The Galliard (53 page)

‘How is it then, this miracle? She has no troops of her own, no great allies, since she will not join the Catholic League – no, it is her own, the miracle – her generosity, her wish for peace, her trust in her people; rather than her charm and beauty.’

He undid another button of his doublet and leaned back, contemplating his wisdom and Bothwell’s wine together with placid satisfaction. His face had grown more completely spherical in the six years since Bothwell had last seen it in the inn-garden at Paris: it was now a perfect harvest-moon with its attendant satellites of chins.

But suddenly its celestial calm was shattered by a convulsion from within; the blue eyes blazed, the fluffy tufts of eyebrows shot up into the pink forehead, the mouth opened in a round indignant O; he was confounded, he was outraged, he demanded of what were the men made in Scotland, and was their Queen indeed a woman and not a mermaid? How was it that even now she was nearly twenty-four there had been no real scandals about her in spite of all the attempts of the ministers, civil and religious, to work them up? Rizzio? Pouf! Cecil’s efforts to blacken her over that had
made him a laughing-stock in France. Châtelard? Pah! She was not of the type to kill her lovers. It was seen.

No, she was cold; and he gave a furnace sigh at the reproach; compliments on her beauty, however subtle, did not amuse her (obviously his own vanity had been piqued); it delighted her far more ‘to hear of hardihood and valiancy’. She never heeded Ronsard’s warning to make the most of her young beauty before it faded like the rose. And in a rich surprising tenor, his hand to his heart, leaning amorously towards his companion, he chanted,

‘Cueillez, Cueillez votre jeunesse:

Comme _à cette fleur, la vieillesse

Fera tenir votre beauté.’

‘No need to goggle at me. I’ve always made the most of my beauty.’

D’Oysel ignored such triviality on a subject as serious as that of food. He wagged his fat finger and said reproachfully that the act of sex could give the Queen no pleasure, only disgust; it was evident in the repulsion she felt for Darnley. She could no more bear him even to lay a hand on her sleeve than if he were a gross spider.

‘Christ’s heart, and do you blame her?’ Bothwell broke out at last, suddenly moved from his silent amusement in those crisp, final, infinitely certain tones that put everything so neatly into categories for the sheer pleasure of arrangement.

‘Blame? How you confuse things, my friend. I say that one has never – but
never
– pleased her. It is seen. She could not hold him faithful to her for even a few weeks after their marriage, and why? Because she did not wish to. Nor does she wish to console herself. Again why? Because he has rendered her a great service: he has disgusted her with men. That is an advantage certainly, to a Queen. To a woman, no!’

‘Because a sickly cub has disappointed her, you think—’ but he could not go on.

‘Aha, you are
touché
! You are not then all stone.’

‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘Oh, you have your blacksmith’s and foreign admiral’s daughters, it is known. How goes it with your Norwegian lady? Is she the reason you have been too preoccupied this past year to make love to your beautiful young Queen?’

‘More likely that my Queen has been too preoccupied with a dangerous childbirth to allow me,’ said Bothwell, hoping his explanation was the true one.

D’Oysel was not to be steered off Anna. His infallible nose for gossip had already discovered that that importunate lady had made use of her passport to pay a second visit to Scotland this summer, encouraged thereto by the news she had obtained that Bothwell’s marriage was not a success. But neither was her attempt to revive the past. Bothwell was none too pleased at her return. To lodge her again on his mother’s estate would have made her far too conspicuous; he gave her one of his peel towers and visited her occasionally and in secret. Poor Anna, lonely, bored and disappointed, poured out her feelings in her sonnets, complaining of the pale tearful wife, in love with another, who had won from her ‘her true husband in the sight of God’. Had she not left her friends and country twice over for him, placed her son, her goods and her own subject heart in his absolute power? These complaints were easier to endure than her expressions of abject humility, when she ‘kissed his hands’ and told him she was trying to make herself worthy of his love.

But even if Bothwell shared her opinion of his wife’s ‘feigned tears’ and ‘writings rouged with learning’ (Lady Jean had recently been both plaintive and pedantic, in a belated attempt to win her husband’s affections), he had no intention of deserting her for Anna. So the Norwegian had now gone home again, and continued to write letters, mostly in verse. He did not answer them – but he kept them.

