The queen came out of her room only in the evening, to take her place at
the window which looked over the lake: at the usual time she saw the
light which was henceforth her sole hope shine in the little house in
Kinross; for a whole long month she had no other consolation than seeing
it, every night, fixed and faithful.
At last, at the end of this time, and as she was beginning to despair of
seeing George Douglas again, one morning, on opening the window, she
uttered a cry. Mary Seyton ran to her, and the queen, without having
strength to speak, showed her in the middle of the lake the tiny boat at
anchor, and in the boat Little Douglas and George, who were absorbed in
fishing, their favourite amusement. The young man had arrived the day
before, and as everyone was accustomed to his unexpected returns, the
sentinel had not even blown the horn, and the queen had not known that
at last a friend had come.
However, she was three days yet without seeing this friend otherwise
than she had just done--that is, on the lake. It is true that from
morning till evening he did not leave that spot, from which he could
view the queen's windows and the queen herself, when, to gaze at a wider
horizon, she leaned her face against the bars. At last, on the morning
of the fourth day, the queen was awakened by a great noise of dogs and
horns: she immediately ran to the window, for to a prisoner everything
is an event, and she saw William Douglas, who was embarking with a pack
of hounds and some huntsmen. In fact, making a truce, for a day, with
his gaoler's duties, to enjoy a pleasure more in harmony with his rank
and birth, he was going to hunt in the woods which cover the last ridge
of Ben Lomond, and which, ever sinking, die down on the banks of the
lake.
The queen trembled with delight, for she hoped that Lady Lochleven would
maintain her ill-will, and that then George would replace his brother:
this hope was not disappointed. At the usual time the queen heard the
footsteps of those who were bringing her her breakfast; the door opened,
and she saw George Douglas enter, preceded by the servants who were
carrying the dishes. George barely bowed; but the queen, warned by him
not to be surprised at anything, returned him his greeting with a
disdainful air; then the servants performed their task and went out, as
they were accustomed.
"At last," said the queen, "you are back again, then."
George motioned with his finger, went to the door to listen if all the
servants had really gone away, and if no one had remained to spy. Then,
returning more at ease, and bowing respectfully--
"Yes, madam," returned he; "and, Heaven be thanked, I bring good news."
"Oh, tell me quickly!" cried the queen; "for staying in this castle is
hell. You knew that they came, did you not, and that they made me sign
an abdication?"
"Yes, madam," replied Douglas; "but we also knew that your signature had
been obtained from you by violence alone, and our devotion to your
Majesty is increased thereby, if possible."
"But, after all, what have you done?"
"The Seytons and the Hamiltons, who are, as your Majesty knows, your
most faithful servants,"--Mary turned round, smiling, and put out her
hand to Mary Seyton,--"have already," continued George, "assembled their
troops, who keep themselves in readiness for the first signal; but as
they alone would not be sufficiently numerous to hold the country, we
shall make our way directly to Dumbarton, whose governor is ours, and
which by its position and its strength can hold out long enough against
all the regent's troops to give to the faithful hearts remaining to you
time to come and join us."
"Yes, yes," said the queen; "I see clearly what we shall do once we get
out of this; but how are we to get out?"
"That is the occasion, madam," replied Douglas, "for which your Majesty
must call to your aid that courage of which you have given such great
proofs."
"If I have need only of courage and coolness," replied the queen, "be
easy; neither the one nor the other will fail me."
"Here is a file," said George, giving Mary Seyton that instrument which
he judged unworthy to touch the queen's hands, "and this evening I shall
bring your Majesty cords to construct a ladder. You will cut through one
of the bars of this window, it is only at a height of twenty feet; I
shall come up to you, as much to try it as to support you; one of the
garrison is in my pay, he will give us passage by the door it is his
duty to guard, and you will be free."
"And when will that be?" cried the queen.
"We must wait for two things, madam," replied Douglas: "the first, to
collect at Kinross an escort sufficient for your Majesty's safety; the
second, that the turn for night watch of Thomas Warden should happen to
be at an isolated door that we can reach without being seen."
"And how will you know that? Do you stay at the castle, then?"
