The other queen

1570, JANUARY, TUTBURY CASTLE: BESS

My husband the earl comes home from London in tight-lipped silence. He is as white as if he was suffering from an attack of the gout again. When I ask him if he is ill, he shakes his head in silence. I see then that he has taken a deep wound to his pride. The queen has humiliated him before the other nobility. She could have done nothing worse to this rightly haughty man than imply that he cannot be trusted, and this is what she has done to him.

She might as well have put him on the rack as tell him, before the others, that he no longer has her confidence. This is one of the greatest noblemen in Britain and she treats him as if he is some lying servant that she might dismiss from his place for stealing. This is a queen who uses torture indeed.

I don’t know why Elizabeth should turn so cruel, making old friends into enemies. I know she is nervous, prone to deep fears; in the past I have seen her sick for fear. But she has always before been acute in knowing her friends, and she has always counted on them. I cannot think what has thrown her from her usual habit of using flattery and guile, desire and sweetness to keep her court around her, and the men dancing to her tune.

It has to be Cecil who has shaken her from her old, safest course. It has to be Cecil, who halted the proper return of the Scots queen to her throne and who has imprisoned two lords, declared another a runaway traitor, and now tells the queen that my husband is not to be trusted. Cecil’s enmity against the other queen, against all Papists, has grown so powerful that he is prepared to behead half of England to defeat them. If Cecil, my true and faithful friend, now thinks that my husband is against him, if he is prepared to use all his power against us, then we are in danger indeed. This return of my husband from London is nothing more than a temporary relief, and everything that I counted on is unreliable; nothing is safe.

I walk across the courtyard, a shawl over my head for warmth, the cold and damp of Tutbury creeping into my bones through my winter boots. I am summoned to the stables, where the stack of hay has fallen so low that we will not be able to get through the winter. I shall have to get more sent from Chatsworth or buy some in. We cannot afford to buy in fodder; I can barely afford to cart it across the country. But truly, I am thinking of nothing but how I shall manage if my husband is accused. What if Cecil recalls him to London, just as they released and then recalled Thomas Howard? What if Cecil arrests my husband, as he has dared to arrest Thomas Howard? What if he puts him in the Tower along with the others? Who would have thought that Cecil would have grown so great that he could act against the greatest lords of the land? Who would have thought that Cecil would claim that the interests of the country are different from those of her great lords? Who would have thought that Cecil could claim that the interests of the country are the same as his?

Cecil will stand my friend, I am sure of that. We have known each other too long for betrayal now; we have been each other’s benchmark for too long in this life. We are cut from the same cloth, Cecil and I. He will not name me as a traitor and send me to the Tower. But what of my husband the earl? Would he throw down George?

I have to say that if Cecil knew for certain that George had joined with his enemies, he would act at once and decisively. I have to say that I would not blame him. All of us children of the Reformation are quick to defend what we have won, quick to take what is not ours. Cecil will not let the old lords of England throw him down for no better reason than he was a steward when they were nobility. Neither would I. We understand that about each other, at least.

My husband the earl does not understand either of us. He cannot be blamed. He is a nobleman, not a self-made man like Cecil. He thinks he needs only to decide something and it shall be. He is used to raising his head and finding what he wants to his hand. He does not know, as Cecil and I know from our hard childhoods, that if you want something, you have to work at it night and day. Then, when you have it, you have to work night and day to keep it. Right now, Cecil will be working night and day towards the death of the Queen of Scots, the execution of her friends, and the breaking of the power of the old lords who support her claim and hate him.

I shall write to Cecil. He understands what houses and land and fortune mean to a woman who was raised with nothing. He might listen kindly to a wife appealing for the safety of her beloved husband. He might listen with generosity to a newly married woman in distress. But if I beg him to save my fortune, he will understand that this is something more important than sentiment: this is business.