Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (42 page)

"Come, sit." She motioned to him to take the widest chair, heaped with
cushions. She had her servitors add more logs to the fire and bring
him a bowl of the leftover soup.

"My mother's favourite," she said. "It is made with veal mixed with
tender fowl and rosemary .. . truly restorative."

Maitland was much too polite to gulp it down as he would have wished,
but she waited until he was finished to begin questioning him.

"It is over?" she asked.

"Yes. I met with the Queen, and presented all our concerns." He
paused. "The answer is no. She will not name you her successor."

"But " Mary was so disappointed that she could not frame the sentence.
Finally, she said, "What exact reasons did she give, when I was
prepared to sign the modified treaty in return?"

"Some nonsense about naming a successor forcing her to look into her
own coffin. Then some hardheaded political observations about how a
successor always becomes the focus for discontented subjects in a
realm. For whatever her reasons a personal quirk, political caution
she declines to clarify the succession."

"Oh." She felt helpless and thwarted. How could Elizabeth ignore the
claims of blood and custom?

"However, she said if she were farced to name a successor, there was
none whose claims would come before yours."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing. It is just Elizabeth-talk, for which she is already becoming
renowned. She herself calls it her 'answer-answer less "

"Oh!" Mary's frustration was quickly turning to anger.

"She suggested a meeting between you, and also sends you this."
Maitland opened his pouch and brought forth a box, which he handed
her.

She took it and wrenched it open, breaking one of the clasps.

Inside was a velvet pouch, and she could feel something hard within it.
She shook it out, and a ring tumbled out it had a hand clasping a
diamond.

"It is a friendship ring, Your Majesty," said Maitland. "It comes
apart, and Elizabeth has retained the other half. It is to be returned
to her if ever you are in distress. It obligates her to come to your
aid."

"How nice." Since she would never need to use it, it was a meaningless
little diplomatic bauble. She put the ring down. Then, on second
thought, she slid it onto her finger, where she could see it and brood
on it.

Maitland looked stuporous.

"You may go to bed," said Mary. "I apologize for keeping you from it.
This could have waited until morning."

After Maitland had gone and she lay in her bed, she could hear the
howling of the wind and the rattling of the tree branches on this
haunted night.

They say the spirits are walking abroad, she thought. And nearby is
the room where my father died, where he turned his face to the wall in
despair.

Are you here, Father? If you are, help me with this difficult land you
have left to me! If it is true that the dead have wisdom, impart it to
me! But her dreams were trifling and senseless, and in the morning she
felt herself no wiser.

NINE

The summons had come at last. John Knox, who had enjoyed the (triumph
of having Edinburgh to himself after his followers had been moved to
defend themselves against the moral pollution of the mass, knew the day
would come when the Queen must return. He had been informed that she
wished to speak with him then. But in the meantime the cowardly,
timorous child had run away, travelling around the realm, as if to get
up her courage to speak to him.

Now she had returned, and a specific summons for his audience with her
had been delivered. He had reread it several times, feeling privileged
to be chosen as the Lord's instrument to confront her and show her her
errors.

He could hardly wait until the prescribed hour to go to the palace.
When it was within a quarter-hour of the time he possessed an accurate
clock made in his beloved Geneva, that had stood on his desk in that
happy place he set out, walking briskly down the smooth, sloping
Canongate, nodding at the nobles he encountered near their town houses
on either side. He strode in through the great gateway at Abbey
Strand, passing into the area that still constituted sanctuary for
debtors and lawbreakers another Papist folly! and gazed at the
Frenchified round towers and the formal entrance to the palace. In
there, then, the contest would take place. He prayed for strength and
the right words.

From her audience chamber the largest room in her suite of royal
apartments Mary saw Knox standing in the courtyard. He was tall and
thin, and the morning sun made him cast a long shadow. He looked like
the gnomon on a sundial, she thought. Then the gnomon moved, and came
toward the palace doors.

Now the time was here. She would actually look this man in the face,
this man who had been her mother's greatest adversary and was now hers.
For so long he had seemed a demon, almost a mythological creature like
the Gorgon or the manticore, that it seemed impossible that he should
be mounting the stairs to her presence this very instant.

She took her place on a chair not a throne with her cloth of estate
over her head, arranged her skirts, and waited. Her brother, Lord
James,

would serve as witness to the proceedings; two guards stood at either
end of the chamber. A lack of sleep the night before had quickened all
her senses, rather than dulling them. They seemed to quiver with
readiness as she waited for his appearance. But his footsteps on the
great stair outside the chamber were soft, and so she did not hear him
until the door swung open and he stood upon the threshold.

"Master John Knox, pastor of the High Kirk of St. Giles, framer of the
First Book of Discipline of the Congregation," announced the guard, so
warmly it was obvious he was a follower.

