THE BEDEVILMENT OF ELIZABETH TUDOR

IN THE EARLY FALL OF 1586 THE ALREADY IMPRISONED MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND, IS IMPLICATED IN A SECRET PLOT TO MURDER & USURP HER COUSIN ELIZABETH, THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. DESPITE HER FIERCE DENIALS MARY IS FOUND GUILTY & SENTENCED TO DEATH. ELIZABETH IS PRESSURED OVER THE FOLLOWING MONTHS TO FINALIZE MARY’S DEATH WARRANT WITH HER SIGNATURE & INSURE HER PLACE ON THE THRONE OF ENGLAND DESPITE MARY’S LEGITIMATE CLAIM AS HEIR.   

7 FEBRUARY 1587

The flickering light of a fire crackled and burned just beside her in a hearth carved with the initials, E.R., a royal monogram. She sat at a table, a regal sphinx like creature made of stiffness and strength like a living marble bust of herself, leering at the document sprawled out in front of her. The words and sentences all blurred together in her eyes that clouded with frustration in the shape of water. She knew that the moment the ink from her quill dried on the paper, the moment her signature was set for all to see would be the moment everything changed forever.  

She nervously tapped the ridge of a golden ring on the table top like the tapping of a frantic woodpecker blasting his way into the bark of a tree. She continued to stare down at the document while her secretary and a minister, William Davison and Francis Cecil, Lord Burghley, respectively, anxiously paced across from her arguing their case, in loud and animated fashion, as to why she needed to sign the document and quickly.

Burghley was forceful and insistent on protecting the Queen, no matter the cost, but his words were just a muffled sound coming from across the table in the shadowy room.

As in many conversations with Lord Burghley, her much aged and senior adviser, she wasn’t fully listening. She was contemplating her own mind and her own conscious on her next step.

This case, particularly, was one of the most important to cross her in her whole life. The document in front of her was the unsigned death warrant of God’s anointed queen, her cousin Mary of Scots.

Her mind was on the repercussions of the event of Mary’s execution. Her mind was on what history would say of her. The very idea of having a fellow queen, one that was already imprisoned, executed under her name, knotted her stomach and tightened her throat.

Another close adviser and protector, Francis Walsingham was most unusually unsettled. He stewed in his own thoughts just outside the room waiting for any sign that the signature was done and that the rest of the process could now be taken care of. Then, just before his nerves forced his heart to burst inside of his chest the door to the Queen’s chamber opened. Out came Burghley and Davison. Davison was sweating and pale like he had the beginnings of deadly freeze within.

"Hand it to me." Walsingham demanded, Davison complied.

Walsingham un-scrolled the document quickly, to see if it was complete.

She signed it.

"Seal it then." Walsingham demanded of an awaiting royal page that had entered the room to assist.

"No, stop!" Davison quickly replied taking the scroll back from Walsingham's extended arm and blocking the royal page from grabbing hold. "The Queen has asked us to wait until the morning to serve the document to Mary and her keepers.”

“But she has signed it.” Walsingham said confused. “It is done.”

“Aye, she has signed it, but with the condition that it only be carried out in the morning when she’s been able have her sleep council her on her final decision. That is by the Queen’s order. " Davison added.

“Burghley!?” Walsingham asked still uncertain of what it all meant. "Is there time for that? Is there time for her to wait, Mary of Scots could have a thousand men on the border by dawn, we have no time wait, we saw the letters that she had written, her plot was imminent." Walsingham said in a frantic tone.

The three men stared at each other not knowing what the next move was. Queen Elizabeth had effectively signed the death warrant of Mary Stuart who was found guilty on charges of conspiracy of regicide. But Mary was not only a suspect in a conspiracy plot against the most powerful woman in Europe, she was also the already imprisoned cousin to Elizabeth on her Tudor side…they were blood relatives. Mary was a queen in her own right, anointed by god, seen as his representative in all that is holy and regal, and Elizabeth knew this was no matter to rush. She had to be pensive.

"She wants us to wait your lordship. She requested that of us just as we left, Lord Burghley heard her say so and it witness." Davison replied to Walsingham who turned back to Burghley for clarification.

“She has requested this Sir Francis.” Burghley replied his words coming from his mouth in a huff as if a rope had to drag them off his tongue. 

Burghley, a man in his late years, hair white as the frost of an early morning, had served the Queen to his detriment. In her early years she often frustrated him with her naive innocent ways of thought. To him, The Queen was still nothing more than a child, a woman whose heart may have pumped the blood of a royal line but none the less weakened by her sex, and this decision was one Burghley and many other at court wanted resolved quickly.

Burley’s grizzled desire for action showed on the lines on his face.  He grabbed the document, unsealed, therefore deemed unofficial by legal terms, from Davison's tight grasp and unfurled it to see the signature once again for himself.

There it was in ink, dried and crusted on the paper.              Elizbeth R

"Very well, if her majesty should sleep on this, I will keep it with mine until she has awoken. Hand it to me Burghley." Walsingham reluctantly stated. 

Davison suspiciously bowed his head as the document went back to Walsingham’s hands then quickly left with the nervous page, leaving Walsingham and Burghley still looking at each other in the shadows of the dark room just outside the Queen's bed chamber. Their eyes met in silent the expressions that could freeze even the warmest of days.

Elizabeth’s reign as Queen had been threatened before, but this felt different. It almost felt like someone, a friend on the inside had gone against her. This was a storm she was not ready to weather. For almost 20 years, Mary had been a thorn in Elizabeth’s side and now, the men surrounding Elizabeth had had enough, something had to be done. Someone had to be made example of and that someone was Mary.

 If Elizabeth’s reign was going to survive she was going to have to flex her power and show the world and her enemies inside the court and abroad what she was made of. For better or worse the execution of Mary of Scots would send that message like nothing else.

“We cannot wait.” Walsingham whispered.

“We cannot go forward without the Queen’s approval. We absolutely cannot.” Burghley replied equally as secretive.

Walsingham shook his head, his eyes frustrated with worry on what might happen if Mary was not illuminated.

“There may be no more time, the letters I intercepted with Mary’s approval of the murder of the Queen, gave no time frame, if we do not take these matters up, God only knows how much further this plot can reach. Mary must die.” Walsingham insisted.

 Burghley’s confidence, too, in Elizabeth’s willingness to remove Mary as a threat was waning as reality begin to trickle in of what he and Walsingham were secretly conspiring to do without the Queen’s knowledge. With their eyes still locked, Walsingham spoke again.

“This must not be let go of, we must act. Let it be done.” Walsingham said in a hushed tone to Burghley who vehemently agreed as passed the document back to Burghley.

 Burghley tightened the rolled-up document in his gloved hands, a protection from the frosty English wind of February, and walked out of the room leaving Walsingham alone in the candle light with his thoughts on what he just ordered done without the Queen's final consent. His nerves were burning in his belly, his heart pounding in his ears.

"Your grace." A voice came from a different entrance to the room outside the Queen’s chamber.

It was the Queen's favorite lady-in-waiting Kat Ashley with a fresh dressing gown for the Queen. She curtsied, he bowed his head with a small grin as she entered the Queen's room where two other maids were rushing around preparing the queen for bed. 

"You're late." The Queen said, her back turned to Kat as two maids removed the heavy garnet toned dress with its flourish of golden and pearl encrusted bows and with ruby appliques. 

Kat quickly curtsied again as the queen kept her back to her.

"And the vultures? Are they circling?" The Queen asked, finally turning to face Kat revealing pale pristine skin covered in white makeup, lips of two pink rose petals and eyes so blue they could have been reflecting a wild English sea crashing on dark rigid shore rocks that were the center of her irises.

"Walsingham still waits behind the door as per usual majesty. The others have flown off." Kat said as she reached over the other two women still removing the garments from Elizabeth to lift the tightly woven red wig attached to the Queen's head crowned with more pearls and sapphires that matched the color of her eyes.

"He'll wait until the sun burns through the window in the morning, that is customary. I may be the only woman on earth to have men constantly waiting on her—undesirably so. Walsingham waits the longest of them all.” The queen chuckled.

Kat smiled and begin to comb through the shortened bright red hair on the queen’s head.

Elizabeth was woman of medium height and frail in body, her 54 years were beginning to show on her freshly washed face. Her eyes, still beguiling in color, too, began to show the creases and marks that time and the stress of the throne had placed on her like a mask only the most powerful people on earth were privy to wear.

As the other two ladies in waiting finished their chores in the Queen’s bedchamber and left, Kat remained and carefully put the queen to bed, tucking her into a flowing bed of feathers and white sheets embroidered in gold trim with the letters ER stitched across each of the top corners.

“I’ve come to a terrible pass Kat. This is a place I never thought I’d never have to see.” The queen said fluffing a cushion behind her head.

“Your majesty?” Kat asked, pretending as though she had no idea what was happening around her.

