in York, unable to get out of the town, surrounded by our army. Their leader, the Earl of Sussex, stays faithful to Elizabeth but he does not have the men to break out of the city, and the county all around is yours. Your army now dominates every town and village east of the Pennines. The true religion is restored in every parish church in the North, the kingdom of the North is yours to command, and you shall be freed within days and returned to Scotland, to your throne.
I read in haste, I cannot stop myself smiling. He writes to me that the Northern earls have played a clever hand. They have declared that they will not rebel against Elizabeth; there is no question of treason; this is emphatically not a rebellion. The battle is against her evil councillors and their policies. They insist only that the church be restored, and the Roman Catholic religion freely practiced in England again, and me returned to the throne of Scotland and acknowledged as heir in England. It is the moderation of these demands which attracts support as much as their righteousness. We are triumphant. Not a man in England would disagree with such a program. All we lack is Elizabeth’s herald under a white flag, asking to parley.
Bishop Lesley urges me to be patient, to do nothing that might lead Elizabeth and her spies to think that I am in touch with the Northern army. To be a jewel, carried silently from one place to another until it finds its final setting.
“Deus vobiscum,” he ends. “God be with you. It cannot be long now.”
I whisper, “Et avec vous, et avec vous, and also with you,” and I throw his letter into the fire that burns in the small fireplace.
I shall have to wait, though I long to be riding at the head of the army of the North. I shall have to be rescued, though I long to free myself. I shall find patience and I shall wait here, while poor Shrewsbury paces the walls of the town and forever looks north in case they are coming for me. I shall find patience and know that this cruel game of wait and fear which Elizabeth has played with me has suddenly turned in my favor and in days, in no more than a week, I shall ride back into Edinburgh at the head of the army of the North and claim my throne and my rights again. And now it is she who has to wait and fear, and I who shall judge whether I shall be kind to her. I am like a precious ship which has been waiting outside the harbor for so long, and now I can feel the tide has turned and the ship is pulling gently at the anchors, the current is flowing fast for me, and I am going home.
1569, NOVEMBER, COVENTRY: BESS
Just because we are far from our own lands does not mean that anybody eats any the less, but now everything has to be bought at market prices and the gold I brought with me is running perilously short. There are no fresh vegetables to be had, and no fruit because of the winter season, but even dried fruits and winter vegetables are priced beyond our means.
I write to Cecil to beg him to send me money to supply the queen’s household, to send me news of the army of the North, and to send me the reassurance that he knows we are faithful. I write to Henry to ask him news of the court and to command him to stay with Robert Dudley. I command him as his mother not to dream of taking arms for the queen and not to come to me. If Cecil only knew the terror I am in, the smallness of my little hoard of coins, the depletion of my courage, he would take pity and write to me at once.
If my husband the earl is suspected, as half the lords of England are suspected, then my fate hangs in the balance with him, with the army of the North, with the destiny of the Queen of Scots. If the Northern army comes upon us soon, we cannot hope to win. We cannot even hold this little city against them. We will have to let them have the queen and whether they take her and put her on the throne of Scotland, or take her to put