The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots (24 page)

Lively music beckoned from the great hall of the Colonna palace, and even before I entered I could smell the delicious scent of the garlands entwined along the staircases and the bowls overflowing with red roses on every table. Frescoes in vivid hues of russet and cobalt, aquamarine and yellow ochre shone from every wall—masterworks, as I supposed—and caged birds sang in tuneful melody from windows and alcoves and niches in the graceful pillars that rose to the high painted ceiling.

In the Colonna palace I was at the center of the rich Roman world, a world far older than that of the French court and far grander than the petty splendors of Holyrood. The Colonna family, as the cardinal’s sister told me with pride, could trace its descent to the days of Nero and Augustus; long before the bishops of Rome had begun to rule the church, the great families of Rome had dominated the city, and often controlled the cardinals as well.

Admiring glances and voices greeted my entrance into the room in my beautiful borrowed gown. All around me I heard “Your Majesty,” “Your Highness” and the words were welcome to my ears.

I could not help but notice that Jamie, who followed me at a respectful distance (for we were advised to follow royal etiquette, and
not enter side by side), was greeted with stares and curious glances, and even a few smirks. No doubt he appeared very provincial in his somewhat worn northern finery, I thought. Yet I could hardly imagine him draped in the languorous silks worn by the Roman men, costly garments but far too effeminate to suit Jamie’s virile, martial spirit.

I moved deeper into the room, approaching the long banqueting tables with their thick embroidered cloths, flower-filled vases and gleaming silver. Then I suddenly smelled a strong musky scent and heard a voice at my ear.

“Come! Hurry! You are in danger!”

A firm hand closed over my arm and I felt myself pulled away, toward a window embrasure partially hidden by a padded hanging sewn in complex patterns of gold and silver threads. My rescuer concealed me, then spoke in a low, musical voice to one of the guardsmen in Spanish. The guardsman left, and my rescuer joined me once again.

I looked at him. His light hazel eyes were as tender as a girl’s, the dark lashes long and thick and curling, yet his expression was determined and commanding, his thin mouth set in a firm line, his high forehead uncreased by the deep marks of worry that were so often prominent in strong men’s faces.

He was younger than I was, and not as tall (alas!). But his bearing and air of confident superiority made it clear that he was highborn. He did not look like an Italian, or a Spaniard either. I was both puzzled and fascinated.

“Your Royal Highness, it was not my intent to alarm you,” he said in his musical voice, “but I had to remove you from harm. There was a man near you who I recognized. He is an agent of Baron Burghley. A hired assassin. I have had him seized and eliminated.”

He spoke French with an accent I did not recognize. His words alarmed me.

“So the wicked baron pursues me even here, in Rome,” I said with a shiver. “Where there is one assassin, there must be more.”

“I’m glad Your Highness is aware of the extent of your danger.”

“I was safer in captivity.” I confessed it mournfully.

“So it would seem.”

At this I sensed a commotion in the room.

“Where is she? What have you done with her?” It was Jamie’s voice, and I felt a catch in my throat, hearing it. His tone held an edge of panic.

I started to move away from our protected enclave, to join Jamie, but my rescuer restrained me, gently but firmly. My body yielded easily to the feel of his hands on the soft, lace-trimmed sleeves of my gown.

“Please, Your Highness, do not put yourself at risk. Let me.”

He stepped out into the room.

“Who seeks our royal guest?”

I heard an uneasy murmuring among the guests.

“And who are you?” Jamie challenged.

“I am the man who has protected her against the English assassin.”

“What English assassin? Where is he?”

I needed to see what was going on in the banqueting hall. Searching the hanging that hid me, I found a worn patch and a small hole. I looked through it, and saw Jamie, truculent as ever, challenging my rescuer, with one hand on the hilt of the short sword he wore at his waist. Oh Jamie, I thought, please don’t cause trouble. Not here. Not tonight.

Facing Jamie was the younger, stronger, less challenging other man, balancing lithe and catlike on the balls of his feet, a faint dismissive smile on his thin lips.

“The assassin has been removed. There is nothing more for you to be concerned about, old father.”

Laughter greeted this rejoinder, the laughter of the sophisticated Italians ridiculing the sputtering, belligerent Scotsman in their midst—the Scotsman with graying hair at his temples and a noticeable limp in one knee. Jamie was about to enter his fifth decade, and though he was
as tough and combative as ever, his arms were weaker and slower than they had been when I first met him, his eyes less keen, his breath shorter and his balance less sure.

