Philippa Gregory - The other queen

“Well, I thank you,” she says coolly.

“A word,” Sir Peter says to me as he turns away from her, and I follow him to the garden gate. “She is lying,” he says bluntly. “Lying like a trooper.”

“I dare swear she is not—”

“I know she is,” he says. “Ridolfi was carrying a letter of introduction from her to the Pope himself. He showed it to Cecil’s man. He boasted of her support. She told the Pope to trust Ridolfi as he would trust her own self. Ridolfi has a plan he calls ‘the Great Enterprise of England’ to destroy us all. It is this plot which is coming to us now. She has called down six thousand fanatical Papist Spaniards on us. And she knows where they are landing, and she has organized for their payment.”

I hold on to the gate to conceal the weakness in my knees.

“I can’t question her,” he goes on. “I cannot interrogate her as I would any ordinary suspect. If she was anyone else she would be in the Tower now and we would be piling rocks on her chest till her ribs broke and her lies were squeezed out with her last gasping breath. We can’t do that to her, and it is hard to tell what other pressure we can bring to bear. To tell truth, I can hardly bear to speak to her. I can hardly look into her false face.”

“There is no more beautiful woman in the world!” bursts from me.

“Oh aye, she’s lovely. But how can you admire a face which is two-faced?”

For a moment I am about to argue, and then I remember the sweetness of her inquiry after her cousin’s health and I think of her writing to Philip of Spain, bringing the Spaniards in on us, summoning the armada and the end of England. “Are you certain she knows of this plot?”

“Knows of it? She has made it!”

I shake my head. I cannot believe it. I will not believe it.

“I have asked her as much as I can. But she might be more honest with you or the countess,” the young man says earnestly. “Go back to her, see if you can find out any more. I shall eat and rest here tonight and leave at dawn.”

“Ridolfi could have forged his letter which said that she recommended him,” I suggest. “Or he could be lying about it.” Or, I think, in the mess we are in since I can be sure of nothing, you could be lying to me or Cecil lying to us all.

“Suppose we start with the presumption that it is she who is lying,” he says. “See if you can get anything out of her. The plans of the Spanish especially. We have to know what they are going to do. If she knows, she must tell you. If we had the slightest idea where they would land we could save hundreds of lives; we might save our country. I will see you before I leave. I am going to her rooms. My men will be turning them upside down right now.”

He sketches a little bow and walks away. I turn back to her. She is smiling at me as I walk across the grass and I know that heart-stopping mischievous gleam. I know it, I know her.

“How pale you are, dear Chowsbewwy,” she remarks. “These alarms are bad for us both. I nearly fainted when I heard the bell.”

“You know, don’t you?” I ask wearily. I don’t sit down on the stool at her feet again, I remain standing, and she rises from the seat and comes beside me. I can smell the perfume in her hair; she stands so close that if I stretched out my hand I could touch her waist. I could draw her to me. She tilts back her head and smiles at me, a knowing smile, one that would be exchanged between warm familiar friends, a lovers’ smile.

“I don’t know anything,” she says with her naughty, confiding gleam.

“I have just been telling him that this Ridolfi might have used your name without your leave,” I say. “He doesn’t believe me, and I find I don’t even believe myself. You know Ridolfi, don’t you? You authorized him, didn’t you? You sent him to the Pope, and to the duke in the Netherlands, and to Philip of Spain; you ordered him to plan an invasion? Even though you are sworn to a new agreement with Elizabeth? Even though you signed your name to her peace treaty? Even though you promised Morton that you would weave no plots and send no letters? Even though you promised me privately, between the two of us, at my request, that you would take care? Even though you know that they will take you away from me if I don’t guard you?”

“I cannot live like a dead woman,” she whispers, though we are alone and there is no sound in the garden but the haunting late afternoon song of the thrush. “I cannot give up on my own cause, on my own life. I cannot lie like a corpse in my coffin and hope that someone is kind enough to carry me to Scotland or to London. I have to be alive. I have to act.”

“But you promised,” I insist like a child. “How can I trust anything, if I hear you promise on your honor as a queen, if I see you sign your name and place your seal, and then I find that it means nothing? You mean none of it?”

“I am imprisoned,” she says. “Everything means nothing until I am free.”

