Elizabeth (29 page)

Late that afternoon Cecil received the death warrant with the Queen's signature on it, and was told that she had gone for a ride with the Earl of Leicester. On 2nd June the Duke of Norfolk was beheaded on a newly erected scaffold on Tower Hill. He died with courage and with dignity, after months of cruel suspense; he wrote a simple letter to the Queen he imagined had been loath to execute him, apologizing for his treachery, and insisting that he had never intended her personal harm. The news of his death reached Mary Stuart at Tutbury; she had been brought back to the Castle as a punishment and installed in apartments where the walls ran with damp and the roof leaked, and the pale summer sun filtered through narrow windows which were fitted with bars. Already suffering from rheumatism from her previous stay there, she was too cold to get out of bed; when Lord Shrewsbury told her that Norfolk had been executed she collapsed, weeping and hysterical, refusing to eat or to be comforted. She embarrassed him by insisting that her cousin Elizabeth had only spared her from execution because she intended her to die from the conditions of her imprisonment. Shrewsbury was unable to deny it convincingly because he thought the same himself. He was not a cruel man, and within limits he was influenced by the charm and attraction of his prisoner.

“If you would only stop plotting against the Queen, Madam,” he said awkwardly, “if you would only resign yourself to living in England and give her your promise not to intrigue for your escape, the Queen would deal generously with you. I beg of you, for your own sake, write to her and give your word.”

“Resign myself!” Mary sat upright. Her face was swollen with tears, the lack of fresh air and exercise had sallowed her famous complexion, and her hair fell lankly down to her shoulders, uncombed and wild.

“Resign myself to a life of imprisonment! I came to her for shelter and I find myself in a dungeon in England instead of in Scotland! ‘If I give my word she will deal generously with me'—ah, how easy it is for you, my Lord, to talk of resignation to such a life, because yours is half over. I am twenty-seven—I am the Queen of Scotland and your rightful sovereign—she should be where I am! If I give my word to Elizabeth that I will renounce my freedom and my rights, live like a nun, with my women and my needlework, betray my birth and forgo my inheritance, then she will send me to a pleasant place to die my living death!

“Well, I will never do it; I will plot and strive for my freedom as long as I have breath, or until she kills me. I could forgive
that
, Jesus is witness that I would almost welcome it, rather than this existence, this misery.… But I will never condone her deceit and ease her conscience by saying I am content with what she has done to me, just for the sake of a dry room and permission to sit in my gaoler's garden! You can write the letter yourself, my Lord, and tell her that. Tell her she has murdered Norfolk and slaughtered her people for nothing, because I will never let her rest!”

She buried her face in the pillows and sobbed, and Shrewsbury left her. He liked her and he sympathized, but he longed to be relieved of his responsibility. If she escaped, Elizabeth would blame him; if she died in his custody the world would suspect him of causing her death. And the night before his wife asked him bluntly what he would do if he received orders from the Council to resolve their problems by poisoning his prisoner. He though of the distracted woman, shut up in her unhealthy rooms, with a lifetime of imprisonment before her; in his opinion she would be better dead, but he had no intention of providing that relase if he could help it. He took her advice and wrote to the Council the same evening and begged them to find another custodian.

Cecil was alone in his room at Hampton Court; the candles were burnt down to their sockets on the table where he was sitting, but the room was already light enough to see without them and the birds outside his window were singing in the first sunlight of the spring morning. He had left the Queen's Masque in the early hours after an urgent message whispered by one of his secretaries. He was sure she would not notice his absence; he played no part in the frivolous side of her life and he lacked the nervous energy which enabled her to dance till dawn and then work through the day without sleep. But he had not slept that night; he had sat at his writing-table and opened the paper which was given to him, and after reading it, he sent his secretary to bed. He was a calm man with unshakeable nerves and no temperament; even at that moment he showed no sign of alarm or surprise, his first thought was to keep the contents of that piece of creased and dirty paper secret from everyone until he had decided what to do and how to tell the Queen.

