SUPERFICIAL PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT
When they told her what was the name Mr. Knox had for her, and how it
had been caught up by all the winds in town, Queen Mary pinched her
lip. ‘Does he call me Honeypot? Well, he shall find there is wine in my
honey—and perchance vinegar too, if he mishandle me. Or I may approve
myself to him honey of Hymettus, which has thyme in it, and other sane
herbs to make it sharp.’
A honey-queen she looked as she spoke, all golden and rose in her white
weeds, her face aflower in the close coif, finger and thumb pinching her
lip. She seemed at once wise, wholesome, sweet, and tinged with mischief;
even the red Earl of Morton, the ‘bloat Douglas,’ as they called him, who
should have been cunning in women, when he saw her preside at her first
Council, said to his neighbour, ‘There is wine in the lass, and strong
wine, to make men drunken. What was Black James Stuart about to let her
in among us?’ It was a sign also of her suspected store of strength that
Mr. Knox was careful not to see her. He had called her ‘Honeypot’ on
hearsay.
No doubt she approved herself: those who loved her, and, trembling,
marked her goings, owned it to each other by secret signs. And yet,
in these early days, she stood alone, a growing girl in a synod of
elders, watching, judging, wondering about them, praying to gods whom
they had abjured in a tongue which they had come to detest. For they
were all for England now, while she clung the more passionately to
France. If she used deceit, is it wonderful? The arts of women against
those half-hundred pairs of grudging, reticent eyes; a little armoury
of smiles, blushes, demure, down-drooping lids! Was it the instinct to
defend, or the relish for cajolery? She had the art of unconscious art.
She looked askance, she let her lips quiver at a harsh decree, she kissed
and took kisses where she could. She laughed for fear she should cry,
she was witty when most at a loss. She refused to see disapproval in
any, pretended to an open mind, and kept the inner door close-barred.
Never unwatched, she was never found out; never off the watch, she never
let her anxiety be seen. Alone she did it. Not Mary Livingstone herself
knew the half of her effort, or shared her moments of dismay; for that
whole-hearted girl saw Scotland with Scots eyes.
But she succeeded—she pleased. The lords filled Holyroodhouse, their
companies the precincts; every man was Queen Mary’s man. The city wrought
at its propynes and pageants against her entry in state. Mr. Knox, grimly
surveying the company at his board, called her Honeypot.
There were those of her own religion who might have had another name for
her. One morning there was a fray after her mass, when the Lord Lindsay
and a few like him hustled and beat a priest. They waited for him behind
the screen and gave him, in their phrase, ‘a bloody comb.’ Now, here was
a case for something more tart than honey—at least, the clerk thought so.
He had come running to her full of his griefs: the holy vessels had been
tumbled on the floor, the holy vestments were in shreds; he (the poor
ministrant) was black and blue; martyrdom beckoned him, and so on.
‘Nay, good father, you shall not take it amiss,’ she had said to him.
‘A greater than you or I said in a like case, “_They know not what they
do._”’
‘Madam,’ says the priest, ‘there spake the Son of God, all-discerning,
not to be discerned of the Jews. But I judge from the feel of my head
what they do, and I think they themselves know very well—and their master
also that sent them, their Master Knox.’
‘I will give you another Scripture, then,’ replied she. ‘It is written,
“_By our stripes we are healed._”’
‘Your pardon, madam, your pardon!’ cried the priest: ‘I read it
otherwise. St. Peter saith, “_By His stripes we are healed_”—a very
different matter.’
She grew red. ‘Come, come, sir, we are bandying words. You will not tell
me that you have no need of heavenly physic, I suppose?’
‘I pray,’ said he, ‘that your Majesty have none. Madam, if it please you,
but for your Majesty’s kindred, the Lord James and his brethren, I had
been a dead man.’
‘You tell me the best news of my brothers I have had yet,’ said she, and
sent him away.
She used a gentler method with Lord Lindsay when he next showed her his
rugged, shameless face. He told her bluntly that he would never bend the
knee to Baal.
