Just a Queen Read online

  She began well, the Queen of Scots, and showed much promise as a player in the game of thrones. Already she had taught me valuable lessons about the limitations of the power of queens and even kings. I learnt from her to listen to my head and ignore my heart, particularly when it tempted me to avoid what I found difficult or frightening. And it was not only from Mary that I learnt valuable lessons. To this day I abide by Cecil’s brilliant advice to always give what you can and only refuse what you must. It is the way to make friends and minimise enemies, particularly as there is much that monarchs must refuse, for all kinds of reasons.

  When the young Scottish queen arrived in her kingdom for the first time since she was five years old, England and Scotland found themselves in a very unusual position. Both countries may have been a little more used to queens than once they were, England having been ruled by my sister before me, and Scotland by the regency of Mary’s remarkable mother, Mary of Guise. But two youthful, unmarried queens was a situation new to all. Predictably the obsession over prospective suitors grew ever more intense. Everyone, it seemed, from the lowliest scullery maid to the greatest duke in the land had a view on just who would be the right man for the two best matches in Christendom.

  Loath as I was to be the subject of such gossip and disrespectful speculation, I quickly discovered that by playing one eligible prince against another I could keep all Europe guessing. Alliances, both marital and politic, could not be certain and my rivals and enemies were constantly unsure about my intentions. This gave me much power and I began to see the benefits in maintaining uncertainty. A changeable game was easy for me because my heart was not involved. The man who I might have contemplated as husband was forever out of reach and this allowed me to tease and flirt and prevaricate with pleasure. I see now that I behaved rather like a man does with the poor deluded wenches who lust after him and I see the attraction of it.

  My cousin, however, had been married once, liked it and had every intention of being married again. When she began openly looking for candidates for her hand, my advisors and I decided to do what we could to influence her.

  ‘Robin?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace?’

  ‘What say you to the Queen of Scots?’

  ‘I’d say that unfortunately she is only the second loveliest queen in all of Christendom.’

  ‘No, don’t be silly. I am serious.’

  ‘What do you mean, what say I? What do you want me to say?’

  ‘What say you to her as a wife?’

  Robin Dudley, who had been reclining at my feet in front of the fire, sat up very straight. We had almost resumed the terms of our old intimacy except, at least on my part, without the foolish romantic hopes and fancies. He was my friend and my playmate, but that was all.

  ‘For me?’ Now he spun around so he could look me full in the face, although, as I was seated on a chair and he on a cushion, I still had the advantage of him.

  ‘Yes, for you.’

  ‘There is only one queen that I ever want to marry.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but I will never take a husband.’

  ‘You say that, but you will, you will marry some great king or prince and break my heart.’

  I bent to pat his sad face gently with my glove. ‘It will not be me who marries, sweet Robin, but one day it may be you.’

  ‘Never, Your Majesty. I swear it.’

  ‘Never say never. No matter, I want you to marry. I want you to marry the Queen of Scots.’

  ‘Why? Surely there are hundreds more suitable candidates.’

  ‘There is no more suitable candidate for husband in all the world.’

  He put his hands on my knees and lifted his face towards mine eagerly. I kissed him gently on the lips but, with a wry glance towards Kat in her accustomed place by the door, I was careful to keep it sisterly.

  ‘Hush now,’ I admonished him quietly as he leant closer to me. ‘I have serious reasons for proposing you marry her.’

  ‘What might they be, my sweet mistress?’

  ‘Move your cushion back a little further, Robin, and I will tell you. You are too close, my lord.’

  I had not just hatched this idea as a whim. Mary was young and she was lusty. She had agreed to allow me to help guide her, mindful that whomever she chose might one day share my throne with her and might well father the future King of England. She had also made it clear that she would not marry someone simply for strategic reasons. She would need to find the successful candidate personally attractive. Robin Dudley was attractive, devastatingly so, and I would trust him with my life. Who better to control the Queen of Scots? He was now single and not built for a bachelor’s life. If he had to marry someone else, I would rather it was someone I had chosen.

