by Alex Nye
Before supper Bothwell and I took a turn in the grounds for some air. The days were getting longer and I liked to enjoy the twilight time. I have a dislike of being confined indoors for long periods of time, and this was especially so when I was a young woman. The great mound of Arthur’s Seat reared up behind us and there was a brisk wind. It was cloudy and cold but the sun broke through in intermittent shafts, bathing the black crags in a golden glow. I already felt uneasy in my heart as we neared the Palace gates. Something drew me, attracted by a dark shape pinned there.
Bothwell pulled me back, but I resisted his efforts.
A placard had been fixed to the Palace gates – a new one – tied with rope.
I drew close to inspect it.
A mermaid, her silvery blue tail curling out behind her, bare to the waist, long auburn hair flowing unchecked down her back. She bore a crown on her head. Beside her was a portrait of a hare, symbol of Bothwell’s Hepburn lineage. There was a message this time, in clear Latin script which I could translate with ease.
Wantons marry in the month of May.
I looked about the empty grounds as if to locate the suspect then turned back to Bothwell, my husband.
“What does this mean?”
He was silent as he cut the placard down.
“There is another’s hand behind this,” I murmured quietly.
I thought of all those courtiers and advisers of mine who had chosen to absent
themselves – Maitland and my brother Moray among them.
“Pay it no need,” Bothwell said, but I knew he was angry.
Rebellion
May 1567
The start of our married life was marked by three lonely weeks spent in Holyrood. The Palace had emptied itself as if a plague had swept through the corridors. Its rooms and corridors echoed to our solitary footsteps. Everyone fled, even those who had been close to me.
At night sleep forsook me and taking a candle, I would walk aimlessly through the great echoing chambers. I stood at the top of the staircase, looking down through the gloom. It was here they had dragged Rizzio’s body, thrusting their daggers into him as they went. I could still hear his cries. They had dragged him along as if he was a lump of meat – until he fell silent – then they thrust him from a high window and flung his corpse onto the cobbles below.
Then I thought of Darnley’s body being brought back here after the explosion at Kirk o’ Field, how he lay still and white on a board after the embalmers had made him ready, and how young he had looked.
As a woman I fail to understand why violence should be resorted to so readily. It grieves me.
I glanced at the portraits of my own ancestors. Long chiselled noses, arched brows, superciliously cold eyes. What advice had they to give me? I had never known my father and his forebears; I had been parted from my mother at the age of five. I felt utterly oppressed by loneliness. I was surrounded by ghosts. Dead voices were the only ones I heard. It was perhaps at this point in my life that I first began to feel haunted.
The fireplaces in this Palace were vast, great yawning caverns one could stand up in, but none of them were lit. There were no servants left to tend them, and the season was not cold enough.
Holyrood had become a giant mausoleum, filled with monuments to the dead rather than the living. Those parties we had once held, the convivial evenings when we gathered in my small turret chamber to play cards and listen to music, left a faint indelible echo on the air. Those days were gone, together with their warmth and optimism.
My courage was failing me. The rooms and staircases and corridors seemed to be teeming with the past.
Most of the nobility had fled Edinburgh and were seething in almost open revolt, in far reaches of the kingdom, plotting against me. I was left only with the protection of Bothwell’s men.
I took my candle and drifted back to the bedchamber where Bothwell lay.
I held my candle aloft and studied him. The glow must have wakened him because he reached out a hand and murmured. “Come to bed, Marie.”
“I am restless,” I whispered.
He opened his eyes, and fixed them on me. “You are safe here now.”
I lay down beside him, and felt the warmth as he wrapped his arms about me.
“If only you had not forced me…” I whispered, “I believe I would have come naturally to love you if you had allowed me.”
“Pah! We are here now, are we not?”
I asked him then if he was ever troubled by ghosts.
He did not know what I meant.
“What will we do?” I asked him.
He did not answer for a long time.
“We will wait.”
We did not have much longer to wait. The following day our eerie peace was disturbed by an unexplained sound;
the slamming of heavy oak doors below and the
pounding of footsteps echoing up the staircase and along the corridor.
Bothwell’s hand was immediately at his belt, locating his dagger.
I waited, remembering other nights when an intruder had forced their way into my private apartments.
A breathless dark-clad figure stood in the doorway, gazing at us.
We stared back.
On his livery was embossed the device of Lord Borthwick, which I recognized instantly.
“I have been sent to warn you…” he began.
“What news?” Bothwell said.
“The confederate lords are advancing on Edinburgh with a vast army,” he cried.
One word breathed through the room.
Rebellion.
“They claim that they are intending to free Her Majesty from the clutches of the Earl of Bothwell.”
Lord Borthwick’s messenger paused for breath before continuing. “My lord urges that if you remain here at the Palace, Your Majesty will be a prisoner within hours, and Lord Bothwell will be killed.”
It had come to this. I was a fugitive in my own kingdom.
