Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

by Margaret George

  The inner chamber—which was it? There was a small door near the tapestry of Hercules’ labours—this one the cleansing of the Augean stables—and it was slightly ajar.

  She was in there, he knew it. Now he must see her. He stretched out his arm and knocked on the door. Let what would happen, happen. He felt no fear. He had put that behind him.

  XLI

  Mary heard the soft knock on the door. She had been waiting for it, sitting rigidly in her chair; now she did not want to rise and greet him. The knocking came again, more insistent.

  She wanted to see him; she could not bear to see him. Until she actually saw him again, the memory of that night in the chapel would remain exactly as it was: perfect and glorious and completely free, free of all examination and soul-searching and apologies and promises, a godly surprise and gift.

  I wish I might never see him again; I wish I had died that night, died the second I got back to my bed, she thought.

  She had hurried across the courtyard in the falling snow, soaking her shoes. Her feet would have been numb, perhaps had been numb, but she had not noticed. She had rushed into her own private chamber, not even speaking to Madame Rallay or Mary Seton, and closed the door. Then she had lain down, completely happy, and spent the night in reverie.

  The next few days, with all their festivities, had passed for her as if she were in a trance. She saw Darnley passing down the steep path into town, probably to drink, but it mattered not. She even glimpsed Archibald Douglas skulking across the courtyard. She entertained Sir Christopher Hatton and thought, idly, how attractive he was, and wondered if Elizabeth fancied him. Every day she passed by the chapel and would incline her head toward it, giving it reverence, thinking it the holiest site she had ever visited.

  She did not see Bothwell, although she kept seeing his wife. Suddenly Lady Bothwell seemed to be everywhere, as if she had multiplied during that night. Mary could not help studying her carefully, trying to see exactly what she wore. When her dress was green, was it because Bothwell was especially fond of the colour? Did she dress to please him?

  At first she had been relieved that she did not see him. Then, gradually, she came to believe that he was avoiding her. The time was drawing near when all the guests would be departing. Embarrassing as it was, she would have to summon him. For it would be unthinkable for them to part without a word, although deep inside she would have preferred that. She could not bear it if he said something to soil even the memory.

  He had other women, had had other women. In the past few days she had found out more about them, as if to torture and punish herself. It seemed he had been married twice before, in a manner of speaking: he had been “handfast” to Janet Beaton, and had lived in common-law marriage with the Norwegian woman. Neither of these was binding, of course, but what did they mean to him?

  The knock was loud and demanding now. Mary rose and opened the door.

  Even so, she was not prepared for the impact of seeing him again, after dwelling so intensely in her own memories. He stood there, completely real and impatient to be admitted.

  “Come in,” she said faintly, stepping aside.

  He almost jumped in the door and closed it. “You left me standing there so long I was sure someone would see me!” he said. He looked annoyed.

  Already this was different from anything she had imagined. The real Bothwell was disconcerting.

  “I took care that no one should be here,” she said. “They are all going to watch the castle-storming.”

  “If it truly costs a king’s ransom, which they say it does, then we must go to watch it too. We will both be questioned about it, and we must witness it.”

  A king’s ransom.

  “We will. In a moment. Separately, of course.” She paused. “What did you mean, a king’s ransom?”

  “It is merely an expression.”

  “One that is very appropriate, I fear.”

  “Mary—I trust I may call you that, here in private—please. Do not begin that.”

  She turned and indicated to him that he should take a seat on one of the huge cushions before the fire. He did so, and she sat opposite him, arranging her skirts so they completely covered the cushion, clasping her knees with her arms.

  “I know not what you mean,” she finally said. Nearby the fire crackled and spat.

  “I mean, discussing your husband and what is to be done, and what we are to do, and so on. Mary, what happened, happened. But I cannot go on with it. You may laugh or call me coward, but I cannot take a married woman as a lover.”

  “So it is not my crown that intimidates you, but my wedding ring?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “I am ashamed to admit it, it makes me sound like a Puritan, but that is one thing my moral code will not permit me. Last week I outraged my own code, but in passion. If I repeat it, it cannot be held to be in passion, but in cold decision, so to speak.”

  “Do you realize that is why I love you?” she said. “For those very same inconvenient principles? They are what make you who you are, and the man I love.”

  “Mary, please, stop this! Can we not go away and forget? I will still serve you as loyally as ever. But I would prefer not ever to be alone with you again. It is not safe.”

  He was looking at her with a level gaze. The wound on his face was turning into a scar, and soon would be just a memory. He wanted the night in the chapel to turn into a scar as well, she thought.

  “So you will have it that we never meet again, except in necessary circumstances, under the eye of others,” she said softly. “You will suppress what happened, attempt to forget it, and, in time, succeed.”

  “Yes.” He did not turn his eyes away.

  “I do not want to forget it,” she said.

  “If you choose to dwell on it, I cannot prevent that.”

  “Oh, Bothwell, I love you! I cannot let you go, send you back down the steep path from Stirling, and off to the Borders again! I cannot pretend!”

