Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles

by Margaret George

  “Then you are firm? Your mind is quite made up?”

  “Yes. I dare fate. Jacta est alia—the die is cast.”

  * * *

  After Cecil had gone, and she had made ready for bed, she sat, dressed in her tawny silken robe, at her desk. She kept reaching her slender fingers into the little basket and eating strawberries. They were delicious, with a tang behind their sweetness.

  Elizabeth was writing a poem. But it was no love poem, no paean to flowery May or Roman gods.

  The Daughter of Debate

  The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,

  And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy.

  For falsehood now doth flow and subject faith doth ebb,

  Which would not be, if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.

  But clouds of toys untried do cloak aspiring minds,

  Which turn to rain of late repent by course of changed winds.

  The top of hope supposed the root of ruth will be,

  And fruitless all their graffed guiles, as shortly ye shall see.

  The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds,

  Shall be unsealed by worthy wights, whose foresight falsehood finds.

  The daughter of debate, that eke discord doth sow,

  Shall reap no gain where former rule hath taught still peace to grow.

  No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port;

  Our realm it brooks no stranger’s force, let them elsewhere resort.

  Our rusty sword with rest shall first his edge employ

  To poll their tops that seek such change and gape for joy.

  Mary writes of love, of passion, in her poems, Elizabeth thought. I write of England.

  She put the paper aside.

  I feel the need to write, but I fear my poetry is as stiff as Cecil’s leg. We are much alike, she thought. The soul of a poet is not always given the wings to fly.

  * * *

  On June second, the Duke of Norfolk was led up the steps of the scaffold on Tower Hill. This time the people were not disappointed. After giving the requisite speech, mingling Christian resignation with farewells, he laid his head on the block. The headsman was in good form that morning, and got it off with only one chop.

  * * *

  On August twenty-second, the Earl of Northumberland was likewise executed at York, after having been extradited from Scotland.

  * * *

  The same day, Catherine de Médicis’s assassins attempted to kill the Huguenot leader, Admiral Coligny, in Paris, where large numbers of Huguenots had come for the wedding of Marguerite Valois and Henri of Navarre. The assassin missed, as the Admiral stooped to adjust his shoe, and only succeeded in shooting his arm. His fellow Huguenots cried, “The Admiral’s arm will cost thirty thousand Catholic arms!”

  Two days later, on St. Bartholomew’s Day—the feast of the apostle who had been martyred by being skinned alive—the Catholics of Paris, under the leadership of the Guises, claiming fear of the Huguenot vow, martyred four thousand Huguenot men, women, and children in the streets. The Duc de Guise himself killed Admiral Coligny. The blood in the streets spread out in a red web between cobblestones.

  In the provinces, another six thousand Huguenots were killed.

  * * *

  Elizabeth received the French ambassador at Woodstock on September eighth, the day after her thirty-ninth birthday. She was dressed in mourning and had ordered her attendants to dress likewise. She had kept the ambassador waiting three days before granting him an audience—all to impress on him the gravity of the situation. Protestant subjects had been slaughtered, and she, a Protestant queen, was outraged.

  Yet when she met with him, drawing him aside to speak privately with him, she was by no means as stern as her garments. She seemed willing to accept the official version of events and the King’s pledge of continuing friendship with England. The Anglo-French Treaty of Blois would stand.

  * * *

  Anti-Catholic feeling now swelled to hysteria in England. The cries for Mary’s execution rose. Her family house, the Guises, had led the massacre.

  IX

  The October skies were brilliant over Scotland; in only two days it would be Hallowe’en, usually a dreary time, but this year it would be golden. Morton had always enjoyed All Hallows’ Eve for all that he was supposed to be a faithful member of the Kirk. He motioned to Erskine to seat himself where he could have a view of the trees outside the window of Morton’s mansion at Dalkeith.

