Outside, the snow was still gently falling, falling in the opalescent haze of a February afternoon. It had been a lazy, enclosed, wintery Sunday. Mass had been celebrated as usual, with Riccio singing, and then there had been a large midday meal, following which everyone had drifted back into the Queen’s chamber to read, play cards, and daydream beside the fire. Her lutenists and viola players entertained for an hour, and Mary truly thought this the sort of Sabbath the Creator had had in mind when He commanded rest upon the seventh day.
But then Riccio, with his ever-busy mind, which never took a Sabbath, began asking questions. “Lord Bothwell, where are his lands?” “How far north are the Earl of Huntly’s lands?” At length she had taken down one of her scrolls—now that her library was all unpacked—and bidden him study the geography of Scotland.
Now his dark head was bent over the part of the map showing the Lothian region. “Crichton. Is that where the wedding took place? Is that in the midst of the Bothwell territory?”
Last month, Bothwell’s sister Janet had married one of Mary’s half brothers, Lord John Stewart. Mary herself had attended the ceremony, and even spent the night in the castle. She had been pleased with the match, for Lord John, happy and free-spirited as a child, had turned into a wild young man. She hoped that marriage would calm him down.
“Yes. His ancestral lands lie in that region.”
“Why is he so reckless?” Riccio asked bluntly. He had never seen Bothwell, who had been employed in the Borders and did not come to court. Mary had invited him to come at the time of François’s requiem, but he had returned the mourning cloth she had sent and said he could not be there, without giving a reason.
“Do you refer to the escapade with Alison Craig?” asked Mary.
“What else?”
“Ah, they were young—”
“Perhaps the Marquis d’Elboeuf was, but Lord John and Bothwell were not.”
Mary laughed. “Men will be men.”
“From what I understand, it was not men being men, but a deliberate insult against the Hamilton family. To try to visit Hamilton’s mistress—”
The Hamiltons. Next in line to the throne. Although merely tepidly Protestant, they had withheld their allegiance to Mary until several months after her return, only sheepishly making their way down to Edinburgh around Christmastime. There were really two Hamiltons to be reckoned with: the father, Duke of Châtelherault, who was timid but hardly evil, and his son, “young Arran,” who was reputedly unstable in his wits. No wonder Queen Elizabeth had rejected his suit!
Bothwell had a long-standing family quarrel with the Hamiltons, as Mary understood it, one of those typically Scottish feuds that was handed down over the generations.
“It was a combination of men being men and trying to embarrass young Arran,” Mary explained. “Arran makes himself out to be as holy as John Knox, yet he’s availed himself of a married woman. So Bothwell and my brother and my uncle set out to show the world what he was about.”
“Enjoying themselves in the process,” said Riccio.
“Well, that is all over now,” said Mary. “The Hamiltons came out to seek revenge, but John Knox reconciled the parties.” Poor Bothwell—to be lectured to by John Knox! It was a worse punishment than an honest sword-thrust.
Bothwell had seemed in high enough spirits at his sister’s wedding since then, proud to be able to provide a festivity that included his Borderers’ bounty for a feast—eighteen hundred wild does and roes, rabbits, partridges, plovers, moorfowl, wild geese, wild duck and drake, and even hedgehog—and afterwards, celebratory sport down in the bracken-grown meadow by the River Tyne.
Riccio stabbed his finger at a large section of the map showing a region of Scotland that was shaped like a bulge on the upper right side. “This section—it is the lands of the Earl of Huntly?” he asked.
“Yes. The Gordons control that land,” said Mary. She would like to see it, to go beyond the nearby lands she had visited.
Just then Madame Rallay told her that Lord James wished to see her.
On the Sabbath? Mary hastily rolled up the map and told Riccio to retire to the outer chamber. But before he could leave, James entered the room. Riccio scurried out, almost running between his legs. James stared after him in distaste. Then he turned to Mary, and she could see that he was genuinely disturbed.
