Philippa Gregory - The other queen

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.”

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.

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.