I did not even hear him. In that moment he told me the truth as he had never spoken before, and I was not listening. I just said, “Who? Tell me the names. Tell me the regicides that killed Darnley. They are dead men.”
In answer he reached into his doublet and brought out the very bond that they had sworn, folded carefully and kept for this moment. He said, “This is for you. It may be the last thing I can do for you. This is for you. It proves your absolute innocence in his murder and our guilt. This is my parting gift to you.”
And then he rode away from me without saying goodbye. Not another word.
The paper was the bond, and on it was the name of almost every great lord at my court, the treacherous, rebellious murderers: including my half brother James. They had sworn to join together to kill my husband, Darnley.
And—voilа—Bothwell’s name was at the top. He was as guilty as any of them. That was what he was trying to tell me, on that day when he left me. That they could all bring themselves to kill a sacred royal person, just like me, one of sacred royal blood, like me. Any man without a conscience could do it. Bothwell too.
1569, DECEMBER,
COVENTRY:
GEORGE
Icannot sleep in this dirty town. The noise of our soldiers goes on all night like a rumble of discontent, and the raucous squeals of the girls of the town pierce the night air like vixen calling.
I get dressed by candlelight, leaving Bess asleep. As I go quietly from the bedroom I see her stir and her hand goes across the bed to where I usually lie. I pretend not to see that she is stirring. I don’t want to talk to Bess. I don’t want to talk to anybody.
I am not myself. The thought checks me as I go down the creaking stairs and let myself out the front door. A sentry in the doorway gives an awkward salute as he sees me and lets me go by. I am not myself. I am not the husband that I was, nor the servant of the queen. I am no longer a Talbot, famed for loyalty and steadiness of purpose. I no longer sit well in my clothes, in my place, in my dignity. I feel blown all about, I feel tumbled over by these great gales of history. I feel like a powerless boy.
If the Queen of Scots triumphs, as she is likely to do today, or tomorrow, I will have to negotiate a peace with her as my new queen. The thought of her as Queen of England, of her cool hands around mine as I kneel before her to offer her my vow of fealty, is so powerful that I stop again and put my hand against the town wall to steady myself. A passing soldier asks, “All right, my lord?” and I say, “Yes. Quite all right. It’s nothing.” I can feel my heart hammering in my chest at the thought of being able to declare myself as her man, in her service, in all honor sworn to her till death.
I am dizzy at the thought of it. If she wins, the country will be turned upside down again, but the people will quickly change. Half of them want the old ways back, the other half will obey. England will have a young beautiful queen; Cecil will be gone; the world will be quite different. It will be like dawn. Like a warm spring dawn, unseasonal hope, in the middle of winter.
And then I remember. If she comes to the throne it will be by Elizabeth’s death or defeat, and Elizabeth is my queen and I am her man. Nothing can change that until her death or surrender, and I have sworn to lay down my life if I can prevent either.
I have walked around the town walls to the south gate, and I pause for a moment to listen. I am sure I hear hoofbeats, and now the sentry looks through the spyhole and shouts, “Who goes there?” and at the shouted reply swings open one half of the wooden gate.
It is a messenger, off his horse in a moment, looking around. “Lord Shrewsbury?” he says to the sentry.
“I am here,” I say, going slowly forward, like a man in no hurry for bad news.
“Message,” he says in little more than a whisper. “From my master.”
I don’t need to ask his master’s name, and he will not tell me his own. This is one of the smartly dressed, well-paid young men of Cecil’s secret band. I put out my hand for the paper and I wave him to the kitchens which have been set up in the Shambles, where already the fires are lit and the bread is baking.
Cecil is brief as always.
Enter into no agreement with the Scots queen as yet. But keep her safe. The Spanish fleet at the Netherlands is armed and ready to sail, but it has not sailed. It is still in port. Be ready to bring her to London as fast as you can travel, as soon as I send word.
Cecil
1569, DECEMBER,
COVENTRY:
MARY
Aletter came, while you were sleeping.” Agnes Livingstone wakes me with a gentle touch to my shoulder in the early morning. “One of the soldiers brought it in.”
My heart leaps. “Give it to me.”
She hands it over. It is a little scrap of paper from Westmorland, his pinched script blurred with rain. Not even in code. It says to keep my faith and my hopes high, he will not be defeated, he will not forget me. If not this time, then another. I will see Scotland again, I will be free.
I struggle to sit up and wave to Agnes to move the candle closer so I can see if anything more is written on the paper. I was expecting him to tell me when they would come for me, of his rendezvous with the Spanish. This reads like a prayer, and I was expecting a plan. If it had been a note from Bothwell he would have told me where I should be and at what time; he would have told me what I should do. He would not have told me to keep my hopes high or that he would not forget me. We never spoke so to each other.
