Hardly had her doors been freed from the watchers, when Mary rose hastily from what she had pretended to be her sickbed and energetically began her preparations. Bothwell and her other friends outside the palace had long since been notified. At midnight saddled horses were waiting in the shadow of the churchyard wall. All that was necessary was to lull the watchfulness of the conspirators, and once more there was assigned to the man whom Mary most despised and whom she now made use of for the last time—to Darnley—the shameful role of numbing their senses with wine and jollity. Such contemptible business was all he was fit for in her estimation. Obedient as a marionette, he asked those who so recently had been his confederates to a mighty carouse. Wine flowed freely, and the boon companions drank to the coming reconciliation. When, at length, with swimming heads and unsteady feet, the members of the company betook themselves to bed, Darnley, wishing to avoid giving rise to suspicion, carefully refrained from betaking himself to the Queen’s room. But his cronies were no longer troubled about such a trifle. The Queen had promised to pardon them, the King had guaranteed their impunity. Rizzio had been buried, and Moray was back in Edinburgh. What further need was there to think or to spy? They retired to their couches and slept soundly after so arduous a day of drunkenness and triumph.
At midnight, when silence had long prevailed in the passages of the sleeping palace, a gate was gently opened. Through the servants’ quarters and down the stairs Mary groped her way into the cellarage; then, by a subterranean passage, she went to the churchyard—a gloomy route which led through burial vaults lit by flickering torches, which fitfully revealed coffins and the bones of the dead in the crypts of the damp and chilly walls. Upstairs, now, to reach, at length, the open air! She had only to cross the churchyard and join her friends, waiting outside with horses. Of a sudden Darnley stumbled over a new-made grave; the Queen joined him, and recognised with horror that it was the place of David Rizzio’s interment, a little mound over his new-made corpse.
This was a last proof of the hammer of destiny, to harden yet further the injured woman’s already hardened heart. She knew what tasks awaited her—to reinstate her royal honour by this flight, and to bring an heir to the throne safely into the world, then to take vengeance upon all who had combined to humiliate her. Vengeance on him, too, who now had become her helper! Without hesitating a moment, the wife, who was well advanced in pregnancy, flung herself astride on horseback behind Arthur Erskine, the faithful captain of the bodyguard. She felt safer with her arms round him than she would have if she had been clasping her husband who indeed, without waiting for her, wishing to make sure of his own skin, had already galloped off. Thus clinging to Erskine, the Queen made all possible speed for twenty-one miles to Seton House, where Lord Seton was awaiting her with an escort of two hundred riders. Now, mounted on her own horse and with her attendant train, by daylight the fugitive had once more become the sovereign. Before noon she reached Dunbar. Here, instead of seeking repose, she instantly set to work. It was not enough to call herself Queen, for at such times she must fight for the reality of queenship. She wrote dispatches to be sent in every direction, summoning her loyal nobles to form an army against the rebels, who held Holyrood. Her life was saved; now she had to save her crown and her honour. Always this woman, when she became inspired with a thirst for vengeance, or when any of her other passions were strongly aroused, knew how to conquer weakness, to get the better of fatigue. It was in these great and decisive moments that she became equal to her task.
A great shock to the conspirators to discover at Holyrood on the morrow that the royal apartments were empty; that the Queen had fled; that Darnley, their confederate and protector, had also disappeared! In the first moments, however, they did not realise the full extent of the disaster. Relying upon Darnley’s royal word, they continued to believe in the general amnesty that, in conjunction with him, they had drafted overnight. This, they thought, would hold good, and they could hardly believe that such treachery as his was possible. They refused to accept the notion that they had been humbugged. As envoy, they sent Lord Sempill to Dunbar, with a humble supplication to Her Majesty to sign their securities and perform the other articles, according to her promise. For three days, however, the envoy was kept waiting outside the gates, as Emperor Henry IV was kept waiting by Gregory in the snow at Canossa. She would not treat with rebels—all the less now that Bothwell had assembled his troops. The conspirators became greatly alarmed, and their ranks began to thin. One after another they made their way to Dunbar to sue for pardon, but the ringleaders, such as Ruthven, who had been the first to attack Rizzio, and Andrew Ker of Faudonside, who had threatened the Queen with a pistol, knew that for them there could be no pardon. With speed they fled from the country, and even John Knox, who had been too swift and too loud in his approval of the murder, thought it expedient to disappear for a time.
