The Queen sent for more lights, and drink for the fiddlers. She did more.

To please the French Ambassador and his suite, she and her maids put on

men’s clothes, and flashed golden hangers from their belts before the

courtly circle. The dancing grew the looser as the lights flared to their

end. Many a man and many a maid slept by the wall; but there was high

revelry in the midst.

Very late, the tumble and rioting at its top, in came the King, with Lord

Ruthven, Archie Douglas, and some more of his friends. He stared, brushed

his hot eyes. ‘What a witches’ Sabbath! Where’s my——? Where’s the Queen?’

‘Yonder, sir. Masked, and talking with my Lady Argyll—and——’

‘God help us, I see.’ He pushed squarely through the crowd, and stood

before her, not steadily.

‘Good-morrow to your Majesty,’ he said. ‘The hour is late—or early, as

you take it. But I am here—ready for bed.’

She held her head up, looking away from him, and spoke as if she were

talking to her people.

‘I’ll not come,’ she said. ‘I am going to cards. Come, ladies. Come,

sirs.’ Turning, she left him.

He looked after her owlishly, blinking as if he was about to cry. He

caught Ruthven by the arm. ‘Oh, man,’ he said, ‘oh, Ruthven, do you see

that? Do you see whom she has there?’

‘Hush, sir,’ says Ruthven. ‘’Tis the same as yesterday, and all the

yesterdays, and as many morrows as you choose to stomach. Come you to

your bed. You cannot mend it this way.’

The King still blinked and looked after his wife. He began to tremble.

‘Oh, man,’ he said, ‘when shall I do it?’

Ruthven, after a flashing look at him, ran after the Queen’s party. She

was a little in front, cloaked now and walking with her ladies. Ruthven

caught up the Italian and said some words. The man stopped, and looked

at him guardedly. Ruthven came closer, and put his hand on his shoulder,

talking copiously. As he talked, and went on talking, his hand slipped

gently down the Italian’s back to his middle, opened itself wide, and

stayed there open.

They parted with laughter on both sides, and a bow from David. Ruthven

came back.

‘You may do it when you please, sir,’ he said to the King.

CHAPTER IV

MANY DOGS

When, on 6th March, the expected stroke fell upon my Lord Chancellor

Morton, and he was required to hand over the seals of his high office

to the Queen’s messengers, he did so with a certain heavy dignity. As I

imply, he had had time for preparation. He had not seen his sovereign for

some weeks, knew that Lethington had not, knew also that his alliance

(even his kinship) with the King had worked against him, and suspected

finally, that what that had not done for his prospects had been managed

by the Italian. So he bowed his head to Erskine and Traquair when they

waited upon him, and, pointing to the Great Seal on the table, said

simply, ‘Let her Majesty take back what her Majesty gave. Gentlemen, good

night.’ Truly, we may say that nothing in his life became him like the

leaving it: but that is the rule.

The same evening—nine o’clock and a snowy night—Archie Douglas came

to his house in the Cowgate and found him writing letters—not easily,

but with grunts, his tongue curling about his upper lip. The disgraced

Chancellor looked up, saw his cousin, and went on writing. Archie waited.

So presently, ‘_Moriturus te salutat_,’ says the Earl, without ceasing to

labour.

‘Pshaw, cousin,’ says Archie, ‘I have come to you with a better cry nor

that.’

‘Have you indeed?’ scoffed my lord. ‘Man, I would be fain to know it.’

‘’Tis _Habet_,’ says Archie, ‘and down with your thumb.’

Lord Morton leaned back in his chair and raked his beard with the pen’s

end. The quip struck his fancy as a pleasant one.

‘I take your meaning,’ he said. ‘I had thought of it myself. But, to say

nothing of his place by her side, I doubt he wears a steel shirt.’

Archie said shortly: ‘He does not. The King felt him last night as he sat

at the cards. And Ruthven felt him well on Bothwell’s marriage night.’

‘The King! He did that!’

‘He did just that.’

Morton gazed at him for a minute. ‘Why,’ he marvelled, ‘why, then he

stands in wi’ the rest? Archie, are ye very sure?’

Archie the wise snapped his fingers at such elementary knowledge. ‘A

month gone, come Friday, he began to open to Ruthven about it.’

The Earl rapped the table smartly with his fingers. ‘And I am the last to

know it! I thank you, cousin, for your good conceit of me. By the mass,

man, you treat me like a boy.’

‘It’s no doing of mine,’ says Archie. ‘I was for making you privy to it

a week syne; but Ruthven, he said, “No.” You were still Chancellor, d’ye

see? And, says Ruthven, your lordship was a tappit hen, that would sit

till they took the last egg from under ye.’

‘Damn his black tongue!’ growled my lord, and looked at his letters. ‘But

he’s in the right of it,’ he added. ‘Cold, cold is my nest the now.’

Archie moistened his lips. ‘They took the seals from you this morn,

cousin?’

‘It is not three hours since they had them.’

‘Do you guess what did it?’

Morton laughed shortly. ‘Ay! It was my Crown-Matrimonial, I doubt.’

‘And do you guess who did it?’

He did not laugh now. ‘Have done with your idle questioning. Who should

do it but the fiddler?’

‘One more question,’ says Archie, ‘by your leave. Do you guess who sits

in your seat?’

‘Ay, I think it, I think it. She will give it to one of her familiars—her

Huntly, or her fine Bothwell.’

Archie once more snapped his fingers. ‘Nor one, nor t’other. There’s a

man more familiar than the pair. Cousin, the fiddler seals the briefs!

The Italian is to be Chancellor. Now what d’ye say?’

Lord Morton said nothing at all. He looked up, he looked down; he screwed

his hands together, rolled one softly over the other.

Archie watched his heavy face grow darker as the tide of rage crept up.

Presently he tried to move him.

‘Are you for England, cousin?’ he asked.

‘Ay,’ said Morton, ‘that is my road.’

Archie then touched him on the shoulder. ‘Bide a while, my lord. We shall

all be friends here before many days. Argyll is here.’

‘Argyll? The fine man!’

‘A finer follows him hard.’

‘Who then? Your sage Lethington?’

‘Lethington! Hoots! no; but the black Earl of Moray, my good lord.’

The Earl of Morton stopped in the act of whistling.

‘Moray comes home?’

‘Ay. His forfeiture is set for the 12th. He is coming home to meet it.

All’s ready.’

Morton was greatly interested. To gain time he asked an idle question.

‘Who has written him to come? Lethington?’

‘Ay, Michael Wylie.’

This was the name they gave him. Machiavelli may be intended—if so, an

injustice to each.

‘Who returns with my lord?’ Morton asked him next; and Archie held up his

fingers.

‘All of them that are now in England. Rothes, Pitarrow, Grange—all of

them. Stout men, cousin.’

Stout indeed! One of them had been enough for Master Davy. My Lord

Morton, his head sunk into his portly chest, considered this news. Moray

was an assurance—for how did Moray strike? In the dark—quickly—when no

one was by. Well, then, if Moray were coming to strike one’s enemy, why

should one meddle? He was never at his ease in that great man’s company,

because he could never be sure of his own aims while he doubted those

of his colleague. You could not tell—you never could tell—what James

Stuart intended. He would cut at one for the sake of hitting another at a

distance. If he were coming back to cut at the Italian, for instance—at

what other did he hope to reach? Morton drove his slow wits to work as

he sat staring at his papers, trying vainly to bottom the designs of a

man whom he admired and distrusted profoundly. Why so much force to scrag

a wretched Italian? The King, Archie, Moray, Grange, Pitarrow, Argyll!

And now himself, Morton! At whom was Moray aiming? Was he entangling the

King, whom he hated? Could he be working against the Queen, his sister?

They used to say he coveted the throne. Could this be his intent?

Such possibilities disturbed him. Let me do Lord Morton the justice to

say that his very grossness saved him from any more curious villainy

than a quick blow at an enemy. The Italian had galled his dignity: damn

the dog! he would kill him for it. But to intend otherwise than loyalty

to the King, his kinsman—no, no! And as for the Queen’s Majesty—why,

she was a lass, and a pretty lass too, though a wilful. She would never

have stood in his way but for that beastly foreign whisperer. Yet—if

the King had been dishonoured by the fiddler, and Moray (knowing that)

meant honestly ... Eh, sirs! So he pondered in his dull, muddled way—his

poor wits, like yoked oxen, heavily plodding the fields of speculation,

turning furrow after furrow! Guess how he vexed the nimble Archie.

‘Well, cousin, well?’ cries that youth at last: ‘I must be going where my

friends await me.’

‘Man,’ said Morton, and stopped him, ‘where are ye for?’

Archie replied: ‘Mum’s the word. But if you are the man I believe you,

you shall come along with me this night.’

Morton had made up his mind. ‘I am with you—for good or ill,’ he said.

Cloaked and booted, the two kinsmen went out into the dark. The wind had

got up, bringing a scurry of dry snow: they had to pull the door hard to

get it home.

‘Rough work at sea the night,’ said Archie.

‘You’ll be brewing it rougher on land, I doubt,’ was Lord Morton’s

commentary.

* * * * *

In a little crow-stepped house by the shore of the Nor’ Loch the Earl

of Morton was required to set his hand to certain papers, upon which

they showed him the names of Argyll, Rothes, Ruthven, Archie Douglas,

Lethington, and others. He asked at once to see Lord Moray’s name: they

told him Lethington had it to a letter, which bound him as fast as any

bond.

‘It should be here,’ he said seriously.

But Ruthven cried out, How could it be there when his lordship was over

the Border?

Morton shook his head. ‘It should be here, gentlemen. ’Twere better to

wait for it. What hurry is there?’

Ruthven said that the game was begun and ought to go on now. ‘Judge you,

my lord,’ he appealed, ‘if I should put my head into a noose unless I

held the cord in my own hand.’

In his private mind Morton believed Ruthven a madman. But he did not see

how he could draw out now.

He read through the two papers—bands, they called them. It was required

of those who signed that they should assist the King their sovereign lord

to get the Crown-Matrimonial—no harm in that!—and that they should stand

enemies to his enemies, friends to his friends. On his side the King

engaged to remove the forfeiture from the exiled lords, to put back the

Earl of Morton into his office, and to establish the Protestant religion.

Not a word of the Italian, not a word of the Queen. The things were well

worded, evidently by Lethington.

‘When are we to be at it?’ he asked.

Ruthven told him, ‘Saturday coming, at night.’ It was now Thursday.

‘How shall you deal?’ This was Morton again.

He was told, In the small hours of the night——and there he stopped them

at once. ‘Oh, Ruthven! Oh, Lindsay! Never on the Sabbath morn! Sirs, ye

should not——’

But Ruthven waved him off. The exact hour, he said, must depend upon

events. This, however, was the plan proposed. When the Queen was set

down to cards or a late supper, Lord Morton with his men was to hold the

entry, doors, stairheads, passages, forecourt of the palace. Traquair

would be off duty, Erskine could be dealt with. Bothwell, Huntly, Atholl,

and all the rest of the Queen’s friends would be abed; and Lindsay was to

answer for keeping them there. The King was to go into the Queen’s closet

and look over her shoulder at the game. At a moment agreed upon he would

lift up her chin, say certain words, kiss her, and repeat the words. That

was to be the signal: then Ruthven, Archie Douglas, and Fawdonsyde—Ker of

Fawdonsyde, a notorious ruffian—would do their work.

Morton listened to all this intently, with slow-travelling eyes which

followed the rafters from their spring in one wall to their cobwebbed end

in the other. He could find no flaw at first, nor put his finger upon the

damnable blot there must be in it; but after a time, as he figured it

over and over, he missed somebody. ‘Stop there! stop there, you Ruthven!’

he thundered. ‘Tell me this: Where will Lethington be the while?’

He was told, ‘Gone to meet the Earl of Moray.’ Moray!—his jaw fell.

