Chapter 42
In April, Kate learned from Elizabeth that Darnley’s distraught father, the Earl of Lennox, had pressured Mary into allowing him to lodge a private indictment of Bothwell.
But while he was permitted to bring only four witnesses to the hearing in Edinburgh, Bothwell had arrived with an intimidating following of four hundred men, whereupon Lennox deemed it wiser not to pursue the case.
Without him, it collapsed, and Bothwell was acquitted.
Kate found the next news even more shocking. Bothwell had waylaid and kidnapped Mary when she was traveling to Edinburgh after visiting her son at Stirling Castle, and then borne her off to his castle at Dunbar.
“Cecil’s agents say that he ravished her there,” Elizabeth revealed over dinner in her chamber, her outrage evident in the angry flush that had spread down to her neckline. “That he should dare to treat his Queen thus! The man should be castrated and hanged!”
Later that day, Francis surprised Kate. “The Council has seen reports that the abduction and so-called rape were done with Queen Mary’s consent and foreknowledge.
She actually turned down an offer to rescue her.
Now it will be impossible for her to refuse to marry Bothwell.
He has got what he wanted. And maybe she has, too. ”
Kate did not know what to think. Elizabeth was incensed and greatly perplexed because Mary, who had still not brought her husband’s murderers to justice, was apparently showering favor on the chief suspect.
And Bothwell’s way was made clear when the Church of Scotland condemned him as an adulterer and granted his wife a divorce.
It was not long before news came that Bothwell had married Mary, whom he had led back to Edinburgh, holding her horse’s bridle as if she were his captive.
Many thought the Scottish Queen’s conduct depraved and were convinced that she had connived with Bothwell to murder Darnley. Even Elizabeth ceased defending the reputation of her sister monarch.
“I can only deplore her behavior,” she said, on the day she learned of the marriage.
She looked deeply moved; the matter was affecting her profoundly.
“I have the greatest misliking of the Queen’s doings, and I am ashamed of her.
It does not become an anointed sovereign to forget her honor and her dignity thus.
It reflects on me; men will use any excuse to say that women should not rule.
And in Mary’s case, I have to agree with them. ”
She was so overcome that she started to weep and hurried off to her closet, beckoning Kate to follow her.
Staunching her tears, she stared out of the window, and when she spoke, her voice was bitter.
“Now you see why I would not marry, or even receive, my Lord of Leicester after his wife was found dead. He was exonerated of all blame, but mud sticks, dear cousin, it sticks. I remembered my dignity as queen. I could not risk being tainted by association, and I put that consideration before my private feelings. But Mary! What has she done, with her husband murdered, and in his grave less than three months? She has married the man who probably murdered him! I do believe she has lost her mind. It is the kindest construction I can put upon her conduct.”
“It does beggar belief,” Kate agreed, wishing she could put her arms around Elizabeth and comfort her as a sister should, yet knowing instinctively that such a gesture would not be welcome, for Elizabeth was trying to master her emotions.
“To be plain with you, I grieve for her,” the Queen said.
“She could not have made a worse choice, and in making it, she has all but proclaimed herself guilty, too, and so people will believe, even if she is innocent, which I am coming increasingly to doubt. I shall write to her and show her my opinion plainly.”
Kate would not have liked to be the recipient of such a letter.
—
It transpired that Mary’s ill-advised marriage had not brought her happiness.
Francis told Kate that Cecil had learned that, just two days after the wedding, the Queen of Scots was regretting what she had done.
She had said that she wished to die and called for a knife with which to kill herself.
Yet, despite her mental anguish, she seemed unable to resist Bothwell’s masculine charms.
“It sounds as if she is in thrall to him,” Kate said.
They were sitting on the grass on the riverbank below the palace, eating cherries from a basket, and basking in the sunshine.
Yet that could not banish the darkness of the subject they seemed to be endlessly discussing whenever they saw each other.
“The Scottish lords find the marriage intolerable,” Francis told her. “They will not put up with Bothwell as king of Scots. Things are going to end badly.”
Kate feared he would be proved right, and she was not surprised to learn that there had been an armed confrontation between Mary and her lords at Carberry Hill outside Edinburgh.
Very little blood had been spilled, but at the end of the day, Mary was in the custody of her nobles and Bothwell had fled.
Elizabeth was shaking with rage—and with fear, because what had been done to one anointed queen could easily be done to another. But this was England. The nobles were loyal. They respected and revered their Queen, even when they grew exasperated with her.
“So much for the lords assuring Mary that they intended no harm to the Crown.” The Queen’s voice was sharp as steel.
“They placed her under guard like a common felon. They led her back to Edinburgh, through the packed streets, and her subjects reviled her as an adulteress and murderess. They were screaming, ‘Burn the whore! Kill her! Drown her!’ ” Elizabeth shivered.
“There were placards depicting her as a mermaid. What humiliation!”
It was tantamount to calling Mary a prostitute. Kate shuddered with outrage and revulsion that a queen could be treated thus.
“They have imprisoned her in the fortress of Lochleven, which stands on an island in the middle of a lake. She had nothing with her but the clothes she wore. My information is that she is with child.” Her voice rose.
“I am deeply concerned at the implications of this captivity of a queen by her subjects. Whatever Mary has done—and, I assure you, I can only deplore her behavior and I have little sympathy for her on a personal level—she is still an anointed sovereign, to whom by nature and law her people owe loyalty and obedience. Their treatment of her is setting a dangerous precedent. Therefore, I am determined to fight for her release.” She rose, and her voice cracked.
“I’m sorry, I can speak of this no more. ” She hastened from the privy chamber.
“These are indeed dangerous precedents,” Blanche said.
