In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  And then the miracle had come. In 1564, the queen requested his service as a Gentleman Pensioner. In that capacity, he was responsible for the queen’s safety and well-being at court, and wherever she went, even on Progress. Of course, he attended her daily, but it was in the evenings that he proved most useful. For it appeared that the queen also remembered that fateful galliard. Many joked that he had found his way to the queen’s heart through the dance, instead of by feats of arms, or by helping her make wise policy. But what cared he, as long as he spent his days near her, protecting her, and in the evenings, partnering her in the dance? He had served her faithfully and loyally ever since. She was his life, but she was completely unaware of it.

  He stood silently, still, almost afraid to move lest he break some unseen spell. It smote his heart to see her so broken and sad. And she was a queen; she must needs hide her heartbreak even more so than any other must do. How he longed to comfort her! But perhaps he did that just by virtue of his presence in the room; did she but know it, a fellow sufferer! If that were so, he was glad. He would willingly have laid his life down for her. He loved her not because of who she was, but for what she was. Brave, beautiful, clever, smart; and so much more besides. The fact that she was queen was the only thing about her that he heartily regretted, because it kept her forever at arm’s length. Had she been anyone else, he should have shouted his love to the sky and married her.

  He had stood frozen all this time, uncertain about having entered the room unbidden. But as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, it was not inappropriate for him to be there. The queen often held private audiences in her privy chamber. He had entered the room unbidden, but she had made no move to stop him; was that tacit leave on her part? He took a gingerly step forward, then another. It was only a short distance to the window where she stood gazing out at the night sky. She was barely a silhouette now that the fire had gone out.

  The fire! The room was as cold as a tomb. There was a goodly task! He took two bold steps towards the hearth, and knelt down to lift a log from the basket to place it upon the grate.

  Suddenly she spoke; softly, so quietly.

  “Leave it,” she said.

  He stood up, uncertain what to do next.

  In the soft darkness of the room she walked to him and when he felt her close, he opened his arms. They stood together such for a long time, he holding her while she wept her silent tears, her shoulders shaking ever so slightly. He lost track of time. What need had he of such a mundane thing as time, when he was holding her in his arms? Would that time would stand still, or better yet, cease altogether.

  Without a word, and barely breaking their embrace, Elizabeth led him to the window seat. He sat down, and in the darkness, she lay there with him, his back against the narrow wooden wall, her head upon his chest, the strong arms encircling her. At that moment his thoughts were only for her; she was as a wounded animal seeking the shelter and safety of a cave in a storm. Whatever she needed, he would give her; and it seemed that what she needed now was the warmth, the comfort, the understanding silence of another human being. He sat, absently stroking her hair, as he might have done if he were soothing a child’s tears. There, in that timeless place, with her body pressed against his, he watched the silent stars.

  Elizabeth knew when he had fallen asleep; she could tell by his deep, even breathing. Sweet Christopher! She knew that he loved her. It was very easy to tell the sycophantic, self-seeking courtiers from those who genuinely cared about her. The people of the court would have been aghast if they knew how transparent they were to her, and how easily read. For this reason, she treasured Christopher and kept him close to her. Not because she loved him, but because he loved her. The gulf between them had been bridged the year before when she had laughed and called him her Lids. But he was much more to her than that. To a ruler, someone who truly loved you for yourself was a rare thing, something to be cherished.

  She still loved Robert; nothing would ever change that, as she had so amply proved this day! But he was lost to her forever now. The love between them was still there, despite all, but something, some vital element, had been lost and might never be recovered. Perhaps this dear, unassuming man could fill that void.

  The horizon was turning a delicate apple green when she stirred; she must wake him and he must go. The ladies of her privy chamber could be trusted, but the castle would soon be astir and everyone must stir with it in the normal rhythm of the day.

  She reached a delicate hand up and touched his face. He opened his eyes. He remembered well where he was and why. His great arms encircled the queen, her head resting on his chest. She looked up and smiled.

