The other queen

1569, NOVEMBER, A SHBY-DE-LA-ZOUCHE CASTLE: BESS

It is impossible to get reliable news; the countryside is alive with gossip and terror, the villages empty of men who have run off to join the army of the North. The women left behind, their stupid faces bright with hope, swear that the good days will come again. These imaginary good days will be the end of me and the destruction of my fortune. If this other queen, Mary Stuart, conquers and becomes the only queen, then she will not look kindly on me. And the first thing she will do is restore the old church. They will want their buildings back; they will want their wealth restored. They will want their gold candlesticks returned from my table, their Venetian glassware, their forks, their gold ewer and ladle. They will want my lands, my mines, my quarries, and my sheep runs. When the Scots queen is on the throne she will remember me well enough as the woman who pretended friendship but spat out jealousy one fatal night. My promises to be her savior will make little impression when the whole of England is her best friend. If this Northern army conquers England and puts their queen on the throne, I will lose my houses and my fortune, my place in the world and everything I have ever striven for.

My husband cannot help me; he will fall too. My friends will not protect me; we are all Protestants, we are all newly arrived at wealth, we are all building on abbey lands, dining off church silver; we will all be forced to return our goods and thrown down together. My poor children will be paupers and inherit nothing but debts. The old church and their new queen will take everything from me and I will be poorer than my mother, and I swore never to be brought so low.

I drive along the wagons with the goods and the provisions as fast as I can, feeling more like a poor peasant fleeing before an army than a countess moving from one beautiful castle to another.

And all the time I am fretting for my home and for my children. My mother and my sister are at Chatsworth, right in the line of march of the Northern army. No army led by noblemen like Westmorland or Northumberland would harm women, but they will be bound to take my cattle and my sheep; they will march through my wheatfields and camp in my woods. And Henry my son and Gilbert my stepson are at court with the queen, and wild for adventure. I pray that Robert Dudley absolutely forbids them to ride out. Henry in particular is a scamp, mad for any excitement: he will offer to scout for the queen, or join the citizens of London to defend her. Robert is my true friend, I know he will keep my boys safe. Pray God he keeps my boys safe. They are my inheritance as much as my houses and all are in danger tonight.

How I wish I could be with my husband the earl, my George. Fool or not, in this crisis I miss him bitterly. His loyal faith and his determination to do his duty by his queen steadies me when I could cry out in panic at the sudden change in our fortunes. He does not plan and foresee and twist and turn in terror as I do. He does not have wagonloads of stolen goods to keep safe. He does not have false promises on his conscience and a knife in his bag. He has not promised the queen her safety and yet been ordered to kill her. He knows his duty and he does it; he does not even have to think about what he should do. He is not clever like me; he is not false-hearted like me.

Maybe he is in love with the Queen of Scots. Perhaps he has enjoyed her looks, and who could blame him? I admit myself, I have never seen such a beautiful woman. Perhaps he has relished her company. Why not? She is as charming as any Frenchwoman raised in vanity and idleness. Perhaps like a man, like a foolish man, he has desired her. Well, he won’t be the first to make that mistake.

But it does not go deep with him, God bless him. When Queen Elizabeth sent him an order he did at once as he was bid. He said he would tie the other queen to her horse if he had to. I love him for that alone. He has faith and loyalty. He has constancy, when all I have is a hunger for wealth and a terror of being poor again. He is a nobleman of honor and I am a newly made woman of greed. I know it.

And then of course it is easier for him; how should he be so plagued with fears like me? He does not have the hunger for land and the fear of loss that I have. He was not raised by a bankrupted widow, he did not have to scrape and serve his way into a good place. He never had to choose his friends on the basis of what they would do for him; he never had to sell himself to the highest bidder, yes, and run the auction too. He does not even know that these are the abbeys’ gold candlesticks on his table and their flocks of sheep on his land. His purity is founded and protected by my greed and calculation. I do the hard and dirty work in this marriage and tonight, for once, I would like to be as clean as he.

We stop for the first night at the castle at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of Hastings’ houses, and though Queen Mary is only here for a night she has to be royally served, and it is my task to make sure it is so. More than ever I want her to see that we are doing the best we can for her. I have to send outriders ahead of her guards to make sure that the house is ready for her arrival; Hastings had shut it down while he was at court, and so my servants have to open it and air the rooms and light the fires. Then I have to catch up with them as quickly as I can so that I can have the wagon of her special goods unpacked and in her room ready for her dinner. I have to have her bedroom fit for a queen before I dream of sitting down to eat. She has to have her special carpet from Turkey on the floor beneath her bed; she has to have her own linen sheets on her bed, lavender-scented; she has to have a change of clothes for the next day, two changes of linen, starched and ironed, and her little dog washed and walked.

Yet all the time that I am fussing about her missing Belgian lace handkerchiefs I am waiting for the news that the army is upon us and closing fast. My wagon train lumbers slowly in the rear, forever getting stuck in the thick mud or having to go round rivers swollen with winter rain, and I have to be with it as we scramble for Coventry. I am unprotected: all the guards are around her, two hours ahead of me. If the army of the North come upon us tomorrow it will be me they find first, with a wagonload of Papist treasures, quite without defense. At any moment they could ride down on us and all I will have to protect myself is a Turkey carpet, a dozen linen sheets, and the queen’s stupid little dog.