‘Are you in pain? The countess was coming to sit with you this afternoon. Shall I tell her not to come?’
‘No, let her come, let her come,’ I say. I shall do nothing to let them know that a fresh plot has started, a new war is beginning.
I open a book of devotional poems and spread the paper out over the leaves. The door opens, and Bess comes in, curtseys and sits at my invitation. From her stool, placed low, she cannot see my letter. To my amusement, she settles down to sew with me while I have this letter, this new invitation to the undoing of her queen and herself, open before me.
I let myself glance at it, and then gasp in horror. ‘Look at this,’ I say suddenly to her. ‘Look! Look at this, which was flung over the courtyard wall!’
It is a drawing of me as a mermaid, a bare-breasted whore, and beneath it is a filthy poem listing my husbands, and remarking that they all die, as if my bed were a charnel house. It says that poor Francis of France was poisoned by me, Darnley was murdered by Bothwell, and I took him to my bed as a reward. It says Bothwell is kept as a lunatic in a barred cave facing the North Sea. It calls me his French whore.
Bess tosses it into the fireplace. ‘Filth,’ she says simply. ‘Think nothing of it. Someone must have got drunk on Christmas ale and sung a little song and scribbled a picture. It is nothing.’
‘It is directed at me.’
She shrugs. ‘News of the Ridolfi plot will spread throughout the kingdom and you will be blamed for it. You have lost the love that people had for you when they thought you were a princess tragically ill-treated by the Scots. Now they think you bring us nothing but trouble. Everyone fears and hates the Spanish. They will not quickly forgive you for inviting them in against us. Even the Catholics blame you for inciting the Pope against Elizabeth. They wanted to live in peace, we all want to live in peace, and you are spoiling it.’
‘But this is not about the Spanish and all that,’ I say. ‘It says nothing about Ridolfi or the Duke of Norfolk. It is all about Darnley, and Scotland, and Bothwell.’
‘Men in an ale house will repeat anything filthy. But it cannot matter to you what they say. They will say anything, and this is old scandal.’
I shake my head, as if to clear my thoughts, and I pick up my little dog and hug him for comfort. ‘But why this old scandal? Why now?’
‘They gossip about what they hear,’ she says steadily. ‘Isn’t it perennial news? An old scandal?’
‘But why speak of it now?’ I demand. ‘Why don’t they blame me for inciting the Pope, or calling in the Spanish? Why this old story in preference to the new? Why now?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I hear no gossip here. And I don’t know why it would come up again now.’
I nod. I think I know what is happening, and I am certain who is doing it. Who else would slur my name but him? ‘Do you think perhaps, Bess, that the men sent out to spy in the ale houses and markets for your queen can talk as well as listen? When they listen for any threat against her, do you think that they also supply scandal about me? About all her enemies? Do you not think, that as they listen at keyholes, they also drip fear and poison into the minds of ordinary people? Do you not think that they abuse me, that they spread fear of strangers, terror of war, accusations about Jews and Papists? Do you not think that this whole country is loyal to Elizabeth because she makes them terrified of anything else? That she has agents whose job is to go around spreading terror to keep her people loyal?’
‘Well, yes,’ Bess agrees, a child of Elizabeth’s England where truth is a thing for sale in the market and scandal is priced to sell. ‘But why would anyone tell old scandals about you? And why now?’
‘That is the very question,’ I say simply. ‘Why now? At this particular, useful moment? Just before Norfolk comes to trial? Could it be that he has refused to say anything against me? Could they fear that they will take him to the very steps of the scaffold and he will not accuse me of treason? Because he knows he is innocent of a rebellion against Elizabeth and I am innocent too. All we wanted was to be married and for me to be released to my country. All we conspired to do was to free me. But they want to hang Norfolk and destroy me. Don’t you know that’s true?’
Bess’s needle is still above her tapestry. She knows I am right and she knows my enemy. She knows how he works and she knows how he succeeds. ‘But why traduce you with an old scandal?’
