CHAPTER VII
THE RED BRIDEGROOM

Margaret Carwood, the Queen’s woman, had a tale to tell, if she could be got to repeat it. She had undressed her mistress, who came in exceedingly late from Bastien’s masque, and put the bedgown upon her: then was the time for Father Roche to come in for prayers—if any time were left, which Carwood could not think was the case. Would her Majesty, considering the lateness of the hour, excuse his Reverence?

But her Majesty looked wildly at Carwood and began to rave. ‘Do you think me leprous, Carwood? Am I not to be prayed with? Why, this is treason!’ And she continued to shiver and mutter, ‘Treason! Treason!’ until the woman, terrified, called up the Chaplain, and he came in with the rest of the household and began the accustomed prayers. Gradually the Queen composed herself, and you could hear her voice—as usual—above all the others, leading the responses.

In the midst of the psalms of the hour, Carwood said, there struck on all ears a dull thud, like the booming of water upon a rock in the sea; the windows of the house shook, and litter was heard to fall behind the wainscot. Then complete silence—and out of that, far off in the city, rose a low and long wailing cry, ‘as of one hurt to death and desolate.’ Father Roche, who had stopped his Gloria Patri at the first shock, when he heard that cry, said sharply, ‘O King of Glory, what’s that?’ and stared at the window, trembling like a very old man; and nobody else was much bolder than he. But the Queen, stiff as a stone, went on where he had left off, driving the words out of herself, higher and higher, faster and faster, until she finished on a shrill, fierce note:—‘Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen‘; and only stopped there because it was not her part to begin the next psalm.

A strange midnight picture! There was Father Roche, the old Dominican, looking all ways for danger, twittering before the candles and cross; there Des-Essars on his knees, with his white face peaked and taut; there poor Carwood, her apron over her head, swaying about; there old Mother Reres spying wickedly out of the corners of her eyes at Mary Livingstone, stern as thunder. Erskine with his white staff stood at the door, two clinging pages about him; in the midst, at her faldstool, the slim, fever-bright Queen in her furred gown, praying aloud, she alone, like a nun in ecstasy. With Father Roche in extremis, Des-Essars was the first to relieve the strain by boldly intoning the versicle; but there were no more prayers. Carwood and Livingstone took the Queen to bed, and Livingstone stayed with her. Carwood says that she herself slept ‘like drowned weed.’ When Livingstone woke her next morning, she heard the great bell tolling at Saint Giles’. She asked first of the Queen, and was told she was ‘quiet.’ She did not dare any more questions, and remained until midday inmate of the only house in town which did not know the news.

Mary Livingstone would say nothing to any one: in fact, so grim were her looks that no one cared to question her. Lady Reres kept her chamber. At nine o’clock the Earl of Huntly came up, with a very fixed face, and was taken to the Queen’s bedchamber door by Des-Essars, who went no farther himself, but hung about the corridor and anteroom in case he might be sent for. Before long he heard the Queen in distress, crying and talking at once, a flood of broken words; and, whiles, Lord Huntly’s voice, sombre and restrained, ill calculated to calm her. Presently Mary Livingstone opened the door, and he heard the Queen calling for him: ‘Baptist, O Baptist, come—quick, quick!’

‘Go to her,’ says Livingstone drily; ‘this is beyond my powers.’

He ran into the room, and saw her lying half-naked on her bed, face downwards, her hair all over her eyes. She looked like one in mortal agony.

‘O madam, O sweet madam——’ he began, being on his knees before her.

She lifted her head. ‘Who calls me?’

She sat up, and parted her hair from her face with her finger-tips. He saw her transfigured, flushed like one with a heat-rash, and her eyes cloudy black, glazed and undiscerning. She was in a transport of feeling, far beyond his scope; but she knew him, and cleared in his sight.

‘Baptist, the King is dead.’

‘Dead, madam! Oh, alas!’

She gripped him by the arm and steadied herself by it. She read his very soul; her eyes seemed to bite him. And she answered a question which he had not asked.

‘How should I know who slew him? How should I? I know not—I do not ask—nor need you—nor should you. But there is one who had no hand in it—be you sure of that. Let none call him murderer—he did nothing amiss. Do you hear? Do you understand? He is clean as new snow—and I—and I—clean as the snow, Baptist. O God! O God!’

She loosed his arm and flung herself down, shaken to pieces by her hard sobbing. Her face had been dry, her eyes tearless. If she could not weep, he thought, it must go hard with her. Livingstone came into the room and went to her help. She used no ceremony, got into the bed, and drew the poor distraught creature to her bosom, whispered to her, kissed and stroked her, mothered her as if it were one of her own children she was tending. The Queen clung to her. Lord Huntly drew Des-Essars aside, into the embrasure of the window.

‘Listen to me, Monsieur Des-Essars,’ he said: ‘I speak to you because I know that you are in her Majesty’s confidence. It is very necessary that her friends should understand what I am going to tell you. My Lord Bothwell had no part in the King’s death. It is true he intended it—I do not attempt to conceal that from you—and even that he went farther than intent; but the King was dead before he came. He had his own plans, and laid them well. But there were other plans of which he had no suspicion.’ Des-Essars would have spoken; Lord Huntly put a hand over his mouth. ‘Say nothing. Ask me not who did it. I was there, and saw it done. I believe that it was just, and will answer for my part when it is required of me.’

‘My lord,’ said Des-Essars, ‘your secret is safe with me. I will only say this: If that person of whom you spake had no part in the deed, then she is free.’

‘She is free,’ said Huntly. ‘I saw to that.’

‘You saw to it—you?’

‘I saw to it. It was I who deceived—that person—and delayed his plans. There was a time, long ago, when I played her false. She trusted me, believing in my honesty, and I forsook her. I have never been able to forgive myself or ceased to call myself traitor until now. And this time, when she has trusted me but little, I have served her.’

‘I hope you may have served her, my lord, but——’

‘Man,’ said Huntly sternly, ‘what are your hopes or mine to the purpose in a case of the sort? Do you not know her better? She would have had him, had he been soaked in blood. Well! now she can have him clean.’

Des-Essars knelt down and kissed the other’s hand. ‘My lord, you have given me a schooling in great love. If the time comes when there shall be need of me, I hope to prove myself your good pupil.’

‘Get up,’ said Huntly, not pleased with this tribute; ‘they serve best who talk least. But you may be sure that the time is at hand when there will be need of more than you and me.’ He looked sadly out of window, across the red roofs, out into the slowly brightening sky. Des-Essars was silent.

They announced the Earl of Bothwell. The Queen put back her hair and wiped her eyes—for Mary Livingstone had thawed her hard grief. She covered herself up to the neck. Bothwell came in, with a low reverence at the door, and made room for Livingstone to go out. She swept by him like a Queen-mother. Queen Mary beckoned him to the bedside, and gave him both her hands to hold. ‘Oh, you have come to me! Oh, you have come to me!’ was all she could say. She could not speak coherently for her full heart. He bent over and kissed her; and for a time they remained so, whispering brokenly to each other and kissing. ‘Have you heard Huntly’s tale?’ she asked him aloud.

He was now sitting composedly by her bed, one leg over the other.

‘Yes, yes, long ago! We have had our talk together.’

She fingered the counterpane. ‘Belike he told you more than I could win of him. He will name no names.’

Bothwell laughed shortly.

‘He is wise. Names make mischief. I could wish his own were as well out of that as mine is. Heard you of Archie’s shoe?’

