by Alex Nye
There is a long silence while I digest this.
“What does Elizabeth know of my correspondence? Am I to have no privacy?”
“You must become accustomed to having further restraints placed upon your freedom.”
“Hah! What further restrains could they muster?”
“Despite the hospitality our sovereign has extended to you these past eighteen years, you have continued to show a blatant disregard for her position and – I might add – her safety.”
“How so?”
“By encouraging others to plot on your behalf – as has been proven in the past.”
“I have no control over what others conspire to achieve in my name.”
He rises to his full height, his black eyes beetling, and clips his heels together before departing.
“You have been warned!” he calls. “Good day to you, Madam.”
“Civil servant,” I shout. “Lackey!”
Jane leans in to quiet me.
The corridors outside fall silent and soon we hear the ring of horses’ hooves again, riding away.
“They push me too far.”
“I have warned you before about the letters, Ma’am. Walsingham and his spies are everywhere.”
“They cannot forbid me my rights as a Queen.”
But I do not add what we both know. That they have, and they will.
In the old days I used to meet with dignitaries, men of rank and position, as we carved out the fortunes of my kingdom, struggling to maintain peace.
Now I wear plain black, relieved only by a ruff of white lace at my throat. There are no rings on my fingers; no coronets or ermined gowns as of yore. No crimson canopy of state. They took that away from me. No gleaming crown or sceptre.
But a true queen needs no crown, nor even crowds to cheer her. A true queen remains so even in exile. Even in prison.
Bare of ornaments, a crucifix at my breast and a beaded rosary at my waist, I nevertheless manage to look the part of a queen. I have innate royal dignity, innate sovereignty, bestowed upon me by God. And it is that which irks my sister, Elizabeth. I was born to be royal from the cradle upwards. It was a responsibility I was reared for and rose to.
Elizabeth fears her position, for she is the daughter of a king’s mistress, as illegitimate as my brother, Moray. There are many who question her claim to the throne, even as she sits on it. Catholics would have her gone, and myself in her stead.
I know this.
And so does she…
Sovereignty comes naturally to me whereas Elizabeth tends to look of peasant stock, even in her finest robes and glittering gems. I do not know quite what it is about her, but no matter how high her collars, no matter how wide her gowns, her countenance is ever that of a peasant.
So, I am not allowed any letters.
So Walsingham says.
So Cecil says.
We shall see.
We have means at our disposal.
Does not the butcher deliver the meat and the brewer deliver his ale? They use caskets and barrels for this purpose, do they not?
I sit by the fire and wait for the moment of reckoning.
And this time the ghosts will leave me in peace.
Craigmillar
November 1566
I was lying ill at Craigmillar Castle when a formal meeting was called to discuss the problem of Darnley. They came to me as I languished in my illness, beyond the boundaries of the city walls. I did not wish to stay in Holyrood and Craigmillar offered us the seclusion we desired. Who could come eavesdropping to this dark castle sitting stark and quiet on its low-lying mound? Its high walls afforded us secrecy. None could see us arriving.
I was already ensconced in my own apartments upstairs, having rested here for the past week and a half with my apothecary in attendance. The fever had passed, but I was still weak.
Rain sleeted across the battlements and clattered down the great chimneys, and when that had passed, my councillors began arriving, in pairs, secretly, without attendants or men-at-arms, quietly through the countryside. No one would even know we were there.
By nightfall we were all assembled in the great banqueting hall. Craigmillar is a sombre seat, remote. Set against the backdrop of a harsh escarpment, it broods; and it did brood that night.
While the servants laid a few victuals at the long tables and lit fires in the great hearths, we waited patiently, making small talk.
We sat down to eat with the black windows set high in the walls uncovered to the night. Candlelight played fitfully across our faces and the fires did little to take the chill off the air.
There were a few of us present; most notably Maitland, Moray, Bothwell and Huntly, Argyll, Mar and Atholl.
“We are gathered here in the interests of national security!” my secretary Maitland began.
Moray held up a hand to stop Maitland, and gestured towards the fireplace where one of the servants still attended to the hearth. We waited for the servant to leave before continuing.
“This is a delicate matter to discuss, but we have to ask Your Grace, how have relations been with your husband of late?”
I prevaricated and Moray stepped in impatiently.
“Marie, we need to know. Have things improved on that front at all?”
I stared at my brother. I could feel Bothwell’s eyes upon me too; I was the only woman in a room full of men.
“Is my private life with my husband really a subject for discussion?”
“Yes, I am afraid it is,” Moray said, addressing me directly. “As Queen of this realm you have no private life. Your life belongs to the crown.”
“I am aware of my responsibilities, Lord James. You have no need to remind me of my role.”
“But perhaps Your Grace is not aware,” Maitland broke in carefully, “that while Prince Henry and yourself are unreconciled to one another, he poses an immediate and considerable risk to the security of the crown?”
“I know that there are rumours…”
“Rumours aplenty!”
“He is becoming dangerous, Ma’am. He is plotting against you.”
