Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Read online

  No, Marie de Guise, the relict—quaint phrase, that, she thought—of His Majesty James V of Scotland must right herself and be poised to defend her infant, like any wolf-mother in a harsh winter. And it was a very harsh winter, not only in terms of the flying snow and icy roads, but for Scotland itself.

  She could almost fancy that, in the ruddy flames of the fires she kept continually burning, the teeth of the nobles looked more like animal fangs than human dog-teeth. One by one they made their way to Linlithgow Palace, the golden palace lying on a long, thin loch just west of Edinburgh, to offer their respects to the infant—their new Queen. They came clad in heavy furs, their feet booted and wrapped round with animal skins, and it was hard to tell their ice-streaked beards from the furs surrounding their faces. They would kneel and murmur something about their loyalty, but their eyes were preternaturally bright.

  There were all the clans who came to make sure that they would not be barred from power by any other clan. For this was the greatest of all opportunities, the equivalent of a stag-kill that attracted all the carrion-eaters of the forest. An infant was their monarch, a helpless infant, with no one but a foreign mother to protect her: a Frenchwoman who was ignorant of their ways here and far from home.

  The Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, was there; had not this baby been born, he would now be king. He smiled benevolently at the infant. “I wish her a long life,” he said.

  The Earl of Lennox, Matthew Stuart, who claimed to be the true heir rather than Arran, came shortly and stood looking longingly down at the baby. “May she have all the gifts of grace and beauty,” he said.

  Patrick Hepburn, the “Fair Earl” of Bothwell, stepped forward and kissed the Queen Mother’s hand lingeringly. “May she have power to make all who gaze upon her love her,” he said, raising his eyes to Marie’s.

  The red-faced, stout northern Earl of Huntly strutted past the cradle and bowed. “May she always rest among friends and never fall into the hands of her enemies,” he said.

  “My lord!” Marie de Guise objected. “Why mention enemies? Why even think of them now? You tie your well-wishes to something sinister. I pray you, amend your words.”

  “I can amend them, but never erase them. Once spoken, they have flown into another realm. Very well: let her enemies be confounded and come to confusion.”

  “I like not the word.”

  “I cannot promise that there will be no enemies,” he said stubbornly. “Nor would it be a good wish. ’Tis enemies that make a man and shape him. Only a no-thing has no enemies.”

  * * *

  After the lords had departed, Marie de Guise sat by the cradle and rocked it gently. The baby was sleeping. The firelight painted the side of her face rosy, and the infant curled and uncurled her fat, dimpled little fingers.

  My first daughter, thought Marie, and she does look different. Is it my imagination? No, I think she’s truly feminine. The Scots would say a lass is always different from a lad, even from the beginning. This daughter has skin like almond-milk. And her hair—she gently pushed back the baby’s cap—of what colour will it be, to go with that skin? It is too early to tell; the fuzz is the same colour as that of all babes.

  Mary. I have named her after myself, and also after the Virgin; after all, she was born on the Virgin’s day, the Immaculate Conception, and perhaps the Virgin will protect her, guard over her as a special charge.

  Mary Queen of Scots. My daughter is a queen already; six days old, and then she became a queen.

  At that thought, a brief flutter of guilt rose in her.

  The King my lord and husband died, and that is how my daughter came to be Queen before her time. I should feel tearing grief. I should be mourning the King, lamenting my fate, instead of gazing in wonder at my daughter, a baby queen.

  The child will be fair, she thought, studying her features. Her complexion and features all promise it. Already I can see that she has her father’s eyes, those Stewart eyes that are slanted and heavy-lidded. It was his eyes that promised so much, that were so reassuring and yet so private, hiding their own depths.

  “My dear Queen.” Behind her she heard a familiar voice: Cardinal Beaton’s. He had not left with the others; but then, he felt at home here, and never more so than now, with the King gone forever. “Gazing upon your handiwork? Be careful, lest you fall in love with your own creation.”

  She straightened and turned to him. “It is difficult not to be in awe of her. She is lovely; and she is a queen. My family in France will be beside themselves. The Guises finally have a monarch to their credit!”

