To them I am not a woman who would like a pet bird, or some new silver
embroidery thread, but only a symbol of Catholicism. Symbols don't
need living, breathing things; they don't read or become lonely or need
medicines. They exist on slogans or so they think, Morgan and Paget
and his like. For that is all they offer me for my comfort. Sometimes
I would rather have a pair of turtledoves.
Early the next morning, Willie came bursting into the hall where they
were filling their mugs with breakfast ale.
"Damn his black soul!" he cried, throwing down a smouldering box.
Sparks and ashes flew out of it. "He was stuffing it in the furnace
next to the wall!"
"Why, Willie, what is it?" Mary made her way over to the box, which
was emitting puffs of smoke.
"It was from Mary Seton," he said. "They actually sent it through,
from the French embassy. A fellow was here, a Nicholas de Cherelles,
and he handed it right over to our friend Paulet. And while I was
watching for I had gone out to empty the chamber pots that
black-hearted wretch, that self-righteous ass, opened it, peeked
inside, and then thrust it into the furnace!"
"What happened then? How was it rescued?"
"I ran up to him and shoved him. I grabbed it out and yelled. And do
you know what he said, that clod pole with Scripture-books for a
spine?" Willie twisted up his face and mimicked him perfectly. " "This
is full of abominable Papist trash!" "
"Yet he let you keep it," said Mary, surprised.
"I did not give him a chance to grab it back," Willie said. "He is
probably coming after it now."
Mary and her ladies went to the smudged window and looked out at the
courtyard. Paulet was indeed there, talking to two men, and nodding
gravely. But he was not following Willie.
"That one's Cherelles, I heard him say his name," said Willie. "The
other fellow I don't know who he is."
Mary had bent down to the package and was pulling off its singed lid.
Inside were rosaries, paintings of saints, holy medals, and silk badges
marked Agnus Dci. There was no letter or if there had been, it had
been removed.
"I know Seton sent them," said Mary. "I remember the sisters making
just such badges at St.-Pierre."
She would treasure the little devotional objects. But, oh! it would
have meant so much to have heard directly from Seton how she was faring
in France.
Chartley Manor was indeed a stately house, built on a hill with a moat
encircling it, and overlooking the surrounding countryside. An older
castle was adjacent to it, its towers embellished with crosses
proclaiming that the original owner had gone crusading in the Holy
Land. In the summer, doubtless it would prove pleasant enough, but now
it lay in the grip of snow and ice, and huge flocks of crows perched on
the bare trees surrounding the house. They seemed to be holding their
own Parliament, cawing and interrupting one another raucously. Mary
shuddered as she had to pass beneath them.
Once settled, everyone Paulet included seemed to be in better spirits.
The quarters, while not fulfilling the soaring dreams of Mary's
attendants, were so much more spacious and comfortable that they seemed
like paradise. Once again the dreary, calcified routine was put into
effect, and Mary's days were ordered from sunrise to midnight. She
trod them like a donkey harnessed to go round and round a waterwheel,
always turning, but going nowhere.
She was sitting in her chair, one thoughtfully sent from Sheffield that
she had always liked, as it had a rung where she could rest her feet
above the cold floor, when Nau approached her. She sighed. It was
time, then, for the daily business meeting. She would have preferred
to go on reading. But deviating from the schedule upset the household,
particularly its older members like Nau, Balthazzar the tailor, the
physician, and the apothecary. So be it.
"Yes, Nau, I know it is time to continue with the memoirs."
He just stood and bit his lip. She saw that he was trembling.
"Why, what is it? Bad news? Is someone ill?"
"I can hardly relate this to you, I am so filled with joy," he
whispered. "There is he came this morning a messenger. From Paris."
"Without the knowledge of Paulet?" She tried to keep her voice steady.
Could it be, could it possibly be?
"Yes. He came, he said, to bring letters to Paulet from the French
embassy. But he managed to signal to me as if he knew me "
"Perhaps you had been described to him?"
"It would have to be by our friends. No one at court has seen me. That
is one advantage perhaps the only one! of being shut away from the
world as we are. He said he said that a way had been arranged to get
letters in and out, right under Paulet's nose. It seems our
sympathizers have managed to bribe the brewer who brings the beer from
Burton every week, to carry letters."
"It can't be true," said Mary. "Paulet has closed us up so tightly
that nothing has got through."
"But it is! There is no such thing as a truly sealed dwelling. And
this fellow "
"What is his name?" asked Mary.
"Gilbert Gifford. He comes from a Catholic family nearby."
"How are we to reach him?" she asked.
"Through the brewer. I will transmit the letters to the brewer when he
arrives. We must wait until the beer is stored in the cellar before
approaching. Gifford himself will come but rarely; otherwise it will
be too suspicious. He said to expect the first delivery next Saturday,
January sixteenth. And have your letters ready to send. Only one or
two, though, as the secret box in the beer barrel is of necessity
small, to avoid detection."
