Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (173 page)

The Lords attacked the castle, but were beaten back. In April, English
help arrived: ships anchored in Leith, and troops and ordnance under
the command of Sir William Drury, Marshal of Berwick, trundled ashore.
Among the cannon was one of the celebrated Seven Sisters captured by
the English long ago in the Battle of Flodden, and now returned to
Scotland in the hands of the enemy.

After an unsuccessful attempt at mining operations, the castle was
bombarded from five positions night and day. The weakness of the
castle was in its water supply, and the besiegers succeeded in blocking
one with lime and wheat. But not until a massive assault on the
David's Tower, with a resulting collapse of its wall, was the second
well stopped. Still the castle fought on, until the English captured
the outworks defending the gentler eastern approach to the castle.

Standing on the outworks, Drury shouted, "Surrender! If you do, all
the defenders are free to depart in peace, except the leaders, Maitland
and Kirkcaldy. I would speak with them!"

Kirkcaldy appeared on the rubble rimming the ramparts. "What terms do
you offer?" he shouted.

"An honourable surrender. Give yourself up, and there will be no harm
to your persons."

After several hours of shouting back and forth, Kirkcaldy agreed and
tried to meet Drury, but was unable to pass through the castle gate
because of the rubble from the bombardment. He was therefore let down
over the wall by a rope.

"Knox prophesied that he would be spewed forth, not at the gate, but by
the wall," whispered the onlookers.

Inside the castle, Maitland dragged himself over to the window and saw
what was happening. Drury's men had seized Kirkcaldy and were roughly
dragging him off, in spite of their promises.

"Liars to the end," he whispered. "There is no truth in them, in these
'men of God." " He would have laughed, but he had no strength. The
truth was that he had been smitten for the past few months with a
creeping paralysis and had almost lost the use of his legs.

"May twenty-ninth. I must then say farewell to thee, world." He had
prepared for this, and laboriously extracted a vial from his cabinet.
"Forgive me, dearest wife." The fair Fleming! Their marriage had been
little but a test of her forbearance and fidelity; it was a far cry
from the life he had hoped to give her.

In the world that used to be, when it was all young, when there was
singing and dancing, he thought, it was there I thought to take you and
keep you. Not to this one of murders and fleeing, and bodily
failure.

Slowly he poured the contents of the vial out into a glass. He held
his hand as steady as he could, fearful of spilling a precious drop.
The liquid venin de crapaud, derived from the distilled body fluids of
toads killed with arsenic, would bring death in a few hours.

He held out the glass, studying the contents. Death in a cup. The
opposite of the ambrosia that mortals could drink on Mount Olympus and
become immortal.

Why is it, he thought, that we can make ourselves a cup of death but
not a cup of life?

He sat down in his chair and took deep breaths. Below he could hear
yelling and marching. They would soon be breaking in. He had to do
it.

He gripped the glass and shut his eyes.

You are delaying, he told himself. If you would be master of your
fate, then drink it. If you wish them to be master of your fate, then
do not.

He brought the glass to his lips and swallowed the bitter, viscous
liquid. It burned all the way down his throat.

"Farewell, you men of God," he muttered. "Spare me from your gentle
mercy. I prefer the kindness of poison it is more trustworthy. Poison
always keeps its promises."

Kirkcaldy was hanged by the market cross in the High Street. He had
stood facing toward Holyrood, and his last sight was of the conical
towers of that palace. But as he died, his body swung round, toward
the afternoon sun behind the castle.

"As Knox foretold," the people murmured, "he was hanged in the face of
the sun." They were hushed with fear.

There were no more Queen's Men in Scotland.

TEN

Bothwell watched as the sun threw longer and longer slants of light on
the floor of his chamber. Soon it would be going down, leaving the
sky, and a semblance of darkness would prevail. This time of year, it
was never entirely dark, even at midnight. But the heavens would
deepen into a rich plum-sapphire color, and would serve to cloak his
activity.

Tonight he would escape.

The tides were right. The light would be right. And the guard would
be almost nonexistent, for tonight was their beloved Midsummer Night
festivity, when people caroused all night, lovers met in the woods, and
the governor of the castle always gave a boisterous celebration, with
unlimited wine and blaring trumpet music. Bothwell had now witnessed
this annual activity for five years; this would be the sixth.

And there will not be a seventh! he vowed.

Every year he had noticed how lax the security became, and every year
the celebrations seemed to grow more and more lavish. Bonfires blazed
all along the shore, and the sound of the drunken townsfolk running in
the narrow streets carried up into the castle. The entire town of
Malmo went on a spree, and normality was suspended. For the next few
days they were equally befuddled with the aftereflects of the wine.

