Philippa Gregory - The other queen

She hears nothing of this. “A hostage? Will she keep him in the Tower like the poor little princes? Will he never come out at all? Will he disappear as they did? Does she mean to kill him?”

Her voice breaks on the thought of it and I cannot bear her distress. I rise from my seat at the table and I go to look out of the window. In our rooms across the courtyard I can see Bess walking down the gallery, accounts books tucked under her arm. She feels a long way away from me now, her worries about rents and our costs are so trivial compared to the unfolding tragedy of the Scots queen. Bess has always been prosaic, but now I have the very heart of poetry beating wildly in my own house.

I turn back to the queen. She is sitting quite still with her hand shading her eyes. “Forgive me,” she says. “Forgive my emotion. You must wish you had a cold-hearted queen to deal with, like your own. And forgive my stupidity. I had not read it properly. I thought that they meant only to supervise James’s education, to make him a good heir to the English throne. I did not realize that they want to take him from me altogether. I thought we were talking about a treaty—not about my destruction. Not about the theft of my child. Not about his kidnap.”

I feel too big and too awkward for the room. Gently, I stand behind her and put my hand on her shoulder, and with a sigh she leans back so that her head rests against my body. That little gesture, and the warmth of her head on my belly, fill me with tenderness, and an inevitable rising desire. I have to step away from her, my heart pounding.

“I was parted from my mother when I was just a little girl,” she says sadly. “I know what it is to be homesick and to miss one’s mother. I wouldn’t do that to my son, not for the throne of France, let alone Scotland.”

“He would be well cared for.”

“I was dearly loved in France,” she says. “And my dearest papa, King Henri, loved me better than his own daughters. He could not have been more kind and tender to me. But I longed for my mother, and I could never go to her. She visited me once, just once, and it was as if I became whole again, as if something was restored that had long been missing: my heart perhaps. Then she had to go back to Scotland to defend my throne for me, and your Cecil, your great William Cecil, saw her weakness and her loneliness and her illness and he forced the treaty on her that he is now forcing on me. She died trying to defend my throne against Elizabeth and Cecil. Now I have to fight the same battle. And this time they want to take my child and break my heart. Elizabeth and Cecil together destroyed my mother and now they want to destroy me, and destroy my son.”

“Perhaps we can negotiate,” I say, then I correct myself. “Perhaps you can negotiate. You could insist that the prince stay in Scotland, perhaps with an English guard and tutor?”

“I have to have him with me,” she says simply. “He is my son, my little boy. He has to be with his mother. Not even Elizabeth can be so hard-hearted as to steal my right to the throne and then my own son from me.”

Itry to stay courageous but some days I am exhausted by sadness. I miss my child and I am so fearful as to who is caring for him, and educating him, and watching over him. I trust the Earl of Mar, his guardian, to guide him and educate him, and his grandfather the Earl of Lennox should keep him safe if only for the sake of Darnley, his dead son, my boy’s father. But Lennox is a careless man, dirty and rough, with no affection for me, and he blames me for the death of his son. What would he know about caring for a little boy? What would he know about the tenderness of a little boy’s heart?

The warmer weather is coming and it is light at six o’clock in the morning and I am woken every dawn by birdsong. This is my third spring in England, my third spring! I can hardly believe I have been here for so long. Elizabeth promises I shall be returned to Scotland by the summer, and she has ordered Shrewsbury to let me ride out freely and receive visitors. I am to be treated as a queen and not as a common criminal. My spirits always used to lift at this time of the year; I was raised so long in France that I am accustomed to the warmth of those long beautiful summers. But this year I do not smile to see the primroses in the hedge, the birds flying, carrying straw and twigs for their nests. This year I have lost my optimism. I have lost my joy. The coldness and the hardness that my cousin Elizabeth embodies in her spinster rule seem to have drained my world of light and warmth. I cannot believe that a woman could be so cruel to me, and that I have to endure it. I cannot believe that she could be so unloving, so unmoved by my appeals to her. I have been the beloved of everyone who knows me; I cannot accept that she should remain so indifferent. I cannot understand unkindness. I am a fool, I know. But I cannot understand her hardness of heart.

