24
Alison went riding with Mary Stuart on Mary’s forty-third birthday. Their breath turned to mist in the cold morning air, and Alison was grateful for the heat of her pony, Garçon, under her. They were accompanied by a squadron of men-at-arms. Mary and all her people were banned from speaking to anyone outside the group at any time. If a child offered the queen an apple, it would be snatched away by a soldier.
They had a new jailer, Sir Amias Paulet, a Puritan so rigid that he made Walsingham seem like a libertine. Paulet was the first man Alison had known to be immune to Mary’s seductive charm. When Mary touched his arm, or smiled winningly at him, or talked lightly of such things as kisses or bosoms or beds, he stared at her as if she were mad, and gave no reply.
Paulet made no bones about reading all Mary’s letters: he handed them to her opened, without apology. She was allowed to write to her relations and friends in France and Scotland, but under these conditions of course nothing could be said about invading England, rescuing her, executing Elizabeth and putting Mary on the throne.
Alison was invigorated by the ride but, as they turned for home, the familiar depression returned. This was the twentieth successive birthday Mary had passed in prison. Alison herself was forty-five, and had spent all those birthdays with Mary, each time hoping this would be the last for which they would be captives. Alison felt they had spent their lives waiting and hoping. It was a dismally long time since they had been the best-dressed girls in Paris.
Mary’s son, James, was now twenty-one and king of Scotland. She had not seen him since he was one year old. He showed no interest in his mother and did nothing to help her, but then why would he? He did not know her. Mary was savagely angry with Queen Elizabeth for keeping her away from her only child for almost his entire life.
They approached their current penitentiary. Chartley Manor had a moat and battlements, but otherwise it was a house rather than a castle, a timber-framed mansion with many cheerful fireplaces and rows of windows to make it bright inside. It was not quite big enough for Mary’s entourage plus the Paulet family household, so the men-at-arms were all lodged in houses in the neighbourhood. Mary and Alison did not feel perpetually surrounded by guards but, all the same, the place was still a prison.
The riders crossed the bridge over the moat, entered the broad courtyard, and reined in by the well in the centre. Alison dismounted and let Garçon drink from the horse trough. A brewer’s dray stood to one side, and burly men were rolling barrels of beer into the queen’s quarters through the kitchen entrance. Near the main door Alison noticed a little crowd of women. Lady Margaret Paulet was there with some of her maids, clustered around the figure of a man in a travel-stained coat. Lady Margaret was friendlier than her husband, and Alison strolled across the yard to see what was going on.
The man at the centre of the little crowd was holding open a travelling case full of ribbons, buttons and cheap jewellery. Mary came and stood behind Alison. The women were fingering the goods for sale, asking the price and chattering animatedly about which they liked. One of them said archly: ‘Have you got any love potions?’
It was a flirtatious remark, and travelling vendors were usually adept at charming their female customers, but this one seemed embarrassed, and muttered something about ribbons being better than potions.
Sir Amias Paulet emerged from the front door and came to investigate. In his fifties, he was a bald man with a fringe of grey hair and a luxuriant ginger moustache. ‘What is this?’ he said.
Lady Margaret looked guilty. ‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied.
Paulet said to the salesman: ‘Lady Margaret is not interested in fripperies.’ Margaret and her maids moved away reluctantly, and Paulet added scornfully: ‘Show them to the Scottish queen. Such vanities are more her type of thing.’
Mary and the women in her captive entourage ignored his rudeness, which was familiar. They were desperate for diversion, and they quickly crowded around the salesman, replacing the disappointed Paulet maids.
At that point Alison looked more closely at the man and repressed a gasp of shock as she recognized him. He had thinning hair and a bushy red-brown beard. It was the man who had spoken to her in the park at Sheffield Castle, and his name was Jean Langlais.
She looked at Mary and remembered that the queen had never seen him. Alison was the only one he had spoken to. She felt a thrill of excited hope. He had undoubtedly come here to talk to her again.
She also experienced a little spasm of desire. Since meeting him in the park she had entertained a little fantasy in which she married him and they became the leading couple at the court when Mary was queen of a Catholic England. It was silly, she knew, to have such thoughts about a man she had met for only a few minutes; but perhaps a prisoner was entitled to foolish dreams.
She needed to get Langlais away from the too-public courtyard and into a place where he could drop his pretence of being a travelling tinker and speak frankly.
‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘Let’s go inside.’
Mary said: ‘I’m still warm from the ride.’
Alison said: ‘Please, madam, remember your weak chest, and step into the house.’
Mary looked offended that Alison should dare to insist; then perhaps she heard the hint of urgency in Alison’s voice, for she raised a speculative eyebrow; and finally she looked directly at Alison, registered the message in Alison’s widened eyes, and said: ‘On second thoughts, yes, let’s go in.’
They took Langlais directly to Mary’s private chamber and Alison dismissed everyone else. Then she said in French: ‘Your majesty, this is Jean Langlais, the messenger from the duke of Guise.’
Mary perked up. ‘What does the duke have to say to me?’ she asked him eagerly.
‘The crisis is over,’ Langlais said, speaking French with an English accent. ‘The Treaty of Nemours has been signed, and Protestantism is once more illegal in France.’
Mary waved an impatient hand. ‘This is old news.’
Langlais was impervious to the queen’s dismissiveness. He carried on unruffled. ‘The treaty is a triumph for the Church, and for the duke of Guise and the rest of your majesty’s French family.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Which means that your cousin, Duke Henri, is free to revive the plan that has been his heart’s desire for so long – to put your majesty on the English throne that is rightfully your own.’
Alison hesitated to rejoice. Too often she had celebrated prematurely. All the same, her heart leaped in hope. She saw Mary’s face brighten.
Langlais went on: ‘Once again our first task is to set up a channel of communication between the duke and your majesty. I have found a good English Catholic boy to be our courier. But we have to find a way to get messages into and out of this house without Paulet reading them.’
Alison said: ‘We’ve done this before, but each time it gets more difficult. We can’t use the laundry girls again. Walsingham found out about that ruse.’
Langlais nodded. ‘Throckmorton probably betrayed that secret before he died.’
Alison was struck by how coldly he spoke of the martyrdom of Sir Francis Throckmorton. She wondered how many others of Langlais’s fellow conspirators had suffered torture and execution.
She put that thought out of her mind and said: ‘Anyway, Paulet won’t let us send our washing out. The queen’s servants have to scrub clothes in the moat.’
Langlais said, ‘We’ll have to think of something else.’
‘No one in our entourage is allowed any unsupervised contact with the outside world,’ Alison said gloomily. ‘I was surprised that Paulet didn’t throw you out.’
‘I noticed barrels of beer being brought in here.’
‘Ah,’ said Alison. ‘That’s a thought. You’re very quick.’
‘Where do they come from?’
‘The Lion’s Head inn at Burton, the nearest town.’
‘Does Paulet inspect them?’
‘And look at the beer? No.’
‘Good.’
‘But how could we put letters in barrels of beer? The paper would get wet, and the ink would run . . .’
‘Suppose we put the papers in sealed bottles?’
Alison nodded slowly. ‘And we could do the same with the queen’s replies.’
‘You could put the replies back into the same bottles and re-seal them – you have sealing wax.’
‘The bottles would rattle around in the empty barrels. Someone might investigate the noise.’
‘You could find a way to prevent that. Fill the barrel with straw. Or wrap the bottles in rags and nail them to the wood to stop them moving.’
Alison was feeling more and more thrilled. ‘We’ll think of something. But we would have to persuade the brewer to cooperate.’
‘Yes,’ said Langlais. ‘Leave that to me.’
*
GILBERT GIFFORD LOOKED innocent, but that was misleading, Ned Willard thought. The man seemed younger than twenty-four: his smooth face bore only the adolescent fluff of a beard and moustache, and he had probably never shaved. But Alain de Guise had told Sylvie, in a letter that came via the English embassy in Paris, that Gifford had recently met with Pierre Aumande in Paris. In Ned’s opinion, Gifford was a highly dangerous agent of the enemies of Queen Elizabeth.
And yet he was behaving naively. In December of 1585, he crossed the Channel from France, landing in Rye. Of course he did not have the royal permission required by an Englishman to travel abroad, so he had offered the Rye harbourmaster a bribe. In the old days he would have got away with that, but things had changed. A port official who let in a suspicious character nowadays could suffer the death penalty, at least in theory. The harbourmaster had arrested Gifford, and Ned had ordered the man brought to London for interview.
