THE FOOL’S WHIP
After a progress about the kingdom, which she thought it well to make for
many reasons—room for the pacifying arm of Mr. Knox being one—it befell
as she had hoped. Speedily and well had the preacher gone to work: the
Earl of Arran walked abroad without a bodyguard, the Earl of Bothwell
showed himself at Court and was received upon his former footing. The
Queen had looked sharply at him, on his first appearance, for any sign
of a shameful face; there was not to be seen the shadow of a shade. It
is not too much to say that she would have been greatly disappointed
if there had been any; for to take away hardihood from this man would
be to make his raillery a ridiculous offence, his gay humour a mere
symptom of the tavern. No, but he laughed at her as slyly as ever before;
he reassumed his old pretensions, he gave back no inch of ground—and,
remember, in an affair of the sort, if the man holds his place the maid
must yield something of hers. It is bound to be a case of give or take.
She felt herself in the act to give, was glad of it, and concealed it
from Mary Livingstone. When this girl, her bosom friend and bedfellow,
made the outcry you might expect of her, the Queen pretended extreme
surprise.
‘Do you suppose this country the Garden of Eden, my dear? Are all the
Scots lords wise virgins, careful over lamp-wicks? Am I Queen of a Court
of Love by chance, and is my Lord of Bothwell a postulant? You tell me
news. I assure you he is nothing to me.’
Now these words were spoken on a day when he had declared himself
something as plainly as was convenient. Exactly what had happened was
this:—
On the anniversary-day of the death of little King Francis of France,
the Queen kept the house with her maids, and professed to see nobody.
A requiem had been sung, the faithful few attending in black mourning.
She, upon a faldstool, solitary before the altar at the pall, looked a
very emblem of pure sorrow—exquisitely dressed in long nun-like weeds;
no relief of white; her face very pale, hands thin and fragile, only one
ring to the whole eight fingers. Motionless, not observed to open her
lips, wink her eyes, scarcely seen to breathe, there she stayed when mass
was done and the chapel empty, save for women and a page or two.
At noon, just before dinner, she walked in the garden, kept empty by
her directions—a few turns with Beaton and Fleming, and Des-Essars for
escort—then, bidding them leave her, sat alone in a yew-tree bower in
full sun. It was warm dry weather for the season.
Presently, as she sat pensive, toying perhaps with grief, trying to
recall it or maintain it—who knows?—she heard footsteps not far off,
voices in debate; and looked sidelong up to see who could be coming. It
was the Earl of Bothwell who showed himself first round the angle of
the terrace, arm-in-arm of that Lord Arran whom she had procured to be
his friend; behind these two were Ormiston, some Hamilton or another,
and Paris, Lord Bothwell’s valet. They were in high spirits and free
talk, those two lords, unconscious or careless of her privacy; Bothwell
was gesticulating in that French way he had; the other, with his head
inclined, listened closely, and sniggered in spite of himself. Both were
in cheerful colours; notably, Bothwell wore crimson cloth with a cloak of
the same, a purpoint of lace, a white feather in his cap. Arran first saw
the Queen, stopped instantly, uncovered, and said something hasty to his
companion; he stared with his light fish-eyes and kept his mouth open.
Bothwell looked up in his good time and bared his head as he did so. It
seems that he muttered some order or advice, for when Lord Arran slipped
by on the tips of his toes, all the rest followed him; but Lord Bothwell
walked leisurely over the grass towards the Queen, as who should say, ‘I
am in the wrong—in truth I am a careless devil. Well, give me my due;
admit I am not a timorous devil.’
As he stood before her, attentive and respectful in his easy way, she
watched him nearly, and he waited for her words. It is a sign of how
they stood to one another at this time that she began her speech in
the middle—as if her thoughts, in spite of herself, became at a point
articulate.
‘You also, my lord!’
‘_Plaît-il?_’
‘Oh, you understand me very well.’
‘Madam, upon my honour! I am a dull dog that can see but one thing at a
time.’
She forced herself to speak. ‘I ask you, then, if this is the day of all
days when you choose to pass by me in your festival gear? I ask if you
also are with the rest of them?’
He made as if he would spread his hands out—the motion was enough. It
said—though he was silent—‘Madam, I am no better than other men.’
