The Wild Queen Read online

  We resumed the progress, still within a long day’s journey of Edinburgh. When I reached Holyrood Palace at the end of September, Scotland was, as promised, already in the firm grip of winter.

  ***

  I was elated to find that while I had been away, the transport ships that had set out from Calais weeks earlier had finally arrived in Leith. Carts from all over the city were commandeered to unload my possessions as well as the baggage of the staff of French servants who had accompanied me. The gilded carriage was sent off directly to storage to await the day when the Scottish roads might become passable.

  The chests of furnishings and trunks containing most of my finery were carried to my apartments. For the next few weeks, when I was not meeting with my advisers regarding matters of governance, I was having a delightful time decorating my new home.

  Tapestries were hung in every hall and chamber, and Turkish carpets that were both beautiful and warm underfoot were rolled out on the stone floors. Special stools, carved and painted, were set out for my Four Maries, with folding stools available for visitors. My gilded throne, covered in crimson velvet and cloth of gold, was placed in the throne room with a splendid cloth of estate mounted above it. The dining hall was now properly furnished with banqueting tables and benches, and cupboards displayed enough gold and silver plate and goblets and ewers and salvers to supply the grandest banquet.

  The Four Maries helped me decide where to keep my collection of gowns, furs, and jewels. “Perhaps much of it could be kept below, in the king’s apartments,” Livingston suggested.

  “Until you have installed in those chambers a king of the realm,” La Flamin added archly, a remark I chose to ignore.

  “A good thing that you will not be required to wear mourning for much longer,” observed Livingston as servants carried away armloads of silks and velvets.

  She had observed correctly; I could scarcely wait to lay aside the somber clothes that I had worn for nearly a year and dress once again in my elegant gowns. On the fifth of December, the anniversary of my husband’s death, I called for two half days of mourning at Holyrood, out of respect for King François. Almost no one other than the Four Maries attended the memorial Mass with me. It seemed that le petit roi was nearly forgotten—and it was true that I rarely thought of him. My life had taken me in a direction we had not considered, and I had no choice but to get on with it.

  When the two half days of mourning were over—on the eighth of December, and my nineteenth birthday—I put away my mourning clothes and eagerly selected a dark green damask trimmed with gold braid and the proper jewels to go with it. People were arriving in the city from the surrounding countryside for the coming Yuletide.

  Beginning that day, I ordered banquets and entertainments and masques, music and dancing and feasting every night through Twelfth Night, the sixth of January. I wanted this to be a brilliant season—an entire month of celebration! Song and poetry were part of it, and I hired a number of musicians as permanent members of my staff and appointed a court poet to provide the celebrators with verses as needed. Three of my valets de chambre formed a singing group to perform regularly at my banquets, but they needed a fourth to sing the low part in the quartet. A member of the Italian diplomatic delegation, David Rizzio, was said to have a fine bass voice. I summoned Rizzio to my chamber.

  “The quartet requires a bass,” I told him. “Do me the favor of joining them.”

  Rizzio agreed, and when the ambassador returned to Italy at the end of the Yuletide season, Signor Rizzio stayed on in Edinburgh.

  ***

  There was much to celebrate at the beginning of 1562. A monarch again occupied the throne of Scotland. Holyrood as well as the other royal palaces had been restored to a magnificence not seen in a long time—I had paid for it from my own funds. I was confident that all would go well in my kingdom, my “auld country”

  The climax of the season was Twelfth Night. The cooks produced an enormous black bun cake, rich with dried fruits and spices. Somewhere inside the cake was a bean; whoever found the bean was crowned king or queen for the night. As it happened, Mary Fleming triumphantly produced the precious bean and claimed the golden crown. La Flamin took her place on my throne, and I knelt humbly before her and swore my fealty to the new queen. The “joyousity” that the Scots nobility expected and had made clear to me they wanted had returned, to the delight of everyone—except John Knox.

