THE QUEEN’S QUAIR
OR
THE SIX YEARS’ TRAGEDY
[Illustration]
THE
QUEEN’S QUAIR
OR
The Six Years’ Tragedy
BY
MAURICE HEWLETT
‘Improbus ille puer, crudelis tu quoque Mater’
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1904
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY MAURICE HEWLETT.
COPYRIGHT, 1903, 1904,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published May, 1904.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
BY HIS PERMISSION AND WITH GOOD REASON THIS TRAGIC ESSAY IS INSCRIBED TO
ANDREW LANG
CONTENTS
PAGE
AUTHOR’S PROLOGUE 1
BOOK THE FIRST
MAIDS’ ADVENTURE
CHAP.
1. HERE YOU ARE IN THE ANTECHAMBER 7
2. HERE YOU STEP INTO THE FOG 25
3. SUPERFICIAL PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT 36
4. ROUGH MUSIC HERE 47
5. HERE ARE FLIES AT THE HONEYPOT 67
6. THE FOOL’S WHIP 77
7. GORDON’S BANE 91
8. THE DIVORCE OF MARY LIVINGSTONE (_To an Italian Air_) 106
9. AIR OF ST. ANDREW: ADONIS AND THE SCAPEGOAT 121
10. THEY LOOK AND LIKE 135
11. PROTHALAMIUM: VENUS WINS FAIR ADONIS 146
12. EPITHALAMIUM: END OF ALL MAIDS’ ADVENTURE 169
BOOK THE SECOND
MEN’S BUSINESS
1. OPINIONS OF FRENCH PARIS UPON SOME LATE EVENTS 191
2. GRIEFS AND CONSOLATIONS OF ADONIS 201
3. DIVERS USES OF A HARDY MAN 214
4. MANY DOGS 229
5. MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCES OF JEAN-MARIE-BAPTISTE DES-ESSARS 236
6. VENUS IN THE TOILS 250
7. AFTERTASTE 270
8. KING’S EVIL 287
9. THE WASHING OF HANDS 306
10. EXTRACTS FROM THE DIURNALL OF THE MASTER OF SEMPILL 318
11. ARMIDA DOUBTFUL IN THE GARDEN 328
12. SCOTCHMEN’S BUSINESS 340
BOOK THE THIRD
MARKET OF WOMEN
1. STORMY OPENING 351
2. THE BRAINSICK SONATA 363
3. DESCANT UPON A THEME AS OLD AS JASON 381
4. SHE LOOKS BACK ONCE 394
5. MEDEA IN THE BEDCHAMBER 404
6. KIRK O’ FIELD 414
7. THE RED BRIDEGROOM 430
8. THE BRIDE’S PRELUDE 451
9. THE BRIDE’S TRAGEDY 474
10. THE KNOCKING AT BORTHWICK 484
11. APPASSIONATA 490
12. ADDOLORATA 502
EPILOGUE 506
AUTHOR’S PROLOGUE
_If one were in the vein for the colours and haunted mists of Romance;
if the thing, perhaps, were not so serious, there might be composed,
and by me, a Romance of Queens out of my acquaintance with four ladies
of that degree; among whom—to adopt the terms proper—were the Queen of
Gall, the Queen of Ferment, and the Queen of Wine and Honey. You see that
one would employ, for the occasion, the language of poets to designate
the Queen-Mother of France, the Queen-Maid of England, and the too-fair
Queen of Scots: to omit the fourth queen from such a tale would be for
superstition’s sake, and not for lack of matter—I mean Queen Venus, who
(God be witness) played her part in the affairs of her mortal sisters,
and proclaimed her prerogatives by curtailing theirs. But either the
matter is too serious, or I am. I see flesh and spirit involved in all
this, truth and lies, God and the Devil—dreadful concernments of our
own, with which Romance has no profitable traffic. La Bele Isoud, the
divine Oriana, Aude the Fair (whom Roland loved)—tender ghosts, one and
all of them, whose heartaches were so melodious that they have filled
four-and-twenty pleasant volumes, and yet so unsubstantial that no one
feels one penny the worse, or the better, for them afterwards. But here!
Ah, here we have real players in a game tremendously real; and the hearts
they seem to play with were once bright with lively blood; and the lies
they told should have made streaks on lips once vividly incarnate—and
sometimes did it. Real! Why, not long ago you could have seen a little
pair of black satin slippers, sadly down at heel, which may have
paced with Riccio’s in the gallery at Wemyss, or tapped the floor of
Holyroodhouse while King Henry Darnley was blustering there, trying to
show his manhood. A book about Queen Mary—if it be honest—has no business
to be a genteel exercise in the romantic: if the truth is to be told, let
it be there._
* * * * *
_A quair is a ~cahier~, a quire, a little book. In one such a certain
king wrote fairly the tale of his love-business; and here, in this other,
I pretend to show you all the tragic error, all the pain, known only to
her that moved in it, of that child of his children’s children, Mary of
Scotland. What others have guessed at, building surmise upon surmise,
she knew; for what they did, she suffered. Some who were closest about
her—women, boys—may have known some: Claude Nau got some from her; my
Master Des-Essars got much. But the whole of it lay in her heart, and to
know her is to hold the key of that. Suppose her hand had been at this
pen; suppose mine had turned that key: there might have resulted ‘The
Queen’s Quair.’ Well! Suppose one or the other until the book is done—and
then judge me._
_Questions for King Œdipus, Riddle of the Sphinx, Mystery of Queen Mary!
