"Your Majesty!"
She gave a wild laugh. Then she turned back to the window and
continued to keep watch.
Melville took his leave, backing out of the audience chamber. The high
doors were closed behind him, and he turned and descended the wide
staircase leading to the ground floor. He emerged into the forecourt,
with each cobblestone a little island in the March slush, and began
treading his way carefully across it. What had come over the Queen?
She seemed possessed, not herself.
Riding through the gateway was Lord Darnley, on his big pale horse. He
was flipping an hourglass.
"Now Master Knox will have to trim his sermons!" he cried. "I have
switched it for one with less sand, by the pulpit at St. Giles." He
grinned and spread his black cloak like a magician.
From her window, Melville saw the Queen waving at Darnley.
NINETEEN
Mary and Darnley kept to themselves, in front of all the others, as I
they trotted along the road leading from Edinburgh to Stirling. It was
a bracing March day, clear and haunting, with winds that seemed to have
raided winter's larder and found it empty, triumphantly proclaiming an
early spring. Already the hawking and hunting would be good at
Stirling, and even if they were not, Mary felt that she must escape the
confines of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh where Knox all but reigned, where the houses huddled darkly
together like gossiping women, where her spirit felt stifled. The
Lords of the Congregation were the true lords of Edinburgh, and their
hands were heavy upon it.
But outside, away in the countryside, ah! what space, what colours,
what clean wild wind. Stirling lay some thirty-seven miles to the
northwest of Edinburgh, if one followed the Firth of Forth until it
became just the River Forth. As the river became shallower, it turned
silver, and reflected the March sky with all its shades of grey-blue
and racing clouds. The land around it was just shedding its
mole-coloured winter coat, and an iridescent shade of green was already
visible in certain lights.
"The hawks will be waiting?" asked Darnley. "I had a wonderful falcon
in England, but I had to leave her."
"These are from the Orkneys. You will be pleased with them." She
turned around in the saddle and saw the rest of the party a hundred
yards back, all strung out in a brightly coloured line: the three
Marys, Riccio, Melville, and the Lord James. The servants, musicians,
churchmen, and chamberlains had gone on ahead to prepare the royal
quarters.
"Will they obey me?" he asked.
"Of course. Will they not recognize a true prince?" She leaned across
her saddle and kissed him.
Ah ... his kisses .. . We must be married soon, she thought, or I shall
surely fall into sin. I think of him and his body even in my sleep,
when I am supposed to be resting.
"How much farther?" Darnley was asking.
"It is not far until we reach Stirling Bridge. Where "
"Where Wallace defeated the English in 1297. Pray do not give me
another history lesson. Just because you have felt obligated to
memorize every fact about Scottish history, pray do not bore me with
it."
His flip words annoyed her. And what of his speech about feeling
Scottish? "It is your history too, or so you claimed. And if you are
to be King "
"King of the present, not of the past."
"Still, you should learn the rudiments of Scottish history," she
said.
"Ah, you sound like a schoolteacher." He frowned and put on a begging
aspect. " Tis true you are three years older and a queen, but I am
loath to be your pupil."
"What would you be, then?"
"Your husband, your lover, your lord, your friend."
"All these .. . can one person be all?"
"In an ideal world. Which we will make."
They approached Stirling Castle, rearing two hundred and fifty feet
from the plain like a gigantic mushroom. The sides of the cliff served
up the castle like an offering. It was massive, grey, an apparition
from Camelot. There were battlements, bastions, portcullises, and
cannon; there were royal apartments, a ceremonial great hall, a lady's
lookout bower, formal knot gardens, a royal park for the breeding of
deer, and jousting grounds: a self-contained dream world of
knighthood.
"I spent my childhood here before I left Scotland," Mary told Darnley.
"It was not safe for me to be anywhere else. King Henry VIII's
soldiers were invading our land and trying to kidnap me."
"You had to take refuge here? You could not live anywhere else?" He
sounded incredulous.
"Yes. I was born at Linlithgow, the palace we passed on our way here.
But within a few months I was brought here, to Stirling. I was crowned
Queen here, in the Chapel Royal, when I was only nine months old."
"Which, I take it, you cannot remember."
"No. Of course not."
"What a pity. To be crowned a queen, and not remember it." He
frowned.
"We stayed here all the time, my mother and I, and the Marys. And some
of my half brothers and sisters .. . James was here, and Robert and
John Stewart, and Jean Stewart. And while we played, and rode our
ponies, and had our lessons, Henry VIII was destroying our land. At
one point the English came within six miles of Stirling, and so my
mother and I fled to a little island in the Lake of Menteith."
"How boring."
"No, it was lovely. There was a monastery there, and " And it was a
special time, a private time I cannot describe, even to you. I am not
sure it all really happened as I remember it.
