Afterwards, at the banquet at Holyrood in which Lennox was feasted, Maitland had the opportunity to seek out Lord James, who had been glaring at him all day.
“Not only did you not prevent this, you had to laud it!” he hissed.
“I was powerless to prevent it,” said Maitland. “You know that.”
Riccio and his musicians had left off playing, and the men had to turn to general conversation until the instruments could once again provide a background to cover their voices.
When the strains of “Adieu, O Desire of Delight” were struck up, Lord James said, “Now we can expect the worst! I have heard that she exhibits great curiosity about this Darnley, her cousin. Next he will be here, following his father’s trail like a puppy.”
“It could be worse. At least Darnley is Elizabeth’s subject, and not a foreigner.”
“No, it could not be worse, if she takes a fancy to him! A whole party will be created; the Lennox Stuarts will reign supreme. And there will be no place for anyone else.” Lord James looked grim. “At least not for this generation.”
“Darnley is a boy. He might prove easy to rule. Once he is here, he may suit our purposes exactly.” Maitland sighed. “One must look for opportunities,” he said. “One must always look for opportunities.”
The music had risen louder, and Mary and Melville were dancing a galliard alone on the floor. Soon Lusty and John Sempill had joined them, the dancing becoming more vigorous and abandoned. Now even Randolph and Beaton were making their way toward the others.
“I have heard reports about this ‘boy,’” said Lord James. “When he was in France, away from his mother—who rules him in all things—I heard he was not so well behaved. He has a taste for wine, too much of it, and pranks.”
“So he’s silly and rebels against his mother. What lad does not?” said Maitland. “Did you never do anything you would not want your mother to know? I’ll warrant even John Knox did.”
XVII
Henry, Lord Darnley, sat as straight as he could in the saddle and craned his neck. They were approaching the border of Scotland; soon he would be able to see his native land for the first time. The remains of the Roman wall had been left behind at Newcastle. He had looked forward to seeing it—had even composed a poem in advance about it, a fine one too—but the wall had proved disappointing, just a moss-covered mound wrapped in mist. Perhaps once it had been mighty, had served as some sort of barrier, but now it could not stop even a grazing flock of sheep from passing to and fro. Nonetheless he whispered the refrain from his poem as he and his five attendants passed through the gap:
“Hold fast thy guarded mission,
Though the fates assail thee;
Thou hast the charge that we would wish on
To stand, to keep, and not to flee.”
From the time he was a child he had heard stories of the fabled wall, built to keep the barbarians at bay. Now the wall lay engulfed in civilisation, and barbarism had been pushed farther north—north to Scotland, where he was going, although farther north than Edinburgh and Glasgow and Stirling.
There had been jolly times on the road since he had left court—stopping at inns to sport, and even drink too much. With each flagon he had toasted his mother, who customarily oversaw every morsel he ate, every costume he wore, every letter he wrote.
“Here’s to you, Mother dear, Mother most watchful, Mother most grave,” he cried that first day out, lifting his tankard. Then he giggled and rattled off, “Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother inviolate, Mother undefiled, Mother most amiable, Mother most admirable, Mother of good counsel, Mirror of Wisdom, cause of our joy—well, that’s true, she arranged all this. And now, I’m a young man going off to seek his fortune. Spiritual vessel, singular vessel of devotion, Mystical Rose”—he laughed uproariously at the image of his stout mother as a mystical rose—“Gate of Heaven, Morning Star—”
“Watch your tongue, you sotten puppy!” cried a burly man seated nearby. “If you insult the Virgin once more—”
“Insult the Virgin?” asked Darnley. “I am speaking of my mother, my blessed mother, not the Blessed Mother.”
“You’re perverting the Litany to the Virgin, and we don’t take kindly to it. Be warned.” He raised a bushy, tangled eyebrow, and the eye that stared out was like a marble.
“Aye.” Darnley returned to his beer. The freedom, the freedom from her had quite gone to his head. It was that, rather than the liquor.
