CHAPTER V
MEDEA IN THE BEDCHAMBER

Women, in the experience of French Paris, as he once informed a select company of his acquaintance, could only be trusted to do a thing, and never to cause a thing to be done. ‘They will always find a thousand reasons why it should not be done, or why it should be done another way—their way, an older way, a newer way, any way in the world but yours. Burn the boats, burn the boats, dear sirs, when you need a woman to help you, as you constantly do in delicate affairs.’ He instanced, as a case in point, his own confidence in Queen Mary, and his master’s want of confidence, when the pair of them rode with her part of her way to Glasgow; and how he was entirely justified by her subsequent behaviour. It made little difference in the end, to be sure; but no doubt she would have been saved a good deal of distress if Bothwell had been as instructed as his lacquey. As it is, it is to be feared that he fretted her sadly. It was not only heartless to play upon her jealousy, to put her so sharply upon her honour, but it was bad policy on his part; for if the creature of your use starts a-quivering at the touch of your hand, how are you served if by your whip and spurs you set her plunging madly into the dark, shying and swerving and cracking her heart? You wear out your tool before the time. That is just what Bothwell did.

The fact is that, as aforesaid, she was too sensitive an instrument for his coarse fingers. As well give Blind Jack a fiddle of Cremona for his tap-room jiggeries. If my lord wanted work from her which Moll Bawd or Kate Cutsheet would have done better, he should have known wiselier how to get it than by using the only stimulus such hacks could feel. This tremulous, starting, docile creature to be pricked on by jealousy, forsooth! Why, that had been King Darnley’s silly way. ‘I would that Glasgow might be the Hermitage and myself the Earl of Bothwell as I lie here,’ he had said; and it made her laugh and admit the truth. But this Bothwell was no finer. ‘Ohè! a many weary leagues before I win my home! Well, I am sure of a welcome there.’ And then, when she bent her head to the way, ‘Ay, Queens and Kings, and all gudemen and wives are in the like case. Bed and board—it comes down e’en to that. Love is just a flaunty scarf to draw the eye with. You see it purfling at a window, and, think you, that should be a dainty white hand a-working there!’

She lifted her face to meet the driving snow, looked into the dun sky and saw it speckled with black—her own colours henceforward! Thus would she be from her soul outwards—sodden grey, and speckled with black. The burden of her heart was so heavy that she groaned aloud. ‘You falter, you fear!’ cried that fidgety brute. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she stammered; ‘I shall fail if you speak to me.’

The snow was falling fast, but there was no wind, when she said farewell to her lover at Callander gate. He would not go in; purposed to ride southward into Liddesdale with but one change of horses, fearing that the wind would get up after dark and make the hill-roads impossible. The Black Laird of Ormiston, Tala, and Bowton were to go with him; he left Paris behind to be her messenger if she should need to send one. There was no time to spare. ‘Set on, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I will overtake you.’

He shook the snow from his cloak, set it flying from eyelashes and beard, drew near to the sombre lady where she stood in the midst of her little company, and put his hand upon her saddle-bow. ‘God speed your Grace upon your goodly errand,’ he said—whereat she gave a little moan of the voice, but did not otherwise respond—‘and send us soon a happy meeting—Amen!’

She looked at him piercingly for a second of time, and then resumed her staring and glooming. He cried her farewell once more, saluted the lords, and pounded over the frozen marsh. One could hear him talking and laughing for a long way, and the barking answers of Ormiston.

The Queen rode up the avenue to the doors, and was taken to bed by Mary Seton and Carwood. She kept her chamber all that evening and night, but sent for Paris early in the morning. He saw her in bed, thin and drawn in the face, very narrow-eyed, and with a short cough. She handed him a great sack, sealed and tied, and a letter.

‘Take these to your master at the Hermitage. You shall have what horses you need. In that pack are four hundred crowns. You see how much trust I have in you.’

Paris assured her that her trust was well bestowed, as she should find out by his quick return to her.

She laughed, not happily. ‘I hope so. I came from France, and to France I go in my need.’

‘Why, madam,’ says Paris, ‘does your Majesty intend for my country?’

‘No, no. I shall see the land of France no more. I spoke of Frenchmen, who are tender towards women.’

Paris felt inspired to say that none loved her Majesty more entirely than the men of his nation, who had delicate sensibility for the perfections of ladies. And he modestly adduced as another example Monsieur Des-Essars, lately advanced to be one of her esquires.

She coloured faintly. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I believe he loves me well. Him also I trust—you, Paris, and Monsieur Des-Essars.’

Paris fell upon his knees. She changed her mood instantly, bade him begone with the treasure, and rejoin her at Glasgow with letters from my lord.

Paris faithfully performed his errand, in spite of the snow with which the country was blanketed as deeply as in a fleece.

‘My lord was glad of the money,’ he tells us, ‘and sent Monsieur de Tala away with it immediately. Before I left him to go to the Queen at Glasgow he told me of his plot, which was to blow the King up with gunpowder as he lay in a lodging at Edinburgh. I said, the King was not at Edinburgh yet. “No, fool,” says he, “but he soon will be.” He showed me papers of association whereon I was to believe stood the names of my lord himself, of my Lords Morton, Argyll, Huntly, Ruthven, and Lindsay, of Mr. Douglas, Mr. James Balfour, and others. He pointed to one name far below the others. “That,” he said, “is of our friend the White Rat,”—my own name for Mr. Secretary. He asked me what I thought of it; I told him, I thought no good of it. “Why not, you fool?” he jeered at me. I replied, “Because, my lord, you do not show me the name of names.”