She had not. He told her of Paris’s discovery in the garden; they both laughed at Archie’s mishap. Bothwell supposed it would cost him five hundred crowns to redeem. We know from Paris that it cost him six.

My Lord Bothwell’s opinion, which he expressed with great freedom, was that Morton and the Douglases had killed the King soon after he had been put to bed. The body had been cold when Paris found it—cold and stiff. Then there was a woman, who had been talking with her neighbours, and found herself under examination in the Tolbooth before she could end her tale. She lived in Thieves’ Row. She declared, and nothing so far had shaken her, that a tick or two after midnight she had heard the scuffling of many feet in the road, and a voice which cried aloud, ‘Pity me, kinsmen, for the love of Him who pitied all the world!’ She heard it distinctly; but, being in bed, and accustomed to hear such petitions, did not get up, and soon after fell asleep. Also there had been heard a boy crying, ‘Enough to break your heart,’ she said. But it had not broken her rest, for all that. This was the story, and——‘Well, now,’ says my Lord Bothwell, ‘what else are you to make of that?’

Des-Essars, watching the Queen’s face under this recital, saw the clouds gather for a storm. Lord Huntly had listened to it with unmoved face. At the end he said gravely, ‘He was long dying’; and no one spoke or moved for some minutes until the Queen suddenly hid her face and sobbed, and cried out that she wished she herself were dead. Lord Bothwell, at that, put his arms about her with rough familiarity, lifted her half out of bed to his own breast, kissed her lax lips, and said, ‘That wilt thou unwish within these few days. What! when thou art thine own mistress and all? No, but thou wilt desire to live rather, to be my dear comfort and delight. For now, look thou, my honey-Queen, thou and I are to get our bliss of one another.’ She, not responding by word or sign, but struggling and striving to be free of his arms, presently he put her down again, and left her. Huntly followed him; and they went up to the Council, which was set for noon.

‘I remained kneeling by her,’ says Des-Essars, ‘while she lay without motion, until presently I found that she was in a heavy sleep. When I went downstairs I heard that Mistress Livingstone had left the Court and gone to her husband, Sempill, at Beltrees.’

The silence of the town during those first few days of doubt was a terrifying thing, enough to try the nerves of the stoutest man; it drove the Queen to such dangerous excesses of exaltation and despondency that all her friends were on tenterhooks to get her away before the storm (which all knew must be brooding) should burst. For what could it portend but a storm, this fatal silence, this unearthly suspense of clamour and judgment? It was not that the citizens merely held their tongues from rumour: it was more literally silence; they talked not at all. If you walked up the Netherbow or round the porch of Saint Giles’; if you hung about the Luckenbooths at noon or ventured any of the Wynds at sun-setting—wheresoever you went about Edinburgh, you heard the padding of feet sparsely on the flagstones; but no voices, no hawkers’ cries, no women calling their children out of the gutters, nor bickering of men in the ale-shops, nor laughter, nor bewailing. The great houses were closely shut and guarded; the Lords of the Privy Council transacted their business behind close doors; messengers came and went, none questioning; the post came galloping down the hill with a clatter which you would have thought enough to open every window in the High Street and show you every pretty girl at her best. But no! So long as the King remained above ground, Death kept his wrinkled hand upon Edinburgh and made the place seem like a burying-ground, whose people were the mourners, crouched, whispering, against the walls—and all together huddled under the cold spell of the graves.

This continued until the day of the funeral, by which time it was absolutely necessary that the Queen should be got away. She agreed—was eager to go; and, before she went, saw the body of the King, which lay in the Chapel Royal, upon a tressle bed, dressed up in the gilt cuirass and white mantle which in life it had worn so bravely. Mary Seton and Des-Essars, who took her in, were so relieved to find their anxieties vain that they had no thought to be surprised. ‘Not only did she stand and look upon the corpse without change of countenance or any sign of distress, but she had her wits all at command. The first thing she said was, “He looks nobly lying there so still: in life he was ever fidgeting with his person,”—which was quite true. And the next thing was, “Look you, look you, he lies just over Davy’s grave!” And then she remembered that we were within one month of the anniversary of that poor wretch’s undoing by this very dead; she reminded us of it. Without any more words, she remained there standing, looking earnestly at him and round about him; and bade one of the priests who watched go fetch a new candle, for one was nearly spent. So far as I could ascertain, she did not kneel or offer any prayer; and after a time she walked slowly away, without reverence to the altar—a strange omission in her—or any looking back. Nor did I ever hear her, of her own motion, speak of him again; but he became to her as though he had never been—which, in a sense that means he had touched or moved her, he never had. Before the funeral celebrations she went to my Lord Seton’s house, and there remained waiting until the Earl of Bothwell could find time to visit her, full of projects, very sanguine and contented. She said to me one day, “You think my maids have forsaken me; you grieve over Livingstone and Fleming. Of the last I say nothing; but I can fetch Livingstone back to me whenever I choose. You shall see.” And she did it before very long.’

On the night following the funeral the profound silence of Edinburgh was broken by a long shrill cry, as of a wandering man. Several people heard him, and shivered in their beds; only one, bolder than the rest, saw him in a broad patch of moonlight. He came slowly down the midst of the Canongate, flap-hatted and cloaked; and as he went, now and again he threw up his head towards the moon, and cried, like one calling the news, ‘Vengeance on those who caused me to shed innocent blood! O Lord, open the heavens and pour down vengeance on those that have destroyed the innocent!’ Upon the hushed city the effect was terrible, as you may judge by this, that no windows were opened and no watchman ventured to stop the man. But next morning there was found a bill upon the Cross which accused Bothwell by name of the deed. It drew a crowd, and then, as by one consent, all tongues were loosened and all pens set free to rail. The Queen was not spared; pictures of her as the Siren, fish-tailed, ogling, naked, malign, made the walls shameful. The preachers took up the text and shrieked her name; and every night the shrouded crier went his rounds. The Red Bridegroom was on all tongues, the Pale Bride in all men’s thoughts.

The Earl of Bothwell, strongly guarded as he was, took, or affected to take, no notice of the clamour; but Archie Douglas became very uneasy, and induced his cousin Morton to have the nightly brawler apprehended. He was therefore taken on the fourth night, and shut up in a pestilential prison called the Thief’s Pit, where no doubt he shortly died. But his words lived after him, and he testified through all men’s tongues. Among the many thousand rumours that got about was one, intolerable to Bothwell, that the Earl of Moray was about to return to Edinburgh, and, in the absence of the Queen, act for the general good of the realm. It was said also that Morton was in correspondence with him, and that it was by his orders that Mr. James Balfour, parson of Fliske, was to be arrested and confined to his own house. Adding to these things the daily letters of the Earl of Lennox to the Privy Council, appealing, in a father’s name, to the honour of Scotland; adding also the Queen’s letters to himself, my Lord Bothwell judged it wise to depart the town; so went down to her Majesty in the country, to Lord Seton’s house, where she still lay. And as he rode out of town, close hemmed in the ranks of his own spearmen, he heard for the first time that name which had been his ever since tongues began to wag: ‘Ay, there he goes for his wages, the Red Bridegroom.’

