Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (399 page)

FEBRUARY 8TH, 1587, HARDWICK HALL: BESS

G
od save them both today, and all days.

I have no cause to love either of them and no cause to forgive them either, but I find I do forgive them, this day of her death and this day of his final heartbreak.

She was an enemy to my queen, to my country, to my faith, and to me, certainly to me. And he was a fool for her, he laid down his fortune for her, and in the end, as most of us think, he laid down his reputation and his authority for her as well. She ruined him, as she ruined so many others. And yet I find I can forgive them both. They were what they were born to be. She was a queen, the greatest queen that these days have known, and he saw that in her, knight errant that he was, and he loved her for it.

Well, today she paid for everything. The day that he dreaded, that she swore could never come, turned out to be a cold wintry morning when she came down the stairs at Fotheringhay to find a stage built in the great hall and the great men of England, my husband among them, to witness her death.

The final plot that could not be forgiven, that could not be overlooked, that she could not blame on others, was a plot to murder Queen Elizabeth and take her throne. The Scots queen, fatally, signed her name to it. Anthony Babington, now a young man, who had been little Babington, my darling page boy, was the chief deviser
of this treasonous scheme and he paid for it with his life, poor young man. I wish to God I had never put him in her way, for she took his heart when he was just a child, and she was his death, as she was for so many others.

After all the thousands of letters that she had written, after all the plots she had woven, despite her training and being so well warned, she was finally careless, or else she was entrapped. She signed her own name to the plan to murder Queen Elizabeth and that was her death warrant.

Or they forged it.

Who knows?

Between a prisoner as determined on freedom as she, and jailers as unscrupulous as Cecil and Walsingham, who will ever know the truth of it?

But in a way today, despite them all, the Scots queen has won the battle. She always said that she was not a tragic figure, not a queen from a legend, but she saw in the end that the only way she would defeat Elizabeth—fully and finally defeat her—was to be the heroine that Elizabeth could not be: a tragic heroine, the queen of suffering, cut down in her beauty and her youth. Elizabeth could name herself the Virgin Queen and claim great beauty, surrounded by admirers, but Mary Queen of Scots will be the one that everyone remembers as the beautiful martyr from this reign, whose lovers willingly died for her. Her death is Elizabeth’s crime. Her betrayal is Elizabeth’s single greatest shame. So she has won that crown. She lost in their constant rivalry for the throne of England, but she will win when the histories are written. The historians, mostly men, will fall in love with her and make up excuses for her, all over again.

They tell me that my husband watched her execution with the tears pouring down his face, speechless with grief. I believe it. I know he loved her with a passion that cost him everything. He was a prosaic man to be overwhelmed by love—and yet it was so. I was there and I saw it happen. I believe no man could have resisted her. She was a tidal
queen, a force of the moon, irresistible. He fell in love with her and she broke his fortune, his pride, and his heart.

And she? Who knows with her? Ask anyone who has loved a beautiful princess. You never know what she may be thinking. The nature of a princess is enigmatic, contrary, just like the sea. But it is my honest opinion that she never loved anyone at all.

And I? I saved myself from the storm that was Mary Queen of Scots and I know myself to be like a cottager who fastens his shutters and bolts the door and sees the gales blow over. George and I parted, he to his houses and me to mine. He guarded the queen and tried to keep her safe and tried to hide his love for her and tried to meet her bills, and I made a life for myself and for my children and I thanked God that I was far away from the two of them, and from the last great love affair of Mary Queen of Scots.

The years have gone by but my love of houses and land has been constant. I lost Chatsworth to my husband the earl when we quarreled and he turned against me, but I built a new house, a fabled house at Hardwick near the home of my childhood, with the greatest windows in the North of England, the most wondrous stretches of glass that anyone has ever seen, in great stone frames that look everywhere. The children even made a nursery rhyme about it:
Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall
, they sing. I have built a legend here.

I had my initials stamped on every side of the house in stone.
ES
it says, in stone at the edge of the towering roof, carved against the sky, so that from the ground, looking up, you can see my initials stamped on the clouds.
ES
the coronet bellows at the countryside, as far as the eye can see, for my house is set on a hill and the topmost roofs of my house shout
ES
.

Elizabeth Shrewsbury,
my house declaims to Derbyshire, to England, to the world. Elizabeth Shrewsbury built this house from her own fortune, with her own skill and determination, built this house from the strong foundations into Derbyshire rock to the initials on the roof. Elizabeth Shrewsbury built this house to declare her name and
her title, her wealth, and her dominance over this landscape. You cannot see my house and not recognize my pride. You cannot see my house and not know my wealth. You cannot see my house and not know that I am a woman self-made, and glad of it.

I have made my children secure in their fortunes; I have done what I set out to do for them. I have founded dynasties: my children own the titles of the earls of Shrewsbury, Devonshire, and Lennox. My son William is the first Earl of Devonshire; my daughter Mary will be the Countess of Shrewsbury. And my granddaughter Arbella is a Stuart, as I planned with Queen Mary. The half-joking scheme that we dreamed over our sewing, I made real; I brought it about. Against the odds, against the will of Queen Elizabeth, in defiance of the law, I married my daughter to Charles Stuart, and their child, my granddaughter, is heir to the throne of England. If luck goes with her—my luck, by which I mean my utter determination—she will be queen one day. And what woman in England but me would have dreamed of that?