Moved by her desire for revenge, Mary would now have liked to make a signal example of these rebellious nobles, and to show them and the world that no one could conspire against her with impunity. But the situation was already dangerous enough to teach them caution for the future. Moray, though he had certainly been privy to the conspiracy (as was shown by his prompt arrival in Edinburgh after Rizzio’s murder), had taken no active part in the affair. Mary perceived that she would be more prudent not to proceed to extremities against this half-brother of hers, who was a man of wide influence. “Not venturing to have so many at once at her hand,” as she herself said, “she thought better to close her eyes against some of the offenders.” Besides, if she proposed to take extreme measures, was not Darnley, her own husband, the first to be dealt with, since he had led the assassins into her bedroom and had held her hands while the murder was going on? But since her reputation had previously been injured by the Chastelard scandal, it suited Mary’s book better not to show forth Darnley in the light of the suspicious and jealous avenger of his honour. “Throw plenty of mud, for some of it will stick.” It would suit both Mary and Darnley better if the tale of recent events were bruited abroad in such a fashion as to show that Darnley, although he had been one of the prime instigators of the disastrous affair, had had neither part nor lot in the murder. This was hard to prove in the case of a man who had signed two bonds guaranteeing in advance impunity to the assassins, and whose own dirk, which he had lent to one of them, had been found sticking in Rizzio’s body. Puppets, however, have neither will nor honour, so Darnley danced obediently when Mary pulled the strings. Ceremoniously, staking his “honour” and his “word as a prince”, he had the most impudent falsehood of the century announced in Edinburgh marketplace, declaring he had had nothing to do with the late “treasonable conspiracy”; that it was calumny to accuse him of anything of the kind; that he had neither “counselled, commanded, consented or assisted”—though everyone in the capital and throughout the country knew that he had not only done all these things, but had “approved” the murder with seal and charter. If it was possible for a man to act more contemptibly than Darnley during the assassination of his sometime friend, he did so now by having this perjury publicly proclaimed. On all those upon whom she had sworn to be avenged, perhaps Mary Stuart took no more terrible vengeance than that which she took on Darnley when she forced the man, who had long since made himself contemptible, to intensify his disgrace by this outrageous lie.
A white pall of falsehood had now been spread over the murder. The strangely reconciled royal pair made a triumphant entry into Edinburgh. All seemed quiet there. To maintain the semblance of justice without stirring deep waters, a few poor devils were hanged, underlings, clansmen and private soldiers who, at the command of their lords, had guarded the doors while these were engaged in the cruel work upstairs; but those of blue blood went unpunished. Rizzio’s remains were sumptuously interred in the royal cemetery—as if this could have been any consolation to the dead man! His brother Joseph succeeded David as secretary. With these events, the tragical episode seemed to have been forgotten and forgiven. But the dead are not silent; their blood crieth from the ground against those who have consigned them to it. Persons who have been violently put to rest leave the guilty neither rest nor quiet.
After the dangers and excitement she had traversed, there was one thing essential to Mary if she was to consolidate a position which had been gravely shaken—she must successfully give birth to a healthy heir to the throne. Only as mother of a prospective king would she be safe, with a safety impossible to her as merely the wife of such a king as Darnley, a king of shreds and patches. Uneasily she awaited the difficult hours that lay before her. Gloom and depression overshadowed her during the last weeks before the birth. Was it that Rizzio’s death had left a scar in her mind? Was it that with her fortified energies she had an enhanced foreboding of imminent disaster? However that may be, she now made a will in which she bequeathed to Darnley a ring he had given her, “a diamond ring enamelled red”. Nor were Joseph Rizzio, Bothwell or the four Marys forgotten. For the first time in her life this woman, in general so carefree and bold, seemed to be dreading death or peril. Quitting Holyrood, which, as the tragical night of David Rizzio’s murder had shown, was not a safe place of residence, she removed to the less comfortable but impregnable Edinburgh Castle to await there the birth of the heir to the Scottish and English crowns.
