Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles Read online

  There were mists. And howling winds and ice-covered hills that sometimes the children went sledding on, using a cow’s skull to ride down the hill behind the castle. There were little furry ponies that she and her playmates—all also named Mary, which was such fun—learned to ride on. There were fogs and heather, green glens, and an enormous sky with clouds that raced across it like bandits.

  Up in the castle, there was a room in the King’s apartments—empty now—that had round medallions on its ceiling. Little Mary would wander into the room and stare at the carved wooden heads in the dim light from the shuttered windows. One of the figures had hands that clutched the rim of the roundel, as if he would escape and leap out into the real world. But he never moved; he remained forever on the brink of a new world which he could not enter, gazing down at her from the ceiling.

  Her mother did not like her to be there. Usually she would come looking for Mary and bring her back into the Queen’s apartments, where she lived and had her lessons; where there were cushions and a fireplace and a swirl of people.

  * * *

  Sometime in that mist of early childhood she came to know her half-siblings. Her mother, with odd charity—or was it political astuteness?—had gathered four of her late husband’s illegitimate offspring and brought them to Stirling Castle. Mary loved them all, loved being part of a large family; and, as her mother did not seem to find it offensive that they were bastards, neither did she.

  James Stewart was stern and grave, but as the oldest, his judgement seemed the wisest and they deferred to it. If he said they should not sled down the hill once more before the light faded, Mary learned that he had always gauged it correctly and that if she disobeyed she would find herself in the dark by the time she reached the bottom.

  Before Marie had brought Mary’s half-siblings to spend some time at Stirling, she had assembled another little family for her daughter as well: the four daughters of friends, all named Mary, and all the same age: Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingston, and Mary Seton.

  Mary Fleming was entirely Scots, and also had Stewart blood, but from further back on the wrong side of the blanket: she was the granddaughter of James IV. Mary Fleming’s mother, Janet, shared the Stewart family traits of beauty and high spirits, and served as governess to the five little Marys. From the earliest days, Mary Fleming—nicknamed La Flamina—was the only one who would take Mary’s dares and outdo her in mischief.

  The other three Marys, although they had proper Scots names and Scots fathers, all had French mothers, ladies-in-waiting who had come over with Marie de Guise. That their daughters should all be friends with her daughter gave the Queen Mother great satisfaction, and a feeling of being at home in this fortress in an alien land. Although the mothers spoke French to each other, their daughters did not seem either interested or able to learn it themselves, although presumably they could understand some words of it. But the mothers, when they wanted to talk secretly of presents and surprises for the girls, could always speak safely in French.

  To differentiate between them, Mary Livingston, robust and athletic, was called Lusty by the others; Mary Seton, who was tall and reserved, was called by her stately surname of Seton, and Mary Beaton, who was plump, pretty, and inclined to daydreaming, was called Beaton because it rhymed with Seton to make a pair. Mary Fleming had been nicknamed La Flamina because of her flamboyant personality. Only Mary was always only Mary, the Mary.

  The eight younger children romped, fought, had secret clubs, cliques, and codes. They kept pets and played at cards, telling fortunes; they tattled on each other and swore eternal friendship the next day. The ninth, James Stewart, presided over their little world with fifteen-year-old solemnity, suspended midway between the world of the adults and that of the children, fully belonging to neither. Both sides turned to him for advice about the other.

  * * *

  Mary was only six months old when she came to live at Stirling, and the whole world was contained in that mountaintop fortress for her. She was crowned there; she took her first tottering steps there; her tutors taught her her earliest lessons there in the antechamber off the Queen’s apartments. When she was only three, she was presented with a tiny pony from the islands in the farthest north of Scotland, and so she first learned to ride there. Lusty, of course, took to the ponies as quickly as she, whereas Seton and Beaton preferred quieter, indoor pastimes. Flamina could ride well enough, but she preferred human adventures to animal ones.

  Mary looked up to James, and followed him about eagerly. When she was very small, she clung to him and pestered him to play with her. As she grew older, she came to realize that he disliked being handled and touched, and that such behaviour had the very opposite effect on him. If she wished him to pay attention to her, she had to look the other way and talk to others. Then curiosity would draw him.

  One day, when she was nearly four, she wandered away from the upper courtyard where the children were playing ball between the Great Hall and the Chapel Royal, and crept into the forbidden King’s apartments. They were always shuttered and dark, but they drew her. The great round medallions on the ceiling cast a brooding presence over the room, as if they were guarding a secret. She kept imagining that if she just looked in every corner, and searched hard enough, she would find her father there. He would have been hiding, playing a joke on them. And think how happy her mother would be to have her bring him out!

  Heart thumping loudly, she walked swiftly across the huge guard chamber. She already knew that nothing was in here. The room was bare, and there was nowhere for the King to hide. The next connected room, the presence chamber, was likewise bare. But there were several little hidden chambers off the King’s bedchamber. She knew they were there; she had seen a map of them. And that was where the King was probably hiding—if he was hiding at all.

  But they were the farthest away, and were very dark. She had never dared to go there before. Once, she had got up to the door of the King’s bedchamber and seen, opening off it, the dark entrance to the closet. But her courage had failed her, and she had turned back.

