28
Rollo Fitzgerald lived through the last decade of the sixteenth century in a fury of disappointment and frustration. Everything he had tried to do had come to nothing. England was more resolutely Protestant than ever. His life was a failure.
And then, with the turn of the century, he perceived that there was one last hope.
Queen Elizabeth was sixty-six when the new century began. It was a great age, and she was becoming haggard, pale and melancholy. She refused to look to the future, and made it an act of treason to even discuss the question of who would succeed to her throne. ‘Men always worship the rising rather than the setting sun,’ she said, and she was not wrong. Despite her prohibition, everyone was talking about what would happen when she died.
Late in the summer of 1602, a visitor from Rome came to see Rollo at Tyne Castle. It was Lenny Price, who had been a student with Rollo at the English College back in the seventies. The lively pink-faced youth of those days was now a grey-haired man of fifty-five. ‘The church has a mission for you,’ said Lenny. ‘We want you to go to Edinburgh.’
They were standing on the roof of one of the castle towers, looking across farmland to the North Sea. Rollo’s pulse quickened at Lenny’s words. Scotland was ruled by King James VI, the son of Mary Stuart. ‘Mission?’ he said.
‘Queen Elizabeth has no heir,’ Lenny said. ‘None of the three children of Henry VIII ever had a child. So King James is the likeliest candidate to succeed Elizabeth on the throne of England.’
Rollo nodded. ‘He’s had a book published explaining his right to the throne.’ James believed in the power of the written word, a useful philosophy for the king of a small, poor country such as Scotland.
‘He’s clearly manoeuvring for it. He’s seeking support – so Rome thinks this is the moment to extract promises from him.’
Rollo felt a warm surge of hope, but forced himself to be realistic. ‘Despite his mother, James is no Catholic. He was taken from Mary Stuart when he was a year old, and from then on, the poison of Protestantism was dripped daily into his childish ear.’
‘But there’s something you don’t know,’ said Lenny. ‘Almost nobody knows, and you mustn’t tell anyone.’ He lowered his voice, even though they were alone. ‘James’s wife is a Catholic.’
Rollo was astounded. ‘Anne of Denmark, the queen of Scotland, is a Catholic? But she was raised Protestant!’
‘God sent a devout man to speak to her, and she saw the light.’
‘You mean someone converted her?’
In a near-whisper, Lenny said: ‘She has been received into the Church.’
‘God be praised! But this changes everything.’
Lenny raised a cautionary hand. ‘We don’t think she’ll be able to convert her husband.’
‘Does he not love her?’
‘Hard to say. Our informants in Scotland say they’re fond of one another. And they have three children. But they also say that James is a pervert.’
Rollo raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘With young men,’ Lenny explained.
Men who loved men committed a cardinal sin, but many of them were priests, and Rollo was not shocked.
Lenny went on: ‘James knows his wife has become a Catholic, and he’s accepted the fact. If we can’t expect that he’ll restore England to exclusive Catholicism, perhaps we can hope for tolerance.’
Rollo winced at the word tolerance. For him it was immorality, a mark of backsliding, error and decadence. How could the Catholic Church now be demanding tolerance?
Lenny did not notice. ‘We must move to exploit this situation, and that’s where you come in. You must take a message to Edinburgh from the Catholic Church in England. If James will promise us freedom of worship, we will not oppose his bid for the English throne.’
Rollo saw immediately that this was the right thing to do, and his heart lifted in optimism. But there was a snag. ‘I’m not senior enough,’ he said. ‘The king of Scotland won’t see me.’
‘But the queen will,’ said Lenny. ‘She’s one of us, now, so we can arrange it.’
‘Is she so far committed?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ said Rollo. ‘I’ll go, of course.’
‘Good man,’ said Lenny.
Six weeks later Rollo was at the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh. The house stood at the foot of a hill called Arthur’s Seat. To the west, the road ran for a mile to another hill on which stood Edinburgh Castle, a much less comfortable home. King James and Queen Anne preferred to live at Holyrood.
Rollo dressed in priest’s robes and hung a crucifix around his neck. He went to the west range of the palace and gave the name Jean Langlais to an assistant, together with an appropriate bribe. He was shown to a pleasant small room with tall windows and a big fire. Scotland was not so bad, he thought, if you were rich. It would have been quite another matter, in these cold winds, to be one of the barefoot children he had seen in the town.
