The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots: A Novel

by Erickson, Carolly

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Once aboard the Black Messenger, Archibald wanted to sail directly to Scotland, but we could not do that; a storm delayed us, and swept us northward, and then we broke a spar and ran out of provisions and had to make landfall at St. Leonard’s on the south coast of England while the crew went ashore to make repairs and take on fresh water and food.

  Though Archibald cautioned me against it, I went ashore as well—I had been ill on the ship and needed to feel solid ground under my feet, without the constant rocking and lurching that made my stomach so upset.

  I thought it would do no harm if I walked along the sea front of the small town, and I asked Anna, the woman I had once called the Skottefrauen but who for many years had been the wife of Red Ormiston and his companion aboard the Black Messenger, to accompany me.

  We strolled together along the quay, I breathed deeply of the sea air and tried to adjust my rolling gait to the unmoving pavingstones beneath my feet. The slanting rays of the late afternoon sun shone down on the old jetty and the fishing boats that were coming in with their catch. We had just paused to watch one of the boats unload, the men carrying baskets of still wriggling fish up the stone steps to display them for sale, when a man came up to me. He was tall and broad, with the large hands of a laborer and the high domed forehead of a man of middle years. Yet he gave an impression of strength and vigor.

  He looked at me carefully—quite rudely, I thought—scrutinizing my face.

  “Sir?” I said, my voice curt. “Sir, it is churlish to stare.”

  A look of astonishment came over his features at the sound of my voice, and instead of answering me he reached out to grasp my arm.

  “By all that’s holy,” he cried, “you resemble the Queen of Scotland, Queen Mary! And your voice is the same!”

  I suppose I should have shaken my head, wrenched my arm free from his grasp and passed on. Instead I smiled—a small smile.

  “It is the queen!” he cried to those nearest him. “I saw her when I went north with Lord Reidpath. It is the queen herself!”

  The man knelt at my feet, and I saw that he had taken a rosary from his pocket and was fingering the beads. It all happened very quickly. I did not know what to do.

  “We are Catholics here at St. Leonard’s,” he was saying under his breath. “Where is your army? I am an armorer. I would like to join your forces.”

  I was recovering from my surprise.

  “I assure you, you are mistaken, sir. Please let me pass.”

  “Of course,” I heard him whisper as I went on by. “I will say no more. Just be aware that we are with you, and we are many!”

  Because of the noisy crowd on the quay the man’s sudden outcry and display of reverence to me had not caused a great deal of notice, though some heads had turned in our direction. I took Anna’s arm and we hurried to leave the quay and were soon back aboard the Black Messenger.

  But once aboard, I could not stop thinking about the incident. What if there were indeed many Catholics in the town of St. Leonard’s, and what if there were others—perhaps many others—in the area? Indeed throughout southern England?

  My thoughts whirled. I could hear my dear grandmamma’s voice saying, do not be hasty, remember all that is at stake. But her cautions were lost amid my rising hopes. Perhaps, I thought, there is a secret army of Catholics in the Weald, perhaps men and munitions are being amassed there just as they were in Vlissingen. It gave me hope to imagine that possibly all was being done in secret, in defiance of the queen, and Baron Burghley and his spies.

  And if, as I hoped, my many supporters were taking active steps to rebel against my cousin Queen Elizabeth then it was all the more imperative that I find the late Amy Dudley’s brother John Appleyard without delay and buy the information he was offering: the location of his sister’s casket and the crucial letters it held.

  John Appleyard was well known to Londoners, his house in Bishops-gate was among the grandest in the parish (so Archibald learned from patrons of the Black Bull Inn in the neighboring street) and he was said to feed sixty beggars every day outside the door to his kitchens and to provide alms for sixty more. He had once been Robin Dudley’s steward, Archibald was told, but no longer held that lucrative office. Still, he had many more court appointments that made him a rich man.

