Carlisle Castle, July 1568
Even long after sunrise, when the world outside was warm and the sky blue, the dungeons of Carlisle Castle were profoundly dark, cold and damp. The dungeons were below the level of the moat; their walls shone with moisture in the candlelight. And yet even with its dank atmosphere and low ceilings, the cave-like room in which the Mass was being sung seemed oddly pleasing to Lord Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. He was a practiced fence-sitter in the matter of religion; he was a professed Protestant, and yet his family had an ancient Catholic lineage. He had found that it was far better to appear submissive and obedient to the law of the land and then quietly go one’s own way. His cousin Elizabeth was of a tolerant frame of mind; as long as one danced to her tune publicly, the queen seemed content to ignore one’s private actions.
For Mary, it was very different. If it were not for the fact that the Mass must needs be celebrated in the bowels of the castle for secrecy’s sake, she would rather have been torn apart by wild horses than to repair daily to the castle’s forbidding dungeons. She had ever been aware of a vague discomfort whenever she had been forced to abide in any tight space, but the very idea of confinement now caused such a panic to arise in her breast that it was all she could do not to rise and flee. Now that she had experienced being a prisoner, the idea, the very thought of further incarceration frightened her beyond words.
The Mass was almost ended; she was torn between her enjoyment of the ceremony and the compelling desire to be gone from the place. Should the candles have suddenly sputtered and gone out, and she left in utter darkness, she knew that she would have fainted dead away, despite her stout heart.
At last the Mass was ended, but as she made to depart, Sir Richard laid a gentle hand upon her arm. As he did so he exchanged quick glances with Lord Thomas Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Charles Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland. The queen must be informed of what was afoot; they had decided amongst themselves that the best place to enlighten her was in the dungeons. For Mary was certain to be upset by the news, and although thick, the walls of the castle above stairs had ears, and there were too many others about during their activities out of doors. Norfolk and the other lords knew with certainty that Cecil and Walsingham had spies everywhere. It was likely that every word that Mary of Scotland uttered outside the walls of the dungeons was known, recorded, sifted, and reported to the Queen of England.
“Stay but a little,” said Sir Richard softly.
Mary searched his eyes. She was adept now at reading the thoughts that emanated from the heart that Sir Richard wore so plainly upon his sleeve. She looked at each of the others in turn; her loyal men! “What is it?” she asked quietly. But already she was afraid of the answer.
For once, Norfolk, Northumberland and Westmoreland were all more than glad to yield place to Sir Richard. All eyes turned expectantly to him.
“I have received word from Sir Francis that Your Grace is to prepare to remove to Bolton Castle. He and Lord Scrope, to whom Bolton belongs, are expected to arrive no more than two days hence, to escort Your Grace there.”
Mary was stunned; she had expected that if there was to be any removal from Carlisle, that it would be to go directly to London and Elizabeth, once that bothersome business at York was concluded. “I shall not go! I refuse to go!” she cried. She looked pleadingly at Sir Richard, and then at all of them. “Why must I go? Why may I not remain here at Carlisle?”
Why indeed; there were so many reasons. Bolton was far inland, and inconvenient to any port; it was remote and isolated. Sir Richard also believed that Sir Francis had been most unhappy with his response to the need for confining Mary more closely. Now she was to be removed from his care altogether. Should he have agreed, been more cooperative, and then pleased himself once Sir Francis had gone back to London? Was this his fault? He only knew that the very idea of Mary leaving Carlisle tore his heart from his breast.
Suddenly Mary’s face lit up. Her innate sense of direction was combined with a talent for map-reading; Carlisle boasted a collection of very fine maps, with which she had whiled away many an idle hour. “Bolton is south of here, I believe, and half way to York,” she said. “Of course! Bolton is to be but a stopping place on my way to the tribunal.” She still deplored the very idea of the tribunal; but if she were forced to attend it, she had great faith in her ability to charm the men who would judge her. If only James did not possess those damnable letters! But she felt that given the chance, she was perfectly capable of explaining them away. But looking about her, she saw that the men did not share her sanguine outlook.
