This was the occasion when Archie Douglas, riding with his kinsman, had pointed to the head of the valley, saying, ‘There goes a man in good company, who lately was glad of any.’ The King scowled, which encouraged him. ‘Ay,’ he went on—‘ay, the favour of the prince can lift up and cast down. Who’d ha’ thought, sirs, that yon Geordie Gordon should be son of a disgraced old body, that must be dug free from the worms before he could be punished enough? And now Geordie’s in a fair way for favours, and hath his bonny earldom almost under his hand. Eh, sirs, that put your trust in princes, go warily your ways!’
Ruthven, by his side, nudged him to be done with it.
‘No, no, my lord,’ cries Archie, ‘I’ll not be silenced when I see my kinsman slighted; him and his high rights passed over for an outlaw!’
These words were used, ‘slighted,’ ‘passed over.’ The words rankled, the things signified came to pass, as surprisingly they will when once you begin to look for them.
First sign:—Early in the winter, so soon as the war was over and Scotland ridded for a time of declared enemies, the Earl of Bothwell came home whilst the King was at Linlithgow, was received by her Majesty, and (it seems) made welcome. No doubt but he made use of her kindness to line his own nest; at any rate, one of the first things asked of the returning monarch was to appoint this Bothwell Lieutenant-General of the South and Lord Admiral of Scotland. The parchments came before him for the sign-manual. O prophet Archibald! he found the Queen’s name already upon them.
He raised an outcry. ‘The Earl of Bothwell! The Earl of Bothwell! How much more grace for this outlaw? Is it not enough that he return with his head on his shoulders?’
She replied that he had deserved well of both of them. He had scared her shameful brother out of Scotland, who would have gone for no other body. He had a stout heart, had promised her that Moray should die an alien or a felon, and would keep his word.
‘But this office is a promise to my father, madam,’ says the King. ‘I promised him that Lieutenancy six months since, and may no more go back upon my word than my Lord Bothwell upon his.’
Rather red in the face, she urged her reasons. ‘That is not convenient, dear friend. They do not love my Lord of Lennox in the West. There are other reasons—good reasons. Had you been here you would have heard them all. You must not vex me in this, now—of all times in my life.’
He looked her up and down curiously, without manners, without enthusiasm. Perhaps he did not understand her—he had a thick head. Then he signed the dockets and went out, not having seen that she had shut her eyes and was blushing.
Dreadfully jealous of his ‘prerogatives,’ he interposed in everything after this, had all state correspondence before him and saw all the replies, whether they were of home or abroad. Here the Italian angered him, whose habit had always been to converse with her Majesty in French: no frowns nor furious pacing of the closet could break him off it. The Queen, very gentle towards him, insisted that the secretary should paraphrase his letters into a kind of Scots; but the King, who was stupid at business, boggled over the halting translation, did not understand any more than at first, and suspected the Italian of deliberate mystification. He told the Queen that she should speak the vernacular with this hireling. She said, and truly, that she thought in French and spoke it better; when, nevertheless, she tried to gratify him, even he saw that it was absurd. Absurd or not, he loved David none the better for that.
He suspected everybody about her person, but chiefly this fat Italian; to whose score he laid his next rebuff, the very palpable hit that it was. The old Duke of Châtelherault, exiled for the late rebellion, was pining in England, it seems, and beginning to ail. Shallow old trickster as he might be, he loved his country and his kindred, and was (as the Queen could never forget) head of the Hamiltons, of the blood royal. He crept back in December over the Solway, and from one of his coast-castles sent humble messengers forward to her for pardon and remission of forfeiture. To these she inclined, on more grounds than one. She had some pity for the old hag-ridden man, haunted ever with the shadow of madness as he was; she remembered his white hair and flushing, delicate face. Then her new Earl of Huntly had married into that family; and she wished to keep a hold on the Gordons. And then, again, the blood royal! She forgot that if she could comfortably admit Châtelherault his share in that, her husband could never admit it without impeaching his own rights. So she inclined to the piteous letters, and allowed herself to be pitiful.
The King, on the first hint of this clemency, was moved beyond her experience. No sulking, brooding, knitting of brows; he fairly stormed at her before her circle. ‘What am I, madam? What silly tavern-sign do you make of me? You exalt my chief enemy, my hereditary enemy, enemy of my title to be here—and ask me to record it! King Henry is to declare his esteem for the Hamiltons, who desire to unking him! This is paltry work, the design too gross. I see foreign fingers at work in this. But I will never consent, never! Ask me no more.’
The Italian surveyed his august company at large, lifted his eyebrows, and blandly, patently, deliberately shrugged. My Lord of Bothwell himself had little stomach for this; but the King strangled a cry and turned upon his insolent critic. ‘White-blooded, creeping, fingering dog!’ He drew his dagger on the man, and for the moment scared the life out of him.
Lord Bothwell stepped in between, a broad-shouldered easy gentleman; the next step was the Queen’s, flame-hued now, and at her fiercest. ‘Put up your weapon, my lord, and learn to be the companion of your prince. Until this may be, the Council is dissolved. Farewell, sirs. David, stay you here. I have need of you.’
Bothwell and Huntly, they say, fairly led him out of the presence. Good lack, here was Proof the Second! The companion of his prince! He would certainly have killed the Italian had not the Queen taken care that he should not.
Once more he went away, and stayed away. He would wait until she felt the need of him, he said to his friends Archie Douglas and Ruthven, who never left him now. On this occasion the Master of Lindsay was of the party, which rode into the Carse of Gowrie, hunting the fox. Hacked son of a fighting father, worse companion he could not have had—saving the presence of the other two—than Lindsay of the burnt face and bloodshot eye. ‘The King with many friends!’ said Bothwell when he heard how they set out. ‘Smarthering Archie to stroke him tender, Ruthven to scrape him raw, and now Lindsay with his fire-hot breath to inflame the part! Geordie, we must fend for the Queen.’ Huntly, sublimely in love, conscious of his growth in grace, said that he was ready.
With the aid of these two advancing noblemen her Majesty’s government went on. She gave the Hamiltons hard terms, which they took abjectly enough; she pardoned Argyll, because he must be separated from his former friends; the rest of the rebels were summoned to surrender to her mercy at the Market Cross; failing that, forfeiture of lands and goods for my Lord of Moray. The day fixed for him was the 12th March. Huntly was sure he would not come, but Bothwell shook his head. ‘Keep your eye on Mr. Secretary’s letter-bag, madam, and let him know that you do it. I shall feel more restful o’ nights when we are over the 12th March. Another thing you may do: throw him into the company of your brown-eyed Fleming. Does your Majesty know that property of a dish of clear water—to take up the smell of the room you set it in? Your Lethington has that property, therefore let him absorb your little Fleming; you will have him as dovelike as herself.’ The advice was taken, and Mr. Secretary rendered harmless for the present.
Then came news of the King’s return; but not the King. He was certainly at Inchkeith, said gossip—Inchkeith, an island in the Firth; but when she asked what he did there, she got confused replies. Bothwell said that he was learning to govern. ‘He has been told, madam, do you see? that if he can rule Lindsay and Ruthven in three roods of land he will have no trouble with Scotland afterwards.’
