In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  The next thing she knew she had awakened screaming. (So she had swooned!) At first she had not recognized the queen’s bedchamber at Edinburgh Castle; it was dark and only a single candle flickered. And then Seton had shaken her and shaken her, and begged her to stop screaming.

  Much as she was doing now!

  “Your Grace, I am sorry, but you were screaming again,” said a tearful Seton.

  Mary sat up and blinked. There was no tell-tale line of light around the windows; it must still be night. “Ah, Seton, it is you. It is I who am sorry. Do not distress yourself. I am awake now.” Would she ever be able to sleep through the night again in peace?

  She had been taken to Loch Leven Castle the day after that harrowing entry into Edinburgh, and here, in this isolated castle in the middle of the loch, she had been imprisoned for five long weeks. And had awakened screaming every night. Her life had become a veritable nightmare, waking and sleeping. But she must not despair; Bothwell was raising an army and would return for her, just as he had promised. With that comforting thought she lay back against her pillows and dozed.

  When she awoke again it was full daylight and Seton sat sleeping in the bedside chair, her hand tucked into her bodice. Mary stirred quietly; she must find the chamber pot, but she had no wish to disturb poor Seton again. As she made to rise, she felt a queer sensation grip her. She threw back the covers. And screamed.

  ###

  The Earl of Moray stood pacing in the antechamber, his hands clasped behind his back. No sound came from within. When the door to Mary’s room finally opened and the midwife emerged, she lifted tearful eyes to the Earl and shook her head.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  The midwife composed her features. “Twins, milord.”

  “Male or female?”

  The midwife licked dry lips. “I am sorry, milord,” she said. “But the…it could not be determined. I have prepared them for burial. May their little souls rest in peace.”

  “And the queen?”

  The midwife shrugged. “Awake. You may see her if you wish.”

  James strode to the door and pushed it open. Mary lay on the bed, pale and exhausted.

  “Well, sister,” he said.

  Mary turned her head and regarded James with haunted eyes.

  “How long do you plan to keep me imprisoned?” she asked shortly.

  James held Mary’s gaze for a long moment and then said, “You are detained here for your own protection. The people, Madam, call for your blood.”

  Mary struggled to sit, could not manage it, and gave up the effort.

  “Some, perhaps,” she rejoined. “But not all, I trow! Even at this moment Bothwell strives to raise an army.”

  “If he does so,” replied James icily, “it will not be a Scottish one.”

  Mary blinked. “Why, what mean you?”

  “I mean that Bothwell has decamped to his wife in Denmark.”

  At this Mary did sit up, but as she did so, her head swam, her face drained of all color and she had to lay back against the pillows once again. “You lie!” she hissed. “Bothwell has no wife in Denmark!”

  “Ah,” said James quietly. “But I am afraid that he does. And it is most unfortunate for him that the lady, far from being amenable to helping him, has appealed to the Danish authorities regarding her outstanding lawsuit against him in that country. For the return of her dowry.”

  “D-dowry?”

  Malice shone from the Earl’s eyes as he explained. “Bothwell was no more free to marry the Lady Jean Gordon than he was to enter into matrimony with yourself,” he said. “And now it appears that he has three wives. Personally, I find one to be all that I can manage.”

  Mary was so shocked that she could barely draw breath. Finally she croaked, “I do not believe you.”

  “In that you must please yourself,” he said. “For now, you must sign this deed of abdication. Scotland needs a ruler, and you will never again be accepted by the people as queen.”

  Mary snorted. “My acceptance by the people is neither here nor there,” she said. “Whilst I live, I am the rightful queen of Scotland.”

  James said nothing, but held her gaze.

  “You would not dare,” she whispered.

  “No,” he replied. “I would not. But there are many others who would. That is why it is not safe for you to leave this island.”

  Mary shrugged. “I can rule from here. You could, if you had a mind to, assist me.”

  It was James’s turn to snort his derision. “I fully intend to rule Scotland, Madam, but not in your stead. You shall sign this deed of abdication,” he tapped the parchment he still held in his hands. “And then I shall stand as regent for your son, King James the Sixth.”