We extinguished the candles and I threw a riding cloak over my shoulders, then we fled from the Palace without taking any possessions. We left everything behind. Except for one thing.
My prayer book and psalter, with its soft leathery covers and its crisply illuminated pages, was attached to my waist by a chain, as it still is, and from it I would not be parted.
As we hurried down the staircase the sounds of our own armed guards drifted up to us from below and this was some comfort and encouragement.
The confederate lords were greedy for rebellion but I had an army at my disposal which was renowned for their skill in battle. I was not without protection and I would not allow those men to overtake me.
I was, however, anxious for my son at Stirling. What if they got to him first and kidnapped him?
Outside, the courtyard began to fill with the reassuring clamour of men at arms, the jangle of harnesses, the stamping of boots, soldiers mustering for action.
Bothwell and I mounted our horses and rode away
from Holyrood without further ado. When I glanced back at its windows, the Palace presented a bleak facade.
I remembered how I had first set eyes on it seven years ago. Now it seemed deserted, haunted almost.
We rode up the Canongate in the darkness, the houses silent on either side of us. Dawn was a long way off and as we clattered up the Royal Mile towards the Castle the rest of the town lay shrouded in an unearthly stillness. Not a chink of light appeared behind any of the shutters. When I glanced up at those grey tenements, I felt the weight of my own loneliness.
We approached the iron drawbridge over the steeply slanting cobbles and waited for the doors to be thrust open to admit us.
Instead, all was as silent as the grave.
Its grim dark walls excluded us.
We waited; the horses restless and impatiently pawing the
ground.
Bothwell shouted up at the man in the postern to allow us entry, but a disembodied voice cried out of the darkness.
“I have been given orders not to allow anyone through tonight, sir!”
“What?”
There was a pause.
“But this is Her Majesty the Queen. Now open the gates at once.”
“Sorry, sir,” came the reply.
The rebel lords had already sent word through to Edinburgh to warn the warden not to allow us protection inside its walls. They wanted us defenceless.
I gazed up in silence at its dark mass, its gates apparently closed to me.
“Let me speak to the Keeper, God damn you,” Bothwell bellowed. “The man is under my command. Now open the gates at once to Her Majesty the Queen.”
“Sorry sir, but I have been given my orders already.”
The voice quavered a little as he spoke, but Bothwell’s men could not get at him, safely inside the castle walls as he was.
I had given birth to my son in that castle; now I was forbidden to enter.
“We must ride to Stirling,” I said. “I must be with my son.”
Bothwell turned his horse about. “They will not touch the Prince,” he said.
“But I must be reunited with him.”
“If we ride to Stirling, we may run the risk of encountering their guards. Stirling is too near Edinburgh.”
“But…”
We stood outside the castle, our horses restless and nervously pawing the cobbles. I could see the weaponry of Bothwell’s men glinting in the darkness around me, but it was useless without the protection of castle walls. We had no shelter, no refuge, and my enemies were moment by moment advancing on Edinburgh.
“Borthwick Castle,” Bothwell said. “We will ride there first, and after, try to raise enough troops to make it to Stirling.”
My thoughts raced. What if the rebel lords held my son hostage and forbade me to see him again? They could capture him and choose a Regent amongst themselves. The fact that I was their anointed Queen did not carry any weight with them.
We turned our horses about and raced from Edinburgh. Once in the saddle and galloping at speed through the darkness, my spirits lifted. I would not let these rebels defeat me. I would see them to the doors of Hell and back.
I had no time left for tears or self-pity. Revenge was my purpose.
Borthwick Castle
June 1567
We rode on through the night for mile after weary mile, across the bare-backed hills, until we came to a deep fertile glen. Here I saw the twin towers of Borthwick rearing up grey above the dark foliage.
Lord Borthwick’s castle stood entrenched in its own wilderness, a vast tumbling undergrowth, quite unlike much of the rest of Scotland. That night it was varnished with a bright film of moonlight. It was perched on a rocky eminence and moated around by the waters of the Gore. This, we felt, would offer adequate protection.
My heart was sore with thinking of my son in Stirling and I was equally troubled by the babe in my womb and the fatigue I did feel. How would either of these two creatures fare in this kingdom of mine, torn as it was by strife and factionalism?
Lord Borthwick met us in the inner courtyard with such warmth and hospitality that I was deeply moved.
“No one knows we are here,” Bothwell informed him.
“And nor shall they,” Borthwick breathed. “You will be safe here, Your Majesty, until we can muster enough support to challenge the confederates. They are men of evil intent. Turn-coats. They have no real beliefs, other than the thought of saving their own skin and lining their own purses.”
Then he noticed how pale I was and the way I held myself, in pain almost.
“Come, Your Majesty needs rest. I will instruct the servants to make a chamber ready for you.”
As we walked across the hall to a winding stone staircase I heard him murmuring to Bothwell, “Her Majesty seems exhausted.”
