The other queen

1568–9, WINTER, TUTBURY CASTLE: BESS

Mary, this most troublesome queen, delays as long as she can. Someone has told her that Tutbury Castle is no fit place for a queen of the blood and now Her Grace refuses to come here and demands to be sent to her good cousin’s court, where she knows well enough that they are celebrating the twelve days of Christmas with feasts and dancing and music, and at the heart of it all will be Queen Elizabeth, with a light heart and light feet, darting around and laughing because the Scots, the greatest threat to the peace of her country, are all falling out amongst themselves, and the greatest rival to her power, the other Queen of England, their queen, is a prisoner without plans for release. Or honored guest, as I believe I am to call her, as I set about making Tutbury something more than a rapidly improvised dungeon.

I must say that Mary Queen of Scots is not the only one who would rather be at Hampton Court this Christmas season and can find little joy in the prospect of a long cold winter at Tutbury. I hear from my friends who send me all the gossip that there is a new suitor for Elizabeth’s hand, the Austrian archduke who would ally us with Spain and the Hapsburgs, and Elizabeth is beside herself with the sudden surging of lust for her last chance to be a wife and a mother. I know how the court will be: my friend Robert Dudley will be smiling but guarded—the last thing he wants at court is a rival to his constant courtship of the queen. Elizabeth will be in a fever of vanity, every day will bring new pretty things to her rooms, and her women will rejoice in the spoil of her castoffs. Cecil will manage everything to the outcome of his choosing, whatever that may be. And I should be there, watching and gossiping with everyone else.

My son Henry, at service in Robert Dudley’s household, writes me that Dudley will never allow a marriage which would displace him from Elizabeth’s side, and that he will oppose Cecil as soon as that old fox shows his hand. But I am for the marriage—any marriage. Pray God that she will have him. She has left it as late as any woman dare; she is thirty-five, dangerously old to give birth to a first child, but she will have to grit her teeth and do it. We have to have a son from her; we have to have an heir to the throne of England. We have to see where we are going.

England is a business, an estate like any other. We have to be able to plan ahead. We have to know who will inherit and what he will get; we have to foresee what he will do with his inheritance. We have to see our next master and know what his plans will be. We have to know whether he will be Lutheran or Papist. Those of us living in rebuilt abbeys and dining off church silver are especially anxious to know this. Please God this time she settles on this suitor, marries him, and gives us a new steady Protestant master for the trade of England.

Elizabeth is a hard mistress to serve, I think, as I command the carpenters to mend the gaps in the floorboards. This would have been our first Christmas at court, for me and my lord the earl. Our first Christmas as newlyweds, the first Christmas I would have been a countess at court, where I should have sparkled like a snowflake and taken great joy in settling old scores from my newly raised position. But instead, the queen allowed my husband the earl only a couple of days with me before dispatching him to Bolton Castle to fetch the Scots queen while I set to work on this hovel.

The more I repair this half-ruined wreck of a house, the more ashamed of it I am, though God knows it is no fault of mine. No house of mine would ever fall into disrepair like this. All of my properties—most of which came to me through the good management of my second husband, William Cavendish—were renovated and rebuilt as soon as we acquired them. We never bought anything without improving it. Cavendish prided himself on parceling together plots of land and swapping one farm for another till he made a handsome estate, which I would then run at a profit. He was a careful man, a great businessman, an older man, over forty when he married me, his bride of nineteen.

He taught me how to keep an accounts book for our household and make it up every week, as faithfully as reading a sermon on Sunday. When I was little more than a girl, I used to bring my household book to him like a child with her schoolwork, and he would go through it with me on a Sunday evening, as if we were saying our prayers together, like a pious father and daughter, our heads side by side over the book, our voices murmuring the numbers.

After the first month or so, when he saw that I had such an aptitude and such a love for the figures themselves, as well as the wealth they represented, he let me see the accounts book for the small manor he had just bought, and said that I could keep it too, to see if I would manage it well. I did so. Then, as he bought more properties, I took care of them. I learned the wages of field laborers as well as house-maids; I learned how much we should pay for carting as well as for washing the windows. I started to run his farms as I ran our house and I kept the books for them all the same.

