“We will not marry until you do!” cried Lusty. “We hereby vow. Do we not?” She stood and looked around the circle at the others. One by one they stood up, and clasped hands.
“I vow not to marry until my mistress is wed,” said Beaton.
“I vow to stay unwed until my sovereign has taken a husband,” said Flamina.
“I vow to keep myself only to her until that day,” Seton finished.
“Ah, that is a touching but perhaps a foolish vow,” said Mary. “I would not keep you from happiness.”
“We will not be happy until you are.” They all embraced her.
She had to smile at the brave sacrifice they had made—in advance.
“It is easy to give up something you do not yet possess,” she told them. “When it is a real person, then I fear you will regret this vow. As for me, at this time, I have no wish to marry.”
A great wave of loneliness swept over her at the implications of that decision. I wish there were someone … but not a stranger, like those men on the list … a companion, someone like me, not someone who shares nothing of my soul, my background, my language.… The Marys are lucky—just such a person is waiting for them, somewhere, whereas with me, it is all politics.
“Perhaps someone will appear who will change your mind. Overnight!” cried the impulsive Flamina. “These things happen.”
“Yes, in stories,” said Mary. “Not for queens, who must make arranged marriages.”
“But this man, perhaps, he would spirit you away—”
A man not arranged with her councillors, a man whom she had chosen, because she wanted him, liked him—! “Get thee behind me, Satan,” she said.
“What?” asked Beaton.
“I am thinking out loud.” Mary smiled.
“About Satan? They say he’s abroad this night, but—”
Mary laughed. “Then perhaps it is time to bid one another good night.”
They gathered up their needlework and stood up.
* * *
Mary was still up, reading, near midnight when she heard the sound of someone’s arrival in the courtyard, and then the voice of Maitland in the guardroom below. Quickly throwing on a mantle, she stepped out of her rooms and descended the stairs.
Maitland looked up at her with surprise. “Your Majesty.” He threw off the hood of his mud-spattered cloak, and a guard closed the door behind him, shutting out the wind. A clump of leaves blew in and scudded across the floor.
“Pray come and tell me what has happened,” she said. “Unless you are too weary. But I will order refreshments—how long have you ridden?”
“From London it is four days’ journey without rest,” he said. He climbed the stairs, and she could see the effort it required for him to lift each leg.
“Come, sit.” She motioned to him to take the widest chair, heaped with cushions. She had her servitors add more logs to the fire and bring him a bowl of the leftover soup.
“My mother’s favourite,” she said. “It is made with veal mixed with tender fowl and rosemary … truly restorative.”
Maitland was much too polite to gulp it down as he would have wished, but she waited until he was finished to begin questioning him.
“It is over?” she asked.
“Yes. I met with the Queen, and presented all our concerns.” He paused. “The answer is no. She will not name you her successor.”
“But—” Mary was so disappointed that she could not frame the sentence. Finally, she said, “What exact reasons did she give, when I was prepared to sign the modified treaty in return?”
“Some nonsense about naming a successor forcing her to look into her own coffin. Then some hardheaded political observations about how a successor always becomes the focus for discontented subjects in a realm. For whatever her reasons—a personal quirk, political caution—she declines to clarify the succession.”
“Oh.” She felt helpless and thwarted. How could Elizabeth ignore the claims of blood and custom?
“However, she said if she were forced to name a successor, there was none whose claims would come before yours.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It is just Elizabeth-talk, for which she is already becoming renowned. She herself calls it her ‘answer-answerless.’”
“Oh!” Mary’s frustration was quickly turning to anger.
“She suggested a meeting between you, and also sends you this.” Maitland opened his pouch and brought forth a box, which he handed her.
She took it and wrenched it open, breaking one of the clasps.
Inside was a velvet pouch, and she could feel something hard within it. She shook it out, and a ring tumbled out—it had a hand clasping a diamond.
“It is a friendship ring, Your Majesty,” said Maitland. “It comes apart, and Elizabeth has retained the other half. It is to be returned to her if ever you are in distress. It obligates her to come to your aid.”
“How nice.” Since she would never need to use it, it was a meaningless little diplomatic bauble. She put the ring down. Then, on second thought, she slid it onto her finger, where she could see it and brood on it.
Maitland looked stuporous.
“You may go to bed,” said Mary. “I apologize for keeping you from it. This could have waited until morning.”
After Maitland had gone and she lay in her bed, she could hear the howling of the wind and the rattling of the tree branches on this haunted night.
They say the spirits are walking abroad, she thought. And nearby is the room where my father died, where he turned his face to the wall in despair.
Are you here, Father? If you are, help me with this difficult land you have left to me! If it is true that the dead have wisdom, impart it to me!
But her dreams were trifling and senseless, and in the morning she felt herself no wiser.
IX
The summons had come at last. John Knox, who had enjoyed the triumph of having Edinburgh to himself after his followers had been moved to defend themselves against the moral pollution of the mass, knew the day would come when the Queen must return. He had been informed that she wished to speak with him then. But in the meantime the cowardly, timorous child had run away, travelling around the realm, as if to get up her courage to speak to him.
