The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots: A Novel

by Erickson, Carolly

  When I showed the finished cloak to Bess I saw nothing but admiration in her shrewd, often wary eyes. She rarely gave me compliments, but on seeing the cloak she said, “Now, that would look far better on you, milady, than on the bony queen Elizabeth. How it would set off your hair and eyes!” She held the cloak up to me and looked me up and down admiringly.

  “You’ve a fine skill with a needle,” she added before handing the garment back to me. “When you get back from the spa we shall have to make an altar cloth together.”

  Buxton lay in a green valley whose remarkable mineral springs had been discovered and visited often by the Romans many centuries ago. The waters appeared to arise from an ancient well dedicated to St. Anne, and when our coach reached the town and passed by the well George Talbot insisted that we get out and drink the hot, sulfurous water, which tasted bitter and burned my throat slightly as it went down.

  When we reached the baths we found them crowded with men and women, their bodies swathed in opaque drapings similar to Roman tunics, only longer. There was no immodesty, or none that I could detect. There was no distinction of rank either; common folk bathed alongside highborn folk, and the earl splashed happily alongside men of business and their rotund wives.

  Margaret helped me undress and put on my own shapeless tunic, then dressed herself in her spa attire and together we eased ourselves into the near-scalding water.

  We were in a large pool, rectangular in shape, bounded on all sides by old Roman stonework with the remains of statuary at each corner. A rooflike canopy shielded us from the weather. Steam rose from the hot water in thick sheets, and the odor of the waters was so strong it almost made me choke. Yet when I slid under the hot liquid and let it penetrate into my skin, down to my very bones, I began to feel a delicious sense of relaxation and wellbeing.

  The earl had been right; the pain in my side, which was everpresent, began to diminish, and as it did, my cares too seemed to melt away. I had been so very anxious about the accusation of treason made against me that I had almost forgotten what it was to feel free of worry and fear.

  Now I felt that freedom slowly creeping over me, as my body yielded to the heat of the waters and I let myself float buoyantly on the tide of peace.

  I slept well that night, a long dreamless sleep, and woke refreshed. We were staying in one of the earl’s many houses, this one only about a mile from the heart of the town of Buxton. The earl came to me soon after I finished my morning tea, rubbing his arthritic hands together as if he felt no pain, his sad eyes brighter than usual.

  “Now then,” he said, “I need to have a private word with you.” The room was cleared of servants and we went to sit in a window embrasure.

  “Her Majesty the queen requires you to bathe this evening at ten o’clock. The waters are reserved for her use at that hour. You may take your tirewoman with you, but no one else. Be prompt. And be prepared. Her Majesty is easily provoked, and, as Bess may have told you, she can be violent when provoked.”

  “I shall endeavor not to provoke her.”

  The earl sighed. “Your very being provokes her, milady. She heartily wishes she were rid of you, as do I, if the truth be told. But you are her blood kin, and a queen born. She cannot bring herself to treat you as she did poor Norfolk. To do away with you would mean pointing a dagger at her own heart, as I have often heard her say.”

  “Ten o’clock then. I shall be ready.”

  The earl leaned toward me until his face was very close to mine. “Be on your guard, madam. That is all I have to say. Be on your guard.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Promptly at ten o’clock I arrived at the great mineral pool and walked slowly along its stone perimeter. The moon had risen, a nearly full moon that shone down on the still waters and silvered them with its bright reflection.

  A lone figure was entering the pool, a woman, so thin she was almost wraithlike, her sparse gray hair floating unfettered around her shoulders and down her back. She entered the water, her simple spa gown spreading out around her as she submerged. The moonlight drained her of color; she looked ghostly, the planes of her face harsh and sharply etched.

  I knew the woman had to be my cousin Elizabeth, yet it was not the Elizabeth of her formal portraits, which I had often seen since Bess possessed copies of several of them. This was not the rouged, high-colored, youthful woman whose picture I had seen so often at Wingfield Manor, but a different creature entirely, an aging woman who looked ill, and whose bony arms, wrists and chest revealed a physical vulnerability that startled me and made me draw back, for a moment, into the shadows.

