To think of it: no place on earth where I can find a home! she came to realize. Day after day she thought these melancholy thoughts, cataloguing her failures.
* * *
On the sixteenth day she arose, and it was all different. She had had one simple, revolutionary thought: My life is not over yet. By my death, I may redeem it.
From far away, from her childhood in France, her mighty uncle Guise’s words returned to her.
“My child,” he had said, touching her curls, “you possess the hereditary courage of your race. I think, when the time comes, you will well know how to die.”
Know well how to die.
How did a person know well how to die? It was the one thing for which there could be no rehearsal.
But it was also the one time all the eyes of the world were upon you, if you died a public death.…
A public death! she prayed. Grant me a public death! That is all I ask. Grant me a public death, and leave me to arrange the rest in a manner pleasing to You, as an offering I hope You will accept. As a sacrifice to make up for my agreeing, only for a moment, to murder …
* * *
At the end of the seventeen days, they came to fetch Mary, to take her … where? Was she to be taken directly to the Tower? Had it not been that she would regret not bidding a personal farewell to all her faithful servants, she would have preferred it that way. Let it happen, and happen quickly, before her resolve faded.
As she passed underneath the long passageway in the jaunty gatehouse, she was greeted with crowds of beggars. They had heard she was held here, and had gathered waiting for her release; the Queen of Scots was reputed to be a generous almsgiver.
“Alms! Alms!” they cried, pushing forward. Mothers held up ragged babies and pointed at them; crippled men leaned on their sticks and extended clawlike hands.
“Ah, good people,” she said, gazing on them. “I have no alms to give you, as I am a beggar now myself.”
“Liar!” hissed Paulet in her ear. “Always misrepresenting yourself, and for the better. You are no beggar, but have rolls and rolls of money put away in your cabinets.”
“It is money for my funeral expenses,” said Mary.
“Then you are right to save it, for you shall need it,” he said ominously. He prodded her into the waiting carriage with its shades rolled down.
* * *
When they returned to Chartley, Mary saw what had happened. Her quarters had been ransacked, all her private papers removed, and some of her personal possessions, which obviously could have no political value, taken: trinkets, a woollen shawl, even toys. The intruders had not even bothered to straighten up the mess, but left it contemptuously as it was. Doors hung open, discarded objects lay in piles around the cupboards and chests.
“The papers, letters, and ciphers were all boxed and sent to Queen Elizabeth,” said Paulet.
“I wonder how Her Majesty will feel upon reading so many secret letters of support from her own loyal courtiers?” asked Mary.
Paulet glared and turned on his heel, leaving her alone.
Slowly she walked around the room. It no longer felt like her room, nor did she have any part in it. She was done with those concerns.
Hurry, she thought. Hurry, before the old cares and fears return! Now I know why Thomas More rejoiced when they took him to the Tower and he no longer had an escape. Until then, he could have bolted through the great wide gate and onto the broad path.
* * *
“You will face a trial,” said Paulet. “It will be held elsewhere. Prepare yourself.”
“When will it take place?” asked Mary.
“That I do not know. Nor where. The Privy Council wished you to be sent to the Tower, but the Queen refused. They are in the process of selecting a site.”
“I see.” It was hard for her to continue standing; her legs had reverted back to their infirmity. But she was determined to stand there as tall and straight as possible.
“Are you not curious to know what has happened to your fellow conspirators?” Paulet said. His distaste for her was now being flooded with curiosity about her strange demeanour.
“I do not know to what you refer,” she maintained.
“Very good, very good, legally you must claim that. Clever. Your legs may be rotten, but your mind is sharp as ever. But I shall tell you anyway: Ballard and Babington and Tichborne and all fourteen of them were arrested, taken to the Tower, and tried. Found guilty, of course. People were in an uproar, and demanded a new form of death for them, one that was more cruel than the usual felon’s execution. But our gracious Queen refused; she said the normal one, if carried out according to specifications, was enough.” He watched her carefully for any signs of emotion. “So Ballard and Babington and five others were taken to St. Giles and drawn and quartered. This time the hangman did not let them hang until dead, but cut them down still alive and disemboweled them and castrated them.”
Mary felt waves of revulsion and fear taking control of her. She swayed slightly on her feet and reached out to steady herself against a table.
“Their private parts were cut off and burnt—”
“Enough.” She held out her hand. “It is a sin to revel in the sufferings of others, friend. So I must forbid you to speak further of it.”
“I am not revelling in it!” he said indignantly. But he, like many others, had been disgusted by the Queen’s command to execute the other half of the criminals as humanely as possible. Such squeamishness and misplaced charity did nothing to discourage further attempts at assassination.
“When you speak of mine, then, I hope your eyes have less shine in them.”
XXVII
Do warning was given. One night Mary said her evening prayers with her household, and the next morning her servants were locked in their rooms, while Sir Thomas Gorges and his henchman, Stallenge, arrived to conduct her away. They were armed with pistols, and treated her as if she were either a dangerous swordsman or a poisonous adder who might strike a mortal blow at any second. They posted guards at her servants’ windows so that they could not even wave farewell.