She herself is the Mystery; the rest is simple enough. There had been
men in Scotland from old time, and Stuarts for six generations to break
themselves upon them. Great in thought, frail in deed, adventurous,
chivalrous, hardy, short of hold, doomed to fail at the touch—so
ventured, so failed the Stuarts from the first James to the fifth.
There had been men in Scotland, but no women. Forth from the Lady of
Lorraine came the lass, born in an unhappy hour, tossing high her young
head, saying, ‘Let me alone to rule wild Scotland.’ They had but to
give her house-room: no mystery there. The mystery is that any mystery
has been found. Maids’ Adventure—with that we begin. A bevy of maids
to rule wild Scotland! What mystery is there in that? Or—since Mystery
is double-edged, engaging what we dare not, as well as what we cannot,
tell—what mystery but that?_
_A hundred books have been written, a hundred songs sung; men enough of
these latter days have broken their hearts for Queen Mary’s. What is
more to the matter is that no heart but hers was broken in time. All the
world can love her now; but who loved her then? Not a man among them. A
few girls went weeping; a few boys laid down their necks that she might
walk free of the mire. Alas! the mire swallowed them up, and she must
soil her pretty feet. This is the nut of the tragedy; pity is involved
rather than terror. But no song ever pierced the fold of her secret, no
book ever found out the truth, because none ever sought her heart. Here,
then, is a book which has sought nothing else, and a song which springs
from that only: called, on that same account, ‘The Queen’s Quair.’_
BOOK THE FIRST
MAIDS’ ADVENTURE
CHAPTER I
HERE YOU ARE IN THE ANTECHAMBER
It is quite true that when they had buried the little wasted King
Francis, and while the days of Black Dule still held, the Cardinal of
Lorraine tried three times to see his niece, and was three times refused.
Not being man enough to break a way in, he retired; but as he knew very
well that the Queen-Mother, the King, the King of Navarre, and Madame
Marguerite went in and out all day long, he had a suspicion that they, or
the seasons, were more at fault than the hidden mourner. ‘A time, times,
and half a time,’ he said, ‘have good scriptural warrant. I will try once
more—at this hour of high mass.’ So he did, and saw Mary Livingstone,
that strapping girl, who came into the antechamber, rather flushed, and
devoutly kissed his ring.
‘How is it with the Queen my niece?’
‘Sadly, Eminence.’
‘I must know how sadly, my girl. I must see her. It is of great concern.’
The young woman looked scared. ‘Eminence, she sees only the Queen-Mother.’
‘The more reason,’ says he, ‘why she should see somebody else. She may be
praying one of these fine days that she never see the Queen-Mother again.’
Livingstone coloured up to the eyes. ‘Oh, sir! Oh, Lord Cardinal, and so
she doth, and so do we all! They are dealing wickedly with our mistress.
It is true, what I told you, that she sees the Queen-Mother: that is
because her Majesty will not be denied. She forces the doors—she hath
had a door taken down. She comes and goes as she will; rails at our lady
before us all. She, poor lamb, what can she do? Oh, sir, if you could
stop this traffic I would let you in of my own venture.’
‘Take me in, then,’ said the cardinal: ‘I will stop it.’
In the semi-dark he found his niece, throned upon the knee of Mary Beaton
for comfort, in heavy black weeds, out of which the sharp oval of her
face and the crescent white coif gleamed like two moons, the old within
the new. Two other maids sat on the floor near by; each had a hand of
her—pitiful sentinels of spoiled treasure. When the gentleman-usher at
the curtain was forestalled by the great man’s quick entry, four girls
rose at once, as a covey of partridges out of corn, and all but the Queen
fell upon their knees. She, hugging herself as if suddenly chilled,
came forward a little, not very far, and held out to the cardinal an
unwilling hand. He took it, laid it on his own, kissed, and let it drop
immediately. Then he stood upright, sniffed, and looked about him, being
so near the blood royal himself that he could use familiarity with
princes. It was clear that he disapproved.
‘Faith of a gentleman!’ he said: ‘one might see a little better, one
might breathe a little better, here, my niece.’
‘The room is well enough,’ said the Queen.
It was dark and hot, heavy with some thick scent.
