Blood Between Queens (29 page)

Adam looked at her with a jolt. Was she arresting the banker, too, as his accomplice?

“Return Sir Adam’s sword,” she told the guard. Her eyes sparkled at Adam as she added to her chamberlain, “And convey to Ambassador de Spes my sincere regret that our meeting must be postponed until tomorrow.”

 

A thin snow swirled around the battlements of Bolton Castle on the Yorkshire moors. Logs blazed in the hearth in Mary’s chamber, but the warmth could not touch the chill in Justine’s heart. The thirteen days since she had parted from Will had been a torture of shame and dread. She stood at the sideboard pouring Burgundy wine into goblets for Mary and her visitors from York, Lord Herries and Bishop Leslie. The fire crackled in the silence that had fallen over them. They were Mary’s lead commissioners at the inquiry and had brought her a grim report. Justine only half listened, her thoughts mired in her own disaster.

“In short, Your Grace,” Herries finished, “though it grieves me to tell you, our strategy is in tatters.” Gray-haired, erect as a soldier, he stood with his back to the fire, his eyes sunken from fatigue. “These so-called casket letters spell the ruin of your claim.”

Bishop Leslie nodded anxiously from his chair. An injury to his ankle had forced him to sit, though in Mary’s presence. Both men were staunch supporters of her royal rights. “Moray has found the weapon to smite you. Your own words.”

“Forged,” Mary said coldly. “As you well know.” She paced at the window, hugging herself as though the snow that fell outside it fell on her.

Justine caught the look that passed between the two men, a glance fraught with meaning. It seemed to her that they accepted the letters as authentic, sight unseen. Still, they remained committed to defending Mary. “Be that as it may,” the bishop said, “your options are dwindling.”

Justine herself could scarcely bear to look at Mary. When she had returned from her devastating visit to Will, she had told Mary only that she had failed to get the letters. Mary had been greatly downcast but had not blamed her, had even thanked her for trying. Justine had not confessed what really happened—that Will had discovered her in the act of getting the letters copied. For two weeks she had relived the horror of that moment on the street. His trembling hand as he held the pages. His stricken look at her. The waver in his voice as he said he would have to tell his uncle about her deceit and Lord Thornleigh would have to tell Elizabeth. Justine had wished the street would crack open between them and swallow her. How could she live with the shame? And what would happen now? What would they do? How would they punish her?

For two weeks she had dragged around, reeling from the wound in her heart, dazed by her disgrace, plagued by a headache that pounded day and night. Ragged from lack of sleep, she would watch the dawn break, her legs feeling too heavy to get out of bed. Mary had noticed and asked if she was ill, and Justine had not been able to hold back the tears. But she maintained her tale that she wept from her failure to get the letters. She kept secret her own personal calamity. To mention the trail that led from Will to Lord Thornleigh to Elizabeth would be to confess her purpose in being sent here: to spy. In fury, Mary might cast her out on the frigid moor. Yet what
was
her purpose here now? Justine’s thoughts stumbled over themselves, and she felt she was half in exile already, adrift on the heath, wandering between the camps of Elizabeth and Mary, belonging to neither.

Yet two weeks had passed and no word had come from London. In her sleepless nights she had wondered over and over why Elizabeth had not recalled her. She imagined all sorts of scenarios: They had decided that recalling her might alert Mary that she was an agent for Elizabeth. Or the opposite: They simply considered her too small a cog in the machinery of state to be a concern. Or might Lord Thornleigh, in his fondness for her, have kept silent? She prayed for that. Even tried to make herself believe that Will might not have told his uncle at all, that he hadn’t had the heart.
Because he loves me
.

No,
loved
me, she thought, her hope spiraling into despair for the hundredth time. Never would she forget the way he had looked at her, like she was a stranger, a liar, someone foul. That look had blasted their betrothal vows of loyalty and love.
No, I blasted them
.

It took all her willpower to calmly hand Lord Herries a goblet of wine, and when she went back to the sideboard she gripped its edge to hold herself steady, not let Mary and the men see her misery as they went on talking about the inquiry. She felt sick to death of the inquiry for the wretchedness it had brought her. She wished she might never hear another word about it, wished she could be left alone to weep. All she had ever wanted was to prove to Will that she was a true Thornleigh! Instead, he thought her a traitor. He hated her. She didn’t know how she could endure it.

