The Galliard (76 page)

His small ships were not strong enough to attack a fortress; he led them out of range of the guns in Scapa Flow and then to the Shetlands. There, as in the Orkneys, he was greeted as the feudal and hereditary overlord; Oliver Sinclair, the ruler or Foude, his mother’s kinsman, was in direct descent, as was Bothwell himself, from the royal house of the St Clairs, Dukes of Normandy, who were independent sovereigns of these islands long before the later Bastard of Normandy conquered England. The princely cousins made friends as they walked along the shore of those far Northern seas and discussed their plans for a maritime hegemony, recruited from adventurers in every ocean. It was by no means impossible at that date.

Pirates would be their enemies’ name for them, no doubt, but 
the dividing line between piracy and respectable naval enterprise was still rather more vague than that between soldiers and sailors; certainly the English captains that had begun to be the terror of the Spanish traders were called pirates in all countries but their own. The ethics of their case did not worry James Hepburn; all his concern was to get bigger and better fighting ships, and shock troops aboard them, since the boats he had already collected were too small and frail, and slow sailers at that, to meet any serious naval engagement. But he had great hopes of getting what he wanted in Denmark and Norway.

A report reached them that the Lord James had returned to Scotland. News travelled slowly to these distant islands; they could not know that James had not only already secured the Regency, but had employed a fleet of the combined naval forces of Leith and Dundee to kill or capture those ‘notorious and manifest pirates’, Bothwell and his followers, with the emphasis on the killing rather than capturing. Bothwell alive and talking at his trial would be as dangerous as at large.

Kirkaldy of Grange eagerly volunteered to lead the expedition, certain that the notorious pirate ‘shall either carry me with him or else I shall bring him dead or quick to Edinburgh’. With him went ‘the sorcerer of the Orcades’, that same sailor Bishop of Orkney who had married them (and managed to insert references to the ‘past evil living’ of the bridegroom in his wedding sermon); he now sided openly with his enemies, confident, as were Grange and Lethington and most others, that this was the last of Bothwell. Only James with his usual caution remarked dampingly, ‘We cannot bargain for the bear’s skin until we catch him.’

The first Bothwell heard of the fleet’s setting out was as he sat at mid-day dinner with the Foude, when one of his men dashed in breathless with the news that at least eight great ships, heavily armed, had been sighted closing in on Bressay Sound where four of Bothwell’s ships lay at anchor. The sailors had acted instantly, knowing they had no chance against such a war fleet, had cut their cables and run up the channel northwards, that is, three of the ships had done so, but the
Swan
(rechristened the
Lame Duck
by
the sailors) had been abandoned, since she was too slow to have any chance of escape.

‘I’ll not leave one ship behind,’ Bothwell roared as he leaped up from the table and dashed down to the harbour, collected the
Swan’s
captain and some of her crew and got them aboard with him on what looked like a suicide cruise. The other three ships were well ahead, but the
Swan
with her delayed start had the pursuers hot on her heels and was losing ground steadily all the way up the Sound. Soon the
Unicorn
, the flagship of the Scottish fleet, was so near that they could see who was on board, and with a yell of joy Bothwell recognised Kirkaldy of Grange and the turncoat Bishop of Orkney. They answered him with triumphant shouts, and certainly there seemed no cause for joy on board the
Lame Duck
, now all but overtaken by her foes. But Bothwell had been with her captain over these waters before and knew what he wanted. He got him to take the ship closer into the rocky shore, where most of the bigger ships dared not venture. Only Grange, no seaman, and hot on the chase, insisted on his flagship following close.

The
Lame Duck
with consummate seamanship ran before the wind through the breaking seas, shipping it green all over the decks, and decoyed the
Unicorn
on to a sunken rock over which she herself was just able to pass. Those on board could hear her keel grating on the rock, and there was a ghastly instant when it seemed as though she would stick there as a stationary mark for the
Unicorn’s
guns. But the captain had gauged the shallowness of her draught correctly and she plunged on to safety, came about to the wind and gained the deeps, the water hissing along the gunwale. But the
Unicorn
, following close, struck dead on the rock. There was a horrible rending sound, the rough water poured in through the hole, the ship lurched, staggered and began to sink fast.

