The Queen's Mary: In the Shadows of Power...

by Sarah Gristwood

  Fleming had forgiven Maitland. Not just for what he had done to Davy. Not just how he had played with his dupe Darnley, but that he had not tried to sweep her, Fleming, out of danger. What if she’d been at that supper party where men pushed a pistol against a queen’s pregnant belly?

  He’d been much away from court these months, it was true. But there must have been letters, conversations. Times when they’d said, we’ll do such and such soon, and Maitland knew – but Fleming did not – that by then the world would have changed completely.

  Or perhaps what Maitland had known was something worse – that the world would be much the same at the end of the day, whoever died, however horribly. Seton found that idea almost harder to take.

  While the queen was away, there had been long nights at Holyrood when she sat up in the queen’s room. She’d tell the servants to bring tapers and get the fire going, and no matter if they thought it strange. She was still one of the Queen’s Marys.

  Fleming had forgiven Maitland. Could she? Or rather, could she have, if her forgiveness or the lack of it could possibly have mattered to anybody? Was this what it took, to love a man? Was this what men wanted, ultimately? Not a woman who would love with reservations but one who gave herself entirely, and let the questions slide away. And if that was what a man wanted, did a monarch want that too?

  No wonder Seton sat alone in the queen’s painted room – dared even to cover herself, on the great bed – until the first rays of light touched Arthur’s Seat and the birds in the palace gardens began singing cheerfully.

  *

  On the queen’s return, as she began to prepare for the birth of her child, it was not so hard to believe things were as they should be. To be sure, there was no going back to Holyrood with all its memories. From a house in Edinburgh’s high street the queen moved into the castle to await the birth – tradition, they said, and no one mentioned that it was also a place of greater security.

  Seton and Fleming were with the queen when, at the beginning of June, she entered her confinement chamber. No wonder they called it confinement, thought Seton as, through a wave of repulsion, she watched workmen nailing thick dark cloth over the window, shutting most of the soft June air away. She understood the theory; that a woman, these last days, nest somewhere safe, warm and restful, without distractions, so that she might dream of her baby. But really!

  Rich hangings over the walls but no tapestries – pictures were ‘not convenient about women in such case’. They’d read out the ordinances laid down by this queen’s great-great-grandmother, the Tudor matriarch Margaret Beaufort, derisively.

  Never mind that a woman might want some distraction, to take her mind off what lay ahead: it seemed the old ladies of the old world and the lords of the new might well agree. The workmen were fastening ropes to the head posts of the bed, for her Majesty to pull on in her throes. Like instruments of torture, thought Seton, shuddering, as she turned away.

  No one knew quite when the birth would be, but on the ninth of the month the queen sent for the lords to hear her will. You did make your will before you went into childbed: everyone knew somebody who had died that way. One of the Protestant theologians said no woman who died in childbirth should be mourned, since she was only fulfilling her destiny.

  There were kind gifts to all, and among them all four of the Marys. Great jewels to be handed down through her French Guise family. But the jewel of Scotland itself – well, thought Seton, reassured, the queen wasn’t going to do anything silly. If she died but her baby lived, then a committee were to rule during his (please God, his) minority. Right now, during her incapacity, the reins of the country were to be held by her reconciled brother, Lord Moray.

  No. Not by Lord Darnley.

  It was after the lords had bowed themselves away that the real business would begin. Seton, and Fleming too, were at once part and not part of this business. They were there when the queen, with brave determined gaiety, laughed with them about the smaller bequests in that will. But later – ‘It’s only the married ladies she’ll want about her then,’ said one of the matrons confidently.

  That didn’t include them but it did include Livy, who had told them with something less than her usual bounce that she too was expecting a baby.

  It included Fleming’s sister Margaret, the Countess of Atholl, who safe in her husband’s northern home led parties of ladies out at nights, so they said, to worship the moon and the mother goddess. Well, that made sense, maybe.

  Would the queen have wanted Beaton, the now-married Beaton, with her, had she not still been away?

