The old woman wore the coif, veil and black holy habit of a nun. Her shoulders were wrapped in a threadbare shawl of finely spun wool. She sat alone in her room, on a wooden chair beside her bed. Her stick was on the bed. Around her neck she wore a gold chain with the cross and body of Christ. She was still and silent, scarcely stirring at the entrance of Shakespeare and Cabral; no more than a slight inclining of her chin, like a deer that has heard something on the wind or caught a scent.
‘Sister Madeleine, it is I, Ana Cabral.’
‘I know who you are, Dona Ana. I may be ancient and my sight may be failing, but I have not lost my wits. Who is with you?’
They were in a small attic room with sloping ceilings and a single, curtained window. Cabral’s candle was the only light, and it refl ected off the black rosary beads that the old woman twisted through her bony fingers. Though her body looked frail and bent, her voice was strong for her years, which Shakespeare took to be approaching sixty. Her accent was instantly discernible as Scottish.
‘His name is Mr Shakespeare, sister. John Shakespeare.’
‘I do not know you. Come closer. Take my hand, Mr Shakespeare.’
Shakespeare stepped forward and allowed the religieuse to clasp his right hand. She held it in her own right hand and stroked it with her left, as though she would divine his character from it. The beads entwined in her fingers were cool on his knuckles. He saw that she wore a thick gold and diamond-encrusted band around the ring finger of her left hand.
‘From your hand I take you to be a gentleman, sir. I can tell, too, that your sinews are drawn, as though you were fearful, but perhaps you are merely attentive and alert. We shall see. Have you come to hear my story? Dona Ana told me I would be asked to say it. It has been a secret so long. Almost twenty-six years. Too long. My little prince…’
‘Indeed, that is why he is here, sister. It is time.’
‘Mr Shakespeare, I have longed for this day. I must tell it before I die. The canker in my breast grows and grows.’ She still held Shakespeare’s hand and her movement guided him to sit on the bed at her side. ‘My little prince must claim his inheritance. No one but me can bear witness. Sit here with me, sir. Do you feel this ring on my finger.’
‘I do.’
‘This ring was presented to me by the blessed martyr Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots — Queen Mary the Second of England in the eyes of God. She placed it on my finger in the November of 1567, and it has been there ever since. It was a day so cold I feel it in my bones still, and yet the ring burned me with its grace. The last day of November. It was the day she gave birth to her little prince and placed him in my arms.’ The old nun turned to Ana Cabral. ‘Give me the Holy Bible, Dona Ana, for what I am about to tell you is sacred to my heart…’
‘I have thought often how I would tell this history, Mr Shakespeare. I shall try to make it short and as direct as I can, for it is important that you should understand it clearly and believe it. In June of the year ’67, after the meeting of the armies at Carberry Hill, Queen Mary was taken prisoner by the rebel lords and imprisoned in the island castle of Lochleven, near Kinross, twenty miles north of Edinburgh. I was one of her two chamber servants, and I was taken there with her.’
Shakespeare watched her closely. The Holy Bible lay on her lap, her hand upon it with the ring finger prominent and slightly more crooked than the others. The diamonds sparkled in the candlelight.
‘It was clear to all that she was with child. She had been vomiting and now she was putting on weight. Everyone knew that the Earl of Bothwell must be the father, but no one really knew how many months had passed since the conception. Her Majesty was scared. Though she had seen much in her twenty-five years — three marriages, war, murder and treachery — she was very lonely in those dreadful days. She wept in fits and tore her hair and oft-times threatened to throw herself from the castle battlements to her death. She told me she knew that the child would be killed. Her enemies — Moray, Morton, Lindsay, Kirkcaldy, Melville and the other lords — would never suffer a child conceived of Bothwell to survive.
‘They were watching her as a hawk will watch a leveret. Their spies were all around us, not least of them William Douglas, the laird of Lochleven, who was her keeper. He was half-brother to Moray and a kinsman to Morton, and he had no love for his sovereign lady. In her small apartment in the round tower of the castle, she had always to have two ladies attending, day and night. They slept at her side. In all she had five ladies-in-waiting, who took these duties in turn. One of them was Mary Seton, her firm friend from childhood days when she and the three other Marys — Livingston, Fleming and Beaton — had accompanied the five-year-old Queen to France as her playmates and companions. Mary Seton was distraught at the state to which her sovereign had been brought and begged to be allowed to dress her hair as she had always done. Mary Seton and I were the only ones at Lochleven that Her Majesty trusted. When we had the opportunity, we would whisper together about what we might do to save the baby.
‘The best hope seemed to be to escape. But how? The island was half a mile into the loch and was always under guard. Perhaps she might go ashore disguised as one of her ladies or maids. At one time she tried that, wearing Mary Seton’s garb, but she was recognised by the ferryman because of her uncommon height and was returned to her gaol. Then Mary Seton had another design to save her unborn child. It was a plan of such guile and deception that I still can scarce believe that it worked. But it did.
‘I had a close cousin, Margaret Rule, not far from Kinross, one whom I loved and who loved me. She was a faithful Roman Catholic and a midwife of long standing in those parts and knew all the wives, so that whenever one suffered a miscarriage, she would be aware of it. Though it is a mortal sin, sir, I do know, too, that sometimes she did help to shift a pregnancy when a young girl was in trouble outside of marriage. I went to her with Mary Seton’s plan and she agreed without hesitation to help us.