  “Thank you, Christopher,” she said

  He stirred and shifted, his great strong arms helping her to rise to her feet. He arose and without a word, took a step towards the door, but she laid a restraining hand on his arm. He stopped; she raised her hand, cool and feather-light, to his cheek.

  “Thank You,” she said again, tears swimming in her eyes. One spilled over and fell, the teardrop making a crystal track on her cheek. He lifted his hand and gently wiped the tear away with his thumb.

  “I love you,” he whispered, with a slight shrug, as if such a thing were not only obvious, but inevitable.

  “I know,” she replied.

  Both came together in an embrace, and once again they stood locked together. But there was nothing of desire in such an embrace; only the comfort that one friend might give to another in a time of great grief or sadness. After a time he bent and placed a soft kiss upon her brow. She smiled slightly and turned back to the window. The sun was just coming up over the tops of the trees, and it shed its golden light on her like a halo.

  He opened the door and closed it softly behind him.

  # # #

  The hand that lay in hers stirred and instantly she was on her feet, her other hand pressed to Christopher’s fevered brow.

  “Thanks be to God!” she cried on a sob. His fever had broken; he felt cool once again. She stood gazing at him intently. He moaned softly and his eyes opened a slit. They were no longer glassy, unrecognizing. Almost before her eyes the red weals began to emerge. “Stay you there!” she cried. Recalling her own dreadful illness, she knew that now he was back in himself once again, he was bound to be very thirsty. She fetched the flagon and poured out a measure of the well-watered wine that she had ordered be left, fresh each day, outside the door to the sick room.

  Christopher’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

  “Hush,” she said, soothingly. “Do not try to speak. Drink now. You have been long away, and have given me a right fright!” Her throat felt thick with tears of relief as she spoke.

  He drank, and when he had drunk his fill, Elizabeth replaced the damp pillows with fresh, dry ones and replaced the damp scarlet flannel in which he was wrapped, with a new one from a pile by the door.

  He opened his mouth to speak; his words came out in a raspy whisper.

  “Death,” he said tentatively.

  “No,” cried Elizabeth. “Oh, my poor lamb, no! You are better, much better. But it has been three days. I was so worried.”

  “Death,” he whispered again. “Death…hath been much more to my advantage than to win life and health by so loathsome a pilgrimage. A time of three days away from Your Grace? No death, no fear of Hellfire, does worse violence to my spirit than to know that I have been absent from you for even one day.”

  “Shh, shh, you must not tire yourself, you must rest now,” coaxed Elizabeth, with a hand to his brow. Still cool, the fever had not returned; but he was raving. A bad sign…? A good one? Perhaps he was still delirious. That should pass in time.

  “No, Your Gracious Majesty,” he said softly. “I have been wandering in that barren land where I could find you no longer. I thank the Almighty that he hath granted my return; upon that boon, I make me now this vow unto you. I shall never wander from your side again. My spirit and my soul agreeth well with my body and my life, that to ser
ve you, Dear Lady, is where my Heaven is; but to lack you is Hell’s torment. Three whole days! My heart is full of woe.”

  The effort such speech cost him was beginning to tell. She put gentle fingers to his lips. “Hush now, my dearest,” she said. The tears that had welled up in her eyes fell, but he had closed his eyes again and did not see them. She dashed them away, and placed a soothing hand upon his brow. It was still cool. The worst was over.

  She had thought him to be sleeping at last, but once again, his eyelids fluttered.

  “Lamb,” he said weakly. “You called me your lamb.”

  “Yes,” she cried, laughing through her tears. “You are my lamb, my dear sheep, my sweet mutton.”

  “So many endearments,” he said with a slight smile. “And your Lids. No one has so many nicknames as I.”

  His words brought the ready tears to her eyes once more. “Indeed, that is so,” she replied. “Nor shall anyone, for none are so deserving as you.” She ran her hand under her runny nose inelegantly, then laughed at the gesture.

