“A promise under duress is worth nothing,” I say cheerfully. “I will be free.”
1572, JANUARY,
LONDON:
GEORGE
Ialmost fall asleep straining my eyes in candlelight, trying to read the notes I have made during the day of Norfolk’s trial. The words that I have scribbled merge and go hazy before my eyes. The evidence from Bishop Ross is enough to destroy Norfolk but it has come from a man so terrified that he cannot even make up a convincing story. Half of the evidence has clearly been dictated by Cecil and attested by men out of their mind with terror and pain. The other half of it has no support from anyone, no witnesses; it is no evidence. It is nothing but Cecil’s lies, undiluted shameless lies.
I am weary to my soul at the thought that if I were a better man I would stand up and denounce Cecil for a false advisor, demand that the lords stand with me and that we go to the queen and insist that she listen to us. I am the greatest man in England, I am the Lord High Steward, it is my duty and honor to defend England against bad advisors.
But to my shame, I know, I am not that man. As my wife would be quick to explain I have neither the wit nor the courage to state and defend a case against Cecil. I do not have the prestige with my peers; I do not have the ear of the queen. Worst of all: I no longer have pride in myself.
The last man to challenge Cecil is before us now on a charge of treason. If we had stood against Cecil when he first took sway over the mind of the young princess, or if we had backed Dudley against him in those early days, or if we had even backed Howard against him only months ago…But we are like a besom of sticks; if we stood together we would be unbreakable, but Cecil will snap us off one by one. There is no one here who will rise to save Thomas Howard. There is no one here who will rise to overthrow Cecil. Not even I, who know of Cecil’s spying, and his lies, and the quiet men who do his bidding all around the country, the men who are trained in torture, the men who have taken the laws of this country and said that they shall not stand, that Cecil’s imaginary dangers are greater than the law, the men who lie for him and care nothing for the truth. I know all this, and I dare not stand against him. Actually, it is because I know all this that I dare not.
1572, JANUARY,
SHEFFIELD CASTLE:
MARY
The little candle flame bobs at my window, and at midnight, when I bend down to blow it out, I hesitate as I see an answering wink from a quickly doused lantern, down in the shadows of the garden where the dark trees overhang the dark grass. There is a small new moon, hidden by scudding clouds, throwing no light on the stone wall below me. It is black as a cliff.
I did this three years ago at Bolton Castle when I trusted in my luck; I thought no walls could keep me in; I thought some man would be bound to rescue me. Elizabeth would not be able to resist my persuasion, or my family would rise up for me, Bothwell would come for me. I could not believe that I would not once again be at a beautiful court, beloved, enchanting, at the heart of everything.
Now it is not the same. I am not the same. I am weary from three years in prison. I am heavier, I have lost my wiry strength, I am no longer tireless, undefeated. When I climbed down the wall at Bolton Castle I had spent a week on the run from my enemies; I was hardened. Here, in the three years of luxurious imprisonment, I have been overfed and bored, inflamed with false hopes and distracted by my own dreams, and I am never well.
I am a different woman in my heart. I have seen the North rise and fall for me, I have seen my men swinging as picked-off bones on the gibbets at the village crossroads. I have accepted a man in marriage and learned of his arrest. And I have waited and waited for Bothwell, certain that he would come to me. He does not come. He cannot come. I have realized that he will never come to me again, even if I order him not to. Even if I send to tell him I never want to see him again, even though he would understand the prohibition is an invitation, he cannot come.
Courage! I bend my head and blow out the little flame. I have nothing to lose by trying, and everything to gain. As soon as I am free again I shall have everything restored to me, my health, my beauty, my fortune, my optimism, Bothwell himself. I check that the sheets are knotted around my waist, I hand the end to John my steward, I smile at Mary Seton and give her my hand to kiss. I will not wait for her, this time; I will not take a maid. I shall start running the moment that my feet touch the ground.
“I will send for you when I am in France,” I say to her.
Her face is pale and strained, tears in her eyes. “God speed,” she says.“Bonne chance!”
She swings open the lattice window and John winds the rope of sheets around the strong wooden post of the bed, and braces himself to take my weight.
I nod my thanks to him and step up to the windowsill, bend my head to get out of the window, and at that very moment there is a hammering on my door and Ralph Sadler’s gruff voice hollering, “Open up! In the name of the queen! Open up!”
“Go!” John urges me. “I have you! Jump.”
I look down. Below me at the foot of the wall I see a gleam of metal; there are soldiers waiting. Hurrying from the main house come a dozen men with torches.
“Open up!”
I meet Mary Seton’s appalled gaze and I shrug. I try to smile, but I feel my lip tremble.“Mon dieu,” I say. “What a noise! Not tonight, then.”
“Open in the name of the queen, or I will break down this door!” Sadler bellows like a bull.