‘Well,’ she said, with a smile, ‘you shall bend it to me instead.’ And
she looked so winning and so young, and withal so timid lest he should
refuse, that (on a sudden impulse) down he went before her and kissed her
hand.
‘I knew that I could make him ashamed,’ she said afterwards to Mary
Livingstone.
‘I would have had him whipped!’ cried the flaming maid.
‘You are out, my dear,’ said Queen Mary. ‘’Twas better he should whip
himself.’
Although she took enormous pains, she succeeded not nearly so well
with her bastard brothers and their sister, Lady Argyll, the handsome,
black-browed woman. James, Robert, and John, sons of the king her father,
and Margaret Erskine, all alike tall, sable, stiff and sullen, were alike
in this too, that they were eager for what they could get without asking.
The old needy Hamilton—Duke of Châtelherault as he was—let no day go by
without begging for his son. These men let be seen what they wanted, but
they would not ask. The vexatious thing with their sort is, that you may
give a man too much or too little, and never be sure which of you is the
robber. Now, the Lord James greatly coveted the earldom of Moray. Would
he tell her so, think you? Not he, since he would not admit it to his
very self. She received more than a hint that it would be wise to reward
him, and told him that she desired it. He bowed his acceptance as if he
were obedient unto death.
‘Madam, if it please your Majesty to make me of your highest estate, it
is not for me to gainsay you.’
‘Why, no,’ says the Queen, ‘I trow it is not. You shall be girt Earl of
Mar at the Council, for such I understand to be your present desire.’
It was not his desire by any means, yet he could not bring himself to say
so. Her very knowledge that he had desires at all tied his tongue.
‘Madam,’ he said, sickly-white, ‘the grace is inordinate to my merits:
and, indeed, how should duty be rewarded, being in its own performance a
grateful thing? True it is that my lands lie farther to the north than
those of Mar; true it is that in Moray—to name a case—there are forces
which, maybe, would not be the worse of a watchful eye. But the earldom
of Moray! Tush, what am I saying?’
‘We spake of the earldom of Mar,’ she said drily. ‘That other, I
understand, is claimed by my Lord of Huntly, as a right of his, under my
favour.’
He added nothing, but bit his lip sideways, and looked at his white
hands. She had done more wisely to give him Moray at once; and so she
might had he but asked for it. But when she opened her hands he shut his
up, and where she spoke her mind he never did. She ought to have been
afraid of him, for two excellent reasons: first, she never knew what he
thought, and next, everybody about her asked that first. Instead, he
irritated her, like a prickly shift.
‘Am I to knock for ever at the shutters of the house of him?’ she asked
of her friends. ‘Not so, but I shall conclude there is nobody at home.’
Healthy herself, and high-spirited, and as open as the day when she was
in earnest, she laughed at his secret ways in private and made light of
them in public. It was on the tip of her saucy tongue more than once or
twice to strike him to earth with the thunderbolt: ‘Did you hasten me to
Scotland to work my ruin, brother? Do you reckon to climb to the throne
over me?’ She thought better of it, but only because it seemed not worth
her while. There was no give-and-take with the Lord James, and it is dull
work whipping a dead dog.
Meantime the prediction of Mary Livingstone seemed on the edge of
fulfilment. Queen Mary ruled Scotland; and her spirits rose to meet
success. She was full of courage and good cheer, holding her kingdom in
the hollow of her palms. Honeypot? Did Mr. Knox call her so? It was odd
how the name struck her.
‘Well,’ she said, with a shrug, ‘if they find me sweet and hive about me,
shall I not do well?’
She made Lethington Secretary of State without reserve, and remarked that
he was every day in the antechamber.
The word flew busily up and down the Canongate, round about the Cross:
‘Master Knox hath fitted her with a name, do you mind? “She is Honeypot,”
quoth he. Heard you ever the like o’ that?’ Some favoured it and her,
some winked at it, some misfavoured; and these were the grey beards and
white mutches. But one and all came out to see her make her entry on the
Tuesday.
