The King, then, was nothing at all. Nerved by her brawny councillor, she had faced her ‘boggart in the corn,’ and in two days’ time could curl her fine lip to remember him. That is a proof that she was sane at the root, needing no more than such bitter as his rough tongue could give to restore her tone. And, having ridded her fears, she soon found that she could rid her memory altogether. The King went out and in, as Bothwell had written, unnoticed. He made no more attempts to come at her, spoke to none but his own company, felt that he was in disgrace, and sulked. Lord Bothwell scoffed at him by implication—by every keen shaft from his eyes and every wag of his head; Lord Huntly kept at a distance; Sir James altered his salutation. On the Sunday before they should move back to town they were speaking of the rebel lords, whether they were now in England or yet on the road; and Bothwell began to cry up Ruthven, his madness, his knives, his friends’ knives. The King got up and left the table. He told Standen afterwards that he should not go to Edinburgh. Standen told Des-Essars, and he told the Queen.

‘Oh, but he shall,’ she said at once, consulted her friends, and sent him a verbal message that she should need him there. He felt this badly—but obeyed it.

For, much against her inclination, she had made up her mind that she must drag the chain which had been forged upon her; she must keep the King in her eye for fear he should work her a mischief. His father Lennox was in Glasgow, an escaped enemy: it would never do for him to go thither. Or suppose he were to return to England! No, no, she must keep him in Edinburgh, keep him cowed, and yet not allow him to grow desperate. Worse than that, the time was coming on when she must have him by her side, in the house, perhaps nearer still. He was now ‘the Queen’s dearest Consort,’ but soon he would be ‘the Prince’s dearest father’ and a power in the land. The Earl of Bothwell, consulted, was precise about that—awkwardly precise.

‘Folk will talk, madam, about you and him. He’ll not want for a faction to cry, “The King keeps aloof! Well he may, knowing what he knows.” Oh, have him with you, ma’am, as near as may be. For hawks dinna pick out hawks’ een, as they say; and if he owns to the child—why, he should know his own.’

She flushed. ‘You speak too plainly, my lord.’

‘Not if I mean honestly, ma’am.’

‘I hope you mean so,’ said she, ‘but the sound of your phrase is otherwise.’

‘I was speaking in character, ma’am. Mark that.’

She was looking down at her lap when next she spoke, carelessly at her careless fingers. ‘Whose child do they allege it?’

The directness of the question and indirectness of its manner puzzled him. He could not tell whether to be blunt or fine.

‘Madam, I am no scandal-monger, I hope, and have little pleasure in the grunting of hogs in a sty. But hogs will grunt, as your Majesty knows.’

She did not raise her eyes, but said: ‘It will be better that you answer me in a few words. One will suffice.’

He tried—he began—but could not do it. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘you must answer for yourself. All I will ask is this: what, think you, drew the King to the deed he did?’

She lifted her head and gave him one long look. Rather, it seemed long. He knelt down quickly and kissed her knee.

He rose and began to justify himself. ‘You forced me to say it—it may have been my duty—make it not my offence. God knows I needed no such royal answer as you have given me—not I! I think no evil of your Majesty, nor have I ever.’

She flashed her eyes upon him—not angrily by any means. ‘Oh, my lord, may I be sure of that? Come, I will tell you what I seem to remember. There was a day when you enlarged yourself from my prison and rode, a free man, to Haddington. What said you of me there among your friends?’

He puzzled over this. ‘I can charge myself with nothing. Your Grace knows more of me than I do.’

‘Did you not speak in the hearing of one Pringle concerning me and my uncle the Cardinal? Did you give me a name then? Come, come, my lord, be plain. Did you not?’

He burst out laughing. ‘The voice is the voice of Queen Mary, but the words are of Black James Stuart! Oho, madam, you will hear finer tales than this concerning me, if you sound that thoughtful man.’

She pressed him, but he would neither deny nor affirm. ‘I shall not defend myself, madam, before your Majesty. But I will meet the Earl of Moray, and wager him in battle, if you give me leave: in battle of one and one, or of a score, or of ten score. Let him repeat his charge in the Grassmarket if he dare.’

Baffled here, she harped back upon the child. She said that she needed to be sure of his good opinion of her. Then he made her heart beat fast, for he came and put his hand upon the back of her chair and stood right over her: she could feel the strength of his eyes, like beams from the sun, driving down upon her.

‘Madam, and my sovereign lady, as God is my judge, this is the truth. I loved you once, and, at love’s bidding, staked all on a great design. My plot was unmannerly, but so is love; you were offended with me, as your right was. I loved you no less, but honoured you the more, because of that. If now I thought evil of you—such evil as you suspect in me—I would tell you so for the sake of that love I gave you before.’

She bowed her head and thanked him humbly; did not look up, nor stir from her place below him.

‘As meek as a mouse!’—he could not remember ever to have seen her so before. What was in her heart? It sent him away thoughtful. Next day he rode at her side to Edinburgh.

