and scatter out of earshot. ‘I have a task for you and for Bess, if you will serve me,’ she says.
‘Anything, Your Grace.’ My mind races. Can she want to come to stay with us this summer? Bess has been working on Chatsworth House ever since her former husband bought it, for this very purpose – to house the queen on her travels to the North. What an honour it will be, if she plans to come. What a triumph for me, and for Bess’s long-laid plan.
‘They tell me that your inquiry against the Scots queen, my cousin, failed to find anything to her discredit. I followed Cecil’s advice in pursuing the evidence till half my court was turning over the midden for letters, and hanging on the words of maids spying at bedroom doors. But there was nothing, I believe?’ She pauses for my confirmation.
‘Nothing but gossip, and some evidence that the Scots lords would not publicly show,’ I say tactfully. ‘I refused to see any secret slanders as evidence.’
She nods. ‘You would not, eh? Why not? Do you think I want a dainty man in my service? Are you too nice to serve your queen? Do you think this is a pretty world we live in and you can tiptoe through dry-shod?’
I swallow on a dry mouth. Pray God she is in a mood for justice and not for conspiracy. Sometimes her fears drive her to the wildest of beliefs. ‘Your Grace, they would not submit the letters as evidence for full scrutiny, they would not show them to the Queen Mary’s advisors. I would not see them secretly. It did not seem to be … just.’
Her dark eyes are piercing. ‘There are those who say she does not deserve justice.’
‘But I was appointed judge, by you.’ It is a feeble response, but what else can I say? ‘I have to be just if I am representing you, Your Majesty. If I am representing the queen’s justice, I cannot listen to gossip.’
Her face is as hard as a mask and then her smile breaks through. ‘You are an honourable man indeed,’ she says. ‘And I would be glad to see her name cleared of any shadow of suspicion. She is my cousin, she is a fellow queen, she should be my friend, not my prisoner.’
I nod. Elizabeth is a woman whose own innocent mother was beheaded for wantonness. Surely, she must naturally side with a woman unjustly accused? ‘Your Grace, we should have cleared her name on the evidence that was submitted. But you stopped the inquiry before it reached its conclusions. Her name should be free of any slur. We should publish our opinions and say that she is innocent of any charge. She can be your friend now. She can be released.’
‘We will make no announcement of her innocence,’ she rules. ‘Where would be the advantage to me in that? But she should be returned to her country and her throne.’
I bow. ‘Well, so I think, Your Grace. Your cousin Howard says she will need a good advisor and a small army at first to secure her safety.’
‘Oh, really? Does he? What good advisor?’ she asks sharply. ‘Who do you and my good cousin nominate to rule Scotland for Mary Stuart?’
I stumble. It is always like this with the queen, you never know when you have walked into a trap. ‘Whoever you think best, Your Grace. Sir Francis Knollys? Sir Nicholas Throckmorton? Hastings? Any reliable nobleman?’
‘But I am advised that the lords of Scotland and the regent make better rulers and better neighbours than she did,’ she says restlessly. ‘I am advised that she is certain to marry again, and what if she chooses a Frenchman or a Spaniard and makes him King of Scotland? What if she puts our worst enemies on our very borders? God knows her choice of husbands is always disastrous.’
It is not hard for a man who has been around the court for as long as I have to recognise the suspicious tone of William Cecil through every word of this. He has filled the queen’s head with such a terror of France and Spain that from the moment she came to the throne she has done nothing but fear plots and prepare for war. By doing so, he has made us enemies where we could have had allies. Philip of Spain has many true friends in England and his country is our greatest partner for trade, while France is our nearest neighbour. To hear Cecil’s advice you would think one was Sodom and the other Gomorrah. However, I am a courtier, I say nothing as yet. I stay silent till I know where this woman’s indecisive mind will flutter to rest.
‘What if she gains her throne, and marries an enemy? Shall we ever have peace on the northern borders, d’you think, Talbot? Would you trust such a woman as her?’
‘You need have no fear,’ I say. ‘No Scots army would ever get past your Northern lords. You can trust your old lords, the men who have been there forever. Percy, Neville, Dacre, Westmorland, Northumberland, all of us old lords. We keep your border safe, Your Grace. You can trust us. We keep armed and we keep the men levied and drilled. We have kept the Northern lands safe for hundreds of years. The Scots have never defeated us.’
She smiles at my assurance. ‘I know it. You and yours have been good friends to me and mine. But do you think I can trust the Queen of Scots to rule Scotland to our advantage?’
‘Surely, when she goes back she will have enough to do to reestablish her rule? We need not fear her enmity. She will want our friendship. She cannot be restored without it. If you help her back on her throne with your army, she will be eternally grateful. You can bind her with an agreement.’
‘I think so,’ she nods. ‘I think so indeed. And anyway, we cannot keep her here in England; there is no possible argument for keeping her here. We cannot imprison an innocent fellow queen. And better for us if she goes back to Edinburgh, than runs off to Paris to cause more trouble.’
‘She is queen,’ I say simply. ‘It cannot be denied. Queen born and ordained. It must be God’s will that she sits on her throne. And surely, it is safer for us if she can bring the Scots to peace than if they are fighting against each other. The border raids in the North have been worse since she was thrown down. The border raiders fear no-one, now that Bothwell is far away in prison. Any rule is better than none. Better the queen should rule than no rule at all. And surely, the French or the Spanish will restore her if we do not? And if they put her back on the throne we will have a foreign army on our doorstep, and she will be grateful to them, and that must be far worse for us.’
‘Aye,’ she says firmly, as if she has made a decision. ‘So think I.’
‘Perhaps you can swear an alliance with her,’ I suggest. ‘Better to deal with a queen, you two queens together, than be forced to haggle with a usurper, a new false power in Scotland. And her half-brother is clearly guilty of murder and worse.’
I could not have said anything that pleased her more. She nods and puts her hand up to caress her pearls. She has a magnificent triple rope of black pearls, thick as a ruff, around her throat.
‘He laid hands on her,’ I prompt her. ‘She is an ordained queen and he seized her against her will and imprisoned her. That’s a sin against the law and against heaven. You cannot want to deal with such an impious man as that. How should he prosper if he can attack his own queen?’
‘I will not deal with traitors,’ she declares. Elizabeth has a horror of anyone who would challenge a monarch. Her own hold on her own throne was unsteady in the early years, and even now her claim is actually not as good as that of the Queen of Scots. Elizabeth was registered as Henry’s bastard and she never revoked the act of parliament. But Mary Queen of Scots is the granddaughter of Henry’s sister. Her line is true, legitimate and strong.
‘I will never deal with traitors,’ she repeats. She smiles, and at once I see again the pretty young woman who came to the throne with no objection at all to dealing with traitors. She had been the centre of all the rebellions against her sister, Mary Tudor, but was always too clever to be caught. ‘I want to be a just kinswoman to the Scots queen,’ she says. ‘She may be young and foolish and she has made mistakes that are shocking beyond words – but she is my kinswoman and she is a queen. She must be well treated, and she must be restored. I am ready to love her as a good kinswoman and see her rule her country as she should.’
‘There speaks a great queen and a generous woman,’ I say. It never hurts with Elizabeth