  Why then, I wondered as I wrapped my gleaming, sparkling necklaces and rings, jeweled ornaments and diamond buttons in silken pouches and placed the pouches carefully into a velvet bag, did he want still more money? So that he could feed a hundred beggars and give out even more alms? Somehow I doubted that benevolence was his motive. He knew that the letters hidden in his sister’s casket could ruin my cousin’s repute and bring the old scandal of Amy Dudley’s murder back to life. He knew how valuable they were to the queen’s enemies, and he was greedy.

  After much argument and persuasion I had convinced Archibald to come to London so that I could sell my jewels and buy the information that would lead me to the letters. He argued strongly that we should sail to Mull and leave all such decisions to Jamie, but in the end I won the argument. I was the more stubborn, I was younger (though feeling my years), and I was, after all, the true claimant to the English throne. Archibald threw up his hands and agreed to do as I wanted.

  The first thing I had to do was convert my valuable jewellery into coins, and for this task Red Ormiston—Sir James Ormiston, as I had dubbed him—was ideally suited. He had after all been selling valuable goods, nearly always stolen or smuggled goods, to dealers who trafficked in such merchandise for decades. I entrusted my heavy velvet bag to him (not for a moment worrying that I might never see either Red or the bag again) and within a few hours he returned, leading two horses, their saddlebags filled with gold coins.

  After securing the chests of coins in a safe hiding place (which to this day I have never revealed), I sent Archibald to confer with John Appleyard.

  Even though the aging Archibald was a self-confident man, I saw clearly that his knees were shaking when he set off to strike a bargain with John Appleyard. I did not envy him his task, indeed I pitied him.

  Presently he returned to us, his face ashen, and said simply, “He wants more.”

  “But there is no more!” I cried. “I have no more!”

  “Unless we can find more money, he will not tell us what we need to know. He is a hard man.”

  “Perhaps he is afraid of the queen,” I wondered aloud. “He may not be greedy, merely frightened.”

  “Or both,” Archibald suggested. “Yes, I would say he was definitely frightened. He kept watching his servants, as if he couldn’t trust them.”

  “Maybe one of the servants knows where the casket is,” I ventured. “And there may be another way of finding out, rather than giving any more money to John Appleyard.”

  Early the following morning I went with Anna Ormiston to the meanest shop I could find where old clothes were sold. I outfitted myself in a threadbare gown and ragged cape full of holes, trailing both garments through the dirt of the street until when I put them on I looked as though I had been sleeping in the street or in a dirty doorway. I took off my boots and covered my head with a thin black shawl, darkening my face with soot and pulling the shawl down over my forehead.

  “By all the saints, Orange Blossom, your own grandmamma would not know you now!” Archibald exclaimed when he saw me. “What in the name of heaven are you going to do, got up like that?”

  “I’m going to take advantage of John Appleyard’s hospitality,” I said. “I’m hungry, and I hear he feeds all the beggars in the neighborhood.”

  And with Anna Ormiston and two of the strongest Norwegian sailors from the crew of the Black Messenger following me at a distance, I set off, hobbling on my bare feet, for the grandest house in Bishops-gate.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  I felt bony fingers clamp down on my arm and yank me toward a much weathered stone wall.

  “Hush! Hold your tongue!”

  The old woman was bent
and grizzled, with stiff white hairs protruding from her determined chin. Like the rest of us in the crowd waiting at the gate of John Appleyard’s tall gabled house, she wore rags and had a feral air.

  “Do not say that name! The queen’s men are everywhere!”

  “What—” I began, but she shushed me again.

  “You know the name! Hold your tongue!”

  The name I had been saying was that of Amy Dudley. I had joined the crowd of those waiting for alms at the gate of the large house, and while waiting I had been asking, quietly and discreetly as I thought, about whether anyone knew where Lady Amy had been laid to rest. Though I had persisted in asking for some minutes, no one had answered me, I had been shunned.

  I looked down into the alert, suspicious eyes of the old beggar woman. “I am ready to pay anyone who can tell me what I want to know.”

