Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (197 page)

It is no wonder the pagans always had an earth goddess, she thought.
Today even I feel her presence mellow, swollen, kindly. I see her in
the weighted grapevines and branches of the pear trees, bent with heavy
fruit. I feel her radiant touch in the sun on my cheek; I smell her
perfume in the flanks of these healthy horses; I hear her voice in the
cries and calls of the half-grown birds now leaving their nests and
learning to fly. In France they understood that to honour the classic
gods was not to be unfaithful to the true ones; in France .. .

If I go to France .. . No, do not think of it.

The hunters halted and gathered in one spot preparatory to blowing the
horn and loosing the hounds. Many knew this was her last opportunity
to refasten her bonnet and take a drink from her riding-bottle.

Suddenly a company of horsemen appeared on the horizon, riding fast.

They must be chasing someone, was Mary's first thought. But I saw no
one else on the road.

Then at once she realized: It was Babington! He had come for her!

But I am not ready, this is not the time, I wanted to hunt .. .

Fool! How ungrateful can you be?

She clutched her reins, preparing herself. Her heart was thudding.
This was not supposed to happen, not really, it had all been a game of
pretend.. ..

The men were approaching, and their speed was not slackening. Did they
mean to run Paulet and the guards down? There was a flash, the glint
of metal in the sun. The swords were out. She flinched, and turned
her head away.

She heard the thunder of the hooves, then voices. She raised her eyes
to see a thickset gentleman, dressed in an elaborate green-and-gold
costume, dismounting. He saluted Paulet, who seemed unsurprised.
Paulet then dismounted, and together they walked over to her.

"Sir Thomas Gorges, special emissary from Queen Elizabeth," announced
Paulet in a high, nasal voice.

"Madam!" cried the green-and-gold envoy in ringing tones. "The Queen
my mistress finds it very strange that you, contrary to the pact and
engagement made between you, should have conspired against her and her
State, a thing which she could not have believed had she not seen
proofs of it with her own eyes and known it for certain." He glared at
Mary.

"Sir, I know not what you mean, I have not "

"A horrible conspiracy against the life of the Queen has been
discovered, in which you have shared!" he cried. "As a result, I am
to conduct you to Tixall. You are under arrest, Madam!"

Nau and Curie had ridden over, taking their place on either side of
her.

"Away with them!" said Gorges. "They are under arrest, too! Take
them to the Tower!"

Soldiers immediately surrounded the secretaries and dragged them
away.

"Now, Madam, turn your horse toward Tixall!"

He nodded to one of the soldiers, who positioned his spear at Mary's
horse.

"Master Paulet, you knew of this!" Mary cried. "It was for this you
brought me here!"

The keeper just looked at her, and did not answer.

"I refuse to go! I refuse to go!" she cried. "You want only to
search my rooms, and steal my possessions, and plant false evidence
against me in my absence! You have no right, you know it is illegal!
You Judas!"

"I am no Judas," he said with an injured air. "I know whom I serve: my
Queen Elizabeth. I never pretended to be your friend, nor to serve
you. Indeed, it would be impossible to do so, as you are my own
Queen's enemy."

"No! It is not so!"

"Be quiet! Obey the orders, or I shall bind you and put you in a
carriage and transport you to Tixall. For, make no mistake, that is
where you are going!"

Gorges yanked on her horse's bridle. "Come!"

Surrounded by soldiers with bristling spears, Mary rode in silence
along the road to Tixall. Only her physician remained by her side; Nau
and Curie had been taken away.

Was she to be summarily executed? What was it this man had said? You
are under arrest. But the Act for the Queen's Safety what had it
specified? That anyone who had been involved in a conspiracy against
the Queen could be executed? Or was that the Bond? Yes, that was the
Bond. The Act had softened it to the extent of saying the guilty
parties must at least be examined before being executed.

But it did not say how official the "examination" must be. Perhaps
just a few rough questions from Gorges, the "official emissary," would
suffice for form's sake.

You have conspired ... a horrible conspiracy .. . those were his
words.

What was he talking about? Was it the Babington Plot, or something
else entirely? Was it even a real plot, or merely a manufactured one
for the government's purposes?

Her heart now seemed to have stopped beating, where just a few moments
earlier it had raced so fast she had felt faint. Her hands were
chilled, and all the warmth was gone from the summer afternoon.

You must be ready to die. It has come to this. Today is the day.

They reached the gatehouse of Tixall, a grey, three-storey decorated
box on the edge of the hunting park. Four octagonal towers, capped by
rounded roofs and stiff bronze pennants, guarded each corner of the
building. Beneath its arched Italian ate entrance they trotted, Mary
still as cold as death as she passed into the shadow.

