In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  The Tower of London, August 1571

  The Bishop of Ross regarded Sir Francis Walsingham with steely eyes. He was a prelate, holding high office in the Church of Rome; if Walsingham’s heretic queen chose not to recognize this, or his appointment by his own queen as her ambassador to the English court, that did not alter the facts. As such, he was immune to arrest, and need not disclose anything he did not choose to. The fact that he was being held in the Tower, that dread place, did give him pause; but there was naught that they could do save to threaten him, and what was that? He would stand fast before the gates of Hell before he would give up the rightful, Catholic queen, or his fellow conspirators.

  The cell in which he was being held had only one window, and that so high up in the wall that he could not reach it to look out. The sun never shone through it, even on a clear day; he must be facing a northerly direction. That alone ought to give him courage! For that way lay his liege lady. He believed at that moment that if only his arm were long enough, he could verily have reached out and touched her, or at least the castle where she bided, in her underserved captivity.

  In the dim glow of the single candle that he had brought with him for his interview with the bishop, Sir Francis perceived the stubborn line in which John Lesley’s jaw was set. No matter; never had he ever failed to get what he wanted from any man.

  “Come, Your Excellency,” said Sir Francis in his soft, smooth voice. “We know what is afoot. Let us hear your version of events…for the record.”

  The bishop pursed his lips and thrust his arms into his voluminous sleeves. “I am a diplomat of Her Grace of Scotland. I am under no obligation to answer any of your questions, sir, or to tell you anything.”

  Sir Francis’s face remained impassive. “Any diplomatic immunity or ambassadorial privileges Your Excellency enjoyed ended when Queen Elizabeth dismissed you from court. And a deposed queen enjoys no political embassy.”

  Bishop Lesley bristled at his words. “Nor does a heretic who is no queen, sir! I am still a prince of the church, and you will treat me with the respect due to my office!”

  “You are no prince of the Church of England,” said Sir Francis. “That is the only church that need concern us here.” The insult to Queen Elizabeth he dismissed as the irrelevancy it was; after all, which queen ruled England and upheld treaties with Scotland, and which queen was deposed and languished under house arrest at that queen’s pleasure? Sir Francis viewed John Lesley as a goat tethered to a stake, awaiting the wolf’s appearance. Goats, to his ear, always had such a weak, pathetic, wavering cry; did the bishop but know it, his protests sounded as such to Sir Francis’s ears.

  “We have come into the possession of letters,” said Sir Francis softly. “Letters to yourself, to the Queen of Scots, and to the Duke of Norfolk.” He leaned back, regarding Bishop Lesley speculatively.

  The bishop pursed his lips. “Anyone may write a letter.”

  Sir Francis was silent for a moment and then he said, “On the face of it, that is true. But these letters were not written by just anyone.” It was time for the wolf to make his appearance. “These letters are from Roberto Ridolfi, and they are in cypher.”

  So that was it, thought the bishop smugly. Sir Francis wished to bargain with him for the key to the code in which they all corresponded. Well, if that were the case, he reflected, Sir Francis was doomed to disappointment! He would die before he would betray the Scots queen and his fellow conspirators. And beyond who the letters were to or from, it meant that they had no idea what the letters said. Beyond an inference based on who was involved in the conspiracy, they had nothing.

  “You shall not get the key to the cypher from me, sir,” said the bishop truculently.

  Sir Francis steepled his fingers under his chin. The candle was burning low; the dripping wax made an intricate pattern on the candleholder, and had spilled over onto the table.

  “Oh,” said Sir Francis blandly. “There will be no need for that, My Lord Bishop. The cyher was quite simple. We already know that which the letters say.”

  For a moment the world tilted and Bishop Lesley swayed on the rough wooden bench upon which he sat. He reached his arms out to the edge of the table between them to steady himself.

