"Return it to me! I command you!"
"Ha!" he laughed, tucking it under his arm.
"I am the Queen!" she screamed.
"Not without soldiers, you are not," he answered. "And there will be
no soldiers without the gold to pay them. Now ... is this bauble worth
your throne?"
"Bothwell ..." She could see beyond him, beyond the five thousand gold
pieces the font was expected to yield. "Can a throne be retained for
five thousand gold coins?"
"It is a lot more than thirty pieces of silver, and look what they
bought."
Never had the capital looked lovelier, thought Knox, as he approached
it on horseback. June was always the time when no city on earth
excepting possibly Geneva was more appealing; more delicately hued,
more vibrant. It had been March when he had left, the month in which
the city was at its annual worst, and so it had been easy to leave
behind. But now .. . ah, he was glad to be home. And glad to answer
the call. His country needed him once again; at last the wheel had
turned and it seemed that the Lord would prevail against the wicked
Jezebel who had tormented them too long.
When I called her that, everyone thought I was cruel. The Lords said,
"Oh, Master Knox, you are so unkind. What harm a few dances? What
harm a private mass or two? What harm the cards and the music?" But I
saw what they did not. It was my privilege and sorrow as a prophet.
They act as though I liked what I saw! I said I saw dolour and sorrow
and heaviness and I did grieve at the vision, not rejoice.
But human weakness is God's opportunity. I know that out of this will
be born something according to His will. If only we have the courage
to reach out and seize it!
Out of chaos can come order. And chaos is here in Scotland once again,
as I foretold. The strongman Bothwell is being crowned with honours
for his evil ways. Even now the Queen has made him Lord of Shetland!
Yet the Psalmist says, "Arise, thou Judge of the World, and reward the
proud after their deserving. Lord, how long shall the ungodly, how
long shall the ungodly triumph? Wilt thou have any thing to do with
the throne of wickedness, which imagine th mischief as a law?" And the
faithful Lords of the Congregation are even now gathering, ready to
throw off the oppression of the evil pair!
His house was waiting, swept clean and tidied by one of the faithful
Lords, one of the few remaining in the city. It felt good to reenter
it, like putting on a favourite shirt that has been cleaned and made
ready. There was much work to do. He would, of course, have to
consult with John Craig that brave man! and gird his loins for the
coming battle. There were sermons to be preached, hearts to be
strengthened swords to be sharpened. The hour had come.
"And tell me, when you refused to announce the banns, what did they
say?" Knox asked John Craig. They were strolling in the little garden
in back of Knox's house. It had not been kept up or planted this
spring and so its little paths were overgrown with weeds. But the
irises and poppies were springing up anyway, poking their slender heads
up above the weeds.
"Bothwell threatened me," he said. "He grabbed his sword, but she
stopped him. He is a blustering, loud-voiced thug."
"I know," said Knox. "But he was not always that way. Strange to say,
I have known him since his boyhood; in fact, my family were vassals of
the Hepburns. It is his father, that traitor, who abandoned him and
taught him the meaning of perfidy and made him into the hard man you
see today. As a boy, he was kind and spirited and imaginative. He did
not deserve the father he had." Knox sniffed. "Nor the wife he is
getting!"
"I tried to stop that," said Craig. "But of course they found someone
else to marry them."
Knox stopped walking and grabbed Craig's collar. "Think you that the
people are ready? Can they be toppled?"
"I have no doubt of it, sir."
"Ah. Then I am indeed come home."
That Sunday, at St. Giles, Knox walked stiffly to the pulpit. He had
felt old, weakened, lately. His joints had developed rheumatism, his
eyes were rheumy, and he had even noticed a disconcerting inability to
distinguish certain sounds. He hated to keep asking people to repeat
themselves, so he had begun guessing what they were saying, filling in
the missing word for himself. He was, after all, fifty-two years old.
But now, with a task to do, God had renewed his strength. It was just
as Isaiah said, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and
not be weary." With a feeling of physical well-being which he had not
experienced in years, he mounted the steep steps to the pulpit; he felt
as if he could almost take them two at a time.
The cathedral was filled, with crowds in every corner, and standing
behind every pillar. They stood in the niches where lately saints'
statues had stood, and turned their faces to him. He looked out at
them and gave silent thanks. Now, Lord, empower my tongue! he
prayed.
Gripping the sides of the pulpit, he began. "Dear brothers and
sisters, it is with great thanksgiving that I stand here again before
you. Since I have last stood here, on that grievous Sunday in March a
few days before the slaying of the Queen's wicked servant, that Riccio,
there has been more blood spilled in heinous crime. At last the Lord
has called me back, even at the peril of my own life. But so must it
be. I take as my text today the first book of Samuel, chapter fifteen,
verse thirty-five, and chapter sixteen, verse one:
"And the Lord repented that he had made Saul king of Israel. And the
Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have
rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and
go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me
a king among his sons."
