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

by Sarah Gristwood

  No – it was the empty chair beside the Queen’s Majesty that made her stomach churn. Someone should, they really, really should, have found a moment to take that away. Or perhaps they’d thought of it, and then thought that if the baby’s father did grace them with his presence, he’d only take the absence of a place as another insult and injury.

  *

  ‘What do you mean, he isn’t coming?’ Seton could hardly be sure, afterwards, which one of them had spoken: and small wonder if they had forgotten their manners when the news came, and broken into speech before the Queen’s Majesty.

  Darnley’s servant kept a trained blank face as he bowed respectfully, and repeated again the message he’d been given. Lord Darnley – for all that he was there, actually there, in Stirling Castle – would not be attending the ceremony. No wonder he’d been going around for days positively pregnant with self-importance, smiling as if he saw a secret victory.

  ‘The king finds himself indisposed,’ the man said blandly. The only trace of nerves was in the way he fiddled with the braid on his Lennox livery. But the excuse was too little and too late, never meant to be believed. Better, far better, if Darnley had simply stayed in Glasgow, well away.

  The queen clearly felt it was beneath her to react. ‘We are sorry to hear it. Very sorry.’ To Seton at least the her words sounded ominous. As if she were pronouncing a valediction on Lord Darnley.

  *

  And the worst of it was, someone still had to play host at this party; or at least do the little jobs of hostship which were beneath the Queen’s own Majesty. No one would have wondered if the queen had given the task to her brother, Lord Moray. But – Lord Bothwell? Dressed in the blue outfit the queen had given him – not that it suited his brown colouring – but blue was the colour of loyalty.

  Seton had felt a tiny shudder as she heard, and battled to keep her face as still as the queen’s own had been, or the face of the messenger from Lord Darnley.

  Was that it – was the choice of substitute a message the queen was sending back to Lord Darnley? The man of all men Darnley would least like to see in his own role or near it – not seated beside the queen, of course, but standing behind her chair, as they placed before her uninterested gaze a never-ending parade of fricasses and fresh fish from the North Sea, of cygnets and snipe, of compotes and jellies. The man who welcomed guests and ambassadors – and did it well, Seton had to admit; one forgot he had spent time in France, that he could, when he chose, be courtly.

  A shame he chose so rarely.

  Yes, that was the reason for the choice, surely. Show Darnley he was not irreplaceable… But there was something in that thought Seton had to push away.

  *

  And then there’d been that other absurd thought, the very memory of which made her blush hotly.

  ‘Seton – come here!’ the queen had called with brittle gaiety. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ She could still be gay, the queen, but there was something artificial in it, like the mask an actor might wear for a play, and it was as hastily put away.

  Now she cried out, as if she’d had an enchanting surprise, as if this were not something she herself had put in motion; a card she’d been holding for five years now, waiting for the right moment to play.

  ‘We’re going to have another celebration – on, yes, I think after Christmas, yes, here at Stirling – on the feast of the Epiphany! What do you think of that? – a wedding party.’ It was then, heaven forgive her, that for a second Seton had actually thought of Bothwell, ludicrously.

  ‘Our dear Fleming is going to marry,’ – the queen looked around, and there he was, with something shining under his gravity – ‘is going to marry Master Secretary!’ Fleming’s gaze was turned inwards, Maitland’s almost as tranquil as ever, but the queen was staring at Seton as if she knew, and there was something febrile in her expectancy. Like a poppy-cheeked patient with a burning ague, whose life is slowly ebbing away.

  Hastily, Seton composed her features into a smile. She was thankful, not for the first time, for her reputation as the stolid one of the Marys.

  Twenty-seven

  So we married Fleming at last, thought Seton, late that January evening after Maitland had taken his new wife away. We married her to the right man, as was always meant to be, and we did the thing gracefully.

  The queen played her part to perfection, as she gave the bride away. Darnley was sulking in Glasgow, ill of the smallpox so they said, and his absence certainly didn’t hurt any. Fleming was like something in a dream as she stood up in the shining cloth of gold the queen had given her, her eyes a thousand happy miles away.

