"This is not wise," is all I cautiously allowed myself to say. And
indeed it is not. I realize that His Holiness Pius V is anxious to
draw the battle lines between the two religions, but he dwells already
in the heavenly realm in his mind, and pays too little attention to
earthly considerations. Had this bull been published before the
Northern Rising, then it might have had some effect. Now all it will
do is subject all Catholics to more hardship and suspicion. Years ago,
his predecessor, Paul IV, declared Elizabeth a heretic and recognized
me as the rightful occupant of the throne, but he did not so blatantly
call upon her subjects to depose her This is a slap in Elizabeth's
face, the other was just a gentle finger-shaking.
"Wisdom does not reside at Rome!" Shrewsbury said righteously.
After he left, I prayed before my crucifix a long while, praying for
James although I knew it was not a form of prayer he liked! But we
must pray each in our own way. I closed my eyes and thought of my
brother as he had been long ago, drawing a veil across the present.
"Eternal rest grant him," I asked.
But now that the shock is over, and I have had a few hours to recover,
I cannot help wondering is the way perhaps cleared now for my return to
Scotland? Might the Lords now call me home? Without Lord James at
their head, they might prove kinder. And perhaps they will discover,
as they did before, that they need their Queen.
FIVE
Mary held the reins as tightly as her stiff fingers would permit as she
directed her horse to trot out of the gates of Chatsworth and onto the
path leading to her next residence of incarceration, Sheffield Castle.
During the Northern Rebellion, she had been moved thirty-five miles
south from Tutbury to Coventry for safekeeping. After the flight of
the earls and the collapse of their rebellion, she had then been hauled
over fifty miles north again to one of Shrewsbury's mansions,
Chatsworth. Now, in November of 1570, a year since the rebellion, she
and her entourage were to be moved yet another fourteen miles to
Sheffield, where the Earl had two residences: the castle and a manor
house about a mile away. That way she could be transferred back and
forth between the two whenever one of them needed cleaning.
Gradually her company had achieved some semblance of permanence. She
had her physician Bourgoing, a surgeon, an apothecary, an embroiderer,
her tailor Balthazzar, grooms of the chamber, ladies of the chamber
like the faithful Mary Seton and Madame Rallay, with Jane Kennedy and
Marie Courcelles to replace the lost Marys, and secretaries like Claud
Nau, all under the supervision of John Beaton, her Master of the
Household. She had her secret priest. She had Bastian Pages to
provide whatever entertainment was possible under the circumstances.
She had a kitchen staff of eight, a coachman, and three grooms of the
stable. Unfortunately she was not allowed to travel anywhere. Some of
her partisans, like Lord Boyd and Lord Claud Hamilton, had returned to
Scotland, but she still had Willie Douglas, John Leslie, and the
Livingstons.
She and the Shrewsburys were settling into the strange semi-friendship
of the keeper and the hostage; they exchanged gifts and pleasantries,
shared confidences and news of neutral personalities, became involved
in the minutiae of each other's everyday lives. Bess and Mary worked
together on the decorating and furnishing of Bess's estates, Mary even
writing to France for patterns and embroidery thread, but Shrewsbury
having to read the letters before sending them on. Mary had not
succeeded in finding any partisans within Shrewsbury's household such
as she had at Lochleven; the only stalwarts she had in her service were
those she had brought herself.
They were watched, but nonetheless Mary had managed to find ways to get
and receive correspondence. Norfolk had been released from the Tower
and put under house arrest in the summer, having made a written oath to
cease and desist from any communication with Mary or any marriage
schemes. But he had immediately disobeyed, and once again secret
letters between them were passing in packets of sewing silks and
foodstuffs, written in orange juice that was invisible until it was
held up to the heat of a flame.
But the failure of the native uprising in England meant that there
could be no deliverance for her without outside help either French or
Spanish. All the rebels in England had been so harshly punished that
for all intents and purposes there was no longer any local hope of
deliverance. Therefore she had been forced to begin negotiations with
the Spanish through a papal agent, the banker Roberto Ridolfi. The
Pope's excommunication of Elizabeth and his bull depriving her of her
throne had whipped Englishmen across the board into a frenzy of
Pope-and-foreigner-hating. Ridolfi, who had originally come to England
with Philip, and as something of a financial wonder child, had remained
as a court adviser to the likes of Cecil himself, had been investigated
by Walsingham after the Northern Uprising, but had passed muster.
Still, the times were chancy for any foreign involvement.
In the meantime, her party in Scotland was dwindling. Dumbarton
Castle, under Lord Fleming and the Hamiltons, still held out, and in a
surprise move, a repentant Maitland he was not called "the Chameleon"
for nothing, Mary thought had converted Kirkcaldy from the party of the
Lords and they both had taken over Edinburgh Castle, which they were
now, in an about-face, holding for Mary. But the assassination of Lord
James had done nothing to facilitate Mary's return.
