In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  Cecil scratched his head. “I fail to see what is humorous about it, or why Your Grace would make such an absurd offer to begin with.”

  Elizabeth was now helpless with laughter; she sank down onto a stone bench that was at the end of one of the garden paths at the river’s edge. “F-forgive me,” she said. She wiped the tears from her eyes, but this time, they were tears of mirth. She fanned herself with her hands in an effort to regain her composure. “All right then,” she said, back in control of herself. “It is time that we proceeded along this path together, but you are sworn to secrecy. Agreed?”

  Cecil’s eyes went wide. “Need Your Grace even ask such a thing?”

  “No, no, of course not, but I fear me that you will be held to blame for a time, and you must be prepared for some unpleasantness until I can explain all to Lord Robert,” she said. “You are more fortunate than he, in that I am taking you into my confidence. For the time being, I fear me, Lord Robert must be kept in the dark as to my scheme.”

  Cecil nodded.

  “All right then,” she said again. “Here it is. There is a vast difference between what I want people to believe and what I actually intend. When I suggested that my Scottish cousin marry Lord Robert, I intended that she should be insulted and chagrined.” The raucous laughter threatened again to gain the upper hand, but she fought it back.

  “In fact, deceiving Her Grace has been so dreadfully easy that it has almost taken all of the fun out it. But misleading My Lord Robert has been less easy. At first he thought it a jest, or a ploy. As indeed, it is, but I do not mean him to know that just yet,” said Elizabeth, with a wicked smile. “He believes that the whole idea of him marrying the Queen of Scotland is a test of his loyalty, and in a way, I suppose it is. Then he rails that it is a scheme of yours, to get rid of him. But regardless of his anxiety, my plan depends upon him truly believing that I want him to marry Mary. After all, is not my logic sound? Is not he the only man who should be trusted, by his love for me, not to try to assist my cousin in usurping my throne?”

  Cecil snorted. “And are you so certain, even of that, Your Grace? Lord Robert aches for a crown. Oh, I believe that he truly loves you, but he is an ambitious man all the same. You know this to be true. Could he indeed be trusted, once he was King of Scotland, not to raise his private army against Your Grace?”

  “My dear Cecil,” said Elizabeth, her thin red eyebrows raised in an impossible arch, “even if I intended to allow such a marriage, do you honestly believe that I would put myself and my throne at such risk?” She shook her head. “No. If I were in a ship on the Channel and caught in the most fearsome storm, I do assure you that I would jettison all to preserve my life, save my crown!” She shook her head. “No, I do not intend for My Lord Robert to marry my cousin. But even if I did, they would be expected to come and live here, in England, where I could keep my eye on them. But it is an academic point in any case. No, she shall not have my Sweet Robin, even as she disdains him. I have a much better match in mind for my troublesome cousin.” She plucked a velvety red rose from the rose tree next to her seat on the bench and twirled it idly in her hands, holding it to her nose every so often and sniffing its scent.

  “You ask why I petitioned the Queen of Scots to allow the Earl of Lennox to return to Scotland after twenty years of exile from his home. Here is why. First, even though the earl and my cousin Margaret, Lady Lennox, are Catholics, Scotland is now a Protestant country by Scottish law. Certainly, there are some Catholics still there, we know this. But Mary’s bastard brother, the Earl of Moray, is a very powerful Reformer and as much as I deplore that fanatic, John Knox, between them they will never allow the Catholics to gain the upper hand in Scotland ever again. Was that not proven when Moray recently defeated the Huntlys so overwhelmingly? No, it is my firm belief that we have little to fear from the Catholics in Scotland. And not only that; even though I am certain that the Catholics cannot prevail in Scotland, and so pose little threat to England, the very introduction of the Lennoxes back into Scottish politics should serve to destabilize the situation there.” Elizabeth shifted on the stone bench, the better to face Cecil, and laid the rose aside.

  “So much for the Catholic threat,” she continued. “Another reason why it is a good thing for the Lennoxes to return to Scotland is because there is, as you are aware, an ancient feud between the Hamiltons and the Lennoxes, both of whom have claims to the Scottish throne. What better way to further undermine the situation in Scotland than to throw those two volatile forces together?”