  She’d seized Seton’s hand as they were dressing her and Seton had looked down in shock. Fleming never made those sort of gestures – not like her cousin the queen who, in the intimacy of her rooms, was forever capturing your hand, as though she feared you might break away.

  ‘I’ll miss you, Mary,’ Fleming said, letting the weight rest on ‘you’ just slightly.

  *

  Let me be honest – said Seton to herself now – I wasn’t sure how I would feel today. It was a shock when I heard, of course it was – but what kind of shock, exactly? I couldn’t mind losing Maitland, could I? Not when I know I never had him – and I don’t think I ever fooled myself to that degree.

  Do I mind that we had been a trio, each unsatisfied, and that now it is they two – and me? Yes, I do mind that a little.

  But I think, I really do think, I don’t mind enough to wish a single jot of their happiness away.

  They’d been so careful of Seton, those weeks over Christmas. So careful, together and separately, still to include her as far as might be. They still walked on the battlements as three. Maitland gave to her, too, a gift for the season, and not just the gloves or the chain an ambassador might use as a bribe, but a book from his father’s library. And Seton realised if she could turn the clock back, to before the queen had spoken, she would not do it. That when she saw the light in them today, it made her… happy.

  I am not Beaton, she thought. To hate someone else for a joy that isn’t mine, it seems that is not in me.

  But it wasn’t just jealousy, even for Beaton. There was wrong done to her, truly. Remembering it, the resentment did wash over Seton. Not against Fleming or against Maitland, but against Queen Mary.

  *

  Seton had turned towards the battlements as she mused, and that was a mistake. The cold that struck was not just physical – she had furs enough, had long grown used to the cold, even in windy Stirling, even in January. But if she walked there now, she would walk solitary.

  The thing about Fleming and Maitland, thought Seton to herself, they’re the only ones who saw me. The only ones outside her family. The ones who knew her as Mary. Of course Maitland would still spend most of his days at court; though he may find excuse to keep Fleming away.

  But something has changed, all the same, Seton thought. I am no longer the person I was this morning. Fleming married, Livy married, Beaton too. They’ll come back from time to time, but differently.

  This much I know, to set against the many doubts. I am now – yes, truly I am – the last of the Queen’s Marys.

  PART V

  February/March 1567

  Twenty-eight

  It had been a good evening, Seton decided, as she began to take the pins out of the queen’s hair. More than a month since the wedding, and she was almost used to turning around and finding Fleming – and Livy, and Beaton – weren’t there.

  It had been a day of festivities: Bastian Pages’ wedding in the morning, then a banquet for an ambassador who was going away. Afterwards they’d spent the evening at Kirk o’Field; and even that had been as agreeable as any evening with Darnley could be.

  Music and wine, Darnley himself on his best behaviour, talking with Queen Mary while Bothwell played cards with Argyll and Huntly. He was almost cured of his illness, he said, ready to leave the house on Edinburgh’s edge and join the party at the palace. With baby James
brought back to Holyrood from Stirling they could all play at happy families.

  But though the doctors called Lord Darnley’s pox the smallpox, you’d be a fool to believe that, surely. They’d gone to see him in Glasgow a few weeks ago. ‘Perhaps the trip will cheer us up,’ Queen Mary had said, unconvincingly.

  When the queen sat down by Darnley’s bed she had looked up, shocked, and her eyes had met Seton’s, the disbelief fading all too quickly. Yes, of course, it would be, with the life he led…

  Seton too had caught the reek. Behind the mask he wore to hide the pustules, Darnley’s gums must be rotting in his head. There was only one drug which did that – mercury. And you couldn’t be around the French court without knowing what was cured with mercury… They called it the French pox, didn’t they?

  But the queen was still determined to bring him back to Edinburgh. She’d had word from Paris that Darnley was plotting to kidnap the little Prince James and rule as his regent, holding her Majesty prisoner, out of the way.

