THE QUEEN’S MARIES:
A Romance of Holyrood.
BY
G. J. WHYTE MELVILLE,
AUTHOR OF “DIGBY GRAND,” “THE INTERPRETER,” “HOLMBY HOUSE,”
“GOOD FOR NOTHING,” ETC.
NEW EDITION.
LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
TO A LADY WHOSE UNTIRING ENERGY AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH HAVE
ADDED LARGELY TO THE LITERATURE OF OUR COUNTRY, AND WHOSE
ELOQUENT DEFENCE OF A CALUMNIATED QUEEN HAS IDENTIFIED WITH
MARY STUART THE NAME OF AGNES STRICKLAND, THE FOLLOWING PAGES
ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
BARTRAMS, HAMPSTEAD, _June 1862_.
THE QUEEN’S MARIES: A ROMANCE OF HOLYROOD.
‘Yestre’en the Queen had four Maries--
The day she’ll hae but three--
There was Mary Beton, and Mary Seton,
And Mary Carmichael and me.’
CHAPTER I.
‘Turn back, turn back, ye weel-fau’red May,
My heart will break in three;
And sae did mine on yon bonny hill-side,
When ye wadna let me be!’
Many a smiling plain, many a wooded slope and sequestered valley
adorns the fair province of Picardy. Nor is it without reason that
her Norman-looking sons and handsome daughters are proud of their
birth-place; but the most prejudiced of them will hardly be found to
affirm that her seaboard is either picturesque or interesting; and
perhaps the strictest search would fail to discover a duller town than
Calais in the whole bounds of France. With the gloom of night settling
down upon the long low line of white sand which stretches westward
from the harbour, and an angry surge rising on the adjacent shoal,
while out to seaward darkness is brooding over the face of the deep, an
unwilling traveller might, indeed, be induced to turn into the narrow
ill-paved streets of the town, on the seaman-like principle of running
for any port in a storm; but it would be from the sheer necessity of
procuring food and lodging, not from any delusive expectation of gaiety
and amusement, essential ingredients in a Frenchman’s every-day life.
And yet Calais has been the scene of many a thrilling incident and
stirring event. Could they speak, those old houses, with their pointed
gables, their overhanging roofs, and quaint diamond-paned windows,
they could tell some strange tales of love and war, of French and
English chivalry, of deeds of arms performed for the sake of honour,
and beauty, and ambition, and gold--the four strings on which most of
the tunes are played that speed the Dance of Death--of failures and
successes, hopes and disappointments, the ups and downs, the ins and
outs, the cross-purposes, the hide-and-seek, that constitute the game
of life. In that very house, over the way yonder--with its silent
courtyard, in which the grass shoots up vigorously between the stones,
and from which to-day nothing more unusual issues than an old peasant
woman in a clean cap, carrying a young child with a dirty face--slept,
perhaps, the loveliest woman the world ever saw, a widow, while yet
a bride, a queen while yet a child, on her way from one royal throne
to take possession of another. Yes, here she lay the night before
she quitted her dear France, never to see it again; the bright, the
beautiful, the beloved, a very rose amongst all the flowers of the
garden, a very gem amongst all the gold and tinsel that surrounded her,
the link in a line of kings, the pride of two countries, the fairest of
God’s creatures--Mary, Queen of Scots--here she lay, with life and love
and hope before her, and slept, and dreamed not of Fotheringay.
It was a chill autumn night. Beyond the walls a rising breeze moaned
fitfully over the dreary flats. The ebbing tide murmured as it receded,
returning, and yet returning, as though loth to leave that comfortless
expanse of wet level sand. A few drops of rain fell from time to
time, and though a star struggled out here and there, the sky became
momentarily more obscured. It was a gloomy night out at sea yonder; it
was a gloomy night here on shore, dismal, foreboding, and suggestive of
farewell.
