Having mentioned the Protestants, the next components were clear. Deven hesitated only in his choice of piece. “Catholic rebels, both in England and Scotland.” These he represented with pawns, one black and one white, both ranged in support of the black queen. It would be a mistake to assume the rebels all unlettered recusant farmers, but ultimately, whatever their birth, they were pawns of the Crowns that backed them. “Their motives are clear enough,” he said. “The restoration of the Catholic faith in these countries, under a Catholic queen with a claim to both thrones.”
What had he not yet considered? Foreign powers, that backed the rebels he had depicted as pawns. They did not fit the divide he had created, using black pieces for the Scots and white for the English; in the end he picked up the two black bishops. “France and Spain. Both concerned, like the rebels, with the restoration of Catholicism. France has long invested her men and munitions in Scotland, the better to bedevil us, and Spain sent the Armada as retaliation for Mary Stewart’s execution.”
Walsingham spoke at last. “More a pretext than an underlying cause. But you have them rightly placed.”
The pieces were arrayed on the table in a strange, disorganized game of chess. On one side stood the black queen with her two bishops, a pawn, and a second pawn from the white; on the opposing side, the white queen and the black king. Had he missed anyone? The English side was grievously outnumbered. But that was a true enough representation. She had Protestant allies, but none whose involvement in the Scottish matter was visible to Deven.
The only group he still wondered about was the Irish, with whom this entire discussion had begun. But he did not know of any involvement on their part, nor could he imagine any that made sense.
If he had failed the test, then so be it. He faced Walsingham and made a slight bow. “Have I passed your examination, sir?”
By way of reply, Walsingham took a white knight and laid it on the English side. “Her Majesty’s privy council,” he said. Then he moved the white queen out into the center, the empty space between the two. “Her Majesty.”
Dividing Elizabeth from her government. “She did not wish the Queen of Scots to be executed?”
“She was of two minds. As you observed, Mary Stewart was a potential heir, though one who would never be acceptable to those of our Protestant faith. Her Majesty also feared to execute the anointed sovereign of another land.”
“For fear of the precedent it would set.”
“There were those who sought our Queen’s death, of course, regardless of precedent. But if one Queen may be killed, so may another. Moreover, you must not forget they were kinswomen. Her Majesty recognized the threat to her own safety, and that of England, but she was most deeply reluctant.”
“Yet she signed the execution order in the end.”
Walsingham smiled thinly. “Only when driven to it by overwhelming evidence, and the patient effort of us her privy councillors. Bringing that about was no easy task, and her secretary Davison went to the Tower for it.” At Deven’s started look, he nodded. “Elizabeth changed her mind in the end, but too late to prevent Mary’s execution; Davison bore the weight of her wrath, though little he deserved it.”
Deven looked down at the table, with the white queen standing forlornly, indecisively, between the two sides. “So what is the riddle? Her Majesty’s true state of mind regarding the Queen of Scots?”
“There is one player you have overlooked.”
Deven bit his lip, then shook his head. “As much as I am tempted to suggest the Irish, I do not think they are who you mean.”
“They are not,” Walsingham confirmed.
Deven studied the chess pieces once more, both those on the table and those unused on the board, then made himself close his eyes. The metaphor was attractive, but easy to get caught in. He mustn’t think of knights, castles, and pawns; he must think of nations and leaders. “The Pope?”
“Ably represented by those Catholic forces you have already named.”
“A Protestant country, then.” Mustn’t think in black and white. “Or someone farther afield? Russia? The Turks?”
Walsingham shook his head. “Closer to home.”
A courtier, or a noble not at court. Deven could think of many, but none he had cause to connect to the Scottish Queen. Defeated, he shook his head. “I do not know.”
“Nor do I.”
The flat words brought his head up sharply. Walsingham met his gaze without blinking. The deep lines that fanned out from his eyes were more visible than ever, and the gray in his hair and beard. The vitality of the Principal Secretary’s intellect made it easy to forget his age, but in this admission of defeat he looked old.
Not defeat. Walsingham would not be outplayed. But it seemed he had, for the moment, been stymied. “What do you mean?”
Walsingham gathered his long robe around him and sat once more, gesturing for Deven to do the same. “Her Majesty had little choice but to execute Mary Stewart; the evidence against her was unquestionable. And years in the assembling, I might add; I knew from previous experience that I would need a great deal. Yet for all the efforts of the privy council, and all that evidence, it was a near thing — as her treatment of Davison shows.”
“You think someone else persuaded her in the end? Or was arguing against it, and turned her back after her decision?”
“The former.”
Deven’s mind was racing, pursuing these new paths Walsingham had opened up. “Not anyone on the Catholic side, then.” That ruled out a good portion of Europe, but fewer in England, even with some educated guesses as to who was a closeted papist.
“There is more.” Walsingham steepled his ink-stained fingers, casting odd shadows over his weary face. “Some of the evidence against the Queen of Scots fell too easily into my hands. There are certain strokes of good fortune that seem too convenient, certain individuals whose assistance was too timely. Not just at the end, but throughout. During the inquiry into her husband’s death, she claimed that someone had forged the letters in that casket, imitating her cipher in order to incriminate her. An implausible defense — but it may have been true.”
“Someone among the Protestant Scots. Or Burghley.”
But Walsingham shook his head before the words were even out. “Burghley has long had his agents, as did Leicester, before his death. But though we have not always been free with the knowledge we gain, I do not think they would, or could, have kept such an enterprise concealed from me. The Scots are a better guess, and I have spent much effort investigating them.”
His tone said enough. “You do not think it was them, either.”
“It does not end with the Queen of Scots.” Walsingham rose again and began to pace, as if his mind would not allow his tired body to remain still. “That was the most obvious incident of interference, and the longest, I think, in the founding and execution. But I have seen other signs. Courtiers presenting unexpected petitions, or changing stances that had seemed firmly set. Or the Queen herself.”
Elizabeth, not Mary. “Her Grace has always been of a… -mercurial temperament.”
Walsingham’s dry look said he needed no reminder. “Someone,” the Secretary said, “has been exercising a hidden influence over the Queen. Someone not of the privy council. I know my fellows there well enough; I know their positions. These interventions I have seen have, from time to time, matched the agenda of one councillor or another… but never one consistently.”
Deven respected Walsingham enough to believe that evaluation, rather than assume someone had successfully misled him for so long. Yet someone must have, had they not? Incredible as it was, someone had found a way to play this game without being uncovered.