Ned puzzled over the enigma while he and Walsingham faced Gifford across a writing table at the house in Seething Lane. ‘What on earth made you imagine you would get away with it?’ Walsingham asked. ‘Your father is a notorious Catholic. Queen Elizabeth has treated him with great indulgence, even making him High Sheriff of Staffordshire – but, despite that, he refused to attend a service even when the queen herself was at his parish church!’
Gifford seemed only mildly anxious, for one facing an interrogator who had sent so many Catholics to their deaths. Ned guessed the boy had no idea of how much trouble he was in. ‘Of course I know it was wrong of me to leave England without permission,’ he said in the tone of one who confesses a peccadillo. ‘I beg you to bear in mind that I was only nineteen at the time.’ He tried a conspiratorial smile. ‘Did you not do foolish things in your youth, Sir Francis?’
Walsingham did not return the smile. ‘No, I did not,’ he said flatly.
Ned almost laughed. It was probably true.
Ned asked the suspect: ‘Why did you return to England? What is the purpose of your journey?’
‘I haven’t seen my father for almost five years.’
‘Why now?’ Ned persisted. ‘Why not last year, or next year?’
Gifford shrugged. ‘It seemed as good a time as any.’
Ned switched the line of questioning. ‘Where in London do you plan to lodge, if we do not lock you up in the Tower?’
‘At the sign of the Plough.’
The Plough was an inn just beyond Temple Bar, to the west of the city, frequented by Catholic visitors. The head ostler was in Walsingham’s pay, and gave reliable reports on all comings and goings.
Ned said: ‘Where else in England will you travel?’
‘To Chillington, naturally.’
Chillington Hall was Gifford’s father’s residence in Staffordshire. It was half a day’s ride from Chartley, where Mary Stuart was currently imprisoned. Was that a coincidence? Ned did not believe in coincidences.
‘When did you last see the priest Jean Langlais?’
Gifford did not reply.
Ned gave him time. He was desperate to learn more about this shadowy figure. Sylvie had seen Langlais, briefly, in Paris in 1572 and had learned only that he was English. Nath and Alain had seen him a few times over the following years, and they described a man of slightly more than average height, with a red-brown beard and thinning hair, speaking French with the fluency of long practice but an unmistakable English accent. Two of the illicit priests Ned had interrogated had named him as the organizer of their clandestine entry into England. And that was all. No one knew his real name or where in England he came from.
Ned said: ‘Well?’
‘I’m trying to think, but I’m sure I don’t know a man by that name.’
Walsingham said: ‘I think I’ve heard enough.’
Ned went to the door and summoned a steward. ‘Take Mr Gifford to the parlour and stay with him, please.’
Gifford left, and Walsingham said: ‘What do you think?’
‘He’s lying,’ said Ned.
‘I agree. Alert all our people to be on the lookout for him.’
‘Very good,’ said Ned. ‘And perhaps it’s time for me to pay a visit to Chartley.’
*
ALISON FOUND Sir Ned Willard maddeningly nice during the week he spent at Chartley Manor. Now in his forties, he was courteous and charming even while he did the most obnoxious things. He went everywhere and saw everything. When she looked out of the window in the morning he was there in the courtyard, sitting by the well, eating bread and watching the comings and goings with eyes that missed nothing. He never knocked at a door. He walked into everyone’s bedroom, male or female, saying politely: ‘I do hope I’m not disturbing you.’ If he was told that yes, he was disturbing someone, he would say apologetically: ‘I’ll be gone in a minute,’ and then stay just as long as he pleased. If you were writing a letter he would read it over your shoulder. He walked in on Queen Mary and her companions at meals and listened to their conversations. It did not help to speak French as he was fluent. If anyone protested, he said: ‘I’m so sorry – but, you know, prisoners aren’t really entitled to privacy.’ All the women said he was lovely, and one admitted to walking around her room naked in the hope that he would come in.
His meticulousness was particularly frustrating because, in recent weeks, Mary had started to receive letters in barrels from the Lion’s Head in Burton, and it turned out that a huge backlog of secret correspondence had been piling up in the French embassy in London since the arrest of Throckmorton more than a year ago. Mary and her long-time secretary, Claude Nau, worked on the avalanche of mail day after day, updating Mary’s confidential relations with powerful supporters in Scotland, France, Spain and Rome. This was important work: Alison and Mary knew that people could easily forget a hero who dropped out of sight. Now the courts of Europe were receiving lively reminders that Mary was alive and well and ready to take the throne that was rightfully hers.
When Sir Ned Willard arrived, all that had to stop. No letters could be written, let alone encoded, for fear that he might walk in and see a revealing half-written document. Numerous letters had already been sealed in bottles and placed in an empty barrel, ready to be picked up by the dray from the Lion’s Head. Alison and Mary had a long discussion about what to do about them. They decided it might call attention to the barrel if they opened it to retrieve the bottles, so they left them as they were; but for the same reason they added no new ones.
Alison prayed that Ned would leave before the next delivery of beer. The man who called himself Jean Langlais had come up with the idea of hiding messages in barrels when he saw the beer being delivered; might not Ned think the same way, and just as quickly? Her prayer was not answered.
Alison and Mary were at a window, watching Ned in the courtyard, when the heavy cart arrived with three thirty-two-gallon barrels.
‘Go and talk to him,’ Mary said urgently. ‘Distract his attention.’
Alison hurried outside and approached Ned. ‘So, Sir Ned,’ she said conversationally, ‘are you satisfied with the security arrangements of Sir Amias Paulet?’
‘He’s a good deal more meticulous than the earl of Shrewsbury.’
Alison gave a tinkling laugh. ‘I’ll never forget you bursting in on us at breakfast at Sheffield Castle,’ she said. ‘You were like an avenging angel. Terrifying!’
Ned smiled, but Alison saw that it was a knowing smile. He knew she was flirting. He did not appear to mind, but she felt sure he did not believe her flattery.
She said: ‘It was the third time I’d met you, but I’d never before seen you like that. Why were you so angry, anyway?’
He did not answer her for a moment. He looked past her at the brewer’s men unloading the full barrels of beer from the dray and rolling them into Mary’s quarters. Alison’s heart was in her mouth: those barrels almost certainly contained incriminating secret messages from the enemies of Queen Elizabeth. All Ned had to do was stop the men, with his usual well-mannered determination, and demand that they open the barrels so that he could check the contents. Then the game would be up, and another conspirator would be tortured and executed.
But Ned did nothing. His attractive face showed no more emotion than it had when coal had been delivered. He returned his gaze to her and said: ‘May I answer you with a question?’
‘All right.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mary Stuart is a prisoner, but you’re not. You’re no threat to the crown of England. You don’t pretend to have a claim on the English throne. You have no powerful relatives at the court of the king of France. You don’t write letters to the Pope and the king of Spain. You could walk out of Chartley Manor and nobody would mind. Why do you stay?’
It was a question she sometimes asked herself. ‘Queen Mary and I were girls together,’ she said. ‘I’m a little older, and I used to look after her. Then she grew into a beautiful, alluring young woman, and I fell in love with her, in a way. When we returned to Scotland, I got married, but my husband died soon after the wedding. It just seemed to be my destiny to serve Queen Mary.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Alison saw the men come back out with the empties – including one containing secret letters in bottles – and load the barrels onto the cart. Once again, all Ned had to do was give the order and the barrels would have been opened, revealing their secret. But Ned made no move to speak to the draymen. ‘I understand,’ he said to Alison, continuing their conversation, ‘because I feel the same way about Queen Elizabeth. And that’s why I was so angry when I found that the earl of Shrewsbury was letting her down.’
The brewer’s men went into the kitchen for their dinner before setting off again. The crisis was over. Alison breathed easier.
Ned said: ‘And now it’s time for me to leave. I must get back to London. Goodbye, Lady Ross.’
Alison had not known he was about to leave. ‘Goodbye, Sir Ned,’ she said.
He went into the house.
Alison returned to Queen Mary. Together they watched through the window. Ned came out of the house with a pair of saddlebags presumably containing his few necessaries. He spoke to a groom, who brought out his horse.
He was gone before the deliverymen finished their dinner.
‘What a relief,’ said Queen Mary. ‘Thank God.’
‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘We seem to have got away with it.’
*
NED DID NOT go to London. He rode to Burton and took a room at the Lion’s Head.
When his horse was taken care of and his bags unpacked, he explored the inn. There was a bar opening on to the street. An arched vehicle entrance led to a courtyard with stables on one side and guest rooms on the other. At the back of the premises was a brewery, and a yeasty smell filled the air. It was a substantial business: the tavern was full of drinkers, travellers arrived and left, and drays were in and out of the yard constantly.
