‘When is it to be?’
‘Soon,’ Beaton answered. ‘April or May.’ Springtime, lovers’ time: that made it worse, in a way. But Beaton’s face was wooden now, hard as the portcullis slammed down over a castle entranceway.
She bent over, the heavy locket round her neck swinging like a pendulum, and began to gather up the fragments of the queen’s scarf, closing her hand on the limp rags, carefully.
‘Here,’ Seton reached out, ‘let me.’ Desperate to do anything, however small, to show her sympathy. Though she and Beaton had not been so close of late, for the moment that distance was swept away.
‘No, leave them. I might need them,’ said Beaton, cryptically. Seton gazed stupidly at the sweat-stained scarf – and thought, absurdly, of Bridie.
Then Beaton said, her words as sharp as needles, ‘It’s not over. It’s not over, Mary.’ Not Seton – Mary.
Her hand on Seton’s arm was like a death grip. Even her face seemed to have changed – as if the old crone she would one day be stepped out from behind Beaton’s smooth cheeks; malevolent, angry. As if Seton had never before seen her clearly.
Then, as if afraid she’d said too much, Beaton spun on her heel and strode away.
*
The queen had a table sent from Florence, made from pietra dura. The Italians took a thousand tiny pieces of coloured stone and made from them a picture, like a tapestry. Seton thought of it later as she tried to piece together what happened next.
Beaton seemed to have accepted her future. It was, after all, what girls like they were bred to, thought Seton stoutly. She stayed smooth-faced even when courtiers teased her about Ogilvie’s homestead, a vast and stony castle built out over an inland sea. If anyone tried to draw her on her real feelings, she simply turned away.
Sometimes the queen herself would ask Beaton whether she were looking forward to the wedding – challengingly perhaps, or as if she herself were looking for some kind of understanding, maybe.
But Beaton just dropped into a curtsey, with an ostentatious reverence that made the gesture almost an insult, and murmured, ‘Majesty.’ Behaving too correctly to merit any reproof, though once or twice the queen’s eyes snapped angrily. Distressed, Seton went to Fleming to talk about it – only to find she did not know what to say.
In the first days of March, it was Fleming seized Seton’s arm. ‘They’re sending Randolph away in disgrace. Moray and the rebels, back in the autumn – the English were giving them money.’ Seton gave a snort of incredulity, and Fleming didn’t pretend not to understand where the error lay.
‘Well, yes, of course, everyone knew the English were bound to be behind it all. But now they’ve got proof. They’ve given Randolph a week to put all his affairs in order, and to leave the country…’ They, Seton thought swiftly, through her distress for Beaton. Not so long ago, it would have been ‘we’.
Someone had dropped her Majesty’s mirror, just the other day, and they’d all made jokes, uneasily. One of the maids, a Highland girl, had said they should consult a witch, who could take the seven years’ bad luck away.
Now Seton seemed to see the bright dangerous shards they’d hidden, so as not to upset her Majesty. Other things were being broken, in the world she could not even see.
Twenty-one
The bond, when later they saw it, said it all, really. ‘We, Henry, by the grace of God, King of Scotland and husband to the Queen’s Majesty… have thought pity to suffer her to be abused or seduced by certain privy persons, wicked and ungodly, especially a stranger Italian called Davie…have devised to take these privy persona, enemies to her Majesty, us, the nobility and commonwealth, to punish them according to their demerits, and in case of any difficulty, to cut them off immediately…’
But none of the Marys had seen the moment of crisis coming – thought anything of the fact that they weren’t to be at the planned supper party. Just the queen and half a dozen intimates – Rizzio among them, as he was always, these days.
It was held in the tiny closet of a room, off Queen Mary’s chamber. Wood lined, small and cosy. Barely enough space for the table and stools, but at least you could get the good of the fire.
Too small, too crammed, that closet – hard for anyone to get away. The queen described it afterwards, writing to her ambassador in France, with the memory still all too vivid, as if would ever fade away.
