Chapter V: Midnight Experiences of Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des-Essars

On that appointed night of Saturday, the 9th of March—a blowy, snowy night, harrowing for men at sea, with a mort of vessels pitching at their cables in Leith Roads—Des-Essars was late for his service. He should have come on to the door at ten o’clock, and it wanted but two minutes to that when he was beating down the Castle hill in the teeth of the wind.

Never mind his errand, and expect fibs if you ask what had kept him. Remember that he was older at this time than when you first saw him, a French boy ‘with smut-rimmed eyes,’ crop-headed, pale, shrewd, and reticent. That was a matter of three years ago: the Queen was but nineteen and he four years younger. He was eighteen now, and may have had evening affairs like other people, no concern of yours or mine. Whatever they may have been, they had kept him unduly; he had two minutes and wanted seven. He drew his bonnet close, his short cape about him, and went scudding down the hill as fast as the snow would let him in shoes dangerously thin for the weather, but useful for tiptoe purposes. The snow had been heaped upon the cawsey, but in the street trodden, thawed, and then frozen again to a surface of ice. From it came enough light to show that few people were abroad, and none lawfully, and that otherwise it was infernally dark. A strangely diffused, essential light it was, that of the snow. It put to shame three dying candles left in the Luckenbooths and the sick flame of an oil lamp above the Netherbow Port. After passing that, there was no sign of man or man’s comforts until you were in the Abbey precincts.

Des-Essars knew—being as sharp as a needle—that something was changed the moment he reached those precincts; knew by the pricking of his skin, as they say. A double guard set; knots of men-at-arms; some horses led about; low voices talking in strange accents,—something was altered. Worse than all this, he found the word of the night unavailing: no manner of entry for him.

‘My service is the Queen’s, honourable sir,’ he pleaded to an unknown sentry, who wore (he observed) a steel cap of unusual shape.

The square hackbutter shook his head. ‘No way in this night, Frenchman.’

‘By whose orders, if you please?’

‘By mine, Frenchman.’

Here was misfortune! No help for it, but he must brave what he had hoped to avoid—his superior officer, to wit.

‘If it please you, sir,’ he said, ‘I will speak with Mr. Erskine in the guardroom.’

‘Mr. Airrskin!’ was the shocking answer—and how the man spoke it!—‘Mr. Airrskin! He’s no here. He’s awa’. So now off with ye, Johnny Frenchman.’ The man obviously had orders: but whose orders?

Des-Essars shrugged. He shivered also, as he always did when refused anything—as if the world had proved suddenly a chill place. But really the affair was serious. Inside the house he must be, and that early. Driven to his last resource, he walked back far enough for the dark to swallow him up, returned upon his tracks a little way so soon as the hackbutter had resumed his stamping up and down; branched off to the right, slipping through a ruinous stable, blown to pieces in former days by the English; crossed a frozen cabbage garden which, having been flooded, was now a sheet of cat-ice; and so came hard upon the Abbey wall. In this wall, as he very well knew, there were certain cavities, used as steps by the household when the gateways were either not convenient or likely to be denied: indeed, he would not, perhaps, have cared to reckon how many times he had used them himself. Having chipped the ice out of them with his hanger, he was triumphantly within the pale, hopping over the Queen’s privy garden with high-lifted feet, like a dog in turnips. To win the palace itself was easy. It was mighty little use having friends in the kitchen if they could not do you services of that kind.

He had to find the Queen, though, and face what she might give him, but of that he had little fear. He knew that she would be at cards, and too full of her troubles and pains to seek for a new one. It is a queer reflection that he makes in his Memoirs—that although he romantically loved the Queen, he had no scruples about deceiving her and few fears of being found out, so only that she did not take the scrape to heart. ‘She was a goddess to me,’ he says, ‘in those days, a remote point of my adoration. A young man, however, is compact of two parts, an earthly and a spiritual. If I had exhibited to her the frailties of my earthly part it would have been by a very natural impulse. However, I never did.’ This is a digression: he knew that she would not fret herself about him and his affairs just now, because she was ill, and miserable about the King. Throwing a kiss of his hand, then, to the yawning scullery-wench, who had had to get out of her bed to open the window for him, he skimmed down the corridors on a light foot, and reached the great hall. He hoped to go tiptoe up the privy stair and gain the door of the cabinet without being heard. When she came out she would find him there, and all would be well. This was his plan.

