Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (198 page)

"Alms! Alms!" they cried, pushing forward. Mothers held up ragged
babies and pointed at them; crippled men leaned on their sticks and
extended clawlike hands.

"Ah, good people," she said, gazing on them. "I have no alms to give
you, as I am a beggar now myself."

"Liar!" hissed Paulet in her ear. "Always misrepresenting yourself,
and for the better. You are no beggar, but have rolls and rolls of
money put away in your cabinets."

"It is money for my funeral expenses," said Mary.

"Then you are right to save it, for you shall need it," he said
ominously. He prodded her into the waiting carriage with its shades
rolled down.

When they returned to Chartley, Mary saw what had happened. Her
quarters had been ransacked, all her private papers removed, and some
of her personal possessions, which obviously could have no political
value, taken: trinkets, a woollen shawl, even toys. The intruders had
not even bothered to straighten up the mess, but left it contemptuously
as it was. Doors hung open, discarded objects lay in piles around the
cupboards and chests.

"The papers, letters, and ciphers were all boxed and sent to Queen
Elizabeth," said Paulet.

"I wonder how Her Majesty will feel upon reading so many secret letters
of support from her own loyal courtiers?" asked Mary.

Paulet glared and turned on his heel, leaving her alone.

Slowly she walked around the room. It no longer felt like her room,
nor did she have any part in it. She was done with those concerns.

Hurry, she thought. Hurry, before the old cares and fears return! Now
I know why Thomas More rejoiced when they took him to the Tower and he
no longer had an escape. Until then, he could have bolted through the
great wide gate and onto the broad path.

"You will face a trial," said Paulet. "It will be held elsewhere.
Prepare yourself."

"When will it take place?" asked Mary.

"That I do not know. Nor where. The Privy Council wished you to be
sent to the Tower, but the Queen refused. They are in the process of
selecting a site."

"I see." It was hard for her to continue standing; her legs had
reverted back to their infirmity. But she was determined to stand
there as tall and straight as possible.

"Are you not curious to know what has happened to your fellow
conspirators?" Paulet said. His distaste for her was now being
flooded with curiosity about her strange demeanour.

"I do not know to what you refer," she maintained.

"Very good, very good, legally you must claim that. Clever. Your legs
may be rotten, but your mind is sharp as ever. But I shall tell you
anyway: Ballard and Babington and Tichbome and all fourteen of them
were arrested, taken to the Tower, and tried. Found guilty, of course.
People were in an uproar, and demanded a new form of death for them,
one that was more cruel than the usual felon's execution. But our
gracious Queen refused; she said the normal one, if carried out
according to specifications, was enough." He watched her carefully for
any signs of emotion. "So Ballard and Babington and five others were
taken to St. Giles and drawn and quartered. This time the hangman did
not let them hang until dead, but cut them down still alive and
disemboweled them and castrated them."

Mary felt waves of revulsion and fear taking control of her. She
swayed slightly on her feet and reached out to steady herself against a
table.

"Their private parts were cut off and burnt "

"Enough." She held out her hand. "It is a sin to revel in the
sufferings of others, friend. So I must forbid you to speak further of
it."

"I am not revelling in it!" he said indignantly. But he, like many
others, had been disgusted by the Queen's command to execute the other
half of the criminals as humanely as possible. Such squeamishness and
misplaced charity did nothing to discourage further attempts at
assassination.

"When you speak of mine, then, I hope your eyes have less shine in
them."

TWENTY-SEVEN

No warning was given. One night Mary said her evening prayers with her
household, and the next morning her servants were locked in their
rooms, while Sir Thomas Gorges and his henchman, Stallenge, arrived to
conduct her away. They were armed with pistols, and treated her as if
she were either a dangerous swordsman or a poisonous adder who might
strike a mortal blow at any second. They posted guards at her
servants' windows so that they could not even wave farewell.

Mary descended the stairway slowly, in spite of their attempts to rush
her. She could not walk as fast as they imagined she could, but she
refused to be carried.

Outside a carriage awaited, two bay horses swishing their tails
briskly.

"Where am I to be taken?" she asked.

"To Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire," replied Gorges.

Surrounding the carriage was an armed body of Protestant gentlemen of
the country. Their spears and muskets shone in the friendly September
sunlight.

"If a dove flew there, it would be seventy miles away," said Gorges.
"But on the roads we have, it will be longer. Three or four days'
journey."

"Will I be permitted to look out at the countryside?"

Gorges and Paulet laughed and looked at each other. "She wants to see
the sights! Fancy that!" said Gorges. "Shall we also stop at the
ancient monuments, and point them out to you? Yes, you may look out
the windows. But at the slightest sign of waving to the people, or
stirring up sympathy, the shades go down!"

