Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

by Margaret George

  “And then, in the filth of her lusts, she seduced a married man, and lay with him, and together they planned to murder her husband, which was done with an explosion, and then a pretend-divorce was secured, against the law of man and the church, that they might the better indulge themselves in their sin. Are we to stand for this? Are we to allow our nation to be so degraded and mocked in the councils of the world? No one would permit such a ruler, would obey or honour such a ruler, who is nothing but a whore!”

  The people stared back at him and began moving around.

  “Yes, I said a whore! There is no other word! Unless you prefer harlot, Messalina, hussy, bawd, adulteress! Or perhaps you prefer murderess? I say that whore in her whoredom should not be allowed to live. Burn the whore! Burn the whore!”

  The people began shouting. Was it in protest or agreement?

  “Burn the whore … burn the whore.…” It was in agreement.

  “The law of the land calls for the burning of women who murder their husbands. And in the Scripture, Deuteronomy twenty-two, verse twenty-two: ‘If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.’

  “And this man, the Earl of Bothwell, the Scripture says of him, in Exodus twenty-one, verse sixteen: ‘Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught shall surely be put to death.’

  “Malachi, chapter four, verse one: ‘Behold the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble.’

  “Sin upon sin, abomination upon abomination—they must die!” yelled Knox. “Let the dogs lick her blood, as they licked that of the evil Ahab, and consumed Jezebel!”

  “They must die,” echoed the people, their voices swelling and filling the dark nave.

  As he fought his way through the surging crowd afterwards, Maitland plucked at his cloak.

  “The Lords of the Congregation are waiting at Stirling,” he whispered, covering his face. “They have an army.”

  Knox stared at him. “And you, sir?”

  “I am with them. I will join them as soon as I may escape.”

  “Do not delay, lest you be numbered with the Queen and burnt along with her.” So the Queen’s secretary was scurrying away, like vermin from a house on fire. “Where are they now?”

  Maitland laughed nervously. “At a regatta in Leith, celebrating their marriage.”

  Knox permitted himself a painful laugh.

  LV

  The waters sparkled, glittering under the ships dotting the surface of the Firth of Forth, where Bothwell had assembled the fleet of Scotland: galleons, carracks, and merchantmen. The vessels were yare and scrubbed, and the flagship was draped with garlands of flowers, ropes as thick as a man’s wrist that looped around the rails and over the figurehead on the prow. The sails were white: a bridal ship for that day.

  “You are mad to have spent the money,” said Mary, but she was pleased nonetheless.

  “It was not right for our marriage to pass uncelebrated,” said Bothwell, “or unmarked by any ceremony or whimsy. Above all things, a wedding demands some gesture of happy extravagance.” He looked at the sizable crowd gathered on the shore, staring out at the flotilla bobbing on the water. “We cannot deny them a chance to share our happiness with us.”

  The man was amazing: such steely calm in the midst of the hatred and coming storm. Was he heroically brave, or did he just not understand?

  “Nor can we deny ourselves,” he said. “For if we do not rejoice, who will rejoice with us? And wherefore was it done at all, then?”

  He understood.

  “Ah, Bothwell,” she said. “I do not know if I can follow you through the fire in the way which will make you proud.”

  “I have watched you go through other fires,” he finally said. “What do you think made me love you?”

  Was that why he had loved her? It was confusing. Why would a man love a woman because she acted like a man at times? “They look so calm,” she said, indicating the crowds. “There is no indication that they are hostile or will turn on us.”

  “They came out for the show, the food, the fine weather, an excuse to leave their work. If anything is free, a crowd will always gather. So it has always been and will always be. It means nothing. No, this show was for us, for you and me. So we can have something to remember always.”

  She shuddered. “When will it come, this blow? We have sold everything we can to pay soldiers. We have comported ourselves so circumspectly that even eighty-year-olds would find us dull company. Yet the Lords have not returned from wherever they are hiding!”

