In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  “Does he not care that such an assertion makes a bastard of his heir?” cried Douglass on a sob. Before Catherine could respond, Douglass continued on. “Not to mention what it makes of myself! What am I to be called in this thing, a strumpet?”

  Catherine could see Elizabeth’s plan very clearly; all she had to do was to prove that Robert’s marriage to Douglass was a fact and his marriage to Lettice would be null and void. And that lady ready to drop a foal any day! Douglass’s marriage to Sir Edward would be no more, and both Douglass and Lettice would be ruined. It was a delicious ploy and one that the Italian schemer in Catherine approved wholeheartedly. Revenge was too sweet a dish to leave it mouldering on the table! But she did feel sorry for poor Douglass, of whom she had become rather fond.

  “Have-a you no witness, no-a paper, my-a dear, to prove-a that which-a you say?” Catherine’s eyes glittered; if the girl had had such things she would not be weeping into her goblet of brandy and tearing her hair.

  “No!” wailed Douglass. “I trow I have trusted the Earl of Leicester too much. There is nothing. I have nothing. And I do not love Edward!”

  Anyone else might have been confused by the apparent non sequitur, but Catherine was not. She shrugged. “It is-a not…how you say…fashionable to love-a one’s husband, my-a lady.” She laughed her breathy little laugh.

  So Douglass was distressed that she could not prove that her marriage to the Earl of Leicester was real! Thank heaven she was too stupid to see that had she had such proof, the Queen of England should have won her gambit. That Douglass seemed frightened of Leicester went a long way to proving that he had threatened to poison her. If Elizabeth were able to prove that Robert had married Douglass, it would nullify his marriage to Lettice, and their child should be born a bastard; and it would force Douglass back into a loveless, and possibly dangerous, situation. But without proof of a marriage between Douglass and Robert, Elizabeth, queen though she was, was powerless to pursue the matter further.

  And in the end, Catherine liked the idea of Elizabeth’s defeat in the matter. The Queen of England ought to be concentrating more on persuading her Parliament to agree to her marriage with Alençon, and spending less time plotting revenge against her faithless lover and her treacherous cousin. Her youngest son was an embarrassment; the sooner he married the Queen of England, the better. Perhaps she should add a condition to the marriage treaty that Alençon must reside across the water…for now.

  Catherine regarded the still-sniveling Douglass with an odd mixture of contempt, pity, and benign tolerance. Some women would always be weak, dependent fools, she reasoned, and nothing to be done about it.

  Thinking of weak fools always brought to mind her daughter-in-law, the Queen of Scotland, rotting away in her English prison. Mary Stuart was royal but had not been educated to rule; but then, neither had she. And yet she had ruled France with an iron hand in her sons’ names for years. Her sons were weak fools, too self-indulgent to rule properly. All the better for her! For she had no intention of relinquishing her power as Queen Mother of France…not ever. Not as long as she had a son in whose name she could reign! And no one called her Merchant’s Daughter now! Now she was called Madame Serpent and Jezebel by those who wished her ill or simply disliked her. How should any of them possibly have known that such a thing could not have given her greater pleasure?

  Sheffield Castle, January 1580

  Mary sat staring into the flickering flames of the tiny hearth with narrowed eyes, deep in thought. She had once haughtily insisted, as a queen, that she be housed in the very finest rooms of every castle or manor house in which they bided, but the years had shown her the wisdom of a small apartment, one that did not face north, one that could be heated sufficiently to keep the cold and damp from entering one’s very bones.

  She lifted her eyes from the hypnotic dance of the flames and looked across the room to the little alcove where Seton sat mending a flounce in the waning afternoon light of a winter’s day. For the past year, she had truly been in want; the mending of clothes and bed linens had replaced the fine embroidery in which a queen and her companion were wont to indulge. How had it come to this? Her dower rents from France had ceased to arrive long ago, thanks, she knew, to Queen Catherine. Catherine had always hated her; for her royal blood; for her beauty; for her indulged position at the French court. What little of her revenues had reached Scotland from France had been forwarded on to her in England only sporadically. Archbishop Beaton did his best, but even James had turned against her and confiscated her funds whenever possible. She gave a mental shrug. From what she had heard, James was in even worse financial straits than she, and possibly he reasoned that she had little need for money in her English prison. But this was far from true. She needed money for bribes, money to buy necessities, money for gifts…

  At the thought of gifts, tears welled up in her eyes. By nature a generous person, she had always taken great delight in giving (and receiving!) gifts. This was the first time in all her years that she had not been able to participate in the gift-giving of the season just past. With what little coined money she possessed, she had commissioned a brooch to be fashioned for James, with which to fasten his cloak against the cold.

  Suddenly she arose and began pacing the small space in front of the hearth. She must find some outlet for her nervous energy or burst.

  “I must ride,” she cried. She marked Seton’s pained look; her companion was not as enamored of the out-of-doors as was she. Mary’s eyes softened. “Please,” she said. “I shall be all right. You stay here and finish your task.”

  Relief shone in Seton’s eyes; she examined the straightness of the seam she was sewing, and then raised her needle once again.

