Spy for the Queen of Scots

by Theresa Breslin

  At about the same time Lord Darnley left to visit his parents, complaining that he was being shown respect by neither his wife nor the nobles.

  ‘Today he is frightened,’ Mary said wretchedly as she watched him go, ‘but soon he will be plotting another scheme to seize the throne.’

  So worried was I about Mary I had no time to think of my own life and loves. The failure of her marriage caused her the deepest heartache. Those closest to her, Marie Seton and Jean, agreed that she needed rest. We persuaded her to take time off and so brought baby James to Holyrood Palace, where Mary was able to enjoy being a mother and playing with her child. Her women vied with each other to carry him from his crib to her arms each morning. My pleasure was tinged with longing that I might be so fortunate as to hold and hug a baby of my own. But then I thought of who might father my child and my mind clouded with indecision.

  I was carrying the baby in the palace gardens one day, crooning as I nursed him in my arms, when I sensed that I was not alone. I glanced up. Duncan Alexander was standing on the path watching me. He came to admire the child, whereupon Prince James opened his eyes and smiled.

  ‘He likes you,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad someone here does,’ Duncan replied.

  ‘I like you too, my Lord of Knoydart,’ I said.

  He offered his finger to the baby, who grasped it his chubby fist and took it to his mouth. ‘See! He also trusts me.’ Duncan lifted his head to look at me intently. ‘Do you?’ he asked.

  I bridled under his scrutiny. ‘Did you come here to question me?’

  ‘No.’ Duncan shook his head. ‘Although at some point there are matters I’d like us to discuss.’ He paused. ‘I came here to inform the queen that her husband, Lord Darnley, has been taken ill. Quite seriously ill.’

  Chapter 39

  ‘I MUST GO to him,’ said Mary.

  ‘Enter the den of the Lennox Stuarts and the Douglas family?’ exclaimed Jean. ‘You know how those parents dote on their son, and they would do you down for causing him upset.’

  ‘Lord Darnley came to visit me when I was ill in Jedburgh,’ said Mary.

  ‘After you had recovered,’ Jean pointed out.

  ‘He is my husband and has sent me a note to say he thinks he is dying and wants to see me one last time.’

  Jean held her head in her hands. ‘A woman is at her most vulnerable when a man appeals to the caring side of her nature.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘You have such a soft heart, Mary, that you do not see he might ensnare you.’

  ‘I am not so naïve. I will be well guarded. Besides,’ Mary said, ‘what else can I do with this man? When he’s apart from me he becomes a focus of rebellion. I’m told that if I divorce him, the Catholics in England will use him against Elizabeth and support his claim to the Scottish and English thrones because they consider me too indulgent to Protestantism. Yet the Protestants, with Knox’s influence, think me a Catholic sympathizer and fed Lord Darnley’s envy of Rizzio to make him strike against me. I intend to persuade my husband to rejoin my court, for it’s best that I know where he is and who with. It’s a lesson I learned from Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of my first husband; the more dangerous your enemy, the nearer to one’s person you should have him.’

  So we went with Mary and escorted Lord Darnley to Edinburgh. He lay on a litter with his face veiled as he wished no one to see the pockmarks on his skin. His doctors had diagnosed smallpox. He was devastated that his good looks might be lost, but grateful that Mary had travelled to be with him and touched that she’d brought him herbal infusions and a lavender pillow to soothe his sleep.

  ‘It does remind me of the time we first met,’ she told us. ‘He was such a pretty lad, and so poorly that—’

  ‘You mothered him, and then, when you couldn’t give him all that he wanted as his real mother was in the habit of doing, he showed himself to be the petulant and spoiled child he truly is.’

  Mary flushed at this rebuke from Jean.

  ‘We have no wish to be harsh.’ I spoke quickly to cover any offence in Jean’s words. ‘It’s only that we don’t want you lulled into a believing a false promise of good behaviour and have you hurt once again.’

  For fear of contagion Prince James was sent back to Stirling Castle, but, to Mary’s disappointment, Lord Darnley refused to enter Holyrood Palace.