With a roar like that of an old bull Jamie drew his sword and lunged at the younger man, only to find his blow swiftly parried and to suffer the humiliation of being caught tightly in the younger man’s arms, and disabled from fighting any more.

“Take this gentleman back to wherever he is quartered,” I heard my rescuer say as two guardsmen came forward to seize Jamie. “Keep him there until the banquet is over.”

I watched Jamie being taken away. I wanted to intervene and help him, above all to spare him the loss of his dignity, but I knew it would not be prudent for me to try to change the situation. Jamie was my husband, yet I had to pretend otherwise—to pretend that, as Pope Gregory and all the Catholic sovereigns believed, my marriage to him was not valid and I had no romantic ties to complicate my political life.

Besides, my common sense told me that Jamie did not belong in the hothouse world of Roman society. He was too brash, too quick to show his feelings; he was not practiced in cloaking his purposes and deceiving his enemies. For years I had heard stories of the treachery of Italians, who were said to conspire in the shadows and hide their nefarious doings by using slow-acting poisons and concealing venomous serpents in their enemies’ gardens. They smiled while they stabbed, it was said. With Italians, nothing was as it appeared, all was a game of smoke and mirrors.

I heard Jamie swearing and protesting as he was led away, and felt my heart sink.

My rescuer had returned to my side, and once again I smelled the strong, almost overpowering scent of musk.

“Your Highness,” he said, “you ought not to be abroad tonight without a large escort to protect you. Who knows what traps Baron Burghley may try to set? I should like to offer my services to you as
your guide. I have many men to call on, we can assure you safety. Will you come with me?”

He held out his arm, and I felt no reluctance in placing my hand atop it. He led me out through an arched colonnade into the garden, where moonlight shone down on leafy trees, their branches stirred by a warm breeze off the river. Surrounded by a phalanx of armed men, poleaxes in their hands, their boots crunching the ground and pavingstones beneath our feet, we walked onto a winding roadway and past fragrant walled gardens enclosed behind ancient gates, and once again I had a sense that my life had reached a new turning, and that nothing in it would ever be the same again.

All Rome was spread out before us, the lights along the riverbank flaring and twinkling, the windows of the great palaces ablaze with firelight, the lanterns in the tall churches lit like beacons amid the gloaming of the poor districts with their twisting narrow lanes and dim alleyways where thieves lurked.

My companion had led me up into the highest tower of the Castel Sant’Angelo, the Angel Castle, which offered a magnificent panorama of the city.

“There is the Trastevere district,” he said, pointing to a cluster of low buildings across the river. “And the Ripa. Don’t ever go there without dozens of men to defend you; the only people you are likely to meet are murderers and drunkards. Better still, stay away entirely.”

He pointed to another area where the houses were larger and the gardens more spread out behind their forbidding stone walls.

“Don’t go into that district either, unless you want to risk danger. That is the quarter of the courtesans: Niobe, Charis, Demetria—”

“You sound as if you know them well,” I ventured, half teasingly, unsure how this handsome young man, who I did not know at all, would react.

“I know them well enough,” he responded with a look that was
half mischievous, half rueful. “Tullia, Aulea, Penthesilea—” His voice dropped to a low monotone. “If you must know, I have known them from childhood. My mother was one of them.”

“And your father was not her husband.”

“No.”

“I see. But you are a personage of note. A captain of men. I saw how the banquet guests were looking at you. They respect you.” I did not know who this man was (and in truth I was enjoying the adventure of not knowing) but he was clearly an important man.

I had a sudden chilling thought. Was he one of those I had heard of called condottieri, private warlords who obeyed no laws and lived as they pleased, bullying and threatening and terrorizing anyone who opposed them?

“Should I be afraid of you?” I asked, ashamed of my naïveté yet unable to prevent myself from asking.

He smiled. “Remember, Your Highness, I am the man who removed you from the path of the assassin. I have your welfare at heart.” He took my hand and lifted it to his lips. “I am not the one you ought to fear. Baron Burghley and his men, yes. The thugs of Rome, yes. The marsh fever that rises in the summer and sweeps away thousands of Romans every year, yes. Even the heat and dust, that will sap your strength and make you cough and wheeze. Rome is a very unhealthy place, as you have already discovered. Yet it can also fulfill your dreams, whether they are spiritual or material.”

He paused, and looked into my eyes. “Which are your dreams, Your Highness?”

Bells rang from the numberless churches all around us, a thunderous peal of bells so loud it clouded my senses and so long I thought it would never end.

“I want my son,” I managed to say as my head cleared. “And I want my throne back. The throne of Scotland.”

I wanted to add, “I want my daughter as well,” but I didn’t dare; Marie-Elizabeth’s existence had to be kept secret.

