‘I freighted my bark with the rich and rare,
Alice of Ormskirk, all for thee,
Little I reckoned of cost or care,
But I launched her out on a summer sea--
‘A summer sea and a smiling sky,
Never a ripple and never a frown,
Never a token of shipwreck nigh:
What did it matter? The bark went down.’
John Knox went back to his studies and his labours. The Queen and
her Maries betook themselves to the duties of adornment and the
preparations for a journey. The court was about to move for a season
to the pleasant seaside town of St Andrews, in Fife, a favourite
resort with her Majesty, and much affected by the household, as their
sojourn in the old episcopal city was marked by a gaiety and freedom
from restraint exceedingly welcome both to the sovereign and her
court. The cavalcade moved off in high spirits. It was but a small
party, consisting at the most of not more than twenty equestrians,
including the four maids-of-honour, and the more immediate attendants
on the person of royalty. Horses stamped and snorted, and shook their
bridles merrily, as they were mounted at the palace gates to move
on in gay procession down the winding causeway that led towards the
Firth. Feathers waved, spurs jingled, men’s voices rose in merriment,
and the soft laughter of women floated like music on the pure calm
air. The dames of Queen Mary’s household, like their mistress, were
skilful horsewomen, yet it was wonderful how many of those little
attentions, which are so delightful to render and so welcome to
receive, they exacted from the cavaliers who accompanied them. Horses
were insufficiently bitted, saddles insecurely girthed, housings
unbecomingly disposed; it seemed as if each of the fair travellers
had reason to complain of her groom’s negligence or incapacity, yet
they bore it with exemplary good humour notwithstanding. Even Mary
Carmichael, after refusing assistance from every gentleman in turn,
and bending her pretty fingers backward against an obstinate buckle,
was fain to apply to Walter Maxwell for his help; and although it was
rendered in the gravest and coldest manner possible, thanked him with
a bright and kindly smile. It was, perhaps, the most provoking way to
treat him. Had she quarrelled with him outright, he would have known
how to act, for he was hurt and angered to the depths of his loyal and
resolute heart, but this off-hand good humour was irritating in the
extreme. It was treating him like a child, he thought, and he chafed
under it inwardly, the while the girl herself was only striving to
avoid a final rupture, and longing to be friends with him as before.
‘Do you journey with us to St Andrews?’ said she, glancing timidly at
his immovable face; ‘or do you return to Holyrood from the waterside?’
and her heart beat faster while she waited for his answer.
‘As the Queen shall direct,’ he replied, it must be admitted, not with
his natural sincerity. ‘I confess I am profoundly indifferent myself.’
He spoke in a hard, dry tone, and she made her horse bound forward from
his side, and bent her head down to caress the animal, till her bright
hair mingled with its mane.
The others rode gaily on, talking and laughing joyfully, all but the
Queen. Mary Stuart was a thought paler than her wont, and unusually
silent and preoccupied. Was it that her remonstrances of Master Knox
had sunk into her heart? or was she overladen with the cares of her
kingdom? or was there some feeling of pity and compunction gnawing
her, foreign to the weightier considerations of religion and policy,
yet, perhaps, keener and more engrossing than these? Whatever might
be the reason, she, who was generally so eager, so buoyant, on an
expedition like this, now rode listlessly and carelessly with her hand
resting idly on her knee, and her rein lying loosely on her horse’s
neck. ‘Black Agnes,’ however, by no means shared the dejection of her
mistress. That favourite palfrey, a gift from her brother Moray, and
called after the famous Agnes of Dunbar, who was Countess of Moray
in her own right, was in the highest spirits at her release from the
stable, and, sharing the mettle of the tameless heroine whose name she
bore, was no eligible conveyance for an inattentive horsewoman. Ere the
gleaming waters of the Firth were in sight, the black mare shied at a
beggar on the road-side, and swerved from him with such activity, that
Mary, unprepared as she was, must have been unseated had a dexterous
hand not seized her bridle-rein at the decisive moment, and a ready arm
supported her till she regained her balance in the saddle.
‘It is the last service I may render my Queen,’ said Chastelâr’s low,
sad voice in her ear. ‘O madam, send me not away from you, I beseech
you!’
