‘But had I wist, before I kist,
That love had been sae hard to win,
I’d have lock’d my heart in a case of gowd,
An’ pinn’d it wi’ a siller pin.’
It was the anniversary of the death of Francis II., and Mary, whose
attachment to her youthful husband evinced itself by a scrupulous
respect for his memory, had ordered a dirge to be performed in the
Royal Chapel at Holyrood for the repose of his soul. The sacred edifice
had been appropriately hung with black; nor was any accessory neglected
that could enhance the gloom of the scene. Carpenters had been employed
for some days previously in preparing the mournful display; and a good
deal of murmuring and discontent had arisen both in the court and
city at the proposed ordinance. The _Godly_, as the Protestant party
somewhat presumptuously termed themselves, mistrusted this return to
papal ceremonials, and made no secret of their dissatisfaction.
Mary, however, tolerant as she was of opposite opinions, always
remained staunch to the ritual in which she had been brought up, and
spared no pains to carry out with due pomp a solemnity which she
esteemed essential to the occasion.
The morning broke gloomily, when the Queen, attired in deep mourning,
and attended only by Lady Hamilton, entered the chapel for early mass.
Her lovely face looked paler than usual under the veil of crape which
shaded it, and there was an expression of something more than sorrow,
of annoyance and apprehension, on its lineaments. Perhaps she was
thinking of her brief reign in France, not long enough for a sovereign
to discover the many troubles and anxieties that line a crown. Perhaps
she was recalling the adoration she had been used to receive from the
excitable French people, and contrasting it with the gloomy brows and
ominous mutterings she had already encountered amongst her new subjects.
Mary had been but a few weeks on the Scottish throne, ere she became
aware that even her beauty and her bereavement were not sufficient
to cover the _odium_ of her religion in the eyes of these northern
zealots, and that Protestantism might esteem it a duty both to God and
man to insult a helpless woman because she was a Catholic Queen.
As she passed slowly up the aisle with weary step and downcast air,
followed by her maid-of-honour, it may be that both the women were
longing wearily for that rest which they came here to seek--glad to be
relieved, if but for an hour, of the burden which at some future time
they should cast down at once and for ever--almost wishing that the
time was come, and the journey over, and the resting-place at hand.
And now the anthem swells and sinks and fills the echoing aisle; and
the crimson light streams through the deep-stained windows on chiselled
font and sculptured cross and monumental marble, while the tones of the
choristers rise and fall like the song of angels speaking of hope and
peace and pardon for the penitent--wailing in their celestial sorrow
for the loved that yet are lost for evermore.
In that flood of harmony the Queen bathed her wounded spirit, bidding
it contemn the reefs and rocks that beset its earthly course as it
floated, if but for an instant, towards the eternal shore; and Mary
Hamilton, joining in the tide of prayer and praise, forgot her hopes
and fears, her tottering happiness and earthly misgivings, while she
felt that there was yet in store for her a home of endless welcome, a
joy that no uncertainty could poison, a love no falsehood could take
away.
Prosperity goes to church, as well it may, to return thanks for the
benefits it has received; to fulfil, as it were, its own part of the
compact by which it flourishes; to acknowledge its advantages and to
entreat their continuance; then it walks back into the sunshine in
its purple and fine linen, with a pleasant consciousness of debts
discharged and duties well fulfilled. Not so its ailing brother,
gaunt Adversity. For the latter the temple of God is the temple of
refuge, the temple of healing, the temple of consolation; thither it
may bring its sores and its sackcloth, without misgivings and without
shame; there it is on a level with the proudest, and in unison with
the happiest; it drinks from the same stream, and out of the same cup;
it returns to its labour and its sorrow, strengthened and refreshed.
Though the heart be aching, it is sound and unbroken still; and the
storms may pelt their fiercest, it only longs the more to come again.
As the anthem proceeded the Scottish Queen became aware that another
voice had been added to her choir, of considerable depth and volume,
thereby completing its harmony and greatly enhancing its effect. This
organ was the property of an individual whose unfortunate destiny it
was to make a far greater stir at the court of Holyrood than became
either his talents or his station, and to meet with a fate which his
antecedents did not deserve.
In the train of the Count de Moretta, ambassador from the court of
Savoy, the Duke of which principality was another unsuccessful suitor
for the hand of the Scottish Queen, came a good-humoured little
Italian, David Riccio by name, whose especial gifts at this period seem
to have been a knack of mimicry, not unusual among his countrymen, and
a fine bass voice of great power and sweetness.