As she pronounced upon it the cardinal paused half-way to the shutter;
but he paused too slightly. The Queen flushed all over and went quickly
between him and the window—a vehement action. ‘Leave it, leave it alone!
I choose my own way. You dare not touch it.’ She spoke furiously; he
bowed his grey head and drew back. Then, in a minute, she herself flung
back the shutters, and stood trembling in the sudden glory revealed. The
broad flood of day showed him the waves of storm still surging over her;
but even as he approved she commanded herself and became humble—he knew
her difficult to resist in that mood.
‘I thought you would treat me as the Queen-Mother does. That put me in a
rage. I beg your pardon, my lord.’ As she held out her hand again, this
time he took it, and drew her by it along with him to the open window. He
made her stand in the sun. Far below the grey curtain-wall were the moat,
the bridges, the trim gardens and steep red roofs of Orleans, the spired
bulk of the great church; beyond all that the gay green countryside. A
fresh wind was blowing out there. You saw the willows bend, the river
cream and curd. The keen strength of day and the weather made her blink;
but he braced her to meet it by his words.
‘Madam,’ said he, ‘needs must your heart uplift to see God’s good world
still shining in its place, patient until your Majesty tires of sitting
in the dark.’
She smiled awry, and drummed on the ledge with her long fingers, looking
wilfully down, not choosing to agree. The maids, all clustered together,
watched their beloved; but the cardinal had saner eyes than any of them.
As he saw her, so may you and I.
A tall, slim girl, petted and pettish, pale (yet not unwholesome),
chestnut-haired, she looked like a flower of the heat, lax and delicate.
Her skin—but more, the very flesh of her—seemed transparent, with colour
that warmed it from within, faintly, with a glow of fine rose. They
said that when she drank you could see the red wine run like a fire
down her throat; and it may partly be believed. Others have reported
that her heart could be discerned beating within her body, and raying
out a ruddy light, now fierce, now languid, through every crystal
member. The cardinal, who was no rhapsodist of the sort, admitted her
clear skin, admitted her patent royalty, but denied that she was a
beautiful girl—even for a queen. Her nose, he judged, was too long, her
lips were too thin, her eyes too narrow. He detested her trick of the
sidelong look. Her lower lids were nearly straight, her upper rather
heavy: between them they gave her a sleepy appearance, sometimes a sly
appearance, when, slowly lifting, they revealed the glimmering hazel of
the eyes themselves. Hazel, I say, if hazel they were, which sometimes
seemed to be yellow, and sometimes showed all black: the light acted
upon hers as upon a cat’s eyes. Beautiful she may not have been, though
Monsieur de Brantôme would never allow it; but fine, fine she was all
over—sharply, exquisitely cut and modelled: her sweet smooth chin, her
amorous lips, bright red where all else was pale as a tinged rose; her
sensitive nose; her broad, high brows; her neck which two hands could
hold, her small shoulders and bosom of a child. And then her hands,
her waist no bigger than a stalk, her little feet! She had sometimes
an intent, considering, wise look—the look of the Queen of Desire, who
knew not where to set the bounds of her need, but revealed to no one
what that was. And belying that look askance of hers—sly, or wise, or
sleepy, as you choose—her voice was bold and very clear, her manners
were those of a lively, graceful boy, her gestures quick, her spirit
impatient and entirely without fear. Her changes of mood were dangerous:
she could wheedle the soul out of a saint, and then fling it back to him
as worthless because it had been so easily got. She wrote a beautiful
bold hand, loved learning, and petting, and a choice phrase. She used
perfumes, and dipped her body every day in a bath of wine. At this hour
she was nineteen years old, and not two months a widow.
All this the cardinal knew by heart, and had no need to observe while
she stood strumming at the window-sill. His opinion—if he had chosen to
give it—would have been: these qualities and perfections, ah, and these
imperfections, are all very proper to a prince who has a principality;
for my niece, I count greatly upon a wise marriage—wise for our family,
wise for herself. He would have been the last to deny that the Guises had
been hampered by King Francis’ decease. All was to do again—but all could
be done. This fretful, fair girl was still Queen of Scotland, _allons_!
Dowager of France, but Queen of Scotland, worth a knight’s venture.
Advance pawns, therefore! He was a chess-player, passionate for the game.
He surveyed the maids of honour, bouncing Livingstone and the rest of
them, too zealous after their mistress’s ease, and too jealous lest the
world should edge them out; and found that he had more zest for the
world and the spring weather. ‘Ah, madam,’ he said, ‘ah, my niece, this
cloister-life of stroking, and kindly knees, is not one for your Majesty.
There are high roads out yonder to be traversed, armies to set upon them,
cities and towns and hill-crests to be taken. But you sit at home in the
dark, nursed by your maids!’
