Philippa Gregory - The other queen

“Will we escort her home?” I ask. I am thinking of a royal progress to Edinburgh, of the castles and the court.

“Our queen will have to send an army to secure her safety. But the lords have agreed to her return. Her marriage to Bothwell will be annulled and they will bring her husband Lord Darnley’s murderers to trial.”

“She will be queen in Scotland again?” I ask. “Despite Cecil?” I try to keep the doubt from my voice but I shall be very surprised if that arch plotter has an enemy queen in his hands and quietly sends her home in comfort, with an army to help her.

“What has Cecil to do with it?” he asks me, deliberately obtuse. “I don’t think that Cecil can determine who is of royal blood, though he thinks to command everything else.”

“He cannot want her restored to power,” I say quietly. “He has worked for years to put Scotland under English command. It has been the policy of his life.”

“He cannot prevent it,” he says. “He has no authority. And it will be something then, my Bess, for us to be the dearest friends of the Queen of Scotland, don’t you think?”

I wait for the two girls to finish turning down the bed, curtsy, and leave the room. “And of course, she is heir to England,” I say quietly. “If Elizabeth returns her to Scotland, she is acknowledging her as queen and her cousin, and so it is to acknowledge her as the heir. So she will be our queen here, one day, I suppose. If Elizabeth has no child.”

“God save the Queen,” George says at once. “Queen Elizabeth, I mean. She is not old; she is healthy and not yet forty. She could yet marry and have a son.”

I shrug. “The Queen of Scots is a fertile woman of twenty-six. She is likely to outlive her cousin.”

“Hush,” he says.

Even in the privacy of our bedroom, between two loyal English subjects, it is treason to discuss the death of the queen. Actually, it is treason to even say the words “death” and “queen” in the same sentence. We have become a country where words have to be watched for betrayal. We have become a country where you can hang for grammar.

“Do you think the Scots queen is truly innocent of the murder of Lord Darnley?” I ask him. “You saw the evidence; are you sure she was not guilty?”

He frowns. “The inquiry closed without a decision,” he says. “And these things are not a matter for women’s gossip.”

I bite my tongue on an irritable reply. “It is not for gossip that I ask you,” I say respectfully. “It is for the safety and honor of your house.” I pause. He is listening now. “If she is the woman that they say—a woman who would murder her husband in cold blood and then marry the man who did the deed for her own power and safety—then there is no reason to think that she would not turn against us, if it was in her interest to do so. I don’t want my cellars packed with gunpowder one dark night.”

He looks aghast. “She is a guest of the Queen of England; she will be restored to her own throne. How can you think that she would attack us?”

“Because if she is as bad as everyone says, then she is a woman who will stop at nothing to gain her way.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that Lord Darnley, her own husband, was in a plot against her. He had joined with the rebel lords and was guided by her half brother, Lord Moray. I think together they planned to throw her down and imprison her and put him as king consort on the throne. Her half brother would have ruled through Darnley. He was a weak creature, they all knew that.”

I nod. I knew Darnley from a boy, a boy horridly spoiled by his mother, in my opinion.

“The lords loyal to the queen made a plot to kill Darnley, Bothwell probably among them.”

“But did she know?” I demand. It is the key question: is she a husband-killer?

He sighs. “I think not,” he says fairly. “The letters that show her ordering the deed are certainly forgeries; the others are uncertain. But she was in and out of the house while they were putting the gunpowder in the cellar; surely she would not have taken the risk if she had known of the danger. She had planned to sleep there that night.”

“So why marry Bothwell?” I demand. “If he was one of the plotters? Why reward him?”

“He kidnapped her,” my loyal husband says quietly, almost in a whisper. He is so ashamed by the shame of the queen. “That seems certain. She was seen to be taken by him without her consent. And when they came back to Edinburgh he led her horse by the bridle so that everyone could see she was his captive and innocent of a conspiracy with him.”

“Then why marry him?” I persist. “Why did she not arrest him as soon as she was safe in her castle and throw him on the scaffold?”