‘What! will Moray no be with me?’

They said, it was much hoped. But the roads were heavy; there was a

possibility——

He jeered at them. Did they not know Moray yet? ‘Man,’ he said, turning

to Archie, ‘it’s not a possibility, it’s as certain as the Day of Doom.’

Then they all talked at once. Moray’s name was fast to a letter; the

letter was fast in Lethington’s poke; Lethington was fast to the band.

What more could be done? Would Lethington endanger his neck? His safety

was Moray’s, and theirs was Lethington’s. And the King? What of the King?

‘You talk of Doomsday, my lord!’ shouts Ruthven, with the slaver of his

rage upon his mouth: ‘there’s but one doom impending, and we’ll see to

it.’

Perorations had no effect upon Morton, who was still bothered. He went

over the whole again, clawing down his fingers as he numbered the

points. There was himself to keep the palace, there was Lindsay to hold

back Bothwell; the King to go into the closet—the kiss—the words of

signal—then Ruthven and——Here he stopped, and his eyes grew small.

‘Oh, sirs,’ he said, ‘the poor lassie! Sold with a kiss! She’s big, sirs;

you’ll likely kill mother and bairn.’

Ruthven, squinting fearfully, slammed the table. ‘Whose bairn, by the

Lord? Tell me whose?’

Morton shook his head. ‘Yon’s hell-work,’ he said. ‘I’ll have nothing

to do wi’t. I guess who’s had the devising of it. ’Tis Lethington—a

grey-faced thief.’

Here Archie Douglas, after looking to Ruthven, intervened, and talked for

nearly half an hour to his cousin. Morton, very gloomy, heard him out;

then made his own proposition. He would stand by the King, he said; he

would hold the palace. No man should come in or out without the password.

But he would not go upstairs, nor know who went up or what went on. This

also he would have them all promise before he touched the band with a

pen:—Whatever was done to the Italian should be done in the passage.

There should be no filthy butchery of a girl and her child, either

directly or by implication, where he had a hand at a job. Such was his

firm stipulation. Archie swore to observe it; Fawdonsyde, Lindsay, swore;

Ruthven said nothing.

‘Archie,’ said his cousin, ‘go you and fetch me the Scriptures. I shall

fasten down Ruthven with the keys of God.’ Ruthven put his hand upon the

book and swore. Then the Earl of Morton signed the band.

CHAPTER V

MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCES OF JEAN-MARIE-BAPTISTE DES-ESSARS

On that appointed night of Saturday, the 9th of March—a blowy, snowy

night, harrowing for men at sea, with a mort of vessels pitching at their

cables in Leith Roads—Des-Essars was late for his service. He should have

come on to the door at ten o’clock, and it wanted but two minutes to that

when he was beating down the Castle hill in the teeth of the wind.

Never mind his errand, and expect fibs if you ask what had kept him.

Remember that he was older at this time than when you first saw him,

a French boy ‘with smut-rimmed eyes,’ crop-headed, pale, shrewd, and

reticent. That was a matter of three years ago: the Queen was but

nineteen and he four years younger. He was eighteen now, and may have

had evening affairs like other people, no concern of yours or mine.

Whatever they may have been, they had kept him unduly; he had two minutes

and wanted seven. He drew his bonnet close, his short cape about him,

and went scudding down the hill as fast as the snow would let him in

shoes dangerously thin for the weather, but useful for tiptoe purposes.

The snow had been heaped upon the cawsey, but in the street trodden,

thawed, and then frozen again to a surface of ice. From it came enough

light to show that few people were abroad, and none lawfully, and that

otherwise it was infernally dark. A strangely diffused, essential light

it was, that of the snow. It put to shame three dying candles left in the

Luckenbooths and the sick flame of an oil lamp above the Netherbow Port.

After passing that, there was no sign of man or man’s comforts until you

were in the Abbey precincts.

Des-Essars knew—being as sharp as a needle—that something was changed

the moment he reached those precincts; knew by the pricking of his skin,

as they say. A double guard set; knots of men-at-arms; some horses led

about; low voices talking in strange accents,—something was altered.

Worse than all this, he found the word of the night unavailing: no manner

of entry for him.

‘My service is the Queen’s, honourable sir,’ he pleaded to an unknown

sentry, who wore (he observed) a steel cap of unusual shape.

The square hackbutter shook his head. ‘No way in this night, Frenchman.’

‘By whose orders, if you please?’

‘By mine, Frenchman.’

Here was misfortune! No help for it, but he must brave what he had hoped

to avoid—his superior officer, to wit.

‘If it please you, sir,’ he said, ‘I will speak with Mr. Erskine in the

guardroom.’

‘Mr. Airrskin!’ was the shocking answer—and how the man spoke it!—‘Mr.

Airrskin! He’s no here. He’s awa’. So now off with ye, Johnny Frenchman.’

The man obviously had orders: but whose orders?

Des-Essars shrugged. He shivered also, as he always did when refused

anything—as if the world had proved suddenly a chill place. But really

the affair was serious. Inside the house he must be, and that early.

Driven to his last resource, he walked back far enough for the dark to

swallow him up, returned upon his tracks a little way so soon as the

hackbutter had resumed his stamping up and down; branched off to the

right, slipping through a ruinous stable, blown to pieces in former

days by the English; crossed a frozen cabbage garden which, having been

flooded, was now a sheet of cat-ice; and so came hard upon the Abbey

wall. In this wall, as he very well knew, there were certain cavities,

used as steps by the household when the gateways were either not

convenient or likely to be denied: indeed, he would not, perhaps, have

cared to reckon how many times he had used them himself. Having chipped

the ice out of them with his hanger, he was triumphantly within the pale,

hopping over the Queen’s privy garden with high-lifted feet, like a dog

in turnips. To win the palace itself was easy. It was mighty little use

having friends in the kitchen if they could not do you services of that

kind.

He had to find the Queen, though, and face what she might give him, but

of that he had little fear. He knew that she would be at cards, and too

full of her troubles and pains to seek for a new one. It is a queer

reflection that he makes in his Memoirs—that although he romantically

loved the Queen, he had no scruples about deceiving her and few fears

of being found out, so only that she did not take the scrape to heart.

‘She was a goddess to me,’ he says, ‘in those days, a remote point of my

adoration. A young man, however, is compact of two parts, an earthly and

a spiritual. If I had exhibited to her the frailties of my earthly part

it would have been by a very natural impulse. However, I never did.’ This

is a digression: he knew that she would not fret herself about him and

his affairs just now, because she was ill, and miserable about the King.

Throwing a kiss of his hand, then, to the yawning scullery-wench, who had

had to get out of her bed to open the window for him, he skimmed down the

corridors on a light foot, and reached the great hall. He hoped to go

tiptoe up the privy stair and gain the door of the cabinet without being

heard. When she came out she would find him there, and all would be well.

This was his plan.

It was almost dark in the hall, but not quite. A tree-bole on the hearth

was in the article of death; a few thin flames about the shell of it

showed him a company of men in the corner by the privy stair. Vexatious!

They were leaning to the wall, some sitting against it; some were on the

steps asleep, their heads nodding to their knees. He was cut off his

sure access, and must go by the main staircase—if he could. He tried it,

sidling along by the farther wall; but they spied him, two of them, and

one went to cut him off. A tall enemy this, for the little Frenchman; but

luckily for him it was a case of boots against no boots where silence

was of the essence of the contract. Des-Essars, his shoes in his hand,

darted out into the open and raced straight for the stair. The enemy

began his pursuit—in riding-boots. Heavens! the crash and clatter on the

flags, the echo from the roof! It would never do: hushed voices called

the man back; he went tender-footed, finally stopped. By that time the

page was up the stair, pausing at the top to wipe his brows and neck of

cold sweat, and to wonder as he wiped what all this might mean. Double

guard in the court—strange voices—the word changed—Mr. Erskine away! No

sentry in the hall, but, instead, a cluster of waiting, whispering men—in

riding-boots—by the privy stair! The vivacious young man was imaginative

to a fault; he could construct a whole tragedy of life and death out of a

change in the weather. And here was a fateful climax to the tragedy of a

stormy night! First, the stress of the driving snow—whirling, solitary,

forlorn stuff!—the apprehension of wild work by every dark entry. Passing

the Tolbooth, a shriek out of the blackness had sent his heart into

his mouth. There had been fighting, too, in Sim’s Close. He had seen a

torch flare and dip, men and women huddled about two on the ground; one

grunting, ‘Tak’ it! Tak’ it!’ and the other, with a strangled wail, ‘Oh,

Jesus!’ Bad hearing all this—evil preparation. Atop of these apparitions,

lo! their fulfilment: stroke after stroke of doom. Cloaked men by the

privy stair—_Dieu de Dieu!_ His heart was thumping at his ribs when he

peeped through the curtain of the Queen’s cabinet and saw his mistress

there with Lady Argyll and the Italian. ‘Blessed Mother!’ he thought,

‘here’s an escape for me. I had no notion the hour was so late.’ What he

meant was, that the rest of the company had gone. He had heard that Lord

Robert Stuart and the Laird of Criech were to sup that night. Well, they

had supped and were gone! It must be on the stroke of midnight.

* * * * *

The Queen, as he could see, lay back in her elbow-chair, obviously

suffering, picking at some food before her, but not eating any. Her lips

were chapped and dry; she moistened them continually, then bit them. Lady

Argyll, handsome, strong-featured, and swarthy, sat bolt upright and

stared at the sconce on the wall; and as for the Italian, he did as he

always did, lounged opposite his Queen, his head against the wainscot.

Reflective after food, he used his toothpick, but no other ceremony

whatsoever. He wore his cap on his head, ignored Lady Argyll—half-sister

to the throne—and when he looked at her Majesty, as he often did, it was

as a man might look at his wife. She, although she seemed too weary or

too indifferent to lift her heavy eyelids, knew perfectly well that both

her companions were watching her: Des-Essars was sure of that. He watched

her himself intensely, and only once saw her meet Davy’s eye, when she

passed her cup to him to be filled with drink, and he, as if thankful to

be active, poured the wine with a flourish and smiled in her face as he

served her. She observed both act and actor, and made no sign, neither

drank from the cup now she had it; but sank back to her wretchedness and

the contemplation of it, being in that pettish, brooding habit of mind

which would rather run on in a groove of pain than brace itself to some

new shift. As he watched what was a familiar scene to him, Des-Essars was

wondering whether he should dare go in and report what he had observed in

the hall. No! on the whole he would not do that. Signior Davy, who was a

weasel in such a field as a young man’s mind, would assuredly fasten upon

him at some false turn or other, never let go, and show no mercy. Like

all the underlings of Holyrood he went in mortal fear of the Italian,

though, unlike any of them, he admired him.

The little cabinet was very dim. There were candles on the table, but

none alight in the sconces. From beyond, through a half-open door, came

the drowsy voices of the Queen’s women, murmuring their way through two

more hours’ vigil. Interminable nights! Cards would follow supper, you

must know, and Signior Davy would try to outsit Lady Argyll. He always

tried, and generally succeeded.

The Queen shifted, sighed, and played hasty tunes with her fingers on

the table: she was never still. It was evident that she was at once

very wretched and very irritable. Her dark-red gown was cut low and

square, Venetian mode: Des-Essars could see quite well how short her

breath was, and how quick. Yet she said nothing. Once she and Lady Argyll

exchanged glances; the Mistress of the Robes inquired with her eyebrows,

the Queen fretfully shook the question away. It was an unhappy supper

for all but the graceless Italian, who was much at his ease now that he

had unfastened some of the hooks of his jacket. The French lad, who had

always been in love with his mistress and yet able to criticise her—as a

Protestant may adore the Virgin Mary—admits that at this moment of her

life, in this bitter mood, he found her extremely piquant. ‘This pale,

helpless, angry, pretty woman!’ he exclaims upon his page. He would

seldom allow that she was more than just a pretty woman; and now she

was a good deal less. Her charms for him had never been of the face—she

had an allure of her own. ‘Mistress Seton was lovely, I consider, my

Lady Bothwell most beautiful, and Mistress Fleming not far short of

that: but the Queen’s Majesty—ah! the coin from Mr. Knox’s mint rang

true. Honeypot! Honeypot! There you had her essence: sleepy, slow, soft

sweetness—with a sharp aftertaste, for all that, to prick the tongue and

set it longing.’