“Where is the proof of that?” I asked.
“We have proof,” Moray cut in.
“He writes to the Pope, to the King of Spain, asking for their support. Marie is not Catholic enough, they say.”
“Not Catholic enough!”
“She surrounds herself with Protestants, they say…”
“I do so with good reason,” I broke in. “My advisers are both Catholic and Protestant, yes.”
“Mainly Protestant, Ma’am,” Maitland added.
“That is because I have chosen advisers with the necessary experience and power to help me govern Scotland.
It would be foolish of me to do otherwise.”
“But others abroad may not regard the matter in that light, Your Grace.”
“They know not Scotland,” I said.
“Exactly. But Your Grace does. As did your mother before you. They know not the realities of governing this kingdom, with its divided history, its politics. But Your Grace does.”
I looked towards Bothwell but he remained quiet throughout all of this.
I rose from the table and reached for my sewing which calmed me.
“Your husband sees himself as having a legitimate claim to the throne, Marie.” It was my brother speaking this time.
“I know this.”
“He cannot be left to his own devices any longer.”
“What do you suggest?”
There was silence in the room. The walls were thick with shadow; the wind gusted in the chimney.
My needlework lay still in my lap.
“What can I do?”
Eyes were lowered, fingers drummed on lips.
“Divorce is an option.”
Bothwell spoke for the first time.
“No. If Her Grace divorces him th
at would invalidate Prince James’ claim to the throne. It would be tantamount to declaring him illegitimate,” Maitland said, and I noticed him avoiding my brother’s eye at this point. Moray, my bastard brother! It was a wound that festered in him – the painful fact of his own illegitimacy. But for that he could have made a first-rate King.
“What, then, is the alternative?”
“As long as Darnley remains outside Your Grace’s circle, he will be dangerous.”
I glanced at Maitland. “So you wish me to be reconciled to him?”
He hesitated. “Possibly…”
I thought of how Darnley had behaved of late, how he had responded to the birth of our son.
“But what can I do?” I cried. “I cannot control him any more than you can. What steps can I possibly take to be united with him, other than to give him what I have already refused? If I give him the Crown Matrimonial now–”
“That will not be necessary–”
“–how can I know that he will not continue in his villainous course afterwards?”
“Quite so, Your Majesty.”
“Perhaps… there is another way.”
We all stared at Maitland, eyes wide.
“There are ways and means of dealing with this sort of problem.”
I was suddenly aware of how dark it had become. It was so quiet in the great banqueting hall once their voices had stilled. I could hear their breathing, sense their tension. A log cracked in the hearth and a shower of red sparks fizzed in the dark.
I lifted my needle again and began to sew.
“Darnley leads such a dangerous life-style, it is indeed a wonder he has not met with an accident before now.”
I sought out Bothwell in the gloom, but he had risen and was standing in the far corner, away from the main table.
“Who knows what may happen to him in the future?” Maitland added.
And there it was. Put there on the table before us like a playing card. The declaration. The promise. The threat.
Whatever it was, it hung in the air between us, palpable as mist.
I felt a tightening in my chest; my breath came short.
Maitland continued smoothly while my brother Moray remained inscrutable, his eyes giving nothing away.
“I hear that the banished lords Ruthven, Morton and Lindsay have shown themselves entirely penitent for their past misdemeanours and are anxious to return to Scotland…”
“Traitors…” I murmured softly without looking up
from my work. “They threatened my own life and the life of my child. What kind of insanity would it be to allow them passage back here?”
“They are anxious to prove to Her Grace their continued fealty and loyalty.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How opportune! Where was their loyalty before, on that night in March? Am I to forget what happened?”
“Of course not, Marie. No one is suggesting you should forget!” I glanced at Bothwell who had spoken.
“You too?” I murmured, but so quietly I do not think the others heard the words pass my lips.
“With Lord Bothwell here to protect you, Ma’am, how could anyone possibly threaten Your Grace’s life?” Maitland added in a soft voice.
I ignored his implied tone.
I sewed on in silence for a moment or two more, while my lords waited.
“You expect me to formally pardon Morton, Ruthven and Lindsay and invite them back to Scotland?”
“They may help to solve Your Majesty’s problem.”
“Traitors cannot help me!”
“Then who can?” my brother said, rising suddenly from the table, his fists clenched.
I lifted my eyes and watched him pace.
Maitland and Moray did put their heads together and murmur. What they said, I know not.
“Perhaps Her Grace needs more time?”
I felt suffocated suddenly. Great bat wings of shadow loomed in the far corners of the room and night seemed to creep around the edges of our circle of light, heavy with menace. I glanced upwards. The banqueting hall was too high to fill with light. Shadows leapt in the pillared minstrels’ gallery above, creating stark images, unearthly shapes, horned figures of black against the yellow stone. I blinked my eyes slowly, wondering if my fever was causing me to imagine devilish shapes in the gloom. I rose, laying my embroidery aside on my chair.
“Wait,” I whispered. All eyes followed my gaze as I pointed upwards.
