The Wild Queen (32 page)

“You promised to stay here tonight!” Henry whined, as he did when he did not get his way.

“That was before Lord Bothwell reminded me of my previous promise to Bastian!” I explained. Henry continued to pout. He slid my ring onto his little finger and lunged for me again.

Laughingly eluding him, I called for my furred cloak. “Good night, dear Henry!” I trilled, wrapping the cloak tightly around me. “Until tomorrow!”

I hated the position in which Henry had put me. I was not naturally flirtatious, nor had I ever needed to be, though I had seen plenty of such games played regularly at the French court. Diane de Poitiers had known every ploy to keep King Henri close to her, and now I needed a ploy of my own to keep my husband at bay.

Down the stair I ran and out into the black night. A sliver of new moon hung low in the sky, and a light sprinkling of fresh snow lay on the ground. My horse was waiting, nostrils steaming, and as my groom prepared to help me mount, I recognized my servant Paris standing off to the side. By the light of a torch I noticed that his face was very dirty.

“How begrimed you are, Paris!” I exclaimed.

He nodded and murmured a reply I could not make out. I rode away with my train of courtiers. The horses' hooves rang loudly on the cobblestones, and my thoughts were no longer on my servant's blackened face but on the festive event I was about to attend.

It was not yet midnight when I entered the great hall where Bastian's wedding masque waited for the queen's arrival in order to begin. I regretted having missed the dancing, but when the masque ended I joined the merry custom of escorting the couple to their marriage bed before retiring to my own apartments.

The day had been long and, on the whole, pleasant. In the morning I would have to deal with the return of my newly amorous husband, for whom I had neither passion nor even affection. I was certain I could find a way to live in some sort of accord with him. There was a chance that he could be taught the refinement he sadly lacked.

My maidservant blew out the candle, and I fell asleep at once.

 

A violent noise, an explosion as loud as twenty or thirty cannon being fired, startled me awake. I leaped up, calling “Guards! Guards!” and dispatched several into the streets to find out what had happened. Surrounded by my frightened maidservants, I waited impatiently for the guards to return. They rushed back, stunned nearly speechless by what they had to report. The Old Provost's Lodge at Kirk o'Field had been blown up.

“The entire dwelling, walls and all else, is destroyed, nothing remains, not a single s-stone,” stammered their lieutenant. “Not one person was found alive.”

Kirk o'Fieldl
“No one?” I cried. “You say that all are dead?”

“Aye, my lady, all. Not a single soul lives to explain it.”

So there it was: My husband was dead. And I knew without a doubt that whoever murdered King Henry had intended to murder me as well.

F
EELING FAINT,
I lay down. The room whirled and would not stop. I could not think clearly The same thoughts raced through my mind:
Henry is dead. My husband. Murdered. Who is the murderer? Am I next?

The one thing of which I was certain was that Divine Providence had me change my mind about staying the night at Kirk o'Field. I was put off by Henry's behavior and used Bastian's wedding masque as an excuse to leave. Had I slept at Kirk o'Field, as I had planned and as Henry had tried to insist on, I would have been blown up as well. I had been delivered from certain death, an assassin's plot, by an act of God.

I fell on my knees and prayed, thanking God for His mercy, praying for the soul of my dead husband, and asking for guidance in the difficult days that lay ahead.

I would withdraw into mourning for forty days, as I had after the death of François. Certain things must be done. I called in my mistress of the wardrobe and ordered black mourning gowns, the
deuil blanc
—the white veil, worn for the death of a king—and several ells of black taffeta with which to drape a mourning chamber at Edinburgh Castle.

I felt safer at the castle than I did at Holyrood, but still I was terrified. I could only think of the plot that had been formulated against David Rizzio; I believed that the same devious planning had gone into a plot against Henry and me. The villains had succeeded in destroying my husband, and I felt sure they would not stop until they killed me.