More than nice considerations, these, which the stealthy opening of

a door and a step in the passage disturbed. Des-Essars would have

straightened himself on that signal, to stand as a page should stand

in the view of any one entering. Then he saw, out of the corner of his

eye, the King go down the little stair. It must be the King, because—to

say nothing of the tall figure, small-headed as it was,—he had seen

the long white gown. The King wore a white quilted-silk bedgown, lined

with ermine. At the turning of the stair Des-Essars saw him just glance

backwards over his shoulder towards the cabinet, but, being stiff within

the shadow of the curtain, was not himself seen. After that furtive look

he saw him go down the privy stair, his hand on the rope. Obviously he

had an assignation with some woman below.

Before he had time to correct this conclusion by the memory of the

cloaked men in the hall, he heard returning steps—somebody, this time,

coming up the steps; no! there were more than one—two or three at least.

He was sure of this—his ears had never deceived him—and yet it was the

King alone who appeared at the stair-head with a lighted taper in his

hand, which he must have got from the hall. He stood there for a moment,

his face showing white and strained in the light, his mouth open, too;

then, blowing out his taper, he came directly to the curtain of the

Queen’s cabinet, pulled it aside and went in. He had actually covered

Des-Essars with the curtain without a notion that he was there; but the

youth had had time to observe that he was fully dressed beneath his

gown, and to get a hot whiff of the strong waters in his breath as he

passed in. Urgent to see what all this might mean, he peeped through the

hangings.

Lady Argyll rose up slowly when she saw the King, but made no reverence.

Very few did in these days. The Italian followed her example, perfectly

composed. The Queen took no notice of him. She rested as she had been,

her head on the droop, eyebrows raised, eyes fixed on the disordered

platter. The King, whose colour was very high, came behind her chair,

stooped, and put his arm round her. His hand covered her bosom. She did

not avoid, though she did not relish this.

‘Madam, it is very late,’ he said, and spoke breathlessly.

‘It is not I who detain you,’ said she.

‘No, madam, no. But you do detain these good servants of yours. Here is

your sister of Argyll; next door are your women. And so it is night after

night. I think not of myself.’

She lifted her head a little to look up sideways—but not at him. ‘You

think of very little else, to my understanding. Having brought me to the

state where now I am, you are inclined to leave me alone. Rather, you

were inclined; for this is a new humour, little to my taste.’

‘I should be oftener here, believe me,’ says the King, still embracing

her, ‘if I could feel more sure of a welcome—if all might be again as it

was once between you and me.’

She laughed, without mirth; then asked, ‘And how was it—once?’

The King stooped down and kissed her forehead, by the same act gently

pushing back her head till it rested on his shoulder.

‘Thus it was once, my Mary,’ he said; and as she looked up into his face,

wondering over it, searching it, he kissed her again. ‘Thus it was once,’

he repeated in a louder voice; and then, louder yet, ‘Thus, O Queen of

Scots!’

Once more he kissed her, and once more cried out, ‘O Queen of Scots!’

Then Des-Essars heard the footsteps begin again on the privy stair, and

saw men come into the passage—many men.

Three of them, in cloaks and steel bonnets, came quickly to the door, and

passed him. They went through the curtain. These three were Lord Ruthven,

Ker of Fawdonsyde, and Mr. Archibald Douglas. Rigid in his shadow,

Des-Essars watched all.

Seeing events in the Italian’s eyes, rather than with her own—for Signior

Davy had narrowed his to two threads of blue—the Queen lifted her head

from her husband’s arm and looked curiously round. The three stood

hesitant within the door; Ruthven had his cap on his head, Fawdonsyde

his, but Archie showed his grey poll. Little things like these angered

her quickly; she shook free from the King and sat upright.

‘What is this, my Lord Ruthven? You forget yourself.’

‘Madam——’ he began; but Douglas nudged him furiously.

‘Your bonnet, man, your bonnet!’

The Queen had risen, and the fixed direction of her eyes gave him

understanding.

‘Ah, my knapscall! I do as others do, madam,’ he said, with a meaning

look at the Italian. ‘What is pleasant to your Majesty in yonder servant

should not be an offence in a councillor.’

‘No, no, ma’am, nor it should not,’ muttered Fawdonsyde, who,

nevertheless, doffed his bonnet.

The King was holding her again, she staring still at the scowling man in

steel. ‘What do you want with me, Ruthven?’ she said. She had very dry

lips.

He made a clumsy bow. ‘May it please your Majesty,’ he said, ‘we are come

to rid you of this fellow Davy, who has been overlong familiar here, and

overmuch—for your Majesty’s honour.’

She turned her face to the King, whose arm still held her—a white, strong

face.

‘You,’ she said fiercely, ‘what have you to do in this? What have you to

say?’

‘I think with Ruthven—with all of them—my friends and well-wishers. ’Tis

the common voice: they say I am betrayed, upon my soul! I cannot endure—I

entreat you to trust me——’ He was incoherent.

She broke away from his arm, took a step forward and put herself between

him and the three. She was so angry that she could not find words. She

stammered, began to speak, rejected what words came. The Italian took off

his cap and watched Ruthven intently. The moment of pause that ensued

was broken by Ruthven’s raising his hand, for the Queen flashed out,

‘Put down your hand, sir!’ and seemed as if she would have struck him.

Fawdonsyde here cocked his pistol and deliberately raised it against the

Queen’s person. ‘Treason! treason!’ shrieked Des-Essars from the curtain,

and blundered forward to the villain.

But the Queen had been before him; at last she had found words, and

deeds. She drew herself up, quivering, went directly towards Fawdonsyde,

and beat down the point of the pistol with her flat hand. ‘Do you dare

so much? Then I dare more. What shameless thing do you here? If I had a

sword in my hand——’ Here she stopped, tongue-tied at what was done to her.

For Ruthven, regardless of majesty, had got her round the middle. He

pushed her back into the King’s arms; and, ‘Take your wife, my lord,’

says he; ‘take your good-wife in your arms and cherish her, while we do

what must be done.’

The King held her fast in spite of her struggles. At that moment the

Italian made a rattling sound in his throat and backed from the table.

Archie Douglas stepped behind the King, to get round the little room;

Ruthven approached his victim from the other side; the Italian pulled at

the table, got it between himself and the enemy, and overset it: then

Lady Argyll screamed, and snatched at a candlestick as all went down. It

was the only light left in the room, held up in her hand like a beacon

above a tossing sea. Where was Des-Essars? Cuffed aside to the wall, like

a rag doll. The maids were packed in the door of the bedchamber, and one

of them had pulled him into safety among them.

All that followed he marked: how the frenzied Italian, hedged in between

Douglas and Ruthven, vaulted the table, knocked over Fawdonsyde, and

then, whimpering like a woman, crouched by the Queen, his fingers in the

pleats of her gown. He saw the King’s light eyelashes blink, and heard

his breath come whistling through his nose; and that pale, disfigured

girl, held up closely against her husband, moaning and hiding her face

in his breast. And now Ruthven, grinning horribly, swearing to himself,

and Douglas, whining like a dog at a rat-hole, were at their man’s hands,

trying to drag him off. Fawdonsyde hovered about, hopeful to help. Lady

Argyll held up the candle.

Douglas wrenched open one hand, Ruthven got his head down and bit the

other till it parted.

‘_O Dio! O Dio!_’ long shuddering cries went up from the Italian as they

dragged him out into the passage, where the others waited.

It was dark there, and one knew not how full of men; but Des-Essars heard

them snarling and mauling like a pack of wolves; heard the scuffling, the

panting, the short oaths—and then a piercing scream. At that there was

silence; then some one said, as he struck, ‘There! there! Hog of Turin!’

and another (Lindsay), ‘He’s done.’

The King put the Queen among her maids in a hurry, and went running

out into the passage as they were shuffling the body down the stair.

Des-Essars just noticed, and remembered afterwards, his naked dagger

in his hand as he went out helter-skelter after his friends. Upon some

instinct or other, he followed him as far as the head of the stair. From

the bottom came up a great clamour—howls of execration, one or two cries

for the King, a round of welcome when he appeared. The page ran back to

the cabinet, and found it dark.

It was bad to hear the Queen’s laughter in the bedchamber—worse when

that shuddered out into moaning, and she began to wail as if she were

keening her dead. He could not bear it, so crept out again to spy about

the passages and listen to the shouting from the hall. ‘A Douglas! a

Douglas!’ was the most common cry. Peeping through a window which gave

on to the front, he saw the snowy court ablaze with torches, alive with

men, and against the glare the snowflakes whirling by, like smuts from a

burning chimney. It was clear enough now that the palace was held, all

its inmates prisoners. But what seemed more terrifying than that was the

emptiness of the upper corridors, the sudden hush after so much riot—and

the Queen’s moan, haunting all the dark like a lost soul.

* * * * *

It was so bad up there that the lad, his brain on fire, felt the need of

any company—even that of gaolers. No one hindering, he crept down the

privy stair,—horribly slippery it was, and he knew why,—hoping to spy

into the hall; and this also he was free to do, since the stair-foot was

now unguarded. He found the hall crowded with men; great torches smoking

to the rafters; a glow of light on shields and blazonry, the banners and

achievements of dead kings. In the stir of business the arras surged like

the waves of the sea. A furious draught blew in from the open doors, to

which all faces were turned. Men craned over each others’ backs to look

there. Des-Essars could not see the King; but there at the entry was the

Earl of Morton in his armour, two linkmen by him. He was reading from a

bill: in front of him was a clear way; across it stood the Masters of

Lindsay and Ruthven, and men in their liveries, halberds in their hands.

‘Pass out, Earl of Atholl,’ he heard Lord Morton say; ‘Pass out, Lord of

Tullibardine’: and then, after a while of looking and pointing, he saw

the grizzled head and square shoulders of my Lord Atholl moving down the

lane of men, young Tullibardine uncovered beside him.

‘Pass out, Pitcur; pass out, Mr. James Balfour; pass out, the Lord

Herries.’ The same elbowing in the crowd: three men file out into the

scurrying snow—all the Queen’s friends, observe.

Near to Des-Essars a man asked of his neighbour, ‘Will they let by my

Lord Huntly, think you?’

The other shook his head. ‘Never! He’ll keep company with the Reiver of

Liddesdale, be sure.’

The Reiver was Lord Bothwell, of course, whom Des-Essars knew to be in

the house. ‘Good fellow-prisoners for us,’ he thought.

‘Pass out, Mr. Secretary, on a fair errand.’

There was some murmuring at this; but the man went out unmolested, with

a sweep of the bonnet to my Lord Morton as he passed. Des-Essars saw

him stop at the first taste of the weather and cover his mouth with his

cloak—but he waited for no more. A thought had struck him. He slipped

back up the puddled stair, gained the first corridor, and, knowing his

way by heart, went in and out of the passages until he came to a barred

door. Here he put his ear to the crack and listened intently.

For a long time he could hear nothing on either side the door; but by and

by somebody with a light—a man—came to the farther end of the passage and

looked about, raising and dipping his lantern. That was an ugly moment!

Crouched against the wall, he saw the lamp now high now low, and marked

with a leaping heart how nearly the beams reached to where he lay. He

heard a movement behind the door, too, but had to let it go. Not for full

three minutes after the disappearance of the watchman did he dare put

his knuckles to the door, and tap, very softly, at the panel. He tapped

and tapped. A board creaked; there was breathing at the door. A voice,

shamming boldness, cried, ‘Qui est?’