  Morton looked dispassionately at the Regent seated across from him. The long-faced Erskine could expect another twelve years of control in Scotland, until the Prince obtained his eighteenth birthday. There seemed to be no danger of Mary being restored to her throne; the Ridolfi Plot had turned Elizabeth against her. Now she sought to be delivered from her. Well, it would cost her even more than the Earl of Northumberland had—in gold.

  “My dear Erskine, you are looking weak and sickly. Are you quite sure you have recovered from the ague?” asked Morton solicitously, pouring him some wine.

  Erskine coughed. “Not entirely. And with winter coming—Stirling is so drafty.” He hacked again.

  “I should think you would be used to it by now. I thought it was well insulated.”

  “Nay, nothing can keep out that wind.” He shuddered. “The only remedy is to keep to one’s bed, under mounds of covers. However, our envoy to Denmark has sent some remarkable undergarments guaranteed to keep one warm—and they do, although they itch.”

  “Denmark. I am glad something has come out of it. I am disgusted with King Frederick! Why does he not surrender Bothwell to us?”

  “We should stop the ‘trial’ business and just go straight to bribery,” said Erskine. He was looking at the dish of pigeon breast with juniper and roast saddle of hare before him. He helped himself. They were dining alone.

  Morton smiled. That was his opening. “Yes. But for that we need money. How desperate are you for it? Would you be willing to undertake an execution for it?”

  “An assassination, you mean?” He was chewing slowly.

  “No, a proper execution.” Morton took a big drink of the French wine from Gascony. “The King’s mother.”

  “Mary?” Erskine put down his fork and stared.

  “The English are willing to deliver her up to our justice. It seems the clamour and turmoil of keeping her is wearing on their nerves. They—or rather Cecil—would pay us to take her back.”

  “How much?” Erskine’s voice was reedy. “Perhaps it is a trick for her restoration.”

  He does not mean to do it, thought Morton. He has lost his nerve and become a worn-out creature.

  “I do not know yet. The question is, would you agree?”

  “I cannot answer.” He shook his head. “Knox is sinking fast. He can no longer walk unsupported. What will we do when he leaves us?”

  “Then make his last days happy. He has long urged us to it.” Morton tried to keep the edge of distrust out of his voice. “We should proceed while the English are in the mood. Elizabeth has been hurt by her cousin’s plotting. But, womanlike, she will change her mind soon enough.”

  “I cannot do it,” said Erskine at length. “It is a monstrous crime, to slay one’s anointed sovereign. I will not have it on my soul.”

  “Nor, so it seems, will Elizabeth. My, what cowards we have about us!”

  He cannot stay Regent another twelve years, thought Morton. He will turn us all into timid girls and skirted eunuchs. Scotland needs strength at its helm, not quivering.

  “You may call it what you will,” insisted Erskine. “I could call some of our doings tyranny and sin.”

  This was alarming. “Are you planning to retire back to your family monastery of Inchmahome, Erskine? What is this turnabout?” asked Morton in a taunting tone.

  “Just reflection. There has been too little of it amongst us.”

  “Very well, then. Forget the English suggestion. How fares the littl
e King?” Morton was noticing how clear and unclouded the French wine was as the light shone through it from the window. A thought had come to him.

  “A true scholar. Very quiet, diligent, and obedient. Nothing like either of his parents, unless he is keeping his true nature hidden. He has a pet monkey,” he suddenly remembered. “He calls it his ‘little infidel’ and lets it cling to him. A sailor brought it to him as a pet. It is the only thing he ever shows affection for.”

  “His mother tried to send him a pony, but we did not permit it,” Morton remembered. “I trust he still hates her?”

  “Yes, Buchanan has seen to that.”

  “Good. Else he might try to ‘rescue’ her someday.”

  “No chance of that,” said Erskine. “I imagine that he will come to guard his throne carefully and not wish to move over and make room for another. All this hating of her was probably unnecessary.” He looked mournfully at Morton.

  He has changed! thought Morton. He is veering off on a new course. For the next twelve years? No!

