Crowns and Scaffolds — A Meditation on Mary Stuart
A poem
In the stone-cold halls of Fotheringhay,
history’s pen scratches across parchment,
each stroke a link in the chain of consequence.
Mary, once crowned in gold and glory,
now wears the mantle of accused.
Her crime: a lineage too royal, a faith too firm.
They say treason tastes like iron on the tongue.
Does Mary savor it as she kneels before her peers,
these men who fear a woman’s power more than God?
Evidence piles like kindling around her feet.
Letters in cipher, whispers of plots,
the phantom crown of England hovering just out of reach.
But what is evidence to those who’ve already decided?
Justice wears a mask here, its scales tipped
by the weight of politics and Protestant zeal.
In her cell, Mary embroiders her story
stitch by careful stitch,
threads of defiance woven into linen and time.
The axe falls. A dull thud echoes through centuries.
Blood soaks into English soil,
Mary’s final offering to a land that never embraced her.
They say her little dog, hidden in her skirts,
refused to leave her body.
Even in death, loyalty finds its mark.
History will call her martyr, victim, threat.
But in this moment, as the executioner lifts her severed head,
she is simply a woman, finally free of crowns.