“I have taken into my own hands the life of my cousin Mary. I have tonight to sleep on it, and I don’t know if the new day will bring me any more clarity than this one has.” Elizabeth remarked.

“Is there no other way then, my lady? Mary must die?” Kat questioned flattening the sheets.

“They say she has conspired against me,” Elizabeth sighed. “They found letters proving so and they say she has raised up arms and militia. I don’t know if there is any other way. God help me come to my senses and understand what is about to happen. If you have envied me before Kat Ashley, do not do so tonight. It is one thing to punish a criminal for their crime, it is another when that criminal shares your blood.” The queen said as she smiled caressing the face of her favorite.

Elizabeth turned over and Kat backed away from the frothy bed of pillows, cushions and fluff allowing the flowing transparent curtain hanging from the bed’s canopy to incase the queen in her slumber. Kat curtsied one last time and blew out the candle next to the bed and hurried out of the room back into the foyer where Walsingham was still posted.

“She sleeps?” He asked to Kat as she closed the door behind her.

“She’s concerned about tomorrow’s events.” Kat replied.

“She is queen, she is concerned about the events every day.”

“No. This is different. This has her majesty in a knot. If I were you, your grace, I would hope that whatever decision she makes it is supported by those surrounding her. It would be in their best interest.” Kat said.

“Do you say this because of something her Majesty has told you?” Walsingham wondered.

“I say this as a person who knows the Queen’s mind and her manners more than anyone else. Whatever she decides tomorrow” Kat continued to warn, “should be the end of all discussion on Mary Stuart.”

Walsingham’s eyes narrowed as Kat scurried out of the room. His mind began to mull over Kat’s words. His grey beard, speckled with the black hairs of his youth, shaped his almond face that creased with the pains of the past and what was to come. He put his life on the line for years in serve to Elizabeth. He would do anything to protect her, no matter what the cost. He knew Mary Stuart’s thirst for power was not only for the blood of Elizabeth but for the blood of thousands of English citizens; even if it were a manipulated thirst by proxy of her French family members who were clearly behind most of Mary’s treasons.

Walsingham pulled a chair closer to the Queen’s bedchamber door and took a deep breath settling in for what would be a long night. He wanted to be the first person at the Queen’s side when she came to a decision on Mary so there would be no doubt on the outcome, and God willing it would be the same outcome as what he had already ordered to occur without Elizabeth’s knowledge.

Walsingham sat back in the chair and paraphrased in whispers to himself, the last thing Kat said to him before she left the room: “The end of Mary Stuart.”

A ghostly utterance that echoed in the open room filled with candle light.

*****

Galloping through dark, wet and green terrain a horseman carried with him a rolled-up document that was tied around his chest with leather straps. He rode faster and faster into the north not knowing what he was about to hand over to the men protecting the incarcerated Mary Stuart.

Finally arriving at the fogged over Fotheringhay Castle after hours of riding the horseman from London was allowed in the residence’s lower level. Several other men, guards, who saw him riding in quickly gathered in the empty room where he was granted access. A bearded man who had been charged with keeping Mary prisoner in the residence had been summoned down from the upper levels to meet the horseman.

The horseman, a young and fresh faced man possibly in his early 20’s, bowed his head and quickly removed the document that was tired around his chest and handed it over to the bearded man.

“What is this?” The man grumbled.

“Dispatched from the Queen, by way of Lord Burghley.” The horseman answered.

“This late in the night? What has happened.?” The bearded keeper asked but did not receive an answer. He turned to a table, center in the room and covered in candles that had hardened melted wax all over its surface, and unwrapped the document then sprawled it across the table so that he could read it more clearly. His eyes became large with surprise at what the document had said.

“What’s been sent?” Another man asked who was standing at the edge of the room.

The bearded keeper of Fotheringhay Castle said nothing, only rolled up the document and quickly went up the back staircase to the apartments where Mary Stuart was being held. With a force of what seemed like a thousand men, he burst open Mary’s door startling all the ladies in waiting inside.

Mary did not budge or flinch in her seat.

“Stand.” The man ordered of Mary. She did not.

Mary remained stone faced and seated.

“Mary Stuart, I demand you to stand. Stand!” The man said, his voice louder and nervous

Mary gripped the edged of the chair’s arms and for what seemed like an hour to the man in front of her, but then she calmly stood up from her chair flattened the front of her dark blue dress with black embroidery and clasped her hands in front of her allowing the beads of a rosary to slip from between her fingers and awaited what she had feared for almost two decades under house arrest.

The man, visibly shaking for what he had to do next read aloud:

“Mary Stuart: letters that implicated you in a plot to depose and execute her Majesty Elizabeth Queen of England were intercepted and they have been given as proof in your trial to your treachery against her Majesty’s government. By evidence of your signature in these letters to kill the Queen and place yourself on the throne of England you were found Guilty, your punishment has been decided.” The man said, his voice shaking.

“These are Lies. LIES!” Mary snarled, her fingers folding into a tight fist turning the tips of her thick fingers white.

“This is no lie, madam. These accusations have been confirmed and you were found guilty.” Another man who was standing at the door said as he walked in too.

There was a brief silence in the room, only breaking to the sniffles of Mary’s ladies in waiting as they knew what was to come.

The first man began to unroll the large form that was brought by horseback in the middle of the night and began to read from it.

“What is this?” Mary questioned

“T'is your death warrant madam.” The bearded man said, looking up at Mary whose eyes seemed to glaze over.

“Holy Mary, mother of God…” a lady-in-waiting’s voice could be heard beginning to pray.

“I hear by announce to you, Mary, Stuart, Queen of Scotland, and to all present that I have received this document directly from London from her Majesty Elizabeth our Queen. She has signed this. Again, you have been found guilty of conspiracy against her Majesty and her government and therefore have ……” he paused looking down at the document to be sure he was of his next words.

“Go on, speak the rest of my Cousin Elizabeth instruction.” Mary her voice soft again with sparkles of a French accent.

“…You’ve been sentence to death as soon as the sun rises.” He finished to the gasps and yelps of Mary’s two ladies in waiting.

Mary hushed her ladies then closed her eyes, took a deep gulp of air and sat back down in the chair.

“When tomorrow?” She questioned.

“Sunrise.” He answered.

Mary carefully caressed her rosary in the palm of her hands and realized that it was already well past midnight. She had only a few hours until her life was over.

“Well then, cousin Elizabeth has made her intentions known, documented them, signed them and sent them to me in the middle of the night. The urgency of her actions shows just how sure she was of this, doesn’t it?” Mary said sarcastically. “Very well. May her sleep never be interrupted, and may her heart always carry within it the weight of the sin she’s committing against the will of Scotland and the will of God.” Mary replied sternly.

“The heretical whore!” A lady-in-waiting exploded through tears and snot.

Mary reached over and slapped the woman across the face to the woman’s shock.

“Wipe your face Anne.” Mary scolded the woman by name. “Tomorrow, Elizabeth murders God’s anointed Queen. Let that be the stain her life leaves upon this earth.” Mary said again knowing full well what her own death would herald to the rest of the world once it was all done.

8 FEBRUARY 1587

A ringing of bells from Westminster Abby echoed across the roof-tops of London through the narrow passages ways of streets like a sonic river flowing up to the glass of every window in the city.

The ringing of morning cathedral bells was at times a sign to the city from the sovereign to celebrate. Perhaps a birth, a marriage, a send off to war, but it also signaled the moment of death.

The bells awoke Elizabeth earlier than usual. It was a Sunday, she was expected at Church for prayers but not for hours. The bells would usually ring when she was already in church, not before, this early morning alarm sent shivers up the Queen’s spine.

She quickly sat up in bed, her ladies-in-waiting had already been scurrying around her chamber nervously gathering things for her to wear as soon as she awoke. On a dress form standing closest to a window that bathed the room in bright morning light was a long black dress covered in dark sparkling crystals accompanied by a crown adorned with droplet pearls and a black veil.  

It was her mourning gown.  

“What is this? What’s happened?” The Queen questioned the women who were startled that she was already awake. They curtsied and came close to her bedside.

Before the two young women could speak, the Queen’s favorite, Kat Ashley entered the room and shoo’ed the other two away then pulled back the sheer curtain that surrounded the Queen’s bed.

“Your majesty has risen early.” Kat said pulling back the bed covers but not answering the Queen’s question
 

“Kat, the bells. What’s happened?” Elizabeth questioned knowing the sound of the bells wasn’t what she was accustomed to hearing as she awoke.

“My lady, you must dress quickly; their Lordships are awaiting your presence to speak on the station of Mary Stuart.” Kat said.

“What is this of Mary? What Situation?” Elizabeth questioned further to Kat’s sudden silence. “I have not yet made my decision and I requested time. What is there to speak of?” The queen questioned to Kat’s serious and stone like face. “Kat? Speak!! What has happened to Mary Stuart?” The Queen pressed, grabbing Kat by the wrists forcing her to stop fiddling with the sheets and covers.

