The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots (4 page)

Even before we entered Francis’s bedchamber we could hear him coughing. I went in first, telling the three Gentlemen of the Bedchamber who were in attendance on him that he had a visitor.

“A visitor?” Francis croaked. “What visitor?”

Though the hearth fire blazed high and the room was hot, he was swathed in a woolen blanket, his feet wrapped in warm leggings. He shivered—or perhaps he was trembling in fear. Visitors frightened Francis.

“It is the Earl of Bothwell, my mother’s man. A friend.”

“A parasite, you mean. Dampierre has cautioned me about this friend, this friend wants money.”

The earl came in then, and at his first sight of Francis, could not help but whisper, “By all that’s holy!”

My poor husband was indeed a ghastly sight. His dark, stringy hair stood out around his pale, thin face with its startling gashes of red where the skin disease that tormented him had broken out. With every rasping cough he brought up green sputum, which he wiped away impatiently with one wet hand. His wild eyes were full of fear
and bad temper, and the sight of Bothwell, with his twinkling earring and sparkling codpiece, made him cackle.

“A cockscomb then! As well as a parasite!”

Bothwell bowed.

“Your Highness,” he said. “I am James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, come to bring you greetings from the Queen Dowager Marie of Scotland. She wishes you a quick recovery and fortunate prospects for a long and happy reign.”

A thin smile crossed Francis’s moist lips.

“Does she indeed? And does she add her apologies for cursing me with a barren daughter for a wife?”

“He doesn’t mean that,” I said, moving closer to the earl. “He is only echoing his mother. When we are alone he doesn’t speak to me like that.”

“Sire,” the earl went on, “both our realms, Scotland and France, are under siege from the English enemy. It would be well for us not to insult each other or provoke quarrels, but to combine our strengths to fight off this scourge.”

“Well said, for a borderer,” Francis sniped. “But as you see, I am under siege from quite another source.” A spasm of coughing interrupted him. I could hardly look at him, he was so wretched, and I so helpless. At length he went on, his voice low, his head bent toward the floor.

“I refer to my mortality. Now leave me. There is no money for you here.”

The earl bowed again, and murmuring, “I am sorry to have found Your Highness in such an unwell state,” left the bedchamber. After a moment I followed him.

“I have a great and sudden thirst,” he said as I came up to him in the dim torchlit corridor. “Seeing death face to face puts me in need of drink.”

I was glad that he made no pretense, that he said what we all saw—that my acid-tongued husband was not likely to live much longer.

“It isn’t true, is it?” he asked. “The rumor that he has leprosy? Because if it is, then you probably have it too.”

“No. But a worm has bored deep into his ear and Michel de Notredame says it cannot be gotten out. It is rotting him from the inside. The cough, the rheums, the terrible rash—all are caused by this deathly worm.”

The earl shook his head. “Poor girl, it must not be easy for you. You must try to have a child, you know. That is your only hope. Otherwise—”

I took a deep breath. I knew what the alternative would be.

“Otherwise,” I said, “the queen dowager will send me back to Scotland. Back to the wolves.”

The earl’s smile was rueful. Yet I saw sympathy in his eyes. “You sound like your mother. But now I must go. No doubt Cristy has already found the nearest tavern. I’ll join him, with Your Highness’s permission.”

“Of course. Thank you,” I added.

“For what?”

“For your truthfulness.”

He nodded. “And I thank you for yours.” We looked at each other then, and smiled, and let the moment linger. I felt something stir deep within me, a sensation for which, then, I had no name. A slowly spreading warmth, a comfort, a sheltering peace. And I was aware once again, as I had been when I first saw him in the courtyard earlier that day, of his bodily strength and vigor.

“Let’s hunt tomorrow,” he said, “if the day is fine.”

I nodded.

“Good night, Your Highness.”

“Good night, my lord.”

Early showers of rain had left muddy patches in the little wood, and as the kennelmen in their leather breeches brought out the hare hounds they splashed through freshets that ran between the chestnuts and the old hornbeams. The dogs yapped as they leapt through the brushwood, and my little roan tossed her head and skittered nervously under me as we waited for the hunting party to assemble.

I felt a bit guilty, leaving Francis in order to course hares, especially since, of the two of us, he was the one who most loved to hunt. But he was hardly able to leave his chair, much less ride, and I told myself that I was not merely seeking fresh air and exercise, I was taking counsel with my mother’s most faithful supporter, the Earl of Bothwell. Whatever conversation we had, whatever further rapport we developed during the day’s sport, would benefit France and Scotland—and my husband as well.

