“‘These treasons will be proved to you, and all made manifest. Yet it is my will that you answer the nobles and peers of the kingdom, as if I myself were present. I therefore require, charge, and command that you make answer, for I have been informed of your arrogance,’” Cecil read. “‘Act candidly, and you will receive the greater favour from me.’” He held up the paper and slowly rotated it for all to see.
Mary looked around at all the faces forming a semicircle around her. “I am already forejudged, and condemned to die by this assembly here convened, yet I adjure you to look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England!” she cried. “Remind your Queen of it!”
* * *
After they were gone, Mary motioned to Jane. “I pray you,” she said, “bring me warm cloths for my head. I have a pounding pain in the forehead.”
“Forgive me, but I could not help overhearing,” she said.
Mary smiled. “You were meant to. I wish Elizabeth could have heard my very words rather than have them repeated to her in a twisted manner later.”
“Their words were harsh.”
“Yes, and they meant them. You know, Jane, that they will never permit me to live. I know this and am ready.” She sighed as she bent her head back and Jane laid the soothing warm cloths across her forehead. “I only pray that my courage will not fail at the test. It is easy to be brave here in my own chambers; every man is a hero before his own private mirror.”
“So you will appear?” Jane was rubbing the cloth methodically, sending the warmth deep inside Mary’s skull.
“Yes. Not for legal reasons, but for higher ones. I need to speak at last; I will not go silently into their prepared grave for me.” She gave a long, regretful sigh. “My courage has always been of the physical type—run, fight, ride. The kind that comes from pounding blood and anger. This requires courage of a different order. And, I beg you—whatever happens, when you leave this place, tell my story. Do not let my words and actions perish, or be snuffed out in this castle.”
Jane shuddered. “I cannot bear to think of it! Yet you plan it all so calmly.”
“For once in my life I must anticipate. I know it will be their aim to silence me, and I must counter that. I come from an ancient and honourable line of kings, and it is imperative that I die worthy of my blood.”
Even if I have not always lived worthy of it, she added silently to herself.
* * *
The night before the opening of the trial, she spent an hour in prayer before sending for Father de Préau. When the old priest came, she took his hand and withdrew into one of the tiny closets for privacy.
“Bless me,” she said. “Strengthen me for tomorrow!”
“I do,” he said. “Remember not to worry about what you shall say or not say, that in the necessary moment it shall be given to you what to say. Believe that.”
“I am frightened.” Her hands were cold, and she knew she would not sleep that night. “Frightened that I will be made to betray myself, my faith, my royal blood. For those are the things of which I am found guilty, those are the things that affront them.” She was shaking. “I will be all alone against the multitude of them.”
“Not all alone,” said the priest. “He will be there, right beside you.”
“I wish I could actually lean against Him. I wish there were something solid there.” She clasped her hands and dug the nails into her palms to steady herself with the pain. “Oh, Father, I have made such mistakes! Yet, in each choice I made, I made it in good faith, thinking it was for the best. I acted according to the knowledge I then had, which was limited. I saw that I should marry, and I loved Darnley, and he had royal blood to make him acceptable to my nobles. On paper, he was the perfect husband! but the things I did not know…”
“That is past,” said de Préau firmly. “No human being is God, to see into another’s heart, or into the future. Forgive yourself; God has. And never forget that out of that ‘sin’ came James, who will unite the two kingdoms someday. Leave these things to God.”
Mary lay wide awake all that night, all the while fearing that her wits would be blunted by fatigue.
* * *
Sunlight, diluted but golden, poured through the tiny windows as Mary was being dressed on the morning of October fifteenth. She felt tremulous but no longer afraid; everything seemed already to have happened, and it would unfold before her in the trial chamber. She therefore had no fear of ruining what had already been written, but only curiosity to know what it was.
The trial was to take place in a chamber directly above the Great Hall. She found her legs to be unusually swollen and stiff on this morning of all mornings, much to her embarrassment. That meant she would have to lean on two people, using them as crutches—hardly a regal entrance. But that, too, was written. So she selected Melville and Bourgoing, and twined her arms about them so she could walk slowly into the chamber, passing between two files of armed halberdiers to the entrance of the judgement hall.
Stretching before her, seventy feet to the end of the chamber, sat her judges. Two long benches ran the length of the chamber, and in the middle, a smaller table with the law officers of the crown: an inner and an outer rectangle, crowded with men. She was the only woman in the room. As she entered, forty-four faces turned to stare at her. She counted them, slowly, deliberately, as if to steady herself.
One for each year of my life, she thought. Was it deliberate—or a wink from Him, reminding me of an order above all their arrangements?
Silence prevailed; the men were staring at her, gaping at the legendary Bosom Serpent. Few in England had actually seen her in all the years she had been among them; indeed, they were more likely to have seen a ghost.
Was this the femme fatale, the woman who had driven so many men to distraction, to their doom? Time had stilled her dangerous charms, had utterly disarmed her. They felt a twinge of disappointment, mixed with relief. The black-clad woman making her way through the door had a double chin and a thick waist.
At the near end of the chamber, a canopied throne presided over the gathering, on a small dais. Mary made her way to it before she was gently stopped and pointed to a chair below it.
