‘She could whisper, and smile, and sigh,
Pleading, flattering, … so can the rest;
But oh! the light in her roving eye
Would have wiled the babe from its mother’s breast.’
The Queen of Scotland was fairly settled in her own palace of
Holyrood. We must now shift the scene to the royal presence-chamber
in that picturesque old building. It is a lofty and well-proportioned
apartment, of which, however, the small windows and thick walls
denote that it was originally constructed with a view to purposes of
defence. It is hung round with a quaint and elaborate tapestry, more
curious, perhaps, than tasteful, representing various incidents in
the heathenish history of Diana; whereon the goddess bares her knee
and draws her bow, to the discomfiture of her rival’s children, with
mythological effrontery. Beautiful oak carvings adorn its massive
chimney-piece, and its panelled roof is richly emblazoned with the
armorial bearings of a line of kings. The floor, instead of being
strewed with rushes, is carefully waxed and polished, a foreign
innovation which has already excited some displeasure amongst the
graver courtiers. Such furniture as the room contains is heavily gilt
and decorated. The sovereign’s chair of state seems to blaze with
embroidery and cloth of gold. It is a right royal apartment, not
unworthy of the company by which it is occupied.
To-night the Queen holds one of her state-receptions, and around her
person are gathered the flower of the Scottish aristocracy. Many a
bold baron who spends half his life sheathed in armour, walks none
the less stately to-night that he has donned satin doublet and silken
hose, that his brow is bare of its steel head-piece, and he carries his
plumed bonnet in his hand. Many a dame of clear blue eye and dazzling
fairness scans with critical glance every fold of the royal drapery,
and watches if she cannot catch and appropriate another grace from her
Queen. They are thronging round her now, for the dissensions which
shall mar her unhappy reign are as yet only in the bud. Each may expect
some fresh boon from a new sovereign, and the baron’s ambition to
become an earl is just as eager, and probably twice as unprincipled, as
the varlet’s to become a page, or the page’s to become a squire. Even
thoughtful Lord James, the Queen’s half-brother, the lay-churchman, the
soldier-statesman--the staff on which she leans, little dreaming it
can ever break in her hand and pierce her to the quick--has forgotten
his sister in his sovereign, and wears on his calm sad face an unusual
expression of deference to-night, because of prospective advancement
and his promised earldom of Mar, and the broad lands and additional
title of Moray, to which he hopes it may lead. He has taken his stand
on the right of the Queen’s chair, and Mary whispers to him ever and
anon as she requires information concerning her new subjects; although,
with the tact of her family and her own kindly acuteness, she has
already mastered the names of most of them, and has even gained the
good-will of more than one rugged baron by a happy question regarding
his old gray tower or his favourite horse.
But amongst many eager countenances, of which, with all their different
expressions, each wears a family likeness of curiosity and expectation,
it is touching to observe the chivalrous face and the lofty bearing of
the Maréchal d’Amville, who has come to bid farewell to his Queen and
his ladye-love. With all the polish of a courtier, with all the pride
of a soldier, and with that dignity of manner which noble natures, and
these alone, acquire from a hopeless sorrow bravely borne, d’Amville
kneels before her who was Queen of France in the sunny days that seem
to have shone so long ago. Many a weary year has he knelt in spirit
before that magic beauty which he now feels he looks on for the last
time. He never expected for a moment that his wild hopeless love
could win him anything but sorrow, yet he grudged it not, nor strove
to conquer the idolatry for which he was prepared to pay its cruel
penalty,--he is paying it even now. Kneeling there to kiss the white
hand that reaches him a letter for her kinsfolk in France so gently and
so gracefully, looking up once more at the face that will haunt him to
his grave, and feeling that none but himself will ever know his folly
or its punishment; and that she, its object, smiling so frankly upon
him, little guesses how gladly he would give her his blighted life,
then and there, at her feet.
But, gentleman and soldier as he is, none can guess his heart by the
unmoved brow, the unshaken voice, and the scrupulous deference with
which he pays his homage. Gracefully he insists on the reception he
will meet with in France, as bearing the latest news from her who was
the pleasure and the pride of the whole kingdom, and his own good
fortune in having been permitted to accompany her and see her safely
bestowed on her Scottish throne. Mary can scarcely keep back her tears
at the allusion; but, with so many jealous eyes around her, well she
knows she must play her part at any cost, and she gulps them down with
an effort.