‘You are too fortunate, my friend, that is your trouble,’ the bland voice of his companion rounded off the troublesome episode. ‘You have a fair lady come sighing for you out of the far North and you are ungrateful. You have a beautiful young wife who now regrets her childish folly and wishes you to love her, it is seen; but you shrug, you say it is too late. My young friend, beware of women.
They are more dangerous than serpents when they are scorned.’

‘Oh, God damn you for an old wiseacre!’ Bothwell answered.

And d’Oysel with mountainous tact spoke instead of Darnley’s odd behaviour politically.

‘He would cut off his nose to spite his face, that one, but that is dangerous, for with it would go some other noses too.’ He pressed a finger on the pudgy button in the middle of his own face, squashing it flat into his cheeks while his little eyes glared out on either side of it with an expression of appalling cunning.

‘Playing with a pup will end in a howl,’ observed Bothwell, ‘and there’s not a Scot now who doesn’t know it and fight shy of him.’

Darnley had indeed set to work to find fresh allies. In May, before his son was born, he had already tried to get away to Flanders, and the two comrades now debated this obscure move. Could it be that he had hoped to meet King Philip of Spain, who had been expected to arrive in Flanders in May with an army to crush the Netherland Protestants and their English backers? Bothwell had some evidence to support this notion.

‘The pup’s got into touch with some English spies, that I know. One of them was in the Tower with me and released later, a fellow called Arthur Pole, who talked big of being able to raise the Catholics for King Philip if he should invade England. He tried to get me into it, and couldn’t understand that though I was an enemy of Elizabeth I was no friend of Philip’s. He’ll find his mistake with the English Catholics too, I’m thinking – they’ll not fight for Philip, however much Elizabeth stamps on ’em; but these fish, who think wars are made only for words, forget there’s such a thing as flesh and blood. Pole’s furnished Darnley with a chart of the Scilly Isles and plans of Scarborough Castle which the young ass left lying about in his usual artless fashion. What’s the betting he means to join King Philip in a descent on the English Coast?’

‘Scarborough – Scilly – Flanders! Your pup roams wide.’

‘Maybe he’s heard that “a ganging fit will aye get something, if it’s only a thorn or a broken toe”,’ Bothwell remarked dryly.

There was no doubt about the ‘ganging fit’. Darnley had a ship ready manned in the Clyde to take him abroad. On Michaelmas
night about ten o’clock he had ridden to Edinburgh, but hearing that the Queen was sitting with some of her great lords, refused to enter. She had run out herself into the raw foggy night air of the courtyard, taken him by the hand and let him in. That evening, alone with him, she had tried to discover what he intended to do on this mysterious voyage, but failed.

For so fair a creature, d’Oysel complained, she was singularly deficient as a Delilah.

She had next day to admit to her Council that she had been able to get nothing from her husband about his plans: it was agreed that he should be questioned publicly. The Frenchman Du Croc and d’Oysel were there; Du Croc asked in flowery terms how he could wish ‘to relinquish so beautiful a Queen and so royal a realm’; Mary took his hand before them all and asked him to say outright what grievance he had that made him act against her, seek to blacken her name with the Catholic Powers, and now secretly to leave the kingdom.

It was the moment he had rehearsed inside his head for weeks; he would tell her in front of everybody how shamefully she had treated him, ignored him, got all she wanted from him, even a son and heir, and then denied him any real power, turned everybody against him. And here was the moment, and Mary standing before him, grave, beautiful, her cold fingers just touching his, her eyes meeting his so cool and calm – for the first time he thought what strange eyes they were, always changing colour, but now they seemed to have no colour, they were the eyes of a mermaid.

And as he turned his head he saw James’ long contemptuous nose, Bothwell’s fiery glance of disgust, and Lethington’s fingertips gently tapping each other.

His courage ebbed out of him; if he began to speak of his injuries he would burst into tears and they would all laugh at him. He mumbled that he ‘never intended any voyage or had any discontent’. He thought he saw a smile pass round. He
must
show that he was to be reckoned with, yes and feared.

He took away his hand with a gesture of tremendous dignity, and in a tone of sinister importance he said, ‘Adieu, Madam, you
shall not see my face for a long time.’ Then he rammed his hat over his eyes and strode out of the room.