“She has been unwell of late, and the strain is beginning to tell…”
Their voices faded as they moved away from me.
He led us to a high chamber at the top of a turret, connected to the main rooms by a very narrow staircase.
“Your Majesty will be safer up here,” he indicated “in case you should have need to hide from our enemies in the night.”
I glanced at him.
“They will not think of coming here, Your Majesty,” he assured me quickly. “Of that, I am certain. You are safe in our hands.”
“And if they do trace us here?” I asked.
Borthwick turned and looked me in the eye.
“Then we will defend you, Your Majesty.”
I bowed my head in gratitude. Once alone, I lay down in the small chamber to sleep as I was truly exhausted.
Bothwell must have joined me during the night,
for come morning I found myself in his arms.
A servant knocked at the door with a pitcher of water.
I had no clothes other than those I was wearing when I fled Edinburgh.
I rose and looked out of the narrow slit of the window at the greenery of the glen beyond. There was no glass in any of the windows here. I had lain all night calmed and soothed by the sounds of nature from outside, the background rumble of the River Gore, the constant trickle of water from a burn nearby, the shriek of an owl, then the beginnings of birdsong as the dawn chorus got underway, the odd flutterings and stirrings among the trees. I felt at peace for an instant, and yet my eyes began to search the undergrowth for any rogue movement which might indicate danger or an intruder.
It had become unnaturally hot during the night, temperatures steadily rising. It was strange weather which we were not accustomed to experiencing in Scotland, and my gown felt soiled with sweat.
I made to clean myself with the pitcher of water as best I could, having no ladies nearby to help me. Bothwell watched in silence. Somehow, the normal protocols of our life had been stripped away and we were left with this intimacy.
Summer had thickened the ivy clinging to the high stone walls and tendrils of it poked through the bare window. There was also convolvulus, white trumpet flowers, folding in on themselves during the night and opening again by day. Their snowy bloom whitened the green beneath our window and their musky scent drifted up to us.
At midday Bothwell and I descended the spiralling stone staircase and found that Borthwick and some of his retainers were waiting for us in the great hall below. A table was laid with victuals and a jug of watered-down ale.
My nausea had left me and I suddenly realised how ravenous I was. The flight from Edinburgh had given me an appetite and I fell upon the food offered.
Borthwick, the perfect host, poured more ale into our glasses.
“What do you suppose has happened in Edinburgh, in our absence?” I asked Borthwick.
He hesitated before replying. “They will have surged into the capital by now, taken possession of the Castle, the Palace, the Exchequer House.”
“Then they hold the keys to my kingdom,” I said.
Bothwell and Borthwick were silent. They could not offer me false hope.
“We will defy them to the last, Your Majesty. We are not done yet.”
“What do you imagine their intentions are, Borthwick?” I asked.
It was a few moments before he ventured to speak. “I think, Ma’am, that their motives are mixed. There are men among them who were close to Your Majesty at one time.”
“And where is Moray in all of this?” Bothwell asked.
Borthwick nodded. “I do not wish to alarm Your Majesty, but it is possible they plan to use Prince James – as a pawn.”
I felt the air leave my chest and I half-rose in my chair, unable to still the panic I felt. “I must somehow make it to Stirling Castle. My Lord Bothwell, we have to
…”
“First, we must defeat our enemies, Ma’am. Then we will ensure that Prince James is safe. If we ride to Stirling now, we ride straight into their trap. They will be waiting for us, expecting Your Majesty to do just that.”
“We will play a waiting game,” Bothwell said. “They’ll not outwit us, Mary.”
I marvelled at his confidence.
“How dare they use my son and rise up against their Queen – in his name.”
All day we waited.
“They will not find us here,” Bothwell insisted. “We will send out scouts and see what they are about!”
A tangible pall of heat lay heavy on the air. I looked
out the crack of the window onto the great lonely glen beneath.
That evening, with a furtive moon rising over the treetops, we sat down to another meal in the banqueting hall. Its high stone rafters arched above us in the gloom like the buttresses of a giant cathedral.
The servants were kind and when the heat became intense I bade them take their rest.
The long windows overlooked the deep glen beneath, which fell away in natural tiers and terraces. It was lit by moonlight. Inside, candles threw colossal shadows up the bare walls.
Sitting here, soothed by the taste of the ale, I could believe that everything would be alright, that my son and I would be reunited; my followers would ensure that those who rose against us would be dealt with.
Those few hours at Borthwick Castle were a small respite. I remember them well: the atmosphere, the seclusion, the sense of peace despite my great troubles. It was a haven, I suppose, and I have not forgotten the man – Lord Borthwick – who provided that haven.
However, there was one disadvantage to Borthwick Castle. Surrounded as it was by the waters of the Gore, the roar of water could obscure other sounds. This made me uneasy.
It was as we sat at table together, by candlelight, that our peace was disturbed. I chanced to glance out of a window at the darkening glen and thought I saw a flash of movement in the bushes beyond, something glinting.