  “Her last name is not Guise, but Stewart,” the bulky churchman reminded her. “It is not her French blood that puts her on this throne, but her Scottish.” He allowed himself to bend down and stroke the baby’s cheek. “Well, what are you to do?”

  “Hold the throne for her as best I can,” answered Marie.

  “Then you will have to remain in Scotland.” He straightened up, and made his way over to a plate of sweetmeats and nuts in a silver bowl. He picked one up and popped it into his mouth.

  “I know that!” She was indignant.

  “No plans to run back to France?” He was laughing, teasing her. “Made from Seville oranges,” he commented about the sweetmeat he was still sucking. “Lately I tasted a coated rind from India. Much sweeter.”

  “No. If this child had not come, if I were a childless widow, then of course I certainly would not linger here! But now I have a task, and one I cannot shirk.” She shivered. “If I do not die of cold here, or take consumption.”

  It was snowing outside again. She walked across the chamber to the arched stone fireplace, where a huge fire was blazing, by her orders. The baby’s chamber must be kept warm, in spite of the wildly bitter weather raging all over Scotland. The Cardinal, who lived luxuriously himself, doubtless approved.

  “Oh, David,” she said, her smile suddenly fading. “What will become of Scotland? The battle—”

  “If the English have their way, it will become part of England. They will seek to grab it one way or another, most likely through marriage. As the victors of Solway Moss, with their thousand high-ranking prisoners in hand, they will dictate the terms. They will probably force Mary to marry their Prince Edward.”

  “Never! I will not permit that!” cried Marie.

  “She must needs marry someone,” the Cardinal reminded her. “That is what the King meant when he said, ‘It will pass with a lass.’ When she marries, the crown goes to her husband. And there is no eligible French prince. The marriage of King François’s heirs, Henri de Valois and Catherine de Médicis, is barren. If little Mary tries to marry a Scot, one of her own subjects, the rest will rise up in jealousy. So who else but the English?”

  “Not an English prince!” Marie kept repeating. “Not an English prince! They are all heretics down there!”

  “And what do you plan to do about the King’s bastards?” the Cardinal whispered.

  “I shall bring them all together and rear them here, in the palace.”

  “You are mad! Better bring them all together and dispose of them, rather.”

  “Like a sultan?” Marie could not help laughing. “Nay, that is not a Christian response. I will offer them charity, and a home.”

  “And rear them with your own daughter, the lawful Queen? That is not Christian, but negligent. You may see your daughter reap the evil harvest of that misguided kindness. Beware that you do not nurture serpents to sting her later, when you are gone.” The Cardinal’s fat, unlined face registered true alarm. “How many are there?”

  “Oh, nine or so, I think.” She laughed, then felt guilty about that, too.

  I should feel bad about the King’s infidelities, she thought. But I do not. Why not? I must not have loved him. Otherwise I would have attacked the women and torn out their eyes.

  “They are all boys, except one girl, Jean. His favourite bastard was the one who carried his name, James Stewart. He’s nine years old now, and lives with
his mother in the castle at Lochleven. They say he’s clever,” said Marie.

  “I don’t doubt it. There’s no one more clever than a royal bastard. They have inordinate hopes. Force him into the Church and tie him up there, if you value the little Queen’s safety.”

  “No, the best way is to allow him into the palace and let him learn to love his sister.”

  “His half-sister.”

  “My, you are stubborn. I appreciate your warnings, but I will keep a close watch.”

  “And what of the nobles? You cannot trust any of them, can you?”

  “Yes, I trust the ones who have married the girls I brought with me from France. Lord George Seton, who married my maid of honour, Marie Pieris; Lord Robert Beaton, who married Joan de la Reynveille; Lord Alexander Livingston, who married Jeanne de Pedefer.”

  “But the greater nobles are not on that list.”

  “No.”

  Just then the little Queen let out a wail, and her mother bent down and picked her up. The tiny mouth was puckered and quivering, and the big eyes were brimming with tears.

  “Hungry again,” said Marie. “I shall call the wet nurse.”

