Just a Queen

by Jane Caro

  *

  I hate war. I do not understand it and I do not wish to wage it. I loathe the uncertainty that accompanies a contest of force and the lack of control war causes me to have over the actions of even the most loyal and beloved servants. Once a man finds himself at the head of an army, it seems to go completely to his own. As a queen, I cannot ride into battle at the head of my troops. I must perforce send a substitute. To place a man, any man, however trusted and loyal, at the head of armed men who swear fealty to him is always dangerous.

  But it was not simply my humiliation in the low countries that caused me anxiety. Walsingham and Cecil had informed me of yet another plot to assassinate me and between us we had agreed to let the conspirators think that they were undetected to see who else we could flush out. I knew that Cecil and Walsingham would give both their lives before they would allow any real harm to come to me, but I could not help feeling constantly on alert. My skin prickled and itched with the old sense of dread, as I waited for the unseen dagger to suddenly plunge itself into my flesh. I required my food taster to be extra vigilant and ate no fruit nor drank any wine or ale that had not first been tasted by someone else.

  It was another cursed Jesuit who set the plot in motion, a fanatic called John Ballard who recruited Anthony Babington, a rich and headstrong young Catholic, who in his turn recruited six more courtiers to plot my grisly murder. I knew them all – not well, I grant you, but their faces were familiar and I had treated them with grace and courtesy. So, unlike the babbling lunatic, or addle-brained schoolmaster who had not set eyes on me nor I on them, I felt the betrayal as well as the fear. Walsingham had instructed Mary’s gaoler Sir Amyas Paulet on what to look out for. We did not have to wait long.

  I stood leaning on my desk with my back turned to Walsingham and Cecil. In front of me was the tapestry that hung behind my chair and sheltered me from any draughts that might come through the wainscoting. It was one of the six magnificent tapestries of the City of Ladies, based on the illuminations in Christine de Pizan’s book of the same name, a book that was a great favourite of mine. As my two advisors unravelled the details of the plot so that I could fully understand the danger I was in, I stared transfixed at the tiny painstaking stitches that created the vision of a queen in red and white and a great lady in brilliant blue. They were laying the foundation stones of the city walls built to protect the fair sex from men.

  ‘Babington wrote to the Queen of Scots on the 12th July, Your Grace, outlining all the details of their plot, including their plans to assassinate you. I have here the letter he wrote should you care to peruse it.’

  It was quite remarkable to me how perfectly the tiny white stitches delineating the ermine trim of the queen’s medieval robe gave way to the red of her velvet gown. The demarcation was precise and yet delicate. The skill of the embroiderer was breathtaking. I waved my hand at Walsingham to indicate I had no interest in reading the traitor’s letter.

  ‘The queen received the letter in a very clandestine manner. After decoding it and copying it carefully, my agents placed it in the bung of a barrel of ale being delivered to the castle, so that she would have no reason to be suspicious of its origin.’

  No matter how often I looked at these tapestries, I never ceased to be diverted by how the two fine ladies, despite their exquisite clothes and ornate headdresses, were building the wall with trowels and planes and squares, like any common workmen. The stitching was just as exquisite forming the rude stones and tools – even the shavings planed from the blocks of the wall – as when it delineated the ladies’ long fingers and silken sleeves.

  ‘Sir Amyas tells me she pondered how to answer the letter for some days, clearly aware that she took a great risk, but answer she did, Your Majesty, and her answer is enough to condemn her.’

  The woman in blue was smoothing the mortar, the queen in red was laying the stones and the wall they had wrought was fine and curved, complete with niches for statues and decorative plants. Yet it looked strong enough to protect the women within from the predations of the men without.

  ‘She went through the plot in detail, not excluding your “tragical execution”, Your Grace, and agreed to it in every particular.’

  On the other side of the embroidered wall, the lady-builders and some new companions were reading plans, moulding pots and preparing to measure angles and make calculations to ensure their City of Ladies was airy and well proportioned – a delight to the eye as well as a joy to occupy.

  ‘We arrested the plotters as you know, Your Grace, and all have been tried and condemned to endure the full agonies of a traitor’s death. We have also arrested the Queen of Scots and searched her rooms. We found sixty different ciphers, Your Majesty, and this.’ Walsingham now proffered another paper, but I did not even turn to look at it, let alone take it from his hands. I was too busy looking at the tiny stitches of the gracious white columns that bore the portico sheltering the women architects, builders and engineers as they made their plans for their city of elegance and safety. ‘It is a list of every English nobleman who has pledged allegiance to the Scottish queen.’

  I sighed and at last turned away from my favourite tapestry. Mary had owned one of the six herself, I believe, as do many other noblewomen. Perhaps we all gain the same comfort from them as we do from Christine de Pizan’s book: that what men say about our gender and the scorn they visit upon us about our nature is not the truth. I looked at the two good and wise men in front of me. Their faces were solemn and although I knew their long pursuit of my cousin was at last at an end, they looked as if they took no more joy in this result than I did and for that I was grateful. Walsingham still pressed the list on me.

