There is one saint in the calendar, who at least has never lacked worshippers; at whose shrine the strictest sectarians, the bitterest Reformers, have never failed to lay their votive offerings, and in whose train shine myriads of the brightest and fairest beings we can picture to ourselves, the only angels that gladden the sight of us adoring mortals here below. Yes, blooming maidens, buxom widows, constituting a phalanx beautiful to look upon, as it is dangerous to deal with, have for centuries conspired to do honour to sweet St Valentine, and we can only regret that the anniversary of his martyrdom (kissed to death, we have always been taught to believe, and buried by turtle-doves, under a shower of orange-blossoms) should occur at a season of the year when in our own climate the usual concomitants of frost and snow seem so inappropriate to the indolent and relaxing amusement of love-making. We have no reason to believe that the 14th of February 1564, afforded any contrast to the usual boisterous inclemency of a Scottish spring, or that Queen Mary and her maidens, looking from the battlements of Wemyss Castle on the leaden waves of the stormy Firth, had any sunshine to gladden them save that which originated in their own breasts.
But the Queen at least was in the height of good-humour and good spirits; though subject to occasional fits of depression, Mary’s usual state of mind was kindly and cheerful; nay, when in some rare interval of peace she was relieved from the pressure of actual distress, or the anticipation of impending calamity, her gay and cordial manner shed an influence of happiness over all who came within its range; and even Randolph—busy, intriguing, heartless, cynical Randolph—could not but admit that ‘this Queen,’ as he calls her, ‘is a divine thing, far excelling any (our own most worthy only excepted) that ever was made since the first framing of mankind.’
Behold, then, Mary Stuart, and her maidens sitting at work in a chamber overlooking the stormy Firth from the seaward turret of Wemyss Castle. Without, the leaden hues of sea and sky form a grand though savage contrast to the white snow-mantle which wraps the undulating shores of Fife, while the opposite Lothian coast stands out, as it were, into the water with the distinct outline and startling appearance of proximity peculiar to an atmosphere charged with coming snow, and a wind from the north-east.
Within, an old oak-panelled chamber, hung here and there with faded tapestry, once of priceless value, but now frayed and worn and coming rapidly into rags; grotesque, gaunt ornaments are strewed about the room, the spoils of predatory warfare on the Danish coast, brought hither generations back by stern Sir Michael, the first Lord Admiral of Scotland. Strange-looking arms and a ponderous axe or two are not in character with the interior of a lady’s bower, nor do the grim figures carved in wood that support the chimney on either side of the high wide fireplace, the least resemble such cupids and other gentle symbols as would be appropriate to the company and the occasion.
Bending over her work, the Queen’s blushes come and go with a degree of graceful embarrassment that is not unmarked by her attendants. These are around her as usual, and, like their mistress, occupy their fingers with considerable energy, and doubtless allow their thoughts to stray far and wide during the task. We of the sterner sex have probably not the faintest idea of the comfort derived by woman from her natural weapon, the needle.
It is well known, we are told, to physiologists, and the fact is not lost sight of in our treatment of the insane, that manual labour requiring a moderate amount of attention, such as the prosecution of a handicraft, has a remarkably composing tendency on the mind; but carpentering is perhaps the only male pursuit which combines the exact proportions of physical and mental exertion supposed to produce such beneficial results. Few men, however, are carpenters, whereas, speaking in general times, all women can sew, and the very act of stitching we believe to be a complete and unfailing anodyne. The delicate fingers bend unconsciously to their task; the white hand flies to and fro as the dove flew round the Ark seeking the olive-branch on which it should find rest at last; the gentle head bends lower and lower, while thoughts, humbled by sorrow and chastened by resignation, wander further and further away. Presently the tears are dropping fast upon the pattern, be it the beads of a queen’s embroidery or the hem of a peasant’s smock; but like summer showers they do but clear the sky when they are over, and ere the hair is shook back, and the loving face looks up to thread the needle afresh, all is sunshine and peace once more.
Perhaps no woman of any degree had oftener occasion to practise this healing occupation than ill-fated Mary Stuart, destined to a pre-eminence in suffering as in beauty.
The only male attendant on the Queen was David Riccio. Splendidly dressed in the thickest velvet that could be procured, that poor little Italian shivered in a corner of the ample fireplace, preserving, to his credit be it said, his southern good-humour even in the rigours of a cold, raw climate, which, to use an expression from his own land, seemed ‘to loosen every tooth in his head.’
Three of the maids-of-honour were unusually silent and depressed, Mary Seton alone incorrigible as usual.
A portentous shiver from Riccio, which he tried in vain to repress, made the Queen look up from her embroidery. She could not but smile at the chattering teeth and pinched features of her ungainly secretary, yet there was a slight tone of irritation in her voice as she said—
‘Heap more wood on the fire, if you are so cold, Signior David; yet methinks the weather hath moderated since morning. It cannot be so bad even now on the landward side; but the wind whistles round this old keep of my brother’s till we might fancy ourselves a plump of wild-fowl cowering together for shelter on the Bass.’
Her eye happening to rest on Mistress Beton while she spoke, that demure lady, who was plunged in a profound fit of abstraction, felt herself called upon to reply, and could find nothing more apposite to say than—
‘Bitter weather indeed, your Grace, and threatening worse than ever over the Firth. Heaven help all poor travellers by land and sea!’ she added piously, drawing at the same time her mantle closer round her shoulders, to the utter destruction of her stupendous ruff, a neglect of which ornamental structure always denoted in Mary Beton extreme discomposure of mind.
‘Psha! child!’ said the Queen, impatiently. ‘Travellers are not so faint-hearted. What say you, Signior David? We wot of some that would ride through fire and water at our behest. Is not that the gallop of a horse I hear even now along the causeway?’
‘I pray you patience, madam!’ answered the cautious Italian, seeing that the Queen had risen from her chair, and was pacing up and down in obvious expectation. ‘No traveller that your Grace wotteth of can be on this side the Firth to-day. Spurs are but steel; horses are but bone and sinew; riders but flesh and blood. There can be no arrival at the earliest for twenty hours. I have myself wagered a collar of pearls and rubies with Mistress Seton.’
