At first Mary Stuart paid no heed to the man in Bothwell, who was for her but one among her more trusty vassals. Just as little did Bothwell see in the Queen a young and desirable woman. With his usual bluntness and unrestraint he had openly commented on her appearance in an unseemly manner, saying: “She and Elizabeth rolled together would not suffice to make one proper woman.” They showed no erotic leaning towards one another. At one time, indeed, the Queen had been inclined to forbid Bothwell’s return to Scotland, having heard that he had spread impudent rumours about her while in France, but as soon as she had had experience of his valour and skill as a soldier she was glad to rely on him. One mark of favour followed another. He was appointed Lieutenant of the Border and, as previously said, was confirmed in his hereditary position as Lord Admiral of Scotland. He also became commander-in-chief of the forces in the event of war or rebellion. The escheated lands of the outlawed rebels were transferred to him, and as a special mark of friendliness the Queen herself chose a wife for him, Lady Jane Gordon, sister of Mary’s faithful counsellor, the Earl of Huntly. There could not be a better proof of the fact that at this juncture there was no love affair between Bothwell and Queen Mary.
A man of so commanding a nature as Bothwell is given power or wrests it to himself. Soon Bothwell had become the Queen’s chief adviser, the real ruler of the Scottish realm. The English ambassador reported with annoyance: “His influence with the Queen excels that of all others.” This time Mary had made a sound choice. At length she had discovered a viceroy or chief minister who was too proud to accept bribes from Elizabeth or to traffic with the other Scottish lords to secure trifling advantages. Having this doughty soldier as her loyal servant, she could maintain the upper hand in her own country. Ere long the nobles realised how much the Queen’s authority had been strengthened through Bothwell’s military dictatorship. They complained: “His arrogance is so great that he is hated more than David ever was.” They would have been glad to clear him out of the way. But Bothwell was not a Rizzio to allow himself to be butchered unresistingly, nor a Darnley who could simply be thrust aside. Familiar with the amiable little ways of the Scottish lords, he was always attended by a strong bodyguard, and at a nod from him the borderers would have risen to support him. Little did he care whether court intriguers loved him or hated him. Enough that they should fear him and that, so long as his sword was ready to his hand, the unruly rabble of his peers would not dare to lay a hand on the Queen. At Mary’s express desire, his bitterest enemy, Moray, had been reconciled to him; therewith the ring of power had been closed, the weights duly balanced. Mary Stuart, now that her position was safeguarded by Bothwell, was contented with a purely representative position; Moray continued to preside over the conduct of home affairs, while Lethington had diplomatic matters in charge. For the first time since Mary had been Queen, order and peace were re-established in Scotland. One man worthy of the name had worked this miracle.
The more power became concentrated in Bothwell’s hard hands, the less remained to wield for him to whom authority rightly accrued, the King. By degrees this little shrank to a mere name, to nothing at all. No more than a year had passed, but how distant seemed the days of the young Queen’s passion for Darnley, when he had been acclaimed King and, in glittering harness, had ridden forth to do battle against the rebels. Now, after the birth of his son, when he had done his duty by his wife and the kingdom, the unhappy man found himself thrust into the background and despised. He might speak, but no one listened; he might go whithersoever he pleased, but unaccompanied. He was not summoned to the council nor invited to festivities, and he grew desperately lonely. In all directions he sensed scorn and hatred. A stranger, a foe, he stood among foes in his own country, in his own house.
