Just a Queen (19 page)

Twenty-two

Anjou had gone, but I felt a stubborn unease that continued to disturb my rest and my few carefree moments. It was a low dread, as if something terrible was approaching but I knew not what. I was not the only person to experience such anxiety. Daily, Walsingham brought me grim reports of Catholics who threatened my life and then, with myriad heavy sighs and a disapproving shake of his head, he shared with me the letters my cousin Mary thought she was sending secretly to the King of Spain and the Bishop of Rome – and their answers. Walsingham allowed the letters to reach their destinations, but only after they had been intercepted, decoded and their contents carefully copied. We all had the feeling that a noose was tightening; what we were not quite sure about was around whose neck. Was our intimate knowledge of the Queen of Scots' secret manoeuvrings more dangerous
to her than the rumours of rebellion were to me?
Fear begets fear, in my experience, and somebody always suffers for it.

A man, probably a harmless lunatic, travelled the country threatening to kill me. He died in custody –
Walsingham swore by his own hand. According to my spymaster, numerous plots to kill me and put Mary on my throne were thwarted by his network. I daresay that his relentless recitation of threats helped create my sense of impending danger and dread, and I doubt not that such a response was exactly what he and Cecil (and many others in my privy council) intended.

Yet it was not only I and those whose well-being depended on my continued security who felt the approaching danger. The entire kingdom sensed that something was out of kilter. Rumours of strange sightings and ugly portents swept the streets. And there was real disaster. When the viewing stand at the Paris Gardens bear pit collapsed, killing many of those who had gathered to watch the sport, it was pronounced an ill omen. Puritans agitated against the theatre and general licentiousness. Catholics, the wisest of them, lay low and curtailed their behaviour even more tightly than before. Some, the foolish ones, chafed against such self-imposed restrictions and began to plot and scheme. Even the moderates began to feel frightened and so, as usual, grew less moderate.

Representatives of the various points of view lobbied me furiously at every opportunity. I avoided the Puritans most assiduously; their solemn self-righteousness annoyed me more than the most flagrant of papists. Cecil and Walsingham were united in their belief that Mary was behind all the unrest and that until she was removed we could never rest ourselves. I refused to accept their recommendations. My unease notwithstanding, I would not persecute Mary further until I had actual proof of her treason. But then it seemed God himself intervened.

In the summer, a strange light fell across London courtesy of a comet that streaked across the sky, its flaming tail bathing us all in an eerie glow.

‘The necromancers declare it is another portent, Your Majesty.' Francis Walsingham had finished his daily recitation of the sins of the Catholic traitors, particularly the Queen of Scots. Now he placed his papers back in their folder and took a step towards the window through which the glow of the comet could be seen. ‘They say it foretells many things.'

‘What things, my lord? Necromancers commonly talk in riddles, but you, my plain speaking friend, do not.'

‘They say it predicts the death of a great personage, Your Grace.'

I knew what he was implying: that the arrival of this comet meant that either Mary must die, or I would. ‘What would you have me do, my lord?'

As I said this I walked to the window and looked across the city towards the comet emblazoned across the sky. The lead casements distorted the light so that its yellow glow fell across Walsingham and me in little jagged slivers.

‘Considering the recent Parry and Throckmorton plots, your Lord High Treasurer, William Cecil and I suggest we institute a commission of investigation into the complicity of the Queen of Scots and confront her directly at Sheffield with the evidence I have uncovered.'

‘She will not recognise your authority, my lord.'

‘Nevertheless, we must do what we can to uncover the level of her involvement. At the very least, the pressure may be enough to startle some of her accomplices into acting foolishly and bringing themselves out into the open.'

‘That is your design, my lord?'

‘Pressure of one kind or another always begets action, Your Grace.'

‘Aye, well this comet has certainly put pressure on me withal.'

I considered Walsingham's words. A commission could do little harm if Mary was as innocent as she relentlessly claimed and it was a serious thing indeed to ignore such a powerful omen from the heavens.

‘You may have your commission, my lord, but that is all you may have – for now.'

Then I leant forward and flung open the great windows so that I could better see the eerie light that had so intensified my kingdom's sense of unease. The heat, noise and smell of London immediately assailed me.

‘Ales iacta est!'
I called out at the blazing light in the sky. The die is cast.

Sir William Wade duly led the delegation sent to Sheffield castle to examine the Scottish queen. As I had prophesied to Walsingham, with no need of a comet, Mary indignantly refused to co-operate. I did not find this surprising at all. Had our positions been reversed, if I had been the prisoner and she the queen, it is exactly how I would have responded. I have always thought of her as my shadow and me as hers. Perhaps this is why I have found her execution so grievously hard to deal with. But I get ahead of myself. When I sent the commission I had as yet not faced the consequences of the events I had put in train.

‘How long am I to be shut up in this dreary prison? I have not been tried, I have not been found guilty of any crime! I came here seeking sanctuary from a fellow queen, certain that she would aid me and arm me and help me regain my rightful throne – as I would have done for her. And yet you dare to question me about treachery!'

Mary was incandescent with rage when my commissioners were ushered into her presence. Before they could explain the purpose of their mission, she had begun to list the wrongs done to her and to question their authority.

‘Your Grace, there are many people – even many foreign observers – who believe that your treatment at the hands of our gracious queen has been singularly merciful.' William Wade ventured a conciliatory response to her tirade.

‘Mercy? Mercy has nothing to do with it. I am as much an absolute prince as your mistress Queen Elizabeth. I am not, never have been and never will be her inferior. It is not her place to bestow mercy on me, her equal in all things. I have been a queen since the cradle and I was crowned Queen of France, the greatest kingdom in all Christendom. Mercy is something a monarch offers their subjects but, unlike all of you, I am not a subject.'

