Just a Queen (10 page)

She had disguised herself as a serving wench and left with the besotted page and another young woman – no doubt equally bewitched – and they simply walked out of the dread prison, into a waiting skiff and rowed themselves to freedom. As Cecil told me the tale, there was a part of me that thrilled at her adventure. Certainly I felt admiration for her audacity. Here was a woman, deeply flawed, no doubt, but with such courage and determination. If she was my enemy, she was formidable.

Once I also lived on the edge of life, fully aware that death was possible at every moment. I thought I hated it and yet, as I spent my days with the meticulous and thorough Cecil, ploughing my way through one state matter to the next, I found myself returning in my imagination to the terror and triumph of my cousin's daring escape. She who was so near to death was very alive.

But not for long.

Twelve

‘I fear, Your Majesty, you have the wolf by the ears.' Dr Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, had dined with me and we were lingering over a good bordeaux and some fine cheese; I was absentmindedly crumbling bread between my fingers. Just before my mother's execution, as Dr Parker liked to remind me, she had commended me to his protection. My mother's name may never have passed my lips, but I kept those who had been close to her, such as Kat and Blanche, close to me and I still wore her likeness in a secret compartment of the ring that never left my right hand.

I pushed the bread away from me. ‘Indeed, my lord bishop, and so it feels. I have the wolf firmly, but I do not know how long I can hold on.'

‘She has written to you?'

‘Aye, my lord, a furious letter. It seems she suspects us of having quietly aided and abetted the Scottish rebels, if not in deed, then certainly in policy.'

‘For a kingdom-less queen, with no soldiers, supporters or power base to speak of, she presumes a great deal. Especially since her defeat at Langside.'

‘She has spirit, my lord.'

‘Would that she had a little less of that and a little more wisdom.'

Mary's attempt to raise an army to take back her kingdom had ended in ignominious defeat. Her ragtag forces had been comprehensively routed by the rebels and she had fled across the border into England and thrown herself upon my protection. Her husband, James Hepburn, whom she had raised from Earl of Bothwell to Duke of Orkney upon their marriage, had fled by ship to Norway – the country of his first wife.

Dr Parker poured himself another generous glass of the excellent bordeaux and leant back in his chair. ‘Carlisle Castle is dangerously close to the Scottish border, Your Majesty.'

‘I know. I have been thinking of asking my cousin to come to court. What is it they say, my lord? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?'

‘But which is she, Your Grace? A friend or a foe?'

‘That is a very good question. Cecil thinks she is a foe, but I have not as yet settled upon an answer.'

‘Until you know the answer, Your Grace, I would not advise inviting her to court. That would send a message of support and approval that could compromise your own standing in the eyes of the world. Your reputation is rising very quickly at the moment, Your Grace. I would not allow the disgraced Queen of Scots to jeopardise it.'

‘You sound like Cecil, Archbishop. He counsels just as you do.'

I was beginning to be referred to in some quarters as the Virgin Queen. There was much about this term that I liked. It implied a virtue and an unworldliness that worked well for my purposes. It also did much to distance me from any who remembered the reputation of my mother (and there were still many who did). Given that Mary was now routinely referred to as a whore and a she-devil, it also did much to emphasise the difference between my reputation and hers. But the phrase also contained an echo of the Virgin Mary, the holy mother of Catholic veneration. It was this expectation, this touch of the divine that made me uneasy. I am a queen, yes, but an earthly one. I know myself to be as weak and inadequate and unworthy as any other mortal creature, more so – sometimes.

My iconic status increased the security of my grip on power, but also increased my sense of being an imposter. I knew that beneath the glorious clothes and imperious manner I remained just a woman.

‘There are many Catholics in the north, Your Majesty, and I hear that they have wasted little time rushing to Carlisle Castle to pay their respects to the Queen of Scots.' Dr Parker was leaning forward, his plate also pushed to one side. The flames from the fire were reflected on the sheen of his skin. The room was close and we were both sweating a little.

