Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (101 page)

"You saw me then?" she kept asking.

"I watched for you. I even went to some of those wretched jousts, just
so I could see you. And there you would be, surrounded by the Guises
and the Valois, shining above them all. I thought you were ... an
angel." He laughed as if it were a sad lost treasure.

"You were not there when the King was killed?"

"No. I came back to Scotland by the time I was twenty-one, when I came
into my inheritance. That was before your marriage." Now his lips
were very close to her ear; he was almost kissing it.

"I love you; do not desert me," she said, burying her face in his
shoulder. She kissed his neck, and felt him shiver.

He kissed her ear, as she wanted him to; she turned her face to his and
sought his lips. He did not hesitate, but kissed her with a passion
all the fiercer for having been fought against.

"Love me and share my fortunes," she whispered. "I cannot leave
you."

"We cannot be together, but we cannot be apart," he said. "This is an
exquisite torture." He let her go. "I know not what to do, where to
go, even how to exist like this."

"You said your code would not permit it. I understand that ... I
honour it. At the same time I cannot bear it."

"But I cannot even live up to it!" His face was filled with anguish.
"And what happens to a man when he cannot live up to his own code? Does
love compensate or reward him? I do not know. No one in Scotland has
ever done such things for love; we have no tradition of great lovers.
There are no Scottish Tristans and Isoldes, no Lancelots and
Guineveres, no Parises and Helens, no Antonys and Cleopatras."

"Then we will be the first. I shall be proud to be."

"To act like pagans?" He sank to his knees and stared at the Turkish
carpet before the fire. "The infidels make objects of great beauty,"
he said. "Even their carved swords are engraved and studded with
precious stones. The tiles of their mosques and dwellings are traced
in patterns and fired to preserve them." He looked up at her. "The
world is wide, my lady."

She knelt down beside him. "Nay. It is very narrow. It is only here,
in this chamber, where we are."

"Our tragedy is that it is not. Surrounding this little chamber is
Scotland, and it is not very forgiving of its sinners. In order to
reach the wider world, we must flee through Scotland, where we will be
stoned and treated as criminals. Is that what you wish?"

"No. But I believe that somehow we can avoid that. The fates will be
kind, Bothwell. They have to be."

"All lovers think that. But it is not fate we must contend with, but
people. Fate is nothing but the sum total of what other people do."

It was now fully dark in the chamber. The castle entertainment would
be beginning soon.

"Mary," he said, "if we are to survive in this world of people and
harness them to serve as our 'fate," we must be cold-blooded with
everyone save ourselves. Have you given any further thought to what I
suggested? Morton and Lindsay and the other exiles? Will you call
them back?"

"Yes. If you advise it," she said. "But I will never allow the three
worst ones back!" she cried. "Not the foul George Douglas the
Postulate, who stabbed Riccio over my shoulder, nor Patrick Bellenden,
who aimed his rapier at my breast, nor Andrew Kerr of Fawdonside, who
tried to fire a pistol into my side. I shall never permit them entry
into Scotland. No, never!"

"As you decree," he said. "Your mercy is great."

Just then a popping sound reached them. She ran toward the window.
"The castle!" she cried. "It is exploding! Oh, look!"

He came over to the window and watched as the walls of the mock castle
on the green below, glowing yellow in the light of internal fires,
began to collapse. Fiery balls flew from the ramparts and exploded on
impact, sending up clouds of sparks. Then, suddenly, the structure
blew up, sending cartwheels of fire and colour out into the night.

FORTY-TWO

Darnley paced the spacious floor of his sumptuously appointed room,
walking nervously from one end to the other. Every so often he glanced
up at the ceiling with its carved round els almost lost in the
deepening shadows.

There they are, he thought. The things that Lord James frightened her
with when she was a child. Oh, she told me all about it ... when she
enjoyed talking to me. Yes, there was a time and not so long ago,
either when she would spend hours telling me about herself, her
childhood, her secrets.

And now she won't even come near me, let alone talk to me!

Anger ripped through him and he stopped at a table in the middle of the
room to pour himself a tall goblet of wine. Maybe this would make him
feel better. God, he felt terrible his joints ached and he had a
perpetual headache. But did she ever come to inquire after his health?
No!

Not even when I sent word I would not be attending the baptism, he
thought. If anything should have piqued her curiosity, or alarmed her,
that should have. But she went right ahead entertaining the English
and French and the churchmen and God knows who else. Here at Stirling,
where we were secretly married! She even ordered my silver plate
removed to use at the banquet.

The bitch!

He smacked his palm down as hard as he could on the tabletop. It
reverberated up into his head and intensified the throbbing there. He
felt sweaty. He ran his hand over his forehead and was horrified to
feel tight little bumps all across it. With a yelp he snatched his
hand away, and went scurrying for his hand mirror. Extracting it out
of its embroidered case, he held it up anxiously and peered at his
face. Strange granular lumps were sprinkled not only across his
forehead, but also on his cheeks.