  ‘Do you blame him?’ Duncan reasoned with her. ‘Bothwell is here at the moment. Would you sleep sound under the same roof as James Hepburn if you’d tried to have him murdered?’

  ‘It is because I am under the same roof as men like yourself and James Hepburn that I do sleep sound at night,’ Mary said sincerely.

  Involuntarily I nodded in agreement. Whereas Mary might be thinking more of Bothwell, I recognized that my own instinct focused on Duncan as our true protector.

  A compromise was reached, and on the first of February Darnley was installed in a house at Kirk o’ Field at the city wall. Hardly had he arrived when he demanded a change of bed and expensive redecoration of his rooms. He persuaded the queen to sleep in the room below his on a couple of nights as he said he was apprehensive at being in the house with only a few servants to protect him. In the week that followed she visited him every day, bringing courtiers with her to entertain him. Sometimes they played cards, and one night he reminded her of the time he’d paid her gambling debt to save her losing her tourmaline ring. Mary twisted the ring where it sat upon her finger. He smiled at her and she smiled in return.

  Bothwell and Lord James Stuart, who were present, frowned at this exchange.

  ‘You also wear the ring I gave you on our wedding day,’ Darnley said to Mary.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied softly.

  A tear oozed from his eye. ‘My beloved wife,’ he murmured.

  ‘In the will I made before my confinement,’ said Mary, ‘I left instructions for that ring, my wedding ring, to be returned to you if I died in childbirth.’

  ‘You did?’ he asked. ‘Even though you thought I had a hand in Rizzio’s’ – he hesitated – ‘in what happened to Rizzio?’

  ‘I had to prepare myself for the worst so I could hold no grudge. I might have died giving birth to your son.’

  ‘My son,’ Darnley repeated, as though the concept was strange to him.

  ‘He is very like you,’ Mary said swiftly, taking the opportunity to reassure him that the child was his, ‘and grows more handsome by the day.’ Not adding, as she had on one occasion, ‘Let the poor babe not have his father’s nature. I pray God to spare him that.’

  Darnley stretched out his hand to her and said tentatively, ‘Perhaps we might make more?’

  Mary did not take her husband’s hand, but neither did she move away from him.

  He gave a smile of triumph. ‘Then we could have a dozen sons who would become lords in their own right. We might make a privy council of our own and relieve some of these men’ – he waved his hand at the nobles gathered in the room – ‘of their titles and land.’

  The queen’s smile faded at her husband’s crass words. Lord James Stuart quietly departed. Bothwell flung down his hand of cards and strode out.

  On Saturday Duncan Alexander came to me in Holyrood Palace. ‘I may have to leave suddenly,’ he said, ‘and I came to advise you to be vigilant. Since Darnley’s return to Edinburgh the city vibrates with tension.’

  ‘Is it not the excitement of the preparations for tomorrow’s wedding of Bastien Pages?’ This man was one of the queen’s favourites; he organized entertainments for her, and courtiers were planning to attend the ceremony dressed in elaborate costumes.

  ‘I believe it’s more than that.’

  I was keen to have him share his information, for I too was aware of a throbbing undercurrent of unrest but unable to find a specific reason. ‘What else do you know?’ I asked him.

  Duncan shook his head in frustration. ‘I haven’t enough funds to pay for the spies to keep abreast of every plot and conspiracy being hatched ar
ound us. I’ll keep listening and watching and I urge you to do the same.’

  ‘All I have heard is that Darnley has said he is fit enough to be moved and now wishes to come here to Holyrood Palace to be by the queen . . .’ I paused. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Lord James Stuart will be very put out by that,’ said Duncan. ‘He doesn’t want a reconciliation between the queen and her husband. Nor, I suspect, would Bothwell, now.’

  ‘Not even for the peace of the realm?’ I asked.

  Duncan grimaced. ‘Personal ambition outweighs any concerns Lord James might have for the peace of the realm. And what my Lord of Bothwell wants is—’ He did not finish the sentence. ‘My mind is spinning,’ he went on. ‘I cannot fathom what they might do.’

  ‘Probably nothing at the moment,’ I said, ‘for Lord James’s wife is taken ill. He begged leave to quit the court and Edinburgh and go to her tonight.’

