The Wild Queen (36 page)

As the days passed, Lord Ruthven was my sole visitor. I observed that he seemed to be growing overly fond of his prisoner, and I looked for ways to use this to my advantage.

“Are you well, my lady queen?” he asked solicitously.

“Not well, Lord Ruthven, but better,” I replied. My maidservants, Maggie and Maud, had brought me some fine linen and needle and thread, and I was working on a set of tiny garments for the child I was expecting in a few months.

Lord Ruthven began to walk about, inspecting the small chamber, which had recently been much improved with the addition of a proper bed and other furnishings, even a tapestry on the rough stone wall and a threadbare carpet on the floor.

“Are you comfortable then?”

I looked at him incredulously. “Is a prisoner ever comfortable?”

“Perhaps I could bring you something that would give you pleasure,” he suggested.

“My freedom, Lord Ruthven!” I exclaimed. “That is what I am most lacking!”

Abruptly, Lord Ruthven dropped to his knees. “My lady queen, you have bewitched me! If only you will love me, I will see to it that you are freed.”

I was appalled by his proposition. What I had perceived to be his affection for me had gone much further than I had expected, and much more was expected from me in return. Here was a man offering me my liberty, but at what cost? I did not trust him, and I cut him off before he could say more. “Lord Ruthven, I find your offer insulting. I bid you leave me and not return.”

***

I had been imprisoned at Lochleven for more than a month when I experienced severe pain and realized that I would miscarry my child. A physician was brought from the town of Kinross, on the western shore of the loch, but he could do nothing to save the infants—I learned that I had been carrying twins—and little to stanch the flow of blood.

As I lay there in utter desolation, Lord Ruthven, ignoring my order not to return, clattered into my chamber without so much as a by-your-leave, accompanied by several lords.

“Good day to you, my lady,” one of them said brusquely. “We have here three documents, a pen, and an inkpot, and we ask that you sign them straightaway”

“Documents?” I asked, too weak even to lift my head. “What documents are these?”

Lord Ruthven cleared his throat. “By the first, you agree to abdicate in favor of your son, Prince James. By the second, you appoint your brother Lord Moray as regent until the prince is of age to rule. And by the third, you nominate the lords to serve until Moray returns from France, which he is expected to do shortly.”

I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. I had been right not to trust Lord Ruthven, who had now turned against me. Had I not still been bleeding heavily, I would have risen from my bed and railed at them, giving them every reason at my command why I would not sign, and then I would have ordered them from my chamber and sent them to the devil. But I could do no more than shake my head and whisper, “I will not sign.”

“Yes, Mary Stuart, you will sign, and you will do it now!”

“I will not sign,” I repeated, my voice a little stronger.

One of the lords bellowed, “Then you had best get up now and dress, because I swear that if you do not sign, we will throw you into the loch and let you drown!”

I gathered what little strength I had and said, slowly but clearly, “You dare to speak that way to your queen and sovereign? I will not sign!”

“Sign, damnable harlot, or I will cut your throat myself!” he roared.

Believing he would do exactly as he threatened, I seized the pen, scribbled a signature on the three documents, and sank back weakly on my pillow. “When I am by the grace of God free again, I shall not honor these, for you know as well as I do that I have signed against my will.”

The lords snatched up their documents and stormed out. I heard their footsteps on the stair, receding into silence. A door slammed. A bolt was thrown.
Perhaps,
I thought,
it would have been better to let them throw me in the loch and drown me, for what is my life worth now? Nothing! My country is torn apart by warring factions. I have lost everything I ever valued.

In the silence that followed the departure of the hateful lords, and in the agony of my soul, I prayed that I might die.

I
DID NOT DIE.
Impoverished in body and mind, lacking health and strength, bereft of all I cared for, still I did not die!

Therefore, I decided to live. I had been compelled against my will to sign a document of abdication, and I knew well that a coerced abdication had no force of law. I resolved to build up my endurance, find a way to escape, make my way to England, and ask Queen Elizabeth's help to regain my throne. Only then could I begin to heal my sorely wounded country. That was my plan, and I was determined to see it through.

