The two were greater friends than ever. Gordon’s three years’ imprisonment had been as lenient as Mary could contrive, but it was a crippling experience for a young man in the height of his vigour. But neither time nor circumstance seemed to have the power to affect that grave yet reckless young Highlander. His first act on his release was to bring his mother, Lady Huntly, to Court, with a bodyguard of four younger brothers and his sister Jean. Neither mother nor brothers laid the blame on the Queen for the way their house had been crushed and the old lord done to death ‘The poor lassie was helpless,’ said Lady Huntly. No one knew what Jean thought, but she was only a girl, and the youngest, just twenty, and did not count.
Gordon was as much in love with the Queen as before, and in the same aloof way. He had the air of a spectator at a play, waiting to see what would happen, and knowing that he could not influence it. Neither he nor Bothwell spoke of their love for Mary.
In spite of all Mary’s vehement support of Bothwell as the better man, Darnley won the contest, and the army had to wait for Lennox as its Commander-in-Chief. He was to command the vanguard, Bothwell the main body, together with the young King; and George Gordon, Earl of Huntly, the rear.
‘So we get our sops thrown to us to soothe our tender feelings, and the line of march was drawn up in order of rank as if it were a State banquet! God’s blood! We’ve lost a week by this fooling, and the rebels are withdrawing to Carlisle without a scratch. I’d have wiped them out by now if she’d stuck to my having the command.’
‘It’s not her doing that you haven’t,’ said Gordon.
‘Don’t I know it! It’s never her doing. It used to be the Bastard’s doing, and now it’s this spoilt mother’s darling – wife’s darling. We’re ruled by whatever man rules her, and she’s made a rotten choice.’
‘There was no other.’
That was true, as he grudgingly admitted. Darnley was no fit match in rank to the Queen, but Arran had been the only other diplomatic possibility for her in two kingdoms. Darnley’s claim as heir to them was thinner than Arran’s, yet a child born of him and Mary would certainly be in the direct succession to them both. Mary’s headlong fancy for the only young man who had any right to make open love to her had been prompted in the first place by her policy of union with England.
The campaign was very pretty, in Bothwell’s sardonic comment, a sartorial success. Darnley was undoubtedly the chief triumph for the tailors, in a gilded corselet over his chamois-leather riding-suit, and overcoat of buffalo hide to keep out the chill of an early October cold spell. He was already wearing his new winter gloves, another present from Mary, perfumed and velvet-lined. She herself was not so elaborate, though she had been advised to wear a light breastplate under the plaid she loved as a riding-cloak, and was very proud of the brace of pistols at her holster. She wore a steel cap and let her hair fly free from under it, for it was impossible to keep it pinned up.
They rode over Crawford Moor, where her father had hoped to find gold – ‘but all the gold here is growing on the whin,’ she laughed as she gazed out over the bright hillside. They held a Council of War at Castlehill, a rude old fortress of Robert the Bruce, whose daughter had married a Stewart and so brought that family to the throne of Scotland. ‘It came with a lass, it will go with a lass,’ James V had murmured on his death-bed when he heard that his child was a girl. But it should not go; she was riding at the head of her armies to see to that.
Her enemies were already on the road to Carlisle, and Bothwell pleaded vehemently at the Council of War that he should go after them with a couple of thousand men, cut off their line of retreat and exterminate their whole army. It was not allowed; but all the same, his speed and the size of the army he had so instantly collected caused the utter collapse of the rebels. Their followers deserted and scattered; their ringleaders fled ignominiously out of the country to the protection of the Queen of England. And all with practically no bloodshed; that was what delighted Mary!
‘I think it’s been a glorious campaign,’ she said haughtily, in answer to Bothwell’s disparaging remarks.
‘Do you so, Madam? I think it’s been no campaign at all. It was just a chase-about raid.’
And the Chase-about Raid it was called ever after.
