Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

by Margaret George

  * * *

  He did not know how long he sat there or how much he drank. He only knew that he was hearing knocking. Someone was intruding! He shook his head to clear it; to his disappointment the thick, muffling feeling had begun to thin out and he no longer felt as if he were floating.

  “A moment.” He stood up and fastened his doublet. “A moment.” He stumbled across the room and flung open the door.

  Who was it? He could barely see in the dim light.

  “I beg your pardon for disturbing you,” a voice was saying. “And evidently I have disturbed you.”

  Lord James! Darnley clutched at his doublet. It was buttoned wrong. “Not at all,” he said, wondering if he sounded normal. He listened to the tone of his own voice. “Pray come in.”

  He turned and expected James to follow. But from the doorway he heard him say, “I see you are in no condition to talk.” The door slammed.

  * * *

  The next morning was Sunday, and in the freedom of her own castle, Mary ordered mass to be said in the Chapel Royal. As it was already the fourth Sunday of Lent, a time allowed for brief relaxation of the Lenten rigours, rose-coloured vestments were worn instead of purple, and there was a celebratory air to the service. The Catholics in the group attended, while the Protestants stayed in their quarters, either sleeping or reading Scripture. Mary did not know and would never presume to inquire.

  As was customary, a dinner would follow in the Great Hall, and then they would go hawking. The day was fine and clear, and promised good riding if the ground was not too muddy from recent rains. But before Mary and her group had reached the entrance of the Great Hall, they encountered the Lord James and all his party saddling up.

  “We are not yet ready for the hawking,” said Mary. “The falconers will not be prepared. Pray you, wait a bit.”

  “We are not interested in hawking,” said James. “We feel these Popish ceremonies in the Chapel Royal to be insufferable. We cannot remain here.”

  “You were not even present, so how can you have found them ‘insufferable,’ brother? Perhaps you ought to have attended. There were words spoken that might have comforted you. And when you say ‘we,’ do you mean yourself in the royal sense? If not, whom do you mean?”

  James straightened in the saddle. “I mean myself and my attendants. Of course I do not mean the royal we.”

  “I see.” She paused a long while. “I am grieved to see that you cannot remain,” she finally said. “Within these walls we played as children and came to know each other. In that sense they are sacred. Must you part from me now?”

  She went over to him and, touching his saddle, laid her hands upon it and looked up at him. From that angle, his chin looked as heavy and immovable as the outer defenceworks of the castle.

  “You drive me away,” he said, jerking the reins of the horse and wheeling around, so that she lost her grip on the saddle and almost fell. “You and your folly. The mass is the least of it.”

  His words made no sense.

  “The people you choose to love,” he finally said, urging his horse forward. The animal trotted off toward the guard towers.

  * * *

  With so few to dine, Mary abruptly ordered the dinner to be served in the Queen’s Presence Chamber instead of the Great Hall. The reduced company was presented with dishes of smothered rabbit, capon in lemon sauce, boiled onions, and sweet cubes of jellied milk. Sunlight streamed into the room, filling it with light.

  “The Lord James and some others have departed,” Mary announced. “Alas, they could not stay. Methinks it is an April Fool, this being April first, and they having no cause of displeasure. Nonetheless we will eat, hawk, and hunt as planned. They will doubtless rejoin us on the morrow.”

  A wide grin spread across Riccio’s face. “Then let us propose a toast for their safe journey to … wherever it may be,” he said, raising his goblet. The thin April sunshine caught the rubies and sapphires along its rim.

  Afterwards, as they were making their way across the upper courtyard toward the palace, Mary turned to Darnley and said, “Now we will have until dark to hawk. All is prepared.” She had meant to turn back to speak to the others, but the frown on Darnley’s face stopped her.

  “I do not feel well,” he said. “My head hurts.”

  In walking across the courtyard, Darnley’s head throbbed with each jarring step, and by the time he reached the palace, only a short distance away, it had increased to such a pitch that he had to hold his head in his hands. He rushed into his bedroom and fell on his gigantic bed, groaning. Taylor, his servant, pulled off his boots and undressed him. By evening he was delirious.

