“He was the only man in Scotland I could trust,” she says quietly. “I learned later he was the only man in Scotland who had never taken a bribe from a foreign power. He is a Scot and loyal to my mother and to me. He was always on my side. He raised an army for me and we returned to Edinburgh and banished the murderers.”

“And your husband?”

She shrugs. “You must know the rest. I could not part from my husband while I was carrying his child. I gave birth to my son and Bothwell guarded him and me. My husband Darnley was murdered by his former friends. They planned to kill me too but it happened I was not in the house that night. It was nothing more than luck.”

“Terrible, terrible,” one of my women whispers. They will be converting to Papacy next out of sheer fellow feeling.

“Yes indeed,” I say sharply to her. “Go and fetch a lute and play for us.” So that gets her out of earshot.

“I had lost my secretary and my husband, and my principal advisors were his murderers,” she said. “I could get no help from my family in France, and the country was in uproar. Bothwell stood by me, and he had his army to keep us safe. Then he declared us married.”

“Were you not married?” I whisper.

“No,” she says shortly. “Not by my church. Not in my faith. His wife still lives, and now another one, another wife, has thrown him into prison in Denmark for breach of promise. She claims they were married years ago. Who knows with Bothwell? Not I.”

“Did you love him?” I ask, thinking that this is a woman who was once a fool for love.

“We never speak of love,” she says flatly. “Never. We are not some romantic couple writing poetry and exchanging tokens. We never speak of love. I have never said one word of love to him nor he to me.”

There is a silence, and I realize she has not exactly answered me.

“And then?” one of my entranced half-wit women whispers.