  “Never!” cried Mary. “I will never abdicate my throne! You lie about Bothwell. You seek to trick me. Well, you will not succeed!”

  The Earl of Moray regarded his sister with cold, gray eyes. “I am not asking, Mary.”

  “I will never sign.”

  James set the deed of abdication aside and leaned forward in his chair. “I must beg you to reconsider,” he said. “For if you do not, your letters to Bothwell shall be published and all the world will know you for the whore and murderess that the Scots know you for. You will be tried in open court, and the letters used as evidence.”

  “They are forgeries!” cried Mary. She sat up so swiftly that he was taken aback. In a trice she was on her feet and lunging towards him, her eyes wild, her hands extended, fingers curled. Absurdly, at that moment she resembled the Lion Rampant on the Royal Arms of Scotland. She fell in a swoon before she had taken three steps; he caught her and laid her back onto the bed. He covered her and stood staring down at her. He was the son of a king; why had God seen fit to make him illegitimate, and bestow upon this blundering woman the crown of Scotland? That was surely an enigma; for when she awoke he would see to it that she signed the deed of her abdication in favor of the infant prince, and from that moment on he, the Earl of Moray, would be king in all but name.

  Richmond Palace, August 1567

  “Christ’s wounds!” cried Elizabeth. “Have the Scots lords gone mad? I wished to see my cousin’s power curtailed and to neutralize her threat to England as a Catholic queen. But never this! How dare Moray do such a thing?” In her hand she held the parchment in which the Earl of Moray informed the Queen of England that the Queen of Scotland had abdicated her throne, that the infant prince had been crowned king in her stead, and that he, Moray, was now Regent of Scotland. Elizabeth threw the document from her as if it were a serpent; when it hit the stone floor the red wax seal shattered and the pieces flew in all directions. She began pacing, her hands clasped behind her back, her errant footsteps crunching and crackling on the pieces of the broken seal.

  Cecil and Throckmorton exchanged uneasy glances. Why could the queen not see how advantageous this was for England? Mary of Scotland’s abdication of her throne, even under duress, meant that Scotland was now back in the hands of the Protestant Lords, the Catholic threat was indeed neutralized, and a regime friendly to England and abhorrent to the French now ruled the country. But at that moment, in her blind rage, she could see naught but that a fellow monarch had been treated disrespectfully at the hands of her own subjects.

  They were correct in their assessment; Elizabeth’s rage was the result of her fear lest what could be done so easily in Scotland could be done just as successfully in England. Rebellion could be contagious. And what of the French? Rather than see Mary ousted in favor of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, might not Catherine de’ Medici seize the opportunity to invade Scotland, even under the guise of assisting Mary? And that brought another, equally dangerous thought to mind.

  “And what of the prince?” Elizabeth slammed her fist down onto the Council table, making their wine cups jump. “We cannot afford to allow Prince James to fall into the hands of the French, as Mary did when she was a child!” Her words died on the air; Cecil and Throckmorton exch
anged significant glances. It was becoming very clear that despite Elizabeth’s half-hearted attempts to broker a marriage for herself, her current efforts were focused upon the Archduke Charles, she had no intention of marrying either him or anyone else. Nor would she name an heir; but with Catherine Grey’s death earlier in the year, it was becoming evident that Mary’s son was the obvious, indeed, perhaps the only, choice. The blood of Scottish and English kings flowed in Prince James’s veins; just as much English blood as Scottish, if one were to consider his pedigree. Mary was the granddaughter of Henry the Eighth’s elder sister, Margaret; Darnley was English by birth and both Scottish and English by blood; he also was a grandchild of Margaret Tudor.

  “Your Grace,” said Cecil. “It was the Scottish lords’ intention to release the Queen of Scots from Bothwell’s thrall, to preserve and protect the prince, and to ensure that Darnley’s murderers are brought to justice. But the queen has refused to denounce Bothwell.”