  “It is the ague,” said Bourgoing, Mary’s physician from childhood, and a friend as well. “In someone of his age, it is not of concern. He will sweat and dream and toss and sleep. When he awakens, he will remember nothing. It is us, the watchers, who will be tired.”

  * * *

  Darnley lay fevered for several days and then, abruptly, the fever departed. He sat up and ordered his favourite soup, sorrel with figs, and the cooks had to stir round to locate a recipe for it. The musicians came and played in his chambers, and Mary visited him, pleased to find him well. But before morning he felt worse, and could retain no food.

  Mary sent Bourgoing to him straightway, and the French physician at length emerged from the chambers shaking his head.

  “Measles,” he said. “The Lord Darnley has taken measles, in the footsteps of the ague.”

  * * *

  Darnley lay in the great royal bed in a trough of sweat. He was drowning in water that seemed to come both from within and without him. He was oozing, and surrounded by an oozing bog. He did not feel the valets de chambre lift him and change the linen and fluff the mattress and place him once again on dry cloth. His fever mounted higher and all he felt was a hot buzz in his head, and intensely rendered images behind his closed eyelids. Then there would come a soft assurance, a presence. It seemed familiar. But he could not know. Who was it?

  “Monsieur Bourgoing, he does not know me,” said Mary, weary after having kept vigil all night by Darnley’s bedside.

  “He knows you in his dreams,” the physician said. “But you must rest. Why do you persist in this vigil?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps because it is the first vigil I am honoured to be given … since the King. King François.”

  “Sickbeds are not an honour, but a cross.”

  “I love Darnley!” she burst out. “Pray tell me he will not die!”

  Bourgoing looked surprised. “A young man will not die of measles. Unless he harbours some other debilitation, like syphilis, or is unusually weak.”

  * * *

  Darnley lay hacking and coughing, each cough racking his thin body and searing his already raw throat. Inside his mouth were white eruptions, and all the tissue was red and swollen around them, making it impossible to eat, although he kept vomiting from his withered and empty stomach. Each time the muscles contracted, it felt like bleeding paper being ripped asunder. His eyes were so sensitive to light that all the windows had to be shaded, and no candle could burn near his bed, lest it cause him stabbing pain.

  In the darkness Mary sat by him, watching over him like a delicate Egyptian goddess standing guard over a Pharaoh’s tomb. Whenever she reached out to touch him, his skin was dry and felt as hot as one of the chaufrettes, the silver footwarmers she used here in the winter. François had never been as hot as this. Could someone be this hot and live?

  Mary would look at his shrunken body—he had lost so much weight—and feel him slipping away from her, and she prayed for hours, sitting on a stool beside him. In the dim light he already seemed to be in a sepulchre, and his pale face and draped body to be that of a tomb effigy carved in alabaster.

  She could not lose him; she could not lose to death a second time.

  If I could take your place, she thought, lie down in this spot, and wrestle with the abhorred shade when he steals into the chamber, thin
king to have an easy victory. I’d grab and twist his bony fingers, break them off, hear them snap, see the pieces fall on the floor.

  Darnley groaned and rolled over.

  No, he shall not have you! Death will have to meet and overpower me here, disarm your gatekeeper. He is no match for me, she promised, wiping his brow in cool, violet-scented water.

  * * *

  On the sixth day Darnley broke out in red spots on his face and neck. The spots spread rapidly to the other parts of his body, and his temperature fell. His eyes fluttered open and he saw Mary for the first time.

  “How … long have you been here?” His voice was a croak.

  “Through the whole illness,” she said

  He smiled a crooked smile. “How long have I been ill?”

  “Since Sunday mass on Laetare Sunday. Tomorrow is Passion Sunday.”

  He shrugged. “I know not these terms.”

  A good Catholic should. “Almost two weeks.”

  He rolled his eyes—still bloodshot. “So long.”