‘And lost! and lost! and lost!’ exclaimed that voluble young lady, dancing rather than walking into the room from which she had not been five minutes absent. ‘Even now the portcullis is up, and I saw him myself ride into the courtyard from the passage-window. Good lack, madam, such a tall cavalier! and his poor horse looked so tired! Not a living creature with him neither, and he called for a cup of wine before ever his spurs had touched the pavement.’
Mary Stuart’s cheek turned very red, and her breath came quick and short! the woman could not but appreciate the compliment, however much the Queen must study to conceal her feelings. This looked like an earnest wooer in good truth; no laggard could thus have distanced his followers and arrived in such an incredibly short space of time from the southern shore. Aye! there was more lost and won on that ride of young Lord Darnley’s than the collar of pearls and rubies which David Riccio delivered the same evening with such a good grace to saucy Mistress Seton. But the Queen’s innate dignity soon reasserted itself. Signing to her ladies to attend on her, she paced majestically from the room.
‘It would ill become us,’ said she, ‘to keep one waiting for an audience who hath shown such loyal diligence in obeying our summons; we will receive our guest in the great hall of the castle. Do you, Signior Riccio, apprise him that we are ready to accept his homage. Mary Carmichael and Mary Hamilton attend us for a few minutes to our tiring-room; we will all meet again here, and proceed at once to the hall.’
Mary seldom spoke in such a measured dignified tone. It may be that this stately manner covered some little trepidation and heart-beating; it may be that the Queen felt timid and bashful as the meekest village maiden. At least it was remarkable that the most beautiful woman in Europe should have thought it necessary to revise her toilet, and add to her attractions before receiving the homage of her vassal and kinsman.
It was no ordinary phalanx of beauty that Darnley had to confront when the venerable seneschal of Wemyss Castle ushered him into the lofty hall, at the end of which, on a portion raised by one step above the level of the floor, was placed the royal lady to whom he had dared to aspire as his bride; her exquisite loveliness only enhanced by the presence of the four prettiest women in Scotland who stood behind her. But ‘faint heart never won fair lady,’ and Darnley’s was by no means one of those dispositions which are prone to fail from a retiring modesty and too low an estimate of their own advantages. Besides, he was playing a great stake, and playing it with all the reckless audacity of a gambler.
Young as he was, he well knew that the prize now before him represented not only the Majesty of Scotland, but possibly, nay, in all human probability, the eventual succession to the English throne. It was this contingency which made Elizabeth so jealous of all matrimonial overtures to her beautiful cousin; it was this which caused Cecil and Throckmorton, and their agent Randolph, to lay their cunning heads together and devise means for amusing the Scottish Queen with a procession of suitors, none of whom were ever intended to be more than the puppets of the moment, each to prevent the attainment of his object by the other.
The accomplished Warwick, the manly-looking, weak-hearted Norfolk, nay, the prime favourite of the English Queen herself, the selfish, handsome, and utterly unscrupulous Leicester, were successively put forward as appropriate sharers of Mary Stuart’s throne and masters of her hand. But no sooner did the hapless object of all this intrigue and duplicity show the slightest preference for one over the other, the faintest inclination to accede to wishes which seemed so candidly expressed, than instantly, like some scene in a masquerade, the performers all changed characters at once. Elizabeth became the stern monitress, Randolph the delicate adviser, and the belted Earls and noble Dukes, no longer humble suitors and devoted champions of their idol, cooled at a breath into very coy and somewhat unwilling parties to an engagement of political expediency, only binding so long as it received encouragement at Greenwich or Whitehall. Thus was a woman’s heart made an object of cruel traffic and shameful double-dealing, none the less disgraceful because its possession implied the occupancy of a throne. Some day, perhaps, the world may be brought to see that even in the highest places expediency can never justify heartlessness or crime, that not only is ‘honesty the best policy,’ but that chivalrous unselfishness and frank defiance of evil are the surest beacons to success.
In the meantime, it is sad to think, that the life’s happiness and the life itself of Mary Stuart were pitilessly sacrificed by one of her own blood and her own sex. Surely, since the serpent, woman has had no such bitter enemy as woman.
Darnley, put forward at eighteen as the rival of so many distinguished nobles, entered on the contest with all the wilfulness of a Stuart, and all the joyous temerity of a boy. Though a tool in the hands of his seniors, it must doubtless have seemed to the adventurous young nobleman no unwelcome task to woo his beautiful sovereign—the kinswoman whom he had already once seen when they were both mere children, but whose charms even at that early age he had not yet forgotten. Few men would refuse the hand of a queen, even if she were an ugly one; what shall we say of a proposal to try his fortune with such a paragon as Mary Stuart? It was no wonder the lightsome young wooer rode horse after horse to death as he posted northward in the direction to which his star beckoned him; no wonder that he should arrive at Wemyss Castle all alone, far ahead of his scattered escort; no wonder that he should advance into Mary’s presence, under all the disadvantages of haste, fatigue, and travel-stained riding-gear, with the gallant air of a gay young knight who goes forth to conquer, rather than that of a slave who comes to wear a chain. As he walked up the hall, his step was firm, his head erect, and his eye bright and open as that of a man who sees his destiny beckoning him forward fairer and fairer, more and more promising as he approaches.
The colour was very deep in Mary’s cheek, and her eyes were fastened to the ground while he drew near, yet she stole a good look at him somehow, too, or she would not have been a woman. What she saw might have satisfied even her fastidious taste.
Darnley was very tall and slim, but his limbs were so well-proportioned, his hands and feet so small and beautifully shaped, that his excessive height only gave him an air of peculiar grace and distinction above ordinary men. Even in the riding-dress of the period, though we may be sure that the handsome young noble wore one of the richest material, and of the most tasteful fashion such a costume allowed, he betrayed those habits of refinement almost bordering on coxcombry, which, when they accompany a fine manly person, have such an attraction for the other sex. All the details of his toilet had been carefully attended to before he started, and disordered as he now was, at least on his exterior, nature had written gentleman in characters that could not be mistaken. Alas! that her pen can sometimes only trace skin deep.