“There now, Bravane,” I called to the horse, reaching down to pat her neck, steadying myself on the planchon under my feet. My skirts were damp, the morning had not been kind to my riding clothes. Yet as I looked down at the sadly rumpled taffeta the air seemed to brighten and the sun came out, its sudden warmth cutting through the early
morning chill. All around me wet leaves glistened as they trembled in the breeze, and the rich smells that rose from the moist earth seemed to grow stronger. Grooms were loading up the horses with baskets of food, and the huntsmen, stamping their feet and flapping their arms, their breaths steaming in the cold air, were signaling to the beaters to begin thrashing the undergrowth with sticks in order to drive the hares toward the open field beyond the wood.

Just as the horns sounded I glimpsed the earl, cap-a-pie in burgundy velvet and mounted on a dark jennet, riding up to join the party. Then we were off, as one great gray hare after another broke free of the scrub and darted off ahead. Slipped of their collars, the dogs raced after them, barking excitedly, and we on our mounts raced after the dogs, coming to a halt now and then when the clever, nimble hares bounded out of sight and the puzzled hounds paused, yapping and circling, until they caught sight of fresh prey.

For two hours and more we rode, in and out of copses, through wet expanses of fern and moss, over bare heath and across fields already shorn of their harvest. Hare after hare fell to the kill, though most, it seemed, escaped. They were vermin, they ate the crops and unless they were hunted, their numbers grew far too great. Still, I was glad when they flew across the fields, veering away from the hounds, turning with dizzying speed, their angular movements impossible to predict or follow. I was glad each time the dogs gave up, baying, for I knew that meant another hare had gotten away.

Escape was much on my mind in those days. For had Michel de Notredame not told me that my entire life was an escape from a dark fate? And were not my mother and my husband seeking to escape death?

Riding at full tilt across the sun-drenched fields on that morning, feeling Bravane’s strong muscles moving rhythmically under me, taking risks as I rode—for I have never been one for prudent coursing—I felt that escape from dark premonitions was indeed possible, and I laughed aloud as I went.

Suddenly I heard strengthening hoofbeats and felt Bravane shudder as another horse passed her, nearly colliding with her in its mad gallop.

“You there! Watch out!” I shouted. But the swift rider did not pull up, or even turn to acknowledge me, he merely raised one gloved hand and shouted, “All for risk, woman! Arise and away!”

I looked more closely at his back. It was the earl! The burgundy doublet and feathered cap, the dark jennet, surely there could not be another member of our party that resembled him so closely.

The sun was nearly overhead, and I was both hungry and thirsty. I could tell from the cries of the dogs and the way their heads drooped and their tongues lolled that they too needed rest and refreshment. We came to a brook and I stopped to let Bravane drink her fill, standing in the long grass that grew at the water’s edge. Up ahead there was a patch of shade where a grove of beech slanted down a sloping hillside. The grooms were there before us, spreading linen cloths and laying out the contents of hampers.

“There are snakes in that grass,” came a low warm voice. I looked around, and saw the earl, approaching on his weary, sweaty-flanked horse, which moved up to stand beside Bravane at the edge of the brook, drinking from the swiftly flowing water.

“You nearly knocked us over,” I said irritably. “Your jennet owes my Bravane the courtesy of an apology.”

The earl removed his cap, revealing tousled light-brown curling hair.

“We beg your royal pardon. We were chasing the fastest hare ever born.”

“And did you catch him?”

“Alas, no.” He looked down into the water. “I fear I am not at my best. The tavern last night was well stocked, the drink flowing, the company—”

“Yes, I can imagine the rest.”

He chortled. “I am short of sleep. But not too drowsy to offer to
bring Your Highness some food.” He dismounted, letting the reins of his horse go slack across its broad back, and strolled off in the direction of the grooms in the beech grove.

I dismounted and stretched my stiff limbs. Leaving Bravane to drink, I took a few steps along the water’s edge. It felt good to move, to feel the breeze on my cheeks, to loosen, slightly, the tight lacing of my bodice (after all, Margaret was not there to notice and tell me I looked disheveled). I took off my cap and let down the braids of my high-piled hair, feeling the coolness of the wind and closing my eyes for the sheer pleasure of it.

I walked back to where the horse waited and secured her to a tree trunk. The earl had returned with a groom who carried a basket of food and a cloth, which he laid out for us to sit on. When the plate and cutlery had been arranged, the metal trenchers and goblets, I thanked the groom and told him he did not need to stay to serve us. He bowed and, jumping across the brook at a bound, departed.