  “The strong strike openly, the weak have to lie in wait. It is hard now to tell just how strong they are. We have Edinburgh Castle under our command, and Dunbar, and I can raise my Borderers. Then there are the countless numbers who will be loyal to you personally and follow your royal Stuart banner.”

  “I wonder if they are countless, or all too easily counted?” she said. Once the countryside had been filled with her supporters. But now …

  The ships were coming into a formation, sailing abreast to show their seamanship. Bothwell was a worthy High Admiral; he had trained his fleet well in the years he had had it under his command.

  “Is there any sight more lovely than a ship with its sails filled?” he said, in the tone he used only when touched by beauty. “‘There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent on the rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.’”

  “And what is the fourth? You said four.”

  “The poet said four. The fourth is ‘the way of a man with a maid.’” He looked at her with that steady gaze that she loved so much, that sustained her like bread. “It is Scripture, believe it or not.”

  “You Reformers all know Scripture,” she said, enviously.

  “Knox is back.” Bothwell let the words sit there.

  She waited.

  “He is preaching today.”

  So it was to come, then. Soon. If not today, tomorrow. Or the day after.

  He reached out and took her hand and, raising it slowly to his mouth, kissed it. Then he held it tightly and kept it entwined in his, by his side.

  * * *

  Holyrood was oddly quiet and seemed almost deserted, although there were the usual retainers, servants, and guards about. But the throngs of courtiers, envoys, secretaries, and all their relatives were missing.

  “Do you remember those tales about empty, enchanted palaces?” she asked. “There was always some treasure or sleeping princess there. I used to wonder what it would be like to stumble into one—whether there would be cobwebs or whether it should be miraculously clean—”

  “You dream too much. This princess cannot sleep, at least not now, or she will wake to find herself with no palace at all.” He was striding down the echoing halls into the royal apartments. At the door the guards gave him a slight nod, but otherwise seemed somnolent.

  The light was fading, but no candles or torches had been lit. Cursing under his breath, Bothwell lit one and brought it over to the window ledge. He looked up and down the Canongate, which was also oddly empty.

  “I feel uneasy,” he said. “I think it is time we summoned the Lords and commanded them to leave Stirling and appear before us. And we should begin to gather an army.”

  “Already?”

  “It is late. We should have done it two weeks ago. I hope it is not too late.”

  Mary shivered. But as much as she hated war, she had no doubt as to the outcome. Bothwell had never lost a battle, and his generalship was the foremost in the land. Lord James, a respectable soldier himself, was not in Scotland and could not be used by either side. Who else did the Lords have? Morton and Home and Lindsay—none of them particularly note-worthy or battle-tested. Kirkcaldy of Grange, who was a good fighter but surely no match for Bothwell.

&n
bsp; Beside her, Bothwell made a sad, low sound. “This is the first time a new soldier will be fighting in the field. It will make military history. In later ages students will say, ‘Ah, in Scotland a new player came to fight,’ just as we now study siege-machines and the catapult and the harquebus. It is the people—it is Knox’s hordes, who now have a voice and a presence the equal of Kirkcaldy of Grange or even Elizabeth of England. The people,” he said, and his voice was tired and bitter. “With all their pitchforks and fervour and bad breath, as mutable as the clouds on a summer’s day, but stronger than a granite boulder rolling down a hill—and just as mindless. They will flatten and crush anything in their path.”

  “Then we can jump out of their way. They will be easy enough to see and dodge.”

  He laughed. “Now that’s the royal spirit I love.” He put his arms round her. “Write the summons calling our men to arms. Let us amass our own boulder.”

  * * *

  A proclamation summoned earls, barons, knights, freeholders, landed men, and substantial yeomen to report with arms and fifteen days’ provisions to the Queen and her dearest husband on June fifteenth at Melrose, in the Borders. The reason given was disorder in Liddesdale, that most untamed and dangerous tract.

