The Spymaster's Daughter

by Jeane Westin

  Both Burghley and Walsingham could not help themselves. They smiled.

  Mary lifted her head into a stately pose and added, “It may be that Babington wrote them, but let it be proved that I received them. I say Babington lied. Other men’s crimes cannot be cast on me.”

  The cipher letters she had written were now produced one by one and read out to the throng. Mary sat suddenly, her astonished expression revealing a sense of having stepped into a neatly laid trap.

  Frances felt Robert’s hand close about hers behind her billowing gown.

  Mary looked about the room, arrayed with solemn lawyers and nobles, her judges all. She burst into tears. “I would never make shipwreck of my soul by conspiring the destruction of my dearest sister queen.”

  Frances wondered whether Mary knew that what she said was untrue. Or did she so desperately want to think herself falsely accused that she could make herself believe a lie?

  Walsingham produced the ale keg in which Mary’s messages had been sent to Babington and his to her. He placed it on the table in front of her.

  The Scots queen’s knees buckled, and her ladies helped her to be seated again. “I cannot walk without assistance or use my arms, and I spend most of my time to bed in sickness. Both age and bodily weakness prevent me from wishing to resume the reins of government. What ruler could fear me?”

  Robert’s hand tightened as he murmured, “She is coming to know that she is exposed…beyond saving herself with protests of sickness.”

  Frances took in a heaving breath. The only thing for Mary now was any pity she could gain from the judges, if such was to be had.

  “I do not fear the menaces of men,” the Scots queen protested as her silent accusers looked on. “I demand another hearing and that I be allowed an advocate to plead my cause.”

  For answer, Walsingham stood and read out her letter to Babington with the condemning phrase: “Fail not to burn this privately and quickly.” Triumphant, Mr. Secretary said: “If you did not seek Queen Elizabeth’s death, then why the urgency to destroy this letter?”

  Desperate now, Mary sat forward and raised her arms toward heaven. “Mother of God, they wish only to destroy me!”

  Walsingham’s voice was heavy with scorn. “Heaven does not listen to assassins!”

  “Nor to those who conspire against the queen of France and Scotland!”

  This brought loud protests of honesty from Walsingham.

  Mary, trying again to deny all, spoke in a voice that carried to the entire chamber. “As to the priest, Ballard, I have heard him spoken of, but I protest that I have never thought of the ruin of the queen of England and would rather have lost my life a hundred times than that so many Catholics suffer for my sake a cruel death at Tyburn.” She drew in a deep, shivering breath. “And you, too, my lord Burghley, you are also my enemy.”

  “No,” said Lord Treasurer Burghley, his voice firm and solemn, “I am enemy to the queen’s enemy.” He stared at Mary, nothing of compassion written in his face. “These proceedings will resume before Parliament to pronounce sentence.”

  Mary no longer asked whether she could plead before Parliament. She knew she was never to see London. But she had final words that caused many to avert their gaze.

  “I have desired nothing but my own deliverance.” Her doctor and ladies reached to support her. As she retreated, she said, “May God keep me from having to do with you all again.”

  Frances’s father, intensely frustrated that he could not bring the Scots queen to confess, walked past her with no pity.

  “I must to my father,” Frances whispered to Robert, who went before and parted the crowd, all heads together, whispering their opinion and disappointment. Without Mary’s confession, it was certain that there would be no beheading this day, though such a death would come as soon as her father and Burghley had Elizabeth’s signature on a document of execution.

  As Frances approached her father, he stepped away from Burghley and a group of lawyers. “I am sorry, Father, that you did not receive the sentence you hoped for.”

  Walsingham’s tired face was also angry. “Delays, daughter, always delays. I fear I will die in my service before that woman dies for her treachery.”

  “Father, again I regret to add to your problems, but I must to Holland at once. My lord Essex tells me that Philip has worsened. It is my duty…and wish…”

  “Yes, yes, Frances. I have a carriage waiting in the bailey now to take you to London. And, Pauley,” he added, “ride on ahead and gain passage for your mistress on the next ship.”