The night of his coming, old Lady Reres made mischief, if any were left to be made; for after supper, fiddlers being in the gallery, what must she to do but clap her hands to them and call for a tune. ‘Fiddlers,’ says she, ‘I call for “Well is me since I am free”‘; and she got it too. Lord Bothwell gave one of his great guffaws, and held out his hand at the signal; the Queen laughed as she took it and was pleased. They danced long and late. But next morning my Lord Seton made some kind of excuse, and left his own house, nor would he come back to it until the Court had removed. With him went the Earl of Argyll.

These departures were the signal for the most insensate revelry—led by the Queen, insisted upon by her, satisfying neither herself nor her lover, nor any of her friends. Des-Essars and the few faithful of the old stock looked on as best they could, always in silence. Not one of them would talk to another, for fear he should hear something with which he would be forced to agree. Le Secret des Secrets is extremely reticent over this insane ten days, in which the Queen—it must be said—was to be seen (by those who had the heart to observe) wooing a man to sin; and when he would not, after torments of deferred desire, of mortification, and of that reproach which never fails a baffled sinner, springing hot-eyed to the chase next day, following him about, wreathing her arms, kissing and whispering, beckoning, inviting, trying all ways to lure him on; heart-rending spectacle for any modest young man, but, to a worshipper-at-a-distance like our chronicler, an almost irremediable disaster, since it kept an open sore in the fair image he had made, and showed him horrible people, with eyesight as good as his own, leering at it. Yes! French Paris, Bastien, Carwood, Joachim, the baser sort—grooms, valets, chamber-women, scullions of the kitchen, saw his flame-proud Queen craving, and craving in vain. He ground his teeth over the squalid comedy. His pen is as secret as death; but it is said that, on one occasion, when he had seen Bothwell stalk into the labyrinth, and soon afterwards the Queen, her head hooded, steal lightly after him, the comments of other beholders roused him to vehement action. It is said that he heard chuckling from the base court, and a ‘Did you mark that? She is close on his heels—a good hound she!’ and saw two greasy heads hobnobbing. He waited, blinking his eyes, until one began to whistle the ramping tune of ‘O, gin Jocky wad but steal me!’ then flashed into the court and drubbed a grinning cook-boy within a few inches of his life. What satisfaction this just exercise may have been was spoiled by the reflection that the flogged rascal knew why he had been made to smart: enough to make our young knight cut off the avenging hand.

These things weighed and considered, I think that what little he does say is curiously judicial. He remarks that the Queen his mistress, restless and miserable as she was, invited oblivion by eating and drinking too much, by dancing too much, by riding too hard; that she suffered from want of sleep; that, as for her love-affair, it was no joy to her. ‘Hers was a plain case of mental love. But I say, Hum!—where the Lover makes an eidolon of the Beloved, and is happiest contemplating that, adorning it with flowers of fancy, and planning delights which can only be realised in solitude,—then the bodily presence of the adored creature effectually destroys the image: a seeming paradox.

‘Thus, however, it was with my mistress. Never was man less suited to lady than this burly lord; never did lady contrive out of material so clumsy master of her bosom so divine. But his presence marred all, because it led her to indulge the monstrous reality instead of the idea. She was generous to a fault (all her faults, indeed, were due to excess of nobility), and most injudicious. Her submission to him tempted him all ways—to domineer, to be overbearing, insolent, a brute; to treat her on occasion as I am very sure my Lady Bothwell would never have allowed herself to be treated. But the Queen bowed her head for still greater ignominy, although more than once I saw her flinch and look away, as if, poor soul, she turned quickly, to comfort herself, from the hateful, real Bothwell of fed flesh to that shining Bothwell of her heart and mind. In all this she was her own enemy; but (by a misfortune two-edged) in other ways she contrived enemies for him. Thus it was an act of madness to make him presents of the late king’s stud, of his dogs and horse-furniture. She added—O doting, most unhappy prodigal!—the gilt armour and great golden casque with crimson plumes, by which the dolt king had been best known. Nothing that she could have done could have been worse judged. Quem Deus vult perdere! Alas and alas!

‘Yet, I must say, it is due to my Lord Bothwell to remember that he was now what he had always been—not consciously cruel, not wilful to torment her, and by no means withholding from her what she so sorely needed of him by any scruples of conscience. Coarse in grain he was, and candidly appetent, but as continent as Joseph when his cautionary side was alert; and, true to his nation, he was at once greedy and cautious. He was never one to refuse gratification to a woman who loved him, if by granting it he could afford any real gratification to himself. It was a question of the scales with him. Now, in the present state of his ventures everything must wait upon security: and security was the last thing he had gained. He would have pleased her if he could, for he was by no means an ill-tempered man, nor a cruel man, unless his necessities drove him that way. And just now they did drive him. His position in Scotland was full of peril: he was universally credited with the King’s death, had few friends, and could not count upon keeping those he had. In fine, everything that he had consistently striven after from the hour when he first saw the Queen at Nancy was just within his grasp. He had climbed the tree inch by inch, bruised himself, scratched himself, torn his clothes to rags; and now it seemed that he hung by a thread—and the fruit could not be plucked yet. The fruit was dropping ripe, but he dared not stretch out his hand for it, lest it should fall by his shaking of the branch, or he by moving too soon. If either fell, he was a dead man. What wonder if he were fretful, gloomy, suspicious, full of harsh mockery? What wonder, again, if he seemed cruel in refusing to ease her smart until his neck were safe? No, I do not blame him. But I curse the hour in which his mother bore him—to be the bane of his country and his Queen. No more.’

The Court returned to Edinburgh upon the news that an Ambassador Extraordinary was come from England. Although there could be no doubt of the matter of his errand, Bothwell insisted upon his reception. In other respects the Queen was glad to go. Her malady kept her from any rest; the emptiness of the days aggravated it until it devoured the substance of her flesh. She had grown painfully thin; she had a constant cough—could not sleep, and was not nourished by meat and drink. Her eyes burned like sunken fires, her lips were as bright as blood, but all the rest of her was a dead, unwholesome white. She said that there was a rat gnawing at her heart. In such a desperate case it seemed to her friends that the murmurs and mutterings of Edinburgh could bring her no further harm: so she went, entered in semi-state, and got a fright.

Her reception was bad: not cold, but accompanied by the murmurs of a great and suspicious crowd. She heard the name they had for Bothwell—‘The Red Bridegroom’—half-voiced with a grim snarl of humour in the tone. Nothing was actually said against herself, but she was acutely sensitive to shades of difference; and after riding rigidly down to Holyrood, the moment she had alighted she caught Des-Essars by the arm, and, ‘You see! You see! They hate me!’

But Mr. Killigrew, from England, and the Earl of Morton, when she summoned him, soon assured her that what Scotland felt towards her was as nothing compared to the common abhorrence of her lover.

Bothwell went away to Liddesdale to see his wife. It is supposed that there was an understanding between him and the Queen, because she made no objection to his going, and did not fret in his absence. She saw Mr. Killigrew alone, in a darkened room, saying: ‘The first thing his mistress, my sister, will ask him, is of my favour in affliction; and I know,’—she put her hand on her bosom—‘I know how thin I am become, and how the tears have worn themselves caves in my cheeks; and would not for all the world that they in England should know.’ The audience lasted half-an-hour; and when Mr. Killigrew left Holyrood, he went to Lord Morton’s house. Thence, it was afterwards found out, he made a journey to Dunkeld, and paid a two days’ visit to the Earl of Moray. There is no doubt he went back full charged to England.