She raised her eyebrows, not her eyes. ‘Why,’ says she, ‘the King, my
husband, is dead, and most of his people glad of it, I believe. If my
kingdom lies within these four walls, and my government is but over
these poor girls, they are my own. What else should I do? Walk abroad
to mass? Ride abroad to the meadows? And be mocked by the people for a
barren wife, who never was wife at all? And be browbeat openly by the
Apothecary’s Daughter? Is this what you set before me, Lord Cardinal?’
The cardinal put up his chin and cupped his beard. ‘The rich may call
themselves poor, the poor dare not. You have a realm, my niece, and a
fair realm. You stand at the door of a second. You may yet have a third,
it seems to me.’
Queen Mary looked at him then, with a gleam in her eyes which answered
for a smile. But she hid her mind almost at once, and resumed her
drumming.
‘King Charles is hot for me,’ she said. ‘He is a brave lad. I should be
Queen of France again—of France and England and Scotland.’ She laughed
softly to herself, as if snug in the remembrance that she was still
sought.
The cardinal became exceedingly serious. ‘I have thought of that. To my
mind there is a beautiful justice——! What our family can do shall be
done—but, alas——!’
She broke in upon him here. ‘Our family, my lord! _Your_ family! Ah, that
was a good marriage for me, for example, which you made! That ailing
child! Death was in his bed before ever I was put there. My marriage!
My husband! He used to cry all night of the pain in his head. He clung
to the coverlet, and to me, lest they should pull him out to prayers.
Marriage! He was cankered from his birth. What king was Francis, to make
me a queen?’
The cardinal lifted his fine head. ‘It was my sister Marie who made
you a queen, madam, by the grace of God and King James. Through your
parentage you are Queen of Scotland, and should be Queen of England—and
you shall be. God of gods, you may be queen of whatso realm you please.
What do I learn? The whole world’s mind runs upon the marrying of you.
The Archduke Ferdinand hath here his ambassadors, attendant on the
Queen-Mother’s pleasure—which you allow to be yours also. Don Carlos, his
own hand at the pen, writes for a hope of your Majesty’s. The Earl of
Huntly, a great and religious prince in Scotland, urges the pretensions
of his son, the Lord of Gordon. Are these to be laid before the
Queen-Mother? To the duchess, your grandmother, writeth daily the Duke
of Châtelherault concerning his son, the Earl of Arran. On his side is
my brother the Constable. More! They bring me word from England that the
Earl of Lennox, next in blood to your Majesty, next indeed to both your
thrones, is hopeful to come to France—he, too, with a son in his pocket,
young, apt, and lovely as a love-apple. All these hopeful princes,
madam——’
Queen Mary coloured. With difficulty she said: ‘I hear of every one of
them for the first time.’
‘Oh, madam,’ cried the cardinal, ‘so long as you sit on your maids’ knees
and give the keys of your chamber to the Queen-Mother, you will only hear
what she please to tell you. And more’—he raised his voice, and gave it
severity—‘I take leave to add that so long as your Majesty hath Mistress
Livingstone here for your husband, your Majesty can look for no other.’
‘I am never likely to look on a better,’ says Queen Mary, and put her
hand behind her. Mary Livingstone stooped quickly and snatched a kiss
from the palm, while the cardinal gazed steadily out of doors. But he
felt more at ease, being sure that he had leavened his lump.
And so he had. The sweet fact of great marriages beyond her doors, and
the sour fact of the Queen-Mother within them, worked a ferment in her
brain and set her at her darling joy of busy scheming. What turned the
scale over was the mortifying discovery that Catherine de’ Medici was in
reality dying to get rid of her. She flew into a great rage, changed her
black mourning for white, announced her departure, paid her farewells,
and went to her grandmother’s court at Rheims. Queen Catherine watched
her, darkling, from a turret as she rode gaily out in her troop of
Guises. ‘There,’ she is reported to have said, I know not whether truly
or not, ‘there goes Madam Venus a-hunting the apple. Alas for Shepherd
Paris!’ The reflection is a shrewd one at least; but it was not then so
certain that Orleans had seen the last of Queen Mary. It was no way to
get her out of France to tell her there was nothing you desired so much.
The old duchess, her grandam, talked marriages and the throne of
Scotland, therefore, into ears only half willing. The little Queen was by
no means averse to either, but could not bring herself to lose hold upon
France. ‘Better to be Dowager of France than an Empress in the north,’
she said; and then ‘Fiddle-de-dee, my child,’ the old lady retorted;
‘give me a live dog before a dead lion. Your desire here is to vex La
Medicis. You would make eyes at King Charles, and we should all lose our
heads. Do you wish to end your days at Loches? The Duke of Milan found
cold quarters there, they tell me. No, no. Marry a king’s son and recover
England from the Bastard.’ Thus all France spake of our great Elizabeth.
Queen Mary, though she loved her grandmother, pinched her lip, looked
meek, and hardened her heart. She had obstinacy by the father’s mother’s
side—a Tudor virtue.
