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PROM THE

WESLEY WEYMAN COLLECTION

PRESENTED BY A PRIEND TO

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC UBRARY

1953

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'^■'ry-^' 7'/

THE

9 *

QUEEN'S OUAIR

OR

The Six Years' Tragedy

BY

MAURICE HEWLETT

1

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^Improbos ille puer, crudelis tu quoque Mater'

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• »'

lonlion

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK : THE MACUILLAN COMPANY

1904

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Ati righti tntrmd

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V \,. \^ V-

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THE DEW YORK PHBLIC LIBRARY

681392A

ASTOR. LENOX ANQ TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

BY

HIS PERMISSION

AND WITH GOOD REASON

THIS TRAGIC ESSAY

IS INSCRIBED

TO

ANDREW LANG

CONTENTS

Author's Prologub

PAGE I

BOOK THE FIRST

MAIDS* ADVENTURE

CHAP.

I. Hkrk you arb in tub Antbchambbr . a. Hbrb you stbp into thb Fog .

3. SUPBRFICIAL PrOPBRTIBS OF THB HONBVPOT

4. Rough Music hbrb

5. Hbrb arb Flibs at thb Honbvpot

6. Thb Fool's Whip

7. Gordon's Bans .... S. Thb Divorcb of Mary Livingstonb ( To an Italian Air) 9. Air of St. Andrbw : Adonis and thb Scapbgoat .

la Thby Look and Likb .....

II. Prothalamium : Vbnus wins Fair Adonis

13. Eptthalamium : End of all Maids' Advbnturb

7

25 36 47 67 77

91 106

121

146 169

BOOK THE SECOND

MEN'S BUSINESS

I. Opinions of Frbnch Paris upon somb Latb Events

X Gbibfs and Consolations of Adonis .

••

vu

191

201

via

THE QUEEN'S QUAIR

CHAP.

3. Divers Uses of a Hardy Man

4. Many Dogs

5. Midnight Experiences of Jean-Marie

6. Venus in the Toils

7. Aftertaste

8. King's Evil

9. The Washing of Hands la Extracts from the Diurnall of the

11. Armida Doubtful in the Garden

12. Scotchmen's Business

Baptiste Des

Master of Sempill

Essars

PAGE 214

229

236

250

270

287

306

328 340

BOOK THE THIRD

MARKET OF WOMEN

1. SiTiRMY Opening .

2. The Brainsick Sonata .

3. Descant upon a Theme as Old as Jason

4. She Looks back once

5. Medea in the Bedchamber

6. Kirk o' Field

7. The Red Bridegroom

8. The Bride's Prelude

9. The Bride's Tragedy la The Knocking at Borthwick

11. Appassionata

12. Addolorata

Epilogue

351 363 381 394 404 414 430 451 474 484 490 502

506

AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE

If one were in the vein for tfie colours and haunted mists of Romance ; if the things perhaps^ were not so serious y there might be composed^ and ^ me^ a Romance of Queens out of my acquaintance with four ladies of that degree ; among whom — to adopt the terms proper — were the Queen of Gall, the Queen ofFertnenty and the Queen of Wine and Honey. You see that one would employ , for the occasion, the language of poets to designate the Queen- Mother of France, the Queen- Maid of England, and tfie too-fair Queen of Scots : to omit the fourth queen from such a tale would be for superstition's sake, and not for lack of matter — / mean Queen Venus, who {God be witness) played her part in tfu affairs of her mortal sisters, and proclaimed her prerogatives by curtailing theirs. But either the matter is too serious, or lam. I see flesh and spirit involved in all this, truth and lies, God and the Devil —dreadful concernments of our own, with which Romance has no profitable traffic. La Bele Isoud, the divine Oriana, Aude the Fair {whom Roland loved) — tender ghosts, one and all of them, whose heartaches were so melodious that tliey have filled four-and-twenty pleasant volumes, and yet so unsubstantial that no one feels one penny the worse, or the better, for them afterwards. But here! Ah, here we have real players in a game tremendously real ; and the hearts they seefn to play with were once bright with lively blood ; and the lies they told should have made streaks on lips once vividly incarnate — and sometimes did it. Real! Why, not lof^g ^go you could have seen a little pair of black satin slippers, sadly dawn at Juel, which may fiave paced with S B

2 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR

Riccio's in the gallery at Wemyss^ or tapped the floor of Holyroodhause while King Henry Darnley was blustering therey trying to show his manhood. A book about Queen Mary — if it be honest — has no business to be a genteel exer- cise in the romantic: if the truth is to be told^ let it be tlure.

A quair is a cahier, a quire^ a little book. In one such a certain king wrote fairly the tale of his love-business ; and here^ in this other ^ I pretend to show you all the tragic err or ^ all tlu pain^ known only to Iter that moved in it^ of that child of his childretis children^ Mary of Scotland. What others have guessed at^ building surmise upon surmise^ she knew ; for what they didy she suffered. Some who were closest about her — women^ boys — may have knoivn some : Claude Nau got some from her ; my Master Des- Essars got much. But the whole of it lay in her hearty and to know Iter is to hold the key of that. Suppose her hand Itad been at this pen ; suppose mine had turned that key : there might have resulted * The Queen's Quair.' Well! Suppose one or the other until the book is done — and then judge me.

Questions for King (Edipus^ Riddle of the Sphinx^ Mystery of Queen Mary I She herself is the Mystery ; the rest is simple enough. There had been men in Scotlandfrom old time^ and Stuarts for six generations to break themselves upon them. Great in thought ^ frail in deed^ adventurous^ chivalrous y hardy ^ short of hold^ doomed to fail at the touch — so ventured^ so failed the Stuarts from the first Jatnes to tlu fifth. There had been men in Scotland^ but no women. Forth from the Lady of Lorraine came the lassy bom in an unliappy Itour^ tossing high her young head^ sayings * Let tne alone to rule wild Scotland.* They had but to give her house- room : no mystery there. The mystery is that any mystery Itas been found. Maid^ Adventure — with that we begin. A bevy of maids to rule wild Scotland! What mystery is there in that ? Or — since Mystery is double-edged^ ^f^g^ging what we dare noty as well as what we cannot^ tell — what mystery but that ?

A hundred books have been written^ a hundred songs sung ; men enough of these latter days have broken their

AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE 3

hearts far Queen Mar/s. What is more to t/ie matter is that no heart but hers was broken in time. All the world can love fur now ; but who loved her then ? Not a man among them. A few girls went weeping ; a few boys laid down their necks that she might walk free of the mire. Alas ! the mire swallowed them up^ and she must soil her pretty feet. This is the nut of the tragedy ; pity is involved rather than terror. But no song ever pierced the fold of her secret^ no book ever found out the truths because none ever sought her heart. Here^ then^ is a book which has sought nothing else^ and a song which springs from that only : called^ on that same account j ' Tfte Queetis Quair,*

/

BOOK THE FIRST

MAIDS' ADVENTURE

V^i

CHAPTER I

HERE YOU ARE IN THE ANTECHAMBER

It is quite true that when they had buried the little wasted King Francis, and while the days of Black Dule still held, the Cardinal of Lorraine tried three times to see his niece, and was three times refused. Not being man enough to break a way in, he retired ; but as he knew very well that the Queen-Mother, the King, the King of Navarre, and Madame Marguerite went in and out all day long, he had a suspicion that they, or the seasons, were more at fault than the hidden mourner. 'A time, times, and half a time,' he said, *have good scriptural warrant. I will try once more — at this hour of high mass.' So he did, and saw Mary Livingstone, that strapping girl, who came into the antechamber, rather flushed, and devoutly kissed his ring.

* How is it with the Queen my niece ? '

* Sadly, Eminence.'

* I must know how sadly, my girl. I must see her. It is of great concern.'

The young woman looked scared. * Eminence, she sees only the Queen-Mother.'

* The more reason,' says he, * why she should see some- body else. She may be praying one of these fine days that she never see the Queen-Mother again.'

Livingstone coloured up to the eyes. *0h, sir! Oh, Lord Cardinal, and so she doth, and so do we all I They are dealing wickedly with our mistress. It is true, what I told you, that she sees the Queen-Mother : that is because her Majesty will not be denied. She forces the doors — she

8 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR BK, i

hath had a door taken down. She comes and goes as she will ; rails at our lady before us all. She, poor lamb, what can she do ? Oh, sir, if you could stop this traffic I would let you in of my own venture.'

* Take me in, then,' said the cardinal : * I will stop it* In the semi-dark he found his niece, throned upon the

knee of Mary Beaton for comfort, in heavy black weeds, out of which the sharp oval of her face and the crescent white coif gleamed like two moons, the old within the new. Two other maids sat on the floor near by ; each had a hand of her — pitiful sentinels of spoiled treasure. When the gentleman-usher at the curtain was forestalled by the great man's quick entry, four girls rose at once, as a covey of partridges out of com, and all but the Queen fell upon their knees. She, hugging herself as if suddenly chilled, came forward a little, not very far, and held out to the cardinal an unwilling hand. He took it, laid it on his own, kissed, and let it drop immediately. Then he stood upright, sniffed, and looked about him, being so near the blood royal himself that he could use familiarity with princes. It was clear that he disapproved.

' Faith of a gentleman I ' he said : * one might see a little better, one might breathe a little better, here, my niece.'

* The room is well enough,' said the Queen.

It was dark and hot, heavy with some thick scent.

As she pronounced upon it the cardinal paused half-way to the shutter ; but he paused too slightly. The Queen flushed all over and went quickly between him and the window — a vehement action. * Leave it, leave it alone! I choose my own way. You dare not touch it' She spoke furiously ; he bowed his grey head and drew back. Then, in a minute, she herself flung back the shutters, and stood trembling in the sudden glory revealed. The broad flood of day showed him the waves of storm still surging over her ; but even as he approved she commanded herself and became humble — he knew her difficult to resist in that mood.

* I thought you would treat me as the Queen-Mother does. That put me in a rage. I beg your pardon, my

CH. 1 IN THE ANTECHAMBER 9

lord.' As she held out her hand again, this time he took it, and drew her by it along with him to the open window. He made her stand in the sun. Far below the grey curtain-wall were the moat, the bridges, the trim gardens and steep red roofs of Orleans, the spired bulk of the great church; beyond all that the gay green countryside. A fresh wind was blowing out there. You saw the willows bend, the river cream and curd. The keen strength of day and the weather made her blink ; but he braced her to meet it by his words.

* Madam,' said he, * needs must your heart uplift to see God's good world «till shining in its place, patient until your Majesty tires of sitting in the dark.'

She smiled awry, and drummed on the ledge with her long fingers, looking wilfully down, not choosing to agree. The maids, all clustered together, watched their beloved ; but the cardinal had saner eyes than any of them. As he saw her, so may you and I.

A tall, slim girl, petted and pettish, pale (yet not unwholesome), chestnut-haired, she looked like a flower of the heat, lax and delicate. Her skin — but more, the very flesh of her — seemed transparent, with colour that warmed it from within, faintly, with a glow of fine rose. They said that when she drank you could see the red wine run like a fire down her throat ; and it may partly be believed. Others have reported that her heart could be discerned beating within her body, and raying out a ruddy light, now fierce, now languid, through every crystal member. The cardinal, who was no rhapsodist of the sort, admitted her clear skin, admitted her patent royalty, but denied that she was a beautiful girl — even for a queen. Her nose, he judged, was too long, her lips were too thin, her eyes too narrow. He detested her trick of the sidelong look. Her lower lids were nearly straight, her upper rather heavy: between them they gave her a sleepy appearance, sometimes a sly appearance, when, slowly lifting, they revealed the glimmering hazel of the eyes themselves. Hazel, I say, if hazel they were, which sometimes seemed to be yellow, and sometimes showed all black : the light acted upon hers as upon a cat's eyes.

10 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

Beautiful she may not have been, though Monsieur de Brantdme would never allow it ; but fine, fine she was all over — sharply, exquisitely cut and modelled : her sweet smooth chin, her amorous lips, bright red where all else was pale as a tinged rose ; her sensitive nose ; her broad, high brows ; her neck which two hands could hold, her small shoulders and bosom of a child. And then her hands, her waist no bigger than a stalk, her little feet! She had sometimes an intent, considering, wise look — ^the look of the Queen of Desire, who knew not where to set the bounds of her need, but revealed to no one what that was. And belying that look askance of hers — sly, or wise, or sleepy, as you choose — her voice was bold and very clear, her manners were those of a lively, graceful boy, her gestures quick, her spirit impatient and entirely without fear. Her changes of mood were dangerous: she could wheedle the soul out of a saint, and then fling it back to him as worthless because it had been so easily got. She wrote a beautiful bold hand, loved learning, and petting, and a choice phrase. She used perfumes, and dipped her body every day in a bath of wine. At this hour she was nineteen years old, and not two months a widow.

All this the cardinal knew by heart, and had no need to observe while she stood strumming at the window-sill. His opinion — if he had chosen to give it — would have been : these qualities and perfections, ah, and these imperfections, are all very proper to a prince who has a principality ; for my niece, I count greatly upon a wise marriage — wise for our family, wise for herself. He would have been the last to deny that the Guises had been hampered by King Francis' decease. All was to do again — but all could be done. This fretful, fair girl was still Queen of Scotland, aliens! Dowager of France, but Queen of Scotland, worth a knight's venture. Advance pawns, therefore! He was a chess-player, passionate for the game.

He surveyed the maids of honour, bouncing Livingstone and the rest of them, too zealous after their mistress's ease, and too jealous lest the world should edge them out ; and found that he had more zest for the world and the spring

CH.i IN THE ANTECHAMBER ii

weather, *Ah, madam/ he said, *ah, my niece, this cloister-life of stroking, and kindly knees, is not one for your Majesty. There are high roads out yonder to be traversed, armies to set upon them, cities and towns and hill-crests to be taken. But you sit at home in the dark,, nursed by your maids ! '

She raised her eyebrows, not her eyes. * Why,' says she, ' the King, my husband, is dead, and most of his people glad of it, I believe. If my kingdom lies within these four walls, and my government is but over these poor girls, they are my own. What else should I do? Walk abroad to mass ? Ride abroad to the meadows ? And be mocked by the people for a barren wife, who never was wife at all ? And be browbeat openly by the Apothecary's Daughter? Is this what you set before me. Lord Cardinal ? '

The cardinal put up his chin and cupped his beard. *The rich may call themselves poor, the poor dare not You have a realm, my niece, and a fair realm. You stand at the door of a second. You may yet have a third, it seems to me.'

Queen Mary looked at him then, with a gleam in her eyes which answered for a smile. But she hid her mind almost at once, and resumed her drumming.

* King Charles is hot for me,' she said. ' He is a brave lad. I should be Queen of France again — of France and England and Scotland.' She laughed softly to herself, as if snug in the remembrance that she was still sought.

The cardinal became exceedingly serious. ' I have thought of that To my mind there is a beautiful

justice ! What our family can do shall be done — but,

alas 1 '

She broke in upon him here. * Our family, my lord ! Vour family ! Ah, that was a good marriage for me, for example, which you made 1 That ailing child t Death was in his bed before ever I was put there. My marriage ! My husband 1 He used to cry all night of the pain in his head. He clung to the coverlet, and to me, lest they should pull him out to prayers. Marriage ! He was cankered from his birth. What king was Francis, to make me a queen ? '

The cardinal lifted his fine head. ' It was my sister

12 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

Marie who made you a queen, madam, by the grace of God and King James. Through your parentage you are Queen of Scotland, and should be Queen of England — and you shall be, God of gods, you may be queen of whatso realm you please. What do I learn ? The whole world's mind runs upon the marrying of you. The Archduke Ferdinand hath here his ambassadors, attendant on the Queen -Mother's pleasure — which you allow to be yours also. Don Carlos, his own hand at the pen, writes for a hope of your Majesty's. The Earl of Huntly, a great and religious prince in Scotland, urges the pretensions of his son, the Lord of Gordon. Are these to be laid before the Queen-Mother ? To the duchess, your grandmother, writeth daily the Duke of Ch^telherault concerning his son, the Earl of Arran. On his side is my brother the Constable. More ! They bring me word from England that the Earl of Lennox, next in blood to your Majesty, next indeed to both your thrones, is hopeful to come to France — he, too, with a son in his pocket, young, apt, and lovely as a love- apple. All these hopeful princes, madam '

Queen Mary coloured. With difficulty she said : * I hear of every one of them for the first time.'

' Oh, madam,' cried the cardinal, ' so long as you sit on your maids' knees and give the keys of your chamber to the Queen-Mother, you will only hear what she please to tell you. And more' — he raised his voice, and gave it severity — * I take leave to add that so long as your Majesty hath Mistress Livingstone here for your husband, your Majesty can look for no other.'

* I am never likely to look on a better,' says Queen Mary, and put her hand behind her. Mary Livingstone stooped quickly and snatched a kiss from the palm, while the cardinal gazed steadily out of doors. But he felt more at ease, being sure that he had leavened his lump.

And so he had. The sweet fact of great marriages beyond her doors, and the sour fact of the Queen-Mother within them, worked a ferment in her brain and set her at her darling joy of busy scheming. What turned the scale over was the mortifying discovery that Catherine de' Medici was in reality dying to get rid of her. She flew

CH. I IN THE ANTECHAMBER 13

into a great rage, changed her black mourning for white, announced her departure, paid her farewells, and went to her grandmother's court at Rheims. Queen Catherine watched her, darkling, from a turret as she rode gaily out in her troop of Guises. * There,' she is reported to have said, I know not whether truly or not, 'there goes Madam Venus a -hunting the apple, Alas for Shepherd Paris!* The reflection is a shrewd one at least ; but it was not then so certain that Orleans had seen the last of Queen Mary. It was no way to get her out of France to tell her there was nothing you desired so much.

The old duchess, her grandam, talked marriages and the throne of Scotland, therefore, into ears only half willing. The little Queen was by no means averse to either, but could not bring herself to lose hold upon France. * Better to be Dowager of France than an Empress in the north,' she said ; and then * Fiddle-de-dee, my child,' the old lady retorted ; * give me a live dog before a dead lion. Your desire here is to vex La Medicis. You would make eyes at King Charles, and we should all lose our heads. Do you wish to end your days at Loches? The Duke of Milan found cold quarters there, they tell me. No, no. Marry a king's son and recover England from the Bastard.' Thus all France spake of our great Elizabeth.

Queen Mary, though she loved her grandmother, pinched her lip, looked meek, and hardened her heart. She had obstinacy by the father's mother's side — a Tudor virtue.

It was just after she had gone to Nancy, to the court of her cousin of Lorraine, that she veered across to the side of the Guises and determined to adventure in Scotland. Two Scots lords came overseas to visit her there: one was the Lord James Stuart, her base-brother, the other a certain Father Lesley, an old friend of her mother's. The priest was a timid man, but by good hap and slenderness of equipage gained her first She might have been sure he was a &ithful friend, though doubtful if a very wise one. Faithful enough he proved in days to come : at this present she found him a simple, fatherly man, of wandering mind, familiar, benevolent, soon scared. He was enchanted with hcTy and said so. He praised her person, the scarlet of her

14 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

lips, the bright hue of her hair, *A bonny brown, my child/ he said, touching it, *to my partial eyes.' She laughed as she told him that in Paris also they had liked the colour. * They will call it foxy in Scotland,' he said, with a sniff; and she found out afterwards that they did. At first she was * Madam ' here, and * your Majesty ' there ; but as the talk warmed him he forgot her queenship in her extreme youth, had her hand in his own and patted it with the other. Then it came to * Child, this you should do,' or • Child, I hope that is not your usage ' ; and once he went so far as to hold her by the hands at arms' leng^ and peer at her through his kind, weak eyes, up and down, as he said to himself, 'Eh, sirs, a tall bit lassie to stand by Bruce's chair t But her mother was just such another one — ^just such another.'