  “You must. If you cannot mask what happened, then you doom us both!” His voice rose in alarm.

  “Do you not care for me?” she heard herself asking, hating herself for letting the words escape her. It was begging; she was as much a beggar as the crowds even now gathering around the gate at the foot of the castle path, begging for alms and scraps from the banquets.

  He rose from the cushion, clearly so uncomfortable that he wished to bolt away from her presence; at least that was what she thought. She rose with him. To her utter confoundment, he put his arms around her and held her to him.

  “Yes, I care for you. I have cared for you ever since I first saw you, a little girl in France.” He held her tightly, but there was no passion in it, just affection.

  “You saw me in France?” she asked, her voice small and astonished. “How?”

  “I saw you many times, passing by in your carriage. Did I never tell you I was in France when you were still a child there?”

  “No, never. I did not know. What were you doing there?”

  “Studying. I was at the Scots’ College, the one by the Sorbonne. I lived in a room just near the Phillippe Auguste wall. And I would see you passing by in your carriage to the Louvre, or along the rue Ste.-Antoine to the jousts, and I would stand still and look, and I thought you the most beautiful, entrancing child I had ever seen. You made me proud to be a Scot! I would point you out to all my friends, saying, ‘She is from Scotland; you can see what beautiful girls we have.’ You were so much prettier than the Valois princesses!” His mouth was quite close to her ear; she could feel his warm breath on her skin.

  “You saw me then?” she kept asking.

  “I watched for you. I even went to some of those wretched jousts, just so I could see you. And there you would be, surrounded by the Guises and the Valois, shining above them all. I thought you were … an angel.” He laughed as if it were a sad lost treasure.

  “You were not there when—the King was killed?”

  “No. I came back to Scotland by the
time I was twenty-one, when I came into my inheritance. That was before your marriage.” Now his lips were very close to her ear; he was almost kissing it.

  “I love you; do not desert me,” she said, burying her face in his shoulder. She kissed his neck, and felt him shiver.

  He kissed her ear, as she wanted him to; she turned her face to his and sought his lips. He did not hesitate, but kissed her with a passion all the fiercer for having been fought against.

  “Love me and share my fortunes,” she whispered. “I cannot leave you.”

  “We cannot be together, but we cannot be apart,” he said. “This is an exquisite torture.” He let her go. “I know not what to do, where to go, even how to exist like this.”

  “You said your code would not permit it. I understand that … I honour it. At the same time I cannot bear it.”

  “But I cannot even live up to it!” His face was filled with anguish. “And what happens to a man when he cannot live up to his own code? Does love compensate or reward him? I do not know. No one in Scotland has ever done such things for love; we have no tradition of great lovers. There are no Scottish Tristans and Isoldes, no Lancelots and Guineveres, no Parises and Helens, no Antonys and Cleopatras.”

  “Then we will be the first. I shall be proud to be.”

  “To act like pagans?” He sank to his knees and stared at the Turkish carpet before the fire. “The infidels make objects of great beauty,” he said. “Even their carved swords are engraved and studded with precious stones. The tiles of their mosques and dwellings are traced in patterns and fired to preserve them.” He looked up at her. “The world is wide, my lady.”

  She knelt down beside him. “Nay. It is very narrow. It is only here, in this chamber, where we are.”

  “Our tragedy is that it is not. Surrounding this little chamber is Scotland, and it is not very forgiving of its sinners. In order to reach the wider world, we must flee through Scotland, where we will be stoned and treated as criminals. Is that what you wish?”

  “No. But I believe that somehow we can avoid that. The fates will be kind, Bothwell. They have to be.”

  “All lovers think that. But it is not fate we must contend with, but people. Fate is nothing but the sum total of what other people do.”

  It was now fully dark in the chamber. The castle entertainment would be beginning soon.

  “Mary,” he said, “if we are to survive in this world of people and harness them to serve as our ‘fate,’ we must be cold-blooded with everyone save ourselves. Have you given any further thought to what I suggested? Morton and Lindsay and the other exiles? Will you call them back?”

  “Yes. If you advise it,” she said. “But I will never allow the three worst ones back!” she cried. “Not the foul George Douglas the Postulate, who stabbed Riccio over my shoulder, nor Patrick Bellenden, who aimed his rapier at my breast, nor Andrew Kerr of Fawdonside, who tried to fire a pistol into my side. I shall never permit them entry into Scotland. No, never!”

  “As you decree,” he said. “Your mercy is great.”

  Just then a popping sound reached them. She ran toward the window. “The castle!” she cried. “It is exploding! Oh, look!”

  He came over to the window and watched as the walls of the mock castle on the green below, glowing yellow in the light of internal fires, began to collapse. Fiery balls flew from the ramparts and exploded on impact, sending up clouds of sparks. Then, suddenly, the structure blew up, sending cartwheels of fire and colour out into the night.

  XLII

  Darnley paced the spacious floor of his sumptuously appointed room, walking nervously from one end to the other. Every so often he glanced up at the ceiling with its carved roundels almost lost in the deepening shadows.

