Thomas Howard looks at me, as an old friend that he thinks will deal with him fairly. “I have had very short warning to answer so great a matter. I have not had fourteen hours in all, both day and night. I am hardly handled. I have had short warning and no books, neither a book of statutes, not so much as the breviate of statutes. I am brought to fight without a weapon.”
I look down at my hands, I shuffle my papers. Surely, we cannot hound this man to the scaffold without giving him time to prepare a defense? Surely, we will allow him a lawyer?
“I stand here before you for my life, lands and goods, my children and my posterity, and for that which I esteem most of all, my honesty,” he says eagerly to me. “I forbear to speak of my honor. I am un-learned; let me have what the law would allow, let me have counsel.”
I am about to command the justices to withdraw and rule on his request. We were his friends; we cannot hear him ask us for something so reasonable and refuse it. The man has to have advice. Then a note from Cecil, farther down the table, is passed along and slid under my hand.
1. If he has a lawyer then the full detail of the Queen of Scots’ promises to him will be revealed. I assure you that her letters to him are not those that you would want read out in your court. They show her as a scandalous whore.
2. All this occurred under your guardianship, which must then be called into question. How could you have allowed such a thing to happen?
3. The trial will be prolonged and the Queen of Scots’ honor and reputation utterly destroyed.
4. Her Grace, our queen, will be held up for contempt before everyone, by what these two say of her. We will make a thousand traitors while prosecuting one.
5. Let us have the decency to get to judgment quickly and let Her Grace the queen deal mercifully with the sentence. She can always pardon him once this trial is over.
I read this and then I rule. “You must make your answer to the charge,” I say to Howard.
He looks at me with his dark honest eyes. One long look, and then he nods. “Then I must question the charge,” he says.
I consent, but we all know there is no avoiding a charge of treason. Cecil’s new laws have so enlarged the definition of treason that it is not possible to live in England today without being guilty almost daily, almost hourly. To speculate as to the queen’s health is treason, to suggest she might one day die is treason, to suggest that she might not be Queen of France is certain treason, though it is nothing but the most obvious truth: none of us will ever see an English Calais again. Even to think, in one’s innermost secret heart, any criticism of the queen is now treason. Thomas Howard must be guilty of treason, as indeed we all must be, every day of our lives, even Cecil.
They nag at him, as hounds will bait a tired bear. He so reminds me of a bear, chained with one leg to a post, while fresh dogs dash in and take a snap and shy away again. They take him back to the inquiry at York and accuse him of favoring the Queen of Scots. They accuse her of claiming the throne of England and imply that he would have married her and made himself King of England. They say that he plotted with the Scots lords, with his sister Lady Scrope, with Westmorland and Northumberland.
They take him through every moment of the inquiry at York; they have evidence that the Scots lords met him and suggested the marriage. This cannot be denied, for it is true. It was no secret and we all approved it. Robert Dudley, now sitting at my side as a fellow judge, his face stony, had a hand in it too. Shall he be tried for treason alongside Howard? William Cecil, the chief playwright and choreographer of this trial, knew all about it as well. I know this, for my own wife reported to him, spying on me. Shall Cecil be on trial? Shall my wife? Shall I? But all of us are eager now to forget our parts in the courtship. We watch Howard shake the dogs from his flank and say that he cannot remember everything, that he admits he has neglected his duty to the queen, he has not been the subject and cousin that he should have been—but this does not make him guilty of treason.
He is trying to tell the truth in this masque of mirrors and costumes and false faces. I could laugh if I were not bowed down with my own sorrows and sick to my heart for him. He is trying to tell the truth to this court of spies and liars.
We are all weary and about to stop for dinner when Nicholas Barham, the queen’s sergeant and Cecil’s instrument, suddenly produces a letter from John Lesley, the Bishop of Ross, to the Queen of Scots. He submits it as evidence and we all obediently read it. In it, the bishop tells Queen Mary that her betrothed, Norfolk, has betrayed his own queen to the Scots lords. It says that all Queen Elizabeth’s plans, all the advice of her councillors, all her innermost counsels have been reported by Norfolk in full to the enemies of England. It is a most shocking letter and proof, complete proof, that he was on the side of the Scots against England, and working for Queen Mary. It is an incredible document. It shows Norfolk, without doubt, as a complete and convinced traitor.
Damning indeed, utterly damning. Except that someone asks Nicholas Barham if this letter was intercepted on its way to the Scots queen or taken from her rooms. Everyone looks at me, of course, who should have caught such a letter. I am in the wrong now, for I did not catch this letter. I shake my head and Barham smoothly reports that this extraordinary letter was somehow lost, mislaid. It was not sent and I did not intercept it. The Queen of Scots never saw it. He tells us, straight-faced, that a copy of this most incriminating letter was hidden in a secret room, found as if by a miracle, years later, by James, Earl of Moray, and handed by him to the Queen of England shortly before his death.
