Chapter XII: Epithalamium: End of All Maids’ Adventure

He fell ill of measles, the young prince, before they could leave Wemyss—measles followed by much weakness, sweating, and ague; and though all her whispering world—but the few—might wonder, nothing could keep her from the proud uses of wifehood. She took her place by his bed early—pale with care, yet composed—and kept it till past midnight. It was beautiful to see her, with rank and kingship cast aside, more dignified by her little private fortune, more a queen for her enclosed realm. For now she swayed a sick-room, and was absolute there: let seditious murmurings and alarms toss their pikes beyond the border.

And indeed they did. Her secret marriage had been so well kept, the Court fairly hummed with scandal; and the simple truth was given a dog’s death that romantic tales might thrive. It was commonly said that if she married him now it would only be because shame would drive her. The Earl of Morton went about with this clacking on his tongue; plain men like Atholl and Herries looked all ways for a pardon upon the doting Queen. In their company the Earl of Moray lifted up deprecating hands; he agreed with the Earl of Morton, advised Atholl and Herries to pray without ceasing. The winds were blowing as he required them; but this sickness was vexatious, with the delays it brought. Time is of the essence of the contract, even if that be only between a vainglorious youth and a rope. Mr. Secretary wrote from England that the Queen of that country was implacably against the marriage; it was possible even now that it might be stopped. But it must on no account be stopped.

This was, in early May, the plain view of the Earl of Moray: that the thing must be publicly done, and soon done, in order that his schemes should bear fruit. It is an odd, almost inexplicable fact that he was to change his whole mind in the course of a few weeks, and for no deeper reason than a word lightly let fall by the Queen, his half-sister. But what a word that was to the bastard of a king! It was the word _King_.

There came to Wemyss, in the midst of these measles and scandalous whisperings, a certain Murray of Tullibardine, a friend of Bothwell’s—him and one Pringle. They came together, and yet separately: Pringle with griefs to be healed—that he, being a servant of my Lord Bothwell’s, had been summarily dismissed with kicks on a sensitive part; Tullibardine as a friend, frankly to sue his friend’s pardon. My Lord Moray refused to help him, having neither love nor use for a Bothwell, but he got to the Queen by the back stairs and put his client’s case. However, she scarcely listened to him. Busy as she was, it was strange to see how far away from her ken the dread Hepburn had drifted.

‘From the Earl of Bothwell—you? What has he to report of himself—and by you?’

Tullibardine spoke of duty, forgiveness, the clemency of the prince, while the Queen stirred the broth in her hand.

‘I never sent him to France,’ she said, ‘but to the Castle of Edinburgh rather. He set me at nought when he fled this country. Let him return to the place I put him in, and we will think about duty, forgiveness, and the prince’s clemency. I bear him no more ill-will than he has put in me, and he can take it out when he pleases.’

‘I thank your Majesty,’ said Tullibardine, ‘and my noble friend will thank you.’

‘He has only himself to thank, so far as I see,’ she replied, and dismissed him before the broth could get cold.

Meantime the Earl of Moray had held a godly conversation with afflicted Pringle. Pringle had much to say: as that, of all men living, the Lord Bothwell hated two—his good lordship of Moray and Mr. Secretary. He had sworn to be the death of each when he returned.

The Earl of Moray compressed his lips, straightened himself, and cleared his throat.

‘I fear for him, Pringle,’ he said, ‘the wild, misgoverned, glorious young man. I cannot charge myself with any offence against him, and yet I remember that when I was in France he girded at me more than once. But I am accustomed in such variancy to hold my plain course. Pringle, that was a desperate gentleman. He had to be forbid the Court.’

‘True, my lord,’ says Pringle, ‘and your lordship knows to what abominable usages he hath——’

‘Pray, Pringle, pray, no more!’

Pringle was now in the painful position of having staked out a short road and finding it denied him. ‘I must whisper in your lordship’s ear. I must make so bold.’

‘Man, I refuse you. Heinous living be far from me!’

‘My lord, I have heard the Lord Bothwell speak of the Queen’s grace in a manner——’

‘Ay, it is like enough, poor Pringle. The wicked man seeth wickedness all over.’

‘He spake of the Queen, my lord—in your ear——’

He breathed it low, a vile accusation concerning the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Queen—his niece, and then a girl of eighteen.