His face, too, was in accordance with the high-bred beauty of his form. The line of features was soft and delicate as a woman’s, the dark eyes shone out soft and tender from beneath a pair of pencilled eyebrows, the dark hair clustered in silken curls round a fair and open brow, pure and unruffled in the calm spring-time of youth, and though the mouth was that of a voluptuary rather than a hero, the small teeth were so white and regular, the lips so full and red, that, had it not been for the down beginning to shade its contour, it might have belonged to a girl. The whole countenance would indeed have been too effeminate, but for a bold sparkle in the eye, which corresponded well with the manly proportions of the frame.
The subject was not half so much abashed as the sovereign. Darnley advanced confidently up the hall, then kneeling before the Queen and kissing the hand she tendered him, he looked boldly in her face and asked leave to deliver certain packets with which he was charged from his mother and kinsfolk.
‘But your mails have not yet arrived, my lord,’ said Mary. ‘You have outridden your retainers; you are the only one of your party who hath yet reached us here in our hiding-place beyond the Firth.’
She stopped in some embarrassment, unwilling that Darnley should learn how much his coming had been looked for and his arrival watched.
‘I have them with me here, your Grace,’ answered he, producing at the same time a packet from his bosom. ‘I would trust my Queen’s letters to no hands but my own, although to remind me of her I do not need to carry them next my heart.’
He dropped his voice at the latter part of his sentence, but looked her boldly in the face while he spoke, as if to mark the effect of his words. Boy as he was, he knew well how to woo a woman already, and had not been slow to learn that the reticence of true affection is the worst auxiliary in the world. He had studied his own motto to some advantage this adventurous young suitor, and now or never was the time to say—
So he kissed the fair hand once more that took the packet from his own, and added—
‘None of my servants can be here for hours, madam, and I have dared to appear before your Majesty all disordered and travel-stained. May my rudeness stand excused in the ardour of my desire to see the beauty which now dazzles me so that I can hardly look upon it, and my loyal anxiety to obey the commands of my mistress and my Queen? Am I forgiven, madam? ’Tis said that “a lady’s face should show grace”.’
‘And well it might, to such a face as yours,’ thought the Queen; but she only answered a few words of commonplace courtesy; bidding her cousin rise from his knees, and affected to busy herself in the packet of letters she had just received,—for Mary was again blushing deeply, and not unwilling to hide her confusion, in the task she had thus set herself. Truth to tell, though she had hitherto been so impervious to flattery, the words she had just heard were stealing their way very softly and pleasantly to her heart.
Seeing her thus occupied, Darnley proceeded to pay his compliments with graceful ease to the attendant ladies, finding time to note in his own mind their respective attractions, and to discover that Mary Seton was the most to his taste of all the four.
After a while, and it may be, somewhat disturbed in her studies by the merry voice of her gay suitor, who came (such is the advantage of being young) as fresh from his ride of so many hundred miles, as if he were lately out of bed, the Queen looked up, and with kindly courtesy bade him join them at the noon-day meal, then about to be served. The young courtier had the good taste to excuse himself, pleading the want of proper attire in which to meet Her Majesty at table, and reflecting in his own mind that he could satisfy the hunger which he now began to feel so keenly more comfortably alone. He saw too that he had made an agreeable impression, and wisely determined to give it time to work. So he asked permission to wait on his sovereign at supper instead, and retired to refresh himself in private, and curse the delay of his servants, whom he expected hour by hour, with some portion of his baggage.
It may easily be imagined that in the seclusion of Wemyss Castle, such an event as the arrival of a guest like Darnley created no small amount of excitement and conversation. Doubtless every point in his doublet, every hair of his head, was thoroughly discussed and criticised, in kitchen, buttery, and hall. The rumour spread like wild-fire through the Castle that this dashing springald was a suitor for the hand of the bonny Queen.
‘Set him up!’ as the Scottish lower orders say when they opine that the aspirant is hardly worthy of the prize. Nevertheless the young lord’s height, appearance, and easy manners had already won him golden opinions of those who judge chiefly by the eye, and when he had finished the best part of a capon, and a goodly stoup of Bordeaux for his breakfast, the old seneschal delivered himself of the opinion that ‘the youth was a bonny lad, an’ a fair-spoken—forbye bein’ a Stuart himsel’, an’ no that far off frae him that lies out bye yonder at Flodden!’
Had there been any dissentients, an allusion to their favourite hero, James IV., would at once have brought them over to an agreement with the majority.
But in Mary Stuart’s bower the engrossing theme was canvassed with considerably less freedom. The Queen herself was restless and ill at ease, constrained in manner and reserved in conversation. Mary Carmichael was absent on certain household duties; Mary Hamilton seldom opened her pale lips now, save at matins or vespers, when she poured from them such floods of melody as if she were indeed an angel from that heaven to which she was so obviously hastening; Mistress Beton had been too long a courtier ever to broach a fresh topic of conversation, or indeed to give an opinion frankly upon any subject whatsoever—moreover, she had no means of learning what Randolph said to all this, and she felt somewhat at a loss to form her own ideas without the assistance of her false English lover; Mary Seton alone led the charge bravely, by asking the Queen point-blank what she thought of her young kinsman.
‘Nay,’ replied Her Majesty, with a smile, ‘you would not have me give an opinion after a five minutes’ interview. The outside methinks is of fair promise; at least, if “all be good that be upcome.”’[11]
[11] A Scotch saying, equivalent to the converse of our ‘Ill weeds grow apace.’
‘Aye, he’s well enough to look at,’ answered the young lady, with the air of a consummate judge. ‘Long and small, even and straight; a proper partner for a galliard, and, I should say, would grace velvet doublet and silken hose better than steel corslet and plumed head-piece. But my choice, now, would be something sterner, stronger, rougher altogether; something more of a man; like stout Earl Bothwell, for instance!’
The Queen started as if she had been stung, and answered angrily—
‘How mean ye? The one is a loyal and accomplished gentleman, the other a brawling swordsman and a traitorous rebel.’
‘A woman might have worse help at her need than the Lord Warden in jack and morion, with a score of those daring borderers at his back,’ retorted the staunch little partisan, following out, it may be, some wandering fancy of her own.
The Queen did not seem loth to pursue the subject.
‘You were talking of looks,’ said she, ‘not sword-strokes; and Bothwell, at his best, was bronzed and marred and weather-beaten, and built more like a tower than a man.’
‘That was exactly what I admired in him,’ interposed the damsel; ‘I even thought that scar over his eye became his face as it would have become none other.’
