The Wild Queen

by Carolyn Meyer

  “Not many attended, my lady queen,” Maud told me. “Those that did had to listen to John Knox preach the sermon that went on until your wee bairn screamed so loud it shut the preacher up and he could not go on.”

  “Knox!” I cried. “So he is back in Edinburgh?”

  “Aye, madam, and speaking out most vigorously against you and your husband,” reported Maggie, always more inclined to tell me the truth than was her sister, Maud.

  “Wheesht!” cried Maud, trying to silence Maggie, who enjoyed her role as bearer of ill tidings.

  But Maggie would not be silenced. “Called you 'that whore of Babylon,’ ” she reported smugly. “Said you was a scarlet adventuress and ought to be hanged for murdering the king.”

  Then Maud could not resist adding, “The preacher said God will send a great plague to Scotland, worse than locusts, worse than fire, if you’re not punished.”

  “And do the people believe him?” I asked.

  “Aye, they do, madam. They do.”

  I wondered if my maids believed him too, but I feared asking, lest they tell me the truth.

  ***

  In mid-August my brother, having returned from France, came to see me. I had expected the visit for some time, half dreading it, half desiring it. We did not embrace. I did not offer him my hand.

  “A fine mess you are in, dear sister!” Lord Moray said coldly. “Were you not warned about where a marriage to a man like Lord Bothwell would lead you—or do we call him Lord Orkney now? It seems you have reaped what you sowed!”

  “Surely I do not deserve all of this!” I cried. I was eager to tell him how I had been misused by the rebel lords but found him unsympathetic and began to wish that he would leave, for he was no solace to me at all.

  Then he softened his tone and begged me to promise I would not try to escape or ask for help from my Guise relatives or from Queen Elizabeth. When I balked at making such promises, he hardened against me again, and so it went for the rest of his visit—back and forth, back and forth. At times he comforted me, and at other times he threatened, gradually wearing me down, and when he promised he would do what he could to help me, I was persuaded that it was perhaps best for him to assume the regency for the infant king of Scotland.

  My brother and I did embrace when he left, and a few days later Maggie and Maud reported that he had been proclaimed regent to act for little James until he came of age.

  Too late, I realized that I had been duped. My brother had no intention of helping me. He had the power he wanted and believed by rights was his.

  In early autumn, as cruel winds howled around Lochleven and cold rains lashed the windows of my prison, I made a vow that I would reclaim my throne and restore my honor no matter what it took, or how long. I had not yet given up hope that my husband would somehow find a way to rescue me, though garbled rumors had reached me that he had made an escape by ship with the lords in pursuit, had been arrested on his way to France to secure help for me, and was now imprisoned in Norway on charges of piracy. I wondered if I would ever see him again, but I clung to the slender thread that he would keep his promise to me.

  ***

  I found ways to improve my spirits. Though I had lost the twins who were to have worn the tiny garments I was sewing, I finished a set and gave it to one of the ladies of the castle. I persuaded Lord Douglas to allow me to have my own cook as well as several other domestic servants, including one who was French and enjoyed speaking with me.

  Seton was permitted to come to stay with me. We often walked together in the garden when the weather was fit, and since fine weather was a rarity on the loch, we walked there even when it was foul. On long winter evenings we read to each other and played cards by a small peat fire. We never tired of each other’s company.

  On the eighth of December I observed my twenty-fifth birthday. I asked for and received a lute and invited some of the servants and residents of gloomy Lochleven Castle to my chambers in the tower for music. We even danced! At Christmas I joined the Douglas family at a Yuletide feast. There I found the companionship of Lord Douglas’s handsome and charming younger brother, George, who was fondly called Pretty Geordie by his family. We talked together several times, and I began to see that Geordie might very well be my way out of Lochleven.

  During the long, harsh winter I cultivated the friendship, and then the love, of Geordie. He was younger than I—just twenty—and obviously smitten. We began to meet secretly, and though he pledged his love to me I cautioned him that there was really nothing he could gain from this.

