The Queen blinked her eyes. ‘Reconciliation seems to be your Mr. Knox’s prerogative. I have not yet learned from you what mine may be.’

‘Yours, madam,’ said Lethington, ‘is the greater, because gentler, hand—to put it no higher than that! Moreover, the Stuarts of Lennox share your Majesty’s faith; and Mr. Knox——’

‘Ah,’ cried the Queen, ‘I conceive your Mr. Knox is Antipope!’

Mr. Secretary confessed that some had called him so.

‘And what does my cousin Châtelherault call him?’ she asked.

He explained that the Duke paid him great respect.

‘Let me understand you,’ said Queen Mary. ‘The Duke is master of the west, and Mr. Knox of the Duke. Who is master of Mr. Knox?’

‘Oh, madam, he will serve your Majesty. I am sure of him.’

She was not so sure: she wondered. Then she found that she was frowning and pinching her lip, so broke into a new line.

‘Let us take the south, Monsieur de Lethington. Who prevails in those parts?’

He told her that there were many great men to be considered there: my Lord Herries, my Lord Hume, the Earl of Bothwell. This name interested her, but she was careful not to single it out.

‘And is Mr. Knox the master of these?’

‘Not so, madam. My Lord Herries is of the old religion; and my Lord of Bothwell——’

‘Does he laugh?’

‘I fear, madam, it is a mocking spirit.’

‘Why,’ says she, ‘does he laugh at Mr. Knox?’

Mr. Secretary detected the malice. ‘Alas! your Majesty is pleased to laugh at her servant.’

‘Well, let us leave M. de Boduel to his laughter. Who rules the north?’

‘The Earl of Huntly is powerful there, madam.’

‘I have had intelligence of him. He is a Catholic. Well, well! And now you shall tell me, Mr. Secretary, where my own kingdom is.’

‘Oh, madam, it is in the hearts of your people. You have all Scotland at your feet.’

‘Let us take a case. Have I, for example, your Mr. Knox at my feet?’

‘Surely, madam.’

‘We shall see. I tell you fairly that I do not choose to be at his. He has written against women, I hear. Is he wed?’

‘Madam, he is twice a widower.’

‘He is severe. But he should be instructed in his theme. He may have reason. Where is my brother?’

‘The Lord James is at his prayers, madam.’

‘I hope he will remember me there. I see that I shall need advocacy.’

Her head ached, her eyes were stiff with watching. She said her good-night and retired. At that hour there was a great shouting and crying in the courtyard, and out of the midst there spired a wild music of rebecks, fiddles, scrannel-pipes, and a monstrous drum out of tune. The French lords said, ‘Tenez, on s’amuse!’ and raised their eyebrows. The Queen shivered over a sea-coal fire. Now at last she remembered all fair France, saw it in one poignant, long look inwards, and began to cry. ‘I am a fool, a fool—but, oh me! I am wretched,’ she said, and rocked herself about. The comfort of women—kisses, strokings, mothering arms—was applied; they put her to bed, and Mary Livingstone sat by her. This young woman was in high feather, surveyed the prospect with calmness, not at all afraid. Her father, she said, had put before her the desires of all those gentry: he had never had such court paid him in his long life. This it was to be father to a maid of honour. The Duke had taken him apart before dinner, urging the suit of his son Arran for the Queen’s hand. The Lord James had spoken of an earldom; Lethington could not see enough of him. ‘Hey, my lamb,’ she ended, stroking the Queen’s hot face, ‘we will have them all at your feet ere this time seven days; and a lass in her teens shall sway wild Scotland!’ The Queen sighed, and snuggled her cheek into the open hand.

Just as she was dozing off there was to be heard a scurry of feet along the corridor, the crash of a door admitting a burst of sound—in that, the shiver of steel on steel, a roar of voices, a loud cry above all, ‘He hath it! He hath it!’ The Queen started up and held her heart. ‘What do they want of me? Is it Mr. Knox?’ Livingstone ran into the antechamber among the huddling women there. Des-Essars came to them bright-eyed to say it was nothing. It was Monsieur D’Elbœuf fighting young Erskine about a lady. The duel had been arranged at supper. They had cleared the tables for the fray.

CHAPTER III
SUPERFICIAL PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT

When they told her what was the name Mr. Knox had for her, and how it had been caught up by all the winds in town, Queen Mary pinched her lip. ‘Does he call me Honeypot? Well, he shall find there is wine in my honey—and perchance vinegar too, if he mishandle me. Or I may approve myself to him honey of Hymettus, which has thyme in it, and other sane herbs to make it sharp.’

A honey-queen she looked as she spoke, all golden and rose in her white weeds, her face aflower in the close coif, finger and thumb pinching her lip. She seemed at once wise, wholesome, sweet, and tinged with mischief; even the red Earl of Morton, the ‘bloat Douglas,’ as they called him, who should have been cunning in women, when he saw her preside at her first Council, said to his neighbour, ‘There is wine in the lass, and strong wine, to make men drunken. What was Black James Stuart about to let her in among us?’ It was a sign also of her suspected store of strength that Mr. Knox was careful not to see her. He had called her ‘Honeypot’ on hearsay.

No doubt she approved herself: those who loved her, and, trembling, marked her goings, owned it to each other by secret signs. And yet, in these early days, she stood alone, a growing girl in a synod of elders, watching, judging, wondering about them, praying to gods whom they had abjured in a tongue which they had come to detest. For they were all for England now, while she clung the more passionately to France. If she used deceit, is it wonderful? The arts of women against those half-hundred pairs of grudging, reticent eyes; a little armoury of smiles, blushes, demure, down-drooping lids! Was it the instinct to defend, or the relish for cajolery? She had the art of unconscious art. She looked askance, she let her lips quiver at a harsh decree, she kissed and took kisses where she could. She laughed for fear she should cry, she was witty when most at a loss. She refused to see disapproval in any, pretended to an open mind, and kept the inner door close-barred. Never unwatched, she was never found out; never off the watch, she never let her anxiety be seen. Alone she did it. Not Mary Livingstone herself knew the half of her effort, or shared her moments of dismay; for that whole-hearted girl saw Scotland with Scots eyes.

But she succeeded—she pleased. The lords filled Holyroodhouse, their companies the precincts; every man was Queen Mary’s man. The city wrought at its propynes and pageants against her entry in state. Mr. Knox, grimly surveying the company at his board, called her Honeypot.

There were those of her own religion who might have had another name for her. One morning there was a fray after her mass, when the Lord Lindsay and a few like him hustled and beat a priest. They waited for him behind the screen and gave him, in their phrase, ‘a bloody comb.’ Now, here was a case for something more tart than honey—at least, the clerk thought so. He had come running to her full of his griefs: the holy vessels had been tumbled on the floor, the holy vestments were in shreds; he (the poor ministrant) was black and blue; martyrdom beckoned him, and so on.

‘Nay, good father, you shall not take it amiss,’ she had said to him. ‘A greater than you or I said in a like case, “They know not what they do.”’

‘Madam,’ says the priest, ‘there spake the Son of God, all-discerning, not to be discerned of the Jews. But I judge from the feel of my head what they do, and I think they themselves know very well—and their master also that sent them, their Master Knox.’

