We can understand the gruesome story of those hours only in the light of the famous letter which she wrote to Bothwell from the ailing Darnley’s bedside; nothing but this missive gives the repulsive deed a reconciling glimmer of humanity. The letter, as it were, removes a wall to give us a glimpse into the dreadful hours in Glasgow. It is long past midnight. Mary Stuart is seated at the writing table in a strange room. A fire flickers on the hearth, throwing shadows on the lofty walls. This fire does not warm either the lonely room or the woman’s freezing soul. Again and again a shudder runs down her back. She is tired, would gladly sleep, but cannot do so owing to the way her mind is worked up. She has lived through too much during these last weeks, during these last hours. Her nerves are still tingling with excitement. Horrified at the thought of the deed about to be committed, but blindly obedient to the behests of the man who has mastered her will, as Bothwell’s slave she has undertaken this evil journey in order to remove her husband from safety to certain death.
She has not found her task easy, so far. At the door of the house she was stopped by a messenger from Lennox, Darnley’s father. The old man had had his suspicions aroused. Why should his son’s wife, who had sedulously avoided her husband for months, and had obviously come to hate him, hasten in this way to his bedside now that he had fallen sick? Old men are ready to forebode evil, and perhaps Lennox called to mind that, whenever Mary Stuart, since Rizzio’s murder, had shown any kindliness towards her husband, it had been in pursuit of personal advantage. However, she managed to satisfy the emissary and was admitted to Darnley’s bedroom. Like Lennox, the young man was mistrustful, remembering how often she had played tricks on him. The first thing he wanted to know was why she had brought a litter along. In face of such questions, it needed all her presence of mind lest, by a stammer, by a blush or by pallor, she should betray herself. Still, dread of Bothwell quickened her powers in the art of deception. With fondling hands, with consoling words, she at length put Darnley’s suspicions to sleep. Thus she undermined his will, made him her pliant tool. Already on the first afternoon, half the work had been done.
Now she was alone with him in the small hours. The candles flickered in ghostly fashion, and so silent was the room that she was afraid her thoughts would become audible, and the sighs of her uneasy conscience. She could not sleep; she could not rest; she felt an irresistible longing to confide to someone the troubles that burdened her spirit, to pour out in words the anguish of her soul. But Bothwell, the only man on earth to whom she could speak about these things, was far away. So secret were they that she was afraid to admit them even to herself. Still, as a relief, she began to commit her thoughts to paper, in a letter to her lover, a long, rambling letter. She would not finish it that night, nor yet the next day, nor yet the night following; for it was really a dialogue with herself. In the act of committing a crime, the criminal was wrestling with her conscience. It was the expression of intense fatigue, of the uttermost confusion. Words of folly and words of profound significance, laments and idle chatter and despairing complaints, succeed one another pell-mell. We have a vision of black thoughts fluttering through the darkness like bats. Hatred flames up between the lines; compassion overcomes it for a moment, but the dominant note is one of ardent love for him who has mastered her will and whose hand has thrust her into this abyss. Her letter paper has come to an end, so she goes on writing on the back of the pages of a memorial—on, on, on, for she feels that horror will choke her unless she continues to pour out words to the man now linked to her in the bonds of crime as well as in the bonds of love.