The Queen smiled once more, and resumed, in the tone of one who is looking far back into the past—
‘He certainly had more of the warrior than the courtier in him, and doubtless he hath always done his part well and knightly in the field; I will do him that justice. Poor Bothwell! he must have been ill-advised indeed when he could refuse to obey me. I thought I could have trusted him if all Scotland besides had failed me. Well, well! all must be forgiven now—and forgotten.’
She spoke the last words in a melancholy tone, and each relapsed into silence, for both the Queen and her damsels seemed to have ample food for thought; so their fingers flew over the tapestry more nimbly than ever, and the work proceeded with extraordinary perseverance till supper-time.
But if Darnley had been pleasant to look at in his travel-stained riding-gear, the most fastidious eye must have admitted that he was indeed splendidly handsome when he appeared, prepared to perform the menial offices of the Queen’s supper-table, clad in a suit of gorgeous apparel, cut in the newest fashion of the English Court. Refreshed with food and repose, sleek from the bath and perfumes of his toilet, radiant with hope and excitement, the young courtier stood before his sovereign probably the best dressed and the best looking man that day in her dominions.
After he had gone through the form of presenting Mary with the basin and ewer, which she declined, she bade him sit down at the same table with herself and her ladies, for the Queen disliked ceremony, and always dispensed with it in private to the utmost. Then did Lord Darnley strain every nerve to be agreeable, and with so partial an audience, it is needless to say, succeeded beyond his highest expectations. Skilled in those outward graces which make so good a show and are so effective in society, it was an easy task to him, even in the presence of royalty, to lead the conversation round to those topics on which he was best qualified to shine.
His descriptions of his journey, his humorous account of the difficulties he experienced in procuring horses at the different posts, with a covert allusion here and there to his impatience to get on, were listened to with laughter and interest by all—with rising colour and heaving breast by one; while in no circle probably of either kingdom could his graphic sketch of the English Court, with its petty intrigues and latest scandal, have been appreciated with such thorough zest and good-will.
It does not follow that Mary Stuart was displeased because she checked him when he mimicked her ‘good sister’ to the life, hitting, with a happy mixture of fun and malice, on some of the most prominent foibles and grotesque points in the character of ‘good Queen Bess.’
Ere the ladies rose from table they had made up their minds that this new acquisition to their society was of unspeakable merit; and later in the evening, when they discovered that he could play and sing as well as he could talk, and that his leg and foot were as beautiful as his face and hand, Mary Seton had almost decided that such courtly graces as these were worth all the ruder virtues of a less accomplished gallant; and judging from her subsequent conduct, we may fairly conclude that Mary Stuart’s opinion followed on the same side.
A few more days of the seclusion of Wemyss Castle, lightened by the lively talk and winning manners of the guest, served but to establish Darnley more securely in the good graces of his sovereign. The weather was of unexampled severity, and a deep snow prevented all attempts at out-door amusements, and especially forbade those field-sports in which Mary took such delight. The society of a handsome young gallant, fluent and accomplished, was not likely to be rated below its real value, when it represented the only amusement available to five such ladies as the Queen and her Maries, shut up in an old house during a snowstorm; and Darnley found he had free access at all hours of the day to their agreeable presence; but he had as yet enjoyed no opportunity of seeing Her Majesty alone. Mary, with her own good sense and womanly reserve, had resolved to judge for herself more at leisure ere she committed her happiness to the keeping of her possible husband, or encouraged him avowedly in his suit.
The young lord, however, impatient by disposition, and now reckless on principle, had resolved that this brief visit to the old seaside tower should determine his fate; he would never have such a chance again; and on the last day of Mary’s sojourn at Wemyss Castle he made up his mind to hazard all upon the cast.
Darnley entertained few scruples of delicacy when he had an object in view. He chose the hour when Mary Hamilton was sure to be in an oratory which the Queen had temporarily fitted up, to get the three other ladies out of his way; a few gold pieces judiciously administered induced the venerable dame who charged herself with the domestic details of the Castle, to request the presence of Mistresses Beton and Carmichael on a visit of inspection to vast hoards of linen hid away in an old walnut-wood press; then seducing Mary Seton into the long gallery under pretence of a match at billiards, or bilies, as it was called, he coolly left the game unfinished and turned the key upon that young lady, who found herself, somewhat to her dismay, a prisoner in a remote apartment of the Castle without the slightest prospect of escape. Chance, too, further favoured his designs, for a blink of sunshine had tempted the Queen out upon the battlements, and he found her there alone looking wistfully across the Firth towards the southern shore.
We are no eavesdroppers on the courtships of royalty. Turn after turn Mary Stuart paced up and down those leads, and still Darnley urged and argued and gesticulated, and still his fair companion blushed and listened and shook her head. That the interview was not entirely without results, Mary Seton gathered from what she witnessed at its conclusion. She had been released from durance by a domestic who happened to be passing the door of the gallery, and hastened immediately to excuse her absence to her Mistress. As she approached the battlements, Darnley was offering the Queen a ring, with every appearance of eagerness and agitation; and although the latter obviously declined the gift, it was with a kindliness and an embarrassment that made the refusal tantamount to an acceptance.
‘For my sake,’ said Darnley, imploringly, ‘your subject, your vassal, your slave for ever!’
‘Not yet,’ murmured the Queen, in answer; and although she spoke very low, her whisper reached the keen ears of the attentive maid-of-honour.
As Darnley left the presence he did not stop to apologise to Mary Seton for their unfinished match. His colour was high, his eye was very bright, there was an air of joyous triumph in his whole aspect and bearing; perhaps he was quite satisfied in his own mind that he had won the game.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Court was now established at Stirling, and a very dull and melancholy Court it was. The visit at Wemyss Castle had indeed borne ample fruit; but as if there was some fatality hanging over Mary Stuart’s head, the days of courtship which, with most women, form such a happy era in life, were fraught for her with much annoyance, vexation, and distress. Though she had listened coyly at first to her handsome young suitor, she had not prohibited him from broaching the agreeable subject again; and by the beginning of April Lord Darnley was known to the whole of Scotland as the accepted lover of the Queen. It is needless to dwell upon the confusion created by such an announcement at the different Courts of Europe, where her marriage had been made the subject of endless intrigue and diplomacy, nor the access of ill-humour which it produced in Elizabeth, who could never make up her mind as to the exact manner in which she should treat her cousin. Cecil was sharply reproved for not having earlier foreseen so probable a contingency; Randolph received a rap over the knuckles for his tardiness in forwarding the disagreeable intelligence; and Lady Lennox, for no graver offence than that of being Darnley’s mother, was committed to the Tower.
