‘Madam,’ he said eagerly, seeing now why she was so thankful, ‘let me go

to Glasgow. You cannot otherwise be sure of this report. The King may be

ill, and yet not mortally. Let us be sure before we give thanks.’

She was crying freely. ‘I have not deserved so great a mercy, God

knoweth. I have been near to deadly sin. Yes, yes—go, Baptist. Go at

once, and return with speed.’ It was settled that he should take with him

her physician and a message of excuse that business kept her from him.

He went to prepare himself; she to write to Bothwell a brave and hopeful

letter concerning this streak of blue in her storm-packed sky. Before

dark Des-Essars was away on a fresh horse.

* * * * *

Up from Whittingehame in a day or two came Mr. Secretary Lethington,

very busy; and had private speech with the Queen, reporting the councils

of her friends down there. She listened idly to his urgings of this and

that. What interest had she now in plots woven under yew trees or in

panelled chambers, when high Heaven itself had declared for her quarrel?

Did Archie grin like a wolf, Morton flush and handle his dagger? Let

them—let them! An angel with a flaming sword stood on the house-roof at

Glasgow, and their little rages were nought.

At the end of his circuitous oration—‘Well, have you ended?’ she asked

him.

‘Madam, I have no more to say.’

She took a scrap of paper and scribbled on it with a pen. ‘Read that, if

you please, and take it with you back again.’

‘_Show to the Earl of Morton_,’ he read, ‘_that the Queen will hear no

speech of the matter arranged with him_.’

Bothwell laughed to see the dropped jaws, aghast at this rebuff. But she,

confident in the help of high Heaven—which had plucked her, as she said,

from the brink of the pit—had recovered all her audacity. And so she

waited, almost happy again, for the return of her messenger.

* * * * *

Des-Essars was gone for more than a week; it was not until the ninth

day from his departure that he brought back his report. I know not what

she had expected—some miraculous dealing or another by which God was to

signify that she was set free to follow her desires; but whatever it was,

the young Brabanter could not end her suspense. So far as the doctors

could judge, the King’s illness might be sweated out of him: they were

trying that when he left. The fever must run its course; no one could

say that it must needs end fatally. Her Majesty was to hope, said the

doctors; and so said Des-Essars, giving the word a twist round. To hope!

She was worn thin with hoping.

The King was horrible, he told her, and wore a taffeta mask. He was

peevish, but not furious; had not enough strength left him for that.

He lay and snapped at all who came near him, harmlessly, like a snake

robbed of its fang. The light hurt his eyes, so he lay in the dark; but,

being extremely curious about himself, he had a candle burning constantly

beside him, and a hand-glass on the bed, in which he was always looking

at his face: a sign of morbid affection of the brain, the doctors

considered. The Queen said carelessly, ‘Why, what else hath he ever cared

for in life but his own person?’

She asked what he had replied to her message of excuse. Des-Essars, who

had not been allowed to talk with him, and had only seen what he did see

when the sick man slept, had delivered it by Standen. Through Standen

also came the answer. The King’s words were, ‘This much you shall say to

the Queen: that I wish Stirling were Jedburgh, and Glasgow the Hermitage,

and I the Earl of Bothwell as I lie here; and then I doubt not but she

would be quickly with me undesired.’

She flushed, but not with shame. ‘Doth he think me at Stirling? He is out

there; but otherwise, my dear, he is right enough.’ She turned away with

a sigh. ‘Well, what can I do but wait?’ She was not allowed to wait long.

Bothwell came to see her, and stayed till near midnight in secret talk.

It was wild and snowy, much like that night, as Des-Essars remembered, in

which Davy had been slain, near a year ago; one of those nights when the

mind, unhappy and querulous, calls up every nerve to the extreme point

of tension. The young man, apprehensive of any and every evil, kept the

watch. He heard the door shut, Bothwell’s step in the corridor; he flew

to the antechamber, hoping that she might send for him. But though he

waited there an hour or more in miserable suspense, neither daring to

show himself nor to leave the place, he heard nothing. Between two and

three o’clock in the morning he fell asleep over the table, wrapped in

his cloak. As once before, she came in, a candle in her hand, and awoke

him by touching his head.

He sprang up, broad awake in an instant; he saw her. ‘Oh, your face!’ he

cried out. ‘Haunted! haunted!’ It was a face all grey, and as still as

marble save for the looming eyes.

‘You sleep,’ she said, ‘but I keep vigil. Bid me good-bye. I am going

away.’

He said, ‘Where you go, I go. I dare not leave you as now you are.’

She was in a stare. ‘I am going to the King.’

‘To the King!’ It horrified him. ‘You—alone?’

‘I am sent: I must go.’

‘I go with you.’

She shook her head. ‘You cannot. What I do I must do myself. Now bid me

good speed upon my journey.’

He folded his arms. ‘I think I will not. I think the best wish I could

make for you would be that you should die.’

This she did not deny; but said she: ‘Vain wishing! I know that I shall

not die until my lord has made me his. After that it had better be soon.’

He asked her, with trembling voice, what she wanted with the King; for

he verily thought that she was going there for one dreadful purpose. She

avoided the question. The King had been asking for her, she said, and it

was her duty to obey him. ‘He is mending fast, they tell me; and with his

health his strength will return. I had rather’—she said it with a sick

shudder—‘I had rather see him before he is able to move.’

‘Madam,’ urged the young man, much agitated, ‘I entreat you, for

the love of Christ! You must not touch him, or allow.... He is one

sore—hideous—poisoned through and through. On my knees I beg of you. Nay,

before you go you shall kill me.’

She looked beside and beyond him in her set, pinched way; he saw the

doom written plain on her face. In an agony, not knowing what he did, he

confronted her boldly. ‘I shall prevent you. You shall not go.’

She said, looking at him now with softened eyes: ‘Oh, if it were possible

even now that I might be as once I was, even now I would say to thee, my

friend, Take me, O true heart, for I would be true like thee! Ah, if it

were possible! Ah, if it were possible!’ Her great eyes seemed homes of

mournful light; so longingly did she look that, for a moment, he thought

he had conquered her. She gave a shake of the head, and when she looked

at him again the kindly hue had gone. ‘But it is not possible—and I am

a soiled woman, wounded in the side and defiled by my own blood; for my

desire is not as thine.’

‘Oh,’ cried he, ‘what are you saying? Do you condemn yourself?’

She shook her head. ‘I neither condemn nor condone: I speak the truth. I

ache for my lover; I must work my fingers to the bone for him.’

‘Not while I have mine—to work for you—to sin for you.’

‘You cannot. Your fingers are too tender.’

This angered him. ‘How can you say that, madam? How can you hurt me so?

You know that I love you. Is it nothing to you? Less than nothing?’

She said, ‘It is much. Come, you and I will kiss together for the last

time.’ She smiled a welcome, held out her arms; sobbing, he put them down

and took her in his own instead, and held her close. There for a while

she was content to be. But when he began to take more than his due, she

gently disengaged herself, having won her object, which was to depart

without him. ‘Adieu, dear faithful friend,’ she said—‘pray for me’; and

as he knelt before her, she stooped down and lifted up his head by the

chin, and kissed him on the forehead, and was gone. After that, she was

inaccessible to him, her door denied.

In three days’ time—on the 23rd of January—she started for Glasgow with

Lords Livingstone, Herries, and Traquair. Bothwell went part of her way,

to where the roads divide. Her last public act had been to allow of the

marriage between Fleming and Lethington. ‘And now,’ she said, ‘I shall

have but one Mary left, who came hither with four. So endeth our Maids’

Adventure.’ But if I am right, it had ended long before. Now she was but

a beast driven by the herdsmen to the market, there to be cheapened by

the butcher.

* * * * *

Of his own moving adventure of the night when, for one moment, she

assuredly looked back over her shoulder, Des-Essars writes what I

consider his most fatuous page. ‘There was,’ he says, ‘a kind of very

passion in that close embrace; and I knew, _by the way she returned my

kisses_, that she was strongly inclined to me. Indeed, she said as much

when she told me that it would have been possible, at an earlier day, for

her to love me as she had once loved the King; with ardour, namely, like

a fanciful child, in the secret mind, with the body but little concerned

in the matter.[7] But it was too late. She owned herself tainted; he had

taught her vice. She could be child no more, girl in love no more; alas,

no, but a thirsty nymph stung by an evil spirit, ever restless, ever

craving, never to be appeased....’

There is more in the same strain, which I say is fatuous. Whether she

had a tenderness for him or not—and no doubt she had one—she was not

revealing it then. Far from it, she wanted to escape, and this was her

readiest way. She was at her old cajolery when she let him embrace and

kiss her; and maybe she did kiss back. It is to be observed that she got

her way immediately afterwards.

[7] His own report stultifies him here. According to him, she did not say

it would have been possible, but oh, that it had been possible.

CHAPTER V

MEDEA IN THE BEDCHAMBER

Women, in the experience of French Paris, as he once informed a select

company of his acquaintance, could only be trusted to do a thing, and

never to cause a thing to be done. ‘They will always find a thousand

reasons why it should not be done, or why it should be done another

way—their way, an older way, a newer way, any way in the world but yours.

Burn the boats, burn the boats, dear sirs, when you need a woman to

help you, as you constantly do in delicate affairs.’ He instanced, as a

case in point, his own confidence in Queen Mary, and his master’s want

of confidence, when the pair of them rode with her part of her way to

Glasgow; and how he was entirely justified by her subsequent behaviour.

It made little difference in the end, to be sure; but no doubt she

would have been saved a good deal of distress if Bothwell had been as

instructed as his lacquey. As it is, it is to be feared that he fretted

her sadly. It was not only heartless to play upon her jealousy, to put

her so sharply upon her honour, but it was bad policy on his part; for if

the creature of your use starts a-quivering at the touch of your hand,

how are you served if by your whip and spurs you set her plunging madly

into the dark, shying and swerving and cracking her heart? You wear out

your tool before the time. That is just what Bothwell did.

The fact is that, as aforesaid, she was too sensitive an instrument for

his coarse fingers. As well give Blind Jack a fiddle of Cremona for his

tap-room jiggeries. If my lord wanted work from her which Moll Bawd

or Kate Cutsheet would have done better, he should have known wiselier

how to get it than by using the only stimulus such hacks could feel.

This tremulous, starting, docile creature to be pricked on by jealousy,

forsooth! Why, that had been King Darnley’s silly way. ‘I would that

Glasgow might be the Hermitage and myself the Earl of Bothwell as I lie

here,’ he had said; and it made her laugh and admit the truth. But this

Bothwell was no finer. ‘Ohè! a many weary leagues before I win my home!

Well, I am sure of a welcome there.’ And then, when she bent her head to

the way, ‘Ay, Queens and Kings, and all gudemen and wives are in the like

case. Bed and board—it comes down e’en to that. Love is just a flaunty

scarf to draw the eye with. You see it purfling at a window, and, think

you, that should be a dainty white hand a-working there!’

She lifted her face to meet the driving snow, looked into the dun sky

and saw it speckled with black—her own colours henceforward! Thus would

she be from her soul outwards—sodden grey, and speckled with black. The

burden of her heart was so heavy that she groaned aloud. ‘You falter, you

fear!’ cried that fidgety brute. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she stammered; ‘I shall

fail if you speak to me.’

The snow was falling fast, but there was no wind, when she said farewell

to her lover at Callander gate. He would not go in; purposed to ride

southward into Liddesdale with but one change of horses, fearing that

the wind would get up after dark and make the hill-roads impossible. The

Black Laird of Ormiston, Tala, and Bowton were to go with him; he left

Paris behind to be her messenger if she should need to send one. There

was no time to spare. ‘Set on, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I will overtake you.’

He shook the snow from his cloak, set it flying from eyelashes and beard,

drew near to the sombre lady where she stood in the midst of her little

company, and put his hand upon her saddle-bow. ‘God speed your Grace upon

your goodly errand,’ he said—whereat she gave a little moan of the voice,

but did not otherwise respond—‘and send us soon a happy meeting—Amen!’

She looked at him piercingly for a second of time, and then resumed

her staring and glooming. He cried her farewell once more, saluted the

lords, and pounded over the frozen marsh. One could hear him talking and

laughing for a long way, and the barking answers of Ormiston.

The Queen rode up the avenue to the doors, and was taken to bed by Mary

Seton and Carwood. She kept her chamber all that evening and night, but

sent for Paris early in the morning. He saw her in bed, thin and drawn

in the face, very narrow-eyed, and with a short cough. She handed him a

great sack, sealed and tied, and a letter.

‘Take these to your master at the Hermitage. You shall have what horses

you need. In that pack are four hundred crowns. You see how much trust I

have in you.’

Paris assured her that her trust was well bestowed, as she should find

out by his quick return to her.

She laughed, not happily. ‘I hope so. I came from France, and to France I

go in my need.’

‘Why, madam,’ says Paris, ‘does your Majesty intend for my country?’

