you. I would appreciate your discretion in this matter, as you can be sure of mine.
Your friend,
Bess
1569, SPRING, TUTBURY CASTLE: MARY
Husband Bothwell,
The queen’s own cousin, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, has proposed marriage to me and promises to use his fortune and army to restore me to my throne in Scotland. Should we be blessed with children they will be doubly heirs to the throne of England from my line and his. Of course, in order to marry him I have to be free from my vows to you, so please apply for an annulment of our marriage at once, on the grounds that it was forced on me, and I will do so too. I continue to demand your freedom from the King of Denmark. He will have to free you when I am restored as queen and we will meet again in Scotland. I am, as I always will be,
Your,
Marie
1569, APRIL, TUTBURY CASTLE: BESS
Word comes from Cecil that the queen is to prepare for her journey to Scotland. First we are all to be released from this imprisonment at Tutbury. He says that at last we can take the queen to a palace which is fit to house her, where we can live as a noble household and not as a straggle of gypsies in the shelter of a ruin.
Everything is to change. The queen is to enjoy greater freedom: she can see visitors, she can ride out. She is to live as a queen and not as a suspect. Cecil even writes me that the cost of her keep will be settled, the arrears paid to us, and our claims will be met promptly in future. We are to give her the honor and the hospitality that a queen deserves, and she is to set off for Edinburgh later in this month and be restored by midsummer.
Well, I concede I was mistaken. I thought Cecil would never let her go, but I was wrong. I thought he would keep her in England and have one trumpedup inquiry after another until he had found or forged enough evidence to imprison her for life. I thought she would end her days in the Tower in a long miserable imprisonment. But I was wrong. He must have another plan in mind. He was always too deep to predict; those of us who are his friends and allies have to keep our wits sharp just to follow him. Who knows what he intends now?
Perhaps it is the marriage with Norfolk; perhaps he has come to think that a queen of royal blood, a queen anointed by God, cannot be kept forever under house arrest. Or perhaps my lord is right and Cecil is losing ground in the counsels of Queen Elizabeth. His star, which has been rising for so long, may be in eclipse. Perhaps all the other lords who have resented his influence will have their way, and my old friend Cecil will have to bow to their authority again, just as he did when we were both young and on the rise. My son Henry, serving at court in the Dudley household, writes to me that he thinks this is the case. He says that twice recently Cecil clashed with a nobleman and came off worse both times. The scandal of the Spanish gold has hurt him badly; even the queen acknowledges that he was mistaken and we will have to repay to the Spanish the bullion that Cecil stole.
“Even so, retain your friendship with him, as I will,” I write cautiously to Henry in reply. “Cecil plays a long game and the queen loves those who protected her as princess.”
My whole household is to move to my husband’s great palace at Wingfield with the Scots queen, and she is radiant at the chance of getting away from Tutbury. Nothing is too much trouble for her: she arranges her own household’s packing into wagons; her own goods, clothes, and jewels are ready to go at dawn. Her pet birds are in their boxes; she swears her dog will sit on anyone’s saddlebow. She will ride ahead with my husband, the earl; as usual, I am to follow with the household goods. I shall trail behind them like their servant. I shall ride in the mud churned up by the hooves of their horses.
It is a beautiful morning when they set off, and the spring birds are singing, larks rising into the warm air as they go over the moor.