In Scotland, the popular opinion was in favour of the match, although the vulgar, with their usual love for the marvellous, affirmed that their Queen’s affections had been gained by magic arts; the favourite rumour being that Darnley had presented Her Majesty with an enchanted bracelet, made by the famous sorcerer Lord Ruthven, who had shut himself up fasting for nine days and nights for the purpose, and finished it off in so short a space of time with no assistance but that of the arch-fiend, his fellow-workman.
The spell, however, which the lover had cast upon his mistress was probably stronger than anything likely to result from the black art, originating as it did in beauty of person, charm of manner, and above all, the sympathetic attraction of young blood. That they had plighted their troth to one another was only to be presumed from the intimacy the Queen permitted him, and the obvious delight she experienced in his society.
Randolph was puzzled. He was fain to have some certain intelligence to convey to Cecil; and, although he had thoroughly sounded Mary Beton, who was beginning to get tired of attentions which never became more definite, he suffered no opportunity to escape him of watching the affianced pair.
The Court, we have said, was dull and melancholy. Darnley, stretched on a sick bed with an attack of measles, was sedulously attended by the Queen. His illness shed a gloom over the royal household, and Randolph was nearly satisfied in his own mind that the marriage was as good as concluded. He resolved, nevertheless, to place his suspicions beyond a doubt.
It was a sunshiny day in April, and the diplomatist knew that he was likely to see Mistress Beton on the southern terrace of the Castle about noon. He awaited her there accordingly, with a great affectation of anxiety and agitation. The lady, on the contrary, looked three inches taller than usual, and was as cold as ice.
‘I have longed to see you, fair madam,’ said the courtly gentleman; ‘there is no sunshine for me where Mistress Beton is not, and I pine like some tropical bird for the reviving warmth of her smiles.’
The comparison seemed a little ridiculous, as she contemplated ‘the bird,’ dressed with scrupulous attention, in the extremity of the mode, and wearing an enormous ruff. She smiled somewhat scornfully, as she replied—
‘You seem to keep your plumage marvellously sleek in the shade.’
‘The bird seeks its mate,’ answered he, laughing good-humouredly; ‘and the two-legged creatures here below, like the fowls of heaven, always wear their gaudiest feathers in the pairing season. Mistress Beton, the cage-door is open at last, and you are now free. Is it not so?’
He took her hand while he spoke, and pressed it warmly, but she released it with an impatient gesture, and answered angrily—
‘What mean you, Master Randolph? My freedom is not dependent upon you, I trow; nor do I see in what manner it concerneth you. I pray you, sir, let go my hand!’
‘Nay, but is it not true that the Queen-bird hath chosen her mate?’ he proceeded affectionately, and determined not to be affronted, at least not yet. ‘In plain English, or rather in your pretty Scotch, tell me truth, fair Mistress Beton: this Queen of yours hath given her consent to her kinsman, and the maidens are released from their vow?’
‘I am not here to tell my mistress’s secrets,’ answered the lady, none the less severely that her conscience reminded her she had not always been so discreet. ‘Surely Master Randolph can get information more reliable than mine, or he hath indeed lived in ignorance for long!’
She was thinking that he had of late neglected her shamefully; but although his quick ear detected much of pique in her tone, there was so little affection in it, that he determined to alter his tactics, but warily, of course, and by degrees.
‘You are offended with me, Mistress Beton,’ said he, in a quiet, mournful voice, ‘and therefore you are pitiless. Well, you will know better hereafter, perhaps when it is too late. I have but remained at this Court for the sake of others, and now it is time that I was gone. You must yourself know that my position here has been a false and delicate one: I am looked on coldly by your Queen; I am an object of jealousy and distrust to this new favourite of hers; I am continually reproached by my own employers for betraying too strong a bias towards the Scottish interest; and, worse than all, those whose good opinion I most value, and for whose sake I have lost so much, turn upon me at the last, and seem determined to fall out with me, whether I will or no. But it takes two to make a quarrel, Mistress Beton, and I am resolved not to be one. Farewell! we part friends. Is it not so?’
A woman could hardly resist such an appeal from a man whom she had once cared for, if ever so little. She gave him her hand frankly, of her own accord this time, and murmured a few commonplace expressions of leave-taking and good-will.
Randolph bowed over the hand he held, and drew a rare jewel from his doublet.
‘You will accept this from me as a keepsake,’ said he, coldly and courteously; ‘perhaps you will look on it sometimes, and think of me more kindly when I am gone.’
It was a large gold locket, in the form of a heart, suspended from two clasped hands, richly ornamented with precious stones, and of a peculiar and fanciful device. Mary Beton started when she set eyes on it.
‘Where did you get that?’ she exclaimed, completely thrown off her guard. ‘It belongs to the Queen!’
Randolph owned one peculiarity: he never smiled when he was really pleased, but had a trick of half shutting his eyes when he considered he had the best of the game; he looked as if he held a trump card now, while he answered quietly—
‘That is surely mine own which I have fairly won. Lord Darnley paid me with that trinket in lieu of the fifty gold pieces he lost, when you and I beat Her Majesty and himself so handsomely at billiards the day before he was taken ill. I never thought the house of Lennox was overburdened with money, yet I can hardly believe its fortunes are at so low an ebb, that its heir must pay his debts with his love tokens.’
‘It is so, nevertheless,’ said Mary Beton, indignantly. ‘It was the Queen’s locket, and I saw her give it him with loving words, a thousand times more precious than the gift. Out upon him! a false knight! a recreant! I would have pawned my doublet first!’
Randolph had learned all he wanted to know. With a few kind phrases he soon took his leave of his companion, hurrying off, we may be sure, to convey the result of his inquiries without delay to his Court. It was not till he had been gone several minutes that Mary Beton cooled down sufficiently to reflect how indiscreetly she had suffered herself to be surprised, and how very unsatisfactory had been hitherto her dealings and relations with the English Ambassador.