  “She is a beauty,” said the Cardinal. “It is hard to imagine that anyone would wish her harm.” He tickled the baby’s chin. “Greetings, Your Majesty.”

  * * *

  “All men lamented that the realm was left without a male to succeed,” a young priest named John Knox wrote, slowly and thoughtfully. He looked up at his crucifix, hanging above his desk, as he dipped his pen in the inkwell.

  Why have You not provided? he beseeched the cross silently. Why have You abandoned Scotland?

  II

  The September weather had played peekaboo all day. First there had been a rainstorm, with high, gusty winds that were even stronger up on the two-hundred-fifty-foot heights of Stirling Castle. Then the clouds had blown away, going east in the direction of Edinburgh, bringing piercingly blue skies and an astringent sense of cleanness. Now black clouds were coming in again, but Marie de Guise still stood in the sunshine and could see a distant rainbow over the retreating storm clouds, which trailed a skirt of mist all the way to the ground.

  Was it an omen? The Queen Mother could be forgiven if she was anxious this day; it was her daughter’s coronation day.

  The ceremony had been hastily arranged in an act of reckless defiance of England; it was, nonetheless, supported by all Scotsmen. Almost to a man, they found the bullying and patronizing of Henry VIII intolerable and unswallowable. His smug demands and his schoolboyish threats; his lack of any grasp of the idea that Scotland was a nation, not a sack of grain to be bought and sold; his cool assumption that he held all the power and therefore must prevail—all these convinced the Scots that they must, and would, resist to the utmost.

  The first thing to do was to break the forced betrothal of Mary to Edward, a betrothal that had as a condition the sending of Mary to England to be raised. Balked in that, King Henry had wanted to place her in the care of an English household in Scotland and ban her own mother from her presence. He was determined that she be in English hands at all times; in other words, she must be kept from her own people and brought up English, not Scottish—the better to betray their interests later, so his thinking went.

  Henry’s “assured lords,” the captives from the battle of Solway Moss, had turned coat and repudiated the English policy as soon as it was possible, and now the second act of defiance was being hurried forward: Mary would be crowned Queen of Scotland this afternoon, to hammer home the fact that Scotland was an independent nation with its own sovereign, even if she was only nine months old.

  The date chosen was most unfortunate, thought the Queen Mother: September ninth, the anniversary of the dreadful battle of Flodden Field, where exactly thirty years before, Mary’s grandfather had met his end, hacked to death by the English.

  Yet there was a certain stirring defiance in it, as if not only Henry VIII were being challenged, but fate itself.

  She looked up once more at the darkening sky, then hurried across the courtyard to the palace. There was no time now to admire the French work that her late husband had lavished on decorating the grey stone palace, down to the whimsical statues he had installed all along the façade. There was even one of her, now looking down at the living model that walked quickly toward the entrance of the palace.

  Her daughter was ready, wearing heavy regal robes in miniature. A crimson velvet mantle, with a train furred with ermine, was fastened around her tiny neck, and a jeweled satin gown, with long hanging sleeves, enveloped the infant, who could sit up but not walk. Her mother smoothed her head—soon to wear the crown—prayed silently for her, and then handed her solemnly to Lord Alexander Livingston, her Lord Keeper, who would carry her across the courtyard in solemn procession to the Chapel Royal. As they passed outside, the Queen Mother saw that the sunshine had fled and the sky was black. But no rain had yet fallen, and the baby passed dry in her ceremonial robes into the chapel, followed by her officers of state in procession.

  Inside, there were not many. The English ambassador, Sir Ralph Sadler, who saw in this the ruin of all his master’s plans, stood gloomily wishing ill on the ceremony and all its participants. D’Oysell, the French ambassador, hated to be there at all, for his presence would seem to condone it. But King François would have to be informed of all the details, or he would punish his ambassador mightily for his ignorance. The other Lord Keepers of the baby Queen constituted an entire row of onlookers. Cardinal Beaton stood ready to conduct the ceremony, hovering over the throne.

  The coronation itself was not lavish, or even intricate, as would have been its counterpart in England. The Scotsmen were ready to get on with it, and so, in the simplest manner, the Lord Keeper Livingston brought Mary forward to the altar and put her gently in the throne set up there. Then he stood by, holding her to keep her from rolling off.

