In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  The attempt on Coligny was therefore attributed to the Queen Mother, but she denied all knowledge of it; she even sent her own physician to see to Coligny’s wounds, which were not deemed to be fatal. So if not the Queen Mother, then whom, Walsingham asked himself? The out-of-favor Guises, whose patriarch Coligny had murdered years before? The Spanish, in retaliation for the invasion of the Netherlands? Speculation was rife as Paris held its collective breath.

  And now this.

  Rapid footsteps brought Walsingham out of his revereie; Ellis was back.

  Dawn was breaking; there was no sun yet, but the quality of the light seemed to be changing. Ellis bent over to assuage the stitch in his side.

  “All is lost,” he gasped out. “Coligny has been dragged from his sick bed, murdered, and thrown out of his window down into the street. He was there beheaded. But the violence is spreading. I can barely credit it, Master. Women and children, dragged into the street and slain! Men killed in their very beds! The mob is looting, and no one is safe. What shall we do, Master? They are heading this way.” The tears rolled unheeded down Ellis’s face, and his hands shook as if with a palsy.

  This was grave news, indeed. But he was prepared.

  Raised voices could be heard at the front of the house. Sir Francis ran to the door; a crowd of people was there, wringing their hands, some weeping openly.

  “Sir Philip!” he cried. In the crowd was Sir Philip Sidney, Dudley’s nephew, who was at the university; the others he did not recognize. A chatter of several languages greeted him. Dutch, German, Italian, even some French families; Protestants, all seeking the protection of the English embassy. He could not turn them away; but he must get them in quickly, and then secure his stronghold.

  “This way,” he said, motioning the crowd into the antechamber. “Ellis, lead them to the pantry.” Ellis ran, and the people, about two dozen of them in all, followed blindly in their panic. He locked and barred the door, and then made his own way towards the kitchens. The French knew that the English were Protestants; the door would not hold for long once the mob reached this street. They had just enough time.

  The room that Walsingham had prepared just off the pantry was well hidden, and well-stocked with food and water, blankets and bedding. There was even a hole in the floor, cordoned off with canvas, for the most necessary of human needs. It was not ideal, but it would keep them all safe. The household staff and his guests all accounted for, he grasped the iron ring that he had had installed into the back of a stout dresser, and pulled it closed behind them. The dresser held mugs and plate; unless one knew that it also functioned as a door, it should go unnoticed. At least he prayed that it would be so.

  They were in God’s hands now.

  Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, August 1572

  The sound of the horns off in the distance caused Elizabeth to turn her mare’s head and gallop off in the direction she thought it came from. There was a warm breeze, and the echo of the clarion call seemed to bounce off the very trees. It was exhilarating to be able to ride again, to hunt! She threw her head back and laughed aloud for the sheer joy of the feel of a horse between her knees again, and the dappled sunlight on her face.

  Through the forest she raced, until she emerged out into the open countryside. The castle shone below her like a yellow jewel surrounded with the emerald of its fine lawns and gardens, and ringed with the sapphire blue of the lake and the moat. The hawthorns that had been draped in white blossoms in the spring now showed the promise of the red berries that would adorn them in the fall. Meadowsweet frothed in the ditches, and white windflowers lay as if they were a carpet of snow upon the hillsides. Yellow oxlips danced in the sudden breeze. The effect was completed by the dotting in of the delicate pink of the ragged robin.

  It seemed as if time stood still for her whenever she was on Progress, and nowhere was this truer than at Kenilworth Castle. Kenilworth was Robert’s castle, and he spared no expense when entertaining the queen and the royal court. Daily there were pageants, fireworks, bear baitings, mystery plays, lavish banquets, and of course, the hunt. Upon her arrival, with four hundred courtiers in her train, Robert had ordered all the clocks at Kenilworth stopped for the duration of her visit, because, he said, she was herself timeless, and there should be no such restraints put upon her enjoyment of his hospitality. It was a pretty gesture, very poetic; it pleased the lover in her, and flattered the queen.

