A Love Beyond by Belle McInnes

Author:Belle McInnes
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Highland
Publisher: Eden Press
Published: 2017-06-25T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

While attending to her civic duties in Jedburgh, news reached Mary that Bothwell had been seriously hurt during an encounter with the reivers and lay helpless at Hermitage. She decided to go to Hermitage there and then to attend to him.

Accompanied by her half brother Moray and a body of officials, she set off on the long and hazardous journey to Hermitage.

The route took the party over huge tracts of open moorland and bog. It was difficult terrain and the weather was foul.

More than once Mary's horse stumbled in the bog and only with difficulty found firm ground. On one occasion she lost her watch and other possessions.

Mary was only able to stay briefly as the party had to return to Jedburgh that same day.

Of the three possible routes to Hermitage, Mary selected the longest to avoid the pass of Note o' Gate and the high, bleak track by Wimburgh.

For 300 years Mary's watch lay where she had dropped it, until it was picked up by a farm worker digging a drainage channel.

It had been well preserved and is now on display at QM House in Jedburgh

Later, after being held in captivity by Elizabeth I of England, she said "Would that I had died in Jedburgh..."1587

Mary was executed at Fotheringay Castle in 1587.

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In the autumn, he travelled to Hermitage with three hundred horse to arrest a group of borderers for trial at Jedburgh, but was seriously wounded while attempting to arrest them. After Mary had travelled to Jedburgh for the assize, she visited him with her other advisers on his sick bed. On her return, she suffered an abdominal haemorrhage, which threatened her life. Bothwell recovered quickly and arrived at her bedside fearing the worst, but she slowly recovered and was able to return by easy stages towards Edinburgh. On reaching Craigmillar, she remained for a fortnight to convalesce

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Mary's route to Hermitage:

When Mary visited Bothwell in Hermitage Castle, she did not take the present route of the road by the Slitterick, but penetrated the mountainous track which lies between that and the Teviot. The perils and the difficulties of such a journey must have been very great, and it is utterly inconceivable how she contrived both to go into Liddesdale and to come back from it again to Teviotdale in the short space of one day. Her path lay up Priesthaugh-swire, between Pencryst-pen and Skelf-hill, then through a long boggy tract called Hawkhass, next up along the course of a mountain stream to the ridge called Maiden's Paps, where the district of Liddesdale begins; she afterwards descended Braidlie-swire, till again she reached a low piece of marshy ground. It was on this spot that the Queen narrowly escaped with her life, her horse having been swamped in the bog (the Queen's Mire); other hills had now to be ascended and descended, the narrow tract generally sloping along their sides, and crossing the little burns at the bottom, until she reached the course of the Hermitage Water, following which she

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