Elizabeth (36 page)

“On your own head be it!”

She nodded to Leicester and he called out. The guards came back and, as they surrounded him, Campion saw the Queen bite her lower lip and turn away.

“Return the prisoner.”

That was Burleigh's voice, very brisk and anxious to get home to bed. They hurried him out of the room and down the garden to the boat. Campion knelt as they rowed back up the black river, and he prayed steadily and with an extraordinary sense of peace.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Every window in the Queen's room was open but the heat was stifling; the gardens were parched, the paved walks and stone benches were burning to the touch, and no breeze came from the river. It was the hottest summer Elizabeth could remember. She had moved from Whitehall at the first outbreak of the summer epidemics in the City and left Greenwich for Hampton Court. It was her favourite residence; she loved the rich red brick, the spacious courtyards and the airy rooms with their wide views of the river and the parklands. She was especially fond of the herb gardens and spent many hours sewing with her ladies in the shaded arbour, surrounded by the sweet and pungent scent of the shrubs. She was too hot and too irritable to go out that day; the weather frayed her nerves and interfered with her sleep, and perversely she made no concessions in dress for herself or her attendants. She sat close to a window, laced into a gown of violet satin; the bodice was stiff with bead and amethyst embroidery and it clung to her tired body like a suit of mail. Her head ached under an auburn wig; her hair was now too thin and too white to cover with anything but a nightcap, and she fought the signs of age with richer dresses, multicoloured wigs and a mask of paint which took two hours to apply twice a day.

Lady Bedford sat beside her, moving the humid air with a fan; it made Elizabeth hotter, and after a few moments she snapped at her to stop. She snapped at her women; when they made mistakes or irritated her, she boxed their ears. They hated her and feared her, and she hated most of them because they were young, and her old attendants were thinning out. Lady Dacre was dead, and Mary Sidney had caught fever and died only a few months ago. There were young, fresh faces round the Queen; women whom she remembered as children. They simpered and giggled, reminding her constantly of her vanished youth, and enviously watched the young men who clustered round her. As a virgin herself, Elizabeth had begun stressing the value of maidenhood; she conveyed her displeasure at signs of flirtation and her outrage at the mention of marriage. No one was permitted to enjoy the consummation of love which she had renounced herself, and she monopolized the time and attentions of every man at Court. Since Alençon's departure she felt affronted by the sight of other people's personal happiness and tormented by the suspicion that her position was tinged with ridicule.

She was selfish and demanding and unreasonably jealous, and there were times when she despised her own weakness and her need of flattery, but the illusion of youth and desirability were essential. She could not stand erect upon her pinnacle without them and, even had she really wished to, she was fifty and unable to step down.

She looked across at the youngest and prettiest of her new ladies, Elizabeth Throckmorton.

“Go to the virginals and play something!”

“Yes, Madam.” Bess Throckmorton curtsied and sat down at the instrument; after a moment she began to play a country melody which she knew Elizabeth liked. She played very well, but not as well as her mistress; Margaret Knollys had once mastered a piece which the Queen found too difficult and she had never been allowed to open the keyboard again.

Elizabeth's thoughts were diverted from her own loneliness and irritability; she was thinking of her lady-in-waiting's kinsman, Nicholas Throckmorton, handsome and charming, and destined for her favour. She was thinking of the day that Walsingham came to her and showed her papers proving that Throckmorton was a Catholic and plotting to assassinate her and proclaim Mary Stuart Queen of England. Throckmorton had died the terrible death prescribed for traitors, but the intrigue showed a terrifying increase in the number of educated, high-born young men who were turning to the Church of Rome and championing the imprisoned Queen of Scotland.