Now she had returned, and a specific summons for his audience with her had been delivered. He had reread it several times, feeling privileged to be chosen as the Lord’s instrument to confront her and show her her errors.
* * *
He could hardly wait until the prescribed hour to go to the palace. When it was within a quarter-hour of the time—he possessed an accurate clock made in his beloved Geneva, that had stood on his desk in that happy place—he set out, walking briskly down the smooth, sloping Canongate, nodding at the nobles he encountered near their town houses on either side. He strode in through the great gateway at Abbey Strand, passing into the area that still constituted sanctuary for debtors and lawbreakers—another Papist folly!—and gazed at the Frenchified round towers and the formal entrance to the palace. In there, then, the contest would take place. He prayed for strength and the right words.
From her audience chamber—the largest room in her suite of royal apartments—Mary saw Knox standing in the courtyard. He was tall and thin, and the morning sun made him cast a long shadow. He looked like the gnomon on a sundial, she thought. Then the gnomon moved, and came toward the palace doors.
Now the time was here. She would actually look this man in the face, this man who had been her mother’s greatest adversary and was now hers. For so long he had seemed a demon, almost a mythological creature like the Gorgon or the manticore, that it seemed impossible that he should be mounting the stairs to her presence this very instant.
She took her place on a chair—not a throne—with her cloth of estate over her head, arranged her skirts, and waited. Her brother, Lord James, would serve as witness to the proceedings; two guards stood at either end of the chamber. A lack of sleep the night before h
ad quickened all her senses, rather than dulling them. They seemed to quiver with readiness as she waited for his appearance. But his footsteps on the great stair outside the chamber were soft, and so she did not hear him until the door swung open and he stood upon the threshold.
“Master John Knox, pastor of the High Kirk of St. Giles, framer of the First Book of Discipline of the Congregation,” announced the guard, so warmly it was obvious he was a follower.
Knox stepped into the chamber and with one motion swept his flat cap off his head and came to the very foot of her chair. “Your Majesty,” he said, staring directly into her eyes. “Lord James, brother in Christ.” He nodded to James, then turned his hard gaze back on Mary.
His eyes were dark brown, and were capable of staring for a long time without blinking. His face was not unkind, thought Mary. He had level eyebrows, a well-proportioned straight nose, and well-formed lips. In fact, there was nothing remarkable about his face, except that it was so ordinary; only his excessively long, flowing beard made him appear different from any middle-aged courtier. That and his severe, dark clothes: the uniform of the Reformers.
For his part, he was grudgingly forced to acknowledge her beauty. His scrutiny revealed that the portraits he had seen had duplicated her features—large, hooded, amber-coloured eyes, long, straight nose, small, curved mouth—without catching her allure. Perhaps it was the colouring, the skin tone, or the posture, or her slenderness, or perhaps …
“Master Knox, we sent for you because we have been troubled by your doings for some time.”
The voice. Her voice was as beguiling as a sea siren’s: sweet and rich and caressing. It aroused a longing to hear more words.
“You have been a rebel against our late mother the Regent, causing her great grief and sorrow; and you have written words that say a woman should not be queen. That is treason, as I am your Queen and sovereign, by God’s grace!” Let him answer that! She was no longer afraid of him. He was just a man.
“So you have not forgotten your Scots,” he said, with grudging surprise. “I feared Lord James would have to translate my words into French.”
“I continued to hear Scots while I was in France. You forget, sir, that my ladies were with me, as well as certain Scotsmen from my court.” If he thought he could make asides to James that she could not follow, he was sorely mistaken.
“But as for The First Blast of the Trumpet”—his voice changed from conversational to his pulpit tone—“for that is what I assume you refer to—indeed it specified that a woman ruler is an abomination and an aberration, but God permits such to exist for His own purposes. If the people are content to live under a woman, I will not rebel. Indeed, Madam, I am as content to live under you as Saint Paul was to live under Nero.”
So she was a Nero? How could he make such a statement? “I am no tyrant, sir, as well you know! I have issued a proclamation respecting your religion, saying that no changes are to made in the religion of the country as I found it when I returned to Scotland. Have you not read it?”
Knox snorted. “Your cousin the Queen Elizabeth of England issued the exact same proclamation when she first took the throne. But within half a year she and Parliament changed the religion to the one she practised … in this case, a sort of halfway thing between the Catholics and the Reformed Kirk. So such proclamations mean nothing; they are but a cover to the ruler’s true intentions, which become plain soon enough.”
Mary drew herself up on her chair. “Good sir, you know that God commands subjects to obey their rulers in all things, therefore if they profess another religion than that of their sovereign, how can this be sanctioned by God?” Indeed this had troubled her, as she had no intention of changing her faith, and thought others should be accorded the same privilege.
