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The road that winds through it is broad enough and well-enough made. There is a moderately good alehouse and an inn that once was clearly a church poorhouse in the old days before someone put in their bid and seized it though looking at it and the fields around it, I doubt there was a great profit. There are good farms and fertile fields and a river that runs deep and fast. It is low- lying land, not the countryside I love: the steep hills and low valleys of the Derbyshire Peaks. It is all rather flat and dull and Tutbury Castle sits atop its own little mound like a cherry on a pat of syllabub. The road to the castle winds up this little hill like a path up a midden and at the top is a handsome gateway built of good stone and an imposing tower which makes you hope for better, but you are soon disappointed. Inside the curtain wall to the left is a small stone house which all but leans against the damp wall, with a great hall below and privy rooms above, a kitchen and bake-house on the side. These, if you please, are to be the apartments of the Queen of Scots, who was born in the Castle of Linlithgow and raised in the Chateau of Fontainebleau and may well be a little surprised to find herself housed in a great hall which has next to no daylight in winter and is haunted by the lingering stink of the neighboring midden. On the opposite side of the courtyard are the lodgings for the keeper of the castle, where I and my lord are supposed to huddle in a part-stone, part-brick building with a great hall below and lodgings above and thank God at least a decent fireplace big enough for a tree at a time. And that is it. None of it in good repair, the stone outer wall on the brink of tumbling into the ditch, the slates loose on every roof, crows’ nests in every chimney. If the queen takes herself up to the top of the tower at the side of her lodgings she can look out over a country as flat as a slab of cheese. There are some thick woods and good hunting to the south but the north is plain and dull. In short, if it were a handsome place I would have pressed my lord to rebuild it and make a good house for us. But he has taken little interest in it and I have none. Well, I am taking an interest now! Up the hill we toil with my good horses slipping and scrabbling in the slush and the wagoners shouting, “Go on! Go on!” to get them to strain against the traces and haul the carts up the hill. The castle doors are open and we stumble into the courtyard and find the entire household, mouths agape, in dirty clothes, the spit boys without shoes, the stable lads without caps, the whole crew of them looking more like slaves just freed from a Turk’s galley than the staff of a nobleman’s house, waiting to serve a queen. I jump down from my horse before anyone has the wit to come and help me. [link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
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[link widoczny dla zalogowanych] “Right, you scurvy knaves,” I say irritably. “We have to get this place in order by the end of January. And we are going to start now.” 1569, JANUARY, ON THE JOURNEY FROM BOLTON CASTLE TO TUTBURY CASTLE: GEORGE S he is a plague and a headache and a woman of whims and fancies; she is a nightmare and a troublemaker and a great, great queen. I cannot deny that. In every inch of her, in every day, even at her most troublesome, even at her utterly mischievous, she is a great, great queen. I have never met a woman like her before. I have never even seen a queen such as her before. She is an extraordinary creature: moody, mercurial, a thing of air and passion, the first mortal that I have ever met that I can say is indeed truly divine. All kings and queens stand closer to God than ordinary men and women, but this is the first one in my experience who proves it. She is truly touched by God. She is like an angel. I cannot like her. She is frivolous and whimsical and contrary. One day she begs me to let her gallop over the fields to escape the drudgery of plodding along the muddy road (I have to refuse); then the next she is too ill and too weary to move. She cannot face the cold, she cannot tolerate the icy wind. Her health is fragile, she has a persistent pain in her side. I believe she is frail as any weak woman.