‘In July of that year, my cousin sent a message for me to come to her. She had what we wanted. I went to her straightway, across the loch, and found her waiting for me with a bag, waterproofed and sealed with beeswax. It contained the dead foetuses of twins, miscarried just hours earlier, still attached to their navel strings, with the placenta, all immersed in pig’s blood from the butcher.
‘I kissed my cousin and offered her silver, which she would not accept. She was helping me for the love of our sovereign and for the love of God. The bag was easy to conceal in my gowns, and I returned with it across the water to the island of Lochleven. For the next few hours we waited our moment. We needed a time when the other ladies and servants were dining and I and the Lady Mary Seton were alone with the Queen. Our chance came in the late evening, just before darkness fell.’
Shakespeare listened intently. Sir Francis Walsingham had once told him that Mary had miscarried twins at Lochleven. There had never been any doubt that it had happened, for the Lord Lindsay and other rebels had come to her the next day on one of their regular visits and had seen her, weeping, still in her bloody clothes and bedding, and had lain their eyes on the dead foetuses before they were taken away for burial in unconsecrated ground. ‘It was a good deed that God did that day,’ Walsingham had said. ‘For a claimant born to the adulterous Scots devil and her co-conspirator in murder would have shaken the very earth of Scotland and England.’ Now this woman, this nun and one-time maidservant to Mary, Queen of Scots, seemed to be telling a different tale.
‘We had to be quick, but we accomplished our task. The Queen lay on her bed and we spread the pig’s blood all about her nether parts and on the sheets. Then we placed the foetuses and placenta in a bowl as if it were she that had miscarried twins. Finally, with much ado, we called for help. The other women came and saw what seemed to have happened and there was much sorrowing and wailing. Lady Mary Seton’s design had worked, but the deception was far from complete. We still had to bring Her Majesty to term and protect her baby.
‘Every month from then on, I would bring in pig’s blood to soak in rags and sprinkle about her bedding to show that she had been brought to her flowers in normal kind, as any woman who is not with child. All this time, of course, she was putting on weight, but she wore loose gowns and her weight gain was attributed to her great sadness, an increased appetite and her lack of proper exercise, so that no one questioned it. And why should they have? For all were certain that she had lost her babies, as they thought.
‘At last, on the thirtieth day of November, she was delivered of a healthy boy. Her throes were thankfully short, no more than two hours, and we stifled her groans and cries with cushions. We had been most fearful that the child would arrive when others less well disposed were about, but God smiled upon us. Apart from me, there were in attendance her other maidservant, who was a Frenchwoman, the Lady Mary Seton and Her Majesty’s private physician, who had by then been brought to her prison household. He was afraid, but she swore him to secrecy, that he would tell no man what was happening on the hazard of his immortal soul.
‘As soon as the child was born, there was no time to lose, for sooner or later the wails would be heard. I took the baby away that night by the ferry, all wrapped tight in swaddling and huddled inside my cloak. He had been well fed by his mother’s milk to make him sleep, and I also gave him a sleeping draught of brandy and herbs so that he should not wake. At one point on the short ferry journey to Kinross the baby stirred, but I was talking loudly to the ferryman and offering him wine to keep his mind distracted, and he seemed to hear nothing of the bairn. And so we arrived safe and I handed the child to my cousin, who found him a wet nurse.
‘The wet nurse never knew whose baby she fed for the next six months, but she fed him well and he grew strong and bonny. At last my sovereign lady escaped and fled to England, where she was to end her days, but I did not go with her. I took charge of the baby boy and, with the help of a certain gentleman, brought him across the sea to Spain, where he was raised to be a king and one day claim his inheritance. And that is my story, sir. Simply told, but true in every detail.’
The tale sounded true to Shakespeare. It had been so guilelessly told that none could doubt it. But what was the old nun’s motive in telling it? Perez wanted money, so did Cabral — but what did the old woman want? He put the question to her.
‘I told you, sir, I want the prince to claim his inheritance. If James the Sixth should die without issue, he must become king of Scotland and heir to the throne of England. It is what Queen Mary always wished and why she wished so desperately that the boy should survive.’
‘Why did you say nothing before?’
Sister Madeleine smiled. ‘Because Walsingham would have despatched an assassin to do away with him.’
‘And now?’
‘Now he is here in England ready to take his rightful place.’
‘No one will believe this. There would need to be proof.’
‘There is proof. And there are witnesses. For the time left to me, I will bear witness. My cousin still lives, as does the Queen’s physician at Lochleven Castle. And though she is now frail and confined to her convent in Rheims, the Lady Mary Seton will tell her story. There are letters, too, in Queen Mary’s hand, which mention her baby’s birthmark. Fear not, Mr Shakespeare, there is no doubt. There will be no doubt in any man’s mind when the Prince steps forward.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Soon enough.’
‘Where exactly is he?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Cannot — or will not?’
The old woman said nothing. Her dim eyes did not waver. Shakespeare turned to look at Ana, who stood as still as a rock and gave nothing away.
‘What is this prince’s name, Sister Madeleine?’
‘Francis Philip Bothwell Stuart.’
‘You must tell me his whereabouts,’ Shakespeare commanded. ‘It is treasonable not to.’
‘I am not English, Mr Shakespeare. And you have no threats to frighten a dying woman. Truly, I would accept martyrdom as a blessing.’
Shakespeare rose from the bed. He turned once again to Ana Cabral. ‘You shall have your gold, Dona Ana,’ he said. ‘Come to me in London. I must ride from here without delay.’
‘Of course, Mr Shakespeare. I would not have expected it otherwise. But take care as you leave, for you are unarmed — and there are those here who do not wish you well.’