“Your Grace will not be permitted to appear before the tribunal at York,” said Lord Thomas.
Incredulous, Mary replied, “Not…? But how am I to defend myself against these wicked charges if I am not to appear, to speak in my own defense? And why, then, am I to remove to Bolton?” Suddenly reality dawned. “No,” she said. “Oh, no. I came to England of my own free will! By what right does my cousin think to keep me here, and say where I shall abide?”
The Earl of Northumberland shrugged. “She is the queen.”
“That gives her the power, sir, not the right!” cried Mary.
“Listen to me,” said the Duke of Norfolk. His eyes bored into hers in the dim candlelight. “There is another way.”
“What other way?” asked Mary. “What do you mean?”
“The Lady Catherine Grey is dead of the lung rot,” said Lord Thomas. “That lady’s children were declared bastards. Mary Grey is a dwarf and languishes under house arrest for marrying without the queen’s permission. The Protestants have no viable candidate for the succession. Only Your Grace stands now to inherit the throne of England. If ought were to happen to Elizabeth, Your Grace would be Queen of England. It is for this reason that Elizabeth seeks to discredit you. But there is a very powerful Queen’s Party even now that unequivocally supports Your Grace in Scotland, and the English Catholics are as ready now as they were in King Henry’s time to rise up. Forget not the Pilgrimage of Grace!”
Lord Percy needed no reminders. “My own father,” he said, “was among those executed when King Henry quelled that religious rebellion. But the English Catholics have been silenced for nigh on ten years, ever since Elizabeth took the throne.”
“Then it is high time for us to rise again,” said the duke. He turned to Mary. “Go to Bolton, Your Grace. Be cheerful; be at peace. Cooperate. Do not resist. And know that your supporters both in Scotland and in England shall redeem you.”
“But what of the tribunal at York?” asked Mary. “What if…”
The Duke of Norfolk smiled his sly smile. “Whom do you think has been appointed to lead the tribunal?”
Mary gasped. Norfolk was the premier peer of the realm; he was the logical choice. He was Elizabeth’s cousin; she trusted him. Oh, if only it were not for those damnable letters that James held over her head! But this may be her last, her only chance. She could not allow Norfolk to walk into a trap on her behalf; that would serve neither of them.
“I fear me, then, that I must tell you all something,” she said softly. “When I was at Loch Leven, my brother, as you know, forced my abdication. He threatened me with death if I did not sign the bond, and so I signed. But there was something else. The Earl of Moray has in his possession a cache of letters that he claims are mine, written to my Lord Bothwell. They are vile, and meant to be proof of my guilt in Lord Darnley’s death. I am certain that he means to present these letters in evidence at York. He must; for beyond the hearsay of my enemies, there is no other proof to be had of my alleged guilt in the matter. But I do assure you, these letters are forgeries. They must be; they cannot be anything else. I never wrote such letters to Bothwell.”
Norfolk nodded. “I have heard of these letters,” he said. “Although I have not yet seen them. Moray has already sent a sampling of them to Queen Elizabeth. But to me, their very form shouts that they are forgeries. Tell me, Your Grace, if you had written such l
etters to my lord Bothwell, in what language would they have been written?”
Mary frowned. Was the question meant to trick her? “Why, in French, of course,” she replied. “I write in no other language.”
“Precisely,” said Lord Thomas. “Just so. Why then, might one ask, did the Earl of Moray see fit to translate the letters first into Latin, and then into English? Her Grace of England is fluent in five languages, French among them. It is therefore likely that the letters were written first in Scots, then translated into French to make them appear as if Your Grace wrote them, then translated into English and Latin, so that those with no French might read them and be shocked...as well as convinced of Your Grace’s guilt. There can be no other explanation.”
“But then Elizabeth must realize that they are forgeries,” said Mary.
