“He speaks strangely,” said the woman. “He is a foreigner.”
“Yes,” said Bothwell. “’Tis true, I came on one of the Hansa ships, a sailor from Lübeck. But I stayed here—”
“A German! No wonder her father does not approve!” The man nodded his massive, bearlike head slowly.
“But love knows no boundaries,” said Bothwell. “You can understand that!”
“Perhaps your brother’s tiny boat—”
“No, he would be furious!” said the woman.
The man continued rowing inexorably back toward the shore. There were ominous noises from the wharf.
Bothwell turned to see a party of men with flaming torches standing at the end of the wharf. Some wore soldiers’ uniforms, and they had harquebuses.
“You may let me out here,” said Bothwell, pointing to the shore as far from the wharf as possible. He tried not to let panic enter his voice.
“What are all those men?” asked the rower. He took the boat back to its original spot and beached it. Then he and his lover started hurriedly pulling on their clothes.
Attempting to be polite, Bothwell nodded to them and climbed over the side of the boat. “Farewell,” he said.
He made his way quickly over the pebbles into the almost-darkness on the farthest possible side of the wharf. But he could hear the search party coming to the little boat; they were questioning the couple. Then the hue and cry was raised.
Bothwell began running, trying to keep his balance on the rocky shore. If he could just get into those marshy reeds a hundred yards ahead. The prospect of crouching in them for hours was horrible, but it was his only hope. He stumbled along, keeping his head down. Behind him he could hear his pursuers.
He reached the edge of the marsh and splashed out into it. He ducked his head and swam underwater until he thought his lungs would burst. The marsh was full of weeds and goo, and sucked him down. Gasping for breath, he surfaced in an area of cattails and lilypads.
But behind him he heard dogs following him into the water, dogs expert in flushing game. They sent up exultant howls as they found him.
* * *
“It seems our guest has found his rooms inadequate,” said Captain Kaas. The sun was streaming in the windows of his quarters; it was midmorning. Bothwell had been marched across the courtyard and then into the governor’s quarters of the castle. It was the first time he had been inside them, and from the little windows he could see the harbour where he had failed so miserably. The merchant ships with their tall masts were rocking gently, and beyond were the small boats, and beyond them, the marsh. They looked so innocent and beckoning in the June sunshine.
Bothwell knew better than to answer or to plead.
“Yes,” continued Kaas. “We tried to make him comfortable, gave him airy quarters with braziers in winter … yet he was dissatisfied. He has repaid our hospitality with ingratitude, trying to leave us without permission. This would have resulted in severe punishment for us, his hosts.” He cast a doleful look at Bothwell. “It seems he had no thought of us.”
The captain then walked briskly over to his desk and wrote out some orders. “It is with great regret that I grant your wish to leave us. There is another prison which will cause you to look back on us with fondness. But ’tis ever true, as the poets say, that we never prize a thing till ’tis past. So, in due time you will prize your days at Malmö and wish to recapture them. But that will not be possible.” He nodded to the two guards. “You will accompany the prisoner across the sound to his new accommodations. A wagon will be necessary for transport across Zeeland.”
“Where am I to be taken, sir?” asked Bothwell.
“To the state prison of Dragsholm,” answered Kaas.
Both guards gasped.
* * *
The wagon trundled across the flat plain that stretched west of Copenhagen, the watery reaches of reclaimed land called Zeeland. Bothwell rode along in it, his hands bound and tied behind him. He had a leg iron that secured him to a bolt in the bottom of the wagon, but he could stand up and look around as the oxen trudged onward.
The sky seemed like a freshly washed sheet held up to dry: taut and stretched. Birds wheeled overhead, taunting Bothwell with their freedom to fly. He revelled in the open air and space around him, and watched the wind passing gently over the flat fields of grain, whispering warm secrets. It made him long so acutely for the lost fields of the Borders that he could feel tears trying to spring up in his eyes. To ride out along those fields again, to gallop free, to see his dogs … He wondered how many litters the people on the moor had raised by now. If he had had the opportunity, he would have improved the breed, trying to create the perfect terrier—an indestructible, loyal, fierce fighter, like the best of the Border men.