“When we reconvene in London, Your Grace, all of Elizabeth’s council will have considered the letters, so there will be little time left,” Bishop Leslie was saying. “Once again I urge you to make a defense. Our strategy to hold Moray to account for his treason must be abandoned. Now that he has made these charges against you, you must answer them or else be thought guilty by all the world.”

“A queen is not bound to answer to her subjects!” Mary cried. Justine looked at her in weary wonder. Since the beginning of the inquiry Mary had not wavered in holding to this single principle, that her royalty conferred special status. “I will appear before Elizabeth and no one else. I have written her again and again entreating this of her. Let her call me to her, queen to queen, and I shall make my case.” Head high, she continued to pace.

The men exchanged a glance that showed their alarm at her self-delusion. “She will not call you,” the bishop said. “She has made it clear that she cannot do so in good conscience while you are under suspicion of such . . . crimes.”

“And meanwhile our enemies have her ear,” Herries said, his voice a growl of disgust. “She has given an audience to Moray.”

Mary whirled around in fury. “What?”

“The moment we were adjourned to London, Moray rode there as fast as horse would carry him.”

“She has seen
him
but refuses
me?
”

The bishop reminded her, with pain in his voice, “He is not under suspicion.”

A wild light leapt in Mary’s eyes. “Then change that! Charge
him
with Darnley’s death.”

They stared at her, astonished. So did Justine. The idea was so rash, so erratic.

“It is the truth, I know it,” Mary said. “He snared Bothwell into the plot. Bothwell may have done the deed, but Moray was the mastermind. His whole scheme was to remove Bothwell by getting him charged with the murder. I tell you, call Moray to account for murdering my husband.”

Herries found his voice. “Even if it were true, it is too late. To hurl such counter-charges would only weaken your case.”

“Why?” she demanded.

The bishop pointed out with great forbearance, “Is there evidence?”

“Find some,” she commanded. “As Moray has done. If he can produce letters, so can we.”

They gaped at her. Herries cleared his throat and said diplomatically, “Your Grace, you are under a great deal of stress. We understand the frustration you feel. But I entreat you to look rationally at—”

“Do not patronize me, sir. It is not
you
Elizabeth keeps in this prison.”

“Please.” Bishop Leslie held up his hands in a gesture of appeasement. “There is one more tactic we might try. The English commissioners are deliberating on this evidence given to them in private. To express our outrage at the secrecy, and perhaps knock some shame into them, we could withdraw from the inquiry. Withdraw in protest.”

Mary instantly was eager. “And then it would be over?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? It would depend on Elizabeth.” He added gloomily, “It always has.”

“I will take that chance. The one outcome I will not endure is a verdict of guilt.” Her face was alight, keen at taking action. “Do it, my lord bishop. Make my protest.”

Herries looked horrified. “If you withdraw, you
proclaim
your guilt. That is how the whole world will see it. I beg you, do not cram yourself into that corner.”

“Then what?” she wailed. She threw up her hands, abandoning hope. “They drive stakes through my body and I can do nothing to save myself! Nothing!” She let out a cry of despair and sank down onto her knees, covering her face with both hands. She bent over, her forehead almost touching the floor, and wept.

The bishop jumped up in alarm, wincing at the pain from his ankle. Herries had frozen in dismay. Justine rushed to Mary’s side. “My lady!” She threw her arm around her waist in pity. Bending to whisper in her ear, she urged Mary to stand. “Do not let them see you like this, my lady. You were born a queen.”

Mary groped for Justine’s hand with a whimper of gratitude. She raised her head, still looking stricken, but she nodded, wiping her wet cheeks. With Justine’s help she got to her feet. She patted Justine’s hand in thanks and as a signal to let her go. Justine curtsied and withdrew to the sideboard, feeling shaky herself. She felt an intense kinship with Mary’s plight. They were both powerless against a tide of events rushing to drown them.