  There they are, he thought. The things that Lord James frightened her with when she was a child. Oh, she told me all about it … when she enjoyed talking to me. Yes, there was a time—and not so long ago, either—when she would spend hours telling me about herself, her childhood, her secrets.

  And now she won’t even come near me, let alone talk to me!

  Anger ripped through him and he stopped at a table in the middle of the room to pour himself a tall goblet of wine. Maybe this would make him feel better. God, he felt terrible—his joints ached and he had a perpetual headache. But did she ever come to inquire after his health? No!

  Not even when I sent word I would not be attending the baptism, he thought. If anything should have piqued her curiosity, or alarmed her, that should have. But she went right ahead entertaining the English and French and the churchmen and God knows who else. Here at Stirling, where we were secretly married! She even ordered my silver plate removed to use at the banquet.

  The bitch!

  He smacked his palm down as hard as he could on the tabletop. It reverberated up into his head and intensified the throbbing there. He felt sweaty. He ran his hand over his forehead and was horrified to feel tight little bumps all across it. With a yelp he snatched his hand away, and went scurrying for his hand mirror. Extracting it out of its embroidered case, he held it up anxiously and peered at his face. Strange granular lumps were sprinkled not only across his forehead, but also on his cheeks.

  They looked horribly familiar. He had seen such blemishes on the faces of some of the women at the brothel … but never anyone that he himself had trafficked with. And there had been that irritation on his privates, but it had healed over.…

  Even as his thoughts raced frantically, he had a stab of fear in his inmost gut.

  Syphilis. I may have syphilis!

  White-hot anger tore through him.

  No! I don’t deserve it! She does!

  Perhaps he had given it to her? A chortling sense of relief waved through him.

  But no. They had not been together for months.

  He sank down on his stool, stunned. He was astounded to find that his first thought was, Now we shall never be together again! He felt all the loss of the world in that realization.

  I love her! Why does she not love me?

  He burst into tears, and started sobbing into his hands.

  Why did she turn against me? For Riccio? But I begged her to forgive me, and I led her to safety.… Because of my drinking? But I only did it because of my torment over her! And the same with the whores!

  No … it’s because of him! Because of Bothwell! The way she rushed to him at the Hermitage … the way she looks at him, I’ve seen that look!

  He saw a reddish glare coming from far below, and went over to the window to see. Far below, like a red flower on the carpet of snow, was the castle, its thin paper-and-plaster walls glowing from within like a lantern. Around the structure, a dark stain of milling people surrounded it. Oh, yes, it was that stupid fireworks castle that she had wasted so much money on—she cared more about that than about him!

  There were cheers as the flames leapt higher, and the knights within fought back with fire-spears. Then, suddenly, the knights were running out of the castle, waving their banners and yelling. The castle began to bloom like an evil yellow flower, and then it flew apart, huge chunks of burning material borne upward with swirls of fire. The crack of an explosion blew a volcano of debris up into the sky like a giant cannon.

  I want to die, Darnley thought. I want her to die. If we cannot be together, then I want us to die in each other’s arms, and then I’ll know no one else can ever have her, and I’ll die happy.

  Another explosion rent the air.

  Gunpowder will do it. It would take more to explode a house, but it could be a small house, it needn’t be a palace.…

  And then she would die, die, die, the cruel Queen.…

  “And you’ll be mine forever,” he whispered, watching the flames buckling the flimsy structure.

  XLIII

  The ambassadors left Stirling; gradually the other entourages said their good-byes as well. During the week or so before they departed, Mary revelled in the secret meetings she would arrange with Bothwell, whispering ins
tructions under the very noses of her eminent guests.

  Meet me in the Privy Chamber … in the empty rooms left by the Earl of Atholl … in the tower chamber, the one that looks out over the King’s Knot.…

  And he would be there, waiting, hungry for her, seemingly forgetting his misgivings. In the cold places they could only embrace, and kiss, and talk. But in the warmed chambers, before the beds had been taken away—and the servants always allowed time for the bedding to air—they could strip away all that separated them from one another, and delight in their own nakedness. Mary would unbind her hair and let it serve as her only mantle, and Bothwell would stroke and kiss it, caressing it as if it had feeling. She would lie back, hanging her head off the side of the bed, exposing the sweet arch of her long neck with its transparent alabaster skin, and he could see the blood pulsing there. Her whole body was slender and seemed, in certain lights, to be a statue come to life.

  “You are the goddess Ronsard proclaimed you,” he would murmur, “but he could only see you thus in his poetic imagination—I hope!”

  She would laugh. “I was swathed in white then.”

  “You are swathed in white now, in your exquisite skin.”

  Inhibitions seemed to have left him, along with his moral scruples.

  But they could never meet enough; the difficulty of arrangements, the need for watchfulness, the constant scrutiny prevented it. So to lie together in a real bed, in a room with a fire, became a rare and much-sought prize.

  And there was always Lady Bothwell to be appeased, Lady Bothwell asking questions, Lady Bothwell growing restless and eager to depart.