She thought this too far to go, even for a churchman, and drew off with a smile and shake of the head — not enough to humiliate him.

He cautioned her with fearful winks and nods against the Lord James Stuart, her half-brother, hinting more than he dared to tell. * That man hath narrow eyes,' he said ; then, recollecting himself, * and so hath your Majesty by right of blood. All the Stuarts have them — ^the base and the true. But his, remark, are most guarded eyes, so that you shall not easily discover in what direction he casts his looks. But I say, madam,' — and he raised his wiry voice, — ' I say that the throne is ever at his right hand ; and I do think that he looks ever to the right'

The Queen's eyes were plain enough at this — squirrel- colour, straight as arrows. Being free-spoken herself, she disliked periphrasis. * Does my brother desire my throne ? Is this your meaning ? '

He jumped back as if she had whipped him, and crossed himself vehemently, saying, * God forbid it ! God forbid it ! '

* I shall forbid it, whether or no,' said the Queen. * But I suppose you had some such meaning behind your speech.' And she pressed him until she learned that such indeed was the belief in Scotland.

'Your misbom brother, madam,' he said, whispering, 'will tell you nothing that he believeth, and ask you

CH.i IN THE ANTECHAMBER 15

nothing that he desireth ; nor will he any man. He will urge you to the contrary of what he truly requires. He will take his profit of another man's sin and rejoice to see his own hands clean. My heart,' he said, forgetting him- self,— and * Ah, Jesu ! ' she records, * I was called that again, and by another mouth,' — * My heart, if you tender the peace of Holy Church in your land, keep your brother James in France under lock and key.'

She laughed at his alarms. ' I wish liberty to all men and their consciences, sir. I am sure I shall find friends in Scotland.'

He named the great Earl of Huntly and his four sons ; but by now she was tired of him and sent him away. All the effect of the poor man's speeches had been to make her anxious to measure wits with her base-brother. He came in two or three days later with a great train, and she had her opportunity.

What she made of it you may judge by this, that it was he and no other who spurred her into Scotland. He did it, in a manner very much his own, by first urging it and then discovering impossible fatigues in the road. This shows him to have been, what he was careful to conceal, a student of human kind.

A certain French valet of the Earl of Bothwell's — Nicolas Hubart, from whose Confessions I shall have to draw liberally by and by, and of whom, himself, there will be plenty to say — made once an acute observation of the great Lord James, when he said that he was that sort of man who, if he had not a black cloak for Sunday, would be an atheist or even an epicurean. There was no one, certainly, who had a more intense regard for decent observance than he. It was his very vesture: he would have starved or frozen without it It clothed him com- pletely from head to foot, and from the heart outwards. Much more than that There are many in this world who go about it swathed up to the eyes, imposing upon those they meet But this man imposed first of all upon himself. So complete was his robing, he could not see himself out of it So white were his hands, so flawless of grit, he could never sec them otherwise. Supposing Father Lesley to have been

i6 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

right, supposing that James Stuart did — and throughout — plot for a throne, he would have been the first to cry out upon the vice of Brutus. It may well be doubted whether he once, in all his life, stood alone — ^so to speak — naked before his own soul. Perhaps such a man can hardly be deemed a sinner, whatever he do. There are those at this hour who say that the Lord James was no sinner. How should he be ? they cry. His own soul never knew it.

This tall, pale, inordinately prim nobleman, with his black beard, black clothes, and (to the Queen's mind) black beliefs, seemed to walk for ever in a mask of sour passivity. He never spoke when to bow the head could be an answer, he never affirmed without qualification, he never denied or refused anything as of his own opinion. He was allowed to have extraordinarily fine manners, even in France, where alacrity of service counted for more than the service itself; and yet Queen Mary declared that she had never seen a man enter a doorway so long after he had opened the door. He seldom looked at you. His voice was low and measured. He cleared his throat before he spoke, and swallowed the moment he had finished, as if he were anxious to engulf any possible effect of his words. Of all the ties upon a man he dreaded most those of the heart-strings : she never moved him to natural emotion but once. But, at this first coming of his, he paid her great court, and bent his stiff knees to her many times a day : this notwithstanding that, as Mary Seton affirmed, he had water on one of them. She said that she had that from his chaplain, but her love of mischief had betrayed her love of truth. The Lord James always stood to his prayers.

When the Queen saw him first it was in the presence of her women, of Lord Eglinton, of the Marquis D'Elboeuf, and others — persons who either hated him with reason or despised him with none. He moved her then, almost with passion, to go ' home ' to Scotland, saying that it behoved princes to dwell among their own people. But at a privy audience a few days later, he held to another tune altogether, pursing his lips, twiddling his two thumbs, looking up and down and about. Now he said that he was not sure ; that there were dangers attending a Popish Queen, and those

CH. I IN THE ANTECHAMBER 17

not only within the kingdom but without it. She begged him to explain himself.

' Better bide, madam/ said he, ' until the wind change in England.'

Any word of England always excited her. The colour flew to her face. * What hath my sister in England to do with my kingdom, good brother ? '

* Why, madam,' he said, * it has come to my sure know- ledge that you shall get no safe-conduct from the English Queen, to go smoothly to Scotland.'

He never watched any one, or was never observed to be watching; but his guarded eyes, glancing at her as they shifted, showed him that, being angry now, she was beauti- ful— like a spirit of the fire.

* I should be offended at what you report if I believed it possible,' she said after a while. ' And yet England is not the only road, nor is it the best road, to my kingdom.*

* No indeed, madam,' he agreed ; * but it is the only easy road for a young and delicate lady.'

*Let my youth, brother, be as God made it,' she answered him ; ' but as for my delicacy, I am thankfully able to bear fatigue and to thrive upon it If my good sister, or you, my lord ' — she spoke very clearly — * think to keep me from my own by threats of force or warnings of danger, I would have you understand that the like of those is a spur to me.'

This was a thing which, in fact, he had understood perfectly.

* I am not a shying horse,' she continued, * to swerve at a heap of sand. I believe I shall find loyalty in my country, and cheerful courage there to meet my own courage. There be those that laugh at danger there, as well as those who weep.'

He said suavely here that she misjudged him, that only his tenderness for her person was at fault. *We grow timid where we love much, madam.'

At this she looked at him so unequivocally that he changed the subject.

* If your Majesty,' he pursued, * knows not the mind of the English Queen, or misdoubts my reading of it, let

C

i8 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

application be made to Master Throckmorton. I am content to be judged out of his mouth/

Master Throckmorton was English Ambassador to the Queen of Scots, a friend of the Lord James's. His lord- ship, indeed, had the greater confidence in giving this advice in that he had already convinced Master Throck- morton of what he must do, and what say, if he wished to get Queen Mary into Scotland — as, namely, decline to help her thither; decline, for instance, a letter of safe- conduct through English soil.

*Let application be made presently, brother,' saic the incensed young lady, and gladly turned to her pleasures.

She had been finding these of late in a society not at all to the mind of the Lord James. Three days before this conversation the Earl of Bothwell, no less, had come to court, making for the North from Piedmont.

In years to come she could remember every flash and eddy of that shifting garden scene when first he came to her. A waft of scented blossom, the throb of a lute, and she could see the peacock on the wall, the gay June borders, the grass plats and bright paths in between, quivering with the heat they gave out. There was a fountain in the midst of the quincunx, on the marble brim of which she sat with her maids and cousin D'Elbceuf, dipping her hand, and now and then flicking water into their faces. A page in scarlet and white had come running up to say that the Duke was nearing with his gentlemen ; and presently down the long alley she saw them moving slowly — crimson cloaks and bared heads, the Duke in the midst, wearing his jewelled bonnet. He was talking, and laughing immoderately with some one she knew not at all, who swung his hat in his hand, and to whom, as she re- membered vividly, the struck poppies bowed their heads. For he hit them as he went with his hat, and looked round to see them fall. The Duke's tale continued to the very verge of the privy garden ; indeed he halted there, in the face of her usher, to finish it. She saw the stranger throw back his head to laugh. * What a great jowl he hath,' she said to Mary Fleming ; and she, in a hush, said, ' Madam,

CH. I IN THE ANTECHAMBER 19

it is the Earl Bothwell.' A few moments later the man was kneeling before her, presented by the Duke himself. She had time to notice the page to whom he had thrown his hat and gloves — a pale-faced, wise-looking French boy, who knelt also, and watched her from a pair of grey eyes

* rimmed with smut-colour.' His name, she found out afterwards, was Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des-Essars. She liked his manly looks from the first — little knowing who and what he was to be to her. Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des- Essars ! Keeper of the Secret des Secrets — where should I be without him ?

The Earl of Bothwell — whom she judged (in spite of the stricken poppies) to be good-humoured — was a galliard of the type esteemed in France by those — and they were many — who pronounced vice to be their virtue. A galliard, as they say, if ever there was one, flushed with rich blood, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that the world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well wherever he might be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, kept brave company bravely. His high colour, while it betokened high feeding, got him the credit of good health. His little eyes twinkled so merrily that you did not see they were like a pig's, sly and greedy at once, and bloodshot His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting and dangerous. His mouth had a cruel twist ; but his laughing hid that too. The bridge of his nose had been broken ; few observed it, or guessed at the brawl which must have given it him. Frankness was his great charm, careless ease in high places, an air of

* take me or leave me, I go my way ' ; but some mockery latent in him, and the suspicion that whatever you said or did he would have you in derision — this was what first drew Queen Mary to consider him. And she grew to look for it — in those twinkling eyes, in that quick mouth ; and to wonder about it, whether it was with him always — asleep, at prayers, fighting, furious, in love. In fine, he made her think.

Mary Livingstone liked not the looks of him from the first, and held him off as much as she could. She slept with her mistress in these days of widowhood, but refused

20 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

to discuss him in bed. She said that he had a saucy eye — which was not denied — and was too masterful.

* You can tell it by the hateful growth of hair he hath/ she cried. * When he lifts up his head to laugh — and he would laugh, mind you, at the crucified Saviour ! — ^you can see the climbing of his red beard, like rooted ivy on an old wall.'

It is true that his beard was reddish, and gross-growing ; his hair, however, was dark brown, thick and curling. Mary Livingstone sniffed at his hair. He stayed ten days at Nancy, saw the Queen upon each of them, and on each held converse with her. She liked him very well, studied him, thought him more important than he really was. He laughed at her for this, and taxed her with it ; but so pleasantly that she was not at all offended. The Lord James would not speak of him, nor he of the Lord James : he shrugged at any reference to him.

* Let it be enough, madam, to own that we do not love each other,' he said when she pressed him. * We view the world differently, that lord and I ; for I look on the evil and the good with open face and what cheer I can muster, and he looks through his fingers and sadly. We speak little one with the other : what he thinks of me I know not. I think him a '

* Well, my lord ? You think my brother a ? '

* A king's son, madam,' he said, demurely ; but she saw the gleam in his eye.

He spoke fluent French, and was very ready with his Italian. He was a latinist, a student of warfare, had read Machiavelli. He scared away a good many poetasters by a real or an affected truculence ; threatened to duck one of them in the fountain, and proved that he could do it by ducking another. The eflect of this was, as he had intended, that Queen Mary for a day laughed with him at the art of poetry, which was no art of his. That day he had a private half-hour, and spoke freely of himself and his ventures.

*A man rich in desires,' he confessed himself, 'and therefore of gfreat wealth. Put the peach on the wall above me, madam, and I shall surely grow to handle it And

CH. I IN THE ANTECHAMBER 21

this other possession is mine, that while I strive and stretch after my prize I can laugh at my own pains, and yet not abate them/

She considered every word he said, and dubbed him Democritus, her laughing philosopher.

*You will have need of my sect in Scotland, madam,* he replied with a bow. * Despise it not ; for in that grey country the very skies invite us to mingle tears. You have a weeper beside you even now — the Lord Heraclitus, a king's son.'

She had no difficulty in discovering her stiff brother James under this thin veil.

All was going on thus well with my Lord of Bothwell when Mary Livingstone heard him rate his page in the fore-court one morning as she came back from Sie mass. She caught sight also of ' his inflamed and wicked face,' and saw the little French boy flinch and turn his shoulder to a flood of words, of which she understood not half. She guessed at them from the rest * They must needs be worse ; and yet how can they be ? And oh ! the poor little Stoic with his white face!' The good girl snapped her lips together as she hurried on. * He shall see as little of my bonny Queen as I can provide for,' she promised herself. * I have heard sculduddery enough to befoul all Burgundy.' Being a wise virgin, she said little to her mistress save to urge her to beg the French boy from his master.

* Why do you want him, child ? ' the Queen asked.

* He hath a steadfast look, and loves you. I think he will serve your needs. Get him if you care,' was all the reply she could win.

The thing was easily done, lightly asked and lightly accorded.

' Baptist, come hither,' had cried my lord ; and the boy knelt before the lady. ' I have sold thee, Baptist.'

* Very good, monseigneur.'

The Queen sparkled and smiled upon him. ' Wilt thou come with me, Jean-Marie ? '

* Yes, willingly, madam.'

* And do me good service ? '

' Nobody in the world shall do better, madam.'

22 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

* But you are positive, my boy ! '

' I do well to be positive, madam, in such a cause as your Majesty's.'

She turned to the Earl. * What is his history ? '

He shrugged. *The Sieur Des-Essars — a gentleman of Brabant — disporting in La Beauce, accosts a pretty Disaster (to call her so) with a speaking eye '

Jean-Marie-Baptiste held up his hand. ' Monseigneur, ah !'

* How now, cockerel ? '

* You speak of my mother, sir,' he said, his lip quivering. ' By the Mass, and so I do ! ' said the Earl.

The Queen patted the lad's shoulder before she sent him away. ' You shall tell me all about your mother, Jean- Marie, when we are in Scotland.'

Jean - Marie - Baptiste Des - Essars quickly kissed her sleeve, and became her man. More of him in due time, and of what he saw out of his ' smut-rimmed ' eyes.

When English Mr. Throckmorton was reported as within a day's ride of Nancy, my Lord Bothwell thought it wise to take leave. His odour in England was not good, and he knew very well that the Lord James would not sprinkle him with anything which would make it better. So he presented himself betimes in the morning, said his adieux and kissed hands.

* Farewell, my lord,' says Queen Mary. * Lorraine will be the sadder for your going.'

*And ever fare your Majesty well,' he answered her gaily, * as in Scotland you shall, despite the weepers.'

* Do you go to Scotland, my lord ? '

* Does your Majesty ? ' says he, his little eyes all of a twinkle.

* My question was first, my lord.*

*And the answer to mine is the answer to your Majesty's.'

* My Lord Democritus, am I to laugh when you leave me?'

* Why, yes, madam, rather than to lament that I out- stay my welcome.'

CH. I IN THE ANTECHAMBER 23

She showed her pleasure ; at least, he saw it under the skin. So he left her ; and Mary Livingstone, as she said, could * fetch her breath.'

Now, as to Mr. Throckmorton — if the Lord James had desired, as assuredly he did, to get his sister to Scotland, unwedded and in a hurry ; if the Queen of England desired it — which is certain, — neither could have used a better means than this excellent man. The Queen was in a royal rage when he, with great troubles and many shakings of his obsequious head, was obliged to own the safe-conduct through England refused. She shut herself up with her maids, and endlessly paced the floors, avoiding their en- treating arms. They besought her to rest, to have patience, to sit on their knees, consult her uncles of Lorraine. * I shall sit in no chair, nor lie in any bed, until I am at sea,' she promised them, and then cried : * What ! am I a kennel- dog to the Bastard in England ? *

Nothing in the world should stop her. She would go to her country by sea, and as soon as they could fit out the galleys. And she had her way — with suspicious ease, if she had had patience to observe it ; for it happened to be the way of three other persons vitally interested in her : the Queen-Mother of France, who wished to get rid of her ; the Queen of England, who hoped she would get rid of herself ; and the Lord James Stuart, uncomfortably illegiti- mate, who hid his designs from his own soul, and looked at affairs without seeming to look.

Two galleys and four great ships took her and her adventurous company from Calais, on a day in August of high sun and breeze, with a misty brown bank on the horizon where England should lie. Guns shot from the forts were answered from the ships ; to the Oriflamme of France the Scots Queen answered with her tressured Lion, and the English Leopards and Lilies. Of all the gallant company embarked there was none who looked more ardently to the north than she who was to sit in the high seat at Stirling. Let Mary Fleming look down, and Mary Beaton raise her eyebrows ; let Mary Seton shrug and Mary Livingstone toss her young head ; they are greatly mistaken who suppose

24

THE QUEEN'S QUAIR

BK. I

that Mary Stuart went unwillingly to Scotland, or wetted her pillow with tears. She cried when she bade adieu to her grandmother — tears of kindness those. But her heart was high to be Queen, and her head full of affairs. How she judged men ! What measures she devised ! Ask Mary Livingstone whether they two slept of nights, or whether they talked of the deeds of Queen Mary — what she should do, what avoid, how walk, how safeguard herself. She lay in a pavilion on the upper deck, and turned her face to where she thought Scotland should be. But Mary Living- stone showed Scotland her back, and sheltered her Queen in her arms.

CHAPTER II

HERE YOU STEP INTO THE FOG

Now, when they had been three days at sea, standing off Flamborough in England, the wind veered to the south- east, and dropped very soon. They had to row the ships for lack of meat for the sails to fill themselves ; the face of the world was changed, the sun blotted out. It became chilly, with a thin rain ; there drew over the sea a curtain of soft fog which wrapped them up as in a winding-sheet, and seemed to clog the muscles of men's backs, so that scarcely way could be made. In this white darkness — for such it literally was — the English took the Earl of Eglinton in his ship, silently, without a cry to be heard ; but in it also they lost the Queen's and all the rest of her convoy. Rowing all night and all next day, sounding as they went in a sea like oil, the Scots company drew past St. Abb's, guessed at Dunbar, found and crept under the ghost of the Bass, came at length with dripping sheets into Leith Road by night, and so stayed to await the mom. They fired guns every hour ; nobody slept on board.

That night, which they began with music, some dancing and playing forfeits, was one of deathly stillness. The guns made riot by the clock ; but the sea-fog drugged all men's spirits. The Queen was pensive, and broke up the circle early. She went to bed, and lay listening, as she said, to Scotland. As it wore towards dawn she could have heard, if yet wakeful, great horns blown afar off on the shore, answering her guns, the voices of men and women, howling, quarrelling, or making merry after their

25

;,r-j-

26 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

fashion ; steeple bells ; sometimes the knocking of oars as unseen boats rowed about her. Once the sentry on the upper deck challenged : * Qui va 14 ? ' in a shrill voice. There was smothered laughter, but no other reply. He fired his piece, and there came a great scurry in the water, which woke the Queen with a start.

* Was that the English guns ? Are we engaged ? '

* No, no, madam ; you forget. We are in our own land by now, safe between the high hills of Scotland. 'Twas some folly of the guard.'

She was told it had gone six o'clock, and insisted on rising. Father Roche, her confessor, said mass ; and after that Mary Seton had a good tale for her private ear. Monsieur de Bourdeilles, it seems, the merry gentleman, had held Monsieur de Chitelard embraced against his will under one blanket all night, to warm himself. This Monsieur de Chitelard, a poet of some hopefulness, owned himself Queen Mary's lover, and played the part with an ardour and disregard of consequence which are denied to all but his nation. A lover is a lover, whether you admit him or not; his position, though it be self-chosen, is respectable : but no one could refuse the merits of this story. Monsieur de Bourdeilles was sent for — a wise- looking, elderly man.