Kat could not bear to raise her eyes to meet the Queen’s as they began to fill with water and droplets fell to on the b bedding marking perfect circles in the white of the sheets. The Queen stared down at the tear stains, and a hurricane of furry began to build inside of her chest. Kat’s silence and mournfulness along with the black dress ready for her to wear could only mean one thing.

Mary was dead.

In a room full of minsters and Lords of the Queen’s court, they busily chatted about what had happened just hours before at sunrise. The beheading of the queen of Scotland by the authority, or so it seemed, of the Queen of England.  

Just then, the doors swung open, four ladies in waiting quickly walked in followed by the Elizabeth in her mourning dress a black veil covering her face, black gloves on her hands and her jaw clinched with anger with anxiety. Walsingham and Burghley looked over at each other knowing the fury the Queen was about to unleash.  

They all bowed their heads at the first glance of the Queen.

“Where is Davison. I want Davison.” She demanded, searching the room with her own eyes for the secretary she specifically instructed to hold on to Mary’s death warrant until she had finally decided.

The crowd parted, and Davison stepped forward.  

“Majesty.” He said, bowing his head with eyes to the floor.

The Queen, her dress heavy, black and wide, stepped up to Davison as the others around him made a larger circle for her entrance.

“Look at me.” She requested in a stern voice. He did so. “What have you done?”

“Majesty, I did as you instructed. I –” he began to explain as Burghley and Walsingham both interrupted to speak but were quickly thwarted as Elizabeth’s gloved hand went up stopping their voices.

“When a sovereign gives specific instructions, it is expected to be heeded at every measure. Every measure! Perhaps had I been a man, my father’s son I would never have had to be in this position here in front of you demanding an explanation to the fact that I was just told my cousin Mary Stuart is dead. Her head chopped off as early as possible. I spoke yesterday night with you and gave you, Davison, specific instruction on what to do and this was not it.”  

“Majesty I did as I was told, that is the God’s honest truth.” Davison responded with his eyes to floor.  

“You were told not to pass the warrant and yet she is dead.” Elizabeth said, beads of sweat forming at the edge of her auburn curled wig creating pearl like shaped orbs on her forehead that she gently whipped away with a small white handkerchief that was neatly tucked inside her black glove.  

“If your majesty would so be pleased to hear me, I can further explain the situation, which I know you would understand to its full extent. This had to be done, your majesty there was no other choice but to do so. The letters had been intercepted, Mary was caught in this plot to kill you where you stand and take your throne! She was found guilty of this and therefore she it was deemed essential that she been handled like any other criminal who would go against our queen.” Lord Burghley interjected, his voice raising.

“ENOUGH!” Elizabeth roared. “I will hear no more men speak. There has been a great act of a treason here, something wicked in the eyes of my own Lords who betray me while I sleep. Have I a covenant of backstabbers among me or have I men who have my best interest?” She wondered. “At this moment I cannot tell the difference between those who wish me ill or those who will me well.”   

“My lady must understand the gravity of what was sure to happen.” Burghley further explained, his voice now tamer.   

“Why? Have you not been explaining it to me in my own mother tongue Burghley? Surely you know just how many times you have come to me with the wish for Mary’s head, I can’t seem to keep count.” Elizabeth chastised.   

“Yes, your majesty” Burghley said, cowering in embarrassment.   

“You of all people in this room, Burghley, know the dangers of what has just transpired. You of all people know, and yet you stand before me explaining that Mary’s death is justified when I had not yet decided so. Am I not justice? Am I not the law? I am the one to decide as final?” Elizabeth scolded again.

“Yes, your majesty, you are.” Burghley quietly digressed. 

“We will go into mourning. All of us. And I will see no one until the end of 7 days. An anointed queen is dead. Walsingham: to my chambers.” Elizabeth ordered as she quickly turned her back on the room of men to their head bows and to the curtsy of her ladies in waiting.

Burghley looked over at Walsingham who glanced back, knowing that the two had caused this disturbance for the good of Elizabeth’s reign, and now after Elizabeth’s refusal to hear anything from Burghley it would come on Walsingham’s shoulders to convince her that what had happened to Mary was for the best.

Walsingham, along with Elizabeth’s ladies, followed her back into her chambers where she furiously removed her gloves and threw them down to the floor where a pet dog quickly pounced on them and began to play. Elizabeth glanced down at her pet trying to mentally escape her reality even for a second.  

Walsingham entered the room as Kat Ashley ripped the gloves from the playful dog’s mouth and carefully placed them on a side table.  

He bowed his head and crossed his arm across his chest as she stared stone-faced at him, like a perfect marble figure with eyes that could freeze any man’s will.

“Did you know about this?” she asked calmly, her rage subsiding. “Did Davison act alone?”  

“I did your majesty and no he did not.” Walsingham, her most trusted advisor said truthfully.  

“Who else? Tell me…who else colluded without my knowledge!?” She said, her temper again bubbling up but then quickly subsiding.  

“Your majesty there was no collusion between your lords or advisors. What was done was to secure your place here on this throne that seemed to be in jeopardy with Mary alive. Mary Stuart was planning to depose you at any cost, your majesty, even that of taking your life to place herself here. This was an act that needed this result.” He explained.

“Don’t you think I know that? Do you really believe that did not understand the gravity of what she was planning and whom she was planning it with? What has happened here is a great rip in the fabric of who I am, Walsingham, a Queen does not kill another Queen, not without any kind of meditation on what was to be done.” Elizabeth said with concern in her voice. “I have now placed my name along side those who have commit such sins against the will of God by killing an anointed Queen. No matter her crimes, I needed the time to prepare myself. That time was taken from me, and you and those you’ve helped have taken that from me. How do you see this? How do you see your actions against your Queen?” She questioned.

“We saw this as a way---any way—to protect you and preserve your reign your majesty. It was not an act against you, it was an act for you. There would be no other exit for Mary worthy of her treason. This was it.” Walsingham said.

Elizabeth shook her head and patted away the slick of sweat on her neck from anxiety running through her body. She took a deep breath and turned back to Walsingham.

“I am now no better than the ones that took my mother’s life from her.” She finally revealed. “No better than those who decided that her crimes, as farfetched and fantastic as they were, were true. They did not wait or prepare to see any truth to her denials. Do you understand what I am saying?” Elizabeth questioned, her voice darting into Walsingham’s heart like a dagger piercing him so that now he could feel her pain.

“Madam, she was found guilty.” Walsingham reminded the Queen.

“I am conflicted Francis, though my heart know it true, but I am conflicted none the less.” The Queen replied, seating herself on a thrown covered in red velvet.

“With all my heart, your majesty, the warrant signed by you, was indeed the right thing to do. No one believed otherwise and for sure, madam, you know this in your own heart that is so conflicted.”  

Walsingham answered, continuing to plead the case of the necessity of Mary Stuart’s execution.  

“I want Davison taken into custody until the time of mourning is over. I want him taken and I want him to be locked away as punishment for what was done today. Seven days. Do you understand me?” She questioned.  

“But your majesty, he has done…” Walsingham began to explain.

“Had he not handed the warrant to you or Burghley or whomever chose to disregard my orders to hold it first, we would not be here. So he is first at fault.” The Queen insisted as she interrupted.

“Yes, your majesty.” Walsingham confirmed.

Elizabeth remained in her room in her black gown the rest of the day and into the night. She would stand and pace the floor grabbing at her head screaming out a sound that no one had ever heard before and falling to her knees in prayer. Her mind was a vortex of words and sentence that formed her thoughts of what was happing on the outside; what must her people think of her? What must God think of her?

She could not stay still. The furious tears would gush from her eyes showing her overcome with emotion, then again stop suddenly allowing the rage she felt at Davison and Walsingham and Burghley for disobeying her order. But there was nothing she could do now. Mary’s head had been severed from her body. She was dead, and Elizabeth once again survived.  

She would only receive forms and papers to sign and food from her Ladies. Nothing else that night. She refused every attempt at an audience requesting that the days of mourning begin immediately. She encased herself in guilt and grief and only thought of her cousin, who guilty or not, died the same way her own mother had which tormented Elizabeth her whole life.  

These memories of childhood without her mother brought her back to Mary Stuart’s own son James, who was in his 20. Elizabeth could only wish that he was not in the same torment as she was, even though that was most likely the case.

The day progressed, and the sun light began to pull away from the Queen’s chamber allowing in the somber colors of dusk. A cold breeze filled the room as Elizabeth continued to sit in virtual silence on the red velvet and gold trimmed chair near a warm burning hearth.  

“Your majesty, you must have something to eat.” Kat said bringing in a tray of food with two other ladies.   

“What?” The Queen said as if she had been broken from a trance by Kat’s voice.  

“It is late, and your majesty has yet to supper. We’ve brought you—” Kat continued but was suddenly interrupted by the queen.