‘I will give you another Scripture, then,’ replied she. ‘It is written, “By our stripes we are healed.”’

‘Your pardon, madam, your pardon!’ cried the priest: ‘I read it otherwise. St. Peter saith, “By His stripes we are healed”—a very different matter.’

She grew red. ‘Come, come, sir, we are bandying words. You will not tell me that you have no need of heavenly physic, I suppose?’

‘I pray,’ said he, ‘that your Majesty have none. Madam, if it please you, but for your Majesty’s kindred, the Lord James and his brethren, I had been a dead man.’

‘You tell me the best news of my brothers I have had yet,’ said she, and sent him away.

She used a gentler method with Lord Lindsay when he next showed her his rugged, shameless face. He told her bluntly that he would never bend the knee to Baal.

‘Well,’ she said, with a smile, ‘you shall bend it to me instead.’ And she looked so winning and so young, and withal so timid lest he should refuse, that (on a sudden impulse) down he went before her and kissed her hand.

‘I knew that I could make him ashamed,’ she said afterwards to Mary Livingstone.

‘I would have had him whipped!’ cried the flaming maid.

‘You are out, my dear,’ said Queen Mary. ‘’Twas better he should whip himself.’

Although she took enormous pains, she succeeded not nearly so well with her bastard brothers and their sister, Lady Argyll, the handsome, black-browed woman. James, Robert, and John, sons of the king her father, and Margaret Erskine, all alike tall, sable, stiff and sullen, were alike in this too, that they were eager for what they could get without asking. The old needy Hamilton—Duke of Châtelherault as he was—let no day go by without begging for his son. These men let be seen what they wanted, but they would not ask. The vexatious thing with their sort is, that you may give a man too much or too little, and never be sure which of you is the robber. Now, the Lord James greatly coveted the earldom of Moray. Would he tell her so, think you? Not he, since he would not admit it to his very self. She received more than a hint that it would be wise to reward him, and told him that she desired it. He bowed his acceptance as if he were obedient unto death.

‘Madam, if it please your Majesty to make me of your highest estate, it is not for me to gainsay you.’

‘Why, no,’ says the Queen, ‘I trow it is not. You shall be girt Earl of Mar at the Council, for such I understand to be your present desire.’

It was not his desire by any means, yet he could not bring himself to say so. Her very knowledge that he had desires at all tied his tongue.

‘Madam,’ he said, sickly-white, ‘the grace is inordinate to my merits: and, indeed, how should duty be rewarded, being in its own performance a grateful thing? True it is that my lands lie farther to the north than those of Mar; true it is that in Moray—to name a case—there are forces which, maybe, would not be the worse of a watchful eye. But the earldom of Moray! Tush, what am I saying?’

‘We spake of the earldom of Mar,’ she said drily. ‘That other, I understand, is claimed by my Lord of Huntly, as a right of his, under my favour.’

He added nothing, but bit his lip sideways, and looked at his white hands. She had done more wisely to give him Moray at once; and so she might had he but asked for it. But when she opened her hands he shut his up, and where she spoke her mind he never did. She ought to have been afraid of him, for two excellent reasons: first, she never knew what he thought, and next, everybody about her asked that first. Instead, he irritated her, like a prickly shift.

‘Am I to knock for ever at the shutters of the house of him?’ she asked of her friends. ‘Not so, but I shall conclude there is nobody at home.’

Healthy herself, and high-spirited, and as open as the day when she was in earnest, she laughed at his secret ways in private and made light of them in public. It was on the tip of her saucy tongue more than once or twice to strike him to earth with the thunderbolt: ‘Did you hasten me to Scotland to work my ruin, brother? Do you reckon to climb to the throne over me?’ She thought better of it, but only because it seemed not worth her while. There was no give-and-take with the Lord James, and it is dull work whipping a dead dog.

Meantime the prediction of Mary Livingstone seemed on the edge of fulfilment. Queen Mary ruled Scotland; and her spirits rose to meet success. She was full of courage and good cheer, holding her kingdom in the hollow of her palms. Honeypot? Did Mr. Knox call her so? It was odd how the name struck her.

‘Well,’ she said, with a shrug, ‘if they find me sweet and hive about me, shall I not do well?’

She made Lethington Secretary of State without reserve, and remarked that he was every day in the antechamber.

The word flew busily up and down the Canongate, round about the Cross: ‘Master Knox hath fitted her with a name, do you mind? “She is Honeypot,” quoth he. Heard you ever the like o’ that?’ Some favoured it and her, some winked at it, some misfavoured; and these were the grey beards and white mutches. But one and all came out to see her make her entry on the Tuesday.

One hour before she left Holyrood, Mr. Knox preached from his window in the High Street to a packed assembly of blue bonnets and shrouded heads, upon the text, Be wise now therefore, O ye Kings—a ring of scornful despair in his accents making the admonition vain. ‘I shall not ask ye now what it is ye are come out for to see, lest I tempt ye to lie; for I know better than yourselves. Meat! “Give us meat,” ye cry and clamour; “give us meat for the gapes, meat for greedy eyes!” Ay, and ye shall have your meat, fear not for that. Jags and slashes and feathered heads, ye shall have; targeted tails, and bosoms decked in shame, but else as bare as my hand. Fill yourselves with the like of these—but oh, sirs, when ye lie drunken, blame not the kennel that holds ye. If that ye crave to see prancing Frenchmen before ye, minions and jugglers, leaping sinners, damsels with timbrels, and such-like sick ministers to sick women’s desires, I say, let it be so, o’ God’s holy name; for the day cometh when ye shall have grace given ye to look within, and see who pulls the wires that sets them all heeling and reeling, jigging up and down—whether Christ or Antichrist, whether the Lord God of Israel or the Lord Mammon of the Phœnicians. Look ye well in that day, judge ye and see.’

He stopped, as if he saw in their midst what he cried against; and some man called up, ‘What more will you say, sir?’

Mr. Knox gathered himself together. ‘Why, this, my man, that the harlotry of old Babylon is not dead yet, but like a snake lifteth a dry head from the dust wherein you think to have crushed her. Bite, snake, bite, I say; for the rather thou bitest, the rather shall thy latter end come. Heard ye not, sirs, how they trounced a bare-polled priest in the house of Rimmon, before the idol of abomination herself, these two days by past? I praise not, I blame not; I say, him that is drunken let him be drunken still. More becomes me not as yet, for all is yet to do. I fear to prejudge, I fear to offend; let us walk warily, brethren, until the day break. But I remember David, ruler in Israel, when he hoped against hope and knew not certainly that his cry should go up as far as God. For no more than that chosen minister can I look to see the number of the elect made up from a froward and stiff-necked generation. Nay, but I can cry aloud in the desert, I can fast, I can watch for the cloud of the gathering wrath of God. And this shall be my prayer for you and for yours, Be wise, etc.’ He did pray as he spoke, with his strong eyes lifted up above the housetops—a bidding prayer, you may call it, to which the people’s answer rumbled and grew in strength. One or two in the street struck into a savage song, and soon the roar of it filled the long street:

A gun in the valley told them that the Queen was away. It was well that she was guarded.

