Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

by Margaret George

  “Welcome! Oh, welcome!” they cried.

  “Bless that sweet face!”

  “A bonny Stewart is come tae us!”

  They ran alongside her horse, calling out, offering her branches of flowers, little cakes, ribbons.

  “Thank you fer comin’,” said one old man, who came so close he could have grabbed her horse’s bridle. “We need ye—we need ye here.”

  There were heavy middle-aged women, their bodies worn out with child-bearing, their cheeks flushed and lined; thin boys with lank hair and confused smiles; burly men with the bushiest beards she had ever seen, often streaked with that reddish tint. Their faces were friendly, welcoming.

  She reined in her horse, which seemed glad to stop. “Thank you, my good people. It is with great joy that I have returned here, to Scotland, to my own land!”

  In front of her Lord James and Maitland had plodded on, unheeding. Just at that moment a swarm of men appeared out the mist and began crying, “Justice! Justice!” They rushed right at Mary’s horse, and Bothwell quickly rode up beside her and unsheathed his sword so quickly Mary did not even see the movement; it just seemed to appear, by magic, in his hand.

  “Stay back!” he barked. “Do not approach so heedlessly!”

  The men stopped, but cried out, “Now the Queen is here, she can hear our grievance!”

  “Not now!” said Bothwell. “You can present your petitions at the proper time. Her Majesty has not even been formally received. After that ceremony—”

  “No,” Mary said quickly. “Let me hear them now, as they have sought me out.”

  Bothwell looked at her as if she were either stupid or ill-informed. He kept his sword poised, holding it up like a great stave.

  “We are poor clerks, who have just saved some companions who were being unjustly jailed! Here they are, Your Majesty!” They pushed forward some young men as their exhibit.

  They looked perfectly ordinary, like any village youths anywhere; certainly they did not look criminal. “Why, what had you done?” Mary asked.

  “We played ‘Robin Hood’ on Sunday,” said one of them. “We put on a show, for the village. And for that we were arrested, and thrown into jail—by the Reformers!” They indicated one of their number, and said, “And he, as our leader, was condemned to death.”

  “By what right—” Mary began.

  “By every right,” said Bothwell, close by her. “The Reformed Kirk now rules the land. Did you not understand that? Did the Lords not spell it all out in their letter? The Kirk makes the laws, and it is now against the law to sport on Sunday. The Lord’s Day must not be profaned.”

  The way he said it—was he in earnest? He had said he was Protestant. Did that mean he believed in these prohibitions? And no, the Lords had not spelled it out in their letter. It would have been too ugly to put in writing.

  “I pardon you,” she said. “I forbid this sentence to be carried out. You are all free.”

  The men let out wild whoops of relief, and began dancing in the road.

  “Come, let us go on,” said Bothwell. But Lord James had turned back in time to hear the exchange. He was glowering.

  “Your Majesty,” he said sourly, “even the Queen must obey the laws of the land.”

  “What laws?” she said. “How can binding laws have been passed without my consent?”

  “Parliament,” said Lord James, in that clipped tone.

  “All parliamentary laws need the royal signature to be adopted as law,” she said. “You sent nothing to me in France to sign—although I understand you passed a multitude of laws recently.”

  “They await your signature at Holyrood,” said Lord James. “Naturally we did not send them to France, knowing you would soon be here.”

  The men had now started shouting and throwing flowers.

  “Oh, the bonny Queen!” they cried. “Will you be our Maid Marian?”

  “Aye!” she said.

  “Sister!” said Lord James, catching his breath. “The royal dignity!” He urged his horse forward and the party set out again, with the freed youths dancing behind them.

  * * *

  Now the ground began to climb more steeply, as they approached Edinburgh. The city lay on a long, bony spine of land, with a dark, ancient castle at its head and Holyrood Palace at its feet. Part of the city had a stout wall around it to keep out the English, but Holyrood lay in the part that was unprotected.

  More people now lined the road, and Mary could see points of light where small bonfires had been lit to welcome her. They glowed through the mist like lanterns.

  The road widened as it approached the crest of a hill, and suddenly there was a wall before the royal party. They entered through the fortified gate, and emerged onto a broad street paved with square boulder stones, bordered on both sides by narrow, many-storeyed houses. Lord James reined in his horse and pointed to the bottom of the hill. Mary could see nothing but mist.

  “Down there is Holyrood, Your Majesty,” he said.

  Mary strained her eyes but could see nothing more than the smokelike fog. Sometimes a shape seemed to shimmer within it, but she could not be sure.

  “You are upon the High Street, the fair road leading down the hill toward the palace,” he said. He turned in the saddle and swept his arm back in the opposite direction. “Up the hill—it’s a slow, steady climb—the street continues all the way to Edinburgh Castle upon its great high rock.”

  She wished she could see it, it was so maddening to be able to see only some ten feet in any direction. “I long to see it all,” she said.

  “You will see it soon enough,” he assured her.

  Now there were larger crowds, and next they passed through the Netherbow gate in the city wall and continued down the same street, now called Canongate, where the houses were less crowded together and more gracious.