It was almost dark in the hall, but not quite. A tree-bole on the hearth was in the article of death; a few thin flames about the shell of it showed him a company of men in the corner by the privy stair. Vexatious! They were leaning to the wall, some sitting against it; some were on the steps asleep, their heads nodding to their knees. He was cut off his sure access, and must go by the main staircase—if he could. He tried it, sidling along by the farther wall; but they spied him, two of them, and one went to cut him off. A tall enemy this, for the little Frenchman; but luckily for him it was a case of boots against no boots where silence was of the essence of the contract. Des-Essars, his shoes in his hand, darted out into the open and raced straight for the stair. The enemy began his pursuit—in riding-boots. Heavens! the crash and clatter on the flags, the echo from the roof! It would never do: hushed voices called the man back; he went tender-footed, finally stopped. By that time the page was up the stair, pausing at the top to wipe his brows and neck of cold sweat, and to wonder as he wiped what all this might mean. Double guard in the court—strange voices—the word changed—Mr. Erskine away! No sentry in the hall, but, instead, a cluster of waiting, whispering men—in riding-boots—by the privy stair! The vivacious young man was imaginative to a fault; he could construct a whole tragedy of life and death out of a change in the weather. And here was a fateful climax to the tragedy of a stormy night! First, the stress of the driving snow—whirling, solitary, forlorn stuff!—the apprehension of wild work by every dark entry. Passing the Tolbooth, a shriek out of the blackness had sent his heart into his mouth. There had been fighting, too, in Sim’s Close. He had seen a torch flare and dip, men and women huddled about two on the ground; one grunting, ‘Tak’ it! Tak’ it!’ and the other, with a strangled wail, ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Bad hearing all this—evil preparation. Atop of these apparitions, lo! their fulfilment: stroke after stroke of doom. Cloaked men by the privy stair—_Dieu de Dieu!_ His heart was thumping at his ribs when he peeped through the curtain of the Queen’s cabinet and saw his mistress there with Lady Argyll and the Italian. ‘Blessed Mother!’ he thought, ‘here’s an escape for me. I had no notion the hour was so late.’ What he meant was, that the rest of the company had gone. He had heard that Lord Robert Stuart and the Laird of Criech were to sup that night. Well, they had supped and were gone! It must be on the stroke of midnight.

* * * * *

The Queen, as he could see, lay back in her elbow-chair, obviously suffering, picking at some food before her, but not eating any. Her lips were chapped and dry; she moistened them continually, then bit them. Lady Argyll, handsome, strong-featured, and swarthy, sat bolt upright and stared at the sconce on the wall; and as for the Italian, he did as he always did, lounged opposite his Queen, his head against the wainscot. Reflective after food, he used his toothpick, but no other ceremony whatsoever. He wore his cap on his head, ignored Lady Argyll—half-sister to the throne—and when he looked at her Majesty, as he often did, it was as a man might look at his wife. She, although she seemed too weary or too indifferent to lift her heavy eyelids, knew perfectly well that both her companions were watching her: Des-Essars was sure of that. He watched her himself intensely, and only once saw her meet Davy’s eye, when she passed her cup to him to be filled with drink, and he, as if thankful to be active, poured the wine with a flourish and smiled in her face as he served her. She observed both act and actor, and made no sign, neither drank from the cup now she had it; but sank back to her wretchedness and the contemplation of it, being in that pettish, brooding habit of mind which would rather run on in a groove of pain than brace itself to some new shift. As he watched what was a familiar scene to him, Des-Essars was wondering whether he should dare go in and report what he had observed in the hall. No! on the whole he would not do that. Signior Davy, who was a weasel in such a field as a young man’s mind, would assuredly fasten upon him at some false turn or other, never let go, and show no mercy. Like all the underlings of Holyrood he went in mortal fear of the Italian, though, unlike any of them, he admired him.