"Alas! no, madam," replied George; "at the castle I am a useless and
even a dangerous friend for you, while once beyond the lake I can serve
you in an effectual manner."
"And how will you know when Warden's turn to mount guard has come?"
"The weathercock in the north tower, instead of turning in the wind with
the others, will remain fixed against it."
"But I, how shall I be warned?"
"Everything is already provided for on that side: the light which shines
each night in the little house in Kinross incessantly tells you that
your friends keep watch for you; but when you would like to know if the
hour of your deliverance approaches or recedes, in your turn place a
light in this window. The other will immediately disappear; then,
placing your hand on your breast, count your heartbeats: if you reach
the number twenty without the light reappearing, nothing is yet settled;
if you only reach ten, the moment approaches; if the light does not
leave you time to count beyond five, your escape is fixed for the
following night; if it reappears no more, it is fixed for the same
evening; then the owl's cry, repeated thrice in the courtyard, will be
the signal; let down the ladder when you hear it".
"Oh, Douglas," cried the queen, "you alone could foresee and calculate
everything thus. Thank you, thank you a hundred times!" And she gave him
her hand to kiss.
A vivid red flushed the young man's cheeks; but almost directly
mastering his emotion, he kneeled down, and, restraining the expression
of that love of which he had once spoken to the queen, while promising
her never more to speak of it, he took the hand that Mary extended, and
kissed it with such respect that no one could have seen in this action
anything but the homage of devotion and fidelity.
Then, having bowed to the queen, he went out, that a longer stay with
her should not give rise to any suspicions.
At the dinner-hour Douglas brought, as he had said, a parcel of cord. It
was not enough, but when evening came Mary Seyton was to unroll it and
let fall the end from the window, and George would fasten the remainder
to it: the thing was done as arranged, and without any mishap, an hour
after the hunters had returned.
The following day George left the castle.
The queen and Mary Seyton lost no time in setting about the rope ladder,
and it was finished on the third day. The same evening, the queen in her
impatience, and rather to assure herself of her partisans' vigilance
than in the hope that the time of her deliverance was so near, brought
her lamp to the window: immediately, and as George Douglas had told her,
the light in the little house at Kinross disappeared: the queen then
laid her hand on her heart and counted up to twenty-two; then the light
reappeared; they were ready for everything, but nothing was yet settled.
For a week the queen thus questioned the light and her heart-beats
without their number changing; at last, on the eighth day, she counted
only as far as ten; at the eleventh the light reappeared.
The queen believed herself mistaken: she did not dare to hope what this
announced. She withdrew the lamp; then, at the end of a quarter of an
hour, showed it again: her unknown correspondent understood with his
usual intelligence that a fresh trial was required of him, and the light
in the little house disappeared in its turn. Mary again questioned the
pulsations of her heart, and, fast as it leaped, before the twelfth beat
the propitious star was shining on the horizon: there was no longer any
doubt; everything was settled.
Mary could not sleep all night: this persistency of her partisans
inspired her with gratitude to the point of tears. The day came, and the
queen several times questioned her companion to assure herself that it
was not all a dream; at every sound it seemed to her that the scheme on
which her liberty hung was discovered, and when, at breakfast and at
dinner time, William Douglas entered as usual, she hardly dared look at
him, for fear of reading on his face the announcement that all was lost.
In the evening the queen again questioned the light: it made the same
answer; nothing had altered; the beacon was always one of hope.
For four days it thus continued to indicate that the moment of escape
was at hand; on the evening of the fifth, before the queen had counted
five beats, the light reappeared: the queen leaned upon Mary Seyton; she
was nearly fainting, between dread and delight. Her escape was fixed for
the next evening.
The queen tried once more, and obtained the same reply: there was no
longer a doubt; everything was ready except the prisoner's courage, for
it failed her for a moment, and if Mary Seyton had not drawn up a seat
in time, she would have fallen prone; but, the first moment over, she
collected herself as usual, and was stronger and more resolute than
ever.
