It was irritating to have to explain. Burghley would have caught my meaning at once.

“We have heard much of the sufferings of the Queen of Scots. She is not a young woman. Paulet is in charge up there. Could he not be persuaded to help us out of this delicate matter?”

Davison stammered: “You mean … remove the Queen … by … by secret methods…”

“I believe I have made myself clear,” I said. “Write to Paulet… very discreetly. I am sure he will see the wisdom of this.”

But I had reckoned without Paulet's self-righteousness. His miserable conscience came between him and his duty.

He was almost indignant. He could not perform an act which God and the law forbade.

“God forbid,” he wrote, “that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant.”

I knew I could not delay indefinitely. I had to stop trying to placate outsiders. I should have no criticism from the people who really mattered—my own Protestant subjects, who wanted the death of Mary Stuart as much as I did.

So I signed the death warrant and at eight o'clock on that February morning Mary Stuart entered the hall at Fotheringhay Castle and went to the block.

As soon as I knew she was dead I was thrown into a panic of remorse.

I had signed her death warrant. In generations to come I should be known as the one responsible for the death of Mary Stuart. It was no use trying to placate my conscience, to tell myself that she had planned my death. I could not forget that I had signed the paper without which she would have been alive. I could not ease my mind except by pretending that I had not meant it. I looked about me for someone to blame. I sent for Davison but I was told that he was suffering from an attack of palsy and was not at Court.

I knew that he was subject to these attacks and I had no doubt that this matter of the death warrant had brought on this one. I worked myself into a passion of dislike against this man, and when Christopher Hatton came to me, I burst out that I was distressed because of the death of my kinswoman.

Hatton was too much of a courtier to express surprise. He had been one of those—as indeed had every one of my councilors—who had urged me to sign the death warrant. He must have been a little taken aback but being Hatton of the graceful manners he waited for me to say what was in my mind.

“That fool Davison…He knew I did not wish him to send the warrant to Paulet… yet he did so…”

Hatton looked grave. I could see the words forming in his mind: Then why did you sign it? But he did not say them, of course. Wise, tactful Hatton!

“He hurried it off,” I declared, “although I had told him to hold it back until he had permission to release it.”

That was not strictly true. I had told myself that it was what I wanted and that Davison had known it. Had he? He was not a mind-reader. He had not the subtlety of Burghley and Walsingham.

“The Queen of Scots has been executed and it is Davison's fault. I want him in the Tower.”

Hatton said: “He is a sick man. It may be that he has misconstrued Your Majesty's orders, but…”

“I want him in the Tower,” I insisted.

Hatton knew better than to argue with me.

Looking back, I am ashamed. It is a great weakness to take a certain action and then try to defend it by blaming others. As always, I had done what my common sense urged me to do. It was just that I felt so deeply about this woman. I had been so envious of her; she had had so much… and yet so little. The Tudor claim to the throne was not built on a very strong foundation. There were many who said that Queen Katharine had never been married to Owen Tudor; there were many who would say that my father had never truly been married to my mother and that I was a bastard. These matters rankled. The Stuart claim was legitimate, based on royalty. Then there was that legendary beauty of hers which attracted all men. I had my admirers, but I had always known in the secret places of my mind that the glitter of a crown and absolute power can be an irresistible magnet. Yes, I had envied her in so many ways… and pitied her. I often thought of what her childhood and girlhood had been at the elegant Court of France and compared it with mine when I had lived through those formative years under the shadow of the axe; hers so cushioned; mine so harsh; and then myself on the throne triumphant and Mary an uneasy Queen and a captive for twenty years. I had no reason to envy her and yet I could not altogether erase that feeling from my mind. I had thought of her so much and the fact that I should never see her somehow added to the mystic bond between us.

She had been such a fool. In fact it seemed to me that she had rarely shown any wisdom at all. She had plunged headlong into disaster; she had had lovers but what had any of them brought her but misery—except perhaps little Franois who had adored her, but that was in the early days when she was the darling of the French Court.

It was true that she had obsessed me in life and now she was doing so in death and in such a manner that to give myself some ease of mind I was accusing a sick and innocent man of something he had never committed. He had never swerved from his duty, yet here I was raging against him, insisting that the poor palsy-stricken creature be taken to the Tower.

Burghley was horrified. He came to me and said it would be well to release Davison without delay.

“Davison has failed in his duty,” I insisted.

“Your Majesty signed the death warrant, which was the right and proper action to take. Davison merely delivered it to Paulet.”

“He knew that I did not wish it to be delivered.”

“Did Your Majesty tell him this?”

“It was understood, and since when has my Lord Burghley become the Queen's judge?”

He was silent but very disturbed.

“I beg Your Majesty to release Davison,” he said quietly.

I could not do it. I derived some comfort from blaming my secretary and I needed comfort. I could not sleep at night. I dreamed of her headless body. I saw her eyes fixed on me accusingly.

Davison in the Tower offered me some comfort and I clung to that.

He was charged with misprision and contempt, and tried in the Star Chamber. He said that I had signed the death warrant and told him that I could not be troubled anymore with it, which he had taken to mean that I did not want it set before me a second time. He said that there was nothing else he could say and that he had acted sincerely and honestly.

They fined him ten thousand marks and sent him back to the Tower to await my pleasure.

One thing he did not do—which he might have—was to disclose the fact that I had made him write to Paulet suggesting that the Queen of Scots might be quietly removed. I had behaved badly to that man; but while I could convince myself that I had never meant the execution of Mary to be carried out, I could placate my conscience. Like most people who have done some person an injury, I disliked that person more than I had before I wronged him. I built up the case against him in my mind. It was weak; and I hated weakness in myself more than in others. But this was a matter so disturbing to me that I had to ease my conscience even with untruths.

Davison was my scapegoat; but he stopped my nightmares about Mary Queen of Scots. In my fantasy I exonerated myself from having played the chief part in her execution. It helped me considerably.

ROBERT WAS HOME—A FACT WHICH GAVE ME THE GREATest pleasure, and the joy of seeing him far outweighed any rancor I felt for his behavior. It was always like that with Robert. I could be madly angry with him but when he stood before me bowing low, raising his face to mine, I thought how foolish I had been to let him go. We were not so young… either of us… that we could afford to waste time. I was not going to let him stray far away again.