Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (175 page)

To simply sit in an inn, to have a cool mug of beer, to eat a meal:
Bothwell did all these with the wonderment of a child, as well. He had
never appreciated the glory of the most ordinary things like these. And
he had a feeling he would never behold them again.

He was unable to make anyone tell him anything about Dragsholm, other
than that it was a state prison, on the water, with Frans Lauridson its
keeper. A man named Olluf Neilson was his assistant. Neither man had
a title, which meant that the King had chosen keepers who were common
people and owed their loyalty only to him, Bothwell deduced. That did
not bode well for him, a nobleman. Such men often hated peers.

They approached Dragsholm, which reared up like a ship over the sea of
grain fields and woodlands on the landed side. With every jolt of the
wagon, the high keep seemed to grow higher, and the grey, forbidding
walls came into view. The little fortress was revealed at last.

The wagon halted before the heavily fortified gate, with its portcullis
and guardhouse. The guards checked their papers and then laboriously
pulled the doors open and let them rumble through.

There was a small, grassy courtyard and a bleak stone tower in one
corner. They waited until a man walked smartly over to them and said
something in Danish so rapidly that Bothwell could not follow. Papers
were handed to him, and he read them carefully. Only when he was
finished did he look up and observe Bothwell.

Their eyes locked. This man had narrow blue eyes and wrinkles at the
corners of his eyelids. He looked as if he had spent a large portion
of his time outdoors, perhaps even as a sailor. "Captain Lauridson,"
he said, nodding at Bothwell.

"The Earl of Bothwell," Bothwell answered.

More rapid Danish followed. Then Lauridson motioned to two soldiers
standing guard at the door of the tower. They came quickly over,
mounted the wagon, and, taking Bothwell by both arms, lifted him down.
Then they marched him over to the door in the tower.

He had only time to notice that the walls were very thick, and glance
up at the upstairs windows, before he had to step inside. It was cold
and dark in there, despite the brightness of the day outside. But in a
moment his eyes grew used to it. He could see light coming from the
upper rooms. He prepared to climb the steps.

"No!" They took his arms and turned him round. A third man pulled the
ring of a trap door in the floor; groaning, he opened up the heavy
stone lid.

"Here!" One of the men thrust a torch down.

There was a dungeon room, completely without natural light, waiting.
They lowered a ladder, and one of them descended. Then Bothwell was
made to follow. The cold hit him like an icy hand. He looked about;
there was a thick oak post in the middle of the room. The floor was
dirt.

"Now," said one of the men, and they forced him over to the post. He
fought as best he could with both hands tied behind him, but they
quickly snapped a short chain bolted to the base of the post onto his
leg iron. Thus shackled, he could only go halfway round the post, like
a chained bear. They cut his hands free and stood back.

The ladder creaked as Captain Lauridson descended. He strode over and
looked critically at Bothwell. "Now, my good friend, you may put any
hope of escape from your mind. The last man who tried it hanged
himself in despair after he was recaptured. He is buried right under
the gallows."

He raised his torch and stuck it in a wall bracket. "I will leave this
here so you may see your surroundings. It will burn another two hours.
Look carefully while you still may." He nodded. "Good day, Your
Grace."

The keeper and his guards climbed back up the ladder, and the stone
door clanged shut from above. Bothwell was left alone in the dungeon,
waiting for the darkness to swallow him up.

ELEVEN

The sound of the drumroll from the outer courtyard at its customary six
o'clock did not wake Mary; she had been lying awake since the hour
when, although it is still dark, night changes imperceptibly into
morning. Her pain kept her awake, the rheumatism and swollen joints
that were constant now, even in the summer.

But the drumroll meant that the rest of her household would now begin
stirring. Mary Seton would sit up promptly as she always did, as alert
as a soldier in the field, and rise from the bed where she always slept
near her mistress. The little dogs would stir, eager to be fed and
walked. In the connecting maze of rooms at Sheffield Manor, Mary's
secretaries, her physician, her pages and valets and femmes de chambre
would begin their unchanging round of duties: keeping a little court
that went through all the motions and protocol of a real court, but
which was invisible to the outside world. They performed their rituals
and tasks to no audience but themselves, for the aim of Queen Elizabeth
was that for all intents and purposes no one in the countryside should
be aware of the presence of the Queen of Scots in their midst.

She was not allowed to go beyond the great octagonal towers that
guarded the gates of the manor, and no one was allowed in to see her.
So she kept state in isolation, a Queen with no audience to grant in
her audience chamber, and with only her own presence in the presence
chamber with its throne and cloth of estate. Male courts-in-exile had
traditionally been busy places; but the only female court-in-exile in
European history was a tomblike establishment, sealed shut.

Mary Seton was removing the covers on the bird cages, and immediately
the turtledoves and barbary-fowl began cooing and chirping. Mary's
aviary was growing: the Guises sent her tame birds, and Philip promised
to send canaries and parrots, although he had not. Philip was slow to
keep all promises. "If Death came from Spain, we should all live to a
very great age," went a common saying. It was frustrating to continue
to importune Philip, but she dared not cross him. Perhaps someday the
canaries would come.