Cecil and Elizabeth cursed the day when James Hepburn had so coolly run the gauntlet of their ships and out-sailed one of their greatest captains. For eighteen months they had had him in their hands, and let him go as ‘of no force now’ – and here he was back in Scotland, thwarting all their plans. There was nothing to be done but one of Elizabeth’s complete right-about turns. Those £3,000 that she had smuggled to James’ wife had apparently been nothing but a premature christening gift for Lady Agnes’ expected baby (a safe assumption, as she was generally expecting one). As to it being sent for the rebel troops, Elizabeth ‘never meant any such thing in that way’. James had to retract his angry reminders of her Ambassador’s ‘faithful promises’ and ‘your own handwriting, confirming the same’, and play a carefully rehearsed comedy with her for the benefit of the French Ambassador, who was concealed behind a curtain while James solemnly told Elizabeth that she had never given him either money or promises, and Elizabeth told James to ‘get you out of my presence for an unworthy traitor’. She was then immensely surprised to see the French Ambassador step forward and coyly admit that he had heard every word. She knew that he knew that she knew he had been there all the time; but that did not matter, appearances were preserved; and some money was sent in secret after the ‘unworthy traitor’ to make the curtain lecture worth his while.
‘Note diligently,’ wrote Knox in the margin of his page describing James’ strange reception by his ally; and three times over: the second time, ‘Note diligently Queen Elizabeth,’ and the third, ‘Here mark either deep dissimulation or a great inconstancy.’
Mary could scarcely believe her triumph. After four years of servitude in her own kingdom she now reigned supreme. Scotland was hers at last, and England must become hers in time. She had kept her word to Elizabeth, married an English subject, and by choosing the one nearest the throne had assured the English succession for their heir.
By honourable dealing, she had actually outmanoeuvred the tricky English Queen; she had the best proof of this in its recognition all through England itself. Important members of Elizabeth’s own Court, more, of her own Council, were already trying to come to terms with Mary, assuring her of their loyal service when she should be their royal mistress.
There was even an overture from Cecil.
Elizabeth had made a surprising success of her eight years’ reign, but she was nearing her middle thirties and still a childless spinster and reputed sickly: it was rumoured that she was incapable of child-bearing. Her star had now begun to set, while Mary’s, so long kept in such dark eclipse, was suddenly shooting up the sky. The mightiest powers in Europe, the Papacy and Spain, were delighted with her, and almost embarrassing in their offers of support. And all the Catholics in England, some said the greater part of the population, were of course in wild jubilation, many of them beseeching Mary not to wait for the death of her cousin, ‘Boleyn’s bastard’, but march south now to ‘her rightful inheritance’; the great Catholic lords of the North offered full help of arms and men and money. But this would mean a civil war, the very thing that Mary dreaded with more than her adult reason, for her loathing of it was a legacy from the horrors of her childhood in France. All she wanted of her enemies was their absence.
Her ‘desire to have all men live as they wish, which so offends the conscience of the godly’, appeared to them after all to have its points.
The rebels began to make peace overtures. They recognised that their best mediator would be Rizzio; James climbed down so far as to write him a very humble letter from England, with the present of a fine diamond; the little Italian promptly stuck it in his cap and capered about, with some outrageously merry remarks about James’ advances to him. Lethington too was making a careful ca
t-like approach to him; and it was Rizzio who got a pardon for Châtelherault, to Darnley’s disgust.
The young man began to complain that this precious Master Davie had finer horses than himself. The nobles scowled at the little upstart and shouldered him out of their way, but all the notice Davie took of that was to mimic their lordly bad manners to Mary so comically that she sobbed with laughter.
Neither guessed that he was being used as a weapon against her. Her enemies could still work her harm from a distance. In England, James began to spread the report that ‘his sister hated him because he knew that concerning her which respect would not suffer him to reveal.’ Elizabeth repeated these dark hints to the French Ambassador. They spread slowly nearer and nearer home, in reversal to the usual process of scandal.