  “A short time for two severe illnesses. A weaker man could not have recovered.”

  “I will never recover,” he whispered. He raised his hand, so thin it looked like a translucent web. “I can barely lift it.”

  Mary took his hand in hers, and hers was the thicker and stronger. She twined the fingers together. “Together we are strong,” she said. “Nothing can separate us.”

  * * *

  “Is she still closeted with him?” asked Knox, drawing aside the Lord James after the Sunday service at St. Giles. He had preached on life in the midst of death, and death in the midst of life: a thorny concept of joy and resignation. It had gone confusingly well.

  “So they say.” James nodded and smiled at the other worshippers filing out, particularly the Lords of the Congregation, who had all dutifully attended this windy April day. Now they would walk down the Canongate, enjoying the brisk air and swirling their mantles, on their way home to their Sunday dinners. “Young Darnley took the measles on the heels of the ague and almost left this world. An ignominious end to an ignominious boy.” James smiled and lifted his hand. “Good day, my lady.” Jean, Countess of Argyll, nodded. “He is altogether insufferable.”

  “How so?” Knox spread his hands in greeting. “My Lord of the Byres.” He bowed to Lord Lindsay.

  “He is vain, empty-headed, arrogant, and touchy. Oh, and he dislikes the Bible.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes. I overheard him say as much on the way to Stirling.”

  The church was emptying out, and Knox returned to the pulpit to gather his notes and close the Bible there. He pointed to the hourglass on its stand before the pulpit.

  “He stole the hourglass and replaced it with this half-hour glass,” he said. “That is the level of his ingenuity. As if I cannot turn it twice.”

  James shook his head. “Precisely.”

  “The hourglass he took was one Calvin had given me,” said Knox. “It was unkind of him to take it. There cannot be another.” Calvin had died a few months earlier.

  “He plays these childish pranks,” said James. “He is but a spoiled baby, a mother’s boy. And his mother will be wild with excitement when she learns that the Queen has fallen in love with him. Why, Darnley’s mother has been scheming for him since he was born. You know she was even sent to the Tower once for being a bit too eager to advance his ‘royal claims.’ Now her dreams are fulfilled.” Lord James paused. “And I think he may have a tendency to depravity.”

  “He is not old enough for that. Thoughtlessness and selfishness are the first steps on that road. But ’tis a long walk until one reaches depravity.” Knox ran his hand over the Bible and then reverently draped its satin cover over it.

  “He is farther along it than one would imagine,” said James.

  “Come home with me,” said Knox, putting his hand on James’s shoulder. “Dine with me this Sabbath.”

  * * *

  “And so you left after that first mass, the one with all the pink vestments?” asked Knox, as they sat in his parlour after the meal of stuffed cod and turnips and cabbage. Knox’s new wife, Margaret Stewart, a distant cousin of both Lord James and the Queen, had withdrawn to leave them alone after bringing in a plate of figs and a pitcher of claret. She was pretty and amiable, but little given to chatter.

  “Yes. Being safely out of Edinburgh, she was giving full rein to the Popish ceremonies. There was incense, chanting”—he saw Knox’s eyebrows rising—“I could hear it clear across the courtyard! So I spoke my objections and left. For the rest, they are still there.”

  “Riccio, too?”

  “Need you ask?”

  “She has sent Maitland to Elizabeth to ask her blessings on the marriage. Oh—you did not know?” Knox slowly stirred the sugar into his red wine.

  “No. I did not.”

  “He left a week ago. What will you do when this marriage comes about? What will Scotland do, with such a king?” He sipped the wine, then abruptly banged the goblet down. “We do not deserve this! Nay, we’ve earned the right to a decent king! It is not to be borne! And we won’t bear it!”

  “You have just answered your own question. I fear Henry, Lord Darnley, cannot have long life amongst us. And as for his not being depraved—what else can you say of someone who shuts himself up in his room and drinks? I saw him!”

  “Drinking alone? You are sure of this?” Knox’s eyes were boring into James’s.