An hour went by. Everyone knew that all royal servants pretended to be influential in order to solicit bribes, whether they had any real power or not. But Rollo was not relying only on his bribe. The priest who had converted Queen Anne to Catholicism was supposed also to tell her she should see Rollo. Nevertheless, she must first be told that Jean Langlais was here.
The woman who came in was not the twenty-seven-year-old queen but a gracious woman past sixty who looked familiar. ‘Welcome to Scotland, Father Langlais,’ she said. ‘Do you remember me? It’s been almost twenty years.’
When she spoke he recognized her as Mary Stuart’s long-time companion Alison. Her hair was grey now, but she had the same alert blue eyes. He stood up and shook her hand. ‘Lady Ross!’ he said.
‘I’m Lady Thurston now.’
‘I didn’t expect to see you.’
‘Queen Anne has been very good to me.’
Rollo got the picture. After the execution of Mary Stuart, Alison had returned to Scotland and married again. She had made herself useful to Queen Anne and become a lady-in-waiting. No doubt it was Alison who had introduced Anne to the Catholic priest who had converted her. ‘I imagine it was you who suggested my mission today,’ Rollo said.
‘Perhaps it was,’ Alison said.
This was good news. It improved Rollo’s chance of success. ‘Thank you for your help.’
‘I owe you a great deal,’ Alison said warmly, and the thought crossed Rollo’s mind that she might have a soft spot for him. But he had never been very interested in romance. Love was a passion that seemed to have passed him by. He was wondering how to respond to Alison when Queen Anne came in.
She had a long oval face with a high forehead and curly light-brown hair. Her figure was good, and she wore a dress with a low neckline to show off her generous bust. ‘I’m very glad to see you, Father Langlais,’ she said pleasantly.
Rollo bowed low and said: ‘Your majesty does me great honour.’
She corrected him. ‘I do honour to the Church you represent.’
‘Of course.’ Royal etiquette was maddeningly difficult. ‘Forgive me.’
‘But let’s sit down and talk.’ She took a seat herself, and Rollo and Alison followed suit. The queen looked enquiringly at Rollo, waiting for him to open the conversation.
Rollo got straight to the point. ‘His Holiness Pope Clement believes that your majesty may soon be queen of England.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘My husband’s title to the English throne is indisputable.’
It certainly was not indisputable. Mary Stuart had been executed as a traitor, and it was generally accepted that the children of traitors could not inherit titles. Rollo said tactfully: ‘And yet there may be men who oppose him.’
She nodded. She knew the facts.
Rollo went on: ‘His Holiness has instructed English Catholics to support the claim of King James, provided only that he promises to allow us freedom of worship.’
‘His majesty, my husband, is a man of tolerance,’ she said.
A grunt of disgust escaped Rollo at the loathed word tolerance, and he had to smother the noise with a cough.
Queen Anne did not seem to notice. ‘King James has accepted my conversion to the true faith,’ she went on.
‘Wonderful,’ Rollo murmured.
‘King James permits Catholic theologians at his court, and often engages them in debate.’
Rollo noticed Alison nodding discreetly to confirm this.
‘I can assure you, without the least doubt,’ Queen Anne said firmly, ‘that when he becomes king of England, he will allow us Catholics freedom of worship.’
‘That gives me great joy,’ Rollo said with feeling. But in his mind he heard Lenny Price say: But is it true? Rollo really needed to hear it from King James himself.
Then the door opened and James walked in.
Rollo leaped to his feet and bowed low.
King James was thirty-six. He had the plump, fleshy face of a sybarite, and his heavy-lidded eyes had a sly look. He kissed his wife’s cheek fondly.
Queen Anne said to him: ‘Father Langlais, here, comes to tell us that his holiness the Pope supports your claim to the throne of England.’
James smiled at Rollo and spoke with a strong Scots accent. ‘Thank you for bringing us this good news, Father.’ He slobbered a little in his speech, as if his tongue might be too big for his mouth.
Anne said: ‘I have been assuring him that you would grant freedom of worship to English Catholics.’
‘Splendid,’ said the king. ‘My mother was a Catholic, you know, Father Langlais.’
‘Requiescat in pace,’ said Rollo, using the Latin formulation of ‘Rest in peace’ that was favoured by Catholics.