*Sieur de Brantdme,' says the Queen — that was his degree in the world — *how did you find the warmth of Monsieur de Chitelard ? '

* Upon my faith, madam,' says he, * your Majesty should know better than I did whether he is alight or not'

* I think that is true,' said Queen Mary ; * but now also you will have learned, as I have, to leave him alone.'

The Grand Prior — a Guise, the Queen's uncle and a portly man — came in to see his niece. He reported a wan light spread abroad : one might almost suppose the sun to be somewhere. If her Majesty extinguished the candles her Majesty would still be able to see. It was curious. He considered that a landing might be made, for news of the ships was plainly come ashore. Numberless small

CH. II HERE YOU STEP INTO THE FOG 27

boats, he said, were all about, full of people spying up at the decks. Curious again : he had been much enter- tained.

* You shall show yourself to them, madam, if you will be guided by me,* says Mary Livingstone. The Grand Prior was not against it

* Well,' says the Queen, * let us go, then, to see and be seen.'

One of the maids — Seton, I gather — made an outcry : 'Oh, ma'am, you will never go to them in your white weed ! '

* How else, child ? '

Seton caught at her hand. *Like the bonny Queen Mab — like the Fairy Vivien that charmed Tamlane out of his five wits. Thus you should go ! '

The Queen turned blushing to the Grand Prior.

* How shall I show myself, good uncle ? '

* My niece, you are fair enough now.*

* Is it true ? * she said. * Then I will be fairer yet. Get me what you will ; make a queen of me. Fleming, you shall choose.*

Mary Fleming, a gentle beauty, considered the case. * I shall dress your Majesty in the white and green,' she declared, and was gone to get it

So they dressed her in white and green, with a crown of stars for her hair, and covered her in a carnation hood against the cold. Then she was brought out among the four of them to lean on the poop and see the people. A half-circle of stately, cloaked gentlemen — all French, and mainly Guises — stood behind ; but Monsieur de Chitelard, shaking like a leaf, sought the prop of a neighbouring shoulder for his arm. It was modestly low, and belonged to Des-Essars, the new page.

* My gentle youth,* said the poet, after thanking him for his services, * I am sick because I love. Do you see that smothered goddess ? Learn then that I adore her, and so was able to do even in the abominable arms of Monsieur de Brantdme.*

* I also consider her Majesty adorable,' replied the page with gravity ; * but I do not care to say so openly.'

■S?5?^

28 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. I

* If your wound be not kept green/ Monsieur de Chite- lard reproved him, * if it is covered up, it mortifies, you bleed internally, and you die.'

Des-Essars bowed. *Why, yes, sir. There is no difficulty in that*

* Far from it, boy — far from it ! Exquisite ease, rather.'

* It is true, sir,' said Des-Essars. * Well 1 I am ready.'

* And I, boy, must get ready. Soothsayers have assured me that I shall die in that lady's service.'

* I intend to live in it,' said Des-Essars ; * for she chose me to it herself.'

Monsieur de Chitelard considered this alternative. * Your intention is fine,' he allowed ; * but my fate is the more piteous.'

Whether the people knew their Queen or not, they gave little sign of it. They seemed to her a grudging race, un- willing to allow you even recognition. She had been highly pleased at first : watched them curiously, nodded, laughed, kissed her hand to some children — who hid their faces, as if she had put them to shame. Some pointed at her, some shook their heads ; none saluted her. Most of them looked at the foreign servants : a great brown Gascon sailor, who leaned half-naked against the gunwale ; a black in a yellow turban ; a saucy Savoyard girl with a bare bosom ; and some, nudging others, said, * A priest ! a priest ! ' — ^and one, a big, wild, red-capped man, stood up in his boat, and pointed, and cried out loud, * To hell with the priest ! ' The cold curiosity, the uncouth drab of the scene, the raw damp — and then this savage burst — did their work on her. She was sensitive to weather, and quick to read hearts. Being chilled, her own heart grew heavy. * I wish to go away. They stare ; there is no love here,* she said, and went down the companion, and sat in her pavilion without speaking. She let Mary Livingstone take her hand. At that hour, I know, her thought was piercingly of France, and the sun, and the peasant girls laughing to each other half across the breezy fields.

Barges came to board the Queen's galley ; strong-faced gentlemen, muffled in cloaks, sat in the stem ; all others stood up — even the rowers, who faced forward like Venetians

CH.II HERE YOU STEP INTO THE FOG 29

and pushed rather than pulled the slow vessels. Running messengers kept her informed of arrivals : the Provost of Edinburgh was come, the Captain of the Castle, the Lord of Lethington, Maitland by name, secretary to her mother the late Queen ; her half-brothers, the Lords James and Robert Stuart, and more — all civil, all with stiff excuses that preparations were so backward. She would see none but her brothers, and, at the Lord James's desire, Mr. Secretary Maitland of Lethington, Him she discerned to be a taut, nervous, greyish man, with a tired face. She was prepared to like him for her mother's sake ; but he was on his guard, unaccountably, and she too dispirited to pursue. Des-Essars, in his Secret Memoirs^ says that he remembers to have noticed, young as he was, how this Lethington's eyes always sought those of the Lord James before he spoke. * Sought,' he says, *but never found them.' Sharply observed for a boy of fourteen.

Well, here was a dreary beginning, which must never- theless be pushed to some kind of ending. Before noon she was landed — upon a muddy shore, the sea being at the ebb — without cloth of estate, or tribune, or litter, with a few halberdiers to make a way for her through a great crowd. She looked at the ooze and slimy litter. * Are we amphibians in Scotland ? ' she asked her cousin D'Elboeuf. His answer was to splash down heroically into the mess and throw his cloak upon it * Gentlemen,' he cried out in his own tongue, * make a Queen's way ! ' He had not long to wait A tragic cry from Monsieur de Chitelard informed all Leith that he was wading ashore. Fine, but retarding action ! His cloak was added late to a long line of them — all French : the Marquis's, the Grand Prior's, Monsieur D'Amville's, Monsieur de Brantdme's, Monsieur De La Noue's, many more. There were competitions, encouraging cries, great enthusiasm. The people jostled each other to get a view ; the Scots lords looked staidly on, but none offered their cloaks.

Thus it was that she touched Scottish soil, as Mr. Secretary remarked to himself, through a foreign web. A little stone house, indescribably mean and close, was open to her to rest in while the horses were made ready. Thither

?s

30 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. I

came certain lords — Earls of Argyll and Atholl, Lords Erskine, Herries, and others — to kiss hands. She allowed it listlessly, not distinguishing friend from unfriend. All faces seemed alike to her: wooden, overbold, weathered faces, clumsy carvings of an earlier day, with watchful, suspicious eyes put in them to make them alive. Her ladies were with her, and her uncles. The little room was filled to overflowing, and in and out of the passage-ways elbowed the French gallants shouting for their grooms. No one was allowed to have any speech with the Queen, who sat absorbed and unobservant in the packed assembly, a French guard all about her, with Mary Livingstone kneeling beside her, whispering French comfort in her ear.

Above the surging and the hum of the shore could be heard the beginnings of clamour. The press at the doors was so great they could scarcely bring up the horses ; and when the hackbutters beat them back the people murmured. Monsieur D'Amville's charger grew restive and backed into the crowd : they howled at him for a Frenchman, and were not appeased to discover by the looks of him that he was proud of the fact There was much sniffing and spying for priests, — well was it for Father Roche and his mates that, having been warned, they lay still among the ships, intending not to land till dusk. How was her Majesty to be got out ? It seemed that she was a prisoner. The Master of the Horse could do nothing for his horses ; the Master of the Household was penned in the doorway. If it had not been for the Lord James, Queen Mary must have spent the night on the sea-shore. But the people fell back this way and that when, bare- headed, he came out of the house. * Give way there — make a place,' he said, in a voice hardly above the speaking tone ; and way and place were made.

Two or three of the French lords observed him. * He has the gestures of a king, look you.'

' You are right ; and, they tell me, a king's desires. Do you see that he measures them with his eye before he speaks, as if to judge what strength he should use ? *

They brought up the horses ; the Queen came out. Up a steep, straggling street, finally, they rode in some kind of

CH.ii HERE YOU STEP INTO THE FOG 31

broken order, in a lane cut, as it were, between dumb walls of men and women. Monsieur de Brantdme remarked to his neighbour that it was for all the world as if travelling mountebanks were come to town. Very few greeted her, none seemed to satisfy any feeling but curiosity. They pointed her out to one another. * Yonder she goes. See, yonder, in the braw, cramoisy hood ! ' * See, man, the bonny long lass ! ' * I mind,' said one, * to have seen her mother brought in. Just such another one.* Some cried, * See you, how she arches her fine neck.' Others, * She hath the eyes of all her folk.' *A dangerous smiler: a Frenchwoman just.'

She did not hear these things, or did not notice them, being slow to catch at the Scots tongue. But one wife cried shrilly, *God bless that sweet face!' and that she recognised, and laughed her glad thanks to the kindly soul.

Most eyes were drawn to the French princes, and missed her in following them and their servants. The Grand Prior made them wonder: his stateliness excused him the abhorred red cross ; but chief of them all seemed Monsieur de Chite- lard, very splendid in white satin and high crimson boots, and a tall feather in his cap. Some thought he was the Pope's son, some the Prince of Spain come to marry the Queen ; but, * Havers, woman, 'tis just her mammet,' said one in Mary Beaton's hearing. The Queen laughed when this was explained to her, and remembered it for Monsieur de Brantdme. But she only laughed those two times between Leith shore and Holyroodhouse.

Her spirits mended after dinner. She held an informal court, and set herself diligently to please and be pleased. She desired the Lord of Lethington, in the absence of a Lord Chamberlain, to make the presentations ; he was to stand by her side and answer all questions. He spoke her language with a formal ease which she found agreeable, betrayed a caustic humour now and again, was far more to her taste than at first. She saw the old Duke of Chitelherault and his scared son, my Lord of Arran.

' Hamiltons, madam,' said Lethington tersely, and thought he had said all ; but she had to be told that

>**.^-.:

32 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

they claimed to stand next in blood to herself and the throne of Scotland.

* The blood has been watered, it seems to me/ she said. * One can see through that old lord.'

' Madam, that is his greatest grief. He cannot, if he would, conceal his pretensions.' ' Explain yourself, sir.'

* Madam, you can see that he is empty. But he pre- tends to fulness.'

* And that white son of his, my lord of Arran ? Does he too pretend to be full — in the head, for example ? '

She embarrassed Mr. Secretary.

Mary Livingstone, at this point, came to her flushed and urgent : * Madam, madam, my good father ! ' A jolly gentleman was before her, who, in the effusion of his loyalty, forgot to kneel. * Your knees, my lord, your knees ! ' his daughter whispered ; but the fine man replied, * No, no, my bairn. I stand up to fight for the Queen, and she shall e'en see all my gear.'

Queen Mary, not ceremonious by nature, smiled and was gracious : they conversed by these signs of the head and mouth, for he had no French.

To go over names would be tedious, and so might have proved to her Majesty had not Lethington fitted each sharply with a quality. Such a man was of her Majesty's religion — my Lord Herries, now; such of Mr. Knox's — see that square-browed, frowning Lord of Lindsay. Mr. Knox had reconciled this honourable man and his wife. It was whispered — this for her Majesty's ear! — that all was not well between my Lord of Argyll and his lady, her Majesty's half-sister. Would Mr. Knox intervene ? At her Majesty's desire beyond doubt he would do it. The Duke of Chitelherault held all the west as appanage of the Hamiltons, except a small territory round about Glasgow, to which her Majesty's kinsman Lennox laid claim. The claim was faint, since the Lennox was in England. It was supposed that fear of the Hamiltons kept him there ; but if her Majesty would be pleased she could reconcile the two houses.

The Queen blinked her eyes. ' Reconciliation seems to

CH. II HERE YOU STEP INTO THE FOG 33

be your Mr. Knox's prerogative. I have not yet learned from you what mine may be.'

* Yours, madam,' said Lethington, * is the greater, because gentler, hand — to put it no higher than that ! Moreover, the Stuarts of Lennox share your Majesty's faith ; and Mr. Knox '

* Ah,' cried the Queen, * I conceive your Mr. Knox is Antipope ! '

Mr. Secretary confessed that some had called him so.

* And what does my cousin Chitelherault call him ? ' she asked.

He explained that the Duke paid him great respect 'Let me understand you,' said Queen Mary. *The

Duke is master of the west, and Mr. Knox of the Duke.

Who is master of Mr. Knox ? '

* Oh, madam, he will serve your Majesty. I am sure of him.'

She was not so sure : she wondered. Then she found that she was frowning and pinching her lip, so broke into a new line.

* Let us take the south, Monsieur de Lethington. Who prevails in those parts ? *

He told her that there were many great men to be considered there : my Lord Herries, my Lord Hume, the Earl of Bothwell. This name interested her, but she was careful not to single it out.

* And is Mr. Knox the master of these ? '

'Not so, madam. My Lord Herries is of the old religion ; and my Lord of Bothwell '

* Does he laugh ? '

' I fear, madam, it is a mocking spirit.' ' Why,' says she, * does he laugh at Mr. Knox ? ' Mr. Secretary detected the malice. * Alas ! your Majesty is pleased to laugh at her servant.'

* Well, let us leave M. de Boduel to his laughter. Who rules the north ? *

* The Earl of Huntly is powerful there, madam.'

* I have had intelligence of him. He is a Catholic. Well, well! And now you shall tell me, Mr. Secretary, where my own kingdom is.'

D

34 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

* Oh, madam, it is in the hearts of your people. You have all Scotland at your feet.'

*Let us take a case. Have I, for example, your Mr. Knox at my feet ? '

* Surely, madam.'

* We shall see. I tell you fairly that I do not choose to be at his. He has written against women, I hear. Is he wed?'

* Madam, he is twice a widower.'

* He is severe. But he should be instructed in his theme. He may have reason. Where is my brother ? '

* The Lord James is at his prayers, madam.'

* I hope he will remember me there. I see that I shall need advocacy.'

Her head ached, her eyes were stiff with watching. She said her good-night and retired. At that hour there was a great shouting and crying in the courtyard, and out of the midst there spired a wild music of rebecks, fiddles, scrannel-pipes, and a monstrous drum out of tune. The French lords said, *Tenez, on s'amuse!' and raised their eyebrows. The Queen shivered over a sea-coal fire. Now at last she remembered all fair France, saw it in one poignant, long look inwards, and began to cry. ' I am a fool, a fool — but, oh me! I am wretched,' she said, and rocked herself about. The comfort of women — kisses, strokings, mothering arms — ^was applied ; they put her to bed, and Mary Livingstone sat by her. This young woman was in high feather, surveyed the prospect with calmness, not at all afraid. Her father, she said, had put before her the desires of all those gentry : he had never had such court paid him in his long life. This it was to be father to a maid of honour. The Duke had taken him apart before dinner, urging the suit of his son Arran for the Queen's hand. The Lord James had spoken of an earldom ; Lethington could not see enough of him. * Hey, my lamb,' she ended, stroking the Queen's hot face, *we will have them all at your feet ere this time seven days ; and a lass in her teens shall sway wild Scotland ! ' The Queen sighed, and snuggled her cheek into the open hand

CH. II HERE YOU STEP INTO THE FOG 35

Just as she was dozing off there was to be heard a scurry of feet along the corridor, the crash of a door admitting a burst of sound — in that, the shiver of steel on steel, a roar of voices, a loud cry above all, * He hath it ! He hath it ! ' The Queen started up and held her heart. * What do they want of me ? Is it Mr. Knox ? ' Livingstone ran into the antechamber among the huddling women there. Des-Essars came to them bright-eyed to say it was nothing. It was Monsieur D'Elboeuf fighting young Erskine about a lady. The duel had been arranged at supper. They had cleared the tables for the fray.

CHAPTER III

SUPERFICIAL PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT

When they told her what was the name Mr. Knox had for her, and how it had been caught up by all the winds in town, Queen Mary pinched her lip. * Does he call me Honeypot? Well, he shall find there is wine in my honey — and perchance vinegar too, if he mishandle me. Or I may approve myself to him honey of Hymettus, which has thyme in it, and other sane herbs to make it sharp.'

A honey-queen she looked as she spoke, all golden and rose in her white weeds, her face aflower in the close coif, finger and thumb pinching her lip. She seemed at once wise, wholesome, sweet, and tinged with mischief ; even the red Earl of Morton, the * bloat Douglas,' as they called him, who should have been cunning in women, when he saw her preside at her first Council, said to his neighbour, * There is wine in the lass, and strong wine, to make men drunken. What was Black James Stuart about to let her in among us ? ' It was a sign also of her suspected store of strength that Mr, Knox was careful not to see her. He had called her * Honeypot ' on hearsay.

No doubt she approved herself: those who loved her, and, trembling, marked her goings, owned it to each other by secret signs. And yet, in these early days, she stood alone, a growing girl in a synod of elders, watching, judging, wondering about them, praying to gods whom they had abjured in a tongue which they had come to detest For they were all for England now, while she

36

CH. HI PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT 37

clung the more passionately to France. If she used deceit, is it wonderful ? The arts of women against those half-hundred pairs of grudging, reticent eyes; a little armoury of smiles, blushes, demure, down -drooping lids I Was it the instinct to defend, or the relish for cajolery ? She had the art of unconscious art. She looked askance, she let her lips quiver at a harsh decree, she kissed and took kisses where she could. She laughed for fear she should cry, she was witty when most at a loss. She refused to see disapproval in any, pretended to an open mind, and kept the inner door close-barred. Never un- watched, she was never found out ; never off the watch, she never let her anxiety be seen. Alone she did it Not Mary Livingstone herself knew the half of her effort, or shared her moments of dismay; for that whole-hearted girl saw Scotland with Scots eyes.

But she succeeded — she pleased. The lords filled Holyroodhouse, their companies the precincts ; every man was Queen Mary's man. The city wrought at its propynes and pageants against her entry in state. Mr. Knox, grimly surveying the company at his board, called her Honeypot.

There were those of her own religion who might have had another name for her. One morning there was a fray after her mass, when the Lord Lindsay and a few like him hustled and beat a priest They waited for him behind the screen and gave him, in their phrase, 'a bloody comb.* Now, here was a case for sometiiing more tart Aan honey — at least, the clerk thought so. He had come running to her full of his griefs: the holy vessels had been tumbled on the floor, the holy vestments were in shreds; he (the poor ministrant) was black and blue; martyrdom beckoned him, and so on.

*Nay, good father, you shall not take it amiss,* she had said to him. ' A greater than you or I said in a like case, " They know not whcU they do^ '

* Madam,' says the priest, ' there spake the Son of God, all-discerning, not to be discerned of the Jews. But I judge from the feel of my head what they do, and I think they themselves know very well — and their master also that sent them, their Master Knox.'

38 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

* I will give you another Scripture, then,' replied she.

* It is written, " By our stripes we are healed^ '

* Your pardon, madam, your pardon I ' cried the priest :

* I read it otherwise. St Peter saith, " Bj^ His stripes we are healed** — z. very different matter.'

She grew red. * Come, come, sir, we are bandying words. You will not tell me that you have no need of heavenly physic, I suppose ? '

* I pray,' said he, * that your Majesty have none. Madam, if it please you, but for your Majesty's kindred, the Lord James and his brethren, I had been a dead man.'

* You tell me the best news of my brothers I have had yet,' said she, and sent him away.

She used a gentler method with Lord Lindsay when he next showed her his rugged, shameless face. He told her bluntly that he would never bend the knee to Baal.

* Well,' she said, with a smile, * you shall bend it to me instead.' And she looked so winning and so young, and withal so timid lest he should refuse, that (on a sudden impulse) down he went before her and kissed her hand.

' I knew that I could make him ashamed,' she said after- wards to Mary Livingstone.