It was the fault of the Jesuit missionaries and lay priests, who were sneaking into the country in greater numbers than ever. Their fanaticism was re-kindling the embers of the old religion, and the Queen found herself compelled to quench that fire in blood. It was more difficult than ever to preserve the life of Mary, when her Council and her Parliament saw constant evidence of the threat she presented to Elizabeth and to themselves. She had replaced Shrewsbury with Sir Ralph Sadleir, and finally given Sir Amyas Paulet the unwelcome task of guarding the most dangerous prisoner in Europe. Elizabeth personally disliked Paulet; he was a sour, unbending Puritan, a devotee of Walsingham and a man incapable of being corrupted by chivalry. Mary's confinement was as uncomfortable as his vigilance could make it, and since Throckmorton's plot, her correspondence had to be written in his presence and approved, and his methods were so successful that she had no means of secret communication with the outside world. Paulet had sealed her off from her friends in England and in Spain as effectively as if she were dead, and when Mary protested to her son James, then styling himself King of Scotland, she was informed that he had asked for Elizabeth's assurance that his mother would never be released. Elizabeth wondered cynically how she had been fool enough to imagine anything else. Did she believe the ties of filial love bound James, who had never seen her since babyhood, and was thoroughly enjoying himself in her place …? Nothing moved James but his own interests, and the last thing in the world he wanted was the emergence of his famous and troublesome mother to reclaim her throne.

What dream did Mary live in, that she should rely on her son, and fall into a paroxysm of rage and grief when she heard that he was among her bitterest enemies? If there was one thing she had learnt from reigning over men for over twenty years, it was the folly of placing too much trust in them. Friends and relatives, lovers and children—how foolish to attach the heart strings to any of them, when ambition so easily tugged them out.

Elizabeth stared into space through narrow eyes. After all these years she was not yet secure; she was an old woman, and she admitted it, wincing inwardly, and there was no respite from the struggle to keep the power to which she had dedicated her life. She had kept her people at peace; they were better fed and employed than at any time in England's history, and still she could not rest on her achievements and be certain of their gratitude. They followed chimeras; the title of Mary, the religion of which she had made herself the champion, though God knows it was power and not Papistry that Mary fought for—the greatest chimera of all, religious truth, urging a man like Edmund Campion to torture and death, and scores of others after him. They could not be content with bread and peace and comfort, and they were always better men than those who were. Braver and nobler than the fops and opportunists who surrounded her, singing songs and writing poetry in praise of a beauty which she had never possessed even in her youth, but fools in the final judgment, and there was no place in the world for fools.

It was not heroic to try and unseat the best sovereign England had ever had, and Elizabeth made that claim without boasting; it was malicious and ungrateful and she hated them for it, and punished them ferociously when she caught them. Most of all she hated Mary Stuart. While so many of her friends died, her enemy lived on, surviving damp and hardship and epidemics, the beacon light that rallied traitors.

“If she were dead, I might have peace.”

“Did you speak, Madam?”

Lady Sutherland interrupted her thoughts and the Queen realized that she must have spoken them aloud.

She stood up and snapped her fingers at Elizabeth Throckmorton to stop playing.

“Send for Lord Burleigh and Sir Francis Walsingham. When they come, you can withdraw.”

Burleigh and the Secretary sat down near the window; the Minister's gout had not improved, and he annoyed the Queen by pleading for a leave of absence which she had so far refused. She needed Burleigh; he was cautious and balanced and wise, and there were too many younger men like Walsingham swaying the Council with rash ideas.

“It's so hot, I expect to see the Devil any moment! My poor Burleigh, I imagine you were sleeping again when I disturbed you?”

“No, Madam, it's too hot for that. I was only reading.”

“And you, Walsingham?”

“Working, Madam. The weather makes no difference to me.”

“Nothing makes any difference to you. I sometimes wonder if you're human.”

The Secretary flushed. Whenever the Queen was bad-tempered, she made him the scapegoat. His dignity had never recovered from the incident when he once flatly contradicted her opinion and she took the shoe off her foot and threw it in his face.

“What was the last report from Paulet about the Queen of Scots?”

“He reported to the Council as usual last week. She is in moderate health, protesting daily about the censorship of her letters, and railing against you, Madam. He had no news of importance.”

“He has no news,” Walsingham interrupted suddenly, “because she is so strictly watched. It was better when we knew what intrigues were hatching by opening her letters. Now she knows nothing and nor do we.”