‘Although he knew entirely well what name I meant, he forced me to mention Monsieur de Moray, and then was angry that I did so. He said that lord would not meddle. I said, “He is wise.” Then he began to jump about the chamber, hopping from board to board like a crow with his wing cut. “My lord of Moray! My lord of Moray!” cried he out. “He will neither help nor hinder; but it is all one. It is late now to change advice—as why should we change for a fool’s word such as thine? If we have Lethington, blockhead, have we not his master?”

‘I said, No; for those gentlemen who interested themselves in the late David had Mr. Secretary, and thought they had the Earl of Moray also. But they found out their mistake the next day, when he came back and, rounding upon them, turned every one of them out.

‘“Well,” he cried—“Well! What then? What is all that to the purpose? Did he not sign my bond at the Council of October?” That bond was what we used to call “Of the Scotchmen’s Business,” because all present signed a paper in favour of the Queen, which was not read aloud. I admitted that he had signed it; but I was not convinced by that. I considered that it pledged him to nothing. I thought it my duty to add, “You are my master, my lord. If you command me in this I shall serve you, because in my opinion it is the business of servants to obey, not to advise. But I say, for the last time, Beware the Earl of Moray.” My master began to rail and swear at his lordship—a natural but vain thing to do. I was silent.

‘The next day after, he told me that he had revealed his plan to Monsieur Hob of Ormiston and to his brother-in-law, my lord of Huntly. If I had dared I should have asked him whether my lady the Countess had been informed; and I did ask it of her woman Torles, who was a friend of mine. But Torles said that, so far as she knew, the Countess never spoke with my lord about the Queen’s affairs.

‘I was curious about another thing, exceedingly curious. “Tell me, my dear Torles,” I said, “our lord and lady—are they still good friends?” From the way that she looked at me, her sly way, and grinned, I knew the answer. “They are better friends, my fine man, than you and I are ever likely to be.” I said something gallant, to the effect that there might be better reasons, and played some little foolishness or other, which pleased her very much. Next morning I started to go to Glasgow with letters for the Queen’s Majesty.’

That was on the 26th January, the very day when Mr. Secretary Lethington was married to his Fleming. Paris heard that he took her to his house of Lethington, but (as he truly adds) the affair is of no moment, where he took her, or whether he took her at all. ‘It was long since she had been of the Queen’s party; indeed, I always understood that it was a love-match between them, entered into at first sight; and that Mistress Fleming had been alienated from her allegiance from the beginning.’ Paris was sorry. ‘She was a pretty and a modest lady, in a Court where those two graces were seldom in partnership.’

He learned at Glasgow that the King was still very sick, and the Queen in a low condition of body. It seems that when she had reached the house she would not have the patient informed of the fact, and would not go to him that same night. Some of the Hamiltons had met her on the road, and returned with her into the town. There was a full house, quite a Court, and a great company about her at supper. Lady Reres was there, an old friend of her Majesty’s, and of Lord Bothwell’s too, and Lord Livingstone, full of his pranks. He, it seems, had rallied the Queen finely about her despondency and long silences; said in a loud whisper that he was ready for a toast to an absentee if she would promise to drink to the name he would cry; and although she would not do it, but shook her head and looked away, his broad tongue was always hovering about Bothwell’s name. It is to be supposed that he drank to many distant friends, for Bastien, the Queen’s valet, told Paris that his lordship grew very blithe after supper. ‘If you will believe me, Paris,’ he said, ‘as her Majesty was warming her foot at the fire, leaning upon this Monsieur de Livingstone’s shoulder, his jolly lordship took her round the middle as if she had been his wench, and cried out upon her doleful visage. “Be merry,” says he, “and leave the dumps to him you have left behind you.” She flung away from him as if he teased her, but allowed his arm to be where it was, and his hardy hand too.’

Great dealings for the Parises and Bastiens to snigger at. I suppose it is no wonder that they unqueened her, since, however fast they went to work, it was never so fast as she did it to herself. They tell me it was always the way with her family, to choose rather to be easy in low company than stiff with the great folk about them. The common sort, therefore, loved the race of Stuart, and the lords detested it. But we must follow Paris if we are to see the Queen.

Though he delivered his letters as soon as he arrived, he was not sent for until late at night. The King’s man, Joachim, took him upstairs, saying as they went, ‘I hope thou hast a stout stomach; for take it from me, all is not very savoury up here.’

Paris replied that he had been so long in the service of gentlemen that their savour meant little to him, even that of diseased gentlemen.

‘Right,’ says Joachim; ‘right for thee, my little game-cock. But thou shalt not find the Queen in too merry pin, be assured.’

Carwood, her finger to her lip, met him in the corridor, passed him in through the anteroom, and pulled aside the heavy curtain. ‘Go in softly,’ she said, ‘and be careful of your feet. It is very dark, and the King sleeps. In with you.’

She drew back and let the curtain drive him forward. Certainly it was plaguey dark. He saw the Queen at the far end of the chamber writing a letter, haloed in the light of a single taper. She looked up when she heard him, but did not beckon him nearer; so he stayed where he was, and, as his eyes grew used to the gloom, looked about him.

