The Fugitive Queen (4 page)

“Not yet but I am about to explain,” said Elizabeth. “In fact, Ursula, I want you to pass a confidential message to Mary Stuart, from one queen to another. I said confidential—it's more than that. It's personal—on an unofficial level, if you understand me.”

I did. There are strange rules in the world of diplomacy. A
message passed on by an official personage may be confidential, but it is not personal.
Personal
means a far greater degree of secrecy.
Personal
means that no one will ever acknowledge that the message was ever passed at all.

“I know of it,” said Cecil in a low voice, “and so does Leicester here . . .”

“Because I trust your discretion as I trust my own,” said Elizabeth. “And the same applies to you and your husband, Ursula. But I wish the matter to be known to no one else, not even to Knollys. He is a man with opinions of his own and they are not the same as mine. He will obey orders, but a man carrying out commands he doesn't agree with can dilute the message without meaning to. A mere tone of voice can make a difference sometimes. So, you will be my mouthpiece instead, Ursula,” said Elizabeth. “Cecil advises it, and I have agreed.”

I glanced at Hugh but he was looking at the queen. His face told me nothing. “The message has to be by word of mouth, I take it, ma'am?” I said. “Nothing written down?”

“Exactly,” said Elizabeth. Her eyes met mine again and held them. “There will be an inquiry,” she said, “into the facts of how Henry Lord Darnley, the husband of my royal cousin Mary Stuart, met his death. We have received an emissary from James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half brother and at present the Regent of Scotland, requesting us to hold such an inquiry and we can scarcely refuse him.”

“The request is reasonable, in the circumstances,” said Cecil.

“But . . .”
Elizabeth's gaze was still fixed on mine. “There is a difficulty. Any such inquiry could well turn into something very like a trial. Representatives sent by Moray will attend and may demand that Mary give evidence herself and allow herself to be questioned. This must not happen. Knollys, who is an honest man but doesn't have the cares of kingship, believes that Mary ought to testify on her behalf to clear her name, but he is wrong. She must not. Mary is an anointed queen and if a monarch is treated like a subject and questioned like a felon, then it can happen to any monarch—especially to one who permitted such a thing to be done in the first place. That is the message you are to
take privily to Mary, Ursula. Tell her from me, her cousin, that the inquiry will probably have to proceed but that she must on no account whatsover agree to testify in person or to be questioned. That is all.”

She smiled. “We will not demand an answer now, this moment, Ursula. Think about it.” Her gaze moved to Hugh. “You must think about it, too. You and your wife must discuss it. Ursula can give me your answer tomorrow.”

Dudley remained with the queen but Cecil left with us. As we threaded our way through the crowded gallery, he said softly: “Come with me to my study.”

At Richmond, Cecil always used the same room for his work. Its square leaded windows overlooked the river, and the bright ripples made reflections on the ornate ceiling, where Tudor roses, painted red and white, were carved into the beams. Cecil went to sit behind his desk, waving us to a couple of other seats.

Without preamble, he said: “This business of Mary Stuart is a nightmare. No one invited her to England! Her presence could damage England's security and our relationships with other countries. She's a most embarrassing nuisance.” We couldn't help looking amused and Cecil in turn resorted to grim humor. “She's like a drunken relative, arriving uninvited at a gathering where the host is trying to impress a visiting bishop or his daughter's future in-laws!”

Hugh said: “We live very quietly and have only a superficial knowledge of what happened to Queen Mary's husband. Gossip says many things and all of them may not be true. Can you enlighten us?”

“I trust so,” said Cecil. He paused for a moment, and his eyes became remote. When they focused on us again, their expression
was very grave. “It's an ugly story. Very ugly. No one could have foreseen such an appalling outcome to that marriage. It should have been a good political match. Henry Lord Darnley was descended from King Henry the Seventh, just as Elizabeth and Mary both are.” We nodded. “It began well,” he said. “It produced a son, of royal descent on both sides, who may one day be Elizabeth's heir. It should have been a safe match, too, because we have the young man's mother here in England to discourage him from any ideas of helping Mary to invade us.

