He shakes his head. “No trials. Those who are known to have ridden out against her are to be hanged. Without trial. Without plea. Without question. She says she wants seven hundred men hanged.”

I am stunned into silence. “That will be a man from every village, from every hamlet,” I say weakly.

“Aye,” he says. “They won’t turn out again, for sure.”

“Seven hundred?”

“Every ward is to have a quota. The queen has ruled that they are to be hanged at the crossroads of each village and the bodies are not to be cut down. They are to stay till they rot.”

“More will die by this punishment than ever died in this uprising. There was no battle, there was no blood shed. They fought with no one, they dispersed without a shot being fired or a sword drawn. They submitted.”

He laughs once more. “Then perhaps they will learn not to rise again.”

“All they will learn is that the new rulers of England do not care for them as the old lords did. All they will learn is that if they ask for their faith to be restored, or the common lands left free to be grazed, or their wages not driven down, that they can expect to be treated as an enemy by their own countrymen and faced with death.”

“They are the enemy,” Hastings says bluntly. “Or had you forgotten? They are the enemy. They are my enemy and Cecil’s enemy and the queen’s enemy. Are they not yours?”

“Yes,” I say unwillingly. “I follow the queen, wherever she leads.” And I think to myself, Yes, they have become my enemies now. Cecil has made them my enemies now, though once they were my friends and my countrymen.

TUTBURY CASTLE: MARY

JANUARY, 1570

My husband, Bothwell,

I am returned to Tutbury, I am imprisoned without hope of release. My army has dispersed. I wish I could see you.

Marie

I have not summoned my lord Shrewsbury since our return to this miserable place from miserable Coventry, when he comes to me without announcement, and asks me if he may sit with me for a moment. His face is so weary and so sad that for a second I am filled with hope that he has heard of a reverse for his queen.

“Is anything wrong, my lord?”

“No,” he says. “No. Not for me and for my cause. But I have grave news for you.”

“Norfolk?” I whisper. “Is he coming for me at last?”

He shakes his head. “He did not rise with the Northern earls. He went to court. In the end he decided to obey his queen. He has submitted to her will. He is her liege man and he has thrown himself on her mercy.”