us as if they were not at all perturbed to find themselves cut out from altarpieces by Bess’s late husband to become nameless smiling faces in our gallery. I shall be like them, I know it, I shall be excised: cut away from my frame and nobody will know who I am.
“Bess,” I say brokenly. I could weep; I feel as weak as a child. “The queen…”
“Which queen?” she asks quickly. She glances out of the window to the terrace where the Scots queen is walking with her little dog in the glow of late summer sunshine. “Our queen?”
“No, no, Queen Elizabeth.” I do not even notice the power of what we have just said. We are become traitors in our own hearts and we do not even know. “Dear God! No! Not her! Not our queen; Queen Elizabeth! Queen Elizabeth knows all about the betrothal!”
Bess’s eyes narrow. “How do you know?”
“Cecil says Dudley told her. He must have thought she would accept it.”
“She does not?”
“She has ordered Norfolk’s arrest,” I say, clutching the letter. “Cecil writes to me. Norfolk is accused of treason, the queen’s own cousin, the greatest man in England, the only duke. He is fled to Kenninghall to raise an army of his tenants and march on London. Cecil says it is…it is…” I cannot catch my breath. Wordlessly I wave the letter. She puts a hand on my arm.
“What does Cecil say?”
I am choking on my words. “He says the duke’s betrothal is part of a treasonous plot by the Northern lords to rescue the queen. And we…and we…”
Bess goes white as the napkin in her hand. “The betrothal was part of no plot,” she says rapidly. “All the other lords knew as well as we…”
“Treason. The queen is calling it a treasonous plot. Norfolk is suspected, Throckmorton has been arrested. Throckmorton! Pembroke, Lumley, and even Arundel are confined to court, not allowed home, not allowed more than twentyfive miles from the court, wherever the court may be. Under suspicion of treason! Westmorland and Northumberland are ordered to London at once, on pain of…”
She gives a little whistle through her teeth, like a woman calling hens, and takes a few steps around as if she would lift the paintings off the walls and put them into hiding for safekeeping. “And us?”
“God knows what is going to happen to us. But half the court is under suspicion, all the lords…all my friends, my kinsmen…she cannot accuse us all…she cannot suspect me!”
She shakes her head, like a stunned ox struck by a hammer. “And us?” she persists, as if she can think of nothing else.
“She has summoned the whole of the Council of the North, on pain of death, to court. She even suspects the Earl of Sussex, Sussex! She says she will question him herself. She swears that he shall tell her to her face what the Northern earls are planning. Cecil says that anyone who so much as speaks to the Queen of Scots is a traitor! He says that anyone who pities her is a traitor. But that is everyone. We all think the queen should be restored to—”
“And us?” she repeats in a whisper.
I can hardly bring myself to say it. “We have to take Queen Mary back to Tutbury. The queen’s orders. She thinks we cannot be trusted to keep her here. She says that we are unreliable. She suspects me.” The words hurt me even to say them. “Suspects me. Me.”
“What of?”
Her words are like a knife. I don’t even correct her speech: I am beyond improving her. “Cecil writes that they know the Northern lords met her. They know that they came and dined with us and stayed overnight. Their visit was not authorized and now he tells me that we should not have let them in. He says I am guilty of negligence, if not worse. He dares to say such a thing to me. He says that he knows I passed Norfolk’s letters to her and hers to him. He says I should not have done so. He all but accuses me of being hand in glove with Norfolk; he all but accuses me of plotting with him and with the Northern lords to set her free. He calls them traitors, condemned to death, and says I am in league with them.”
Bess gives a little hiss, like a snake.
“He all but says I am guilty of treason.” The terrible word drops between us like a falling axe.