by Susan Kay
“Oh, you have a man in mind, do you? And who might that be?”
“Lennox’s eldest son—Henry Darnley.”
They were silent for a moment and he gaped at her. The light from the window danced on the crown of diamond spikes that held her blazing hair in place, and suspended a transparent cobweb veil beyond her bare shoulders. There was a little glow of malicious pleasure in her face, almost a touch of the sinister, and as he looked at her he felt, not for the first time, a small prickle of fear.
“But surely you don’t intend to let her marry a man who has a claim to your throne! Won’t marriage with your cousin’s son simply strengthen her position? What’s to stop them invading anyway?”
Elizabeth toyed thoughtfully with her fan.
“If she marries Darnley, she’ll find she’s got her hands too full to even think of my crown. She’ll be too busy hauling her husband out of every beer barrel and whore’s bed in Edinburgh. There’s a little more to dear cousin Henry than that angelic face suggests. Haven’t you ever wondered where he gets to whenever he’s excused attendance? Well, I happen to have made it my business to find out, and believe me, Robin—if Mama knew what her precious blue-eyed boy does behind the doors of a whore-house she’d beat him black and blue for it.”
Robin frowned. “I’ve never noticed anything amiss in his conduct.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t dare to bring his nasty little habits to court, not with Mama watching. He lives in terror of the bitch, like his father and the rest of her household. But once he’s off the leash in Scotland he’ll run mad as a rabid dog. We’ll hear no more of Mary’s pretensions once she puts a crown on Darnley’s head!”
“But what makes you so certain she will want him?”
“His pretty, pouting face—his Tudor blood—his claim to my throne—oh, he’s certainly got his assets! Superficially he’s a great match and I shall appear to move heaven and earth to prevent it. I shall scream and stamp and probably threaten war—that should really convince her that he’s worth the having! When she takes him—as she will—it will be with a crow of triumph at having out-manoeuvred me at last. And the minute that marriage takes place, the Countess of Lennox will go to the Tower for plotting it against my spoken wishes.”
Robin gave her a speculative glance and touched her clenched fist on her lap.
“God knows I’m no lover of the Countess, but I’ve often wondered why you hate her so much.”
Elizabeth stared into space with narrowed eyes.
“Oh—it’s an old grudge and I suppose I should have let it go by now, only every time the old harridan flounces into my presence, I remember how she made me suffer and I want to wring her scrawny neck all over again.”
She told him about the kitchen and saw his eyes widen in surprise and anger.
“Traitors suffer less on the rack,” he muttered. “You might have gone out of your mind.”
Elizabeth laughed shortly.
“I wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction, I knew it was what she wanted. But even so I still bear the scars of her malice.” She held out her hands at arms’ length, palms down, and for the first time he noticed their continual tremor. “Ever since then I’ve slept badly, disturbed by the smallest sound, I snap and slap for no apparent reason, so that behind my back my women curse me for a bad-tempered bitch—oh yes, they do, and it’s true!” She frowned. “A lot of other people had a hand in wrecking my nerves, Robin, but Lennox was the only one who did it out of spite. And Lennox alone will pay for it—as I swore at the time.”
“By seeing her son made a king? Won’t that be worth at least ten years in the Tower to her?”
Elizabeth smiled slowly at him, and something about that smile made him shiver involuntarily.
“The Scots have sharp daggers and a long-standing tradition of killing their kings. I imagine they’d make short work of any mincing he-bawd who tried to lord it over them—and Darnley’s just fool enough to try it. One sniff of power and he’ll think he’s God Almighty.”
For a moment Robin was silent, staring at the floor.
“You intend to send him out to his death, don’t you?” he said at last. “That’s your true motive—your ultimate revenge on Lennox!”
She looked at him coolly.
“My only true motive is to restrain Mary’s ambitions and protect my crown. That’s all that really matters. Anything else that accrues from this is purely incidental, but I think it will work very nicely—don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t see how you can possibly expect to play chess with the emotions of half of Europe.”
She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair playfully.
“In that case you’ll be prepared to put a thousand gold crowns on the outcome.”
And that truly staggered him, for where money was concerned she had all the instincts of a miser. She would never bet such an amount on anything she did not consider to be an absolute certainty, but the possibility of winning such a wager from her was irresistible. It would upset her for days if she lost!
So at last he agreed to play the part she had assigned him, took on her wager and watched incredulously as events unfolded steadily, almost entirely as the Queen had predicted.