Des-Essars smiled. ‘C’est toi, Paris?’

His question was answered by another. ‘Tiens, qui est ce drôle?’

Paris, for a thousand pound! Knocking again, he declared himself. ‘It is

I, Paris—M. Des-Essars.’

‘Monsieur Baptiste, your servant,’ then said Paris through the door.

‘My lord is a prisoner, Paris?’

‘Not for the first time, my dear sir.’

‘How many are you there?’

‘Four. My lord, and Monsieur de Huntly, myself, Jock Gordon.’

‘Well, you should get out—but quickly, before they have finished in the

hall. They are passing men out. Be quick, Paris—tell my lord.’

‘Bravo!’ says Paris. ‘We should get out—and quickly! By the chimney, sir?

There is no chimney. By the window? There is but one death for every man,

and one neck to be broke.’

‘You will break no necks at all, you fool. Below these windows is the

lions’ house.’

Paris thought. ‘Are you sure of that?’

‘Sure! Oh, Paris, make haste!’

Again Paris appeared to reflect; and then he said, ‘If you are betraying

a countryman of yours, M. Des-Essars, and your old patron also, you shall

never see God.’

Des-Essars wrung his hands. ‘You fool! you fool! Are you mad? Call my

lord.’

‘Wait,’ said Paris. In a short time, the sound of heavy steps. Ah, here

was my lord!

‘’Tis yourself, Baptist?’

‘Yes, yes, my lord.’

‘Have they finished with Davy?’

‘My God, sir!’

‘What of the Queen?’

‘Her women have her.’

‘Now, Baptist. You say the lion-house is below these windows. Which

windows? There are four.’

‘The two in the midst, my lord. My lord, across the Little Garden—in a

straight line—there are holes in the wall.’

‘Oho! You are a brave lad. Go to your bed.’

Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des-Essars went back to the Queen’s side. At the

door of the cabinet he found Adam Gordon in a fit of sobs. ‘Oh, my fine

man,’ says the French lad, stirring him with his foot, ‘leave tears to

the women. This is men’s business.’

Adam lifted up his stricken face. ‘Where have you been cowering, traitor?’

Jean-Marie laughed grimly. ‘I have been saving Scotland,’ he said,

‘whilst you were blubbering here.’

Adam Gordon, being up by now, knocked Jean-Marie down.

‘I excused him readily, however,’ he writes in his Memoirs, ‘considering

the agitation we all suffered at the time. And where he felled me there I

lay, and slept like a child.’

CHAPTER VI

VENUS IN THE TOILS

Sir James Melvill, whom readers must remember at Saint Andrews as

a shrewd, elderly courtier, expert in diplomacy and not otherwise

without humours of a dry sort, plumed himself upon habit—‘Dear Mother

Use-and-Wont,’ as he used to say. A man is sane at thirty, rich at forty,

wise at fifty, or never; and what health exacts, wealth secures, and

wisdom requires, is the orderly, punctual performance of the customary.

You may have him now putting his theory into severest practice: for

though he had seen what was to be seen during that night of murder and

alarm, though he had lain down to sleep in his cloak no earlier than five

o’clock in the small hours, by seven, which was his Sunday time, he was

up and about, stamping his booted feet to get the blood down, flacking

his arms, and talking encouragement to himself—as, ‘Hey, my bonny man,

how’s a’ with you the morn?’ Very soon after you might have seen him over

the ashes of the fire, raking for red embers and blowing some life into

them with his frosted breath. All about lay his snoring fellows, though

it was too dark to see them. Every man lay that night where he could find

his length, and slept like the dead in their graves. There seemed no soul

left in a body but in his own.

He went presently to the doors, thinking to open them unhindered. But no!

a sitting sentry barred the way with a halberd. ‘May one not look at the

weather, my fine young man?’ says Sir James.

‘’Tis as foul as the grave, master, and a black black frost. No way out

the now.’

Sir James, who intended to get out, threw his cloak over his shoulder and

gravely paced the hall until the chances should mend. One has not warred

with the Margrave, held a hand at cards with the Emperor Charles at

Innspruck, loitered at Greenwich in attendance upon Queen Elizabeth, or

endured the King of France in one of his foaming rages, without learning

patience. He proposed to walk steadily up and down the hall until nine

o’clock. Then he would get out.

* * * * *

The women said afterwards that the Queen had quieted down very soon,

dried her eyes, gone to bed, and slept almost immediately ‘as calm as a

babe new-born.’ However that may be, she awoke as early as Sir James,

and, finding herself in Mary Fleming’s arms, awoke her too in her

ordinary manner by biting her shoulder, not hard. ‘My lamb, my lamb!’

cooed the maid; but the Queen in a brisk voice said, ‘What’s o’clock?’

The lamp showed it to be gone seven.

The Queen said: ‘Get up, child, and find me the page who was in the

cabinet last night. I saw him try the entry, and he ran in when—when....

It was Baptist, I think.’

She spoke in an even voice, as if the occasion had been a card party.

This frightened Mary Fleming, who began to quiver, and to say, ‘Oh,

ma’am, did Baptist see all? ’Twill have scared away his wits.’ And then

she tried coaxing. ‘Nay, _ma Reinette_, but you must rest awhile. Come,

let me stroke your cheek’—a common way with them of inviting sleep to her.

But the Queen said, ‘I have had too much stroking—too much. Now do as I

bid you.’ So the maid clothed herself in haste and went out with a lamp.

Outside the door she found the two youths asleep—Des-Essars on the floor,

Gordon by the table—and awoke them both. ‘Which of you was on the door

last night?’

‘It was I, Mistress Fleming,’ said the foreigner. ‘All the time I was

there.’

‘Come with me, then. You are sent for.’

He followed her in high excitement into the Queen’s bedchamber. There

he saw Margaret Carwood asleep on her back, lying on the floor; and the

Queen propped up with pillows, a white silk shift upon her—or half upon

her, for one shoulder was out of it. She looked sharper, more like Circe,

than she had done since her discomforts began: very intense, very pale,

very black in the eyes. And she smiled at him in a curiously secret way—a

beckoning, fluttering of the lips, as if she shared intelligence with

him, and told him so by signs. ‘She was as sharp and hard and bright as

a cut diamond,’ he writes of this appearance; ‘nor do I suppose that

any lady in the storied world could have turned her face away from a

night of terror and blood, towards a day-to-come of insult, chains and

degradation, as she turned hers now before my very eyes.’

She did not say anything for a while, but considered him absorbingly,

with those fever-bright eyes and that cautious smile, until she had made

up her mind. He, of course, was down on his knee; Mary Fleming, beside

him, stood—her hand just touching his shoulder.

‘Come hither, Jean-Marie.’

Approaching, he knelt by the bed.

‘No,’ said she, ‘stand up—closer. Now give me your hand.’

He held it out, and she took it in her own, and put it against her side.

He simply gazed at her in wonder.

‘Tell me now if you feel my heart beating.’

He waited. ‘No, madam,’ said he then, whispering.

‘Think again.’

He did. ‘No, madam. Ah! pardon. Yes, I feel it.’

‘That will do.’

He whipped back his hand and put it behind him. It had been the right

hand. The Queen watched all, still smiling in that wise new way of hers.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I think you will serve me, since you have assured

yourself that I am not so disturbed as you are. I wish you to find out

where they have put him.’

He felt Mary Fleming start and catch at her breath; but to him the

question seemed very natural.

‘I will go now, madam.’

‘Yes. Go now. Be secret and speedy, and come back to me.’

He bowed, rose up, and went tiptoe out of that chamber of mystery and

sharp sweetness. Just beyond the door Adam Gordon pounced on him and

caught him by the neck. He struggled fiercely, tried to bite.

‘Let me go, let me go, you silly fool, and worse! I’m on service. Oh, my

God, let me go!’

‘How does she? Speak it, you French thief.’

‘_Dieu de Dieu!_’ he panted, ‘I shall stab you.’

At once his hands were pinned to the wall, and he crucified. He told his

errand—since time was all in all—with tears of rage.

‘I shall go with you,’ says Adam. ‘We will go together.’

In the entry of the Chapel Royal, near the kings’ tombs, they found

what seemed to be a new grave. A loose flagstone—scatter of gravel

all about—the stone not level: one end, in fact, projected its whole

thickness above the floor.

‘There he lies,’ says Adam. ‘What more do you want?’

Des-Essars was tugging at the stone. ‘It moves, it moves!’ He was crimson

in the face.

They both tussled together: it gave to this extent, that they got the

lower edge clear of the floor.

‘Hold on! Keep it so!’ snapped Des-Essars suddenly.

He dropped on to his stomach and thrust his arm into the crack, up to the

elbow.

‘What are you at? Be sharp, man, or I shall drop it!’ cried Adam in

distress.

He _was_ sharp. In a moment he had withdrawn his hand, jumped up and

away, and was pelting to the stairs. Adam let the great stone down

with a thud and was after him. He was stopped at the Queen’s door by a

maid—Seton.

‘Less haste, Mr. Adam. You cannot enter. Her Majesty is busy.’

Des-Essars had found the Queen waiting for him—nobody else in the room.

‘Well? You saw it?’

‘I have seen a grave, madam.’

‘Well?’

‘It is a new grave.’

‘There’s nothing in that, boy.’

‘Monsieur David is in there, ma’am.’

Her quick eyes narrowed. How she peered at him! ‘How do you know?’

‘Madam, I lifted up the stone. No one was about.’

‘Well?’

‘I found something under it. I have it. I am therefore quite sure.’

‘What did you find? Let me see it.’

He plucked out of his breast a glittering thing and laid it on the bed.

‘Behold it, madam!’ Folding his arms, he watched it where it lay.

The Queen stared down at a naked dagger. A longish, lean, fluted blade;

and upon the bevelled edge a thick smear, half its length.

She did not touch it, but moved her lips as if she were talking to it.

‘Do I know you, dagger? Have we been friends, dagger, old friends—and now

you play me a trick?’ She turned to Des-Essars. ‘You know that dagger?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He had seen it often, and no later than last night, and

then in hand.

‘That will do,’ said she. ‘Leave me now. Send Fleming and Seton—and

Carwood also. I shall rise.’

When he was gone her face changed—grew softer, more thoughtful. Now she

held out her hand daintily, the little finger high above the others,

and with the tips of two daintily touched the dagger. She was rather

horrible—like a creature of the woods at night, an elf or a young witch,

playing with a corpse. She laughed quietly to herself as she fingered the

stained witness of so much terror; but then, when she heard them at the

door, picked it up by the handle and put it under the bedclothes. No one

was to know what she meant to do.

The women came in. ‘Dress me, Carwood, and quickly. Dolet, have you my

bath ready?’ ‘Mais, c’est sûr, Majesté.’ They poured out for her a bath

of hot red wine. No day of her life passed but she dipped herself in that.

* * * * *

At nine o’clock, braced into fine fettle by his exercise, Sir James

Melvill went again to the hall doors. A few shiverers were about by this

time, for sluggard dawn was gaping at the windows; some knelt by the

fire which his forethought had saved for them, some hugged themselves

in corners; one man was praying aloud in an outlandish tongue, praying

deeply and striking his forehead with his palm. Sir James, not to be

deterred by prayers or spies, stepped up to the sentry, a new man, and

tapped him on the breast. ‘Now, my honest friend,’ he said pleasantly,

‘I have waited my two hours, and am prepared to wait other two. But he

to whom my pressing errand is must wait no longer. I speak of my lord of

Morton—your master and mine, as things have turned out.’

‘My lord will be here by the ten o’clock, sir,’ says the man.