The Queen, although she suffered this light-hearted kind of criticism without rebuke, did not reply to it, nor did she let Bothwell see that she was anxious. The Italian saw it, however, whether she would or no, and took care to give her every scrap of news. She learned from him that the King was drinking there, fuddling himself. He was holding a Court, where (as Bothwell had guessed) he was easily King, throned on a table, with a ‘lovely Joy’ on either hand. She had the names of his intimates, with exact particulars of their comings and goings. The Earl of Morton was not above suspicion; he went there by night always, cloaked and in a mask. The Queen, more conscious of her power since the rebellion, conscious now of her matronly estate, grew sick to have such nasty news about her—it was as if the air was stuck with flies. Presently she fell sick in good truth, with faintings, pains in her side, back-soreness, breast-soreness, heart-soreness. It did not help her to remember that she must be at Linlithgow at Christmas, and meet the King there.
Lying in her bed, smothered in furs, shivering, tossing herself about—for she never could bear the least physical discomfort—she chewed a bitter cud in these dark days, and her thoughts took a morbid habit. She fretted over the Court at Inchkeith, imagined treasons festering there and spreading out like fungus to meet the rebels in England; distrusted Bothwell because he did not choose to come to her, Huntly because he did not dare; she distrusted, in fact, every Scot in Scotland, and found herself thereby clinging solely to the Italian; and of him—since she must speak to somebody—she consequently saw too much. The man was very dextrous, very cheerful, very willing; but he had a gross mind, and she had spoiled him. To be kind to a servant, nine times in ten, means that you make him rich at your own charges, and then he holds cheap what his own welfare has diminished. So it was here: Davy was not the tenth case. She had been bountiful in friendship, confidence, familiarity—of the sort which friends may use and get no harm of. He had always amused her, and now he soothed and strengthened her at once by sousing her hot fancies in the cold water of his common-sense. She had learned to fear the workings of her own mind, informed as it was by a passionate heart; she would lean upon this honest fellow, who never looked for noonday at eleven o’clock, and considered that a purge or a cupping was the infallible remedy for all ailments, including broken hearts. It is not for you or me, perhaps, to complain where she did not. Queen Mary was no precisian, to expect more than she asked. If she loved she must be loved back; if she commanded she must be obeyed; if she was hipped she must be amused. I believe Signior Davy gave himself airs and made himself comfortable. She found the first ridiculous and the second racial. She knew that chivalry was not a virtue of that land where bargaining is at its best, and that where her Italian saw a gate open he would reasonably go in. The odds are that he presumed insufferably; certain it is that, though she never saw it, others saw nothing else, and, gross-minded themselves, misread it grossly. The tale was all about the town that Signior Davy was the Queen’s favourite, and where he was always to be found, and what one might look for, and who was to be pitied, etc. etc. The revellers at Inchkeith advised each other to mark the end, and some were for telling the King. But Archie Douglas was against that. ‘Tell him now,’ he said, ‘and see your salmon slip through the net. Wait till Davy’s in the boat, man, and club him then.’
Nevertheless, the deft Italian, by his cold douches, his playing the fool, his graceless reminiscences and unending novels, cured the Queen. Late in December she astonished the Court by holding a council in person—in a person, moreover, as sharp and salient as a snow-peak glittering through the haze of frost, and as incisive to the touch. There were proclamations to be approved: ‘The King’s and Queen’s Majesties considering,’ etc., the common form. These must be altered, she said. ‘The Queen’s Majesty by the advice of her dearest husband’: she would have it thus for the future. Tonic wit of the Italian! for to whom else, pray, could you ascribe it? The word went flying about that the style was changed, and was not long in coming to Inchkeith. ‘The Queen’s husband!’ Ill news for Inchkeith here.
Yet, the night he had it, he gloomed over it—being in his cups—with a kind of slumberous gaiety stirring under his rage.
‘The Queen’s husband! By the Lord, and I am the Queen’s husband. Who denies it is a liar. Archie Douglas, Archie Douglas, if you say I am not the Queen’s husband you lie, man.’
‘I, sir?’ says Archie, very brisk. ‘No, sir, I am very sure of it. By my head, sir, and her Majesty knows it.’
‘She ought to know it. She shall know it. I’m a rider, my lords; I ride with the spur.’
‘’Tis the curb you lack,’ says Ruthven, with a harsh laugh.
The blinking youth pondered him and his words. ‘I’m for the spur and a loose rein, Ruthven. I get the paces out of my nags. I have the seat.’
‘Half of it, say, my lord!’
Everybody heard that except the King, who went grumbling on. ‘You shall not teach me how to sit a horse. I say you shall not, man.’
‘My lord,’ cried Lindsay, who never would call him ‘sir,’ ‘the talk is not of horse-riding. If we use that similitude for the Queen’s government, I tell your lordship it is unhappy. For on that horse of government there be two riders, I think; and of what advantage is the loose rein of your lordship when your fellow uses the curb?’
‘Ay my good lord, you hit the mark. Two riders, two riders, by God’s fay!’
The same voice as before—heard this time by the King. No one knew who had spoken, nor were the words more explicitly offensive than Lindsay’s; but the pothouse tone of them caught the muzzy ear, hit some quick spot in the cloudy brain, and stung like fire. The King lifted up his head to listen; he opened his mouth and stared, as if he saw something revealed beyond the window, some warning or leering face. Then he rose and held by his chair. ‘Two riders? Two riders? Two! Who said that? By heaven and hell, bring me that man!’
The pain, the horror he had, the helpless rage, made a dead hush all over; nobody stirred. Ridiculous he may have been, as he raised his voice yet higher and mouthed his words—worthless he was known to be—and yet he was tragic for the moment. ‘I say it is damnable lying,’ he said, swaying about. ‘I say that man shall go to deep hell.’ He stared round the hall, at his wits’ end. His wits made a pounce. ‘Archie, thou black thief, ’twas thou!’
‘No, sir; no, upon my soul.’
‘Ruthven, if you have dared—Lindsay—Fleming! Oh, mercy and truth!’
The rest was hideous.
They got him to bed between them, while little Forrest cried and made a fuss, praying them to kill him sooner than leave him with his master in the raving dark. No one took any notice of the anguish of a boy.
With time came counsel, and friends very free with it. Even prudence made herself heard in that brawling house. The King should meet his consort at Linlithgow, do his duty by her, observe the Christmas feast.
‘You will do well, sir—though I am sore to say it—to hear the popish mass,’ he was advised: ‘with reservation of conscience, the stroke would be politic.’
He agreed with all such advice; he intended to be wise. But the grand stroke of all was the Earl of Morton’s, to devise a way by which the injured husband could point the King’s demands with that undoubted right of his. The Crown-Matrimonial, resounding phrase! let him ask her to give him that. Nobody was prepared to say what was or was not this Crown-Matrimonial, or whether there was such a crown. The term was unknown to the law, that must be owned; and yet it had a flavour of law. It was double-armed, yet it was hyphenated; you could not deny part of it in any event. Why, no, indeed! cried Inchkeith at large, highly approving.
Archie Douglas cheered his noble kinsman: ‘Hail, King-Matrimonial of Scotland!’
Ruthven grinned, it was thought, approvingly; but Lord Morton, remembering that he was still the Queen’s Chancellor and should not go too far, made haste to advise the utmost delicacy. Above all things, let no breath of his dealings be heard.
‘I need not affirm my earnest hope,’ he said, ‘that peace and good accord may come out of this. The wish must find acceptance in every Christian heart. As such I utter it. I am not in place to do more. I cannot admonish; I serve the State.’
The King nodded sagely.
‘Good, cousin, good. I take your meaning. It is a fair intent, for which I am much beholden to you.’ Adonis, the proud rider, was chastened just now.