It was a spacious room, but low in the ceiling, and raftered, with heavy curtains across the windows, which were embayed. A great bed was in the midst of the wall, canopied and crowned, with plumes at the corners and hangings on all sides but one—the door side. He could not see the King lying there, though he could hear his short breaths, ‘like a dog’s with its tongue out’; but presently, to his huge discomfort, he made out a sitting figure close to the pillow on the farther side, and not six paces from him across the bed—man or woman he never knew. It might have been a dead person, he said, for all the motion that it made. ‘It sat deep in the shadow, hooded, so that you could not see its face, or whether it had a face; and one white hand supported the hood. It did not stir when the sufferer needed assistance, such as water, or the turning of a pillow, or a handkerchief. It was a silent witness of everything done and to be gone through with; gave me lead in the bowels, as they say, the horrors in the hair.’

It may have been Mary Seton, or a priest, or a watching nun; at any rate, it terrified Paris, his head already weakened by the burden of that fetid chamber. The air was overpowering, tainted to sourness, seeming to clog the eyelids and stifle the light.

By and by the Queen beckoned him forward, putting up her finger to enjoin a soft tread. He came on like a cat, and stood within touching distance of her, and saw that she was kneeling at a table, writing with extreme rapidity, tears running down her face. There was a silver crucifix in front of her, to which she turned her eyes from time to time, as if referring to it the words which cost her so much to put down. Once, after a frenzy of penmanship, she held out her hands to it in protest; then reverently took it up and kissed it, to sanctify so the words she was writing: ‘The good year send us that God knit us together for ever for the most faithful couple that ever He did knit together.’ Paris knew very well to whom she wrote so fully, who was to read this stained, passionate letter, ill scrawled on scraps of old paper, scored with guilt, blotted with shameful tears, loving, repentant, wilful, petulant, unspeakably loyal and tender, all by turns. At this moment the King called to her.

He lay, you must know, with a handkerchief over his face. Paris had believed him asleep, for his breathing, though short, was regular, and his moaning and the working of his tongue counted for little in a sick man’s slumber. But while she was in the thick of her work at the table he coughed and called out to her in distress, ‘Mary, O Mary! where are you gone?’ And when she did not answer, but went on with the unspinning of the thought in her mind, and let him call ‘Mary, O Mary!’ Paris, looking from one to the other—and awfully on that shrouded third—found blame for her in his heart.

She finished her line, got up, and went to the foot of the bed. ‘You call me? What is your pleasure?’

‘His pleasure! Faith of a Christian!’ thinks Paris.

The King whispered, ‘Water, in Christ’s name’; and Paris heard the clicking of his dry tongue. Nevertheless he said, ‘Let me fetch you the water, madam.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘fetch it you. And I would that one of us could be drowned in the water.’

He poured some into a cup and took it to her.

‘Give it him,’ says she, ‘give it him. I dare not go nearer.’

The King heard that, and became sadly agitated. He wriggled his legs, tossed about, and began to wail feebly. In the end she had to take it, but you could see that she was nearly sick with loathing of him, natural and otherwise. For to say nothing that she had to lift the handkerchief, that he was hideous, his breath like poison, she was so made that only one could possess her at a time. If she loved a man she could not abide that any other should claim a right of her—least of all one who had a title to claim it.

The water cooled his fever for a time and brought him vitality. He talked, babbled, in the random way of the very sick, plunging headlong into the heart of a trouble and flying out before one can help with a hand. But he was quick enough to see that she did not respond readily, and sly enough to try her upon themes which he judged would be stimulating. He confessed with facile tears the faults of his youth and temper, begged her pardon times and again for his offences against her. ‘Oh, I have done wickedly by you, my love, but all’s over now. You shall see how well we will do together.’

Said she, ‘It will be better to wait a while. Talk not too much, lest you tax yourself.’

He rolled about, blinking his sightless eyes. ‘Do not be hard upon me! I repent—I tell you that I do. Pardon me, my Mary, pardon my faults. Let us be as we were once—lovers—wedded lovers—all in all!’ Paris saw her sway, with shut eyes, as she listened to him. ‘I would have you sleep now, my lord. It will be best for you. You tire yourself by talking.’

He begged for a kiss, and, when she affected not to hear him, grew very wild. It was a curious thing that she did then, watched by Paris with wonder. She dipped the tips of her two forefingers in the cup of water, and, putting them together, touched the back of his hand with them. ‘Ah, the balm of your cool sweet lips!’ he cried out, and was satisfied. But when he asked her to kiss his forehead she, in turn, became agitated, laughing and crying at once, and rocked herself about before she could repeat the touch of her two wet fingers on so foul a place. Again he sighed his content, and lay quiet, and presently dozed again.

She left him instantly and went back to her writing. She wrote fast; the fierce pen screamed over the paper: ‘You make me dissemble so much that I am afraid thereof with horror.... You almost make me play the part of a traitor.... If it were not for obeying I had rather be dead. My heart bleedeth at it....’ And again, ‘Alas! I never deceived anybody, but I remit myself wholly to your will. Send me word what I shall do, and whatsoever happen unto me I will obey you.... Think also if you will not find some invention more secret by physic; for he is to take physic at Craigmillar and the baths also, and shall not come forth for a long time....

... ‘It is very late; and although I should never be tired in writing to you, yet I will end after kissing your hands. Excuse my evil writing and read this over twice.... Pray remember your friend and write to her, and often. Love me always as I shall love you.’

She put a bracelet of twisted hair in between the sheets, made a packet of the whole, and beckoned Paris to follow her into the next room. ‘Take you this,’ she said, ‘whither you know well, and tell my lord all that you have seen and heard. He will learn so that I am a faithful and obedient lover. And if he should be jealous, and ask you in what manner I have behaved myself here, you may show him.’ So speaking, she joined her two forefingers, as he had seen her do before, and touched the table with them. He was not likely to forget that, however. It struck him as an ingenious and quaint device.

