In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  And it appeared that James only pretended to desire her freedom; and certainly not at the expense of his own sovereign power. His primary concern was the preservation of his own authority. Not only in regard to Scotland, but for the English succession as well. Facts must be faced; had Elizabeth and James agreed to her proposal for shared power, she would still have expected the rule of Scotland to devolve upon herself. She was, after all, the rightful queen. But even had that been acceptable to the Scots, it was unlikely that they would have welcomed back a Catholic queen.

  She did a mental tally of all her woes; James’s treachery; Elizabeth’s perfidy; Philip’s empty promises; her French relations’ indifference to her plight; her whole wasted life. So this was defeat; she must accept.

  And then a smoldering anger seemed to explode inside her brain. She may have lost all the battles, but she would still win the war. Yes, decidedly! For was it not her son, and not any offspring of Elizabeth’s, who would someday rule the entire island? The Tudor Dynasty would be no more; it would die with her barren cousin, and a new Stuart Dynasty would be born. But before she left this world, she would tell Elizabeth exactly what she thought of her, and what she thought of what her cousin had done to her.

  Another letter to Philip would not come amiss, either! His Grace had dallied, and now James could no longer be spirited away to Spain. Forsooth, what difference did it make anyway? James’s rule was for another day. She was still Queen of Scotland by right of birth and by God’s sanction through her coronation. Philip should come in the name of God and the Catholic religion, and free her to rule England and Scotland, which were hers by right. But would he? So far Philip had vouchsafed her nothing but empty promises; James despised her despite his occasional flowery words; and Elizabeth had never been anything but treacherous and deceitful.

  And yet, despite the nagging pain in her side, the crippling joint evil she suffered every moment of every day, the persistent cough that boded no good, and a melancholy that could no longer be ignored, she found that she simply could not give up hope…not yet.

  “Seton,” she said, with an energy she had not felt in many a day. “My quill and parchment, if you please.”

  Theobalds, Hertfordshire, September 1582

  The sounds of grief made themselves known once more throughout the house. It had been the same for two whole days. Cecil had arrived from town with his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, the day before her own arrival at Theobalds, only to find that Elizabeth’s husband had died. Not of plague; the plague was raging in London, and was the reason the Parliament had come out to the country to sit. William Wentworth had taken a chill and died suddenly, before his wife was able to get to his bedside.

  The girl was inconsolable; it had been a love match. Cecil was an indulgent father who allowed his children some choice in the matter of whom they would marry. But as far as Elizabeth could see, such indulgence only made matters worse.

  She could have decamped to Hatfield, but somehow, she seemed to find an odd comfort in someone else’s heartbreak. Besides, to do so would have been churlish. Young Elizabeth had been named for her; she was the girl’s godmother. What was more natural than that she should share the family’s grief at this terrible time? And it was soothing to be in the bosom of such a close family. If there was one thing she lacked, despite her royalty and the absolute power that came with it, it was a family life. Even a queen could not order some things; she had never known what even the simplest farmer knew in terms of home and hearth. Theobalds was a palace, to be sure, but it was also a comfortable home shared by a loving family. And the countryside was so heartbreakingly lovely just at this time…it was late September, almost October; the harvest was in, and the trees were displaying all their colorful autumn glory. Even despite the weeping and wailing, there was no place, at that moment, that she would rather have been.

  She was sitting at the window looking out at Cecil’s magnificent gardens, and the red and gold of the trees beyond, when a movement in the doorway caught her eye.

  “Ah, Blanche,” she said. “Poor Elizabeth! My heart goes out to her.” For had she not lost her Robert, just as surely as young Elizabeth had lost her William? But her own was the worst sort of grief; Robert was still alive, and seeing him at court never failed to reopen the old wound of his betrayal and his marriage to Lettice. For her, there was no healing, for every time she saw him or heard his voice, the wound gaped and bled right into her heart. No amount of grieving, no amount of time passing, ever brought her any closer to putting the past behind her. Was she, then, doomed to a lifetime of heartbroken sorrow? It would seem so…

  “Your Grace,” said Blanche. “The small council is assembled.”

