In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  Mary smiled and patted Jane’s hand. “This matter needs thinking on,” she said. “How long will you be at Bolton, my lady?”

  Again the two sisters exchanged glances, this time unmistakably uneasy ones.

  “Of that I am not certain, Your Grace,” replied Jane. “You see…”

  “I pray you, please, do not hesitate on my account,” said Mary, with a wry smile. “I am accustomed to receiving evil tidings!”

  “Well,” said Jane carefully. “I am here at Bolton because my lord has been summoned to the south. To London. Both the Earl of Westmoreland and the Earl of Northumberland have been so summoned. The tribunal at York has been closed and moved to London, to Westminster, and more commissioners assigned to sift the evidence.”

  “Ha!” cried Lady Margaret. “What my sister means to say is that the tribunal at York was so close to finding for Your Grace that the queen became uneasy and decided to stop its proceedings. A fresh start in London, under her own eye, will help to assure that the findings are what she expects them to be, so that she may render the decision she wants!”

  “Hush, Margaret,” said Jane. “The walls have ears, sister. Your Grace,” she said, turning once again to Mary, “the findings of the tribunal matter not. We know what the queen will say, regardless of the evidence. You must marry my brother; then the north will rise, the queen will be deposed and Your Grace and my brother will rule a Catholic England.” These, after all, were Lady Jane’s goals; to see England and Scotland restored to God’s grace, and the Howards once again in the ascendant, taking their rightful place at the forefront of England’s government. In a rare momnet of insight, Lady Jane realized that power was every bit as much a driving force for her as her unshakable Catholic faith. She would be the sister of the king of a united Britain…and who had more power than a king?

  Lady Jane focused her attention back onto Mary. “The queen has refused to meet with you,” she said with narrowed eyes. “But was Your Grace aware that all the while the tribunal at York has been hanging fire, the Earl of Moray has been in London for the duration of it, and has met with the Queen of England numerous times?”

  “Oh!” cried Mary, her hand to her chest. “Perfidious queen! I came into England not to answer my false accusers, but to see them in manacles before me, that I might indict them before the queen for their unlawful acts! But never have I been given an opportunity to do so! And now you tell me that my cousin has all this while been meeting with Moray?”

  Lady Margaret hesitated; one did not shush a queen, after all. But it was imperative that no one overhear their conversation. With an uneasy glance towards the door, she said, “Oh, Your Grace, I do beg of you…”

  The three heads drew closer together.

  “There will be many trials and tribulations to be got through before we are successful,” said Jane in a harsh whisper. “Norfolk is doing his best to suppress Moray’s letters, and the addition of Northumberland and Westmoreland to the commission can only serve to work in Your Grace’s favor.”

  “And,” said Lady Margaret, “rumors have reached my lord’s ears that there have been plots against the Earl of Moray’s life; and not only by Your Grace’s supporters, mind you, but by his own confederates! There are many who wish him dead.”

  “Aye,” said Mary softly. “I am among them! Any man who accepts Moray’s regency is a traitor and should be hung. His regency is illegal and he knows it. Whilst there is a Hamilton living, he has no right to such a position; indeed, as long as I am alive I am queen and there should be no regency. The accusations against me have no substance and well does my faithless brother know it. Elizabeth knows it. How long do they plan to maintain this farce?”

  Lady Jane took Mary’s face into both her hands. “Your Grace, I fear that we must go. We must rouse no suspicions that we plan and plot. By the Rood, there are rumors enough as it is! But be of good cheer, Your Grace. Do not despair. We are for you. It shall not be long before you shall wear two crowns once again, and the Mass is said the length and breadth of the island!” She gave Mary’s hands a final squeeze, and just as suddenly as they had appeared, Lady Margaret and Lady Jane were gone.

  Westminster Palace, January 1569

  It had been a remarkably harsh winter so far; the snow lay thick upon the ground and the river was so full of ice that it was too hazardous for the boatmen to ply their trade. The people walked the streets with their hoods and shawls pulled tightly against the icy wind. Where noses or fingers peeked through, they were blue with cold.

