This was not a quiet murder done on an out-of-the-way shallow flight of stairs with a packed jury to return a verdict of accidental death. This was a huge explosion in the heart of Edinburgh in the middle of the night, with the queen having refused to sleep with her husband in the doomed house that very evening. As if she knew, people say. As if the gunpowder was packed by someone she knew.

Even locked in my room, even confined to the garden, the rumors reach me. The kitchen at Chequers is sizzling with gossip, the stable yard lads are great supporters of the Scots lord: James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who has always fought for the Protestant cause, whose ways are simple and direct and violent. The laundry maids are filled with pity for poor Lord Darnley, blown up in his bed, or strangled by the barbarian Scots lords at the behest of his wicked wife. All spring the scandal gets more and more outrageous and elaborate until in April we hear that Mary Queen of Scots has run away from her capital city, and in May that she has married the man who killed her husband: James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell.

CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,

SUMMER 1567

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.