  “Sir, am I not to escort Lady Frances to London?”

  “Nay, Essex has kindly offered this service to his friend’s wife.”

  Frances felt her future closing in on her. She bowed her head. “Then, Father, this is our parting and I ask your blessing.” It was quickly given and she walked to her room, Robert following.

  He entered her small chamber and closed the door, standing there silent while she threw her belongings into her traveling chest. “I hope you find Sir Philip mending, my lady.” His words were even, and he tried to make them sincere, because he had shut his mind to any thought of harm coming to Sir Sidney. Yet his chest had a sore ache, as if his heart were too swollen for its space. It fair hurt to breathe deeply.

  She turned to him, anguish everywhere on her face, seeing him standing like a statue before her. “Why do I feel so suddenly a stranger to you?” she whispered.

  “Because from now on we are but mistress and servant.” Almost against his will his legs carried him forward.

  She ran the short space to him. “Robert…Robert, forgive me. There is no other way. Our paths are laid for us by others and sad fortune.”

  He kissed her hair, which tumbled about her face as he liked it and would always remember it.

  Her lips moved up to his and his mouth was hard upon hers. He sought kisses enough to last a lifetime. At last, gasping and flushed with need, she pulled back, then rose upon her toes to his cheek, kissing his wound, now pink and healing.

  “I will always love you, Robert.”

  For one last time he crushed her to him, lifting her off her feet. Then he put her down, away from him. He needed the separation at once or he would not be able to allow it at all. He reached for her clothes chest, hoisted it on his shoulder, opened the door, and led the way to the bailey, his stiff leg suffering from the weight of the chest and his heavy spirit.

  Essex waited with his horse tied to the rear of the carriage. “My lady,” he said, and opened the door to hand her inside before following her to sit in the facing seat. “Pauley, put the casket above.”

  “Aye, my lord,” Robert said. He bowed a moment later as the carriage pulled from the bailey, gathering speed just beyond the moat. He closed his eyes, listening to the horses’ hooves pounding down the road, remembering that sound from the road to Chartley and the young lad sitting beside him…always beside him in his memory.

  A short time later, after receiving letters bound for Holland from Walsingham, Robert took horse and headed for Deptford, taking faster lanes and roads too difficult for a carriage. Riding through the night and glad of the dark, he arrived the next day at the port of Deptford on the Thames south of London. He soon made arrangements for Lady Sidney’s cabin on the merchant ship Paul swinging at anchor, a ship that still carried the faint impression of the word Saint before the name.

  He inspected the tiny cabin, seeing the space that would hold her on her way to her husband. The scar on his cheek pulsed, and he knew that he was indulging in a form of self-torture. He must let her go. He must.

  As quickly as he could, Robert rode from Deptford to Whitehall, hoping to see Frances before she took a barge for the ship, and berating himself for such a need.

  When Frances arrived at Whitehall, tired and bone-shaken from the long carriage ride on roads already turned from dust to mud, she went immediately to her chambers on the arm of Essex.

  “I will at once to Her Majesty and
ask that I accompany you to Sir Philip’s side, my lady.” He opened the latch on her door.

  “My lord, I thank you, but do not—”

  He was gone before her remonstrance was fully voiced.

  Meg rushed to her, worry making lines on her forehead. “My lady…my lady…”

  “We must ready ourselves to leave for Holland within the hour. You and Will, too.”

  “My sweet lady, the queen calls for you to come to her immediately.”

  “What cause?”

  “I know not, Lady Frances,” Meg said, bowing her head, but not before the lie tightened her mouth.

  With Will following, Frances quickly made her way to the royal apartments, wishing she could change to a fresh gown, not even knowing whether the one she wore had mud spatters or rain spotting.

  “The queen waits,” the liveried guard said, bowing.

