A Fine Madness

by Alan Judd

  ‘You must tell Christopher what he should say and what will happen when he is stopped at the Chartley moat,’ I told Gilbert. ‘And how he should speak to Curll.’

  Gilbert leaned forward, elbows on the table, lowering his voice. ‘There will be two soldiers on your side of the moat. They are suspicious of strangers. I have herbs prepared you can carry in your bag and you must say you come from me, the apothecary, with herbs for the Queen of Scots to be delivered to the hand of Sir Amias Paulet. Sir Amias will depute Curll to receive them. When you are alone with him you pass Curll the letters I shall give you and receive from him any that the Queen is sending. You must say nothing about them, show no curiosity, act as if your main concern is the herbs and the letters are of no interest, nothing to do with you. Curll knows we have to devise a better means than these calls which already are beginning to attract attention. Last time one of the guards joked about the Queen of Herbs, she has so many now. But do not expect pleasantries from Curll. He is dutiful and wary and afraid of Sir Amias. They all are. He is a zealous guardian and the Queen complains of his harshness.’

  I was not surprised to hear that. Having worked with Sir Amias when he was ambassador to Paris I knew him for a punctilious servant to our Queen and a dedicated enemy of the old religion. Like Mr Secretary, he had witnessed the massacres of Protestants in Paris.

  Christopher rode out to Chartley the next morning. He was away an unconscionable time and, fearing that something had gone wrong, I eventually rode out myself. Knowing Sir Amias, I could say I had business with him if necessary. As I approached the grounds I met the landlord of our inn coming away with his brewer’s dray. He was a great hearty fellow with arms like other men’s thighs. His relentless good cheer masked an equally relentless pursuit of money which, along with dog-like devotion to whomsoever had power over him, rendered him trustworthy. Sir Amias had personally approved him as supplier of ale to Queen Mary and her followers and in return for a generous stipend, discreetly handled, he informed Sir Amias of anything he learned. He was forever protesting his honesty, to us and to his customers alike. Following Sir Amias’s lead, we referred to him not by name but simply as ‘the honest man’.

  He knew me only as an occasional traveller who paid promptly but he must have suspected I had some connection with what was going on at Chartley. We exchanged greetings, with me pretending I was out to exercise my horse and he pretended to believe me. I asked as casually as I could if he had seen my travelling companion, who had business at the house.

  ‘The young man with herbs? Yes, sir, I have seen him, waiting his turn like everyone else. It is busy there today, not only me and your herb man but the world and his wife have found reason to call. Sir Amias is in a choler with them all and now the Queen insists she must ride out to breathe the air and he must find soldiers to escort her. It is a great to-do. Ride on and you will see for yourself.’

  He flicked his carthorse on. I should have turned back, having learned what I needed to know, but just as curiosity killed the cat, so it spurred me on that day. I had a yen to set eyes on Queen Mary, having heard she was beautiful. Within a few minutes of riding farther into the grounds I could see the house and the moat through the trees. There was a bustle of people about the drawbridge and I had pulled up, determining to go no closer, when I heard hooves and wheels behind me. A carriage with half a dozen soldiers as outriders approached slowly along a track among the trees to my right. I backed up to make way and as the carriage passed I beheld her.

  To those who never set eyes upon the Queen of Scots, I can say that, even at twenty or thirty yards, hers was a face to launch a thousand ships, as our poet put it. Framed by abundant red hair, it had a clarity and a fineness that leapt across distance like a bright light, claiming your attention to the neglect of all else. Hers was an almost unreal glamour which, while you beheld it, eclipsed in your mind those other qualities, moral and personal, that made her so unwelcome in Scotland and such a threat in England.

  She stared hard at me and bade her carriage stop. She beckoned and I approached to within a few yards. This was not at all what I had planned and I was uncertain how to proceed.

  ‘Oo are you?’ she asked. She spoke English through her nose, like most French. She could not pronounce her H.