Des-Essars gleaned all the news he could. He told the whole to Huntly, to the Queen what he must. The town was full of dangerous ferment, which at any moment might burst out. Most of the lords were in the country; most of them were, or had been, at Dunkeld: Seton, Argyll, Atholl, Lindsay, Morton, Mar had all conferred with Moray. What had they to say to him? What, above all, had Morton to say to him—Morton, who had killed the King? When Huntly had this question put, and could find no answer to it, he went directly to the Queen and advised her to send for her brother. She hated the necessity, but allowed it. Meanwhile, the King’s father, old Lennox, wrote daily letters to her and to the Council, crying vengeance on the murder. He did not hesitate, in writing to the lords, to name Bothwell, Tala, and Ormiston as the murderers; and they did not hesitate to repeat his charges to the Queen. Old Lady Reres, delighting in mischief, underscored the names in red whenever she could. The Queen was furious.

‘He is innocent of all—I know it for a truth. Who accuses my Lord of Bothwell accuses me. It is rank treason.’

These sort of speeches cannot acquit a man, and may convict their speaker.

Then my Lord Moray, in a courteous letter, excused himself from attendance upon his sovereign at this conjuncture. His health, he regretted to say, was far from good, or he should not have failed to obey her Majesty. The Queen was much put about. Send a peremptory summons to the Earl of Morton, says Huntly; she did it without question. Morton came on the night of 8th March, and Des-Essars, who saw him ride into the courtyard at the head of a troop in his livery, remembered that on the same night a year ago he and these pikemen of his had been masters of Holyrood. What a whirligig! Masters of Holyrood; then outwitted, ruined, and banished; now back in favour, and, by the look of them, in a fair way to be masters again. The bluff lord had the masterful air; the way in which he announced himself seemed to say, ‘Oh, she’ll see me quick enough! She hath need of me, look you!’ He was very much at his ease—cracked his jokes with Erskine all the way upstairs, and, meeting Lethington at the head of them, asked after his new wife, with a gross and somewhat premature rider to the general question.

She sent for her young confidant when the audience was over, and greeted him with, ‘Now, foolish boy, you shall be contented. He is fast for us—will say nothing if we say nothing.’

‘Oh, madam, did he seek to bargain with your Majesty?’

She laughed. ‘No, no! Nor did I cross his palm with earnest-money. But there would have been no harm.’

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘you shall forgive me for saying that there would have been much. It is not for the prince to compound with treason, nor for a noble, innocent lady to traffic with the guilty.’

She stopped his mouth, her hand upon it. ‘Hush, thou foolish boy! What treason did he do? To set me free—is this treason? To rid me of my tyrant—was this guilt?’

He hung his head, and she watched his confusion; then, repenting, stroked his face, murmuring, ‘Foolish boy! Fond boy! Fond and foolish both—to love a lover!’

She told him a secret. She had heard two women talking beyond the garden wall. They spoke laughingly together of the Red Bridegroom—‘and of me, Baptist, they spake somewhat.’

‘I know, I know! Tell me no more.’

‘Of me they spake,’ she went on. ‘“Bothwell’s wench,” they said, “Bothwell’s——”’

He caught at her wrist. ‘Stop! I will not hear you! I shall kill myself if you say that word!’

She swung her hand to and fro, and his with it, which held her so fast. ‘The word,’ she said, ‘is nothing without the thing—and the thing is not true. I would that it were! Do you set so much store by names and framed breaths and idle ceremonies, and call yourself my lover? Do you tell me to my face that if I called you to come to me, to stretch open your two arms and clasp me within them, and to fly with me this world of garniture and bending backs and wicked scheming heads, and abide night and morning, through noon-heat and evening glow and the secrets of long nights under the watching stars, fast by my side, with our mouths together and our hearts kissing, and our two souls molten to one—do you tell me now that you would deny me? Answer you.’

He faced her steadfastly. ‘I do say so. I should deny you. I serve God, and honour you. How should I dare do you dishonour?’

She was very angry—shook him off. ‘Leave my wrist. How do you presume to hold your Queen? Leave me alone! You insult me by look and word.’

He left her at once, but she sent for him early next morning and easily made amends.

Driven to it at last, on the 24th of the month she wrote to old Lennox that Bothwell should be tried by his peers. She did it partly because Huntly advised it as the only possible way to stop the growing clamour, but much more because she wanted Bothwell back. He had been with his wife all the month; Huntly also had been there more than once—Adam Gordon, old Lady Huntly. A family council was, perhaps, in the nature of the case; but all the members of that had returned a week ago, and why should he remain? Why, indeed, if (as all Scotland believed) he had gone to urge divorce upon his Countess? So the excuse was made to serve: he was formally summoned; returned to town on the 28th; made public entry with an imposing force of his friends and adherents; kissed the Queen’s hand in all men’s sight, and on the same day sat at the Council board, and discussed with the others, who were to try him, the precedents for his own trial. This was no way to satisfy Lennox or Edinburgh.

The assize was fixed for 12th April. On the 7th of that month the Earl of Moray left Scotland without leave asked or leave-taking of the Queen. He stayed a day at Berwick, and had a long conference with the English Warden, then took ship and sailed for France. This should have given her pause, and did for a day or two; but to a craving nymph, stalking gauntly the waste places, what matters but the one thing? It made Des-Essars serious enough, and put French Paris in a dreadful fright. His master, he said, ‘was fool enough to be glad at his going; but the Queen knew better. M. Des-Essars told me that she wept, and would have sent messengers after him to get him back if she could. Ah, and she was right! For when yet did that lord’s departure betoken her anything but harm? Never, never, never!’ says French Paris.

The trial itself was a form from beginning to end, with the Queen a declared partisan, and the assize packed with her friends or his. My lord rode down to it as to a wedding; he rode one of the dead king’s horses—rode it gaily; and as he departed he looked up at the window and waved his hat, and all men saw the flutter of the Queen’s white handkerchief; and some say that she herself was to be seen smiling and nodding to him. Certain it is that when he was cleared—a matter of a few hours—and came out into the light of day and the face of a huge crowd, which blocked the street from side to side, he was met by Lethington, bareheaded, and by Melvill, bowing to the earth, and by the concourse with a chill and rather terrible silence. One shrill cry went up in all that quiet, and one alone. ‘Burn the hure!’ was shrieked by a woman, but instantly hushed down, and nothing was heard after it but the trampling of horses as Bothwell’s troop went by. When the Queen met him at the foot of the palace stairs, he went down on his knees; but many saw the smile that looped up his mouth. She was very much moved, could not say more than, ‘Get up—come—I must speak with you.’

He went upstairs with her—they two alone. The courts and yards of Holyrood were like a camp.

Such a state of things might not last for long. Bothwell could not go out of doors alone. Even in company his hand was always at his dagger, his eye for ever casting round, probing corners for ambushes, searching men’s faces for signs of wavering or fixed purpose. Strong man as he was, circumstances were too many for him: he told Paris one day that he was ‘near done.’

‘Sir,’ says Paris, ‘and so, I take leave to say, is the Queen’s majesty. If your lordship is for the seas——’

‘Damn you, I am not!’ said Bothwell.

He considered the case as closely as ever anything in his life, for he was engaged in a great game. He consulted one or two men—Melvill, Lord Livingstone, his leering old uncle of Orkney. He sounded Morton, Argyll, Bishop Lesley (as he now was become); and then he gave a supper at Ainslie’s, opened his plans, and got their promises to stand by him. He wrote these out and made them sign. This was on 19th April, and that night he certainly saw the Queen. I say ‘certainly’ because Des-Essars, who was with her afterwards, was told by her that ‘her lord’ had gone into Liddesdale to harry the reivers. Something in her tone—he could not see her eyes—made him doubt her: a little something made him suspect that she intended him to doubt.