Till midnight the queen remained at the window, her eyes fixed on that
star of good omen: at last Mary Seyton persuaded her to go to bed,
offering, if she had no wish to sleep, to read her some verses by M.
Ronsard, or some chapters from the Mer des Histoires; but Mary had no
desire now for any profane reading, and had her Hours read, making the
responses as she would have done if she had been present at a mass said
by a Catholic priest: towards dawn, however, she grew drowsy, and as
Mary Seyton, for her part, was dropping with fatigue, she fell asleep
directly in the arm-chair at the head of the queen's bed.
Next day she awoke, feeling that someone was tapping her on the
shoulder: it was the queen, who had already arisen.
"Come and see, darling," said she,--"come and see the fine day that God
is giving us. Oh! how alive is Nature! How happy I shall be to be once
more free among those plains and mountains! Decidedly, Heaven is on our
side."
"Madam," replied Mary, "I would rather see the weather less fine: it
would promise us a darker night; and consider, what we need is darkness,
not light."
"Listen," said the queen; "it is by this we are going to see if God is
indeed for us; if the weather remains as it is, yes, you are right, He
abandons us; but if it clouds over, oh! then, darling, this will be a
certain proof of His protection, will it not?"
Mary Seyton smiled, nodding that she adopted her mistress's
superstition; then the queen, incapable of remaining idle in her great
preoccupation of mind, collected the few jewels that she had preserved,
enclosed them in a casket, got ready for the evening a black dress, in
order to be still better hidden in the darkness: and, these preparations
made, she sat down again at the window, ceaselessly carrying her eyes
from the lake to the little house in Kinross, shut up and dumb as usual.
The dinner-hour arrived: the queen was so happy that she received
William Douglas with more goodwill than was her wont, and it was with
difficulty she remained seated during the time the meal lasted; but she
restrained herself, and William Douglas withdrew, without seeming to
have noticed her agitation.
Scarcely had he gone than Mary ran to the window; she had need of air,
and her gaze devoured in advance those wide horizons which she was about
to cross anew; it seemed to her that once at liberty she would never
shut herself up in a palace again, but would wander about the
countryside continually: then, amid all these tremors of delight, from
time to time she felt unexpectedly heavy at heart. She then turned round
to Mary Seyton, trying to fortify her strength with hers, and the young
girl kept up her hopes, but rather from duty than from conviction.
But slow as they seemed to the queen, the hours yet passed: towards the
afternoon some clouds floated across the blue sky; the queen remarked
upon them joyfully to her companion; Mary Seyton congratulated her upon
them, not on account of the imaginary omen that the queen sought in
them, but because of the real importance that the weather should be
cloudy, that darkness might aid them in their flight. While the two
prisoners were watching the billowy, moving vapours, the hour of dinner
arrived; but it was half an hour of constraint and dissimulation, the
more painful that, no doubt in return for the sort of goodwill shown him
by the queen in the morning, William Douglas thought himself obliged, in
his turn, to accompany his duties with fitting compliments, which
compelled the queen to take a more active part in the conversation than
her preoccupation allowed her; but William Douglas did not seem in any
way to observe this absence of mind, and all passed as at breakfast.
Directly he had gone the queen ran to the window: the few clouds which
were chasing one another in the sky an hour before had thickened and
spread, and--all the blue was blotted out, to give place to a hue dull
and leaden as pewter. Mary Stuart's presentiments were thus realised: as
to the little house in Kinross, which one could still make out in the
dusk, it remained shut up, and seemed deserted.
Night fell: the light shone as usual; the queen signalled, it
disappeared. Mary Stuart waited in vain; everything remained in
darkness: the escape was for the same evening. The queen heard eight
o'clock, nine o'clock, and ten o'clock strike successively. At ten
o'clock the sentinels were relieved; Mary Stuart heard the patrols pass
beneath her windows, the steps of the watch recede: then all returned to
silence. Half an hour passed away thus; suddenly the owl's cry resounded
thrice, the queen recognised George Douglas's signal: the supreme moment
had come.
In these circumstances the queen found all her strength revive: she
signed to Mary Seyton to take away the bar and to fix the rope ladder,
while, putting out the lamp, she felt her way into the bedroom to seek
the casket which contained her few remaining jewels. When she came back,
George Douglas was already in the room.
