Just a Queen Read online

  ‘We must take steps immediately against her. We have evidence, here—’

  Cecil gestured to Robin who held up some papers.

  ‘We have evidence that the Queen of Scots has plans to escape and flee to Spain.’

  ‘This is not such a surprise, is it my lords? We have known for some time that a conspiracy of some kind was afoot.’

  ‘Aye, Your Majesty, but now we have the proof of her treachery and enough evidence to bring both the Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk to trial!’ There was excitement in Robin’s voice as he spoke these words. Not one of the men in front of me would be sorry to see the head of either the Queen of Scots or their erstwhile colleague fall. Men’s thirst for blood puzzles me sometimes.

  ‘What steps have you taken to ensure that the Queen of Scots cannot put her plan into action?’ The idea of Mary free to plot mischief against me somewhere in Europe made my blood run cold.

  ‘I have sent a fast horse, Your Grace, to the Earl of Shrewsbury to redouble the guard around the treacherous queen. I marked the message “haste, post haste, haste, haste, haste, for life, life, life”.’ So, it was as urgent as that.

  ‘Good. And Norfolk, what of him?’

  ‘He is in the Tower, Your Grace, and the evidence we found in his house is brought safely here.’ Again Robin held up more of the papers he clutched in his hands. They included coded letters, the key to the code found hidden in the foolish Duke’s roof and a letter from Mary herself.

  On the face of this evidence the Duke of Norfolk was lost. I could save Mary Stuart – the evidence against her was relatively flimsy – but for poor foolish Norfolk there was no remedy but a traitor’s death. I had hoped that I could merely have imprisoned him for a time, maybe even a long time, rather than take his life. But there was no help for it, I would have to sign his death warrant; I would have to take responsibility for his dreadful punishment. I, who had indulged him, who had ignored the history of treachery in his family, who had given him a place on my privy council, and treated him with the honour and dignity that the greatest lord in the land deserved. I, who had turned a blind eye to his Catholicism and who had tried to warn him away from the path of treachery and conspiracy. The Howards had no business plotting and intriguing. They did not have the brains or the stomach for it, so their conspiracies always failed.

  Norfolk was tried and convicted. Cecil told me later that he denied that he had ever conspired in my death or the taking of my throne, but the die was cast. For myself, I believed the man. The Thomas Howard I knew was a big enough fool to simply ignore the consequences of what he was doing. Whatever comforting tales he told himself, his marriage to a freed Queen of Scots could only lead to an attempt on my throne. Anyone with the eyes to see and the brains to think would come to that conclusion. I did not doubt for a moment that Mary was well enough endowed with both. Thomas Howard’s tragedy was that he had neither. My tragedy was that now I had to kill him.

  ‘The hinder part of my brain does not trust the forward parts of the same, my lord. Each time I sign the warrant, I am overcome with horror and must unsign it. He is my cousin and I am so light on for kin of my own blood, my lord. I have no wish for his death, no desire to spill his blood. On the contrary, I shrink from it. Can we not just lock him up, my lords? As you love me, can we not just imprison him until God takes his life?’

  I was sobbing as I said this, the tears running unchecked down my face. I had been in my bed for three days and three nights and Robin and Cecil had sat beside me, holding the third warrant for the Duke of Norfolk’s death. I had revoked the other two and torn them both asunder.

  ‘He has been sentenced to die by a legally constituted court and the sentence must now be carried out upon him and it is your duty as queen to sign the warrant. You have no choice in this, Your Grace.’ Cecil was using his mildest tone, but he and Robin were weary unto death after three days of soothing words, argument and tantrums. ‘It is no kindness to him, Your Grace, to leave him hanging, so to speak, like this, not knowing when the end is to come. You do him no favours by raising his hopes of reprieve falsely in this way.’

  I wept at Robin’s words and buried my face in my pillows. I knew the truth of what he said, yet I still searched in my mind for a way out of my dilemma. In my thirteen years on the throne no person of noble blood had been executed. I had been proud that the scaffold on Tower Hill was derelict. Indeed it had become so neglected from lack of use that when Norfolk had been condemned, another had to be built in its place.

