"They are just lately weaned," he said. "Lady Bothwell died before she
had meant them to be sent, but I took them anyway, before they could be
lost in the confusion."
Mary lifted out the black one. "What peculiar ears! They are
beginning to stick up like a sail!"
"Yes, in the mother they were spread out like two high sails atop her
head, just perched there. Of course the hair will get longer."
"Is it really as long as she said?"
"It drags the ground, Your Majesty."
She remembered the ones in the house on the moor. Yes, they had had
hair that looked like the caparisons of horses. She laughed. "They
are welcome in our household. But they will have to make their peace
with the French spaniels."
"French and Scots have ever had a strange marriage," said the
messenger.
"Tell me when and how did she die?"
"Of extreme old age, is the only ailment I know. She was always
healthy, and then just slowly began to fade. Like the colours of a
gown left out to dry in the hot sun; everything grows fainter. Her
skin got paler, her grip looser, her eyesight weaker .. . and her
hearing became very bad. Even the barking of the dogs she couldn't
hear! It took her longer to walk across a room, longer to wake up, and
then, one day, she didn't wake up. It was very simple, like a ripe
apple falling from a tree or rather, an overripe apple giving up the
ghost at last."
Mary crossed herself. "May God grant us such a comfortable death! An
easy death such a great gift! And did she know this was coming?"
"It would seem so, in the orderly way she took her leave of everything,
even down to providing for the puppies."
An easy death ... an orderly death .. . God must have loved her,
thought Mary.
The afternoon passed slowly as Mary Seton, Jane, and Marie did their
embroidery, sitting on their already embroidered stools around their
mistress. In this series of panels where, oh, where would they put
them? they were depicting animals, exotic ones. There was a toucan
from America, a unicorn, a monkey, and a phoenix. Mary herself was
working on a scarlet petticoat embroidered with silver flowers, which
she planned to send to Elizabeth. It was a very ambitious work,
involving an entire border of intricate flowers, stems, and leaves.
Perhaps it would soften Elizabeth's heart.
How could she actually wear something made with my own hands and still
not see me as a real, breathing person? Mary thought as she pulled the
hard silver threads in and out.
The sun warmed the chamber, and even with the casement windows wide
open, the women grew drowsy. Mary put aside her sewing and decided to
read instead. She had marked her place in Lancilot de Laik just where
Lancelot and Guinevere had become lovers. She was determined to get
through it for the first time since Bothwell had entered her life. She
had. hated knowing that after the falling in love came the reckoning
with King Arthur and then the sentence of burning.. ..
Burn the whore!
But they didn't burn me, she told herself, and Darnley was no kindly,
noble King Arthur.. ..
She found herself fighting sleep by the late afternoon and lay down to
rest. She knew she would fall asleep and hated to give in to it, for
it meant she would be up late again. The cycle must somehow be broken,
but there was no incentive to do so. The hours of captivity somehow
seemed friendlier and softer late at night, playing cards and talking
in low voices in the candlelight. It was easier to imagine she was up
late at Fontainebleau or Holy rood, surrounded by her intimates after
everyone else had gone to bed.. .. She slept, one arm across her eyes,
and dreamed of Lancelot and his lake, and the Lady of the Lake and
Arthur's sword, dripping with water, then with blood. She awoke with a
gasp.
Just then she heard the drumroll again from the outer courtyard. The
sound of evening; another day had dragged itself through and now was to
be locked away. Another day to be recorded and its good and bad totted
up, blemishes and brightnesses of souls to beam out for eternity. Some
people had died today and were even now having to face a roll call of
all their days this day that seemed so very ordinary to her. Be with
us now and in the hour of our death.
She forced herself to stand up, shake her head, clear it. It would
soon be time for supper, with its reduced number of dishes and lessened
ceremony. She had no appetite for it, but she must take her place at
the table.
After dinner, the ladies retired back to their chamber. Mary took up
Lancelot again until the household gathered for evening prayers.
Again they arranged themselves in the largest chamber and listened
while the priest intoned Psalms.
" "My God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me, and art so
far from my health, and from the words of my complaint?" "
The light was fading in the chamber, and they all kept silent and then
filed away back to their rooms.
There the women would read a bit, once again tidy their things, and
then, yawning with the intense debilitation of having done nothing all
day, take to their beds and try to sleep. Nau and Andrew Beaton would
go over their books, making neat entries in the proper columns, then
close them and put them away. Willie Douglas, Bastian Pages, Anthony,
the coachmen, the grooms, and the ushers would gather in a corner of
the gallery and play cards until late at night. Sometimes Mary and her
women would join them.
But not tonight.
My heart is so strangely heavy tonight, she thought, as she prepared
for bed. I do not wish to have any company.