  I took it and read the names written there. Many of them surprised me and all of them wounded me, but still I knew that there was only one action I could take. When I had finished the list and read every name carefully down to the bottom, I took two steps to the fire and dropped the paper into the heart of it.

  ‘Video taceoque,’ I said to the two men before me. ‘I see and I am silent.’

  Twenty-four

  ‘I assure you, if the case stood between her and myself only, if it had pleased God to have made us both milkmaids with pails on our arms, so that the matter should have rested between us two and that I knew she did and would seek my destruction still, yet I would not consent to her death. Aye, if I could perceive how I might be freed from the conspiracies and treasons of her favourers in this action – by your leave she should not die.’

  I protested to parliament, I protested to my ministers, at night in my chamber I protested to myself and to God, but my protests fell on deaf ears. Against my will and yet by my authority thirty-six of my councillors gathered to try Mary, hereditary Queen of Scots, the granddaughter of my father’s elder sister and so my closest living relative and – as queen in her own right, by birth my only living peer – for treason.

  The Queen of Scots also protested at the indignity of having to answer for her conduct, just as I would have done had I been in her place and, God forbid, she in mine. She challenged the authority of the court to try an anointed queen, she protested about her situation on a lowly chair. Bitterly did she protest the insult of the trial, but she did not protest her innocence nor did she admit her guilt.

  ‘It seemeth strange to me, that the queen should command me as a subject to commit myself to a trial. I am an absolute queen, and will do nothing which may be prejudicial either to royal majesty, or to other princes of my place and rank, or my son. My mind is not yet so far dejected, neither will I sink or faint under this my calamity.’

  Yet she also pleaded her isolation and friendlessness, so plaintively that I wept. ‘The laws and statutes of England are to me altogether unknown, I am destitute of councillors, and who shall be my peers I cannot tell. My papers and notes are taken from me, and no man dareth to be my advocate.’

  Had she but confessed her fault and
thrown herself upon my mercy, I would have saved her life. But the most she would admit to was that she had appealed for help elsewhere. ‘I have recommended myself and my condition to foreign princes.’

  It was not enough; if she stubbornly persisted in her refusal to answer any charges or acknowledge the legality of my court, I could do nothing to help the daughter of debate.

  It became clear to me as she conducted her own proud defence against the thirty-six men who presumed to stand in judgment of her, that rather than fear a traitor’s death, she saw it as an opportunity. Only through a glorious death could she deflect attention from the disaster she had made of her life and take on a martyr’s crown. A more powerful coronation in death than any she ever had in life. She would die brilliantly – it was all that was left to her – and I had given her the stage she craved. As her triumph in disaster rose, my misery in conquest grew. I was infuriated by her refusal to take responsibility for her crimes against me, against the father of her son, against her country. Wearied beyond endurance by her posturing, I sent her a strongly worded letter in a last-ditch attempt to avert her martyrdom and my ignominy.

  ‘You have in various ways and manners attempted to take my life and bring my kingdom to destruction by bloodshed. I have never proceeded harshly against you, but have, on the contrary, protected and maintained you like myself. These treasons will be proved to you and made manifest. Yet it is my will that you answer the nobles and peers of the kingdom as if I myself were present. I therefore require, charge and command you make answer, for I have been well informed of your arrogance.’

  I finished my furious letter with a final plea to remove us both from what I was beginning to see as an unstoppable trajectory. ‘Act plainly without reserve and you will sooner be able to obtain favour of me.’

  I meant it. Had she confessed her guilt humbly, I would have pardoned her. As I now realise, she had no such intention. At last, she had a stage and all the world’s eyes were watching. After two decades out of sight, I cannot blame her for grasping her final opportunity with such enthusiasm. Again, it is what I might well have done had I been in her place. And, realistically, what possible alternative fate did I offer her: more wearisome decades as an aging and forgotten prisoner? She preferred a glorious end as a Catholic martyr. I was angry with her as it dawned on me that it was she in her weakness who had taken control of the moment, but I was much angrier with myself. How had I allowed myself to be persuaded into this position? Why had I not left things as they were and let her rot in gaol? Frantically I searched for some solution other than the inevitable execution. I knew she would be found guilty and be condemned to death. So did she. She relished the fall of the axe. She believed the spilling of her blood would wash away her sins. I dreaded it – knowing that the spilling of her blood would be seen as the blackest deed of mine.

  Once she had been found guilty and condemned, by unanimous verdict, it still remained for me to sign the warrant for her execution. This I could not do. Just as I had been when I was required to sign the execution warrant for her erstwhile suitor, Thomas Duke of Norfolk, I was beset on all sides by those who pleaded with me to end the life of the traitorous queen, and by those who begged me to show her clemency. The new King of France, Henry III, sent his ambassador to plead for her life and I spoke to him plainly.

  ‘It is impossible to save my own life if I preserve that of the Queen of Scots, but if you ambassadors can point out any means whereby I may do it, I shall be greatly obliged to you, never having shed as many tears at the death of my father, or my brother King Edward or my sister Mary, as I have done for this unfortunate affair.’

  Sadly the ambassador could offer me no remedy.