I am so angry with her and I feel so betrayed that I turn my back on her and take two hasty steps away. It is an insult to a queen: men have been banished from court for far less than turning their back. I check when I realize what I have done, but I don’t turn to face her and kneel.

I feel like a fool. All this time I have been thinking the best of her, reporting to Cecil that I have intercepted messages and she has not received them. I have told him I am sure she has not invited them, that she attracts conspiracies but does not conspire herself, and all this time he has known that she was writing treasonous, rebellious instructions, planning to overthrow the peace of the country. All this time he has known that he was right and I was wrong, that she was an enemy and my tenderness towards her was itself a folly, if not treason. She has played the part of a devil and I have trusted her and helped her against my own interests, against my own friends, against my fellow Englishmen. I have been a fool for this woman, and she has abused my trust and abused my household and abused my fortune and abused my wife.

“You have shamed me,” I burst out, still turned away from her, my head bowed and my back to her. “Shamed me before Cecil and the court. I swore that I could keep you safe and away from conspiracy and you have made me false to my oath. You have done whatever wickedness you pleased and you have made a fool of me. A fool.” I am out of breath; I end in a sob of mortification. “You have played me for a fool.”

Still she says nothing, and still I don’t turn to look at her.

“I told them that you were not plotting, that you could be trusted with greater freedom,” I say. “I told them that you had entered into a treaty with the queen and made a promise to Morton and you had sworn these on your honor. I said that you would never break your word. Not your word of honor as a queen. I promised this on your behalf. I said that you had given your word. I said that was as good as a gold coin. I told them that you are a queen, a queenpar excellence , and a woman incapable of dishonor.” I take a shuddering breath. “I don’t think you know what honor is,” I say bitterly. “I don’t think you know what honor means. And you have dishonored me.”

Gently, like a petal falling, I feel her touch. She has come up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. I don’t move and gently she lays her cheek against my shoulder blade. If I turned, I could take her in my arms and the coolness of her cheek would be like a balm on my red and angry face.

“You have made a fool of me before my queen, before the court, and before my own wife,” I choke out, my back tingling under her touch. “You have dishonored me in my own house, and once I cared for nothing more than my honor and my house.”

Her hand on my shoulder grows firmer; she gives a little tug on my jacket and I turn to look at her. Her dark eyes are filled with tears, her face twisted with grief. “Ah, don’t say so,” she whispers. “Chowsbewwy, don’t say such things. You have been a man of such honor to me; you have been such a friend to me. I have never had a man serve me as you have done. I have never had a man care for me without hope of return. I can tell you that I love—”

“No,” I interrupt. “Don’t say another word to me. Don’t make another promise to me. How should I hear anything you say? I cannot trust anything you say!”

“I don’t break my word!” she insists. “I have never given my true word. I am a prisoner: I am not bound to tell the truth. I am under duress and my promise means noth—”

“You have broken your word, and with it, you have broken my heart,” I say simply, and I pull away from her grip and walk away from her without looking back.

Acold autumn, and the leaves falling early from the trees, as if the weather itself will be hard on us this year. We have escaped disaster by a whisper, a whisper, nothing more. The Queen of Scots’ spy and plotter, Roberto Ridolfi, had every great power in Christendom in alliance against us. He had visited the Pope in Rome, the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the King of Spain, and the King of France. They all sent either gold or men or both, ready for an invasion which was to murder Queen Elizabeth and put Queen Mary on the throne. Only Ridolfi’s boastful whisper of the plot reached the keen ears of William Cecil and saved us.

Cecil took the Queen of Scots’ bishop to stay with the Bishop of Ely as a house guest. It must have been a merry party. He took his servant to the Tower and broke him on the rack, under the stones, and by hanging him from the wrists. The man—an old servant of the Queen of Scots—told the torturers everything they asked, and probably more besides. Then Norfolk’s men were taken into the Tower and sang their songs as their fingernails were pulled out. Robert Higford showed them the hiding place for the letters, under the tiles of the roof. William Barker told them of the plot. Lawrence Bannister decoded the Queen of Scots’ letters to her betrothed, Norfolk, filled with love and promises. Then finally they took the Queen of Scots’ friend and ambassador, Bishop John Lesley, from his stay in Cambridgeshire to the harsher hospitality of the Tower and gave him a taste of the pain that had broken lesser men, and he told them everything.