Mary Stuart (22 page)

Once more then Bothwell was thrust back on his own resources, and proved equal to the occasion. Still, the way in which Morton, Moray and Lethington had received his approaches showed him that they were nowise opposed to the scheme, and that he might consider himself to have a free hand. If not by their signatures to a document, they had at least declared their assent by a silence full of meaning and by a friendly aloofness. Now that Mary and Bothwell and the Scottish lords were of one mind, Darnley's fate was sealed.

Everything was prepared. Bothwell made arrangements with a few hardy caitiffs, agreeing with them as to the place and method of the murder. One thing was lacking—the victim. Darnley, however much of a nincompoop, must have had an inkling of what awaited him. For several weeks he refused to go to Holyrood so long as the Scottish lords were there. He did not feel safe at Stirling Castle, now that Rizzio's assassins, those men with whom he had broken troth, had been readmitted to Scotland by Mary's act of clemency. Refusing invitations and firmly resisting lures, he stayed in Glasgow. His father, the Earl of Lennox, was there with other trusty friends and allies. Here he had a stronghold. On the Clyde was a vessel, and in case of need he could embark and make his escape by sea. Then, as if at the most dangerous hour fate wanted to protect him, during the early days of January 1567 he fell ill of smallpox, this providing him with a welcome pretext for staying weeks longer in safe harbourage at Glasgow.

The King's illness interfered with the plans made by Bothwell. He was waiting impatiently in Edinburgh. For some unknown reason the Earl was now in a hurry. Perhaps he was eager for the crown; perhaps he thought there were too many initiates, so that the scheme would soon be blown upon; anyhow he wished to bring matters speedily to a head. Yet how could Darnley, already suspicious and now ill in bed, be attracted to the place of slaughter? An open summons would warn him. Neither Moray nor Lethington nor anyone else at court was in the young monarch's good graces, or likely to be able to persuade him to return. One person in the world had power over the poor weakling, one to whom he was devoted, and who had twice succeeded, ere this, in making him subservient to her will. Mary, if she feigned affection for the man who wanted nothing but her love, might perhaps lull his suspicions to sleep. None other could achieve this colossal deception. Since she herself was no longer mistress of her will, but blindly obeyed the orders of him to whom she had given her heart, Bothwell had merely to issue his commands and the incredible happened, or that happened which our modern feelings make incredible. On 22nd January, Mary Stuart, who for weeks had avoided any contact with her husband, rode to Glasgow, ostensibly to visit the young fellow, but really to entice him back to Edinburgh, where death awaited him.

T
HE CURTAIN NOW RISES
on the most sinister act in the tragedy of Mary Stuart—the most sinister and the most obscure. Yet there is no conflict of testimony as to the journey she made to Glasgow to visit her ailing husband when the conspiracy to murder him was in full swing. It is one of the most incontestable actions of her life. Here, as so often, arises the question whether Mary Queen of Scots was really an Atrides figure, was, like Clytemnestra, able with well-feigned wifely care to make ready the bath for her husband on his return from Troy, while Ægisthus, her paramour, with whom she had planned the murder of Agamemnon, was waiting in the shadow with the sharpened axe. Was she a second Lady Macbeth, who with gentle and flattering words led King Duncan to the bedroom in which Macbeth was to slay him? Was she one of those fiendish criminals whom the unruly passion of love will often produce out of women who have been devoted wives? Or was she a mere tool in the hands of the brutal bully Bothwell, unconsciously (in a trance, as it were) obeying an irresistible command; a puppet, unaware of the preparations that were being made for the dreadful deed? Modern sentiment rises in revolt against the theory that she was a deliberate criminal, that a woman who had previously shown herself animated with humane sentiments could have been party to the butchering of her husband. Repeated attempts have been made, and will still be made, to put another, a kindlier interpretation upon her journey to Glasgow. Again and again one tries to regard as untrustworthy the utterances and documents which incriminate her. One scrutinises the Casket Letters, the verses, the sworn testimony, in the honest hope of convincing oneself that the exculpations devised by Mary’s defenders are satisfactory. In vain! With the best will in the world to believe them, we find that these special pleadings have no convincing force. The more closely we scrutinise the exonerations, the more futile do they seem when confronted with the iron chain of fact.

How can anyone imagine that loving care impelled Mary to seek out her husband on his sickbed that she might withdraw him from a safe refuge in order to have him better tended at home? For months the wedded couple had lived apart. Darnley had been “in a manner exiled from her presence” … though “with all humilitie he requiryth hir favour, to be admitted to hir bed as hir husband.” She bluntly refused to allow him his conjugal rights, and there is ample evidence that such conversations as she had of late had with Darnley were disfigured by hatred and contentions. The Spanish, the English and the French ambassadors write at great length in their reports about the estrangement as insuperable, inalterable, a thing which must be taken as a matter of course. The Scottish lords had publicly advocated a divorce and yet more forcible means of solving the difficulty. So indifferent had the pair become to one another that, when Darnley received tidings that Mary lay dangerously ill in Jedburgh, and that the last sacrament had been administered, he made no immediate move to visit her. Not even with a microscope can the observer find any intact filaments of love in this marriage at the stage the rupture had now reached. Tenderness was over and done with. Preposterous, therefore, is the assumption that loving care instigated Mary’s journey to Glasgow.

