Elizabeth (14 page)

“Nobody left you,” Dudley said.

“There's always the point that they had no particular place to go,” she murmured, “but that does not apply to you. I tried to secure a good pension and a position for you, but I fear you won't get either now.”

“They had no particular place to go.…” How well she knew them all. And how well she must have known him to be able to make him get down on his knees for the first time in countless years and pray to God to let her live. Now he could say it and believe it was true, without reservation, almost without self-interest.

“I love you, Madam.”

“I know,” she said. “I wanted it so, and so it is. You will find me grateful, Robert.”

He remained by her bedside, one thin hand held in his, until she fell asleep.

It was early December and the Palace of Holyrood was so bitterly cold that Mary Stuart spent her time in one of the smaller ante-chambers, her writing-table drawn close to the big open fireplace where a heap of logs threw out a scorching heat. But it was still cold; the far corners of the room were freezing, and a strong draught stirred the heavy tapestry covering the walls. The Queen wore a dress of dark red velvet, its sleeves and collar lined with miniver, and a sable rug covered her knees. She was aware that her brother James Moray disapproved of her furs and her refusal to freeze to death in the big Council Chamber. She had a suspicion that he considered it unpatriotic to suffer so obviously from the Scottish climate. He was a tall, dark man, with a grave expression which was becoming increasingly dour. He seldom smiled and she had never heard him laugh.

“Lethington's despatches came this morning,” she said. Her accent was still painfully French after nearly two years. “Queen Elizabeth has fully recovered from her illness … unfortunately.”

James frowned.

“Surely you don't wish your cousin dead, Madam?”

“And what did she wish me, when she sent a fleet to search for me on my voyage here?”

Mary was finding it more difficult to be tactful with him lately. He never forbore to point out to her what he considered errors of judgment, conduct or speech, and, in her growing confidence, the Queen showed her irritation more and more.

“The question of the English throne is only delayed again, when it might have been settled by an act of God. Naturally, my dear James, I am disappointed, and I am honest enough to say so. Lethington says her life was despaired of for several days; and for weeks afterwards everyone was frightened, she was so weakened. He tells me that if she had died the rumour is that her Council proposed to proclaim her kinswoman Catherine Grey as Queen. He says no mention was made of me.”

“It pains me,” James said slowly, “to hear you lamenting another Crown when you wear the Crown of Scotland. I would advise you not to show your eagerness to others, Madam; we are a proud race and no good at taking second place. I will not repeat this, but others might.”

“If I were Queen of England, as well as Scotland, don't you know what it would mean to you?” she asked him. She knew he was greedy and ambitious; she knew that no one would claim more from her in power and spoils than James if she ruled over England, but it infuriated her when he would not admit it. It put her in the wrong, as if she had no right, no divine sanction by blood, to unite the two kingdoms.

“Power is not my God,” he answered sharply, stung by the implication of her remark which put him in the same category as that unprincipled robber, James Bothwell, and others like him. They would follow the devil into hell to fill their pockets, but he was not one of them. He was a man and the son of a King; that King's failure to marry his mother was responsible for his position as a bastard, taking bounty from a mere sister, when the Crown should have been his. Other men would have been tempted to take it from her, and when she first came to Scotland it would have been easy. He had resisted that temptation; he had helped her and supported her loyally against his inclinations, defended her idolatrous religion and made a show of brotherly affection which he had not really felt in his heart. She was in his debt, not he in hers; she owed her life to his sense of honour.

Suddenly she smiled and held out her hand to him.

“Come, my brother—let's not quarrel! We have the same high blood, you and I, and the same temper. You know I love you dearly and would give you anything; I never meant that you would wish to take.”

“I am not quarrelling,” he said. He ignored her hand and saw it go down to her side again. “But I find my position very difficult. I wasn't brought up in France like you; I may have the same high blood, as you describe it, but only one side is Royal and that's not enough. I want to be a loyal brother to you—God is witness of that—but I cannot share your passion for advancement. Keep the throne you have, guard it and guard yourself, and leave England alone. No one wins who plays against Elizabeth Tudor. That's all I shall say to you.”

She still smiled, but he could not be sure whether it was feigned. She had a stubborn character in spite of her meekness. She called him dear brother and mended their disagreements, but sometimes there was a light of wilfulness, almost of anger in her peculiar slanting eyes which made him doubt her friendliness.