He taught me that it means nothing to own land or money as the old lords own their estates and waste them from one generation to another. Wealth means nothing at all if you do not know, to the last penny, what your fortune is. You might as well be poor if you do not know what you have. He taught me to love the order of a well-kept accounts book and how the bottom of the page at the end of each week should show the balance between money coming in and money going out, so that you know, and know to a penny, whether you are ahead in the world or behind.

Cavendish told me that this is not how the great lords do it. Many of their stewards do not even keep the books like this, the new way, with receipts and expenses put side by side for comparison, and this is why, at the end of the day, we will do better than them. He told me that they treat their houses and their lands and their tenants and their fortunes as if they were all a great mass that cannot be calculated. So—since this is what they believe—they never try to calculate their wealth. They inherit and pass it on wholesale, without inventory. They lose and gain without keeping account. They have no idea whether a townhouse should rent out at a greater profit than a wheatfield. When they are taxed they guess at what they are worth; when they borrow money they cannot calculate their fortune. When they are paid a huge sum in war, or inherit treasure on marriage, they tumble it into their strongroom and never even list it. Whereas we, the new men and women who have risen so recently, we look at every field, at every trade, at every ship, and we see that it pays for itself.

Slowly, as Cavendish and I added property and houses to our fortune, each one chiseled from the dying body of the old church, I created new books, a new one for each new estate, each one showing a good balance of profit on rents, or sale of wool, or hay or corn or wheat or iron ore, or whatever goods each land could bring to us. Slowly I learned the prices of trees standing in a forest and the value of timber when they were felled. Slowly I learned to estimate the price of wool on a sheep’s back or the profits to be made from a flock of geese at Christmas. My husband Cavendish hired good reliable men who had served the monks in the abbeys and the nuns in the nunneries and knew how lands should yield good rents and revenue, and I set myself to learn from them. Soon it was my task to read the accounts brought to me by the stewards of our growing estates: I was overseer as well as house manager. Soon it was I who knew to the last penny that our properties were well run and our wealth was increasing.

None of this happened overnight, of course. We were married ten years; we had our children—eight of them, bless them all, and bless the good husband who gave them to me, and the fortune to endow them. He rose high in the favor of the court. He served first Thomas Cromwell and then directly the king. He served in the Court of Augmentations, that prime position, and traveled the country valuing the church properties and turning them over to the Crown, as one after another proved to be unfit for the work of the Lord and better closed down.

And if it happened that the houses that were the richest, and the most profitable, were the first to attract the attention of godly reform, then it was not for us to question the mysterious ways of Providence. If they had been good men they would have been good stewards of the wealth of the Lord and not squandered the church’s fortune: encouraging the poor in idleness and building churches and hospitals of excessive beauty. Better for God that poor stewards be replaced by those who knew the value of money and were ready to set it to work.

Of course my husband bought on his own account. God knows, everyone in England was buying land on his own account, and at the most desperate prices. It was like the herring fleet coming in, all at once. We were like fishwives on the harbor wall, reveling in a glut. We were all mad to get our hands on our share of the old church lands. It was a banquet of land grabbing. No one questioned William as he valued for the Crown and then bought and sold for himself. It was expected by everyone that he should supplement his fees by trading on his own account, and besides, he took no more than was customary.

How did he do it? He valued land low in his own favor, sometimes for the benefit of others. Sometimes he received gifts, and sometimes secret bribes. Of course! Why not? He was doing the king’s work and furthering the reform of the church. He was doing God’s work in expelling corrupt priests. Why should he not be richly rewarded? We were replacing a rotten old church with one in the true image of His son. It was glorious work. Was my husband not on God’s own work, to destroy the old bad ways of the Papist church? Was he not absolutely right, directed by God Himself, to take wealth away from the corrupt Papal church and put it into our hands, we who would use it so much better? Is that not the very meaning of the sacred parable of the talents?

And all the while I was his apprentice, as well as his wife. I came to him a girl with a burning ambition to own my own property and to be secure in the world. Never again would I be a poor relation in the house of a richer cousin. He taught me how I could do it. God bless him.

