I reread the letter over and over until I have it in my memory, and then I burn it in the little fireplace in my room. I wear her chain of gold around my neck and think that this little thing comes from a woman who has the rights to the treasure house of England.
It is not my only Christmas gift. My hosts give me some ribbons and my maid trims one of my shifts with some pretty lace. I give Lady Hawtrey a sketch of the garden from my window. If I could see more, I would draw more, but even my sight is confined.
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
SPRING 1567
Lord Darnley, that wildly vicious son of my cousin Margaret Douglas, is dead. The boy that no one ever thought would make good has made a terrible end, naked and strangled in the garden, his house in ruins behind him. Someone—and everyone is saying that it is the Protestant lords—blew up his house, Kirk o’ Field, with gunpowder and caught him as he fled. He was not a youth who was ever going to die in his bed—a murderer who threatened his own unborn son and wife, a twisted child spoiled by his mother’s ambition—but everyone is shocked that he should die such a death, and horrified by what this means for the Queen of Scots, only just recovered from her illness and now widely suspected of murdering her husband.
Elizabeth, hardly concealing her delight at the disaster that has blown up the agreement between her and the Scots queen, just as the house Kirk o’ Field has been blown apart, is now ostentatiously filled with pity for the vicious boy’s heartbroken mother. Our cousin Lady Margaret Douglas is released from the Tower and allowed to stay with Thomas Sackville at Sackville Place. Her little boy Charles joins her, to comfort her in her terrible loss. The death of her syphilitic murderer son somehow excuses her own treason. Lady Margaret is set free; Katherine and I, innocent of anything, are kept imprisoned. Elizabeth can think of nothing but how she should respond to our cousin Queen Mary.
While the rabid Scots preachers declare that no woman can hold power, Elizabeth is driven to support her cousin. But she cannot do it wholeheartedly. She publishes advice to the Scots queen pointing out the contrast between herself—the celibate queen—and the scandalous newly widowed, twice-married queen. A copy of this letter even reaches me at Chequers, and I read it, amazed that the queen calls herself a faithful cousin and friend, says that she is more sorry for the danger to Mary than for the death of Darnley, and that Mary must preserve her honor rather than look through her fingers at those who have done her the favor of murdering her husband, “as most people say.”
I don’t know whether or not “most people” ever said that Mary was the murderer of Darnley before Elizabeth’s damning defense, but I am very sure that everyone will say it now. I see the hand of William Cecil all through this: the murder in the nighttime garden, the smearing of the reputation of the papist queen, the sudden leap of Elizabeth into confidence and pretend pity. The death of Darnley has ruined Mary, just as her marriage to him ruined her. It has ruined the agreement that she was making with Elizabeth, just as William Cecil planned.
This was not a quiet murder done on an out-of-the-way shallow flight of stairs with a packed jury to return a verdict of accidental death. This was a huge explosion in the heart of Edinburgh in the middle of the night, with the queen having refused to sleep with her husband in the doomed house that very evening. As if she knew, people say. As if the gunpowder was packed by someone she knew.
Even locked in my room, even confined to the garden, the rumors reach me. The kitchen at Chequers is sizzling with gossip, the stable yard lads are great supporters of the Scots lord: James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who has always fought for the Protestant cause, whose ways are simple and direct and violent. The laundry maids are filled with pity for poor Lord Darnley, blown up in his bed, or strangled by the barbarian Scots lords at the behest of his wicked wife. All spring the scandal gets more and more outrageous and elaborate until in April we hear that Mary Queen of Scots has run away from her capital city, and in May that she has married the man who killed her husband: James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell.
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
SUMMER 1567
Compared with this new disastrous marriage of the Queen of Scots, my love match with Thomas Keyes and even Katherine’s with Ned Seymour fade into minor indiscretion. We fell in love with honorable men who were free to marry. Nobody even knows if Bothwell has a wife. But Queen Mary marries him without any sign of shame, dressed in fanciful mourning wear: a black patterned velvet gown embroidered all over with gold and silver thread. I ask Lady Hawtrey to be sure to find out about the gown and it is indeed gloriously expensive black velvet with real gold embroidery and a scarlet undergown! She is a bride and a widow at once. She may be a murderer; certainly, she is marrying a murderer. She is ruined in the eyes of the world: French, Spanish, and English; papist and Protestant. She has destroyed herself. Clearly, she cannot be heir to England.
I wait for Sir William to come to me and tell me that I am to go free. William Cecil’s long secret campaign against the Scots queen, his secret plan for our succession, is finally fulfilled. There can be no reason for my sister and me to be held any longer. Sir William Hawtrey tells me that Robert Dudley’s brother Ambrose visited Ned Seymour, defying the order that says that my brother-in-law is to have no visitors; and assured him that my sister Katherine will be named as heir, and the Dudleys will support her.
I am restless in my stuffy room. I open both the windows and look out. When I go out for my walk I pace up and down in the pretty midsummer garden, going round and round the outer path like a ferret circling its cage. Every time I hear hoofbeats I think it must be the queen’s messenger coming to set me free. It cannot be long now.
Lady Hawtrey tells me the gossip from London. Lady Margaret Douglas’s husband, the frightened father of Lord Darnley, has run away from Scotland, and been allowed into England. He is invited to court, and Lady Margaret is free to join him. He tells of a Scotland which has turned to rebellion. The Scots lords are against Bothwell and against their queen. Queen Mary—Bothwell’s victim, Bothwell’s wife—cannot keep the authority of a queen. Just as Elizabeth always feared, a married queen is reduced to the level of her husband. Mary came to Scotland a royal French widow in a dress of the brightest white. She cannot hold the country as Bothwell’s wife in seductive black with red petticoats. They treat her with outward respect, but they imprison her in the island castle of Lochleven. My sister’s rival, who was so free and powerful, is now a prisoner just like us.
And, just like us, our imprisoned cousin is now dependent on the goodwill of Elizabeth. Nobody else can order the Scots lords to respect their monarch. No one else has an army on the border, spies in place, and most of the lords as paid retainers. But instead of commanding the restoration of a fellow queen, Elizabeth listens to our other cousin, Margaret Douglas, who demands justice for the death of her son: the execution of her daughter-in-law, and the possession of her grandson, the little heir. All these righteous claims to humiliate the Scots queen have great appeal for Elizabeth, but she cannot pursue them.