My two maidservants, Maggie and Maud, were always the best conduits for gossip gathered in the kitchens. They brought me the news that my fourteen-month-old son had been crowned King James VI of Scotland in the parish church at Stirling on the twenty-ninth of July, just five days after I had been forced to sign away my crown.

“Not many attended, my lady queen,” Maud told me. “Those that did had to listen to John Knox preach the sermon that went on until your wee bairn screamed so loud it shut the preacher up and he could not go on.”

“Knox!” I cried. “So he is back in Edinburgh?”

“Aye, madam, and speaking out most vigorously against you and your husband,” reported Maggie, always more inclined to tell me the truth than was her sister, Maud.

“Wheesht!”
cried Maud, trying to silence Maggie, who enjoyed her role as bearer of ill tidings.

But Maggie would not be silenced. “Called you 'that whore of Babylon,' ” she reported smugly. “Said you was a scarlet adventuress and ought to be hanged for murdering the king.”

Then Maud could not resist adding, “The preacher said God will send a great plague to Scotland, worse than locusts, worse than fire, if you're not punished.”

“And do the people believe him?” I asked.

“Aye, they do, madam. They do.”

I wondered if my maids believed him too, but I feared asking, lest they tell me the truth.

***

In mid-August my brother, having returned from France, came to see me. I had expected the visit for some time, half dreading it, half desiring it. We did not embrace. I did not offer him my hand.

“A fine mess you are in, dear sister!” Lord Moray said coldly. “Were you not warned about where a marriage to a man like Lord Bothwell would lead you—or do we call him Lord Orkney now? It seems you have reaped what you sowed!”

“Surely I do not deserve all of this!” I cried. I was eager to tell him how I had been misused by the rebel lords but found him unsympathetic and began to wish that he would leave, for he was no solace to me at all.

Then he softened his tone and begged me to promise I would not try to escape or ask for help from my Guise relatives or from Queen Elizabeth. When I balked at making such promises, he hardened against me again, and so it went for the rest of his visit—back and forth, back and forth. At times he comforted me, and at other times he threatened, gradually wearing me down, and when he promised he would do what he could to help me, I was persuaded that it was perhaps best for him to assume the regency for the infant king of Scotland.

My brother and I did embrace when he left, and a few days later Maggie and Maud reported that he had been proclaimed regent to act for little James until he came of age.

Too late, I realized that I had been duped. My brother had no intention of helping me. He had the power he wanted and believed by rights was his.

In early autumn, as cruel winds howled around Lochleven and cold rains lashed the windows of my prison, I made a vow that I would reclaim my throne and restore my honor no matter what it took, or how long. I had not yet given up hope that my husband would somehow find a way to rescue me, though garbled rumors had reached me that he had made an escape by ship with the lords in pursuit, had been arrested on his way to France to secure help for me, and was now imprisoned in Norway on charges of piracy. I wondered if I would ever see him again, but I clung to the slender thread that he would keep his promise to me.

***

I found ways to improve my spirits. Though I had lost the twins who were to have worn the tiny garments I was sewing, I finished a set and gave it to one of the ladies of the castle. I persuaded Lord Douglas to allow me to have my own cook as well as several other domestic servants, including one who was French and enjoyed speaking with me.

Seton was permitted to come to stay with me. We often walked together in the garden when the weather was fit, and since fine weather was a rarity on the loch, we walked there even when it was foul. On long winter evenings we read to each other and played cards by a small peat fire. We never tired of each other's company.

On the eighth of December I observed my twenty-fifth birthday. I asked for and received a lute and invited some of the servants and residents of gloomy Lochleven Castle to my chambers in the tower for music. We even danced! At Christmas I joined the Douglas family at a Yuletide feast. There I found the companionship of Lord Douglas's handsome and charming younger brother, George, who was fondly called Pretty Geordie by his family. We talked together several times, and I began to see that Geordie might very well be my way out of Lochleven.

