‘The Comic Mask now appears,’ says Le Secret des Secrets in a reflective mood, ‘the Comic Mask, with a deprecatory grin, to show how it was the misfortune of Scotland at this time that, being a poor country, every funded man in it was forced to fatten his glebe at the cost of his neighbour’s. So house was set against house, friendship made a vain thing, and loyalty a marketable thing. More than that, every standard of value set up to be a beacon or channel-post or point of rally (whichever you chose to make it), became ipso facto a tower of vantage, from which, if you were to draw your dues, it was necessary to scare everybody else. When Mr. Knox sourly called Queen Mary a Honeypot, he intended to hold her out to scorn; but actually he decried his countrymen who saw her so; and not saw her only, but every high estate beside. For them the Church was a honeypot, the council, the command of the shore, the wardenry of the marches. “Come,” they said, “let us eat and drink of this store, but for God’s sake keep off the rest, or it will never hold out.” Round about, round about, came the buzzing flies, at once eager and querulous; and while they sipped they looked from the corners of their eyes lest some other should get more than his share; and the murmurs of the feasters were as often “Give him less” as “Give me more.” Yet it would be wrong, I conceive, to call the Scots lords all greedy; safer to remember that most of them must certainly have been hungry.’ So Monsieur Des-Essars obtrudes his chorus—after the event.
Young Queen Mary, hard-up against the event, had no chorus but trusty Livingstone of the red cheeks and warm heart; nor until her first Christmas was kept and gone was she conscious of needing one. She had maintained a high spirit through all the dark and windy autumn days, finding Bothwell’s effrontery as easy to explain as the Duke’s poltroonery, or the hasty veering of old Huntly. Bothwell, she would extenuate, held her cheap because women were his pastime, the Duke sought her protection because he was a coward, Huntly shied off because his vanity was offended. If men indeed had ever been so simple to be explained, this world were as easy to manage as a pasteboard theatre. The simplicity was her own; but she shared the quality with another when she sent for Mr. Knox because she thought him her rival, and when he came prepared to play the part.
The time was November, with the floods out and rain that never ceased. It was dark all day outside the palace; raw cold and showers of sleet mastered the town; but within, great fires made the chambers snug where the Queen sat with her maids and young men. The French lords had taken their leave, the pageants and dancings were stayed for a time. In a diminished Court, which held neither the superb Princes of Guise nor the hardy-tongued Lord of Bothwell—in a domesticated, needleworking, chattering, hearth-haunting Court—there was a great adventure for the coy excellences of Monsieur de Châtelard. Discussing his prospects freely with Des-Essars, he told him that he had two serious rivals only. ‘Monsieur de Boduel,’ he said, ‘forces my Princess to think of him by insulting her. He appears to succeed; but so would the man who should twist your arm, my little Jean-Marie, and make cuts with the hand at the fleshy part. He would compel you to think of him, but with fear. Now, fear, look you, is not the lady’s part in love, but the man’s, the perfect lover’s part. For it may be doubted whether a woman can ever be a perfect lover—if only for this reason, that she is designed for the love of a man. The Lord Gordon, eldest son and heir of that savage greybeard, Monsieur de Huntly, is my other adversary in the sweet warfare. She looks at him as you must needs observe a church tower in your Brabant. It is the tallest thing there; you cannot avoid it. But what fine long legs can prevail against the silken tongue? Not his, at least. Therefore I sing my best, I dance, I stand prayerful at corners of the corridor. And one day, when I see her pensive, or hear her sigh as she goes past me, do you know what I shall do? I shall run forward and clasp her knees, and cry aloud, “We bleed, we bleed, Princess, we bleed! Come, my divine balm, let us stanch mutually these wounds of ours. For I too have balsam for thee!” Do you not think the plan admirable?’
‘It is very poetical,’ said Des-Essars, ‘and has this merit, usually denied to poetry, that it is uncommonly explicit. I think I know better than you what are the designs of Monsieur de Boduel, since he was once my master. He does not seek to insult or to terrify my mistress, as you seem to suppose—but to induce her to trust him. He would wish to appear to her in the character of the one man in Scotland who does not seek some advantage from her. My Lord Gordon’s designs—to use the word for convenience, though, in fact, he has no designs—are as simple as yours. He is infatuated; the Queen has turned his head; and it is no wonder, seeing that she troubled herself to do it.’
‘If he has no designs, boy,’ cried Monsieur de Châtelard, ‘how can you compare him with me, who have many?’
Des-Essars clasped his hands behind his head. ‘I suppose you are the same in this, at least,’ he said, ‘that both of you seek to get pleasure out of my mistress. Let me tell you that your most serious rival of all is one of whom you know nothing—one who seeks neither pleasure nor profit from her; to whom, therefore, she will almost certainly offer the utmost of her store.’
‘Who is this remarkable man, pray?’
‘It is Master Knox, the Genevan preacher,’ said Des-Essars. ‘I think there is more danger to the Queen’s heart in this man’s keeping than in that of the whole Privy Council of this kingdom.’
Monsieur de Châtelard was profoundly surprised. ‘I had never considered him at all,’ he admitted. ‘In my country, Jean-Marie, and I suppose in yours also, we do not consider the gentry of religion until our case is become extreme. Of what kindred is this man?’
‘He is of the sons of Adam, I suppose, and a tall one. I have seen him.’
‘You mistake me, my boy. Hath he blood, for example?’
‘Sir, I will warrant it very red. In fine, sir, this man is King of Scotland; and, though it may surprise you to hear me say so, I will be so bold as to add in your private ear, that no true lover of the Queen my mistress could wish her to give up her heart into any other keeping which this country can furnish.’
Monsieur de Châtelard, after a short, quick turn about the room, came back to Des-Essars vivacious and angry. ‘You speak absurdly, like the pert valet you are likely to become. What can you know of love—you, who dare to dispose of your mistress’s heart in this fashion?’
Des-Essars looked grave. ‘It is open to me, young as I am, to love the Queen my mistress, and to desire her welfare. I love her devotedly; but I swear that I desire nothing else. Nor does my partner and sworn ally, Monsieur Adam de Gordon.’
‘Love,’ said Monsieur de Châtelard, tapping his bosom, ‘severs brotherhoods and dissolves every oath. It is a perfectly selfish passion: even the beloved must suffer for the lover’s need. Do you and your partner suppose that you can stay my advance? The thought is laughable.’
‘We neither suppose it nor propose it,’ replied the youth. ‘We are considering the case of Mr. Knox, and are agreed that, detestable as his opinions may be, there is great force in them because of the great force in himself. We think he may draw the Queen’s favour by the very neglect he hath of it; and although our natures would lead us to advance the suit of my Lord Gordon, who is my colleague’s blood-brother, as you know—for all that, it is our deliberate intention to throw no obstacle in the way of any pretensions this Master Knox may chance to exhibit.’
‘And, pray,’ cried Monsieur de Châtelard, drawing himself up, ‘and, pray, how do you look upon my pretensions, which, I need not tell you, do not embrace marriage?’
‘To tell you the truth, sir,’ Des-Essars replied, ‘we do not look upon them at all.’
Monsieur de Châtelard was satisfied. ‘I think you are very wise,’ he said. ‘No eye should look upon the deed which I meditate. Fare you well, Jean-Marie. I speak as a man forewarned.’
Jean-Marie returned to his problems.