This complete eclipse of Darnley, this sudden change from hot to cold, may have been explicable on the ground of the spiritual change that had occurred in his wife, but her open manifestation of contempt for him was a political move, and a political folly. Reason should have taught Mary to leave this vain and ambitious young man at least a semblance of power and prestige, and not to expose him as cruelly as she did to the ruthless disdain of the Scottish lords. Such mortifications may make even a weakling strong and hard. Darnley, who had hitherto been a mere fool, grew by degrees malicious and dangerous. He could no longer restrain his wrath. When, attended by armed guards (he had learnt caution since Rizzio’s murder), he rode forth on prolonged hunting expeditions, his guests would hear him utter open threats against Moray and many other Scottish lords. On his own initiative he wrote diplomatic dispatches to foreign potentates, describing his wife as “unsteadfast in the faith”, and offering himself to Philip II as the true defender of Catholicism. He considered that, as the great-grandson of Henry VII, he was entitled to his share of royal power and, however soft and yielding his youthful spirit, from time to time a determination to assert his honour flickered in the depths. In truth we are not entitled to term this unhappy man dishonourable, but only to speak of him as a weakling, and it seems probable that Darnley was led into despicable paths by perverted ambition, by an irritable self-assertive impulse. At length, the bow having been stretched too tightly, he formed a desperate resolve. At the end of September he rode from Holyrood to Glasgow, having openly proclaimed his intention to leave Scotland for foreign parts. He would no longer fritter away his time in the northern realm. He had been refused the powers which rightly belonged to him as King. So be it; he cared nothing for the empty title. He was given no task worth performing in the Scottish kingdom, so he would go elsewhere. At his command a ship was made ready on the Clyde, and preparations were pushed forward for departure.
What did Darnley mean by this singular threat? Had some warning already reached his ears? Had he been given a hint that a plot against him was in the wind, and had he decided, feeling incapable of defending himself against his enemies, to flee to some region where he would be beyond the reach of poison or dirk? Was he tortured by suspicion or hunted by dread? Or was he merely showing off, making a diplomatic gesture of defiance, in order to alarm Mary Stuart? Between these various possibilities it is impossible to decide, all the more seeing that mixed feelings are usually at work in every resolve, so that each of the hypotheses may be partially true. For here, when we have to penetrate the shadowy depths of the heart, historical lights grow dim. Only with caution, groping one’s way, guided by suppositions, can one venture further into the labyrinth.
This much is certain, that Mary was greatly alarmed by the tidings of Darnley’s intended departure. A deadly blow would be inflicted on her reputation if the father of her child were to quit the kingdom before the formal celebration of little James’s baptism. It would be particularly dangerous now, so soon after the Rizzio scandal. The stupid young fellow might work her infinite mischief by giving his tongue free rein at the court of Catherine de’ Medici or at that of Elizabeth Tudor. What a triumph it would be for her two rivals, how it would hold her up to the mockery of the world, if the husband she had so passionately loved were thus to divorce himself from her bed and board! Hastily she summoned her council of state and, to get ahead of Darnley, she penned a diplomatic dispatch to Catherine de’ Medici declaring herself innocent of any wrongdoing against the fugitive. “Il veult estre tout et commander partout, à la fin il se mest en ung chemin pour estre rien”—He wants to be everything, and in command everywhere, and in the end he is well on the way to being nothing.
But the alarm was premature, for Darnley did not set sail. He could find strength for a bold gesture, but not for a bold deed. On 29th September 1566, the very day on which the lords of the council sent their warning missive to Paris, Darnley turned up in Edinburgh, at ten o’clock in the evening, in front of the palace of Holyrood. Yet he refused to enter the building so long as any of the lords of the council remained there, another instance of childish and scarcely explicable behaviour. Did he dread sharing the fate of Rizzio? Was it only from caution that he refused to enter the palace so lo
ng as he knew his enemies to be there? Or did the humiliated man wish to be publicly begged by Mary to come home again? Had he perhaps only paid this visit in order to discover what effect his threat of flight from Scotland had produced? Here we are faced by a mystery, as almost always where Darnley’s behaviour and fate are concerned.
Mary speedily made up her mind. She had learnt the use of a special technique in her dealings with her husband when he wanted to play the lord and master or the rebel. She knew that, just as on the night after Rizzio’s murder, she must quickly undermine his willpower before, in his youthful stubbornness, he could work mischief. Away then with moral considerations, with prudery or other niceties of feeling! Once more she played the yielding wife. To mould him to her will, she did not shun extreme measures. Dismissing the lords of the council, she went out to Darnley, who was defiantly waiting outside the door, and led him, not only into the palace, but presumably into Circe’s island, into her own bedroom. And lo! the charm worked, as it had done before, and would always work with this youth who was a slave to his passion for her. Next morning he had been tamed, and was once more in leading strings.