To be free of her at last! Of her meddling and lecturing and conniving and counselling. Our Lady of Constant Counsel. He giggled, and the man next to him gave another baleful stare.
Even as he had been standing in his bedchamber trying to remember if he had packed what was needful, she had come in and brushed his hair.
“Like a shining crown of gold,” she had said dreamily. “Make sure when you wash it you rinse it with chamomile water to keep its colour.”
“Mother!” He had clapped his hat on in disgust.
“They say she is partial to golden hair,” she said.
“I heard she preferred black hair,” he said, just to argue.
“No, I have it on the best authority—”
“Bah!” He fastened his cloak sooner than he had planned to, in order to leave. The open road beckoned, the high road to freedom. What mattered what waited in Scotland? Its most compelling charm lay in the fact that his mother was forbidden to enter. He could go where she could not follow.
* * *
As a result, he had not thought enough about Scotland itself; it had been an escape rather than an entity or reality in itself. And now that reality was lurking just a few miles away, and he felt ignorant and unprepared.
Why did I not read more about it, study more? he bewailed as they approached Berwick and the border.
Because she assailed me so constantly I had no leisure or privacy, he answered himself. But it was no comfort.
They passed through Berwick, the border city that had once been Scottish but had been won by the English in 1482 and remained in their hands. The Earl of Bedford, watchdog for the area, greeted them ceremonially and then escorted them to the very border itself, where the Lord James and Maitland and a company of horsemen received them.
“In the name of Her Majesty Queen Mary, we bid you welcome to Scotland,” said Lord James.
His speech was perfect London English, and Darnley was disappointed.
“You sound like Englishmen,” he said.
“I’ th’ name o’ Her Majesty the Queen, we bid ye welcome tae Scotland,” said James. “Ken ye this better?”
Darnley laughed. “They are almost two separate tongues, then.”
“Twa leids,” confirmed James.
And I have not learned it! thought Darnley with a grey feeling. They will be able to talk, and I not understand.
“I will learn,” he promised. “For it is the language of my family.”
“Ye are tae bide i’ Holyrood for a space,” said James. “An’ tak yer ease at Edinburgh. Yer faither is at Dunkeld, but will soon join ye. The Queen, she is at Wemyss Castle.”
It sounded like Dutch to Darnley, and it quickened his unease.
“Slowly, sir, slowly. I am but little learned in Scots as yet,” he said.
“Ye’d best leir quickly, then,” James advised, and his voice was cold.
XVIII
Mary shivered even in her woollen undergarments that were supposed to keep the cold at bay. They were woven of fine light wool and were close-fitting, so they would not show under regular clothes. She had had them made up in France, and if they proved satisfactory, she planned to order a trunkful both for herself and her Marys. But they offered scant protection against the peculiar, seeping wet chill of this February, which did not produce honest ice and snow, but white mists and creeping damp that left fingers stiff and made one shiver continually.
Throwing on her thickest mantle, fastening her beaver-fur hat, and pulling on her gloves, she decided to walk abo
ut the garden. Fight fire with fire, cold with cold, she thought. If I go outside, properly dressed, it may feel warmer than staying inside the cold stone rooms of Wemyss Castle. And walking will stir my sluggish blood.
She descended the spiral stone staircase of the corner turret of the old castle, and pushed open the thick iron-and-oak door into the garden. It was deserted in this dead time of year, its hedges bare, its flowerbeds covered in straw and burlap. Frost lay on the mounds of mulch and made a coating on the statuary. Cupid with his arrow, poised on one chubby foot, had ice on his rounded buttocks.
And tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, thought Mary. Poor cold lad, you’d best cover yourself.
Strange how we forget that Cupid grew up to be a handsome god. He was as beautiful as a male Venus, and Psyche fell in love with him at one glance. Instead we cling to the dimpled child instead of the man. Why is that, I wonder?
