She sat in a high-backed chair with a cloth of estate over her head: a
makeshift throne. The first person to be brought in was the notorious
Willie Kerr, the father-in-law murderer.
"William Kerr, Laird of Cessford, you have been accused of killing your
wife's father in the most heinous way, smiting off his head and arms by
the axe. In addition to violating your marital duty and the Fourth
Commandment to honour one's father and mother you have violated your
spiritual duty, for the man was an abbot as well, and had even baptized
your sons," recited the secretary, reading off the accusation
matter-of-factly. "Judgement and sentence now rest with your sovereign
Queen."
The man looked so ordinary. His shock of brown-and-grey hair stood up
as if in fear, and his lined face was resigned, as it had been resigned
to border raiding, warfare, burnings.. ..
"Mercy, Your Majesty!" he cried, flinging himself to his knees. "I
sinned, I committed murder, but I repent! And my wife .. . she hated
her father, he beat her and misused her, until she was so in fear of
him she trembled at the sound of his voice, or even upon hearing his
name. And besides what business does an abbot have fathering
children?" He stood up and his spine grew straighter and straighter.
"He was a sinner, and I punished him! He was a stain on the Church! Do
you wonder why John Knox and his mob have prevailed? It is because the
Church has been besmirched by such as the Abbot!"
The man spoke true. The Church of Scotland had been undone, not by the
greed of the King, as in England, but by the greed and ineptitude of
its own leaders here. Cardinal Beaton, this Abbot of Kelso .. .
"I but struck a blow for honesty and justice, Your Majesty!" he cried.
"Honesty in place of hypocrisy, abuse, and cruelty! And I stand ready
to die for it! My death will not have been in vain."
"You shall not die," Mary said. "For you speak true."
She heard Maitland and Lord James snort with disgust.
Mary retired at midday to take some nourishment. Ten prisoners had
been brought before her, and she had listened to their pleas. Not one
had been sentenced to death.
Lord James and Maitland were so disapproving they withdrew into their
own chambers and would not eat with her, although if she commanded
them, they would have obeyed.
How can I sentence anyone to die who upholds his conscience? Mary
asked herself. Kerr was right in what he said about the Abbot. But he
was wrong to take the punishment into his own hands. It is hard to
refrain; God is very slow to act, if we leave it to Him, as we are told
to do.
She began picking at her platter of roasted partridge and cabbage. She
had no appetite, not since the news from the Borders.
A knock on the door.
"Enter," she said.
A burly man, so heavy that his own flesh warmed him and therefore he
had no need of mantles or capes, came in.
"I am one of Lord BothwelPs men," he stated. "There is glorious news!
The Earl lives!"
"What?" Mary stood up, shaking.
"The Earl lives! We brought him back in a cart, all bloody and cold
... so cold, the blood on his wounds had congealed, and he seemed not
to breathe. But before we reached the Hermitage, he stirred. His
wounds were not mortal." He threw up his hands. "And today he opened
his eyes and inquired whether Your Majesty had been informed of his
death. When we said yes, he ordered me to go immediately to tell you
he lived. He seemed to care for nothing else. At least, not first."
"He lives?" The man must be imagining it.
"Aye. He lives and mends, on the hour."
"Is he himself ?"
The man laughed. "Indeed. He joked about Jock and was delighted he
had not escaped. "Ah, there's something to be said for the lowly
dagger," he said. "When pistols and swords fail you, it's nice to lay
hold of a dagger in your belt." "
"Then he must be allowed to take his own time to mend. We shall come
when the justice court is over."
For nine days she stayed at Jedburgh, administering justice. Daily she
received bulletins about the progress of Bothwell. He had his arm in a
sling. He ate three full meals. He went out in the forecourt of the
Hermitage and talked to his men. He directed them on their raids.
At last all the malefactors had been paraded before her for sentencing,
and she had not condemned anyone to death. Lord James and Maitland
were clearly worried about her decisions, and kept insisting that only
violence could cure violence.
"A fire is used to put out a fire," said Maitland. "These men
understand nothing else. Your mercy is misplaced."
"You did not hesitate to avail yourselves of it," she said pointedly.
"Why should the standards be different at court?"
"There is a difference between political disagreements and just plain
pillage and murder," said Lord James.
"Riccio's murder was bloodier than what happened to the Abbot of Kelso.
I see no niceties of difference, for all that the King's dagger had
jewels in its handle." She did not wish to continue this conversation.
"You have my leave to depart on the morrow. For myself, I will go to
the Hermitage. There is much business to discuss with Lord Bothwell,
if he is able."
"It is nigh thirty miles away," said Lord James. "You must start out
early." He again raised that questioning eyebrow. "So you mean to
ride over sixty miles in one day?"
"Why ever not?"
"Even in your flight to Dunbar, which was marvelled over, you only went
twenty-five. And now sixty, just to cheer a sick man?"