Ned noted that empty barrels from incoming drays were rolled to a corner where a boy removed the lids, cleaned the insides with water and a scrubbing brush, and stacked the barrels upside down to dry.
The owner was a big man whose belly suggested that he consumed plenty of what he brewed. Ned heard the men call him Hal. He was always on the move, going from the brewery to the stable, harrying his employees and shouting orders.
When Ned had the layout of the place in his head, he sat on a bench in the courtyard with a flagon of beer and waited. The yard was busy, and no one paid him any attention.
He was almost certain the messages were going in and out of Chartley Manor in beer barrels. He had been there for a week and had watched just about everything that went on, and this was the only possibility he could see. When the beer arrived he had been partly distracted by Alison. It could have been a coincidence that she chose to chat to him just at that moment. But Ned did not believe in coincidences.
He expected that the draymen would travel more slowly than he had coming from Chartley, for his horse was fresh and the carthorses tired. In the end it was early evening by the time the dray entered the courtyard of the Lion’s Head. Ned stayed where he was, watching. One of the men went away and came back with Hal while the others were unhitching the horses. Then they rolled the empty barrels over to the boy with the scrubbing brush.
Hal watched the boy remove the lids with a crowbar. He leaned against the wall and looked unconcerned. Perhaps he was. More likely, he had calculated that if he opened the barrels in secret his employees would know that he was up to something seriously criminal, whereas if he feigned nonchalance, they would assume it was nothing special.
When the lids came off, Hal looked into each barrel. Bending over one, he reached inside and brought out two bottle-shaped objects wrapped in rags and tied with string.
Ned allowed himself a satisfied sigh.
Hal nodded to the boy, then crossed the courtyard to a doorway he had not used before and went inside.
Ned followed rapidly.
The door led to a set of rooms that appeared to be the publican’s home. Ned walked through a sitting room into a bedroom. Hal stood at an open cupboard, obviously stashing the two items he had taken from the barrel. Hearing Ned’s step on the floorboards, he spun round and said angrily: ‘Get out of here, these are private rooms!’
Ned said quietly: ‘You are now as close as you have ever come to being hanged.’
Hal’s expression changed instantly. He went pale and his mouth dropped open. He was shocked and terrified. It was a startling transformation in a big, blustering fellow, and Ned deduced that Hal – unlike poor Peg Bradford – knew exactly what kind of crime he was committing. After a long hesitation he said in a frightened voice: ‘Who are you?’
‘I am the only man in the world who can save you from the gallows.’
‘Oh, God help me.’
‘He may, if you help me.’
‘What must I do?’
‘Tell me who comes to collect the bottles from Chartley, and brings you new ones to send there.’
‘I don’t know his name – honestly! I swear it!’
‘When will he next be here?’
‘I don’t know – he never gives warning, and his visits are irregular.’
They would be, Ned thought. The man is careful.
Hal moaned: ‘Oh, God, I’ve been such a fool.’
‘You certainly have. Why did you do it? Are you Catholic?’
‘I’m whatever religion I’m told to be.’
‘Greed for money, then.’
‘God forgive me.’
‘He has forgiven worse. Now listen to me. All you have to do is continue as you are. Give the courier the bottles, accept the new ones he brings, send them to Chartley, and bring back the replies, as you have been doing. Say nothing about me to anyone, anywhere.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to understand. Just forget that you ever met me. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, and thank you for being merciful.’
You don’t deserve it, you money-grubbing traitor, Ned thought. He said: ‘I’m going to stay here until the courier comes, whenever that may be.’
He arrived two days later. Ned recognized him instantly.
It was Gilbert Gifford.
*
IT WAS A dangerous business, recruiting men to join a conspiracy to kill the queen. Rollo had to be very careful. If he picked the wrong man he could be in the deepest kind of trouble.
He had learned to watch for a certain look in the eyes. The look combined noble purpose with a high-minded disregard for consequences. It was not madness, but it was a kind of irrationality. Rollo sometimes wondered whether he had that look himself. He thought not: he was cautious to the point of obsession. Perhaps he had had it when young, but he must surely have lost it, for otherwise he would by now have been hung, drawn and quartered like Francis Throckmorton and all the other idealistic young Catholics Ned Willard had caught. In which case, he would by now have gone to heaven, like them; but a man was not permitted to choose the moment he made that journey.
Rollo thought that Anthony Babington had the look.
Rollo had been observing Babington for three weeks, but from a distance. He had not yet spoken. He had not even gone into the houses and taverns that Babington frequented, for he knew they would be watched by Ned Willard’s spies. He got close to Babington only in places that were not Catholic haunts, and among groups of people so large that one extra was not noticeable: in bowling alleys, at cockfights and bear-baiting, and in the audience at public executions. But he could not carry on taking precautions for ever. The time had come when he had to risk his neck.
Babington was a young man from a wealthy Derbyshire Catholic family that harboured one of Rollo’s secret priests. He had met Mary Stuart: as a boy Babington had been a page in the household of the earl of Shrewsbury, at the time when the earl was her jailer; and the boy had been captivated by the charm of the imprisoned queen. Was all that enough? There was only one way to find out for sure.
Rollo finally spoke to him at a bullfight.
It took place at Paris Gardens in Southwark, on the south side of the river. Entrance was a penny, but Babington paid twopence for a place in the gallery, removed from the jostling and smell of ordinary folk in the stalls.
The bull was tethered in a ring but otherwise unconstrained. Six big hunting dogs were led in and immediately flew at the bull, trying to bite its legs. The big bull was remarkably agile, turning its head on the muscular neck, fighting back with its horns. The dogs dodged, not always successfully. The lucky ones were simply thrown through the air; the unlucky ones impaled on a horn until shaken off. The smell of blood filled the atmosphere.
The audience yelled and screamed encouragement, and placed bets on whether the bull would kill all the dogs before succumbing to its wounds.
No one was looking anywhere but the ring.
Rollo began, as always, by letting his target know that he was a Catholic priest. ‘Bless you, my son,’ he said quietly to Babington, and when Babington gave him a startled look he flashed the gold cross.
Babington was shocked and enthused. ‘Who are you?’
‘Jean Langlais.’
‘What do you want with me?’
‘It is time for Mary Stuart.’
Babington’s eyes widened. ‘What do you mean?’
He knew perfectly well what was meant, Rollo thought. He went on: ‘The duke of Guise is ready with an army of sixty thousand men.’ That was an exaggeration – the duke was not ready, and he might never have sixty thousand – but Rollo needed to inspire confidence. ‘The duke has maps of all the major harbours on the south and east coasts where he may land his forces. He also has a list of loyal Catholic noblemen – including your stepfather – who can be counted upon to rally to the invaders and fight for the restoration of the true faith.’ That was accurate.
‘Can all this be true?’ Babington said, eager to believe it.
‘Only one thing is lacking, and we need a good man to supply the deficiency.’
‘Go on.’
‘A high-born Catholic whose faith is unquestionable must put together a group of similar friends and free Queen Mary from her prison at the moment of crisis. You, Anthony Babington, have been chosen to be that man.’
Rollo turned away from Babington, to give him a moment to digest all that. In the ring, the bull and the dead or dying dogs had been dragged away, and the climactic entertainment of the afternoon was beginning. Into the ring came an old horse with a monkey in the saddle. The crowd cheered: this was their favourite part. Six young dogs were released. They attacked and bit the horse, which tried desperately to escape their teeth; but they also leaped at the monkey, which seemed to tempt them more. The spectators roared with laughter as the monkey, maddened with fear, tried frantically to escape their bites, jumping from one end of the horse to the other, and even trying to stand on the horse’s head.
Rollo looked at Babington’s face. The entertainment was forgotten. Babington shone with pride, exhilaration and fear. Rollo could read his mind. He was twenty-three, and this was his moment of glory.
Rollo said: ‘Queen Mary is being held at Chartley Manor, in Staffordshire. You must go there and reconnoitre – but do not attract attention to yourself by attempting to speak to her. When your plans are made, you will write to her, giving the details, and entrust the letter to me. I have a way of getting papers to her secretly.’
The light of destiny shone in Babington’s eyes. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘And gladly.’
In the ring the horse fell down, and the dogs seized the monkey and tore it apart.
Rollo shook Babington’s hand.
Babington said: ‘How do I get in touch with you?’
‘You don’t,’ said Rollo. ‘I’ll contact you.’
