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1568, Winter, Hampton Court: George (#ulink_8b131ed4-0ad3-563a-b8fc-0b9b2e88089d)
My queen, Elizabeth, is more generous and more just than anyone can imagine. With so much suspicion now raised and expressed against her cousin, she has ordered that the slanderous letters shall be kept secret forever, and she will restore her cousin to her kingdom. Elizabeth will not hear another word against her cousin, she will not have her name dragged through the mud. She is generous and just in this; we could never have reached a fair judgement without listening to the most terrible scandal, so Elizabeth has silenced both scandal and defence.
But even though she is a monarch of such justice and wisdom I find I am a little perturbed that I am summoned to see her.
She is not on her brown velvet throne embroidered with pearls and diamonds in the Paradise room, though there are, as ever, dozens of men waiting about, hoping to catch her attention when she comes out for company before dinner. The strangers to Hampton Court Palace examine the exquisite musical instruments that are scattered on tables around the room, or play draughts on the ebony boards. Those who are old hands at court idle in the window bays, concealing their boredom at the delay. I see Cecil, watchful as ever. Cecil, dressed in black like some poor clerk, is talking quietly with his brother-in-law Nicholas Bacon. Behind them hovers a man I don’t know, but who is now admitted into their councils, a man who wears his hat pulled down over his eyes as if he does not want to be recognised. And behind him, another new man, Francis Walsingham. I don’t know who these men are, nor where they belong, to which great families they are allied. To tell truth, most of them don’t have family – not as I understand such a thing. They are men without background. They have come from nowhere, they belong nowhere, they can be recruited by anyone.
I turn away as the queen’s lady-in-waiting Lady Clinton comes out through the grand double doors from the queen’s inner chamber, and when she sees me, speaks to the guard, who stands aside and lets me in.
There are more guards than usual, at every doorway and every gate to the castle. I have never seen the royal palace so heavily manned. These are bitterly troubled times, we have never needed such protection before. But these days there are many men – even Englishmen – who would carry a knife and strike down their own queen if they could. There are more of them than anyone could have dreamed. Now that the other queen, the one that they call the true heir, is actually in England, the choice between the Protestant princess and the Catholic rival is set before every man, and for every Protestant in the land today there are two secret Papists, probably more. How are we to live, when we are divided among ourselves, is a question I leave to Cecil, whose unending enmity to Catholics has done so much to bring this about, and to make a bad situation so much worse.
‘Is Her Grace in good spirits today?’ I ask in an undertone to her ladyship. ‘Happy?’
She understands me well enough to give me a quick sideways smile. ‘She is,’ she says. She means that the famous Tudor temper is not unleashed. I have to admit I am relieved. The moment that she sent for me I was afraid I would be scolded for letting the inquiry reach no damning conclusion. But what could I do? The terrible murder of Darnley and her suspicious marriage to Bothwell, his probable killer, which appeared as such a vile crime, may not have been her fault at all. She may have been victim rather than criminal. But unless Bothwell confesses everything from his cell, or unless she testifies to his wickedness, no-one can know what took place between the two of them. Her ambassador will not even discuss it. Sometimes I feel that I am too frightened even to speculate. I am not a man for great sins of the flesh, for great drama. I love Bess with a quiet affection, there is nothing dark and doomed about either of us. I don’t know what the queen and Bothwell were to each other; and I would rather not imagine.
Queen Elizabeth is seated in her chair by the fireside in her private chamber, under the golden cloth of estate, and I go towards her and sweep off my hat and bow low.
‘Ah, George Talbot, my dear old man,’ she says warmly, calling me by the nickname she has for me, and I know by this that she is in a sunny mood, and she gives me her hand to kiss.
She is still a beautiful woman. Whether in a temper, whether scowling in a mood or white-faced in fear, she is still a beautiful woman, though thirty-five years of age. When she first came to the throne she was a young woman in her twenties and then she was a beauty, pale-skinned and red-haired with the colour flushing in her cheeks and lips at the sight of Robert Dudley, at the sight of gifts, at the sight of the crowd outside her window. Now her colour is steady, she has seen everything there is to see, nothing delights her very much any more. She paints on her blushes in the morning, and refreshes them at night. Her russet hair has faded with age. Her dark eyes, which have seen so much and learned to trust so little, have become hard. She is a woman who has known some passion but no kindness; and it shows in her face.
