it compare to dancing attendance on another woman every day of your life, and leaving your own wife at risk? Her own fortune halfsquandered? Her lands in jeopardy?”
The bitterness in her voice stuns me. Bess is still looking out the window, her mouth full of poison, her face hard.
“Bess…wife…You cannot think I favor her above you…”
She does not even turn her head. “What shall we do with her?” she asks. She nods to the garden and I draw a little closer to the window and see the Scots queen, still in the garden, with a cloak around her shoulders. She is walking along the terrace to look out over the rich woods of the river valley. She shades her eyes with her hand from the low autumn sun. For the first time I wonder why she walks and looks to the north, like this, every day. Is she looking for the dust from a hardriding army, with Norfolk at their head, come to rescue her and then take her down the road to London? Does she think to turn the country upside down once more in the grip of war, brother against brother, queen against queen? She stands in the golden afternoon light, her cloak rippling behind her.
There is something in the set of her head, like a beautiful figure in a tableau, that makes one long for an army in the fields below her, an army to rescue her and take her away. Even though she is my prisoner I long for her escape. She is too fine a beauty to wait on a tower without rescue. She is like a princess in a child’s fairy tale; you cannot see the picture that she makes and not want to set her free.
“She has to be free,” I say unguardedly to Bess. “When I see her like this, I know she has to be free.”
“She is certainly a trouble to keep,” she says unromantically.
1569, SEPTEMBER, TUTBURY CASTLE: MARY
Bothwell,
They are taking me to Tutbury Castle now. The Northern lords and Howard will rise for me on October 6th. If you can come, you shall command the army of the North and we will ride out in battle again with everything to win. If not, wish me luck. I need you. Come.
Marie
I swear by Our Lady, this is the last time that I will ever be taken back to this hateful prison of Tutbury Castle. I go quietly now, but this is the last time they will take me up this twisting road to this stinking prison where the sun never shines into my room and where the wind blows steadily and coldly over the flat fields. Elizabeth hopes that I will die of the cold and the damp here, or of disease from the fetid mists from the river, but she is wrong. I will outlive her. I swear I will outlive her. She will have to murder me if she wants to wear black for me. I will not weaken and die to convenience her. I will enter the castle now but I shall leave it at the head of my own army. We will march on London and I shall imprison Elizabeth and we shall see how long she lasts in a damp castle of my choosing.
They can rush me back here, they can march me all the way back to Bolton Castle if they like, but I am a queen of the tides and the current is flowing fast for me now. They will not keep me prisoner for more than another week. They cannot keep me. This is the end for the Shrewsburys; they do not know it yet but they are about to be destroyed. The Northern lords will come for me with Norfolk at their head. The date is set, it is to be October 6th, and I shall date my reign from that day. We will be ready. I am ready now. Then my jailers will be my prisoners and I shall treat them as I wish.
Norfolk will be calling up his tenants now; thousands will answer his call. The Northern lords will muster their great army. All the Shrewsburys achieve by bringing me here, to their most miserable dungeon, is to imprison me somewhere that I will be easy to find. Everyone knows that I am kept at Tutbury; everyone knows the road to the castle. The Northern army will come for me within weeks, and the Shrewsburys can choose whether to die