Oh, I thought perhaps they would relent, the Lords, she lamented. I
thought that Lord James was my chief enemy in Scotland. But no, there
are many lesser ones. And Elizabeth Elizabeth convinced them to accept
the Earl of Lennox as their Regent! She is determined to keep me pent
up here why?
Lennox as Regent. Bite would not be Pate if she did not hold
surprises. But Lennox!
Sad as Mary was, there was one good aspect of it: for the first time,
little James would be in the everyday company of a relative. The poor
boy, four years old now, had been treated as an orphan by everyone.
Pray that Lennox does not poison his grandson's mind against me, Mary
thought. I know he cannot say good things of me, for he hates me, but
if God will have mercy on me, He will restrain Lennox from mouthing
evil about me.
Little James. She had sent him a gift of a pony and a little saddle,
with a letter telling him how she loved him, but she had had no reply.
Had he ever received her gift and letter? Would she ever know?
They plodded along in the mists of late November, along Baslow Edge and
then across Totley Moor, where gold and green lay in interspersed
patches. A patina of purple heather softened the colours and blended
with the grey that was swirling everywhere. The sky was also grey, but
comforting, like an encircling arm. It looked enough like the moors of
Scotland to call the memories forth, but it was tamer, kinder. A man
would not be able to ride far enough here to hide himself.
For her, the moors would always be that ride with Bothwell.
They descended into the sheltered valley of the river Don, which made a
big, lazy loop, like a U. At the bottom of the U rose a hill,
surmounted by the castle to which they were going; also on the bottom
of the U, the much smaller River Sheaf joined the Don. The ground
beside them flattened out, and Shrewsbury, trotting up beside Mary,
pointed to one side.
" Tis the Assembly Green," he said. "Every Easter Tuesday I review the
town militia here. And across the road is the archery field." A great
flat brown ground lay torpid in the dead time of year.
"So archery is still practised here?" Mary asked. How outmoded, she
thought, when it is guns and knives now that do all the damage. Guns
from windows, and knives in the back. And poison in cups, of course.
Archery: noble and old-fashioned.
"Of course!" Shrewsbury said with a laugh. "Are we not near Sherwood
Forest? If all the rest of the world gives up the bow and arrow, we
are duty-bound to preserve it here or Robin Hood's ghost will haunt
us."
"I fear it will become just a game for children, or a sport for young
men."
"Never!" said Shrewsbury stoutly.
They went across a stone bridge with an old chapel on it; Mary saw that
the chapel was now used to store wool. By the banks of the river she
could see the ducking stool for gossips. Two signs of the Protestant
religion: the minding of everyone's business, and the use of holy
buildings for secular gain.
The party wound its way up the wagon road that led beside the castle's
tournament grounds and the ramparts. At the top of the hill they
turned and crossed the castle's drawbridge over the moat, entering the
forbidding area between two bastion towers. The mist curled around
them.
Mary felt her heart sinking. This was the most fortresslike of the
places where she had been kept. Perhaps it was the combination of its
location deep within England, its moat and hilltop site, its high walls
and inner and outer baileys, but this place seemed like the iron fist
of a fully armoured knight. The idea that she was anything but a
prisoner could not be sustained; only a prisoner would be lodged in
such a strongbox.
"Why, what a ... fair residence," said Mary, faintly.
Her apartments were on the northeast side, which looked down on the
wide loop of the Don and out over the castle orchards and the archery
field, across to the hunting park where the manor was. Huge oaks
dotted the hunting park, their trunks looking like barrels from this
distance. The leaves were all off, and so Mary could glimpse the red
brick of the manor house through the limbs of the trees.
The number of rooms was generous, and she could not complain of being
cramped. Her own privy chamber was large, with two fireplaces and
ceilings that were high enough that they allowed ample headroom even
for tall people. She tried to personalize her surroundings with her
tapestries and embroideries, and with miniatures of her relatives: her
mother, Francois, Darnley, baby James, Catherine de Medicis, the
Countess of Lennox, and Elizabeth. She set them up on a little table
of sandalwood that had been sent down from Scotland.
There was no miniature of Bothwell; the only one in existence had been
painted during his honeymoon with Lady Jean, and she retained it. Mary
assumed it was flung in the bottom of an old box, if not destroyed, and
her heart ached for it. Yet, much as she would have loved to have it,
she could picture him so perfectly in her mind that she consoled
herself with the thought that in some ways a painted image would only
damage and dull the one in her imagination.
She had a little portable altar, and that she set up in an alcove in
the privy chamber, grateful that she could do so openly.
She also had a globe and maps that had been sent down from Edinburgh,
and she spent many hours studying them, flying away in her imagination
to the lands that were just painted curves and lines. Paris was only a
name and a spot of brown, no different on the map from Lyons or Calais;
the magic did not lie on paper. She and her attendants played games
naming cities and rivers, as if to torture themselves. Rome and the
Tiber and Athens and Jerusalem ... all the places they could never go.
Or rather, that Mary could not: all the rest were free to leave; their
imprisonment was voluntary.