Stretched out in death, he was suddenly once again the shining, naive
boy she had met in the garden at Wemyss. The boy who had not
completely died, but had peeped out occasionally from the drunken, weak
bully. Some part of that earlier knight had survived. Until now. Now
they were extinguished together, the innocence and the guilt. The
lover who had tried to kill her.
Do not forget that, she thought. He planned to look upon you laid out
on this bier. Only no you would have been burnt beyond recognition.
Now in the pale flickering light the darker splotches of his disease
showed up against the blanched skin.
Now they would never heal, she thought. It would have distressed
him.
The lords were staring at her, their eyes riveted on her, trying to
read her face. Suddenly she felt more open to inspection than
Damley.
In that moment the full force of what was happening burst in on her. I
am on display here, not Damley!
Even in death you seek to harm me! She thought. Her revulsion as she
gazed at Darnley's face passed over her features and was duly noted by
those present.
A letter was drafted in Mary's name by the lords to send to France
later that day. Dully, not reading it carefully, Mary signed it. if
God in His mercy had not preserved us, as we trust, to the end that we
may take a rigorous vengeance of that mysterious deed, which ere it
should remain unpunished we had rather lose life and all. The matter
is so horrible and strange, as we believe the like was never heard of
in any country.. ..
Elizabeth. Elizabeth must be told.
At the thought of the English Queen, Mary shrank. Elizabeth, with her
spies and ambassadors and inquisitive mind, would probe into it and
attempt to twist it to her own advantage in some way. Yet if Elizabeth
were not informed promptly, she would manage to use that as well to her
advantage.
I have not the strength to compose a letter, thought Mary. I will
dispatch Melville and trust him to satisfy her questions.
Night. Night at last although it had felt like night all day and she
could sink into sleep, or attempt to. She asked Madame Rallay to light
all the candles. Suddenly she was afraid that Darnley's pale, angry
ghost would come up the stairs and slip into her room as he had the
night of Riccio's murder. Yet at the same time she wanted to be alone,
to face him. She ordered the puzzled Madame to sleep out in the
antechamber.
She lay still and cold in the room. The palace was quiet, but it was
not a tranquil quiet, rather the pause before a plunge into more
horrors.
She could not think. It was better not to think. She closed her eyes.
And then she heard the sounds: footsteps on the stairs. Quiet
treading. Upward.
I am ready, she thought. I will not flinch from you, Darnley, no
matter in what form you appear.
Yet she was shaking as if she lay naked outdoors in the February cold,
as he had.
The door swung open silently on oiled hinges. The candlelight, gentle
as it was, could not penetrate the darkness inside the stair landing. A
hand grasped the door to keep it from banging against the stone and
making a noise.
Short, powerful fingers. A wide hand.
Bothwell stepped into the room. His movement, his blocky body screamed
safety', to her before she consciously recognized his face.
Stifling a cry of gladness, she exhaled in a great sob. Swiftly,
soundlessly, he was beside her, half leaping onto the bed. He grabbed
both her hands and kissed them roughly, his warm breath almost painful
against her skin.
"O God," he breathed in her ear, pulling her up and against him,
kneeling on the quivering mattress.
Frantically they sought one another's lips, both intending to talk, to
explain, but unable to do anything other than kiss. At the touch of
his lips, Mary felt all desire satisfied, all longing quenched.
Bothwell was here.
He was tearing at the frilled neck of her gown, hungrily kissing her
neck, biting and sucking on her smooth skin.
She tilted her head back and let his lips travel down her throat and
between her breasts. With one hand she touched the top of his head.
His hair was cold; unlike his fevered skin, it took on the temperature
of the room.
He had started to caress her legs, to lift her gown. His breath was
coming in short gasps. But she was strangely calm, unaroused. She put
out a hand and stayed his.
"I am no longer with child," she said, as softly as possible, leaning
over to his ear. "Sometime in the night, everything .. . everything
... It is gone."
Abruptly he stopped his caresses. "Then ... it was all for nothing."
His words puzzled her.
"All ... for nothing," he repeated. He shook his head, and let go of
her.
|]No, not for "
"You do not understand." He drew in a long, slow breath.
"Then you must tell me, explain it all. Why was there an explosion?
What happened when you tried to arrest him? Oh, it has been so
dreadful not to know, after you went forth on Sunday night!"
He rolled over, lying fully clothed beside her on the bed. "There was
no arrest. As I approached the house with my men, he thought it was
you returning. He lit the fuse and escaped. It was his intention that
you would enter the house and be blown to pieces. The fuse was lit
some ten minutes before your perceived arrival."
"But he was killed. Killed as he ran away." She had to know. "Did
you kill him?"
"No," he answered. "No, I did not see him or touch him. Until the
dawn when, along with the others, I discovered the body."
