Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (203 page)

"I am Robert Beale, clerk of her Majesty's Privy Council," one man
stepped forward and said. He was a healthy-looking man, robust without
being portly.

Mary rose and left the table, with its remains of food and dirty
dishes. She walked slowly to the other end of the chamber, where her
throne would have been. Then she turned and faced them.

"Madam, we are sent here to announce to you the sentence: you are found
guilty of conspiring against the life of Queen Elizabeth, and are
condemned by the Parliament of this country to die," he said softly.

Mary just looked at him and said nothing.

Behind him the other men shifted from foot to foot.

"These gentlemen, all leading members of the Privy Council, lawyers of
the crown, and other officials, are witnesses that we have indeed
communicated this to you. The sentence has been proclaimed by heralds
and published throughout the realm," Beale continued.

"Ah," said Mary.

"Now is the time to confess and ask forgiveness!" said Paulet, who had
joined them.

"Confess? Ask forgiveness?" said Mary. "The trial and its sentence
are illegal." The men began to murmur, and she went on quickly, "But
it is no matter. I know the real reason I am to die, and I am humbly
grateful for it. It is for my religion. What a privilege has thus
been bestowed on me!"

"You may stop that right now!" said Beale. "It is a clever move to
try to make yourself out to be a saint and a martyr, but the truth is
you are neither, and are condemned to die for common plotting and
treason against the Queen."

"I beseeched Him to accept the sorrows and persecutions I have suffered
in both mind and body as some atonement for my sins, and I see He has
answered my prayers!" Mary went on.

"You see, gentlemen, what I have had to endure," said Paulet. "Long,
tedious speeches that have nothing to do with the matter at hand! It
would be charitable to say her long imprisonment has robbed her of her
good sense, but she has never had good common sense. She has indulged
herself with fancies, surrounding herself with flatterers and
foreigners even in Scotland, to the end that she has lived in her own
little world all her life. So now she erects another little stage
where she can act out a part: the sainted martyr, lifting her eyes to
Heaven, clutching her rosary and mumbling Latin."

"Madam," Beale persisted, "if you would but confess to the Queen "

"When is the sentence to be carried out?" Mary asked.

"That is in the hands of the Queen's Majesty," answered Beale.

"And it is to be a public execution?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You will not do me to death secretly, and rob me of that public
death?" she asked Paulet.

"Madam!" he almost shouted. "I am a man of honour and a gentleman,
and I would never dishonour myself by exercising such cruelty, or
conducting myself like a Turk!"

"For which I am grateful," said Mary.

After the deputation left, Paulet reentered the chamber and went
quickly upstairs to her bedchamber, carrying a bundle under his arm.
She rose and followed him, but it took her some time to ascend the
stairs. When she finally reached the upper room, her blood ran cold.

Paulet was decking her bed with black hangings.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"This is to signify that you are, in the eyes of the law, already dead.
These are your funeral trappings. The rest of the chamber will be hung
with black as well." He busily continued attaching them.

"So my bed is to be my hearse," she said. "I am to lie in state?"

"As it were," he answered. "And think upon your everlasting
destination. " He stepped down off his stool and eyed his handiwork.

"And your billiard table is to be taken away," he said. "This is no
time to waste in idle recreations."

"I have never used it since it has been there. I have had other
occupations. Pray take it away and give us some more room."

He snorted with disdain and left.

Later that afternoon, Mary called together her people and made the
announcement to them. She hoped no one would break out in lamentations
or anger; that would make it all the harder.

"My friends, today I have received the sentence," she said. "We all
know what that is. And Paulet has kindly decorated my chamber so that
I will feel at all times as if I am in the valley of the shadow of
death."

"When is it to be?" asked Jane Kennedy. Her eyes shone with tears,
but her voice did not tremble. Mary was grateful for that.

"I do not know. Therefore I must make preparations now. I will need
paper, and certain lists to be drawn up of my remaining property. I
must write my farewell letters, and make my will."

At that, Elizabeth Curie gave a cry, and Willie Douglas moaned.

"I am happy, truly I am, for this will see an end to all my troubles,"
she insisted. "If you love me, you will rejoice with me. The captive
is to go free at last! And when I am free, then you will be, too. Only
help me to part from this world easily and with grace. That is your
task, that is all I ask of you. Help me disrobe from this mantle of
sorrow, and put on my heavenly robes."

Mary's hand was aching. The rheumatism was especially bad in her
writing hand, as if to plague her. But she had completed her letters:
one to Archbishop Beaton, her envoy in Paris, one to Mendoza, the
Spanish ambassador who had been expelled from England on her account
for the Throckmorton Plot, and now was posted to Paris. One to the
Pope, her spiritual father. And one to Henri of Guise, the head of the
Guise family now. To Guise she had allowed herself to speculate on her
execution.