  They talked about general matters: gossip about Elizabeth’s new favourite, Hatton; a translation of Caesar’s Commentaries just printed in England; the fact that Ivan the Terrible of Russia had protested the brutality of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s. Drake had just set off on a marauding voyage to the Spanish Main, with Elizabeth’s blessing. A Royal Exchange building had been opened in London, and it was said to be glittering. At the Battle of Lepanto, the forces of Philip had routed the forces of the Turk under Ali Pasha in an heroic sea fight. Suleiman’s navy had been destroyed, and ten thousand Christian galley slaves set free. Unfortunately this freed Philip to devote his entire energies to exterminating his other enemy: heretics.

  “We live in exciting times,” said Erskine. He looked down at the sweet that Morton had brought out himself and set before him. It was a pale mound with slivered almonds and cinnamon.

  “Plain country fare,” said Morton. “This is a curd cheese, with a lemony taste. Sometimes the taste can be refreshingly bitter. But that is as it is supposed to be. My cook tells me that the local people here eat it to gain strength for the winter.”

  They each took their spoons and tasted it, then proceeded to eat.

  The taste was quite tangy, with lemon and something else, thought Erskine. Perhaps a bit of tansy.

  He took his leave shortly thereafter for the forty-mile ride back to Stirling.

  “’Tis a glorious day, and I shall enjoy seeing the sunset,” said Erskine. “I will stop after dark near Linlithgow.”

  By the time he reached it, he was stricken with stomach pains so severe that he had to be helped out of the saddle. He was taken to his usual inn, where, after a night of agony, he died—the second regent to expire in Linlithgow.

  Morton immediately succeeded him.

  * * *

  Just after Hallowtide, the weather abruptly changed, and gales swept through Scotland, bringing torrents of stinging, icy rain and high winds. The oceans were vexed and waves crashed against the coast and into the Firth of Forth, sending clouds of ocean spray high in the air. The few remaining leaves were stripped from the trees and carried far out over the water.

  Knox, ailing badly, managed to ascend the pulpit of St. Giles on November ninth and preach to his successor the duties of a minister, but his voice was so weak that no one more than a few feet away could hear him. Then, shakily, he was helped down, and the whole congregation followed him as he limped painfully back to his house.

  He had invited some friends to supper that night, and insisted on sitting with them at the supper table.

  “Open the new hogshead of wine,” he rasped to Margaret.

  “Nay,” one of the guests demurred. “That’s over one hundred gallons, and we can’t drink it all. Save it for a larger group.”

  Knox said calmly, “Please drink as freely as you wish, and do not hold back. I shall not live to finish it.” He reached out and patted Margaret’s hand.

  After supper he took to his bed.

  “I cannot read,” he said to his wife. “I cannot hold my eyes upon the text. I pray you, please read to me from the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John. It was, you know, where first I cast my anchor.”

  “Wh-what do you mean?” She could not understand his leave-taking. He was not yet sixty, and his mysterious illness—the weakness and paralysis and coughing—did not seem to signal a particular disease.

  “I mean these are the words that called me directly, and that seem to speak in the intimate voice of my Master.”

  “John, why do you not call the physician?” she cried.

  “You may call him if you wish,” he said gently. “I will not neglect the ordinary means of healing, but I know the Lord will soon put an end to my warfare. My trumpets all are blown. But others will be calling me home.” Again he patted her hand. “Now read, I pray you.”

  “‘I have glorified Thee on earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do. I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest me out of the world. I pray for them: While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy name: those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.’”

  He sighed and let his eyes seek the lighted window of his study that overlooked the High Street.

  “So much vanity,” he murmured. So many had passed beneath that window, going to and from Holyrood Palace. He could hear the shouts and cries of that day eleven years earlier when the Queen had made her ceremonial entrance to Edinburgh, and she had passed by, jewels on her bosom and grey cloak spread out across her horse’s flanks.

  “Son of perdition,” he whispered. Yes, the son of perdition had been lost, he had not succeeded in saving her. She had gone down to ruin, in a trail of lovers and vice and murder. And it was not over yet. “Jezebel…” he sighed. “The dogs shall drink thy blood, as I prophesied.”