"Who, then?" Thank God and all the saints. Both well was not a
murderer.
"I know not. There were many who would gladly have killed him, should
opportunity have presented itself." He ran his hands through his hair.
"And now those same people will seek to blame us, to destroy us." His
voice was low and guarded.
"Who?"
"I know not. That is the agony of it. Everyone speaks fair and hides
his true visage. We are in great danger." He paused. "Do you not
realize that we are now bound forever because of that dead boy on his
bier? There was murder done, Mary. It is a mystery, this murder, but
it is a mystery that will swirl us away to destruction. We must cling
together to survive."
He took her hands and put them around himself. "Hang on to me," he
commanded. "Put your arms around me, and whatever happens, do not let
go."
She could feel his hard body pressing against hers; in his clenched
knotted muscles and long, hard bones seemed to lie safety from all
danger. The very scars on his body were like badges of power. But as
she rested her head on his tensed shoulder, she could feel that beneath
the steel-hard muscles lay ordinary flesh and all-too-breakable
bones.
FIFTY
Mary ordered the court into mourning, providing them with the requisite
black cloth to be sewn into the costumes. A week after his death,
Darnley was entombed with royal honours and a Catholic funeral in
Holyrood, next to the vault of James V. Watching the casket being borne
to the altar and hearing the chanting, Mary felt nothing but relief
that his unhappy life was over, then stabs of guilt that she could
summon so little pity. But he had died as if by his own hand,
attempting to kill others. And innocent people had perished in the
explosion.
The court had been stunned, creeping about quietly until it became
clear that the plot had perished with the man, that there was no
further danger. Ashamed that this seemed to confirm the rest of the
world's opinion that Scotland was a barbarous country, inhabited by
savages where atrocious deeds were everyday occurrences, a murmuring
arose low at first, then rising. Punish the villains. No one seemed
to believe that Mary had been in any danger, or that anyone but Darnley
had been the target of the crime. In death Darnley acquired the
majesty and importance he had lacked in life. Regicide had been
committed! The King had been slain!
A barrel had been found by the ruins of the house, proof that the
powder had been brought hastily from someplace Holyrood? Men had
walked the streets boldly that night, declaring themselves "friends of
my Lord Both-well's," so it was said. Black Ormiston, a henchman of
Bothwell's, had been seen close to the fateful house just after the
explosion.
Mary and her Council offered a reward of two thousand pounds for
information about the perpetrators of the crime, although she knew none
would be found. None except Darnley, and that must remain secret. She
wished to protect his name, for his little son's sake, and knew
Bothwell would never reveal the truth. Besides him, who would know?
Whoever had helped to place the powder there originally? Yes, those
accomplices would know.. .. An investigation was opened the day after
the explosion by a committee of lords meeting at the Tolbooth.
The choking closeness of the mourning chamber at Edinburgh Castle was
oppressive to Mary. Black drapes shrouded the walls, and fat beeswax
candles burned serenely on their stands. She felt as though she were
entombed herself. The continual companionship of death, where the
spectre seemed as real as the hunched figure of Madame Rallay or the
veiled face of Mary Seton, kneeling on the priedieu, was intensely
disturbing. She even had horrible dreams in which she and Bothwell
were dead, clutching each other in skeletal forms.
Bourgoing was alarmed at her agitated, morbid state of mind. He
ordered her to leave the chamber as soon as Darnley's funeral was over,
and seek the healthful open air of a site near the sea. Time and again
he had found that being near water could help restore distracted
spirits.
Mary Seton's brother George offered his castle on the Forth, and on
February sixteenth, Mary left the mourning chamber with relief, riding
out slowly from Edinburgh in the mists and drawing her black hooded
mantle around her.
The day Mary left Edinburgh, a placard appeared, set up near the
Tolbooth.
TTie most foul murder of our Kingl
Perpetrated by the Scurvy Sir James Balfour, the Filthy Earl Bothwell,
and the Witch Janet Beaton. The Queen, knowing oj it, in the power of
the Witch, and assenting thereto.
French Paris angrily ripped it down and carried it to Bothwell, but not
before most of Edinburgh had seen it. Two days later, another appeared
in the same spot.
The Abominable Earl of Bothwell Hath Killed Our King.
Underneath was a drawing of the baby Prince James, hands clasped in
prayer, imploring:
Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord. Again Paris took it down and
destroyed it.
That night, a crier roamed the streets, his plaintive voice wailing,
"The mighty Earl of Bothwell hath killed the King."
When good citizens looked out their windows in the dark dead of night,
they could not see the crier. But they heard his voice echoing, "The
Earl of Bothwell ... the Earl of Bothwell is the murderer .. . murderer
.. . murderer...."