  “I am a married woman,” I reminded him, though I was under continual pressure to divorce Lord Orkney. “And I am a queen. I can offer you nothing but my heartfelt thanks and sisterly affection for the help you give me.”

  “Then that shall be enough for me,” he said, his wide young eyes shining with adoration.

  ***

  Geordie arranged for a boat to take a certain “laundress” from the castle to the village on the mainland shore. He helped me with the disguise, wrapping a muffler around my face and lacing heavy boots on my feet. On a blustery morning in March, after an imprisonment of more than nine months and carrying a basket heaped with linens from my own bed, I made my way to the jetty where the boat was moored and scrambled awkwardly aboard. I had never done anything like this in my life, accustomed as I was to being assisted whether I needed it or not. I nodded to the boatman, who untied the boat and began to row while keeping up a steady stream of conversation. I replied with nods and murmurs.

  We were halfway across the loch, the wind kicking up little whitecaps, when suddenly the boatman stopped rowing and stared at me. I, in turn, stared at my boots and prayed that he had not recognized me. But he lunged at me, trying to pluck off my muffler. My hands flew up to stop him, and he began to laugh.

  “The hands of a lady!” he cried. “I’ll say it plainly: the fair white hands of a queen! ’Tis true, isn’t it?”

  “Aye,” I said, “it is true, indeed, but I beg you to keep rowing to the shore, and I will pay you all I have.”

  He paused, considering my offer. “ ’Tis not that I lack sympathy for you, madam, but ’twould sure be the end of me if Sir William found out I had helped his best and most famous prisoner escape.”

  “Then do with me as you will,” I said, thoroughly dispirited. “Though it may mean my death.”

  “Nay, my lady, I won’t let that happen. I will take you back, and you must slip into the castle the same way you came out, and none will be the wiser.”

  That was the end of that, though I fretted that the boatman would not keep his word. My lovelorn friend Geordie despaired at least as much as did I that our plan had failed.

  “We shall try again,” he said firmly. “But the next time we will plan more carefully, and I promise you that we shall succeed.”

  ***

  Several weeks later I made a second escape attempt. This time Geordie enlisted the help of Willie Douglas, a young page, not yet sixteen, and rumored to be Sir William’s illegitimate son, though he was officially described as an orphan. Little Willie, as he was called, would row me in a boat to the village on the mainland shore, where Geordie would meet us and lead us to the town of Kinross. Lord Seton, Mary’s brother, would be waiting at Kinross with a small group of armed men.

  There were many pieces to this plan that had to fit together perfectly if it was to succeed. The first challenge was to escape the constant companionship of the laird’s wife, who was expecting a child but who often—too often, in fact—liked to sleep in my bedchamber; his mother, old Lady Douglas, who talked ceaselessly; and his young daughter, Fiona, and her cousin Kirsten, who followed me around worshipfully, begging me to tell them stories about my life in France. Somehow I was going to have to elude this gaggle of chattering females.

  The laird’s wife unwittingly cooperated by giving birth late in April, an event that served to distract the others for several days. Therefore, on a rare sunny Sunday afternoon, the second
of May, while most members of the laird’s family were enjoying themselves at May Day celebrations on the eastern end of the island, Little Willie stowed some clothing and other items in one of the boats tied up at the jetty near the castle’s main gate, which faced west. He took this opportunity to allow all the other boats to fill partway with water—not enough to sink them but enough so that bailing would be necessary. He still needed to get the key to unlock the main gate.

  Later, the family went in to supper, inviting me to join them. I declined, pleading a headache. Seton and I exchanged our clothes; I put on her red kirtle, she took my blue one, and I covered myself with her long mantle, pulling the hood up over my hair.

  “You must not worry about me, dear Mary,” Seton counseled. “If an alarm is raised and they come looking for you, I will be sitting in your chair and stitching on your embroidery, and that will gain you a little time. And I shall not worry about you, for I know that my brother will keep you safe.”

