Elizabeth (26 page)

There would be no troops; no open offence; only lies and procrastinations and more lies, and as much damage to the power of her dear brother-in-law as they could do him without being actually found out. That was what she wanted, not an old man's blustering. When they could think of a solution, Cecil could come and tell her.

She swept past them down the room and the door banged behind her. The Council gathered their papers and reseated themselves with a sigh of relief. As the Queen had balked their wishes over Mary Stuart, Bedford and Hunsdon and even Sussex, still very red after her rebuke, returned to the old problem of her unmarried state and insisted that both the danger from Mary and the greater danger of activity from the Spanish enemy were the consequences of her obstinate refusal to marry and safeguard her throne with an heir. She was demanding money to finance the Netherlands rebellion, but as soon as they approached Parliament for the grant, Parliament would reopen the issue of her marriage. The time would come, Bedford said angrily, when the Queen would fail to placate them with excuses. Leicester remarked dryly that no doubt the Queen was prepared to intimidate them instead, and the meeting ended in general agreement that there was no way of circumventing her wishes. Mary Stuart would have to be protected and Parliament would have to be persuaded or squeezed into granting more money. As they left, Cecil heard the Duke of Norfolk mutter under his breath that he wondered why the devil they bothered to hold a Council meeting at all.

By the winter of 1568 the position was static; the men surrounding the Queen of England were nervous and discontented, convinced that their policy of inaction would have fatal results and the money granted by Parliament, after an angry encounter with the Queen over her professed virginity, would not be sufficient to meet the national need and leave anything with which to put heart into the rebels in the Netherlands. The King of France was hinting that he might place troops at the disposal of Mary's few supporters in Scotland, free her and restore her to her throne, with the obvious sequel of invading England while they had the opportunity. Moray's answer was a threat to execute Mary the instant a French fleet was sighted off the coast of Scotland. But no troops sailed for Scotland and Mary lived on in her prison at Lochleven Castle, where she had miscarried of twin sons. And if her cousin Elizabeth exasperated her advisers without losing their loyalty, Mary repeated her feat of winning some men to her by personal attraction while she turned the rest into mortal enemies.

The sickly boy who had been her first husband had loved her as deeply as his capacity would allow, and even the blackguard and rapist Bothwell had felt some stirring in his soul which drove him to the course of violence which had ruined them both. Now another boy fell under the enchantment of the young Queen who was a prisoner in his family's castle. Willie Douglas was only fourteen and he had been brought up to regard his sovereign as an adulteress, a Papist and a witch. It was an alarming picture which immediately showed false when the Queen came under his roof and he saw the supposed wanton conducting herself with gentleness and piety under the most unchivalrous conditions. When she miscarried the boy heard his relations rejoicing, expressing the wish that she might die. He undertook duties in her quarters and saw the Queen nursing a right arm which was black with bruises after a visit from Morton and Lindsay, who departed with the act of abdication they had obtained only by holding her down and forcing her hand to guide the pen. He saw a great deal, and Mary knew he was watching. She was in the same mood of reckless desperation which had given her the courage to escape from Holyrood with Darnley; extreme danger sharpened her wits to a high pitch of cunning which unfortunately flagged under less tense conditions. She had at last recovered from the betrayal of Bothwell and the horror of her experiences immediately after surrendering. She was free of the burden of his children, and her health had returned. She was prepared to use any means of escape that offered, and the means was the young cousin of her captor who was obviously in a romantic daze and besotted enough to do anything. She laid siege to Willie Douglas' loyalty as carefully as a general undermining a fortress. Men had used Mary, and now she used the young Douglas, and to such purpose that before the trees were in bud round the moat at Lochleven, she had crossed it in a small boat and was on her way to raise her Standard and rally her supporters against Moray for a final battle.

The battle took place in May at Langside, but it was less of a battle than an ambush; her old friends the Hamiltons and the Gordons came forward, and laid down their lives in a terrible defeat which turned into a massacre. There was no time to try and reach the coast and escape to France; there was no time to do anything but avoid the capture which would certainly end in her death, and Mary turned her horse from the scene of carnage and disaster and rode across the border into England to take refuge with Elizabeth.