The Earl cowed him with a look. ‘Go, Pringle, go! This talk should never have been held between us. You have misused my charity. Go, I say.’

Pringle shivered out.

In his time the Earl of Moray saw the Queen, and, after due preparation, chose to tarnish her ears with the tale.

But she was not at all tarnished. From her safe seat, with but a party-wall between her husband and her, she received it brightly.

‘Why, what a ragged tongue he hath! The poor, proud Cardinal! Did he not love me? I believe he always did.’

‘Madam,’ said her brother, ‘you interpret gently. This makes the slanderer’s damnation the deeper.’

She laughed. ‘It is plain, brother, that you know little of France. In France the truth goes for nothing, but the jest is all. My Lord Bothwell has been much in France.’

‘A jest, madam? This a jest?’

‘It is quite in their manner. I remember the old King——’ She broke off suddenly. ‘Oh, brother, my King is more at ease! This morning his fever left him, and there broke a great sweat.’

‘I rejoice,’ said he—‘I rejoice. But touching this horrible railer—if he should crave leave to return——’

‘He has craved it already,’ replied the Queen. ‘I answered that if he choose to come back to his prison he may do it. But not otherwise. Brother, I must go to the King.’

* * * * *

The King! We were there, then; and it galled him like a rowel. Although she used it warily, and only with the nine persons who were privy, he could not bear the word; for every time he heard it he was stung into remembering that he ought to have foreseen it and had not. It is to be admitted that it had never once crossed his mind—neither the word nor the thing; astute, large-minded, wide-ranging as he was, he was also that unimaginative, prim-thinking man who has pigeon-holes for the categories, knows nothing of passion that breaks all rules, nor can conceive how loyalty is like meat to women in love, and humility like wine. Lethington could have told him these things, the Italian could have told him, any of the maids; and he never to have guessed at them! Dangerously mortified at the discovery, his disgust with himself and the fact worked together into one great distemper. This it was which threw him out of his balance, and led him presently to the greatest length he ever went; but at present it was only gathering in him. It made him doubtful, distrustful of himself and all; and when he looked about for supports he could find none to his taste. One folly after another! How he had cut away his friends! There was Lethington in England. There was the Italian, who knew so much. He sickened at the thought of that capable ruffian who had helped him hasten the crowning of ‘the King.’ Very possibly—very certainly, it seemed to him now, brooding over it in stillness and the dark—very possibly the ruin of his life had been laid that night when he had sought out the creature in his den and bought him with a diamond. Argyll was here, Rothes, Glencairn, and their like, and Morton the Chancellor, whom he only half trusted. Besides, Morton was cousin of this flagrant ‘King,’ and would rise as he rose. On the whole, and for want of better, he consorted with Argyll and his friends, and dared go so far as this, to tell them that he had fears of the marriage.

‘I could have wished,’ he said to Argyll, ‘a livelier sense of favours done in so young a man; also that my sister might have judged more soberly how far to meet him. If men of age and known probity had been consulted!’

Glencairn, a passably honest man, and undoubtedly a pious man, said tentatively here, that no lord of the Council could be found to support the Prince. As for the Queen’s grace——

‘She has been unhappily rash,’ says Moray; ‘I cannot think more. Maidenly lengths would have become her, a queenly regard, but surely no more.’ He turned to Argyll. ‘Frankly, brother-in-law, Mr. Knox should not hear of these late doings—of these bedside ministrations, these transports, these fits of self-communing, this paltering with the tempter, this doffing of regalities. I pray, I pray for Scotland!’

‘The gowk’s a papist,’ says Argyll, a plain man.

‘He is young, brother-in-law; that we remember always.’

‘He stinks of pride,’ says Argyll,—‘sinful, lusty pride of blood. If this marriage be made we shall all rue it.’

The Earl of Moray clapped a hand to each of his shoulders.

‘Brother-in-law, pray for Scotland!’

‘Oh, ay,’ says Argyll, ‘and put an edge to my Andrew Ferrara.’

