“Perhaps she will pay us.”

“Perhaps.”

“Is there any plan to send the Queen of Scots home?” she asks hopefully.

“Not now,” I say quietly. “They have sent her bishop into exile in France, and her spy, Ridolfi, has fled to Italy. The Spanish ambassador has been ordered to leave in disgrace, and everyone else is in the Tower. The Scots won’t want her—seeing the company she keeps and how faithless she has been, breaking her parole, and her word, and her promise to Lord Morton. And Cecil must be certain that Norfolk’s evidence will incriminate her. The question can only be, What will he do with evidence that damns her?”

“Will they put her on trial? What could be the charge?”

“If they can prove that she invited Spain to invade or plotted the queen’s death, then she is guilty of rebellion against a lawful monarch. That would carry the sentence of death. They can’t execute her, of course, but they can find her guilty and put her in the Tower forever.”

Bess is silent; she cannot meet my eyes. “I am sorry,” she says awkwardly.

“The punishment for raising a rebellion is death,” I say steadily. “If Cecil can prove that she tried to assassinate Elizabeth, then she would face a trial. She would deserve a trial, and lesser men have died for what she has done.”

“She says that Elizabeth will never kill her. She says that she is untouchable.”

“I know it. She is sacred. But a guilty verdict will see her in the Tower forever. And no power in Europe would defend her.”

“What could Norfolk say against her that would be so very bad?”

I shrug. “Who knows what she has written to him, or what she wrote to the Spanish, or to her spy, or to the Pope? Who knows what she promised them?”

“And Norfolk himself?”

“I think it will be a treason trial,” I say. “I shall have to be chief justice. It hardly seems possible. That I should sit as judge on Thomas Howard! We practically grew up together.”

“He will be found innocent,” she predicts. “Or the queen will pardon him after the verdict. They have quarreled as cousins do, but she loves him.”

“I pray that it is so,” I tell her. “For if I have to turn the axe towards him and read out the death sentence, then it will be a dark day for me, and a worse one for England.”

CHATSWORTH: MARY

DECEMBER, 1571

I am hobbling painfully in the courtyard, as my legs are so stiff and painful I can hardly walk, when I see a stone flung in an arc over the wall from the outside, and it falls near my feet. A piece of paper is wrapped around it and, disregarding the twinge in my knees, I step over it at once, hiding it with my skirts.