  ‘Thomas Phelippes, if please your Majesty.’ I had been about to use one of my other names but thought that if she were to make trouble I would have to seek protection from her keeper, Sir Amias, who knew my in my own name.

  She stared at me for some moments more, then turned away and bade her carriage continue.

  When she passed it was as if the sun had left me and I was back in the shadows in which I normally subsisted, a man of low stature with yellow hair and beard and a face marked with the pox. The sight of that Queen, with her impossible beauty, made me despair of marriage. What hope had I, how would I ever meet a woman who would have me? Yet, while God spared me from age and infirmity, I was still determined to find a good wife. On my ride back to our inn I did not think at all of our great matter.

  When Christopher returned that afternoon I told him I had seen the Queen. He had too, he said. She had set off in her carriage while he was waiting to be admitted to Curll.

  ‘Did you not think her beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, she is striking.’ He nodded as if contemplating an abstract quality. Then he looked at me. ‘A face does it for you, eh, Thomas? A face is enough?’

  ‘A face such as hers, yes.’

  He smiled. ‘You are too easily smitten.’

  He had done his job, passing the letters to Curll and receiving some from him which by candle that night I had to carefully open and set about deciphering, which was never easy work. But it was the next morning that he suggested the ruse, sir, that is the reason I am telling you all this. I had paid our bill and as we waited for our horses to be brought round I remarked on our host’s cheerful rapacity. Under cover of banter he had tried to charge for more ale than we had drunk. When I pointed it out he did not argue but laughed as at a joke.

  ‘An honest knave,’ said Christopher. ‘You know where you are with such men. Who pays him owns him. I helped unload the barrels while I was waiting and they gave me an idea for your future letters. Those barrels. Every week they go into the house and every week others come out. Why could not Queen Mary’s secret correspondence go in them? Wrap the letters in something waterproof so that they float in the ale, then Curll could find them and send the Queen’s replies in the same manner. Your honest man would surely do it for you in return for some additional consideration.’

  Thus was established the system that gave us oversight of all the Queen Mary’s correspondence with Thomas Morgan, and with all those in England who plotted the murder of Queen Elizabeth on her behalf. Gilbert called again on the house and suggested the arrangement to Curll, who thought it excellent, Mr Secretary agreed and Sir Amias dropped more silver into the open hands of the honest man. The result was that we knew the intelligence conveyed to her before she did, and read her replies before they reached their recipients. We would have managed without Christopher’s ingenious suggestion but it would have been more cumbersome, more vulnerable to discovery, and taken longer.

  His second contribution to the great matter was less clear-cut. It occurred later in the summer, by which time we had a comprehensive understanding of what Babington and his fellow plotters intended. Do I really need to describe this to you, sir? It became very well known. His Majesty surely knows it. Unless His Majesty has reason to fear such a plot against himself? Could that be the reason for his interest? If so I—

  Very well, Christopher Marlowe’s role. But I need to describe the whole to make that clear. Is it possible perhaps that we could order more coals for the fire? And more ale? I thank you, sir, I thank you.

  You will know, then, that Queen Mary entered a fateful correspondence with the wealthy and foolish young Babington, a gentleman of Derbyshire who had previously delivered messages from Morgan to the Qu
een. Now, leaving his wife and children at home and restless for further adventure, he took lodgings in London where he met John Ballard, the priest who pretended to be Captain Fortescue. They had known each other in Paris and Ballard travelled secretly to London, armed as I have said before with the Pope’s commission to dispose of the usurper Elizabeth and install Mary on the throne. He recruited Babington, and Babington in turn a number of other young Catholic gentlemen with time on their hands, money in their purses, adventure in their hearts and little in their heads. They were persuaded by Ballard that unless Elizabeth was removed there would either be a massacre of Catholics in England, as there had been of Protestants in France, or Spain and France would jointly invade. Thus, the plot against Elizabeth seemed to them not only a rightful restoration of the old faith but a patriotic duty and a great saving of Christian lives.

