Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

by Margaret George

  The next morning she awakened and sat bolt-upright, filled with conviction. She must go to Scotland.

  The decision was less a decision than an order from somewhere deep within her, which had gathered strength during the night and now took command. She did not dare to question it; it seemed to have its own authority.

  * * *

  As she bid farewell to the abbey, glancing at it from over her shoulder, she whispered, “Mother, you and I are now changing places.”

  * * *

  She took her route slowly back to Paris. This time the small roads at the height of spring looked different to her. The cottages were hung with garlands, and children swung from ropes on trees, crying out with exuberance; orchards were in full bloom; farmers were tilling the fields, and the smell of fresh-turned earth rode on the air. People called to her as she passed, and in spite of herself, she felt her spirits lifting as she responded to the warm air and the bright spring colours. She was only eighteen, after all.

  As she threaded her way along, she silenced her small party of attendants, because she did not want to chatter. The calls of the birds, the cries of the playing children, were soothing to her in a way no conversation could ever be. They rode in single file down the well-trodden path, inhaling the heavy aroma of the flowering fruit trees.

  Up ahead was another party, approaching from the opposite direction. A group of revellers, no doubt, looking for a spot to stop and have a picnic, or perhaps pilgrims, paying a visit to some obscure saint’s well or grave. It was as much a part of springtime as the mating birds, and as noisy and twittering.

  But as they came closer, Mary suddenly recognized the lead rider. It was her brother, Lord James Stewart. He appeared in front of her like a vision, a creature wholly out of place in this blooming, merry, pagan countryside.

  “James!” she cried, waving to him.

  He came forward and saluted her. “Your Majesty!” He dismounted and took off his hat in token of respect.

  In spite of her disappointment in him for joining the Lords of the Congregation, she was pleased to see him. He was family, after all, her blood—or half-blood—brother.

  “James! How came you here?” she cried.

  “Searching for you,” he said. “You were not in Paris.” His tone hovered between disappointment and accusation.

  “Indeed not. I was minded to visit my relatives.”

  “Did you receive the letter?” he asked bluntly.

  Mary looked back at her party—Madame Rallay, Mary Seton, and Father Mamerot—and signalled them to halt. “Let us seek a clearing, where we may rest and I may speak with my dear brother, the Lord James Stewart, so unexpectedly met.”

  “There is one a mile beyond here,” he said. “I passed it and it looked most inviting.” Mounted again, he reined his horse and turned around; his party did likewise.

  Once at the clearing, the parties dismounted and settled. Mary drew her brother apart.

  “You are persistent and resourceful,” she commented. “The countryside is full of roads.” Her knowledge that he was a leader in Knox’s movement made him seem far away from the brother she had played with at Stirling, and she was guarded with him.

  “I was lucky.” He smiled, and it made his features quite pleasing. He was a stolid-looking man, with a broad nose and wide cheekbones. “Or else the Lord aided me, as my mission was in accordance with His will.”

  She stiffened. It was begun already, then, the Reformed preaching. “Your mission?” she asked.

  “To speak to you in person, after we had dispatched our letter. To bring you home to Scotland. Yes, we want you. We want you to return. To us, your people.”

  “My ‘people,’ as you call them, seem to have strayed far from their obedience to their sovereign.” She chose her words carefully. “They deposed my mother—”

  “She was not the sovereign,” he said quickly.

  “She was the ruler appointed by me. Then they made laws about the religion of the land and declared them binding, and defined what was treason and what was not. In short, they took all the prerogatives of ruling upon themselves, under the direction of Master John Knox.”

  He started to say something, but she cut him off. “Nay, make no demurrings!” she said. “Knox bellowed, and you followed! It was he who directed this ‘revolution,’ and it is to him you yield your allegiance. For what purpose, then, do you entreat me to return?”

