The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots: A Novel

by Erickson, Carolly

  “There is a little farm in France, I am told. A charming place, tucked away where no one would be likely to find it. No one but the baron’s men, who are there even now, waiting for a message from me. I wonder what message I ought to send them?”

  It was too much for me. Trembling, I wept—and at the sound of my weeping, Bess joined me.

  “Come now, ladies. Where is your courage? If I did not weep when my mother was taken from me, and shown no mercy, and killed by my father—if I did not weep when I was raped by the man I loved and trusted most, the tall, handsome Thomas Seymour—if I did not give in to tears when my bloody sister threw me in the Tower—why then, surely you can show some restraint now.”

  Somehow I found my voice.

  “Do not make us pay for the wrongs you have suffered.”

  “Bravely said. But now, revenons à nos moutons, as the French expression goes. There is, as I was saying, a little farm in France, where a child lives, a child who bears my name along with her mother’s. I was not asked to be the godmother of this child when she was born—indeed I did not know of her existence until quite recently. But now that I do know, I must decide what should be done with her.”

  With every word out of the queen’s mouth I felt my dread rise. It was hard for me to breathe. I prayed silently, frantically, desperate for help.

  “It would be easy to remove her; no one knows who she is, or where she is. You and your clever grandmother have kept her a great secret. But you ought to know by now, nothing can be kept secret from me, not for long.”

  “Except one thing,” I whispered. “The secret of happiness.”

  “What was that?” Her voice sharpened.

  But I was silent.

  “Make her speak!” she cried, and I cringed, waiting for blows to fall.

  “No—not yet.” She was clearly agitated. She stopped burning the papers and, with an impatient gesture, kicked shut the lid of the wooden casket.

  “You have a choice, cousin,” she resumed after a time. “You can preserve the life of this unknown girl by swearing to give up your treasons, or you can continue to conspire against my throne. If you do that, the girl will die.”

  “How do I know that any of what you say is true?”

  At a nod from the queen, a large cloth was brought forward into the light. It was the wall hanging Marie-Elizabeth and I had worked on for so many months, the carefully embroidered intertwined story of our lives. The words ONE LIKE THE LIONESS stood out in the dimness.

  At the sight of the embroidery something within me gave way, and I felt the heavy weight of despair. There is no hope now, I thought. It is Elizabeth who is one like the lioness now, not my mother, or me, or my lovely daughter. And she has us all at bay.

  I was distraught. I hung my head. Lord, into thy hands I place my fate. Save me, O Lord, from the lion’s maw.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “I will agree to what you ask.”

  “Louder! Swear before all those here.”

  “Yes!” I shouted, my voice shrill, cracking with emotion. “Yes, I vow it! I will not conspire against you!”

  My shouting roused Archibald from his faint. He lifted his head, looked around the room, his eyes wild with surprise and fear. “No, Mary, no!”

  And then, before my horrified eyes, the guards beat and kicked and pummeled him until his breath was gone and there was no more strength in him.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  I went into a darkness on the day the queen recaptured me and threatened me, a darkness from which I did not recover for a very long time.

  It was a darkness of the spirit. A sort of little death, as I thought of it later. Something deep inside me, a reservoir of faith and trust, dried up, never to be completely restored. Only those who have suffered such a blow can understand what I mean. If you can understand, I ask you to pity me.

  I am told that my hair turned gray quite quickly, and my eyes grew more deep-set and pouched, wary and full of fear and sorrow. I could not see this transformation, I was not allowed any pier glass in the small room where I was kept. My new warder did not approve of vanity. But I am certain that my suffering, my disillusionment, was carved into my face, the pain evident in the tightening of my mouth, the curving of my spine that had once been proudly straight, the hunger—a hunger not only for food, but for hope—evident in my sunken cheeks. My once white skin became sallow and puckered, my teeth fewer and yellowed. The breath that came from my mouth, at one time as sweet as apples and honey (so Jamie told me) became rank, and my words, once honeyed, were often bitter and sharp as knives.

  My physical pains increased and multiplied: the stabbing pain in my side, the soreness in all my limbs that worsened when the weather turned foul, my weak, injured knee that buckled under me when I tried to lift anything—all cried out for succor. I needed the larks’-tongue balm that Jamie had provided for George Shrewsbury. I needed ease for my tired flesh and above all, healing for my wounded spirit.

  I bit my nails until they bled. I read my Bible. I fastened a heavy gold rosary around my waist and told my beads many times a day, sometimes kneeling (when my knee allowed), sometimes standing at the small barred window which gave me my only view of the outer world, and sometimes, in the worst hours of the cold night, lying in my hard bed, sleepless and beset by dejection, impatient for the dawn that never seemed to come.

  It was only when I learned, through the French ambassador in London, that my cousin was thinking of putting me on trial once again that I began to come out of the fog of pain and despair that surrounded me for so long and attempted to grapple with the world again.

