‘She’ll be sleeping now,’ said Adam.

‘I doubt it,’ said Jean-Marie.

CHAPTER XII
EPITHALAMIUM: END OF ALL MAIDS’ ADVENTURE

He fell ill of measles, the young prince, before they could leave Wemyss—measles followed by much weakness, sweating, and ague; and though all her whispering world—but the few—might wonder, nothing could keep her from the proud uses of wifehood. She took her place by his bed early—pale with care, yet composed—and kept it till past midnight. It was beautiful to see her, with rank and kingship cast aside, more dignified by her little private fortune, more a queen for her enclosed realm. For now she swayed a sick-room, and was absolute there: let seditious murmurings and alarms toss their pikes beyond the border.

And indeed they did. Her secret marriage had been so well kept, the Court fairly hummed with scandal; and the simple truth was given a dog’s death that romantic tales might thrive. It was commonly said that if she married him now it would only be because shame would drive her. The Earl of Morton went about with this clacking on his tongue; plain men like Atholl and Herries looked all ways for a pardon upon the doting Queen. In their company the Earl of Moray lifted up deprecating hands; he agreed with the Earl of Morton, advised Atholl and Herries to pray without ceasing. The winds were blowing as he required them; but this sickness was vexatious, with the delays it brought. Time is of the essence of the contract, even if that be only between a vainglorious youth and a rope. Mr. Secretary wrote from England that the Queen of that country was implacably against the marriage; it was possible even now that it might be stopped. But it must on no account be stopped.

This was, in early May, the plain view of the Earl of Moray: that the thing must be publicly done, and soon done, in order that his schemes should bear fruit. It is an odd, almost inexplicable fact that he was to change his whole mind in the course of a few weeks, and for no deeper reason than a word lightly let fall by the Queen, his half-sister. But what a word that was to the bastard of a king! It was the word King.

There came to Wemyss, in the midst of these measles and scandalous whisperings, a certain Murray of Tullibardine, a friend of Bothwell’s—him and one Pringle. They came together, and yet separately: Pringle with griefs to be healed—that he, being a servant of my Lord Bothwell’s, had been summarily dismissed with kicks on a sensitive part; Tullibardine as a friend, frankly to sue his friend’s pardon. My Lord Moray refused to help him, having neither love nor use for a Bothwell, but he got to the Queen by the back stairs and put his client’s case. However, she scarcely listened to him. Busy as she was, it was strange to see how far away from her ken the dread Hepburn had drifted.

‘From the Earl of Bothwell—you? What has he to report of himself—and by you?’

Tullibardine spoke of duty, forgiveness, the clemency of the prince, while the Queen stirred the broth in her hand.

‘I never sent him to France,’ she said, ‘but to the Castle of Edinburgh rather. He set me at nought when he fled this country. Let him return to the place I put him in, and we will think about duty, forgiveness, and the prince’s clemency. I bear him no more ill-will than he has put in me, and he can take it out when he pleases.’

‘I thank your Majesty,’ said Tullibardine, ‘and my noble friend will thank you.’

‘He has only himself to thank, so far as I see,’ she replied, and dismissed him before the broth could get cold.

Meantime the Earl of Moray had held a godly conversation with afflicted Pringle. Pringle had much to say: as that, of all men living, the Lord Bothwell hated two—his good lordship of Moray and Mr. Secretary. He had sworn to be the death of each when he returned.

The Earl of Moray compressed his lips, straightened himself, and cleared his throat.

‘I fear for him, Pringle,’ he said, ‘the wild, misgoverned, glorious young man. I cannot charge myself with any offence against him, and yet I remember that when I was in France he girded at me more than once. But I am accustomed in such variancy to hold my plain course. Pringle, that was a desperate gentleman. He had to be forbid the Court.’

‘True, my lord,’ says Pringle, ‘and your lordship knows to what abominable usages he hath——’

‘Pray, Pringle, pray, no more!’

Pringle was now in the painful position of having staked out a short road and finding it denied him. ‘I must whisper in your lordship’s ear. I must make so bold.’

‘Man, I refuse you. Heinous living be far from me!’

‘My lord, I have heard the Lord Bothwell speak of the Queen’s grace in a manner——’

‘Ay, it is like enough, poor Pringle. The wicked man seeth wickedness all over.’

‘He spake of the Queen, my lord—in your ear——’

He breathed it low, a vile accusation concerning the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Queen—his niece, and then a girl of eighteen.

The Earl cowed him with a look. ‘Go, Pringle, go! This talk should never have been held between us. You have misused my charity. Go, I say.’

Pringle shivered out.

In his time the Earl of Moray saw the Queen, and, after due preparation, chose to tarnish her ears with the tale.

But she was not at all tarnished. From her safe seat, with but a party-wall between her husband and her, she received it brightly.

‘Why, what a ragged tongue he hath! The poor, proud Cardinal! Did he not love me? I believe he always did.’

‘Madam,’ said her brother, ‘you interpret gently. This makes the slanderer’s damnation the deeper.’

She laughed. ‘It is plain, brother, that you know little of France. In France the truth goes for nothing, but the jest is all. My Lord Bothwell has been much in France.’

‘A jest, madam? This a jest?’

‘It is quite in their manner. I remember the old King——’ She broke off suddenly. ‘Oh, brother, my King is more at ease! This morning his fever left him, and there broke a great sweat.’

‘I rejoice,’ said he—‘I rejoice. But touching this horrible railer—if he should crave leave to return——’

‘He has craved it already,’ replied the Queen. ‘I answered that if he choose to come back to his prison he may do it. But not otherwise. Brother, I must go to the King.’

The King! We were there, then; and it galled him like a rowel. Although she used it warily, and only with the nine persons who were privy, he could not bear the word; for every time he heard it he was stung into remembering that he ought to have foreseen it and had not. It is to be admitted that it had never once crossed his mind—neither the word nor the thing; astute, large-minded, wide-ranging as he was, he was also that unimaginative, prim-thinking man who has pigeon-holes for the categories, knows nothing of passion that breaks all rules, nor can conceive how loyalty is like meat to women in love, and humility like wine. Lethington could have told him these things, the Italian could have told him, any of the maids; and he never to have guessed at them! Dangerously mortified at the discovery, his disgust with himself and the fact worked together into one great distemper. This it was which threw him out of his balance, and led him presently to the greatest length he ever went; but at present it was only gathering in him. It made him doubtful, distrustful of himself and all; and when he looked about for supports he could find none to his taste. One folly after another! How he had cut away his friends! There was Lethington in England. There was the Italian, who knew so much. He sickened at the thought of that capable ruffian who had helped him hasten the crowning of ‘the King.’ Very possibly—very certainly, it seemed to him now, brooding over it in stillness and the dark—very possibly the ruin of his life had been laid that night when he had sought out the creature in his den and bought him with a diamond. Argyll was here, Rothes, Glencairn, and their like, and Morton the Chancellor, whom he only half trusted. Besides, Morton was cousin of this flagrant ‘King,’ and would rise as he rose. On the whole, and for want of better, he consorted with Argyll and his friends, and dared go so far as this, to tell them that he had fears of the marriage.

‘I could have wished,’ he said to Argyll, ‘a livelier sense of favours done in so young a man; also that my sister might have judged more soberly how far to meet him. If men of age and known probity had been consulted!’