I cannot help but look incredulously at Cecil, that he should expect men—not children enjoying fairy tales but men of the world, and his fellow lords—to accept this complicated fable. The look he returns to me is smilingly blank. I am a fool to expect something more convincing. To Cecil it does not matter if none of this makes sense; what matters is that the letter is entered on the record, that the record is part of the trial, that it will serve as evidence to justify the verdict to the world, and that the verdict will be guilty.
“Shall we have our dinner now?” he asks pleasantly.
I rise and we go out. I am so foolish that I look for Norfolk as we lords go for our dinner, and think I will put my arm around his shoulders for a moment and whisper, “Be of good courage; there is no escaping the verdict, but the pardon will follow.”
Of course, he does not dine with us. I had forgotten. We all go to eat our dinner in the great hall; he goes alone, to eat alone in his cell. He cannot dine with us, he is banished from our company, and I will never put my arm around his shoulders again.
1572, JANUARY,
SHEFFIELD CASTLE:
BESS
Ihave no great love for the Scots queen, God knows, but it would take a woman with a harder heart than mine not to defend her against our new house guest and temporary jailer, Ralph Sadler. He is a hard-hearted bad-tempered old man, utterly immune to any form of beauty, whether it be the white hoarfrost on the trees here at Sheffield Castle or the pale, strained beauty of the Scots queen.
“I have my orders,” he says hoarsely to me after she has withdrawn from the dinner table, unable to bear his slurping his pottage for another moment. She whispers of a headache and takes herself from the room. I could wish I could escape so easily, but I am the mistress of a great house and I must do my duty by a guest.
“Orders?” I ask politely, and watch him spoon up another great swallow in the general direction of his big mouth.
“Aye,” he says. “Defend her, protect her, prevent her escape, and if all else fails…” He makes a horrible gesture with his flat hand, a long cutting movement across his own throat.
“You would kill her?”
He nods. “She cannot be allowed to get free,” he says. “She is the greatest danger this country has ever faced.”
I think for a moment of the Spanish armada that they say Philip is building right now in his fearsome shipyards. I think of the Pope demanding that all of the old fai
th disobey Queen Elizabeth, authorizing them to kill her. I think of the French and the Scots. “How can she be?” I ask. “One woman alone? When you think of all that we face?”
“Because she is a figurehead,” he says harshly. “Because she is French, because she is Scots, because she is Catholic. Because none of us will ever sleep sound in our beds while she is free.”
“Seems a bit hard that a woman should die because you can’t sleep,” I say waspishly.
It earns me a hard look from this hard old man, who is obviously unaccustomed to a woman with opinions. “I heard that she had won you over, and your lord,” he says nastily. “I heard that he, in particular, was very taken.”
“We are both of us good servants to the queen,” I say staunchly. “As Her Grace knows, as my good friend Lord Burghley knows. No man has ever doubted my lord’s honor. And I can be a good servant to Her Grace and yet not want to see the Scots queen murdered.”
“You might be able to,” he says gloomily, “but I cannot. And in time, I expect there will be more who think like me than think like you.”
“She might die in battle,” I say. “If, God forbid, there was a battle. Or she might be killed by an assassin, I suppose. But she cannot be executed: she is of blood royal. She cannot be charged with treason: she is a consecrated queen. No court can judge her.”
“Oh, who says?” he asks suddenly, dropping his spoon and turning his big face on me.
“The law of the land,” I stammer. He is almost frightening in his bulk and with his temper. “The law of the land which defends both great and small.”
“The law is what we say it is,” he boasts. “As she may yet discover, as you may one day see. The law will be what we say it should be. We shall make the laws and those who threaten us or frighten us will find that they are outside the protection of the law.”
“Then it is no law at all,” I maintain. After all I am the wife of the Lord High Steward of England. “The law must defend the high and the low, the innocent, and even the guilty until they are shown to be criminal.”
Sadler laughs, a rough loud laugh. “That may have been so in Camelot,” he says crudely. “But it is a different world now. We will use the laws against our enemies, we will find evidence against our enemies, and if there is neither law nor evidence, then we will make it fresh, specially for them.”
“Then you are no better than they,” I say quietly, but aloud I turn to my server of the ewery and say, “More wine for Sir Ralph.”
1572, JANUARY,
SHEFFIELD CASTLE:
MARY
My betrothed is fighting for his life in a courtroom, judged by men as fearful as he. My son is far from me. The only man who could save me now is far, far away, himself imprisoned, and I don’t expect ever to see him again. My worst enemy is my new keeper, and even Bess, the falsest friend a woman ever had, is repelled by his harshness towards me.
