In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  It broke her heart to finally admit to herself that James was a lost cause. He had signed Elizabeth’s Treaty of Nonsuch as King of Scotland, despite her protests. Such a treaty should have been signed only by Scotland’s rightful sovereign; herself. But hurt pride was the very least of it. Such a usurpation of royal power on her son’s part rendered her something far worse even than a virtually helpless captive queen. It made her irrelevant. And an irrelevant, redundant monarch was in a dangerous position indeed.

  Why was she seemingly the only person who was moved by the fact that there was no other sovereign of Scotland save herself? Without her, James was, at best, Lord Darnley and Earl of Lennox, after his father. Such unkindness from him to whom she had always borne such an intensity of love caused an overwhelming feeling of despair to wash over her like a tidal wave. But as quickly as it came, it went, and a new resolve was born in her. There were those who still sought to see her prevail.

  But not only was James a lost cause on earth, it distressed her terribly to know that his soul could not be saved. She had tried, and tried through others, to save his soul, but he would not be turned from the error of Protestantism. There was nothing more she could do; her son was now her enemy.

  And yet if Elizabeth’s heart should stop beating, at that very moment, she, Mary would be Queen of England. She was the great-grandchild of Henry VII, and next in line to the throne. Nothing could change that. The Protestants had wrought their Bond of Association, which the English Parliament had made law. The Bond was meant to thwart a Catholic succession; and it presumed her involvement in Elizabeth’s death. Dear, clever Anthony had advised her to ask to sign the Bond herself, to demonstrate fealty to her English cousin. After all, what difference would it make, once Philip invaded, Elizabeth was deposed, and she herself sat on the throne of England?

  She may have lost James, but she had her dear Anthony; he had become almost as a son to her. He was a devout Catholic, he was noble, and he believed in her cause as James never would. She never saw Anthony anymore, as she had at Wingfield, now that she was under the strict purview of Sir Amyas. But he had devised a means by which to smuggle letters and they corresponded as often as prudence allowed. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her and she had again asked Janet how her letters were being got in and out of the castle; an arrangement with a sympathetic baker who supplied the Castle was as much as Janet would say.

  So there was hope after all. She had somehow lived through the summer at Tutbury. She must endure just a while longer…

  ###

  The sound of voices outside her rooms when she had been with Lord George, or at Wingfield Manor with Sir Ralph, had always been welcome. Visitors! But here at Tutbury with Sir Amyas, it simply made her wary…and fearful. Sir Amyas had not taken his defeat over her throne and canopy at all well; she was certain he spent his nights devising new means by which to discomfit her.

  Her door opened abruptly. This was another thing amongst many that she resented under Sir Amyas’ charge; the abrupt and uninvited invasion of her privacy.

  In Sir Amyas’ hand was a basket, covered with linen cloth. Mary stifled a smirk; had he come to propose a picnic, then? The sight was incongruous and struck a bizarre note; but the malice with which he regarded her was unmistakable.

  “I have here,” he said. “A basket of loaves.”

  That much was obvious. Mary stifled an hysterical laugh. Was he, as she had sometimes suspected, unbalanced? She eyed the basket owlishly, her brows arched in wordless question.

  Sir Amyas thrust a hand into the basket and pulled out a parcel wrapped in linen, and which was tied with a cord. He took a step forward and held the packet out to her.

  Mary leaned forward, took the packet from his hands, and untied the cord. Into her lap fell all her letters. She blanched, and then the blood made its slow way up her neck and into her face. Quickly, she tried to recall if there were aught in the letters that might incriminate her; she thought not. As she had once plaintively cried to Sir Francis, might not one appeal to one’s friends for help? She lifted her chin, which jutted out at a royal angle.

  “Well?” she asked. “What of it? I am a sovereign queen, held in unjust captivity by my cousin. Would you not do the same, if your freedom were curtailed unfairly? ”

  “What I would do is of no consequence to you, Madam,” said Sir Amyas haughtily. So her tactic was to be to brazen it out. But still, he sensed her discomfiture at being caught. The willing baker was a fiction, a ploy; her servants had fallen for the ruse. Now she was discovered and, so she thought, once again bereft of her avenues of communication. But it was as he had said to Walsingham; it was when the Queen of Scotland was at her lowest that her heart was at its greatest. In his opinion, the consistent flaw in her judgment was that she followed her heart and not her head. Mary Stuart had demonstrated amply that she thrived on intrigue and deception. He took great comfort in the knowledge that Her Grace of Scotland was soon to play the mouse to Walsingham’s patiently waiting cat. Eventually, she would become frustrated; frantic, even. When that occurred, another means of communication would make itself known. The mouse would be taken in and the cat would pounce. Checkmate.

  A violent shudder wracked Mary’s frame at the look of sheer hatred with which Sir Amyas was regarding her. She truly believed that if aught should happen to Elizabeth, he would murder her with his own hands before he would see her on the throne of England. She knew, in the very marrow of her bones, that Walsingham wanted her dead. Not Elizabeth; of this she was certain. The burden of conscience that must needs be borne by one who had murdered one’s own blood would be rendered even worse by the knowledge that one had also struck a blow against the divinity of royalty. One guilty of such a thing would forever wonder how God viewed the willful sacrifice of his anointed. But even if her own death were the only vengeance she ever achieved against Elizabeth, it would be well worth it.