It was just after she had gone to Nancy, to the court of her cousin of
Lorraine, that she veered across to the side of the Guises and determined
to adventure in Scotland. Two Scots lords came overseas to visit her
there: one was the Lord James Stuart, her base-brother, the other a
certain Father Lesley, an old friend of her mother’s. The priest was a
timid man, but by good hap and slenderness of equipage gained her first.
She might have been sure he was a faithful friend, though doubtful if a
very wise one. Faithful enough he proved in days to come: at this present
she found him a simple, fatherly man, of wandering mind, familiar,
benevolent, soon scared. He was enchanted with her, and said so. He
praised her person, the scarlet of her lips, the bright hue of her hair.
‘A bonny brown, my child,’ he said, touching it, ‘to my partial eyes.’
She laughed as she told him that in Paris also they had liked the colour.
‘They will call it foxy in Scotland,’ he said, with a sniff; and she
found out afterwards that they did. At first she was ‘madam’ here, and
‘your Majesty’ there; but as the talk warmed him he forgot her queenship
in her extreme youth, had her hand in his own and patted it with the
other. Then it came to ‘Child, this you should do,’ or ‘Child, I hope
that is not your usage’; and once he went so far as to hold her by the
hands at arms’ length and peer at her through his kind, weak eyes, up
and down, as he said to himself, ‘Eh, sirs, a tall bit lassie to stand
by Bruce’s chair! But her mother was just such another one—just such
another.’
She thought this too far to go, even for a churchman, and drew off with a
smile and shake of the head—not enough to humiliate him.
He cautioned her with fearful winks and nods against the Lord James
Stuart, her half-brother, hinting more than he dared to tell. ‘That man
hath narrow eyes,’ he said; then, recollecting himself, ‘and so hath
your Majesty by right of blood. All the Stuarts have them—the base and
the true. But his, remark, are most guarded eyes, so that you shall
not easily discover in what direction he casts his looks. But I say,
madam,’—and he raised his wiry voice,—‘I say that the throne is ever at
his right hand; and I do think that he looks ever to the right.’
The Queen’s eyes were plain enough at this—squirrel-colour, straight as
arrows. Being free-spoken herself, she disliked periphrasis. ‘Does my
brother desire my throne? Is this your meaning?’
He jumped back as if she had whipped him, and crossed himself vehemently,
saying, ‘God forbid it! God forbid it!’
‘I shall forbid it, whether or no,’ said the Queen. ‘But I suppose you
had some such meaning behind your speech.’ And she pressed him until she
learned that such indeed was the belief in Scotland.
‘Your misborn brother, madam,’ he said, whispering, ‘will tell you
nothing that he believeth, and ask you nothing that he desireth; nor
will he any man. He will urge you to the contrary of what he truly
requires. He will take his profit of another man’s sin and rejoice to see
his own hands clean. My heart,’ he said, forgetting himself,—and ‘Ah,
Jesu!’ she records, ‘I was called that again, and by another mouth,’—‘My
heart, if you tender the peace of Holy Church in your land, keep your
brother James in France under lock and key.’
She laughed at his alarms. ‘I wish liberty to all men and their
consciences sir. I am sure I shall find friends in Scotland.’
He named the great Earl of Huntly and his four sons; but by now she was
tired of him and sent him away. All the effect of the poor man’s speeches
had been to make her anxious to measure wits with her base-brother. He
came in two or three days later with a great train, and she had her
opportunity.
What she made of it you may judge by this, that it was he and no other
who spurred her into Scotland. He did it, in a manner very much his own,
by first urging it and then discovering impossible fatigues in the road.
This shows him to have been, what he was careful to conceal, a student of
human kind.
A certain French valet of the Earl of Bothwell’s—Nicolas Hubart, from
whose _Confessions_ I shall have to draw liberally by-and-by, and of
whom, himself, there will be plenty to say—made once an acute observation
of the great Lord James, when he said that he was that sort of man who,
if he had not a black cloak for Sunday, would be an atheist or even an
epicurean. There was no one, certainly, who had a more intense regard
for decent observance than he. It was his very vesture: he would have
starved or frozen without it. It clothed him completely from head to
foot, and from the heart outwards. Much more than that. There are many in
this world who go about it swathed up to the eyes, imposing upon those
they meet. But this man imposed first of all upon himself. So complete
was his robing, he could not see himself out of it. So white were his
hands, so flawless of grit, he could never see them otherwise. Supposing
Father Lesley to have been right, supposing that James Stuart did—and
throughout—plot for a throne, he would have been the first to cry out
upon the vice of Brutus. It may well be doubted whether he once, in all
his life, stood alone—so to speak—naked before his own soul. Perhaps such
a man can hardly be deemed a sinner, whatever he do. There are those at
this hour who say that the Lord James was no sinner. How should he be?
they cry. His own soul never knew it.
