Philippa Gregory - The other queen

“This Easter?”

“Yes.”

“You give me your word?”

“Yes,” he says, and I believe him. “But will you give me yours?”

“My word?” I repeat icily.

“Your word, as a queen, that you will not plot with the enemies of England.”

I pause. He looks hopeful, as if my safe return to Scotland and all his plans are hanging on this moment. “Very well. I promise,” I say solemnly.

“Your word as a queen?”

“I give you my word as a queen,” I say firmly.

“You will not receive or send secret letters? You will not engage in any conspiracy against the peace of England?”

“I give you my word that I will not.”

Morton sighs and glances over at Shrewsbury as if he is much relieved. Shrewsbury comes closer and smiles at me. “I told you she would promise,” he says. “The queen is determined to return to her throne. She will deal with you and with all your loyal countrymen with spotless honor.”

The queen and I ride home in the bright midday spring sunshine, a wagon following behind us with two roe deer for Bess’s flesh kitchen. The queen is in a lighthearted mood; she loves hunting and rides better than any woman I have ever met; she could outride most men.

When we come through the great gate for the stable yard my heart sinks to see Bess waiting for us, hands on her hips, the very portrait of an offended wife. The queen gives a little ripple of suppressed laughter and turns her head so Bess cannot see her amusement.

I dismount and lift the queen down from the saddle, and then the two of us turn to Bess like children waiting for a reprimand.

She gives an unwilling curtsy. “We are to go to Tutbury,” she says, without preamble.

“Tutbury?” the queen repeats. “I thought we were to stay here and then go to Scotland.”

“A letter from the court,” Bess says. “I have started packing again.”

She hands over the sealed letter to the queen, nods distantly at me, and strides off to where the traveling wagons are being made ready for another journey.

All the joy is wiped from the queen’s face as she hands the letter to me. “Tell me,” she says. “I cannot bear to read it.”

I break the seal and open the letter. It is from Cecil. “I don’t quite understand,” I say. “He writes that you are to go back to Tutbury for greater safety. He says there have been some incidents in London.”

“Incidents? What does he mean?”

“He doesn’t say. He says nothing more than he is watching the situation and he would feel happier for your safety if you were at Tutbury.”

“I would be safer if I were in Scotland,” she snaps. “Does he say when we are to go?”

“No,” I say. I pass the letter to her. “We will have to go as he bids. But I wish I knew what is in his mind.”

She slides a sideways glance at me. “Do you think Bess will know? Might he have written to her separately? Might he have told her what he fears?”

“He might have done.”

She slips off her red leather glove and puts her hand on my wrist. I wonder if she can feel my pulse speed at the touch of her fingers. “Ask her,” she whispers. “Find out from Bess what Cecil is thinking, and tell me.”

As always, they ride ahead and I labor behind with the wagons laden with her luxuries. But once they are arrived at the castle and my lord has seen her safe into her usual rooms, he leaves her and rides back to meet me. I see his surprise at the number of wagons, there are forty on this trip, and at my weariness and dustiness as I ride at their head.

“Bess,” he says awkwardly. “What a number, I did not—”

“Have you come to help them unload?” I ask acidly. “Did you want me, my lord?”

“I wondered if you had news from Gilbert, or Henry, or anyone else at court,” he says hesitantly. “Do you know why they have sent us back here?”

“Does she not tell you?” I ask sarcastically. “I would have thought she would have known.”

He shakes his head. “She is afraid that they are going to renege on their promise to send her back to Scotland.”

We turn up the lane towards the castle. It is muddy as usual. I have come to hate this little castle. It has been my prison as well as hers. I will tell him everything I know; I have no taste for torturing him, nor the queen.

“I don’t know anything about that,” I say. “All I know from Henry is that the queen seems likely to accept the French prince in marriage. Cecil is advising her to take him. In those circumstances I imagine Cecil thought it best to have the Queen of Scots somewhere that he could prevent her persuading her family against the match, which she is certain to do, or stirring up any other sort of trouble.”

“Trouble?” asks my husband. “What trouble could she cause?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But then, I have never been very good at predicting the trouble she can cause. If I had foreseen the trouble she could cause, I would not be here now, riding before forty wagons to a house I hate. All I know is that Cecil warned me that he feared there was a plot but could find no evidence.”

“There is no plot,” he says earnestly. “And Cecil can find no evidence because there is none. She has given her word, don’t you remember? She gave her word as a queen to Lord Morton that there would be no plots and no letters. She will be returned to Scotland. She swore on her honor she would not conspire.”

“Then why are we here?” I ask him. “If she is as innocent and honorable as you say?”

This is a most unnatural thing, I am sure, a most illegal thing. A damned wicked and dishonorable thing. Wrong, against custom and practice, another innovation, and another injustice.”

I come to my senses and find I am muttering to myself as I walk along the outer wall of Tutbury Castle, gazing out but not really seeing the fresh greenness of the spring landscape. I don’t think I will ever look out to the north again without fearing that I may see an army coming to besiege us.