"I go not to nurse him, but to receive and give reports!"
"Of course," said Lord James. "Then we shall accompany you. That is,
if you will allow us to."
The dawn came up fair, but with an icy edge to it. They were in the
saddle just as the sun was breaking over the tips of trees that were
fast shedding their leaves.
Mary could hardly wait to be on her way. She wheeled her horse round
in the cold air and said, "Let us depart, then. Our guide will take us
by the shortest route!"
Out through the town's main street, past yet another ruined abbey, they
trotted, until, reaching the open fields, they could gallop. The
sheaves of grain glowed with frost, like ghostly sentinels, and the
fields were silver. Alongside the fields were orchards, half harvested
now. Ladders leaned against the trees, and baskets were scattered
about on the ground.
But farther on, the tidy fields and orchards were replaced first by
thickets and then by vast ranges of dun-coloured hills, with trickles
of water cascading down their steep, mossy banks. A few white
butterflies danced in the purple and brown heather and bracken, and
hawks soared overhead in the huge skies, but the area felt abandoned
and godless.
"Bog!" cried their guide, pointing to an area of thick reeds and grass
that looked deceptively like everything around it. They skirted it.
By now the sun had risen almost to mid-sky and the temperatures were
pleasant. They had been riding almost six hours.
"There!" he cried, pointing to a grey bulk on a rise two or three
miles away.
Even at that distance it seemed big, and as they approached, it loomed
larger and larger until it seemed like a portal to an ancient city. The
grey fortress seemed to grow until it blotted out the sky and eclipsed
the sun.
They approached the plank bridge that functioned as a drawbridge over
the moat, but the sentries had been alerted to their coming as soon as
they had been sighted at the crest of the hill. The portcullis was
raised, and the guards ran to tell their master.
"Come, he lies in here," said one soldier, leading them past dank rooms
where Mary could actually hear water dripping, and into one vaulted
chamber where a crackling fire in a cavernous fireplace tried to keep
the damp and dark at bay. Smoke filled the room, but it had a pleasant
scent.
Lying mounded under furs and wool blankets, with a boy seated on a
stool by his bed, Bothwell slept. As Mary approached him, she felt
such trepidation her legs and arms grew chilled. But why? She knew he
lived. She could see the top of his reddish hair, then, as she drew
closer, his rounded face, with the eyes tightly closed. Instead of his
usual tan, his face was pale and the colour of pear-flesh. She felt
chilled all the way through at the vision. He looked like a corpse.
Then he stirred. One eye opened, then the other. He did not look
pleased, or surprised, or comforted, to see her. The attendant brought
over a short, flat board to help prop him up, as Bothwell began pulling
off the covers with one hand and trying to use it as a lever to raise
himself.
"Pray do not strain yourself," said the boy, sliding the board
underneath his back and then stuffing blankets behind it.
Bothwell grunted and lowered his head until the boy was finished. Then
he looked up and said, "Welcome, Your Majesty. My Lord James, Earl of
Moray. Maitland." He ran his uninjured hand over his hair.
The movement, so telling of Bothwell, moved Mary in a way that words
never could. She was flooded with delirious joy at seeing this little
gesture, knowing that it described everything about him, everything
that she loved.
Yes, loved. At the same time that word, which seemed to speak itself
in her mind, sent a sickening feeling of doom through her.
Yes, I love him, but there can be nothing but shame and sorrow in it,
and no good fate, she thought. In my very happiness lies embedded my
woe; they cannot be separated.
And had I not known this, I perhaps could have gone on as I was, as
Darnley's wife, wrestling with the ugly aftermath of his perfidy, and
the deep antagonism of the Lords toward me, she thought. The lean diet
of dullness, details, and depression could have been borne as a penance
for my earlier ignorance in Scotland, when I first came, and even for
the unthinking pleasures of my days in France when, idle and young, I
passed what seemed to be perpetual summer. But now ... I cannot go on
... not as I was. Yet what I shall become, I fear to discover.
"We heard you were dead," Mary said quietly.
"Then I trust this is a happy surprise," he said. His voice, weak at
first, became stronger.
"No surprise," said Mary. "We were relieved to hear by the next day
that you were only injured, but not mortally."
"He woke up in the cart," said the bedside boy. "There we were,
transporting the bloody corpse in this cart that was lurching and
thumping and getting stuck every ten yards, when suddenly he groaned
and moved. Well," he said with a gleeful laugh, "we ran! Have you
ever had a corpse come back to life? It was only when we heard him
cursing we knew it was no ghost."
"Cannot ghosts curse?" asked Both well. "I should imagine those are
their first words. After all, who wants to be dead?"
Mary saw that his left hand was heavily bandaged, and that the bandage
wrapping his head was soaked through with bloody fluid.