' I would have had him whipped ! ' cried the flaming maid.

*You are out, my dear,' said Queen Mary. "Twas better he should whip himself

Although she took enormous pains, she succeeded not nearly so well with her bastard brothers and their sister. Lady Argyll, the handsome, black-browed woman. James, Robert, and John, sons of the king her father, and Margaret Erskine, all alike tall, sable, stiff and sullen, were alike in this too, that they were eager for what Aey could get without asking. The old needy Hamilton — Duke of Chitelherault as he was — let no day go by without begging for his son. These men let be seen what they wanted, but they would not ask. The vexatious thing with their sort is, that you may give a man too much or too little, and never be sure which of you is the robber. Now, the Lord James greatly coveted the earldom of Moray. Would he tell her so, think you ? Not he, since

CH. Ill PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT 39

he would not admit it to his very self. She received more than a hint that it would be wise to reward him, and told him that she desired it. He bowed his acceptance as if he were obedient unto death.

* Madam, if it please your Majesty to make me of your highest estate, it is not for me to gainsay you.'

* Why, no,' says the Queen, * I trow it is not. You shall be girt Earl of Mar at the Council, for such I under- stand to be your present desire.'

It was not his desire by any means, yet he could not bring himself to say so. Her very knowledge that he had desires at all tied his tongue.

* Madam,' he said, sickly-white, * the grace is inordinate to my merits : and, indeed, how should duty be rewarded, being in its own performance a grateful thing? True it is that my lands lie farther to the north than those of Mar ; true it is that in Moray — to name a case — there are forces which, maybe, would not be the worse of a watchful eye. But the earldom of Moray ! Tush, what am I saying ? '

*We spake of the earldom of Mar,' she said drily. *That other, I understand, is claimed by my Lord of Huntly, as a right of his, under my favour.'

He added nothing, but bit his lip sideways, and looked at his white hands. She had done more wisely to give him Moray at once ; and so she might had he but asked for it. But when she opened her hands he shut his up, and where she spoke her mind he never did. She ought to have been afraid of him, for two excellent reasons : first, she never knew what he thought, and next, every- body about her asked that first Instead, he irritated her, like a prickly shift.

* Am I to knock for ever at the shutters of the house of him?* she asked of her friends. *Not so, but I shall conclude there is nobody at home.'

Healthy herself, and high-spirited, and as open as the day when she was in earnest, she laughed at his secret ways in private and made light of them in public. It was on the tip of her saucy tongue more than once or twice to strike him to earth with the thunderbolt : * Did you hasten

40 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

me to Scotland to work my ruin, brother ? Do you reckon to climb to the throne over me ? ' She thought better of it, but only because it seemed not worth her while. There was no give-and-take with the Lord James, and it is dull work whipping a dead dog.

Meantime the prediction of Mary Livingstone seemed on the edge of fulfilment Queen Mary ruled Scotland ; and her spirits rose to meet success. She was full of courage and good cheer, holding her kingdom in the hollow of her palms. Honeypot ? Did Mr. Knox call her so ? It was odd how the name struck her.

* Well,' she said, with a shrug, * if they find me sweet and hive about me, shall I not do well ? '

She made Lethington Secretary of State without reserve, and remarked that he was every day in the ante- chamber.

The word flew busily up and down the Canongate, round about the Cross : * Master Knox hath fitted her with a name, do you mind? "She is Honeypot," quoth he. Heard you ever the like o' that ? ' Some favoured it and her, some winked at it, some misfavoured ; and these were the grey beards and white mutches. But one and all came out to see her make her entry on the Tuesday.

One hour before she left Holyrood, Mr. Knox preached from his window in the High Street to a packed assembly of blue bonnets and shrouded heads, upon the text. Be wise now therefore^ O ye Kings — a ring of scornful despair in his accents making the admonition vain. ' I shall not ask ye now what it is ye are come out for to see, lest I tempt ye to lie ; for I know better than yourselves. Meat! "Give us meat," ye cry and clamour; "give us meat for the gapes, meat for greedy eyes ! " Ay, and ye shall have your meat, fear not for that Jags and slashes and feathered heads, ye shall have; targeted tails, and bosoms decked in shame, but else as bare as my hand. Fill yourselves with the like of these — but oh, sirs, when ye lie drunken, blame not the kennel that holds ye. If that ye crave to see prancing Frenchmen before ye, minions and jugglers, leaping sinners, damsels with timbrels, and

CH. Ill PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT 4!

suchlike sick ministers to sick women's desires, I say, let it be so, o' God's holy name ; for the day cometh when ye shall have g^ace given ye to look within, and see who pulls the wires that set them all heeling and reeling, jigging up and down — whether Christ or Antichrist, whether the Lord God of Israel or the Lord Mammon of the Phoenicians. Look ye well in that day, judge ye and see.'

He stopped, as if he saw in their midst what he cried against; and some man called up, 'What more will you say, sir ? '

Mr. Knox gathered himself together. * Why, this, my man, that the harlotry of old Babylon is not dead yet, but like a snake lifteth a dry head from the dust wherein you think to have crushed her. Bite, snake, bite, I say ; for the rather thou bitest, the rather shall thy latter end come. Heard ye not, sirs, how they trounced a bare-polled priest in the house of Rimmon, before the idol of abomination herself, these two days bypast ? I praise not, I blame not ; I say, him that is drunken let him be drunken still. More becomes me not as yet, for all is yet to do. I fear to pre- judge, I fear to offend ; let us walk warily, brethren, until the day break. But I remember David, ruler in Israel, when he hoped against hope and knew not certainly that his cry should go up as far as God. For no more than that chosen minister can I look to see the number of the elect made up from a froward and stiff-necked generation. Nay, but I can cry aloud in the desert, I can fast, I can watch for the cloud of the gathering wrath of God. And this shall be my prayer for you and for yours. Be wise, etc' He did pray as he spoke, with his strong eyes lifted up above the housetops — a bidding prayer, you may call it, to which the people's answer rumbled and grew in strength. One or two in the street struck into a savage song, and soon the roar of it filled the long street :

The hunter is Christ, that hunts in haste.

The hounds are Peter and Paul ; The Pope is the fox, Rome is the rocks,

That nibs us on the galL

42 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR Bk. I

A gun in the valley told them that the Queen was away. It was well that she was guarded.

Des-Essars, the Queen's French page, in that curious work of his, half reminiscence and half confession, which he dubs Le Secret des Secrets^ has a note upon this day, and the aspect of the crowd, which he says was dangerous. * Looking up the hill,' he writes, * towards the Netherbow Port, where we were to stop for the ceremony of the keys, I could see that the line of sightseers was uneven, ever surging and ebbing like an incoming sea. Also I had no relish for the faces I saw — I speak not of them at the windows. Certainly, all were highly curious to see my mistress and their own ; and yet — or so I judged — they found in her and her company food for the eyes and none for the heart They appeared to consider her their pro- perty; would have had her go slow, that they might fill themselves with her sight ; or fast, that they might judge of her horsemanship. We were a show, forsooth ; not come in to take possession of our own ; rather admitted, that these close-lipped people might possess us if they found us worthy — ah, or dispossess us if they did not. Here and there men among them hailed their favourites : the Lord James Stuart was received with bonnets in the air ; and at least once I heard it said, " There rides the true King of Scots." My Lord Chancellor Morton, riding immediately before the Queen's Grace, did not disdain to bandy words with them that cried out upon him, " The Douglas ! The Douglas!" He, looking round about, "Ay, ye rascals," I heard him say, " ye know your masters fine when they carry the sword." He was a very portly, hearty gentleman in those days, high-coloured, with a full round beard. But above all things in the world the Scots lack fineness of manners. It was not that this Earl of Morton desired to grieve the Queen by any freedom of his ; but worse than that, to my thinking, he did not know that he did it. As for my lords her Majesty's uncles, their reception was exceedingly unhappy ; but they cared little for that. Foolish Monsieur de Chitelard made matters worse by singing like a boy in quire as he rode behind his master. Monsieur D'Amville. This he did, as he said, to show his

CH. Ill PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT 43

contempt for the rabble; but all the result was that he earned theirs. I saw a tall, gaunt, bearded man at a window, in a black cloak and bonnet. They told me that was Master Knox, the strongest man in Scotland.'

It is true that Master Knox watched the Queen go up, with sharp eyes which missed nothing. He saw her eager head turn this way and that at any chance of a welcome. He saw her meet gladness with gladness, deprecate doubt, plead for affection. * Out of the strong came forth sweet- ness : but she is too keen after sweet food.* She smiled all the while, but with differences which he was jealous to note.

* She deals carefully ; she is no so sure of her ground. Eh, man, she goes warily to work.'

A child at a window leaped in arms and called out clearly : * Oh, mother, mother, the braw leddy I ' The Queen laughed outright, looked up, nodded, and kissed her hand.

* Hoots, woman,' grumbled Mr. Knox, * how ye lick your fingers ! Fie, what a sweet tooth ye have ! '

She was very happy, had no doubts but that, as she won the Keys of the Port, she should win the hearts of all these people. Stooping down, she let the Provost kiss her hand.

* The sun comes in with me, tell the Provost,' she said to Mr. Secretary, not trusting her Scots.

* Madam, so please you,' the good man replied, clearing his throat, * we shall make a braver show for your Grace's contentation upon the coming out from dinner. Rehearse that to her Majesty, Lethington, I'll trouble ye.'

* Ah, Mr. Provost, we shall all make a better show then, trust me,' she said, laughing ; and rode quickly through the gate.

She was very bold : everybody said that. She had the manners of a boy — his quick rush of words, his impulse, and his dashing assurance — with that same backwash of timidity, the sudden wonder of * Have I gone too far — betrayed myself?' which flushes a boy hot in a minute. All could see how bold she was ; but not all knew how the heart beat. It made for her harm that her merits were shy things. I find that she was dressed for the day in * a stiff white satin gown sown all over with pearls.' Her neck

44 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR »Bk. I

was bare to the cleft of the bosom ; and her tawny brown hair, curled and towered upon her head, was crowned with diamonds. Des-Essars says that her eyes were like stars ; but he is partial. There were many girls in Scotland fairer than she. Mary Fleming was one, a very gentle, modest lady ; Mary Seton was another, sharp and pure as a profile on a coin of Sicily. Mary Livingstone bore herself like a goddess; Mary Beaton had a riper lip. But this Mary Stuart stung the eyes, and provoked by flashing contrasts. Queen of Scots and Dryad of the wood ; all honey and wine ; bold as a boy and as lightly abashed, clinging as a girl and as slow to leave hold, full of courage, very wise.

* Sirs, a dangerous sweet woman. Here we have the Honeypot,' says Mr. Knox to himself, and thought of her at night

After dinner, as she came down the hill, they gave her pageants. Virgins in white dropped out of machines with crowns for her; blackamoors, Turks, savage men came about her with songs about the Scriptures and the fate of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. She understood some, and laughed pleasantly at all. Even she took not amiss the unmannerly hint of the Lawn Market, where they would have burned a mass-priest in effigy — had him swinging over the faggots, chalice and vestment, crucifix and all.

* Fie, sirs, fie I What harm has he done, poor soul ? ' was all she said.

The Grand Prior was furiously angry; seeing which, the Earl of Morton cut the figure down, and then struck out savagely with the flat of his blade, spurring his horse into the sniggering mob. * Damn you, have done with your beastliness — down, dogs, down ! ' The Lord James looked away.

At the Salt Tron they had built up a door, with a glory as of heaven upon it Here she dismounted and sat for a while. Clouds above drew apart ; a pretty boy in a gilt tunic was let down by ropes before her. He said a piece in gasps, then offered her the Psalter in rhymed Scots. She thought it was the Geneva Bible, and took it with a queer lift of the eyebrows, which all saw. Arthur Erskine, to whom she handed it, held it between finger and thumb

CH. Ill PROPERTIES OF THE HONEYPOT 45

as if it had been red hot ; and men marked that, and nudged each other. The boy stood rigid, not knowing what else to do ; quickly she turned, looked at him shyly for a moment, then leaned forward and took him up in her arms, put her cheek to his, cuddled and kissed him. ' You spake up bravely, my lamb,' she said. 'And what may your name be?' She had to look up to Lethington for his reply, but did not let go of the child. His name was Ninian Ross. ' I would I had one like you, Ninian Ross I ' she cried in his own tongue, kissed him again, and let him go.

People said to each other, ' She loves too much, she is too free of her loving — to kiss and dandle a bairn in the street'

*Honeypot, Honeypot!' said grudging Mr. Knox, looking on rapt at all this.

Des-Essars writes : * She believed she had won the entry of the heart ; she read in the Castle guns, bells of steeples, and hoarse outcry of the crowd, assurance of what she hoped for. I was glad, for my part, and disposed to thank God heartily, that we reached Holyroodhouse without injury to her person or insult to cut her to the soul.'

I think Des-Essars too sensitive: she was fully as shrewd an observer as he could have been. At least, she returned in good spirits. If any were tired, she was not ; but danced all night with her Frenchmen. Monsieur de Chitelard was a happy man when he had her in his arms.

'Mis^ricorde — O Queen of Love! Thus I would go through the world, though I burned in hell for it after.'

' Thus would not I,' quoth she. ' You are hurting me. Take care.*

They brought her news in the midst that the Earl of Bothwell was in town with a great company, and would kiss her hands in the morning if he might.

' Let him come to me now while I am happy,' she said. * Who knows what to-morrow may do for me ? '

She sent away Chitelard, and waited. Soon enough she saw the Earl's broad shoulders making a way, the daring eyes, the hardy mouth. 'You are welcome, my lord, to Scotland.'

46 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

* But am I welcome to your Majesty ? '

* You have been slow to seek my welcome, sir.'

* Madam, I have been slow to believe it'

* You need faith, Monsieur de BodueL*

* I wish that your Majesty did ! ' 'Why so?'

* That your Majesty might partake of mine.'

They chopped words for half an hour or more. But she had her match in him.

She was friends with all the world that night, or tried to think so. Yet, at the going to bed, when the lights were out, the guards posted, and state-rooms empty save for the mice, she came up to Mary Livingstone and stroked her face without a word, coaxing for assurance of her triumph. Wanting it still — for the maid was glum — she supplied it for herself. *We rule all Scotland, my dear, we rule all Scotland ! '

But Mary Livingstone held up her chin, to be out of reach of that wheedling hand. Coldly, or as coldly as she might, she looked at the eager face, and braved the glimmering eyes.

*Ay,' she said, *ay, you do. You and John Knox betwixt you.'

The Queen laughed. * Shall I marry Mr. Knox ? He is twice a widower.'

* He would wed you the mom's mom if you would have him,' says Livingstone. * 'Tis a fed horse, that Knox.'

* He feeds on wind, I think,' the Queen said ; and the maid snorted, implacable.

* 'Tis a better food than your Earl of Bothwell takes, to my mind.'

* And what is his food ? *

'The blood of women and their tears,' said Mary Livingstone.

CHAPTER IV

ROUGH MUSIC HERE

The Earl of Huntly came to town, with three tall sons, three hundred Gordons, and his pipers at quickstep before him, playing, * Cock o* the North.' He came to seek the earldom of Moray, a Queen's hand for his son George, and to set the realm's affairs on a proper footing ; let Mr. Knox and his men, therefore, look to themselves. His three sons were George, John, and Adam. George, his eldest, was Lord Gordon, with undoubted birthrights ; but John of Findlater, so called, was his dearest, and should have married the Queen if he had not been burdened with a stolen wife in a tower, whom he would not put out of his head while her husband was alive. So George must have the Queen, said Huntly. That once decided, his line was clear. * Madam, my cousin,' he intended to say, * I give you all Scotland above the Highland line in exchange for your light hand upon the South. Straighter lad or cleanlier built will no maid have in the country, nor appanage so broad. Is it a match ? ' Should it not be a match, indeed ? Both Catholics, both sovereign rulers, both young, both fine imps. If she traced her descent from Malcolm Can- more, he got his from Gadiffer, who, as every one knows, was the brother of Perceforest, whose right name was Betis, whose ancestor was Brutus' self, whose root was fast in Laomedon, King of Troy. * The boy and girl were born for each other,' said Huntly. So he crossed the Forth at Stirling Brig, and marched down through the green low- land country like a king, with colours to the wind and the

47

48 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR BK. i

pipes screaming his hopes and degree in the world. But he came slowly because of his unwieldy size. He was exceedingly fat, white-haired and white-bearded, and had a high-coloured, windy, passionate face, flaming blue eyes, and a husky voice, worn by shrieking at his Gordons. Such was the old Earl of Huntly, the star of whose house was destined to make fatal conjunctions with Queen Mary's.

His entry into Edinburgh began at the same rate of pomp, but ended in the screaming of men whose pipes were slit There were Hamiltons in the city, Hepbums, Murrays, Keiths, Douglases, red-haired Campbells. The close wynds vomited armed men at every interchange of civilities on the causey; a match to the death could be seen at any hour in the tilt-yard ; the chiefs stalked grandly up and down before their enemies' houses, daring one another do their worst It seemed that only Huntly and his Gordons had been wanting to set half Scotland by the ears. The very night of their incoming young John of Findlater spied his enemy Ogilvy — the husband of the stolen wife — walking down the Luckenbooths arm-in-arm with his kinsman Boyne. He stepped up in front of him, lithe as an otter, and says he, * Have I timed my coming well, Mr. Ogilvy ? ' Ogilvy, desperate of his wife, may be excused for drawing upon him ; and (the fray once begun) you cannot blame John Gordon of Findlater for killing him clean, or Ogilvy of Boyne for wounding John of Findlater. Hurt as he was, the young man was saved by his friends. Little he cared for the summons of slaughter sued out against him in the morning, with his enemy dead and three hundred Gordons to keep his doors.

The Earl his father treated the affair as so much thistle- down thickening the wind ; but his own performances were as exorbitant as his proposals. He quarrelled with the high Lord James Stuart about precedence. Flicking his glove in the sour face, * Hoots, my lord, you are too new an Earl to take the gate of me,' he said. He assumed the title of Moray — ^which was what he had come to beg for — in addition to his own. * She dare not refuse me, man. It is well known I have the lands.' The Lord James turned stately away at this hearing, and Huntly ruffled past him

CH. IV ROUGH MUSIC HERE 49

into the presence, muttering as he went, * A king's mis- chance, my sakes I ' He had a fine command of scornful nick- names ; that was one of them. He called Mr. Secretary Lethington the Grey Goose — no bad name for a tried gentleman whose tone was always symptomatic of his anxieties. The Earl of Bothwell was a * Jack-Earl,' he said ; but Bothwell laughed at him. The Duke and his Hamiltons were * Glasgow tinklers ' ; the Earl of Morton, • Flesher Morton.' His pride, indeed, seemed to be of that inordinate sort which will not allow a man to hate his equals. He hated whole races of less-descended men ; he hated burgesses, Forbeses, Frenchmen, Englishmen ; but his peers he despised. Catholic as he was, he went to the preaching at Saint Giles' in a great red cloak, wearing his hat, and stood apart, clacking with his tongue, while Mr. Knox thundered out prophecies. * Let yon bubbly-jock bide,' he told his son, who was with him. * 'Tis a congested rogue, full of bad wind. What ! Give him vent, man, and see him poison the whole assembly.' Mr. Knox denounced him to his face as a Prophet of the Grove, and bid him cry upon his painted goddess. The great Huntly tapped his nose, then the basket of his sword, and presently strode out of church by a way which his people made for him.