  Greenwich Palace, December 1585

  Robert’s face was flushed red, a sure sign of his extreme annoyance. Two reddish patches burned high on Elizabeth’s cheekbones, showing through the white paint on her face. For a moment the two simply glared at each other. He had been deferring to Elizabeth as queen almost all of his life; old habits die hard. He would wait before he said aught more, lest he anger her further.

  Slowly, Elizabeth picked up the letter from the table by the hearth, where she had been standing when he entered the room. She eyed it distastefully.

  “I shall ask you once again, sir,” she said in a voice that was deadly in its calmness. “Is this true?”

  Robert, after so many years of intimacy with the queen, knew something that Elizabeth’s other men did not. Many feared her temper, and its many unpleasant manifestations. But he knew that Elizabeth railing loudly and banging her fists on the table was far safer than Elizabeth in the white heat of anger, when she became calm and quiet.

  He could remain silent no longer; a direct question from the queen must needs be answered. “I do not see how one can be expected to represent queen and crown in a foreign country unless one is properly dressed,” he replied.

  “Properly dressed, is it?” she sneered. “Is that what my cousin calls it? The reports I have received claim that Lettice is planning to go to the Netherlands bedecked with jewels and clad in cloth of gold, as if she were a queen. That, I assure you, I shall never allow. Notwithstanding that I gave no permission for my cousin to accompany you there in the first place!”

  He must walk a very thin line at this crucial moment; he dared not say the wrong thing lest she should once again withdraw his commission as Lieutenant General of the Queen’s Troops in the Netherlands. His nerves could not take much more of her indecision and her tearful, cloying possessiveness; thrice had she withdrawn his command since she had first told him that he should be allowed to go, on the excuse that she simply could not do without him.

  Allowed! That was rich! Who else would have been willing to spend vast sums of his own money for the plea
sure of serving the Crown? He was to receive no salary for his tenure in the Netherlands; far from it! It was understood from the outset that he was expected to defray his own expenses for the venture. He had raised every penny he could by mortgaging his estates. And not only was he paying his own expenses, he had already advanced the Crown large sums of money for the campaign, which he knew in his heart that Elizabeth would never repay. Could any man have shown greater spirit for a task set him by royalty?

  But the money notwithstanding, all knew that he was the fittest, in fact, the only viable choice to take command of the English army mandated by the Treaty of Nonsuch. It was a testament to the success of Elizabeth’s reign that there were few nobles in England with any true military experience. Some adventurous men had fought in Ireland and the Netherlands over the years; in point of fact, half the standing army in the Low Countries currently consisted of English volunteers. But custom provided that an English army be commanded, not by a professional soldier, but by a great nobleman. Surely, as the favorite of the queen, he was the fittest for the task.

  Elizabeth knew all of this; she appreciated it. But not even for the money would she allow Lettice to go to the Netherlands as the wife of a great general, to be fawned upon and fêted by the adoring Dutch. Lettice, Lettice! Another thorn in her side! Well, her haughty cousin must be put in her place.

  “You may inform my cousin that she is to stay in England,” said Elizabeth.

  Robert breathed an inward sigh of relief; he had not wanted Lettice to accompany him, but he had not been able to say her nay once she conceived the notion that in Holland, she should hold her own court. In anticipation of their adventure across the water, his wife had gleefully spent a fortune on new gowns and jewels. He felt for Lettice, he knew she was lonely and frustrated away from court, but what remedy? He would go, he must go; but Lettice should stay home and he would recoup his lost dream of living a soldier’s life, without the encumbrance of a satellite.

  Elizabeth tossed the letter aside and smiled. Robert might believe he was fooling her, but the very fact that he did not argue for Lettice’s presence in the Netherlands spoke volumes. She understood; his grief over his son had numbed with time, but it was still there. He desperately needed something to distract him from his heartbreak.

  She placed her hand over his. “You go to do England, and myself, Robert, a very great service. But beware; the Dutch will try to force a loftier title upon you. Have they not already offered me sovereignty over their estates, and failing me, Henri? But we must not take it. We are there only to assist, to encourage the Dutch, as our fellow Protestants. That is all. To do anything more would provoke war with Spain.” War! How she hated and feared it.

  She recalled the glory of this year’s Ascension Day celebrations in London. She had ridden in a golden coach, open all around so that the people could see her. Above her was a diaphanous white canopy, sewn with pearls and embroidered with golden thread. To symbolize her virginity, she wore a white gown. It had been a beautiful sunny day, and not only had she dazzled, she had come near to blinding; if one looked too long at her, it was like looking at the sun. All that day as she made her slow way to Westminster from Greenwich, the people had shouted themselves hoarse proclaiming, “God save the queen!” She had responded to each and every cry with “God save my people!”

  That the people of England loved their queen she was in no doubt. To them, as God’s anointed, she was a semi-divine being. Her dogged persistence in the face of her Council and her Parliament to remain unmarried, a virgin queen, had had an odd effect; to the English Protestants, she had taken the place of the Virgin Mary. People needed such icons, it seemed; and she was nothing loath if it bolstered her popularity and fostered the love her people so willingly bestowed upon her.