During the long, harsh winter I cultivated the friendship, and then the love, of Geordie. He was younger than I—just twenty—and obviously smitten. We began to meet secretly, and though he pledged his love to me I cautioned him that there was really nothing he could gain from this.

“I am a married woman,” I reminded him, though I was under continual pressure to divorce Lord Orkney. “And I am a queen. I can offer you nothing but my heartfelt thanks and sisterly affection for the help you give me.”

“Then that shall be enough for me,” he said, his wide young eyes shining with adoration.

***

Geordie arranged for a boat to take a certain “laundress” from the castle to the village on the mainland shore. He helped me with the disguise, wrapping a muffler around my face and lacing heavy boots on my feet. On a blustery morning in March, after an imprisonment of more than nine months and carrying a basket heaped with linens from my own bed, I made my way to the jetty where the boat was moored and scrambled awkwardly aboard. I had never done anything like this in my life, accustomed as I was to being assisted whether I needed it or not. I nodded to the boatman, who untied the boat and began to row while keeping up a steady stream of conversation. I replied with nods and murmurs.

We were halfway across the loch, the wind kicking up little whitecaps, when suddenly the boatman stopped rowing and stared at me. I, in turn, stared at my boots and prayed that he had not recognized me. But he lunged at me, trying to pluck off my muffler. My hands flew up to stop him, and he began to laugh.

“The hands of a lady!” he cried. “I'll say it plainly: the fair white hands of a queen! 'Tis true, isn't it?”

“Aye,” I said, “it is true, indeed, but I beg you to keep rowing to the shore, and I will pay you all I have.”

He paused, considering my offer. “ 'Tis not that I lack sympathy for you, madam, but 'twould sure be the end of me if Sir William found out I had helped his best and most famous prisoner escape.”

“Then do with me as you will,” I said, thoroughly dispirited. “Though it may mean my death.”

“Nay, my lady, I won't let that happen. I will take you back, and you must slip into the castle the same way you came out, and none will be the wiser.”

That was the end of that, though I fretted that the boatman would not keep his word. My lovelorn friend Geordie despaired at least as much as did I that our plan had failed.

“We shall try again,” he said firmly. “But the next time we will plan more carefully, and I promise you that we shall succeed.”

***

Several weeks later I made a second escape attempt. This time Geordie enlisted the help of Willie Douglas, a young page, not yet sixteen, and rumored to be Sir William's illegitimate son, though he was officially described as an orphan. Little Willie, as he was called, would row me in a boat to the village on the mainland shore, where Geordie would meet us and lead us to the town of Kinross. Lord Seton, Mary's brother, would be waiting at Kinross with a small group of armed men.

There were many pieces to this plan that had to fit together perfectly if it was to succeed. The first challenge was to escape the constant companionship of the laird's wife, who was expecting a child but who often—too often, in fact—liked to sleep in my bedchamber; his mother, old Lady Douglas, who talked ceaselessly; and his young daughter, Fiona, and her cousin Kirsten, who followed me around worshipfully, begging me to tell them stories about my life in France. Somehow I was going to have to elude this gaggle of chattering females.

The laird's wife unwittingly cooperated by giving birth late in April, an event that served to distract the others for several days. Therefore, on a rare sunny Sunday afternoon, the second of May, while most members of the laird's family were enjoying themselves at May Day celebrations on the eastern end of the island, Little Willie stowed some clothing and other items in one of the boats tied up at the jetty near the castle's main gate, which faced west. He took this opportunity to allow all the other boats to fill partway with water—not enough to sink them but enough so that bailing would be necessary. He still needed to get the key to unlock the main gate.

Later, the family went in to supper, inviting me to join them. I declined, pleading a headache. Seton and I exchanged our clothes; I put on her red kirtle, she took my blue one, and I covered myself with her long mantle, pulling the hood up over my hair.