But within the town, bustle and hurry, and a certain amount of
confusion, not unmixed with revelry, imparted considerable life and
animation to the hours of darkness, scaring indeed some of the quiet
householders, and rousing the echoes in the narrow streets. Horses,
picketed in the market-place, stamped and snorted and shook their
bridles; spurs clanked on the pavement; steel corslet and head-piece
flashed in the light of torches held by bearded men-at-arms, looking
doubly martial in that red glare. Here might be seen a dainty page
in satin doublet, with velvet cap and feather, elbowing some sturdy
groom who was bearing a cuirass home from the armourer’s, or leading
a charger to its stall, and inquiring, with all a page’s freedom,
for the lodging of his lord, to receive, probably, an answer neither
respectful nor explanatory, but productive of a stinging retort--for
in those days the pages of a great house were masters of all weapons,
but especially of the tongue. There might be observed a group of
peasant-women, in clean hoods and aprons, with baskets on their heads,
lingering somewhat longer than was absolutely necessary to exchange
with harquebusiers or spearmen those compliments in which the French
imagination is so prolific, and which the French language renders with
such graceful facility. Anon, a lord of high degree, easily recognised
by the dignity of his bearing, and the number of his retainers
thronging round him with arms and torches, passed along the streets,
exciting the curiosity of the vulgar and the admiration of the softer
sex; while more than one churchman, threading his way quietly homeward,
dropped his ‘_Benedicite_’ with gentle impartiality amongst the throng.
The blessing was usually received with gratitude, though an exception
might occur in the person of some stalwart man-at-arms, large of limb,
fresh-coloured, and fair-bearded, who returned the good man’s greeting
with derision or contempt. These reprobates were invariably well armed,
and extremely soldier-like in their bearing, to be distinguished,
moreover, by their blue velvet surcoats, on which St Andrew’s cross
was embroidered in silver, and the peculiar form of their steel-lined
bonnets, which they wore with a jaunty air on one side the head.
Something, also, of more than the usual assumption of a soldier might
be traced in their demeanour, as is apt to be the case with the members
of a _corps d’élite_, and such the Archers of the Scottish Body-Guard
had indeed a right to be considered both by friend and foe. Although
in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty, many of them, including
their captain, the unfortunate Earl of Arran, were staunch Protestants;
and at that rancorous period, the supporters of the Reformed Church did
by no means confine themselves to a silent abnegation of the errors
they had renounced.
One archer, however, a young man with nothing peculiarly striking
either in face or figure, save an air of frankness and quiet
determination on his sun-burnt brow, acknowledged the benediction of
a passing ecclesiastic with a humility that excited the jeers of two
or three comrades, to which he replied with the quiet simplicity that
seemed to be a part of his character, ‘An old man’s blessing, lads,
can do neither you nor me any harm,’ and proceeded on his way without
further remark or explanation; while the manner in which his rebuke
was received by the scorners themselves, denoted that he was at least
a person of some consideration and standing in the _corps_. Elbowing
his way through a gaudy crowd, consisting of the Marquis d’Elbœuf’s
retainers, who were accompanying their master in his attendance on his
royal niece, and certain satellites of the House of Guise, for the
duke and duchess, with Cardinal Lorraine, had already escorted the
Queen of Scotland thus far upon her journey, our archer turned into
an _auberge_, already filled with a mixture of courtiers, soldiers,
pages, men-at-arms, and other officials, and seating himself at a
small deal table, coarse and clean, requested to be served, in a
tone of impatience that implied a vigorous appetite and a long fast.
While the host, quick, courteous and smiling, bustled up to him, with
napkin, trencher, and some two feet of bread, the archer removed
the bonnet from his brow, and, looking around him, nodded to one or
two acquaintances with an air of considerable preoccupation, ere he
subsided into a profound fit of abstraction, which, to judge by his
countenance, proceeded from no agreeable theme.
He was a man of less than thirty summers, sufficiently well-built, and
of ordinary stature, with no peculiar advantages of person or bearing
that should distinguish him from any other gentleman-private of the
Scottish Body-Guard. His arms, indeed, were scrupulously clean and
of the best workmanship; for when a man’s life depends daily on the
quality of his blade, such details become a matter of course; and if
his apparel were a thought more carefully put on, and of a more precise
cut, than that of his fellows, this distinction seemed but to arise
from that habitual attention to trifles which is the usual concomitant
of energy and readiness for action. A sloven _may_ be a brave man, and
a capable; but if the machine is to remain in good working order, every
screw should fit to a hair’s breadth, and a coat of varnish over the
whole will not detract from its efficiency. Our archer, then, was well
but not splendidly dressed; nor would his face more than his figure
have attracted the attention of any casual observer. Nine men out of
ten would have passed him by unnoticed. A woman would have been first
puzzled, then interested, perhaps eventually fascinated, by the quiet
repose of that stern, calm brow. It was a face of which the expression
was many years older than the features. A physiognomist would have
detected in it resolution, tenacity of purpose, strong feeling,
repressed by habitual self-control--above all, self-denial and great
power of suffering.
For the rest, his complexion, where not tanned by the weather, was
fair and fresh-coloured, according well with the keen gray eye and
light-brown hair of his Scottish origin.