  In July of that year, 1586, young Babington wrote the letter that eventually caused the Queen to reply in what we called ‘the bloody letter’, the letter that damned her. In his letter Babington told her that the princes of Europe were preparing ‘for the deliverance of our country from the extreme and miserable state wherein it hath too long remained’. I have it by heart, that letter, even after these many years, so familiar did I become through going over my decipherment with Mr Secretary time and again. Babington proposed that England would be invaded, Mary freed and Elizabeth removed: ‘the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by excommunication of her made free, there be six noble gentlemen, who… will undertake that tragical execution.’ Those words were the plotters’ death warrants. But not quite Queen Mary’s because it did not absolutely prove her complicity. For that we needed her own words.

  Babington wrote the fateful letter in his London lodgings then handed it to one of the anonymous young men who collected correspondence for the Queen of Scots on behalf of the French ambassador, usually without knowing what they were doing. The ambassador would then have the letters secretly conveyed by Gilbert to our honest man in Burton-upon-Trent who would conceal them in the beer barrels for Curll to find. I would meanwhile have copied and deciphered them. Sometimes we intercepted them immediately, as on this occasion when the anonymous young man was provided by us and brought the letter straight to me. Babington was a careless encipherer who made frequent mistakes, which in some ways aided my work and in others slowed it because his errors were meaningless and I had to reconstruct what he must have thought he was saying. When I had finished the copying the original was resealed and sent on its way to Staffordshire.

  As I said, that letter was sufficient to hang Babington and Ballard and the other plotters but not enough to hang Queen Mary. We needed an incriminating response, and for that we had to wait. Ten long days we waited. Queen Mary, for all her foolish past conduct, was cautious of commitment and exposure. She wrote nothing in her own hand, not even notes. She would dictate her replies to Curll, who would put her words into cipher and conceal the missive in an ale barrel. On this occasion I was in Staffordshire awaiting it when the honest man, who by now knew my business, retrieved it and handed it to me. Thus was I copying, deciphering and reading Queen Mary’s reply long before the original reached young Babington in London.

  Curll was a much better encipherer than Babington and, knowing his keys, it took me little more than a day to unlock his work, make a fair plain-text copy for Mr Secretary and send it by rapid despatch. I took the original with me back to London, confident that Babington would know nothing of any delay when eventually he received it from one of the anonymous young men. I wanted Mr Secretary to see it, in case he wished to show it to the Privy Council or even Queen Elizabeth herself, such was its import. The crucial passage was that in which Queen Mary commended Babington for his zeal in combating enemies who sought ‘the extirpation of our religion out of this realm with ruin of us all’. She then added ten words which sharpened her executioner’s axe, words which showed she acknowledged and accepted the plot to murder Queen Elizabeth: By what means do the six gentlemen deliberate to proceed? That was why we called it ‘the bloody letter’ – we knew blood would run after those words. That the Queen knew well what she was about was further evidenced by her urging Babington to ‘fail not to burn this present quickly’.

  Once that letter was in Babington’s hands we knew we could move against the plotters and finally against Queen Mary herself. But for the latter we needed the authority of Queen Elizabeth. It was well known at Court that she was reluctant to execute a fellow Queen, her cousin at that. Mr Secretary and Lord Burghley found it hard even to discuss it with her.

  The Court was at Greenwich when I reached London and I had to go by river to meet Mr Secretary there. He wanted to see the original letter before it was delivered to Babington. He took me to one of the many small rooms of the palace, one that he had made his own by furnishing it with maps and books, although he was not often there. He was in better health this time and greeted me warmly.

  ‘I thank God for you, Thomas. You are truly an instrument of His work. But that does not relieve us of the necessity of continuing to strive to the uttermost in His cause. I think we have more to do with this letter.’