The little cabinet was very dim. There were candles on the table, but none alight in the sconces. From beyond, through a half-open door, came the drowsy voices of the Queen’s women, murmuring their way through two more hours’ vigil. Interminable nights! Cards would follow supper, you must know, and Signior Davy would try to outsit Lady Argyll. He always tried, and generally succeeded.

The Queen shifted, sighed, and played hasty tunes with her fingers on the table: she was never still. It was evident that she was at once very wretched and very irritable. Her dark-red gown was cut low and square, Venetian mode: Des-Essars could see quite well how short her breath was, and how quick. Yet she said nothing. Once she and Lady Argyll exchanged glances; the Mistress of the Robes inquired with her eyebrows, the Queen fretfully shook the question away. It was an unhappy supper for all but the graceless Italian, who was much at his ease now that he had unfastened some of the hooks of his jacket. The French lad, who had always been in love with his mistress and yet able to criticise her—as a Protestant may adore the Virgin Mary—admits that at this moment of her life, in this bitter mood, he found her extremely piquant. ‘This pale, helpless, angry, pretty woman!’ he exclaims upon his page. He would seldom allow that she was more than just a pretty woman; and now she was a good deal less. Her charms for him had never been of the face—she had an allure of her own. ‘Mistress Seton was lovely, I consider, my Lady Bothwell most beautiful, and Mistress Fleming not far short of that: but the Queen’s Majesty—ah! the coin from Mr. Knox’s mint rang true. Honeypot! Honeypot! There you had her essence: sleepy, slow, soft sweetness—with a sharp aftertaste, for all that, to prick the tongue and set it longing.’

More than nice considerations, these, which the stealthy opening of a door and a step in the passage disturbed. Des-Essars would have straightened himself on that signal, to stand as a page should stand in the view of any one entering. Then he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the King go down the little stair. It must be the King, because—to say nothing of the tall figure, small-headed as it was,—he had seen the long white gown. The King wore a white quilted-silk bedgown, lined with ermine. At the turning of the stair Des-Essars saw him just glance backwards over his shoulder towards the cabinet, but, being stiff within the shadow of the curtain, was not himself seen. After that furtive look he saw him go down the privy stair, his hand on the rope. Obviously he had an assignation with some woman below.

Before he had time to correct this conclusion by the memory of the cloaked men in the hall, he heard returning steps—somebody, this time, coming up the steps; no! there were more than one—two or three at least. He was sure of this—his ears had never deceived him—and yet it was the King alone who appeared at the stair-head with a lighted taper in his hand, which he must have got from the hall. He stood there for a moment, his face showing white and strained in the light, his mouth open, too; then, blowing out his taper, he came directly to the curtain of the Queen’s cabinet, pulled it aside and went in. He had actually covered Des-Essars with the curtain without a notion that he was there; but the youth had had time to observe that he was fully dressed beneath his gown, and to get a hot whiff of the strong waters in his breath as he passed in. Urgent to see what all this might mean, he peeped through the hangings.

Lady Argyll rose up slowly when she saw the King, but made no reverence. Very few did in these days. The Italian followed her example, perfectly composed. The Queen took no notice of him. She rested as she had been, her head on the droop, eyebrows raised, eyes fixed on the disordered platter. The King, whose colour was very high, came behind her chair, stooped, and put his arm round her. His hand covered her bosom. She did not avoid, though she did not relish this.

‘Madam, it is very late,’ he said, and spoke breathlessly.

‘It is not I who detain you,’ said she.

‘No, madam, no. But you do detain these good servants of yours. Here is your sister of Argyll; next door are your women. And so it is night after night. I think not of myself.’