* * * * *
One hour before she left Holyrood, Mr. Knox preached from his window in
the High Street to a packed assembly of blue bonnets and shrouded heads,
upon the text, _Be wise now therefore, O ye Kings_—a ring of scornful
despair in his accents making the admonition vain. ‘I shall not ask ye
now what it is ye are come out for to see, lest I tempt ye to lie; for I
know better than yourselves. Meat! “Give us meat,” ye cry and clamour;
“give us meat for the gapes, meat for greedy eyes!” Ay, and ye shall have
your meat, fear not for that. Jags and slashes and feathered heads, ye
shall have; targeted tails, and bosoms decked in shame, but else as bare
as my hand. Fill yourselves with the like of these—but oh, sirs, when
ye lie drunken, blame not the kennel that holds ye. If that ye crave to
see prancing Frenchmen before ye, minions and jugglers, leaping sinners,
damsels with timbrels, and such-like sick ministers to sick women’s
desires, I say, let it be so, o’ God’s holy name; for the day cometh
when ye shall have grace given ye to look within, and see who pulls the
wires that sets them all heeling and reeling, jigging up and down—whether
Christ or Antichrist, whether the Lord God of Israel or the Lord Mammon
of the Phœnicians. Look ye well in that day, judge ye and see.’
He stopped, as if he saw in their midst what he cried against; and some
man called up, ‘What more will you say, sir?’
Mr. Knox gathered himself together. ‘Why, this, my man, that the harlotry
of old Babylon is not dead yet, but like a snake lifteth a dry head from
the dust wherein you think to have crushed her. Bite, snake, bite, I
say; for the rather thou bitest, the rather shall thy latter end come.
Heard ye not, sirs, how they trounced a bare-polled priest in the house
of Rimmon, before the idol of abomination herself, these two days by
past? I praise not, I blame not; I say, him that is drunken let him be
drunken still. More becomes me not as yet, for all is yet to do. I fear
to prejudge, I fear to offend; let us walk warily, brethren, until the
day break. But I remember David, ruler in Israel, when he hoped against
hope and knew not certainly that his cry should go up as far as God.
For no more than that chosen minister can I look to see the number of
the elect made up from a froward and stiff-necked generation. Nay, but
I can cry aloud in the desert, I can fast, I can watch for the cloud of
the gathering wrath of God. And this shall be my prayer for you and for
yours, _Be wise, etc._’ He did pray as he spoke, with his strong eyes
lifted up above the housetops—a bidding prayer, you may call it, to which
the people’s answer rumbled and grew in strength. One or two in the
street struck into a savage song, and soon the roar of it filled the long
street:
The hunter is Christ, that hunts in haste,
The hounds are Peter and Paul;
The Pope is the fox, Rome is the rocks,
That rubs us on the gall.
A gun in the valley told them that the Queen was away. It was well that
she was guarded.
Des-Essars, the Queen’s French page, in that curious work of his, half
reminiscence and half confession, which he dubs _Le Secret des Secrets_,
has a note upon this day, and the aspect of the crowd, which he says was
dangerous. ‘Looking up the hill,’ he writes, ‘towards the Netherbow Port,
where we were to stop for the ceremony of the keys, I could see that the
line of sightseers was uneven, ever surging and ebbing like an incoming
sea. Also I had no relish for the faces I saw—I speak not of them at the
windows. Certainly, all were highly curious to see my mistress and their
own; and yet—or so I judged—they found in her and her company food for
the eyes and none for the heart. They appeared to consider her their
property; would have had her go slow, that they might fill themselves
with her sight; or fast, that they might judge of her horsemanship. We
were a show, forsooth; not come in to take possession of our own; rather
admitted, that these close-lipped people might possess us if they found
us worthy—ah, or dispossess us if they did not. Here and there men among
them hailed their favourites: the Lord James Stuart was received with
bonnets in the air; and at least once I heard it said, “There rides
the true King of Scots.” My Lord Chancellor Morton, riding immediately
before the Queen’s Grace, did not disdain to bandy words with them that
cried out upon him, “The Douglas! The Douglas!” He, looking round about,
“Ay, ye rascals,” I heard him say, “ye know your masters fine when they
carry the sword.” He was a very portly, hearty gentleman in those days,
high-coloured, with a full round beard. But above all things in the
world the Scots lack fineness of manners. It was not that this Earl of
Morton desired to grieve the Queen by any freedom of his; but worse than
that, to my thinking, he did not know that he did it. As for my lords
her Majesty’s uncles, their reception was exceedingly unhappy; but they
cared little for that. Foolish Monsieur de Châtelard made matters worse
by singing like a boy in quire as he rode behind his master, Monsieur
d’Amville. This he did, as he said, to show his contempt for the rabble;
but all the result was that he earned theirs. I saw a tall, gaunt,
bearded man at a window, in a black cloak and bonnet. They told me that
was Master Knox, the strongest man in Scotland.’