‘Oh, I believe it, I believe it! You are no better indeed; but I had
thought you wiser.’
He caught at the word, and rubbed his chin over it. ‘Hey, my faith,
madam—wiser!’
The Queen tapped her foot. ‘If I had said kinder, I might have betrayed
myself for a fool. Kindness, wisdom, generosity, pity! In all these
things I must believe you to be as other men. Is it not so?’
Seeing her clouded eyes, he did not affect to laugh any more. He was
either a bad courtier or one supremely expert; for he spoke as irritably
as he felt.
‘Madam, I know few men save men of spirit, therefore I cannot advise
you. But you know the saw, _Come asino sape così minuzza rape_: “The
donkey bites his carrot as well as he knows.” Wisdom is becoming to a
servant; kindness, generosity, and the rest of these high virtues are
the ornament of a master, or mistress. Why, madam, if I desire the warmth
of the sun, shall I ever get it by shivering? Is that a wise reflection?’
She clasped her hands over her knee, and looked at her foot as she swung
it slowly; but if the action was idle the words were not. ‘If I asked
you, my lord, to wear the dule with me upon this one day of the year,
should you refuse me? If I grieve, will you not grieve with me?’
He never faltered, but spoke as gaily as a sailor to his lass. ‘Faith of
a gentleman, madam, why should I grieve—except for that you should grieve
still? For your grieving there may be a remedy; and as for me, far from
grieving with you, I thank the kindly gods.’
She bit her lip as she shivered. ‘You are cruel,’ she said: ‘you are
cruel. I knew it before. Your heart is cruel. This is the very subtlety
of the vice.’
‘Not so, madam,’ he answered quietly; ‘but it is dangerous simplicity. Do
you not know why I give thanks?—I think you do, indeed.’
Very certainly she thought so too.
She sat on after he was gone, twisting her fingers about as she spun her
busy fancies; and was so found by her maids. Little King Francis and
the purple pall which signified him were buried for that day; and after
dinner she changed her black gown for a white. It was at going to bed
that night that she had rallied Mary Livingstone about Scots lords and
wise virgins, and declared that Lord Bothwell was nothing to her. And the
maid believed her just as far as you or I may do.
Not that the thing was grown serious by any means: the maid of honour
made too much of one possible lover, and the Queen, very likely, too
little. The difference between these two was this: Mary Livingstone
looked upon her Majesty’s lovers with a match-maker’s eye, but Queen Mary
with a shepherding eye. The flock was everything to her. Just now, for
example, she was anxious about certain other strays; and, as time wore on
to the dark of the year, she began to be impatient. The Gordons, said her
brother James, were playing her false; but it was incredible to her—not
that they should be at fault, but that her instinct should be so. She
could have sworn to the truth of that fine Lord Gordon, and been certain
that she had won over old Huntly at the last. The mistake—if she was
mistaken—is common to queens and pretty children, who, finding themselves
in the centre of their world, give that a circumference beyond the line
of sight. Because all eyes are upon them they think that there is nothing
else to be seen. She was to learn that Huntly at Court and Huntly in
Badenoch were two separate persons; so said the Lord James.
‘Sister, alas! I fear a treacherous and stiff-necked generation’; and he
had more to go upon than he chose her to guess as yet.
So far, at least, she had to admit that old Huntly was a liar: John of
Findlater was never brought back. Her messengers returned again and
again, saying, ‘The Earl was in the hills,’ or ‘The Earl was hunting
the deer,’ or ‘The Earl was punishing the Forbeses.’ And where was her
fine Lord Gordon, with his sea-blue, hawk’s eyes? She was driven at
last to send after him—a peremptory summons to meet her at Dundee; but
he never came—could not be found or served with the letter—was believed
to be with the Earl, his father, but had been heard of in the west with
the Hamiltons, etc. etc. The face of Lord James—his eyes ever upon the
Earldom of Moray—was sufficient answer to her doubts; and when she turned
to Lord Bothwell for comfort, he laughed and said, reminding her of a
former conversation, ‘Prick the old bladder, madam, scatter the pease;
then watch warily who come to the feast.’