  At the same time, the Queen summoned the Lords of the Congregation to Edinburgh. None appeared, but from the safety of Stirling they issued an announcement that the men were being summoned to Melrose to overthrow the laws of the land and even to kidnap the baby Prince.

  Mary was forced to issue a denial, saying, “As for her dearest son, of whom shall Her Majesty be careful if she neglect him that is so dear to her, on whose good success her special joy consists and without whom Her Majesty could not think herself in good estate but comfortless all her life?”

  Then silence fell over Scotland—silence, except for John Knox’s preaching about the Jezebel and her Ahab.

  * * *

  A week passed, a week of quiet that was not a true quiet but a waiting for action. Mary and Bothwell lived in the royal apartments at Holyrood like ghosts, or the last man and woman on earth.

  “This should feel like Eden, like Adam and Eve,” he commented one night as they finished their solitary meal. “But there is a great difference in being the first and in being the last. One is filled with hope, the other with dread or remorse.” He wiped his full lips with the linen napkin. The fare had been pleasing: a creamy soup with oysters, a delicate fish from Linlithgow loch, which had been stocked by Marie de Guise and could be found nowhere else in Scotland, the most tender leaves of dandelion and cress in a salad, and finally a custard with raisins and walnuts. A light Rhenish wine had tasted good with the meal, and Bothwell poured himself another goblet of it, although he swirled it around and looked at it in a melancholy fashion before taking a drink. Finally he rose and put his napkin down.

  “Gather your clothing and what jewels you have left. We must leave Edinburgh,” he suddenly said. “They mean to surprise us here. Oh, they will answer the summons to come, but not in the manner you called them. They are on the march now; I can feel it.”

  “Then let us retreat to Edinburgh Castle. Balfour is holding it secure for us.”

  “No. Let us go to the Borders, gather our army, and then return. There is no sense in being bottled up in Edinburgh Castle with no army; they would simply have us trapped. We will go first to Borthwick Castle, and then on to the Hermitage.”

  * * *

  On June sixth, the Queen and Bothwell left Edinburgh, but in an orderly, almost leisurely manner. Twelve trunks of Mary’s goods were transported, including a silver basin and kettle, and before vacating Holyrood they summoned Maitland and told him to follow. He demurred; he said he would join them later.

  “He’ll join us in Hell,” said Bothwell, as they rode away. “That’s another one gone.” He drew himself up straighten.

  * * *

  Borthwick was only twelve miles south of Edinburgh, a huge, golden stone fortress with twin towers, rearing up out of a grassy mound. Crichton Castle, where Jean now lived, was visible from the tops of the towers. Bothwell took Mary up the narrow winding stairs, where they had to duck their heads to ascend, up to the flat, fortified roof, and they stood on it together in the warm June twilight. All around them the shadows lay long and undulating on the land. To the north and west the fields were green, and the setting sun made the furrows of the fields look like teeth in a comb. To the east and south the moors stretched out, dun and grey and moss green: the Fala Moor and the Moorfoot hills, wrinkled and weathered.

  “It’s worth fighting for,” said Bothwell. “Do whatever you must to keep it. If you are forced to, you must choose it over me.”

  “It will not come to that.” The setting sun outlined his face, his beloved profile. Behind him glowed the fields and land. There could be no choosing.

  “It well could.” He turned and took her hands in his. “I will fight to the best of my ability, but there are always surprises. The gods like to surprise us.” Seeing the look on her face, he said, “Since I studied Roman military books, when I think of campaigns, I become a pagan. I think of Jupiter, Apollo, Mars—and all the tricks they like to play on mortals, never more so than on the battlefield.”

  “And who are you, then, in your imagination? Marc Antony, Caesar, Octavian?” She could see him amongst them, holding his own in bravery and strategy and strength.

  “None of them. The mortals in the play change; only the gods are always the same characters. I am no one but myself.”

