And perhaps we can forgive the reiver, since he dealt a blow to Bothwell that those of us who love Mary have longed to strike through the long centuries. Bothwell took Elliott in custody, Elliott not suspecting that a Scot could prove treacherous like a Southron, and was carrying him to the Hermitage. Jock asked pleasantly what would be his fate at the assize.
HERMITAGE CASTLE.
"Gif ane assyises wald mak him clene, he was hertlie contentit, but he behuvit to pas to the Quenis grace."
This was little promise to little Jock Elliott. He fled. Bothwell chased. Bothwell fired, wounded Jock, overtook him, and Jock managed to give Bothwell three vicious thrusts of his skene dhu—"Wha daur meddle wi' me!"—before Bothwell's whinger drove death into little Jock Elliott.
Bothwell, wounded, perhaps to death, so word went up to Edinburgh, was carried to the Hermitage.
Buchanan, the scandalous chronicler of the time—there were such in Scotland, then, and always for Mary—set down that "when news thereof was brought to Borthwick to the Queen, she flingeth away in haste like a madwoman by great journeys in post, in the sharp time of winter, first to Melrose, and then to Jedworth."
It happened to be the crisp, lovely, truly Scottish time, October, and Mary opened court at Jedburgh October 9, presiding at the meetings of the Privy Council, and then rode to the Hermitage October 16. She rode with an escort which included the Earl of Moray, the Earl of Huntley, Mr. Secretary Lethington, and more men of less note. For six days the girl queen (Mary was only twenty-four in this year of the birth of James, year before the death of Darnley, the marriage with Bothwell, the imprisonment at Loch Leven) had been mewed to state affairs, and a ride through the brown October woods, thirty miles there and thirty miles back again, must have lured the queen who was always keen for adventure, whether Bothwell was the goal, or just adventure.
The mist of the morning turned to thick rain by night, and the return ride was made in increasing wet and darkness. Once, riding ahead and alone and rapidly, the Queen strayed from the trail, was bogged in a mire, known to-day as the Queen's Mire, and rescued with difficulty.
Next day Mary lay sick at Jedburgh, a sickness of thirty days, nigh unto death. News was sent to Edinburgh, and bells were rung, and prayers offered in St. Giles. On the ninth day she lay unconscious, in this little town of Jedburgh, apparently dead, twenty years before Fotheringay. "Would God I had died at Jedburgh."