Then a certain Lord Ruthven entered her field, sent for out of Gowrie—a
dour, pallid man, with fatality pressing heavily on his forehead. It
seemed to weigh his brows over his eyes, and to goad him at certain
stressful times to outbursts of savagery—snarling, tooth-baring—terrible
to behold. He hated Huntly as one Scots lord could hate another, for no
known reason.
‘You ask me what you shall do with Huntly, madam? I say, hang him on a
tree, and poison crows with him. It will be the best service he can ever
do you.’
He said this at the council board, and dismayed her sorely. It seemed to
her that he churned his spleen between his teeth till it foamed at his
loose lips.
She flew to the comfort of her maids: here was her cabinet of last
resource! They throned her among them, put their heads near together,
and considered the case of Scotland. Mary Livingstone could see but one
remedy for the one deep-set disease. Bothwell’s broad chest shadowed all
the realm as with a cloud: chase that away, you might get a glimpse of
poor Scotland; but while the dreadful gloom endured the Gordons seemed to
her a swarm of gnats, harmless at a distance. ‘Let them starve in their
own quags, my dear heart,’ she said; ‘you will have them humble when they
are hungry. Theirs is the sin of pride—but, O Mother of Heaven, keep us
clean from the sin that laughs at sinning!’
Mary Fleming put in a word for the advice of Mr. Secretary Lethington,
but blushed when the others nudged each other. The Secretary was known to
be her servant. Mary Beaton said, ‘I thought we were to speak of Huntly?
_Ma belle dame_, touch his heart with your finger-tips.’
‘So I would if I knew the way,’ said the Queen, frowning.
‘Send him back his bonny boy Adam,’ says Beaton; ‘I undertake that he
will plead your cause. You have given him good reason.’
The Queen thought well of this; so presently Adam Gordon was sent north
as legate _a latere_.
* * * * *
Christmas went out, Lent drew on, the months passed. The Ark of State
tossed in unrestful waters, but young Adam of Gordon came not again
with a slip of olive. ‘If that child should prove untrue,’ said the
Queen, ‘then his father is the lying traitor you report him.’ This to
Mr. Secretary Lethington, very much with her just now, at work for Mr.
Secretary Cecil of England, trying his hardest to bring about a meeting
between his mistress and the mistress of his friend. Lethington, knowing
what he did know, had little consolation for her; but he bore word to
his master, the Lord James, that the Queen was angering fast with the
Gordons; a very little more and the fire would leap.
‘In my poor judgment,’ he said, ‘the kindling-spark will be struck when
she sees the scribbling of her love-image. She hath fashioned a very Eros
out of George Gordon.’
‘I conceive, Mr. Secretary,’ said the Lord James, making no sign that he
had heard him, ‘that the times are ripe for our budget of news.’
‘I think with your lordship,’ the Secretary replied, ‘but will you be
your own post-boy?’
‘Ah! I am a dullard, Mr. Secretary,’ said my lord. ‘Your mind forges in
front of mine.’
He was fond of penning his agents in close corners. Let them be explicit
since he would never be. Lethington gulped his chagrin.
‘My meaning was, my lord, that it will advantage you more to confirm than
to spread your news concerning the Lord Gordon. Whoso tells her Majesty
a thing to anger her, I have observed that he will surely receive some
part of her wrath. Not so the man who is forced to admit the truth of
a report. He, on the contrary, gains trust; for delicacy in a courtier
outweighs integrity with our mistress. Therefore let the Duke bring the
news, and do you wait until you can bow your head over it. Perhaps I
speak more plainly than I ought.’
‘I think you do, sir, indeed,’ says the Lord James, and lacerates his
Lethington.
* * * * *
There was a masque upon Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnival, and
much folly done, which ended, like a child’s romp, in a sobbing fit. Amid
the lights, music, laughter of the throng, the Queen and her maids braved
it as saucy young men, trunked, puffed, pointed, trussed and doubleted;
short French cloaks over one shoulder, flat French caps over one ear.
Mary Livingstone was the properest, being so tall, Mary Fleming the least
at ease, Mary Beaton the pertest, and Mary Seton the prettiest boy.
