His Dark Lady (57 page)

‘Madam,’ the older one asked, whose name Goodluck knew to be Bull, chief executioner at the Tower of London, ‘will you forgive us this discharge of our duty?’

‘Willingly,’ Mary replied lightly to the executioner’s traditional request, though her cheeks were damp and her lips trembled as she spoke. ‘I forgive you both with all my heart, for I hope this death will bring an end to the troubles of my life.’

Her expression now resolute, Mary raised her arms for the masked executioners to disrobe her.

As her black gown was slowly and respectfully removed, a petticoat of crimson satin was revealed beneath.

Several men in the front seats cried out, ‘For shame!’, while others frowned in open consternation, shaking their heads at this last defiant gesture. Goodluck smiled grimly. The rebel Queen knew well what the effect of such a last garment would be upon those reading of her death in months and years to come. For crimson was not only the colour of blood, but also of martyrdom. Her choice today would provide a rallying cry to every secret Catholic in the land, to rise up and die a martyr to their faith.

Led to the block, Mary knelt before it on a cushion, not looking at the dreadful object but staring some way ahead, her lips moving in silent prayer.

One of her women came forward and, with badly shaking hands, folded a gilt-embroidered white cloth for a blindfold. This she placed gently over her mistress’s eyes, with some whispered words of comfort, then knotted it behind Mary’s head and stepped back.

The watching gentlemen in the hall were silent at last, sitting motionless as they waited for the end. Even the Dean of Peterborough had finished reading quietly from the psalms and now closed his Bible, looking on with a sudden expression of pity.

‘
In te Domine confido, non confundar in aeternum
,’ Mary declared, putting her trust in the Lord, and fumbled blindly for the block.

Finding the smooth hollow where her neck must rest, the Scottish Queen lowered herself to the block, and then, as though to make herself more comfortable there, turned her cheek slightly to face the wall where Goodluck stood.

Her face was pale again now, almost as white as the cloth binding her eyes. There was an awkward moment as the executioner’s assistant bent to remove her two hands from the block, where she had been gripping on to the wood as though for very life itself. The man muttered something in her ear, and Mary stretched her arms and legs out from the block so as not to impede the blow.

The masked executioner laid aside the cloth he had been using to wipe the sweat from his hands and picked up his axe in a businesslike manner. He stepped forward, taking up a position just behind the Queen and to her left.

As though the blindfolded Mary had suddenly sensed Bull’s presence behind her, Goodluck saw her outstretched arms begin to shake. Nonetheless, the Queen did not attempt to move from the block but maintained a dignified composure in her last seconds.

Goodluck steeled himself to watch the moment of execution itself, though the compassion he felt for the Queen surprised him with its intensity. Having spent the better part of a year disguised as a Catholic, Goodluck knew that the plainer English faith was at heart not that dissimilar from its Catholic roots. At the end of one’s life, it was the same Jesus Christ to whom one cried
in extremis
. The Queen’s desperate prayers had moved him almost to tears, and while his head knew that Mary Stuart deserved this fate for colluding with the Catholic plotters who had sought her cousin’s death, his heart told him that this execution was cruel and unjust.

‘Into thy hands, O Lord,’ Mary cried urgently in Latin, repeating her prayer several times in a strong voice, ‘I commend my spirit.’

Lord Shrewsbury, seated close at hand on the dais, had risen slowly to his feet as Mary was led to the block. Now, with a last grim look about the hall, he raised his white staff of office to indicate that the Queen was ready to die, and nodded to Bull to perform the task.

Bull raised his axe high, with an almost interminable pause at the top of the swing, then brought it down.

‘Jesu!’ Mary seemed to exclaim, her lips jerked open, blood streaming from a deep gash in the back of her head, her neck still intact.

Horrified by the man’s incompetence, Goodluck swore beneath his breath and crossed himself.

Undeterred, Bull widened his stance and swung the heavy axe above his head again.