‘I had promised him exact tidings by eight,’ replied Sir James; and spoke

so serenely that he was allowed to pass the doors, which were shut upon

him. Nobody could have regretted more than himself that he had lied: he

had no mortal errand to the Earl of Morton. But seeing that he had not

failed of Sabbath sermon for a matter of fifteen years, it was not to be

expected that the murder of an Italian was to stay him now. Sermon in

Saint Giles’s was at nine. He was late.

The fates were adverse: there was to be no sermon for him that Sabbath.

As he walked gingerly across the Outer Close—a staid, respectable, Sunday

gentleman—he heard a casement open behind him, and turning sharply saw

the Queen at her chamber window, dressed in grey with a white ruff, and

holding a kerchief against her neck. After a hasty glance about, which

revealed no prying eyes, he made a low reverence to her Majesty.

Sparkling and eager as she looked, she nodded her head and leaned far

out of the window. ‘Sir James Melvill,’ she called down, in a clear,

carrying voice, ‘you shall do me a service if you please.’

‘God save your Majesty, and I do please,’ says Sir James.

‘Then help me from this prison where now I am,’ she said. ‘Go presently

to the Provost, bid him convene the town and come to my rescue. Go

presently, I say; but run fast, good sir, for they will stay you if they

can.’

‘Madam, with my best will and legs.’ He saluted, and walked briskly on

over the frozen snow.

Out of doors after him came a long-legged man in black, a chain about his

neck, a staff in hand; following him, three or four lacqueys in a dark

livery.

‘Ho, Sir James Melvill! Ho, Sir James!’

He was by this time at the Outer Bailey, which stood open for him—three

paces more and he had done it. But there were a few archers lounging

about the door of the Guard House, and two who crossed and recrossed each

other before the gates. ‘Gently doth it,’ quoth he, and stayed to answer

his name to the long-legged Chamberlain.

‘What would you, Mr. Wishart, sir?’

‘Sir James, my lord of Ruthven hath required me——’ But he got no further.

‘Your lord of Ruthven?’ cried Sir James. ‘Hath he required you to require

of me, Mr. Wishart?’

‘Why, yes, sir. My lord would be pleased to know whither you are bound so

fast. He is, sir, in a manner of speaking, deputy to the King’s Majesty

at this time.’

Sir James blinked. He could see the Queen behind her window, watching

him. ‘I am bound, sir,’ he said deliberately, ‘whither I shall hope to

see my lord of Ruthven tending anon. The sermon, Mr. Wishart, the sermon

calls me; the which I have not foregone these fifteen years, nor will not

to-day unless you and your requirements keep me unduly.’

‘I told my lord you would be for the preaching, Sir James. I was sure

o’t. But he’s a canny nobleman, ye ken; and the King’s business is before

a’.’

‘I have never heard, Mr. Wishart, that it was before that of the King of

kings,’ said Sir James.

‘Ou, fie, Sir James! To think that I should say so!’—Mr. Wishart was

really concerned—‘Nor my lord neither, whose acceptance of the rock of

doctrine is well known. I shall just pop in and inform my lord.’

‘Do so. And I wish you a good day, Mr. Wishart,’ says Sir James in a

stately manner, and struck out of the gates and up the hill.

He went directly to the Provost’s house, and what he learned there seemed

to him so serious, that he overstepped his commission by a little way.

‘Mr. Provost,’ he said, ‘you tell me that you have orders from the King.

I counsel you to disregard them. I counsel you to serve and obey your

sanctified anointed Queen. The King, Mr. Provost, is her Majesty’s right

hand, not a doubt of it; but when the right hand knoweth not what the

left hand is about, it is safer to wait until the pair are in agreement

again. What the King may have done yesterday he may not do to-day—he may

not wish it, or he may not be capable of it. I am a simple gentleman, Mr.

Provost, and you are a high officer, steward of this good town. I counsel

not the officer in you, but the sober burgess, when I repeat that what

may have been open to the King yesterday may be shut against him to-day.’

‘Good guide us, Sir James, this is dangerous work!’ cried the Provost.

‘Who’s your informant in the matter?’

‘I have told you that I am a simple gentleman,’ said Sir James, ‘but

I lied to you. I am a Queen’s messenger: I go from you to meet her

Majesty’s dearest brother, the good Earl of Moray, who should be home

to-day.’

It must be owned that, if he was an unwilling liar, he was a good

one. He lied like truth, and the stroke was masterly. The Provost set

about convening the town; and when Sir James Melvill walked back to

Holyrood—after sermon—all the gates were held in the Queen’s name.

He did not see her, for the King was with her at the time; but Mary

Beaton received him, heard his news and reported it. She returned shortly

with a message: ‘The Queen’s thanks to Sir James Melvill. Let him ride

the English road and meet the Earl of Moray by her Majesty’s desire.’

He was pleased with the errand, proud to serve the Queen. His greatest

satisfaction, however, was to reflect that he had not, after all, lied to

the Provost of Edinburgh.

* * * * *

Now we go back to Queen Mary. Bathed and powdered, dressed and coifed,

her head full of schemes and heart high in courage, she waited for the

King, being very sure in her own mind that he would come if she made no

sign. Certainly, certainly he would come: she had reasoned it all out

as she lay half in bed, smiling and whispering to the dagger. ‘He has

been talked into this, by whom I am not sure, but I think by Ruthven and

his friends. They will never stop where now they are, but will urge him

further than he cares to go. I believe he will wait to see what I do. He

is not bold by nature, but by surges of heat which drive him. Fast they

drive him—yet they leave him soon! When he held me last night he was

trembling—I felt him shake. And yet—he has strong arms, and the savour of

a man is upon him!’

She sat up, with her hands to clasp her knee, and let her thought go

galloping through the wild business. ‘I felt the child leap as I lay on

his breast! Did he urge towards the King his father, glad of his manhood?

So, once upon a day, urged I towards the King my lord!’

She began to blush, but would be honest with herself. ‘And if he came

again to me now, and took me so again in his arms—and again I sensed the

man in him—what should I do?’

She looked wise, as she smiled to feel her eyes grow dim. But then she

shook her head. ‘He will come, he will come—but not so. I know him: oh, I

know him like a thumbed old book! And when I bring out that which I have

here’—her hand caressed the dagger—‘I know what he will do. Yes, yes,

like an old book! He will rail against his betrayer, and in turn betray

him. Ah, my King, my King, do I read you aright? We shall see very soon.’

She looked out upon the snowy close, the black walls and dun pall of air;

she saw Sir James Melvill set forward upon his pious errand, and changed

it, as you know. Then she resumed her judging and weighing of men.

Odd! She gave no thought to the wretched Italian, her mind was

upon the quick, and not the dead. Ruthven, a black, dangerous

man—scolding-tongued, impious in mind, thinking in oaths—yes: but a man!

Archie Douglas, supple as a snake, Fawdonsyde and his foolish pistols,

she considered not at all; but her mind harped upon Ruthven and the King,

who had each laid rough hands upon her—and thus, it seems, earned her

approbation. Ruthven had taken her about the middle and pushed her back,

helpless, into the other’s arms; and she had felt those taut arms, and

not struggled; but leaned there, her face in his doublet. _Pardieu_, each

had played the man that night! And Ruthven would play it again, and the

King would not. No, no; not he!

Ruthven, by rights, should be won over. Should she try him? No, he

would refuse her; she was sure of it. He was as bluff, as flinty-cored

as——Ranging here and there, searching Scotland for his parallel, her

heart jumped as she found him. Bothwell, Bothwell! Ha, if he had been

there! It all began to re-enact itself—the scuffling, grunting, squealing

business, with Bothwell’s broad shoulders steady in the midst of it. Man

against man: Bothwell and Ruthven face to face, and the daggers agleam

in the candle-light:—hey, how she saw it all doing! Ruthven would stoop

and glide by the wall: his bent knees, his mad, twitching brows! Bothwell

would stand his ground in mid-floor, and his little eyes would twinkle.

‘Play fairly with the candle, my Lady Argyll!’ and he would laugh—yes,

she could hear his ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ But she jumped up as she came to that,

she panted and felt her cheeks burn. She held her fine throat with both

hands until she had calmed herself. So doing, a thought struck her. She

rang her hand-bell and sent for Des-Essars once more.

When he came to her she made a fuss over him, stroked his hair, put

her hand on his shoulder, said he was her young knight who should ride

out to her rescue. He was to take a message from her to the Earl of

Bothwell—that he was on no account to stir out of town until he heard

from her again. He should rather get in touch with all of her friends and

be ready for instant affairs. Des-Essars went eagerly but discreetly to

work. She then had just time to leave a direction for Melvill, that he

should be first with her brother Moray, when they told her that the King

was coming in.

‘Of course he is coming,’ she said. ‘What else can he do?’

Her courage rose to meet him more than half-way. If Des-Essars had been

allowed to feel her heart again he would have found it as steady as a

man’s.

‘I will see the King in the red closet,’ she said. ‘Seton, Fleming, come

you with me.’

When he was announced he found her thus in company, sitting at her

needlework on a low coffer by the window.

The young man had thickened rims to his eyes, but else looked pinched and

drawn. He kept a napkin in his hand, with which he was for ever dabbing

his mouth: seeming to search for signs of blood upon it, he inspected it

curiously whenever it had touched him. As he entered the Queen glanced

up, bowed her head to him and resumed her stitch-work. The two maids,

after their curtseys, remained standing—to his visible perturbation.

It was plain that he had expected to find her alone; also that he had

strung himself up for a momentous interview—and that she had not. He grew

more and more nervous, the napkin hovered incessantly near his mouth;

half-turning to call his man Standen into the room, he thought better of

it, and came on a little way, saying, ‘Madam, how does your Majesty?’

She looked amused at the question, as she went on sewing.

‘As well, my lord,’ she told him, ‘as I can look to be these many months

more. But women must learn such lessons, which men have only to teach.’

He knew that he was outmatched. ‘I am thankful, madam——’

‘My lord, you have every reason.’

‘I say, I am thankful; for I had a fear——’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘Do you fear, my lord? What have you to fear?

Your friends are about you, your wife a prisoner. What have you to fear?’

‘The tongue, madam.’

She had goaded him to this, and could have had him at her mercy had she

so willed it. But she was silent, husbanding her best weapon against good

time.

He went headlong on. ‘I had words for your private ear. I had hoped that

by a little intimacy, such as may be looked for between——But it’s all

one.’

She affected not to understand, pored over his fretful scraps with the

pure pondering of a child. ‘But——! Converse, intimacy between us! Who is

to prevent it? Ah, my poor maids afflict you! What may be done before

matrons must be guarded from the maids. Indeed, my lord, and that is

my opinion. Go, my dears. The King is about to discuss the affairs of

marriage.’

They went out. The King immediately came to her, stooped and took her

hand up from her lap. She kept the other hidden.

‘My Mary,’ he said—‘My Mary! let all be new-born between us.’

She heard the falter in his voice, but considered rather his fine white

hand as it held her own, and judged it with a cool brain. A frail hand

for a man! So white, so thinly boned, the veins so blue! Could such hands

ever hold her again? And how hot and dry! A fever must be eating him. Her

own hands were cold. New-born love—for this hectic youth!

‘New-born, my lord?’ she echoed him, sighing. ‘Alas, that which must be

born should be paid for first. And what the reckoning of that may be now,

you know as well as I. May not one new birth be as much as I can hope

for, or desire? I do think so.’

Fully as well as she he knew the peril she had been in, she and the load

she carried. He went down on his knee beside her, and, holding her one

hand, sought after the other, which she hid.

‘My dear,’ he said earnestly, ‘oh, my dear, judge me not hardly. I

endeavoured to shield you last night—I held you fast—they dared not

touch you! Remember it, my Mary. As for my faults, I own them fairly.

I was provoked—anger moved me—bitter anger. I am young. I am not

even-tempered: remember this and forgive me. And, I pray you, give me

your hand.—No, the other, the other! For I need it, my heart—indeed and

indeed.’ That hand was gripped about a cold thing in her lap, under her

needlework. He could not have it without that which it held; and now she

knew that he should not. For now she scorned him—that a man who had laid

his own hands to man’s work should now be on his knees, pleading for his

wife’s hands instead of snatching them—why, she herself was the better

man! Womanlike, she played with what she could have killed in a flash.