But Mary the Queen was the most provoking, the trimmest, most assured
little gallant that ever you saw; and yet, by that art she had, that
extraordinary tact, never more a queen than when now so much a youth.
Her trunks were green and her doublet white velvet; her cloak was violet
threaded with gold. Her cap was as scarlet as her lips; but there was no
jewel in her ear or her girdle to match her glancing eyes. By a perverse
French courtesy, which became them very ill, such men as dared to do
it, or had chins to show, were habited like women. Queen Mary led out
Monsieur de Châtelard in a ruff and hooped gown; Des-Essars made a nun
of himself, most demure and most uncomfortable; Mary Fleming chose the
Earl of Arran—the only Scot in the mummery—a shepherdess with a crook.
Mary Livingstone would not dance. ‘Never, never, never!’ cried she. ‘Let
women ape men, as I am doing: the thing is natural; we would all be men
if we could. But a man in a petticoat, a man that can blush—ah, bah!
_pourriture de France!_’
That night, rotten or not, Monsieur de Châtelard played the French game.
Queen Mary held him, led him about, bowed where he curtsied, stood
while he sat. He grew bolder as the din grew wilder; he said he was the
Queen’s wife. She thought him a fool, but owned to a kind of sneaking
tenderness for folly of the sort. He called her his dear lord, his sweet
lord, said he was faint and must lean upon her arm. He promised to
make her jealous—went very far in his part. He swore that it was all a
lie—he loved his husband only: ‘Kiss me, dear hub, I am sick of love!’
he languished, and she did kiss his cheek. More she would not; indeed,
when she saw the old Duke of Châtelherault struggling through the crowd
about the doors, she felt that here was a chance of getting out of a
tangle. She flung the sick monkey off and went directly towards the Duke.
He had come to town that day, she knew, directly from his lands in the
west: perhaps he would know something of the Gordons. He was a frail,
pink-cheeked old man, with a pointed white beard and delicate hands; so
simple as to be nearly a fool, and yet not so nearly but that he had
been able to beget Lord Arran, a real fool. When he understood that this
swaggering young prince was indeed his queen, he gave up bowing and
waving his hands, and dropped upon his knee, having very courtly old ways
with him.
‘Dear madam, dear my cousin, the Lothians show the greener for your
abiding. ’Tis shrewish weather yet in the hills; but you make a summer
here.’
‘Rise up, my cousin,’ says the Queen, ‘and come talk with me.’ She drew
him to a settle by the wall. ‘What news of your house and country have
you for me?’
‘I hope I shall content your Majesty,’ he said, rubbing his fine hands.
‘We of the west have been junketing. We have killed fatlings for a
marriage.’
She was interested, suspecting nothing. ‘Ah, you have made a marriage!
and I was not told! You used me ill, cousin.’
‘Madam,’ he pleaded somewhat confusedly, ‘it was done in haste: there
were many reasons for that. Take one—my poor health and hastening years.
Nor did time serve to make Hamilton a house. It was a fortalice, and must
remain a fortalice for my lifetime. But for your Grace——’ He stopped,
seeing that she did not listen.
She made haste to turn him on again. ‘Whom did you marry? Not my Lord of
Arran, for he is pranking here. And you design him for me, if I remember.’
‘Oh, madam!’ He was greatly upset by such plain talk. ‘No, no. It was my
daughter Margaret. My son Arran! Ah, that’s a greater thing. My daughter
Margaret, madam——’
‘Yes, yes. But the man—the man!’
‘Madam, the Lord of Gordon took her.’ He beamed with pride and
contentment. ‘Yes, yes, the Lord of Gordon—a pact of amity between two
houses not always too happily engaged.’
There is no doubt she blenched at the name—momentarily, as one may at a
sudden flash of lightning. She got up at once. ‘I think you have mistook
his name, cousin. His name is Beelzebub. He is called after his father.’
She left him holding his head, and went swiftly towards the door.
The dreary Châtelard crept after her. ‘My prince—my lord!’
‘No, no; I cannot hear you now.’ She waved him off.
Bowing, he shivered at his plight; but ‘Courage, my child,’ he bade
himself: ‘“Not _now_,” she saith.’
