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HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780007481293
Ebook Edition © April 2020 ISBN: 9780007481316
Version: 2020-02-24
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
Copyright
Epigraph
Execution Warrant
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
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
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