The carriage rolled away down the long path leading from Chartley,
whence the brewer had come labouring up with his wagon, onto the main
road leading eastward. Chartley, with its rounded towers and large
expanses of glass, diminished until it was just a speck on the horizon,
no bigger than a stick.

The road took them through Needwood Forest and through
Burton-upon-Trent the very home of the fateful brewer and then through
Charnwood Forest and into the large, thriving town of Leicester.

Cardinal Wolsey was buried here, Mary knew. In the last month she had
been reading extensively from English history. He, too, had been
summoned by the monarch to come and stand trial for "treason"; he, too,
had stayed at Wingfield Manor for a time. He had died among the monks
at Leicester Abbey, possibly by his own hand, with the now-famous
farewell, "Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king,
He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies."

She shuddered and crossed herself. There was yet time to make sure
that those words, those doleful, tragic words, would not apply to her.
There was yet a great service she could do for God.

Fotheringhay reared up from the uninspiring landscape. As they had
travelled east, the rolling hills had disappeared and the surroundings
had begun to take on a level appearance, although the meadows were
pleasant enough. The gigantic, brooding pile was situated on the River
Nene, and surrounded by two huge moats: the outer one was seventy-five
feet wide, and the inner sixty-five. The road leading up to it had
always been called Perryho Lane.

It sounded Latin to Mary, and a sad, appropriate phrase at that.
"Perio," she whispered. "I perish."

The carriage rolled across the drawbridge and in through the massive
north gateway, its only entrance. The very stones of the ancient
fortress were grey and stained and seemed to emanate gloom.

High on each side of the courtyard the thick walls soared, almost
shutting out the daylight. A castle had stood on this site since the
days of the Conqueror, and it seemed to have gathered and concentrated
all the foreboding doom of each age within itself. It was now
exclusively a state prison. It had once belonged to David of Scotland,
but had been lost to the Plantagenets, who had played out their own
painful parts here. Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cambridge, had been
beheaded for conspiring against Henry V; Richard III had been born
here; Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, had been imprisoned here.
Henry VIII had tried to send Katherine of Aragon here, but she had
refused.

Mary descended from the carriage, and found herself standing in the
courtyard. She could see that there was a Great Hall, and also a
chapel, along one side of the buildings. An octagonal tower stood in
the northwest corner, and it was to this that she was led by a troop of
armed men. There had been no formal greeting, no welcome from the
castellan whoever he was.

Up the stairs she laboured, stopping every fifth or sixth step. The
old-fashioned stone stairwell was dark and the stones worn by countless
feet passing over them, until the lip of each step dipped like a lily
petal. At last she emerged onto a landing on the first floor.

"This tower is yours," said Gorges. "There are two chambers on this
floor, two on the floor above."

She looked around the almost-bare room. It was only about sixteen feet
across; the other "chamber" was nothing but a tiny closet.

"I thank you," she finally said. "Will my furnishings what is left of
them be sent?"

"Aye, they're following."

When they left, with a clang of the door, Mary stood shivering in the
middle of the room. This was the sort of place where political
killings took place and there had been so many of them in English
history: the smothered little princes in the Tower, the gruesome murder
of Edward II in Berkeley Castle by a red-hot poker, and Richard II's
secret murder in Pontefract Castle. And who had murdered these kings?
Other kings who had found them inconvenient, in the way.

Have they sent me here to be murdered? she cried silently to herself.
O God, preserve me from a secret murder! For then I could not honour
You in it, nor make a statement for posterity. Which is exactly what
the English would wish to prevent.. ..

Shuddering, she sat down on a stool in the cold, dark room.

In a few days, a reduced suite of her servants joined her, and some of
her furniture arrived. Her priedieu and portable altar and old ivory
crucifix were set up to make a makeshift oratory. The remaining
personal possessions, like the miniatures of her family, and treasured
letters that had survived the rifling, came like friends to comfort
her.

Her suite was quite small now: Jane Kennedy; Elizabeth and Barbara
Curie; Gilles Mowbray; Andrew Melville, her master of the household;
Bastian Pages and his wife; Willie Douglas; her old tailor Balthazzar;
equally old Didier her porter; Dominique Bourgoing the physician;
Jacques Gervais the apothecary; Pierre Gorion the surgeon; and Father
de Preau. All her "outdoor people," her horse keepers and carriage
driver, had been dismissed. She was not to go outdoors ever again.

All these people were jammed into the octagonal tower rooms; some of
her bolder servants managed to explore the rest of the castle and
reported back that there were many empty staterooms along one entire
side of the courtyard.