that people write to you? D’you not think he reads what you have written and all the letters that come for you? He is the spymaster of England; he will know far more than I do. And even I know that you are in constant correspondence with the French and with the Spanish and that men, whose names I don’t know, write in code to you all the time, asking you if you are safe, if you need anything, if you are going to be set free.”

“I am a queen,” she says simply. “A princess of the blood. The King of Spain and the King of France, the Holy Roman Emperor are my kinsmen. It is only right and proper that the kings of Europe should write to me. And it is a sign of the criminal kidnap that I endure that any of their agents should think it better to send to me in secret. They should be free to write to me openly, but because I am imprisoned, for no reason, for no reason at all, they cannot. And as for the others—I cannot help that loyal hearts and reverent minds write to me. I cannot prevent their writing, nor should I. They wish to express their love and loyalty and I am glad to have it. There can be nothing wrong in that.”

“Think,” I say urgently to her. “If Cecil believes that I cannot stop you plotting, he will take you away from me or replace me with another guardian.”

“I should not even be here!” she exclaims with sudden bitterness. She draws herself up to her full height; her dark eyes fill with sudden tears. “I signed the document for Cecil, I agreed to everything. I promised to give up my son to Elizabeth: you were there, you saw me do it. Why then am I not returned to Scotland as agreed? Why does Cecil not honor his part of the bargain? Pointless to tell me, Don’t write to my friends. I should not have to write to them, I should be among them as a free woman. You think of that!”

I am silenced by her temper and by the justice of what she says. “Please,” I say weakly. It is all I can say. “Please don’t endanger yourself. I have read some of these letters. They come from varlets and fools, some of the most desperate men in England, and none of them has a penny to rub together and none of them could plan an escape if his own life depended on it. They may be your friends but they are not dependable. Some of them are little more than children; some of them are so well known to Cecil that they are on his payroll already. He has turned them to his service. Cecil’s spies are everywhere, he knows everybody. Anyone who writes to you will be known to Cecil and most of them will be his men trying to entrap you. You must not trust these people.

“You have to be patient. You must wait. As you say, you have an agreement with the queen herself. You have to wait for her to honor it.”

“Elizabeth honor a promise to me?” she repeats bitterly. “She has never done so yet!”

“She will,” I say valiantly. “I give you my own word she will.”

My good friend William Cecil is to be Baron Burghley, and I am as glad of it as if I had been ennobled myself. This is nothing more than he deserves for years of loyal service to the queen, a lifetime of watching her and planning for England. God only knows what dangers we would be in now, what terrible perils we would face—even worse than those that now haunt us—if it had not been for Cecil’s wise advice and steady planning, ever since the queen came to her throne.

That the danger is very real cannot be doubted. In his letter to announce his ennoblement Cecil adds a warning: that he is certain that the Queen of Scots is planning a new uprising.

Dear Bess,

Beware. It may be that you can detect the plot by watching her, though it has escaped us watching her associates in London. I know that Norfolk, while swearing utter loyalty to Her Grace the Queen, is selling his gold and silverware at a knockdown price to the London goldsmiths. He has even parted with his own father’s jewel of the Garter to raise cash. I cannot believe that he would sacrifice his father’s greatest honor for anything other than the opportunity of his life. I can think of nothing that would be worth such a sacrifice to him but some terrible rebellion. I fear very much that he is planning to finance another war.

All my pride and joy in my new position is nothing if the peace of England is destroyed. I may be a baron now, and you may be a countess, but if the queen we serve is thrown down or murdered, then we are no better off than when we were children of landless fathers. Be watchful, Bess, and let me know all that you see, as always.

Burghley

I smile to see his new signature, but the smile drains from my face as I tear his letter into little pieces and feed it into the fire in my muniments room. I cannot believe that a sensible man such as Norfolk would risk everything again—not again!—for the Queen of Scots. But Cecil—Burghley, I should say—is seldom wrong. If he suspects another plot, then I should be on my guard. I will have to warn my husband the earl and watch her myself. I had hoped they would have taken her back to Scotland by now. God knows, I am at the point where I wish they would take her anywhere at all.

I am hopeful, I am so hopeful. Weeks now, I think, and we will both be free.

Marie

I dress with particular care in black and white, sober colors, but I wear three diamond rings (one is my betrothal ring from Norfolk) and a band of rich bracelets just to demonstrate that though my crown has been taken from me and my rope of black pearls stolen by Elizabeth, I am still a queen. I can still look the part.

Lord Morton is visiting me from Scotland and I want him to go back with the news that I am ready and fit to take my throne. He is due at midday but it is not till the midafternoon and it is growing dark and cold that he comes riding into the courtyard.