She knew he was in the cavalcade, indeed she had never retracted
the permission originally given, that he should accompany the court
to St Andrews, and perhaps something had told her he was not riding
very far off, although she had resolved to treat him henceforth with
enforced coldness and reserve. As she turned to thank him now, and
marked his gallant bearing, the skill with which he rode his mettled
chestnut horse, the bravery of his apparel, the respectful deference
of his manner, and the pale worn face that told of so much sorrow and
suffering, the Queen’s heart swelled with that remorseful pity which is
not many degrees removed from a softer feeling.
‘You must leave me now,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘I will tell you
more when we are embarked. You shall come to me then for your last
directions, Chastelâr, and to bid me farewell!’
‘Is there no hope?’ he asked, in a low stifled whisper.
‘None,’ she answered, firmly, in the same guarded tone. ‘O Chastelâr!
I pity you,’ she added, while the tears sprang to her eyes; ‘from my
heart I pity you; but it _must_ be so.’
He fell back quietly and humbly. Mary put ‘Black Agnes’ into a gallop,
and the cavalcade were soon engaged in all the bustle of embarkation at
the waterside.
It was Valentine’s Day, and the weather was indeed in unison with that
mild and popular saint. It was one of those soft pleasant days, with a
calm atmosphere and a serene though clouded sky, that come in the early
spring to remind us of the principles of growth and fragrance still
existing, though dormant, in the bosom of the teeming earth. The russet
sward was saturated with moisture, and not a bud had yet started into
life, not a snowdrop lifted its gentle head on the southern side of
the sleeping braes and shaws, heavy with the promise of another year.
Ashore, the rooks were flocking to the fresh-turned glebe, where the
bright ploughshare, sticking in the furrow, marked that the half-day’s
work was done; while, on the broad Firth, soft and smooth and white
as milk, the dark sea-bird rode calm and motionless, as if at anchor,
poised on the surface of his home; the distant mountains loomed grand
and dim and sullen, the nearer points and promontories shot sharply
out into the water, clearly defined against the sheeted level of the
Firth; the very tide seemed but to heave and sob at intervals, lapping
drowsily against the dripping sea-weed on the rocks. It was a scene of
beauty, but beauty of a softening, saddening tendency, and all on board
were fain to acknowledge its melancholy influence and partake in the
depression it produced.
The sturdy boatmen bent to their oars; the courtiers, disposed in
different attitudes, appeared chiefly intent on arriving at the
termination of their voyage; and Mary, sitting in the stern of the
boat, dipped her hand idly in the water, silent and gazing downwards,
in obvious disquietude of mind.
Chastelâr watched the Queen with eager eyes. After a while he struck a
few notes on the lute, without which he seldom travelled; and observing
that this, as usual, was the signal for general attention, and that
Mary did not seem to disapprove, proceeded to play a mournful melody,
which, as it rose and fell, he accompanied in apparent abstraction with
his voice.
‘Gone! wholly gone! How cold and dark;
A cheerless world, of hope bereft;
The beacon quench’d, and not a spark
In all the dull gray ashes left.
‘No more, no more, a living part
In life’s contending maze to own;
Dead to its kind, an empty heart
Feeds on itself alone!--alone!
‘The present all a blank, and worse;
No ray along the future cast;
All blighted by the blighting curse,
Except the past!--except the past!
‘Ay, if the cup be crush’d and spilt,
More than the sin the loss I rue,
And if the cloud was black with guilt,
The silver light of love shone through.
‘And though the price be maddening pain;
One-half their rapture to restore,
And live those blissful hours again,
I’d pay the cruel price once more.
‘Dreams! dreams! Not backward flows the tide
Of life and love--it cannot be:
Well--thine the triumph and the pride,
The suffering and the shame for me!’
As he concluded, even the rough boatmen looked from one to the other
in undisguised approval. Never insensible to the charms of music have
been these bold sons of the sea. To this day they are persuaded that
the silver shoals of herring are attracted by harmonious sounds, and
they dredge for oysters with a low monotonous chant, that they believe
peculiarly grateful to that retiring zoophyte. Long after Chastelâr’s
last notes had died gradually out over the silent waters, they laid
to their oars with a will, and seemed to pull their long sweeping
strokes in measured cadence to the unforgotten strain. The Maries,
too, applauded enthusiastically, all but one, and she was weeping in
silence, because her heart was full.