  It was more than a week after she’d read her will that the queen’s pains began, Seton and Fleming found themselves jostled out of the tiny room by the sheer press of helpful, hindering ladies. Glad to be so, in a way, but in another—

  ‘One more door to wait outside,’ said Fleming wryly.

  *

  They hadn’t expected it would go on so long. The queen’s pains began as the sun went down: it would be over by midnight, surely. She’d had the holy relics of St Margaret brought to help her in her travails: thank heavens at least that they of the old faith had those things to cling to.

  At midnight it wasn’t over – ‘Nowhere near, yet,’ said the midwife briskly. Through the door they could hear the queen say, between grunts, that if she’d known it would be this bad she would never have married. Seton thought of Elizabeth in England, fleetingly.

  As the skies lightened again there seemed no end to the pains that seemed to recede only to seize the queen again like – Seton shuddered – the waves on the sea; and she was getting so tired that the midwife said, quietly, that perhaps they should try the old ways.

  They’d already given her water from a pure jet bowl, so that she could drink in the stone’s healing properties. This was something else, apparently. Still hovering in their doorway, Seton and Fleming were brushed aside as maids came bustling through with more bedlinen. Set a pallet bed, and pillows, and tied more pulling ropes to the foot of the queen’s bed for—

  ‘What, there’s someone else going to give birth in there?’ giggled Fleming nervously. Lying down there was Lady Reres – they knew her, as Beaton’s aunt, but they’d seen her around court for months with her flat belly. Behind her, the Countess of Atholl stooped over something on a table they couldn’t quite see.

  The midwife’s assistant was kind enough to explain. ‘They’re trying to cast some of the queen’s pains onto that other lady.

  ‘Can’t say as I think it’s working, mind,’ – as the queen cried out again, sharply.

  It was gone ten in the morning when a new cry came. Seton and Fleming looked at each other in hope. ‘It just sounds so angry!’ But the countess was at the door with a red squalling bundle, and proudly—

  ‘It’s a boy! A fine healthy boy.’ She sounded as proud as though her spells had made the baby, and perhaps they had, in a way. The pair outside found they too were beaming proudly. Behind them, the queen’s chamber looked like a butcher’s shop, with Livy hunched over the queen’s still form as they tried, without moving her, to pull the bloodied sheets away.

  *

  A queen can’t be allowed much respite. Twenty hours’ struggle, and the blood, and the cries, and two days later she was sitting up in bed, to receive Castelnau. Not all that reluctantly, maybe – there must have been relish in spreading the news of her triumph (take that, Elizabeth!) as far as may be. More of a pleasure, no doubt, than seeing Lord Darnley. When Darnley was brought in to her she held up the baby, and told him it was fathered by none other than he.

  Not a thing she should have had to say.

  She was still very weak, and fretful from the pain in her breasts. Great swollen orbs, blue-veined and giant nippled, she couldn’t bear for anyone to touch them, though the midwife gave Livy some cream to rub in, to drive the milk away.

  The baby had a wet nurse, naturally.

  Despite her pain the queen was triumphant. Her feelings as a mother apart,
this baby made her stronger in her monarchy. A fruitful branch of the Stuart family tree, not some French-trained female who could be swept aside.

  But at the same time – those who knew her recognised the symptoms – she was as fragile as a dry twig under a weight of snow. Tearful, and clutching after her happy triumph as though she were afraid it might blow away.

  Twenty-three

  The doctors recommended a change of air, and it was too tempting for anyone to disagree. They moved – a modified quorum of the court – to the pleasant holiday palace of Alloa, just an easy boat journey away.

  There the queen did seem to take a stronger hold on her good spirits – all the stronger, perhaps, for the fact Lord Darnley stayed mostly away.

  ‘Made himself scarce, as well he may do, upsetting her Majesty that way.’ If Seton sounded vengeful, then she could be sure at least that those around felt the same way. Livy had gone back to her husband’s home. Her life, like Beaton’s, would for the most part be elsewhere now. But the remaining ladies, married or not, were wrapping the queen and her new infant in their own protective swaddling bands; another kind of maternity.