*
NED TOOK GIFFORD to the Tower of London, his right arm roped to the left wrist of a guard. ‘This is where traitors are tortured,’ Ned said conversationally as they ascended the stone staircase. Gifford looked terrified. They went to a room with a writing table and a fireplace, cold in summer. They sat down on opposite sides of the table, Gifford still tied to the guard, who stood beside him.
In the next room, a man screamed.
Gifford paled. ‘Who is that?’ he said.
‘A traitor called Launcelot,’ said Ned. ‘He dreamed up a scheme to shoot Queen Elizabeth while she rode in St James’s Park. He proposed this murderous plan to another Catholic who happened to be a loyal subject of the queen.’ The second man also happened to be an agent of Ned’s. ‘We think Launcelot is probably a lunatic working alone, but Sir Francis Walsingham needs to be sure.’
Gifford’s smooth boyish face was deathly white, and his hands were shaking.
Ned said: ‘If you don’t want to suffer what Launcelot is going through, you just have to cooperate with me. Nothing difficult.’
‘Never,’ said Gifford, but his voice shook.
‘After you collect the letters from the French embassy, you will bring them to me, so that I can make copies, before you take them to Chartley.’
‘You can’t read them,’ Gifford said. ‘Nor can I. They’re written in code.’
‘Let me worry about that.’ Ned had a genius codebreaker called Phelippes.
‘Queen Mary will see the broken seals on the letters and know what I’ve done.’
‘The seals will be restored.’ Phelippes was also a skilled forger. ‘No one will be able to tell the difference.’
Gifford was taken aback by these revelations. He had not guessed how elaborate and professional Queen Elizabeth’s secret service was. As Ned had suspected from the start, Gifford had no idea what he was up against.
Ned went on: ‘You will do the same when you pick up the letters from Chartley. You will bring them to me, and I will have them copied before you deliver them to the French embassy.’
‘I will never betray Queen Mary.’
Launcelot screamed again, and then the scream died away and the man began to sob and plead for mercy.
Ned said to Gifford: ‘You are a lucky man.’
Gifford gave a snort of incredulity.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Ned. ‘You see, you don’t know much. You don’t even know the name of the Englishman who recruited you in Paris.’
Gifford said nothing, but Ned guessed from his expression that he did have a name.
Ned said: ‘He called himself Jean Langlais.’
Gifford was not good at hiding his feelings, and he let his surprise show.
‘That is obviously a pseudonym, but it’s the only one he gave you.’
Once again Gifford appeared disheartened by how much Ned knew.
‘You’re lucky, because I have a use for you, and if you do as you’re told, you won’t be racked.’
‘I won’t do it.’
Launcelot screamed like a man in hell.
Gifford turned away and threw up on the stone floor. The sour smell of vomit filled the little room.
Ned stood up. ‘I’ve arranged for them to torture you this afternoon. I’ll come and see you tomorrow. You’ll have changed your mind by then.’
Launcelot sobbed: ‘No, no, please, stop.’
Gifford wiped his mouth and whispered: ‘I’ll do it.’
‘I need to hear you better,’ Ned said.
Gifford spoke louder. ‘I’ll do it, God damn you!’
‘Good,’ said Ned. He spoke to the guard. ‘Untie the rope,’ he said. ‘Let him go.’
Gifford could hardly believe it. ‘I can go?’
‘As long as you do what I’ve told you. You will be watched, so don’t imagine you can cheat me.’
Launcelot began to cry for his mother.
Ned said: ‘And the next time you come back here there will be no escape.’
‘I understand.’
‘Go.’
Gifford left the room, and Ned heard his hurried footsteps clatter down the stone stairs. Ned nodded to the guard, who also went out. Ned sat back in his chair, drained. He closed his eyes, but after a minute Launcelot screamed again, and Ned had to leave.
He went out of the Tower and walked along the bank of the river. A fresh breeze off the water blew away the smell of puke that had lingered in his nostrils. He looked around him, at boatmen, fishermen, street hawkers, busy people and idlers, hundreds of faces talking, shouting, laughing, yawning, singing – but not screaming in agony or sweating in terror. Normal life.
He crossed London Bridge to the south bank. This was where most of the Huguenots lived. They had brought sophisticated textile technology with them from the Netherlands and France, and they had quickly prospered in London. They were good customers for Sylvie.
Her shop was the ground floor of a timber-framed building in a row, a typical London house, with each storey jutting out over the one below. The front door was open, and he stepped inside. He was soothed by the rows of books and the smell of paper and ink.
Sylvie was unpacking a box from Geneva. She straightened up when she heard his step. He looked into her blue eyes and kissed her soft mouth.
She held him at a distance and spoke English with a soft French accent. ‘What on earth has happened?’
‘I had to perform an unpleasant duty. I’ll tell you, but I want to wash.’ He went out to the backyard, and dipped a bowl in a rain barrel, and washed his face and hands in the cold water.
Back in the house, he went upstairs to the living quarters and threw himself into his favourite chair. He closed his eyes and heard Launcelot crying for his mother.
Sylvie came upstairs. She went to the pantry, got a bottle of wine, and poured two goblets. She handed him a glass, kissed his forehead and sat close to him, knee to knee. He sipped his wine and took her hand.
She said: ‘Tell me.’
‘A man was tortured in the Tower today. He had threatened the life of the queen. I didn’t torture him – I can’t do it, I don’t have the stomach for that work. But I arranged to conduct an interrogation in the next room, so that my suspect could hear the screams.’
‘How dreadful.’
‘It worked. I turned an enemy agent into a double agent. He serves me now. But I can still hear those screams.’ Sylvie squeezed his hand and said nothing. After a while he said: ‘Sometimes I hate my work.’
‘Because of you, men like the duke of Guise and Pierre Aumande can’t do in England what they do in France – burn people to death for their beliefs.’
‘But in order to defeat them I have become like them.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ she said. ‘You don’t fight for compulsory Protestantism the way they fight for compulsory Catholicism. You stand for tolerance.’
‘We did, at the start. But now, when we catch secret priests, we execute them, regardless of whether they threaten the queen. Do you know what we did to Margaret Clitherow?’
‘Is she the woman who was executed in York for harbouring a Catholic priest?’
‘Yes. She was stripped naked, tied up, and laid on the ground; then her own front door was placed on top of her and loaded with rocks until she was crushed to death.’
‘Oh, God, I didn’t know that.’
‘Sickening.’
‘But you never wanted it to be this way! You wanted people with different beliefs to be good neighbours.’
‘I did, but perhaps it’s impossible.’
‘Roger told me something you once said to him. I wonder if you remember the time he asked you why the queen hated Catholics.’
Ned smiled. ‘I remember.’
‘He’s hasn’t forgotten what you told him.’
‘Perhaps I did something right. What did I say to Roger?’
‘You said that there are no saints in politics, but imperfect people can make the world a better place.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘That’s what Roger told me.’
‘Good,’ said Ned. ‘I hope it’s true.’
*
SUMMER BROUGHT NEW hope to Alison, who brightened with the weather. Only the inner circle at Chartley Manor knew of the secret correspondence with Anthony Babington, but Mary’s revived spirits heartened everyone.
Alison was optimistic, but not blindly so. She wished she knew more about Babington. He came from a good Catholic family, but that was about all that could be said for him. He was only twenty-four. Would he really be able to lead a rebellion against the queen who had held on firmly to power for twenty-seven years? Alison wanted to know the plan.
The details came in July of 1586.
After the initial exchange of letters that served to establish contact and assure both parties that the channel of communication was open, Babington sent a full outline of what he proposed. The letter came in a beer barrel, and was decoded by Mary’s secretary, Claude Nau. Alison sat with Mary and Nau, in Mary’s bedroom at Chartley Manor, and pored over the paper.
It was exhilarating.
‘Babington writes of “this great and honourable action” and “the last hope ever to recover the faith of our forefathers”, but he says more,’ said Nau, looking at his decrypt. ‘He outlines six separate actions necessary for a successful uprising. The first is the invasion of England by a foreign force. Second, that force to be large enough to guarantee military victory.’
Mary said: ‘The duke of Guise has sixty thousand men, we’re told.’
Alison hoped it was true.
‘Third, ports must be chosen where the armies can land and be resupplied.’
‘Settled long ago, I think, and maps sent to my cousin Duke Henri,’ said Mary. ‘Though Babington may not know about that.’
‘Fourth, when they arrive they must be met by a substantial local force to protect their landing against immediate counterattack.’
‘The people will rise up spontaneously,’ Mary said.
Alison thought they might need prompting, but that could be arranged.
‘Babington has given this some thought,’ Nau said. ‘He has selected men he describes as “your lieutenants” in the west, the north, South Wales, North Wales, and the counties of Lancaster, Derby and Stafford.’