But, just as on the night after Rizzio’s murder, the man thus befooled had to pay the price for his folly. Darnley, again believing himself lord and master, unexpectedly encountered in the reception room the French ambassador and the lords of the council, Mary, like her “dear sister” Elizabeth in the matter of the Moray comedy, had provided timely witnesses. In their presence she loudly and urgently enquired of Darnley, “for God’s sake” to tell her why he wanted to leave Scotland, and whether anything in her conduct had given occasion for such a step. This was an unpleasant surprise for Darnley, who had a moment before believed himself lover and beloved, and now had to appear as an accused person before the lords of the council and the French ambassador, du Croc. He stood there moodily, this tall young fellow, with his pale, beardless boyish countenance. Had he been a true man, had he had any grit in him, now would have been the moment to show it. Masterfully he should have stated his grievances, presenting himself before his subjects and his wife, not as accused, but as accuser and King. But one who has a “heart of wax” does not venture to resist. Like a criminal caught in the act, like a schoolboy who is being scolded and is afraid of bursting into tears, Darnley stood in the great hall, biting his lips and maintaining an impenetrable silence. He gave no answer. He made no accusation, but neither did he excuse himself. Now the lords of the council, who found this silence of his embarrassing, addressed him courteously, asking him how he could forsake “so beautiful a queen and so noble a realm”. In vain! Darnley would not answer. This defiant and menacing silence grew more and more oppressive to the assembly. Obviously the unfortunate wight was finding it hard to restrain himself, and it would have been a terrible scene for Mary Stuart if he had found energy to persist in his accusatory silence. But now Darnley grew weak. When du Croc and the lords plied him persistently “avec beaucoup de propos”—with much good reason-ing—he at length reluctantly acknowledged that nothing in his wife’s conduct had given him occasion for the intended journey. This admission, which put Darnley in the wrong, was all that Mary wished. Her reputation had been established before the French ambassador. She could smile once more and, with a final wave of her hand, show herself thoroughly satisfied with Darnley’s declaration (“qu’elle se contentait”).
But Darnley was by no means satisfied. His gorge rose because he had again been outwitted by this Delilah, because he had been lured from the bulwarks of his silence. Immeasurable must have been the torment of the man thus befooled when, with a magnanimous gesture, the great actress “forgave” her husband the King before the foreign envoys, whereas he probably had ground for playing the accuser. Too late did he recover his poise. Abruptly he broke off the conversation. Without a courtly farewell to the lords of the council, without embracing his wife, stiff as a herald who had issued a declaration of war, he quitted the room. His only words as he departed were: “Madam, you are not likely to see me again for a long time.” But the lords and Mary Stuart smiled and drew a deep breath of relief when the “proud fool” who had come full of brazen impudence now went away with hanging head. His threats no longer alarmed anybody. Let him stay away as long as he liked, and the further away the better, both for him and for others.
Nevertheless, the man whom no one seemed to want was needed after all. He was urgently summoned home. After a long postponement the formal baptism of the young prince had been fixed for 17th December 1566, at Stirling Castle. Imposing preparations had been made. Elizabeth, who was to be godmother, would not indeed be present. Throughout life she carefully avoided meeting Mary Stuart. The English Queen, however, overcoming her notorious avarice, had sent a costly gift by the Earl of Bedford, a massive silver font, richly gilt. The French, Spanish and Savoyard ambassadors were also on hand; nor would any member of the Scottish nobility who was of note absent himself from the ceremonial. On so representative an occasion, it would have been most unseemly to exclude Henry Darnley, who, however unimportant personally, was the father of the child and the nominal king of the country. But Darnley, who knew that this was the last occasion on which he would be needed, was not so readily to be snared. He had had his fill of public life, had been informed that the English ambassador was instructed to refuse him the title of “Your Majesty”, while the French ambassador, on whom he called, sent down an amazingly presumptuous message announcing his intention of walking out of one door of the room when Darnley entered the other. At length the worm turned, although even now, when his vanity had been pricked, he could manage nothing better than a childishly malicious gesture. Still, the gesture was effective. Darnley came to Stirling Castle but kept in retirement there. He made his demonstration by confining himself to his apartments, neither participating at the baptism of his son nor attending dances and masques. Instead of Darnley, Bothwell, the new favourite, splendidly attired, received the guests. From time to time murmurs of impatience were heard among them, and Mary had to outdo herself in friendliness and cheerfulness lest the skeleton in the household should become too obvious, lest the lord and master, the father and the husband, in his barred chamber on the upper storey, should succeed in completely spoiling the festal mood of his wife and her friends. Once more he had shown—by keeping out of the way—that he was still on hand, thus reminding people effectively of his existence.