  Elizabeth stood at the window watching the sluggish, gray river flow by with its unaccustomed burden of ice. Finally she turned towards the hearth with a sigh and splayed her hands out before the fire.

  The Earl of Moray sat in his chair, trying very hard to keep still; first his leg would jump up and down, and no sooner had he suppressed that nervous habit than his fingers would begin to tap, seemingly of their own accord, on the arm of his chair.

  The queen was restless, too, and had long since bid him sit still while she paced from the hearth to the window, to the sideboard to pour wine for them, and back to her chair by the fireside, in an unending circuit.

  Cecil sat and sipped his wine, wishing once again that Elizabeth had thought to mull it on this icy day. The fire crackled and spat, but unless one were sitting right next to it, the room felt as cold as a tomb.

  No one spoke; all three of them were as nervous as cats.

  “I have decided,” she said at last. With that statement, Elizabeth banged her wine cup onto the sturdy wooden table beside her chair and threw herself down with an inelegant plop. “Cecil, you shall close the tribunal.”

  Moray ceased all movement and waited. Surely the queen must know all the questions that such a decision on her part raised for him. Most important of all, what would Elizabeth’s verdict be? It was not his place to ask. But thanks be to God, it was Cecil’s.

  Cecil shifted in his chair. The tribunal at York had accomplished nothing; the tribunal at Westminster had been sensationalized by the Queen of Scotland’s shocking love letters to the Earl of Bothwell. The entire proceeding had sunk to the level of a disgusting prurience. And still Elizabeth’s commissioners were leaning in favor of the Scots queen rather than against her, a situation, staunch Protestant that he was, that he found deplorable. He took a long pull from his cup and then set it aside. “And what shall I say that Your Grace has decided?”

  “I?” asked Elizabeth. “Why, nothing. I have decided nothing, except that the evidence on both sides is inconclusive and that we have, therefore, no findings to share.”

  Moray was stunned; it was genius. All this time, everyone had been waiting to see how the Queen of England would find in regard to her sister queen. Guilty? Not guilty? Either finding carried with it dire consequences. If Elizabeth found Mary guilty of the murder of her husband, then surely he was justified in having deposed her; he might even be able to have her executed. But by whom? The Scots? The English? What reaction would there be to such drastic measures? For there had to be consequences.

  Conversely, a finding of not guilty surely must mean that the Queen of Scotland would be reinstated to her throne, and that would cause to resurface all of the previous problems of a Catholic queen in a Protestant nation. And what would become of the Earl of Moray then? He had only consented to present the perfidious letters that his sister was purported to have written if it meant that she would be found guilty based on their evidence. But to make no finding, to draw no conclusion at all! If such a ruling did not verify his sister’s guilt in the matter of Darnley’s murder, then neither did it confirm her innocence. His own regency should stay in place, untarnished. Mary’s position would remain ambiguous, and she would continue in the vague status of unofficial prisoner of the Queen of England. And not to put too fine a point on it, both he and Elizabeth shared a tacit belief that Mary was, in fact, guilty, and was indeed an adulteress and a murderer, by her intimate association with Bothwell.

  With
this a single bold stroke, Elizabeth would succeed in disgracing the Queen of Scotland without passing judgment upon a fellow sovereign. It was now evident that Elizabeth had never had any intention of restoring Mary to her throne, but wanted only an excuse to ensure that she remained a prisoner.

  Elizabeth met Moray’s gaze directly. “Let there be no misunderstanding between us, my lord. The Queen of Scotland will never be released whilst I am Queen of England. But justice must be seen to be done. Therefore, I will present my cousin with the following terms. Her guilt or innocence aside, before she can be restored to her throne she must agree to renounce all claim to the throne of England, both as sovereign and as heir. She must abandon all intention of soliciting league with both France and Spain. And lastly, she must agree to abandon completely the Mass in Scotland.”

  Moray snorted. “She will never agree to such terms.”

  Elizabeth’s golden eyes seemed to glow in the firelight. “Exactly.”

  Not for the first time, an icy finger touched Moray’s spine. Elizabeth was a formidable foe. Never must he run afoul of her.