  No business was supposed to be conducted during this timeless time; but there were always issues that could not wait, and so upwards of twenty couriers a day sped into the castle courtyard, seeking this courtier or that. But the horseman who clattered over the drawbridge just as Elizabeth emerged from the forest held a message for the queen herself. The courier flashed his royal warrant, and proceeded to the hunting grounds. He spared a thought for the days when messengers who brought bad news were themselves killed; he sent up a quick prayer of thanks to Saint Gabriel, the patron saint of messengers, that this was no longer the case.

  The queen was always the center of attention, and as Elizabeth emerged from the woods, the hunting party, from whom she had become separated in her headlong flight to find the stag they were chasing, rallied round her once again. The courier sped towards the queen without delay.

  The dogs had begun to bay once again and the horn to sound when Elizabeth caught sight of the messenger. The news he brought must be of the utmost importance in order for anyone left at the court to have sent a message to disturb her holiday.

  The man reined to a halt in a spray of clods and dismounted. He withdrew a sealed packet from his saddlebag and handed it up to the queen with both hands.

  Robert held a wineskin out to her, but she shook her head, took the packet, broke the seal and began to read. At first she could not believe her eyes; she had to read the message twice through before the words would sink into her disbelieving brain. And once they did, inexplicably, she began to weep.

  Everyone, including Robert, knew better than to question the queen; she would tell them the news, if she wanted to, in her own good time. After a moment, she reached out and gestured to Robert for his wineskin. She would need its fortification after all.

  By this time, the rest of the hunters as well as the houndsmen and huntsmen had made their way back to the hillside on which the queen sat her horse.

  Elizabeth, now composed once again, stood up in her stirrups and addressed the crowd. “The news has come to me of a great slaughter of innocents,” she said. A collective gasp sounded, and she went on. “The Catholics of Paris, yea, and of other cities of France, too, have risen up and slain every Protestant they can find in their midst. No one was spared; unarmed men, women, even children and infants, have been butchered in their thousands by the frenzied mob.” She waved the parchment in the air. “This message tells of rivers teeming with the bodies of the slain, streams running red with their blood. The dead are piled high in the streets without burial. All in the name of the French king, it says.” The women began to weep and the men to murmur amongst themselves.

  Robert leaned in and whispered his question. “Why, Your Grace? Does it say why?”

  Elizabeth placed a hand on his arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “We shall immediately begin a period of mourning for our Protestant brethren,” she said. With that, she turned her horse and rode with Robert by her side back to the castle.

  ###

  The French ambassador, Bertrand de Salignac Fenelon, seigneur de la Mothe, bowed low before the queen, who sat upon her throne swathed in black. Only the red of her hair and the subtle glitter of the jewels sewn onto her veil offered any relief from the darkness of her apparel. Elizabeth said nothing, and the silence in the great hall began to be oppressive.

  Finally, she said, “Well, sir? And what have you to say to England about the heinous murder of our Protestant brethren in the streets of your cities? What sort of monarch is it who commands such a thing, and what sort of people would carry out such orde
rs? We are shocked and appalled beyond mere words.”

  Fenelon himself had only just heard of the massacre; but he had his instructions.

  “I beg of Your Grace to believe that it was all a very great misunderstanding,” said Fenelon. “The massacre was not ordered by the king or the Queen Mother, Your Grace. It was caused by the Guises, who murdered Gaspard de Coligny in revenge for the murder of their duc. But the people thought that Coligny was murdered because he is Huguenot. And from there, the people began to murder all the Huguenots.”

  “The murder of the Duc de Guise was years ago,” said Elizabeth, waving an imperious hand at Fenelon. But in a way, it rang true. The Guise were out of favor with the Valois; what better way to cloak a revenge killing than to instigate the mindless mobs of Paris, already inflamed by the marriage of their princess to a Huguenot, to wholesale murder? And it still made no sense to her that Catherine would have ordered such a thing; she wanted the treaty with England as badly as Elizabeth herself did. Why cause such a shocking atrocity as the mindless slaughter of ten thousand people to cloak one death, at the expense of a treaty that had just been negotiated? On the other hand, Coligny was known to have a hold over Charles IX that the queen mother resented. Would they ever know the truth of it?

