No peace in my heart, since Hastings is only waiting for the countryside to be declared safe before he takes the other queen from me, and I can neither speak to her nor plead for her.
No peace in the country, where I can trust the loyalty of no one; the tenants are surly and are clearly planning yet more mischief, and some of them are still missing from their homes, still roaming with ragtag armies, still promising trouble.
Leonard Dacre, one of the greatest lords of the North, who has been in London all this while, is now returned home. Instead of seeing that the battle is over, and lost, even with Elizabeth’s great army quartered on his doorstep, he summons his tenants, saying that he needs them to defend the queen’s peace. At once, as always, guided by the twin lights of his fear and his genius at making enemies, Cecil advises the queen to arrest Dacre on suspicion of treason, and forced into his own defense, the lord raises his standard and marches against the queen.
Hastings bangs open the door into my private room as if I am traitor myself. “Did you know this of Dacre?” he demands.
I shake my head. “How should I? I thought he was in London.”
“He has attacked Lord Hunsdon’s army and got clean away. He swears he will raise the North.”
I feel a sinking fear for her. “Not again! Is he coming here?”
“God knows what he is doing.”
“Dacre is a loyal man. He would not fight the queen’s army.”
“He has just done so and is now an outlaw running for his life like the other Northern earls.”
“He is as loyal as—”
“As you?” Hastings insinuates.
I find that my fists are clenched. “You are a guest in my house,” I remind him, my voice trembling with rage.
He nods. “Excuse me. These are troubling times. I wish to God I could just take her and leave.”
“It’s not safe yet,” I say swiftly. “Who knows where Dacre’s men might be? You can’t take her away from this castle until the countryside is safe. You will raise the North again if they kidnap her from you.”
“I know. I’ll have to wait for my orders from Cecil.”
“Yes, he will command everything now,” I say, unable to hide my bitterness. “Thanks to you, he will be without rival. You have made our steward our master.”
Hastings nods, pleased with himself. “He is without equal,” he says. “No man has a better vision of what England can be. He alone saw that we had to become a Protestant country, we had to separate ourselves from the others. He saw that we have to impose order on Ireland, we have to subordinate Scotland, and we have to go outward, to the other countries of the world, and make them our own.”
“A bad man to have as an enemy,” I remark.
Hastings cracks a brutal laugh. “I’ll say so. And your friend the other queen will learn it. D’you know how many deaths Elizabeth has ordered?”
“Deaths?”
“Executions. As punishment for the uprising.”
I feel myself grow cold. “I did not know she had ordered any. Surely there will be trials for treason for the leaders only, and…”
He shakes his head. “No trials. Those who are known to have ridden out against her are to be hanged. Without trial. Without plea. Without question. She says she wants seven hundred men hanged.”
I am stunned into silence. “That will be a man from every village, from every hamlet,” I say weakly.
“Aye,” he says. “They won’t turn out again, for sure.”
“Seven hundred?”
“Every ward is to have a quota. The queen has ruled that they are to be hanged at the crossroads of each village and the bodies are not to be cut down. They are to stay till they rot.”
“More will die by this punishment than ever died in this uprising. There was no battle, there was no blood shed. They fought with no one, they dispersed without a shot being fired or a sword drawn. They submitted.”
He laughs once more. “Then perhaps they will learn not to rise again.”
“All they will learn is that the new rulers of England do not care for them as the old lords did. All they will learn is that if they ask for their faith to be restored, or the common lands left free to be grazed, or their wages not driven down, that they can expect to be treated as an enemy by their own countrymen and faced with death.”
“They are the enemy,” Hastings says bluntly. “Or had you forgotten? They are the enemy. They are my enemy and Cecil’s enemy and the queen’s enemy. Are they not yours?”
“Yes,” I say unwillingly. “I follow the queen, wherever she leads.” And I think to myself, Yes, they have become my enemies now. Cecil has made them my enemies now, though once they were my friends and my countrymen.
1570, JANUARY,
TUTBURY CASTLE:
MARY
My husband, Bothwell,
I am returned to Tutbury, I am imprisoned without hope of release. My army has dispersed. I wish I could see you.
Marie
I have not summoned my lord Shrewsbury since our return to this miserable place from miserable Coventry, when he comes to me without announcement, and asks me if he may sit with me for a moment. His face is so weary and so sad that for a second I am filled with hope that he has heard of a reverse for his queen.
“Is anything wrong, my lord?”
“No,” he says. “No. Not for me and for my cause. But I have grave news for you.”
“Norfolk?” I whisper. “Is he coming for me at last?”