"Ah, Seton, good morning," said Mary, rising from the bed. Her knees
throbbed and hurt as she put her weight on them.

Seton brought over two dresses for her to choose from: one was stark
black, the other grey, trimmed with jet braids. Mary started to choose
the black, but Seton said, "Oh, Your Majesty, 'tis a warm June day! Be
a little lighthearted! Choose grey!"

Mary smiled and agreed. She never wore colours anymore; all her gowns
were black, white, grey, or violet, the colours of mourning. She
softened the costume with a long, filmy white veil that fell below her
shoulders. But then she always added a heavy piece of religious
jewellery: a huge gold rosary, an Agnus Dci of rock crystal engraved
with the Passion.

If only Ronsard could now behold me, she thought. If only anyone could
now behold me. I go through the motions of my life completely
concealed from the eyes of the outside world. Would Ronsard even
recognize me as I am now? He remembers the girl at the French court;
the black-clad captive invalid is another person entirely. I do not
even show my own hair anymore; as if it, too, were in mourning, it
never grew thick again after I cut it. And now it is growing grey,
although I am only thirty-two.

Ronsard had addressed a poem to Queen Elizabeth. It went:

Queen, you who imprison a Queen so rare,

Soften your wrath and change your mind,

The sun from its rising to its sinking to sleep

Views no more barbarous act on this earth!

Peopk, your degenerate lack of will to fight

Shames your forebears, RenauM, Lancelot, and Roland,

Who with glad hearts took up ladies' wrongs

And guarded them, and rescued them where you, Frenchmen,

Have not dared to look at or to touch your arms,

To save from slavery such a lovely Queen!

Elizabeth was angered at this poetic call to arms, and had Mary guarded
more strictly than ever. But she need not have concerned herself about
the French. Their treaty with her showed that they would never stir
for Mary.

"I will wear the red-brown wig today," she told Seton, and seated
herself to have her hair dressed. Seton was adept at pinning up Mary's
hair after carefully brushing it and massaging the scalp and adjusting
the wig, curling the strands of hair until it looked entirely natural.
No one in the outer rooms knew the hair was not her own. Anthony
Babington was always praising its lustrous beauty. If only it were
hers!

Once it was, she thought. Once my hair was as beautiful as you believe
it now is.

Anthony had remained her page, although he was fast approaching the age
when he would be sent away. He was fifteen now, grown tall and
staggeringly handsome with vivid black-and-white colouring. She and he
had worked together on all manner of smuggling out messages: stuffing
them into high-heeled slippers in place of hollowed-out cork, inserting
them between layers of wood in trunks and coffers. They devised a
method of sending messages in books, in which the invisible writing was
only between the lines on every fourth page; the books so treated bore
a green satin bookmark, and were included in a shipment of other books.
Alum-treated cloth would always be an odd length, to mark it for the
addressee. Anthony reveled in these games, for he saw himself as a
knight helping a captive queen as Ronsard had begged his laggard
countrymen to do.

Anthony believed she would be rescued. Did she? Or was it merely
something she felt duty-bound to keep trying, as if to give up entirely
would be to wither into nothingness? Since the Parliament that had
cried for her death, and caused the Duke of Norfolk to go to his, her
life had been relatively quiet. In the three years since then, there
had been no rescue attempts, no plots, no plans. The only thing that
had become startlingly clear was that the only possible help would come
from Spain. The native English sympathizers had not the strength to do
it, as the Northern Rising had proved, and the French, awash in their
religious wars, were drowning in their own blood.

And so she dutifully courted Philip as her rescuer, her hope. She had
grieved for the Duke of Norfolk, although she had never met him. He
had represented her one chance to make a respectable exit from her
confinement, and with him perished her only English escape route. Now
she was forced into what the English would call treason dealing with
the Spanish.

But letters were only letters, and so far nothing had happened to
disturb the placid succession of days in Sheffield.

Abroad, death continued to cut down the Valois: Charles IX died of a
wasting disease some said of anguished remorse for the St.
Bartholomew's Day Massacre and was succeeded by Henri III. And Mary's
uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, went to meet his Maker, trailing
satins and silks and perfumes. Heaven or Hell would be a more refined
place now.

The bell was ringing softly, calling the household to prayer. Mary and
her attendants went out into the presence chamber, which was the
largest room available to them, and waited while the rest of the
forty-odd members came in. There was Bourgoing, the physician; Andrew
Beaton, the brother of John, who had died since their exile; Bastian
Pages; Claud Nau; Andrew Melville, her master of the household;
Gourion, her surgeon; Gervois, her apothecary; Balthazzar, her old,
infirm French tailor; Anthony Babington; and Willie Douglas, a grown
man of twenty-two now. Her women Seton, Jane Kennedy, Marie
Courcelles, and old Madame Rallay made a half-circle around her in
front of the French priest, Camille de Pr6au, who was officially in the
guise of an almoner and had replaced the English one.