The Wild Queen (27 page)

Henry kissed me lightly then and left, as we had agreed, to wait for me in my chamber while I heard Mass. His reason was good enough: he did not want to give Knox and his Protestant band any chance to say that Henry did not support their cause. After he had gone, all those remaining helped me to cast off my
deuil blanc,
each of them removing one pin, marking my passage from widow to wife.

The mood much brightened, my ladies led me off to change out of black and into an elegant gown of ivory satin encrusted with gems. Beaming, I greeted my husband, and as trumpets blew a fanfare, we led our guests into the great hall for the finest dinner my cooks could design: sixteen dishes, consisting of chicken, lamb, and various kinds of fish and fowl. Several times we stepped out into the forecourt of the palace to acknowledge the cheers of the crowds gathered there to wish us well and to toss them handfuls of gold and silver coins.

“Such a fine-looking pair!” we heard over and over when we returned to the great hall to lead the dancing. There were masques performed that had been written for the occasion by the court poet, George Buchanan; singing done by a chorus that included my secretary, David Rizzio; and still more dancing.

Late in the afternoon we all retired to our chambers to rest while the servants and cooks prepared a supper to be served later to a second group of guests. It was my expectation that Henry would join me in my chamber, perhaps just to lie by my side and sleep a little, though I was much too excited for sleep.

But Henry did not appear in my bedchamber. He had, it seemed, gone off to gamble with his friends, Rizzio among them. Not wishing the Four Maries to witness my disappointment, I stayed alone until it was time for my ladies to begin dressing me for the evening.

The supper was just as sumptuous as the dinner. The pastry cooks had outdone themselves. The masques were more elaborately staged, the music even livelier, and my husband accompanied himself on the lute when he sang a song he himself had composed for me. There were sour notes of a different sort: my brother Lord Moray had refused to attend my wedding. Another who refused the invitation was Thomas Randolph; as Elizabeth's ambassador, he could do nothing to show support for my marriage to Henry Stuart. The one who suffered most from Randolph's absence was Beaton, who would have been happy to have her admirer for a dancing partner.

When the revelry ended, long after midnight, my husband and I withdrew to my bedchamber. As we left the hall, the Four Maries and I exchanged our special signal—left hand to right eyebrow—and smiled. I was not nervous. I was no longer a naive girl of sixteen, and though I had not experienced the raptures of the marriage bed during my twenty months as the wife of François, my body had told me during Henry's passionate kisses and intimate caresses what I might expect. There would be no witnesses to the consummation, no requirements for proof of my virginity And when Henry came to my bed that night and took me in his arms, I knew at last the transports of love.

M
Y HUSBAND AND
I retreated to Seton Palace, where George Seton, brother of my devout Mary, kept a beautiful suite in readiness for us. There we abandoned ourselves to the delights of our new marriage. My passion for Henry imprisoned for so long by the demands of my great status as queen, was suddenly released. I was like a starving man before a banqueting table, determined to have my fill; a woman craving water whose thirst would now be slaked.

“You are like a wild thing!” Henry laughed, his long, elegant limbs entangled with mine. “My wild queen.” He pinned my arms to my sides and kissed me. “And it is my duty to tame you.”

Far from being tamed, I was inflamed.

After only two days, we had to leave; we could indulge ourselves no longer. Too many duties awaited me. Reluctantly, we returned to Holyrood.

In our absence John Knox had delivered another of his hateful sermons, calling me “the harlot Jezebel” and denouncing the sumptuous style in which we had celebrated our wedding. “Three days of nothing but balls and banquets,” he had railed, perhaps angry that he had not been among those invited.

We heard of Elizabeth's fury when she had learned that our marriage had actually taken place. She seized all the properties of the Lennox family and ordered Henry's mother to be held prisoner in the Tower of London and made as miserable as possible. When the angry queen dispatched a representative to chastise me, I sent him back with a sharp rejoinder:

“Stop meddling in affairs that do not concern you.”

