I seat myself in my chair, under my cloth of estate, and wait. Sure enough, there is a knock at the door and Shrewsbury is announced with Morton. I do not rise. I let him be presented to me, and when he bows low, I incline my head. He can learn to treat me as a queen again; I don’t forget that before he was as bad as any of them. He can start as I intend we shall go on. He greets me now as a prisoner; he will next see me on my throne in Edinburgh. He can learn deference.

Bess comes in behind the two men and I smile at her as she curtsies. She dips the smallest of bows; there is little love left between us these days. I still sit with her on most afternoons, and I still give her hopes of her prospects when I am returned to the throne, but she is weary of attending on me and beggared by the expense of my court and the guards. I know it, and there is nothing I can or would do to help her. Let her apply to Elizabeth for money for my imprisonment. I am hardly going to pay my own jailers for incarcerating me.

The worry has put lines on her face and a grimness about her that was not there when I first walked into her house more than two years ago. She was newly married then, and her happiness glowed in her face. Her pride in her husband and her position was fresh for her. Now she has lost her fortune in entertaining me, she may lose her house, and she knows she has lost her husband already.

“Good day to you, my lady countess,” I say sweetly and watch her murmur a reply. Then the Shrewsburys take themselves off to the corner of the room, I nod to my lute player to play a tune, and to Mary Seton to see that wine and little cakes are served, and Morton sits on a stool beside me and mutters his news in my ear.

“We are ready for your return, Your Grace,” he says. “We are even preparing your old rooms at Holyrood.”

I bite my lip. For a moment I see again, in my mind, the dark red stain of Rizzio’s blood on the floor of my dining room. For a moment I think what a return to Scotland will mean to me. It will be no summer of French roses. The Scots were ill-suited to me before, and matters will not have improved. I shall have to live with a barbaric people and dine with a bloodstain on my floor. I shall have to rule them with my will and all my political skills. When Bothwell comes we can dominate them together, but until he arrives I will be in constant danger again of kidnap and rebellion.