For My Sins

by Alex Nye

  “Our purpose?”

  There was a moment of prolonged tension that prickled the air and made me uncomfortable as Maitland eyed our man, Bothwell.

  “It seems you speak a little too freely, my lord!”

  Bothwell did not reply. He met Maitland’s stare.

  Maitland lowered his gaze first and said, “Madam, it is time to think about returning.” He glanced towards the window where the afternoon was darkening.

  “Actually, Maitland, I prefer to stay here rather than ride back down the Canongate. I believe it would be easier – and safer.”

  There was a deafening silence.

  “I did make that suggestion beforehand? And I recall you liked it not then, either!”

  “As you wish.”

  “If you have such concern for my safety, then I think it only wise we should remain here.”

  And so we did.

  One week of rising early to work at the ledgers in the library, dining at night by candlelight opposite the very shadow of St. Giles’ High Kirk with its beastly buttresses. We worked hard all day, blinded by figures. We could spin money from thin air, coinage to pay for banquets and feasts, masques and musicians. We agreed to levy a tax, and to borrow money from the merchants of Edinburgh to the tune of £12,000, and they did oblige. We promised to pay them back and they foresaw future benefits to themselves and their businesses if they did comply. The baptism would take place at Stirling Castle; with its high vantage point and its grand proportions, we could safely host a myriad of kings and their entourages here. And besides, it was the seat of my son’s nursery. He was safe there, as I had been years ago, until the age of five when my mother sought to protect me from King Henry’s ravages.

  My French page, Bastien, was with us while we worked at the Exchequer – one of my favourites – but I took no other servants.

  Eventually Maitland was called away to attend to some family business and left, promising to return in a day or two to finalize the arrangements.

  “Do not be gone long, Maitland. I need you here.”

  Bothwell and I dined alone that night. Bastien served us cold meat and vegetables. As the moon rose high above Edinburgh, it painted the stark buttresses and tall tenements with an eerie silver glow.

  As we ate I confessed to Lord Bothwell that I no longer trusted any of my own courtiers, the people I was supposed to rely on to help me govern.

  “Even Maitland,” I said. “Even he. They share my table, eat my food, live in every palace and castle alongside me. I pay their wages and yet I cannot trust them.”

  “Ma’am, they are not a very trustworthy bunch,” he murmured.

  “I suspect everyone of treason. Rizzio’s murder, Darnley’s changeable nature. There is someone else behind all of this, Bothwell. Someone very close to me, who wishes me harm.”

  Bothwell said nothing.

  “Who can that be?”

  Still, he said nothing.

  “Protestants,” I said. “They have an agenda of their own.”

  And I nodded my head towards Knox’s headquarters across the way.

  After a heartbeat or two Bothwell spoke quietly. “But I too am a Protestant.”

  “You?” I laughed. “You are no zealot, Bothwell.”

  “From your Catholic stance, do you not view me as a heretic?”

  “I believe in tolerance. I have seen what extremism does to people.”

  I shuddered, remembering the Huguenots in Paris, and how my mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici, had forced us as children to watch when they were rounded up and publically slaughtered. She presented it as a spectacle for royal eyes to feast upon, to ensure the continued success of the Catholic monarchy.

  “I do not believe in terror as a persuasive argument,” I added thoughtfully, my eyes filled with the mist of those far-away memories.

  “Anyway, I do not see that you are over-exercised much by religious concerns, Lord Bothwell.”

  He considered this for a moment.

  “I have my own thoughts on what is right and wrong, what is expected of the Church and State.”

  I mulled over his words for a while and was surprised by his next remark.

  “I suppose it is not wise for a woman in your position to trust anyone. It could be political suicide.”

  I dared to risk a glance. He had risen and stood at the window, staring out.

  “Even you?”

  He had his back to me now.

  “Especially me.”

  I hid my disappointment as I bent my head to my needlework. I was aware that he might be studying my reflection in the opaque glass, where the candles made a mirror of our little tableau.

  The occupation with my hands saved me from showing the anxiety I felt.

  Linlithgow

  November 1566

  Once the baptisimal arrangements were made, we parted company and it was with relief that I quit Edinburgh. I rode back to Stirling to visit my son’s nursery. He was still so small I feared he would not remember me. Had my touch, my smell, become foreign to him? Wet-nurses could not provide the love I did feel; the attachment, the bond. But the cares of government do contrive to break that bond, to snap it asunder with distance and time.

  “He is safest here, Ma’am,” Mary Seton assured me when I shed tears on leaving him again. “What good would it do to risk the little Prince by having him accompany you? It would be impossible.”

  “I know this, my friend,” I murmured. “But still it hurts to leave him. It is the burden of my birth-right. Sometimes, Mary, I wish I had been born a wench in the field,

  an ordinary carter’s daughter. Would my fate have been any happier then?”

  She looked at me askance. “Aye, it would. If you had survived, that is. Many an ordinary carter’s child dies before they reach their majority.”

  I nodded. I loved Mary Seton for speaking always the plain truth.