She could hear sounds of the armed guards at their posts, keeping watch
over the entrance to the royal apartments, as they did every night when
the great outer gates were closed. Some of them were laughing and
talking. Why shouldn't they? she thought. They were young and the
night was warm and starry.
She lay down on the bed and lighted the single candle that was affixed
to her headboard. She closed her eyes and prayed to be able to sleep,
to let the hours pass unnoticed and uncounted.
In eight hours the morning drumroll sounded, and another day began.
One day in high summer, the tedium was broken after dinner when the
Earl of Shrewsbury paid a formal visit to Mary, being duly announced by
her page.
"Ah! My dear Shrewsbury!" Mary greeted him with uplifted hands.
She and Shrewsbury had a unique relationship. On the one hand, it had
all the cosiness of those living in close proximity, the camaraderie
that springs up in spite of itself in enforced companionship. On the
other, it had all the distrust of warden and prisoner, made more
complex by yet another factor: in acting as her gaoler, Shrewsbury had
doomed himself to a sort of house arrest himself, as he could never
leave and go to court. So she, in a sense, was also his gaoler. Beyond
that, there was always the unspoken knowledge that, in the twinkling of
an eye, in the sudden onset of fever, in a dry cough that turned into
something else, Elizabeth could die and Mary be Queen of England. It
might be his sovereign that Shrewsbury was now facing.
"Madam, I bring good news." He held out a letter.
Mary saw the green wax of the official English seal. She ripped it
open.
"She gives me permission to go to Buxton!" In her excitement, she
almost hugged Shrewsbury.
"I know." He held up his letter. "I am pleased."
Mary said, "I am so grateful."
"We can leave next week," he said. "I will make sure that your
quarters are in order. I look forward to it, Your Majesty." With a
shy smile, he bowed.
In her coach, bumping its way along the rutted excuse for roads, Mary
looked eagerly out at the countryside as she was transported the twenty
miles between Sheffield and Buxton. She was alone, except of course
for Mary Seton and Shrewsbury, who was riding along ahead, greeting all
the people who lined the road to glimpse their overlord.
He had ordered Mary to keep the shades drawn in the coach, not to stare
out, and above all, not to make any gestures to the people. But she
had rolled up one corner of the shades and peeked out. The closed
coach was drawing almost as much attention as if she had been leaning
out and waving.
"The Scots Queen!" they whispered, pointing. They stood on tiptoe and
tried to catch a glimpse inside. "Has anyone seen her?" they asked.
Little boys ran after the coach and tried to jump up on it, and had to
be shoved off by the guards. Shrewsbury was met with cries of "Show
her! Show your captive Queen!" He rode on, ignoring the calls, but
dreading the stir that was going to be caused in Buxton.
Queen Elizabeth had given lengthy and detailed instructions, but what
they amounted to was that Mary must be kept in strictest isolation. It
could not be helped that she would have an opportunity to see others
during her bathing times at the warm spring itself, but as for all the
rest of the socializing the walks, the games of bowling, the hawking
she was not to participate. There were to be no strangers coming and
going from Buxton, Mary must give an hour's notice preparatory to
leaving her rooms, and she was to have no visitors after nine at
night.
Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth herself would be on progress in the
Midlands, and might just might come to Buxton herself. If she did, she
would expect to find her instructions being followed to the letter.
Shrewsbury sighed. He did not know whether to hope she came, or hope
she did not.
The warm springs of Buxton were held to cure an array of illnesses,
from rickets to weak sinews, from ringworm to "hypochondriac winds,"
but were most known for the soothing of aching limbs. The waters here
were not scalding hot, as were the ones at Bath, and so were more
attractive to the infirm. They gushed from deep springs into a covered
bath house with marble seats built all around the pool, so that the
patients could sit and soak in the waters for two or three hours, while
their clothes were being aired. In addition to this the cure-seekers
were to drink the waters obtained from St. Anne's well, starting out
with three pints a day and working their way up to eight pints; the
various prescribed courses were fourteen days, twenty days, and forty
days.
After leaving the waters, and dressing in his freshly aired clothes,
the patient was expected to exercise. The stronger men could hawk,
shoot, and bowl; sicklier men and all women must confine themselves to
a gentle version of bowling that involved a board with slots.
Men at court like Cecil, who were unable to attend at that time, drank
from barrels of Buxton water specially sent down for medicinal
purposes. Dudley, too, was a devotee of the waters.
They arrived, and Mary was helped from the carriage into her quarters
in the new four-storey hostelry that could accommodate thirty people,
owned by Shrewsbury. In truth, Bess owned Buxton itself, and had
established a schedule of fees to be collected from the patients; half
was to be given to the poor, and the other half paid to the resident
physician on duty there. There was a buzz of voices; the lodge was a
busy place and a centre of activity. The buzz turned into silence as
the Queen of Scots made her way through the common rooms and up to her
apartments.