  Frances entered, making her three curtsies to Elizabeth, who sat on her throne chair with Essex at her elbow. Did she want a personal account of Mary’s trial? Yet a different message was in the queen’s face….“Lady Sidney, I have sad news to impart. Comes this morning a message from the Earl of Leicester in Arnhem that the grievous wound of your husband, Sir Philip Sidney, turned gangrenous—”

  Frances swayed and Essex rushed to her, clasping her in his arms. “Frances…Frances,” he murmured, his lips near her cheek.

  “—and it is my unhappy duty to tell you that he died of this wound.” The queen stared, angry and unhappy, at Essex, but continued. “The people everywhere proclaim Sir Philip’s courage. I will declare him a national hero and he will have a state funeral.”

  Frances heard Elizabeth’s words as if from far away. She was overwhelmed with such a storm of emotion, of guilt and sorrow.

  “My lord Essex,” Elizabeth said, her face set hard, “you may leave us at once.”

  Essex looked startled, but bowed and obeyed.

  When the door to the reception chamber closed, Elizabeth said, “My lady, in your bereavement you may be seated in my presence.”

  “Very kind, your grace.” She was glad of the chair, as her bones felt too soft to hold her upright.

  “Do you have an affection for the Earl of Essex?” Elizabeth asked, her voice distant and hard.

  “No, Majesty, none. I am…I was…a married woman.”

  “Has the earl expressed affection to you?”

  “Majesty, my lord Essex was friend to my husband.” Frances looked to the door, wishing to be anywhere but near a jealous, aging woman who was once a friend, but now might quickly turn an enemy. And over a man thirty-five years younger! But Frances saw more in the queen’s face than her jealousy. Essex’s desire for a younger woman forced the queen to face the lie behind her pretense that she never aged.

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed, and pieces of her Mask of Youth sprinkled onto the bosom of her black-and-white gown, the colors of which proclaimed her ever a virgin.

  “My lady Sidney, you have the appearance of an innocent, but two men are drawn to you. I have heard of another, your handsome servant…and mine, Robert Pauley. Both these men are unsuitable to your station, one far too high and the other very much too low.” The queen’s eyes seemed to see into Frances’s mind. “I forbid such attachments on pain of my great displeasure.”

  Frances rose and curtsied, not terribly surprised by Elizabeth’s knowledge. Information flowed to her. No one could keep their secrets from her for long. Her own days as a lady of the presence were over. Indeed, most of her life seemed over. She would be a widow sitting by a window with her memories. “With permission, your grace, I will retire from court and my duties to you and begin my mourning at once.”

  Elizabeth’s tone was angry. “Lady Frances, I have shown you favor, indulged your differences…your very great differences.” The queen lifted her head higher, looking down on Frances. “You have not been my lady of the presence so much as my plaything. I wish to see you no more.”

  Frances curtsied very low, then moved backward to the great doors of the royal apartment.

  “Wait!” the queen said, her voice hoarse. “I admit that at times you have served us well…very well indeed, and most unusually…but your service is done here, all of it. I give you permission for immediate departure to Barn Elms.”

  “My gratitude, Majesty.” Frances made her way to the great doors, somewhat stronger now for the quick change in tone from angry to peacemaking, unusual for this queen.

  “My lady Sidney.”

  “Yes, your grace.” She half turned.

  “Since you did serve but two months of your second year of appointment, you will receive this year no annual pay.”

  Frances curtsied and hid a desire to laugh hysterically. The doors shut behind her with a final click, as if so ordered by Elizabeth. Frances knew that she would miss the queen who had looked on her with favor and with anger. Yet Elizabeth’s favor, once gone, was gone forever.

  This day Philip Sidney’s widow walked slowly to her chambers, oblivious of those around her, indeed of Will following. When she faltered, she felt his hand on her arm, ready to assist if she should faint.

  He was still to learn that she would never be given to the collapses of other women…if her courage held.