  At the beginning of November I found myself in Linlithgow Palace, the seat of my own birth. I stood regarding the elaborate fountain in the courtyard which my father had had constructed to welcome his French bride to Scotland. I wondered what my mother must have felt on first arriving here and encountering that gift.

  Marie of Guise was a good mother who loved her daughter deeply. We wrote often to one another and spent our lives in craven affection, ever full of longing for one another.

  That first sad parting when I was five years of age is one that haunts me forever more. We shared the same name. Marie.

  When she first arrived at Linlithgow and met her future husband, James, could she have known the struggles that awaited her? Could she have known how strong and noble a figure she would cut? A woman of steel who could govern our unruly kingdom all on her own? And she spoke often of Bothwell. He had served her well, had been her friend and confidant, a loyal servant. How could others not therefore understand that I would expect the same of him?

  At Linlithgow I began to feel the first vague stirrings of unease in my health. One morning I woke to a sharp pang, but chose to ignore it. I clutched my abdomen and was immediately beset by thoughts of gloom. I decided the best policy was to rise above the pain, pretend it was not there.

  It was on that day that Bothwell’s wife, Lady Jean Gordon, rode out to meet me from Crichton Castle where she did reside. I was surprised and not a little alarmed by the visit.

  “My husband Bothwell lies ill in Hermitage Castle,” she told me. “Perhaps you have heard?”

  My face paled.

  No, I had not. “Is it serious?”

  “Well, I am not always the first to learn of these matters. There is aye a distance between James Hepburn and myself. But, aye, they say it is serious. He got involved in a skirmish with some cattle reivers and came off the worst for it. He lies abed.”

  “Is he in danger?”

  “I know no
t.” She watched me for some time. “You understand, I would never have married the man, if it had not been at Your Majesty’s bidding?”

  I met her gaze. “I only meant to reward the Earl for his services to our crown. And it seemed you both would benefit from the match.”

  She lowered her almond eyes.

  “And do you not think that love should have entered the arrangement?”

  I said nothing, for she knew as well as I that love has little to do with marriage for women of our standing.

  “I would have been happier wed to Alexander of Ogilvie,” she murmured.

  “Oh…happiness?” I sighed. “Perhaps it is an over-used word.”

  “And you, Your Grace?” she enquired, her calm gaze keen and alert. “What of your happiness, Ma’am?”

  “I have none,” I replied “certainly while I rule Scotland, and with an errant husband by my side. At least,

  if he was by my side I could be sure of what he is about.

  I know not what he conspires to do next.”

  She studied me carefully.

  “And my Lord Bothwell?”

  “What of him?”

  “How do you perceive him, Ma’am?” she added pointedly.

  I hesitated.

  “I regard him as a friend and acquaintance, a loyal servant and supporter of the crown. As did my mother afore me.”

  “And nothing else?”

  Narrowing my eyes, I put my head on one side.

  “Of what do you charge me, Lady Jean?” I was nonplussed.

  “I think you grow over-fond of him. And he with you.”

  “Then you think wrong!”

  “But I came here today to inform you that I care not. He is not mine to love, nor I, his.”

  I swallowed, shocked at her words.

  I spoke what was on my mind.

  “I have heard others say that Bothwell does love his wife very much.”

  “And that offends thee?”

  “Of course not. It is what I had hoped when I encouraged you both to wed.”

  “You did not encourage me. You gave me to him. Like a chattel.”

  I hesitated, shocked at her straightforward manner of speaking. Her icy serenity hid a woman of steel.

  “I am sorry that you see it in that light. That was not my intention.”

  “If my husband does love me, I do not return the favour. I want only my freedom. And that I cannot have. But I only came here to tell you the news.”

  “How sick do they say he is?” I asked her.

  “I cannot say,” she added.

  My mind ran with possibilities of disaster. How would I fare in Scotland if Bothwell and his army were not on my side? To whom would I turn? Who possessed enough of the brawn and willpower about them that they could actively step in to defend my position and my honour?

  I was terrified at the prospect of losing him – and she saw it.

  She was a young woman of grace, with a smooth, fair complexion and lovely almond-shaped eyes, hazel of hue. She was sedate where I was fiery; she was elegant where I was too ready to leap into the saddle and ride; she was calm where I was spirited. I envied her and yet, I admired her. She did not lose her head to anything, even to her beloved Alexander of Ogilvie, whom she had forsaken at the urgings of court politics.

  I did not wait for Lady Jean Gordon to return to her own Crichton Castle before I did leap in the saddle and – pains or no pains – hastened my way to Hermitage Castle where Bothwell lay in peril.

  I rode for four hours without stopping, my retinue urging me to take my rest, but I listened not to them. I arrived before noon – the day after Lady Jean Gordon’s visit – and burst into the chamber. I feared he had already passed.

  “My Lord Bothwell?” I cried of his man-servant. “What of him?”

  “He is…”

  A forest of backs confronted me, gathered about the bed. I did not wait upon ceremony but pushed into his midst.

  I feared to see a corpse lying there, pale and blood-spattered, statuesque in white sheets. But his eyes were open upon the pillow. He was staring at the wall. At first I thought it to be the death-stare, but then I saw him blink. He turned his head towards me, but the first word he spoke was not my name. It was Lady Jean’s.