It was almost fifty miles across Zeeland to Dragsholm, and the cart would take several days to reach it. The driver and the two guards stopped at small inns for refreshment, and permitted Bothwell to come in, too, although he had to wear his leg-chain. To eat, they allowed his hands to be untied, but they would allow him no knife to cut his cheese or bread. Instead, they cut it for him, like a child.
To simply sit in an inn, to have a cool mug of beer, to eat a meal: Bothwell did all these with the wonderment of a child, as well. He had never appreciated the glory of the most ordinary things like these. And he had a feeling he would never behold them again.
He was unable to make anyone tell him anything about Dragsholm, other than that it was a state prison, on the water, with Frans Lauridson its keeper. A man named Olluf Neilson was his assistant. Neither man had a title, which meant that the King had chosen keepers who were common people and owed their loyalty only to him, Bothwell deduced. That did not bode well for him, a nobleman. Such men often hated peers.
* * *
They approached Dragsholm, which reared up like a ship over the sea of grainfields and woodlands on the landed side. With every jolt of the wagon, the high keep seemed to grow higher, and the grey, forbidding walls came into view. The little fortress was revealed at last.
The wagon halted before the heavily fortified gate, with its portcullis and guardhouse. The guards checked their papers and then laboriously pulled the doors open and let them rumble through.
There was a small, grassy courtyard and a bleak stone tower in one corner. They waited until a man walked smartly over to them and said something in Danish so rapidly that Bothwell could not follow. Papers were handed to him, and he read them carefully. Only when he was finished did he look up and observe Bothwell.
Their eyes locked. This man had narrow blue eyes and wrinkles at the corners of his eyelids. He looked as if he had spent a large portion of his time outdoors, perhaps even as a sailor. “Captain Lauridson,” he said, nodding at Bothwell.
“The Earl of Bothwell,” Bothwell answered.
More rapid Danish followed. Then Lauridson motioned to two soldiers standing guard at the door of the tower. They came quickly over, mounted the wagon, and, taking Bothwell by both arms, lifted him down. Then they marched him over to the door in the tower.
He had only time to notice that the walls were very thick, and glance up at the upstairs windows, before he had to step inside. It was cold and dark in there, despite the brightness of the day outside. But in a moment his eyes grew used to it. He could see light coming from the upper rooms. He prepared to climb the steps.
“No!” They took his arms and turned him round. A third man pulled the ring of a trap door in the floor; groaning, he opened up the heavy stone lid.
“Here!” One of the men thrust a torch down.
There was a dungeon room, completely without natural light, waiting. They lowered a ladder, and one of them descended. Then Bothwell was made to follow. The cold hit him like an icy hand. He looked about; there was a thick oak post in the middle of the room. The floor was dirt.
“Now,” said one of the men, and they forced him over to the post. He fought as best he could with both hands tied behind him, b
ut they quickly snapped a short chain bolted to the base of the post onto his leg iron. Thus shackled, he could only go halfway round the post, like a chained bear. They cut his hands free and stood back.
The ladder creaked as Captain Lauridson descended. He strode over and looked critically at Bothwell. “Now, my good friend, you may put any hope of escape from your mind. The last man who tried it hanged himself in despair after he was recaptured. He is buried right under the gallows.”
He raised his torch and stuck it in a wall bracket. “I will leave this here so you may see your surroundings. It will burn another two hours. Look carefully while you still may.” He nodded. “Good day, Your Grace.”
The keeper and his guards climbed back up the ladder, and the stone door clanged shut from above. Bothwell was left alone in the dungeon, waiting for the darkness to swallow him up.