Then I told him that the Chatsworth estate was for sale, near to my old home of Hardwick in Derbyshire, that I knew it well and it was good land, that the original owner was my cousin but he had sold it to spite his family, that the new owner, frightened by claims against the freehold, was desperate for a sale, that we could make a sharp profit if we were not too particular at taking advantage of a fool in trouble. William saw, as I did, the profit that could be made from it, and he bought it for me at a knockdown price and swore it would be the greatest house in the North of England, and it would be our new home.

When the new queen, Mary Tudor, came to the throne—and who would have thought she could defeat the good Protestant claimant, my friend Jane Grey?—they accused my poor Cavendish of defrauding his office, of taking bribes, and of stealing land from the Holy Roman Catholic church, which now rose again from the dead like Jesus Himself. Shameful accusations and frightening times: our friends held in the Tower for treason, dearest little Jane Grey facing death for claiming the throne, the reformation of religion utterly reversed, the world turned upside down again, the cardinals returned and the Inquisition coming. But the one thing that I was sure of, the one thing that comforted me through all the worry, was the knowledge that he would know to a penny how much he had stolen. They might say that his books at the palace did not account for the huge fortune he had made, but I knew that he would know; somewhere there would be accounts that would show it all, good and clear, theft and profit. When he died, my poor husband Cavendish, still under suspicion of theft, corruption, and dishonest accounting, I knew that he would make his accounts in heaven, and St. Peter (who I supposed would be restored also) would find them exact, to the last penny.

In his absence, it fell to me, his widow, all alone in the world, to defend my inheritance on earth. He had left me everything in my own name, God bless him, for he knew I would keep it safe. Despite every tradition, custom, and practice which makes widows paupers and men the only heirs, he put every penny in my name, not even in trust, not to a kinsman. He did not favor a man, any man, over me, his wife. He gave it wholly to me. Think of that! He gave everything to me.

And I swore that I would not betray my dearest Cavendish. I swore, with my hand on his coffin, that I would keep the sacks of gold under the marriage bed, the lands that I had inherited from him, the church candles on my tables and the pictures on my walls, and that I would show my duty to him, as his good widow, by fighting to prove their title as my own. He left his fortune to me; I owed it to him to see that his wishes were honored. I would make sure that I kept everything. I made it my sacred duty to keep everything.

And then, thank God the claims against me were cut short by another royal death. God Himself preserved my Protestant fortune. Queen Mary the Papist would have clawed back all the church lands if she could have done. She would have had monasteries rebuilt and abbeys rededicated, and certainly everything taken back from good officers who were only doing their duty—but God quickly took her to Himself and she died before she could dispossess us all, and the new ruler was our Elizabeth.

Our Elizabeth, the Protestant princess who knows the value of good property as well as the rest of us, who loves, as we do, peace, the land, and a reliable currency. She understands well enough the price of our loyalty to her. We will all be good Protestants and loyal subjects if she will leave us with our stolen Papist wealth and make sure that no Papist ever gets the throne and threatens our fortunes again.

I had placed myself close to her from the earliest years, both by calculation and preference. I was raised in a Protestant household, in service to the great Lady Frances Grey, I was companion to Lady Jane Grey, and I served a God who recognizes hard work. I was at Hatfield when my friend Robert Dudley himself brought the news that the old queen was dead and Elizabeth was the heir. I was at her coronation as a beautiful and wealthy widow (God bless my husband Cavendish for that) and my next husband, Sir William St. Loe, was her chief butler of England. I caught his eye on the night of her coronation dinner and knew that he looked at me and saw a pretty woman of thirty, with great lands that marched temptingly beside his own. Dearest Cavendish had left me so prosperous that perhaps I could have made a deal for an even better husband. Sir John Thynne of Longleat was mentioned as one, and there were others. But to tell truth, William St. Loe was a handsome man and I liked him for himself. Also, although Sir John has Longleat, which is a house any woman could covet, William St. Loe’s lands were in my home country of Derbyshire and that made my heart beat faster.

