The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots: A Novel

by Erickson, Carolly

  After much swearing and pacing Jamie managed to calm himself, though I could tell how angry he was—not only because of what Henry had done to me, and to his friend Cristy, but because of an even more urgent matter he proceeded to tell me about.

  “Are you aware that your husband is conspiring against you? That he has persuaded the Protestant lords—including your brother James, and the reverend Knox, and many others—to join him in seizing the throne from you?”

  “No. I did not know he had gone that far.”

  “They even approached me to join them. Can you imagine? Me? The last person in all Scotland who would ever desert you, no matter what anyone may say.”

  “Yes, Jamie. I know that.”

  “At first, when they came to me, I wanted to laugh in their faces and denounce them. But then I thought, I can serve you better by pretending to be part of their plan. That way I can warn you in advance when they mean to strike.”

  “Perhaps I should strike first.”

  “How?”

  “Your sister casts spells. I could ask her to put a spell on Henry.”

  “You could, but if anything were to happen to him, his allies would then have even more reason to dethrone you. You would be accused of causing his death. No, it is better that you wait for Henry to reveal his treachery. Then your guards can take him and deal with him.”

  Christmas came and went. A month passed, and then another, and still the conspiracy Jamie had warned me about had not led to any action. My belly was becoming uncomfortably large, the baby had begun kicking me and I often had an upset stomach after I ate. Mistress Asteane watched over me, assuring me that all was well, and Dr. Bourgoing too came to examine me once a week. Meanwhile Jamie’s wedding plans went forward and he was married in February, but almost as soon as the ceremony was ended he was back at my court, with his sister—and, I could not help but notice, without his new wife.

  “You must take the greatest care now,” Jamie told me soon after he arrived. “Do not leave the palace, for any reason. Keep your guards around you. I will stay nearby, and Jean as well.”

  I assured him that I would do as he said.

  “Your husband’s diabolical plan is worse than I had thought. He has paid Red Ormiston ten thousand English crowns to attack you, along with his gang of felons. When and where I don’t yet know. You need to be ready.”

  “What if I offer him fifteen thousand not to do it?”

  “Ah, but he has given his word. Mere money will not convince him to break it.”

  I remembered how Jamie and the outlaw had once joined forces. Surely there must be some tie of allegiance between them, even in the murky world of everchanging Scots loyalties.

  “You know him well. Could you persuade him not to go through with this murderous attack, for the sake of his loyalty to you, and yours to me?”

  “I have already tried. I am still trying. I will add your promise of fifteen thousand crowns to my persuasions.”

  Day after day passed, Adrien and my guardsmen remained in attendance on me, and my other servants, sensing danger, were visibly wary and seemed to draw physically nearer to me when they were in my presence.

  One morning my baby gave such a lusty kick that I cried out, and fell to my knees. At once the guardsmen were all around me, my servants came rushing in to my small dressing room and in the corridor outside there was such a loud hue and cry that I thought the very walls would shake.

  But I was fine, I assured everyone that I was in no danger and Jamie’s sister Jean sat beside me until all was normal again.

  “I’ve been meaning to give you this,” Jean said as we sat together. She drew out a large round stone from her pocket and handed it to me. To my surprise, it felt warm. It was a piece of rock crystal, set in silver and meant to be worn on a chain around the neck.

  “This is a charm stone, a gem of power,” she told me. “It carries the blessings of many generations of healers. It will protect you, and ease your pains, when your time comes.”

  I thanked her and hung the stone from a silver chain, and wore it along with the portrait of my mother which I nearly always had with me.

  Perhaps, I thought, these worries that prey on me will come to nothing. Mistress Asteane kept telling me that pregnant women are always worried, and often for no reason. I did my best to believe her. I drank my tea, and said my prayers for the best outcome of all the anxieties that assailed me. And all the while I fingered the charm stone that hung around my neck, doing my best to take comfort from its rough warmth, hoping that my child and I would be protected, no matter what dangers we might face.