He shakes his head. “He did not rise with the Northern earls. He went to court. In the end he decided to obey his queen. He has submitted to her will. He is her liege man and he has thrown himself on her mercy.”
“Oh,” I say. I bite my lip so that I say nothing more. Dear God, what a fool, what a coward, what a turncoat. Damn Norfolk for his stupidity that will be my ruin. Bothwell would never have threatened an uprising and then submitted early. Bothwell would have ridden out to battle. Bothwell never evaded a fight in his life. An apology would have choked him.
“And I am sorry to tell you that Lord Dacre has fled over the border to Scotland.”
“His rising is over?”
“It is all over. The queen’s army controls the North, and her executioners are hanging men in every village.”
I nod. “I am sorry for them.”
“I too,” he says shortly. “Many of them will have been ordered to follow their liege lord and done nothing more than their duty. Many of them will have thought they were doing the will of God. They are simple men who didn’t understand the changes that have come to this country. They will have to die for not understanding Cecil’s policies.”
“And I?” I whisper.
“Hastings will take you as soon as the roads are fit to travel,” he says, his voice very low. “I cannot prevent him. Only the bad weather is holding him now; as soon as the snow clears he will take you away. I am under suspicion myself. Pray God I am not ordered to London to the Tower on a charge of treason as you are taken from me to Leicester.”
I find I am shaking at the thought of being parted from him. “Will you not travel with us?”
“I won’t be allowed.”
“Who will protect me when I am taken from your care?”
“Hastings will be responsible for your safety.”
I don’t even mock this. I just give him a long, fearful look.
“He will not harm you.”
“But, my lord, when shall I see you again?”
He gets up from his chair and leans his forehead against the high stone mantelpiece. “I don’t know, Your Grace, my dearest queen. I don’t know when we shall meet again.”
“How will I manage?” I can hear how small and weak my voice is. “Without you…and Lady Bess, of course. How shall I manage without you?”
“Hastings will protect you.”
“He will incarcerate me in his house, or worse.”
“Only if they accuse you of treason. You cannot be charged
with any crime if you were only planning to escape. You are only in danger if you encouraged rebellion.” He hesitates. “It is essential that you remember this. You have to keep the difference clear in your mind, if anyone should ever question you. You cannot be charged with treason unless they can show that you were plotting the death of the queen.” He pauses; he lowers his voice. “If you wanted nothing more than your freedom then you are innocent of any charge. Remember this if anyone asks you. Always tell them that you were only planning to be free. They cannot touch you if you insist that your only plan was escape.”
I nod. “I understand. I will be careful what I say.”
“And even more careful of what you write,” he says, very low. “Cecil is a man for written records. Never put your name to anything he can name as treason. He will be watching your letters. Never receive and never write anything that threatens the safety of the queen.”
I nod. There is a silence.
“But what is the truth?” Shrewsbury asks. “Now that it is all over, did you plot with the Northern lords?”
I let him see my gleam of amusement. “Of course I did. What else is there for me to do?”
“It is not a game!” He turns irritably. “They are in exile, one of them charged with treason, and hundreds of men will die.”
“We might have won,” I say stubbornly. “It was so close. You know it yourself; you thought we would win. There was a chance. You don’t understand me, Chowsbewwy. I have to be free.”
“There was a great chance. I see that. But you lost,” he says heavily. “And the seven hundred men who must die have lost, and the Northern lords who will be executed or exiled have lost, and the greatest duke in England, fighting for his life and his good name, has lost…and I have lost you.”
I rise and stand beside him. If he turned his head now he would see me, looking up at him, my face raised for his kiss.
“I have lost you,” he says again, and he steps away from me, bows, and goes to the door. “And I don’t know how I will manage, how I will manage without you.”
1570, JANUARY,
TUTBURY CASTLE:
BESS
You would not take us for a castle of victors. Hastings is surly and anxious to be home. He speaks of riding out and overseeing the hangings himself, as if the lives of our tenants were a matter of sport: another sort of kill when the weather is too snowy for hunting. The queen is pale and sickly; she complains of a pain in her side, in her leg; she has headaches and sits in the darkness of her rooms with the shutters closed against the cold wintry light. She is taking this hard, as well she might.
And my lord is as quiet and grave as if there was a death in the house; he goes quietly about his business almost on tiptoe. We hardly speak to one another except about the work of the house and family matters. I have not heard him laugh, not once, not since we were at Wingfield, when it was summer and we thought the queen would go back to her throne in Scotland within days.