From Corstorphine that very same day he wrote to her complaining of the scornful looks and treatment given him by her ‘great lords’.

But he had at last succeeded in one of his aims, for the ‘great lords’ decided they could no longer ignore him. No sooner had he ridden off than a conference was held by the Lord James, Lethington and Argyll, with the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly, pledging to support each other in disobeying the King when his orders conflicted with the Queen’s. This curious combination of old enemies showed their sense of the urgent need for unity against a common danger.

Bothwell’s uneasiness was not merely because of Darnley. It was in Mary’s very success that the danger lay. Her toleration was winning more and more of the milder Protestants to her side, and even to her religion; as the ministers were still very much a minority (there were not nearly enough of them for all the parishes), this was driving them to desperation. And a Scotland strengthened by unity, as she was strengthening it, was the last thing England wanted. There were English attempts to stir up trouble, Morton and Lindsay being very helpful as agents. Was the Lord James engineering the trouble for his own purpose? The old Abbot of Kelso, William Kerr, was murdered by two of his own relatives, who struck off his head ‘because’, it was rumoured, ‘the Lord Bastard wanted to shut his mouth’. The Abbot had known too much about the Rizzio murder plot and who was in it. Bothwell’s office as Lieutenant made it his duty to ride against the Kerrs and punish their murder of their kinsman, but his scouts warned him of opposition being organized against him all along the Border; also, on the English side, of a widespread plot working against him personally, either to kill or capture him for England.

To counter this he called a Royal Progress with a Court of Justice at Jedburgh, which, of course, James would also attend. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief’; he grinned as he thought of James sitting in judgement on the very crimes he had instigated.

He did not explain his motives to Mary, but she gladly agreed to this; her Progresses had always had effect, she told her Lieutenant.

‘On the partridges anyway,’ he answered her. ‘I hear their price goes up to half a crown apiece as soon as you appear.’

‘It’s the purveyors’ fault. They take all the profit and poke their noses into everything, and those are so long they stretch from here to France over even a bottle of Bordeaux.’

So she appointed a tariff to ‘put the purveyors’ noses out of joint’ and keep down the prices of board and lodging at Jedburgh during her visit: bed and bedding at a shilling a night; a man’s ‘ordinary’, with braised beef, mutton and roast, at one and four; good ale at fivepence a pint; finest bread at fourpence the pound; and stabling for a horse at twopence the twenty-four hours.

Old Sir Richard Maitland quoted to her from his own verses how

Of Liddesdale the common thieves

None dare sleep for their mischieves.

He warned her in especial to beware of the three Jocks – the Laird’s Jock (‘Takes hen and cock’), Jock o’ the Side (‘A greater thief ne’er did ride’) and the famous or infamous Little Jock o’ the Park (‘rips chest and ark’), for

They leave not spindle, spoon nor spit,

Bed, bolster, blanket, shirt nor sheet.

He watched her ride off in her spirits, the hoofs of her mare Black Agnes clattering merrily on the cobblestones of Edinburgh High Street, and all her Court in attendance. She turned to wave her quirt at the old man with a flourish: she never looked so well as on horseback: it was a graceful fashion, this new-fangled side-saddle that she had introduced into Scotland.

Chapter Sixteen

Mary had put off the Assizes till October so as to give time for the harvest to be gathered in first. Bothwell had ridden ahead two days before with three hundred horse to round up ‘the common thieves’. Hermitage Castle was his headquarters, and on the first day he filled it with prisoners from the Armstrong clan who were conducting a happy little war on the Johnstones of Nithsdale. These he would take on with him to be tried at Jedburgh when he had added to the bag. Next day it was the turn of the Elliots, now his determined enemies.

One got up early to catch an Elliot; as the Night Hawk clattered across the drawbridge over the moat the ground was still dark, and a white cow moved through the dim shapes of some fruit trees as slowly as the moon through clouds. A brown owl rose heavy and blundering from almost under his horse’s hoofs and flapped away into the shadow of the Castle. His ‘lambs’ came jingling after him, the hoofs of their mounts beating a merry rattle like that of kettledrums on the hollow planks of the bridge.