  TWENTY-THREE

  What I have to tell now is only a jumble of memories, all of them ghastly. I remember being in a familiar room, surrounded by friends, feeling safe there because Adrien was nearby and Jamie’s sister Jean was sitting right next to me and my equerry Arthur Erskine, who always carried his dagger, was sitting right across the table.

  We were dining. I remember the rich smell of the food, and the taste of chicken in my mouth, and feeling my baby kick, and hearing David laugh.

  But then Henry came into the room—he was not a welcome guest at my table, and I did not want him there, but he sat down anyway and then Jean said “oh no, not now” and then before I knew it there were more men coming into the room, the tall, fearsome-looking Red Ormiston among them. And then Adrien stood up and reached for his sword and one of the men hit him and he fell and my heart started to beat too fast and I thought I was going to faint.

  Instead I tried to stand up and that was when Henry pushed me back against the wall and held me there so that I could not move. I thought, dear God, is he going to violate me again? But he just continued to hold me, there against the wall, and I felt the cold metal of a pistol against my temple and then I was aware that someone was clutching at my skirt. Pulling on it, tearing it, and at the same time crying out, “Save me! O madam, save me!”

  Henry’s sour breath was in my face and someone was screaming and then I felt a strong tug on my clothes and at the same moment there was a cry—hardly more than a breath—and a sort of sighing, and then I felt something warm and wet on my shoes and I managed to look down and saw, first, David’s face, and then blood. Red blood, and lots of it, staining my carpet and David being dragged away from me but reaching out with his hands toward me.

  “Justice, justice, justice” he kept calling out, his voice more and more faint. Someone was dragging him by the heels across the floor, away from me, and the fur on his coat was red with his blood.

  “Call the guard” I kept saying but my voice was no more than a whisper. Then I wanted to shut my ears because there were loud, agonizing screams—a man’s screams—coming from just outside the room.

  And then, in the midst of all the confusion, in my horror, in my bewilderment, with my heart racing so fast that I could barely think at all, something very strange happened. Red Ormiston, who is a big, wide, hulking man, taller than any of my guards and probably much stronger, and who was wearing a yellow and red plaid with a sprig of heather in his cap, came up to Henry and me and with one hand swept Henry aside. Just swept him out of the way, as if he were nothing more than a dog eating scraps under the table.

  I thought, he’s going to kill me. I know he is. And I began repeating the words of the Lord’s Prayer and shut my eyes.

  There was a great commotion in the room all around me. I heard the clink of metal on metal, shouts and curses, women screaming, running feet—and then, all of a sudden, the alarm bells began ringing to arouse the whole city and I thought, my people will come and save me.

  Yet it was not my subjects who saved me, but the immense man standing before me, towering over me. The outlaw Ormiston, who fixed me with his dark eyes and held one immense hand in front of my face.

  He put his mouth to my ear and muttered “You owe me fifteen thousand crowns.”

  And then, still thinking that I was going to die, I gave in to the fear and the roaring in my ears and
my knees buckled under me and I sank down, down, into oblivion.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I was in Jamie’s arms. I was being carried in his arms as he ran through the corridors of the palace, bumping along, amid a chaos of noise and crowding and shouted voices and, above it all, the sound of the alarm bells ringing throughout the city.

  He swerved. He yelled at people to get out of his way. I opened my eyes but felt dizzy so I closed them again. Was I hurt? Was my baby hurt?

  I opened my eyes again but now we were in the dark, and I could see nothing but stone walls. He was carrying me down stairs, into the cellars. I could smell the damp, the green slime that grew down the old stones of the walls on either side of us. Faint torchlight glimmered as Jamie reached the bottom step and made his way along a corridor to a small room nearly filled with piles of wood and barrels and hogsheads.

  Jamie set me gently down. I was dazed, but I could stand, holding onto his shoulder for balance.

  “We must get away, before they come after us, before there are any more murders. Can you ride, do you think?”

