Free Just a Queen by Jane Caro

attractive. Robin Dudley was attractive, devastatingly so, and I would trust him with my life. Who better to control the Queen of Scots? He was now single and not built for a bachelor’s life. If he had to marry someone else, I would rather it was someone I had chosen.
    Moreover, Robin was ambitious. Our match was now out of the question, but perhaps I could offer him another queen. I could see his interest was piqued. His family had always longed for a throne and I was offering him one.
    â€˜I will make you Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh, as I promised, and then I will send you north to woo a queen.’
    â€˜The wrong queen.’
    â€˜Beggars cannot be choosers, my lord.’
    Of course, as all history now knows, the marriage of Dudley and the Queen of Scots was never to be. Indeed, she rejected him sight-unseen with a sneer and an insult, dismissing him as my horse-master and implying (rather more accurately) that it was only because I could not have him myself that I suggested him as a suitable consort.
    Foolish woman, all may have turned out differently if only she had swallowed her pride and chosen the man Dudley over the boy she eventually married.

Seven
    â€˜Your queen has dark hair, I believe, my lord? Is your mistress’s hair lovelier than mine, or does mine have the advantage?’ Perhaps I had taken too many glasses of claret with my dinner. I was normally abstemious, but Cecil and I were deeply involved in calling back the debased metal coins my father had put into circulation. We wished to improve the quality and the value of English sovereigns, an honourable and necessary task, but the work was long, arduous and dull. My back ached from hunching over my desk, totting up figures, and I curled my fingers in on themselves as I caught sight of them. The ink from my quill stained them and, despite the unguents my ladies had rubbed vigorously into them, the marks remained.
    I was relieving my ennui by amusing myself with poor Sir James Melville, the Queen of Scots’ new ambassador to my court. I had taken him into my bedchamber and showed him some of my keepsakes, mementoes and most precious jewels, including my great ruby. As I displayed them to him, I hinted that all of these could one day belong to his mistress. It was politic to keep gently reminding the Scots that I fully intended her as my heir, even though I would never call her such officially.
    â€˜And which of us is fairest, my lord?’
    â€˜The fairness of both queens is beyond dispute.’
    â€˜You speak in riddles, my lord. It is a plain question and I would a plain answer. Which of us is the fairer – or the plainer?’ I believe I giggled.
    â€˜You are the fairest queen in England, and she the fairest in Scotland.’
    â€˜That is no answer, my lord. Which of us is taller?’ I was testing his honesty. Many had told me of the Queen of Scots’ great height.
    â€˜Our queen.’
    â€˜And how does your queen amuse herself, Sir James?’
    â€˜She is fond of playing the lute and the virginals.’
    â€˜And plays them well?’
    â€˜I am told she does, Your Grace, for a queen.’
    Then a foolish idea seized me. I can blame the wine, but my own vanity was really at fault. I pride myself on my skill at music, which I like to think I inherited from my father. I find great relief from the cares of state when I play upon the virginals, and sometimes imagine running away and making a living as a troubadour, dressed as a boy. I wonder if Master Shakespeare realises how much the women in his audience yearn to shed the burden of their sex and live as freely as boys? I think men waste little time imagining what it is like to be a woman.
    Often, in those early years, when the pomp and circumstance of the day were over, when the bed curtains were safely pulled around me, and Kat Ashley or Blanche Parry was snoring gently in the truckle bed nearby, I wept for fear. All day, every day,