  And it was not just that; all those years ago, when she had taken over the rule of England from her sister, England had had no army, a limping navy, and was weighed down by a formidable burden of debt created by the thriftless and bellicose nature of the three previous reigns. Trade and industry were languishing. The poor suffered abominably.

  A generation later, her reign was seen to be one of constant improvement in the state of the country. The debts of the previous reigns had been paid, to England’s honor, even the enormous debts her father had incurred with his senseless wars. It was ironic that even though Philip had the plundered wealth of the New World at his disposal, he could not raise a loan; whereas England could borrow all she desired at very low rates of interest. But lo, she had no need to borrow money; England was virtually free of debt, and she even had a small surplus in her treasury.

  And so she was hugely popular with the people. Many would say this was due to the low taxes, the burgeoning trade, and the host of other blessings that had been bestowed upon England with her good government. But at the root of all of it was the fact that she had avoided war. So the people were right to celebrate. See what an England she had made for them, where peace and prosperity prevailed!

  But men were warlike; had her ministers had their way, England would have been at war with Spain at the very beginning of her reign. Thwarted of these warlike intentions, the men had turned their eyes northward towards Scotland. At that time, Scotland had been under the rule of her greatest enemy, whom many believed to have a greater claim to the English throne than did she. They had urged her to subdue with force of arms her northern neighbor, with its papist queen. But she knew better…had she taken their advice, Scotland would now be to her the running sore that the Netherlands was to Philip. No, she had not gone to war with Scotland; instead she had waited for the Queen of Scotland to fall into the web of her own intrigue, with the result that her cousin had spent over half her life as a prisoner in England. So whereas the Dutch revolt had served to cripple Philip, she had nurtured the relationship with James, and now had a reliable ally in Scotland.

  As long as Philip was occupied in the Low Countries, any conquest of England, or France, must needs wait. She and Henri and Catherine would never be good friends, but they had common cause in keeping Spain… and her dreaded Inquisition… at bay. As long as this delicate balance could be maintained, England was safe.

  She had raised Robert up to an earl despite his family’s past disgrace and dishonor; she had restored his position at court and his wealth. She had the power to beat him back into the dust he came from if she so chose. But no. She heard that her father had once said something very similar to her mother; that he had raised her up and could just as easily strike her down. He had done as much to herself when he had taken away her title of princess and declared her bastard. She could not visit such upon Robert, whom she loved despite all.

  “You may tell my cousin to put away her dresses,” she said. “You may go.”

  So he was still to go! Robert bowed and walked backwards out of the room. It was best to depart before Her Grace changed her mind again.

  London, December 1585

  Gilbert Gifford woke to profound darkness once again, and the same bone-chilling cold that he remembered well from his last brief period of consciousness. With his eyesight all but useless in such complete and total darkness, his hearing seemed to have become sharper. The sounds he heard, however, were not at all comforting; he could hear rats scuffling, and water dripped with maddening regularity from some unseen source.

  As with before, he tried to stretch out his arms and legs, but found that he could neither stand, sit, nor lie down. He could only crouch.

  How long had he been here? There was simply no way of knowing. Time had ceased to exist in this damnable hell to which he had been banished. He was so hungry he felt sick, and he thirsted terribly. He had long since drunk the cup of water he had discovered wedged into a corner of the tiny space. He had no food. For the first time in his life he knew what it meant to be truly afraid.

  For not a single soul on earth knew where he was. He had crossed the water on a secret mission. And now, unless he missed his guess, he was in the Tower of London.
He had only vague, shadowy memories of how he had come to be here, in this cell known as the Little Ease. He had heard of its existence, and had doubted it. Now he knew.

  But why did not someone come for him? Did they not want to ask him questions? He had had enough; he should have told them anything for a mug of water and a blanket. He would have betrayed Jesus Christ himself for the ability to lie flat out on the filthy floor, even though it stank abominably and was wet with slime. Was it possible that they had forgotten about him? Was he to die here, then, cold and miserable in the dark and damp, in this terrible posture that made such a mockery of the human form?

  For what seemed like an eternity, long hours of frightened wakefulness were followed by an empty timelessness when he lost consciousness. One could not sleep; it was impossible to sleep thus. One time when he was back in himself, he discovered a crust of bread next to his water cup, which was mercifully full again. He could not help himself; he wolfed the crust and drank the water in one gulp. His hands shook uncontrollably, from fright, from the cold; and he spilled some of the water. This upset him and he began to weep. At first he thought it was someone else he heard, but there was no one there. His fear, his despair, was complete; for the first time in his existence, he entertained thoughts of self-destruction. But how was he to hang himself when he could not even stand up?

  The crust and the cup told him he was not forgotten; but how long could he survive in his dreadful situation? The absurdity of wishing for death in the same moment in which he was so very frightened of it struck him oddly and he began to laugh. He was unaware of the moment when his laughter turned to screams. There must be another person close by after all. But then he realized that it was himself who was screaming. And then he knew no more.