  I nodded. “If I must.”

  “You are not injured?”

  I shook my head. But my head hurt. Perhaps I was injured. I decided to ignore it.

  “Then we must try to get to the stables. Do you think—”

  With a crash one of the barrels tipped over.

  “Don’t kill me!” came a voice—my husband’s voice, tremulous with fear. “I swear it wasn’t my doing! They made me! They used me!”

  In my weakened state it was all I could do to swat the air and say, “No, no, don’t let him near me!”

  Henry was cowering in a corner of the storeroom, his clothes covered in blood. Jamie quickly went to him and seized his pistol and the long knife he had stuck into his belt.

  “It was all your doing,” Jamie said to Henry, his voice cold with rage. “Every bit of it. I know your purposes, and so does the queen your wife. I ought to kill you here and now for what you did—and what you meant to do.”

  “Oh, Jamie, it was horrible. All the blood, and poor David, they hurt poor David—”

  “He is dead. They meant to kill you too, but Red Ormiston protected you.”

  “He did. I remember now. He said, ‘You owe me fifteen thousand crowns.’ ”

  “Please, you must save me,” Henry pleaded. “Don’t let them find me. They will torture me!”

  “And you deserve it. Preening little princeling! Worthless swine! Whoreson cur!” Jamie kicked Henry then, who began blubbering and once more pleading for his life.

  “We’ve got to get to the stables,” Jamie said to me. “It will be faster if you can run. Can you?”

  Some clarity was returning to my dazed mind and senses. “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t leave me!” Henry begged. “Take me with you!”

  “Then come along, if you must,” Jamie called out over his shoulder as we made our way as quickly as we could through the maze of hallways and storerooms, slipping on the slick stones and listening for the sound of pursuers.

  “We’ve got to get to Dunbar,” Jamie was saying. “I have loyal men there. We will be safe there in the castle.”

  I was feeling ill but once we reached the stables Jamie was able to lift me up onto a strong horse and we rode together, the poor horse straining and snorting under our weight, along the road that led out beside the abbey, avoiding the crowds and hubbub. Henry rode behind us, I could hear him cursing as he fell farther and farther behind.

  We were soon out of the town though I could still hear the alarm bells ringing when we were miles away. We rode as swiftly as the overburdened horse could carry us, but it still took us nearly four hours to get to Dunbar. All the way along Jamie kept looking back, watching for fast riders trying to overtake us. But the only rider behind us was Henry, whipping his poor mount along, though we did share the muddy roads with other travelers, some with carts, and with flocks of sheep being driven to market, all of which slowed us down a lot.

  Finally we crested a hill overlooking the sea, and there, looming vast and forbidding, was the ancient castle of Dunbar. The castle that had belonged to Jamie’s family for generations. I welcomed the sight. Behind those thick stone walls we would be safe, I thought. Except that my husband would be within the walls, and I feared him. I wished that Jamie had dispatched him, there in the cellars of Holyrood. I wished that I had never seen him, and been bewitched by the sight. But what was done was done, and in only a few months there would be a child to carry our blood, to bear our likenesses, to succeed me on the throne.

  I took my chamber at Edinburgh Castle toward the end of May, and prepared for my delivery.

  The terrible events that had taken place at Holyrood, and that had led me to take refuge in Dunbar Castle, were two months behind me, and I had returned to Edinburgh with an escort of hundreds of loyal men, the conspirators who had assaulted me and killed my servant David Riccio having fled and my treacherous, cowardly husband having once again retreated into the shadows of my life.

  When my labor began three weeks later I hoped that the charm stone Jamie’s sister Jean had given me would preserve me from suffering. And perhaps it did—to an extent. But the gripping, clamping pains that made me cry out hour after hour caused me more suffering than I imagined any one woman deserved. I strained against each renewed, agonizing onslaught, hoping that it would be the last. I looked to the midwife Mistress Asteane for help and reassurance. But there was very little she could do, other than to remind me, rather drily I thought, that thousands of women since time began had sweated and cried out just as I was doing, and that if they could bear the agony of it, then so could I.