Queen Mary was amused with the large, boisterous, florid man, and very much admired his sons. They were taller than the generality of Scots, sanguine, black-haired, small-headed, with the intent far gaze in their grey eyes which hawks have, and all dwellers in the open. She saw but two of them, the eldest and the youngest — for John of Findlater, having slain his man, lay at home — and set her- self to work to break down their shy respect For their sakes she humoured their preposterous father; allowed, what all her court was at swords drawn against, that his pipers should play him into her presence ; listened to what he had to say about GadiflTer, brother of Perceforest, about Knox and his ravings, about the loyal North. He expanded like a warmed bladder, exhibited his sons' graces as if he were a horsedealer, openly hinted at his proposals in her regard. She needed none of his nods and winks, being pCTfectly w^ll ablQ to read him, and of judgment perfectly

E

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clear upon the inflated text In private she laughed it away. ' I think my Lord of Gordon a very proper gentle- man,' she said to Livingstone ; * but am I to marry the first long pair of legs I meet with ? Moreover, I should have to woo him, for he fears me more than the devil. Yet it is a comely young man. I believe him honest'

*The only Gordon to be so, then,' said Livingstone tersely. This was the prevailing belief: * False as Gordon.'

Then came Ogilvy of Boyne and his friends before the Council, demanding the forfeiture of John Gordon of Findlater for slaughter. Old Huntly pished and fumed. * What ! For pecking the feathers out of a daw I My fine little man, you and your Ogilvys should keep within your own march. You meet with men on the highways.' The young Queen, isolated on her throne above these angry men, looked from one to another faltering. Suddenly she found that she could count certainly upon nobody. Her brother James had kept away ; the Earl of Bothwell was not present; my lord Morton the Chancellor blinked a pair of sleepy eyes upon the scene at large. * Let the law take its course,' she faintly said ; and old Huntly left the chamber, sweeping the Ogilvys out of his road. That was no way to get the Earldom of Moray and a royal daughter- in-law into one's family. He himself confessed that the time had come for serious talk with the Queen.

Even this she bore, knowing him Catholic and believing him honest. When, after some purparley, at a privy audience, he came to what he called 'close quarters,' and spoke his piece about holy church, sovereign rulers, and fine imps, she laughed still, it is true, but more shrewdly than before. * Not too fast, my good lord, not too fast I approve of my Lord Gordon, and should come thankfully to his wedding. Yet I should be content with a lowlier office there than you seem to propose me. And if he come to my wedding, I hope he will bring his lady.' She turned to the Secretary. * Tell my lord, Mr. Secretary, what other work is afoot.'

Hereupon Lethington enlarged upon royal marriages, their nature and scope, and flourished styles and titles before the mortified old man. He spoke of the Archduke

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Ferdinand, that son of Caesar ; of Charles the Most Christian King, a boy in years, but a very forward boy. He dwelt freely and at length upon King Philip's son of Spain, Don Carlos, a magnificent young man. Mostly he spoke of the advantage there would be if his royal mistress should please to walk hand in hand with her sister of England in this affair. Surely that were a lovely vision ! The hearts of two realms would be pricked to tears by the spectacle — two great and ancient thrones, each stained with the blood of the other, flowering now with two roses, the red and the white ! The blood-stains all washed out by happy tears — ah, my good lord, and by the kisses of innocent lips! It were a perilous thing, it were an un- warrantable thing, for one to move without the other. ' I speak thus freely, my Lord of Huntly,' says Lethington, warming to the work, * that ye may see the whole mind of my mistress, her carefulness, and how large a field her new- scaled eyes must take in. This is not a business of knitting North to South. She may trust always to the affection of her subjects to tie so natural a bond. Nay, but the com- forting of kingdoms is at issue here. Ponder this well, my lord, and you will see.'

The Earl of Huntly was crimson in the face. * I do see, madam, how it is, that my house shall have little tender- ness from your Majesty's ' — he was very angry. * I see that community of honour, community of religion count for nothing. Foh! My life and death upon it!' He puffed and blew, glaring about him ; then burst out again. * I will pay my thanks for this where they are most due. I know the doer — I spit upon his deed. Who is that man that Cometh creeping after my earldom? Who looketh aslant at all my designs ? Base blood stirreth base work. Who seeketh the life of my fine son ? '

The Queen flushed. * Stay, sir,' she said, * I cannot hear you. You waste words and honour alike.

He shook his head at her, as if she were a naughty child ; raised his forefinger, almost threatened. * Madam, madam, your brother James '

She got up, the fire throbbing in her. * Be silent, my lord!'

53 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR BK. I

* Madam '

' Be silent'

' But, madam '

Lethington, much agitated, whispered in her ear ; she shook him away, stamped, clenched her hands.

' You are dismissed, sir. The audience is Bnisbed. Do you hear me?'

' How finished ? How finished ? '

' Go, go, my lord, for God's sake ! ' ui^ed the secretary.

' A pest I ' cried he, and fumed out of the Castle.

She rode down the Canongate to dinner that day at a hand-gallop, the people scouring to right and left to be clear of heels. Her colour was bright and hot, her hair streamed to the wind. ' Fly, fly, fly 1 ' she cried, and whipped her horse. ' A hateful fool, to dare me so 1 ' Lethington, Ai^II, James her brother, came clattering and pounding behind. ' She is fey ! She is fey 1 She rides like a witch 1 ' women said to one another ; but Mr. Knox, who saw her go, said to himself, ' She is nimble as a boy." Publicly — since this wild bout made a great com- motion in men's thoughts — he declared, ' If there be not tn her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth me.' Neither he nor his judgments were anything to her in those days ; she heard little of his music, rough or not. And yet, just at that time, had she sent for him she could have won him for ever. ' Happy for her,' says Des-Essars, writing after the event, ' thrice happy for her if she had 1 For I know very well — and she knew it also afterwards — that the man was in love with her.'

At night, having recovered herself, she was able to laugh with the maids at old Huntly, and to look with kind eyes upon the graces of his son Gordon.

' If I cared to do it,' she said, ' I could have that young man at my feet But I fear he is a fool like his father.'

She tried him : he danced stiffly, talked no French, and did not know what to do with her hand when he had it, or with his own either. She sparkled, she glittered before him, smiled at hts confusion, encouraged him by softness, befooled bim. It was plain that be was elated ; but she

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held her own powers so lightly, and thought so little of his, that she had no notion of what she was doing — to what soaring heights she was sending him. When she had done with him, a strange tremor took the young lord — a fixed, hard look, as if he saw something through the wall.

* What you see ? What you fear, my lord ? ' she stam- mered in her pretty Scots.

' I see misfortune, and shame, and loss. I see women at the loom — a shroud for a man — hey, a shroud, a shroud I ' He stared about at all the company, and at her, knowing nobody. Slowly recovering himself, he seemed to scrape cobwebs from his face. * I have drunk knowledge this night, I think.'

She plumbed the depth of his case. ' Go now, my lord ; leave me, now.'

* One last word to you, madam, with my face to your face.'

* What would you say to me ? '

He took her by the hand, with more strength than she had believed in him. 'Trust Gordon,' he said, and left her.

* I shall believe your word,' she called softly after him, * and remember it'

He lifted his hand, but made no other sign ; he carried a high head through the full hall, striding like a man through heather, not to be stopped by any.

She thought that she had never seen a prouder action. He went, carrying his devotion, like a flag into battle. Beside him the Earl of Bothwell looked a pirate, and Chitelherault a pantaloon.

* He deserves a fair wife, for he would pleasure her well,' she considered ; then laughed softly to herself, and shook her head. * No, no, not for me — such a dreamer as that. I should direct his dreams — I, who need a man.'

That pirate Earl of Bothwell used a different way. He bowed before her the same night, straightened his back immediately, and looked her full in the face. No fear that this man would peer through walls for ghosts I She was still tender from the thoughts of her young

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Highlander ; but you know that she trusted this bluff ally, and was not easily offended by honest freedoms. She had seen gallants of his stamp in France.

'Pleasure and good answers to your Grace's good desires/ he laughed.

She looked wisely up at him, keeping her mouth demure.

* Monsieur de Boduel, you shall lead me to dance if you will.'

* Madam, I shall.' He took her out with no more cere- mony, and acquitted himself gaily: a good dancer, and very strong, as she had already discovered. What arms to uphold authority I What nerve to drive our rebels into church ! Ah, if one need a man ! . . .

She asked him questions boldly. * What think you, my lord, of the Earl of Huntly ? '

' Madam, a bladder, holding a few pease. Eh, and he rattles when you do shake him ! Prick him, he is gone ; but the birds will flock about for the seeds you scatter. They are safer where they lie covered, I consider.'

She followed this. * I would ask you further. There is here a remarkable Mr. Knox : what am I to think of him?'

He stayed awhile, stroking his beard, before he shrugged in the French manner, that is, with the head and eyebrow.

* In Rome, madam, we doff caps to the Pope. I am friendly with Mr. Knox. He is a strong man.'

* As Samson was of old ? '

He laughed freely. *Oh, my faith, madam, Delilah is not awanting. There's a many and many.'

She changed the subject * They tell me that you are of the religion, Monsieur de Boduel, but I am slow to believe that. In France I remember '

' Madam,' says he, * my religion is one thing, my philo- sophy another. Let us talk of the latter. There is one God in a great cloud ; but the world, observe, is many- sided. Sometimes, therefore, the cloud is rent towards the south ; and the men of the south say, " Behold ! our God is hued like a fire." Or if, looking up, they see the sun pale in a fog, with high faith they say one to another,

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" Yonder white disc, do you mark, that is the Son of God." Sometimes also your cloud is parted towards the north. Then cry the men of those parts, " Lo ! our God, like a snow -moun tain !" Now, when I am in the south I see with the men of the south, for I cannot doubt all the dwellers in the land ; but when I am in the north, likewise I say. There is something in what you report So much for philosophy — to which Religion, with a rod in hand, cries out : " You fool, you fool ! God is neither there nor here ; but He is in the heart" There you have it, madam.'

She bowed gravely. * I have heard the late king, my father-in-law, say the same to Madame de Valentinois; and she agreed with him, as she always did in such matters. It is a good thought But in whose heart do you place God ? Not in all ? '

* In a good heart, madam. In a crowned heart'

* The crowned heart,' said she, * is the Douglas badge. Do you place Him then in the heart of Monsieur de Morton ? '

This tickled him, but he felt it also monstrous. * God forbid me ! No, no, madam. Douglas wears it abroad — not always with credit But the crowned heart was the heart of the Bruce.'

She was pleased ; the sudden turn warmed her. * You spoke that well, and like a courtier, my lord.'

* Madam,' he cried, covering his own heart, * that is what I would always do if I had the wit For I am a courtier at this hour.'

Pondering this in silence, she suffered him to lead her where he would ; and took snugly to bed with her the thought that, in her growing perplexities, she had a sure hand upon hers when she chose to call for it

As for him, Bothwell, he must have gone directly from this adventure in the tender to play his bass in some of the roughest music of those days. That very night — and for the third time — he, with D'Elboeuf and Lord John Stuart, went in arms, with men and torches, to Cuthbert Ramsay's house, hard by the Market Cross; and, being refused as before, this time made forceful entry.

56 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR BK. i

To the gudeman's * What would ye with me, sirs, good lack?' they demanded sight of Alison, his handsome daughter, now quaking in her bed by her man's side ; and not sight only, but a kiss apiece for the sake of my Lord Arran. She was, by common report, that lord's mistress — but the fact is immaterial.

* Come down with me, man — stand by me in this hour,' quoth she.

But her husband plainly refused to come. * Na, na, my woman, thou must thole the assize by thysel*,' said the honest fellow.

She donned her bedgown, tied up her hair, and was brought down shamefast by her father.

* Do me no harm, sirs, do me no harm ! '

'Less than your braw Lord of Arran,' says Bothwell, and took the firstfruits.

The low -roofed parlour full of the smoke of torches, flaring lights, wild, unsteady gentlemen in short cloaks, flushed Alison in the midst — one can picture the scene. The ceremony was prolonged ; there were two nights' vigil to be made up. On a sudden, half-way to the girl's cold lips. Lord Bothwell stops, looks sidelong, listens.

* The burgh is awake. Hark to that ! Gentlemen, we must draw off.'

They hear cries in the street, men racing along the flags. From the door below one calls, *The Hamiltons! Look to yourselves ! The Hamiltons ! '

Almost immediately follows a scuflle, a broken oath, the *0h, Christ!' and fall of a man. Lord Bothwell regards his friends — ^posterior parts of three or four cran- ing out of window, D'Elboeuf tying up his points, John Stuart dancing about the floor. * Gentlemen, come down.'

He wrapped his cloak round his left arm, whipped out his blade, and went clattering down the stair. The others came behind him. From the passage they heard the fight- ing ; from the door, as they stood spying there, the whole town seemed a roaring cave of men. Through and above the din they could catch the screaming of Lord Arran, choked with rage, tears, and impotence.

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* Who is the doxy, I shall ask ye : Arran or the lass ? ' says Bothwell, making ready to rush the entry.

Just as he cleared the door he was stabbed by a dirk in the upper arm, and felt the blood go from him. All Edin- burgh seemed awake — a light in every window and a woman to hold it Hamiltons and their friends packed the street : some twenty Hepbums about Ramsay's door kept their backs to the wall. For a time there was great work.

In the midst of the hubbub they heard the pipes skirling in the Cowgate.

* Here comes old Huntly from his lodging,' says Lord John to his neighbour. This was Bothwell, engaged with three men at the moment, and in a gay humour.

* Ay, hark to him ! ' he called over his shoulder ; and then, purring like some fierce cat, 'Softly now — aha, I have thee, friend ! ' and ran one of his men through the body.

The pipes blew shrilly, close at hand, the Gordons plunged into the street. Led by their chief, by John of Findlater and Adam (a mere boy), they came rioting into battle.

* Aboyne ! Aboyne ! Watch for the Gordon ! * — they held together and clove through the massed men like a bolt.

* Hold your ground ! I'll gar them give back ! ' cried old Huntly ; and Bothwell, rallying his friends, pushed out to meet him : if he had succeeded the Hamiltons had been cut in two. As it was, the fighting was more scattered, the ntilie broken up ; and this was the state of affairs when the Lord James chose to appear with a company of the Queen's men from the Castle.

For the Lord James, in his great house at the head of Peebles Wynd — awake over his papers when all the world was asleep or at wickedness — had heard the rumours of the fight; and then, even while he considered it, heard the Gordons go by. He heard old Huntly encouraging his men, heard John of Findlater: if he had needed just advantage over his scornful enemy he might have it now. He got up from his chair and stood gazing at his papers, rubbing together his soft white hands. Anon he went to

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the closet, awoke his servant, and bade him make ready for the street Cloaked, armed and bonneted, followed by the man, he went by silent ways to the Castle.

When he came upon the scene of the fray, he found John Gordon of Findlater at grapple with a Hamilton amid a litter of fallen men. He found Adam Gordon pale by the wall, wounded, smiling at his first wound. He could not find old Huntly, for he was far afield, chasing men down the wynds. D'Elboeuf had slipped away on other mischief, Bothwell (with a troublesome gash) had gone home to bed. He saw Arran battering at Ramsay's door, calling on his Alison to open to him — and left the fool to his folly. It was Huntly he wanted, and, failing him, took what hostages he could get He had John of Findlater pinioned from behind, young Adam from before, and the pair sent off guarded to the Castle.

To Arran, then, who ceased not his lamentations, he sternly said, * Fie, my lord, trouble not for such a jade at such an hour ; but help me rather to punish the Queen's enemies.*

Arran turned upon him, pouring out his injuries in a stream.

The Lord James listened closely : so many great names involved ! Ah, the Earl of Bothwell ! Alas, my lord, rashness and vainglory are hand-in-hand, I fear. The Marquis D'Elboeuf ! Deplorable cousin of her Majesty. The Lord John! Tush — my own unhappy brother! One must go deeply, make free with the knife, to cut out of our commonwealth the knot of so much disease.

*My Lord of Arran,* he concluded solemnly, *your offence is deep, but the Queen's deeper than you suppose. I cannot stay your resentment against the Earl of Bothwell ; it is in the course of nature and of man that you should be moved. But the Earl of Huntly is the more dangerous person.'

My Lord James it was who led the now sobbing Arran to his lodging, and sought his own afterwards, well content with the night's work. It is not always that you find two of your enemies united in wrong-doing, and tlie service of the state the service of private grudges.

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When the archers had cleared the streets of the quick, afterwards came down silently the women and carried off the hurt and the dead. The women's office, this, in Edinburgh.

The Queen was yet in her bed when Huntly came swelling into Holyroodhouse, demanding audience as his right But the Lord James had been beforehand with him, and was in the bedchamber with the Secretary, able to stay, with a look, the usher at the door. * It is proper that your Majesty should be informed of certain grave occurrents,' he began to explain ; and told her the story of the night so far as was convenient. According to him, the Earl of Bothwell mixed the brew and the Earl of Huntly stirred it. D'Elboeuf was not named, John Stuart not named — when the Queen asked, what was the broil about ? Ah, her Majesty must hold him excused : it was an unsavoury tale for a lady's ear. * I should need to be a deaf lady in order to have comfortable ears, upon your showing,' she said sharply. How well he had the secret of egging her on ! * Rehearse the tale from the beginning, my lord ; and consider my ears as hardened as your own.' He let her drag it out of him by degrees : Arran's mistress, Bothwell's night work, so hard following upon night talk with her ; Huntly's furious pride : rough music indeed for young ears. But she had no time to shrink from the sound or to nurse any wound to her own pride. At the mere mention of Bothwell's name Mary Livingstone was up in a red fury, and drove her mistress to her wiles.

* And this is the brave gentleman,* cried the maid, * this is the gallant who holds my Queen in his arms, and goes warm from them to a trollop's of the town ! Fit and right for the courtier who blasphemes with grooms in the court — but for you, madam, for you ! Well — I hope you will know your friends in time.'

The Queen looked innocently at her, with the pure inquiiy of a child. *What did he want with the girl? Some folly to gall my Lord Arran, belike.' Incredible questions to Livingstone !

Just then they could hear old Lord Huntly storming in

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the antechamber. * There hurtles the true offender, in my judgment/ said the Lord James.

* He uses an unmannerly way of excuse/ says the Queen, listening to his rhetoric.

* Madam,' said Mr. Secretary here, * I think he rather accuses. For his sort are so, that they regard every wrong they do as a wrong done to themselves. And so, per- chance, it is to be regarded in the ethic part of philosophy.'

"Why does he rail at my pages? Why does he not come in ? ' the Queen asked. Whereupon the Lord James nodded to the usher at the door.

Delay had been troublesome to the furious old man, fretting his nerves and exhausting his indignation before the time. He was out of breath as well as patience ; so the Queen had the first word, which he had by no means intended. She held up her finger at him.

•Ah, my Lord of Huntly, you angered me the other day, and I overlooked it for the love I bear to your family. And now, when you have angered me s^ain, you storm in my house as if it was your own. What am I to think ? '

He looked at her with stormy, wet eyes, and spoke brokenly, being full of his injuries. * I am hurt, madam, I am sore affronted, traduced, stabbed in the back. My son, madam ! '

She showed anger. * Your son ! Your son ! You have presumed too far. You offer me marriage with your son, and he leaves me for a fray in the street ! *

Startled, he puffed out his cheeks. ' I take God to witness, liars have been behind me. Madam, my son Gordon had no hand in the night's work. He was not in my house ; he was not with me ; I know not where he was. A fine young man of his years, look you, madam, may not be penned up like a sucking calf. No, no. But gallant sons of mine there were — who have suffered — whose injuries cry aloud for redress. And, madam, I am here to claim it at your hands.'

* Speak your desires of me : I shall listen,' said she.

