Mary Stuart (28 page)

Bothwell was not the man to be carried away by sentiment. An experienced seaman, he could read the signs of a coming storm. With inveterate resolution he prepared to meet all hazards. He knew that his enemies aimed at his life, and that matters would soon be decided by an appeal to arms. Hastily, therefore, he sharked up what riders and foot soldiers he could, in order to be prepared to resist attacks. Mary sacrificed everything left to her in order to aid him in paying his mercenaries; she sold her jewels, borrowed such moneys as she could, and at length (though this was a grievous affront to the English Queen) decided that the silver-gilt font Elizabeth had sent her for little James’s christening should be committed to the melting pot in the hope of prolonging the agony of her own rule. In threatening silence, however, the Scottish lords gathered together, enveloping the palace like a thunderstorm which might at any moment shoot forth its lightnings against the royal pair. Bothwell was too familiar with the cunning of his erstwhile associates to trust the semblance of tranquillity. He knew well enough that they were planning to strike him out of the darkness, and he would not await their onslaught in unfortified Holyrood. On 5th June, barely three weeks after the wedding, he and Mary rode from Edinburgh to the stronghold of Borthwick, a few miles south of the capital in the direction of the border, where his principal strength lay. There Mary, as a last hope, issued a summons for 12th June, addressed to her “subjects, noblemen, knights, esquires, gentlemen and yeomen”, who were to assemble under arms, provided with a week’s supply of food. Obviously Bothwell designed, by a sudden attack, to strike down his enemies before they had gathered their own forces.

But this flight from Holyrood gave the Scottish lords courage. Hastily they moved upon Edinburgh, occupying the capital without resistance. Sir James Balfour, who had been Bothwell’s chief assistant in the murder, was ready and willing to betray his confederate, so that a couple of thousand riders were able to gallop off to Borthwick to seize Bothwell before he could get his troops together and equip them for battle. Bothwell, however, would not allow himself to be taken like a wild beast in a snare. He jumped out of a window before the main body of his enemies under Morton and Hume arrived on the scene, and spurred away, leaving Mary behind. The Scottish lords did not, at this juncture, venture to use arms against their Queen, being content with the attempt to persuade her to detach herself from Bothwell. She, however, was still in thrall to her ravisher. During the night, hastily dressing herself as a boy, she mounted her horse and, soon joined by her husband, rode with him to Dunbar, leaving all else in order to live or die with Bothwell.

One little sign ought to have convinced the Queen that her cause was lost. For on the day of her flight from Edinburgh to Borthwick Castle there suddenly disappeared, “without leave-taking”, her last adviser, Maitland of Lethington, the only man who, during these weeks when she had been distraught by passion, had continued to show some degree of loyalty. Lethington had followed his mistress a long way on the gloomy descent to ruin, and perhaps—Bothwell apart—no one had done more than he to weave the net of murder around Darnley. But now he felt that the wind had changed and was blowing in full force against the Queen. A typical diplomatist, one of those who always trim their sails to the breeze of power, he would no longer help in a cause he knew to be lost. While the ride to Borthwick was in progress, he quietly turned his horse and rode back to join the other side. The last rat had deserted the sinking ship.

Mary was unteachable; she could be neither intimidated nor warned. In this astonishing woman danger served only to intensify the courage that gave her greatest follies a romantic glamour. Reaching Dunbar on horseback, in male attire, she found there no royal robes, no harness, no equipment. What matter? This was not the time for courtly state, now that war had been declared. From a woman of the people she borrowed a feminine outfit—“a red petticoat, with sleeves tied with points, a partlet, a black velvet hat and a muffler.” Little did she care if her appearance was unqueenly, so long as she could ride beside the man who was all that remained to her on earth, and for whom she had sacrificed everything. Bothwell quickly mustered what forces he could. The “subjects, noblemen, knights, esquires, gentlemen and yeomen” had failed to assemble. Scotland was no longer loyal to its Queen. With two hundred mercenary harquebusiers as shock troops and a rabble of poorly armed peasants and borderers (not more than about twelve hundred men in all) on 14th June the Queen and Bothwell rashly abandoned Dunbar and set forth to attack Edinburgh. The insignificant army was driven onward by the sturdy will of the Earl, who hoped to take the Scottish lords by surprise. He knew that foolhardiness can sometimes save a situation in defiance of reasonable calculation.

