The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots: A Novel

by Erickson, Carolly

  A silence fell, then my grandmother spoke again, in a far firmer tone.

  “Don’t imagine that Queen Elizabeth will just hand you her throne,” Antoinette went on, rising shakily from her knees and beginning to walk around the small room. “Don’t imagine that she is your friend. She is ruthless. Everyone knows it. She is even more ruthless than your mother-in-law Catherine, who I have never liked or trusted and who ordered the murder of so many innocent souls on that terrible St. Bartholomew’s Day.”

  My former mother-in-law had shocked all of Christendom the year before by ordering the slaughter of thousands of Protestants in Paris, a slaughter that continued for nearly a week and left untold numbers dead. The victims had been killed for no other reason than that they were Protestants, not Catholics; the queen feared that they meant to destroy the supremacy of the Catholic church in France.

  “Ever since the pope excommunicated Queen Elizabeth there has been war brewing between the Catholics and Protestants here in England,” my grandmother was saying. “You are the Catholics’ heroine. Secret Catholics, fearful of the Protestant queen and her Parliament, hang your picture in their homes, along with the crucifix. They hope that through you, the country can be brought back into the fold of the true church. But you know what will happen. There will be war, and more slaughter, and you and your son will be in danger—and Marie-Elizabeth too, if—God forbid—it becomes known that she is your daughter.

  “Do not risk it, petite reinette,” she pleaded, suddenly abandoning her calm tone and showing her emotions once again. “Come home to France, as you should have when Marie-Elizabeth was first born. Don’t make the same mistake as you did then! Come home to France, where you are loved, and forget all that has happened since you left. Let us all start afresh at Saint-Cheron. You have a husband and a daughter, and it may even happen, God willing, that one day your son will be reunited with you as well.

  “The path you are on cannot lead to anything but destruction. You cannot really expect to ever be queen in either England or Scotland. Your claims are just, but they can never be realized. The Scots despise you and even if Elizabeth dies, she will not leave her kingdom to you, but to your Protestant son—or someone else entirely.

  “I beg you, dearest Marie, listen to your wise old grandmamma and come to us in France!”

  You should have been a lawyer, I thought to myself. You are very persuasive—and I would like nothing better than to live with Jamie and Marie-Elizabeth and you in your rural paradise. But no matter what you or Michel de Notredame or anyone else may say, I know where my destiny lies, and it does not lie on an estate in Normandie. I am a queen, a queen of two realms, not a dairymaid or a farmer. I must seek my thrones. Once I reign, I will bring my family to court. All will be as it should be. I must be patient, and courageous, and in the end, I shall have it all.

  FORTY-FOUR

  My network of friends and supporters was broadening. Hour after hour I sat at my writing desk at Wingfield Manor, reading and answering letters and messages from the French ambassador and King Philip of Spain, my uncle the Duc de Guise and secretaries at the papal court in Rome. We corresponded in codes and ciphers, the messages concealed in a wide variety of receptacles, everything from herring-baskets and jars of candies to jeweled medallions with hollow centers and boxes of scented gloves. I bribed the rat catchers that came regularly to Wingfield Manor to conceal letters in their traps, which were fitted out with false bottoms under Jamie’s supervision. Some of my correspondents sent me books in which they had written extra words and sentences between the lines on certain pages, marked with green ribbons. Others wrote in tiny script on bolts of white taffeta brought to me by my dressmaker.

  In the months following my strange interview with my cousin the queen, the messages all tended to say the same thing: that the power of the true church, supported by the armed might of Spain and France, was growing in England and that it would not be long before my cousin was forced to give up her throne and I would reign in her stead.

  My hopes rose, especially when I learned that Pope Gregory XIII himself was a strong advocate of my royal rights, and that he had a plan to end my captivity and bring about a glorious future for me as his favored daughter. I rejoiced in the pope’s support and approval; unlike so many others in my past, he did not condemn me as a murderess, as both the Scots and the English did, or as a traitor, as Baron Burghley and many others in England did, or as a Jezebel with a wicked heart as John Knox did. Instead he lauded me as a faithful daughter of the church and the rightful queen of both Scotland and England.

