Her Majesty’s chamber pot is still warm and in its puddle of purple urine is a sizable turd.
“What do you want me to do with that?” Beale asks.
“You have to go through it,” Wilkins tells him.
“Why?”
“Two years ago we found a note tied in a length of sheep’s gut. They’d paid the dong farmer to tip it to one side.”
Christ.
“It is the only way she can get anything out,” he goes on. “So. We do what we must. I’ve got everything ready.”
There’s a bucket of water and a block of black soap. There’s also a spoon.
“You have to kind of…”
Wilkins mimes a pressing action with the spoon.
Beale gets to work. He gags constantly.
After a moment there’s a thick paste and a little knot of what could be anything.
“Give it a wash,” Wilkins tells him when he shows him.
He picks it out with the tip of the spoon. Into the bucket of water and then vigorous stirring. Then he fishes it out and puts it on the table.
He still doesn’t want to touch it.
“She’s a queen for Christ’s sake.” Wilkins laughs. “It’s an honor to touch her shit.”
Eventually he teases the knot apart. A thin strip of silk, that’s all. Wilkins whistles.
“So what?” Beale asks.
“Maybe nothing,” Wilkins admits, “but how did it get there?”
“She must have eaten it,” Beale supposes.
Wilkins agrees. “But why, eh? That’s the question.”
“We’ll have to show it to Master Walsingham,” he says. “He’ll be pleased.”
Beale goes to stand outside, to get some air.
Above, in Cassiopeia, the new star shines as bright as ever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sheffield Castle, September 25, 1572
There is not a single thing—ewer, candlestick, book, sample of embroidery, pot of dried flower heads—left atop any surface. All have been swept to the floor, and Margaret Formby has never seen the queen in so foul a fit of rage. Mary Seton strokes the queen’s back, whispering to her in French, while the queen stands leaning straight-armed against the window, legs apart and breathing very heavily. It is, Margaret thinks, as if she were giving birth.
She wishes she had never come here. She wishes she had never entered Mistress Seton’s service. It had seemed perfect at the time, but as soon as they came south and found the bonds of captivity tightening around the queen’s household, something dark and ungodly had entered her life like a canker in a rosebud.
When Margaret was first asked to perform the strange procedures for Queen Mary, she was told they were on the orders of Mary’s French physician. It was a way of isolating the malign humors they told her. Margaret had been flattered to be so trusted to tie the knots in just such a way—tight, tight, really tight, but not too tight—but when, afterward, when they would summon her back to untie the ropes, she was always shocked to see the queen’s body dissected by the welts the cords left in her soft, soft flesh, and the patchy rashes left from the beeswax they melted over her naked body. There were often puckered pinch marks too: once she saw Mary Seton rubbing down the queen with a linen cloth, and her pale, blue-veined breasts were crowned with green bruises.
Soon after that Mistress Seton told Margaret that Her Majesty’s health was not improving, despite the time spent in the cords, and the French physicians had sent further instructions that involved more strenuous efforts at soothing Queen Mary, and of removing the malignant humors manually.
“No one must know that Her Majesty is ill,” Mary Seton said. “Nobody.”
And so it had begun, an almost daily regimen of stroking the queen’s nether parts until she shuddered.
“That is good,” Mary Seton said. “You are good at this.”
Margaret was surprised this was good for the queen’s health. She had done it to herself more than once, and afterward always felt drained and a little depressed. Queen Mary seemed to seek what she called “translation” and yet the very moment it was over, she found it repellent, every aspect and even the idea of it. But soon she would demand it once more, as if this time it would end her miseries. It never did. She never felt better.
Meanwhile further orders came from the French physicians—though how, Margaret never knew—to rub harder, faster, and to push her fingers more deeply. The physician said she must bite the queen’s breasts, not so hard to draw blood, but to leave the nipples raw.
And then the suppression of the airway started, and she went to Mistress Seton, who had by this time passed onto her all these medical duties, and Margaret told her it frightened her to be half strangling the queen, and of her fears of misjudging it.
“You must do as she commands,” Mistress Seton had told her.
“But it feels—against God’s command,” she’d said.
“You must do as she commands.”
And so she had.
Time and time again, until now she has become an almost constant companion and knows the queen’s body—not just its outer appearance, but its inner workings—better than her own.
But she is not happy. The queen’s morbid neediness for this stimulation sickens her and she has come to dread the summons: “Margaret.”
But what is she to do? She was plucked from her family in Scotland and is risen above all other maids, high, yet not so high as Mary Seton, and so there is no one with whom she can talk, share fellowship, or find relief for herself. She finds she craves fresh air, silence, a cool wind in her face, spring sunshine, the chatter of children, anything but this oppressive shared captivity. She could scream.
“Margaret.”
Oh God.
This time the queen wishes for rapture for the wrong reasons. She is fixated, almost mad with desire for it, yet is not at all desirous, and is so tense and burningly miserable that rose oil needs to be used, and her breath is hot and foul, and she never relaxes, and so it is almost impossible. No. It is impossible. It is dangerous. Margaret panics and loses her touch. The queen will not be delivered.
“Get off me! Get off me! Get out!”
Margaret leaps away as if scalded.
“Mary! Mary!” the queen shouts and Mary Seton comes swiftly to her side to correct her dress. The queen is clench fisted, weeping hot tears of anguish. Mary Seton soothes her as she would a child, and Margaret hurries away, likewise in tears. She cannot stand it. She cannot stand being cooped up all day in this foul atmosphere, performing all these wicked tasks.
She runs down the steps and out into the castle bailey.
Guards in Shrewsbury’s colors watch her impassively. She walks and walks, and only occasionally does she glance up at the top floor of the tower, where she sees a face, briefly, like a smear at the window, but what is she to them?
At length Mary Seton sends John Kennedy to fetch her in. He is a boy of about fifteen winters, someone’s son, obviously. He runs errands and fetches bottles and so forth. Most of the time he sits by the door of the bailey, whittling spoons and leaving piles of splinters. Ordinarily they hardly speak to each other, though they might be five years apart in age, and from similar families, though his are from Edinburgh, she knows, while hers are of York. He is very pale skinned, with cheeks that flare whenever he speaks to a woman.