In the stern of the boat, a wide roomy shallop, pulled by some six or
eight oars, the Queen sat apart from the rest of the company. More
than once she had glanced at Chastelâr while he sung, and varying
expressions, none of them in keeping with the serene sky overhead,
had crossed her brow. After he had finished, she remained silent for
several minutes, absorbed in deep reflection. By degrees, as they
approached the opposite shore of Burntisland, and the hills of Fife
began to rise clear and brown above the black, jagged rocks and level
strips of white sand that edged the water’s margin, the attention of
Her Majesty’s train became diverted to the different objects around,
and anon a shoal of porpoises, tumbling to windward in grotesque
succession, drew them, with many exclamations of wonder and amusement,
to the bows.
None were now left in the stern of the boat save the Queen and
the steersman. That ancient Triton’s whole attention was riveted,
seaman-like, on the shallows they were nearing, where, for the first
time during their passage, the rolling waves were breaking languidly
into surf. Chastelâr remained in the place he had never quitted, his
eyes fixed on the Queen’s face. She beckoned him to approach, and in an
instant he was at her side.
‘We remain at Burntisland to-night,’ said Mary, in a low measured
voice that seemed the result either of extreme indifference or perfect
self-command. ‘In the morning we shall ride on to St Andrews. I have
a packet that must be delivered without delay at Dunfermline. Can I
depend upon you to undertake its safe arrival there before to-morrow’s
dawn?’
He assented eagerly. This was no such distant banishment! He should be
under the same sky, within a day’s journey! The light of hope shone
over his face, but while the Queen proceeded in those dry, chilling
tones, it faded as it came.
‘You will ride thence to Stirling, where you will remain until you
receive instructions from Maitland or Melvil. They will be accompanied
by letters for the French Court, and on the instant of their receipt
you will depart for Paris. Chastelâr, I depend upon your obedience--you
will not fail me.’
The cold drops stood on his forehead. It was in a broken, hollow voice
that he replied--
‘My life is in your hands. Do with me what you will!’
Again her kindly heart smote her sore. It was a fearful gift this charm
that she possessed. It was a dreadful responsibility thus to hold the
happiness of a human being, so to speak, in her hand. Could she dash it
to pieces without some tinge of pity and remorse? She resumed her task
very sadly and unwillingly.
‘It is better,’ said she, ‘that this should be done at once. Queen
though she be, nay, _because_ she is a Queen, Mary Stuart may not
listen for a moment to the voice of her own feelings, nor the impulse
of her own heart, pitying as it does those who are in trouble, though
their sufferings and their sorrows spring from their own deed. Nay,’
she added, seeing him about to speak, and deprecating his words,
as it were, with a gentle, almost a caressing gesture of her white
hand, ‘there is nothing you can urge that shall induce me to alter
my determination. A woman’s heart is weak, but her _will_ is iron as
a man’s. It _must_ be so, Chastelâr, for your own sake--and--and for
mine!’
‘O God!’ he exclaimed, in an agony like a man writhing under a
death-blow. ‘Have pity--have pity! Anything but this--any disgrace,
any punishment, any ordeal. But oh! think of the forlorn, despairing
prayer, “Entreat me not to leave thee!”’
The tears dropped fast from her eyes, and the beautiful face quivered
in its struggle to be firm. What was that to him? He could only think
her hard, unfeeling as the seaboard rock. She yielded not an inch.
‘It _must_ be so,’ she repeated; ‘loyal and true, you will not fail me
at last!’
His eyes flashed with anger. Man’s nature can scarce endure great
sorrow without a tinge of resentment.
‘Loyalty and truth are soon forgotten in the absent,’ said he,
bitterly. ‘Lip-service and flattery are more welcome to princes. I
cannot refuse to make room for a newer favourite!’
She smiled on him gentle and forgiving through her tears.
‘You are unjust,’ she said, ‘and unkind; you know it is not so; and
when you are far off it will be your punishment to think that you could
have spoken such words to me to-day.’
The reaction of his feelings was frightful: he put his hand to his
throat as if he was choking, and gasped out in broken syllables--
‘Forgive me! only forgive me before I go out from the light into
eternal darkness and despair!’
