The Queen, as he could see, lay back in her elbow-chair, obviously suffering, picking at some food before her, but not eating any. Her lips were chapped and dry; she moistened them continually, then bit them. Lady Argyll, handsome, strong-featured, and swarthy, sat bolt upright and stared at the sconce on the wall; and as for the Italian, he did as he always did, lounged opposite his Queen, his head against the wainscot. Reflective after food, he used his toothpick, but no other ceremony whatsoever. He wore his cap on his head, ignored Lady Argyll—half-sister to the throne—and when he looked at her Majesty, as he often did, it was as a man might look at his wife. She, although she seemed too weary or too indifferent to lift her heavy eyelids, knew perfectly well that both her companions were watching her: Des-Essars was sure of that. He watched her himself intensely, and only once saw her meet Davy’s eye, when she passed her cup to him to be filled with drink, and he, as if thankful to be active, poured the wine with a flourish and smiled in her face as he served her. She observed both act and actor, and made no sign, neither drank from the cup now she had it; but sank back to her wretchedness and the contemplation of it, being in that pettish, brooding habit of mind which would rather run on in a groove of pain than brace itself to some new shift. As he watched what was a familiar scene to him, Des-Essars was wondering whether he should dare go in and report what he had observed in the hall. No! on the whole he would not do that. Signior Davy, who was a weasel in such a field as a young man’s mind, would assuredly fasten upon him at some false turn or other, never let go, and show no mercy. Like all the underlings of Holyrood he went in mortal fear of the Italian, though, unlike any of them, he admired him.
The little cabinet was very dim. There were candles on the table, but none alight in the sconces. From beyond, through a half-open door, came the drowsy voices of the Queen’s women, murmuring their way through two more hours’ vigil. Interminable nights! Cards would follow supper, you must know, and Signior Davy would try to outsit Lady Argyll. He always tried, and generally succeeded.
The Queen shifted, sighed, and played hasty tunes with her fingers on the table: she was never still. It was evident that she was at once very wretched and very irritable. Her dark-red gown was cut low and square, Venetian mode: Des-Essars could see quite well how short her breath was, and how quick. Yet she said nothing. Once she and Lady Argyll exchanged glances; the Mistress of the Robes inquired with her eyebrows, the Queen fretfully shook the question away. It was an unhappy supper for all but the graceless Italian, who was much at his ease now that he had unfastened some of the hooks of his jacket. The French lad, who had always been in love with his mistress and yet able to criticise her—as a Protestant may adore the Virgin Mary—admits that at this moment of her life, in this bitter mood, he found her extremely piquant. ‘This pale, helpless, angry, pretty woman!’ he exclaims upon his page. He would seldom allow that she was more than just a pretty woman; and now she was a good deal less. Her charms for him had never been of the face—she had an allure of her own. ‘Mistress Seton was lovely, I consider, my Lady Bothwell most beautiful, and Mistress Fleming not far short of that: but the Queen’s Majesty—ah! the coin from Mr. Knox’s mint rang true. Honeypot! Honeypot! There you had her essence: sleepy, slow, soft sweetness—with a sharp aftertaste, for all that, to prick the tongue and set it longing.’
More than nice considerations, these, which the stealthy opening of a door and a step in the passage disturbed. Des-Essars would have straightened himself on that signal, to stand as a page should stand in the view of any one entering. Then he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the King go down the little stair. It must be the King, because—to say nothing of the tall figure, small-headed as it was,—he had seen the long white gown. The King wore a white quilted-silk bedgown, lined with ermine. At the turning of the stair Des-Essars saw him just glance backwards over his shoulder towards the cabinet, but, being stiff within the shadow of the curtain, was not himself seen. After that furtive look he saw him go down the privy stair, his hand on the rope. Obviously he had an assignation with some woman below.
Before he had time to correct this conclusion by the memory of the cloaked men in the hall, he heard returning steps—somebody, this time, coming up the steps; no! there were more than one—two or three at least. He was sure of this—his ears had never deceived him—and yet it was the King alone who appeared at the stair-head with a lighted taper in his hand, which he must have got from the hall. He stood there for a moment, his face showing white and strained in the light, his mouth open, too; then, blowing out his taper, he came directly to the curtain of the Queen’s cabinet, pulled it aside and went in. He had actually covered Des-Essars with the curtain without a notion that he was there; but the youth had had time to observe that he was fully dressed beneath his gown, and to get a hot whiff of the strong waters in his breath as he passed in. Urgent to see what all this might mean, he peeped through the hangings.
Lady Argyll rose up slowly when she saw the King, but made no reverence. Very few did in these days. The Italian followed her example, perfectly composed. The Queen took no notice of him. She rested as she had been, her head on the droop, eyebrows raised, eyes fixed on the disordered platter. The King, whose colour was very high, came behind her chair, stooped, and put his arm round her. His hand covered her bosom. She did not avoid, though she did not relish this.
‘Madam, it is very late,’ he said, and spoke breathlessly.
‘It is not I who detain you,’ said she.
‘No, madam, no. But you do detain these good servants of yours. Here is your sister of Argyll; next door are your women. And so it is night after night. I think not of myself.’
She lifted her head a little to look up sideways—but not at him. ‘You think of very little else, to my understanding. Having brought me to the state where now I am, you are inclined to leave me alone. Rather, you were inclined; for this is a new humour, little to my taste.’
‘I should be oftener here, believe me,’ says the King, still embracing her, ‘if I could feel more sure of a welcome—if all might be again as it was once between you and me.’
She laughed, without mirth; then asked, ‘And how was it—once?’
The King stooped down and kissed her forehead, by the same act gently pushing back her head till it rested on his shoulder.
‘Thus it was once, my Mary,’ he said; and as she looked up into his face, wondering over it, searching it, he kissed her again. ‘Thus it was once,’ he repeated in a louder voice; and then, louder yet, ‘Thus, O Queen of Scots!’
Once more he kissed her, and once more cried out, ‘O Queen of Scots!’ Then Des-Essars heard the footsteps begin again on the privy stair, and saw men come into the passage—many men.
Three of them, in cloaks and steel bonnets, came quickly to the door, and passed him. They went through the curtain. These three were Lord Ruthven, Ker of Fawdonsyde, and Mr. Archibald Douglas. Rigid in his shadow, Des-Essars watched all.
Seeing events in the Italian’s eyes, rather than with her own—for Signior Davy had narrowed his to two threads of blue—the Queen lifted her head from her husband’s arm and looked curiously round. The three stood hesitant within the door; Ruthven had his cap on his head, Fawdonsyde his, but Archie showed his grey poll. Little things like these angered her quickly; she shook free from the King and sat upright.
‘What is this, my Lord Ruthven? You forget yourself.’
‘Madam——’ he began; but Douglas nudged him furiously.
‘Your bonnet, man, your bonnet!’
The Queen had risen, and the fixed direction of her eyes gave him understanding.
‘Ah, my knapscall! I do as others do, madam,’ he said, with a meaning look at the Italian. ‘What is pleasant to your Majesty in yonder servant should not be an offence in a councillor.’
‘No, no, ma’am, nor it should not,’ muttered Fawdonsyde, who, nevertheless, doffed his bonnet.
