I have worked all my life to earn my place in the world. I have friends who love me and I have acquaintances who trust me. I live my life to a code which I learned as a young woman: my word is my bond, my faith is close to my heart, my queen has my loyalty, my house is everything to me, my children are my future, and I am trustworthy in all these things. In business I am honorable but sharp. If I see an advantage I take it, but I never steal and I never deceive. I will take money from a fool but not from an orphan. These are not the manners of the nobility, but they are the way that I live. How shall I ever respect a woman who lies, defrauds, conspires, seduces, and manipulates? How shall I see her as anything other than despicable?

Oh, I cannot resist her charm; I am as foolish as any of these men when she promises to invite me to Holyroodhouse or to Paris, but even when she enchants me I know that she is a bad woman. She is a bad woman through and through.

“My cousin has treated me with great cruelty and injustice,” she remarks after one of my ladies (my own ladies!) has the stupidity to say that we will miss her when she returns to Scotland. “Great cruelty, but at last she sees what everyone in the world saw two years ago: a queen cannot be thrown down. I must be restored. She has been both stupid and cruel but at last now she sees reason.”

“I would think she has been patient beyond belief,” I mutter irritably into my own sewing.

The Queen of Scots arches her dark eyebrows at dissent. “Do you mean to say that you believe she has been patient with me?” she inquires.

“Her court has been divided, her own cousin tempted into disloyalty, her lords have plotted against her, she has faced the greatest rebellion of her reign, and her Parliament calls for her to execute all those involved in the plot, including you.” I glare balefully at my own ladies, whose loyalty has been suspect ever since this glamorous young queen first appeared among us with her romantic stories of France and her so-called tragic life. “The queen could have followed the advice of her councillors and called in the hangman for every one of your friends. But she has not.”

“There is a gibbet at every crossroads,” Queen Mary observes. “There are not many in the North who would agree with you that Elizabeth’s mercy falls like the gentle rain.”

“There is a rebel at the end of each rope,” I say stoutly. “And the queen could have hanged a dozen more for each one.”