But if it had been Bothwell’s note, there would have been no mournful tone. Bothwell never thought of me as a tragic princess. He thinks of me as a real woman in danger. He does not worship me as a work of art, a beautiful thing. He serves me as a soldier; he takes me as a hard-hearted man; he rescues me as a vassal serves a monarch in need. I don’t think he ever promised me anything he did not attempt.
If it had been Bothwell, there would have been no tragic farewell. There would have been a hard-riding party of desperate men, coming by night, armed to kill and certain to win. But Bothwell is lost to me, in prison at Malmц, and I have to trust to the protection of such as Shrewsbury, the determination of Norfolk, and the daring of Westmorland, three uncertain, fearful men, God damn them. They are women compared to my Bothwell.
I tell Agnes to hold the candle close and I bring the note up to the flame, hoping that I will see the secret writing of alum or lemon juice turning brown in the heat. Nothing. I scorch my fingers and pull them away. He has sent me nothing but this note of regret, of nostalgia. It is not a plan; it is a lament, and I can’t bear sentiment.
I don’t know what is happening; this note tells me nothing, it teaches me nothing but dread. I am very afraid.
To comfort myself, without hope of reply, I write to the man who is utterly free of sentiment.
I fear that Westmorland has failed me and the Spanish have not sailed and the Pope’s bull dethroning Elizabeth has not been published. I know that you are no saint, worse: I know that you are a murderer. I know you are a criminal fit for the scaffold and you will undoubtedly burn in hell.
So come. I don’t know who will save me if you do not. Please come. You are, as before, my only hope.
Marie
1569, DECEMBER,
COVENTRY:
BESS
Hastings comes upon me as I stand on the town walls, looking north, a bitter wind blowing into my face, making my eyes water as if I were weeping, feeling as bleak as the gray day itself. I wish that George was here to put his arm around my waist and make me feel safe once more. But I don’t think he has touched me since the day at Wingfield when I told him that I am the spy that Cecil has placed in his household.
I wish to God I had news from Chatsworth and from my mother and my sister. I wish I had a note from Robert Dudley to tell me that my two boys are safe. I wish, more than anything in the world, I wish that I had a note, a line, a single word of encouragement from Cecil.
“News from Lord Hunsdon,” Hastings says briefly. A paper flutters in his ha
nd. “At last. Thank God we are saved. Dear God, we are saved. Praise God, we are saved.”
“Saved?” I repeat. I glance north again: it is a gesture we all make; one afternoon against the gray horizon I will see the darker gray of six thousand men marching towards us.
He waves his hand northwards. “No need to look for them anymore. They’re not there!” he exclaims. “They’re not coming!”
“Not coming?”
“They turned back to meet the Spanish at Hartlepool and the Spanish failed them.”
“Failed them?” It seems all I can do is echo him, like a chorus.
Hastings laughs in his joy and snatches my hands as if he would dance with me. “Failed them. Failed them, Madam Bess! The damned Spanish! Failures, as you would expect! Failed to meet them and broke their hearts!”
“Broke their hearts?”
“Some have given up and gone home. Westmorland and Northumberland are riding separately. Their army is dispersing.”
“We are safe?”
“We are safe.”
“It is over?”
“Over!”
Relief makes friends of us. He holds out his arms and I hug him as if he were my brother. “Thank God,” I say quietly. “And without a battle joined nor a drop of kinsman’s blood spilled.”
“Amen,” he says quietly. “A victory without a battle, a victory without a death. God save the queen.”
“I cannot believe it!”
“It is true. Cecil writes to me himself. We are saved. Against all the odds we are saved. The Protestant queen keeps her throne and the other queen is at our mercy. Her allies delayed, her friends dispersed, her army gone. Thank God, thank the God of our faith.”
“Why have the Spanish not come?”
Hastings shakes his head, still laughing. “Who knows? Who knows? The main thing is they missed their rendezvous; she is ruined. Her army discouraged, her thousands of men melted away. We have won! Thank God who smiles on us, His own.”
He whirls me round and I laugh out loud.
“My God, there will be profits to be made out of this,” he says, going from piety to prospect in one swift leap.
“Land?”
“Westmorland’s estates and Northumberland’s lands must be confiscated and broken up,” he says. “They will be charged with treason; their houses will be awarded to those who have been loyal. Who more loyal than you and me, eh, Countess? Shall you get another grand house from this, d’you think? How would half of Northumberland suit you?”
“It’s no more than I’ve paid out already,” I say.
“Richly rewarded,” he remarks with intense pleasure. “We will be richly rewarded. God blesses us, doesn’t He? Praise Him.”
1569, DECEMBER,
COVENTRY:
GEORGE
Ishould be glad, I should be singing an anthem, but I cannot delight in her defeat. It is clear to me now that my heart has been divided in these hard days, and I cannot seem to be a whole man again. I should be as happy as the others: the relief in Bess is palpable; Hastings has cracked his hard face into a smile. Only I have to pretend to happiness. I don’t feel it. God forgive me, I feel such pity for her. I feel her defeat as if it were my own cause that is lost.