  She had been very worried about Sir Francis, not knowing for days if he were dead or alive; but hard on the heels of the news of the massacre, she had received a letter from Walsingham himself. He was safe, along with Robert’s brother-in-law, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Thomas Smith, his aide, and all his staff; they had even sheltered a number of refugees, by laying hidden in the embassy until the massacre was over. She had delayed telling the pregnant Lady Ursula about her husband’s danger until she knew for certain that he was safe.

  She turned her attention back to the discomfited French ambassador.

  “I have reliable information, sir,” she said haughtily, “that Huguenots who had been granted protection in the Palace of the Louvre itself were murdered, and their bodies stacked without ceremony in the courtyard. And no guards were posted at any of the embassies until the crisis was over. My own embassy was looted and only the ingeniousness of my ambassador accounted for the lives of my people there. How do you explain that?”

  Fenelon kneaded his cap. “Baseless rumor,” he said. “Lies, I am certain of it. I do assure Your Grace that this terrible atrocity was neither planned nor condoned by the French king and queen.”

  Enough was enough; she had berated the French ambassador publicly, which was necessary. But the Treaty of Blois must stand; she dare not protest any further. But here was an opportunity not to be missed!

  “You may inform the king and the Queen Mother that I accept their explanation,” she said, with a regal nod. “However, I fear me that there can be no more discussion of a marriage between our two countries at this time.”

  ###

  Elizabeth paced the room, her nervous energy affecting all of the men assembled there. Her uncle Effingham, Cecil, Sussex, Arundel, Sir Francis Knollys, the Lord High Admiral, Lord Clinton, Robert, all gathered around, their expressions grim.

  “Think you that they mean to take ship and bring their slaughter here?” asked the Lord High Admiral, Edward Clinton.

  “There is no way of knowing,” replied Elizabeth. “Ready the fleet, just in case. But somehow I cannot believe that the Queen Mother is behind such a thing as this. It flies in the face of the Treaty of Blois, the ink of which is barely even dry! No, something else must be afoot. Perhaps it was as Fenelon said; mayhap the murder of Coligny, which we know was premeditated, simply sparked off an unexpected flame that, once, started, could not be extinguished.”

  “So you do not believe this to be a fundamental shift in French policy?” asked Arundel.

  Elizabeth stopped her pacing. “It would make no sense,” she said. “If it were not for the fact that we have just entered into the Treaty of Blois, I would be sending troops to the coast. But no, I do not believe this was intentional, nor that it presages danger to us here.”

  “The people are calling for the head of the Queen of Scotland,” said Robert. “They believe that she was complicit in the murder of the Huguenots. Many believe that the French mean to continue the slaughter here and place the Scots queen on the throne.”

  Elizabeth guffawed. “Then they give Mary Stuart credit for more power than she possesses,” she said. “No, the Queen of Scotland has enough sins of her own to answer for, without ascribing to her those of other people. I do not believe she knew of this. We must leave Her Grace of Scotland be for the time being. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to believe Fenelon’s lame excuses. I think someone, for whatever reason, wanted Coligny dead, and they killed him. He is a leader of the Huguenots, so the people took it upon themselves that his killing was a sign for the murder of all Huguenots. Sometimes the simplest explanations are the most viable, think you not?”

  “Regardless of the reason for it,” said Cecil, “we must prepare now for a mighty influx of Protestant refugees. We cannot in good conscience turn such away.”

  Again Elizabeth snorted. “I have no intention of turning them away,” she said. “In fact, I plan to send money and arms to the Huguenots still in France who are willing to fight. But subtly, if you please. We do not want to ruffle any more feathers in Paris…or in the Netherlands.”

  The men of the Council nodded their heads. Here was a queen who thought like a king. Perhaps they had underestimated her all these years.

  Chapter 18

  “The Queen of Scotland has enough sins of her own to answer

  for, without ascribing to her those of other people.”