  Moreover, Robin was ambitious. Our match was now out of the question, but perhaps I could offer him another queen. I could see his interest was piqued. His family had always longed for a throne and I was offering him one.

  ‘I will make you Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh, as I promised, and then I will send you north to woo a queen.’

  ‘The wrong queen.’

  ‘Beggars cannot be choosers, my lord.’

  Of course, as all history now knows, the marriage of Dudley and the Queen of Scots was never to be. Indeed, she rejected him sight-unseen with a sneer and an insult, dismissing him as my horse-master and implying (rather more accurately) that it was only because I could not have him myself that I suggested him as a suitable consort.

  Foolish woman, all may have turned out differently if only she had swallowed her pride and chosen the man Dudley over the boy she eventually married.

  Seven

  ‘Your queen has dark hair, I believe, my lord? Is your mistress’s hair lovelier than mine, or does mine have the advantage?’ Perhaps I had taken too many glasses of claret with my dinner. I was normally abstemious, but Cecil and I were deeply involved in calling back the debased metal coins my father had put into circulation. We wished to improve the quality and the value of English sovereigns, an honourable and necessary task, but the work was long, arduous and dull. My back ached from hunching over my desk, totting up figures, and I curled my fingers in on themselves as I caught sight of them. The ink from my quill stained them and, despite the unguents my ladies had rubbed vigorously into them, the marks remained.

  I was relieving my ennui by amusing myself with poor Sir James Melville, the Queen of Scots’ new ambassador to my court. I had taken him into my bedchamber and showed him some of my keepsakes, mementoes and most precious jewels, including my great ruby. As I displayed them to him, I hinted that all of these could one day belong to his mistress. It was politic to keep gently reminding the Scots that I fully intended her as my heir, even though I would never call her such officially.

  ‘And which of us is fairest, my lord?’

  ‘The fairness of both queens is beyond dispute.’

  ‘You speak in riddles, my lord. It is a plain question and I would a plain answer. Which of us is the fairer – or the plainer?’ I believe I giggled.

  ‘You are the fairest queen in England, and she the fairest in Scotland.’

  ‘That is no answer, my lord. Which of us is taller?’ I was testing his honesty. Many had told me of the Queen of Scots’ great height.

  ‘Our queen.’

  ‘And how does your queen amuse herself, Sir James?’

  ‘She is fond of playing the lute and the virginals.’

  ‘And plays them well?’

  ‘I am told she does, Your Grace, for a queen.’

  Then a foolish idea seized me. I can blame the wine, but my own vanity was really at fault. I pride myself on my skill at music, which I like to think I inherited from my father. I find great relief from the cares of state when I play upon the virginals, and sometimes imagine running away and making a living as a troubadour, dressed as a boy. I w
onder if Master Shakespeare realises how much the women in his audience yearn to shed the burden of their sex and live as freely as boys? I think men waste little time imagining what it is like to be a woman.

  Often, in those early years, when the pomp and circumstance of the day were over, when the bed curtains were safely pulled around me, and Kat Ashley or Blanche Parry was snoring gently in the truckle bed nearby, I wept for fear. All day, every day, grey-bearded men with degrees from universities asked me to make decisions. I tried hard to make good ones, but always feared that I knew nothing and that many mocked me quietly behind my back. Perhaps that is why I felt so compelled to prove my virtues to my cousin’s representative.

  In the grip of my idea and the wine, I got up from the banqueting table, feigning tiredness, but as I left the room, I signalled for my cousin, Lord Hunsdon, to follow me. ‘In a few minutes’ time, contrive to bring Sir James Melville to the gallery near my virginals. I will be playing upon them. I want you to tell Sir James this because I will be behind the tapestry so he will not be able to see me. Will you do this?’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace.’