‘No, no. I shall see the land of France no more. I spoke of Frenchmen,

who are tender towards women.’

Paris felt inspired to say that none loved her Majesty more entirely than

the men of his nation, who had delicate sensibility for the perfections

of ladies. And he modestly adduced as another example Monsieur

Des-Essars, lately advanced to be one of her esquires.

She coloured faintly. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I believe he loves me well. Him

also I trust—you, Paris, and Monsieur Des-Essars.’

Paris fell upon his knees. She changed her mood instantly, bade him

begone with the treasure, and rejoin her at Glasgow with letters from my

lord.

Paris faithfully performed his errand, in spite of the snow with which

the country was blanketed as deeply as in a fleece.

‘My lord was glad of the money,’ he tells us, ‘and sent Monsieur de Tala

away with it immediately. Before I left him to go to the Queen at Glasgow

he told me of his plot, which was to blow the King up with gunpowder as

he lay in a lodging at Edinburgh. I said, the King was not at Edinburgh

yet. “No, fool,” says he, “but he soon will be.” He showed me papers

of association whereon I was to believe stood the names of my lord

himself, of my Lords Morton, Argyll, Huntly, Ruthven, and Lindsay, of Mr.

Douglas, Mr. James Balfour, and others. He pointed to one name far below

the others. “That,” he said, “is of our friend the White Rat,”—my own

name for Mr. Secretary. He asked me what I thought of it; I told him, I

thought no good of it. “Why not, you fool?” he jeered at me. I replied,

“Because, my lord, you do not show me the name of names.”

‘Although he knew entirely well what name I meant, he forced me to

mention Monsieur de Moray, and then was angry that I did so. He said that

lord would not meddle. I said, “He is wise.” Then he began to jump about

the chamber, hopping from board to board like a crow with his wing cut.

“My lord of Moray! My lord of Moray!” cried he out. “He will neither help

nor hinder; but it is all one. It is late now to change advice—as why

should we change for a fool’s word such as thine? If we have Lethington,

blockhead, have we not his master?”

‘I said, No; for those gentlemen who interested themselves in the late

David had Mr. Secretary, and thought they had the Earl of Moray also.

But they found out their mistake the next day, when he came back and,

rounding upon them, turned every one of them out.

‘“Well,” he cried—“Well! What then? What is all that to the purpose? Did

he not sign my bond at the Council of October?” That bond was what we

used to call “Of the Scotchmen’s Business,” because all present signed a

paper in favour of the Queen, which was not read aloud. I admitted that

he had signed it; but I was not convinced by that. I considered that it

pledged him to nothing. I thought it my duty to add, “You are my master,

my lord. If you command me in this I shall serve you, because in my

opinion it is the business of servants to obey, not to advise. But I say,

for the last time, Beware the Earl of Moray.” My master began to rail and

swear at his lordship—a natural but vain thing to do. I was silent.

‘The next day after, he told me that he had revealed his plan to Monsieur

Hob of Ormiston and to his brother-in-law, my lord of Huntly. If I had

dared I should have asked him whether my lady the Countess had been

informed; and I did ask it of her woman Torles, who was a friend of mine.

But Torles said that, so far as she knew, the Countess never spoke with

my lord about the Queen’s affairs.

‘I was curious about another thing, exceedingly curious. “Tell me, my

dear Torles,” I said, “our lord and lady—are they still good friends?”

From the way that she looked at me, her sly way, and grinned, I knew the

answer. “They are better friends, my fine man, than you and I are ever

likely to be.” I said something gallant, to the effect that there might

be better reasons, and played some little foolishness or other, which

pleased her very much. Next morning I started to go to Glasgow with

letters for the Queen’s Majesty.’

That was on the 26th January, the very day when Mr. Secretary Lethington

was married to his Fleming. Paris heard that he took her to his house

of Lethington, but (as he truly adds) the affair is of no moment, where

he took her, or whether he took her at all. ‘It was long since she had

been of the Queen’s party; indeed, I always understood that it was a

love-match between them, entered into at first sight; and that Mistress

Fleming had been alienated from her allegiance from the beginning.’ Paris

was sorry. ‘She was a pretty and a modest lady, in a Court where those

two graces were seldom in partnership.’

* * * * *

He learned at Glasgow that the King was still very sick, and the Queen

in a low condition of body. It seems that when she had reached the house

she would not have the patient informed of the fact, and would not go

to him that same night. Some of the Hamiltons had met her on the road,

and returned with her into the town. There was a full house, quite a

Court, and a great company about her at supper. Lady Reres was there,

an old friend of her Majesty’s, and of Lord Bothwell’s too, and Lord

Livingstone, full of his pranks. He, it seems, had rallied the Queen

finely about her despondency and long silences; said in a loud whisper

that he was ready for a toast to an absentee if she would promise to

drink to the name he would cry; and although she would not do it, but

shook her head and looked away, his broad tongue was always hovering

about Bothwell’s name. It is to be supposed that he drank to many distant

friends, for Bastien, the Queen’s valet, told Paris that his lordship

grew very blithe after supper. ‘If you will believe me, Paris,’ he said,

‘as her Majesty was warming her foot at the fire, leaning upon this

Monsieur de Livingstone’s shoulder, his jolly lordship took her round

the middle as if she had been his wench, and cried out upon her doleful

visage. “Be merry,” says he, “and leave the dumps to him you have left

behind you.” She flung away from him as if he teased her, but allowed his

arm to be where it was, and his hardy hand too.’

Great dealings for the Parises and Bastiens to snigger at. I suppose

it is no wonder that they unqueened her, since, however fast they went

to work, it was never so fast as she did it to herself. They tell me

it was always the way with her family, to choose rather to be easy in

low company than stiff with the great folk about them. The common sort,

therefore, loved the race of Stuart, and the lords detested it. But we

must follow Paris if we are to see the Queen.

Though he delivered his letters as soon as he arrived, he was not sent

for until late at night. The King’s man, Joachim, took him upstairs,

saying as they went, ‘I hope thou hast a stout stomach; for take it from

me, all is not very savoury up here.’

Paris replied that he had been so long in the service of gentlemen that

their savour meant little to him, even that of diseased gentlemen.

‘Right,’ says Joachim; ‘right for thee, my little game-cock. But thou

shalt not find the Queen in too merry pin, be assured.’

Carwood, her finger to her lip, met him in the corridor, passed him in

through the anteroom, and pulled aside the heavy curtain. ‘Go in softly,’

she said, ‘and be careful of your feet. It is very dark, and the King

sleeps. In with you.’

She drew back and let the curtain drive him forward. Certainly it was

plaguey dark. He saw the Queen at the far end of the chamber writing a

letter, haloed in the light of a single taper. She looked up when she

heard him, but did not beckon him nearer; so he stayed where he was, and,

as his eyes grew used to the gloom, looked about him.

It was a spacious room, but low in the ceiling, and raftered, with heavy

curtains across the windows, which were embayed. A great bed was in the

midst of the wall, canopied and crowned, with plumes at the corners and

hangings on all sides but one—the door side. He could not see the King

lying there, though he could hear his short breaths, ‘like a dog’s with

its tongue out’; but presently, to his huge discomfort, he made out a

sitting figure close to the pillow on the farther side, and not six paces

from him across the bed—man or woman he never knew. It might have been a

dead person, he said, for all the motion that it made. ‘It sat deep in

the shadow, hooded, so that you could not see its face, or whether it had

a face; and one white hand supported the hood. It did not stir when the

sufferer needed assistance, such as water, or the turning of a pillow, or

a handkerchief. It was a silent witness of everything done and to be gone

through with; gave me lead in the bowels, as they say, the horrors in the

hair.’

It may have been Mary Seton, or a priest, or a watching nun; at any rate,

it terrified Paris, his head already weakened by the burden of that fetid

chamber. The air was overpowering, tainted to sourness, seeming to clog

the eyelids and stifle the light.

By and by the Queen beckoned him forward, putting up her finger to enjoin

a soft tread. He came on like a cat, and stood within touching distance

of her, and saw that she was kneeling at a table, writing with extreme

rapidity, tears running down her face. There was a silver crucifix in

front of her, to which she turned her eyes from time to time, as if

referring to it the words which cost her so much to put down. Once, after

a frenzy of penmanship, she held out her hands to it in protest; then

reverently took it up and kissed it, to sanctify so the words she was

writing: ‘The good year send us that God knit us together for ever for

the most faithful couple that ever He did knit together.’ Paris knew very

well to whom she wrote so fully, who was to read this stained, passionate

letter, ill scrawled on scraps of old paper, scored with guilt, blotted

with shameful tears, loving, repentant, wilful, petulant, unspeakably

loyal and tender, all by turns. At this moment the King called to her.

He lay, you must know, with a handkerchief over his face. Paris had

believed him asleep, for his breathing, though short, was regular, and

his moaning and the working of his tongue counted for little in a sick

man’s slumber. But while she was in the thick of her work at the table he

coughed and called out to her in distress, ‘Mary, O Mary! where are you

gone?’ And when she did not answer, but went on with the unspinning of

the thought in her mind, and let him call ‘Mary, O Mary!’ Paris, looking

from one to the other—and awfully on that shrouded third—found blame for

her in his heart.

She finished her line, got up, and went to the foot of the bed. ‘You call

me? What is your pleasure?’

‘His pleasure! Faith of a Christian!’ thinks Paris.

The King whispered, ‘Water, in Christ’s name’; and Paris heard the

clicking of his dry tongue. Nevertheless he said, ‘Let me fetch you the

water, madam.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘fetch it you. And I would that one of us could be

drowned in the water.’

He poured some into a cup and took it to her.

‘Give it him,’ says she, ‘give it him. I dare not go nearer.’

The King heard that, and became sadly agitated. He wriggled his legs,

tossed about, and began to wail feebly. In the end she had to take it,

but you could see that she was nearly sick with loathing of him, natural

and otherwise. For to say nothing that she had to lift the handkerchief,

that he was hideous, his breath like poison, she was so made that only

one could possess her at a time. If she loved a man she could not abide

that any other should claim a right of her—least of all one who had a

title to claim it.

The water cooled his fever for a time and brought him vitality. He

talked, babbled, in the random way of the very sick, plunging headlong

into the heart of a trouble and flying out before one can help with

a hand. But he was quick enough to see that she did not respond

readily, and sly enough to try her upon themes which he judged would be

stimulating. He confessed with facile tears the faults of his youth and

temper, begged her pardon times and again for his offences against her.

‘Oh, I have done wickedly by you, my love, but all’s over now. You shall

see how well we will do together.’

Said she, ‘It will be better to wait a while. Talk not too much, lest you

tax yourself.’

He rolled about, blinking his sightless eyes. ‘Do not be hard upon me! I

repent—I tell you that I do. Pardon me, my Mary, pardon my faults. Let us

be as we were once—lovers—wedded lovers—all in all!’ Paris saw her sway,

with shut eyes, as she listened to him. ‘I would have you sleep now, my

lord. It will be best for you. You tire yourself by talking.’

He begged for a kiss, and, when she affected not to hear him, grew very

wild. It was a curious thing that she did then, watched by Paris with

wonder. She dipped the tips of her two forefingers in the cup of water,

and, putting them together, touched the back of his hand with them. ‘Ah,

the balm of your cool sweet lips!’ he cried out, and was satisfied. But

when he asked her to kiss his forehead she, in turn, became agitated,

laughing and crying at once, and rocked herself about before she could

repeat the touch of her two wet fingers on so foul a place. Again he

sighed his content, and lay quiet, and presently dozed again.

She left him instantly and went back to her writing. She wrote fast; the

fierce pen screamed over the paper: ‘You make me dissemble so much that

I am afraid thereof with horror.... You almost make me play the part of

a traitor.... If it were not for obeying I had rather be dead. My heart

bleedeth at it....’ And again, ‘Alas! I never deceived anybody, but I

remit myself wholly to your will. Send me word what I shall do, and

whatsoever happen unto me I will obey you.... Think also if you will

not find some invention more secret by physic; for he is to take physic

at Craigmillar and the baths also, and shall not come forth for a long

time....

... ‘It is very late; and although I should never be tired in writing to

you, yet I will end after kissing your hands. Excuse my evil writing and

read this over twice.... Pray remember your friend and write to her, and

often. Love me always as I shall love you.’

She put a bracelet of twisted hair in between the sheets, made a packet

of the whole, and beckoned Paris to follow her into the next room.

‘Take you this,’ she said, ‘whither you know well, and tell my lord all

that you have seen and heard. He will learn so that I am a faithful and

obedient lover. And if he should be jealous, and ask you in what manner

I have behaved myself here, you may show him.’ So speaking, she joined

her two forefingers, as he had seen her do before, and touched the table

with them. He was not likely to forget that, however. It struck him as an

ingenious and quaint device.

‘If my lord need me,’ she went on, ‘he can send you to Linlithgow, where

I shall lie one night. Thence I shall go directly to Craigmillar with the

King’s litter. It is late, and I must go to bed, if not to sleep. Other

women lie abed, comforted, or to be comforted before daylight; but that

cannot I be as yet. Now go, Paris.’