  The effort to speak to her and to keep his eyes open was beginning to tell. He seemed to sink back into his pillows; a violent shudder wracked his body. Instantly she arose and added another log to the fire. When she returned to his side, he seemed to be sleeping at last; but once again he began to speak in a raspy whisper. His voice was very faint; she leaned forward, close to his lips, that she might hear better that which he was trying to say. This time he did not have the strength to open his eyes.

  “Bear with me, my most dear, sweet lady. My passion for thee overcometh me. Love me, for I love you.”

  His lips ceased moving and finally his breathing took on the deep regularity of the sleeper. Gone at last were the short, sharp pantings that she remembered so well from her own illness, and that had frightened her so in him. She was relieved that he had fallen asleep at last, and that she need not reply to him. For what was there she could have said? That his love for her was genuine, selfless and sincere, she was in no doubt. But her heart belonged to Robert and nothing to be done. To dear, sweet Christopher she would not lie. And then a thought struck her. She did love him. Many professed to love her, but she believed that Christopher really did love her. What was she to do, then, except return that unselfish love as best she might? Not as she loved Robert; that was different. But she was bound now to Christopher just as surely as she was bound to Robert. And Robert’s love, she knew, had never been entirely selfless. Christopher’s was. She was not certain how she knew this; but she did. Robert was lost to her forever; this she accepted. But even so, nothing had changed for them; if anything, they had grown closer. Because it had become apparent, without a word ever being spoken, that despite what Robert had done, he was still loved by, and protected by, the queen.

  She gazed down at Christopher’s sleeping face. It was strange, she thought, how in slumber a man will often resemble so much the innocent little boy he had once been. Once again she placed her hand upon his brow. She could never have Robert now, even though she still had his love; but she could have this. The undying, unselfish undemanding love of this dear man.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered. And then, exhausted herself, she leaned over onto the bed from the chair in which she had sat vigil over him for the past three days and slept with her head upon his chest, her fingers entwined in his.

  Rufford Abbey, Nottinghamshire, September 1574

  The journey from Chatsworth to Rufford Abbey had seemingly been doomed from the beginning. Everything from a lame baggage horse to Bess’s woman misplacing her jewel casket had conspired to delay their departure. But finally the cavalcade pulled away on a beautiful, sparkling day in late September.

  It was Michaelmas Day, and the roads were crowded with servants going to their new posts. Mary was, for once, permitted to ride in the litter with the leather flap rolled up, so that she might see the people, and they might see her. As always on such journeyings, the wind and the feel of the sun on her face evoked first a great joy in her, and then a profound sorrow; if only she had been allowed a horse! But Lord George dare not indulge her so far as that.

  And so this day found her sharing the royal litter with Seton, of course, but also with two others; one of whom she thoroughly loathed. Her mother-in-law, the Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, had come a-visiting Bess at Chatsworth and had been extended the invitation to Rufford. Her brother-in-law, Darnley’s young sibling, was with them as well. Charles Stuart, now heir to the earldom of Lennox in Darnley’s place, was an obnoxious, wilful, spoilt youth of nineteen, who promised so far to be every bit as loathsome and insufferable as Darnley had ever been. Margaret spoiled the boy, because with Darnley gone, he was all she had left. But Mary believed he would have been hateful even had she not done so; it seemed that to be despicable was an inborn trait of the deadly combination of Douglas and Stewart. If only she did not have to share her litter with them! But they were all of the Blood Royal; it was unavoidable. They must ride together.

  The day was waning when it became apparent that they were in some danger of not reaching their first stopping place before dark, the manor house of Lord Templeton. Thanks to her buffoon of a great uncle, the priories and abbeys that might have been called upon to give them succor were no more.

  Then suddenly the wind changed, the sun disappeared and a blast frigid of air swept down upon them from the north; with it came a driving rain. The rain came down in torrents while the storm raged; there was nothing for it but to halt the litters, carts and baggage wagons until the storm passed. They were vulnerable, out in the open, without even the dubious shelter of a clump of trees.

