Elizabeth (39 page)

At last the letter shaped itself into the beautiful phraseology which she could always command. She urged Queen Mary to admit her guilt in the Babington conspiracy.

“If you will do this by letter in your own hand, as Queen to Queen and woman to woman, if you submit to my personal judgement, you will not be tried in any open court in this realm and I will find some means of lenience towards you.…”

After a moment she signed it with her beautiful, distinctive signature and suddenly remembered how carefully she had perfected it; it was almost impossible to forge. She had been clever then and careful, not a rash fool like that other woman to whom she was making her last offer of reprieve. In her inner heart she did not blame her for using any weapon, even murder, to try and regain the freedom denied to her for nearly twenty years. She understood it when Mary lied and stooped to pathetic deceits and ridiculous codes that Walsingham's cypher clerk broke down in a few hours; she would have done the same, but done it with greater skill. She could say that to Robert, because she never pretended with him; Robert was a cynic and they understood each other. And, thank God, she thought angrily, as she sanded and sealed the letter, Robert did not regard her as a semi-divinity, too wise and exalted to suffer the pangs of doubt or conscience, and too rarefied to admit that she was tolerant of many human crimes. If Mary wrote out and signed a confession, she would be comparatively harmless. The kind of men who went to their deaths at Tyburn for a religious ideal would never shed their blood to put a coward and an admitted murderess upon the throne of England. She could purchase her life at the expense of her honour, but as Elizabeth rang her bell and gave the letter to her secretary to send to Fotheringay by special courier, she had a premonition that the price was too high.

In her apartments at Fotheringay Castle, Mary Stuart read the Queen of England's letter, and as she read her pale face flushed with anger. Her ladies were watching her, hoping that the letter contained some message of hope. Jane Kennedy spoke at last:

“Madam, what is it? I beg of you tell us, we are dying of anxiety.”

Mary turned to them and smiled; it was a bitter sardonic smile.

“The Queen of England offers to pardon me if I confess. If I admit myself guilty of all the crimes she charges me with, if I throw myself upon her mercy, she will save me from this commission of judges and spare my life.”

Nobody answered; none of them, knowing Mary as they did, even dared to suggest that she might give serious thought to the letter.

“You see, ladies, I can live if I betray myself and all those brave men who have given their lives for my cause. Queen Elizabeth must think me as base and crooked as she is herself,” she added quietly.

“Get me some paper and pens and ink. I will answer this now. The courier who brought it can return with my reply.”

It was a short note, the wording was polite but uncompromising, as if she were addressing a stranger.

She could not beg Elizabeth's pardon for crimes which she had not committed. She had no intention of answering the English Commissioners or accepting their judgment, because she was a sovereign and only accountable to God. She wished her cousin well, as she had always done, and ended by forgiving her for the twenty years of unjust confinement she had suffered. The message was sent back to London and when the Queen had watched the courier riding away from her window, she went back to her oratory to pray.

On October 11th, the Commissioners arrived at Fotheringay and Mary was brought before them in the Castle Great Hall. There for the first time she saw her implacable enemies, Burleigh and Walsingham, and a jury of thirty-six peers, Privy Councillors and judges.

She was tried without a counsel for her own defence; the evidence was read to her and she was refused access to the copies of her letters to Babington and his to her. She answered with dignity and humour, defended herself with passionate sincerity, and insisted that she had never plotted against Elizabeth's life. She lied in some matters because she was certainly guilty of the major charge; but she told the truth whenever it was possible. She was not consciously false; the circumstances of her indictment were so palpably unjust, the evidence was forged in places, and the men sitting in judgment upon her were so blatantly biased, that Mary's defence was only an exhibition of magnificent courage—heroic and admirable and doomed to failure. It was a farce in law, but a grim necessity in common fact. She was too dangerous to the Queen of England and to them, and the legality of the proceedings were relatively unimportant. There were men among them who had written secretly to her in the past, protesting their loyalty, but she knew they would condemn her because she had to be condemned. After two days the Commissioners left her, recording a verdict of guilty on all counts. The sentence was deferred. It must be pronounced by Parliament and ratified by Elizabeth's signature on the warrant for her execution. Fotheringay was silent and empty, except for Paulet and his soldiers and her few servants. She occupied herself with needlework and writing what she knew would be her last letters to all those who had neglected to help her and were unable to save her now.