It is true that Master Knox watched the Queen go up, with sharp eyes
which missed nothing. He saw her eager head turn this way and that at any
chance of a welcome. He saw her meet gladness with gladness, deprecate
doubt, plead for affection. ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness: but
she is too keen after sweet food.’ She smiled all the while, but with
differences which he was jealous to note. ‘She deals carefully; she is no
so sure of her ground. Eh, man, she goes warily to work.’
A child at a window leaped in arms and called out clearly: ‘Oh, mother,
mother, the braw leddy!’ The Queen laughed outright, looked up, nodded,
and kissed her hand.
‘Hoots, woman,’ grumbled Mr. Knox, ‘how ye lick your fingers! Fie, what a
sweet tooth ye have!’
She was very happy, had no doubts but that, as she won the Keys of the
Port, she should win the hearts of all these people. Stooping down,
she let the Provost kiss her hand. ‘The sun comes in with me, tell the
Provost,’ she said to Mr. Secretary, not trusting her Scots.
‘Madam, so please you,’ the good man replied, clearing his throat, ‘we
shall make a braver show for your Grace’s contentation upon the coming
out from dinner. Rehearse that to her Majesty, Lethington, I’ll trouble
ye.’
‘Ah, Mr. Provost, we shall all make a better show then, trust me,’ she
said, laughing; and rode quickly through the gate.
She was very bold: everybody said that. She had the manners of a boy—his
quick rush of words, his impulse, and his dashing assurance—with that
same backwash of timidity, the sudden wonder of ‘Have I gone too
far—betrayed myself’ which flushes a boy hot in a minute. All could see
how bold she was; but not all knew how the heart beat. It made for her
harm that her merits were shy things. I find that she was dressed for the
day in ‘a stiff white satin gown sewn all over with pearls.’ Her neck
was bare to the cleft of the bosom; and her tawny brown hair, curled and
towered upon her head, was crowned with diamonds. Des-Essars says that
her eyes were like stars; but he is partial. There were many girls in
Scotland fairer than she. Mary Fleming was one, a very gentle, modest
lady; Mary Seton was another, sharp and pure as a profile on a coin of
Sicily. Mary Livingstone bore herself like a goddess; Mary Beaton had a
riper lip. But this Mary Stuart stung the eyes, and provoked by flashing
contrasts. Queen of Scots and Dryad of the wood; all honey and wine; bold
as a boy and as lightly abashed, clinging as a girl and as slow to leave
hold, full of courage, very wise. ‘Sirs, a dangerous sweet woman. Here we
have the Honeypot,’ says Mr. Knox to himself, and thought of her at night.
After dinner, as she came down the hill, they gave her pageants. Virgins
in white dropped out of machines with crowns for her; blackamoors, Turks,
savage men came about her with songs about the Scriptures and the fate of
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. She understood some, and laughed pleasantly
at all. Even she took not amiss the unmannerly hint of the Lawn Market,
where they would have burned a mass-priest in effigy—had him swinging
over the faggots, chalice and vestment, crucifix and all. ‘Fie, sirs,
fie! What harm has he done, poor soul?’ was all she said.