  My imprisonment was so harsh and so isolating that I had very little news, but I was allowed to communicate with the French ambassador, who was then the Baron de Châteauneuf. He informed me that my cousin Elizabeth was becoming more and more frightened, so frightened that her fainting fits were increasing and she had acute stomach pains. She was convinced that the Catholic powers, especially King Philip of Spain, were filling England with spies. It was only a matter of time before these spies found their way into her own council, and betrayed her. There was no one she could trust, no one except Baron Burghley, who had been telling her for many years that she had to put me to death, because I was her principal rival for power.

  If only she would die, I said aloud as I read the ambassador’s message. If only she would catch the plague, or eat one of Bess Shrewsbury’s special stag pies, or just succumb to the consumption her physicians say will carry her off before long. Once she died, the ambassador assured me, my son James would be king. There was a firm agreement between the royal councils of England and Scotland that the throne would pass to James. Once Elizabeth was in her tomb and James ruled in England, surely he would liberate me from my captivity and let me live out my life in comfort. In my dejected state I no longer aspired to rule myself, it would be enough that my son should govern both realms, and leave me to live out my remaining years in peace.

  My aspirations had changed, but so had my cousin’s plans for me. I was to be tried, and judged, and swept away, like the irritating piece of chaff I had become.

  One morning I had just completed my toilette, putting on the black gown and white veil that had become my daily apparel, and fastening the gold rosary around my waist, when I was rudely interrupted by my warder and informed that I was to be moved to Fotheringhay castle in Northamptonshire. My servants hastened to pack my few possessions and load them onto a cart. Then, under heavy guard, I was escorted to the castle where I was shut in a small plain room and told that my trial would soon begin.

  I never forgot the peril I was in—and the danger in which my growing daughter Marie-Elizabeth stood. I had sworn not to conspire against my cousin the queen, yet I could not control the conspiring of others, and I had been warned that if any plot against the queen’s life came to light, whether or not I knew of it or was involved in it, I would be put to death and my daughter would disappear. I lived each day, indeed each hour, with this dread k
nowledge in my thoughts and pressing on my heart.

  So it was with the greatest anxiety that I learned, just before my departure for Fotheringhay, that several young men had been executed for undertaking to kill the queen, and executed in the most cruel and brutal way possible, suffering the pain of having their bowels cut out and their privates cut off before being hacked into bits like dying animals at a slaughterhouse.

  This gory news struck me like a blow, frightening me so that I had difficulty breathing and had to reach for one of the servants to steady me. I had visions of terrible recriminations to come, of Marie-Elizabeth being stabbed and mutilated and even my dear grandmamma having her aging body violated by cruel men with axes and bludgeons. It had happened before, I knew. I had read in my history books—I spend much time in reading now, to pass the time—about the execution of Henry VIII’s poor elderly relative Margaret Pole, who was nearly seventy years old when she was charged with treason, her head and neck hacked repeatedly by a bungling executioner, her death an excruciatingly painful ordeal.

  The recent revelations of conspiracy against the queen my cousin were not the first such plot that I knew of; my Guise relations in France had attempted, in vain, to cause a rising in England and one Francis Throckmorton had been executed for his part in this conspiracy. The Baron de Châteauneuf had implied, in his infrequent messages to me, that other plans and plots were constantly forming and unraveling in the murky world of Catholic intrigue.

  Yet the cruel executions and the decision to put me on trial convinced me that with each plot, the threat to my cousin’s throne was being taken more seriously. I wondered whether the revelations about the most recent plot were true. Did the young men who had been put to death really mean to carry out the murder of the queen? Or was it all just a devilish invention of Baron Burghley, eager as always to create a reason to order my death?

  Like the queen, I had little trust in anyone, save the Lord who had preserved me and continued to preserve me. I was praying on the afternoon my warder and three of the queen’s privy councilors came to tell me that my trial would soon begin. I was to be judged, they said, by a commission of twenty-four peers of the realm and government officials and men of law. These men would determine whether there had indeed been a plot to kill the queen, a plot undertaken in my name. If they determined that such a plot did exist—and they assured me they had proof that it did—then I would be put to death. I was not to be permitted any advocate of my own, I was told, nor any witnesses to swear on my behalf.

  They did not say “you must prepare to die,” but there was no mistaking what they meant. I was being told that my time had run out. I was to be sacrificed for the sake of the queen’s peace of mind. There would be no leniency for me, as a condemned traitor to the throne.

  The men left, and before long my supper was brought to me. I could eat nothing. I sat before the fire in my small cold room, staring into the low flames like one deprived of sight and hearing, speech and thought.

  I was to be condemned to die. There was to be no escape. No hope of escape. The baleful destiny long ago predicted for me had come upon me at last.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  As I sat before the fire, numb with shock, I heard the door of my small room being opened. My warder came in with a short, gray-haired woman—a woman I had not seen in many years, but whose face was more welcome to me, at that moment, than I can possibly convey.

  “Margaret!” I cried, getting up from my bench and holding out my arms to my dear tirewoman and friend. We embraced for a long, lingering time, both of us in tears.

  “Look at you, Your Highness,” Margaret cried. “Still my lovely queen!”

  “Much altered, I fear.”