“You know, Kat I never met Mary. We never saw one-another’s face. Not in person. Not once in our whole entire lives and yet we were such star-crossed figures, doomed to be set against each other from the moment of our births. They do that, you know, to ‘princes of the female sex’ mostly. They force us to hate each other and become these unwilling rivals for no reason. Neither of us were even born to be Queen. Not literally. Men…well, they get to live out their lives and fight on battle fields and kill one another in the name of bravery to prove how manly they really are. Women are used as pawns. We’re just pawns to them.”   

Kat and the two other ladies-in-waiting stared at the queen who spoke to them but never looked at them, her eyes were fixated on the fire burning in the hearth. Her voice seemed unfocused, and manner of speaking went off on tangents that, to her ladies, meant nothing at all.  

“Where should we leave these madam?” One of the ladies said from behind Kat, her arms aching with the heft of the trey of food.  

“What?” The Queen said again, her face finally turning to the three women across from her. “Just put it there, I don’t feel like eating anyway. Just go…. I’ll be fine tonight alone. Please.” She continued.

The three women hurried over to the large oak table in the Queen’s bedchamber where she would usually have her breakfast and placed down their trays of food. The two young ladies turned back to their mistress and quickly curtsied and scurried off out of the room. Kat walked over to the queen and handed her something to drink.   

“It’ll help bring sleep” Kat said, handing over the alcoholic beverage.  

The queen smiled and took the cup of liquid that smelled of some sort of fermented fruit, deep red and gold in color.

The Queen took a sip, it burned down her throat like a ball of fire pulling away from the sun and crashing down on earth. She coughed, but took another sip, it soon began to take her mind off of the horror show that was her day. The light of the fire and the candles began to twinkle, and her body began to ease, the tightening of her muscles finally releasing their grab on her bones.

“There’s more.” Kat continued as she motioned to the table with a full pitcher of whatever was in the cup.   

The queen grabbed Kat’s hand and squeezed in thanks, Kat dipped herself into a deep curtsy and excused herself leaving the Queen alone with her thoughts.

Hours past and Elizabeth remained alone in her chamber. The food, stale and cold, finally got her attention. She slowly made her way, still in her glistening black mourning dress, over to the table and removed the tops of the trays to see what had been made for her. She poked around a few of the bits of food, but nothing struck her appetite, however, she drank the entire pitcher of the alcoholic drink Kat had brought for her. The Queen’s head and mind felt fuzzy and it did what Kat mentioned it would: sleep was near.

Elizabeth sluggishly moved herself to her bed as the moon filled the sky above casting a greyish blue light into her chamber from the windows. As Elizabeth removed hear head-dress in a mirror a strange clicking sound begin just over her shoulder that came from a darkened corner of her room. It was like the sound of coming from a voice, almost like a muffled gurgle.  

The clicking was rapid, and it didn’t seem to come from anything she had ever heard before. She replaced her headdress, a crown of sorts that was attached to a ruby red wig and moved slowly towards where the sound was coming from.

“What is that? Is there someone there? You will show yourself to me at once!” The queen said, her hands nervously pulling on tiny tassels at the waste of her dress.  

The clicking, a sound that seemed to be coming from someone’s throat as they chocked, suddenly stopped.

Elizabeth squinted her eyes to try and make sense of what she was seeing in the corner, which was only shadows, but nothing solid in mass appeared. She then turned again and took to steps towards her bed and the clicking began again.

“I say! That’s enough show yourself now!!” She demanded of the person, which by now she believed was human, making the sound which again stopped when she spoke.

Elizabeth this time refused to budge from the spot she was standing in until the shadowy mass she saw in the corner of the room revealed itself.

The shadowy figure that slowly morphed into humanoid form stood in the dark corner of Elizabeth’s bed chamber gawking at her from it’s perch in the shadows. It was as if it were teaser her, taunting her to come closer and attempt to remove it from her presence. The Queen, small in stature, but bold in her will and strength to allow no one to undermine her no matter their size stood firm in her place while her muscles twitched and twisted in her back with fright that only her tight corset would attest to.

By this point the mass was a fog of black, it was a cloud of darkness that for some reason had come to Elizabeth to face her on this night, the night of Mary Stuart’s death. The Queen’s heart began to pound in her chest, had the darkest creature known to humanity come and take her very soul for what she had done? Was this Satan, standing before her in her room ready to reap the spirit from her own royal body?

“Speak your name.” Elizabeth muttered. “Speak it now or I shall call for my guards.”

The mass stayed in it’s place for a brief moment then as Elizabeth began to lose patience and turn towards the door of her room, it began to step forward into the light of the moon that had cast shadows of the window frame onto the chamber floor and to Elizabeth’s shock and horror, this was not the devil himself come to steal her soul from her body, the shapely figure, the creature that stood in the corner under the shadowy fog of night’s gloom was her sister. Mary Tudor who had died almost 30 years before this date.

Elizabeth gasped and with shock fell to the floor, her dress flowing upwards like a cloud of fabric surrounding her small body.  

“Sister.” Elizabeth whispered through her hand covering her mouth.

Mary’s face was worn and cold. It had not been the same face Elizabeth remembered, but the same none the less. She was dressed in a black gown covered in rubies at every seam. Her hair, a dark reddish-brown, was placed perfectly under a crown that covered her entire head and spiked in pearls. Mary’s eyes were sunken and cold, but then again, towards the end of her life they had already looked this way.

“You seem sickly sister. Perhaps you’re not far from being where I am now.” Mary said with a sinister grin. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time, although I did believe it would have come in a very different capacity.”

“You are not here. You are not here. Mary is dead. This is not Mary.” Elizabeth said, her voice a quivering terror swirling between sweaty fingers that still covered her mouth.

Mary sat down across from her sister who was still on the floor.

“Stand in my presence.” Mary demanded of her younger sister who only shook her head no. “Stand in my presence.” Mary repeated much more forcibly, this time Elizabeth complied.

“What is happening. Have I been bewitched?!” Elizabeth asked of the ghost.

“You’ve certainly been cursed, but any child born of a whore like your mother would have been.” Mary bristled. “But I have not come here to condemn you for your mother’s sins, we are only responsible for the sins we commit in our own skins, that is why I am placed where I am.” Mary explained.

“Where is that?” Elizabeth, her voice now seemingly calmer questioned.

Mary fell silent and looked away to a window that sat far across from her and gazed at the moon.

“Mary?” Elizabeth asked, stepping closer, her hand extended to touch Mary’s face.

“If you touch me you will feel flesh and bone, there is no difference.” Mary said, Elizbeth stood still. “You thought everything would be so easy, didn’t you? You thought that once I was gone and you were crowned queen that everything would finally work in your favor. Look where that confidence has gotten you.” Mary sneered.  

“I thought nothing of easy.” Elizabeth said, still astonished she was speaking to her dead sister. “I saw how this position battered your life for five years and that of Father’s. I saw what it did to your marriage and your hopes and dreams for your reign. I knew what was at stake the moment the crown fell upon my head. I’ve taken nothing for granted.” Elizabeth responded.

“Haven’t you? Haven’t you taken things for granted? Your trust in those who only seek to ruin you brings my heart to flutter. I see all the daggers pointed at you every single day Elizabeth, and yet you prick yourself constantly. You learned nothing from what you saw father and myself go through. Nothing.” Mary stated.

“I’ve done as my conscious and heart demand. Nothing more and nothing less but my heart still grieves for a loss of life, any life, even that of Mary Stuart’s.”  

“And yet, Mary Stuart was inches away from having your head on a pike more than once. So here you sit, still queen, still all-powerful crying over what you did. Don’t you see? You’ve only done what would have been done to you.” Her sister Mary answered.

“We don’t know that.” Elizabeth countered, unsure of the events that would have happened had Mary Stuart lived.

Mary smirked and stood up and walked over to her sister who was still standing. She smiled at Elizabeth and caressed her porcelain skin. Behind all the jealousy and paranoia, behind the tumultuous relationship of betrayal by their father over their respectful mothers that tore their family to pieces, there was still a bond of blood that linked them together. Mary, in all her coldness and vengefulness, was deeply warm towards her siblings at one point.

“I have waited for this moment for a very long time.” Mary said again. “Look what you have become. Look what you have done.” Mary said, turning her sister to a mirror.

“What have I become?” Elizabeth questioned, staring at herself in the mirror. A royal queen, all powerful, full of glory and serenity of everything that had been bestowed on her from birth, then taken from her, then given to her again at her sister’s death.

“You are the greatest ruler this nation has seen in centuries. Elizabeth, Queen of England has ruled with an iron fist” Mary said in verse then paused, “well, now that she’s done Mary Stuart in, no one will test the power of her reach.” Mary explained speaking to an unknown listening.  

Elizabeth shook her head, tearing herself from her reflection gripping the sides of her head with her bejeweled hands.