  It was no wonder the courtiers said she would not have a child, I thought. She did not look at all like a woman of childbearing years, with the ripe, abundant flesh of a mother or a mother-to-be. She looked like a slight, fragile woman on the threshold of the dreaded years, the years over forty when women’s flesh becomes repugnant and what beauty they possess drains away. I wondered what she had looked like at twenty, or at twenty-five. Despite what her vanity told her, I knew that she had never been beautiful, nor had she resembled her dark-haired, seductive mother. It was her sister Mary who had been the beauty, blond and sweet-faced (though her face, people said, had become drawn and lined soon enough). Elizabeth was the quick-witted one, it was said, though always nervous and fearful.

  And why not? She had had much to fear, throughout her life.

  I watched as my cousin moved languidly through the hot waters, then I entered the pool myself and joined her.

  “So, my brave little cousin, we meet at last.” Her body appeared frail, but her voice was low, masculine and commanding. She scrutinized me for a moment, and I met her gaze. “My friend Cecil,” she went on, “wants me to cut your head off. I think he would do it himself, if I’d let him.”

  I was frightened, more by the wry laugh that accompanied her words than by the words themselves, or her acidulous tone. Despite the scalding water, I shuddered.

  “I have restrained him. That is the only reason you are alive. Now the question is, what am I to do with you? By God’s death, I do not know.”

  “I cannot solve that dilemma, Your Majesty,” I said, hoping my voice was not tremulous, but unable to prevent myself from thinking, does she mean to drown me?

  “When I was very young, in France, a wise man read my fortune, and told me that I had disordered the cosmos by surviving, as a child. I was not meant to survive, he said. Yet I have.”

  “In this we are alike. My survival too was rued by many—though never, thankfully, by my remarkable father. The Lion of England.”

  Suddenly she swam away from me, her movements more swift and athletic than I would have imagined. Evidently her frail appearance was deceptive.

  When she returned I asked her, “And what would the Lion of England have advised you to do?” I was aware, as soon as I said the words, that I had spoken recklessly.

  “Ha! All the world knows his ways. He removed all inconveniences from his path, without mercy. He would say, ‘Off with her head!’ But I am not my father.”

  She looked at me, searching my face, evidently wanting to see fear there, or shock, but seeing none.

  “There is a likeness between us, is there not?” she asked presently. “We are both tall, we are both slender—” (You are skeletal, I wanted to say, but didn’t.) “We both have lovely hands, and are thought to be beautiful.” I held my peace, returning her steady gaze. “Only you have a son, and I have not.” (And I have a daughter as well, I wanted to say, but of course I did not.)

  For a time there was no sound but the lapping of the waters against the stones, and the splashing made by my cousin’s restless hands. I could not help but feel more and more relaxed, as the heated waters bathed me, while she appeared to be becoming more and more agitated.

  “You could still marry, Your Highness,” I said at length.

  She shook her head violently, making the drops fly from her long gray hair.

  “Never. I would be a fool to ma
rry. And you may as well know, even the physicians say it is unlikely I can have children. By God’s holy bones, there is enough gossip on that topic!”

  “I’m sorry.” And I was, in that moment, genuinely sorry, thinking of my own beloved little ones.

  Elizabeth tossed her head. “I’m not—except for the devilish question of the succession, of course. In truth I don’t like children. Dirty, unruly things. A curse and a worry, most of them.”

  Her tone was bitter. Why, I wondered. Was it because the one man she had wanted to marry, Robin Dudley, was denied her?