She smiled as she thought of the little celebration she had planned for her company—Valentine choosing in the traditional manner, games, tokens. The Marys would enjoy it, particularly Mary Livingston, whose suitor John Sempill was close to hand. They would marry soon, all of them. And it was time. They were all in their twenties and had already waited long enough out of deference to their mistress.
It is good that we are here out of eyesight—and spy-sight—of Knox, she thought. Wemyss Castle is not a place he’ll come, nor any of his fellows, for all it’s just across the firth from Edinburgh. He has become more vociferous of late, more demanding.
She turned down the avenue of cypresses that formed a double row in the centre of the garden. The tall, sloping green trees kept a watch over the rest of the garden, almost bidding it be silent. And silent it was; no birds sang, no noise was heard, except the chafing of the water on the rocks far below. The dash and slither of the cold sea made an icy, mournful sucking sound as it pounded and withdrew, pounded and withdrew.
Mary walked to the border of the garden, which looked down at the Firth of Forth from the very edge of the cliff. A small wall had been built along the edge to prevent accidents. But it was only waist high and a person could leap over it easily. Or be pushed.
She pulled her mantle closer and lifted its hood to cover even her hat, for the wind was fierce. It blew in from the North Sea, whipping through the funnel made by the firth with its cliffs, and kept blowing, past Linlithgow and all the way to Stirling, perhaps, where it would die down, trapped in the rising inland hills.
The sky was grey and blanketed the sun. Across the firth the hills rose gently toward Edinburgh, but the fog and mist obscured it and Mary could not see the city. Even as she watched, the fog rolled in from the North Sea, almost as if it were boiling, and it climbed up the cliffs and snaked its way into the garden, obediently following the open gravel paths, getting obstructed in the brown leafless hedges, and muffling the statue of Cupid, wrapping him in a cloudy mantle. The garden turned into a smoky sea, with just a few landmarks sticking up to provide orientation: the cypresses, the top of the sundial, the tallest topiary sculptures.
I shall be swallowed up, thought Mary, as she saw that even the tower door was now invisible. She turned to grope her way back, but suddenly she saw a movement, the only one that had occurred in the garden the entire time. Something moved in the white mist—moved, then stopped. There was a gleam of metal. But no sound; no sound at all.
She made her way in that direction, keeping to the gravel path, then following a wide one that went to the very cliff-edge of the garden, where the movement had fluttered.
The gleam of metal came again, then a clanking sound: metal against metal.
Standing on the path, looking out toward the water, was a tall man, swathed in a dark cape. His head was covered, and there was a long sword hanging from his belt. He grasped its hilt and it clanked against something metal in his costume, making a low thick sound.
He seemed taller than a mortal man, and his black cloak did not seem to move with the wind; it hung as if sculpted in stone. He did not move, either, except for his hand on his sword, and the collar of his mantle obscured his features.
She came closer, and still he did not move, and made no sound. Beyond him there was a stirring, and through the mist a pale horse’s head appeared, with eyes the colour of fallen leaves. She approached the man and touched his arm. He turned and looked at her.
He was pale and his eyes were as cold as the mist and blue-tinged. His lips were full but looked bloodless, and there was no colour in his cheeks. He was ageless, his face unlined as in youth, but somehow graven with all the knowledge of mortality.
She gave a little cry; he blinked and looked uncomfortable.
“I beg your pardon for frightening you,” he said. A smile loosened his lips and his face changed. “I was frightened myself, and waiting here to pluck up my courage.”
His horse curled back its lip and moved; the fog drifted away for a moment like smoke and revealed a pale animal with an elaborate saddle.
“What was the deed that required so much courage?” Mary asked. This young knight seemed an apparition from antiquity, perhaps even from King Arthur’s time. He fingered his sword—a great bejewelled one—with long white fingers.
“To present myself to a fair Queen,” he said.
“And why should that affright you so?”