Naturally, I called upon those I believed were closest to me for support at this time of crisis. Foremost among them was Lord Bothwell. He arrived, offering his most profound condolences, and told me something I did not know: “Your husband, the king, did not die in the explosion,” he said. “King Henry's body and his valet's were found in the south garden, at some distance from the lodging.”

“God save us!” I cried, shocked at this revelation. “How then did he die?”

“Suffocation, according to a physician who has seen the bodies. Henry must have become suspicious, some alarming noise perhaps, and lowered himself from the window before the explosion. He would have gotten away, but the murderous villains seized him and the valet and killed them in such a way as to leave no visible marks.”

“Those responsible must be found and punished,” I said, my voice unsteady. “There must be a thorough investigation into the murder.”

“I will assist you in every way possible, my lady queen,” Bothwell promised.

I thanked him. “And there must be a funeral too.”

“The simpler the better, I believe,” Lord Bothwell suggested. “A large state funeral may not be appropriate, under the circumstances.”

“See to it,” I said, trusting that he would.

***

I passed Monday as though I were in a dream. I retired that night but slept little, an hour here, a few minutes there, my rest troubled by frightening images. My thinking remained clouded. My head pounded, and my stomach gave me no peace.

Tuesday morning I sat in my bed trying to recall what it was I was supposed to do that day. Then I remembered: a wedding. I was expected at the wedding feast of Margaret Carwood, a favorite lady of the bedchamber. I had bought her dress and arranged for the banquet. Perhaps I should order it canceled? Put the court into mourning immediately? I tried to think. But the day was Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent began and the last day Lady Margaret could be married until after Easter. Seeing nothing to be gained by a delay, I would allow the wedding to go forward.

I called for maidservants to help me dress, but I could not decide what to wear. The maids fluttered about in confusion when I asked them to choose for me, but finally settled on a plain black gown. “Perhaps with only a few jewels, madam,” they suggested, and I nodded and let them choose the jewels as well.

When they had dressed me, I descended to the royal chapel. Everyone stared at me when I entered, and then all of them dropped to their knees, as was customary. After that, no one knew what to do. The bride rushed up and, in tears, embraced me. I did not understand why she was weeping. She loathed King Henry. So did her intended husband, John, my distant cousin.

“We shall all weep later,” I told the bridal couple, and I signaled that the ceremony should begin.

When it ended and the couple had been blessed, everyone was to join a happy procession to the great hall, but the mood felt anything but joyous. The musicians waited for a cue. Perhaps if I left, I thought, there would be some good cheer. I returned to my apartments and sat alone, staring at the wall. Later in the day I moved to a darkened chamber at Edinburgh Castle to begin the forty days of mourning. Outside the castle, the wind howled like a wounded animal.

***

On the evening of Friday, the fourteenth of February, King Henry was laid to rest next to my father in the royal tomb at the old abbey. There was little ceremony. Only a few mourners gathered in the early darkness of a winter night—few, because most of the noblemen were Protestant, and this was a Catholic sacrament.

It had not yet occurred to me that I might be blamed for his death.

But soon I was dismayed to find that I had become a target of criticism. People began to suspect, and then to convince one another, that if I had not actually ordered the murder, I was at least complicit in it. Queen Catherine wrote to me that Henry's death was the subject of much discussion in France; many there felt my intentions were sinister. In fact, she sent me a strongly worded challenge:
Avenge the killing, or suffer dishonor and disgrace.

My uncle Charles, the cardinal of Lorraine, sent me no message of sympathy or support. He pretended that I did not even exist. Instead, he chose this moment to write to my brother and tell him that they must cooperate in restoring order to Scotland! The pain of my uncle's action hurt me almost beyond words.

Worst of all was the letter from Elizabeth. I received the diplomat who delivered it in the mourning chamber at Edinburgh Castle and strained to read it by the light of the single wavering candle. It was written in her own hand.
Many people here are saying that you will look through your fingers at this deed instead of avenging it, and that you will take no action against those who have done this in your name or at your order.
I forced myself to continue reading.
I exhort you and beg you to take this to heart and will not fear to touch even him you have nearest to you if he was involved.

