by Susan Kay
His conscience gave him precious little trouble, for he was well satisfied that the end had justified the means. She would outride this stormy scandal and allow him to lead her down that path which would end in a foreign alliance and a wise marriage, to an heir with no traitor’s blood flowing in his veins. Their spiritual reunion was complete, their dreams once more in perfect harmony; together they would serve this land and make it great. He was quite certain that no golden apple, however sweet its promise, would ever turn her from her chosen path again.
Elizabeth sat in moody silence, twisting a ruby aglet on the bodice of her gown; when it came away in her hand, she cursed and got up. A mantle of silver-spangled lawn fell from her shoulders and trailed in the rushes as she walked away to the empty hearth.
“Now that the inquest is over,” she remarked casually, without looking at him, “I shall recall him to court.”
“If you think it wise,” he said guardedly. His glance had flickered. She turned to smile at him a trifle unpleasantly.
“Wise or not you have nothing to fear from him now, my friend—have you?”
“Your Majesty?” He kept his gaze steady, but of a sudden all the colour had drained out of his face and he was acutely aware of his own heartbeat.
She ran her fingers caressingly across the chimney-piece and still he saw that twisted little smile about her lips.
“It occurs to me, William Cecil, that you cannot be unduly displeased by Lady Dudley’s timely demise.”
He had known some bad moments in his varied life, but never one to equal this.
She knows!
But that was impossible—inconceivable! There was nothing to link his name with this, no careless mistake, no apparent motive. She could not know—but if she did, would he walk from this room to a cell in the Tower?
Panic touched him, throwing his ordered brain into chaos, but by some remarkable effort of will he stood his ground and faced her calmly. Whatever she suspected, she had no evidence—she could prove nothing in any court of law.
And yet there were other ways for a monarch to dispense with the services of a minister who exceeded his authority—he, like Amy Dudley, could meet with a well-timed accident.
The evening light was failing rapidly and the pupils of her eyes had grown enormous, obliterating all colour from the iris. Black eyes in the pale face of a stranger—and yet not unfamiliar. Where had he seen them before?
Suddenly she held out her hand to him. As he took it and pressed it fervently to his lips, he heard her soft voice and knew, without looking, that she was still smiling.
“I don’t know who murdered Amy—I don’t think I want to know now. But whoever it was I am grateful to him.”
“Madam,” he whispered.
“I won’t be held, Cecil, not by you or any other man. I won’t be harnessed by snaffle and bit. If you would ride an unbroken mare, you must learn to do without a saddle.”
He smiled faintly. “I’m a poor horseman, Your Majesty.”
“I never promised you an easy journey—nor a safe one. Only a unique destination. I am the only person in this world who can give you what you crave. So come with me, Cecil—I need you.”
He released her hand and stood back from her; his face was pale.
“And Dudley? Do you need him too?”
“You must not be jealous,” she said slowly. “I give you my word, now and for all time, that I shall not marry the man, nor take him to my bed. I give you the word of a queen—and a virgin. Is it enough to make you trust me—or would you prefer that I submit to the indignity of medical examination?”
She saw the sudden rush of purple colour in his sallow face, and wondered idly how long it was since anyone had made William Cecil blush like a bashful schoolboy. When he knelt solemnly at her feet and told her that the Queen’s word was as sacred in his mind as the word of God, she was vastly amused by her power to move him, and rapped him lightly on the head with her fan.
“Then pray that I don’t come to confuse the two—as my father did, several times.”
He rose to his feet, inflated by a bubble of triumph that remained invulnerable to the needle of her mockery. She was safe for ever from Dudley’s vulgar grasp; she had given her word, her royal word. And he believed it, because he needed to believe it.
As he left, it occurred to him that it was rather a pity his hand in this remained unseen. It was the triumph of a lifetime that surely ought to be accorded the honour of verse.
Some years after his death, the playwright, John Webster, unwittingly obliged him: “The surest way to chain a woman’s tongue is break her neck; a politician did it.”
Short and to the point, it would have pleased his fastidious taste in epitaphs.
* * *
When Cecil had gone, Elizabeth sat alone in the empty room and played the virginals by candlelight. For a short while her fingers moved with their customary skill across the keyboard, then suddenly struck wildly, savagely, marking a jarring discord of the tinkling notes. She slammed the keyboard shut and gave way to the uncontrollable laughter which had seized her, an uncanny echo of her mother’s wild levity, which had laughed even at death. For, like her mother, she too was laughing at the travesty of love, laughing to find herself caught in a fierce emotional tangle with two men who had nothing in common but ambition and the English language. Two men prepared to fight like dogs for the right to possess her, one desiring her body, the other her soul. Only now did she realise how closely she was bound to them both.
They pulled in opposite directions, and if they pulled long and hard enough no doubt she would split in two, like a rag doll, so that each could run off to his lair, gloating over his dead and useless trophy. Only now she knew how to turn this deadly game to her own advantage. She could be the apex of that triangle, controlling every force within it; Cecil, unwittingly, had just handed her the very means with which to do it.