  She had to get him back in Edinburgh – or at Craigmillar, anyway – away from his father and the whole Lennox affinity. She needed him quiet until she could finalise her deal with Elizabeth, and to get that she’d promise him whatever was necessary.

  She’d promise to do – or to let him do – whatever was necessary. And, now that his cure was complete, her promise would fall due the very next day.

  When Seton remembered that, her pleasure in the evening began to falter. Don’t be a fool, she told herself fiercely. By bedtime he’ll be tucked up with his real love, the bottle, and her Majesty can wriggle out of it that way… But his cure was what they’d been celebrating that evening.

  If celebrating was the word, actually.

  *

  All the same it had been a pleasant evening. Darnley had refused to go to Craigmillar but the house he’d chosen, Kirk o’Field, was cosy, especially after it had been decked out with Holyrood tapestries and a velvet bed. They’d been there until eleven – the Sunday before Lent, it was a last chance for fun and sweetmeats. For jollity – though Lord Moray had said he had to get home because his wife was ill with her coming baby; and Maitland too had stayed away.

  They were on their way back from Kirk o’Field to join in the last of Bastian’s wedding celebrations when – it was a thing Seton remembered, after – they’d passed a former servant of Bothwell’s, now in Balfour’s employ. Impatiently, Seton hunched a shoulder. Balfour: once one of Darnley’s allies, now turned against him: the man couldn’t keep a single crony. They noticed the servant’s face and hands were grimed – laughed about it, as they went on their way.

  The queen was especially gay as they helped put Bastian’s bride to bed, and it was well past midnight when they got her to her own bed at last. As Seton lay down on her pallet, on duty in the queen’s room that night, she thought before she drifted off that maybe, sometimes, she should just trust.

  It didn’t come easy to her, to let go. To let the smooth old wine do its work, and enjoy the music – a new lutenist from abroad, brought in by Rizzio’s brother – and the way the firelight played on the new silver pomander the queen had given her only that day. To eat a few too many of the candied cherries and let them all tease her for it, gently.

  But this time, she had managed it. She could believe that Queen Mary knew what she was doing. That somehow, things would turn out happily.

  *

  The noise, when it came, was as loud as thirty cannons. Someone screamed, from below them in the palace. Dogs were barking from the kennels, and probably all around the city. Queen Mary sat up – wakeful instantly.

  ‘Seton what is it? Go find out, quickly.’

  ‘It might just be a storm. Wasn’t that lightning?’ called one of the maids from the doorway, foolishly.

  Somehow Seton knew it wasn’t just a storm. Or – she thought she’d known, afterwards, but by then it was impossible to tell the first truth from the last and the then from the later. Stumbling in the dark she stubbed her foot on a corner, painfully.

  ‘What o’clock is it?’ Stupid, she thought, as she asked, for what did it matter, but the frightened guard answered anyway. Past two in the morning – it was their only piece of certainty.

  Was it an attack, an attack on her Majesty? No sign of that – just confusion of noise as the palace came awake – then Bothwell marching in without a warning, fully dressed.

  ‘Is he there? Is that Bothwell? What’s happening?’ The queen didn’t sound so much imperious as querulous. Understandably.

  ‘Never mind, your Majesty. We’ll soon find out.’ He sounds like a doctor, not a soldier, thought Seton irritably. Professionally soothing – speaking his lines like someone in a play. So why did she feel sure he knew this was disaster?

  Maybe because they all knew it, really.

  *

  They were treating the queen like an invalid. Possets and shawls, while she trembled like a puppy. But as they waited for news, her Majesty propped up in the great bed, there didn’t seem to be anything to say.

  ‘Perhaps it was down in the laich houses – there’s always trouble there. Or an explosion in the foundry.’ It was one of the younger maids, but the queen just smiled at her faintly, forgivingly. She’d sent Bothwell with the captain of the guard to see where the trouble was, but – were they, were they truly, waiting in the dark, without a suspicion? Unlikely.

  Bothwell was back before daybreak, looking grim but not surprised. But then, were any of us, really? – Seton thought.