‘The king, our husband came to us in our cabinet and sat down beside us, where we were at supper…The Earl of Morton and Lord Lindsay, with their assisters, clothed in warlike manner, occupied the whole entrance to our palace. Lord Ruthven, clothed in like manner, with his complices, took entry perforce in our cabinet, and there seeing our secretary, David Riccio, among others our servants, declared he had to speak with him.
‘The said David for refuge took safeguard, having retired him behind our back, [but] the Lord Ruthven with his accomplices put violent hands on him, struck him over our shoulders with whingers, one part of them standing before our face with bended daggs, most cruelly took him forth out of our cabinet, and at the entry of our chamber gave him fifty-six strokes with whingers and swords, in doing whereof we were not only struck with great dread, but were most justly induced to take extreme fear of our life…’
While Ruthven sat there, coughing his lungs out, one of the men pressed his pistol to the queen’s pregnant belly. Everyone knew Ruthven himself hadn’t long to live; he could afford to do things carelessly. Then he asked the queen for permission to take a drink – it could have been almost funny.
But what the queen couldn’t bear to write was how active a part Darnley had played in the whole terrible story – holding his royal wife by the arms, so she couldn’t help Davy.
The queen thought that she showed herself to Darnley, before they were married, as she stood there in man’s costume that day. I showed myself to Darnley, she thought, but he never showed his true self to me.
*
Seton and Fleming had reached the door to the queen’s bedroom at almost the same moment that evening, only to find guards barring the way.
‘Let us in!’ It was Fleming at her most imperious. ‘Don’t you know who we are? We’re the queen’s own ladies.’
‘Get back to your gossip, girlie,’ said one of the men unpardonably, eyeing Fleming’s red hair. Seton didn’t recognize his livery, but later she learned it was Lord Ruthven’s. Well, it would be. ‘Yon queen’s got other things to think about right now than having herself dressed fancy.’
‘I’m sorry, madam, that’s impossible,’ another, dark-clad, man interjected, much more civilly.
With a dawning horror, Seton recognised him as someone in Maitland’s employ. Turning to Fleming, with a flash of accusation on her lips, she saw the same horror in Fleming’s face.
‘Where?… Is he?’
‘No, no, madam, my master is safe enough.’ The dark-clad man bobbed his chin towards the other wing of the palace. He must have meant it for reassurance, but it didn’t come out that way.
To anyone who knew their court, the sums did not add up to any figure Fleming and Seton could bear to see. Maitland safe but in the palace, and his man far enough in the know to be here at the door already? Arm in arm with men who had… But they still didn’t know what had been done, precisely.
They could hear the queen’s voice from inside the barred room, keening high above the men’s in anger and distress. So – not that, at least. Not the worst thing, anyway.
Helpless, they stood outside the door. Then slumped, then sat on the floor by the wall, their silk skirts growing dusty as the time passed away.
In the dizzying, dozing thoughts of the small hours, Seton thought that if she never in all her life waited one more minute outside a closed door, it would already be too long. But what else were they good for, the Marys? Unable to get in, they couldn’t bear to go away.
Belatedly, Seton wondered where Beaton could be. After the meal in the great hall, she’d simply melted away – but the commotion shoul
d have fetched her hours ago, surely.
The door to the bedchamber opened, and a man’s head appeared.
‘Fetch a midwife – quickly,’ – and Seton was flying, balancing precariously on the tips of her high-heeled shoes, running to the courtyard where the waiting men clustered, anxious and surly, but ready to take a message, and pass on the burden of urgency.
*
Afterwards, Seton understood that this too had been a part of queenship. That you learn to use everything you have – even the weakness of your own body.
They had lectured the queen, Ruthven and the others – scolded her for giving heed to foreigners, for seeking to restore the Catholic faith, for outlawing good Protestants, men like Moray, who only wanted the best for their country. For wronging her husband Lord Darnley… He dared complain she no longer came to his bed – ‘You say you won’t or you make yourself sick! You just sit playing cards with Davy!’