She was free of Robin now, free of his predatory affection and her own dark uncertainty. She could indulge her love for him within the limits she chose to set. All the world knew she could not marry him, and because she could not marry him he could not expect her to risk the threat of pregnancy. Iron-cast bars of logic would keep him out of her bed and keep him safe—as safe as that terrible secret which need never be told.
But the cream of the jest for her was Cecil—her dear, wily Cecil who imagined he had been so very clever. As indeed he had been—perhaps a little too clever for his own good. He imagined, as they all did, that her reluctance to accept a foreign prince lay in her secret longing for Robert Dudley. Even Cecil believed her public statement that she was wedded to England and would live and die a virgin was just the empty protestation of a coy female. No one took her seriously, and perhaps in the game she had elected to play it was just as well.
Above and beyond her own emotional conflict, the choice of spinsterhood burned free, fuelled by the purest of political considerations. She had seen only too plainly the disaster her sister’s foreign match had brought in its wake. Marriage to France or Spain would reduce England to a vassal state once more, while marriage to an Englishman raised the spectre of faction warfare among her jealous nobility. There was only one way for a Queen Regnant to survive and that was alone. As she was now she had perhaps another twenty years to play her enemies off against each other, to drive a wedge between France and Spain by keeping both in perpetual fear that she would marry a candidate of either side. It was a game that only a woman could hope to get away with and, if it worked, it would gain her the time she needed to rebuild a nation which was spiritually and financially bankrupt. She would cultivate this country till it bloomed like a fine rose; she would cosset trade, stimulate education, encourage piracy, and fling her ships wide to the wealth of the new world. She would not be too nice about her methods; whatever paid was worthwhile and when trouble threatened she would wriggle out of it with a cunn
ing facade of lies. She was probably the most accomplished liar in the world, and proud of it! She had no illusions about what lay ahead—there would be years of endless struggle, perhaps even heartbreak, years in which she would have to fight herself and her own desires as hard, if not harder, than the myriads of enemies around her. In many ways it would be a nun’s existence.
She stood at the crossroads of her life and stared at the deep forking of the ways. Down one lay the ultimate fulfilment of a woman; down the other the fulfilment of a queen. And for a moment, as she saw the steep and barbed path before her, she quailed. She wanted to ride to Kew and throw herself into Robin’s arms and beg him to lay the ghosts that haunted her; she wanted to love and be loved and bear him a dozen merry, black-haired children. But it wouldn’t work. In her heart she knew that, knew that she was not fit to be any man’s wife.
Yet those very things which flawed her womanhood could be made to serve England and make her a great queen. She could play them all off against each other, France and Spain and the Papacy, people and Parliament, Cecil and Robin—
Poor Robin!
She was aware of tears in her eyes and rubbed them away with a fierce gesture. Great queens did not wail like little girls for what could not be! She went to her mirror and took up the tiny pots of paint which would remove the marks of grief from the mask of majesty. When she had finished, her reflection looked back at her calmly, a bold, clever face that was both composed and utterly resolute.
Two men and one woman, she thought suddenly and smiled, for she knew she could make it work. She could have the pair of them on her own terms and take from them everything they had to give. And she could do it for no better reason than that one of them—normally the most clear-sighted of men—had allowed fear to make him act like a fool.
One small mistake, with devastating consequences, had given her the whip-hand over them both.
Part 3
The Queen
“She fished for men’s souls and had so sweet a bait none could escape her network…She caught many a poor fish who little knew what snare was laid for them.”
—Sir Christopher Hatton
Chapter 1
The chamber of mourning was silent and lit by the glow of black candles, the heavy curtains drawn to shut out the bright light of day. The death of a French king was traditionally followed by forty days of isolation for his widow and not even the irreverent rays of the sun were permitted to intrude on this formalised period of grief. Apart from her four handmaidens, Mary Stuart had seen no one for over a month and, in spite of her genuine sorrow for the loss of one who had been a playmate rather than a husband, she was beginning to find the compulsory inactivity tedious.
Outside, beyond the courtyard of Orleans, the bells were ringing, as indeed they were still ringing out all over France: The King is dead, long live the King!
But the King for whom they rang was a frightened nine-year-old boy cowering in the apartments of his dominating mother. Catherine de Medici was a mysterious, vindictive woman, waiting only for a decent interval to elapse before she might have the extremely personal pleasure of ejecting her detested daughter-in-law from French soil.
Mary knew in her heart that a few months’ respite was the most she could expect from the woman she had once carelessly castigated as a tradesman’s daughter. And then it would be goodbye to France for the girl who was Queen of Scotland by birth, Dowager Queen of France by marriage, and Queen of England by right in the eyes of every good Catholic in Europe.
There would be no opportunity to arrange another marriage on French soil, with her mother-in-law, as Regent, blocking every diplomatic avenue. No matter which way she looked at it, Mary could see no alternative for the time being but a return to her native land.