  When Darnley did come to Alloa, the couple had come to shouts and almost blows; Elizabeth’s envoy took care to report that the Scottish Queen had spoken quite unlike a lady.

  ‘He should know what he’s talking about, working for Elizabeth,’ said Fleming sharply.

  But Fleming was softening and warming with the summer days. There was a strange sense of release in the air – the quiet of a fever patient after the doctors had let blood – as if something now past had liberated them in some way. Though Maitland was still exiled from court, the queen was beginning to speak of him more kindly.

  To be sure Maitland – any decent man – might look good beside Darnley. The queen tried, she really did, and just how hard she tried was known only to those who put her to bed at night and woke her in the morning. The queen still took her breakfast in bed and Seton, bringing the tray early, during one of Darnley’s visits, was greeted by a purse-lipped Fleming, who waved her away. ‘Busy.’

  Surely, the queen couldn’t bring herself to let him… She could, apparently. Score one more for queenship, they agreed together, later that day. It would be the jewels in her crown; a husband reconciled and a second baby. But that was how it all went wrong – at Traquair to the south in the lush river valley, where all should have been pleasant and easy.

  The season had begun for hunting the red stag: you ride hard, that way. It is not for the faint-hearted or the frail of body, which is why the queen whispered in Darnley’s ear that she would not ride out next day.

  Her ladies could guess what she’d been whispering. Already – the reward for those swollen tormenting breasts – the chance of another pregnancy. Far, far too soon to say anything in public of course. But Darnley had no sense of a woman’s privacy.

  ‘No matter – if you lose this baby we can make another.’ Flushed with wine (as when was he not?), he looked for approval round the company. As if all that mattered were the number of seeds he could plant in a woman’s body.

  It was as if he’d taken a giant brand, and laid a scar across the landscape. The queen flushed scarlet and then white, less with embarrassment than fury. It was the Laird of Traquair, all credit to him, who bravely spoke up, telling Darnley to behave more fittingly.

  ‘What, must we not work a mare when she’s in foal?’ After all Darnley had done – murder and rebellion, letters to foreign powers that from anyone else would be called treachery – this seemed almost the most shocking, they agreed later, privately. It’s not the sword waving in your face that does the most harm, it’s the quick stab in your sleeping belly.

  Queen and consort would ride together to Stirling, where their baby would be given to the charge of the Earl of Mar, as was tradition for heirs of Scottish royalty. But that once done – Seton reassured Fleming – she would surely want to gather her allies. And after that, she really should have expected to meet him any day.

  Seton had just come from a last careful look round the Stirling nursery. Taking her own leave of the milk-scented thing with the tiny waving fists made her realise how much worse it was going to be for the Queen’s Majesty: tradition, yes, but that didn’t make it easy. So when she passed a figure standing silent in the castle’s court she made as if to pass on, unseeingly.

  But the figure moved forward to halt in her way. She reddened, painfully. Then set her lips and brushed past him, clumsy.

  For a moment Maitland seemed minded to let her go, then with a word under his breath he turned and fell into step beside her, keeping pace so that unless she ran she could not get away. Furious, she swung to face him.

  ‘Mistress Seton.’ He paused a moment. ‘Mary.’ She didn’t speak, could not have found the words to describe his treachery. It was the first time she’d seen him in many months, since before Davy’s death, and it seemed to her he should have changed in some way.

  But there he stood, the same neat dark figure – less pale and less careworn than he had been, actually; well, being away from court did tend to take you that way. At the thought, her indignation surged up anew. So he’d been fishing, no doubt, or sailing on the lochs at Atholl’s Highland home while they—

  ‘I’m not going to explain myself to you, Mary. I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry. It wouldn’t even be true, entirely. Sorry for the necessity, yes. It wasn’t even as if I disliked Davy.’

  Davy. No one else at court even mentioned his name, though the queen, defiant, was taking on his brother Joseph to write her letters as Davy had once done. Now his murderer or as good as was the only one to acknowledge Davy had ever strutted among them, and hated to get dirt on his fine hands, and taken such a childlike pride in introducing himself as her Majesty’s private secretary.