Standing at the Queen’s door, he had his plan cut and dried. When the preacher should be brought in by the usher, he would require a word with him before he pulled back the curtain. He does not confess to it in his memoirs; but I have no doubt what that word was to have been. Remember that there was this much sound sense on the boy’s side: he knew very well that the Queen had thought more of Mr. Knox than she had cared to allow. His inferences may have been ridiculous; it is one thing to read into the hearts of kings, another to dispose them. However that may be, the Captain of the Guard had received his orders. He himself introduced the great man into the antechamber, and led him directly to the entry of the Queen’s closet. Mr. Erskine, who held this office, was also Master of the Pages, and no mere gentleman-usher. He brushed aside his subaltern with no more ceremony than consists in a flack of the ear, and, ‘Back, thou French pullet—the Queen’s command.’ Immediately afterwards he announced at the door, ‘Madam, Mr. Knox, to serve your Majesty.’
‘Enter boldly, Mr. Knox,’ he bade his convoy then, and departed, leaving him in the doorway face to face with the Queen of Scots.
She sat in a low chair, tapestry on her knees, her needle flying fast; in her white mourning, as always when she had her own way, she looked a sweet and wholesome young woman. Mary Livingstone, self-possessed and busy, was on a higher chair behind her, watching the work; Mary Fleming in the bay of the window, Lord Lindsay near by her, leaning against the wall. Mary Beaton and Mary Seton were on cushions on the floor, each holding an end of the long frame. Mr. Secretary regardful by the door, and a lady who sat at a little table reading out of Perceforest or Amadis, or some such, completed as quiet an interior as you could wish to see. While Mr. Knox stood primed for his duty, scrutinised by half a dozen pair of eyes, the Queen alone did not lift hers up, but picked at a knot with her needle.
The tangle out, ‘Let Mr. Knox take heart,’ she said, with the needle’s eye to the light and the wool made sharp by her tongue: ‘here he shall find a few busy girls putting to shame some idle men.’ Seeing that Mr. Knox made no sign—as how should he, who needed not take what he had never lost?—she presently turned her head and looked cheerfully at him, her first sight of a redoubtable critic. Singly her thoughts came, one on the heels of the other: her first, This man is very tall; the second, He looks kind; the third, He loves a jest; the fourth, which stayed long by her, The deep wise eyes he hath! In a long head of great bones and little flesh those far-set, far-seeing, large, considering eyes shone like lamps in the daylight—full of power at command, kept in control, content to wait. They told her nothing, yet she saw that they had a store behind. No doubt but the flame was there. If the day made it mild, in the dark it would beacon men. She saw that he had a strong nose, like a raven’s beak, a fleshy mouth, the beard of a prophet, the shoulders and height of a mountaineer. In one large hand he held his black bonnet, the other was across his breast, hidden in the folds of his cloak. There was no man present of his height, save Lethington, and he looked a weed. There was no man (within her knowledge) of his patience, save the Lord James; and she knew him at heart a coward. Peering through her narrowed eyes for those few seconds, she had the fancy that this Knox was like a ragged granite cross, full of runes, wounded, weather-fretted, twisted awry. Yet her four thoughts persisted: He is very tall, he looks kind, he loves a jest—and oh! the deep wise eyes he hath! Nothing that he did or spoke against her afterwards moved the roots of those opinions. She may have feared, but she never shrank from the man.
Now she took up her words where she had left them. ‘You, who love not idleness, Mr. Knox, are here to help me, I hope?’
He blinked before he answered. ‘Madam,’ then said he, ‘I am here upon your summons, since subjects are bound to obey, that I may know your pleasure of me.’ ‘A sweet, dangerous woman,’ he thought her still; but he added now, ‘And of all these dainty ladies the daintiest, and the shrewdest reader of men.’
‘Come then, Mr. Knox, and be idle or busy as likes you best,’ she said, and resumed her needle. ‘I am glad to know,’ she added, ‘that you consider yourself bound anyways to me.’
He, not moving from his doorway—making it serve him rather for a pulpit—when he had thought for awhile, with quickly blinking eyes, began: ‘I think that you seek to put me to some question, madam, but without naming it. I think that you would have me justify myself without cause cited. But this I shall not do, lest afterwards come in your Clerk of Arraigns and I find myself prejudged upon my plea before I am accused at all. Why, in this matter of service of subjects, we are all in a manner bound upon it. Many masters must we obey: as God and His stewards, who are girded angels; and Death and his officers, who are famines, diseases, fires, and the swords of violent men, suffered by God for primordial reasons; and next the prince and his ministers, among whom I reckon——’
‘Oh, sir; oh, sir,’ she cried out, ‘you go too fast for me!’
‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I speak with respect, but I do think you go as fast as I.’
She laughed. ‘I am young, Mr. Knox, and go as fast as I can. Do you blame me for that?’
‘I may not, madam,’ said he steadily, ‘unless to remember that you sit in an old seat be to blame you.’
‘I sit at my needlework now, sir.’
He saw her fine head bent over the web, a gesture beautifully meek, but said he: ‘I suspect the seat is beneath your Majesty. It is hard to win, yet harder to leave when the time comes.’
‘But,’ said she, ‘if I put aside my seat, if I waive my authority, how would you consider me then?’
He turned his head from one to another, and then gazed calmly at the Queen. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘if you waive your authority and put aside your seat, the which (you say) you have from God, why then should I consider you at all?’
When the room stirred, she laughed, but it was to conceal her vexation. She pricked her lip with her needle.
‘I see how it is with you and your friends, sir,’ she said drily. ‘You love not poor women in any wise. When we are upon thrones you call us monsters, and when we come off them you think us nothing at all. It is hard to please you. And yet—you have known women.’
‘A many,’ said he.
‘And of these some were good women?’
‘There was one, madam, the best of women.’
Her eyes sparkled. ‘Ah! You speak kindly at last! You loved my mother! Then you will love me. Is it not so?’
He was silent. This was perilous work.
‘I have sent for you, Mr. Knox,’ she continued, ‘not for dialectic, in which I can see I am no match for you; but to ask counsel of you, and require a benevolence, if you are ready to bestow it. We will talk alone of these things, if you will. Adieu, mes enfants; gentlemen, adieu. I must speak privately with Mr. Knox.’
What had she to say to him? Not he alone wondered; there was Master Des-Essars at the door—Master Des-Essars, who, with the generosity of calf-love, was prepared to surrender his rights for the good of the State. Mary Livingstone, to whom one man, lover of the Queen, was as pitiable as another, swept through the anteroom without a word for anybody. The others clustered in the bay, whispering and wondering.
But as to Mr. Knox, when those two were alone, she baffled him altogether by asking him to intervene in the quarrel between the Lords Bothwell and Arran: baffled him, that is, because he had braced himself for tears, reproaches, and what he called ‘yowling’ against his ‘Stinking Pride’ sermon, which of late had made some stir. In that matter he was ready to take his stand upon the holy hill of Sion; he had his countermines laid against her mines. Yea, if she had cried out upon the book of the Monstrous Regiment itself, he had his pithy retorts, his citations from Scripture, his Aristotle, his Saint Paul, and Aquinas—for he did not disdain that serviceable papist—his heavy cavalry from Geneva and his light horsemen from Ayrshire greens. But she took no notice of this entrenched position of his: she drew him into open country, then swept out and caught him in the flank. Choosing to assume, against all evidence, that he had loved her mother, assuming that he loved her too, she pleaded with him to serve her well, and used the subtlest flattery of all, which was to take for granted that he would refuse what she begged. This was an incense so heady that the flinty-edged brain was drugged by it, declined ratiocination. As she pleaded, in low urgent tones, which cried sometimes as if she was hurt, and thrilled sometimes as though she exulted in her pure desire, he listened, sitting motionless above her, more moved than he cared afterwards to own. ‘For peace’s sake I came hither, young as I am, and because I desire to dwell among my own folk. I hoped for peace, and do think that I ensued it. Have I vexed any of you in anything? Have I oppressed any?’ At such a time, against such pleading, he had it not in his heart to cry out, ‘Ay, daily, hourly, you vex, thwart, and offend the Lord’s people.’