“I have killed an anointed Queen, Mary. She was what we were. She too was crowned and chosen by God, I have taken that promise and choice from him, from God” Elizabeth lamented.

Mary took a step back and left Elizabeth to sulk. There was a look of disappointment on her white cold face. The look of a mother who had seen their child fail in a way that they never expected them to, at something that was to have come naturally.  

“Maybe you should have let her live, maybe you should have allowed her to build an army larger and stronger than your own and allowed her to march into London and into your palace and break down these walls and take what was yours, take what your father and what your brother and what I bequeathed you and take what your own mother died for. Maybe that would have been better? Maybe that is what you want? Because I can assure you, what you do not allow yourself to understand is the there was going to be bloodshed, Elizabeth, blood would have been spilled no matter what. You just insured it was not yours.” Mary said sternly in confirmation of Elizabeth’s action towards their cousin Mary.

“What will be my punishment? I know it will come.” The Queen questioned.  

“It will come. Nothing good comes from nothing good, that I can attest to. Of all the blood I spilled in 5 years, I can tell you that we pay in time. Some more than others too. But I have not come here to give you a punishment or to feel an insecurity, only to gaze upon you with my pity.” Mary explained.

“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked in a tone of desperation.

“You are not the monster you think you are, and one day you will be tested again.” Mary explained.

“Will I fail?” Elizabeth wondered.

Mary raised an eyebrow; a cold chill fell upon the room as she paced to a different side and sat in chair that sat in the shadow of the moon light directly across from Elizabeth who eagerly awaited her dead sister’s answer. But Mary’s only turned smug in her reply.

“I could have been great like you too. I could have done what you have done and achieved it better and more successful. There were too many against me at court. Too many who wanted to raise you up and tear me down. The daughter of a harlot who destroyed my good mother. Why didn’t I do to you what you did to Mary Stuart?” Mary replied in a growl.  

“You had me arrested.” Elizabeth slyly reminder her sister.  

“And I let you live. And see? Look what you’ve become. Imagine now, dear sister, had you let that Scottish heretic move in on your rightful place but not acting where would you be? At the bottom of a pyre smoldering in your own skin That’s where. Burt to dust like a witch.” Mary continued, her voice still cold and angry.

Elizabeth shook her head that pounded with the beat of her heart that seemed to reach from her chest to her eyes, the disbelief of her vision still lingering but the faith in her spirituality proving this was in fact her sister calling on her and speaking to her with these message from beyond. Elizabeth took a deep breath and accepted this vision and continued to speak back.

“There was nothing you could have done, for I was innocent of what they were accusing me of. I was always a faithful servant and humble subject of yours, Mary, always. We share the same father and to that I hold very dear in my own heart.” The Queen recounted.

“That. That is why I set you free. You speak in such a sincere and almost holy way that I could not bare to take an ax to your neck myself. I see you for the daughter you are, the King’s blood does run through you too. I see him in you. I had to test my own faith in that you were not what they said you were. That was my challenge in the end you sit on the throne and I lay in a cold grave.”

“Do you regret it? Keeping me alive?” Elizabeth questioned.

Mary sat back in the soft chair allowing the fire warm her body, the expression on her face shown that she was considering Elizabeth’s question deeply. Did she regret saving her life and placing Elizabeth on house arrest all those years ago when the crime of treason was placed on Elizabeth’s head too.

“I regret allowing things to come between us in such a way that I eventually began to see no safety in anyone. All around me, Elizabeth, were wolves at my throat that I don’t believe I understood truth from reality. At a certain point we no longer became sisters. Do you remember when I was first place on the throne after our brother’s death? How close we were. We came to court together. United. But…” Mary paused in her quick reminisce of good days gone, “a lesson learned is a lesson earned. You’ve earned your place here and now.” Mary finished.  

Mary then smiled and walked form her seat towards her sister and grabbed both her hands in her own. She looked at her deep into her eyes and saw that the grudges she one held over Elizabeth’s head needed to pass away, like the dawn passing over the darkness of the night illuminating a new day.

Mary kissed her sister on the cheek as Elizabeth closed her eyes, shaking in her shoes at the sensation of the kiss. Mary then released her sister’s hands and stepped over to the dark corner from which she came. She stood there, only a dim light shining from the moon lit window highlighted Mary’s cheekbones and the rubies on her dress. Her eyes black now from the shadows that consumed them of the room.

“The future of Princes is never one to be told because it can change with a drop of an ax. Elizabeth, know this, and take it with you for as long as there is air in your lungs and sight in your eyes: When a woman changes the world, she can be seen as the devil herself where a man would be seen a revolutionary. Do not let that steer your course, seize every ounce glory that comes in your direction, even if it means dropping the ax with your own bare hands.”

And with those final words, the darkness of the corner of the room consumed what was Mary’s entire body. It enveloped her like a wave upon the shore, like a cloud swallowing up a mountain top. Elizabeth lunged forward and touched the darkness that was her sister expecting to feel nothing, just emptiness in the gloom, instead she felt a solid mass of black. Hard like a body.

Terrified, The Queen jumped backwards, stepping on the hem of her gown which caused her to fall to the floor. The dark mass in the corner that was her sister was now larger, bulkier and had eyes. She could see it’s eyes. She could see it looking down at her with a stare that was colder and more sinister than the first time. The black cloud of shadows began to float from the corner closer and closer to the Queen on the floor, Elizabeth closed her eyes and screamed out her sister’s name as if she were begging for protection.

“This is no way to greet a King.” A voice said from above to Elizabeth whose eyes were closed. She opened them and looked up, and there larger than life, like a painting she had once seen of him, bloated and fat, rosy cheeked and plump was her father Henry VIII.

Elizabeth quickly jumped to her feet and stepped backwards. She could not believe her eyes. First her sister now her father visiting her, face to face from beyond their graves. It could not be true, she could not be in the same room as her father after all these years, after his own death. But there he was awaiting her to curtsy in his presence.

Elizabeth could only scowl at her father who for so many years distanced himself from her, even at one point pretending she didn’t exist, removing her from his household as a young girl and placing her in the clutches of a man who’s only wish was to control her in hopes of his own rise to power, an act Elizabeth would never forgive her father for.

“Don’t look so frightening daughter. Come, come closer. You may believe your own eyes of what they witness.” The King said, sitting on the chair his ghostly daughter Mary had just sat on.

“This can’t be. I must be going mad. I must be going mad. How can I look upon the face of my sister and of my father who are both gone of this world? How can I be here in this room with them like they are of flesh as I am?!” Elizabeth said, her mind racing her body shaking with confusion and mania.

“You must stop this. We have much to speak of before I go.” Henry said.

Elizabeth quickly turned back to her father and shook her head angrily.

“Do not speak.” She said. “Do not speak to me as if you and I are one in the same, I am flesh and you are not.”

“Were we not the same at some point? I do see in you and have seen in you so much of myself. More than any of my other children. Mary, well she was head-strong as I was, but she was never one to completely allow herself to be cut off from other’s opinions. She gave way eventually. Edward, well the poor boy never had a chance. But you, my dear Elizabeth, have always ruled from your gut, even before you had anything to rule over.” Henry chuckled, his own gut bouncing up and down with laughter.

“We are not the same.” Elizabeth said, seething with a mixture of hate and fear.

“Do I irk you so much that you cannot even bare to admit that you are much like your father? I too am like my father. Would it please you more if I say that you are like your grandfather?” Henry questioned.

“What do you want of me?” Elizabeth asked.

Henry sighed and lifted his heavy ghostly body upwards, his legs shifting their strength to hold up his massive frame like a boulder held up by two small bare tree trunks cracking and buckling under the pressure.

“Your whole life, every day of it, has come to this moment. This moment is what will partly define how you are seen throughout the rest of your reign, it is not something you should look down on and shame in your own mind, it is something you should see as a badge of honor and regality. You took a threat from someone closer than you could imagine and vanquished it before they could vanquish you. You have upheld part of your promise to protect this realm that is under your name, that is the mark of a true ruler.” Henry explained, echoing her sister’s Mary’s sentiments.

“No. I’ve already told my sister, the murder of a family member, no matter their crime does not absolve me from the punishment my soul will endure. I have to take responsibility for what I have done against the will of God.” Elizabeth complained of herself.

Henry shook his head in disappointment and walked over to the dinner plates left on the table by Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting. He tore open the silver domed trays and picked at the food like a scavenger searching for scarps.    

“Do you ever wonder what that punishment will be?” Henry asked of his daughter with a mouth full of food.

Elizabeth looked upon him with a sense of disgust. She walked over and stood across from him at the table of food and shook her head.

“That is not for me to worry about. I shall take it as it comes.” She responded.

“That’s what I would have said. Take it on the nose like the head of state you are. That again, is the proven speech of a person meant to rule, just like me.” Henry responded, again linking her to him.

