Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (67 page)

"Aye, but you are the lion!" cried someone. "Show her your teeth!"

He strode across the forecourt and was soon being ushered into the
broad entrance hall and from thence up the now-familiar wide staircase
and then into the adjoining audience chamber. The Queen was already
there, seated on her throne with the embroidered cloth of estate in
gold and violet behind it.

She was all bedecked in the red and yellow Scottish colours, as if she
meant to appeal to his love for his country. Her hair was smoothed
back and her face shiny; it had just had an anointing of almond oil
imported from France, he guessed. She was smiling and obviously
happy.

Why, she's no prettier than my Margaret, he thought in genuine
surprise. Suddenly she was diminished in his eyes.

"Master Knox," said John Erskine, "I have been chosen by Her Majesty to
be present, to answer questions and witness what passes between you."

Erskine: a mild and kind man, and a staunch Protestant, recently named
Earl of Mar by the Queen. The absence of Lord James was blatant and
more to be felt than if he had been present, thought Knox.

Knox bowed slightly and awaited the Queen's words.

"Dear Master Knox," she said, her voice smooth and offensively
pleasant, "I must congratulate you on your recent marriage and wish you
happiness." She smiled as if she had just offered him an estate.

"I am sure you did not call me here for that," he replied.

"I wish no unkindness to pass between us," she said, still smiling, as
if she had not heard his rebuff. "Whatever there has been in the past,
I know that we are different now, that we have learned much since our
early days." Still she smiled that inane smile.

"Every day I learn in the Lord. It is not the same thing as general
learning, by which even a child, and a dull one, increases in knowledge
day by day, with little effort on his part. I can detect no changes in
you, Madam, not since you first landed here in the ugly fog that
surrounded you four years ago."

"You have not seen me in person," she persisted. "Now, perchance, when
we talk, you will see changes, willingness to accommodate."

Was that clumsy hint supposed to tantalize him? "Of what do you wish
to speak, Madam?"

"Of the future of Scotland, in that I am sure you share my anxiety that
an heir be provided."

"God will provide," Knox said stiffly. So that was it.

"God cannot provide by himself without provoking scandal," she replied
sweetly. "I cannot bring forth a child without a husband. It would
not be seemly."

"An unseemly husband is even worse," he said. "And the man nay, I
cannot even call him a man, he is a debauched child you propose to take
to yourself is an insult even to you! You must not even think of it!"
He raised his voice so that it could be heard through the windows and
doors. He had trained his voice to carry great distances.

"So it is true!" she said, still infuriatingly, falsely, pretending a
sweet mood. "You have been preaching against my intended marriage to
the Lord Damley."

"I do not deny it. Is that what you expected me to do?"

"You must desist in this obstruction." She kept her voice even and
reasonable.

"Never." He glared at her.

"Master Knox!" she cried out suddenly, her voice shrill and not at all
the soft, pleasing tone she had adopted until then. "Never has a ruler
been treated as you have seen fit to treat me! I have borne with your
rude words, both against myself and my family, and my faith. I have
even sought your counsel and advice, only to be spurned. But this
preaching against my marriage I cannot permit it to continue! You must
stop at once. I command you to do so!" She burst into tears, and an
attendant rushed over with a handkerchief.

Knox shifted back and forth from foot to foot as he patiently waited
for her to regain control of herself. Stupid, vapourish girl!

"Outside of my preaching, there is nothing in me to offend others. And
when I preach, I am not master of myself, but must obey Him who
commands me to speak plain, and to flatter no flesh upon this earth,"
he finally said.

"But what have you to do with my marriage?" she cried. "The Lords
have given their permission."

"If the Lords consent that you take a pagan husband, they in effect
renounce Christ, banish His truth from them, betray the freedom of this
realm. And" he felt these words come from somewhere outside himself
"perchance in the end this choice will do small comfort to yourself."
He had suddenly felt a weight of sin, suffering, and ugliness pressing
upon him.

"What have you to do with my marriage?" she repeated. "And what are
you within this commonwealth?"

"A subject born within the same, Madam," he said dryly. "And albeit I
be neither earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me however
abject I may be in your eyes a profitable member of the same." He drew
himself up to stand as thin and tall as possible, as though an
invisible wire were attached to the top of his head, suspending him. "I
am as bound as any member of the nobility to speak out, if I see
something harmful approaching."

Mary began to weep again. Erskine mounted the platform of her throne
and said, "Do not be distressed, lovely Queen you who are so beautiful,
and merciful, and held in such esteem by all the princes of Europe "

But she continued crying, until Knox's acerbic voice cut in. "Madam, I
never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures; yea, I can
scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand corrects;
much less can I rejoice in Your Majesty's weeping. But seeing that in
truth I have offered you no just occasion to be offended, but have
spoken the truth, as my calling craves of me, I must sustain Your
Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my conscience, or betray my
country through my silence."

