A Tip for the Hangman

by Allison Epstein

  “Confess your treasons,” said the priest from behind Morgan. “Confess and repent, and go to your graves fearing God.”

  Repent or don’t, Walsingham thought. It didn’t matter now. The platform would fall either way.

  Morgan spat on the scaffold. Babington flinched. Over his shoulder, Walsingham felt rather than saw Marlowe do the same.

  “I have nothing to repent,” Morgan said. “God save Queen Mary.”

  “God save Queen Mary,” Babington said. His voice held steady, with strength Walsingham hadn’t expected. Neither had Morgan, from his owlish stare. Babington smiled, giving the older traitor a soft nod. “God save Queen Mary,” he repeated, louder.

  “And death to all tyrants,” Morgan finished.

  Death to all tyrants.

  Death to rebels first.

  The wind tore through the courtyard, the tall grass and the priest bent their heads as one, and the ropes jerked as Morgan and Babington fell.

  Twenty-Two

  Mary had been arrested in August and brought to Northampton to stand trial, but October arrived without any move to summon the court. The Privy Council and the lord chancellor locked themselves in the castle’s library and argued legal precedent long into the night. They claimed these meetings were essential to prepare an effective case, but Kit, who’d been tasked with transcribing them for the queen’s benefit, knew this was a lie. After the first meeting, the argument was so straightforward that a first-year Cambridge undergraduate could have made it. They needed the queen’s permission to begin, that was all. Until they got it, they would wait. And Kit would remain here, crafting memoranda to Whitehall, encoding his transcriptions using a cipher he’d been tasked to devise for the occasion, scribbling notes with a shaking hand.

  Kit slept worse with each passing week. Soon, he stayed awake until three or four in the morning, pacing the castle’s halls in endless, anxious circles to outrun the ghosts of Morgan and Babington. His nerves gnawed at him like acid through iron. He’d thought he’d understood the consequences of what he’d been told to do, but it was different writing it out in his own hand. Hearing it. Dreaming it night after night, the tortured screams of two men, and knowing that once their wracked bodies finally found their graves, he was the one who’d sent them there.

  Robert Poley, on the other hand, seemed untroubled by his role in the matter. He arrived at Fotheringhay three days after Kit and Walsingham, striding about with a careless bounce in his step. He haunted Kit’s pacing, attempting to trade stories as if he and Kit had always been friends.

  “I wish you’d seen Babington’s face, Marlowe,” Poley said. Kit feigned interest in a tapestry hanging in the west corridor, hoping Poley would take the hint. “When the soldiers came. His eyes got wide as gold sovereigns. God’s teeth, I thought the man would cry.”

  Kit felt the retch rise in his throat. That stupid peacock Babington. Heads spiked atop Bishopsgate. The snap of the rope, and the half-choked scream when the rope was exchanged for the blade. He turned his back on Poley and bolted into the privy, where he vomited for a full minute. He shook his head as he rose, knees weak. He couldn’t crumble now. This wasn’t the end. Not by half.

  It was almost a relief when Walsingham announced the trial would begin on the fourteenth of October. Anything was preferable to waiting.

  The tribunal met in Fotheringhay’s great hall, a cavernous space with a vaulted ceiling like an ancient mead hall. Two long rows of benches had been pushed along either wall for the nobles. A table for the notaries stood in the center, behind which sat a row of chairs for the lord chancellor and the lord chief justice. A bar had been raised at the back of the room, cordoning off a space for men without pedigree to watch. Windows in the room were scarce, and already the thick panes were fogged against the chill outside. A short autumn, then, and a hard winter on its heels.

  Kit entered as late as he could, when the room already teemed with noblemen. He felt them turn to look at him. Not seeing him but measuring him, and not liking what they found. He shrank into himself and stood behind the bar, resting his hands on the wood. Running suddenly seemed more attractive than ever.

  “Didn’t think you were coming,” Robert Poley said, from Kit’s left.

  Kit jumped. He scowled at Poley, his anxiety funneling into rage. Of all the people he could have stood beside.