Seeing him silent, pondering above her, she stretched out her arms for a minute, and bewitched him utterly with her slow, sad smile. ‘If a girl of my years can be tyrant over grave councillors, if that be possible, and I have done it, I shall not be too stiff to ask pardon for my fault, or to come to you and your friends, Mr. Knox, to learn a wiser way. But you cannot accuse me. I see you answer nothing.’ Whether he could or not, he did not at that time.
She came back to her first proposition. ‘Of my Lord of Bothwell I know only this,’—she seemed to weigh her words,—‘that in France he approved himself the very honest gentleman whom I looked to find him here. He is not of my faith; he favours England more than I am as yet prepared to do; he is stern upon the border. What his quarrel may be with my Lord of Arran I do not care to inquire. I pray it may be soon ended, for the peace’s sake which I promised myself. Why should I be unhappy? You cannot wish it.’
‘Madam,’ he said, in his deep slow voice, ‘God knoweth I do not.’
She looked down; she whispered, ‘You are kind to me. You will help me?’
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘God being with me, I will.’ She looked up at him like a child, held out her hand. He took it in his own; and there it lay for a while contented.
Upon this fluttering moment the Lord James, walking familiarly in king’s houses, entered with a grave inclination of the head. The Queen was vexed, but she was ready, and resumed her hand. Mr. Knox was not ready. He stiffened himself, and opened his mouth to speak: no words came. The Lord James went solemnly to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. The Queen’s eyes flashed.
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I am glad that my friend Mr. Knox should be here.’
‘Upon my word, my lord,’ cried the Queen in a rage, ‘why should you be glad, or what has your gladness to do with the matter?’ Mr. Knox, before she spoke, had gently disengaged himself; now he made her a deep obeisance and took his leave—not walking backwards. ‘That is a true man,’ was her judgment of him, and never substantially altered. What he may have thought of her, if he afterwards discovered how she had used him here, is another question. He set about doing her behests, at any rate. There was a probability that my Lord Bothwell would show himself at Court again before many days, and without direct invitation of hers.
After a progress about the kingdom, which she thought it well to make for many reasons—room for the pacifying arm of Mr. Knox being one—it befell as she had hoped. Speedily and well had the preacher gone to work: the Earl of Arran walked abroad without a bodyguard, the Earl of Bothwell showed himself at Court and was received upon his former footing. The Queen had looked sharply at him, on his first appearance, for any sign of a shameful face; there was not to be seen the shadow of a shade. It is not too much to say that she would have been greatly disappointed if there had been any; for to take away hardihood from this man would be to make his raillery a ridiculous offence, his gay humour a mere symptom of the tavern. No, but he laughed at her as slyly as ever before; he reassumed his old pretensions, he gave back no inch of ground—and, remember, in an affair of the sort, if the man holds his place the maid must yield something of hers. It is bound to be a case of give or take. She felt herself in the act to give, was glad of it, and concealed it from Mary Livingstone. When this girl, her bosom friend and bedfellow, made the outcry you might expect of her, the Queen pretended extreme surprise.
‘Do you suppose this country the Garden of Eden, my dear? Are all the Scots lords wise virgins, careful over lamp-wicks? Am I Queen of a Court of Love by chance, and is my Lord of Bothwell a postulant? You tell me news. I assure you he is nothing to me.’
Now these words were spoken on a day when he had declared himself something as plainly as was convenient. Exactly what had happened was this:—
On the anniversary-day of the death of little King Francis of France, the Queen kept the house with her maids, and professed to see nobody. A requiem had been sung, the faithful few attending in black mourning. She, upon a faldstool, solitary before the altar at the pall, looked a very emblem of pure sorrow—exquisitely dressed in long nun-like weeds; no relief of white; her face very pale, hands thin and fragile, only one ring to the whole eight fingers. Motionless, not observed to open her lips, wink her eyes, scarcely seen to breathe, there she stayed when mass was done and the chapel empty, save for women and a page or two.
At noon, just before dinner, she walked in the garden, kept empty by her directions—a few turns with Beaton and Fleming, and Des-Essars for escort—then, bidding them leave her, sat alone in a yew-tree bower in full sun. It was warm dry weather for the season.
Presently, as she sat pensive, toying perhaps with grief, trying to recall it or maintain it—who knows?—she heard footsteps not far off, voices in debate; and looked sidelong up to see who could be coming. It was the Earl of Bothwell who showed himself first round the angle of the terrace, arm-in-arm of that Lord Arran whom she had procured to be his friend; behind these two were Ormiston, some Hamilton or another, and Paris, Lord Bothwell’s valet. They were in high spirits and free talk, those two lords, unconscious or careless of her privacy; Bothwell was gesticulating in that French way he had; the other, with his head inclined, listened closely, and sniggered in spite of himself. Both were in cheerful colours; notably, Bothwell wore crimson cloth with a cloak of the same, a purpoint of lace, a white feather in his cap. Arran first saw the Queen, stopped instantly, uncovered, and said something hasty to his companion; he stared with his light fish-eyes and kept his mouth open. Bothwell looked up in his good time and bared his head as he did so. It seems that he muttered some order or advice, for when Lord Arran slipped by on the tips of his toes, all the rest followed him; but Lord Bothwell walked leisurely over the grass towards the Queen, as who should say, ‘I am in the wrong—in truth I am a careless devil. Well, give me my due; admit I am not a timorous devil.’
As he stood before her, attentive and respectful in his easy way, she watched him nearly, and he waited for her words. It is a sign of how they stood to one another at this time that she began her speech in the middle—as if her thoughts, in spite of herself, became at a point articulate.
‘You also, my lord!’
‘Plaît-il?’
‘Oh, you understand me very well.’
‘Madam, upon my honour! I am a dull dog that can see but one thing at a time.’
She forced herself to speak. ‘I ask you, then, if this is the day of all days when you choose to pass by me in your festival gear? I ask if you also are with the rest of them?’
He made as if he would spread his hands out—the motion was enough. It said—though he was silent—‘Madam, I am no better than other men.’
‘Oh, I believe it, I believe it! You are no better indeed; but I had thought you wiser.’
He caught at the word, and rubbed his chin over it. ‘Hey, my faith, madam—wiser!’
The Queen tapped her foot. ‘If I had said kinder, I might have betrayed myself for a fool. Kindness, wisdom, generosity, pity! In all these things I must believe you to be as other men. Is it not so?’
Seeing her clouded eyes, he did not affect to laugh any more. He was either a bad courtier or one supremely expert; for he spoke as irritably as he felt.
‘Madam, I know few men save men of spirit, therefore I cannot advise you. But you know the saw, Come asino sape così minuzza rape: “The donkey bites his carrot as well as he knows.” Wisdom is becoming to a servant; kindness, generosity, and the rest of these high virtues are the ornament of a master, or mistress. Why, madam, if I desire the warmth of the sun, shall I ever get it by shivering? Is that a wise reflection?’
