by Alex Nye
Kirk o’ Field was a quadrangle of houses just inside the city walls, between two ruined kirks, with untilled fields spanning away behind the housebacks. We approached it by a narrow alley called Thieves’ Row, and an icy wind blew down its channel as our horses’ hooves clipped and slithered noisily over the snow-lined cobbles.
We clattered into the courtyard, our retinue of arquebusiers still bearing Darnley’s litter. My husband’s arm emerged from between the curtains and pointed towards the largest and most prominent house of all – Hamilton House – facing onto the square, and shouted out.
“That one is the only fit residence for a king!” he cried, but he was over-ruled and taken to the Provost’s House instead.
“Why here?” he commanded.
“I have been advised it is the only one we can make ready in time, with the baths you’ll be requiring. Please, don’t fret any more Darnley. We are all doing our best by you.”
The litter was lowered onto the steps outside and I saw my husband appear from between the damask curtains and helped up the steps into the house. He looked thin and feeble in his shift, the weight of the blankets on his shoulders making him stoop like an old man. Something about that image made me shudder and I did not know why.
It was a remote and lonely spot, made more desolate still by the prospect of the derelict church to one side, overshadowing the red-tiled roofs with its haunting shell, its nave exposed and blackened, with snow drifts piling up against the abandoned altar. Was this the beginnings of the work of Knox, I wondered? Ordering his men to rip out statues and destroy any churches which were adorned with paintings and fine sculptures? Anything suspected of being a ‘graven image’ was to be destroyed according to that oracle, Knox.
The house in which Darnley was to be lodged had dormer windows, crow-stepped gables, and the flagstones of the floor all sloped to one side. It smelt of damp because it had stood empty for so many years, and the doors were slightly warped so that they dragged when trying to draw them. I observed these features with some misgiving.
I later learned that the property sat on a basement which was catacombed with cellars and underground passages. I did not know this at the time, only that the place was neglected and old. Its foundations were a virtual honeycomb of cool cell-like vaults, chambers and compartments, for effective storage one must assume, although no doubt it had been used for other more nefarious purposes over the centuries.
Darnley made a great fuss about how damp and evil-smelling the place was, and in truth I did not blame him.
“This is not a suitable place for a king to lay his head,” he complained, “let alone a sick king.”
“I cannot help but agree with you on some points, Darnley, but we will see what can be done. I promise I shall make the place comfortable for you. You shall see.”
I spoke with my page, Bastien, and the Master of the Wardrobe, and that same day additional furniture was brought from the Palace itself. Carpets, tapestries, arras, cushions, chairs and even a bed were conveyed to the house in Kirk o’ Field and I supervised the preparations.
“I shall stay here too, Darnley. Perhaps not every night, but now and again, until you are better and can join us again at Holyrood.”
This reassurance seemed to satisfy him for a while. I had a ground floor bedchamber set up directly beneath his own; a small bed of yellow and green damask with furred coverlets was erected in it, for my own comfort on those nights when it was too dark and cold to venture out again to the Palace.
We spent all that night decking out the Provost’s bleak house in finery. Turkish carpets covered the sloping uneven floors, rich heavily-brocaded tapestries hid the damp and buckled walls, cushions of red velvet gave an impression of comfort and warmth. A cedar-wood chair with a high narrow back, upholstered in purple, was placed next to the head of his bed, together with a small green baize table for playing cards, a pastime which could occupy Darnley for hours. We even went to the trouble of having Darnley’s own bed conveyed here, the one I had presented to him as a gift during happier days in our marriage. There he lay, petulant and sick, and secretly scheming, his eyes following me about the room as I attended to him.
For a week he stayed at Kirk o’ Field and every evening, with a train of my own attendants, I would spend a few hours at his bedside, entertaining him, playing dice or cards, listening to the delicate trickling music of the lute or the virginals as it pervaded the smoke-filled air with its sweet resonance. I could not tell what motivated him. His eyes were shifting and fiery, especially at night. Perhaps it was the fever. When I bent to stroke his cheek or forehead, to pat his pillows higher, I smelt the rank odour of conspiracy on his breath.
Or did I?
There was a mean glint of ambition in those eyes, as there had been on the night of Rizzio’s murder, and yet,
a part of me believed that he was still a boy, a young man, whose appetites and passions were beyond his own control and even now in need of guidance. Still, whatever he was about, I was a match for him this time.
We were watching him. We had him in our sights.
It is true I had openly despaired of Darnley in front of my advisers and my Secretary of State, but I never outwardly condoned his death or any notion that he – or anyone else – should be harmed.
That was not my plan at all.
There was another behind all of these events. A silent other who remains shielded in mystery. The one who looks through his fingers and says nothing; the one who is always absent when trouble is afoot; the one who contrives to be neither seen, nor heard.
Of whom do I speak?
Fotheringhay Castle
October 1586
“Bothwell!”
A voice rings out as my silvery needle flies through the fabric, beautiful stitches sculpting the form of a large cat with gleaming yellow eyes.
I shake my head in silence.