  To my parliament in response to yet another petition from the members to execute the Queen of Scots, I replied thus: ‘I am not so void of judgment as not to see my own peril, nor yet so ignorant as not to know it were in nature a foolish course to cherish a sword to cut my own throat. But this I do consider: that many a man would put his life in danger for the safeguard of a king. I do not say that so will I, but I pray you think that I have thought upon it.

  ‘You must be content,’ I told them, ‘with this answer answerless, assuring yourselves that I am now and ever will be most careful to do that which will be best for your preservation. And be not too earnest to move me to do that which may tend to the loss of that which you are most desirous to keep.’

  I did not dissemble. I was not playing politics. Just as Mary’s execution offered her an escape from the trap in which she had languished for so long, so I could sense that it presented to me a trap all of my own making. To keep Mary alive was to keep the threat against my own safety alive. As long as she lived, men would plot on her behalf. To kill Mary would ruin my reputation and imperil my immortal soul. Worse, it would mean that I would do what I had always sworn I would never do – execute an anointed queen.

  Two phrases repeated themselves in my mind. I may even, on occasion, have muttered them aloud. ‘Aut fer, aut feri’ (Bear with her, or smite her) and ‘Ne feriare, feri’ (Strike, lest thou be stricken). Over and over they repeated themselves, bringing me no closer to any decision. Fervently I prayed for a quick fever or an attack of the plague to carry her off. Yet, as Walsingham’s spies continually informed us, despite the pain in her leg that caused her to walk with a stick, the Queen of Scots had never seemed as invigorated or alive as in the weeks she prepared herself for her death. Sir Amyas Paulet listened at every keyhole and engaged her in conversation as often as possible, but he heard nothing to my advantage. As he reported to us dourly, she was full of righteousness about the wrongs and indignities visited upon her.

  I had chosen Sir Amyas as Mary’s final gaoler at Fotheringay because I judged him to be incorruptible. He was a man of few words and strong Protestant principles. I had judged him to be impervious to the charms of my notoriously seductive cousin. Both the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, who had guarded Mary longer than all her custodians, had fallen under her spell, but stiff-necked Sir Amyas despised her as a papist, a woman, a sinner and a great whore, just as I had hoped. I was soon to regret the perspicacity of my choice.

  It was December before I allowed Cecil to draw up the warrant for Mary’s execution and when the proclamation was read out in the streets of London, my people lit bonfires in celebration. If the people of London wanted her dead, the people of Scotland wanted the opposite. Although they were the ones who had condemned her as a whore and a murderess and forced her to flee her kingdom, now they clamoured against her fate. They did not want her back as their queen, perhaps, but they did not want her executed either. It was their protests that caused Mary’s son to dispatch his emissary Master of Gray to my court to play a strange double game.

  ‘Your Majesty.’ The smooth-faced Scotsman bowed low. Despite his accent, so ungentle to English ears, this favourite of the young Scottish king was unlike the usual brutish lairds who presented themselves at court. This Gray was elegantly garbed, his hair sweetly perfumed with a pearl that dangled becomingly from one ear.

  ‘You are welcome, my lord.’

  ‘My master, the King of Scotland bids me to plead for clemency for the Queen Mother of Scotland.’

  How Mary would have hated to hear him use the title she had so recently spurned.

  ‘Your master is not alone in this, my lord, be assured.’

  ‘I am relieved to hear it. My master begs you to beware of the damage this execution could do to your international reputation as a great and merciful queen. He begs you to think of the similarity between you both – as women, as queens, as cousins.’

  ‘Thank your master for his concern and assure him that I do think of all these things, not just daily but hourly, even from minute to minute.’

  ‘My master King James also begs you to consider his own position and to what straits and hazards his reputation may be plunged among his own people if any violence be offered to h
is mother.’

  ‘I can see your master’s difficulty.’

  He also wishes me to point out, Your Grace, how strange and monstrous a thing it would be to subject an absolute prince to the judgment of subjects. How prodigious, if an absolute prince should be made so dangerous a precedent for the profaning and vilifying of her own and other princes’ diadems.’

  ‘Aye, my lord, and you may tell your master that it is just such that fills me with horror and with hesitation. Yet it is to his mother’s part that I must place the responsibility. It is her behaviour that has driven me to this extremity.’

  The Master of Gray appeared to have finished his pleading and bowed to indicate as much. I held out my hand for him to kiss and he came very close to me in order to do so. As he bent over to perform the courtesy he whispered a phrase that was meant for my ears alone. ‘Mortua non mordet.’

  A dead woman biteth not – it was clear I was to understand that this whispered phrase was his master’s real message to me. Should I kill the Queen of Scots, I could expect only token protest from her son.

  Poor Mary, there were few who mattered who did not want her dead. It seemed that, apart from the Scots people themselves, it was only I who stood between her and the scaffold.

  Although I still had not signed the death warrant, events proceeded as if such an outcome was inevitable. Mary herself even wrote me a farewell letter, forgiving me for what was about to be done in my name. Her words made me weep, but I also noted her continuing stubborn refusal to accept that she had any part in her own demise. To my chagrin, it was also clear from her words that she had a subtle understanding of the life I was condemning myself to by signing away hers. I could not blame her for twisting the knife.