Our intrepid reporter tracks down the rusticated Lady Mary FitzRoy
RENAISSANCE WEEKLY: Lady Mary, you've been absent from court for some months now. How are you finding country life?
MARY: [laughs, but there's bitterness beneath the sound]
Peaceful. Wonderfully, tediously peaceful.
[gestures around the modest room]
No whispered conspiracies, no coded messages, no need to calculate which smile might advance one's position. Just sheep, tenant farmers, and the occasional visit from the local rector. It's amazing how quickly one adjusts to irrelevance.
RW: Your absence followed some rather dramatic events involving coups and conspiracies. Can you tell us about your involvement?
MARY: [her composure slips slightly]
My "involvement," as you so delicately put it, was a mistake born of desperation.
[stands and moves to the window]
Do you know what it's like to be almost royal? To have been married to a king's son, yet have that marriage declared invalid? To possess a title but no fortune, beauty but no security?
RW: You're referring to your brief marriage to Henry FitzRoy?
MARY: [turns back sharply]
Brief? We were wed for three years, though we were... children, really. Henry was sweet, kind, everything his father wasn't.
[her voice grows bitter]
But when he died, they claimed our marriage had never been consummated, therefore invalid. No inheritance, no widow's portion, nothing but a courtesy title and the memory of what might have been.
RW: Which led you to seek... alternative arrangements for advancement?
MARY: [sharply]
A girl's got to eat, hasn't she?
[returns to her seat, smoothing her skirts with excessive care, continues in a more measured tone]
Let's not dance around it. I was recruited. Approached by those who thought my position at court - however tenuous - might prove useful. They offered me security, a future, in exchange for... services.
[meets our gaze defiantly]
What would you have done?
RW: Those services included seducing Master John Dee to steal his documents?
MARY: [colour rises in her cheeks]
Seduction? Who told you that? [laughs harshly]
Anyway, you flatter both of us. Master Dee is... was... surprisingly attractive for a scholar. Intelligent, passionate about his work, genuinely kind.
[her voice softens slightly]
If circumstances had been different... [catches herself] But they weren't. I had my orders, and he had information my employers wanted.
RW: Did you feel any guilt about betraying his trust?
MARY: [long pause]
Guilt is a luxury I couldn't afford - still can’t afford.
[voice hardens]
Besides, what did I really take from him? A forged document that meant nothing. He was clever enough to anticipate treachery - which says something about his opinion of my character, doesn't it?
[bitter smile]
He used me as much as I tried to use him.
RW: When did you discover the document was false?
MARY: [waves a dismissive hand]
My handlers figured it out quickly enough. The dates were wrong, the details nonsensical. They were... displeased.
[touches her cheek unconsciously] Very displeased.
Apparently, seducing brilliant mathematicians requires more skill than I possessed.
RW: What was your relationship with Thomas Seymour in all this?
MARY: [her expression grows cautious]
Lord Thomas? A charming man, when it suited his purposes.
He promised advancement, security, a place in the new order he was planning.
[Shrugs]
Like most men, he promised much and delivered little. And the promises he did make - they all died with him on the scaffold, didn’t they?
RW: Do you regret your choices?
MARY: [considers this seriously]
Regret?
I regret being born into circumstances that offered so few choices. I regret marrying a boy who died too young - not that I had any say in the matter, anyway. I regret trusting men who saw me only as a tool to be used and discarded.
[her voice grows stronger]
But I don't regret trying to secure my own future. In a world that gives women little power, we must use what advantages we have.
RW: What does the future hold for Mary FitzRoy?
MARY: [a genuine smile crosses her face for the first time]
Anonymity, I hope. I'm considering remarriage - a country gentleman, nothing grand, but honest and kind.
[touches her stomach almost unconsciously]
A chance to build something real, something lasting. The court was glittering poison. Perhaps it's time to choose a different sort of life entirely.
RW: Any message for Master Dee, should he read this?
MARY: [pauses, her mask slipping to reveal something almost vulnerable]
Tell him... tell him that not everything that night was performance. And that I hope he finds someone worthy of his trust.
[Straightens]
He deserves better than the games we courtiers play.
As we prepared to leave, Lady Mary walked us to her door, where a modest garden bloomed with spring flowers. When we commented on their beauty, she smiled genuinely for the first time in our interview. "I planted them myself," she said. "There's something to be said for creating beauty instead of trading in secrets." Whether this represents genuine reformation or merely another performance remains to be seen.
Mary FitzRoy spoke with Renaissance Weekly at her Essex estate in the spring of 1549, where she maintains a deliberately quiet existence far from the intrigues that once defined her life.