Elizabeth I (109 page)

Still standing on his height and nobility, Essex mocked, “Ah, Master Secretary, I thank God for my humiliation, that you in the ruff of all your bravery, have come hither to make your oration against me today.”

But Cecil brushed the insult off and pressed him. “Which councillor was it who quoted me about the Infanta? Name him if you dare. If you do not name him, it must be believed to be a fiction.”

“Aha!” crowed Essex. “Southampton here heard it as well.”

“Who was it, then? Again I say, name him!”

“It was ... the comptroller, Sir William Knollys.”

“Summon him here,” ordered Buckhurst. “I know he has absented himself out of family loyalty, so he would not have to testify against his nephew, but now he must come. And do not tell him what this is about. He must be utterly ignorant of the coming question.”

The proceedings were suspended while Knollys was fetched from his home and escorted into the court. He stood before Buckhurst, who detailed Essex’s accusation against Cecil and asked if he had ever heard the secretary express those thoughts.

Knollys took a deep breath and thought out loud. “Yes ... he did speak of it. But ... it had to do with something else. Something else ... What was it?” He shook his head as if he could tumble his thoughts around inside. “Oh yes. It was when that Jesuit had written the tract ‘Conference on the Next Succession.’ Cecil said it was impudent of him to claim that the Infanta had the same rights in the succession as anyone else.”

“That was what he said? That it was
wrong
of the Jesuit to make that claim?”

“I believe his exact words were ‘a strange impudence,’” said Knollys.

Buckhurst wagged his head from side to side. “And so now we have it. You have lived under an illusion, Lord Essex. An illusion of your own making.”

The court was adjourned while the jury members withdrew to make their verdict. When they assembled again, they stood and, one by one, placing their left hands on their right sides, made the pronouncement: “Guilty, my lord, of high treason, upon mine honor.”

Essex stood quietly, asking only for clemency for Southampton. Southampton whimpered and asked for mercy.

Buckhurst pronounced sentence. “You shall both be led from hence to the place from whence you came and there remain during Her Majesty’s pleasure: from thence to be drawn upon a hurdle through the midst of the city, and so to the place of execution, there to be hanged by the neck and taken down alive—your bodies to be opened, and your bowels taken out and burned before your face: your bodies to be quartered—your heads and quarters to be disposed of at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and so God have mercy on your souls.”

Essex looked around, his head held high. “I think it fitting that my poor quarters, which have done Her Majesty service in diverse parts of the world, should now at the last be sacrificed and disposed at Her Majesty’s pleasure.” Then he bowed, flipping his cape out.

The court was stunned at his arrogance and lack of contrition.

The prisoners were returned to the Tower with the executioner’s blade now turned toward them.

84

I
was sitting in a high-backed chair, rigid like a Byzantine icon, as the day drew to its close. I had not eaten all day, fasting in order to feel more keenly what was happening in Westminster Hall. The hall’s carved wooden ceiling had looked down alike on the joyous and the tormented, and that just within my own family. Today what did they see, what did they hear?

A knock; then a messenger entered. “They are pronounced guilty,” he said.

I stood. “When?”

“Just now. I have run straight from the hall.”

It was so nearby he was not even out of breath. “Both of them?”

“Yes, both Essex and Southampton. They are on their way back to the Tower.”

I went to the window and peered out. There were enough boats on the river that it was hard to know which one carried the prisoners. I let the curtain fall. “They shall never leave it,” I said. “They go upon the river for the last time.” What must it be like to ride anywhere, knowingly, for the last time?

“Mr. Secretary Cecil clinched the day,” he said. “He made a surprise appearance from behind a curtain, just as in a play. But he turned the tables so thoroughly against Essex that the earl had no recourse. Standing beside that strapping man, never did Cecil, in his small stature, play taller. He will be providing a transcript of all the happenings. The scribes are copying furiously this very moment. But it will take several hours.”

“But you have brought me the meat of it,” I said. “The rest is pastry decoration.”

It was done, then. It was done. I felt immense relief to be delivered from the long-hovering threat, but no satisfaction. Just so I had felt when Walsingham had exposed the Scots queen unequivocally and the judges had pronounced sentence. My suspicions had been confirmed. But I would rather have had them turn out to be unfounded.

I gathered my women about me. These faithful companions of my chamber deserved to hear immediately what had happened. Then I withdrew with Catherine, and we were alone in the bedchamber.

“Once more I will be thanking Charles for his timely service to the realm,” I told her.

“He still has Essex’s sword,” said Catherine. “What will you tell him to do with it?”

“It should be returned to the family,” I said. “When all this is—over.”

“When will that be?”

“As soon as the papers can be drawn up and arrangements made.”