He said, ‘Madam, be of good heart. All things come by waiting.’

She sighed, but said nothing. He made his reverence, and away.

CHAPTER VI

KIRK O’ FIELD

The Earl of Bothwell returned to Edinburgh the day before the Queen

was to leave Glasgow, and sent for Des-Essars to come to his lodging.

‘Baptist,’ he said, ‘I understand that her Majesty will be at Linlithgow

this night, with the King in his litter. She will look to see me there,

but I cannot go, with all my affairs in this town out of train and no

one to overlook them but myself. I desire you, therefore, to go with the

escort that is to meet her, and to give her this message from me: “It

has not been found possible to accommodate the King at Craigmillar, but

a house has been got for him near Saint-Mary-in-the-Field, and properly

furnished. Please your Majesty, therefore, direct his bearers thither.”’

He made him repeat the words two or three times until he was sure of

them; then added, ‘If the Queen ask you more concerning this house, _with

intent to know more_, and not for mere curiosity, you shall tell her that

it is near the great house of the Hamiltons, in the which the Archbishop

now lodges. She will be satisfied with that, you will find, and ask you

no more.’

Des-Essars understood him perfectly; but in case the reader do not, I

shall remind him that this Archbishop Hamilton of Saint Andrews was

brother of the old Duke of Châtelherault, of whom he used to hear in

the beginning of this book—one of the clan, then, which disputed the

Succession with the Lennox Stuarts and was regarded by the King as an

hereditary enemy, with a blood-feud neither quenched nor quenchable. That

same Archbishop, when the Queen was at Stirling for the baptism, scaring

of the King, recall of Morton and the rest of the deeds done there, had

been restored to his consistorial powers, and put at liberty to bind and

loose according to his discretion and that of Saint Peter his master.

There had been some talk at the time as to why he had been so highly

favoured, and the opinion commonly held that he was to divorce the Queen

from the King. That was not French Paris’s opinion, for one. In Edinburgh

now, at any rate, was this Archbishop Hamilton with the keys of binding

and loosing in his hands, not as yet making any use of them, and lodging

in the great family house without the city wall.

Well, the escort departed for Linlithgow, Des-Essars with it. This is

what he says of his adored mistress:

‘I think she was glad to see me, as certainly was I to see her looking

so hale and fresh. Her eyes were like wet stars; she kissed me twice at

meeting, with lips which had regained their vivid scarlet, were cool but

not dry. I hastened to excuse my Lord Bothwell on the score of affairs.

“Yes, yes, I know how pressed he is,” she replied. “I know he would have

come if it had been possible. He has sent me the best proxy by you.”

I told her that my Lord Huntly would be here momently, but she made a

pouting mouth and a little grimace—then looked slily at me and laughed.

‘I rehearsed faithfully my Lord Bothwell’s message, and could not see

that she was particularly interested in the King’s actual lodging—though

that is by no means to imply that she was _not_ interested. It is due

to say that I never knew any person in all my experience of Courts

and policy so quick as she not only to conceal her thoughts, but also

to foresee when it would behove her to conceal them. It was next to

impossible to surprise her heart out of her.

‘She asked me eagerly for Edinburgh news. I told her that the Hamiltons

were in their own house; the Archbishop there already, and my Lord of

Arbroath expected every day. She said in a simple, wondering kind of

a way, “Why, the Hamilton house is next neighbour unto the King’s, I

suppose?”

‘“Madam,” I said, “it is. And so my Lord Bothwell bid me remind your

Majesty.”

‘She laughed; a little confusedly. “Better the King should not know of

it,” she said. “He hates that family, and fears them, too. But that is

not extraordinary, for he always hates those whom he fears.”

‘She asked, was my lord of Morton in town? I replied that he was, with

a strong guard about his doors and a goodly company within them, as Mr.

Archibald Douglas of Whittingehame and his brother, Captain Cullen, Mr.

Balfour of Fliske, and others like him, and also the laird of Grange.

To him resorted most of the lords of the new religion; they, namely, of

Lindsay, Ruthven, Glencairn, and Argyll. My lord of Bothwell, however,

lodging in the Huntly house, had a larger following than the Douglases;

for all the Hamiltons paid him court as well as his own friends. She did

not ask me, but I told her that her brother, my Lord Moray, kept much to

himself, and saw few but ministers of his religion, such as Mr. Wood and

Mr. Craig, and Mr. Secretary Lethington, who (with his wife) was lodged

in his lordship’s house, and worked with him every day.

‘She stopped me here by looking long at me, and then asking shortly,

“Have you heard anything of my Lady Bothwell?” which confused me very

much. I could only reply that I had heard she had been indisposed. “I am

sorry to hear it,” said she in quite an ordinary tone, “and am sorry also

for her, when she finds out that her sickness is not what she hopes it

is. You have not seen her, I suppose?” I had not.

‘“I have seen her in illness,” she pursued. “It does not become

white-faced women to be so, for to be pale is one thing, but to be pallid

another. When the transparency departs from a complexion of ivory, the

residuum is paste. I myself have not a high colour by nature: yet when I

am ill, as I am now, I always have fever, and look better than when my

health is better. Did you not think, when you saw me first this morning,

that I looked well?”

‘I had thought she looked both beautiful and well, and told her so. She

was pleased.

‘“I love you, Baptist, when you look at me like that, and your words find

echo in your eyes. Now I will tell you that the joy of seeing you again

had much to say to my good looks. But I think that women would always

rather look well than be well.”

‘As soon as my Lord Huntly had come in and dined, we departed from

Linlithgow. Her Majesty rode on with that lord, Lord Livingstone and the

others, leaving me behind with Mr. Erskine and the ladies, to conduct

the King’s litter safely to the house prepared for him. I did not see

his face nor hear him speak, but understood that he was greatly better.

His hand, which was often outside the curtains, waving about, looked

that of a clean man. He kept it out there, my Lady Reres told me, in the

hope that her Majesty would see and touch it. Once, when it had been

signalling about for some while, her ladyship said, “’Tis a black shame

there should be a man’s hand wagging and no woman’s to slip into it.” So

then she let him get hold of hers; and he, thinking he had the Queen’s,

squeezed and fondled it until she was tired. We got him by nightfall

into a mean little house, set in a garden the most disconsolate and

weed-grown that ever you saw. It was a wild, wet evening, and as we went

down Thieves’ Row the deplorable inhabitants of that street of stews and

wicked dens were at their doors watching us. As we came by they pointed

to the gable of the house, and uttered harsh and jeering cries. Lady

Reres screamed and covered her face. There was perched an old raven on

the gable-end, that croaked like any philosopher in the dumps; and as we

set down the litter in the roadway, he flapped his ragged wings twice or

thrice, and flew off into the dark, trailing his legs behind him. The

people thought it an ill-omen....’

* * * * *

Here, for the time being, I forsake Des-Essars, and that for two reasons:

the first, that I have a man to hand who knew more; the second, that

what little the Brabanter did know he did not care to tell. A more than

common acquaintance with his work assures me that his secret preoccupied

him from hereabouts to the end—that _Secret des Secrets_ of his which he

thought so important as to have written his book for nothing else but to

hold it. We shall come upon it all in good time, and see more evidently

than now we do another, and what we may call supererogatory secret, which

is that he grew bolder in his passion for the Queen, and she, perhaps, a

little inclined to humour it. But for the present we leave him, and turn

to the brisk narrative of one who knew nearly everything that was to be

known, and could hazard a sharp guess at things which, it almost seems,

could never perfectly be known. I mean, of course, our assured friend

French Paris—bought, once for all, with a crown piece.

French Paris asks, in his bright way, ‘Do you know that lane that runs

straight from the Cowgate to the old house by the Blackfriars—the

Blackfriars’ Wynd, as they call it?’ You nod your head, and he continues.

‘Well, towards the end of that same lane, if you wish to reach the

convent house, you pass through the ancient wall of the city by a gate

in it which is called the Kirk o’ Field Port. This will lead you to the

Blackfriars’ Church, but not until you have turned the angle of the wall

and followed the road round it towards the left hand. Within that angle

stands another church, Saint Mary-of-the-Field, which has nothing to do

with what I have to tell you. But mark what I say now. You go through

the Kirk o’ Field Port; you turn to the left round by the wall; on your

right hand, at no great distance along, you behold a row of poor hovels

at right angles to your present direction—doorless cabins, windowless,

without chimneys, swarming with pigs, fowls, and filthy children; between

them a very vile road full of holes and quags and broken potsherds. That

is called Thieves’ Row, and for the best of good reasons. Nevertheless,

behind those little pigs’ houses, on either hand, there are gardens very

fair; and if you venture up, above the thatch of the roofs you will see

the tops of fine trees waving in a cleaner air than you would believe

possible, and find in the full middle of this Thieves’ Row, again on

either hand, a garden gate right in among the mean tenements. That

which is on the right hand leads into the old Blackfriars’ Garden, a

great tangled place of trees and greensward with thickets interspersed;

the other, on the left hand, belongs to the garden of the house wherein

they lodged the King when they had brought him from Glasgow. Above the

gate could once be seen the gable-end of the house itself; but you will

not see it now if you look for it. And if you stood in the garden of his

house and looked out over the boskage, you could see the hotel of the

Lord Archbishop of Saint Andrews, the Hamilton House. Usefully enough,

as it turned out, there let a little door from the corner of the King’s

garden right upon the Archbishop’s house.

‘To tell you of the King’s lodging, it was as mean as you please, built

of rough-cast work upon arches of rubble and plaster, with a flight of

stairs from the ground-level reaching to the first floor—the _piano

nobile_, save the mark! Upon that floor was a fair hall, and a chamber

in which the Queen might lie when she chose, wardrobe, maids’ chamber,

cabinet, and such like. The King lay on the floor above, having his own

chamber for his great bed, with a little dressing-room near by. His

servants, of whom he had not more than three or four, slept some in the

passage and some in the hall; except his chamber-child, who lay in the

bedchamber itself, on or below the foot of the King’s great bed. Now

those stairs of which I told you just now led directly from the garden to

the hall upon the first floor; but out of the Queen’s chamber there was a

door giving on to a flight of wooden steps, very convenient, as thereby

she could come in and out of the house without being disturbed. All this

I observed for myself, as my master desired me, when Nelson, the King’s

man, was showing me how ill-furnished and meanly found it was to be the

lodging of so great a gentleman.

‘To say nothing of the garden, which, in that winter season, was

miserable indeed, I was bound to agree that the house wanted repair.

Nelson showed me where the roof let in water; he showed me the holes of

rats, the track of their runs across the floors, and the places where

they had gnawed the edges of the doors. “And, if you will believe me,

Paris,” said he, “there is not so much as a key to a lock in the whole

crazy cabin.” This was a thing which I was glad to have learned, and to

bring to my master’s knowledge when, at the last moment, he thought fit

to acquaint me with his pleasure. I had heard, in outline, what it was,

on the day before I went to the Queen at Glasgow; but I will ask you

to believe that he told me no more until the morning of the day when I

received his commands to go to work. This is entirely true; though it is

equally true that I found out a good deal for myself. My master, you must

understand, had not a fool under his authority. No, no!

‘I did not myself see the Queen for two or three days after the King’s

coming in, though I took many letters to her and bore back her replies.

When I say I did not see her, that is a lie: I did—but never to speak

with her, merely as one may pass in the street. I was struck with her

fine looks and the shrill sound of her laughter: she talked more than

ordinarily, and never spared herself in the dance. Once, or maybe twice,

she visited the King in his lodging—not to sleep there herself, though

her bed stood always ready, but going down to supper and remaining till

late in the evening: never alone; once with the Lords Moray and Argyll,

and once with (among other company) her brother, the Lord Robert, and

a Spanish youth very much in his confidence. As to this second visit,

Monsieur Des-Essars, who was there, told me a singular thing,[8] namely,

that this Lord Robert had been moved to impart to the King the danger

he lay in—that is, close to the Hamiltons, and with my Lord Morton at

large and in favour in Edinburgh. Now, for some reason or another, it

seems that his Majesty repeated the confidence to the Queen herself just

as I have told it to you. Whereupon, said Monsieur Des-Essars, she flew

into a passion, commanded the Lord Robert into her presence, and when

he was before her, the King lying on his bed, bade him repeat the story

if he dare. My Lord Robert laughed it off as done by way of a jest, and

the Queen, more and more angry, sent him away. Now, here comes what I

call the cream of the jest. “You may judge from this, Paris,” said M.

Des-Essars to me, “how monstrous foolish it is to suppose that the Queen

devises some mischief against her consort, or shares the counsels of any

of his enemies. For certainly, if she did, she would not provoke them

into betraying her in his own presence.”