So, ‘Reivers, ma’am!’ he cried. ‘Is this a time to consider the lifting of cattle, when yourself and him are in danger, and no man knows when the town may rise?’

Her answer was an odd one. She was sitting in a low chair by the wood fire, leaning back, looking at the red embers through her fingers. Before she spoke she lowered her head, as if to put her face in shadow, and looked up at him sideways. He saw the gleam of one eye, the edge of her cheek where the light caught it. As he read her, she was laughing at him.

‘More may be lifted than cattle by these wild men of the Border. I am going to Stirling in two days’ time, and maybe we shall meet, my lord and I.’

He asked her calmly—accustomed to her way of declaring certainties as possibilities—was such a meeting arranged for? ‘Come to me, child,’ she said (though he was not a child), and when he obeyed, ‘Kneel by my side.’ She put her arm round his neck in a sisterly fashion, and said, ‘You shall be with me to Stirling, and again when we depart from Stirling. You forget not that you are my brother? Well, then, brother, I say to you, Leave me not now, for the time is at hand when I shall need you. I believe I am to be made the happiest woman in the world, and need you to share my joy as much as ever you did my sorrow. Hereafter, for many days, I may have no time to speak privately with you. Kiss me, therefore, and wish me happy days and nights.’

He kissed her, wondering and fearing. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘bethink you what you are about! I beg of you to speak with my lord of Huntly in this business of Stirling.’

She said, ‘It is done. I have spoken with him: he was here but an hour gone. And I have Lethington on my side, and Mary Livingstone and Fleming will both be with me.’ She laughed at her thoughts; not for a long time had her old malicious gaiety been upon her. ‘I knew that I could win back Livingstone. Guess you how I did it.’ And when he could not, or would not, she whispered in his ear, ‘She believes I am with child by the King.’

Des-Essars had nothing to say, but she kept him by her, talking of her life about to begin, her joy and pride, love, duty, privilege, in a way so innocent and candid, she might have been a child at play. The hours were small when he bade her good-night, and she said laughingly, ‘Yes, go now. I shall be wise to sleep while I may.’

As he went he stretched out his arms, let them fall, and shrugged his young shoulders—gestures all of despair.

Where all was prepared beforehand it was not hard to forecast the turn of events. It fell out much as Des-Essars had reasoned it over to himself. Upon a fresh spring morning of flitting clouds and dancing grasses, the Queen’s party, rounding the shoulder of a green hill, was suddenly advised of a company of horsemen, advancing at a leisurely trot, at some quarter mile’s distance. One could look upon what followed as at a play; for it may be taken for truth that not a man, soldier or other, so much as swept the uplands with his eye, so conscious was he that a play indeed it was! The oncoming troop was observed in silence; in silence, without word of command or lifted hand, each halted at a spear’s throw. The Earl of Bothwell, with two lieutenants, rode forward, baring his head as he came. Nobody of the Queen’s men went out to meet him; nobody hailed him; nobody moved to safeguard the Queen, who herself sat motionless upon her little white jennet, in the forefront of her escort, Mary Livingstone on one side of her and Mary Fleming on the other. The Earl came to her side, reining up short as his stirrup clicked against hers.

‘Madam, for your Grace’s protection and honour I am come to lead you to a safe hold. I beseech your Majesty take it not amiss in one who desires above all things to serve you.’

The Queen, in a very low voice, replied, ‘Lead me, sir, according to your good judgment.’

He took up the rein of her horse, wheeled, and led her away to his own troop, no one staying him. Mary Livingstone whipped after her, Mary Fleming followed. Then the Earl of Huntly, looking round upon the remnant, free there and armed upon the road, said in measured tones, ‘Follow, sirs, since it seems we are prisoners.’

If play it was, it was not even played properly, but had been reduced to a spiritless rite. Yet, as Des-Essars has the wit to remark, to the Queen the whole had been an act of very beautiful symbolism. He had noticed, as no one else did, the gesture with which she gave herself up—her opened palms, bowed head, good eyes, at once trusting and thankful. Ah! she had been immodest once in her dire need, panting, blowsed, scratched, dishevelled by her ardent chase. He had seen her so, and shuddered. But now she was modest, but now she had regained virginity. A folded maid sought in marriage by a man, she had bowed her head. ‘Lead me, sir, according to your good judgment!’ Thus Des-Essars, fond lover! It is safe to assert that he was alone in discerning these fine things, as the lining of a very vulgar business.

The moment he had the Queen at Dunbar, which was reached by nightfall, my lord dismounted her and took her away. Led by his hand, she went without a word to her women, without any looking back. The rest of the company was left to shift as best it could. There were meat and drink on the spread tables; there may have been beds or there may not. The Queen was no more seen.

Sir James Melvill made an effort, let off a quip or two, ruminated aloud in an anecdotic vein, rallied Lethington, flattered Huntly, felt himself snubbed and knew that he deserved it, but waived off the feeling with his ‘H’m, h’m!’ and recovered his dignity. Huntly gloomed upright; Des-Essars was bent double, head in hands; Lethington walked up and down the hall, marking with his eye flagstones upon which he must alight at every step, or be ruined. To watch his mad athletics made his gentle wife grieve and Mary Sempill rage. Most of Bothwell’s men were asleep; Ormiston was drunk; Hob, his brother, was both. Gradually silence, which had been fitful, became universal; and then they heard the wind moaning round the great house and the sea beating at the black rock on which it stands. The casements shook, doors far off slammed again and again, gulls and kittiwakes screamed as they swept to and fro over the strand; and as the doomed company sat on in the dark listening to all this, and some thinking with horror of what could be doing between those two in the vast wind-possessed house, and some with pity welling like blood, and some shamefully, and some with wisely nodding heads—presently, when the shrilling of the birds grew piercingly loud, one of these banged against the window, and fought there at the glass, battling with wings of panic.

Mary Sempill rose with a shriek. ‘O God, save her! O God, save her!’ She was thinking of her Queen.

Nobody moved except Mary Fleming, who felt out the way to her and put arms about her.

Thus the night went on.

In the morning Paris came down and said that her Majesty desired to see Mistress Sempill. She was taken up, and found the Queen in bed in a darkened room. She walked to the edge of the bed and looked down, seeing little. The Queen lay still, one of her bare arms out of bed; this arm she slowly raised and touched her Livingstone’s cheek, then dropped it again heavily.

But her Livingstone had now recovered herself, and could afford to be cynical.

‘Well—Honeypot?’ said she.

‘Empty,’ said the Queen.

Then her Livingstone kissed her.

CHAPTER VIII
THE BRIDE’S PRELUDE

French Paris took a letter to Lady Bothwell from Dunbar, as he thinks, on the day after the ravishing: he fixes his date from the fact that Sir James Melvill happened to tell him that it was his birthday, the 25th of April.

‘Not the first I have spent in durance, my good fellow,’ the genial gentleman had added, ‘although I tell you candidly that it is the first wedding-night—so to call it—at which I have assisted in such a place.’

Paris would have prolonged so interesting a conversation if his master had not been waiting to be dressed. As it was, he excused himself and hurried up to his duties; which done, my lord handed him a letter, saying, ‘Deliver this safely, at your peril; and remember also that whatsoever my lady shall ask you, she is to have a full answer.’

