In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  “You may rise,” she said testily, with just a trace of sarcasm.

  Very well, if that was how she wanted to play this royal game of cat and mouse! He arose. Had there been anyone else present to observe the two of them, they might have noticed that Robert’s head was also tilted haughtily, his own lips pursed in annoyance.

  But she was the queen and it was for her to speak first. Robert stood, waiting. The silence became unbearable.

  Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. She had no need to conjure up the vision of the scene in the garden at Greenwich in which Robert sat at Lettice’s feet and kissed her hand while they both laughed as they shared a jest. The image was burned onto her memory; it had pervaded her every waking thought since the day it had happened over a week before.

  For more than a week she had managed to ignore him! She had departed Greenwich for Windsor without so much as a word to him. But when the court moved, it was expected that the Earl of Leicester would move with it. And yet when she arrived at Windsor, Robert was nowhere to be found. Very well then, if he did not want to be with her…

  For eight miserable days she had gone about her affairs without sending him any word; she had likewise received none. At first her resentment was strong enough to sustain her; but after several days, she could wait no longer. She made a discreet inquiry as to Robert’s whereabouts. He was in the castle; but he was indisposed and had taken to his bed.

  The thought that Robert, her beloved, might really be ill sent her into a panic. Further inquiry yielded the information that he was not gravely ill; he was suffering from a broken heart. Well, what of her broken heart? He had started it, after all. Had she shown any extraordinary favor to Tom Heneage before that awful day? Had she shown such favor to anyone? She had not. It was for him to explain, then; it was for him to apologize.

  Thinking these thoughts caused her temper to come to a sudden boil. She turned to him and cried, “You cast me aside for another! You flirted with Lettice, right there under my very window! I am sorry now that I have wasted so much time on you!”

  “I was not flirting!” cried Robert. “I was not! She is your cousin, and so is dear to me for no other reason! And her husband is my friend! She is witty and kind, and we shared a jest, that is all! God’s blood, if I were going to carry on in such a manner, it would not be with your cousin, and it would not be where you could see me do it!”

  “Oh, that is comforting indeed!” rejoined Elizabeth. “So now I must worry that you are carrying on behind my back!”

  “Of course you do not!” cried Robert. “That is female reasoning! I want no one but you!”

  Elizabeth’s golden eyes smoldered. “Humph! So say you!”

  Robert’s eyes went wide with genuine shock. “Are you calling me a liar, Madam? No, do not answer. It matters not. With your gracious leave, I would retire from court. It is high time I lived in my own house, like other men. I have no further appetite for either your temper or for this ridiculous courtship dance to whose tune I must constantly dance!”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms. “Leave court, you say? So that you may carry on unobserved with my cousin, you mean!”

  Robert had tossed his hat onto a chair when he entered; he retrieved it and made to depart, bowing and backing his way to the door.

  Elizabeth strode up to him, dashed the cap from his hand and cried, “You shall not leave court, sir! You shall stay until I give you leave to depart, and not before!”

  Robert put his hand to his face and rubbed it from his dark eyebrows, down his cheeks, and to the end of his pointed beard. At the look of exasperation on his handsome face, Elizabeth was almost tempted to relent. But that was how it always went! Not this time, she thought.

  “Madam,” said Robert, in a quiet voice this time, as though he were speaking to an especially thick child, “for what purpose would you have me remain? And I am heartily weary of being blamed by all and sundry for your failure to marry. Elizabeth, I of all people know for certes that you have no intention of ever marrying anyone, least of all myself. And do not think it does not pain me to say so. I would that you should own as much; my cause is hopeless, is it not?” He bent down and retrieved his hat from the floor.

  Elizabeth tilted her chin up and regarded him in haughty silence, looking down her hooked nose at him, but said nothing.

