Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

by Margaret George

  Mary could hardly wait to be on her way. She wheeled her horse round in the cold air and said, “Let us depart, then. Our guide will take us by the shortest route!”

  Out through the town’s main street, past yet another ruined abbey, they trotted, until, reaching the open fields, they could gallop. The sheaves of grain glowed with frost, like ghostly sentinels, and the fields were silver. Alongside the fields were orchards, half harvested now. Ladders leaned against the trees, and baskets were scattered about on the ground.

  But farther on, the tidy fields and orchards were replaced first by thickets and then by vast ranges of dun-coloured hills, with trickles of water cascading down their steep, mossy banks. A few white butterflies danced in the purple and brown heather and bracken, and hawks soared overhead in the huge skies, but the area felt abandoned and godless.

  “Bog!” cried their guide, pointing to an area of thick reeds and grass that looked deceptively like everything around it. They skirted it.

  By now the sun had risen almost to mid-sky and the temperatures were pleasant. They had been riding almost six hours.

  “There!” he cried, pointing to a grey bulk on a rise two or three miles away.

  Even at that distance it seemed big, and as they approached, it loomed larger and larger until it seemed like a portal to an ancient city. The grey fortress seemed to grow until it blotted out the sky and eclipsed the sun.

  They approached the plank bridge that functioned as a drawbridge over the moat, but the sentries had been alerted to their coming as soon as they had been sighted at the crest of the hill. The portcullis was raised, and the guards ran to tell their master.

  “Come, he lies in here,” said one soldier, leading them past dank rooms where Mary could actually hear water dripping, and into one vaulted chamber where a crackling fire in a cavernous fireplace tried to keep the damp and dark at bay. Smoke filled the room, but it had a pleasant scent.

  Lying mounded under furs and wool blankets, with a boy seated on a stool by his bed, Bothwell slept. As Mary approached him, she felt such trepidation her legs and arms grew chilled. But why? She knew he lived. She could see the top of his reddish hair, then, as she drew closer, his rounded face, with the eyes tightly closed. Instead of his usual tan, his face was pale and the colour of pear-flesh. She felt chilled all the way through at the vision. He looked like a corpse.

  Then he stirred. One eye opened, then the other. He did not look pleased, or surprised, or comforted, to see her. The attendant brought over a short, flat board to help prop him up, as Bothwell began pulling off the covers with one hand and trying to use it as a lever to raise himself.

  “Pray do not strain yourself,” said the boy, sliding the board underneath his back and then stuffing blankets behind it.

  Bothwell grunted and lowered his head until the boy was finished. Then he looked up and said, “Welcome, Your Majesty. My Lord James, Earl of Moray. Maitland.” He ran his uninjured hand over his hair.

  The movement, so telling of Bothwell, moved Mary in a way that words never could. She was flooded with delirious joy at seeing this little gesture, knowing that it described everything about him, everything that she loved.

  Yes, loved. At the same time that word, which seemed to speak itself in her mind, sent a sickening feeling of doom through her.

  Yes, I love him, but there can be nothing but shame and sorrow in it, and no good fate, she thought. In my very happiness lies embedded my woe; they cannot be separated.

  And had I not known this, I perhaps could have gone on as I was, as Darnley’s wife, wrestling with the ugly aftermath of his perfidy, and the deep antagonism of the Lords toward me, she thought. The lean diet of dullness, details, and depression could have been borne as a penance for my earlier ignorance in Scotland, when I first came, and even for the unthinking pleasures of my days in France when, idle and young, I passed what seemed to be perpetual summer. But now … I cannot go on … not as I was. Yet what I shall become, I fear to discover.

  “We heard you were dead,” Mary said quietly.

  “Then I trust this is a happy surprise,” he said. His voice, weak at first, became stronger.

  “No surprise,” said Mary. “We were relieved to hear by the next day that you were only injured, but not mortally.”

