The other queen

1571, DECEMBER, SHEFFIELD CASTLE: GEORGE

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.”

She bows her head and bites her lip so she does not blurt out the reproach that is on her tongue. I know she is already the loser for marrying me. She is thinking of her husbands who carefully amassed their fortunes for her. Men I have sneered at as upstarts, with no family to speak of. She gained from marrying them: they founded a fortune. But I have squandered it. I have lost her fortune. And now I think I have lost my pride.

“Will you go to London this season?” she asks me.

“Norfolk’s trial is delayed until after Christmas,” I say. “Though I doubt they will be very merry at court, with this ghost at their feast. I shall have to serve at his trial. I’ll go down to London then, after twelfth night, and when I see Her Majesty, I will speak again about her debt to us.”

“Perhaps she will pay us.”

“Perhaps.”

“Is there any plan to send the Queen of Scots home?” she asks hopefully.

“Not now,” I say quietly. “They have sent her bishop into exile in France, and her spy, Ridolfi, has fled to Italy. The Spanish ambassador has been ordered to leave in disgrace, and everyone else is in the Tower. The Scots won’t want her—seeing the company she keeps and how faithless she has been, breaking her parole, and her word, and her promise to Lord Morton. And Cecil must be certain that Norfolk’s evidence will incriminate her. The question can only be, What will he do with evidence that damns her?”

“Will they put her on trial? What could be the charge?”

“If they can prove that she invited Spain to invade or plotted the queen’s death, then she is guilty of rebellion against a lawful monarch. That would carry the sentence of death. They can’t execute her, of course, but they can find her guilty and put her in the Tower forever.”

Bess is silent; she cannot meet my eyes. “I am sorry,” she says awkwardly.

“The punishment for raising a rebellion is death,” I say steadily. “If Cecil can prove that she tried to assassinate Elizabeth, then she would face a trial. She would deserve a trial, and lesser men have died for what she has done.”

“She says that Elizabeth will never kill her. She says that she is untouchable.”

“I know it. She is sacred. But a guilty verdict will see her in the Tower forever. And no power in Europe would defend her.”

“What could Norfolk say against her that would be so very bad?”

I shrug. “Who knows what she has written to him, or what she wrote to the Spanish, or to her spy, or to the Pope? Who knows what she promised them?”

“And Norfolk himself?”

“I think it will be a treason trial,” I say. “I shall have to be chief justice. It hardly seems possible. That I should sit as judge on Thomas Howard! We practically grew up together.”

“He will be found innocent,” she predicts. “Or the queen will pardon him after the verdict. They have quarreled as cousins do, but she loves him.”

“I pray that it is so,” I tell her. “For if I have to turn the axe towards him and read out the death sentence, then it will be a dark day for me, and a worse one for England.”