I am now, by an unjust sentence, about to be put to such a death as no
person of our family, much less of my rank, ever suffered. Yet I
thank

, God for it, being useless to the world and to the cause of His church
in my present state. And though executioner never yet dipped his hand
in our blood, be not ashamed thereof, my friend.

There was still the will to compose, and then the hardest letter of all
the obligatory one to Elizabeth.

Although she had been in a curious state of exaltation all day, it was
ebbing away and all she felt now was weariness.

Do I have the strength to go on? she asked herself. I must; I may not
be given the time to compose these later. And they must be done.

The will was only a listing of finances, trying to make provision for
her servants, and requesting that she be buried in France, with her
mother. She tried to remember all the small sums and holdings, but
without her account books, she could not be sure. Nonetheless, she
hoped that either the King of Spain, the King of France, or the Duc de
Guise would, in charity, cover the small bequests.

Now the letter to Queen Elizabeth. She shut her eyes and prayed for
the words to come to her. Then she slowly began to write. At first
the words were mere formalities. Then she came to the heart of the
matter.

Now having been informed, on your part, of the sentence passed in the
last session of your Parliament, and admonished by Lord Beale to
prepare myself for the end of my long and weary pilgrimage, I prayed
them to return my thanks to you for such agreeable intelligence, and to
ask you to grant some things for the relief of my conscience.

I will not accuse any person, but sincerely pardon every one, as I
desire others, and, above all, God, to pardon me. And since I know
that your heart, more than that of any other, ought to be touched by
the honour or dishonour of your own blood, and of a Queen, the daughter
of a king, I require you, Madam, for the sake of Jesus, that after my
enemies have satisfied their black thirst for my innocent blood, you
will permit my poor disconsolate servants to remove my corpse, that it
may be buried in holy ground, with my ancestors in France, especially
the late Queen my mother, since in Scotland the remains of the Kings my
predecessors have been outraged, and the churches torn down and
profaned.

As I shall suffer in this country, I shall not be allowed a place near
your ancestors, who are also mine, and persons of my religion think
much of being interred in consecrated earth. I trust you will not
refuse this last request I have preferred to you, and allow, at least,
free sepulture to this body when the soul shall be separated from it,
which never could obtain, while united, liberty to dwell in peace.

Dreading the secret tyranny of some of those to whom you have abandoned
me, I entreat you to prevent me from being dispatched secretly, without
your knowledge, not from fear of the pain, which I am ready to suffer,
but on account of the reports they would circulate after my death. It
is therefore that I desire my servants to remain the witnesses and at
testators of my end, my faith in my Saviour, and obedience to His
church. This I require of you in the name of Jesus Christ in respect
to our consanguinity, for the sake of King Henry VII, your
great-grandfather and mine, for the dignity we have both held, and for
the sex to which we both belong.

Her hand was trembling. She hated to think of Elizabeth holding the
letter and reading it. At the same time she knew she would be bereft
if she ever knew for certain that Elizabeth would never see it. She
continued.

I beseech the God of mercy and justice to enlighten you with His holy
Spirit, and to give me the grace to die in perfect charity, as I
endeavour to do, pardoning my death to all those who have either caused
or cooperated in it; and this will be my prayer to the end.

Accuse me not of presumption if, leaving this world and preparing
myself for a better, I remind you that you will have one day to give
account of your charge, in like manner as those who preceded you in it,
and that my blood and the misery of my country will be remembered,
wherefore from the earliest dawn of our comprehension we ought to
dispose our minds to make things temporal yield to those of eternity.

Your sister and cousin wrongfully a prisoner,

Marie Royne

There. It was done. Mary folded the paper and stood up. Her head was
throbbing. She had written many, many pages. When she looked at the
stack, she could scarcely believe it.

At her little altar the candle was still flickering. The dim yellow
light bathed the face of the Virgin painted on wood, which had served
as her chief devotional object since she had removed her ivory crucifix
and fastened it on the wall where her royal canopy should have been.
When Paulet had uneasily admitted that he had no right to take it down,
she had assured him that she preferred the crucifix in any case.

Now, kneeling before the Virgin, she closed her eyes and felt herself
flooded with a peace born of more than just completion of a task. She
marvelled at how this could be, imagining having received the sentence
of certain death at any other time or place in her life, when the blood
ran strong and her attachment to the earth was fierce.

In France, when all her senses were drowning in beauty; in Scotland,
when her pride and ambition were engaged with the challenge of ruling,
and then, later, when her courage had to confront the danger of
treason; in the arms of Bothwell, when desire and love possessed her
and made her exult in every aspect of her earthly being ... no, at none
of these times would she have wanted to be called away from this world.
At first it was a garden to her, then an arena, and then a bed of
pleasure, and she had drunk deeply of it. Now it was a draught that
she put aside, never to taste again.