She wrote to the Pope and to the King of France, and to her son, protesting her innocence and forgiving them their lack of diligence, and lastly she wrote to Philip of Spain. She bequeathed him her right to the throne of England and gave her final blessing to his inheritance. When Sir Amyas Paulet came to her some weeks later and told her that Parliament had sentenced her to be beheaded, Mary only smiled and turned away. There was nothing left now but prayer and patience. When the warrant arrived, she would be at peace.

Sir William Davidson was a rather diffident man; as second secretary to the Queen he usually saw her when Walsingham was present, but at this, the most crucial time since the trial of Mary Stuart, Walsingham was ill, and the onus of conducting his business fell on the unhappy Davidson. He was in the Queen's room at Greenwich Palace, and he was fidgeting as he waited in front of her. The document he had brought with him was held behind his back; in his nervousness he creased it and the paper crackled. The Queen was writing, but she looked up at him and frowned. She looked paler than usual and there were deep lines under her eyes which were red and sunken, for she had been sleeping very badly during the past few weeks.

She watched Davidson with hostility; she was irritated by his shifting nervousness, but then her nerves were so taut with anxiety and strain that the slightest noise made her want to scream. He was stupid and he was pedantic and he was holding himself as if he expected her to throw her inkpots at him.

“Have you brought the warrant?” she asked sharply.

“Yes, Madam.”

“Then give it to me.”

Davidson unfolded the roll of paper and laid it in front of her. She sat looking at it, and he felt sure that she would refuse to sign it once again and send him back to Walsingham. The last time he had come, she had horrified him by suddenly demanding why she had to make a public spectacle of her cousin's death, when some of those who had been loudest in their demands for the extreme penalty could easily dispose of the Scots Queen and save their own mistress from taking the step. He would never forget the moment when she told him to write to Paulet and suggest that he poisoned his prisoner. He had listened to her, frozen with horror and for the first time he was more disgusted by the Queen than afraid for her, and he managed to make a stumbling protest before she turned on him with an oath and told him to do what he was told. He had sent the letter to Paulet, but that unbending man, true to his iron principles to the end, wrote back refusing to sully his conscience by shedding blood without a legal warrant.

Elizabeth was remembering the incident at that moment; she remembered her rage with that pompous Puritan fool, who no doubt considered her a murderess and presumed to judge her motives by his own vulgar conscience. It was a sensible proposal; it was hallowed by custom and attested by the shades of many Kings of England who had been put to death in prison by a successful rival. If they lost the battle, they were hacked to death on the field, like Richard III when he lost his crown to her own grandfather, Henry VII. If they were deposed and imprisoned, they died by stealth, like Henry VI. But no crowned sovereign in the world had ever been dragged to a public scaffold and beheaded like a common criminal, and this was what she was being forced to do to Mary. And for week after week, as she lay without sleep, torturing herself with indecision, the ghost of her mother stood behind the Queen of Scotland. It was better to die in the dark, to be despatched out of life with some semblance of privacy than to quit the world like a felon, exhibited to the vulgar gaze. The world would judge her as she was already judging herself; nothing Mary had done against her would expunge the crime of severing an anointed head and delivering a crowned Queen to the penalty of the common law.

But nobody would relieve her; Paulet made his conscience the excuse, but his fellow Commissioner, Sir Drue Drury, was no fanatic and he would not do it either. He did not trust his Queen. When Mary was dead she might easily disclaim all knowledge of the murder and punish the men who had obeyed her and carried it out. Still she hesitated; she felt as ill and distraught as she did when she had to sign her first warrant for execution by the axe, so many years ago, when the Duke of Norfolk was condemned.

“How is Sir Francis Walsingham?” she asked suddenly.

“A little better, Madam,” Davidson murmured. He was watching her hand holding the pen; the ink was slowly gathering, forming a single drop at the end of the nib. Suddenly she shook it. The ink splattered and then she dropped the paper on the floor beside her. He squinted at it, and saw her signature scrawled at the end. He stood, not daring to move or speak; Elizabeth's face was the colour of a corpse; she pressed her hand to her eyes and he took a step forward, thinking she was going to faint. Her voice stopped him; it was harsh and acid with sarcasm:

“Take this to Walsingham; the bad news will come near to killing him!”

