by Susan Kay
Hatton smiled faintly and reached for his ivory cane.
“I understand, my friend. You have done well to bring this matter so far, but I think it is time the warrant was laid in Lord Burghley’s hands. Come—we will go now.”
Burghley stared at the warrant on the table before him. It took him just five minutes to make the most momentous decision in his career, five minutes during which he remembered that moment when he had bowed before her and sworn that he was hers to command in all things.
Just see that you remember that, my friend. At all times.
He recalled the curious quiver of fear which he had felt as she spoke. It was almost as though she had foreseen this very moment when he would be in a position to usurp her authority in a manner both unprecedented and cavalier. But surely this was what she was waiting for him to do. And after all, it was not the first time he had staked his career on a hunch by sending a woman to her death. A great deal passed through the complex corridors of Burghley’s mind during those endless minutes of hesitation, but at the end of them his decision was firm and unshakeable. He knew what had to be done now; and he sent out a secret summons to all the available members of the Privy Council.
The next morning, tense and expectant, eight men trooped into his private room and took their seats. There was a portentous silence as Burghley rose stiffly to his feet and addressed the little gathering.
“My lords, the Queen has done her part in signing the warrant, all indeed that the law requires to make the execution legal. But despatching it, gentlemen, as I am sure you are all aware, is a very different matter and one which could take considerable time. Time we do not have. I am sure you all understand how easily a change of mind could take place.” The cool eyes swept round all those watching faces. “Here is the warrant.” He flourished the document from which dangled the Great Seal of England. “For my own part, gentlemen, I see no reason to trouble Her Majesty further with details of procedure. I therefore propose that we should all take responsibility for despatching the warrant without delay.”
The response to Burghley’s remarkable proposal was a unanimous agreement that no man would inform the Queen of their action until the deed was accomplished. Talking quietly among themselves, the councillors drifted out to take dinner, but Leicester lingered in Burghley’s room, absently kicking a log in the hearth and sending a shower of sparks into the chimney.
Burghley watched him cautiously from the security of his armchair.
“Well,” said the Earl at last, staring bleakly into the flames, “I only hope we’ve done the right thing.”
“If you had any doubts, Leicester, you should have voiced them at the appropriate time,” retorted Burghley coolly. “I hope I don’t need to remind you of your commitment to this undertaking. It would take more than thirty pieces of silver to buy your way out of this, I assure you!”
Leicester sighed; he seemed too distracted to take offence at that unkind snipe against his integrity.
“I advised secret murder, did you know?” he mused quietly. “I hear from Davison that she took my advice, after all. Don’t you think—”
Burghley frowned. “Paulet will never agree—he knows he would shoulder the blame for it. And for precisely that same reason we’ll never get an assassin of our own past his guardianship. Put it out of your mind, Leicester—it’s much better the honourable way.”
“Honourable!” Leicester turned to look at him ironically. “You call sending it behind her back honourable? I hardly think that will be her choice of word.”
“We’re all in this together,” Burghley insisted steadily, “and a united front will be our shield against her anger.”
Leicester shook his head sombrely.
“There’s no shield in all the world that will protect you after this, my friend. I’d hazard a rough guess and say it will probably mean the end of your career.”
Burghley smiled faintly. “Yes—you’d like that wouldn’t you, Leicester? Old grievances die hard even after all these years. But whatever the outcome I shall always stand by my decision. The Queen’s life must be preserved at any cost.”
Leicester turned from the fire and looked at him squarely.
“Even at the cost of her sanity?”
Burghley looked away uncomfortably.
“It won’t come to that.”
“Won’t it? I wish I was so sure. She worries me, Burghley, I think we’ve pushed her too far. Oh, Christ, man, can’t you see how unstable she is? The news of this could send her right over the edge. Are you happy to face Philip with the Queen incapable of active government? Do you think we’d stand a chance without her?”
“You could be wrong,” insisted Burghley doggedly. “Will you answer for her life if you are?”
Leicester turned away abruptly. It was an impossible choice.
“I pray that I am wrong,” he said dully. “I pray for it more than anything else in this world. And if I were you, Burghley, I would start praying too, night and day, until the moment comes when she has to be told.”
* * *
In the Great Hall of Fotheringay Castle there was silence as Mary Stuart knelt before the wooden block, her eyes blindfolded and buried deep in a black cushion. She had behaved throughout the ceremony with all the tragic composure of a Druid sacrifice and her dignity had awed the hostile crowd to the point of breathless reverence. She had repented her crimes, large and small, she had forgiven her enemies and made her peace with God during that endless February night when she had knelt at her prie-dieu until dawn. She had meant to die like a saint in the eyes of man and God, but now in the all-engulfing darkness, waiting for that final act, her mind reached not out to Heaven, but to Hell.