The Maries were indeed all in trouble now, more or less. Here was their leader, the lady who expected them to look up to her for counsel and example, awaking to a sensation the most galling perhaps that can be experienced by the female heart—that of having been cozened out of its affections by one who has given nothing in return. In one way or another we all of us go on playing silver against gold all our lives through, but it is not in human nature to have this humiliating truth thrust upon its notice without vexation. Mary Beton fairly ground her white teeth together when she thought how near she had been to loving Mr Randolph very devotedly, and how that astute gentleman had been making a cat’s-paw of her all through, never so much as burning the tips of his own fingers the while. It was an aggravation to reflect on Ogilvy’s honest nature, and the sincere homage she had spurned for the sake of one so much inferior in every manly quality to the frank-hearted soldier. And now Ogilvy was absent from the Court, and perhaps consoling himself for her unkindness in the smiles of another. Well, he would come back again; and it would go hard but she would resume her sway, if once she turned her mind to it, and was really determined to try.
A woman’s spirit is tolerably elastic. We may say of it, as Horace says of the shipwrecked merchant, ‘mox reficit rates;’—the bark may have had awful weather to encounter, have lost spars, and masts, and tackle by the fathom, perhaps damaged her screw, and sustained one or two very awkward bumps against a shoal—never say die! she puts in hopefully to refit, jury-masts are rigged, fresh canvas bent, leaks carefully stopped, and damages repaired; the first fine day she launches forth to sea again, almost as good as new.
But there are some exceptions that cannot thus recover, some natures to whom one keen disappointment of the affections is a moral death-blow; nay, there are rare cases in which such a wound is physically fatal. Mary Hamilton had never been like the same woman since Chastelâr’s death. With a pale cheek and a languid step she went about her duties indeed as usual, but the light of her life seemed to be gone, and the only time a smile ever crossed that beautiful sad face was when, in the exercise of her devotions, the soul seemed to assert its superiority over the body, and to lift itself out of this earthly darkness into the ‘everlasting day’ beyond. Everyone who came about Mary Hamilton seemed to acknowledge the refining influence of a spirit thus purified by suffering. The fiercest barons, the rudest men-at-arms felt softened and humanised while in her presence, and James Geddes the fool, after sitting gazing into her face for hours together, would break into a succession of such unearthly moans as subjected him to the discipline of the porter’s lodge forthwith.
Lively Mistress Seton was losing somewhat of her spirits and her elasticity. The laugh was no longer so frequent, though it might ring out at times as saucily as ever, and the step, though light and buoyant still, had acquired a more sober and regular tread as she went upon Her Majesty’s errands through the gloomy passages of Stirling Castle. The young lady was learning to think. In her heart she did not thoroughly approve of this proposed match on which the Queen was now so bent, and considered Lord Darnley, with all his outward advantages and accomplishments, by no means good enough for her dear mistress. Mary Seton had seen through him at once, as a woman often does, and detected under that fair outside the frivolous disposition, the reckless passions, and the utter want of heart beneath. If she had given her honest opinion, she would have said Bothwell was worth a dozen of him, and his big henchman, a hundred.
And what of Mary Carmichael? Proud, self-reliant, and undemonstrative, she was the last person on earth to have admitted that any anxiety or disappointment of her own could have deprived her cheek of one shade of colour, or dimmed her eye of one ray of brightness, and yet beautiful Mary Carmichael was losing day by day much of that brilliant freshness which had constituted no small portion of her beauty, and went about mournfully and in heaviness, as one who suffered keenly from some secret sorrow; yet the stranger who used to meet her in the garden at Holyrood had been seen at Stirling, and his clandestine interviews with the fair maid-of-honour had been of late more frequent than usual. If she was the happier for them, her appearance strangely belied her.
Yes, the Court was very dull now. Darnley was on a sick bed, and Mary and her maidens were in trouble, one and all.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Our worthy friend, ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ seemed strangely altered as he rode back into Liddesdale. A moody man was Dick, and a silent; no longer the jovial comrade and ‘devil-may-care’ trooper that the other jackmen had heretofore known him, but a sulky and captious fellow-traveller, an abrupt and peremptory martinet. The borderer was beginning to find that he had a conscience, and to discover how unpleasant are the remonstrances of that monitor when displeased. His heart smote him sorely while he reflected on the part he had been compelled to play with regard to Maxwell, a man whose whole character had inspired him with admiration and respect, in whom also, as a constant frequenter of the Court, he took an affectionate interest that he did not care to analyse. And now he had lured this frank and friendly soldier into a trap from which it was doubtful if he would escape with life. The towers of Leslie were thick and lofty, and well-guarded; the retainers of Rothes noted, like their chief, for an unscrupulous recklessness and defiance of all consequences. What chance for the naked prisoner in such a stronghold? Those damp and gloomy vaults could keep a secret well. It needed no outrage, neither steel nor poison, to silence an inmate for ever. The jailer had but to forget a small black loaf, neglect to fill a shallow cruse of water, and who would ever chronicle the prisoner’s agonies in a torturing, lingering death? ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ turned sick and faint at the thought.
He had ample leisure to indulge these painful fancies, for the rapidity with which Maxwell had been conveyed into Fife necessitated a slow return, even on the same powerful horses that carried the men-at-arms of Earl Bothwell. Ere the weary animals pricked their ears to welcome the towers of Hermitage, Dick had come to a resolution which neither discipline nor loyalty would have tempted him to abandon. His comrades, more astonished than irritated at the change in one whom they had been accustomed to consider the very pattern of a moss-trooper, shook their heads, and whispered one another that ‘muckle Dick was fey,’ signifying doomed,—it being an old Scottish superstition that any sudden and complete change in the disposition of an individual denotes an early death. When Dick sat silent among the wassailers below the salt, and passed the black flagon untasted by, many a roistering associate looked a thought graver for the moment, as he pictured his old comrade stretched upon the heather, with the pale gleam of death upon his face, and a ‘false Southron’s’ lance through his body, a thought graver perhaps, for an instant, till a coarse jest or a fresh draught of ale brought him back to the gross and the material once more.