* * * * *

How she lingered over him, prayed over him, watched every petulant twitching of his limbs, no one could know altogether save Mary Sempill, and she had affairs of her own to consider—a wife who knew she was going to be a mother. But for this proud preoccupation, she might have seen how touchingly the Queen made the most of her treasure, and how all the ardour which had hurried her into wedlock was now whipped up again to prove it bliss. Was he fretful—and was he not? It was the fever in his dear bones. Was he gross-mannered? Nay, but one must be tender of young blood. Did he choose to have his Englishmen about him, his Archie Douglas to tell him salt tales, while she sat with her maids and waited? Well, well, a man must have men with him now and again, and is never the better husband for cosseting. When they urged her to be a queen, she lowered her eyes and said she was a wife. This raised an outcry.

‘He is, he can only be, your consort, madam.’

‘I am his, you mean,’ said she. ‘The man chooses the woman. There are no crowns in the bridal bed, and none in heaven. Naked go we to both.’

Mary Sempill wrung her hands over talk of the sort. ‘Out, alas! My foolish, fond, sweet lass!’

But Mary Fleming considered, nursing her cheek in the way she had. ‘The strength of a man overrides all your politics, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘The Salic Law is the law of nature, I have heard men say.’

‘God smite this youth if he try it!’ said Sempill fiercely. ‘He’ll set the heather afire and burn us all in our beds. And you, Fleming, will have need of mercy in your turn, if you hearken to your grey-faced Lethington.’

‘Mr. Secretary has a very noble heart, Mary. I hope I may say the same of your Master.’

Mary Sempill sniffed. ‘My Master, as you call him, has a head for figures. He can cipher you two and two. And he says of your Lethington that he is working mischief in England.’

Mary Fleming rose with spirit to this challenge. ‘I cannot believe it. You are angry with me because you are vexed with the King.’

Then it was Mary Sempill to bounce away. ‘The King! Never use that word to me, woman. There shall be no King in Scotland till my mistress bears him.’

But she was talking without her book.

They moved to Stirling as soon as the young lord was mended; and thither came the Earl of Lennox, in a high taking—foxy, close-eyed, crop-bearded, fussy and foolish—to pay his respects to the Prince his son. Never was a more disastrous combination made: they cut the Court in half, as shears a length of cloth. The garrulity of the old man set everybody on edge; then came the insolent son, to prove the truth even worse than they had feared. His father egged him on to preposterous lengths, intolerable behaviour; so the ‘pretty cockerel,’ as they called him in France, made wild work in the hill-town. He quarrelled so fiercely with my Lord Rothes that Davy had to pull him off by main force, and then he drew his dagger on the Lord Justice Clerk, who came to his lodging with a message from the Queen.

‘Tell your mistress,’ he had cried out to that astonished officer, ‘that I pay honour to none but the honourable. You have come here with lies in your throat. She sent me no such message. You are a very dirty fellow.’

Archie Douglas put in his oar. ‘No, no, sir. You jest with the Lord Justice Clerk—but your jest is too broad.’

‘By God, man,’ says the Prince, ‘this jest of mine is narrow at the point. Let him come on and taste the forky tongue of it.’

The Lord Justice Clerk was too flustered to be offended at the moment; but when he had gained the calm of the street he shuddered to recall the scene. Her Majesty must be informed of every circumstance: flesh and blood could not endure such affronts. It needed all her Majesty’s cajolery to salve the wounded man, and more than she had over to comfort herself when he had gone away mollified.

Lord Ruthven was one of the Prince’s intimates at this time, a malign influence; and the everlasting Italian was another. Signior Davy, at home in all the chambers of the house, used to sit on the edge of the young man’s bed and pare his nails while he talked philosophy and statecraft. It was he who tempered the storm which had nearly maddened the Lord Justice Clerk.

‘Your lordship is in a fair way to the haven,’ he said. ‘I tell you honestly you will get on no quicker for this choler. You must needs be aware that her Majesty will have no rest until you and she are publicly wedded. She is fretting herself to strings under that desire. What then is my advice to your lordship? Why, to sit very still, and to insist with your respectable father that he hold his tongue. I speak plainly; but it is to my friend and patron.’

The Prince was not offended—but he was obstinate.

‘Speak as plain as you please, Davy, and deal for me as warily as you can. The patent should be sealed.’