‘My other hand, my lord? Do you ask for it? You had it once, when you put

rings upon it, but let it go. Do you ask for it again? It can give you no

joy.’

‘I need it, I need it! You should not deny me.’ He craved it abjectly.

‘Oh, my soul, my soul, I kiss the one—let me kiss the other, lest it be

jealous.’

Unhappy conceit! Her eyes paled, and you might have thought her tongue a

snake’s, darting, forked, flickering out and in as she struck hard.

‘Traitor!’ thus she stabbed him—‘Traitor, son of a traitor, take and kiss

it if you dare.’ She laid above her caught hand that other, cool and

firm, and opened it to show him the handle of his own dagger. She took

the blade by the point and held the thing up, swinging before his shocked

eyes. ‘Lick that, hound!’ she said: ‘you should know the taste of it

better than I.’

He dropped her one hand, stared stupidly at the other: but as his gaze

concentrated upon the long smear on the blade you could have seen the

sweat rising on his temples.

She had read him exquisitely. After the first brunt of terror, rage

was what he felt—furious rage against the man whom he supposed to have

betrayed him. ‘Oh, horrible traitor!’ he muttered by the window, whither

he had betaken himself for refuge,—‘Oh, Archie Douglas, if I could be

even with thee for this! Oh, man, man, man, what a curious, beastly

villain!’ He was much too angry now to be tender of his wife—either of

her pity or revenge; he turned upon her, threatening her from his window.

‘You shall not intimidate me. I am no baby in your hands. This man is a

villain, I tell you, whom I shall pursue till he is below my heel. He has

laid this, look you for a trap. This was got by theft, and displayed by

malice—devilish craft of a traitor. And do you suppose I shall let it go

by? You mistake me, by God, if you do. Foul thief!—black, foul theft!’

She pointed to the smear on the blade. ‘And this?’ she asked him: ‘what

of this? Was this got by theft, my lord? Was this dry blood thieved from

a dead man? Or do I mistake, as you suppose? Nay, wretch, but you know

that I do not. The man was dead long before you dared touch him. Dead

and in rags—and then the King drove in his blade!’ Her face—Hecate in

the winter—withered him more than her words. Though these contained a

dreadful truth, the other chilled his blood. He crept aimlessly about the

room, feeling his heart fritter to water, and all the remains of his heat

congested in his head. He tried to straighten his back, his knees: there

seemed no sap in his bones. And she sat on, with cold critical eyes, and

her lips hard together.

‘My Mary,’ he began to stammer, ‘this is all a plot against my

life—surely, surely you see it. I have enemies, the worse in that they

are concealed—I see now that all the past has been but a plot—why, yes,

it is plain as the daylight! I entreat you to hear me: this is most

dangerous villainy—I can prove it. They swore to stand my friends—fast,

fast they swore it. And here—to your hand—is proof positive. Surely,

surely, you see how I am trapped by these shameful traffickers!’

Her eyes never left his face, but followed him about the room on his

aimless tour; and whether he turned from the window or the wall, so

sure as he looked up he saw them on him. They drove him into speech.

‘I meant honestly,’ he began again, shifting away from those watchful

lights; ‘I meant honestly indeed. I have lived amiss—oh, I know it well!

A man is led into sin, and one sin leads to another. But I am punished,

threatened, in peril. Let me escape these nets and snares, I may do well

yet. My Mary, all may be well! Let us stand together—you and I’—he came

towards her with his hands out, stopped, started back. ‘Look away—look

away; take your eyes from off me—they burn!’ He covered his own. ‘O God,

my God, how miserable I am!’

‘You are a prisoner as I am,’ said the Queen. ‘We stand together because

we are tied together. And as for my eyes, what you abhor in them is what

you have put there. But since we are fellow-prisoners, methinks——’

He looked wildly. ‘Who says I am prisoner? If I am—if I am—why, I

am betrayed on all hands. My kinsmen—my father—no, no, no! That is

foolishness. Madam,’ he asked her, being desperate, ‘who told you that I

was a prisoner?’

She glanced at the dagger. ‘This tells me. Why, think you, should Archie

Douglas have laid that in the grave, except for me to find it there?’

It was, or it might have been, ludicrous to see his dismay. He stared,

with dots where his eyes should have been; he puffed his cheeks and blew

them empty; in his words he lost all sense of proportion.

‘Beastly villain! Why, it is a plot against me! Why, they may murder me!

Why, this may have been their whole intent! Lord God, a plot!’

He pondered this dreadfully, seeing no way of escape, struggling with

the injury of it and the pity of it. Consideration that she was in the

same plight, that he had plotted against her, and now himself was plotted

against: there was food for humour in such a thought, but no food for

him. Of the two feelings he had, resentment prevailed, and brought his

cunning into play. ‘By heaven and hell,’ he said, ‘but I can counter

shrewdly on these knaves. Just wait a little.’ He cheered as he fumbled

in his bosom. ‘You shall see, you shall see—now you shall see whether or

no I can foin and parry with these night-stabbers. Oh, the treachery, the

treachery! But wait a little—now, now, now!’

He produced papers in a gush—bonds, schedules, signatures, seals—all

tumbled pell-mell into her lap. She read there what she had guessed

beforehand: Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, Douglas, Lethington—ah, she had

forgotten this lover of Mary Fleming’s!—Boyd—yes, yes, and the stout

Kirkcaldy of Grange. Not her brothers? No: but she suspected that

Lethington’s name implied Moray’s. Well, Sir James would win her back

Moray, she hoped. She did not trouble with any more. ‘Yes, yes, your

friends, my lord. Your friends,’ she repeated, lingering on the pleasant

word, ‘who have made use of you to injure me, and now have dropped you

out of window. Well! And now what will you do, fellow-prisoner?’

At her knees now, his wretched head in her lap, his wretched tears

staining her, he confessed the whole business, sparing nobody, not even

himself; and as his miserable manhood lay spilling there it staled—like

sour milk in sweet—any remnants of attraction his tall person may have

had for her. She could calculate as she listened—and so she did—to what

extent she might serve herself yet of this watery fool. But she could

not for the life of her have expressed her contempt for him. The thing

had come to pass too exactly after her calculation. If he had been a boy

she might have pitied him, or if, on entering her presence, he had laid

sudden hands upon her, exulting in his force and using it mannishly; had

he been greedy, overbearing, insolent, snatching—and a man!—she might,

once more and for ever, have given him all her heart. But a blubbering,

truth-telling oaf—heaven and earth! could she have wedded _this_? Well,

he would serve to get her out of Holyrood; and meantime she was tired and

must forgive, to get rid of him.

This was not so easy as it sounds, because at the first word of human

toleration she uttered he pricked up his pampered ears. As she went on

to speak of the lesson he had learned, of the wisdom of trusting her for

the future and of being ruled by her experience and judgment, he brushed

his eyes and began to encroach. His tears had done him good, and her

recollected air gave him courage; he felt shriven, more at ease. So he

enriched himself of her hand again, he edged up to share her seat; very

soon she felt his arm stealing about her waist. She allowed these things

because she had decided that she must.

He now became very confidential, owning freely to his jealousy of

the Italian—surely pardonable in a lover!—talking somewhat of his

abilities with women, his high-handed ways (which he admitted that

he had in excess: ‘a fault, that!‘), his ambitions towards kingship,

crowns-matrimonial, and the like trappings of manhood. She listened

patiently, saying little, judging and planning incessantly. This he

took for favour, advanced from stronghold to stronghold, growing as he

climbed. The unborn child—pledge of their love: he spoke of that. He was

sly, used double meanings; he took her presently by the chin and kissed

her cheek. Unresisted, he kissed her again and again. ‘_Redintegratio

amoris!_’ he cried, really believing it at the moment. This very night he

would prove to her his amendment. Journeys end in lovers’ meeting! If she

would have patience she should be a happy wife yet. Would she—might he

hope? Should this day be a second wedding day? Her heart was as still as

freezing water, but her head prompted her to sigh and half smile.

‘You consent! You consent! Oh, happy fortune!’ he cried, and kissed her

mouth and eyes, and possessed as much as he could.

‘Enough, my lord, enough!’ said she. ‘You forget, I think, that I am a

wife.’

He cursed himself for having for one moment forgotten it, threw himself

at her knees and kissed her held hands over and over, then jumped to his

feet, all his courage restored. ‘Farewell, lady! Farewell, sweet Queen! I

go to count the hours.’ He went out humming a tavern catch about Moll and

Peg. She called her women in, to wash her face and hands.

* * * * *

By riding long and changing often Sir James Melvill had been able to

salute the Earl of Moray on the home side of Dunbar. The great man

travelled, _primus inter pares_, a little apart from his companions

in exile—and without Mr. Secretary Lethington. The fact is that Mr.

Secretary was as much distrusted by his friends as by Lord Moray himself,

and had been required at the last moment to stay in town. Sir James,

thanks to that, was not long in coming to close quarters with the Earl,

and frankly told him that he had been sent by the Queen’s Majesty to

welcome him home. Lord Moray was bound to confess to himself that,

certainly, he had not looked for that. He had expected to come back a

personage to be feared, but not one to be desired. The notion was not

displeasing—for if you are desired it may very well be because you are

feared. So all the advantage at starting lay with Sir James.

He went on to say how much need her Majesty felt in her heart to stand

well with her blood relations. As for old differences—ah, well, well,

they were happily over and done with. My lord would not look for the

Queen to confess to an error in judgment, nor would she, certainly,

ever reproach him with the past. There was no question of a treaty of

forgiveness between a sister and her brother. Urgency of the heart,

mutual needs, were all! And her needs were grievous, no question. Why,

the very desire she had for his help was proof that the past was past.

Did not his lordship think so?

His lordship listened to this tolerant chatter as became a grave

statesman. Without a sign to betray his face he requested his civil

friend—‘worthy Sir James Melvill’—to rehearse the late occurrences—‘Of

the which,’ he said, ‘hearing somewhat at Berwick, I had a heavy heart,

misdoubting what part I might be called upon to play in the same.’

Whereupon Sir James, with the like gravity, related to his noble friend

all the details of a plot which nobody knew more exactly than the man who

heard him. It added zest to the comic interlude that Sir James also knew

quite well that my lord had been one of the conspirators.

At the end his lordship said: ‘I thank you, Sir James Melvill, for your

tender recital of matters which may well cause heart-searching in us all.

Happy is that queen, I consider, who has such a diligent servant! And

happy also am I, who can be sure of one such colleague as yourself!’

‘All goes well,’ thinks Melvill. ‘I have my old sow by the lug.’

If he had one lug, the Queen got the other. For when my Lord of Moray

reached Edinburgh that night, he was told that her Majesty awaited him at

Holyroodhouse. Prisoner or not, she received him there, smiling and eager

to see him—and her gaolers standing by! And whenas he hesitated, darkly

bowing before her, she came forward in a pretty, shy way; and, ‘Oh,

brother, brother, I am glad you have come to me,’ she said, and gave him

her hands, and let him kiss her cheek.

He murmured something proper,—his duty always remembered, and the rest of

the phrases,—but she, as if clinging to him, ran on in a homelier speech.

‘Indeed, there was need of you, brother James!’ she assured him, and went

on to tell him that which moved the stony man to tears. At least, it is

so reported, and I am glad to believe it.

She walked with him afterwards in full hall, talking low and

quickly—candour itself. Her tones had a throbbing note, and a note of

confidence, which changed the whole scene as she recited it. I repeat,

the hall was full while she walked with him there, up and down in the

flickering firelight—full of the men whose plots he had shared, and hoped

to profit by. Fine spectacle for my lords of the Privy Council, for Mr.