But the seed had been sown there too. At the very beginning of their acquaintance, James had contrived to suggest suspicions of Rizzio to Darnley. The youth ignored them while he was certain of Mary’s obvious passion for himself. When he was not so certain, he would begin to remember them again.
Bothwell did not hear the faint breath of scandal that was creeping up against the Queen like a wreath of fog from outside her kingdom. He was far too busy to be much at Court. He had first remained at Dumfries in command of his Borderers, to keep watch all along the Border against the rebels; he had all the fords across the rivers guarded, and the hill passes, so that there should be no communication between them and Scotland.
When it was clear that ‘the rats have not a tooth left to gnaw with’, he turned his vigorous attention to working up the Queen’s artillery. Now at last he was able to carry out his plan of putting all artillery into double equipage to serve both as siege guns and field batteries; he appointed a Controller of Artillery, with authority to place wrights and gunners near all the fortresses, to cut timber for the wheels and platforms, supply iron for the mountings, and lead and stone for the ammunition. Timber was felled all that winter on the Tay and sent down by sea to Leith Harbour. He arranged for continuous labour and regular wages, and ensured the exact number of draught oxen to be sent by each stock-owner to Leith for drawing the timber.
There was some pleasure among all this business: a brush or two with the English at Berwick who had objected to his guard on the Border passes; more than a brush with the Elliots, whose peel towers he now burned as he had threatened, in accordance with his powers as Lieutenant of the Border ‘to ride with fire and sword’ upon those houses that had disobeyed his call to arms. Rob Elliot of Redheugh sought safety with Sir John Forster, but Forster had to go cannily, for the English Queen was anxious to appoint a peace conference, with Forster and the Earl of Berwick as the English Commissioners.
Once again Bothwell stood in her way. He was chosen by Mary as the chief Scottish delegate instead of the easy ‘tractable’ nominees that Elizabeth had wanted. In vain did her Envoy, Randolph, protest and even storm at the Scottish Queen, declaring that she had chosen the very man most hated by the Queen of England.
The delicate girl lying back on her pillows only laughed at the indignant little man’s attempts to bully her out of her right to choose her own representative. She apologized charmingly for receiving him in bed, but she had not slept well. Randolph’s gallantry was more disconcerting than his anger.
‘I expect,’ he said archly, ‘Your Grace has something in your belly to keep you awake.’
‘Do you really like that man?’ she asked later of Beton, who had held a long flirtation with Randolph.
Beton tossed her impudent curls; the corners of her mouth went up in a hard little shut smile.
‘He thinks so. You may find it useful that he does, Madam.’
‘He’s a spy, of course. Have you been spying on the spy? Is it something about Elizabeth? Will it affect me?’
‘It is something about Elizabeth. It has affected you. I don’t know how much it will.’ Beton spoke more slowly than usual. Mary threw a pillow at her.
‘Beton, you teasing monkey, tell me quick!’
‘No, Madam, give me time. I like to make sure of my facts.’
Mary gave in good-humouredly. ‘And so you let Randolph make love to you, merely to make use of him for me?’
Beton was instantly again the casual cynical young woman of the world. ‘He is well enough to flirt with – and to work up others. I like handsome Sandy Ogilvie better.’
‘So does Lady Jean Gordon, I fancy.’
‘She may, but she’s a dull creature.’
‘All the same, I have a notion that she will always get what she wants in the end.’
The end of my life then!’ and Beton laughed at so incredible a thought. She was already secretly engaged to the fickle swain, she admitted.
Kisses and congratulations, laughing promises of secrecy and a wedding dress, they could not keep off the chill dismay that struck at Mary’s heart before she recognised its cause. Was it that Sandy was not good enough for the most brilliant of her Maries? No, it struck nearer home – the knowledge that Jean would now be thankful to save herself from the ignominious position of the jilted, by encouraging a lover of far greater power and importance than young Alexander Ogilvie of Boyne.
