Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (6 page)

Lady Fleming, who was Flamina's mother and the children's governess,
came over to soothe the Queen and take charge of the little girls.
"There are some gowns from the time of James IV in a trunk I have just
opened," she said. "Headdresses, too, with gold braid. They are in
the little chamber off the Queen's bedchamber. Try them on and see who
can look most like her own grandmother." She waved cheerfully, and the
girls scampered off.

"Now," she said, taking the Queen's hand, "at least we know they are
safe."

Marie de Guise stood shivering in the warm sunshine. "Poor little
Bea-ton it is her own relative, the Cardinal, that they have killed!
Oh, how can I ever tell her? Yet if I do not, others will. Oh,
Janet!" She turned back to Lady Fleming. "They killed him, hung him
up like an animal I am afraid!" The words came tumbling out. "Next
they will come for us!"

"Nay, nay," said Lady Fleming. "They will not, they cannot. Stirling
is the safest fortress in all Scotland. That is why you chose it!"

"But St. Andrews was supposed to be safe. The Cardinal was fortifying
it; day and night the workmen were building it up. And yet and yet
they got through!" She shuddered.

Lady Fleming raised her head proudly. "Yes, but it was the English he
was fortifying it against. He did not suspect his own countrymen. They
came disguised as workmen. Who were they?"

"The Protestants radical heretics, revenging the burning of their
leader, George Wishart."

"Oh, him!" Fleming waved her hand.

"I am frightened, Janet, frightened. Who would have thought they could
exact such revenge?"

"Then call in outside help. Call on your mighty kinsmen in France.
Your brother Duc Francois is a mighty soldier and can persuade the King
to send ships and arms."

Marie smiled nervously. "Not so, not so. The King in France is very
ill; all he cares about is fleeing from his disease. It is not easy to
get his ear."

Together they walked over to the ramparts and stared down at the valley
below. They could see the beckoning hills leading up into the
Highlands, a place where cool breezes swept down all summer. The river
lay in its bed like a silver chain in a velvet box. There was no
movement of troops, nothing threatening. But then these fanatics did
not come in the guise of troops.

Standing on the windy ramparts, Marie realized, suddenly and
profoundly, how completely alone she was. Her ally and adviser was
gone. There was no one to guide her in her policy, to protect her. She
tried not to see in her mind's eye the Cardinal, swinging on the castle
wall, hanging by his bedsheets. Or to picture him the way they said he
was now, salted like a side of beef and lying in a barrel in the
castle's dungeon.

They had let Marion Ogilvy go, after forcing her to witness his murder
and mutilation. They did not sport with her themselves; they were much
too holy for that, these reforming lairds from life, who had come into
the castle in the early morning on a cart, diguised as workmen.

"Who are these lairds?" Janet wondered out loud.

"The report is that the assassins themselves numbered some sixteen or
so," said Marie, who had questioned the messenger more closely than had
the shocked governess. "But others are preparing to join them. They
mean to hold the castle for themselves."

"What? For themselves? What for?"

"They are calling themselves the Castilians and sending to England for
help."

"Ah." Now it was clearer than ever. "This is all part of the attack
on Scotland that never ceases from England. They are determined to
swallow us up! Ever since the Scots repudiated the marriage contract,
the English have been trying to force a new one upon us by military
means," Lady Fleming said.

At the same time, Marie realized with a sickening feeling, that meant
they would never stop. And Scotland had no power to withstand them for
much longer, if they were that determined.

That night, as Marie de Guise made ready for sleep a sleep she knew
would not come she allowed her attendant of the bedchamber to brush her
hair, which had grown long.

Brush, brush .. . the rhythm was soothing, as it began at her scalp and
drew itself all the way to the ends, making her scalp tingle. The fire
and the candles cast long, jumping shadows on the wall, shadows that
obliterated the pretty coloured pictures of gods and goddesses, knights
and ladies, on the tapestries imported from a safe, ordered place like
Flanders.

Just as the darkness and shadows of Scotland obliterate all that's
sustaining, she thought, her mind set free and drifting by the brush ..
. brush .. . brush caresses. It is a land at the end of the earth,
where men turn into something else. All of Scotland is like this
castle of Stirling ancient and stained with blood, with just a light
cover of diverting statues, decorations, and distractions like the
white peacocks walking the palace grounds around the artificial
fishponds. They don't mean anything, they just take one's eyes off
those misty mountains in the distance, or the enemies creeping up the
Forth valley.

Half the nobility seem to dabble in with craft she mused. They say
Lord James's mother, Lady Douglas, is a witch, and used her spells to
bind the King to her, and Patrick, third Lord Ruthven, one of Mary's
own guardians appointed by Parliament, is said to be a warlock himself.
The dark powers seem so close here.

"That is enough, Meg," said Marie. Her scalp was beginning to hurt
from the brushing. "I will take my rest now."