“Then we'll talk of something else,” Mary answered gently. “My suitors—there's a good subject! The Countess of Lennox, as Lethington points out, is another blood cousin of mine, and she has a son who is unmarried. Lethington thinks he might be a likely candidate.”

“You mean Henry Darnley,” James said. He was better informed than she thought. “He's in England, and am I correct in supposing he has a distant claim to the English throne?”

“Oh, very distant.” Mary dismissed the most important factor as if it meant nothing. “Lethington says he is well favoured and young. His mother would welcome the match.”

“No doubt,” he said sourly. “If she were allowed to make it. I can't see the Queen of England permitting a kinsman and a subject to marry you and so strengthen your ambitions. I think Lethington is a fool to mention it.”

“That's one thing Lethington is not,” she countered. “And you know it, even though you don't like him. He is not a fool. He knows the kind of husband I need, and if he recommends Darnley, there must be something in the man. As for Elizabeth, what right has she to stop me? Every candidate I suggest, she vetoes for me. The Spanish Prince, Don Carlos——No, that would mean an unfriendly alliance with Spain and she would be forced to protect herself. The King of Sweden—the same excuse.… The King of France——”

“Your own brother-in-law,” he pointed out. Her coldblooded attitude to marriage always affronted him. It was indecent for a woman to consider a husband as a dynastic loss or gain; that was a man's privilege.

“Oh, James,” she said wearily, “what of it? I was never poor Francis' wife in anything but name. But no, my cousin refuses that more violently than the others. She promised to meet me, but that promise came to nothing. She promises to name me as her successor if I do this or don't do that; I'm growing tired of her interference. I wonder that since the Scots are so proud, they don't resent it too! What does she imagine? That I shall stay a withered virgin like herself, without sons to come after me?”

“That cannot be,” her brother answered stiffly. “You must have a husband to guide you. But it must be the right husband, chosen for the right qualities, not a fool who may be able to further your ambitions.”

“We said we wouldn't speak of that,” she reminded him, and the hostile gleam flashed at him for a second and was gone. Her smile reappeared. “I won't detain you, James; but I like to discuss everything with you first. You know I depend on you so much.”

He kissed her hand and then her cheek, and bowed as he left her. When she was alone she threw the rug off and stood up, her lips compressed, her slanted eyes half closed with anger.

She must have a husband. By God, he was right! She must have a man to stand between her and her half-brother and her nobles and somehow rescue her from this maddening life of encirclement, this masquerade as Queen where everything she did or said was subject to the approval of others. It was somewhat better now than at first; she had more freedom, she had made many friends, she was loved a little for herself and a great deal for what she represented: the chance of engorgement of their rich enemy across the Border. But she did not love the Scots or their country; she could not. She could not spend her life hemmed in in this bleak and wretched kingdom, when a land of freedom and enlightenment, with a large population of her own faith, rich towns and splendid palaces, lay within reach. In England she would be a Queen as Elizabeth was Queen. She had tried to love Scotland, but the terms of Scotland's love were the negation of everything she had been taught regarding the rights of a sovereign and the necessities of a cultured existence. It was cold and humourless and half civilized. In her frustration and despair she paced the little room imagining how easy it would be to love an English kingdom and transform herself into an English Queen. Her mind returned to Lethington's despatch. In spite of his reputation as an unscrupulous opportunist, Mary liked Lethington; he was a shrewd man with a dry sense of humour which she found refreshing, a cynic but a polished cynic, who often looked at her with a gleam of amusement in his light eyes as if he could see beyond the quiet demeanour into the depths of her ambitious and incautious spirit. He had watched her closely in the first months of her reign in Scotland, and she knew she had won his respect by her tact, or rather her dissimulation. They shared not only a sense of humour but also a conspiracy to outwit her enemies. He hated the rude, ranting preacher Knox, despised her brother James, and was confessed agnostic enough to be indifferent to her religion. Once he had decided to support her, he had given her excellent service. He had no patience for fools and no intention of choosing a losing side. Lethington saw her possibilities, and he had decided that with the right advice and a little luck, his Queen might well unite England and Scotland under one Crown.

