For My Sins

by Alex Nye

  “You’ve signed your own death warrant,” Moray muttered through his teeth. Then wiping his hand on his thigh, he withdrew from the room.

  Darnley was left standing there, looking at me, his shirt disordered.

  “Are you satisfied?” he said.

  I winced.

  His eyes looked incredibly sad and my heart failed me. The whole ghastly scene was disturbing to behold and shook me to the core.

  “Do you honestly expect me to appear at your side now, Mary, as a dutiful husband?” he said, raising his hand to his jaw. “After this?”

  “What do you expect of me, Darnley?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Not this!”

  “Nor I! You have undone us,” I wept.

  He looked at me as if in surprise at my display of grief. Perhaps he really did not comprehend how he had hurt and injured me.

  “Rumours come to me all the time, Darnley, of how you are plotting to leave the country.”

  “I have asked your Privy Council if they might release me into exile! There is no secret!”

  “But what then?”

  “We are not happy, Marie. We have never been happy. What is the point in continuing?”

  I noticed how he called me by the affectionate ‘Marie’.

  “Never happy, Darnley?”

  He avoided my gaze. How could I win him over, this recalcitrant husband of mine?

  “You can’t just leave,” I murmured “any more than I can. You are married to the queen of this country, remember?”

  “Oh, yes, I remember,” he said bitterly. “The problem is that other people don’t.”

  I tried to fix his gaze, but he turned away.

  “Will you come to the baptism, Henry?”

  “I have another question for you – my sweet wife. Am I permitted to share your bed, eat at your table? Or is that reserved for your favourites?”

  “You are objectionable, Darnley. You have made yourself utterly objectionable. You have brought this upon yourself!”

  “And is that your answer?”

  I did not reply.

  “In that case, I cannot answer for my own behaviour.”

  I turned and left, not knowing what would happen next.

  The rooms below were filling up with guests, their clamour drifting along the corridors and up the staircase. Diplomats from France, Savoy and Piedmont gathered in the courtyard and the Great Hall, their vast retinues clad in velvet, damask, silk and furs, rubbing shoulders with each other, completely unaware of the private drama that was being enacted above.

  I arrived back in my own apartments to find a scene of agitation, people restlessly pacing and demanding to know what we were about. Maitland, Moray and Bothwell had all appeared.

  “It is unthinkable.”

  “Something must be done.”

  “We will threaten him.”

  “I have already done so.”

  “Then we will cajole him. Your Grace can employ her feminine charms…”

  I shook my head wearily. “I have tried, but to no avail. We shall simply leave matters as they are, and wait and see.”

  “Wait and see, Your Highness?”

  “It is all we can do, Maitland. There is no other way.”

  I could hear their voices all around me as they paced the room. But no matter how much they protested and complained, no matter how much they panicked, I knew it was pointless. There was nothing that any of us could do. I would simply hold my head high and perform before my audience with a bright smile upon my face.

  And it would be a performance.

  I can ever act the part of a queen.

  “Come,” I beckoned Mary Seton and Livie to my side. “It is time, I think.”

  My ladies fell nervously into position behind me, my lords went before me and we processed along the stone corridors towards the Great Hall. We could hear the hum of voices long before we neared them, and while my stomach fluttered with butterflies, a surge of energy carried me through. I was to meet with the world’s leaders and their representatives, and demonstrate to them that Scotland was a kingdom to be ranked among the best – whether they believed me or not.

  Music drifted from the state rooms as we walked in kingly file along the corridors, the walkways, and down the spiralling staircase that led to the Great Hall itself.

  The guests were gathered. A sea of faces glanced up. Hopefully, the cluster of maids-of-honour and companions around my person would distract them from the absence of my husband.

  “It is not likely that they will notice, Madam,” Livie whispered in my ear. “We are such a busy army.”

  She was right. Besides, the assumption might be that he would join us later. I hid my nerves.

  A sigh of acknowledgement and a cheer swept through the crowd as we entered. I held my head high, smiled, and met their acknowledgements with a courtly greeting.

  The gathered company bristled with wealth and rank; jewels and ermine, fur and silk. I had lived so long in the country, riding from castle to castle, that I was suddenly overwhelmed by the ocean of grandeur before me. It quite took me back to my days in France. In an instant I was transported to the past, but then swept back again.

  The Duke of Bedford was at my elbow. “Your Majesty, the Queen of England sends her regards and her deepest sorrow that she cannot be with you on this auspicious day.”

  “Please convey to my dearest sister, the Queen Elizabeth, that I count myself blessed that she has sent such a worthy representative as yourself. I hope that you will enjoy our humble festivities – such as they are.”

  “Humble?” he glanced about him at the Great Hall decked in its finery, boughs of Christmas greenery, candles and lanterns burning, the four great fireplaces roaring. Despite the great expanse, it was filled with the scent of wood-smoke and spices. The diamond-paned windows flickered gold with reflected light.

  The crowd parted as I processed into the middle of the Great Hall. I was aware of being watched, studied, scrutinized, but I know my own capacity to charm.