At Carberry Hill, six miles from Edinburgh, on Sunday, 15th June, the two rabbles (they are not worthy the name of armies) came face to face. The Queen’s troops, now swelled by reinforcements to three thousand five hundred, outnumbered those of her enemies. But few of the lords of the realm, few of the nobility and gentry, were fighting under the royal banner of the Scottish lion. Except for the before-mentioned harquebusiers (mercenaries) the Queen’s main supporters were Bothwell’s moss-troopers, whose lust for battle was almost wholly in abeyance. Less than half a league away, on the other side of the stream, were the forces of her adversaries, well mounted gentlefolk, adequately armed and trained for combat. The standard under which they were prepared to fight was a strange one for those who had been accomplices in the late King’s murder. It was of white silk, and upon it was painted the dead body of Darnley, with the infant James praying before it, in the words: “Judge and avenge my caus, O Lord!” Thus the very men who had participated in the slaying of Darnley now wished to represent themselves as Darnley’s avengers, and to proclaim themselves as having taken up arms only against his murderer, not in rebellion against the Queen.

The two banners fluttered bravely in the wind. But there was no bravery in the hearts of those who formed either body of combatants. Neither side would advance to the attack across the burn. Both parties stood watching one another warily. Bothwell’s borderers had no mind to let themselves be slaughtered for a cause beyond their understanding. The Scottish lords, on their side, had certain scruples which rendered them unwilling to use spears and swords against their rightful Queen. To bring a monarch to his death by a cleverly devised hole-and-corner conspiracy, thereafter to hang a few poor devils of the lower orders and solemnly proclaim their own innocence—little matters of that sort did not occasion them any pricks of conscience. But in open day to assail a sovereign ruler conflicted with the feudalist notions which still swayed their minds.

Du Croc, the French ambassador, present on the battlefield as a neutral observer, did not fail to notice that neither side was eager for the fray, and therefore hastened to offer his services as mediator. Under a flag of truce, with an escort of fifty horse, the Frenchman crossed the brook to parley with Bothwell and the Queen.

It was a strange audience. Mary, who had been accustomed to receive the French ambassador beneath a royal canopy, and robed in court attire, was sitting on the stones, clad as aforesaid, with a short kilt which barely covered her knees. But she was no less dignified, no less proud, than if she had been in full panoply of state. She could not master her wrath. As if she were still queen of the situation as she was still virtually Queen of the country, she demanded that the Scottish lords should immediately make their submission. The lords, she said, had formally acquitted Bothwell, but now they were accusing him of the murder. They had asked her to marry Bothwell, and now dared to make a crime of her having done so. No doubt, in these respects, Mary’s indignation was justified, but the hour of right had passed, and the hour of might had come. While Mary was parleying with du Croc, Bothwell rode up. The ambassador saluted him, but did not shake hands. Now Bothwell had his word to say. He spoke clearly, and without reservations. Not a shade of fear troubled his audacious countenance. Du Croc himself had, unwillingly, to admit the unshaken courage of the desperado. “I must acknowledge,” wrote the ambassador in his report to the King of France, under date 17th June 1567, “that I saw in him a great warrior, who spoke with self-confidence, and was well able to lead his followers boldly and skilfully. I could not but admire him, because he was well aware that his enemies were resolute, and that he could not count upon the fidelity of a bare half of his own forces. Nevertheless he was undismayed.” Bothwell proposed that the issue should be decided by single combat between himself and anyone of equal rank whom his enemies chose to appoint. His cause was just, and God would be on his side. Banteringly he told the Frenchman to watch the proposed duel from a neighbouring hillock. That would be good sport. The Queen, however, would hear nothing of the proposal. “No, no,” she interposed, “I will not suffer that; I will fight out the quarrel by his side.” She still hoped that her enemies would submit to her authority. A born romanticist, she was now, as ever, lacking in the sense of reality. Du Croc speedily realised that his mission was fruitless. The fine old fellow would gladly have helped the Queen if he could, and the tears came to his eyes, but so long as she stood by Bothwell there was no hope for her. Farewell, then. He bowed courteously, turned his horse and rode slowly back to the Scottish lords.

The parley was finished. It was time for the battle to begin. But the rank and file had better sense than their leaders. They saw that the great men had been conversing amicably. Why should poor wretches shoot one another or cut one another down on such a fine afternoon? Bothwell’s soldiers idled about, and when Queen Mary, as a last hope, ordered them to attack, they refused to advance. They had been loafing on the hillside for six or seven hours, and now the little force began to crumble away. As soon as the lords perceived this, they dispatched two hundred cavalrymen to cut off Bothwell’s and the Queen’s retreat. Mary saw the danger and, being still a woman in love, she thought not of her own danger but of Bothwell’s. She knew that none of her subjects would lay a hand on herself, but that his enemies would not spare him, for Bothwell left alive might betray things which these belated avengers of Darnley would not like to have made public. For the first time in her life, therefore, she mastered her pride. She sent a messenger under a flag of truce to Kirkcaldy of Grange, asking him to come alone for a parley.