On the morning of 19th June 1566, a royal salute from the guns of the fortress at length announced to the town the joyful news that a son had been born, a new Stuart King of Scotland. There would be an end to the dangerous “regiment of women”. The mother’s most ardent wish and the strong desire of the country for a male heir to the House of Stuart had been fulfilled. But hardly had the child been born, when Mary felt it incumbent upon her to safeguard his honour. No doubt rumour had brought to her news of the poisonous suspicion which the conspirators had instilled into Darnley’s ears, to the effect that she had had adulterous relations with Rizzio. She knew how glad would be her “dear sister” Elizabeth in London to find any pretext for contesting the paternity of her son, and perhaps subsequently, on that ground, refusing to him the right of succession to the English crown. She therefore determined forthwith and most publicly to nail this lie to the counter. Having summoned Darnley to the lying-in chamber, she presented to him the child before those assembled, saying: “My lord, God has given you and me a son whose paternity is of none but you.”
Darnley was embarrassed, for no one had done more than he, with his jealous loquacity, to spread dishonouring reports about Mary. How was he to respond to his wife’s solemn announcement? To hide his shame, he bent over the infant and kissed it.
Mary, fondly taking the baby boy in her arms and uncovering his face, presented him once more to her husband with the words: “My lord, here I protest to God, and as I shall answer to Him at the great day of judgement, this is your son, and no other man’s son, and I am desirous that all here, both ladies and others, bear witness, for he is so much your son that I fear it may be worse for him hereafter.”
This was a great and solemn asseveration, and at the same time a strange dread to utter. Even in so weighty an hour, the mortified wife could not conceal her mistrust of Darnley. She could not forget how much he had disappointed and wounded her. After these remarkable words, the Queen turned to Sir William Standen, saying: “This is the prince who I hope shall first unite the two kingdoms of England and Scotland.”
With some surprise, Sir William answered: “Why, madam, shall he succeed before Your Majesty and his father?”
“Alas!” said Mary with a sigh. “His father has broken to me.”
Darnley, thus openly shamed, tried to console his wife, and enquired uneasily: “Sweet madam, is this your promise that you made to forgive and forget all?”
“I have forgiven all,” rejoined Mary, “but can never forget.”
After a pause she went on: “What if Faudonside’s pistol had shot? What would have become of him and me both? Or what estate would you have been in? God only knows, but we may suspect.”
“Madam,” answered Darnley, “these things are all past.”
“Then,” said Mary, “let them go.”
That was the end of the conversation, in which words like lightning flashes showed that a storm was brewing. Mary had said no more than half the truth when she declared that she had forgiven though she could not forget. She was not the woman to forgive such an outrage. There would never again be peace in this castle or in this country until blood had atoned for blood, and violence had been requited with violence.
Hardly had the mother been delivered of her babe, between nine and ten in the morning, when Sir James Melville, as always the Queen’s most faithful emissary, set forth to convey the tidings to London. He received instructions, as he relates in his memoirs, “to post with diligence the 19th day of June, in the year 1566, between ten and eleven before noon. It struck twelve when I took my horse, and I was at Berwick the same night.” This was riding post-haste indeed, to cover two days’ journey in half a day, for the customary first halt on the way to London was at Dunbar. He continued with the same express speed. “The fourth day after, I was in London.” There he was informed that the queen was dancing at Greenwich, so, calling for a fresh horse, he hastened thither in order to convey his great news the same night.
Elizabeth, convalescent from a long and dangerous illness, was rejoicing in the recovery of her strength. Lively, animated, raddled and powdered, she looked, in her bell-shaped skirt, like a great tulip amid the circle of her admiring courtiers. Secretary Cecil, with Melville at his heels, made his way through the throng of dancers to the Queen, and whispered in her ear that Mary Stuart had given birth to a son.