That must have showed her the way. If he would expose their closest secrets, like an old crone waving the stained bedsheet after a wedding night, well, so would she. Did she tell them that by the sixth month the baby was pressing heavy on her bladder, and were they actually going to stand there while she…? Did she make them remember the womb is where a woman’s madness comes from, or so the doctors say? She cried out that she was losing the child, that her pains had come upon her suddenly.
When the midwife went in so did the two Marys, and to be sure the woman was quickly told what to say. That if the queen weren’t allowed a change of air, and attendance, she’d miscarry.
(And then where would Lord Darnley be? At the toe of everyone’s boot, suddenly. ‘Every cloud…’ murmured Fleming to Seton quietly, before they were sure this was indeed just a pretence, and that the queen was, if anything, riding high, on one of her wild bursts of vitality.)
*
I’ve never seen her cleverer – thought Seton, admiringly. For her own part, she could hardly bear to be in the same room as Lord Darnley. A Darnley blubbered into baby’s tears; but Seton felt her very chest grow hard and armoured, and her fingers curve into talons as she passed him the comforting wine cup.
How could he have let in the men who thrust their knives, through the fine doublet of which he’d been so proud, into Davy’s smooth olive skin, until they heard him cry out in agony? A Davy who had, to be sure, grown big for his boots – but if that were to be a killing crime, then the first on the scaffold would be Darnley.
There’d been no time to think about Davy himself, with his quick flashing smile and his all-seeing eyes, and the huge basso voice that came so unexpected from his small body. But whatever he and Davy had been to one another – and Seton had never believed those rumours, any more than she did the ones that linked him with the Queen’s Majesty – how could Darnley stand by and watch a good, yes a good man turn from tasting his wine and clowning to please the company to a screaming bleeding thing that died begging for mercy?
Except, of course, that’s one thing everyone had to learn, those near the crown. They had to learn to stand by. Stand by when Chastelard died – Huntly’s son too. But this was worse, it was, said Seton fiercely as she held the basin of water to wash the queen’s tears away.
They’d known what they were – what anyone close to a throne must be. But here was Darnley, yesterday’s allies behind him like outworn toys, huddled in the room with his wife as though he’d never betrayed her in any way. Convinced in a heartbeat (and so he should be) that the lords who took care to leave his own knife in Davy’s body could turn it on him just as easily.
So that was Queen Mary’s first job done. She’d even promised to sleep with him, if necessary: the more readily for the fact that before night came he’d instead be in love with his bottle of whisky.
Her second job was with Lord Moray; oh yes, he’d appeared that morning, to scavenge the pickings of what others had done. Him, she hailed as her dear brother, who’d never have allowed her, if only he’d been there, to be treated so roughly. Said she’d be happy to accede to her husband’s request and pardon the lords who’d rebel against her, recently. Yes, even those who’d dared draw knives in her presence, and threaten her own life and that of her baby…
The queen pressed her hand against her belly. Divide and conquer. Moray was never going to let gratitude to men like Ruthven or Morton stand in the way of an accord with the queen that might win back his confiscated territory.
She walked around the room with one hand in Lord Darnley’s hand, and another clasping Lord Moray. When the lords came and knelt before her, she told them they could draw up what papers of pardon they liked, and she’d sign the next day.
John Knox had done his work too well, convinced them of a woman’s frailty. They bowed, and agreed, and went downstairs, slapping themselves on the back, no doubt, that the only way to deal with women was firmly.
And then after midnight – taking with her Lord Darnley – she slipped down to the Holyrood wine cellars, where a passage led to the grounds outside, and simply rode away.
*
To the queen, galloping through the cold spring air, with the warmth of the horse’s thudding bulk under her, this probably felt like a victory, Seton thought. The ability to live in the moment had always been one of Queen Mary’s greatest strengths. She’d bested all the men who dared so underestimate her, she’d snatched Darnley back like a prize from his alliance with the lords. She was away, and free. And if it was a victory at all, it was her victory.