“Of him, I will not speak.”
“Why not?” Darnley’s ghost asks me, stepping closer to the hearth.
I purse my lips tightly, reluctant to speak with this evil spectre, this intruder.
“He is not the one.”
“Then who is it?” he breathes, leaning in close.
A door slams in the corridor outside and his head snaps round in alarm.
When the wood scrapes against the worn flags and Jane appears, he vanishes. I look back to where he was, startled. He is nowhere to be seen.
My tapestry waits.
Kirk o’ Field
February 1567
I simply acquiesced. Not even that. I had no knowledge of what the lords were plotting between them, what they had decided.
I spent two nights with my young husband, sleeping in the hastily rigged-up chamber beneath his own. They were dark nights. I went to bed alone. A sickle moon lit the sky. The view from my window was bounded on either side by the two abandoned kirks; testimony to Knox’s evil influence, even here. White snow drifted against black bare stone. One of them had no rafters remaining, as if it had been burnt to the ground, just a roofless neglected husk. I had walked there earlier in the week to investigate and seen the sad interior of the kirk, its nave filled with last autumn’s leaves, newly-fallen snow, ledges and spearheads of ice against the cracked and frozen altar. They had been Catholic, these churches, declared kirks and then left to decay, the Scottish people wishing to wipe their memories clean of their Catholic past, to reach out and embrace a new religion with new laws, new prejudices, new stringent demands. The stone window-frames were without glass, empty eye-sockets letting in the rain and snow, channels through which the wind would howl on a winter’s night. One steeple remained, thrusting skyward, hopelessly, uselessly, like an abandoned promise.
A new round of snowflakes fell from the night sky to land on the blackened ruins, softening their dereliction.
Darnley’s health was slowly improving, da
y by day. He was looking forward eagerly to the day when he could move with me into the Palace once more. He claimed that he still loved me.
It was hard to believe in his claims when only weeks before he had sought to humiliate me before all the courts of Europe assembled at Stirling Castle for the baptism of our son. I reserved the right to remain sceptical.
When he grabbed my wrist and declared, “We loved each other once, did we not, Marie?” I held myself calm and aloof, outwardly pleasant. I did not know what to think. For, to my mind he had never been a devoted husband. From the minute he had secured the possibility of marriage with me, he changed, as though he had got what he wanted and needed no longer play the ardent lover. It was a hard lesson I learned.
We decided between us that he would be well enough to return to Holyrood on Monday morning, the tenth of February, and from that day forward he would share my bed and my table as we tried to salvage what we could of our marriage, even if only for the sake of our public image. It was also for the sake of our son; presenting a united front as parents would give him a more secure inheritance as monarch one day.
Sunday was to be Darnley’s last day in Kirk o’ Field. It was also the last day before Lent, and therefore a time of rejoicing and carnival before the long days of abstinence set in – the opportunity for a last fling, although no doubt Knox did not condone such practices. He would rather spend the entire year in travail and mourning than see his flock enjoy a single moment of pleasure in life.
My French page Bastien was to be married to Christina Hogg and I had planned a grand reception for them at the Palace, with the prospect of hours of prolonged festivity lasting into the early hours.
On the Sunday morning I dressed myself for a day of celebrations. I remember exactly what I wore, down to the last detail: a gown of rich crimson velvet with rose-red rubies glimmering at my throat and from the lobes of my ears.
At noon there was a wedding breakfast for Christina and Bastien with much laughter and merriment. I raised my glass and drank toasts to the future of the happy couple. I could see the happiness in their eyes and their demeanour as they spoke to one another and I did envy it, for I did not think their love would mar and spoil so quickly as mine had done.
At four o clock in the afternoon, as it grew dusk, I rode slowly up the Canongate to the house of the Bishop of Isles for a formal dinner to mark the Savoyard ambassador’s departure from Scotland the following day. Myself, Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll and Maitland all sat at table together, with the dusk falling momentarily on the streets outside. I noticed nothing strange. I have searched my memory since and tried to reflect on whether any of those present seemed tense or anxious. I can find no clue.
After dinner we rode to Kirk o’ Field, as we usually did. A long elegantly-clad train of us, still laughing and smiling, light-headed from the wine we had drunk. Thieves’ Row rang with our iron-shod mounts, stamping and snorting and slipping on the uneven slabs. Bothwell was by my side, I remember that, and I felt the warmth of his presence, although I did not interpret it in any other way than friendship and support.
We all crowded into my husband’s small bedchamber, in our finery and inappropriate garb, almost too bright and festive for such a dark day, with snow on the ground outside and ice at the windows. Bothwell was wearing a suit of soft black velvet and satin trimmed with silver.
Why did I notice that?
Well, because he held my elbow firmly and steered me up the staircase to Darnley’s bedside, and because I ever did have a fine attention to detail.
Darnley was delighted to see us and amused by our good-natured banter. I gave him some wine and offered to play cards with him, so we dealt out a hand of whist at the green baize table. When I beat him for the third time he grew impatient.
“You always have the advantage over me, Marie. Why is that?”