Reverence for the sacred command of a monarch had a magic effect. Kirkcaldy of Grange halted his riders. He went alone to Mary Stuart and, before saying a word, he knelt to pay homage. Then he stated his conditions. The Queen must leave Bothwell and return with the Scottish lords to Edinburgh. Bothwell could ride whithersoever he pleased. No one would pursue him.

Bothwell (a wonderful scene, and a wonderful man!) stood looking on without a word. He said nothing to Kirkcaldy nor yet anything to the Queen to influence her decision. One cannot but feel he was ready to ride alone against the two hundred who were waiting at the foot of the hill, prepared, at a wave of Kirkcaldy’s hand, to charge the hostile lines. Only when he heard that the Queen had agreed to Kirkcaldy’s proposal did Bothwell step to her and embrace her—for the last time, though neither of them knew this. Thereupon he mounted his horse and galloped off, followed only by a couple of servants. The dream was over, and the time of awakening had come.

The awakening came, dreadful, inexorable. The Scottish lords promised to conduct Mary back to Edinburgh with all due honour, and it is probable that such had been their intention. But hardly did she, seated on her jennet and wearing lowly attire, begin to ride through the ranks of the common soldiers, when, fired with scorn, they venomously reviled her. So long as the iron hand of Bothwell had protected the Queen, the hatred of the populace had been kept in restraint. Now, when she was no longer thus safeguarded, contempt broke forth. A queen that had capitulated was no longer a queen to these rebel soldiers. They thronged round her more and more closely, inquisitively at first, then challengingly, with shouts of “Burn the whore! Burn the murderess!” Kirkcaldy laid about him with the flat of his sword, but in vain. More and more of the rebels closed around her, and held aloft, full in her sight, the banner demanding God’s vengeance upon Darnley’s murderer. This unroyal progress, this running of the gauntlet from Carberry Hill to Edinburgh lasted from six in the evening until ten. The populace thronged from the villages and from all the houses of the city to enjoy the spectacle of a captured queen. Again and again the press became so great that the ranks of the soldiers were broken. Never did Mary Stuart suffer a more profound humiliation than on this day.

But this proud woman might be humiliated; she would not bend. As a wound does not burn fiercely until it is cleansed, so Mary did not really feel her defeat until she was faced by this poison of scorn. Her hot blood, the blood of the Stuarts, the blood of the Guises, boiled. Instead of behaving prudently, she railed at the lords, holding them responsible for her contumelious treatment by the people. Like an angry lioness she roared at her enemies; she would hang them, would have them crucified; and suddenly she seized the Earl of Lindsay’s hand, saying: “I swear, by this hand which is now in yours, that I will have your head.” As always, in times of danger, her excess of courage led her into folly. Although the Scottish lords now had her safe in their hands, she openly used the most abusive language against them, expressing the utmost contempt for their misbehaviour, instead of maintaining a prudent silence or trying to win her subjects over by cajolery.

Probably her rage made the lords harsher than they had at first intended to be. At any rate, now that they felt she would never forgive them, they did their utmost to make the unruly woman feel her defencelessness. Instead of installing their Queen in the palace of Holyrood, which lay without the city walls, they compelled her to ride past Kirk o’ Field into Edinburgh, where the streets were filled with the rabble. There, through High Street, she was led to the provost’s house, as if to the pillory. The door was locked upon her. Not one of her noblewomen or servantmaids was admitted. A night of despair followed. For days she had not changed her clothes. Since the morning she had not had a morsel of food. Terrible had been her sufferings from sunrise to sunset—a period in which she had lost her kingdom and her lover. Outside in the street there assembled, as before a wild beast’s cage, a foul-tongued mob, to shout words of the coarsest opprobrium. Not until now, when the lords believed that her spirit was broken, did they try to negotiate with her. They did not ask much. Their only demand was that she should break away from Bothwell for ever. But the defiant woman could fight more boldly for a lost cause than for a hopeful one. Contemptuously she rejected their proposal, and one of her adversaries admitted later: “Never have I seen a more valiant woman than was the Queen on this occasion.”