Chapter VI: Venus in the Toils

Sir James Melvill, whom readers must remember at Saint Andrews as a shrewd, elderly courtier, expert in diplomacy and not otherwise without humours of a dry sort, plumed himself upon habit—‘Dear Mother Use-and-Wont,’ as he used to say. A man is sane at thirty, rich at forty, wise at fifty, or never; and what health exacts, wealth secures, and wisdom requires, is the orderly, punctual performance of the customary. You may have him now putting his theory into severest practice: for though he had seen what was to be seen during that night of murder and alarm, though he had lain down to sleep in his cloak no earlier than five o’clock in the small hours, by seven, which was his Sunday time, he was up and about, stamping his booted feet to get the blood down, flacking his arms, and talking encouragement to himself—as, ‘Hey, my bonny man, how’s a’ with you the morn?’ Very soon after you might have seen him over the ashes of the fire, raking for red embers and blowing some life into them with his frosted breath. All about lay his snoring fellows, though it was too dark to see them. Every man lay that night where he could find his length, and slept like the dead in their graves. There seemed no soul left in a body but in his own.

He went presently to the doors, thinking to open them unhindered. But no! a sitting sentry barred the way with a halberd. ‘May one not look at the weather, my fine young man?’ says Sir James.

‘’Tis as foul as the grave, master, and a black black frost. No way out the now.’

Sir James, who intended to get out, threw his cloak over his shoulder and gravely paced the hall until the chances should mend. One has not warred with the Margrave, held a hand at cards with the Emperor Charles at Innspruck, loitered at Greenwich in attendance upon Queen Elizabeth, or endured the King of France in one of his foaming rages, without learning patience. He proposed to walk steadily up and down the hall until nine o’clock. Then he would get out.

* * * * *

The women said afterwards that the Queen had quieted down very soon, dried her eyes, gone to bed, and slept almost immediately ‘as calm as a babe new-born.’ However that may be, she awoke as early as Sir James, and, finding herself in Mary Fleming’s arms, awoke her too in her ordinary manner by biting her shoulder, not hard. ‘My lamb, my lamb!’ cooed the maid; but the Queen in a brisk voice said, ‘What’s o’clock?’ The lamp showed it to be gone seven.

The Queen said: ‘Get up, child, and find me the page who was in the cabinet last night. I saw him try the entry, and he ran in when—when.... It was Baptist, I think.’

She spoke in an even voice, as if the occasion had been a card party. This frightened Mary Fleming, who began to quiver, and to say, ‘Oh, ma’am, did Baptist see all? ’Twill have scared away his wits.’ And then she tried coaxing. ‘Nay, _ma Reinette_, but you must rest awhile. Come, let me stroke your cheek’—a common way with them of inviting sleep to her.

But the Queen said, ‘I have had too much stroking—too much. Now do as I bid you.’ So the maid clothed herself in haste and went out with a lamp.

Outside the door she found the two youths asleep—Des-Essars on the floor, Gordon by the table—and awoke them both. ‘Which of you was on the door last night?’

‘It was I, Mistress Fleming,’ said the foreigner. ‘All the time I was there.’

‘Come with me, then. You are sent for.’

He followed her in high excitement into the Queen’s bedchamber. There he saw Margaret Carwood asleep on her back, lying on the floor; and the Queen propped up with pillows, a white silk shift upon her—or half upon her, for one shoulder was out of it. She looked sharper, more like Circe, than she had done since her discomforts began: very intense, very pale, very black in the eyes. And she smiled at him in a curiously secret way—a beckoning, fluttering of the lips, as if she shared intelligence with him, and told him so by signs. ‘She was as sharp and hard and bright as a cut diamond,’ he writes of this appearance; ‘nor do I suppose that any lady in the storied world could have turned her face away from a night of terror and blood, towards a day-to-come of insult, chains and degradation, as she turned hers now before my very eyes.’

She did not say anything for a while, but considered him absorbingly, with those fever-bright eyes and that cautious smile, until she had made up her mind. He, of course, was down on his knee; Mary Fleming, beside him, stood—her hand just touching his shoulder.

‘Come hither, Jean-Marie.’

Approaching, he knelt by the bed.

‘No,’ said she, ‘stand up—closer. Now give me your hand.’