The queen waves her hand and her women rise obediently and scatter out of earshot. ‘I have a task for you and for Bess, if you will serve me,’ she says.
‘Anything, Your Grace.’ My mind races. Can she want to come to stay with us this summer? Bess has been working on Chatsworth House ever since her former husband bought it, for this very purpose – to house the queen on her travels to the North. What an honour it will be, if she plans to come. What a triumph for me, and for Bess’s long-laid plan.
‘They tell me that your inquiry against the Scots queen, my cousin, failed to find anything to her discredit. I followed Cecil’s advice in pursuing the evidence till half my court was turning over the midden for letters, and hanging on the words of maids spying at bedroom doors. But there was nothing, I believe?’ She pauses for my confirmation.
‘Nothing but gossip, and some evidence that the Scots lords would not publicly show,’ I say tactfully. ‘I refused to see any secret slanders as evidence.’
She nods. ‘You would not, eh? Why not? Do you think I want a dainty man in my service? Are you too nice to serve your queen? Do you think this is a pretty world we live in and you can tiptoe through dry-shod?’
I swallow on a dry mouth. Pray God she is in a mood for justice and not for conspiracy. Sometimes her fears drive her to the wildest of beliefs. ‘Your Grace, they would not submit the letters as evidence for full scrutiny, they would not show them to the Queen Mary’s advisors. I would not see them secretly. It did not seem to be … just.’
Her dark eyes are piercing. ‘There are those who say she does not deserve justice.’
‘But I was appointed judge, by you.’ It is a feeble response, but what else can I say? ‘I have to be just if I am representing you, Your Majesty. If I am representing the queen’s justice, I cannot listen to gossip.’
Her face is as hard as a mask and then her smile breaks through. ‘You are an honourable man indeed,’ she says. ‘And I would be glad to see her name cleared of any shadow of suspicion. She is my cousin, she is a fellow queen, she should be my friend, not my prisoner.’
I nod. Elizabeth is a woman whose own innocent mother was beheaded for wantonness. Surely, she must naturally side with a woman unjustly accused? ‘Your Grace, we should have cleared her name on the evidence that was submitted. But you stopped the inquiry before it reached its conclusions. Her name should be free of any slur. We should publish our opinions and say that she is innocent of any charge. She can be your friend now. She can be released.’
‘We will make no announcement of her innocence,’ she rules. ‘Where would be the advantage to me in that? But she should be returned to her country and her throne.’
I bow. ‘Well, so I think, Your Grace. Your cousin Howard says she will need a good advisor and a small army at first to secure her safety.’
‘Oh, really? Does he? What good advisor?’ she asks sharply. ‘Who do you and my good cousin nominate to rule Scotland for Mary Stuart?’
I stumble. It is always like this with the queen, you never know when you have walked into a trap. ‘Whoever you think best, Your Grace. Sir Francis Knollys? Sir Nicholas Throckmorton? Hastings? Any reliable nobleman?’
‘But I am advised that the lords of Scotland and the regent make better rulers and better neighbours than she did,’ she says restlessly. ‘I am advised that she is certain to marry again, and what if she chooses a Frenchman or a Spaniard and makes him King of Scotland? What if she puts our worst enemies on our very borders? God knows her choice of husbands is always disastrous.’
It is not hard for a man who has been around the court for as long as I have to recognise the suspicious tone of William Cecil through every word of this. He has filled the queen’s head with such a terror of France and Spain that from the moment she came to the throne she has done nothing but fear plots and prepare for war. By doing so, he has made us enemies where we could have had allies. Philip of Spain has many true friends in England and his country is our greatest partner for trade, while France is our nearest neighbour. To hear Cecil’s advice you would think one was Sodom and the other Gomorrah. However, I am a courtier, I say nothing as yet. I stay silent till I know where this woman’s indecisive mind will flutter to rest.
‘What if she gains her throne, and marries an enemy? Shall we ever have peace on the northern borders, d’you think, Talbot? Would you trust such a woman as her?’
