Elizabeth (25 page)

He was like a wild animal, defiant and snarling at bay. He had no fear of death in battle; but he had told her plainly that he would kill her and himself before he fell into the hands of Lord James and his supporters. Her brother was in France; it was typical of him to leave the rebellion to be fought by others. When it was successful, he would return, protesting his innocence. He was responsible for the revolt, he was the organizer, the brain behind the ruffians she could see below her. And he had promised that she would not be harmed. Perhaps he meant to keep that promise. It was her only hope; she felt so sick that she swayed in the saddle. If they fought they died—she and Bothwell and the child she carried—fought and died for nothing, without even the memory of love between them. And suddenly Mary did not want to die. She was sick of blood and pain and futility, and she was only twenty-five.

She turned to one of the clansmen standing by her and sent him to find Bothwell. He came after some delay, scowling and sweating in his heavy steel breastplate.

“Their troops are round the back of us,” he said shortly. “All this parleying was just a feint to strengthen their position while we talked. I told you to send that damned Frenchman away!”

“We cannot win,” Mary said slowly. “The men are deserting; there are less and less left to us every hour.”

He began to swear and pull out his sword and she touched his arm suddenly.

“If they give you a safe conduct, will you abandon this battle?”

“What?” he stared at her, his dark eyes narrowing against the sun. “Don't talk such madness; they want my head and they'll have to come and get it. I'll kill that cur Morton if it's the last blow I strike on earth.”

“If they let you go,” she insisted, her voice strained and trembling, “I will surrender to them. I am the one they want most. Du Croc says I shan't be harmed. I beg of you, James, I beseech you, listen to me.”

“Listen to you!” he laughed bitterly. “I listened to you long enough, Madam, and now see where it has brought me!”

“I don't want it to bring you to your death. Blame me if you wish; God knows I blame myself, but what is done cannot be altered now. We were friends once, before all this; I truly loved you once, and I am carrying your child. For that child's sake, I want you to escape.”

He looked at her and for a moment he caught her arm, not unkindly but to give her support. He couldn't believe that she meant what she said; she would surrender if he could go free. Even at that moment his insane pride rejoiced at the idea that he had conquered her in spite of everything, that, even if he despised her, she cared for him.… Women had always cared for him, no matter how he treated them, they came whining back, asking for more. All women except the Queen whose attentions had driven him to disaster, and then proved that when it came to a trial of power and strength, her title was only an empty echo against the men and money of her brother and her nobles.

“Let me send down to them,” she pleaded. “And if they grant your life, we will lay down our arms.”

“How do I know you will be safe?” he asked, and suddenly ashamed of his relief, he looked away from her.

“They have given their word for that already. James could not break it publicly. No harm will come to me.”

It was late afternoon when the rebel Lords gave their assurance. As Lord Lindsay said, once they had the Queen safe, Bothwell would not get very far.

The sun was sinking when Mary said goodbye to him for the last time; her face was very white under the red light as he stood awkwardly in front of her, anxious to get away and torn by a feeling of shame and anger and regret that could not find expression. In his own way he loved her, in a way that was ruthless and ambitious and predominantly lustful. He could not come nearer to telling her so than by saying he wished it had been different and hoped that she had forgiven him for what had happened at Dunbar.

“I wanted to marry you,” he mumbled. “And I thought you might be persuaded against it if we delayed. I did what seemed the only thing to make up your mind for you. It's an old Border method.”

“It was the wrong one, but I believe you thought it right,” she said wearily. “There's nothing left for us but forgiveness now. I do forgive you from my heart.”

“We can still fight,” he said, but she was not deceived. He wanted to go, and she longed to be free of him now that she knew he was ready to abandon her, free even to depend upon her brother James. It was not possible to sink lower than she had done in courage or in hope.

“Farewell,” he said abruptly. “I will be back, and I swear I'll help you if you need it.”

She watched him mount and spur his horse into a gallop back over the ridge of the hill; then she began to ride slowly forward towards the rebel forces.