  Later that afternoon, not daring to seek out Robert, and perhaps not able to bear another parting that might expose him to the queen’s anger, she, along with her servants, was escorted by one of her father’s secretaries to Barn Elms in her father’s barge. All the way upriver in the misty rain, Frances watched the queen’s swans hiding their heads under their wings. She sat huddled under a sealskin cover stretched overhead as the drumbeat of rain matched the splash of oars slicing into the Thames.

  Frances forced herself to find a corner of her mind for Robert, a place to keep him and their memories safe and warm forever. She thought, too, of Philip. Had his last memory been of Stella, as God took him to his hero’s place in heaven? Her heart did ache for him. But she had been mourning him all her married life. His body was now dead to her, as his heart had always been.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Woods, hills and river, now are desolate.

  Since he is gone the which them all did grace:

  And all the fields do wail their widow state,

  Since death…their fairest flower in field that ever grew,

  Was Astrophel…”

  —The Doleful Lay of Clorinda,

  Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke

  January

  In the Year of Our Lord 1587

  BARN ELMS

  Mary Herbert, Philip’s sister, had written a long poem eulogizing him and vowed to work on it until it was as perfect as Philip’s own lines. Frances held the draft in her lap, proof again that talent and desire did not pass to sons alone.

  Frances smiled, knowing that her father would never in this world agree, ever maintaining that if his daughter’s work as an intelligencer were known, she would bring his name only great dishonor. Or did she find excuse for no longer being quite so fond of the name intelligencer? The queen of Scots’ face at Fotheringhay, her proudly sad eyes seeing betrayal everywhere, yet haunted Frances and, perhaps, always would.

  The lady widow, as the servants had named her, sat alone gazing from her bedchamber window onto the familiar snowy landscape. The winter afternoon had settled softly upon Barn Elms and upon Frances. These days she quietly mourned many people. She prayed for Mary Stuart awaiting execution at Fotheringhay; for Philip at rest in his casket while channel storms raged, preventing his body’s transport to his homeland. She prayed for his grieving sister, bent so many days over his eulogy, and, finally, she silently pleaded for God’s understanding of her own loss that could never be acknowledged.

  Her room echoed with the voice of Aunt Jennet. “You do your duty, dear child, and that is ever the right way.”

  Frances’s throat constricted at a familiar sight. Here came another rider in Essex livery up the road from Mortlake.

&n
bsp; No doubt the rider brought more letters, more ponderous Petrarchan poetry from the Earl of Essex, extolling her every feature and limb in wearisome rhyme. Why? Why did the earl want her when he could have his choice of Europe’s princesses and most of the unmarried noble daughters of England and perhaps even some married ones? She knew, or thought she knew. He was a conqueror. He had conquered Elizabeth, or so he thought, and now he would take the only woman at court who did not want him, and would make himself her master. Her reluctance was her allure; it enticed him and always had. That was not love. To be taken first by a famous poet in need of escaping his failed love and his debts, and next by a man who dared not lose was neither love she would ever choose. Yet the love that thrilled, that contented her in every way, was impossible—nay, more than that, lunacy. A common man of no station against a high noble of the kingdom…Why couldn’t her heart follow the path her father and all custom had laid for her?

  She gripped the arms of her chair not for the first time that day, glancing at her writing table, where she had placed a number of letters from Essex, which arrived now most every day, sometimes one in the morning and another before an early winter’s night made the roads too dangerous for horse or man.

  In a smaller and quite separate stack were letters from Robert tied round with a blue ribbon, but they’d been read and reread almost to tatters. He had promised to come as soon as the Thames was clear of ice, and her hands clasped tight to think of it. She had not seen him for near two months; her father had kept him busy, almost using him as a courier, as if to keep them apart. She doubted her father had any such thought, except an instinct he did not want to own.

  She heard a servant answer the door and waited while the rider from Essex was invited to rest with mulled wine to warm him for his ride back to Mortlake a few leagues away. Then, as if in a play of Lord Leicester’s men being performed every afternoon to the penny groundlings, Frances heard the servant wearily climb the stairs, waited for his knock, and, when it came, called out: “Enter and place the package on my table. There will be no answer.”