‘I thanked his honour, but when he had gone I burst out laughing to

myself. Do you ask why? First of all, none knew better than M. Des-Essars

how the Queen stood with regard to her husband, and why my lord of Morton

had been suffered to come home. None knew better than he, except it were

the Queen herself, that the King was to be removed, she standing aside.

Very well: then why did M. Des-Essars try to hoodwink me, except in the

hope to gather testimony on all sides against what he feared must take

place? But why did the Queen bring my Lord Robert face to face with

the King, she knowing too well that his warning had bones and blood

in it? Ah! that is more delicate webbery: she was a better politician

than her young friend. To begin with, there was no real danger; for the

Lord Robert knew nothing, and was nothing but a windbag. His confusion,

therefore (he was at heart a coward), would give the King confidence.

But, secondly, I am sure she still hoped that his Majesty might be

removed without my master’s aid. I think she said to herself, “The King

gains his health”—as indeed he did, with his natural skin coming back

again, and the clear colour to his eyes—“and with health,” she would

reason it, “his choler will return. To confront these two, with a lie

between them, may provoke a quarrel. The daggers are handy: who can say

what the end of this may be? One of two mishaps: the King will kill Lord

Robert, or Lord Robert the King; either way will be good.” Observe, I

know nothing; but that is how I read the story.

* * * * *

‘Now, all this while my master was very busy, very brisk and happy,

singing at the top of his voice as he went about his business—as he

always did on the verge of a great enterprise; but the first precise

information I had that our work was close at hand was upon 9th February,

being a Sunday. My master lodging at the Lord Huntly’s house in the

Cowgate, I was standing at the door at, maybe, seven o’clock in the

morning; black as Hell it was, but the cold not extraordinary. There came

some woman down the street with a lantern swinging, and stopped quite

close to me. She swung her lantern-light into my face, and, the moment

she saw that I was I, began to speak in an urgent way. She was Margaret

Carwood, one of the Queen’s women.

‘“Oh, Paris,” she says, “I have been sent express to you! You are to go

down to the King’s lodging and fetch away the quilt which lies on the

Queen’s bed there.”

‘I knew this quilt well—a handsome piece of work, of Genoa velvet, much

overlaid with gold thread, which they say had belonged to the old Queen.

‘I asked, “By whose order come you, my good Carwood?” for I was not

everybody’s man.

‘She replied, “By the Queen’s own, given to me by word of mouth, not an

hour since. Go now, go, Paris. She is in a rare fluster, and will not

rest.”

‘“Toho!” I say, “she disquieteth herself about this quilt.”

‘And Carwood said, “Ay, for it belonged to her lady mother, and is

therefore worth rubies in her sight. She hath not slept a wink since she

woke dreaming of it.”

‘To be short, this gave me, as they say, food for thoughts. Then,

about the eleven o’clock, as the people were coming out from their

sermon, I had more of the same provender—and a full meal of it. Judge

for yourselves when I tell you with what the vomiting church doors

were buzzing. My lord of Moray had left Edinburgh overnight and gone

northward, to Lochleven, to see his mother, the Lady Douglas. He had

taken secret leave of the Queen, and immediately after was away. Oh,

Monsieur de Moray, Monsieur de Moray! is not your lordship the archetype

and everlasting pattern of all rats that are and shall be in the world?

‘Now, putting the one thing on the top of the other, you may believe

that I was not at all surprised to get my master’s orders the same

day, to convey certain gunpowder from Hamilton House through the King’s

garden into the Queen’s chamber so soon as it was quite dark. There you

have the reason why the quilt had been saved. Powrie, Dalgleish, and

Patrick Wilson were to help me; Monsieur Hob d’Ormiston would show us

how to dispose of our loads and spread the train for the slow match. In

Hamilton House it lay, mark you well! I will make the figs in the face of

anybody who tells me that the Hamiltons were not up to the chin in the

affair. How should we use their house without their leave? There were the

Archbishop and Monsieur d’Arbroath involved. But enough! It is obvious.

And I can tell you of another gentleman heavily involved, no one more

certainly than I. It was my lord of Huntly: yes, gentlemen, no less a man.

‘It fell out about the five o’clock that, judging it dark enough for far

more delicate work than this of powder-laying, I was setting out to join

my colleagues by Hamilton House, when my Lord Huntly sends down a valet

for me to go to his cabinet. I had had very few dealings with this young

nobleman, whom (to say truth) I had always considered something of a

dunce. He was as silent as his sister, my master’s lady, and, after his

fashion, as good to look upon. You never saw a straighter-legged man, nor

a straighter-looking, nor one who carried, as I had thought, an empty

head higher in the air. That was my mistake. He was an old lover of the

Queen’s, whom she fancied less than his brother Sir Adam. He, that Sir

Adam, had been bosom-friend of Monsieur Des-Essars when the pair of them

were boys, and had shared the Queen’s favours together, which very likely

were not so bountiful as common rumour would have them. He certainly was

a fiery youth, who may one day do greatly. But I admit that I had held my

Lord Huntly for a want-wit—and that I was very much mistaken.

‘I went up and into his cabinet, and found him standing before the fire,

with his legs spread out.

‘“Paris,” says he, “you are off on an errand of your master’s, I

jealouse; one that might take you not a hundred miles from the

Blackfriars’ Garden.”

‘I admitted all this. “I might tell you,” he says, “that I know that

errand of yours, and share in the enterprise which directs it. Maybe you

have been shown my name upon a parchment writing: I know that you are in

your master’s confidence.”

‘I replied that I had understood his lordship had been made privy to my

master’s thoughts in many matters, as was only reasonable, seeing the

relationship between both their lordships: upon which he said, “You are a

sly little devil, Paris, but have a kind of honesty, too.” I thanked him

for his good opinion; and then he says, looking very hard at me, “Your

master is now abroad upon this weighty business, and has left me to order

matters at home. Now mark me well, Paris, and fail not in any particular,

at your extreme peril. _The train is to be put to proof at two o’clock

of the morning by the bell of Saint Giles’, but not a moment before._

You are to tell this to Mr. Hobbie Ormiston, who will report it to your

master. Do you swear upon your mother’s soul in Paradise that you will

deliver this message?” he says. I promised, and, what is more, I kept my

promise; but at the time I thought it very odd that my master, generally

so careful in these nice undertakings, should have left the all-important

direction of _time when_ to so dull-minded a person as my Lord Huntly. To

add to my bewilderment, Monsieur Hob also, when I gave him the message,

told me that he had had it already from his lordship, and had repeated

it to my master. Immediately afterwards we set to work at our little

preliminaries, and were soon sweating and black as negroes.

‘That night there was a supper in the hall of the King’s lodging, the

Queen being there, my master, the Earls of Huntly and Argyll, the Lord

Livingstone and others, with the King lying on a couch that he might

have their company. They were merry enough at their meal, for I was

working close by and heard them; and I could not help reflecting upon the

drollery of it—for it was droll—that here were executioners and patient

all laughing together, and I behind the party wall laying the table (as

it were) for an ambrosial banquet for one at least of the company. It is

impossible to avoid these humorous images, or I find it so.

‘Bastien the Breton had that very morning been married to Dolet—both

Queen’s servants. She had been at their mass, and (loving them fondly, as

she was prone to love her servants) intended to be present at the masque

of the night and to put the bride to bed. She, my master, Monsieur de

Huntly, and Mistress Seton were all to go; they were at this supper in

their masquing gear. My master’s was very rich, being of a black satin

doublet slashed with cloth of silver, black velvet trunks trussed and

tagged with the same. My lord of Huntly was all in white. I did not

fairly see the Queen’s gown, which was of a dark colour, I think of

claret, and her neck and bosom bare. I remember that she had a small

crown of daisies and pearls, and a collar of the same things.

‘At eleven o’clock, or perhaps a little after, the Queen’s linkmen and

carriers were called for. Nelson told me that she kissed the King very

affectionately, and promised to see him the next day. He was positive

about that, for (being curious) I asked him if he had certainly heard her

say that.

‘“Oh, yes,” he said, “and I’ll tell you why. The King caught her by the

little finger and held her. ‘Next day, say you?’ he asked her. ‘And when

will you say, “This night,” Mary?‘

‘“She laughed and swung her hand to and fro, and his with it that held

it. ‘Soon,’ she said, ‘soon.’”

‘This is what Nelson told me: he was never the man to have conceived that

charming scene of comedy. Well, to continue, my master was to escort

her Majesty out of the house, the grooms going before with torches. Her

litter was in Thieves’ Row, as you may believe when you reflect that our

train of gunpowder extended down her private flight of steps, across the

garden to the door which gives on to Hamilton House. All my work lay

on that side, and there I should have been; but by some extraordinary

mischance it happened that I was just outside the door when my master led

her Majesty out, and so—in a full light of torches—she came plump upon me.

‘That was a very unfortunate incident, for I was as black as a

charcoal-burner. But there it was: I came full tilt upon her and my

lord, and saw her face in the light of the torches as fair and delicate

as a flower, and her eyes exceedingly bright and luminous, like stars

in midsummer. She was whispering and laughing on my master’s arm, and

he (somewhat distracted) saying, “Ay, ay,” in the way he has when he is

bothered and wishes to be quiet.

‘But at the sight of me flat against the wall she gave a short cry, and

crushed her bosom with her free hand. “O God! O God! who is this?”

‘She caught at my master’s arm. By my head, I had given her a fright—just

as the colliers of old gave that Count of Tuscany who thought they

were devils come to require his soul, and was converted to God, and

built seven fine abbeys before he died. Her mouth was open; she did not

breathe; her face was all white, and her eyes were all black.

‘“Pardon, madam, it is I, your servant, poor French Paris,” I said; and

my master in a hurry, “There, ma’am, there; you see, it is a friend of

ours.”

‘When she got her breath again, it came back in a flood, like to

suffocate her. She struggled and fought for it so, I made sure she would

faint. So did my master, who put his hand behind to catch her and save

the noise of her fall. She shut her eyes, she tottered. Oh, it was a bad

affair! But she recovered herself by some means, and did her bravest to

carry it off. “Jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are!” she said, panting and

swallowing; and my master damned me for a blackguardly spy, and bade me

go wash myself.

‘It is true I was behind the door, but most false that I was spying. God

knows, I had enough secrets to keep without smelling for more. But that

was not a time to be justifying myself. My master took the Queen away

immediately, Mistress Seton with her. Afterwards I heard my Lords Argyll

and Livingstone depart—but not M. de Huntly. I saw him again before I

went out myself.

‘I waited about until I heard the King helped up to bed by his servants;

I waited a long time. They sang a psalm in his chamber, and talked

afterwards, laughing and humming airs. They had the boy to amuse them

with fooleries: Heaven knows what they did or did not. I thought they

would never finish. Finally, I heard the King call, “Good-night all,” saw

the lights put out, and made a move at my best pace to get home, clean

myself, and be ready for the others. Going through the garden along the

edge of my powder-train, I met somebody, who called out, “It is I, the

Earl of Huntly,” and then said, “Remember you of my words? It is now past

midnight. Fire nothing until you hear the strokes of two. More depends

upon that than you can understand. Now be off.” I wished his lordship a

good-night, and he replied, “Go you to the devil with your nights.” So

off I went.

‘We all made ready, and assembled in good time at the door of our house

in the Cowgate: my master, M. Hob Ormiston, M. de Tala, M. de Bowton,

myself, Powrie, Dalgleish, and Patrick Wilson. There may have been

more—it seemed to me that one or another joined us as we went—in which

case I know not their names. We went down by the Blackfriars’ Wynd,

meeting nobody, through the Kirk o’ Field Port, and round by the wall to

Hamilton House. A light was burning in the upper window of that mansion,

and was not extinguished so long as I was there (though they tell me it

was blown out after the explosion); but no man came out to join us at the

appointed place. Half the company was stopped at the corner of the town

wall by my master’s orders: he himself, M. d’Ormiston, and I went into

the garden; and just as we entered, so well had all been timed, I heard

Saint Giles’ toll the hour of two. I lighted the train; and then we all

went back, joined the others (who had seen nothing dangerous outside the

wall), and returned by the way we had come—no one saying anything. We

may have been half of the way to the Gate—I cannot say—when the darkness

was, as it were, split asunder as by a flare of lightning, one of those

sheeted flames that illumines a whole quarter of the sky, and shows in

the midst a jagged core of intenser light. And whilst we reeled before it

came the crash and volley of the noise, as if all Hell were loosed about

us. What became of our betters I know not, nor what became of any. For

myself, I tell you fairly that I stooped and ran as if the air above me

were full of flying devils.

‘By some fate or other I ran, not to the city, but along the wall of the

Blackfriars’ Garden, a long way past the Gate, and lay down in a sort of

kennel there was while I fetched up my breath again. Then, not daring

to go back to the Wynd, for I was sure the whole town would be awake,

I considered that the best thing for me to do was to climb that garden

wall, and lie hidden within it until the citizens had wondered themselves

to sleep. So I did, without difficulty, and felt my way through brakes

and shrubberies into what seemed to be an open space. I lit my lantern,

and found myself in a kind of trained arbour, oval or circular in shape,

made all of clipped box. In the middle of it were a broad platt of

grass and a dial: a snug enough place which would suit me very well. It

appeared to me, too, that there was a settle on the far side, on which I

could repose myself. Good! I would lie there.