It was so unusual for Elizabeth to attend a Council meeting, that when Cecil told the other members to expect the Queen, they knew it would be a difficult session. They were all standing by their places round the long polished table, with the canopied chair at the top; the Duke of Norfolk, the Lords Leicester, Hunsdon, Sussex, Bedford, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton and Sir William Cecil, and Cecil had a pile of papers stacked with his characteristic neatness just in front of him, placed edge to edge, with a sheaf of clean parchment; a stand of freshly cut quill pens, and ink and sanding paper were laid out before each Councillor. It was his duty to write down the Queen's comments and keep the minutes of the meeting. He had been hoping that Elizabeth would leave the guidance of the Council to him as she normally did; in that way he felt there might be a chance of altering her attitude to the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots, at that time held as her brother Moray's prisoner in the island castle of Lochleven. She was under the guardianship of her deadly enemies, the Douglas, and lucky to have lived through the ordeal of her parade through the streets of Edinburgh after her surrender at Carberry Hill, where the crowds had yelled for her blood, and besieged the house where the Lords had lodged her, screaming that she should be burnt alive as a witch and a whore.…

Elizabeth had reacted with volcanic fury to the reports of the brutality, indignity and ill-usage to which her sister Queen had been subjected, after receiving promises of humane and honourable treatment from those who held her captive. And it was this obstinate defence of Mary's Royal immunity which had so far prevented Moray and the others from putting their prisoner to death. The Council which was waiting for her had been called to point out the folly of her attitude.

“Make way for the Queen's Grace! The Queen's Grace to the Council!”

They could hear the shout of her gentleman usher; they were all turned towards the door when at last it opened and Elizabeth walked quickly through into the room. Every back bowed. The Queen wore a stiff skirted gown of pale cream satin, lined with gold tissue; the soft, shimmering colour blended with her hair and was repeated in the little yellow cap, the edges sewn with pearls and topaz.

“Greetings, my Lords.” She spoke briskly, and inwardly Cecil's spirits drooped. He knew that clipped, businesslike tone and the mood it indicated.

She sat down in her chair of state and began to pick sweets out of the gold bowl.

Cecil cleared his throat and began to ask the Queen's consideration of a proposed amendment to the local judiciary system in country parishes. It was a futile trick because she interrupted him in the middle of the second sentence.

“You don't need my opinion for such stuff. Get to the real business. The Earl of Moray has asked for another assurance that he has nothing to fear from me if he executes Queen Mary.”

Her dark eyes swept round the line of faces.

“That is the question, Gentlemen. And here is my answer, which it will be your pleasure to convey on my behalf. The day any rebellious subject takes the life of their lawful Prince, on any pretext whatsoever, an English army marches into Scotland.”

“Madam.” Throckmorton leant towards her. “We all know your merciful nature, but there's surely a point where mercy and policy cease to meet. The Queen of Scots is your mortal enemy. She has claimed your throne from the day your sister Mary died and has continued to claim it ever since she arrived in Scotland. Nothing has changed her attitude. If she regains her throne in Scotland and, knowing the country as I do, it's not as impossible as it seems in spite of her conduct, she will be as dangerous to you as ever, perhaps more if she finds another man fool enough to marry her and engage in her ambitions. I beg you, Madam, on behalf of your Council and all your people, to allow Lord Moray and the other Lords to do what they want. Let them try the Queen for Darnley's murder and execute her. We shan't have peace as long as she lives.”

There was a moment's silence before Elizabeth answered him. She knew that he spoke sincerely and without personal malice towards the Queen of Scots. It was a natural and just solution to Throckmorton who was not as bloodthirsty as her cousin Hunsdon or the Earl of Bedford, or as basically unchivalrous as Leicester. They all thought she was being obstinate and sensitive to world opinion; Cecil thought she was being sentimental and was positively sad in his disappointment in her. They saw nothing wrong with killing a sovereign, because they were all commoners.