  James looked startled and taken by surprise by her attack. “Because you need a country, and we need a queen. And if you would see your way clear to considering the merits of the Reformed Faith—”

  “Nay, never! Do not delude yourself on that! I will not change my faith like a hat, for political purposes! This is my faith, and I hold it as dear as any Knox does his! And besides”—she looked at him searchingly—“what does it say of a ruler, that she change her faith for expediency? How could her people rely on her for any consistency? She would be nothing, a wave tossed here and there by every wind that blows.” She looked carefully at James. There had been a time when he was being groomed for the Church, when it was thought he would content himself there. He had seemed to take seriously his position as Commendator of St. Andrews. “If you would see your way clear to return to the faith of your fathers, I could see you wearing a Cardinal’s hat,” she said.

  “Like your devout uncle?” he replied. His pleasure at rejecting the proposition was obvious.

  They both laughed.

  “Two statesmen make political offers to one another, and are refused in statesmanlike fashion,” James said. “Now we can proceed to business.”

  “You seem to be misled,” she said in a clear voice. “We are not two equal statesmen, but queen and subject.”

  He did not reply, but inclined his head slightly. “As to your return, we—the Lords of the Congregation—are prepared to offer you every fealty, if you respect our religion.”

  “I will respect yours if you will respect mine.” He started to speak, but she went on. “I am informed that, under the influence of Master Knox, you have made the saying of mass illegal and punishable by death. This is a great sin, to which your consciences must answer at some later date. But I insist on the right to the practice of my own faith in private. I must be able to attend mass and receive the sacraments, which I need in order to live. Do I have your promise, your solemn word, on this?”

  “Master Knox—”

  “Master Knox is not king! There can be but one anointed ruler in the land. If it be Knox, I shall not come. Make your choice. I ask but little; it is what you would ask, were our positions reversed.”

  “True enough.” He closed his eyes and seemed to be fighting some inner battle. “But the people must not see your priests, or the Popish trappings, or it may incite them to violence. They must remain hidden. Mass must be restricted to you and your household alone; nowhere else in Scotland may it be held!”

  “Yes, brother,” she said. Were there no Catholics left in Scotland? How could the faithful survive, with no spiritual sustenance?

  “When may we expect you in Scotland?” he was saying.

  “In the summer,” she answered. “I will notify you later of the exact date.”

  “My heart is gladdened to be able to take this news to my brethren,” he said. But he did not look particularly joyful.

  And which brethren did he mean?

  * * *

  The moment of parting had come. The court had journeyed with her to the port of Calais. It was a gay festivity for them, a pageant like the ones enacted at weddings and baptisms. Lord Bothwell had arranged for the ships: a white galley for Mary, and a second one with her goods, including her horses, both flying a blue flag with the French royal arms. There was artificial excitement because Elizabeth had refused to grant Mary a passport in the unlikely event that her ship ran aground and she was forced to come ashore in England. Elizabeth was attempting to register her dislike of Mary’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh; Mary used the refusa
l as an exercise in dramatics for Throckmorton’s benefit, saying that Elizabeth could slay her if she wished when she fell into her hands.

  The Cardinal of Lorraine stood by the dock and embraced her. “You know that my love goes with you,” he said. “Do not lose heart among those heretics.”

  “If my own religion is permitted me, how can I lose heart?” she asked.

  He eyed the galleys. “It would be better if you would leave your jewels in my safekeeping rather than trust them on the high seas in these vessels.”

  “I have already left most of them in France, as I had to surrender them into Queen Catherine’s keeping,” she said. “I have only what I brought with me from Scotland, and the Great Harry, and the long ropes of black pearls Queen Catherine gave me for a personal wedding gift.”

  “I wonder she does not demand their return,” he said.

  “She has hinted at it. But I did not hear. Besides, good uncle, if you trust my person to these vessels—being infinitely more vulnerable and mortal—then the jewels should be safe enough.”

  He laughed. “Indeed, they should.” He looked long into her eyes, and his smile faded. “May God go with you,” he said.