“And then,” said Cecil grimly, “what happens? He turns out to be dissolute and murderous. The gossip you have heard included the killing of David Riccio, I take it?”

“One of her secretaries,” I said. “And a good musician, too. Yes. I met him when I was in Scotland. He struck me as a harmless little fellow. What we heard was that Darnley and his men burst into one of the queen's supper parties at Holyrood, where Riccio was one of those present, dragged him out screaming, and slaughtered him, and threatened Mary's own life.”

I hesitated and then added: “I'm fairly sure that the supper room was the one where I once attended a gathering. It's quite small, intimate. When I saw it, there were wall hangings of red and green, and a fire in the hearth, and . . . there was music,” I said in a low voice. “Riccio was playing the lute. Darnley was playing a spinet. They were accompanying each other, like friends. It was
all
friendly, almost domestic. I can't imagine it as a scene of carnage. And to think it was Darnley who . . .”

“Darnley was a fool and a villain,” said Cecil. “He may have had ambitions to become the widower king of Scotland. That murder could have been aimed as much at Mary as at Riccio. She was about six months pregnant at the time. The shock could have caused a miscarriage and quite possibly killed her. I have eyes and ears at the Scottish court . . . .”

“According to Ursula, you have eyes and ears everywhere, Sir William,” said Hugh.

“I make sure of it,” said Cecil candidly. “My informants in Scotland reported to me that some of the Protestant nobles had convinced Darnley that the queen was having a love affair with poor
David Riccio. It was also reported to me that when the plot was first laid, Darnley actually wanted Riccio to be killed before the queen's eyes, though the other nobles, at least, had the decency to say no, he must be dragged out first. Even so, I believe the first dagger blow was struck in her presence. After the murder, Darnley panicked and seems to have thought that the nobles meant to kill both him and Mary and then rule Scotland themselves. Mary apparently agreed with him. She somehow came to terms with Darnley and they fled from Edinburgh together. I daresay she couldn't have escaped without his help. But she had had enough of him and up to that point,” said Cecil, “one can sympathize with her.
But . . .
”

Hugh said slowly: “Darnley was assassinated, and the rumor that we heard points the finger at Mary. By the sound of it, she had every reason to want to get rid of Darnley.”

“Quite. No one could have blamed her for seeking an annulment,” Cecil said, “and she could have got one. She and Darnley were cousins and she married him without a papal dispensation. Annulment might have made their son illegitimate, though I should think that a way round that could have been found. Popes can give dispensations for other things besides the marriage of cousins. Better still, she could have charged Darnley with treason, and got rid of him that way. The killing of Riccio virtually in front of her when she was far gone in pregnancy
does
look like an attempt on her life and that would indeed have been treason. Annulment or arraignment; no one would have questioned either. And either would have been legal, correct in law. But murder—the murder of a king and a husband—and in such circumstances as these: that's different.”

“Just what were the circumstances?” asked Hugh. “It was in Edinburgh and involved an explosion but we know little more than that.”

“I can tell you the rest,” said Cecil. “And as I said, it's an ugly tale. Darnley had been ill—probably with the French pox. He'd been consorting with whores. He was recuperating in a house in Edinburgh, a place called Kirk o' Field. He'd rented it himself, to convalesce in—it seems that he was nervous of entering any
stronghold controlled by any of his wife's noblemen. I daresay he had his reasons, and a guilty conscience may well have been among them! At any rate, there he was, on the night of Sunday the ninth of February last year. Queen Mary had been with him part of the time but that evening she was at Holyrood at the wedding celebrations for one of her servants and stayed overnight. In the small hours of the morning, there was an explosion at Kirk o' Field. The house was blown up. Presumably the intention was to encompass Darnley's death. However, someone or something must have warned him, because he tried to escape, along with one servant . . .”

Cecil was a statesman, a man of dignity, and in the general way, his way of talking was calm and restrained. But beneath that controlled exterior were depths of emotion and imagination. He would not have been so able a statesman without them. Elizabeth knew them and drew on them. We experienced them now. Using words as a painter uses a brush, he created for us a picture, a dreadful picture, of that night at Kirk o' Field.

