The other queen

1571, DECEMBER, CHATSWORTH: MARY

Iam hobbling painfully in the courtyard, as my legs are so stiff and painful I can hardly walk, when I see a stone flung in an arc over the wall from the outside, and it falls near my feet. A piece of paper is wrapped around it and, disregarding the twinge in my knees, I step over it at once, hiding it with my skirts.

My heart races; I can feel my lips smile. Ah, so now it begins again, another proposal, another plot. I had thought that I was too hurt and defeated for any more conspiracies, but now one has fallen at my feet and I feel my hopes leap up at the prospect of another chance of freedom.

I glance around; no one is watching me except the little page boy, Anthony Babington. Quick as a lad playing football, I kick the stone towards him, and he bends and snatches it up and puts it in his pocket. I stagger another few steps, wearily, as if my knees are worse, and then I call him to me.

“Lend me your shoulder, boy,” I say. “My legs are too weak for walking today. Help me to my room.”

I am almost certain that no one is watching us, but it is part of the delight of the plot to wait until we are on the turn of the stair and to say urgently to him, “Now! Now!” and he slips his little hand into his breeches’ pocket, unwraps the stone, and gives me the crumpled paper.

“Good boy,” I whisper. “Come and see me at dinner time and I will have a sugared plum for you.”

“I serve you for faith alone,” he says. His dark eyes are bright with excitement.

“I know you do, and God Himself will reward you for it, but I would like to give you a sugarplum as well,” I say, smiling at him.

He grins and helps me to the door of my chamber and then bows and leaves me. Agnes Livingstone helps me in.

“Are you in pain? The countess was coming to sit with you this afternoon. Shall I tell her not to come?”

“No, let her come, let her come,” I say. I shall do nothing to let them know that a fresh plot has started, a new war is beginning.

I open a book of devotional poems and spread the paper out over the leaves. The door opens, and Bess comes in, curtsies and sits at my invitation. From her stool, placed low, she cannot see my letter. To my amusement, she settles down to sew with me while I have this letter, this new invitation to the undoing of her queen and herself, open before me.

I let myself glance at it, and then gasp in horror. “Look at this,” I say suddenly to her. “Look! Look at this, which was flung over the courtyard wall!”

It is a drawing of me as a mermaid, a bare-breasted whore, and beneath it is a filthy poem listing my husbands and remarking that they all die, as if my bed were a charnel house. It says that poor Francis of France was poisoned by me, Darnley was murdered by Bothwell, and I took him to my bed as a reward. It says Bothwell is kept as a lunatic in a barred cave facing the North Sea. It calls me his French whore.

Bess tosses it into the fireplace. “Filth,” she says simply. “Think nothing of it. Someone must have got drunk on Christmas ale and sung a little song and scribbled a picture. It is nothing.”

“It is directed at me.”

She shrugs. “News of the Ridolfi plot will spread throughout the kingdom and you will be blamed for it. You have lost the love that people had for you when they thought you were a princess tragically ill-treated by the Scots. Now they think you bring us nothing but trouble. Everyone fears and hates the Spanish. They will not quickly forgive you for inviting them in against us. Even the Catholics blame you for inciting the Pope against Elizabeth. They wanted to live in peace, we all want to live in peace, and you are spoiling it.”

“But this is not about the Spanish and all that,” I say. “It says nothing about Ridolfi or the Duke of Norfolk. It is all about Darnley, and Scotland, and Bothwell.”

“Men in an alehouse will repeat anything filthy. But it cannot matter to you what they say. They will say anything, and this is old scandal.”

I shake my head, as if to clear my thoughts, and I pick up my little dog and hug him for comfort. “But why this old scandal? Why now?”

“They gossip about what they hear,” she says steadily. “Isn’t it perennial news? An old scandal?”

“But why speak of it now?” I demand. “Why don’t they blame me for inciting the Pope or calling in the Spanish? Why this old story in preference to the new? Why now?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I hear no gossip here. And I don’t know why it would come up again now.”

I nod. I think I know what is happening, and I am certain who is doing it. Who else would slur my name but him? “Do you think perhaps, Bess, that the men sent out to spy in the alehouses and markets for your queen can talk as well as listen? When they listen for any threat against her, do you think that they also supply scandal about me? About all her enemies? Do you not think that as they listen at keyholes, they also drip fear and poison into the minds of ordinary people? Do you not think that they abuse me, that they spread fear of strangers, terror of war, accusations about Jews and Papists? Do you not think that this whole country is loyal to Elizabeth because she makes them terrified of anything else? That she has agents whose job is to go around spreading terror to keep her people loyal?”

“Well, yes,” Bess agrees, a child of Elizabeth’s England where truth is a thing for sale in the market and scandal is priced to sell. “But why would anyone tell old scandals about you? And why now?”

“That is the very question,” I say simply. “Why now? At this particular, useful moment? Just before Norfolk comes to trial? Could it be that he has refused to say anything against me? Could they fear that they will take him to the very steps of the scaffold and he will not accuse me of treason? Because he knows he is innocent of a rebellion against Elizabeth and I am innocent too. All we wanted was to be married and for me to be released to my country. All we conspired to do was to free me. But they want to hang Norfolk and destroy me. Don’t you know that’s true?”

Bess’s needle is still above her tapestry. She knows I am right and she knows my enemy. She knows how he works and she knows how he succeeds. “But why traduce you with an old scandal?”

“I am a woman,” I say quietly. “If you hate a woman, the first thing you destroy is her reputation. They will name me as a woman of shame, unfit to rule, unfit to marry. If they ruin my reputation, then they make Norfolk’s crime seem even worse. They make him look like a man who was ready to marry an adulteress and a murderess. They make him look insane with ambition and me lower than a whore. Who would follow Norfolk or serve me? No loyal Scotsman or even Englishman would ever want me on the throne. They would think I was guilty of treason against Elizabeth because they believe I am a whore and a murderess.”

Bess nods reluctantly. “To dishonor you both equally,” she says. “Even if they cannot get you both to trial.”

“And who would whisper such a thing? Who do you think, Bess Talbot? Who do you know who uses rumor and false accusation and terrible slanders to destroy another’s reputation? To finish them forever? When he cannot prove them guilty in an inquiry, but when he is determined to give them the reputation of guilt in the world? Who would do this? Who has the men already in his service and the power that he could do this?”

I see in her stricken face that she knows full well who runs the spies, and that it is the same man who runs the slander makers. “I don’t know,” she says stoutly. “I don’t know who would do such a thing.”

I let it rest. I have heard worse ballads than the one we have just burned on the fire, and seen worse portraits too. I let Bess cling to her denial rather than force her to name her friend Cecil as a spy and a pitcher of filth. “Well, well,” I say lightly. “If you do not know, having lived at court as you have done, having seen who rules and who has power, then I am sure that I do not know either.”