‘The path of light made by my lantern showed me now another thing—that I

was not the only tenant of this garden. There lay a man in white midway

of the grass. “Oho,” thinks I, “I will have a close look at you, my

friend, before I settle down.” Peering at him from my safe distance, I

saw that he had another beside him; and made sure that I was on the edge

of an indiscretion. If here I was in a bower of bliss, it became me on

all counts to withdraw. But first I must be sure: too much depended upon

it. I drew nearer: the light fell upon those two who lay so still. My

heart ceased to beat. Stretched out upon that secret grass, with his eyes

staring horribly into the dark, lay the King whom I had gone forth to

slay—stark and dead there, and the dead boy by his side. By God and his

Mother! I am a man of experience, with no call to be on punctilio with

dead men. But that dead man, I am not ashamed to say, made me weep, after

I had recovered myself a little.

‘God has shown me great mercy. I am not guilty of the King’s death, nor

is my master. I should have supposed that my Lord Huntly killed him,

to save the Queen from deadly sin, and could then have understood his

urgent instructions to me not to go to work before a certain hour. If

that had been so, all honour to him. I say, so I should have supposed;

but one little circumstance made me hesitate. Near by, on the same grass

platt, I found a velvet shoe, which I took back with me into town. It

was purchased of me afterwards by Monsieur Archibald Douglas, that

grey-headed young man, for six hundred crowns; and I believe I might have

had double. That, mind you, told me a tale!

‘The King had been smothered, I consider. There were no wounds upon him

of any sort, nor any clothes but his shirt. Taylor, the boy, was naked.

‘There, gentlemen, you have a relation of my share in these dark facts,

told you by a man whose position (as you may say) between one world and

another is likely to sober his fancy and incline him to the very truth.’

French Paris, a jaunty dog—with a kind of brisk, dog’s fidelity upon him

which is a better quality in a rascal than no fidelity, or perhaps than

dull fidelity—has very little more to say to you and me.

[8] Des-Essars himself, it is to be observed, omits this story

altogether.

CHAPTER VII

THE RED BRIDEGROOM

Margaret Carwood, the Queen’s woman, had a tale to tell, if she could be

got to repeat it. She had undressed her mistress, who came in exceedingly

late from Bastien’s masque, and put the bedgown upon her: then was the

time for Father Roche to come in for prayers—if any time were left, which

Carwood could not think was the case. Would her Majesty, considering the

lateness of the hour, excuse his Reverence?

But her Majesty looked wildly at Carwood and began to rave. ‘Do you think

me leprous, Carwood? Am I not to be prayed with? Why, this is treason!’

And she continued to shiver and mutter, ‘Treason! Treason!’ until the

woman, terrified, called up the Chaplain, and he came in with the rest

of the household and began the accustomed prayers. Gradually the Queen

composed herself, and you could hear her voice—as usual—above all the

others, leading the responses.

In the midst of the psalms of the hour, Carwood said, there struck on

all ears a dull thud, like the booming of water upon a rock in the sea;

the windows of the house shook, and litter was heard to fall behind the

wainscot. Then complete silence—and out of that, far off in the city,

rose a low and long wailing cry, ‘as of one hurt to death and desolate.’

Father Roche, who had stopped his _Gloria Patri_ at the first shock, when

he heard that cry, said sharply, ‘O King of Glory, what’s that?’ and

stared at the window, trembling like a very old man; and nobody else was

much bolder than he. But the Queen, stiff as a stone, went on where he

had left off, driving the words out of herself, higher and higher, faster

and faster, until she finished on a shrill, fierce note:—‘_Sicut erat in

principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen_‘; and only

stopped there because it was not her part to begin the next psalm.

A strange midnight picture! There was Father Roche, the old Dominican,

looking all ways for danger, twittering before the candles and cross;

there Des-Essars on his knees, with his white face peaked and taut; there

poor Carwood, her apron over her head, swaying about; there old Mother

Reres spying wickedly out of the corners of her eyes at Mary Livingstone,

stern as thunder. Erskine with his white staff stood at the door, two

clinging pages about him; in the midst, at her faldstool, the slim,

fever-bright Queen in her furred gown, praying aloud, she alone, like

a nun in ecstasy. With Father Roche _in extremis_, Des-Essars was the

first to relieve the strain by boldly intoning the versicle; but there

were no more prayers. Carwood and Livingstone took the Queen to bed, and

Livingstone stayed with her. Carwood says that she herself slept ‘like

drowned weed.’ When Livingstone woke her next morning, she heard the

great bell tolling at Saint Giles’. She asked first of the Queen, and was

told she was ‘quiet.’ She did not dare any more questions, and remained

until midday inmate of the only house in town which did not know the news.

Mary Livingstone would say nothing to any one: in fact, so grim were her

looks that no one cared to question her. Lady Reres kept her chamber.

At nine o’clock the Earl of Huntly came up, with a very fixed face, and

was taken to the Queen’s bedchamber door by Des-Essars, who went no

farther himself, but hung about the corridor and anteroom in case he

might be sent for. Before long he heard the Queen in distress, crying

and talking at once, a flood of broken words; and, whiles, Lord Huntly’s

voice, sombre and restrained, ill calculated to calm her. Presently Mary

Livingstone opened the door, and he heard the Queen calling for him:

‘Baptist, O Baptist, come—quick, quick!’

‘Go to her,’ says Livingstone drily; ‘this is beyond my powers.’

He ran into the room, and saw her lying half-naked on her bed, face

downwards, her hair all over her eyes. She looked like one in mortal

agony.

‘O madam, O sweet madam——’ he began, being on his knees before her.

She lifted her head. ‘Who calls me?’

She sat up, and parted her hair from her face with her finger-tips. He

saw her transfigured, flushed like one with a heat-rash, and her eyes

cloudy black, glazed and undiscerning. She was in a transport of feeling,

far beyond his scope; but she knew him, and cleared in his sight.

‘Baptist, the King is dead.’

‘Dead, madam! Oh, alas!’

She gripped him by the arm and steadied herself by it. She read his very

soul; her eyes seemed to bite him. And she answered a question which he

had not asked.

‘How should I know who slew him? How should I? I know not—I do not

ask—nor need you—nor should you. But there is one who had no hand in

it—be you sure of that. Let none call him murderer—he did nothing amiss.

Do you hear? Do you understand? He is clean as new snow—and I—and I—clean

as the snow, Baptist. O God! O God!’

She loosed his arm and flung herself down, shaken to pieces by her hard

sobbing. Her face had been dry, her eyes tearless. If she could not weep,

he thought, it must go hard with her. Livingstone came into the room

and went to her help. She used no ceremony, got into the bed, and drew

the poor distraught creature to her bosom, whispered to her, kissed and

stroked her, mothered her as if it were one of her own children she was

tending. The Queen clung to her. Lord Huntly drew Des-Essars aside, into

the embrasure of the window.

‘Listen to me, Monsieur Des-Essars,’ he said: ‘I speak to you because

I know that you are in her Majesty’s confidence. It is very necessary

that her friends should understand what I am going to tell you. My Lord

Bothwell had no part in the King’s death. It is true he intended it—I do

not attempt to conceal that from you—and even that he went farther than

intent; but the King was dead before he came. He had his own plans, and

laid them well. But there were other plans of which he had no suspicion.’

Des-Essars would have spoken; Lord Huntly put a hand over his mouth. ‘Say

nothing. Ask me not who did it. I was there, and saw it done. I believe

that it was just, and will answer for my part when it is required of me.’

‘My lord,’ said Des-Essars, ‘your secret is safe with me. I will only say

this: If that person of whom you spake had no part in the deed, then she

is free.’

‘She is free,’ said Huntly. ‘I saw to that.’

‘You saw to it—you?’

‘I saw to it. It was I who deceived—that person—and delayed his plans.

There was a time, long ago, when I played her false. She trusted me,

believing in my honesty, and I forsook her. I have never been able to

forgive myself or ceased to call myself traitor until now. And this time,

when she has trusted me but little, I have served her.’

‘I hope you may have served her, my lord, but——’

‘Man,’ said Huntly sternly, ‘what are your hopes or mine to the purpose

in a case of the sort? Do you not know her better? She would have had

him, had he been soaked in blood. Well! now she can have him clean.’

Des-Essars knelt down and kissed the other’s hand. ‘My lord, you have

given me a schooling in great love. If the time comes when there shall be

need of me, I hope to prove myself your good pupil.’

‘Get up,’ said Huntly, not pleased with this tribute; ‘they serve best

who talk least. But you may be sure that the time is at hand when there

will be need of more than you and me.’ He looked sadly out of window,

across the red roofs, out into the slowly brightening sky. Des-Essars was

silent.

They announced the Earl of Bothwell. The Queen put back her hair and

wiped her eyes—for Mary Livingstone had thawed her hard grief. She

covered herself up to the neck. Bothwell came in, with a low reverence

at the door, and made room for Livingstone to go out. She swept by him

like a Queen-mother. Queen Mary beckoned him to the bedside, and gave

him both her hands to hold. ‘Oh, you have come to me! Oh, you have come

to me!’ was all she could say. She could not speak coherently for her

full heart. He bent over and kissed her; and for a time they remained so,

whispering brokenly to each other and kissing. ‘Have you heard Huntly’s

tale?’ she asked him aloud.

He was now sitting composedly by her bed, one leg over the other.

‘Yes, yes, long ago! We have had our talk together.’

She fingered the counterpane. ‘Belike he told you more than I could win

of him. He will name no names.’

Bothwell laughed shortly.

‘He is wise. Names make mischief. I could wish his own were as well out

of that as mine is. Heard you of Archie’s shoe?’

She had not. He told her of Paris’s discovery in the garden; they both

laughed at Archie’s mishap. Bothwell supposed it would cost him five

hundred crowns to redeem. We know from Paris that it cost him six.

My Lord Bothwell’s opinion, which he expressed with great freedom, was

that Morton and the Douglases had killed the King soon after he had been

put to bed. The body had been cold when Paris found it—cold and stiff.

Then there was a woman, who had been talking with her neighbours, and

found herself under examination in the Tolbooth before she could end

her tale. She lived in Thieves’ Row. She declared, and nothing so far

had shaken her, that a tick or two after midnight she had heard the

scuffling of many feet in the road, and a voice which cried aloud, ‘Pity

me, kinsmen, for the love of Him who pitied all the world!’ She heard it

distinctly; but, being in bed, and accustomed to hear such petitions, did

not get up, and soon after fell asleep. Also there had been heard a boy

crying, ‘Enough to break your heart,’ she said. But it had not broken her

rest, for all that. This was the story, and——‘Well, now,’ says my Lord

Bothwell, ‘what else are you to make of that?’

Des-Essars, watching the Queen’s face under this recital, saw the clouds

gather for a storm. Lord Huntly had listened to it with unmoved face. At

the end he said gravely, ‘He was long dying’; and no one spoke or moved

for some minutes until the Queen suddenly hid her face and sobbed, and

cried out that she wished she herself were dead. Lord Bothwell, at that,

put his arms about her with rough familiarity, lifted her half out of

bed to his own breast, kissed her lax lips, and said, ‘That wilt thou

unwish within these few days. What! when thou art thine own mistress

and all? No, but thou wilt desire to live rather, to be my dear comfort

and delight. For now, look thou, my honey-Queen, thou and I are to get

our bliss of one another.’ She, not responding by word or sign, but

struggling and striving to be free of his arms, presently he put her

down again, and left her. Huntly followed him; and they went up to the

Council, which was set for noon.

‘I remained kneeling by her,’ says Des-Essars, ‘while she lay without

motion, until presently I found that she was in a heavy sleep. When I

went downstairs I heard that Mistress Livingstone had left the Court and

gone to her husband, Sempill, at Beltrees.’

* * * * *

The silence of the town during those first few days of doubt was a

terrifying thing, enough to try the nerves of the stoutest man; it drove

the Queen to such dangerous excesses of exaltation and despondency that

all her friends were on tenterhooks to get her away before the storm

(which all knew must be brooding) should burst. For what could it portend

but a storm, this fatal silence, this unearthly suspense of clamour

and judgment? It was not that the citizens merely held their tongues

from rumour: it was more literally silence; they talked not at all. If

you walked up the Netherbow or round the porch of Saint Giles’; if you

hung about the Luckenbooths at noon or ventured any of the Wynds at

sun-setting—wheresoever you went about Edinburgh, you heard the padding

of feet sparsely on the flagstones; but no voices, no hawkers’ cries, no

women calling their children out of the gutters, nor bickering of men

in the ale-shops, nor laughter, nor bewailing. The great houses were

closely shut and guarded; the Lords of the Privy Council transacted their

business behind close doors; messengers came and went, none questioning;

the post came galloping down the hill with a clatter which you would

have thought enough to open every window in the High Street and show you

every pretty girl at her best. But no! So long as the King remained above

ground, Death kept his wrinkled hand upon Edinburgh and made the place

seem like a burying-ground, whose people were the mourners, crouched,

whispering, against the walls—and all together huddled under the cold

spell of the graves.

