Elizabeth (11 page)

After weeks of preparation she was setting out at last, to take possession of her Scottish kingdom so recently torn by civil war and now in the grip of a fierce religious reformation.

Mary was very tall, taller than the Lord Eglinton, who was Bishop of Orkney and a famous sailor, taller than the Lord High Admiral of Scotland, Lord Bothwell, both of whom were escorting their Queen on the voyage and were standing beside her on the windy poop-deck as she looked on France for the last time. She was tall but very slim, with the narrow proportion and delicate bones of a much smaller woman, and the tears she shed accentuated the extreme pallor of her face. It was a strange face with a high forehead and a long, well-bred nose; the hair which curled round her ermine cap was a very dark red, and her slanting eyer were hazel. The face was elfin and yet beautiful; everything about her was expressive, from the sensitive mouth to the movements of her hands when she spoke. Eglinton, who was more of a pirate than a priest, admitted that the Scots had the loveliest woman in Europe as their Queen, and then wondered dourly whether they would appreciate it. It was difficult to be near such a completely feminine creature with her unnatural air of delicacy and her boyish high spirits without being drawn to her. At least as a woman, if not as a Queen. But he could not imagine her as a ruler, sitting in isolation on a throne, symbolizing the Divine law of Kingship to that unruly pack of blackguards who would be waiting for her at Holyrood Palace. Her mother had been as tough as any Border Lord, but the girl's father was a poet and a dreamer as well as a King, an aesthete who had given his daughter her breeding and her pride as well as this precarious throne which she was so determined to occupy. From personal feelings, Eglinton wished her well but he wouldn't have gambled a week's privateering on her chances.

Bothwell watched her without appearing to do so. He was short and very powerfully built, with the bowed legs of a man who had spent more hours on horseback than on foot, and at twenty-three he had an infamous reputation for piracy, Border raiding and personal debauch. He had followed the Queen's party in the recent war, and done her mother such good service that Mary trusted him implicitly. It was a situation that intrigued and irritated him. He had no respect for women and less for a sovereign who was a woman; it was certain that he felt no pity for the youth and inexperience of the girl he was taking back to. Scotland to face the stormiest country in Europe and to attempt to tame a nobility who were notorious for regicide. He knew enough about Mary and her humiliation at the Court where her mother-in-law Catherine de' Merici reigned, to understand why she had been rash enough to leave France and entrust herself to such an uncertain future. She had spirit and she had beauty, and he was interested in those, but it was an interest which he insisted was a base one, grounded in self-advancement. If she prospered, he would do well. If she failed, his enemies would dismember him in property and limb. Therefore he was the Queen's man. He saw her wipe her eyes, and immediately one of her ladies, four of them all named Mary like herself, rushed forward with an elegant silk handkerchief. It was a flimsy, useless thing, trailing fine lace. He took the white linen scarf from his neck and handed it to Mary Stuart without a word. She took it and for a moment their fingers touched.

“Thank you, my Lord.”

She spoke English with a strong French accent; he wondered how her insular Scots people would like that, or the musical voice. A pleasing voice, more suited to a lady's chamber or a gentle duet at the virginals than the uproar of a Council Chamber. She would never be able to roar. She would never be able to make herself heard at all where she was going. If they managed to escape the English ships which Elizabeth Tudor had sent into the Channel to intercept them, and arrived in Scotland at all.…

The English Queen had refused her cousin a safe conduct because Mary had not ratified the Treaty of Edinburgh, made with Scottish Lords who were in revolt against her at the time. He had been surprised when he heard of Mary's answer to Elizabeth's ambassador Throckmorton. With or without Elizabeth's permission, she would set out to claim her right as Queen of Scotland. If the Queen of England succeeded in capturing her on the journey, then she might do her pleasure and make sacrifice of her. It was an undiplomatic answer which acutely embarrassed the English Ambassador, but its tactlessness appealed to Bothwell who never used a soft word when he could substitute an insult. She had a habit of speaking her mind, and a knack of choosing the right word when she wanted to be rude. It was the arrogance of youth which trapped her into referring to her dreaded mother-in-law Catherine de' Medici as a banker's daughter, and Catherine had made her pay for the sally when Mary's young husband died and she was no longer Queen Consort. She had been unkindly funny at Elizabeth's expense when the scandal of her affair with Lord Robert Dudley was the talk of Europe a year earlier.