The old man looked fixedly at his enemy across the bed. • Ay, madam, and so I will.' He folded his arms, and the action, and the weight of his wrongs, stemmed his vehemence

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for a while. Dignity also he gained by his restraint, a quality of which he stood in need ; and truly he was dignified. To hear his account, loyalty to the throne and to his friends was all the source of his troubles. He had come down with proffers of alliance to the Queen, and they laughed him to scorn. He with his two sons rose out of their beds to quell a riot, to succour their friends

* And whom do you call your friends ? ' cried the Queen, interrupting him quickly.

He told her the Hamiltons — but there certainly he lied — good friends of his and hopeful to be better. The Queen calmed herself. * I had understood that you went to the rescue of my Lord Bothwell,' she began ; and true it was, he had. But now he laughed at the thought, and maybe found it laughable.

* No, no, madam,* he said : * there are no dealings betwixt me and the border -thieves. But the Duke hath made a treaty with me ; and it was to help my Lord Arran, his son, that I and mine went out' Well ! he had stayed the riot, he had carved out peace at the sword's edge. * Anon ' — and he pointed out the man — * anon comes that creeper by darksome ways, and rewards my sons with prison-bars — he, that has sought my fair earldom and all ! Ay, madam, ay ! ' — his voice rose — * so it is. Of all the souls in peril last night, some for villainy's sake, some to serve their wicked lusts, some for love of the game, and some for honesty and truth — these last are rewarded by the jail. Madam, madam, I tell your Majesty, honest men are not to be bought and sold. You may stretch heart-strings till they crack ; you may tempt the North, and rue the spoiling of the North. I know whose work this is, what black infernal stain of blood is in turmoil here. I know, madam, I say, and you know not Some are begotten by night, and some in stealth by day — when the great world is at its affairs, and the house left empty, and nought rife in it but wicked humours. Beware this kind, madam — ^beware it What they have lost by the bed they may retrieve by the head. Unlawful, unlawful — a black strain.'

The Lord James was stung out of himself. * By heaven, madam, this should be stopped 1 '

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The Queen put up her hand. ' Enough said. My Lord Huntly, what is your pleasure of me ? '

Old Huntly folded up his wrath in his arms once more.

* I ask, madam, the release of my two sons — of my son Findlater, and of Adam, my young son, wounded in your service, sorely wounded, and in bonds.'

* You frame your petition unhappily,' said the Queen with spirit 'This is not the way for subjects to handle the prince.*

He extended his arms, and gaped about him. ' Subjects, she saith! Handling, she saith! Oh, now, look you, madam, how they handle your subject and my boy. He hath fifteen years to his head, madam, and a chin as smooth as your own. I fear he is hurt to the death — I fear it sadly ; and it turns me sick to face his mother with the news. Three sons take I out, and all the hopes I have nursed since your Majesty lay a babe in your mother's arm. With one only I must return, with one only — and no hopes, no hopes at a' — madam, an old and broken man.' He was greatly moved ; tears pricked his eyelids and made him fretful. * Folly, folly of an old fool ! To greet before a bairn ! ' He brought tears into the Queen's eyes.

* I am sorry for your son Adam,* she said gently ; * but do not you grieve for him. He is too young to suffer for what he did under duress. You shall not weep before me. I hate it It makes me weep with you, and that is forbidden to queens, they say.*

A man had appeared at the curtain of the door, and stood hidden in it The Lord James went to him while the Queen was turned to the Secretary.

* Mr. Secretary,* said she, * you shall send up presently to the Castle. I desire to know how doth Sir Adam of Gordon. Bring me word as soon as may be.* She had returned kindly to the old Earl when her brother was back by the bed.

* Madam,' he said to her, but looked directly at his foe,

* the injuries of my Lord Huntly's family are not ended, it appears. They bring me news *

That was a slip ; the Queen's cheeks burned. * Ah, they bring ^(w news, my lord 1 *

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He hastened to add : " And I, as my duty is, report to your Majesty, that Sir John Gordon of Findlater hath, within this hour, broken ward. He is away, madam, leav- ing an honest man dead in his room.' He had made a false step in the beginning, but the news redeemed him.

The Queen look^ very grave. * What have you to say to this, Lord of Huntly ? '

* I say that he is my very son, madam,' cried the stout old chief, * and readier with his wits than that encroacher over there.'

Mr. Secretary Lethington covered a smile ; the Queen did not But she replied : * And I say that he is too ready with his wits ; and to you, my lord, I say that you must fetch him back. I will not be defied.'

She saw his dogged look, and admired it in him. Well she knew how to soften him now !

* There shall be no bargain between you and me,' she continued, looking keenly at him ; ' but as I have passed my word, now pass you yours. I will take care of the boy. He shall be here, and I will teach him to love his Queen better than his father can do it, I believe. That is my part Now for yours : go you out and bring me back Sir John.'

Old Huntly ran forward to the bed, fell on his knees beside it, and took the girl's hand. The tears he now felt were kindlier, and he let them come. * Oh, if you and I could deal, my Queen,' he said, * all Scotland should go laughing. If we could deal, as now we have, with the hearts' doors open, and none between ! Why, I see the brave days yet ! I shall bring back Findlater, fear not for it ; and there shall be Gordons about you like a green forest — and yourself the bonny, bonny rose bowered in the midst! God give your Majesty comfort, who have given back comfort and pride unto me 1 '

The Queen's eyes shone with wet as she laughed her pleasure. * Go then, my lord ; deal fairly by me.'

He left her there and then, swelling with pride, emotion, and vanity inflamed, meaning to do well if any man ever did. He brushed aside Lethington with a sweep of the ^rm — * Clear a way there— clear a way ! '

64 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

In this Gordon conflict the iniquities of Lord Bothwell were forgotten, for the Queen's mind was now set upon kind offices. She took young Adam into her house and visited him every day. As you might have expected, where the lad was handsome and the lady predisposed to be generous, she looked more than she said, and said more than she need. Young Adam fell in love with this glim- mering, murmuring, golden princess. Fell, do I say ? He slipped, rather, as in summer one lets oneself slip into the warm still water. Even so slipped he, and was over the ears before he was aware. Whatever she may have said, he made mighty little reply: the Gordons were always modest before women, and this one but a boy. He hardly dared look at her when she came, though for a matter of three hours before he had never taken his eyes from the door through which she was to glide in upon him like a Queen of Fays. And the fragrance she carried about her, the wonder of her which filled the little chamber where he lay, the sense of a goddess unveiling, of daily miracle, of her stooping (glorious condescension I), and of his lifting- up — ah, let him who has deified a lady tell the glory if he dare ! The work was done : she was amused, the miracle wrought She had found him a sulky boy, she left him a budded knight Here was one of the conquests she made every day without the drawing of a sword. Most women loved her, and all boys and girls. But although these are, after all, the pick of the world — to whom she was the Rose of roses — we must consider, unhappily, the refuse. They were the flies at the Honeypot

Mary Livingstone, not seriously, chid her mistress. * Oh, fie ! oh, fie ! ' she would say. * Do you waste your sweet store on a bairn ? They call you too fond already. Do you wish to have none but fools about you ? '

* If it is foolish to love me, child,' said the Queen, pre- tending to pout, * you condemn yourself. And if it is foolish of me to love you, or to love Love — again you condemn yourself, who teach me day by day. Are you jealous of the little Gordon, or of the little Jean-Marie ? Or is it Monsieur de ChAtelard whom you fear ? '

' Chitelard, forsooth ! A parrokeet I '

CH- IV ROUGH MUSIC HERE 65

The Queen laughed. * If you are jealous, Mary Living- stone, you must cut off my hands and seal my mouth ; for should you take away all my lovers, I should stroke the pillars of the house till they were warm, and kiss the maids in the kitchen until they were clean. I must love, my dear, and be loved : that I devoutly believe.'

* Lord Jesus, and so do 1 1 ' groaned the good girl, and thanked Him on whom she called that Bothwell's day was over. For although she said not a word of the late scandal, she watched every day and lay awake o* nights for any sig^ that he was in the Queen's thoughts. All she could discover for certain was that he came no more to Court And yet he was in or near Edinburgh. The old Duke of Chitelherault had himself announced one day in a great taking, with a pitiful story of his son Arran. Lord Both- well's name rang loud in it. His son Arran, cousin (he was careful to say) of her Majesty's, being highly incensed at the affront he had suffered, had chaJlenged the Earl of Bothwell to a battle of three on a side. The weapons had been named, the men chosen. My Lord Bothwell had kept tryst, Arran (on his father's counsel) had not. There- upon my Lord Bothwell cries aloud, in the hearing of a score persons, * We'll drs^ him out by the lugs, gentle- men I ' and set about to do it. ' My son Arran, madam, goes in deadly fear; for so ruthless a man, a man so arrogant upon the laws as this Lord of Bothwell vexeth not your Majesty's once prosperous realm. Alas, that such things should be 1 Madam, I gravely doubt for my son's safety.'

* Why, what would you have of me, cousin ? ' says the Queen. * I cannot fight your son's battle. Courage I cannot give him. Am I to protect him in my house ? '

Mt is protection, indeed, madam, that I crave. But your Majesty knows very well in what guise I would have him enter your house.'

This was too open dealing to be dextrous in such a delicate market

* Upon my word, cousin,' says the Queen, * I think that you carry your plans of protection too far if you propose that I should shelter him in my bed.'

F

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THE QUEEN'S QUAIR

BK.I

The old Duke looked so confounded at this blunt commentary that she repented later, and promised that she would try a reconciliation. 'But I cannot move in it myself/ she told him. 'There are many reasons against that :Do you say that my Lord Bothwell threatens the life of your son ? '

' Indeed, madam, I do fear it'

' Well, I will see that he does not get it Leave me to deal as I can.'

The Queen sent for Mr. Knox.

CHAPTER V

HERE ARE FLIES AT THE HONEYPOT

* The Comic Mask now appears/ says Le Secret des Secrets in a reflective mood, * the Comic Mask, with a deprecatory grin, to show how it was the misfortune of Scotland at this time that, being a poor country, every funded man in it was forced to fatten his glebe at the cost of his neighbour's. So house was set against house, friendship made a vain thing, and loyalty a marketable thing. More than that, every standard of value set up to be a beacon or channel- post or point of rally (whichever you choose to make it), became ipso facto a tower of vantage, from which, if you were to draw your dues, it was necessary to scare every- body else. When Mr. Knox sourly called Queen Mary a Honeypot, he intended to hold her out to scorn ; but actually he decried his countrymen who saw her so ; and not saw her only, but every high estate beside. For them the Church was a honeypot, the council, the command of the shore, the wardenry of the marches. "Come," they said, " let us eat and drink of this store, but for God's sake keep off" the rest, or it will never hold out." Round about, round about, came the buzzing flies, at once eager and querulous; and while they sipped they looked from the corners of their eyes lest some other should get more than his share ; and the murmurs of the feasters were as often "Give him less" as "Give me more." Yet it would be wrong, I conceive, to call the Scots lords all greedy ; safer to remember that most of them must certainly have been

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hungry/ So Monsieur Des-Essars obtrudes his chorus — after the event.

Young Queen Mary, hard-up against the event, had no chorus but trusty Livingstone of the red cheeks and warm heart ; nor until her first Christmas was kept and gone was she conscious of needing one. She had maintained a high spirit through all the dark and windy autumn days, find- ing Both well's effrontery as easy to explain as the Duke's poltroonery, or the hasty veering of old Huntly. Bothwell, she would extenuate, held her cheap because women were his pastime, the Duke sought her protection because he was a coward, Huntly shied off because his vanity was offended. If men indeed had ever been so simple to be explained, this world were as easy to manage as a paste- board theatre. The simplicity was her own; but she shared the quality with another when she sent for Mr. Knox because she thought him her rival, and when he came prepared to play the part.

The time was November, with the floods out and rain that never ceased. It was dark all day outside the palace ; raw cold and showers of sleet mastered the town ; but within, great fires made the chambers snug where the Queen sat with her maids .and young men. The French lords had taken their leave, the pageants and dancings were stayed for a time. In a diminished Court, which held neither the superb Princes of Guise nor the hardy-tongued Lord of Bothwell — in a domesticated, needleworking, chattering, hearth -haunting Court — there was a g^reat adventure for the coy excellences of Monsieur de Chitelard. Discussing his prospects freely with Des-Essars, he told him that he had two serious rivals only. * Monsieur de Boduel,' he said, * forces my Princess to think of him by insulting her. He appears to succeed ; but so would the man who should twist your arm, my little Jean-Marie, and make cuts with the hand at the fleshy part He would compel you to think of him, but with fear. Now, fear, look you, is not the lady's part in love, but the man's, the perfect lover's part. For it may be doubted whether a woman can ever be a perfect lover — if only for this reason, that she is designed for the love of a man. The Lord

CH. V FLIES AT THE HONEYPOT 69

Gordon, eldest son and heir of that savage greybeard, Monsieur de Huntly, is my other adversary in the sweet warfare. She looks at him as you must needs observe a church tower in your Brabant. It is the tallest thing there ; you cannot avoid it. But what fine long legs can prevail against the silken tongue? Not his, at least Therefore I sing my best, I dance, I stand prayerful at comers of the corridor. And one day, when I see her pensive, or hear her sigh as she goes past me, do you know what I shall do? I shall run forward and clasp her knees, and cry aloud, " We bleed, we bleed, Princess, we bleed 1 Come, my divine balm, let us stanch mutually these wounds of ours. For I too have balsam for thee!" Do you not think the plan admirable ? '

'It is very poetical,' said Des-Essars, 'and has this merit, usually denied to poetry, that it is uncommonly explicit I think I know better than you what are the designs of Monsieur de Boduel, since he was once my master. He does not seek to insult or to terrify my mistress, as you seem to suppose — but to induce her to trust him. He would wish to appear to her in the char- acter of the one man in Scotland who does not seek some advantage from her. My Lord Gordon's designs — to use the word for convenience, though, in fact, he has no designs — are as simple as yours. He is infatuated ; the Queen has turned his head ; and it is no wonder, seeing that she troubled herself to do it'

' If he has no designs, boy,' cried Monsieur de Chdte- lard, 'how can you compare him with me, who have many?'

Des-Essars clasped his hands behind his head. 'I suppose you are the same in this, at least,' he said, ' that both of you seek to get pleasure out of my mistress. Let me tell you that your most serious rival of all is one of whom you know nothing — one who seeks neither pleasure nor profit from her; to whom, therefore, she will almost certainly offer the utmost of her store.'

' Who is this remarkable man, pray ? *

* It is Master Knox, the Genevan preacher,' said Des- Essars. 'I think there is more danger to the Queen's

^o THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. I

heart in this man's keeping than in that of the whole Privy Council of this kingdom.'

Monsieur de Chitelard was profoundly surprised. * I had never considered him at all,' he admitted. * In my country, Jean-Marie, and I suppose in yours also, we do not consider the gentry of religion until our case is become extreme. Of what kindred is this man ? '

' He is of the sons of Adam, I suppose, and a tall one. I have seen him.'

*You mistake me, my boy. Hath he blood, for example ? '

* Sir, I will warrant it very red. In fine, sir, this man is King of Scotland ; and, though it may surprise you to hear me say so, I will be so bold as to add in your private ear, that no true lover of the Queen my mistress could wish her to give up her heart into any other keeping which this country can furnish.'

Monsieur de Chitelard, after a short, quick turn about the room, came back to Des-Essars vivacious and angry.

* You speak absurdly, like the pert valet you are likely to become. What can you know of love — ^you, who dare to dispose of your mistress's heart in this fashion ? '

Des-Essars looked grave. * It is open to me, young as I am, to love the Queen my mistress, and to desire her welfare. I love her devotedly; but I swear that I desire nothing else. Nor does my partner and sworn ally, Monsieur Adam de Gordon.'

* Love,' said Monsieur de Chdtelard, tapping his bosom, 'severs brotherhoods and dissolves every oath. It is a perfectly selfish passion : even the beloved must suffer for the lover's need. Do you and your partner suppose that you can stay my advance? The thought is laughable.'

* We neither suppose it nor propose it,' replied the youth.

* We are considering the case of Mr. Knox, and are agreed that, detestable as his opinions may be, there is great force in them because of the great force in himself. We think he may draw the Queen's favour by the very neglect he hath of it ; and although our natures would lead us to advance the suit of my Lord Gordon, who is my col- league's blood-brother, as you know — for all that, it is our

CH.V FLIES AT THE HONEYPOT 71

deliberate intention to throw no obstacle in the way of any pretensions this Master Knox may chance to exhibit.'

'And, pray,' cried Monsieur de Chitelard, drawing himself up, *and, pray, how do you look upon my pre- tensions, which, I need not tell you, do not embrace marriage ? *

* To tell you the truth, sir,' Des-Essars replied, * we do not look upon them at all.'

Monsieur de Chitelard was satisfied. ' I think you are very wise,* he said. * No eye should look upon the deed which I meditate. Fare you well, Jean-Marie. I speak as a man forewarned.'

Jean-Marie returned to his problems.

Standing at the Queen's door, he had his plan cut and dried. When the preacher should be brought in by the usher, he would require a word with him before he pulled back the curtain. He does not confess to it in his memoirs; but I have no doubt what that word was to have been. Remember that there was this much sound sense on the boy's side : he knew very well that the Queen had thought more of Mr. Knox than she had cared to allow. His inferences may have been ridiculous ; it is one thing to read into the hearts of kings, another to dispose them. However that may be, the Captain of the Guard had received his orders. He himself introduced the great man into the antechamber, and led him directly to the entry of the Queen's closet. Mr. Erskine, who held this office, was also Master of the Pages, and no mere gentle- man-usher. He brushed aside his subaltern with no more ceremony than consists in a flack of the ear, and, * Back, thou French pullet — the Queen's command.' Immediately afterwards he announced at the door, ' Madam, Mr. Knox, to serve your Majesty.'

'Enter boldly, Mr. Knox,' he bade his convoy then, and departed, leaving him in the doorway face to face with the Queen of Scots.

She sat in a low chair, tapestry on her knees, her needle flying fast ; in her white mourning, as always when she had her own way, she looked a sweet and wholesome young woman. Mary Livingstone, self-possessed and busy,

72 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. I

was on a higher chair behind her, watching the work; Mary Fleming in the bay of the window, Lord Lindsay near by her, leaning against the wall. Mary Beaton and Mary Seton were on cushions on the floor, each holding an end of the long frame. Mr. Secretary regardful by the door, and a lady who sat at a little table reading out of Per cef ares t or Amadis^ or some such, completed as quiet an interior as you could wish to see. While Mr. Knox stood primed for his duty, scrutinised by half a dozen pairs of eyes, the Queen alone did not lift hers up, but picked at a knot with her needle.

The tangle out, *Let Mr. Knox take heart,' she said, with the needle's eye to the light and the wool made sharp by her tongue : * here he shall find a few busy girls putting to shame some idle men.' Seeing that Mr. Knox made no sig^n — as how should he, who needed not take what he had never lost? — she presently turned her head and looked cheerfully at him, her first sight of a redoubtable critic. Singly her thoughts came, one on the heels of the other : her first. This man is very tall; the second. He looks kind ; the third. He loves a jest ; the fourth, which stayed long by her. The deep wise eyes he hath I In a long head of great bones and little flesh those far-set, far-seeing, lai^e, considering eyes shone like lamps in the daylight — full of power at command, kept in control, content to wait They told her nothing, yet she saw that they had a store behind. No doubt but the flame was there. If the day made it mild, in the dark it would beacon men. She saw that he had a strong nose, like a raven's beak, a fleshy mouth, the beard of a prophet, the shoulders and height of a mountaineer. In one large hand he held his black bonnet, the other was across his breast, hidden in the folds of his cloak. There was no man present of his height, save Lethington, and he looked a weed. There was no man (within her knowledge) of his patience, save the Lord James; and she knew him at heart a coward. Peering through her narrowed eyes for those few seconds, she had the fancy that this Knox was like a ragged granite cross, full of runes, wounded, weather-fretted, twisted awry. Yet her four thoughts persisted : He is very tall, he looks kind,

CH, V FLIES AT THE HONEYPOT 73

he loves a jest — and oh I the deep wise eyes he hath! Nothing that he did or spoke against her afterwards moved the roots of those opinions. She may have feared, but she never shrank from the man.