They met, therefore, at Linlithgow, heard mass together, made their offerings, and to all the world were friends again. The Crown-Matrimonial lay hidden until the spring of the year. Not even the new coinage—Maria et Henricus, ‘the dam before the sire’—tempted it out; but there were reasons for that. A week after the Epiphany, as they were in the Queen’s closet with a small company, she took his hand and said: ‘My lord, you shall hereafter give me what worship you can; for now I know of a certainty that I have deserved well of you and Scotland.’ Her pride in the fact and something of pity for herself made her voice quiver.
He started and flushed quickly. ‘Is it true, madam? Is that the case? Oh, I thank God for it!’
He would not let go of her hand, but waited impatiently until those present took the hint and retired; then took her, kissed her, and called her his Mary again.
She cried contentedly enough, her cheek against his heart; and he, at once triumphant and generous, father and lover, stayed by her for a whole day and night.
There was much talk, as you may suppose. The maids went about with their heads in the air, as if they had achieved something. But apart from them, all the talk was not of this complacent kind. Mr. Randolph, for instance, wrote to his patron, Mr. Cecil, of England: ‘The Queen is with child beyond a doubt. She informed the King in my hearing. Now, woe is me for you when David’s son shall be King in England!’ And there is no doubt that what Mr. Randolph took leave to report was no news to the late revellers of Inchkeith.
In all her late perplexities of disordered mind, unsteady hand, chagrin, disenchantment, and what not, it is strange to observe with what tenacity the Queen kept a daily glance of her eyes for one private affair. It was an affair of the heart, however.
Those who know her best explain that she suffered from a malady of the affections. ‘The Queen my mistress,’ says Des-Essars in Le Secret des Secrets, ‘when she had once seen—even for a few moments only—man, woman, or child in whom lay, somewhere, some little attractive quality or action, could never rest until she had him subject utterly to her will. Subject, do I say? The word is weak. The devotion which she must have was so absolute that she never got it, could hardly ever deceive herself that she had got it; and would have spurned it at once if she had, as a grovelling thing not worth a thought. But, just because she never could get it, she never tired of the pursuit of it. To get it she would humble herself, lower herself, make herself ridiculous, cheapen herself; to hold what she had (or thought she had) she would play any part, tell most fibs, do much injustice to herself and the unfortunate capture; to lose after all was to suffer torments of baffled hope and endeavour; and then—to begin again upon some similar panting quest. Sometimes she sickened, but of possession, never of pursuit; and if she did, it was an infallible sign that the thing she had had been too easily caught. Thus she sickened of “Adonis,” not because he had been restive at first, but because he had not been restive until after he was won. She had longed for him, wooed him, wed him in secret. All was going well. If ever her cup of joy had brimmed over, it had been on that night of sudden consummation at Wemyss. That golden, beaded cup! there had seemed a well-spring in it, a feast to be enjoyed for ever in secret, by delicious, hasty snatches. But when they ordered the affair in public, it was stale after the event; and when he—the fool—cried over her the mort o’ the deer (as I know he did, for Sir Adam Gordon heard him), it had been his own death, not hers, that he proclaimed. Sated too soon, she had time to see herself and to shudder at the wry image she made.
‘I know very well,’ he adds, in an afterthought, ‘that, in saying this, I may be taken as an example to point my own thesis; but even if I were, the reflections are just. And the fact is that, although she knew that I loved her, and might, indeed, have loved me, she learned of my manhood too late. I can add also, with a hand on my heart, that she would never have had to pursue me. For I was always at her feet.’
But to return to my matter—this affair of the heart. It most curiously bears out Des-Essars’ analysis to remember that when she released George Gordon from his bonds, and had him once more spilling love at her feet, she was by no means touched. The sanguine young man loved her, she knew it well; but she always felt a little leap of scorn for a man who could own to loving her. It made him seem womanish in her eyes, like Châtelard. And in the very act—when he was below her footstool, ready to kiss her foot—she remembered that there was one Gordon whom she had not yet won. She remembered Jean Gordon, who, on that day of Gordon’s Bane, had looked at her fixedly, with grave dislike—had had the nerve to survey her Queen and judge and pick out what parts to despise. She had rarely seen her since, but had never forgotten her. Deep in her burning heart she had cherished the hope of winning that frozen heart; and here—with George Gordon kissing her foot—sat she, curiously pondering how far she could use the brother to lure the sister into the net.
There was nothing unholy about this desire of hers to subdue a girl’s heart. It was coloured by impulses which were warm and rich and chivalrous. Had it been that of a youth there would not be a word to say; there was much of the quality of a youth about Queen Mary. She certainly had his chivalry—for chivalry is really pity, with a relish—a noble emotion which reacts by exalting the percipient. She saw herself protector of this friendless girl, felt kindly the very kindly kiss which she would bestow: it should fall like dew upon the upturned, stony face. At its fall the cold and dread would thaw, tears would well in those judging eyes, the hardened lips would quiver, the congealed bosom would surge; sobbing, grieving, murmuring her thankful love, Jeannie Gordon would hasten into forgiving arms. O mercy of the forgiven! O grace of the forgiving! The picture was pure, the desire (I repeat) honest—but there was glory to be gained too, a vision to be made good of the Queen playing the lover’s part, worth every shift of the quick head, and all the cajolery of the sidelong eyes. Ah me! Here was a chase-royal.
Giving George Gordon kind words, and hope of kinder, she had his mother and sister to Court, and to them was sincerity, princely magnanimity itself. The old Countess was soon won over: there came a day when she would not hear a word against her Majesty, and would judge her dead husband’s actions sooner than allow her patroness to be condemned in their defence. Her two sons stood by her—both lovers of this divine huntress; so that the house of Huntly was in ascension, and Des-Essars, feeling that his nose was (as they say) out of joint, showed that he felt it by patronising his comrade Adam.
But Adam disarmed him. ‘My brother is to be Earl again, Baptist, and therefore I am Sir Adam. You do wrong to refuse me the salute. But let be. To you I shall always be plain Adam Gordon, because we share the same adventure. Now let me tell you. She kissed me yestere’en—here.’ He touched his forehead. ‘I owe you nothing for civility, yet I’ll not go back upon my bond. You shall take your joy of the place: it is your right.’ Then they made it up; Adam pursued his family up the hill of fame. ‘It is all in a fair way; look now, I’ll tell you a secret. The Bastard is out in arms; but if we win he will lose his head, and then Moray shall be ours again! Who knows what may come of that? Be sure, however, that I shall not forget you, Baptist. No, no. What I win of you know what shall be yours to the full half.’ He owned that he was vexed with his sister. ‘What! she sulks in the presence—she holds back—like a child fighting a blown fire! ’Tis unmaidenly of Jeannie; I doubt her a true Gordon. And talks of the Béguines of Bruges, doth she? Let her go, say I.’ All this judgment of Jeannie’s case, as the reader perceives, was before the chasing of the Earl of Moray, and before the Earl of Bothwell came home with French Paris, his candid valet. A word now of him.