  “And another thing,” cried Robert, now dashing the bedraggled hat back down to the floor. “What of all those men who believe that I wield such great influence over you, that I hold you in some sort of thrall? That is amusing! Nothing could be further from the truth! Even with my position on the Council, my power is ephemeral! I have no effect on anything, Madam, least of all upon yourself! And I am tired to the bone of being blamed for everything that goes wrong, and given no credit for anything successful! Your failures are all laid at my door, but your brilliant successes are all your own! And what of you and that oaf, Heneage? You shunned me, you embarrassed me, before the entire court! You…”

  Elizabeth stood with both fists clenched. “I what?” she demanded.

  Suddenly tears misted his eyes and his voice came out in a whisper. “You broke my heart. I was miserable to think that I had lost your favor. And I truly had no idea why. I thought…”

  Elizabeth’s own eyes welled with tears. “What did you think?”

  “I thought you had stopped loving me.”

  As they argued, they had unconsciously moved closer and closer together; now they stood at arm’s length from each other. They both made the same move at the same time and before they knew what was happening, they were in each other’s arms, both crying, incoherent.

  After an eternity, they loosened their hold, but still held each other’s arms. Robert searched her eyes, and what he saw there comforted him. But he must know; he must make certain.

  “You would have had me marry the Queen of Scotland.”

  “Never,” Elizabeth replied, promptly and emphatically. “Never. I would never have let you go. But it was essential that you, above all people, truly believed that such was my intention. Otherwise my ploy to get Mary married to Darnley would never have succeeded.”

  His eyes swam with tears. “Oh, Your Grace,” he cried on a sob. “Oh, that changes everything. I am sorry. I thought you wanted to be rid of me.”

  The tears that had welled up in Elizabeth’s eyes spilled over unheeded; she smiled through them. She was beyond speech to know that, after all, there had been no flirtation with Lettice. It had all been a fiction, concocted in her overwrought mind. He loved her; she loved him.

  This time their embrace was not frantic, but calm, soothing, loving. They stood together for a long time in each other’s arms, each thinking their own thoughts.

  But something had changed; no longer was there the subtle, unspoken promise between them that they had come to know, to live with every day, to expect, to take for granted. Their love had reached a higher plane, but their ability to take the next logical step had been crushed forever.

  Palace of Holyrood House, December 1565

  Davide Riccio di Pancaliere turned this way and that in front of the silver-gilt mirror. The mirror was a present from the queen; he was very proud of its beauty, but even more gratified that it was the queen herself who had given him such a lovely object. He loved beautiful things, and he loved the queen who had bestowed such a gift upon him.

  He certainly could have bought the mirror for himself, had he had a mind to; he was growing rich indeed from the bribes and payoffs he received for granting eager supplicants entré to Mary’s presence. But the price of such riches was the hatred of the men of the Scottish court. They loathed the idea that they must go through him to get to the queen. He was foreign, he was Catholic, and unforgivable sin amongst the hardy, rough-and-ready Scots, he had a physical deformity.

  He was not a hunchback; nothing as severe as that. He had a slight curvature of the spine, nothing more. But it was noticeable, and marred his looks. Because of this, people
said he was ugly, but that was unfair. It was true that he was slight of stature and very short; the amazon Queen of Scots stood a full foot higher than he did, and of course there was his crooked back. But otherwise, he believed himself to be quite handsome, if he must say it himself.

  Davide twitched the folds of his rich cloak so that it hid his spine. He loved preening before the beautiful mirror the queen had given him; and why not? He spent most of his bribe money on gorgeous clothing. He owned quite a collection of jeweled caps, cloaks of velvet lined with sable and sewn with golden and silver thread, doublets so encrusted with jewels that they stood by themselves when not in use; all in rich colors that pleased the eye. Nothing garish for him! His dark Italian coloring demanded deep forest greens, rich burgundies, russets and midnight blues.