  “The noblemen have their houses here, near Holyrood and outside the city walls. There is more room, so they can have their gardens and orchards,” said Maitland, who had ridden up alongside her.

  The sight of so many people welcoming her, and being near Holyrood at last, excited her. Gone were the exhaustion and debilitation that had clung to her for months, and the nagging sense of having made a wrong decision, of having left something more important behind.

  “I have never seen Holyrood!” she said. “It was never safe for me to be there, when I was a child.”

  “Peace has come to Scotland at last,” Maitland replied. His eyes swept up and down the street, but in the dense fog did not discern any of Knox’s loudmouthed followers. That they were evidently indoors, he gave thanks. He felt sorry for the Queen and wished he could spare her what he knew was inevitably coming. Peace? As long as you were of Mr. Knox and the Congregation, yes.

  II

  John Knox hitched up his breeches as he settled himself at his work desk. Although it was only Tuesday, he was inspired to begin his Sunday sermon. He was now pastor of St. Giles, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, the foremost church of Scotland, and his two-hour-long sermons were heard by hundreds of people and repeated to hundreds more within just a few hours. He did not see it as a reflection on his own oratory, but rather on the power of the Holy Spirit, which gave him the words. He but spoke what he was directed to speak.

  The Queen of Scots had set sail, or was about to, any day; he did not know whether she had left France or not. But all his prayers to keep her away had evidently been refused by God. It was His purpose to let her come and ascend the throne in Scotland. Knox must bow to His wishes.

  The theme of the sermon that the Holy Spirit had shown him this week was to be upon the Elect of God, His chosen ones, using Ephesians 1:4–5 as his text:

  According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love:

  Having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.

  As sometimes happened, Knox had
not responded immediately to the nudge of the Holy Spirit when first directed to this text, but waited to see if the call was genuine. Alas, it was, and Knox was constrained to labour on that difficult text and doctrine, which Calvin was always refining.

  He sighed and looked out the window, which afforded a view up and down the High Street of Edinburgh from its overhanging vantage point. His desk was positioned so that when he was working, he could see the crownlike spire of St. Giles, farther up the hill. Today he could not see it, even though it was only a short distance away, because a strange, thick mist had descended and was swirling around all the buildings, wrapping them in a blanket of cold, minute drops.

  It is so unseasonable, he thought. Such a fog, and in August! He reached for a wool blanket and pulled it about himself, thankful for its thick comfort.

  The Elect. The Predestined. It was such a thorny concept. If God had predestined some to be saved, “before the foundation of the world,” then of what use was preaching? God’s own would presumably come forward of their own accord. And what if someone not chosen was moved to come forward as a result of preaching? What a cruel hoax on him! And was God that cruel? Would He tease people with a hope of something they could not have? Only little boys did that to their younger brothers.

  But I am called to explain this, he thought. And what of the even more difficult allusion in Revelation 7:4 about only 144,000 people being saved? Was Heaven that limited?

  He moved on his cushions. It seems to get more and more difficult, he thought. I am forty-seven years old and the Lord keeps veiling things from me. I keep trying to part the veil, but there are always more veils behind each one.… Will I never reach His heart?

  Perhaps I should preach on “the veils.” One of the things behind the veils, hidden from my understanding, is the fact of the Elect, of Predestination … yes, but I must trust and believe nonetheless, until more is revealed to me.…

  He picked up his pen in excitement, dipped it in the ink. I must preach of my own ignorance, yet place it in trust, he thought. I trust that I am one of the Chosen, but I cannot know—it is all to do with grace.…

  Exhilarated, he began writing as fast as he could, while the day failed to lighten outside as it should. The mist had stifled the sun.

  * * *

  Three hours later, the Spirit left him. He sagged at his writing desk and felt his inspiration dying away. But he had trapped it on paper, he thought exultantly, looking at the curling leaves of writing paper covering his desk. He had trapped the Spirit as a fisherman trapped fishes in his net. We both labour at our calling, he thought.

  As he was gathering up the loose sheets of paper—he would not read them over until the next day, for he never corrected his work under the power of the Spirit, only composed—there was a quick series of raps on his door.

  “Pray enter,” he said. He was ready for company, ready to descend to the lower room, have a bowl of soup, and commune with other human beings. Enough of the muse and the Spirit. His human instrument was weary and longed to be with its own.

  His secretary stepped in, and his cloak was shiny with droplets from the fog. “She’s here, sir,” he said. “The Queen has landed at Leith.”

  “What, already?” cried Knox. “I had not even received word that she had left France.”

  “The winds were favourable. It took only five days,” replied the secretary. “They arrived early this morning, to a rather meagre welcome, as they were not expected so soon. The Queen and her party had to borrow horses, for their own were impounded in England. But they are even now on their way to Edinburgh.”

  Knox stood up. It was come, then. The thing he had been dreading, and had prayed to be spared.