  Sir Francis was using his thumbnail to pry up the lines of yellowish wax that had run onto the surface of the table. “The letters,” he said, without looking up from his task, “describe in some detail a most heinous plot. The last letters we intercepted were accompanied by a great deal of money.” This concerned him most particularly, because when funds started arriving, it was certain that an army would not be far behind. He knew what was planned; he did not know exactly when. And the letters from Ridolfi, whilst they implicated the recipients, were, as the bishop had said earlier, absolute proof of nothing. He needed the letters between Lesley, Norfolk and the queen, for surely there must be some. Subtle means had been used to search the queen’s apartments at Tutbury whilst Her Grace took her exercise at the archery butts; the search had yielded nothing, nor had a search of the Charterhouse, where Norfolk had been biding under house arrest before being brought back to the Tower. But a queen, a duke and a bishop could not be racked. He needed the names of those further down in the conspiracy, those who might know where such things were hidden. For hidden they must be; in his estimation, neither the Queen of Scots, the Duke of Norfolk nor the Bishop of Ross understood the importance of destroying such documents.

  The candle was almost burnt out. It was time for sterner measures.

  “Know you, my good bishop, where in the Tower you are lodged?” asked Sir Francis quietly.

  How odd, thought Lesley. He had just been contemplating that very thing earlier. “Why, on the north side, My Lord,” he replied.

  Sir Francis arose. “Come,” he said, smiling benignly. With one hand he grasped the candleholder and wrenched it free from its prison of wax; with the other he beckoned the bishop. He pounded twice on the door; the raucous screech of a key scraping in the metal lock sounded and the door opened on squeaking hinges.

  When Lesley had arrived at the Tower, it was dark, and the rooms nearest his own were locked and barred. It was by flickering torchlight that he had been admitted to his cell, and the door locked behind him. Now the door across from his own lay open. The room was brightly lit with cressets along the walls; a fire pit glowed in the farthest corner. From the walls, glittering in the firelight, hung instruments whose purpose he could only guess at, shuddering. But in the very center of the room lay a device that, although he had never seen it before, he knew instantly. The rack!

  Suddenly he began to shake as if from an ague; his knees buckled and he dropped down onto the straw that was scattered upon the floor. “P-please,” he stuttered. His jaw worked but no further sound would come out; his teeth chattered so loudly in his ears that he thought that they must break.

  The men who had been standing on either side of the great device moved, and at this an icy fear such as he had never known before seized him. His very blood seemed to run cold in his veins. In his rising panic, his bowels turned to water. An acrid odor filled the room. He had pissed himself.

  And then suddenly the floodgates opened, and there, on his knees in his own filth, he began to babble.

  “You want Norfolk’s men,” he cried. “Banister, Higford and Barker. They know all. And the Queen of Scots! Why, she is a witch who casts a spell, have you not heard of it? In her baleful presence, a man is not a man any longer, but an instrument of her enchantment. She is evil, sinful, wicked, immoral and corrupt! She is a jezebel, a daughter of Danaus, who killed her first husband by poison, caused her second to be murdered, and yea, just as David with Uriah, would have sent Bothwell to his death in battle had he not run away, to his everlasting shame and disgrace! And when my lord of Norfolk marries her and ascends the throne by her side, woe be unto him! For shall not his days then be numbered, as with all who have shared the queen’s marriage bed? Alas, beware, for foreign ships will soon be upo
n us!”

  On and on it went, the distraught bishop becoming even more incoherent, until finally he lay sobbing on his side in the filthy straw. There he writhed in his fear and misery, muttering, “Spare me! Spare me! I have told you all!”

  Not quite all, thought Sir Francis. There had been no mention of Queen Elizabeth. What fate was planned for Her Grace in this dastardly conspiracy? For there must be some plan. He needed more.

  With a flick of his eyes, Sir Francis bid the two men lift the sniveling heap that was the Bishop of Ross and drag him back to his cell. Walsingham detected in their rough handling of the prisoner their disappointment that there was to be no racking.