Alison thought that sounded impressively well organized.
‘ “Fifth, Queen Mary must be freed”,’ Nau read aloud. ‘ “Myself, with ten gentlemen and a hundred of our followers, will undertake the delivery of your royal person from the hands of your enemies.” ’
‘Good,’ said Mary. ‘Sir Amias Paulet has nowhere near a hundred guards here, and anyway, most of them are lodged in the surrounding neighbourhood, not at the Manor. Before they can be mustered, we’ll be long gone.’
Alison was feeling increasingly energized.
‘And sixth, of course, Elizabeth must be killed. Babington writes: “For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by excommunication made free, there be six gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your majesty’s service, will undertake that tragic execution.” I think that’s about as clear as it could be.’
It certainly was, thought Alison, and for a moment she was chilled to think of the murder of a queen.
‘I must reply to this quickly,’ said Mary.
Nau looked anxious. ‘We should be careful what we say.’
‘There is only one thing I can say, and that is yes.’
‘If your letter should fall into the wrong hands . . .’
‘It will be placed in safe hands, and written in code.’
‘But if things should go wrong . . .’
Mary reddened, and Alison knew that the anger and frustration of the last twenty years were showing. ‘I have to seize this opportunity. Otherwise there is no hope for me.’
‘Your reply to Babington will be evidence of treason.’
‘So be it,’ said Mary.
*
THE BUSINESS OF espionage required a lot of patience, Ned reflected in July of 1586.
He had hoped, back in 1583, that Francis Throckmorton would lead him to hard evidence of the treachery of Mary Stuart. That hope had been disappointed when the malice of the earl of Leicester had forced Ned to arrest Throckmorton prematurely. Then, in 1585, he had found a new Throckmorton in Gilbert Gifford. This time the earl of Leicester was not in England to make trouble: Queen Elizabeth had sent him to the Spanish Netherlands at the head of an army to fight for the Dutch Protestant rebels against their Catholic Spanish overlords. Leicester was making a hash of the job – his talents were for flirting and charming, not fighting and killing – but it kept him from undermining Walsingham.
As a result, Ned was in a strong position. Mary thought she was sending and receiving secret letters, but Ned was reading everything.
However, it was now July and he had not yet found what he was looking for, despite six months of surveillance.
Treachery was implied in every letter Mary received or wrote, of course, whether she was corresponding with Pierre Aumande or the king of Spain; but Ned needed something no one could argue with. The letter Babington sent to Mary early in July was explicit, and he would undoubtedly hang for it. Ned waited in suspense to see how Mary would reply. Surely now she would have to make her intentions clear in writing? The exact wording of her response might finally condemn her.
Her reply came into Ned’s hands on 19 July. It was seven pages long.
It was written by her secretary, Claude Nau, as always, and encoded. Ned gave it to Phelippes for deciphering and waited in a fever of impatience. He found he could not concentrate on anything else. He had a long letter from Jerónima Ruiz in Madrid about the internal politics of the Spanish court which he read three times without understanding a word. He gave up and left Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane to walk across the bridge to his own home in Southwark for midday dinner. Being with Sylvie always soothed his soul.
She closed the shop and cooked some salmon in wine with rosemary. As they ate, in the dining room over the shop, he told her about Babington’s letter and Mary’s response. He had no secrets from Sylvie: they were spies together.
As they were finishing the fish, one of Ned’s assistants arrived with the decrypt.
It was in French. Ned could not read French as effortlessly as he could speak it, but he went through it with Sylvie.
Mary began by praising Babington’s intentions in general terms. ‘That’s already enough to convict her of treason,’ Ned said with satisfaction.
Sylvie said: ‘It’s very sad.’
Ned looked at her with raised eyebrows. Sylvie was a crusading Protestant who had risked her life for her beliefs many times, yet she felt pity for Mary Stuart.
She caught his look. ‘I remember her wedding. She was just a girl, but beautiful, with a wonderful future in prospect. She was going to be the queen of France. She seemed the luckiest young woman in the world. And look what has become of her.’
‘She’s brought all her troubles on herself.’
‘Did you make good decisions when you were seventeen?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘When I was nineteen I married Pierre Aumande. How’s that for bringing trouble on oneself?’
‘I see your point.’
Ned read on. Mary went farther than general praise. She responded to each element of Babington’s plan, urging him to make more detailed preparations to welcome the invaders, muster local rebels in support, and arm and supply everyone. She asked for a more precise outline of the scheme to free her from Chartley Manor.
‘Better and better,’ said Ned.
Most importantly, she urged Babington to give careful thought to exactly how the assassins of Queen Elizabeth would proceed with their murderous task.
When Ned read that sentence he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his aching back. It was incontrovertible proof. Mary was active in the planning of regicide. She was as guilty as if she wielded the knife herself.
One way or another, Mary Stuart was finished.
*
ROLLO FOUND Anthony Babington celebrating.
Babington was at the grand London home of Robert Pooley with several fellow conspirators, sitting around a table laden with roasted chickens, bowls of hot buttered onions, loaves of new bread and jugs of sherry wine.
Rollo was disturbed by their levity. Men who were plotting to overthrow the monarch should not get drunk in the middle of the day. However, unlike Rollo, they were not hardened conspirators but idealistic amateurs embarked on a grand adventure. The supreme confidence of youth and nobility made them careless of their lives.
Rollo was breaking his own rule in coming to Pooley’s house. He normally stayed away from the Catholics’ regular haunts. Such places were watched by Ned Willard. But Rollo had not seen Babington for a week and he needed to know what was happening.
He looked into the room, caught Babington’s eye, and beckoned him. Uncomfortable in the home of a known Catholic, he led Babington out. Alongside the house was a spacious garden, shaded from the August sun by a small orchard of mulberry and fig trees. Even this was not secure enough for Rollo, for only a low wall separated it from the busy street, noisy with cartwheels and vendors and the banging and shouting of a building site on the other side of the road. He insisted they leave the garden and step into the shady porch of the church next door. Then at last he said: ‘What’s happening? Everything seems to have gone quiet.’
‘Wipe that frown away, Monsieur Langlais,’ said Babington gaily. ‘Here’s good news.’ He took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and handed it over with a flourish.
It was a coded letter together with a decrypt written out by Babington. Rollo moved to the archway and read it in the sunlight. In French, it was from Mary Stuart to Babington. She approved all his plans and urged him to make more detailed arrangements.
Rollo’s anxiety melted away. The letter was everything he had hoped for, the final and decisive element in the plan. Rollo would take it to the duke of Guise, who would immediately muster his army of invasion. The godless twenty-eight-year tyranny of Elizabeth was almost over.
‘Well done,’ Rollo said. He pocketed the letter. ‘I leave for France tomorrow. When I return I will be with God’s army of liberation.’
Babington clapped him on the back. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Now come and dine with us.’
Rollo was about to refuse but, before he could speak, his instincts sounded an alarm. He frowned. Something was wrong. The street had gone quiet. The cartwheels had stopped, the vendors were no longer crying their wares, and the building site was silent. What had happened?
He grabbed Babington’s elbow. ‘We have to get away from here,’ he said.
Babington laughed. ‘What on earth for? In Pooley’s dining room there’s a keg of the best wine only half drunk!’
‘Shut up, you fool, and follow me, if you value your life.’ Rollo stepped into the church, hushed and dim, and quickly crossed the nave to a small entrance in the far wall. He cracked the door: it opened on to the street. He peeped out.
As he had feared, Pooley’s house was being raided.
Men-at-arms were taking up positions along the street, watched in nervous silence by the builders and the vendors and the passers-by. A few yards from Rollo, two burly men with swords stood at the garden gate, clearly placed to catch anyone trying to flee. As Rollo looked, Ned Willard appeared and banged on Pooley’s front door.
‘Hell,’ said Rollo. One of the men-at-arms began to turn towards him and he quickly closed the door. ‘We’re discovered.’
Babington looked scared. ‘Who by?’
‘Willard. He’s Walsingham’s right-hand-man.’
‘We can hide here.’
‘Not for long. Willard is thorough. He’ll find us if we stay here.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ Rollo looked out again. Pooley’s front door now stood open, and Willard had vanished, presumably inside. The men-at-arms were tense, waiting for action, looking around them warily. Rollo closed the door again. ‘How fast can you run?’
Babington belched and looked green. ‘I shall stand and fight,’ he said unconvincingly. He felt for his sword, but he was not wearing one: Rollo guessed it was hanging on a hook in Pooley’s entrance hall.
Then Rollo heard a sheep.