“The Queen of England is going to marry her Horse master who killed his wife to make room for her.”

Perhaps the price of that remark was the presence of a fleet of English ships in the Channel. It was not always safe to be witty in France; it would be much less safe in Scotland, where the Lords were not particularly gifted with a sense of humour. Was she a fool, he wondered? How did she compare with that other Queen, her cousin by blood, still sitting firmly on her throne in England, having kept her lover Dudley beside her without marrying him, apparently stronger after three years on the throne than when she came to it.… If Mary Stuart were like her, he had thrown the right dice for once.…

Slowly the galley eased into the open sea, its sails filled by a rising wind. The young Queen remained on deck, surrounded by her ladies and her three uncles, the princely, brilliant Guises, while Eglinton and Bothwell, neither of whom liked each other, drew together as outsiders, their plans for a quick voyage frustrated by the Queen's order that the galley slaves were not to be whipped to increase their speed.

It was a sign of sentimentality which dismayed them both. It might well have delivered them to the English, as Eglinton said between curses, except that the Lord always protects fools and innocents, and sent down a thick Channel fog which enabled them to glide the long way round and land safely at Leith on the 19th.

Elizabeth looked up from the chessboard, one hand poised with a knight. She had played three games with Dudley, and won two; she was about to checkmate him when the Earl of Sussex appeared in the doorway. He pulled off his cap, and knelt.

“Your Majesty's pardon, but I've come from Portsmouth!”

“Come in, Sussex, come in.” She put the knight down on the board, and got up without looking at Dudley. Over her shoulder she said: “Checkmate, my Lord. You owe me twenty gold pieces. Now, Sussex, what is your news?”

The Earl looked quickly at Dudley, and hesitated. Elizabeth's hand waved impatiently.

“You can speak in front of Robert. I have no secrets from him.”

“Our fleet has returned, Madam. But without the Queen of Scots. Her ship escaped us in a thick fog.”

“Damn them!” Elizabeth exploded. “Damn them and their fog.… When did she land and where?”

“At Leith, Madam, a week ago. But we captured two of her baggage ships, with all her horses and most of her possessions. It's a rich prize.”

“But not the one I wanted,” she retorted. “Robert, get me some wine.… Horses and trinkets! She landed at Leith, you say? Isn't that a devil of a place?”

“No worse than the rest of Scotland,” Sussex answered. “But worse for the lack of those horses and trinkets you speak of. She made no triumphal entry into Edinburgh; the best they could find her was a knock-kneed old hackney, and the Reformers sang psalms under her window all night!”

To the relief of both men, the Queen laughed.

“By God, what a welcome! Was she well received?”

“I have no details, Madam,” Sussex temporized. She was amused by the humiliation of her rival; she would be less amused if he were to tell her that Mary Stuart had survived it with humour and charm. He would leave that task to Cecil; she accepted bad news from him with a better grace than from anyone else at Court.

“Sir William Cecil may have our Ambassador's report. He will know more.”

“Thank you, Sussex; send him to me. Come and dine at my table later; I want to hear all the news of yourself since you've been out of my sight. I've missed you.”

She always said that, Dudley thought, and they always believed her. She had a genius for making men feel important.

“What are you thinking, Robert?” She was looking at him over the edge of the golden wine cup. She may have lulled Sussex by laughing over her failure to capture Mary Stuart, but he was not deceived. He knew that in spite of her calm she was furious, and very anxious.

“I was wondering what good it would have done if you had taken the Scots Queen,” he said. “You couldn't have kept her here—you have no excuse.”

“I don't need excuses. My cousin would have remained my guest, driven on to my coast by storms, or rather fog—until she ratified the Treaty of Edinburgh and renounced all claim to my throne.”

Dudley shook his head.

“She might have refused for a long time, Madam; too long for that diplomacy to last. Then what?”

She sat back, balancing her cup between those narrow, lovely hands, and shrugged.