Hermitage Castle was no lightsome residence now. But for the return of military duties and the clang of arms at stated intervals in the court, it might have been a college or a monastery, so rarely was the voice of merriment heard within its walls. No more hawking and hunting now. The drawbridge had not been lowered, nor the portcullis raised, since Moray took his departure with his solemn smile, following wild Rothes and his spearmen at half-a-day’s interval, and leaving the lord of the castle in a mood of such stern and sullen defiance as caused the boldest of his retainers to shrink instinctively from his path. It seemed like another life, that they used to lead long ago,—dashing out in the dewy mornings with hawk on hand and hound at heel, or winding warily away in warlike order at set of sun for a moonlight foray on the Southern side. The rude spearmen consoled themselves with great meals of beef and floods of ale, but the henchman’s platter often remained untouched, his cup unfilled, whilst the lord of the castle himself spent whole days of solitude in his own chamber, walking out at sunset to the northern rampart, where he would pace up and down for hours, far into the night.
His good angel had abandoned Bothwell at last, yet the spirit had left a gleam of his presence, a fragrance from its wings, about him still. Fast in the toils of unscrupulous Moray, the earl could yet look back with a painful longing to the days when he was a loyal subject and a devoted knight to his beautiful Queen. At times he would be tempted to forego ambition, pride, revenge, consistency, everything but his wild unreasoning affection, and, galloping to Holyrood or Stirling, fling himself at Mary’s feet, entreat her to forgive him, and pledge himself, if it would make her happier, that he would never see her face again. Yes, there were moments when the proud, strong man felt he would ask no more welcome relief than to bow his head and pour his heart out like a woman in tears before his Queen; but then he thought of Darnley’s youthful beauty, and Darnley’s mocking smile—of the path that was still open to himself if he would crush all such foolish weaknesses, all such exaggerated notions of chivalry and forbearance. The fiend, who is always at hand with his temptations, if a man gives him the least encouragement, whispered in his ear that nothing is impossible to one who has no scruples, and who will ungrudgingly risk all; that when honour, honesty, faith, and humanity are but rated as flimsy superstitions to bind weak intellects, and crime itself is considered simply as an untoward necessity or a decisive manœuvre, the will becomes all-in-all, and the master-spirit, that can dare boundlessly and unflinchingly, may aspire to the fulfilment of its boldest wishes and its wildest dreams. Bothwell, too, had been brought up in no precise or scrupulous school. In his adventurous career on the North Sea, many a scene of bloodshed and rapine had come under his notice, and one who had accustomed himself to direct those predatory descents on the Danish coast, which were but authorised acts of piracy after all, was not likely to entertain much compassion for a woman’s shriek or a man’s death-groan. It would have been no shrinking from bloodshed that could have deterred Bothwell from any scheme on which he had once thought well to enter.
Moray, too, had got the Earl completely in his hands. That wary statesman, in whom the suaviter in modo seems to have been admirably combined with the fortiter in re, had the peculiar faculty of acquiring unbounded influence over his associates, a power sometimes observable in the calm impassive nature which never betrays its own feelings. Whatever might be the plot on which he was engaged, how high soever ran the waves through which the base-born Stuart steered his bark, not a shade of trepidation was to be detected on his quiet brow during its voyage, not a gleam of satisfaction when he had landed his cargo safely in port. It may be that men felt, so long as their interests were identical, they could trust Moray not to betray himself or them. It may be that, though sadly warped to evil, his was a superior nature, born to command. Whatever was the cause, no intriguer could be more plausible, no party-leader more successful.
And Bothwell, eager, hot-headed, vain, perhaps even romantic, was a mere child in the hands of such a man as this. What could avail the bluff straightforward courage of the swordsman against the diplomatic finesse of the equally bold but far more subtle statesman? It was the old story of the long sweeping sabre against the delicate rapier skilfully handled. The broad blade whistles through the air with mighty strokes that would serve to cleave a head-piece or to lop a limb, but ere it can descend amain, the thin line of quivering steel has wound its sinuous way under the guard and through the joints of the harness, and is drinking the streams of life-blood from the heart. Earl Bothwell was bound hand and foot to the half-brother of his Queen.
All these intrigues and vexations goaded the warden to the verge of madness. He could scarce bear to be noticed, much less addressed, by his retainers; and it was with a fierce oath and a savage glare that he accosted his henchman when the latter ventured to interrupt his solitary walk, one summer’s evening, on the northern rampart.
The stars were coming out one by one in the soft twilight sky, and the warden paced moodily to and fro, looking ever and anon wistfully towards the north.
‘What lack ye, man, in the fiend’s name?’ exclaimed the earl, angrily. ‘Must every knave that clears a trencher come into my presence unbidden? Silence, varlet, and begone!’
But Dick, too, had a sore heart and a perplexed brain, a combination which renders a man somewhat careless of outward observances. He was not to be daunted, even by the displeasure of his chief, and he answered doggedly in return—
‘I’ll no be silent when it’s for the laird’s honour that I suld speak! Oh! Bothwell, man, me an’ mine has served you an’ yours ever sin’ Scotland was a kingdom, I’m thinkin’. Will ye no hear me speak the day?’
Dick’s voice shook when he alluded to his feudal services. Stern as the giant looked, he was hoarse and trembling with emotion. Something in the warden’s breast responded to the appeal of his retainer, and he answered with assumed impatience—
‘Say your say, man, in the devil’s name, who seems to be commanding officer here; out with your report, if report it be, and have done with it.’
‘I wad wage my life for you, Bothwell, and that ye ken fine,’ replied Dick, with something almost like tears shining in his eyes. ‘I wadna grudge to shed every drop of bluid I hae, just to keep ye frae watting your foot. It’s no danger, an’ it’s no disgrace, an’ it’s no death that wad daunton me frae doing the laird’s bidding. No, no, “Dick-o’-the-Cleugh” and Dick’s forbears ha’ eaten the Hepburn’s bread and drunk frae the Hepburn’s cup ower lang for the like o’ that. But it’s just rackin’ my heart to think o’ yon lad in the donjon-keep at Leslie, and him breaking bread in the Hepburn’s hall, and setting his trust on the Hepburn’s honour. And to think o’ the like o’ me pittin’ his feet in the fetters and his craig in a tow; I wish my hands had rotted off at the elbows first!’