‘You need have no fear,’ I say. ‘No Scots army would ever get past your Northern lords. You can trust your old lords, the men who have been there forever. Percy, Neville, Dacre, Westmorland, Northumberland, all of us old lords. We keep your border safe, Your Grace. You can trust us. We keep armed and we keep the men levied and drilled. We have kept the Northern lands safe for hundreds of years. The Scots have never defeated us.’
She smiles at my assurance. ‘I know it. You and yours have been good friends to me and mine. But do you think I can trust the Queen of Scots to rule Scotland to our advantage?’
‘Surely, when she goes back she will have enough to do to reestablish her rule? We need not fear her enmity. She will want our friendship. She cannot be restored without it. If you help her back on her throne with your army, she will be eternally grateful. You can bind her with an agreement.’
‘I think so,’ she nods. ‘I think so indeed. And anyway, we cannot keep her here in England; there is no possible argument for keeping her here. We cannot imprison an innocent fellow queen. And better for us if she goes back to Edinburgh, than runs off to Paris to cause more trouble.’
‘She is queen,’ I say simply. ‘It cannot be denied. Queen born and ordained. It must be God’s will that she sits on her throne. And surely, it is safer for us if she can bring the Scots to peace than if they are fighting against each other. The border raids in the North have been worse since she was thrown down. The border raiders fear no-one, now that Bothwell is far away in prison. Any rule is better than none. Better the queen should rule than no rule at all. And surely, the French or the Spanish will restore her if we do not? And if they put her back on the throne we will have a foreign army on our doorstep, and she will be grateful to them, and that must be far worse for us.’
‘Aye,’ she says firmly, as if she has made a decision. ‘So think I.’
‘Perhaps you can swear an alliance with her,’ I suggest. ‘Better to deal with a queen, you two queens together, than be forced to haggle with a usurper, a new false power in Scotland. And her half-brother is clearly guilty of murder and worse.’
I could not have said anything that pleased her more. She nods and puts her hand up to caress her pearls. She has a magnificent triple rope of black pearls, thick as a ruff, around her throat.
‘He laid hands on her,’ I prompt her. ‘She is an ordained queen and he seized her against her will and imprisoned her. That’s a sin against the law and against heaven. You cannot want to deal with such an impious man as that. How should he prosper if he can attack his own queen?’
‘I will not deal with traitors,’ she declares. Elizabeth has a horror of anyone who would challenge a monarch. Her own hold on her own throne was unsteady in the early years, and even now her claim is actually not as good as that of the Queen of Scots. Elizabeth was registered as Henry’s bastard and she never revoked the act of parliament. But Mary Queen of Scots is the granddaughter of Henry’s sister. Her line is true, legitimate and strong.
‘I will never deal with traitors,’ she repeats. She smiles, and at once I see again the pretty young woman who came to the throne with no objection at all to dealing with traitors. She had been the centre of all the rebellions against her sister, Mary Tudor, but was always too clever to be caught. ‘I want to be a just kinswoman to the Scots queen,’ she says. ‘She may be young and foolish and she has made mistakes that are shocking beyond words – but she is my kinswoman and she is a queen. She must be well treated, and she must be restored. I am ready to love her as a good kinswoman and see her rule her country as she should.’
‘There speaks a great queen and a generous woman,’ I say. It never hurts with Elizabeth to slather on a bit of praise. Besides, it is earned. It will not be easy for Elizabeth to resist the terrors that Cecil frightens her with. It will not be easy for her to be generous to a younger and more beautiful kinswoman. Elizabeth won her throne after a lifetime of plotting. She cannot help but fear an heir with a claim to the throne, and every reason to conspire. She knows what it is like to be the heir excluded from court. She knows that when she was the heir excluded from court she spun one plot after another, murderous rebellions that nearly succeeded in destroying her half-sister and bringing down the throne. She knows what a false friend she was to her sister – it will be impossible for her to trust her cousin who is, just as she was, a young princess impatient of waiting.
She beams at me. ‘So, Talbot. This brings me to your task.’
I wait.
‘I want you to house the Scots queen for me, and then take her back to her kingdom when the time is right,’ she says.
‘House her?’ I repeat.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Cecil will prepare for her return to Scotland; in the meantime, you shall house her and entertain her, treat her as a queen, and when Cecil sends you word, escort her back to Edinburgh, and return her to her throne.’