That was the root of the quarrel—his patent of creation to be Duke of Rothesay. The Queen had promised it to him, but there had been vexed debate over it in the Council. It was a title for kings’ sons, and had always been so. The Earl of Moray vehemently opposed; the Argylls, Glencairns, and others of his friends followed him; they had hopes also of the Chancellor. At the minute, therefore, although the Queen had insisted even unto tears, she had not been able to get her way. So she pretended to give over the effort, meaning, of course, to work round about for it. She had seen the Chancellor’s wavering: if she could gain him she would have much. All she wanted for herself was time, all from the Prince was patience. But the furious fool had none to lend her.

When the Italian had done his work upon his nails—the rough with the knife, the rounding-off with his teeth—he resumed his spoken thoughts.

‘Your patent,’ he said, ‘is as good as sealed. The Queen is at work upon it in ways which are past your lordship’s finding out. For the love of mercy, be patient: you little know what you are risking by this intemperance. Why, with patience you will gain what no patent of her Majesty’s can give you: that little matter of kingship, which, in such a case as yours, goes only by proclamation and——’

My lord pricked up his ears to this royal word. ‘Ha! In a good hour, Master David!’

‘Good enough, when it comes,’ says Davy; ‘but you did not allow me to finish. Proclamation—and acclamation, I was about to add; for one is as needed as the other.’

This was a fidgety addition.

‘Pooh!’ cried the Prince, ‘the pack follows the horn.’

He set the Italian’s shoulders to work. ‘I advise you not to count upon it, my lord. In this country there is no pack of hounds, but a flock—many flocks—of sheep. And they follow the shepherd, you must know. Therefore you must be prudent; let me say, more prudent. The Queen comes to you too much; you go to her too little. It is she that pays the court, where it should be you. _Dio mio!_ It is not decent. It is madness.’

‘She is fond of me, Davy. The truth is, she is over-fond of me.’

Signior Davy stopped himself just in time. He buried his exclamation in a prodigious shrug.

The doings of the Lennoxes, father and son, which scared the Court so finely, were the Earl of Moray’s only hope. He, in truth, was very near finding himself in the position of a man who should have lit a fire to keep wolves from his door. The flames catch the eaves and burn his house down: behold him without shelter, and the wolves coming on! This is exactly his own case. Kingship for the young man, by whose entangling he had hoped to entangle his sister, was a noose round his own neck—the mere threat of it was a noose. If he furthered it he was ruined; if he opposed it—at this hour of the day—he might equally be ruined. All his hope lay in England. Let the Queen of England send for her runaway subjects, and then—why, he could begin again. As day succeeded to day, and favour to favour—the dukedom conferred, the match in every one’s mouth, the Court at Edinburgh, the Chapel Royal in fair view—he worked incessantly. He dared not try the Italian again, lest the impudent dog should grin in his face; but he secured Argyll and his friends, the Duke of Châtelherault and his; he wrote to Lethington, to Mr. Cecil, to the Earl of Leicester, to Queen Elizabeth. And so it befel that, one certain morning, English Mr. Randolph faced the Lennoxes with his mistress’s clear commands. Father and son were to return to England, or——

_Quos ego_—in fact; much too late for the fair. They took the uncompromising message each after his kind: Lennox, white-haired, ape-faced and fussy, sitting in his deep leather chair, rolling his palms over the knobs of it, swinging his feet free of the ground; the Prince his son stiff as a rod, standing, with one hand to his padded hip—blockish and surly as a rogue mule.

Lennox spoke first. ‘Hey, Master Randolph!’—his little naked eyes were like pin-pricks—‘Hey, Master Randolph, I dare not do it. No, no. It’s not in the power of man living to do the like of it.’

Randolph shifted his scrutiny. The Prince was angry, therefore bold; assured, therefore haughty.

‘And I, Randolph,’ he said, ‘tell you fairly that go I will not.’

Randolph became dry. ‘I hope my lord, for a better answer to the Queen your sovereign. Will and Shall are bad travelling companions for a legate. I urge once more your duty upon you.’

‘Duty!’ cried the flushed youth: ‘I own to no duty but Queen Mary’s, and I never will. As to the other Queen, your mistress, who grudges me my fortune, it is no wonder that she needs me. You will understand wherefore in a few days’ time. I do not intend to return: there is your answer. I am very well where I am, and likely to be better yet anon. So I purpose to remain. There is your answer, which seems to me a good one.’

Randolph turned his back and left them. When he saw the Earl of Moray he said that he had done his best to serve him; and that, although he had no hope of staying the marriage, his lordship might count upon the friendship of England in all enterprises he might think well to engage in ‘for the welfare of both realms.’ This was cold comfort.