This continued until the day of the funeral, by which time it was

absolutely necessary that the Queen should be got away. She agreed—was

eager to go; and, before she went, saw the body of the King, which lay

in the Chapel Royal, upon a tressle bed, dressed up in the gilt cuirass

and white mantle which in life it had worn so bravely. Mary Seton and

Des-Essars, who took her in, were so relieved to find their anxieties

vain that they had no thought to be surprised. ‘Not only did she stand

and look upon the corpse without change of countenance or any sign of

distress, but she had her wits all at command. The first thing she said

was, “He looks nobly lying there so still: in life he was ever fidgeting

with his person,”—which was quite true. And the next thing was, “Look

you, look you, he lies just over Davy’s grave!” And then she remembered

that we were within one month of the anniversary of that poor wretch’s

undoing by this very dead; she reminded us of it. Without any more words,

she remained there standing, looking earnestly at him and round about

him; and bade one of the priests who watched go fetch a new candle, for

one was nearly spent. So far as I could ascertain, she did not kneel

or offer any prayer; and after a time she walked slowly away, without

reverence to the altar—a strange omission in her—or any looking back. Nor

did I ever hear her, of her own motion, speak of him again; but he became

to her as though he had never been—which, in a sense that means he had

touched or moved her, he never had. Before the funeral celebrations she

went to my Lord Seton’s house, and there remained waiting until the Earl

of Bothwell could find time to visit her, full of projects, very sanguine

and contented. She said to me one day, “You think my maids have forsaken

me; you grieve over Livingstone and Fleming. Of the last I say nothing;

but I can fetch Livingstone back to me whenever I choose. You shall see.”

And she did it before very long.’

On the night following the funeral the profound silence of Edinburgh

was broken by a long shrill cry, as of a wandering man. Several people

heard him, and shivered in their beds; only one, bolder than the rest,

saw him in a broad patch of moonlight. He came slowly down the midst of

the Canongate, flap-hatted and cloaked; and as he went, now and again

he threw up his head towards the moon, and cried, like one calling the

news, ‘Vengeance on those who caused me to shed innocent blood! O Lord,

open the heavens and pour down vengeance on those that have destroyed

the innocent!’ Upon the hushed city the effect was terrible, as you may

judge by this, that no windows were opened and no watchman ventured to

stop the man. But next morning there was found a bill upon the Cross

which accused Bothwell by name of the deed. It drew a crowd, and then, as

by one consent, all tongues were loosened and all pens set free to rail.

The Queen was not spared; pictures of her as the Siren, fish-tailed,

ogling, naked, malign, made the walls shameful. The preachers took up

the text and shrieked her name; and every night the shrouded crier went

his rounds. The Red Bridegroom was on all tongues, the Pale Bride in all

men’s thoughts.

The Earl of Bothwell, strongly guarded as he was, took, or affected to

take, no notice of the clamour; but Archie Douglas became very uneasy,

and induced his cousin Morton to have the nightly brawler apprehended. He

was therefore taken on the fourth night, and shut up in a pestilential

prison called the Thief’s Pit, where no doubt he shortly died. But his

words lived after him, and he testified through all men’s tongues.

Among the many thousand rumours that got about was one, intolerable to

Bothwell, that the Earl of Moray was about to return to Edinburgh, and,

_in the absence of the Queen_, act for the general good of the realm.

It was said also that Morton was in correspondence with him, and that

it was by his orders that Mr. James Balfour, parson of Fliske, was to

be arrested and confined to his own house. Adding to these things the

daily letters of the Earl of Lennox to the Privy Council, appealing, in a

father’s name, to the honour of Scotland; adding also the Queen’s letters

to himself, my Lord Bothwell judged it wise to depart the town; so went

down to her Majesty in the country, to Lord Seton’s house, where she

still lay. And as he rode out of town, close hemmed in the ranks of his

own spearmen, he heard for the first time that name which had been his

ever since tongues began to wag: ‘Ay, there he goes for his wages, the

Red Bridegroom.’

The night of his coming, old Lady Reres made mischief, if any were left

to be made; for after supper, fiddlers being in the gallery, what must

she to do but clap her hands to them and call for a tune. ‘Fiddlers,’

says she, ‘I call for “Well is me since I am free”‘; and she got it too.

Lord Bothwell gave one of his great guffaws, and held out his hand at the

signal; the Queen laughed as she took it and was pleased. They danced

long and late. But next morning my Lord Seton made some kind of excuse,

and left his own house, nor would he come back to it until the Court had

removed. With him went the Earl of Argyll.

These departures were the signal for the most insensate revelry—led by

the Queen, insisted upon by her, satisfying neither herself nor her

lover, nor any of her friends. Des-Essars and the few faithful of the old

stock looked on as best they could, always in silence. Not one of them

would talk to another, for fear he should hear something with which he

would be forced to agree. _Le Secret des Secrets_ is extremely reticent

over this insane ten days, in which the Queen—it must be said—was to be

seen (by those who had the heart to observe) wooing a man to sin; and

when he would not, after torments of deferred desire, of mortification,

and of that reproach which never fails a baffled sinner, springing

hot-eyed to the chase next day, following him about, wreathing her

arms, kissing and whispering, beckoning, inviting, trying all ways to

lure him on; heart-rending spectacle for any modest young man, but, to

a worshipper-at-a-distance like our chronicler, an almost irremediable

disaster, since it kept an open sore in the fair image he had made,

and showed him horrible people, with eyesight as good as his own,

leering at it. Yes! French Paris, Bastien, Carwood, Joachim, the baser

sort—grooms, valets, chamber-women, scullions of the kitchen, saw his

flame-proud Queen craving, and craving in vain. He ground his teeth over

the squalid comedy. His pen is as secret as death; but it is said that,

on one occasion, when he had seen Bothwell stalk into the labyrinth, and

soon afterwards the Queen, her head hooded, steal lightly after him, the

comments of other beholders roused him to vehement action. It is said

that he heard chuckling from the base court, and a ‘Did you mark that?

She is close on his heels—a good hound she!’ and saw two greasy heads

hobnobbing. He waited, blinking his eyes, until one began to whistle the

ramping tune of ‘O, gin Jocky wad but steal me!’ then flashed into the

court and drubbed a grinning cook-boy within a few inches of his life.

What satisfaction this just exercise may have been was spoiled by the

reflection that the flogged rascal knew why he had been made to smart:

enough to make our young knight cut off the avenging hand.

These things weighed and considered, I think that what little he does say

is curiously judicial. He remarks that the Queen his mistress, restless

and miserable as she was, invited oblivion by eating and drinking too

much, by dancing too much, by riding too hard; that she suffered from

want of sleep; that, as for her love-affair, it was no joy to her. ‘Hers

was a plain case of mental love. But I say, _Hum!_—where the Lover

makes an _eidolon_ of the Beloved, and is happiest contemplating that,

adorning it with flowers of fancy, and planning delights which can only

be realised in solitude,—then the bodily presence of the adored creature

effectually destroys the image: a seeming paradox.

‘Thus, however, it was with my mistress. Never was man less suited to

lady than this burly lord; never did lady contrive out of material so

clumsy master of her bosom so divine. But his presence marred all,

because it led her to indulge the monstrous reality instead of the idea.

She was generous to a fault (all her faults, indeed, were due to excess

of nobility), and most injudicious. Her submission to him tempted him all

ways—to domineer, to be overbearing, insolent, a brute; to treat her

on occasion as I am very sure my Lady Bothwell would never have allowed

herself to be treated. But the Queen bowed her head for still greater

ignominy, although more than once I saw her flinch and look away, as if,

poor soul, she turned quickly, to comfort herself, from the hateful, real

Bothwell of fed flesh to that shining Bothwell of her heart and mind. In

all this she was her own enemy; but (by a misfortune two-edged) in other

ways she contrived enemies for him. Thus it was an act of madness to make

him presents of the late king’s stud, of his dogs and horse-furniture.

She added—O doting, most unhappy prodigal!—the gilt armour and great

golden casque with crimson plumes, by which the dolt king had been best

known. Nothing that she could have done could have been worse judged.

_Quem Deus vult perdere!_ Alas and alas!

‘Yet, I must say, it is due to my Lord Bothwell to remember that he

was now what he had always been—not consciously cruel, not wilful to

torment her, and by no means withholding from her what she so sorely

needed of him by any scruples of conscience. Coarse in grain he was, and

candidly appetent, but as continent as Joseph when his cautionary side

was alert; and, true to his nation, he was at once greedy and cautious.

He was never one to refuse gratification to a woman who loved him, if

by granting it he could afford any real gratification to himself. It

was a question of the scales with him. Now, in the present state of his

ventures everything must wait upon security: and security was the last

thing he had gained. He would have pleased her if he could, for he was

by no means an ill-tempered man, nor a cruel man, unless his necessities

drove him that way. And just now they did drive him. His position in

Scotland was full of peril: he was universally credited with the King’s

death, had few friends, and could not count upon keeping those he had.

In fine, everything that he had consistently striven after from the hour

when he first saw the Queen at Nancy was just within his grasp. He had

climbed the tree inch by inch, bruised himself, scratched himself, torn

his clothes to rags; and now it seemed that he hung by a thread—and

the fruit could not be plucked yet. The fruit was dropping ripe, but he

dared not stretch out his hand for it, lest it should fall by his shaking

of the branch, or he by moving too soon. If either fell, he was a dead

man. What wonder if he were fretful, gloomy, suspicious, full of harsh

mockery? What wonder, again, if he seemed cruel in refusing to ease her

smart until his neck were safe? No, I do not blame him. But I curse the

hour in which his mother bore him—to be the bane of his country and his

Queen. No more.’

* * * * *

The Court returned to Edinburgh upon the news that an Ambassador

Extraordinary was come from England. Although there could be no doubt of

the matter of his errand, Bothwell insisted upon his reception. In other

respects the Queen was glad to go. Her malady kept her from any rest; the

emptiness of the days aggravated it until it devoured the substance of

her flesh. She had grown painfully thin; she had a constant cough—could

not sleep, and was not nourished by meat and drink. Her eyes burned like

sunken fires, her lips were as bright as blood, but all the rest of her

was a dead, unwholesome white. She said that there was a rat gnawing at

her heart. In such a desperate case it seemed to her friends that the

murmurs and mutterings of Edinburgh could bring her no further harm: so

she went, entered in semi-state, and got a fright.

Her reception was bad: not cold, but accompanied by the murmurs of a

great and suspicious crowd. She heard the name they had for Bothwell—‘The

Red Bridegroom’—half-voiced with a grim snarl of humour in the tone.

Nothing was actually said against herself, but she was acutely sensitive

to shades of difference; and after riding rigidly down to Holyrood, the

moment she had alighted she caught Des-Essars by the arm, and, ‘You see!

You see! They hate me!’

But Mr. Killigrew, from England, and the Earl of Morton, when she

summoned him, soon assured her that what Scotland felt towards her was as

nothing compared to the common abhorrence of her lover.

Bothwell went away to Liddesdale to see his wife. It is supposed that

there was an understanding between him and the Queen, because she made

no objection to his going, and did not fret in his absence. She saw

Mr. Killigrew alone, in a darkened room, saying: ‘The first thing his

mistress, my sister, will ask him, is of my favour in affliction; and I

know,’—she put her hand on her bosom—‘I know how thin I am become, and

how the tears have worn themselves caves in my cheeks; and would not for

all the world that they in England should know.’ The audience lasted

half-an-hour; and when Mr. Killigrew left Holyrood, he went to Lord

Morton’s house. Thence, it was afterwards found out, he made a journey

to Dunkeld, and paid a two days’ visit to the Earl of Moray. There is no

doubt he went back full charged to England.

Des-Essars gleaned all the news he could. He told the whole to Huntly,

to the Queen what he must. The town was full of dangerous ferment, which

at any moment might burst out. Most of the lords were in the country;

most of them were, or had been, at Dunkeld: Seton, Argyll, Atholl,

Lindsay, Morton, Mar had all conferred with Moray. What had they to say

to him? What, above all, had Morton to say to him—Morton, who had killed

the King? When Huntly had this question put, and could find no answer

to it, he went directly to the Queen and advised her to send for her

brother. She hated the necessity, but allowed it. Meanwhile, the King’s

father, old Lennox, wrote daily letters to her and to the Council, crying

vengeance on the murder. He did not hesitate, in writing to the lords,

to name Bothwell, Tala, and Ormiston as the murderers; and they did not

hesitate to repeat his charges to the Queen. Old Lady Reres, delighting

in mischief, underscored the names in red whenever she could. The Queen

was furious.