Established there more firmly than at any time since her reign began; with a council packed with her friends, with Lord Huntly (her slave) for Chancellor; with her open enemies ruined and in exile, her secret enemies abject at her knees, her husband in disgrace, and her child near its birth—in this comfortable state of her affairs, the Earl of Bothwell suddenly asked leave to go into his own country. She was piqued, and could not help showing it.

‘You desire to—you will consort with—one who loves me little? Well, my lord, well! How should I hinder your going, since I cannot quench your desire?’

Thinks he, ‘Now, now, what root of grievance is this, sprouting here?’ Aloud he said, ‘Madam, I am content—and more than content—to stay by your Majesty so long as you find me of use. But the time is at hand, and you have said it, when you will refuse me harbourage.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she said quickly, her face aflame: ‘you cannot be with me in the castle.’

She had agreed to lie-in there, and had forbidden quarters to Lords Bothwell and Huntly alike. Do you ask why? Mary Seton might have answered you in part—but scornfully, since women have no need to ask such things. They know them. ‘Lord Huntly! Lord Huntly!’ I can hear her say—a pretty, vehement little creature—‘Lord Huntly! And he a known lover of our mistress? How should he be there?’ Pass Lord Huntly: what of Lord Bothwell? She would shake her head. ‘No, no,’ she would say, ‘it could not be. He is a faithful friend.’ Well, then, what of that? She would rise quickly and walk to the window. ‘I cannot tell you, sir, why he is not to be there. But I am very clear that she would not suffer it. Oh, for example——impossible!’ You would get no more from her. And what more could you want?

But the Queen was still frowning over his leave of absence, and pinching her lip. Then she broke out, in the midst of her private thoughts: ‘But I cannot refuse you! How can I? You having asked to go—what is the worth of your staying, when your heart is——And yet—there is the King——’ She looked slily up. ‘My lord, do you dare to trust your pupil alone?’

His face took a gay air. ‘If I am your tutor, madam——’

‘Why,’ said she, ‘what else can you be? My confessor? My cousin? My brother? What else?’

He laughed, avoiding her inquiry. ‘To be your brother would be to own kinship with my lord of Moray. A dangerous degree, ma’am, for one of the pair.’

‘I would not have you for my brother,’ she said thoughtfully.

Responsive thought struck fire in his eyes. ‘I will ask you this. Will your Grace receive me into the castle? There I could be of service—maybe.’

He watched her intently now—watched until he saw the flag come fluttering down. She lowered her eyes; he could hardly hear her words.

‘No, no. You must not be there. Afterwards—come soon.’ She waited there, hanging on the last word; then rose. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is better that you should go. I will not——’ She spoke wildly. ‘Go, my lord, go.’

He knelt to her before he obeyed; at the door she called him back. Quickly he returned, but she would not look at him.

‘I wish to tell you—as plainly as I can——’ So she began, speaking slowly, feeling for her words. ‘The King shall be there with me—in the castle. It is painful to me—I conceive that you must know it. But I shall do as you advise—that scandal may be averted.’ She strained her arms down, stiffening them, gave an impatient shake of the head. ‘Heaven watch over me! And you, my lord, do you pray. Ah, but you use not prayer!’ She seemed conscious that she was speaking double and he not understanding. It made her angry enough to look at him. ‘Well, well, why are you here still? Go quickly, I say—go.’

Go he did, a puzzling, excited man.

Before he left the city he saw his brother-in-law, Lord Huntly, for a moment. ‘Geordie,’ he said, ‘I’m for the Border. I’m going to my wife. Are you for yours or do you stay here?’

‘I stay.’

‘You may be wise. I am going to my wife—and I may be wise. God knows that I know not. I have not seen her for five months.’

Lord Huntly had no answer. He had not seen his for over a year. Presently Bothwell makes another cast.

‘I took leave of the Queen of late. She was greatly wrought upon—distempered. Sent me off—called me back—sent me off again, after some wild words. I know not what to make of it.’

‘Help her through it, God!’ said Huntly.

‘I think it is a matter for Lucina,’ said Bothwell, and went his road.

He travelled musingly by the hill-ways into Liddesdale, French Paris behind him. At the top of the pass—Note o’ the Gate, they call it—whence first you see the brown valley of the Liddel, and all the hills, quiet guardians about the silver water, he reined up, and stood looking over his lands.

‘Yonder awaits me the fairest dark lady in Scotland, and (to my mind) the fairest demesne: the open country and the good red deer. Oh, the bonny holms, the green knowes, and the ledged rocks! Houp, man! We are free of the scented chambers and all their whisperings here.’

‘It is most certain, my lord,’ said French Paris, ‘that we have left the direction of those whisperings to Monsieur de Moray.’

Lord Bothwell was stung. ‘Monsieur de Moray! Monsieur de Moray! Pooh, rascal, she has her husband with her now. And that may be even worse for me.’

French Paris looked demurely at the reins sliding in his fingers. ‘True, my lord, she has his Majesty. I have remarked that women in the Queen’s condition have extraordinary inclination for their husbands. It is reasonable.’

‘You are a fool, Paris,’ said the Earl.