It is an honour so great that I can hardly catch my breath at the thought of it. To be host to the Queen of Scotland and to return her to her kingdom in triumph! Cecil must be sick with envy; he has no house half as grand as Bess’s at Chatsworth, though he is building like a madman. But not fast enough, so she will have to come to us. I am the only nobleman who could do the task. Cecil has no house and Norfolk, as a widower, has no wife. No-one has a grand house and a well-loved loyal reliable wife like Bess.
‘I am honoured,’ I say calmly. ‘You can trust me.’ Of course, I think of Bess, and how thrilled she will be that Chatsworth will house a queen at last. We will be the envy of every family in England, they will all want to visit us. We shall have open house all the summer, we shall be a royal court. I shall hire musicians and masquers, dancers and players. We will be one of the royal courts of Europe – and it will all be under my roof.
She nods. ‘Cecil will make the arrangements with you.’
I step backwards. She smiles at me, the dazzling smile that she gives to the crowds when they call out her name: the Tudor charm at full meridian. ‘I am grateful to you, Talbot,’ she says. ‘I know you will keep her safe in these troubled times, and see her safely home again. It will only be for the summer and you will be richly rewarded.’
‘It will be my honour to serve you,’ I say. ‘As always.’ I bow again and walk backwards and then out of the presence chamber. Only when the door is closed and the guards before it cross their halberds once more do I allow myself to whistle at my luck.
1568, Winter, Bolton Castle: Mary (#ulink_a4c301eb-be8e-5625-8b37-cc4252c2b349)
My faithful friend, Bishop John Lesley of Ross, who has followed me into exile, saying that he cannot stay at home in comfort beside an empty throne, writes to me in our secret code from London. He says that although Elizabeth’s third and final inquiry in Westminster Palace could find nothing against me, yet the French ambassador has not yet been told to prepare for my journey to Paris. He is afraid that Elizabeth will find an excuse to keep me in England for another week, another month, God only knows how long; she has the patience of a tormentor. But I have to trust to her friendship, I have to rely on her good sense as a cousin and a fellow queen. Whatever my doubts about her – a bastard and a heretic though she is – I have to remember that she has written to me with love and promised her support, she has sent me a ring as pledge of my safety forever.
But while she hesitates and considers, all this while, my son is in the hands of my enemies, and his tutors are Protestants. He is two years old; what they tell him of me, I cannot bear to imagine. I have to get back to him before they poison him against me.
I have men and women loyal to me, waiting for my return, I cannot make them wait forever. Bothwell, imprisoned in Denmark on a ridiculous charge of bigamy, will be planning his own escape, thinking ahead to setting me free, determined that we shall be reunited on the throne of Scotland. With or without him I have to get back and claim my throne. I have God’s hand of destiny on my life, I was born to rule Scotland. I cannot refuse the challenge to win back my throne. My mother gave her life to keep the kingdom for me, I shall honour her sacrifice and pass it on to my heir, my son, her grandson, my little boy, James, Prince James, heir to Scotland and to England, my precious son.
I cannot wait to see what Elizabeth will do. I cannot wait for her slowly to act. I don’t know if my son is safely guarded, I don’t even know if he is well-nursed. His false uncle, my half-brother, has never loved him; what if he has him killed? I left him with trustworthy guardians in Stirling Castle; but what if they are besieged? I dare not sit here quietly and wait for Elizabeth to forge a treaty with my enemies that sends me on parole to France, or orders me to hide in some convent. I have to get back to Scotland and enter the battle for my throne once more. I did not escape from Lochleven Castle to do nothing. I did not break free from one prison to wait quietly in another. I have to be free.
Nobody can know what this is like for me. Certainly not Elizabeth, who was practically raised in prison, under suspicion from the age of four. She is a woman trained to a cell. But I have been mistress of my own great rooms since I was a girl of eleven in France. My mother insisted I should have my own rooms, my own presence chamber, my own entourage; even as a child I had the ordering of my own household. Then as now, I cannot bear to be constrained; I must be free.