They claim Midsummer Night is a night of enchantment, of magic, he
thought. Let it make me invisible! The lovers go out to gather fern
seed on this night to confer invisibility on themselves; no one needs
it more than I. He had come to know his guards well: the thickset Sven,
the lecherous Tor, and the conscientious Bjorn. Over the years he had
learned Danish, and had been a pleasant and cooperative prisoner, until
he had gained their confidence. Hours of listening to them discuss
their women, religion, and ailments had made him well acquainted with
their strengths and weaknesses.

The governor of the castle, Captain Kaas, was a bluff, plain fellow who
did everything by the book. He kept the rooms for King Frederick
always at the ready, with fresh linens and potpourris, but the King
never came. Bothwell had never had his audience with him, and he knew
now he never would. The King had forgotten him, as completely as if he
were dead. As far as Frederick was concerned, he was dead; he was of
absolutely no political value any longer. But being a thrifty sort,
Frederick never relinquished anything, just in case. And so he kept
Bothwell tight in his castle of Malmo.

In the beginning, Bothwell had had visitors and been kept informed of
what was happening beyond the (Jresund. But over the years the visits
had ceased; he had had to rely on whatever the guards happened to hear
in town, and so he only knew of the most striking events. He knew that
Mary was still a prisoner, and that, just as he had never been granted
audience with Frederick, she had never succeeded in seeing Elizabeth.
He knew that Knox had died, and that the Queen's party in Scotland was
a spent force. He knew that Elizabeth had been excommunicated, and the
Lord James assassinated. He had heard of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew's. But the motives behind these things, the fine shadings
of them, the diplomatic outcome of them, he did not know. King Charles
IX not only never helped him, but never acknowledged his letter. The
letters from Mary, few and far between, still came through once in a
great while. In them she always beseeched him to be of good courage
and know she was loyal.

When the guards went out to the adjoining courtyard to watch the
lighting of the bonfire, that was when he would do it. His rooms were
on the ground floor, and he had carefully loosened the back of the
wooden "closet" on the sea-wall of his quarters. This gave out
directly on the sea, and had been strengthened to prevent just what
Bothwell now hoped to achieve. But he had had six years to work at it.
He believed that he had adequate strength to force the boards now if he
had only ten minutes or so. Then, to squeeze out, land safely near the
ocean, and slip away over the rocks. Even that would be favourable
tonight: it would be low tide, exposing them like stepping-stones for
him to dash across. There would be small boats tied near the harbour,
and they would not be guarded; a simple matter to take one.

And then what? Row out beyond the harbour, hide himself in a fishing
village, then hire himself out as a hand on one of the larger merchant
ships crossing the Baltic Sea to Germany. Thank God he knew Danish
now, and could concoct a reasonable story about himself.

My ancestors had a Viking or two amongst them, he thought, up in the
Shetlands. Pray I look enough like them to blend in with the Danes.

The sun duly went down, and as Bothwell's windows faced south, it
remained light in his rooms a long time. He could hear the three
sentry guards making impatient noises as they waited to be relieved.
They looked forward eagerly to this night all year long. At last it
seemed four hours the young soldier who was assigned to forgo his
revelry that night arrived to relieve them. He had already done his
drinking, as if in defiance of his superiors. Bothwell heard him sit
down heavily, and then a few minutes later unmistakable snores came
from the guardroom.

Swiftly, Bothwell went to the door of the closet. He had nothing to
take with him; he had never been permitted to retain any weapons or
money, and so there was nothing to gather up. He would survive on this
flight only by his nerves and wits.

He loosened the nails which he had pried out over many months, always
being careful to replace them so they looked secure opened the door
partway, and slipped behind it. Now he would have to move as fast as
humanly possible, lest the guard peek in the room and see no one there.
The back boards, thick ones, had been nailed with heavy studs, but had
loosened somewhat due to the salty air and sea spray. He threw his
shoulder against them and prayed they would give way without making a
loud noise.

His prayer was answered; one of the boards splintered quietly. He hit
it again, and it and its nearest neighbour broke open. A gush of fresh
air hit him. He kicked a third board and was elated to hear it give
way. Now! The opening was wide enough. He wiggled through and found
himself hanging about ten feet over mossy rocks. He cautiously climbed
through and hung by his hands to drop down as silently as possible.

The rock underneath was as slick as if it had been covered in grease.
Immediately his feet flew out from under him and he landed heavily on
his back. Pain tore through him, and for a horrible instant he thought
he could not move his legs. But feeling flooded back into them and he
rolled over and made his way carefully, shaken, on all fours across the
expanse of rocks. Fifteen feet or so farther out, the ocean was
nibbling at the rocks, which were covered in long strands of seaweed.

The area he had to traverse was much longer than he had thought. But
he had never had a view of it and had had to imagine it. He could
never get to the harbour this way; it would take all night. Nervously
he looked back up at the bulk of the castle, its bastions reflected in
its moat. He thought he could see a red reflection of bonfire flames
coming from the courtyard, but as yet there was no noise of alarm.