  ‘If you’d known what I knew—’

  Seton raised her hand, and obediently he halted. She did know, she could guess, what she would hear: some story of secret letters found. To the pope, maybe, with plans to force Scotland back to the true faith, yes, but under the pope’s sway. Had they really been the reason Davy had to die?

  ‘The queen has forgiven me, it seems.’ He did not say, and so has Mallie. ‘Well, forgiven me enough to make use of me once more, which is as it should be. Lord Bothwell may even have to give me back those fat abbey lands,’ – on the ghost of a smile, his face sobered suddenly.

  ‘There are few people whose good opinion I truly value in this court, but one of them turns out to be you, Mary.’

  He paused a moment. ‘Shall we?’ Shall we walk, as we often used to walk before, thought Seton, all three of them together, to take the air and a moment of quiet. The thing about Stirling is there’s air aplenty.

  From the castle’s very walls, great rocky crags fall sharply away. Only in Scotland do you raise a baby in a place whose first virtue is it’s easy to defend. So close across the valley you feel you could touch them, the hills rear up and the Highlands begin, a land of different dangers and opportunities. That expedition after the Gordons, and her brother George’s arm around her… no real talk with George for a long time now, and hard to know what she’d dare say.

  They reached the castle walls, and stood gazing north. As the birds wheeled below them Seton shivered, and Maitland in his heavy cloak shifted slightly, to block the wind. She found she had, not forgiven, but accepted him. Maybe she wouldn’t do so badly, should loving ever come her way.

  He knew it, of course. ‘So, then – tell me, how does it go, Mary?’ Haltingly, she began to say something of that sense they’d first had, of release. And, even as she spoke, realised it had begun to ebb away. It seemed troubles, like the pains of childbirth, kept on coming like the waves of the sea.

  Her words had run dry. Standing there, with Maitland beside her, she could not even pretend to forget the real trouble. Her shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug.

  ‘Darnley.’

  *

  A few hours later, t
he subject of Darnley showed no sign of going away.

  ‘Yes, but he’s such a fool he probably doesn’t even realise how outrageous he is.’ Fleming never spoke loudly, but all the same Seton glanced around them, to check there were no guards patrolling the palace walls. They were all of them getting sloppy – punch drunk, perhaps, with what they’d been through since the queen’s marriage, or giddy with relief that nothing so bad would ever streak across their horizon again. But there were still conversations you shouldn’t have about a king. Even a king by courtesy. Even this king by courtesy.

  Then again, Darnley’s behaviour now was enough to make anyone too angry for caution. The guards in their wardroom were probably saying the same as Fleming, and saying it less politely. The latest was, he wanted to go and live abroad, since the queen did not treat him properly.

  Where was it he hoped to go – somewhere they’d take him seriously? But it couldn’t be allowed, of course. Trouble is, there were places that would take him seriously – oh, not for himself, but for the possibilities he opened up. A puppet regent ruling for a baby, if the Queen’s Majesty could just be set aside, and setting a woman aside might be easy.

  And now he was Mr Catholic Church, Mr France, Mr Spain, or Mr-whatever-anyone-wanted-him-to-be. Anything except the simple consort of Scotland and stud to her Majesty.

  He’d declared in public his wish to go abroad. The bigger audience the better, for his wounded vanity. When the Queen’s Majesty took him by the hand and begged him, if he had any real cause of offence, not to spare her but to say it plainly, he just looked silly. Maitland told Fleming the council were writing to Catherine de Medici to put down a record of Darnley’s insanity. He wouldn’t be able to settle in France – in one sense it was a pity. It’s not as if they couldn’t do without Lord Darnley, now he had served his purpose, you might say.

  A spare would be nice, but the queen now had an heir, and a bad husband was more an encumbrance than a tool. He had become expendable, though he did not realise it. That’s what Seton and Fleming were discussing, as they paced the Stirling battlements that September day.