In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  Finally it was over. The wedding feast would follow that evening, but now, she could absent herself for a while and take her ease at the manor house.

  When she gained her apartments she dismissed her ladies, who were nothing loath; the gardens were warm and rose-scented and love was in the air. She was just replacing her shoes with a pair of forgiving velvet slippers and preparing to hoist her tired feet up onto a cushioned hassock when a knock sounded upon her door.

  “Damn and blast!” she muttered. “What now?” Was she never to have a moment’s peace? “Come,” she said wearily.

  Into the room filed the four most powerful men in England; Cecil; Robert, now Earl of Leicester; her cousin, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk; and another Howard cousin, Thomas Radclyffe, Earl of Sussex, newly returned from his post in Ireland. She eyed them warily.

  “Here is an unholy alliance,” she quipped sarcastically. Cecil and Robert were like oil and water, her two Howard cousins were constant rivals for her affection, and they all resented Cecil and hated Robert. What could possibly have brought them together at the same time? “Well?” she sighed.

  The men shuffled their feet and would not meet her eyes. Cecil, as chief advisor, could have spoken; Robert, as her favorite, should have spoken; Norfolk, as the premier peer of the realm, had the right to take precedence over them all. Still, no one spoke.

  “God’s death!” she cried in exasperation. “Would you disturb my peace and then not tell me wherefore?”

  Sussex, newly returned to England after a long and fruitless absence in Ireland, had always liked and admired his royal cousin; he stepped forward. The others had on many occasions been made to taste her temper; he had not had to do so for many a year, even when he had returned from Ireland a failure, his thankless, impossible task there unaccomplished through no fault of his own. He would speak, and take the brunt of the anger they all knew would follow their news.

  “A messenger has arrived from Sandgate Castle, Your Grace,” said Lord Thomas.

  Elizabeth fixed them all with her penetrating eyes. Sandgate…? Ah yes, a stop amongst many on her upcoming royal Progress. “And says?” she asked, eyebrows raised in anticipation. Had the French forestalled her after all, and attacked the coast? That fear had been at the back of her mind ever since Mary of Scotland had returned from France. And now that trouble was brewing up north, the idea of an imminent French offensive had come to the forefront to haunt not only her sleep, but her waking hours as well. The very purpose of her visit to Sandgate was to assess the castle’s defenses; it lay twenty miles south and west of Dover, and might well be called upon to augment defenses there should the French ever take it into their heads to invade.

  “The Lady Mary Grey has married the Castellan there, a Master Thomas Keyes,” said Sussex.

  The queen’s reaction surprised them all; she laughed heartily. “Married?” she cried. “To Master Keyes? The giant? Oh, that is rich! What a couple they must make, she standing not four feet high and he fully seven!”

  The men eyed each other carefully; had they miscalculated? Or had the queen failed to grasp the implications of yet another heir to the throne of England marrying without royal leave?

  Suddenly Elizabeth stopped laughing. “And what inspired this act of folly? Have we any idea?”

  “Yes,” said Cecil. “According to my man, they have been much thrown together in making the preparations for Your Grace’s royal visit to the castle, and they…”

  The queen’s pale skin began to flush red and her golden eyes to smolder. “And they what?”

  “They…well, from what we understand they fell in love, and…” Cecil was nothing if not practical; the reasons were irrelevant as far as he was concerned. What was relevant was that yet another Grey sister had acted rashly, broken the law, and thereby endangered the succession. “There are several witnesses to the ceremony, Your Grace.”

  “They are to be separated at once, do you hear?” she said quietly. “My cousin is to be confined in the Tower and Master Keyes is to be sent to the Fleet Prison. I shall have no little Keyes bastards threatening my crown! See to it at once!”

  “But Your Grace,” said Cecil. “The marriage was performed by clergy and duly witnessed. What God hath joined together, let no man…or woman…put asunder. It is true that they have broken civil law, but…”

  “And what is the law for, if not to punish those who break it?” cried Elizabeth. “Fetch the bishop of London. I will see this unlawful union dissolved.”