‘I am a woman,’ I say quietly. ‘If you hate a woman, the first thing you destroy is her reputation. They will name me as a woman of shame; unfit to rule, unfit to marry. If they ruin my reputation then they make Norfolk’s crime seem even worse. They make him look like a man who was ready to marry an adulteress and a murderess. They make him look insane with ambition and me lower than a whore. Who would follow Norfolk or serve me? No loyal Scotsman, or even Englishman would ever want me on the throne. They would think I was guilty of treason against Elizabeth because they believe I am a whore and a murderess.’
Bess nods reluctantly. ‘To dishonour you both equally,’ she says. ‘Even if they cannot get you both to trial.’
‘And who would whisper such a thing? Who do you think, Bess Talbot? Who do you know who uses rumour and false accusation and terrible slanders to destroy another’s reputation? To finish them forever? When he cannot prove them guilty in an inquiry, but when he is determined to give them the reputation of guilt in the world? Who would do this? Who has the men already in his service, and the power that he could do this?’
I see in her stricken face that she knows full well who runs the spies, and that it is the same man who runs the slander-makers. ‘I don’t know,’ she says stoutly. ‘I don’t know who would do such a thing.’
I let it rest. I have heard worse ballads than the one we have just burned on the fire, and seen worse portraits too. I let Bess cling to her denial rather than force her to name her friend Cecil as a spy and a pitcher of filth. ‘Well, well,’ I say lightly. ‘If you do not know, having lived at court as you have done, having seen who rules and who has power, then I am sure that I do not know either.’
1572, January, Cold Harbour House, London: George
As I get to London, after a bad journey in terrible weather, and open up a few rooms of my London house, I learn that Cecil, having kept the terrible letters of the Scots queen as a state secret on the command of Elizabeth for over three years, has now seen fit to publish this odd and obscene collection of poetry, threat and evil.
Having refused to see them as a secret document, and insisted that they were presented as evidence in court or not shown at all, I now find these most secret papers, which we all agreed were too dreadful to be discussed by an official inquiry, are now available at the stationers as a little booklet, priced for sale, and the poor people are writing ballads and posting drawings based on this filth. The supposed author of these vile and lustful scribbles, the Queen of Scots, is unanimously reviled in London by everyone who has bought and read them; and even the common people throughout England seem to have learned of the letters and now claim to know, with the absolute certainty of the ignorant, that she is Bothwell’s lover and Darnley’s murderer, the poisoner of her first husband and the lover of her French father-in-law, and in league with the devil to boot. They are creating ballads and stories and more than one vile riddle. She, who I first saw as a creature of fire and air, is now notorious; she is become a figure of fun.
Of course this makes Norfolk look even more of a fool in the eyes of everyone. Before he stands his trial we all think that he must have been drunk with ambition to have been seduced by such an obvious Jezebel. Before a word of evidence has been posted, before he has even walked into court, every right-thinking man in England condemns him for stupidity and lust.
Except me. Except me. I do not condemn him. How can I? She took me in, as she took him in, I desired her, as he desired her. He, at least, had the sense to think that though she might have been a bad woman, she might still be Queen of Scotland and make him king. He had at leas
t had the old Howard sense of ambition. I was a greater fool than he was. I just wanted to serve her. I didn’t even want a reward. I didn’t even mind the cost. I just wanted to serve her.
1572, January, Sheffield Castle: Bess
We have to wait for the verdict on Thomas Howard from London and there is nothing we can do to speed this time of waiting. Queen Mary is impatient for news and yet dreads to hear. One would almost have thought her truly in love with him. One would almost think that the man she loved is on trial.
She walks on the battlement and she looks south, where he is, instead of north. She knows that no army will come for her from the North this year. Her dupe Norfolk and her pander Ross are imprisoned and her spy is run away, she is a woman alone. Her master-plotter Ridolfi has conspired only to win his own safety. Her last husband, Bothwell, will never be released from his prison in Denmark; both the Scots lords and the English are determined that such a dangerous enemy shall never be set free. He can be of no help to her any more. Her besotted admirer and only loyal friend, my husband, is nursing a broken heart and finally remembering his duty to his queen and his country, and his promises to me. None of the men she has enchanted can help her now. There is no army of rescue for her, there is no man sworn to be hers till death, there is no network of friends and liars, gathering secretly and silently in a dozen hidden places. She is defeated, her friends are arrested, screaming on the rack, or run away. She is finally a true prisoner. She is quite in my power.