  “She … she is beautiful, sir,” said the secretary. “I saw her as she stopped and talked to the people en route. In Scots. She is very tall, and has a perfect complexion, and moves with such grace, like a—a cat, all supple and with perfection—”

  “Enough! Are you bewitched with her?” cried Knox. “Your speech is strange, disjointed!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said quietly. “I was only attempting to describe her before you saw her. She will arrive in less than an hour. I thought you would want to be notified.”

  Knox went to the window. Little beads of water covered all the panes, making them opaque. “How many are there in her party?”

  “She brings with her a number of Frenchmen—”

  “Naturally!”

  “I believe there are three of her Guise uncles—”

  “Naturally!”

  “A poet who elected to come to Scotland, one Chastelard, I believe—”

  “Just what we need! Is he the first of a swarm? Better a plague of locusts than a plague of poets!” He turned and glared at the man.

  “Sir, I merely bring the news; I did not select the party. Shall I go on, or will you continue to argue and harass me?”

  Knox sighed. “Go on. Forgive me.”

  “Her brother, the Lord James, went to meet her, along with Maitland of Lethington and Lord Erskine.”

  Good Protestants all, thought Knox. Pray they be not bewitched or deflected from their purpose—which is to rule her, rather than permit her to rule us.

  “Ummm.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flicker of colour. There was something glimmering in the mist. The first of the bonfires. Bonfires of joy, they called them. “The folly begins,” he muttered.

  O dear God, do not permit this nation to relapse into idolatry and error, he prayed. Do not bring us this far in the way of truth to abandon us now!

  “This fog,” he suddenly said. “I know now whereof it comes. The very face of Heaven speaks what comfort she brings into this country with her: to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness, and all impiety.” He felt his voice rising, as if he were speaking to hundreds, and not just in this time, but to all time. “For never in the memory of man this day of the year was seen a more dolorous face of Heaven! The surface wet, the corruption of the air; the mist so thick and dark that scarce might any man espy the length of two pair of butts.… That forewarning God gives us … heed it!”

  “Sir?”

  “But they do not.” He glanced at the twinkling spark of colour that denoted a bonfire. “They do not. They are blind!”

  III

  Lord James leaned over and said to Mary, “Holyrood was one of our father’s favourite palaces. He built the front tower, and he tried to make the palace seem French, to please your mother.”

  Was there a pause before “your mother”?

  Not until they passed into the actual forecourt could Mary see the palace looming ahead, like a dark echo of a French château. The round tower was there, with its conical cap, like the ones in the Loire; but the stone was mottled instead of white, and the windows were small. Against the woolly mist it looked cold and prisonlike; it was attached to the original part of the abbey, which clung like an appendage.

  “Oh,” was all she could say. She did not want to go into it; it looked menacing. And it was so small! Was this the grandest palace her country afforded?

  Inside the palace it was as cold as the outside; nay, colder.

  “Welcome to Holyrood,” said James, and his voice sounded hollow in the near-empty guard room.

  As she looked around questioningly, James quickly said, “I told you things were not quite ready. We understood that you would be bringing furnishings from France.”

  He led the party up the large stairway and then to the first cluster of royal apartments. “These are the King’s apartments,” he announced. “Antechamber, presence chamber, and bedchamber.” They were empty, but Mary tried to imagine them filled with people, with life and colour, and failed. Central to the picture there needed to be her father, and she had no moving, living memory of him.

  “The Queen’s apartments are directly above,” he said, leading the way back out through the antechamber to a wide stairway. “There is also a small connecting staircase directly between the two bedrooms, b
ut with a party this large I prefer to use the main staircase.”

  Had he been French, Mary thought, he would have made some allusion to the staircases between the two bedrooms. As it was, he recited it as an architectural fact and nothing more.

  He seemed proud of the Queen’s apartments, as he stood at the threshold of the audience chamber and beckoned.

  Mary walked into the chamber. It was a fair one, with an oratory and fireplace, and several windows looking out onto the courtyard. Tapestries hung on the walls, and the wooden ceiling had been freshly painted.

  She made her way across the length of the chamber and crossed the threshold into the adjoining one. For a moment she stood alone in it. It was smaller than the audience chamber, and an odd shape—not quite square, but not round, either. Two outpocketings bulged from the room, framed by doorways.

  She lifted the curtain of one and quickly realized what it was: it contained a velvet-hung device called a “close stool.” The other minute chamber had a fireplace and a window, although it was only about eight by ten feet.

  “Whatever is this for?” she asked James, who had come into the room. “It is so tiny!”

  “You may use it as a supper room,” he said.

  “For dolls?”

  “You will find that in the winter, January especially, a small room with a fireplace is most welcome. A table will fit in here, and your mother the Regent had as many as six guests to dine with her here.” He paused. “So I have heard. She never invited me.”

  Before Mary could reply, he continued, “This room is in the tower. Remember the round turret you saw from the courtyard? The rest of the rooms, the public rooms, the ceremonial rooms, are all in the front. There is the Chapel Royal”—he looked at her sternly—“which has been lately stripped of its idols and made pure.”

  “And this is where I am to have my private masses?” she asked. Seeing him frown, she said, “As you promised.” She had meant her remark to sound light, but he chose to answer gravely.