He held it out, and she took it in her own, and put it against her side. He simply gazed at her in wonder.

‘Tell me now if you feel my heart beating.’

He waited. ‘No, madam,’ said he then, whispering.

‘Think again.’

He did. ‘No, madam. Ah! pardon. Yes, I feel it.’

‘That will do.’

He whipped back his hand and put it behind him. It had been the right hand. The Queen watched all, still smiling in that wise new way of hers.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I think you will serve me, since you have assured yourself that I am not so disturbed as you are. I wish you to find out where they have put him.’

He felt Mary Fleming start and catch at her breath; but to him the question seemed very natural.

‘I will go now, madam.’

‘Yes. Go now. Be secret and speedy, and come back to me.’

He bowed, rose up, and went tiptoe out of that chamber of mystery and sharp sweetness. Just beyond the door Adam Gordon pounced on him and caught him by the neck. He struggled fiercely, tried to bite.

‘Let me go, let me go, you silly fool, and worse! I’m on service. Oh, my God, let me go!’

‘How does she? Speak it, you French thief.’

‘_Dieu de Dieu!_’ he panted, ‘I shall stab you.’

At once his hands were pinned to the wall, and he crucified. He told his errand—since time was all in all—with tears of rage.

‘I shall go with you,’ says Adam. ‘We will go together.’

In the entry of the Chapel Royal, near the kings’ tombs, they found what seemed to be a new grave. A loose flagstone—scatter of gravel all about—the stone not level: one end, in fact, projected its whole thickness above the floor.

‘There he lies,’ says Adam. ‘What more do you want?’

Des-Essars was tugging at the stone. ‘It moves, it moves!’ He was crimson in the face.

They both tussled together: it gave to this extent, that they got the lower edge clear of the floor.

‘Hold on! Keep it so!’ snapped Des-Essars suddenly.

He dropped on to his stomach and thrust his arm into the crack, up to the elbow.

‘What are you at? Be sharp, man, or I shall drop it!’ cried Adam in distress.

He _was_ sharp. In a moment he had withdrawn his hand, jumped up and away, and was pelting to the stairs. Adam let the great stone down with a thud and was after him. He was stopped at the Queen’s door by a maid—Seton.

‘Less haste, Mr. Adam. You cannot enter. Her Majesty is busy.’

Des-Essars had found the Queen waiting for him—nobody else in the room.

‘Well? You saw it?’

‘I have seen a grave, madam.’

‘Well?’

‘It is a new grave.’

‘There’s nothing in that, boy.’

‘Monsieur David is in there, ma’am.’

Her quick eyes narrowed. How she peered at him! ‘How do you know?’

‘Madam, I lifted up the stone. No one was about.’

‘Well?’

‘I found something under it. I have it. I am therefore quite sure.’

‘What did you find? Let me see it.’

He plucked out of his breast a glittering thing and laid it on the bed.

‘Behold it, madam!’ Folding his arms, he watched it where it lay.

The Queen stared down at a naked dagger. A longish, lean, fluted blade; and upon the bevelled edge a thick smear, half its length.

She did not touch it, but moved her lips as if she were talking to it. ‘Do I know you, dagger? Have we been friends, dagger, old friends—and now you play me a trick?’ She turned to Des-Essars. ‘You know that dagger?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He had seen it often, and no later than last night, and then in hand.

‘That will do,’ said she. ‘Leave me now. Send Fleming and Seton—and Carwood also. I shall rise.’

When he was gone her face changed—grew softer, more thoughtful. Now she held out her hand daintily, the little finger high above the others, and with the tips of two daintily touched the dagger. She was rather horrible—like a creature of the woods at night, an elf or a young witch, playing with a corpse. She laughed quietly to herself as she fingered the stained witness of so much terror; but then, when she heard them at the door, picked it up by the handle and put it under the bedclothes. No one was to know what she meant to do.

The women came in. ‘Dress me, Carwood, and quickly. Dolet, have you my bath ready?’ ‘Mais, c’est sûr, Majesté.’ They poured out for her a bath of hot red wine. No day of her life passed but she dipped herself in that.