“She did not send for me; I came hither on my father’s orders. He told me he could not leave Dunkeld for a week at least, and therefore I must go alone to present myself to her. But to presume—to just arrive—nay, it sounded better when I was far away.”
“Why—you are Henry, Lord Darnley,” she finally said.
He turned even paler as she threw back her hood.
“O Holy Mother! It is you! You are she! You are—oh forgive me, triple fool that I am!” He grabbed her gloved hand in his white ungloved one and began kissing it.
“Dear cousin,” she said, embarrassed by his embarrassment, “I have long looked for your coming.” She extracted her hand from his cold bony one. “Fret not. Is this not better than a public meeting? An exchange of civilities under the eye of all our entourages? We were both drawn here, to this dead deserted garden, for a reason … belike the same reason.”
“Yes. A wish for solitude, for reflection, for privacy.” A look of happiness sent colour into his face and at once roses bloomed in what had been a winter visage.
“Which is in scant supply for either of us,” she said. “One must take it whenever possible.” She motioned to him. “Will you come in now?”
“In a moment. Must we join others so soon? And be engulfed by them?”
She understood exactly what he meant, even though all the people here with her at Wemyss were of her choosing, and the people who made her feel most under scutiny were missing: Lord James and Maitland and even the kindly Erskine and Melville.
“If you wish.” She smiled at him, seemingly lightly, but actually she was measuring his height and revelling in the fact that his eyes looked down on hers—something few eyes had ever done. She was used to the fact that she was taller than almost everyone, did not consciously think of it, it was so incorporated into her being, as a person on land does not think of how he balances—until he goes to sea.
“Can we see Edinburgh from here?” he asked.
“On a clear day,” she said, leading him toward the lookout at the edge of the garden. “But today the mists obscure it.”
Great clouds were blowing along the water, writhing and twirling. Every few seconds a quick glimpse of the land across the water showed itself.
“Almost directly across is Leith,” she said.
“Edinburgh’s port,” he said, like a bright schoolboy. He had obviously memorized it. “And far to the left, at the tip of the landmass, is Tantallon Castle. Where my uncle the Earl of Morton welcomed my father.”
“He seemed gladdened to be allowed back into Scotland.”
“Oh, to come home is a joy beyond words. Is that not what Heaven is? ’Tis said we are not at
home upon this earth, being only strangers and aliens cast out, but eventually we return home—if we are privileged to do so. Just so it is a second joy to return to our earthly home, when we have been cast out. It is probably the greatest happiness we are afforded in this life.” His face was shining.
“But you were not cast out,” she finally said. “You have never been in Scotland before. You were born in England; you are an English subject and even first prince of the blood there.”
“But Scotland is my ancestral home.”
“But what can that mean, precisely? It cannot inform your memories, your sensibilities. Such things must be grasped on site; they cannot be passed on like a mysterious vapour.”
“Ah! You cannot understand,” he said forlornly. “I only know that I feel Scottish, that there is something in me that always leapt at the word ‘Scottish,’ that thrilled when I would discover that a poem was written by a Scot or a valiant deed at arms was done by a Scot abroad or that a hitherto seemingly ordinary person had some Scots blood. At once he would seem different, elevated. Nay, I cannot explain it.”
“I understand.” And she did. “I felt the same when I returned to Scotland. But alas, I found that although the French considered me Scots, the Scots considered me French. I have all the feelings you described, but no one would ever ascribe them to me. Even now they consider me ‘foreign,’ using religion as an excuse to do so. How absurd are the subterfuges we employ—Scotland was Catholic for a thousand years. She has been Protestant for barely five. Who then is the better Scot, the more traditional Scot, the truer Scot?”
“Yes! Yes!” he said. “It is the same in England. Our ancestral religion is suddenly pronounced traitorous. Yet Edward the Confessor and Henry V professed and defended it. How then can they still be praised as heroes?”
“By holding two contradictory creeds in their heads at the same time. ’Tis most fashionable.”
They both laughed.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 34