The Queen's Mary: In the Shadows of Power...

by Sarah Gristwood

  When at last Beaton began to talk, it was as if she couldn’t stop. Seton thought she’d never heard her say so many words together. And then she thought that perhaps it was only here, away from the royal presence, that they could speak clear – could finish their thoughts freely. At court, with eager ears always around, they all spoke a language so guarded and clipped it might have been the code of a spy.

  The clear pale light was changing now, and the peasant girls were packing their baskets with seaweed, preparing to go away home to their supper. Across the Firth, the hills were darkening blue, and closer at hand, the salt marsh of the neighbouring bay was the mauve of lavender. In the west, the sky was streaking raspberry and as they turned back towards the great house they both paused to gaze.

  Beaton had been speaking, Seton thought, as if the trouble was in the past. She sounded like the queen, when she rose from her sickbed after one of those spells when even the light in her eyes makes her cry, convinced that this time, the pain had gone for ever and a day.

  But the pain always comes back, and Seton doubted Beaton’s glimpse into the abyss could ever really go away.

  As they started up the path from the shore to the palace, Seton could see her brother and a party of friends riding across the skyline. They’d been out hawking, but now the birds were called in for the day. Just one solitary adventurer was still coasting the air above, while his handler below called anxiously.

  Underneath it all – underneath the plans and the passions, at a level below loyalty, or jealousy – perhaps all Beaton and she wanted was to fly free.

  But however high the hawks might soar, they’d be down for the night, even the rebellious latecomer. Fed and cared for, but hooded and blinded – no, the hawks weren’t free.

  Neither, of course, were they.

  *

  There was one subject of which they never spoke, and that was the Queen’s Majesty. True to her promise, she had ridden out to Seton several times during those first weeks, and sat quietly by Beaton’s bed.

  Seton and her family were pleased, were grateful – Seton hoped Beaton was too. But at the same time, it was as if a fissure in the world had opened with Chastelard’s death. Seton had known it before that walk down to the shore – but now it was widening slowly.

  She’d never, you might say, really looked at Queen Mary in her mind. Not as if she were just another woman. They none of them did, if they were prudent – it was the best way to get through their duty easily. She is the main fact of our lives, Seton thought, as immovable as Arthur’s Seat and as impossible to alter as the weather. But now… like Beaton, Seton found she couldn’t control her thoughts too easily.

  That crack in the world, said Seton to Beaton – that membrane over the void, that no one else can see? Sometimes I think I see it too. But she said that only in her head, and silently.

  Seton didn’t blame the queen, exactly, that she’d signed the warrant, or that hers was the name the executioner called out aloud as he lifted the axe. If Queen Mary had pardoned Chastelard because she liked him, passed over the needs of the country, then Seton’s instinct would have been to condemn. But surely, after all, she could have stopped this from happening, she could have found some way? That it would never have come to pass if only she had been the kind of queen she was meant to be.

  And below all that, Seton realised, the feeling was growing in her – there was something about her Majesty.

  The crawling conviction came from far under her skin – that, for those around her, the Queen of Scots was not lucky.

  She couldn’t speak of this to anybody. Not to George, of course – he’d never have understood. Not to Beaton – those wounds were too raw. Though to explain it to Beaton, in any case, might well be unnecessary.

  When the queen visited, and held Beaton’s hand, Beaton had taken the attention passively. Managed to murmur a word of thanks – as she should do, naturally.

  But once the queen left, Seton heard Beaton rouse herself, unusually, to ask the maid for water. When Seton went into the room she’d been rubbing that hand with the wet cloth, as though she’d like to wash the skin away.

  *

  It was Beaton, the day after they’d been to the shore, who suggested the two of them should ride out to visit Bridie. Seton’s old nurse had been retired to a cottage on the family estate, and Seton was surprised Beaton remembered the old woman. But it was one of those days when winter seems at last to have been chased away, and she was ready enough to agree.