The ambassador bids me keep up my courage and wait for his news. But I cannot just wait. I cannot have patience. I am a young woman in the very prime of my health and beauty and fertility. They have left me to celebrate my twenty-sixth birthday in prison. What do they think they are doing to me? What do they think I will endure? I cannot be confined. I must be free. I am a queen, I was born to command. They will find that I am a dangerous and untamed prisoner. They will find that I will be free.
1568, Winter, Chatsworth House: Bess (#ulink_a15990f7-4dc2-533a-89da-8a5106d97263)
Cecil’s clerk writes to tell me that Mary Queen of Scots is not to come to us at Chatsworth, where I could entertain her as she deserves: in a great house with a beautiful park and everything done as it should be. No, she is to come to Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire: one of our poorest properties and half-derelict, and I have to turn my life upside down to make this ruin fit for a queen in the middle of winter.
‘If your lord and husband could only have been prevailed on to see all the evidence against her, she could have been returned to Scotland in disgrace already,’ Cecil writes, sweet as an unripe apple, in a postscript. ‘Then we would all have been able to rest easy this Christmastide.’
There is no need for Cecil to reproach me. I warned my lord that the inquiry was a sham and a show, as close to life as are the mummers dressed in motley at Christmas. I told him that if he chose to become a player in this scene of Cecil’s devising then he must follow the playscript word by word. He was not invited there to improvise. He should have found the verdict that Cecil wanted. But he would not. If you hire an honourable man to do dirty work you will find the work honourably done. Cecil chose the wrong lord when he chose my husband to supervise the disgrace of the Scots queen. And so Cecil has no scandal, and no dishonoured queen, and I have no husband at home, and I have to clean and rebuild a derelict castle in the middle of winter.
Cecil says: ‘I am sorry that you have to house this Athalia; but I hope it will not be for long, for certainty, she will follow the destiny of her namesake.’
This obviously means something to Cecil, who has the benefit of a man’s education, but for a woman such as me, the daughter of a farmer, it is as opaque as a code. Fortunately, my darling son Henry is staying with me, on a brief holiday from his place at court. His father, my second husband, Cavendish, left me with instructions and an income to get him educated like a gentleman, and I sent him, and then his two brothers, to school at Eton.
‘Who is Athalia?’ I ask him.
‘Obscure,’ he replies.
‘So obscure that you don’t know the answer?’
He smiles lazily at me. He is a handsome boy and he knows that I dote on him.
‘So, my Mama-Countess. What is the information worth to you? We live in a world where all intelligence is for sale. You pay me well enough to report the gossip from court. I am your spy in the house of your friend Robert Dudley. Everyone has an informant and I am merely one of many of yours, I know. What will you pay me for the fruits of my education?’
‘I have paid for it once already in your tutors’ fees,’ I reply. ‘And they were dear enough. Besides, I think you don’t say because you don’t know. You are an ignoramus and my money was wasted on your education. I hoped to buy myself a scholar and all I have is an idiot.’
He laughs. He is such a handsome boy. He has all the disadvantages of a rich boy. Even though he is my own darling, I can see it clearly. He has no idea that money is hard to earn, that our world is filled with opportunity and also danger. He has no idea that his father and I went to the limits of the law and beyond to make the fortune that we would lavish on him and on his brothers and sisters. He will never work as I do, he will never worry as I do. To tell the truth, he has no idea of either work or worry. He is a well-fed boy, whereas I was raised with hunger – a hunger for everything. He takes Chatsworth for granted as his pleasant home, his due; whereas I have put my heart and soul here, and I would sell my heart and soul to keep it. He will be an earl if I can buy him an earldom, a duke, if I can afford it. He will be the founder of a new noble family: a Cavendish. He will make the Cavendish name a noble one. And he will take it all, as if it came easily, as if he had to do nothing but smile as the sun warmly smiles on him; bless him.
‘You misjudge me. I do know, actually,’ he says. ‘I am not such an idiot as you think. Athalia is in the Old Testament. She was a queen of the Hebrews and she was accused of adultery and killed by the priests, so as to free her throne so that her son Joash could become king.’
I can feel my indulgent smile freeze on my face. This is no matter for jokes. ‘They killed her?’