She clasped her hands over her knee, and looked at her foot as she swung it slowly; but if the action was idle the words were not. ‘If I asked you, my lord, to wear the dule with me upon this one day of the year, should you refuse me? If I grieve, will you not grieve with me?’
He never faltered, but spoke as gaily as a sailor to his lass. ‘Faith of a gentleman, madam, why should I grieve—except for that you should grieve still? For your grieving there may be a remedy; and as for me, far from grieving with you, I thank the kindly gods.’
She bit her lip as she shivered. ‘You are cruel,’ she said: ‘you are cruel. I knew it before. Your heart is cruel. This is the very subtlety of the vice.’
‘Not so, madam,’ he answered quietly; ‘but it is dangerous simplicity. Do you not know why I give thanks?—I think you do, indeed.’
Very certainly she thought so too.
She sat on after he was gone, twisting her fingers about as she spun her busy fancies; and was so found by her maids. Little King Francis and the purple pall which signified him were buried for that day; and after dinner she changed her black gown for a white. It was at going to bed that night that she had rallied Mary Livingstone about Scots lords and wise virgins, and declared that Lord Bothwell was nothing to her. And the maid believed her just as far as you or I may do.
Not that the thing was grown serious by any means: the maid of honour made too much of one possible lover, and the Queen, very likely, too little. The difference between these two was this: Mary Livingstone looked upon her Majesty’s lovers with a match-maker’s eye, but Queen Mary with a shepherding eye. The flock was everything to her. Just now, for example, she was anxious about certain other strays; and, as time wore on to the dark of the year, she began to be impatient. The Gordons, said her brother James, were playing her false; but it was incredible to her—not that they should be at fault, but that her instinct should be so. She could have sworn to the truth of that fine Lord Gordon, and been certain that she had won over old Huntly at the last. The mistake—if she was mistaken—is common to queens and pretty children, who, finding themselves in the centre of their world, give that a circumference beyond the line of sight. Because all eyes are upon them they think that there is nothing else to be seen. She was to learn that Huntly at Court and Huntly in Badenoch were two separate persons; so said the Lord James.
‘Sister, alas! I fear a treacherous and stiff-necked generation’; and he had more to go upon than he chose her to guess as yet.
So far, at least, she had to admit that old Huntly was a liar: John of Findlater was never brought back. Her messengers returned again and again, saying, ‘The Earl was in the hills,’ or ‘The Earl was hunting the deer,’ or ‘The Earl was punishing the Forbeses.’ And where was her fine Lord Gordon, with his sea-blue, hawk’s eyes? She was driven at last to send after him—a peremptory summons to meet her at Dundee; but he never came—could not be found or served with the letter—was believed to be with the Earl, his father, but had been heard of in the west with the Hamiltons, etc. etc. The face of Lord James—his eyes ever upon the Earldom of Moray—was sufficient answer to her doubts; and when she turned to Lord Bothwell for comfort, he laughed and said, reminding her of a former conversation, ‘Prick the old bladder, madam, scatter the pease; then watch warily who come to the feast.’
Then a certain Lord Ruthven entered her field, sent for out of Gowrie—a dour, pallid man, with fatality pressing heavily on his forehead. It seemed to weigh his brows over his eyes, and to goad him at certain stressful times to outbursts of savagery—snarling, tooth-baring—terrible to behold. He hated Huntly as one Scots lord could hate another, for no known reason.
‘You ask me what you shall do with Huntly, madam? I say, hang him on a tree, and poison crows with him. It will be the best service he can ever do you.’
He said this at the council board, and dismayed her sorely. It seemed to her that he churned his spleen between his teeth till it foamed at his loose lips.
She flew to the comfort of her maids: here was her cabinet of last resource! They throned her among them, put their heads near together, and considered the case of Scotland. Mary Livingstone could see but one remedy for the one deep-set disease. Bothwell’s broad chest shadowed all the realm as with a cloud: chase that away, you might get a glimpse of poor Scotland; but while the dreadful gloom endured the Gordons seemed to her a swarm of gnats, harmless at a distance. ‘Let them starve in their own quags, my dear heart,’ she said; ‘you will have them humble when they are hungry. Theirs is the sin of pride—but, O Mother of Heaven, keep us clean from the sin that laughs at sinning!’
Mary Fleming put in a word for the advice of Mr. Secretary Lethington, but blushed when the others nudged each other. The Secretary was known to be her servant. Mary Beaton said, ‘I thought we were to speak of Huntly? Ma belle dame, touch his heart with your finger-tips.’
‘So I would if I knew the way,’ said the Queen, frowning.
‘Send him back his bonny boy Adam,’ says Beaton; ‘I undertake that he will plead your cause. You have given him good reason.’
The Queen thought well of this; so presently Adam Gordon was sent north as legate a latere.
Christmas went out, Lent drew on, the months passed. The Ark of State tossed in unrestful waters, but young Adam of Gordon came not again with a slip of olive. ‘If that child should prove untrue,’ said the Queen, ‘then his father is the lying traitor you report him.’ This to Mr. Secretary Lethington, very much with her just now, at work for Mr. Secretary Cecil of England, trying his hardest to bring about a meeting between his mistress and the mistress of his friend. Lethington, knowing what he did know, had little consolation for her; but he bore word to his master, the Lord James, that the Queen was angering fast with the Gordons; a very little more and the fire would leap.
‘In my poor judgment,’ he said, ‘the kindling-spark will be struck when she sees the scribbling of her love-image. She hath fashioned a very Eros out of George Gordon.’
‘I conceive, Mr. Secretary,’ said the Lord James, making no sign that he had heard him, ‘that the times are ripe for our budget of news.’
‘I think with your lordship,’ the Secretary replied, ‘but will you be your own post-boy?’
‘Ah! I am a dullard, Mr. Secretary,’ said my lord. ‘Your mind forges in front of mine.’
He was fond of penning his agents in close corners. Let them be explicit since he would never be. Lethington gulped his chagrin.
‘My meaning was, my lord, that it will advantage you more to confirm than to spread your news concerning the Lord Gordon. Whoso tells her Majesty a thing to anger her, I have observed that he will surely receive some part of her wrath. Not so the man who is forced to admit the truth of a report. He, on the contrary, gains trust; for delicacy in a courtier outweighs integrity with our mistress. Therefore let the Duke bring the news, and do you wait until you can bow your head over it. Perhaps I speak more plainly than I ought.’
‘I think you do, sir, indeed,’ says the Lord James, and lacerates his Lethington.
There was a masque upon Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnival, and much folly done, which ended, like a child’s romp, in a sobbing fit. Amid the lights, music, laughter of the throng, the Queen and her maids braved it as saucy young men, trunked, puffed, pointed, trussed and doubleted; short French cloaks over one shoulder, flat French caps over one ear. Mary Livingstone was the properest, being so tall, Mary Fleming the least at ease, Mary Beaton the pertest, and Mary Seton the prettiest boy. But Mary the Queen was the most provoking, the trimmest, most assured little gallant that ever you saw; and yet, by that art she had, that extraordinary tact, never more a queen than when now so much a youth. Her trunks were green and her doublet white velvet; her cloak was violet threaded with gold. Her cap was as scarlet as her lips; but there was no jewel in her ear or her girdle to match her glancing eyes. By a perverse French courtesy, which became them very ill, such men as dared to do it, or had chins to show, were habited like women. Queen Mary led out Monsieur de Châtelard in a ruff and hooped gown; Des-Essars made a nun of himself, most demure and most uncomfortable; Mary Fleming chose the Earl of Arran—the only Scot in the mummery—a shepherdess with a crook. Mary Livingstone would not dance. ‘Never, never, never!’ cried she. ‘Let women ape men, as I am doing: the thing is natural; we would all be men if we could. But a man in a petticoat, a man that can blush—ah, bah! pourriture de France!’