  Robert, who had said nothing, knelt at her feet and took one of the soft, elegant hands into both of his own. “If only Your Grace would marry me,” he said softly, “no illicit marriage need trouble you or England ever again.” He looked up at her with his great, liquid brown eyes; absurdly, he reminded her at that moment of a dog.

  Sussex added his voice to Robert’s. Better Dudley than no marriage at all! “Once the people see how happy Your Grace is, and once England has an heir of your body, Cousin, all will be quite well, and we need not be troubled any longer by any other claimants to the throne, or their foolish actions.”

  “Aye,” agreed Norfolk. Even he was tiring of the constant intrigue that resulted from the queen’s refusal to marry. Looking sidelong at the detestable Robert, now insufferable as Earl of Leicester, he said, “But I think me a royal match should be better advised…”

  And then suddenly the floodgates opened. Elizabeth stood up, burst into tears, and began pacing the room. “God’s blood!” she cried. “It is always the same! The French pressuring me to marry Charles IX, a boy of fifteen! The Emperor Ferdinand bullying me for a decision about marriage to the archduke! Robert never gives me a moment’s peace, nor does Cecil, the Commons, the Lords, or the Council! Do any of you care about me? No! Oh, certainly there are many who care about the Queen of England, as long as she does what they wish her to do, for the sake of their own ends! But what of my wishes? All of you seek only my ruin, or my death! Have you ever thought of the dangers of childbed? What if I were to marry and then perish bearing this heir that seems to be all anyone cares about? Would you rather have a babe for your king than a grown woman, who has proved her mettle these past six years?” She ceased her frantic pacing, her chest heaving in indignation, her tears making shiny tracks as they fell unheeded down her cheeks.

  The men were at first too stunned to speak; and then they rushed to kneel before her, all speaking at once, reassuring her that she was their much-loved queen, that they esteemed her above anything, or anyone, and that they would never force her to do anything she did not wish to do. They were suddenly ashamed of their past hounding, and mortified that the queen should think these things of them.

  As Elizabeth sobbed brokenheartedly, she was half aware of their contrite words; but all she could think of was that until her men reached Sandgate, her cousin Mary and the hapless Thomas Keyes were but two more people who would get to taste love’s fulfillment, whereas she never would. For she knew, she had always known, that she would never marry…to do so would be to relinquish her power, and that she would never do. Even as she sobbed, seated once again with her head on her arms, she felt her spine stiffen. Very well, then, if she must be a virgin queen, she would be a glorious one; one to be reckoned with. She would continue to keep her suitors on tenterhooks; only by doing so could she maintain her dominant position. But no longer would she mourn her state. She would, henceforth, embrace it.

  In the confusion of Elizabeth’s outburst, no one heard the tentative knock on the door to the queen’s apartments. A slight movement caught Elizabeth’s attention and the men turned to see Lettice Knollys standing in the doorway. Elizabeth cleared her tear-thickened throat and said calmly, quietly, “Well, girl? What is it?”

  Lettice curtseyed beautifully and replied, “Forgive me, Your Grace, but Mistress Ashley has been taken ill.”

  Palace of Holyrood House, August 1565

  It was still dark when Mary was awakened by a sharp pain in her abdomen. She
knew what the pain betokened; her monthly courses had begun. So it was not to be yet; the indecent haste with which she had foresworn her promise to Sir Nicholas had been unnecessary after all. But how was she to have known?

  There had been dark rumors about the state of her honor just one month previously. Many believed that she had anticipated her marriage vows and assuaged her burning lust for Darnley because she had hastily moved forward her plans for marriage, not even waiting for the papal dispensation to arrive from Rome, which was required for first cousins to marry in the Catholic Church.