Glencairn, a passably honest man, and undoubtedly a pious man, said tentatively here, that no lord of the Council could be found to support the Prince. As for the Queen’s grace——

‘She has been unhappily rash,’ says Moray; ‘I cannot think more. Maidenly lengths would have become her, a queenly regard, but surely no more.’ He turned to Argyll. ‘Frankly, brother-in-law, Mr. Knox should not hear of these late doings—of these bedside ministrations, these transports, these fits of self-communing, this paltering with the tempter, this doffing of regalities. I pray, I pray for Scotland!’

‘The gowk’s a papist,’ says Argyll, a plain man.

‘He is young, brother-in-law; that we remember always.’

‘He stinks of pride,’ says Argyll,—‘sinful, lusty pride of blood. If this marriage be made we shall all rue it.’

The Earl of Moray clapped a hand to each of his shoulders.

‘Brother-in-law, pray for Scotland!’

‘Oh, ay,’ says Argyll, ‘and put an edge to my Andrew Ferrara.’

How she lingered over him, prayed over him, watched every petulant twitching of his limbs, no one could know altogether save Mary Sempill, and she had affairs of her own to consider—a wife who knew she was going to be a mother. But for this proud preoccupation, she might have seen how touchingly the Queen made the most of her treasure, and how all the ardour which had hurried her into wedlock was now whipped up again to prove it bliss. Was he fretful—and was he not? It was the fever in his dear bones. Was he gross-mannered? Nay, but one must be tender of young blood. Did he choose to have his Englishmen about him, his Archie Douglas to tell him salt tales, while she sat with her maids and waited? Well, well, a man must have men with him now and again, and is never the better husband for cosseting. When they urged her to be a queen, she lowered her eyes and said she was a wife. This raised an outcry.

‘He is, he can only be, your consort, madam.’

‘I am his, you mean,’ said she. ‘The man chooses the woman. There are no crowns in the bridal bed, and none in heaven. Naked go we to both.’

Mary Sempill wrung her hands over talk of the sort. ‘Out, alas! My foolish, fond, sweet lass!’

But Mary Fleming considered, nursing her cheek in the way she had. ‘The strength of a man overrides all your politics, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘The Salic Law is the law of nature, I have heard men say.’

‘God smite this youth if he try it!’ said Sempill fiercely. ‘He’ll set the heather afire and burn us all in our beds. And you, Fleming, will have need of mercy in your turn, if you hearken to your grey-faced Lethington.’

‘Mr. Secretary has a very noble heart, Mary. I hope I may say the same of your Master.’

Mary Sempill sniffed. ‘My Master, as you call him, has a head for figures. He can cipher you two and two. And he says of your Lethington that he is working mischief in England.’

Mary Fleming rose with spirit to this challenge. ‘I cannot believe it. You are angry with me because you are vexed with the King.’

Then it was Mary Sempill to bounce away. ‘The King! Never use that word to me, woman. There shall be no King in Scotland till my mistress bears him.’

But she was talking without her book.

They moved to Stirling as soon as the young lord was mended; and thither came the Earl of Lennox, in a high taking—foxy, close-eyed, crop-bearded, fussy and foolish—to pay his respects to the Prince his son. Never was a more disastrous combination made: they cut the Court in half, as shears a length of cloth. The garrulity of the old man set everybody on edge; then came the insolent son, to prove the truth even worse than they had feared. His father egged him on to preposterous lengths, intolerable behaviour; so the ‘pretty cockerel,’ as they called him in France, made wild work in the hill-town. He quarrelled so fiercely with my Lord Rothes that Davy had to pull him off by main force, and then he drew his dagger on the Lord Justice Clerk, who came to his lodging with a message from the Queen.

‘Tell your mistress,’ he had cried out to that astonished officer, ‘that I pay honour to none but the honourable. You have come here with lies in your throat. She sent me no such message. You are a very dirty fellow.’

Archie Douglas put in his oar. ‘No, no, sir. You jest with the Lord Justice Clerk—but your jest is too broad.’

‘By God, man,’ says the Prince, ‘this jest of mine is narrow at the point. Let him come on and taste the forky tongue of it.’

The Lord Justice Clerk was too flustered to be offended at the moment; but when he had gained the calm of the street he shuddered to recall the scene. Her Majesty must be informed of every circumstance: flesh and blood could not endure such affronts. It needed all her Majesty’s cajolery to salve the wounded man, and more than she had over to comfort herself when he had gone away mollified.

Lord Ruthven was one of the Prince’s intimates at this time, a malign influence; and the everlasting Italian was another. Signior Davy, at home in all the chambers of the house, used to sit on the edge of the young man’s bed and pare his nails while he talked philosophy and statecraft. It was he who tempered the storm which had nearly maddened the Lord Justice Clerk.

‘Your lordship is in a fair way to the haven,’ he said. ‘I tell you honestly you will get on no quicker for this choler. You must needs be aware that her Majesty will have no rest until you and she are publicly wedded. She is fretting herself to strings under that desire. What then is my advice to your lordship? Why, to sit very still, and to insist with your respectable father that he hold his tongue. I speak plainly; but it is to my friend and patron.’

The Prince was not offended—but he was obstinate.

‘Speak as plain as you please, Davy, and deal for me as warily as you can. The patent should be sealed.’

That was the root of the quarrel—his patent of creation to be Duke of Rothesay. The Queen had promised it to him, but there had been vexed debate over it in the Council. It was a title for kings’ sons, and had always been so. The Earl of Moray vehemently opposed; the Argylls, Glencairns, and others of his friends followed him; they had hopes also of the Chancellor. At the minute, therefore, although the Queen had insisted even unto tears, she had not been able to get her way. So she pretended to give over the effort, meaning, of course, to work round about for it. She had seen the Chancellor’s wavering: if she could gain him she would have much. All she wanted for herself was time, all from the Prince was patience. But the furious fool had none to lend her.

When the Italian had done his work upon his nails—the rough with the knife, the rounding-off with his teeth—he resumed his spoken thoughts.

‘Your patent,’ he said, ‘is as good as sealed. The Queen is at work upon it in ways which are past your lordship’s finding out. For the love of mercy, be patient: you little know what you are risking by this intemperance. Why, with patience you will gain what no patent of her Majesty’s can give you: that little matter of kingship, which, in such a case as yours, goes only by proclamation and——’

My lord pricked up his ears to this royal word. ‘Ha! In a good hour, Master David!’

‘Good enough, when it comes,’ says Davy; ‘but you did not allow me to finish. Proclamation—and acclamation, I was about to add; for one is as needed as the other.’

This was a fidgety addition.

‘Pooh!’ cried the Prince, ‘the pack follows the horn.’

He set the Italian’s shoulders to work. ‘I advise you not to count upon it, my lord. In this country there is no pack of hounds, but a flock—many flocks—of sheep. And they follow the shepherd, you must know. Therefore you must be prudent; let me say, more prudent. The Queen comes to you too much; you go to her too little. It is she that pays the court, where it should be you. Dio mio! It is not decent. It is madness.’

‘She is fond of me, Davy. The truth is, she is over-fond of me.’

Signior Davy stopped himself just in time. He buried his exclamation in a prodigious shrug.