She smiled with delight. "A waterproof box in a beer barrel! How
ingenious!"
Her eyes were shining.
She did not dare to write any letters, lest it was a hoax and Paulet
would swoop down upon her, search her rooms, and find them. But she
waited, so anxiously that she was glad the nights were so long in the
January cold, so that others could not see her nervously tossing and
turning. She, who usually talked so freely, hugged this secret to
herself, praying that it was true.
January sixteenth came, a cold, clear day. There would be no trouble
in the cart making its journey from Burton-upon-Trent, twelve miles
away. It was Saturday, and the routine was somewhat relaxed, in
comparison with the rest of the week. The laundresses passed in and
out searched down to their shifts by Paulet's women and the miller
delivered his flour. Then Mary saw the cart, with its huge barrel,
creaking up the entrance road. It lumbered across the drawbridge and
finally stopped in the courtyard. The fat driver called for help, and
soon three guards were struggling to hoist the barrel down. In the
meantime, the empty one from the week before was being rolled out.
Mary clutched at Nau's sleeve. "Is it in there?" she whispered. "Is
it really there?"
"We will have to wait, and send a page down to the cellar. It would
not do for me to go, or even Willie."
She wished she still had her little clock, or even an hourglass. She
had no way of setting a time to wait. "Let us count to a hundred," she
said. "No, let us say a rosary!"
When the rosary had been recited, Nau peeked out the window and saw
that the brewer's cart had gone. He called over one of the pages, the
one who always helped him with his regular duties, and gave him the
instructions. The boy nodded gravely, and was gone.
Mary went to her private corner the one where she was never to be
disturbed and waited. She could not even pray; she tried to suspend
her thoughts. Soon enough, Nau was wordlessly handing her a
leather-wrapped package. She rose and, drawing him aside with her,
unwrapped it.
Inside lay two letters.
Her heart was pounding, and she hardly dared open the first. But she
did, and quickly.
My dearest sovereign lady and Queen,
This is to vouchsafe the bearer, Mr. Gilbert Gifford, as someone in
complete accord with our mission. You may safely confide in and employ
the same, a deacon in our own Holy Mother Church, devoted to your
cause. His uncle dwells within ten miles of Chartley.
Yours to command, in loving obedience, Thomas Morgan.
Mary gave a long sigh, almost like a cry. It had been so long!
She unfolded the second, and read it. It was from the French
ambassador, and it merely affirmed the authenticity of the messenger,
and said that twenty-one packets of letters were piled up in the French
embassy a year's worth of correspondence to be forwarded.
"This is from the French ambassador," said Mary, "proving that all is
in order."
She handed it to Nau, and he read it quickly.
"All my mail! A year's worth!" she said.
During the next few days, she spent all her time writing four letters,
three to France to her agent Morgan, her ambassador Archbishop Beaton,
and her nephew the Duc de Guise and one to the French ambassador in
London. In them she enclosed the new cipher code to be used for future
communications. And to the French ambassador, she wrote assuring him
that she had found Gifford a faithful messenger, as he had promised:
"You may safely entrust all the letters that have been sent to you for
me to this new and devoted agent, through whom you may henceforth
safely communicate with me."
On the last day of February, the French ambassador turned over to
Gilbert Gifford a sack containing the twenty-one packets of letters
received from all over the world from Morgan and Paget and Beaton in
Paris; from Catholic political exiles and agents in the Netherlands;
from Robert Parsons, the Jesuit mastermind, and Sir Francis Englefield
in Spain; from the Duc de Guise and the Duke of Parma.
In March, they began appearing their seals broken because they had had
to be inserted into the small box at Chartley, and Mary was able to
read, for the first time, what had been happening in the outside world
since the failure of the Throckmorton Plot.
She read how the Catholics had lost hope in the promises of Guise and
his "Holy League," and had turned increasingly to Spain and the promise
of using Spanish troops to effect an invasion of England. She read
that hostile actions between England and Spain had already begun, with
the Spanish seizing English shipping, and Elizabeth formally taking the
Dutch rebels under her "protection."
"Why, Elizabeth has even sent troops over there!" Mary told Nau in
disbelief. "And sent her beloved Earl of Leicester to command them!"
"Ah! With the English so occupied, now will be the time to escape, if
ever!" he said. "If the Duke of Parma can just spare a few troops,
effect a landing...."
"Nau!" she said, clapping her hands to her mouth. "There is a new
Pope! Look Sixtus V! So many changes!"
"Yes, the world has rushed on, while we mouldered here," he answered
grimly.
In late March the unexpected happened: Nicholas de Cherelles, the
French ambassador's assistant, arrived at Chartley, bringing letters
from the royal family in France, and asked to be allowed to deliver
them personally to Mary. Paulet made a great show of frowning and
complaining, opening the letters himself, and finally saying that it
might be allowed, but only if he himself was present.