Philippa Gregory - The other queen

“Bess, no! Is this true?”

“He is accused of being part of a plot to release you,” I say. “You would know more of this than I.”

“I swear—”

“Don’t,” I say coldly. “Save your breath.”

She falls silent. “Ah Bess, if you were in my shoes you would have done the same thing. He and I—”

“Did you really persuade yourself that you loved him?”

“I thought he would save me.”

“Well, you have led him to his death,” I say. “And that’s a thing I wouldn’t have done. Not even in your shoes.”

“You don’t know what it is to be queen,” she says simply. “I am a queen. I am not like other women. I have to be free.”

“You have condemned yourself to a lifetime of imprisonment,” I predict. “And him to death. I would not have done that in your shoes, queen or not.”

“They can prove nothing against him,” she says. “And even if they forge evidence, or torture false testimony from servants, he is still the queen’s cousin. He is of royal blood. She will not condemn her own family to death. A royal person is sacred.”

“What else can she do?” I demand, driven to irritation. “All very well for you to say that she can’t do it, but what choice does she have? What choice does he leave her? If he will not stop plotting, after making a full submission and being forgiven, if you will not stop plotting, after giving your sworn word, what can she do but end it? She cannot spend the rest of her life waiting for your assassin to arrive and kill her.”

“She cannot kill him; he is her cousin and of royal blood. And she will never be able to kill me,” she declares. “She cannot kill a fellow queen. And I would never send an assassin. So she can never end this.”

“You have become each other’s nightmare,” I say. “And it is as if neither of you can ever wake.”

We sit in silence for a moment. I am working on a tapestry of my house at Chatsworth, as accurate as a builder’s drawing. Sometimes I think this will be all I have left of Chatsworth when I have to sell my pride and my joy to a buyer at a breakdown price. All I will have left of the years of my happiness is this tapestry of the house I loved.

“I have not heard from my ambassador for weeks,” the queen says quietly to me. “John Lesley, Bishop of Ross. Is he arrested? Do you know?”

“Was he part of the plot?” I ask.

“No,” she says wearily. “No. There was no plot that I know of. And certainly he was not part of it. And even if he had received a letter from someone, or met with someone, then he cannot be arrested, since he is an ambassador. He has rights, even in such a kingdom as this, where spies make proclamations and commoners pass laws.”

“Then he has nothing to fear,” I say unkindly. “And neither do you. And neither does the Duke of Norfolk. He is safe, and according to you, so are you and the ambassador: all of you untouchable in either the sanctity of your bodies or the innocence of your conscience. That being so, why are you so pale, Your Grace, and why does my husband not ride with you in the mornings anymore? Why does he never seek you out and why do you not send for him?”

“I think I’ll go back to my rooms now,” she says quietly. “I am tired.”

Ihave to wait for long months in silence, guarding my tongue, afraid even to write to my own ambassador for news, imprisoned in anxiety. In the end I hear from Paris, in a letter that has been opened and read by others, that Norfolk is arrested and will be charged with treason.

Last time he was in the Tower it was Cecil himself who argued that the duke was imprudent but not treasonous and had him released to his London house. But this time it is all different. Cecil is leading the duke’s accusers and has the duke and all his household under arrest. Undoubtedly the servants will be tortured and they will either confess the truth or make up lies to escape the pain. If Cecil is determined that the duke will face a charge of treason, then he will find the evidence to prove it, and the luck of the Howards will turn bad in this generation, as it has done so often before.

There is worse news on the second page. Bishop John Lesley, my faithful friend who chose exile in my service rather than his comfortable palace at home, is a broken man. He has turned up in Paris resolved to live the rest of his days as an exile in France. He will say nothing of what took place in England nor why he is now in France. He is dumb. The gossip is that he turned his coat and told Cecil everything. I cannot believe it: I have to read and reread the report but it assures me that John Lesley has abandoned my cause and gave the evidence which will condemn Norfolk. They say that Lesley told Cecil everything he knew, and of course, he knew everything. He knew all about Ridolfi—why, he was the joint author of the plot. The world now believes that the duke, the banker, the bishop, and I sent a mission around Europe begging the French, the Spanish, and the Pope to assassinate Elizabeth and to attack England. The world knows that I chose as my conspirators a braggart, a weakling, and a fool. That I am a fool myself.

Shrewsbury will never forgive me for dishonoring my parole with him, for lying to Cecil, to Morton, to him. He has hardly spoken to me since that day in the garden when he said I had broken my word and his heart. I have tried to speak to him but he turns away; I have put my hand on his but he quietly withdraws. He looks ill and tired but he says nothing to me of his health. He says nothing to me of anything anymore.

Bess is drained by worry about money and by fear of the future and by long bitter resentment of me. We are a remorseful household in this autumn season. I have to hope that the Scots will come to me once more and ask me to return; I have to believe that a fresh champion will write to me with a plan to release me; I have to believe that Philip of Spain will not be discouraged by this disastrous end to the plan that we swore could not fail. I cannot find in myself the courage to write once more, to start again, to stitch again the tapestry of conspiracy.