But while the pen between her trembling fingers seemed to move of its own volition over the paper, she noticed that she lacked power to say what she wanted to say, to bridle, to arrange her thoughts. What she inscribed on these sheets seemed to her to well up from unknown depths of her mind, so that she excused herself for incoherence and begged Bothwell to read the letter twice over. This is what makes the epistle of three thousand words so unique a human document, that it is not written alertly and clearly, but confusedly and stumblingly. It is not Mary’s conscious mind that is speaking, so much as an inner self, the voice of trance and fatigue and fever—the subconsciousness with which it is so hard to get into touch, the realm of feeling that knows no shame. Overtones and undertones, clear ideas and such as would never be expressed by one with full awareness, are mingled in this document written by one who had temporarily lost the power of self-concentration. She repeats herself, contradicts herself, gives vent to a flow of jumbled thoughts in the extremity of her passion. Very few documents have been preserved that reveal so admirably as this the hyperexcitability of one who is in the course of committing a crime. No Buchanan and no Lethington, no one with an ordinary though shrewd intelligence could, for all his culture and ability, have imagined with such magical faithfulness the hallucinated monologue of a profoundly troubled heart; could have imagined the desperate situation of the woman who, while the deed is in full progress, finds no other escape from pricks of conscience than in writing to her lover; who writes in search of forgetfulness, of self-exculpation; who takes refuge in writing to dull, in the quiet of the night, the sound of the monitory beating of her own heart. Once more we cannot but think of Lady Macbeth, wandering by night through the dark corridors of Dunsinane Castle, assailed by dreadful memories and, in the monologue of a sleepwalker, recounting the incidents of her crime. None but a Shakespeare or a Dostoevsky could have imagined such a scene; none but they, or their master, Reality. (The French original having been destroyed, the quotations from the second letter to Bothwell that follow are taken from an English translation.)
“I am weary, and am a sleepe, and yet I cannot forbeare scribbling so long as ther is any paper … Excuse it, yf I write yll; you must gesse the one halfe; but I am glad to write unto you when other folkes be a sleepe, seeing that I cannot doo as they doo, according to my desyre, that is betwene your armes my dear lyfe.” With overwhelming impressiveness she describes how delighted Darnley has been by her unexpected coming. One can fancy oneself looking at the poor youth, his face flushed with fever, and still disfigured by the eruption. He has been alone, languishing for a sight of his fair young wife. Now, of a sudden, he finds her sitting by his bedside. “He said that he did dreme, and that he was so glad to see me that he thought he shuld dye.” Again and again, indeed, the old suspicions flame up in him. Her coming seems incredible, but he has been too sore at heart, and is now too glad to see her to dwell on the possibility of further deception, often though she has deceived him. It is sweet for a man who is weak and ill to believe in loving assurances, so easy to persuade a vain man that he is loved. Ere long Darnley was once more her slave, just as he had become during the night after Rizzio’s murder, and he begged her forgiveness for everything he might have done to displease her.
I avowe that I have done amisse … and so have many other of your subjects don, and you have well pardonid them. I am young. You will saye that you have also pardoned me many tymes and that I returne to my fault. May not a man of my age, for want of counsell, fayle twise or thrise and mysse of promes and at the last repent and rebuke him selfe by his experience? Yf I may obtayn this pardon I protest I will neuer make faulte agayne. And I ask nothing but that we may be at bed and table togiether as husband and wife; and if you will not I will never rise from this bed … God knoweth that I am punished to have made my God of you and had no other mynd but of you.
Once more we look through this letter into the shadowy room that is so distant both in time and space. We picture Mary Stuart sitting by the sick man’s bed and listening to this outburst of love and humility. Now she ought to rejoice, for her scheme has been successful; she has once more made the simple-minded lad soft and yielding. But she is too much ashamed of her deceit to rejoice. At the climax of her success she is overcome with loathing as she contemplates her own deed. Gloomily, with averted eyes, with disordered senses, she sits beside her husband, so that even Darnley is at length s
truck by something obscure, something incomprehensible, in this beloved woman. The poor dupe tries to console the deceiver! He wants to help her, to cheer her up, to make her happy. He implores her to stay the night in his room, dreaming, poor fool, once more of love and tenderness. It is heartbreaking to a reader of this letter to note how the weakling again clung trustfully to his wife, again felt sure of her. He could not turn away his eyes from her, or cease from enjoying the delight of renewed confidential association from which he had so long been debarred. He begged her to cut up his meat for him. In his folly, he blurted out secret after secret, revealing the names of those whom he had been employing to spy upon her. Not knowing of her passion for Bothwell, he told her of his own fierce hatred of Bothwell and Lethington.