  “Indeed. He reeked of whisky, his doublet was undone and rumpled, and he could scarcely talk. And all the while the Queen was dreaming sweet dreams about him in her chamber, no doubt!”

  Knox hated to imagine it. “A pity.”

  James nodded. “Most of the time, she is with him. She lived there during his illness, so I heard. Her continual presence in his bedchamber night and day gives scandal.”

  “She remains there even after he has recovered?” Knox shook his head. “The shame of it! It is the scandal of David and Bathsheba!” He paused. “Speaking of David, which brings to mind swords, did you hear that Bothwell has left France, where he has been ever since he escaped from Edinburgh Castle, and is even now on his way back to Scotland?” Once again Knox’s news made Lord James start.

  “That is all we need!” he cried. “I thought we were rid of him forever!”

  “He’s a good enough Protestant,” said Knox, watching James’s face.

  “He’s not good for anything, except brawling, whoring, and ambushing.”

  “And keeping order in the Borders,” Knox reminded him.

  “Yes, I grant that.” James leaned back in his chair and hooked one arm over its back. “Let us keep him there, then. Rounding up and hanging those who steal sheep and reive by the full moon.”

  * * *

  They brought in the May in the early dawn, Mary and her Marys, Riccio and Darnley. They left Stirling Castle just as the sky was lightening in the windows in Darnley’s bedchamber, which lay in the eastern range of the palace. The air was as chill and calm as an icy lake, and it seemed impossible that warm weather would ever come again. But Maypoles were being decorated in the villages as people prepared to honour spring to force her arrival. Robin Hood and Maid Marian, forbidden in Edinburgh by the Kirk, would strut and play openly all day in the country, and lead the games of skill. A waning half moon was fading out against the growing light and soon would be setting, old and outworn.

  “To the forest, to cut the branches,” said Mary, touching spurs to her horse’s flanks. She hoped some early buds would be out, lest they return with only bare sticks. She pulled her grey mantle closer about her.

  But there were many birch and rowan trees, vines of eglantine, and hedges of hawthorn that had already opened their leaf buds and showed miniature, sticky, translucent little leaves, shining on the branches like dew. And in the meadows, violets and snowdrops were blooming. Mary stopped and let her horse nibble the tender new grass while she picked the little flowers and wove a chaplet with
them.

  “Here, let me,” said Darnley, taking it from her. He placed it on her head, admiring the way the little starry wildflowers became her. “No amethysts or diamonds could be fairer,” he said. “No Queen of the May could ever be more beautiful than you, wearing the flowers of the meadow.” He leaned over and kissed her. “This moment is privileged,” he said in a hushed tone. “I am happier than I have ever been.” He looked around the meadow, watched the light on the dew, saw a small dun rabbit waiting for him to move. “Stay, moment. Never change or leave.” He looked into her eyes.

  “How solemn you are,” she said, smiling. She moved her left hand and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. The rabbit started and bounded away.

  “Now you have ruined it,” he said. “The perfect moment. It is gone.”

  “Only statues cannot move,” she finally said. “And things move around them, and moss grows on them, and ice covers them, and at last they themselves move—topple over or crumble. There’s no help for it, I fear.” She took a small vine of myrtle she had cut; its bright periwinkle flowers glowed against the shiny dark oval leaves. “Here’s a crown for you,” she said, twining it around his head. “Now you are King of the May, king of the perfect moment.”

  “To the Queen:

  Be governor both good and gracious;

  Be loyal and lovesome to thy lieges all;

  Be large of freedom and of nothing desirous;

  Be just to the pure for anything may befall;

  Be firm of faith and constant as a wall.…”

  he recited. “I wrote it for you. There is more.”

  “I am touched,” she said. “Pray walk with me and recite the rest. But not if it is dolorous. I will hear only happy things today.”

  * * *

  When the company returned from the Maying, wearing their garlands and playing the horn and tabor, they festooned the Great Hall with the flowering branches and held the holiday feast. Afterwards they went their ways to their chambers to rest; they had been up for many hours.