  I do not pretend; I do not dissemble. I am myself, always, in every aspect a queen, willing to die for her people. If my people are required to make sacrifice, then I will make sacrifice also. If my people are ready to fight for what they believe in, then I am ready to fight also. I never heard it said that Elizabeth rode at the head of an army, though I am willing to stand corrected if such be the case.

  Polite pleasantries and platitudes were exchanged, murmurs of greeting, standard phrases of praise and obeisance. Court etiquette, they call it. And I can shine at the ritual if this is what is required. But what wins over my enemies, in all cases but one, is my sincerity, my genuine wish to connect with another human being, to please. I have known only one or two men resistant to this charm. Knox is one of them – impermeable to the last. Elizabeth’s henchman, Cecil, here in England, is another.

  May God rot their souls.

  I am nothing if not obedient, respectful, courteous. I have always been guided by a firm belief that most people are open to reason and compassion. But I have been proven wrong before now. And I have ever been shocked at the realisation.

  It is indeed hard to forgive, though forgiveness is at the heart of the Catholic religion.

  I looked on the sight of my assembled guests with not a little pride. All of these eminent figures have gathered here in the Great Hall of Stirling Castle at my request and invitation, was the thought that ran through my mind. Glittering ecclesiastical vestments, garments of unparalleled opulence, bejewelled, mitred, encrusted with gems. It was hard to credit that all of these ambassadors and representatives of the most important heads of state throughout Europe had travelled through the cold and the snow to celebrate alongside us the baptism of our little son. It was a magnificent sight.

  I could see Bothwell’s figure among the guests, circu
lating, throwing back his head in laughter. I suppressed the uneasy thought that he seemed to be subtly proprietorial in his gestures. He seemed a little too expansive, a little too comfortable in his role as defender of my honour.

  However, I was more concerned about my husband lurking upstairs, nursing his grievances.

  Moray appeared at my elbow at one point and murmured “Any word of Darnley, Your Grace?”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe it is for the best, after all,” he added.

  I was terrified that he would suddenly appear amongst us, drunk.

  At four o’ clock in the afternoon the guests formed two parallel rows along the corridors all the way from my son’s nursery to the Chapel Royal across the courtyard. It was in part spontaneous, and in part organized with the utmost skill. Between their ranks my little prince was carried in state, borne in the arms of the Count of Brienne, his passage lit by the flickering of torches. It was a solemn procession we made, down the staircase, step by step, across the Great Hall, out through the palisaded walkway, between the hushed and waiting guests. I could hear sentimental sighs of pleasure at the sight of a mere wean, all bedecked in frothing lace, the burden of sovereignty already upon his brow.

  The Chapel was sumptuously adorned, resplendent with its own finery. Silver candlesticks shone on the altar and richly embroidered vestments hung all about, flashing in the candlelight. The heavy silver font that the Duke of Bedford had borne all the way from England was centre stage, near the door of the Chapel where everyone could see it. It shone like fire.

  Bothwell and Moray stood at the doorway rather than participate in the actual ceremony. Apparently their religious persuasions would not allow them to proceed any nearer to the altar.

  I knelt in view of the world; the courts of Europe ranged in rows at my back, and prayed for my son’s future.

  ‘King James’, as he styles himself now, was a mere babe in arms then, a fleshy creature with bright questing eyes, still too young to listen to the rumours they would tell of his mother, or to condemn me for crimes I did not commit.

  Fotheringhay Castle

  October 1586

  My needle flies in and out, feverishly stitching the fine lines which tell my own story.

  I like to unravel the threads of my destiny, and dream of what might have been. It is a comfort, because the truth of what really happened hurts so. He has ended by believing in the lies and slanders which Moray fed him, the distortions and half-truths. After I was forced to abdicate, and as soon as I fled Scotland, casting myself upon my sister’s ‘mercy’, they had my little son crowned and my brother Moray declared himself Regent.

  It was what he always wanted. When we were friends, I believed in his friendship. When he defended my honour against Darnley that morning in Stirling Castle, I was genuinely moved. I thought we had a bond of blood that would prevail. But I was wrong. My half-brother achieved his ambition in the end. To rule as Regent – it was all he wanted, in the event that he could not be King.

  “I was pragmatic, Mary.”

  A voice breaks the silence, and when I look up he is standing before me. White-faced, wily-eyed as ever.

  “You betrayed me.”

  “Everyone betrayed you. There was only ever one single difference between you and I, sister, in the line of succession. Knox put it succinctly. Women cannot rule. You were female.”

  “And you were illegitimate!”

  “Exactly so, my sister. It is with regret that we must acknowledge that fact. I never wanted to hurt you, or betray you. It was never personal. You must understand that.”

  I bend my head to my sewing, just as I always did when I was listening to my councillors discuss matters of state. Pierce the cloth, pull the thread through, apply the exact amount of tension, see where the stitch lies, and proceed with another. There is a reassuring rhythm to the art, the movement of lifting and pricking, pulling the bright thread through.

  “I ever did love to see you sew, Mary!”

