The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory
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Barren women cannot go on pilgrimage to a sacred well, sick men cannot hobble to a shrine. They know themselves to be bereft. Undeniably, they have been robbed of much that made their lives happier. And they think that this exquisite other queen, dressed in black with a veil of white, as seductive as a novice nun, will bring back all the good things for them, and they crowd around her and tell her that good times will come again, that she must wait, as they will wait for her, until I have to shout at the guard to push them away.
Perhaps it is no more than the trivial matter of her beauty. People are so foolish over a beautiful woman, they attribute all sorts of magic to her for nothing more than the set of her dark eyes and the thickness of her dark eyelashes. They come to the roadside to stare for curiosity and then they stay and call blessings on her in the hopes of seeing her smile. She raises her hand in thanks; I have to say, she does have extraordinary grace. She smiles at each and every one of them as a private greeting. Everyone who sees her is besotted: hers for life. She has such a presence that nobody ever asks me which of the women in the travelling cloaks in the queen. She is slim like a thoroughbred horse; but tall, tall as a man. She carries herself like a queen and every eye is drawn to her. When she rides by, there is a whisper of admiration like a breeze, and this adoration has blown around her all her life. She carries her beauty like a crown and she laughs and gives a little shrug at the constant admiration she attracts, as if it is a cloak that someone has dropped: ermine, around her 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