  Just after Twelfth Night, my companions and I and members of the court made a long day’s journey south of Edinburgh to James Hepburn’s Crichton Castle for the wedding of Hepburn’s sister Lady Janet to my half brother John Stuart. I had a fondness for weddings, and I could now indulge my taste for fine gowns and jewels, though I still often dressed in widow’s black, which I found flattering. After three days of banquets and masques and other entertainments so welcome during the long nights and short days of the Scottish winter, we returned to Edinburgh to prepare for the next big wedding: my eldest brother, James, who now enjoyed the title of earl of Moray, was to marry Lady Agnes Keith. The wedding took place in February at the High Kirk of St. Giles, only a short distance from Holyrood. John Knox himself preached the sermon, and then we all withdrew to Holyrood Palace for three more days of brilliant celebration.

  The preacher complained that the banquets and masques and dancing offended many godly people. It was hardly a surprise, then, when the following Sunday John Knox thundered from his pulpit in a sermon lasting some two hours condemning the “wanton skipping” by women who could not have been “honest” or they would never have indulged in such wicked behavior. The women skipping wantonly included me.

  ***

  Among the celebrations and the joyousity, an instance of poor judgment on my part led to disastrous consequences. A young page, Pierre de Boscotel de Chastelard, had been among those who accompanied me to Scotland from France. Chastelard was a poet and musician of considerable skill as well as an exceptionally graceful dancer. When he sent me flattering verses, I invited him to court, delighted by his talent and pleased by his presence. I gave him generous gifts of money to buy himself new clothes, as I often did to those whom I particularly liked. But I did not realize that Chastelard thought he was in love with me. Worse, he misinterpreted my friendship and convinced himself that the welcome I offered him and the compliments I paid him proved that I returned his love.

  Soon after the weddings of my two brothers I danced with Chastelard until a late hour. That night, apparently carried away by his romantic delusions, he crept into my bedchamber before I arrived and hid beneath my bedstead. My grooms discovered him there and dragged him out by his ankles. When I heard the tumult, I rushed in, and, horrified at the liberties he had taken, I ordered him to leave Scotland and never return. He wept and apologized many times over, but I refused his apologies. I considered the matter finished.

  I was wrong. In a matter of weeks Chastelard returned to Scotland—it is possible that he never left—and insinuated himself once again into my court. As I did not see fit to send him off to serve a term in prison, as I should have and as he deserved, he apparently believed he had been forgiven and restored to my good graces. For a second time he dared to invade the privacy of my bedchamber, this time as my ladies were preparing to undress me. My brother James heard my screams and ran in with his men-at-arms.

  “He came here to ravish me!” I cried, truly terrified. “For this he must die!”

  Chastelard was carried off and thrown into a dungeon to await a public trial. I worried that he would somehow convince the judge that I was at fault and had encouraged him, toyed with his deep feelings. But he was found guilty of treason and condemned to death. He begged for clemency, which I refused to grant.

  My brother Lord Moray made me an unwilling witness to Chastelard’s beheading. “If you order a man’s execution, madam, you must be prepared to see it through,” said my brother coldly.

  I took my place on a parapet overlooking the market square at St. Andrews, where a sc
affold stood ready My hands were shaking, and my legs were so weak that I had to sit down as the poet was led to his doom. Chastelard gazed steadily at me as his last moments drew near and called out, “Adieu, you who are so beautiful and so cruel, you whom I cannot stop loving!” And then the ax fell.

  It was terrible. I screamed and fell to the floor in a faint. Afterward I could not rid myself of the sense that I was responsible and had brought about his end, though my friends assured me Chastelard was quite mad to have behaved as he did.

  Not everyone agreed that I was blameless. John Knox did not miss the opportunity to lay the culpability on my shoulders, insinuating that I must have been the young man’s mistress all along, which I most assuredly was not. Even Lord Moray stated bluntly that I had acted unwisely.

  “You enticed him,” James said. “He would not have behaved so badly had you not encouraged him.”