  Cecil said nothing; she continued.

  “So, the first two steps of my plan are in place,” said Elizabeth. “Mary is incensed over being asked to marry an English commoner in exchange for the succession to the throne of England, which, by the way, she will never have, and the Earl of Lennox will shortly be on his way back to Scotland. As you may have observed, all of this has taken an extraordinary amount of time to put into place.”

  “Indeed,” remarked Cecil dryly. “Are you not afraid, Your Grace, that the lady will tire of waiting and make a match of her own?”

  Elizabeth let out an inelegant snort. “No,” she said. “I am not. I will tell you why. The idea that she is the rightful queen of England has become an obsession for my cousin of Scotland. She hankers for a grand match with a European prince, so that she may invade England and snatch the crown from my head. But wars are expensive, Cecil, as I have learned recently to my great dismay! And although Mary may be willing to bankrupt her already impoverished country to see me humiliated, King Philip of Spain and the Emperor Ferdinand suffer from no such desires and will keep their hands and their ducats in their pockets. In short, she is not worth it, and neither is Scotland. England might be, but the cost is simply too great. And while Mary waits for a husband, her blood grows hotter and hotter in her veins. Soon she will be able to wait no longer. And when her desire reaches fever pitch, I shall put the last pieces of my plan into motion.”

  Elizabeth turned on the bench to face Cecil. “I fear me that there is a sting in all this for you, my Good Cecil. Are you willing to take the pain to support the cause of ultimate success?”

  Without hesitation, Cecil replied, “I am Your Majesty’s good servant. Whatever you ask of me, I shall do, with a glad heart.”

  Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “All right, then. I am going to create Robert Earl of Leicester.”

  Cecil shrugged. “Lord Robert is already on the Council, Your Grace. Ennoblement will hardly make him any more troublesome than that!” It made sense; if Elizabeth actually expected the Scots queen to take seriously her demand that she marry Robert Dudley, then ennobling him was the only thing to do, whether she truly meant for the marriage to take place or not.

  Elizabeth laughed, but the relief shone from her eyes. Truly, this was a loyal servant, to hear of his rival’s promotion with such equanimity.

  “And then,” she said quietly, searching his eyes, “when she can no longer demur at my insistence that she marry the Earl of Leicester, and her blood is fired with impatience to marry at long last, then I shall throw her the bait that shall snare her and tangle her in a sticky web from which she will never emerge.”

  Cecil waited and said nothing.

  “You asked about Darnley,” said Elizabeth. “It is Darnley whom I intend that she should marry. I shall wait a suitable interval after Robert’s ennoblement, then I shall send the boy north. She will not be able to resist him. He is young, he is beautiful, he is royal, and he has a claim to both the Scottish and the English thrones. And I shall pretend that if she marries him without my leave that I shall be most displeased and shall withhold the succession from her in consequence. My cousin will be unable to resist defying me.”

  At this Cecil did respond, most vehemently. “But he is a Catholic! Would not their union be most dangerous? Even if Your Grace is convinced that there is little to fear from the Scottish Catholics, what of the English ones? Oh, Your Grace, I beg of you… abandon this course! It is frau
ght with peril. Can you not see that?”

  “All that you say would be true except for one thing,” said Elizabeth with a sly smile. She retrieved the rose and held it up to her nose.

  Nonplussed, Cecil cried, “And what is that, I pray you to tell me?”

  “It is simply this,” said Elizabeth. “Darnley is an arrogant, spoiled, unruly, disobedient, headstrong, obstinate fool. Mary is impetuous, impulsive and rash, and thinks with her heart and not her head. Between them they will spell each other’s ruin.”

  Cecil was truly taken aback. “That is female logic,” he said. “Your Grace plays the situation as though it were a game of chess, and they the pawns!”