* * * * *

At nine o’clock, braced into fine fettle by his exercise, Sir James Melvill went again to the hall doors. A few shiverers were about by this time, for sluggard dawn was gaping at the windows; some knelt by the fire which his forethought had saved for them, some hugged themselves in corners; one man was praying aloud in an outlandish tongue, praying deeply and striking his forehead with his palm. Sir James, not to be deterred by prayers or spies, stepped up to the sentry, a new man, and tapped him on the breast. ‘Now, my honest friend,’ he said pleasantly, ‘I have waited my two hours, and am prepared to wait other two. But he to whom my pressing errand is must wait no longer. I speak of my lord of Morton—your master and mine, as things have turned out.’

‘My lord will be here by the ten o’clock, sir,’ says the man.

‘I had promised him exact tidings by eight,’ replied Sir James; and spoke so serenely that he was allowed to pass the doors, which were shut upon him. Nobody could have regretted more than himself that he had lied: he had no mortal errand to the Earl of Morton. But seeing that he had not failed of Sabbath sermon for a matter of fifteen years, it was not to be expected that the murder of an Italian was to stay him now. Sermon in Saint Giles’s was at nine. He was late.

The fates were adverse: there was to be no sermon for him that Sabbath. As he walked gingerly across the Outer Close—a staid, respectable, Sunday gentleman—he heard a casement open behind him, and turning sharply saw the Queen at her chamber window, dressed in grey with a white ruff, and holding a kerchief against her neck. After a hasty glance about, which revealed no prying eyes, he made a low reverence to her Majesty.

Sparkling and eager as she looked, she nodded her head and leaned far out of the window. ‘Sir James Melvill,’ she called down, in a clear, carrying voice, ‘you shall do me a service if you please.’

‘God save your Majesty, and I do please,’ says Sir James.

‘Then help me from this prison where now I am,’ she said. ‘Go presently to the Provost, bid him convene the town and come to my rescue. Go presently, I say; but run fast, good sir, for they will stay you if they can.’

‘Madam, with my best will and legs.’ He saluted, and walked briskly on over the frozen snow.

Out of doors after him came a long-legged man in black, a chain about his neck, a staff in hand; following him, three or four lacqueys in a dark livery.

‘Ho, Sir James Melvill! Ho, Sir James!’

He was by this time at the Outer Bailey, which stood open for him—three paces more and he had done it. But there were a few archers lounging about the door of the Guard House, and two who crossed and recrossed each other before the gates. ‘Gently doth it,’ quoth he, and stayed to answer his name to the long-legged Chamberlain.

‘What would you, Mr. Wishart, sir?’

‘Sir James, my lord of Ruthven hath required me——’ But he got no further.

‘Your lord of Ruthven?’ cried Sir James. ‘Hath he required you to require of me, Mr. Wishart?’

‘Why, yes, sir. My lord would be pleased to know whither you are bound so fast. He is, sir, in a manner of speaking, deputy to the King’s Majesty at this time.’

Sir James blinked. He could see the Queen behind her window, watching him. ‘I am bound, sir,’ he said deliberately, ‘whither I shall hope to see my lord of Ruthven tending anon. The sermon, Mr. Wishart, the sermon calls me; the which I have not foregone these fifteen years, nor will not to-day unless you and your requirements keep me unduly.’

‘I told my lord you would be for the preaching, Sir James. I was sure o’t. But he’s a canny nobleman, ye ken; and the King’s business is before a’.’

‘I have never heard, Mr. Wishart, that it was before that of the King of kings,’ said Sir James.

‘Ou, fie, Sir James! To think that I should say so!’—Mr. Wishart was really concerned—‘Nor my lord neither, whose acceptance of the rock of doctrine is well known. I shall just pop in and inform my lord.’

‘Do so. And I wish you a good day, Mr. Wishart,’ says Sir James in a stately manner, and struck out of the gates and up the hill.

He went directly to the Provost’s house, and what he learned there seemed to him so serious, that he overstepped his commission by a little way. ‘Mr. Provost,’ he said, ‘you tell me that you have orders from the King. I counsel you to disregard them. I counsel you to serve and obey your sanctified anointed Queen. The King, Mr. Provost, is her Majesty’s right hand, not a doubt of it; but when the right hand knoweth not what the left hand is about, it is safer to wait until the pair are in agreement again. What the King may have done yesterday he may not do to-day—he may not wish it, or he may not be capable of it. I am a simple gentleman, Mr. Provost, and you are a high officer, steward of this good town. I counsel not the officer in you, but the sober burgess, when I repeat that what may have been open to the King yesterday may be shut against him to-day.’

