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       Title image: Execution by S. J. Parris

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       Copyright

      HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

      Copyright © Stephanie Merritt 2020

      Prelims show ‘MS 4769f.1 Execution Warrant for Mary Queen of Scots, 1587 (ink on paper)’ © Bridgeman Images

      Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

      Cover images (front) © Lebrecht Music & Arts / Alamy Stock Photo (Elizabethan drawing), (back) © Interfoto / Alamy Stock Photo (warrant to execute Mary Queen of Scots), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

      Stephanie Merritt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

      Source ISBN: 9780007481293

      Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780007481316

      Version: 2020-02-24

       Epigraph

      For the dispatch of the usurper, from the obedience of whom we are by excommunication made free, there be six gentlemen, all my private friends, who for the zeal they bear to the Catholic cause and your majesty’s service, will undertake that tragic execution.

       Letter from Anthony Babington to Mary, Queen of Scots, 6th July 1586

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Epigraph

      Execution Warrant

      Prologue

      Part One

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Part Two

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Epilogue

       Keep Reading …

       About the Author

       Also by S. J. Parris

       About the Publisher

       Execution Warrant

Execution Warrant

       PROLOGUE

       17th July 1586

       Chartley Manor, Staffordshire

      Six gentlemen. Six of them, ready to undertake that tragic execution in her name. She smiles at the euphemism. But then: why not call it that? Elizabeth Tudor is a heretic, a traitor and a thief, occupying a throne she has stolen; dispatching her would be no regicide, but a just and deserved punishment under the law. Not the law of England, to be sure, but God’s law, which is greater.

      Mary sits at the small table in her room, in her prison, thinking, thinking, turning over and over in her mind the pages of the great ledger of injustices heaped against her. Eventually, she dips her quill in the inkpot. She wears gloves with the fingers cut off, because it is always cold here, in Staffordshire; the summer so far has been bleak and grey, or at least what she can see of it from her casement, since she is not permitted to walk outside. She flexes her fingers and hears the knuckles crack; she rubs the sore and swollen joints. A pool of weak light falls on the paper before her; she has havered so long over this reply that the candle has almost burned down, and she only has one left until Paulet, her keeper, brings the new ration in the morning. Sometimes he pretends to forget, just as he does with the firewood, to see how long she will sit in the cold and dark without protesting. And when she does ask meekly for the little that is her due, he uses it against her; charges her with being demanding, spoilt, needy, and says he will tell her cousin. But should a queen plead meekly with the likes of Sir Amias Paulet, that puffed-up Puritan? Should a queen be starved of sunlight, of liberty, of respect, and endure it with patience? Twenty years of imprisonment has not taught her to bear it any better, nor will she ever accept it. The day she bows

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