His Dark Lady

by Victoria Lamb

  Led to the block, Mary knelt before it on a cushion, not looking at the dreadful object but staring some way ahead, her lips moving in silent prayer.

  One of her women came forward and, with badly shaking hands, folded a gilt-embroidered white cloth for a blindfold. This she placed gently over her mistress’s eyes, with some whispered words of comfort, then knotted it behind Mary’s head and stepped back.

  The watching gentlemen in the hall were silent at last, sitting motionless as they waited for the end. Even the Dean of Peterborough had finished reading quietly from the psalms and now closed his Bible, looking on with a sudden expression of pity.

  ‘In te Domine confido, non confundar in aeternum,’ Mary declared, putting her trust in the Lord, and fumbled blindly for the block.

  Finding the smooth hollow where her neck must rest, the Scottish Queen lowered herself to the block, and then, as though to make herself more comfortable there, turned her cheek slightly to face the wall where Goodluck stood.

  Her face was pale again now, almost as white as the cloth binding her eyes. There was an awkward moment as the executioner’s assistant bent to remove her two hands from the block, where she had been gripping on to the wood as though for very life itself. The man muttered something in her ear, and Mary stretched her arms and legs out from the block so as not to impede the blow.

  The masked executioner laid aside the cloth he had been using to wipe the sweat from his hands and picked up his axe in a businesslike manner. He stepped forward, taking up a position just behind the Queen and to her left.

  As though the blindfolded Mary had suddenly sensed Bull’s presence behind her, Goodluck saw her outstretched arms begin to shake. Nonetheless, the Queen did not attempt to move from the block but maintained a dignified composure in her last seconds.

  Goodluck steeled himself to watch the moment of execution itself, though the compassion he felt for the Queen surprised him with its intensity. Having spent the better part of a year disguised as a Catholic, Goodluck knew that the plainer English faith was at heart not that dissimilar from its Catholic roots. At the end of one’s life, it was the same Jesus Christ to whom one cried in extremis. The Queen’s desperate prayers had moved him almost to tears, and while his head knew that Mary Stuart deserved this fate for colluding with the Catholic plotters who had sought her cousin’s death, his heart told him that this execution was cruel and unjust.

  ‘Into thy hands, O Lord,’ Mary cried urgently in Latin, repeating her prayer several times in a strong voice, ‘I commend my spirit.’

  Lord Shrewsbury, seated close at hand on the dais, had risen slowly to his feet as Mary was led to the block. Now, with a last grim look about the hall, he raised his white staff of office to indicate that the Queen was ready to die, and nodded to Bull to perform the task.

  Bull raised his axe high, with an almost interminable pause at the top of the swing, then brought it down.

  ‘Jesu!’ Mary seemed to exclaim, her lips jerked open, blood streaming from a deep gash in the back of her head, her neck still intact.

  Horrified by the man’s incompetence, Goodluck swore beneath his breath and crossed himself.

  Undeterred, Bull widened his stance and swung the heavy axe above his head again.

  This time the blow struck true, and Mary’s head fell forward, not quite cut off but no longer on her shoulders. This problem was remedied after another few moments, Bull stooping above the block to hack away at the remains of her neck with his axe. Finally the deed was done and the Queen’s head dropped to the platform, fully severed.

  A little breathless from his efforts, Bull bent to grasp it by its white cap. He lifted the bloodied head and swung it round to show the watching crowd. ‘God save the Queen!’

  At that moment the cap and red hair below seemed to detach themselves. Suddenly Bull had nothing but a cap and wig in his hand, while the Queen’s almost bald head went rolling like a football across the platform, leaving a gruesome trail of blood behind.

  Grey-haired, it came to rest facing Goodluck, lips still jerking up and down as though in prayer.

  Sickened and speechless, Goodluck looked away from the dreadful sight. Then he heard the pitiful cries of her ladies and gentlemen attendants and, glancing across the hall, saw that Lord Shrewsbury, too, was crying. It seemed nobody quite knew what to do now that the execution was complete. For a moment there was chaos, gentlemen leaping up and knocking chairs over in their hurry either to leave the hall or to get a better view of her lifeless corpse, and above it all, the Dean of Peterborough could be heard saluting Queen Elizabeth, and crying, ‘So perish all the Queen’s enemies!’