‘Good guide us, Sir James, this is dangerous work!’ cried the Provost. ‘Who’s your informant in the matter?’

‘I have told you that I am a simple gentleman,’ said Sir James, ‘but I lied to you. I am a Queen’s messenger: I go from you to meet her Majesty’s dearest brother, the good Earl of Moray, who should be home to-day.’

It must be owned that, if he was an unwilling liar, he was a good one. He lied like truth, and the stroke was masterly. The Provost set about convening the town; and when Sir James Melvill walked back to Holyrood—after sermon—all the gates were held in the Queen’s name.

He did not see her, for the King was with her at the time; but Mary Beaton received him, heard his news and reported it. She returned shortly with a message: ‘The Queen’s thanks to Sir James Melvill. Let him ride the English road and meet the Earl of Moray by her Majesty’s desire.’ He was pleased with the errand, proud to serve the Queen. His greatest satisfaction, however, was to reflect that he had not, after all, lied to the Provost of Edinburgh.

* * * * *

Now we go back to Queen Mary. Bathed and powdered, dressed and coifed, her head full of schemes and heart high in courage, she waited for the King, being very sure in her own mind that he would come if she made no sign. Certainly, certainly he would come: she had reasoned it all out as she lay half in bed, smiling and whispering to the dagger. ‘He has been talked into this, by whom I am not sure, but I think by Ruthven and his friends. They will never stop where now they are, but will urge him further than he cares to go. I believe he will wait to see what I do. He is not bold by nature, but by surges of heat which drive him. Fast they drive him—yet they leave him soon! When he held me last night he was trembling—I felt him shake. And yet—he has strong arms, and the savour of a man is upon him!’

She sat up, with her hands to clasp her knee, and let her thought go galloping through the wild business. ‘I felt the child leap as I lay on his breast! Did he urge towards the King his father, glad of his manhood? So, once upon a day, urged I towards the King my lord!’

She began to blush, but would be honest with herself. ‘And if he came again to me now, and took me so again in his arms—and again I sensed the man in him—what should I do?’

She looked wise, as she smiled to feel her eyes grow dim. But then she shook her head. ‘He will come, he will come—but not so. I know him: oh, I know him like a thumbed old book! And when I bring out that which I have here’—her hand caressed the dagger—‘I know what he will do. Yes, yes, like an old book! He will rail against his betrayer, and in turn betray him. Ah, my King, my King, do I read you aright? We shall see very soon.’

She looked out upon the snowy close, the black walls and dun pall of air; she saw Sir James Melvill set forward upon his pious errand, and changed it, as you know. Then she resumed her judging and weighing of men.

Odd! She gave no thought to the wretched Italian, her mind was upon the quick, and not the dead. Ruthven, a black, dangerous man—scolding-tongued, impious in mind, thinking in oaths—yes: but a man! Archie Douglas, supple as a snake, Fawdonsyde and his foolish pistols, she considered not at all; but her mind harped upon Ruthven and the King, who had each laid rough hands upon her—and thus, it seems, earned her approbation. Ruthven had taken her about the middle and pushed her back, helpless, into the other’s arms; and she had felt those taut arms, and not struggled; but leaned there, her face in his doublet. _Pardieu_, each had played the man that night! And Ruthven would play it again, and the King would not. No, no; not he!

Ruthven, by rights, should be won over. Should she try him? No, he would refuse her; she was sure of it. He was as bluff, as flinty-cored as——Ranging here and there, searching Scotland for his parallel, her heart jumped as she found him. Bothwell, Bothwell! Ha, if he had been there! It all began to re-enact itself—the scuffling, grunting, squealing business, with Bothwell’s broad shoulders steady in the midst of it. Man against man: Bothwell and Ruthven face to face, and the daggers agleam in the candle-light:—hey, how she saw it all doing! Ruthven would stoop and glide by the wall: his bent knees, his mad, twitching brows! Bothwell would stand his ground in mid-floor, and his little eyes would twinkle. ‘Play fairly with the candle, my Lady Argyll!’ and he would laugh—yes, she could hear his ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ But she jumped up as she came to that, she panted and felt her cheeks burn. She held her fine throat with both hands until she had calmed herself. So doing, a thought struck her. She rang her hand-bell and sent for Des-Essars once more.