“Forgive me,” he said, “for coming to you today. But there has been such disturbing news.…” He shook his head and then closed his eyes as if trying to gain control of himself. Finally, after several deep breaths, he said, “A plot has been revealed! Bothwell has urged young Arran to kidnap you and take you as a prisoner to Dumbarton Castle, there to—to—” Lord James choked.
Mary burst out laughing, a frightened laugh. Then she said, “How do you know this?”
“Arran confessed it to John Knox! And then he wrote it to Randolph, the English ambassador.”
“But … where is he now?”
“He and Bothwell have been taken into custody,” said Lord James. “Arran is being held at his father’s castle, and Bothwell is under house arrest at Crichton.”
“Then there is no danger?” Mary felt herself relax.
“Not for now. But they must be examined before the Privy Council,” said Lord James.
Why was he so excited, if the danger was past? Mary said, “Of course.” Poor James was still clenching his jaw. “Dear brother, pray sit down, take some refreshment. We can talk. We have little opportunity these days, there is so much state business.” She rang her little handbell and Madame Rallay appeared. “Have some cakes and drinks brought in,” she told her. “And ask my musicians—”
“No! No music!” said James quickly.
How foolish of her. Of course, no music on the Sabbath for him. “No music,” Mary agreed.
James took a seat on one of her little ebony chairs and stuck his hands out before the fire. “You are right, dear sister. We need some time together, apart from the council and other duties.” He sighed. “How like you to remember that.”
“Soon you are to be a married man, and then your wife can remember it,” she said. “You need someone to look after you, James.”
Lord James was to be married in only two weeks, to Lady Agnes Keith. “Yes, it is about time,” he finally said. “I am almost thirty.”
“One by one the bachelors fall,” said Mary. “First Lord John, now you. Next Bothwell or Argyll or Arran?”
“Next it should be you.” James was looking at her with concern. Just then she noticed that he was wearing a miniature pinned to his doublet, of a man whose mouth was like his own.
“Who is that?” she asked, pointing at it.
He started and tried to cover it up, as if he had not realized he was wearing it. “Why, it is—the King, our father!” He acted embarrassed.
“It is a fine study,” she said. There was something vaguely familiar about it. She compared the faces and realized how much fleshier and broader her brother’s was than the King’s. Her own was closer to the King’s shape.
“Will you not consider marriage, dear sister?”
“You should wait until you have sampled it yourself before you urge it on others,” she replied. Why was he so persistent?
“But seriously, have you given any thought to it? I know that at one time you were thinking of Don Carlos of Spain—”
“I have no appetite for children,” she said.
Just then Madame Rallay entered, setting down a tray of heated, frothy milk caudle, and some tarts made with orange rind. The conversation was suspended.
“But his domains—”
“I do not care to go to Spain,” she said.
“What of the Archduke Charles of Austria?”
She burst out giggling. “They say he has an enormous head!”
“Well, you seem not to mind weird-looking people. Riccio is in your chambers enough, enjoying your company!” Lord James said indignantly.
“He is in my outer chambers, not
my inner.” Mary could not stop herself laughing, although she knew it annoyed James.
“There is King Erik of Sweden,” he went on.
“He is writing love letters to Queen Elizabeth just now. When she has rejected him, then I will consider him.”
“Dear sister, what will satisfy you? ‘It is not right for man to be alone—’”
“Always Scripture! Can you not speak your own mind unaided?” She laughed. “Will you create an ‘help meet for me,’ then? Make him spring full-formed from my forehead, as Minerva came from Zeus—”
“You are so silly, sister!” But he said it kindly. “How do you imagine this fanciful mate to be?”
“Tall, like me. I’ve hardly met a man my height, it would be a delightful novelty. Writes poetry. Sings. Rides. Loves me.” She was enjoying making him up.
“Of what complexion?”
“I care not.”
“Is he athletic?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Learned?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Of royal blood?”
“But of course!”
“Handsome?”
