The other queen

1569, NOVEMBER, TUTBURY CASTLE: GEORGE

Icannot sleep. I cannot eat either as it happens. I cannot sit quietly in my chair or take any pleasure in riding out. I have bought four days of safety for her by arguing that they have not a strong-enough guard, that with the Northern army on the march—who knows where?—they dare not ride out with her. They could take her straight into an ambush. No one knows how many men have joined the Northern lords. No one knows where they are now. Hastings, grumbling, has sent for more of his men.

“Why bother?” Bess asks me, her brown eyes cold. “Since she has to go anyway. Why see that Hastings has a strong guard? I should have thought you would have wanted her to be rescued.”

I want to tell her, “Because I would say anything to keep her under the same roof as me for another day.” But that would make no sense at all. So I remark, “The news from all around is that Westmorland and Northumberland are on the move and their army is more than two thousand strong. I don’t want to send them out into trouble. It does us no good at all if they go from here into an ambush.”

Bess nods, but she does not look convinced. “We don’t want her trapped here,” she says. “The army will swarm to her like wasps to a jam pot. Better she goes than they set siege to us here. Better that she goes sooner rather than later. We don’t want her here. We don’t want her army coming here for her.”

I nod. The newlywed husband and wife that we were only months ago did not want her here, interrupting our happiness. But us? Now we are divided in our wishes. Bess thinks only of how to get herself and her fortune safe through this dangerous time. And for some reason, I cannot think at all. I cannot plan at all. I think I must have a touch of the gout that I had before. I have never felt so light-headed and so weary and so sick. I seem to spend hours looking out the window across the courtyard to where her shutters are closed. I must beill. I can think of nothing but that I have only four days left with her under my roof, and I can’t even devise a reason to go across the courtyard and speak to her. Four days and I may spend them like a dog sitting outside a shut door, not knowing how to get in. I am howling inside my head.