  Elizabeth stood up and began to pace the pathway, up and down, in front of the bench upon which Cecil still sat. She tossed the rose aside. “Which is exactly what they are! The succession, Cecil, is not a prize to be rewarded at my whim, even if I am queen! She forgets that. The succession is a right under English law; I may be able to name my successor, but my choice must be ratified by the Parliament, even so. Think you that the Parliament will approve a queen who, far from demonstrating that she has England’s good at heart, schemes and plots to marry a foreign prince who shall help her to visit war upon our land? I think not! No one save the English Catholics want to see Mary as my successor; that was evidenced most clearly when I suffered from the small pox. No, Cecil, the Queen of Scots shall never wear my crown, nor shall she ever have my Robin.”

  Elizabeth sat on the bench beside Cecil and laid her hand atop his own. “I do not claim that my strategy is without risks,” she said quietly. “But I believe these risks to be minimal, and worth taking, to achieve my aim, which is the utter destruction of the Queen of Scots.” Elizabeth regarded him with her penetrating stare.

  Cecil sighed. He was not above a bit of subterfuge and intrigue when the situation warranted it, but he could not touch the queen for the sheer Machiavellian intricacy of her thinking. She had said that she was weaving a web of destruction for Mary; but such plans could turn in on one. “Just be certain, Your Grace, that you do not yourself become entangled in this web you are weaving to trap the Scots queen.”

  Elizabeth tilted her chin up and narrowed her eyes. “You say that this is like a game of chess, and indeed, you are right,” she said. “My next move shall be to wait until Madam of Scotland’s blood is at a boil for a husband and her anger is at white heat against me; then I shall send Darnley north to his father. My cousin will not be able to resist either his charming person or the opportunity to defy me. She will marry him without my leave, and he will be nothing loath! Darnley’s head itches for a crown, just as my Lord Robert’s does, I trow! Then granting either of them the English succession will be out of the question.”

  The sun slipped below the horizon, which was now an apple green in the west; in the east the sky was dark blue and a few early stars twinkled in it. Serving men began lighting the torches that lined the path from the river to the chapel. Elizabeth rose from the bench and placed her hand on Cecil’s shoulder. “The loss of a pawn or two is a small matter, Cecil, but often such a loss brings with it the loss of the whole game. I shall checkmate the Scots queen, Cecil. This is a game that I intend to win.”

  Wemyss Castle, Scotland, February 1565

  As his horse picked her way gently up yet another icy slope, Darnley adjusted the woolen muffler in which he had wrapped his head so that he could see out of its protective folds. He grimaced at the red and blue tartan of Clan Lennox in which he found himself swathed against the bitter cold. He was used to the luxury of the English and French courts; Scotland seemed to his young eyes a barbaric land of wild, stark landscapes and even wilder people. Half of his blood was Scottish, but already he had learnt to disdain the Scots, and think of them as lower than himself.

  It started to snow again, and the seemingly weightless flakes seemed to swirl up before beginning their slow journey to the ground. The snow fell thickly, obscuring his ability to see even a few feet in front of him to the next rider. He wondered cynically if the hardships he had endured on this nightmare journey to the north would be worth all the discomfort and sheer inconvenience that was traveling in winter.

  His father, Matthew Stewart, the fourth Earl of Lennox, had come north into Scotland late in the year before, to see to the Lennox estates; Queen Elizabeth had petitioned Queen Mary on his behalf, and Mary had agreed to allow the exiled earl to return to his homeland at last, after twenty long years of exile. The earl had supported King Henry of England’s attempt to marry his son Edward to the infant Queen of Scots, but the Scots thought little of such a plan, and a war between Scotland and England was fought. Mary had been spirited away to the French court and married to the Dauphin François instead, and the earl left stranded in England. Henry had recompensed the earl for his displaced loyalty and his lost lands by marrying him to his blood niece, the Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of his sister, and herself half Scottish. It had seemed like a good bargain to the earl; but it had also been a boon to Henry to settle at last into marriage his troublesome niece.

  And now here was Darnley, the product of the union, frozen half to death somewhere between Edinburgh and Fife, on his way to find his father at the Scottish court. His mother, Lady Margaret, was Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin, and she had begged tirelessly to gain the royal permission for Darnley to join his father and at last see his Scottish patrimony. The only saving grace so far was that his mother had stayed behind in London.