He arrived in Scotland, you will remember, when her war with rebels was as good as over. She was keen; flushed with one triumph, and sanguine of another. Scotland at her feet, and all the Gordons hers but one: how was stubborn Jeannie to hold out against her? She was wedded, she was safe, she was victorious, she was happy: everything combined to make the redoubtable Bothwell welcome to her. It was possible, she found, to meet him without quickening of the breath; it was possible to look coolly at him, and (O marvel!) to ask herself what under heaven she had once dreaded in him. His eyes? Had they seemed audacious? They were small and twinkling. His throat, jaw, and snarling mouth—had they seemed purposeful and cruel? The one was forward and the other curved, just ready to laugh. Well, is a laughing man dangerous to women? When she considered that, less than a year ago, she had written secretly to the man, sent him a glove, and with that a fib, she could contemplate herself in the act, as one may a pale old picture of oneself (in curls and a pinafore) at some childish game—with humorous self-pity, and with some anxious regrets too. The thing was well done with—over and done with; but heigho! the world had been more ventureful then. He gave her back her faded tokens; they came from his bosom and went into hers—no thrills! They were quite cold when she laid them by.
He joined the field with her, or what was left of it, and brought with him the Border clans—Elliots, Armstrongs, Turnbulls, and his own Hepburns—ragged and shoeless, less breeched than the Highlanders, if that were possible; but men of dignity and worth, as she saw them, square-bearded, broad-headed men, tawny as foxes, blunt, unmannerly, inspecting her and her two women without awe or curiosity. They were like their chief, she thought, and, with him to lead them, never lagged in the chase. Huntly had his Gordons; and there were Forbeses, Grants, Ogilvies. Breechless were they—some at least—but of great manners; they had poets among them, and her beauty was the theme of harp-strings as well as eye-strings. The pipes swelled and screamed in her daily praise; fine music, great air! But those glum, ruminating Borderers, to whom she was just a ‘long bit lassock’! She turned to them again directly the piping was stopped—to them and their chief, who was of them, blood and bone. Twice she traversed Scotland in their midst, watching them by day, dreaming of them by night. Just as little could she do without this bracing, railing Bothwell as without proud Jeannie Gordon, whom she loved in vain.
And thus the combination came, as in a flash, the old beloved scheme of unity—north and south to awe the middle parts of Scotland. Old Huntly had proposed it and failed—it had been the death of him; but now she would try it and succeed. Into the north she would put a new Huntly; out of the south she would call a new Bothwell. A match, a match! The thought came to her with a ringing sound of hopeful music, ‘Now I have thee mine, proud Jeannie Gordon!’ Strange, ardent, wilful creature—half perverse, half unsexed! Because a man did not love her she would trust him, because a girl would have nothing to say to her she could never let her alone! But Master Des-Essars was right. She was a born huntress.
The preliminaries of the hopeful match were easily made: Huntly was grateful, the dowager profuse; Bothwell chuckled when he was sounded about it, but declined to discuss so simple a matter.
‘You’ll never find me backward, my friend,’ he told Huntly (as George Gordon now was called); ‘many indeed have complained that I am not backward enough. I’m a bull in a pasture—I’m an invading host—I devastate, I come burning. But there! have it as you will.’
Nobody else was consulted, for nobody else was worth it in the Queen’s eyes. When time had been given for all to sink in, she sent for Jean Gordon; who was brought by her mother to the door of the cabinet, put through it, and left there face to face with her careful Majesty. The time of year was mid-January.
The Queen sat upon a heap of cushions by the fire, leaning back a little to ease herself. Her chin was in her hand—a sign that she was considering. She wore a rich gown of murrey-coloured satin, showed her red stockings and long, narrow slippers. Her condition was not hid, and her face would have told it in any case—pinched, peaked, and pettish. Her eyes were like a cat’s, shifty and ranging, now golden-red, now a mask of green, now all black, according as she glanced them to the light; her thin, amorous lips looked like a scarlet wound in her pale face. By her side stood Mary Fleming, a gentle creature in pale rose, as if set there that by her very humanity she might enhance the elfin spell of the other. This Queen was like a young witch, rather new to the dangerous delight, but much in earnest.
She looked up sideways at the girl by the door—a girl to the full as tall as she, and much more sumptuous: deep-breasted, beautiful, composed, a figure of a nun in her black and ivory. For her hair was perfect black and her face without a tinge; and all her gown was black, with a crucifix of silver hung from her waist. She clasped her hands over it as she stood waiting.
‘Come, my girl,’ said the Queen.
Jean took a few steps forward and knelt down. It seems that she might have pleased if she had done it sooner.
‘Very well: it’s very well,’ the Queen began; and then, ‘No! it is not at all well! You seek my hand to kiss it. You shall not have it!’
She put one hand below the other, and watched for the effect. There was none. Provoking!
‘Why should I give my hand to a little rebel,’ she went on again, ‘who says in her heart, “My mother is beguiled, my brothers are beguiled, but I will never be”? who says again, “If she gives me her hand, and I kiss it, ’twill be because I dare not bite it”? Why then should I give my hand to you?’
‘You should not, madam,’ says Jean.
The Queen bit her lip.
‘Oh, the guarded, darkened heart of you, Jean! Why, if I bore a grudge as hardly as you, whom should I not drive out of Scotland?’
As Jean made no answer, Fleming was brought into play.
‘Answer for her, Fleming. Tell her I should drive them all out. Should my brother have stayed? He is too happy in England, I think. Shall I keep your Lethington at home?’
Poor Fleming coloured with pain.
‘Nay, child, nay—I am teasing thee. I know that if he will not kiss my hand ’tis because he hopes for thine. And belike he can have it for the asking! Alack, this Lethington with his two wicked hands! One he will hold out to England, and my false brother Moray will take it; one to Scotland, and pretty Fleming hath it. A chain, a chain! to pen the naughty Queen, who will not let traitors kiss her hands, and must be taught better respect for liars, lick-spittles, and time-servers!’
She was working herself to be dangerous. Good Fleming’s whisper in her ear, ‘Dear, sweet madam, deal not too harshly!’ might have been heard, had not Jean Gordon been kneeling there, stinging her to worse.
‘Harshly, harshly, my girl?’ the Queen snapped at Fleming. ‘I am water heaving against that rock—torn ragged by its fret, and scattered to the wind—to drop down as tears—as salt tears, Mary Fleming! Ah, the sea will drink up my tears, and the sea have me at last, and lap me to soft sleep, and soothe me that I forget!’ She changed her mood, looked proudly at the kneeling girl. ‘You, that will not kiss my hand—nor shall not—you are to forget what you choose and remember what you choose; but of me you expect—what, O heaven! My memory is to lie in your lap and obey you. Oh, it is very well! I am to forget that your father was a traitor——’
The girl’s eyes met hers directly.
‘He was none, madam.’
‘I say I am to forget that, and remember that I dealt sternly with an old man.’
Jean grew fiercely white. ‘Barbarously, madam!’ she said; ‘when you dragged a dead old man from the grave and spat upon his winding-sheet.’
‘Hush, hush!’ said Mary Fleming; and Jean looked at her, but said no more. The Queen was very pale, lying on her side, crouched among the cushions.
‘He defied me,’ she said, ‘but I forgave him that. He tampered with my enemies, he boasted and lied and cheated. He died in arms against his prince, and I shed tears in pity of myself. For then I was new in Scotland, and thought that the love of a man was something worth, and shivered when I lost it, as one left bare to the gales. Now I know wiselier concerning mannish love; and I know how to draw it since I hold it cheap. I would as soon draw that of dogs and apes, I think.’ She looked over her shoulder, then quickly pillowed her cheek again, but held up her hand. Mary Fleming took it. ‘Dogs, and apes, and tigers are men, Mary Fleming!’ the complaining voice resumed; ‘and I Dame Circe at her spells! And here before me, look you, poor faithful, chaste Penelope, that will not touch my hand!’