  It was no wonder I began to look forward each day to receiving my secret mail, which I shared with Jamie when he was not out raiding Spanish treasure ships with Red Ormiston or smuggling goods from France.

  By favorable chance there were major changes under way at Wingfield Manor. George Talbot and his wife were quarreling more and more often, and Bess was gone for weeks at a time, supervising the building of her grand new mansion at Chatsworth. George moped and bellowed in rage; when upset with his wife he tended to gorge on sprats, and then became dyspeptic and had to stay in bed, sometimes for days on end.

  All the commotion and confusion benefited me, as the earl was less scrutinous than his wife, and I was given more latitude once again, as in the days before Baron Burghley made his first frightening appearance at the manor and constrained my liberties so severely.

  The baron continued to appear at infrequent intervals at Wingfield Manor, and sometimes even imprisoned and tortured my servants in an effort to force them to confess that I was guilty of treason. But I was fortunate; my servants were loyal, and no threats or pains could make them betray me. In time the baron came to realize that his efforts were in vain, and his visits ceased.

  Besides, as my correspondents told me, the baron was needed in London, for the royal court and council were said to be divided and the queen’s power was under threat. There were rumors of renewed discontent in the north country, discontent which was spreading and causing unrest in the midlands and south as well. England was once again in turmoil.

  I had learned, during the years of being Queen Elizabeth’s enforced guest, that when there was turmoil in the country, my warders tended to be lax.

  Jamie was away when the rat catchers brought word from the Spanish ambassador that Pope Gregory had a special plan for me, and would be sending his messenger to inform me of it. This happened in the year 1575, a year of unexpectedly mild weather which caused the villagers of Oakerthorpe to say that I was bringing good fortune once again, and that good crops were sure to follow, since I was helping to return England to the true faith. Most of the villagers were Catholic, though they dared not profess their faith openly; by law all subjects of Queen Elizabeth had to attend Protestant services. They welcomed the priests who were arriving from France and Rome and Ireland to work among them; they hid the fathers in their cellars, or in secret rooms of their houses with secret entrances. They waited for the day when England would be Catholic again, and I would be queen.

  “Beloved daughter of His Holiness,” the ambassador’s message to me read, “I greet you in the name of Him whose holy purposes we both serve. A courier will be sent to you. Be prepared to go with him.”

  I knew nothing more than these few cryptic words, but they were enough. They were more than enough. Suddenly I was all excitement. When would the courier come? Would he take me directly to London, and would I find a Spanish army there, doing battle with the forces of my cousin Elizabeth? Or perhaps two armies, one Spanish and one French?

  At last, I thought, I am to receive the treatment I am entitled to by birth. The great ones of Europe, who had neglected me for so long, are about to exalt me to my rightful place among them.

  I packed a small bag, taking only my rosary, my pistol, my prayerbook, my medallion of my mother and the small portrait of Marie-Elizabeth Jamie had given me, along with a few necessities. I would not be needing much, I told myself. Soon I would be living in a p
alace again, with my every want provided and my every need supplied.

  I hid the bag in the still room, beneath the bed where Jamie and I had spent our happiest hours. Then, telling no one but Margaret what my purpose was, I settled down to wait for word of my destiny.

  FORTY-FIVE

  The Spaniards came stealthily, in the longest watches of the night.

  I had been told to await a messenger, but it was not a sole messenger that stole into Wingfield Manor through a broken pane in the scullery on that dark night but several dozen. I did not wake but Margaret, who was always more alert to sounds than I, was awakened and came to tell me that there were strangers in our midst.

  Feeling certain it was the messenger I had been expecting, I dressed hurriedly and with Margaret’s help was soon ready. Meanwhile the visitors were rousing the household. I could hear the brawl starting in the guardroom where the soldiers slept and in no time at all, shouting and the slap of swords filled the manor. There was a knock at my bedchamber door and Margaret admitted two handsome, dark-haired gentlemen who made me the briefest of bows.

