Mary Queen of Scots: A Private Life

1587, Fotheringhay Castle

The cold in these rooms is never absent, only altered. It comes through the stone, into the straw, into the joints, and by morning even the linen has the smell of damp confinement rather than any woman’s chamber. Keys sound in the passage before dawn, and after so many months I know the men by the pace of their approach. They still inspect, count, confer, withdraw. I am allowed paper and denied meaning. That is the arrangement. Somewhere beyond these walls the warrant is either signed or near enough to signing that the difference is vanity. They watch me now less as a queen than as a sentence awaiting its proper ceremony. My letters have been opened, copied, twisted. My prayers themselves would be taken as evidence if properly arranged. I know very well what shape they mean to leave of me once the axe has done its work, and it is not a shape I recognise. There is still a little time before they call for me, but not much, and less each day.