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 newset 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 BurtononTrent. 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,