Now she took up her words where she had left them. *You, who love not idleness, Mr. Knox, are here to help me, I hope?'

He blinked before he answered. 'Madam/ then said he, ' I am here upon your summons, since subjects are bound to obey, that I may know your pleasure of me.' * A sweet, dangerous woman,' he thought her still ; but he added now, ' And of all these dainty ladies the daintiest, and the shrewdest reader of men.'

'Come then, Mr. Knox, and be idle or busy as likes you best,' she said, and resumed her needle. * I am glad to know,' she added, * that you consider yourself bound anyways to me.'

He, not moving from his doorway — making it serve him rather for a pulpit — when he had thought for awhile, with quickly blinking eyes, began : * I think that you seek to put me to some question, madam, but without naming it I think that you would have me justify myself without cause cited. But this I shall not do, lest afterwards come in your Clerk of Arraigns and I find myself prejudged upon my plea before I am accused at all. Why, in Uiis matter of service of subjects, we are all in a manner bound upon it Many masters must we obey : as God and His stewards, who are girded angels; and Death and his officers, who are famines, diseases, fires, and the swords of violent men, suffered by God for primordial reasons ; and next the prince and his ministers, among whom I reckon '

* Oh, sir ; oh, sir,' she cried out, * you go too fast for me ! ' ' Madam,' said he, * I speak with respect, but I do think

you go as fast as I.'

She laughed. 'I am young, Mr. Knox, and go as fast as I can. Do you blame me for that ? '

' I may not, madam,' said he steadily, ' unless to remember that you sit in an old seat be to blame you.'

* I sit at my needlework now, sir.'

74 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

He saw her fine head bent over the web, a gesture beautifully meek, but said he : 'I suspect the seat is beneath your Majesty. It is hard to win, yet harder to leave when the time comes.'

* But,' said she, * if I put aside my seat, if I waive my authority, how would you consider me then ? '

He turned his head from one to another, and then gazed calmly at the Queen. * Madam,' he said, * if you waive your authority and put aside your seat, the which (you say) you have from God, why then should I consider you at all ? '

When the room stirred, she laughed, but it was to conceal her vexation. She pricked her lip with her needle.

* I see how it is with you and your friends, sir,' she said drily. * You love not poor women in any wise. When we are upon thrones you call us monsters, and when we come off them you think us nothing at all. It is hard to please you. And yet — you have known women.'

* A many,' said he.

* And of these some were good women ? '

* There was one, madam, the best of women.'

Her eyes sparkled. * Ah ! You speak kindly at last ! You loved my mother! Then you will love me. Is it not so ? '

He was silent. This was perilous work.

* I have sent for you, Mr. Knox,' she continued, * not for dialectic, in which I can see I am no match for you ; but to ask counsel of you, and require a benevolence, if you are ready to bestow it. We will talk alone of these things, if you will. Adieu, mes enfants ; gentlemen, adieu. I must speak privately with Mr. Knox.*

What had she to say to him ? Not he alone wondered ; there was Master Des-Essars at the door — Master Des- Essars, who, with the generosity of calf-love, was prepared to surrender his rights for the good of the State. Mary Livingstone, to whom one man, lover of the Queen, was as pitiable as another, swept through the ante -room without a word for anybody. The others clustered in the bay, whispering and wondering.

CH. V FLIES AT THE HONEYPOT 75

But as to Mr. Knox, when those two were alone, she bafHed him altogether by asking him to intervene in the quarrel between the Lords Bothwell and Arran : baffled him, that is, because he had braced himself for tears, reproaches, and what he called 'yowling' against his

* Stinking Pride ' sermon, which of late had made some stir. In that matter he was ready to take his stand upon the holy hill of Sion ; he had his counter-mines laid against her mines. Yea, if she had cried out upon the book of the Monstrous Regiment itself, he had his pithy retorts, his citations from Scripture, his Aristotle, his Saint Paul, and Aquinas — for he did not disdain that serviceable papist — his heavy cavalry from Geneva and his light horsemen from Ayrshire greens. But she took no notice of this entrenched position of his : she drew him into open country, then swept out and caught him in the flank. Choosing to assume, against all evidence, that he had loved her mother, assuming that he loved her too, she pleaded with him to serve her well, and used the subtlest flattery of all, which was to take for granted that he would refuse what she begged. This was an incense so heady that the flinty- edged brain was drugged by it, declined ratiocination. As she pleaded, in low urgent tones, which cried sometimes as if she was hurt, and thrilled sometimes as though she exulted in her pure desire, he listened, sitting motionless above her, more moved than he cared afterwards to own.

* For peace's sake I came hither, young as I am, and because I desire to dwell among my own folk. I hoped for peace, and do think that I ensued it. Have I vexed any of you in anything? Have I oppressed any?' At such a time, against such pleading, he had it not in his heart to cry out, *Ay, daily, hourly, you vex, thwart, and offend the Lord's people.'

Seeing him silent, pondering above her, she stretched out her arms for a minute, and bewitched him utterly with her slow, sad smile. * If a girl of my years can be tyrant over grave councillors, if that be possible, and I have done it, I shall not be too stiff to ask pardon for my fault, or to come to you and your friends, Mr. Knox, to learn a wiser way. But you cannot accuse me. I see you answer

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nothing.' Whether he could or not, he did not at that time.

She came back to her first proposition. * Of my Lord of Bothwell I know only this/ — ^she seemed to weigh her words, — 'that in France he approved himself the very honest gentleman whom I looked to find him here. He is not of my faith ; he favours England more than I am as yet prepared to do ; he is stem upon the border. What his quarrel may be with my Lord of Arran I do not care to inquire. I pray it may be soon ended, for the peace's sake which I promised myself. Why should I be unhappy ? You cannot wish it'

* Madam,' he said, in his deep slow voice, 'God knoweth I do not'

She looked down ; she whispered, ' You are kind to me. You will help me ? '

* Madam,' he said, * God being with me, I will.' She looked up at him like a child, held out her hand. He took it in his own ; and there it lay for a while contented.

Upon this fluttering moment the Lord James, walking familiarly in king's houses, entered with a grave inclination of the head. The Queen was vexed, but she was ready, and resumed her hand. Mr. Knox was not ready. He stiffened himself, and opened his mouth to speak : no words came. The Lord James went solemnly to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. The Queen's eyes flashed.

* Madam,' he said, ' I am glad that my friend Mr. Knox should be here.'

'Upon my word, my lord,' cried the Queen in a rage, '-why should you be glad, or what has your gladness to do with the matter ? ' Mr. Knox, before she spoke, had gently disengaged himself ; now he made her a deep obeisance and took his leave — not walking backwards. ' That is a true man,' was her judgment of him, and never substantially altered. What he may have thought of her, if he after- wards discovered how she had used him here, is another question. He set about doing her behests, at any rate. There was a probability that my Lord Bothwell would show himself at Court again before many days, and without direct invitation of hers.

CHAPTER VI

THE fool's whip

After a progress about the kingdom, which she thought it well to make for many reasons — room for the pacifying arm of Mr. Knox being one — it befell as she had hoped. Speedily and well had the preacher gone to work : the Earl of Arran walked abroad without a bodyguard, the Earl of Bothwell showed himself at Court and was received upon his former footing. The Queen had looked sharply at him, on his first appearance, for any sign of a shameful face ; there was not to be seen the shadow of a shade. It is not too much to say that she would have been greatly disap- pointed if there had been any ; for to take away hardihood from this man would be to make his raillery a ridiculous offence, his gay humour a mere symptom of the tavern. No, but he laughed at her as slily as ever before ; he reassumed his old pretensions, he gave back no inch of ground — and, remember, in an affair of the sort, if the man holds his place the maid must yield something of hers. It is bound to be a case of give or take. She felt herself in the act to give, was glad of it, and concealed it from Mary Livingstone. When this girl, her bosom friend and bed- fellow, made the outcry you might expect of her, the Queen pretended extreme surprise.

* Do you suppose this country the Garden of Eden, my dear? Are all the Scots lords wise virgins, careful over lamp-wicks ? Am I Queen of a Court of Love by chance, and is my Lord of Bothwell a postulant ? You tell me news. I assure you he is nothing to me.'

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Now these words were spoken on a day when he had declared himself something as plainly as was convenient. Exactly what had happened was this : —

On the anniversary - day of the death of little King Francis of France, the Queen kept the house with her maids, and professed to see nobody. A requiem had been sung, the faithful few attending in black mourning. She, upon a faldstool, solitary before the altar at the pall, looked a very emblem of pure sorrow — exquisitely dressed in long nun -like weeds; no relief of white; her face very pale, hands thin and fragile, only one ring to the whole eight fingers. Motionless, not observed to open her lips, wink her eyes, scarcely seen to breathe, there she stayed when mass was done and the chapel empty, save for women and a page or two.

At noon, just before dinner, she walked in the garden, kept empty by her directions — a few turns with Beaton and Fleming, and Des-Essars for escort — then, bidding them leave her, sat alone in a yew-tree bower in full sun. It was warm dry weather for the season.

Presently, as she sat pensive, toying perhaps with grief, trying to recall it or maintain it — who knows ? — she heard footsteps not far off, voices in debate ; and looked side- long up to see who could be coming. It was the Earl of Bothwell who showed himself first round the angle of the terrace, arm-in-arm of that Lord Arran whom she had procured to be his friend ; behind these two were Ormiston, some Hamilton or another, and Paris, Lord Bothwell's valet They were in high spirits and free talk, those two lords, unconscious or careless of her privacy ; Bothwell was gesticulating in that French way he had ; the other, with his head inclined, listened closely, and sniggered in spite of himself. Both were in cheerful colours ; notably, Bothwell wore crimson cloth with a cloak of the same, a purpoint of lace, a white feather in his cap. Arran first saw the Queen, stopped instantly, uncovered, and said something hasty to his companion ; he stared with his light fish -eyes and kept his mouth open. Bothwell looked up in his good time and bared his head as he did so. It seems that he muttered some

CH. VI THE FOOL'S WHIP 79

order or advice, for when Lord Arran slipped by on the tips of his toes, all the rest followed him ; but Lord Bothwell walked leisurely over the grass towards the Queen, as who should say, * I am in the wrong — in truth I am a careless devil. Well, give me my due; admit I am not a timorous devil.'

As he stood before her, attentive and respectful in his easy way, she watched him nearly, and he waited for her words. It is a sigfn of how they stood to one another at this time that she began her speech in the middle — as if her thoughts, in spite of herself, became at a point articulate.

* You also, my lord ! * 'Plait-il?'

* Oh, you understand me very well.'

* Madam, upon my honour ! I am a dull dog that can see but one thing at a time.'

She forced herself to speak. * I ask you, then, if this is the day of all days when you choose to pass by me in your festival gear? I ask if you also are with the rest of them ? '

He made as if he would spread his hands out — the motion was enough. It said — though he was silent —

* Madam, I am no better than other men.'

*Oh, I believe it, I believe it! You are no better indeed ; but I had thought you wiser.'

He caught at the word, and rubbed his chin over it.

* Hey, my faith, madam — wiser ! '

The Queen tapped her foot. * If I had said kinder, I might have betrayed myself for a fool. Kindness, wisdom, generosity, pity I In all these things I must believe you to be as other men. Is it not so ? '

Seeing her clouded eyes, he did not affect to laugh any more. He was either a bad courtier or one supremely expert ; for he spoke as irritably as he felt.

* Madam, I know few men save men of spirit, therefore I cannot advise you. But you know the saw. Come asino sape cosi minuzza rape : " The donkey bites his carrot as well as he knows." Wisdom is becoming to a servant ; kindness, generosity, and the rest of these high virtues are

8o THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

the ornament of a master, or mistress. Why, madam, if I desire the warmth of the sun, shall I ever get it by shivering ? Is that a wise reflection ? '

She clasped her hands over her knee, and looked at her foot as she swung it slowly ; but if the action was idle the words were not. * If I asked you, my lord, to wear the dule with me upon this one day of the year, should you refuse me ? If I grieve, will you not grieve with me ? '

He never faltered, but spoke as gaily as a sailor to his lass. ' Faith of a gentleman, madam, why should I grieve — except for that you should grieve still? For your grieving there may be a remedy ; and as for me, far from grieving with you, I thank the kindly gods.'

She bit her lip as she shivered. *You are cruel,' she said : * you are cruel. I knew it before. Your heart is cruel. This is the very subtlety of the vice.'

*Not so, madam,' he answered quietly; *but it is dangerous simplicity. Do you not know why I give thanks? — I think you do, indeed.'

Very certainly she thought so too.

She sat on after he was gone, twisting her fingers about as she spun her busy fancies; and was so found by her maids. Little King Francis and the purple pall which signified him were buried for that day ; and after dinner she changed her black gown for a white. It was at going to bed that night that she had rallied Mary Livingstone about Scots lords and wise virgins, and declared that Lord Bothwell was nothing to her. And the maid believed her just as far as you or I may do.

Not that the thing was grown serious by any means : the maid of honour made too much of one possible lover, and the Queen, very likely, too little. The difference between these two was this : Mary Livingstone looked upon her Majesty's lovers with a match-maker's eye, but Queen Mary with a shepherding eye. The flock was everything to her. Just now, for example, she was anxious about certain other strays ; and, as time wore on to the dark of the year, she began to be impatient The Gordons, said her brother James, were playing her false ; but it was incredible to her — not that they should be at

CH.V1 THE FOOL'S WHIP 8i

fault, but that her instinct should be so. She could have sworn to the truth of that fine Lord Gordon, and been certain that she had won over old Huntly at the last The mistake — if she was mistaken — is common to queens and pretty children, who, finding themselves in the centre of their world, give that a circumference beyond the line of sight. Because all eyes are upon them they think that there is nothing else to be seen. She was to learn that Huntly at Court and Huntly in Badenoch were two separate persons ; so said the Lord James.

'Sister, alas I I fear a treacherous and stiff- necked generation ' ; and he had more to go upon than he chose her to guess as yet. ^

So far, at least, she had to admit that old Huntly was a liar: John of Findlater was never brought back. Her messengers returned again and again, saying, *The Earl was in the hills,' or *The Earl was hunting the deer,* or • The Earl was punishing the Forbeses.' And where was her fine Lord Gordon, with his sea -blue, hawk's eyes? She was driven at last to send after him — a peremptory summons to meet her at Dundee ; but he never came — could not be found or served with the letter — was believed to be with the Earl, his father, but had been heard of in the west with the Hamiltons, etc. etc. The face of Lord James — his eyes ever upon the Earldom of Moray — was sufficient answer to her doubts ; and when she turned to Lord Bothwell for comfort, he laughed and said, reminding her of a former conversation, * Prick the old bladder, madam, scatter the pease ; then watch warily who come to the feast.*

Then a certain Lord Ruthven entered her field, sent for out of Gowrie — a dour, pallid man, with fatality pressing heavily on his forehead. It seemed to weigh his brows over his eyes, and to goad him at certain stressful times to outbursts of savagery — snarling, tooth-baring — ^terrible to behold. He hated Huntly as one Scots lord could hate another, for no known reason.

' You ask me what you shall do with Huntly, madam ? I say, hang him on a tree, and poison crows with him. It will be the best service he can ever do you.'

G

82 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

He said this at the council board, and dismayed her sorely. It seemed to her that he churned his spleen between his teeth till it foamed at his loose lips.

She flew to the comfort of her maids: here was her cabinet of last resource I They throned her among them, put their heads near together, and considered the case of Scotland. Mary Livingstone could see but one remedy for the one deep -set disease. Both well's broad chest shadowed all the realm as with a cloud : chase that away, you might get a glimpse of poor Scotland ; but while the dreadful gloom endured the Gordons seemed to her a swarm of gnats, harmless at a distance. * Let them starve in their own quags, my dear heart,' she said ; * you will have them humble when they are hungry. Theirs is the sin of pride — but, O Mother of Heaven, keep us clean from the sin that laughs at sinning 1 '

Mary Fleming put in a word for the advice of Mr. Secretary Lethington, but blushed when the others nudged each other. The Secretary was known to be her servant. Mary Beaton said, * I thought we were to speak of Huntly? Ma belle dame^ touch his heart with your finger-tips.'

*So I would if I knew the way,* said the Queen, frowning.

* Send him back his bonny boy Adam,' says Beaton ; ' I undertake that he will plead your cause. You have given him good reason.'

The Queen thought well of this ; so presently Adam Gordon was sent north as legate a latere.

Christmas went out. Lent drew on, the months passed. The Ark of State tossed in unrestful waters, but young Adam of Gordon came not again with a slip of olive.

* If that child should prove untrue,' said the Queen,

* then his father is the lying traitor you report him.' This to Mr. Secretary Lethington, very much with her just now, at work for Mr. Secretary Cecil of England, trying his hardest to bring about a meeting between his mistress and the mistress of his friend. Lethington, knowing what he did know, had little consolation for her ; but he bore word

CH. VI THE FOOL'S WHIP 83

to his master, the Lord James, that the Queen was angering fast with the Gordons ; a very little more and the fire would leap.

* In my j)oor judgment,' he said, * the kindling-spark will be struck when she sees the scribbling of her love- image. She hath fashioned a very Eros out of George Gordon.'

* I conceive, Mr. Secretary, ' said the Lord James, making no sign that he had heard him, 'that the times are ripe for our budget of news.'

* I think with your lordship,' the Secretary replied,

* but will you be your own post-boy ? '

* Ah ! I am a dullard, Mr. Secretary,' said my lord.

* Your mind forges in front of mine.'

He was fond of penning his agents in close comers. Let them be explicit since he would never be. Lethington gulped his chagrin.

* My meaning was, my lord, that it will advantage you more to confirm than to spread your news concerning the Lord Gordon. Whoso tells her Majesty a thing to anger her, I have observed that he will surely receive some part' of her wrath. Not so the man who is forced to admit the truth of a report. He, on the contrary, gains trust ; for delicacy in a courtier outweighs integrity with our mistress' Therefore let the Duke bring the news, and do you wait until you can bow your head over it. Perhaps I speak more plainly than I ought.'

* I think you do, sir, indeed,' says the Lord James, and lacerates his Lethington.