‘He is innocent of all—I know it for a truth. Who accuses my Lord of

Bothwell accuses me. It is rank treason.’

These sort of speeches cannot acquit a man, and may convict their speaker.

Then my Lord Moray, in a courteous letter, excused himself from

attendance upon his sovereign at this conjuncture. His health, he

regretted to say, was far from good, or he should not have failed to obey

her Majesty. The Queen was much put about. Send a peremptory summons to

the Earl of Morton, says Huntly; she did it without question. Morton

came on the night of 8th March, and Des-Essars, who saw him ride into

the courtyard at the head of a troop in his livery, remembered that on

the same night a year ago he and these pikemen of his had been masters

of Holyrood. What a whirligig! Masters of Holyrood; then outwitted,

ruined, and banished; now back in favour, and, by the look of them, in

a fair way to be masters again. The bluff lord had the masterful air;

the way in which he announced himself seemed to say, ‘Oh, she’ll see me

quick enough! She hath need of me, look you!’ He was very much at his

ease—cracked his jokes with Erskine all the way upstairs, and, meeting

Lethington at the head of them, asked after his new wife, with a gross

and somewhat premature rider to the general question.

She sent for her young confidant when the audience was over, and greeted

him with, ‘Now, foolish boy, you shall be contented. He is fast for

us—will say nothing if we say nothing.’

‘Oh, madam, did he seek to bargain with your Majesty?’

She laughed. ‘No, no! Nor did I cross his palm with earnest-money. But

there would have been no harm.’

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘you shall forgive me for saying that there would have

been much. It is not for the prince to compound with treason, nor for a

noble, innocent lady to traffic with the guilty.’

She stopped his mouth, her hand upon it. ‘Hush, thou foolish boy! What

treason did he do? To set me free—is this treason? To rid me of my

tyrant—was this guilt?’

He hung his head, and she watched his confusion; then, repenting, stroked

his face, murmuring, ‘Foolish boy! Fond boy! Fond and foolish both—to

love a lover!’

She told him a secret. She had heard two women talking beyond the garden

wall. They spoke laughingly together of the Red Bridegroom—‘and of me,

Baptist, they spake somewhat.’

‘I know, I know! Tell me no more.’

‘Of me they spake,’ she went on. ‘“Bothwell’s wench,” they said,

“Bothwell’s——”’

He caught at her wrist. ‘Stop! I will not hear you! I shall kill myself

if you say that word!’

She swung her hand to and fro, and his with it, which held her so fast.

‘The word,’ she said, ‘is nothing without the thing—and the thing is not

true. I would that it were! Do you set so much store by names and framed

breaths and idle ceremonies, and call yourself my lover? Do you tell me

to my face that if I called you to come to me, to stretch open your two

arms and clasp me within them, and to fly with me this world of garniture

and bending backs and wicked scheming heads, and abide night and morning,

through noon-heat and evening glow and the secrets of long nights under

the watching stars, fast by my side, with our mouths together and our

hearts kissing, and our two souls molten to one—do you tell me now that

you would deny me? Answer you.’

He faced her steadfastly. ‘I do say so. I should deny you. I serve God,

and honour you. How should I dare do you dishonour?’

She was very angry—shook him off. ‘Leave my wrist. How do you presume to

hold your Queen? Leave me alone! You insult me by look and word.’

He left her at once, but she sent for him early next morning and easily

made amends.

Driven to it at last, on the 24th of the month she wrote to old Lennox

that Bothwell should be tried by his peers. She did it partly because

Huntly advised it as the only possible way to stop the growing clamour,

but much more because she wanted Bothwell back. He had been with his wife

all the month; Huntly also had been there more than once—Adam Gordon, old

Lady Huntly. A family council was, perhaps, in the nature of the case;

but all the members of that had returned a week ago, and why should he

remain? Why, indeed, if (as all Scotland believed) he had gone to urge

divorce upon his Countess? So the excuse was made to serve: he was

formally summoned; returned to town on the 28th; made public entry with

an imposing force of his friends and adherents; kissed the Queen’s hand

in all men’s sight, and on the same day sat at the Council board, and

discussed with the others, who were to try him, the precedents for his

own trial. This was no way to satisfy Lennox or Edinburgh.

The assize was fixed for 12th April. On the 7th of that month the Earl

of Moray left Scotland without leave asked or leave-taking of the Queen.

He stayed a day at Berwick, and had a long conference with the English

Warden, then took ship and sailed for France. This should have given

her pause, and did for a day or two; but to a craving nymph, stalking

gauntly the waste places, what matters but the one thing? It made

Des-Essars serious enough, and put French Paris in a dreadful fright. His

master, he said, ‘was fool enough to be glad at his going; but the Queen

knew better. M. Des-Essars told me that she wept, and would have sent

messengers after him to get him back if she could. Ah, and she was right!

For when yet did that lord’s departure betoken her anything but harm?

Never, never, never!’ says French Paris.

The trial itself was a form from beginning to end, with the Queen a

declared partisan, and the assize packed with her friends or his. My

lord rode down to it as to a wedding; he rode one of the dead king’s

horses—rode it gaily; and as he departed he looked up at the window

and waved his hat, and all men saw the flutter of the Queen’s white

handkerchief; and some say that she herself was to be seen smiling and

nodding to him. Certain it is that when he was cleared—a matter of a few

hours—and came out into the light of day and the face of a huge crowd,

which blocked the street from side to side, he was met by Lethington,

bareheaded, and by Melvill, bowing to the earth, and by the concourse

with a chill and rather terrible silence. One shrill cry went up in all

that quiet, and one alone. ‘Burn the hure!’ was shrieked by a woman, but

instantly hushed down, and nothing was heard after it but the trampling

of horses as Bothwell’s troop went by. When the Queen met him at the foot

of the palace stairs, he went down on his knees; but many saw the smile

that looped up his mouth. She was very much moved, could not say more

than, ‘Get up—come—I must speak with you.’

He went upstairs with her—they two alone. The courts and yards of

Holyrood were like a camp.

Such a state of things might not last for long. Bothwell could not go

out of doors alone. Even in company his hand was always at his dagger,

his eye for ever casting round, probing corners for ambushes, searching

men’s faces for signs of wavering or fixed purpose. Strong man as he was,

circumstances were too many for him: he told Paris one day that he was

‘near done.’

‘Sir,’ says Paris, ‘and so, I take leave to say, is the Queen’s majesty.

If your lordship is for the seas——’

‘Damn you, I am not!’ said Bothwell.

He considered the case as closely as ever anything in his life, for

he was engaged in a great game. He consulted one or two men—Melvill,

Lord Livingstone, his leering old uncle of Orkney. He sounded Morton,

Argyll, Bishop Lesley (as he now was become); and then he gave a supper

at Ainslie’s, opened his plans, and got their promises to stand by him.

He wrote these out and made them sign. This was on 19th April, and that

night he certainly saw the Queen. I say ‘certainly’ because Des-Essars,

who was with her afterwards, was told by her that ‘her lord’ had gone

into Liddesdale to harry the reivers. Something in her tone—he could not

see her eyes—made him doubt her: a little something made him suspect that

she intended him to doubt.

So, ‘Reivers, ma’am!’ he cried. ‘Is this a time to consider the lifting

of cattle, when yourself and him are in danger, and no man knows when the

town may rise?’

Her answer was an odd one. She was sitting in a low chair by the wood

fire, leaning back, looking at the red embers through her fingers. Before

she spoke she lowered her head, as if to put her face in shadow, and

looked up at him sideways. He saw the gleam of one eye, the edge of her

cheek where the light caught it. As he read her, she was laughing at him.

‘More may be lifted than cattle by these wild men of the Border. I am

going to Stirling in two days’ time, and maybe we shall meet, my lord and

I.’

He asked her calmly—accustomed to her way of declaring certainties as

possibilities—was such a meeting arranged for? ‘Come to me, child,’ she

said (though he was not a child), and when he obeyed, ‘Kneel by my side.’

She put her arm round his neck in a sisterly fashion, and said, ‘You

shall be with me to Stirling, and again when we depart from Stirling.

You forget not that you are my brother? Well, then, brother, I say to

you, Leave me not now, for the time is at hand when I shall need you. I

believe I am to be made the happiest woman in the world, and need you to

share my joy as much as ever you did my sorrow. Hereafter, for many days,

I may have no time to speak privately with you. Kiss me, therefore, and

wish me happy days and nights.’

He kissed her, wondering and fearing. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘bethink you what

you are about! I beg of you to speak with my lord of Huntly in this

business of Stirling.’

She said, ‘It is done. I have spoken with him: he was here but an hour

gone. And I have Lethington on my side, and Mary Livingstone and Fleming

will both be with me.’ She laughed at her thoughts; not for a long time

had her old malicious gaiety been upon her. ‘I knew that I could win back

Livingstone. Guess you how I did it.’ And when he could not, or would

not, she whispered in his ear, ‘She believes I am with child by the King.’

Des-Essars had nothing to say, but she kept him by her, talking of her

life about to begin, her joy and pride, love, duty, privilege, in a way

so innocent and candid, she might have been a child at play. The hours

were small when he bade her good-night, and she said laughingly, ‘Yes, go

now. I shall be wise to sleep while I may.’

As he went he stretched out his arms, let them fall, and shrugged his

young shoulders—gestures all of despair.

Where all was prepared beforehand it was not hard to forecast the turn of

events. It fell out much as Des-Essars had reasoned it over to himself.

Upon a fresh spring morning of flitting clouds and dancing grasses, the

Queen’s party, rounding the shoulder of a green hill, was suddenly

advised of a company of horsemen, advancing at a leisurely trot, at some

quarter mile’s distance. One could look upon what followed as at a play;

for it may be taken for truth that not a man, soldier or other, so much

as swept the uplands with his eye, so conscious was he that a play indeed

it was! The oncoming troop was observed in silence; in silence, without

word of command or lifted hand, each halted at a spear’s throw. The Earl

of Bothwell, with two lieutenants, rode forward, baring his head as he

came. Nobody of the Queen’s men went out to meet him; nobody hailed him;

nobody moved to safeguard the Queen, who herself sat motionless upon her

little white jennet, in the forefront of her escort, Mary Livingstone on

one side of her and Mary Fleming on the other. The Earl came to her side,

reining up short as his stirrup clicked against hers.

‘Madam, for your Grace’s protection and honour I am come to lead you to

a safe hold. I beseech your Majesty take it not amiss in one who desires

above all things to serve you.’

The Queen, in a very low voice, replied, ‘Lead me, sir, according to your

good judgment.’

He took up the rein of her horse, wheeled, and led her away to his

own troop, no one staying him. Mary Livingstone whipped after her,

Mary Fleming followed. Then the Earl of Huntly, looking round upon the

remnant, free there and armed upon the road, said in measured tones,

‘Follow, sirs, since it seems we are prisoners.’

If play it was, it was not even played properly, but had been reduced to

a spiritless rite. Yet, as Des-Essars has the wit to remark, to the Queen

the whole had been an act of very beautiful symbolism. He had noticed, as

no one else did, the gesture with which she gave herself up—her opened

palms, bowed head, good eyes, at once trusting and thankful. Ah! she

had been immodest once in her dire need, panting, blowsed, scratched,

dishevelled by her ardent chase. He had seen her so, and shuddered. But

now she was modest, but now she had regained virginity. A folded maid

sought in marriage by a man, she had bowed her head. ‘Lead me, sir,

according to your good judgment!’ Thus Des-Essars, fond lover! It is

safe to assert that he was alone in discerning these fine things, as the

lining of a very vulgar business.

* * * * *

The moment he had the Queen at Dunbar, which was reached by nightfall, my

lord dismounted her and took her away. Led by his hand, she went without

a word to her women, without any looking back. The rest of the company

was left to shift as best it could. There were meat and drink on the

spread tables; there may have been beds or there may not. The Queen was

no more seen.

Sir James Melvill made an effort, let off a quip or two, ruminated

aloud in an anecdotic vein, rallied Lethington, flattered Huntly, felt

himself snubbed and knew that he deserved it, but waived off the feeling

with his ‘H’m, h’m!’ and recovered his dignity. Huntly gloomed upright;

Des-Essars was bent double, head in hands; Lethington walked up and down

the hall, marking with his eye flagstones upon which he must alight at

every step, or be ruined. To watch his mad athletics made his gentle

wife grieve and Mary Sempill rage. Most of Bothwell’s men were asleep;

Ormiston was drunk; Hob, his brother, was both. Gradually silence, which

had been fitful, became universal; and then they heard the wind moaning

round the great house and the sea beating at the black rock on which

it stands. The casements shook, doors far off slammed again and again,

gulls and kittiwakes screamed as they swept to and fro over the strand;

and as the doomed company sat on in the dark listening to all this, and

some thinking with horror of what could be doing between those two in the

vast wind-possessed house, and some with pity welling like blood, and

some shamefully, and some with wisely nodding heads—presently, when the

shrilling of the birds grew piercingly loud, one of these banged against

the window, and fought there at the glass, battling with wings of panic.