‘Farewell,’ she says, ‘my brave protector and pilot; be assured Mary
Stuart never forgets a friend. You will advise the Guises of my welfare
and happiness. You will tell the French court and the French people,’
she added, drawing herself up and speaking in a louder tone, so as to
be heard by all, ‘that you left me on a royal throne, surrounded by the
bravest and the most loyal nobility in Europe.’
A murmur of applause went the round of the circle at this spirited
declaration, and Lord James gave the Queen a glance of mingled surprise
and approval.
As d’Amville rose from his knee and retired, Chastelâr, who followed
in the train of the Maréchal, passed before the Queen to make his
farewell obeisance. The poet’s face wore an expression of determination
foreign to its usual character; but it was observed by one who watched
its every turn, that he never lifted his eyes above the hem of Mary’s
robe. She inclined her head graciously to him, nevertheless, and he
passed into the outer circle, and was soon conversing lightly with the
maids-of-honour and other of the courtiers.
It chanced, however, that the Queen had forgotten some additional
message for her kinsfolk, with which she intended to charge d’Amville,
and ere he had reached the door, she wished to call him back. The first
person whose eye she caught happened to be the Earl of Arran, who had
taken up a position opposite Her Majesty, and seemed to observe her
narrowly.
Not unwilling to pay the house of Hamilton every compliment in her
power, Mary beckoned the Earl to her side and charged him with her
commission. Arran’s wild eye flashed fire at the proposal!
‘I will obey your commands, madam,’ said he, rudely, ‘though there be
pages enough in the gallery to send after a French adventurer. It seems
that France had better come to Holyrood and abide with your Majesty
once for all.’
His tone was so loud, and his bearing so excited, that the bystanders
gazed in astonishment on one another and on the Queen.
Mary looked surprised, almost scared for a moment, and then flushed
with displeasure; but her sweet temper soon prevailed, and she answered
gently,--
‘Nay, cousin, you shall do my bidding yourself as you have always done.
Have not you and I reason to look back upon the days we spent in France
as the happiest of our lives? Youth comes but once, my lord, and we
shall neither of us ever be so light-hearted again.’
The unfortunate nobleman trembled from head to foot, and turned deadly
pale. He seemed about to indulge in some frantic outbreak, which he
repressed with an effort; then with writhing lip and dilated nostril,
he strode towards the doorway, the courtiers making way for him as he
passed with looks of astonishment and alarm.
Lord James, glancing at Morton, put his finger to his brow and shook
his head gravely. The grim Douglas laughed his ghastly laugh, and
with his hand on the haft of his dudgeon-dagger, muttered something
about ‘blood-letting’ and ‘melancholy,’ that, had he been the
physician, would have boded no good to the patient; and Arran, rushing
tumultuously through the gallery to cool his brow in the night air,
reappeared in the Presence no more that night.
It seems to us there is a strange, sad moral in the history of this
beautiful Queen. Probably the gift that women most desire, beyond
riches, wisdom, even virtue itself, is a power of fascination over the
other sex; and this dangerous charm must have been possessed by Mary to
a degree that in the days of Greece and Rome would have been attributed
to supernatural influence. With all her advantages of rank, talent,
and education, this very quality, so far from adding to her happiness,
seems to have been the one engine which worked her own destruction,
and that of every kindly heart that came within her sphere. Few of the
other sex could look upon Mary without an inclination, at least, to
love her; and how many, like high-minded d’Amville and poor half-crazed
Arran, had cause to curse the day when first they felt the spell of
that sweet face, apparently so unconscious of its power! Of all the
eminently beautiful women the world has seen, Mary Stuart wrought
the most of wreck and utter ruin with the kindliest disposition and
the best intentions. Dalilah, we have never doubted, was a heartless
sensualist, covetous only of pleasure and gold. The Phrynes and
Aspasias were, probably, finished courtesans, with whom the affections
were but instruments necessary to a profession of which they were
thorough mistresses. Cleopatra, like a royal voluptuary, grudged no
price for her desire; and in her love of conquest, blazoned forth and
made the most of her rich southern charms. _Marguérite de Valois_ knew
and cultivated her resplendent beauty with the diligence of a devotee
and the scientific aptitude of a Frenchwoman. But the Queen of Scotland
alone seems to have been half ignorant and wholly careless of those
advantages which women most prize and cherish; seems to have regarded
her loveliness as little as the flower its fragrance, and to have gone
about frankly and freely dispensing her dangerous notice with the
innocence of an involuntary and unconscious coquette.