  After ten hours of misery she gave me a posset to drink that she said would ease my agony, but I could not keep it on my stomach. I vomited it up, and the retching only made my sufferings worse.

  In the end I cried out for death, I was so wretched, and Margaret Carwood sent for the priest who was waiting in the next room, ready to give me extreme unction in the event I did not survive my ordeal.

  He prayed over me, and made the sign of the cross, and I thought, will I die before my son can ever know me? I had never known my own father; would my son too be a child of bereavement?

  Was this what Michel de Notredame had meant when he said my life would be baleful?

  By the time Mistress Asteane told me that the birth was near and that I ought to try my hardest to push the child out into the world, I had no energy left. I was exhausted. She bore down on my stomach and pinched me so hard that I became angry and this energized me. More pinches, more anger—and then I heard Margaret say, “Here comes the little prince,” and I gave a last groan and forced my shuddering body to yield up its burden.

  I heard a muffled cry. Then whispers.

  “He has a caul.”

  I looked at the tiny red child the midwife was holding up, and saw that he was indeed a prince and that there was a pink bubble around his face. The women in the room shrank back from the sight, but Mistress Asteane took it in stride. Expertly she cut the bubble open, letting fluid spill out, and then my son began to wail as she carefully removed the pink membrane from around his head.

  “Hear him now, the little caulbearer!” Margaret cried out, and reverently touched one small arm with her finger. The others rushed up to touch him as well.

  “He’s a blessed one,” someone said. “He will have the second sight, as all caulbearers do. He will know the future.”

  “I will call him James,” I managed to say, though I could hardly speak, my throat hurt so. “Prince James Stuart, and in time King James of Scotland, the sixth of that name.”

  I began coughing then, and kept on coughing for most of the night, while outside my windows I could hear the guns thundering their salute and my subjects shouting their joy at the news that I had been safely delivered. Little James slept in his cradle beside my bed, swathed in sheets of fine Holland cloth embroidered with the royal arms.

  “
Prince James,” I mused when at last I fell into a deep sleep. “Jamie. My favorite name. Jamie.” And I reached out my hand to touch the blessed face of my newest love.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  My recovery was slow and full of difficulties. I was nervous, my nails were a shameful sight and I chewed on bits of leather and even on the ivory binding of my prayerbook. My teeth marks were all over it. I never knew when I might feel dizzy and there were times when I shook and shook and could not stop.

  I never felt safe. Someone in my household kept playing fearsome tricks to remind me that I was in danger. One night when I went to bed I found blood stains on my pillow. Someone was turning the flowers in my bedchamber upside down in their vases, or replacing them with nettles. When I put on my slippers I found sharp thorns inside them, so that they hurt my feet. Sometimes, when I was eating, I imagined—or was I imagining?—that the food tasted strange, and I spat it out, fearing poison. I had never forgotten what little King Charles told me in France, that my mother-in-law was intent on poisoning me. Quite possibly my enemies in Scotland had the same goal.

  Every time I received one of these ugly reminders of danger I felt faint and ill. I knew that I was being watched, that someone—no doubt someone being paid by my husband—was determined to destroy my peace and drive me into a state of terror.

  Henry was nowhere near Holyrood, he had gone to Glasgow to be close to his father whose Lennox lands and possessions were nearby. He had spoken of leaving Scotland, of going to Norway or France, and I heartily wished he would go. But then he had changed his mind and gone to Glasgow instead, and he was said to be plotting against me once more, and telling lies about me to whomever would listen, stirring up old resentments and criticisms and even saying that our son James was not his but the child of another man.

  I was in low spirits much of the time. I had always been slender, but now became very thin. Far too thin and spare for a woman not yet twenty-five. When I heard that Henry too was ill, and with the dreaded French disease, I worried that he might have passed it on to me, and that that might be why I was fast becoming a wraith.