All dancing stopped, all secret talk, all laughing, teasing, and
love-making. They opened her a broad way. The Earl of Bothwell swept the
floor with his thyrsus: he was disguised as the Theban god. But she cried
out the more vehemently, ‘No, no! I am pressed; I cannot hear you now.
You cannot avail me any more,’ and flashed through the doorway. ‘Send me
Livingstone to my closet,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘and send me
Lethington.’ She ran up her privy stair, and waited for her servants,
tapping her foot, irresolute, in the middle of the floor.
Mary Livingstone flew in breathless. ‘What is it? What is it, my lamb?’
‘Get me a great cloak, child, and hide up all this foolery; and let Mr.
Secretary wait until I call him.’
Mary Livingstone covered her from neck to foot, took off the scarlet cap,
coifed her head seemly, brought a stool for her feet: hid the boy in the
lady, you see, and all done without a word, admirable girl!
The Queen had been in a hard stare the while. ‘Now let me see M. de
Lethington. But stay you with me.’
‘Ay, till they cut me down,’ says Livingstone, and fetched in the
Secretary.
She began at once. ‘I find, Mr. Secretary, that there is room for more
knaves yet in Scotland.’
‘Alack, madam,’ says he, ‘yes, truly. They can lie close, do you see,
like mushrooms, and thrive the richlier. Knaves breed knavishly, and
Scotland is a kindly nurse.’
‘There are likely to be more. Here hath the Duke married his daughter,
and the Lord of Huntly that brave son of his whom of late he offered to
me. Is this knavery or the ecstasy of a fool? What! Do they think to win
from me by insult what they have not won by open dealing?’
Mr. Secretary, who had known this piece of news for a month or more, did
not think it well to overact surprise. He contented himself with, ‘Upon
my word!’ but added, after a pause, ‘This seems to me rash folly rather
than a reasoned affront.’
The Queen fumed, and in so doing betrayed what had really angered
her. ‘Knave or fool, what is it to me? A false fine rogue! All rogues
together. Ah, he professed my good service, declared himself worthy of
trust—declared himself my lover! Heavens and earth, are lovers here of
this sort?’
Mary Livingstone stooped towards her. ‘Think no more of him—ah me, think
of none of them! They seek not your honour, nor love, nor service, but
just the sweet profit they can suck from you.’
The Queen put her chin upon her two clasped hands. ‘I have heard my aunt,
Madame de Ferrara, declare,’ she said, with a metallic ring in her voice
which was new to it, ‘that in the marshes about that town the peasant
women, and girls also, do trade their legs by standing in the lagoon
and gathering the leeches that fasten upon them to suck blood. These
they sell for a few pence and give their lovers food. But my lovers in
Scotland are the leeches; so here stand I, trading myself, with all men
draining me of profit to fatten themselves.’
‘Madam——’ said Lethington quickly, then stopped.
‘Well?’ says the Queen.
‘I would say, madam, the fable is a good one. Gather your leeches and
sell them for pence. Afterwards, if it please you, trade no more in the
swamps, but royally, in a royal territory. Ah, trade you with princes,
madam! I hope to set up a booth for your Majesty’s commerce, and to find
a chafferer of your own degree.’
She understood very well that he spoke of an English alliance for her,
and that this was not to be had without a husband of English providing.
‘I think you are right,’ she replied. ‘If the Queen of England, my good
sister, come half-way towards me, I will go the other half. This you may
tell to Mr. Randolph if you choose.’
‘Be sure that I tell him, madam.’
‘Good dreams to you, Mr. Secretary.’
‘And no dreams at all to your Majesty—but sweet, careless sleep!’
The Queen, turning for consolation to her Livingstone, won the relief of
tears. They talked in low tones to each other for a little while, the
mistress’s head on the maid’s shoulder, and her two hands held. The Queen
was out of heart with Scotland, with love, with all this skirting of
perils. She was for prudence just now—prudence and the English road. Then
came in the tirewoman for the unrobing, and then a final argument for
England.