  “Bromley sent the summons half an hour ago.” Poley nodded toward the back of the lord chancellor’s head in front of them. “Your Scottish heretic is taking her time. She must like an entrance.”

  Would Poley have answered Bromley’s summons sooner, in Mary’s place? Would he have sauntered into a room of men determined to condemn him any way they could? Kit’s fingernails bit into his palms. He turned the pain over in his head, using it as a center of gravity. He could pretend none of this was real, nothing but the sharp bite in his hands.

  The door opened, and two guards entered, flanking Mary between them. Kit’s chest tightened around his lungs.

  She looked like a queen still. Dressed simply, in a black gown with a white lace veil over her hair, she stood straight, towering. Her eyes flicked across the assembled noblemen—not like a hunted deer, but a snake preparing to strike. Her guards led her to the front of the room, but she ignored the chair set before the table. Tall and confident, she looked at the impatient Lord Chancellor Bromley, at the fragile Lord Burghley, at the imperturbable Sir Francis Walsingham.

  At the common men standing behind the bar.

  At Kit.

  There was no question. She recognized him at once.

  Poley scowled at Kit, then thumped him on the back hard enough to jar him. “You’re a damned hero, Marlowe,” he muttered. “At least pretend like you’re enjoying it.”

  Kit closed his eyes. The trembling in his head was easier to manage in darkness. When he looked again, Mary had sat down. The lord chancellor rose and paced to the front of the room, displaying a pathological need to command a crowd’s attention. Well, let him, then. The sooner Bromley began, the sooner this would finish.

  “Madam,” Bromley said. His voice was too high to perform his office with dignity, but no one dared laugh. “We are gathered to examine serious charges against you, to secure the safety of Her Majesty’s person by reaching a just verdict.”

  Mary smiled. Kit had seen her mock Anthony Babington with that same smile. “I am familiar with the idea of a trial, Lord Chancellor,” she said.

  Poley snorted. Kit could have killed him.

  Bromley’s eyes narrowed. “In that case,” he said, “you will also be familiar with the terms of the Act of Association.”

  “I am.”

  Every soul in that room was. No paragraph had been read, repeated, and debated more in the previous weeks. The Act of Association, to protect the life of Queen Elizabeth at whatever cost. Any conspirator who attempted, intended, or considered a plot against Her Majesty would be executed for treason. And if a conspiracy was discovered to place someone else on the throne, that person would be executed as well—whether they knew of the conspiracy or not. A crafty piece of legislation, and a new one. Walsingham had written it himself, scant months before recruiting Kit. Too neat for coincidence. Walsingham had set the legal precedent to condemn Mary for his suspicions, then found an agent to confirm them.

  “Then you understand the charges against you?” Bromley asked.

  Mary’s smirk had not faded. “Have you charged me with anything, Lord Chancellor? I thought you were providing a dramatic monologue.”

  “She’s stalling,” Poley said under his breath.

  “Stop it,” Kit hissed. This was agonizing enough without Poley treating it like a spectacle in need of commentary.

  Bromley’s words came fast and clipped. Under less formal circumstances, he would have shouted. “Mary Stuart, you are charged with treacherous violation of the Act of Associ
ation. You are charged with plotting against the life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Of conspiring with traitors. Of instigating plots against England from the moment you entered this country.”

  Mary’s lips twitched with a smile at this. She bowed her head to Bromley, like a musician accepting applause. Did she want to die? In a room like this, where every word and every gesture meant life or death, she had no room for carelessness. And that bow was a deadly mistake.

  But then, nothing would change the court’s mind. She had dignity, this way. Perhaps that was the point.

  “Madam,” Bromley said, “tell the court of your association with Anthony Babington.”

  “I apologize, sir,” Mary said. “I do not know the gentleman.”

  Bromley scowled. “Sir Robert Cecil,” he said.

  Cecil stood from the right-hand bench, a paper in his hand. He’d been waiting for his cue like an overeager player.

