Just a Queen (14 page)

‘Tonight, the Earl of Leicester and I are here as your friends – your oldest friends and we hope your most trusted friends. We know the goodness and kindness of Your Majesty's heart. It does you personal credit that you should take your responsibilities as a monarch so seriously and be so much more inclined to mercy than to tyranny.'

‘Tell that to the members of my parliament,' I said, my words somewhat muffled by my face being buried in my pillow.

‘Aye, Your Grace, that ignorant criticism was most unwarranted. But, Your Grace, the fact remains that you are not able to give full rein to your personal inclination. You are no ordinary woman, able to forgive the betrayals of men if she so chooses. You are the queen and the betrayal of others towards you is not personal: it is a threat to all who live and prosper in your kingdom. We are not arguing here about your desires, but about your duty.'

Cecil was right. I knew full well he was right. It was why I had appointed him my closest advisor and why to this day he remains my partner in all that I do. When it is required of him he will give me the advice he believes is right – not the advice I want to hear.

‘I will not sign any warrant referring to the Queen of Scots and her part in this conspiracy.'

‘She has not been accused, Your Grace, nor tried, nor convicted. She is a prisoner already and the guard around her has been reinforced. She is no threat to you at the moment.'

‘Why is it that we can lock Mary Stuart behind castle walls for the rest of her life, but not Thomas Howard? Why can we not treat him as we treat her?'

‘It is as I have said, Your Grace, because he has been duly tried, convicted and sentenced to death by a court of law. Evidence has been produced, defence has been made and fault has been proven. No such proceedings have occurred regarding the lady you have mentioned.'

‘She will be a prisoner forever now, won't she?' I sat up in my bed and my tears had ceased. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and Robin handed me a handkerchief. I blew heartily into it and gave it back to him.

‘I can see no circumstances where it would be safe to allow the Queen of Scots her freedom.'

‘Not even if she retired to a convent and abdicated her claim to any throne, willingly?'

‘Not even then. While she lives, she would – and will – remain the focus of all who would plot to remove a Protestant monarch from the throne of England. She must, therefore, remain under our control and surveillance.'

‘And if I die before she does? She is younger than I am, after all.'

‘We must pray sincerely that does not occur.'

‘You plan to make sure it does not occur, Cecil. I know you too well. I will not aid you in this, my lord, be assured of that.'

‘But that is not what we are discussing here. The
Queen of Scots is not under sentence of death; the Duke
of Norfolk is. It is his warrant you must sign and no other.'

‘Would that it will always be so.'

And I took the heavy paper and signed. Before the ink had time to dry, Robin had the parchment out of my hands and with a perfunctory bow had made haste to take the warrant to the proper authority.

‘You are in a great hurry to see your old friend and colleague dead, my lord Leicester.' But he had already left the chamber before I finished my sentence.

‘It is not easy for any of us to see this sentence carried out, Your Grace. Thomas Howard has been a friend and a colleague to us all.'

‘Don't take me for a fool, Sir Spirit. Once Norfolk's head is from his shoulders you will have weeded all the Catholics from my court – Southampton, Arundel, Cobham and Lumley – all gone now. Don't think I do not see what you do.'

Cecil looked at me and sighed. ‘Yet, Your Grace, if they had not conspired with this fanatic Ridolfi, if they had remained loyal and true subjects to you, they could have continued to grow and prosper in your garden. It is not what I have done. It is what they have done that has caused them to be rooted out. I do not like this bloodshed, good madam, any more than you do.'

And I looked at his face, lined and seamed as it was even then. (It is a veritable spider's web now.) And the weariness around his eyes and mouth indicated that what he said was true. My heart filled with warmth and fellow feeling for him at that moment and I picked up his worn hand and held it in both my own. As I did, I saw his eyes fill up with tears and together, quietly, as comrades in arms, we wept for what we both had to do.