"All goes well, madam," said he. "Your friends await you on the other
side of the lake, Thomas Warden watches at the postern, and God has sent
us a dark night."
The queen, without replying, gave him her hand. George bent his knee and
carried this hand to his lips; but on touching it, he felt it cold and
trembling.
"Madam," said he, "in Heaven's name summon all your courage, and do not
let yourself be downcast at such a moment."
"Our Lady-of-Good-Help," murmured Seyton, "come to our aid!"
"Summon to you the spirit of the kings your ancestors," responded
George, "for at this moment it is not the resignation of a Christian
that you require, but the strength and resolution of a queen"
"Oh, Douglas! Douglas," cried Mary mournfully, "a fortune-teller
predicted to me that I should die in prison and by a violent death: has
not the hour of the prediction arrived?"
"Perhaps," George said, "but it is better to die as a queen than to live
in this ancient castle calumniated and a prisoner."
"You are right, George," the queen answered; "but for a woman the first
step is everything: forgive me". Then, after a moment's pause, "Come,"
said she; "I am ready."
George immediately went to the window, secured the ladder again and more
firmly, then getting up on to the sill and holding to the bars with one
hand, he stretched out the other to the queen, who, as resolute as she
had been timid a moment before, mounted on a stool, and had already set
one foot on the window-ledge, when suddenly the cry, "Who goes there?"
rang out at the foot of the tower. The queen sprang quickly back, partly
instinctively and partly pushed by George, who, on the contrary, leaned
out of the window to see whence came this cry, which, twice again
renewed, remained twice unanswered, and was immediately followed by a
report and the flash of a firearm: at the same moment the sentinel on
duty on the tower blew his bugle, another set going the alarm bell, and
the cries, "To arms, to arms!" and "Treason, treason!" resounded
throughout the castle.
"Yes, yes, treason, treason!" cried George Douglas, leaping down into
the room. "Yes, the infamous Warden has betrayed us!" Then, advancing to
Mary, cold and motionless as a statue, "Courage, madam," said he,
"courage! Whatever happens, a friend yet remains for you in the castle;
it is Little Douglas."
Scarcely had he finished speaking when the door of the queen's apartment
opened, and William Douglas and Lady Lochleven, preceded by servants
carrying torches and armed soldiers, appeared on the threshold: the room
was immediately filled with people and light.
"Mother," said William Douglas, pointing to his brother standing before
Mary Stuart and protecting her with his body, "do you believe me now?
Look!"
The old lady was for a moment speechless; then finding a word at last,
and taking a step forward--
"Speak, George Douglas," cried she, "speak, and clear yourself at once
of the charge which weighs on your honour; say but these words, 'A
Douglas was never faithless to his trust,' and I believe you".
"Yes, mother," answered William, "a Douglas!... but he--he is not a
Douglas."
"May God grant my old age the strength needed to bear on the part of one
of my sons such a misfortune, and on the part of the other such an
injury!" exclaimed Lady Lochleven. "O woman born under a fatal star,"
she went on, addressing the queen, "when will you cease to be, in the
Devil's hands, an instrument of perdition and death to all who approach
you? O ancient house of Lochleven, cursed be the hour when this
enchantress crossed thy threshold!"
"Do not say that, mother, do not say that," cried George; "blessed be,
on the contrary, the moment which proves that, if there are Douglases
who no longer remember what they owe to their sovereigns, there are
others who have never forgotten it."
"Douglas! Douglas!" murmured Mary Stuart, "did I not tell you?"
"And I, madam," said George, "what did I reply then? That it was an
honour and a duty to every faithful subject of your Majesty to die for
you."
"Well, die, then!" cried William Douglas, springing on his brother with
raised sword, while he, leaping back, drew his, and with a movement
quick as thought and eager as hatred defended himself. But at the same
moment Mary Stuart darted between the two young people.
"Not another step, Lord Douglas," said she. "Sheathe your sword, George,
or if you use it, let be to go hence, and against everyone but your
brother. I still have need of your life; take care of it."