They looked horribly familiar. He had seen such blemishes on the faces
of some of the women at the brothel .. . but never anyone that he
himself had trafficked with. And there had been that irritation on his
privates, but it had healed over.. ..

Even as his thoughts raced frantically, he had a stab of fear in his
inmost gut.

Syphilis. I may have syphilis!

White-hot anger tore through him.

No! I don't deserve it! She does!

Perhaps he had given it to her? A chortling sense of relief waved
through him.

But no. They had not been together for months.

He sank down on his stool, stunned. He was astounded to find that his
first thought was, Now we shall never be together again! He felt all
the loss of the world in that realization.

I love her! Why does she not love me?

He burst into tears, and started sobbing into his hands.

Why did she turn against me? For Riccio? But I begged her to forgive
me, and I led her to safety.. .. Because of my drinking? But I only
did it because of my torment over her! And the same with the whores!

No .. . it's because of him! Because of Bothwell! The way she rushed
to him at the Hermitage .. . the way she looks at him, I've seen that
look!

He saw a reddish glare coming from far below, and went over to the
window to see. Ear below, like a red flower on the carpet of snow, was
the castle, its thin paper-and-plaster walls glowing from within like a
lantern. Around the structure, a dark stain of milling people
surrounded it. Oh, yes, it was that stupid fireworks castle that she
had wasted so much money on she cared more about that than about him!

There were cheers as the flames leapt higher, and the knights within
fought back with fire-spears. Then, suddenly, the knights were running
out of the castle, waving their banners and yelling. The castle began
to bloom like an evil yellow flower, and then it flew apart, huge
chunks of burning material borne upward with swirls of fire. The crack
of an explosion blew a volcano of debris up into the sky like a giant
cannon.

I want to die, Darnley thought. I want her to die. If we cannot be
together, then I want us to die in each other's arms, and then I'll
know no one else can ever have her, and I'll die happy.

Another explosion rent the air.

Gunpowder will do it. It would take more to explode a house, but it
could be a small house, it needn't be a palace.. ..

And then she would die, die, die, the cruel Queen.. ..

"And you'll be mine forever," he whispered, watching the flames
buckling the flimsy structure.

FORTY-THREE

The ambassadors left Stirling; gradually the other entourages said
(their good-byes as well. During the week or so before they departed,
Mary revelled in the secret meetings she would arrange with Both-well,
whispering instructions under the very noses of her eminent guests.

Meet me in the Privy Chamber ... in the empty rooms left by the Earl of
AthoU ... in the tower chamber, the one that looks out over die King's
Knot.. ..

And he would be there, waiting, hungry for her, seemingly forgetting
his misgivings. In the cold places they could only embrace, and kiss,
and talk. But in the warmed chambers, before the beds had been taken
away and the servants always allowed time for the bedding to air they
could strip away all that separated them from one another, and delight
in their own nakedness. Mary would unbind her hair and let it serve as
her only mantle, and Bothwell would stroke and kiss it, caressing it as
if it had feeling. She would lie back, hanging her head off the side
of the bed, exposing the sweet arch of her long neck with its
transparent alabaster skin, and he could see the blood pulsing there.
Her whole body was slender and seemed, in certain lights, to be a
statue come to life.

"You are the goddess Ronsard proclaimed you," he would murmur, "but he
could only see you thus in his poetic imagination I hope!"

She would laugh. "I was swathed in white then."

"You are swathed in white now, in your exquisite skin."

Inhibitions seemed to have left him, along with his moral scruples.

But they could never meet enough; the difficulty of arrangements, the
need for watchfulness, the constant scrutiny prevented it. So to lie
together in a real bed, in a room with a fire, became a rare and
much-sought prize.

And there was always Lady Bothwell to be appeased, Lady Bothwell asking
questions, Lady Bothwell growing restless and eager to depart.

On Christmas Day, Mary called together the remaining lords: Lord James,
Maitland, Argyll, Huntly, and Erskine. She unrolled her pardon for the
exiles and read it slowly.

"They are all to return, under my forgiveness," she said. "You must
welcome your brothers back, and let us pray that this is an end to all
discord and strife."

That night Darnley, mounted on his favourite white horse, slipped away
from Stirling Castle and made straight for Glasgow and his father's
bailiwick.

FORTY-FOUR

The sun was sinking on Twelfth Night when Mary stood to one side as
Mary Fleming, her flamboyant Flamina, was wedded to Maitland. The
ceremony did not take place in the Chapel Royal, as there were not
enough guests to fill it, but in the Queen's Privy Chamber. Maitland
looked at her possessively. He had waited patiently for almost five
years, had waded through the problems of the age difference, and
weathered all the political upheavals that brought him now closer, now
further, from the Queen he claimed to serve.