It is not the only thing I have to show you, he’d told her.
And he was right: it was not. But he was dead now, she thinks, or imprisoned somewhere, and so might as well be, and so is she. Sometimes, at night, alone in her bed in Tutbury, or Sheffield, or Chatsworth, or any of the other castles she is shuffled between, she thinks about that.
But she is spoiled to any other way now, for nothing else delivers her in transport in such a violent fashion, and so she has taught this girl when and where to apply her fingers—just here, and here, when I signal—and she goes at it fairly regularly, though under orders of her confessor, she tries to keep it down to once a day.
But by Christ she is so bored.
All she has to look forward to is that, and needlework with Lady Elizabeth Talbot.
And so now, why not?
“Margaret?”
Margaret Formby knows what she wants, and she sets aside her own circle of stitching and crosses the small room while Mary lies back on the large bed. She is a handsome, severe girl, Margaret, who was initially awkward and scared of what she was asked to do, but she has learned well and now her touch is firm at the right time, and delicate when it is not the right time. Mary tips her head back and sees rain on the gray glass of the window behind her. She wishes she might have it opened and that she might have a view of the countryside. She cannot do the first, and nor has she the second, and so she allows Margaret to lift her skirts, and part her braies, and she devotes herself, for the moment, to such pleasures as she can get.
After the passing of time during which a man might say the first cycle of the rosary, Mary takes over from Margaret, as they have practiced. Oftentimes, in the past, the earl used to insert into her anus a stubby, knobbled length of silver that he called his “other membrum verile,” which, when she was on the point of her delivery, he would slowly withdraw. The first time he did this, she fainted. He spoiled her, she thinks, just as he spoiled so many women.
“Now! Now!”
Margaret presses. Mary cannot breathe. The light fades. She can see worms in the peripheral of her vision. Hot. Waves of pleasure swell through her body, and she thinks this is what transubstantiation will be like. This is rapture. This is what it will be like when she is finally lifted up by the angelic host and borne in bliss to heaven. But then the pleasure becomes intense—violent, and in its extremity it becomes pain. Her mind is collapsing; her body is killing itself.
She jerks upright on the bed, throwing Margaret away. She draws in great gasps of air. Her face is scarlet; her entire body feels afire. She feels cored out, caved in.
Margaret never knows if this is what she wants.
“Get away,” Mary tells her, for now she cannot stand to look at her.
Mary rights her braies and pulls down her skirts and after she has regained her breath, her composure, and her sense of solidity, she stands. Her heart beats in her temples.
Margaret is back at her stitching.
Time gathers weight. Heavier and heavier. Mary feels it everywhere, pushing her down, crushing her. She is crushed. By time. By despair. By misery. She turns back to the bed and falls on it, lying facedown, and she lets the tears come.
Later that afternoon, she receives her gaoler, Sir George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, with no fewer than four of his guards, each with a sword, primed to act as if she would attack their master.
“God give you good day, Your Majesty,” he says, bowing low, maintaining the pretense that he is other than her keeper. He wears broadcloth breeches, a finely stitched doublet, and a wide, furred cape, which opens to reveal a surprisingly modest, though pearled, codpiece that fails to catch her slightest attention.
“And unto you, Sir George.”
“I trust you are well? You look somewhat downcast.”
Downcast? Downcast? She thinks to give him downcast.
“I am quite well,” she tells him instead. “Tired is all.”
He glances over at Margaret, whose hand is paused midstitch. Of course she is a spy. Does she tell him all?
By the Mass, who cares.
“What is it you want, Sir George?” she asks.
Now he comes to it, and it is a good thing.
“The Queen sends permission that you should be permitted to walk our grounds.”
She is pleased but will not show it.
“Your grounds? Why, Sir George, I shall scarcely set off before I shall need to turn about.”
“The Queen has given permission for you to take your hawk to the park.”
Now she cocks her head. This is news indeed.
“My hawk? In the park?”
Shrewsbury smiles.
“Today,” he says. “This very afternoon.”
It is no better a pastime than pleasuring herself, she thinks to say, but holds her tongue.
She is in grosgrain and linen, for it is an oppressively warm day, and she rides on an elegant roan, with red leather saddle and reins. She carries her hawk in its polished leather hood, and Sir George is at her side, though a little behind, as befits his rank. He concentrates on the greenery of the oaks and the elms that fill the far end of his park, perhaps five hundred paces away, whence he supposes the birds will come. The tip of his tongue is very pink between his bearded lips, but he probably has no idea what he looks like. He and Bess of Hardwick? She doubts it.
But she is not interested in birds. She is tensed for something else, and she believes the hawk, a merlin, senses her tension unlike the other men, especially not the pathetic little huntsman who is so eager to please. He hops from foot to foot, trying not to point out the various birds that are