Mary cast a despairing look at the empty throne. “I am a queen by birth, and my place should be there under the canopy!” she objected.
“That is Elizabeth’s place,” said the Lord Chancellor.
Elizabeth’s place—mockingly empty. Her absence seemed more solid than the living presence of the judges.
Mary took her place in a velvet chair below the empty, lowering throne, settling herself gingerly.
She looked round. Here were the faces to go with the names she had heard for years. “So many councillors,” she whispered to Melville, “and not one for me!”
The Lord Chancellor rose and read the accusation against her. She was to be tried for conspiring the destruction of Elizabeth’s person and of the realm of England, and for the subversion of the national religion. She replied, as she had many times before, that she had been illegally detained in England, and that she had agreed to appear only to show that she was not guilty of the attempted murder of Elizabeth. She would answer only on that question, she said. She did not recognize the jurisdiction of the court over her, but came only to clear her good name.
The Lord Chancellor read, in Latin, the commission to try her; Mary protested that the new law had been enacted strictly to snare her.
Serjeant Gawdy, on behalf of the crown, now rose and accused her of attempting to kill Elizabeth, and of inviting foreign invasion of England; both were treason under the Act for the Queen’s Safety, which was law, regardless of how newly enacted or for what reason. He then detailed the Babington Plot, accusing her of knowing about it, assenting to it, promising her assistance to the rebels, and showing them ways and means.
“I knew Babington as a page in Shrewsbury’s household!” she replied. “But since he departed from thence, I have never held c
onference with him, written him, nor received letters, of that kind, from him; nor have I ever plotted, or entered into plots, for the destruction of your Queen.” That was what he would want her to say; she owed him that loyalty. That was what one always said, one always denied and dared others to prove it.
“Babington confessed!” said Gawdy. “Yes, he eagerly confessed, thinking that somehow that would buy him a privilege. As if to confess to treason were to buy forgiveness!”
He confessed! thought Mary, with a sinking heart. He betrayed himself and his beliefs. She winced inwardly to picture him broken, with the kind of brokenness that was worse than death.
“He told us of the letters that passed between you; indeed, he kindly reconstructed one. And it happens that he was telling the truth—for we have a certified copy of the original letter!”
Mary felt faint. How had they got it? The secret post … how had it been breached?
Walsingham now spoke. “The business with the brewer was all our doing,” he explained, looking directly at her.
So this was Walsingham: this sallow-faced, ruff-clad Puritan, the dark man who had been her adversary for so long. She stared at him, filled with shock and anger.
All their doing! she thought. From the beginning … to have taken the bait so unquestioningly … She felt sick.
Walsingham now read Babington’s letter in its entirety, followed by her answer to it. She suddenly wondered if Babington had written the letter at all; maybe the whole letter was merely a Walsingham forgery.
“I—It may be that Babington wrote that letter; but let it be proved that I received it! And to prove that I have consented to any wicked design, it will be necessary to produce my own handwriting! It is an easy matter to counterfeit ciphers and characters!” she said. “Besides, if Babington confessed such things, why was he put to death, instead of being brought face-to-face with me as witness to convict me?” She looked round in distress. “I appeal to the statute enacted in the fifteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, which expressly provides that no one should be arraigned for intending the destruction of the sovereign’s life but by the testimony and oath of two lawful witnesses, brought face-to-face before him.”
Cecil said sarcastically, “I thought you were so ignorant of English law! You see, gentlemen, how much credence can be placed in her statements and disclaimers.”
“Perhaps the Babington letter is a forgery!” she cried. “How do you know it was not tampered with? It has obviously passed through many hands! This is Walsingham’s doing! He will stop at nothing to achieve my death!”
Eyes flashing, Walsingham rose. “I call God to witness,” he said loudly, “that as a private person I have done nothing unbeseeming an honest man, nor, as I bear the place of a public man, have I done anything unworthy of my place. I confess that being very careful for the safety of the Queen and the realm, I have curiously searched out all the practices against the same. If Ballard or Babington had offered me his help in this matter, I should not have refused it; yea, I would have recompensed the pains they had taken. If I have practised anything with them, why did they not utter it to save their lives?”
“I speak only what I have been told, sir, that you are not above creating your own evidence!” said Mary. “You can see by that how dangerous it is to believe ill-wishers. I pray you not credit my slanderers any more than I credit yours.”
The hearing went on, with the confessions of Nau and Curie read out. The secretaries had confirmed the text of the Babington letter.
“Then they were threatened with torture,” Mary insisted.
On and on went the hearings, pausing only to take midday refreshment. Mary found herself thirsty and faint. Her composure was starting to slip, and she felt as if she were being attacked by a pack of wolves.
In the afternoon, more details were paraded out. Nau and Curie’s statements were reexamined, then Cecil accused her of refusing to sign the Treaty of Edinburgh. Next the Parry Plot and Morgan’s part in it was brought up, and Mary was questioned as to why she had paid Morgan a pension. She countered by asking why Elizabeth had given Lord James and the other Scottish rebels a pension.