  Elizabeth rounded on him, slamming her wine cup down onto the table with a ringing bang. “That does not give the Scots the right to humiliate, imprison and depose an anointed queen! And even if the Scottish people cannot see this, then certainly the Scottish lords must know it! Does not their own nobility depend upon the sacred hierarchy that has the monarchy at its head? An anointed queen is answerable only to God! To act in such a manner is presumptuous at the very least, and at the worst upsets the natural order of things. Does not the current state of unhappy Scotland attest to this more than amply?”

  “With respect, Your Grace,” said Cecil, “has not the unroyal behavior of the Queen of Scots served to bring all monarchy into disrepute? Her conduct reflects badly upon all royalty. We ought to be less concerned with righting any wrongs done to Queen Mary Stuart and assisting the Scottish lords, not hindering them with all this talk of vengeance on the Scottish queen’s behalf.”

  This time, Elizabeth picked up her wine cup and threw it across the room. “Christ on the Cross! Even if she were guilty of all they charge her with, I cannot assist the Scottish lords whilst they hold a fellow monarch prisoner!”

  “Moray claims,” said Cecil, “that Her Grace is secured in Loch Leven Castle, which is surrounded on all sides by the waters of the loch, for her own protection. The Scottish people call for her blood.”

  Throckmorton wished only to remain inconspicuous during this exchange; but in an unguarded moment he blurted out, “I fear me that the Queen of Scots has never learnt to separate her emotions from her regality. Nor from her policy.”

  “Nor will she ever!” shouted Elizabeth. “Her reign has been an unmitigated disaster. My cousin has rushed headlong into the destruction of her own royalty, but she is the rightful queen of Scotland, by birth and by the will of God! Nothing can justify the queen’s overthrow by her own subjects!”

  “Then what would have us do, Your Grace?” asked Cecil.

  “God’s blood, man!” cried Elizabeth. “She must be made to see that she will have to answer the charges made against her, so that she may be, God willing, restored to the throne of Scotland, but with a Council approved by us! God knows that she has proven time and again that she is incapable of ruling alone. And then she must denounce Bothwell and try him for Darnley’s murder.”

  Cecil came as close as he ever had to losing his own temper; but that would be as disastrous as the Queen of Scot’s reign had been thus far. “But that is just what she will not do,” he said quietly.

  “Your Grace,” said Sir Nicholas. “I spoke with Kirkcaldy of Grange just after the queen surrendered to him and he delivered her to the Lords of the Congregation. Forgive me, Your Grace, but Her Grace said that she cares not if she loses France, England or her own country of Scotland for Bothwell, and will go with him to the world’s end in a white petticoat ere she leave him.”

  Elizabeth, who had been frantically pacing the room, stopped in her tracks, her face a study in shock. Hearing Mary’s own words awakened her as if from a dream. She could not conceive of such a refutation of her responsibilities as queen, a position in which she had been placed, against all odds, by the will and the grace of God. If her cousin was willing to give up her throne for Bothwell, then there was no help for her.

  Cecil muttered under his breath that there had recently been far too much talk about queens in their petticoats.

  All was silence for a moment and then Elizabeth laughed at Cecil’s jest, but the smile left her face as quickly as it had appeared. “You ask me what you ought to do,” she said gravely. “In turn I must ask you, what would you have me do? Where in Holy Scripture does it say that the people are at liberty to depose the prince that God has placed over them? Where is it written that Christian monarchs are subject to arrest by their own subjects, who may then capture them, imprison them and proceed to judge them? I know of no such laws, My Lords! If the Scots persist in such behavior I shall have no choice but to revenge my cousin and make an example of them for all posterity!”

  “But surely,” said Cecil, “in the case of the Queen of Scots…”

  The wine cup that she had thrown earlier had hit the wall, bounced off of it and then rolled back almost to her feet. In her rage she retrieved it and threw it again. “Any person,” and with this she fixed Cecil with a gimlet eye, “who is content to see a neighboring prince unlawfully deposed must needs be less than dutifully minded towards his own sovereign!”