‘Your lordship may count upon me,’ says the valet, hoping with all his heart that she would not tax his countenance too far. Leaving the room, he was recalled.

‘One thing more, Paris. Your mistress will give you a coffer for me. Guard it well, as you value your neck; for, trust me, if you come not home with that intact, I will run you down though you were in the bury of Hell.’

‘Rest easy, my lord,’ said Paris superbly, ‘rest easy here, and disport yourself as seems good to your wisdom; for certainly I shall never fail you. Nor have I ever,’ added the poor complacent rogue, and took the thought with him up the gallows ladder.

It is a singular thing that Bothwell knew his wife so little as to provide against a line of conduct which she could never have taken. According to Paris, she asked him no awkward questions at all, but read her letter calmly, dipping a toast in white wine and whey as she read. At the end, after musing a while, looking extremely handsome, she said: ‘My lord, I see, makes no mention how long he remains at Dunbar. Knowest thou anything to the purpose?’

Nothing awkward here; but Paris blundered it. ‘Oh, my lady,’ he says, conscious of his red face, ‘I suppose his lordship will stay out the moon.’

‘What hath he to do with the moon, or the moon with him, fool?’ said the Countess; and soon afterwards sent him away, as without any value for her.

One can picture him then in the kitchen quarters—jaunty, abounding in winks and becks; or with the grooms in the stables—what conversations! The play, dragged by the weary, high players, must have quickened when the clowns tumbled through it.

Next day my lady had him up again to her chamber and gave him letters for Edinburgh: a large packet for a notary, one Balnaves or Balneaves, another for the Archbishop’s Grace of Saint Andrews at Hamilton House.

‘Deliver these with speed, Paris, and come back to me—but not here. I shall be at Crichton expecting you—and give you a packet for my lord.’

This is how Paris learned that process of divorce was begun. He dates it the 26th-27th April.

Demure, wide-eared scamp! he was not idle in town, I assure you; but ran from cawsey to cawsey, from tavern-parlour to still-room, into all churches, chapels, brothels, about the quays of Leith, up and down the tenement stairs, spying, watching, judging, and remembering. He was most amazed at the preachers, whose licence to talk exceeded all bounds of belief. There was one Cragg, well named for a rock-faced, square-hewn man, colleague of Mr. Knox’s: to listen only to this firebrand! This Cragg—Paris heard him—rocked screaming and sweating over the brink of his pulpit, and hailed his Queen a Jezebel, a Potiphar’s wife, a strumpet of the Apocalypse. ‘And I could have wrung his brazen neck for him,’ said Paris, ‘but that all the people stood packed about him murmuring their agreement. It would have been my death to have declared myself—and I was vowed to return to my lord.’

The city seemed to be in the governance of the Earl of Morton, unsuspected of any hand in the late crime, and of Lord Lindsay, whom all hot gospellers loved. Close in with them was Grange—Kirkcaldy of Grange—a very busy man, Marshal of the City, Captain of the Guard, who kept surveillance of Holyrood and the lower town. Paris perceived that he was lieutenant to Lord Morton, a cultivable person if willing to be cultivated. About his doors, every day and at all hours of the day, he saw messengers stand with horses ready. Now and again one would come out with his despatches bound upon him, mount and ride off—south, north, west. Similarly, others came in, white with dust, and delivered up their charges to the porter at the door. Paris, never without resource, inquired into the matter, and found out with whom Grange corresponded. With my Lord of Atholl at Perth! With my Lord of Moray in Paris! With Mr. Secretary Cecil in London! Why, this was treasonable stuff, hanging stuff, as he told his informant—Gavin Douglass, body-servant to Mr. Archie of the name—who knew it as well as he did.

‘Oh, ay, you make up your mind to the treason o’t, Paris,’ says Gavin; ‘but I recommend you let not my master catch you in this town. You have had six hundred gold crowns of his for the price of an old shoe—he has never ceased to talk of it, believe me. No later than yesterday he was at it, saying that pretty soon he could afford to give all his clothing to the world and stand up mother-naked as he was born, and be none the worse. “And to think,” says he, “to think I could be such a custard-faced loon as to buy back my slipper from a rogue I shall be hanging in a week.”’

Paris was indignant and hurt. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that the lords of Scotland are at their favourite game of beggar-my-neighbour. Dieu de Dieu! what else could we have expected? Your Scotch way: roguery upon roguery, thieves on thieves’ backs, traitors who betray their co-traitors—hogs and rats, one and all!’

He left Edinburgh much alarmed at the state of its affairs, determined to be done with the Countess at Crichton and back again in Dunbar as soon as might be; but, greatly to his annoyance, her ladyship, being busy with her law business, kept him four or five days kicking his heels: it was the 4th of May before she delivered him her packet. That was a coffer, strongly bound and clamped with iron, locked and sealed.

At the moment of his going Lady Bothwell said to him, ‘Tell my lord, Paris, that this day he and I are free of each other; tell him that here I am and here remain.’

Paris, always the servant of a fine woman, knelt upon one knee. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘your ladyship has never loved me, but I take God to witness that I have ever honoured your ladyship. Albeit I am a poor devil of a lacquey, madam, I have wit enough to know a great lady when I see her.’

Said the Countess: ‘If you think that I have a disliking for you, Paris, you are mistaken. I neither love nor hate you. I have never thought about you.’

‘Madam,’ said he, ‘why should your ladyship? I shall venture, none the less, to pray God give you all health, fame, and happiness.’

Lady Bothwell sat bolt upright, one firm hand on the table. ‘Health I have from God already. Fame, if you mean good fame, I have kept for myself. Happiness, if that lies in the satisfaction of abiding desire, I intend to have before long. Now begone with your charge.’

He went out shaking his head, muttering to himself: ‘Terrible lady! fine, carven, deep-eyed lady! What is her abiding desire?’

He found out afterwards.

The coffer and he came safe to Dunbar and into the presence of their master. The Queen was in the room: red eyes, hot patches in her cheeks, a swinging foot, fingers a-tap on the table——‘Ho! a tiff,’ thinks Paris.

My Lord Bothwell hands over the coffer, or rather puts it on the table by the Queen’s elbow. ‘Here is your testimony, ma mie. By my advice you burn every scrap of it.’

‘Shall I burn what has cost me so much, and you, it seems, so little?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Is it nothing to you that I have written with my blood and sealed with my tears?’

‘I had not analysed the ink,’ said my lord; ‘and if I had I should value your honour more. However, you must do what you will.’ She left him without answer; and by and by Des-Essars presented himself, saying that he had her Majesty’s command to take charge of the coffer for her. Something in message or messenger seemed to anger the Earl. ‘Damn you, French monkey, you take too much in charge. Must her Majesty always have an ear to pull or a cheek to pinch? Man, Baptist, for two pence I’d have both your lugs off and a hot iron at your cheeks: with a broad C branded there, my man: ay, by God, and a double C! Chamberer Convict, man, Baptist!’

He worked himself crimson in the face, his eyes savage and red. ‘Mind your ways, young sir, mind your ways’—he threatened with his fist,—‘I warn ye mind your ways just now—lest you come into the deep mire, man, where no ground is.’