“Now that we have her,” Elizabeth said, “we must keep her. She cannot return to Scotland; Moray would kill her and I cannot let him do that.”

“She is asking,” Cecil pointed out, “to be sent to France. What answer can we give to that request?”

The Queen looked at him and shrugged. “Any answer we choose, my dear friend. We have sheltered the fugitive. I saved her life and my conscience is not going to prick me if I compel her to lead it here where I can see that she does me no harm. She will not be allowed to go to France and stir up trouble there, or to do anything but stay in England. As my guest—or my prisoner; if she decides to be difficult.”

It was impossible to foresee Elizabeth's reactions; Cecil was only too grateful she had not thrown her arms round her cousin's neck and welcomed her like a sister when she first arrived in the country. Mary had come into the North of England with nothing but the clothes she wore, and sent a request to her Royal relative for a few necessities while she made her way to London. And suddenly Elizabeth had changed, almost before the eyes of the men who had heard her defending, even sympathizing with Mary a few weeks before. The pale, rather peaked face had grown thinner and whiter, and the black eyes were very narrow, like the mouth. Elizabeth stood in front of them like a fox taking scent, as taut and pitiless as a vixen finding a wounded terrier bitch in its lair. She answered Mary's plea for clothes by a bundle of dirty petticoats and a length of torn velvet, and forbade her to proceed any closer to London without her personal permission.

She was never allowed to forget the presence of the Scots Queen, even though Mary was many miles away in the North, for Cecil brought her reports of demonstrations in Mary's favour among the people and described how the Catholic nobility and gentry were busy making the fugitive's lodgings a place of pilgrimage. He did not comment; there was no need to stress the personal affront to Elizabeth which was the result of Mary's presence. He knew his mistress, and he knew that her jealousy of her people's love was even greater than her jealousy in personal relationships. She had used the affection of her subjects as a weapon against her Council and her Parliament; when she overrode the wishes of both bodies, she could appear in the streets on her way through the country and point to the cheering crowds who surrounded her as the answer to her critics.

Now they were cheering someone else, a younger, lovelier woman who was already invested with an aura of romantic tragedy. Elizabeth's contact with her people was confined to that portion of her country which was staunchly Protestant. She knew within weeks that she could not rely upon the same loyalty from the population in the North where the old religion still survived in spite of the legal repressions which had been in force against it for the last ten years. Religion was no excuse to her; it was pointless for Leicester to tell her that men were more influenced by a Queen they could see than by the decrees of a sovereign known only by name. She was too angry to be reasonable and too realistic to be lulled by logical explanations. He had an alternative suggestion which was in the minds of Cecil and her other Councillors but which they dared not propose: why not agree to the pleas of Lord Moray's emissaries and return Mary to the vengeance of her Scottish subjects? And there were moments when Elizabeth swore that if Mary were dead, by whatever means, it would be worth the censure of the world to be rid of her, and rid of the internal cleavage her presence had already revealed. But if the Scots were clamouring for the surrender of their enemy, the ambassadors of France and Spain were always at Elizabeth's elbow, seeking her assurance that she would not betray the trust her cousin had placed in her. France offered her asylum and Philip of Spain promised to be responsible for the Queen of Scotland if she were surrendered to him. When the French were informed of his interest in the heiress to the English throne, they made it clear that they would prefer Mary dead at the hands of her own rebel Lords, if Elizabeth could not keep her out of mischief.

And that was Elizabeth's answer. It reminded her of the chess simile she had used to Cecil once, some years ago, when the board was just set out and the pieces seemed evenly matched in the game between them. With the White Queen in their hands, it was checkmate. Threats from France or Spain could be quietened by the simple means of holding Mary to ransom. Elizabeth refused the request of Moray and countered it by promising not to let Mary go to France or Spain, and she dispensed with the pretence that her cousin was a guest by ordering her forcible removal to Bolton Castle where she was taken from the shelter of the Catholic North and placed under the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury. And in December of that year Elizabeth solved her monetary troubles by seizing ships sailing through the Channel with cargoes of bullion destined for Spain.