The doings of the Lennoxes, father and son, which scared the Court so finely, were the Earl of Moray’s only hope. He, in truth, was very near finding himself in the position of a man who should have lit a fire to keep wolves from his door. The flames catch the eaves and burn his house down: behold him without shelter, and the wolves coming on! This is exactly his own case. Kingship for the young man, by whose entangling he had hoped to entangle his sister, was a noose round his own neck—the mere threat of it was a noose. If he furthered it he was ruined; if he opposed it—at this hour of the day—he might equally be ruined. All his hope lay in England. Let the Queen of England send for her runaway subjects, and then—why, he could begin again. As day succeeded to day, and favour to favour—the dukedom conferred, the match in every one’s mouth, the Court at Edinburgh, the Chapel Royal in fair view—he worked incessantly. He dared not try the Italian again, lest the impudent dog should grin in his face; but he secured Argyll and his friends, the Duke of Châtelherault and his; he wrote to Lethington, to Mr. Cecil, to the Earl of Leicester, to Queen Elizabeth. And so it befel that, one certain morning, English Mr. Randolph faced the Lennoxes with his mistress’s clear commands. Father and son were to return to England, or——

Quos ego—in fact; much too late for the fair. They took the uncompromising message each after his kind: Lennox, white-haired, ape-faced and fussy, sitting in his deep leather chair, rolling his palms over the knobs of it, swinging his feet free of the ground; the Prince his son stiff as a rod, standing, with one hand to his padded hip—blockish and surly as a rogue mule.

Lennox spoke first. ‘Hey, Master Randolph!’—his little naked eyes were like pin-pricks—‘Hey, Master Randolph, I dare not do it. No, no. It’s not in the power of man living to do the like of it.’

Randolph shifted his scrutiny. The Prince was angry, therefore bold; assured, therefore haughty.

‘And I, Randolph,’ he said, ‘tell you fairly that go I will not.’

Randolph became dry. ‘I hope my lord, for a better answer to the Queen your sovereign. Will and Shall are bad travelling companions for a legate. I urge once more your duty upon you.’

‘Duty!’ cried the flushed youth: ‘I own to no duty but Queen Mary’s, and I never will. As to the other Queen, your mistress, who grudges me my fortune, it is no wonder that she needs me. You will understand wherefore in a few days’ time. I do not intend to return: there is your answer. I am very well where I am, and likely to be better yet anon. So I purpose to remain. There is your answer, which seems to me a good one.’

Randolph turned his back and left them. When he saw the Earl of Moray he said that he had done his best to serve him; and that, although he had no hope of staying the marriage, his lordship might count upon the friendship of England in all enterprises he might think well to engage in ‘for the welfare of both realms.’ This was cold comfort.

Shortly after this disappointment the careworn lord got into a wrangle with the Prince in a public place—not a difficult thing to do. It began with the young man’s loud rebuke of Mr. Knox, who (said he) had called him ‘a covetous clawback,’ and whose ears he threatened to crop with a pair of shears. Beginning in the vestibule of the Council-chamber, it was continued on the open cawsey in everybody’s hearing. There was heat; the younger may have raised his hand against the elder, or he may not. The Earl, at any rate, declared that he went in fear of his life. Then came the hour, most memorable, when he saw the Queen alone.

He was sent for, and he came, as he told her at once, ‘with his life in his hand.’

She asked him who would touch his hand, except to take it and shake it?

‘One, madam,’ he replied darkly, ‘who is too near your Majesty for my honour or——’ and there he stopped.

‘Or mine, would you say?’ she flashed back at him—one of her penetrative flashes, following a quick turn of the head. Remember, she knew nothing of his brawl with the Prince.

He disregarded her riposte, and pursued his suspicions. ‘Madam, madam, I very well know—for I still have friends in Scotland—in what danger I stand. I very well know who talked together against me behind the back-gallery at Perth, and can guess at what was said, and how this late discreditable scene was laid——’

‘Oh, you guess this, brother! you guess that!’ the Queen snapped at him; ‘I am weary of your guesses against my friends. There was the Earl of Bothwell, whom you guessed your mortal enemy; now I suppose it is the Prince, my husband. Do you think all Scotland finds you in the way? It is easy for you to remove the suspicion.’

His looks reproached her. ‘Did you send for me, madam, to wound me?’

‘No, no. You have served me well. I am not unmindful.’ Her eyes grew gentle as she remembered Wemyss and the hasty mysteries of the night—the hurry, the whispered urgings, the wild-beating heart. She held out her hand, shyly, as befitted recognition of a blushful service. ‘I can never quarrel with you, brother, knowing what you know, remembering what you have seen.’

Whither was fled the finer sense of the man? He misunderstood her grossly, believing that she feared his knowledge. He did not take her proffered hand—she drew it back after a while, slowly.

‘You say well, sister,’ he answered, with cold reserve. ‘There should be no quarrel, nor need there be, while you remember me—and yourself.’

‘It was not at all in my mind, I assure you,’ she told him, with an air of dismissing the foolish thing; and went on, in the same breath, to speak of the vexatious news from England—as if he and she were of the same opinion about that! Her ‘good sister,’ she said, was holding strange language, requiring the return of ‘subjects in contumacy,’ showing herself offended at unfriendly dealing, and what not—letters, said Queen Mary, which required speedy answer, and could have but one answer. The Contract of Matrimony, in short, had been prepared by my Lord Morton, was ready to be signed; the high parties were more than ready. Should she send for the treaty? She wished her brother to see it. That was why she had summoned him.

He was seldom at a loss, for when direction failed him he had a store of phrases ready to eke out the time. But now that he was plumply face to face with what he had come both to hate and to fear, he stammered and looked all about.

She rang her hand-bell, and bade the page call Signior Davy ‘and the parchment-writing’; then, while she waited in matronly calm, sedately seated, hands in lap, he wrestled with his alarms, suspicions, grievances, disgusts; saw them flare before him like shapes—lewd, satyr shapes with their tongues out; lost control of himself, and broke out.

‘The marriage-band, you speak of? Ah—ah—but there is much to say anent such a thing—a tedious inquiry! Madam—madam—I should have exhibited to you before—the fault is in me that I did not——There is a common sense abroad—no man can fight a nation—it is thought that the case is altered. Yes, yes! Monarchs—you that be set in authority over men—are to be warned by them that stand about your thrones, monished and exhorted. ’Tis your duty to listen, theirs to impart: duty to God and the conscience. I am sore at a loss for words——’

Probably she had not been listening very closely, or heeding his agitation. She stopped him with a little short laugh.

‘Nay, ’tis not words you lack. Find courage, brother.’

‘Why, madam,’ said he, ‘and so I must. “It is expedient,” saith the Book, “that one man die——”! What a whole nation dreads, there must be some one to declare—even though, in so doing, he should seem to stultify himself. Oh, madam, is not the case altered from what it promised at first? Alas, what hope can we now have—seeing what we have seen—that this young man will prove a setter-forth of Christ’s religion? Or how can we suppose that he will ensue what we most desire—I mean the peace of God upon true believers? Do they know him in England and suppose that of him? Then how can we suppose it? Why, what token hath he showed towards the faithful but that of rancour? What professions hath he made, save them of mass-mongering, false prophecy, idolatry, loving darkness, shunning the light? Oh, madam, I am sore to say these things——’

The Italian entered with his parchments before he could hurry to a close or she stop him with an outcry.