Archie Douglas and his cousin Morton, fine for Mr. Secretary Lethington!

Before she kissed her brother good-night, before she went to bed, she

felt that she had done a good day’s work. And now, with her triumph as

good as won, she was ready for the crowning of it.

* * * * *

There she was out-generalled: there she was beaten. Match for all these

men’s wit, she was outwitted by one man’s sodden flesh. They undressed

her, prepared her for bed. She lay there in her pale, fragrant beauty,

solace for any lord’s desire, and conscious of it, and more fine for

the knowledge. She took deep breaths and draughts of ease; she assured

herself that she was very fair; she watched the glimmering taper and read

the shadows on the pictured wall as she waited for the crowning of her

toil. The day had been hers against all odds; the day is not always to

Venus, but the night is her demesne. So she waited and drowsed, smiling

her wise smile, secure, superb, and at ease. But King Harry Darnley, very

drunk, lay stertorous in his own bed; nor dared Forrest, nor Standen, nor

any man of his household, stir him out of that. The Queen of Wine and

Honey had digged a pit of sweetness and hidden a fine web all about it,

and was fallen into the midst of it herself.

And so, it is like enough, if the boar had not timely rent the thigh of

Adonis, Dame Venus herself might have writhed, helpless in just such

toils.

CHAPTER VII

AFTERTASTE

The Queen woke at eight o’clock in the morning and called for a cup of

cold water. She sat up to drink, and was told that Antony Standen had

been at the door at half-past six, the King himself at seven. Listening

to this news with her lips in the water, her eyes grew bitter-bright. ‘He

shall have old waiting at my chamber door,’ she said, ‘before he wins

it.’ Then she began to weep and fling herself about, to bite the coverlet

and to gloom among the pillows. ‘If I forget this past night may my God

forget me.’ O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery! She lay down again

and shut her eyes, but fretted all the time, twitching her arms and legs,

making little angry noises, shifting from side to side. Mary Seton sat by

the bed, cool and discreet.

The minutes passed, she enduring, until at last, unable to bear the

tripping of them, she started up so violently that a great pillow rolled

on to the floor. ‘I could kill myself, Seton,’ she said, grinding her

little teeth together, ‘I could kill myself for this late piece of work.

Verjuice in me!—I should die to drink my own milk. And all of you there,

whispering by the door, wagering, nudging one another—“He’ll never

come—never. Not he!” Oh, Jesu-Christ!’ she cried, straining up her bare

arms, ‘let this wound of mine keep green until the time!’

‘Hush, dear madam, oh, hush!’ says Seton, flushing to hear her; but the

Queen turned her a white, hardy face.

‘Why should I be hushed? Let me cry out my shame to all the world, that

am the scorn of men and wedded women. Who heeds? What matter what I say?

Leave me alone—I’ll not be hushed down.’

Seton was undismayed. ‘No wedded woman am I. I love you, madam, and

therefore I shall speak with you. I say that, as he has proved his

unworthiness, so you must prove your pride. I say——’

There was hasty knocking at the door; the maid ran: ‘Who is it knocks?’

‘The King’s valet is without. The King asks if her Majesty is awake.’

‘Let him ask,’ said the Queen: ‘I will never see him again. Say that I am

at prayers.’

Seton called, ‘Reply that Her Majesty is unable to see the King at this

time. Her Majesty awoke early, and is now at prayers.’ She returned to

the bed, where the Queen lay on her elbow, picking her handkerchief to

pieces with her teeth.

‘Sweet madam,’ she said, ‘bethink you now of what must be done this day.

You wish to be avenged of your enemies....’

The Queen looked keenly up.

‘Well, well, of all your enemies. But for this you must first be free.

And it grows late.’

The Queen put her hair from her face and looked at the light coming in.

She sat up briskly. ‘You are right, _ma mie_. Come and kiss me. I have

been playing baby until my head aches.’

‘You will play differently now, I see,’ said Seton, ‘and other heads may

wish they had a chance to ache.’

The Queen took her maid’s face in her dry hands. ‘Oh, Seton,’ she said,

‘you are a cordial to me. They have taken my poor David, but have left me

you.’

‘Nay, madam,’ says Seton, ‘they might take me too, and you need none

of my strong waters. There is wine enough in your honey for all your

occasions.’

A shadow of her late gloom crossed over her. ‘My honey has been racked

with galls. ’Tis you that have cleared it. Give me my nightgown, and send

for Father Roche. I will say my prayers.’

With a spirit so responsive as hers, the will to move was a signal for

scheming to begin. Up and down her mind went the bobbing looms, across

and across the humming shuttles, spinning the fine threads together into

a fabric whose warp was vengeance and the woof escape from self-scorn.

She must be free from prison this coming night; but that was not the

half: she intended to leave her captors in the bonds she quitted. So

high-mettled was she that I doubt whether she would have accepted the

first at the price of giving up the second. Those being the ends of her

purpose, all her planning was to adjust the means; and the first thing

that she saw (and, with great courage, faced) was that the King—this

mutilated god, this botch, this travesty of lover and lord—must come out

with her. Long before demure Father Roche could answer his summons she

had admitted that, and strung herself to accept it. She must drag him

after her—a hobble on a donkey’s leg—because she dared not leave him

behind. He had betrayed his friends to her—true; but if she forsook him

he would run to them again and twice betray her. She shrugged him out of

mind. Bah! if she must take him she would take him. ’Twas to be hoped he

would get pleasure of it—and so much for that. But whom dared she leave?

She could think of no one as yet but her brother Moray. Overnight she

had separated him from the others, and she judged that he would remain

separate. Her thought was this:—‘He is a rogue among rogues, I grant.

But if you trust one rogue in a pack, all the others will distrust him.

Therefore he, being shunned by them, will cleave to me; and they, not

knowing how far I trust him, will falter and look doubtfully at one

another; and some of them will come over to him, and then the others

will be stranded.’ Superficial reasoning, rough-and-ready inference, all

this. She knew it quite well, but judged that it would meet the case of

Scotland. It was only, as it were, the scum of the vats she had seen

brewing in France.... But I keep Father Roche from his prayers.

* * * * *

Affairs in the palace and precincts kept their outward calm in the face

of the buzzing town. Train-bands paraded the street, the Castle was for

her Majesty, the gates were faithful. In the presence of such monitors

as these the burgesses and their wives kept their mouths shut as they

stood at shop-doors, and when they greeted at the close-ends they looked,

but did not ask, for news. But the Earl of Morton’s men still held the

palace, and he himself inspected the guard. There were no attempts to

dispute his hold, so far as he could learn, no blood-sheddings above the

ordinary, no libels on the Cross, no voices lifted against him in the

night. He held a morning audience in the Little Throne-room, with his

cousin Douglas for Chief Secretary; and to his suitors, speaking him

fair, gave fair replies. But it may be admitted he was very uneasy.

That had not been a pleasant view for him overnight, when the great Earl

of Moray, newly returned, walked the hall with the Queen upon his arm.

His jaw had dropped to see it. Here was a turn given to our affairs!

Dreams troubled him, wakefulness, and flying fancies, which to pursue was

torment and not to pursue certain ruin. He slept late and rose late. At

a sort of levee, which he held as he dressed, he was peevish, snapped at

the faithful Archie, and almost quarrelled with Ruthven.

‘Do you bite, my lord?’ had said that savage. ‘If I am to lose my head it

shall be in kinder company. I salute your lordship.’ And so he slammed

out.

Morton knew that he must smooth him down before the day was over, but

just now there were more pressing needs. He told his cousin that he must

see the King at the earliest.

Archie wagged his silvery head, looking as wise as an old stork. ‘Why,

that is very well,’ says he; ‘but how if he will not see you?’

‘What do you mean, man?’ cried the Earl upon him.

‘Why, this, cousin,’ said Archie: ‘that the King is out of all hand the

morn. I went to his door betimes and listened for him, but could hear

nothing forby the snivelling of his boy, therefore made so bold as to

open. There I found the minion Forrest crying his heart out over the bed,

and could hear our kinsman within howling blasphemy in English.’

‘Pooh, man, ’tis his way of a morning,’ said Morton, heartening himself.

‘What did you then?’

Archie screwed his lips to the whistle, and cocked one eyebrow at the

expense of the other.

‘What did I? I did the foolishest thing of all my days, when I sent in my

name by the boy. Strutting moorcock, call me, that hadna seen him all the

day before! Oh, cousin Morton, out comes our King like a blustering gale

o’ March, and takes me by the twa lugs, and wrenches at me thereby, and

shakes me to and fro as if I were a sieve for seeds. “Ye black-hearted,

poisonous beast!” he roars; “ye damned, nest-fouling chick of a drab and

a preacher!” says he—ah, and worse nor that, cousin, if I could lay my

tongue to sic filthy conversation. “I’ll teach ye,” says he thunderous,

“I’ll teach ye to play your games with your King!” He was fumbling for

his dagger the while, and would have stabbed me through and through but

for them that stood by and got him off me. Cousin, I fairly ran.’

The Earl looked sternly at him. ‘Tell me the truth, you Archie. What

devil’s trick had you played upon him?’

He looked so blankly, swore so earnestly, Nothing, upon his honour, that

he had to be believed.

‘Well then,’ said Morton, ‘what may this betide?’

‘Woe can tell your lordship! Little good to you and me belike.’

Lord Morton said, ‘I doubt he’ll play us false. I doubt the knave was

working the courage into him.’

And there you see why he was uneasy in his ruling of the palace. Heavy,

ox-like, slow-footed man, thick-blooded, fond of thick pleasures, slow to

see, slow to follow, slow to give up—he felt now, without more rhyme or

reason to support him, that his peril was great. The King was about to

betray him. A hot mist of rage flooded his eyes at the thought; and then

his heart gave a surge upwards and he felt the thick water on his tongue.

‘If he betray me, may God help him if He cares!’

After his duties in the Little Throne-room, in this grave conjuncture, it

seemed good to him to get speech with Mr. Secretary, who had been let out

of the house, but had let himself in again when his master, my lord of

Moray, came home.

‘Pray, Mr. Secretar,’ says he, ‘have you any tidings of my lord of Moray?’

Lethington became dry. ‘I had proposed to meet my lord, as your

lordship may recollect. It seemed good to your lordship that I should

not go, but that Sir James Melvill should—with results which I need

not particularise. I have not been sent for by my lord of Moray since

his home-coming, therefore I know no more of his lordship than your

lordship’s self knows.’

The Earl of Morton rumbled his lips. ‘Prutt! Prutt! I wonder now....’ He

began to feel sick of his authority.

‘The King, Mr. Secretar,’ he began again, ‘is in some distemperature at

this present. I am in doubt—it is not yet plain to me—I regret the fact,

I say.’

‘One should see his Majesty,’ says Lethington. ‘No doubt but Mr.

Archibald here——’

‘By my soul, man,’ said Mr. Archibald with fervour, ‘I don’t go near him

again for a thousand pound—English.’

‘No, no, Mr. Secretar,’ says my lord; ‘but consider whether yourself

should not adventure my lord of Moray.’

‘My lord——’

Morton lifted his hand. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘you _must_ do it. I tell you,

the sooner the better.’ The hand fell upon the table with a thud.

Lethington started, then left the room without a word.

Very little was said between the two gentlemen at this moment in charge

of Holyrood until the Secretary’s return. The Master of Lindsay intruded

upon them to report that the Earl of Lennox had left the palace, had left

Edinburgh, and had ridden hard to the west. Lord Morton nodded to signify

that his ears could do their duty.

‘Like son, like father,’ said Archie when the Master had gone.

Soon afterwards Lethington knocked at the door, entered, advanced to the

table, and stood there, looking at the ink-horn, which he moved gently

about.

‘Well, sir! We are here to listen,’ cried Morton, in a fever.

Lethington was slow to answer even then.