But when he was at Hermitage, his proud wife upon his knee, my lord swore to himself over and over again that he was the happiest rogue not yet hanged. And yet he could not but hear, beneath all his protestations, that slow, wounded voice,—‘Afterwards—come soon.’ Good lord! what was the meaning of the like of that?

CHAPTER IX
THE WASHING OF HANDS

To a woman’s affair flocked matron and maid, till the castle seemed a hive of rock-bees. Afar off, it was said, you could hear them humming within; on sudden alarms out they came in a swarm, and ill fared physician or priest, or discreet, wide-eared gentleman sent by his wife to get a piece of news. June was in and well in, skies were clean, the twilight long in coming and loth to go. Queen Mary lay idle by her window, and watched the red roofs turn purple, the hills grow black, the paling of the light from yellow to green, the night’s solemn gathering-in, the star shine clear in a dark-blue bed out there over Arthur’s Seat. Her time was short—but one could scarcely tell. She often felt that she scarcely cared to tell when this crowning hour was to come.

Quick-spirited, sanguine young woman, she bade fair to be weary of matron and maid alike, with their everlasting talk of ‘the promise of Scotland,’ their midwifery stories, their nods and winks, their portentous cares over what she had supposed a pretty ordinary business. It was to be seen that she was fretting, and the truth was that she was in much too good health: bodily ease had never been pleasant to her, and never been safe. Her mind grew arrogant and luxurious at once, felt itself free to range in regions unlawful; and so did range, the lax flesh playing courier. So while the humming and swarming of the household bees went on over and about her listless head, while she snapped twice at the maids for every once the matrons chafed her, in her mind she walked where she fain would have had her body to be: and then, sick of this futility, she grew peevish and wished she had never been born. Upon such a crisis, intending for the best, Mary Beaton superinduced a stout, easily-flushed, gamesome lady, her aunt Lady Forbes of Reres.

Mary Beaton was now the wife of Mr. Ogilvy of Boyne; but this aunt of hers was of the father’s side. A Beaton, she, niece of the great murdered cardinal, sister of the witch-wife of Buccleuch, and in these, no less than in her own respects, a lady to be aware of. She was in her days of silver and russet now, who before may have been of dangerous beauty—of that quickly-ripe, drowsy, blowsy, Venetian sort, disastrous to mankind. Of it, indeed, the clear ravages remained, though cushioned deep in comfortable flesh; traceable there, as in the velvety bosses of a green hill you mark the contours of what was once a citadel of war. Her grey hair she now wore over her ears, to conceal (as the Queen averred) members which were so well stuffed with gallant lore as to be independent for the rest of their lives. She had a pretty mouth—a little overhung—and dimpled chin, light green eyes, fat, pleasurable hands, a merry voice and a railing tongue. Thanks to the combination, she could be malicious without ceasing to amuse. To those who know—and by this time I hope they are many—it is good evidence of her abilities and merits alike that Mary Livingstone could not abide the woman.

It was not required that she should. The Queen, too languid to judge her, listened to the savoury tales of this Reres by the hour together, neither laughing nor chuckling, but for all that fully content. So one might watch audacious archery, and admire the barbed flights, even when some pricked oneself. Lady Reres was of that kind of woman who can never speak of men without marking the gender of them. All the persons on her scene wore transparent draperies; to hear her you would have supposed that the one business of man were to pursue his helpmate, and of woman to stroke her own beauties. She spared neither age nor sex from her categories: all must be stuffed in somewhere; nor did the very throne exempt the sitter from service. The throne of Scotland, for instance! She made it sufficiently appear to Queen Mary that her royal father had been a mighty hunter. She knew the romantic origin of all the by-blows—‘Cupid’s trophies,’ as she called them (O my Lord of Moray!)—and did not scruple to reveal them to the ears of Lady Argyll, herself the daughter of Margaret Erskine, and quite aware of it. Then she must adventure Queen Marie of Lorraine—the one saint whose lamp had never grown dim upon her daughter’s altar—and hint that she had been consciously fair and not unconsciously pursued. ‘And I speak as one who should know, sweet madam,’ said this old Reres; ‘for the Cardinal, fine man, was of my own kindred, and differed noways from the rest of the men. I mind very well—’twas at Linlithgow, where you were born, my Queen—Queen Marie sat by the window on a day, her hand at her side, at her foot a dropped rose. But oh! that flower was wan beside the roses in her face. Your Majesty hath not her hues—no, but you favour the Stuarts. “Dear sakes, madam,” say I, “you have dropped your rose.” So faintly as she smiled, I heard her sigh, and knew she could not answer me then. “Some one will pick up what I have let fall,” saith she at last—and then, behind the curtain, I see a red shoe. I touched my lips—they were as red as your own in those days, madam—and slipped away, knowing my book. Hey! but red was the hue of the Court at that tide—with the tall Cardinal, and the tall rosy Queen, and the dropping, dropping roses.’ The Queen let her talk. She had a soft, wheedling voice—a murmurous accompaniment to luxurious thought.