  ‘God’s truth!’ said Duncan. ‘This is sinister. That wily fox has slipped away so that he may not be implicated in whatever happens.’

  Bastien’s wedding took place the next day, and in the evening the queen went to visit Darnley. They rolled dice and chatted, and eventually she said that as luck was not running her way she should go home, whereupon Darnley said, ‘Wait here tonight again. I am so comforted when I know you sleep below me.’ He opened his eyes wide to show he meant no suggestiveness in the remark.

  Mary winked at me and said, ‘Come, take my seat in this game, Sir Duncan.’

  Duncan shook his head and went out of the room. I crossed to the door. He was pacing the corridor.

  ‘We must get the queen away from here.’ He put his finger to his lips as I started to ask why.

  I went back just in time to hear the queen say, ‘I’ll play no more.’ She stifled a yawn. ‘I feel too tired to ride home to Holyrood tonight.

  Bothwell spoke up, ‘They expect you for the ceremony of the bedding of the bride.’

  ‘I am sure the newlyweds will manage that very well without me,’ she quipped.

  Everyone laughed.

  Bothwell said tersely, ‘It would better that you went for—’

  William Maitland interrupted him suavely, ‘Is the bridegroom, Bastien Pages, not the man who organized the wonderful masque for the christening ceremony of Prince James?’

  ‘Why yes,’ said Mary, ‘and I am in his debt, for he made that a most memorable occasion and impressed our foreign ambassadors.’

  ‘And is there not another masque of his devising to be performed before the happy couple retire for the night?’

  Mary stood up. ‘That is true, and they may be waiting for me before they begin as I said I would attend.’

  ‘Best not let the bridegroom become too impatient,’ Bothwell added.

  There was more laughter, but when Mary bade her husband farewell, Darnley was not laughing. ‘Stay with me this night,’ he begged.

  ‘I cannot,’ she told him. ‘I have a duty to those who serve me. Tomorrow you will come to Holyrood. We will be together then.’

  To ease his pain at their parting and as a token of her goodwill, she drew off the tourmaline ring from her finger and gave it to him.

  I awoke in the middle of the night.

  My bedroom was thick with silence and shadows. Being the beginning of February it was very cold in Scotland, yet I left the warm nest of my covers to go to the window. The palace slumbered. Darkness enveloped the earth. Only the Duty Watch were visible, warming themselves by a brazier in the courtyard. I heard the muffled sound of hooves. A lone horseman was leading his horse quietly towards the exit gate. He exchanged words with the porter, who opened up and let him through. It was Duncan Alexander. He mounted his horse and rode off in the direction of Kirk o’ Field.

  What had prompted this midnight excursion? Had he received a message to say that Lord Darnley was unwell? I would have to wait until morning to find out.

  In bed once more I lay in a restless, half-dreaming state. Sliding on the edge of oblivion, I woke as the massive bang of an explosion rocked the palace and the city. My bed curtains shook and I sprang up, clutching at the sheets. I thought they must have fired the cannon from the castle wall. Great God, we were under attack! Had the English sent an army to invade us? A fleet to blockade the port of Leith?

  I scrambled from bed and, without slippers or dressing gown, ran to the queen’s room. The corridors were filling with people, and a hubbub sounded from the streets outside: cries of fear, and then the sound of the city alarm bells clanging.

  Bothwell appeared, still dressed in his finery from the previous evening, but with a sword in his hand. He cleared everyone apart from myself from the queen’s apartments, summoned the palace guard and sent messengers out, directing them to go and ensure that Lord Darnley was safe. In the mêlée I looked in vain for Duncan.

  We opened a window, and now there was no mistaking where the noise had come from. The smell of gunpowder floated on the wind. Above Kirk o’ Field flames lit the sky.

  ‘My husband!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘I must go to him.’

  ‘You must stay in the palace!’ Captain Erskine was adamant.

  In shock the queen did not respond.

  ‘Majesty!’ he said loudly. ‘There may be an attack on your person. Lord Bothwell instructed me to remain close to you until he returned.’