I nod to John. “I think you had better let him in,” I say.
I put out my hand to Mary and let her help me down from the window. “Quickly,” I say. “Untie the rope. I don’t want him to see me like this.”
She fumbles as he hammers with the hilt of his sword. John throws open the door and Sadler falls inwards. Behind him is Bess, white-faced, her hand tugging at his sleeve, holding back his sword arm.
“You damned traitor, you damned treasonous, wicked traitor!” he hollers as he stumbles into the room and sees the knotted sheets on the floor and the open window. “She should take your head off; she should take your head off without trial.”
I stand like a queen and say nothing.
“Sir Ralph…,” Bess protests. “This is a queen.”
“I could damned well kill you myself!” he shouts. “If I threw you out of the window now I could say that the rope broke and you fell.”
“Do it,” I spit.
He bellows in his rage and Mary dives between us and John moves closer, fearing this brute will lunge at me in his temper. But it is Bess who prevents him, tightening her grip on his arm. “Sir Ralph,” she says quietly, “you cannot. Everyone would know. The queen would have you tried for murder.”
“The queen would thank God for me!” he snaps.
She shakes her head. “She would not. She would never forgive you. She does not want her cousin dead; she has spent three years trying to find a way to restore her to her throne.”
“And look at the thanks she gets! Look at the love which is returned her!”
“Even so,” she says steadily, “she does not want her death.”
“I would give it her as a gift.”
“She does not want her death on her conscience,” Bess says, more precisely. “She could not bear it. She does not wish it. She will never order it. A queen’s life is sacred.”
I feel icy inside. I don’t even admire Bess for defending me. I know she is defending her own house and her own reputation. She doesn’t want to go down in history as the hostess who killed a royal guest. Mary Seton slips her hand in mine.
“You will not touch her,” she says quietly to Sir Ralph. “You will have to kill me, you will have to kill us all first.”
“You are blessed in the loyalty of your friends,” Sir Ralph says bitterly. “Though you yourself are so disloyal.”
I say nothing.
“A traitor,” he says.
For the first time I look at him. I see him flush under the contempt of my gaze. “I am a queen,” I sa
y. “I cannot be named as a traitor. There can be no such thing. I am of the blood royal; I cannot be accused of treason; I cannot be legally executed. I am untouchable. And I don’t answer to such as you.”
A vein throbs in his temple; his eyes goggle like those of a landed fish. “Her Majesty is a saint to endure you in her lands,” he growls.
“Her Majesty is a criminal to hold me against my consent,” I say. “Leave my room.”
His eyes narrow. I do believe he would kill me if he could. But he cannot. I am untouchable. Bess tugs gently at his arm and together they leave. I could almost laugh: they go backwards, step by stiff step, as they must do when they leave a royal presence. Sadler may hate me, but he cannot free himself from deference.
The door closes behind them. We are left alone with our candle still showing a wisp of smoke, the open window, and the knotted rope dangling in space.
Mary pulls in the rope, snuffs the candle, and closes the window. She looks out over the garden. “I hope Sir Henry got away,” she says. “God help him.”
I shrug. If Sir Ralph knew where to come and at what time, the whole plot was probably penetrated by Cecil from the moment that Sir Henry Percy first hired his horses. No doubt he is under arrest now. No doubt he will be dead within the week.
“What shall we do?” Mary demands. “What shall we do now?”
I take a breath. “We go on planning,” I say. “It is a game, a deadly game, and Elizabeth is a fool for she has left me with nothing to do but to play this game. She will plot to keep me, and I will plot to be free. And we shall see, at the very end, which of us wins and which of us dies.”
1572, MARCH,
CHATSWORTH:
BESS
Iam bidden to meet my lord, his lawyer, and his steward in his privy chamber, a formal meeting. His lawyer and clerks have come from London, and I have my chief steward to advise me. I pretend to ignorance, but I know what this is all about. I have been waiting for this all the weeks after the verdict of guilty on Howard and my lord’s silent return home.
My lord has served his queen as loyally as any man could do but even after the verdict she wanted, she has not rewarded him. He may be Lord High Steward of England but he is a great lord only in reputation. In reality he is a pauper. He has no money left at all, and not a field that is not mortgaged. He has returned from London as a man broken by his own times. Howard is sentenced to death and it will be Cecil’s England now, and my lord cannot live in peace and prosperity in Cecil’s England.
Under the terms of our marriage contract my lord has to give me great sums of money at my son’s coming of age. Henry is now twenty-one years old and Charles will soon be twenty, and my lord will owe me their inheritance and the money for my other children on the first day of April, as well as other obligations to me. I know he cannot pay it. He cannot get anywhere near to paying it.