  But Cecil was not to be cowed. He knew Elizabeth well enough to think that perhaps she was plagued by the threats to her own throne, at the time when the English people had been raging against Dudley as the murderer of his wife, and herself suspected of abetting him, that they might marry. “If Your Grace thinks to liken your own conduct to that of the Scots queen, I can assure you that the two instances are in no way comparable.”

  “Hah!” cried Elizabeth. “Just so. Do you not see then, how I am placed? Firstly, I dare not take any other stand in public than outrage at this preposterous treatment of a fellow sovereign, lest my own subjects think to try likewise here in England. Secondly, I fear me that anything less than vehement threats on my part may result in the Scots making so bold as to execute the Queen of Scotland. They have threatened to do so, have they not? Have you not said that the people call for her blood?”

  She turned to Throckmorton. “Sir Nicholas, you must return to Scotland and deliver my messages of shock, disbelief and outrage at their actions to the Earl of Moray and the Scottish lords, towards their anointed queen. But I have a private message for the Earl of Moray.” Elizabeth recalled the incident just after the earl had fled Scotland to the safety of England, when she had berated him publicly before her entire court. But her private actions had been quite different. She had sheltered the earl and given him money to continue his insurrection north of the border. The earl would have once again to be content to bear her public invective regarding the treatment of his royal sister. But Sir Nicholas would be charged with explaining her political position, which she was certain the earl already knew and appreciated.

  But what none of these men could possibly fathom was the fact that because she herself had once been a prisoner in the Tower and made to fear for her very life, she had a special sympathy now for her cousin’s plight. Such memories would never completely die. Even so, her sympathy must needs stop short of armed intervention; a sympathy that was, when all was said and done, merely kind words, which cost her nothing. For Mary Stuart as a person she cared not a whit; for the rights and royalty of the Queen of Scotland, she cared a great deal, because its impingement touched her own sovereignty.

  Whilst the Queen of England sat deep in thought over the conundrum of what to do about Mary, Sir Nicholas sat as if pole-axed, the words “back to Scotland” ringing in his ears.

  Loch Leven Castle, May 1568

  Mary sat at the window looking out over the rippling blue waters of the loch. The weather had been cold and gloomy for weeks; all there was to be seen had been gray water, gray sky, and wisps of endless gray fog.
But today the wind came from the west, and was warm. She let her cloak fall to the floor; the sun had finally reached her window, which it did only in the late afternoon, and she no longer had need of it.

  She noticed that the fields across the loch and up the hill were now a subtle, translucent green; the delicate heads of the oats undulated gently in the breeze. When she had first come to this desolate place in July of the year before, the oats had been golden and ripe for harvest. Once harvested, the fields had been a depressing sight; nothing but an ugly brown stubble for the entire autumn and winter. And now they were green. So much wasted time!

  It was ironic, she thought, that she had once remarked to herself how tedious five weeks of imprisonment was. And now she had been at Loch Leven Castle for almost ten months! But that was back when she had held hope that Bothwell was raising an army and would come for her at its head. She knew now that he never would.

  A soft knock upon the door of the inner chamber interrupted her reverie. She was allowed no visitors; it must be young Willie Douglas with her firewood. Seton arose and opened the door.

  Willie smiled in greeting and Seton closed the door behind him.

  “I dare not tarry long, Your Grace,” whispered the boy. “But I have news.” He gently set the basket of logs down by hearth, and then strode to the window where she sat. He bowed, went down on one knee, and held a small object up to her in his calloused hand. The pearl earring sitting in the middle of his work-roughened palm seemed incongruous.

  Mary’s eyes grew wide as she reached out a delicate white hand to retrieve the jewel. They dare not speak for fear of listening ears, although who should hear them from the top of the tower in which she was housed, she was at a loss to understand. Her inner chamber could be reached only through the outer chamber from which Willie had just come, and that room held her only remaining servant beside Seton, Janet Kennedy. All her servants were fiercely loyal; so loyal that she had been gradually stripped of all of them except Seton and Janet over the past months of her imprisonment.