  But later it was proven that Chastelard had been hired by French Protestants who wished to sully my honor and my reputation, and who had very nearly succeeded. I vowed that I would never again open myself to such criticism.

  “From this day forward,” I told Mary Fleming, “you must sleep in my bedchamber to preserve my reputation as an honest woman.”

  For some time she did, though weeks passed before I could shake off my mood of melancholy that came with the realization that it was my fault. I had made a serious misstep. Perhaps there was a wildness in me, and I was not as firmly in command of it as I wished to be.

  Chapter 31

  The Gordons

  SCOTLAND WAS NOT FRANCE, and the Scots were not like the French. Yet I believed that I had won the goodwill of most of my subjects—nobles, lairds, commoners. One exception was John Knox. He and the rabid Protestant reformers pressed me relentlessly to abolish the Catholic faith in all its forms. Knox was conniving with Queen Elizabeth’s chief adviser, William Cecil, to undermine my authority any way he could.

  I refused to sign the Treaty of Edinburgh. I had no intention of renouncing my claim to the English throne until Queen Elizabeth agreed to name me her heir if she died without leaving any legitimate children. Elizabeth was twenty-eight, only nine years older than I, but one could never predict how many years a gracious God might grant each of us. My brother François de Longueville had died just before his sixteenth birthday, my husband his seventeenth, while my grandmother, nearly seventy, continued to enjoy good health. Thus far Elizabeth had not married. Perhaps she had no intention of marrying. She had even said that she would die a virgin. If she truly meant that and did not change her mind, as I had heard she so often did, I had no concern that Elizabeth would produce an heir and move me further down the line of succession. Even if she did change her mind and marry, she might not produce an heir, and then I should still rightfully inherit the English crown. So I firmly believed—but I had to persuade Elizabeth of that.

  I set out to gain her trust and her friendship. I wrote to her assuring her of my amity and appealing for hers. I reminded her that months earlier, I had arranged to have my portrait made and sent to her and had requested that she do the same for me. She had not responded to that request, but she had sent me a handsome diamond in the shape of a heart, which I treasured.

  Still she refused to name me her heir, stating frankly that once an heir was named, plots to displace her would inevitably begin.

  Elizabeth and I began writing back and forth, sending gifts, even composing verses for each other. We discussed an eventual meeting, a thrilling prospect for me. I had begun to feel a deep kinship with her, almost as though she were my sister, a kinship that would be sealed once we actually met. I was certain that, face to face, I could persuade her of my suitability as her heir, even though the major sticking point remained that she was Protestant and I a devout Catholic.

  In the summer of 1562 I sent William Maitland to England to arrange the details of a meeting. But Elizabeth had changed her mind yet again. The meeting would be postponed. I wept with disappointment.

  Very well, I thought, I will follow a different path. I can be as stubbornly elusive as the English queen. She will not hear of my shedding tears on her account.

  ***

  Late in August I set out on a second royal progress, this time journeying to the Scottish Highlands, going as far north as Inverness. I had arranged for my priest to say Mass at the royal chapel when we arrived at Stirling Castle, but he was prevented from doing so—by my own brother Lord Moray!

  “James,” I cried, upset and incensed, “you promised that I could hear Mass in my own chapel. You have broken your promise!”

  “I guaranteed that you could continue to hear Mass at the royal chapel in Holyrood,” he said, his jaw set stubbornly “But that guarantee does not extend to Stirling, or to any other place.”

  It was pointless to argue, and on this occasion we compromised. The priest set up a small altar in my apartments for me and the Four Maries and a few others. I had made up my mind to walk a careful line in dealing with the religious issues that plagued my country. I would adhere to a policy of tolerance, and I would not allow this strategy to be undermined.

  My brother’s highhandedness angered me, though I knew that he was trying to mollify Knox and the others. I had not yet forgiven him for making me feel guilty about the Chastelard incident. A gulf had opened between us. A confrontation was coming.