She lifted her head a little to look up sideways—but not at him. ‘You think of very little else, to my understanding. Having brought me to the state where now I am, you are inclined to leave me alone. Rather, you were inclined; for this is a new humour, little to my taste.’

‘I should be oftener here, believe me,’ says the King, still embracing her, ‘if I could feel more sure of a welcome—if all might be again as it was once between you and me.’

She laughed, without mirth; then asked, ‘And how was it—once?’

The King stooped down and kissed her forehead, by the same act gently pushing back her head till it rested on his shoulder.

‘Thus it was once, my Mary,’ he said; and as she looked up into his face, wondering over it, searching it, he kissed her again. ‘Thus it was once,’ he repeated in a louder voice; and then, louder yet, ‘Thus, O Queen of Scots!’

Once more he kissed her, and once more cried out, ‘O Queen of Scots!’ Then Des-Essars heard the footsteps begin again on the privy stair, and saw men come into the passage—many men.

Three of them, in cloaks and steel bonnets, came quickly to the door, and passed him. They went through the curtain. These three were Lord Ruthven, Ker of Fawdonsyde, and Mr. Archibald Douglas. Rigid in his shadow, Des-Essars watched all.

Seeing events in the Italian’s eyes, rather than with her own—for Signior Davy had narrowed his to two threads of blue—the Queen lifted her head from her husband’s arm and looked curiously round. The three stood hesitant within the door; Ruthven had his cap on his head, Fawdonsyde his, but Archie showed his grey poll. Little things like these angered her quickly; she shook free from the King and sat upright.

‘What is this, my Lord Ruthven? You forget yourself.’

‘Madam——’ he began; but Douglas nudged him furiously.

‘Your bonnet, man, your bonnet!’

The Queen had risen, and the fixed direction of her eyes gave him understanding.

‘Ah, my knapscall! I do as others do, madam,’ he said, with a meaning look at the Italian. ‘What is pleasant to your Majesty in yonder servant should not be an offence in a councillor.’

‘No, no, ma’am, nor it should not,’ muttered Fawdonsyde, who, nevertheless, doffed his bonnet.

The King was holding her again, she staring still at the scowling man in steel. ‘What do you want with me, Ruthven?’ she said. She had very dry lips.

He made a clumsy bow. ‘May it please your Majesty,’ he said, ‘we are come to rid you of this fellow Davy, who has been overlong familiar here, and overmuch—for your Majesty’s honour.’

She turned her face to the King, whose arm still held her—a white, strong face.

‘You,’ she said fiercely, ‘what have you to do in this? What have you to say?’

‘I think with Ruthven—with all of them—my friends and well-wishers. ’Tis the common voice: they say I am betrayed, upon my soul! I cannot endure—I entreat you to trust me——’ He was incoherent.

She broke away from his arm, took a step forward and put herself between him and the three. She was so angry that she could not find words. She stammered, began to speak, rejected what words came. The Italian took off his cap and watched Ruthven intently. The moment of pause that ensued was broken by Ruthven’s raising his hand, for the Queen flashed out, ‘Put down your hand, sir!’ and seemed as if she would have struck him. Fawdonsyde here cocked his pistol and deliberately raised it against the Queen’s person. ‘Treason! treason!’ shrieked Des-Essars from the curtain, and blundered forward to the villain.

But the Queen had been before him; at last she had found words, and deeds. She drew herself up, quivering, went directly towards Fawdonsyde, and beat down the point of the pistol with her flat hand. ‘Do you dare so much? Then I dare more. What shameless thing do you here? If I had a sword in my hand——’ Here she stopped, tongue-tied at what was done to her.

For Ruthven, regardless of majesty, had got her round the middle. He pushed her back into the King’s arms; and, ‘Take your wife, my lord,’ says he; ‘take your good-wife in your arms and cherish her, while we do what must be done.’