He turns away; he is a modest man. I can see his ears going red from a blush. He cannot meet my eyes. “He did not just kidnap her,” he says, his voice very quiet. “We think he raped her and she was with child by him. She must have known herself to be utterly ruined as a woman and a queen. The only thing she could do was to marry him and pretend that it was by consent. That way at least she kept her authority though she was ruined.”

I give a little gasp of horror. A queen’s person is sacred; a man has to be invited to kiss her hand. A physician is not allowed to examine her, whatever her need. To abuse a queen is like spitting on a holy icon; no man of conscience would dare to do it. And for the queen to be held and forced would be like having the shell of her sanctity and power broken into pieces.

For the first time, I feel pity for this queen. I have thought of her so long as a monster of heresy and vanity that I have never thought of her, little more than a girl, trying to rule a kingdom of wolves, forced in the end to marry the worst of them. “Dear God, you would never know to look at her. How does she bear it? It is a wonder that her spirit is not broken.”

“So you see, she will be no danger to us,” he says. “She was a victim of their plotting, not one of the plotters. She is a young woman in much need of friends and a place of safety.”

There is a tap at the door to tell me that my private household is assembled in our outer chamber, ready for prayers. My chaplain is already among them. I have household prayers said every night and morning. George and I go through to join them, my head still spinning, and we kneel on the cushions that I have embroidered myself. Mine has a map of my beloved Derbyshire, George’s shows his family crest, the Talbot. All of my household, from page boy to steward, kneel on their cushions and bow their heads as the chaplain recites the prayers for the evening. He prays in English so that everyone may speak to God together in language that we all understand. He prays for the kingdom of God and for the kingdom of England. He prays for the glory of heaven and the safety of the queen. He prays for my lord and for me and for all these souls in our care. He thanks God for the gifts we enjoy, as a result of Elizabeth on the throne and the Protestant Bible in the churches. This is a godly Protestant household and twice a day we thank God who has rewarded us so richly for being His people, the best Protestants in Christendom. And so we remind everyone—me as well—of the great rewards that come from being a godly Protestant household in the direct charge of a Protestant God.

This is a lesson that the Catholic queen may learn from me. We Protestants have a God who rewards us directly, richly, and at once. It is by our wealth, our success, and our power that we know that we are the chosen. Who can doubt God’s goodness to me, when they see my house at Chatsworth, now three stories high? Who, if they saw my accounts books with the figures marching so strongly down to the bottom line, could doubt that I am one of the chosen, one of the specially favored children of God?

Iam surprised to have no instructions yet from the queen to prepare for the journey to Scotland, though I look for a command every day. I had expected by now to have been ordered to prepare a great escort to take the Queen of Scots home. In the absence of any message, the days go on, the weather improves, and we are starting to live together as a household, a royal household. It is a great honor and I have to remind myself not to become overproud of the good management of my wife and the lineage of my guest. She seems to be enjoying her visit with us, and I cannot help but be glad that we are her hosts in England. What benefits may flow from this friendship I would not stoop to calculate: I am not a paid companion. But of course, it goes without saying that to be the trusted and most intimate friend of the next Queen of England has to be an advantage, even to a family already well established.

I receive a note, not from the queen herself, but from Cecil, who tells me that we must hold the other queen for only a few days longer while the Scots negotiate for her safe return to her kingdom and her throne. Then she will leave. The Scots have agreed that they will have her back as queen and she will return to her country with honor, this very month.

The relief for me is tremendous. Even though I know that our inquiry cleared her, and the queen herself is defending her cousin’s name, I was anxious for her. She is so young, and without advisors. She has neither father nor husband to defend her, and she has such enemies ranged against her! And the more time I spend with her the more I hope for her safety, even for her success. She has a way—I have never known such a woman before—she has a way of making everyone feel that they would like to serve her. Half of my household is openly in love with her. If I were a bachelor, or a younger man, or a fool outright, I would say that she is enchanting.