I have made my children secure in their fortunes; I have done what I set out to do for them. I have founded dynasties: my children own the titles of the earls of Shrewsbury, Devonshire, and Lennox. My son William is the first Earl of Devonshire; my daughter Mary will be the Countess of Shrewsbury. And my granddaughter Arbella is a Stuart, as I planned with Queen Mary. The half-joking scheme that we dreamed over our sewing, I made real; I brought it about. Against the odds, against the will of Queen Elizabeth, in defiance of the law, I married my daughter to Charles Stuart, and their child, my granddaughter, is heir to the throne of England. If luck goes with her—my luck, by which I mean my utter determination—she will be queen one day. And what woman in England but me would have dreamed of that?

I say it myself: not bad—not bad at all. Not bad at all for the daughter of a widow with nothing. Not bad at all for a girl from Hardwick, who was born into debt and had to earn everything she owns. I have made myself, a new woman for this new world, a thing that has never been before: a woman of independent means and an independent mind. Who knows what such women will do in the future? Who knows what my daughters will achieve, what my granddaughters might do? The world of Elizabeth is full of venturers: both those who travel far away to distant lands and those who stay at home. In my own way, I am one of them. I am a new sort of being, a new discovery: a woman who commands herself, who owes her fortune to no man, who makes her own way in the world, who signs her own deeds and draws her own rents and knows what it is to be a woman of some pride. A woman whose virtue is not modesty, a woman who dares to boast. A woman who is glad to count her fortune and pleased to do well. I am a self-made woman and proud of it.

And nobody in this world will ever call me Mrs. Fool.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Mary, Queen of Scots, is one of the great iconic characters of English history, and the research for this book has been a revelation to me, as I hope it will be to the reader. Recent work on the queen suggests a very different picture of her from the romantic and foolish woman of the traditional version. I believe she was a woman of courage and determination who could have been an effective queen even of a country as unruly as Scotland. The principal difference between her and her successful cousin Elizabeth was good advisors and good luck, not—as the traditional history suggests—one woman who ruled with her head and the other who was dominated by her heart.