* * *
In order to make him a suitable candidate for Mary Stuart’s hand, Elizabeth raised Robin to be Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh. It was a royal title which had never before been bestowed on one without a drop of royal blood, but as she had surmised, under the circumstances even Cecil could not breathe a word against it. Sussex and Norfolk held their tongues with remarkable restraint, so that the only person at the English court who looked as though he might choke on the issue was the Scots envoy, Melville, who was forced to watch the ceremony of investiture and witness the Virgin Queen of England tickling the neck of the new-made Earl who knelt before her. Robin looked up at her with a familiar grin and she parted her lips in a burlesque of a kiss, while Andrew Melville held himself rigid to suppress his burning desire to stride up and slap her presumptuous face. He had already suffered a great deal from the English Queen in the preceding weeks. On more than one occasion, she had backed him into an impossible diplomatic corner, demanding to know whether he considered her to be more beautiful than his own mistress. Who was the better musician, the better dancer? He had grown scarlet with embarrassment beneath her wicked gaze as the outrageous questions became increasingly personal and he was uncomfortably aware that her attendants were doubled up with amusement at his acute discomfort.
“And which of us is the taller, Sir Andrew?”
“My mistress stands several inches above Your Majesty.”
“Ah, then she is too tall, for I myself am exactly the right height for a woman—do you not agree, sir?”
What could he say? How could he ever face his own mistress again? He had never in his life been made to look such a wooden idiot, but this investiture was the final straw. How dared she insult his Queen by offering this shabby adventurer, the man who was commonly reputed to have murdered his wife in order to find a place in the royal bed? And how dared she publicly demonstrate the relationship which was obviously still between them as though her original suggestion had not been insolence enough! Tickling his neck on a solemn state occasion—what did they do in the privacy of her apartments if this was how she behaved in public? And as for that disgusting suggestion that the three of them should form one household—he glanced up and quailed, for the ceremony was over and she was bearing down upon him once more. And if she made one more tasteless remark—just one!—he was going to throw diplomacy to the winds.
“Well, Melville—what do you think of my new creation?”
“No doubt he will adorn his place,” said Melville drily. “He is fortunate indeed to have a princess willing to reward him for his services.”
She knew what he meant by that and was
amused.
“I detect a certain lack of enthusiasm, Melville.” She glanced pointedly at Darnley, who bore the Sword of State and a bored expression. “I hope you don’t prefer that long lad over there for your mistress.”
Melville was startled. How in God’s name had she got wind of their interest in Darnley? Did she want Darnley for herself? Certainly her tone implied that she would not consider Mary’s interest in him in a friendly light.
“Why, madam,” he replied hastily, “no woman could prefer that beardless lady-faced boy to so fine a man as Lord Leicester.”
She smiled coyly, inclined her head in approval of his answer and beckoned the new Earl to her side. Melville drew aside in some relief. As far as he could tell, he had assuaged her suspicions, but her attitude had confirmed his private opinion: Darnley was a good catch that must be netted with the minimum of delay. For if she knew, she would stop it—her tone had made that quite clear.
The reaction in Scotland to the Earl of Leicester’s suit was exactly what Elizabeth had hoped for. Mary was blind with rage and deaf to the most elementary promptings of common sense. Neither her advisers nor her half-brother were able to reason with her and persuade her to call Elizabeth’s bluff. The insult was intolerable. The Horsemaster, the murderer, the son of a traitor and—worse than any of these—the cast-off lover! How dared Elizabeth try to pass him on as though he were a well-worn slipper whose comfortable fit she could heartily recommend. It was disgusting—disgusting!—and she would not give the proposal a moment’s serious thought, no, not even with the subtle promise of the English succession as a wedding present.
Rage stripped away the mask of patience and restraint which Mary had cultivated for nearly three years, exposing her raw emotions to the air. And Elizabeth allowed Darnley to escape to Scotland at the precise moment when she judged her cousin to be ready to fall in love with the first handsome candidate who crossed her path. Darnley was an English subject—he would bring Mary nothing but his Tudor blood and his remote claim to the English throne, as Mary’s outraged bastard brother, James, did his best to point out to her before it was too late. As he watched his half-sister’s helpless infatuation take its natural course, James pleaded, begged, and finally threatened; while Elizabeth, apparently furious at the turn events were taking, demanded Darnley’s immediate return to England. The open hostility from James and Elizabeth was sufficient to convince Mary that Darnley must be a good match. He was also a Catholic and the most handsome and charming young man she had ever had the good fortune to meet. The choice seemed patently obvious to her—she was heartily tired of humouring her enemies. Her marriage to Darnley was conducted in almost indecent haste, simultaneously satisfying a physical lust and a personal spite against her half-brother and her English cousin, the two people she had begun to hate more than anyone else on earth.
Within a month, the marriage was celebrated by civil war. James led her outraged Protestant nobility in open rebellion against her and she rode into the field against him, nursing a devastating personal knowledge of the perverted drunkard who was now her King-Consort. The peace which Mary had so skilfully preserved in Scotland since her arrival was shattered beyond repair, while in England Elizabeth smirked as the new Earl of Leicester paid out his thousand gold pieces and seriously began to wonder if she had second-sight.