Such a small thing really, but it had robbed her of her inward composure and made her last moment on this earth one of overwhelming hatred. In her natural pride she had taken it for granted that she would be despatched from this life, as befitted her rank, by the mercifully swift caress of a sharp sword. But in less than a second her head would be severed by the common headsman’s axe which she had seen waiting, half concealed in the straw which covered the scaffold. For that and for that alone she vowed eternal vengeance on the woman she imagined had ordered it out of spite.
Dear God…give me grace to haunt her all the rest of her days!
The words were stifled in the black velvet of the cushion and before the last syllable had died on her trembling lips the axe had fallen. Three times it arched through the still air, hacking with all the clumsy butchery she had dreaded, before Mary’s head at last rolled away from her body. The executioner grasped the head by the hair and swung it aloft, only to find himself grasping an empty chestnut wig. Grey-haired and smeared with blood, the head rolled across the scaffold like some hideous ball and a gasp of horror went up from the spectators, for the eyes were open and the lips—it was plainly seen—the lips were still moving. From beneath her red skirts Mary’s little terrier crept whimpering and came to cower in the pool of blood between the head and the slumped body. For a long time no one moved and then the scene was transfigured by frantic activity. The dog was carried upstairs to be washed of his mistress’s blood. The head and body were borne away for embalming and while the block and Mary’s clothing were carried outside to be burned, that no martyr’s relics might remain, George Talbot spurred his horse out of Fotheringay courtyard, riding through the night to bring news of the deed to Greenwich Palace.
Burghley said, “She is not to be told yet.”
Talbot gaped at him with absolute amazement and the Lord Treasurer inclined his head with the first sign of nervousness. “It would be better to break it cautiously to her by degrees,” he said huskily.
Talbot registered one thing with certainty from this incredible command; the great Lord Burghley was evidently a very frightened man.
* * *
In London the celebration bells rang on
for twenty-four hours while the people lit bonfires and danced all night in the streets at the news. It was the bells which finally betrayed the English councillors’ guilty secret when the Queen inquired the cause of their ringing from one of her ladies. What happened after that no one at the English court cared to remember. By the end of forty-eight hours, when she had stopped sobbing long enough to find her voice, Greenwich Palace was like a spiritual battleground. Davison was in the Tower, waiting to be hanged for betraying her trust; Burghley was banished from court on the understanding that his face was repugnant to her sight; Walsingham in deepest disgrace and, with Hatton, forbidden to come into her presence. Shocked and alarmed, they comforted themselves with the knowledge that she would get over it; a month later they had begun to sense the real possibility that she would not.
Burghley sat alone at Theobalds, that great country mansion which he had erected as a monument to his Queen, and brooded on the calamity which had overtaken him. Twice now in a long and very distinguished career of practised mind-reading, he had grievously misread the desires of his royal mistress—and twice a woman had died because of it. But this time he had been so sure—so certain—that he was doing what she really wanted; and the sudden, irrational vengeance which she had wreaked upon him had left him dumbstruck.
He was finished—all his years of devoted service thrown back in his withered face like so much trash, flung out of court like an old dog whose tricks had tired at last. She no longer had any use for him. Only his age had saved him from sharing Davison’s imprisonment in the Tower.
Mildred watched from the doorway in grim silence as the crippled old figure hunched over his desk, day after day, scribbling frantic letters to his royal mistress, each one returned to him unopened, so that he must put it aside and endorse it methodically “Not received.” At first he had said with forced cheerfulness, “I’ve weathered her storms before. You’ll see—she’ll send for me again within a few days. She can’t do without me—I know she can’t.”
A week later he said, “They say she’s ill—what can be expected if she refuses to eat or sleep? But I tell you, Mildred, once she begins to feel better it will all be forgotten.”
Two weeks later he banged his fist on the table and shouted, “I know who’s behind this—it’s Leicester—pouring his poison into her ears—playing on her mind when she’s vulnerable—he’s always done that. If only I could speak to her, if only she would send for me and give me a chance to explain—”
It was March before he got his chance to do that and Mildred thought how pathetic it was to see a white-haired old man stumbling about his room in his haste to obey the royal summons, like an elderly dog who has heard his master’s whistle at last.
He was back almost before his wife had time to accept that he was gone, stumbling from his grey mule and staggering into the house, leaning heavily on the arm of his steward. Mildred found him in the library, crumpling his hat in his hands. He turned to look at her with tears running down his parchment cheeks, losing themselves in the white, wiry hairs of his beard.
“William!” She hurried across the room and helped him to a chair. “What happened? Why are you back?”
He shook his head, unable to accept it, and his voice was broken.
“It was just the same—no—it was worse—she just stood there, leaning on Leicester’s arm—she looked so different, almost old—still dressed in mourning black, a black veil over her face. She wouldn’t give me her hand to kiss—she made me stand through the whole interview.”
Mildred was silent for a moment, shocked by the significance of that last detail.
“But the Queen never lets you stand,” she muttered at last. “Once she even stopped a speech because she saw you had no chair.”