“It goes without saying.”
“My dear sister, I fear you will never find him.”
“Perhaps that is why nuns become the brides of Christ. There is no one on earth like that.”
“That way is not permitted you.”
“Yes.” She had known that, at St. Pierre’s. “My mate, I fear, will be altogether of this earth.” She watched James sipping his drink. Some of the milk clung to his lips. “Now, as to this business with Bothwell and Arran…”
* * *
Mary took her place at the head of the Privy Council. Already waiting, looking as if they were to attend a funeral, were all six of the inner circle: Lord James, Maitland, Morton, Huntly, Kirkcaldy, Erskine. The seventh, Lord Bothwell, was to be brought in to answer the charges hurled at him by the noblest blood of the land, young Arran.
“You may bring in the men,” Mary told the guards, and within a moment or two, from separate doors, Bothwell and Arran entered, stopped, and glared at one another.
“Come closer, and let us hear what you have to say,” said Mary in a loud voice.
Arran, distrust showing in his eyes, edged near to the chair of state.
He would have been handsome, but his face had that bloated, drained look of someone who has been ill. His colouring was bad; he was flushed where he should have been pale, and blanched where he should have been flushed.
Bothwell walked forward as though he were so disgusted he could barely stand to be in the same room as everyone else—including the Queen. She noticed that he wore his riding clothes; he had not seen fit to put on the proud attire that she had seen him in at the wedding.
“James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, explain yourself to us and to the council here present,” Mary said.
Arran pointed a shaking finger at Bothwell. “He’s a traitor! He tried to lead me into treason! He wanted me to waylay you, to kill Lord James and Maitland, to take you captive—”
“He’s stark raving mad,” said Bothwell calmly. “This is all his sick fancy. You know he takes it of his mother; she has been mad for years.”
Mary saw Morton start as if he had been bitten. He ran a pudgy hand through his wiry red hair. Then she remembered: Morton’s wife was the sister of Arran’s mother, and they said she was insane, too, that Morton kept her locked up while he pursued other women.…
“Mad? Mad?” cried Arran. “No, I’m not mad! He whispered it in my ear, he thought no one would ever know!”
“I tell you he’s mad,” said Bothwell. He did not seem afraid for his life, his station, or his reputation. He merely stood calmly, as if he were a long-suffering victim.
“Alas, I must verify that,” said Kirkcaldy. The young soldier stood up, obviously hating what he had to do. “He had escaped from confinement at his father’s home and came to me, half naked, in the middle of the night. Then the spell came upon him, and he cried out about witches and devils attacking him. Then he—” Kirkcaldy stopped, ashamed. “He imagined himself to be the Queen’s husband and in bed with her.”
There were sharp intakes of breath all around, except for Bothwell, who let out a hoot of laughter.
“Isn’t she? Isn’t she?” Arran cried plaintively, and ran toward Mary. A guard jumped into action and grabbed him.
“Take him to Edinburgh Castle,” Lord James said decisively, before Mary could say anything.
“Yes,” she said. “I order that he be taken there.”
When the guards had led Arran away, Bothwell said, “I am free to go?” Every muscle in his body showed that he was already moving in his mind.
“No,” said Lord James. “There are yet questions we need to ask you. Arran may be mad, but who is to say that something you said was not the basis of it? Even a madman needs seeds planted in his mind. Now, what was it you advocated?”
Bothwell was astonished. “Nothing! I advocated nothing!”
“Why were you in touch with Randolph?” Maitland suddenly asked.
Mary watched Maitland as he stared intently at Bothwell. His genial demeanour had been replaced by something from the Inquisition.
“Perhaps you have been in league with the English,” Erskine suggested.
Bothwell looked incredulous. “You must know that I am proud of the fact that I have never been in league with any foreign power.”
“Proud? But ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,’” Lord James intoned. “Perhaps your very pride has drawn you into sin!”