The archer’s meditations, however, were soon put to flight by the
agreeable interruption of a well-served supper (for, indeed, prior to
those days, as old Froissart will bear us witness, the French excelled
in cookery); and after the first cravings of appetite were appeased,
he emptied a cup of red wine with a sigh of considerable satisfaction,
then returned to his platter with renewed vigour, and filled his goblet
once more to the brim.
‘Good wine drowns care,’ said a laughing voice behind him; ‘and Cupid
himself cannot fly when his wings are drenched. Ho! drawer, quick!
Another flask of Burgundy, and place me a chair by my pearl of Scottish
Archers, till he tells me what brings him here eighty leagues from
Paris, unless it be to mingle his tears with the salt brine of the
accursed Channel that bears our White Queen[1] from the shores of
France.’
[1] Mary was called ‘_La Reine Blanche_,’ because she mourned
in _white_ for her first husband, Francis II.
An expression of pain shot rapidly over the archer’s face as he greeted
the speaker with a cordial grasp of the hand; but he answered in the
deep steady tones that were habitual to him.
‘A man may have despatches to carry from the constable to his son; and
d’Amville is not likely to overlook a soldier’s delay on such a road as
this, where there are as many horses as poplar trees. I could take the
Montmorency’s orders yesterday at noon, and be here to supper to-night,
without borrowing the Pegasus you ride so recklessly, my poetical
friend.’
The other laughed gaily; and when he laughed, his dark eyes flashed and
sparkled like diamonds.
‘My Pegasus,’ said he, ‘needs oftener the spur than the rein; but who
could not write verses, and sing them too, with such a theme before
him? Listen, my friend. I am to sail to-morrow with them for Scotland.
Heaven’s blessing on d’Amville that he has selected me to accompany
him! Nay, we are appointed to the Queen’s galley; and Mary will take
at least one heart along with her, as loyal and devoted as any she can
leave behind.’
He checked himself suddenly, and a sad, wistful expression crossed his
handsome brow, whilst the dark eyes dimmed, and he set down untasted
the Burgundy he had lifted to his lips. Something in his voice, too,
seemed to have enlisted the archer’s sympathy, and he also was silent
for a moment, and averted his looks from his companion’s face.
After a while he forced himself to speak.
‘I must return,’ said he, ‘in two more days. Is it true they embark
without fail to-morrow? Is there no danger from the ships of England?
Is Her Majesty well accompanied? Doth the household sail with her?
Ladies and all?’
‘The Maries, of course,’ replied the other, answering only the last
question, which he reasonably considered the most interesting to his
listener; ‘and right glad they seem to be to quit this merry land
of France for that cold bleak country where I hear music is scarcely
known, and dancing interdicted as a sin! I marvel much at their taste.
To be sure, they accompany one who would inspire the wildest savages
with chivalry, and make the veriest desert a paradise! Ah! when was
such a garland of beauty ever trusted to the waves? The Queen and her
satellites! One lovelier than another, but all paling before her. A
bumper, my friend! on your knees, a bumper--a health to the letter M!
nay, pledge me one for each of the four, and a fresh flask for the
Queen--for the Queen!’
Again the speaker’s voice sank to a whisper, and the archer, who had
ere now recovered the usual indifference of his demeanour, proceeded
to do justice to a toast which could not, according to the manners of
the age, have been refused, and which, in truth, for reasons of his
own, he was by no means loth to pledge. The table at which they sat,
however, was by this time surrounded by the different frequenters
of the _auberge_, for the archer’s companion, no other than the
poet Chastelâr, was too well-known and popular an individual in the
gay circles of France to remain long unnoticed, where so many of
her nobility were congregated. Young, handsome, and well-born, his
romantic disposition and undoubted talents had rendered him an especial
favourite with a people who, above all things, delight to be amused,
and with whom enthusiasm, whether real or affected, is generally
accepted as an equivalent for merit. To look on Chastelâr, with his
long dark curls and his bright eyes, was to behold the poet-type in
its most attractive form; and when to beauty of feature and delicacy
of mind were added a graceful figure, skill in horsemanship, as in all
knightly exercises, great kindliness of disposition, and gentle birth,
what wonder that with the ladies of the French Court to be in love
with Chastelâr, was as indispensable a fashion as to wear a pointed
stomacher, or a delicate lace-edging to the ruff? And Chastelâr, with
true poet-nature, sunned himself in their smiles, and enjoyed life
intensely, as only such natures can, and bore about with him the while,
unsuspected and incurable, a sorrow near akin to madness in his heart.