Shortly after this disappointment the careworn lord got into a wrangle with the Prince in a public place—not a difficult thing to do. It began with the young man’s loud rebuke of Mr. Knox, who (said he) had called him ‘a covetous clawback,’ and whose ears he threatened to crop with a pair of shears. Beginning in the vestibule of the Council-chamber, it was continued on the open cawsey in everybody’s hearing. There was heat; the younger may have raised his hand against the elder, or he may not. The Earl, at any rate, declared that he went in fear of his life. Then came the hour, most memorable, when he saw the Queen alone.

He was sent for, and he came, as he told her at once, ‘with his life in his hand.’

She asked him who would touch his hand, except to take it and shake it?

‘One, madam,’ he replied darkly, ‘who is too near your Majesty for my honour or——’ and there he stopped.

‘Or mine, would you say?’ she flashed back at him—one of her penetrative flashes, following a quick turn of the head. Remember, she knew nothing of his brawl with the Prince.

He disregarded her _riposte_, and pursued his suspicions. ‘Madam, madam, I very well know—for I still have friends in Scotland—in what danger I stand. I very well know who talked together against me behind the back-gallery at Perth, and can guess at what was said, and how this late discreditable scene was laid——’

‘Oh, you guess this, brother! you guess that!’ the Queen snapped at him; ‘I am weary of your guesses against my friends. There was the Earl of Bothwell, whom you guessed your mortal enemy; now I suppose it is the Prince, my husband. Do you think all Scotland finds you in the way? It is easy for you to remove the suspicion.’

His looks reproached her. ‘Did you send for me, madam, to wound me?’

‘No, no. You have served me well. I am not unmindful.’ Her eyes grew gentle as she remembered Wemyss and the hasty mysteries of the night—the hurry, the whispered urgings, the wild-beating heart. She held out her hand, shyly, as befitted recognition of a blushful service. ‘I can never quarrel with you, brother, knowing what you know, remembering what you have seen.’

Whither was fled the finer sense of the man? He misunderstood her grossly, believing that she feared his knowledge. He did not take her proffered hand—she drew it back after a while, slowly.

‘You say well, sister,’ he answered, with cold reserve. ‘There should be no quarrel, nor need there be, while you remember me—and yourself.’

‘It was not at all in my mind, I assure you,’ she told him, with an air of dismissing the foolish thing; and went on, in the same breath, to speak of the vexatious news from England—as if he and she were of the same opinion about that! Her ‘good sister,’ she said, was holding strange language, requiring the return of ‘subjects in contumacy,’ showing herself offended at unfriendly dealing, and what not—letters, said Queen Mary, which required speedy answer, and could have but one answer. The Contract of Matrimony, in short, had been prepared by my Lord Morton, was ready to be signed; the high parties were more than ready. Should she send for the treaty? She wished her brother to see it. That was why she had summoned him.

He was seldom at a loss, for when direction failed him he had a store of phrases ready to eke out the time. But now that he was plumply face to face with what he had come both to hate and to fear, he stammered and looked all about.

She rang her hand-bell, and bade the page call Signior Davy ‘and the parchment-writing’; then, while she waited in matronly calm, sedately seated, hands in lap, he wrestled with his alarms, suspicions, grievances, disgusts; saw them flare before him like shapes—lewd, satyr shapes with their tongues out; lost control of himself, and broke out.

‘The marriage-band, you speak of? Ah—ah—but there is much to say anent such a thing—a tedious inquiry! Madam—madam—I should have exhibited to you before—the fault is in me that I did not——There is a common sense abroad—no man can fight a nation—it is thought that the case is altered. Yes, yes! Monarchs—you that be set in authority over men—are to be warned by them that stand about your thrones, monished and exhorted. ’Tis your duty to listen, theirs to impart: duty to God and the conscience. I am sore at a loss for words——’

Probably she had not been listening very closely, or heeding his agitation. She stopped him with a little short laugh.

‘Nay, ’tis not words you lack. Find courage, brother.’