It is notorious, that even the lower animals acknowledged the influence
of this captivating nature. Dogs attached themselves to the Queen with
their brave fidelity, from the instant they came into her presence. She
loved to dress her own hawks, and was pleased to boast that she could
reclaim the wild bird of the air with greater facility than the most
experienced of her falconers. Horses that fretted and chafed under the
boldest cavaliers, would bend at once to the gentle hand of the royal
equestrian, and carry her with safety and docility. The brute yielded
gladly, as though proud to contribute to her happiness; and man looked
and longed and grieved, and did his best to make both himself and her
miserable.
Of physical beauty there is no question that she possessed an
extraordinary share--perhaps more than any woman of that or any other
age. Like her mother, she was of lofty stature and peculiar dignity
of bearing, whilst she inherited from her father an exact symmetry
and the most graceful proportions. James V., though he made bad use
of his physical advantages, was one of the comeliest and best-limbed
men in his dominions. Mary’s hand was a model for a sculptor, whilst
every gesture and every movement of her body was at once womanly and
dignified. But it was the Queen’s face that riveted the attention, and
fascinated both sexes with its entrancing loveliness. Other women might
be beautiful; other women might have had the same smooth, open brow,
the same chiselled features and pencilled eyebrows, the same delicate
chin and white full neck and bosom--ay, even the same long, soft hazel
eyes, and rich dark chestnut hair; but where was the woman in Europe
whose glance, like hers, raised from under those sweeping eyelashes,
found its way straight to the heart; whose smile seemed at once to
entreat and to command, to extort obedience and bestow reward, like
sunlight penetrating the coldest object and warming and brightening
all within its sphere? Yes, there was many a beautiful woman in France
and Scotland, not to mention such fair dames at the English court as
did not fear to provoke the displeasure of ‘good Queen Bess’ by too
engaging a deportment or too becoming an attire; but there was only one
Mary Stuart, as many an aching heart in steel-clad bosom was fain to
confess to its cost.
And yet on that fair face was often to be remarked an expression of
melancholy, as though produced by some vague foreboding of evil, such
as cast a shadow over the countenances of so many of the Stuarts.
Even James V., though he could revel with the noisiest, and sing many a
merry stave of his own writing, amongst which
‘We’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon,’
is not the least suggestive and poetical, bore on his brow this
mysterious presage of evil, although it was perhaps more apparent, as
well it might be, in the pensive lineaments of his descendant, the
first Charles, and the surpassing beauty of his peerless daughter,
Mary Queen of Scots. Was it this that the soothsayer meant, when
Mary of Guise took her beautiful child, then a mere infant, to the
famous Nostradamus, and bade him cast her horoscope, and fortell her
destinies? The sage looked on the blooming face, turned so artlessly
towards his own, and announced in his deep grave tones, ‘There is blood
on that fair young brow!’
Through her happy childhood in the peaceful islet of
Inch-ma-home--through her graceful youth, spent with the daughters of
France in the quiet retreats of Amboise and Fontainebleau--through her
early wedded life and short supremacy, as through her widowhood, when
the _Blanche Reine_ was the darling and pride of the French court,
this shadow of evil never left her. It pervaded her turbulent reign
in Scotland, her many reverses, her cruel injuries, her disheartening
defeats, her dreary captivity. Perhaps it never faded from her brow
till the glory of death shone over it, in the hands of the headsman at
Fotheringay.
Mary looked round her courtiers in dismay at Arran’s extraordinary
conduct. The sad expression was more than usually apparent on her fair
forehead: she whispered a few words to her brother, who seemed to
be her refuge, as was natural, in her difficulties, and Lord James,
darting another glance at Morton, quitted the apartment with his usual
staid impassive air.
Then the Queen, rising, broke up the circle by which she was
surrounded, and pacing through the room, addressed herself by turns
to the different nobles present, and was observed to be more than
usually condescending to the Earl of Morton, as though some instinctive
prescience bade her deprecate, as early as possible, the hostility of
that fierce uncompromising nature.
The Earl’s grim countenance relaxed into a smile that added to its
natural ghastliness, as she passed; and Secretary Maitland whispered to
Lord John Stuart that--
‘The Douglas was in a courtly mood to-night, and reminded him of the
lion in George Buchanan’s elegy that was led by the lady in a silken
chain;’ to which the gay prior of Coldinghame, contemplating a shapely
leg he loved well to display in a galliard, replied with a light laugh--
‘I never mistrust the lion so much as when he shows his fangs,’
alluding to the prominent teeth and unshapely mouth of the redoubted
Earl.
‘Nor I the Douglas so much as when he hides his claws,’ answered
Secretary Maitland; and the two passed gaily on to take part in the
amusements and revelry that once more enlivened the walls of old
Holyrood.