As gallant after gallant strode up to the table at which the two
friends sat, the conversation became general, turning, as such
conversations usually do, on the congenial themes of love and war.
Again and again was mine host summoned for fresh supplies of wine,
and the archer, whose recent arrival from Paris made him an object of
general interest, was plied with questions as to the latest news and
gossip of the capital. Richly-mounted swords were laid aside on the
coarse deal table, cloaks of velvet and embroidery draped the uncouth
chairs, gilt spurs jingled on the humble floor, and voices that had
bandied opinions with kings in council, or shouted ‘St Denis!’ in the
field, were now exchanging jest and laugh and repartee under the homely
roof of a common wine-shop.
Even the Marquis d’Elbœuf, the Queen’s uncle, a lord of the princely
house of Guise, and Admiral of France, joined with a sailor’s frankness
in the gay revel, and taking a seat between Chastelâr and the archer,
questioned the latter as to his late interview with the constable, and
the well-being of that distinguished veteran, a soldier of whom every
man in France was proud.
‘And you made sail with the despatches the moment you were out of his
sight,’ observed the marquis. ‘I’ll warrant, you made a fair wind of
it all the way to Calais, for the Montmorency brooks no delay in the
execution of his orders. How looked he, my friend?--and what said he?
Come tell us the exact words.’
‘He looked like an old lion, as he always does,’ answered the archer,
simply; ‘and he said to me in so many words, “These letters must be
in my son’s hands within eight-and-forty hours. I can depend upon you
Scots. May the blessing of Our Lady be upon you, my child. And now,
Right--Face! and go to the devil!”’
The Marquis laughed heartily.
‘He loves your countrymen well,’ said he, ‘and with reason. I have
heard him swear the bravest man he ever saw was a Scot.’
A murmur of dissent, if not disapproval, rose around the table, and
many of the Frenchmen present bent their brows in manifest impatience;
but the marquis, who had his own reasons for wishing to be well with
the Scottish nation, and whose frank nature brooked no withdrawal or
modification of his opinions, struck his hand on the board, till the
cups leaped again, and repeated in loud tones--
‘A Scot!--yes, gentlemen--a Scot. And I know why he said so--for I
too was present at the boldest feat-of-arms even the constable ever
witnessed; and so was my modest friend here with the cross of St
Andrew on his breast--only he was but a stripling then, and had hardly
strength to hold his pike at the advance. A health, gentlemen! Do me
reason. To the memory of Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes! one of your
difficult Scotch names. Norman Leslie, the bravest of the brave!--Will
you hear the story?’
‘Tell it, marquis!’ was repeated on all sides, and cups were set down
empty on the board, as many an eager warlike face turned towards the
Admiral of France.
‘It was at Rentz, then,’ proceeded d’Elbœuf, ‘where the old Emperor
out-generalled _us_ as completely as we outfought _him_, and the two
armies were almost within bow-shot of each other. We resembled a couple
of angry dogs that are not permitted by their masters to fight. A clear
slope of some two or three hundred paces divided us, and the German
light-horsemen came galloping out to skirmish, tossing their lances in
the air and bantering us. There must have been, at least, a hundred of
them within a pistol-shot of our lines. The blood of Frenchmen soon
boils up, gentlemen; but we had no orders to engage, and I, for one,
kept my men-at-arms in hand, for the king was commanding in person,
and Condé, and the constable, and the Duc d’Anguien were present, and
likely to visit any breach of discipline with severe reproof. Ah!
they cannot thus interfere with us at sea; but I ground my teeth at
intervals, and thought, if the order would only come, what short work
we would make with the German dogs.
‘Norman Leslie, however, had come up after the council was over in the
king’s tent, and so, I suppose, fancied himself free to act. He had
but half a score men with him at most; but he formed them into line,
and charged up the hill into the thick of the enemy. It was a noble
sight to see him, gentlemen, in his coat of black velvet, with its
broad white crosses, and his burnished armour, with a red Scotch bonnet
on his head. How he drove that good gray horse of his a dozen lances’
lengths ahead of his following! He rode through and through the Germans
as if they were a troop of children at play. We, in the lines, I tell
you, counted five of them go down before his lance broke. Then he drew
his sword, and though they shot at him with musquetoons and culverines,
we could still see the red bonnet glancing to and fro, like fire among
the smoke. At last they detached a company of spearmen to surround him,
and then striking spurs into his horse, he came galloping back to our
lines, and rode gallantly to salute the constable in the centre. As he
kissed his sword-hilt, the good gray fell dead at Montmorency’s feet.
