A Letter from the Ghost of Mary Stuart to the Ghost of Elizabeth Tudor

A LETTER FROM THE GHOST OF MARY STUART TO THE GHOST OF ELIZABETH TUDOR

En ma fin est mon commencement

My dearest Sister and Cousin, We greet you well.

They christened me MARY STUART crowned at six days old the QUEEN OF SCOTS. See, across my Seat-of-State and Rightful Throne is draped the honorable motto:

IN MY END IS MY BEGINNING

Very true; inasmuch as they have summarized the Bildungsroman of their infant queen, grown up in infinite plays, movies, and operatic trances:

they see to it that

happy reigns and happy lives live up/

to the great blessing and supreme joy that it is that two noble kinswomen named on this same Great Isle should chance to reign by Fortune,

and in this same Great Age: named after you, My Dear Elizabeth.

Thus is launched an insular Invitation for you to come and join in all my spiritual bonfires and cinnamon-laced bright banquet dreams;

But, how dare I say it is Fortune, which grants two queens reign unrivaled where it is Heavenly Providence who so ordains it—

and the possibility of the greatest friendship of history—

the rule of two great queens sprung from the same stock and stem, where Tudor is fused with Stuart... we are the future of Great Britain.

In view of such just cause for drinks and celebration, [as now for the birth of my son] I want and hope, more than any gift or godsend,

to be able at last to meet you in person and be admitted into Your Royal Presence as well as you into Mine/

think of the peace and prosperity we could enjoy together

in order to be given this

I’ll make the effort to speak in English with you, although I wish you’d write in French to me.

KNOW NOW Once And For All [that]the lies they spread about me are calumnious in false letters full of the libelous trash that they write in my name to defame me; the soi-disant CASKET LETTERS are a good example of Fake News spread by my detractors and not properly subjected to fact-checking;

and yet You believed them over me so that by now you have imprisoned me; I suppose

That’s what I get for losing a battle—

You sent me your ring,

with another one of your beautiful letters—vowing support,

I suppose I misunderstood you while I sang à-tue-tête

you murmuring breezes

that round me are flying

come bear my devotion

my tears and my sighing

away to that haven I once called my home

that haven of love and joy I once called my home

you white clouds of heaven

o stay for a moment

and bear me away to France

away from this torment

but you will not hear me

and onward you roam

away to that haven I once called my home

the haven of love and joy I once called my home...

I sang that song in a secret letter sent to the French Ambassador, Monsieur de Mauvissière; it was written in cipher and sung in soprano during my times as a triple agent, or maybe quadruple agent seeking the perfect deals with Scotland, France, Spain, and not least in the bargaining,

with you yourself, my noble cousin who is ENGLAND Herself Embodied a Land Embroidered. This was to be my greatest alliance and crowning administrative project;

I came to you for help

instead

you have betrayed me and enslaved me

yet I could never hate you

only ever love you

knowing your natural good

forever and always

your lofty mind and spirit.

You know that I am not the Mary Stuart from the movies/

yet I fear that I have put myself into

other hands than yours.

These Men, these Counselors, these Ravagers—

my well-beloved Sister—

just look what mine have done to me—

and ask yourself how you could put your trust in those who persuade you persecute and pursue your own beloved kinswoman?

Years have gone by/ I have counted them;

you are waging a war

to waste and erase away

the luster of my once famed

beauty in this cage:

and yet, my dearest sister and cousin, it will all be well worth the trouble. The tragic conflict between us will ring throughout the ages; and although it could have been love and harmony—

we will be famous for this beheading...

[a possibility of one of the greatest enmities in history]

While eternally I crave this tête-à-tête,

at times in private penitence

I fear and tremble at the thought of you—

because I have betrayed you as well.

How well I know you to take after the Great Lion

who wishes to be heeded

be needed

and be bowed to,

to be obeyed in the spirit of love,

and who FLIES INTO A RAGE [if ever she is not].

Well then, I willingly accept you for GREAT LION; but You in turn must recognize

Me as Second of this Race,

Your Successor

As my Child is your Successor.