I am starting to feel afraid. I would not have believed that Elizabeth could put me in the charge of such a man. It is to dishonor me, to make such a man my custodian. She would know this: she has been a captive herself. She would know how a harsh jailer destroys a prisoner’s life. He will not let me walk in the park, not even in the frozen snow in the morning, he will not let me ride out, he will allow me no more than ten minutes’ walk in the cold yard, and he has been talking to Bess about reducing my household once more. He says I cannot have my luxuries from London, I may not have letters from Paris. He says I should not have so many dishes for dinner, nor fine wines. He wants to take down the cloth of estate which marks my royal status. He wants me to have an ordinary chair, not a throne, and he sits without invitation, in my presence.
I would not have believed that this could happen to me. But neither would I have believed that Elizabeth would put her own cousin, her closest kin, on trial for treason, especially as she must know that he is guilty of nothing but his ambition to marry me—which, though disagreeable to a woman of Elizabeth’s gross vanity, is hardly a crime. He rode out in no rebellion, he sent no money of his own to any rebellious army—why, he lost the French gold he was supposed to send. He obeyed her order to go to court though his followers hung on to the leathers of his stirrups and the tail of his horse and begged him not to go. He surrendered Kenninghall, his own great house, disinheriting his own children: just as she asked. He stayed obediently at his London house and then went, as ordered, to the Tower. He met Ridolfi, several times, it is true. But I know, as they must know, that he would not have laid a plot with him to murder Elizabeth and overthrow her country.
I am guilty of that—good God yes, I don’t deny it to myself though I will never confess it to them. I would see Elizabeth destroyed and the country free of her illegal, heretical rule. But Thomas Howard would never have done so. To be cruelly frank—he is not the man for it, he has not the stomach for it. There is only one man I know who would plan it and see it through, and he is in a well-guarded room with bars on the window, facing the sea in Denmark, thinking of me, and will never throw his life down on a gamble again.
“I have no prospects,” I say gloomily to Mary Seton as we sit over our own private dinner in my chamber. I will not dine with Ralph Sadler; I would rather starve.
Around us, about forty companions and servants sit down to dine, and the servers bring dish after dish for me to take a small helping and send them out around the hall. They still bring in more than thirty different dishes, a tribute to my importance as a queen. I would be insulted by less.
Mary Seton is not gloomy like me; her dark eyes are dancing with mischief. “You always have prospects,” she whispers in French. “And now you have another Sir Galahad ready to serve you.”
“Sir Galahad?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe he is more a Sir Lancelot. Certainly a nobleman ready to risk everything for you. One who has come in secret. One whose name you know. One that you don’t expect, and one who has a plan to get you out of here before the end of the trial. Before the shame of having your business discussed in open court.”
“Bothwell,” I breathe at once. I have an instant certainty that he has got away from Denmark. For what prison could hold him? Bothwell, free and coming to my side, will have me out of here and on a horse to Scotland in a moment. Bothwell will raise an army in the borders, turn the country upside down. Bothwell will take Scotland as if the country were a reluctant woman and make her know her master. I could laugh aloud at the thought of him free. What a fox among a hen coop he will be when he is on his horse with his sword drawn once more. What a nightmare for the English, what a revenge for me. “Bothwell.”
Thank God she does not hear me. I would not want Mary to think that his name ever comes to my mind. He was my undoing. I never speak of him.
“Sir Henry Percy,” she says. “God bless him. He sent this; it came to me from the hand of young Babington. Sir Ralph watches you so close we did not dare try to get it to you till now. I was going to hold it till bedtime if I had to.”
She hands me a little note. It is brief and to the point.
Be ready at midnight. Put a candle at your bedroom window from ten of the clock if you are ready to come tonight. At midnight tonight, blow out the candle and let yourself down from the window. I have horses and a guard and will have you away to France at once. Trust me. I would give my life for you.
Henry Percy
“Do you dare?” Mary asks me. “Your closet window faces outwards over the garden; that must be the one he means. It is a drop of forty feet. It is no worse than Bolton Castle and you would have got away then but for the rope breaking on that girl.”
“Of course I dare,” I say. At once the candles burn brighter and the smell of dinner is so appetizing that I feel my mouth water. My companions in the room are dear friends who will miss me when I am gone but who will delight in my triumph. At once, I am alive again, alive and with hopes. I think of Sir Ralph Sadler’s consternation and Bess’s destruction when I get away from their guardians
hip, and I cannot help but giggle at the thought of their faces when they find I am gone in the morning. I shall get to France and I shall persuade the king and his mother that they must send me home to Scotland with an army great enough to dominate the Scots lords. They will command that Bothwell be freed to lead my army. They will see the advantages of it, and if they do not, I shall apply to Philip of Spain for help. I could go to him, or to the Pope, or to any one of a dozen wealthy Papists who would help me if I were away from here and free from the wicked imprisonment of my cousin.
“Oh no! Did you not promise the Earl of Shrewsbury that you would not escape while he was away from home? He asked for your word of parole and you gave it.” Mary is suddenly aghast at the memory. “You cannot break your word to him.”