“She made me stand,” he repeated dully, almost as though it were the final cruelty which had broken his spirit. “Her eyes were full of hatred, Mildred. I tried to speak, I tried to reason with her, but she would not hear me out. She called me false dissembler, traitor—wicked wretch—in front of Leicester and Walsingham. And even Leicester looked away at that. It’s not him, Mildred, it’s not him, as I thought—as I hoped. It’s her—it’s all her. They say the wrath of the king is death—she means to prove it in me.”
“William—you’re ill—you must not distress yourself like this.”
He looked up at his wife and smiled bitterly.
“My sickness is grounded on her ingratitude—it burns deeper than a continual fever.”
Mildred knelt stiffly by his chair and laid her plain, homely face against his hands.
“William—you have the children—the grandchildren—this beautiful house and the life she never gave you time to enjoy. Take this as a God-given chance to spend your remaining years in peace and tranquillity. Forget her, my dearest—forget her! Let her go.”
He looked down at the grey head in his lap and gently touched the peak of her cap. “When they lay me in my grave,” he said.
* * *
Once the door had closed behind Burghley’s bent, defeated figure, Walsingham had bowed and crept softly out of the room, exchanging a quick, sympathetic glance with Leicester, who remained behind.
After the violent scene which had just taken place there was an uneasy silence and the Queen, in her sweeping mourning gown, began to wander aimlessly from room to room in her private apartments, driven by the morbid restlessness which plagued her day and night. Leicester followed at a distance, watching her, conducting a disjointed and fragmentary conversation which, no matter what he said, seemed disturbingly one-sided. He had begun to realise that his replies were not registering, that though she appeared to be addressing him, she was in reality talking to herself.
“I never desired her death. Never!”
“But when you signed the warrant we all assumed—”
“No one believes me. No one will ever believe me. No one!”
“I believe you. For pity’s sake, my love, stop tormenting yourself like this.”
“I look into their eyes and tell them I never meant it to be done and their eyes look back and call me liar. Murderess. I’ve killed so many and they all lie quietly in their graves, except her—but then she’s not buried yet. Yes, that must be it—she has nowhere grand to rest. I will give her a state funeral—all the pomp and ceremony due to a queen—whatever it costs—perhaps then she’ll leave me alone.”
She walked into the bedroom and he hurried after her with an icy tingling at the base of his spine. She was staring at her tapestry frame, untouched now for many weeks, picking hopelessly at the stitches, unravelling half a rose. This time he went right up to her and took her hands in alarm.
“What do you mean—leave you alone?”
She looked up and there was fear in her eyes, the same wild, unreasoning terror that he had glimpsed occasionally when she woke from nightmares; nightmares he had never prevailed upon her to describe. He remembered the disorientation that would continue for endless minutes, until the last mists of sleep were shaken from her confused mind; his own relief when she finally sat up and laughed, while still shaking, apologised for waking him so rudely yet again, suggested that perhaps she should change his adjoining room for a more peaceful apartment.
But now there was no hope that she would wake up and laugh, however shakily; for she was wide awake.
She took his hand and pressed his fingers against her throat on the bare patch of skin between her chin and the great cartwheel ruff.
“There,” she said. “You can feel it, can’t you?”
The fine network of hairline cracks across her mind was so clear to Leicester, in that moment, that he might have been looking at some ancient Greek vase, infinitely fragile, equally precious. He knew instinctively that one false jar now would send the whole precarious structure crumbling. He was going to have to choose his words with the utmost care.
“Yes,” he said quiet
ly, cautiously, “I can feel it. I think—you had better tell me, how it came to be there.”
Her eyes widened on his face in an ecstasy of relief and suddenly words were tumbling from her in a great breathless torrent. Some of them went past his understanding, like the rapid pummelling of a mighty waterfall, but he caught enough of her meaning to make his own senses reel with horror. She spoke repeatedly of the chain of iron about her neck and of queens, murdered queens, his victim—and hers. One owned what the other now sought, a bridge back to life.
“…but she will not give me up—why should she? I was always hers. So they fight, they fight when I sleep and their conflict consumes me. I burn candles all night long in my room to prevent it—I fear sleep more than I fear death.”
As he stood and listened to her ravings, his face contorted, as though he were about to weep. She saw it and stiffened, stepped back from him with one hand at her throat.
“Am I mad?” she whispered hollowly. “Is this what it feels like? Shall I be shut away like Philip’s wretched grandmother?” She pressed her hands against her temples in gathering panic. “I should not have told you—I should not have told anyone—”
He caught her hands and kissed them furiously.
“I swear to you,” he said, in a curiously choked voice, “I swear to you, as God is my witness, that I will never speak of this or betray you to anyone.”
“I have been betrayed on all sides by those who are closest in my counsel,” she said dully. “You are all that is left to me out of a pit of vipers.”
Whatever part he had played in that betrayal, she appeared to have forgotten. He alone had escaped the wrath she had visited on the rest of the Council; and now he understood why.