Des-Essars drilled his slim body to attention, and fixed his eyes on the opposite wall. The Earl glared at him open-mouthed, and fingered his dagger as though he itched to be at it. But presently he scoffed at himself—‘A white-faced boy to stand by side o’ me!’ He turned: ‘Take your coffer, master, and be out of this. A little more and I might colour you finely.’

Des-Essars removed both coffer and himself. Paris was trembling: he knew that what he had to report of Edinburgh’s doings would not make matters any better. Nor did they—though it may be doubted whether they could have made matters any worse.

The joys of love—love’s moment of victory, love’s rest, and possession of the spoils—are gossamer things: an adverse breath may shred them away. As for Love himself, you may call him a Lord or a Beast, give him his roseate wings or his cloven hoofs and tail: certainly there never was in the world so refined a glutton. Perfection is what he claims, no less; perfection of leisure to obtain, perfection of content, and all according to that standard of mind which, in a field without limit, grudges the stirring of a filament as a hindrance to the enormous calm he covets, and sees in a speck of sand a blemish upon his prize. ‘Alas! no man, no kingdom of this world, no ordering attainable by mortal minister could have appeased Queen Mary. She was made to hunt for happiness and never to find it. She had risked all upon this cast of hers, had made it, at her last gasp had fallen upon the quarry. And now, clutching it, eyeing the coverts fearfully to right and left, starting at a whisper, cowering at the lightest shadow—like a beast of prey, she had no time to taste what she had so hardly won. O miserably stung by the rankling arrow! Poor Io, spurred by the gad-fly, what rest for thee? Come, ye calm-browed beneficent goddesses of the night! Handmaids of Death, come in! and with cool finger-tips close down these aching lids, and on these burning cheeks lay the balm of the last kiss; so the mutinous, famishing heart shall contend with Heaven no more!’ The dithyrambic cry of Des-Essars does not indicate a comfortable state of things at Dunbar.

The Queen was madly in love, aching to be possessed, but knowing herself insecurely possessed. Her tyrant, master, beloved—whatever Bothwell may have desired to be—was harassed by events, and could not play the great lover even if he would. Rebellion gathered outside his stronghold, and he knew every surge of it; he was not safe from disaffection within doors, and had to watch for it like a cat at a mousehole. If the Queen had sinned to get a lover, he had risked his head to wive a queen. Well, and he had not got her yet, though she asked for nothing better all day and night. Queens and what they carry are not got by highway robbery: it’s not only a question of kissing. You may steal a Queen for the bedchamber—but there’s the Antechamber to be quieted, there’s the Presence Chamber to be awed, there’s the Throne Room to be shocked into obsequiousness: ah, and the Citadel to be taught to fly your banner. Brooding on these things—all to do except one—his lordship had no time for transports, and no temper neither. When the Queen wept he swore, when she pleaded he refused her, when she sulked he showed his satisfaction at being let alone, and when she stormed he stormed loudlier. He was not a man of fine perceptions: that was his strength, he knew. By the Lord, said he, let others, let her, know it too! And the sooner the better.

She would not discuss politics. Dunbar, which was to have been her bride-bower, should be so still, in defiance of beastly fact. She refused to hear what Paris had to say of Edinburgh pulpits, of Morton’s men-at-arms, Grange’s flying messengers. When Bothwell spoke of the Prince at Stirling she promised him a new prince at Dunbar; when he cried out threats against Archie Douglas she stopped his mouth with kisses; when he summoned Liddesdale to arms she pouted because her arms were not enough for him. It was mad, it was unreasonable, it fretted him to feverish rages. He gnashed his teeth. Lethington kept rigidly out of his way: he was really in danger, and knew it; not a day passed but he made some plan of escape. Melvill spoke in whispers, could not have stood on more ceremony with his Maker. Huntly was always on the verge of a quarrel; and as for poor little Des-Essars, you know how he stood.

There came anon swift confirmation of Paris’ fears: a letter from Hob Ormiston, now in Edinburgh, to his brother the Black Laird. Both worthies had been, as we know, with Bothwell on the night of Kirk o’ Field. Hob wrote that Kirkcaldy of Grange had met him after sermon in a company of people, taxed him with the King’s murder and threatened him with arrest ‘in the Queen’s name and for her honour.’ He went in fear, did Hob; his life was in it. Now, might he not clear himself? Let his lordship of Bothwell be sounded upon that, who knew that he was as guiltless of that blood as his lordship’s self. It would be black injustice that an innocent Hob should suffer while a blood-guttered Archie went scot-free, and a crowning indignity that he should perish under the actual guilty hands. For well he knew that my L—d of M——n stood behind Grange. Ormiston, with this crying letter in hand, sought out his master, and found him on the terrace overlooking the sea, walking up and down with the Queen and Lord Huntly. As he approached he saw her Majesty cover her mouth and strangle a yawn at birth.

Bothwell read the letter through, and handed it to the Queen. She also read it hastily. ‘Innocent!’ she mocked, with a curling, sulky lip, ‘the innocent Hob—a good word! But this letter concerns you, Huntly, more than me.’

In turn the dark young lord read it. He was much longer at it, slower-witted; and before he was half-way through for the second time the Queen was out of patience.

‘Well! well! What do you make of it, you who know the very truth and do not choose to declare it? Are our friends to be cleared, or will you see them all butchered for the Douglases’ sake?’

He did not answer for a while, but looked far oversea with those hawk-eyes of his, which seemed able to rend the garniture of Heaven and descry the veiled secrets of God. When he turned his face towards her it was a far nobler than the soured face he looked upon.

‘But to clear them, madam—Hob and the like of Hob—am I to betray them that trusted me?’

She gave a thring of the shoulder, a fierce flash of her eye, and turned shortly, and went away by herself. There was a hot wrangle between the three men afterwards—in which Bothwell did not scruple to curse his brother-in-law for ‘meddling in what concerned him not,’ or (if he must meddle) for not meddling well[9]; but Huntly could not be moved.

Things like these drove Bothwell into action—to go through with his business, possess himself of Edinburgh and the Prince, and marry the Queen? Why not? He was free, he had her in the crook of his arm; he had but to go up to blow away the fog of dissidence: afflavit ventus, etc.! He urged her Majesty, lectured Lethington, conferred with Huntly, and got agreement, more or less. Well then, advance banners, and let the wind blow!

At the first tidings of the Queen’s approach, the Earl of Morton and his belongings—his Archie Douglas, his Captain Cullen, his Grange—departed the city and repaired to Stirling. This gave fair promise; and even the greeting she got when, pacing matronly by Bothwell’s side, surrounded by a live hedge of Bothwell’s spears, she entered the gates and went down to Holyrood, was so far good that it was orderly. No salutations, no waving of bonnets; but close observation, a great concourse in a great quiet. She did not like that, though Bothwell took no notice. He had not expected to be welcome; and besides, he had other things to think of.

I extract the following from Des-Essars:—

‘The Queen had a way of touching what she was pleased with. She was like a child in that, had eyes in her fingers, could not keep her hands away, never had been able. To stroke, fondle, kiss, was as natural to her as to laugh aloud when she was pleased, or to speak urgently through tears when she was eager. I remember that, as we rode that day into the suburb of Edinburgh, she, being tired (for the way had been hot and long), put her hand on my shoulder; and that my lord looked furiously; and that she either could not, or would not see him. I had had reason only lately to suspect him of jealousy, though she as yet had never had any. But for this very innocent act of hers he rated her without stint or decorum when we were at Holyroodhouse; and as for me, I may say candidly that I walked with death as my shadow, and never lay down in my bed expecting to get out of it on the morrow.