When he came to her she made a fuss over him, stroked his hair, put her hand on his shoulder, said he was her young knight who should ride out to her rescue. He was to take a message from her to the Earl of Bothwell—that he was on no account to stir out of town until he heard from her again. He should rather get in touch with all of her friends and be ready for instant affairs. Des-Essars went eagerly but discreetly to work. She then had just time to leave a direction for Melvill, that he should be first with her brother Moray, when they told her that the King was coming in.

‘Of course he is coming,’ she said. ‘What else can he do?’

Her courage rose to meet him more than half-way. If Des-Essars had been allowed to feel her heart again he would have found it as steady as a man’s.

‘I will see the King in the red closet,’ she said. ‘Seton, Fleming, come you with me.’

When he was announced he found her thus in company, sitting at her needlework on a low coffer by the window.

The young man had thickened rims to his eyes, but else looked pinched and drawn. He kept a napkin in his hand, with which he was for ever dabbing his mouth: seeming to search for signs of blood upon it, he inspected it curiously whenever it had touched him. As he entered the Queen glanced up, bowed her head to him and resumed her stitch-work. The two maids, after their curtseys, remained standing—to his visible perturbation. It was plain that he had expected to find her alone; also that he had strung himself up for a momentous interview—and that she had not. He grew more and more nervous, the napkin hovered incessantly near his mouth; half-turning to call his man Standen into the room, he thought better of it, and came on a little way, saying, ‘Madam, how does your Majesty?’

She looked amused at the question, as she went on sewing.

‘As well, my lord,’ she told him, ‘as I can look to be these many months more. But women must learn such lessons, which men have only to teach.’

He knew that he was outmatched. ‘I am thankful, madam——’

‘My lord, you have every reason.’

‘I say, I am thankful; for I had a fear——’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘Do you fear, my lord? What have you to fear? Your friends are about you, your wife a prisoner. What have you to fear?’

‘The tongue, madam.’

She had goaded him to this, and could have had him at her mercy had she so willed it. But she was silent, husbanding her best weapon against good time.

He went headlong on. ‘I had words for your private ear. I had hoped that by a little intimacy, such as may be looked for between——But it’s all one.’

She affected not to understand, pored over his fretful scraps with the pure pondering of a child. ‘But——! Converse, intimacy between us! Who is to prevent it? Ah, my poor maids afflict you! What may be done before matrons must be guarded from the maids. Indeed, my lord, and that is my opinion. Go, my dears. The King is about to discuss the affairs of marriage.’

They went out. The King immediately came to her, stooped and took her hand up from her lap. She kept the other hidden.

‘My Mary,’ he said—‘My Mary! let all be new-born between us.’

She heard the falter in his voice, but considered rather his fine white hand as it held her own, and judged it with a cool brain. A frail hand for a man! So white, so thinly boned, the veins so blue! Could such hands ever hold her again? And how hot and dry! A fever must be eating him. Her own hands were cold. New-born love—for this hectic youth!

‘New-born, my lord?’ she echoed him, sighing. ‘Alas, that which must be born should be paid for first. And what the reckoning of that may be now, you know as well as I. May not one new birth be as much as I can hope for, or desire? I do think so.’

Fully as well as she he knew the peril she had been in, she and the load she carried. He went down on his knee beside her, and, holding her one hand, sought after the other, which she hid.

‘My dear,’ he said earnestly, ‘oh, my dear, judge me not hardly. I endeavoured to shield you last night—I held you fast—they dared not touch you! Remember it, my Mary. As for my faults, I own them fairly. I was provoked—anger moved me—bitter anger. I am young. I am not even-tempered: remember this and forgive me. And, I pray you, give me your hand.—No, the other, the other! For I need it, my heart—indeed and indeed.’ That hand was gripped about a cold thing in her lap, under her needlework. He could not have it without that which it held; and now she knew that he should not. For now she scorned him—that a man who had laid his own hands to man’s work should now be on his knees, pleading for his wife’s hands instead of snatching them—why, she herself was the better man! Womanlike, she played with what she could have killed in a flash.