“Arrangements? The executioner, a grave plot? There is already a scaffold at Tower Hill. He will not be going to Tyburn, I assume?”

“No, nor to Tower Hill. He will have a private execution on Tower Green. A new scaffold must be built. It has been almost fifty years since there has been an execution there. Lady Jane Grey was the last one.”

“Why send him there?”

“Because he requested a private execution.”

“Or because it would be too dangerous to permit the public to witness it out on Tower Hill?”

“Both, Catherine. If the public makes a ruckus, then it reverses our victory. He must perish out of sight.”

The trial had taken place on Thursday; over the weekend Essex agonized with his Puritan chaplain, Abdyias Ashton, whom he had asked for ere he surrendered. He had relapsed into a state of frenzied religiosity that focused entirely on his soul and excluded his grieving family. He would not see his wife, mother, sisters, or friends. Instead he confessed all to Ashton, who then insisted on bringing Privy Councillors to partake of these unburdenings. So on Saturday, only two days after the trial, a very different Essex writhed in front of the admiral and Cecil, breast beating and then writing out four pages of confessions, allegations, and blame.

“Well, men, you have witnessed his breakdown,” I told them, as they presented me with the original papers—not a copy. His tiny handwriting, shrunk to get as much as possible on the pages, made it hard to read. “It is never a pretty sight.”

Before me Charles and Cecil stood stiffly. The confession began with his admission that he was “the greatest, the vilest, and the most unthankful traitor that ever was born.” He was exaggerating, as usual. But he named names of everyone associated with his plot, drawing in Lord Mountjoy and his mistress, Penelope. She had insulted him and egged him on by telling him that everyone thought him a coward, he said. “Look to her, for she has a proud spirit,” he warned.

“It runs in the family,” I grunted.

“In the midst of all this, he suddenly demanded that his attendant, Henry Cuffe, be brought in to face him,” said Cecil. “And then he accused him to his face of leading him into it all.”

“Ah, he is the same man despite his protestations of reform,” I said. “He has ever sought to blame others for his misdeeds. It is always someone else’s fault—in his eyes.”

“But not the law’s,” said Cecil. “The law has spoken.” He hesitated, then shot a glance at Charles. “There is one other thing ...”

“You must tell it,” said Charles.

“Essex admitted in our presence that, and I quote, ‘the Queen will never be safe as long as I live.’”

“Those were his exact words?” I said.

“Indeed,” said Charles, “though I hate hearing them repeated.”

“He only admits what we already knew,” I said, more lightly than I felt.

“As regarding the others—Cuffe, Meyrick, Blount, and the rest,” Charles said, “they will stand trial after these first two are dispatched.”

“What of Southampton?” asked Catherine. “You did not mention where he was ... was to go.”

“Not Tower Green,” I said. In truth, I had thought little about him. He was so inconsequential.

“If he is to join Essex on his exit from this world, then you should decide,” said Cecil.

That annoyed me. “Do not issue orders to princes,” I said. “I shall decide when I decide. Have the papers been drawn up?”

“They will be ready tomorrow, and awaiting your royal signature,” he said.

“Sunday. I would never sign an execution warrant on a Sunday!”

“Monday, then,” said Cecil.

“Monday it shall be, then. And the execution can proceed on Tuesday. Ready everything.”

He had said not one word about me in his confession, or to the councillors, or to his chaplain. This time there were no appeals, no tear-stained letters, no poems, and no protestations. At last the golden tongue and pen of the earl had fallen silent.

Nor was there to be any word from me. What could I possibly say? If I said all I felt, it would fill not four pages, as Essex had done, but a hundred.
Where have you gone?
I wanted to say.
What infected you, corrupted you? Was there anything I could have done to alter it? Did I play any part in it?

But those questions were not ones a queen could ask a subject, and this subject would never have the self-knowledge to give an honest answer. So: silence on both sides.

Provision must be made for his body. It had to go somewhere after it fell on the scaffold. I gave orders that a grave be prepared in the little church of St. Peter ad Vincula, which stood only yards away. It served as the final resting place of many executed prisoners. The higher ranking were inside the church, and the lesser people were buried in the graveyard around it. I had never been able to force myself to go inside, for all that it had fine marble monuments. My mother lay there, and I could not bear to think so closely upon how she was taken there, still warm from the scaffold and not in a proper coffin. Others kept her company, a whole host of them: her brother George, and Thomas More, and Queen Catherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey. But if I stood there and looked, there would be only one grave I would see: hers.

I mean no disrespect,
I told her in my mind, as I had a thousand times.
But, Mother, I have made my peace with it all, as I have had to.

Lent was about to begin. We always had a play at court on Shrove Tuesday. I must think of that. I must select something. Life must go on, flow smoothly, as it always had.