Seventeen

Sir Francis Walsingham was tall and very slender. He was dressed entirely in black, which had the effect of making the white of his starched ruff seem dazzling. Despite the austerity of his appearance, the cloth from which his gown was fashioned was of the finest wool; its cut expensive and well tailored. His beard was perfectly trimmed and the nails on the ends of his long fingers carefully shaped. His hands were not stained with ink like mine. His eyes were small, but their expression was shrewd beneath a heavy brow and his nose was long with a distinct bump at its bridge. The face of a man who gave little away.

‘Arise, Sir Francis.' He was on his knees.

‘We have long been aware of your tireless and meticulous work and Lord Burleigh has sung your praises on many occasions. We are therefore in no doubt that you will make a formidable principal secretary.'

‘You have earnt your high office, Sir Francis, by your own merit.'

Cecil smiled warmly at the man whose career he had so carefully nurtured.

‘We have been particularly pleased with your ability to discover information discreetly and efficiently. There are many of our subjects who we need to watch carefully. Especially, perhaps, those who claim not to be our subjects.'

‘I receive reports daily from Tutbury, Your Majesty. There is not a word the Queen of Scots says that I am unaware of.'

It was another thing I liked about Secretary Walsingham. He was quick to understand subtleties.

‘You are sure of that, Sir Francis?'

‘I am certain. Every word she speaks, every word she writes is later examined by me. She uses a cipher, but we long ago broke the code and I have spies closer to her than any realise.'

‘And her thoughts, Sir Francis?'

‘Your cousin is a talkative woman, Your Grace, and her captivity weighs heavily upon her. From what my spies tell me, there is little that passes through her mind that does not also get articulated. When she is sad, she bewails her fate. When she is enraged, she swears and threatens. When she feels hope and joy, she cannot hold her tongue either. There is little strategy in her make-up, she is a woman who changes with her moods and hides nothing.'

‘Poor lady. It is what we all dread, my lord, is it not, that we are being betrayed by the people we trust?'

‘I would not waste too much sympathy upon the Queen of Scots, Your Grace. Her primary focus is on your undoing.'

‘Does she say so?'

‘Not in as many words, but she plots and schemes and
plans daily for her freedom and – if I may speak frankly, Your Grace – her freedom spells the end of yours.'

‘Yet it is hard not to sympathise. You must remember, Sir Francis, that I was once in just such a place as she, suspected of wishing my sister's demise when all I really yearned for was to be at liberty.'

I had hoped that Norfolk's death would satisfy those who saw treachery behind any whispered conversation, but I was wrong. No sooner was his noble head hoisted on a pike and his body consigned to a traitor's grave, than parliament began to pester me once again for the head of my Stuart cousin. It took all my eloquence to dissuade them from this dangerous course. I told them the case was not strong enough and that such an action would bring the fury of all Europe down upon our heads – Catholic and Protestant alike. I warned them against making a martyr of her and a tyrant (a Great Turk, perhaps) of me. I soothed them with assurances that she was well guarded and closely watched and that she was of less consequence as a tightly held prisoner than a dead rallying cry. Temporarily they ceased their baying for my cousin's blood, but I should have known better than to think that parliament would ever allow itself to bow to good sense and the will of its prince for very long. If they couldn't have her head, they wanted her crown.

‘I will not do it, Cecil. I will not. She has been the Queen of Scots for longer than I have been Queen of England – decades longer. Parliament – those jumped up little men of no breeding and no consequence – has no right under God or the law to take a title away from one who holds it by divine right!'

My newly promoted Lord High Treasurer (Cecil, of course) was persistent and dogged, but I could be just as stubborn.

‘She is rejected by her own realm, Your Grace. Her half-brother rules as regent in her place until her son is old enough to take her crown. He has been the Scottish king since 1566, after Mary abdicated.'

‘Was
forced
to abdicate, my lord, as you well know, at the point of a sword.'

‘That's as may be, Your Majesty, but she is now a queen in name only and the lords and House of Commons are united on this. They wish to deal with the traitor for your sake, for your safety. They cannot stomach that the Queen of Scots should escape unsanctioned for her part in the Ridolfi plot, while the Englishman whom she ensnared is dead and buried. At the very least, they want her title and status removed.'

