Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George
“I cannot work in this cold,” he said, putting down his pen.
The February winds were howling over the castle, elevated a hundred feet above the plain and exposed on all sides. This time Mary was housed in a flimsy wood and plaster building called “the lodge”; it had once served as a hunting lodge for nobles who came to Needwood Forest for recreation. But now there were actual gaps in the walls and holes in the windowpanes. Besides, it backed on the earthworks of the ramparts, so that no sun or air could enter on the long side, making everything so damp that no furniture placed there could avoid being covered with mould.
The castle yard was muddy, and the only semblance of a garden was a little fenced area near the stables, which resembled a pigsty; the stench of the privies that emptied just over the walls permeated the air; and fevers and pestilence rose with the vapours from the swampy, ill-drained marshes at the foot of the hill.
“Then leave off for today,” said Mary. “I believe we are up to my escape from Langside. I need to recall the flight to Dundrennan in more detail, although I hate remembering it.”
Together they left the tiny withdrawing chamber and went into the presence chamber, where Mary’s throne consisted of a high-backed chair with splintered rungs underneath. There was never anyone to whom she could give audience, but the chair was there nonetheless. Perhaps there would be messengers from Elizabeth, from James, from the French ambassador. Perhaps they would come; someday they would come.
Just then the door was flung open and Sir Amyas Paulet strode in, the buckles clinking on his polished shoes. He stopped and glared at Mary, obviously displeased to see her there.
“Good day, Madam,” he said shortly. He nodded to Nau. Then he stepped smartly over to the throne, and began yanking at her cloth of estate, the old green one with her cherished motto, In My End Is My Beginning. It fell down with a great whoosh! of noise, enveloping the throne like a tent.
“Stop! What are you doing?” Mary shrieked. She rushed over to him faster than she had been able to move since her arrival.
He cocked one eyebrow and gave her an icy glare. “Well, Madam, I see you can move right speedily when you like!” He began tugging at the cloth, wadding it up against his chest.
“Don’t touch that!” she said. “Put it down! I command you!”
He stopped and gave a cutting laugh. “Command me? But you are not my sovereign. I owe you no allegience.”
“True, you are not my subject, but the subjects of other sovereigns are adjured to treat all rulers with courtesy.”
“And what rule book did that come from?” he sneered. “One of those outdated French chivalry books to which you are so devoted?”
“From the book of common human decency,” she said. “By what right do you remove this symbol of my royalty?”
“It was never permitted to begin with, therefore I am correct to remove it,” said Paulet. “There were no orders about it, and everything that is not expressly allowed is forbidden.”
“No,” said Nau suddenly. “You have it backwards. Everything that is not forbidden should be allowed.”
“Be quiet, servant!” barked Paulet. “You yap like one of those annoying dogs of your mistress! Now, Madam, procure for me an order from Queen Elizabeth, and I’ll restore this trumpery soon enough.” He tucked it under his arm.
“How can I procure anything from Queen Elizabeth when I cannot write letters? You and your friend Walsingham have closed my channels to the outside world. I can neither send nor receive letters!” she cried. “Please, sir, do not destroy it! It belonged to my mother!”
“If you are prevented from writing letters, it is because you have written too many in the past,” said Paulet. “Seditious letters, knavish letters, letters tending to the danger of Elizabeth and the realm of England. Plotting letters—Popish letters!” He spat on the carpetless, stained wooden floor. “You did nothing but sit with your pen, pouring out rubbish and incendiary garbage to your Catholic allies in Europe, inviting them to invade England! Nay, now restrict yourself to your memoirs with your nattering French secretary—that’s all I’ll permit!”
“But I should be allowed to write to the Queen. The lowest subject in the land has the right to write to the Queen,” insisted Mary.
“Oh, so now you claim a subject’s rights? Are you then saying that you are a subject?”
“No, of course not.” How quick he was!
“Then you must bear with your own isolation and punishment.”
“Punishment! Of what am I guilty?” she cried.
He shook his head in disgust. “Oh, Madam! You know full well!” He turned and walked out of the room. She had not given him leave to depart, but then he did not regard himself as under her control, but vice versa.
As the door slammed, Mary turned to Nau. “Have you ever beheld such insolence? Write it down, Nau, write it down, that someday others may know, and judge for themselves!”
He was shaking with anger. “An ordinary little man, not even a nobleman! And all pretence of your being a ‘guest’ departed with Shrewsbury; this man is clearly a gaoler. He guards you in a castle that is not his, he takes his orders not even from the Queen but from her principal secretary, following the rules Walsingham has laid down. And they are so strict!”
“Yes. Do you remember the day Paulet read them out to us? No mingling between the two households, my servants not to walk on the walls, the coachman not to go abroad without Paulet’s guard, no laundresses, I am not to speak to any member of his household except in his presence, no mail to be sent or received except through the French embassy, and unless it passes through his hands first. He opens my letters and dares to hand them to me with the seals broken! The insolence, Nau, the insolence!”
“It is a new world, this world of the Elect of God,” said Nau. “It makes tyrants out of little men.”
