Chapter 43 #3
Kate agreed. “The best cure will be to see him,” she said, tears welling. But nothing changed.
—
In September, Kate received a package from Bolton. It contained a beautiful chain of gold pomander beads strung on gold wire.
“It is a gift from Queen Mary,” Francis had written in the enclosed letter.
“She asked me to assure you of her friendship and desires to make your acquaintance. She has probably grown weary of hearing me speak of you! See how she corrupts me; she knows that the way to my heart is through you, my darling.”
That afternoon, when Elizabeth and her ladies were taking a brisk walk in the park, the Queen setting the pace, she was in a peevish mood. “It seems that your husband is being too lenient with Queen Mary,” she said to Kate, who was struggling to keep up. “I fear he has come under her spell.”
Kate was riled by her words, which seemed to emanate from pure cattiness. “I know for a fact that my husband is above that,” she retorted.
“He is a man like all the rest,” Elizabeth replied.
“He is the best of men!” Kate said angrily.
“He accepted a costly pomander from her.”
“It was for me!” Kate lifted up the pomander at the end of her girdle for Elizabeth to see.
“Ah. Well, that puts a different complexion on things.” There was no apology, of course.
“You will be pleased to know, Kate, that I have ordered a commission of inquiry into the murder of Lord Darnley. Mary’s innocence must be established before I can receive her at my court.
The inquiry will open next month at York.
In the meantime, I have ordered my commissioners to press for her restoration. ”
This was music to Kate’s ears. It might mean that Francis could come home.
However, the inquiry at York reached no conclusion in October, and in November it was reopened at Westminster.
To the Queen’s annoyance—and Kate’s intense frustration—it became clear that the Scottish lords’ chief objective was to keep Mary out of Scotland.
She was not summoned to attend the second inquiry, and was not present, therefore, when the Scottish lords revealed the existence of a casket of letters that they claimed contained incriminating evidence against her and Bothwell, proving her an adulteress and murderess.
Kate could not have cared less. She suffered another attack of fever that month.
Elizabeth could not have been kinder, even with everything else she had on her mind—except to give Kate the one thing she truly needed.
She sat with Kate daily until she felt better, and they had long discussions about Mary.
Elizabeth confided that she was skeptical about the casket of letters.
“It is possible that compromising passages have been inserted into genuine letters. Naturally, Mary has denied having written them. But my Lord of Norfolk has seen them, and he is convinced that they are authentic. He was utterly appalled at their contents and informed me that they are proof of the inordinate love between Mary and Bothwell and her abhorrence of her husband. He says she is a wicked woman.”
Kate was not surprised when the commissioners and the Council unanimously accepted the Casket Letters as authentic.
But no one seemed to know how to proceed against Mary.
The last thing Elizabeth wanted was for an anointed queen to be proclaimed guilty of murder, but she did see the necessity for Mary to accept her deposition and live quietly in England as a private person for the rest of her life, and she told Francis to persuade Mary to agree to this.
Kate was distraught. If Mary remained a prisoner in England, she might never see Francis again. It was too terrible a prospect to contemplate. She feared she might suffer a relapse and die.
—
In the middle of December, Elizabeth moved to Hampton Court. Kate was feeling well enough to make the journey from Whitehall, but she was glad of Beth’s arm to lean on as she climbed into the royal barge. Hopefully, she would be better when Christmas came.
On her arrival, Elizabeth summoned her councillors and nobility to Hampton Court to hear the commission’s proceedings read out to them. The peers agreed that these were such foul matters that her Majesty’s position was justified.
“Queen Mary’s crimes are now so apparent that she can never be received at court,” Elizabeth announced.
“However, she cannot be declared guilty unless she puts forward a defense—which she has consistently refused to do, unless it is to me in person—which is out of the question. So, for the present, she must stay where she is.”
Kate felt sick when she heard that, and Francis was clearly feeling desperate, too.
It was a very cold winter and Bolton sounded like a bleak place.
“We are utterly unprovided for,” he complained.
“We lack firewood and victuals. Cecil is sending some, God be praised. How I miss my home comforts—and my beloved wife.”
Kate had been hoping that Lettice and Walter would come to court for Christmas, but they remained at Chartley, marooned by the weather.
Kate felt very lonely amid the throngs of courtiers and the gaiety.
She would have liked to pay a visit to the children at Syon, as she hadn’t been for weeks, but still did not feel up to it.
She would not let herself think of happy Christmases of the past when she had been with her loved ones, although they had been few and far between in recent years.
All she wanted was to behold Francis’s beloved face and be held in his arms.
Two days after Christmas Day, while helping the Queen to dress, she was seized by a terrible pain across her middle.
It was so bad that she had to sit down, holding her breath and leaning slightly forward in the hope that it would ease.
Once more, Elizabeth summoned Dr. Huicke, who took one look at Kate and ordered her to bed.
“Drink this,” he ordered, and she downed some syrup, which made her drowsy, but took the edge off the pain.
She lay there, longing for it to subside completely and fearful of what it might import.
She was only forty-four and she didn’t want to die just yet.
There were too many people who needed her.