Mary descended the stairway slowly, in spite of their attempts to rush her. She could not walk as fast as they imagined she could, but she refused to be carried.
Outside a carriage awaited, two bay horses swishing their tails briskly.
“Where am I to be taken?” she asked.
“To Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire,” replied Gorges.
Surrounding the carriage was an armed body of Protestant gentlemen of the country. Their spears and muskets shone in the friendly September sunlight.
“If a dove flew there, it would be seventy miles away,” said Gorges. “But on the roads we have, it will be longer. Three or four days’ journey.”
“Will I be permitted to look out at the countryside?”
Gorges and Paulet laughed and looked at each other. “She wants to see the sights! Fancy that!” said Gorges. “Shall we also stop at the ancient monuments, and point them out to you? Yes, you may look out the windows. But at the slightest sign of waving to the people, or stirring up sympathy, the shades go down!”
The carriage rolled away down the long path leading from Chartley, whence the brewer had come labouring up with his wagon, onto the main road leading eastward. Chartley, with its rounded towers and large expanses of glass, diminished until it was just a speck on the horizon, no bigger than a stick.
The road took them through Needwood Forest and through Burton-upon-Trent—the very home of the fateful brewer—and then through Charnwood Forest and into the large, thriving town of Leicester.
Cardinal Wolsey was buried here, Mary knew. In the last month she had been reading extensively from English history. He, too, had been summoned by the monarch to come and stand trial for “treason”; he, too, had stayed at Wingfield Manor for a time. He had died among the monks at Leicester Abbey, possibly by his own hand, with the now-famous farewell, “Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.”
She shuddered and crossed herself. There was yet time to make sure that those words, those doleful, tragic words, would not apply to her. There was yet a great service she could do for God.
* * *
Fotheringhay reared up from the uninspiring landscape. As they had travelled east, the rolling hills had disappeared and the surroundings had begun to take on a level appearance, although the meadows were pleasant enough. The gigantic, brooding pile was situated on the River Nene, and surrounded by two huge moats: the outer one was seventy-five feet wide, and the inner sixty-five. The road leading up to it had always been called Perryho Lane.
It sounded Latin to Mary, and a sad, appropriate phrase at that. “Perio,” she whispered. “I perish.”
The carriage rolled across the drawbridge and in through the massive north gateway, its only entrance. The very stones of the ancient fortress were grey and stained and seemed to emanate gloom.
High on each side of the courtyard the thick walls soared, almost shutting out the daylight. A castle had stood on this site since the days of the Conqueror, and it seemed to have gathered and concentrated all the foreboding doom of each age within itself. It was now exclusively a state prison. It had once belonged to David of Scotland, but had been lost to the Plantagenets, who had played out their own painful parts here. Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cambridge, had been beheaded for conspiring against Henry V; Richard III had been born here; Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, had been imprisoned here. Henry VIII had tried to send Katherine of Aragon here, but she had refused.
Mary descended from the carriage, and found herself standing in the courtyard. She could see that there was a Great Hall, and also a chapel, along one side of the buildings. An octagonal tower stood in the northwest corner, and it was to this that she was led by a troop of armed men. There had been no formal greeting, no welcome from the castellan—whoever he was.
Up the stairs she laboured, stopping every fifth or sixth step. The old-fashioned stone stairwell was dark and the stones worn by countless feet passing over them, until the lip of each step dipped like a lily petal. At last she emerged onto a landing on the first floor.
“This tower is yours,” said Gorges. “There are two chambers on this floor, two on the floor above.”
She looked around the almost-bare room. It was only about sixteen feet across; the other “chamber” was nothing but a tiny closet.
“I thank you,” she finally said. “Will my furnishings—what is left of them—be sent?”
“Aye, they’re following.”
When they left, with a clang of the door, Mary stood shivering in the middle of the room. This was the sort of place where political killings took place—and there had been so many of them in English history: the smothered little princes in the Tower, the gruesome murder of Edward II in Berkeley Castle by a red-hot poker, and Richard IPs secret murder in Pontefract Castle. And who had murdered these kings? Other kings who had found them inconvenient, in the way.
Have they sent me here to be murdered? she cried silently to herself. O God, preserve me from a secret murder! For then I could not honour You in it, nor make a statement for posterity. Which is exactly what the English would wish to prevent.…
Shuddering, she sat down on a stool in the cold, dark room.
* * *
In a few days, a reduced suite of her servants joined her, and some of her furniture arrived. Her prie-dieu and portable altar and old ivory crucifix were set up to make a makeshift oratory. The remaining personal possessions, like the miniatures of her family, and treasured letters that had survived the rifling, came like friends to comfort her.
Her suite was quite small now: Jane Kennedy; Elizabeth and Barbara Curie; Gilles Mowbray; Andrew Melville, her master of the household; Bastian Pages and his wife; Willie Douglas; her old tailor Balthazzar; equally old Didier her porter; Dominique Bourgoing the physician; Jacques Gervais the apothecary; Pierre Gorion the surgeon; and Father de Préau. All her “outdoor people,” her horsekeepers and carriage driver, had been dismissed. She was not to go outdoors ever again.