Other accusations were thrown at her: her assumption of the arms and title of England in 1558, her declaring herself the sole legitimate descendant of Henry VII, her presumption in drawing up a pedigree proving herself a representative of the ancient British monarchs by descent from Edmund Ironside, her failure to reprove the Pope for naming her Queen of England—the commissioners not even waiting their turns, shouting that she was “guilty, guilty, guilty!” The sound rose to a babble, drowning out the cheerful crackling of the fire in the huge fireplace. The hearing broke up, dismissed by the Lord Chancellor until the morrow.
* * *
Mary was so drained she could scarcely walk unaided back to her quarters. But she was determined to stand erect while she was still in sight of the commissioners. When she reached her room, she had only the strength to say, “It is not finished,” to the waiting attendants.
Lying on her bed, stretched out full length, she gradually stopped shaking. The hearing had gone on for almost eight hours. Their evidence was damning; it was clear that she was doomed.
Yet I believe I answered well and nimbly, she thought. Perhaps there will be some who will carry away a kindlier impression of me than they came with. Jesu, so many of them, and ones I had wished to see. And dear old Shrewsbury there. He scarcely said a word.… Hatton, grown so worn … Sir Ralph Sadler, who saw me naked when I was just a baby, inspecting me … who would ever have thought he would outlive me? All these gentlemen, what did they say they were? Nine earls, thirteen barons, six privy councillors …
* * *
The trial resumed the next morning. Mary again entered the room leaning on her servants’ arms, and took her place in the crimson velvet chair. The forty-four faces appeared eager to resume; their colour was high and their voices loud. As she looked round the room, she was struck with a subtle difference between today and yesterday, but she could not immediately name it.
Now Mary rose and addressed the assembly. “Friends,” she began. Then she saw how the use of that word unleashed a volley of head-shaking. “Judges,” she amended it, “I came here voluntarily, out of regard for my own honour, to vindicate myself from the horrible imputation of having been a party to the hurt of Queen Elizabeth. But instead I have been attacked on many other issues; you have attempted to confuse me and lead away from the main charge. And as to the main accusation, you have produced no witnesses; neither have you produced any original writings, but only ‘certified copies.’ If you can condemn me by my own words or writing, I will submit. But I am sure you cannot produce any.”
It is true I agreed to it, she thought, in a moment of weakness. But I refuse to be condemned on false or tampered evidence. God has mercifully seen to it there is no earthly evidence of my lapse. He is my shield and protection.
“Listen to how sure she is! It is not innocence speaking, but craft! She knows full well they do not exist because she systematically destroyed them—proving her wiliness!”
“Hear, hear!” seconded other voices.
The noise rose until it was a rumble. Suddenly she realized what was different about the men this day: they already wore their riding clothes, they were booted and spurred. They meant to end the hearing early enough to leave while it was yet daylight. The time was already set; it mattered not what she said.
“My crimes, for which I am really on trial here today,” she continued, holding her head high, “consist of my birth, the injuries that have been inflicted on me, and my religion. Of the first I am justly proud, the second I can forgive, and the third has been my sole consolation and hope under all my afflictions. I am the last Catholic member of both royal houses of England and Scotland, and I would cheerfully give my best blood to procure relief for the suffering Catholics of the realm; but not even for their sake would I purchase it at the price of religious war and the blood of many others, having a
lways been tender of the lives of God’s meanest creatures.”
“Yet he who is tender with foals and piglets is often cruel to his wife!” cried one man.
“And every murderer has a mother who stands at the gallows-foot, extolling his kindness to his relatives!” yelled another. “‘Not my Gregory! He always watered the flowers so faithfully!’”
Everyone screamed with laughter, and even Walsingham guffawed. Cecil struggled to maintain order.
Mary burst into tears, which just ignited them more. She had always hated bear-baiting, where the chained animal was attacked by waves of snarling dogs, their jaws dripping with red foam. She had refused to watch this so-called sport, remembering with pain her tame bear in France, so gentle and obedient. Now she felt as if she had been transformed into a bear herself, held fast to be slashed and killed. And they said Elizabeth greatly enjoyed bear-baiting, that it was one of her favourite pastimes.…
“Let us proceed,” said Cecil. “Let us move on to the next charge, that of trafficking with England’s enemies, inviting invasions by Spain.” He nodded to Walsingham.
Walsingham rose. “There are numerous letters to prove this. She has written to her agents in Paris, to Mendoza the Spanish ambassador, to Philip himself, urging just such action.” He opened a great pouch and let the letters fall out like a shower of leaves. One or two landed on the floor.
Mary commanded her chest to stop heaving, and stilled her own trembling by willpower. “I do not deny that I have longed for liberty and done my utmost to procure it. In this I acted from a very natural wish. When it was denied me by Queen Elizabeth, I turned to other countries,” she said. “Yet I was not driven to this until I had been cruelly mocked by deceptive treaties, all my amicable offers slighted, and my health destroyed by rigorous imprisonment.”
The room had at last grown silent.
“I have written to my friends, and solicited them to help me to escape from Elizabeth’s miserable prisons, in which she has kept me now nearly nineteen years, till my health and hopes have been cruelly destroyed.”
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 121