Bothwell roared into the wind to Grange as he leaned over the gunwale, ‘Here’s your safeguard to the Queen, you perjured swine! Take your pork into the pickle tub!’

Some of the sailors were already struggling in the brine, but others had managed to lower the long-boat and were crowding into it, with Grange among them; they fought each other shamelessly,
and the Bishop, crowded out, took a flying leap, robes, breastplate and all, from the sinking ship on to a rock and clung there, shrieking to be picked up. His sailors paid no heed to him and were rowing straight past him, when with another magnificent leap he fell plump into the middle of the crowded boat, on top of all the shouting, cursing men, and very nearly upset it. Bothwell’s fugitive crew cheered derisively as they sailed away.

‘The sea won’t cheat the gallows of you,’ they yelled.

Bothwell’s manoeuvre had held up the whole pursuit, for Grange’s other ships had to stop and pick up the survivors, and Bothwell’s all got clear away to Unst, the most northerly of the islands.

But he was certain there would be more fighting, and at once, and sent back one of his ships to Scalloway to fetch a detachment that there had been no time to pick up on his flight. Sure enough, up came Grange’s ships again, though without Grange or the Bishop, for their taste of the bear’s claws had been too much for them. They preferred to stay on dry land with an armed force and hunt up and take back for lingering execution any fugitives of Bothwell’s crews who had not been able to join their ships in time, and were easy prey on an island.

In charge of the pursuit on water was yet another candidate for the unfought duel at Carberry, anxious to make up at sea for what they had failed to do on land, James Murray of Purdovis, now laird of Tullibardine. He attacked Bothwell’s ships off Unst, and for three hours the three little ships fought a running fight, working out to sea all the time, and with the
Lame Duck
lagging, lagging, lagging all the way. At last she fell to Tullibardine.

Still the detachment from Scalloway had not come up, and still Bothwell fought on, two small ships against seven far bigger and stronger armed, till the
Pelican
, where he was now aboard, had her mainmast shot right away.

It looked like the end, clean and fairly quick in those long ice-green waves. But just when all seemed over, a south-westerly squall surged up, and Bothwell had one more chance to show his seamanship. He took it superbly, extricated his two battered hulks
and ran before the wind, leading Tullibardine for sixty miles on their heels before the laird had to give up the chase to the better sailors.

James Hepburn sailed on through the gale, free of his foes, in an exultation that took no count of the stormy sea, the shattering wounds to his two remaining ships, now barely seaworthy; nor that the ship he had sent to Scalloway contained all his worldly goods, clothes and jewels (he had chosen that one so that it might not fall to his enemies); nor that they were short of all provisions and would need a deal of reconditioning before they could make another voyage, if indeed they could reach the end of this one. But what did any of that matter when, by the luck of the world, they were not at the bottom of the sea, but still roving on?

‘A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin’
–

The sailors were singing the version of the song that had reached the English ports.

‘In Amsterdam there lives a maid

And she is mistress of her trade,

And I’ll go no more a-roving

With you, fair maid.’

He had only one regret, that Mary had not been with him to enjoy that fight, the chase, and best of all that consummate stroke of seacraft that had sunk Grange’s ship. It had been a grand afternoon since he had sprung up from the Foude’s dinner-table, years ago it seemed now. Well, they would have others, and together. He was just thirty-two and she twenty-four, they still had a good part of their lives and all the world to go a-roving in.

The pale light of Northern late summer stole over the sea, and the water gleamed out with that strange added life that comes to it in the dark. With the dawn came the coast of Norway, enormous, remote, unearthly, blue beyond blue, melting into snow-capped heights, like mountains at the edge of the world.