In addition to this I have been lending him money to pay for the queen’s keep for the past year, and I have known for the past six months that he won’t be able to repay me this either. The expense of housing and guarding the Queen of Scots has cost him all the rents and revenues of his land, and there is never enough money coming in. To settle his debt to me, to fulfil his marriage contract, he will have to sell land or offer me land instead of the money he should pay me.
He finally realized what a crisis he was in when he could not hold his usual open house at Christmas. He finally realized that he could not go on pouring his fortune at the feet of the Scots queen. When I told him that there was nothing left in the treasure room, no credit available for us in the whole of Derbyshire, he finally saw the disaster that has been building every day for the past three years, and of which I have warned him, every time that we sent out our bill to the queen and received no payment. I have been thinking every day for three years about what we should do about this unbearable expense, every day for the past three years it has nagged at me like a pain, and so I know what I want. His poverty has come as a surprise to him; to me it is an old enemy.
I have not been idle. Indeed, I have deliberately shifted his debt from the moneylenders to myself, securing his borrowings with my own funds, knowing that he would not be able to repay. Knowing what I want. I know what I will settle for, and I know what I will absolutely reject.
I sit on a straight-backed chair, hands in my lap, attentive, as the lawyer stands before me and explains that the earl’s financial position is straitened through no fault of his own. He has had expenses beyond what any lord could bear, in his service to the queen. I bow my head like an obedient wife and listen. My husband looks out the window as if he can hardly bear to hear his folly described.
The lawyer tells me that in view of the earl’s obligations in terms of our marriage contract, and his later obligations from his borrowing from me, he is prepared to make a proposal. My chief steward glances at me. He has been frightened by my loans; I can feel his hopeful look on my face, but I keep my eyes down.
The lawyer proposes that all the lands that I brought to my lord on marriage shall be restored to me. All the lands that were gifted to me by my dearest husband William St. Loe and my careful husband before him William Cavendish will be returned to me. In return I must forgive my husband his debt to me for the cash loans I have made him, and I must forgive him the support of my children, which he promised on marriage. The agreement we made on marriage is, in effect, to be dissolved. I shall have my own again and he will be responsible neither for me nor for my children.
I could cry with relief, but I say nothing and keep my face still. This is to regain my inheritance; this is to restore to me the fortune I made with husbands who knew the value of money and knew the value of land and kept them safe. This restores to me myself. This makes me once more a woman of property, and a woman of property is a woman in charge of her own destiny. I will own my house. I will own my land. I will manage my fortune. I will be an independent woman. At last I shall be safe again. My husband may be a fool, may be a spendthrift, but his ruin will not drag me down.
“This is a most generous offer,” his lawyer says, when I say nothing.
Actually, no; it is not a generous offer. It is a tempting one. It is designed to tempt me, but if I were to hold out for the cash I am owed, my husband would be forced to sell most of these lands to clear his debts, and I could buy them at rock-bottom prices and show a profit. But, I imagine, this is not the way of an earl and his countess.
“I accept,” I say simply.
“You do?”
They were expecting more haggling. They were expecting a great repining about the loss of money. They expected me to demand coin. Everyone wants money; nobody wants land. Everyone in England but me.
“I accept,” I repeat. I manage a wan smile at my lord, who sits in a sulk, realizing at last how much his infatuation with the Scots queen has cost him. “I would wish to help my husband the earl in this difficult time. I am certain that when the queen is returned to Scotland she will favor him with the repayment of all debts.” This is to rub salt in a raw wound. The queen will never return to Scotland in triumph now, and we all know it.
He smiles thinly at my optimism.
“Do you have a document for me to sign?” I ask.
“I have one prepared,” the lawyer says.
He passes it over to me. It is headed “Deed of Gift” as if my husband the earl had not been forced into repaying me my own again. I will not quibble at this, or at the value of the lands that are overpriced, or at the value of the woodland which has not been properly maintained. There are many items I would argue if I were not eager to finish this, desperate to call my own lands my own again.
“You understand that if you sign this you must provide for your own children?” The lawyer hands me the quill, and I am hard put not to laugh aloud.
Provide for my children! All my husband the earl has ever done is provide for the Queen of Scots. His own children’s inheritance has been squandered on her luxuries. Thank God he will no longer be
responsible for me and mine.
“I understand,” I say. “I will provide for myself and for my family, and I will never look to the earl for help again.”
He hears the ring of farewell in this, and his head comes up and he looks at me. “You are wrong if you blame me,” he says with quiet dignity.
“Fool,” I think, but I do not say it. This is the last time I shall call him fool in my thoughts. I promise myself this, as I sign. From this day if he is wise or if he is a fool, he cannot cost me my lands. He can be a fool or not as he pleases, he will never hurt me again. I have my lands back in my own hands and I will keep them safe. He can do what he wants with his own. He can lose all his own lands for love of her, if he so chooses, but he cannot touch mine.