Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (378 page)

For a moment I can almost see her, my exquisite Queen Mary, as if I have summoned her with my lies. She is standing before me, her pale face downturned, the dark eyelashes against her perfect cheek. I can almost hear the third crowing of a cock as I deny my love for her.

“And Bess?”

“Bess does her best,” I say. “She does her best for love of you. But we would both rather be at court with you than living at Tutbury with the Scots queen. It is an exile for us both. We have both been unhappy.” I hear the ring of truth in my voice at that, at least. “We are both very unhappy,” I say honestly. “I don’t think either of us knew how hard this would be.”

“The expense?” she jeers.

“The loneliness,” I say quietly.

She sighs as if she has come to the end of a piece of hard work. “I was sure all along that you were faithful, whatever anyone said. And my good Bess.”

“We are,” I say. “We both are.” I begin to think that I may walk out of this room a free man.

“Hastings can take her to his house until we decide what is to be done with her,” she says. “You can go back to Chatsworth with Bess. You can start your married life all over again. You can be happy again.”

“I thank you,” I say. I bow low and walk backwards towards the door. There is no point in mentioning the huge debt she owes me for the queen’s keep. There is no point in telling her that Bess will never forgive me for the loss of this fortune. No point in repining that we cannot start married life all over again, it is spoiled, perhaps forever. I should be glad just to get out of here without an escort of guards to take me to the Tower, where my friends wait for the death sentence.

At the door, I hesitate. “Has Your Grace decided what is to become of her?”

The queen shoots me a hard, suspicious look. “Why would you care?”

“Bess will ask me,” I say feebly.

“She will be held as a prisoner until we can judge what to do,” she says. “She cannot be tried for treason: she is no subject of mine, so she cannot be accused of treason. She cannot be returned to Scotland now; clearly she cannot be trusted. She has made my life impossible. She has made her own life impossible. She is a fool. I don’t want to keep her imprisoned forever, but I don’t see what else I can do with her. It is that or her death, and clearly I cannot kill a fellow queen and my cousin. She is a fool to force this dilemma upon me. She has raised the stakes to victory or death and I can give her neither.”

“She would make a peace agreement with you, I think,” I say cautiously. “She would hold to a peace treaty with you. She always speaks of you with the deepest of respect. This uprising was none of her making and she was preparing to return to Scotland as an ally of yours.”

“Cecil says she cannot be trusted,” she says shortly. “And she herself has taught me not to trust her. And hear this, Talbot: I would take Cecil’s opinion before that of a man who permitted her to court, betroth herself, and plan a rebellion under his very roof. At the very least you were too trusting with her, Shrewsbury. I pray to God it is nothing worse. She has fooled you; I hope she has not seduced you.”

“I swear she has not,” I say.

She nods, unimpressed. “You can go back to your wife.”

I bow. “I am always loyal,” I say from the doorway.

“I know what you do,” she says bluntly. “I know every single thing that you do, trust Cecil for that. But I don’t know what you think anymore. I used to know what you all thought, but now you are grown mysterious, all of you. You have all lost your fidelity. I don’t know what you all want. You are opaque to me now, where once you were all so clear.”

I find I cannot answer her. I should be a clever courtier and have some words of reassurance or even flattery. But she is right. I no longer understand myself, nor the world that Cecil has made. I have grown mysterious to myself.

“You can go,” she says coldly. “Everything is different now.”

1570, JANUARY, TUTBURY CASTLE: BESS

M
y husband the earl comes home from London in tight-lipped silence. He is as white as if he was suffering from an attack of the gout again. When I ask him if he is ill, he shakes his head in silence. I see then that he has taken a deep wound to his pride. The queen has humiliated him before the other nobility. She could have done nothing worse to this rightly haughty man than imply that he cannot be trusted, and this is what she has done to him.

She might as well have put him on the rack as tell him, before the others, that he no longer has her confidence. This is one of the greatest noblemen in Britain and she treats him as if he is some lying servant that she might dismiss from his place for stealing. This is a queen who uses torture indeed.

I don’t know why Elizabeth should turn so cruel, making old friends into enemies. I know she is nervous, prone to deep fears; in the past I have seen her sick for fear. But she has always before been acute in knowing her friends, and she has always counted on them. I cannot think what has thrown her from her usual habit of using flattery and guile, desire and sweetness to keep her court around her, and the men dancing to her tune.

It has to be Cecil who has shaken her from her old, safest course. It has to be Cecil, who halted the proper return of the Scots queen to her throne and who has imprisoned two lords, declared another a runaway traitor, and now tells the queen that my husband is not to be
trusted. Cecil’s enmity against the other queen, against all Papists, has grown so powerful that he is prepared to behead half of England to defeat them. If Cecil, my true and faithful friend, now thinks that my husband is against him, if he is prepared to use all his power against us, then we are in danger indeed. This return of my husband from London is nothing more than a temporary relief, and everything that I counted on is unreliable; nothing is safe.