‘My other hand, my lord? Do you ask for it? You had it once, when you put rings upon it, but let it go. Do you ask for it again? It can give you no joy.’

‘I need it, I need it! You should not deny me.’ He craved it abjectly. ‘Oh, my soul, my soul, I kiss the one—let me kiss the other, lest it be jealous.’

Unhappy conceit! Her eyes paled, and you might have thought her tongue a snake’s, darting, forked, flickering out and in as she struck hard.

‘Traitor!’ thus she stabbed him—‘Traitor, son of a traitor, take and kiss it if you dare.’ She laid above her caught hand that other, cool and firm, and opened it to show him the handle of his own dagger. She took the blade by the point and held the thing up, swinging before his shocked eyes. ‘Lick that, hound!’ she said: ‘you should know the taste of it better than I.’

He dropped her one hand, stared stupidly at the other: but as his gaze concentrated upon the long smear on the blade you could have seen the sweat rising on his temples.

She had read him exquisitely. After the first brunt of terror, rage was what he felt—furious rage against the man whom he supposed to have betrayed him. ‘Oh, horrible traitor!’ he muttered by the window, whither he had betaken himself for refuge,—‘Oh, Archie Douglas, if I could be even with thee for this! Oh, man, man, man, what a curious, beastly villain!’ He was much too angry now to be tender of his wife—either of her pity or revenge; he turned upon her, threatening her from his window.

‘You shall not intimidate me. I am no baby in your hands. This man is a villain, I tell you, whom I shall pursue till he is below my heel. He has laid this, look you for a trap. This was got by theft, and displayed by malice—devilish craft of a traitor. And do you suppose I shall let it go by? You mistake me, by God, if you do. Foul thief!—black, foul theft!’

She pointed to the smear on the blade. ‘And this?’ she asked him: ‘what of this? Was this got by theft, my lord? Was this dry blood thieved from a dead man? Or do I mistake, as you suppose? Nay, wretch, but you know that I do not. The man was dead long before you dared touch him. Dead and in rags—and then the King drove in his blade!’ Her face—Hecate in the winter—withered him more than her words. Though these contained a dreadful truth, the other chilled his blood. He crept aimlessly about the room, feeling his heart fritter to water, and all the remains of his heat congested in his head. He tried to straighten his back, his knees: there seemed no sap in his bones. And she sat on, with cold critical eyes, and her lips hard together.

‘My Mary,’ he began to stammer, ‘this is all a plot against my life—surely, surely you see it. I have enemies, the worse in that they are concealed—I see now that all the past has been but a plot—why, yes, it is plain as the daylight! I entreat you to hear me: this is most dangerous villainy—I can prove it. They swore to stand my friends—fast, fast they swore it. And here—to your hand—is proof positive. Surely, surely, you see how I am trapped by these shameful traffickers!’

Her eyes never left his face, but followed him about the room on his aimless tour; and whether he turned from the window or the wall, so sure as he looked up he saw them on him. They drove him into speech. ‘I meant honestly,’ he began again, shifting away from those watchful lights; ‘I meant honestly indeed. I have lived amiss—oh, I know it well! A man is led into sin, and one sin leads to another. But I am punished, threatened, in peril. Let me escape these nets and snares, I may do well yet. My Mary, all may be well! Let us stand together—you and I’—he came towards her with his hands out, stopped, started back. ‘Look away—look away; take your eyes from off me—they burn!’ He covered his own. ‘O God, my God, how miserable I am!’

‘You are a prisoner as I am,’ said the Queen. ‘We stand together because we are tied together. And as for my eyes, what you abhor in them is what you have put there. But since we are fellow-prisoners, methinks——’

He looked wildly. ‘Who says I am prisoner? If I am—if I am—why, I am betrayed on all hands. My kinsmen—my father—no, no, no! That is foolishness. Madam,’ he asked her, being desperate, ‘who told you that I was a prisoner?’

She glanced at the dagger. ‘This tells me. Why, think you, should Archie Douglas have laid that in the grave, except for me to find it there?’

It was, or it might have been, ludicrous to see his dismay. He stared, with dots where his eyes should have been; he puffed his cheeks and blew them empty; in his words he lost all sense of proportion.