  I thought back over what I knew of her life. She had been born into great controversy, as Henry VIII’s daughter by his love Anne Boleyn. But Anne was executed when little Elizabeth was how old? Two or three, I think Bess had told me. Only a tiny child. Did she even remember her doomed mother? Then she was declared a bastard, and made to feel an outcast at her father’s court. After the Lion of England died, her young brother King Edward had restored her to favor, but her Catholic sister Mary, when she became queen in her turn, had distrusted her half-sister Elizabeth and put her in the Tower. Poor Queen Mary, who everyone said had had a sad life and had been brokenhearted because she could not bear a child. And then, at last, Elizabeth had become queen, against all odds—only to find herself thwarted in her desire to marry her beloved Robin—a thing she desired so greatly that she ordered the murder of Robin’s wife Amy. Or so it was widely believed.

  Perhaps she is bitter out of guilt, I thought. Is that what keeps her from allowing Baron Burghley to have me executed? The fact that she does not want more guilt on her conscience?

  But in the course of these musings my cousin had swum to the edge of the pool and was climbing out. I heard her muttering “A curse and a worry. Yes, by God’s death, a curse and a worry.” Then she shouted for her women, and in an instant three of them appeared, carrying blankets to throw around the queen’s spare shoulders, and lanterns to light her way to her waiting carriage.

  I knew that Margaret was waiting for me, and that she would come if I called for her, but I delayed. Instead I continued to lie in the hot soothing waters, pondering my cousin’s words and reminding myself that as Jamie always said, it was actions, not words, that counted. And Elizabeth’s actions, though somewhat puzzling, were not hostile. She had come to the vicinity of Wingfield Manor to see me. She had kept me alive. She had spoken, on the whole, civilly to me and had even confided that she disliked children and most likely could not have any.

  Or had all her actions been false? Had our entire meeting been a ruse, designed to deceive me or distract me from some larger and more sinister plan? Did she know that Thomas had told me of the letters hidden in Amy Dudley’s casket? Was she hoping to find out whether I had them, or what other scheme I might be involved in?

  The moon had risen higher, and its pale white light bathed all in beauty. But for me there was to be no peace that night. For hours I lay awake, haunted by images of my thin, wraithlike cousin with her bony body and blunt words, her wry laugh and acid tone, her talk of a likeness between us and her sudden, abrupt leavetaking. What was I to make of it all? Did she mean me well or ill? And was she, despite the latent strength in her frail body, unlikely to live much longer?

  FORTY-THREE

  The queen left Buxton on the night of our encounter in the mineral baths. I never received a thank you for the lovely blue cloak I made for her, or even an acknowledgment that she had received it. There was no further word from her on any subject. Only silence—and her abrupt departure.

  On the day after she left, however, I received a gift that was more precious to me than any communication from the queen—except, of course, the communication that I most longed for. The news that I would soon be freed.

  Jamie was at Buxton, staying at George Talbot’s house, in his constant guise of Holp the peddler. He was very welcome there, as the invalids and semi-invalids who frequented the spa were eager to buy his medicinal remedies and he could be very charming and persuasive when he chose, as I well knew.

  And Jamie had another service to offer. Like many peddlers, he made small loans. From time to time he had loaned modest sums to the immensely rich George Talbot (who always felt poor and needy), and Talbot was usually in arrears in his repayment, which made him inclined to do favors for Jamie. Others at the spa owed Jamie money also, in fact he had quite a clientele of wellborn people who were in debt to him, just as they were in debt to their dressmakers and tailors, their jewelers and coach-makers. Jamie encouraged these debts—and charged high rates of interest, just as the Italian moneylenders did. He confided to me that he was building a small fortune.

  “When I have enough, I’ll buy us an army and invade Wingfield Manor and take you far away, someplace where the English can never reach us.”

  “Oh, if only you could!”

  “We could sail to the Orkneys or the Faroes, or perhaps southwards to Africa where the monkeys and the parrots come from. How would you like that?”

  “Please, dear Jamie. Please.”

  He kissed me, then said that he had a surprise for me.

  “Talbot has given me permission to take you riding.” We went out to the stables and there I found Mignonne, and gladly mounted her. She whinnied softly as soon as she saw me, and I petted her soft neck.