  Today she would go. She half wished she had brought Flamina with her. But she knew that her father would not appear if anyone else was there. She had to go alone.

  At the same time, she knew it was only a game. He was not really there; this was just a test of courage she was setting for herself. She crept forward in the dim room, making for the bedchamber. Her eyes had become accustomed to the dark, and now she could see much better. She reached the doorway of the bedchamber and peered in.

  There was still a bed there, and it even retained its hangings. She dared herself to get down on her hands and knees and peek under it. She did, almost fainting with trepidation. But there was nothing under it but dust and silence.

  Now she had to do it; she had to go into the attached closet. There was no sound at all except her own breathing. She wanted to turn back; she did not want to turn back. She held her breath and ran, on light feet, into the room.

  It was horribly dark. It had in it a sense of some presence, and it was not benevolent. She forced herself to walk around the perimeter of the room, touching the walls, but by the time she was halfway round, she was so frightened she felt almost sick. Her knees started to shake, and she dropped to all fours and crawled toward the door.

  But then she found herself in an even darker room. There must have been two doors in the room; maybe there were three. How could she get out? Terror overtook her and all logical thought fled. She huddled on the floor and shook with the feeling of helplessness.

  Then she heard a noise. The ghost! The ghost of her father! He was coming to keep his appointment, and suddenly she did not wish to see him. Above all, she did not wish to see a ghost!

  “Why, Mary,” said a quiet voice. “Are you lost?”

  She leapt up. Who was speaking? “Yes. I wish to return to the courtyard,” she said, trying to sound dignified. But her knees persisted in shaking.

  “Why have you come here?�
�� The voice ignored her request.

  “I wished to explore,” she said grandly. No need to tell about the ghost, or the possibility of the ghost.

  “And now you’re lost.” The voice held a mocking parody of sympathy. “What a pity.” It paused. “Do you know where you are?”

  “Not—not exactly.”

  “I could lead you out.”

  “Who are you?” She knew the voice; she knew she did.

  The figure stepped over to her, and took her hand. “Why, I’m James, your brother,” he said.

  “Oh! Thank goodness! Let us leave together!”

  “I said I could lead you out.” His voice had a slight catch to it. “And that I would be most glad to do, but in exchange I’d like you to do something for me.”

  “What?” This was very odd. Why was he so strange?

  “I’d like a reward. I’d like the miniature of our father that you have—that you’re wearing this very minute.”

  She had pinned it onto her bodice that morning, as if it would serve to call him forth. She loved it; it was one of the very tangible reminders of him that she had. She liked to study his face, the long oval, the thin nose and shapely lips. Secretly she wondered if she looked like him, or would grow to look like him. She knew she did not resemble her mother in anything save height.

  “No,” she said. “Choose something else.”

  “There’s nothing else I want.”

  “I cannot give it to you. I treasure it.”

  “Then I cannot help you. Find your own way out.” Quickly he pulled his hand away and ran for the door.

  She heard his footsteps disappearing, and she was left alone in the dark.

  “James!” she called. “James, come back here!”

  He laughed from the outer chamber.

  “James, I command you!” she screamed. “Come here at once! I am the Queen!”

  His laughter stopped, and in a moment he was standing beside her once again.

  “You can command me to return,” he said sulkily. “But you cannot command me to lead you out if I decide I will stay here with you. I will pretend I was lost as well. So. Give me the miniature and I will lead you out. Otherwise we will sit here and be lost together until a guard finds us.”

  She waited, her lip quivering. At last she said, “Very well. Take the miniature.” She refused to unfasten it herself; let James stick himself in doing it.

  Deftly he unpinned it; he must have eyed it for a long time, since he knew how to unfasten it in the dark, she thought. “There,” he said. “You forget he is my father too. I wish to have something of his. I promise I will treasure it and never let any harm come to it.”

  “Pray lead me out,” she said. The loss of the pin was so painful that she wanted to get back out into the sun as soon as possible, as if sunlight could restore it in some mysterious way.

  * * *

  She attempted to forget about it; and in days to come she almost managed to convince herself that she had lost the pin in the dark chambers, surrendering it to her father as a gift. She was glad when James went away for several months to be with his mother on Lochleven. By the time he returned, she had no clear memory of the miniature.

  IV

  The wind was whipping across the empty, snow-dusted fields as the little party trotted on. They were on their way from Longniddry to the larger town of Haddington; there George Wishart would preach as the Spirit called him, in spite of the warning he had received from the lord of the area, Patrick Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. As they made their way in the dull January afternoon, they kept alert for any suspicious movement. It might be the friendly lords who had promised to meet them here—or it might be their enemies.

  Out in front of the party was a slim, straight-backed figure whose eyes swept the road and whose hands clutched a two-handed sword. He was a young man about thirty years old, who acted as tutor to the two young sons of Sir Hugh Douglas of Longniddry and who also served as a public notary in the district. His name was John Knox and he no longer knelt in front of crucifixes or begged God to reveal why He had abandoned Scotland. The answer had come, by way of George Wishart: it was Scotland who had abandoned God, led astray by the “puddle of papistry.” Knox had in turn abandoned his priestly calling and embraced the Reformed Faith. It was a dangerous decision.