This time the blow struck true, and Mary’s head fell forward, not quite cut off but no longer on her shoulders. This problem was remedied after another few moments, Bull stooping above the block to hack away at the remains of her neck with his axe. Finally the deed was done and the Queen’s head dropped to the platform, fully severed.

A little breathless from his efforts, Bull bent to grasp it by its white cap. He lifted the bloodied head and swung it round to show the watching crowd. ‘God save the Queen!’

At that moment the cap and red hair below seemed to detach themselves. Suddenly Bull had nothing but a cap and wig in his hand, while the Queen’s almost bald head went rolling like a football across the platform, leaving a gruesome trail of blood behind.

Grey-haired, it came to rest facing Goodluck, lips still jerking up and down as though in prayer.

Sickened and speechless, Goodluck looked away from the dreadful sight. Then he heard the pitiful cries of her ladies and gentlemen attendants and, glancing across the hall, saw that Lord Shrewsbury, too, was crying. It seemed nobody quite knew what to do now that the execution was complete. For a moment there was chaos, gentlemen leaping up and knocking chairs over in their hurry either to leave the hall or to get a better view of her lifeless corpse, and above it all, the Dean of Peterborough could be heard saluting Queen Elizabeth, and crying, ‘So perish all the Queen’s enemies!’

As the Earl of Kent began to cheer, a sudden shriek went up from the small crowd gathered below the block. Her body still slumped sideways in a pool of blood, the dead Queen’s petticoats were stirring unnaturally, almost as though her bloodied trunk was about to rise and walk again to fetch its head.

Goodluck stared, wholly disconcerted. Dark tales of supernatural resurrections came back to him, and the hairs lifted on the back of his neck.

Stooping to lift the sticky petticoat, with no sign of fear or respect, the executioner’s assistant reached in and dragged out a small white terrier, which must have been concealed under the Queen’s skirts throughout the execution. The little dog yapped and twisted about in his grasp, clearly panicked. One of the Queen’s ladies came forward, sobbing violently, to take the animal. But as soon as he released it, the terrier scampered round and tucked itself into the gory space where Mary’s head had been, its white fur matting with blood.

Goodluck bowed to the gentleman next to him, who was still staring, horrified, at the Queen’s twitching lips, and left the over-heated hall.

That evening, as dusk was falling, Goodluck made his way slowly back up to Fotheringay Castle, heading this time for the postern gate.

The captain happened to be in the guardroom. He asked Goodluck’s business curtly, no doubt having spent the day turning a steady stream of curious visitors away from the scene of the Scottish Queen’s beheading. But he accepted Goodluck’s note of business politely enough and bore it away inside.

Goodluck lit a pipeful of tobacco from the brazier in the guardroom and waited out of the cold, smoking and exchanging pleasantries with the guards as they played a game of dice.

When the captain returned, he was accompanied by a short balding man whom Goodluck recognized as one of the castle servants. This man looked him up and down, then invited Goodluck to walk out with him a little way along the path.

‘So you are Walsingham’s man. I was beginning to think you were not coming. From his letter, I expected you this afternoon,’ he told Goodluck once they were out of earshot of the castle walls.

‘There were still too many people about earlier in the day. Besides, these things are better done in the dark.’

The man grunted. ‘That’s as may be,’ he remarked, with a touch of bravado, though Goodluck noticed how he glanced nervously
about
himself more than once in the thickening dusk. ‘But I didn’t like wandering the castle with such a gruesome trophy about my person, I can tell you. If I had been searched—’

‘But I take it you were not,’ Goodluck commented drily. He held out a hand, turning so that no one watching from inside the castle would be able to see the transaction. ‘Why not let me relieve you of your burden now? Then you may go about your duties with a clear conscience.’

Hesitant, his small dark eyes watchful, the man dug into the pocket hanging from his belt and brought out a coarse handkerchief folded very small and tied with string. This makeshift parcel he handed to Goodluck with a dramatic shudder. ‘Here you are. Though what your master wants with it, I would not like to think.’