‘They did indeed. She was known to be unchaste, and unfit to rule. So they killed her and put her son in her place.’ He pauses. His dark eyes gleam at me. ‘There is a general view, I know vulgar, Mama, but a general view, that no woman is fit to rule. Women are by nature inferior to men and it goes against nature if they so much as try to command. Athalia was – tragically for her – only typical.’
I raise a finger to him. ‘Are you sure of that? Do you want to say any more? Would you like to expound further on female inability?’
‘No! No!’ he laughs.‘I was expressing the vulgar view, the common error, that is all. I am no John Knox, I don’t think you are all a monstrous regiment of women, honestly, Mama, I do not. I am not likely to think that women are simple-minded. I have been brought up by a mother who is a tyrant and commander of her own lands. I am the last man in the world to think that a woman cannot command.’
I try to smile with him but inwardly I am perturbed. If Cecil is naming the Scots queen as Athalia then he means me to understand that she will be forced to let her baby son take the throne. Perhaps he even means that she will die to make way for him. Clearly, Cecil does not believe that the inquiry cleared her of the murder of her husband and of adultery with his killer. Cecil wants her publicly shamed and sent away. Or worse. Surely he cannot dream that she could be executed? Not for the first time I am glad that Cecil is my friend; for he is certainly a dangerous enemy.
I send my son Henry, and my dear stepson Gilbert Talbot, back to court and tell them that there is no point staying with me, for I have work to do; they might as well see in the Christmas season in comfort and merriment in London, for I can provide neither. They go willingly enough, revelling in each other’s company and in the adventure of the ride south. They are like a pair of handsome twins, alike in age – seventeen and fifteen – and in education, though my boy Henry, I must say, is far and away naughtier than my new husband’s son, and leads him into trouble whenever he can.
Then I have to strip my beautiful house, Chatsworth, of hangings and tapestries and carpets, and ship linen by the cartload. This Queen of Scots is to come with a household of thirty persons and they will all have to sleep somewhere, and I know full well that Tutbury Castle has no furniture nor comfort of any kind. I command my Chatsworth chief steward of the household, the grooms of the servery and of the buttery and the master of horse at the stables to send food and trenchers, knives, table linen, flagons and glassware by the wagon-load to Tutbury Castle. I command the carpentry shop to start making beds and trestle tables and benches. My lord uses Tutbury no more than once a year, as a hunting lodge, and the place is barely furnished. Myself, I have not ever been there, and I am only sorry that I have to go there now.
Then, when Chatsworth is in chaos from my orders and the wagons are stuffed with my goods, I have to climb on my own horse with my teeth gritted at the stupidity of this journey, and at the head of my own wagons I ride south-east for four hard days across inhospitable country on roads that are frosty in the morning and thick with mud by midday, through fords which are swollen with freezing floods, starting at wintry dawn and ending in the early dark. All this, so that we can get to Tutbury and try to put the place into some kind of order before this troublesome queen arrives to make us all unhappy.
1568, Winter, Hampton Court: George (#ulink_c552d69c-6593-5920-bc37-1d128d7f4b54)
‘But why does the queen want her taken to Tutbury Castle?’ I ask William Cecil, who of all men in England always knows everything, he is a tradesman of secrets. He is the very monopolist of secrecy. ‘Chatsworth would be more fitting. Surely the queen wants us to house her at Chatsworth? To be honest, I have not been to Tutbury myself in years; but you know that Bess bought Chatsworth with her previous husband and brought it as her dowry to me, and she has made it very lovely.’
‘The Scots queen won’t be with you for long,’ Cecil says mildly. ‘And I would rather have her in a house with a single entrance by a guardhouse, which can be well-guarded, than have her gazing out of fifty windows over beautiful parkland and slipping out of half a dozen doors into the gardens.’
‘You don’t think we might be attacked?’ I am shocked at the very thought of it. Only later do I realise that he seems to know the grounds of Tutbury Castle, which is odd, since he has never visited. He sounds as if he knows it better than I do myself, and how could that be?
‘Who knows what might happen, or what a woman like her will take into her head to do, or what support she can attract? Who would have thought that a score of educated noblemen, clearly instructed and advised, with well-trained witnesses and perfect evidence, would sit down to inquire into her behaviour, see the most scandalous material ever written, and then rise up, having decided nothing? Who would have thought that I would convene a tribunal three times over, and still be unable to get a conviction? Are you all so besotted with her?’