That night, rotten or not, Monsieur de Châtelard played the French game. Queen Mary held him, led him about, bowed where he curtsied, stood while he sat. He grew bolder as the din grew wilder; he said he was the Queen’s wife. She thought him a fool, but owned to a kind of sneaking tenderness for folly of the sort. He called her his dear lord, his sweet lord, said he was faint and must lean upon her arm. He promised to make her jealous—went very far in his part. He swore that it was all a lie—he loved his husband only: ‘Kiss me, dear hub, I am sick of love!’ he languished, and she did kiss his cheek. More she would not; indeed, when she saw the old Duke of Châtelherault struggling through the crowd about the doors, she felt that here was a chance of getting out of a tangle. She flung the sick monkey off and went directly towards the Duke. He had come to town that day, she knew, directly from his lands in the west: perhaps he would know something of the Gordons. He was a frail, pink-cheeked old man, with a pointed white beard and delicate hands; so simple as to be nearly a fool, and yet not so nearly but that he had been able to beget Lord Arran, a real fool. When he understood that this swaggering young prince was indeed his queen, he gave up bowing and waving his hands, and dropped upon his knee, having very courtly old ways with him.
‘Dear madam, dear my cousin, the Lothians show the greener for your abiding. ’Tis shrewish weather yet in the hills; but you make a summer here.’
‘Rise up, my cousin,’ says the Queen, ‘and come talk with me.’ She drew him to a settle by the wall. ‘What news of your house and country have you for me?’
‘I hope I shall content your Majesty,’ he said, rubbing his fine hands. ‘We of the west have been junketing. We have killed fatlings for a marriage.’
She was interested, suspecting nothing. ‘Ah, you have made a marriage! and I was not told! You used me ill, cousin.’
‘Madam,’ he pleaded somewhat confusedly, ‘it was done in haste: there were many reasons for that. Take one—my poor health and hastening years. Nor did time serve to make Hamilton a house. It was a fortalice, and must remain a fortalice for my lifetime. But for your Grace——’ He stopped, seeing that she did not listen.
She made haste to turn him on again. ‘Whom did you marry? Not my Lord of Arran, for he is pranking here. And you design him for me, if I remember.’
‘Oh, madam!’ He was greatly upset by such plain talk. ‘No, no. It was my daughter Margaret. My son Arran! Ah, that’s a greater thing. My daughter Margaret, madam——’
‘Yes, yes. But the man—the man!’
‘Madam, the Lord of Gordon took her.’ He beamed with pride and contentment. ‘Yes, yes, the Lord of Gordon—a pact of amity between two houses not always too happily engaged.’
There is no doubt she blenched at the name—momentarily, as one may at a sudden flash of lightning. She got up at once. ‘I think you have mistook his name, cousin. His name is Beelzebub. He is called after his father.’ She left him holding his head, and went swiftly towards the door.
The dreary Châtelard crept after her. ‘My prince—my lord!’
‘No, no; I cannot hear you now.’ She waved him off.
Bowing, he shivered at his plight; but ‘Courage, my child,’ he bade himself: ‘“Not now,” she saith.’
All dancing stopped, all secret talk, all laughing, teasing, and love-making. They opened her a broad way. The Earl of Bothwell swept the floor with his thyrsus: he was disguised as the Theban god. But she cried out the more vehemently, ‘No, no! I am pressed; I cannot hear you now. You cannot avail me any more,’ and flashed through the doorway. ‘Send me Livingstone to my closet,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘and send me Lethington.’ She ran up her privy stair, and waited for her servants, tapping her foot, irresolute, in the middle of the floor.
Mary Livingstone flew in breathless. ‘What is it? What is it, my lamb?’
‘Get me a great cloak, child, and hide up all this foolery; and let Mr. Secretary wait until I call him.’
Mary Livingstone covered her from neck to foot, took off the scarlet cap, coifed her head seemly, brought a stool for her feet: hid the boy in the lady, you see, and all done without a word, admirable girl!
The Queen had been in a hard stare the while. ‘Now let me see M. de Lethington. But stay you with me.’
‘Ay, till they cut me down,’ says Livingstone, and fetched in the Secretary.
She began at once. ‘I find, Mr. Secretary, that there is room for more knaves yet in Scotland.’
‘Alack, madam,’ says he, ‘yes, truly. They can lie close, do you see, like mushrooms, and thrive the richlier. Knaves breed knavishly, and Scotland is a kindly nurse.’
‘There are likely to be more. Here hath the Duke married his daughter, and the Lord of Huntly that brave son of his whom of late he offered to me. Is this knavery or the ecstasy of a fool? What! Do they think to win from me by insult what they have not won by open dealing?’
Mr. Secretary, who had known this piece of news for a month or more, did not think it well to overact surprise. He contented himself with, ‘Upon my word!’ but added, after a pause, ‘This seems to me rash folly rather than a reasoned affront.’
The Queen fumed, and in so doing betrayed what had really angered her. ‘Knave or fool, what is it to me? A false fine rogue! All rogues together. Ah, he professed my good service, declared himself worthy of trust—declared himself my lover! Heavens and earth, are lovers here of this sort?’
Mary Livingstone stooped towards her. ‘Think no more of him—ah me, think of none of them! They seek not your honour, nor love, nor service, but just the sweet profit they can suck from you.’
The Queen put her chin upon her two clasped hands. ‘I have heard my aunt, Madame de Ferrara, declare,’ she said, with a metallic ring in her voice which was new to it, ‘that in the marshes about that town the peasant women, and girls also, do trade their legs by standing in the lagoon and gathering the leeches that fasten upon them to suck blood. These they sell for a few pence and give their lovers food. But my lovers in Scotland are the leeches; so here stand I, trading myself, with all men draining me of profit to fatten themselves.’
‘Madam——’ said Lethington quickly, then stopped.
‘Well?’ says the Queen.
‘I would say, madam, the fable is a good one. Gather your leeches and sell them for pence. Afterwards, if it please you, trade no more in the swamps, but royally, in a royal territory. Ah, trade you with princes, madam! I hope to set up a booth for your Majesty’s commerce, and to find a chafferer of your own degree.’
She understood very well that he spoke of an English alliance for her, and that this was not to be had without a husband of English providing. ‘I think you are right,’ she replied. ‘If the Queen of England, my good sister, come half-way towards me, I will go the other half. This you may tell to Mr. Randolph if you choose.’
‘Be sure that I tell him, madam.’
‘Good dreams to you, Mr. Secretary.’
‘And no dreams at all to your Majesty—but sweet, careless sleep!’
The Queen, turning for consolation to her Livingstone, won the relief of tears. They talked in low tones to each other for a little while, the mistress’s head on the maid’s shoulder, and her two hands held. The Queen was out of heart with Scotland, with love, with all this skirting of perils. She was for prudence just now—prudence and the English road. Then came in the tirewoman for the unrobing, and then a final argument for England.