When the clamor subsided we came down from the tower and resumed our walk, glad for the everpresent escort of halberdiers as we passed along streets where troops or gangs were shouting and skirmishing, horses galloping, tavern brawls erupting and quarreling voices filling the air. Rome was a very noisy, captious city, I thought, compared to Edinburgh, where there were feuds and quarrels aplenty but where the night watchmen kept a rough order and the only sounds after midnight, as a rule, were those of voices raised in dirgelike hymns.

“Rome is far noisier than Edinburgh,” I remarked as we came to a square with a cascading fountain, water spouting from the generous breasts of long-haired marble maidens and the gaping mouths of scaly stone fish. “The stinks are the same, and the quarreling. But the air here is far softer, and the language much lovelier to listen to, even though I don’t understand it. And the monuments—surely no other city has such monuments.”

Our way led to the Colosseum, a huge amphitheater, long since ruined yet still recognizable for what it had once been, a great open-air theater where shows and exhibitions of all kinds were held. Cats roamed its old stones, their eyes gleaming yellow, their yowls eerie in the shadowed night.

“Here is where Nero threw the Christians to the lions. In his day it was pagan against Christian, now the battle is between the true church and the Lutheran heretics.”

“And the Calvinists,” I put in. “Many Scots follow the Calvinist teachings and would not want them forgotten.”

“Who are the lions now, I wonder?” my companion mused aloud, disregarding my comment. “The troops that are unleashed against the heretics, or the heretics who roam the world, seeking whom they may devour?”

We heard, in the distance, the tramping of boots and the sound of many horses.

“Those are my men,” my companion said, “returning from a raid
on a village in the Campagna where heresy has taken root. They had orders to kill every heretic, or suspected heretic. I have no doubt that every man, woman and child in that village has been duly punished for their heresy.” A cold sneer crossed the thin line of his lips, making his handsome face turn almost ugly.

“Heresy can and will be stamped out, you realize,” he said with new confidence in his voice, “and corruption along with it. My father sacked and burned this city, long before I was born. They say his horsemen stabled their beasts in the great cathedrals and pillaged all the ill-gotten treasure from the papal chests.”

“Your father was a prominent commander then?”

“Yes.”

“Was he a condottiere?”

At this my companion laughed aloud, the first time I had heard him laugh.

“I’m sure the Romans saw him in that guise, yes.”

We said no more for a time, but began the long walk back to the Colonna palace. My companion asked if I would prefer to ride back, and offered to summon a carriage, but I said no, that I preferred to continue our walking tour, even though my delicate golden slippers were ruined and the skirt of my lovely gown stained and torn.

I was in love with the balmy night, with the squalid, splendid city set amid the reeking marsh. I had not walked so far in years. My body sang with the sheer pleasure of it. And I could not help but be intrigued with the mysterious, fascinating man who had revealed it all to me. A man I had never seen before that night. Whose name I did not know, or seek to know. Who exerted a strong influence over me, though I could not have said how, or in what that influence consisted.

A man who, as I mulled these things over in my mind, was moving closer to me as we entered the ancient Forum, with its crumbling temples and fallen pillars, its ancient walls and courtyards now reduced to heaps of slag.

“Some day, Your Highness,” he was saying in his musical voice,
“these old stones will breathe again. Rome will be restored, renewed. New monuments, even larger and more beautiful than the old ones, will rise here, and Christendom will once more be united under one church. And one Holy Father.”

His voice gathered urgency as he spoke, and I began to see the panorama of the new Rome, resplendent in its newfound glory.

“It is become my life purpose to see this dream come true,” he was saying. “I have shown you the city, Your Highness, because one day, in its resurrected form, it may belong to you—to us—when heresy is quelled and all the heretic kingdoms of the world are reconquered and truth reigns supreme.”

He spoke as one uniquely inspired—yet his words seemed suddenly hollow, and his allusion to our possessing the city together verged on madness.

Is he mad, I wondered. What does he mean? What can he mean?

I hesitated. Was I being drawn into a lunatic’s obsession? Yet the longer I stood there, amid the old stones bathed in moonlight, the easier it was to believe in the regenerative power of his dream. I could almost see the new Rome rising from the old, like the New Jerusalem of the Bible. Almost—but not quite.

Common sense and curiosity took me over.

“Who are you,” I asked the man of great dreams, “that you weave such spells?”

He turned to me and swept me a bow.

“Don John of Austria, Prince of Guelderland and Knight of the Golden Fleece, Scourge of the Turk and Defender of Christendom, at Your Highness’s service.”