When it rains here, it can rain in astonishing torrents. The heavens
turn black, the skies rumble, and sheets of it come down, so much the
earth cannot absorb it all. It fills the gulleys with swirling streams
and turns the roads into mires. Here at Sheffield Manor, where we
spend the summers, the sound of the rain on all the great oaks of the
park sounds like spears rattling on Roman soldiers' shields
Anthony came to bid me farewell Another person leaves my life, a person
I cared for. One by one they all leave. It is right that Anthony do
so, he is a young man, ready now to go out into the world.
"I am going to London," he said. "I have come into my inheritance, as
you know, and it is a tidy one. But I will never desert my principles,
dear sovereign, nor abandon you or the True Faith. In fact, I look for
a Catholic wife. It is time."
I looked at him, he was even more handsome than he had been as a boy,
and any woman would find him an attractive match. His father being
dead, he was much freer than most to make his own choice.
"I will miss you, Anthony," I could not help saying. The eternal voice
of the left-behind. "But it comforts me to know you will be true to
the Church. God knows, it is becoming more and more difficult."
"Yes, and more than that I may be able to help actively," he said.
"There are plans afoot ..."
"Hush, Anthony," I said. "Do not mix yourself up in them. Not now."
Live a little first, I meant, do not risk your life before you have
tasted it.
He looked disappointed. If he had thought I would applaud his plans,
he was wrong. It is becoming more and more dangerous to dabble in
this. Since my arrival in England, things have become much more tense
for the Catholics. Elizabeth evidently hoped that once the old priests
died out, Catholicism would die along with them. But some stubborn
exiles set up a Catholic seminary in Douai with the express purpose of
training new priests, since 1575 these have been sneaking into England,
and suddenly many of the secret Catholics who went obediently to
Anglican services have stopped going, and young people are being
reconverted. The renegade priests slip from house to house, saying
mass, hearing confessions, preaching sermons. The old Catholic
families, like Anthony's, have formed a secret network of houses where
the priests can hide. There has even developed a profession of
carpenters and masons who specialize in constructing ingenious hiding
places for the priests. Like any forbidden thing, Catholicism now has
become attractive for rebellious, adventurous youth. Oxford is
particularly Catholic-leaning.
1 know Anthony, and I know he is drawn to this, and probably sees
himself as a leader of the persecuted English Catholics, hiding them,
guiding them, giving them money. He is ambitious, he would want to be
a ringleader, not a mere follower.
He glared at me. "I am going to study law," he finally said.
"Good, Anthony. That will stand you in good stead."
"The Jesuits are coming," he said. "That will change things. They
will take charge, and there'll be no more of this cowardly sneaking and
hiding. Oh, no! That's not their way."
"Anthony, I pray the Jesuits do not come," I told him. "The new Pope,
Gregory XIII, has stirred up enough English patriotism with his
ill-fated invasion of Ireland. That stupid, stupid plan to oust the
English! It has forever destroyed the defence of the priests that
their work is not political, and made the English see them as evil
foreign agents in the land."
"Pope Gregory at least retracted the bull excommunicating Elizabeth
that should have pleased them!" said Anthony
"No, that made it worse!" I said. Anthony looked dumbfounded (perhaps
his political sense was naive after all), and so I explained, "In his
Explanatio, he says that the bull is not binding 'except when public
execution of the said bull shall become possible." In other words, all
Catholic subjects may pretend to obey until the army arrives to
overthrow Elizabeth."
"So!" He looked disdainful.
"That means that when a Catholic swears loyalty, it now means nothing
other than that he is biding his time. The Explanatio has made us all
dissimulating traitors."
"Not you!" he said. "How can a queen be a traitor?"
"I meant all Catholics. Anthony, be careful."
But he swept away with a smile and a laugh. He is young, and wants
adventure.
I had meant to remind him about the execution of Cuthbert Mayne two
years ago, and two other Catholic priests last year. These were the
first martyrs to suffer death for religion under Elizabeth. I fear
they will not be the last.
July 22, 1579 It is still raining, as it has been for the past seven
days. The ground is so soaked that horses' hooves sink into it up to
the fetlocks, so messages are slow coming and going.
I wished I had reminded Anthony of other things, like the increasingly
militant stance of Philip. He has recently issued a proclamation
blaming William of Orange for the disturbances in Christendom in
general and in the Netherlands in particular, and has authorized his
murder. First Lord James was murdered in Scotland, then Coligny in
France, and now Philip calls for William's murder. It does make the
Catholics into the assassins that Protestants fear. Two of their
staunchest Reformist leaders have been murdered Little wonder Elizabeth
feels threatened, and that her subjects seek to protect her
All this means for me is that I am increasingly viewed as the dangerous
"Bosom Serpent" that Walsingham calls me, the enemy in their midst. But
it is they who have insisted on keeping me in their midst, when I have
begged and pleaded to be freed!