The King was holding her again, she staring still at the scowling man in steel. ‘What do you want with me, Ruthven?’ she said. She had very dry lips.
He made a clumsy bow. ‘May it please your Majesty,’ he said, ‘we are come to rid you of this fellow Davy, who has been overlong familiar here, and overmuch—for your Majesty’s honour.’
She turned her face to the King, whose arm still held her—a white, strong face.
‘You,’ she said fiercely, ‘what have you to do in this? What have you to say?’
‘I think with Ruthven—with all of them—my friends and well-wishers. ’Tis the common voice: they say I am betrayed, upon my soul! I cannot endure—I entreat you to trust me——’ He was incoherent.
She broke away from his arm, took a step forward and put herself between him and the three. She was so angry that she could not find words. She stammered, began to speak, rejected what words came. The Italian took off his cap and watched Ruthven intently. The moment of pause that ensued was broken by Ruthven’s raising his hand, for the Queen flashed out, ‘Put down your hand, sir!’ and seemed as if she would have struck him. Fawdonsyde here cocked his pistol and deliberately raised it against the Queen’s person. ‘Treason! treason!’ shrieked Des-Essars from the curtain, and blundered forward to the villain.
But the Queen had been before him; at last she had found words, and deeds. She drew herself up, quivering, went directly towards Fawdonsyde, and beat down the point of the pistol with her flat hand. ‘Do you dare so much? Then I dare more. What shameless thing do you here? If I had a sword in my hand——’ Here she stopped, tongue-tied at what was done to her.
For Ruthven, regardless of majesty, had got her round the middle. He pushed her back into the King’s arms; and, ‘Take your wife, my lord,’ says he; ‘take your good-wife in your arms and cherish her, while we do what must be done.’
The King held her fast in spite of her struggles. At that moment the Italian made a rattling sound in his throat and backed from the table. Archie Douglas stepped behind the King, to get round the little room; Ruthven approached his victim from the other side; the Italian pulled at the table, got it between himself and the enemy, and overset it: then Lady Argyll screamed, and snatched at a candlestick as all went down. It was the only light left in the room, held up in her hand like a beacon above a tossing sea. Where was Des-Essars? Cuffed aside to the wall, like a rag doll. The maids were packed in the door of the bedchamber, and one of them had pulled him into safety among them.
All that followed he marked: how the frenzied Italian, hedged in between Douglas and Ruthven, vaulted the table, knocked over Fawdonsyde, and then, whimpering like a woman, crouched by the Queen, his fingers in the pleats of her gown. He saw the King’s light eyelashes blink, and heard his breath come whistling through his nose; and that pale, disfigured girl, held up closely against her husband, moaning and hiding her face in his breast. And now Ruthven, grinning horribly, swearing to himself, and Douglas, whining like a dog at a rat-hole, were at their man’s hands, trying to drag him off. Fawdonsyde hovered about, hopeful to help. Lady Argyll held up the candle.
Douglas wrenched open one hand, Ruthven got his head down and bit the other till it parted.
‘O Dio! O Dio!’ long shuddering cries went up from the Italian as they dragged him out into the passage, where the others waited.
It was dark there, and one knew not how full of men; but Des-Essars heard them snarling and mauling like a pack of wolves; heard the scuffling, the panting, the short oaths—and then a piercing scream. At that there was silence; then some one said, as he struck, ‘There! there! Hog of Turin!’ and another (Lindsay), ‘He’s done.’
The King put the Queen among her maids in a hurry, and went running out into the passage as they were shuffling the body down the stair. Des-Essars just noticed, and remembered afterwards, his naked dagger in his hand as he went out helter-skelter after his friends. Upon some instinct or other, he followed him as far as the head of the stair. From the bottom came up a great clamour—howls of execration, one or two cries for the King, a round of welcome when he appeared. The page ran back to the cabinet, and found it dark.
It was bad to hear the Queen’s laughter in the bedchamber—worse when that shuddered out into moaning, and she began to wail as if she were keening her dead. He could not bear it, so crept out again to spy about the passages and listen to the shouting from the hall. ‘A Douglas! a Douglas!’ was the most common cry. Peeping through a window which gave on to the front, he saw the snowy court ablaze with torches, alive with men, and against the glare the snowflakes whirling by, like smuts from a burning chimney. It was clear enough now that the palace was held, all its inmates prisoners. But what seemed more terrifying than that was the emptiness of the upper corridors, the sudden hush after so much riot—and the Queen’s moan, haunting all the dark like a lost soul.
It was so bad up there that the lad, his brain on fire, felt the need of any company—even that of gaolers. No one hindering, he crept down the privy stair,—horribly slippery it was, and he knew why,—hoping to spy into the hall; and this also he was free to do, since the stair-foot was now unguarded. He found the hall crowded with men; great torches smoking to the rafters; a glow of light on shields and blazonry, the banners and achievements of dead kings. In the stir of business the arras surged like the waves of the sea. A furious draught blew in from the open doors, to which all faces were turned. Men craned over each others’ backs to look there. Des-Essars could not see the King; but there at the entry was the Earl of Morton in his armour, two linkmen by him. He was reading from a bill: in front of him was a clear way; across it stood the Masters of Lindsay and Ruthven, and men in their liveries, halberds in their hands.
‘Pass out, Earl of Atholl,’ he heard Lord Morton say; ‘Pass out, Lord of Tullibardine’: and then, after a while of looking and pointing, he saw the grizzled head and square shoulders of my Lord Atholl moving down the lane of men, young Tullibardine uncovered beside him.
‘Pass out, Pitcur; pass out, Mr. James Balfour; pass out, the Lord Herries.’ The same elbowing in the crowd: three men file out into the scurrying snow—all the Queen’s friends, observe.
Near to Des-Essars a man asked of his neighbour, ‘Will they let by my Lord Huntly, think you?’
The other shook his head. ‘Never! He’ll keep company with the Reiver of Liddesdale, be sure.’
The Reiver was Lord Bothwell, of course, whom Des-Essars knew to be in the house. ‘Good fellow-prisoners for us,’ he thought.
‘Pass out, Mr. Secretary, on a fair errand.’
There was some murmuring at this; but the man went out unmolested, with a sweep of the bonnet to my Lord Morton as he passed. Des-Essars saw him stop at the first taste of the weather and cover his mouth with his cloak—but he waited for no more. A thought had struck him. He slipped back up the puddled stair, gained the first corridor, and, knowing his way by heart, went in and out of the passages until he came to a barred door. Here he put his ear to the crack and listened intently.
For a long time he could hear nothing on either side the door; but by and by somebody with a light—a man—came to the farther end of the passage and looked about, raising and dipping his lantern. That was an ugly moment! Crouched against the wall, he saw the lamp now high now low, and marked with a leaping heart how nearly the beams reached to where he lay. He heard a movement behind the door, too, but had to let it go. Not for full three minutes after the disappearance of the watchman did he dare put his knuckles to the door, and tap, very softly, at the panel. He tapped and tapped. A board creaked; there was breathing at the door. A voice, shamming boldness, cried, ‘Qui est?’
Des-Essars smiled. ‘C’est toi, Paris?’
His question was answered by another. ‘Tiens, qui est ce drôle?’