It was hopeless. Sorrow at the realization made her cry out, "Master
Knox, leave this chamber!"

Bowing, he submitted to her request and backed out. The high doors of
the chamber were opened for him and he found himself standing in the
stair landing that served as antechamber just beyond. A bank of pretty
yoang court girls were sitting on a window seat, each wearing a
different coloured bright dress. The summer light made them glow, and
their healthy complexions were ruddy.

"O fair ladies!" he found himself compelled to say, calling them to
attention. His voice was light and merry, as if he would banter and
dally with them.

"How pleasing this life of yours would be if it could abide, and in the
end you could pass to Heaven with all this gay gear!" He shook a
finger at them. They reminded him of flowers in a garden border:
beautiful and simple and perishable.

"But He upon that knave Death, who will come whether you will or not!
And when he has arrested you, the foul worms shall be busy with this
flesh, be it ever so fair and so tender!" He flicked a finger
underneath one girl's chin, felt the soft melting flesh surrounding the
eternal jawbone underneath. "And the weak soul, I fear, will be too
feeble to carry anything with it gold, ornaments, tassels, pearls, or
gems."

Abruptly he turned and left them to their common doom, the doom no one
ever thinks is real.

Not me, they all secretly think. Not me. And all the while they sit
secure, perched on their tree branches, Death is sawing at the base of
the tree, he thought, satisfied that he had disturbed them.

They will think about it at least three minutes, he thought sourly,
clumping down the steps.

Human frailty. What could one man do against it, its self-serving
lies, pleasure-blindness, and powerful desires?

TWENTY-TWO

Two weeks later, on July twenty-ninth, Knox rode through the main
street of St. Andrews, making for the old Abbey, where the Lord "James
was Commendator. Earlier in the day Knox had preached the Sunday
sermon in the parish church, fulfilling the vow to do so that he had
made in the galleys.

How long ago that was almost twenty years! The sea sparkled in the
bright midsummer sun, the surface glittering like a million tiny fish
scales. Out on the promontory the ruined church of St. Andrews had
stood like a broken sand castle. O those days, those days, the first
fruits of the rising against the Cardinal and the corrupt church of
Satan! That was when we first struck terror in their hearts, showed
them we were the marching army of the Lord!

The memory of the men storming the castle and surprising the Cardinal
in his bed with his whore warmed him. And after he had been stabbed in
retaliation for his cruel burning of Wishart, his body was hung from
the very ramparts where he had smiled as Wishart burned.

The Cardinal and his whore .. . why was it that those who practised the
religion of Rome seemed either to keep whores if male or be ones
themselves if female?

But we purged St. Andrews, and today it is the foremost seat of the
Reformed Kirk: our showpiece.

It was a pleasant town on its rocky cliffs overlooking the North Sea,
with its broad streets, gracious town no uses and colleges. The town
was filled with scholars and their students at St. Mary's College, St.
Salvator's College, or St. Leonard's College. Ironically, St.
Leonard's, founded in 1512 to train recruits for the Church of Rome,
had become a hotbed of reformers.

This is our little Geneva, Knox thought, with pride. And I myself came
of age here I myself first stepped forward upon that long road I am
still treading.

He urged his horse to break into a trot. He had been glad enough to
leave Edinburgh, leave behind the mess and turmoil. The Queen had had
the banns called for her marriage to Lord Darnley the Sunday before,
and his palace informants told him she meant it to take place soon.
There would not be three weeks of banns, as her own supposedly
cherished Church required.

Perhaps she is with child, Knox thought. That would explain the
haste.

He came upon the Abbey, with its high grey stone walls and gatehouse.
There were no guards, as the Abbey no longer guarded secret treasures
inaccessible to the public. He rode freely into the enclosure, seeking
the Lord James's house. It was formerly the Prior's dwelling, a
well-appointed stone house, somewhat apart from the grouping of other
ecclesiastical buildings.

The Lord James had sent him an urgent and uncharacteristically
beseeching message to come to him in this crisis of the Queen's
impending marriage. Knox was pleased to acquiesce, and also pleased
that the Lord James was not yet so haughty as he had been depicted by
his enemies. He still had need of him, Knox.

Knox approached the Prior's quarters, and even as he did so a servant
appeared to take his horse.

"The Lord James?" Knox asked.

"Within, good Master Knox," the boy replied, indicating the main
entrance.

Knox strode in, past the ancient carvings of saints and entwined fruits
framing the entranceway, and into the darkened antechamber. He
announced himself to the guard little more than a lad and waited.