  ‘Give me a few moments to begin, and then bring him hither.’

  Of course, I played out my little charade and my song. Sir James professed surprise upon discovering me and I simpered with maidenly modesty at being so discovered. (I suspect I was about as convincing as one of Master Shakespeare’s boy actors playing the heroine.) I bade him kneel on a cushion and listen as I went through my repertoire and then, of course, I asked him which queen played the better. He showered me with compliments, yet, although it was precisely what I had wanted, I found it all a little hollow. When I woke the next morning, despite my pounding head and the foul taste in my mouth, I only turned truly sick when I remembered my desperate showing off to the Scottish ambassador. Then, I groaned aloud and pulled the covers over my head.

  My foolishness was not cured by my shame, however. A few nights hence I contrived to have Sir James surprise me again as I danced a particularly athletic and demanding figure. Once again, I asked him which queen was the lightest on her feet and he again awarded the prize to me. And even as I kept relentlessly pushing the poor man to measure two queens against one another, part of me felt embarrassed and humiliated. I hated revealing myself so nakedly and yet I felt compelled to do so.

  Fortunately my humiliations were as nothing compared with the self-inflicted disasters that were about to befall my cousin.

  ‘Henry Darnley has applied for a passport.’ Cecil and I were going through the list of tasks for the day.

  ‘Good riddance,’ I said without looking up from my quill.

  ‘He wishes to travel to Scotland.’

  Now I did raise my eyes. Henry Darnley was the son of Margaret Lennox, the daughter of my father’s older sister, Margaret, and so a cousin of the Queen of Scots and, of course, also of mine.

  ‘What say you, Sir Spirit?’ I stretched my ink-stained fingers to loosen the knotted and cramped muscles in my hands.

  He is a quick-witted man, but a slow and cautious speaker. ‘He is a drunkard and a wastrel, too full of his own importance. He will not be missed at this court, but he could cause trouble in Scotland.’

  ‘Aye, my lord, but trouble for whom? He is a good-looking young man and I remember his fair face towering above the courtiers when they stood in a cluster. He must be taller by half a hand than the Queen of Scots.’ I knew, as only another woman could, that the Queen of Scots would not willingly marry a man of lesser stature than she was herself.

  ‘He will, of course, pay his respects to his cousin on his arrival.’

  ‘Indeed, Your Grace. In fact, I have been informed that his mother has filled his head with ideas that he should seek the hand of the royal lady.’

  ‘No doubt, for they say he inherited his wits from his addle-headed mother. He is a Catholic, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Should we be troubled by this possible alliance, my Spirit? Or would it be politic to let my cousin go to the devil in her own way?’

  Cecil scratched at his chin with the feather of his quill as he often did when deep in thought. ‘There is no good reason to deny him the passport, Your Grace.’

  ‘Request approved, then, my lord. We will let events unfold as they may. What is the next item of business?’

  We had killed the impressive hind we had been chasing all morning, and the game-keepers were beginning the butchery. We would soon be feasting on fine venison. The dogs had been tied up some distance away, but still they bayed furiously as the smell of fresh blood hit their nostrils. I take no pleasure in the gory business of removing the entrails of such a fine beast and had led my mount some distance away. The afternoon was hot and getting hotter, so I dismounted and sat upon a fallen log beneath the canopy of a greenwood tree. My master of horse, the newly created Earl of Leicester, joined me on my perch. I pulled at my leather gauntlets and peeled them from my hands – with some difficulty. I was still sweating slightly from the effort of the chase. The cool breeze on my skin was delicious. I unbuttoned the jacket of my riding costume and thrust my booted feet out in front of my heavy skirts. How I longed to pull off my shoes and let my toes luxuriate in the cool grass, but a queen must be a queen at all times and queens are never barefoot. I let the gloves fall and a manservant appeared from nowhere and caught them before they hit the earth. I was finally growing used to all my small needs being taken care of instantly. Possessions were no more a burden to me than the fine wine I drank or delicate food I ate. They appeared, I used as little or as much of them as I cared to, and then they disappeared to trouble me no more.