Knox cleared his throat. Oh, it was so glorious to be restored to
power, if only to preach this sermon.
"Now this very thing has happened in our land. God has utterly
rejected and cast down the woman on the throne, because she has sinned
and turned to abomination. God has provided us with another king, the
Prince James.
In His goodness he has done this, allowing the harlot Queen to live
long enough to provide an heir for the throne. In His mercy, he will
not abandon us to the horror of civil war and fighting for the throne,
but has given us his blessing in this Prince, who is a goodly child,
for all his Romish baptism, and is being brought up and instructed by
the Lord Erskine, a faithful member of the Elect."
He sighed and looked over at the hourglass: it was the one that the
hateful Darnley had replaced after stealing the one from Calvin.
I should have taken it back before he died, thought Knox. Now no one
will ever know where it has gone. A sense of loss pervaded him.
There was still plenty of sand left in it. Perhaps he would not even
use up all his allotted time. He felt that he had already said what he
came to say. He could harangue the crowd about Mary and Bothwell, but
the important thing was to move ahead to the coronation of James.
Still, it would not hurt to remind the people of why this was indeed
necessary.
"I remember the day she came to Scotland do you? There was foul mist
everywhere, a warning from Heaven it wrapped her up like one of her
French cloaks, clung on her like one of her French poets, kissed her
cheeks freely like one of her courtiers and foreign spies...." He was
warming up now.
"And then, in the filth of her lusts, she seduced a married man, and
lay with him, and together they planned to murder her husband, which
was done with an explosion, and then a pretend-divorce was secured,
against the law of man and the church, that they might the better
indulge themselves in their sin. Are we to stand for this? Are we to
allow our nation to be so degraded and mocked in the councils of the
world? No one would permit such a ruler, would obey or honour such a
ruler, who is nothing but a whore!"
The people stared back at him and began moving around.
"Yes, I said a whore! There is no other word! Unless you prefer
harlot, Messalina, hussy, bawd, adulteress! Or perhaps you prefer
murderess? I say that whore in her whoredom should not be allowed to
live. Burn the whore! Burn the whore!"
The people began shouting. Was it in protest or agreement?
"Burn the whore .. . burn the whore.. It was in agreement.
"The law of the land calls for the burning of women who murder their
husbands. And in the Scripture, Deuteronomy twenty-two, verse
twenty-two: "If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both
the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the
evil from Israel."
"And this man, the Earl of Bothwell, the Scripture says of him, in
Exodus twenty-one, verse sixteen: "Anyone who kidnaps another and
either sells him or still has him when he is caught shall surely be put
to death."
"Malachi, chapter four, verse one: "Behold the day cometh, that shall
burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly,
shall be stubble."
"Sin upon sin, abomination upon abomination they must die!" yelled
Knox. "Let the dogs lick her blood, as they licked that of the evil
Ahab, and consumed Jezebel!"
"They must die," echoed the people, their voices swelling and filling
the dark nave.
As he fought his way through the surging crowd afterwards, Maitland
plucked at his cloak.
"The Lords of the Congregation are waiting at Stirling," he whispered,
covering his face. "They have an army."
Knox stared at him. "And you, sir?"
"I am with them. I will join them as soon as I may escape."
"Do not delay, lest you be numbered with the Queen and burnt along with
her." So the Queen's secretary was scurrying away, like vermin from a
house on fire. "Where.are they now?"
Maitland laughed nervously. "At a regatta in Leith, celebrating their
marriage."
Knox permitted himself a painful laugh.
FIFTY-FIVE
The waters sparkled, glittering under the ships dotting the surface of
the Firth of Forth, where Bothwell had assembled the fleet of Scotland:
galleons, car racks and merchantmen. The vessels were yare and
scrubbed, and the flagship was draped with garlands of flowers, ropes
as thick as a man's wrist that looped around the rails and over the
figurehead on the prow. The sails were white: a bridal ship for that
day.
"You are mad to have spent the money," said Mary, but she was pleased
nonetheless.
"It was not right for our marriage to pass uncelebrated," said
Both-well, "or unmarked by any ceremony or whimsy. Above all things, a
wedding demands some gesture of happy extravagance." He looked at the
sizable crowd gathered on the shore, staring out at the flotilla
bobbing on the water. "We cannot deny them a chance to share our
happiness with us."
The man was amazing: such steely calm in the midst of the hatred and
coming storm. Was he heroically brave, or did he just not
understand?