The men were silent. Willie stood in the shadows, a shadow himself; all knew him to be completely loyal. He looked at the faces of the great lords who stood about the distraught queen. All of them believed her to be innocent of Darnley’s death, but paradoxically, he who loved her so devotedly believed her guilty of it, letters or no letters. But it mattered not to him; Darnley had been a brute and an ass, and in his estimation, deserved his fate.
“God in Heaven,” exclaimed Mary. “So this tribunal is a sham. I am to be a prisoner in England, that my brother may rule Scotland in my son’s name, and that the people of this island may continue to live in Protestant error. The Queen of England has no intention of ever releasing me, or restoring me to my throne.” The shock was so profound that she swayed where she stood; Sir Richard reached out an arm to steady her, and Norfolk handed her down onto a pew.
Mary sat, her head in her hands. This was defeat, then. She had risked all by coming to England and she had lost.
“Do not despair, Your Grace,” said Norfolk. “We are for you. The earls and I, and many others, are devoted to Your Grace, and committed to your cause. We shall not fail you.”
On the Road to Bolton Castle, July 1568
The horse Mary rode was as tame a palfrey as ever wore horseshoes, but still, she was grateful for it. Upon leaving Carlisle, she had been forced to sit in a closed litter. Lord Scrope was taking no chances; he did not want her journey from Carlisle to Bolton to take on the aspect of either a Progress or a pilgrimage. The area through which they would travel to Bolton was sparsely populated, but somehow the news of the Queen of Scotland’s removal to Bolton had become known. However, the people who turned out to catch a glimpse of the legendary queen were disappointed of their outing; there was nothing to see because she had been forced to ride in the hateful litter with the curtains drawn. The twenty-five miles from Carlisle to Lowther Castle, the first of two stopping places on their way to Bolton, had been a misery, cut off as she was from the people, and forced to stifle in the closed conveyance.
Even Lord Scrope had to admit that there was a risk that the longer they stayed on the road, the more likely it was that one misguided faction or another might attempt to rescue the hapless queen; he became torn between the necessity for speed and the comparable risk of allowing Mary a horse. What was to stop her from bolting, after all? But in the end, he had decided that they must make haste for their final destination of Bolton Castle, so on the second leg of their journey, from Lowther to Wharton, Mary had been permitted a horse. And so this hot summer’s day found Mary sitting the tame little palfrey, almost a pony, on the last leg of their journey from Wharton to Bolton. Nothing untoward had occurred as yet, and they were making much better time.
Lord Scrope was a stern, taciturn man who thus far had given every impression of being one of those rare beings who were immune to her charm. Lord Scrope’s men flanked her on all sides; even had she been vouchsafed the stallion that she had ridden to course hares at Carlisle Castle, she could not have made a run for it. And where would she have gone? Every step taken by the timid little palfrey brought her deeper and deeper into England.
Without doubt she was, once again, a prisoner. Had it not been for the assurances of the Duke of Norfolk and the earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland that they had a plan for her liberation, she would have been frantic indeed. But she was doing her best to pretend, as she had agreed to do, that she was still a guest of the Queen of England, and not a captive.
The tribunal at York she now knew to be a meaningless bit of pretense. The lords of the commission would go through the motions of hearing and sifting the evidence; Elizabeth would pretend to weigh it; but whatever conclusions her cousin reached would not result in her freedom, and she would never receive the promised help from the Queen of England to regain her throne. She now knew that all of it was merely a spectacle that would be used to justify her own incarceration, and the continuance of Moray’s pact with her cousin to keep Scotland and England Protestant and the two realms at peace with each other.
But as frustrating as this knowledge was, above all things, she must not begin to doubt herself; to do so would lead inevitably to despair, that deadly sin. And so each time she started to go back over the decisions she had made and what had led to them, she made a concerted effort to think of something else. But the road was long, and these thoughts would intrude. Almost before she knew it, her mind had once again traveled back to the road from Dundrennan Abbey, and the choices that had brought her to this moment, to this place. Had she chosen rightly? So many fates, not least of all her own, hung in the balance.