  The sodden ground squelched under the horses’ hooves, but there were creamy curdles of primroses on the banks, and already the faintest haze of bluebells in the woods. Bridie’s cottage was retired enough, but the readiness with which a village girl let them in said that she had plenty of visitors, and looking around her cottage it wasn’t hard to guess why.

  She’d always been well versed in the use of herbs, as any nurse has to be, and sure enough there were great bunches hanging from the roof. Their scent was something Seton remembered from her childhood – that, and the tiny carved figures Bridie let her hold, for a treat, remnants of the nurse’s own distant childhood, before the sailor husband came to her isles and swept her away.

  But there were other clues to tell anyone that she had become the village wise woman. The local… Seton’s mind just touched on the word ‘witch’, and scuttered hastily away.

  There were many in Scotland who tried to channel the old forces, whatever the new laws might say. Seton wondered who came to visit Bridie, and why, and made sure not to look at a cage in the corner where something scrabbled nervously.

  As children, the four Marys had listened avidly to Bridie’s stories. Oh, she didn’t exactly hand out instructions. The dreadful recipes – graveyard soil, and live toads – were not (she said) for ladies. They were for the cottages, where fashionable women only went when they had trouble too private to take to an apothecary.

  Beaton and Seton sipped the milk posset Bridie made for them, and Beaton even laughed a little as they teased her about the old days. But there’d always been something more than a joke that lay behind Bridie’s stories.

  You’d have to be dead to your nerves’ ends not to feel some echo when she used to talk about the magic of sympathy. How stabbing a man’s footprint could send pain knifing into his vitals, how a wax doll could be made, and named, and its entrails melted away. How an image could be made, or sewn, and then destroyed in some way. Thread drawn over its eyes, so the one depicted would never see clearly. Threads bound over a female figure’s womb, to keep her writhing in childbirth fruitlessly.

  Seton found herself making an effort not to look at the low table that held a heap of Bridie’s stitchery.

  Best if something from the hated one could be built into the figure, but even the image was not always necessary, Bridie had said. Sometimes just the naming, and the hating, would do. As they got up to leave at last, Bridie kissed them both, and Seton, her nursling, the more warmly. But it was at Beaton that she looked when she said: ‘You’ll always know where I am. Or you can send your girl Morag to find me.’

  They rode back side by side, and silently. Seton was always aware, with Beaton, of currents moving below the surface, like eddies around the rocks at the bottom of a dark mountain stream.

  How did Bridie know of Morag? Sharply, Seton was aware how little she really understood Beaton, for all she had always assumed they had more in common than many of the others. Two women who wanted to make a difference in the world…

  But at this moment, as they pressed the horses homewards, Seton found herself pressing her heels into the smooth brown flanks, almost as if she were trying to get away.

  PART III

  Spring 1565 – March 1566

  Thirteen

  ‘She has to marry.’ Fleming looked over her shoulder as she spoke, quietly. Seton was silent – but then, there wasn’t much to say. It wasn’t as if any of them were going to disagree. It had been four years since they had arrived in Scotland a
nd the idea had become commonplace.

  For a second, the three Marys all thought of Livy – married, herself, a fortnight now and still with her new husband in Falkirk.

  ‘A younger son,’ said Beaton dismissively.

  ‘Marriage for love,’ said Fleming, meaningfully. She too was talking of Livy, of course – but no one could keep minds or eyes off that other pair, dancing just a room’s length away.

  At any other time, the queen’s three remaining Marys, huddled together like this in so public a place, might well have drawn attention – rumours, even of conspiracy. They had all grown accustomed, these last few years, to that sort of second-hand celebrity. But now all eyes were fixed on her Majesty as she swung, laughing, back into the dance with Lord Darnley.

  ‘He’s tall like her, anyway,’ said Beaton inconsequentially.

  *

  It was three weeks ago now – before Livy’s wedding – that the court had staggered, grumbling, towards the icy winter sea shore. Hardly even a pretence that this was some sort of progress, or a sporting holiday – what, to play golf on the sands at Wemyss in February? Where the winds were so high they hung ropes of stones over the crofters’ thatch to stop it being blown away?

