LORD BOTHWELL KEPT ME at Dunbar Castle for twelve days. Each day he asked the same question: “Are you ready to marry me, Mary?” And each day he received the same answer. “No, James. Not now. Not later. Never.”
He did not pretend to love me. That was not the issue. He did not offer me love, nor did I ask for it. He offered me protection. He offered me his loyalty Not the loyalty of the marriage bed—he was incapable of that. Gradually, during those days at Dunbar, I came to see that I needed his strong hand to keep the rebellious Scottish lords in check and help me regain control of my realm. I could not do it alone. These men would run roughshod over any woman who tried to rule without a man at her side.
We talked at length about what steps needed to be taken to restore order. We talked as we rode together near Dunbar, as we walked along the lonely path overlooking the sea, and as we supped together in the evenings. At night he came to my bed, though I pleaded with him not to. When I resisted, it seemed only to inflame his ardor.
“I like a woman who fights,” he said approvingly as I wept and struggled. “You are indeed my wild queen!”
“You will get me with child,” I cried. “My reputation will be ruined. And I am committing a grievous sin by lying with a married man.”
“Aha!” he crowed triumphantly. “I can absolve you of that sin, for I am no longer a married man! Lady Jean has accepted my terms, and the judge has issued a divorce decree. I am a free man again! You have no more excuses for refusing my suit, Mary, and many reasons for accepting it. You have no choice but to make me your husband.”
And so, God help me, I agreed to marry him.
***
Early in the morning of the sixth of May, we left Dunbar Castle accompanied by a large contingent of musketeers and rode straight to Edinburgh, keeping up a hard pace. Bothwell sent a messenger on ahead to the castle to order the great guns fired in salute as we arrived. Late in the day we entered the city by the West Port.
He dismounted and took the reins from me. “I will lead your horse,” he said.
Up the hill we went toward the castle. The boom of the cannon summoned huge crowds—crowds that in the past had always turned out to cheer for their queen. But this time there was no cheering. Only silence and grim stares greeted us.
“These fools will pay for their insolence,” Bothwell muttered angrily.
His first item of business was to order the preacher at the High Kirk of St. Giles to proclaim the marriage banns on the next Sunday, the eleventh of May. The minister, an assistant to John Knox, refused. James threatened to have him hanged. When I stepped in and ordered the minister to read the banns, he obeyed but delivered a long harangue from the pulpit condemning the marriage.
I felt as though I were wading upstream through waist-deep, rapidly flowing water, moving slowly against the current while everything else sped past me in a blur. If someone asked a question, I was hard put to answer. Bothwell made all the decisions for me. Once again I suspected him of using the black arts to control me, but I had not the strength to stop him.
On Monday, May twelfth, I officially pardoned him for my abduction, and later that day I created him duke of Orkney and lord of Shetland, ranks that made him suitable to marry a queen. But even as we were enacting this ritual, with the newly proclaimed duke swirling his ermine-trimmed robes while I sat on my gilded throne, I was much aware of growing opposition to my coming marriage. All those men who had signed the bond at Ainslee Tavern urging me to marry the earl of Bothwell were now changing their position. Not just the lords of Scotland opposed it but the foreign emissaries who learned of it. And my dearest friends, the Four Maries, each in turn had warned me in the strongest terms: Do not marry this man.
Livingston—Lusty, the outspoken one—added, “I once wagered a set of combs that this would come about. I said he would get himself out of the Tower of London and set himself to wed the richest and most beautiful lady in all of Scotland. Do you remember? My lady Mary, if you marry him, you will surely live to regret it.”
I would hear none of this. “But I recognize his good qualities, and they are many,” I protested. “I have truly come to care for him and to trust that he will be my protector!” I could not bring myself to confess the shame I felt at having lain with him.
The Four Maries had stared at me in disbelief.
I stopped my ears to it all as I lifted the golden coronet of a duke and placed it on his brow. It seemed I could hear only his voice and no others, and I saw in him only what I wished to see.
***
I married James Hepburn in the great hall of Holyrood Palace on the fifteenth of May At ten o’clock in the morning I entered the hall wearing the long white deuil of a widow. There was not time to have a new gown made for the occasion, but my seamstresses stitched gold braid to a black gown of cut velvet, and underneath it I wore a black taffeta petticoat that had been given a new lining of red silk. The bridegroom strutted about in a handsome suit of silk and velvet, a suit that had been one of Henry’s favorites. The ceremony was the Protestant rite, which pained me, but James was Protestant and would not hear of a Catholic sacrament.
Following the ceremony, I removed my widow’s veil and changed into a yellow silk gown for the wedding dinner, to which many had been invited but which few had chosen to attend. My husband had decided to forgo the masques and dancing that I so enjoyed.
“A dinner is enough,” he said. “No need for more than that.”
I acquiesced silently.
We sat at a long table in the great hall, I at one end and James at the other, far enough apart that he could not see the tears that rolled slowly down my cheeks and dropped, one by one, onto my uneaten food.
Later that night a placard appeared outside the palace with a quote from the Roman poet Ovid. This is what the people say: Harlots marry in the month of May.
My people held that I was a fallen woman. King Henry had been dead only three months, and I had just married the man they were convinced had murdered him.
***
I was miserable. I had begun to believe that I loved my new husband. Despite his sometimes rough behavior, his words to me had been kind, and I thought that gentle manner signified his growing affection for me. But within a single day of our wedding we had begun to argue, sometimes bitterly. He had me in tears almost constantly with his suspicions and accusations. I tried hard to please him, but nothing I did satisfied him. I felt I could not endure more.
“If someone will only bring me a knife, I shall kill myself!” I cried, and I truly meant it.
In public I did my best to give the impression that I had made a wise and considered decision to marry James. In his turn, he behaved courteously and showed me great respect as a queen, though in private he treated me with little respect as a woman. I was his to be used as he wished. I could not hide that from my friends, who witnessed much of his abuse and could do nothing to help.
But James and I faced a problem more serious than our own personal turmoil. Three days after my abduction at the River Almond a number of powerful lords had gathered at Stirling. For four days they debated what to do. Calling themselves the Confederate Lords, they set three goals: to free me from captivity; to kill the earl of Bothwell, whom they termed a barbarous tyrant and the cruel murderer of the king; and to protect Prince James, all for the good of Scotland. As I was creating Lord Bothwell the duke of Orkney and preparing for our wedding in Edinburgh, these rebel lords had set up a court at Stirling in my son’s name. They performed a masque that showed Lord Bothwell being condemned and hanged. When James inevitably learned about it, he went nearly mad with rage. The oaths that spewed from his mouth were the foulest I had yet heard.
“I shall be revenged on these so-called Confederate Lords!” he shouted, and continued with a stream of profanities.
I was angry too, but most of all I was deeply hurt that men I had once trusted had turned against me. Then came the worst desertion of all: James and Sir William Maitland got into a heated argument that became very ugly. Sir William declared that he had had enough and was joining the rebel lords.
Sir William, my secretary of state and close adviser for so long, could not bring himself to bid me farewell. His wife, my oldest and dearest friend, Mary Fleming—La Flamin, the chief of the Four Maries—came to me later that day when she thought I would be alone. Both of us burst into tears.
“There are no words for what I feel,” she said, choking on her sobs.
“Nay,” I said, “there are not.”
We held each other in silence, except for the sounds of our weeping.
“Adieu, ma chère Marie,” I said at last and hid my eyes as she tiptoed from my chamber.
“Adieu! Adieu!”