No doubt, when the body is unstrung you pet your thought, and indulge it in its wanton ways. There is no harm in dreaming. The Queen lay waiting there, thrilled faintly with the sense of what was to come upon her, softly served and softly lapped. And in soft guise came into ministry the figures of her dreams, inviting, craving, imploring, grieving, clinging about her. She communed again with all her lovers, the highest and the lowest—from Charles of France, Most Christian King, a stormy boy, who frowned his black brows upon her and kissed so hotly on that day she saw him last, down to slim, grey-eyed Jean-Marie-Baptiste, whom by kindness she had made man. Others there were, stored in her mind, a many and a many—and any one of them would have died for her once. What of Mr. Knox, of the great hands? What of John Gordon, fiercest of old Huntly’s sons? What of George Gordon, romantic, speechless lover at this hour? To each his own sweetness, to each the secret of his own desire: she savoured each by each as she lay, turning and snuggling and dreaming among her pillows. And when the cooing old Reres by the bed spoke of Lord Bothwell, she listened, sharply intent; and wondered if there were light enough left to betray her, and hoped not. Dangerous, desperate, hardy man! He was a theme upon which Lady Reres descanted at large. Let his draperies be as they would, his gender was never in doubt.

Reres had known James Bothwell—so she always called him—for many years; for although his only numbered thirty yet, and she confessed to five-and-forty, he had come into blossom as quick as a pear-tree in a mild Lent: at fifteen and a half James Bothwell——! She lifted up her hands to end the sentence.

‘They say—under the breath I speak it—that of late he hath cast his eyes above him. Ah, and how high above him, and how saucily, let others tell your Majesty.’ Queen Mary’s hot ears needed no telling. ‘They say it drove my lord of Arran into raving fits. Fie then, and out upon you, Bothwell, if Majesty cannot be a hedge about a lovely woman! But so it hath ever been with all that disordered blood of Hepburn: thieves all, all thieving greatly. I need not go back far—and yet they tell the tale of the first Hepburn of them, and of Queen Joan, widow of our first James. What did those two at Dunbar together?’ At Dunbar—a Hepburn and a dead Queen of Scots—alack! and what had done this living Queen with her Hepburn there?

‘A pest upon them all!’ cries Reres; ‘for what did the son of that Hepburn with a Queen? And the father of our James Bothwell, what did he? For if James Bothwell’s father loved not your Majesty’s own mother, and loved her not in vain—why should our man find himself a straitened earl at this day? But so it is, they say, and so is like to be, that every Hepburn of Bothwell dieth for love of a Queen of Scots. Foh, then! and is our man to vary the tide of his race? Oh, madam, I could tell your Majesty some deal of his prowess! Listen now: he loved my sister Buccleuch, and me he loved. Greedy, greedy! Oh, there’s a many and many a woman hath greeted sore for him to come back. But he never came, my Queen of Honey, he never came! And let not her,’ she darkly said, ‘that hath him now, think to keep him. No, no, the turtle hath mated too high. He is like the king-eagle that sits lonely on his rock, and fears not look at the sun: for why? he bideth the time when he may choose to fly upward. Did he mate with my sister—a Hob to her Jill? Mated he with me? God knows whom he will mate with or mate not. He has but to ask and have, I think.’

‘Pull the curtain, pull the curtain,’ says Queen Mary; ‘the light vexes my eyes.’

‘And stings your fair cheek, my Honey-Queen,’ says wise Lady Reres, and gives her a happy kiss.

So it is that a woman of experience, who carries her outlay gallantly, approves herself to her junior, who wishes to carry her own as gallantly as may be. But Mary Livingstone—Mistress Sempill, as they called her now—mother already and hoping to be mother again, used to bounce out of the bedchamber whenever Lady Reres entered it with her James Bothwell on the tip of her quick tongue.

In the drowsy days of mid-June the Queen suffered and bare a son. First to know it outside the castle-hive was brisk Sir James Melvill, who had it from Mary Beaton before they fired the guns on the platform; and that same night, by the soaring lights of the bonfires, rode out of Lothian to carry the great news into England. No man saw Queen Mary for four days, though the castle was filled to overflowing and the Earl of Huntly walked all night about the courtyards, telling himself that for the sake of mother and child the vile father must be kept alive. The King was lodged in the castle by now; and one good reason for Huntly’s vigil may have been that his Majesty and his people had swamped the house-room. The Earls of Moray, Argyll and Mar were there; Atholl also and Crawfurd (to name no more)—the two last linked with Huntly against two of the first, and all alike watching Lord Moray for a sign. It seemed, now this child was come, no man knew just what line he should take. So each looked doubtfully at his neighbour, and an eye of each was linked to Moray’s eyes of mystery. At the end of her four days’ grace the Queen sent for her brothers first among men—the three black Stuarts, James, John, and Robert; and two of them obeyed her.

In the dark, faint-smelling chamber, as they knelt about her bed, she put her thin hand over the edge that they might kiss it, and seemed touched that they should do it with such reverence. They could see her fixed eyes—large now, and all black—upon them, seeking, wondering, considering if their homage might be real. As if no answer was to be read out of them, she sighed and turned away her head. She spoke faintly, in the voice of a woman too tired to be disheartened. ‘You shall see your Prince, my lords. Fetch me in the Prince.’

