to Scotland. Once I am back on my throne I will be safe from scandal and from Cecil’s spies alike. You can save me. And you can keep James safe. Keep him safe for love of me. It can be our secret. It can be the secret of our two hidden hearts.”
“I will,” he says simply. “Trust me, I will.”
1570, JUNE, CHATSWORTH: GEORGE
It is agreed, thank God, it is agreed and will shortly be sealed and signed. The queen is to be returned to Scotland and I shall be guardian to her son. Nothing less than this duty would console me for the loss of her. But to stand as father to her boy will be everything. I shall see her beauty in him, and I will raise him as she would wish. My love for her will be invested in him; she will see a good young man come from my care. She will be proud of him; he will be a boy of my making, and I will forge him into a good prince for her. I will not fail her in this. She trusts me and she will find me trustworthy. And it will be such a joy to have a little boy in the house, a boy whose mother is a woman of such beauty, a boy that I can love for his mother’s and for his own sake too.
It seems that our troubles may be over. The riots in Norwich have been put down with rapid brutality and those Catholics who have heard of the papal bull against Elizabeth are not hurrying forward to put their heads into a noose. Norfolk is to be released from the Tower. Cecil himself argued that though his offense is great, his crimes do not amount to treason. He is not to face trial, nor the death sentence. I am more relieved by this than I show to Bess when she tells me.
“Are you not pleased?” she asks, puzzled.
“I am,” I say quietly.
“I thought you would have been delighted. If they do not accuse Norfolk, then there can be no shadow over you, who did so much less.”
“It is not that which pleases me,” I say. I am irritated by her assumption that all I think of is my own safety. But I am always irritated by her these days. She cannot say a word that does not grate on me. Even when I know that this is unfair, I find that the way that she walks into a room sets my teeth on edge. She has a way of putting down her feet, heavily like a woman going to market, a way of carrying her eternal accounts books, a way of being always so busy, so hardworking, so efficient. She is more like a housekeeper than a countess. There is no grace about her. She utterly lacks any elegance.
I know, I know, I am wickedly unfair to blame Bess for lacking the charm of a woman raised in a court and born to greatness. I should remember that she is the woman I married for choice, and she has good looks, good health, and good spirits. It is unfair to complain that she does not have the looks of one of the most beautiful women in the world or the manners of the queen of one of the finest courts in Europe. But we have such a being in our house; such a paragon smiles at me each morning; how can I help but adore her?
“So what pleases you?” Bess asks encouragingly. “This is good news, I think. I expected you would be happy.”
“What pleases me is that I shall be spared his trial.”
“His trial?”
“I am still Lord High Steward of England,” I remind her, a touch sourly, “whatever your friend Cecil thinks of me and would do against me if he could. I am still Lord High Steward and if a peer of the realm is to be tried for treason, then I would be the judge who would sit on his case.”
“I hadn’t thought,” she said.
“No. But if your good friend Cecil had brought my true friend Norfolk to trial for his life, it would have been I who would have been forced to sit with the axe before me and bring in a verdict. I would have had to tell Norfolk, a man I have known from his boyhood, that I found him guilty, when I knew he was innocent, and that he was to