  I waited by the window of my tower chamber, watching for Willie’s signal. When it came—he pulled a red kerchief from a pocket—I kissed Seton and crept down the winding stair to the courtyard. Servants were bustling about, but none paid me the slightest attention. I was not concerned about them; it was Fiona and Kirsten who worried me. And indeed, there they were. I held my breath, but they mistook me for Mary Seton; I was holding a prayer book, and they passed by without interrupting my devotions.

  I continued to murmur prayers until I joined Willie near the main gate.

  “I have it,” he said, grinning and brandishing a big iron key. “Sir William always hangs it on a hook near the door.”

  The lock resisted at first. Willie cursed softly My nerves, already stretched taut, grew even tighter. At last the lock yielded, and Willie pushed open the heavy gate just enough for us to slip through and then closed and locked it again. He tossed the key into the mouth of a squat black cannon as we ran past. “That should slow them down for a while,” he said.

  We hurried out onto the jetty, and Willie pointed out the half-submerged boats. We jumped into the only dry one and cast off the ropes, and he began to row as hard as he could across the loch. It was about a mile to Kinross. I marked the point at which the boatman had seen through my disguise as a laundress.

  “Do you think Sir William has discovered our absence by now?” I asked Willie.

  “Not yet,” he said. “They are entertaining guests from the other islands, and there is plenty of wine.” Then he added, “And when they do, they will discover that all the boats are filled with water.”

  “The guests’ boats as well?”

  “Of course!” he said, pleased with himself.

  Geordie, the laird’s brother, was holding several fine horses, saddled and ready, as we came ashore. “From the laird’s stables,” he explained. “He keeps them here on the mainland, rather than ferry them back and forth to the island. Fortunate for us.”

  “He will be beside himself when he learns what has happened!” I exclaimed. “His prisoner gone and his horses too!”

  “Aye, he will,” Geordie agreed dryly.

  I mounted the gelding Geordie recommended. “Willie, will you go back now to Lochleven? How will you explain what has happened?”

  He shook his head. “Nay, my queen. I’ll not go back. I have pledged myself to serve you.”

  “As have I,” added Geordie.

  I began to make a little speech of gratitude, thanking them both for their support, but Geordie was eager to be off. “You may thank us later, madam. Now we must find Lord Seton and his horsemen and put as many miles as possible between us and Sir William.”

  And off we rode. For the first time in nearly a year, I was free!

  Chapter 49

  Freedom

  WE RODE HARD through the soft spring evening, heading directly south from the loch. I was jubilant. My strength had returned, as had my confidence. I was at liberty. How glorious! A pale light still remained in the sky as we made for the ferry where the Firth of Forth narrowed and found boatmen willing to take us across.

  When my companions met again on the south shore, we speculated on what might be happening back at Lochleven Castle.

  “Sir William is in a fury,” said Geordie. “He has found himself locked in from the outside. His key is gone. He cannot remember where he keeps the duplicate. He calls everyone to look for it.”

  Willie continued, “His face is red with rage. He sends servants clambering over the wall. They report that the boats are all filled with water and must be bailed. He searches for Geordie and me, first one, then the other. He cannot find either.”

  “Suddenly he remembers his royal prisoner,” I added, laughing. “She is gone!”

  I had not laughed so heartily in a very long time, but beneath the laughter I was uneasy. What no one said was that Sir William had certainly reached the mainland by now. He would have found his stables raided and sounded the alarm. We were surely being hunted. What was more, he would have sent word to my brother Lord Moray, now in Glasgow. We could not afford to stop or even slow down.

  Lord Seton rode in the lead, taking us to Niddry Castle, another of the fortresses that belonged to his family. “Accommodations will be simple,” he warned me. “Nothing luxurious has been prepared for us, for I did not want rumors to get out concerning our royal guest.”

  “Does your sister know your plan?” I asked, suddenly fearful that the laird in his rage might pry the information out of Mary Seton, my stand-in for the past several hours.

  “She would not think of Niddry. It has never been her favorite place. Too bleak, she claims.”