Even though I have never seen you (perhaps because I have never seen you) I still seek to win you over despite fearing you; at moments I can scarce believe that you exist, for now I have aged, no longer young and beautiful

my most precious years spent in a cage

who would not fly into a rage?

In my End is my Beginning: I heard the song again

in the peace of my gloomy seclusion

you’d torment me with new dreams of terror

though I’d meet you I’m lost in confusion

and I dare not remain and confront you

stay o stay on your throne in your splendor

never call me to stand in your presence

I’m bereft now of friend or defender

by the world I am scorned

I am scorned and despised

by all the world,

I was said to have sung in Italian; but if only You could see my side

You whom I respect and love more than any other earthly prince

so much so that

although you have lavished me with spectacular prisons, transporting me from estate to estate in the lap of luxury of your inland domains, but always so far from the sea/

same proverbial gilded cage for proverbial songbirds.

Too far from the sea to hope for escape and freedom—

Still I beg you humbly for my liberty [for only you can set me free];

thus I rant repeat and reiterate a thousand times

my beseeching unto you,

In the name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

Who washed our sins in his blood;

In the name of our common progenitor Henry VII;

In the name of the rank,

that puts us on the stage before

all people to judge our actions;

Lastly and above all—

In the name of our sisterhood, cousin-ship, common womanhood

and your very royal honor\

I beg of you,

let me see you just once

to give you my love

and tell you my tale to your face.

Don’t keep your distance, but face the Presence.

If truly and definitively this is not possible;

if it would dishonor your person too much to be in the Presence

of a Murderess/

an Adulteress/

a public and private Papist/

a Woman who has loved and who has birthed/

then at least do me the final honor to set me free.

If not in life, then let my beginning be in my beheading,

and I can at least glory in the honor

of it having been by your missive and Signature.

Because I will debase myself

and I will be proud doing it:

for that is the Catholic Spirit, my Confession to you, in a Letter.

Here finally the stage is set for my execution.

I will carry myself proudly on this platform in front of the world

In my dying moment/

But before I go into that fatal chamber hall

All clothed in black and draped in deadly pall

[princesse infortunée]

Victim of the tabloids and yellow rag demise:

I give to you my greatest treasure

Princeling that I bred to unify the Island

Next in kin to you and sprung from me: my son to be your godson,

That you may advise him along the path of royal power.

Send him letters as you sent to me;

love him as your own

and scheme us all to Peace...

[I will see You at the Coronation]

And now, to speak aloud my tragic litanies and prayer first to the Lord but then to you, beloved cousin and sister, my jailer my executioner and my greatest love—

now I know after all these years why you would not look upon me or admit me into your presence in all the time you held me prisoner:

One should never look in the eye a sacrificial victim destined to death.

I suppose then

that I am the Mary Stuart from the movies.

Therefore by Letter I can never say

what I meant to inform you of,

the things I had to tell you,

my dearest Elizabeth,

so many secret and wondrous things,

both as regards my personal tale,

and secrets of state precious to a ruler—

so that now you will never know what I had or not to do

with that explosion that killed my second husband,

my troublesome cousin and yours; you likewise

will never know whether forbidden love was what

caused me to do it; you will never know

the Continental machinations I would have informed you of, O Queen of an Island Divided! See to the Succession that will make us One as if He were not only my Son but one born to the Both of Us as equal Mothers in order to scheme us into Peace and Eternal Memory now and forever so that as I die and recollect upon the shadow of my life and its unfolding where from the moment of my birth unto my final hours here in this land I have never known a moment of rest/

I wish I could convert the Mass of all my suffering into your Protestant joy and jubilation if something good could come from my prayer that the flowing streams of my blood will satisfy someone or something and water the flowers of the fair fields of France and England Scotland alike or else have the hidden power of washing away your deceit and my own bringing concord to the land:

Sisters in this as in everything else which I wish for you just like I am Wishing now that God grant You a long life in perfect health as well as many years of a long and happy reign both for yourself and your namesake blossoming in your perpetual glorification in this world and the next,

Your most affectionate Sister and Cousin,

Marie R.

1542-1587