‘Amen,’ said King James.
*
NED WILLARD CRIED when Queen Elizabeth died.
She passed away at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603, in the early hours of a rainy Thursday. Ned was in the room, which was crowded with courtiers, clergymen, and ladies-in-waiting: a queen was too important to die in peace.
Ned was sixty-three. His two patrons, William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, had died years ago, but the monarch still had need of secret intelligence, and Ned had continued to provide it. At the death bed he stood next to Elizabeth’s diminutive, hunchbacked secretary of state Robert Cecil, aged forty, younger son of the great William. ‘My pygmy,’ Elizabeth had called Robert, with the casual cruelty of a monarch. But she had listened to him, for he was as brilliant as his father. Old William had said of his two sons: ‘Thomas can hardly rule a tennis court, but Robert could rule England.’
We’re all pygmies now, Ned thought sorrowfully; Elizabeth was the giant, and we just served her.
Elizabeth had been in bed for three days, and unable to speak for most of that time. She had fallen asleep at about ten o’clock the previous evening. Now it was three in the morning, and she had simply stopped breathing.
Ned could not control his sobs. The woman who had dominated his life was gone. For the first time in years he recalled the moment when he had glimpsed the young Princess Elizabeth getting out of her bath, and he was pierced by a pain that was almost physical to think that the lovely girl he had seen then was now the lifeless husk that lay in the bed in front of him.
Robert Cecil left the room the moment the doctors declared her dead, and Ned followed, wiping his wet face with the sleeve of his coat. They had no time to mourn. There was too much to do.
They took a painfully slow barge to London in the darkness. Despite the royal ban on discussion of the succession, the council had agreed long ago that James of Scotland should be the next king of England. But it had to be done quickly. The ultra-Catholics knew the queen was dying and they, too, might have made elaborate plans.
There was no plausible rival to James as king, but there were other ways for the succession to be disrupted. The likeliest scenario was that the ultras would try to kidnap James and his eldest son, Prince Henry. Then they would either kill James or force him to abdicate, and declare his son king – which was how James himself had come to the throne of Scotland as a baby. Prince Henry was only nine years old, so, obviously, an adult would have to rule as his regent, and that would, of course, be one of the senior Catholic noblemen, perhaps even Ned’s stepson, Earl Bartlet of Shiring.
Then the Protestants would form an army, civil war would break out, and England would see all the horror and bloodshed of the French wars of religion.
Ned and Cecil had spent the last three months taking precautions against this dreadful scenario. Ned had made a list of the most powerful Catholics and, with Cecil’s approval, had put them all in jail. An armed guard had been set about the Exchequer. Cannons had been test-fired at the palace of White Hall.
Ned reflected that the three great women of the sixteenth century were now dead: Elizabeth, Queen Caterina of France, and Margherita of Parma, governor of the Netherlands. They had all tried to stop men killing one another over religion. Looking back, it seemed to him that their achievements had been pitifully limited. Evil men had always frustrated the efforts of the peacemakers. Bloody religious wars had raged for decades in France and the Netherlands. Only England had remained more or less at peace.
All Ned wanted to do, with what remained of his life, was to keep that peace.
Daylight dawned while they were still on the river. When they reached White Hall, Cecil summoned the Privy Council.
The council agreed a proclamation, and Robert Cecil wrote it out in his own hand. Then the councillors went out to the green opposite the Tiltyard, where a crowd had gathered, no doubt having heard rumours. A herald read out the announcement that Elizabeth had died and James of Scotland was now king.
After that they rode to the city, where again crowds had gathered in places where proclamations were usually made. The herald read the statement outside St Paul’s Cathedral then again at Cheapside Cross.
Finally, the council went to the Tower of London and formally took possession of the fortress in the name of King James I of England.
The reaction of Londoners was subdued, Ned observed with relief. Elizabeth had been popular, and they were sad. London merchants had prospered under Elizabeth, and their main wish was for no changes. James was an unknown quantity: a foreign king, though Scots was better than Spanish; a Protestant, but with a Catholic wife; a man, but rumoured to have womanly ways.
Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was held while James was still on the long journey from Edinburgh.
A thousand official mourners escorted the hearse on its short journey to Westminster Abbey, and Ned estimated that at least a hundred thousand people watched the procession. The coffin was covered in purple velvet and surmounted by a coloured wax model of Elizabeth in formal robes.