  “Don’t speak of that here!” She tightened her grip on my arm and pulled me into a crevice in the wall, a declivity where the ancient stones had fallen or been pried away by thieving hands. Rain had begun to pour down and our voices were drowned out by the sound of its splashing and thudding against the uneven pavingstones. The old woman raised one thin arm in a vain effort to shield herself from the downpour.

  I leaned close to her. “Do you know where Lady Dudley’s casket is?”

  “I know all there is to know,” she said, speaking more to the wall than to me. “Wickedness. Every sort of wickedness. What they did to that poor girl! They tried to hide it all, by moving her here and there. Moving her poor broken body . . .”

  “Moving it where? Where is the casket now?”

  The old woman looked around, but there was no one near enough to us to overhear.

  “Right next door, at St. Ethelburga’s!” she whispered. “In the crypt!”

  “Do you know this for certain? Have you seen the casket?”

  Suddenly she was angry. “Have I seen it? Have I, Rose Pinto, seen it?” She drew herself up to her full height, which was far below mine. “I prepared her body. I saw her die.”

  There was pride in her tone.

  “You were in her household then?”

  “I was her maid. But the others saw it as well. All the old servants. Mistress Odingcells, Mistress Owen—we saw her writhing on the floor after she ate those stag pies. We saw the terrible pain she was in, from the poison.”

  “But I thought she died from a fall!”

  “Nonsense! After she was poisoned, her poor body was thrown down the stairs by that wicked Richard Smythe, the one the queen bribed to keep her secret! And Appleyard was there too—” Here the old woman looked around again, hastily, before returning to her story. “It was Smythe that bribed the jury afterwards, that swore she had an accident and fell down the stairs, and that no one was to blame. Oh, he has much to answer for in the next life, that one!”

  “But you never came forward with the truth?”

  “We were all told to keep silent. If we kept silent, we would be taken care of. That’s why Appleyard feeds us. And there’s silver for us too, every Lady Day and at Eastertide.”

  I reached for the bag of small coins I had brought with me—all I had left from the money Red Ormiston had gotten for my jewels. All that I had kept back for my own modest costs.

  “This is yours, Mistress Pinto,” I said, handing her the bag. She snatched it from my hand and darted out into the rain, joining the cluster of dripping beggars waiting at the gate.

  St. Ethelburga’s, I thought. Right next door, at St. Ethelburga’s. I was so excited I ran, splashing through the filthy puddles in my wet feet, nearly colliding with Anna and the Norwegian sailors, so eager was I to tell Archibald what I had discovered and to make our plans.

  By nightfall the rain had turned to a cold drizzle, the beggars had long since gone to their places of shelter and I had taken off my ragged clothing and put on a clean dry gown. The cold rain had given me a chill, and I sneezed and coughed as I sat talking with Archibald and Anna and her husband.

  “What if the crypt is locked?” Archibald said.

  Red Ormiston laughed. “There’s not a lock in England I can’t pick—or break.”

  “But the noise, that would draw attention.”

  “I can be quiet.”

  “What if there are guards?” I put in.

  Red pointed to a thick cudgel leaning against the wall. And Anna drew the long sharp knife that she always carried and laid it on the table with a heavy thud.

  Archibald sighed and shook his head. “I wish Jamie were here. But if he were, he would cause a commotion. That would bring Burghley’s men for certain, and nothing would be accomplished.

  “No, we are better doing this alone. Just ourselves. Besides, if we waited for Jamie to arrive the casket might be moved.”

  In the end we decided to wait for midnight, then go to St. Ethelburga’s and break in. Archibald would bring a chest to carry the letters we expected to find inside the casket. It was the crudest of plans, but we would not be suspected. Not if Rose Pinto, Amy Dudley’s faithful former maid, did not betray us, and I did not think she would.

  Sneezing and drinking chamomile tea to calm my fluttering nerves, I tried to drowse as I waited for midnight and the long-awaited culmination of my hopes.