  “Very well,” Elizabeth replied. “Send them in.”

  A few moments later, her most trusted men filed into the room. Cecil; Walsingham; Sussex; Robert; Hatton.

  “Well, gentlemen all,” she said, as Robert poured summer ale for everyone from a flagon on the sideboard. “What of London?”

  Robert took a long pull from his tankard. “Very bad,” he said, “but only in the stews. Parts of the city are not even affected. It is most peculiar.” He ran the back of his hand across lips he smacked in satisfaction as he drank. The harvest had been good; the summer ale boded well for the October ale still to come. That ought to be a heady brew indeed!

  Walsingham shifted in his seat. Elizabeth had known these men most of her life; reading their subtle messages was akin to breathing. It came naturally to her.

  “And you, Sir Francis,” she said. “You look like the cat who has just swallowed the cream.”

  It was true, he reflected. He had been working for fourteen years to rid England of what he considered to be her most dangerous and pernicious foe: Mary Stuart. He believed that finally, he had what would lead to that which he had been striving for all these years; enough evidence to ensure the execution of the Queen of Scotland. He pulled two letters from his doublet and handed them to her. The others had also read them; the atmosphere in the room seemed charged with the anticipation of what the queen’s reaction would be to Mary’s letters.

  Mary’s first letter was to herself. She skimmed it and then set it aside with a shrug. “What of it?” she said. “I am accustomed to the impotent castigations and dire predictions of eternal hellfire and damnation with which my cousin is wont to berate me.” But she had to admit, there was something different about this letter; her cousin had believed herself to be dying when she wrote it, and she had not minced her words. But Mary had not died; she had recovered. She wondered with a wry smile if her cousin now regretted any of her sharp words. It all still boiled down to the same protestations of injustice and threats of God’s harsh judgment upon her for unfairly holding her queenly cousin prisoner all these years.

  Would God judge her harshly for doing so? She thought not. What she had done, she had done for the sake of the peace and prosperity of the two realms who shared their island… and which it was becoming more and more likely would both someday be under the purview of this woman’s son.

  She unfolded the second letter and began to read. It was to Philip of Spain. This time it did not take long before the tell-tale signs made themselves known; Walsingham noted with great satisfaction her pursed lips, her narrowed eyes, the red flush of anger creeping up the queen’s neck.

  “Oh, perfidious queen and cousin!” she cried. Still she clutched the parchment as her eyes darted back and forth across the page. Suddenly she crushed the letter in both hands and then dashed it to the floor as if it had been a poisonous snake. “How dare she! She says she will only leave her prison as Queen of England! She will do whatever she has to do to gain her freedom!” She pointed a long, slim finger at the crumpled parchment on the floor. “That is a murder bond!”

  “Your Grace,” said Sussex. “We all know that the Queen of Scotland has long sought Your Grace’s death. She covets your crown and will stop at nothing to gain it, despite her melancholy words of looking to the here
after for her only justice.”

  “So she thinks,” said Elizabeth, “that English Catholics will fight for her! Knows she not that peace and prosperity will always win over war and strife? Am I a despot, who burns men for their faith, as did my sister? Laws and fines serve the treasury much better, sir!”

  “It is indeed curious,” mused Hatton, “that Your Grace and Henri of France both find yourselves in similar situations, in that neither of Your Graces has a direct heir, and the putative successors to both realms present seemingly impossible problems. What I mean is, England would never accept Mary Stuart as queen, because Her Grace is Catholic and this is a Protestant country; and Henry of Navarre is Protestant, and the French, being Catholic, will never accept a Protestant king.”

  Walsingham shot Hatton a warning glance; the difference between the situation in France and that in England was that Elizabeth had a viable alternative in the Protestant James. But discussion of the succession nearly always led to the queen’s implacable anger. There was no room for that today. They finally had proof of Mary Stuart’s treachery; now was the moment to move against her, if only Elizabeth could be persuaded to do so.

