But she is not happy. The queen’s morbid neediness for this stimulation sickens her and she has come to dread the summons: “Margaret.”
But what is she to do? She was plucked from her family in Scotland and is risen above all other maids, high, yet not so high as Mary Seton, and so there is no one with whom she can talk, share fellowship, or find relief for herself. She finds she craves fresh air, silence, a cool wind in her face, spring sunshine, the chatter of children, anything but this oppressive shared captivity. She could scream.
“Margaret.”
Oh God.
This time the queen wishes for rapture for the wrong reasons. She is fixated, almost mad with desire for it, yet is not at all desirous, and is so tense and burningly miserable that rose oil needs to be used, and her breath is hot and foul, and she never relaxes, and so it is almost impossible. No. It is impossible. It is dangerous. Margaret panics and loses her touch. The queen will not be delivered.
“Get off me! Get off me! Get out!”
Margaret leaps away as if scalded.
“Mary! Mary!” the queen shouts and Mary Seton comes swiftly to her side to correct her dress. The queen is clench fisted, weeping hot tears of anguish. Mary Seton soothes her as she would a child, and Margaret hurries away, likewise in tears. She cannot stand it. She cannot stand being cooped up all day in this foul atmosphere, performing all these wicked tasks.
She runs down the steps and out into the castle bailey.
Guards in Shrewsbury’s colors watch her impassively. She walks and walks, and only occasionally does she glance up at the top floor of the tower, where she sees a face, briefly, like a smear at the window, but what is she to them?
At length Mary Seton sends John Kennedy to fetch her in. He is a boy of about fifteen winters, someone’s son, obviously. He runs errands and fetches bottles and so forth. Most of the time he sits by the door of the bailey, whittling spoons and leaving piles of splinters. Ordinarily they hardly speak to each other, though they might be five years apart in age, and from similar families, though his are from Edinburgh, she knows, while hers are of York. He is very pale skinned, with cheeks that flare whenever he speaks to a woman.
“Mistress Seton is after you,” he tells her.
Margaret hardly knows what to expect. Will she be sent packing? If she is honest, she does not care.
In fact, it is an errand: to walk with John Kennedy into town and rent him a horse at the White Hart, in Mary Seton’s name.
“Her Majesty is very upset, Margaret,” Mary Seton tells her in a very low voice. Like Queen Mary she has eyes the color of polished hazelnuts. “And needs this done as it is a matter of grave import, but we are much observed by the Queen’s enemies, so keep this close, and make certain you are not seen going to, or coming back from the inn.”
It is easier said than done, of course, but Talbot’s guards are oafish and care only for Queen Mary’s whereabouts.
John Kennedy wears a traveling cloak and carries a bag in which is some awkward shape.
When they are on the street, out of sight of the castle, Margaret asks him what it is.
“Can’t tell you,” he says.
“Go on.”
“A candlestick,” he tells her with a shrug.
“Where are you taking it?”
“Back home,” he says. “I’ve got a message writ here for a man, but—”
Another shrug.
She cannot read either. “Will you come back?”
He looks very uncertain.
“I am told I must,” he says, “though by God I do not wish it.”
Queen Mary watches the flickering shape of Margaret Formby returning across the castle’s bailey through the lumpen glass in her windows. The girl has a tendency to stoop, she thinks. It is an unattractive habit.
“The new man was making himself agreeable to her,” Queen Mary tells Mary Seton.
“Oh yes?” Mary Seton smiles.
Queen Mary laughs softly. “And do you trust the boy?” she asks.
“I do, Your Majesty.”
She is still trying to be soothing. She might stroke her hair were she not wearing a veil.
The queen is still unable to believe what she read in the message received today. Quesada has diverted his fleet, and the prospect of her release is stillborn. She is now stuck here in this miserable castle as a prisoner for all eternity. It would have been better for her if he had not sailed at all! At least then she might still be at Tutbury, or taking the waters at Buxton, which allowed her some freedom. Some air. Here in Sheffield she is overwatched constantly. Not just by the Earl of Shrewsbury, and all his many men and servants, but by Burghley and Walsingham’s mice downstairs too. Even if she could not sometimes smell them, she would know they were there, know she was being subjected to this close watch. She has acquired the sense in her years at various courts, first in France, and then in Scotland. There is a tight airlessness to the world about her, as if there are no gaps in anything, no sense of space beyond the walls.
Still, she thinks, she is not done yet.
She watches Margaret Formby until she disappears below, out of sight, and then there is a gentle thud of a door being closed.
How long will it take? she wonders.
A day? Two? A week at the most. Or will they wait until the boy reaches Edinburgh?
But what if it doesn’t happen at all?
She has nothing else to do but wait anyway.
She turns away from the window.
“Margaret,” she calls.
Wilkins sends word: “Something’s afoot.”
He saw them coming out of the tower with their heads bowed, Margaret Formby and the boy, John Kennedy. Nothing very odd about that, “save,” Wilkins says, “you could just tell.”
“She is no good at