Monsieur de Châtelard, who truly (as he had told Des-Essars) was a foredoomed man, lay hidden at this moment where no man should have lain unsanctified. I shall not deal with him and his whereabouts further than to say that, just as Frenchmen are slow to see a joke, so they are loath to let it go. He had proposed on this, of all nights of the year, to push his joke of the ballroom into chamber-practice. Some further silly babble about ‘wifely duty’ was to extenuate his great essay. If jokes had been his common food, I suppose he would have known the smell of a musty one. As it was, he had to suffer in the fire which old Huntly and his Hamilton-marriage had lit: his joke was burnt up as it left his lips. For the Queen’s words, when she found him, clung about him like flames about an oil-cask, scorched him, blistered him, shrivelled him up. He fell before them, literally, and lay, dry with fear, at her discretion. She spurned him with her heel. ‘Oh, you weed,’ she said, ‘not worthy to be burned, go, or I send for the maids with besoms to wash you into the kennel.’ He crept away to the shipping next day, pressing only the hand of Des-Essars, who could hardly refuse him. ‘His only success on this miserable occasion,’ the young man wrote afterwards, ‘was to divert the Queen’s rage from Monsieur de Gordon, and to turn her thoughts, by ever so little more, in the direction of the English marriage. He was one of those fools whose follies serve to show every man more or less ridiculous, just as a false sonnet makes sonneteering jejune.’
Lent opened, therefore, with omens; and with more came Lady Day and the new year. The Gordons, being summoned, did not answer; the Gordons, then, were put to the horn. The Queen was bitter as winter against them, with no desire but to have them at her knees. As for lovers and their loves, after George Gordon, after the crowning shame of Monsieur de Châtelard, ice-girdled Artemis was not chaster than she. My Lord of Bothwell, after an essay or two, shrugged and sought the border; the Queen was all for high alliances just now, and Mr. Secretary, their apostle, was in favour. He was hopeful, as he told Mary Fleming, to see two Queens at York; and who could say what might not come of that? And while fair Fleming wondered he was most hopeful, for like a delicate tree he needed genial air to make him bud. You saw him at such seasons at his best—a shrewd, nervous man, with a dash of poetry in him. The Queen of England always inspired him; he was frequently eloquent upon the theme. His own Queen talked freely about her ‘good sister,’ wrote her many civil letters, and treasured a few stately replies. One wonders, reading them now, that they should have found warmer quarters than a pigeon-hole, that they could ever have lain upon Queen Mary’s bosom and been beat upon by her ardent heart. Yet so it was. They know nothing of Queen Mary who know her not as the Huntress, never to be thrown out by a cold scent. Mr. Secretary, knowing her well, harped as long as she would dance. ‘Ah, madam, there is a golden trader! Thence you may win an argosy indeed. What a bargain to be struck there! Sister kingdoms, sister queens—oh, if the Majesty of England were but lodged in a man’s heart! But so in essence it is. Her royal heart is like a strong fire, leaping within a frame of steel. And your Grace’s should be the jewel which that fire would guard, the Cor Cordis, the Secret of the Rose, the Sweetness in the Strong!’
Mary Fleming, glowing to hear such periods, saw her mistress catch light from them.
‘You speak well and truly,’ said Queen Mary. ‘I would I had the Queen of England for my husband; I would love her well.’ She spoke softly, blushing like a maiden.
‘Sister and spouse!’ cries Lethington with ardour. ‘Sister and spouse!’
For the sake of some such miraculous consummation she gave up all thoughts of Don Carlos, put away the Archduke, King Charles, the Swedish prince. Her sister of England should marry her how she would. Lethington, on the day it was decided that Sir James Melvill should go to London upon the business, knelt before his sovereign in a really honest transport, transfigured in the glory of his own fancy. ‘I salute on my knees the Empress of the Isles! I touch the sacred stem of the Tree of the New World!’
Very serious, very subdued, very modest, the Queen cast virginal eyes to her lap.
‘God willing, Mr. Secretary, I will do His pleasure in all things,’ she said.
The Lord James, observing her melting mood, made a stroke for the Earldom of Moray. Were the Gordons to defy the Majesty of Scotland? With these great hopes new born, with old shames dead and buried—never, never! The Queen said she would go to the North and hound the Gordons out.
On the morning of Lammas Day the Queen heard mass in the Chapel Royal with a special intention, known only to herself. Red mass it should have been, since she felt sore need of the Holy Ghost; but she had given up the solemn ornament of music for the sake of peace. So Father Lesley read the office before the very few faithful: her maids, Erskine, Herries, the esquires, the pages, the French Ambassador, the Ambassador of Savoy—with him a certain large, full-blooded Italian, of whom there will be something to say anon. Mr. Knox had been scaring off the waverers of late: the Catholic religion was languid in the realm.
She knelt before the altar on her faldstool very stiffly, and looked more solitary than she felt. Her high mood and high endeavour still holding, there was but one man in Scotland who could make her feel her isolation, make her pity herself so nearly that the tears filled her eyes. Her brother James and his party, ostentatiously aloof, she could reckon with. All was said of them long ago by that old friend of hers now facing God in the mass: ‘Your brother stands on the left of your throne; but he looks for ever to the right.’ With this key to the cipher of my Lord James, what mystery in his sayings or doings? Then the grim Mr. Knox, who had worked her secret desires, and since then railed at her, scolded her, made her cry—she had his measure too. He liked her through all, and she trusted him in spite of all: at a pinch she could win him over. Whom, then, need she consider? The Earl of Bothwell—ah, the Earl of Bothwell, who laughed at everything, and had looked drolly on at her efforts to be a queen, and chosen to do nothing to help or hinder: there was a man to be feared indeed! She never knew herself less a queen or more a girl than when he was before her. Laughed he or frowned, was he eloquent or dumb as a fish, he intimidated her, diminished her, drove her cowering into herself to queen it alone. Christ was not so near, God not so far off, as this confident, free-living, shameless lord. Therefore now, because she dared not falter in what she was about to do, or see herself less than she desired to be, she had sent him into Liddesdale to hold the Justice-Court, and had not cared even to receive him when he came to take his leave. Lady Argyll, who had stood in her place, reported that he had gone out gaily, humming a French air. With him safely away, she had faced her duty—duty of a Prince, as she conceived it. And here she knelt in prayer, prone before the Holy Ghost—solitary (but that is the safeguard of the King!)—and searched the altar for a sign of assurance.
Over that altar hung Christ, enigmatic upon His cross. The red priest bent his head down to his book, and made God apace.
The Queen’s lips moved. ‘My Saviour Christ, I offer Thee the intention of my heart, a clean oblation. If I do amiss in error, O Bread of Heaven, visit it not upon me. I have been offended, I have been disobeyed; they call upon me to claim my just requital. But be not Thou offended with me, my Lord, and pardon Thou my disobedience. As for my punishment, I suffer it in seeking to punish.’
It is not often that women pray in words: an urgency, a subjection, a passionate reception is the most they do—and the best. But she prayed so now, because she felt the need of justifying herself before Heaven, and the ability to do it. For Bothwell was in far Liddesdale, and she on her throne.