  The galling thing was, these rumormongers were completely correct in their suspicions, and the evil gossip they had bruited abroad was no more than the truth. But how could they possibly have known? She had been raised at the French court; it was a place of absolutely no privacy, where one’s every move, one’s every word, was known almost as soon as one had demonstrated it. But the Scottish court was vastly different; here she was attended only by her four Marys and even then only when she wished it. She was quite free to come and go as she pleased. So perhaps the evil rumors had simply been very astute guesses that had happened to hit upon the truth. If so, she knew that she herself was to blame; she certainly had made no secret of her affection, her partiality, her great desire, for Darnley. And she was going to marry him anyway; so what harm…? It was so unfair!

  She had once heard her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, laughing at the fact that fully half of the marriages in France were performed with a pregnant bride at the altar. Her uncle, the Duc de Guise, had agreed. The reason was that barren marriages were the scourge of high and low alike. A man needed a son to carry on his title, his lands, his name; and even the lowest villein wanted a son to inherit his plough and his old donkey when he died. It was best to ensure a fruitful union. So the Catholic Church winked at such indiscretions, whilst the womenfolk smiled slyly, nodded knowingly, and counted on their fingers after a “premature” birth.

  But what a lesser person could get away with, be she noble or peasant, was not the exalted behavior expected of a queen. If she had conceived the needed heir for Scotland that might result from the slaking of her great desire for Darnley before the wedding ring was on her finger, she would have been ruined. Pregnancy without benefit of marriage for an anointed queen would have been a catastrophe. So she had married Darnley in haste, just in case. But now that had proved unnecessary.

  And a good thing it was, in the long run. For she had important work to do, work that could not have been done if she were hindered by a child in her womb. There would be plenty of time for that.

  Without a word to her as to his hostile intentions, her brother James, the Earl of Moray, had refused to attend her wedding to Darnley; the ostensible excuse being that their joining together was to be celebrated in a nuptial mass with full Catholic rites. Simply by doing so she and Darnley were breaking not only Church law by marrying without the needed dispensation, but civil law as well; Scotland was a Protestant country, and the Mass forbidden by law. So James had not been present at her wedding ceremony. But he had also refused her summons to court after the wedding to pay homage to Darnley as his new king. This angered her, but what she had not known was that her brother was all the while plotting against her. When the news finally reached her of her brother’s perfidy, he had already raised a formidable force of twelve hundred men-at-arms. And then the Scottish Parliament had come forward at his behest to state that her declaration of a Catholic King of Scotland and her marriage to him without their express consent was illegal. She in turn declared James and his supporters to be outlaws, rebels and traitors to the crown.

  Mary had a taste for adventure; with her bastard brother’s defiance her blood was up and she meant to teach him a lesson he would not soon forget. For she had mustered forces of her own; fully five thousand of them had so far flocked to her banner. Catholics of course, but Protestants as well. That had surprised her; but little did she know that what she took for devotion to herself was nothing more than loyalty to the crown she wore. Some men were loath to take up arms against their anointed sovereign, even when that sovereign was in the wrong, and regardless of ideology.

  And so this morning, with that little pain in her abdomen that presaged her freedom, for now, from pregnancy, she knew that she would be able to follow her heart and lead her troops into battle. It would not be the first time; she had done as much during the Huntly rebellion.

  While she had been thinking these thoughts the candle by her bedside had guttered and gone out. It must be close to sunrise. She stirred; Darnley’s place beside her was empty. He must have risen early to organize their troops. They would march at sunrise; she would be ready.

  ###

  Mary donned her riding clothes, sent a servant to collect the helmet, breastplate and gorget that had been forged to her measure, and made her way to the stables. All was a-bustle. She had commanded that her war-horse be saddled and armored; he stood waiting patiently for her, his head protected by a chanfron and his neck by a peytral. She slipped a handful of small, sour apples from her pocket and fed them to him, one by one. The stallion nickered and stamped his foot in readiness.