Babington, my faithful page boy, comes dashing into my rooms, his nose red from the cold and his little hands frozen, to tell me that the nobleman from Scotland has finally arrived and his horses are being stabled.

I seat myself in my chair, under my cloth of estate, and wait. Sure enough, there is a knock at the door and Shrewsbury is announced with Morton. I do not rise. I let him be presented to me, and when he bows low, I incline my head. He can learn to treat me as a queen again; I don’t forget that before he was as bad as any of them. He can start as I intend we shall go on. He greets me now as a prisoner; he will next see me on my throne in Edinburgh. He can learn deference.

Bess comes in behind the two men and I smile at her as she curtsies. She dips the smallest of bows; there is little love left between us these days. I still sit with her on most afternoons, and I still give her hopes of her prospects when I am returned to the throne, but she is weary of attending on me and beggared by the expense of my court and the guards. I know it, and there is nothing I can or would do to help her. Let her apply to Elizabeth for money for my imprisonment. I am hardly going to pay my own jailers for incarcerating me.

The worry has put lines on her face and a grimness about her that was not there when I first walked into her house more than two years ago. She was newly married then, and her happiness glowed in her face.

Her pride in her husband and her position was fresh for her. Now she has lost her fortune in entertaining me, she may lose her house, and she knows she has lost her husband already.

“Good day to you, my lady countess,” I say sweetly and watch her murmur a reply. Then the Shrewsburys take themselves off to the corner of the room, I nod to my lute player to play a tune, and to Mary Seton to see that wine and little cakes are served, and Morton sits on a stool beside me and mutters his news in my ear.

“We are ready for your return, Your Grace,” he says. “We are even preparing your old rooms at Holyrood.”

I bite my lip. For a moment I see again, in my mind, the dark red stain of Rizzio’s blood on the floor of my dining room. For a moment I think what a return to Scotland will mean to me. It will be no summer of French roses. The Scots were ill-suited to me before, and matters will not have improved. I shall have to live with a barbaric people and dine with a bloodstain on my floor. I shall have to rule them with my will and all my political skills. When Bothwell comes we can dominate them together, but until he arrives I will be in constant danger again of kidnap and rebellion.

“And the prince is being prepared for his journey,” he says. “He is looking forward to going to England; we have explained to him that this will be his home for the future, and he will be King of England one day.”

“He is well?”

“I have reports for you from his nurse and from his governor,” he says. “Also from his tutor. He is well and forward. He is growing strongly and learning his lessons.”

“He speaks clearly now?” Early reports had been of him drooling and failing to close his mouth in eating and in speech. A prince who is to command two kingdoms, perhaps three, has to be beautiful. It is harsh, but this is the way of the world.

“Much improved, as you will see.”

I take the package of reports and hand them to Mary Seton for reading later.

“But I have a request,” he says quietly.

I wait.

“We hear from the English ambassador that you are in correspondence with the King of Spain.”

I raise my eyebrows and say nothing. It is surely not Morton’s business who writes to me. Besides, I am not directly in touch with the King of Spain. He is meeting my emissary Ridolfi, who is traveling to the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, to the Pope himself, and then to Philip of Spain. The joke is that Elizabeth gave him a pass of safe conduct out of the kingdom, having no idea that he was my emissary, touring her enemies to raise a campaign against her.

“And also with the King of France.”

“And?” I ask frostily. “Et puis?”

“I have to ask you, while matters are so sensitive, that you don’t write to them,” he says awkwardly. His Scots accent, always rather thick to my ears, grows more impenetrable as he is embarrassed. “We are making an agreement with Baron Burghley on behalf of the English court—”

“Baron Burghley?”

“Lord William Cecil.”

I nod; the ennoblement of my enemy can only make things worse for me and the old aristocracy—my friends.

“We are making an agreement, but when Lord Cecil finds secret letters to and from enemies of the state and you, he does not trust you. He cannot trust you.”

“The French are my kin,” I point out. “He can hardly blame me for writing to my family when I am far from home and utterly alone.”

Morton smiles. He does not look overly concerned at my loneliness.

“And Philip of Spain? England’s greatest enemy? Even now he is building ships for an invasion. He calls it an armada, to destroy England.”

“I do not write to him,” I lie readily. “And I write nothing to my family which Cecil cannot read.”

“Actually, Your Grace, you probably writenothing at all that he does not read,” he emphasizes. “He probably sees every letter that comes and goes, however clever you think you have been with your secret couriers and number codes and invisible ink.”