  “If you would read Babington’s confession for the court, Sir Robert,” Bromley said.

  Cecil began to read, but Kit wasn’t listening. He’d already heard Babington confess, voice wavering, edging toward tears, pleading without shame. Not the kind of confession he would forget. Instead, he watched Mary. Though she didn’t move, her face paled as Cecil spoke. Kit could see her putting together the pieces.

  Anthony Babington was dead. Mary, confined and isolated, must have suspected, but she hadn’t known until this moment. Now Mary could imagine what Kit had witnessed. Dying screams. Flesh burning in the courtyard. Perhaps she’d heard it, from whatever corner of the castle they’d imprisoned her in, but dismissed it as the product of an overstrained imagination. Would the memory, even diluted by distance, linger for her the same way it did for him?

  “Anthony Babington and Thomas Morgan have been justly punished for their treasons,” Cecil said. “Their brood of assassins will follow. And all swear they acted in your name.”

  Mary made the sign of the cross, then let out her breath slowly. When she spoke again, her voice was level. “I will pray for their souls as I pray for all Christians,” she said. “But beyond Morgan, who managed my household for a time, I do not know them.”

  “You corresponded with Babington,” Cecil pressed. “You wrote your intent to practice against the queen’s life. You cannot deny that.”

  Mary sat up straighter. Her dignity flashed like a comet, screaming fire at the end of the world. “I can and I will. Show me one letter in which I said I would harm my cousin. Show me one.”

  Cecil’s smile was inhuman. A hunting dog’s smile. Kit could almost see blood on his lips. “With pleasure,” he said. “Perhaps this will look familiar.”

  A sergeant handed a paper to Cecil, who extended it with a cruel flourish of his wrist. The familiar lines of the cipher stared up at Mary. Her hand traveled to her throat before she could stop it. Kit forced himself to look away from the letters. Each even breath had become a question of will.

  “I see no treason in this,” Mary said. Her voice sounded very small, and very far away. “I see no meaning there.”

  The lord chancellor smirked. “Oh, I think you do. Permit me to refresh your memory.”

  Kit couldn’t have been farther from Bromley if he’d tried, but even from this distance, he could see the second piece of paper Bromley thrust in front of Mary. Another copy of the letter, this one annotated with Kit’s own script. Her treasons laid out for the whole world to see. Bromley read them aloud: the generals, the foreign forces, the invasions. And the final note, the one Kit had deciphered here at Fotheringhay, the one in her possession at her arrest: Do it. Tell your men to begin.

  “Madam,” Bromley said coldly, recitation done, “do you deny you set these words down and signed them with your name?”

  Mary’s voice faltered, for the first time, as she replied. Her hand was still at her throat. “I am queen of Scotland still,” she said. “If there is justice in this court, you will not convict a queen.”

  “Madam,” Bromley said. “You neglect my question. Did you sign these words with your name?”

  Mary laughed, softly, a quiet rumble between weeping and shouting. “Sir,” she said, “you are my enemy.”

  “No, madam,” Bromley said. “I am the enemy of the queen’s enemies.”

  Mary’s eyes swept across the bench. Burghley would not help her, nor would Cecil, or anyone. Mary had played Whitehall’s game, and played it well, but they had played one step ahead.

  Then, maddeningly, she turned to Walsingham and smiled. Kit wanted to scream at her to stop. That smile would earn her nothing.

  “Sir Francis,” she said. “I know you have no love for me, or my religion. I do not ask you to deny this. But you are an honest man. You will not let this continue. You will see reason.”

  Walsingham didn’t blink. It was as if Mary spoke a language he didn’t understand. “Madam,” he said, “you mistake me. I do not consort with traitors.”

  Mary laughed like cannon fire. “No?” she said, locking eyes with Kit at the back of the room.

  Mary had known Kit as her servant. She’d spoken to him, prayed for his sister, trusted him with her fears. And now she would kill him if she could. Kit no longer cared what the tribunal thought of him. Let them stare. He couldn’t endure the accusation in that look another moment.