  After several more hours in the bitter winter weather, they crested a rise and as they did so, the castle appeared, a dark, brooding shape glimpsed through a blanket of swirling snow and sleet. An outrider had been sent to alert the castellan of their imminent arrival; a figure appeared out of the gloom, riding towards them, to guide them in. It was barely after the noon hour, but the day already seemed as if it were darkening to night.

  Once in the castle, with dry clothes on his body and a mug of steaming mulled wine inside him, Darnley felt somewhat restored, but his head ached and he had such a bad rheum that he could barely breathe. His father found him dozing by the fire.

  “Ah, Darnley,” said earl. “We had given you up. Was your journey tolerable?”

  Darnley yawned and stretched. “Father! At last! The weather is bitter, even in the south. When I left London, even the Thames had frozen so hard that people were walking upon it. When I arrived in Edinburgh, they told me that the court had moved to Fife. The journey all the way from London has been dismal, but this last bit was treacherous. We nearly froze to death. What a godforsaken place!”

  The earl frowned. “You will find that Scotland is much different than England, or for that matter, from France.” Matthew Lennox seized the poker and thrust it into the fire, which leapt its response. “Scotland is a poor country, and the Scots prone to fighting amongst themselves. Do not expect to see mincing courtiers here, my boy. These are men, rough men, ready with a sword at the slightest provocation.”

  With a sudden swiftness that took the earl aback, Darnley drew his bodkin from his waist with a metallic swish. Its blade glinted in the firelight, and reflected in his eyes. “I have just as swift a hand, I trow,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, put that away,” said the earl. “Your lady mother is not here to protect you now, boy; I fear me that if you rile the Scots lords you will pay the consequences before I or anyone else can come to your aid. Cool your temper and look to your benefit instead! We are here to re-establish the Lennox right. You must behave yourself.”

  Darnley returned his knife to its sheath and settled back in his chair, slouching with his long legs thrust out in front of him.

  “Come,” said Earl Matthew. “It is time to present you to the queen. Do you bring messages from Her Grace of England?”

  Darnley arose, donned his cloak with a flourish, and followed his father out of the room. “I do indeed,” he said.

  ###

  The Great Hall had a fireplace that three men could easily
stand up in, and yet the room was frigid. The hall was packed with the men and women of the court, but to Darnley’s eyes, it was a dull affair. It seemed that everyone wore some sort of tartan, which although colorful in some cases, still failed to dazzle an eye more used to splendor. The wind was blowing a gale outside and every now and then sent a billow of smoke down the chimney and back into the room from the hearth. No court, he felt, could have been more different from Elizabeth’s magnificent castles and palaces, or the even more opulent French.

  At the arrival in the hall of the earl and his son, the room quietened and the crowd seemed to instinctively part down the middle. Darnley lifted his eyes and there, at the other end of the great room, sat his cousin, the Queen of Scotland. She looked little different from the last time he had seen her at the French court; but here she glittered and gleamed like a being from another world. At the courts of France or England she would have been simply one more richly dressed female, dripping with costly jewels, but here, in the midst of the plainly dressed Scots, in her cloth of silver gown and diamonds, she glimmered like a fairy in a poppy-induced dream.

  But his blood did not stir at the sight of her; all he saw was a woman, well-dressed, with a face somewhat flushed from the heat of the fire, which she was sitting very close to upon her throne.

  Mary had been engaging several courtiers in a constant repartee, but at the sudden silence, she looked up and what she saw was entirely different. She saw a man, the tallest man she had ever seen, his golden head reflecting the firelight; smoky blue eyes, and pale skin just touched with rose, which had she but known it, was the result of windburn and fever. His entire ensemble was white, from his hose to his doublet and cloak. A great diamond shone at his shoulder where the pin fastened his cloak, and the sheath of his bodkin gleamed golden and shone with gemstones. As he moved, the muscles of his well-shaped legs rippled. She knew that this God amongst men must be her cousin Darnley; but could this paragon be the same person whom she had last seen four years ago at the French court, a gangling puppy of a youth, with a voice that cracked as that of a boy on the verge of manhood? He had been tall then, but now she could see that he topped her by at least a head. She caught her breath as he neared and when he was before her throne, she stood and extended her hand to him.