‘Why, madam,’ said he, ‘and so I must. “It is expedient,” saith the Book, “that one man die——”! What a whole nation dreads, there must be some one to declare—even though, in so doing, he should seem to stultify himself. Oh, madam, is not the case altered from what it promised at first? Alas, what hope can we now have—seeing what we have seen—that this young man will prove a setter-forth of Christ’s religion? Or how can we suppose that he will ensue what we most desire—I mean the peace of God upon true believers? Do they know him in England and suppose that of him? Then how can we suppose it? Why, what token hath he showed towards the faithful but that of rancour? What professions hath he made, save them of mass-mongering, false prophecy, idolatry, loving darkness, shunning the light? Oh, madam, I am sore to say these things——’

The Italian entered with his parchments before he could hurry to a close or she stop him with an outcry.

It needed not so quick an eye to sense the brewing of a storm. The Queen sat back in her chair, cowering in the depths of it. Her eyes were fastened upon a little glass bowl which stood on the table—in a broody stare which saw nothing but midnight. The Earl, white to the edge of his lips, was waving his hands in the air. Bright and confident, the Italian stood at the door; but my lord, in his agitation, turned upon him. ‘Man, you’re a trespasser. Off with you! The Queen is in council—off!’

‘_Scusì_,’ says Davy, ‘I am summoned. _Eccomi._’

He was dramatically quiet; he woke the Queen.

She started from her chair and ran to him. ‘Oh, David, David, he denies me! Perjury! Perjury!’

‘Sovereign lady,’ said the Italian, ‘here is one who will never deny you anything.’

As he knelt my lord recovered his dignity. ‘It is not convenient, madam——’

Ah, but she faced about. ‘Convenient! convenient! To end what you have begun? You! that led me to him! You that drove us in with your breath like a sheet of flame!’

He put up his hand, driven to defend himself. ‘Nay, madam, nay! It cannot be said. My design was never adopted—it was misunderstood. I bowed to no idols—that be far from me. I was outside the door. I neither know what was done within your chapel, nor afterwards within any chambers of the house. My only office was——’

She held herself by the throat—all gathered together, as if she would spring at him.

Signior Davy looked mildly from one to the other. ‘_Scusì_,’ he said, his voice soft as milk, ‘but your lordship was not outside _all_ doors. I know to a point how much your lordship knows.’

The Earl gasped for breath.

At this point the Queen seemed to have got strength through the hands. She let them down from her neck, as if the spasm had passed. Her heart spoke—a lyric cry. ‘He brought me to the chamber door, and kissed my cheek, and wished me joy!’ She spoke like one enrapt, a disembodied sprite, as if the soul could have seen the body in act, and now rehearse the tale. ‘He led me to the chamber door, and kissed my cheek! “Sweet night,” says he, “sweet sister! See how your dreams come true.” And “Burning cheek!” says he; and “Fie, fie, the wild blood of a lass!” I think my cheek did prophesy, and burn for the shame to come.’ She turned them a tragic shape—drawn mouth, great eyes, expository hands. ‘Why, sirs, if a groom trick a poor wench and deny her her lines, you put her up in a sheet, and freeze the vice out of her with your prying eyes! Get you a white sheet for Queen Mary and stare the devil out of her! Go you: why do you wait? Ah, pardon, I had forgot!’ She exhibited one to the other. ‘This man has no time to spare that he may chastise the naughty. The throned is made shameful that the throne may be emptied. Give him a leg, David; he will stand your friend for it.’

‘Dear madam! sweet madam!’ murmured the Italian.

But she had left him now for the white skulker by the door. ‘Oh you, you, you, in your hurry!’ she mocked him, ‘deny me not my shroud and candle. For if you are to sit in my seat I will stand at the kirk gate and cry into all hearts that go by, “See me here as I stand in my shroud. I am the threshold he trod upon. He reached his degree o’er the spoils of a girl.”’ She came closer to him, peering and whispering. ‘And I will be nearer, my lord, whenas you are dead. I will flit over the graves of the kings my ancestors till I find the greenest, and there shall I sit o’ nights, chattering your tale to the men that be there with their true-born about them. “Ho, you that were lawful kings of Scotland, listen now to me!” I shall say. And they will lift their heads in their vaults and lean upon their bony elbows at ease and hear of your shameful birth and life of lies and treasons, and most miserable death. And you in your cerements will lie close, I think, my brother, lest the very dead turn their backs on you.’