  ###

  Sheffield was located at the confluence of no less than five rivers; the Don; the Sheaf; the Rivelin; the Loxley; and the Porter. It had an excellent defensive position. The castle sat nestled in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. Much of the town surrounding the castle was built on hillsides with views out to the countryside. The expanse was barren now, with its stubble fields and leafless trees, but it mattered not; just to be out of doors was balm to her spirit. Thanks be to God that she was still allowed to ride, as long as she had a suitable escort. Today Queen Elizabeth should not have complained, for none other than Lord George rode with her.

  The ground was level beyond the moat and once she gained it, Mary spurred her mare and took off like the wind. Her guard was nothing loath; they too enjoyed a good gallop, and they secretly admired the Scots queen’s proficiency with a horse. Lord George matched her on the gallop stride for stride, and then halted with her at the river bank, the horses blowing from the exertion and then delicately dipping their foaming muzzles into the clear, cool water.

  Suddenly, she cried, “By the Rood, George, but I am weary of Scotland!” Bitter tears sprang into her eyes and she dashed them away with an impatient swipe of her hand. For a moment Lord George was taken aback. In all the years that he had served as her gaoler, yes, her gaoler, she had never addressed him by his Christian name without first prefacing it with his title. Such an unconscious slip was proof of their intimacy, even in the abstract sense.

  He had been but a young man at the Tudor court when Mary’s Tudor grandmother, Margaret, another Queen of Scotland, had uttered the same words to King Henry. Weary of Scotland; yes, he could understand that. So much pain, so much sorrow, so many disappointed hopes. What was there left for her? For it was clear that Elizabeth would never release her.

  Lord George stole a glance at Mary but did not respond to her plaintive cry. What could he say, after all? There was no comfort to be offered. He sighed. She was just as lovely as ever in his eyes. She was gentle, kind, generous, understanding. In short, the Queen of Scotland was everything that Bess was not. It was indeed a great irony that he had once admired Bess for the very traits he now found so disagreeable in her, and which made him want to turn away from her.

  Mary had been silent since
her outburst, but now she continued on as if there had been no long silence between them.

  “I never wanted to come to Scotland,” she said. “It was France that I loved. Always dear, beautiful France.” Her voice took on a dreamlike quality when she spoke of her love for France. But when she uttered the word Scotland, the very timbre of her voice changed; it became gruff, unyielding. In France she had been made much of, been petted and spoiled; Scotland had brought her nothing but pain and sorrow, bitter disappointment and heartache. “I would I had stayed in France and never come across the water!” she cried on a sob, “and Scotland be damned!”

  Lord George was a large man, with very long arms. They rode side by side, their horses walking slowly. The temptation to reach out and place a comforting hand upon hers, where it sat languidly upon her pommel, was overwhelming; he fought back the urge. Although the gesture would certainly have been taken as an effort to comfort her, he dared not risk touching her. Even after all these years, he still found her presence intoxicating. It was best to stay at arm’s length. They walked their horses in silence, Lord George unsure of what to say and Mary deep in thought.

  The years were passing; indeed, it was the very essence of irony to Mary that the days seemed to drag by so slowly and yet the years flew. She would soon complete her twelfth year as Elizabeth’s prisoner. And despite all the plots, the plans, the schemes, she was no closer to gaining her freedom. The turn things had taken with James was yet another bitter disappointment in a long line of them. Elizabeth’s interference had been exacerbated by the arrival in the fall just past at the Scottish court of Esme Stuart, 5th Lord d’ Aubigny, who was the younger brother of her father-in-law, Matthew Stewart, the 4th Earl of Lennox. The Lennox earldom had reverted to the crown upon the old earl’s death, but rumors were flying in Scotland that James meant to settle the title upon his cousin. Another worthless hanger-on, seeking to nurse at the royal teat! And James too young to see it! If only she were there to guide him! But then if she were there, James would not be on the throne at all. He had betrayed his own mother; did that justify her in betraying him?

  In a way, she could not blame James. He was surrounded by sycophants and men who wished him ill. Elizabeth was a pernicious influence, tempting him with premature kingship, and refusing to allow mother and son to correspond. Archbishop Beaton had sorrowfully informed her that few of her letters to James actually reached him, nor would the Queen of England permit her son’s letters to be sent on to her. There was a time when James had written to her regularly, but even then Elizabeth had intercepted his letters whenever possible. Some of her letters reached him through Beaton, she knew, but from James she had had nothing, despite Beaton’s offer of assistance in smuggling his letters to her. It seemed that her son was truly lost to her, a circumstance over which she had shed many a tear.

  So what was to be done? She dashed away a last tear and smiled smugly to herself. If Elizabeth thought to practice such dastardly deeds as forbidding correspondence between a mother and her son, and tempting an impressionable child to a crown that was not yet his own, then must she not look to herself, and practice her own deceptions? But to do so one must have opportunities, and the cooperation of others.