They met a German merchant vessel that piloted them in to that fairy shore. ‘A ‘manifest pirate’ would have seized her to refit and revictual himself. Bothwell, it seemed, was more ‘notorious’ than ‘manifest’. But his appearance was manifestly disreputable in old boatswain’s clothes, torn and patched up somehow after his long struggle with the sea. The Norwegians were suspicious, so was the Danish captain Aalborg, who was patrolling these waters in search of pirates, for Norway was then a dependency of Denmark. Bothwell could produce no papers, and had to go to Bergen in Aalborg’s custody to answer inquiries.

There, with unruffled confidence, before the governor, Eric Rosencrantz, and a commission of twenty-four burghers and magistrates, the ragged sea-rover announced that he was the husband of the Queen who was known as the loveliest woman in Europe; and the supreme governor of all Scotland. Yet such was ‘the serenity of his countenance’ that it was not doubted. They only questioned the absence of any passport or ship’s papers. To which he made his supreme gesture as the Galliard.

Looking round on these solid respectable burghers in their Sunday black, with a smile of weary condescension the man with the head of a king and the old coat of a boatswain replied,

‘Being myself the supreme ruler of the land, of whom can I receive authority?’

That he made his effect was shown by the fact that he was referred to after this as ‘the Scottish King’, even by the King of Denmark. A more immediate and useful result was that he was at once released from custody and allowed to lodge at an inn pending further inquiries. He had no doubt of their issue. There was some question about the actual ownership of the
Pelican
, but Bothwell had chartered her at fifty crowns a month in fair and open market, and no accusation could be brought against him; it would all be settled in a few days when the court would be held.

He looked forward confidently to meeting Frederick II again, this time on equal terms, and asking him for help for the Queen, as seven years before he had asked and received it for her mother. A single raid carried out with vigour from the coast, a hundred sturdy
swimmers to cross the loch at night, and they would carry her off. His plans kept his thoughts happily busy as he walked round the narrow horseshoe harbour where the coloured reflections of the painted houses, pink and blue, white and yellow, danced up and down on the wind-ruffled waters like peasant girls bobbing in a ring.

But he did not get his freedom. He did not see his boon companion, Frederick of Denmark.

In Bergen town there lived a maid

And she was mistress of her trade.

Out of the dead past where she had lain forgotten, into the court of inquiry where Bothwell had expected to hear discussed only some technical point of a vessel’s ownership, came the woman with the black elf-locks and white strange face of a Lapland witch. Anna Throndsen, cousin to Rosencrantz, appeared in court to enter a claim for the money she had lent him in Flanders seven years before, so that he might go and tender his services to his young Queen at the Court of France.

The wheel had come full circle; in his end was his beginning.

The money charges could have been easily answered by detailing the goods and valuables with which he had since repaid it over and over. Bothwell preferred to say nothing except offer to pay it again with the smaller of his ships and a yearly rent of one hundred dollars from Scotland. The charge was dropped. Now he would be free. His debt to Anna had only detained him for a moment.

But that moment was decisive. With a strange economy of fate, she proved to be the weapon destined to ruin both her faithless lover and the woman he had afterwards loved and served so faithfully. Her letters and the Queen’s, found among Bothwell’s papers, were interwoven to form the basis of the Casket Letters that eighteen months later were concocted to prove the Queen guilty of murder; her ‘Sonnets’, which Ronsard later repudiated as not only too rough in style for the Queen’s verses, but in far too indifferent French, were employed for the same purpose. Anna was doubly revenged.

During that delay to Bothwell’s freedom caused by her action, Rosencrantz discovered more of the upheaval under which he had left Scotland. The custody of this stormy petrel, with the power to hold him as a threat over both the Scottish and English Governments, who were now both clamouring for his blood, would, as King Frederick, that boon companion, heartily agreed, be extremely useful in the game of European politics. So Bothwell was kept in prison, at first ‘honourably’ and comfortably, on one pretext after another, always thinking that it would soon be cleared up; writing to Frederick his plan for the ‘deliverance of the Queen, my princess,’ and offering Orkney and Shetland, those former Scandinavian dependencies, in return for Danish aid and ships (an offer which tempted Frederick considerably for a time).