  As the Earl of Kent began to cheer, a sudden shriek went up from the small crowd gathered below the block. Her body still slumped sideways in a pool of blood, the dead Queen’s petticoats were stirring unnaturally, almost as though her bloodied trunk was about to rise and walk again to fetch its head.

  Goodluck stared, wholly disconcerted. Dark tales of supernatural resurrections came back to him, and the hairs lifted on the back of his neck.

  Stooping to lift the sticky petticoat, with no sign of fear or respect, the executioner’s assistant reached in and dragged out a small white terrier, which must have been concealed under the Queen’s skirts throughout the execution. The little dog yapped and twisted about in his grasp, clearly panicked. One of the Queen’s ladies came forward, sobbing violently, to take the animal. But as soon as he released it, the terrier scampered round and tucked itself into the gory space where Mary’s head had been, its white fur matting with blood.

  Goodluck bowed to the gentleman next to him, who was still staring, horrified, at the Queen’s twitching lips, and left the over-heated hall.

  That evening, as dusk was falling, Goodluck made his way slowly back up to Fotheringay Castle, heading this time for the postern gate.

  The captain happened to be in the guardroom. He asked Goodluck’s business curtly, no doubt having spent the day turning a steady stream of curious visitors away from the scene of the Scottish Queen’s beheading. But he accepted Goodluck’s note of business politely enough and bore it away inside.

  Goodluck lit a pipeful of tobacco from the brazier in the guardroom and waited out of the cold, smoking and exchanging pleasantries with the guards as they played a game of dice.

  When the captain returned, he was accompanied by a short balding man whom Goodluck recognized as one of the castle servants. This man looked him up and down, then invited Goodluck to walk out with him a little way along the path.

  ‘So you are Walsingham’s man. I was beginning to think you were not coming. From his letter, I expected you this afternoon,’ he told Goodluck once they were out of earshot of the castle walls.

  ‘There were still too many people about earlier in the day. Besides, these things are better done in the dark.’

  The man grunted. ‘That’s as may be,’ he remarked, with a touch of bravado, though Goodluck noticed how he glanced nervously about himself more than once in the thickening dusk. ‘But I didn’t like wandering the castle with such a gruesome trophy about my person, I can tell you. If I had been searched—’

  ‘But I take it you were not,’ Goodluck commented drily. He held out a hand, turning so that no one watching from inside the castle would be able to see the transaction. ‘Why not let me relieve you of your burden now? Then you may go about your duties with a clear conscience.’

  Hesitant, his small dark eyes watchful, the man dug into the pocket hanging from his belt and brought out a coarse handkerchief folded very small and tied with string. This makeshift parcel he handed to Goodluck with a dramatic shudder. ‘Here you are. Though what your master wants with it, I would not like to think.’

  ‘As well, then,’ Goodluck said pleasantly, unwrapping the small handkerchief, ‘that it is none of your business.’ He looked down at the short grey lock of hair concealed within the cloth folds. It curled slightly, dried blood still attached to one end. ‘Strange to think h
er hair was no longer red, but grey.’

  The man made no reply, but bowed and took himself back to the castle with a muttered, ‘Goodnight,’ clearly uncomfortable now that his task had been discharged.

  Goodluck wrapped the dead Queen’s lock of hair once more in the handkerchief, secreted the grisly parcel in the lining of his jacket, and set off back to the inn where he had been staying. It was a chill night, but with only a light frost on the ground. Spring was definitely in the air. He would keep the same room at the inn tonight, then begin the ride home to London as soon as he had breakfasted.

  Though there seemed little need for him to hurry back, now that Mary was finally dead. Confirmation of her death would have reached Sir Francis Walsingham tonight anyway. Which meant the chief secretary would be too busy dealing with Queen Elizabeth’s anger tomorrow to wonder where Goodluck was with the requested memento of his triumph over the Catholic Queen.

