Виктория Холт - The Captive Queen of Scots

Those who had taken part in the Babington plot and were due for execution on the next day were more fortunate than those who had suffered before them. The Queen ordered that they were to be hanged by the neck until they died.

ELIZABETH was pensive.

The time had come, Burleigh assured her, to take action against the Queen of Scots. Walsingham was in complete agreement with him.

In her hand the Queen held a letter from Leicester, who was in Holland. He was shocked beyond expression, he wrote, that the wicked woman of Scotland had schemed against the life of his beloved Queen. The easiest method of preventing such an occurrence being repeated was to administer a dose of poison. This, urged Leicester, was legal in the circumstances and would relieve his dear mistress of the anxiety he knew she would feel if obliged to sign the death warrant of one who was a Queen even as she was herself.

No, Robert, thought Elizabeth. I will not be accused by my Catholic subjects of her murder.

But what to do?

“Bring her to the Tower,” suggested Walsingham.

But the Queen shook her head. She did not forget that there was a strong Catholic party in London. It had shocked Elizabeth deeply, to learn that there were among her subjects those who could conspire against her. The number involved in the Babington plot was startling; and they were but a minority of the Catholics who were prepared to work against her.

“I shall not have her brought to London,” she said. “She shall go to Fotheringay Castle and there be tried. If she should be found guilty, there shall she meet her fate.”

FOTHERINGAY!

Mary was filled with foreboding as she came to her new prison. She had been separated from many of her friends before she left Chartley, and among these was Barbara Curle who wept bitterly at the parting; but Elizabeth Curle, whom Mary dearly loved, was allowed to accompany the Queen to Fotheringay, as was Jane Kennedy. Andrew Melville, her Master of the Household, was also with her.

The castle was a grim fortress standing on the north bank of the River Nen in Northamptonshire. Mary did not think of escape as she had on entering other prisons, for a sense of inevitable doom had possession of her and she believed that she would never leave this place alive.

When her party had crossed the drawbridge they entered a court which led to a large hall. Mary stood for a few moments looking at this hall before Paulet said harshly that she was to be conducted to her apartments.

They passed a chapel and he led the way to the rooms which had been set aside for her use. They were large, and pictures graced the walls.

As holding her little Skye terrier in her arms, she followed Paulet, she felt the little creature’s heart beating wildly.

“Be still, little one,” she murmured. “At least they have not parted us . . . and never shall they . . . while I live.”

* * *

IN THE GREAT HALL of Fotheringay the dais was emblazoned with the arms of England, and on this dais was a chair covered in red velvet.

In this hall were gathered the lords of England, come to try Mary for her part in the plot to assassinate their Queen, and among them were Lord Burleigh and Sir Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth was represented by the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General and the Queen’s Sergeant. Mary was to defend herself.

She was pleased to have with her at this perilous time Sir Andrew Melville who, as the Master of her Household, was entitled to accompany her; on his devotion and affection she placed great reliance; but she knew that it could avail her little, for all those men who had come from London to Fotheringay had determined to find her guilty.

The Queen’s Sergeant, Sir Thomas Gawdy, colorful in his blue robe with the red hood falling on his shoulders, stood up to open the case. He spoke of the information obtained from Babington and his fellow conspirators; he explained that six of them had planned to murder Queen Elizabeth. There were letters, he said, which would prove Queen Mary guilty of partaking in this plot.

Depositions had been taken from her secretaries, Jacques Nau and Gilbert Curle, which would prove the case against her.

Mary stared blankly before her, wondering what torture those two had suffered before they had betrayed her. She did not know that they had refused to betray her, that they had been trapped into making certain admissions and that Jacques had written to Queen Elizabeth assuring her of Mary’s innocence in any plot to assassinate her. Jacques and Gilbert were still in prison because of their persistent loyalty to their mistress.

But how could she learn that in this sad hall of doom?

She was thinking back to that day when Babington’s letters had arrived, trying to remember exactly what he had written, exactly what he had said.

She demanded to see the letters and triumphantly pointed out that they were in the handwriting of one who had deciphered them; and could not, she asked, the decipherer have written what he wished? How could they prove that they were letters written by her when they were not in her handwriting?

In a moment of folly she denied knowing Babington; but she added: “It is true that I have heard of him.”

She was reminded that Babington had confessed that correspondence had passed between them, and that the assassination of Elizabeth had been part of the Babington plot.

“Gentlemen,” cried Mary, “you must understand that I am no longer ambitious. I wish for nothing but to pass my days in tranquillity. I am too old now, too infirm to wish to rule.”

“You have continually asserted your pretensions to the throne of England,” Burleigh accused her.

“I have never given up asserting my rights,” answered Mary cryptically, and Burleigh was somewhat nonplussed because there were many who doubted the legitimacy of Elizabeth, and it was impossible to know whether some of them were present.

She attacked Walsingham, calling him an enemy who had deliberately set out to entrap her. “I never thought to harm the Queen of England,” she cried. “I would a hundred times rather have lost my life than see so many Catholics suffer for my sake.”

“No true subject of the Queen was ever put to death on account of religion,” Walsingham retorted, “though some have died for treason and because they maintained the Bull of Excommunication against our Queen and accepted the authority of the Pope against her.”