  * * *

  Maitland gave the safety signal and the Lords of the Congregation streamed into Edinburgh: Morton, Home, Atholl, Glencairn, Lindsay, the young son of Ruthven. Lord Erskine left the baby Prince behind at Stirling and joined them. Even the notorious Kerr of Cessford, who had been kindly treated by Mary at the justice court, joined the insurgent Lords.

  Maitland approached Balfour at Edinburgh Castle with an offer: join them and be forgiven any part in the murder of Darnley, which was too widely rumoured to be hidden much longer. He agreed. Together he and Maitland hammered out an agreement, setting forth the Lords’ side of the story, and stating:

  Sir James Balfour of Pittindrech, knight, clerk of our Sovereign’s register, and keeper of the Castle of Edinburgh, tendering the Queen’s Majesty’s most dangerous state, and the peril that may come to the commonweal, has, upon the like zeal with us, faithfully promised, and by the tenour hereof promises, to aid and assist us, or any part of us that shall enterprise and put order to the premises of the Castle of Edinburgh, for furthering of our enterprises devised and to be devised. Providing always that he may be so required as his honour be safe at our first coming into the town of Edinburgh.

  Therefore we make a covenant to support, maintain, and hold him harmless for all his former deeds, and to advance and prefer him to all honour and profit, and especially to maintain and continue him in the keeping of the Castle of Edinburgh.

  The following day, June twelfth, the Lords put out their own proclamation, having it called from the Mercat Cross. They stated that they were determined to “enterprise the delivery of the Queen’s most noble person from the captivity and restraint in which she has been now for a long time held by the murderer of her husband, who has usurped the government of her realm; to deliver her forth from captivity and prison, and to punish Bothwell both for the cruel murder of the late King Henry, and the ravishing and detention of the Queen.”

  Men flocked to the Lords’ grisly standard—a banner showing the dead Darnley stretched out under a tree with little Prince James praying “Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord”—and by nightfall they had added a thousand to their side. Lord Home and Morton, with a force of cavalry, decided to make a night march to Borthwick and surprise Bothwell in the dark, cutting him off before he could reach the Borders. Under torchlight they streamed out of the city, twelve hundred strong.

  * * *

  Bothwell lay in the dark, not sleeping. Mary was by his side in the massive,
worm-eaten wooden bed in the uppermost chamber in the tower. She lay quietly, and by her breathing he knew she slept. But he was unable to; although the sounds outside were the soothing ones of early summer—the whisking of tree branches, the hooting of owls, and, from far away, the sound of farmers carousing in a roadside tavern—the night seemed dangerous.

  He heard the army when it was still far down the road, heard that unmistakable sound of marching men, and scrambled out of bed. Quickly he pulled on his breeches and peered out the window. Nothing was visible yet. He returned to the bed and woke Mary.

  “They are coming,” he said quietly. She was instantly awake.

  “Where?”

  “I hear them down the road. It sounds like a large company.”

  She, too, jumped out of bed and went to the window. She could see the winking of their torches, now visible. There were a great many of them.

  “Get dressed,” said Bothwell. “And I will tell you what we must do. They want to trap me here. They will surround the tower. Hold them off. I will escape from the postern gate.”

  His voice was crisp and calm. Although her head was clear, jolted awake by fright, she had trouble grasping what he was saying.

  “Do not let them know I have gone. I will go to Black Castle; it is only two miles away, at Cakermuir. But it is hidden in the moor and small, and they will likely not know where to find it. I will wait for you there. When they leave, you can join me.”

  The torches were coming closer. “What if they do not leave? What if they capture me?”

  “They won’t. They cannot storm this castle. Lord Borthwick will hold it. It is impregnable except against cannon, and they do not have cannon.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They are moving too fast.” Quickly he threw on his mantle. “I must be gone. Do not let them know I have escaped until twenty-four hours have passed. Then tell them, or you will never be able to leave the castle yourself.” He grabbed her and pressed her against him for a moment. Then, letting her go, he made for the stairs.