“I'm tired of talking politics, Robert; I shall have my fill of them when Cecil comes in a few moments. Come back to me later and we will finish our chess. But pay the twenty pieces you owe me before you go.”

It was a rule that the Queen should be paid on the spot when she won; it was also a rule that no one asked for her debts. He counted the money out on to the table and then kissed her hand, hiding the chagrin he felt at his dismissal. It had taken him twelve months of superhuman patience, tact and abject submission to regain the favour he had lost after Amy's death. He no longer argued or pressed his attentions on her unless she invited them. Though she made much of him in public, for the pleasure of focusing romantic speculation on herself, as he suspected, she often rebuffed him irritably when they were alone, but he made no comment. He could not afford that luxury, and he knew it. The lesson of the past year had been a hard and bitter one, but he had learnt it.

He bowed to her and went out.

When Cecil came he found her sitting by the chessboard, studying the pieces which were arranged as if she were going to play.

“We failed,” she said, without looking up. “Sussex has just told me.”

“It was ordained,” the Secretary answered. “No one could expect such a fog to come down at this time of year.”

“You talk like those putrid Calvinists; ordained be damned! God doesn't alter the weather to suit Mary Stuart and thwart me—He has better things to occupy Him. I hear she made a poor showing on her entry into Edinburgh. Is that true or was Sussex lulling me?”

“Partly true and partly lulling,” Cecil answered, taking the seat opposite to her. “She had no horses and no jewels, but she took the people's fancy, and was well received by them.”

“You heard this from Randolph?” Elizabeth looked up at him.

Cecil shook his head. “No, Madam; ambassadors' reports travel too slowly for my liking; I have other observers in Scotland with faster pens. They wrote to me the day she arrived.”

“Is she as beautiful as they say?” Elizabeth asked him. “Is that why she was welcomed?”

“Beautiful and well advised. She came into the country like a fugitive, entered her capital without proper accoutrements and listened to speeches of welcome telling her to abolish the abomination of the Mass, and she gave the same smile to everyone and said she was well pleased.”

“She
is
well advised.” Elizabeth's lips compressed. “How long will she conceal herself do you think? Or is it possible that she'll forswear her religion and conform with the Calvinists?”

“If she does, she is less dangerous to you. The malcontents in England are not likely to support one Protestant Queen against another. Her strength in claiming the English throne lies in her Popery.”

“In that and her legitimate birth and her Tudor blood. Oh, Cecil, if we had only captured her.… But we failed, and now we stand like this, she and I; two Queens on either side of their frontiers, like the pieces on this board. The White Queen and the Red. We have our Knights. There's you, and my Lords of the Council, and my nobles who would lose all they have won under a Catholic sovereign, and the Bishops, each longing to burn the other for the good of their immortal souls.…”

“Her Bishop is John Knox,” the Secretary interrupted. “He is on our board. And her Knights are her bastard half-brother Lord James Moray, that snake Lethington who'd sell his own mother, Ruthven, who'd
hang
his, and many more of the same kind. She is eighteen and half French, and she knows nothing of Scotland or the Scots.”

“All men have the same vices, whatever their nationality,” the Queen said slowly. “If she offers them the conquest of England with all the plunder that implies, her Knights and Bishops will fight as hard for her as mine for me.”

“They will not win,” Cecil said. “They would have less chance of making any move at all, if you would take a husband, Madam, before the Queen of Scots takes one.”

Elizabeth stood up suddenly.

“Do you think I had overlooked that factor? I'm not a fool, Cecil, or an innocent at state affairs. My well beloved cousin has quartered the arms of England and styled herself Queen of England since the day my sister Mary died. She has left France where she was only a King's widow and counted for nothing; and gone to that battlefield of a country to become a Queen in her own right. And above all, to step closer to my throne; that is the one she wants to sit on. She may be eighteen and all the rest, but she's got ambition in her blood. This is no simpering girl, content with needlework and books; I only wish it were. If she has this mettle in her, the pieces will move on that board, and they'll move before long. If I marry, you say—marry, marry.… Rather let us think about her choice of husband and leave mine alone!”