Dot nodded. Kate would have run after Elizabeth but decided that she was best left alone. “I think that the Queen of Scots is her own worst enemy,” she said.
—
It was now July, and the news that filtered south from Scotland was worse and worse.
The Queen of Scots had miscarried of twins and lost so much blood that she was now confined to bed.
Despite Elizabeth’s efforts to persuade the lords to remember their oaths of allegiance and release her, they took advantage of her weakened condition and forced her to sign an instrument of abdication in favor of her thirteen-month-old son, whom they had quickly crowned King of Scots.
Public opinion in Scotland was now violently opposed to Mary, and Elizabeth’s intervention was greatly resented.
The lords were threatening to break off their alliance with England in favor of a new one with France if she did not support them.
“Of course, it would be logical for Protestant England to be allied with a Protestant government in Edinburgh,” Francis pointed out over supper one evening.
They had been talking about how happy Hal was in his marriage, and how well the children were doing in their chosen careers, and the talk had drifted, as it usually did, to events in the wider world.
“But isn’t that government illegal? By what right do the Scottish lords rule?”
“They have no true right, Kate, but it is usually the victors who make the laws, and they will find some justification for their actions, I’ll warrant.
” He leaned forward and speared some meat on his knife, laying it on her plate.
“To be honest, do we want a Catholic queen ruling Scotland? The only reason Elizabeth is defending her is because she is frightened of the implications of her deposition. Truly, Mary is not fit for office. Morally, she is wanting—and that is putting it mildly.”
“I agree with you to a point,” Kate said. “Yet she has been treated brutally and unfairly.”
“It might be no more than she deserves.” Francis’s tone was disapproving. “At the very least, she has shown appalling judgment all along, especially in marrying Darnley. Look where that has led her!”
Kate paused, hesitating to say what was in her heart. “I think I know who was responsible for that. Our Queen was adamant that Darnley should not go to Scotland—yet she sent him, knowing what kind of man he was.”
Francis shook his head. “Even she could not have predicted what would happen. You know I don’t think a lot of her statesmanship, but she was not responsible for Mary’s decisions.”
“But Francis, she knew that Mary would take the bait. Darnley had a claim to the English throne—a better one than hers, as you once told me, she being a foreigner born out of the realm. It was a certainty that Mary would have thought to strengthen her claim by marrying Darnley.”
“I grant you that Elizabeth would have foreseen that, but why would she have connived at a marriage that posed such a threat to her own position?”
“Because she knew that Darnley would cause trouble for Mary!”
Francis smiled. “He could equally have caused trouble for Elizabeth. No, Kate, I don’t hold our Queen responsible for Mary’s troubles. But what I would like to see is her washing her hands of the woman and making friends with the Scottish lords. That would be very much in England’s interests.”
Kate knew herself bested. She still thought she was right, but Francis liked to assert his superior masculine judgment, and she would not argue with him, for the sake of preserving the harmony between them. Besides, what did affairs in distant Scotland have to do with them?
—
Elizabeth spent much of the summer fuming against the Scottish lords.
“What warrant have they in Scripture to depose their Prince?” she burst out one day, while composing a letter to her envoys in Scotland.
“Or what law have they found in any Christian monarchy which states that subjects may arrest the person of their Prince, detain them captive, and proceed to judge them? No such law is to be found!”
She had been warned that any attempt to rescue Mary would only lead to her being killed.
Kate was of the opinion, though, that had Elizabeth not reacted as violently to the lords’ treatment of Mary, they might have executed their Queen without further ado.
Now relations between Elizabeth and the men who should have been her Protestant allies were so frigid that war seemed a very real possibility.
Her councillors, however, were pressing her to foster friendly relations with the new regime in Scotland.
“We’re all very concerned about her Majesty’s obsession with bringing the Scots to heel,” Francis confided to Kate.
“She refuses to recognize the lords’ authority, yet she will have to do so soon because they are well entrenched in power and there is little likelihood that Mary will ever be restored to the throne.
And to be honest, Kate, although Elizabeth outwardly professes not to approve of the present situation, I don’t doubt that, in her heart, she likes it well enough. ”
Kate suspected that he was right. She had learned over the years that the louder the Queen protested against something, the more she was secretly in favor of it.
But Elizabeth continued to vocalize her animosity against the Scottish nobles, standing in the gallery that led to the council chamber and berating her lords for not having thought of a way in which she could revenge the Queen of Scots’ imprisonment and deliver her, then shouting that she would declare war on the Scots.
When Cecil opened his mouth to defend the lords, Elizabeth rounded on him.
“Master Cecil, any person who is content to see a neighboring prince unlawfully deposed must be less than dutifully minded toward his own sovereign.”
Kate saw Cecil wince, but he persisted. “Might I remind your Majesty that if you threaten the Scots with war, they might well carry out their threat to execute Queen Mary.”
She subsided at that, but she was in a foul mood for two days afterward.
—
That autumn, Kate was unwell with stomach pains, a fever, and a flux, similar to the symptoms she had had when she was ill before Hal’s wedding. The Queen once again summoned Dr. Huicke, but he could only diagnose an imbalance of the humors and prescribe an infusion of chamomile, sage, and mint.
In a few days, Kate felt better, but two weeks later, she suffered a recurrence of the symptoms, and this time the herbs were less efficacious.
She did not recover until Christmas, and then she found she had lost her appetite—or rather, she was nervous about eating lest certain foods set off another attack.
Francis and Beth were both concerned about her, and though she assured them that she was quite well really and that it was nothing to worry about, inwardly she was fretting about the future.
What if her symptoms were the signs of some serious disease?
How would her loved ones manage if she died?
What nonsense! she admonished herself. They were all making a fuss about nothing.