"Shall we stop and rest?" asked Mary.
"I do not see any suitable place," said Maitland. "Everything here is
muddy."
And indeed their horses' hooves made sucking noises as they trotted
along the path.
"The first high spot we find, then," said Mary, trying to keep her
voice cheerful. In spite of her worry and suspense about her
situation, she was enjoying the music of the songbirds the robins,
thrushes, and wood larks and even the deeper calls of the blackbirds
and the raucous cries of the rooks. It was an exuberant chorus that
spoke more loudly of life than anything composed for the organ in a
church building. Overhead the silent hawks were soaring in the immense
blue sky.
They began to climb up and away from the stream that flashed in its
rocky channelled maze, swollen with spring water. A hillock,
surrounded by hawthorn and sweet briar hedges in white bloom, and
carpeted with bright new grass, seemed to be waiting just for them.
"How magnificent!" said Mary, as she saw over the rim of the hill, and
beheld the flowering meadow spread out before her. "It looks like a
tapestry!"
Now Maitland allowed himself a smile. "Ah, now you are praising art!
For you are saying that the artists do such a fine job that it seems
nature copies them, rather than the other way around."
They dismounted, and the rest of the party followed suit. On all sides
of the hill there were blooming woodlands and tangled underbrush; as
Mary looked in one direction, she caught a flash of white that meant a
deer hidden in the shadows, watching them warily before bolting away.
"Come, walk with me!" she said to her three councillors, but Maitland
and Huntly had already drawn apart and were beyond reach of anything
but a shout. Only Melville heard her and obeyed.
Melville, too, looked unhappy. All of them unhappy beneath this
smiling, tender April sun! Surely God must think His creatures deaf,
blind, and ungrateful, thought Mary. Just then she saw a family of
hedgehogs scurrying for safety at their approach, and she laughed out
loud.
"The hedgehog needn't be so timid," she said. "Although I suppose he
hasn't the de fences of his more formidable cousin, the porcupine.
Have you ever seen a porcupine? I am minded to do an embroidery "
"Your Majesty," said Melville, "I think again, forgive me, I am only
doing my duty that you have weightier matters to concern yourself with
than porcupine embroideries." He stopped walking and looked at her
forlornly.
"Dear Melville," she finally said. "You have been with me through so
much. So, once again, you see fit to warn me? My behaviour is giving
offence?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. It is Bothwell. You must divorce yourself from
him."
No, she thought. It is not divorce I need, but a marriage. "I am not
married to him," she said.
"No, nor must you ever be. He is not worthy, and it would compromise
you to take such a man. When he forced the Lords to sign that pitiful
petition, it showed just how desperate his case is. It was laughable,
pathetic."
"But they signed it."
"Only by force. Your Majesty, has he ... attempted to act on it? The
strange thing about it was, it was a licence to woo! He was saying 'if
I should convince her to accept me." But heaven must put that thought
far from your mind! You must be deaf to his entreaties, like Ulysses
to the sirens. Put wax in your ears and lash yourself to the mast, if
necessary!"
"Ah, Melville. You have my good at heart," she finally said.
All the while she was thinking, What is he going to plan? What can he
possibly plan to overcome such opposition? Trust me, he had said. But
how?
She rode along, a sprig of lily-of-the-valley from the meadow tucked in
her bodice, its sweet scent keeping her company. Her party seemed to
be in slightly better spirits after their stop. Perhaps they had
needed a rest, or perhaps it was only that the scurrying of life and
busyness, like the hedgehogs, was proving impossible to resist.
Suddenly there was a crashing in the brush ahead, round the bend where
the bridge over the little Almond River awaited them. A great company
of horsemen were there hundreds of them.
"Why, what is this?" cried Mary, reining her horse back. Soldiers.
She could see the glint of the sun on their metal helmets. No! Not
another Scottish attack or rebellion. Even as she fought to master her
reeling horse, she felt her heart begin to pound and that familiar
extraordinary energy flooding into her veins. It was the same as that
which had come to her when she pursued Lord James in the Chaseabout
Raid, as that when she fled through the graveyard with Darnley; it was
beginning to feel like a friend she could count on to appear in times
of danger.
"What is this?" she cried. "Who blocks our way?" Now filled with
courage, she spurred her horse and galloped forward, around the bend.
Before her was an army. And at its head, Bothwell.
He sat his horse like a wooden effigy, huge and immobile. His visor
was down and she could not see his eyes; there was only a long, thin
slit like a corpse's mouth, rounded at the corners.
"What is this?" she repeated. She stopped just before Bothwell, this
odd Bothwell whose face was invisible.
"Your Majesty," he said, "there is danger in Edinburgh. I and my men,
my loyal Border troops, are here to escort you to safety. We will go
to Dunbar Castle." He reached out with a quick, darting movement and
grabbed her horse's bridle. "I pray you, do not resist."