He frowned. As he listened, he realized it was not one but a flock of sheep. He remembered that there was a slaughterhouse along the street. A farmer was driving the flock to be butchered, a daily occurrence in every town in the world.
The sound came nearer.
Rollo looked out a third time. He could see the flock now, and smell them. There were about a hundred, and they filled the street from side to side. Pedestrians cursed them and stepped into doorways to get out of their way. The leaders drew level with Pooley’s front door, and suddenly Rollo saw how the sheep might save him.
‘Get ready,’ he said to Babington.
The men-at-arms were angry about being shouldered aside by sheep, but they could do nothing. If humans had shoved them, they would have brandished their weapons, but already-terrified sheep could not be bullied into doing anything other than follow each other to their death. Rollo would have laughed if he had not been afraid for his own life.
When the leaders of the flock passed the two men standing by the garden gate, all the men-at-arms were trapped by sheep. At that point Rollo said: ‘Now!’ and flung open the door.
He stepped out, with Babington on his heels. Two seconds later their way would have been blocked by sheep. He ran along the street, hearing Babington’s footsteps behind him.
A shout of ‘Stop! Stop!’ went up from the men-at-arms. Rollo glanced back to see some of them struggling to push through the sheep and give chase.
Rollo ran diagonally across the street and past the front of a tavern. An idler drinking a pot of ale stuck out a foot to trip him, but Rollo dodged it. Others just watched. Londoners were not generally well disposed towards men-at-arms, who were often bullies, especially when drunk; and some bystanders cheered the fugitives.
A moment later Rollo heard the bang of an arquebus, but he felt no impact, and Babington’s pace did not falter, so the shot had missed. There was another shot, with the same lack of effect, except that all the bystanders scurried indoors to take cover, knowing well that bullets did not always go just where the gun was pointed.
Rollo turned into a side street. A man carrying a club held up a hand to stop him, shouting: ‘City watch! Halt!’ Members of the city watch had the right to stop and question anyone suspicious. Rollo tried to dodge past the man, but he swung his club. Rollo felt a blow on his shoulder, lost his balance, and fell. He rolled over and looked back in time to see Babington’s arm swing through a half-circle that ended with a mighty punch to the side of the watchman’s head, knocking him down.
He tried to rise but seemed too dazed, and he slumped on the ground.
Babington helped Rollo up and they ran on.
They turned another corner, ducked down an alley, emerged from it into a street market, and slowed to a walk. They pushed their way into the crowds shopping at the stalls. A vendor tried to sell Rollo a pamphlet about the sins of the Pope, and a prostitute offered to do them both together for the price of one. Rollo looked back and saw no one in pursuit. They had escaped. Perhaps some of the others had also managed to get away in the confusion.
‘God sent his angels to help us,’ Rollo said solemnly.
‘In the shape of sheep,’ said Babington, and he laughed heartily.
*
ALISON WAS ASTONISHED when grumpy Sir Amias Paulet suggested to Mary Stuart that she might like to join him and some of the local gentry in a deer hunt. Mary loved riding and socializing, and she jumped at the chance to do both.
Alison helped her dress. Mary wanted to look both pretty and regal for people who would soon be her subjects. She put on a wig over her greying hair and anchored it firmly with a hat.
Alison was allowed to go too, along with the secretary, Nau. They rode out of Chartley courtyard and across the moat, then headed over the moors towards the village where the hunt was to rendezvous.
Alison was exhilarated by the sun, the breeze, and her thoughts of the future. Previously, there had been several conspiracies aimed at freeing Mary, and Alison had suffered a series of bitter disappointments, but this one seemed different, for everything had been taken into account.
It was three weeks since Mary had replied to Anthony Babington giving her approval of his plan. How much longer did they have to wait? Alison tried to calculate how many days it would take the duke of Guise to assemble his army: two weeks? A month? Perhaps she and Mary would hear advance rumours of the invasion. Any day now, word might reach England of a fleet of ships assembling on the north coast of France, and thousands of soldiers going aboard with their horses and armour. Or perhaps the duke would be subtle, and conceal the fleet in rivers and hidden harbours until the last minute, so that the invasion would come as a shock.
As she was mulling this, she saw a group of horsemen at a distance, riding fast. Her heart leaped. Could this be the rescue party?
The party drew closer. There were six men. Alison’s heart beat rapidly. Would Paulet put up a fight? He had brought with him two men-at-arms, but they would be outnumbered.
The leader of the group was someone Alison did not recognize. She noticed, despite her tumultuous excitement, that he was expensively dressed in a suit of green serge with extravagant embroidery. It must be Anthony Babington.
Then Alison looked at Paulet and wondered why he appeared unconcerned. The approach of a group of fast riders in open country was normally worrying, but he almost looked as if he had been expecting them.
She looked again at the riders and saw, with a horrible shock, that bringing up the rear was the slim figure of Ned Willard. That meant the riders were not a rescue party. Willard had been Mary’s nemesis for a quarter of a century. Now approaching fifty, he had streaks of grey in his dark hair and lines on his face. Even though he was riding last, Alison felt he was the real leader of this group.
Paulet introduced the man in green serge as Sir Thomas Gorges, an emissary from Queen Elizabeth, and Alison was seized by a fear as cold as the grave.
Gorges spoke what was obviously a rehearsed sentence. Addressing Mary, he said: ‘Madam, the queen my mistress finds it very strange that you, contrary to the pact and engagement between you, should have conspired against her and her State, a thing which she could not have believed had she not seen proofs of it with her own eyes and known it for certain.’
Alison realized that there was no deer hunt. Paulet had invented that as a way of separating Mary from the majority of her entourage.
Mary was horribly surprised. Her poise deserted her. Flustered, she spoke barely coherently. ‘I have never . . . I have always been a good sister . . . I am Elizabeth’s friend . . .’
Gorges took no notice. ‘Your servants, known to be guilty too, will be taken away from you.’
Alison said: ‘I must stay with her!’
Gorges looked at Willard, who gave a brief shake of his head.
Gorges said to Alison: ‘You will remain with the other servants.’
Mary turned to Nau. ‘Don’t let them do this!’
Nau looked terrified, and Alison sympathized. What could one secretary do?
Mary got off her horse and sat on the ground. ‘I will not go!’ she said.
Willard spoke for the first time. Addressing one of his group, he said: ‘Go to that house.’ He pointed to a substantial farmhouse half-hidden by trees a mile away. ‘They’re sure to have a cart. Bring it here. If necessary, we’ll tie up Mary Stuart and put her in the cart.’
Mary stood up again, giving in. ‘I shall ride,’ she said dispiritedly. She got back on her horse.
Gorges handed Paulet a piece of paper, presumably an arrest warrant. Paulet read it and nodded. He kept the paper, perhaps wanting proof – in case anything should go wrong – that he had been ordered to let Mary out of his care.
Mary was pale and shaking. ‘Am I to be executed?’ she said in a trembling voice.
Alison wanted to cry.
Paulet looked at Mary contemptuously. After a cruelly long pause he answered her question. ‘Not today.’
The arresting party got ready to move off. One of them kicked Mary’s horse from behind, causing the beast to start, jolting Mary; but she was a good rider, and stayed in the saddle as the horse moved off. The others went with her, keeping her surrounded.
Alison cried as she watched Mary ride away, presumably to yet another prison. How had this happened? It could only be that Babington’s plot had been uncovered by Ned Willard.
Alison turned to Paulet. ‘What is to be done with her?’
‘She will be put on trial for treason.’
‘And then?’
‘And then she will be punished for her crimes,’ said Paulet. ‘God’s will be done.’
*
BABINGTON PROVED ELUSIVE. Ned searched every London house where the conspirator had lodged without finding any clues. He set up a nationwide manhunt, sending a description of Babington and his associates to sheriffs, harbourmasters and lord lieutenants of counties. He dispatched two men to Babington’s parents’ home in Derbyshire. In every communication he threatened the death penalty for anyone helping any of the conspirators to escape.
In fact, Ned was not particularly concerned about Babington. The man was no longer much of a danger. His plot had been smashed. Mary had been moved, most of the conspirators were now being interrogated in the Tower of London, and Babington himself was a fugitive. All those Catholic noblemen who had been getting ready to support the invasion must now be putting their old armour back into storage.
However, Ned knew from long and dismal experience that another plot might readily grow in the ashes of the old. He had to find a way to make that impossible. The treason trial of Mary Stuart ought to discredit her in the eyes of all but her most fanatical supporters, he thought.