“I have heard the contrary to be so,” Mary replied.

Walsingham was uneasy. “My soul is free from malice,” he told the court. “God as my witness I, as a private person, have done nothing unworthy of an honest man. I bear no ill will to any. I have attempted no one’s death, but I am a faithful servant to my mistress, and I confess to being ever vigilant in all that concerns the safety of my Queen and Country. Therefore I am watchful of all conspirators.”

“Why do you not bring my secretaries, Nau and Curle, to give evidence in my presence?” demanded Mary. “If you believed that they would continue to condemn me you would not hesitate to have them brought face-to-face with me.”

“This is unnecessary,” Burleigh told the court, and Walsingham nodded. They had had enough trouble with those loyal young men.

So the trial continued throughout that day and the next; and when the hour came for judgment, Burleigh told the court that it was the wish of their Sovereign Lady Elizabeth that no sentence should be given until she herself had considered the evidence.

The trial was over.

Mary was helped from the hall by the faithful Melville, and Elizabeth’s men set out for London.

ELIZABETH WAS UNEASY. All the evidence was laid before her, and still she hesitated.

She must be absolutely blameless. Passing along the river from Greenwich to Hampton Court she looked at her city and wondered how many Catholics were lurking in those narrow streets, how many would have lifted their voices against her if they dared.

Ever since Mary had, when Dauphine of France, allowed herself to be given the title Queen of England, she had been a menace to disturb the peace of Elizabeth. She must die. But only when she was proved, without any doubt whatsoever, to have deserved death.

Elizabeth listened to Burleigh, Walsingham and Leicester. They were all urging her to agree to the execution; but her feminine perception made her hesitate again and again. As shrewd men they knew what was good for her and the country; but as a woman she was greatly concerned with the gossip which was whispered on street corners, and she knew that in street-corner whispers revolution often set its seeds.

IN THE STAR CHAMBER at Westminster the Commissioners opened the case against Mary.

To this were brought Jacques Nau and Gilbert Curle.

Jacques had solved the problem which had tormented him for many days and nights. He had been tempted and had turned away from temptation. Not for freedom, not for Bessie and their life together would he bear false witness. In his deposition, they had twisted his words; they had questioned him until he was exhausted; and afterward he had been fearful of what he might have said against the Queen. But to remedy that he had written to Elizabeth, though he fully believed that the letter would have no effect on her or her ministers.

He had heard of the terrible deaths of Babington, Ballard and those others who had died with them. Sometimes he awoke sweating in the night dreaming that the executioner’s knife was poised above his quivering body. Torture and degrading death on one side . . . Bessie and all that he longed for on the other. Yet what joy could there be for him if he must always live with the knowledge that to gain it he had helped to send his mistress to her death?

He was standing before the Commissioners, and Walsingham was questioning him.

He would not say what they wished him to. Letters from Babington there had been, but the principal accusation against Mary—that she had conspired to assassinate Elizabeth—was false.

He threw back his head and cried: “You, my lords, will have to answer to Almighty God if you should, on false charges, condemn a sovereign Queen.”

The fury in the faces of the Commissioners did not dismay him.

“I ask,” he continued, “that my protestation be made public.”

Curle was smiling at him, for they stood together in this; and it occurred to them both that the evidence they had to give was the most important in the trial.

The Commissioners were not deterred. Such words should not be heard outside the doors of the Star Chamber.

They had come here to pronounce Mary Queen of Scots, guilty and deserving of death.

This they were determined to do.

WALSINGHAM AND BURLEIGH presented themselves to their royal mistress.

“And the verdict?” she asked.

“Guilty, Your Majesty. We cannot find that there is any possible means to provide for Your Majesty’s safety but by the just and speedy execution of the Queen of Scots, the neglecting whereof may procure the heavy displeasure and punishment of Almighty God.”

“I am unwilling,” answered the Queen, “to procure the displeasure and punishment of God, yet in my heart I remember this is a Queen and my cousin. Tell me, were all in agreement as to this verdict?”

Walsingham and Burleigh exchanged glances. “There was one, Your Majesty, who declared himself unsure that the Queen of Scots had compassed, practiced or imagined the death of Your Majesty.”

“And his name?”

“Lord Zouche.”

“One in the Star Chamber,” mused the Queen. “How many in the country?”

“Your Majesty,” said Burleigh, “this is no time for weakness. While the Queen of Scots lives you are in danger. The time is ripe.”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Then go to Fotheringay and warn her of the verdict which my Star Chamber and Houses of Parliament have pronounced against her.”

Jubilantly her ministers left her.

HOW DREARY WAS THE WINTER at Fotheringay, how irksome in London.

The two Queens were constantly in each other’s thoughts. Will she relent? wondered Mary. How can I accomplish her death without seeming to have done so? Elizabeth asked herself.

Her ministers were anxiously awaiting her decision.

Young James had written to her, imploring clemency for his mother. How that would have comforted Mary if she had known!

But she shall not know! thought Elizabeth angrily. Let her wait in her prison, apprehensive and fearful—for she has cast a shadow over my life since the day I took the crown.