Des-Essars, the Queen’s French page, in that curious work of his, half reminiscence and half confession, which he dubs Le Secret des Secrets, has a note upon this day, and the aspect of the crowd, which he says was dangerous. ‘Looking up the hill,’ he writes, ‘towards the Netherbow Port, where we were to stop for the ceremony of the keys, I could see that the line of sightseers was uneven, ever surging and ebbing like an incoming sea. Also I had no relish for the faces I saw—I speak not of them at the windows. Certainly, all were highly curious to see my mistress and their own; and yet—or so I judged—they found in her and her company food for the eyes and none for the heart. They appeared to consider her their property; would have had her go slow, that they might fill themselves with her sight; or fast, that they might judge of her horsemanship. We were a show, forsooth; not come in to take possession of our own; rather admitted, that these close-lipped people might possess us if they found us worthy—ah, or dispossess us if they did not. Here and there men among them hailed their favourites: the Lord James Stuart was received with bonnets in the air; and at least once I heard it said, “There rides the true King of Scots.” My Lord Chancellor Morton, riding immediately before the Queen’s Grace, did not disdain to bandy words with them that cried out upon him, “The Douglas! The Douglas!” He, looking round about, “Ay, ye rascals,” I heard him say, “ye know your masters fine when they carry the sword.” He was a very portly, hearty gentleman in those days, high-coloured, with a full round beard. But above all things in the world the Scots lack fineness of manners. It was not that this Earl of Morton desired to grieve the Queen by any freedom of his; but worse than that, to my thinking, he did not know that he did it. As for my lords her Majesty’s uncles, their reception was exceedingly unhappy; but they cared little for that. Foolish Monsieur de Châtelard made matters worse by singing like a boy in quire as he rode behind his master, Monsieur d’Amville. This he did, as he said, to show his contempt for the rabble; but all the result was that he earned theirs. I saw a tall, gaunt, bearded man at a window, in a black cloak and bonnet. They told me that was Master Knox, the strongest man in Scotland.’

It is true that Master Knox watched the Queen go up, with sharp eyes which missed nothing. He saw her eager head turn this way and that at any chance of a welcome. He saw her meet gladness with gladness, deprecate doubt, plead for affection. ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness: but she is too keen after sweet food.’ She smiled all the while, but with differences which he was jealous to note. ‘She deals carefully; she is no so sure of her ground. Eh, man, she goes warily to work.’

A child at a window leaped in arms and called out clearly: ‘Oh, mother, mother, the braw leddy!’ The Queen laughed outright, looked up, nodded, and kissed her hand.

‘Hoots, woman,’ grumbled Mr. Knox, ‘how ye lick your fingers! Fie, what a sweet tooth ye have!’

She was very happy, had no doubts but that, as she won the Keys of the Port, she should win the hearts of all these people. Stooping down, she let the Provost kiss her hand. ‘The sun comes in with me, tell the Provost,’ she said to Mr. Secretary, not trusting her Scots.

‘Madam, so please you,’ the good man replied, clearing his throat, ‘we shall make a braver show for your Grace’s contentation upon the coming out from dinner. Rehearse that to her Majesty, Lethington, I’ll trouble ye.’

‘Ah, Mr. Provost, we shall all make a better show then, trust me,’ she said, laughing; and rode quickly through the gate.

She was very bold: everybody said that. She had the manners of a boy—his quick rush of words, his impulse, and his dashing assurance—with that same backwash of timidity, the sudden wonder of ‘Have I gone too far—betrayed myself’ which flushes a boy hot in a minute. All could see how bold she was; but not all knew how the heart beat. It made for her harm that her merits were shy things. I find that she was dressed for the day in ‘a stiff white satin gown sewn all over with pearls.’ Her neck was bare to the cleft of the bosom; and her tawny brown hair, curled and towered upon her head, was crowned with diamonds. Des-Essars says that her eyes were like stars; but he is partial. There were many girls in Scotland fairer than she. Mary Fleming was one, a very gentle, modest lady; Mary Seton was another, sharp and pure as a profile on a coin of Sicily. Mary Livingstone bore herself like a goddess; Mary Beaton had a riper lip. But this Mary Stuart stung the eyes, and provoked by flashing contrasts. Queen of Scots and Dryad of the wood; all honey and wine; bold as a boy and as lightly abashed, clinging as a girl and as slow to leave hold, full of courage, very wise. ‘Sirs, a dangerous sweet woman. Here we have the Honeypot,’ says Mr. Knox to himself, and thought of her at night.

After dinner, as she came down the hill, they gave her pageants. Virgins in white dropped out of machines with crowns for her; blackamoors, Turks, savage men came about her with songs about the Scriptures and the fate of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. She understood some, and laughed pleasantly at all. Even she took not amiss the unmannerly hint of the Lawn Market, where they would have burned a mass-priest in effigy—had him swinging over the faggots, chalice and vestment, crucifix and all. ‘Fie, sirs, fie! What harm has he done, poor soul?’ was all she said.

The Grand Prior was furiously angry; seeing which, the Earl of Morton cut the figure down, and then struck out savagely with the flat of his blade, spurring his horse into the sniggering mob. ‘Damn you, have done with your beastliness—down, dogs, down!’ The Lord James looked away.

At the Salt Tron they had built up a door, with a glory as of heaven upon it. Here she dismounted and sat for a while. Clouds above drew apart; a pretty boy in a gilt tunic was let down by ropes before her. He said a piece in gasps, then offered her the Psalter in rhymed Scots. She thought it was the Geneva Bible, and took it with a queer lift of the eyebrows, which all saw. Arthur Erskine, to whom she handed it, held it between finger and thumb as if it had been red hot; and men marked that, and nudged each other. The boy stood rigid, not knowing what else to do; quickly she turned, looked at him shyly for a moment, then leaned forward and took him up in her arms, put her cheek to his, cuddled and kissed him. ‘You spake up bravely, my lamb,’ she said. ‘And what may your name be?’ She had to look up to Lethington for his reply, but did not let go of the child. His name was Ninian Ross. ‘I would I had one like you, Ninian Ross!’ she cried in his own tongue, kissed him again, and let him go.

People said to each other, ‘She loves too much, she is too free of her loving—to kiss and dandle a bairn in the street.’

‘Honeypot, Honeypot!’ said grudging Mr. Knox, looking on rapt at all this.

Des-Essars writes: ‘She believed she had won the entry of the heart; she read in the castle guns, bells of steeples, and hoarse outcry of the crowd, assurance of what she hoped for. I was glad, for my part, and disposed to thank God heartily, that we reached Holyroodhouse without injury to her person or insult to cut her to the soul.’

I think Des-Essars too sensitive: she was fully as shrewd an observer as he could have been. At least, she returned in good spirits. If any were tired, she was not; but danced all night with her Frenchmen. Monsieur de Châtelard was a happy man when he had her in his arms.

‘Miséricorde—O Queen of Love! Thus I would go through the world, though I burned in hell for it after.’

‘Thus would not I,’ quoth she. ‘You are hurting me. Take care.’

They brought her news in the midst that the Earl of Bothwell was in town with a great company, and would kiss her hands in the morning if he might.

‘Let him come to me now while I am happy,’ she said. ‘Who knows what to-morrow may do for me?’

She sent away Châtelard, and waited. Soon enough she saw the Earl’s broad shoulders making a way, the daring eyes, the hardy mouth. ‘You are welcome, my lord, to Scotland.’