  Ten

  ELIZABETH REINED IN her horse at the head of a path, pausing under the bare-limbed trees to admire the view. The air is so fresh out here at Greenwich, she thought. Chilly, too, with a greyish icy coating to the trunks and spring not yet upon them, but not unbearably so. Anyway, it was a relief not to be constantly raising a pomander to her nose in case some foul whiff caused her to retch.

  The forest at least was clean. Nothing to shrink from here. The vast wooded estate of Greenwich Palace stretched before her, a maze of narrow forest paths and bursts of meadow for the gallop. A golden place in summer, but now the woods were still wintry, most of the stark branches not yet in bud. Inviting nonetheless; a place to try and forget the troubles that pressed so closely these days. Elizabeth thought of the dirty swell of wherries and slow river barges they had passed on their way into the woods, bobbing on a scummy tide so white in places it looked like milk that had curdled. The men aboard had halted to stare as her glittering entourage passed, shielding their eyes against the sun, then bent to their tasks again. ‘Haul away there!’, ‘Fresh fish!’, ‘Passage to the docks!’ Their faint cries disturbed the air even now, like crows jeering in the sunshine. A man must earn his living, but all the same …

  Suddenly irritable, her head turned. What had she heard now? Not the coarse voices of watermen, but bells. Church bells.

  She held up a hand for silence as the band of accompanying courtiers came level with her, and listened for a moment, not sure whether she had imagined the sound.

  Her bodyguards glanced at each other. They too had caught the echoes from the city and seemed to sense danger. They nudged their mounts closer, flanking her small party of gentlemen and ladies.

  She glanced back. Robert had stopped to listen to the bells as well. He had been riding at the back of the cavalcade, deep in conversation with one of the men he had brought back from the Low Countries, a bald-headed fellow with a curt manner. More conspiracy and high intrigue, she thought. Well, if she did not ask what went on and Robert did not tell her, she need not bother her head with it. She was oddly comfortable with that tacit arrangement. It should be her new policy. Feast and dance and ride, and never ask what her closest men were planning in their ‘secret’ meetings that everyone knew about.

  Robert had spurred his horse towards her, now hauling on the reins to bring his stallion from a brisk canter to a standstill beside her. Such a show-off. Except he must have sunk his spurs too deeply into the horse’s glossy black side, for the animal reared up madly, hooves lashing the air. Cursing under his breath, Robert kept the horse on a short rein, talking to it and gripping its flanks with thighs and knees until the stallion was calm again.

  He might no longer be the vital young man she had fallen in love with as a girl, yet he had lost none of his magical touch with horses. Nor with her, truth be told. Though she should not humiliate herself by admitting that, even in the privacy of her own heart.

  ‘Listen, do you hear? Are those bells ringing in the city, do you think?’ Elizabeth asked.

  He listened, one hand stroking down his horse’s neck. Too idly, she thought. He was not surprised.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded. Her eyes narrowed on his face. ‘What do you know?’ Her mind leapt ahead to disaster. Church bells pealing out across the river. Men running, fire in the city. An old panic swamped her, all thoughts of her ride forgotten. ‘Is it an invasion? Are the Spanish coming?’

  ‘I doubt it, Your Majesty,’ he reassured her, though now he was looking uncomfortable. ‘We would have had better warning.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ she told him, wheeling her horse about, ‘let us ride back and discover the cause. I cannot be easy in my mind until I am sure we are not about to be set upon by a pack of Spaniards creeping out of the hedgerows.’

  ‘Your Majesty, wait!’

  Elizabeth ignored him. She urged her horse on past the confused guards and her staring women, their mounts fidgeting and tearing at the grasses in the cold sunlight.

  These church bells meant something, and Robert knew it. But what? Enough of these games, she thought, and dug in her heels.

