by G Lawrence
“If she is to remain in England she must stand trial, Majesty. If you cannot prove her guilty of murder, you have no right to hold her.”
“The notion offends me as much as perfumed leather does my poor nose, Cecil. It is an affront to divine kingship.”
“If she is acquitted, she can return home, and will not face death,” Cecil said, almost to himself. “Then, she is the Scots’ problem.”
I nodded. “I know, and little as I like it, it must be done.” I smoothed my dress, feeling weary. “In the morning, send for my good cousin Francis Knollys. I need a loyal man, and one safely married, to become her custodian. She will be accorded due respect, Cecil, as the Queen of Scotland, and I will think on what is to be done with her.”
“You cannot meet her, Majesty. To do so would taint you.”
“She is a queen, Cecil.”
“She is also an accused murderess, Majesty.”
“I know.”
I turned back to the window, thinking. Darkness squatted over the city, draping her long, black skirts over the imposing city walls, the homes, and the people resting there, bound in slumber as I was lost in thought.
When news of Mary’s arrival had spread, Archbishop Parker had remarked, “Our good Queen has the wolf by the ears.” Perhaps he was right, but to me it seemed the wolf was at my door.
The slightest breath of wind would see that door opened, and me devoured.
Chapter Two
Greenwich Palace
Spring 1568
When Cecil left, I stood at the window. Moonlight slipped across the ponds like silk, the breeze feathering the water into a trail of ice and fire. Fresh leaves glinted under the hoary moon, and gravelled paths shone like trails of diamonds. The end of spring had been warm, wild and wet. Days of sunshine surrendered to lashing rain and grey skies ceded to blue. The heavens were in a shimmering, fluctuating state of chaos and possibility, never knowing which season to obey; spring or summer; old or new. Perhaps it was therefore fitting my cousin had chosen this moment to step upon England’s soil.
The last months had brought change in other ways. That January, Katherine Grey had died. In Suffolk, at Cockfield Hall, seat of Sir Owen Hopton, Katherine had been kept under house arrest, sequestered from others, aside from her youngest son. People protested I was cruel to not permit Katherine and her husband, Hertford, to meet since they had been released from the Tower, but I wanted no more bastard babes born of their illicit union. Two sons whom others would use to threaten my throne were quite enough. Those who called me cruel ignored the fact I had allowed Katherine to keep her baby, and had sent her elder son to Hertford. They thought I should reunite the family, but I had been generous enough.
When Katherine had been sent to Hopton, he had been shocked by her thin frame and pale skin. He had asked for a doctor, whom I had duly sent, but all the doctors in the world can do nothing for one who refuses to eat. At the end of January, Katherine dolefully informed her servants she was not long for this world. Hopton was shocked that one so young could be so eager for death, but Katherine said she was lonely, without her Ned and her eldest son, and declared she had no reason to live. Hopton told Katherine she would recover. “No,” she had replied. “No life in this world; but in the world to come I hope to live ever. For here there is nothing but care and misery, and there is life everlasting.”
In her last hours, Katherine had sent me a message, begging to be forgiven for marrying without permission. “Be good to my children,” she pleaded, saying her boys had few friends and needed my grace. She petitioned for Hertford, asking that I forgive him. As she became weaker, Katherine asked for a chest to be brought to her, and from it handed Hopton two rings; her betrothal and wedding rings. She wanted them sent to Hertford. Hopton was surprised. These rings had not been produced as evidence that she and Hertford had married legally when their union had been investigated. Katherine sent a portrait to her Ned, along with her rings. Inscribed inside her wedding ring was, “While I Lived, Yours.”
Katherine died the next morning. On the day I heard of her death, I had gone to my gardens.
I had never liked Katherine, never warmed to her, yet I mourned… as much for the manner of her passing as for her death. I felt guilt. I had separated her from her reasons for living, and yet, I had acted as I had to. She had chosen to marry without consent, to get a babe in her belly, to lie to other suitors, to allow Hertford into her chambers whilst they were prisoners in the Tower in order to conceive another bastard babe. Time and time again she had betrayed me, flouted my commands, made a mockery of my authority. A queen cannot allow that. Power is an illusion. If thwarted, the fantasy fades. I could not allow the portrait of my power to dim. I had to act against her. I had to.
I could have taken her head, or that of her husband. I could have stolen away their sons and made them wards of the court. I did not. Hertford and Katherine were prisoners, but in grand houses, rather than ill cells. There was no more mercy I could have shown, yet I felt guilt.
And anger.
Katherine had had the choice, as my mother had not, to live for her children. Katherine could have raised her youngest boy, and in time, with good behaviour proven, seen little Lord Beauchamp again too. But she chose death. Katherine had stopped eating. She abandoned her children. My mother would never have left me, had she had the choice. Katherine accepted the cool, blissfulness of death, rather than struggling on for the sake of her sons.
Yes… I was angry. Angry she was more concerned with proving a point against me, than with living in order to shelter her children. This world is hard enough without children having to stand alone.