‘But am I welcome to your Majesty?’

‘You have been slow to seek my welcome, sir.’

‘Madam, I have been slow to believe it.’

‘You need faith, Monsieur de Boduel.’

‘I wish that your Majesty did!’

‘Why so?’

‘That your Majesty might partake of mine.’

They chopped words for half an hour or more. But she had her match in him.

She was friends with all the world that night, or tried to think so. Yet, at the going to bed, when the lights were out, the guards posted, and state-rooms empty save for the mice, she came up to Mary Livingstone and stroked her face without a word, coaxing for assurance of her triumph. Wanting it still—for the maid was glum—she supplied it for herself. ‘We rule all Scotland, my dear, we rule all Scotland!’

But Mary Livingstone held up her chin, to be out of reach of that wheedling hand. Coldly, or as coldly as she might, she looked at the eager face, and braved the glimmering eyes.

‘Ay,’ she said, ‘ay, you do. You and John Knox betwixt you.’

The Queen laughed. ‘Shall I marry Mr. Knox? He is twice a widower.’

‘He would wed you the morn’s morn if you would have him,’ says Livingstone. ‘’Tis a fed horse, that Knox.’

‘He feeds on wind, I think,’ the Queen said; and the maid snorted, implacable.

‘’Tis a better food than your Earl of Bothwell takes, to my mind.’

‘And what is his food?’

‘The blood of women and their tears,’ said Mary Livingstone.

CHAPTER IV
ROUGH MUSIC HERE

The Earl of Huntly came to town, with three tall sons, three hundred Gordons, and his pipers at quickstep before him, playing, ‘Cock o’ the North.’ He came to seek the earldom of Moray, a Queen’s hand for his son George, and to set the realm’s affairs on a proper footing; let Mr. Knox and his men, therefore, look to themselves. His three sons were George, John, and Adam. George, his eldest, was Lord Gordon, with undoubted birthrights; but John of Findlater, so called, was his dearest, and should have married the Queen if he had not been burdened with a stolen wife in a tower, whom he would not put out of his head while her husband was alive. So George must have the Queen, said Huntly. That once decided, his line was clear. ‘Madam, my cousin,’ he intended to say, ‘I give you all Scotland above the Highland line in exchange for your light hand upon the South. Straighter lad or cleanlier built will no maid have in the country, nor appanage so broad. Is it a match?’ Should it not be a match, indeed? Both Catholics, both sovereign rulers, both young, both fine imps. If she traced her descent from Malcolm Canmore, he got his from Gadiffer, who, as every one knows, was the brother of Perceforest, whose right name was Betis, whose ancestor was Brutus’ self, whose root was fast in Laomedon, King of Troy. ‘The boy and girl were born for each other,’ said Huntly. So he crossed the Forth at Stirling Brig, and marched down through the green lowland country like a king, with colours to the wind and the pipes screaming his hopes and degree in the world. But he came slowly because of his unwieldy size. He was exceedingly fat, white-haired and white-bearded, and had a high-coloured, windy, passionate face, flaming blue eyes, and a husky voice, worn by shrieking at his Gordons. Such was the old Earl of Huntly, the star of whose house was destined to make fatal conjunctions with Queen Mary’s.

His entry into Edinburgh began at the same rate of pomp, but ended in the screaming of men whose pipes were slit. There were Hamiltons in the city, Hepburns, Murrays, Keiths, Douglases, red-haired Campbells. The close wynds vomited armed men at every interchange of civilities on the cawsey; a match to the death could be seen at any hour in the tilt-yard; the chiefs stalked grandly up and down before their enemies’ houses, daring one another do their worst. It seemed that only Huntly and his Gordons had been wanting to set half Scotland by the ears. The very night of their incoming young John of Findlater spied his enemy Ogilvy—the husband of the stolen wife—walking down the Luckenbooths arm-in-arm with his kinsman Boyne. He stepped up in front of him, lithe as an otter, and says he, ‘Have I timed my coming well, Mr. Ogilvy?’ Ogilvy, desperate of his wife, may be excused for drawing upon him; and (the fray once begun) you cannot blame John Gordon of Findlater for killing him clean, or Ogilvy of Boyne for wounding John of Findlater. Hurt as he was, the young man was saved by his friends. Little he cared for the summons of slaughter sued out against him in the morning, with his enemy dead and three hundred Gordons to keep his doors.

The Earl his father treated the affair as so much thistledown thickening the wind; but his own performances were as exorbitant as his proposals. He quarrelled with the high Lord James Stuart about precedence. Flicking his glove in the sour face, ‘Hoots, my lord, you are too new an Earl to take the gate of me,’ he said. He assumed the title of Moray—which was what he had come to beg for—in addition to his own. ‘She dare not refuse me, man. It is well known I have the lands.’ The Lord James turned stately away at this hearing, and Huntly ruffled past him into the presence, muttering as he went, ‘A king’s mischance, my sakes!’ He had a fine command of scornful nicknames; that was one of them. He called Mr. Secretary Lethington the Grey Goose—no bad name for a tried gentleman whose tone was always symptomatic of his anxieties. The Earl of Bothwell was a ‘Jack-Earl,’ he said; but Bothwell laughed at him. The Duke and his Hamiltons were ‘Glasgow tinklers’; the Earl of Morton, ‘Flesher Morton.’ His pride, indeed, seemed to be of that inordinate sort which will not allow a man to hate his equals. He hated whole races of less-descended men; he hated burgesses, Forbeses, Frenchmen, Englishmen; but his peers he despised. Catholic as he was, he went to the preaching at Saint Giles’ in a great red cloak, wearing his hat, and stood apart, clacking with his tongue, while Mr. Knox thundered out prophecies. ‘Let yon bubbly-jock bide,’ he told his son, who was with him. ‘’Tis a congested rogue, full of bad wind. What! Give him vent, man, and see him poison the whole assembly.’ Mr. Knox denounced him to his face as a Prophet of the Grove, and bid him cry upon his painted goddess. The great Huntly tapped his nose, then the basket of his sword, and presently strode out of church by a way which his people made for him.

Queen Mary was amused with the large, boisterous, florid man, and very much admired his sons. They were taller than the generality of Scots, sanguine, black-haired, small-headed, with the intent far gaze in their grey eyes which hawks have, and all dwellers in the open. She saw but two of them, the eldest and the youngest—for John of Findlater, having slain his man, lay at home—and set herself to work to break down their shy respect. For their sakes she humoured their preposterous father; allowed, what all her court was at swords drawn against, that his pipers should play him into her presence; listened to what he had to say about Gadiffer, brother of Perceforest, about Knox and his ravings, about the loyal North. He expanded like a warmed bladder, exhibited his sons’ graces as if he were a horsedealer, openly hinted at his proposals in her regard. She needed none of his nods and winks, being perfectly well able to read him, and of judgment perfectly clear upon the inflated text. In private she laughed it away. ‘I think my Lord of Gordon a very proper gentleman,’ she said to Livingstone; ‘but am I to marry the first long pair of legs I meet with? Moreover, I should have to woo him, for he fears me more than the devil. Yet it is a comely young man. I believe him honest.’

‘The only Gordon to be so, then,’ said Livingstone tersely. This was the prevailing belief: ‘False as Gordon.’