  ‘A fine kill, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Aye, my lord, and the beast gave us even finer sport.’

  ‘You cleared that stone wall with a foot to spare! As fine an example of horsemanship as I have ever seen.’

  I was delighted by his compliment. I knew it was important to these manly men that their queen could match them in their sport. ‘I think we must give credit to my mount, Robin, and to your great care of her. It was she who did all the work. My task was merely to hold tight.’

  ‘You are too modest, Your Grace. It takes not just great skill but great heart to gallop at such a barrier without fear.’

  ‘They say the Queen of Scots has tired of her new husband already.’

  ‘She was a fool to marry him.’

  ‘Do not be too hard on her, my lord. I have some understanding why she made the choice she did.’

  ‘Have you, Your Grace? Perhaps you can enlighten me, it is more than most of us who knew Darnley can fathom.’

  ‘Aye, but what choice did she have? Monarchs are usually wed to people they have never seen. My father’s younger sister, Princess Mary, was only eighteen when she was shipped off to France to marry King Louis, a man many decades older than she and whom she had never set eyes upon. Is it any wonder that as soon as her husband died she married her attendant Charles Brandon? He was young and she knew him and so could choose him.’

  ‘I would think knowing Henry Darnley would have the opposite effect.’

  ‘She didn’t know him, my lord. I am not claiming that. She is only just getting to know him now, it seems. But she had met him and I am sure he made himself as agreeable as he could, in the beginning.’

  ‘He is a handsome enough stripling and women are easily seduced by a pretty face.’

  ‘Methinks my sex is not alone in that weakness, my lord.’

  ‘They say she cannot bear his company anymore and shuns him at every opportunity.’

  ‘How she must be repenting her precipitate trip to the altar.’

  Cecil and I had not expected our vague plan to go quite as well as it had. No sooner had Darnley presented himself to his cousin the queen than she fancied herself madly in love with him. Within a few months of meeting they were married, and M
ary, besotted with her fair-of-face new husband, declared they were to rule as equals. She even commanded that Henry Darnley be addressed as king. Now, only a few months later, word reached us that the scales of infatuation had begun to fall from her eyes.

  ‘Poor Mary. I did try to offer her a better husband, but she would have none of it.’

  ‘She was not the only one who felt that way.’ Robin had dropped his voice very low and leant closer to me on our wooden seat.

  ‘I suppose I can understand Mary reacting to my offer of you as her husband as if I had intended an insult, but do not pretend to me, my lord, that if she had been more open to the idea, you would have refused the honour. You are a Dudley and your family has always desired a crown.’

  ‘I do not desire a crown; I desire you.’

  ‘But that desire can never be fulfilled, and I think you would have made a much better husband for Mary than the vain youth she now finds herself saddled with. And you would have been my ally in her court and, of course, “my eyes”.’

  ‘It does no good to think of things that will never be – as you so often tell me.’

  Robin had drawn back from me and I could see that he was not well pleased by the idea that I could part with him so easily.

  ‘I am glad she would not have you, my lord. I would have missed you. But it was not a foolish suggestion of mine. You are the best man for husband in all of Christendom and she may have married the worst.’

  Just then the grooms threw the entrails of the slaughtered beast to the dogs, and their yelping as they fought over the choicest pieces of still warm innards distracted us from our conversation.

  ‘The sun is low in the sky, my lord, and the shadows are long. It is time to return.’ I mounted my spirited mare, rested now and well watered and Robin, having handed me up, put his foot in the stirrup.

  ‘I will race you, my lord!’

  I spurred my horse into a gallop, leaving the new Earl of Leicester hopping awkwardly on one leg.

  ‘Let us test the filly’s mettle!’ I called to him over my shoulder.