  “Bleaker than Lochleven?”

  Geordie and Willie laughed. “There is naught bleaker than Lochleven!”

  We reached Niddry around midnight. It was as Lord Seton described: starkly simple. Waiting for me were two loyal men. One was my husband’s cousin Sir Alexander Hepburn, whom I dispatched to secure Dunbar Castle for me. He agreed to leave at once and ride through the night. The other was Sir James Hamilton.

  After a few hours of sleep—I slept more soundly than I had in some time—we were ready to move on to Craigne-than Castle, belonging to Hamilton. Within a day or two I had established a small court at the laird’s castle. This gave me a base to rally support and make necessary decisions. I did not want to go into battle again—I had had quite enough of that at Carberry Hill, where our army had been so badly outnumbered.

  “It may be your only opportunity to seize the throne that is rightfully yours,” Geordie reminded me. He had no love for his half brother Lord Moray—who of course was my half brother as well. I had come to loathe Moray as much as I loathed anyone, understanding finally that any kindness he had ever shown me had been with an eye toward one goal: to rule Scotland as its king.

  “You must fight,” insisted Lord Seton and Geordie, as well as the others.

  In the end I agreed, as it became clearer each day that I was still much loved by the Scots who lived here in the countryside, far from Edinburgh. Many of the lords who had at first joined the rebels were now deserting their ranks and coming to side with me. I knew that I had superior numbers. My troops would triumph, my army would win the day, and my brother would be vanquished once and for all. I would put him on trial for treason, as he deserved. I would not forgive him for the way he had treated me. Our numbers continued to swell.

  On Thursday, the thirteenth of May, I knelt and prayed with my troops and then mounted one of Sir William’s finest chargers. I planned to ride at the head of my newly formed army toward Dumbarton, the huge and nearly impregnable fortress from which I had sailed for France twenty years earlier. At Dumbarton, to the northwest on the far side of Glasgow, I would be able to unite my allies to fight against Lord Moray’s rebel troops.

  Though I felt sure my troops would carry the day, my heart was pounding as the battle began. Alas, from the very beginning, it went badly! The lord set to lead the main army failed completely in his command, and in les
s than an hour more than a hundred of my men lay dead, and three hundred more were taken prisoner—including my dear friend Lord Seton, who had been dangerously wounded. Lord Moray had won. I tasted again the bitterness of defeat.

  “Flee,” urged Geordie. “You must, madam. Flee for your very life.”

  Young Willie stood with me, tears in his eyes. “Aye, my lady queen. I will go with you and share whatever fate befalls you.”

  I nodded. “To my stronghold at Dumbarton.”

  Geordie stopped his anxious pacing and stepped forward. “Too dangerous, madam. You will be cut off. You must flee southward.”

  I considered. I could not abide the thought of being seized by Lord Moray and imprisoned again after less than a fortnight of freedom. Dumbarton was too far, and too big a risk. Grimly, I agreed. “Southward, then.”

  Lord Herries, one of the most loyal of Catholics from the wild western part of Scotland, came to my assistance and offered himself as our guide through this rough and unforgiving country. We set out, winding around and sometimes doubling back to avoid being in the neighborhood of those who would be allied with my enemies. Search parties had been sent out in all directions with the intent of capturing me. We paused long enough to destroy an ancient wooden bridge to further impede those who might be following close behind.

  The weather turned hot and then cold, and we were so hungry and thirsty I did not see how we could keep going. But we did—more than ninety miles without knowing exactly where I was headed, or where I would end. I slept for a time on the hard, rocky ground of a poor-looking farm, shivering with cold, though young Willie gave me his jerkin for a pillow and Geordie covered me with his doublet.

  When I awoke, an old crone brought out a basin of oatmeal and a spoon and offered it to me, along with a pitcher of soured milk. That was my supper, and I was glad to have it and thanked her for it. She smiled broadly—she was missing several teeth—and replied in the Gaelic language that I could scarcely understand, though I thought she addressed me as “my sovereign queen.”