This tall, pale, inordinately prim nobleman, with his black beard, black
clothes, and (to the Queen’s mind) black beliefs, seemed to walk for
ever in a mask of sour passivity. He never spoke when to bow the head
could be an answer, he never affirmed without qualification, he never
denied or refused anything as of his own opinion. He was allowed to
have extraordinarily fine manners, even in France, where alacrity of
service counted for more than the service itself; and yet Queen Mary
declared that she had never seen a man enter a doorway so long after
he had opened the door. He seldom looked at you. His voice was low and
measured. He cleared his throat before he spoke, and swallowed the moment
he had finished, as if he were anxious to engulf any possible effect
of his words. Of all the ties upon a man he dreaded most those of the
heart-strings: she never moved him to natural emotion but once. But, at
this first coming of his, he paid her great court, and bent his stiff
knees to her many times a day: this notwithstanding that, as Mary Seton
affirmed, he had water on one of them. She said that she had that from
his chaplain, but her love of mischief had betrayed her love of truth.
The Lord James always stood to his prayers.
When the Queen saw him first it was in the presence of her women, of Lord
Eglinton, of the Marquis D’Elbœuf, and others—persons who either hated
him with reason or despised him with none. He moved her then, almost with
passion, to go ‘home’ to Scotland, saying that it behoved princes to
dwell among their own people. But at a privy audience a few days later,
he held to another tune altogether, pursing his lips, twiddling his two
thumbs, looking up and down and about. Now he said that he was not sure;
that there were dangers attending a Popish Queen, and those not only
within the kingdom but without it. She begged him to explain himself.
‘Better bide, madam,’ said he, ‘until the wind change in England.’
Any word of England always excited her. The colour flew to her face.
‘What hath my sister in England to do with my kingdom, good brother?’
‘Why, madam,’ he said, ‘it has come to my sure knowledge that you shall
get no safe-conduct from the English Queen, to go smoothly to Scotland.’
He never watched any one, or was never observed to be watching; but his
guarded eyes, glancing at her as they shifted, showed him that, being
angry now, she was beautiful—like a spirit of the fire.
‘I should be offended at what you report if I believed it possible,’ she
said after a while. ‘And yet England is not the only road, nor is it the
best road, to my kingdom.’
‘No indeed, madam,’ he agreed; ‘but it is the only easy road for a young
and delicate lady.’
‘Let my youth, brother, be as God made it,’ she answered him; ‘but as for
my delicacy, I am thankfully able to bear fatigue and to thrive upon it.
If my good sister, or you, my lord’—she spoke very clearly—‘think to keep
me from my own by threats of force or warnings of danger, I would have
you understand that the like of those is a spur to me.’
This was a thing which, in fact, he had understood perfectly.
‘I am not a shying horse,’ she continued, ‘to swerve at a heap of sand. I
believe I shall find loyalty in my country, and cheerful courage there to
meet my own courage. There be those that laugh at danger there, as well
as those who weep.’
He said suavely here that she misjudged him, that only his tenderness for
her person was at fault. ‘We grow timid where we love much, madam.’
At this she looked at him so unequivocally that he changed the subject.
‘If your Majesty,’ he pursued, ‘knows not the mind of the English Queen,
or misdoubts my reading of it, let application be made to Master
Throckmorton. I am content to be judged out of his mouth.’
Master Throckmorton was English Ambassador to the Queen of Scots, a
friend of the Lord James’s. His lordship, indeed, had the greater
confidence in giving this advice in that he had already convinced Master
Throckmorton of what he must do, and what say, if he wished to get Queen
Mary into Scotland—as, namely, decline to help her thither; decline, for
instance, a letter of safe-conduct through English soil.
‘Let application be made presently, brother,’ said the incensed young
lady, and gladly turned to her pleasures.
She had been finding these of late in a society not at all to the mind of
the Lord James. Three days before this conversation the Earl of Bothwell,
no less, had come to court, making for the North from Piedmont.
In years to come she could remember every flash and eddy of that shifting
garden scene when first he came to her. A waft of scented blossom, the
throb of a lute, and she could see the peacock on the wall, the gay June
borders, the grass plats and bright paths in between, quivering with the
heat they gave out. There was a fountain in the midst of the quincunx,
on the marble brim of which she sat with her maids and cousin D’Elbœuf,
dipping her hand, and now and then flicking water into their faces. A
page in scarlet and white had come running up to say that the Duke was
nearing with his gentlemen; and presently down the long alley she saw
them moving slowly—crimson cloaks and bared heads, the Duke in the midst,
wearing his jewelled bonnet. He was talking, and laughing immoderately
with some one she knew not at all, who swung his hat in his hand, and to
whom, as she remembered vividly, the struck poppies bowed their heads.