Were these words that I would have said in her place? She was a passionate and courageous woman, and a proud and haughty queen, but was she politic? Was that not always her weakness? She spoke as if her birthright gave her real rights, and yet every second of the past decade or two must have shown her the folly of that belief.

She had been a queen since birth, as she said. When I was a child, no one ever expected me to become a queen unless by marriage. Was that the essence of the difference between us? She had been fortune's spoilt darling during her formative years; I its neglected bastard. I knew where my rights really came from and it was not from God, comets or no. It was from my people, whose loyalty and support I held by acting as wisely as I could and by putting their interests first and my own second. I had both refused and contemplated marriage for their sake. As I once said to Cecil – rather shocking him, I fancy – I believe that the people have the right to control the public actions of their sovereign, while Mary believes they do not.

‘I am younger than your mistress the Queen of England, much younger, but my sufferings have made me look older. I live in grief and frustration, ground down by lack of freedom to the woeful estate in which you now see me. My circumstances are pitiable and, if you would condemn me, my lords, of I know not what crime, I will fear it not, for I see no other end to my misery.'

Older she may have felt and older she may have looked, but she retained something of her fascination for men. I could see by Sir William's expression as he related their conversation to me that Mary had made him genuinely pity her. As always, her power over men piqued my interest; I interrupted Sir William's report.

‘How did she seem to you, my lord? In her appearance, I mean. Has she, as she claims, aged a great deal?'

‘She is a tall woman, Your Grace, and is now large in every particular. Enforced inactivity has seen her gain weight and the damp has aggravated the ague that comes with age. She is a little stooped and her hands are twisted. I did not see her when she was a young woman, but she looks every day of her age now. She does not compare to your radiance, Your Majesty. Beside you she is like a swallow to the sun.'

I sat a little straighter in my chair and slipped my own wrinkled hands higher in my sleeves. I was grateful for my own slender frame. ‘But I interrupted you, Sir William. Please continue with your report.'

‘May I not ask my friends to help me? I have meant innocently and if they have done wrong, they alone are to be blamed.' Such was her answer when Sir William asked her about the plots and conspiracies she had been party to. And when he laid out the proof she flared into anger once again.

‘You have not the rank to reason with me!'

‘We left her with tightened security, Your Grace, every visitor is to be questioned and no one may enter the castle without the express permission of your council. Whenever she rides outside the castle walls she must be accompanied by an armed guard.'

‘Poor queen in name only. The boundary of her fiefdom is narrowing rapidly.'

Quietly and without my knowledge Cecil and Walsingham now drew up and signed a document
called the Bond of Association. It attempted to control what might happen in the case of my death. The Bond guaranteed that only a Protestant could follow me to the English throne and that if none were immediately available a Great Council – made up of good Protestant nobles only – would rule in my stead until such a claimant could be found.

When I discovered what the two men had done, I was furious with them. Such ordinary little men who dared to occupy themselves with the succession of those who could only be anointed by God. Had they so easily forgotten the chaos that followed John Dudley's attempts to keep my Catholic sister from her throne? I had not. Nor had I forgotten the sullen, stubborn resistance of the people who knew full well who was their rightful sovereign. God puts princes in the way of thrones, but it is the people who make sure they ascend and who determine whether they remain on their seat.

I made them change the Bond they had designed so that no reprisals could be visited against James, Mary's son. I also then opened negotiations with the now fully grown boy to recognise him as the rightful King of Scotland, even though his mother was still alive. I did wonder what his response might be, because it involved disavowing his mother. I knew that if I recognised him as the rightful king it would achieve a number of things distinctly to his advantage. It would strengthen immeasurably his hold on his throne and his prestige. It would start to make it clear that I intended him for my heir and, of course, further weaken the position of his mother, my rheumatic, choleric prisoner.

Walsingham showed me a letter: King James's letter to his mother, disavowing her title of queen. It played absolutely into our hands, but I almost winced as I read it. Ungrateful princeling, he was all for himself and cared nothing for her, that much was clear.

‘He has assured her that she will always be referred to by the honorific of Queen Mother,' I said, looking up at my wily advisor.

‘He has, Your Grace, but,' Walsingham presented me with another letter, ‘she is not well pleased with such a title.'

I took Mary's missive from him and saw the pain and fury her son's self-serving letter had caused. So furiously had she wielded her pen that it tore scratches and holes in the parchment. Poor queen, she knew her hopes of release and resurrection were fading fast and, most ghastly betrayal of all, one of the people snatching her future from her was her own child.

‘I pray you to note,' I read her words aloud, ‘I am your true and only queen. Do not insult me further with this title Queen Mother. There is neither king nor queen in Scotland except me.'

It was not pleasant to read of her despair. ‘Her powerlessness at the hands of her own son moves me to pity, my lord Walsingham.'

‘She is powerless in all things legal, Your Grace, and that is just the time when desperation and fading hope may force her hand.'

‘Must we trap her further?'

‘We can only trap her if she does something that she must not do. If she could merely accept her situation and enjoy her quiet life without this constant plotting and scheming, I would have no interest in her.'

‘I was once second in line, my lord, and there were many who plotted and schemed in my name, whether I would have them do so or not. She is as much a victim of others' foolish hopes and ambitions as of her own.'

‘It does not change the fact of the matter, Your Grace.'

‘And what fact is that?'

‘While she lives, your life is in danger.'

We moved Mary back to Tutbury Castle the better to keep an eye on her. Poor lady, soon after her arrival, a Catholic priest who was confined in the room above hers, hung himself from his window. When she opened her curtains the following morning she was
greeted by the horrifying sight of the suicide hanging in front of her, his lifeless feet banging against her sill.
She wrote me a desperate letter that morning begging for her life and her liberty. I wept over it but did nothing.