‘Obedience?’ she asked in her turn, looking wistfully at the shore,
which they were now approaching; and on their arrival at which,
something perhaps warned her that she must take her last leave of
Chastelâr and his unselfish, unexacting devotion.
‘To the death!’ he replied; and even while he spoke the boatmen shipped
their oars, and those who were forward leaped out waist-deep in water,
to steady the shallop for the disembarkation of the ladies.
This was no such easy task. In these days people walk from a roomy
steamer roofed in and glazed like a conservatory, across a platform
securely railed on to a substantial stone-built quay that reaches a
quarter of a mile out into the Firth, and renders them as independent
of tide as the vessel herself does of weather; save for the slight
oscillation caused by the motive power, a blind man, unless in a gale
of wind, would never know that he had left _terra firma_. But even
within the recollection of those now scarce past middle age, the
crossing of the Firth was an affair of considerable discomfort, if not
a little danger. The state of the tide was of paramount importance;
the transit in an open boat, generally of the smallest and craziest
description, to the steamer moored half-a-mile off, was in itself a
voyage of no slight apprehension to the timid, especially if the wind
had been blowing for two or three days steadily from the east: and the
disembarkation on the northern side was, if possible, worse; the boat
had to be beached with practised dexterity not to capsize altogether,
and under the most favourable circumstances the pursuing waves were
pretty sure to come dashing in over her stern, wetting to the skin
those unwary passengers who had not taken refuge at the prow.
At low water also a considerable journey had to be made which partook
of the discomforts both of land and sea, inasmuch as it was performed
in the ungainly fashion termed by schoolboys ‘pick-a-back,’ on the
shoulders of veteran boatmen wading knee-deep through the surf. To
a heavy weight and a timid rider this mode of progression was also
not without its terrors, for if the bearer, generally old and often
infirm, made the slightest false step, a very complete ducking was the
inevitable result.
In this hazardous mode it was necessary to land the Queen and her
ladies on their arrival at Burntisland: the scene was one of bustle,
dash, and excitement, none the less picturesque for the hard-weather
appearance of the boatmen and the gaudy dresses of the fishermen’s
wives and daughters, who came down in numbers to welcome their
Sovereign, and shrank not from criticising in loud ear-piercing tones
the personal appearance of the party, and the whole details of the
proceeding.
The horses that had been conveyed across in the boat accompanying
the Queen’s, splashed one after another into the water, amidst shouts
of laughter, and half-swam, half-scrambled ashore as they might. The
retainers and men-at-arms jeered each other merrily as they waded
through the waves, or wrung the wet from their boots and clothing on
the sand; the female spectators screamed out their advice and opinions,
fluttering aloof shrill and pertinacious as the sea-mews themselves;
whilst white-headed urchins ran hither and thither through the crowd,
devising impossible jobs which they professed their readiness to
perform for the smallest remuneration in copper. But the Queen’s
shallop excited the interest and attention of all.
One by one the ladies were received into the arms of their attending
boatmen, to be conveyed tenderly and carefully ashore. In right of
his years, his experience, his patriarchal dignity, and his solemn
demeanour, the oldest of these boatmen was entrusted with the person
of the Queen. He was a stalwart, fine old man, broad in the shoulders,
deep in the chest, large of stature, and strong of limb. He took Mary
in his arms as if she had been a baby, and waded with her deliberately
through the surf; another score of yards, and she would have been safe
on land; but whether the veteran had been celebrating his prospective
distinction by deep potations of alcohol, or whether his toil-worn
frame failed him at the pinch, or whether it was indeed by one of those
fatalities for which it is impossible to account, he made a false step,
a fruitless effort to recover it, and but for prompt assistance must
have precipitated his royal burden before him into the water.
Need we say that it was Chastelâr who was at hand to save; that it was
his grasp which plucked the Queen from her falling supporter at this
critical juncture; and that for a few blissful moments, worth to his
delirious fancy whole ages of torture, the love-stricken poet for the
first and last time bore the precious form of Mary Stuart in his arms?
Slowly, carefully, gently, he waded with her to the land; not a word
was spoken--not a look exchanged; the Queen’s face was cold and
impassive as marble, and Chastelâr, in the tumult of his love and
his despair, was conscious but of one frantic wish, that the waves
would rise over their heads and cover them, and they might be at rest
fathom-deep down there together for evermore.