In three days’ time she was to go to the North; and, though the country knew it not, she would go in force to punish the Gordons. You may judge by her prayers whether she was satisfied with the work. Plainly she was not. Her anger had had time to cool; she might have forgotten the very name of the clan, except that their men had had honest faces, and that two of them had certainly loved her once. But she had not been allowed to forget: the record remained, held up ever before her eyes in the white hand of Lord James. Contumacy! Contumacy! Old Huntly had been traitor before, when he trafficked with the enemies of her mother, and tried to sell herself to the English king. The Gordons would not surrender; they had mated with the Hamiltons, a stock next to hers for the throne. Was there not a shameful plot here? Would she not be stifled between these two houses? Yes, yes, she knew all that. But they were Catholics, they had shown her honest faces, two of them had loved her. She was not satisfied; she must have a sign from heaven.
God was made, the bell proclaimed Him enthroned, Queen Mary bowed her head. Now, now, if the Gordons were true men, let God make a sign! The tale was told that once, when a priest lifted up the Host above his head, the thin film dissolved, and took flesh in the shape of a naked child, who stood, burning white, upon the man’s two hands. Let some such marvel fall now! Intimacies between God and the Prince had been known. She hid her face, laid down her soul; the vague swam over her, the dark—a swooning, drowning sense. In that, for a moment, as vivid clouds chased each other across her field, she saw a face, a shape—mocking red mouth, vivacious, satirical hands, the gleam of two twinkling eyes: Bothwell, hued like a fiend, shadowing the world. She shuddered; God passed over, as the bell called up the people. With them she lifted her head, stiffened herself. The spell was broken. Without being more superstitious than her brethren, she may be pardoned for finding in this experience an ominous beginning of adventure.
Nevertheless, she so faced the heights of her task that, on the day appointed, she set out as bravely as to a hunting of stags. Jeddart pikes, bowmen from the Forest, her Lothian bodyguard—she had some five hundred men about her; too many for a progress, too few to make war. She herself rode in hunting trim, with two maids, two pages, two esquires; her brother, of course, in command; with him, of course, the Secretary. At fixed points along the road certain lords joined her: Atholl at Stirling, Glencairn and Ruthven at Perth, these with their companies. Lying at Coupar-Angus, at Glamis, at Edzell, her spirits rose as she breasted the rising country, saw the cloud-shadowed hills, the swollen rivers, the wind-swept trees, the sullen moors, the rocks. She grew happy even, for motion, newness, and physical exertion always excited her, and she was never happy unless she was excited. No fatigue daunted her. She sat out the driving days of rain, bent neither to the heat nor to the cold fog. She was always in front, always looking forward, seemed like the keen breath of war, driven before it as the wind by a rain-storm. Lethington likened her to Diana on Taygetus shrilling havoc; but the Lord James said: ‘Such similitudes are distasteful. We are serious men upon a serious business.’ She rode astraddle like a young man, longed for a breastplate and steel bonnet. She made Ruthven exercise her with the broadsword, teach her to stamp her foot and cry, ‘Ha! a touch!’ and cajoled her brother into letting her sleep one night afield. Folded in a military plaid, so indeed she did; and watched with thrills the stars shoot their autumn flights, and listened to the owls calling each other as they coursed the shrew-mice over the moor. She pillowed her head on Mary Livingstone’s knee at last, and fell asleep at about three o’clock in the morning.
In the grey mirk—sharply cold, and a fine mist drizzling—Lethington and his master came to rouse her. Mary Livingstone lifted a finger of warning. The Queen was soundly asleep, smiling a little, with parted lips and the hasty breathing of a child. Mary Seton, too, was deep, her face buried in her arm. The two men looked down at the group.
‘Come away, my lord: give them time,’ said the Secretary.
But my Lord James did not hear him. He stood broodingly, muttering to himself: ‘A girl’s frolic—this romping, fond girl! And Scotland’s neck for her footstool—and earnest men for her pastime. O King eternal, is it just? Man!’ he said aloud, ‘there’s no reason in this.’
Mr. Secretary misunderstood him, not observing his wild looks. ‘Give them a short half-hour, my lord. There are two of them sleeping; and this poor watcher hath the need of it.’
The Lord James turned upon him. ‘Who sought to have women sleeping here? Are men to wait for the like of this? Are men to wait for ever? She should have counted the cost. I shall waken her. Ay! let her have the truth.’
‘She will wake soon enough,’ says Lethington, ‘and have the truth soon enough.’
The Lord James gave him one keen glance. ‘I command here, Mr. Secretary, under the Queen’s authority. Bid them sound.’
The trumpet rang; the Queen stretched herself, moved her head, yawned, and sat up. She was wide awake directly, laughed at Livingstone for looking so glum, at Seton’s tumbled hair. She kissed them both, said her prayers with Father Roche, and was ready when the order to march was given.
When she came to Aberdeen she was told that a messenger from the Earl of Huntly was waiting for her with his chief’s humble duty, and a prayer that she would lodge in his castle of Strathbogie. This was very insolent or very foolish: she declined to receive the man. Let the Earl and his son Findlater render themselves up at Stirling Castle forthwith, she would receive them there. No more tidings came directly; but she learned from her brother news of the country which made her cheeks tingle. It was the confident belief of all the Gordon kindred, she was given to know, that her Majesty had come into the North to marry Sir John Gordon of Findlater. He was to be created Earl of Moray and Duke of Rothesay to that end. True news or false, she was in the mood to believe it, and cried out, with hot tears in her eyes, that she could have no peace until that rogue’s head was off. Needing no prompter at her side, she took instant action, marched on Inverness and summoned the keys of the castle. They told her that the Lord of Findlater was keeper; none could come in but by his leave. Findlater! But the man was out of his mind! She grew very quiet when, after many repetitions of it, she could bring herself to believe this report; then she sent for Lethington and bade him raise the country. The counsel was her brother’s, and meant that the clans—Forbeses, Grants, MacIntoshes—were to be supported and turned against the Gordons. The Lord James considered that his work was as good as done. So did the captain of the castle of Inverness; and rightly, for when his charge was surrendered he was hanged. The town did its best to appease the Queen with humble addresses and crocks full of gold pieces; but she concealed from nobody now that she had come up with war in her hands. Captains and their levies were sent for from the south; roads marked out for Kirkcaldy of Grange, Lord John Stuart, Hay of Ormiston; rendezvous given at Aberdeen. And presently she went down to meet them, full of the purpose she had.
Old Huntly came out to watch. They saw his men, some hundred or more, in loose order at the ford of Spey. Queen Mary’s heart leapt for battle, real crossing of swords to crown all this feigning and waiting; but the enemy drew off to the woods, and nobody barred her road to Aberdeen. Uncomfortably for herself, she lodged at Spynie on the way, where Bishop Patrick of Moray made her very welcome. He was Lord Bothwell’s uncle, true Hepburn, a scapegrace old Catholic, anathema to the good Lord James, and proud of it. Something of Bothwell’s gleam was in his cushioned eyes, something of Bothwell’s infectious gaiety in his rich laugh. Like Bothwell, too, he was a mocker, who saw things sacred and profane a uniform, ridiculous drab, shrugged at the ruin of the faith in Scotland, and supposed Huntly had been paid to be a traitor. The Queen’s fine temper made her sensitive to depreciation of the things she strove at; under such rough fingers she was bruised. She felt cheapened by her intercourse with this bishop; and not only so, but her business sickened her. The old pagan made light of it.
‘’Tis but a day in the hedgerows for ye, madam. Send your terriers—Lethington and siclike—into the bury, you shall see the Gordons bolt to your nets like rabbits, and old Huntly squealing loudest of all.’