  She had all but given up hope when Mendoza’s letter arrived in the fall. Smuggled in to her by a sympathetic wine merchant, that letter had brought her back from the abyss of despair into which she had fallen. Bernardo de Mendoza was Philip’s ambassador to the English court. In his letter, Mendoza described an ingenious plan to kidnap James from Scotland and send him to the Spanish court, where he would be wed to a Spanish infanta. It was a plan that had been mooted before, and which she had thought to be moribund. She was aware that Philip proposed such a plan less for her benefit than for the possibility of restoring the Catholic faith to England and Scotland, and defeating once and for all his recalcitrant sister-in-law. That she herself stood to benefit by being restored to her throne was simply collateral to the King of Spain’s own desires. But who cared for that? It was a plan, a plot, a ploy, something to cling to; the very idea of it engendered hope in a breast that had all but lost the courage to go on in the face of such overwhelming odds.

  All had seemed fair fit to succeed and then Esme’s unexpected arrival had changed everything. The thirteen-year-old James took an instant liking to his exotic relative. At thirty-seven, Esme Stuart was, if the reports could be believed, handsome, urbane, and possessed of a natural French charisma inherited from his beautiful French mother.

  With Esme dancing attendance on James at the Scottish court, Mendoza was finding it unexpectedly difficult to carry through with their plans. And now rumors were reaching her ears that James planned to bestow the earldom of Lennox upon his intriguing cousin. At first she had been cast down by such news, but Beaton had bade her not to despair; already jealousy of the handsome Esme had blackened some countenances on the privy council, and should James actually demonstrate such partiality, it would be only a matter of time before the situation turned ugly, and Esme could be ousted. Beaton assured her that such was inevitable, but things must run their course; he counseled patience.

  Rumors of the Lennox title and lands being given to the Duc d’ Aubigny had angered Bess, who believed Arabella to be the rightful inheratrix of her father’s position and wealth. No promises had been made, it was true, but Bess had assumed that the reversion to the crown of the Lennox patrimony was only temporary until Arabella came of age. But Mary knew that to be a forlorn hope, if Bess did not; lands and titles were rarely bestowed upon females in their own right unless a marriage further bestowing it all upon a favorite was in the offing.

  Lord George quietly cleared his throat. He had no wish to turn back to the castle; an afternoon spent in the company of the queen was a rare treat for him. But dusk was nigh, and the light was failing; darkness would fall quickly now. As they rode through the gloaming, a thick mist began to creep along the ground at their feet. Five rivers made for inescapable dampness; an evening or morning mist was a common occurrence.

  Mary was also reluctant to return to the castle. The last of the sun was poised at the tip of a distant hilltop. Its shining rays pierced a low cloud, flooding the plain with a golden luminosity, igniting the ethereal mist and making a glowing carpet of the plain as they galloped towards the castle. But once the sun disappeared, it would be dark indeed. Wordlessly Mary smoothly turned her horse with a flick of the wrist, her hands lightly holding the reins. She spurred her mare, the horse springing first into a canter and then a striding lope. The others followed the queen’s lead, and before long the party was galloping headlong for the castle.

  It was a hard thing, thought Mary, to be so free one moment, with the wind in her hair, caressing her face, a swift horse between her knees, and then to find oneself back in the unwelcome apartments, a captive once more.

  Greenwich Palace, January 1581

  “Where does the time go, Parry?” sighed Elizabeth. Time was now The Enemy. It was slipping away so fast that it had begun to frighten her. And its effects were devastating. She had long since given up the vice of gazing at herself in the mirror; it was best to imagine herself as she once had been.

  Blanche was silent; she knew the queen’s question was rhetorical and required no answer. Blanche Parry had been Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber and Keeper of the Queen’s Jewels since Kat Ashley’s death. She was both Welsh and English by birth; the Tudors had Welsh blood in their veins and they had always been partial to those who shared that bond. Keeper of the Queen’s Jewels was a formidable task; the royal collection was vast and with the Twelve Days having just concluded, it was now for Blanche to enter all of the new jewels the queen had received as New Year’s gifts into the inventory. Elizabeth was overseeing the effort, but not because of any shortcomings on Blanche’s part; she simply wanted to examine the trove again.

  Amongst all the trinkets, Elizabeth’s eyes sought out Robert’s New Year’s gift. It was a set of three dozen elaborate golden b
uttons, an ingenious gift for one who enjoyed extravagant display in her dress. After all, a queen was expected to dress sumptuously. Even Alençon had been captivated by the vast display of wealth belonging to the Queen of England, much of which was part of her wardrobe in the form of bejeweled gowns and headdresses.

  She lifted one of the buttons and studied it in the firelight. It glittered and sparkled, an effect that was enhanced by the dancing flames in the hearth. Each button was set around its edge with diamonds and rubies. The buttons were beautiful, and fit for a queen. She sighed and dropped the shimmering orb back onto the pile with a grimace of distaste. She would never wear them. For they were engraved with Robert’s arms and forged into the shape of true lover’s knots. She could not help but wonder whether or not he had bestowed a similar gift upon his wife!

  She had been disillusioned with Robert for quite some time, and during Alençon’s visit, had scarcely seen him. He had repaired to his estates with the pregnant Lettice, and had only shown his face at court for Council meetings, where he managed to vex not only herself but the entire Council with his open jealousy of Alençon and his vocal distaste for the idea of the French marriage.