  Bothwell ran in, bringing his messenger, who was sweating with exertion.

  ‘No point in the queen going there,’ the man said. ‘No point in any of us. I have just come from the house at Kirk o’ Field. It is completely destroyed. Whoever was caught in that blast has not survived.’

  It was then I thought of the man I’d seen ride towards there earlier. He would have been in the house at Kirk o’ Field as the explosion occurred.

  ‘Duncan?’ I cried out. ‘Where is Sir Duncan Alexander!’

  Chapter 40

  ‘I AM HERE,’ said a quiet voice.

  Duncan had entered the room behind me.

  ‘And where were you before?’ Bothwell was staring hard at him.

  ‘I might ask you the same question, sir,’ he parried.

  The two men faced each other, and I realized that whatever friendship had been between them before had ended this night.

  ‘Among my courtiers there are few upon whom I can rely,’ Mary spoke out. ‘You are two such men. I beg you in this crisis, let there be no conflict between you. I charge you to investigate what has happened and report to me.’

  When they’d left, Mary sat down upon her bed, shaking. ‘Sir Duncan Alexander, James Hepburn the Earl of Bothwell, and William Maitland were the three men who encouraged me to return to the palace last night. If they had not done so I would be dead. And so might you.’

  We held onto each other for comfort. If Mary had decided to sleep at Kirk o’ Field, I would, most likely, have also stayed to keep her company.

  ‘They must have had suspicions of a plot,’ I reasoned.

  ‘But not necessarily be part of it,’ Mary added quickly.

  * * *

  In the morning we learned of the horrible events at Kirk o’ Field.

  Lord Darnley’s dead body and that of his servant were found lying in the neighbouring garden, untouched by the explosion. Most likely they’d heard the murderers setting the powder fuse and had tried to escape, but were caught and killed. There were no marks upon their corpses. It was believed they’d been smothered.

  It was Bothwell who brought the queen this news, and after making the announcement in the presence of her attendants, he asked to speak to her alone. Mary sat immobile in her chair. Despite the intimidating presence of Bothwell and the fact that the armed men at the door were in his pay, I refused to leave.

  Mary raised her head. ‘You may go, Jenny. I will grant the Earl of Bothwell a private audience.’

  She spent more than an hour with him while he convinced her that he had no part in the murder of her husband.

  ‘The Earl of Bothwell was loyal to
my mother as he is to me,’ she told me. ‘He lives by his family motto and is faithful unto death.’

  Mary would not be moved on this, becoming utterly convinced of Bothwell’s innocence. And to show that she believed in him, and, to let others know this, in the days that followed she gave him gifts, sought his advice, and agreed that it should be his men who guarded her son.

  ‘Can you not speak to the queen?’ Duncan Alexander asked me more than once. ‘By behaving like this she is on a path to disaster.’

  ‘Mary listens to no one on this matter,’ I said. ‘Not Marie Seton, nor Jean, nor myself. She insists Bothwell is blameless.’

  ‘We may never know the whole truth,’ he said. ‘Bothwell is guilty, I’m sure of it, but he is one of many. It is the talk of Edinburgh that his close friend, James Balfour, recently bought a quantity of gunpowder.’

  ‘Bothwell has asked the queen to make James Balfour governor of Edinburgh Castle, while he will be given the Orkney Islands.’

  ‘Then he digs a pit for himself. The lords who must have joined him in this conspiracy – Morton, Lindsay, James Stuart and the rest – will be consumed with rage. They did it in case the Lennox Stuarts managed to gain enough support to remove Mary and have Darnley rule as regent until his son came of age, or perhaps kill the child too and have Darnley proclaimed king. With him gone, they won’t now tolerate a more deadly adversary. Bothwell is doomed, and by siding with him, so also is the queen. Already there are salacious posters appearing in the streets, accusing Mary, not only of being intimate with Bothwell, but of having conspired to kill her husband.’

  Although Duncan had named Lord James Stuart as a coconspirator, he wasn’t in Edinburgh at the time of Darnley’s murder, so no blame could be attached to him. In the midst of the rapidly increasing scandal he asked leave to go to London on family business.