  I did not flinch, for that was as it should be. I was his queen and his sovereign. He owed me a great deal, but he owed his wife more…

  “It is not she,” I whispered. “It is I. Marie.”

  His gaze quickly focused.

  “Your Grace? You ride all this way to see me?”

  I stood up quickly from where I had knelt, and recovered myself.

  “Of course,” I said. “How else am I supposed to govern Scotland if I have not the support of my fiercest Borderer? You cannot afford to be ill, Bothwell. I have not the time for it.”

  “Nor the patience, I see!”

  His servants watched us, and my retinue too, all eyes upon us, noting our behaviour. There was nothing untoward in the way we did relate to one another. I swear this upon my son’s life and any who were there could vouchsafe this for me.

  “It is not my time, Your Grace. I have no intention of quitting this world just yet. ‘Tis but a scrape. No more.”

  “A mere scrape? I had not thought you could be laid low by such a slight injury.”

  His dark eyes glowed merrily in his poor face for an instant.

  “Aye, Your Grace is right. I should hasten back into the saddle afore long. Your Majesty will have need of my efforts.”

  “Indeed I do, Bothwell.”

  I slipped a glove from my hand and laid it upon his chest.

  “Lest you forget your duty!”

  He picked it up and held it briefly.

  With barely a half hour to rest ourselves and take sustenance, having assured myself that Bothwell was not, after all, at death’s door, I did take my leave of him, mounting the saddle and riding another four hours across moorland and heath, to be at Jedburgh by nightfall where I had business to conduct.

  Once there, I succumbed to the pains which had been troubling me earlier. The irony was, I became more ill than Bothwell, and neither he nor Darnley hastened to my side to ensure I was not dying.

  The doctors were of the opinion that I had not recovered from the birth of my son. It was suggested to me that perhaps the placenta had not fully come away from the womb, and some remained, infected. Whatever it was, my apothecary and surgeon waited on me anxiously as a fever ravaged my body. I remember little of those dark days, only that I did fear the worst.

  Of Darnley there were constant rumours filtering

  through, that he was urging the Catholics abroad – Spain no less – to send out an Armada to kidnap me, that he would conspire to murder me and rule Scotland in my stead. He continued to bargain for the Crown Matrimonial, to be named as my heir after my death, and when I refused, he skulked and brooded like a madman. He drank more heavily, kept bad company, and in truth I was relieved to be free of his presence. He disappeared often into his father’s country. Lord Lennox and his wife had lands near the Clyde, and here it was that Darnley retreated, brim-full of his woes and grievances.

  “It is I who should be King,” he complained, and no doubt his mother agreed with him.

  The Lennoxes had ruined their spoiled wee darling, and I was the unfortunate one who was forced to bear the consequences. I knew what it meant at first-hand. I had lived with it; seen it; witnessed its petty cruelties. The thought of leaving my son to his care terrified me.

  Fotheringhay Castle

  October 1586

  The sun is up. It has risen above the castle ramparts and reaches long claws across the fields. Another day dawns with monotonous regularity.

  Jane comes to help me dress.

  It is bitterly cold this morning. A ground frost has made white sta
tues of the bushes and shrubs. A world of spun sugar, glittering in the dawn.

  Even the garden is a prison. I may only go thus far, heavily guarded of course. It is almost not worth my while, but Jane insists the fresh air is good for my constitution.

  I dreamt about Bothwell last night, for the first time in years. I blame Darnley’s ghost for that, setting off a train of memories that are best forgotten. What is done cannot be undone. And what is known cannot be unknown.

  On our return, the chair is waiting for me, pulled up close to the hearth. There was a time when they denied me fuel and I shivered, perishing. Now Jane has managed to correct that wrong and I am grateful to her.

  My basket of needlework lies on the table, the threads laid out carefully in rows. A rainbow of silk.

  I have been curiously absentminded this morn. I keep gazing out of the narrow window into the grey distance, where the mist curls off the edge of the world.

  My embroidery lies discarded in my lap, the calico untouched.

  The jangle of a harness in the courtyard below. My keen ears hear boots resounding on the bare staircase, circling higher.

  “Ma’am,” Jane whispers. “There is a messenger here from Her Majesty.”

  “What is it?”

  “It is Lord Burleigh to see you.”

  Almost before I have had time to collect my thoughts he bursts upon us, without ceremony.

  Cecil, the most efficient of her statesmen.

  He is accompanied by diverse others who crowd into my chamber.

  “How nice to see you, gentlemen. Please, don’t trouble yourselves to take off your hats!”

  Cecil clears his throat. “I have come on business of a high priority, from Her Majesty the Queen of England.”

  “And how is my dear sister and cousin?” I murmur.

  He ignores me.

  “Her Majesty has sent instructions that you are to receive no more letters.”

  “Letters?” I gaze at him in innocent surprise.

  “Quite so! Letters. Walsingham and I are working to protect Her Majesty and feel that her person is ill-served by your continued correspondence with foreign heads of state abroad.”