The child was brought in upon a cushion, a mouthing, pushing, red epitome of our pretensions, with a blind pitiful face. Lady Mar and Lady Reres held it between them, passed it elaborately under the review of the lords; and as these looked upon it in the way men use, as if timid to admit relationship with a thing so absurd—here is a James Stuart to be taken, and that other left!—the Queen watched them with bitter relish, turned to be a cynic now, for the emptiness of disenchantment was upon her. To win this mock-reverence of theirs she had laboured and spent! With this, O God, she had paid a price! Now let all go: for they looked at her prize as at so much puling flesh, and had kissed her hand on the same valuation. Pish! they would scheme and plot and lie over the son as they had over the mother—and the only honest fellow in all Scotland was Death, who had just made a fool of her! The child began to wail for its nurse, and pricked her into a dry heat. For it is to be known that she could not nurse her baby. ‘Take him, take him, good Reres. I cannot bear the noise he makes, nor can ease him any. And you, my lords, shall come again if you will. Come when the King is by.’ Here, as if suddenly urged by some anxiety, she raised herself in the bed. They saw how white she was, and how fearfully in earnest. ‘Fail me not, brothers, in this. I desire you to be with me when the King is here.’

When they had both promised, they left her to sleep; but she could get none for fretting and tossing about.

Mary Livingstone said, How could she sleep? She was ‘woeful that she could not nurse her baby.’

Hereat the Queen took her by the arm and hurt her by her vehemence. ‘What honesty is left in this world but Death?’ she croaked in her misery. ‘When your blood-brothers compass your downfall, and your husband is a liar declared, and your own breasts play churl to your new-born child—oh, oh, oh, I would open my arms to bonny leman Death!’

Mary Livingstone, blind with tears, hung over her, but could not speak. The Queen drove her away, and had in the reminiscent, the caustic, the fertile Reres.

At two in the afternoon of a later day a great company was admitted; and the King, coming in last with an Englishman of his friends, stood for the first time these long weeks by the Queen’s bed. She was prepared for him, gave him her hand, but flinched evidently when he saluted it. The Countess of Mar brought in the Prince, having settled this function of honour with Reres as best she knew, and handed it about in the throng.

‘Give it to me, my Lady Mar,’ says the Queen in that dry, whispering voice of hers. All the spring seemed gone out of her, so much she dragged her words. The moment she had it in bed with her it began its feeble wailing.

‘There, sir, there then! ’Tis your royal Mother has you!’ says Lady Mar; and the Queen, bothered and sick of the business before she had begun with it, grew deadly hot as she held it, rocking it about. The King gazed solemnly at his offspring: he blinked, but no more foolishly than any other man. The courtiers admired, happily not called upon to speak; in fact, nobody spoke except the infant, and Lady Mar, who pleaded in whispers. Nor did she whisper in vain, for presently the crying stopped, the Queen held up the child in her arms and searched vaguely the King’s face. I say, vaguely, because those who knew and loved her best could not in the least understand that questioning look, nor connect it with the words she spoke. She used no form of ceremony, neither sir’d nor my-lorded him; but poring blankly in his face, ‘God hath given you and me a son,’ she said.

The King was observed to blush. ‘And I thank God for him, madam,’ was his answer, as he stooped to kiss the child. He achieved his honourable purpose, though the Queen drew back as his face came near. Who did not see that?

Again she said, ‘You have kissed your very son.’ There was a silence upon all, and then she added in a voice aside—‘So much your son that I fear it will be the worse for him hereafter.’ Coming at such a time, from such a mouth, the words dropped upon that hushed assembly like an Oracle. No Scot of them all durst say anything, nor could the French Ambassador find phrases convenient. The King may or may not have heard her—he was slow. But plain Sir William Stanley in his Lancashire voice cried out, ‘God save your Majesties, and the Prince your son!’ She looked about to find who spoke so heartily, and they told her the name and station of the man. She observed him with interest, held up the child for him to see.

‘Look upon him, sir, for whom you pray so stoutly. This is the prince I hope shall first unite two realms.’

‘Why, madam,’ says Sir William, ‘shall he succeed before your Majesty and his father?’

He meant well, but did unhappily. The Queen gave back the child to Lady Mar before she replied.

Then, ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think he shall, and for this reason. Because his father has broken my heart.’

Not a soul dared to move. The King started—as one jerks in first sleep—grew violently red, looked from face to face, found no friendliness in any, and broke out desperately: ‘Is this your promise? Is this your promise? To forget and forgive?’

She was as hard as flint. ‘I have forgiven,’ she said, ‘but I shall never forget. Would that I could! But what if I had died that snowy night? Or what if Fawdonsyde’s pistol had shot my babe in me?’

‘Madam,’ said the King, ‘these things are past.’

She threw herself back, face to the wall. ‘Ay, they are past. Well, let them go.’ She shut her eyes resolutely until they were all gone out; and when that, which seemed the only thing to be done, was well done, she opened them again, with a new and sharp outlook upon affairs. She sent one of the women for Des-Essars, another for the physician.

