The other queen

1570, WINTER, SHEFFIELD CASTLE: GEORGE

Places that I find hidden and treasonous letters to the Queen of Scots:

1. Under a stone in the garden, brought to me by the gardener’s lad who is too simple to understand that the shilling stuck on the outside of the letter was payment to take it in secret to her.

2. Baked inside special Christmas bread for her from my own pastry maker.

3. Sewn inside a gown of silk as a gift from friends in Paris.

4. Pasted into the leaves of a book from a spy in the Spanish Netherlands.

5. Folded into a bolt of damask from Edinburgh.

6. Flown in by one of her own homing pigeons from God knows where, but I am especially worried by this, for the bird was not spent from a long flight: whoever sent it out must be close at hand.

7. Tucked into her saddle where I find it as I lift her up to go riding. She laughed, as if it does not matter.

8. In the collar of her lapdog. These two last must be men in my household acting as couriers for her friends. The homing bird she trained herself, pretending to me that she wanted tame doves. I gave them to her myself, more fool I.

“This must stop,” I tell her. I try to sound stern but she has been washing her dog and she has a linen apron over her gown, her headdress is laid aside, and her hair is falling down from its pins. She is as beautiful as a laundry maid in a fairy story and she is laughing at the dog splashing in the bathwater and wriggling as she tries to hold him.

“Chowsbewwy!” she exclaims with pleasure at seeing me. “Here, Mary, take little Pкche, he is too naughty, and too wet.”

With a lunge the little dog struggles to be free and shakes himself vigorously, drenching us all. The queen laughs. “Take him! Take him!Vite! Vite! And get him dry!”

I regain my solemn expression. “I daresay you would not like it if I took him away from you for good.”

“Not at all,” she replies. “But why would you dream of doing such a cruel thing? How has Pкche offended you?”

“Or if I refused to give you books, or new material for a gown, or did not let you walk in the garden?”

She rises to her feet and strips off her linen apron, a gesture so domestic and ordinary that I almost catch her hand and kiss it as if we were newlyweds in our own little house. “My lord, are you offended with me for something?” she asks sweetly. “Why do you threaten me so? Is something wrong? Has Bess complained of me?”

I shake my head. “It is your letters,” I say. “You must authorize men to write to you. I find letters everywhere. The guards bring me one practically every day.”

She shrugs, a typical gesture which says, in her French way, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” “Pouf! What can I do? England is full of people who want to see me free. They are bound to write to me to ask if they can help.”

“This will ruin us,” I say urgently to her. “Ruin you, as well as me. D’you not think that Cecil has a spy in this very castle? D’you not think he knows that you write every day, and that people write to you? D’you not think he reads what you have written and all the letters that come for you? He is the spymaster of England; he will know far more than I do. And even I know that you are in constant correspondence with the French and with the Spanish and that men, whose names I don’t know, write in code to you all the time, asking you if you are safe, if you need anything, if you are going to be set free.”

“I am a queen,” she says simply. “A princess of the blood. The King of Spain and the King of France, the Holy Roman Emperor are my kinsmen. It is only right and proper that the kings of Europe should write to me. And it is a sign of the criminal kidnap that I endure that any of their agents should think it better to send to me in secret. They should be free to write to me openly, but because I am imprisoned, for no reason, for no reason at all, they cannot. And as for the others—I cannot help that loyal hearts and reverent minds write to me. I cannot prevent their writing, nor should I. They wish to express their love and loyalty and I am glad to have it. There can be nothing wrong in that.”

“Think,” I say urgently to her. “If Cecil believes that I cannot stop you plotting, he will take you away from me or replace me with another guardian.”

“I should not even be here!” she exclaims with sudden bitterness. She draws herself up to her full height; her dark eyes fill with sudden tears. “I signed the document for Cecil, I agreed to everything. I promised to give up my son to Elizabeth: you were there, you saw me do it. Why then am I not returned to Scotland as agreed? Why does Cecil not honor his part of the bargain? Pointless to tell me, Don’t write to my friends. I should not have to write to them, I should be among them as a free woman. You think of that!”

I am silenced by her temper and by the justice of what she says. “Please,” I say weakly. It is all I can say. “Please don’t endanger yourself. I have read some of these letters. They come from varlets and fools, some of the most desperate men in England, and none of them has a penny to rub together and none of them could plan an escape if his own life depended on it. They may be your friends but they are not dependable. Some of them are little more than children; some of them are so well known to Cecil that they are on his payroll already. He has turned them to his service. Cecil’s spies are everywhere, he knows everybody. Anyone who writes to you will be known to Cecil and most of them will be his men trying to entrap you. You must not trust these people.

“You have to be patient. You must wait. As you say, you have an agreement with the queen herself. You have to wait for her to honor it.”

“Elizabeth honor a promise to me?” she repeats bitterly. “She has never done so yet!”

“She will,” I say valiantly. “I give you my own word she will.”