I am writing at my desk when there is a tap at the door and Mary Seton comes flying into the room, her hood half-pushed off her head. “Your Grace, you will never believe—”

“What?”

“Elizabeth has been excommunicated! The Holy Father himself has published a papal bull against her. He says she is a usurper with no right to the throne and that no Christian need obey her. He says it is a holy duty to pull her down from her borrowed power. He is calling upon every Christian in the world to defy her. He is calling on every Roman Catholic to rebel! He is calling on every Roman Catholic power to invade! He is calling all Christians to destroy her. This is like a crusade!”

I can hardly breathe. “At last,” I say. “I was promised this. The Northern lords told me that Roberto Ridolfi had the Holy Father’s word that this would be done. But when I heard nothing, I thought it had all gone wrong. I even doubted Ridolfi.”

“No! He was true to you. The bull was published last year,” Mary whispers, out of breath. “In time for the uprising. But the bull has only just arrived. Oh! If only it had come before! If it had come during the uprising! All of England would have turned against Elizabeth.”

“It’s not too late now,” I say rapidly. “Everyone of the true faith will know it is their duty to throw her down and that the Holy Father has named me as Queen of England. And besides, it will force my family in France, and Philip of Spain, to act. It is not only justice but now it is their holy duty to put me on my throne of Scotland, and England too.”

Mary’s eyes are shining. “I will see you wear your crown again,” she declares.

“You will see me wear the crown of England,” I promise her. “This does not just mean my freedom, it means that the Pope recognizes me as the true heir of England. If the Holy Father says that I am Queen of England, who can stand against me? And all the Papists in the world are bound by their faith to support me. Mary, I shall be Queen of England and Scotland. And I shall crown my son as Prince of Wales.”

“Thank God that the Holy Father has ruled in your favor!”

“Thank God for Ridolfi, who put my case to him,” I say quietly. “He is a great friend to me. God keep him, wherever he is. And when I come to my own again he shall be among the men who can claim their reward for serving me.”

Ihear them ringing the bells in the church at Chatsworth as I am ordering the linen for the Scots queen’s bed. She is to come here within a few days, and my heart rushes in sudden terror. It can’t be an uprising again. Pray God it is not the landing of the Spanish armada. I send one of the page boys racing to discover what is amiss now. He comes back and finds me in the laundry room, a list of linen in my shaking hand, and tells me that the queen Mary Stuart has been declared the true Queen of England and the Pope has called on all those of the old faith to destroy the bastard Elizabeth and put the true queen, Mary, in her place, and there is an uprising for her in Norwich and they say the whole of the east of England will turn out for the true queen and the true faith.

I am so shocked for a moment that I pretend I want some fresh air and go out to the gallery and sink down on a bench among all the painted saints. I can hardly believe that this nightmare goes on, goes on and on, and we never achieve victory, and we never achieve peace. I look at my painted saints, as if they could tell me the answer to the purgatory of the times that we endure. God knows we are a small country and there are very few of us with a vision as to how the country should be. Now the old scarlet whore of Rome has called down on us the rage of the rest of Christendom: Philip of Spain, Madame Serpent in France—they will think that battle against us is a crusade, a holy war. They will think themselves commanded by God to destroy us. They will come against us; united they will master us.

“We are so few,” I whisper to myself. It is true. We are a little island, with enemies for neighbors in Ireland and France and the Spanish Netherlands just half a day’s sail away. We are so few who really understand what destiny God has given us. We are so few who are prepared to serve as His saints to bring the purity of His true church to England, His chosen country. We are surrounded by enemies, we are tempted by Satan, we are besieged by the superstitions and lies of the old faith; they will destroy us if they can.