“As you say,” Elizabeth said, “she was our best source of information. Thanks to that zealous idiot Paulet it is completely dried up. I have been thinking that her dabblings were less dangerous than her silence.”

“If Paulet relaxes, she will suspect,” Burleigh said. “We would have to open a channel for her letters without his knowledge. Walsingham, you could find a way of doing that.…”

“I was never in favour of cutting her off from the world,” the Secretary insisted. “We know she is the Queen's deadly enemy and capable of any crime against her. But, to commit the crime, she must have the opportunity, and to punish it, we must have proof.”

“For once,” Elizabeth remarked, “you do not go too fast. I survived Throckmorton's plot; the next assassin might not be so clumsy. But if Mary hears of it first, so will we. And if she can be found in concert with my enemies again, it should be possible to punish her as she deserves.”

For a moment Burleigh and Walsingham stared at her without speaking. For nearly twenty years she had been urged to kill Mary Stuart, and it was inconceivable that even Elizabeth should have chosen this stifling, uneventful afternoon to change her mind.

“If you mean that you will take our advice at last, Madam, I feel like falling on my knees and thanking God,” Burleigh said.

“I'm not sure what I mean,” Elizabeth retorted. “Except that I'm tired of my life being menaced in such a woman's favour. I am tired of hearing that she rails against me, who have saved her life for all these years, and that because she cannot spend her years in peace, she denies all quiet of mind to me. I promise nothing, understand that.”

“Madam, I beg of you, don't weaken now.” Walsingham leant towards her, his hands gripping his knees, his pale green eyes dilated with excitement. “Lift your protection from her. She is a viper, coiled in your breast! Do you think she would suffer from scruples if the position was reversed? You would have been dead years ago, executed or murdered, it's all one to her. Give us your word that if there's one more plot, she'll suffer for her part in it!”

Elizabeth looked at him, her face was inscrutable. If there was an expression in her eyes, it seemed to Walsingham that she was almost bored.

“Find me that plot first, and the proof. Then I will answer you.”

She dismissed them, and the two men walked away together down the long, hot Gallery, past groups of courtiers, talking and sitting by the windows, and through the outer chamber where the Queen's personal guard of fifty Gentlemen Pensioners was on duty. Burleigh was the first to speak.

“What is the date today, Sir Francis?”

“July 23rd, my Lord.”

“Remember it,” the Minister said quietly. “I know the Queen. This marks the end of Mary Stuart.”

Mary had been moved again. In the depths of the winter, when her stay in the lethal cold and damp of Tutbury Castle had reduced her to beg Elizabeth for warmer quarters, the Scots Queen was taken to a different prison. Chartley was in Staffordshire; it was a heavily fortified house, manned by a strong garrison under the command of Sir Amyas Paulet, but the rooms were comfortable and well heated and, for the first time in months, Mary was able to get out of bed. She spent long hours sewing with her ladies, or staring out of the window at the barren parklands, drenched by rain. She never laughed and seldom even smiled; she felt ill in mind and body, depressed by a presentiment of death which drove her to the exercise of her religion, but deprived of comfort by the intense bitterness and hatred which poisoned her prayers. Her son had failed her; France and Spain had done nothing to effect her release and the inhuman strictness of Paulet tortured her with inactivity. She had no hope of escape, no means of knowing whether there was one man prepared to work on her behalf, and the sense of desertion, of utter hopelessness, was weakening her will to live.

At forty-three she was bent with rheumatism, unable to walk without a stick, her beautiful figure had thickened, and her hair was white. She was an old, tired, embittered woman, with nothing left of her beauty but the lovely changing colour of her hazel eyes. She had been in prison nearly eighteen years, and for the first time she felt that she would never be free until she died. Her enemies had triumphed over her in life; but in death she might be able to cancel their victory. Some of her servants left her when she moved from Tutbury. It was her last opportunity to send a message to the outside world. Witnessed by her Secretary Nau and Mary Seton, the Queen made her will, and showed it to Nau's assistant who would soon be travelling to France.