“I am sure that, being a man, I am a sinner, but in a general, rather than a particular, sense,” said Bothwell. His manner had changed a little, Mary noticed. He now seemed more truculent and ready for combat. “Try me, then, in a court of law. If no fault be found in me, acquit me and let me go.”
“But we cannot acquit you,” said Maitland.
“What do you mean?” Mary demanded. “Of course he is entitled to a trial!”
“But not an acquittal,” Maitland said smoothly. “Do you not understand? An acquittal of Bothwell would then convict Arran of false accusation, making him a traitor deserving of death. Arran is the next blood to the throne; it would not be seemly. It would make of us a laughingstock among nations.”
“Let me go!” roared Bothwell. If he had had a sword, Mary knew he would have drawn it. Guards immediately grabbed his arms and pinned them behind his back.
“Then we shall not try him,” said Mary slowly. “For now I remember the maxim of Livy: Hominem improbum non accusari tutius est, quam absolvi. That is, not to try someone suspected of something is better policy than to acquit him.”
“There is a letter just arrived from Queen Elizabeth pleading for him,” said Lord James. “How did she know of all this, if he had not been in league with Randolph?”
Had Bothwell been all the deceitful things he had so stoutly claimed not to be? Mary felt a great, flooding disappointment.
“I have been good to you,” she finally said to Bothwell. “And is this how you repay me?”
“Is what how I repay you? Lord James is twisting the facts, poisoning your mind to discredit me!”
“I pray you, remove to Edinburgh Castle. Your temper is growing as distracted as Arran’s,” Mary said. She would question him later, in private, away from this tribunal.
“You are faithless, like all monarchs!” cried Bothwell. “To think I was so deceived in you!”
“Obey the Queen!” Lord James had risen and he roared out the order. The guards hustled Bothwell from the room.
“I well see there is no justice here!” said Huntly, gathering up his papers and following in Bothwell’s wake.
XII
Maitland pulled his cap down more tightly over his ears, and wrapped the end of his mantle over his head. The March wind, coming off the sea here at St. Andrews, was piercing. And to think they would have to stay out here for hours! And all for an
ostensible religious ceremony. Not for the first time, Maitland wondered why the Lord required His followers to be uncomfortable, to torture themselves in His name. Assuming He did require it, that is …
“Knox will be here soon,” said Lord James. The chill made his face look pinched.
“Good,” muttered Maitland, all the while thinking, Bad. Knox would complicate things. But then, he was needed to give colour to their reason for being there: to honour the anniversary of the martyrdom of George Wishart.
“Isn’t that similar to celebrating the saints’ days?” Maitland had asked innocently, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
Morton had shrugged. He did not care to complicate his mind with any such technicalities. “Just be there,” he had said.
And so Maitland was there, along with Erskine, Lindsay, Ruthven, and Kirkcaldy of Grange, pacing before the walls of the castle, helping to pile on the wood for the bonfire they would light—none too soon—and watching to see if Archbishop Hamilton was inside the castle. Hamilton, a bastard member of the clan, had remained a Catholic, although he was said to be “everything by turns and nothing long.” He had taken over Cardinal Beaton’s old post, and might even now be watching them.
Kirkcaldy pointed up to the walls of the castle. The whistling wind all but drowned out his words, as the castle was situated almost overhanging the sea. “To think we held out there for a year!” Pride was plain in him.
“Was not the captivity a brutal punishment?” Maitland asked. Kirkcaldy had been one of those taken away by the French, although his high birth meant that he was merely imprisoned, rather than becoming a galley slave like Knox.
“Captivity is bitter,” said Kirkcaldy. “Yes, it is.”
Erskine walked over to them, bundled up so that he resembled an upright bear. “Knox is here,” he said.
Maitland saw the Reformer, still on horseback, gesturing to Lord James. But Knox dismounted and came over to them, his cloak, heavy as it was, lifted behind him by the ocean wind. He was rubbing his gloveless hands together, his Bible tucked under one arm.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 28