My biggest problem was not the preacher or the queen of England but my brother James, earl of Moray. While I had been young and unmarried and dependent on my brother's counsel, the jealous monster lying dormant in his heart had slumbered. Since the hour of my birth, my illegitimate half brother had known that I, and not he, would inherit the Scottish throne. But James wanted more than anything in the world to be king. Now my marriage to a man he did not like had awakened the beast. My growing confidence to make my own decisions merely fed his jealousy. He was preparing to lead a rebellion against me.

Informed that my brother was a traitor, I ordered Lord Moray—I would no longer call him familiarly James—to appear before me within six days and explain himself.

I feared for my safety and for Henry's if Lord Moray gathered enough support to conquer my army and seize us both. His rebellion had to be put down swiftly. I knew that I had the loyalty of the common people, and I was confident they would rally around me and would not aid the rebel lords. But I needed help.

First I wrote to James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell, who had been living in Paris since his escape from the Tower of London. (Livingston had won the first part of her wager, that he would somehow get himself out of the Tower, and had kept her diamond combs.) I forgave him whatever misdeeds he had committed that had landed him in prison and then in exile. I sent for him now.

At the same time I freed George Gordon the younger, son of the earl of Huntly whom I had defeated in battle two years earlier. I restored to Gordon his lands and his title as well as his freedom, and in gratitude he promised to aid my efforts to stop my brother and the rebels.

Six days had passed since my ultimatum to my brother, with no response. I summoned the messenger-at-arms and gave him the order: “Go now and put Lord Moray to the horn.” The messenger obeyed, proceeding to the High Cross near the fountain on the High Street. After blowing the royal horn, he loudly declared, “Hear ye, hear ye! Know ye that James Stuart, earl of Moray, is hereby declared an outlaw by order of Her Majesty Mary, queen of Scots!” He repeated this horn blast and declaration three times.

A month after the magnificence of my wedding day and the splendid nights of indulging my passion for my husband, I assumed another role. Donning a metal helmet and placing a loaded pistol in my saddlebag, I mounted my strongest horse, and with Henry, king of Scots, beside me—how he loved that title!—I rode at the head of an army of eight thousand. I led my men out of Edinburgh and west, toward Glasgow, where I intended to confront my brother and his rebel troops. Heavy downpours sent every stream surging over its banks, hindering our advance but not stopping us.

Lord Moray and his rebel followers managed to elude my forces, riding east and slipping past me to Edinburgh, where they attempted to take the castle. My loyal troops drove them out. We had successfully held off the rebels, but I was nevertheless immensely relieved when Lord Bothwell reached Scotland.

“Thank God you are here!” I cried when my old friend was ushered into the outer chamber at Holyrood. “Are you all right, Lord Bothwell?” I asked anxiously, for he looked exhausted, his beard in need of trimming, his clothes of fine quality but ill-fitting.

“As well as can be expected, my lady queen,” he replied with the crooked smile I found so charming. “Queen Elizabeth did her best to capture me when she learned that I was on my way here. Her warships were plying the North Sea in search of me, and she even sent a notorious pirate to seize me! But as the pirate and his minions boarded my ship, I let myself down the other side with several of my men, and we escaped undetected in rowboats. We came ashore south of here with a few pistols and little else. I set out immediately for Edinburgh, stopping for the night at Dunbar Castle with Lord Huntly, lately restored to your good graces. He made me a gift of clothing, but I regret, madam, that we are of a somewhat different size.”

I applauded his outrageous tale of escape, ordered quarters readied for him, suits of clothes found, and a fine meal prepared. I reinstated Lord Bothwell to his position on my privy council and announced my intention to put him in command of my royal army. Then we set to work on our strategy to put my brother Lord Moray in his place.

When Henry found out, he was angry. “I mean my father to command,” he said. “Revoke your order at once, Mary.”

“It is my army and my choice, not yours, Henry. Lord Bothwell stays.”

Henry erupted in a rage. “And I say that he goes! You will obey me, for I am your husband and your king!”

My anger rose up to match his. “You are the king because I made you the king,” I snapped. “Before me, you were nothing. Nothing!”

That reminder was like a match to tinder. More harsh words were exchanged. I pounded the table. Henry hurled a candlestick across the room. Servants witnessed it all, pretending to avert their eyes.