‘If my lord need me,’ she went on, ‘he can send you to Linlithgow, where I shall lie one night. Thence I shall go directly to Craigmillar with the King’s litter. It is late, and I must go to bed, if not to sleep. Other women lie abed, comforted, or to be comforted before daylight; but that cannot I be as yet. Now go, Paris.’

He said, ‘Madam, be of good heart. All things come by waiting.’

She sighed, but said nothing. He made his reverence, and away.

CHAPTER VI
KIRK O’ FIELD

The Earl of Bothwell returned to Edinburgh the day before the Queen was to leave Glasgow, and sent for Des-Essars to come to his lodging. ‘Baptist,’ he said, ‘I understand that her Majesty will be at Linlithgow this night, with the King in his litter. She will look to see me there, but I cannot go, with all my affairs in this town out of train and no one to overlook them but myself. I desire you, therefore, to go with the escort that is to meet her, and to give her this message from me: “It has not been found possible to accommodate the King at Craigmillar, but a house has been got for him near Saint-Mary-in-the-Field, and properly furnished. Please your Majesty, therefore, direct his bearers thither.”’

He made him repeat the words two or three times until he was sure of them; then added, ‘If the Queen ask you more concerning this house, with intent to know more, and not for mere curiosity, you shall tell her that it is near the great house of the Hamiltons, in the which the Archbishop now lodges. She will be satisfied with that, you will find, and ask you no more.’

Des-Essars understood him perfectly; but in case the reader do not, I shall remind him that this Archbishop Hamilton of Saint Andrews was brother of the old Duke of Châtelherault, of whom he used to hear in the beginning of this book—one of the clan, then, which disputed the Succession with the Lennox Stuarts and was regarded by the King as an hereditary enemy, with a blood-feud neither quenched nor quenchable. That same Archbishop, when the Queen was at Stirling for the baptism, scaring of the King, recall of Morton and the rest of the deeds done there, had been restored to his consistorial powers, and put at liberty to bind and loose according to his discretion and that of Saint Peter his master. There had been some talk at the time as to why he had been so highly favoured, and the opinion commonly held that he was to divorce the Queen from the King. That was not French Paris’s opinion, for one. In Edinburgh now, at any rate, was this Archbishop Hamilton with the keys of binding and loosing in his hands, not as yet making any use of them, and lodging in the great family house without the city wall.

Well, the escort departed for Linlithgow, Des-Essars with it. This is what he says of his adored mistress:

‘I think she was glad to see me, as certainly was I to see her looking so hale and fresh. Her eyes were like wet stars; she kissed me twice at meeting, with lips which had regained their vivid scarlet, were cool but not dry. I hastened to excuse my Lord Bothwell on the score of affairs. “Yes, yes, I know how pressed he is,” she replied. “I know he would have come if it had been possible. He has sent me the best proxy by you.” I told her that my Lord Huntly would be here momently, but she made a pouting mouth and a little grimace—then looked slily at me and laughed.

‘I rehearsed faithfully my Lord Bothwell’s message, and could not see that she was particularly interested in the King’s actual lodging—though that is by no means to imply that she was not interested. It is due to say that I never knew any person in all my experience of Courts and policy so quick as she not only to conceal her thoughts, but also to foresee when it would behove her to conceal them. It was next to impossible to surprise her heart out of her.

‘She asked me eagerly for Edinburgh news. I told her that the Hamiltons were in their own house; the Archbishop there already, and my Lord of Arbroath expected every day. She said in a simple, wondering kind of a way, “Why, the Hamilton house is next neighbour unto the King’s, I suppose?”

‘“Madam,” I said, “it is. And so my Lord Bothwell bid me remind your Majesty.”

‘She laughed; a little confusedly. “Better the King should not know of it,” she said. “He hates that family, and fears them, too. But that is not extraordinary, for he always hates those whom he fears.”

‘She asked, was my lord of Morton in town? I replied that he was, with a strong guard about his doors and a goodly company within them, as Mr. Archibald Douglas of Whittingehame and his brother, Captain Cullen, Mr. Balfour of Fliske, and others like him, and also the laird of Grange. To him resorted most of the lords of the new religion; they, namely, of Lindsay, Ruthven, Glencairn, and Argyll. My lord of Bothwell, however, lodging in the Huntly house, had a larger following than the Douglases; for all the Hamiltons paid him court as well as his own friends. She did not ask me, but I told her that her brother, my Lord Moray, kept much to himself, and saw few but ministers of his religion, such as Mr. Wood and Mr. Craig, and Mr. Secretary Lethington, who (with his wife) was lodged in his lordship’s house, and worked with him every day.

‘She stopped me here by looking long at me, and then asking shortly, “Have you heard anything of my Lady Bothwell?” which confused me very much. I could only reply that I had heard she had been indisposed. “I am sorry to hear it,” said she in quite an ordinary tone, “and am sorry also for her, when she finds out that her sickness is not what she hopes it is. You have not seen her, I suppose?” I had not.

‘“I have seen her in illness,” she pursued. “It does not become white-faced women to be so, for to be pale is one thing, but to be pallid another. When the transparency departs from a complexion of ivory, the residuum is paste. I myself have not a high colour by nature: yet when I am ill, as I am now, I always have fever, and look better than when my health is better. Did you not think, when you saw me first this morning, that I looked well?”

‘I had thought she looked both beautiful and well, and told her so. She was pleased.

‘“I love you, Baptist, when you look at me like that, and your words find echo in your eyes. Now I will tell you that the joy of seeing you again had much to say to my good looks. But I think that women would always rather look well than be well.”