It needed not so quick an eye to sense the brewing of a storm. The Queen sat back in her chair, cowering in the depths of it. Her eyes were fastened upon a little glass bowl which stood on the table—in a broody stare which saw nothing but midnight. The Earl, white to the edge of his lips, was waving his hands in the air. Bright and confident, the Italian stood at the door; but my lord, in his agitation, turned upon him. ‘Man, you’re a trespasser. Off with you! The Queen is in council—off!’

‘Scusì,’ says Davy, ‘I am summoned. Eccomi.’

He was dramatically quiet; he woke the Queen.

She started from her chair and ran to him. ‘Oh, David, David, he denies me! Perjury! Perjury!’

‘Sovereign lady,’ said the Italian, ‘here is one who will never deny you anything.’

As he knelt my lord recovered his dignity. ‘It is not convenient, madam——’

Ah, but she faced about. ‘Convenient! convenient! To end what you have begun? You! that led me to him! You that drove us in with your breath like a sheet of flame!’

He put up his hand, driven to defend himself. ‘Nay, madam, nay! It cannot be said. My design was never adopted—it was misunderstood. I bowed to no idols—that be far from me. I was outside the door. I neither know what was done within your chapel, nor afterwards within any chambers of the house. My only office was——’

She held herself by the throat—all gathered together, as if she would spring at him.

Signior Davy looked mildly from one to the other. ‘Scusì,’ he said, his voice soft as milk, ‘but your lordship was not outside all doors. I know to a point how much your lordship knows.’

The Earl gasped for breath.

At this point the Queen seemed to have got strength through the hands. She let them down from her neck, as if the spasm had passed. Her heart spoke—a lyric cry. ‘He brought me to the chamber door, and kissed my cheek, and wished me joy!’ She spoke like one enrapt, a disembodied sprite, as if the soul could have seen the body in act, and now rehearse the tale. ‘He led me to the chamber door, and kissed my cheek! “Sweet night,” says he, “sweet sister! See how your dreams come true.” And “Burning cheek!” says he; and “Fie, fie, the wild blood of a lass!” I think my cheek did prophesy, and burn for the shame to come.’ She turned them a tragic shape—drawn mouth, great eyes, expository hands. ‘Why, sirs, if a groom trick a poor wench and deny her her lines, you put her up in a sheet, and freeze the vice out of her with your prying eyes! Get you a white sheet for Queen Mary and stare the devil out of her! Go you: why do you wait? Ah, pardon, I had forgot!’ She exhibited one to the other. ‘This man has no time to spare that he may chastise the naughty. The throned is made shameful that the throne may be emptied. Give him a leg, David; he will stand your friend for it.’

‘Dear madam! sweet madam!’ murmured the Italian.

But she had left him now for the white skulker by the door. ‘Oh you, you, you, in your hurry!’ she mocked him, ‘deny me not my shroud and candle. For if you are to sit in my seat I will stand at the kirk gate and cry into all hearts that go by, “See me here as I stand in my shroud. I am the threshold he trod upon. He reached his degree o’er the spoils of a girl.”’ She came closer to him, peering and whispering. ‘And I will be nearer, my lord, whenas you are dead. I will flit over the graves of the kings my ancestors till I find the greenest, and there shall I sit o’ nights, chattering your tale to the men that be there with their true-born about them. “Ho, you that were lawful kings of Scotland, listen now to me!” I shall say. And they will lift their heads in their vaults and lean upon their bony elbows at ease and hear of your shameful birth and life of lies and treasons, and most miserable death. And you in your cerements will lie close, I think, my brother, lest the very dead turn their backs on you.’

She stopped, struggling for breath. The dangerous ecstasy held her still, like a rigor; but he, who with shut eyes and fending arms had been avoiding, now lifted his head.

‘You misjudge me—you are too hasty——’

As a woman remote from him and his affairs she answered him, ‘Not so. But I have been too slow.’

‘Your Majesty should see——’

She sprang into vehemence, transfigured once more by fierce and terrible beauty.

‘I do see. You are a liar. I see you through and through, and the lies, like snakes, in your heart. I will never willingly see you again.’

Still he tried to reason with her. ‘If accommodation of joint griefs——’

‘None! There can be none. Where do we join, sir? Tell me, and I will burn the part.’

‘Dear sir,’ said the Italian, as she paced the room, gathering more eloquence—‘dear sir, I advise you to depart.’

The Earl was stung by the familiarity. ‘Be silent, fellow. Madam, suffer me one more word.’

‘You drown in your words. Therefore, yes.’

He gathered his wits together for this poor opportunity. ‘I have been misjudged,’ he said, ‘and know very well to whom I stand debtor for that. Nevertheless, I would still serve your Grace in chamber and in hall, so far as my conscience will suffer me. I say, that is my desire. But if you drive me from you; if I am turned from my father’s birthright——I beseech you to consider with what painful knowledge I depart. If I have witnessed unprincely dealing in high places——’

She openly scorned him. ‘Drown, sir, drown! No, stay. I will throw you a plank.’

She rang the bell. Des-Essars answered. ‘If my lord the Chancellor is in hall, or in the precincts in any part, I desire his presence here. If he is abroad, send Mr. Erskine—and with speed.’

The boy withdrew. She sat, staring at nothing. The two men stood. Absolute silence.

The Chancellor happened to be by. He was found in the tennis-court, calling the game. Much he pondered the summons, and scratched in his red beard.

‘Who is with the Queen, laddie?’

He was told, the Italian and my Lord of Moray. Making nothing of it, he whistled for his servant, who lounged with others at the door.

‘Hurry, Jock Scott! my cloak, sword, and bonnet. At what hour is the Council?’

‘My lord, at noon.’

He went off, muttering, ‘What’s in the wind just now?’ and as he went by the great entry saw the guard running, and heard a shout: ‘Room for the Prince’s grace!’ He could see the plumes of the riders and the press about them. ‘It’ll be a new cry before long, I’m thinking,’ he said to himself, and went upstairs.

Entering that silent room, he bent his knee to the Queen. She did not notice his reverence, but said at once: ‘My Lord Chancellor, I shall not sit at the Council to-day. You will direct the clerk to add a postill[3] to the name of my Lord of Moray here.’

‘Madam, with good will. What shall his postill be?’

‘You shall write against his name, Last time he sits. I know that your business is heavy. Farewell, my lords.’

Morton and Moray went out together. At the end of the corridor and head of the stair, Morton stopped.

‘Man, my Lord of Moray, what is this?’

For answer, the Earl of Moray looked steadily at him for a moment: then, ‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘we must go to our work, you and I.’

They said no more; but went through the hall, and heard the Prince’s ringing voice, high above all the others, calling for ‘that black thief Ruthven.’ They saluted a few and received many salutations. Lord John Stuart passed them, his arm round the neck of his Spanish page, and stared at his brother without greeting. These two hated each other, as all the world knew. That same night the Earl of Moray left Edinburgh, and went into Argyll, where all his friends were. It was to be nine months before he could lay his head down in his own house again.