Knox smiled. Now he had her out in the open; she had betrayed her ultimate design. “Dear Madam, you err! As Christ said to the Pharisees, you know not the Scriptures! What if Moses had submitted and followed the religion of Pharaoh? What if Daniel had embraced the faith of Nebuchadnezzar? What if—God forbid!—the Christians had obeyed the Roman emperors and returned to worshipping Jupiter and Apollo? No, good Madam! They were bound to obey, but not in matters of conscience.”
He was becoming excited; his dark face was taking on a glow. But he was omitting an important point, she thought. “None of these people—not Moses, not Daniel, not the Christian martyrs—raised the sword against their princes,” she said slowly. “And that is the true issue.”
He continued to look directly into her eyes as he said, “God had not given them the power or the means.”
James started a bit, and Mary felt her heart pounding.
You knew he felt this way, she told herself. Why, then, are you surprised that he openly professes it?
“So you think, then,” she said, “that if the subjects have the power, they may allowably resist their rulers?”
“Indeed, if the rulers exceed their bounds, then by all means they should be resisted, and by power, if necessary.” His beard jerked up and down as his mouth moved.
She stared at him.
“After all,” he continued, “it is a commandment to honour one’s father and mother, and the duty to the ruler follows in that wise. It is of the same case. But if a father should fall into a frenzy, or become mad, so that he should try to do violence upon his children, are not the children bound to arise, restrain the father, and take away his weapons—in order to prevent him from dishonouring himself by killing his children? Do you think God will be displeased with them for preventing their father from committing a great wickedness? It is even so, Madam, with rulers who would murder their subjects, who are children of God. Their blind zeal is but a very mad frenzy. Therefore to take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into prison, until they be brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedience against rulers, but true obedience, because it agrees with the will of God.”
Take the sword from them … bind their hands … cast them into prison … was this his plan for her? No matter what she did, was deposition and imprisonment her ultimate destination, should Knox have his way?
She was not aware that many moments had passed, until James said, “What has offended you, Madam?”
She brought herself back to the matter at hand. “Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you and not me, and shall do as they please, and not what I command. And so must I be subject to them, and not they to me.” She appealed to Knox, standing before her: “Answer this charge.”
“God forbid,” he said, “that ever I take it upon me to set subjects at liberty to do what pleases them. But my desire is that both rulers and subjects obey God. And your duty is to be a foster mother to His Kirk, and a nurse to His people.”
So she was to sponsor his Reformed Kirk?
“It is not the church I will nourish,” she said. “I will defend the Church of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Church of God.”
“Your will, Madam, is no reason,” he said, in a booming voice that could be heard beyond the chambers by all the eavesdroppers and even out in the forecourt, as the windows were open. “Neither does your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. Why, the Jews at the time of the crucifixion of Christ had not perverted the law of Moses as far as the Church of Rome has that of the Apostles!”
He did not frighten or convince her. His booming voice, his narrowed eyes were simply a device he used, as some men rode horses; she could perceive that well enough. “My conscience holds it not so,” she replied quietly. She knew what she knew, and knew it from the heart.
“Conscience, Madam, requires knowledge. And I fear that right knowledge you have not.” He lifted his head like a great stag.
“But I have both heard and read, concerning the matter.” And prayed, she thought.
“So, Madam, did the people who crucified Jesus. They had read both the law and the prophets, but they had interpreted it after their own manner. H
ave you ever heard anyone teach besides the official churchmen permitted by the Pope and his Cardinals?”
Without waiting for her reply—for he knew it already—he said, “The ignorant Papist cannot patiently reason, and the crafty Papist will never submit to a hearing to be judged. For they know they cannot sustain any argument, except by the fire and sword of repression, and by setting up their own laws.”
She felt weary of him. He could not understand her at all: not her feelings nor her position nor her calling. All he wanted was to have a Scriptural-quote duel, and stun her with his memory, no doubt prodigious. There was higher knowledge than that, mystical knowledge and knowledge of the heart; but it was beyond words, by its very nature.
He was blathering on with another long Scriptural analogy.
“You are over-knowledgeable for me,” she said. “But were my teachers here, they would be well able to dispute with you.” We have pedantic exhibitionists, too, she thought.
“Madam! Would to God the learnedest Papist in Europe, he whom you would believe absolutely, were here. When he was convinced of the truth, then you would follow!”
This was nonsense. Imagine the Abbess Renée being converted by Master Knox! Or her Uncle Cardinal!
Smiling at Knox, she stood up. The interview was over.
Next time you stir up my subjects to disobedience and disorder, I may banish you, she thought. I am not afraid of you; you are just a man, she kept repeating to herself. She felt a great wave of relief pass through her. It was over.
* * *
Late that night, although his energy was low—for such a confrontation and opportunity to witness drained him mightily—he felt it obligatory to write his impression of the Queen of Scots:
If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgement faileth me. In communication with her, I espied such craft as I have not found in such age.
This report must be dispatched immediately to all his spiritual and political colleagues, especially to his brethren in the English court.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 26