Paris, for a thousand pound! Knocking again, he declared himself. ‘It is I, Paris—M. Des-Essars.’
‘Monsieur Baptiste, your servant,’ then said Paris through the door.
‘My lord is a prisoner, Paris?’
‘Not for the first time, my dear sir.’
‘How many are you there?’
‘Four. My lord, and Monsieur de Huntly, myself, Jock Gordon.’
‘Well, you should get out—but quickly, before they have finished in the hall. They are passing men out. Be quick, Paris—tell my lord.’
‘Bravo!’ says Paris. ‘We should get out—and quickly! By the chimney, sir? There is no chimney. By the window? There is but one death for every man, and one neck to be broke.’
‘You will break no necks at all, you fool. Below these windows is the lions’ house.’
Paris thought. ‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Sure! Oh, Paris, make haste!’
Again Paris appeared to reflect; and then he said, ‘If you are betraying a countryman of yours, M. Des-Essars, and your old patron also, you shall never see God.’
Des-Essars wrung his hands. ‘You fool! you fool! Are you mad? Call my lord.’
‘Wait,’ said Paris. In a short time, the sound of heavy steps. Ah, here was my lord!
‘’Tis yourself, Baptist?’
‘Yes, yes, my lord.’
‘Have they finished with Davy?’
‘My God, sir!’
‘What of the Queen?’
‘Her women have her.’
‘Now, Baptist. You say the lion-house is below these windows. Which windows? There are four.’
‘The two in the midst, my lord. My lord, across the Little Garden—in a straight line—there are holes in the wall.’
‘Oho! You are a brave lad. Go to your bed.’
Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des-Essars went back to the Queen’s side. At the door of the cabinet he found Adam Gordon in a fit of sobs. ‘Oh, my fine man,’ says the French lad, stirring him with his foot, ‘leave tears to the women. This is men’s business.’
Adam lifted up his stricken face. ‘Where have you been cowering, traitor?’
Jean-Marie laughed grimly. ‘I have been saving Scotland,’ he said, ‘whilst you were blubbering here.’
Adam Gordon, being up by now, knocked Jean-Marie down.
‘I excused him readily, however,’ he writes in his Memoirs, ‘considering the agitation we all suffered at the time. And where he felled me there I lay, and slept like a child.’
Sir James Melvill, whom readers must remember at Saint Andrews as a shrewd, elderly courtier, expert in diplomacy and not otherwise without humours of a dry sort, plumed himself upon habit—‘Dear Mother Use-and-Wont,’ as he used to say. A man is sane at thirty, rich at forty, wise at fifty, or never; and what health exacts, wealth secures, and wisdom requires, is the orderly, punctual performance of the customary. You may have him now putting his theory into severest practice: for though he had seen what was to be seen during that night of murder and alarm, though he had lain down to sleep in his cloak no earlier than five o’clock in the small hours, by seven, which was his Sunday time, he was up and about, stamping his booted feet to get the blood down, flacking his arms, and talking encouragement to himself—as, ‘Hey, my bonny man, how’s a’ with you the morn?’ Very soon after you might have seen him over the ashes of the fire, raking for red embers and blowing some life into them with his frosted breath. All about lay his snoring fellows, though it was too dark to see them. Every man lay that night where he could find his length, and slept like the dead in their graves. There seemed no soul left in a body but in his own.
He went presently to the doors, thinking to open them unhindered. But no! a sitting sentry barred the way with a halberd. ‘May one not look at the weather, my fine young man?’ says Sir James.
‘’Tis as foul as the grave, master, and a black black frost. No way out the now.’
Sir James, who intended to get out, threw his cloak over his shoulder and gravely paced the hall until the chances should mend. One has not warred with the Margrave, held a hand at cards with the Emperor Charles at Innspruck, loitered at Greenwich in attendance upon Queen Elizabeth, or endured the King of France in one of his foaming rages, without learning patience. He proposed to walk steadily up and down the hall until nine o’clock. Then he would get out.
The women said afterwards that the Queen had quieted down very soon, dried her eyes, gone to bed, and slept almost immediately ‘as calm as a babe new-born.’ However that may be, she awoke as early as Sir James, and, finding herself in Mary Fleming’s arms, awoke her too in her ordinary manner by biting her shoulder, not hard. ‘My lamb, my lamb!’ cooed the maid; but the Queen in a brisk voice said, ‘What’s o’clock?’ The lamp showed it to be gone seven.
The Queen said: ‘Get up, child, and find me the page who was in the cabinet last night. I saw him try the entry, and he ran in when—when.... It was Baptist, I think.’
She spoke in an even voice, as if the occasion had been a card party. This frightened Mary Fleming, who began to quiver, and to say, ‘Oh, ma’am, did Baptist see all? ’Twill have scared away his wits.’ And then she tried coaxing. ‘Nay, ma Reinette, but you must rest awhile. Come, let me stroke your cheek’—a common way with them of inviting sleep to her.
But the Queen said, ‘I have had too much stroking—too much. Now do as I bid you.’ So the maid clothed herself in haste and went out with a lamp.
Outside the door she found the two youths asleep—Des-Essars on the floor, Gordon by the table—and awoke them both. ‘Which of you was on the door last night?’
‘It was I, Mistress Fleming,’ said the foreigner. ‘All the time I was there.’
‘Come with me, then. You are sent for.’
He followed her in high excitement into the Queen’s bedchamber. There he saw Margaret Carwood asleep on her back, lying on the floor; and the Queen propped up with pillows, a white silk shift upon her—or half upon her, for one shoulder was out of it. She looked sharper, more like Circe, than she had done since her discomforts began: very intense, very pale, very black in the eyes. And she smiled at him in a curiously secret way—a beckoning, fluttering of the lips, as if she shared intelligence with him, and told him so by signs. ‘She was as sharp and hard and bright as a cut diamond,’ he writes of this appearance; ‘nor do I suppose that any lady in the storied world could have turned her face away from a night of terror and blood, towards a day-to-come of insult, chains and degradation, as she turned hers now before my very eyes.’
She did not say anything for a while, but considered him absorbingly, with those fever-bright eyes and that cautious smile, until she had made up her mind. He, of course, was down on his knee; Mary Fleming, beside him, stood—her hand just touching his shoulder.
‘Come hither, Jean-Marie.’
Approaching, he knelt by the bed.
‘No,’ said she, ‘stand up—closer. Now give me your hand.’
He held it out, and she took it in her own, and put it against her side. He simply gazed at her in wonder.
‘Tell me now if you feel my heart beating.’
He waited. ‘No, madam,’ said he then, whispering.
‘Think again.’
He did. ‘No, madam. Ah! pardon. Yes, I feel it.’
‘That will do.’
He whipped back his hand and put it behind him. It had been the right hand. The Queen watched all, still smiling in that wise new way of hers.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I think you will serve me, since you have assured yourself that I am not so disturbed as you are. I wish you to find out where they have put him.’
He felt Mary Fleming start and catch at her breath; but to him the question seemed very natural.
‘I will go now, madam.’
‘Yes. Go now. Be secret and speedy, and come back to me.’
He bowed, rose up, and went tiptoe out of that chamber of mystery and sharp sweetness. Just beyond the door Adam Gordon pounced on him and caught him by the neck. He struggled fiercely, tried to bite.