‘What would you have, man?’ said his chief, somewhat less impatiently than the henchman had expected. ‘’Tis a mettled gallant, I grant ye, and a far-off kinsman of my own. What, then? A soldier must take his chance; ’tis but the fortune of war.’
‘An’ whan the leddies speir for their messenger at Holyrood, an’ the bonny Queen hersel cries, “Ou, he’s safe enough, I trusted him to Bothwell;” how will we look if ever we come lilting into the Abbey-yard, and can give no tidings of our guest?’
The warden’s brow softened, although he seemed considerably perplexed.
‘I would he were safe back again, Dick,’ replied he, ‘I care not who knows it; but Rothes has a firm grip, and he would like well to make favour with Moray, even though he should disoblige me. I wish poor Walter may not be in a prison from which there is no breaking, at this present speaking. Aye, Dick! times are changed since my father’s day. Earl Patrick, now, if he had wanted anything from the proudest baron in Scotland, would have gone and taken it with a hundred riders at his back.’
Dick snapped his fingers in great glee. He was reading his chieftain’s thoughts as he would have read the track of a herd of cattle driven but yesterday into Cumberland.
‘It wadna tak’ a hundred men,’ said he, exultingly, ‘to lift the plenishing of Leslie Hoos itsel’, though it were garrisoned with a’ the loons in Fife. I wad but ask for Ralph Armstrong and “Lang Willie,” an’ maybe Little “Jock-o’-the-Hope,” to bring awa’ Maister Maxwell in a whole skin, gin he lay in the heart o’ Carlisle jail!’
‘It might not be a bad ploy for some of our lads,’ answered Bothwell, with rather a fierce smile. ‘Horses get fat and men lazy cooped up here within four gray walls, and I might require man and horse in proper trim before long. Hark ye, Dick! if ye want to go northward for some ten days or so, I shall not ask ye where ye have been at your return. No thanks! leave me, man! If it come to blows, that long body o’ yours can take care of itself.’
For the next hour or two ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ looked like a different person as he busied himself preparing man and horse for a march that he determined should commence at nightfall. When the sun had set, and the earl, after deeper potations than ordinary, had retired from his habitual walk on the rampart, his henchman and three companions rode steadily out of the castle-yard, followed by many inquiring looks from their comrades, who, heartily wearied of their forced inaction, beheld with strong feelings of envy the departure of the little cavalcade. It consisted but of four individuals, nevertheless it would have been difficult among all Lord Bothwell’s retainers to have selected a more efficient-looking quartette. With the exception of ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ himself, Ralph Armstrong was esteemed the most powerful man in Liddesdale; he was a stolid-looking fellow, too, with considerable mother-wit concealed under a composure that nothing could ruffle, and a courage that nothing could daunt. ‘Lang Willie,’ again, was an exceedingly voluble and amusing companion, chiefly distinguished for his extraordinary skill as a swordsman, and the readiness and coarseness of his repartees. Little ‘Jock-o’-the-Hope,’ so called simply because he was the youngest of the party, was an active, limber, powerful fellow, with all the mettle of his twenty summers and the sagacity of twice his age.
With such a following, and a moonless night in his favour, Dick would have been nothing loth to lay a wager that he would cross the Southern Border, and take Lord Scrope by the beard.
They rode all night merrily enough; steadily though, and careful not to distress their horses. As they neared the capital, Dick’s spirits rose visibly, and his comrades could not but remark on his resumption of his old habits of good-fellowship; but at daybreak an incident occurred which cast a gloom over the henchman’s superstitious nature, and plunged him once more into that gloomy taciturnity which was so foreign to his real disposition.
It was in the gray of the dawn. Dick was riding at the head of the party, who followed in single file, for the tract lay through some boggy and broken ground in which two horses could not go abreast. Suddenly a hare that had been cropping the dank herbage thus early, stole into the path in front of them, and leaped slowly along under the very nose of the henchman’s charger. This, although an untoward omen, was too common an occurrence to create alarm. There was an established formula for all such cases made and provided. Though too good a Protestant to cross himself, Dick repeated the customary charm with edifying gravity; but, as though in defiance, the hare still kept on in front of them. At three different angles in the path she hesitated, seeming about to turn off to right or left, and then hopped slowly on in the direction they were travelling. The stout borderers grew pale. It was even proposed that they should retrace their steps and abandon the enterprise; but Dick suggested that as he was the person immediately in front, his must be the entire risk, and the warning must be especially intended for him. The others were well satisfied to take this view of the matter, and presently they were discoursing as blithely as before; but their leader felt a depression of spirits creeping over him, which he strove in vain to overcome, and as the gloom gathered darker and darker about him, he felt in the depths of his rude nature that presentiment of coming death, which, let philosophers say what they will, is no unusual precursor of the final catastrophe.
His past life comes back to him with strange vividness as he rides silently on. His father’s rude gray tower at the head of the glen; the sunny, grassy nook, where he used to play, by the shallow burn, with five sturdy urchins like himself, and one golden-haired brother, whom they missed at last from amongst them, and told each other in awed whispers, looking up at the sky the while, how ‘Willie was gone to heaven.’ Till to-day he had almost forgotten the gleam of his father’s broadsword, and the caresses of a gentle, care-worn woman who used to hush him to sleep with low plaintive songs. He remembers, too, with peculiar distinctness, that first ride on the tall bay gelding, and the mimic lance with which he drove his imaginary foray.
These early memories are clearer to him now than many a real scene of plunder and bloodshed in which he knows he has since taken too much delight, but his devotion to his chief is as intense as ever, albeit dashed with something of a melancholy tenderness that seems unnatural, and derogatory to both.
Another figure, too, comes flitting across the borderer’s mental sight—a figure that is seldom long absent from his dreams either by day or night—a figure that he dares to dwell on now for the first time these long weeks past without shame, because he feels that he is about to vindicate his loyalty to all belonging to her, or to her Queen.
He can almost hear the ringing tones of her voice, can almost catch the flutter of her dress. Surely he is bewitched! Bewitched, or else irrevocably doomed to death. As he gathers a sprig of witch-elm and fastens it in his morion, he says to himself that if he is really to die, he should like to see Mary Seton just once again.