"Monks!" He made a face. "But then what happened?"
Could he really not know? "Henry VIII died, but it was no release for
us. His successor, Edward VI, let them continue plaguing us. His
foremost general, Edward Seymour, led troops right up near Edinburgh.
There was a big battle, the Battle of Pinkie Clough, and the Scots
lost. Then my mother and everyone knew that the Scots could not
withstand England on their own. We had to sell ourselves to France."
How ugly that sounded. She had never recited all these things out loud
before, had never heard their ominous, leaden inevitability. "So I was
promised as a bride to the Dauphin, in exchange for French protection.
The French King sent a royal ship for me. And so I went to France. And
there I grew up, married the Dauphin "
"And ended up back in Scotland," he finished. "Thirteen years
later."
"But the whole world changed in those thirteen years. Two new rulers
for England "
"And a new one for Scotland. The Reformed Kirk," said Darnley. "It
rules with a heavy hand."
"Aye." Its hand was sometimes heavier than she felt she could bear.
"But its hand lies mainly in Edinburgh. Here we are free of it."
"Yes. Except for " he jerked his head toward the Lord James, far in
the rear. "Why ever did you bring him along?"
"He wished to come. And he works hard. "Yet the labourer is worthy of
his hire." "
Darnley made a face. "I do not like Bible quotes, even in jest."
They passed through the outer de fences and over a ramp leading to the
gatehouse with its huge, drum like towers guarding the entrance to the
castle, and attained the height of the rock. The wind tore at them.
Mary Fleming's hat blew off and tumbled quickly across the paved stones
before being sucked ut over the battlements and disappearing.
"Oh!" she cried, astonished at the speed with which it happened.
"Gone to grace some townsman's wife," said Lord James. "An act of
charity."
Mary assigned Darnley to the King's apartments, which caused the entire
company to whisper, as she had known it would. But she could not help
herself. Why should she place him in the crowded west wing of the
royal apartments, when the gracious and well appointed King's
apartments stood empty?
Stirling boasted a fine set of double apartments for the Queen and
King, with adjoining bedchambers. James V had built the facilities
only two years before his death, and he had been proud of all the
fashionable features: the series of three chambers in increasing
degrees of privacy, leading to the conjoined bedchambers in the eastern
wing, the private closets off each bedchamber, with work quarters and
bathrooms, the high ceilings in the King's Presence Chamber, decorated
with carved round els The view from the Queen's apartments showed all
of the countryside out beyond the castle, and let in the morning
light.
Marie de Guise had kept the King's apartments shuttered and silent, and
had let no one pass into them. It was her way of mourning. Mary
remembered that she had once ventured into them and received a scolding
all out of proportion to her offense. The rooms had been dark and
filled with dust, and the big carved heads on the ceiling had looked
like monsters. She had not wanted ever to go there again, but had
harboured a secret fear that her father's ghost or skeleton was there.
But upon her return to Scotland, she had ordered the King's apartments
opened, aired, and painted, and today they were sumptuous and
inviting.
They settled into their assigned quarters. Mary ran through hers,
finding all in order, and hesitantly knocked on Darnley's connecting
door. He flung it open.
"No spies," he whispered, taking her in his arms. "Is it not a
miracle?"
Alone, after dinner, the royal party having said its good nights,
Darnley felt safe when he closed his door. He looked around the room,
with its gilded furnishings and its high bed with elaborately
embroidered hangings and valances fringed in gold. This was the King's
room, and he, Henry, Lord Darnley, was soon to be King. King of
Scotland. That for Queen Elizabeth and her mouldy old court!
He sat quietly for a few moments, listening for any noise. Had
everyone truly settled down for the night? Mary was not likely to come
seeking him; she had looked almost apologetic as she told him how tired
she was. Still, he waited. Then he got up and made his way across the
chamber to open his travelling bag. Inside was something he wanted
very much.
He felt around his other personal belongings, his ledger, his writing
materials, his medicines which his mother had packed for him ("Never be
without them!" she had said sternly) for his coughs and rheums, his
sleeping mask to combat his insomnia, until he found it, gurgling as
sweetly as a babe in its swaddling clothes. He drew it forth: it was a
flask of whisky, the legendary drink up here. Oh, how he had longed to
try it! Now he had managed to obtain a bottle from the accommodating
Earl of Atholl.
Eagerly he twisted off its cap and took a giant swallow of it. It was
so much stronger than the wine he was used to that he felt as if a fist
had smashed into his chest, and he coughed. He could not believe a
liquid could have such strength; even poison would be gentler, he
thought.
Neither was he prepared for the fact that the whisky seemed to race
from his stomach into his brain. It felt as if he had poured it
directly into his head.