‘Let me go, let me go, you silly fool, and worse! I’m on service. Oh, my God, let me go!’
‘How does she? Speak it, you French thief.’
‘Dieu de Dieu!’ he panted, ‘I shall stab you.’
At once his hands were pinned to the wall, and he crucified. He told his errand—since time was all in all—with tears of rage.
‘I shall go with you,’ says Adam. ‘We will go together.’
In the entry of the Chapel Royal, near the kings’ tombs, they found what seemed to be a new grave. A loose flagstone—scatter of gravel all about—the stone not level: one end, in fact, projected its whole thickness above the floor.
‘There he lies,’ says Adam. ‘What more do you want?’
Des-Essars was tugging at the stone. ‘It moves, it moves!’ He was crimson in the face.
They both tussled together: it gave to this extent, that they got the lower edge clear of the floor.
‘Hold on! Keep it so!’ snapped Des-Essars suddenly.
He dropped on to his stomach and thrust his arm into the crack, up to the elbow.
‘What are you at? Be sharp, man, or I shall drop it!’ cried Adam in distress.
He was sharp. In a moment he had withdrawn his hand, jumped up and away, and was pelting to the stairs. Adam let the great stone down with a thud and was after him. He was stopped at the Queen’s door by a maid—Seton.
‘Less haste, Mr. Adam. You cannot enter. Her Majesty is busy.’
Des-Essars had found the Queen waiting for him—nobody else in the room.
‘Well? You saw it?’
‘I have seen a grave, madam.’
‘Well?’
‘It is a new grave.’
‘There’s nothing in that, boy.’
‘Monsieur David is in there, ma’am.’
Her quick eyes narrowed. How she peered at him! ‘How do you know?’
‘Madam, I lifted up the stone. No one was about.’
‘Well?’
‘I found something under it. I have it. I am therefore quite sure.’
‘What did you find? Let me see it.’
He plucked out of his breast a glittering thing and laid it on the bed.
‘Behold it, madam!’ Folding his arms, he watched it where it lay.
The Queen stared down at a naked dagger. A longish, lean, fluted blade; and upon the bevelled edge a thick smear, half its length.
She did not touch it, but moved her lips as if she were talking to it. ‘Do I know you, dagger? Have we been friends, dagger, old friends—and now you play me a trick?’ She turned to Des-Essars. ‘You know that dagger?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He had seen it often, and no later than last night, and then in hand.
‘That will do,’ said she. ‘Leave me now. Send Fleming and Seton—and Carwood also. I shall rise.’
When he was gone her face changed—grew softer, more thoughtful. Now she held out her hand daintily, the little finger high above the others, and with the tips of two daintily touched the dagger. She was rather horrible—like a creature of the woods at night, an elf or a young witch, playing with a corpse. She laughed quietly to herself as she fingered the stained witness of so much terror; but then, when she heard them at the door, picked it up by the handle and put it under the bedclothes. No one was to know what she meant to do.
The women came in. ‘Dress me, Carwood, and quickly. Dolet, have you my bath ready?’ ‘Mais, c’est sûr, Majesté.’ They poured out for her a bath of hot red wine. No day of her life passed but she dipped herself in that.
At nine o’clock, braced into fine fettle by his exercise, Sir James Melvill went again to the hall doors. A few shiverers were about by this time, for sluggard dawn was gaping at the windows; some knelt by the fire which his forethought had saved for them, some hugged themselves in corners; one man was praying aloud in an outlandish tongue, praying deeply and striking his forehead with his palm. Sir James, not to be deterred by prayers or spies, stepped up to the sentry, a new man, and tapped him on the breast. ‘Now, my honest friend,’ he said pleasantly, ‘I have waited my two hours, and am prepared to wait other two. But he to whom my pressing errand is must wait no longer. I speak of my lord of Morton—your master and mine, as things have turned out.’
‘My lord will be here by the ten o’clock, sir,’ says the man.
‘I had promised him exact tidings by eight,’ replied Sir James; and spoke so serenely that he was allowed to pass the doors, which were shut upon him. Nobody could have regretted more than himself that he had lied: he had no mortal errand to the Earl of Morton. But seeing that he had not failed of Sabbath sermon for a matter of fifteen years, it was not to be expected that the murder of an Italian was to stay him now. Sermon in Saint Giles’s was at nine. He was late.
The fates were adverse: there was to be no sermon for him that Sabbath. As he walked gingerly across the Outer Close—a staid, respectable, Sunday gentleman—he heard a casement open behind him, and turning sharply saw the Queen at her chamber window, dressed in grey with a white ruff, and holding a kerchief against her neck. After a hasty glance about, which revealed no prying eyes, he made a low reverence to her Majesty.
Sparkling and eager as she looked, she nodded her head and leaned far out of the window. ‘Sir James Melvill,’ she called down, in a clear, carrying voice, ‘you shall do me a service if you please.’
‘God save your Majesty, and I do please,’ says Sir James.
‘Then help me from this prison where now I am,’ she said. ‘Go presently to the Provost, bid him convene the town and come to my rescue. Go presently, I say; but run fast, good sir, for they will stay you if they can.’
‘Madam, with my best will and legs.’ He saluted, and walked briskly on over the frozen snow.
Out of doors after him came a long-legged man in black, a chain about his neck, a staff in hand; following him, three or four lacqueys in a dark livery.
‘Ho, Sir James Melvill! Ho, Sir James!’
He was by this time at the Outer Bailey, which stood open for him—three paces more and he had done it. But there were a few archers lounging about the door of the Guard House, and two who crossed and recrossed each other before the gates. ‘Gently doth it,’ quoth he, and stayed to answer his name to the long-legged Chamberlain.
‘What would you, Mr. Wishart, sir?’
‘Sir James, my lord of Ruthven hath required me——’ But he got no further.
‘Your lord of Ruthven?’ cried Sir James. ‘Hath he required you to require of me, Mr. Wishart?’
‘Why, yes, sir. My lord would be pleased to know whither you are bound so fast. He is, sir, in a manner of speaking, deputy to the King’s Majesty at this time.’
Sir James blinked. He could see the Queen behind her window, watching him. ‘I am bound, sir,’ he said deliberately, ‘whither I shall hope to see my lord of Ruthven tending anon. The sermon, Mr. Wishart, the sermon calls me; the which I have not foregone these fifteen years, nor will not to-day unless you and your requirements keep me unduly.’
‘I told my lord you would be for the preaching, Sir James. I was sure o’t. But he’s a canny nobleman, ye ken; and the King’s business is before a’.’
‘I have never heard, Mr. Wishart, that it was before that of the King of kings,’ said Sir James.
‘Ou, fie, Sir James! To think that I should say so!’—Mr. Wishart was really concerned—‘Nor my lord neither, whose acceptance of the rock of doctrine is well known. I shall just pop in and inform my lord.’
‘Do so. And I wish you a good day, Mr. Wishart,’ says Sir James in a stately manner, and struck out of the gates and up the hill.