Elizabeth, in her frustration, turned to her father, his ghostly appearance casting a large shadow in the moon lit room, and stared deep into his eyes. Her hands curled into two rock hard fists squeezing all the pink color of her skin in her knuckles.

“What you did was nothing like what I did. NOTHING…and there isn’t anything you or people who supported you that still haunt my court can say to prove otherwise. You killed my mother on a cabal of lies and deceit all so that you could feed your disgusting hunger for attention and lust.” She replied, revolted that he would continue to try and link their two personalities.

Henry smirked at the site of his daughter’s fiery attitude billowing out of her with a fist thrust to the table.

“My daughter, even now you remind me of myself. Fists et al. But you’re right. You’re right in condemning my action against Ann, your mother. For every grain of sand in that hour glass you see there,” Henry said pointing to a golden hour glass across the table, “I suffer 100 times more in pain where I am. My mistakes are my own and I will forever be cursed for it. But our two situations are not that different, albeit, crudely.” Henry continued as he walked over to the hour glass and flipped it, so the sand began to filter.  

“You took her from me. I never knew her. I never knew what it was to have a mother and a father together as one. It was all taken with a snap of a finger. That is what defined my whole life. That instant and moment in time was quickening with destruction to my own life, as a baby, was what set me on this path. I promised myself to rule when it came to it with the heart of a king, and I have, but not the heart of my father.” Elizabeth said determined.

“The heart of any king. The heart of a man who’s brought to life with the power he has been given from God above. That is how you have taken to this office. And that I am proud to see.” Henry realized. “I cannot go back in time, but I can only wish for you the understanding that what I did, was so that I could preserve what you enjoy and thrive in today.”  He added.

“No,” Elizabeth interjected. “What you did, taking my mother from me was a testament to your selfishness and greed. I prayed about what I had to do. I wanted a day to sleep and rest my thoughts on the prospect of taking a life of a queen in her own right. I tore myself to bits when I heard the decision had been taken upon without my final approval. You…your majesty, married my mother’s lady in waiting only 10 days after her head was severed off her body for crimes she did not and would not have ever committed against you. That I know for sure.” Elizabeth said, to her father who was now inching his way, step by step closer to the dark corner from where he arrived.  

“You speak with such sureness. You speak with such force, I had all of that against you and yet you are so sure of yourself to stand here to my face, standing, not cowering and saying that to me directly.” Henry replied, reveling in pride of the force his daughter was showing.

“I have ascended to this place because I am your daughter, but I have succeeded on my own.” Elizabeth said again. 

Henry smiled and walked along the edge of the room with his finger dragging along the tops of tables. He looked around the room and saw painting after painting of rulers before him, even his own father, that hung in her bed chamber but none of him.

“Have I been forgotten then?” He asked her plainly.

“Never.” She said. “But I suspect you’ve been forgiven.” She added.

“By you?” He asked.

“By most. I have a ways to go, perhaps one day when I see things clearer and not through the eyes of a daughter who lost her mother the way Mary Stuart’s son has now lost his, maybe then I can say too that I have forgiven you.” Elizabeth explained.

“There—that is the difference between you and me. It is right there in what you have just said.” Henry said to a confused Elizabeth.

“I don’t understand you’ve been saying all this time how similar we are. How are we now different?” She questioned.

“We are similar, but similarities at times are only skin deep. But you are more than just skin, you have a deep soul and that soul truly cares for those around her. I can honestly say that perhaps I never cared more for anyone than I cared for myself. Those around me would fall away and feed my insecurities and yet I somehow forgot to care for those in return. This is a quality that I envy in you Elizabeth.” Henry explained as he walked over to the corner of the room he came from.

As he stepped into the shadowy corner of the Queen’s bedchamber, only the moon light now shined on this fat, sweaty brow. The Queen lifted the hem of her gown slowly walked towards her father, and one last time she curtsied.

“I may have the blood of a king running through my veins, but that is all that has made me a Queen in title, I am also a Queen in rule and I rule from my head as well as my heart as a woman would, and for that I am not ashamed.” She said again, as a tear, singular and perfect in shape rolled down her face slipping down her cheek and off to the side of her neck.  

Her father’s stately head bowed and soon turned into a dark shape again that lingered in the corner. The Queen stared at it wondering what he would say in return, but no words came from the now shapeless dark shadow. The queen stepped closer and suddenly remembered a candle near hear bed. She quickly rushed over, her dress rustling like the crunching of Autumn leaves on the edges of furniture as she ran past and grabbed the candle and quickly lit it by it’s hardened wick from the cooling embers in the hearth.

Elizabeth turned and slowly walked over to the corner that was so dark that two of her dead family members had miraculously materialized from. With her hand carefully protecting the flame from blowing out and the light hugging the chiseled bone structure of her face she saw that the dark corner, now lit with the flickering light of a candle was completely empty. She stood facing the corner, her royal jewelry glittering in the dancing candle light alone again.

“This never happened.” She said to herself, her head shaking in a fog of disbelief and confusion. “They were neve here, they were never here, they were never here!” She said again, pacing back and forth, her shoes curling and bunching the ancient rug below her.

Elizabeth looked over at the hour glass her father had turned over and noticed that the final trickles of sand had fallen through. Her head was spinning, her head was pounding. It had to be the drink Kat left her, she thought. It had to be what she had in that cup, whatever was in that cup had must have made her hallucinate and imagine her dead sister and her dead father appearing to her from the shadows of a dark portion of the room. It was either that, or she was truly losing her mind. All of the stress was getting to her. She had to lay down. She had to find her way to her head and relieve herself of the heaviness of the day.

She carefully placed the candle down on a table and walked over to the bed that so welcomed her with its soft plush edges. She pulled the sheer sheet that hung from the canopy and had tiny little beads of glass stitched in them to resemble stars and slowly laid herself in her bed. She was too tired to remove any of her clothes or jewelry. She lay in bed, fully dressed and crossed her arms over her abdomen allowing sleep to reach into her subconscious and turn off her mind.

But her heart was pounding too hard. She could feel it throbbing in her chest like someone knocking on a draw-bridge gate trying to force their way in. She could even smell her father’s scent still lingering in the room like his invisible ghost watching her sleep through the sheer curtains with tiny glass stars.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” She whispered to herself, tapping her forehead with both hands trying to push out the memory of those visitations but the faces would not leave her.

She tossed, and she turned, and she felt no comfort even in the softest folds of her bed. The time went on and the moon soon left it’s orbital place in the sky lighting the checkered floor and positioned itself somewhere else in the sky allowing the night to fully envelope within her royal bedchamber.  

It was completely dark now with only the tiniest hints of embers in her hearth and the last gasp of fire from the candle she had placed on the table across from her bed.  

Sleep was in her eyes and they slowly shut with the heaviness of an anchor dropping to the bottom of the sea, slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the blackness of sleep.  And just as Elizabeth began to doze off into a world of dreams, she heard the strange sound of clicking again, this time accompanied by a slow wheezing sound of breath. This Clicking or gurgling that Elizabeth believed to be coming from the throat of a person was stronger than the other time.

This time, too, the sound was coming from right beside her, instead of the darkened corner of her room. Elizabeth, in a dazed state of early sleep, identified it as the same sound she heard just before her sister Mary appeared to her from the black mist in the corner of the room at the very beginning of her haunted night.

The Queen slowly turned on her side to face the other direction in her bed shook her head furiously as if to shake out the sound while covering her ears to keep the sound from entering. But it was no use, there was nothing she could do. Whatever was beside her wanted Elizabeth to know it’s presence.

Her eyes shot open, no longer heavy like a sinking anchor, as she began to feel the pressure of what seemed to be a body pushing down into the bed right next to her as if someone or something were laying down.

Elizabeth’s own breathing was now shallow in terror with the sensation of a stranger in her bed. Her heart was pounding, her hands covering her ears in vein. Her body was locked in position; too terrified to turn over and see what her was beside her. The being was almost teasing her, testing her strength and her determination to pretend that it was not there. The Queen, this iron woman of will and strength of a thousand Kings, was about to break.

“What have I done to deserve this infernal terror coming at me from all sides and tearing me away from a moment’s peace?!” The queen screamed in her bed, turning from her side to face upwards into the top of her canopy bed, the truss of her dress tangled in the thrust of her body and locking her in position.

Yet the sound persisted, and Elizabeth finally dared to look.

The Queen moved her head slowly to the left to look over to where the sound was coming from, and there laying next to her almost in the exact same position, looking upwards at the canopy of Elizabeth’s bed too, mouth agape allowing the gurgling sound from deep inside her throat was the freshly dead Mary, Queen of Scots; Mary’s face the color of a pale green corpse and eyes the color of an autumn orange sky.  

Elizabeth became physically ill the instant she saw her dead cousin. She lifted herself out of the bed with such a force that she fell to the ground unable to control the velocity of which her body jolted out and through the sheer canopy curtain, tangling her crown and hands in it’s wavy beauty.

