The Other Queen (5 page)

“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 simpleminded. 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, reveling 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 neither 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 wagonload 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 southeast 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.

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 realize 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 behavior, 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 honorable man in England, indeed. Your wife is right to caution me that you are a man of utter honor. 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 honor 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 honor 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 coattails 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.

“There is nothing about the countess and her abilities that does not befit her position,” he says smoothly.

“And her position is very grand indeed. You are the greatest nobleman in England, Talbot, we all know that. And you do right to remind us, should we ever make the mistake of forgetting it. And all of us at court appreciate Bess’s good sense; she has been a favorite amongst us all for many years. I have watched her marry upwards and upwards with great pleasure. We are counting on her to make Tutbury Castle a pleasant home for the Queen of Scots. The countess is the only hostess we could consider. No one else could house the Queen of Scots. Any other house would be too mean. No one but Bess would know how to do it. No one but Bess could triumph.”

This flattery from Cecil should content me, but we seem to be back to Bess again, and Cecil should remember that before I married her she was a woman who had come up from nothing.

It is to be tonight. I am going to escape from Bolton Castle, their so-called,soi-disant , “impregnable”

Yorkshire castle, this very night. Part of me thinks: I dare not do this, but I am more terrified of being trapped in this country and unable to go either forward or back. Elizabeth is like a fat ginger cat on a cushion; she is content to sit and dream. But I must reclaim my throne, and in every day of my exile, the situation grows worse for me. I have castles holding out for me in Scotland and I must get relief to them at once. I have men ready to march under my standard, I cannot make them wait. I cannot let my supporters die for lack of my courage. I have Bothwell’s promise that he will escape from Denmark and return to command my armies. I have written to the King of Denmark, demanding Bothwell’s freedom.

He is my husband, the consort of a queen, how dare they hold him on the word of a merchant’s daughter who complains that he promised marriage? It is nonsense, and the complaints of such a woman are of no importance. I have a French army mustering to support me, and promises of Spanish gold to pay them.

Most of all, I have a son, a precious heir,mon bébé ,mon chéri , my only love, and he is in the hands of my enemies. I cannot leave him in their care: he is only two years old! I have to act. I have to rescue him.