“You mourn for her, Majesty,” de Silva, the Spanish ambassador and my good friend, had said as he approached me in the gardens that day.
“I do. Yet there is a less worthy impulse in my breast, old friend. I find I have less to fear this day than yesterday.”
“A queen must always consider the advantages of every event.”
“She must… and must live with the darkness and light within, understanding there are uses for both.”
Yet did I have less to fear, or more? Katherine was interred in the local church at Yoxford, rather than joining her relations in Westminster Abbey. Even in death, I did not want her elevated. Think it spite, if you wish, but the true reason was political. Entomb her in Westminster, and her young sons, or devious men about them, might come to think they were the true heirs to the throne. Treat Katherine as a princess in death, and I might give life to rebellion in the name of new kings.
Katherine had been malleable, a prime target for ambitious men, but what is more impressionable than infant boys, who might be shaped and moulded into whatever men desire?
Katherine was buried with pomp and glory, banners streaming from the funeral procession, and hordes of common people weeping for her in the church. Her dog refused to eat, taking from the example of its mistress. It lay upon her grave, wasting away, until it died. Word was sent to Katherine’s last living sister, Mary Grey, under house arrest with their step-grandmother, Katherine Willoughby, the Dowager of Sussex. Mary Grey, too, had married without permission.
The last Grey must have understood that with her sister’s death, and her own shifted place in the succession, she had even less chance of release or reunion with her husband than before. Not that anyone wanted Mary for Queen, or Thomas Keys, a mere soldier, as King, but Katherine’s death brought Mary closer to the throne, making the stain of her illegal marriage deepen.
And Mary Grey is not the only one of my cousins with a stain upon her name, I thought as I touched a string of pearls at my throat. Softly, they glimmered under the reflected radiance of the moon, sending dappled rays of pearly light to dance over my roaming fingertips. Once the property of my cousin of Scots, these pearls were now mine since I had outbid Catherine de Medici for them. The Scots were selling off Mary’s jewels. They had no use for them now. I had no compunction about buying them at a fair price. They were me
ant to be worn by a queen, and Mary could no longer afford them. They were a symbol. I was a greater sovereign than my imprisoned cousin. Signs, when one lives amongst many who cannot read, are important.
“I would have thought you would want no more reminders of her,” Robin had said to me on the day the pearls became mine.
I had not answered. My lips had remained silent, for there was another reason beyond mere acquisition behind my purchase. There is benefit, at times, in feeling haunted.
When I purchased the pearls, I had thought Mary Stewart might be restored to her throne, but a crushing loss in battle had brought her dreams and mine to sudden, brutal death. On the 16th of May, my cousin, shaven-headed and bewigged to disguise her identity, and carrying only the gown upon her back, had fled Scotland. Deflected from France by the tumbling oceans, and crossing the Solway Firth in a fishing boat, she and her meagre allies had entered England. She announced she had come to place herself under my protection. I was not fooled. She wanted aid to recover her kingdom.
War was not welcome to me under any circumstances, and to go to war on Mary’s behalf, attempting to unseat our Protestant allies in Scotland, was unthinkable. Yet I could not countenance the notion of simply handing her to Moray, leader of the opposing party in her country’s war. Sending her to France or Spain was unwise, yet left in England Mary could become a focus for anyone with a reason to unseat me. There were other problems, too. Mary wanted to see me, but with doubt hanging over her, a thick mist of swirling qualms and suspicions about the death of her husband, I could not bring her to court. To meet her would be to vindicate her, and align myself with the murder of Darnley. She had a reputation to repair, but I had one to protect too.
I had always been a survivor. No matter my sympathy for Mary, I had to come first, as did England.
But as a monarch of another land, I could not legally hold Mary as my prisoner. She was also magnetic, beautiful and charming. Many a hardened politician had fallen for her. It was not inconceivable to think she might sway any gaoler I sent to watch her, making her more of a threat.
Never had I better understood the fear my sister had known for me, than on the day Mary of Scots stepped onto English soil.
Mary did not comprehend the weight she had placed upon my shoulders. She was not one to think of anyone but herself. And were her days of yearning for my throne done? I wondered. The Catholic north had rejoiced at her arrival. It had always remained a stronghold for Catholics, and there were many more dissidents there than in the Protestant south. Just how innocent was my cousin? Had she sorrowed for the loss of one crown, and contemplated claiming another?
There had been a time when I had dared to hope we might be united, as sisters, as women thrown into this dance of kings, but those days were as dead as Darnley.
She had done much to justify my distrust. Mary had married without my permission, even though she knew it was required in order for me to uphold her as my heir, and then her husband had been murdered, and her third marriage, done under duress after Bothwell had imprisoned and raped her, had only added to her poor reputation.
Under guard at Carlisle Castle, Mary had sent letters extolling our friendship, the symbiotic relationship of our twin thrones, and the love she had always harboured for me. They were piteous creations, as full of lies as truths.