‘The effect of his unreason upon her, when she could be brought to believe in it, was of the unhappiest. It lay not in her nobility to subserve ignoble suspicions. Our intercourse, far from ceasing out of deference to him, was therefore made secret, and what was wholly innocent stood vested in the garb of a dear-bought sin—an added zest which she had been much better without. I was removed from all direct service of her—for he saw to that; but she found means of communicating with me every day; waited for me at windows, followed me with her eyes, had little speedy, foolish signals of her own—a finger in her mouth, a hand to her side, her bosom touched, her head held askew, her head hung, a smile let to flutter—all of which were to be so much intelligence between us. She excelled in work of the kind, was boundlessly fertile, though I was a sad bungler. But, God forgive me! I soon learned in that blissful school, and became, I believe, something of a master.

‘I was not the only man of whom he was jealous, by any means. There was my Lord Livingstone, a free-living, easy man of advanced age, who had been accustomed to fondle her Majesty as his own daughter, and saw no reason to desist, being given none by herself. But one day my lord came in and found him with his hand on her shoulder. Out he flung again, with an oath; and there was a high quarrel, with daggers drawn. The Queen, who could never be curbed in this kind of way by any one, lover or beloved, dared his lordship to lay a finger on Livingstone; and he did not. There was also my lord of Arbroath, who had pretensions and a mind of his own; to whom she gave a horse, and induced more high words. There was my Lord Lindsay, who admired her hugely and said so: but to follow all the wandering of unreason in a gentleman once his own master, were unprofitable. All that I need add (for the sake of what ensued upon it) is that one day Mr. Secretary Lethington came into the Cabinet all grey-faced and shaking as with a palsy, and laid his hands upon the Queen’s chair, saying fearfully: “Sanctuary, madam, sanctuary! I stand in peril of my life.” It appeared that my lord, who abhorred him, had drawn on him in full hall. So then once more she grew angry and forbade his lordship to touch a hair of Lethington’s head: “For so sure as you do it,” she said, “I banish you the realm.” For the moment he was quite unnerved, and began to babble of obedience and his duty; and I say, let God record of our lady in that time of her disgrace that she had not forgotten how to stand as His vicegerent in Scotland.

‘Affairs went from bad to worse with her. We learned every day by our informers how the lords were gaining strength in the west, and stood almost in a state of war against us. They were close about the Prince—the chiefs of their faction being the Earls of Mar, Atholl, Argyll, Glencairn, and Morton. With them was Grange, the best soldier in the kingdom; and Lord Lindsay would have gone over, but that he grossly loved the Queen and could not keep his eyes off her. Letters intercepted from and to England made it certain that the Queen of that country was supporting our enemies and preparing for our ruin—nor was it without reason, as I am bound to confess, for the safety of our young prince imported the welfare of her country as well as ours; and it may well have been distasteful to her English Majesty to have the fingers of the Earl of Bothwell so near to dipping in her dish. As if these troubles were not enough, we were presently to hear of flat rebellion under the Queen’s very eyes, when we were told that Mr. Cragg, the preacher, would not read out the banns of marriage. That same was a stout man, after Mr. Knox’s pattern. It is true they forced him by a writ to publish them, but neither summons before the council nor imminent peril of worse would keep his tongue quiet. He daily railed against those he was about to join in wedlock, and had to be banished the realm.

‘Hard-faced was the Queen through these disastrous days, and all stony within; bearing alike, with weary, proud looks, the indifference of her trusted friends, the insolent suspicions of my lord of Bothwell, the constant rumours, even the shameful reports, put about concerning herself, as if she was ignorant of them. She was not, she could not be ignorant, but she was utterly negligent. To her but one thing was of concern—his love; and until she was sure of that all else might go as it would. True, he was jealous: at one time she had thought that a hopeful sign. But when she found out that in spite of her kindness he remained indifferent; when he abstained from her company and bed, when he absented himself for two days together—and was still jealous—she was bound to doubt the symptom. It wanted but one thing, in truth, to break down her pride and trail her lovely honour in the dust: and she had it sharp and stinging. O unutterable Secret of Secrets, never to be divulged but in this dying hour when she must ask for pity, since honest dealing is denied to her! She was stung—down fell she—and I saw her fall—heart-broken, and was never more the high Huntress, the Queen “delighting in arrows.” My pen falters, my tears blind me; but write it I must: her fame, her birthright, nay, her gracious head, are in dire peril.[10]

‘It was commonly suspected that Lethington was desirous of escaping to the lords at Stirling, among whom he could count upon one firm friend in the Earl of Atholl. To say nothing that he went hourly in fear of my lord of Bothwell, and believed that the Queen distrusted him, he had been too long in the Earl of Moray’s pocket—kept there as a man keeps a ferret—to be happy out of it. Nominally at large, a pretty shrewd watch was kept upon him, since it would not have been at all convenient to have him at large among her Majesty’s enemies. He knew too much, and his wife, that had been Mistress Fleming, more than he. Therefore it was not intended that he should leave us. Yet I am certain that no day passed in which he did not make some plan of escape.

‘It was for a step in one of such schemes, I suppose, though I cannot see how it should have helped him, that on the day before my lord of Bothwell was created Duke of Orkney, and three days before the marriage, he gave the Queen a thought which very soon possessed her altogether.

‘My lord was away, but expected back that night; Lethington, being with some others in the Queen’s Cabinet when the talk fell upon the Countess of Bothwell, told her Majesty that the lady was dwelling at Crichton. He said it very skilfully—quasi negligently and by the way—but instantly she caught at it, and took it amiss. “She has cast him off—let him cast her off. Crichton! Crichton! Why, he holds it of me! How then should Jean Gordon be there? Or do we share, she and I?” She spoke in her petulant, random way of hit or miss, meaning (it is likely) no more than that she was weary of Lethington. But he coughed behind his hand, and rising up suddenly, went to the window. The Queen marked the action, and called him back.

‘“Come hither, Mr. Secretary,” said she quietly; and he returned at once to her side.

‘“You will please to explain yourself,” she said. Very quiet she was, and so were we all.

‘He began vast excuses, floundering and gasping like a man in deep water. The more he prevaricated the more steadfast she became in pursuit; and so remained until she had dragged out of him what he knew or had intended to imply. The sum and substance was that Paris (a valet of my lord’s) had of late taken letters to and from Crichton: common knowledge, said Lethington. And then, after a good deal, not to the purpose, he declared that my lord had spent two several nights there since the Court had returned to Edinburgh from Dunbar.

‘The Queen, being white even to the lips, said faintly at the end that she did not believe him. Lethington replied that nothing but his duty to her would have induced him to relate facts so curious; the which, he added, must needs concern her Majesty, the Fountain of Honour, who, unsullied herself, could not brook defilement in any of the tributaries of her splendour. She dismissed us all with a wave of her hand—all but Mistress Sempill (who had been Mistress Livingstone), who stayed behind, and whose ringing voice I heard, as I shut the door, leap forward to be at grips with the calumny.

‘She had recovered her gallantry by the evening. Incredible as it may seem, it is true that she publicly taxed my lord with the facts charged against him, when he returned. He did not start or change colour—looked sharply at her for an instant, no more.

‘“Jealous, my Queen?” he asked her, laughing.

‘“And if I am, my lord, I have an example before me,” said she. “Have you not been pleased to condemn me in regard to this poor boy?”