The only way I cease to be Dowager Queen of France, Queen of Scotland, and the only true heir to the throne of England is when I am dead. They will have to kill me if they want to deny me my throne. And I wager my title, my fortune, and my life that they will never dare to do that. To lay violent hands on me would be the same as throwing down an angel, a sin like crucifying the Christ again. For I am no ordinary woman, I am a sanctified queen, I am seated above every mortal; only the angels are my superiors. Mortals cannot kill such a being as I. I am anointed with holy oil, I am chosen by God. I am untouchable. They can fear me and they can hate me, they can even deny me. But they cannot kill me. Thank God, I am at least safe in this. I will always be safe in this.

CHATSWORTH: BESS

WINTER, 1568

I have news from my husband the earl, of the inquiry at Westminster. (I am still newly wed, I love to say “my-husband-the-earl.”) He writes to me almost daily to tell me of his discomfort, and in return I send him news of his children and mine, home-baked pies, and the best Chatsworth cider. He says he has been secretly shown letters of the most damning evidence, love letters from the married queen to the married Earl of Bothwell urging him to kill her husband, poor young Lord Darnley, telling him that she is on fire with lust for him. Wanton poems, promises of nights of pleasure, French pleasures are especially mentioned.

I think of the judges—my husband, young Thomas Howard, his friend the Earl of Sussex and old Sir Ralph Sadler, Robert Dudley and my good friend William Cecil, Nicholas Bacon, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Henry Hastings, and all the others—reading this nonsense with shocked faces, trying to believe that a woman planning to murder her husband by packing his cellars with gunpowder would spend the very night before the explosion at her husband’s sickbed, writing love poetry to her accomplice. It is so ridiculous that I wonder they are not laughed out of court.