‘I do not doubt it.'

‘They may form a Catholic faction around her. She is a dangerous woman and must be watched carefully.'

‘Cecil fears she may try to return to France.'

‘That would be disastrous.'

‘Yet if I am seen to give Mary any support in England, the Scottish lords may turn to their old alliance with the French and that is just as dangerous. The Scottish lords have the infant king as a bargaining chip. I have been left with his disgraced mother whom nobody wants.'

‘Except the Catholics in your own kingdom, Your Majesty.'

‘You offer me little comfort, Dr Parker.'

‘There is little comfort to be had when one holds a wolf by the ears, unless one manages to put it in a cage.'

‘But I have no legitimate reason to condemn a fellow monarch to a prison cell. If I was to do such a thing, I would be roundly condemned for it. The eyes of the world are upon me, my lord.'

‘She is accused of murdering her husband, Your Majesty. Why not institute an inquiry into her guilt or innocence? You can bring her further into England while she awaits the results of such a commission and hold her with all the pomp and circumstance required of her status while you do what any wise and just ruler would do: examine the evidence.'

‘What if she is found to be innocent, my lord? What then? Must I use force of arms to restore her to her throne? I cannot see the Scots meekly accepting her back merely on my say so.'

‘Cross that bridge when you come to it, good madam. A judicial inquiry takes time to set up and gather evidence, time to review and time to consider its verdict. In the meantime, you can loosen your grip on the wolf and yet keep it safely and humanely caged. Do not allow it to realise it is a prisoner; treat it rather as an honoured guest.'

‘You give wise counsel, my lord. I thank you most heartily for it.'

He had cheered me considerably. Whenever I have faced a dilemma, I have often found that delaying a decision is the wisest course. Events have a way of rectifying themselves without any interference by me. However they turn out, for good or ill, if I have prevaricated and done nothing, no consequences or blame can attach to me. My tendency towards waiting infuriates many of the men in my court. They are all for action. They are the sex that want to do something, to rush in and threaten, and force a resolution. Like many of my own sex, I have learnt that sometimes it is better to wait and tread softly if I must tread at all. So the inquiry that Dr Parker had suggested bought me time, if nothing else.

In preparation, against her vociferous protests, I had my cousin moved deeper into my kingdom, away from the dangerous northern border to Bolton Castle in Yorkshire. My informants reported that she cried and threw objects at them when they told her that she was to be moved. She even declared that if they intended to take her hence they would have to pick her up bodily and carry her to Bolton.

I felt sad when they told me of her futile passion. Poor little queen, she had not yet understood that she no longer had any agency. I was a prisoner once too. I knew only too well the desolation that slowly descends as the captive realises his or her utter powerlessness. But this was an entirely new experience for the Scottish queen. Imperious from infancy, she no doubt still expected that the world would return to rights very soon and she would be restored to all her former glory. How bitter it must have been for her to realise slowly just how permanent her situation now was. What happened to the Queen of Scots would from now on be decided by me alone. It was a responsibility I did not want, but could not avoid.

Once she was in Bolton Castle and I felt I had released the wolf safely into its gilded cage, I wrote to her of my decision to institute an inquiry. I did not tell her it was to explore whether she herself was guilty of husband-murder. To broach such a subject directly would have required powers of diplomacy that were beyond me. The inquiry was simply into the events surrounding Darnley's death. ‘Oh madam,' I wrote, ‘there is not a creature living who more longs to hear your justification than myself; not one who would lend a more willing ear to any answer which will clear your honour. But I cannot sacrifice my own reputation on your account.'

Yet, as I sit here now, on this cushion, my aching back against the wall, I know I lied in that letter. What would I have done if she had been exonerated? Would I have gone to war with Scotland and imposed my will upon the Scottish people? Would I have insisted they accept the woman they had reviled as their queen? It is a question that I never had to answer because Mary's half-brother and the Regent of Scotland, the Earl of Moray, fortuitously discovered a casket of letters from Mary to Bothwell and what was contained within that ornate little box undid her entirely.

