And it is now, when Thomas Howard is found guilty of treason for proposing to marry her, when Bess’s husband is despised for falling in love with her, that suddenly, the reputation of Mary Queen of Scots is destroyed. The Privy Council allows the full release of her letters, the famous letters of the silver gilt casket—forged and fictitious. William Cecil has been busy and the papers, which were once so secret that they could not even be shown to royal advisors, are now published so cheaply that every spit boy and kitchen girl in London can buy a copy and read that Queen Mary is no rightful queen, for she whored with Bothwell and blew up her husband with a bombard.
Shocked by this, and frightened by Cecil’s many other warnings, the parliament calls for Mary to be accused and executed. Still the unwanted, ruinous guest of my aunt Bess, the Scots queen has to wait to see what Elizabeth will do. My guess is that Elizabeth will hold all her cousins—all of us—indefinitely, until Mary’s beauty is worn out, until Thomas’s loyal army forgets him, until they die of heartbreak. But she cannot diminish me: I am already small. She cannot break my heart: it is buried with my husband, Thomas Keyes.
When I finally hear from Cecil, he refuses my request. The queen does not wish for me to return to normal life yet. I am not allowed to care for my stepchildren; I am not allowed to raise Thomas’s children as he asked me to do. But she need not think that I will quietly die to oblige her. Not for this, not for anything.
ST. BOTOLPH’S-WITHOUT-ALDGATE,
LONDON, SPRING 1573
And finally . . . I have won. It is as simple and as beautiful as that. I have outlived Elizabeth’s malice, and survived her jealousy.
I saw her leave my beloved sister to die of the plague, and then leave her to die of despair. I saw her put my baby nephews in the way of disease and neglect. I saw her execute her cousin Thomas Howard and imprison her cousin a queen—and who would think that you could imprison a Queen of Scots and a royal kinswoman of France? But I have seen Elizabeth do all this. And finally, I have seen her ill will towards me wear out from overuse. It is not me who tires of it and gives up, it is Elizabeth. Finally, she releases me.
First, she allows me to stay with my stepfather, Adrian Stokes, at Beaumanor, so I return to my family home. Then, as if weary of her long years of persecution, she sets me free, and promises to restore my allowance. There is no more sense to freeing me than there was to arresting me. I am no danger to her now, I was no danger before. It is nothing but royal whim.
But I don’t care, I don’t call for justice, nor do I complain that she could have released me seven years ago, she need never have arrested my beloved husband, she could have released Katherine, she need not have died. I know that we are Elizabeth’s fear and her folly. But I don’t complain. She pays me an allowance, she sets me free. I can afford to live on my own, and I kiss my stepfather and his new wife and her enchanting children, and I buy myself a house and set myself up as a householder of London, as proud and as free as Lady Gresham, but far happier.
The city of London is beautiful in springtime. It is the best of all times. The villages that press against the city walls are bright with white snowdrops and festive with yellow Lenten lilies that bob in the wind. Mr. Nozzle, aging now, knows that we have come to our own home at last, and spends his day on a red velvet cushion on a high-backed chair in the hall where he can keep an eye on the comings and goings of my little household, like a little sergeant porter. I give him a thick embroidered leather belt and a coat of Tudor green in memory of the queen’s sergeant porter, whom I will never forget.
I see my husband’s children, as I promised him that I would. His daughter, Jane Merrick, is a frequent visitor, and she asks me to be godmother to her daughter that she names Mary for me. I have other visitors. I have friends from my old days at court, the bridesmaids at my wedding, and Blanche Parry, first lady of the bedchamber, comes from time to time to talk of the old days. If I want to return to serve Elizabeth, I know that Blanche will speak for me, and I could hug myself with joy at the thought that I will consider this. My proper place is at court, but my dislike of Elizabeth is so strong that I may prefer exile outside it. I don’t know yet. I shall decide. I have the freedom to choose.
I have other visitors. My stepgrandmother and her children come to me whenever they are in London, and I often dine with them and stay overnight. My brother-in-law, Ned, writes with news of my nephews, and I will visit them at Hanworth in the summer. The youngest, Thomas, is a scholar like my sister Jane, a poet like his father. I send him books that are recommended by the preachers who visit me to study and talk of the new theology that is demanding that Elizabeth’s half-papist Church goes further with reform and purity. I buy the new books and go to hear sermons and keep myself informed of the twist and turn of the debate.
Aunt Bess, that fair-weather friend of our family, visits me when she is in London. She cannot bring herself to speak of the division in her household, but everyone knows that “my husband, the earl” has wasted his huge fortune in entertaining and securing the safety of his royal guest, and still she drains his coffers as Elizabeth neither sends the queen back to Scotland in honor nor dumps her on France in shame. Bess lives apart from her husband as much as possible but she could not save the fortune and that is perhaps her greatest grief.
She speaks fondly of her children and of her great house-building projects. She hopes to rescue her fortune from the earl’s debts and keep enough money of her own to build a great new house beside her great old house Hardwick Hall, and found a dynasty. Her earl may have failed her; but her ambition will never fail. God Himself only knows who she will choose as a husband for her poor daughter.
“What d’you think of Charles Stuart for my Elizabeth?” she asks. “He is kinsman to the queen herself and brother to the late King of Scotland.”
I look at her, completely aghast. “You think you would get Elizabeth’s permission for such a marriage?”
She makes a little puffing sound, as if she were blowing out a candle and, for some reason, it makes me freeze. “Oh, no, so maybe nothing,” she says. “But tell me, how much do you pay your chief steward here? Are London men not terribly expensive?”
I let her move the conversation away and I let myself forget that she spoke of it. My aunt Bess was well represented when she had a rampant lion as her crest. Nobody knows where she and her family will end.
Before she leaves I show her all around my little house, from the servants’ bedrooms in the attics to my bedroom and privy chamber below. She admires my library of books, she prods my great four-poster bed. “Everything very good,” she speaks to me as one woman who has come up from nothing to another who lost everything and has won it back.
I show her my hall and my silverware in the cupboard. Twenty people can dine off silver at my table, and a hundred people can be seated below us in the hall. Sometimes I give grand dinners, I invite whomever I choose. Mr. Nozzle watches us quietly as we admire my treasures.
I take her through to the kitchens and show her the spit in the fireplace and the charcoal burning tray for the sauces, the bread ovens and behind them the storerooms, the flesh kitchen, the subtlety room, the dairy, the cellar, the brewhouse, and buttery.