‘A conviction?’ I repeat. ‘You make it sound like a trial. I thought it was a conference? You told me it was an inquiry.’
‘I fear our queen has been ill-served in this.’
‘But how?’ I ask. ‘I thought we did what she wanted. She stopped the inquiry herself, saying that it was unjust to the Queen of Scots? Surely she has cleared the Scots queen of any wrongdoing? Surely you should be glad? Surely our queen is glad that we held a thorough inquiry but could find nothing against her cousin? And that being so, why should our queen not invite Queen Mary to live with her at court? Why should she come to us at all? Why should they not live as cousins in harmony, queen and heir? Now that her name is cleared?’
Cecil chokes on a laugh that he cannot silence, and claps me on the shoulder. ‘You know, you are the very man to keep her safe for us,’ he says warmly. ‘I think you are the most honourable man in England, indeed. Your wife is right to caution me that you are a man of utter honour. And the queen will be indebted to you for your good guardianship of her dear cousin. I am sure that all of us are as glad as you are that the inquiry cleared the Scots queen’s name, and now we know that she is innocent. You have proved her innocent, thank God. And we will all have to live with the consequences.’
I am troubled, and I let him see it. ‘You did not want her cleared of blame?’ I say slowly. ‘And you want her at Tutbury, and not held with honour at Chatsworth?’ I have a sense of something amiss. ‘I have to warn you: I will only deal with her fairly, Master Secretary. I will have to beg an audience and ask our queen what she intends.’
‘Nothing but good,’ he says smoothly. ‘As I do. As you do. You know that the queen is going to invite you to become a member of the Privy Council?’
I gasp. ‘Privy Council?’ This has been a long time coming. My family name commends me; but I have had to wait a long time for this moment, it is an honour that I have yearned for.
‘Oh yes,’ he says with a smile. ‘Her Majesty trusts you so well. Trusts you with this task, and others that will follow. Will you serve the queen without question?’
‘I always do,’ I say. ‘You know, I always do.’
Cecil smiles. ‘I know. So guard the other queen and keep her safe for us until we can return her safely to Scotland. And make sure you don’t fall in love with her, good Talbot. They say she’s quite irresistible.’
‘Under my Bess’s nose? And us married less than a year?’
‘Bess is your safeguard as you are ours,’ he says. ‘Give her my warmest wishes and tell her that when she next comes to London she must break her journey at my house. She will want to see the progress I am making with it. And if I am not mistaken she will want to borrow some of my plans; but she may not steal my builders. Last time she came I found her in deep conversation with my plasterer. She was tempting him away to flower her hall. I swore I would never trust her with one of my artisans again, she poaches them, she truly does. And I suspect her of putting up wages.’
‘She will give up her building projects while she is caring for the queen,’ I tell him. ‘Anyway, I think she must have finished the work on Chatsworth by now. How much work does a house need? It is good enough now, surely? She will have to give up her business interests too, I shall have my stewards take over her work.’
‘You’ll never get her to hand over her farms and her mines, and she’ll never finish building,’ he predicts. ‘She is a great artificer, your new wife. She likes to build things, she likes property and trade. She is a rare woman, a venturer in her heart. She will build a chain of houses across the country, and run your estates like a kingdom, and launch a fleet of ships for you, and found a dynasty of your children. Bess will only be satisfied when they are all dukes. She is a woman whose only sense of safety is property.’
I never like it when Cecil talks like this. His own rise from clerk to lord has been so sudden, on the coat-tails of the queen, that he likes to think that everyone has made their fortunes from the fall of the church, and that every house is built with the stone of abbeys. He praises Bess and her mind for business, only to excuse himself. He admires her profits because he wants to think that such gains are admirable. But he forgets that some of us come from a great family that was rich long before the church lands were grabbed by greedy new men; and some of us have titles that go back generations. Some of us came over as Norman noblemen in 1066. This means something, if only for some of us. Some of us are wealthy enough, without stealing from priests.
But it is hard to say any of this without sounding pompous. ‘My wife does nothing that does not befit her position,’ I say, and Cecil gives a little laugh as if he knows exactly what I am thinking.