Very little passed between the Queen and her Secretary. She sat quite still, staring and glooming; he moved about, touching a thing here and there, like a house-servant who, by habit, dusts the clean furniture. This brought him by degrees close to her chair. Then he said quickly, ‘Madam, let me speak.’

‘Ay, speak, David.’

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘this is not likely to be work for fair ladies, though they be brave as they are fair. I have seen it growing—this disturbance—a many days. He is not alone by any means, my lord your brother. Madam, send a messenger into France. Send your little Jean-Marie.’

She looked up. ‘Into France?’

‘Madam, yes. Send a messenger into France. Let him fetch home the Earl of Bothwell.’

She started. ‘Him?’

Riccio nodded his head quickly.

Whereupon she said, ‘He is not in France.’

‘Send for him, madam,’ said Riccio, ‘wheresoever he may be—him and no other. Remember also—but no hurry for that—that you have my Lord Gordon under your hand. At need, remember him. A fine young man! But the other! Oh, send quickly for him! Eh, eh, what a captain against rebels!’ He could not see her face; her hand covered it.

‘I will think of this,’ she said. ‘Go now. Send me Carwood: I am mortally tired.’ Carwood was her bedchamber-woman.

There was a riot on the night following the proclamation of King Henry, begun by some foaming fool in the Luckenbooths. Men caught him with a candle in his hand, burning straw against a shop door. ‘What are ye for? What are ye for?’ they cried at him, and up he jumped with the fired wisp in his hand, and laughed, calling out, ‘I am the muckle devil! Come for the popish King!’ The words fired more than the brand, for people ran hither and thither carrying their fierce relish, feeding each other. The howling and tussling of men and women alike raged in and out of the wynds. It was noticed that nearly all the women took the Queen’s part, and fought against the men—a thing seldom seen in Edinburgh. In a desultory way, with one or two bad outbreaks, of which the worst was in the Grassmarket, where they stoned a man and a girl to death, it lasted all night. The Lord Lyon had his windows broken. Mr. Knox quelled the infuriates of the High Street.

This was on the night of July 28th, very hot weather. On the morning of the 30th she was married in her black weeds—for so she chose it, saying that she had been married already in colour, and as her lord was possessed of the living, so now he should own the dead part of her. She heard mass alone, for the Prince would not go to that again; but the Earl of Atholl stood by her, while Lennox waited in the antechapel with his son. Mass over, the words were spoken, rings put on. He had one and she three. They knelt side by side and heard the prayers; she bowed herself to the pavement, but he was very stiff. They rose; he gave her a kiss. When her women came about her he went away to her cabinet and waited for her there, quiet and self-possessed, not answering any of his father’s speeches.

Presently they bring him in the Queen, with coaxings and entreaties.

‘Now, madam, now! Do off your blacks. Come, never refuse us!’

She laughed and shook her head, looking sidelong at her husband.

‘Yes, yes,’ they cry, ‘we will ask the King, madam, since you are so perverse. Sir, give us leave.’

‘Ay, ay, ladies, unpin her,’ he says.

Mary Sempill cried, ‘Come, my ladies! Come, sirs! Help her shed her weeds.’ She took out a shoulder-pin, and the black shroud fell away from her bosom. Mary Fleming let loose her arms; Mary Seton, kneeling, was busy about her waist; Mary Beaton flacked off the great hood. Atholl, Livingstone, Lennox, all came about her, spoiling her of her old defences. When the black was all slipped off, she stood displayed in figured ivory damask, with a bashful, rosy, hopeful face. Atholl took a hand, Lennox the other.

‘By your leave, sweet madam.’ They led her to the young man.

‘She is yours, sir, by her own free will. God bless the mating!’

Then, when they had all gone tumbling out of the room, and you could have heard their laughter in the passages, she stood before him with her hands clasped. ‘Yes, my lord, I am here. Use me well.’

He gave a toss of the head; laughed aloud as he took her.

‘Ay, my Mary, I have thee now!’

He held her close, looking keenly into her hazel eyes. He kissed her mouth and neck, held up his head, and cheered like a hunter. ‘The mort o’ the deer! The mort o’ the deer! ‘Ware hounds, ‘ware! Let the chief take assay.’

The head of the Hamiltons, the head of the Campbells, the head of the Leslies, were all in Argyll with the Earl of Moray. Mr. Knox was with his young wife; Mr. Randolph kept his lodging; the Earl of Bothwell was at sea, beating up north; and my Lord Gordon, new released from prison, was with his mother and handsome sister Jean. None of these were at the marriage, nor bidden to the marriage supper. But there came a decent man, Mr. George Buchanan, affording himself an epithalamy, and received in recompense the Queen’s and King’s picture set in brilliants. This did not prevent him from casting up his hands in private before Mr. Knox. The great elder watched him grimly.

‘So the wilful lass has got her master! And a pranking rider for a bitter jade! Man, George,’ he said, looking critically through him, ‘in my opinion you are a thin, truckling body.’

END OF MAIDS’ ADVENTURE

BOOK THE SECOND
MEN’S BUSINESS

CHAPTER I
OPINIONS OF FRENCH PARIS UPON SOME LATE EVENTS

Nicholas the lacquey, whom they call ‘French Paris,’ can neither read nor write, nor cipher save with notches in a wand; but he has travelled much, and in shrewd company; and has seen things—whatever men may do—of interest moral and otherwise. And whether he work his sum by aid of his not over-orderly notches, or upon his not over-scrupulous fingers, the dog can infer; he will get the quotient just, and present it you in divers tongues, with divers analogies drawn from his knowledge of affairs: France, England, the Low Countries, Upper Italy, the Debateable Land—from one, any, or all, French Paris can pick his case in point. Therefore, his thoughts upon events in Scotland, both those which led to his coming thither in the train of my Lord Bothwell, his master, and those which followed hard upon it, should be worth having, if by means of a joke and a crown-piece one could get at them.

You may see the man, if you will, lounging any afternoon away with his fellows on the cawsey—by the Market Cross, in the parvise of Saint Giles’s, by the big house at the head of Peebles Wynd (‘late my Lord of Moray’s,’ he will tell you with a wink), or, best of all, in the forecourt of Holyrood—holding his master’s cloak upon his arm. He is to be known at once by the clove carnation or sprig of rosemary in his mouth, and by his way of looking Scotchwomen in their faces with that mixture of impudence and naïveté which his nation lends her sons. Being whose son he is, he will be a smooth-chinned, lithe young man, passably vicious, and pale with it; grey in the eye, dressed finely in a good shirt, good jacket and breeches. But for certain these two last will not meet; the snowy lawn will force itself between, and, like a vow of continence, sunder two loves. Paris will be tender of his waist. He will look at all women as they pass, not with reverence (as if they were a holier kind of flesh), but rather, like his namesake, as if he held the apple weighing in his hand. Seems to have no eye for men—will tell you, if you ask him of them, that there are none in Scotland but his master and Mr. Knox; and yet can judge them quicker than any one. It was he who said of the King, having seen him but once, after supper, at Stirling: ‘This young man fuddles himself to brave out his failure. He is frigid—wants a sex.’ And of the Queen, on the same short acquaintance, but helped by hearsay: ‘She had been so long the pet of women that she thought herself safe with any man. But now she knows that it takes more than a cod-piece to make a man. Trust Paris.’ Trust Paris! A crown will purchase the rogue, and yet he has a kind of faithfulness. He will endure enormously for his master’s sake, shun no fatigues, wince at no pain, consider no shame—to be sure, he has none—blink at few perils. Talk to him, having slipped in your crown, he will be frank. He will tell you of his master.