The monotonous clip-clop of the palfrey’s hooves on the soft dust of the road, the steady, gentle swaying of her body in the saddle, the warm breeze, all induced in her a somewhat hypnotic state. The horse needed no urging; it would have followed blindly the nag in front of it to the earth’s end if called upon to do so.
Mary closed her eyes, and when she did so, she could see the abbey at Dundrennan as clearly in her mind as if she stood before it. They had walked that blustery day in the warm sunshine from the abbey down to the sparkling burn, picking their way through the prickly yellow gorse. They followed the stream for several miles until the gorse gave way to mounds of sea pinks; they had reached the Solway Firth, where a fishing boat waited to take her and her party across the water to England. On any other day, the walk might have been a pleasant one. But all the way, Mary’s men, Livingston, Boyd, Herries, even the abbot, who had walked with them, had pleaded with her, trying to dissuade her from going to England. Elizabeth was wily and could not be trusted; by imposing herself on her royal cousin, she would be placing her in an impossible position. Their religious differences were only part of the dilemma that Mary’s unannounced and probably unwelcome arrival would visit upon the Queen of England. What of Her Grace’s treaties with the Earl of Moray? Going to England was a dangerous decision with which they could not agree. All the way from the abbey to the mouth of the firth they had voiced their grave misgivings, and tried to convince her to go to France, to Brussels, anywhere but England.
She had listened to their entreaties, but said nothing. Her own thoughts on the matter were quite different; she firmly believed that Elizabeth, a fellow queen and a blood relative, could not but be moved by her cousin’s dire situation. Mary had been convinced all of her life of her power to charm; she would charm Elizabeth, and all her men. She would charm the English Parliament. She would be given first sympathy, and then men, money, arms. Perhaps she would even be named, finally, as heir to the throne of England. That she was the rightful Queen of England some, mainly Protestant, did not agree; but all in good time. If she could not oust Elizabeth from her throne, then she would wait for it. Elizabeth was eleven years her senior, and according to some reports, not in good health. In her own estimation, she had much to win by going to England, and little to lose.
Her men had never ceased in their efforts to convince her how wrong she was, and even up to the moment when they stepped aboard the fishing boat that was to convey them across the Solway Firth, they beseeched her not to sail for England.
She understood their points of view; but i
t was evident that they did not appreciate hers. How could she make them understand? It sounded well on the face of it to suggest that she go to France; but she knew that Queen Catherine hated her and would not help her. It was true that, as François’s widow, she was Queen Dowager of France, but that did not matter to Catherine; she continued to send Mary’s dower revenues to Scotland, but that only meant that the funds were now lining James’s pockets instead of her own. Could anything have been more despicable, or obvious? The French would collaborate with whomever was in power in Scotland, and cared nothing for her rights as queen. No, she could not look to the French for help in regaining her throne.
But what of her Guise relatives, then? Surely they would assist their golden child in her distress? It was true that while she had been queen of two kingdoms her relatives had made much of her. But what would their attitude be when she arrived penniless, bedraggled, stripped of her throne, begging money and favors? Even for the sake of a show of support for Catholicism, her instinct warned her that they were not to be relied upon in such circumstances as these.
Very well, then, they had countered, if France was not to her liking, what of Spain? The Duke of Alba was in the Netherlands with a formidable army, having recently quelled a rising of the Dutch Protestants there. They were just across the Channel. And perhaps once they had defeated Moray and the Lords of the Congregation in Scotland, they could move on to England. They would depose the bastard Elizabeth, and then she would be queen of both realms! It all sounded very plausible, but wars cost money. The Spanish army was only just recovering from the war they had waged in the Low Countries. Despite Alba’s proximity, it would take time to negotiate with Philip. Sending an army across the Channel was no mean feat; it would take time and it would be very expensive. Could she wait?
In High Places Page 42