After six months of degradation and misery with a debauched brute for a husband, pregnancy was Mary Stuart’s sole triumph, all she had to show for the marriage that had split her kingdom and turned her half-brother into a traitor. Only the devotion of her closest adviser, the stunted little Italian musician David Riccio, saved her from abject despair, as slowly and carefully he began to rebuild the bridges which her hasty marriage had destroyed. It was soon obvious to Darnley, to the Scottish lords, and to the anxiously watching English councillors that Mary was receiving too much good advice and that something drastic would have to be done about it. So on a bitter March night, with a savage brutality unparalleled even in Scottish history, Riccio was stabbed to death in the presence of a mistress six months gone with child. Darnley held Mary while the Lords Ruthven, Morton, Lindsay, Kerr, and Douglas plunged their daggers into the little Secretary in a frenzy of blood lust; he stood by, with quiet satisfaction, while Kerr pressed a cocked pistol against Mary’s side and threatened the life of his unborn child. He was a king at last, taking a kingly revenge on an inferior rival, and his conscience never stirred; but later, alone with his wife, his sense of self-preservation did and the signs of nervous agitation were unmistakable to Mary. She had neither time nor strength to waste voicing her loathing of this spineless traitor—that could come later when she was safe. Now she needed the pitiful craven to engineer her escape, and she began to play mercilessly on his fears with such success that a mere night later saw her riding with Darnley to the safety of Lord Bothwell’s castle at Dunbar. And when the news was brought to England, Elizabeth astonished her own advisers by applauding the courage and cunning by which Mary had won free of her enemies.
“I’m only sorry she didn’t stab Darnley with his own dagger at Dunbar!” she cried. “The mean-minded knave should be boiled alive for the way he’s treated her.”
It was too much for Leicester’s logic. He had to point out to her that it was she who had sent the mean-minded knave to her cousin in the first place, but she did not appear to hear as she stalked up and down the room with an angry swish of brocade.
“They say he held her and forced her to watch it all—a helpless girl carrying his own child.”
“Madam, that helpless girl is your deadly enemy, you’ve said so yourself before now. And you knew Riccio was to be murdered. I showed you Randolph’s letter weeks ago—you approved of it.”
She shot him a look of hostility.
“I approved the principle, not the means. Neither you nor Cecil told me that it was to be done in her presence with the poor devil clinging to her skirts and screaming like a stuck pig. They say her gown was soaked with blood—”
Elizabeth stood in the centre of the room, clenching and unclenching her hands. They were alone, so he could not accuse her of play-acting for the benefit of watching ambassadors.
“If I’d known it was to be done like this I’d have warned her—I swear I would.”
He was silent, trying to reconcile this angry sympathy with the cold cunning of her diplomacy. Increasingly, he was beginning to see the woman and the Queen as quite separate entities. A pity one never knew which one would be called to face!
At last he said cautiously, “Well, it’s done now. Does it really matter how?”
“It could have caused her to miscarry.”
Robin shrugged. “I’d say it’s not too late, even now, to hope for that.”
“Hope?” she picked up an inkwell from her desk and flung it at him wildly. “You think I hope for the death of unborn children? God, what an insensitive pig you are. Get out of my sight and don’t come back until you’ve wiped that gloating smile off your face.”
He picked his way carefully over the trail of ink and bowed himself out of the room, reflecting that it was rarely possible to know just what she would welcome. Evidently the only kind of treachery she seemed to approve of was her own.
In the corridor beyond he met Cecil, who glanced at his ink-splashed doublet with a quizzical expression.
“Still angry, I see,” the Secretary remarked. “This is perhaps not the time to seek audience.”
“Not unless you aspire to decapitation by inkwell,” said Leicester drily.
The two men exchanged a guarded smile. For a fleeting moment there was an alliance of puzzled male sympathy, as strong and irrational as that which had suddenly united Elizabeth with her sworn enemy.
They withdrew together beyond the Privy Chamber, civil with each other now, as political necessity had increasingly forced them to be.
“What do you make of this business with the S
cottish Queen, Sir William?”
Cecil frowned and glanced round cautiously to ensure they would not be overheard.
“I think it a great pity they allowed her to escape. Given time and the right support, she will regain her full power and influence in Scotland.”
Leicester gave him a heartless little smile.
“Time is the one thing no one can give her—from what I hear she has no hope of surviving the birth. Three more months, Sir William, and God may resolve our problem for us.”
Cecil sucked in his lower lip and gnawed the edge of his greying beard.
“The fortunes of every Englishman may now depend upon the fate of Mary Stuart in childbed. I hope you’re right, my lord—indeed I hope you’re right.”
Chapter 3
All the windows of the Great Hall had been pushed open and a gay riot of music and laughter spilt out into the sweet dusk beyond. It was a sultry June evening and not a breath of air stirred the silent trees in the rambling riverside gardens of Greenwich, as Sir Andrew Melville rode hell for leather into the empty courtyard and tumbled from his spent horse. Grooms hurried forward to take the reins from his hands and he paused a moment to draw his sleeve across his sweating face, before stumbling through the clouds of midges into the palace.
In the hot, airless corridor beyond the Great Hall he encountered the Secretary of State who stiffened visibly at the sight of him.