And there was one man he was desperate to capture. Every prisoner interrogated had mentioned Jean Langlais. All said he was not French but English, and some had met him at the English College. They described him as a tallish man of about fifty going bald on top: there seemed nothing very distinctive about his appearance. No one knew his real name or where he came from.
The very fact that so little was known about someone so important suggested, to Ned, that he was extraordinarily competent and therefore dangerous.
Ned now knew, from interrogating Robert Pooley, that both Langlais and Babington had been at Pooley’s house minutes before the raid. They were probably the two seen, by the men-at-arms, running away from the neighbouring church, their escape aided by an obstructive flock of sheep. Ned had just missed them. But they were probably still together, along with the few conspirators remaining at large.
It took Ned ten days to track them down.
On 14 August a frightened rider on a sweating horse arrived at the house in Seething Lane. He was a young member of the Bellamy family, well-known Catholics but not suspected of treason. Babington and his fellow fugitives had turned up at the family’s home, Uxendon Hall near the village of Harrow-on-the-Hill, a dozen miles west of London. Exhausted and starving, they had begged for shelter. The Bellamys had given them food and drink – compelled to do so under threat of their lives, they claimed – but had then insisted that the runaways leave the house and travel on. Now the family were terrified they would be hanged as collaborators, and eager to prove their loyalty by helping the authorities catch the conspirators.
Ned ordered horses immediately.
Riding hard, it took him and his men-at-arms less than two hours to reach Harrow-on-the-Hill. As the name suggested, the village was perched on top of a hill that stuck up out of the surrounding fields, and boasted a little school started recently by a local farmer. Ned stopped at the village inn and learned that a group of suspiciously bedraggled strangers had passed through earlier, on foot, heading north.
Guided by young Bellamy, the party followed the road to the boundary of the parish of Harrow, marked by an ancient sarsen stone, and through the next village, which Bellamy said was called Harrow Weald. Beyond the village, at an inn called The Hare, they caught up with their quarry.
Ned and his men walked into the building with swords drawn ready for a fight, but Babington’s little group offered no resistance.
Ned looked hard at them. They were a sorry sight, having cut their hair inexpertly and stained their faces with some kind of juice in a poor attempt at disguise. They were young noblemen accustomed to soft beds, yet they had been sleeping rough for ten days. They seemed almost relieved to be caught.
Ned said: ‘Which one of you is Jean Langlais?’
For a moment no one answered.
Then Babington said: ‘He’s not here.’
*
NED WAS FRUSTRATED to breaking point on the first day of February, 1587. He told Sylvie he was thinking of leaving the service of the queen. He would retire from court life, continue as member of Parliament for Kingsbridge, and help Sylvie run her bookshop. It would be a duller but happier life.
Elizabeth herself was the reason for his exasperation.
Ned had done everything possible to free Elizabeth from the menace of Mary Stuart. Mary was now imprisoned at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire and, although in the end she had been allowed to have her servants with her, Ned had made sure that the flinty Sir Amias Paulet also went with her to impose strict security. In October, the evidence he had assembled had been presented at Mary’s trial, and she had been convicted of treason. In November, Parliament had sentenced her to death. At the beginning of December, news of the sentence had been broadcast all over the country to general rejoicing. Walsingham had immediately drafted the death warrant Elizabeth would need to sign to authorize the execution. Ned’s old mentor William Cecil, now Lord Burghley, had approved the wording.
Almost two months later, Elizabeth still had not signed it.
To Ned’s surprise, Sylvie sympathized with Elizabeth. ‘She doesn’t want to kill a queen,’ she said. ‘It sets a bad precedent. She’s a queen herself. And she’s not the only one who feels that way. Every monarch in Europe will be outraged if she executes Mary. Who knows what revenge they may take?’
Ned could not see it like that. He had devoted his life to protecting Elizabeth, and he felt she was rejecting his efforts.
As if to support Sylvie’s point of view, ambassadors from both France and Scotland came to see Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace on 1 February to plead for Mary’s life. Elizabeth did not want to quarrel with either country. She had recently signed a peace pact with King James VI of Scotland, who was Mary’s son. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s own life was still under threat. In January, one William Stafford confessed to plotting to poison her. Walsingham had publicized this, making it seem closer to success than it had ever really come, in order to bolster public support for Mary’s execution. Exaggeration aside, it was still a chilling reminder that Elizabeth could never feel truly safe while Mary lived.
After the ambassadors had left, Ned decided to present Elizabeth with the death warrant again. Perhaps today she might be in the mood to sign it.
He was working with William Davison, who was standing in for Walsingham as secretary of state because Walsingham himself was ill. Davison agreed to Ned’s plan – all Elizabeth’s advisors were desperate for her to get it over with. Davison and Ned inserted the death warrant into the middle of a bundle of papers for her to sign.
Ned knew that Elizabeth would not be fooled by this little subterfuge. But she might pretend to be. He sensed that she was looking for a way to sign and then claim she had not intended to. If that was how she wanted it, he would make it easy for her.
She seemed in a good mood, he saw with relief when they entered the presence chamber. ‘Such mild weather for February,’ she said. The queen was often too hot. Sylvie said it was her age: she was fifty-three. ‘Are you well, Davison?’ she said. ‘Are you getting enough exercise? You work too hard.’
‘I’m very well, and your majesty is most kind to ask,’ said Davison.
She did not banter with Ned. She was aware that he was annoyed with her for prevarication. He could never hide his feelings from her. She knew him too well, perhaps as well as Sylvie did.
She had remarkable intuition, and now she gave a demonstration of it. Still addressing Davison, she said: ‘That bundle of papers you’re grasping to your bosom like a beloved child – does it include the death warrant?’
Ned felt foolish. He had no idea how she could have known.
‘Yes,’ Davison confessed.
‘Give it to me.’
Davison extracted the paper from the bundle and handed it to the queen, bowing as he did so. Ned half expected her to berate them for trying to slip it past her, but she did not. She read the document, holding it at arm’s length to compensate for her weakening eyesight. Then she said: ‘Bring me pen and ink.’
Astonished, Ned went to a side table and picked up what she needed.
Would she really sign it? Or was she still toying with him, the way she had toyed with all those European princes who had wanted to marry her? She never had married: perhaps she never would sign the death warrant of Mary Stuart.
She dipped the quill he gave her in the inkwell he held out. She hesitated, looked at him with a smile he could not interpret, then signed the warrant with a flourish.
Hardly able to believe that she had at last done it, Ned took the document from her and handed it to Davison.
She looked sad, and said: ‘Are you not sorry to see such a thing done?’
Davison said: ‘I prefer to see your majesty alive, even at the cost of the life of another queen.’
Good answer, Ned thought; reminding Elizabeth that Mary would kill her if she could.
She said: ‘Take that paper to the Lord Chancellor and have him affix the Great Seal.’
Even better, Ned thought; she was definitely in earnest.
‘Yes, your majesty,’ said Davison.
She added: ‘But use it as secretly as may be.’
‘Yes, your majesty.’
It was all very well for Davison to say yes, your majesty, Ned thought, but what on earth did she mean by telling him to use the document secretly? He decided not to ask the question.
She turned to him. ‘Tell Walsingham what I’ve done.’ Sarcastically she added: ‘He will be so relieved it will probably kill him.’
Ned said: ‘He’s not that ill, thank God.’
‘Tell him the execution must be done inside Fotheringhay, not on the castle green – not publicly.’
‘Very well.’
A musing mood seemed to come over the queen. ‘If only some loyal friend would deal the blow covertly,’ she said quietly, not looking at either man. ‘The ambassadors of France and Scotland would not blame me for that.’
Ned was shocked. She was proposing murder. He immediately resolved to have nothing to do with such a plan, not even by mentioning it to others. It would be too easy for a queen to deny she had made any such suggestion and prove the point by having the killer hanged.
She looked directly at Ned. Seeming to sense his resistance, she turned her gaze on Davison. He, too, said nothing. She sighed and said: ‘Write to Sir Amias at Fotheringhay. Say that the queen is sorry he has not found some way to shorten the life of Mary Stuart, considering the great peril Elizabeth is subject to every hour of the day.’
This was ruthless even by Elizabeth’s standards. ‘Shorten the life’ was hardly even a euphemism. But Ned knew Paulet better. He was a harsh jailer, but the rigid morality that led him to treat his prisoner severely would also hold him back from killing her. He would not be able to convince himself that murder was God’s will. He would refuse Elizabeth’s request – and she would probably punish him for that. She had little patience with men who did not obey her.
She dismissed Davison and Ned.