Odd then, that I should take such little joy in it. Perhaps it is because she is so roundly defeated: her beauty is dissolving into fat, her grace is made clumsy by pain, her eyes swollen with crying, her rosebud mouth now permanently folded into a thin line of suffering. She, who always looked so much younger than me, has suddenly aged like me, grown weary like me, grown sorrowful like me.
We form a quiet alliance, we have learned the hard way that the world is not easy for women. I have lost the love of my husband, my last husband. But so has she. I may lose my home and she has lost her kingdom. My fortunes may come good again, and so may hers. But in these cold grey winter days we are like two hangdog widows who cling together for warmth, and hope for better days though doubting they will ever come.
We talk of our children. It is as if they are our only prospect of happiness. I talk of my daughter Elizabeth, and she says that she is of an age to match with Charles Stuart, her husband Darnley’s younger brother. If they were to marry – and this is a game to play over our sewing – their son would be heir to the English throne, second only to her son James. We laugh at the thought of the consternation of the queen if we were to make such an ill-starred ambitious match, and our laugh is like that of old ill-natured women, plotting something bad, as revenge.
She asks me about my debts and I tell her frankly that the costs of her lodging have taken my husband to the very brink of ruin, and that he has drawn on my lands and sold my treasure to save his own. The fortune that I brought him on marriage has been mortgaged, bit by bit, to meet his debts. She does not waste her time or mine in regret, she says that he should insist that Elizabeth pays her debts, she says that no good king or queen ever lets a good subject be out of pocket: how else can they rule? I tell her, and truly, that Elizabeth is the meanest sovereign that ever wore a crown. She gives her love and affection, she gives her loyalty, she can even give honours and sometimes (more rarely) money-earning positions; but she never hands over cash from her treasury if she can possibly help it.
‘But she will need his friendship now,’ she points out. ‘To get the verdict of guilty on the duke? She must realise that she should pay her debts to him now, he is the master of the judges, she must want him to do her will.’
I see from this that she does not know him at all, she does not begin to understand him. I find I love him for his proud folly, even though I rail at him for being a proud fool. ‘He won’t bring in a verdict that depends on whether she pays her debt to him,’ I say. ‘He’s a Talbot, he can’t be bought. He will look at the evidence, weigh the charge and come to the just sentence; whatever he is paid, whatever it costs.’ I hear the pride in my own voice. ‘That is the sort of man he is. I would have thought you would know that by now. You can’t bribe him, and you can’t buy him. He’s not an easy man, not even a very sensible man. He does not understand the way of the world and he is not a very clever man. You might even call him a fool, certainly he was a fool over you; but he is always, always a man of honour.’
1572, January, Sheffield Castle: Mary
The night that they start the trial I send my women to bed and sit beside my fire and think, not of the Duke of Norfolk, who faces the judges tomorrow for my sake, but of Bothwell, who would never have turned himself in to arrest, who would never have let his servants confess, who would never have written state secrets in a breakable code, who would never have let those codes be found. Who – God knows, above all other – would never have trusted a turncoat such as Ridolfi. Who – God forgive me – would never have trusted my assurance that Ridolfi was the man for us. Bothwell would have seen at once that my ambassador John Lesley would break under questioning, Bothwell would have known that Ridolfi would brag. Bothwell would have guessed that the plot would fail and would never have joined in it. Bothwell – it makes me laugh to think of it – would never have sent a queen’s ransom in an unmarked bag by a Shrewsbury draper, trusting to luck. Bothwell was a thief, a kidnapper, a rapist, a murderer, a wicked man, a despicable man; but never a victim. No-one has ever held Bothwell for long, or cozened him, or tricked him, or had him serve against his own interests. Not until he met me, that is. When he fought for himself he was unbeatable.