  “John, do not torment yourself with her memory,” said Margaret. “Think of your children! Our little daughters—think of them, not of her!”

  “I think of Scotland, dear wife, and all things concerning her.”

  Scotland was in peril. In spite of the flight of the evil Queen, in spite of the triumph of the Kirk, in spite of Elizabeth’s recognition of James VI, the country seemed to be in the grip of lawlessness and disorder. Three regents had died in only four years, and there was no one able to enforce government decrees. Bothwell’s strongmen were no longer at hand to control the Borders, where outlaws once again roamed freely. The clan hatreds—Hamiltons and Lennox Stewarts, Douglases and Gordons—raged on. Maitland and Kirkcaldy still held Edinburgh Castle and rained cannonballs down on helpless townsfolk, although the other lords loyal to the Queen—Argyll, Huntly, Hamilton—had retreated out of the city.

  Martha, Margaret, and Elizabeth, his three little daughters, crowded round his bed. “Father!” said six-year-old Martha, pulling gently on his beard.

  “You may cut it a bit if you wish,” he said. They had had a game about his beard, with his daughter wishing to trim it. Sometimes he let her, but once she had botched it and left him to preach at St. Giles with a ragged beard flapping up and down. “You may even make it uneven.”

  “What is that?” asked Margaret, the four-year-old, pointing at a neat stack of boards along one wall.

  “No, you mustn’t!” said her mother to Knox.

  “And why should I not tell her? ’Tis to be my coffin, dearest. I asked my friend Bannatyne to start preparing it.”

  Margaret the elder began weeping.

  * * *

  On the nineteenth, Morton came. The new Regent was stern and had aged much in the past few months. The violent red of his hair and beard had softened, and there were threads of white in them. His dark eyes were troubled, although he tried to hide it from Knox.

  Knox remembered him as he was in the first days of the Covenant of the Lords of the Congregation. Morton had been a staunch supporter from the beginning, and had never wavered like
so many others. He had been in the prime of life then, and was still flourishing. Now he had his reward: the highest power in Scotland.

  “Leave us alone,” Knox asked the others who were present, and they withdrew. Then Knox motioned to Morton to bend close. “Did you have any knowledge of the murder of Darnley?” he asked. “You must tell me the truth.”

  Morton hesitated. Did a lie to a prophet count as a heavier sin than a lie to another man? Did Knox have the power to forgive sins? Could he see through the lie? He had the gift of prophecy. “I—I knew that certain men wished to rid the world of him,” he finally said. “But I refused to be a party to it. I am ashamed to say it was not because of pity for the King, but because of caution for myself. I had just been allowed to return to Scotland after the Riccio murder, and I dared not involve myself with another so soon.”

  Knox relaxed his grip on Morton’s wrist. “You may then call the others back in.”

  Lord Boyd, David Lindsay, and the new minister of St. Giles returned to the bedside. Knox struggled to sit up, and Boyd placed a bolster behind him and helped him.

  “I am troubled about the lords still in Edinburgh Castle that daily wreak havoc on the people in the streets of the city,” he said in a wavering voice. “I make a dying request of you, that you go to Kirkcaldy in the castle and tell him, in my name, this: Unless he repents of his desertion of the Lords, he shall die miserably. For neither the craggy rock in which he miserably trusts, nor the carnal prudence of Maitland, whom he looks upon as a demigod, nor the assistance of foreigners, as he falsely flatters himself, shall deliver them. He will be spewed forth, not by the gate, but by the wall.” He suddenly sat bolt upright and his voice deepened. “For he shall be disgracefully dragged from his nest to punishment, and hung on a gallows in the face of the sun, unless he speedily amend his life, and flee to the mercy of God.” His voice subsided. “The man’s soul is dear to me, and I would not have it perish if I could save it.”

  “What of his companion, Maitland?” asked Morton.

  “He is a godless man, I daresay even an atheist. I can hold out no hope for him.” Knox slid back down in his bed, wheezing and choking.