Bothwell and Moray exchanged glances.
“There is no one there, Your Grace. There cannot be,” Maitland assured me.
“I will go and see that we are not overlooked,” Bothwell said, before vanishing towards the staircase. I watched him go.
When I sat down again at the head of the table the others were watching me, waiting. I felt weary all of a sudden.
I spoke clearly. “I do not want to be a party to any crime. I will not sanction it. Do you hear?”
I could feel the instant relief in the room.
“You may leave the logistics entirely up to us, Ma’am,” Maitland said.
“I want no stain on my conscience, nothing that trespasses the law of God or the law of this land. You understand?”
Maitland and Moray smiled.
“Of course!”
“And it goes without saying that whatever measures you take must be done with the full backing of Parliament, of course.”
“Of course! I can assure Your Grace that it is possible to deal with this little problem, quite efficiently, without any prejudice either to your reputation…or your conscience.”
Maitland bowed his head slightly and it did occur to me then what a smooth and urbane operator he was, a master
of manipulation. That is why, after all, I had chosen him as my chief Secretary of State, to assist me in affairs of government – because of his consummate skill in dissembling. He was a past master at it.
As I lifted my embroidery and began to sew, he added a comment which I have never forgotten and which has haunted me all these years.
“After all,” he added, nodding his head in the direction of my brother – who remained inscrutable, “although Lord Moray here is as scrupulous a Protestant as Your Grace is a Papist, I am sure that he will look through his fingers at the deed, and say nothing.”
There were a few smiles of mild amusement as the tension in the room eased.
Look through his fingers?
“At what deed?” I asked.
The men stopped suddenly and looked at me.
Huntly advanced to my side and spoke quietly. “Maitland knows what he is about, Your Grace. Leave matters in other’s hands.”
My brother Moray rose and walked towards the window.
The November winds had begun to howl around the blackened castle walls.
“It looks as if it may snow tonight,” he observed.
I watched his back.
And as I did so I had a sudden flashback – not so long ago in fact – to when he was ushered into my presence in my widow’s chamber in France. How I had been so glad to see him then, as if he heralded the answer to my prayers. Now his back was turned to me and I could not fathom a single honest thought in his head.
As the others began to talk, I was quiet and thoughtful. The pains of my recent illness were still not far from my memory. And now I had other pains to exercise my mind.
Stirling Castle
December 1566
There were fragments of snow on the air as we approached Stirling Castle. Whenever I saw that stark fortress resting high on its impregnable rock, the mountains marching along the skyline behind it, my heart rose in my chest, because I knew then that I was to come face to face with my little son. We kept his nursery here as it was more secure, easier to guard.
Twenty years ago my mother Marie of Guise had though
t the same, and I always associated Stirling with happy childhood memories, the precious years before my mother and I were separated.
Darnley did not ride with us. He was in Glasgow. He had formally requested to be allowed to retreat into exile in France, but my privy council and I had refused the ludicrous request. Once outside the borders of Scotland, what manner of plotting might he not be capable of? Requesting foreign arms and men to rise up against me.
Scotland froze that December. The lochs became white plates of ice, reflecting the mountains like glass. We rode under a weak winter sun, great white fields and moorland stretching either side of us. Behind us we left a trail of hoof prints, wheel-marks and churned-up ruts of greying snow.
We clattered up the steep causeway towards the fortified entrance, the wind keening across the plains, straight from the mountains. The air was bracing. To one side were the Trossachs, to the other the Grampians. I could see their snowy summits, speaking of far-off places yet to be visited.
Stirling Castle itself was ready to receive us. The horses were stabled and the outer close was full of bustle and business. Carts rolled in bearing goods and supplies. Smells of baking emanated from the kitchens and the bake house and the spice house – areas of the castle I would never visit, where men and boys roasted meat over the spit, plucked partridges and pheasants, cracked eggs, and kept the great bread ovens constantly stoked up and roaring. I loved the way that the courtyards rang with these distant sounds of activity. It made me feel warmed, as if I was at the heart of something cherished. The sights and sounds and smells were a welcome assault on my senses.
The windows of the palace that my father had built winked in the fading winter light, set in their ochre walls. He had employed carvers, painters and stonemasons to adorn this wonderful palace, to advertise it as a sparkling gem upon the brow of Scotland. It was the perfect place to baptise little Prince James, a showcase to present to our European visitors.
The walls and facades were thick with statuary: sculptures of fantastic and weird design. They leered down at us from the highest points and I remember as a child, craning my neck to see them, wondering what messages they bore for me.
We made our way up the high wooden steps to the entrance of the Palace. Here were my private apartments, the walnut ceilings heavily carved and painted, bright colours depicting the kings and queens who had ruled Scotland before me – my ancestors and forebears. There was even a motif of my mother’s family, the Guises, a bird pierced through with three arrows. Every attention to detail had been carefully overseen when my father attended to the building of this opulent jewel. I miss it so. And I can lovingly recall every feature as if I trod there only yesterday.