A quick word of thanks, whistled off into the air, will introduce him to the broad piece. He will give it a flick in the air, catch it as it comes down, rattle it in his hollowed palm, with a grin into your face. ‘This is the upright servant, this pretty knave,’ he will say of his coin. ‘For, look you, sir, this white-faced, thin courtier is the one in all the world whom you need not buy for more than his value. God of Gods, if my master thought fully of it he would be just such another. Because it is as plain as a monk’s lullaby that, if you need not give more for him than he is worth, you cannot give less!’

His master, you have been told, is the great Earl of Bothwell, now Lord Admiral of Scotland, Lieutenant-General of the East, West, and Middle Marches, and right hand of the Queen’s Majesty. How is the story of so high a man involved in your crown-piece? Why, thus.

French Paris displays the coin. ‘Do you see these two children’s faces, these sharp and tender chins, these slim necks, these perching crowns? What says the circumscription? Maria et Henricus D. G. Scotorum Regina et Rex. How! the mare before the sire? You have touched, sir!’ For observe, Paris’ master came into Scotland, a pardoned rebel, because this legend at first had run Henricus et Maria Rex et Regina, and there was outcry raised, flat rebellion. And so surely, says Paris, as he had come, and been received, him with his friends, and had given that quick shake of the head (which so well becomes him), and lifted his war-shout of ‘Hoo! hoo! A Hepburn, hoo!’—so surely they struck a new coinage, at this very Christmas past—and here we are over Candlemas—with Maria et Henricus, and the mare before the sire. ‘That is how my master came back to Scotland, sir, and here upon the face of your bounty you see the prémices. But there will be a more abundant harvest, if I mistake not the husbandman.’

‘That is a droll reflection for me,’ he will add, ‘who have been with my master as near beggary as a swan in the winter, and nearer to death than the Devil can have understood. I have served him here and there for many years—Flanders, Brabant, Gueldres, Picardy, Savoy, England. Do you happen to know the port of Yarmouth? They can drink in Yarmouth. I have hidden with him in the hills of this country: that was when he had broken out of prison in this town, and before he hanged Pringle with his own hands. I have skulked there, I say, until the fog rotted my bones. I have sailed the seas in roaring weather, and upon my word, sir, have had experiences enough to make the fortune of a preacher. There was a pirate of Brill in our company, Oudekirk by name, who denied the existence of God in a tempest, and perished by a thunderbolt. Pam! It clove him. “There is no God!” cried he, and with the last word there was a blare of white light, a crackling, hissing, tearing noise, a crash; and when we looked at Oudekirk one side of him was coal-black from the hair to the midriff, and his jaws clamped together! But I could not tell you all—some is not very convenient, I must allow.

‘We were at Lille when the Queen’s messenger—the little smutty-eyed Brabanter—found us. He brought two letters: the Queen’s very short, a stiff letter of recall, promising pardon “as you behave yourself towards us.” The other was from that large Italian, who sprawls where he ought not, in his own tongue; as much as may be, like this:—

‘“Most serene, cultivable lord, it is very certain that if you come to this country you will be well received; the more so, seeing that certain of your unfriends (he meant Monsieur de Moray) have been treated lately as they well deserve. The Queen weds Prince Henry Stuart, of whom I will only write that I wish he were older and more resembled your magnificence.”

‘All Italians lie, sir; yet so it is that their lies always please you. You may be sure my master needed no more encouragement to make his preparation of travel. It was soon after this that he showed me a glove he had, and an old letter of the Queen’s. We were in his bedchamber, he in his bed. He has many such pledges, many and many, but he was sure of this glove because it was stiff in two fingers. When he told me that he intended for Scotland and must take the glove with him, I said, “Master, be careful what you are about. It is certain that the Queen will know her own glove again, and should this prove the wrong one it will be worse for you than not to show it at all.”

‘“Pooh, man,” says he, “the glove is right enough. There are no others stiff from a wetting. But look and see. Let’s be sure.”

‘It was true there were no others quite so stiff in the fingers. Tears had done it, the letter said: but who knows, with women?’ French Paris, here, would give a hoist to his breeches.

‘In September last we made land, after a chase in furious weather. An English ship sighted us off Holy Island: we ran near to be aground on that pious territory, but our Lady or Saint Denis, or a holy partnership between them, saved us. They sent out a long boat to head us into shoal water; we slipped in between. My master had the helm and rammed it down with his heel; we came about to the wind, we flew, with the water hissing along the gunwale. We saw them in the breakers as we gained the deeps. “There goes some beef into the pickle-tub!” cried he, and stood up and hailed them with mockery. “Sooner you than me, ye drowning swine!” he roars against the tempest. Such a man is my master.

‘We found anchorage at Eyemouth, and pricked up the coast-road to this place. The war—if you can call it war, which was a chasing of rats in a rickyard—was as good as over, but by no means the cause of war. The Queen was home from the field, where they tell me she had shown the most intrepid front of any of her company. Not much to say, perhaps. Yet remember that she had Monsieur de Huntly with her, that had been Gordon—a fine stark man, like a hawk, whom she had set free from prison and restored to his Earldom before the rebellion broke out; and he is passably courageous. But it was a valet of his, Forbes, “red Sandy Forbes,” they call him, who told me that he had never in his life seen anything like the Queen of Scots upon that hunting of outlaws. Think of this, dear sir! The King in a gilt corslet, casque of feathers, red cloak and all, greatly attended by his Englishmen—his pavilion, his bed, his cooks and scullions; his pampered, prying boys, his little Forrest, his little Ross, his Jack and his Dick; with that greyhead, bowing, soft-handed cousin of his, Monsieur Archibald, for secretary—hey? Very good: you picture the young man And she!’ French Paris threatens you with one finger, presented like a pistol at your eyes. ‘She had one lady of company, upon my soul, one only, the fair Seton; that one and no other with her in a camp full of half-naked, cannibal men—for what else are they, these Scots? She wore breastplate and gorget of leather, a leather cap for her head, a short red petticoat, the boots of a man. As for her hair, it streamed behind her like a pennon in the wind. It was hell’s weather, said Sandy Forbes; rain and gusty wind, freshening now and again to tempest; there were quags to be crossed, torrents to be forded; the rain drove like sleet across the hills. Well, she throve upon it, her eyes like stars. There was no tarrying because of her; she raced like a coursing dog, and nearly caught the Bastard of Scotland. He was the root of all mischance, as always in a kingdom; for a bastard, do you see? means fire somewhere. Have you ever heard tell of my Lord Don John of Austria? Ah, if we are to talk of fire, look out for him.