‘As well, then,’ Goodluck said pleasantly, unwrapping the small handkerchief, ‘that it is none of your business.’ He looked down at the short grey lock of hair concealed within the cloth folds. It curled slightly, dried blood still attached to one end. ‘Strange to think her hair was no longer red, but grey.’

The man made no reply, but bowed and took himself back to the castle with a muttered, ‘Goodnight,’ clearly uncomfortable now that his task had been discharged.

Goodluck wrapped the dead Queen’s lock of hair once more in the handkerchief, secreted the grisly parcel in the lining of his jacket, and set off back to the inn where he had been staying. It was a chill night, but with only a light frost on the ground. Spring was definitely in the air. He would keep the same room at the inn tonight, then begin the ride home to London as soon as he had breakfasted.

Though there seemed little need for him to hurry back, now that Mary was finally dead. Confirmation of her death would have reached Sir Francis Walsingham tonight anyway. Which meant the chief secretary would be too busy dealing with Queen Elizabeth’s anger tomorrow to wonder where Goodluck was with the requested memento of his triumph over the Catholic Queen.

Ten

ELIZABETH REINED IN
her horse at the head of a path, pausing under the bare-limbed trees to admire the view. The air is so fresh out here at Greenwich, she thought. Chilly, too, with a greyish icy coating to the trunks and spring not yet upon them, but not unbearably so. Anyway, it was a relief not to be constantly raising a pomander to her nose in case some foul whiff caused her to retch.

The forest at least was clean. Nothing to shrink from here. The vast wooded estate of Greenwich Palace stretched before her, a maze of narrow forest paths and bursts of meadow for the gallop. A golden place in summer, but now the woods were still wintry, most of the stark branches not yet in bud. Inviting nonetheless; a place to try and forget the troubles that pressed so closely these days. Elizabeth thought of the dirty swell of wherries and slow river barges they had passed on their way into the woods, bobbing on a scummy tide so white in places it looked like milk that had curdled. The men aboard had halted to stare as her glittering entourage passed, shielding their eyes against the sun, then bent to their tasks again. ‘Haul away there!’, ‘Fresh fish!’, ‘Passage to the docks!’ Their faint cries disturbed the air even now, like crows jeering in the sunshine. A man must earn his living, but all the same …

Suddenly irritable, her head turned. What had she heard now? Not the coarse voices of watermen, but bells. Church bells.

She held up a hand for silence as the band of accompanying
courtiers
came level with her, and listened for a moment, not sure whether she had imagined the sound.

Her bodyguards glanced at each other. They too had caught the echoes from the city and seemed to sense danger. They nudged their mounts closer, flanking her small party of gentlemen and ladies.

She glanced back. Robert had stopped to listen to the bells as well. He had been riding at the back of the cavalcade, deep in conversation with one of the men he had brought back from the Low Countries, a bald-headed fellow with a curt manner. More conspiracy and high intrigue, she thought. Well, if she did not ask what went on and Robert did not tell her, she need not bother her head with it. She was oddly comfortable with that tacit arrangement. It should be her new policy. Feast and dance and ride, and never ask what her closest men were planning in their ‘secret’ meetings that everyone knew about.

Robert had spurred his horse towards her, now hauling on the reins to bring his stallion from a brisk canter to a standstill beside her. Such a show-off. Except he must have sunk his spurs too deeply into the horse’s glossy black side, for the animal reared up madly, hooves lashing the air. Cursing under his breath, Robert kept the horse on a short rein, talking to it and gripping its flanks with thighs and knees until the stallion was calm again.

He might no longer be the vital young man she had fallen in love with as a girl, yet he had lost none of his magical touch with horses. Nor with her, truth be told. Though she should not humiliate herself by admitting that, even in the privacy of her own heart.