Mary Queen of Scots by John Guy

Author:John Guy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241986899
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

19

Assassination Two

The day before Darnley’s assassination was one of the happiest Mary could remember. It was the feast of Quinquagesima: the Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, one of the last opportunities before Easter for the banqueting and dancing that gave her so much pleasure. This particular Sunday had an atmosphere of carnival. At midday, she attended the wedding reception of Bastian Pages, her favourite valet and stage designer, whose satyrs at the masque for Prince James’s baptism had offended the English by wiggling their tails. He had married Christina (or Christily) Hogg, one of Mary’s gentlewomen and another of her favourites, that morning at Holyrood in the Chapel Royal. Mary presented the bridal gown, which was richly embroidered and expensive. The celebrations were expected to last until midnight.

Mary left the reception in mid-afternoon, promising to join in the dancing before the end of the evening. She then changed, ready for an official banquet at four o’clock in honour of the Duke of Savoy’s ambassador, who was returning home. The host was the Bishop of Argyll, John Carswell, who occupied one of the larger houses in the Canongate. When she left around seven o’clock in the evening, she was accompanied by Bothwell, Argyll, and Huntly, but not Moray, who had slipped away to Fife claiming that his wife was ill and likely to suffer a miscarriage. Maitland also found it prudent to absent himself, and Morton was still under a curfew. He was barred under the terms of his pardon from within seven miles of Mary or the court.

Around eight o’clock, Mary and her train of lords and ladies rode to Kirk o’Field for a party to mark the end of Darnley’s convalescence. There was perhaps music and some dancing, at the very least wine and conversation. As the evening drew late, Darnley became increasingly amorous. He wanted Mary to stay the night. He started touching her, but she had already promised Bastian and Christina that she would attend their wedding masque.

Mary always kept her promises to her favourite servants. Shortly before eleven o’clock, she rose to leave and called for the horses. Darnley tried to dissuade her, and to fend him off she drew a ring from her finger as a token, saying that on the following night she would sleep with him. Moray, later reporting this to Guzman de Silva, the Spanish ambassador in London, said that Mary ‘had done an extraordinary and unexampled thing on the night of the murder in giving her husband a ring, petting and fondling him after plotting his murder’. This, said Moray, who was himself in Fife and saw none of the events he so boldly claimed to be describing, had been ‘the worst thing’ about this cold-blooded deed.

In appeasing Darnley, Mary was playing for time. When he had foreseen the prospect of house arrest and refused to lodge at Craigmillar Castle, her objective was to get him back to Edinburgh under her control and away from the influence of Lennox and his retainers.

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