These were the qualities that first recommended him to the notice of
Mary; and when, in addition to his musical acquirements, she found
him quick-witted, ready and obliging, fluent with the pen, and a
perfect master of the French language, she promoted the good-humoured,
deformed, and diminutive foreigner to the post of private secretary,
little dreaming of the construction which would hereafter be put upon
so harmless an appointment.
In the meantime Riccio revelled in the exercise of his delightful
talent--filling the crape-hung building with his notes of mournful
melody--and Mary listened entranced, and forgot for the moment her
troubles, her widowhood, and her crown.
But the charms of music, and even the consolations of religion, can but
stave off earthly cares for a brief period of repose, after which they
are prone to thrust themselves on our notice with a vigour all the more
imperative for such temporary respite. When mass was concluded, and
Mary, with her maid-of-honour, was about to quit the chapel, she could
not but observe how none, save her immediate attendants and personal
household, had assisted to form the congregation; how the nobility
of her court, with but few exceptions, had remained outside, with a
certain ostentatious assumption of dissent from the religion of their
Queen. She could not help remarking as much to her attendant.
‘Do you not see, my dear,’ said she, bitterly, ‘how the new religion
is disposed to charity and toleration? My Protestant lords will not
even join in the devotions of their Sovereign, when she prays for the
welfare of her husband’s soul. They will not “weep with those who
weep,” nor “rejoice with those who rejoice,” unless it be by Master
Knox’s permission, and in black cassock and Geneva band. Verily,
Mary Hamilton, it is a weary lot to be a woman, but it is a daily
humiliation to be a Queen!’
‘I know not what a Queen’s trials may be, madam,’ answered the other,
on whose sweet face the halo of devotion had not yet faded away; ‘but a
woman’s sorrows, I fancy, may be too hard for a woman to bear, unless
she brings them with her unreservedly and lays them all down here.’
While she spoke she stood near the chapel-door, and the December sun,
shedding its rays through the deep red cross of the stained window
above, streamed full upon her fair and gentle face. It seemed to her
mistress, even then, that she looked like some patient saint, purified
by suffering, and bearing the cross of her Master in the red glory of
martyrdom.
But such holy thoughts as these were soon driven from Mary’s mind
by fresh annoyances. On leaving her chapel, and emerging into the
courtyard of her palace, the Queen found it crowded by an assemblage of
her nobility, whose motley apparel, of the gayest and gaudiest hues,
contrasted offensively with her own sad mourning garb. Not one of
them had shown sufficient sympathy with her feelings to wear so much
as a black ribbon on his doublet, or to doff the plume that flaunted
from his rich velvet bonnet. Stung to the quick by such disrespect,
Mary determined to meet it by an insult as injudicious as it was
unworthy. Halting on the threshold of her chapel, she took not the
slightest notice of the salutations offered her by the proudest lords
in Scotland, but beckoned to the new singer, whose voice had recently
so much delighted her, and giving him her missal to carry, complimented
him with marked familiarity on his performance; and so, holding the
astonished Italian in conversation at the chapel-door, kept every one
else waiting uncovered until she had done with him.
Many a haughty brow was already bent on the unknown stranger. Gray
moustaches, that had bristled in the teeth of the English archers at
Flodden, were pulled in mingled astonishment and anger; while hands,
always too prompt to shed blood, gripped dagger and sword-hilt, as
though neither the sacred locality nor the presence of the sovereign
would long restrain them from open violence. The first impulse of the
Scottish noble was to resent an insult or avenge an injury on the
spot. Morton alone, of all the crowd, seemed to experience neither
indignation nor surprise. The smile that gave his face so fiendish
an expression only deepened and hardened round his mouth. He glanced
from the Queen to her ill-chosen favourite with looks rather of
amused malignity than offended pride. Morton’s will was strong in
proportion to his passions, and these, with all their abiding energy,
were thoroughly under the control of his hard unfeeling nature. The
Douglas was, indeed, one of those who would ‘strike sooner than speak,
and drink sooner than pray;’ yet he only glared on the singer with a
kind of comic ferocity, and the poor little Italian shrunk nearer his
protectress with a prophetic horror of the hard-featured earl.
Bidding Riccio follow in her train, the Queen passed on through the
cloisters of the palace towards her own apartments, returning with
cold courtesy the salutations of her nobility. The courtiers looked
meaningly at each other, and then at the new favourite, who slunk along
behind his mistress, bearing her gorgeous missal, in ludicrous dismay.
Secretary Maitland, a man whose wits were always at hand, and who
could transact more business in ten minutes than the rest of the Privy
Council in as many days, approached her Majesty with a huge bundle
of papers under his arm, and the Queen, taking them from him without
remark, handed the whole at once to Riccio. The secretary ventured on
an expostulation.