He went directly to the Provost’s house, and what he learned there seemed to him so serious, that he overstepped his commission by a little way. ‘Mr. Provost,’ he said, ‘you tell me that you have orders from the King. I counsel you to disregard them. I counsel you to serve and obey your sanctified anointed Queen. The King, Mr. Provost, is her Majesty’s right hand, not a doubt of it; but when the right hand knoweth not what the left hand is about, it is safer to wait until the pair are in agreement again. What the King may have done yesterday he may not do to-day—he may not wish it, or he may not be capable of it. I am a simple gentleman, Mr. Provost, and you are a high officer, steward of this good town. I counsel not the officer in you, but the sober burgess, when I repeat that what may have been open to the King yesterday may be shut against him to-day.’
‘Good guide us, Sir James, this is dangerous work!’ cried the Provost. ‘Who’s your informant in the matter?’
‘I have told you that I am a simple gentleman,’ said Sir James, ‘but I lied to you. I am a Queen’s messenger: I go from you to meet her Majesty’s dearest brother, the good Earl of Moray, who should be home to-day.’
It must be owned that, if he was an unwilling liar, he was a good one. He lied like truth, and the stroke was masterly. The Provost set about convening the town; and when Sir James Melvill walked back to Holyrood—after sermon—all the gates were held in the Queen’s name.
He did not see her, for the King was with her at the time; but Mary Beaton received him, heard his news and reported it. She returned shortly with a message: ‘The Queen’s thanks to Sir James Melvill. Let him ride the English road and meet the Earl of Moray by her Majesty’s desire.’ He was pleased with the errand, proud to serve the Queen. His greatest satisfaction, however, was to reflect that he had not, after all, lied to the Provost of Edinburgh.
Now we go back to Queen Mary. Bathed and powdered, dressed and coifed, her head full of schemes and heart high in courage, she waited for the King, being very sure in her own mind that he would come if she made no sign. Certainly, certainly he would come: she had reasoned it all out as she lay half in bed, smiling and whispering to the dagger. ‘He has been talked into this, by whom I am not sure, but I think by Ruthven and his friends. They will never stop where now they are, but will urge him further than he cares to go. I believe he will wait to see what I do. He is not bold by nature, but by surges of heat which drive him. Fast they drive him—yet they leave him soon! When he held me last night he was trembling—I felt him shake. And yet—he has strong arms, and the savour of a man is upon him!’
She sat up, with her hands to clasp her knee, and let her thought go galloping through the wild business. ‘I felt the child leap as I lay on his breast! Did he urge towards the King his father, glad of his manhood? So, once upon a day, urged I towards the King my lord!’
She began to blush, but would be honest with herself. ‘And if he came again to me now, and took me so again in his arms—and again I sensed the man in him—what should I do?’
She looked wise, as she smiled to feel her eyes grow dim. But then she shook her head. ‘He will come, he will come—but not so. I know him: oh, I know him like a thumbed old book! And when I bring out that which I have here’—her hand caressed the dagger—‘I know what he will do. Yes, yes, like an old book! He will rail against his betrayer, and in turn betray him. Ah, my King, my King, do I read you aright? We shall see very soon.’
She looked out upon the snowy close, the black walls and dun pall of air; she saw Sir James Melvill set forward upon his pious errand, and changed it, as you know. Then she resumed her judging and weighing of men.
Odd! She gave no thought to the wretched Italian, her mind was upon the quick, and not the dead. Ruthven, a black, dangerous man—scolding-tongued, impious in mind, thinking in oaths—yes: but a man! Archie Douglas, supple as a snake, Fawdonsyde and his foolish pistols, she considered not at all; but her mind harped upon Ruthven and the King, who had each laid rough hands upon her—and thus, it seems, earned her approbation. Ruthven had taken her about the middle and pushed her back, helpless, into the other’s arms; and she had felt those taut arms, and not struggled; but leaned there, her face in his doublet. Pardieu, each had played the man that night! And Ruthven would play it again, and the King would not. No, no; not he!
Ruthven, by rights, should be won over. Should she try him? No, he would refuse her; she was sure of it. He was as bluff, as flinty-cored as——Ranging here and there, searching Scotland for his parallel, her heart jumped as she found him. Bothwell, Bothwell! Ha, if he had been there! It all began to re-enact itself—the scuffling, grunting, squealing business, with Bothwell’s broad shoulders steady in the midst of it. Man against man: Bothwell and Ruthven face to face, and the daggers agleam in the candle-light:—hey, how she saw it all doing! Ruthven would stoop and glide by the wall: his bent knees, his mad, twitching brows! Bothwell would stand his ground in mid-floor, and his little eyes would twinkle. ‘Play fairly with the candle, my Lady Argyll!’ and he would laugh—yes, she could hear his ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ But she jumped up as she came to that, she panted and felt her cheeks burn. She held her fine throat with both hands until she had calmed herself. So doing, a thought struck her. She rang her hand-bell and sent for Des-Essars once more.
When he came to her she made a fuss over him, stroked his hair, put her hand on his shoulder, said he was her young knight who should ride out to her rescue. He was to take a message from her to the Earl of Bothwell—that he was on no account to stir out of town until he heard from her again. He should rather get in touch with all of her friends and be ready for instant affairs. Des-Essars went eagerly but discreetly to work. She then had just time to leave a direction for Melvill, that he should be first with her brother Moray, when they told her that the King was coming in.
‘Of course he is coming,’ she said. ‘What else can he do?’
Her courage rose to meet him more than half-way. If Des-Essars had been allowed to feel her heart again he would have found it as steady as a man’s.
‘I will see the King in the red closet,’ she said. ‘Seton, Fleming, come you with me.’
When he was announced he found her thus in company, sitting at her needlework on a low coffer by the window.
The young man had thickened rims to his eyes, but else looked pinched and drawn. He kept a napkin in his hand, with which he was for ever dabbing his mouth: seeming to search for signs of blood upon it, he inspected it curiously whenever it had touched him. As he entered the Queen glanced up, bowed her head to him and resumed her stitch-work. The two maids, after their curtseys, remained standing—to his visible perturbation. It was plain that he had expected to find her alone; also that he had strung himself up for a momentous interview—and that she had not. He grew more and more nervous, the napkin hovered incessantly near his mouth; half-turning to call his man Standen into the room, he thought better of it, and came on a little way, saying, ‘Madam, how does your Majesty?’
She looked amused at the question, as she went on sewing.
‘As well, my lord,’ she told him, ‘as I can look to be these many months more. But women must learn such lessons, which men have only to teach.’
He knew that he was outmatched. ‘I am thankful, madam——’
‘My lord, you have every reason.’
‘I say, I am thankful; for I had a fear——’
She gave him a sharp look. ‘Do you fear, my lord? What have you to fear? Your friends are about you, your wife a prisoner. What have you to fear?’
‘The tongue, madam.’
She had goaded him to this, and could have had him at her mercy had she so willed it. But she was silent, husbanding her best weapon against good time.
He went headlong on. ‘I had words for your private ear. I had hoped that by a little intimacy, such as may be looked for between——But it’s all one.’
She affected not to understand, pored over his fretful scraps with the pure pondering of a child. ‘But——! Converse, intimacy between us! Who is to prevent it? Ah, my poor maids afflict you! What may be done before matrons must be guarded from the maids. Indeed, my lord, and that is my opinion. Go, my dears. The King is about to discuss the affairs of marriage.’