To this latter, who found her sitting up in bed with very bright eyes, she said, ‘Master Physician, I feel stronger, having done all the disagreeable duties which seemed expected of me. I wish for your consideration of this matter: when can I rise from this bed?’

He gravely pondered. ‘Madam, in these heats I dare not advise you to be moved. Nourishment and repose should work wonders for your Majesty, as indeed you tell me that they have.’

‘At least, they would if I could get them,’ she replied.

‘All Scotland would give herself to provide them, madam, for your solace.’

‘They are the last things I should look for from Scotland,’ said the Queen. ‘Nourishment and repose! I shall leave my bed to-morrow.’

‘Madam,’ said the doctor, ‘I have but done my duty.’

‘Ah, duty!’ she said. ‘And have I not done mine? Now, good sir, I intend my pleasure.’

Dismissing him, she turned to Des-Essars, who stood erect by the door. ‘I desire to wash my hands, Jean-Marie. Bring basin and towel.’

As he served her at the bed’s edge, she dipped and rinsed her hands—carefully, formally, smiling to herself as at the good performance of some secret rite. This might have been lustral water, Jordan’s, or that sluggish flow of Lethe’s. She held up her wet hands before the lad’s face. ‘Do you see any speck?’

‘Oh no, madam.’

‘Be very sure,’ she said; ‘look well again. These hands, mark you, have been in Scotland four years.’ She rinsed again and wrung them of drops; smelt them, and seemed pleased. ‘Roses they smell of now—not Scotland,’ she said. ‘So I am free of Scotland.’ She dried her hands and sent him away with the service—‘But come back soon,’ she said; ‘I have more for you to do.’

Des-Essars returned. ‘Wait you there,’ said she, ‘while I write a letter.’ She wrote, pausing here and there, looking wisely for a word or two—sometimes at the prim-faced youth, as if she could find one there—scoring out, underlining, smiling, biting the pen. She ended—did not re-read.

‘Bring taper and wax.’ She sealed her letter with her signet ring, and held it out. ‘Take this incontinent to my lord of Bothwell. At Hermitage in Liddesdale you shall find him. Be secret and sure. You have never failed me yet, and I trust you more than most. I trusted you four years ago, when you were a boy: now you are nearly a man, and shall prove to be fully one if you do this errand faithfully. Ask for French Paris at your first coming in—thus you will get at my lord privily. Now go, remembering how much I entrust you with—my happiness, and hope, and honour.’ He made to leave her, but she cried, ‘Stay. You love me, I think. Come nearer—come very near. Nearer, nearer, foolish boy. What, are you so timid? Now—stoop down and kiss me here.’ She touched her cheek, then offered it.

He flushed up to the roots of his hair and had nothing to say; but he was never one to refuse chances. She said, ‘You have kissed a Queen. Now go, and earn your wages.’ He marched from the room, grown man, and took the way in half an hour.

At his castle of Hermitage, deep in the hills, the Earl of Bothwell frowned over his letter, and having read it many times, went on frowning as he fingered it. ‘Now, if any faith might be given to a princess,’ he thought to himself, ‘those two should never be together again man and wife. The pledge is here, the written word.’ He chuckled low in his throat, then shrugged like an Italian. ‘The word of a prince, the bond of a weathercock! Let the words go for words—but the heart that devised, the head that spun, the hand that set them here—ah, a man may count on them!’ He sprang to his feet, went to the window and looked out far into the sunny brown hills. He shook his fist at the blue sky. ‘Oh, Bastard of Scotland, James misbegotten of James! Oh, my man, if these words are true, there shall come a grapple between you and me such as the men of the dales know not—and a backthrow for one of us, man James, which shall not be for me.’ Leaning out of the window, he roared into the court for his men. ‘Ho, Hob Elliott! Ho, Jock Scott! Armstrong, Willy Pringle, Paris, you French thief! Boot and saddle, you dogs of war—I take the North road this night.’ He strode a turn or more about the room, shaking his letter in his hand. ‘Better than a charter, better than a sasine, bond above bonds!’

But he went to his wife’s bower. ‘My heart,’ saith he, ‘I must leave thee this night—I am called to town. God knoweth the end of the adventure. Read, my soul, read, and then advise.’

She read the French slowly, he behind her, his face almost touching her cheek, prompting her with a word or two; but so eager as he was, he was always in front, and had to come back for her, mastering his impatience. At the end she sat quietly, looking at her hands. His excitement was not to be borne.

‘Well, my girl, well?’

‘Go to her, my lord.’

‘You say that!’

She replied calmly, ‘No, it is she that says it—it is veiled in these lines.’

He took her face between his hands. ‘But it is thou that sendest me—hey? Be very sure now what thou art about. If I go, I go to the end. I stay never when I ride out o’ nights until I have the cattle in byre.’

Her deep eyes met his without faltering. ‘Let her have of you what she will. I have what I have.’

Now she had made him wary. He could not be sure what she was at—unless it were one thing.

