Chapter 43 #2
That evening, at supper with the Queen and the other great ladies of her household, Kate related what Francis had written in his letter. Elizabeth smiled when she heard his comments about Mary not being as beautiful as the flatterers said, so Kate seized her moment.
“Madam, when am I to see my husband again?” she asked.
Elizabeth’s smile faded. “When he is no longer needed up north. I thought you understood that, Kate. He is deployed there because it is where he can be most useful to me.”
Kate was growing desperate, clenching her teeth in frustration. “But Madam, I love my husband. It is hard, not to say unnatural, to be without him. May I not visit him from time to time?”
Elizabeth remained unmoved. “It is inconvenient at present. We will talk about it some other day.”
It was another of her maddening answerless answers. Grief and anger battled in Kate’s breast. How could Elizabeth be so inhuman?
She simmered until it was time to prepare the Queen for bed. When Elizabeth was standing there in her night-robe, and the others were leaving, Kate faced her.
“Bess, I am so unhappy. I cannot live without my husband, and I cannot comprehend why you don’t understand that, or feel for us.”
Elizabeth’s cheeks flushed. She looked just like her father.
“Kate, in my position, I cannot afford to let my emotions govern me. The decisions I take are for the good of the State. Francis is the best man for his office. His godliness will protect him from the Queen of Scots’s machinations.
I expect you to understand that, sometimes, sacrifices have to be made for the highest good. ”
Spare me your philosophy! Kate thought angrily. “But I need him here.” She hated herself for letting the tears spill. “I am worried about my health.”
“I am sorry to have put you in this situation,” Elizabeth said, in a kindlier voice. “I am hoping that a solution to the problem of the Queen of Scots will soon present itself. In the meantime, if you feel unwell, talk to me. I have the best physicians in the kingdom.”
Kate could do no more. She bade Elizabeth good night and retired tearfully to her lonely bed.
—
It was obvious from his letters that Francis was not happy.
He regarded Mary as a threat to the security of the realm, and he was clearly worried that she would escape.
“She resents the restrictions on her liberty,” he wrote, “and I have to endure her tears and rages. I have informed her Majesty that she is causing me more pains, perils, and grief than she does to any other man.”
Kate resolved again to beg Elizabeth to let her go north and be a support to Francis, but when she raised the matter, Elizabeth rounded on her.
“Kate, you must trust my judgment and accept the situation! Your husband is doing an excellent job at Carlisle, as I was certain he would. And I need you here. I do not want to hear any more of your complaints.”
Kate shut her mouth. She dared not protest too much.
—
Another month passed, and still no decision had been reached in respect of Mary’s future.
Francis had written regularly, and it was beginning to seem, to Kate’s dismay, that he was reconciling himself to living in the north.
He had apparently enjoyed watching football matches with Mary on the green outside the castle’s postern gate.
Despite their religious differences, it was apparent that he was beginning to like the Scottish Queen.
Kate was not at all happy about that. She had heard too much about Mary’s enchantments.
Francis had been a faithful husband, but he was a man with needs, and they were not currently being met.
Her imagination soared in tortuous twists and turns.
Elizabeth was pleased with his work but concerned to hear that he felt that security at Carlisle was problematic.
“I have decided that he shall take her to Bolton Castle,” she declared. “It’s farther south, but it’s a secure fortress and sufficiently far from both Scotland and London to pose any great security risk.”
Mary, however, refused to go. Francis wrote to Kate: “If I had to enumerate the difficulties that we have had to persuade her, instead of a letter I should be writing a book, and that somewhat tragical!”
Yet in July, he did manage to escort Mary to Bolton.
Kate hoped that the Queen would assign custody of her to Lord Scrope, the castle’s owner, but Elizabeth was having none of it.
Francis was to stay where he was. At her lowest moments, Kate began to wonder if Elizabeth was doing this so that she could have Kate all to herself.
Her unease mounted when she learned that her husband was trying to amuse Mary—who spoke French and Scots—by teaching her English, which would necessitate their spending long periods of time together.
Why could the woman not use French, the language in which she and Elizabeth corresponded?