He was not the only man who had noticed the Lady Jean Gordon. She was too pale and her nose rather too long, but her figure was beautiful, full-formed, and carried with the conscious voluptuous grace of a much older woman. Her whole air and manner were of a remarkable composure for her age: whatever the cause of her silence, it was certainly not from any shyness or diffidence.
Bothwell had noticed her deliberately on his rare appearances at Court, for he was glad of the chance given him by a fine young woman to distract his attention from the Queen. Mary’s presence was now an acute discomfort to him; it was bad enough in absence to hear in his mind some sudden echo of that magic voice, the tingling vibrant excitement of it, ringing across the serious business that he had in hand, sometimes even waking him just as he was falling asleep, so that he started up imagining for one wild instant that he had heard her speak. While away from her he could tire his body and drug his mind with the furious speed of all his activities; when with her, the only relief for his tormented senses, as he watched her with that pampered boy, was to behave with rather more than his accustomed ungraciousness to her.
It was becoming the fashion for the young Protestant nobles to attend Mass in the Queen’s chapel occasionally as a courtesy, and also as a relief from the long sermons of their own ministers. But Bothwell still refused to do so, flatly and bluntly; he would not give any handle to the notion that because he supported the Queen he must therefore be ‘a great Papist’. The world had gone mad over tying labels, generally the wrong ones, on to everybody.
‘You are the Inquisition’ – that still expressed the common opinion of Mary.
He did not explain this, but laughed when she thought he would come, ‘if only for the music, as many do. We’re having the new Palestrina Mass. Davie got a copy of it from Rome. He still sings the bass.’
‘Aye, they call him a base fellow.’
‘What a stupid joke! I thought you liked him.’
‘I do. My only objection to him is that he’s served you too well.’
Again he would not say why, and when she cited the Protestants at Court who attended Mass, he jeered at them. ‘They’re used to changing their coat – more often than their linen, some of them. Even that may follow, now you’re civilizing us all so fast.’
How rude and sneering he’d grown in his long absence! He would probably never quite forgive her for it. So she still spoke gently, though urgently, as she explained that this particular Mass was a State occasion of international importance. Monsieur Rambouillet, a nobleman from the French Court, was being sent to confer on Darnley a high honour of ecclesiastical origin, the Knighthood of the Cockle, of the Order of St Michael. This decoration had not been given to a Scot since half a century ago when François I had bestowed it on his friend the Franco-bred Duke of Albany, ‘Magnificen
t Uncle’ of James V, who had left his fair wide lands in France to come and be Governor of Scotland during his nephew’s minority. Tremendous preparations had then been made for the Collar of the Cockle; the Palace of Holyrood had been repaired (even the drainage sewers, which were never its strong point) and partly rebuilt; all the lords and barons throughout the kingdom were summoned to attend the ceremony in St Giles’ Cathedral in new robes of cloth-of-gold, crimson satin, purple velvet and black taffetas. Albany ever after bore the Cockle shells round the border of his coat of arms.
She told all this to Bothwell, almost begging him to understand her eagerness that the occasion should not fall too far short of that earlier splendour. St Giles’ was now Protestant, and closed to her; the ceremony could only be held in her private chapel, but at least let her and Darnley have the support of her greatest nobles!
Even this failed to move him. He said that he would meet the Frenchman at the banquet that his old friend, the merchant, Barron, was giving in honour of the occasion, and that would certainly impress Rambouillet if Barron told the full list of Bothwell’s debts to him as an after-dinner story.
She shrugged her shoulders; she might have known it, he would do nothing to please her. Serve her, yes, he had proved that again and again, but that was his loyalty, the one tribute he paid to morality. But he cared nothing for her happiness or unhappiness – and nothing for what she thought of him, any more than he cared what the world thought. She felt as much envy as irritation. If only she could be like that, carefree, insolently regardless of others’ opinion!
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