  It was Elizabeth’s turn to snort. “I hear that my cousin was every bit as incensed about the loss of her pearls as at the loss of her crown. I fear me that she has great difficulty distinguishing between the two!”

  Moray shrugged. “My sister has ever ruled with her heart and not her head.”

  And thank St. Michael and all His angels for that, thought Cecil. Otherwise, it might have been his own queen who languished in a dreary castle, in a foreign country, under house arrest.

  “However,” said Elizabeth, “we have a far greater problem. Rumors of plots have come to my ears.”

  “Plots!” exclaimed Moray. “When are there not rumors and plots?”

  “Several of my men are concerned that keeping my cousin from her freedom, if she is denied her throne, may cause unrest. Sir Francis has warned me on a number of occasions that if my cousin should ever officially become a prisoner in my realm, we should have much ado with her. I have lately come to believe it!” Elizabeth steepled her fingers. “There have been several suggestions on the subject of finding a husband for the Queen of Scots.”

  “Indeed?” said Moray. He did not want Mary back; he never wanted to see her face again, and he did not want her presence in Scotland, to foment trouble there. His troublesome sister was in England; let her stay here, and let Elizabeth be burdened with that problem! He had of late begun to view Mary’s escape from Scotland as rather a good thing than a bad. But a husband! Would not a husband simply seek to win back her crown of Scotland? “Has Your Grace anyone in mind?”

  Elizabeth smiled her slow, cat’s smile. “Sir Francis has put forward his nephew, my cousin, George Carey. For you must agree, it must needs be a Protestant.”

  “My sister will never agree.”

  Elizabeth guffawed. “I did not expect that she would. There is also a plot afoot to marry her to Norfolk.”

  “Never!” cried Moray. “Where did you hear such a thing? Is it true?”

  “Oh, aye,” said Cecil. “It is true enough. We have already confronted my lord of Norfolk, who has denied it, of course. He cast a wary eye at those letters of yours and said that he preferred to sleep on a safe pillow. But methinks he lies.”

  “We shall have to watch him carefully,” said Elizabeth. “For if Mary were to marry a Catholic, especially one as powerful as Norfolk, I trow that I should be in the Tower within a month!”

  She smiled to herself when she recalled just how that plot had been revealed to her! She was gratified that Robert was so intent on avoiding marriage to the bewitching Mary Stuart that he would risk intriguing behind her back. But the silly could not have chosen a worse candidate. And Robert and Norfolk had always been deadly enemies; they made for such strange bedfellows that if the situation had not been so serious she could have laughed at it. But poor Robert had lost his nerve, taken to his sick bed in his anxiety, and then confessed all to her. She had magnanimously forgiven him and then confronted Norfolk with the accusation that he was planning to marry Mary Stuart without royal consent. Despite his fervent denials of any such scheme, the fact that the duke’s face had gone chalk white had given him away in a trice.

  Moray frowned. “And will you not arrest him?”

  Elizabeth shrugged, retrieving her wine cup. “On what charge? Intention is not action, therefore, no treason has been committed…yet. No, Walsingham has him under observation. If the cat jumps the wrong way, there will be plenty of time to decide what is best to do. I do not want to incite a Catholic rebellion, if such can be avoided. In the meantime, I plan to make every show of support for my dear cousin of Scotland. You, My Lord of Moray, will scream like a scalded cat when I do so. Together, we shall convince your people and mine that we both desire nothing less than that justice be done. That should satisfy all, and in the end nothing at all shall be done. Are you agreeable to this plan?”

  “Certainly, Your Grace,” said Moray. “But I would feel more secure if my sister were placed farther away from the Scottish border and the Catholic north of England.”