She remembered very little of Scotland. The country was just a faded nightmare, an echo of wild hoofbeats in the night, bearing her away from her English enemies, a smell of damp and decay and sweat. All that was proud and fastidious in her recoiled at the memory, so that her mind writhed like an animal in the snares of a net, seeking the loophole that would mean escape. And when she thought of escape she thought of England—rightfully hers, snatched from her grasp by a greedy Protestant usurper. It was hard to believe that the English could first take a bastard for their Queen and then support her through the most disgusting scandal since the days when old King Henry’s matrimonial farces had entertained the courts of Europe. Elizabeth was not only a bastard, she was a whore; so what dark arts did she practise to keep a people as proud as the English in submission beneath her amoral rule?
Mary had stared long into her Venetian mirror asking herself this very question, and now believed she had the answer. Lack of choice had cramped the English into mutinous acceptance of this “live dog”—Mary smiled to think how close the Bishop of Winchester had come by that remark to calling his Queen a bitch. But once the Queen of Scotland sat on her throne beyond the border, it would be a different case. With the right marriage and foreign troops to enforce her claim, she could be Queen of England within six months. There remained one distasteful obstacle in her chosen path. To reach Scotland it would be necessary to pass through English waters; to do that without jeopardy required a written safe-conduct from the so-called Queen of England; and to ask for that was to imply that the usurper had authority to grant it.
All that was young and impulsive in Mary cried out that she would rather enter a French convent than submit to the indignity of asking Elizabeth Tudor for anything. But ambition, warring against her finer sensibilities, told her that for once she must lower her high-stomached Stuart pride. First get home in safety to Scotland and then—England would be her footstool.
So ask—where was the harm? Elizabeth would never dare to refuse. Indeed, the only obstacle Mary foresaw lay in getting the English jade out of the Horsemaster’s bed just long enough for her to sign the necessary document.
Mary laughed and turned from the mirror; she often laughed when she thought of Elizabeth. A horsemaster, a low-born knave, a traitor’s son—was it possible such a harlot could stand in her way for long?
She rang the bell for her ladies and smiled gaily when they entered. Tomorrow the black candles would be doused to mark the end of her official period of mourning and she would begin to build herself a new life beyond the safe haven of French shores.
* * *
Fierce July sunlight streamed in gold shafts through the latticed windows of the Long Gallery and struck green fire from the emeralds in Elizabeth’s hair. She smoothed the plumes of her feathered fan between her fingers and stood looking out over the busy river which was dotted with barges and small boats. Beneath her gaze, London heaved with activity like a huge ant-hill; it was a sight she never tired of watching from this splendid vantage point, the throbbing heart of their kingdom.
Cecil, who waited at her side, shifted his weight on to his good leg and glanced at her face, which as usual told him nothing. She had flown into a public rage when news of Mary Stuart’s request had reached her, but since she was perfectly capable of producing rage, grief, or pleasure in appropriate proportions whenever it suited her, he was uncertain of her real reaction.
For himself, he was horrified by the news, and knew his alarm was shared by most of the Council. The Queen’s most significant rival installed in close proximity across the border was a grim prospect for the future. It was bound to excite unrest in the Catholic North. Mary’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh had nullified its most important clause. Her claim to the English throne still stood and in all essentials they were right back where they had started.
He was tired and vaguely depressed; his foot was throbbing with gout. If only the Queen were not so fond of standing! He eyed a footstool with regret and coughed discreetly, to remind her of his presence.
“Shall I draft a reply to the Scottish Queen, madam?”
“If you will.” She turned from
the window. “I think I have made my feelings quite plain. Unless she signs the Treaty and renounces her claim I shall not guarantee her safety in English waters.”
Cecil fingered his plain buttons uneasily.
“And if she refuses, madam—what then?”
Elizabeth raised the plumed fan so that only her dark eyes and brilliant hair were visible above the white feathers.
“Then, my friend, it will be my life or hers in the end. Instruct Throckmorton of my terms.”
Cecil bowed bleakly, and took himself and his gout away.
* * *
“—and so, madam, under the circumstances,” Throckmorton’s voice quivered with embarrassment, “I fear Her Majesty is obliged to refuse your safe conduct.”
A gasp of disbelief came from the little group of attendants surrounding the Scottish Queen and Mary rose with icy dignity from her chair.
“Draw back,” she said to the women closest to her. “I have no desire to make a vulgar display of my temper in public.”
She swept away to a pink-cushioned window-seat and the English Ambassador, miserably humiliated, followed her.
“I’m sorry, madam,” Throckmorton said quietly. “There was nothing I could do to spare you this—nothing anyone can do with Her Majesty in such a mood. And yet—” He groped hopefully for her hand. “If you would only sign this treaty, you would find her more than amenable. My mistress can be a loyal friend.” His voice dropped very low. “Or a deadly enemy. I beseech you from the bottom of my heart not to win her as the latter.”
Mary smiled gently and touched his arm. She was not afraid of his mistress, as Throckmorton so plainly was, and it was time she made that fact quite clear.
“The enmity of the English is nothing new to me, sir,” she said pleasantly. “Your late King attempted to prevent my journey to France when I was but a child. I will not relinquish what I know to be my rights simply to spare myself your Queen’s displeasure. I shall sail without her permission, and regret only that I so far forgot myself as to ask a favour of her in the first place.”