Now, the Gordons had been fair in her sight, noble friends and hardy foes. But if George Gordon was to squeal like a rabbit, then war was playing at soldiers, and she a tomboy out for a romp. She left Spynie feeling that she hated the Gordons, hated their fault, hated their chastisement, and hated above all men under the tent-roof of heaven the whole race of Hepburn.
‘Vile, vile scoffers at God and His vicars! They make a toy of me, these Hepburns. Uncle and nephew—I am a plaything for them.’
‘Just a Honeypot, madam,’ said Livingstone, and was snapped at for her respect.
‘Am I “Madam” to you now? What have I done to make you so petulant?’
‘I wish you would be more “Madam” to the Hepburns,’ replied the maid. ‘I could curse the whole brood of them.’
John Gordon defended two good castles, Findlater and Auchindoune. He expected, and was prepared for, a siege; but when the reinforcements came up from the Lowlands, somewhat to his consternation the Queen joined them at Aberdeen and hung about that region indefinitely, as if the autumn were but begun. Perhaps the suspense, the menace, told on old Huntly’s nerves; at any rate, something brought him to his knees. He sent petition after petition, promise upon promise; was reported by Ormiston to be very much aged, tremulous, given to sobbing, and when not so engaged, incoherent. This worthy went to Strathbogie, hoping to surprise him; failed to find him at home, but saw the Countess and a young girl, strangely beautiful, the Lady Jean, sole unmarried daughter of the house. The Countess took him into the chapel.
‘Do you see that, Captain Hay?’ says she.
‘What in particular, ma’am?’
There were lighted candles on the altar, a cross, the priest’s vestments of cloth of gold laid ready. She pointed to these adornments.
‘There is why they hunt us down, Captain Hay, because my lord is a faithful Christian gentleman. And woe,’ cried she, ‘woe upon her who, following wicked counsels, persecutes her own holy religion! It had been better for her that she had never been born. Tell your mistress that. Tell her that Gordon’s bane is her own bane. Ah, tell her that.’
He repeated the piece to the Queen in council, and she received it in a cold silence, looking furtively round about her at the lords present, for all the world (says Hay of Ormiston) as if she would see whether they believed the words or not. Her brother sat on her left, Morton the Chancellor on her right; Argyll was there, Ruthven, Atholl, Cassilis, Eglinton. Not one of them looked up from the table, or saw her anxious peering. Atholl whispered Cassilis without moving his head, and Cassilis nodded and stared on. What did she think during that constrained silence? Gordon’s bane her own bane! Could it be true? Perhaps the gibe of old Bishop Hepburn came to her timely help: ‘Rabbits in a bury, and old Huntly squealing first and loudest.’
She threw up her head, like a fretful horse. ‘My lords,’ she said in her ringing, boyish voice, ‘you have heard the message sent me by the Countess of Huntly. I am not of her mind. Gordon has tried to be my bane, but is not so now. I think Gordon’s bane is Gordon’s self, and fear not what he can do against me. And if not I, why need you fear? Take order now, how best to make an end of it all.’ Order was taken.
Huntly was summoned before the council, and sent his wife. The Queen would not see her. The royal forces moved out of Aberdeen; John Gordon cut to pieces an outlying party; then the Earl joined hands with his son, and the pair marched on Aberdeen. The fight was on the rolling hills of Corrichie, down in the swampy valley between, over and up a burn. Their cry of ‘Aboyne! Aboyne!’ bore the Gordons into battle; their pride made them heroic; their pride caused them to fall. It was a case, one of the first, of the ordnance against the pipes. No gallantry—and they were gallant; no screaming of music, no slogan nor sword-work, nor locking of arms, could hold out against Kirkcaldy’s cannon or Lord James’s horse. They huddled about their standard and so died; some few fled into the lonely hills; but Huntly was taken, and two of his tall sons, and all three brought to the Queen. John of Findlater and Adam were in chains; the old man needed none, for he was dead. They say that when he was taken he was frantic, struggled with his captors to the last, induced so an apoplexy, stiffened and died in their arms. They guessed by the weight of him that he was dead. All this they told her. She neither looked at the body nor chose to see the two prisoners; received the news in dull silence. ‘Where is the Lord Gordon?’ She did ask that; and was told that he had not been engaged.
‘Coward as well as traitor,’ she gloomed; ‘what else is left him to adorn?’
‘Madam, tumbril and gallows,’ croaked Ruthven, like a hoody crow.
Next morning she awoke utterly disenchanted of the whole affair. Nothing would content her but to be quit of it. ‘I seem to smell of blood and filthy reek,’ she said to her brother James. ‘Take what measures you choose. Ruin the ruins to your heart’s content. The house was Catholic, and I suppose the stones and mortar are abominable in your eyes. Pull them down; do as you choose—but let me go.’
He asked her desire concerning the prisoners. This caught villain Findlater, for instance.
‘You seek more blood?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Take his, then. He has had his fill of it in his day; now let him afford you a share.’
Adam Gordon? She took fire at his name. ‘You shall not touch a hair of his head. I do not choose—I will not suffer it. He is for me to deal with.’
He swore that she should be obeyed; but she called in Lethington, and put the lad in his personal charge, to be brought after her to Stirling. At this time Lethington was the only man she could trust.
Lastly, her brother hinted at the reward of his humble services to her realm.
‘Oh, yes, yes, brother, you shall have your bonny earldom. God knows how you have wrought for it. But if you keep me here one more hour, I declare I shall bestow it on Mr. Secretary.’
He thanked her, saying that he hoped to deserve such condescension by ever closer attention to her business. She chafed and fidgeted till he was gone, then set about her escape. With a very small escort, she pushed them to the last extreme in her anxiety to be south.
There should have been something of the pathetic in this struggle of a girl to get out of throne-room and council-chamber; one might almost hear the shrilling of wings; but Scots gentlemen fearful of their treadings must be excused for disregarding it. They told her at Dundee that the Duke of Châtelherault lay there, awaiting her censures. Hateful reminder!
‘What can he want with me at such an hour, in such a place as this?’
‘Madam, it is for his son-in-law’s sake he hath come so far.’
She flamed forth in her royalest rage. ‘Is the Lord Gordon so poor in heart? Can he not beg for himself? Can he not lie? Can he not run? He can hide himself, I know, while his kinsmen take the field. Let him learn to whine also, and then he will be armed cap-à-pie.’ The old Duke was refused: let the Lord Gordon surrender himself at Stirling Castle.
Thither went she, shivering in the cold which followed her late fires; and sat in the kingly seat to make an end of the Gordons. Thither then came the young lord whom she had once chosen to bewitch, walking upright, without his sword. He could not take his eyes from her face when he stood before her; nor could she restrain her fury, though many were present; no, but she leaned forward, holding by the balls of the chair, and drove in her hateful words fiercely and quick.
‘Ah, false heart, you dare to meet me at last!’
He said, ‘I have offended you, and am here at your mercy.’
‘What mercy for a liar?’
‘There should be none.’
‘For a disobedient servant?’
‘None, madam, none.’
‘For a craven that hides when war is adoing?’
He answered her steadily. ‘Whether is that man the greater coward who fears such taunts as these, and for fear of them does hardily; or he that refuses to draw sword upon his sovereign, though she throw in his face his refusal? If I was able to dare your enmity, it is a small thing to me that now I must have your scorn. There is no man in this place shall call me craven; but from your Majesty I care not to receive the name, because I am proud to have deserved it.’
This was well spoken, had she not been too fretful to know it.