October 15, Anno Domini 1580. Is it possible it has been so long since
I have written in this little book? When first I came to England, and
was presented with it, I thought it would only last a year. But I find
that most of my writing has been in the form of letter-writing, and
when I am finished with that task, I have no desire to write anything
more, my hands ache and are numb. These letters how many of them have
there been? Enough to fill several volumes, were they collected. And
the sad thing, the amusing thing depending on who you are is that they
all say the same thing. In all of them the prisoner cries for release,
to anyone she feels will help. No stratagem is unemployed: there is
begging, and appeal to sentimentality, appeal to justice, appeal to
blood, appeal to charity, there are threats, both of the here-and-now
and of the hereafter. There are wild promises and offers to perform
any tasks. But in the end, the answer has always been no. And so
perhaps I would have been better had I just recorded my own thoughts,
for myself and posterity, than to pour such effort into crying to deaf
ears.
But no. It was impossible to remain silent. For there was always the
hope that this time, perhaps .. .
Gradually my memory of what it is not to be imprisoned faded. It has
been thirteen years now since I was taken to Lochleven. They say I
have lost touch with the world, which is changing rapidly, that I live
in the past, among dead ideas and dead people. Perhaps that is true,
although it seems to me that more and more I live in the realm of
eternity, in the time that is yet to come. When I finally conquer my
fear of Death, then there will be nothing more here to hold me. But
now I have not conquered it, I still see him as a rude arresting
officer who will hustle me away, as the English did, and take me away
from the few things that I still hold dear.
Retribution. Recompense. Return. Is this what I suffer? When first
the doors of the prison turned on me and all the doors are alike, be
they at Lochleven, at Carlisle, at Tutbury, Wingfield, Sheffield I
thought it was. But now the punishment, the retribution, the
suffering, the effects of the failings, whatever you wish to call this,
have extended so much longer than the thing itself. It seems all out
of proportion, and so I must continue to wonder Why?
Scotland sometimes seems like a dream to me, even now I find it
confusing in retrospect. They say with distance all things become
clear, but with distance Scotland has become even more unreal and
misty. It was my crucible, and I failed there.
Scotland continues to exist, of course, and is still a dangerous place.
Lately a new element has arisen, predictable, but one that has thrown
the Lords into a panic. James is growing up,he is fourteen now, and
has a mind of his own. He is not so easily ruled, and has taken his
French cousin Esme Stuart to his side, rebelling against his keepers.
They say the Guises sent him over to "corrupt" James. Be that as it
may, there was yet another revolt and plot, and the Earl of Morton was
ousted as Regent and brought to trial. And for what? For Darnley's
death.
Morton was executed on his favourite device, a beheading machine called
"the Maiden," which works by releasing a suspended blade over the
victim's head. It is called the Maiden because they say "although she
lies down with many men, no one has yet got the best of her." It is
said to be much cleaner and surer than a human headsman. And thus
perished that vile man, my enemy.
Now that James is free of him, I may be able to approach him. All
these years, they have prevented us from communicating. But surely now
he will listen to his mother. I have a proposal to make, which may
benefit us both.
June 11, Anno Domini 1582. I am now in my fortieth year how chilling
that sounds! I cannot be the first to be surprised to be suddenly old"
but when I was fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five, I thought youth would
last forever.
Nicholas Hillard came to Sheffield recently to paint miniatures of
Shrewbury and his family, and he painted one of me, too. I hated it.
The woman he painted was like a distorted vision of the girl painted by
Clouet long ago in France. She had the same features, but they had
blurred and run, were softened like an overripe pear. I have often
observed such pears lying on their platters. They still hold their
shape, but they are soft enough that the bottoms are a little flattened
where they are lying, and the skin is slightly swollen. These,
incidentally, make the best eating, if one eats them just at that
moment. The next day they are inevitably mushy and show spots.
To think that I am in that state! And yet, upon looking in my glass, I
had to admit that the portrait was accurate, it captured all the
features. It was even, truth to tell, a little flattering. My chin is
fuller than he painted, and my nose sharper.
A woman of forty. She is seen as a simpering, silly thing, a witch, or
else a lascivious man-eater, hungry for young male flesh. Bothwell's
Janet Beaton was seen as such, and even the elegant Diane de Poitiers
with young Henri II, both women being some twenty years older than
their lovers. I have been reading Chaucer, and his Wife of Bath is a
chortling, lip-smacking libertine who admits that she took on her
twenty-year-old husband when she was forty, and "truly, as my husbands
all told me, I had the silkiest (juoniam that could be, I never could
withdraw my Venus-chamber from a good fellow." I blush to write such,
even though Chaucer did not.