  Walsingham looked at Kit, nodded, then turned to Mary with a smile. You thought that man was yours, the smile said, but he is mine. He has always been mine. He owes you nothing. And you will get what you deserve.

  “Mary Stuart.” Bromley’s voice came from a great distance. “This court finds you guilty of practices against the life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. The penalty for such treason, as established by the Act of Association, is death. Your sentence shall be conveyed to Her Majesty, to be enacted at her pleasure.”

  Mary’s expression did not change. “Very well,” she said. “But grant me one thing.”

  “Madam?” Bromley said.

  “Let me spend my final days away from devils like you.”

  She swept past Bromley, who made no move to stop her. The tribunal watched her go in silence, followed close by her guards.

  At Babington’s execution, Kit thought he knew the sensation of blood on his hands. Now, he truly understood what it was to be a murderer.

  Twenty-Three

  Kit pressed his forehead to the window overlooking the courtyard. The icy glass felt both brutal and soothing against his burning skin. Winter had buried Northampton in snow, and icicles hung like dragons’ teeth from the bare trees. Their branches were the only gallows remaining, though even now Kit could see the swinging silhouette of Anthony Babington, suspended by a frozen rope. That had been early autumn. It was now February. How could it possibly still feel so warm?

  Against the window, he waited for the vertigo to pass. He’d spent five months in this manor, taking down encoded messages from the tribunal to dispatch to Whitehall, deciphering the replies. It was the most pressing crisis in England—if their correspondence fell into the wrong hands, there was no telling what might happen. Kit knew what he was doing mattered, but that didn’t erase the strain of five months surrounded by these cold, cruel men, hardly sleeping, going days without anyone addressing him by name.

  The verdict had been sent to the queen at once, but what followed was an agonizing exercise in equivocation. The messages Kit deciphered from Whitehall were circuitous, stating no opinion and agreeing to nothing. A bit late for a stab of conscience, Kit thought. The queen should have had her second thoughts before backing her prey into a corner and giving her hounds the taste of blood.

  “There you are.” Walsingham’s voice, behind Kit, seemed filtered through several feet of water. “What are you doing?”

  “Casting my horoscope,” Kit said, without looking. “Scorpio seems to be ascending.”

  Walsingham took Kit
by the shoulder. His grip was firm, somewhere between a father to a wayward son and a jailer to a condemned man. Kit flinched. He’d never seen Walsingham look at him quite like this before.

  “Come with me,” Walsingham said. “It’s beginning.”

  The dizziness rushed back, blurring Kit’s vision. He pressed one hand against the window, to transfer its chill to his burning blood.

  “Marlowe. Come.”

  Did Walsingham give the same command to his dogs?

  “The sentence will pass at ten o’clock in the hall. Five minutes.”

  The hall. Kit’s mind stuck on the words. An indoor execution. It felt ludicrous. A masque, a spectacle, theater. Five minutes? He hadn’t seen a new message from London in days. “Has the queen ordered—”

  Walsingham shook his head. “The queen’s advisors act in Her Majesty’s best interest.”

  She didn’t know, then. The Council had grown tired of waiting. If they could see what Kit saw, hollowed-out bodies hanging from a frozen tree, would they be so impatient to act?

  He felt his stomach turn and swallowed. Walsingham tightened his grip on Kit’s shoulder—reassurance or the tug of a noose? In what world was it so hard to tell? Then Walsingham let go, turned his back on Kit, and set off down the corridor. Kit had no choice but to follow.

  He’d walked these passages hundreds of times, but through the fog of his whirling mind, they felt skewed, dreamlike. Their two-minute journey seemed to take hours. At last, they reached the hall, where the tribunal already waited within. Kit could hear nothing through the door. The silence terrified him.

  He knew what he would see inside. He hadn’t stopped seeing it since Mary’s arrest. He didn’t want to see it now. Kit turned back—to hell with consequences, he would not sit in that room and wait for the axe to fall, he couldn’t. But Walsingham stood behind him, between Kit and freedom.