Still, we have to consider the last argument of those who wish to defend the Queen through thick and thin. Perhaps her journey was designed to put an end to the breach between herself and her husband? Perhaps she visited him in order to become reconciled to him? Unfortunately even this last straw breaks in the hands of her uncompromising defenders; or, rather, it is broken by a document in her own writing. Only one day before she set out for Glasgow, in a missive to Archbishop Beaton, she unreflectingly (for Mary Stuart never dreamt that her letters would continue to testify against her long after she was dead) gave vent to the most acrimonious utterances concerning Darnley.

Is that the voice of reconciliation? Are those the sentiments of a loving wife who, full of distress, is hastening to her sick husband’s bedside? But here is another incriminating circumstance. Mary undertook the journey, not simply to visit Darn-ley and come home again, but with the fixed intent of having him conveyed forthwith to Edinburgh. Surely this was excess of zeal? Was it not contrary to the rules of medical art and the prescriptions of reason to take a man not yet convalescent from smallpox out of his bed in midwinter, and to convey him on a two-day journey in a litter? In her “loving care” for him she intended to carry him off in this way, as is shown by her having brought a litter along with her, that Darnley might have no cause for objection to the removal, and could be transported as soon as possible to Edinburgh, where the conspiracy to get rid of him was in active progress.

Still, lest we should unjustly accuse a fellow mortal of murder, let us ask whether there can be found any justification for her defenders’ contention that she was not privy to the conspiracy. Unfortunately there is extant a letter sent by Archibald Douglas which effectually disposes of this hypothesis. Unless she had forcibly closed her eyes to what was going on, she could not fail to be aware of it. She knew that the pardoned lords were deadly enemies of Darnley and that they had sworn vengeance against him. They had shown her the bond in which Darn-ley pledged himself to join them in Rizzio’s murder. Furthermore, Lethington told her that means would be found, without tarnishing her honour, to free her from the “proud fool and bloody tiranne”. The aforesaid letter shows that Archibald Douglas, the chief agent of the conspirators, sought Mary out on her journey to secure her plain assent to the plot for Darnley’s assassination. Even if we may suppose that she refused such assent, and declined to be a party to the affair, what are we to think of a wife who keeps silent when she has been informed that her husband’s murder is being planned? Why did she not warn Darnley? Why, above all, though she must now have been convinced that his enemies intended to slay him, did she bring him back into the region where his murder would be comparatively easy? In such circumstances silence is something more than mere complicity; it is the tendering of secret aid, for one who is informed of a conspiracy and does not try to prevent its being carried out is at least guilty of failure to intervene.

No unprejudiced investigator can fail to recognise Mary’s complicity in her husband’s murder. However, if this complicity was a crime, it was a “
crime passionnel
”—one of those terrible actions for which not the individual but his passion is responsible, at a time when passion has full sway.

One who wishes to plead extenuating circumstances can only do so on the ground of “diminished responsibility” through passion, and not on the ground that she knew nothing of the matter. She was not acting boldly, joyfully, in full awareness, and under the promptings of her own will, but at the instigation of an alien will. I do not think it can be justly said that Mary went to Glasgow in a spirit of cold calculation in order to bring Darnley back into the danger zone; for, in the decisive hour (as the Casket Letters prove), she was filled with repulsion and horror at the thought of the role which was imposed on her. Doubtless she had beforehand talked over with Bothwell the plan of removing Darnley to Edinburgh, but one of her letters shows with remarkable clearness how, as soon as she was a day’s journey away from her controller, and thus partially freed from the hypnotic influence he exercised upon her, the slumbering conscience of this
magna peccatrix
began to stir. We must draw a clear distinction between her, as one of those who are driven into crime by mysterious forces, and those who are criminals through and through; for at the moment when Mary began the actual carrying out of the plan, when she found herself face to face with the victim whom she was to lead to the slaughter, she was no longer inspired by hatred or by vengeful sentiments, and her innate humanity struggled desperately against the inhumanity of her commission. At the moment of the crime, and even when she was engaged in transferring Darnley to the place of assassination, the true womanliness of her nature surged up. But this revulsion of feeling came too late. In the Kirk o’ Field affair, Mary was not only the huntress cunningly seeking her prey; she herself was also the quarry. Behind her she could hear the crack of the huntsman’s whip. She trembled at the thought of the bullying wrath of her lover Bothwell should she fail to lead the victim to the sacrifice, and she trembled, likewise, lest through weakness she should forfeit the arl’s love. Only on the ground that Mary was suffering from a paralysis of the will, and did not at the bottom of her soul will her own deed, only when we recognise that she was inwardly in revolt against the actions that were forced upon her, can we at least sympathetically understand a deed which, from the outlook of abstract justice, was unpardonable.

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.)