Moray swore that the letters had been taken from one of Bothwell's servants after the defeat at Carberry Hill. Some have claimed they were forgeries, but they were the people interested in seeing the queen exonerated. The queen herself refused to either deny or confirm whether the eight damning letters or the foul sonnets which accompanied them – love poems written to Bothwell while her husband was still alive – were authentic or not.

‘The charges against me are false,' she declared, ‘because I, on my word as a princess, declare them to be false.' Such a response, while haughty and spirited, did little to ease suspicions on either side.

Francis Knollys read the incriminating letters to my council in a solemn and shocked voice, intoning them with all the melancholy of a tolling bell.

‘I do here a work that I hate much but I had begun it this morning.' Knollys read the queen's words slowly and dramatically. ‘You make me dissemble so much that I am afraid thereof with horror, and you make me almost play the part of traitor.' And then she in Knollys' voice confronted the very solution that had also come into my mind. ‘Think also if you will not find some invention more secret by physic, for he is to take physic at Craigmillar and the baths also.'

Despite the incongruity of Knollys' deep, masculine instrument reading such intensely feminine words, not one person in my privy council moved as the horrific mur
derous plan unfolded. What we heard were the words of
a desperate woman plotting with her lover the murder of her husband. Royal or not, beloved darling of the Catholics of Christendom or not, unless these writings were proved a forgery, nothing could save her.

‘You have enough evidence here to condemn her to death, Your Majesty.' Robin spoke as soon as Knollys folded the last of the notorious letters and replaced it in the small casket in which they had been found.

‘Unnatural woman, unnatural wife. She is not worthy of drawing breath in the same kingdom as
Your Majesty.' Knollys was shaking with fury as he closed the ornate metal lid.

‘We must wait for the verdict of the inquiry, my lords. We must be seen to observe the letter and spirit of the law and only then decide what must be done.' Cecil could always be relied upon to counsel caution.

‘The letters are very convenient for the man who brought them to our attention, Your Majesty. We must not forget that.' The Duke of Norfolk's words may indeed have been wise ones, but he was a Catholic and one of the first of the northern lords who had rushed to pay his respects to the Queen of Scots at Carlisle Castle. Indeed, there had already been whispers about where his loyalties lay.

‘What mean you by that, my lord of Norfolk?' Robin was immediately on his guard. ‘Are you accusing the Earl of Moray of forgery?'

‘I am not, my lord. I am merely suggesting we proceed cautiously, because if I can see that these letters serve his purpose so fittingly, well then others less well disposed towards our own queen will see the same.'

‘I have no intention of executing a sovereign queen. If the inquiry decides that she is guilty, she will be held in comfort and with all due deference for her own protection.'

‘But for how long, Your Majesty? She is a robust woman, she has shown herself able to endure much in the way of hardship, she may yet live many decades and she will be the focus of all dissatisfaction and discontent, as well as of those who are ambitious and those who believe a Catholic monarch should sit on your throne. You will be nursing a viper, good madam, and it may bite you.' Robin was determined.

A wolf, a viper. It seemed I was surrounded by creatures with their fangs bared. I could think of no solid argument to refute their case, but I was their queen. I did not have to win the argument with logic. I held up my hand to silence them. ‘We will await the verdict. Then, my lords, you can put your case to me again.'

Their greatest fear was the same as always. If something happened to me and I had not married and borne a legitimate heir to my throne, the Queen of Scots would inherit it. If such an outcome had horrified my Protestant lords before, now that she was a proven murderer, adulteress and whore, in their eyes at least, the possibility was simply too much to contemplate. If I had married and had children, would the Queen of Scots have been of such importance? Maybe not, but, as so many do, I might have died in childbed and as it has
turned out I have outlived her. That threat at least
has now gone. No wonder my advisors find my grief and despair so unfathomable.