‘As soon as my Lord Huntly had come in and dined, we departed from Linlithgow. Her Majesty rode on with that lord, Lord Livingstone and the others, leaving me behind with Mr. Erskine and the ladies, to conduct the King’s litter safely to the house prepared for him. I did not see his face nor hear him speak, but understood that he was greatly better. His hand, which was often outside the curtains, waving about, looked that of a clean man. He kept it out there, my Lady Reres told me, in the hope that her Majesty would see and touch it. Once, when it had been signalling about for some while, her ladyship said, “’Tis a black shame there should be a man’s hand wagging and no woman’s to slip into it.” So then she let him get hold of hers; and he, thinking he had the Queen’s, squeezed and fondled it until she was tired. We got him by nightfall into a mean little house, set in a garden the most disconsolate and weed-grown that ever you saw. It was a wild, wet evening, and as we went down Thieves’ Row the deplorable inhabitants of that street of stews and wicked dens were at their doors watching us. As we came by they pointed to the gable of the house, and uttered harsh and jeering cries. Lady Reres screamed and covered her face. There was perched an old raven on the gable-end, that croaked like any philosopher in the dumps; and as we set down the litter in the roadway, he flapped his ragged wings twice or thrice, and flew off into the dark, trailing his legs behind him. The people thought it an ill-omen....’

Here, for the time being, I forsake Des-Essars, and that for two reasons: the first, that I have a man to hand who knew more; the second, that what little the Brabanter did know he did not care to tell. A more than common acquaintance with his work assures me that his secret preoccupied him from hereabouts to the end—that Secret des Secrets of his which he thought so important as to have written his book for nothing else but to hold it. We shall come upon it all in good time, and see more evidently than now we do another, and what we may call supererogatory secret, which is that he grew bolder in his passion for the Queen, and she, perhaps, a little inclined to humour it. But for the present we leave him, and turn to the brisk narrative of one who knew nearly everything that was to be known, and could hazard a sharp guess at things which, it almost seems, could never perfectly be known. I mean, of course, our assured friend French Paris—bought, once for all, with a crown piece.

French Paris asks, in his bright way, ‘Do you know that lane that runs straight from the Cowgate to the old house by the Blackfriars—the Blackfriars’ Wynd, as they call it?’ You nod your head, and he continues. ‘Well, towards the end of that same lane, if you wish to reach the convent house, you pass through the ancient wall of the city by a gate in it which is called the Kirk o’ Field Port. This will lead you to the Blackfriars’ Church, but not until you have turned the angle of the wall and followed the road round it towards the left hand. Within that angle stands another church, Saint Mary-of-the-Field, which has nothing to do with what I have to tell you. But mark what I say now. You go through the Kirk o’ Field Port; you turn to the left round by the wall; on your right hand, at no great distance along, you behold a row of poor hovels at right angles to your present direction—doorless cabins, windowless, without chimneys, swarming with pigs, fowls, and filthy children; between them a very vile road full of holes and quags and broken potsherds. That is called Thieves’ Row, and for the best of good reasons. Nevertheless, behind those little pigs’ houses, on either hand, there are gardens very fair; and if you venture up, above the thatch of the roofs you will see the tops of fine trees waving in a cleaner air than you would believe possible, and find in the full middle of this Thieves’ Row, again on either hand, a garden gate right in among the mean tenements. That which is on the right hand leads into the old Blackfriars’ Garden, a great tangled place of trees and greensward with thickets interspersed; the other, on the left hand, belongs to the garden of the house wherein they lodged the King when they had brought him from Glasgow. Above the gate could once be seen the gable-end of the house itself; but you will not see it now if you look for it. And if you stood in the garden of his house and looked out over the boskage, you could see the hotel of the Lord Archbishop of Saint Andrews, the Hamilton House. Usefully enough, as it turned out, there let a little door from the corner of the King’s garden right upon the Archbishop’s house.

‘To tell you of the King’s lodging, it was as mean as you please, built of rough-cast work upon arches of rubble and plaster, with a flight of stairs from the ground-level reaching to the first floor—the piano nobile, save the mark! Upon that floor was a fair hall, and a chamber in which the Queen might lie when she chose, wardrobe, maids’ chamber, cabinet, and such like. The King lay on the floor above, having his own chamber for his great bed, with a little dressing-room near by. His servants, of whom he had not more than three or four, slept some in the passage and some in the hall; except his chamber-child, who lay in the bedchamber itself, on or below the foot of the King’s great bed. Now those stairs of which I told you just now led directly from the garden to the hall upon the first floor; but out of the Queen’s chamber there was a door giving on to a flight of wooden steps, very convenient, as thereby she could come in and out of the house without being disturbed. All this I observed for myself, as my master desired me, when Nelson, the King’s man, was showing me how ill-furnished and meanly found it was to be the lodging of so great a gentleman.

‘To say nothing of the garden, which, in that winter season, was miserable indeed, I was bound to agree that the house wanted repair. Nelson showed me where the roof let in water; he showed me the holes of rats, the track of their runs across the floors, and the places where they had gnawed the edges of the doors. “And, if you will believe me, Paris,” said he, “there is not so much as a key to a lock in the whole crazy cabin.” This was a thing which I was glad to have learned, and to bring to my master’s knowledge when, at the last moment, he thought fit to acquaint me with his pleasure. I had heard, in outline, what it was, on the day before I went to the Queen at Glasgow; but I will ask you to believe that he told me no more until the morning of the day when I received his commands to go to work. This is entirely true; though it is equally true that I found out a good deal for myself. My master, you must understand, had not a fool under his authority. No, no!

