Free Just a Queen by Jane Caro Page B

deny him the passport, Your Grace.’
    â€˜Request approved, then, my lord. We will let events unfold as they may. What is the next item of business?’
    We had killed the impressive hind we had been chasing all morning, and the game-keepers were beginning the butchery. We would soon be feasting on fine venison. The dogs had been tied up some distance away, but still they bayed furiously as the smell of fresh blood hit their nostrils. I take no pleasure in the gory business of removing the entrails of such a fine beast and had led my mount some distance away. The afternoon was hot and getting hotter, so I dismounted and sat upon a fallen log beneath the canopy of a greenwood tree. My master of horse, the newly created Earl of Leicester, joined me on my perch. I pulled at my leather gauntlets and peeled them from my hands – with some difficulty. I was still sweating slightly from the effort of the chase. The cool breeze on my skin was delicious. I unbuttoned the jacket of my riding costume and thrust my booted feet out in front of my heavy skirts. How I longed to pull off my shoes and let my toes luxuriate in the cool grass, but a queen must be a queen at all times and queens are never barefoot. I let the gloves fall and a manservant appeared from nowhere and caught them before they hit the earth. I was finally growing used to all my small needs being taken care of instantly. Possessions were no more a burden to me than the fine wine I drank or delicate food I ate. They appeared, I used as little or as much of them as I cared to, and then they disappeared to trouble me no more.
    â€˜A fine kill, Your Majesty.’
    â€˜Aye, my lord, and the beast gave us even finer sport.’
    â€˜You cleared that stone wall with a foot to spare! As fine an example of horsemanship as I have ever seen.’
    I was delighted by his compliment. I knew it was important to these manly men that their queen could match them in their sport. ‘I think we must give credit to my mount, Robin, and to your great care of her. It was she who did all the work. My task was merely to hold tight.’
    â€˜You are too modest, Your Grace. It takes not just great skill but great heart to gallop at such a barrier without fear.’
    â€˜They say the Queen of Scots has tired of her new husband already.’
    â€˜She was a fool to marry him.’
    â€˜Do not be too hard on her, my lord. I have some understanding why she made the choice she did.’
    â€˜Have you, Your Grace? Perhaps you can enlighten me, it is more than most of us who knew Darnley can fathom.’
    â€˜Aye, but what choice did she have? Monarchs are usually wed to people they have never seen. My father’s younger sister, Princess Mary, was only eighteen when she was shipped off to France to marry King Louis, a man many decades older than she and whom she had never set eyes upon. Is it any wonder that as soon as her husband died she married her attendant Charles Brandon? He was young and she knew him and so could choose him.’
    â€˜I would think knowing Henry Darnley would have the opposite effect.’
    â€˜She didn’t know him, my lord. I am not claiming that. She is only just getting to know him now, it seems. But she had met him and I am sure he made himself as agreeable as he could, in the beginning.’
    â€˜He is a handsome enough stripling and women are easily seduced by a pretty face.’
    â€˜Methinks my sex is not alone in that weakness, my lord.’
    â€˜They say she cannot bear his company anymore and shuns him at every opportunity.’
    â€˜How she must be repenting her precipitate trip to the altar.’
    Cecil and I had not expected our vague plan to go quite as well as it had. No sooner had Darnley presented himself to his cousin the queen than she fancied herself madly in love with him. Within a few months of meeting they were married, and Mary, besotted with her fair-of-face new husband, declared they