She gave a little moan, and sat up, shaking her head. ‘No, no, no, my girl, you have the wrong of me. I weave no spells, I want no dogs and apes—no man’s desire. Love!’ she clasped her hands at the stretch of her arms, ‘Love! I want love—and have it from all women but you. I am the queen of women’s hearts, and you are my only rebel. Love me, Jean! Forgiveness, ma mie!’
There was no answer. The Queen started forward, almost frenzied, and threw herself upon the girl—encircled her, clung, and began to kiss her. She kissed her lips, cheeks, eyes, and hair; she stroked her face, she begged and prayed. ‘Love me, Jeannie: I have done you no wrong. I had no hand in it—I could not move alone. I cried, but could not move. They would have it so. Oh, love me, my dear, for the sake of what I have bought and paid for!’
A flint-stone would have thawed under such a lava-stream. Jean Gordon took a softer tinge, but tried to free herself.
‘I thank your Majesty—I would not seem too hard. Maybe I have been stiff, maybe I have brooded. There has been too much thinking time, sitting at work for ever in our dark house. I thank your Majesty—I thank your Grace.’
The Queen lay back again, smiling through her tears. Mary Fleming, deeply moved, took her hand and lifted it, holding it out—by look and gesture commanding the other to do it reverence. So it was done at last.
The Queen said softly: ‘I thank you, child; I thank you, Jeannie. You make me happier. Trust me now, and sit beside me. I have a matter for your ears, and for your heart too, as I hope.’
So Jean sat staidly by her on the cushions and heard the marriage-plan. All she could find to say was that she hoped it would give satisfaction to her Majesty.
The Earl of Bothwell, then, was married upon the Lady Jean Gordon on 24th February, at Holyrood, by the Protestant rite. The Queen and Court were there, she very scornful and full of mockery of what was done. She said, and loudly, ‘If the bride is content with this munchance, why should I be discontent?’ meaning, of course, that there was every reason in the world why she should be. But the truth was that the bride, who professed the old religion, had no choice; for the Earl had insisted upon the minister and his sermon at the price of marriage whatsoever, and the lady’s brother Huntly shared his opinion. Whereupon the bride had shrugged her shoulders.
‘I am bought and sold already,’ she said; ‘therefore what matter to me whether the market is out of the statute?’
The Queen laughed. ‘Tu as rayson, ma belle,’ she said. ‘Le vray mariage s’est faict ailleurs.’
And Lady Jeannie replied in a low voice, ‘Nous verrons, madame.’
All things accomplished, and the Queen gone out by her private door, the Earl handed his Countess through the press to the great entry. Many people came surging about them; the courtyard seemed chockablock, with vexed cries tossed here and there, both ‘God bless the Queen!’ and ‘God damn the Paip!’ In the midst of all the Countess makes as if to falter, cries out, ‘Oh, my foot hurts me!’ gets free her hand and stoops. What was she about?
The Earl, who was quickly put out when he was playing a part (as he surely was just now), stood by for a little, twitching his cheek-bones. Anything would have vexed him at such a time, and at any time he scorned a mob. So he pushed forward to clear more space, crying roughly, with his arms abroad, ‘Out, out, ye tups!’ He made himself an open way to the doors, and stood on the threshold of the chapel, very fierce, plucking at his beard, his hat over his brows. There was room behind and before him: in front were the grooms and servants with their masters’ swords. ‘I dare ye to move, ye babbling thieves,’ he seemed to be threatening them, and kept them mute by the power of the eye.
Meantime the Countess rises from her foot, puts her hand on a young man’s shoulder near by, and says, ‘Take you me.’ This young man, grave and personable, is Mr. Alexander Ogilvy of Boyne, whom I hope you remember to have seen last fighting with her brother, John of Findlater, in the Luckenbooths, that day when the Gordons came swelling into Edinburgh to see the new Queen. He was an old sweetheart of hers, and might have had her but for that unlucky encounter. And since he was here—was it for his sake that the Countess Jeannie had hurt her foot? It is uncertain.
However—‘Fear not, lady, but I’ll take you where you please,’ he assures her; and walks out of church, her hand upon his shoulder.
Thus they come level with the Earl, and pass him.
‘How now, wife?’ he cries: ‘so soon!’
‘Even so, my lord, since you are so tardy,’ says she, without a look his way.
This Mr. Ogilvy walks directly into the crowd, which makes a way for him, hugely tickled by his spirit, and closes in upon him after. The Earl lets fly a sounding oath, and starts after them. ‘By——and——, but I’m for you!’
They let him through; they cry, ‘Earl Bothwell is after his lady! The hunt is up—toho!’ There was much laughter, driving, flacking of hands; and the women were the worst.
After dinner, dancing: the Queen in wild spirits, handed about from man to man, and (not content with that) dancing with the women when men flagged. Her zest carried her far out of politics; wary in the chamber, she was like one drunk at a feast. So she saw nothing of the comedy enacting under her very eyelids: how, while she was led out by my lord, Mr. Ogilvy made play with my lady; and my lord, very much aware of it, fumed. The minute he was dismissed, down he strode through the thick of the frolic, maddening at the courtiers bowing about him, and quarrelled and talked loud, and drank and talked louder; but yet could not get near his handsome new wife. He roundly told his brother-in-law at last that if her ladyship would not come, he should go alone.
‘Whither, my lord?’ asks Huntly.
‘Why, to bed,’ says he.
‘It is yet early,’ says Huntly.
‘It is none so early for the bed I intend for,’ he was told. ‘My bed is at Hermitage. I am master there, I’d let you know, and shall be here some day, God damn me.’ He was in a high rage at the way things were going, and always impatient of the least restraint. One or two bystanders, however, shrewd men, suspected that he had met his match.
Lord Huntly did not believe him—could not believe that he would ride, and ask his young Countess to ride, fifty miles through the marriage night. Nevertheless, towards six o’clock, the Earl came into the lower hall with his great boots on and riding-cloak over his shoulder, and confronted his lady standing with Mr. Ogilvy, my Lord Livingstone, Mary Sempill, her Master, and some more.
‘My lady,’ he said with a reverence, ‘I am a bird of the bough. ’Tis after my hour—I’m for my bed.’
Lady Bothwell gave him a short look. ‘If that is your night-gear, my lord, you sleep alone.’
Harshly he laughed. ‘It seems I am to do that. But, mistress, when you want me you will find me at Hermitage, whither I now go. And the same direction I give to you, Mr. Ogilvy,’ says he with meaning. ‘If you come into my country, or any country but this cursed town, you shall find me ready for you, Mr. Ogilvy of Boyne.’
Ogilvy wagged his head. ‘La la la! We shall meet again, never fear, my Lord Bothwell,’ says he.
The Countess gave him her hand to kiss. ‘I wish you good-night, Boyne,’ she said: ‘I am going to my bed’: then, looking her Earl in the face, ‘Pray you send your page for my women, my lord. I lack my riding-gear.’
Lord Huntly, who was up with them by now, cries out: ‘What wild folly is this? Do you rave? You will never go to Liddesdale this hell-black night! Are you mad, Lord Bothwell, or a villain?’
‘I’m a bird of the bough, brother-in-law, a bird of the bough.’
The Countess turned to her brother. ‘Should I be afraid of the dark, Huntly, with this nobleman by my side?’
‘God’s death, my child,’ says Bothwell, admiring her cool blood, ‘I would be more at your side if you suffered me.’
Lord Huntly turned on his heel.
She went to take leave of the Queen, and found her on an unworthy arm. ‘My leave, madam. I crave liberty to follow my lord.’