‘They are for your Majesty’s _private_ information,’ said he,
deferentially, but in a tone of marked disapproval.
‘And I have given them to my _private_ secretary,’ replied Mary,
haughtily; thus hastily and injudiciously confirming the appointment
that led to such disastrous results.
‘Shall I attend your Grace to explain their contents?’ asked Maitland,
as coolly as if nothing unusual had taken place.
‘When I send for you, sir,’ answered the Queen; and even Maitland’s
assurance was compelled to give way. He could but bow and fall back
amongst the crowd.
Some of the nobles were so offended that they quitted the court on the
spot; others thought it a bad opportunity to press their respective
suits with the sovereign, and lounged off, as it were inadvertently, to
their different amusements and occupations--one to fly a hawk, another
to try a horse, not a few to break their fast on rich food and strong
potations; the while they discussed the gossip of the court, which had
received no inconsiderable fillip from the events of the morning.
Lord James walked gravely away to Mr Randolph’s lodging. His brother,
the gay lay-prior of Coldinghame, mounted his horse to join a
merry-making on Leith sands. The Earl of Huntly and the Earl Mareschal
departed to prepare an ordinance for the council, discussing, to
all appearance, weighty matters of state; yet, perhaps, could their
dialogue have been overheard, it related to far less important topics.
The courtyard of the palace was almost deserted, and Mary, dismissing
her maid-of-honour and the Italian, prepared to take a solitary turn up
and down the cloisters, to soothe her temper and compose her troubled
mind.
The Queen thought she was alone. It was not so, however; for, from
the moment of her leaving the chapel, her movements had been watched
by a man concealed behind one of the arches; and no sooner had her
attendants quitted her than he emerged from his hiding-place.
Mary started, and almost screamed, as this unexpected figure stepped
forth and stood in front of her. Indeed, a bolder nature might have
been alarmed at its wild appearance and the vehemence of its gestures.
Pale and haggard, all unbraced, and with disordered dress--but unarmed,
even to his sword--the Earl of Arran confronted Mary Stuart with none
of the ceremony observed by a subject in the presence of his Queen.
‘At last!’ he shouted, with passionate vehemence, and placing himself
so that she could not pass by him,--‘at last I see thee once more.
After weary hours of watching by night and day, after danger and
difficulty and longing, I see thee once more. No longer the Queen of
Scotland, surrounded by her court, and haughty in all the panoply of
royalty, but Mary Stuart, the flower of womanhood, the darling of
France, and the idol of Arran’s heart.’
‘What mean you, my lord?’ exclaimed the Queen, utterly aghast at this
unheard-of proceeding, and hardly knowing, in her astonishment, whether
to stand or fly. ‘Are you mad or dreaming? I am, indeed, Mary Stuart,
and it is not thus I should be accosted by the Earl of Arran.’
‘Mad!’ returned the unfortunate nobleman, the wild cunning of insanity
gleaming from his eye, and pointing with his wasted hand to the
palace windows as he spoke. ‘Hark ye, madam; they are mad up yonder.
Mad from vaults to roof of this accursed building, this stronghold
of superstition and Papacy. The Lord James is mad, who would deliver
his sister into the hands of the ungodly; the priests are mad, who
would withhold her, by main force, from the tidings of salvation;
the choristers are mad, singing their unholy dirges for the souls
that are gone to perdition. Mary! Mary!’--he changed to accents of
wild affection and entreaty--‘I alone am devoted to you. The house of
Hamilton is the only refuge for the Stuart.’
Mary was constitutionally brave. Her courage began to return as she
reflected she was within call of her household and retainers. She had a
natural regard, too, for her kinsman; and a woman’s pity for the wreck
that something within, too truly, told her she herself had made. She
tried to quiet the poor maniac with soothing, gentle words.
‘Nay, cousin,’ said the Queen, ‘when have I doubted your loyalty or
your honour? Why come to assure me of it at this unbecoming hour, and
in this unbecoming guise? You are afflicted, Arran, and ill at ease.
Retire into the palace; our own physician shall attend you; the best of
lodging and the best of care shall not be grudged to my kinsman.’
For a moment Arran seemed calmer, and once or twice he passed his hand
across his brow, as though waking from some troubled sleep, or trying
to recall some lost recollection. And, indeed, whilst the Queen kept
her eye on him, though he tried hard to avoid her glance, it held him
in a certain subjection. No sooner, however, was it withdrawn, than his
madness blazed forth once more.
‘It is the plot!’ he shouted again, as though addressing some imaginary
audience, ‘the accursed, traitorous plot, that I alone have power to
prevent. Papist and Protestant, rebel and renegade, from the four winds
of heaven, they are banded together to carry off my Queen. Listen,
madam; on my knees, I implore you to listen.’