I walk across the courtyard, a shawl over my head for warmth, the cold and damp of Tutbury creeping into my bones through my winter boots. I am summoned to the stables, where the stack of hay has fallen so low that we will not be able to get through the winter. I shall have to get more sent from Chatsworth or buy some in. We cannot afford to buy in fodder; I can barely afford to cart it across the country. But truly, I am thinking of nothing but how I shall manage if my husband is accused. What if Cecil recalls him to London, just as they released and then recalled Thomas Howard? What if Cecil arrests my husband, as he has dared to arrest Thomas Howard? What if he puts him in the Tower along with the others? Who would have thought that Cecil would have grown so great that he could act against the greatest lords of the land? Who would have thought that Cecil would claim that the interests of the country are different from those of her great lords? Who would have thought that Cecil could claim that the interests of the country are the same as his?

Cecil will stand my friend, I am sure of that. We have known each other too long for betrayal now; we have been each other’s benchmark for too long in this life. We are cut from the same cloth, Cecil and I. He will not name me as a traitor and send me to the Tower. But what of my husband the earl? Would he throw down George?

I have to say that if Cecil knew for certain that George had joined with his enemies, he would act at once and decisively. I have to say that I would not blame him. All of us children of the Reformation are quick to defend what we have won, quick to take what is not ours. Cecil will not let the old lords of England throw him down for no better
reason than he was a steward when they were nobility. Neither would I. We understand that about each other, at least.

My husband the earl does not understand either of us. He cannot be blamed. He is a nobleman, not a self-made man like Cecil. He thinks he needs only to decide something and it shall be. He is used to raising his head and finding what he wants to his hand. He does not know, as Cecil and I know from our hard childhoods, that if you want something, you have to work at it night and day. Then, when you have it, you have to work night and day to keep it. Right now, Cecil will be working night and day towards the death of the Queen of Scots, the execution of her friends, and the breaking of the power of the old lords who support her claim and hate him.

I shall write to Cecil. He understands what houses and land and fortune mean to a woman who was raised with nothing. He might listen kindly to a wife appealing for the safety of her beloved husband. He might listen with generosity to a newly married woman in distress. But if I beg him to save my fortune, he will understand that this is something more important than sentiment: this is business.

1570, JANUARY, TUTBURY CASTLE: MARY

Bothwell,

I have your letter. I know you would have come if you could. I did look for you at the time, but it is all over for me now. I see that it is over for you. We have been great gamblers and we have lost. I shall pray for you.

Marie

It is so bitterly cold, it is so drear, it is so miserable here that I can hardly bear to get out of my bed in the morning. The old ache in my side has returned and some days I cannot eat nor even lie in my bed without crying for pain. It has been raining, sleety freezing rain, for days and all I can see from my poky windows are gray skies, and all I can hear is the ceaseless drip, drip, drip from the roof to the mud below.

This castle is so damp that not even the biggest fire in the hearth can dry the patterns of damp from the plaster on the walls, and my furniture is starting to grow green with a cold wet mold. I think that Elizabeth chose this place for me hoping that I will die here. Some days I wish that I could.

The only event which has gone my way at all is the safe return of the Earl of Shrewsbury from Windsor Castle. I expected him to face death too, but Elizabeth has chosen to trust him a little longer. Better than that, she has even decided to leave me in his care. Nobody
knows why this should be, but she is a tyrant, she can be whimsical. I suppose that once she had ordered her killings, her excessive fears were sated. She overreacts, as she always does, and from sending me two extra jailers, banishing my household servants and companions, threatening me with house arrest and the arrest of my host, now she restores me to the keeping of Shrewsbury and sends me a kind letter inquiring after my health.

Shrewsbury delivers it, but he is so pale and drawn that I might have thought the letter was his order of execution. He hardly looks at me and I am glad of that, for I am huddled in rugs in my chair at the fireside, twisted around to try to spare the pain in my side, and I have never looked worse.

“I am to stay with you?” He must hear the relief in my voice, for his tired face warms in response.

“Yes. It seems I am forgiven for letting you meet the Northern lords, God save their souls. But I am on parole as your guardian. I am warned not to make mistakes again.”

“I am truly sorry to have brought such trouble to your door.”

He shakes his head. “Oh, Your Grace, I know that you never meant to bring trouble to me. And I know you would not plot against an ordained queen. You might seek your freedom but you would not threaten her.”

I lower my eyes. When I look up again he is smiling down on me. “I wish you could be my advisor as well as my guardian,” I say very quietly. “I would have done better in my life if I could always have been kept by a man such as you.”

There is a silence for a moment. I hear the log shift in the grate and a little flame makes the shadowy room brighter.

“I wish it too,” he says, very low. “I wish I could see you come to your own again, in safety and health.”

“Will you help me?” My voice is barely louder than the flicker of the fire.

“If I can,” he says. “If I can without dishonor.”

“And not tell Bess,” I add. “She is too good a friend of Cecil for my safety.” I think he will hesitate at this: I am asking him to ally with me against his wife. But he rushes forward.

“Bess is his spy,” he says, and I can hear the bitterness in his voice. “Her friendship with him may have saved my life, but I cannot thank her for it. She is his friend and his ally, his informant. It was her reporting to him that saved me. It is his authority that sanctions everything. Bess is always friends with the most powerful. Now her choice lights on Cecil, whereas it used to be me.”