Despising this wife of mine, this straightforward, vulgar, lovable wife of mine, I set my heart and spent my fortune on a woman whose word is like the wind; it can blow wherever it wants. She can speak three languages but she can tell the truth in none of them. She can dance like an Italian but she cannot walk a straight line. She can embroider better than a sempstress and write a fair hand, but her seal on the bottom of a document means nothing. Whereas my Bess is known throughout Derbyshire for fair trading. When Bess shakes on a deal it is sealed and you could stake your life on it. This queen could swear on a fragment of the True Cross—and it would still be provisional.

I have spent my fortune on this will-o’-the-wisp of a queen; I have put my honor on this chimera. I have squandered Bess’s dowry and the inheritance for her children on keeping this woman as a queen should be served, never knowing that under the cloth of state was seated a traitor. I let her sit on a throne and command a court in my own house and order things just as she would have them, because I believed, deep in my faithful heart, that this was a queen like no other had ever been.

Well, in that I was right. She is a queen as no other has ever been. She is a queen with no kingdom, a queen with no crown, a queen with no dignity, a queen with no word, a queen without honor. She has been ordained by God and anointed by His holy oil, but somehow He must have forgotten all about her. Or maybe she lied to Him too.

Now it is I who will have to forget all about her.

Bess comes tentatively to my privy chamber and waits on the threshold, as if she is not sure of a welcome.

“Come in,” I say. I mean to sound kind but my voice is cold. Nothing sounds right between Bess and me anymore. “What d’you want of me?”

“Nothing!” she says awkwardly. “A word, only.”

I raise my head from the papers I have been reading. My steward insisted that I see them. They are long lists of debts, money that we have borrowed to finance the keeping of the queen, and they fall due next year. I know of no way to pay them except by selling my lands. I slide a sheet of paper over them so that Bess cannot see—there is no point in worrying her too—and I slowly get to my feet.

“Please, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she says apologetically.

We are always saying sorry to each other these days. We tiptoe around as if there is a death in the house. It is the death of our happiness, and this is my fault too.