Elizabeth’s justice is clamping down on our lands like a hard winter. The news of the planned executions has leaked out and men are disappearing from the villages overnight, leaving nothing but their footsteps in the snow, leaving wives like widows with no one to break the ice on the water of the well. It will not be the same here, not for a generation. We will be ruined if the strong young men run away and their sons are taken to the gallows in their place.
I don’t pretend to know how to run a country: I am a woman of no education, and I care for nothing but keeping my lands in good heart and building my houses, keeping my books, and raising my children to the best estate I can find for them. But I do know how to run a farm, and I do know when a land is ruined, and I have never seen anything more sad and sorry than the estates of the North in this bitter, bitter year of 1570.
1570, JANUARY,
TUTBURY CASTLE:
MARY
Babington, the sweet boy page Anthony Babington, brings me my little dog, who insists on running away from my rooms to whore in the stable yard, where there is some kind of rough lady guard dog to whom he is a most devoted swain. He is a bad dog and whatever the charms of the stable-yard bitch, he should show a little more discrimination. I tell him so, kissing the warm silky head as Babington holds him and says, his face scarlet, “I washed him for you and toweled him dry, Your Grace.”
“You are a kind boy,” I say. “And he is a bad dog. You should have beaten him.”
“He’s too small,” he says awkwardly. “Too small to beat. He is smaller than a kitten.”
“Well, I thank you for bringing him back to me,” I say, straightening up.
Anthony’s hand goes inside his doublet, pulls out a packet, tucks it under the dog, and hands them both to me.
“Thank you, Babington,” I say loudly. “I am indebted to you. Make sure you take no risks,” I say softly. “This is a graver matter than bringing a naughty dog home.”
He flushes red, like the little boy he is. “I would do anything…,” he stammers.
“Then do this,” I caution him. “Take no grave risks for me. Do only what you can do safely.”
“I would lay down my life for you,” he says in a rush. “When I am grown to be a man I will set you free myself, you can count on me. I will make a plan, we will call it the Babington plot, everyone will know of it, and I will rescue you.”
I put my fingertips on his bright cheek. “And I thank you for that,” I say quietly. “But don’t forget to take care. Think: I need you free and alive to serve me. I shall look for you when you are a man, Anthony Babington.”
He smiles at that and bows to me, a great sweep of a bow as if I were an empress, and then he dashes off, long-legged like a colt in a springing field. Such a sweet, sweet boy, he makes me think of my own son, little James, and the man that I hope he will be.
I carry the dog and the packet to my privy room where my two-winged altar stands. I lock the door and look at Babington’s parcel. I see the unbroken seal of Bishop Lesley of Ross, writing from London.
I am grieved to my heart to tell you that my lords Westmorland and Northumberland and the Duke of Norfolk are all undone. Norfolk has given himself up and is in the Tower under charge of treason, God help him. Northumberland will join him there as soon as they bring him in. He was raising an army for you in Scotland but your wicked half brother captured him and sold him to Elizabeth for a ransom. It should have been thirty pieces of silver.
Westmorland has disappeared, and the word is that he has got away to Europe, perhaps France, perhaps the Netherlands, and the Countess of Northumberland with him. She rode at the head of your army, God bless her, and now she pays a heavy price. She will be a widow in exile.
Westmorland’s own wife has gone to their country house in despair and declares she knows nothing of the plot and wishes only to live quietly in peace. She hopes that the Tudor lust for revenge will pass over her.
Your betrothed, Norfolk, is almost certain to be charged with treason, God be with him and you. Cecil will revel in this undoing of his enemies and we have to pray that King Philip of Spain or your French cousins exert themselves to ensure your safety while these brave men face accusation and die for you. You are the third point to this plot, and there is no doubt in my mind that any evidence brought against
Norfolk will implicate you. Pray God they do not dare to come near you, though all who love you are in danger of their lives. I am in constant contact with de Spes, the Spanish ambassador, for your protection. But your loyal servant Roberto Ridolfi, who loaned money to Norfolk and brought me the Spanish gold and the promise of support from the Holy Father, has disappeared off the face of the earth. I am deeply afraid for him. I think we will have to assume that he has been arrested. But why would they arrest him and not come for me? I pray that he is safe in hiding and not captive or dead.
I myself am in fear of my own life and safety. The city is like a darkened courtyard at night, filled with spies; every footstep echoes, every passerby is watched. No one trusts his neig
hbor and everyone listens at every corner. Please God that the queen is merciful and Cecil does not destroy these poor men he has captured. Please God they leave you where you are, with your trustworthy guardian. I shall write again as soon as I can. I wish I had better news to send you and greater courage for myself but I remain, your faithful friend and servant, John Lesley.
I swear I will never fail you, not now, at this time of your need.