‘It should be the other way, child,’ said the Queen, ‘for a little while, at least. But we will come and put you to bed—and he shall come after.’
‘Your Majesty’s pardon, but this may hardly be. My lord chooses for Hermitage, and I must follow him—as my duty is.’
It made the Queen grow red; but she did not let go the arm she had. ‘As you will, mistress,’ she said stiffly, and added something in Italian to her companion, who raised his eyebrows and gave a little jerk of the head.
‘You ride a long way for your joy,’ she resumed, with a hard ring in her voice. ‘It’s to be hoped you are well accompanied. Yonder is a wild country: Turnbulls in the Lammermuirs, Elliots in Liddesdale. But you have a wild mate.’
The Countess then looked her full in the face. ‘Your Majesty forgets,’ she said. ‘It is not men that I and mine have reason to fear.’
After a short and quick recoil the Queen went straight up to her and took her face in her two hands. Speaking between clenched teeth, she said: ‘You shall not quarrel with me, Jeannie Bothwell. Or I will not quarrel with you. I wish you well wherever you go. Remember that: and now give me a kiss.’
She had to take it, for it was not offered her; and then she pushed the girl away with a little angry sob. ‘Ah, how you hate me! You are the only woman in Scotland that hates me.’ She felt the prick of tears, and shook her head to be so fretted. ‘If I were to tell you of your Earl—as I could if I cared——’ The Italian touched her arm, and brought her sharply round. ‘Well? Why should I not? Am I such a happy wife that my wedding-ring is a gag? Shall she have of me the bravest man in Scotland, and not know the price?’ Gulping down her anger, she put her hand on her bosom to keep it quiet. ‘No, no, I am not so base. Let her have what comfort she can. All wives need that. God be with you, Jeannie Bothwell.’
‘And with your Majesty, at all times.’
The Countess curtsied, kissed hands, and went away backwards. She had not taken the smallest notice of the Italian.
‘If I could hate like that, David,’ said the Mistress, ‘I should be Queen of France at this hour.’
‘Oh, oh! And so you can, madam, and so you shall,’ replied the man.
The Queen sent for more lights, and drink for the fiddlers. She did more. To please the French Ambassador and his suite, she and her maids put on men’s clothes, and flashed golden hangers from their belts before the courtly circle. The dancing grew the looser as the lights flared to their end. Many a man and many a maid slept by the wall; but there was high revelry in the midst.
Very late, the tumble and rioting at its top, in came the King, with Lord Ruthven, Archie Douglas, and some more of his friends. He stared, brushed his hot eyes. ‘What a witches’ Sabbath! Where’s my——? Where’s the Queen?’
‘Yonder, sir. Masked, and talking with my Lady Argyll—and——’
‘God help us, I see.’ He pushed squarely through the crowd, and stood before her, not steadily.
‘Good-morrow to your Majesty,’ he said. ‘The hour is late—or early, as you take it. But I am here—ready for bed.’
She held her head up, looking away from him, and spoke as if she were talking to her people.
‘I’ll not come,’ she said. ‘I am going to cards. Come, ladies. Come, sirs.’ Turning, she left him.
He looked after her owlishly, blinking as if he was about to cry. He caught Ruthven by the arm. ‘Oh, man,’ he said, ‘oh, Ruthven, do you see that? Do you see whom she has there?’
‘Hush, sir,’ says Ruthven. ‘’Tis the same as yesterday, and all the yesterdays, and as many morrows as you choose to stomach. Come you to your bed. You cannot mend it this way.’
The King still blinked and looked after his wife. He began to tremble. ‘Oh, man,’ he said, ‘when shall I do it?’
Ruthven, after a flashing look at him, ran after the Queen’s party. She was a little in front, cloaked now and walking with her ladies. Ruthven caught up the Italian and said some words. The man stopped, and looked at him guardedly. Ruthven came closer, and put his hand on his shoulder, talking copiously. As he talked, and went on talking, his hand slipped gently down the Italian’s back to his middle, opened itself wide, and stayed there open.
They parted with laughter on both sides, and a bow from David. Ruthven came back.
‘You may do it when you please, sir,’ he said to the King.
When, on 6th March, the expected stroke fell upon my Lord Chancellor Morton, and he was required to hand over the seals of his high office to the Queen’s messengers, he did so with a certain heavy dignity. As I imply, he had had time for preparation. He had not seen his sovereign for some weeks, knew that Lethington had not, knew also that his alliance (even his kinship) with the King had worked against him, and suspected finally, that what that had not done for his prospects had been managed by the Italian. So he bowed his head to Erskine and Traquair when they waited upon him, and, pointing to the Great Seal on the table, said simply, ‘Let her Majesty take back what her Majesty gave. Gentlemen, good night.’ Truly, we may say that nothing in his life became him like the leaving it: but that is the rule.
The same evening—nine o’clock and a snowy night—Archie Douglas came to his house in the Cowgate and found him writing letters—not easily, but with grunts, his tongue curling about his upper lip. The disgraced Chancellor looked up, saw his cousin, and went on writing. Archie waited. So presently, ‘Moriturus te salutat,’ says the Earl, without ceasing to labour.
‘Pshaw, cousin,’ says Archie, ‘I have come to you with a better cry nor that.’
‘Have you indeed?’ scoffed my lord. ‘Man, I would be fain to know it.’
‘’Tis Habet,’ says Archie, ‘and down with your thumb.’
Lord Morton leaned back in his chair and raked his beard with the pen’s end. The quip struck his fancy as a pleasant one.
‘I take your meaning,’ he said. ‘I had thought of it myself. But, to say nothing of his place by her side, I doubt he wears a steel shirt.’
Archie said shortly: ‘He does not. The King felt him last night as he sat at the cards. And Ruthven felt him well on Bothwell’s marriage night.’
‘The King! He did that!’
‘He did just that.’
Morton gazed at him for a minute. ‘Why,’ he marvelled, ‘why, then he stands in wi’ the rest? Archie, are ye very sure?’
Archie the wise snapped his fingers at such elementary knowledge. ‘A month gone, come Friday, he began to open to Ruthven about it.’
The Earl rapped the table smartly with his fingers. ‘And I am the last to know it! I thank you, cousin, for your good conceit of me. By the mass, man, you treat me like a boy.’
‘It’s no doing of mine,’ says Archie. ‘I was for making you privy to it a week syne; but Ruthven, he said, “No.” You were still Chancellor, d’ye see? And, says Ruthven, your lordship was a tappit hen, that would sit till they took the last egg from under ye.’
‘Damn his black tongue!’ growled my lord, and looked at his letters. ‘But he’s in the right of it,’ he added. ‘Cold, cold is my nest the now.’
Archie moistened his lips. ‘They took the seals from you this morn, cousin?’
‘It is not three hours since they had them.’
‘Do you guess what did it?’
Morton laughed shortly. ‘Ay! It was my Crown-Matrimonial, I doubt.’
‘And do you guess who did it?’
He did not laugh now. ‘Have done with your idle questioning. Who should do it but the fiddler?’
‘One more question,’ says Archie, ‘by your leave. Do you guess who sits in your seat?’
‘Ay, I think it, I think it. She will give it to one of her familiars—her Huntly, or her fine Bothwell.’
Archie once more snapped his fingers. ‘Nor one, nor t’other. There’s a man more familiar than the pair. Cousin, the fiddler seals the briefs! The Italian is to be Chancellor. Now what d’ye say?’