  “He woke up in the cart,” said the bedside boy. “There we were, transporting the bloody corpse in this cart that was lurching and thumping and getting stuck every ten yards, when suddenly he groaned and moved. Well,” he said with a gleeful laugh, “we ran! Have you ever had a corpse come back to life? It was only when we heard him cursing we knew it was no ghost.”

  “Cannot ghosts curse?” asked Bothwell. “I should imagine those are their first words. After all, who wants to be dead?”

  Mary saw that his left hand was heavily bandaged, and that the bandage wrapping his head was soaked through with bloody fluid.

  “My belly is the worst,” he said, flinging off the covers with his good, strong right hand. His entire abdomen was so bandaged it looked like a padded jack, the quilted leather coat Borderers wore. “The wound runs lengthwise almost six inches. He got me when I was rounded over a log, asking to be carved like a pheasant. Ah, well. At least he’s dead. Thus perish all the Queen’s enemies,” he said lightly. “He didn’t wake up in the cart, did he?”

  Maitland smiled at him. “No. And you will soon be well and fighting more enemies.”

  “Alas that the Queen has so many,” Bothwell said carefully. “And the justice courts at Jedburgh? The session is completed?”

  “Indeed,” said Lord James. “We certainly would not have left betimes.”

  “Certainly. And…?”

  “Sentences were passed,” said Maitland. “There were no executions.”

  “What of Kerr?” Bothwell’s voice rose in disbelief.

  “The Queen only fined him,” said Lord James. “It seems she was touched by his tale of the Abbot’s personal shortcomings. ’Twas not the way our royal father, James V, handled these criminals. I fear this womanish approach renders your wounds acquired in useless service. If Jock o’ the Park yet lived, doubtless he’d have a sad tale to win a stay of execution, as well. Perhaps his son had the melancholy, or his hog choked on an acorn. How grievous!”

  Bothwell was glaring at Mary. She shot a look at Lord James, commanding him to silence.

  “If there are reports of your raids and of the other activities in the Borders, we shall take them back to Jedburgh and study them,” she said as loftily as she could manage. “I have brought records of our proceedings for you to read. We will remain in Jedburgh during the month of October. When you are able to travel, we request that you come by litter to us there.”

  “By litter!” he cried. “Only pregnant women and invalids travel by litter!”

  “I shall send one for you within ten days,” she insisted. “And you will use it—by my command.”

  * * *

  It was already midafternoon, and past time to be on their way. Mary had been loath to leave, but clutching the reports, she realized it was time. Darkness would overtake them on their way back.

  The sun had come out, temporarily brightening the scenery, turning ochre into marigold yellow on the hills, dull deep purple into vibrant violet, sedge into bright brown. But that was short-lived, and before they had journeyed over three hills the sun vanished, all the colours dimmed, and mists began to creep up from the bogs, reaching long fingers toward the high places.

  Mary was tired—nay, exhausted. Suddenly the prospect of the thirty-mile journey in the saddle seemed as daunting and impossible as going all the way to Jerusalem. Darkness was coming fast in the October afternoon, and their guide would have difficulty recognizing landmarks. Yet they dared not go faster, for the terrain was too uneven and dangerous.

  Darkness caught them still fifteen miles from Jedburgh, in the midst of a vast waste that skirted peat bogs and was littered with boulders and scrub.

  “The Devil’s tract,”
muttered Lord James.

  “Watch your footing!” cried the guide. “Keep in single file. I will dismount and lead.” He held out a torch before him, testing each step.

  The wind rose and penetrated their cloaks. It began to rain, a drumming, icy rain.

  They would be out all night, Mary thought. Perhaps they should halt, erect some sort of shelter. Perhaps that would be safer. Perhaps—

  Suddenly she lurched to the left as her horse foundered and his entire right side sank in a mire. The horse emitted a distressed cry, and the others stopped.

  “What’s that?” cried Maitland.

  The horse, attempting to extricate himself, churned in the marsh. Mary was thrown off and landed in a cold, oozing slush laced with brambles. Her feet sank instantly, and she could feel no bottom. She instinctively flung her arms over the saddle and hung on. The horse was almost swimming in the mire.

