The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots (30 page)

As I sat before the fire, numb with shock, I heard the door of my small room being opened. My warder came in with a short, gray-haired woman—a woman I had not seen in many years, but whose face was more welcome to me, at that moment, than I can possibly convey.

“Margaret!” I cried, getting up from my bench and holding out my arms to my dear tirewoman and friend. We embraced for a long, lingering time, both of us in tears.

“Look at you, Your Highness,” Margaret cried. “Still my lovely queen!”

“Much altered, I fear.”

She took my hand and patted it. “Not so very much, to those who love you.” She smiled, then went on. “The queen herself sent me. She told her messenger to say to me that you would have need of my help tonight and in the days to come.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “The queen? Are you in the queen’s service now?”

She nodded, then whispered “I thought I might be of use to you if I joined the royal household. My husband Ned was taken on as a
constable of the watch, and I am head laundress in Her Majesty’s palace at Richmond.”

“But why should she retain you, knowing your loyalty to me?”

“I think because there is a part of her that has a regard for you.”

“Even after the way she has treated me?”

Margaret shrugged. “You are still alive. Without that regard, you wouldn’t be.”

“Margaret! You are not her spy, are you? Come to add to my suffering in my last days?”

“Indeed I am not. I am what I have always been—and what the queen knows me to be. I am your loyal servant, who honors and loves you. I am sure she means me to ease your days.”

I threw up my hands. “She is beyond my understanding. But not beyond my hatred,” I added under my breath.

Margaret and I supped together—I was suddenly very hungry—there in the narrow room, before the fire, and as we ate, she talked, her voice bright, almost shrill. I could tell she was using the voice she meant the guards just beyond the door to overhear.

But at times she lowered her voice to a near whisper, and talked of matters of the greatest importance to me. I hung on her every murmured word.

“I have seen King James,” she said softly.

“How is he? Did he speak of me? Did you tell him I love him?”

“I may as well tell you the hard truth.”

“You always have.”

“He did not show any love or concern for you. He did not want to speak of you at all. I saw his eyes darken when I said your name.”

I said nothing for a time. “I did hope he might have some affection for me,” I said at length.

“The men who nurtured him and raised him crushed any feeling he may once have had for you.”

“Yes, I suppose I knew that.”

“He is nothing like what you would expect,” Margaret went on. “He staggers, because his legs are weak and malformed.”

I nodded. “I was always worried about his legs. They never straightened out the way they should have, when he was a baby.”

“He stammers.”

“He had a large thick tongue. His nurses all remarked on it.”

“He is ill-favored, not at all like yourself or his late father Lord Darnley, whom everyone detested but who was, it must be said, a beautiful man. James is nearly a grown man now, but weak and cowardly, afraid of every shadow, like a timid boy. He clings to older, stronger men and loves them in the way the Scripture says he should not. He cringes when anyone except his special favorites come near him. They say he has a very able mind, but no heart.”

“My dear son, the caulbearer! The child gifted with the second sight!”

“If he has the second sight, I have not heard of it. He writes poetry, a great deal of it, and keeps poets near him. But only handsome ones, according to his doorkeeper, who is a friend of Ned’s. And he drinks. He drinks a great deal.”

I shrugged. “He is Scottish.”

“Even for a Scot, he drinks a great deal. And when he drinks, he calls in his minions, and they grow wild, riding on each other’s backs, and shouting and swearing, and falling down as drunkards do. He has no sense of how a king ought to behave.”

“Has he no virtues?”

Margaret thought awhile. “He loves books,” she said at length. “He is said to wish that he lived in a library and not in a palace.”

“Ah! He is a scholar. But scholars do not make good kings.”

A servant came in and put a log on the fire, making it crackle and spreading a little more warmth in the room.

“Margaret, James could save me, if he chose. He could persuade my cousin to cancel the trial and release me. Will you go to him and plead for me? Ask him to intervene with Elizabeth?”

“I already have. I spoke to him when he was at court. He received me, even after he was told that I had been your servant while you were still Queen of Scots.”

“And what did he say?”

“He couldn’t say very much. We were not alone. Clearly he was unsure what to do, and it was also clear to me that what he cared about was inheriting the English throne from Elizabeth. I think he will do whatever Elizabeth tells him to do, about you. He has no memory of you, you know. The one thing he did say was, that you have chosen your own path, especially when you had his father murdered. You have determined your own fate, and cannot evade it.”

“But I did not order the murder of Darnley!”

“Your son and many others believe you did. He says you deserve to suffer for your sins. He is a strict Protestant, after all. A man after the late John Knox’s heart. As a Protestant he does not dare anger his Protestant subjects by defending and helping a Catholic martyr (which is what you have become, in the eyes of many), even if she is his mother. His Protestant subjects force him to show you no mercy, while his subjects who are secret Catholics condemn him for doing nothing on your behalf. Do you know, he cannot leave the palace, the people clamor so loudly for him to use his influence to have you released. He is under siege!”

“And I will never see my son again,” I said softly. “My dear boy. May God watch over him, and protect him.”

On the day of my trial my hands were shaking and I was trembling. It began the moment I entered the great hall on that October morning, leaning on Dr. Bourgoing’s arm, and went on until I left many hours later, dragging myself along, my strength exhausted.