  ‘I have no wish for blood, no thirst for it. It is a serious thing to take another’s life, my lord. God commands against it; “Thou shalt not kill”, He tells us. He does not say “Thou shalt not kill – except for traitors”. I do not wish to burn in hell, my lords, for taking this man’s life.’

  ‘Now is not the time to argue theology, Your Grace. This is a matter of the law. Your cousin has conspired against you, he has plotted your demise, he has been judged guilty of these capital crimes. The punishment of the court must be carried out, otherwise you risk fatally damaging the authority of your own legal system and the consequences of that for the stability of your kingdom do not bear contemplation.’

  ‘Leave me, leave me, let me sleep and perhaps I will sign the warrant in the morning.’

  ‘No, Your Grace, we will not leave you; not until you have signed the warrant. It must be done and, forgive an old man’s impertinence, but it must be done now.’

  At this I grew angry and repeated a phrase that I had used many times before. ‘“Must” is not a word to use to princes!’

  ‘Tonight, the Earl of Leicester and I are here as your friends – your oldest friends and we hope your most trusted friends. We know the goodness and kindness of Your Majesty’s heart. It does you personal credit that you should take your responsibilities as a monarch so seriously and be so much more inclined to mercy than to tyranny.’

  ‘Tell that to the members of my parliament,’ I said, my words somewhat muffled by my face being buried in my pillow.

  ‘Aye, Your Grace, that ignorant criticism was most unwarranted. But, Your Grace, the fact remains that you are not able to give full rein to your personal inclination. You are no ordinary woman, able to forgive the betrayals of men if she so chooses. You are the queen and the betrayal of others towards you is not personal: it is a threat to all who live and prosper in your kingdom. We are not arguing here about your desires, but about your duty.’

  Cecil was right. I knew full well he was right. It was why I had appointed him my closest advisor and why to this day he remains my partner in all that I do. When it is required of him he will give me the advice he believes is right – not the advice I want to hear.

  ‘I will not sign any warrant referring to the Queen of Scots and her part in this conspiracy.’

  ‘She has not been accused, Your Grace, nor tried, nor convicted. She is a prisoner already and the guard around her has been reinforced. She is no threat to you at the moment.’

  ‘Why is it that we can lock Mary Stuart behind castle walls for the rest of her life, but not Thomas Howard? Why can we not treat him as we treat her?’

  ‘It is as I have said, Your Grace, because he has been duly tried, convicted and sentenced to death by a court of law. Evidence has been produced, defence has been made and fault has been proven. No such proceedings have occurred regarding the lady you have mentioned.’

  ‘She will be a prisoner forever now, won’t she?’ I sat up in my bed and my tears had ceased. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and Robin handed me a handkerchief. I blew heartily into it and gave it back to him.

  ‘I can see no circumstances where it would be safe to allow the Queen of Scots her freedom.’

  ‘Not even if she retired to a convent and abdicated her claim to any throne, willingly?’

  ‘Not even then. While she lives, she would – and will – remain the f
ocus of all who would plot to remove a Protestant monarch from the throne of England. She must, therefore, remain under our control and surveillance.’

  ‘And if I die before she does? She is younger than I am, after all.’

  ‘We must pray sincerely that does not occur.’

  ‘You plan to make sure it does not occur, Cecil. I know you too well. I will not aid you in this, my lord, be assured of that.’

  ‘But that is not what we are discussing here. The Queen of Scots is not under sentence of death; the Duke of Norfolk is. It is his warrant you must sign and no other.’

  ‘Would that it will always be so.’

  And I took the heavy paper and signed. Before the ink had time to dry, Robin had the parchment out of my hands and with a perfunctory bow had made haste to take the warrant to the proper authority.

  ‘You are in a great hurry to see your old friend and colleague dead, my lord Leicester.’ But he had already left the chamber before I finished my sentence.