  Quickly, Cardinal Beaton put the Coronation Oath to her, which her keeper, as her sponsor, answered for her; in his voice she vowed to guard and guide Scotland and act as its true Queen, in the name of God Almighty, who had chosen her. Immediately then the Cardinal unfastened her heavy robes and began anointing her with the holy oil on her back, breast, and the palms of her hands. When the chill air struck her, she began to cry, with long, wailing sobs.

  The Cardinal stopped. True, this was only a baby, crying as all babies cried, unexpectedly and distressingly. But in the silence of the stone chapel, where nerves were already taut with the whole clandestine, rebellious nature of the ceremony, the sounds were shattering. The child cried as at the fall of Man, as if in horror of damnation.

  “Sssh, ssh,” he murmured. But the little Queen would not be quieted; she wailed on, until the Earl of Lennox brought forward the sceptre, a long rod of gilded silver, surmounted by crystal and Scottish pearl. He placed it in her baby hand, and she grasped the heavy shaft with her fat fingers. Her crying died away. Then the ornate gilded sword of state was presented by the Earl of Argyll, and the Cardinal performed the ceremony of girding the three-foot sword to the tiny round body.

  Later, the Earl of Arran carried the crown, a heavy fantasy of gold and jewels that enclosed within it the circlet of gold worn by Robert the Bruce on his helmet at the Battle of Bannockburn, not far from Stirling. Holding it gently, the Cardinal lowered it onto the child’s head, where it rested on a circlet of velvet. From underneath the crown, heavy with the dolour of her ancestors, Mary’s eyes looked out. The Cardinal steadied the crown and Lord Livingston held her body straight as the Earls Lennox and Arran kissed her cheek in fealty, followed by the rest of the prelates and peers who knelt before her and, placing their hands on her crown, swore allegiance to her.

  III

  Henry VIII unleashed the full force of his fury against the Scots. An army was sent to storm Stirling Castle, capture Mary, and sack and burn everything in the surroundings. Men, women, and children were to be put to the sword; Edinburgh destroyed, Holyrood raze
d, the Border abbeys demolished, and the harvest, already gathered in, to be set on fire.

  The English soldiers slashed and murdered their way into Edinburgh. They came down the Canongate and up to the doors of Holyrood Abbey, and entered into the sanctuary. Seeking the Stewart tombs, they found the great enclosed monument on the right side of the Abbey, near the altar, and broke into it, desecrating the royal burial places. The tomb of Mary’s father was opened and his coffin dragged out into the daylight, mocked, and then abandoned, to lie forlorn in the aisle.

  * * *

  Scotland wept and lamented. Scotland was wounded and cried out, but there was none to heed or help her. The dead stank to heaven, the children went to bed hungry, in the care of whatever relative survived, and the razed streets of Edinburgh smouldered. The Scottish people looked at the ruined abbeys and the deserted churches and sought the only help left, the Divine, in a new way. Despite the ban on all Protestant literature, there were smuggled Protestant translations of the Scriptures—William Tyndale’s version, and even copies of the English Great Bible of 1539—now coming into Scotland. But where the heretical preachers could not hide, a Bible could be secreted; where God seemed silent in speaking through his erstwhile Church, the Church of Rome, he began speaking directly through His Word as revealed in the Scriptures. Preachers were abroad throughout the land, having been trained in Geneva, Holland, Germany. People listened to their sermons and found solace in God’s reaching out to them. He offered His hand and they grasped it.

  * * *

  In Stirling Castle the Queen Mother and her daughter were safe. The ancient castle on its high rock, rising out of the plain, held fast and was beyond the power of the English to capture. Inside the palace walls, Marie de Guise fashioned a home for her daughter, with playmates, tutors, and pets. It was a world in itself, high above the Forth valley, looking down on Stirling Bridge and the gateway to the Highlands, where a person could vanish in safety from any foreign foes that threatened. There were rare excursions to hawk and hunt and see the countryside, before scurrying back to the safety of the rock fortress.