‘I did not myself see the Queen for two or three days after the King’s coming in, though I took many letters to her and bore back her replies. When I say I did not see her, that is a lie: I did—but never to speak with her, merely as one may pass in the street. I was struck with her fine looks and the shrill sound of her laughter: she talked more than ordinarily, and never spared herself in the dance. Once, or maybe twice, she visited the King in his lodging—not to sleep there herself, though her bed stood always ready, but going down to supper and remaining till late in the evening: never alone; once with the Lords Moray and Argyll, and once with (among other company) her brother, the Lord Robert, and a Spanish youth very much in his confidence. As to this second visit, Monsieur Des-Essars, who was there, told me a singular thing,[8] namely, that this Lord Robert had been moved to impart to the King the danger he lay in—that is, close to the Hamiltons, and with my Lord Morton at large and in favour in Edinburgh. Now, for some reason or another, it seems that his Majesty repeated the confidence to the Queen herself just as I have told it to you. Whereupon, said Monsieur Des-Essars, she flew into a passion, commanded the Lord Robert into her presence, and when he was before her, the King lying on his bed, bade him repeat the story if he dare. My Lord Robert laughed it off as done by way of a jest, and the Queen, more and more angry, sent him away. Now, here comes what I call the cream of the jest. “You may judge from this, Paris,” said M. Des-Essars to me, “how monstrous foolish it is to suppose that the Queen devises some mischief against her consort, or shares the counsels of any of his enemies. For certainly, if she did, she would not provoke them into betraying her in his own presence.”

‘I thanked his honour, but when he had gone I burst out laughing to myself. Do you ask why? First of all, none knew better than M. Des-Essars how the Queen stood with regard to her husband, and why my lord of Morton had been suffered to come home. None knew better than he, except it were the Queen herself, that the King was to be removed, she standing aside. Very well: then why did M. Des-Essars try to hoodwink me, except in the hope to gather testimony on all sides against what he feared must take place? But why did the Queen bring my Lord Robert face to face with the King, she knowing too well that his warning had bones and blood in it? Ah! that is more delicate webbery: she was a better politician than her young friend. To begin with, there was no real danger; for the Lord Robert knew nothing, and was nothing but a windbag. His confusion, therefore (he was at heart a coward), would give the King confidence. But, secondly, I am sure she still hoped that his Majesty might be removed without my master’s aid. I think she said to herself, “The King gains his health”—as indeed he did, with his natural skin coming back again, and the clear colour to his eyes—“and with health,” she would reason it, “his choler will return. To confront these two, with a lie between them, may provoke a quarrel. The daggers are handy: who can say what the end of this may be? One of two mishaps: the King will kill Lord Robert, or Lord Robert the King; either way will be good.” Observe, I know nothing; but that is how I read the story.

‘Now, all this while my master was very busy, very brisk and happy, singing at the top of his voice as he went about his business—as he always did on the verge of a great enterprise; but the first precise information I had that our work was close at hand was upon 9th February, being a Sunday. My master lodging at the Lord Huntly’s house in the Cowgate, I was standing at the door at, maybe, seven o’clock in the morning; black as Hell it was, but the cold not extraordinary. There came some woman down the street with a lantern swinging, and stopped quite close to me. She swung her lantern-light into my face, and, the moment she saw that I was I, began to speak in an urgent way. She was Margaret Carwood, one of the Queen’s women.

‘“Oh, Paris,” she says, “I have been sent express to you! You are to go down to the King’s lodging and fetch away the quilt which lies on the Queen’s bed there.”

‘I knew this quilt well—a handsome piece of work, of Genoa velvet, much overlaid with gold thread, which they say had belonged to the old Queen.

‘I asked, “By whose order come you, my good Carwood?” for I was not everybody’s man.

‘She replied, “By the Queen’s own, given to me by word of mouth, not an hour since. Go now, go, Paris. She is in a rare fluster, and will not rest.”

‘“Toho!” I say, “she disquieteth herself about this quilt.”

‘And Carwood said, “Ay, for it belonged to her lady mother, and is therefore worth rubies in her sight. She hath not slept a wink since she woke dreaming of it.”

‘To be short, this gave me, as they say, food for thoughts. Then, about the eleven o’clock, as the people were coming out from their sermon, I had more of the same provender—and a full meal of it. Judge for yourselves when I tell you with what the vomiting church doors were buzzing. My lord of Moray had left Edinburgh overnight and gone northward, to Lochleven, to see his mother, the Lady Douglas. He had taken secret leave of the Queen, and immediately after was away. Oh, Monsieur de Moray, Monsieur de Moray! is not your lordship the archetype and everlasting pattern of all rats that are and shall be in the world?

‘Now, putting the one thing on the top of the other, you may believe that I was not at all surprised to get my master’s orders the same day, to convey certain gunpowder from Hamilton House through the King’s garden into the Queen’s chamber so soon as it was quite dark. There you have the reason why the quilt had been saved. Powrie, Dalgleish, and Patrick Wilson were to help me; Monsieur Hob d’Ormiston would show us how to dispose of our loads and spread the train for the slow match. In Hamilton House it lay, mark you well! I will make the figs in the face of anybody who tells me that the Hamiltons were not up to the chin in the affair. How should we use their house without their leave? There were the Archbishop and Monsieur d’Arbroath involved. But enough! It is obvious. And I can tell you of another gentleman heavily involved, no one more certainly than I. It was my lord of Huntly: yes, gentlemen, no less a man.