It was especially clear to me because I had met Darnley. I knew that he was not a pleasant young man, far from it. But I also knew that he was young. He had been still no more than twenty-one when he died, barely out of boyhood, and therefore inexperienced. It was unlikely but still possible that, had he lived longer, he might have learned from his mistakes. But he never had the chance.

Cecil made us see him—roused, probably, from his first sleep, by a frightened servant “who had either found barrels of gunpowder and a waiting fuse in the cellars of the house, or else seen unknown men gathering in a secretive way nearby. There certainly
were
men nearby, as you'll hear,” Cecil said.

At any rate, whatever his servant told him must have terrified Darnley, for he got up so quickly that he didn't even put on a cloak though the servant had brought one, and the season was February. Darnley had been ill; he must have been shaky through weakness as well as fear. His man helped him to get out through a window. “The fellow must have brought a rope. He let Darnley
down on a chair attached to the rope,” Cecil said. “Those things were found afterwards.”

The servant had got down to join his master somehow, and then the two of them fled through the garden in a state of panic, Darnley still wearing only his nightgown.

“A February night in Scotland is likely to be chilly, even for a fit man, which he wasn't. If he didn't even stop to throw his cloak round him, he must have been desperate,” Cecil said.

I could believe it. I imagined the boy who had thought himself the King of Scotland, running for his life across the wintry grass in the darkness, gasping for breath, his teeth chattering from a mixture of weakness, cold, and terror.

Running straight into the arms of the assassins who were waiting to make sure that he should not escape.

“There were some women living in a house close to the garden,” Cecil said. “They heard Darnley scream out to someone to pity him, for the sake of Jesus Christ who pitied all the world. The scream ended in a choking noise and what sounded like a struggle. The men who caught him strangled both him and his servant, and while they were doing it, the house blew up. The fuse was probably lit while Darnley was getting out of the window. The explosion killed some other servants who were sleeping in the house. The roar of it, and the flames going up, fetched a crowd to the scene and the bodies of Darnley and his man were found.”

There was a silence. Then Cecil said: “When you were in Scotland, Ursula, did you encounter the Earl of Bothwell, by any chance?”

“James Hepburn. Yes,” I said.

“He's the nobleman most strongly suspected of having arranged the murder,” said Cecil. He was once more the dignified statesman. “Possibly with, possibly without, Mary Stuart's knowledge. Either way, it was hardly wise of her to marry him shortly afterwards. She claims that he abducted and ravished her and more or less compelled her to marry him, but there are strong rumors that she consented to the abduction and all that
followed. The Scots people rose up against both of them.” The statesman allowed himself a little dry wit. “Bothwell has fled overseas and
we've
got Mary and, as I said, it's a nightmare!”

Hugh inquired: “Is she a prisoner or a guest?”

“Half and half,” said Cecil. “But I can tell you this—the nightmare isn't going to go away. Whatever the outcome of this wretched inquiry, or trial, or whatever it's called, we have no jurisdiction over her. She is, as Elizabeth says, an anointed queen. When it's finished, we shall be left with exactly the same set of alternatives as we have now and I don't like any of them! For one thing, if her name is cleared, she will ask us to raise an army to put her back on the throne of Scotland. That's out of the question, to begin with.”

“Why?” asked Hugh..

“We don't
want
her back on the Scottish throne!” said Cecil irritably. “Innocent or guilty—and think what she's guilty
of,
if that's the case!—she's still Catholic! We're surrounded by Catholic nations as it is. There's Spain—and they rule the Netherlands as well—and there's France. We need a Protestant Scotland. We lost it the moment Mary landed there and now we've got it back and we're not going to let it go. Just now, her half brother James Stewart, who is Protestant, is ruling Scotland in the name of Mary's infant son, and rearing the child to be a Protestant, too. Elizabeth
cannot
back a Catholic ruler against a Protestant one. She might as well cut her own throat and be done with it!”