Even him you have nearest to you.
Whom did she mean? She went on to spell it out exactly:
Bothwell, if the father of King Henry accuses him.

Why Bothwell? What rumors had reached her? Did she despise him because he had managed to escape from the Tower of London? Why would she choose to believe the accusations of the old earl of Lennox, who had long ago fallen into her disfavor and whose wife Elizabeth still held prisoner? There were several men close to me—Lord Bothwell, certainly; Lord Huntly was another; my brother Lord Moray; Sir William Maitland; others. Elizabeth must have had her own personal reasons for pointing a finger at Bothwell.

The queen ended her letter by stating that there was no longer any question of naming me her successor, and I must agree to sign the Treaty of Edinburgh as it had originally been drawn up. Everything I had dreamed of, longed for, worked for, artfully argued for was gone now, erased in one brief sentence. The murder of the king of Scotland was too shocking, too scandalous, to allow the agreement to go forward.

The diplomat expressed the hope that he would have a reply to carry back to his queen within the week. I made some little movement of my head, neither aye nor nay. The gentleman withdrew, and I gave myself over to sobs that went on for a very long time.

***

Sitting alone in my darkened chamber day after day, I tried to think through what was likely to happen now, not only to me but to little Prince James. Whatever befell me, I was determined to preserve my son's present safety and future reign. But I had no idea what to do or where to turn. My suspicions fell on first one nobleman and then another. I had begun to believe that my brother had organized the plot. I had never been certain of Lord Moray's loyalty, and now I felt more strongly than ever that though I had often turned to him for advice and wise counsel, he was mostly interested in securing the crown of Scotland for himself. That conviction grew when he went into exile in France, sending me only the briefest message of his departure.

I, who had always felt secure in my role as queen, now felt defenseless; it seemed my power had been swept away by rebellious lords who wanted the authority for themselves. My thoughts turned to my former mother-in-law the queen mother of France. Catherine had no trouble exerting her power. I might learn a valuable lesson from her:
Avenge the killing, or suffer dishonor and disgrace.

I had to find someone whom I could trust completely The only person left in whom I had total confidence was James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell. He had been unwavering in his loyalty. He had shown himself to be intelligent and courageous. If in the past he had sometimes come down on the wrong side of the law, he now represented it as high sheriff of Edinburgh with a number of armed men under his command.

There were other qualities I admired in the earl. My husband was just twenty-one at his death and in most ways still a boy, an unformed youth. Lord Bothwell was thirty-two, eight years older than I, mature in judgment and seasoned in experience. I knew that he was disliked by many people, but I took that as a sign of jealousy of the high regard in which I held him. Had it not been for him, I would have been completely alone, totally isolated.

I called for him, and he appeared immediately, as though he had been expecting my summons. “My lord Bothwell, you have long been a friend to me, as you were to my dear mother. I am asking you now to pledge me your help in all things, to place your loyalty to me above all others.”

Lord Bothwell dropped to one knee and placed his hand on his heart. “My lady queen, you need not ask it, for you already have it,” he said. “I am your faithful servant in all things, as I have been in the past, am now, and shall be evermore.”

I was so moved that to demonstrate my complete faith in him, I promised him some fine gifts—Henry's splendid stable of horses as well as his most luxurious suits of clothes. Lord Bothwell raised my hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly. He left my presence chamber, both of us feeling pleased by our conversation.

Watching his confident swagger as he departed, I had a moment of self-doubt.
Have I made a mistake in giving him those things?

But I brushed away the thought and prepared to meet with my secretary.

O
N THE
S
UNDAY
before Easter I ended the forty days of mourning by ordering a solemn requiem Mass for the soul of King Henry. As the choir chanted a mournful dirge, I was overcome by emotion and collapsed. For three days I lay in bed, my mind in a turmoil. Then I collected myself with difficulty and moved from Edinburgh Castle back to Holyrood to observe the great feast of Easter.