They went out. The King immediately came to her, stooped and took her hand up from her lap. She kept the other hidden.
‘My Mary,’ he said—‘My Mary! let all be new-born between us.’
She heard the falter in his voice, but considered rather his fine white hand as it held her own, and judged it with a cool brain. A frail hand for a man! So white, so thinly boned, the veins so blue! Could such hands ever hold her again? And how hot and dry! A fever must be eating him. Her own hands were cold. New-born love—for this hectic youth!
‘New-born, my lord?’ she echoed him, sighing. ‘Alas, that which must be born should be paid for first. And what the reckoning of that may be now, you know as well as I. May not one new birth be as much as I can hope for, or desire? I do think so.’
Fully as well as she he knew the peril she had been in, she and the load she carried. He went down on his knee beside her, and, holding her one hand, sought after the other, which she hid.
‘My dear,’ he said earnestly, ‘oh, my dear, judge me not hardly. I endeavoured to shield you last night—I held you fast—they dared not touch you! Remember it, my Mary. As for my faults, I own them fairly. I was provoked—anger moved me—bitter anger. I am young. I am not even-tempered: remember this and forgive me. And, I pray you, give me your hand.—No, the other, the other! For I need it, my heart—indeed and indeed.’ That hand was gripped about a cold thing in her lap, under her needlework. He could not have it without that which it held; and now she knew that he should not. For now she scorned him—that a man who had laid his own hands to man’s work should now be on his knees, pleading for his wife’s hands instead of snatching them—why, she herself was the better man! Womanlike, she played with what she could have killed in a flash.
‘My other hand, my lord? Do you ask for it? You had it once, when you put rings upon it, but let it go. Do you ask for it again? It can give you no joy.’
‘I need it, I need it! You should not deny me.’ He craved it abjectly. ‘Oh, my soul, my soul, I kiss the one—let me kiss the other, lest it be jealous.’
Unhappy conceit! Her eyes paled, and you might have thought her tongue a snake’s, darting, forked, flickering out and in as she struck hard.
‘Traitor!’ thus she stabbed him—‘Traitor, son of a traitor, take and kiss it if you dare.’ She laid above her caught hand that other, cool and firm, and opened it to show him the handle of his own dagger. She took the blade by the point and held the thing up, swinging before his shocked eyes. ‘Lick that, hound!’ she said: ‘you should know the taste of it better than I.’
He dropped her one hand, stared stupidly at the other: but as his gaze concentrated upon the long smear on the blade you could have seen the sweat rising on his temples.
She had read him exquisitely. After the first brunt of terror, rage was what he felt—furious rage against the man whom he supposed to have betrayed him. ‘Oh, horrible traitor!’ he muttered by the window, whither he had betaken himself for refuge,—‘Oh, Archie Douglas, if I could be even with thee for this! Oh, man, man, man, what a curious, beastly villain!’ He was much too angry now to be tender of his wife—either of her pity or revenge; he turned upon her, threatening her from his window.
‘You shall not intimidate me. I am no baby in your hands. This man is a villain, I tell you, whom I shall pursue till he is below my heel. He has laid this, look you for a trap. This was got by theft, and displayed by malice—devilish craft of a traitor. And do you suppose I shall let it go by? You mistake me, by God, if you do. Foul thief!—black, foul theft!’
She pointed to the smear on the blade. ‘And this?’ she asked him: ‘what of this? Was this got by theft, my lord? Was this dry blood thieved from a dead man? Or do I mistake, as you suppose? Nay, wretch, but you know that I do not. The man was dead long before you dared touch him. Dead and in rags—and then the King drove in his blade!’ Her face—Hecate in the winter—withered him more than her words. Though these contained a dreadful truth, the other chilled his blood. He crept aimlessly about the room, feeling his heart fritter to water, and all the remains of his heat congested in his head. He tried to straighten his back, his knees: there seemed no sap in his bones. And she sat on, with cold critical eyes, and her lips hard together.
‘My Mary,’ he began to stammer, ‘this is all a plot against my life—surely, surely you see it. I have enemies, the worse in that they are concealed—I see now that all the past has been but a plot—why, yes, it is plain as the daylight! I entreat you to hear me: this is most dangerous villainy—I can prove it. They swore to stand my friends—fast, fast they swore it. And here—to your hand—is proof positive. Surely, surely, you see how I am trapped by these shameful traffickers!’
Her eyes never left his face, but followed him about the room on his aimless tour; and whether he turned from the window or the wall, so sure as he looked up he saw them on him. They drove him into speech. ‘I meant honestly,’ he began again, shifting away from those watchful lights; ‘I meant honestly indeed. I have lived amiss—oh, I know it well! A man is led into sin, and one sin leads to another. But I am punished, threatened, in peril. Let me escape these nets and snares, I may do well yet. My Mary, all may be well! Let us stand together—you and I’—he came towards her with his hands out, stopped, started back. ‘Look away—look away; take your eyes from off me—they burn!’ He covered his own. ‘O God, my God, how miserable I am!’
‘You are a prisoner as I am,’ said the Queen. ‘We stand together because we are tied together. And as for my eyes, what you abhor in them is what you have put there. But since we are fellow-prisoners, methinks——’
He looked wildly. ‘Who says I am prisoner? If I am—if I am—why, I am betrayed on all hands. My kinsmen—my father—no, no, no! That is foolishness. Madam,’ he asked her, being desperate, ‘who told you that I was a prisoner?’
She glanced at the dagger. ‘This tells me. Why, think you, should Archie Douglas have laid that in the grave, except for me to find it there?’
It was, or it might have been, ludicrous to see his dismay. He stared, with dots where his eyes should have been; he puffed his cheeks and blew them empty; in his words he lost all sense of proportion.
‘Beastly villain! Why, it is a plot against me! Why, they may murder me! Why, this may have been their whole intent! Lord God, a plot!’
He pondered this dreadfully, seeing no way of escape, struggling with the injury of it and the pity of it. Consideration that she was in the same plight, that he had plotted against her, and now himself was plotted against: there was food for humour in such a thought, but no food for him. Of the two feelings he had, resentment prevailed, and brought his cunning into play. ‘By heaven and hell,’ he said, ‘but I can counter shrewdly on these knaves. Just wait a little.’ He cheered as he fumbled in his bosom. ‘You shall see, you shall see—now you shall see whether or no I can foin and parry with these night-stabbers. Oh, the treachery, the treachery! But wait a little—now, now, now!’
He produced papers in a gush—bonds, schedules, signatures, seals—all tumbled pell-mell into her lap. She read there what she had guessed beforehand: Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, Douglas, Lethington—ah, she had forgotten this lover of Mary Fleming’s!—Boyd—yes, yes, and the stout Kirkcaldy of Grange. Not her brothers? No: but she suspected that Lethington’s name implied Moray’s. Well, Sir James would win her back Moray, she hoped. She did not trouble with any more. ‘Yes, yes, your friends, my lord. Your friends,’ she repeated, lingering on the pleasant word, ‘who have made use of you to injure me, and now have dropped you out of window. Well! And now what will you do, fellow-prisoner?’