There was a masque upon Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnival, and much folly done, which ended, like a child's romp, in a sobbing fit. Amid the lights, music, laughter of the throng, the Queen and her maids braved it as saucy young men, trunked, puffed, pointed, trussed and doubleted ; short French cloaks over one shoulder, flat French caps over one ear. Mary Livingstone was the properest, being so tall, Mary Fleming the least at ease, Mary Beaton the pertest, and Mary Seton the prettiest boy. But Mary the Queen was the most provoking, the

84 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR BK. I

trimmest, most assured little gallant that ever you saw; and yet, by that art she had, that extraordinary tact, never more a queen than when now so much a youth. Her trunks were green and her doublet white velvet ; her cloak was violet threaded with gold. Her cap was as scarlet as her lips ; but there was no jewel in her ear or her girdle to match her glancing eyes. By a perverse French courtesy, which became them very ill, such men as dared to do it, or had chins to show, were habited like women. Queen Mary led out Monsieur de ChAtelard in a ruff and hooped gown ; Des-Essars made a nun of himself, most demure and most uncomfortable ; Mary Fleming chose the Earl of Arran — the only Scot in the mummery — a shepherdess with a crook. Mary Livingstone would not dance. * Never, never, never ! ' cried she. * Let women ape men, as I am doing : the thing is natural ; we would all be men if we could. But a man in a petticoat, a man that can blush — ah, bah ! pourriture de France ! '

That night, rotten or not, Monsieur de ChAtelard played the French game. Queen Mary held him, led him about, bowed where he curtsied, stood while he sat He grew bolder as the din grew wilder ; he said he was the Queen's wife. She thought him a fool, but owned to a kind of sneak- ing tenderness for folly of the sort He called her his dear lord, his sweet lord, said he was faint and must lean upon her arm. He promised to make her jealous — went very far in his part He swore that it was all a lie — he loved his husband only : * Kiss me, dear hub, I am sick of love ! ' he languished, and she did kiss his cheek. More she would not ; indeed, when she saw the old Duke of Chatelherault struggling through the crowd about the doors, she felt that here was a chance of getting out of a tangle. She flung the sick monkey off and went directly towards the Duke. He had come to town that day, she knew, directly from his lands in the west : perhaps he would know some- thing of the Gordons. He was a frail, pink-cheeked old man, with a pointed white beard and delicate hands ; so simple as to be nearly a fool, and yet not so nearly but that he had been able to beget Lord Arran, a real fool. When he understood that this swaggering young prince

CH. VI THE FOOUS WHIP 85

was indeed his queen, he gave up bowing and waving his hands, and dropped upon his knee, having very courtly old ways with him«

' Dear madam, dear my cousin, the Lothians show the greener for your abiding. 'Tis shrewish weather yet in the hills ; but you make a summer here.'

* Rise up, my cousin,' says the Queen, * and come talk with me.' She drew him to a settle by the wall. * What news of your house and country have you for me ? '

* I hope I shall content your Majesty,' he said, rubbing his fine hands. *We of the west have been junketing. We have killed fatlings for a marriage.'

She was interested, suspecting nothing. * Ah, you have made a marriage ! and I was not told ! You used me ill, cousin.'

'Madam,' he pleaded somewhat confusedly, *it was done in haste : there were many reasons for that. Take one — my poor health and hastening years. Nor did time serve to make Hamilton a house. It was a fortalice, and must remain a fortalice for my lifetime. But for

your Grace ' He stopped, seeing that she did not

listen.

She made haste to turn him on again. ' Whom did you marry ? Not my Lord of Arran, for he is pranking here. And you design him for me, if I remember.'

*0h, madam!' He was greatly upset by such plain talk. * No, no. It was my daughter Margaret. My son Arran! Ah, that's a greater thing. My daughter Margaret, madam *

* Yes, yes. But the man — the man ! '

* Madam, the Lord of Gordon took her.' He beamed with pride and contentment. *Yes, yes, the Lord of Gordon — a pact of amity between two houses not always too happily engaged.'

There is no doubt she blenched at the name — moment- arily, as one may at a sudden flash of lightning. She got up at once. * I think you have mistook his name, cousin. His name is Beelzebub. He is called after his father.' She left him holding his head, and went swiftly towards the door.

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The dreary Chitelard crept after her. *My prince — my lord ! '

* No, no ; I cannot hear you now.' She waved him off.

Bowing, he shivered at his plight ; but * Courage, my child,' he bade himself: * " Not naw^^ she saith.'

All dancing stopped, all secret talk, all laughing, teas- ing, and love-making. They opened her a broad way. The Earl of Bothwell swept the floor with his thyrsus : he was disguised as the Theban god. But she cried out the more vehemently, * No, no ! I am pressed ; I cannot hear you now. You cannot avail me any more,' and flashed through the doorway. *Send me Livingstone to my closet,' she called over her shoulder, *and send me Leth- ington.' She ran up her privy stair, and waited for her servants, tapping her foot, irresolute, in the middle of the floor.

Mary Livingstone flew in breathless. *What is it? What is it, my lamb ? '

'Get me a great cloak, child, and hide up all this foolery ; and let Mr. Secretary wait until I call him.'

Mary Livingstone covered her from neck to foot, took off the scarlet cap, coifed her head seemly, brought a stool for her feet : hid the boy in the lady, you see, and all done without a word, admirable girl !

The Queen had been in a hard stare the while. * Now let me see M. de Lethington. But stay you with me.'

*Ay, till they cut me down,' says Livingstone, and fetched in the Secretary.

She began at once. * I find, Mr. Secretary, that there is room for more knaves yet in Scotland.'

'Alack, madam,' says he, *yes, truly. They can lie close, do you see, like mushrooms, and thrive the richlier. Knaves breed knavishly, and Scotland is a kindly nurse.'

'There are likely to be more. Here hath the Duke married his daughter, and the Lord of Huntly that brave son of his whom of late he offered to me. Is this knavery or the ecstasy of a fool ? What ! Do they think to win from me by insult what they have not won by open dealing ? '

Mr. Secretary, who had known this piece of news for a

CH. VI THE FOOUS WHIP 87

month or more, did not think it well to overact surprise. He contented himself with, * Upon my word ! ' but added, after a pause, * This seems to me rash folly rather than a reasoned affront'

The Queen fumed, and in so doing betrayed what had really angered her. * Knave or fool, what is it to me ? A false fine rogue ! All rogues together. Ah, he professed my good service, declared himself worthy of trust— declared himself my lover ! Heavens and earth, are lovers here of this sort ? '

Mary Livingstone stooped towards her. 'Think no more of him — ah me, think of none of them ! They seek not your honour, nor love, nor service, but just the sweet profit they can suck from you.'

The Queen put her chin upon her two clasped hands.

* I have heard my aunt, Madame de Ferrara, declare,' she said, with a metallic ring in her voice which was new to it,

* that in the marshes about that town the peasant women, and girls also, do trade their legs by standing in the lagoon and gathering the leeches that fasten upon them to suck blood. These they sell for a few pence and give their lovers food. But my lovers in Scotland are the leeches ; so here stand I, trading myself, with all men draining me of profit to fatten themselves.'

* Madam ' said Lethington quickly, then stopped.

* Well ? ' says the Queen.

* I would say, madam, the fable is a good one. Gather your leeches and sell them for pence. Afterwards, if it please you, trade no more in the swamps, but royally, in a royal territory. Ah, trade you with princes, madam ! I hope to set up a booth for your Majesty's commerce, and to find a chafferer of your own degree.'

She understood very well that he spoke of an English alliance for her, and that this was not to be had without a husband of English providing. * I think you are right,' she replied. * If the Queen of England, my good sister, come half-way towards me, I will go the other half. This you may tell to Mr. Randolph if you choose.'

' Be sure that I tell him, madam.'

* Good dreams to you, Mr. Secretary.*

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*And no dreams at all to your Majesty — but sweet, careless sleep ! '

The Queen, turning for consolation to her Livingstone, won the relief of tears. They talked in low tones to each other for a little while, the mistress's head on the maid's shoulder, and her two hands held. The Queen was out of heart with Scotland, with love, with all this skirting of perils. She was for prudence just now — prudence and the English road. Then came in the tirewoman for the unrobing, and then a final argument for England.

Monsieur de Chdtelard, who truly (as he had told Des- Essars) was a foredoomed man, lay hidden at this moment where no man should have lain unsanctified. I shall not deal with him and his whereabouts further than to say that, just as Frenchmen are slow to see a joke, so they are loath to let it go. He had proposed on this, of all nights of the year, to push his joke of the ballroom into chamber- practice. Some further silly babble about 'wifely duty* was to extenuate his great essay. If jokes had been his common food, I suppose he would have known the smell of a musty one. As it was, he had to suffer in the fire which old Huntly and his Hamilton-marriage had lit : his joke was burnt up as it left his lips. For the Queen's words, when she found him, clung about him like flames about an oil-cask, scorched him, blistered him, shrivelled him up. He fell before them, literally, and lay, dry with fear, at her discretion. She spurned him with her heel. * Oh, you weed,' she said, * not worthy to be burned, go, or I send for the maids with besoms to wash you into the kennel.' He crept away to the shipping next day, pressing only the hand of Des-Essars, who could hardly refuse him. *His only success on this miserable occasion,' the young man wrote afterwards, * was to divert the Queen's rage from Monsieur de Gordon, and to turn her thoughts, by ever so little more, in the direction of the English marriage. He was one of those fools whose follies serve to show every man more or less ridiculous, just as a false sonnet makes sonneteering jejune.'

Lent opened, therefore, with omens; and with more

CH. VI THE FOOL'S WHIP 89

came Lady Day and the new year. The Gordons, being summoned, did not answer ; the Gordons, then, were put to the horn. The Queen was bitter as winter against them, with no desire but to have them at her knees. As for lovers and their loves, after George Gordon, after the crowning shame of Monsieur de Ch4telard, ice -girdled Artemis was not chaster than she. My Lord of Bothwell, after an essay or two, shrugged and sought the border ; the Queen was all for high alliances just now, and Mr. Secretary, their apostle, was in favour. He was hopeful, as he told Mary Fleming, to see two Queens at York ; and who could say what might not come of that ? And while fair Fleming wondered he was most hopeful, for like a delicate tree he needed genial air to make him bud. You saw him at such seasons at his best — a shrewd, nervous man, with a dash of poetry in him. The Queen of England always inspired him ; he was frequently eloquent upon the theme. His own Queen talked freely about her *good sister,' wrote her many civil letters, and treasured a few stately rqplies. One wonders, reading them now, that they should have found warmer quarters than a pigeon- hole, that they could ever have lain upon Queen Mary's bosom and been beat upon by her ardent heart Yet so it was. They know nothing of Queen Mary who know her not as the Huntress, never to be thrown out by a cold scent Mr. Secretary, knowing her well, harped as long as she would dance. * Ah, madam, there is a golden trader ! Thence you may win an argosy indeed. What a bargain to be struck there! Sister kingdoms, sister queens — oh, if the Majesty of England were but lodged in a man's heart ! But so in essence it is. Her royal heart is like a strong fire, leaping within a frame of steel. And your Grace's should be the jewel which that fire would guard, the Cor Cordis^ the Secret of the Rose, the Sweetness in the Strong ! '

Mary Fleming, glowing to hear such periods, saw her mistress catch light from them.

* You speak well and truly,' said Queen Mary. * I would I had the Queen of England for my husband ; I would love her well.' She spoke softly, blushing like a maiden.

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THE QUEEN'S QUAIR

BK. I

'Sister and spouse!' cries Lethington with ardour. * Sister and spouse ! '

For the sake of some such miraculous consummation she gave up all thoughts of Don Carlos, put away the Archduke, King Charles, the Swedish prince. Her sister of England should marry her how she would. Lethington, on the day it was decided that Sir James Melvill should go to London upon the business, knelt before his sovereign in a really honest transport, transfigured in the glory of his own fancy. * I salute on my knees the Empress of the Isles ! I touch the sacred stem of the Tree of the New World ! '

Very serious, very subdued, very modest, the Queen cast virginal eyes to her lap.

*God willing, Mr. Secretary, I will do His pleasure in all things,' she said.

The Lord James, observing her melting mood, made a stroke for the Earldom of Moray. Were the Gordons to defy the Majesty of Scotland? With these great hopes new bom, with old shames dead and buried — never, never ! The Queen said she would go to the North and hound the Gordons out.

CHAPTER VII

GORDON'S BANE

On the morning of Lammas Day the Queen heard mass in the Chapel Royal with a special intention, known only to herself. Red mass it should have been, since she felt sore need of the Holy Ghost ; but she had given up the solemn ornament of music for the sake of peace. So Father Lesley read the office before the very few faithful : her maids, Erskine, Herries, the esquires, the pages, the French Am- bassador, the Ambassador of Savoy — with him a certain large, full-blooded Italian, of whom there will be something to say anon. Mr. Knox had been scaring off the waverers of late : the Catholic religion was languid in the realm.

She knelt before the altar on her faldstool very stiffly, and looked more solitary than she felt Her high mood and high endeavour still holding, there was but one man in Scotland who could make her feel her isolation, make her pity herself so nearly that the tears filled her eyes. Her brother James and his party, ostentatiously aloof, she could reckon with. All was said of them long ago by that old friend of hers now facing God in the mass : * Your brother stands on the left of your throne ; but he looks for ever to the right' With this key to the cipher of my Lord James, what mystery in his sayings or doings? Then the grim Mr. Knox, who had worked her secret desires, and since then railed at her, scolded her, made her cry — she had his measure too. He liked her through all, and she trusted him in spite of all : at a pinch she could win him over. Whom, then, need she consider? The Earl of Bothwell—

91

92 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk. i

ah, the Earl of Bothwell, who laughed at everything, and had looked drolly on at her efforts to be a queen, and chosen to do nothing to help or hinder : there was a man to be feared indeed ! She never knew herself less a queen or more a girl than when he was before her. Laughed he or frowned, was he eloquent or dumb as a fish, he intimidated her, diminished her, drove her cowering into herself to queen it alone. Christ was not so near, God not so far off, as this confident, free-living, shameless lord. Therefore now, because she dared not falter in what she was about to do, or see herself less than she desired to be, she had sent him into Liddesdale to hold the Justice-Court, and had not cared even to receive him when he came to take his leave. Lady Argyll, who had stood in her place, reported that he had gone out gaily, humming a French air. With him safely away, she had faced her duty— duty of a Prince, as she conceived it. And here she knelt in prayer, prone before the Holy Ghost — solitary (but that is the safeguard of the King !) — and searched the altar for a sign of assurance.

Over that altar hung Christ, enigmatic upon His cross. The red priest bent his head down to his book, and made God apace.

The Queen's lips moved. * My Saviour Christ, I offer Thee the intention of my heart, a clean oblation. If I do amiss in error, O Bread of Heaven, visit it not upon me. I have been offended, I have been disobeyed ; tliey call upon me to claim my just requital. But be not Thou offended with xne, my Lord, and pardon Thou my dis- obedience. As for my punishment, I suffer it in seeking to punish.'

It is not often that women pray in words : an urgency, a subjection, a passionate reception is the most they do — and the best But she prayed so now, because she felt the need of justifying herself before Heaven, and the ability to do it For Bothwell was in far Liddesdale, and she on her throne.

In three days' time she was to go to the North ; and, though the country knew it not, she would go in force to punish the Gordons. You may judge by her prayers

CH.vn GORDON'S BANE 93

whether she was satisfied with the work. Plainly she was not Her anger had had time to cool ; she might have forgotten the very name of the clan, except that their men had had honest faces, and that two of them had cer- tainly loved her once. But she had not been allowed to forget : the record remained, held up ever before her eyes in the white hand of Lord James. Contumacy ! Con- tumacy! Old Huntly had been traitor before, when he trafficked with the enemies of her mother, and tried to sell herself to the English king. The Gordons would not surrender; they had mated with the Hamiltons, a stock next to hers for the throne. Was there not a shameful plot here? Would she not be stifled between these two houses? Yes, yes, she knew all that But they were Catholics, they had shown her honest faces, two of them had loved her. She was not satisfied ; she must have a sign from heaven.

God was made, the bell proclaimed Him enthroned, Queen Mary bowed her head. Now, now, if the Gordons were true men, let God make a sign ! The tale was told that once, when a priest lifted up the Host above his head, the thin film dissolved, and took flesh in the shape of a naked child, who stood, burning white, upon the man's two hands. Let some such marvel fall now I Intimacies between God and the Prince had been known. She hid her face, laid down her soul ; the vague swam over her, the dark — a swooning, drowning sense. In that, for a moment, as vivid clouds chased each other across her fleld, she saw a face, a shape — ^mocking red mouth, vivacious, satirical hands, the gleam of two twinkling eyes : Bothwell, hued like a fiend, shadowing the world. She shuddered ; God passed over, as the bell called up the people. With them she lifted her head, stiffened herself. The spell was broken. Without being more superstitious than her brethren, she may be pardoned for finding in this experience an ominous beginning of adventure.

Nevertheless, she so faced the heights of* her task that, on the day appointed, she set out as bravely as to a hunting of stags. Jeddart pikes, bowmen from the Forest, her Lothian bodyguard — she had some five hundred men about her; too many for a progress, too few to make

94 THE QUEEN'S QUAIR bk, i

war. She herself rode in hunting trim, with two maids, two pages, two esquires ; her brother, of course, in com- mand ; with him, of course, the Secretary. At fixed points along the road certain lords joined her : Atholl at Stirling, Glencairn and Ruthven at Perth, these with their com- panies. Lying at Coupar- Angus, at Glamis, at Edzell, her spirits rose as she breasted the rising country, saw the cloud- shadowed hills, the swollen rivers, the wind-swept trees, the sullen moors, the rocks. She grew happy even, for motion, newness, and physical exertion always excited her, and she was never happy unless she was excited. No fatigue daunted her. She sat out the driving days of rain, bent neither to the heat nor to the cold fog. She was always in front, always looking forward, seemed like the keen breath of war, driven before it as the wind by a rain- storm. Lethington likened her to Diana on Taygetus shrilling havoc ; but the Lord James said : ' Such simili- tudes are distasteful. We are serious men upon a serious business.' She rode astraddle like a young man, longed for a breastplate and steel bonnet. She made Ruthven exercise her with the broadsword, teach her to stamp her foot and cry, * Ha ! a touch ! ' and cajoled her brother into letting her sleep one night afield. Folded in a military plaid, so indeed she did ; and watched with thrills the stars shoot their autumn flights, and listened to the owls calling each other as they coursed the shrew-mice over the moor. She pillowed her head on Mary Livingstone's knee at last, and fell asleep at about three o'clock in the morning.

In the grey mirk — sharply cold, and a fine mist drizzling — Lethington and his master came to rouse her. Mary Livingstone lifted a finger of warning. The Queen was soundly asleep, smiling a little, with parted lips and the hasty breathing of a child. Mary Seton, too, was deep, her face buried in her arm. The two men looked down at the group.

* Come away, my lord : give them time,' said the Secretary.

But my Lord James did not hear him. He stood broodingly, muttering to himself: *A girl's frolic — this romping, fond girl ! And Scotland's neck for her footstool

CH. VII GORDON'S BANE 95

— and earnest men for her pastime. O King eternal, is it just? Man ! ' he said aloud, * there's no reason in this.'

Mr. Secretary misunderstood him, not observing his wild looks. * Give them a short half-hour, my lord. There are two of them sleeping ; and this poor watcher hath the need of it'

The Lord James turned upon him. * Who sought to have women sleeping here ? Are men to wait for the like of this? Are men to wait for ever? She should have counted the cost. I shall waken her. Ay! let her have the truth.'

* She will wake soon enough,' says Lethington, * and have the truth soon enough.'

The Lord James gave him one keen glance. * I com- mand here, Mr. Secretary, under the Queen's authority. Bid them sound.'

The trumpet rang ; the Queen stretched herself, moved her head, yawned, and sat up. She was wide awake directly, laughed at Livingstone for looking so glum, at Seton's tumbled hair. She kissed them both, said her prayers with Father Roche, and was ready when the order to march was given.

When she came to Aberdeen she was told that a mes- senger from the Earl of Huntly was waiting for her with his chief's humble duty, and a prayer that she would lodge in his castle of Strathbogie. This was very insolent or very foolish: she declined to receive the man. Let the Earl and his son Findlater render themselves up at Stirling Castle forthwith, she would receive them there. No more tidings came directly ; but she learned from her brother news of the country which made her cheeks tingle. It was the confident belief of all the Gordon kindred, she was given to know, that her Majesty had come into the North to marry Sir John Gordon of Findlater. He was to be created Earl of Moray and Duke of Rothesay to that end. True news or false, she was in the mood to believe it, and cried out, with hot tears in her eyes, that she could have no peace until that rogue's head was off. Needing no