Monsieur de Châtelard, who truly (as he had told Des-Essars) was a
foredoomed man, lay hidden at this moment where no man should have lain
unsanctified. I shall not deal with him and his whereabouts further than
to say that, just as Frenchmen are slow to see a joke, so they are loath
to let it go. He had proposed on this, of all nights of the year, to
push his joke of the ballroom into chamber-practice. Some further silly
babble about ‘wifely duty’ was to extenuate his great essay. If jokes
had been his common food, I suppose he would have known the smell of a
musty one. As it was, he had to suffer in the fire which old Huntly and
his Hamilton-marriage had lit: his joke was burnt up as it left his lips.
For the Queen’s words, when she found him, clung about him like flames
about an oil-cask, scorched him, blistered him, shrivelled him up. He
fell before them, literally, and lay, dry with fear, at her discretion.
She spurned him with her heel. ‘Oh, you weed,’ she said, ‘not worthy
to be burned, go, or I send for the maids with besoms to wash you into
the kennel.’ He crept away to the shipping next day, pressing only the
hand of Des-Essars, who could hardly refuse him. ‘His only success on
this miserable occasion,’ the young man wrote afterwards, ‘was to divert
the Queen’s rage from Monsieur de Gordon, and to turn her thoughts, by
ever so little more, in the direction of the English marriage. He was
one of those fools whose follies serve to show every man more or less
ridiculous, just as a false sonnet makes sonneteering jejune.’
* * * * *
Lent opened, therefore, with omens; and with more came Lady Day and the
new year. The Gordons, being summoned, did not answer; the Gordons, then,
were put to the horn. The Queen was bitter as winter against them, with
no desire but to have them at her knees. As for lovers and their loves,
after George Gordon, after the crowning shame of Monsieur de Châtelard,
ice-girdled Artemis was not chaster than she. My Lord of Bothwell, after
an essay or two, shrugged and sought the border; the Queen was all for
high alliances just now, and Mr. Secretary, their apostle, was in favour.
He was hopeful, as he told Mary Fleming, to see two Queens at York;
and who could say what might not come of that? And while fair Fleming
wondered he was most hopeful, for like a delicate tree he needed genial
air to make him bud. You saw him at such seasons at his best—a shrewd,
nervous man, with a dash of poetry in him. The Queen of England always
inspired him; he was frequently eloquent upon the theme. His own Queen
talked freely about her ‘good sister,’ wrote her many civil letters, and
treasured a few stately replies. One wonders, reading them now, that they
should have found warmer quarters than a pigeon-hole, that they could
ever have lain upon Queen Mary’s bosom and been beat upon by her ardent
heart. Yet so it was. They know nothing of Queen Mary who know her not
as the Huntress, never to be thrown out by a cold scent. Mr. Secretary,
knowing her well, harped as long as she would dance. ‘Ah, madam, there
is a golden trader! Thence you may win an argosy indeed. What a bargain
to be struck there! Sister kingdoms, sister queens—oh, if the Majesty of
England were but lodged in a man’s heart! But so in essence it is. Her
royal heart is like a strong fire, leaping within a frame of steel. And
your Grace’s should be the jewel which that fire would guard, the _Cor
Cordis_, the Secret of the Rose, the Sweetness in the Strong!’
Mary Fleming, glowing to hear such periods, saw her mistress catch light
from them.
‘You speak well and truly,’ said Queen Mary. ‘I would I had the Queen
of England for my husband; I would love her well.’ She spoke softly,
blushing like a maiden.
‘Sister and spouse!’ cries Lethington with ardour. ‘Sister and spouse!’
For the sake of some such miraculous consummation she gave up all
thoughts of Don Carlos, put away the Archduke, King Charles, the Swedish
prince. Her sister of England should marry her how she would. Lethington,
on the day it was decided that Sir James Melvill should go to London upon
the business, knelt before his sovereign in a really honest transport,
transfigured in the glory of his own fancy. ‘I salute on my knees the
Empress of the Isles! I touch the sacred stem of the Tree of the New
World!’
Very serious, very subdued, very modest, the Queen cast virginal eyes to
her lap.
‘God willing, Mr. Secretary, I will do His pleasure in all things,’ she
said.
The Lord James, observing her melting mood, made a stroke for the Earldom
of Moray. Were the Gordons to defy the Majesty of Scotland? With these
great hopes new born, with old shames dead and buried—never, never! The
Queen said she would go to the North and hound the Gordons out.