‘It was in the flats below Stirling that she felt the scent hot in her face. The Bastard had had six hours’ start; but if spurring could have brought horses to face that weather, she had had him in jail at this hour, or in Purgatory. “Half my kingdom,” cries she, “sooner than lose him now!” But he got clear away, he and Monsieur le Duc, and the old Earl of Argyll, and Milord Rothes and the rest of them. They crossed the March into England, and she dared not follow them against advice. My master, when he came, confirmed it: he would not have her venture, knowing England as well as he did; and I need not tell you, sir, that—for that once—he had the support of the King. He was out of breath, that King! But, of course! If you drink to get courage you must pay for it. Your wind goes, and then where is your courage? In the bottle, in the bottle! You drink again—and so you go the vicious round.’ French Paris flips his finger and thumb, extinguishing the King of Scots. ‘The King, sir? Pouf! Perished, gone out, snuffered out, finished, done with—adieu!’ He kisses his hand to the sky. This is treason: let us shift our ground.

‘I did not see my master’s reception, down there in the palace: that was not for a lacquey. Very fine, very curious, knowing what I know. They met him in the hall, a number of the lords—none too friendly as yet, but each waiting on the other to get a line: my Lord of Atholl, a grave, honest man, my Lord of Ruthven, pallid, mad and struggling with his madness, my Lord of Lindsay, who ought to be a hackbutter, or a drawer in a tavern; there were many others, men of no account. My master entered on the arm of the new Earl of Huntly, just restored, the fine young man, to the honours of his late father. In this country, you must know, a certain number of the lords are always in rebellion against the King. He imprisons, not executes, them; for he knows very well that before long another faction will be out against him; and then it is very convenient to release the doers in the former. For by that act of grace you convert them into friends, who will beat your new foes for you. They in their turn go to prison. You know the fate of M. de Huntly’s father, for instance—how he rebelled and died, and was dug out of the grave that they might spit upon his old body? The Bastard’s doing, but the Queen allowed it. And now, here is the Bastard hiding in the rocks, and old Huntly’s son hunting him high and low. Drôle de pays! But, I was about to tell you, rebels though we have been, they received us well—crowded about us—clapped our shoulders—cheered, laughed, talked all at once. My master was nearly off his feet as they bore him down the hall towards the fire. Now, there by the fire, warming himself, stood a nobleman, very broad in the back, very pursy, with short-fingered, fat hands, and well-cushioned little eyes in his face. So soon as he saw us coming he grew red and walked away.

‘“Ho, ho, my Lord of Morton, whither away so fast?” cried out my master.

‘And my Lord of Livingstone said: “To sit on the Great Seal, lest Davy get it from him”; and they all burst out laughing like a pack of boys. I suppose he is still sitting close, for he has not been seen this long time.

‘We sent up our names and waited—but we waited an hour! Then came my Lord of Traquair and took up my master alone. He had his glove and letter with him, I knew. He was determined to risk them.

‘The Queen had nobody with her; and he told me that the first thing she said to him was this:—“My lord, you have things of mine which I need. Will you not give them to me?”

‘He took them out of his bosom—if you know him you will see his twinkling eyes, never off her—and held them up. “They have been well cared for, madam. I trust that your Majesty will be as gentle with them.”

‘“They are safe with me,” says the Queen. So then, after a fine reverence, he gave them up, and she thanked him, and put them in her bosom; and I would give forty crowns to know where they are now. I know where they will be before long.

‘Now what do you think of that? It shows you, first, that he was right and I wrong; for she never looked at the thing, and any woman’s glove would have done, with a little sea-water on the fingers. My master, let me tell you, is a wise man, even at his wildest. He did more good to himself by that little act than by any foolish play of the constant lover. He showed her that she might trust him. True. But much more than that, he showed her that he did not need her tokens; and that was the master-stroke.

‘The same line he has followed ever since—he alone, like the singling hound in a pack. He has held her at arm’s length. She has trusted him, and shown it; he has served her well, but at arm’s length. That Italian fiddler, rolling about in her chamber, too much aware of his value, takes another way. Lord forgive him! he is beginning to play the patron. That can only lead him to one place, in my opinion. Hated! that is a thin word to use in his respect. He makes the lords sick with fear and loathing. They see a toad in the Queen’s lap, as in the nursery tale, and no one dare touch the warty thing, to dash it to the wall. My master would dare, for sure; but he does not choose. For all that, he says that Monsieur David is a fool.

‘It is when I am trussing him in the mornings, kneeling before him, that he speaks his mind most freely. He is like that—you must be beneath his notice to get his familiarity. Do you know the course he takes here in this world of rats and women? To laugh, and laugh, and laugh again: voilà! He varies his derision, of course. He will not rally the King or put him to shame, but listens, rather, and watches, and nods his head at his prancings, and says, “Ha, a fine bold game, now!”; or, if he is appealed to directly, will ask, “Sir, what am I to say to you? the same as Brutus said to Cæsar?” “And what said Brutus?” cries the King. “Why, sir,” replies my master, “he said, Sooner you than me, Cæsar.” That is his favourite adage. And so he plays with the King, his eyes twinkling and his mouth broad, but no teeth showing. He shows neither his teeth nor his hand. He is a good card-player; and so he should be, who has been at the table with the Queen-Mother Catherine, daughter of Mischief and the Apothecary.

‘The King hates my master without understanding; the Queen leans on him to gain understanding; but she has not gained it yet. You may trust my lord for that. Did you hear of the mass on Candlemas Day, a week past to-day? How she thought this a fine occasion to restore the ancient use: her enemies beaten over the border, all her friends should carry tapers, so that the Queen of Heaven might be purified again of her spotless act? She required it personally of all the lords, one by one, herself beseeching them with soft eyes and motions of the hands hard to be denied. Moreover, she is to have need of purification herself if all goes well. For she is ... but you can judge for yourself. Many promised her on whom she had not counted; my master, on whom she did count, refused her point-blank. The strangest part of the business is, however, that his credit is higher now than it was before. So much so that she has made him a fine marriage. Monsieur de Huntly’s sister is the lady; I have seen her, but reserve my judgment. I think that she will not like me—I feel it in the ridges of my ears, a very sensitive part with me. She was in the Queen’s circle one day—the day on which I saw her—a statue of a woman, upon whom the Queen cast the eyes of that lover who goes to church to view his mistress afar off, and has no regard for any but her, and waits and hopes, and counts every little turn of her head—as patient as a watching dog. Curious! curious government of women! Hey—pardon! The Council is up. I must be forward. Sir, I thank you, and humbly salute you.’

French Paris pushes through the huddle of servants, the rosemary sprig in his mouth.

My Lord Admiral the Earl of Bothwell comes out one of the first, between the Lords Seton and Caithness. He talks fast, you notice, with a good deal of wrist and finger-work, acknowledges no salutations though he is offered many. My Lord Seton takes them all upon himself, misses not one. The Earl of Caithness is an oldish man, rather hard of hearing. Heeding nobody, speaking as he feels, laughing at his own jokes, capping one with another, the burly admiral stands barehead in the raw drizzle, swinging his feathered hat in his hand. There seems much to say, if he could only remember it, and no hurry. Horses are brought up, gentlemen mount by the post and spur away. Three ushers come running, waving their wands. ‘Sirs, the King!’ The crowd gathers; the Lord Admiral continues his conversation.