‘I did not wish to see him so punished, good my lord, as you may recall. I did all I could to save him from the full wrath of the law.'

‘You have saved Mary, Queen of Scots, from its full wrath, in your mercy, but should you save her from any punishment at all? That, I think, is the question the parliamentarians are grappling with.'

‘It is not her I save, my lord. Can you not see that? It is the divine authority of princes that I protect. Mary herself is irrelevant in this. She is held securely, if you and Walsingham are to be believed, and her every move is watched and noted. What I am protecting is the sacred truth that monarchs are placed upon their thrones by God and may not be separated from the birthright of their title, prestige and – yes – royalty by mere mortals, no matter what crimes they may have committed.'

‘Her crimes have been heinous, indeed.'

‘The Queen of Scots' crimes, you mean, my lord Burleigh.'

I saw Cecil's lips tighten at my reminder of the courtesies due to my cousin, but I did not care; this was not about Mary's safety, it was about my own. Many remain dubious about my right to the throne. Mary's right – as the only living child of her father, the King of Scots – was never in question. It was her character that was at issue and it is never within the purview of men to judge the character of their natural superiors. There have been bad kings and good kings, monarchs who were loved and revered and others who were hated and despised. That is not the point, and it never will be. It is more permissible to kill a king than to take away his or her title and position. To remove a sovereign from the throne is to put man's law ahead of God's. It is blasphemy.

‘Give my parliament this answer, Lord Burleigh, and this answer only –
la royne s'advisera
.'

‘They will know you mean to do nothing.'

‘I do not care what they know or do not know. My answer is that I like it not and if you value the love I bear you, we will discuss this no longer.'

Cecil looked at me and opened his mouth. I held up my hand. ‘No longer, Lord Burleigh. I have said all I intend to say.'

Yet, no sooner had my new secretary been elevated officially than Sir Francis was returning me to the same wearisome discussion.

‘The issue of the Queen of Scots' complicity in the Ridolfi plot is in the past, Sir Francis and that, for now, is where I wish it to stay. The plotters have been dealt with and the instigator has disappeared to Europe. Indeed, my lords—' And now I glared at both the men in front of me. ‘Indeed, my lords, I am curious that in contrast to your desire to have the head of the Queen of Scots on such relatively flimsy evidence, the proven instigator of this plot, once so firmly in your custody as to taste the rack, has somehow escaped and made his way to freedom. If your spies are as good as you claim, Sir Francis, how has this been allowed to happen? If your care of me is so thorough and so tender, Lord Burleigh, I say again, how has this been allowed to occur?'

Oh Mary, I did fight for you. I fought for you repeatedly. Not for your freedom, I grant you, but for your life, your dignity and your rights as a queen. No doubt you looked upon me as your oppressor, but I was your protector too. If not for me, you would have been dead much sooner and died bereft of your titles. Even now that you are gone, I have continued to fight for your honour. Davison is in the Tower, cooling his heels, and I have banished my Spirit from court. I know not when I will feel able to set my eyes upon him again. It is his doing, this terrible deed. He has schemed for it, plotted for your demise as surely – nay, perhaps even more surely – than ever you plotted mine.

It felt as if I was fighting wars on many fronts during that period of my reign. I was fighting to keep my cousin's head upon her shoulders and I was also fighting for peace – to keep my country from declaring war on the Spanish Hapsburgs in support of the rebellious Protestant Dutchmen.

What is the o'clock? I look to the timepiece upon my wrist. The sight of its jewels glinting in the few shafts of sunlight that penetrate the gloom of my chamber sets me to smiling. I remember very well how pleased I was to receive it.

‘I am weary of affairs of state. I am weary of the lowlanders and their impudent struggle against their Spanish masters.' I asked my oldest friend, Leicester, dearest Robin, to sit with me beside the fire and share a glass of wine now that the day's formalities were ended. ‘Cecil talks of nothing but the anticipated revolt by the Netherlands against the Hapsburgs. He wants me to align myself with the Protestant lowlanders; indeed, it seems all of London does. They are hungry for a holy war against the Spanish.'

