The other queen

1569, NOVEMBER, COVENTRY: MARY

Anote from my ambassador Bishop Lesley, balled up and held tight in the brown fist of little Anthony Babington, is dropped by him into my lap in our temporary quarters at Coventry, the best house in the town and a mean, dirty little place at that.

I write in haste with great news. Our campaign is under way. Roberto Ridolfi is returned from the Spanish Netherlands and has seen the armada. They are ready to sail to support you now. They will land at Hartlepool or Hull, either city will declare for you, and then the Spanish troops will march to free you. Elizabeth has raised a reluctant army from the merchants and apprentices of London but they are making slow progress, losing men at every stop; there is no appetite for battle.

Your own army is triumphant; every city and town in the North is throwing open its gates, one after another. We have Elizabeth’s Council of the North pinned down in York, unable to get out of the town, surrounded by our army. Their leader, the Earl of Sussex, stays faithful to Elizabeth but he does not have the men to break out of the city, and the county all around is yours. Your army now dominates every town and village east of the Pennines. The true religion is restored in every parish church in the North, the kingdom of the North is yours to command, and you shall be freed within days and returned to Scotland, to your throne.

I read in haste, I cannot stop myself smiling. He writes to me that the Northern earls have played a clever hand. They have declared that they will not rebel against Elizabeth; there is no question of treason; this is emphatically not a rebellion. The battle is against her evil councillors and their policies. They insist only that the church be restored, and the Roman Catholic religion freely practiced in England again, and me returned to the throne of Scotland and acknowledged as heir in England. It is the moderation of these demands which attracts support as much as their righteousness. We are triumphant. Not a man in England would disagree with such a program. All we lack is Elizabeth’s herald under a white flag, asking to parley.

Bishop Lesley urges me to be patient, to do nothing that might lead Elizabeth and her spies to think that I am in touch with the Northern army. To be a jewel, carried silently from one place to another until it finds its final setting.

“Deus vobiscum,” he ends. “God be with you. It cannot be long now.”

I whisper, “Et avec vous,et avec vous , and also with you,” and I throw his letter into the fire that burns in the small fireplace.

I shall have to wait, though I long to be riding at the head of the army of the North. I shall have to be rescued, though I long to free myself. I shall find patience and I shall wait here, while poor Shrewsbury paces the walls of the town and forever looks north in case they are coming for me. I shall find patience and know that this cruel game of wait and fear which Elizabeth has played with me has suddenly turned in my favor and in days, in no more than a week, I shall ride back into Edinburgh at the head of the army of the North and claim my throne and my rights again. And now it is she who has to wait and fear, and I who shall judge whether I shall be kind to her. I am like a precious ship which has been waiting outside the harbor for so long, and now I can feel the tide has turned and the ship is pulling gently at the anchors, the current is flowing fast for me, and I am going home.