I think of my palace at Holyrood in the early days of my marriage to Darnley. Within weeks I had discovered that the beautiful boy I had fallen in love with was a foul young man whose only charms were in appearance. As soon as we were married he let me see what everyone else knew, that he was a drunk and a sodomite with a burning ambition to put me aside from rule and take the power himself as king consort.
I blamed my distaste for him on my discovery of the sort of man he was; but the truth was worse than that – far worse. I remember Bothwell coming to my court at Holyrood, the shabby ladies and the uncouth men of my Scottish court falling back to make way, as they always did, for Bothwell, who came forward, unsmiling and powerful, head and shoulders above everyone else. Someone gave a little hiss of distaste, and someone left slamming the door, and three men drew away and fingered their belts where their swords should be, and instead of being angered at the disrespect I just caught my breath at the scent of a man who was at least a man and not a half-peasant, like these Scots lords, nor a half-girl, like my lightweight husband; but a man who would stand to look a king in the face, a man like my father-in-law, the King of France, who knew himself to be the greatest man in the room, whoever else was there.
I see him and I want him. It is as simple and as sinful as that. I see him, and I know he can hold this throne for me, defeat these lickspittle turncoats for me, confront John Knox and the men who hate me, knock these warring lords together, command my allowance from France, defend me from England, and make me queen here. No-one else can do it. They fear no-one but him. And so I want no-one but him. He is the only man who can keep me safe, who can save me from these barbarians. A savage himself, he can rule them. I look at him and I know he is the man who will take me to my destiny. With him I will command Scotland, with him I could invade England.
Does he know this, the minute he sees me – composed and beautiful on my throne? I am not such a fool as to let my desire show in my face. I look at him calmly and I nod my head at him and remark that my mother trusted him above all the other lords and he served her with honour. Does he know that as I am speaking so coolly I can feel my heart pounding underneath my gown and my body prickle with nervous sweat?
I don’t know, even later, I still don’t know. He will never tell me, not even when we are lovers whispering in the nigh
t, he won’t tell me then, and when I ask, he laughs lazily, and says: ‘A man and a maid …’
‘Hardly a maid,’ I say.
‘Far worse,’ he says. ‘A married woman, a much-married woman, and a queen.’
‘So did you know I wanted you?’
‘Sweetheart, I knew you were a woman, so you would be bound to want somebody.’
‘But did you know it was you?’
‘Well, who else was there?’
‘Will you not say?’
‘There were you, clinging to your throne, desperate for help. Someone was going to kidnap you and marry you by force. You were like a wild bird waiting for the net. There was I, longing for wealth and position and the chance to settle some old scores and rule Scotland. Would you not say we were born for each other?’
‘Do you not love me? Did you never love me?’
He pulls me into his arms and his mouth comes down on mine. ‘Not at all. Not at all, you French whore, you precious vixen, mine own, all mine own.’
‘No,’ I say as his weight comes down on me. It is what I always say to him. It is the word which means desire to me, to us. It is the word which means yes: ‘No.’
January 16th, 1572, Westminster Hall, London: George
London is like a city in mourning, I have never seen anything like it since the young Elizabeth was taken from the Tower to imprisonment in the country and we were so afraid that she would never come home safe again. Now her cousin makes another fearful journey, from the Tower to the Star Chamber at Westminster Hall. But this time it is ordered by us, the Protestants, the Englishmen, against another Protestant and an Englishman. How has this happened?
It is a cold morning, still dark – for God’s sake, why are people not still in their beds? Or going about their business? Why are they here, lining the streets, in a miserable silence, filling the lanes with foreboding? Cecil has ordered the queen’s guards and the mayor’s men to keep order, and behind their broad shoulders, the white faces of ordinary men and women peep out, hoping to see the queen’s cousin go by, hoping to call out to him their prayer that he will be saved.
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 138