  The day was dull and misty, unlike the usual August weather. As the rowers prepared to take them out into the open sea so the sails could be hoisted, a fishing boat foundered in the harbour and went down. All hands aboard were drowned.

  As the royal galley waited in respect, the passengers silently lining the rails, Mary felt sudden, unsettling fear.

  “What a sad augury for a journey,” she said. She looked out at the shore and was aware that she was already beyond its help and comfort.

  As they cast off and left the harbour, and France dwindled into the distance, she clung to the railing and kept staring at its receding coastline. Tears streaming down her face, she kept repeating, “Farewell, France. Farewell, France. I fear I may never see you again.” Her words were muffled in the sound of the oars and the rush of the wind, a melancholy lost cry.

  That night, before she retired for bed, she asked the captain if he would awaken her before they passed beyond the last sight of France. He did so in the cold early morning, and she stood on deck and watched the faint outline of France resolve itself into the pearly haze of sunrise.

  BOOK TWO

  Queen of Scotland

  1561–1568

  I

  The great white galley ploughed through the seas, making its way past the English coast by the traditional, but hazardous, route across the North Sea toward Scotland’s east coast. Unless a safe conduct were granted—which it had not been—ships were subject to attack off the straits of Dover, Yarmouth, and Holy Island all the way up to Scotland, and would have no shelter if rough weather hit them anywhere along the six-hundred-mile journey.

  Up and down, sliding from wave-trough to wave-trough, the galley slipped away from France and, encountering no difficulties, approached Scotland after only five days at sea. The mist had never lifted throughout the entire journey, and Mary, standing at the rail and straining to glimpse the coast, saw nothing but white fog.

  “Scotland!” said Bothwell, striding up to where the party of Frenchmen accompanying Mary were standing by the rail staring out at nothing.

  “Où? Where is it?” asked Brantôme, who had insisted on coming to Scotland to see it for himself.

  “Behind the white curtain, waiting for you.” He came to Mary and whispered, “There it is.”

  She nodded.

  “We will be landing at Leith, God willing.”

  Was it that problematical to find one’s way? she wondered.

  Seeing the puzzlement on her face, he said, “Your mother’s vessels went so far afield they landed in Fife instead of Leith. But never fear. The French have learned their way better now.” His grim voice was at odds with his smile.

  So thick was the fog that in spite of the voices and noises as the galley approached the landing, Mary could not even see the wharf. There were no trumpets, no gladsome shouts of welcome, nothing but the smell of tar, the thump of ropes, and the raw voices of seamen crying, “Landing! Tie her!”

  For years Mary had imagined landing in Scotland as an adult queen returning to her childhood home. She and François together, of course, standing at the rail, seeing a great company of mounted councilmen awaiting them, silken banners flying, caparisoned horses gleaming, heralds sounding their trumpets, crowds cheering. And at the head of them all, her mother … her mother, who now lay encased in a leaden coffin en route to France.

  A loud whap! as a rough-hewn gangplank was put down.

  “Come,” said Bothwell, gesturing toward it.

  Mary gathered her skirts and, motioning to the Marys, said in a determinedly gay voice, “Let us go ashore.”

  They descended the gangplank, five slender figures of black-and-white on the slanting board. The blanketlike fog made Mary feel as though she were stepping out into a dream instead of landing in a real country. She stood on the cold dock, drawing her cloak about her. How drear, how chill—and it only August! Was this the Scottish summer?

  How can I survive here? was her first fleeting thought.

  “Your Majesty!”

  The mist swirled, and out stepped James Stewart in a grey cloak almost the same colour as the surrounding mist. “Mary, have you come, then?” he said.

  “Yes, brother! I am here at last!”

  She went forward to embrace him, but he stepped back and bowed, giving obeisance.

  Now two other figures emerged from the fog: a familiar-looking man with a face so long and thin it looked like an icon, and a man whose features were pleasingly nondescript.