“Pardon me, my lords,” Mary said, summoning her dignity. “You have served me faithfully and I thank you with all my heart. But I ask you now, can nothing be done to save my reputation?”

Another look passed between the men and the bishop gave Herries a solemn nod. Herries took a tense, formal step toward Mary. Justine sensed that whatever he was about to say, he and the bishop had previously discussed it.

“Your Grace, I know I speak for Bishop Leslie and for all your delegation, and indeed for every one of your loyal supporters in Scotland, when I say that we would go on defending you in this arena, the inquiry, until our dying day if that is what you want. However, the outcome looks bleak. And not only for you. There is your son. A verdict of guilt against you could cast suspicion on his legitimacy. I urge you to consider abandoning the treacherous legal quagmire that awaits your case in London, and to take a different course.”

“What course?”

“Abdication.”

Mary stiffened like a doe sighting fire. “How dare you—”

“I dare, Your Grace, because of the love I bear you. You cannot win in this English arena. You have already lost in Scotland. Accept the loss—do it
before
the inquiry judges you—and leave for France with your head high.”

Justine watched in astonishment. Mary’s abdication had not crossed her mind, but she immediately saw it would end the crisis in a stroke. And her going to France with dignity was the outcome Justine had always thought best, for both Mary and Elizabeth.

Mary only sneered. “Never. They made me sign my abdication when they had me in their power, but I rallied and raised an army. I repealed the vile decree.”

“Ratify it now, Your Grace,” said the bishop sadly. “Do it, for the sake of your son.”

“Never.” Mary’s look was steely, but tears welled up and her voice wavered, and Justine read in her face the agonized knowledge that there was little other option if she was to preserve her reputation. She would no longer be a queen, but neither would she be branded an adulteress and a murderer.

“Leave me,” Mary told the men. “We will speak further, but I cannot think of this now.”

When they left, Justine stayed with Mary. They sat and sewed, neither speaking, both struggling with their own private pain. The fire crackled and the snow fell and dusk crept across the moors by stealth.

Just as the last of the light faded, visitors were announced.

“Sir Walter Mildmay, my lady,” Margaret Currier said as she ushered in the arrivals, a stout man who looked in his late forties, with a bony nose and calm gray eyes, and a plump young woman whose cheeks and hands were chapped from the cold. “Sir Walter brings greetings from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth,” Margaret added.

Mary jumped up in excitement and rushed to Mildmay. She grabbed his hand, which made him start in surprise. “Sir,” she said eagerly, “do you bring an invitation from my dear cousin? Am I to see her?”

Sir Walter recovered from her shockingly effusive welcome. He bowed with great respect and smiled, but shook his head. “That is not my mission, Your Grace.” He had courteously addressed her in French and spoke with an easy mix of friendliness and formality that indicated much experience in diplomacy. “However, I take much pleasure in the mission I
am
entrusted with. Allow me to present my daughter, Winifred.” He beckoned the young woman, who stepped forward, blushing, and curtsied.

Mary barely looked at the girl. “Yes, yes, but what message do you being from Elizabeth?”

Mildmay looked unperturbed, smiling again. “My daughter is the message. Her Majesty sends her as your lady-in-waiting.”

“I have three,” Mary said, vexed. “I need no more.”

“Quite so, Your Grace. My daughter is to replace Mistress Thornleigh.”

Justine stiffened. Mary gave her a puzzled look. Dread crawled over Justine. For thirteen days she had agonized over what her fate would be. Now the answer had come. Not in words of forgiveness from Lord Thornleigh, as she had prayed, but a cold, impersonal dismissal.

“This young lady is to leave me?” Mary asked, indicating Justine. “Why?”

“Sheer indulgence on the part of Her Majesty, Your Grace,” he answered pleasantly. “Lord Thornleigh is her great friend, as you may know, so Her Majesty kindly accommodates his wishes. His wife plans to visit friends in Venice and Lord Thornleigh’s wish is to have his ward home that she may accompany his wife abroad. Mistress Thornleigh is to return to London with me.”

Justine found it hard to breathe. Lady Thornleigh had no friends in Venice. This was a fabrication, a film of gauze to cover up the truth.