‘They are good Protestants, Your Majesty. They are weary of their papist yoke.'

‘Do not spoil the evening with talk of politics, my eyes. You forget, I knew the King of Spain, when he was married to my sister Mary. He is no Catholic monster to me but an anointed king, whose company, I confess, I once rather enjoyed. It is entirely possible that I owe my life to him. Had he but said the word, my sister would have had my head from my shoulders in a trice.'

‘God watched over you, my queen, not Philip of Spain.'

‘That's as may be, my lord, but I am not as eager to take up arms against mighty Spain as others would have me be. But, let us not talk of these weighty matters; let us be gay and foolish and speak of nothing of any importance.' And I clapped my hands and bade my musicians play.

Robin looked at me and smiled. I saw as he did so that the lines had deepened around his eyes and a small furrow had etched itself upon his brow. I lifted my finger and ran my nail along its length. ‘Take your ease, my lord. The finger of time is painting your cares permanently upon your face.'

‘Yet time has completely missed yours. You are as youthful as the day I first set eyes on you.'

‘I think I was about five years old at the time, my lord, so I think you flatter me.'

‘Perhaps a little, Your Grace, but only a very little.'

‘No matter, I find this subject of conversation much more to my liking.'

‘Forgive me, Your Grace. My mind was filled with the matters of the day. Speaking of time, Your Grace. I have something for you that may amuse.' And Robin reached into a pocket and pulled out a shining trinket. It glittered enticingly in his hand.

‘What is it, my lord? A bracelet.'

‘It is also a bracelet.' He held it just out of my reach.

‘Also? You speak in riddles.'

‘Here, give me your arm.'

I held it out to him and he fixed the pretty bauble around my wrist.

‘It is not a riddle, it is a marvel. See, here, it has a tiny clock, a timepiece embedded in its span.'

I looked closely at the object and saw that he was right. The bracelet encircled a tiny clock face.

‘You wind it, here, just as you would a clock and it marks the time of your days wherever and whenever you go.'

‘It is ingenious, my lord!' I was delighted with the novelty and turned my wrist this way and that to better admire the effect.

‘It is beautiful and useful, Your Grace. Just like its new owner.'

I have worn Robin's gift for a decade or more. As long as
it is wound daily, it keeps the time manfully and I could not do without it. I must glance at it a hundred times a day. I see now, that – despite the afternoon sunlight – it is once again hastening on to evening. The shadows lengthen beyond my chamber and another day since the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, passes. A speck of something mars the glass on the face of my timekeeper and I spit on my finger and rub it away gently. As I do so, I hear footsteps approaching outside my door.

A servant has knocked and enters, carrying a bowl of warm water and soap and towels. Philadelphia Carey – or Scrope as she now is – follows close behind, bearing perfumed oils and unguents. Behind her is Blanche Parry, bearing clean linen and gowns. All three hesitate in the doorway, wondering, perhaps, if I am about to assail them with pewter tankards or curses, but I am tired and, no doubt, I stink. The servant places the bowl and jug where she is bade, and Blanche is behind me unlacing my gown. Philadelphia brings a stool for me to sit upon and begins to gently comb and unknot my hair. The wig I discarded lies where I tossed it, in a corner against a tapestry. It looks as if a woman's head has rolled there, its face turned away from us. The sight of it and, perhaps, the gentle kindness of my ladies brings me undone and tears flow again. Who knew a dried-up old woman like me, whose heart has withered
to a husk from disuse, could have so much moisture
in her?

‘Hush, Your Majesty, hush. You must not take on so. What is done had to be done and the lady brought her fate upon herself.'

It is only Blanche that I would allow to talk to me in this way. Even Philadelphia, the daughter of my cousin Lord Hunsdon, is silent and keeps her eyes upon her task.

‘I am frightened by what I have done.' I sob out loud.