I go to her room and tap at the door. Mary Seton opens it and her eyes are red from weeping. I understand at once that the queen knows of her downfall; perhaps she knows more than I do. She has been receiving secret letters even here, even in Coventry, and I cannot blame her for that.
“You know, then,” I say simply. “It is over.”
She nods. “She will want to see you,” she says quietly and holds the door wide.
The queen is seated in her chair of state by the fireside; the cloth of estate is shining golden in the candlelight. She is as still as a painting as I come into the room, her profile outlined in gold by the glow from the fire. Her head is slightly bowed, her hands are clasped in her lap. She could be a gilded statue entitled “Sorrow.”
I step towards her. I don’t know what I can say to her or what hope I can give her. But as I move she turns her face up to me and rises to her feet in one graceful movement. Without words she comes to me, and I open my arms and hold her. That is all I can do: wordlessly hold her, and kiss her trembling head.
1569, DECEMBER,
COVENTRY:
BESS
So, it is over. Good God, I cannot believe that it is over, and I have my goods safe in my wagons and I can go home again. I have a home to go to. I cannot believe it, but it is true. It is over. It is over, and we have won.
I should have predicted this; I would have predicted it if I had kept my wits about me. But I am a vulgar farmer’s daughter in very truth, and all I could think about was burying the silver and not about the will and the wit of the rival armies. Elizabeth’s army finally arrived on their sluggish march at Durham and sought an enemy to engage and found they had gone, blown away like mist in the morning. The great army of the North marched to meet the Spanish armada at Hartlepool and found nothing. At once they doubted every plan. They had sworn to restore the old church, so they held their Mass and thought that was done. They were for freeing the Scots queen but they were none of them sure where she had gone and they were counting on the Spanish pikemen and Spanish gold. They did not fancy facing Elizabeth’s army without either, and to tell truth they wanted to slip off to their homes and enjoy the peace and prosperity that has come with Elizabeth. They did not want to be the ones to start another war between kin.
Alas for them. The Spanish doubted them and did not want to risk their army and their ships until they were certain of victory. They delayed, and while they hesitated, the Northern army waited at Hartlepool, straining their eyes to see over the white wave tops for the whiter sails, and seeing nothing but the gray skyline and wheeling gulls with the cold spray of the North Sea blowing in their disappointed faces. Then they heard that the Duke of Norfolk had submitted to Elizabeth and written to Westmorland and Northumberland, begging them not to march against their queen. He dropped his head and rode to London though his own tenants hung on his horse’s tail and stirrup leathers and begged him to fight. So there was no Spanish fleet, there was no great army led by the Duke of Norfolk; the Northern army had victory at their very fingertips but they did not know it, and they did not grasp it.
Cecil writes to Hastings to be warned that the country is not at peace, to trust no one, but Westmorland is fled to the Netherlands and Northumberland has gone over the border to Scotland. Most of the men have gone back to their villages with a great story to tell and memories for the rest of their lives and nothing, in the end, achieved. Let a woman, even a vulgar farmer’s daughter, know this: half the time the greater the noise the less the deeds. And grand announcements do not mean great doings.
Let me remember also, in my own defense, that the vulgar farmer’s daughter who buries the silver and understands nothing at least has her silver safe when the great campaigns are over. The army is dispersed. The leaders are fled. And I and my fortune are safe. It is over. Praise God, it is over.
We are to take the queen back to Tutbury for safekeeping before she goes with Hastings to the Tower of London, or wherever he is commanded to take her, and the carters have broken some good Venetian glasses of mine and lost one wagon altogether, which held some hangings and some carpets, but worse than all of this, there is no note from Cecil addressed to us. We are still left in silence, and no word of thanks from our queen for our triumph in snatching the Scots queen from danger. If we had not rushed her away—what then? If she had been captured by the rebels, would not the whole of the North have turned out for her? We saved Elizabeth as surely as if we had met and defeated the army of the North, fifty against six thousand. We kidnapped the rebels’ figurehead and without her they were nothing.
So why does Elizabeth not write to thank my husband the earl? Why does she not pay the money she owes for the queen’s keep? Why does she not promise us Westmorland’s estates? Day afte
r day I tally up her debt to us in my accounts book, and this pell-mell rush across the country did not come cheaply either. Why does not Cecil write one of his warm short notes to send me his good will?
And when we are back in Tutbury with only a few broken glasses, one lost soup tureen, and a wagon full of hangings gone missing, to show for our terror-struck flight—why can I still not feel safe?
1570, JANUARY,
TUTBURY CASTLE:
GEORGE
There is no peace for me. No peace at home, where Bess counts up our losses every day, and brings me the totals on beautifully written pages, as if mere accuracy means they will be settled. As if I can take them to the queen, as if anyone cares that they are ruining us.