  He heartily resented those who called him upstart and parvenu. He was, in fact, a descendant of the Counts of San Paolo et Solbrito, a Piedmontese from the northern city of Turin, in Italy. He had come to the Scottish court in the train of Roberto Solaro, the Count of Moretta, on the recommendation of the Duke of Savoy. He was a gifted musician, and it was his deep bass voice that had first caught the attention of the captivating Queen of Scotland.

  The queen was more French than Scottish; she played the lute, composed her own verse and music, and sang like a nightingale. She had her own musicians, brought for her pleasure from the cosmopolitan court of France, and oh! The good fortune! She needed a fourth to complete her quartet after one of her men had become homesick and begged leave to return to the Continent. And there was Davey Rizzio, as she called him in her lilting, musical voice, a bass singer who was equally talented on the lute.

  When the Count of Moretta concluded his business and departed, Davide Riccio, a younger son of a younger son with a good name and an ancient family to recommend him, but with little else besides his talent, had stayed behind to serve the enchantress who was the Queen of Scots.

  He had been captivated by Mary Stuart’s legendary charm from the day he had first made her acquaintance. The girl was a Diana; beautiful, tall and athletic, bold and audacious; and yet as feminine as a doe, as gentle as a lamb. Her speaking voice was like the legendary Sirens of Greek myth; it enticed one to dream of the fulfillment of desires one hitherto had no inkling even existed. He gave no thought to the danger in allowing himself to be so seduced; for in Greek mythology, the Sirens were dangerous creatures, who lured unsuspecting sailors with their enchanting music and enthralling voices to shipwreck and doom onto the rocky coast of their island.

  From that moment on he had set his mind to please her. He would have done anything to be allowed into that royal presence, so that he might bask in the golden glow of her admiration. For she did admire him; he knew this because she had told him so. She admired his talent for music, to be sure, but she also employed him to write her correspondence. And so from a brief time of admiring her from afar, he had come to be her personal secretary, and so was in her intoxicating presence daily for hours at a time.

  In the daytime they worked together on foreign dispatches and domestic issues; in the evenings he ate at her table and then he sang for her, or with her, at her pleasure. She had taken to relying on him to compose her daily schedule, and so he had fallen into the habit of charging people money for the privilege of gaining access to the royal ear, so that they may state their case, whatever that might be. This was common practice in the governments of Italy; but here in backward Scotland, it was resented. Mary knew of the practice and assured him she approved of it. The Scottish treasury was practically bare and she could offer him little in the way of compensation for his administrative and musical services; such bribery was simply a practical means by which to supplement his income.

  And so his days were filled with the heady brew of her company, her easy affability, and he drank of her amazing charisma until he was intoxicated with it. He dreamed of her at night in the solitude of his bed. And then he discovered an even better way; on most nights he took to arranging for a young girl to be awaiting him in the richly appointed rooms that he occupied in every castle and palace where the queen stayed. There would be only one candle, and that placed in the farthest corner of the room; the girl must always be tall, with long, auburn hair. In the semi-darkness he gave free-rein to his fantasies about the beautiful Queen of Scotland. What would she think if she knew? Far from being insulted, he thought he knew her well enough to assume that she would simply laugh.

  That she was still a virgin he also knew. Money could buy more than rich clothes, jewels and fine furnishings! It also bought information. Her first husband, the King of France, had been a mere boy, a weakling, and unable to consummate their marriage. The Queen of Scots was a beautiful, charming woman who exuded sexual energy, and had no outlet for it.

  If only he could have given her what she needed!

  But that was out of the question, so he lived day after day, drunk on her company in the daytime, drunk on his fantasies of her by night. All had been wonderful, and then Darnley had come.