‘Beastly villain! Why, it is a plot against me! Why, they may murder me! Why, this may have been their whole intent! Lord God, a plot!’

He pondered this dreadfully, seeing no way of escape, struggling with the injury of it and the pity of it. Consideration that she was in the same plight, that he had plotted against her, and now himself was plotted against: there was food for humour in such a thought, but no food for him. Of the two feelings he had, resentment prevailed, and brought his cunning into play. ‘By heaven and hell,’ he said, ‘but I can counter shrewdly on these knaves. Just wait a little.’ He cheered as he fumbled in his bosom. ‘You shall see, you shall see—now you shall see whether or no I can foin and parry with these night-stabbers. Oh, the treachery, the treachery! But wait a little—now, now, now!’

He produced papers in a gush—bonds, schedules, signatures, seals—all tumbled pell-mell into her lap. She read there what she had guessed beforehand: Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, Douglas, Lethington—ah, she had forgotten this lover of Mary Fleming’s!—Boyd—yes, yes, and the stout Kirkcaldy of Grange. Not her brothers? No: but she suspected that Lethington’s name implied Moray’s. Well, Sir James would win her back Moray, she hoped. She did not trouble with any more. ‘Yes, yes, your friends, my lord. Your friends,’ she repeated, lingering on the pleasant word, ‘who have made use of you to injure me, and now have dropped you out of window. Well! And now what will you do, fellow-prisoner?’

At her knees now, his wretched head in her lap, his wretched tears staining her, he confessed the whole business, sparing nobody, not even himself; and as his miserable manhood lay spilling there it staled—like sour milk in sweet—any remnants of attraction his tall person may have had for her. She could calculate as she listened—and so she did—to what extent she might serve herself yet of this watery fool. But she could not for the life of her have expressed her contempt for him. The thing had come to pass too exactly after her calculation. If he had been a boy she might have pitied him, or if, on entering her presence, he had laid sudden hands upon her, exulting in his force and using it mannishly; had he been greedy, overbearing, insolent, snatching—and a man!—she might, once more and for ever, have given him all her heart. But a blubbering, truth-telling oaf—heaven and earth! could she have wedded _this_? Well, he would serve to get her out of Holyrood; and meantime she was tired and must forgive, to get rid of him.

This was not so easy as it sounds, because at the first word of human toleration she uttered he pricked up his pampered ears. As she went on to speak of the lesson he had learned, of the wisdom of trusting her for the future and of being ruled by her experience and judgment, he brushed his eyes and began to encroach. His tears had done him good, and her recollected air gave him courage; he felt shriven, more at ease. So he enriched himself of her hand again, he edged up to share her seat; very soon she felt his arm stealing about her waist. She allowed these things because she had decided that she must.

He now became very confidential, owning freely to his jealousy of the Italian—surely pardonable in a lover!—talking somewhat of his abilities with women, his high-handed ways (which he admitted that he had in excess: ‘a fault, that!‘), his ambitions towards kingship, crowns-matrimonial, and the like trappings of manhood. She listened patiently, saying little, judging and planning incessantly. This he took for favour, advanced from stronghold to stronghold, growing as he climbed. The unborn child—pledge of their love: he spoke of that. He was sly, used double meanings; he took her presently by the chin and kissed her cheek. Unresisted, he kissed her again and again. ‘_Redintegratio amoris!_’ he cried, really believing it at the moment. This very night he would prove to her his amendment. Journeys end in lovers’ meeting! If she would have patience she should be a happy wife yet. Would she—might he hope? Should this day be a second wedding day? Her heart was as still as freezing water, but her head prompted her to sigh and half smile.

‘You consent! You consent! Oh, happy fortune!’ he cried, and kissed her mouth and eyes, and possessed as much as he could.

‘Enough, my lord, enough!’ said she. ‘You forget, I think, that I am a wife.’

He cursed himself for having for one moment forgotten it, threw himself at her knees and kissed her held hands over and over, then jumped to his feet, all his courage restored. ‘Farewell, lady! Farewell, sweet Queen! I go to count the hours.’ He went out humming a tavern catch about Moll and Peg. She called her women in, to wash her face and hands.