She wouldn’t be thinking about who had arranged the horses, and the handful of picked servants waiting, and the messages to the loyal lords, and Lord Bothwell among them. That had all been arranged by the queen’s ladies, naturally. And now Seton felt seep into her bones, like an ague, the shaking awareness that they lived in a land where the lords felt able to threaten the Queen’s Majesty. Lived among men who could murder her loyal servant, in her very presence, just because he stood in their way.
Would it ever have happened in Elizabeth’s England? Grasping after her loyalty to Queen Mary, Seton pushed the thought away.
But while the queen sat in Dunbar to regain her strength and assemble her forces, the Marys, left behind in Holyrood, were staring at each other as if at strangers, hardly daring to acknowledge what they might see.
PART IV
March 1566 – January 1567
Twenty-two
They say that Scotland was a land of giants once. That their quarrels made the hills spurt tongues of fire, and rivers of liquid fire well up from the bowels of the earth. That Arthur’s Seat was nothing to do with the chivalrous Camelot king in Malory, but the lair of something larger and darker.
That Arthur, the giant, is gone away now, but his seat is there plain to see. Brooding like a thundercloud over Holyrood, at once just a part of the landscape – covered by bracken, or heather, or snow, by season – and a reminder that there are forces beyond what you see.
That’s how Rizzio’s murder felt, or so it seemed to Seton, anyway.
*
Maitland had been dining with Bothwell and Huntly as Davy died. Of course he’d known all about the plot – hadn’t meant for it to happen that brutally, maybe. In the queen’s chamber, before even they rode away, Darnley couldn’t wait to babble it out to his wife – ‘Maitland said, Maitland told me, Maitland’s spies had said you were abed with Davy.’
Seton hadn’t been able to look at Fleming’s face as they moved around the room with their possets and their shawls, doing all they could to assuage the hurt Fleming’s lover had dealt Queen Mary.
Once the queen herself looked up at Fleming – swiftly, searchingly. She seemed satisfied by what she saw. Seton had come to the same conclusion: no, Fleming hadn’t known.
But that left too many questions between Fleming and Maitland, surely. Surely – as they ministered to the queen’s needs, and even Lord Darnley’s, and took turns at the table to write the letters which would be smuggled out to the queen’s supporters – Fleming was loo
king at the wreck of her own love story?
With Beaton, it was another matter. She’d appeared silently in the chamber when the rest of the ladies were let in, and no word of where she’d been, before. She’d performed her duties faithfully, and the queen seemed not to query.
It was only later that they learned Randolph, before he left Scotland, had also known the whole story. Had written to Elizabeth that the man Davy was to have his throat cut and that immediately. It didn’t, no of course it didn’t, mean he’d told his lover before he went away.
But what stuck in Seton’s craw like a fishbone in the gullet – louring over her landscape like Arthur’s Seat over Holyrood – was the memory of that night when the queen had told Beaton she must marry.
*
Perhaps it was just as well, in the circumstances, that Beaton’s own marriage had passed off quietly. A ceremony at her own family home, with no great parade of her closeness to Queen Mary.
Perhaps, now, none of it mattered, for the queen had triumphed, and without having to raise a sword. By the end of April she was back in Edinburgh, with George Seton’s troops behind her, as they should be; and men from Livy’s and Fleming’s families.
Ruthven and his closest had fled over the border, all thought of pardon for them forgotten, but apart from that…
‘Everyone’s reconciled to everyone,’ Fleming said, adding with a sigh, ‘or nearly.’ Maitland was still banned from court, staying at his friend Atholl’s home on the northern coast, as far from the court as you could get without actually leaving the country. The Abbey lands at Haddington the queen had given him were confiscate, and handed over to Lord Bothwell.
But Fleming had been in touch with him, of course she had. Atholl was married to Fleming’s sister Margaret, the one with the talent for witchery. It was clear, too, that Fleming had made her own deal with the part he had played. There was a new kind of steel under her regained serenity.
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