"My life, like my arm and my honour, is at your service, madam, and from
the moment you command it I shall preserve it for you."
With these words, rushing to the door with a violence and resolve which
prevented anyone's stopping him--
"Back!" cried he to the domestics who were barring the passage; "make
way for the young master of Douglas, or woe to you!".
"Stop him!" cried William. "Seize him, dead or alive! Fire upon him!
Kill him like a dog!"
Two or three soldiers, not daring to disobey William, pretended to
pursue his brother. Then some gunshots were heard, and a voice crying
that George Douglas had just thrown himself into the lake.
"And has he then escaped?" cried William.
Mary Stuart breathed again; the old lady raised her hands to Heaven.
"Yes, yes," murmured William,--"yes, thank Heaven for your son's flight;
for his flight covers our entire house with shame; counting from this
hour, we shall be looked upon as the accomplices of his treason."
"Have pity on me, William!" cried Lady Lochleven, wringing her hands.
"Have compassion on your old mother! See you not that I am dying?"
With these words, she fell backwards, pale and tottering; the steward
and a servant supported her in their arms.
"I believe, my lord," said Mary Seyton, coming forward, "that your
mother has as much need of attention just now as the queen has need of
repose: do you not consider it is time for you to withdraw?"
"Yes, yes," said William, "to give you time to spin fresh webs, I
suppose, and to seek what fresh flies you can take in them? It is well,
go on with your work; but you have just seen that it is not easy to
deceive William Douglas. Play your game, I shall play mine". Then
turning to the servants, "Go out, all of you," said he; "and you,
mother, come."
The servants and the soldiers obeyed; then William Douglas went out
last, supporting Lady Lochleven, and the queen heard him shut behind him
and double-lock the two doors of her prison.
Scarcely was Mary alone, and certain that she was no longer seen or
heard, than all her strength deserted her, and, sinking into an
arm-chair, she burst out sobbing.
Indeed, all her courage had been needed to sustain her so far, and the
sight of her enemies alone had given her this courage; but hardly had
they gone than her situation appeared before her in all its fatal
hardship. Dethroned, a prisoner, without another friend in this
impregnable castle than a child to whom she had scarce given attention,
and who was the sole and last thread attaching her past hopes to her
hopes for the future, what remained to Mary Stuart of her two thrones
and her double power? Her name, that was all; her, name with which,
free, she had doubtless stirred Scotland, but which little by little was
about to be effaced in the hearts of her adherents, and which during her
lifetime oblivion was to cover perhaps as with a shroud. Such an idea
was insupportable to a soul as lofty as Mary Stuart's, and to an
organisation which, like that of the flowers, has need, before
everything, of air, light, and sun.
Fortunately there remained to her the best beloved of her four Marys,
who, always devoted and consoling, hastened to succour and comfort her;
but this time it was no easy matter, and the queen let her act and speak
without answering her otherwise than with sobs and tears; when suddenly,
looking through the window to which she had drawn up her mistress's
armchair--
"The light!" cried she, "madam, the light!"
At the same time she raised the queen, and with arm outstretched from
the window, she showed her the beacon, the eternal symbol of hope,
relighted in the midst of this dark night on Kinross hill: there was no
mistake possible, not a star was shining in the sky.
"Lord God, I give Thee thanks," said the queen, falling on her knees and
raising her arms to heaven with a gesture of gratitude: "Douglas has
escaped, and my friends still keep watch."
Then, after a fervent prayer, which restored to her a little strength,
the queen re-entered her room, and, tired out by her varied successive
emotions, she slept an uneasy, agitated sleep, over which the
indefatigable Mary Seyton kept watch till daybreak.
As William Douglas had said, from this time forward the queen was a
prisoner indeed, and permission to go down into the garden was no longer
granted but under the surveillance of two soldiers; but this annoyance
seemed to her so unbearable that she preferred to give up the
recreation, which, surrounded with such conditions, became a torture. So
she shut herself up in her apartments, finding a certain bitter and
haughty pleasure in the very excess of her misfortune.