  No, they were there to meet the man Queen Mary might marry.

  Since she had, all Europe agreed, to marry somebody.

  I say a man, Seton thought, but Darnley is more like a boy; not that we realised that immediately. Tall and blond and oh, he was courtly. She hadn’t realised they’d been missing French manners so badly. As he knelt before the queen, and made his reverences, he made Lord Moray look like a sulky schoolmaster – and even Maitland look shopworn.

  He had gifts all round – though his father would have bought them, probably. Lord Lennox would never have neglected so basic a precaution as sweetening the ladies who had the queen’s private ear, who’d gossip with her about Lord Darnley at the end of the day.

  But no matter who coached him, there is something about a handsome young man who seems to love the ladies. Seton’s head told her sense, but just for a moment, as he turned away, she envied her Majesty.

  And – always back to it – she did have to marry somebody. Otherwise, what had been the point of the last four years’ diplomacy? It wasn’t as though they hadn’t been through every other possibility.

  *

  It had been more than a year ago that Randolph, the English ambassador, had knelt to Queen Mary and said that her cousin Queen Elizabeth indeed agreed that the Scots Queen should marry. Not that Elizabeth herself shows any sign of it, but her path cannot be for everybody.

  So Seton wondered why Randolph was sweating so heavily – until he named the husband Queen Elizabeth proposed…

  Robert Dudley?

  Who was Elizabeth’s own favourite – her lover, everyone said. Who probably murdered his own wife to get Elizabeth into his bed. Whose father and grandfather had died on the block, who had the blood of merchants in his veins. Who had started out as Elizabeth’s horse master. She’d made him an earl now, of course, but really…

  There had always been that strange idea that if only Mary or Elizabeth were a man, then they themselves could marry. But this was absurd. No one, least of all the queen, even pretended to take it seriously. They said Elizabeth had even tickled his neck as she created him earl. At the very ceremony.

  *

  Moray and Maitland tried to suppress the stories, frantic lest they should take Queen Mary’s chances of the English succession yet one step further away. With an Englishman on the Scottish consort’s throne, the borders would be secured for eternity.

  But, Dudley?

  Of course, they say that Robert Dudley is courtly too. Or at least, with qualities to make a woman forget – or forgive – any crudity.

  They’d had high hopes of Don Carlos of Spain, but he proved mad, as all Europe knew. So between the madman and the bad man, there comes Lord Darnley, with his own claim to the English throne, and the same grandmother as Queen Mary. His family is Catholic, but he’ll bend to any wind – went to John Knox’s sermon just today.

  And if it punishes Elizabeth for the Dudley proposal, then that’s an extra point in his favour, maybe.

  *

  Other things had happened in the last year. The country was still much where it was. But I’m not sure if we ourselves are, thought Seton, warily.

  It was as if the steps of the dance had moved them on again, flinging her away from Beaton. As if, those days at Seton, they had both seen too much or shown too much, and now scuttered, scared, away. George, too, she somehow saw less of, she thought sadly.

  But the same dance had brought her closer to Fleming – a Fleming who Seton no longer saw as looking anything like the Queen’s Majesty. With Fleming came Maitland; they too were an old story now, for all there was no sign they’d ever be allowed to marry. Seton supposed she should be jealous; but somehow it didn’t seem to work that way.

  She and Fleming had both grown used to seeing themselves – papers in hand instead of hair powder or pins – peering down, intent, like two apprentice secretaries, while quietly Maitland opened up for them his view of Scottish policy.

  Until there came the joker in the pack that was Lord Darnley.

  *

  The day before, the queen had called for dancing again, to keep the blood flowing while no one could get out, this snowy weather when no one so much as walked from the palace to the city.

  Seton was just tired with the being cooped up, maybe. But she’d seen Darnley’s face sideways, just down the set, and it wasn’t quite the way he was looking at her Majesty – everyone looked at the queen to see what they can get back from her, whether it were just smiles, or promises, or money.

