and overseeing the hangings himself, as if the lives of our tenants were a matter of sport: another sort of kill when the weather is too snowy for hunting. The queen is pale and sickly; she complains of a pain in her side, in her leg; she has headaches and sits in the darkness of her rooms with the shutters closed against the cold wintry light. She is taking this hard, as well she might.
And my lord is as quiet and grave as if there was a death in the house; he goes quietly about his business almost on tiptoe. We hardly speak to one another except about the work of the house and family matters. I have not heard him laugh, not once, not since we were at Wingfield, when it was summer and we thought the queen would go back to her throne in Scotland within days.
Elizabeth’s justice is clamping down on our lands like a hard winter. The news of the planned executions has leaked out and men are disappearing from the villages overnight, leaving nothing but their footsteps in the snow, leaving wives like widows with no one to break the ice on the water of the well. It will not be the same here, not for a generation. We will be ruined if the strong young men run away and their sons are taken to the gallows in their place.
I don’t pretend to know how to run a country: I am a woman of no education, and I care for nothing but keeping my lands in good heart and building my houses, keeping my books, and raising my children to the best estate I can find for them. But I do know how to run a farm, and I do know when a land is ruined, and I have never seen anything more sad and sorry than the estates of the North in this bitter, bitter year of 1570.
1570, JANUARY, TUTBURY CASTLE: MARY
Babington, the sweet boy page Anthony Babington, brings me my little dog, who insists on running away from my rooms to whore in the stable yard, where there is some kind of rough lady guard dog to whom he is a most devoted swain. He is a bad dog and whatever the charms of the stableyard bitch, he should show a little more discrimination. I tell him so, kissing the warm silky head as Babington holds him and says, his face scarlet, “I washed him for you and toweled him dry, Your Grace.”
“You are a kind boy,” I say. “And he is a bad dog. You should have beaten him.”
“He’s too small,” he says awkwardly. “Too small to beat. He is smaller than a kitten.”
“Well, I thank you for bringing him back to me,” I say, straightening up.
Anthony’s hand goes inside his doublet, pulls out a packet, tucks it under the dog, and hands them both to me.
“Thank you, Babington,” I say loudly. “I am indebted to you. Make sure you take no risks,” I say softly. “This is a graver matter than bringing a naughty dog home.”
He flushes red, like the little boy he is. “I would do anything…,” he stammers.
“Then do this,” I caution him. “Take no grave risks for me. Do only what you can do safely.”
“I would lay down my life for you,” he says in a rush. “When I am grown to be a man I will set you free myself, you can count on me. I will make a plan, we will call it the Babington plot, everyone will know of it, and I will rescue you.”
I put my fingertips on his bright cheek. “And I thank you for that,” I say quietly. “But don’t forget to take care. Think: I need you free and alive to serve me. I shall look for you when you are a man, Anthony Babington.”
He smiles at that and bows to me, a great sweep of a bow as if I were an empress, and then he dashes off, longlegged like a colt in a springing field. Such a sweet, sweet boy, he makes me think of my own son, little James, and the man that I hope he will be.
I carry the dog and the packet to my privy room where my twowinged altar stands. I lock the door and look at Babington’s parcel. I see the unbroken seal of Bishop Lesley of Ross, writing from London.
I am grieved to my heart to tell you that my lords Westmorland and