"I must protest," said the Earl of Sussex, the Duke of Norfolk's
brother-in-law and a man known to lean toward the Catholic faction.
"Our most merciful Queen is not a judge. She herself has said she has
no wish to make windows into men's souls."
Young Christopher Hatton, turning his handsome face toward his Queen,
said, "I myself have seen the Scottish Queen, when I had the honour to
represent our most glorious Majesty at the baptism in Edinburgh. I
hereby declare to you that she is a most noble creature and must be
treated with honour. Let us not prove as wicked as her lords in
Scotland. We are Englishmen, and pride ourselves on our laws and
justice, and our chivalry."
Elizabeth gave a sigh. "Ah, I know not what to do! My heart flies out
to her in charity, while my Council bids me beware of the serpent!"
Cecil spoke at last. "It were perhaps best if you could detain her
while you made arrangements for her safety. We know that there is no
place for her at present. For her to go to France and possibly
reassert her claims to your throne, as she did once there already is
not wise. Likewise, Spain might resurrect those claims. Lastly, well
we know that if she reenters Scotland she will be promptly executed.
The only way she could return to Scotland which is the only place for
her would be if she and the lords could come to some arrangement.
Perhaps if you agreed to recognize the King in exchange for their
permitting Mary to rule in name alongside him? But all these things
would take time to arrange.. He raised his hands in a gesture of
delicate helplessness.
"Yes ..." Elizabeth thought silently about it for a moment. "Perhaps
you, Knollys, should go to Carlisle, as my representative. I
understand that the Earl of Northumberland has already hurried to her
and attempted to whisk her away to Alnwick, his castle seat. Lowther
and he nearly came to blows. The Catholics are already flocking to
her, they say, bringing bouquets and obeisance .. . that region of the
country has ever had a fondness for the old ways and the old religion.
Yes, Knollys you shall go to her, to my dear sister, and inform her
that I cannot receive her in her present state."
Knollys looked discomfited. "But but have you nothing else, beyond
that, to tell her? Am I then to allow her to go where she will?"
"Of course not!"
"But if we cannot receive her, if we have nothing to offer, then she
must seek her fortune elsewhere."
"But we do have something to offer her," said Cecil. "We will act as
mediators, and insist the rebel lords justify themselves to us. If
they can show no convincing proof that their actions were called for,
then we shall restore Queen Mary." He nodded sagaciously.
"And if they bring forward proof?" Knollys persisted.
"Then we shall find some way to allow them to remain in power, provided
Queen Mary can return to Scotland in safety."
"It shall be your task to convince Queen Mary that, regardless of the
findings, she will be restored to her estate in Scotland," said
Elizabeth.
"Will she be content with that? Or does she seek more? Perhaps she is
just as glad to be quit of Scotland and on a larger stage where she can
have a grander scope," said Walsingham, a saturnine young man who was
Cecil's confidential lieutenant.
"I doubt that she has any such ambitions; they were most likely blown
up at Kirk O'Field," said Elizabeth slowly.
"Ambitions do not die so easily," Walsingham insisted, "and soon
Scotland may appear to her like a nightmare to which she would never
return, whereas England will seem most meet for her appetites."
"We must not, then, serve to drive her to desperation. Knollys, you
shall comfort her, and assure her of our loving concern for her. My
only interest is to compose the differences between her and her
subjects."
"When shall I depart?" asked Knollys, in resignation.
"Why, as soon as possible," Elizabeth replied. "Tomorrow. And be sure
to take a mirror."
After the councillors filed from the room, Cecil stayed discreetly
behind. As the one member of the Council who had already known about
Mary's arrival, he had had time to prepare a memorandum on it. His
memoranda, in which he always examined the pros and cons of any
question in orderly form, were famous. Now he withdrew it from his
bosom.
"Ah, my dear Cecil, I was waiting for this." Elizabeth took the paper.
"Have you laboured over it long?"
"All night, Your Majesty. I must confess, this matter deeply troubles
me."
"Your man Walsingham seems to fear the worst."
"He is ... vigilant, Your Majesty."
"Oh, Cecil, what am I to do?" she burst out. "I have never been in
such a quandary!"
Cecil could not help smiling. "You have indeed been in worse
quandaries, in which your own life was at stake. Always you have acted
with foresight and prudence; I have no doubt that you will do so in
this instance. Always remember that there are two persons in one that
you are faced with. There is Mary, an anointed queen who has been
persecuted and driven from her throne, and who is now a crowned head
without a pillow to lay it on. This woman has lost her husband, her
son, her throne, her country. She is made of flesh and blood like you,
and she shakes if she is chilled and becomes ill if she has no food.
