Mary Queen Of Scots by Fraser Antonia

Author:Fraser, Antonia [Fraser, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780297857952
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2010-06-23T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Mermaid and the Hare

‘Certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music’

Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(said to be a reference to Bothwell and Mary)

At the palace of Holyrood Queen Mary was woken from her sleep by a noise like twenty or thirty cannon. Shortly afterwards messengers brought her the news that the house at Kirk o’Field had been totally destroyed, and her husband’s dead body found lying at a distance of sixty to eighty paces. Her first reactions were horror and shock – horror at what had happened and shock at the feeling that she herself had had such a narrow escape. Bothwell described her in his narrative as ‘fort épleurée et contristée’.1 She wrote the same day – Monday, 10th February – to her ambassador Beaton in Paris, pouring forth her amazement and distress, although it is noticeable that her conventional grief for Darnley is outweighed by her conviction that the conspiracy had been aimed at her personally; shortly after the event, the Venetian ambassador in Paris also reported that the crime was the work of heretics (Protestants) who had intended to kill Mary too.2 ‘The matter is so horrible and strange,’ wrote the queen, ‘as we believe the like was never heard of in any country.’3 She retailed Darnley’s fate (still apparently unaware that he had been strangled, and not killed by the blast) and reported the utter demolition of the building ‘with such a vehemency, that of the whole lodging, walls and other, there is nothing remaining, no, not a stone above another, but all carried far away, or dung in dross to the very groundstone. It must have been done with the force of powder, and appears to be a mine.’ The queen did not yet know who was responsible, but is certain that with ‘the diligence our Council has begun already to use … the same being discovered … we hope to punish the same with such rigour as shall serve for example of this cruelty to all ages to come’. She continued: ‘Always who ever have taken this wicked enterprise in hand, we assure our self it was dressed always for us as for the King; for we lay the most part of all the last week in that same lodging, and was there accompanied with the most part of the lords that are in this town that same night at midnight, and of very chance tarried not all night, by reason of some mask in the abbey; but,’ the queen concluded piously, ‘we believe it was not chance but God that put it in our head.’

It is evident that at the moment when she wrote this letter, a few hours after the crime, it had not yet struck the queen that any of her chief nobles were involved in its execution. The sheer outrageousness of the explosion had distracted her from considering the known enmities between Darnley and many of the nobility – as Bothwell must have

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