“There is evil here. There is evil here!!” Elizabeth screamed, as her large dress knocked over a table breaking objects of glass including the hour glass that spilled sand all over the checkered floor.

“I say, remove thyself at this very moment, remove thyself from my presence, spirt, and leave this place and go to where you belong!” Elizabeth continued, wiping away the sick from her mouth.  

The body of Mary Stuart slowly levitated itself horizontally off the bed, then flipped vertically so that it may stand as Elizabeth watched through the gauzy curtain of the bed that hung between them.

 The spirit made her way around the large oak canopy bed to face Elizabeth. The two queens finally face to face for the first time but in two different realms of existence; One alive with breath in her body, the other a spirit haunting the one responsible for her demise.

“Get back! Stand back!” Elizabeth shouted as she noticed a thick slit around Mary’s neck just below her chin.

“There is no need to fear me, I have not come to harm you, your majesty.” Mary Stuart answered in a ghostly curtsey.  

Elizabeth furrowed her brown in mistrust, her eyes gazing at the woman standing before her in a red gown with soft features, a woman that she knew was executed just before day break that morning.

“What have you come here for. What have you come here to tell me?” Elizabeth said, her voice calmer.

“Your paranoia has gotten the best of you cousin. The world around you are a pack of wolves hungry for your blood, I am proof of just how far a female can fall when men see her as a threat to their own ambition. They’ll come at you and bite and scratch until they’ve drawn every drop of blood from your cold dead body. They don’t see you as someone who’ll continue to survive as you have. They expect you to falter sooner or later as your mother did, as your sister did, and I as have. And who can I blame for my demise, but my own cousin and fellow queen, a puppet of men.” Mary’s rigid ghostly voice recited with her frayed French accent.  

Elizabeth took a deep breath that filled every inch of her lungs and knew that this opportunity, whether it was a figment of her imagination brought on by guilt or intoxication was the last time she would be able to say what she needed to say. This moment, having Mary Stuart standing in from of her now, dead and gone in spirit form, was Elizabeth’s last chance for a form of absolution.

She would not squander it.

“Mary…” The English Queen began.

“Don’t say what you’ll regret Elizabeth.” Mary smirked, slowly walking in a half circle towards the hearth to Elizbeth’s side where she’d crouch down and place her hands over the dying embers bringing them back to life and to full flame. Her dress now a deeper red, framing the dead Stuart Queen like an oil painting with crimson and brick.

“It hurts my heart to know what pain I have caused your son James. I hurts to know that he may possibly be suffering what I have, I too loss my mother in a similar fashion brought on by lies of the men who surrounded my father, but what I have been presented with is not farce, I believe it to be true.” Elizabeth noted.

“Hurts your heart!?” Mary shouted. “Yet you signed my life away, like I was some common criminal born in some gutter, eh? You did that all the while believing all the lies that were told of me, that I was some sort of plotting murderess of my own husbands that I had something to do with tearing down of you and your crown? That’s what you believed!” Mary said, turning back to face Elizabeth, the fire now blazing like the sun behind her.

“I cannot say where the truth begins because your deception has blurred it so.” Elizabeth explained of Mary’s frequent entanglements with mistruths and treachery. “Protecting myself from all angles has become a sport of which I have tired of. I cannot fortify myself any more than I already have, and when I am presented with the evidence that I was presented with, I took matters into my pen and scribed my signature to your warrant—but I waited, and I prayed that I would be given the knowledge of it’s truth to then serve that warrant the next day. I was not given the benefit of that time and perhaps the same conclusion would have been met non-the-less.” Elizabeth said to the creepily smiling Mary, who Elizabeth noticed had a slit around the whole circumference of her neck.

“I too cannot say the truth to you even now. Had I been writing letters back forth to those who too are dead and gone, those conspirators against you the Queen of England? Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. Only the devil may know the truth for sure.” Mary answered cryptically.

“Does the devil deal in these matters?” Elizabeth questioned with concern in her voice.

“Does he not? When power is presented in the way that is has, as a matter of survival for any Queen, why, who else but the Devil comes along giving us those little morsels of evil truths that trap us in our own ego-centric minds, consumed by whatever knowledge he gives us like the apple given to Eve. All the while, we’re betrayed by our own self-conscious minds, constantly second guessing our own intuitions for that of a man’s.” Mary explained.

“I trust those around me, and they told me you were dangerous.” Elizabeth said in a hushed tone.

“Is that right cousin!?” Mary said, mocking her, “isn’t that also how your sister Mary treated you ---as a danger to her and her crown? She did to you what you did to me.” Mary bristled.

“You pay for the wicked ways of your own doing, I tried to relieve you of that wickedness, but you continued to follow your path of destruction. Only you can blame yourself for plotting against me so much so that …” Elizabeth begin to explain but was cut off by Mary.

“LIES! All of it …every word of it lies! I did nothing you would not do if presented by glory the way I was. You left me down for the dogs to eat, and they feasted.” Mary said, her voice now pouncing from her chest like a lion to its kill. “It was a matter of my life or yours and I had no choice but to deliver.”

“Then that, cousin Mary, was your mistake. I have survived more darker storms than you could ever imagine; I have survived daggers to my heart from my own brethren and I have always prevailed because I do not give into men’s wills, I make my own and I force those men to follow suit because I am their queen.” Elizabeth answered to Mary who when listening to her flame haired cousin speak as her emotions seemed to have boiled over.  

Mary seemed to finally understand that going behind Elizabeth’s back was her undoing. No one could untimely survive the exposure of a plot to depose a sitting queen, not even Mary herself, a woman so used to the underhanded twists and turns of a royal court of any nationality. Even if Elizabeth was granted her time to think on the outcome of Mary’s execution the results –in truth--would have remained the same and Mary knew, for her fate was sealed the moment she decided to add her name to the conspiracy murder plot.

“Surely had I been my father or even my brother and you, yours, things would have been different.” Mary whispered to her cousin Elizabeth as the light from the fire burning in her eyes.

“How do you mean?” Elizabeth questioned.

“The men around us, cousin, would have found it almost impossible to use such childish gossip to lift one up and curse the other.” Mary said sitting back down on a plush chair near the fire.  

“Gossip.” Elizbeth repeated with a smirk, repeating Mary’s way of explaining away her treachery as mere gossip.

“Rumors. Gossip. Lies.” She repeated.

“Had it only been that, my lady, your neck would not have that large cut so deep around it I could see your throat from the inside. Had it only been that…” Elizabeth said, her voice trailing off.  

Mary smirked, knowing that Elizabeth had no intention of falling for any mind of word games, but Elizabeth did understand where Mary was coming from. After all, they were two women in a world of ruled by men set against each other from the moment they knew the existence of each other.   

“Men do find ways to bring women together, I will admit, but usually in a way where one of them ends up losing her head, and the other perhaps her mind. As you can see, we are exactly that…. the perfect models: You sit before me a dead woman, and I sit here speaking to the dead.” Elizabeth laughed.  

The two women were on different sides of a war, a war not always fought with arms but fought with the struggle for power by men all around them who were to use the names of their respective sovereigns to push their agenda’s and their own ambitions further along the path, so that perhaps, maybe one day the door would open and they too would somehow, by some fate or act of god, find themselves seated  upon the throne themselves by discarding the women on their way always came first and foremost. Mary Stuart was not the first female ruler to fall prey to the devious traps and plots of the men at court.

“Where do I go from here?” Elizabeth wondered and hoped for a helpful answer from Mary who only shook her head without an answer. “I have only but the future of so many years ahead of me to know and to grasp with both hands, my people, the people of this realm that I love so much, deserve a steady hand. I plan on continuing to grant that to them as best I can, that is the promise I gave when I was crowned.” Elizabeth explained.

“There is so much more to you than meets the eyes, and I never really could put my own eyes on you to understand that. I have now, and I see that we are both similar creatures in the end, are we not?” Mary questioned, her anger and resentment cooling like the embers in the hearth.

“In title alone perhaps, but not in actions.” Elizabeth muttered.

“Every woman who has put her life on the line to protect her stature as a true Prince in her own right knows the perils of it all, perhaps some more than others. Their blood is not only the hands of their executioners, but on the hands of those who sign warrants such as mine. And in that sense too have they not sold their own souls?” Mary crudely questioned.

Elizabeth saw Mary’s attempt and a vague warning of repercussion to what had transpired just that morning during her execution, but smartly shot back with a slap of truth:

“With your death I am secure.” Elizabeth pointed out to Mary’s snickering.

“Oh cousin, your soul is too bathed in the blood of others. No one is so innocent that they will not see that as fact. Only one of us was meant to live out our days in full.” Mary whispered.  

Elizabeth sighed and walked over to a large oak desk facing a giant painting of the virgin mother. She looked over at a globe that was given to her by the King of Denmark and began to spin it with her hand and watched the nations of the world spin around; turning and turning by the power and force of the Queen of England’s hand, a welcome analogy to Elizabeth’s liking.