She inspires pity. The other
Mary is a political creature, the tool of the Catholics, who would not
care if she were made of wood and spouted blood that was green, so long
as she could function as their figurehead. This woman is your deadly
enemy. She inspires respect and fear. To treat one with kindness and
the other with wariness, when they both live together in one body, is
an impossible task."
"Why did she have to come here?" cried Elizabeth.
"You should only be thankful that she is not in France," Cecil
insisted. "You can use this for your own advantage."
"Oh, leave me!" said Elizabeth. "Leave me to study all your pros and
cons!"
After he was gone, she opened the paper and stared at it. Cecil's neat
handwriting covered the page.
PRO REGINA SCOTORUM:
1. That she has come willingly into England, trusting Queen Elizabeth's
promises of help.
2. That she was unlawfully condemned, for her subjects seized and
imprisoned her, charged her with her husband's murder, refused her
permission to answer in person or by advocate in the Parliament which
condemned her.
3. That she is a queen subject to none, and not bound by law to answer
her subjects.
4. That she offers, in Elizabeth's presence, to acquit herself.
CON REGINA SCOTORUM:
1. That she procured her husband's murder, whom she had constituted
King, and so he was a public person and her superior. Therefore her
subjects were bound to search for and punish the offender.
2. She protected Bothwell, the chief murderer, and defended him to
defeat justice.
3. She secured his acquittal by a legal technicality.
4. She procured his divorce from his lawful wife.
5. She feigned to be forcibly taken by him and then married him,
increasing his power to a point that none of her nobles dared abide
about her.
6. Bothwell detained her by force and yet when her nobles sought to
deliver her she refused to dismiss him and helped him to escape.
It would seem that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth can neither aid her,
permit her to come to her presence, or restore her, or suffer her to
depart before trial.
So there was to be a trial. There was no other way. Elizabeth felt as
if all the peace in her kingdom, so carefully cultivated for ten years,
was now in jeopardy. The Queen of Scots had come to sow dragon's teeth
in her realm.
TWO
Mary waited until Mary Seton had finally fallen asleep before she rose
and went to the window. She stood, dreamily, looking out over the
hills and dales of the gentle countryside around her. To think I
fought so against coming here, she thought. I did not want to be moved
from Carlisle; I even refused to go unless I was tied up. Everything
was so confusing. Elizabeth's baffling behaviour the way she kept Lord
Merries waiting for two weeks before she even admitted him to her
presence; the way she forbade Lord Fleming even to sail for France.
Those ugly, worn-out clothes she sent for me Knollys tried to pretend
she had sent them for my maidservants. And her refusal to see me
unless I was cleared of any suspicion of guilt in the murder as if I
would contaminate her. But since then I have come to understand that
she means to restore me to my throne, but that in order to do so, she
has to establish herself as an impartial party else the Lords will not
cooperate with her. How clever she is! She has got Lord James to
agree to submit to a hearing.
A warm breeze, heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, blew into the
window with little puffs. This Bolton Castle, located fifty miles
deeper into England than the border city of Carlisle, had been her home
since mid-July. It stood on a ridge in the western part of Yorkshire.
Elizabeth had said it was necessary for Mary to move in order for her
to be closer to her, Elizabeth. But she was still two hundred miles
away from her. What good had it done?
Bolton itself was pleasantly situated a very high castle that consisted
of four towers joined together by curtain walls, making a square with
an empty center. In this center was a cobbled courtyard with a heavily
fortified gatehouse guarding it. Mary's suite of rooms all four of
them was on the third, uppermost floor. The remarkable thing about
Bolton was that the walls had flues running through them like a
honeycomb, which carried heat from the fireplaces not that this
mattered in the summer. But in the winter ... oh, but they would be
gone by winter. She would not have an opportunity to compare this
heating to the tiled room furnaces at Fontainebleau that she remembered
from her childhood.
She leaned out the window and breathed deeply. She felt completely
restored and calm, and her spirits were rising daily. She was eager to
have her hearing, to be able at last to pour out the truth to someone
who was not a Scot, but to whose arbitration the Scots would be
submissive.
She tiptoed back across the room. They had given her a spacious suite
of rooms, although they had had to borrow furniture from all the
neighbours in order to furnish them properly. Even the smallest, the
bedchamber, was large enough that a folding screen gave her privacy at
one end; Mary Seton slept at the other. Seton and a large contingent
of other followers had been allowed to join her; and Lady Douglas had
sent all the possessions she had so hastily left behind. She had even
included a kindly note with them. Well, Lady Douglas, as a king's
ex-mistress, was used to the vicissitudes of fortune. She may have
lost a prisoner, but her son George may have gained a royal wife, if
fate decided to turn that way Mary knew that was what she was thinking.
She could not help but be amused at the adaptable old lady: a good
loser, always looking ahead to the next hand.