I noticed the earl watching him, with what I thought was a look of envy.

“He is younger, after all,” I said.

“Hah! Am I old? I am not yet twenty-six.”

“I imagine my groom is all of, perhaps, sixteen. He plays tennis well. I have played with him, when no one was watching. It is not thought proper for a queen to compete against men—or boys,” I added by way of explanation. “Especially servant boys.”

“And did you win?”

“Once. I think he let me win. But win or lose, I was good competition.”

“I notice you ride well too.”

“You noticed?”

“Of course I noticed.”

A comfortable silence fell, while we ate and drank. As during the supper the previous night, he ate heartily while I nibbled.

He picked a juicy red strawberry from a bowl and held it out to me. I started to reach for it, then, rather daringly, took it with my teeth, making the earl smile, watching me.

“Now where, do you imagine, are ripe strawberries to be found this late in the year?”

“My mother-in-law has them brought from the south. She says greenhouse strawberries are not as sweet.”

“How far south, I wonder? Africa?” We both laughed.

“No. Only her monkeys come from there. Or do they come from the New World? I can’t remember. Messy things, monkeys.”

After eating several more strawberries and drinking another goblet of wine, the earl began humming. It was a dance tune, one I remembered from my early childhood in Scotland, before I came to France.

“I remember that tune,” I said.

“A song from the borders. My father used to play it on the pipes. He tried to teach me to play, but I was never any good.”

The earl lay back on the linen, his hands underneath his head, one booted leg crossed over the other. After a time he looked over at me.

“My father loved your mother, did you know?”

“No.”

“When they were very young. He was Patrick Hepburn, the Fair Earl. He wanted to marry her—before she was matched with your father the king, that is. I think she secretly loved my father. Still loves him, perhaps. I know he went on loving her, right up until he died. I think the reason she likes me so well is that I remind her of him.”

I listened with interest. I had never before thought of my mother as a woman in love, only as a widow, a woman alone. She rarely mentioned my father, and never with affection.

“What was he like, your father?”

“Handsome. A good swordsman.”

“Honorable?”

“He upheld the honor of the borders.”

“What does that mean?”

He thought for a moment. “It means, you can’t trust anyone. A year ago your mother sent me south to make peace with the English. The treacherous, thieving, murderous English. I went. We signed an accord: no more fighting, no more skirmishes along that thin invisible line that separates our two kingdoms.

“We all agreed, made vows, and went home. And do you know what happened next? The lord Arran, your royal kinsman, takes money from the English and does their bidding. He comes to my castle at Crichton with fifty men and two English bombards and breaches the walls, steals everything inside, then sets fires in the ruins. And all, he says, because I broke the peace by brawling with my men on his lands. Brawling, mind you! Not doing anyone or any thing any harm.”

Warming to his tale, the earl got to his feet.

“I sent him a challenge. He didn’t even answer! He knows I can outfight him any day. But he’s still a coward! A weak, sniveling coward.

“I went after him. I made him beg for his life. I wanted to kill him, but I knew your mother wouldn’t like it. So I made him pay me a hundred crowns instead and forced him to give me his hand in peace. I left. And do you know what he did then?”

“I cannot imagine.”

“He betrayed me to your mother. He went to her and sat in her council chamber and swore that he and I were plotting to kill her and seize the kingdom, and that I put him up to it!”

“I know from mother’s letters that Arran is not to be trusted.”

“He’s not to be borne! I would gladly hunt him and not these silly hares. Set the dogs on him, and let them tear out his black heart!”

The hunt was reassembling, the grooms packing up and preparing the horses. I got up and went over to Bravane, untied her and stroked her neck and asked the earl for his help in mounting her.

“At least,” I said as he offered me his arm and I stepped up onto
the planchon, arranging my skirts as I took my seat, “Arran is no longer regent.”

“No. It is much worse now. He heads the rebels, those pernicious Lords of the Congregation, who have been fighting your mother. Your cousin Elizabeth sends him money. Sometimes my spies catch her messengers riding up from London with bags of gold, meant for Arran and his Lords. As much as a thousand pounds.”

He mounted his jennet. The horns were beginning to blow and the beaters to thrash the bushes. We urged our mounts across the brook and joined the other riders, our eyes on the hounds, waiting for the signal to resume our headlong gallop, the swift, elusive prey ever in view.