He wrote a great deal about her cousin Elizabeth, for whom he had a healthy respect. He admitted to his mistress that her rival was a clever, devious personality who appeared to be absolute ruler of her kingdom, with power that made Mary hot with envy. She was a consummate actress, and an equally accomplished liar; she protested her friendship for the Scots Queen, and sighed sentimentally over the prospect of a meeting between them, which she herself had frustrated. Lethington further reported that she had no religious feelings whatever; her private taste inclined towards Catholic ritual; she liked music and ceremony and candles, but on those of her Catholic subjects who refused to attend the established services, she levied fines which were ruining them financially. As a result, many had capitulated rather than be reduced to penury. She had no scruples, but she dreaded war. Mary was comforted by this; for she mistook it for a sign of weakness and rejoiced in her own high spirits which would welcome a romantic campaign. Elizabeth's attitude smelled of the counting house and the middle-class caution which Mary so heartily despised. Lethington thought the English Queen unlikely to marry; she was said to be barren, which explained her position as the mistress of Lord Robert Dudley. If Mary waited, and avoided antagonizing her cousin by a foreign marriage, Elizabeth would eventually name her as her successor. When that was done, the situation could be reassessed. But he emphasized, in every letter he sent back from England, that Elizabeth was a formidable opponent, backed by some of the cleverest men in Europe, with Sir William Cecil at their head.

Formidable, Mary repeated that word to herself, trying to conjure the living woman from all the accounts she had heard of her. Ruthless, deceitful, able to impose her will upon those men whom Lethington considered so exceptionally wise and strong. A gifted musician, a beautiful dancer, passionately fond of dress and openly acquisitive about jewels and treasures. (One of the safest ways to Elizabeth's favour was a valuable present, articles of clothing included.) She spoke three languages fluently and translated the Classics like a University scholar, indeed better than many of them. But she was still a bastard, the daughter of a common adventuress who was beheaded for adultery and incest. She was not beautiful like Mary, or truly Royal, with the blood of the Stuarts and the majestic Guises running in her veins. She was a heretic and a usurper, and all her cleverness could not outweigh these disadvantages when it came to a clear choice between the Queen of Scotland and herself.

In spite of Lethington, in spite of James, in spite of everyone who warned her and looked dubious, Mary's confidence in her own destiny was stronger than ever. She could review her two years in Scotland and tell herself that England would be easy after such an apprenticeship at ruling the unruly.

She picked up Lethington's latest despatch and began to re-read the remarks on Henry Darnley.

At the end of that year, English troops were in occupation of Havre. Having committed herself to war, Elizabeth ordered a vigorous policy. Cecil was restored to favour by one of her disconcerting reversals; she sent for him, remained alone with him for three hours, and appeared at Court the next day leaning affectionately on his arm. If she was cool at times it merely sharpened his wits and improved his work with a little healthy anxiety; when she welcomed him back, he fell under her influence more completely than before. His subjection was a slow process, but it was as absolute as her dominion over Dudley. He loved his wife and his growing family of children; he could never explain the particular mixture of fascination and uncertainty which bound him to Elizabeth.

But in March of 1563 the war ended in France with the capture of the Protestant Prince de Condé and the murder of the Catholic Duc de Guise. The rather ridiculous figure of the Regent, Catherine de' Medici, suddenly emerged from the political shadows in a different shape. The neglected wife, the foreigner with nothing to recommend her except the fortunes of her Florentine banker's family, put an end to the war in France, and revealed a sinister ability. Her first action was to unite the forces of the Huguenots and Catholics against the English troops at Havre. It was a clever move; religious differences were forgotten in patriotic hatred of the hereditary enemy who had taken advantage of a private French quarrel to make claims on the soil of France, making Calais their objective. Elizabeth's soldiers had done no fighting for Condé; they now found themselves besieged by Condé's supporters in concert with Catholic troops, and a long and bitter engagement began, in which the English fought with courage and tenacity. Anxious and enraged at the setbacks, Elizabeth now encouraged her armies as fiercely as she had first resisted their embarkation, and she drew Cecil closer than ever into her confidence. But her efforts and the fighting qualities of the Havre garrison were defeated by a deadlier enemy than the French. Plague broke out in the port and soon a hundred men a day were dying, with twice as many sick. There was nothing to do but accept the peace Catherine de' Medici offered, with the final reunuciation of all claims to Calais.