For he hit them as he went with his hat, and looked round to see them
fall. The Duke’s tale continued to the very verge of the privy garden;
indeed he halted there, in the face of her usher, to finish it. She saw
the stranger throw back his head to laugh. ‘What a great jowl he hath,’
she said to Mary Fleming; and she, in a hush, said, ‘Madam, it is the
Earl Bothwell.’ A few moments later the man was kneeling before her,
presented by the Duke himself. She had time to notice the page to whom
he had thrown his hat and gloves—a pale-faced, wise-looking French boy,
who knelt also, and watched her from a pair of grey eyes ‘rimmed with
smut-colour.’ His name, she found out afterwards, was Jean-Marie-Baptiste
Des-Essars. She liked his manly looks from the first—little knowing who
and what he was to be to her. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des-Essars! Keeper of
the _Secret des Secrets_—where should I be without him?
The Earl of Bothwell—whom she judged (in spite of the stricken poppies)
to be good-humoured—was a galliard of the type esteemed in France by
those—and they were many—who pronounced vice to be their virtue. A
galliard, as they say, if ever there was one, flushed with rich blood,
broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that
the world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well wherever he
might be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, kept brave company
bravely. His high colour, while it betokened high feeding, got him the
credit of good health. His little eyes twinkled so merrily that you did
not see they were like a pig’s, sly and greedy at once, and bloodshot.
His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting and dangerous.
His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing hid that too. The bridge
of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or guessed at the brawl
which must have given it him. Frankness was his great charm, careless
ease in high places, an air of ‘take me or leave me, I go my way’; but
some mockery latent in him, and the suspicion that whatever you said or
did he would have you in derision—this was what first drew Queen Mary
to consider him. And she grew to look for it—in those twinkling eyes,
in that quick mouth; and to wonder about it, whether it was with him
always—asleep, at prayers, fighting, furious, in love. In fine, he made
her think.
Mary Livingstone liked not the looks of him from the first, and held him
off as much as she could. She slept with her mistress in these days of
widowhood, but refused to discuss him in bed. She said that he had a
saucy eye—which was not denied—and was too masterful.
‘You can tell it by the hateful growth of hair he hath,’ she cried.
‘When he lifts up his head to laugh—and he would laugh, mind you, at the
crucified Saviour!—you can see the climbing of his red beard, like rooted
ivy on an old wall.’
It is true that his beard was reddish, and gross-growing; his hair,
however, was dark brown, thick and curling. Mary Livingstone sniffed at
his hair. He stayed ten days at Nancy, saw the Queen upon each of them,
and on each held converse with her. She liked him very well, studied
him, thought him more important than he really was. He laughed at her
for this, and taxed her with it; but so pleasantly that she was not at
all offended. The Lord James would not speak of him, nor he of the Lord
James: he shrugged at any reference to him.
‘Let it be enough, madam, to own that we do not love each other,’ he said
when she pressed him. ‘We view the world differently, that lord and I;
for I look on the evil and the good with open face and what cheer I can
muster, and he looks through his fingers and sadly. We speak little one
with the other: what he thinks of me I know not. I think him a——’
‘Well, my lord? You think my brother a——?’
‘A king’s son, madam,’ he said, demurely; but she saw the gleam in his
eye.
He spoke fluent French, and was very ready with his Italian. He was a
latinist, a student of warfare, had read Machiavelli. He scared away a
good many poetasters by a real or an affected truculence; threatened
to duck one of them in the fountain, and proved that he could do it by
ducking another. The effect of this was, as he had intended, that Queen
Mary for a day laughed with him at the art of poetry, which was no art of
his. That day he had a private half-hour, and spoke freely of himself and
his ventures.
‘A man rich in desires,’ he confessed himself, ‘and therefore of great
wealth. Put the peach on the wall above me, madam, and I shall surely
grow to handle it. And this other possession is mine, that while I
strive and stretch after my prize I can laugh at my own pains, and yet
not abate them.’
She considered every word he said, and dubbed him Democritus, her
laughing philosopher.
‘You will have need of my sect in Scotland, madam,’ he replied with a
bow. ‘Despise it not; for in that grey country the very skies invite
us to mingle tears. You have a weeper beside you even now—the Lord
Heraclitus, a king’s son.’
She had no difficulty in discovering her stiff brother James under this
thin veil.
All was going on thus well with my Lord of Bothwell when Mary Livingstone
heard him rate his page in the forecourt one morning as she came back
from the mass. She caught sight also of ‘his inflamed and wicked face,’
and saw the little French boy flinch and turn his shoulder to a flood of
words, of which she understood not half. She guessed at them from the
rest. ‘They must needs be worse; and yet how can they be? And oh! the
poor little Stoic with his white face!’ The good girl snapped her lips
together as she hurried on. ‘He shall see as little of my bonny Queen
as I can provide for,’ she promised herself. ‘I have heard sculduddery
enough to befoul all Burgundy.’ Being a wise virgin, she said little to
her mistress save to urge her to beg the French boy from his master.