The King comes out, taller by a head than most, exceedingly magnificent, light-haired, hot in the face. Hats and bonnets are doffed, but in silence. The great grey stallion with red trappings is his; and he can hold it though two grooms cannot well. He stands for a while, pulling on his gauntlet, scowling and screwing his mouth as he tussles with it. But the scowls, you gather, are less for the glove than for a calm-eyed, fleshy, pink man with a light red beard, who has emerged but just now; whose furred cloak is over-fringed, whose bonnet sags too much over one eye, the jewel in it too broad. This is Signior Davy, too cool and too much master to please one who is hot and not master of himself. You can see the King’s mood grow furious to the point of unreason, while my Lord Bothwell continues his tales, and the Italian, secure in a crowd, seems to be daring an attack.

The King is mounted, the King is away. The crowd drives back to right and left. He goes swinging down the steep street, his gentlemen after him. The Earl of Bothwell calls out, ‘Paris, my cloak.’

Paris turns the rosemary sprig. ‘Le voici, monseigneur.’

He walks away to his lodging like any plain burgess of the town, and Paris trips jauntily after him, looking Scotchwomen in the face.

CHAPTER II
GRIEFS AND CONSOLATIONS OF ADONIS

In these dark February days the King was prone to regard his troubles as the consequence, and not the verification, of certain words spoken by Archie Douglas on the braeside by Falkirk—that being a trick of the unreasonable, to date their misfortunes from the time when they first find them out. And yet it was an odd thing that Archie should have spoken in his private ear shortly after Michaelmas, and that here was Candlemas come and gone, with everything turning to prove Archie right. Now, which of the three was the grey-polled youth—prophet, philosopher, or bird of boding?

Consider his Majesty’s affairs in order. The Queen, before marriage and at the time of it, had been as meek as a girl newly parted from her mother, newly launched from that familiar shore to be seethed in the deep, secret waters of matrimony. Something of that exquisite docility he had discerned when he experienced, for instance, the prerogatives of a man. One name before another is a very small matter; but it had given him a magnanimous thrill to read Henricus et Maria upon the white money, and to feel the confidence that Henricus et Maria, in very fact, it was now and was to be. Little things of the sort swelled his comfort up: the style royal, the chief seat, the gravity of the Council (attendant upon his), the awe of the mob, the Italian’s punctilio, his father’s unfeigned reverence. Even Mr. Randolph’s remarked abstention was flattering, for it must have cost the ambassador more to ignore the King than the King could ever have to pay for the slight. Now, a man needs time to get the flavours of such toothsome tribute; he must roll it on his tongue, dally over it with his intimates. Little Forrest, the chamber-child, could have told a thing or two: how the King used to wear his gold circlet in private, and walk the room in his crimson mantle. Antony Standen knew something. Yes, yes, a man needs time; and such time was denied him—and (by Heaven!) denied him by the Queen herself.

By the Queen! From the hour when she heard the news from Argyll, that the rebels, her brother at their head, had called out the clans of the west—Campbells, Leslies, Hamiltons—against her authority, she was a creature whom her King had never conceived of. He was told by Archie Douglas then, and partly believed, that she was slighting him; but the plain truth is, of course, that all her keen love for him was running now in a narrow channel—that of strenuous loyalty to the young man she had chosen to set beside her. These hounds to deny his kingly right! Let them learn then what a King he was, for what a King she held him! She strained every nerve, put edge to every wit in his vindication. While he lay abed, stretching, dreaming—sometimes of her, more often of her love for him, most often of what he should do when he was fairly roused: ‘Let them not try me too far, little Forrest! I say, they had best not!’ etc.—at these times she was in her cabinet with the Italian, writing to her brother of France, her father of Rome, her uncles and cousins of Lorraine, promising, wheedling, threatening, imploring. Or she was in audience, say, with George Gordon, winning back his devotion with smiles and tender looks, with a hand to the chin, or two clasping her knee—with all the girlish wiles she knew so well and so divinely used. For his sake—that slug-abed—she dared see Bothwell again; and greater pride hath no woman than this, to brave the old love for the sake of the new. Finally, when cajolery and bravado had done their best for her, she sprang starry-eyed into battle, headed her ragged musters in a short petticoat, and dragged him after her in gilded armour. That is what a man—by the mass, a King!—may fairly call being docked of his time to get the flavours.

He went out unwillingly to war, with sulky English eyes for all the petty detriments. He sniffed at her array, her redshanks armed with bills, her Jeddart bowmen, haggard hillmen from Badenoch and Gowrie. Where were the broad pavilions, the camp-furniture, the pennons and pensels, the siege-train, the led horses, the Prince’s cloth of estate? Was he to huddle with reivers under a pent of green boughs, and with packed cowdung keep the wind from his anointed person? King of kings, Ruler of princes! was she to do the like? How she laughed, tossed back her hair, to hear him!

‘Hey, dear heart, you are in wild Scotland, where all fare alike. O King of Scots, forget your smug England, and teach me, the Queen, to laugh at stately France! Battle, my prince, battle! The great game!’

She galloped down the line, looking back for him to follow. Line! it was no line, but a jostling horde of market-drovers clumped upon a knowe. There were no formation, no livery, no standard—unless that scarecrow scarf were one. Why should he follow her to review a pack of thieves?

Hark, hark, how the rascals cheered her! They ran all about her, tossing up their bonnets on pikes. They were insulting her.

‘By God!’ he cried out, ‘who was to teach them behaviour? Was this the King’s office?’

‘It is the Queen’s, my good lord; she will teach them,’ said the Italian at his elbow. ‘And what her Majesty omits the enemy will teach them, at his own charges. I know your countrymen by now. Manners? Out of place in the field. Courage? They have never wanted for that.’

The King grew red, as he tried in vain to stare down this confident knave; then turned to his Archie Douglas. ‘A company of my Lord Essex’s horse,’ he said, ‘would drill these rabble like a maggoty cheese.’

Archie excused his nation. ‘They will trot the haggs all day, sir, on a crust of rye-bread, and engage at the close for a skirl of the pipes. Hearken! they are at it now. ’Tis the Gordons coming in.’ The thin youth drew himself up. ‘Eh, sirs, my heart warms to it!’ he said, honestly moved by an honest pride.

But the King sulked. ‘Filthy work! Where are my people? Ho, you! my cloak!’

‘Ay, there comes a spit o’ rain,’ said Archie Douglas, nosing the weather. This was no way for a man to get the flavours of kingship.

In the chase that followed—forced marches on Glasgow after old Châtelherault, the scouring of the Forth valley, the view-halloo at Falkirk, and much more—the Queen had to leave him alone, for so he chose it; and there was no time to humour him, had there been inclination. But truly there was none. She had the sting of weather and the scurry in her blood; she was in perfect health, great spirits, loving the work. Hunter’s work! the happy oblivion of the short night’s rest, the privations, the relish of simple fare, the spying and hoping, the searching of hillsides and descents into sombre valleys, your heart in your mouth; all the trick and veer of mountain warfare, the freedoms, the easy talk, the laughing, the horseplay; she found nothing amiss, kept no state, and never felt the lack of it. The Italian and his letter-case, Lethington and his dockets, were behind. Atholl watched Edinburgh Castle for her, Bothwell was coming home; she had none with her but Mary Seton for countenance, Carwood for use, one page (Adam Gordon), one esquire (Erskine), and Father Roche. For the rest, her cousin and councillor and open-air comrade was George Gordon, late in bonds. So sometimes a whole day would pass without word to the King; later, as at Falkirk, where the scent had been so hot, three or four days; and she never missed him!