  It was not the first time that a man had broken at the mere sight of the rack; but even he had been shocked at the outpouring of vituperative invective that the bishop had directed towards the Scottish queen. From what depths of confusion had that bitter diatribe come forth? He had no doubt that the Queen of Scots was a Circe, who like that lady of myth, used magic to transform men into animals. How many men had she made into the equivalent of lustful, rutting beasts, through their desire for her? And had not Circe been exiled to the solitary island of Aeaea for killing her husband, the prince of Colchis? Perhaps what the bishop had blurted out in his fear of the agony of the rack was true. But through all his blathering, one thing had struck Walsingham as possibly useful; the names of Banister, Higford and Barker.

  Horham Hall, September 1571

  Elizabeth stood in the topmost room of the tower and watched as the horses and their riders pursued a hart through the fields. The hart was wily, and changed course with the grace of a dancer. But she could tell that the hart somehow knew that for him, this was a death dance. The hounds bayed, the riders on their swift horses closed ever closer on the brave animal’s trail, and then suddenly all was lost to her sight when the entire party, hart, hounds, horses and riders, disappeared into a thick coppice of beeches.

  “Damnation!” she cried. It was so frustrating not to be riding in the hunt herself, leading the charge, tiring a brace of horses as her father used to do. But the sore on her leg had flared up again and there was nothing for it…she could not ride. She had not even been able to mount her horse for her Summer Progress, but had had to take to a litter instead.

  As she waited impatiently for the hunt to emerge from the coppice, a movement on the other side of the deer park caught her eye. A courier! Without a word, she turned and made for the staircase. It was wider than some and had a stout handrail; for this tower had been built especially for her visit to Horham Hall by her host, Sir John Cutte. Cecil, anticipating the queen’s inability to ride, had bid Sir John ensure that Her Grace should be able to enjoy watching the hunt from best advantage, since she likely would not be able to participate in it.

  Cecil had also seen the rider, and he followed the queen wordlessly down the stairs. He and Sir Francis had begged her to abandon all thought of a Summer Progress with Ridolfi’s plot known to be afoot, but Elizabeth would not hear of it. She was adamant that she would neither change her plans nor give up her holiday.

  Just as with the Bishop of Ross, Sir Francis had only to show Norfolk’s two henchmen the rack, and they babbled all they knew. Unfortunately, that which they offered so effusively was still little more than hearsay evidence, when all was said and done. Cecil and Walsingham needed, they simply must have, more, in order to bring down the Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots.

  Yes, thought Cecil, Banister and Higford had disappointed. But when he had last received word from Walsingham, Norfolk’s secretary, Barker, was still holding out. And how much racking could a man take? The presence of the courier could only mean that the hapless Barker had either broken…or succumbed.

  Elizabeth emerged from the bottom of the tower into the sunlight, shading her eyes with her hand. She leant upon her stick awaiting Cecil, who was making slower time hobbling down the stairs. Suddenly she heard a great cry off in the distance; the shouts from the hunting party carried on the wind. Someone must have brought down the courageous hart at last. She knew a brief moment of pity for the beast that had so skillfully eluded the arrow so doggedly for so long. Was it Robert, perhaps, who had been the instrument of the stalwart creature’s death? After herself, he was the best shot; and after him, it was usually her cousin, Lettice Knollys, whose aim was truest. But knowing herself unable to ride and participate in the sport, she had made certain that Lettice was not amongst the ladies privileged to accompany the queen on this year’s Royal Progress. She would brook no competition, and certainly not from her own cousin!

  Cecil finally appeared at the doorway to the tower. He came stumping out on his stick; she had walked away into the meticulously trimmed parterres with their fragrant rose trees, and awaited him there.

  Elizabeth snorted in disgust. “What a pair we make, the two of us!” she cried, shaking her head as he limped towards her.

  Cecil smiled and said, “But at least Your Grace is young enough to hope for recovery. Whereas I, alas…” He shrugged.

  Not so young, she thought; she had just turned thirty-eight. She had celebrated her birthday at Audley End, a manor house on the site of a ruined abbey. The house was owned by the Howards and currently belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. The fact that her hapless cousin was back in the Tower once more, along with his servants, afforded her great amusement; she had joked with her company, asking, “Where is our host?” Audley was just outside the town of Saffron Walden; the town treasurer had presented her, on behalf of the townspeople, with a fine silver-gilt cup filled with nineteen pounds in gold coins, in celebration of her presence amongst them on the anniversary of her birthday.

