Mary rested her forearms on the windowsill in her bedchamber. Breathing deep, she leaned out to survey Chartley’s grounds, the trees, the river. The faint breeze toyed with the sleeves of her pale blue gown, sending the fabric rippling toward the horizon. She’d seen the pose in a painting somewhere, as a child: the besieged queen of the Chanson de Roland, or some other maudlin lady in a tower. Two weeks ago, she’d have dismissed the comparison as self-indulgent. Two weeks ago, she’d paced this room for nights on end, anxious and wild. Two weeks ago, she’d felt like cut crystal, sharp and ready to shatter.
Now, her confinement almost felt romantic. Anything would, so close to the end.
It wouldn’t be long now. Anthony had left Cresswell three weeks ago for a rented house in Lichfield, a spit of a village fifteen miles away. She had arranged to meet his man Poley on the edge of the woods this afternoon, to pass off a letter. Short and to the point—at this stage, no call to waste words.
Do it, said the letter, behind the screen of cipher. Tell your men to begin.
It would be over soon.
And she could endure in the meantime. She could fill a week or two pretending Elizabeth’s men had thwarted her, passing the time somehow, watching the idle dramas that occupied her staff. They thought she didn’t notice, but Mary noticed everything. Noticed how Marlowe’s grief over his sister had faded—not long after Anthony had written of the impending strike. Noticed the way he looked at Anne Cooper with more than an observer’s interest, as if trying to see something essential about her. The young thought they invented these things, but Mary knew their game. Indulging the mood, she thought back to her decades-old wedding night with the dauphin, both of them children still. Sitting beside her in that grand carved bed, both trying not to think about the members of the French court arrayed at the foot of it, waiting to pay witness to consummation. François had looked down at his knees under the bedclothes and asked shyly to kiss her, and without speaking she ran one hand along his cheek and kissed him first. François had smiled then just as Marlowe smiled now. The smile of an anxious lover getting good news.
Mary stepped back from the window, though she left it open. A sweet boy, François. She’d been ill-starred in husbands since, but at least her first had meant well. And if Marlowe was clever enough to keep pace with Cooper, more happiness to him. The girl was smart, and kind, and easy to talk to: rare qualities in this household. Surrounded by such bores and bureaucrats, Mary even found herself missing Anthony Babington’s inane flattery. At least insulting him gave her something to do.
Soon enough. When Anthony turned up at Chartley’s door with an army, Mary could insult him with every breath in her body. She pressed one hand against the waist of her skirt, feeling the letter safely folded in the fabric. Then, decided, she swept down the stairs and into Lord Rich’s study. The lord of the manor was under royal command to approve or deny all unplanned excursions, but that didn’t mean she needed to ask politely.
“I will take a walk on the grounds,” she said, instead of hello. She didn’t sit. Sitting would signal she meant to discuss the matter, which she didn’t.
Sir Robert Rich looked up from the manor’s account books, spread across the desk in his study. He scowled, round eyes suspicious behind a fussy pair of spectacles. No wonder Lady Rich spent little time with him. A dull businessman, spending his life indoors totaling up ledgers. Not exactly the gallant knight of a woman’s dreams. “Do you think that’s wise, madam?” Rich said.
“That is not your concern,” Mary said.
As her jailer, it was in fact his concern, which she expected him to point out. Technically, she was permitted to walk the grounds as well as the manor, but Rich followed rules beyond the letter of the law.
Rich removed his spectacles and pressed his thumb and middle finger to his closed eyes, circling away a headache. Mary smirked. Sir Robert Rich was the kind of man who inspired headaches in others. Only fair he should take his turn. “You are not to leave the grounds,” he said. “And you will bring Cooper with you, for supervision. No untoward behavior will be tolerated.”
Mary’s smirk widened. “Untoward behavior? With Cooper? Sir, you mistake my intentions.”
Rich colored, to her satisfaction. He waved a hand toward the door, intending to get Mary—and the headache she brought into his life—out of his study. “Go, then. Be back within the hour, or I will send the dogs after you.”
Fair enough, Mary thought. She wouldn’t need the hour. And Cooper could keep a secret.