With him as my husband, and a good Protestant queen on the throne, I knew there would be no questioning the history of a pair of gold candlesticks that once stood on an altar and now my best table. No one would worry about some three hundred handsome silver forks, a couple of dozen golden ewers, some exquisite Venetian glass, and chests of gold coins which suddenly appeared in the accounts of my household goods. Surely, to the Protestant God whom we all worship and adore, no one would trouble a loyal widow who has done nothing but love things of beauty that have come her way? There would be no great anxiety about lands that had once belonged to the church and now belong to me. And nor should there be. “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads the corn,” my Cavendish used to say to me, and sometimes, only half in jest, “the Lord helps them who help themselves.”

But neither of us—I swear to Our Lady—neither of us, at our most acquisitive, would have taken Tutbury Castle even as a gift. It will cost more to put right than it would to pull down and start again. I can just imagine my Cavendish looking it over and saying to me, “Bess, beloved, a castle is a very fine thing, but where is the profit in it?” And the two of us would have ridden away to a better investment: something that we could buy cheap and make better.

When I remember Cavendish, I have to marvel at my new husband, the earl. His family have owned half of England for centuries, and leased this property of Tutbury forever, but they have let it get so rundown that it is no good for them, nor for any fool that might have taken it off their hands. Of course, my husband the earl has no mind for detail, he has never had to trouble himself with the vulgar questions of profit and loss. After all, he is a nobleman, not a merchant like my Cavendish. He is not on the rise as my Cavendish had to be, as I was then proud to be. My husband the earl has such great lands, he has so many people as servants and tenants and dependents, that he has no idea what profit he makes and what are his costs. Cavendish would have been sick to his heart to do business like this, but it is the noble way. I don’t do it myself, but I know enough to admire it.

Not that there is anything wrong with Tutbury village. The road that winds through it is broad enough and well-enough made. There is a moderately good alehouse and an inn that once was clearly a church poorhouse in the old days before someone put in their bid and seized it—though looking at it and the fields around it, I doubt there was a great profit. There are good farms and fertile fields and a river that runs deep and fast. It is low-lying land, not the countryside I love: the steep hills and low valleys of the Derbyshire Peaks. It is all rather flat and dull and Tutbury Castle sits atop its own little mound like a cherry on a pat of syllabub. The road to the castle winds up this little hill like a path up a midden and at the top is a handsome gateway built of good stone and an imposing tower which makes you hope for better, but you are soon disappointed. Inside the curtain wall to the left is a small stone house which all but leans against the damp wall, with a great hall below and privy rooms above, a kitchen and bake-house on the side. These, if you please, are to be the apartments of the Queen of Scots, who was born in the Castle of Linlithgow and raised in the Chateau of Fontainebleau and may well be a little surprised to find herself housed in a great hall which has next to no daylight in winter and is haunted by the lingering stink of the neighboring midden.

On the opposite side of the courtyard are the lodgings for the keeper of the castle, where I and my lord are supposed to huddle in a part-stone, part-brick building with a great hall below and lodgings above and—thank God—at least a decent fireplace big enough for a tree at a time. And that is it. None of it in good repair, the stone outer wall on the brink of tumbling into the ditch, the slates loose on every roof, crows’ nests in every chimney. If the queen takes herself up to the top of the tower at the side of her lodgings she can look out over a country as flat as a slab of cheese. There are some thick woods and good hunting to the south but the north is plain and dull. In short, if it were a handsome place I would have pressed my lord to rebuild it and make a good house for us. But he has taken little interest in it and I have none.

Well, I am taking an interest now! Up the hill we toil with my good horses slipping and scrabbling in the slush and the wagoners shouting, “Go on! Go on!” to get them to strain against the traces and haul the carts up the hill. The castle doors are open and we stumble into the courtyard and find the entire household, mouths agape, in dirty clothes, the spit boys without shoes, the stable lads without caps, the whole crew of them looking more like slaves just freed from a Turk’s galley than the staff of a nobleman’s house, waiting to serve a queen.

I jump down from my horse before anyone has the wit to come and help me. “Right, you scurvy knaves,” I say irritably. “We have to get this place in order by the end of January. And we are going to start now.”