Mary Stuart (42 page)

At length the knell sounded. Grim Death came to lay her low. Still, she lived on for days with the rattle in her throat, her restless old heart beating feebly. Beneath the windows, his horse ready saddled, an envoy of the impatient Scottish heir was awaiting a prearranged sign. One of Elizabeth's ladies had promised, as soon as the queen breathed her last, to lower a ring to the messenger. Long was the vigil. The Virgin Queen, who had rejected so many wooers, was reluctant to accept the embrace of Death. On 24th March 1603, a casement opened, a woman's hand was protruded, a ring was dropped. The courier mounted his horse and galloped away, to reach Edinburgh in two and a half days—a ride that became famous, for the distance is hard upon four hundred miles. He counted upon a high guerdon for his pains, for he was the bringer of good tidings. James VI of Scotland would mount the English throne as James I. In the person of Mary Stuart's son, the two kingdoms of Britain were to be united, and the long struggle between those of the same blood and speech who live on either side of the border was to come to an end. History often walks by dark and devious paths, but in the end historical necessity comes into its own.

James I settled down contentedly at Whitehall, where his mother had so often dreamt of residing. At long last he was free from monetary cares, and his ambition was satisfied; he thought more of comfort than of immortal fame. He often went out hunting; was glad to visit the theatre, there extending his patronage over a certain Shakespeare and other noted playwrights—this being one of the few good things to be recorded of the first Stuart monarch of a united Britain. A weakling, lethargic and dull-witted, devoid of Elizabeth's intellectual brilliancy, lacking the courage and the passion of his mother, he was a humdrum ruler over the joint heritage of the two queens who had so long been at feud. The union of the crowns, which each of them had so eagerly coveted, fell into his hands like an overripe fruit. Now, when England and Scotland were one, the time had come to forget that a Queen of Scotland and a Queen of England had troubled one another's lives with poisonous enmity. No longer could it be said that one of them had been right and the other wrong, since death had reduced the pair of them to the same level. Those who had so long fiercely opposed one another could now rest side by side. James I had his mother's mortal remains brought south from Peterborough to be interred, with great pomp and ceremony, in the British pantheon at Westminster Abbey. A marble statue of Mary Stuart was erected over her tomb, hard by the marble statue over the tomb of Elizabeth Tudor. The old quarrel was finished; neither woman would dispute the other's right to a place in the Abbey. The foes who during their lifetime had never set eyes on one another were to rest for evermore side by side as sisters in the untroubled sleep of immortality.

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