  “Come quickly, Your Highness,” one of them said in thickly accented French, using a term of address I had not heard in many years. “We must move you while we can.”

  They led me onto a balcony that overlooked the small kitchen garden. It was dark, far too dark to see the ground below me.

  “God help me!” I heard myself say as they secured a rope to one of the stone pillars. They meant to lower me to the ground, like a beast being lowered into the hold of a ship by a pulley. I was terrified.

  “You must be brave,” one of the men said. “A queen must be brave. Shut your eyes, and trust us.”

  I would not relive the next few moments for any amount of gold. I tried not to think. I closed my eyes and felt the rope being secured around my waist.

  Then I felt myself being lifted, gently, and then, suddenly, there was nothing solid under my feet. It was not a smooth descent. I swung helplessly from side to side, and with each downward tug of the rope I thought I would fall to my death. I tried repeating the words of the Lord’s Prayer but could not concentrate.

  After what seemed like an hour I felt hands clutching my feet, and I was helped to the ground. I opened my eyes then, and saw by torchlight several men who bowed to me and indicated that I should mount one of the waiting horses. I did not hesitate. I put myself into the hands of these strangers—these liberators—and rode off beside them into the night.

  I held tightly to the wooden railing as the Black Messenger crested the swells of the Sleeve, as the French call the English Channel, and did my best not to give in to the urges of my heaving stomach. Ships and I did not agree well; if I went below, into the tiny cabin I shared with Jamie, I was sick within minutes. Only by staying on deck, and holding onto the railing as if for dear life, was I able to keep my food down.

  It was not only seasickness that kept my stomach in turmoil, it was excitement. For Jamie had informed me that at Pope Gregory’s request I was being taken to Rome, to the Holy See, and this thought thrilled me. His Holiness the pope was honoring me with his favor, and upholding my royal rights. At last all that I had been fighting for was within my grasp. Day after day, as the ship made its way along the coastline of France, Portugal and Spain, as we passed through the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean, I kept this vision of papal support and protection before my eyes. By the time we reached the papal lands and the ship made its way up the River Tiber, I was convinced that my life had taken a new turning, and that nothing would ever be the same for me again.

  I had never seen anything as magnificent as the audience chamber of Pope Gregory at the Vatican in Rome, with its rose marble colonnades and high domed ceiling, its great wide vestibule with statues of ancient warriors and near-naked goddesses, its gilded doorways and bronze eagles (a reminder of Rome’s pre-Christian past) and, in the center, the raised, high-backed thronelike chair in which the lean, lively Gregory himself sat, engaged in conversation with the men around him.

  Everything in the Vatican, it seemed, smelled strongly of stale incense, though the environment was certainly not one of worship. This grand room was far from being a place of quiet sanctuary, where worshippers were invited to pray; on the contrary, it was a place of worldly affairs and material concerns. Of money and power—and those who controlled both.

  For the great audience chamber was full of people: cardinals and bishops, moneylenders with their books of account, officials of the papal treasury and chancery, ambassadors and emissaries from abroad, workmen making repairs and cleaning women scouring the floors and sweeping. Supplicants, favor-seekers, embattled enemies shaking their fists at one another and shouting—all created a din louder than that of any open-air marketplace.

  The noise was almost deafening, like the buzzing of hundreds of bee hives, filled with angry bees. When I entered the great room, surrounded by my escort of Spanish soldiers, and with Jamie at my side, the din did not subside, but the crowd did part to let me walk through to the Holy Father’s high thronelike chair.

  He rose at my approach, and stepped down from the raised chair onto the marble floor so that we were on the same level (though as usual, with most men I stood near, I was quite a bit taller).

  “Daughter,” he said, holding out his arms in welcome. I gladly walked into his embrace, then kissed his ring. His hands, I noticed, were like a woman’s hands, soft, the nails carefully manicured.