I say it myself: not bad—not bad at all. Not bad at all for the daughter of a widow with nothing. Not bad at all for a girl from Hardwick, who was born into debt and had to earn everything she owns. I have made myself, a new woman for this new world, a thing that has never been before: a woman of independent means and an independent mind. Who knows what such women will do in the future? Who knows what my daughters will achieve, what my granddaughters might do? The world of Elizabeth is full of venturers: both those who travel far away to distant lands and those who stay at home. In my own way, I am one of them. I am a new sort of being, a new discovery: a woman who commands herself, who owes her fortune to no man, who makes her own way in the world, who signs her own deeds and draws her own rents and knows what it is to be a woman of some pride. A woman whose virtue is not modesty, a woman who dares to boast. A woman who is glad to count her fortune and pleased to do well. I am a self-made woman and proud of it.

And nobody in this world will ever call me Mrs. Fool.

   Touchstone Reading Group Guide

The Other Queen

1. Bess describes George and herself as newlyweds happy and in love. On
page 2
, she says, “Only my newly wedded husband is so dotingly fond of me that he is safe under the same roof as such a temptress.” What is it that first makes Bess uneasy about her husband’s feelings toward Mary?

2. Authors often challenge themselves by writing from the point of view of characters of the opposite sex. Do you think Gregory does a convincing job of creating her main male character, George Talbot? Do you think he is more or less realistic than the women in this novel, such as his wife, Bess, or Mary and Elizabeth?

3. George and Bess marry from choice and admiration. Identify how they describe each other early in the novel, then discuss how their opinions change over the course of the story. Do you think they ever really knew each other, or do you think their affection is another casualty of Mary and Elizabeth’s treacherous conflict?

4. On
page 54
, George compares Elizabeth and Mary. He says, “My queen, Elizabeth, is a most solid being, as earthy as a man. But this is a queen who is all air and angels. She is a queen of fire and smoke.” How else are the two queens compared throughout the novel by different characters? How do they describe themselves in comparison to each other?

5. George holds tightly to a noble, genteel way of life that has all but slipped away in England under Elizabeth’s rule. How do you feel about his devotion to Elizabeth given the circumstances of the times? Do you think Bess ultimately betrays her husband, or does she save him from himself? How might you deal with your spouse if your fundamental beliefs and loyalties rested on opposite sides?

6. Examine both Mary’s reasons for believing that her cousin Elizabeth must naturally support her as the heir to the English throne and restore her to the Scottish throne, and Elizabeth’s reasons for the actions she takes to keep Mary subordinated and under a watchful eye. With whom do you sympathize most, and why?

7. At the heart of the conflict between Elizabeth and Mary is a power struggle between the new ways of Protestant England and the old ways of Catholicism. How has the transition to Protestantism changed England as portrayed in this novel? In what ways do George and Bess serve as representatives of these two Englands?

8. Compare and contrast the various characters’ interpretation of religion and their relationship to God with respect to their Papist or Protestant beliefs. How do the characters differ in their use of God as justification and enlightenment?

9. Bess thinks George is a great fool. Mary finds him entirely honorable, and yet she relates to her rapist and captor, Bothwell, more powerfully. What do you think of these men? How do these two men compare to other significant male characters in the novel such as William Cecil, Henry Hastings, the Duke of Norfolk, and Ralph Sadler?

10. Throughout the novel, George and Bess are constantly in opposition. George fears and detests the “new England” that he believes Cecil has created, while Bess sees Cecil’s reforms as part of a golden dawn for England and for all Protestants. Who has the stronger character? Which side do you think you’d choose?

11. On
page 221
, Bothwell tells Mary, “The magic of royalty is an illusion that can be shattered by a man without a conscience.” What significance does this observation have for the novel and for this time in history? Using examples from the novel to support your opinion, explain why you either agree or disagree. Similarly, discuss the parallels between the effects of lifting the mystery of royalty and lifting the mystery of religion as described in this novel.

12. What understanding do Bess and Mary finally come to about each other? Do you think either can truly understand the other’s perspective, given such wildly different upbringings?

13. In the end, George is heartbroken to learn that Mary has lied to him and to almost everyone else. In her defense, Mary explains that she cannot possibly give her “true word” while under duress and imprisoned. Do you think this is an excuse? Why or why not?

One of your chief gifts as a novelist is your ability to look at a well-known story and find a unique way to frame it. What first attracted you to Queen Mary’s story? What ultimately convinced you to write this novel?

I was attracted to the story by reading a very good biography of Queen Mary by John Guy that convinced me she was an astute and intelligent woman and not the doomed tragedy queen of the myth. When I discovered that she was the prisoner of Bess of Hardwick, I could see that this was a collision of two tremendously powerful women, and I was very encouraged because no one before has been very interested in this period of Mary’s life, or seen the possibilities of her plotting and her domestic arrangements.

You’ve written several novels about Queen Elizabeth I. How did you find the experience of writing about her from the perspective of one of her greatest opponents?

I think my view of Elizabeth remains generally the same, but I always remember what a different person she rightly is as a young woman, in
The Queen’s Fool,
or a woman on the edge of her power, in
The Virgin’s Lover
. In this book we have an older and more confident Elizabeth but still one racked with uncertainty.

Tudor England is a favorite subject for filmmakers and television producers. Have you seen a production that is particularly accurate in its historical portrayals? Do you have a favorite film or television show about Elizabeth’s reign and/or Mary Queen of Scots?