“Is it true? Are you married, Lady Mary?” one of the younger maids blurts out, and curtseys and colors red to her ears. “Begging your pardon,” she whispers.
I don’t have to answer her, but I am not going to deny it now. I am never going to deny my marriage or the man I love. Part of me thinks—but this is quite absurd! I have one sister executed for claiming the throne, and one sister imprisoned for falling in love—and here am I, with a ring in my pocket and a private marriage, neither claiming the throne nor marrying a noble.
“Is she very angry?” I ask.
Someone makes a little whistle like calling up a storm.
“Am I to go in?”
“You’re to wait here,” Lady Clinton says. “She’ll send for you.”
“I’ll go to my room and change my hood,” I say. Nobody says that I may not go and so I go out through the doors again, through the presence chamber and the furtive glances, and up the narrow stairs to my rooms. My maid, white-faced, brushes my hair and pins my hood without saying a word. I don’t speak to her.
When I go back to the privy chamber, someone has called William Cecil and he is standing in the window bay talking to my stepgrandmother, Catherine Brandon, and Blanche Parry. Everyone else is waiting at a polite distance, straining their ears to hear, not daring to step closer. When I come into the chamber, Sir William looks up and sees me. He gives me a weary smile and I go across the room and look up at him. My lady stepgrandmother stands behind me, as if she would advocate for me.
“Now here’s a to-do,” Sir William says gently, and I think—thank God, at last someone who knows that this is a marriage for love, that means nothing except to us who love each other. It will offend the queen since all love but her own heartless playacting offends the queen. But here is a sensible man who knows that it is of no importance in the greater world.
“I am sorry that I did not ask permission,” I say quietly.
“You are married?” he confirms.
“Yes, to Mr. Thomas Keyes.”
A suspicion of a smile crosses the old statesman’s face. “I think he must be the biggest gentleman of the court and you the smallest lady.”
“John Dee would say that we were the opposites that make the whole,” I observe.
“The offense is very great,” Sir William says, nodding to the closed chamber door.
“The offense is very small. Her Majesty may take great offense, but there is no cause.”
He bows his head at my correction.
“Am I to go in? I can explain it was nothing but a private matter.”
“I would take her in . . .” my lady stepgrandmother offers.
Blanche shakes her head. “She won’t see you,” she says shortly. “She is very angry, Lady Mary. This, on top of everything else . . .”
“This is nothing,” I say staunchly. “And everything else—if you mean my sister’s marriage to a young nobleman—was no ground for offense either. The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots is a matter of national importance but nothing to do with us. My sister and I were acting as private individuals.” I look around at the other ladies of the bedchamber. “Are none of us ever to marry?”
William Cecil clears his throat. “You’re to go to Windsor,” he says. “While Her Majesty makes inquiry.”
“I will speak for you,” my lady stepgrandmother says.
“Inquiry into what?” I demand. “There was a marriage, held in private. There were witnesses. His family was there, a maid was witness for me. There was a priest who will attest that the wedding was valid. You need hold no inquiry to know everything. I will tell you everything. Mr. Keyes will tell you everything.”
William Cecil looks tired. “Perhaps. But Her Majesty wishes you to go to Windsor while she holds an inquiry.”
I take his hand and look up at him. “Sir William, you tell us that there is a plot by the Spanish to finance the Queen of Scots. The Queen of Scots has married the heir to the throne of Scotland, and defeated the Protestants who were rebelling against her. Is this the time for you and the Privy Council to worry about me?”
“Little me?” he suggests with a smile.
“I could not be a smaller person at court. The affairs of my heart could not be of less importance.”
“She insists,” he says gently. “Pack your things.”
I would go straight to Thomas at the gate, but two ladies go with me to my rooms to help me to pack my books, my papers, my clothes, and jewels. Then when I am ready to leave, there are two guards at the door and they take me down the privy stair to the watergate. I look for Thomas at the great gate of the palace, but he is not there and his deputy on duty does not look up so I cannot gesture. The room above the watergate where we lived together as man and wife shows no lights at the windows; the shutters are closed. Either he is in there, under arrest in darkness, or they have taken him somewhere else already.
“I want to see my husband, Thomas Keyes,” I say to the guardsman beside me. “I insist.”
“My orders are that you will go by barge to Windsor,” he says.
“The sergeant porter,” I remind him. “Of military rank and unimpeachable honor. I insist that you let me see him.”
He bobs his head down towards me. “They’ve taken him into the city,” he says, very quietly. “He’s already gone, my lady.”
WINDSOR CASTLE,
SUMMER 1565
I am kept in three good rooms overlooking the upper ward of Windsor Castle. The outer door is locked at night but during the day there is a guard set outside and he will walk with me if I want to go out to the royal garden. I am allowed to walk anywhere inside the castle walls but I am not allowed out. The rooms are spacious and I have my two ladies-in-waiting and three maids. These are better rooms than Katherine had in the house of the lieutenant of the Tower, and more freedom than Jane had there. I am so glad not to be held in the Tower—that would be unbearable. I could not tread the same track as my imprisoned sister, I could not wake to see the green where my martyred sister was killed. At least this is better than that.
I live quietly, I attend the castle chapel twice a day, walking there with the guards before and behind me. I read, I study, I sew, and I make music. There is nothing to do, but at least I am not on my knees to a tyrant who hates me.
I write to my sister Katherine that I, too, have married for love and I, too, meant nothing wrong by it but to be happy with a good man. I write that I, too, have offended the queen by this but that I hope that she will forgive me, and forgive Katherine, too. I give it to the commander of the castle but I don’t know if it will get beyond Cecil’s spies to my sister.
I write to Thomas Keyes. This is a harder letter. He is no poet like poor Ned Seymour. Our courtship was never one of words and pretty sayings. So I write briefly and I don’t expect anyone to deliver my letter to him. If I am writing only for the spies, it does not matter. Thomas does not need assurances of my love, nor I of his. We are lovers, we are married, we know each other’s heart. However brief the letter, he knows that I love him as passionately and as powerfully as the greatest poet, though the lines are short.
My dearest husband,
I am being held at the pleasure of Her Majesty at Windsor Castle. I hope she will pardon us both very soon, as soon as she learns that we meant no ill by our marriage and only hoped for our happiness.
I miss you very much. I love you very dearly. I do not regret our marriage (except that it has displeased the queen). You are the heart of a heartless world.—your wife, Mary
The trees in the park are as bright as the queen’s bronze, copper, and gold chains, and the flowers in the herb garden lose their color and their petals and become tatter-headed sticks. The summer ends in long warm days and every day I climb the circling steps to the top of the tower where I can see the river and the boats coming to and fro. Although I always look for it at sunset, the royal barge never comes for me.
The commander of the castle stops me as I walk back to my room one evening and says that I am to pack and leave the next morning.