The King held her fast in spite of her struggles. At that moment the Italian made a rattling sound in his throat and backed from the table. Archie Douglas stepped behind the King, to get round the little room; Ruthven approached his victim from the other side; the Italian pulled at the table, got it between himself and the enemy, and overset it: then Lady Argyll screamed, and snatched at a candlestick as all went down. It was the only light left in the room, held up in her hand like a beacon above a tossing sea. Where was Des-Essars? Cuffed aside to the wall, like a rag doll. The maids were packed in the door of the bedchamber, and one of them had pulled him into safety among them.

All that followed he marked: how the frenzied Italian, hedged in between Douglas and Ruthven, vaulted the table, knocked over Fawdonsyde, and then, whimpering like a woman, crouched by the Queen, his fingers in the pleats of her gown. He saw the King’s light eyelashes blink, and heard his breath come whistling through his nose; and that pale, disfigured girl, held up closely against her husband, moaning and hiding her face in his breast. And now Ruthven, grinning horribly, swearing to himself, and Douglas, whining like a dog at a rat-hole, were at their man’s hands, trying to drag him off. Fawdonsyde hovered about, hopeful to help. Lady Argyll held up the candle.

Douglas wrenched open one hand, Ruthven got his head down and bit the other till it parted.

‘_O Dio! O Dio!_’ long shuddering cries went up from the Italian as they dragged him out into the passage, where the others waited.

It was dark there, and one knew not how full of men; but Des-Essars heard them snarling and mauling like a pack of wolves; heard the scuffling, the panting, the short oaths—and then a piercing scream. At that there was silence; then some one said, as he struck, ‘There! there! Hog of Turin!’ and another (Lindsay), ‘He’s done.’

The King put the Queen among her maids in a hurry, and went running out into the passage as they were shuffling the body down the stair. Des-Essars just noticed, and remembered afterwards, his naked dagger in his hand as he went out helter-skelter after his friends. Upon some instinct or other, he followed him as far as the head of the stair. From the bottom came up a great clamour—howls of execration, one or two cries for the King, a round of welcome when he appeared. The page ran back to the cabinet, and found it dark.

It was bad to hear the Queen’s laughter in the bedchamber—worse when that shuddered out into moaning, and she began to wail as if she were keening her dead. He could not bear it, so crept out again to spy about the passages and listen to the shouting from the hall. ‘A Douglas! a Douglas!’ was the most common cry. Peeping through a window which gave on to the front, he saw the snowy court ablaze with torches, alive with men, and against the glare the snowflakes whirling by, like smuts from a burning chimney. It was clear enough now that the palace was held, all its inmates prisoners. But what seemed more terrifying than that was the emptiness of the upper corridors, the sudden hush after so much riot—and the Queen’s moan, haunting all the dark like a lost soul.

* * * * *

It was so bad up there that the lad, his brain on fire, felt the need of any company—even that of gaolers. No one hindering, he crept down the privy stair,—horribly slippery it was, and he knew why,—hoping to spy into the hall; and this also he was free to do, since the stair-foot was now unguarded. He found the hall crowded with men; great torches smoking to the rafters; a glow of light on shields and blazonry, the banners and achievements of dead kings. In the stir of business the arras surged like the waves of the sea. A furious draught blew in from the open doors, to which all faces were turned. Men craned over each others’ backs to look there. Des-Essars could not see the King; but there at the entry was the Earl of Morton in his armour, two linkmen by him. He was reading from a bill: in front of him was a clear way; across it stood the Masters of Lindsay and Ruthven, and men in their liveries, halberds in their hands.

‘Pass out, Earl of Atholl,’ he heard Lord Morton say; ‘Pass out, Lord of Tullibardine’: and then, after a while of looking and pointing, he saw the grizzled head and square shoulders of my Lord Atholl moving down the lane of men, young Tullibardine uncovered beside him.

‘Pass out, Pitcur; pass out, Mr. James Balfour; pass out, the Lord Herries.’ The same elbowing in the crowd: three men file out into the scurrying snow—all the Queen’s friends, observe.