  She took my hand and patted it. “Not so very much, to those who love you.” She smiled, then went on. “The queen herself sent me. She told her messenger to say to me that you would have need of my help tonight and in the days to come.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “The queen? Are you in the queen’s service now?”

  She nodded, then whispered “I thought I might be of use to you if I joined the royal household. My husband Ned was taken on as a constable of the watch, and I am head laundress in Her Majesty’s palace at Richmond.”

  “But why should she retain you, knowing your loyalty to me?”

  “I think because there is a part of her that has a regard for you.”

  “Even after the way she has treated me?”

  Margaret shrugged. “You are still alive. Without that regard, you wouldn’t be.”

  “Margaret! You are not her spy, are you? Come to add to my suffering in my last days?”

  “Indeed I am not. I am what I have always been—and what the queen knows me to be. I am your loyal servant, who honors and loves you. I am sure she means me to ease your days.”

  I threw up my hands. “She is beyond my understanding. But not beyond my hatred,” I added under my breath.

  Margaret and I supped together—I was suddenly very hungry—there in the narrow room, before the fire, and as we ate, she talked, her voice bright, almost shrill. I could tell she was using the voice she meant the guards just beyond the door to overhear.

  But at times she lowered her voice to a near whisper, and talked of matters of the greatest importance to me. I hung on her every murmured word.

  “I have seen King James,” she said softly.

  “How is he? Did he speak of me? Did you tell him I love him?”

  “I may as well tell you the hard truth.”

  “You always have.”

  “He did not show any love or concern for you. He did not want to speak of you at all. I saw his eyes darken when I said your name.”

  I said nothing for a time. “I did hope he might have some affection for me,” I said at length.

  “The men who nurtured him and raised him crushed any feeling he may once have had for you.”

  “Yes, I suppose I knew that.”

  “He is nothing like what you would expect,” Margaret went on. “He staggers, because his legs are weak and malformed.”

  I nodded. “I was always worried about his legs. They never straightened out the way they should have, when he was a baby.”

  “He stammers.”

  “He had a large thick tongue. His nurses all remarked on it.”

  “He is ill-favored, not at all like yourself or his late father Lord Darnley, whom everyone detested but who was, it must be said, a beautiful man. James is nearly a grown man now, but weak and cowardly, afraid of every shadow, like a timid boy. He clings to older, stronger men and loves them in the way the Scripture says he should not. He cringes when anyone except his special favorites come near him. They say he has a very able mind, but no heart.”

  “My dear son, the caulbearer! The child gifted with the second sight!”

  “If he has the second sight, I have not heard of it. He writes poetry, a great deal of it, and keeps poets near him. But only handsome ones, according to his doorkeeper, who is a friend of Ned’s. And he drinks. He drinks a great deal.”

  I shrugged. “He is Scottish.”

  “Even for a Scot, he drinks a great deal. And when he drinks, he calls in his minions, and they grow wild, riding on each other’s backs, and shouting and swearing, and falling down as drunkards do. He has no sense of how a king ought to behave.”

  “Has he no virtues?”

  Margaret thought awhile. “He loves books,” she said at length. “He is said to wish that he lived in a library and not in a palace.”

  “Ah! He is a scholar. But scholars do not make good kings.”

  A servant came in and put a log on the fire, making it crackle and spreading a little more warmth in the room.

  “Margaret, James could save me, if he chose. He could persuade my cousin to cancel the trial and release me. Will you go to him and plead for me? Ask him to intervene with Elizabeth?”

  “I already have. I spoke to him when he was at court. He received me, even after he was tol
d that I had been your servant while you were still Queen of Scots.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He couldn’t say very much. We were not alone. Clearly he was unsure what to do, and it was also clear to me that what he cared about was inheriting the English throne from Elizabeth. I think he will do whatever Elizabeth tells him to do, about you. He has no memory of you, you know. The one thing he did say was, that you have chosen your own path, especially when you had his father murdered. You have determined your own fate, and cannot evade it.”

  “But I did not order the murder of Darnley!”

  “Your son and many others believe you did. He says you deserve to suffer for your sins. He is a strict Protestant, after all. A man after the late John Knox’s heart. As a Protestant he does not dare anger his Protestant subjects by defending and helping a Catholic martyr (which is what you have become, in the eyes of many), even if she is his mother. His Protestant subjects force him to show you no mercy, while his subjects who are secret Catholics condemn him for doing nothing on your behalf. Do you know, he cannot leave the palace, the people clamor so loudly for him to use his influence to have you released. He is under siege!”

  “And I will never see my son again,” I said softly. “My dear boy. May God watch over him, and protect him.”

  FIFTY-NINE

  On the day of my trial my hands were shaking and I was trembling. It began the moment I entered the great hall on that October morning, leaning on Dr. Bourgoing’s arm, and went on until I left many hours later, dragging myself along, my strength exhausted.

  I tried not to show my fear as I walked slowly past the men brought together to judge me, impatient, grim-faced men, ordered by my cousin to pronounce sentence on me as a traitor so that I can be put to death.

  They took off their hats as I passed, out of respect, but they did not do me the honor of giving me a throne to sit on—only a plain chair, as if I were an ordinary woman and not a queen born.