  After leaving Stirling we rode for days in a constant drizzle of rain and fog, and by the time we reached Aberdeen, everyone was wet and miserable. It had also become difficult to find enough supplies along our route to feed my large entourage.

  On our way from Aberdeen to Inverness we passed near the castle belonging to my cousin George Gordon, earl of Huntly Inverness Castle was said to be one of the finest in all of Scotland. Lord Huntly was a member of my privy council, and though we were constantly in disagreement over several matters, we were related by blood—King James IV was our common grandfather—so I was prepared to ignore our disagreements and accept Gordon’s famous hospitality.

  “We will be treated well here,” I assured my companions. “Fires will blaze on every grate, the beds will be soft, and food and wine will be plentiful.”

  But I was walking into a hornets’ nest.

  Huntly was lord chancellor of Scotland and the most powerful of the Catholic noblemen. He vigorously opposed my intended meeting with Queen Elizabeth and any sort of agreement with Protestant England. He also made no secret of his resentment of me for making my brother the earl of Moray, giving James control over lands that Lord Huntly felt belonged to him.

  At the castle gates, the keeper of the castle—one of Huntly’s sons—stood with hands on hips, flanked by guards armed with swords.

  “What sort of welcome is this for your sovereign queen?” I called out.

  “No welcome at all, madam!” came the reply “On the orders of my father, George Gordon, earl of Huntly and master of this castle, entry is denied.”

  His reply stunned me. This was treason. I was not about to tolerate defiance of my royal authority. “My greetings to my cousin and countryman,” I called back. “Open the gates.”

  “Entry denied!”

  I called upon my guards to withdraw, heard them muttering, and glanced up to see the archers on the battlements. My decision came swiftly I ordered the captain of the guards to dispatch messengers across the neighboring shires, summoning the leaders of clans I knew were hostile to the Gordons. Most of my retinue were sent off to the nearby town to find what lodgings they could. The Four Maries refused to leave me. We waited, wet and mud spattered, but determined. Within hours several hundred clansmen had assembled, armed with pikes and cudgels and ready to fight.

  “Storm the castle,” I ordered the men. “Seize the young Gordon who has refused to open the gates to his queen and sovereign and hang him from the battlements.”

  The captain looked surprised. “Hang him, my lady?”

  It was harsh, but I knew that I had to establish my authority quickly and wi
thout wavering. “Hang him,” I repeated.

  We watched from a low rise as the men stormed the castle. It was over quickly.

  “There is still time to change your mind,” Seton whispered. “About young Gordon.”

  “I will not change it,” I said, but I hid my trembling hands.

  ***

  The next day my spies informed me that another of Huntly’s sons, John Gordon, planned to have me kidnapped and then force me to marry him. Here was a Scot who must have been as mad as the French poet Chastelard! The battle was joined at Corrichie, near Aberdeen. My brother commanded an army of three thousand men; the earl of Huntly had only a third of that number. John Gordon was captured, and I ordered him beheaded the next day. This was not the same as my order for the execution of Chastelard. John Gordon was clearly guilty of treason. That same day, the old earl died of a stroke on the battlefield. His embalmed body was later taken to Edinburgh, where in its coffin the corpse was found guilty of treason and Lord Huntly’s lands forfeited to the Crown. His eldest son and heir, George Gordon the younger, was spared and put under house arrest.

  None of this was what I had intended when I set out on my progress. I had demonstrated by my actions that I was not to be trifled with or intimidated, but I had blood on my hands, and the deaths of two more men troubled my conscience. Despite this, my show of strength and fortitude had not brought me a single step closer to a meeting with the queen of England and the result I sorely desired: to be named Elizabeth’s heir. Now as I rode back toward Edinburgh, I thought I knew what might hasten that end. By the time I reached Holyrood Palace I had come to a decision, as important as my decision to return to Scotland.

  I must search for a man who will aid me in my goal to inherit the English throne, and marry him.

  I must have a husband.

  Chapter 32

  A Suitable Match