“Message,” he says in little more than a whisper. “From my master.”

I don’t need to ask his master’s name, and he will not tell me his own. This is one of the smartly dressed, well-paid young men of Cecil’s secret band. I put out my hand for the paper and I wave him to the kitchens which have been set up in the Shambles, where already the fires are lit and the bread is baking.

Cecil is brief as always.

Enter into no agreement with the Scots queen as yet. But keep her safe. The Spanish fleet at the Netherlands is armed and ready to sail, but it has not sailed. It is still in port. Be ready to bring her to London as fast as you can travel, as soon as I send word.

Cecil

COVENTRY: MARY

DECEMBER, 1569

A letter came, while you were sleeping.” Agnes Livingstone wakes me with a gentle touch to my shoulder in the early morning. “One of the soldiers brought it in.”

My heart leaps. “Give it to me.”

She hands it over. It is a little scrap of paper from Westmorland, his pinched script blurred with rain. Not even in code. It says to keep my faith and my hopes high, he will not be defeated, he will not forget me. If not this time, then another. I will see Scotland again, I will be free.

I struggle to sit up and wave to Agnes to move the candle closer so I can see if anything more is written on the paper. I was expecting him to tell me when they would come for me, of his rendezvous with the Spanish. This reads like a prayer, and I was expecting a plan. If it had been a note from Bothwell he would have told me where I should be and at what time; he would have told me what I should do. He would not have told me to keep my hopes high or that he would not forget me. We never spoke so to each other.

But if it had been Bothwell’s note, there would have been no mournful tone. Bothwell never thought of me as a tragic princess. He thinks of me as a real woman in danger. He does not worship me as a work of art, a beautiful thing. He serves me as a soldier; he takes me as a hard-hearted man; he rescues me as a vassal serves a monarch in need. I don’t think he ever promised me anything he did not attempt.