Walking the sweep of the grounds, Mary felt the glow of a laugh rise from the base of her ribs. She heard the song of a skylark nesting in the woods, somewhere past the narrow stream. It was beautiful, she thought. The world was beautiful. Made that way by the letter stowed in her skirt, a simple note that would set everything in motion. Reckless, perhaps, to deliver it herself, but Mary was through waiting for others to act. Now, at the end, she would be where she belonged, at the center of it all.
“You seem happy, madam,” Cooper said, walking beside her.
Mary laughed. “I am. The strangest feeling in the world.”
“Good news?” From another person, the question might have been dangerous, a sign of discovery. But Mary trusted Anne Cooper with her life. She’d heard the maid pray, more than once, and watched her make the sign of the cross without pause. Once you’d heard how someone prayed, knowing whether to trust them was easy.
“The best,” Mary said. “Change is coming soon, my friend. I promise you that.”
Mary crossed the narrow bridge to the edge of the woods, Cooper close behind. She looked through the trees, whose thin branches and dry leaves had withered in the scorching summer. One note, passed from hand to hand, and in a few weeks, it would be done. She would be free. She would be out.
She would be queen.
Poley would come soon, Mary knew. Anthony was an idiot, and his opportunistic man no better, but she trusted them to keep their promises. She walked the length of the woods, listening to the sound of the skylark, to the ripple of the stream.
To footsteps against the crumbling leaves.
Mary saw them at once. The uniformed men, emerging from the yellow scrub and brittle trees. Eight? Ten? She didn’t count. It didn’t matter. Each with the same embroidered scarlet-and-gold rose on their lapel. The Tudor rose. Elizabeth’s rose.
Mary’s hand rose to her throat. She forced herself to lower it.
The suave, slightly hunched man at the head of the company looked as surprised to see Mary as she to see him. Regaining his composure, he smiled, then extended a hand. Mary stared down at the man like he’d vomited at her feet. Through her alarm, she was glad the diminutive Sir Robert Cecil stood nine inches shorter than she did. There was a petty pleasure to be had in that.
Cecil’s smile did not dip. “Mary, my dear,” he said, retracting the hand. “How thoughtful. You’ve saved us the trouble of coming all the way to the house.”
“Sir Robert,” Mary said. Her heart trembled, but her voice held steady. “What a pleasant surprise.”
It was a marvel Cecil found a way to speak around his smile. “I doubt that very much.”
“What is the meaning of this?” she said. “We are still on the grounds, as my cousin instructed.”
“We?”
Mary looked back. She stood alone. Cooper must have bolted at the first sound of the guards. She’d been right, then, about the maid’s beliefs. Perhaps she’d done more than follow the true faith privately, if Cooper felt the need to flee at the first sign of danger. Every woman for herself, then. Mary had been surrounded by advisors and conspirators and idiot husbands all her life, but one by one they had left her, and in truth, she had always been alone. It seemed fitting, to face this man one to one.
“I have done nothing to offend,” Mary said.
“Mary, my dear,” Cecil said. “The time for that game is up.”
A soldier stepped forward, drawing his blade. “Mary Stuart, we arrest you on charges of treason, heresy, conspiracy, and intended regicide.”
If Mary had one asset to her name, it was stoicism. She stood still, the blue of her summer gown fluttering behind like the trappings of some fairy queen. The soldier’s naked sword hovered against her heart. She raised her chin and looked down at Cecil as if the blade weren’t there.
“A convincing performance,” Cecil said. “I almost want to believe it.”
Mary didn’t want to lie to Cecil. She wanted to tell him everything. Yes, she hated Elizabeth. Yes, she wanted her cousin dead; her cousin deserved it. Yes, she would put herself on the throne in a heartbeat, and do whatever it took to get there, because it was her throne, her right, her country. Yes, a hundred times yes, to all of it.
But Mary was righteous, not stupid. She smiled, cold enough to freeze a man’s heart. “You will kill me if I resist.”
“I expect so, yes,” Cecil said.
Mary drew herself up to her full height. “Lead on, then,” she said, “where you will.”