‘Why do you want him, child?’ the Queen asked.
‘He hath a steadfast look, and loves you. I think he will serve your
needs. Get him if you care,’ was all the reply she could win.
The thing was easily done, lightly asked and lightly accorded.
‘Baptist, come hither,’ had cried my lord; and the boy knelt before the
lady. ‘I have sold thee, Baptist.’
‘Very good, monseigneur.’
The Queen sparkled and smiled upon him. ‘Wilt thou come with me,
Jean-Marie?’
‘Yes, willingly, madam.’
‘And do me good service?’
‘Nobody in the world shall do better, madam.’
‘But you are positive, my boy!’
‘I do well to be positive, madam, in such a cause as your Majesty’s.’
She turned to the Earl. ‘What is his history?’
He shrugged. ‘The Sieur Des-Essars—a gentleman of Brabant—disporting in
La Beauce, accosts a pretty Disaster (to call her so) with a speaking
eye——’
Jean-Marie-Baptiste held up his hand. ‘Monseigneur, ah——!’
‘How now, cockerel?’
‘You speak of my mother, sir,’ he said, his lip quivering.
‘By the Mass, and so I do!’ said the Earl.
The Queen patted the lad’s shoulder before she sent him away. ‘You shall
tell me all about your mother, Jean-Marie, when we are in Scotland.’
Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des-Essars quickly kissed her sleeve, and became her
man. More of him in due time, and of what he saw out of his ‘smut-rimmed’
eyes.
* * * * *
When English Mr. Throckmorton was reported as within a day’s ride of
Nancy, my Lord Bothwell thought it wise to take leave. His odour in
England was not good, and he knew very well that the Lord James would not
sprinkle him with anything which would make it better. So he presented
himself betimes in the morning, said his _adieux_ and kissed hands.
‘Farewell, my lord,’ says Queen Mary. ‘Lorraine will be the sadder for
your going.’
‘And ever fare your Majesty well,’ he answered her gaily, ‘as in Scotland
you shall, despite the weepers.’
‘Do you go to Scotland, my lord?’
‘Does your Majesty?’ says he, his little eyes all of a twinkle.
‘My question was first, my lord.’
‘And the answer to mine is the answer to your Majesty’s.’
‘My Lord Democritus, am I to laugh when you leave me?’
‘Why, yes, madam, rather than to lament that I outstay my welcome.’
She showed her pleasure; at least, he saw it under the skin. So he left
her; and Mary Livingstone, as she said, could ‘fetch her breath.’
Now, as to Mr. Throckmorton—if the Lord James had desired, as assuredly
he did, to get his sister to Scotland, unwedded and in a hurry; if the
Queen of England desired it—which is certain,—neither could have used
a better means than this excellent man. The Queen was in a royal rage
when he, with great troubles and many shakings of his obsequious head,
was obliged to own the safe-conduct through England refused. She shut
herself up with her maids, and endlessly paced the floors, avoiding their
entreating arms. They besought her to rest, to have patience, to sit on
their knees, consult her uncles of Lorraine. ‘I shall sit in no chair,
nor lie in any bed, until I am at sea,’ she promised them, and then
cried: ‘What! am I a kennel-dog to the Bastard in England?’
Nothing in the world should stop her. She would go to her country by
sea, and as soon as they could fit out the galleys. And she had her
way—with suspicious ease, if she had had patience to observe it; for
it happened to be the way of three other persons vitally interested in
her: the Queen-Mother of France, who wished to get rid of her; the Queen
of England, who hoped she would get rid of herself; and the Lord James
Stuart, uncomfortably illegitimate, who hid his designs from his own
soul, and looked at affairs without seeming to look.
* * * * *
Two galleys and four great ships took her and her adventurous company
from Calais, on a day in August of high sun and breeze, with a misty
brown bank on the horizon where England should lie. Guns shot from the
forts were answered from the ships; to the Oriflamme of France the Scots
Queen answered with her tressured Lion, and the English Leopards and
Lilies. Of all the gallant company embarked there was none who looked
more ardently to the north than she who was to sit in the high seat at
Stirling. Let Mary Fleming look down, and Mary Beaton raise her eyebrows;
let Mary Seton shrug and Mary Livingstone toss her young head; they
are greatly mistaken who suppose that Mary Stuart went unwillingly to
Scotland, or wetted her pillow with tears. She cried when she bade adieu
to her grandmother—tears of kindness those. But her heart was high to be
Queen, and her head full of affairs. How she judged men! What measures
she devised! Ask Mary Livingstone whether they two slept of nights, or
whether they talked of the deeds of Queen Mary—what she should do, what
avoid, how walk, how safeguard herself. She lay in a pavilion on the
upper deck, and turned her face to where she thought Scotland should be.
But Mary Livingstone showed Scotland her back, and sheltered her Queen in
her arms.