At her knees now, his wretched head in her lap, his wretched tears staining her, he confessed the whole business, sparing nobody, not even himself; and as his miserable manhood lay spilling there it staled—like sour milk in sweet—any remnants of attraction his tall person may have had for her. She could calculate as she listened—and so she did—to what extent she might serve herself yet of this watery fool. But she could not for the life of her have expressed her contempt for him. The thing had come to pass too exactly after her calculation. If he had been a boy she might have pitied him, or if, on entering her presence, he had laid sudden hands upon her, exulting in his force and using it mannishly; had he been greedy, overbearing, insolent, snatching—and a man!—she might, once more and for ever, have given him all her heart. But a blubbering, truth-telling oaf—heaven and earth! could she have wedded this? Well, he would serve to get her out of Holyrood; and meantime she was tired and must forgive, to get rid of him.
This was not so easy as it sounds, because at the first word of human toleration she uttered he pricked up his pampered ears. As she went on to speak of the lesson he had learned, of the wisdom of trusting her for the future and of being ruled by her experience and judgment, he brushed his eyes and began to encroach. His tears had done him good, and her recollected air gave him courage; he felt shriven, more at ease. So he enriched himself of her hand again, he edged up to share her seat; very soon she felt his arm stealing about her waist. She allowed these things because she had decided that she must.
He now became very confidential, owning freely to his jealousy of the Italian—surely pardonable in a lover!—talking somewhat of his abilities with women, his high-handed ways (which he admitted that he had in excess: ‘a fault, that!‘), his ambitions towards kingship, crowns-matrimonial, and the like trappings of manhood. She listened patiently, saying little, judging and planning incessantly. This he took for favour, advanced from stronghold to stronghold, growing as he climbed. The unborn child—pledge of their love: he spoke of that. He was sly, used double meanings; he took her presently by the chin and kissed her cheek. Unresisted, he kissed her again and again. ‘Redintegratio amoris!’ he cried, really believing it at the moment. This very night he would prove to her his amendment. Journeys end in lovers’ meeting! If she would have patience she should be a happy wife yet. Would she—might he hope? Should this day be a second wedding day? Her heart was as still as freezing water, but her head prompted her to sigh and half smile.
‘You consent! You consent! Oh, happy fortune!’ he cried, and kissed her mouth and eyes, and possessed as much as he could.
‘Enough, my lord, enough!’ said she. ‘You forget, I think, that I am a wife.’
He cursed himself for having for one moment forgotten it, threw himself at her knees and kissed her held hands over and over, then jumped to his feet, all his courage restored. ‘Farewell, lady! Farewell, sweet Queen! I go to count the hours.’ He went out humming a tavern catch about Moll and Peg. She called her women in, to wash her face and hands.
By riding long and changing often Sir James Melvill had been able to salute the Earl of Moray on the home side of Dunbar. The great man travelled, primus inter pares, a little apart from his companions in exile—and without Mr. Secretary Lethington. The fact is that Mr. Secretary was as much distrusted by his friends as by Lord Moray himself, and had been required at the last moment to stay in town. Sir James, thanks to that, was not long in coming to close quarters with the Earl, and frankly told him that he had been sent by the Queen’s Majesty to welcome him home. Lord Moray was bound to confess to himself that, certainly, he had not looked for that. He had expected to come back a personage to be feared, but not one to be desired. The notion was not displeasing—for if you are desired it may very well be because you are feared. So all the advantage at starting lay with Sir James.
He went on to say how much need her Majesty felt in her heart to stand well with her blood relations. As for old differences—ah, well, well, they were happily over and done with. My lord would not look for the Queen to confess to an error in judgment, nor would she, certainly, ever reproach him with the past. There was no question of a treaty of forgiveness between a sister and her brother. Urgency of the heart, mutual needs, were all! And her needs were grievous, no question. Why, the very desire she had for his help was proof that the past was past. Did not his lordship think so?
His lordship listened to this tolerant chatter as became a grave statesman. Without a sign to betray his face he requested his civil friend—‘worthy Sir James Melvill’—to rehearse the late occurrences—‘Of the which,’ he said, ‘hearing somewhat at Berwick, I had a heavy heart, misdoubting what part I might be called upon to play in the same.’
Whereupon Sir James, with the like gravity, related to his noble friend all the details of a plot which nobody knew more exactly than the man who heard him. It added zest to the comic interlude that Sir James also knew quite well that my lord had been one of the conspirators.
At the end his lordship said: ‘I thank you, Sir James Melvill, for your tender recital of matters which may well cause heart-searching in us all. Happy is that queen, I consider, who has such a diligent servant! And happy also am I, who can be sure of one such colleague as yourself!’
‘All goes well,’ thinks Melvill. ‘I have my old sow by the lug.’
If he had one lug, the Queen got the other. For when my Lord of Moray reached Edinburgh that night, he was told that her Majesty awaited him at Holyroodhouse. Prisoner or not, she received him there, smiling and eager to see him—and her gaolers standing by! And whenas he hesitated, darkly bowing before her, she came forward in a pretty, shy way; and, ‘Oh, brother, brother, I am glad you have come to me,’ she said, and gave him her hands, and let him kiss her cheek.
He murmured something proper,—his duty always remembered, and the rest of the phrases,—but she, as if clinging to him, ran on in a homelier speech. ‘Indeed, there was need of you, brother James!’ she assured him, and went on to tell him that which moved the stony man to tears. At least, it is so reported, and I am glad to believe it.
She walked with him afterwards in full hall, talking low and quickly—candour itself. Her tones had a throbbing note, and a note of confidence, which changed the whole scene as she recited it. I repeat, the hall was full while she walked with him there, up and down in the flickering firelight—full of the men whose plots he had shared, and hoped to profit by. Fine spectacle for my lords of the Privy Council, for Mr. Archie Douglas and his cousin Morton, fine for Mr. Secretary Lethington! Before she kissed her brother good-night, before she went to bed, she felt that she had done a good day’s work. And now, with her triumph as good as won, she was ready for the crowning of it.
There she was out-generalled: there she was beaten. Match for all these men’s wit, she was outwitted by one man’s sodden flesh. They undressed her, prepared her for bed. She lay there in her pale, fragrant beauty, solace for any lord’s desire, and conscious of it, and more fine for the knowledge. She took deep breaths and draughts of ease; she assured herself that she was very fair; she watched the glimmering taper and read the shadows on the pictured wall as she waited for the crowning of her toil. The day had been hers against all odds; the day is not always to Venus, but the night is her demesne. So she waited and drowsed, smiling her wise smile, secure, superb, and at ease. But King Harry Darnley, very drunk, lay stertorous in his own bed; nor dared Forrest, nor Standen, nor any man of his household, stir him out of that. The Queen of Wine and Honey had digged a pit of sweetness and hidden a fine web all about it, and was fallen into the midst of it herself.
And so, it is like enough, if the boar had not timely rent the thigh of Adonis, Dame Venus herself might have writhed, helpless in just such toils.