  ‘It is not easy for any of us to see this sentence carried out, Your Grace. Thomas Howard has been a friend and a colleague to us all.’

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool, Sir Spirit. Once Norfolk’s head is from his shoulders you will have weeded all the Catholics from my court – Southampton, Arundel, Cobham and Lumley – all gone now. Don’t think I do not see what you do.’

  Cecil looked at me and sighed. ‘Yet, Your Grace, if they had not conspired with this fanatic Ridolfi, if they had remained loyal and true subjects to you, they could have continued to grow and prosper in your garden. It is not what I have done. It is what they have done that has caused them to be rooted out. I do not like this bloodshed, good madam, any more than you do.’

  And I looked at his face, lined and seamed as it was even then. (It is a veritable spider’s web now.) And the weariness around his eyes and mouth indicated that what he said was true. My heart filled with warmth and fellow feeling for him at that moment and I picked up his worn hand and held it in both my own. As I did, I saw his eyes fill up with tears and together, quietly, as comrades in arms, we wept for what we both had to do.

  Seventeen

  Sir Francis Walsingham was tall and very slender. He was dressed entirely in black, which had the effect of making the white of his starched ruff seem dazzling. Despite the austerity of his appearance, the cloth from which his gown was fashioned was of the finest wool; its cut expensive and well tailored. His beard was perfectly trimmed and the nails on the ends of his long fingers carefully shaped. His hands were not stained with ink like mine. His eyes were small, but their expression was shrewd beneath a heavy brow and his nose was long with a distinct bump at its bridge. The face of a man who gave little away.

  ‘Arise, Sir Francis.’ He was on his knees.

  ‘We have long been aware of your tireless and meticulous work and Lord Burleigh has sung your praises on many occasions. We are therefore in no doubt that you will make a formidable principal secretary.’

  ‘You have earnt your high office, Sir Francis, by your own merit.’

  Cecil smiled warmly at the man whose career he had so carefully nurtured.

  ‘We have been particularly pleased with your ability to discover information discreetly and efficiently. There are many of our subjects who we need to watch carefully. Especially, perhaps, those who claim not to be our subjects.’

  ‘I receive reports daily from Tutbury, Your Majesty. There is not a word the Queen of Scots says that I am unaware of.’

  It was another thing I liked about Secretary Walsingham. He was quick to understand subtleties.

  ‘You are sure of that, Sir Francis?’

  ‘I am certain. Every word she speaks, every word she writes is later examined by me. She uses a cipher, but we long ago broke the code and I have spies closer to her than any realise.’

  ‘And her thoughts, Sir Francis?’

  ‘Your cousin is a talkative woman, Your Grace, and her captivity weighs heavily upon her. From what my spies tell me, there is little that passes through her mind that does not also get articulated. When she is sad, she bewails her fate. When she is enraged, she swears and threatens. When she feels hope and joy, she cannot hold her tongue either. There is little strategy in her make-up, she is a woman who changes with her moods and hides nothing.’

  ‘Poor lady. It is what we all dread, my lord, is it not, that we are being betrayed by the people we trust?’

  ‘I would not waste too much sympathy upon the Queen of Scots, Your Grace. Her primary focus is on your undoing.’

  ‘Does she say so?’

  ‘Not in as many words, but she plots and schemes and plans daily for her freedom and – if I may speak frankly, Your Grace – her freedom spells the end of yours.’

  ‘Yet it is hard not to sympathise. You must remember, Sir Francis, that I was once in just such a place as she, suspected of wishing my sister’s demise when all I really yearned for was to be at liberty.’

  I had hoped that Norfolk’s death would satisfy those who saw treachery behind any whispered conversation, but I was wrong. No sooner was his noble head hoisted on a pike and his body consigned to a traitor’s grave, than parliament began to pester me once again for the head of my Stuart cousin. It took all my eloquence to dissuade them from this dangerous course. I told them the case was not strong enough and that such an action would bring the fury of all Europe down upon our heads – Catholic and Protestant alike. I warned them against making a martyr of her and a tyrant (a Great Turk, perhaps) of me. I soothed them with assurances that she was well guarded and closely watched and that she was of less consequence as a tightly held prisoner than a dead rallying cry. Temporarily they ceased their baying for my cousin’s blood, but I should have known better than to think that parliament would ever allow itself to bow to good sense and the will of its prince for very long. If they couldn’t have her head, they wanted her crown.