“Illegal surely, and in any case wrong.”

“What is the matter now?” Bess says, coming to my side. She has thrown a shawl over her head and shoulders and she looks like a farmer’s wife run outside to feed the hens. “I was just in the garden and I saw you striding about and muttering to yourself like a man driven insane. Is it the queen? What has she done now?”

“No,” I say. “It is your great friend, Cecil.”

“Burghley.” She corrects me just to irritate me, I know. That nobody is now a baron and we must all call him “my lord.” And for what? For persecuting a queen of the blood until she is driven halfway to treason?

“Burghley,” I say mildly. “Of course, my lord Cecil. My lord Cecil the baron. How glad you must be for him. Your good friend. How grand he has become, what a pleasure for all who know and admire him. And he is building his grand house still? And he has substantial money from the queen, posts and preferments? He grows wealthier every day, does he not?”

“What’s the news? Why are you so angry?”

“He has pushed a bill through Parliament to disinherit the Queen of Scots,” I say. “Disinherit her. Now we see why he ordered us here where she could be so closely guarded. If ever the country would rise for her, you can see they might rise now. Declaring her invalid to inherit! As though Parliament can determine who is the heir to the throne. As though it does not go by blood. As though a bunch of commoners can say who is a king’s son! It makes no sense, apart from anything else.”

“Burghley has achieved this?”

“She must see this as false dealing to her. In the very month when she is due to go back to Scotland as queen, Cecil sends us here and pushes through a bill that says that no one of the Roman Catholic faith can ever be a monarch of England. Their faith is to disbar them as much as if they were…” For a moment I am speechless, I cannot think of an example. It has never been like this in England before. “A Jew…,” I manage. “If one can imagine such a thing as a Tudor Jew, a Stuart Jew. A Mussulman, a Hindoo pretender. They are treating her as if she were a Turk. She is a child of the Tudor line—Cecil is saying she is a foreigner to us.”

“It makes Elizabeth safe from a Papist assassin,” Bess says shrewdly. “There is no point in any hidden priest making a martyr of himself by killing her if it does not put a Papist on the throne.”

“Yes, but that’s not why he’s done it,” I exclaim. “If he cared so much to protect the queen, he would have rushed the bill through last year when the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and commanded every Papist criminal in the country to murder her. No. This is just to attack the Queen of Scots at the very moment when we have a complete agreement. This is to drive her into rebellion. And I will have to be the one to tell her what he has done. It was to be an act of absolute faith between the two queens, and I am the one who has to tell her that she has been cheated of her inheritance.”

“You can tell her that her plotting has all been for nothing then.” There is a vindictive pleasure lilting in my wife’s voice. “Whatever she has written to Norfolk or to her foreign friends, if she is debarred from the throne she can promise what she likes but they will know her to be a liar without friends in England.”

“She is no liar. She is the heir,” I say stubbornly. “Whatever anyone says, whatever Cecil says in Parliament. She has Tudor blood, she is nearest to the throne, whether they like it or no. She is the next heir to England. What else do we say? That we pick and choose the next king or queen depending on our preference? Are monarchs not chosen by God? Are they not descended one from another? Besides, all the kings of England before this one have been Papist. Is the religion of the fathers of the kings of England now to be an obstacle to their being king? Has God changed? Has the king changed? Has the past changed too? Has Cecil—I beg your pardon, Baron Burghley—has he the power to disinherit Richard I? Henry V?”

“Why should you be so upset?” she asks unpleasantly. “Has she promised you a dukedom as reward when she is Queen of England?”

I gasp at the insult on my own castle wall from my own wife. But this is how things are now. A land steward is a baron, a queen is disinherited by the House of Commons, and a wife can speak to her husband as if he were a fool.

“I serve the Queen of England,” I say tightly. “As you know, Bess. To my cost.”

“My cost too.”

“I serve the Queen of England and none other,” I say. “Even when she is ill advised. Woefully ill advised by your friend.”

“Well, I am glad that your loyalty is unchanged and nothing is wrong,” she says sarcastically, since it must be clear to everyone that everything is all wrong in England today. She turns to go back down the stone stairs to the mean little herb garden in the castle yard. “And when you tell her, be sure she understands that this is the end of her ambition. She will be Queen of Scotland again as we have agreed, but she will never rule in England.”

“I serve the Queen of England,” I repeat.

“You would do better to serve England,” she says. “Cecil knows that England is more than the king or the queen. All you care about is who is on the throne. Cecil has a greater vision. Cecil knows it is the lords and the commons too. It is the people. And the people won’t have a burning, persecuting wicked Papist queen on the throne ever again. Even if she is the true heir ten times over. Make sure you tell her that.”

Iam like a fox in a trap in this poor castle, and like a fox I could chew off my own foot for rage and frustration. Elizabeth promises to return me to my throne in Scotland but at the same time she is doing everything she can to see that I will never inherit the greater prize of England.