  I drop my sewing in my lap for an instant and gaze at him.

  “Is this affection you show, after all this time, after all these years of enmity between us?”

  “I am a phantom, Mary. There is no ‘us’. I cease to exist.”

  I lower my head again, and sew in silence.

  “Yes, you cease to exist.”

  They betrayed you, my brother, just as they once betrayed me. You enjoyed, what? Three years of regency before they stabbed you in the back? Morton was next to take the reins of government, to inflict his odious rule upon my son.

  They beat him, I know. I try not to think on it, because there was nothing I could do from here. I heard rumours; I wrote letters, implored, entreated. I wrote to my son to reassure him of the great love I had for him.

  I doubt those letters ever arrived.

  Censored.

  His mind erased of the memory of his mother, those few short months we had together when he was a babe in arms. Before they ruined him. Before they shaped and moulded him into the monster they wanted him to become, hardening him with cruelty.

  But he is no monster, and never was.

  He holds the memory of his mother dear, even if he is unable to express it.

  They showed me a portrait of him once. He did not look a happy man. Why did the artist not choose to conceal that look in his eye, and replace it with another?

  They took him from me, and they beat him. They shaped him until he was cowed beneath the weight of their greedy ambition.

  I know a little of what that feels like. My Guise uncles slither and creep into the corners of my mind where I will not let them loose. I command them to stay in the shadows. Unlike Moray, Darnley and Bothwell, my Guise uncles are not allowed to claw their way up from where I have buried them. I plant a stone upon their graves. It holds them down.

  I have other ghosts to contend with.

  Ghosts never haunt the innocent. Bess of Hardwick told me that once. The wretched woman who took such pleasure in my incarceration. She revelled in humiliating me and depriving me of the basic comforts needed in order to keep body and soul together.

  Ghosts never haunt the innocent.

  Well, I have plenty of ghosts to contend with here.

  Stirling Castle

  December 1566

  After the ceremony in the Chapel, I glanced over my shoulder at Bothwell and Moray who still hunkered in the doorway, refusing to enter a place where such ‘Papist nonsense’ was being conducted. I caught their eye and smiled. They clung so ardently to their bleak Scottish God. John Knox held sway, even here, far away from the shadow of St. Giles’ High Kirk.

  Those few days spent at Stirling Castle were among some of the best I enjoyed during my reign, despite the anxieties and fears I suffered concerning Darnley’s behaviour. Were it not for my problematic husband, it could indeed have been said that I was happy. People I thought were friends and allies surrounded me. I had succeeded in uniting the Catholics and Protestants to some extent. I was in a position of strength, weakened only by the presence of Darnley and his impossible demands. But I had Moray and Bothwell and Maitland on my side, working in my favour.

  So I thought…

  There was a ripple of laughter and sympathy from the crowd as little James was baptised. As Father Mamaret held him over the font and poured water upon his forehead, my little son opened his lungs and roared. The assembled company responded with more murmurings of mirth.

  “Ah, he is a lusty lad, as you say,” the Count of Brienne guffawed, trying out our native Scots.

  I answered him in French.

  When I neared Bothwell I took the time to pause and murmur, “You couldn’t find it in your heart to enter the Chapel itself?”

  “You have your beliefs, Your Grace, and I have mine!”

  “Ah, a man of principle, I see! I suppose you would not wa
nt to risk stepping any further…for fear of contamination.”

  “No offense is meant by it, Your Grace.”

  “And none is taken,” I replied.

  It was completely dark outside by the time we emptied the Chapel and a banquet was waiting for us back in the Great Hall. The guests thronged after us along the palisaded walkway on the edge of the courtyard, and through the tall double doors. Long trestle tables were redolent with great platters bearing meat and fish, preserved fruits and freshly baked bread. I had little appetite, my nerves were too fraught, but I was happy to watch my guests salivate at the sight of all these delicacies. The four huge fireplaces had been built up again and were roaring. It was a relief to be bathed in their golden warmth after the chill of the Chapel and the courtyard.

  I moved among my guests, smiling and sociable, acting my part as perfectly as ever, but at the back of my mind was the thought of Darnley.

  “Your husband is not well?” a smooth urbane voice murmured. I turned to see the Duke of Piedmont at my elbow.

  I hesitated a moment too long before replying.

  “He did not attend the ceremony!”

  “Yes, my husband has been suffering with an old complaint of his. He kept to his rooms upstairs. It is to be hoped he will appear shortly, perhaps during the evening celebrations.”

  In fact, I sincerely hoped not – but was not about to confess as much in public.

  A dark shadow crossed my mind. Others had noticed his absence, after all, and now it was commented on. I looked up to see Bothwell watching me from across the far side of the Hall where he had just entered.

  Once the Duke of Piedmont was out of earshot my brother Moray slid to my side.

  “We have decided the best policy is to put about the rumour that Darnley is not well,” he hissed. “It’s partly true anyway. I’ll go up and see him again in an hour or two and ‘encourage’ him to make an appearance.”

  “Is that wise? Perhaps we would do better to leave him be.”