Lord Morton said nothing at all. He looked up, he looked down; he screwed his hands together, rolled one softly over the other.
Archie watched his heavy face grow darker as the tide of rage crept up. Presently he tried to move him.
‘Are you for England, cousin?’ he asked.
‘Ay,’ said Morton, ‘that is my road.’
Archie then touched him on the shoulder. ‘Bide a while, my lord. We shall all be friends here before many days. Argyll is here.’
‘Argyll? The fine man!’
‘A finer follows him hard.’
‘Who then? Your sage Lethington?’
‘Lethington! Hoots! no; but the black Earl of Moray, my good lord.’
The Earl of Morton stopped in the act of whistling.
‘Moray comes home?’
‘Ay. His forfeiture is set for the 12th. He is coming home to meet it. All’s ready.’
Morton was greatly interested. To gain time he asked an idle question. ‘Who has written him to come? Lethington?’
‘Ay, Michael Wylie.’
This was the name they gave him. Machiavelli may be intended—if so, an injustice to each.
‘Who returns with my lord?’ Morton asked him next; and Archie held up his fingers.
‘All of them that are now in England. Rothes, Pitarrow, Grange—all of them. Stout men, cousin.’
Stout indeed! One of them had been enough for Master Davy. My Lord Morton, his head sunk into his portly chest, considered this news. Moray was an assurance—for how did Moray strike? In the dark—quickly—when no one was by. Well, then, if Moray were coming to strike one’s enemy, why should one meddle? He was never at his ease in that great man’s company, because he could never be sure of his own aims while he doubted those of his colleague. You could not tell—you never could tell—what James Stuart intended. He would cut at one for the sake of hitting another at a distance. If he were coming back to cut at the Italian, for instance—at what other did he hope to reach? Morton drove his slow wits to work as he sat staring at his papers, trying vainly to bottom the designs of a man whom he admired and distrusted profoundly. Why so much force to scrag a wretched Italian? The King, Archie, Moray, Grange, Pitarrow, Argyll! And now himself, Morton! At whom was Moray aiming? Was he entangling the King, whom he hated? Could he be working against the Queen, his sister? They used to say he coveted the throne. Could this be his intent?
Such possibilities disturbed him. Let me do Lord Morton the justice to say that his very grossness saved him from any more curious villainy than a quick blow at an enemy. The Italian had galled his dignity: damn the dog! he would kill him for it. But to intend otherwise than loyalty to the King, his kinsman—no, no! And as for the Queen’s Majesty—why, she was a lass, and a pretty lass too, though a wilful. She would never have stood in his way but for that beastly foreign whisperer. Yet—if the King had been dishonoured by the fiddler, and Moray (knowing that) meant honestly ... Eh, sirs! So he pondered in his dull, muddled way—his poor wits, like yoked oxen, heavily plodding the fields of speculation, turning furrow after furrow! Guess how he vexed the nimble Archie.
‘Well, cousin, well?’ cries that youth at last: ‘I must be going where my friends await me.’
‘Man,’ said Morton, and stopped him, ‘where are ye for?’
Archie replied: ‘Mum’s the word. But if you are the man I believe you, you shall come along with me this night.’
Morton had made up his mind. ‘I am with you—for good or ill,’ he said.
Cloaked and booted, the two kinsmen went out into the dark. The wind had got up, bringing a scurry of dry snow: they had to pull the door hard to get it home.
‘Rough work at sea the night,’ said Archie.
‘You’ll be brewing it rougher on land, I doubt,’ was Lord Morton’s commentary.
In a little crow-stepped house by the shore of the Nor’ Loch the Earl of Morton was required to set his hand to certain papers, upon which they showed him the names of Argyll, Rothes, Ruthven, Archie Douglas, Lethington, and others. He asked at once to see Lord Moray’s name: they told him Lethington had it to a letter, which bound him as fast as any bond.
‘It should be here,’ he said seriously.
But Ruthven cried out, How could it be there when his lordship was over the Border?
Morton shook his head. ‘It should be here, gentlemen. ’Twere better to wait for it. What hurry is there?’
Ruthven said that the game was begun and ought to go on now. ‘Judge you, my lord,’ he appealed, ‘if I should put my head into a noose unless I held the cord in my own hand.’
In his private mind Morton believed Ruthven a madman. But he did not see how he could draw out now.
He read through the two papers—bands, they called them. It was required of those who signed that they should assist the King their sovereign lord to get the Crown-Matrimonial—no harm in that!—and that they should stand enemies to his enemies, friends to his friends. On his side the King engaged to remove the forfeiture from the exiled lords, to put back the Earl of Morton into his office, and to establish the Protestant religion. Not a word of the Italian, not a word of the Queen. The things were well worded, evidently by Lethington.
‘When are we to be at it?’ he asked.
Ruthven told him, ‘Saturday coming, at night.’ It was now Thursday.
‘How shall you deal?’ This was Morton again.
He was told, In the small hours of the night——and there he stopped them at once. ‘Oh, Ruthven! Oh, Lindsay! Never on the Sabbath morn! Sirs, ye should not——’
But Ruthven waved him off. The exact hour, he said, must depend upon events. This, however, was the plan proposed. When the Queen was set down to cards or a late supper, Lord Morton with his men was to hold the entry, doors, stairheads, passages, forecourt of the palace. Traquair would be off duty, Erskine could be dealt with. Bothwell, Huntly, Atholl, and all the rest of the Queen’s friends would be abed; and Lindsay was to answer for keeping them there. The King was to go into the Queen’s closet and look over her shoulder at the game. At a moment agreed upon he would lift up her chin, say certain words, kiss her, and repeat the words. That was to be the signal: then Ruthven, Archie Douglas, and Fawdonsyde—Ker of Fawdonsyde, a notorious ruffian—would do their work.
Morton listened to all this intently, with slow-travelling eyes which followed the rafters from their spring in one wall to their cobwebbed end in the other. He could find no flaw at first, nor put his finger upon the damnable blot there must be in it; but after a time, as he figured it over and over, he missed somebody. ‘Stop there! stop there, you Ruthven!’ he thundered. ‘Tell me this: Where will Lethington be the while?’
He was told, ‘Gone to meet the Earl of Moray.’ Moray!—his jaw fell.
‘What! will Moray no be with me?’
They said, it was much hoped. But the roads were heavy; there was a possibility——
He jeered at them. Did they not know Moray yet? ‘Man,’ he said, turning to Archie, ‘it’s not a possibility, it’s as certain as the Day of Doom.’
Then they all talked at once. Moray’s name was fast to a letter; the letter was fast in Lethington’s poke; Lethington was fast to the band. What more could be done? Would Lethington endanger his neck? His safety was Moray’s, and theirs was Lethington’s. And the King? What of the King?
‘You talk of Doomsday, my lord!’ shouts Ruthven, with the slaver of his rage upon his mouth: ‘there’s but one doom impending, and we’ll see to it.’
Perorations had no effect upon Morton, who was still bothered. He went over the whole again, clawing down his fingers as he numbered the points. There was himself to keep the palace, there was Lindsay to hold back Bothwell; the King to go into the closet—the kiss—the words of signal—then Ruthven and——Here he stopped, and his eyes grew small.
‘Oh, sirs,’ he said, ‘the poor lassie! Sold with a kiss! She’s big, sirs; you’ll likely kill mother and bairn.’
Ruthven, squinting fearfully, slammed the table. ‘Whose bairn, by the Lord? Tell me whose?’