  When the rain finally stopped, the sun streamed out golden for just a moment from a thin break between the horizon and the still-threatening banks of black clouds, as if in mockery of the now bedraggled party. It was as cold as it could possibly be without freezing, and the relentless wind, which had not died with the storm’s abatement, searched with icy fingers every inch of exposed flesh, even inside the dismal litter.

  The rain made a quagmire of the road; everyone, including Lord George himself, was laboring to free at least the litters carrying the ladies from the mud. But the already exhausted horses were straining so hard that Mary finally put her head out of the window of the royal litter and cried, “Enough!”

  Bess, who followed in the litter behind with one of her many daughters, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, forgot herself so far as to stick her own head out of her litter to enquire as to how the Queen of Scotland proposed they do otherwise, and perhaps Her Grace would fancy instead spending the night where they were, simply to spare a horse?

  Mary responded by doing what she had grown accustomed to doing all these years; she ignored Bess. Without a word to Margaret or Charles, she drew her cloak tightly about her and closed her eyes. Even the cold, miserable, cramped litter was a blessed haven compared to the many a cold night she and her men had spent sleeping out in the open on the ground or in dark caves in the mountains on their headlong flight south after their defeat at Langside. She had nothing but scorn for Bess and for Margaret.

  She slept, and when she awoke, it was to a brilliant sunrise. She rolled up the leather flap that had done nothing to stop the biting wind from searching the litter all night. It was deathly cold, but the wind had now finally died down. She mused that it would have been far better if it had been just that little bit colder, enough to freeze; at least then the ground would have hardened. But as it was, they were still stuck in the same sucking mud in which they had become mired the day before.

  When the bedraggled party finally arrived at Rufford, fully half of them, servant and master alike, were miserably ill, either with debilitating rheum or burning fever.

  Lady Margaret took swooning to her bed, and even Bess was the worse for wear and seemed somewhat subdued. But Lord George was well and truly ill, and all three women were very concerned for him. Only Mary and the two children seemed unaffected by their ordeal.

 
; Mary took it upon herself to nurse Lord George; Bess, even had she been up to the task, was never a tender nurse. What he needed was rest and quiet. As his fever burned, Mary cared for her gaoler most tenderly, placing a cool vinegar cloth upon his brow and holding the cup to his lips whenever she could persuade him to drink. Half of the servants were laid low; she and Seton were quite on their own, but even Seton was affected and spent most of the day dozing in a chair. And so it was Mary who mended the fire, fetched the logs from the cellar and made broth in the kitchen. They were mundane, homely chores, but even this much freedom was sweet.

  When Mary returned with a basket full of logs, Seton was sleeping in her chair, and Lord George had once again thrown his covers off. He alternated between burning fever and bone-rattling chills; she had left him firmly wrapped against this malady, but the fever must have taken hold again in her absence. She retrieved the blanket from the floor where it had fallen and tucked it firmly about him once more. After mending the fire and holding a sup of water to Lord George’s chapped lips, she brought out a little pot of goose grease, pilfered from the larder without benefit of making an entry into Bess’s infernal log book. A small smile curved her lips at that thought; Bess was known to agonize over the least discrepancy between book and larder, and would spend hours running any inconsistency to ground. She applied a generous dollop of the grease onto Lord George’s cracked lips and settled back in her chair.

  It had been an eventful year for others; hearing the tidings long after they had occurred never failed to distress her. It was as if everyone had ceased to recall her very existence. And some of the happenings directly concerned her.

  Charles IX had died suddenly in May, and Anjou had taken the throne of France as Henri III. Good! Charles had been bloodthirsty since childhood…she had sometimes doubted his sanity…but the great massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day had apparently shaken even him. He had gone so far as to offer all Frenchmen freedom of conscience, the unforgivable act of a coward in her estimation. Henri was a good Catholic; some even called him fanatic. But as far as she was concerned, that was a good thing. How else to eradicate heresy?