The other queen

1572, JANUARY, COLD HARBOR HOUSE, LONDON: GEORGE

As I get to London, after a bad journey in terrible weather, and open up a few rooms of my London house, I learn that Cecil, having kept the terrible letters of the Scots queen as a state secret on the command of Elizabeth for over three years, has now seen fit to publish this odd and obscene collection of poetry, threat, and evil.

Having refused to see them as a secret document, and insisted that they were presented as evidence in court or not shown at all, I now find these most secret papers, which we all agreed were too dreadful to be discussed by an official inquiry, are now available at the stationers as a little booklet, priced for sale, and the poor people are writing ballads and posting drawings based on this filth. The supposed author of these vile and lustful scribbles, the Queen of Scots, is unanimously reviled in London by everyone who has bought and read them, and even the common people throughout England seem to have learned of the letters and now claim to know, with the absolute certainty of the ignorant, that she is Bothwell’s lover and Darnley’s murderer, the poisoner of her first husband and the lover of her French father-in-law, and in league with the devil to boot. They are creating ballads and stories and more than one vile riddle. She, whom I first saw as a creature of fire and air, is now notorious; she is become a figure of fun.

Of course this makes Norfolk look even more of a fool in the eyes of everyone. Before he stands his trial we all think that he must have been drunk with ambition to have been seduced by such an obvious Jezebel. Before a word of evidence has been posted, before he has even walked into court, every right-thinking man in England condemns him for stupidity and lust.

Except me. Except me. I do not condemn him. How can I? She took me in, as she took him in; I desired her, as he desired her. He, at least, had the sense to think that though she might have been a bad woman, she might still be Queen of Scotland and make him king. He had at least had the old Howard sense of ambition. I was a greater fool than he was. I just wanted to serve her. I didn’t even want a reward. I didn’t even mind the cost. I just wanted to serve her.