But the rod was already in pickle to punish him for his boy-like mutiny. A few days later, at Christmas Eve, it struck. The unexpected happened. Mary Stuart, who had been so unconciliatory, decided, upon Moray’s and Bothwell’s advice, to pardon the murderers of Rizzio. Therewith Darnley’s worst enemies, the conspirators whom he had betrayed, were recalled to Scotland. Darnley, however stupid he might be, could not fail to recognise that this put him in mortal danger. If the clique of Moray, Lethington, Bothwell and Morton should be re-formed, the hunt would be up so far as he was concerned—a hunt of which he would be the quarry. There must be some hidden significance when his wife came to terms with the assassins, and a price which he by no means wanted to pay.
Like a beast with bloodhounds on its trail, Darnley fled from Stirling Castle to join his father in Glasgow. Not ten months had yet elapsed since Rizzio’s death and burial, yet his murderers were again fraternising, and something sinister was imminent. The dead do not like to sleep alone; they always demand companions in the tomb, and always they send fear and horror as heralds.
In truth something dark and heavy and ominous seemed to have been brooding over Holyrood for the last few weeks, something as chill and depressing as a north-east wind. That evening of the baptism at Stirling, when hundreds of candles were lit to show the strangers the splendours of the Scottish court, and to welcome the friends who had come from afar, Mary Stuart, who for brief spaces of time could master her will, had summoned all her energies. Her eyes flashed with simulated happiness; she charmed the guests by her merriment and cordiality; but hardly had the lights b
een extinguished when her feigned cheerfulness came to an end. Now, at Holyrood, it was cruelly quiet, and yet more cruelly quiet in the depths of her soul. The Queen was seized by an inscrutable melancholy foreign to her temperament. Her face was shadowed, and she seemed profoundly disturbed. She no longer danced, no longer called for music. Moreover, since her ride to Jedburgh, at the end of which she had been lifted from her horse half-dead with fatigue, she had never fully recovered. She complained of pains in the side, stayed day after day in bed, and shunned all scenes of merriment. She would not stay long at Holyrood, but moved on week after week, for brief sojourns at one castle after another, driven by a terrible unrest. Some disturbing element was at work in her, and she seemed to be listening with tense curiosity to the working of that which was painfully burrowing within her. Something new, something hostile, had gained ascendancy over her usually sunny temperament. Once the French ambassador found her lying on her bed, sobbing bitterly. The experienced old man was not deceived when, ashamed at being detected in tears, she began to talk of the pain in her left side which had made her weep. He recognised at once that her troubles were spiritual and not bodily, the troubles, not of a queen, but of an unhappy woman. “The Queen is not well,” reported du Croc to Paris, “but I think the real cause of her illness is a sorrow which she cannot forget. Again and again she says: ‘Oh that I could die!’”
Moray, Lethington and the Scottish lords in general did not fail to see that their sovereign was in a gloomy mood. Still, being better trained in the art of war than in the science of psychology, they could see no cause for her trouble but the obvious one of her connubial disappointment. “She finds it intolerable,” wrote Lethington, “that he should be her husband, and that there is no way in which she could be rid of him.” Du Croc, however, old and wise, had spoken truth when he referred to “a sorrow which she cannot forget”. An inward and invisible wound of the spirit was torturing her. The sorrow she could not forget was sorrow that she had forgotten herself and her honour. Sorrow that she had disobeyed law and custom, that a passion had suddenly seized her like a beast of prey, and was now gnawing at her entrails, an immeasurable, unquenchable passion, beginning as a crime and from which she could be freed only by further and yet further crimes. Now, in her alarm, filled with shame and self-torment, she was striving to hide this terrible secret from herself and the world, though she could not fail to know that to hide it was impossible. Already she was subject to a stronger will than her conscious will; she no longer belonged to herself, but only to her passion.