‘I have been admitted to my lord of Moray,—so much there is to say. He

had his reader with him, but came out to me. When I began to speak he

regretted at once that he could not hear me at any length. He showed me

his table encumbered with business, and declined at the present to add

any more to the litter. I urged your lordship’s desire to have speech

with him as soon as might be; he replied that his own desire was always,

in all things, to serve your lordship. I said, “Serve his lordship then

in this”: upon the which he owned that he failed of strength. “I have

a traveller’s ache in my bones,” saith he. “Let my Lord Morton have

patience.”’

He stopped there.

Lord Morton took a turn about the room. ‘No more than that said he,

Lethington? No more than that?’

‘His lordship said no more, my lord. And therefore, seeing that he

plainly wished it, I took my leave.’

The Earl looked at Archie Douglas: some secret intelligence passed

between them in which the Secretary had no share.

‘I am going to speak with my lord of Ruthven in his chamber,’ then said

he. ‘And, cousin, do you come also.’

The guard presented arms to the great man as he went down the hall, and

a few underlings—women of the house, grooms of the closet and coffer—ran

after him with petitions; but he waved away all and sundry. They fell

back, herded into groups and whispered together. The Secretary came out

alone and paced the hall deep in thought. One or two eyed him anxiously.

How did he stand now? It was a parlous time for Scotland when nobody knew

to whom to cringe for a favour.

* * * * *

Then—two hours after dinner—word was brought down into the hall that the

Queen would receive the Earl of Morton and certain other named persons in

the Throne-room. Great debate over this. Lord Ruthven was for declining

to go. ‘We are masters here. ’Tis for us to receive.’

But Lord Lindsay shook his ragged head. ‘No, no, Ruthven,’ he says,

‘take counsel, my fine man. It is ill to go, but worse to stay away.’

‘How’s that, then?’ cries Ruthven, white and fierce.

‘Why, thus,’ the elder replied. ‘If you go, you show that you are master.

If you go not, you betray that you doubt it.’

‘I see it precisely contrary,’ says Ruthven.

‘Then,’ he was told, ‘you have a short vision. It is the strong man can

afford to unbar the door.’

The Earl of Morton was clearly for going. ‘I take it, my lord of Moray

is behind this message. Let us see what he will do. He is bound to us as

fast as man can be.’

They sent up Lethington, who came back with the answer that my lord of

Moray had been summoned in like wise, and would not fail of attendance

upon her Majesty. This settled the masters of Holyrood. ‘Where he goes

there must we needs be also.’

Archie Douglas and Lethington had not been required by the Queen; but

when Archie was for rubbing his hands over that, the other advised him to

take his time.

‘You are not the less surely hanged because they let you see you are not

worth hanging,’ said the Secretary. Archie damned him for a black Genevan.

At the time set the Earls of Morton, Argyll, and Glencairn, the Lords

Ruthven, Rothes, and Lindsay, and some few more, went upstairs with what

state they could muster.

They found the Queen on the throne, pale, stiff in the set of her head,

but perfectly self-possessed. Three of her maids and Lady Argyll were

behind the throne. Upon her right hand stood the King in a long ermine

cloak, upon her left the Earl of Moray in black velvet. Lord John Stuart

and a sprinkling of young men held the inner door, and a secretary, in

poor Davy’s shoes, sat at a little table in the window. The six lords

filed in according to their degrees of ranking. Ruthven, behind Lindsay,

jogged his elbow: ‘See the pair of them there. Betrayed, man, betrayed!’

None of them was pleased to see that Moray had been admitted first, and

yet none of them in his heart had expected anything else. It was the

King who drew all their reproaches: in some sense or another Moray was

chartered in villainy.

The Queen, looking straight before her, moistened her lips twice, and

spoke in a low voice, very slowly and distinctly.

‘I have sent for you, my lords, that I may hear in the presence of the

King my consort, and of these my kindred and friends, what your wisdoms

may have to declare concerning some late doings of yours. As I ask

without heat, so I shall expect to be answered.’ Pausing here, she looked

down at her hands placid in her lap. So unconscious did she seem of

anything but her own dignity and sweet estate, you might have taken her

for a girl at her first Communion.

The Earl of Morton moved out a step, and made the best speech he could

of it. He had the gift, permitted to slow-witted men, of appearing

more honest than he was; for tardiness of utterance is easily mistaken

for gravity, and gravity (in due season) for uprightness. One has got

into the idle habit of connecting roguery with fluency. But it must be

allowed to Morton that he did not attempt to disavow his colleagues. If

he urged his own great wrongs as an excuse for violence, he claimed that

the wrongs of Scotland had cried to him louder still. He now held the

palace, he said, for the prevention of mischief, and should be glad to

be relieved of the heavy duty. Then he talked roundabout—of requitals in

general—how violent griefs provoked violent medicines—how men will fight

tooth and nail for their consciences. Lastly he made bolder. ‘If I fear

not, madam, to invoke the holy eyes of my God upon my doings, it would

not become me to quail under your Majesty’s. And if that which I hold

dearest is enchained, I should be a recreant knight indeed if I failed

of a rescue.’ He glanced toward the King at this point; but the young

man might have been a carven effigy. His end therefore—for he knew now

that he had been betrayed—was a lame one: a plea for mutual recovery

of esteem, an act of oblivion, articles to be drawn up and signed, _et

cætera_. The Queen, placidly regarding her fingers, drew on the others

after him one by one.

The Earl of Glencairn had nothing to say, as he proved by every word he

uttered; the Earl of Argyll began a speech, but caught his wife’s eye

and never finished it. Lord Lindsay, an honest, hot-gospel, rough sort

of man—who might have been a Knox in his way—said a great deal. But he

was long over it, and slow, and prolix; and the Queen none too patient.

At ‘Secondly, madam, you shall mark——’ she began to tap with her toe;

and then one yet more impatient broke in, feeling that he must shriek

under his irritation unless he could relieve it by speech. This was Lord

Ruthven, a monomaniac, with one cry for the world and one upon whom to

cry it. If he spoke his rages to the Queen in form, he aimed them at the

King in substance, and never once looked elsewhere, or threatened with

his finger any other than that stock-headed starer out of painted eyes.

He thrust away Lindsay with a pawing hand, and—‘Oh, madam, will you

listen to me now?’ says he. ‘We speak our pieces before ye like bairns on

a bench, who have acted not long since like men, and men wronged. And who

are we, when all’s said, to justify ourselves? Who was the most aggrieved

among us? Let that man speak. Who had most cause to cry out, Down with

the thief of my honour? Let him say it now. What was our injury compared

to that man’s? If we played in his scene, who gave out the parts? If we

laid hands upon our Queen, by whose command did we so? And into whose

hands did we commit her royal person? Let him answer, and beat us down

with his words, if to any hands but his own.’ Wrought up by his own

eloquence, driving home his terrible questions, he had advanced unawares

close to the man he threatened. The King jumped back with a short cry;

but the Queen, who had been straining forward to listen, like a racer at

his mark, interposed.

‘I am listening,’ she said; ‘continue, Ruthven.’

Ruthven, at this check, began to cast about for his words. He had lost

his flow. ‘As for yon Davy, madam, I’ll not deny airt and pairt in his

taking——’

‘Why, how should you indeed?’ says the Queen, smiling rather sharply.

‘I say I will not, madam,’ says Ruthven, flurried; then with a savage

snarl he turned short on the King and fleshed his tooth there.

‘And you!’ he raved at him: ‘deny it you, if you dare!’

The King went white as a sheet.

‘Man,’ said the Earl of Morton finely, ‘hold your peace. I lead this

company.’

Lord Ruthven said no more, and Morton took up anew his parable. What he

did was well done: he did not give ground, yet was conciliatory. It was

a case for terms, he said. Let articles be drawn up, lands be restored,

offices stand as before the slaughter, the old forfeitures be overlooked,

religion on either side be as it had been: in fact, let that come which

all hoped for, the Golden Age of Peace.

The Queen consulted with her brother, ignored her husband, then accepted.

Lethington was to draw up articles and submit them. For Peace’s sake,

if it were possible, she would sign them. Rising from her throne, she

dismissed her gaolers. She took Moray’s arm, just touched the King’s with

two fingers, and walked through the lines made by her friends, a page

going before to clear the way. The moment she was in her room she sent

Des-Essars out with a letter, which she had ready-written, for the Earl

of Bothwell.

Left with his fellow-tragedians, Ruthven for a time was ungovernable,

with no words but ‘black traitor—false, perjuring beast of a thief’—and

the like. Morton, to the full as bartered as himself, did not try to hold

him. He too was working into a steady resentment, and kindling a grudge

which would smoulder the longer but burn the more fiercely than the

madman’s spluttering bonfire. And he was against all sudden follies. When

Ruthven, foaming, howled that he would stab the King in the back, Morton

grumbled, ‘Too quick a death for him’; and Lindsay said drily, ‘No death

at all. Yon lad is wiser than Davy—wears a shirt that would turn any

blade.’ ‘Then I’ll have at him in his bed,’ says Ruthven. And Lindsay, to

clinch the matter, scoffs at him with, ‘Pooh, man, the Queen is his shirt

of mail. Are you blind?’

Into this yeasty flood, with courage truly remarkable, the Earl of Moray

steered his barque, coming sedately back from his escort of the Queen. At

first they were so curious about his visit that they forgot the vehement

suspicion there was of treachery from him also. The precision of his

steering was admirable, but he ran too close to the rocks when he spoke

of the Queen as ‘a young lady in delicate health, for whom, considering

her eager temper and frail body, the worst might have been feared in the

late violent doings.’

Here Morton cut in. ‘I call God to witness, my lord, and you, too,

Ruthven, shall answer for me, whether or not I forbade the slaughter of

that fellow before her face. For I feared, my lord, that very health of

hers.’

‘And you did well to fear it, my lord,’ said the Earl of Moray; and that

was the turn too much.

Said Ruthven to him dangerously, ‘You make me sick of my work.’ He peered

with grinning malice into the inscrutable face. ‘Tell me, you, my lord of

Moray, what did _you_ look for in the business? What thought _you_ would

come of murder at the feet of a woman big? God in heaven, sir, what is it

you look for? what is it you think of day after day?’

Lord Moray blinked—but no more. ‘Hush, hush, Lord Ruthven, lest you utter

what would grieve all who love Scotland.’

Ruthven howled. ‘Man, do you talk of Scotland? Are we friends here? Are

we in the kirk? If we are in council, for God’s sake talk your mind.

Ah!—talk of that, my good lord——’ he pointed to the empty throne. ‘Man,

man, man! there’s your kirk and your altar—you prater about Scotland’s

love.’ For a moment he fairly withered the man; but then, as drowning in

a flood-tide of despair, he lifted up his hands and covered his tormented

eyes. ‘Oh, I am sick just,’ he said, ‘sick of your lying—sick, I tell

you, sick—sick to death!’

The Earl of Moray made a little sign with his eyebrows and closed eyes;

and they left him alone with Ruthven. It should never be denied of this

man that he had the courage of his father’s race.

The ‘Articles of Peace and Oblivion’ were drawn up, tendered on knees,

and overlooked by her Majesty.

‘I see your name here, Mr. Secretary, as in need of mercy,’ she said,

with a finger on the place. Of course she had known that he was up to the

chin in the plot, but she could rarely resist making the sensitive man

wriggle.

He murmured something unusually fatuous, painfully conscious of his

standing.

‘Oh, sir,’ she said, ‘if you seek for my pardon you shall have it. I am

contented with a few things. But go you now and sue for it in the maids’

closet. You will find Fleming there. I cannot answer for her, I warn

you; for if you say to a maid, “Love me, love my dog,” it is possible

she may rejoin, “Serve me, serve my mistress.” That, at least, is the

old-fashioned pleading in the courts of love.’

He was greatly confused, the obsequious, fertile man, and she greatly

entertained.