Naturally enough, the more he gave himself away, the harder he made it for his wife to betray him, unsuspecting and helpless. Despite herself, she was touched by the credulity of her victim. She found it difficult to go on playing this despicable comedy. “You have never heard him speake better nor more humbly; and if I had not proofe of his hart to be as waxe and if myne were not as a dyamant, no stroke but coming from your hands could make me but to have pitie of him.” We see that she no longer hated Darnley, that she had forgotten all the ill the poor deceitful creature had done her. At the bottom of her soul she would gladly have spared him. She shifted the burden of vengeance onto Bothwell’s shoulders. “You are the cause thereof. For, my own revenge, I wold not doo it.” It is Bothwell’s command, which she must obey in defiance of her conscience. For love’s sake, and for no other reason, she must do this horrible thing, must turn the childlike trust of her husband to account. She burst out angrily: “You make me dissemble so much that I am afrayde thereof with horrour, and you make me almost to play the part of a traitor. Remember that if it weare not for obeyeng I had rather be dead. My heart bleedith for yt.”
But a thrall cannot defy orders. He can but groan when the lash drives him forward. Once more she insists that what she does is done by Bothwell’s will and not her own: “Alas! and I never deceived anybody; but I remitt myself wholly to your will. And send me word what I shall doo, and whatsoever happen to me, I will obey you. Think also yf you will not fynd som invention more secret by phisick, for he is to take physick at Cragmillar and the bathes also.”
We see that she would at any rate be glad to secure an easier death for her unhappy husband, and to avoid the gross act of violence that had been planned. Had she not become so completely subordinate to Bothwell, had there still remained in her a spark of moral independence, she would, even at this late hour, one feels, have saved Darnley. But she will not venture on disobedience, being afraid that this will cost her Bothwell, whose wishes she has pledged herself to carry out; and also afraid (this is a brilliant flash of psychological insight, which no forger could have imagined) that Bothwell would, in the end, despise her for having shown compassion. “I shall never be willing to beguile one that puttith his trust in me. Nevertheless you may doo all, and doo not estyme me the lesse therefor, for you are the cause thereof.” She flings herself, figuratively, on her knees before him in a last despairing appeal that he will reward by his love the torment that she is now suffering for his sake.
Now if to please you, my deere lyfe, I spare neither honor, conscience, nor hazard, nor greatnes, take it in good part, and not according to the interpretation of your false brother-in-law, to whom I pray you, give no credit against the most faythfull lover that ever you had or shall have. See not also her [the Countess of Bothwell] whose faynid teares you ought not more to regarde than the true travails which I endure to deserve her place, for obteyning of which, against my own nature, I doo betray those that could lett me. God forgive me, and give you, my only frend, the good luck and prosperitie that your humble and faythfull lover doth wisshe vnto you, who hopeth shortly to be an other thing vnto you, for the reward of my paynes.
One who listens to the unhappy woman’s tortured heart speaking out of this letter will not term her a murderess, although throughout these days and nights she was serving the cause of murder. We feel, as we read, that her reluctance is really stronger than her will. We feel that her honest spirit has been besmirched by these deceptions; perhaps during many of these hours she was much nearer suicide than murder. But herein lies the disaster of such subjection as hers. One who has surrendered his will to another’s keeping can no longer choose his own path; he can only serve and obey. She therefore stumbled onward, bondmaid of her passion, unwitting and yet at the same time cruelly aware, towards the abyss of her deed.