  Darnley! Had he himself been a woman, Darnley would have been the last man to appeal to him. The boy was tall and had a beautiful face, and Davide must admit, was just as talented as himself on the lute. But the boy was, to his eye, almost womanish. How the devil could his Diana, his goddess, love such a one? If she must be deflowered, he would much rather have seen her submit to one of the primitive men of Scotland; they had not the polite manners of the French, but any one of them would have been able to do what needed to be done. He knew he could not have her for himself, but by the Rood, if she must marry, and queens must marry and beget heirs, he wanted to see her marry a man, not a beardless boy. Whatever was she thinking, his idol of womanhood? Darnley was a whining child, a pretty-faced youth, with nothing beyond his outward appearance and his pedigree to recommend him.

  But his darling had made it abundantly clear that she wanted Darnley, and he had worked very hard, diplomatically, to get him for her. He had encouraged her infatuation by day because he knew it made her happy, and by night he had pretended, with his whores, that it was him for whom she smoldered so lustily. Indeed, watching Mary burn until the moment when she was finally able to surrender to her wanton appetites had given him many a night of intoxicating fulfillment. On the night she finally did take Darnley to her bed, a circumstance that none knew of but the three of them, for the two had not yet taken their marriage vows, his fantasies were so vivid that he might have been in the room with them.

  Darnley had been drawn to him as well, a circumstance that Davide found fascinating. For one so young, Darnley was a past master at the sexual game, and he had a taste for both men and women. Davide was surprised, but nothing loath; he was an urbane man of the world and always open to new experiences. And their rompings had a special piquancy for him; it made him feel even closer to the queen, knowing that they were both making love to the same man.

  It was, at first, an amusing result of this unholy alliance that Darnley was infatuated enough with him to offer him his protection as king. Darnley was king in name only, a courtesy title, for although Mary had proclaimed him King of Scotland upon their marriage, she had not had Darnley crowned. So he had no real power. But it afforded the droll Davide many a hearty laugh to know that while he loved Mary, Mary loved Darnley, and Darnley loved him. Was there ever such a love triangle?

  But he had begun to hear disturbing rumors of late. The Scots nobles had become aware of the situation, and were not amused. What was laughable was that they believed that he was having an illicit affair with the queen, when in reality, he was having that affair with the king. It was too ridiculous.

  But there was danger in these rumors for all three of them. The Earl of Moray and the Protestant Lords of the Congregation had little respect for the queen, and they hated Darnley as much, if not more, than they hated “Sir Davey”, as they called him in derision. The time for love’s dalliance and the associated amusement it afforded was over; something must be done. He told Mary
of the danger brewing amongst her nobles. Ever courageous in the face of peril, she was ready to do whatever he thought was best.

  He knew who was to blame for all of the ills of Scotland, and for Mary’s current danger; it was her brother, the Earl of Moray, and his exiled band of Protestants. The time had come to strike at the heart of the heretics. With Moray dead, he and Mary would be able to restore the true religion to Scotland and rid both court and country of a dangerous faction; dispose of Moray and their troubles would soon be over.

  Whitehall Palace, December 1565

  James Stuart, the Earl of Moray, knelt in front of the Queen of England, staring at her in utter fascination. His head should have been bowed, but he could not take his eyes from her. He did not know it, but there was nothing that could have pleased Elizabeth’s vanity more. It was ironic that his gaze of admiration was genuine; he was usually quite adept, as adept as the queen herself, at hiding his thoughts. But not this time, and it had coincidentally worked to his advantage.

  Elizabeth was a queen first and a woman second, but already she had developed a liking for this straightforward man. Also, she wanted peace with Scotland, and therefore, she wanted to help him. They had been in constant communication, through Cecil, for some time. Their goals were the same in regard to their two countries, and to the island that both those countries shared.

  It was a great pity indeed, for had James been legitimate, there would have been no finer man to rule Scotland than the Earl of Moray. He knew it; his contemporaries knew it; Cecil and Elizabeth knew it. And with the exception of the highest office in the land, the Scots did not mind as much as some about a bit of tainted blood. And James was, after all, the son of a king. But more than that, he was an ardent Protestant; it was largely due to his policies that Scotland was now a Protestant country by law.