Morton shook his head. ‘Yon’s hell-work,’ he said. ‘I’ll have nothing to do wi’t. I guess who’s had the devising of it. ’Tis Lethington—a grey-faced thief.’
Here Archie Douglas, after looking to Ruthven, intervened, and talked for nearly half an hour to his cousin. Morton, very gloomy, heard him out; then made his own proposition. He would stand by the King, he said; he would hold the palace. No man should come in or out without the password. But he would not go upstairs, nor know who went up or what went on. This also he would have them all promise before he touched the band with a pen:—Whatever was done to the Italian should be done in the passage. There should be no filthy butchery of a girl and her child, either directly or by implication, where he had a hand at a job. Such was his firm stipulation. Archie swore to observe it; Fawdonsyde, Lindsay, swore; Ruthven said nothing.
‘Archie,’ said his cousin, ‘go you and fetch me the Scriptures. I shall fasten down Ruthven with the keys of God.’ Ruthven put his hand upon the book and swore. Then the Earl of Morton signed the band.
On that appointed night of Saturday, the 9th of March—a blowy, snowy night, harrowing for men at sea, with a mort of vessels pitching at their cables in Leith Roads—Des-Essars was late for his service. He should have come on to the door at ten o’clock, and it wanted but two minutes to that when he was beating down the Castle hill in the teeth of the wind.
Never mind his errand, and expect fibs if you ask what had kept him. Remember that he was older at this time than when you first saw him, a French boy ‘with smut-rimmed eyes,’ crop-headed, pale, shrewd, and reticent. That was a matter of three years ago: the Queen was but nineteen and he four years younger. He was eighteen now, and may have had evening affairs like other people, no concern of yours or mine. Whatever they may have been, they had kept him unduly; he had two minutes and wanted seven. He drew his bonnet close, his short cape about him, and went scudding down the hill as fast as the snow would let him in shoes dangerously thin for the weather, but useful for tiptoe purposes. The snow had been heaped upon the cawsey, but in the street trodden, thawed, and then frozen again to a surface of ice. From it came enough light to show that few people were abroad, and none lawfully, and that otherwise it was infernally dark. A strangely diffused, essential light it was, that of the snow. It put to shame three dying candles left in the Luckenbooths and the sick flame of an oil lamp above the Netherbow Port. After passing that, there was no sign of man or man’s comforts until you were in the Abbey precincts.
Des-Essars knew—being as sharp as a needle—that something was changed the moment he reached those precincts; knew by the pricking of his skin, as they say. A double guard set; knots of men-at-arms; some horses led about; low voices talking in strange accents,—something was altered. Worse than all this, he found the word of the night unavailing: no manner of entry for him.
‘My service is the Queen’s, honourable sir,’ he pleaded to an unknown sentry, who wore (he observed) a steel cap of unusual shape.
The square hackbutter shook his head. ‘No way in this night, Frenchman.’
‘By whose orders, if you please?’
‘By mine, Frenchman.’
Here was misfortune! No help for it, but he must brave what he had hoped to avoid—his superior officer, to wit.
‘If it please you, sir,’ he said, ‘I will speak with Mr. Erskine in the guardroom.’
‘Mr. Airrskin!’ was the shocking answer—and how the man spoke it!—‘Mr. Airrskin! He’s no here. He’s awa’. So now off with ye, Johnny Frenchman.’ The man obviously had orders: but whose orders?
Des-Essars shrugged. He shivered also, as he always did when refused anything—as if the world had proved suddenly a chill place. But really the affair was serious. Inside the house he must be, and that early. Driven to his last resource, he walked back far enough for the dark to swallow him up, returned upon his tracks a little way so soon as the hackbutter had resumed his stamping up and down; branched off to the right, slipping through a ruinous stable, blown to pieces in former days by the English; crossed a frozen cabbage garden which, having been flooded, was now a sheet of cat-ice; and so came hard upon the Abbey wall. In this wall, as he very well knew, there were certain cavities, used as steps by the household when the gateways were either not convenient or likely to be denied: indeed, he would not, perhaps, have cared to reckon how many times he had used them himself. Having chipped the ice out of them with his hanger, he was triumphantly within the pale, hopping over the Queen’s privy garden with high-lifted feet, like a dog in turnips. To win the palace itself was easy. It was mighty little use having friends in the kitchen if they could not do you services of that kind.
He had to find the Queen, though, and face what she might give him, but of that he had little fear. He knew that she would be at cards, and too full of her troubles and pains to seek for a new one. It is a queer reflection that he makes in his Memoirs—that although he romantically loved the Queen, he had no scruples about deceiving her and few fears of being found out, so only that she did not take the scrape to heart. ‘She was a goddess to me,’ he says, ‘in those days, a remote point of my adoration. A young man, however, is compact of two parts, an earthly and a spiritual. If I had exhibited to her the frailties of my earthly part it would have been by a very natural impulse. However, I never did.’ This is a digression: he knew that she would not fret herself about him and his affairs just now, because she was ill, and miserable about the King. Throwing a kiss of his hand, then, to the yawning scullery-wench, who had had to get out of her bed to open the window for him, he skimmed down the corridors on a light foot, and reached the great hall. He hoped to go tiptoe up the privy stair and gain the door of the cabinet without being heard. When she came out she would find him there, and all would be well. This was his plan.
It was almost dark in the hall, but not quite. A tree-bole on the hearth was in the article of death; a few thin flames about the shell of it showed him a company of men in the corner by the privy stair. Vexatious! They were leaning to the wall, some sitting against it; some were on the steps asleep, their heads nodding to their knees. He was cut off his sure access, and must go by the main staircase—if he could. He tried it, sidling along by the farther wall; but they spied him, two of them, and one went to cut him off. A tall enemy this, for the little Frenchman; but luckily for him it was a case of boots against no boots where silence was of the essence of the contract. Des-Essars, his shoes in his hand, darted out into the open and raced straight for the stair. The enemy began his pursuit—in riding-boots. Heavens! the crash and clatter on the flags, the echo from the roof! It would never do: hushed voices called the man back; he went tender-footed, finally stopped. By that time the page was up the stair, pausing at the top to wipe his brows and neck of cold sweat, and to wonder as he wiped what all this might mean. Double guard in the court—strange voices—the word changed—Mr. Erskine away! No sentry in the hall, but, instead, a cluster of waiting, whispering men—in riding-boots—by the privy stair! The vivacious young man was imaginative to a fault; he could construct a whole tragedy of life and death out of a change in the weather. And here was a fateful climax to the tragedy of a stormy night! First, the stress of the driving snow—whirling, solitary, forlorn stuff!—the apprehension of wild work by every dark entry. Passing the Tolbooth, a shriek out of the blackness had sent his heart into his mouth. There had been fighting, too, in Sim’s Close. He had seen a torch flare and dip, men and women huddled about two on the ground; one grunting, ‘Tak’ it! Tak’ it!’ and the other, with a strangled wail, ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Bad hearing all this—evil preparation. Atop of these apparitions, lo! their fulfilment: stroke after stroke of doom. Cloaked men by the privy stair—Dieu de Dieu! His heart was thumping at his ribs when he peeped through the curtain of the Queen’s cabinet and saw his mistress there with Lady Argyll and the Italian. ‘Blessed Mother!’ he thought, ‘here’s an escape for me. I had no notion the hour was so late.’ What he meant was, that the rest of the company had gone. He had heard that Lord Robert Stuart and the Laird of Criech were to sup that night. Well, they had supped and were gone! It must be on the stroke of midnight.