  Together she and Cecil walked the length of the garden towards the house, and just as they gained the path to the rear entrance, they spied the courier trotting towards them. At the sight of them, he went down on one knee and handed the sealed parchment up to the queen. Elizabeth waved her hand for Cecil to take it.

  Cecil broke the seal and read the letter. “There will be an answer,” he said to the courier. “See to yourself and your horse and I will send for you.” The man bowed and departed in the direction of the kitchens.

  With a triumphant look upon his face, he lifted his eyes to Elizabeth’s and said softly, “At last, we have them.”

  At that moment a piercing cry silenced the somnolent buzzing of the bees in the bushes and the birdsong in the trees; the hunt had ended with that last great cry, and the party was now hawking.

  Elizabeth looked up just in time to see a downward-racing blur disappear behind the trees. She wondered what poor creature had just met its end at the sharp talons of the formidable bird of prey. She shivered; the cry and its result were analogous to Norfolk’s current dilemma, if what Cecil just said was true.

  “Are you not pleased, Your Grace?” asked Cecil.

  Pleased. Was it possible to be pleased that one’s own kinsmen had been caught plotting one’s demise and the seizure of one’s kingdom? Should one be pleased that the penalty that should be exacted for such behavior would have to be sanctioned by herself, so that she would be responsible for the deaths of her own blood relations?

  She sighed. “What does Walsingham’s dispatch say?”

  “Barker has confessed.”

  They resumed walking down the garden path, and came upon a stone bench before a red brick wall. The wall faced south, and upon it were espaliered a row of apricot trees. Elizabeth studied the display, then plucked the ripest of the fruit. She eyed it carefully, then rubbed off the delicate fuzz with a long, white finger.

  She shrugged. “A man is likely to say anything if he is racked long enough.” She bit tentatively into the apricot; she had been having much trouble of late with her teeth. But the fruit was soft and yielding.

  “That is true,” said Cecil. “But this confession is accompanied by indisputable proof.” He eyed the bench longingly; he could not sit until the queen did.

  Elizabeth noticed Cecil’s uncomfor
table stance; he leaned heavily with both hands upon the top of his stick. She sat down, and waved him to sit as well. He eased himself down onto the bench.

  “In what form is this proof?” she asked.

  “Letters,” he said. “Sir Francis’s initial search of the Charterhouse yielded nothing. But our unfortunate Mr. Barker described a certain loose brick under the eaves outside the duke’s bedroom window. It was there that a cache of letters has been found.”

  “More letters!” exclaimed the queen. She turned and plucked another apricot. “Letters from whom?”

  “Ridolfi, of course, and…” Cecil hesitated.

  Elizabeth looked up sharply. “And whom?”

  “And the Queen of Scots,” he said firmly. “Between Her Grace’s letters and Ridolfi’s, we now know for certain what the plot is. In one of the letters, Ridolfi explains to the duke what must be done about Your Grace, if the plot is to succeed. The King of Spain desires that Your Grace be neutralized, and then he will send his troops, via Alba in the Netherlands.”

  Elizabeth snorted inelegantly. “Humph! Neutralized! A pleasant euphemism for murdered!” For what king would leave alive an object for insurrection and uprising to plague his heart out, as she was plagued by the Queen of Scotland? No, it must be death. Her mind raced back over the years to the time when Philip of Spain had first come to England to marry her sister. She remembered that soft, velvet night when she had first met him. Mary had been so reluctant to allow them to meet; she was jealous of her youth and beauty. And Philip had been captivated by her! So captivated that he had wanted to marry her after her sister’s death. But she would not repeat her sister’s folly. And now the King of Spain wanted her dead, and her feather-brained cousin set up in her place, that he might rule England through her from afar. Well, it was not to be. She would see to that!