Philippa Gregory - The other queen

“Please God,” I say.

“You will come with me?” she whispers. “Come as my advisor?”

“I don’t know if I can…”

“Come with me as my friend,” she suggests so quietly that I can only hear her by bending my head so that her lips are at my ear and I can feel her breath on my cheek. We are as close as lovers.

“I need a man at my side. One who can command an army, one who will use his fortune to pay my soldiers. A loyal Englishman to deal with Cecil and Elizabeth for me. I need an English nobleman who will keep the Scots lords’ confidence, who will reassure the English. I have lost my lord duke. I need you, Chowsbewwy.”

“I cannot leave England…I cannot leave the queen…or Bess…”

“Leave them for me,” she says simply, and the moment she speaks, it does all seem extraordinarily clear. Why not? Why should I not go with this most beautiful woman and keep her safe? Why should I not follow my heart? For a glorious moment I think that I could just go with her—as if Bess, and the queen, and England were of no importance. As if I had no children, no stepchildren, and no lands, as if I did not have a hundred kinsmen and-women, a thousand dependents, another thousand servants, and more tenants and workers than I can count. As if I could just run away like a boy might run to the girl he loves. For a moment I think that I should do this, that it is my duty to her, the woman I love. I think that a man of honor would go with her and not stay at home. An honorable man, a noble man, would go and defend her against her enemies.

“Leave them all for me,” she says again. “Come to Scotland with me and be my friend and advisor.” She pauses. She says the words I want to hear more than any other words in the world. “Oh, George. Love me.”

This young woman, who it seems I must now endure as a rival for my husband as well as a constant drain on my accounts, has the cursed nine lives of a cat and the luck of the devil. She has survived the guardianship of Hastings, who rode off and left her to us, though he swore to me he would see her dead rather than alive to destroy the peace of England, she has survived the rising of the North, though better men and women than her will die on a scaffold for lesser crimes than she has joyfully committed, and she has survived the disgrace of a secret betrothal, though her betrothed is locked up in the Tower and his servants are on the rack. She sits in my great chamber, sewing with the finest silks, as well as I do myself, before a fire blazing with expensive timber, and all the while messages are going from her to her ambassador, from him to William Cecil, from him to the queen, from Scotland to each of them, all to forge an agreement that she will be returned in glory to her throne. After all she has done, all these great powers are determined that she shall regain her throne. Even Cecil says that, in the absence of any other royal Scot, she must be restored.

The logic of this escapes me, as it must do everyone whose handshake is their bond and who drives a straight bargain. Either she is not fit to be queen—as certainly the Scots once thought, and we agreed—or she is as fit now as she was when we held three inquiries into her conduct. The justice of this escapes me too. There is the Duke of Norfolk waiting in the Tower for a trial for treason; there is the Earl of Northumberland executed for his part in the Northern rising; there is the Earl of Westmorland in exile forever, never to see his wife or lands again, all for seeking the restoration of this queen, who is now to be restored. Hundreds died under the charge of treason in January. But now in February, this same treason is policy.

She is a woman accursed, I swear it. No man has ever prospered in marriage to her; no champion has survived the doubtful honor of carrying her colors; no country has been the better for her queenship. She brings unhappiness to every house she enters, and I, for one, can attest to that. Why should a woman like this be forgiven? Why should she get off scot-free? Why should such a Jezebel be so damned lucky?

I have worked all my life to earn my place in the world. I have friends who love me and I have acquaintances who trust me. I live my life to a code which I learned as a young woman: my word is my bond, my faith is close to my heart, my queen has my loyalty, my house is everything to me, my children are my future, and I am trustworthy in all these things. In business I am honorable but sharp. If I see an advantage I take it, but I never steal and I never deceive. I will take money from a fool but not from an orphan. These are not the manners of the nobility, but they are the way that I live. How shall I ever respect a woman who lies, defrauds, conspires, seduces, and manipulates? How shall I see her as anything other than despicable?

Oh, I cannot resist her charm; I am as foolish as any of these men when she promises to invite me to Holyroodhouse or to Paris, but even when she enchants me I know that she is a bad woman. She is a bad woman through and through.

“My cousin has treated me with great cruelty and injustice,” she remarks after one of my ladies (my own ladies!) has the stupidity to say that we will miss her when she returns to Scotland. “Great cruelty, but at last she sees what everyone in the world saw two years ago: a queen cannot be thrown down. I must be restored. She has been both stupid and cruel but at last now she sees reason.”

“I would think she has been patient beyond belief,” I mutter irritably into my own sewing.

The Queen of Scots arches her dark eyebrows at dissent. “Do you mean to say that you believe she has been patient with me?” she inquires.

“Her court has been divided, her own cousin tempted into disloyalty, her lords have plotted against her, she has faced the greatest rebellion of her reign, and her Parliament calls for her to execute all those involved in the plot, including you.” I glare balefully at my own ladies, whose loyalty has been suspect ever since this glamorous young queen first appeared among us with her romantic stories of France and her so-called tragic life. “The queen could have followed the advice of her councillors and called in the hangman for every one of your friends. But she has not.”

“There is a gibbet at every crossroads,” Queen Mary observes. “There are not many in the North who would agree with you that Elizabeth’s mercy falls like the gentle rain.”

“There is a rebel at the end of each rope,” I say stoutly. “And the queen could have hanged a dozen more for each one.”

“Yes, indeed, she has lost all her support,” Mary agrees sweetly. “There was not a town or village in the North that declared for her. They all wanted the true religion and to see me freed. Even you had to run before the army of the North, Bess.Tiens! How you labored with your wagons and how you fretted for your goods! Even you knew that there was not a town or village in the North that was loyal to Elizabeth. You had to whip up your horses and get through them as quick as you could while your silver cups fell off the back.”

There is a ripple of sycophantic laughter from my ladies at the thought of me struggling along with my Papist candlesticks. I bend my head over my sewing and grit my teeth.

“I watched you then,” she says more quietly, drawing her chair a little closer to me so that we can speak privately. “You were afraid in those days, on the road to Coventry.”

“No blame in that,” I say defensively. “Most people were afraid.”

“But you were not afraid for your own life.”

I shake my head. “I am no coward.”

“No, you are more than that. You are courageous. You were not afraid for your life, nor for the safety of your husband. You were not afraid of the battle either. But you were terrified of something. What was it?”

“The loss of my house,” I concede.

She cannot believe me. “What? Your house? With an army at your heels you were thinking of your house?”

I nod. “Always.”

“A house?” she repeats. “When we were in danger of our very lives?”

I give a half-embarrassed laugh. “Your Grace, you would not understand. You have been queen of so many palaces. You would not understand what it is like for me to win a small fortune and try to keep it.”

“You fear for your house before the safety of your husband?”

“I was born the daughter of a newly widowed woman,” I say. I doubt she would understand me even if I could spell it out for her. “On my father’s death she was left with nothing. I mean that: nothing. I was sent to the Brandon family, as companion and upper servant in their household. I saw then that a woman must have a husband and a house for her own safety.”

“You were surely in no danger?”

“I was always in danger of becoming a poor woman,” I explain. “A poor woman is the lowest thing in the world. A woman alone owns nothing; she cannot house her children; she cannot earn money to put food on the table; she is dependent on the kindness of her family; without their generosity she could starve to death. She could see her children die for lack of money to pay a doctor; she could go hungry for she has no trade nor guild nor skill. Women are banned from learning and from trade. You cannot have a woman blacksmith or a woman clerk. All a woman can do, without education, without a skill, is to sell herself. I decided, whatever it cost me, I would somehow win property and cling to it.”