  Outside the walls of the self-contained castle on Stirling Rock where the Queen resided, and beyond the equally self-contained castle at St. Andrews where Cardinal Beaton presided, reformers slipped from house to house, carrying their smuggled Bibles and their outlawed messages. Safe from the vigilant eyes and ears of the Queen and Cardinal, they made their converts in a population that, if it did not actually “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” at least was eager to try to find new pathways to God. The feeling was abroad in the air, in all Christendom, like an undercurrent, a siren song: Come drink at the waters of this well. People came to drink for all the reasons people come to forbidden waters—some out of genuine thirst, others out of curiosity, still others out of daring and rebellion. Henry VIII’s Trojan horse was not the bribed and bullied nobles he had sent north, but the reformers who followed in their wake on missions of their own.

  George Wishart, steeped in the new brew of Protestant theology from Europe, taught and preached loudly enough that the Cardinal’s ears pricked up, and like a hunting dog spotting an otter, he tried to track him down. Wishart continued his bold preaching to large congregations, eluding the Cardinal for a time. Now he was headed for an area very near Edinburgh, in spite of warnings from the faithful that the Queen and her henchman, the Earl of Bothwell, were prepared to capture him.

  At the very least, his partisans begged him, do not appear so publicly.

  “What, shall I lurk like a gentleman ashamed of his business?” the missionary had answered. “I will dare to preach if others will dare to hear!”

  Now, across the fields of Lothian, they were making their way in expectation of meeting their supporters from the western part of Scotland. For this they had left the safety of Fife, where the largest numbers of converts were.

  John Knox drew up the coarse wool collar of his mantle and peered out across the landscape. By God, let any enemies appear and he’d mow them down! He clenched the sword.

  Men of the cloth were not supposed to carry weapons, that he knew. But am I still a man of the cloth? he asked himself. No, by the blood of Christ! That mockery of a ceremony I went through in my ignorance, creating me a priest, was nothing, was worse than nothing! No, unless I hear a clear call, direct from God, I’m not a man of the cloth.

  * * *

  Wishart preached twice in Haddington, in the church that was the largest in the area. Only a very few showed up to hear him—after the thousands who had thronged to attend all his sermons elsewhere.

  “It’s the Earl of Bothwell,” said Wishart afterwards, as they took a small evening meal at the home of John Cockburn of Ormiston. “He’s the lord of this area; he must have warned people to stay away.” He chewed his brown bread carefully. He had blessed it and thanked the Lord for it, and now it tasted different. “What is he like, this Bothwell?” He looked up and down the table to the men gathered there: Douglas of Longniddry, Cockburn of Ormiston, the laird of Brunstane, Sandilands of Calder. Wishart was not well acquainted with Scottish magnates in the Lothian region.

  “A blackguard,” said Cockburn. “A man who betrays everyone. His word means nothing. And ambitious. He’d sell his soul or his mother to advance himself.”

  “He’s already sold his wife!” said Brunstane. “He just divorced her, a fine lady, born a Sinclair, because he had hopes of ingratiating himself to the Queen Mother.”

  “He hoped to get into her bed,” said Cockburn bluntly. “Legally, that is.”

  “You mean he presumed to try to marry the French Queen?” Wishart was shocked.

  “Yes. And he has not abandoned his suit.”

  John Knox wondered if he should speak up. He ate a few more mouthfuls of h
is mutton stew before saying, “My family has known the Hepburns for generations. We’ve fought under their banner in many wars. They are a brave lot, and usually loyal. This ‘Fair Earl’ is an anomaly; but we should not stain the rest of the family by association. One of his castles is only a few miles downriver, Hailes Castle on the Tyne. He is probably there right now.”

  “Is he … devout?” asked Wishart.

  Knox laughed in spite of himself. “The only altar he worships at is his mirror.”

  Darkness had fallen outside, and the wind picked up. The men grew uneasy, although they tried to hide it. Ordinarily, had each been with other company, they would have pasted over their anxiety with extra glasses of wine. But now they just blinked at each other and waited. Finally Wishart rose and said, “Let us read Scripture and pray.”

  They gathered at the other end of the small room, where a meagre fire burned in the stone fireplace. Wishart pulled out his worn Bible and let the pages fall open in obedience to a small gesture of his hands. He read from the eighth chapter of Romans, and then led them in prayer.

  Immediately after saying the amens, Douglas informed him that he would be returning to Longniddry that evening.

  Wishart smiled; he had known this would happen, and that it was for the good of all. He turned to Knox and said, “Then you must accompany your master.”

  Knox protested. “Nay, I must be here to protect you! I will slash as Peter did in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I will glory in cutting off the chief priest’s servant’s ear!”

  “Return the sword to me, John,” said Wishart.

  Reluctantly, but with complete obedience, Knox handed it over.

  “Now you must return to your bairns, and God bless you. One is enough for a sacrifice.”

  * * *