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own advantage.’

      ‘A forward woman,’ Mary Seton says disapprovingly. ‘Without respect for her husband and his family. A crowing hen. But a woman who knows the value of money.’ She is thinking as I am – that a woman who does not scruple to make her fortune from the destruction of the church of God can surely be bribed to look the other way just once, for just one night.

      ‘And him? The Earl of Shrewsbury?’

      I smile. ‘D’you know, I think he is all but untouchable? All he seems to care for is his own honour and his dignity; and of all men in England, he must be safe in that.’

      

       1569, Winter, Tutbury Castle: Bess

      ‘How much are we being paid for her?’ I ask George as we take a glass of spiced wine seated either side of our bedroom fire. Behind us the maids are turning down our bed for the night.

      He gives a little start and I realise that I am, once again, too blunt. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I say quickly. ‘Only I need to know for my book of accounts. Is the court to pay us a fee?’

      ‘Her Majesty the Queen graciously assured me that she will meet all the costs,’ he says.

      ‘All of them?’ I ask. ‘Are we to send her a note of our expenses, monthly?’

      He shrugs his shoulders. ‘Bess, dearest wife … this is an honour; to serve is a privilege that many seek but only we were chosen. The queen has assured me that she will provide. Of course we will benefit from our service to her. She has sent goods from her own household for her cousin, has she not? We have the queen’s own furniture in our house?’

      ‘Yes,’ I say hesitantly, hearing the pride in his voice. ‘But really, it is only some old things from the Tower. William Cecil wrote to me that Queen Mary’s household is supposed to be thirty people?’

      My husband nods.

      ‘She has come here with at least sixty.’

      ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Has she?’

      For some reason, known only to men and in this instance a nobleman, he has ridden at the head of a train of a hundred people for ten days and failed to notice.

      ‘Well, they don’t all expect to be housed here, I suppose?’

      ‘Some of them have gone to the ale house in the village; but her household – companions, retainers, servants and the grooms – are under our roof, and they are all eating and drinking at our expense.’

      ‘She has to be served as a queen,’ he says. ‘She is a queen to her fingertips, don’t you think, Bess?’

      It is undeniable. ‘She is a beauty,’ I say. ‘I always thought they must be exaggerating when they spoke of her as the most beautiful queen in the world; but she is all of that, and more. She would be beautiful if she were a commoner, but the way she carries herself and her grace …’ I hesitate. ‘Do you like her very much?’

      The gaze he turns to me is totally innocent, he is surprised by the question. ‘Like her? I hadn’t thought. Er, no, she is too …’ He breaks off. ‘She is troubling. She is challenging. Everywhere we go she has been a centre for treason and heresy. How can I like her? She has brought me nothing but difficulty.’

      I hide my pleasure. ‘And do you have any idea how long she will stay with us?’

      ‘She will go home to Scotland this summer,’ he says. ‘The inquiry has cleared her of any wrongdoing; our queen is certain that there is nothing against her. Indeed, she seems to have suffered much injustice. And her lords put themselves utterly in the wrong by holding her prisoner, and making her abdicate her throne. We cannot tolerate this in a neighbour. To throw down a queen is to overthrow the natural order. We dare not let them do it. It is to go against the order of God. She has to be restored and the rebels punished.’

      ‘Will we escort her home?’ I ask. I am thinking of a royal progress to Edinburgh, of the castles and the court.

      ‘Our queen will have to send an army to secure her safety. But the lords have agreed to her return. Her marriage to Bothwell will be annulled and they will bring her husband Lord Darnley’s murderers to trial.’

      ‘She will be queen in Scotland again?’ I ask. ‘Despite Cecil?’ I try to keep the doubt from my voice but I shall be very surprised if that arch plotter has an enemy queen in his hands and quietly sends her home in comfort, with an army to help her.

      ‘What has Cecil to do with it?’ he asks me, deliberately obtuse. ‘I don’t think that Cecil can determine who is of royal blood, though he thinks to command everything else.’

      ‘He cannot want her restored to power,’ I say quietly. ‘He has worked for years to put Scotland under English command. It has been the policy of his life.’

      ‘He cannot prevent it,’ he says. ‘He has no authority. And it will be something then, my Bess, for us to be the dearest friends of the Queen of Scotland, don’t you think?’

      I wait for the two girls to finish turning down the bed, curtsey and leave the room. ‘And of course, she is heir to England,’ I say quietly. ‘If Elizabeth returns her to Scotland she is acknowledging her as queen and her cousin, and so it is to acknowledge her as the heir. So she will be our queen here, one day, I suppose. If Elizabeth has no child.’

      ‘God save the queen,’ George says at once. ‘Queen Elizabeth, I mean. She is not old, she is healthy she is not yet forty. She could yet marry and have a son.’

      I shrug. ‘The Queen of Scots is a fertile woman of twenty-six. She is likely to outlive her cousin.’

      ‘Hush,’ he says.

      Even in the privacy of our bedroom, between two loyal English subjects it is treason to discuss the death of the queen. Actually, it is treason to even say the words ‘death’ and ‘queen’ in the same sentence. We have become a country where words have to be watched for betrayal. We have become a country where you can hang for grammar.

      ‘Do you think the Scots queen is truly innocent of the murder of Lord Darnley?’ I ask him. ‘You saw the evidence, are you sure she was not guilty?’

      He frowns. ‘The inquiry closed without a decision,’ he says. ‘And these things are not a matter for women’s gossip.’

      I bite my tongue on an irritable reply. ‘It is not for gossip that I ask you,’ I say respectfully. ‘It is for the safety and honour of your house.’ I pause. He is listening now. ‘If she is the woman that they say – a woman who would murder her husband in cold blood and then marry the man who did the deed for her own power and safety – then there is no reason to think that she would not turn against us, if it was in her interest to do so. I don’t want my cellars packed with gunpowder one dark night.’

      He looks aghast. ‘She is a guest of the Queen of England, she will be restored to her own throne. How can you think that she would attack us?’

      ‘Because if she is as bad as everyone says, then she is a woman who will stop at nothing to gain her way.’

      ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Lord Darnley, her own husband, was in a plot against her. He had joined with the rebel lords and was guided by her half-brother, Lord Moray. I think together they planned to throw her down and imprison her and put him as king consort on the throne. Her half-brother would have ruled through Darnley. He was a weak creature, they all knew that.’

      I nod. I knew Darnley from a boy, a boy horridly spoiled by his mother, in my opinion.

      ‘The lords loyal to the queen made a plot to kill Darnley, Bothwell probably among them.’

      ‘But

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