It was spread out in front of him, and the big Papal seal at the end of it was clearly impressed with the triple tiara and the Keys symbolizing Peter's guardianship of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was a device Cecil had hated all his life, and it had not been publicly displayed in England for eleven years. The top of the document was torn where it had been ripped down from the Bishop of London's door at St. Paul's. He had read it so often in the past two hours that he knew every word in it by heart.

‘The Sentence Declaratory of the Holy Father against Elizabeth, Pretended Queen of England and those heretics adhering to her.'

The Pope had excommunicated her at last. After eleven years of patience, perhaps of hoping for the compromise which Cecil knew would never be reached through a Catholic marriage or anything else, the Pope had declared Elizabeth an outlaw to the Christian world, a bastard and a usurper, a persecutor of the true religion whose Catholic subjects were absolved from their oath of allegiance. The friends of Elizabeth were the enemies of Rome, automatically sharing the anathema pronounced against her. It was now the bounden duty of every Catholic in the country to dethrone her if they could.

None of the Council had anticipated this; they had fallen into the habit of regarding the Pope as a distant and impotent enemy who was too weak to take the initiative against them, content to ignore the systematic destruction of the Catholic religion in the hope that the process would be halted by her death and the accession of her cousin Mary Stuart. But Elizabeth had not died; and she was holding her successor a prisoner who might be put to death at any moment. And if Mary died, the infant King of Scotland, reared in the blackest Protestantism, was the inevitable ruler of England. If Mary had stayed in her own kingdom, or been executed before she had time to foment a rebellion, the Pope would not have taken this irrevocable step. Now he knew the only hope of maintaining the Catholic faith in England was to drag Elizabeth off her throne in favour of Mary, and that was the purpose of the excommunication. This was his blessing to the martyrs of the Northern rebellion, and his encouragement to all revolts in the future. It was also a direct invitation to the other Catholic powers in Europe to invade England in a Holy War. Someone had posted the Bull at St. Paul's; even if they discovered the culprits and punished them with all the ferocity of the law, it had been seen by too many people to be suppressed, and there would be other copies smuggled into the big towns throughout the country.

Cecil had been sitting there for nearly three hours, wondering what steps to take and how to protect Elizabeth from the consequences of the sentence in her own kingdom.

“They told me your lights were still burning. What is the matter, Cecil?”

She was standing in the doorway, still dressed in her masque costume, glittering with jewels, the painted and plumed headdress swinging from her wrist.

He stood up and hesitated, and one hand covered the glaring crimson seal.

“I didn't want to disturb you, Madam. I thought you must have gone to bed.”

Elizabeth pushed the door close and walked towards the table.

“I was enjoying myself. You should copy me sometimes and wear yourself out with pleasure instead of work. Take your hand away and show me what you are hiding.”

He gave her the paper without answering and she stood reading it, the golden mask and headdress of Diana, Goddess of the Chase, hanging still from the ribbon round her right wrist.

“Too late for Northumberland and Westmorland, but timely enough for the future,” she said. “I am a bastard and a usurper and whoever takes my throne or sticks a dagger in my heart does a service to God. The same sentence was levelled against my father, and he died in his bed.”

She threw the Bull of Excommunication back on to the table.

“It was different in your father's day,” Cecil said at last. “There was no Catholic claimant to his throne but his own daughter Mary. Tyrannical and wicked as she was, she would never have rebelled against him.”

Elizabeth laughed unpleasantly. “She wouldn't have lived long enough to try.”

“France was quarrelling with Rome,” he continued. “They are allies now. Spain was in no position to invade, Germany was in upheaval, the Protestant movement was too strong all over Europe to permit anyone to carry out the Pope's excommunication against your father. Your father gambled and won, Madam, thank God. The odds against you are much heavier.”

“Only in one direction, Cecil, and for all these years that direction has never changed.” She sat down facing him, and raised her hand when he tried to speak.