"Courage!" said Bourgoing, the physician. "Queen Elizabeth is dead.
This is all only for our own protection, in case there are other
assassins about."

"No," said Mary. "It is this Queen who is dead."

They pushed her into a room of the older portion of the manor house,
and dragged Bourgoing away. The door slammed shut, and she was utterly
alone. There was no attendant, no servant, not even a guard. One
little room opened off the larger one, and there was no paper, no pen,
no books. And for once she did not have her cross or rosary with
her.

When darkness fell, a maidservant brought in one candle and placed it
silently on a table. Then she left and locked the door behind her.

Mary sank down on a small chair, so drained she could hardly move.

Here it is, she thought. It has come to this at last.

I knew it would, she answered herself. And it is all right; it is
acceptable.

I can bear it. Elizabeth still lives, and the plot came to nothing.
God has been merciful; He has spared me from being a murderess. Now I
will not have her death on my conscience. I failed in the test He had
set me, but He held me back from calamity. She crawled onto the bed
and fell asleep, deeply relieved.

For seventeen days she remained at Tixall. In a few days they allowed
two attendants to bring her a change of clothing. She asked to be
allowed to write to Queen Elizabeth, but Paulet who had stayed on at
Tixall to guard her refused.

During those seventeen days, she reviewed all her past life. There was
nothing to read, no distractions, no conversation, and the long hours
must be passed in thinking. When events were actually happening, there
seemed to be no pattern to them. But seen in retrospect, a pattern
emerged. Only at the end of a life could the pattern be discerned;
only then was there a completed weaving to be seen. And hers was this:
since the moment of her birth, she had been an inconvenient person, a
person who did not fit in, who ruined other people's tidy patterns.

She had been born a girl when her father longed for a male heir, a
princess when the realm longed for a prince.

She had French blood and a French upbringing, making her a stranger in
the land she was given to rule and hateful to her own people.

She was a Catholic ruler in a Protestant land, the only one such in the
world.

By sex, by upbringing, by religion, she was out of step with her own
people. Yet those three things could not be repudiated; they were her
very self.

She had tried to compensate for these shortcomings by marriage, but her
marriages rendered her even more obnoxious to her own people. They
would not tolerate a foreign prince, a Catholic, but the native sons
she married instead were unacceptable. One was too weak, the other too
strong.

She was peace-loving in a country where only ruthlessness and power
were respected. She had pardoned rebels instead of executing them;
after each plot she had allowed the traitors to creep back into
Scotland and into favour. She thought it was Christian kindness; they
saw it as weakness, and scorned her.

Lord James, Knox, Morton, Erskine, Darnley, Lennox .. . the list was
endless. Those she had treated kindly had betrayed her.

What were the duties of the Messiah, and therefore of all Christian
rulers? To preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for die
prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the
oppressed. Yet it was I who was blind, it was I who ended up
imprisoned.

After the final upheaval, it had become clear there was no place on
earth that even wanted her. There was no rest for her, no haven. Her
beloved France the country for which she had suffered so in her own!
would not lift a finger for her. Elizabeth of England, her kinswoman,
had found her too close in blood to dispose of, but too alien to
welcome.

To think of it: no place on earth where I can find a home! she came to
realize. Day after day she thought these melancholy thoughts,
cataloguing her failures.

On the sixteenth day she arose, and it was all different. She had had
one simple, revolutionary thought: My life is not over yet. By my
death, I may redeem it.

From far away, from her childhood in France, her mighty uncle Guise's
words returned to her.

"My child," he had said, touching her curls, "you possess the
hereditary courage of your race. I think, when the time comes, you
will well know how to die."

Know well how to die.

How did a person know well how to die? It was the one thing for which
there could be no rehearsal.

But it was also the one time all the eyes of the world were upon you,
if you died a public death.. ..

A public death! she prayed. Grant me a public death! That is all I
ask. Grant me a public death, and leave me to arrange the rest in a
manner pleasing to You, as an offering I hope You will accept. As a
sacrifice to make up for my agreeing, only for a moment, to murder ..
.

At the end of the seventeen days, they came to fetch Mary, to take her
.. . where? Was she to be taken directly to the Tower? Had it not
been that she would regret not bidding a personal farewell to all her
faithful servants, she would have preferred it that way. Let it
happen, and happen quickly, before her resolve faded.

As she passed underneath the long passageway in the jaunty gatehouse,
she was greeted with crowds of beggars. They had heard she was held
here, and had gathered waiting for her release; the Queen of Scots was
reputed to be a generous alms giver