I tried not to show my fear as I walked slowly past the men brought together to judge me, impatient, grim-faced men, ordered by my cousin to pronounce sentence on me as a traitor so that I can be put to death.

They took off their hats as I passed, out of respect, but they did not do me the honor of giving me a throne to sit on—only a plain chair, as if I were an ordinary woman and not a queen born.

I had not wanted to appear at my trial at all. I knew it would make no difference to the outcome whether I was present or not: I would be condemned either way. And yet, as I sat in my plain chair, looking into the solemn faces of the men appointed to condemn me, I was glad that I had agreed, after much coercion, to take part. At least by being present, I could refute the lies told about me. I could confront my accusers and accuse them, in turn, of lying.

When the Lord Chancellor asserted that I had plotted to kill the
queen I was able to say, as loudly as I could, that the court could not judge me because I am a queen and not a subject. I could shout (though my voice was no longer very loud, and broke whenever I strained it) that all the evidence brought against me was fraudulent, all the documents fabricated, all the witnesses coerced into telling lies. I said, again and again, that I had been betrayed by my cousin the queen, who had offered me her protection and given me long years of imprisonment instead.

Not long into the trial my head began to ache with all the exertion I was making. I could feel the blood pounding in my ears, at times it was hard to breathe, and even harder to try to shout louder than my angry accusers. Dr. Bourgoing advised me that I was overstraining myself, that I ought to ask for time to rest. He brought me a restorative cup of wine and advised me to say my rosary quietly, fingering the gold beads I wore at my waist, as a way of calming myself. I did my best to follow his advice, yet I kept hearing the harsh words shouted out against me—“wicked Jezebel,” “traitorous woman,” “murderess,” “villainess”—a long litany of ugly words. The echoing voices rolling around the vast chamber made me dizzy, as if the words were bludgeons and I a struggling victim reeling under their blows.

Gradually the many voices blurred into one strident accusing voice, and then, as if in a sudden explosion of sound, all at once there were many shouts, a chorus of shouts, all saying the same thing: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

I cowered, I pulled the white veil I wore over my face to hide my fear. I heard myself growl—yes, growl, like a cornered animal. I heard Dr. Bourgoing say, “It is enough! Can’t you see how you are wearying this poor aging woman!”

At his words I seemed to find fresh energy, and managed to get up from my chair and stand before my accusers, drawing aside the veil so that my face could be clearly seen.

“I forgive all those who have been coerced into giving false evidence against me,” I said. “I forgive the men who wrote false
messages, and created false ciphers. I know you are all under sentence of royal displeasure, unless you do as you are told.”

“Do you dare to impugn the veracity of the queen’s court?” demanded the Lord Chancellor in a voice so thunderous I feared it would pierce the high painted ceiling.

“I forgive all my judges,” I went on, “and all those in exalted office”—here I looked directly at the Lord Chancellor, who flinched under my gaze—“and pardon you all here present, for presuming to judge one of higher birth and greater right than yourselves.”

And with that, amid renewed shouting, I reached for Dr. Bourgoing’s arm and felt the reassuring grip of another arm on my other side, and began to make my slow way out of the room.

I was dignified, I did not falter, nor did I look back with indignation at those who were shouting at me, though some of the words they used were gutter words, not fit for a highborn lady, much less a queen.

But as I reached the door my legs felt weak, almost as though they would collapse under me. I tightened my grip on Dr. Bourgoing’s arm, and he murmured, “Courage!” which helped me, though I was trembling.

The trembling in my hand that began that day has never gone away. It became difficult to keep my poor hand steady as I tried to write. The words I have written since that day have had an unsure, awkward look to them, with wide wriggles and tall spikes quite unlike my usual handwriting which, if I do note it myself, is exceptionally well formed and quite lovely. I hoped that after I slept my hand would stop shaking and I would be able to write in my usual fashion. But the change was permanent. The harm was done.

I was condemned, as I knew I would be. I spent my days in prayer, and reading my Bible, shriving my conscience and preparing to die.

But it did not happen. No one came to tell me that I was to be moved from Fotheringhay, or that the day of my execution had been
determined. Nor was Margaret recalled to Richmond. Instead she was allowed to remain with me, a great comfort and support to me. And after several weeks she was allowed to receive a visitor: her husband Ned Hargatt.

She spent several hours with him, and afterwards came to me, her thin face full of smiles.

“Ned has seen your Jamie!” she said, handing me a small object wrapped in white silk. “He sends you a miniature, and much news. King Philip is gathering a great fleet, he calls it the Most Fortunate Fleet, to bring an army to invade England. Lord Bothwell is to be captain of one of the carracks, the
San Marco,
with fifty guns and three hundred men. The fleet gathers at Lisbon, they sail for Portsmouth and the south coast any day!”

“Ah,” was all I could manage to say, at first. Then, “Ah, Lord, let them come soon! Give them fair winds and a following sea!”

Margaret and I embraced, my heart leapt. When Don John died, I had lost my champion; now I had found him again, only this time it was my true champion, my dearest love, who would sail into battle to save me, and bring me safely back into his arms again.