her as my new queen. The thought of her as Queen of England, of her cool hands around mine as I kneel before her to offer her my vow of fealty, is so powerful that I stop again and put my hand against the town wall to steady myself. A passing soldier asks, “All right, my lord?” and I say, “Yes. Quite all right. It’s nothing.” I can feel my heart hammering in my chest at the thought of being able to declare myself as her man, in her service, in all honor sworn to her till death.
I am dizzy at the thought of it. If she wins, the country will be turned upside down again, but the people will quickly change. Half of them want the old ways back, the other half will obey. England will have a young beautiful queen; Cecil will be gone; the world will be quite different. It will be like dawn. Like a warm spring dawn, unseasonal hope, in the middle of winter.
And then I remember. If she comes to the throne it will be by Elizabeth’s death or defeat, and Elizabeth is my queen and I am her man. Nothing can change that until her death or surrender, and I have sworn to lay down my life if I can prevent either.
I have walked around the town walls to the south gate, and I pause for a moment to listen. I am sure I hear hoofbeats, and now the sentry looks through the spyhole and shouts, “Who goes there?” and at the shouted reply swings open one half of the wooden gate.
It is a messenger, off his horse in a moment, looking around. “Lord Shrewsbury?” he says to the sentry.
“I am here,” I say, going slowly forward, like a man in no hurry for bad news.
“Message,” he says in little more than a whisper. “From my master.”
I don’t need to ask his master’s name, and he will not tell me his own. This is one of the smartly dressed, wellpaid young men of Cecil’s secret band. I put out my hand for the paper and I wave him to the kitchens which have been set up in the Shambles, where already the fires are lit and the bread is baking.
Cecil is brief as always.
Enter into no agreement with the Scots queen as yet. But keep her safe. The Spanish fleet at the Netherlands is armed and ready to sail, but it has not sailed. It is still in port. Be ready to bring her to London as fast as you can travel, as soon as I send word.
Cecil
1569, DECEMBER, COVENTRY: MARY
A letter came, while you were sleeping.” Agnes Livingstone wakes me with a gentle touch to my shoulder in the early morning. “One of the soldiers brought it in.”
My heart leaps. “Give it to me.”
She hands it over. It is a little scrap of paper from Westmorland, his pinched script blurred with rain. Not even in code. It says to keep my faith and my hopes high, he will not be defeated, he will not forget me. If not this time, then another. I will see Scotland again, I will be free.
I struggle to sit up and wave to Agnes to move the candle closer so I can see if anything more is written on the paper. I was expecting him to tell me when they would come for me, of his rendezvous with the Spanish. This reads like a prayer, and I was expecting a plan. If it had been a note from Bothwell he would have told me where I should be and at what time; he would have told me what I should do. He would not have told me to keep my hopes high or that he would not forget me. We never spoke so to each other.
But if it had been Bothwell’s note, there would have been no mournful tone. Bothwell never thought of me as a tragic princess. He thinks of me as a real woman in danger. He does not worship me as a work of art, a beautiful thing. He serves me as a soldier; he takes me as a hardhearted man; he rescues me as a vassal serves a monarch in need. I don’t think he ever promised me anything he did not attempt.
If it had been Bothwell, there would have been no tragic farewell. There would have been a hardriding party of desperate men, coming by night, armed to kill and certain to