Yet she need not have worried. In his next letter, which he addressed to her as “you, who are my other self,” he wrote that his position was becoming more and more distasteful to him.
“I have written to Cecil and demanded my recall. My dearest, pray use your own influence to bring that about, that I may be released from this unwelcome duty.”
Kate felt completely reassured after reading that.
She raised the subject when she next saw Elizabeth, which was at a tennis match the following morning.
“Kate, the answer is still no,” the Queen said, her eyes on the players. “Do not ask me again.”
A few days later, she was complaining that Francis was being overzealous in trying to convert his charge.
“It’s one thing to make her an Anglican, another to force on her his puritanic views!
” she snapped. “It seems he has commended to her the extreme doctrines and forms of Master Calvin. Well, he shall hear from me about that!”
Kate began to hope that she would now recall him.
Even his return home in disgrace would be better than this separation.
But all Elizabeth did was send him a sharp reprimand and order him to desist from trying to convert Mary.
Soon afterward, Francis protested to Kate that Mary had accepted his plain speaking on religion quite contentedly, even if she had taken no notice.
Kate had now come to accept that she could trust her husband with the Scottish enchantress, but she missed him so badly that it was making her ill.
Her old abdominal pains had returned and her digestion was uncertain, making it imperative that she be always within reach of a privy.
Beth was concerned, yet Elizabeth seemed not to notice.
For all her declarations that she loved Kate above all others, she had no idea of how unhappy she was making her.
Kate wrote and vented her frustrations on Francis, who replied that the Queen’s behavior seemed contradictory to him, too.
Beth had written to him to express her fears about Kate’s health, and he wrote that he also was worried, which alarmed her.
Had Beth exaggerated her symptoms? Heaven forbid, she did not want him to suffer anxiety on her account.
“I hope you are taking your physick,” he wrote.
She had not, she confessed in her reply. Beth had been nagging her about it, too. Belatedly, she downed the foul-tasting stuff, but too late. Toward the end of July, she went down with a raging fever.
Elizabeth was deeply concerned. She summoned the royal physicians and sat waiting with Kate, holding her hand, until they came. She even wrote herself to Francis, informing him of Kate’s illness. But she did not recall him.
By early August, the crisis had passed, and Kate was well enough to sit up in bed and read a letter newly arrived from Bolton.
“I am very sorry to hear that you are fallen into a fever,” Francis had written.
“I would to God I were with you, so that I might attend and care for you and bring about your good recovery. I trust you shall shortly overcome this fever and recover good health again. But darling, I fear that when you are in health, you often forget to prevent any sickness by taking your physick, and then you fall sick, and it is too late. I pray for your help, that I may be recalled and return to you, for I have little to do here. I have written to Master Secretary in this behalf.”
Reading his words, and sensing his helpless desperation, Kate begged Elizabeth, from her sickbed, to let him come home. But once more, Elizabeth refused.
“It is impossible, Kate. He is needed in the north,” she said, and changed the subject, leaving Kate in misery. That night, she cried on Beth’s shoulder.
From then on, Francis wrote repeatedly to Elizabeth and Cecil, begging to leave his post and return to London.
When Kate was up again, but still feeling weak, Cecil came to see her.
“I am sorry for your sickness, and for the Queen’s intransigence,” he soothed.
“Her mind is set—I can do nothing with her. Your husband has written again to say that as you have lately been sick, he believes that light duties and quietness of mind are the only means to preserve your health. He knows you are desirous to go north to be with him if he is not to return to court soon. He has asked me to tell you he thinks it likely that he will be at Bolton for five or six weeks. Between ourselves, Kate, I do not think anyone knows the Queen’s mind on that matter.
I am aware that Francis has spent a lot of money on doctors and medicines for you—I know the royal physicians do not come cheaply.
If he is going to be in the north for longer, he thinks it’s imperative for you to join him, for the comfort of your spirits and the healthful exercise of your body in traveling there.
He does not want you remaining at court, for until your body be stronger, he doubts that daily attendance on the Queen will improve your health. ”