Then came Ogilvy of Boyne and his friends before the council, demanding the forfeiture of John Gordon of Findlater for slaughter. Old Huntly pished and fumed. ‘What! For pecking the feathers out of a daw! My fine little man, you and your Ogilvys should keep within your own march. You meet with men on the highways.’ The young Queen, isolated on her throne above these angry men, looked from one to another faltering. Suddenly she found that she could count certainly upon nobody. Her brother James had kept away; the Earl of Bothwell was not present; my Lord Morton the Chancellor blinked a pair of sleepy eyes upon the scene at large. ‘Let the law take its course,’ she faintly said; and old Huntly left the chamber, sweeping the Ogilvys out of his road. That was no way to get the Earldom of Moray and a royal daughter-in-law into one’s family. He himself confessed that the time had come for serious talk with the Queen.

Even this she bore, knowing him Catholic and believing him honest. When, after some purparley, at a privy audience, he came to what he called ‘close quarters,’ and spoke his piece about holy church, sovereign rulers, and fine imps, she laughed still, it is true, but more shrewdly than before. ‘Not too fast, my good lord, not too fast. I approve of my Lord Gordon, and should come thankfully to his wedding. Yet I should be content with a lowlier office there than you seem to propose me. And if he come to my wedding, I hope he will bring his lady.’ She turned to the Secretary. ‘Tell my lord, Mr. Secretary, what other work is afoot.’

Hereupon Lethington enlarged upon royal marriages, their nature and scope, and flourished styles and titles before the mortified old man. He spoke of the Archduke Ferdinand, that son of Cæsar; of Charles the Most Christian King, a boy in years, but a very forward boy. He dwelt freely and at length upon King Philip’s son of Spain, Don Carlos, a magnificent young man. Mostly he spoke of the advantage there would be if his royal mistress should please to walk hand in hand with her sister of England in this affair. Surely that were a lovely vision! The hearts of two realms would be pricked to tears by the spectacle—two great and ancient thrones, each stained with the blood of the other, flowering now with two roses, the red and the white! The blood-stains all washed out by happy tears—ah, my good lord, and by the kisses of innocent lips! It were a perilous thing, it were an unwarrantable thing, for one to move without the other. ‘I speak thus freely, my Lord of Huntly,’ says Lethington, warming to the work, ‘that ye may see the whole mind of my mistress, her carefulness, and how large a field her new-scaled eyes must take in. This is not a business of knitting North to South. She may trust always to the affection of her subjects to tie so natural a bond. Nay, but the comforting of kingdoms is at issue here. Ponder this well, my lord, and you will see.’

The Earl of Huntly was crimson in the face. ‘I do see, madam, how it is, that my house shall have little tenderness from your Majesty’s’—he was very angry. ‘I see that community of honour, community of religion count for nothing. Foh! My life and death upon it!’ He puffed and blew, glaring about him; then burst out again. ‘I will pay my thanks for this where they are most due. I know the doer—I spit upon his deed. Who is that man that cometh creeping after my earldom? Who looketh aslant at all my designs? Base blood stirreth base work. Who seeketh the life of my fine son?’

The Queen flushed. ‘Stay, sir,’ she said, ‘I cannot hear you. You waste words and honour alike.’

He shook his head at her, as if she were a naughty child; raised his forefinger, almost threatened. ‘Madam, madam, your brother James——’

She got up, the fire throbbing in her. ‘Be silent, my lord!’

‘Madam——’

‘Be silent.’

‘But, madam——’

Lethington, much agitated, whispered in her ear; she shook him away, stamped, clenched her hands.

‘You are dismissed, sir. The audience is finished. Do you hear me?’

‘How finished? How finished?’

‘Go, go, my lord, for God’s sake!’ urged the Secretary.

‘A pest!’ cried he, and fumed out of the Castle.

She rode down the Canongate to dinner that day at a hand-gallop, the people scouring to right and left to be clear of heels. Her colour was bright and hot, her hair streamed to the wind. ‘Fly, fly, fly!’ she cried, and whipped her horse. ‘A hateful fool, to dare me so!’ Lethington, Argyll, James her brother, came clattering and pounding behind. ‘She is fey! She is fey! She rides like a witch!’ women said to one another; but Mr. Knox, who saw her go, said to himself, ‘She is nimble as a boy.’ Publicly—since this wild bout made a great commotion in men’s thoughts—he declared, ‘If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth me.’ Neither he nor his judgments were anything to her in those days; she heard little of his music, rough or not. And yet, just at that time, had she sent for him she could have won him for ever. ‘Happy for her,’ says Des-Essars, writing after the event, ‘thrice happy for her if she had! For I know very well—and she knew it also afterwards—that the man was in love with her.’

At night, having recovered herself, she was able to laugh with the maids at old Huntly, and to look with kind eyes upon the graces of his son Gordon.

‘If I cared to do it,’ she said, ‘I could have that young man at my feet. But I fear he is a fool like his father.’

She tried him: he danced stiffly, talked no French, and did not know what to do with her hand when he had it, or with his own either. She sparkled, she glittered before him, smiled at his confusion, encouraged him by softness, befooled him. It was plain that he was elated; but she held her own powers so lightly, and thought so little of his, that she had no notion of what she was doing—to what soaring heights she was sending him. When she had done with him, a strange tremor took the young lord—a fixed, hard look, as if he saw something through the wall.

‘What you see? What you fear, my lord?’ she stammered in her pretty Scots.

‘I see misfortune, and shame, and loss. I see women at the loom—a shroud for a man—hey, a shroud, a shroud!’ He stared about at all the company, and at her, knowing nobody. Slowly recovering himself, he seemed to scrape cobwebs from his face. ‘I have drunk knowledge this night, I think.’

She plumbed the depth of his case. ‘Go now, my lord; leave me, now.’

‘One last word to you, madam, with my face to your face.’

‘What would you say to me?’

He took her by the hand, with more strength than she had believed in him. ‘Trust Gordon,’ he said, and left her.

‘I shall believe your word,’ she called softly after him, ‘and remember it.’

He lifted his hand, but made no other sign; he carried a high head through the full hall, striding like a man through heather, not to be stopped by any.

She thought that she had never seen a prouder action. He went, carrying his devotion, like a flag into battle. Beside him the Earl of Bothwell looked a pirate, and Châtelherault a pantaloon.

‘He deserves a fair wife, for he would pleasure her well,’ she considered; then laughed softly to herself, and shook her head. ‘No, no, not for me—such a dreamer as that. I should direct his dreams—I, who need a man.’

That pirate Earl of Bothwell used a different way. He bowed before her the same night, straightened his back immediately, and looked her full in the face. No fear that this man would peer through walls for ghosts! She was still tender from the thoughts of her young Highlander; but you know that she trusted this bluff ally, and was not easily offended by honest freedoms. She had seen gallants of his stamp in France.

‘Pleasure and good answers to your Grace’s good desires,’ he laughed.

She looked wisely up at him, keeping her mouth demure.

‘Monsieur de Boduel, you shall lead me to dance if you will.’

‘Madam, I shall.’ He took her out with no more ceremony, and acquitted himself gaily: a good dancer, and very strong, as she had already discovered. What arms to uphold authority! What nerve to drive our rebels into church! Ah, if one need a man!...