  She left the woodlands and returned by way of the winding path alongside the River Thames, which was the quicker route back to the palace grounds. The sound of bells was louder there, insistent, pealing down the river. Was every church tower in London thronged with mad bell-ringers? Her anger mounted, beating in her head with wings of steel. Her councillors were hiding some momentous happening from her. They were treating her like a child who could not be trusted with the truth. Whatever had happened, the whole of England seemed to know. Yet she, their queen, was ignorant of it.

  She envisaged hordes of swarthy Spaniards setting fire to her beloved London and putting its citizens to the sword while she rode out with her ladies like a simpering fool.

  ‘God’s death, what is it?’ she exclaimed in her frustration.

  At her back came the sound of hooves. Robert and her guards had begun to catch up with her.

  But no, no. Wait, listen again. Her mind steadied. The church bells did not sound a warning. They were not a call to arms, nor a terrified cry of ‘Invasion!’ The bells rang out joyfully across the city, each peal tumbling wildly over the other in celebration as they had done on the day of her coronation.

  Round the next bend, she came across a group of commoners by the waterside. Several girls had already waded out into the river with their skirts tucked high into their belts and were bent over, their pale legs reflected in the murky water, searching for the eel traps that had been weighted down on the riverbed. Yet the water must be icy at this time of year, Elizabeth thought, amazed at the sight. Sure enough, the young girls gasped and shivered as they waded, their sleeveless arms red-raw with the cold. A scrawny, grey-haired woman worked on the bankside, grimly exhorting the girls to ‘Keep at it!’ and ‘Drag ’em up!’ The rolled-up sleeves of the old woman’s gown revealed surprisingly muscular arms as she wrestled the captive eels into lidded buckets for market.

  Elizabeth reined in her horse. ‘You there! Why do the bells ring down the river?’ she called out to the old woman.

  Seeing who it was, the old woman looked astonished, then fell to her knees on the muddy bank. The girls turned to stare open-mouthed from the river, shielding their eyes against the low February sun as the royal party came to a halt.

  ‘God save the Queen!’ the old woman cried out with toothless patriotism. She gave a knowing nod, as though Elizabeth had been testing her with that question and she would now prove true. ‘Why, the church bells ring for joy that the Scottish Queen as plotted against Your Majesty is dead.’ She crossed herself piously. ‘May God in His heaven bless you and preserve you from all such wicked creatures of the devil, Your Majesty.’

  Stunned, Elizabeth turned to Robert as he drew rein beside her. ‘I don’t understand. What does the old woman mean? Robert, what does she mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, but again she caught that edge in his voice and her temper flared. Why was he lying to her? Could she trust no one in this
world but old and toothless women, the simple poor of London?

  ‘I must see William Davison at once. Give the old crone a penny for her tale,’ she told him in a choked voice, then brought the crop down hard on her gelding’s rump and felt the animal leap forward, jerking her in the saddle.

  She galloped back to Greenwich, her lips tight with anger and impatience, soon leaving her guards behind as they attempted to keep up. It could not be true, she kept thinking, the reins clutched tight in her gloved hands. Mary’s death warrant had been signed, yes. But she had not given the order for it to be discharged.

  Yet why would the bells be ringing if not to celebrate Mary’s execution? She could understand every sly-eyed courtier in the palace concealing the truth from her. Why would the old woman have lied?

  By the time Elizabeth reached the palace gates, Robert had caught up with her again, the others not far behind.

  He followed her inside, trying to catch at her arm. ‘Your Majesty! Elizabeth, please wait!’

  ‘Tell me it is not true!’ she exclaimed hotly, and shook him off when he did not speak. Turning, she saw Sir Christopher Hatton emerge from one of the Council chambers, his face very sombre. ‘Sir Christopher, what is the meaning of these church bells that are ringing all over London? Sweet Jesu, tell me my cousin still lives!’

  Sir Christopher Hatton glanced at Robert over her shoulder, then bowed his head. The silence dragged on and she felt her face flush with agitation. Why did he not speak?

  ‘You must forgive me for being the bearer of tidings that may cause you unhappiness, Your Majesty,’ Sir Christopher began with slow and politic deliberation, but she interrupted him.