  “The Queen!” yelled the guide. “Stop! Help!”

  He rushed over to her, thrusting his torch toward the commotion. The horse was neighing and frantically kicking the thick, slimy water.

  “Climb on the saddle and over his back!” said Lord James. “The left side is safe! Come!”

  Mary hauled herself up, the weight of her soaked skirts pulling her backwards. With one hand she clung to the saddle, and extended the other to her brother. He pulled her with such force she thought her arm would be wrenched off. She landed on top of him in a heap.

  “There, there.” The guide was calming Mary’s horse and fishing for the reins. “Quiet, quiet.” Gradually the animal stopped struggling. “Now.” He carefully guided him toward the dry path, until the searching hooves found it. Then, with a loud sucking noise, spewing rotting vegetation and stinking water, the horse came out of the bog.

  Mary, shaking with the cold, insisted on remounting him rather than switching horses with one of the men. And for another four hours she stumbled along, so exhausted and debilitated she could later remember nothing but the cold, the silence, the pelting rain, and the single flaring torch, leading on.

  * * *

  It was past midnight when they finally arrived back at the house at Jedburgh, but Mary did not know. Her teeth were chattering and she had to be carried into the house. When Madame Rallay removed her wet clothes she found her flesh to be colder then the cloth.

  Warmth—in the form of hot wrapped bricks placed in the bed, a fire in the chamber, furs heaped on the bed—failed to revive her. She never opened her eyes but became delirious and then, by the following evening, unable to speak or, seemingly, to hear. First her legs, then her arms, became paralyzed.

  “She is dying!” cried Bourgoing, in a panic.

  “Of a fall in a bog?” asked Lord James, incredulous.

  “A healthy twenty-three-year-old person does not collapse and die for no reason!” insisted Maitland.

  “Her father the King did, after Solway Moss, and he was barely thirty,” said the physician. “Royal blood is different. After a mental shock, the body can collapse.”

  “Bah! What mental shock?” said Lord James. “And I do not do such.”

  “Only half your blood is royal,” the physician said pointedly.

  “She is sinking!” Madame Rallay’s voice rose in alarm. “Pray send for her confessor!”

  Far away, Mary heard the soft voice of Father Mamerot, begging her to relieve her conscience of its sins and so enter Paradise. But she could not speak.

  And how can I confess a sin that has not yet happened, but is more real than any of the rest?

  “Speak!” he was begging her. But she could not.

  “Her feet grow cold!” cried Bourgoing, and Mary was touched at the anguish in his voice.

  He cares for me, she thought in gratitude.

  But none of that seemed to matter, and she felt herself being lifted away, growing farther from them. Her only feeling was of deep sadness to leave Bothwell, and then that too faded, as something paltry and unsustaining. What she was being drawn to was so powerful it drowned out everything else.

  She could suddenly see herself lying on the bed, could see Bourgoing frantically uncovering her and binding her limbs until they were all wrapped in white—a half-ghost. An assistant physician was applying hot oil, and she saw the gleam of the glass. It seemed amusing. Now Bourgoing was beating on her feet, slapping them rapidly, but she could not feel it. She was not there in that absurdly wrapped weak body.

  She saw Madame Rallay, face twisted with grief, opening the windows to let her spirit pass. And she was drawn there, inexorably it seemed.

  Maitland was wringing his hands in genuine consternation. And Lord James? His head was bent over the table in the back of the room, and he was writing something. It was difficult to see. She came closer, hovering just over him. A little chest was open.

  He was inventorying her jewels!

  She was dead, and this was his reaction!

  A jolt of anger flew through her, and suddenly there was feeling in her lips. Bourgoing was forcing some wine down her throat, and it stung her cracked lips. It choked her. She was violently ill, instantaneously, and vomited onto the covers and floor.

  The vomit dripped off her lips and she could taste it, and was sick again. She coughed and choked and was wracked with pain, imprisoned once again in her body.

  “She lives!” cried Bourgoing, and dimly Mary heard Lord James scrambling from the jewel table over to her.

