The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory

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pale shoulders.

      They throw evergreen leaves down on the road before her since they don’t have flowers in this wintry season. At every stop someone presses pots of honey and preserves on us for her pleasure. The women bring out rosaries for her to touch as if she were a saint, and I have to look the other way, for the rosaries themselves are against the law now. Or at any rate, I think so. The laws change so often I can’t always keep up. My own mother had a rosary of coral, and my father had a candle lit before a marble crucifix every day of his life; but Bess keeps these hidden in our treasure room now, jumbled up with the icons her previous husband stole from the abbeys. Bess treats them all as profitable goods. She does not think of them as sacred, Bess does not think of anything as sacred. This is the new way.

      But when we pass a roadside shrine where a statue or a crucifix once stood, there is now a candle new-set and burning with a brave little light as if to say that the statue may be broken and the crucifix thrown down; but the light on the road and the flame in the heart still burn. She insists on pausing before these empty shrines to bow her head and I cannot hurry her because there is something about her in prayer … something about the turn of her head, as if she is listening as well as praying. I cannot make myself interrupt these brief communions though I know that when people see her, it just encourages Papacy and superstition. I can see that these little prayers strengthen her as if someone – who? Her mother? Her lost husband? Perhaps even her namesake, the very Mother of God? – is speaking to her in the silence.

      How should I know? I am a man who simply follows my king. When my king is a Papist, I am a Papist. When he is a Protestant, I am a Protestant, if he became a Mussulman I suppose I would do so too. I don’t think of these things. I have never thought of these things. I pride myself in being a man who does not think about such things. My family do not struggle for their faith, we remain faithful to the king and his God is our God. But when I see her face illuminated by the candle from a roadside icon and her smile so rapt … well, in truth, I don’t know what I see. If I were foolish like the common people I would think I see the touch of God. I would think I see a woman who is as beautiful as an angel, because she is an angel, an angel on earth, as simple as that.

      Then she laughs in my face some evenings, feckless as the girl she is. ‘I am a great trial to you,’ she says, speaking French. ‘Don’t deny it! I know it and I am sorry for it. I am a great trouble to you, Lord Shrewsbury.’

      She cannot pronounce my name at all. She speaks like a Frenchwoman; you would never know that her father was a Scot. She can say ‘the earl’ well enough. She can manage ‘Talbot’; but ‘Shrewsbury’ utterly defeats her. She puckers up her mouth into a kissing pout to attempt it. It comes out ‘Chowsbewwy’ and it is so funny that it almost makes me laugh. She is charming; but I remember that I am married to a woman of great worth and I serve a queen of solid merit.

      ‘Not at all,’ I say coldly, and I see her girl’s smile falter.

       1569, January, on the journey from Bolton Castle to Tutbury Castle: Mary

      Bothwell,

      They are moving me to a new castle, Tutbury, near Burton-on-Trent. I shall be the guest of the Earl of Shrewsbury but I am not free to leave. Come as soon as you can get free.

       Marie

      I keep my head down and I ride like a nun on her way to Mass but everywhere I go, I am taking in everything. I ride as Bothwell the tactician taught me to ride: constantly on the lookout for ambush, for opportunity, for danger, mapping the land in my mind as he would. This England is my kingdom, my inheritance, and these Northern lands will be my especial stronghold. I don’t need secret letters from my ambassador, the good Bishop John Lesley of Ross, to tell me that half the country is mine already, longing to be rid of the tyranny of the usurper, my cousin Elizabeth; for everywhere I go, I see that the common people want to go back to the old ways, the good ways, they want the church restored and a queen that they can trust on the throne.

      If it were the common people alone I would take their praise and their gifts and smile my thanks and know that they can do nothing; but it is so much more than them. At every stop on the road, when the wine comes in for dinner, a server drops a message into my lap or palms me a note. Shrewsbury is a hopeless guardian, bless him. He watches the door but forgets all about the windows. Half a dozen lords of England have sent me assurances that they will never let me be held captive, that they will never let me be sent back to Scotland as a prisoner, that they have vowed to set me free. They will make Elizabeth honour her word to restore me to my throne, or they will challenge her in my name. There is a conspiracy against Elizabeth smouldering, like a fire in heather, spreading, hidden at the very roots. In hesitating to restore me to my throne she has gone too far for her court to support. They all know that I am her only legitimate heir; and they all want me to be secure of my kingdom in Scotland and assured of my inheritance in England. This is nothing more than simple justice, this is my right; and the English nobility as well as the commoners want to defend my right. Any English queen of any sense would make this clear for me, clear for her lords, clear for her country. Any queen of any sense would name me as her heir and put me back on the throne of Scotland and order me to bide my time until her death. If she would treat me fairly like this, I would honour her.

      For many of them Elizabeth is a pretender to the throne, a Protestant bastard who has played on her Tudor-red hair and my absence to put herself where I should be. All of Europe and half of England accept that I am the true heir, descended in a straight and legitimate line from King Henry VII, whereas she is an acknowledged bastard, and worse: a known traitor to the queen who went before her, the sacred Mary Tudor.

      It is a tricky path I have to tread. No-one would blame me if I escaped from this compulsory hospitality. But everyone, even my own family, even Elizabeth’s enemies, would condemn me if I raised a riot in her kingdom. She too would be within her rights to accuse me of troublemaking, even treason, if I made a rebellion against her; and I dare not risk that. These lords must be led on to free me, for I must be free. But they must do it of their own choice. I cannot encourage them to rebel against their crowned sovereign. In truth: nor would I. Who believes more strongly than I that an anointed queen should reign? A legitimate sovereign cannot be questioned.

      ‘But is she a legitimate sovereign?’ Mary Seton, my companion, asks me slyly, knowing that she is only repeating my old words back to me, as we rest one evening in a poor inn on the road to Tutbury.

      ‘She is,’ I say firmly. At any rate, when we are in her lands and with no power of our own, we will treat her as such.

      ‘The child of Anne Boleyn, conceived outside wedlock when the king was married to a Catholic princess,’ she reminds me. ‘Declared a bastard by her own father, and that law never revoked. Not even by her … as if she is afraid to ask the question … Heir to the throne only because the king named her on his deathbed, after his son, after his legitimate daughter, the desperate last words of a frightened man.’

      I turn away from her to the fire and push the most recent note, a promise of help from Mary’s faithful brother, Lord Seton, to the back of the logs and watch it burn. ‘Whatever she is, whatever her mother was, even whatever her father – even if he was Mark Smeaton a singer – nonetheless she is an anointed queen now,’ I say firmly. ‘She found a bishop who could bring himself to crown her, and as such she is sacred.’

      ‘All but one of her bishops refused. The whole church but one Judas denied her. Some of them went to prison rather than crown her. Some of them died for their faith, and died denying her. They called her a usurper, a usurper on your throne.’

      ‘Peut-être.

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