‘It fell out about the five o’clock that, judging it dark enough for far more delicate work than this of powder-laying, I was setting out to join my colleagues by Hamilton House, when my Lord Huntly sends down a valet for me to go to his cabinet. I had had very few dealings with this young nobleman, whom (to say truth) I had always considered something of a dunce. He was as silent as his sister, my master’s lady, and, after his fashion, as good to look upon. You never saw a straighter-legged man, nor a straighter-looking, nor one who carried, as I had thought, an empty head higher in the air. That was my mistake. He was an old lover of the Queen’s, whom she fancied less than his brother Sir Adam. He, that Sir Adam, had been bosom-friend of Monsieur Des-Essars when the pair of them were boys, and had shared the Queen’s favours together, which very likely were not so bountiful as common rumour would have them. He certainly was a fiery youth, who may one day do greatly. But I admit that I had held my Lord Huntly for a want-wit—and that I was very much mistaken.

‘I went up and into his cabinet, and found him standing before the fire, with his legs spread out.

‘“Paris,” says he, “you are off on an errand of your master’s, I jealouse; one that might take you not a hundred miles from the Blackfriars’ Garden.”

‘I admitted all this. “I might tell you,” he says, “that I know that errand of yours, and share in the enterprise which directs it. Maybe you have been shown my name upon a parchment writing: I know that you are in your master’s confidence.”

‘I replied that I had understood his lordship had been made privy to my master’s thoughts in many matters, as was only reasonable, seeing the relationship between both their lordships: upon which he said, “You are a sly little devil, Paris, but have a kind of honesty, too.” I thanked him for his good opinion; and then he says, looking very hard at me, “Your master is now abroad upon this weighty business, and has left me to order matters at home. Now mark me well, Paris, and fail not in any particular, at your extreme peril. The train is to be put to proof at two o’clock of the morning by the bell of Saint Giles’, but not a moment before. You are to tell this to Mr. Hobbie Ormiston, who will report it to your master. Do you swear upon your mother’s soul in Paradise that you will deliver this message?” he says. I promised, and, what is more, I kept my promise; but at the time I thought it very odd that my master, generally so careful in these nice undertakings, should have left the all-important direction of time when to so dull-minded a person as my Lord Huntly. To add to my bewilderment, Monsieur Hob also, when I gave him the message, told me that he had had it already from his lordship, and had repeated it to my master. Immediately afterwards we set to work at our little preliminaries, and were soon sweating and black as negroes.

‘That night there was a supper in the hall of the King’s lodging, the Queen being there, my master, the Earls of Huntly and Argyll, the Lord Livingstone and others, with the King lying on a couch that he might have their company. They were merry enough at their meal, for I was working close by and heard them; and I could not help reflecting upon the drollery of it—for it was droll—that here were executioners and patient all laughing together, and I behind the party wall laying the table (as it were) for an ambrosial banquet for one at least of the company. It is impossible to avoid these humorous images, or I find it so.

‘Bastien the Breton had that very morning been married to Dolet—both Queen’s servants. She had been at their mass, and (loving them fondly, as she was prone to love her servants) intended to be present at the masque of the night and to put the bride to bed. She, my master, Monsieur de Huntly, and Mistress Seton were all to go; they were at this supper in their masquing gear. My master’s was very rich, being of a black satin doublet slashed with cloth of silver, black velvet trunks trussed and tagged with the same. My lord of Huntly was all in white. I did not fairly see the Queen’s gown, which was of a dark colour, I think of claret, and her neck and bosom bare. I remember that she had a small crown of daisies and pearls, and a collar of the same things.

‘At eleven o’clock, or perhaps a little after, the Queen’s linkmen and carriers were called for. Nelson told me that she kissed the King very affectionately, and promised to see him the next day. He was positive about that, for (being curious) I asked him if he had certainly heard her say that.

‘“Oh, yes,” he said, “and I’ll tell you why. The King caught her by the little finger and held her. ‘Next day, say you?’ he asked her. ‘And when will you say, “This night,” Mary?‘

‘“She laughed and swung her hand to and fro, and his with it that held it. ‘Soon,’ she said, ‘soon.’”

‘This is what Nelson told me: he was never the man to have conceived that charming scene of comedy. Well, to continue, my master was to escort her Majesty out of the house, the grooms going before with torches. Her litter was in Thieves’ Row, as you may believe when you reflect that our train of gunpowder extended down her private flight of steps, across the garden to the door which gives on to Hamilton House. All my work lay on that side, and there I should have been; but by some extraordinary mischance it happened that I was just outside the door when my master led her Majesty out, and so—in a full light of torches—she came plump upon me.

‘That was a very unfortunate incident, for I was as black as a charcoal-burner. But there it was: I came full tilt upon her and my lord, and saw her face in the light of the torches as fair and delicate as a flower, and her eyes exceedingly bright and luminous, like stars in midsummer. She was whispering and laughing on my master’s arm, and he (somewhat distracted) saying, “Ay, ay,” in the way he has when he is bothered and wishes to be quiet.

‘But at the sight of me flat against the wall she gave a short cry, and crushed her bosom with her free hand. “O God! O God! who is this?”

‘She caught at my master’s arm. By my head, I had given her a fright—just as the colliers of old gave that Count of Tuscany who thought they were devils come to require his soul, and was converted to God, and built seven fine abbeys before he died. Her mouth was open; she did not breathe; her face was all white, and her eyes were all black.