Mary was still shaking. “My cloth of estate! My very emblem of royalty!”
“They cannot take away your royalty, Madam. That is why they fear seeing the symbols of it.”
* * *
Mary and her reduced household had been in the grip of Sir Amyas Paulet for almost two months. Never had she envisoned such bleakness, not only from the surroundings and from her ill health, but from the smug spite of the Puritan keeper. She had no doubt that she had been given into his hands because he was seen to be proof against her persuasions. All her life she had been blessed with the ability to make people sympathetic toward her, once they had actually met her. Only Knox had actively disliked her, finding her annoying and tedious. Now it was as if Knox’s spirit had come to dwell in another’s body, for the same narrow-eyed distaste stared out from Paulet’s face whenever he looked at her.
Old Madame Rallay had died within five weeks of their arrival; she had been almost eighty, and the cold and damp had proved too much for her. With sorrow Mary had seen her buried at the little priory church of St. Mary, just outside the walls of Tutbury. It had once been a Benedictine priory, founded as a thank offering by the first holder of Tutbury, back in the days just after William the Conqueror. But Henry VIII had put an end to the monks, and so the faithful old French Catholic servant had been laid to rest in an Anglican service, with the sanctimonious Paulet reciting Scripture. He had insisted on attending, his dark eyes darting this way and that, ever on the lookout for messengers or secret letters being passed.
But Mary had not been thinking of the wider world that day, but of the ever-shrinking personal world she inhabited.
One by one they all leave me, she thought. Soon I will stand completely alone on the stage.
Watching the plain wooden coffin being lowered, she gave silent thanks that she had sent Seton away, away from this hell of ice and cold, so like the ring of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.
* * *
In March, Paulet paid a visit to her chamber. “Madam,” he said stiffly, “it pains me to hear that once again you have set your mind on evading my rules. I refer specifically to that Popish habit you ha
Mary replied, “Good sir, I am afflicted in both body and spirit, and I need the prayers of the poor.”
“Nonsense!” he yelled. “Enough of this absurd reasoning! You attempt to win them over to your cause, to make yourself an object of loyalty and admiration. But you cannot fool me, however much you can fool a few simple people.”
She felt tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, but did not allow them to show.
“I was coming to see you on other business, when this foolishness was reported to me. Now, as to the other—here are two communications that will interest you.” He handed her two letters, already torn open. Then he stood there, intending to watch her reaction as she read them.
“You may go,” she said. “I can read them without your help.”
With a scowl, he turned and left.
She waited for him to be gone before she felt safe in reading them. The first was a report from the French ambassador.
My dearest daughter,
This is to advise you of the measures recently adopted by Parliament, a Parliament dominated by the so-called Puritans and other staunch supporters of all things English. As you know, the Queen’s privy councillors drew up a bond of loyalty pledging themselves to do or die for her, in the style of old King Arthur and his knights, and thousands of her subjects signed the bond.
This was prompted by the threat of plots against her, and as a sort of hysterical reaction to the assassinations abroad. The Queen let it be known that she preferred it to be a spontaneous act of loyalty rather than a law per se, but Parliament insisted on making it a law. Thus a new law is on the books, the Act for the Queen’s Safety. It empowers a panel of judges to investigate any plot or plotters and to punish them as they see fit.
In addition, Parliament came down hard on the Jesuits. Any priest ordained since Elizabeth’s accession has forty days to leave England, on pain of high treason. Any layman sheltering such priests is guilty of a felony.
As if these events were not disturbing enough, yet another assassination plot surfaced—a Dr. William Parry, who claims to have been commissioned by your agent in Paris, Thomas Morgan, and the Pope, to kill Elizabeth. He had a letter from the Papal secretary, Cardinal Como, promising him an indulgence if he succeeded. He arrived armed with a bullet blessed by Rome to do the deed. As a result, my King has seen fit to imprison Thomas Morgan in the Bastille. And Parry is to pay the price of his treason at Tyburn, hanging, drawing and quartering, and so on—the entire bestial procedure. So angry were the citizens that they demanded a more extreme measure—as if anything could be worse! But Elizabeth said the usual methods would suffice.
It grieves me that I can only be the bearer of such unhappy tidings. May God be your comfort.
Mary laid the letter down. Her heart was pounding. She felt trapped in a new and subtle way now; she could be blamed by any madman pointing a finger at her and implicating her in these wild schemes. It seemed that assassination fever was sweeping the land.
Do I read this second letter? she thought. She remembered Paulet’s expression of triumph. Both letters must somehow be to her misfortune. With trembling fingers she pulled out the second document and began reading.
To the Most High and Mighty Prince, Elizabeth:
It having been considered and examined at length, it has been concluded by us that the Association desired by our mother, in which we might rule jointly, is neither right nor desirable to us. Therefore we deem it to our pleasure that such Association should neither be granted nor spoken of hereafter.
James VI, by the grace of God King of Scotland.
Official copy certified by Wm. Cecil, Lord Burghley & Francis Walsingham, principal secretary. March 2, 1585.
Mary let out a moan and the paper dropped from her hand.