The Grand Prior was furiously angry; seeing which, the Earl of Morton cut
the figure down, and then struck out savagely with the flat of his blade,
spurring his horse into the sniggering mob. ‘Damn you, have done with
your beastliness—down, dogs, down!’ The Lord James looked away.
At the Salt Tron they had built up a door, with a glory as of heaven upon
it. Here she dismounted and sat for a while. Clouds above drew apart; a
pretty boy in a gilt tunic was let down by ropes before her. He said a
piece in gasps, then offered her the Psalter in rhymed Scots. She thought
it was the Geneva Bible, and took it with a queer lift of the eyebrows,
which all saw. Arthur Erskine, to whom she handed it, held it between
finger and thumb as if it had been red hot; and men marked that, and
nudged each other. The boy stood rigid, not knowing what else to do;
quickly she turned, looked at him shyly for a moment, then leaned forward
and took him up in her arms, put her cheek to his, cuddled and kissed
him. ‘You spake up bravely, my lamb,’ she said. ‘And what may your name
be?’ She had to look up to Lethington for his reply, but did not let go
of the child. His name was Ninian Ross. ‘I would I had one like you,
Ninian Ross!’ she cried in his own tongue, kissed him again, and let him
go.
People said to each other, ‘She loves too much, she is too free of her
loving—to kiss and dandle a bairn in the street.’
‘Honeypot, Honeypot!’ said grudging Mr. Knox, looking on rapt at all this.
Des-Essars writes: ‘She believed she had won the entry of the heart; she
read in the castle guns, bells of steeples, and hoarse outcry of the
crowd, assurance of what she hoped for. I was glad, for my part, and
disposed to thank God heartily, that we reached Holyroodhouse without
injury to her person or insult to cut her to the soul.’
I think Des-Essars too sensitive: she was fully as shrewd an observer as
he could have been. At least, she returned in good spirits. If any were
tired, she was not; but danced all night with her Frenchmen. Monsieur de
Châtelard was a happy man when he had her in his arms.
‘Miséricorde—O Queen of Love! Thus I would go through the world, though I
burned in hell for it after.’
‘Thus would not I,’ quoth she. ‘You are hurting me. Take care.’
They brought her news in the midst that the Earl of Bothwell was in town
with a great company, and would kiss her hands in the morning if he might.
‘Let him come to me now while I am happy,’ she said. ‘Who knows what
to-morrow may do for me?’
She sent away Châtelard, and waited. Soon enough she saw the Earl’s
broad shoulders making a way, the daring eyes, the hardy mouth. ‘You are
welcome, my lord, to Scotland.’
‘But am I welcome to your Majesty?’
‘You have been slow to seek my welcome, sir.’
‘Madam, I have been slow to believe it.’
‘You need faith, Monsieur de Boduel.’
‘I wish that your Majesty did!’
‘Why so?’
‘That your Majesty might partake of mine.’
They chopped words for half an hour or more. But she had her match in him.
She was friends with all the world that night, or tried to think so. Yet,
at the going to bed, when the lights were out, the guards posted, and
state-rooms empty save for the mice, she came up to Mary Livingstone and
stroked her face without a word, coaxing for assurance of her triumph.
Wanting it still—for the maid was glum—she supplied it for herself. ‘We
rule all Scotland, my dear, we rule all Scotland!’
But Mary Livingstone held up her chin, to be out of reach of that
wheedling hand. Coldly, or as coldly as she might, she looked at the
eager face, and braved the glimmering eyes.
‘Ay,’ she said, ‘ay, you do. You and John Knox betwixt you.’
The Queen laughed. ‘Shall I marry Mr. Knox? He is twice a widower.’
‘He would wed you the morn’s morn if you would have him,’ says
Livingstone. ‘’Tis a fed horse, that Knox.’
‘He feeds on wind, I think,’ the Queen said; and the maid snorted,
implacable.
‘’Tis a better food than your Earl of Bothwell takes, to my mind.’
‘And what is his food?’
‘The blood of women and their tears,’ said Mary Livingstone.