"Who is in arms against us?" she demanded. Was it Morton, or the
Lennox Stewarts, or some Knoxians?
"I cannot say at this moment. It is all confusion. Come." He turned
his horse and began to lead hers away. "You as well," he told the
three courtiers.
Concerned for them, Mary turned to assure them. But Maitland and
Huntly did not look worried or even surprised; only Melville did.
Shocked, she realized that once again there had been a plot to which
she was not privy. They had already known about it. That was why
Maitland paid no attention to the blooming countryside; his attention
was on the blooming plot. And Huntly it was not to his liking, so he
wore a frown, but he had agreed to it nonetheless. Dear God! Was this
Bothwell's solution to their dilemma?
"If there is indeed an uprising, then send one of your men back to
Edinburgh to raise the alarm," said Mary.
"As you like," said Bothwell, jerking his head toward Lord Borthwick in
his party. "Go, my good man. In the meantime, we must hurry."
They passed by Edinburgh, where a cannon volley was fired at them, but
missed. They skirted the city and continued heading due east, toward
Dunbar and the sea. Suddenly the blooming hedges, green glades, and
foaming spring waters became invisible, and Mary saw nothing but the
swarms of soldiers ahead of her. Bothwell did not speak again, but led
her ever onward, like an emissary from some dreadful undiscovered
region charged with bringing back a captive.
Why did he not speak to her? She swallowed hard as the first rush of
excitement drained away, deserted her veins, and left her uneasy and
confused.
The sun set behind them, and torches were lit as they passed through
the little Lothian villages of Dalkeith and Haddington Knox's home town
and skirted the estate of Maitland. Had he wished, he surely could
have bolted at that point. But no he was paid to continue on the
journey; no clearer proof was needed of his complicity.
She began to smell the sea, and by midnight they came to Dunbar Castle.
For an instant, as she rode into the courtyard and heard the cries of
the gulls just beyond, hovering over the sea, she felt a leaping joy,
for it was just so that she had ridden to safety after the Riccio
murder. But only for an instant. This time was entirely different.
Bothwell rode out into the middle of his milling soldiers. "I have
eight hundred men here, all loyal to my command," he shouted. "Do not
attempt to test my word, for I assure you they will obey me and slay
anyone who tries to escape, regardless of who he is."
There were murmurs and shouts, but only amongst the small train of
Mary's retainers.
"Do not attempt to fight," Mary told them. "You can see that he has
hundreds of men, and you are less than thirty. We must submit." She
did not want any show of bravery that would result in bloodshed. They
were hopelessly outnumbered.
Bothwell rose in his stirrups and cried in ringing tones, "The Lords of
Scotland have signed a bond allowing me to marry the Queen, and to
account anyone who attempts to prevent it as a faithless traitor." He
waved a piece of paper in the air. It was barely visible in the red
flaring torchlight. "But I know there are those who will attempt to
prevent it! Now I will marry the Queen, no matter who objects yea,
whether she herself agrees or not!"
There was a shocked silence. Both well jumped down off his horse and
came over to Mary and pulled her down into his arms. He held her so
tightly she could scarcely breathe.
"I have her, and I will make it so that she is mine, indisputably mine.
Seek not to interfere, or I will make a corpse of you!"
He picked her up and carried her through the yawning entranceway to the
inner fortress. She was trembling and stunned. He marched through the
courtyard and into the keep, then, still not halting his pace, up the
stairs to the uppermost floor. Releasing her, he slammed the thick
wooden door behind him and bolted it with a beam as big as a gangplank.
Outside she could hear a tumult rising.
"No one can break in here," he said, as if reading her thoughts. "We
are safe."
Inside the square room, its ancient walls made only of irregular,
unfinished stone, three torches flickered from their wall sockets. One
of the three windows was open, on the sea side, and a loud wind was
rushing in, almost drowning out his words.
"Safe?" She stared at him, at the rough, leather-clad warrior standing
before her. She had thought she knew him. Now he looked like one of
the Northmen carved on old stones she had seen depicting the Viking
invasions. "You must be mad. Why have you done this?"
"So that I have a thousand witnesses that I kidnapped the Queen and lay
with her against her will. I could have done with a bit more
protesting on your part, for the sake of convincing skeptics." He was
smiling as if he had just done an ordinary thing.
"How do we dare do this? No one will believe us!" His sheer audacity
was astounding.
"Seeing is believing," he said. "That's what they claim. Now a
thousand people have seen. And I will keep you locked up here long
enough to make it credible."
"That you .. . dishonoured me?" Her voice was shaky. He was asking
her to endure that shame, just for him.
"Yes. You know that in Scottish law there is only one way to repair
that particular dishonour. Marriage."
Shame flooded her, but at the same time, his daring and
straightforwardness were compelling. "But they will hate you for doing
this! You've degraded yourself, and there's no repair for that. Oh,
Bothwell! How could you resort to this? I cannot bear it for you to
have hurt yourself so!"