“Not Mary Stuart—she is an obsession with you, but she is far less dangerous to me than my dear brother-in-law the King of Spain. I am excommunicated—very well. She is my successor, but France will not attack me to put Mary on the throne because they know I will kill Mary when the first French ship is sighted in the Channel. We have crushed one rebellion at home, and we will crush others when they come. We have the best spy system, the most deterrent punishments that have ever been devised, and we have the principal conspirators under our supervision. If we know Mary's secrets we will know the secrets of our enemies in England and abroad. I am not afraid of Mary; I am afraid of Philip of Spain. You talk about his father, the Emperor. He was occupied with Germany then, Philip is occupied with the Netherlands now. But he will not be tied down there for ever. And Charles V was a politician; his son is a fanatic. When the time comes, he will try and carry this out.” She pointed to the Bull. “He was once King of England; he hates it, as much as he hates me. He would like to do here what he is doing to the Netherlands—not for the worship of God, but for the worship of Philip. There is no distinction between the two in his mind. He will not attack me to make Mary Stuart Queen in my place; I've told you that so often I'm tired of repeating it. He is not going to spill Spanish blood to give France a half-share in this country. So long as we keep her alive, we are safe from him.”

“He engaged in the Ridolfi plot,” Cecil reminded her. “He promised troops and money then, why not now?”

“I didn't say he wouldn't promise,” Elizabeth corrected him. “He will promise anything if it will make trouble for me, but I don't think for a moment he has any confidence in that foolish woman's ability to succeed in any plot she undertakes. God above, you know Philip—you dealt with with him while my sister reigned—do you suppose he has anything but contempt for a woman in the first place, much less one who has lost her throne through marrying a drunken bawd and being ravaged by the man who killed him? Ah, Cecil, she may touch the hearts of many, but she will no more draw Philip into her lists as champion than she could seduce you! When he attacks me, it will be to take England for himself.”

“We should ally with France,” the Secretary urged. “We should send Mary Stuart back to Scotland, and let the Regent execute her, and you should marry a French Prince. Catherine de' Medici is not so bound by Rome that she will refuse the chance of the throne for one of her sons.”

“She is bound by astrology, not Rome,” Elizabeth said dryly. “I am aware of that. But if I listened to you and sent Mary to her death, a Spanish force would be sailing from the Netherlands before I could marry a French Prince or anyone else.”

“The time may come when we cannot keep her as a hostage any longer,” Cecil said slowly. “You talk of her as an asset, Madam; but now this has come, I tell you her hand will be behind every assassin's pistol or dagger that can be hired! We may have the best spy system, but we must make Catholics traitors and execute them for treason and not for religion. We will hang, draw and quarter the man who posted this and any of his fellows we can find. The same must be done with priests and with those who hear Mass. We must make their religion an act of disloyalty, punished by the utmost penalties of the law for traitors. The two must become synonymous in the eyes of your people. We must quench this religion until no vestige of it remains—that is your only hope of safety. But to do it finally we will have to put Mary Stuart to death with the rest. You can lop off the branches of a tree but it will not die till you hack at the roots. And that day will come, Madam. It must, however you resist it.”

“When it does, and if it does,” Elizabeth answered him, “we must be ready for Spain. Now I am going to bed.”

The Bull was traced to a Catholic gentleman named Felton, who refused to betray his associates under torture, and made an attempt to mitigate the Queen's anger against his family by bequeathing her a valuable diamond ring as he stood on the scaffold. The Queen was assured that he had suffered the full rigours of the appalling sentence, put the ring on her finger and admired it, and infuriated Cecil by giving Felton's widow a personal dispensation to have Mass said in her house for the rest of her life. Religion was not mixed with her motives; Felton had been tortured and dismembered for politics, and Elizabeth saw no reason to begrudge his wife the consolation of her faith. She was savage and ruthless and adamant; there was no mercy in her when her power was threatened, but nothing Cecil or Sussex or even Leicester could say made her a hypocrite or a bigot. It was the Secretary's secret grief that his mistress had so little feeling for religion in her soul.