Mary declared her lords had accepted her marriage to Bothwell. They did not want her to marry a foreign prince, she protested, so she had not. She said only a native of Scotland had the vim and nerve to control fellow Scots, and that was why she had married him. Mary declared Bothwell had been her mother’s most able defender; a man loyal first and always to the throne. She protested her kidnap had been real, but whilst in captivity, Bothwell had won her heart.
I did not believe a word.
Mary was attempting to slip a veil of respectability over Bothwell’s odious character. She did, however, admit that he might have been part of the conspiracy against Darnley, but said she had not known this at the time of her marriage.
I was revolted by her defence of Bothwell. I knew she had been taken captive and raped. There was too much evidence to suggest a more palatable, romantic situation, but prisoners sometimes fall for their guards, and abused people sometimes come to rely on their abusers. I knew that well enough from my time in the house of my stepmother, Katherine Parr, when her husband had hunted me as a child. Unable to comprehend that I was in danger, my mind had tried to trick me into an ideal of love; if I loved Seymour, I could not be hurt by him. A simple, foolish fiction… a way for a mind to protect itself.
But there was another reason for Mary’s defence of Bothwell. Her name was stained, defamed by the rape she had endured. If all this horror had been done with consent, there was no shame. My royal cousin had spun a pretty myth, trying to deny the harsh, brutal truth. It had not worked.
“Her people have cast her off,” Cecil had said. “They accuse her of moral turpitude, adultery, murder, and think her unfit to rule. They claim she engaged in sex with Bothwell months before Darnley was slain, and the two lovers plotted his death together.”
I had nodded, keeping quiet, for in truth I knew not what to say.
“They say her kidnap was staged,” Cecil had gone on. “An excuse so she could wed the man she secretly adored.”
They had gone further. Scottish lords used her pregnancy, which had ended tragically in the death of stillborn female twins, to demonstrate she had not been raped. There was a common belief that if a woman enjoyed sex, she conceived. Mary had conceived, therefore she had not been raped; a convenient myth for rapists to wield against women, and for others to support, enabling abusers to continue their evil.
However ridiculous, these thoughts were hard-set in the minds of many. My best option was to convince her people to spare her life and treat her honourably. But getting the Scots to take back my unwanted guest was going to be taxing.
Yet for all this, Mary’s letters strummed a cord within my soul. Her accounts of her mistreatment, of the shame smothered upon her, of her terror of false reports, had brought back feelings I had never wanted to recall. Mary’s letters reminded me of those I had sent to my sister during the time of my imprisonment in her reign. There was another echo, too… that of the rumours and slanders thrown at me when Amy Dudley had died. I understood how a woman might be misrepresented in this world governed by men and their prejudices. A woman would be judged always more harshly than a man. A woman would be made a sinner, to absorb and justify the sins of men.
I wanted to believe she had had nothing to do with Darnley’s death. That she had been used as a pawn by Bothwell. That her sins were of foolishness, pride and misplaced trust, rather than spite and murder. Yet I could not meet her, nor work for her, unless I knew she was innocent. That meant there must be a trial.
I had to see her restored on terms that favoured England, and any agreement must include the condition that Mary would be kept alive. Until I worked this miracle, she would be my politely-held prisoner. I had to maintain the fiction she was a guest, or see every king of hostile lands come to fight me, ostensibly on her behalf, but really for their own ambitions.
I was not alone in my troubles. Phillip of Spain, my beloved brother, as he liked to call himself, was, too, experiencing hardship. In the Netherlands, disaffected people had risen in revolt against their absent master.
Phillip was seen, not without reason, as cold and arrogant. He had never visited the Low Countries, thinking those territories inconsequential to the beauty, might and majesty of Spain. The Spanish Netherlands was a territory of many people and languages, home to revolutionary thought and bustling trade. Phillip used it as his purse. Revenue, Phillip minded not, but he had more problem with religion, or rather the wrong religion. Calvinism had taken root, finding support amongst the poor and the lesser nobility. Phillip was horrified by the rise in Protestantism, and tried to stamp it out, appointing stadtholders, regional governors who took charge of provinces. The King of Spain w
as utterly assured that national unity would come with religious unity, and tolerance was not something he kept company with. Margaret of Palma, Phillip’s bastard half-sister, was the regent. She was joined by a Council of State comprised of the Count of Egmont, leader of Flanders and Artois, the Duke of Aerschot, and Prince William of Orange, stadtholder of Holland, Utrecht and Zeeland.
These stadtholders saw Phillip as a damaging influence. Being an absent ruler, they saw he understood their country not, and they were not alone. Dutch and Flemish nobility resented the loss of their traditional liberties, and merchants disliked Phillip’s heavy taxes. Calvinists were preaching against him and in response, Phillip set the Inquisition roaming, arresting and torturing men for their faith. Unrest had settled upon the Low Countries, and Margaret of Palma was unable to maintain control. Her magnates were largely Catholic, but, like me, they did not hold with religious persecution, understanding it led to disorder. Many lesser nobles and commoners were Protestants, and had learned to fear the Catholic Church. William of Orange and the Count of Egmont wanted the Inquisition removed and changes in policy leading to religious freedom. Phillip would grant neither.