  Leaving the great audience chamber he led me and those with me into a much smaller, darker and cooler chamber where we sat on cushioned benches and were served delicious sherbet and fresh pears.

  “These are from my own garden,” the Holy Father told me, indicating a verdant courtyard visible through an archway. “I like to pick them myself, early in the morning, before the world descends on me.” He laughed. “It really does feel that way sometimes.”

  “Your Holiness—” I began, “I cannot thank you enough for my—liberation. It has been so long since I was a free woman—”

  “And high time. You should have been freed years ago. That ill-born wretch that calls herself Queen of England should have been thrown down and trampled underfoot for the bastard that she is. And you, beloved daughter, must take your rightful place upon her throne.”

  “The powers of Catholic Europe have been slow to support Queen Mary’s rights with anything stronger than words,” Jamie said boldly from where he stood, behind me and off to the side.

  The pope looked at Jamie, taking in his truculent statement and his even more truculent stance, feet planted apart, one hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “My lord Bothwell, is it not? You are welcome here at the font of all Christendom, even though I am told you are a heretic.”

  “I follow the true religion—”

  Fearing an argument, or worse, I reached out to put a restraining hand on Jamie’s arm.

  “As do I,” said the pope, smiling. “We will leave it at that, since I see you enjoy the favor of Her Highness the Queen. As to the support the Holy See offers Queen Mary, more will be revealed tonight, at the banquet Cardinal Colonna is giving in her honor.”

  “What news from England, Your Holiness?” I asked.

  “The bastard Elizabeth has put your former jailers in the Tower, and no one knows of your escape except the members of your household and hers. It is better so. While we marshall our forces for our assault, the bastard Elizabeth is saying that you have been arrested and are being held in a secret prison. We could not have wished for a more favorable situation. Except for a very few, the English do not know of your escape.”

  All the lords of Rome, it seemed, both spiritual and temporal, were gathering in the Colonna palace to honor me. I lacked a gown suitable for a banquet but the cardinal’s sister Olivia, a warm, matronly woman whose French was heavily spiced with Italian, offered to provide what I needed.

  From her many trunks and baskets of gowns she produced three suitable for me to wear—on
e in a glowing midnight blue, one in peach satin and one (the one I chose) in a fragile shade of parchment with delicate lace around the bodice and sleeves. While her dressmakers made the necessary alterations she brought out a variety of headdresses for me to try, and ropes of pearls to adorn my neck and ears.

  It had been a very long time since I was dressed as a queen—or even as a fine lady. I sat before a tall pier glass as Olivia Colonna supervised the combing out and dressing of my long red-gold hair, the anointing of my cheeks and forehead and neck with oil of lavender, the rouging of my lips and the blanching of my skin. My eyes were brightened with herbal drops, my teeth scrubbed with twigs and my bitten nails covered with thin, soft gloves.

  I marveled at the change in my appearance. I looked ten years younger—or at least five, if I am truthful. It was as if the worries and hardships of the past had fallen away, or been covered over with a soft flattering veil that masked the deepening lines and shadows of my face. Instead of an anxious prisoner I had become, in the space of an hour or two, a lovely woman, a woman no longer young but beautiful with the ripeness of her years, her beauty faintly tinged with the melancholy of worldly experience. I looked at myself in the mirror, and smiled.

  I can still enchant, I thought. My charms have not deserted me. And with that smile lingering on my lips I accompanied Olivia Colonna into the great hall of the Colonna palace, where the lords of Rome awaited me.

  FORTY-SIX

  Lively music beckoned from the great hall of the Colonna palace, and even before I entered I could smell the delicious scent of the garlands entwined along the staircases and the bowls overflowing with red roses on every table. Frescoes in vivid hues of russet and cobalt, aquamarine and yellow ochre shone from every wall—masterworks, as I supposed—and caged birds sang in tuneful melody from windows and alcoves and niches in the graceful pillars that rose to the high painted ceiling.