Just a Queen Read Online Free

those who had fled from my sister’s Catholic tyranny returned from Flanders and Geneva and other parts of Protestant Europe where they had taken refuge. They came back to England with their prejudices hardened and their demands for religious conformity ever more vociferous. Of course it was not just my Protestant subjects I could not satisfy; my Catholic ones were just as discontented. I had already begun to realise that it is beyond the powers of even monarchs to please both sides at once, or, as I grumbled increasingly to Cecil, any of them ever . Now – thanks to the fatal lance of one of her countrymen – the Queen of Scots had become the focus of my attention for perhaps the first time.
    â€˜A Scotsman, was it?’ I broke the silence, a suspicious thought about the splinter that had entered King Henry’s brain now entering my own. There was rebellion in Scotland, an uprising against Mary Stuart’s formidable mother, Mary of Guise, who ruled Scotland as regent in her daughter’s stead.
    â€˜There has been some speculation about that, Your Majesty, but according to Throckmorton it is baseless gossip. Montgomery did not wish to joust with the king and tried to cry off. It was Henry himself who insisted on one final bout.’
    â€˜Bah! How foolish to tempt fate when your own is not the only one at stake. At least that is one fear you need not have for me, Cecil. I will never be foolhardy on the jousting field.’
    â€˜Nay, Your Majesty, but I have seen you fearless on a horse.’
    â€˜You do my fearing for me, good master secretary, so I have no need of it.’ I jested with my councillor, but I was already aware of just how many men’s necks relied on my continued good health. At least Henry had an heir of his own blood and his own religion. Mary of Scotland was the natural heir to me, and a follower of the old faith. A fact not lost on those who most feared it, nor on those to whom it offered great comfort and hope. ‘She has styled herself Queen of England from birth, has she not?’
    â€˜Aye, madam. That she has.’
    â€˜I remember. I was only nine when she was born, but even then I thought her a greedy little infant, hungry for crowns.’
    â€˜Now she has the crown of France, perhaps she can be persuaded to give up her claim on that of England.’
    â€˜Perhaps, my lord – though if I were the new Queen of France, I would not do so. It remains a chip to be bargained with and I would never give one of those away without receiving something of value in return.’
    â€˜Not all women are as wise as Minerva, Your Grace. Indeed, I have only ever met one.’ He smiled at me shyly. Cecil has always been a ponderous flirt, but unlike others with more honeyed tongues, he meant what he said.
    Damn that Scotsman and his deadly lance! I have always loathed his brutish race: they have caused me to lose more sleep than even those savages the Irish. A jousting Scot may have inadvertently brought me to the state that I find myself in almost thirty years later – with my head aching and my eyes red and sore from the tears I have shed. Had Henry retired from the field that day, as he was advised, Mary may yet have kept her head and I my unblemished conscience. But these are foolish longings. Fate is as fate does. There is no avoiding it.
    How little I worried about the young Queen of France in that golden summer of 1559, the first year of my reign. She was safely across the Channel, married to the young king of another country. Her likeliest fate was to be the mother of kings of France and of Scotland. Cecil, my privy council and I discussed the possibility that a son of hers could perhaps one day unite the kingdoms of Scotland, England and France. Indeed, it caused my privy council and me some amusement, as I recall, to think of the consternation such an outcome would cause our common enemy, the King of Spain. But such a future seemed remote. I was