XI
The sound of the drumroll from the outer courtyard at its customary six o’clock did not wake Mary; she had been lying awake since the hour when, although it is still dark, night changes imperceptibly into morning. Her pain kept her awake, the rheumatism and swollen joints that were constant now, even in the summer.
But the drumroll meant that the rest of her household would now begin stirring. Mary Seton would sit up promptly as she always did, as alert as a soldier in the field, and rise from the bed where she always slept near her mistress. The little dogs would stir, eager to be fed and walked. In the connecting maze of rooms at Sheffield Manor, Mary’s secretaries, her physician, her pages and valets and femmes de chambre would begin their unchanging round of duties: keeping a little court that went through all the motions and protocol of a real court, but which was invisible to the outside world. They performed their rituals and tasks to no audience but themselves, for the aim of Queen Elizabeth was that for all intents and purposes no one in the countryside should be aware of the presence of the Queen of Scots in their midst.
She was not allowed to go beyond the great octagonal towers that guarded the gates of the manor, and no one was allowed in to see her. So she kept state in isolation, a Queen with no audience to grant in her audience chamber, and with only her own presence in the presence chamber with its throne and cloth of estate. Male courts-in-exile had traditionally been busy places; but the only female court-in-exile in European history was a tomblike establishment, sealed shut.
Mary Seton was removing the covers on the bird cages, and immediately the turtledoves and barbary-fowl began cooing and chirping. Mary’s aviary was growing: the Guises sent her tame birds, and Philip promised to send canaries and parrots, although he had not. Philip was slow to keep all promises. “If Death came from Spain, we should all live to a very great age,” went a common saying. It was frustrating to continue to importune Philip, but she dared not cross him. Perhaps someday the canaries would come.
“Ah, Seton, good morning,” said Mary, rising from the bed. Her knees throbbed and hurt as she put her weight on them.
Seton brought over two dresses for her to choose from: one was stark black, the other grey, trimmed with jet braids. Mary started to choose the black, but Seton said, “Oh, Your Majesty, ’tis a warm June day! Be a little lighthearted! Choose grey!”
Mary smiled and agreed. She never wore colours anymore; all her gowns were black, white, grey, or violet, the colours of mourning. She softened the costume with a long, filmy white veil that fell below her shoulders. But then she always added a heavy piece of religious jewellery: a huge gold rosary, an Agnus Dei of rock crystal engraved with the Passion.
If only Ronsard could now behold me, she thought. If only anyone could now behold me. I go through the motions of my life completely concealed from the eyes of the outside world. Would Ronsard even recognize me as I am now? He remembers the girl at the French court; the black-clad captive invalid is another person entirely. I do not even show my own hair anymore; as if it, too, were in mourning, it never grew thick again after I cut it. And now it is growing grey, although I am only thirty-two.
Ronsard had addressed a poem to Queen Elizabeth. It went:
Queen, you who imprison a Queen so rare,
Soften your wrath and change your mind,
The sun from its rising to its sinking to sleep
Views no more barbarous act on this earth!
People, your degenerate lack of will to fight
Shames your forebears, Renauld, Lancelot, and Roland,
Who with glad hearts took up ladies’ wrongs
And guarded them, and rescued them—where you, Frenchmen,
Have not dared to look at or to touch your arms,
To save from slavery such a lovely Queen!
Elizabeth was angered at this poetic call to arms, and had Mary guarded more strictly than ever. But she need not have concerned herself about the French. Their treaty with her showed that they would never stir for Mary.
“I will wear the red-brown wig today,” she told Seton, and seated herself to have her hair dressed. Seton was adept at pinning up Mary’s hair—after carefully brushing it and massaging the scalp—and adjusting the wig, curling the strands of hair until it looked entirely natural. No one in the outer rooms knew the hair was not her own. Anthony Babington was always praising its lustrous beauty. If only it were hers!
Once it was, she thought. Once my hair was as beautiful as you believe it now is.