James repudiated her utterly, and had not even the courage or filial kindness to write directly to her himself. He was almost nineteen now—Darnley’s age when she had met him, and his father’s son indeed.
XIX
The sea wind was filled with stinging salt, and assaulted the leathery cheeks of Gilbert Gifford as he stood at the rail of the merchant ship plying the heaving sea between France and England. The ship rolled up and down, in and out of the troughs of waves, and few of the passengers were not seasick, but Gifford had always prided himself on having the stomach of a merman. He could eat food that was tainted, could drink beer that was spoiled, and never even have a rumble in his stomach. It was a blessing from God, thought the renegade Catholic.
Oh, there were so many blessings from God, he thought, counting them. There was, first and foremost, his heritage—an ancient and honourable Catholic family from Staffordshire. There were his relatives—his slippery brother George and his fiery uncle William, all active in the band of permanent exiles that had set up shop in Paris and lived in a fevered dream world of restoring England to the True Faith. Yes, a man should have a mission, no matter how farfetched.
He, Gilbert, had flirted with the True Faith all his life. What an ordeal, to feel called and yet not called! At length he had had himself ordained a deacon at Reims, after a trip to Rome. But the robes had not exactly fit. Meanwhile, his uncle William was embroiled in the nasty strife between the regular priests and the Jesuits, all wanting to save England. Gilbert had hied himself to Paris and offered his services to the “regular” priests there, all of whom were swarming around the Queen of Scots’ little embassy like wasps around a sweet cake. It was a hive of conspiracy and grandiose plans. Quickly he had ingratiated himself with Thomas Morgan, the ambassador’s cipher clerk, and Charles Paget, his assistant. Oh, it was a fine life, as it turned out; much more gratifying and exciting than praying and reading. And that was another blessing: to have found work he enjoyed.
And he did enjoy it. The ciphers. The whispers. The smuggled money. The danger. Poor old Morgan had run afoul of that. One of the assassins he had supported, a Dr. Parry, had been apprehended in England before he could kill Queen Elizabeth, and now Morgan was languishing in prison—the Bastille. But it was not an arduous imprisonment, and he carried on his plotting from there with little interruption. This plotting was something that got into a man’s blood, evidently. Life was dull without it. Even Gilbert, in the heat of the moment, had been sworn into an assassination plot against Elizabeth with his uncle and a soldier appropriately named Savage. But it had fizzled out.
Thomas Morgan remained adamant that Mary Queen of Scots should be rescued, and England re-Catholicized. Now Gilbert was carrying letters from him to her, vouching for him as a trustworthy carrier and messenger, in an attempt to reopen her lines of communication. She had been held incommunicado for several months, ever since she had been transferred to her new overseer, Paulet. But there must be a way to get around him and his strictures. The Catholics in the area would have means, and Gilbert knew them from his boyhood, and was trusted by them.
It should be an exciting few months, until he tired of it. He was thankful he had not been ordained a full priest, now that it was treason for any priest to set foot in England. Yes, the war was heating up; even the tolerant Elizabeth had passed severe measures to protect the national religion.
Did he care if England became Catholic again? Honestly, in his soul? He asked himself that question, as he clung to the rail and rode the sea like a man on a bucking horse.
Well, it would be nice.… It would be fitting to return to the old way.
But do you care, truly? he asked himself. Does it matter to you if it’s English or Latin that rises above the altar in a plainsong chant? More to the point, do you care if it’s the Lord’s Supper or the Eu
I don’t, he answered. But I like working for a cause; it’s more exciting than mending shoes or tending the sick.
He could see the coastline of England ahead. It would not be long now.
* * *
The ship had docked at Rye, a small port in Sussex, avoiding Dover. The shoals were tricky here, and often there were sandbanks and hidden currents. But their landing was safe, and Gilbert gathered up his things and stepped ashore, feeling invigorated. He carried little, to avoid any suspicion or searching. Just the letters.
As he was making his way through the dock area, past the wharves and warehouses, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You have not passed through our inspection booth,” a voice was saying, and Gilbert found himself staring into the face of one of the Queen’s customs officers. “Come, sir!”
“I beg your pardon,” said Gilbert smoothly, “I did not see any booth, nor did the captain instruct me to search for it, as I carry no goods. I am just a simple passenger.”
“Passenger? On business?”
“No, just a native son returning to his home.” He managed to sigh. “I have grown so homesick, and my mother—”
“Where were you abroad?”
There was no safe answer. The Netherlands harbored exiles, as did France. Rome was suspicious, as was Spain. “Paris,” he finally said. Paris could be anything one wanted: school, service to the French court, culture, women, mercenaries.
“Where’s your passport?”
Dutifully, Gilbert presented it. It was all in order; nothing was forged.
“Signed by Walsingham,” the customs man said.
“But it does not say what his business is,” said his associate. “How long have you been in Paris?” he queried Gilbert.
Before he could answer, they grabbed him and began searching him. They seized his pouch of personal goods. The letters had been hidden between layers of the leather. But their expert fingers felt the extra thickness, and a knife flashed in the dull afternoon light and slashed open the secret pocket.