‘“Pardon, madam, it is I, your servant, poor French Paris,” I said; and my master in a hurry, “There, ma’am, there; you see, it is a friend of ours.”

‘When she got her breath again, it came back in a flood, like to suffocate her. She struggled and fought for it so, I made sure she would faint. So did my master, who put his hand behind to catch her and save the noise of her fall. She shut her eyes, she tottered. Oh, it was a bad affair! But she recovered herself by some means, and did her bravest to carry it off. “Jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are!” she said, panting and swallowing; and my master damned me for a blackguardly spy, and bade me go wash myself.

‘It is true I was behind the door, but most false that I was spying. God knows, I had enough secrets to keep without smelling for more. But that was not a time to be justifying myself. My master took the Queen away immediately, Mistress Seton with her. Afterwards I heard my Lords Argyll and Livingstone depart—but not M. de Huntly. I saw him again before I went out myself.

‘I waited about until I heard the King helped up to bed by his servants; I waited a long time. They sang a psalm in his chamber, and talked afterwards, laughing and humming airs. They had the boy to amuse them with fooleries: Heaven knows what they did or did not. I thought they would never finish. Finally, I heard the King call, “Good-night all,” saw the lights put out, and made a move at my best pace to get home, clean myself, and be ready for the others. Going through the garden along the edge of my powder-train, I met somebody, who called out, “It is I, the Earl of Huntly,” and then said, “Remember you of my words? It is now past midnight. Fire nothing until you hear the strokes of two. More depends upon that than you can understand. Now be off.” I wished his lordship a good-night, and he replied, “Go you to the devil with your nights.” So off I went.

‘We all made ready, and assembled in good time at the door of our house in the Cowgate: my master, M. Hob Ormiston, M. de Tala, M. de Bowton, myself, Powrie, Dalgleish, and Patrick Wilson. There may have been more—it seemed to me that one or another joined us as we went—in which case I know not their names. We went down by the Blackfriars’ Wynd, meeting nobody, through the Kirk o’ Field Port, and round by the wall to Hamilton House. A light was burning in the upper window of that mansion, and was not extinguished so long as I was there (though they tell me it was blown out after the explosion); but no man came out to join us at the appointed place. Half the company was stopped at the corner of the town wall by my master’s orders: he himself, M. d’Ormiston, and I went into the garden; and just as we entered, so well had all been timed, I heard Saint Giles’ toll the hour of two. I lighted the train; and then we all went back, joined the others (who had seen nothing dangerous outside the wall), and returned by the way we had come—no one saying anything. We may have been half of the way to the Gate—I cannot say—when the darkness was, as it were, split asunder as by a flare of lightning, one of those sheeted flames that illumines a whole quarter of the sky, and shows in the midst a jagged core of intenser light. And whilst we reeled before it came the crash and volley of the noise, as if all Hell were loosed about us. What became of our betters I know not, nor what became of any. For myself, I tell you fairly that I stooped and ran as if the air above me were full of flying devils.

‘By some fate or other I ran, not to the city, but along the wall of the Blackfriars’ Garden, a long way past the Gate, and lay down in a sort of kennel there was while I fetched up my breath again. Then, not daring to go back to the Wynd, for I was sure the whole town would be awake, I considered that the best thing for me to do was to climb that garden wall, and lie hidden within it until the citizens had wondered themselves to sleep. So I did, without difficulty, and felt my way through brakes and shrubberies into what seemed to be an open space. I lit my lantern, and found myself in a kind of trained arbour, oval or circular in shape, made all of clipped box. In the middle of it were a broad platt of grass and a dial: a snug enough place which would suit me very well. It appeared to me, too, that there was a settle on the far side, on which I could repose myself. Good! I would lie there.

‘The path of light made by my lantern showed me now another thing—that I was not the only tenant of this garden. There lay a man in white midway of the grass. “Oho,” thinks I, “I will have a close look at you, my friend, before I settle down.” Peering at him from my safe distance, I saw that he had another beside him; and made sure that I was on the edge of an indiscretion. If here I was in a bower of bliss, it became me on all counts to withdraw. But first I must be sure: too much depended upon it. I drew nearer: the light fell upon those two who lay so still. My heart ceased to beat. Stretched out upon that secret grass, with his eyes staring horribly into the dark, lay the King whom I had gone forth to slay—stark and dead there, and the dead boy by his side. By God and his Mother! I am a man of experience, with no call to be on punctilio with dead men. But that dead man, I am not ashamed to say, made me weep, after I had recovered myself a little.

‘God has shown me great mercy. I am not guilty of the King’s death, nor is my master. I should have supposed that my Lord Huntly killed him, to save the Queen from deadly sin, and could then have understood his urgent instructions to me not to go to work before a certain hour. If that had been so, all honour to him. I say, so I should have supposed; but one little circumstance made me hesitate. Near by, on the same grass platt, I found a velvet shoe, which I took back with me into town. It was purchased of me afterwards by Monsieur Archibald Douglas, that grey-headed young man, for six hundred crowns; and I believe I might have had double. That, mind you, told me a tale!

‘The King had been smothered, I consider. There were no wounds upon him of any sort, nor any clothes but his shirt. Taylor, the boy, was naked.

‘There, gentlemen, you have a relation of my share in these dark facts, told you by a man whose position (as you may say) between one world and another is likely to sober his fancy and incline him to the very truth.’

French Paris, a jaunty dog—with a kind of brisk, dog’s fidelity upon him which is a better quality in a rascal than no fidelity, or perhaps than dull fidelity—has very little more to say to you and me.