  FIFTY-SIX

  We went along the wet street past John Appleyard’s house with its flaring torches, sputtering in the rain, to the small old church of St. Ethelburga’s. On the side away from the house, a narrow set of steps led downward into darkness. It was the entrance to the crypt.

  Red Ormiston went first, prepared to have to use force or stealth to move the ancient door. Archibald followed, carrying a torch that provided very little light, its flame burning low. But to our surprise the door yielded to Red’s touch, and we crossed the threshold into a room that smelled of dust and mold and time-ravaged bodies.

  Archibald raised his torch and we saw at once that the room was full of stone tombs—and that we were not alone.

  I hardly had time to gasp in surprise before I felt my arms pinned behind my back and saw that Red Ormiston, with a deep cry of outrage, was being overpowered by three strong men. Archibald dropped fainting to the floor while Anna, knife raised, held two attackers at bay but was not quick enough to threaten the others that grasped her from behind and soon disarmed her and tied a cloth around her mouth.

  I felt and saw all this, yet amid my shock and fear I could not take my eyes from the thin figure that stood in the center of the room, a wooden casket on the stone floor in front of her. She was taking papers out of the casket one by one and setting them alight from a burning brand she held. So absorbed was she in her task that she seemed to ignore our presence, though Red Ormiston continued to struggle and kick out against his captors and swear strong oaths and Anna too did her best to scream, though the cloth that bound her mouth shut reduced her screams to weak grunts.

  It was Elizabeth who was burning the papers, wearing the shining blue satin cloak I had made for her years earlier, its bold design of red and pink roses, yellow and purple tulips glowing vibrant in the torchlight. When she moved I could see the gleam of gold spangles on the underside of the cloak. She, or her tirewomen, had gone to much trouble to preserve that carefully made garment, I thought, even as my heart was pounding and I was also thinking, she’s going to kill me now for certain.

  As if to confirm my dark imagining I saw Baron Burghley standing in a corner of the room, and beside him, sitting heavily on a bench, her arms and legs bound, her posture forlorn, was another familiar figure: Bess Shrewsbury!

  Elizabeth paused in her work of destruction and said in the low, commanding tones I remembered hearing at Buxton spa, “So my friend Rose Pinto has brought you to us, as I trusted she would.”

  She regarded me coolly from across the room, and I did my best to gaze steadily back at her, taking in the gray hair streaked with white, the masklike face drained of color, the sharp bones that stood out from the deep wrinkly mesh of her neck. How she had
aged! And not only aged, but withered; there was so much less of her than on the last occasion when we met.

  “I congratulate Mistress Pinto,” I managed to respond, all too aware that my voice shook a little. “She is a fine actress, even if she does betray the memory of her mistress Amy Dudley.”

  “She is loyal to her sovereign.”

  “Her present sovereign, not her true sovereign.”

  At this I saw Baron Burghley take a step toward me, and I flinched.

  “He does wish you ill,” Elizabeth said with a wry smile, meanwhile setting fire to each paper in turn, then dropping the burning ash into a wide-mouthed urn. “Had I left your fate to the baron, you would not be here now.”

  I heard the sound of crying, and realized that it was coming from Bess.

  “Ah, Mistress Shrewsbury, all this talk of death upsets you. Yet you were eager enough to prepare those stag pies you made for our good Amy on the day of her dreadful accident, were you not? The pies with an added ingredient in them—a deadly ingredient—”

  Bess shook her head violently, sobbing. “I didn’t know,” she cried. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you knew! And one day you will pay for all you knew, and for letting my little French cousin slip through your fingers and be taken off to Rome, where she plotted against me, and planned my death, just as Baron Burghley now plans hers.”

  I felt faint. Had I not been held firmly by the men on either side of me—men who reeked of beer and sweat—I would have fallen to the floor.

  “Oh yes, she has been plotting my death for years,” the queen went on, as if musing to herself, in her menacing low monotone. “My spies have kept me well informed of all she has said and done. Where she has gone, whom she has been with—”

  Oh God, I thought. Not Marie-Elizabeth. Not Grandmamma Antoinette. No!