  “John Erskine, Your Majesty,” said the long-faced man.

  “From Inchmahome … we were playmates there,” she remembered. “And for a little while in France … you came when your father was there…” She was thinking out loud. “It is indeed a homecoming to find you here.”

  He smiled, a smile that went all the way to the margins of his narrow face. “I no longer go to Inchmahome,” he said, sounding regretful. “But you are welcome there, the same as always.”

  “He left the island behind, along with the rest of the Popish superstitions,” said James, his words clipped.

  “I see,” Mary said.

  “William Maitland, Laird of Lethington, Your Majesty,” said the third man. He bowed elaborately, as if to cover an awkward moment.

  “We are pleased to receive you,” she said, acknowledging him. So this was her mother’s secretary of state, reputedly the most intelligent man in Scotland.

  Now the most intelligent man merely knelt and said, “Welcome, Your Majesty.”

  “We were not expecting your arrival today,” said Lord James. “But it seems the winds favoured your voyage. Alas, there is a problem with the horses”—he paused—“and also with Holyrood Palace.” Shrugging, he continued, “It seems that the English intercepted the galley bringing Your Majesty’s horses, and … er … impounded them in England. We are endeavouring to have them returned forthwith. And Holyrood is not quite prepared to receive you.”

  Not prepared? They had known she was coming for weeks! she thought.

  “However, if you will bide a space here, while it is readied, a merchant, a Mr. Andrew Lamb, has graciously consented to feed—uh, feast you in his home here in Leith. In the meanwhile I will procure horses for your party of … is it sixty?” His eyes fastened upon a small man in a fur-lined robe in her party. “Who is that?” he asked in a low voice. “Your confessor? A priest?”

  Mary nodded, and Lord James looked put upon.

  * * *

  In the late afternoon, Lord James reappeared with enough horses for all, although most of them were sorry nags—their coats dull, their bones protruding, and many of them unshod.

  So this was how she was to make her first appearance in her native land—so different from her imaginary entrance on her white horse. At least she did not have to walk the two miles in
the mud, or ride a donkey. They set out on the wide, potholed, muddy road leading from Leith up to Edinburgh. The fog had not lifted, and so there was nothing to be seen on either side, much to Mary’s disappointment—she was longing to see her half-remembered country that now seemed disinclined to show itself to her. The smoke-thick droplets also veiled the damage from the recent siege of Leith by the English.

  “I sent word ahead to Edinburgh,” said Lord James. “So there soon should be people gathering.” He sounded harassed and resigned—his voice was so impersonal, and there was little left of the brother she had gone sledding with at Stirling.

  “Thank you, dear brother.” She looked around at her party, all mounted now. “Come, my friends!” she said cheerfully. “It is time to go to our new home!” Resolutely she turned her head in the direction she imagined Edinburgh to lie. But in truth, she was completely dependent on James to lead the way.

  They moved out in a painfully slow cavalcade through the dreary streets of the town, made all the more dreary by the ruined buildings on either side of the road, burnt by the English just before the recent fighting ended. There seemed to be no colours at all but this pewter-shaded sky, this bluish grey mist, and the black of charred wood. And the chill! It penetrated quickly down to the very skin. Mary felt herself about to start shivering, and willed herself not to.

  A few faces peeked out of doorways; they were colourless, too, and had the resigned, dull look of hungry people who were weary of fighting. She saw how different they looked from French townsfolk. Their garments were rougher and seemingly all of that brown-dun-tan shade of undyed wool. Their faces, too, were different—the look in the light eyes, the paler skin. Here and there she saw a child with fiery red hair.

  “The Queen!” she heard one say in a shrill voice. “It has to be, it has to be, look at her fine cloak—”

  She turned to wave and smile, but she saw no one in the mist.

  * * *

  The road began to climb upward; she could feel it. More people now began to gather on the road; word had gone out that the Queen had come.