On a queen's trail

Standing in the rain atop Calton Hill, I could see the icy blue Firth of Forth. When the wind tried to grab my coat, I spun around and found the tapestry of Edinburgh at my feet.

Everyone who comes here, it seems, knows about the hapless Scottish queen whose execution for treason in 1587 at the behest of her cousin Elizabeth I of England has inspired books, plays, movies and debate.

When Elizabeth died childless in 1603, Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, was summoned to the English throne, uniting two warring realms into the nation we now know as Britain.

The story

Once upon a time, I read every book about Mary in the library, most of them fictionalised accounts of her life that filled in the blanks left by history. To me, she was a brave and beautiful 16th-century Princess Diana, ensnarled in events she couldn't control.

More recent considerations, including Antonia Fraser's 1969 biography, have sought to balance the quotients of villian and saint. So I came to Scotland to resolve the mystery.

Mary landed at Leith north of Edinburgh in 1561. Her father, James V, had died days after she was born. Crowned queen of Scotland as a wee babe, she had enough royal blood to sit on the throne of England as well (were Henry VIII not occupying it).

She was stalked by English armies and taken to France for safekeeping; she married Francis, the dauphin, who ascended the French throne a year later.

They ruled France for 13 months before he died in 1560, leaving Mary a widow with one crown left — a crown she had to return to Scotland to claim.

That is why I started my pilgrimage looking towards Leith, wondering how Mary felt when she set foot in Scotland.

By all accounts, it was a cold, poor, war-torn country, governed by a group of lords who, unlike Catholic Mary, had embraced the Protestant Reformation.

On landing, she would have spied dour, Edinburgh Castle, but the party headed to Holyroodhouse, beneath the volcanic crag known as Arthur's Seat. Built around a medieval abbey, Holyroodhouse was Scotland's royal residence.

Today, the palace faces the Scottish Parliament, a nightmare of a building. I pretended it wasn't there. Instead, I went to the palace gate and bought a ticket.

The forecourt was the first stop, where Queen Elizabeth II approved the 1998 Act of Devolution at Holyroodhouse that gave Scotland home rule for the first time in 300 years.

Sovereignty was also the question when Mary first saw Holyroodhouse Palace. In the political game played by France and England, Scotland and Mary were the prizes.

When the Scots annulled a treaty betrothing her to Henry VIII's son, Edward, the English king sent troops across the border into battles known as the Rough Wooing.

Her marriage to the French dauphin made the English apoplectic and she was an incessant nettle in the flesh of Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I.

Mary settled at Holyroodhouse. Shortly after she arrived, she sparred over theology with John Knox in her audience chamber. The Protestant Moses of Scotland and founder of the Presbyterian faith, he was a misogynist who likened Mary to Nero.

The mistakes

Although Mary got off to a promising start in Scotland by labouring to reconcile her nobles and vowing to respect the Protestant status quo as long as she could practise her own Catholic faith.

But four years later, she took her first misstep by marrying her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.

By all accounts, Darnley was a wastrel who drank to excess and plotted the slaying of Mary's secretary, Italian musician David Rizzio.

The ruins of Linlithgow Palace, Mary's birthplace and Stirling Castle, are an easy drive west of the capital. Pilgrims can find no better place for a picnic than Lochleven Castle about 26 miles north of Edinburgh, where rebel lords imprisoned her in 1567.

Tucked into her kingdom's beguiling corners are other Queen of Scots sites, most of them stately homes she visited, including Traquair House, about an hour's drive south of Edinburgh.

Catherine Maxwell Stuart, the 21st Lady of Traquair, still lives there with her family, except when she makes the house available to bed-and-breakfast guests.

I got the Rose Room overlooking a maze. Just down the hall is the chamber where Mary stayed in 1566.

Darnley was killed less than a year after Rizzio. Historians agree that a group of plotters, led by James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, set off an explosion intended to rid Scotland of Darnley.

The facts

The rest of the facts are murky. Did Mary know of the plot or even participate in it? By that time had she fallen in love with Bothwell, whom she wed three months later.

Or did the ambitious earl strong-arm her into marriage, as some historians claim? She and Bothwell fought for their lives against the Scottish lords who rallied against them.

They fled to Borthwick Castle, about 15 miles from Edinburgh. It is now a hotel with baronial chambers.

I had dinner in the castle's Great Hall, near the window through which Mary escaped besieging rebels.

From there she rode to Crichton Castle, into battle with insurgents and, when that was lost, across the border to England, where she hoped for help from her cousin Elizabeth.

She never again saw Bothwell, who fled to Denmark. She spent the next 18 years and nine months a captive in England. Elizabeth signed Mary's death warrant, even though she may have wanted to spare her.

After dinner, I retired to my room, which is where the queen had stayed. For a Mary fan, there could be no greater bliss than watching darkness steal into the nooks and reading in the red canopied bed.

Go there . . . Calton Hill . . . From the UAE

Edinburgh is the closest airport.
British Airways flies daily via London. Fare from Dh3,450 Air France flies daily via Paris. Fare from Dh3,480

— Information courtesy: The Holiday Lounge by Dnata.
Ph: 04 4380454