She asked him questions boldly. ‘What think you, my lord, of the Earl of Huntly?’

‘Madam, a bladder, holding a few pease. Eh, and he rattles when you do shake him! Prick him, he is gone; but the birds will flock about for the seeds you scatter. They are safer where they lie covered, I consider.’

She followed this. ‘I would ask you further. There is here a remarkable Mr. Knox: what am I to think of him?’

He stayed awhile, stroking his beard, before he shrugged in the French manner, that is, with the head and eyebrow.

‘In Rome, madam, we doff caps to the Pope. I am friendly with Mr. Knox. He is a strong man.’

‘As Samson was of old?’

He laughed freely. ‘Oh, my faith, madam, Delilah is not awanting. There’s a many and many.’

She changed the subject. ‘They tell me that you are of the religion, Monsieur de Boduel, but I am slow to believe that. In France I remember——’

‘Madam,’ says he, ‘my religion is one thing, my philosophy another. Let us talk of the latter. There is one God in a great cloud; but the world, observe, is many-sided. Sometimes, therefore, the cloud is rent towards the south; and the men of the south say, “Behold! our God is hued like a fire.” Or if, looking up, they see the sun pale in a fog, with high faith they say one to another, “Yonder white disc, do you mark, that is the Son of God.” Sometimes also your cloud is parted towards the north. Then cry the men of those parts, “Lo! our God, like a snow-mountain!” Now, when I am in the south I see with the men of the south, for I cannot doubt all the dwellers in the land; but when I am in the north, likewise I say, There is something in what you report. So much for philosophy—to which Religion, with a rod in hand, cries out: “You fool, you fool! God is neither there nor here; but He is in the heart.” There you have it, madam.’

She bowed gravely. ‘I have heard the late king, my father-in-law, say the same to Madame de Valentinois; and she agreed with him, as she always did in such matters. It is a good thought. But in whose heart do you place God? Not in all?’

‘In a good heart, madam. In a crowned heart.’

‘The crowned heart,’ said she, ‘is the Douglas badge. Do you place Him then in the heart of Monsieur de Morton?’

This tickled him, but he felt it also monstrous. ‘God forbid me! No, no, madam. Douglas wears it abroad—not always with credit. But the crowned heart was the heart of the Bruce.’

She was pleased; the sudden turn warmed her. ‘You spoke that well, and like a courtier, my lord.’

‘Madam,’ he cried, covering his own heart, ‘that is what I would always do if I had the wit. For I am a courtier at this hour.’

Pondering this in silence, she suffered him to lead her where he would; and took snugly to bed with her the thought that, in her growing perplexities, she had a sure hand upon hers when she chose to call for it.

As for him, Bothwell, he must have gone directly from this adventure in the tender to play his bass in some of the roughest music of those days. That very night—and for the third time—he, with D’Elbœuf and Lord John Stuart, went in arms, with men and torches, to Cuthbert Ramsay’s house, hard by the Market Cross; and, being refused as before, this time made forceful entry.

To the gudeman’s ‘What would ye with me, sirs, good lack?’ they demanded sight of Alison, his handsome daughter, now quaking in her bed by her man’s side; and not sight only, but a kiss apiece for the sake of my Lord Arran. She was, by common report, that lord’s mistress—but the fact is immaterial.

‘Come down with me, man—stand by me in this hour,’ quoth she.

But her husband plainly refused to come. ‘Na, na, my woman, thou must thole the assize by thysel’,’ said the honest fellow.

She donned her bedgown, tied up her hair, and was brought down shamefast by her father.

‘Do me no harm, sirs, do me no harm!’

‘Less than your braw Lord of Arran,’ says Bothwell, and took the firstfruits.

The low-roofed parlour full of the smoke of torches, flaring lights, wild, unsteady gentlemen in short cloaks, flushed Alison in the midst—one can picture the scene. The ceremony was prolonged; there were two nights’ vigil to be made up. On a sudden, half-way to the girl’s cold lips, Lord Bothwell stops, looks sidelong, listens.

‘The burgh is awake. Hark to that! Gentlemen, we must draw off.’

They hear cries in the street, men racing along the flags. From the door below one calls, ‘The Hamiltons! Look to yourselves! The Hamiltons!’

Almost immediately follows a scuffle, a broken oath, the ‘Oh, Christ!’ and fall of a man. Lord Bothwell regards his friends—posterior parts of three or four craning out of window, D’Elbœuf tying up his points, John Stuart dancing about the floor. ‘Gentlemen, come down.’

He wrapped his cloak round his left arm, whipped out his blade, and went clattering down the stair. The others came behind him. From the passage they heard the fighting; from the door, as they stood spying there, the whole town seemed a roaring cave of men. Through and above the din they could catch the screaming of Lord Arran, choked with rage, tears, and impotence.

‘Who is the doxy, I shall ask ye: Arran or the lass?’ says Bothwell, making ready to rush the entry.

Just as he cleared the door he was stabbed by a dirk in the upper arm, and felt the blood go from him. All Edinburgh seemed awake—a light in every window and a woman to hold it. Hamiltons and their friends packed the street: some twenty Hepburns about Ramsay’s door kept their backs to the wall. For a time there was great work.

In the midst of the hubbub they heard the pipes skirling in the Cowgate.

‘Here comes old Huntly from his lodging,’ says Lord John to his neighbour. This was Bothwell, engaged with three men at the moment, and in a gay humour.

‘Ay, hark to him!’ he called over his shoulder; and then, purring like some fierce cat, ‘Softly now—aha, I have thee, friend!’ and ran one of his men through the body.

The pipes blew shrilly, close at hand, the Gordons plunged into the street. Led by their chief, by John of Findlater and Adam (a mere boy), they came rioting into battle.

‘Aboyne! Aboyne! Watch for the Gordon!’—they held together and clove through the massed men like a bolt.

‘Hold your ground! I’ll gar them give back!’ cried old Huntly; and Bothwell, rallying his friends, pushed out to meet him: if he had succeeded the Hamiltons had been cut in two. As it was, the fighting was more scattered, the mêlée broken up; and this was the state of affairs when the Lord James chose to appear with a company of the Queen’s men from the Castle.

For the Lord James, in his great house at the head of Peebles Wynd—awake over his papers when all the world was asleep or at wickedness—had heard the rumours of the fight; and then, even while he considered it, heard the Gordons go by. He heard old Huntly encouraging his men, heard John of Findlater: if he had needed just advantage over his scornful enemy he might have it now. He got up from his chair and stood gazing at his papers, rubbing together his soft white hands. Anon he went to the closet, awoke his servant, and bade him make ready for the street. Cloaked, armed and bonneted, followed by the man, he went by silent ways to the Castle.

When he came upon the scene of the fray, he found John Gordon of Findlater at grapple with a Hamilton amid a litter of fallen men. He found Adam Gordon pale by the wall, wounded, smiling at his first wound. He could not find old Huntly, for he was far afield, chasing men down the wynds. D’Elbœuf had slipped away on other mischief, Bothwell (with a troublesome gash) had gone home to bed. He saw Arran battering at Ramsay’s door, calling on his Alison to open to him—and left the fool to his folly. It was Huntly he wanted, and, failing him, took what hostages he could get. He had John of Findlater pinioned from behind, young Adam from before, and the pair sent off guarded to the Castle.