Near to Des-Essars a man asked of his neighbour, ‘Will they let by my Lord Huntly, think you?’

The other shook his head. ‘Never! He’ll keep company with the Reiver of Liddesdale, be sure.’

The Reiver was Lord Bothwell, of course, whom Des-Essars knew to be in the house. ‘Good fellow-prisoners for us,’ he thought.

‘Pass out, Mr. Secretary, on a fair errand.’

There was some murmuring at this; but the man went out unmolested, with a sweep of the bonnet to my Lord Morton as he passed. Des-Essars saw him stop at the first taste of the weather and cover his mouth with his cloak—but he waited for no more. A thought had struck him. He slipped back up the puddled stair, gained the first corridor, and, knowing his way by heart, went in and out of the passages until he came to a barred door. Here he put his ear to the crack and listened intently.

For a long time he could hear nothing on either side the door; but by and by somebody with a light—a man—came to the farther end of the passage and looked about, raising and dipping his lantern. That was an ugly moment! Crouched against the wall, he saw the lamp now high now low, and marked with a leaping heart how nearly the beams reached to where he lay. He heard a movement behind the door, too, but had to let it go. Not for full three minutes after the disappearance of the watchman did he dare put his knuckles to the door, and tap, very softly, at the panel. He tapped and tapped. A board creaked; there was breathing at the door. A voice, shamming boldness, cried, ‘Qui est?’

Des-Essars smiled. ‘C’est toi, Paris?’

His question was answered by another. ‘Tiens, qui est ce drôle?’

Paris, for a thousand pound! Knocking again, he declared himself. ‘It is I, Paris—M. Des-Essars.’

‘Monsieur Baptiste, your servant,’ then said Paris through the door.

‘My lord is a prisoner, Paris?’

‘Not for the first time, my dear sir.’

‘How many are you there?’

‘Four. My lord, and Monsieur de Huntly, myself, Jock Gordon.’

‘Well, you should get out—but quickly, before they have finished in the hall. They are passing men out. Be quick, Paris—tell my lord.’

‘Bravo!’ says Paris. ‘We should get out—and quickly! By the chimney, sir? There is no chimney. By the window? There is but one death for every man, and one neck to be broke.’

‘You will break no necks at all, you fool. Below these windows is the lions’ house.’

Paris thought. ‘Are you sure of that?’

‘Sure! Oh, Paris, make haste!’

Again Paris appeared to reflect; and then he said, ‘If you are betraying a countryman of yours, M. Des-Essars, and your old patron also, you shall never see God.’

Des-Essars wrung his hands. ‘You fool! you fool! Are you mad? Call my lord.’

‘Wait,’ said Paris. In a short time, the sound of heavy steps. Ah, here was my lord!

‘’Tis yourself, Baptist?’

‘Yes, yes, my lord.’

‘Have they finished with Davy?’

‘My God, sir!’

‘What of the Queen?’

‘Her women have her.’

‘Now, Baptist. You say the lion-house is below these windows. Which windows? There are four.’

‘The two in the midst, my lord. My lord, across the Little Garden—in a straight line—there are holes in the wall.’

‘Oho! You are a brave lad. Go to your bed.’

Jean-Marie-Baptiste Des-Essars went back to the Queen’s side. At the door of the cabinet he found Adam Gordon in a fit of sobs. ‘Oh, my fine man,’ says the French lad, stirring him with his foot, ‘leave tears to the women. This is men’s business.’

Adam lifted up his stricken face. ‘Where have you been cowering, traitor?’

Jean-Marie laughed grimly. ‘I have been saving Scotland,’ he said, ‘whilst you were blubbering here.’

Adam Gordon, being up by now, knocked Jean-Marie down.

‘I excused him readily, however,’ he writes in his Memoirs, ‘considering the agitation we all suffered at the time. And where he felled me there I lay, and slept like a child.’