The argument raged, died down, and flared again. In the end tempers cooled, and we reached a grudging compromise. Lord Lennox would lead the advance troops, and Lord Bothwell and Henry would ride together at the head of the main forces.

Early in October we were ready Nearly twelve thousand men had answered my call! I gave the order, and the army marched southward, toward the border with England. I understood very well what Moray and the rebel lords intended: they wished to depose me and make Scotland a Protestant country. I could not allow that to happen. I wanted the rebels crushed and James Stuart, Lord Moray, taken alive.

My brother, counting on Queen Elizabeth's support, retreated across the border with the rebel lords, only to find that Elizabeth was unwilling to help him. I put out the order requiring him and his friends to appear in Parliament in March to learn of the forfeiture of all their property. I believed that the earl of Moray was unlikely to trouble me further. After a splendid banquet at Dumfries to celebrate our victory over my brother and the rebels, Henry and I made our way back to Holyrood, leaving Lord Bothwell with troops to guard the border.

I should have been happy, deliriously so. I was enormously popular with the common people of Scotland. I had shown Queen Elizabeth that she could not interfere in Scottish affairs. I had routed the rebel lords without a drop of blood being shed. I grew increasingly confident in my ability to rule. And best of all, I suspected that I was with child.

What made a mockery of my triumph was this: I had begun to recognize that my husband was not the man I had thought he was. We argued about nearly everything, and I often ended in tears. In the first flush of new love and passionate fulfillment, I was so eager to please him that I agreed to almost anything he wanted. Now I balked at some of his demands.

Henry insisted that on every document we signed together as king and queen, his name should be on the left, the position of honor. Mine, he said, should come second, on the right.

I resisted. “As queen, it is my privilege to place my name first, on the left.”

“I am your lord and master!” he cried. “And I shall sign on the left!”

That was just one issue. We were headed for trouble, and I knew it.

I
PRAYED TO HAVE A SON,
and as the new life quickened inside me, I was convinced that it would be a boy. This was a great joy and consolation to me, for I understood more with every passing day that my husband would provide neither joy nor consolation. I had hoped that as Henry got older—he would turn twenty the day before I turned twenty-three—and with the guidance of some of my most able and trusted ministers, he would grow into his role as king of Scots. But what grew instead were his arrogance and insolence. There was no way to reason with him, to make him understand that I had been a queen practically from birth, the daughter and granddaughter of kings, and he was king only because I had made him one. I was willing to share power; I was not willing to surrender it. But Henry truly seemed to believe that I would hand over to him all my authority as sovereign simply because he was a male and my husband! It was disgraceful. For the first time I understood the reluctance of Queen Elizabeth of England to marry.

There was one important policy in which Henry stubbornly opposed me. In the face of the growing legions of Protestant followers of John Knox, I had always insisted that all men had the right to worship as they chose. While I demanded my right to hear Mass in my own chapel, I would not try to deprive the Protestants of their right to follow a different way—even those rebel lords who opposed me. Henry had grown up Catholic, as I had, but he had attended Knox's services and sat through the tirades against me and the Catholic Church. Now Henry decided that he would make his mark by forcing the Protestants into submission and returning Scotland to the one true church.

“It is my desire to be recognized as the greatest king in all of Europe!” he announced; I cringed and said nothing. Restoring the country to Catholicism was the means by which he intended to accomplish his goal.

By Christmas of 1565, barely five months after our spectacular wedding, it was clear to me and surely becoming evident to everyone else that whatever love Henry and I had borne each other—if indeed he had ever truly loved me, and if the desire I had felt for him had really been love—had vanished like the early-morning mists on the firth.

The ones who knew best were the Four Maries, often witnesses to what happened between us. I had decided to pardon a nobleman and his whole large family who had been enemies of Lord Lennox for a long time. When Henry heard of the pardon, he stormed into my outer chamber, where I sat with my ladies, stitching a little garment for the bairn. He did not bother to greet me or my ladies civilly but merely announced loudly, “You have pardoned people without asking my permission. I forbid any further pardons, madam!”