I am going to settle my lord and the queen here in Sheffield Castle and then I will go on a visit to Chatsworth. I pine like a lover to be there; I have missed most of this summer; I want to catch the leaves turning sere. We cannot afford to rebuild or improve this year, nor the next, perhaps not for a decade, but at least I can plan what I would like to do; at least I can enjoy the work I have done. At least I can ride around my own land and see my friends and be with my children as if I were a countess and a woman of substance and not a cipher at a young woman’s court.

This autumn, my husband the earl and I will escort the queen to Scotland, and if she rewards him as richly as she should, we shall have Scottish lands and perhaps a Scottish dukedom. If she gives him the rights to the harbor dues of a port, or the taxes on the import of some restricted goods, or even the tolls of the border roads, we might make our fortune again from this painful vigil. If she plays us false and gives us nothing, then at the very least, we are rid of her, and that alone is worth a barony to me. And when we are rid of her there is no doubt in my mind that he will return to me in his heart. We did not marry for passion but for a mutual respect and affection, and our interests run together now, as they did then. I put my lands into his keeping, as I had to; he put his children and his honorable name into mine. Surely, when she is gone, and he has recovered from his foolish adoration of her, he will come back to me and we can be once more as we were before.

So I comfort myself, hoping for a better future, as I walk from the rose garden to the garden door. Then I pause, as I hear the worst sound in the world: the sound of galloping hooves, rapid like an anxious heartbeat, and I know at once, without a moment’s doubt, that something terrible has happened. Something truly terrible is happening again. Some terror is coming into my life carried by a galloping horse. She has brought some horror to our door and it is coming as fast as it can ride.

SHEFFIELD CASTLE: GEORGE

SEPTEMBER, 1571

I am in the mews, tending to my favorite hawk, when I hear Bess screaming my name at the same time as I hear the tolling of the castle bell.