  But Elizabeth was lost in her own musings and had not heard Hatton’s comment. “I have always,” she said softly, almost to herself, “greatly feared an alliance between France and Spain for the very reason that even though England should likely defeat either of these foes, she may not fare so well should we have to fight them both in league. This,” she pointed to the crumpled letter, “is most worrisome.”

  Finally, Walsingham could restrain himself no longer. “God’s teeth, Madam, you have proof here, seen with your own eyes, of treason, in the Queen of Scot’s own hand! Will you do nothing?”

  Suddenly tears welled up in her eyes. She knew firsthand what it was like to be imprisoned unjustly, and to walk in fear of suffering at any moment an ignominious, bloody death under the headsman’s axe. Had she not been unjustly imprisoned by her own sister, and in the dreaded Tower, no less? Did these men not realize why she had always left Mary in the hands of some nobleman in the No Man’s Land between London and Edinburgh? Why did they think she had not simply consigned her cousin to the safety and security of the Tower? The truth was, she simply could not bring herself to do it. And did they not see that she wished Mary as dead as did they, but that she could not order her death? Her own experiences with injustice and fear prevented her from dealing any more harshly with Mary than she had. And always at the back of her mind was the terrible precedent that would be set by one queen ordering the death of another.

  And where would England be now, had her own sister allowed her to be executed?

  But even so, all her life she had lived in Mary’s shadow; royal, unquestionably legitimate, beautiful Mary, who charmed effortlessly all who came into contact with her. Consider Beale! Before he had been sent to Mary to learn all he could about James’s doings, Beale had positively vilified the Queen of Scotland for a Catholic and the ruination of three realms. Well, in the case of France, that was an exaggeration; Mary had only been Queen Consort there, and not for very long. But that her cousin had added to the strife in both Scotland and England could not be denied.

  And yet when Beale had returned from his visit to Mary, he had pled for doctors for her, and for Mary’s elaborate French coach to be sent to her at Chatsworth for her pastime. This, despite all the reports she had of the physical wreck Mary had become! This had set her to peering carefully into her own looking glass; she was nine years Mary’s senior, and yet the men and women around her sang praises to her beauty. But she knew the truth; it was only her royalty and her power, and not herself, that they worshipped. She pretended that she was still the beauty she had been, and those around her humored her vanity…some out of love, some out of fear, some out of hope for preferment. But Mary seemed to charm effortlessly, despite her condition.

  She sighed. As usual, she was in two minds about her royal cousin, a state of affairs that always made her uneasy. “This letter,” she said. “I fear me that it is not enough.”

  Walsingham, Cecil and Sussex exchanged wary glances; they had suspected that it would not be. They had known the queen would want more. What they sought was her promise that when they had it, she would act. One step at a time!

  “Your Grace,” said Walsingham. “This letter is proof that the Queen of Scotland is involved in a conspiracy that involves not only the King of Spain, but the Guise faction in France.” He bent down as gracefully as a cat and retrieved the crumpled parchment from the floor. “I beg of you, please read on.”

  With a scowl and a deep frown, she held out her hand. After several seconds she expostulated, “God’s eyeballs!”

  “Quite,” said Walsingham. The letter implicated not only a respected Englishman in Francis Throckmorton, but it also plainly showed that the Spanish ambassador had been acting inappropriately. “I have been observing the Spanish and French embassies for some time, Your Grace. There is an intrigue afoot. We shall discover it and then, I have no doubt that Your Grace will take the necessary steps to safeguard the realm.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said. She wished they would all just go away and leave her in peace. But at that thought, she experienced a feeling of deep regret. What would she have done all these years without these loyal men, her true friends? They meant well, both in terms of the realm and her own personal well-being. No, she should not wish them away. “Yes,” she said again, more gently. “Bring me more and I shall think about what is best to do.”