Mary Sempill rose with a shriek. ‘O God, save her! O God, save her!’ She

was thinking of her Queen.

Nobody moved except Mary Fleming, who felt out the way to her and put

arms about her.

Thus the night went on.

In the morning Paris came down and said that her Majesty desired to see

Mistress Sempill. She was taken up, and found the Queen in bed in a

darkened room. She walked to the edge of the bed and looked down, seeing

little. The Queen lay still, one of her bare arms out of bed; this arm

she slowly raised and touched her Livingstone’s cheek, then dropped it

again heavily.

But her Livingstone had now recovered herself, and could afford to be

cynical.

‘Well—Honeypot?’ said she.

‘Empty,’ said the Queen.

Then her Livingstone kissed her.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BRIDE’S PRELUDE

French Paris took a letter to Lady Bothwell from Dunbar, as he thinks,

on the day after the ravishing: he fixes his date from the fact that Sir

James Melvill happened to tell him that it was his birthday, the 25th of

April.

‘Not the first I have spent in durance, my good fellow,’ the genial

gentleman had added, ‘although I tell you candidly that it is the first

wedding-night—so to call it—at which I have assisted in such a place.’

Paris would have prolonged so interesting a conversation if his master

had not been waiting to be dressed. As it was, he excused himself and

hurried up to his duties; which done, my lord handed him a letter,

saying, ‘Deliver this safely, at your peril; and remember also that

whatsoever my lady shall ask you, she is to have a full answer.’

‘Your lordship may count upon me,’ says the valet, hoping with all his

heart that she would not tax his countenance too far. Leaving the room,

he was recalled.

‘One thing more, Paris. Your mistress will give you a coffer for me.

Guard it well, as you value your neck; for, trust me, if you come not

home with that intact, I will run you down though you were in the bury of

Hell.’

‘Rest easy, my lord,’ said Paris superbly, ‘rest easy here, and disport

yourself as seems good to your wisdom; for certainly I shall never fail

you. Nor have I ever,’ added the poor complacent rogue, and took the

thought with him up the gallows ladder.

It is a singular thing that Bothwell knew his wife so little as to

provide against a line of conduct which she could never have taken.

According to Paris, she asked him no awkward questions at all, but read

her letter calmly, dipping a toast in white wine and whey as she read. At

the end, after musing a while, looking extremely handsome, she said: ‘My

lord, I see, makes no mention how long he remains at Dunbar. Knowest thou

anything to the purpose?’

Nothing awkward here; but Paris blundered it. ‘Oh, my lady,’ he says,

conscious of his red face, ‘I suppose his lordship will stay out the

moon.’

‘What hath he to do with the moon, or the moon with him, fool?’ said the

Countess; and soon afterwards sent him away, as without any value for her.

One can picture him then in the kitchen quarters—jaunty, abounding in

winks and becks; or with the grooms in the stables—what conversations!

The play, dragged by the weary, high players, must have quickened when

the clowns tumbled through it.

Next day my lady had him up again to her chamber and gave him letters

for Edinburgh: a large packet for a notary, one Balnaves or Balneaves,

another for the Archbishop’s Grace of Saint Andrews at Hamilton House.

‘Deliver these with speed, Paris, and come back to me—but not here. I

shall be at Crichton expecting you—and give you a packet for my lord.’

This is how Paris learned that process of divorce was begun. He dates it

the 26th-27th April.

Demure, wide-eared scamp! he was not idle in town, I assure you; but

ran from cawsey to cawsey, from tavern-parlour to still-room, into all

churches, chapels, brothels, about the quays of Leith, up and down the

tenement stairs, spying, watching, judging, and remembering. He was most

amazed at the preachers, whose licence to talk exceeded all bounds of

belief. There was one Cragg, well named for a rock-faced, square-hewn

man, colleague of Mr. Knox’s: to listen only to this firebrand! This

Cragg—Paris heard him—rocked screaming and sweating over the brink of his

pulpit, and hailed his Queen a Jezebel, a Potiphar’s wife, a strumpet of

the Apocalypse. ‘And I could have wrung his brazen neck for him,’ said

Paris, ‘but that all the people stood packed about him murmuring their

agreement. It would have been my death to have declared myself—and I was

vowed to return to my lord.’

The city seemed to be in the governance of the Earl of Morton,

unsuspected of any hand in the late crime, and of Lord Lindsay, whom

all hot gospellers loved. Close in with them was Grange—Kirkcaldy of

Grange—a very busy man, Marshal of the City, Captain of the Guard, who

kept surveillance of Holyrood and the lower town. Paris perceived that

he was lieutenant to Lord Morton, a cultivable person if willing to be

cultivated. About his doors, every day and at all hours of the day, he

saw messengers stand with horses ready. Now and again one would come out

with his despatches bound upon him, mount and ride off—south, north,

west. Similarly, others came in, white with dust, and delivered up

their charges to the porter at the door. Paris, never without resource,

inquired into the matter, and found out with whom Grange corresponded.

With my Lord of Atholl at Perth! With my Lord of Moray in Paris! With

Mr. Secretary Cecil in London! Why, this was treasonable stuff, hanging

stuff, as he told his informant—Gavin Douglass, body-servant to Mr.

Archie of the name—who knew it as well as he did.

‘Oh, ay, you make up your mind to the treason o’t, Paris,’ says Gavin;

‘but I recommend you let not my master catch you in this town. You have

had six hundred gold crowns of his for the price of an old shoe—he has

never ceased to talk of it, believe me. No later than yesterday he was

at it, saying that pretty soon he could afford to give all his clothing

to the world and stand up mother-naked as he was born, and be none the

worse. “And to think,” says he, “to think I could be such a custard-faced

loon as to buy back my slipper from a rogue I shall be hanging in a

week.”’

Paris was indignant and hurt. ‘I can see,’ he said, ‘that the lords

of Scotland are at their favourite game of beggar-my-neighbour. _Dieu

de Dieu!_ what else could we have expected? Your Scotch way: roguery

upon roguery, thieves on thieves’ backs, traitors who betray their

co-traitors—hogs and rats, one and all!’

He left Edinburgh much alarmed at the state of its affairs, determined to

be done with the Countess at Crichton and back again in Dunbar as soon as

might be; but, greatly to his annoyance, her ladyship, being busy with

her law business, kept him four or five days kicking his heels: it was

the 4th of May before she delivered him her packet. That was a coffer,

strongly bound and clamped with iron, locked and sealed.

At the moment of his going Lady Bothwell said to him, ‘Tell my lord,

Paris, that this day he and I are free of each other; tell him that here

I am and here remain.’

Paris, always the servant of a fine woman, knelt upon one knee. ‘My

lady,’ he said, ‘your ladyship has never loved me, but I take God to

witness that I have ever honoured your ladyship. Albeit I am a poor devil

of a lacquey, madam, I have wit enough to know a great lady when I see

her.’

Said the Countess: ‘If you think that I have a disliking for you, Paris,

you are mistaken. I neither love nor hate you. I have never thought about

you.’

‘Madam,’ said he, ‘why should your ladyship? I shall venture, none the

less, to pray God give you all health, fame, and happiness.’

Lady Bothwell sat bolt upright, one firm hand on the table. ‘Health I

have from God already. Fame, if you mean good fame, I have kept for

myself. Happiness, if that lies in the satisfaction of abiding desire, I

intend to have before long. Now begone with your charge.’

He went out shaking his head, muttering to himself: ‘Terrible lady! fine,

carven, deep-eyed lady! What is her abiding desire?’

He found out afterwards.

The coffer and he came safe to Dunbar and into the presence of their

master. The Queen was in the room: red eyes, hot patches in her cheeks, a

swinging foot, fingers a-tap on the table——‘Ho! a tiff,’ thinks Paris.

My Lord Bothwell hands over the coffer, or rather puts it on the table by

the Queen’s elbow. ‘Here is your testimony, _ma mie_. By my advice you

burn every scrap of it.’

‘Shall I burn what has cost me so much, and you, it seems, so little?’

she asked bitterly. ‘Is it nothing to you that I have written with my

blood and sealed with my tears?’

‘I had not analysed the ink,’ said my lord; ‘and if I had I should

value your honour more. However, you must do what you will.’ She left

him without answer; and by and by Des-Essars presented himself, saying

that he had her Majesty’s command to take charge of the coffer for her.

Something in message or messenger seemed to anger the Earl. ‘Damn you,

French monkey, you take too much in charge. Must her Majesty always have

an ear to pull or a cheek to pinch? Man, Baptist, for two pence I’d have

both your lugs off and a hot iron at your cheeks: with a broad C branded

there, my man: ay, by God, and a double C! Chamberer Convict, man,

Baptist!’

He worked himself crimson in the face, his eyes savage and red. ‘Mind

your ways, young sir, mind your ways’—he threatened with his fist,—‘I

warn ye mind your ways just now—lest you come into the deep mire, man,

where no ground is.’

Des-Essars drilled his slim body to attention, and fixed his eyes on

the opposite wall. The Earl glared at him open-mouthed, and fingered

his dagger as though he itched to be at it. But presently he scoffed at

himself—‘A white-faced boy to stand by side o’ me!’ He turned: ‘Take your

coffer, master, and be out of this. A little more and I might colour you

finely.’

Des-Essars removed both coffer and himself. Paris was trembling: he knew

that what he had to report of Edinburgh’s doings would not make matters

any better. Nor did they—though it may be doubted whether they could have

made matters any worse.

* * * * *

The joys of love—love’s moment of victory, love’s rest, and possession of

the spoils—are gossamer things: an adverse breath may shred them away.

As for Love himself, you may call him a Lord or a Beast, give him his

roseate wings or his cloven hoofs and tail: certainly there never was in

the world so refined a glutton. Perfection is what he claims, no less;

perfection of leisure to obtain, perfection of content, and all according

to that standard of mind which, in a field without limit, grudges the

stirring of a filament as a hindrance to the enormous calm he covets,

and sees in a speck of sand a blemish upon his prize. ‘Alas! no man, no

kingdom of this world, no ordering attainable by mortal minister could

have appeased Queen Mary. She was made to hunt for happiness and never

to find it. She had risked all upon this cast of hers, had made it, at

her last gasp had fallen upon the quarry. And now, clutching it, eyeing

the coverts fearfully to right and left, starting at a whisper, cowering

at the lightest shadow—like a beast of prey, she had no time to taste

what she had so hardly won. O miserably stung by the rankling arrow! Poor

Io, spurred by the gad-fly, what rest for thee? Come, ye calm-browed

beneficent goddesses of the night! Handmaids of Death, come in! and with

cool finger-tips close down these aching lids, and on these burning

cheeks lay the balm of the last kiss; so the mutinous, famishing heart

shall contend with Heaven no more!’ The dithyrambic cry of Des-Essars

does not indicate a comfortable state of things at Dunbar.

The Queen was madly in love, aching to be possessed, but knowing herself

insecurely possessed. Her tyrant, master, beloved—whatever Bothwell may

have desired to be—was harassed by events, and could not play the great

lover even if he would. Rebellion gathered outside his stronghold, and

he knew every surge of it; he was not safe from disaffection within

doors, and had to watch for it like a cat at a mousehole. If the Queen

had sinned to get a lover, he had risked his head to wive a queen.

Well, and he had not got her yet, though she asked for nothing better

all day and night. Queens and what they carry are not got by highway

robbery: it’s not only a question of kissing. You may steal a Queen for

the bedchamber—but there’s the Antechamber to be quieted, there’s the

Presence Chamber to be awed, there’s the Throne Room to be shocked into

obsequiousness: ah, and the Citadel to be taught to fly your banner.

Brooding on these things—all to do except one—his lordship had no time

for transports, and no temper neither. When the Queen wept he swore, when

she pleaded he refused her, when she sulked he showed his satisfaction

at being let alone, and when she stormed he stormed loudlier. He was not

a man of fine perceptions: that was his strength, he knew. By the Lord,

said he, let others, let her, know it too! And the sooner the better.

She would not discuss politics. Dunbar, which was to have been her

bride-bower, should be so still, in defiance of beastly fact. She

refused to hear what Paris had to say of Edinburgh pulpits, of Morton’s

men-at-arms, Grange’s flying messengers. When Bothwell spoke of the

Prince at Stirling she promised him a new prince at Dunbar; when he cried

out threats against Archie Douglas she stopped his mouth with kisses;

when he summoned Liddesdale to arms she pouted because her arms were

not enough for him. It was mad, it was unreasonable, it fretted him to

feverish rages. He gnashed his teeth. Lethington kept rigidly out of his

way: he was really in danger, and knew it; not a day passed but he made

some plan of escape. Melvill spoke in whispers, could not have stood

on more ceremony with his Maker. Huntly was always on the verge of a

quarrel; and as for poor little Des-Essars, you know how he stood.