  “Yes,” he said coolly. “I do believe the Queen will live. The Lord be praised!”

  XXXVII

  For days Mary lay in the bed in that upper room of the Kerr’s fortified house, trying hard to recover. She obediently drank the thinned gruel Bourgoing spooned between her lips, and gradually it was replaced by thicker gruel and then by eggs and bread pudding, and finally by stewed young chicken meat. She went from lying in bed to being able to sit at a small table and eat her food. But then she would have to lie back down.

  And as she lay there, horrible thoughts would grip her. She would recover, but for what? Darnley? He had not even wanted to preside at the justice courts, for all he coveted the title of King. And now he was unreachable, off hawking somewhere in the west of Scotland. Had they even told him of her illness? Had he cared?

  Thinking of him and her great folly in having bound herself to him, she would have paroxysms of anger and grief.

  Yet there is the child, she would remind herself. It was my duty to provide an heir, the best one possible for our throne and later, perhaps, for the English one, and I did that.

  If there were only the bad marriage, the marriage that is now no marriage, I could endure that. That is a Queen’s duty. But there is more … the torture of Bothwell.

  I became ill when I realized that the thing I most desired carried the promise of my own destruction, that if I could drink that potion, which I feel I must drink in order to live, than I betray everything I once was.

  Oh, wretched, wretched Queen! she cried silently.

  * * *

  The leaves were swirling down, lazy spinning yellow wheels, the day Bothwell was brought to Jedburgh. She was sitting up at her little table, eating bread pudding with raisins, when she saw the single line of riders approaching, a great litter slung between two horses. Bothwell lay in it, his left arm still bound, his middle still thick with bandages. But his face—ah, his face!—was merry, and had colour. He was smiling, and she thought she heard him laugh.

  They settled him on the floor directly below hers. She could hear the scraping and thudding as furniture was brought in and rearranged. If she strained, she believed she heard his voice. But the nature of a fortified house was to have thick stone walls and heavy floors, and true sound was muffled.

  She would imagine him lying directly beneath her, and it charged each footstep she took, as she pictured him hearing it in his chamber.

  * * *

  On the fifth day after his arrival, she invited him to dine with her on her floor. He had no trouble negotiating the steps—his
legs had not been injured—and emerged looking rather robust, considering his recent experience.

  “I am gratified to see you mend so quickly,” she said.

  “A soldier cannot afford to take very long,” he answered. “After the first week, the wounds have healed quickly. And you—you were taken suddenly, gravely ill!”

  She had forgotten she had not spoken to him since; he had undoubtedly heard it from others. “Yes. I was thrown in the mire in the dark, and afterwards … I fell victim to a mysterious collapse.”

  But you know what it was, do you not? she thought. It seemed to her as if he could surely read her mind, as if he had been present with her every second since she rode away from the Hermitage that afternoon. But that was a foolish fancy.

  “I am grieved to hear it.” He was looking at her, taking in her new frailty.

  “It is past now.” She saw his look and wondered if she still looked ill. “I have been reading your reports.… Is it true that…?”

  For the rest of the dinner she attempted to discuss the Borders with him, and his duties there. “It is said here, in this patent, that your post carries the power to allow you to ride against rebels, attack them with fire and sword, besiege and overthrow houses held against you. It even says you can command assistance from neighbours, under pain of death, and direct letters in my name.”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  “Have you?”

  “Have I what?”

  “Directed letters in my name?”

  “No, never. I would not hide behind your skirts, so to speak.”

  * * *

  Darnley arrived, almost two weeks from the time she had been taken ill. She had seen his white horse approaching, seen his blue feathered hat from above, and been able to prepare herself. She drew on her robe and her velvet slippers and attempted to arrange her hair.

  The door creaked open and Darnley poked his head in. His hat was cocked so that it was the feather she saw first, protruding into the room. Then his head followed.

  “Oh, my love,” he said, rushing to her side. He reached down to kiss her, and she turned her face so it was a cheek kiss.