Her unsteady, almost hysterical laughter followed him as he fled from the room. When he had gone, Elizabeth signed and sealed the rest of the papers in front of her and placed them in a neat pile on her writing-table. She stood up very slowly; her legs were trembling and her head hammered with pain. It was a cold, drizzling day in late January, and it had taken her over two months to do what she had just done and send her own first cousin to a shameful death. She went to the window automatically and unfastened it; the cold, damp air touched her face and she closed her eyes.

Strike or be stricken. She had said that to Robert only the night before when he was pleading with her to sign the warrant, telling her that she was fretting herself into her grave for a worthless principle, arguing that once it was done she would be glad, as she had been glad when Norfolk died. She needn't know the details; he would keep all accounts from her if she liked, shelter her, protect her. Her people were united with her, armed to defend her against attack; her Parliament were loyal and loving and determined to rescue her from the danger of assassination. The life of one treacherous woman was nothing compared to the safety of England and the continuance of her reign.

And now it was done. But at least it would be done many miles away in Northamptonshire. When Burleigh had suggested bringing Mary to the Tower and executing her there, Elizabeth had become almost hysterical. The old associations crowded in upon her, the echo of the Tower cannon, heard by her own father when Anne Boleyn was killed, would certainly reach her ears if she were within a hundred miles. And that sound, and her half-forgotten terrors as a child, would drive her mad.… The Council had begun to despair, thinking she would never sign the paper. But she had, and already in her own mind she was excusing herself, driven by her own emotional torment to deceive herself for the first time in her life. It was signed, but she could still recall it if she liked, even at the last moment. She closed the window and rang for her ladies. To their annoyance, the Queen announced that she and they were going for a long walk in the freezing Palace grounds.

Walsingham glanced at the warrant Davidson gave him, and got out of his sick-bed. He knew Elizabeth; he well knew the struggle which had been raging between her and all her advisers to obtain that signature, and he was not going to waste a moment. Within an hour the paper had been sent to Burleigh who called all available members of the Council. He and Walsingham and Leicester, the Lords Howard, Hunsdon, Cobham, Knollys and Derby, were shown the Queen's signature, and the Great Seal of England which had been hurriedly affixed to it. Burleigh looked from one to the other and said gravely:

“My Lords, Her Majesty has done her part. Now we must do ours. We cannot risk a change of mind. And we owe it to the Queen to spare her the distress of further details. I propose that we all take the responsibility and send this warrant at once to Sir Amyas Paulet with instructions to execute the Queen of Scots immediately.”

Eight voices answered as one:

“Agreed.”

As they were leaving the room, Walsingham approached Leicester. “I have taken the precaution of ordering the Tower headsman, Bulle, to leave for Fotheringay,” he said.

Leicester looked at him and shook his head. “You think of everything, my friend,” he said.

For the first time he understood why Elizabeth would never like her Secretary.

On February 8th, 1587, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, Dowager Queen of France, heiress to the throne of England and Ireland and Wales, walked to the Great Hall at Fotheringay for the last time. She had been told to be ready the night before, and she had spent the last hours of her life in prayer and calm preparation. All the turbulence, the ambition and egotism of her adult years had faded, leaving her temperate and resigned. She was able to pray, at last, for her friends and even her enemies, and she meant it when she promised forgiveness as she hoped to be forgiven. And with real humility she prayed for herself. For the first time her regrets were for others, for all those who had suffered through her, even indirectly. She prayed for Darnley and struggled to feel pity and understanding for him, though she could truly say he was the cause of all her misfortunes. She had set her feet towards Fotheringay on the day of her marriage all those years ago. She could think of him and of her half-brother, James, and of Bothwell, without a tinge of blame or hatred. She could not forgive her cousin Elizabeth and she compromised by refusing to think of her at all. She divided what was left of her possessions between her ladies and servants; she insisted with gaiety on wearing her finest velvets and her best wig, and painted her sad, tired face as if she were going to a State reception. At the foot of the scaffold she saw one friendly face—the ageing Earl of Shrewsbury, her old friend, responsible for many comforts in the years she had spent in his keeping. There were tears in his eyes as he looked at her; she gave him her hand for a moment and then began to walk slowly up the shallow steps.