  Elizabeth considered. Mary was in England and must remain so for the time being. She had every intention of sending the hapless queen back to Scotland…let Moray deal with the Scottish queen on Scottish soil! All in good time. For now, she agreed wholeheartedly that Mary’s removal further south would be most prudent. And it had also become evident that it was unwise to leave her captivating cousin in the charge of one man for too long. She quickly cast her mind over the likely candidates to take charge of the intriguing enchantress who was Mary Stuart. She turned to Cecil. “My Lord, kindly inform the Earl of Shrewsbury that he is to take charge of the Queen of Scots and remove Her Grace immediately to his castle of Tutbury.” There was a man who certainly should not be charmed! And if the earl did perchance succumb to the temptress who was her beguiling cousin, his formidable wife, Bess of Hardwick, the Countess of Shrewsbury, would be sure to have her husband’s head on a platter.

  Sighty Crag, Scottish Borders, December 1569

  Lord Thomas Percy, the Seventh Earl of Northumberland, drew his sodden cloak more closely about him. The weather was cruel; it was bitterly cold, but not quite cold enough to snow, therefore they had marched steadily north all that day from Naworth in an icy drizzle. The higher they rose in the hills that divided England from Scotland, the more blustery it became; so added to the misery of their drenched clothing were the icy fingers of the wind, searching every inch of exposed flesh and rendering it numb with cold.

  For the hundredth time he wished that they dared risk a fire; he could not recall ever being so cold in all his life. The sky had cleared towards sunset and now the baleful yellow moon was high and bright, so bright that he could see faint shadows amongst the rocks. He could also make out humps that looked like rock in that rocky expanse, but that he knew were his companions. Amongst them were his wife, and Westmoreland’s as well. The women were surprisingly uncomplaining; perhaps the stories of the Queen of Scotland’s exploits and travails gave them courage in their extremity. Not that they needed it…both women had more than proved their mettle in the past weeks. But war was no occupation for women, and winter was no time for war.

  How had it come to this? But then, it was not supposed to end this way. It had all started out so well; he and Northumberland had raised their own constituents, hundreds of them. They had also convinced many others of the men of the north, gentlemen of wealth and influence, that their cause was just. They would restore the true faith, the ancient worship, to the realm, and then place at its head the true queen. Mary of Scotland would be named Mary, Queen of the British Isles, and all the lands and peoples therein would be united for the first time.

  From all they received promises of support and cooperation. Secret meetings had been held at his seat of Topcliffe, at which their strategy had been fleshed out and agreed. They had even enlisted the aid of the pope himself; Pius had sent his agent, Roberto Ridolfi, w
ith promises of men and money. And then word had reached the conspirators in the north that the Duke of Norfolk had been sent to the Tower. There seemed no doubt that the reason was that his plan to free Mary and marry her had been found out; but certainly he had denied it all?

  But the next news they received was that Norfolk had lost his nerve and confessed everything to Elizabeth, in an effort to save himself. No, they had assured each other, such rumors could not be true. Norfolk was steadfast in his resolve. But then had come the dreaded call; the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland were to come to London to wait upon Her Majesty forthwith.

  They were not quite ready to begin their crusade, but to have obeyed the queen’s summons would certainly have resulted in their being placed in the Tower alongside Norfolk. Better to die fighting than on the scaffold! Their wives had agreed, and the two women had ridden hard and long, rallying troops in the countryside. Just as Mary herself would have done, if she were free! The two earls, with their wives and their army, had marched on Durham and taken the cathedral. They had destroyed the hateful Protestant Communion Table and set up an altar; they had burnt all the English Bibles and Protestant prayer books they could find. Catholic priests, hearing of the insurrection, had come out from their hiding places, consecrated the altar and held Mass, absolving the weeping multitudes of the sin of their forced conformance to the heresy of Elizabeth’s reign.

  Not as many men as they had hoped flocked to Durham, but with such as they had, they proceeded on to York. They marched under the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ, banners hidden for more than thirty years since the Pilgrimage of Grace. All had seemed fair fit to succeed; they had met with no resistance and men continued to join the muster as they marched south to free the Queen of Scots.

  They were within fifty miles of Tutbury, where they planned to overwhelm any guard there and free Mary, when news reached them that the Queen of Scotland had been removed from Tutbury Castle, they knew not where. They were running out of funds; the news that the Queen of Scots might not be freed after all caused many of their men to quietly turn away and make for home.