"As you wish, Madam." Meg brought out the lace bed-cap the Queen
Mother always wore. She fastened it on her head and then pulled back
the bed curtains.

But there is witchcraft in France, too, Marie thought, as she lay in
bed. The Italian Woman, Catherine de Medicis my brothers tell me she
consults with wizards and necromancers, with anyone who can cure her
barrenness. She would even deal with Satan himself perhaps even has,
for at long last, after ten years, she and Henri Valois have a son,
Francois. He was born a year after my own Mary, most inauspiciously,
during an eclipse of the sun. Any fool knows this is a bad omen, the
worst possible for what does an eclipse portend but just that, an
eclipse of the person? but they attempted to cover it up by designing
an heraldic badge for the child, showing a sun and moon and the bold
motto: "Between these I issued." Since then the Italian Woman has had
a daughter, Elisabeth, and is pregnant again. The devil keeps his
bargain. In his own way he is a being of integrity, so those who deal
with him say.

Marie turned over and settled herself more comfortably. She was warmer
now; she removed the heavy top cover.

They said little Francois was sickly, but he seemed to be growing
stronger. Perhaps he was "eclipsed" most at his birth perhaps that is
all the omen meant, she thought. Perhaps he will live to be an answer
to my Mary.. .. Oh, if only the Cardinal could help me! Oh, David!

With no one to hear, she wept for her only friend, her only adviser.

SIX

Scarcely half a year later, Henry VIII died, and was succeeded on the
throne of England by nine-year-old Edward, but in reality by the boy's
uncle and Protector, the Duke of Somerset. The death of Henry VIII did
nothing to lessen the ferocious "rough wooing," as the Scots
sarcastically called the English military attempts to force the
marriage of little Mary to now-King Edward by burning, killing, and
looting all over the Scottish countryside.

As winter turned to spring, the French King Francois I followed Henry
VIII to the grave. His son, the weak, ineffectual Henri II, now ruled
France and was much more anxious to please the powerful Guise family
than old Francois I had ever been; pleasing them meant, of course,
championing the Scots against the English.

The rebels and assassins of Cardinal Beaton had held out in St. Andrews
Castle for months, vainly hoping for English succour. Inside the stout
castle walls, with the salted body of the dead Cardinal stored in his
own dungeon, the murderers alternated between riotous living and deep
penitence. Hungry for entertainment and company, certain fathers
ordered the tutor of their children to bring the boys to the castle.
John Knox, the tutor, obeyed, and came in at Easter.

After some initial hesitation, he took on the mantle of his vocation:
he began to preach, minister, and debate with his "congregation," a
congregation in exile. The thirty-three-year-old schoolmaster took to
the pulpit like a John the Baptist, thundering of the great punishment
to come if they did not reject the Synagogue of Satan, the Whore of
Babylon, the Roman Church with its Pope, the Man of Sin. He whipped
them into a frenzy of religious ecstasy.

The French sent a military force, and by the end of July 1547 the
castle was forced to surrender. Knox, captured by the enemy, joined
his fellow rebel-prisoners as a convict-rower in the galleys of the
French fleet.

Stunned by the French action and hold on Scotland, the English now
acted. The Protector himself led an invasion of Scotland, coming up
through

Northumberland and passing through on the Berwick side of the coast.

He had an army of about eighteen thousand men, of which a third were
cavalry. The foot soldiers were armed with muskets; heavy artillery
was present, there were a thousand wagons of supply, and the might of
the English fleet hovered just offshore.

Scots from all over had flocked to defend their country, and the Earl
of Arran had twice as many men as the enemy some thirty-six thousand.
But they had no guns, only Highland archers; they had no artillery,
only spears; and they had no horses. They marched under a white banner
proclaiming Afflicte sponse ne obUviscaris "The Holy Church
Supplicating Christ."

At Pinkie Clough, beside the town of Musselburgh, some six miles east
of Edinburgh, the Earl of Arran dug in to fight. He formed a battle
line of four divisions on a piece of high ground, and their glittering
spears were like four great fields of ripe barley. Or, as an English
eyewitness described them, their ranks and spears were as thick as the
spikes of a hedgehog. The black-robed clergy, standing together, were
clearly visible, their tonsured heads looking like rows of helmets.

Both sides knew full well what they were fighting for. Somerset
himself stepped forward and offered to withdraw if only the Scots would
agree to let Mary choose her own husband when she was old enough, and
not to make a marriage for her.

The Scots answered by hurling themselves on their foes, heedlessly
abandoning their strong position. The English ships fired on them,
scattering their archers; the cavalry cut them down. Most of the dead
were wounded in the head, because the mounted soldiers could reach no
lower with their swords, lopping off heads and hacking necks. Ten
thousand Scots were slain, and the dead lay so thick that from a
distance they looked like herds of grazing cattle in the green meadow.
The white banner with its slogan was pulled out from under a mound of
dead clergymen. The mud-stained trophy was sent south to be presented
to King Edward VI in token of his victory.