He knelt, and clasped Mary’s hand in both his own.
‘I have discovered a conspiracy to seize your royal person, and to
carry you into bondage. Lord James has consented to join in it. The
Earls of Seton and Livingstone have signed the bond drawn up by smooth
and crafty Lethington, with every name attached in characters of blood,
except his own. Morton has promised his assistance; for when was the
Douglas out of any scheme of violence and crime? And Bothwell, with his
border reprobates, is to put it in execution; but Arran will save his
Queen.’
‘How say you? Morton? my brother? trusty Seton? and Bothwell, loyal
and true? Impossible! You are raving,’ said the Queen, now thoroughly
alarmed. ‘Where shall I turn to? What shall I do?’
‘The Hamiltons will rally round the Stuart!’ exclaimed the maniac,
rising from his knees, and making as though he would seize Mary in his
arms.
Before she could call for help, however, he suddenly desisted from his
purpose, and placing his finger on his lip with a gesture of caution
and a glance at the Queen, in which cunning and imbecility were
strangely mingled, moved swiftly and stealthily away.
With the quick perceptions of insanity, he had caught the sound of
an armed step approaching through the cloisters; and ere Mary had
recovered from her dismay, a tall, warlike figure bowed to its very
sword-hilt before her, and she found herself face to face with the
Warden of the Marches.
He had been riding all night to reach Holyrood. He had galloped on
ahead of the best-mounted of his troop, who were even now rounding the
base of Arthur’s Seat, as they neared the Scottish capital. In those
troubled times there was no lack of excuses for the warden to seek
personal instructions from his sovereign, and Bothwell had availed
himself of some late misunderstanding with Lord Scrope, the warden
on the English side, to obtain an audience of the Queen. With a wild
feverish longing for the sweet face, to behold which was fast becoming
a necessity of his existence, he had hurried to the presence of his
sovereign. And now, when the moment had at last arrived, the colour
faded in his bronzed cheek, and he trembled, that strong man-at-arms,
like a girl.
Agitated and frightened as she was, Mary recovered herself sufficiently
to receive him with becoming dignity. As his stalwart figure bent
in homage, and the upturned face, with its manly features and fair
short-curling beard, softened visibly beneath her glance, the Queen
might well leave her hand in her subject’s for an instant longer than
the customs of a court required. He looked like a man who had both
strength and will to help a woman at her need; and the bold border
chief kissed the white hand that lay so gently in his own, with all the
devotion of a worshipper kneeling before a saint.
‘You are welcome, Bothwell,’ said Mary, ‘though you come, doubtless, to
tell me of fresh disturbances on the border--fresh troubles to harass
and perplex the Queen. The true heart and ready hand grow rare at
Holyrood, and more and more welcome to Mary Stuart day by day.’
‘I am but a plain soldier, madam,’ answered Bothwell. ‘Your Majesty’s
need of me is at once my pride and my reward. It is nothing new to tell
you that every drop of James Hepburn’s blood belongs to his Queen.’
‘I believe it,’ answered Mary, smiling sadly; ‘and yet even Bothwell’s
loyalty has this very morning been questioned. Nay,’ she added, as the
Earl started indignantly to his feet, ‘I, at least, never doubted you
for an instant.’
‘I have but one answer to my accusers, madam,’ replied the warden,
pointing significantly to his sword. ‘If a subject questions my
loyalty, I can demand the ordeal. If my sovereign suspects it,’ he
added, with a slight trembling in his voice, ‘I can but give her my
life to vindicate my honour.’
‘O Bothwell!’ exclaimed Mary, ‘would that all were like you! I have
none to counsel me; none in whom I can trust; none to sympathise with
me in my loneliness, a widow, and a Queen. To-day, in my bereavement
and my affliction,’ she added, reverting to the conduct of her
courtiers, which had so hurt and irritated her best feelings, ‘not one
of them had the decency to share in the mourning of their sovereign.
Even my warden comes before me in his ordinary attire, but that is
fairly excusable when it consists of corslet and head-piece hacked and
dinted in my service.’
‘Say not so, madam,’ answered Bothwell, pointing to a sprig of willow
worn in his basnet. ‘I gathered yon sprig from the sallows that skirt
its bank as I rode the water of Roslin in the misty dawn. I could
not forget the day of my Queen’s bereavement; and it shall never be
told that Bothwell forbore to share the dangers or the sorrows of his
sovereign.’
The angry colour that had brightened it all the morning died out on
Mary’s cheek. She looked at the Earl steadfastly while one might have
counted ten, then her lip quivered. She turned her face away, and burst
into tears.