There is a settling sense of unsurprised disappointment among the hunting party when Mary summons Lord Livingston to her side and tells him something none can hear. He announces that Her Majesty is tired and wishes to return to her chamber.
Hoods are put back on birds, and jesses are tightened.
Beale knows better than to suppose the rest of them might stay to enjoy the rest of their day.
The party turns and winds back down the hill after the queen, the day done.
He returns his horse to the stable and tips the ostler and finds himself back in the hall of the White Hart before noon.
“Well?” Walsingham asks almost before he is through the door.
He tells him all he saw. Walsingham writes down all he says.
“What did you make of Margaret?”
“She is very unsettled.”
Walsingham is pleased. He senses a stress point. A possible fracture.
That night Walsingham sends Beale to the castle to relieve Wilkins in Queen Mary’s tower. Wilkins open the door.
“Just in time,” he says.
Her Majesty’s chamber pot is still warm and in its puddle of purple urine is a sizable turd.
“What do you want me to do with that?” Beale asks.
“You have to go through it,” Wilkins tells him.
“Why?”
“Two years ago we found a note tied in a length of sheep’s gut. They’d paid the dong farmer to tip it to one side.”
Christ.
“It is the only way she can get anything out,” he goes on. “So. We do what we must. I’ve got everything ready.”
There’s a bucket of water and a block of black soap. There’s also a spoon.
“You have to kind of…”
Wilkins mimes a pressing action with the spoon.
Beale gets to work. He gags constantly.
After a moment there’s a thick paste and a little knot of what could be anything.
“Give it a wash,” Wilkins tells him when he shows him.
He picks it out with the tip of the spoon. Into the bucket of water and then vigorous stirring. Then he fishes it out and puts it on the table.
He still doesn’t want to touch it.
“She’s a queen for Christ’s sake.” Wilkins laughs. “It’s an honor to touch her shit.”
Eventually he teases the knot apart. A thin strip of silk, that’s all. Wilkins whistles.
“So what?” Beale asks.
“Maybe nothing,” Wilkins admits, “but how did it get there?”
“She must have eaten it,” Beale supposes.
Wilkins agrees. “But why, eh? That’s the question.”
“We’ll have to show it to Master Walsingham,” he says. “He’ll be pleased.”
Beale goes to stand outside, to get some air.
Above, in Cassiopeia, the new star shines as bright as ever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sheffield Castle, September 25, 1572
There is not a single thing—ewer, candlestick, book, sample of embroidery, pot of dried flower heads—left atop any surface. All have been swept to the floor, and Margaret Formby has never seen the queen in so foul a fit of rage. Mary Seton strokes the queen’s back, whispering to her in French, while the queen stands leaning straight-armed against the window, legs apart and breathing very heavily. It is, Margaret thinks, as if she were giving birth.
She wishes she had never come here. She wishes she had never entered Mistress Seton’s service. It had seemed perfect at the time, but as soon as they came south and found the bonds of captivity tightening around the queen’s household, something dark and ungodly had entered her life like a canker in a rosebud.
When Margaret was first asked to perform the strange procedures for Queen Mary, she was told they were on the orders of Mary’s French physician. It was a way of isolating the malign humors they told her. Margaret had been flattered to be so trusted to tie the knots in just such a way—tight, tight, really tight, but not too tight—but when, afterward, when they would summon her back to untie the ropes, she was always shocked to see the queen’s body dissected by the welts the cords left in her soft, soft flesh, and the patchy rashes left from the beeswax they melted over her naked body. There were often puckered pinch marks too: once she saw Mary Seton rubbing down the queen with a linen cloth, and her pale, blue-veined breasts were crowned with green bruises.
Soon after that Mistress Seton told Margaret that Her Majesty’s health was not improving, despite the time spent in the cords, and the French physicians had sent further instructions that involved more strenuous efforts at soothing Queen Mary, and of removing the malignant humors manually.
“No one must know that Her Majesty is ill,” Mary Seton said. “Nobody.”
And so it had begun, an almost daily regimen of stroking the queen’s nether parts until she shuddered.
“That is good,” Mary Seton said. “You are good at this.”
Margaret was surprised this was good for the queen’s health. She had done it to herself more than once, and afterward always felt drained and a little depressed. Queen Mary seemed to seek what she called “translation” and yet the very moment it was over, she found it repellent, every aspect and even the idea of it. But soon she would demand it once more, as if this time it would end her miseries. It never did. She never felt better.
Meanwhile further orders came from the French physicians—though how, Margaret never knew—to rub harder, faster, and to push her fingers more deeply. The physician said she must bite the queen’s breasts, not so hard to draw blood, but to leave the nipples raw.
And then the suppression of the airway started, and she went to Mistress Seton, who had by this time passed onto her all these medical duties, and Margaret told her it frightened her to be half strangling the queen, and of her fears of misjudging it.
“You must do as she commands,” Mistress Seton had told her.
“But it feels—against God’s command,” she’d said.
“You must do as she commands.”
And so she had.
Time and time again, until now she has become an almost constant