  -Elizabeth I

  Chatsworth, Derbyshire, October 1572

  T he Earl of Shrewsbury should have been a vastly contented man. He was titled; he came from a respected line of loyal peers; he was wealthy; he had the queen’s confidence. And he would have been contented, but for the three women in his life. His wife, Bess, was a shrew; his royal guest…prisoner was such an ugly word…Mary of Scotland, was a constant source of worry and anxiety to him, for a litany of reasons; and Elizabeth, although she had entrusted him with the delicate task of being the Queen of Scots’ gaoler, had likewise condemned him to this purgatory so far from court, and seemingly had all but forgotten him and his services to the crown.

  If asked if he could have changed anything, Lord George would promptly have requested to be relieved of the burden of being the caretaker of Queen Mary Stuart.

  But not like this.

  Sir Henry Killigrew sat before him, sipping wine from a mug. He knew, that like himself, Killigrew was in Queen Elizabeth’s confidence. There was no reason to doubt that which Killigrew had just told him, but he would have been easier in his mind if he had it writing.

  “And whom,” he said, but his words came out as a bark and a squeak; he cleared his throat, took a sip of his wine, and said again, “And whom is to inform the Queen of Scotland of this decision?”

  Both men’s eyes strayed to Bess, who was standing by the window, looking out over the vast lawns and carefully kept gardens of her beloved Chatsworth. Perhaps a walnut grove on the western hillside? Suddenly she became aware of the silence and looked around.

  “Not I,” she said shortly. “I want nothing to do with such a thing! And what ails you, my Lord of Shrewsbury, that you should not want to take this opportunity to coddle your charge?”

  Lord George winced; such accusations were bad enough when made before the servants, but in front of a peer… He drew breath to respond just a moment too late; Bess used the pause to start her harangue in earnest.

  “Oh, do not think that I and all those who live here do not see it!” she railed. She turned to Sir Henry. “My Lord Shrewsbury has conceived himself a passion for the Scottish queen, Sir Henry. Always demanding the choicest rooms for Her Grace, the finest cuts of meat for her table! How fortunate it is that he has his wife to look out for him, or Mary Stuart would have escaped
long since, due to his leniency! It is I who must needs see to it that Her Gracious Majesty is housed in the dreary keep, so that she will not abscond some moonlit night, to our shame and detriment. It is I who must keep watch on the kitchens to ensure that my own table receives the bounty due to the mistress of the house. Aye, the queen is fed on food commensurate with her sedentary state, not on the delights that a more active damsel may consume and remain lithe and lissome. Why, the queen has only me to thank that she has not so far run to fat! If only you could see the sweetmeats, the confections, that Lord George seeks to bestow upon his paramour!”

  Lord George sat, his back straight, his eyes fixed upon the wall, wishing himself a thousand miles away. Bess fixed him with a glare and then turned back to Sir Henry.

  “Yes, paramour I said, and paramour I mean!” she shouted, her eyes wild and flashing. There was a time when Lord George had been amused by Bess’s temper, and he had thought her fiery and grand; now he was embarrassed beyond words. But he dared not rebut her; that only fueled the fire. It was best to let her shout herself out.

  “Did you know, Sir Henry, that the Queen of Scots possesses an uncanny wile said to ensnare all who come into her presence? Bah! I am not affected by such, if it even exists! Mary Stuart is no enchantress. She is simply a woman who is free with her favors, and for that, is loved by those taken in by her false generosity. No, sirs, I will not tell the Queen of Scotland that she is to be taken back to Scotland to lose her head! One of you must needs do so. I wash my hands of the whole affair.”

  Lord George sighed. In a way, that was best, he supposed. Bess could be trusted only to taunt Mary and make her cry; Sir Henry did not look to be the gentle sort. Only he would be able to break the news to her that she had been sold by England back to the Scots, just as Northumberland had recently been sold by the Scots to England.

  Bess, her head held high, walked to the door of the room, yanked it open, and closed it smartly behind her.