To Arran, then, who ceased not his lamentations, he sternly said, ‘Fie, my lord, trouble not for such a jade at such an hour; but help me rather to punish the Queen’s enemies.’

Arran turned upon him, pouring out his injuries in a stream.

The Lord James listened closely: so many great names involved! Ah, the Earl of Bothwell! Alas, my lord, rashness and vainglory are hand-in-hand, I fear. The Marquis D’Elbœuf! Deplorable cousin of her Majesty. The Lord John! Tush—my own unhappy brother! One must go deeply, make free with the knife, to cut out of our commonwealth the knot of so much disease.

‘My Lord of Arran,’ he concluded solemnly, ‘your offence is deep, but the Queen’s deeper than you suppose. I cannot stay your resentment against the Earl of Bothwell; it is in the course of nature and of man that you should be moved. But the Earl of Huntly is the more dangerous person.’

My Lord James it was who led the now sobbing Arran to his lodging, and sought his own afterwards, well content with the night’s work. It is not always that you find two of your enemies united in wrong-doing, and the service of the state the service of private grudges.

When the archers had cleared the streets of the quick, afterwards came down silently the women and carried off the hurt and the dead. The women’s office, this, in Edinburgh.

The Queen was yet in her bed when Huntly came swelling into Holyroodhouse, demanding audience as his right. But the Lord James had been beforehand with him, and was in the bedchamber with the Secretary, able to stay, with a look, the usher at the door. ‘It is proper that your Majesty should be informed of certain grave occurrents,’ he began to explain; and told her the story of the night so far as was convenient. According to him, the Earl of Bothwell mixed the brew and the Earl of Huntly stirred it. D’Elbœuf was not named, John Stuart not named—when the Queen asked, what was the broil about? Ah, her Majesty must hold him excused: it was an unsavoury tale for a lady’s ear. ‘I should need to be a deaf lady in order to have comfortable ears, upon your showing,’ she said sharply. How well he had the secret of egging her on! ‘Rehearse the tale from the beginning, my lord; and consider my ears as hardened as your own.’ He let her drag it out of him by degrees: Arran’s mistress, Bothwell’s night work, so hard following upon night talk with her; Huntly’s furious pride: rough music indeed for young ears. But she had no time to shrink from the sound or to nurse any wound to her own pride. At the mere mention of Bothwell’s name Mary Livingstone was up in a red fury, and drove her mistress to her wiles.

‘And this is the brave gentleman,’ cried the maid, ‘this is the gallant who holds my Queen in his arms, and goes warm from them to a trollop’s of the town! Fit and right for the courtier who blasphemes with grooms in the court—but for you, madam, for you! Well—I hope you will know your friends in time.’

The Queen looked innocently at her, with the pure inquiry of a child. ‘What did he want with the girl? Some folly to gall my Lord Arran, belike.’ Incredible questions to Livingstone!

Just then they could hear old Lord Huntly storming in the antechamber. ‘There hurtles the true offender, in my judgment,’ said the Lord James.

‘He uses an unmannerly way of excuse,’ says the Queen, listening to his rhetoric.

‘Madam,’ said Mr. Secretary here, ‘I think he rather accuses. For his sort are so, that they regard every wrong they do as a wrong done to themselves. And so, perchance, it is to be regarded in the ethic part of philosophy.’

‘Why does he rail at my pages? Why does he not come in?’ the Queen asked. Whereupon the Lord James nodded to the usher at the door.

Delay had been troublesome to the furious old man, fretting his nerves and exhausting his indignation before the time. He was out of breath as well as patience; so the Queen had the first word, which he had by no means intended. She held up her finger at him.

‘Ah, my Lord of Huntly, you angered me the other day, and I overlooked it for the love I bear to your family. And now, when you have angered me again, you storm in my house as if it was your own. What am I to think?’

He looked at her with stormy, wet eyes, and spoke brokenly, being full of his injuries. ‘I am hurt, madam, I am sore affronted, traduced, stabbed in the back. My son, madam——!’

She showed anger. ‘Your son! Your son! You have presumed too far. You offer me marriage with your son, and he leaves me for a fray in the street!’

Startled, he puffed out his cheeks. ‘I take God to witness, liars have been behind me. Madam, my son Gordon had no hand in the night’s work. He was not in my house; he was not with me; I know not where he was. A fine young man of his years, look you, madam, may not be penned up like a sucking calf. No, no. But gallant sons of mine there were—who have suffered—whose injuries cry aloud for redress. And, madam, I am here to claim it at your hands.’

‘Speak your desires of me: I shall listen,’ said she.

The old man looked fixedly at his enemy across the bed. ‘Ay, madam, and so I will.’ He folded his arms, and the action, and the weight of his wrongs, stemmed his vehemence for a while. Dignity also he gained by his restraint, a quality of which he stood in need; and truly he was dignified. To hear his account, loyalty to the throne and to his friends was all the source of his troubles. He had come down with proffers of alliance to the Queen, and they laughed him to scorn. He with his two sons rose out of their beds to quell a riot, to succour their friends——

‘And whom do you call your friends?’ cried the Queen, interrupting him quickly.

He told her the Hamiltons—but there certainly he lied—good friends of his and hopeful to be better. The Queen calmed herself. ‘I had understood that you went to the rescue of my Lord Bothwell,’ she began; and true it was, he had. But now he laughed at the thought, and maybe found it laughable.

‘No, no, madam,’ he said: ‘there are no dealings betwixt me and the border-thieves. But the Duke hath made a treaty with me; and it was to help my Lord Arran, his son, that I and mine went out.’ Well! he had stayed the riot, he had carved out peace at the sword’s edge. ‘Anon’—and he pointed out the man—‘Anon comes that creeper by darksome ways, and rewards my sons with prison-bars—he, that has sought my fair earldom and all! Ay, madam, ay!’—his voice rose—‘so it is. Of all the souls in peril last night, some for villainy’s sake, some to serve their wicked lusts, some for love of the game, and some for honesty and truth—these last are rewarded by the jail. Madam, madam, I tell your Majesty, honest men are not to be bought and sold. You may stretch heart-strings till they crack; you may tempt the North, and rue the spoiling of the North. I know whose work this is, what black infernal stain of blood is in turmoil here. I know, madam, I say, and you know not. Some are begotten by night, and some in stealth by day—when the great world is at its affairs, and the house left empty, and nought rife in it but wicked humours. Beware this kind, madam—beware it. What they have lost by the bed they may retrieve by the head. Unlawful, unlawful—a black strain.’

The Lord James was stung out of himself. ‘By heaven, madam, this should be stopped!’

The Queen put up her hand. ‘Enough said. My Lord Huntly, what is your pleasure of me?’

Old Huntly folded up his wrath in his arms once more. ‘I ask, madam, the release of my two sons—of my son Findlater, and of Adam, my young son, wounded in your service, sorely wounded, and in bonds.’

‘You frame your petition unhappily,’ said the Queen with spirit. ‘This is not the way for subjects to handle the prince.’