Alas! his master followed him in less than a fortnight, for though the
king sent his own leech to dress his wounds, brave Norman Leslie was
hurt in so many places, that it was out of the power of leech-craft to
save him. What say you, gentlemen? a bolder feat-of-arms than that was
never attempted by a soldier, and it was executed by a Scot! What say
you of a man that would ride through an armed host single-handed to
fetch away a laurel leaf?’
The archer smiled, and bowed low at this flattering tribute to his
nation.
‘I might return your compliments, marquis,’ said he, ‘had we not a
Scotch proverb which implies “_Stroke me, and I will stroke thee_.” And
yet it is but fair to say I have known a rougher ride than even Norman
Leslie’s taken for a silk handkerchief, and by a Frenchman.’
‘A silk handkerchief! a lady’s of course,’ said one. ‘A love-token!’
exclaimed another. ‘Undertaken in deliverance of a vow,’ suggested a
third. ‘Done by an Englishman for a wager,’ laughed a fourth.--All had
some remark to make except Chastelâr, whose colour rose visibly, and
who looked distressed and ill at ease.
‘A handkerchief of the softest Cyprus silk,’ insisted the archer in his
quiet expressive voice, ‘and rescued by the very man to whom I this
day presented his father’s letters. And yet it is no wonder that the
constable’s son and a Marshal of France should be a brave man. I tell
you, gentlemen, that I saw d’Amville at the head of a band of Huguenots
sorely pressed, and outnumbered by his countrymen of the Catholic
faith, so that he had but one chance of retreat in placing a rapid
stream betwixt himself and his pursuers. As he was facing the enemy,
whilst the last of his followers entered the water, a handkerchief
dropped unnoticed from beneath his corslet. He discovered his loss,
however, as soon as he reached the opposite bank; and dashing once more
into the stream, under a murderous fire, charged through the press
of men-at-arms to the spot where it lay, dismounted, picked it up,
and cut his way back again to his own troop. There was blood on the
handkerchief when his page unarmed him that night; but I think it was
the blood of the bravest man in France.’
‘And the handkerchief?’--cried several voices. ‘Whose was it?’ ‘Who
gave it to him?’ ‘Happy the lady who owned so true a knight!’
The archer smiled once more.
‘Nay, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘it was no love-token after all. But the
marshal is the soul of loyalty as of honour. There was an M and a
crown-royal embroidered on the margin. It belonged to the White
Queen--to her whom France is to lose to-morrow for ever.’
‘What a theme for the minstrel!’ exclaimed d’Elbœuf gaily. ‘Chastelâr!
canst thou hear and be silent? Awake, man! drench thy brain with
Burgundy, and improvise us some stanzas!’
The poet looked up with the air of one who shakes some painful burden
off his mind. He put his cup to his lips, and answered gaily enough.
‘Not on that theme, marquis, at least to-night. Is it not the eve of
our departure? And can there be merriment for France when she thinks
of all she is to lose on the morrow? Nay, gentlemen, if you must have
a song, let it be a lament. Let France mourn the absence of one whose
like she may never hope to see again.’
Seats were drawn nearer the table; the guests’ faces assumed an air of
interest and expectation. Through the open doorway might be seen the
humbler servants of the household crowding eagerly to listen. Chastelâr
looked around him well-pleased, and sang, in a rich mellow voice,
the following stanzas, after the model of his old instructor, the
celebrated Ronsard:--
‘As an upland bare and sere,
In the waning of the year,
When the golden drops are wither’d off the broom;
As a picture when the pride
Of its colouring hath died,
And faded like a phantom into gloom:
‘As a night without a star,
Or a ship without a spar,
Or a mist that broods and gathers o’er the sea;
As a court without a throne,
Or a ring without a stone,
Seems the widow’d land of France bereft of thee.
‘Our darling, pearl, and pride!
Our blossom and our bride!
Wilt thou never gladden eyes of ours again?
Would the waves might rise and drown
Barren Scotland and her crown,
So thou wert back with us in fair Touraine!’
Amidst the applause which followed the notes of their favourite,
cloaks and swords were assumed, reckonings were discharged, farewells
exchanged, and laughing, light-hearted gallants streamed up the dark
street in quest of their respective lodgings. Soon each was housed,
and all was quiet ere the first streaks of dawn rose upon the sleeping
town, and the cold bleak shore, and the dull waves of the brooding
Channel.