I think of Shrewsbury saying that I have dishonored my word as a queen and I wonder if anyone will ever trust me in the future or think it safe to rely on my judgment. I think I am truly defeated this time. My greatest champion and only friend Bothwell is still imprisoned in Denmark without hope of release, and he writes to me that he will go mad in confinement. My codes are all broken, my friends are imprisoned, the ambassador has left my service, my betrothed is facing a charge of treason, and the man who loved me, without even knowing it, will no longer meet my eyes.

Ithought I was in pain before. I thought that I had lost the love and duty of my wife, who had decided that I was a fool. I pledged myself, in silence, always in silence, to a woman so far above me as to be more than a queen: an angel. But now I find there is a new hell, below the one I knew. Now I find that the woman to whom I had given my secret loyalty is a traitor, a betrayer of herself, forsworn, a liar, a person of dishonor.

I could laugh to think that I used to look down on my Bess for coming from a farmhouse, for having an accent which cracks into Derbyshire, for claiming to be Protestant while knowing no theology, for insisting on the Bible in English while being unable to read Latin, for decorating her walls and furnishing her rooms with the spoils of a destroyed church. For being, at worst, little more than the widow of a thief, the daughter of a farmer. I could laugh at myself now for the sin of false pride, but it would be a sound like a death rattle in the throat.

Despising this wife of mine, this straightforward, vulgar, lovable wife of mine, I set my heart and spent my fortune on a woman whose word is like the wind; it can blow wherever it wants. She can speak three languages but she can tell the truth in none of them. She can dance like an Italian but she cannot walk a straight line. She can embroider better than a sempstress and write a fair hand, but her seal on the bottom of a document means nothing. Whereas my Bess is known throughout Derbyshire for fair trading. When Bess shakes on a deal it is sealed and you could stake your life on it. This queen could swear on a fragment of the True Cross—and it would still be provisional.

I have spent my fortune on this will-o’-the-wisp of a queen; I have put my honor on this chimera. I have squandered Bess’s dowry and the inheritance for her children on keeping this woman as a queen should be served, never knowing that under the cloth of state was seated a traitor. I let her sit on a throne and command a court in my own house and order things just as she would have them, because I believed, deep in my faithful heart, that this was a queen like no other had ever been.

Well, in that I was right. She is a queen as no other has ever been. She is a queen with no kingdom, a queen with no crown, a queen with no dignity, a queen with no word, a queen without honor. She has been ordained by God and anointed by His holy oil, but somehow He must have forgotten all about her. Or maybe she lied to Him too.

Now it is I who will have to forget all about her.

Bess comes tentatively to my privy chamber and waits on the threshold, as if she is not sure of a welcome.

“Come in,” I say. I mean to sound kind but my voice is cold. Nothing sounds right between Bess and me anymore. “What d’you want of me?”

“Nothing!” she says awkwardly. “A word, only.”

I raise my head from the papers I have been reading. My steward insisted that I see them. They are long lists of debts, money that we have borrowed to finance the keeping of the queen, and they fall due next year. I know of no way to pay them except by selling my lands. I slide a sheet of paper over them so that Bess cannot see—there is no point in worrying her too—and I slowly get to my feet.

“Please, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she says apologetically.

We are always saying sorry to each other these days. We tiptoe around as if there is a death in the house. It is the death of our happiness, and this is my fault too.

“You don’t disturb me,” I say. “What is it?”

“It is to say I am sorry, but I cannot see how we can have open house this Christmastide,” she says in a rush. “We cannot feed all the tenant farmers and their families, not as well as all the servants. Not this year.”

“There is no money?”

She nods. “There is no money.”

I try to laugh but it sounds all wrong. “How much can it cost? Surely we have coin and plate in the treasure room enough for a dinner and ale for our own people?”

“Not for months and months.”

“I suppose you have tried to borrow?”

“I have borrowed all that I can, locally. I have already mortgaged land. They don’t accept it at full value anymore; they are starting to doubt our ability to repay. If nothing improves, we will have to go to the London goldsmiths and offer them plate.”

I wince. “Not my family goods,” I protest, thinking of my crested plates being melted down as scrap. Thinking of the goldsmiths, weighing my silverware, and seeing my family crest, and laughing that I have come to this.

“No, of course not. We will sell my things first,” she says levelly.

“I am sorry for this,” I say. “You had better tell your steward to tell your tenants that they cannot come for their dinner this year. Perhaps next.”

“They will all know why,” she warns me. “They will know we are struggling.”

“I imagine everyone knows,” I say drily. “Since I write to the queen once a month and beg her to pay her debts to me, and the letter is read in public to her. The whole court knows. All of London knows. Everyone knows we are on the brink of ruin. No one will offer us credit.”

She nods.

“I will put this right,” I say earnestly. “If you have to sell your plate, I will get it back for you. I will find a way, Bess. You will not be the loser for marrying me.”