‘Dost thou send me,’ he asked her, ‘to be her bane? art thou so still and steadfast a hater?’

‘I send you not at all,’ she answered. ‘It is she that calls. Remember that against the time when you have need to remember it.’

He caught her up and kissed her repeatedly. ‘Sit thou still, Jeannie, and watch,’ says he; ‘keep my house and stuff, and have a prayer on thy lips for me. Never doubt me, my dear. Doubt all the world to come, but doubt not me.’

She said, ‘I am very sure of you—both of what you will do, and what you will not do.’

He kissed her again, and left her. She did not come out to see him ride away.

Cantering on grass through the hot starry night, he called Des-Essars to his side and questioned him closely about the letter. How did she write it? What did she say? Who was by?

‘My lord,’ said Baptist, ‘I myself was by. No other at all. She bade me take it straight to your lordship, surely and secretly. She wrote it herself and sealed it with the ring on her forefinger. But she wrote nothing until she had washed her hands.’

‘Why, my lad,’ says he, ‘were her hands so foul?’

‘My lord, they were the fairest, whitest hands in the world. But she washed them many times, until, as she said, they smelt of roses, and not of Scotland.’

‘The plot thickens, God strike me! What else, boy?’

‘Nothing more, my lord, save that she gave me the letter, as I have told your lordship, and sent me directly away.’

CHAPTER X
EXTRACTS FROM THE DIURNALL OF THE MASTER OF SEMPILL

That sandy-haired, fresh-coloured, tall gentleman, John Sempill, Master of Sempill, received his Mary Livingstone on her return from the Court with more demonstration than was held seemly in Scotland; but they were his own servants who saw him, and he was sincerely glad to have her back. Not only the pattern housewife, but the ornament of his hearth, the most buxom of the Maries, the highest-headed, greatest-hearted, the ruddiest and the ripest—well might he say, as he fondled her, ‘My lammie, thou art a salve for my sair een,’ and even more to the same effect.

‘By your favour, Master,’ quoth she, ‘you shall give over your pawing. I am travel-weary and heart-weary, and you trouble me.’

‘Heart-weary, dear love!’ cried the Master. ‘And you so new back to your bairn and your man!’

‘I am full fain of you, Master, and fine you know it. And our bairn is the pride of my eyes. But I grieve over what I’ve left behind me; my heart is woe for her. And indeed, if you must have it, I am near famishing for want of bite and sup.’

‘Come away, woman, come away,’ said the Master, justly shocked. ‘There’s the best pasty on the board that ever you set your bonny teeth to, and a brew of malt unmatched in Renfrew. Or would you have the Canary? Or happen the French wine is to your liking? Give a name to it, wife, for it’s a’ your ain, ye ken.’ He hovered about her, anxious to serve, while she pulled at her gauntlets.

‘The fiend is in the gloves, I think. There then, they’re off. Master, I’ll take a cup of the red French wine. Maybe it will put heart into me.’

‘Take your victual, take your victual, my lady,’ says the Master, ‘I’ll be back just now.’ He was his own cellarer, prudent man, and was apt to excuse himself by saying that one lock was better than two.

The wine brought back the colour to her cheeks and loosened the joints of her tongue. All he had now to do was to listen to her troubles: and he did listen. It is likely that, had she been less charged with them, she had been warier; but she was indeed surcharged. He soon understood that it was the coming of the Earl of Bothwell that had caused her return.

‘Not that I would not have braved him out, you must know, Master—bristling boar though he be, dangerous, boastful, glorious man. It would take a dozen of Hepburns to scare me from my duty. But oh,’tis herself that scares me now! So changed, so sore changed. You might lay it to witchcraft and be no fool.’

‘’Twill be the lying-in, I doubt,’ says the sage Master. ‘You mind how hardly my sister Menzies took her first. Ay, ’twill be that.’

Mary Livingstone would not have it. ‘There are many that say so, but I am not one. No, no. I know very well where to look for it. Witchcraft it is, night-spells. I mind the beginning o’t. Why, when I first saw her, all dim as I was with my tears, her heart went out to me—held out to me in her stretched hands. She took me to her sweet warm bosom, and I could have swooned for joy of her, to be there again. “Oh, Livingstone, my dear, my dear! Come back to me at last!” And so we weep and cling together, and all’s as it had ever been. For you know very well we were never long divided.’

‘Never long enough for me, Mary, in my courting time.’

‘She was expecting her wean from day to day, and I tell you she longed for the hour. She was aye sewing his little clothes—embroidering them—ciphers and crowns and the like. She worked him his guiding-strings with her own hands, every stitch—gold knot-work, you never saw better. And all her talk was of him.’

‘Likely, likely,’ murmured the Master.

‘She never wavered but it was to be a prince, for all that we teased her—spoke of the Princess Mary that was coming—or should it not be Princess Margaret? She smiled in her steady way, as she uses when she feels wise, knowing what others cannot know. “No other Mary in Scotland,” she said. “There are five of us now, and Scotland can hold no more. My Prince Jamie must wed with a Margaret if he needs one.” No, she never doubted, and you see she was right. Oh, she was right and well before the magic got to work!