She stopped, struggling for breath. The dangerous ecstasy held her still, like a _rigor_; but he, who with shut eyes and fending arms had been avoiding, now lifted his head.

‘You misjudge me—you are too hasty——’

As a woman remote from him and his affairs she answered him, ‘Not so. But I have been too slow.’

‘Your Majesty should see——’

She sprang into vehemence, transfigured once more by fierce and terrible beauty.

‘I do see. You are a liar. I see you through and through, and the lies, like snakes, in your heart. I will never willingly see you again.’

Still he tried to reason with her. ‘If accommodation of joint griefs——’

‘None! There can be none. Where do we join, sir? Tell me, and I will burn the part.’

‘Dear sir,’ said the Italian, as she paced the room, gathering more eloquence—‘dear sir, I advise you to depart.’

The Earl was stung by the familiarity. ‘Be silent, fellow. Madam, suffer me one more word.’

‘You drown in your words. Therefore, yes.’

He gathered his wits together for this poor opportunity. ‘I have been misjudged,’ he said, ‘and know very well to whom I stand debtor for that. Nevertheless, I would still serve your Grace in chamber and in hall, so far as my conscience will suffer me. I say, that is my desire. But if you drive me from you; if I am turned from my father’s birthright——I beseech you to consider with what painful knowledge I depart. If I have witnessed unprincely dealing in high places——’

She openly scorned him. ‘Drown, sir, drown! No, stay. I will throw you a plank.’

She rang the bell. Des-Essars answered. ‘If my lord the Chancellor is in hall, or in the precincts in any part, I desire his presence here. If he is abroad, send Mr. Erskine—and with speed.’

The boy withdrew. She sat, staring at nothing. The two men stood. Absolute silence.

* * * * *

The Chancellor happened to be by. He was found in the tennis-court, calling the game. Much he pondered the summons, and scratched in his red beard.

‘Who is with the Queen, laddie?’

He was told, the Italian and my Lord of Moray. Making nothing of it, he whistled for his servant, who lounged with others at the door.

‘Hurry, Jock Scott! my cloak, sword, and bonnet. At what hour is the Council?’

‘My lord, at noon.’

He went off, muttering, ‘What’s in the wind just now?’ and as he went by the great entry saw the guard running, and heard a shout: ‘Room for the Prince’s grace!’ He could see the plumes of the riders and the press about them. ‘It’ll be a new cry before long, I’m thinking,’ he said to himself, and went upstairs.

Entering that silent room, he bent his knee to the Queen. She did not notice his reverence, but said at once: ‘My Lord Chancellor, I shall not sit at the Council to-day. You will direct the clerk to add a _postill_[3] to the name of my Lord of Moray here.’

‘Madam, with good will. What shall his _postill_ be?’

‘You shall write against his name, _Last time he sits_. I know that your business is heavy. Farewell, my lords.’

Morton and Moray went out together. At the end of the corridor and head of the stair, Morton stopped.

‘Man, my Lord of Moray, what is this?’

For answer, the Earl of Moray looked steadily at him for a moment: then, ‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘we must go to our work, you and I.’

They said no more; but went through the hall, and heard the Prince’s ringing voice, high above all the others, calling for ‘that black thief Ruthven.’ They saluted a few and received many salutations. Lord John Stuart passed them, his arm round the neck of his Spanish page, and stared at his brother without greeting. These two hated each other, as all the world knew. That same night the Earl of Moray left Edinburgh, and went into Argyll, where all his friends were. It was to be nine months before he could lay his head down in his own house again.

* * * * *

Very little passed between the Queen and her Secretary. She sat quite still, staring and glooming; he moved about, touching a thing here and there, like a house-servant who, by habit, dusts the clean furniture. This brought him by degrees close to her chair. Then he said quickly, ‘Madam, let me speak.’

‘Ay, speak, David.’

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘this is not likely to be work for fair ladies, though they be brave as they are fair. I have seen it growing—this disturbance—a many days. He is not alone by any means, my lord your brother. Madam, send a messenger into France. Send your little Jean-Marie.’

She looked up. ‘Into France?’

‘Madam, yes. Send a messenger into France. Let him fetch home the Earl of Bothwell.’

She started. ‘Him?’

Riccio nodded his head quickly.

Whereupon she said, ‘He is not in France.’