  “Where are we to go?”

  “Oh, not far. Out into the countryside.”

  The hill country around Buxton was rough, the riding paths no more than narrow tracks overgrown in many places with brambles and scrub. We rode without an escort, until we had gone perhaps five miles from the town of Buxton. Then we reached a cottage with a barn attached, a very modest place indeed, so modest that I couldn’t imagine how Jamie had happened to find it or who could live inside.

  But when the cottage door opened and I saw my beloved grandmother Antoinette standing in the doorway, smiling, her arms outstretched, I let out a cry of joy and ran to her. She had grown more gray in the years since I had seen her last, her face more lined but still very handsome, the elegance of her garments a sharp contrast to the bareness of her surroundings.

  She stepped back into the dark room and called out, “Viens-tu, ma poupette, viens voir ta maman!”

  In response to her words a sweet-faced little girl came up to me, her dimpled hands held out, her small mouth turned up in a grin, her plump cheeks pink with excitement.

  “Maman maman maman,” she cried, and I swept her up into my arms and wept and swung her around and around for sheer happiness.

  “She’s a bonny Scots lass, is she not?” Jamie said proudly. “Even if she does speak French and call me papa.”

  I could not get over the sight of my dear Marie-Elizabeth. I had seen a miniature portrait of her, painted when she was about three years old, but I had not seen her in the flesh since she was a tiny infant. I held her in my lap and would not let her go, while my grandmother told me all about the farm in Normandie where they lived, Saint-Cheron, and the healthful life they enjoyed there, with fresh eggs from the hen house and fresh cream from the dairy, home-grown barley and oats for baking bread and apples and pears and cherries from the orchards in season.

  “I have a pony, maman,” little Marie-Elizabeth told me, looking up into my face with a beguiling smile. “And there are kitties in the barn and grandmamma gave me a bird that talks. When are you coming to live with us?”

  At this I could only shake my head. “I don’t know, dearest little girl. If only I knew.”

  “Recite your Latin for maman, poupette.”

  I smiled to hear Marie-Elizabeth pronounce the words of a few lines from Vergil in Latin, her Latin heavily accented with French.

  “Her tutor is very pleased with her,” grandmamma said. “And her dancing master as well.”

  “You should see her ride,” Jamie said. “I helped teach her. She has a good seat for a child who is not yet six years old.”

  Jamie explained that as soon as he had heard I would be coming to the spa, he se
nt Red Ormiston in the Black Messenger to bring Marie-Elizabeth and my grandmother to England, hoping they could see me during my weeks away from Wingfield Manor. Ormiston smuggled them ashore at a deserted cove unguarded by Baron Burghley’s spies.

  “The coast is well guarded these days. They are watching for the Jesuits, who are swarming ashore in dozens, coming to take back England for the pope.”

  “I know. The French ambassador writes to me. He sends his messages through the cobbler Johannis, in the cork heels of my shoes.”

  Jamie held out his hand to Marie-Elizabeth. “Come, my bonny.” She slid off my lap and took his hand. “I know your grandmamma wants to talk to you alone, Orange Blossom. We will go and see the garden.”

  I watched my daughter’s retreating figure with longing.

  “Anyone can see how you love her,” grandmamma said. “You should be with her. It could be arranged, you know. You have only to tell us when and where, and King Charles’s soldiers will come for you. This Baron Burghley I hear about has eyes everywhere—even on this cottage, I have no doubt—but your Jamie is clever. He could find a way to get you to the coast, and King Charles will bring his ships to guard you on your return to France.”

  She knelt at my feet, the folds of her long black gown spreading out over the dusty floor.

  “Your little girl needs you. She cries for her papa, she sees him so rarely. And now that she has known you, she will cry for you too.”

  I could not help but be moved by this plea, it was so heartfelt—and so unlike my self-possessed, wise grandmother.

  “I weep for her too, grandmamma,” I said. “And for you.”