* * * * *

By riding long and changing often Sir James Melvill had been able to salute the Earl of Moray on the home side of Dunbar. The great man travelled, _primus inter pares_, a little apart from his companions in exile—and without Mr. Secretary Lethington. The fact is that Mr. Secretary was as much distrusted by his friends as by Lord Moray himself, and had been required at the last moment to stay in town. Sir James, thanks to that, was not long in coming to close quarters with the Earl, and frankly told him that he had been sent by the Queen’s Majesty to welcome him home. Lord Moray was bound to confess to himself that, certainly, he had not looked for that. He had expected to come back a personage to be feared, but not one to be desired. The notion was not displeasing—for if you are desired it may very well be because you are feared. So all the advantage at starting lay with Sir James.

He went on to say how much need her Majesty felt in her heart to stand well with her blood relations. As for old differences—ah, well, well, they were happily over and done with. My lord would not look for the Queen to confess to an error in judgment, nor would she, certainly, ever reproach him with the past. There was no question of a treaty of forgiveness between a sister and her brother. Urgency of the heart, mutual needs, were all! And her needs were grievous, no question. Why, the very desire she had for his help was proof that the past was past. Did not his lordship think so?

His lordship listened to this tolerant chatter as became a grave statesman. Without a sign to betray his face he requested his civil friend—‘worthy Sir James Melvill’—to rehearse the late occurrences—‘Of the which,’ he said, ‘hearing somewhat at Berwick, I had a heavy heart, misdoubting what part I might be called upon to play in the same.’

Whereupon Sir James, with the like gravity, related to his noble friend all the details of a plot which nobody knew more exactly than the man who heard him. It added zest to the comic interlude that Sir James also knew quite well that my lord had been one of the conspirators.

At the end his lordship said: ‘I thank you, Sir James Melvill, for your tender recital of matters which may well cause heart-searching in us all. Happy is that queen, I consider, who has such a diligent servant! And happy also am I, who can be sure of one such colleague as yourself!’

‘All goes well,’ thinks Melvill. ‘I have my old sow by the lug.’

If he had one lug, the Queen got the other. For when my Lord of Moray reached Edinburgh that night, he was told that her Majesty awaited him at Holyroodhouse. Prisoner or not, she received him there, smiling and eager to see him—and her gaolers standing by! And whenas he hesitated, darkly bowing before her, she came forward in a pretty, shy way; and, ‘Oh, brother, brother, I am glad you have come to me,’ she said, and gave him her hands, and let him kiss her cheek.

He murmured something proper,—his duty always remembered, and the rest of the phrases,—but she, as if clinging to him, ran on in a homelier speech. ‘Indeed, there was need of you, brother James!’ she assured him, and went on to tell him that which moved the stony man to tears. At least, it is so reported, and I am glad to believe it.

She walked with him afterwards in full hall, talking low and quickly—candour itself. Her tones had a throbbing note, and a note of confidence, which changed the whole scene as she recited it. I repeat, the hall was full while she walked with him there, up and down in the flickering firelight—full of the men whose plots he had shared, and hoped to profit by. Fine spectacle for my lords of the Privy Council, for Mr. Archie Douglas and his cousin Morton, fine for Mr. Secretary Lethington! Before she kissed her brother good-night, before she went to bed, she felt that she had done a good day’s work. And now, with her triumph as good as won, she was ready for the crowning of it.

* * * * *

There she was out-generalled: there she was beaten. Match for all these men’s wit, she was outwitted by one man’s sodden flesh. They undressed her, prepared her for bed. She lay there in her pale, fragrant beauty, solace for any lord’s desire, and conscious of it, and more fine for the knowledge. She took deep breaths and draughts of ease; she assured herself that she was very fair; she watched the glimmering taper and read the shadows on the pictured wall as she waited for the crowning of her toil. The day had been hers against all odds; the day is not always to Venus, but the night is her demesne. So she waited and drowsed, smiling her wise smile, secure, superb, and at ease. But King Harry Darnley, very drunk, lay stertorous in his own bed; nor dared Forrest, nor Standen, nor any man of his household, stir him out of that. The Queen of Wine and Honey had digged a pit of sweetness and hidden a fine web all about it, and was fallen into the midst of it herself.

And so, it is like enough, if the boar had not timely rent the thigh of Adonis, Dame Venus herself might have writhed, helpless in just such toils.