“How does one find that ‘place’? It’s impossible to without causing the chaos for one’s self; when you are the face of a nation for a people whose lives and livelihood a sovereign’s only care, allowing someone to take that from them is the true act of treason against God’s will. I regret allowing things to go where it went in your case, but I do not regret protecting my people from what may have come if I had allowed you to live and succeed under your terms. Yes….” Elizabeth said with confirmation and confidence in her final decision on Mary’s fate. “I am resolve with that idea now.” She stated with her back turned to Mary who did not respond or replay. Not a single sound, only the sound of the spinning globe and the cracking of the fire could be heard.

 Elizabeth placed her index finger down on the globe and let the smooth surface of the planet slide along her finger nail as it scratched along while she applied pressure forcing the globe to begin to slow and eventually coming to a complete stop with England right under the Queen’s finger.

“It was meant to be. It must have been meant to be.” Elizabeth said to Mary again to no reply and when the English queen turned to look at her Scottish counterpart in the face, whom she believed was still seated the chair by the fire, saw only an empty seat.  

Mary had vanished and with her the gloom of the night.

Elizabeth, startled at the sudden emptiness of the room, felt an icy cold chill run up her spine. She was not alone after all. She looked over in the corner where the dark, shapeless figured had one morphed into her dead half sister and father and standing there now, in black as dark as the night itself was a large shadowy mass again. This time, with eyes, red as the rubies that adorned her dress.

Her breathing became shallower, her heart began to pump faster, Elizabeth stood there, face to face with something sinister and cold and heartless. What was this beast standing before her? Its’ breathing like that of a bulls ready to rage from its pen, stepped closer, the thud of it’s hoof like foot hitting the floor as Elizabeth’s eyes filled with water.

“Back. Get back!” She said, her voice stern and strong as the fire in the hearth grew larger without a single touch from a human hand

The beast growled a cold and sinister laugh and stepped forward revealing hoofs covered in the blackest of fur.

“You wish so much to be like men, but your heart is only that of a woman whose gifts are granted to her by those she seeks to control. But I have all this against you…and I will not go softly into the night like the other three who have come before me.” The beast spoke, then stepped again one more hoof forward.

“What do you want of me? What have you come to take? My life? My soul?” Elizabeth bravely questioned.  

“Does thou giveth both without protest?” The beast asked.

“I give you nothing. What are you? What do you want, beast, explain!” The queen said, stepping backwards a few steps, her dress twice catching below her heel.

The beast moved slower and slower into the dimly lit room, it’s breathing repeating like a deep percussion sound through its nostrils releasing a foul smell that covered the room like death warmed over.

“There is great power within you, so much so I can taste its purity.” The beast replied with a his from under its red eyes. “You’ve taken a life so easily and yet you stand here without remorse.”  

“As god as my witness, as the light shall show one day, truthfully and without prejudice, I did as any man would do and will not be judged on my sex for it. I stand by my hand and it’s written signature that the life I took was not taken in vein, that for my own survival so that I could continue to rule as God’s representative here on earth to represent my people, I would do so by taking the threat of my own demise into my own hands, so be it.” Elizabeth said, her backward motion stopping in place.  

The dark creature found itself locked in place, Elizabeth’s words freezing it like a fish twisting in the icy waters of winter, she was not backing down or giving in. Elizabeth was secure and finally at peace with what she had done to Mary, her cousin and sister-queen. Now, in her own mind, finally, Mary’s death was justified.  

“Go on, do as you must to me, but I have come to understanding and peace with it. Nothing you do now, whatever you are will take away the hurt that I caused myself. It had to be done,

and that is what I say to you now. The peace within my heart I give over to the soul of Mary Stuart and I feel she has forgiven me. There is no more hurt or pain or any more painful memories you can inflict on me than I have already inflicted upon myself. So do as you must.” Elizabeth said facing the dark figure in the corner with red eyes.  

She shut her eyes and extended her arms to the side and waited for her fate. But all she heard was the sound of muffled moans then silence, then a sudden warmth on her cheeks, like sweet kisses from the sun.  

It was the sun.

A brand-new day had risen, Elizabeth stood in front of the dark corner, now bright with light, her eyes opening to see if whatever had visited her last had vanished too with the light of day.  She then rushed over to a stately window overlooking the palace grounds and saw a pink and orange glow coming from the horizon. The beast had gone. Elizabeth’s manifested turmoil had vanished with the brightness of sun.

“A new day.” She mumbled to herself, shaking from what the entire ordeal of the night. She then clumsily walked over to the mirror and began to check herself over hopefully erasing the terrors of the night that had just floated away like a small paper boat in a lake with such ease and gentleness that is the night turning to dawn.

“Majesty?” a voice called from just over Elizabeth’s shoulder. She turned, it was Kat with a vat of fresh water and wash cloths expressing a confused look on her face noticing the Queen had yet to change clothes from the day before. “You have already risen.” Kat also noted again oddly.

“Kat,” the Queen said rushing over to Kat’s side “if I were to tell you something in the strictest of confidence you would not breath a word of it to anyone, would you not?” The Queen questioned Kat.

“Of course, your majesty, I wouldn’t dare. What has happened?” Kat asked.

Elizabeth looked deep into Kat’s eyes, they were so soft and brown and trusting. Her expression was that of someone who was deeply concerned and was truthful in her answers. But Elizabeth knew better than anyone else that secrets in this palace were never kept under lock and key. The minute Elizabeth explained what had happened the night before, that she had been visited by three of her dead relatives they’d have her surely committed and deemed mad. The thought of court seeing her insane stopped her dead cold from revealing her spiritual visitations.

“Never you mind.” The Queen said with a grin, deciding the better to keep the secret to the grave.

Her other ladies in waiting then rushed in and removed her old clothes and bathed her then dressed her again in another fresh black dress. A vail, carefully placed around her face and intricately attached to a pearl and diamond crown that sat neatly at the back of her head sparkled in the bright sun shine. Rings were placed on her freshly washed hands and like an artist meticulously covering his blank white canvas the women painted on the face of Elizabeth Tudor, transforming her into England’s Virgin Queen who was hiding a turbulent night of shadows and spirits underneath a serene venire of make up and jewelry. Then together the Queen and her her now vailed maids made their way down to court to greet her ministers.

The white-faced Queen stepped into a large golden room with a golden throne in the center draped in red velvet with her initials sewed into the back. Her ladies all sat next to her on similarly velvet lined stools, Kat in a slightly higher stool handed Elizabeth a small white dog that looked even more white against the Queen’s black dress that sparkled in the room of gold.

“Burghley. Walsingham” The Queen called as the two men carefully made their way through the other lords and bowed acknowledging their presence at Court. “Has Davison been taken into custody as I requested?” She asked.

“Yes. Your majesty.” Burghley replied in tone of voice that seemed defeated.  

“Good, but I am not satisfied on all fronts of this. Through the night I have seen…” she paused unsure of what to say she had seen the night before. “I been given council of what has transpired here yesterday in regard to Mary Stuart’s death and how it was all done.” Elizabeth said, changing her statement.

“Council, Majesty? I must interject, I was not asked to give council and therefore request that…” Burghley said in a fluster, showing his discomfort with the idea of being left out of any meeting, as her highest-ranking adviser would suggest his taking part in.  

“Calm yourself my Lord,” The Queen smirked. “there has not been council from anyone of this earth, and I would not seek it from anyone of this earth without your consent. You may now breath again. My council was of the spiritual sense. Although I am frustrated in the manner of which my instructions to hold on to the document as important as Mary Stuart’s death warrant were not heeded, I am satisfied in the result. My people are my only care. My people, the people of England need their Queen to remain seated where God has placed her and ….” Elizabeth paused quickly remembering the conversations with her sister, her father and her cousin, “for reasons unknown to me Mary’s demise in all this was the manner in which my placement here remains so.” She continued staring off above the heads of all the men in the room.

Burghley and Walsingham both bowed their heads as if synched, then looked at each other with relief.

In her mind Elizabeth knew that she did the right thing by cutting the snake off at the head and ending any more plots against her on Mary Stuart’s behalf, but the anguish and resentment that this situation placed in her hand would always be present in her heart and remain there forever like a scar that would never heal.

Elizabeth TUDOR and Mary Stuart WOULD never meet in person, only in the shadows of the mind of Queen Wracked WITH guilt. THEIR CONNECTION WOULD forever be intertwined in a rivalry not of their making. ELIZABETH’s Decisions ON MARY’S EXECUTION meant she had to betray a certain part of herself and her faith TO ultimately Insure no one stepped between her and HER CROWN.  IN THE END, Elizabeth I Queen of England BECAME MORE THAN JUST A FACE IN A PAINTING FROM HISTORY.

SHE WAS A SURVIVOR.