Damning indeed, utterly damning. Except that someone asks Nicholas Barham if this letter was intercepted on its way to the Scots queen or taken from her rooms. Everyone looks at me, of course, who should have caught such a letter. I am in the wrong now, for I did not catch this letter. I shake my head and Barham smoothly reports that this extraordinary letter was somehow lost, mislaid. It was not sent and I did not intercept it. The Queen of Scots never saw it. He tells us, straight-faced, that a copy of this most incriminating letter was hidden in a secret room, found as if by a miracle, years later, by James, Earl of Moray, and handed by him to the Queen of England shortly before his death.

I cannot help but look incredulously at Cecil, that he should expect men—not children enjoying fairy tales but men of the world, and his fellow lords—to accept this complicated fable. The look he returns to me is smilingly blank. I am a fool to expect something more convincing. To Cecil it does not matter if none of this makes sense; what matters is that the letter is entered on the record, that the record is part of the trial, that it will serve as evidence to justify the verdict to the world, and that the verdict will be guilty.

“Shall we have our dinner now?” he asks pleasantly.

I rise and we go out. I am so foolish that I look for Norfolk as we lords go for our dinner, and think I will put my arm around his shoulders for a moment and whisper, “Be of good courage; there is no escaping the verdict, but the pardon will follow.”

Of course, he does not dine with us. I had forgotten. We all go to eat our dinner in the great hall; he goes alone, to eat alone in his cell. He cannot dine with us, he is banished from our company, and I will never put my arm around his shoulders again.

SHEFFIELD CASTLE: BESS

JANUARY, 1572

I have no great love for the Scots queen, God knows, but it would take a woman with a harder heart than mine not to defend her against our new house guest and temporary jailer, Ralph Sadler. He is a hard-hearted bad-tempered old man, utterly immune to any form of beauty, whether it be the white hoarfrost on the trees here at Sheffield Castle or the pale, strained beauty of the Scots queen.

“I have my orders,” he says hoarsely to me after she has withdrawn from the dinner table, unable to bear his slurping his pottage for another moment. She whispers of a headache and takes herself from the room. I could wish I could escape so easily, but I am the mistress of a great house and I must do my duty by a guest.