  ‘I will not do it, Cecil. I will not. She has been the Queen of Scots for longer than I have been Queen of England – decades longer. Parliament – those jumped up little men of no breeding and no consequence – has no right under God or the law to take a title away from one who holds it by divine right!’

  My newly promoted Lord High Treasurer (Cecil, of course) was persistent and dogged, but I could be just as stubborn.

  ‘She is rejected by her own realm, Your Grace. Her half-brother rules as regent in her place until her son is old enough to take her crown. He has been the Scottish king since 1566, after Mary abdicated.’

  ‘Was forced to abdicate, my lord, as you well know, at the point of a sword.’

  ‘That’s as may be, Your Majesty, but she is now a queen in name only and the lords and House of Commons are united on this. They wish to deal with the traitor for your sake, for your safety. They cannot stomach that the Queen of Scots should escape unsanctioned for her part in the Ridolfi plot, while the Englishman whom she ensnared is dead and buried. At the very least, they want her title and status removed.’

  ‘I did not wish to see him so punished, good my lord, as you may recall. I did all I could to save him from the full wrath of the law.’

  ‘You have saved Mary, Queen of Scots, from its full wrath, in your mercy, but should you save her from any punishment at all? That, I think, is the question the parliamentarians are grappling with.’

  ‘It is not her I save, my lord. Can you not see that? It is the divine authority of princes that I protect. Mary herself is irrelevant in this. She is held securely, if you and Walsingham are to be believed, and her every move is watched and noted. What I am protecting is the sacred truth that monarchs are placed upon their thrones by God and may not be separated from the birthright of their title, prestige and – yes – royalty by mere mortals, no matter what crimes they may have committed.’

  ‘Her crimes have been heinous, indeed.’

  ‘The Queen of Sc
ots’ crimes, you mean, my lord Burleigh.’

  I saw Cecil’s lips tighten at my reminder of the courtesies due to my cousin, but I did not care; this was not about Mary’s safety, it was about my own. Many remain dubious about my right to the throne. Mary’s right – as the only living child of her father, the King of Scots – was never in question. It was her character that was at issue and it is never within the purview of men to judge the character of their natural superiors. There have been bad kings and good kings, monarchs who were loved and revered and others who were hated and despised. That is not the point, and it never will be. It is more permissible to kill a king than to take away his or her title and position. To remove a sovereign from the throne is to put man’s law ahead of God’s. It is blasphemy.

  ‘Give my parliament this answer, Lord Burleigh, and this answer only – la royne s’advisera.’

  ‘They will know you mean to do nothing.’

  ‘I do not care what they know or do not know. My answer is that I like it not and if you value the love I bear you, we will discuss this no longer.’

  Cecil looked at me and opened his mouth. I held up my hand. ‘No longer, Lord Burleigh. I have said all I intend to say.’

  Yet, no sooner had my new secretary been elevated officially than Sir Francis was returning me to the same wearisome discussion.

  ‘The issue of the Queen of Scots’ complicity in the Ridolfi plot is in the past, Sir Francis and that, for now, is where I wish it to stay. The plotters have been dealt with and the instigator has disappeared to Europe. Indeed, my lords—’ And now I glared at both the men in front of me. ‘Indeed, my lords, I am curious that in contrast to your desire to have the head of the Queen of Scots on such relatively flimsy evidence, the proven instigator of this plot, once so firmly in your custody as to taste the rack, has somehow escaped and made his way to freedom. If your spies are as good as you claim, Sir Francis, how has this been allowed to happen? If your care of me is so thorough and so tender, Lord Burleigh, I say again, how has this been allowed to occur?’