He extended his arms, and gaped about him. ‘Subjects, she saith! Handling, she saith! Oh, now, look you, madam, how they handle your subject and my boy. He hath fifteen years to his head, madam, and a chin as smooth as your own. I fear he is hurt to the death—I fear it sadly; and it turns me sick to face his mother with the news. Three sons take I out, and all the hopes I have nursed since your Majesty lay a babe in your mother’s arm. With one only I must return, with one only—and no hopes, no hopes at a’—madam, an old and broken man.’ He was greatly moved; tears pricked his eyelids and made him fretful. ‘Folly, folly of an old fool! To greet before a bairn!’ He brought tears into the Queen’s eyes.

‘I am sorry for your son Adam,’ she said gently; ‘but do not you grieve for him. He is too young to suffer for what he did under duress. You shall not weep before me. I hate it. It makes me weep with you, and that is forbidden to queens, they say.’

A man had appeared at the curtain of the door, and stood hidden in it. The Lord James went to him while the Queen was turned to the Secretary.

‘Mr. Secretary,’ said she, ‘you shall send up presently to the Castle. I desire to know how doth Sir Adam of Gordon. Bring me word as soon as may be.’ She had returned kindly to the old Earl when her brother was back by the bed.

‘Madam,’ he said to her, but looked directly at his foe, ‘the injuries of my Lord Huntly’s family are not ended, it appears. They bring me news——’

That was a slip; the Queen’s cheeks burned. ‘Ah, they bring you news, my lord!’

He hastened to add: ‘And I, as my duty is, report to your Majesty, that Sir John Gordon of Findlater hath, within this hour, broken ward. He is away, madam, leaving an honest man dead in his room.’ He had made a false step in the beginning, but the news redeemed him.

The Queen looked very grave. ‘What have you to say to this, Lord of Huntly?’

‘I say that he is my very son, madam,’ cried the stout old chief, ‘and readier with his wits than that encroacher over there.’

Mr. Secretary Lethington covered a smile; the Queen did not. But she replied: ‘And I say that he is too ready with his wits; and to you, my lord, I say that you must fetch him back. I will not be defied.’

She saw his dogged look, and admired it in him. Well she knew how to soften him now!

‘There shall be no bargain between you and me,’ she continued, looking keenly at him; ‘but as I have passed my word, now pass you yours. I will take care of the boy. He shall be here, and I will teach him to love his Queen better than his father can do it, I believe. That is my part. Now for yours: go you out and bring me back Sir John.’

Old Huntly ran forward to the bed, fell on his knees beside it, and took the girl’s hand. The tears he now felt were kindlier, and he let them come. ‘Oh, if you and I could deal, my Queen,’ he said, ‘all Scotland should go laughing. If we could deal, as now we have, with the hearts’ doors open, and none between! Why, I see the brave days yet! I shall bring back Findlater, fear not for it; and there shall be Gordons about you like a green forest—and yourself the bonny, bonny rose bowered in the midst! God give your Majesty comfort, who have given back comfort and pride unto me!’

The Queen’s eyes shone with wet as she laughed her pleasure. ‘Go then, my lord; deal fairly by me.’

He left her there and then, swelling with pride, emotion, and vanity inflamed, meaning to do well if any man ever did. He brushed aside Lethington with a sweep of the arm—‘Clear a way there—clear a way!’

In this Gordon conflict the iniquities of Lord Bothwell were forgotten, for the Queen’s mind was now set upon kind offices. She took young Adam into her house and visited him every day. As you might have expected, where the lad was handsome and the lady predisposed to be generous, she looked more than she said, and said more than she need. Young Adam fell in love with this glimmering, murmuring, golden princess. Fell, do I say? He slipped, rather, as in summer one lets oneself slip into the warm still water. Even so slipped he, and was over the ears before he was aware. Whatever she may have said, he made mighty little reply: the Gordons were always modest before women, and this one but a boy. He hardly dared look at her when she came, though for a matter of three hours before he had never taken his eyes from the door through which she was to glide in upon him like a Queen of Fays. And the fragrance she carried about her, the wonder of her which filled the little chamber where he lay, the sense of a goddess unveiling, of daily miracle, of her stooping (glorious condescension!), and of his lifting-up—ah, let him who has deified a lady tell the glory if he dare! The work was done: she was amused, the miracle wrought. She had found him a sulky boy, she left him a budded knight. Here was one of the conquests she made every day without the drawing of a sword. Most women loved her, and all boys and girls. But although these are, after all, the pick of the world—to whom she was the Rose of roses—we must consider, unhappily, the refuse. They were the flies at the Honeypot.

Mary Livingstone, not seriously, chid her mistress. ‘Oh, fie! oh, fie!’ she would say. ‘Do you waste your sweet store on a bairn? They call you too fond already. Do you wish to have none but fools about you?’

‘If it is foolish to love me, child,’ said the Queen, pretending to pout, ‘you condemn yourself. And if it is foolish of me to love you, or to love Love—again you condemn yourself, who teach me day by day. Are you jealous of the little Gordon, or of the little Jean-Marie? Or is it Monsieur de Châtelard whom you fear?’

‘Châtelard, forsooth! A parrokeet!’

The Queen laughed. ‘If you are jealous, Mary Livingstone, you must cut off my hands and seal my mouth; for should you take away all my lovers, I should stroke the pillars of the house till they were warm, and kiss the maids in the kitchen until they were clean. I must love, my dear, and be loved: that I devoutly believe.’

‘Lord Jesus, and so do I!’ groaned the good girl, and thanked Him on whom she called that Bothwell’s day was over. For although she said not a word of the late scandal, she watched every day and lay awake o’ nights for any sign that he was in the Queen’s thoughts. All she could discover for certain was that he came no more to Court. And yet he was in or near Edinburgh. The old Duke of Châtelherault had himself announced one day in a great taking, with a pitiful story of his son Arran. Lord Bothwell’s name rang loud in it. His son Arran, cousin (he was careful to say) of her Majesty’s, being highly incensed at the affront he had suffered, had challenged the Earl of Bothwell to a battle of three on a side. The weapons had been named, the men chosen. My Lord Bothwell had kept tryst, Arran (on his father’s counsel) had not. Thereupon my Lord Bothwell cries aloud, in the hearing of a score persons, ‘We’ll drag him out by the lugs, gentlemen!’ and set about to do it. ‘My son Arran, madam, goes in deadly fear; for so ruthless a man, a man so arrogant upon the laws as this Lord of Bothwell vexeth not your Majesty’s once prosperous realm. Alas, that such things should be! Madam, I gravely doubt for my son’s safety.’

‘Why, what would you have of me, cousin?’ says the Queen. ‘I cannot fight your son’s battle. Courage I cannot give him. Am I to protect him in my house?’

‘It is protection, indeed, madam, that I crave. But your Majesty knows very well in what guise I would have him enter your house.’

This was too open dealing to be dextrous in such a delicate market.

‘Upon my word, cousin,’ says the Queen, ‘I think that you carry your plans of protection too far if you propose that I should shelter him in my bed.’

The old Duke looked so confounded at this blunt commentary that she repented later, and promised that she would try a reconciliation. ‘But I cannot move in it myself,’ she told him. ‘There are many reasons against that. Do you say that my Lord Bothwell threatens the life of your son?’

‘Indeed, madam, I do fear it.’

‘Well, I will see that he does not get it. Leave me to deal as I can.’

The Queen sent for Mr. Knox.