I see from this that she does not know him at all, she does not begin to understand him. I find I love him for his proud folly, even though I rail at him for being a proud fool. “He won’t bring in a verdict that depends on whether she pays her debt to him,” I say. “He’s a Talbot, he can’t be bought. He will look at the evidence, weigh the charge, and come to the just sentence, whatever he is paid, whatever it costs.” I hear the pride in my own voice. “That is the sort of man he is. I would have thought you would know that by now. You can’t bribe him, and you can’t buy him. He’s not an easy man, not even a very sensible man. He does not understand the way of the world and he is not a very clever man. You might even call him a fool—certainly he was a fool over you—but he is always, always a man of honor.”

SHEFFIELD CASTLE: MARY

JANUARY, 1572

The night that they start the trial I send my women to bed and sit beside my fire and think, not of the Duke of Norfolk, who faces the judges tomorrow for my sake, but of Bothwell, who would never have turned himself in to arrest, who would never have let his servants confess, who would never have written state secrets in a breakable code, who would never have let those codes be found. Who—God knows, above all other—would never have trusted a turncoat such as Ridolfi. Who—God forgive me—would never have trusted my assurance that Ridolfi was the man for us. Bothwell would have seen at once that my ambassador John Lesley would break under questioning; Bothwell would have known that Ridolfi would brag. Bothwell would have guessed that the plot would fail and would never have joined in it. Bothwell—it makes me laugh to think of it—would never have sent a queen’s ransom in an unmarked bag by a Shrewsbury draper, trusting to luck. Bothwell was a thief, a kidnapper, a rapist, a murderer, a wicked man, a despicable man, but never a victim. No one has ever held Bothwell for long, or cozened him, or tricked him, or had him serve against his own interests. Not until he met me, that is. When he fought for himself he was unbeatable.

I think of my palace at Holyrood in the early days of my marriage to Darnley. Within weeks I had discovered that the beautiful boy I had fallen in love with was a foul young man whose only charms were in appearance. As soon as we were married he let me see what everyone else knew, that he was a drunk and a sodomite with a burning ambition to put me aside from rule and take the power himself as king consort.