  ‘Of course we’ll know more when it gets light. But you’d best prepare yourself, your Majesty. It’s at Kirk o’Fields – looks like the house is just a pile of rubble.’

  ‘Lord Darnley.’

  ‘Yes.’

  And Seton realised with a sinking heart that the design had always been laid down this way.

  *

  First light brought the real darkness – the news that just made everything worse. Bit by bit it trickled through, as if the surgeons were exploring a wound by inches.

  First thing: they’d found Darnley’s body. Yes, he was dead, and – yes, the queen was free. Funny – it didn’t feel that way.

  Second thing: he wasn’t dead in the ruin of the house. They found him lying in the garden nearby, his servant dead beside him. His nightshirt pulled up round his waist, showing everything he’d got, but hardly a mark on his body.

  He couldn’t have been killed by the explosion. But it wasn’t surprising – Seton assured herself – that Bothwell thought at first he had been.

  He’d been strangled, Bothwell said. There was a chair, and a rope nearby – he had himself lowered from the window trying to get away. But why not just use the door? Unless someone had locked him in.

  That seemed worse than the rest of it – until an unwary officer let slip that some local women had seen men in court silks running past their door, and had heard Darnley cry out for mercy.

  Bothwell hadn’t told them that part. There are fates you wouldn’t wish, even on Lord Darnley.

  Rizzio had cried out that way. Just eleven months ago, that was – said the queen, suddenly. She was pacing the room one moment, and crying out orders; then suddenly she’d be clinging and needy. And Seton didn’t want to think about why she was glad to see the queen was so distressed.

  Glad it was, it really was, a shock to her Majesty.

  The light was fading again that evening before Seton could get a few moments away. And then she picked up her skirts before she was halfway out of the presence chamber and ran like a hunted deer towards the grove in the palace gardens.

  Anything to be out of the rooms where grave-faced officers brought snippets of news, and maids brought hot drinks, and they were all so very sorry. But where somehow, despite the signs of her shock, no one ever quite managed to look at Queen Mary.

  The grove was all bare branches now, the autumn’s leaves half rotted away. She’d have had no heart to kick them, anyway. A hawk screamed overhead and Seton saw the
scene at Kirk o’Field as if from above, in her mind’s eye.

  Despite the dank mist, her brain was afire. Enemies. There had been enemies. No surprises there. Darnley had hardly a friend left. But this was different – or was it, really?

  Depends who the enemy was.

  If it was Morton the thug, well, no changes there. The world still stood under the heavens. Morton had proved how easily he could kill, and he’d long nursed a grudge against Lord Darnley. Ever since the Rizzio night, when Darnley had left his fellow conspirators in the lurch, and just galloped away.

  If it were Lord Moray, well… Seton – and her mistress too – could bear that suspicion very easily. Regrettable, of course, but the thing about Moray was, he’d find a way to cloak even murder in sanctity.

  Yes, but would he do the murder? Or even order it done? Painfully, Seton remembered Maitland’s words at Craigmillar, in November – that Moray would peep through his fingers at anything someone else might do. Yes, that was Moray.

  Maitland. She couldn’t ever say he wouldn’t. She’d seen he could, and she’d accepted it, already, and Rizzio was less harmful, more lovable, than Darnley. Yes, but the scandal – for there was going to be a scandal – left Queen Mary’s alliance with Elizabeth in tatters. He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise that, surely.

  And nor, as surely, would the queen. Warm relief rushed over Seton, and she turned back towards the palace with a firmer step. Because, to whom had Maitland been talking, when he spoke of Moray peeping through his fingers at Craigmillar that November day?

  Yes, it was Queen Mary who herself brought Darnley back to Edinburgh. But her actions must just have played into the hands of Darnley’s other enemies.

  All right, let’s say it – into Bothwell’s hands. He’d never made any secret of his feelings about Lord Darnley. Cui bono? The old lawyers’ phrase swam into Seton’s mind. Whose the good? Who stood to gain more than the rest from the death of Lord Darnley?