Knox stepped into the chamber and with one motion swept his flat cap
off his head and came to the very foot of her chair. "Your Majesty,"
he said, staring directly into her eyes. "Lord James, brother in
Christ." He nodded to James, then turned his hard gaze back on Mary.

His eyes were dark brown, and were capable of staring for a long time
without blinking. His face was not unkind, thought Mary. He had level
eyebrows, a well-proportioned straight nose, and well-formed lips. In
fact, there was nothing remarkable about his face, except that it was
so ordinary; only his excessively long, flowing beard made him appear
different from any middle-aged courtier. That and his severe, dark
clothes: the uniform of the Reformers.

For his part, he was grudgingly forced to acknowledge her beauty. His
scrutiny revealed that the portraits he had seen had duplicated her
features large, hooded, amber-coloured eyes, long, straight nose,
small, curved mouth without catching her allure. Perhaps it was the
colouring, the skin tone, or the posture, or her slenderness, or
perhaps .. .

"Master Knox, we sent for you because we have been troubled by your
doings for some time."

The voice. Her voice was as beguiling as a sea siren's: sweet and rich
and caressing. It aroused a longing to hear more words.

"You have been a rebel against our late mother the Regent, causing her
great grief and sorrow; and you have written words that say a woman
should not be queen. That is treason, as I am your Queen and
sovereign, by God's grace!" Let him answer that! She was no longer
afraid of him. He was just a man.

"So you have not forgotten your Scots," he said, with grudging
surprise. "I feared Lord James would have to translate my words into
French."

"I continued to hear Scots while I was in France. You forget, sir,
that my ladies were with me, as well as certain Scotsmen from my
court." If he thought he could make asides to James that she could not
follow, he was sorely mistaken.

"But as for The First Blast of the Trumpet" his voice changed from
conversational to his pulpit tone "for that is what I assume you refer
to indeed it specified that a woman ruler is an abomination and an
aberration, but God permits such to exist for His own purposes. If the
people are content to live under a woman, I will not rebel. Indeed,
Madam, I am as content to live under you as Saint Paul was to live
under Nero."

So she was a Nero? How could he make such a statement? "I am no
tyrant, sir, as well you know! I have issued a proclamation respecting
your religion, saying that no changes are to made in the religion of
the country as I found it when I returned to Scotland. Have you not
read it?"

Knox snorted. "Your cousin the Queen Elizabeth of England issued the
exact same proclamation when she first took the throne. But within
half a year she and Parliament changed the religion to the one she
practised ... in this case, a sort of halfway thing between the
Catholics and the Reformed Kirk. So such proclamations mean nothing;
they are but a cover to the ruler's true intentions, which become plain
soon enough."

Mary drew herself up on her chair. "Good sir, you know that God
commands subjects to obey their rulers in all things, therefore if they
profess another religion than that of their sovereign, how can this be
sanctioned by God?" Indeed this had troubled her, as she had no
intention of changing her faith, and thought others should be accorded
the same privilege.

Knox smiled. Now he had her out in the open; she had betrayed her
ultimate design. "Dear Madam, you err! As Christ said to the
Pharisees, you know not the Scriptures! What if Moses had submitted
and followed the religion of Pharaoh? What if Daniel had embraced the
faith of Nebuchadnezzar? What if God forbid! the Christians had
obeyed the Roman emperors and returned to worshipping Jupiter and
Apollo? No, good Madam! They were bound to obey, but not in matters
of conscience."

He was becoming excited; his dark face was taking on a glow. But he
was omitting an important point, she thought. "None of these people
not Moses, not Daniel, not the Christian martyrs raised the sword
against their princes," she said slowly. "And that is the true
issue."

He continued to look directly into her eyes as he said, "God had not
given them the power or the means."

James started a bit, and Mary felt her heart pounding.

You knew he felt this way, she told herself. Why, then, are you
surprised that he openly professes it?

"So you think, then," she said, "that if the subjects have the power,
they may allow ably resist their rulers?"

"Indeed, if the rulers exceed their bounds, then by all means they
should be resisted, and by power, if necessary." His beard jerked up
and down as his mouth moved.

She stared at him.

"After all," he continued, "it is a commandment to honour one's father
and mother, and the duty to the ruler follows in that wise. It is of
the same case. But if a father should fall into a frenzy, or become
mad, so that he should try to do violence upon his children, are not
the children bound to arise, restrain the father, and take away his
weapons in order to prevent him from dishonouring himself by killing
his children? Do you think God will be displeased with them for
preventing their father from committing a great wickedness? It is even
so, Madam, with rulers who would murder their subjects, who are
children of God. Their blind zeal is but a very mad frenzy. Therefore
to take the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into
prison, until they be brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedience
against rulers, but true obedience, because it agrees with the will of
God."