‘To me she used to talk, more nearly than to the others. Poor Fleming! You’ll have heard of her sore disgrace—for favouring that lank Lethington of hers. She is suspect, you must know, of seeking his recall, so hath no privacy with our mistress. Beaton and Seton were never of such account; so ’twas to me she spoke her secrets—over and over in the long still forenoons, wondering and doubting and hoping, poor lamb. “Do you think he’ll lippen to me, Livingstone?” she would say. “Did your own child laugh to see his mother? I think ’twould break my heart,” she said, “if he greeted in my arms.” She intended to be nurse to him herself: that I will hold by before the Thronéd Three on Doomsday. Not a night went by but, when I came to her in the morn, she bade me look, and try, and be sure. I told her true, she could do it. And what hindered her, pray? What drove away her milk? Eh, sir, I doubt I know too well.

‘It was Beaton brought in that old quean, that liggar-lady of Bothwell’s, that lickorish, ramping Reres. Mother’s sister of Beaton’s she is, own sister to the wise wife of Buccleuch, with witchcraft in the marrow of her. What made Beaton do it? Let God tell you if He care. I think the Lord God may well have covered His face to hear her tales. Such a tainted history I never listened to—pourriture de France! Oh, Master, I’ve heard the Count of Anjou and his minions, and Madame Marguerite and all hers at their wicked talk. I’ve heard Bothwell blaspheme high Heaven in three tongues, and had the bloat Italian scald my ears with a single word. But the Reres beats all. Good guide us, where hath she not made herself snug? Whose purchase hath she not been? Man, I cannot tell you the tales she told, nor one-quarter the shamefulness she dared to report. And the soft lingering tongue of the woman! And how she lets her scabrous words drop from her like butter from a hot spoon! My poor lamb was weary of bed and body, I’ll allow. I’ll own the old limmer made her laugh; she never could refuse a jest, as you know, however salted it might be. No: she must listen and must laugh, while I could have stabbed the old speckled wife. But my Queen Mary kept her at the bedside; and there they were, she and this Reres, for ever kuttering and whispering together. ’Twas then, in my belief, the cast was made, and the wax moulded and the spells set working.

‘For mark you this. The pains came on o’ the Wednesday morn, in the small grey hours; and by nine o’clock the child was born alive. It wailed from the first—never was such a fretful bairn; and she could hear him, and grieved over it, and could not find rest when most she needed it. And then—when they put it to her—she could not nurse it. Oh, Master, I could have maimed my own breast to help her! She tried—sore, sore she tried; she schooled herself to smile, though the sweat fairly bathed her; she crooned to it, sang her French, her pretty stammering Scots; but all to no purpose—no purpose at all. The child just labbered itself and her—my bonny lamb—and got no meat.

‘Master, it fairly broke her spirit. She did not fret, she did not lament, but lay just, and stared at the wall; and not a maid nor woman among us could rouse her. The old Reres tried her sculduddery and night-house talk, but did no better than we with our coaxing and prayers. She had no heart, no care, no pride in the world; but just let all go, and thrung herself face to the wall.

‘The lords came about her, and she showed them their prince: you could see she scorned them on their knees, and herself to whom they knelt. The craven King came in behind them, and she bade him kiss his own son. She looked him over, with all the dry rage withering her face—you’ld have said she had chalked herself!—and spoke him terrible words. “I may forgive, but I shall never forget,” she said: and to an Englishman who was with him—“He has broken my heart.” A King! He’s a spoiled toy in her hands; and the like is all the glory of Scotland—a thing of no worth to her. What hath changed her so but witchcraft? Ah, what else hath such a wicked virtue? Soon after this she sent for Bothwell; and when he came she was up and about—mad, mad, mad for her pastime; drinking of pleasure, you may say, like a thirsty dog, that fairly bites the water. Oh, Master, I am sick at the heart with all I’ve seen and heard!’

‘Let me comfort my Heart and Joy!’ said the really loving Master, and applied himself to the marital privilege. Extracts from his Diurnall, with which I have been favoured by a learned Pen, shall follow here—not without their illustrative value in this narrative. I omit all reference to the redding of the hay, the wool sales of each week, statistical comparisons of the lands of Beltrees with other sheep-ground, Sandy Graeme’s hen, the draining of Kelpie’s Moss, a famous hunting of rats on Lammas Day, and other matters of a domestic or fleeting interest.

It is not without pain, be it added, that I allow the Master to display himself naked, as it were, and far from ashamed. It will be seen—I regret to say it—that he was not above trafficking his good wife’s heart, or sending her to grass—in pastoral figure!—when the milk ran dry. Commerce and the Affections! Well, he was not alone in Scotland; there were belted Earls in the trade with him—canny chafferers in the market-place, or (in Knox’s phrase) Flies at the Honeypot. He was no better than his neighbours; and you will hear the conclusion of their whole matter, from a shrewd observer, at the end of this book.

The first date in the Diurnall of any moment to us is—