The Queen woke at eight o’clock in the morning and called for a cup of cold water. She sat up to drink, and was told that Antony Standen had been at the door at half-past six, the King himself at seven. Listening to this news with her lips in the water, her eyes grew bitter-bright. ‘He shall have old waiting at my chamber door,’ she said, ‘before he wins it.’ Then she began to weep and fling herself about, to bite the coverlet and to gloom among the pillows. ‘If I forget this past night may my God forget me.’ O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery! She lay down again and shut her eyes, but fretted all the time, twitching her arms and legs, making little angry noises, shifting from side to side. Mary Seton sat by the bed, cool and discreet.
The minutes passed, she enduring, until at last, unable to bear the tripping of them, she started up so violently that a great pillow rolled on to the floor. ‘I could kill myself, Seton,’ she said, grinding her little teeth together, ‘I could kill myself for this late piece of work. Verjuice in me!—I should die to drink my own milk. And all of you there, whispering by the door, wagering, nudging one another—“He’ll never come—never. Not he!” Oh, Jesu-Christ!’ she cried, straining up her bare arms, ‘let this wound of mine keep green until the time!’
‘Hush, dear madam, oh, hush!’ says Seton, flushing to hear her; but the Queen turned her a white, hardy face.
‘Why should I be hushed? Let me cry out my shame to all the world, that am the scorn of men and wedded women. Who heeds? What matter what I say? Leave me alone—I’ll not be hushed down.’
Seton was undismayed. ‘No wedded woman am I. I love you, madam, and therefore I shall speak with you. I say that, as he has proved his unworthiness, so you must prove your pride. I say——’
There was hasty knocking at the door; the maid ran: ‘Who is it knocks?’
‘The King’s valet is without. The King asks if her Majesty is awake.’
‘Let him ask,’ said the Queen: ‘I will never see him again. Say that I am at prayers.’
Seton called, ‘Reply that Her Majesty is unable to see the King at this time. Her Majesty awoke early, and is now at prayers.’ She returned to the bed, where the Queen lay on her elbow, picking her handkerchief to pieces with her teeth.
‘Sweet madam,’ she said, ‘bethink you now of what must be done this day. You wish to be avenged of your enemies....’
The Queen looked keenly up.
‘Well, well, of all your enemies. But for this you must first be free. And it grows late.’
The Queen put her hair from her face and looked at the light coming in. She sat up briskly. ‘You are right, ma mie. Come and kiss me. I have been playing baby until my head aches.’
‘You will play differently now, I see,’ said Seton, ‘and other heads may wish they had a chance to ache.’
The Queen took her maid’s face in her dry hands. ‘Oh, Seton,’ she said, ‘you are a cordial to me. They have taken my poor David, but have left me you.’
‘Nay, madam,’ says Seton, ‘they might take me too, and you need none of my strong waters. There is wine enough in your honey for all your occasions.’
A shadow of her late gloom crossed over her. ‘My honey has been racked with galls. ’Tis you that have cleared it. Give me my nightgown, and send for Father Roche. I will say my prayers.’
With a spirit so responsive as hers, the will to move was a signal for scheming to begin. Up and down her mind went the bobbing looms, across and across the humming shuttles, spinning the fine threads together into a fabric whose warp was vengeance and the woof escape from self-scorn. She must be free from prison this coming night; but that was not the half: she intended to leave her captors in the bonds she quitted. So high-mettled was she that I doubt whether she would have accepted the first at the price of giving up the second. Those being the ends of her purpose, all her planning was to adjust the means; and the first thing that she saw (and, with great courage, faced) was that the King—this mutilated god, this botch, this travesty of lover and lord—must come out with her. Long before demure Father Roche could answer his summons she had admitted that, and strung herself to accept it. She must drag him after her—a hobble on a donkey’s leg—because she dared not leave him behind. He had betrayed his friends to her—true; but if she forsook him he would run to them again and twice betray her. She shrugged him out of mind. Bah! if she must take him she would take him. ’Twas to be hoped he would get pleasure of it—and so much for that. But whom dared she leave? She could think of no one as yet but her brother Moray. Overnight she had separated him from the others, and she judged that he would remain separate. Her thought was this:—‘He is a rogue among rogues, I grant. But if you trust one rogue in a pack, all the others will distrust him. Therefore he, being shunned by them, will cleave to me; and they, not knowing how far I trust him, will falter and look doubtfully at one another; and some of them will come over to him, and then the others will be stranded.’ Superficial reasoning, rough-and-ready inference, all this. She knew it quite well, but judged that it would meet the case of Scotland. It was only, as it were, the scum of the vats she had seen brewing in France.... But I keep Father Roche from his prayers.
Affairs in the palace and precincts kept their outward calm in the face of the buzzing town. Train-bands paraded the street, the Castle was for her Majesty, the gates were faithful. In the presence of such monitors as these the burgesses and their wives kept their mouths shut as they stood at shop-doors, and when they greeted at the close-ends they looked, but did not ask, for news. But the Earl of Morton’s men still held the palace, and he himself inspected the guard. There were no attempts to dispute his hold, so far as he could learn, no blood-sheddings above the ordinary, no libels on the Cross, no voices lifted against him in the night. He held a morning audience in the Little Throne-room, with his cousin Douglas for Chief Secretary; and to his suitors, speaking him fair, gave fair replies. But it may be admitted he was very uneasy.
That had not been a pleasant view for him overnight, when the great Earl of Moray, newly returned, walked the hall with the Queen upon his arm. His jaw had dropped to see it. Here was a turn given to our affairs! Dreams troubled him, wakefulness, and flying fancies, which to pursue was torment and not to pursue certain ruin. He slept late and rose late. At a sort of levee, which he held as he dressed, he was peevish, snapped at the faithful Archie, and almost quarrelled with Ruthven.
‘Do you bite, my lord?’ had said that savage. ‘If I am to lose my head it shall be in kinder company. I salute your lordship.’ And so he slammed out.
Morton knew that he must smooth him down before the day was over, but just now there were more pressing needs. He told his cousin that he must see the King at the earliest.
Archie wagged his silvery head, looking as wise as an old stork. ‘Why, that is very well,’ says he; ‘but how if he will not see you?’
‘What do you mean, man?’ cried the Earl upon him.
‘Why, this, cousin,’ said Archie: ‘that the King is out of all hand the morn. I went to his door betimes and listened for him, but could hear nothing forby the snivelling of his boy, therefore made so bold as to open. There I found the minion Forrest crying his heart out over the bed, and could hear our kinsman within howling blasphemy in English.’
‘Pooh, man, ’tis his way of a morning,’ said Morton, heartening himself. ‘What did you then?’
Archie screwed his lips to the whistle, and cocked one eyebrow at the expense of the other.
‘What did I? I did the foolishest thing of all my days, when I sent in my name by the boy. Strutting moorcock, call me, that hadna seen him all the day before! Oh, cousin Morton, out comes our King like a blustering gale o’ March, and takes me by the twa lugs, and wrenches at me thereby, and shakes me to and fro as if I were a sieve for seeds. “Ye black-hearted, poisonous beast!” he roars; “ye damned, nest-fouling chick of a drab and a preacher!” says he—ah, and worse nor that, cousin, if I could lay my tongue to sic filthy conversation. “I’ll teach ye,” says he thunderous, “I’ll teach ye to play your games with your King!” He was fumbling for his dagger the while, and would have stabbed me through and through but for them that stood by and got him off me. Cousin, I fairly ran.’