‘Send for him, madam,’ said Riccio, ‘wheresoever he may be—him and no other. Remember also—but no hurry for that—that you have my Lord Gordon under your hand. At need, remember him. A fine young man! But the other! Oh, send quickly for him! Eh, eh, what a captain against rebels!’ He could not see her face; her hand covered it.

‘I will think of this,’ she said. ‘Go now. Send me Carwood: I am mortally tired.’ Carwood was her bedchamber-woman.

* * * * *

There was a riot on the night following the proclamation of King Henry, begun by some foaming fool in the Luckenbooths. Men caught him with a candle in his hand, burning straw against a shop door. ‘What are ye for? What are ye for?’ they cried at him, and up he jumped with the fired wisp in his hand, and laughed, calling out, ‘I am the muckle devil! Come for the popish King!’ The words fired more than the brand, for people ran hither and thither carrying their fierce relish, feeding each other. The howling and tussling of men and women alike raged in and out of the wynds. It was noticed that nearly all the women took the Queen’s part, and fought against the men—a thing seldom seen in Edinburgh. In a desultory way, with one or two bad outbreaks, of which the worst was in the Grassmarket, where they stoned a man and a girl to death, it lasted all night. The Lord Lyon had his windows broken. Mr. Knox quelled the infuriates of the High Street.

This was on the night of July 28th, very hot weather. On the morning of the 30th she was married in her black weeds—for so she chose it, saying that she had been married already in colour, and as her lord was possessed of the living, so now he should own the dead part of her. She heard mass alone, for the Prince would not go to that again; but the Earl of Atholl stood by her, while Lennox waited in the antechapel with his son. Mass over, the words were spoken, rings put on. He had one and she three. They knelt side by side and heard the prayers; she bowed herself to the pavement, but he was very stiff. They rose; he gave her a kiss. When her women came about her he went away to her cabinet and waited for her there, quiet and self-possessed, not answering any of his father’s speeches.

Presently they bring him in the Queen, with coaxings and entreaties.

‘Now, madam, now! Do off your blacks. Come, never refuse us!’

She laughed and shook her head, looking sidelong at her husband.

‘Yes, yes,’ they cry, ‘we will ask the King, madam, since you are so perverse. Sir, give us leave.’

‘Ay, ay, ladies, unpin her,’ he says.

Mary Sempill cried, ‘Come, my ladies! Come, sirs! Help her shed her weeds.’ She took out a shoulder-pin, and the black shroud fell away from her bosom. Mary Fleming let loose her arms; Mary Seton, kneeling, was busy about her waist; Mary Beaton flacked off the great hood. Atholl, Livingstone, Lennox, all came about her, spoiling her of her old defences. When the black was all slipped off, she stood displayed in figured ivory damask, with a bashful, rosy, hopeful face. Atholl took a hand, Lennox the other.

‘By your leave, sweet madam.’ They led her to the young man.

‘She is yours, sir, by her own free will. God bless the mating!’

Then, when they had all gone tumbling out of the room, and you could have heard their laughter in the passages, she stood before him with her hands clasped. ‘Yes, my lord, I am here. Use me well.’

He gave a toss of the head; laughed aloud as he took her.

‘Ay, my Mary, I have thee now!’

He held her close, looking keenly into her hazel eyes. He kissed her mouth and neck, held up his head, and cheered like a hunter. ‘The mort o’ the deer! The mort o’ the deer! ‘Ware hounds, ‘ware! Let the chief take assay.’

* * * * *

The head of the Hamiltons, the head of the Campbells, the head of the Leslies, were all in Argyll with the Earl of Moray. Mr. Knox was with his young wife; Mr. Randolph kept his lodging; the Earl of Bothwell was at sea, beating up north; and my Lord Gordon, new released from prison, was with his mother and handsome sister Jean. None of these were at the marriage, nor bidden to the marriage supper. But there came a decent man, Mr. George Buchanan, affording himself an epithalamy, and received in recompense the Queen’s and King’s picture set in brilliants. This did not prevent him from casting up his hands in private before Mr. Knox. The great elder watched him grimly.

‘So the wilful lass has got her master! And a pranking rider for a bitter jade! Man, George,’ he said, looking critically through him, ‘in my opinion you are a thin, truckling body.’

[3] _Postill_, a marginal note.

END OF MAIDS’ ADVENTURE