Anthony had remained her page, although he was fast approaching the age when he would be sent away. He was fifteen now, grown tall and staggeringly handsome with vivid black-and-white colouring. She and he had worked together on all manner of smuggling out messages: stuffing them into high-heeled slippers in place of hollowed-out cork, inserting them between layers of wood in trunks and coffers. They devised a method of sending messages in books, in which the invisible writing was only between the lines on every fourth page; the books so treated bore a green satin bookmark, and were included in a shipment of other books. Alum-treated cloth would always be an odd length, to mark it for the addressee. Anthony reveled in these games, for he saw himself as a knight helping a captive queen—as Ronsard had begged his laggard countrymen to do.
Anthony believed she would be rescued. Did she? Or was it merely something she felt duty-bound to keep trying, as if to give up entirely would be to wither into nothingness? Since the Parliament that had cried for her death, and caused the Duke of Norfolk to go to his, her life had been relatively quiet. In the three years since then, there had been no rescue attempts, no plots, no plans. The only thing that had become startlingly clear was that the only possible help would come from Spain. The native English sympathizers had not the strength to do it, as the Northern Rising had proved, and the French, awash in their religious wars, were drowning in their own blood.
And so she dutifully courted Philip as her rescuer, her hope. She had grieved for the Duke of Norfolk, although she had never met him. He had represented her one chance to make a respectable exit from her confinement, and with him perished her only English escape route. Now she was forced into what the English would call treason—dealing with the Spanish.
But letters were only letters, and so far nothing had happened to disturb the placid succession of days in Sheffield.
Abroad, death continued to cut down the Valois: Charles IX died of a wasting disease—some said of anguished remorse for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre—and was succeeded by Henri III. And Mary’s uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, went to meet his Maker, trailing satins and silks and perfumes. Heaven—or Hell—would be a more refined place now.
The bell was ringing softly, calling the household to prayer. Mary and her attendants went out into the presence chamber, which was the largest room available to them, and waited while the rest of the forty-odd members came in. There was Bourgoing, the physician; Andrew Beaton, the brother of John, who had died since their exile; Bastian Pages; Claud Nau; Andrew Melville, her master of the household; Gourion, her surgeon; Gervois, her apothecary; Balthazzar, her old, infirm French tailor; Anthon
y Babington; and Willie Douglas, a grown man of twenty-two now. Her women—Seton, Jane Kennedy, Marie Courcelles, and old Madame Rallay—made a half-circle around her in front of the French priest, Camille de Préau, who was officially in the guise of an almoner and had replaced the English one.
Father de Préau swept in, the silver pin in his hat gleaming.
He looks the way we all used to, Mary thought. He does not look like a captive or an exile yet. But then, he is free to go.
She looked around at all her household. They are all free to go, she thought. Every person here can pack his bag, notify the Earl of Shrewsbury that he has decided to leave, and have the gates swing open for him. Only I cannot leave—I alone.
Father de Préau led the prayers in French. As some of the members of the household were Protestants, Mary always insisted that the readings and prayers be ones that they could participate in. Private mass and confessions would take place in her chamber at other times.
“Saint Paul says, in the second book of Corinthians, ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ My friends, my brothers and sisters, take heart!” the priest enjoined them.
Mary felt the nagging voice that had been troubling her of late: Is all this to be rewarded? Or is that just a vain hope, something to make each day bearable? “For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest,” the Scripture also says. If there is nothing hereafter, then I am a pitiable fool and suffering means nothing.
The prayers were over; now the household would go about its repetitious tasks until time for dinner at eleven o’clock. Shrewsbury’s people dined then, too, and the gates were locked during that hour.
Mary and her ladies retired to her suite of rooms, there to work on their needlepoint. They embroidered ceaselessly, and there were now embroidered stools, bed hangings, pillows, and panels everywhere. Mary made gifts for Elizabeth—caps and petticoats—and sent her French relatives little mementoes. It was a way of reminding them of her existence.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Page 106