Free Mary, Queen of Scots by Alison Weir Page B

Chamber across the passage. However, Bothwell apparently heard muffled sounds, and hastened downstairs.
    “My God! What a noise you are making!” he growled. “Everything you do can be heard upstairs.”
    Apart from attracting attention, there were obvious risks in what the conspirators were supposed to have been doing. At any time, someone—even the Queen herself—could have come into the room to see what was causing the noise, or to fetch something, and found them there with the pile of powder. It is not inconceivable that cloaks were being stored in the Queen’s room that evening. Furthermore, the Queen and her Lords would have had with them a number of attendants, who would have been coming and going all evening. Someone surely would have noticed that something odd was going on. Most pertinent of all, had there been so much gunpowder in a heap on the floor, the dust from it would have permeated every part of the room, so that the lighting of even a single candle would assuredly have caused it to ignite.
    After Bothwell had gone back to the gathering, Paris is supposed to have made sure that the back door and the door to the stairs were left unlocked. He then locked the door to the Queen’s room, left the keys to the downstairs doors with Hepburn, and went upstairs, or into the quadrangle, 16 where he signalled to Bothwell that all was ready. It was then that Mary noticed how begrimed he was. 17 Argyll patted Paris on the back, from which Paris inferred that he too was in the conspiracy; at the time his deposition was made, Argyll had just been forced to submit to the Lords after supporting Mary, so it is not surprising that Paris was allowed to imply his guilt.
    The Queen then left Kirk o’Field with Bothwell and her other courtiers. As Powrie and Wilson emerged from Blackfriars Wynd into the Canongate with the empty trunks, they saw the torches lighting the royal entourage ahead of them.
    After his midnight interview with Mary, Bothwell, with the help of Dalgleish, his tailor, changed out of his masquing costume into a canvas doublet, black hose and a thick German soldier’s cloak, then, armed with a sword and taking with him Powrie, Dalgleish, Wilson and a very reluctant Paris among others—Lennox says his party numbered sixteen, while the eyewitness, Mrs. Merton, counted eleven—he walked to Kirk o’Field, to supervise the killing of the King. 18
    As he and his men emerged from Holyrood, they were challenged by the palace guards, and said they were “my Lord Bothwell’s friends.” Finding the Netherbow Port closed for the night, Wilson woke up the porter, John Galloway, and made him open it “to friends of Lord Bothwell’s.” When the porter asked why they were all abroad at so late an hour, he received no answer. Bothwell then led his men up the High Street and down Blackfriars Wynd, where they knocked at Ormiston’s lodgings, only to find he was not at home; Ormiston later claimed that he had gone to the house of his friend, Thomas Henderson. Bothwell and his followers were almost certainly the men whom Mrs. Merton later saw coming up Blackfriars Wynd a short while before the explosion. Lennox claims that they approached Kirk o’Field by “the secret way” that Mary had used, which gave access from the monastery grounds. Once they arrived, Bothwell and Paris climbed over the town wall, the Earl having told the others to wait in the east garden and not stir, regardless of what they heard or saw. Dalgleish was apparently in ignorance of what was to happen, for he later swore before his execution that, “As God shall be my judge, I knew nothing of the King’s death before it was done.”
    One of those who allegedly accompanied Bothwell was a Captain James Cullen, who had served as a mercenary in France, Denmark and Poland. In 1560, he had been an officer of the garrison in Edinburgh Castle, and in February 1567, he was the captain of a band of royal hagbuteers and was described by Cecil as a