Bothwell Castle
Then, at two in morning, an explosion that shook all Edinburgh, that astonished the world, that still reverberates through the world.
Then—the dark.
A marriage, at two in the morning, a flight to Borthwick, a meeting at Carberry, one more night in Edinburgh, in a house as mean as that of Kirk o' Field, a day at Holyrood, and a forced ride with ruffian nobles, Lindsay and Ruthven on each hand, to Loch Leven, thirty miles in the night of June 16, 1567—and Edinburgh and Holyrood and the Crown of Scotland know her no more.
"Helen's lips are drifting dust,
Ilion is consumed in rust."
And Mary. And Holyrood.
There is one more Holyrood scene descending from this. On a Saturday evening, March 26, 1603, the son of Mary, the King of Scotland, supped with the Queen, perhaps in that small supper room where Rizzio was supping with a queen; and they had retired. "The palace lights were going out, one by one." And Sir Robert Carey, three days out from London, clattered into the courtyard, the King was roused, Sir Robert knelt before him—
"Queen Elizabeth is dead, and Your Majesty is King of England!"
James I of England, James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, son of Darnley, son of the ninth generation from Bruce, The Bruce. The "auld enemy" is finally defeated; and to borrow again from Rosaline Masson, "the lights of Holyrood went out, one by one."