  He had on the desk before him the plain text copy I had sent in advance and now laid the enciphered original beside it. He looked from one to the other, stroking the point of his beard with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. ‘It is plain to anyone that the Queen of Scots implicitly acquiesces in this plot to murder her cousin and restore papal rule. It will be plain too that Babington and Ballard and their friends are mired in guilt. But I worry that plainness by implication may not be sufficient for the law to convict her under the Act for the Queen’s Surety, which requires proof that she is privy to the conspiracy, that she is engaged in it, is part of it. For that, something else may be needed.’

  I doubted we could provoke her into being more open. ‘She is cautious. Babington will not seek further authority because he will think he has it in this. And if we delay, the plotters who are now gathering like crows on the threshing floor may fly away and disperse.’

  ‘I know, Thomas, I know.’

  He continued to stroke his beard, gazing at the columns for figures in the enciphered letter. Somehow, in those moments of silence that felt like minutes, I began to divine his thoughts. I could hardly bring myself to say what I thought he was thinking, it seemed so great a hazard. But neither could I resist.

  ‘Unless, Mr Secretary, we added words to her letter.’

  His dark eyes rested on mine. I felt he had been waiting for me to say it. He nodded. ‘It needs a postscript.’

  It is curious to relate now, sir, but I may as well confess to you that after these many years I still remember my heart beating faster as I stood before him. What he proposed was a great and dangerous undertaking, the introduction of a forgery into a court of law convened under oath before our Lord. But Mr Secretary was quick to end my hesitation.

  ‘We must be very careful of the phrasing,’ he said, ‘and you must be very sure of your writing. And it must be done with all speed. We cannot delay delivery much longer.’

  I put my reservations aside and we worked on it together for the rest of that day in Greenwich. We had first to agree what should be said, words that made Queen Mary’s intention, already implicit in what she had dictated, mortally clear. They had also to be true to her manner of correspondence, bearing in mind that she thought in French and turned it into English. And they had to follow on naturally from what was already written. Once that was agreed, I had to translate it into Curll’s cipher, expressing it as he would have while ensuring that Babington would understand it. Then I had to copy Curll’s script precisely.

  Fortunately, I have since childhood had the happy gift that, shown a man’s hand, I can copy it so closely that he himself would think it his. It is the same with any man’s voice, accent or mode of speech. This gift of mimicry I never had to cultivate or work at. I simply grew up finding I had it, as some men may natural
ly and easily catch a ball, and others woo a woman.

  Even so, it took time. We had to send for inks like that which Curll had used, then mix them to get the right shade. I tried, shaped, tried again a dozen quills until I had one with which I could repeat his strokes precisely. Then I wrote out the eight lines of cipher three or four times on other paper to ensure I had his script exactly. Finally I added it to his letter. I can tell you now, from memory, how those ciphered columns read:

  I would be glad to know the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to accomplish the designment, for that it may be I shall be able upon knowledge of the parties to give you some further advice necessary to be followed therein; and as also from time to time particularly how you proceed and as soon as you may for the same purpose who be already and how far every one privy hereunto.

  Next it had to be resealed, a demanding task requiring great exactitude for which we used Arthur Gregory, a Dorset man and our master forger. The letter was handed to Anthony Babington the next day by someone he recalled afterwards only as ‘a homely serving man in a blue coat’.

  I hope you will inform His Majesty, sir, that this postscript, those fatal words Mr Secretary and I put together, was never used against his mother? When the letter – her own alone, the real letter – was read out at her trial it was shorn of that paragraph we forged. She was judged and condemned through her own words entirely. Mr Secretary discussed it with the Privy Council and after much debate they agreed it was better to trust to the words the Queen of Scots herself had dictated than to risk the whole case against her through allegations of forgery. It was not that the forged paragraph said anything she did not believe or wish for but that any doubt about it – she would surely protest it was not hers, as would Curll – might undermine the truth of what she had in fact said. That alone should have been enough to execute her – and was, as proven. I must tell you, sir, I was much relieved.