Ned had a designated place in the cortege, but when they entered the cathedral he was able to slip away and find Margery. He held her hand during the service and drew strength from her like warmth from a fire. She was grieving too, for she had come to share Ned’s conviction that peace between Christians was more important than doctrinal disputes, and Elizabeth had symbolized that life-saving creed.
When the coffin was lowered into its grave in the Lady Chapel, Ned wept all over again.
He considered what he was weeping for. It was partly for Elizabeth’s idealism, which had also been his own. He grieved because those ideals had been so grubbily compromised, over the years, by the demands of everyday politics; for, in the end, Elizabeth had put to death almost as many Catholics as Queen Mary Tudor – ‘Bloody Mary’ – had killed Protestants. Mary had killed them for their beliefs, whereas Elizabeth had killed them for treason, but the line was too often blurred. Elizabeth was a flawed human being, and her reign had been a patchwork. All the same, Ned had admired her more than anyone else under heaven.
Margery passed him a handkerchief for his tears. It was embroidered with a design of acorns and he recognized it, with a little jolt of surprise, as one he had given her for the same purpose almost half a century ago. He wiped his face, but it was like trying to dry the beach at Combe Harbour: the tears kept flowing with the relentlessness of the incoming tide.
The chief officers of the royal household ritually snapped their white staves of office and threw the pieces into the grave after the coffin.
As the congregation began to leave, it struck Ned that his life had been worth living because of the people who had loved him, and of those the most important were four women: his mother, Alice; Queen Elizabeth; Sylvie; and Margery. Now he was stricken with grief because Elizabeth was the third of them to die; and he clung hard to Margery as they walked together away from the great cathedral, for he realized that she was all he had left.
*
A YEAR AFTER the death of Queen Elizabeth, Rollo Fitzgerald swore that he would kill King James.
James had broken his vows to Catholics. He had renewed Elizabeth’s laws against Catholicism and had enforced them with extra savagery, as if he had never promised anyone tolerance or freedom of worship. Whether Queen Anne’s undertakings had been sincere Rollo would never know, but he suspected not. Together James and Anne had duped Rollo, and the community of English Catholics, and the Pope himself. Rollo’s rage came from the knowledge that he had been fooled, and had been used as the instrument of deceiving others.
But he was not going to give in. He would not concede victory to the lying James and the spiteful Puritans, the blasphemers and the rebels against the true Church. It was not over yet.
The idea of shooting or stabbing James was hazardous: in getting close to the king there was too much risk of being interfered with by guards or courtiers before the deed was done. On the roof of the tower at Tyne Castle, Rollo brooded over how the assassination could be managed, and as he did so his lust for revenge sharpened and his plan grew monstrously ambitious. How much better it would be to wipe out Queen Anne as well. And perhaps the royal children, too: Henry, Elizabeth and Charles. And the leading courtiers, especially Ned Willard. He wished he could shoot them all together with a double-shotted cannon as had been used against the armada. He thought of the fireships, and wondered if he could set light to a palace when they were all gathered together.
And, slowly, a plan began to form in his mind.
He travelled to New Castle and put the plan to Earl Bartlet and the earl’s elder son Swifty, who was eighteen. As a boy, Bartlet had hero-worshipped Rollo, and Rollo still had strong influence over him. Swifty had been told since he was old enough to talk that the fortunes of the Shiring earldom had shrunk under Elizabeth. Father and son were grievously disappointed that James was continuing Elizabeth’s persecution of Catholics.
Bartlet’s younger brother, Roger, was not present. He worked in London for Robert Cecil and no longer lived at New Castle – which was a good thing. Much influenced by his mother Margery and his stepfather, Ned Willard, Roger might have disapproved of Rollo’s plan.
‘The opening of Parliament,’ Rollo said, when the servants had gone and the three men were alone after dinner. ‘We get them all together: King James, Queen Anne, Secretary of State Robert Cecil, Sir Ned Willard, and the members of that heretical blaspheming Parliament – all dead with one fatal blow.’
Bartlet looked puzzled. ‘It’s a tempting prospect, of course,’ he said. ‘But I can’t imagine how it could possibly be achieved.’
‘I can,’ said Rollo.