  She stopped a page who was running down the center aisle of the stable. “Where is the king?” she asked.

  “I know not, Your Grace,” he said. “I have not seen him. Shall I…”

  “No,” she replied. “I will find him. Carry on.”

  Mary searched all the likely places out of doors and stopped everyone she saw; no one had seen Darnley. Perhaps he had returned to their apartments looking for her.

  Many of the weapons that would be taken with them hung on the walls of the Great Hall; she would need her brace of pistols. She cut through the abbey, lit a candle and said a quick prayer for her success in arms, then entered the palace at the east end of the Long Gallery. It was the shortest route to the Great Hall. Perhaps that was where Darnley was, supervising the distribution of weapons. The Long Gallery faced north and had only one set of east-facing windows; it was very dim as she made her way through. She was hurrying, but a slight movement caught her eye and she stopped. And there, to her complete astonishment, sat Darnley, slouched on a settle, one long leg thrown carelessly over its arm. Usually, the sight of that leg, its muscles rippling in his hose as he swung it back and forth like a bored schoolboy, would have made her blood burn and her heart race. But for the first time, she felt nothing but a mild impatience with him; what on earth was he doing here, when the entire palace was a-stir, the fighting men making ready to depart?

  “My Lord,” she said. “What do you here? We ride out at sunrise.”

  “Oh, bother James,” he said. “Why should we bear the discomfort of a campaign, riding hither and yon looking for him? Let him come to us.” His speech was slurred, and as he waved his arm clumsily, he knocked a wine cup and the flagon of wine next to it onto the stone floor. The sound of it in the empty gallery rang hollow and seemed to echo. The cup was empty; what was left in the flagon spilled out and began creeping across the floor between them. In the uncertain light of the single candle that burned on the table on Darnley’s other side, the liquid looked startlingly like blood.

  When she did not answer, Darnley narrowed his eyes and…there was no other word for it…leered at her. “We know well how to use our time, do we not, my lady?” With that he eyed the place where her riding breeches came together between her legs. Her impatience suddenly turned to something that she had never before felt in his presence, in association with him; disgust.

  Mary looked from the spilled wine to Darnley’s puffy, pasty face. “You are drunk!” she cried.

  He laughed. “You may not possess the intellectual accomplishments of our cousin of England, but you have a distinct grasp for the obvious!”

  And impertinent as well, she thought. She had always found Darnley’s acerbic wit amusing when it was aimed at others. Never before had he used such a tone to her. But how could one be drunk so early in the morning? They
had retired together, and as Darnley had said, used their time well; he must have arisen after she fell asleep and had been drinking all night.

  “This is serious, Darnley,” she cried. “The men are mustering as we speak. We ride forth today, now, at the head of our troops. You are the king. You must lead the men. And there is no need to look for James! He is on his way to Edinburgh. If we leave at dawn we shall engage him on the road. He is outnumbered. He has only twelve hundred men to our five thousand.”

  As if he had heard nothing of Mary’s speech Darnley said, “King! Hah! An empty title. I am not permitted to rule here!”

  Mary looked at him in despair. His allusion to the manner of the use of their time, before this moment, would have caused her blood to burn. But looking at him now, she felt a cold knot form in the pit of her stomach that took rapid hold and radiated out until it reached her very fingertips. It froze her blood, that blood that used to boil at the sight of him, at the very sound of his voice. Suddenly the scales were lifted from her eyes and she saw Darnley as others saw him; a spoiled, self-indulgent, dissolute sot. The thought of making love to him at that moment almost made her physically ill. She felt her gorge rise and swallowed it back down.

  Perhaps he was right about his empty title; she had discovered that when it came to it, she had no desire to relinquish her power after all. But even so, Darnley had never once evinced the slightest inclination to take a real hand in affairs. Their eyes met; Darnley’s were insolent. Suddenly her blood began to boil not with the familiar heat of desire, but with fury.