Outside in the waiting room, Ned spoke quietly to Davison. ‘When the warrant has been sealed, I suggest you take it to Lord Burghley. He will probably call an emergency meeting of the Privy Council. I’m certain they’ll vote to send the warrant to Fotheringhay without further consulting Queen Elizabeth. Everyone wants this done as soon as possible.’
‘What will you do?’ said Davison.
‘Me?’ said Ned. ‘I’m going to hire an executioner.’
*
THE ONLY MEMBER of Mary Stuart’s little court who was not crying was Mary herself.
The women sat around her bed all night. No one slept. From the great hall they could hear the banging of carpenters, who were undoubtedly building some kind of scaffold. Outside Mary’s cramped suite of rooms, heavy boots marched up and down the passage all night: the nervous Paulet feared a rescue attempt and had posted a strong guard.
Mary got up at six o’clock. It was still dark. Alison dressed her by candlelight. Mary chose a dark red petticoat and a red satin bodice with a low neck. She added a black satin skirt and an overmantle of the same fabric with gold embroidery and sleeves slashed to show a purple lining. She had a fur collar to combat the chill of bleak Fotheringhay. Alison helped her don a white headdress with a long lace veil that fell down her back to the ground. It reminded Alison of the gorgeous train of blue-grey velvet she had carried at Mary’s wedding in Paris, so many sad years ago.
Then Mary went alone into the little oratory to pray. Alison and the others stayed outside. Dawn broke as they waited. Alison looked out of a window and saw that it was going to be a fine, sunny day. Somehow that trivial detail made her angry.
The clock struck eight, and soon afterwards there was a loud and insistent knocking at the door of Mary’s quarters. A man’s voice called out: ‘The lords are waiting for the queen!’
Until this moment Alison had not really believed that Mary would be killed. She had imagined it might all be a sham, a play put on by Paulet for some spiteful purpose; or by Elizabeth, who would issue a last-minute reprieve. She recalled that William Appletree, who had shot at Elizabeth while she was on a barge on the Thames river, had been dramatically reprieved as he stood on the scaffold. But if the lords were here to witness the execution, it must be real. Her heart seemed to turn into a lead weight in her chest, and her legs felt weak. She wanted to lie down and close her eyes and fall asleep for ever.
But she had to look after her queen.
She tapped on the door of the chapel and looked inside. Mary was on her knees in front of the altar, holding her Latin prayer book. ‘Give me a moment longer, to finish my prayers,’ she said.
Alison passed this message through the closed door, but the men outside were in no mood for concessions. The door was flung open, and the sheriff walked in. ‘I hope she won’t make us drag her there,’ he said in a voice tinted with panic, and Alison sensed, in a moment of compassion that surprised her, that he, too, was distressed.
He opened the chapel door without knocking. Mary rose to her feet immediately. She was pale but calm, and Alison – who knew her well – felt reassured, at that moment, that the queen would maintain her regal bearing throughout the ordeal to come. Alison was relieved: she would have hated to see Mary lose her dignity as well as her life.
‘Follow me,’ said the sheriff.
Mary turned back momentarily and took an ivory crucifix from its hook on the wall over the altar. With the cross pressed to her heavy bosom and the prayer book in her other hand, she walked behind the sheriff, and Alison followed.
Mary was inches taller than the sheriff. Illness and confinement had made her portly and round-shouldered, but Alison saw, with grieving pride, that she made a point of walking upright, her face proud, her steps unfaltering.
In the little antechamber outside the hall they were stopped. ‘The queen goes alone from here,’ said the sheriff.
Mary’s servants protested, but the man was adamant. ‘Orders from Queen Elizabeth,’ he said.
Mary spoke in a high, firm voice. ‘I do not believe you,’ she said. ‘As a maiden queen, Elizabeth would never condemn a fellow woman to die without any ladies to attend her.’
The sheriff ignored her. He opened the door to the hall.
Alison glimpsed a temporary stage about two feet high, draped with a black cloth, and a crowd of noblemen around it.
Mary passed through the doorway then stopped, so that the door could not be closed, and said in a carrying voice that rang in the hall: ‘I beg your lordships, allow my servants to be with me, so that they may report the manner of my dying.’
Someone said: ‘They might dip their handkerchiefs in her blood, to be used as blasphemous relics by superstitious fools.’
Someone was already worried about how to manage public reaction to this execution, Alison realized. No matter what they did, she thought savagely, those who took part in this vile performance would be regarded with hatred and loathing for all eternity.
‘They will not do any such thing,’ said Mary. ‘I give you my word.’
The lords went into a huddle, and Alison heard murmured words, then the voice said: ‘Very well, but only six.’
Mary gave in, pointed one by one at the people she wanted – starting with Alison – then walked forward.
Now Alison could see the entire hall. The stage was in the middle. Sitting on stage, on two stools, were men she recognized as the earls of Kent and Shrewsbury. A third stool, with a cushion, was clearly intended for Mary. In front of it, also draped in black, was the chopping block, and on the floor lay a huge woodcutter’s axe, its blade freshly edged by the grindstone.
In front of the stage were two more seats, one occupied by Paulet and the other by a man Alison did not know. Standing to one side was a burly fellow in the clothes of a working man, the only person in the room dressed so; and after a moment’s puzzlement Alison realized he must be the executioner. A heavy contingent of armed soldiers formed a circle around the stage. Outside the circle stood a large crowd of spectators: an execution had to be witnessed.
Among the crowd Alison spotted Sir Ned Willard. He had done more than anyone else to bring about today’s horror. He had outwitted Elizabeth’s enemies at every turn. He did not even appear triumphant. In fact, he looked aghast at the sight of the stage, the axe and the doomed queen. Alison would have preferred him to gloat: she could have hated him more.
Logs blazed in the massive fireplace, but failed to have much effect, and it seemed to Alison that the hall must be colder than the sunlit courtyard visible through the windows.
Mary approached the stage. As she did so, Paulet stood up and gave her his hand to help her up the steps. ‘Thank you,’ she said. But the cruel irony of his courtesy was not lost on her, for she then added bitterly: ‘This is the last trouble I shall ever give you.’
She climbed the three steps with her head held high.
Then she calmly took her place on the execution stool.
While the commission for her execution was read out she sat motionless, her face without expression; but when a clergyman began to pray, loudly and pompously, asking God to convert her to the Protestant faith at the last minute, she protested. ‘I am settled in the ancient Catholic Roman religion,’ she said with queenly decisiveness, ‘and I mean to spend my blood in defence of it.’
The man took no notice, but carried on.
Mary turned sideways on her stool, so that she had her back to him, and opened her Latin prayer book. She began to read aloud in a quiet voice while he ranted on, and Alison thought proudly that Mary was indisputably the more gracious of the two. After a minute, Mary slid off her stool to her knees, and continued to pray facing the execution block, as if it were an altar.
At last the prayers ended. Now Mary had to remove her outer garments. Alison went onto the stage to help her. Mary seemed to want to undress quickly, as if impatient to get this over with, and Alison removed her overmantle and skirt as rapidly as possible, then her headdress with its veil.
Mary stood there in her blood-red underclothes, the very picture of a Catholic martyr, and Alison realized she had chosen the colour for exactly that effect.
Her servants were weeping and praying loudly, but Mary reproved them, saying in French: ‘Don’t cry for me.’
The executioner picked up the axe.
Another of the women brought a white blindfold and covered the queen’s eyes.
Mary knelt down. Unable to see the block, she felt for it with her hands, then lowered her head into position, exposing her bare white neck. In seconds the axe would cut into that soft flesh. Alison was horrified to her soul.
In a loud voice Mary cried in Latin: ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.’
The executioner lifted the axe high and brought it down hard.
He missed his mark. The blow did not sever Mary’s neck, but bit into the bony back of her head. Alison could not contain herself and let out a loud sob. It was the most awful sight she had seen in a long life.
Mary did not move, and Alison could not tell whether she was still conscious. She made no sound.
The executioner lifted the axe and brought it down again, and this time his aim was better. The steel edge entered her neck at just the right place and went through almost all the way. But one sinew remained, and her head did not fall.
Horribly, the executioner took the head of his axe in both hands and sawed through the sinew.
At last Mary’s head fell from the block onto the mat of straw that had been placed to receive it.
The man picked up the head by the hair, held it up for all to see, and said: ‘God save the queen!’
But Mary had been wearing a wig, and now, to Alison’s horror and revulsion, wig and head separated. Mary’s head fell onto the stage, and the executioner was left holding her curly auburn wig. The head on the floor was revealed to be covered with short, grey hair.
It was the final, terrible indignity, and Alison could do nothing but close her eyes.