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.
More than any other belief, Elizabeth believes that the law of the land does not apply to queens. She wants everyone to think that a queen might make mistakes—might make fatal mistakes in her personal life—and still be fit to rule. If people say that a queen cannot be in love with a married man, where would that leave Elizabeth and Robert Dudley? If people say that an unwanted husband or wife cannot be mercilessly killed, then what adjustment should be made to the coroner’s verdict of the accidental death of Amy Dudley? Elizabeth would like the baby Stuart in her keeping, would like to see his father’s death avenged; but the safety of his mother as a queen is sacrosanct. Nothing matters more to Elizabeth, the daughter of a beheaded queen, than everyone understanding that queens cannot be beheaded. No queen can be beheaded in England ever again.