“It's not my habit to give explanations,” she said at last, “but I know the affection you all have towards me, and I don't wish you to think it is taken lightly. My Lords, this once I will open my heart to you. I want no record of this written, Cecil; let it stay in your memories. Before my grandfather, Henry VII, came to the throne, it was the custom of English Kings to take the crown by force. Civil war, tyranny and terrible crimes were the result of that precedent; in fact our country was no better than Scotland. The Tudors have changed that; with our dynasty kingship has gained a sacred place in the hearts of subjects of all degree. I can come and go amongst you all because I know there is not a man among you who would put his poignard into my heart, because I am your Queen and as your Queen my blood is sacred. It was this ideal, this truth, which prevented my sister from putting me to death when so many advised her to do so, using all those arguments you have employed against the Queen of Scots. I was her heir and of the Blood Royal. So, God help us, is Mary Stuart to me. If I stand by while those ruffians send her to the scaffold, I have stretched out my own neck and bared my own bosom. If I, as Queen of England, admit the right of a Prince's subjects to judge and try and condemn their Prince, then my own precedent might well rebound upon me. I do not admit Moray's right. I have spoken to you as a Queen and now I tell you that as a woman I abhor the treachery and brutality with which he and the other scoundrels have treated a defenceless woman who is carrying a child.”

“She connived at Darnley's murder,” Sussex pointed out.

“If she did, she is only guilty of poor timing and worse planning—I will not allow you to sit there and pretend that such a cur deserved anything other than death for his conduct towards her. Conduct towards his Queen, more than his wife, I would remind you. Besides, it is not proved, and I fear it troubles my conscience very little. I will not set an example to the world by abandoning the Queen of Scots to a judicial murder. Nor will I close my eyes to poison—tell Moray that too. And if the time comes when she can regain her throne, she may only regain it with my help and on such terms that she will never perplex us again. That, surely, is a better alternative and if we are patient it may come about.”

She held out her hands palms downward across the table. Her coronation ring shone in the light.

“I have been Queen of England for ten years, my Lords, and my hands are not stained with any man's blood. I will never sully them with the blood of a fellow Prince who comes of the same stock as myself.”

There was nothing to be said after that. The Council agreed that her warning should be sent to Moray, and the subject of Mary Stuart was superseded by the Queen's pressing need of finance. For the last ten years Elizabeth's exchequer had been unsteady; national bankruptcy was her nightmare, and the fear of it drove her to drastic economies which were always aimed at those extravagances sacred to her male advisers, to wit, the fleet and the army. The intervention in France had squandered millions of her carefully hoarded Treasury gains; now the great financial houses in the Netherlands were unwilling to hazard more money for England, who might well be overrun by Spain once the Netherland rebels had been finally defeated. And final defeat was something Elizabeth would not consider. It was all very well, she broke in angrily during the meeting, to talk about Mary Stuart who was shut up in a Scottish castle without men or money or hope, when their real danger lay in a huge Spanish army of veterans across the Channel, who might well be launched against England at any moment.

If Philip put down the revolt in the Netherlands, he would be the first power in Europe. If they had forgotten Philip of Spain in all this blabbering about a woman, she had not. She had never forgotten Philip, even when she was most anxious about Mary Stuart. He had a long memory and a slowly mounting score to settle. He had been held back, forced into pretending friendship for her by factors which were known to them all: the fear of her possible marriage to a French Prince; the equal fear of a French-inspired attack upon her to put Mary Stuart upon the throne; the necessity to keep English trade flourishing in his Netherland kingdom. He had only to be sure she would not marry a Frenchman, that Mary was no longer eligible as a French cat's-paw, and that the best way of keeping trade intact with the Netherlands was to swallow the other half of the business, and then they would all be lost.

They needed money. They needed it primarily to send to the rebels and keep that costly, terrible war going as a distraction and a drain upon the resources of Spain. When Sussex suggested sending troops the Queen sprang out of her chair with a string of oaths, and asked him whether he wanted a war with Spain at this moment, or was he so old that he was tired of the rigours of living?