There would be no war, she maintained, when some of her Council came clamouring to her, accusing Cecil of responsibility. Spain was now paralysed for lack of money; Philip could protest and bluster as much as he liked. There was nothing he could do but add the seizure to his list of grievances and wait for his revenge. When the reckoning came, if it came, she would be strong enough to meet it in the open. The men who were most afraid of war with Spain were those who had most to fear from a Catholic revival, the men who pressed for the death of Mary Stuart, for marriage with a foreign Prince, for any measure which they thought would safeguard their own interests against the risks inherent in a woman's political juggling; and since they dared not criticize the Queen, they found a scapegoat in her Secretary and principal adviser, William Cecil. He was already too powerful for Norfolk's peace of mind, while Bedford and Hunsdon and Sussex were all jealous of his wealth and his growing power.

None of them believed that Elizabeth meant to marry anyone. Nor would she allow the Scots to dispose of Mary Stuart who was royally lodged at Bolton Castle and busy winning the confidence of Lord and Lady Shrewsbury. And at twenty-six, in excellent health and openly determined to escape and secure her rights, Mary Stuart was obviously destined to survive Elizabeth. Her bitterest enemies decided to insure against the future by secretly negotiating with her.

If Mary were married to an Englishman, then their position would be secured. The candidate chosen, by birth and by his own willingness, was the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk had seen Mary at Carlisle and was sufficiently stupid and vain to be completely captivated by her and to forget the formidable character of the other Queen he had sworn to serve. He had always been influenced by nobility of birth, and there was no Princess in the world whose blood was more illustrious than that of the young woman confined at Bolton. He belonged to the old order of English aristocracy where women had always been the pawns of men, and he had never relished the autocracy of Elizabeth. In his heart he regarded her as a parvenue and a bastard with a lashing tongue and an unseemly disregard for the superior breed of men. The winning, dignified, yet feminine Mary was infinitely more appealing, and the prospect of uniting himself with such a woman and sharing her dazzling birthright, drove all fear of Elizabeth out of his mind. He was so confident and so limited in his vision that he tolerated the presence of his hated enemy the Earl of Leicester among those implicated in the plot.

Leicester had joined because he was afraid, and for the moment the fear of others infected him and swayed his judgment. Panic is the most contagious of all human emotions, and the fears of Sussex and Arundel, neither of them weaklings, brought him to the point where he believed that Elizabeth was about to be overthrown by a Spanish invasion, or else succumb to a sudden illness and be replaced by a Catholic Queen who had a grudge against them all. Throckmorton was among the conspirators and he reminded Leicester of his own tenuous position, of the constant humiliation which his pursuit of Elizabeth had brought him, and then asked bluntly whether he were prepared to lose his head for her after she was dead, or have the courage to make a provision for himself. Leicester balked at Norfolk, but they told him roughly that there was no choice. He could buy Norfolk's tolerance by complicity, and Norfolk's scruples were waived by the assurance that the plot could not succeed without Leicester who must be persuaded into it to stop him betraying it to the Queen. The Spanish Ambassador was informed of their intentions, and through him the King of Spain gave the project his blessing.

In her quasi-confinement at Bolton Castle, Mary declared that she was deeply in love with the Duke and ready to marry him as soon as her escape could be arranged. She made the declaration in cold blood, and she was prepared to carry out the promise and give herself to any man who could help her. Passion and feeling were dead in Mary; they had died the night James Bothwell came into her room and robbed her of her womanly dignity, and her natural sentimentality had withered like the gorse on Carberry Hill the day her ravisher and husband, whose unborn child she carried, rode away to freedom and left her to the cruelties of her enemies. She could give her heart because she no longer had one; but she did not let Norfolk or Shrewsbury or any of the other Englishmen involved with her see that, for purely political ends, she was more bloodless than Elizabeth had ever been. Her pleas to meet Elizabeth had been refused on the pretext of the charge of murdering Darnley which her subjects had brought against her and substantiated with copies of impassioned love-letters she was supposed to have written to Bothwell, proving her an adulteress and a party to the crime. These letters were not only forgeries but copies of forgeries; to anyone who knew Mary the letters were palpably false, but they served the dual purpose of blackening Mary's reputation and excusing the English Queen from accepting her and hearing her side of the story.