  The men sat and talked, and drank their ale, while she attended to the rest of the letters in the dispatch box. Every so often she glanced up and drank her fill of Robert with hungry eyes. Time had dealt as harshly with him as it had with her; he was florid, fat and wrinkled. But it mattered not; she loved him still.

  Suddenly a wave of sheer loneliness swept over her. For the first time, instead of just looking old, she felt old. When Alençon left, he had taken the last of her youth with him. And now the years stretched out before her bleakly in an endless vista of time.

  She recalled as a young girl standing on the great beach in Norfolk as the tide stole away, leaving behind the remains of the sea. Many of the shells were dead, empty of the life that had once inhabited them. Like those, her great love for Robert was now just an empty shell…

  Now as the years passed, all she could hope for would be to outlive Mary, so that she might save England from the chaos that was sure to engulf the land if she did not.

  As she sat musing and thinking her thoughts, she was unaware that Walsingham was observing her. It may have surprised her to learn that their thoughts at that moment were remarkably similar. For Walsingham meant to see to it that Mary’s head did not stay on her shoulders one moment longer than was necessary.

  London, March 1583

  As Francis Throckmorton gently and reverently took the wafer onto his tongue, he performed the ritual that he now always practiced when taking Holy Communion; he conjured up in his mind the picture of his beloved parents as they had been carved into the marble of their great tomb in Coughton Church, at home in Warwickshire. Their effigies were heartbreakingly lovely and completely unique; whereas most funereal effigies were carved with praying hands, his parents’ likenesses had been carved into the warm, mottled marble holding hands. It was a flouting of convention that they had both reveled in, the tomb having been carved while they still lived. And now they were both dead. His father had died of shame after having been suspended from office in his service to the queen; his mother had died of a broken heart shortly after his father’s dishonor, disgrace and untimely death.

  And it was all so unnecessary! Many who held the office of Justice found for friends and relatives. Justice, after all, was justice, and must be served, regardless of who benefitted. But the verdict that had been cited in his father’s humiliation had only been an excuse. What the queen had done to his father was unforgivable; he knew the real reason why his family had been ruined.<
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  He had learned very young how dangerous it was to be a practicing Catholic in Tudor England, once the Bastard Elizabeth had taken the throne. He had been young, but not too young, to remember the glorious time of the reign of Queen Mary of happy memory. Under Queen Mary Tudor, after years of persecution, English Catholics were finally at liberty to practice their faith once more. Indeed, for the first years of his life, Francis and his brother, Thomas, had known no other religion save that of the Catholic Church. He loved the comfort of the daily ritual and the heady fragrance of frankincense.

  And then suddenly all was changed. Queen Mary died and instead of the rightful queen taking the throne, the crown of England was bestowed upon Elizabeth, the bastard daughter of King Henry VIII and the Great Whore, Anne Boleyn. Had a greater injustice than that ever been done? All knew that the rightful queen was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, great-granddaughter of King Henry VII of England. Mary was Catholic, she was unquestionably legitimate, and she was the lawful heir to the throne of England.

  From that time on, the Throckmorton’s troubles had been many. There were spies abroad in the land; it did not take long before the Bastard Queen learned the names of those who flouted her religious laws. The Throckmortons had been fined and fined until there was almost nothing left. His father’s inability to pay further had coincided with the case against him, and he had died a broken man. His poor mother had been truly frightened for him and his brother, Thomas, and had packed them off to France to their cousin. She had died while they were on the Continent and they had never seen her again.

  While in France, he and his brother had experienced firsthand the misery, the anguish, the hopeless despair of the many English Catholics who lived in penurious exile, pining for their homes in England. But it was simply not safe, and very expensive! …to be Catholic on English shores.

  There had been other plots seeking to free Queen Mary from her unjust imprisonment at the hands of the Bastard Queen. None had succeeded, and still the tragic queen languished under house arrest, far from the seat of the government that was rightfully hers. Her health, from what he heard, had suffered greatly. This had been the state of affairs for almost fifteen years.