  It was more – he was looking at her, yes, but as if he couldn’t see. Not the queen, not the beautiful young woman, not Mary. There was a kind of smiling blankness as if all those bright questing eyes ever saw was the vision of he, himself. Lord Darnley.

  *

  There was something about those weeks. It had been hard to think clearly. The snow came down more heavily than any winter since any of them were born, and the paths were still closed in the Borders, they said. Well, Seton’s brother George said so, when he struggled in from Seton one milder day.

  He came in from the courtyard with the snow melting on his furs and it was as if someone had opened a window and let the chill fresh air in, suddenly. He looked around the hall at the huge banked fire, and the queen flushed with the flames and the dancing.

  ‘Well, you all look as snug as babes in a crib,’ he said. It sounded false, he was so hearty, but that was what they had been, cocooned by the snow.

  They were gracious to each other, George and Lord Darnley. But it was – yes – just after that Seton felt that frisson of doubt.

  Not that her brother spoke badly of the match – quite the contrary.

  ‘It’s well enough to do, Mary,’ he said later privately. ‘The truth, faith, and the old nobility. He’s likely enough to father us a son, and at any rate it’s better than Robert Dudley. If he’d won the prize, there’d have been no holding Maitland and Moray.

  ‘No, this lad should do his duty in the bedroom, and elsewhere he’ll not trouble us too badly.’ He spoke of Darnley’s duty, not of Seton’s own, but then he didn’t have to, really. Foster the match in any way you may. It went without saying.

  In truth there was little Seton needed to do. Just one night, when the queen had them put her into the great bed early. Then she patted the quilt for the three remaining Marys to settle round. It was always a squash, and it was no real honour – she might have done the same for her spaniels – but it did feel cosy.

  They wound up talking of the days in France and it was Beaton, oddly, who recalled a promise they had made one day. It had been in the orchard, at Chenonceaux, in May, when the air was just growing hot and heavy. The four of them were fresh brought from the convent to join the queen and their lives had opened up before them, suddenly.


  They must have been talking of love and weddings, and what they’d wear and it had been – yes – Beaton who led the other three to promise they wouldn’t marry before Queen Mary.

  It was the kind of thing young girls do, feelings overflowing like wine from a cup, and nowhere for them to go. But it was silly, very silly. As ladies of the queen’s court, the Marys needed her permission to marry, anyway – and they’d already have been planning the queen’s wedding to the dauphin.

  It was something to remember, and to laugh about, as they all grew drowsy on the thick Scottish quilts. But as Seton’s arm grew pins and needles under her, a tiny movement of the queen’s hand stopped any more talk of marriage.

  *

  You pray for something to happen, and it does, thought Seton crossly. You long for the roads to be cleared, and a messenger to get through, and he arrives, and then you’re sorry. You start to feel like a baby that’s been kept too long in swaddling bands, and then you find yourself out on your own feet on the highway, and great people and horses are thundering by and all you want is to be back in the nursery…

  She and Beaton had been on duty with the queen that day when Randolph came to kneel before her, with the air of a man who hopes for the best but doesn’t think it likely. Little Davy Rizzio had been at his heels – a terrier snapping after a baited badger, his dark face alight with curiosity.

  Just a few months before – weeks, really – Davy had been just an Italian gadfly about the court. A skilful musician, but the kind of person Randolph met in corners, to exchange a little information for a little money. But now the English ambassador might well be seen alongside the queen’s new private secretary, Secretary Rizzio.

  Then Seton stopped thinking about Rizzio. Beaton’s eyes were fixed on Randolph with a painful anxiety. She was vibrating to his fear, almost oblivious of her Majesty.

  They all knew what the message was about, if not exactly what it would say. After all these long years of positioning and worrying, Queen Mary had demanded from Elizabeth an answer to the question of the English throne. Would Elizabeth agree to name Mary her successor? Would she dare say, yes, but only if Mary married Robert Dudley?