On the second day Mary Stuart made the prescribed arrangements; the more subtle, the more dangerous part of the scheme had been carried through. She had allayed the suspicions in Darnley’s mind, so that the ailing, stupid youth was now “the merriest that ever you saw”. Though still feeble, still disfigured by the marks of the recent smallpox, he ventured on little endearments. He tried to kiss her, to put his arms round her, and she found it hard to conceal her disgust and impatience. Obedient to Mary’s wishes, as obedient as she was to Bothwell’s commands, this thrall of a thrall declared himself ready to return with her to Edinburgh. Trustfully he allowed himself to be carried out of his safe retreat and installed in the litter, his face wrapped in a linen cloth to hide its disfigurement. Now the victim was on the way to the slaughterhouse, and Mary had fulfilled her cruel task. The rough and bloody deed was to be Bothwell’s affair, and that harsh borderer would find it a thousand times easier than Mary Stuart had found the preceding acts of deception.
The litter advanced slowly, accompanied by a guard of riders, along the wintry road. The royal pair, seemingly reconciled after months of severance and dissension, were returning to Edinburgh. Edinburgh? Yes, but where in Edinburgh? To Holyrood Palace, one might suppose, the royal residence, a comfortable abode. No, Bothwell, the all-powerful, had made other arrangements. The King should not return to his own home at Holyrood, for there might still be danger of his spreading the infection. Why not, then, send him to Stirling, or to Edinburgh Castle, an impregnable fortress, or house him as guest in some other princely dwelling, or perhaps in the episcopal palace? No, and yet again no! Strangely enough there was chosen for his residence a modest and isolated building that no one would have dreamt of; not a princely habitation at all, but a house “in a solitar place at the outmost part of ye town, separat from all companie—ane maist rewynous hous quhair no man had dwelt seven yearis of befoir”—a house hard to watch and to protect. One cannot but ask who had chosen for the King this suspiciously remote house in Kirk o’ Field, to which the approach was by an alley bearing the ominous name of Thieves’ Row. Bothwell had chosen it, Bothwell who was now “all in all”. Again and again one comes across the same red thread in the labyrinth. Again and again, in letters, documents and utterances, the trace of blood leads us back to this sinister figure.
A small habitation, unworthy of a king, it lay among untilled fields, the nearest adjoining residence being that of one of Bothwell’s henchmen. It contained no more than an anteroom and four rooms. On the ground floor a bedroom was made ready for the Queen, who now expressed a strong desire to care tenderly for the husband she had of late neglected. One of the rooms on the upper storey was set in order for the King, and the other of the two first-floor rooms was allotted to his three serving men. Certainly the place was richly furnished for the occasion, carpets and tapestries being brought from Holy-rood, and one of the fine beds which Mary of Guise had imported from France. Another of these beds was supplied for the Queen’s bedroom.
Now Mary could not do enough to display her affection for Darnley. Though she slept only two nights in the Kirk o’ Field house, she came over frequently to companion him, attended by her train—and we must not forget that for months before this she had sedulously avoided him. The nights she slept in the room under Darnley’s were probably the fifth and seventh of February. Everyone in Edinburgh was to know that the King and the Queen were once more a loving couple,
the reconciliation being thus advertised to the world. This change of mood must have produced a strange impression upon the Scottish lords who, only a few days before, had discussed with the Queen the removal of Darnley by all possible means. Now had come this overemphasised affection! The ablest of the nobles, Moray, was quick to draw his conclusions. He did not doubt for a moment that, in the sequestered house, evil was to befall the King of Scotland, and diplomatically he made his preparations.
Perhaps there was only one person in Scotland who honestly believed in Mary’s change of heart—Darnley himself, the unhappy husband. His vanity was tickled by the attention she paid him; he was proud to find that the Scottish lords, who for so long had treated him with contempt, now visited him in his sickbed making low obeisances and showing concern in their faces. In a letter to his father, dated 7th February, he assured Lennox how rapidly his health was improving under “the loving care of my love the Queen, who doth use herself like a natural and loving wife.” Within a few days the last traces of the dreaded and usually disfiguring disease had disappeared. His doctors had assured him of this, and that he would be able to remove to his palace. The horses had been ordered for next Monday. Another day, and he would be back in Holyrood, to share bed and board with his wife and, once more, to be King in his own country and lord of his wife’s heart.