“You cannot give up yet,” I urged. “Play again and you shall win this time.”
“What? You think to control me thus?” His smile was strained and weak.
Bothwell stood nearby, watching.
Darnley glanced at him with plain dislike. “I’m very tired,” he muttered.
“Then you shall rest,” and I bent down and kissed his forehead.
It was freezing over outside and candles glimmered on the tables as I sat quietly in the high-backed chair beside Darnley’s bed. The rest of the gathering began to form companionable groups, some raising their voices in a loud peal of laughter, others murmuring, chatting on volubly. Their happy circles excluded myself and Darnley – though we were the centre of this drama. It allowed us a measure of privacy, I suppose, his hand resting in mine.
At about ten in the evening someone reminded me that I had promised to attend the masque at the Palace to honour the wedding celebrations.
“We really ought to prepare to depart, Ma’am, if you wish to avoid disappointing Christina and Bastien.”
It was Maitland who spoke this time.
Darnley held me back by the wrist. “Don’t go,” he pleaded. “Stay here!”
Maitland looked uneasy. “You made a firm promise, Ma’am.”
“Perhaps just another hour?”
On retrospect, although I noticed nothing at the time, I concede now that the mood changed at that moment. Looks were exchanged.
Who was it? Maitland? Bothwell? One of them insisted that it was not possible to stay another hour, that we must leave immediately. I have searched my memory again and again to try and identify which one of them spoke at that point. They were eager that I should leave – and at once. Just as Darnley was equally eager that I should stay.
“It is only till tomorrow,” I told him. “Is that so long to wait?”
I bid him goodnight and left the chamber, giving him one swift glance over my shoulder before I left.
As I stepped out into the cold courtyard of Kirk o’ Field I felt the pressure of Bothwell’s hand against my cloak, briefly, in the small of my back, a passing contact. It travelled through me like electricity. No words were spoken.
With bright torches burning and flaring in the night, their smoke trailing backwards in the knife-edge wind, my cavalcade made its way down the Cowgate, up Blackfriar’s Wynd, through the Netherbow Gate, then down to the Palace with the white tip of Arthur’s Seat rearing behind it.
There was snow in the air.
And a sense of menace.
As we crossed the iron drawbridge into the outer courtyard, I could hear the sounds of rejoicing. A lively strain of music lilted towards me on the frozen air, reminding me for one second what it was to be young and without any cares in this world.
The doors of the Palace were thrust open; I heard the wail of the bagpipes long before I saw them and remembered how they had once wailed up to me, through the darkness of the night on my arrival here six years ago. Tonight the great yawning rooms of the Palace were filled with their sound, and it made a more cheerful melody.
Holyrood Palace
February 1567
I joined in the masque enthusiastically, pretending a light-heartedness I did not feel. The Palace was lit throughout; the hall was ashimmer and ablaze, ornate banners hung from the ceiling, fires roared.
I was dreading the next day and what it would bring, for I confess I did not want to be reunited with Darnley in my apartments at Holyrood. It was not my true heart’s desire, but more a decision of management and good politics.
I danced with Bothwell at one point. I did not know what my nobility were planning this night. They did not seek to enlighten me.
It was long after midnight when I retired to my own apartments. I shed my glittering gown and my huge blood-coloured gems, and lay down in my bed beneath the canopy.
Did I sleep?
I do not remember. My brain was too overwrought with the excitement of the day.
I looked at the hearth, a faint orange glow
in the darkness, and remembered how Rizzio was slain in these rooms and how Darnley had played a part in that. I wondered how I would bear to share my home with him again.
I thought about Bothwell and the pressure of his hand in the small of my back, what it had felt like to dance with him, a new sensation.
For a long time I lay in the darkness, thinking like this, until sleep claimed me.
I was woken by a terrible noise. At two o’ clock or thereabouts, long before dawn, there was a vast explosion. I felt the ground tremble and the ripples of sound rent and tore apart the cold night air. I sat up in bed, wondering by what magic the extinct volcano, Arthur’s Seat, was erupting once more, its lava threatening to pour down over Holyrood.
But it was not Arthur’s Seat.
The whole town shook with the noise; the walls of the Palace shook, and the great black rock on which the Castle sits, silvered with moonlight, threw forth an echo of the explosion into the night. Then, it seemed, there was absolute stillness.
For many minutes nothing happened. No one moved; no one stirred.
Throughout the whole town of Edinburgh and the great halls and courtyards of the Palace, all was silent.
It was many minutes before the corridors of Holyrood burst into life. It began with footsteps pounding along the passage outside.
“Your Majesty!”
Mary Seton burst into my chamber.
Confused and still half-asleep, I shrugged on a cloak and asked my ladies-in-waiting why they were firing the cannon.
“Is the town being attacked?” I asked.
“We do not know!” came the reply.
Their faces were white with lack of sleep. There was a general air of panic at what might be happening outside, reflecting my own state of mind.
There were cries from below, and voices travelled up to me where I stood in my shift.
“Where is the Queen?”