All these people were jammed into the octagonal tower rooms; some of her bolder servants managed to explore the rest of the castle and reported back that there were many empty staterooms along one entire side of the courtyard.
“Ah,” said Mary, understanding the meaning. “Those are to house the men who are coming to judge me.”
* * *
A week after her arrival, Paulet stepped into the room. He looked triumphant as he said, “Madam, your misdeeds are now to be punished. You will be interrogated by the lords of the land. I advise you, therefore, to confess your crime now and beg pardon before you are formally convicted by a court of law.”
She looked at him, standing there so earnestly. She herself was seated, and did not rise. “You treat me like a child,” she said, “who should confess to its parents and so avoid a spanking. I have nothing to confess.”
His mouth dropped open and anger tore across his face. “Why, you—”
“As a sinner,” she cut him off, “I am truly conscious of having often offended my Creator, and I beg Him to forgive me. But as Queen and sovereign, I am aware of no fault or offence for which I have to render account to anyone here below.”
“Queen! Sovereign!” he sputtered.
“As therefore I could not offend, I do not wish for pardon; I do not seek it, nor would I accept it from anyone living.”
He shook his head angrily. “Pride, Madam, pride! You drown in pride!”
After he had left, Jane said to her, “You will be made to pay for those words, I fear.”
“What words I say now mean nothing. The Act for the Queen’s Safety was framed to destroy me. It is true, they have no legal right to judge me or try me. But they hold my body, and will punish it regardless.”
* * *
On October twelfth, a small deputation of lords, including Paulet again, visited Mary in her rooms. They came to announce what Mary already knew, simply by looking out her windows: that the commissioners had arrived at Fotheringhay, bolstered by a force of two thousand soldiers. There would be a trial, and Mary would have to answer to the charge of joining a conspiracy to hurt Elizabeth. She would be judged as “a person that shall or may pretend to the title to the Crown of this realm.” The punishment was, first, to be deprived of her title to the English crown forever, and second, to be put to death.
“You know you have no legal right to try me,” said Mary calmly. “As a sovereign Queen, there are no peers to sit in judgement of me but fellow monarchs. Are the stands to be filled with the kings and queens of the earth? If so, I welcome them. If not, I refuse to appear.”
Paulet thrust a letter into her hands. “The Queen commands you to appear.”
“The Queen cannot ‘command’ me. I am not her subject.” Mary read the letter quickly and handed it back to Paulet. “I am not subject to the laws of England.”
The Lord Chancellor, Thomas Bromley, snapped, “Yes, you are! You have lived under protection of them, and are therefore subject to them.”
Mary could not help laughing quietly. “I came to England to seek Elizabeth’s aid, and instead was put in prison. So I have not enjoyed either protection or benefit from these laws—nor have I understood from any man what manner of laws they were. They seem strange laws indeed.”
“Your prerogative as a sovereign avails you nothing in the realm,” replied Cecil. “And if you fail to appear, it makes no difference! You will simply be judged in absentia.”
Mary had not anticipated that. “Is it even so?” she murmured. “Judged even if I do not appear? How you twist the laws! I have begged to be heard. For twenty years I have asked to speak to Elizabeth, and to answer questions before a free Parliament. But to appear before a closed, secret tribunal … what are you so afraid of others hearing?”
Cecil, who had dreaded her arguments and recalcitra
nce, now broke in. “Never fear, all your words will be heard throughout the land—and all your deeds made known. You will have cause to wish they had been kept secret!”
Sir Christopher Hatton suddenly spoke up. Mary saw how the once-handsome courtier had aged since he had come to Scotland for the baptism. The baptism … “If you do not appear, it will be thought that you are hiding shameful things. If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear. But by avoiding a trial, you stain your reputation with an eternal blot.”
“I would rather die a thousand deaths than acknowledge myself subject to the authority of the Queen of England in any way, to the prejudice of regal majesty,” answered Mary. “I cannot thus submit to the laws of the land without injury to myself, the King my son, and all other sovereign princes. I do not recognize the laws of England; I do not know or understand them. And as for a trial, I am alone, without counsel or representation. My papers and notes have all been taken from me, so I cannot even prepare my own defense, except from memory. You have all my papers to use against me, whereas I am denied them to defend myself.”
“No treason trial permits counsel for the accused,” said Bromley.
“Enough of this,” said Cecil. “Hear the words which the Queen addresses directly to you. She foresaw just this arguing and resistance. ‘You have planned in divers ways and manners to take my life and to ruin my kingdom by the shedding of blood.’”
Mary gasped. The words were blunt, rude, and addressed not from one sovereign to another, but from a master to his disobedient slave. “Was there no salutation?” she interrupted him to ask.
“No. No greeting, no titles.”
The note of a master to a slave, indeed.
“‘I have never proceeded so harshly against you,’” Cecil continued. “On the contrary, I have maintained you and preserved your life with the same care which I use for myself.’”
Mary indicated the cramped, dark room. “Is this how she maintains herself?” she asked.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 120