Chapter VIII: King’s Evil

Sir James Melvill, wise and mature, travelled gentleman, made nothing of a ride to Dunbar in the slush of snow. He was careful to take it before the dawn, and arrived late, to find the Queen not visible. They told him she had come in some hours after daybreak, exhausted, but not nearly so exhausted as her horse. It was hardly likely she would rise the day.

‘You’ll let her Majesty know that I’m here, with my service to ye, Mr. Erskine. And since ye’re so obliging I’ll take a mouthful just of your spiced wine.’ Thus Sir James; who was sipping at this comfortable cup when the Earl of Bothwell came in, stamping the winter from his boots, and recalled him to his privileges. To see him make his bow to a lord was to get a lesson in the niceties of precedence. He knew to the turn of a hair how far to go, and unless the occasion were extraordinary, never departed from the Decreet of Ranking. In the present case, however, all things considered, he may have judged, ‘This Earl has merited the salutation of a Prince-Bishop.’ That presupposed, the thing was well done. Sir James’s heels went smartly together—but without a click, which would have been too military for the day; the body was slightly bent, with one hand across the breast. But his head fell far, and remained down-hung in deepest reverence of the hero. It is exactly thus that a devotional traveller in a foreign town might salute, but not adore, the passing Host. ‘I will not bow the knee to Baal; no, but I will honour this people’s God.’ And thus bowed Sir James.

‘Now, who graces me so highly?’ cried Bothwell when he saw him; and immediately, ‘Eh, sirs, it is honest Sir James! So the wind hath veered in town already! Man, you’re my weathercock in this realm. Your hand, Sir James, your hand, your hand. Never stoop that venerable pow to me.’

‘Always the servant of your lordship,’ murmured Sir James, much gratified.

‘Havers, James!’ says Bothwell, and sat upon the table. He swung his leg and looked at his sea boots as he talked, reflecting aloud, rather than conversing.

‘The Queen is sound asleep,’ he said, ‘as well enough she may be. Good sakes, my man, what a proud and gladsome lady have we there! I tell you, I have seen young men ride into action more tardily than she into the perilous dark. She flung herself to the arms of foul weather like a lammock to his dam’s dug. You’d have said’—he lowered his voice—‘you’d have said she was at the hunting of a hare, if you’d seen her gallop—with Adonis fleeting before her.’

Sir James nodded, as if to say—‘A hint is more than enough for me.’

‘Well!’ cried Bothwell, ‘well! What scared the gowk, then?’

‘My lord,’ said Sir James, ‘you must observe, he had been by when Lord Ruthven’s knife was at work, slicing Davy. He knew the way of it, d’ye see?’

Bothwell flung up his head. ‘Ay! he was all in a flutter of fear. The bitter fools that they are! Every traitor of them betraying the other, and a scamper who shall do mischief and be first away. But this one here—he’s none too safe, ye ken. He’s dug his own grave, I doubt. Before long time you and I, Melvill, shall see him by Davy’s side.’

‘Ah, my lord of Bothwell——’ Sir James was scandalised.

‘Fear nothing, man—I must talk. Here, in this place, what is he? Who heeds him, where he comes or whither he goes? Why, this skipjack of Brabant is the better man!’

The skipjack of Brabant was Des-Essars, come down to call Lord Bothwell to the Queen. She was about to hold a council, and Melvill was to abide the upshot.

‘Is the King to be there, do you know, Baptist?’ says my lord, his hand on the lad’s shoulder.

‘The King sleeps, my lord,’ he replied. ‘I heard her Majesty say that he could not do better.’

‘Her Majesty has the rights of him by now,’ says Bothwell. ‘Well—we shall work none the worse without him. Sir James, your servant. If I can help you, you shall see her.’

‘So your lordship will bind me fast to your service,’ bowed Sir James, and watched the pair depart. He observed that Des-Essars’ crown was level with the Earl’s cheek-bone.

* * * * *

Let me deal with the fruit of this council while I may. Sir James took a seed of it, as it were, back to Edinburgh, planted and watered it, and saw an abundant harvest, of sweet and bitter mixed. As for instance,—to the Earls of Moray and Argyll went full pardons of all offences; to Glencairn and Rothes the hope of some such thing upon proof of good disposition—just enough to separate men not quite dangerous from men desperate. To them, those desperate men, came the last shock. Writs of treason were out against the Earl of Morton, Lords Ruthven and Lindsay and the Master of Lindsay, against Archibald Douglas of Whittingehame, William Kirkcaldy of Grange, Ker of Fawdonsyde and their likes; also, definitely and beyond doubt, against William Maitland, younger of Lethington. The Secretary had to thank Lord Bothwell for that, for the Queen would have spared him if she could for Mary Fleming’s sake. These writs were served that very night and copies affixed to the Market-cross. The smaller fry—men in Morton’s livery, jackals and foxes of the doors—were to be taken as they fell in and hanged at conveniency. Many were apprehended in their beds before Sir James could be snug in his own.

One may look, too, for a moment at the last conference of them that of late had been masters of Holyrood. It was had in Lord Morton’s big house—a desultory colloquy broken by long glooms.

‘If you are still for hanging yourself, Ruthven,’ said my Lord Morton, in one of these pauses, ‘you’ve time.’

And Ruthven turned his eyes about with evident pain. Those thought, who looked at him, that he had not so much time. He was horribly ill, with fever in bones and blood. ‘I’m not for that now, my lord,’ he said, ‘I have a better game than that in hand.’

‘I could name you one if you were needing it,’ said Morton again, with a glance towards Archie Douglas. Listening and watching, the grey-headed youth chuckled, and rubbed his dry hands together.

‘Ay,’ said Ruthven, observing the action, and sickening of actor and it, ‘slough your skin, snake, and bite the better.’

‘Man, Ruthven,’ said Morton impatiently, ‘you talk too much of what you will do, and spend too much of your spleen on them that would serve ye if ye would let them. Body of me, we have time before us to scheme a great propyne for this good town that spews us out like so much garbage.’

‘We have that, cousin,’ says Archie, ‘if but we accord together.’

‘Ah, traitors all, traitors all!’ Ruthven was muttering to himself; then (as he thought of the chief of traitors) burst out—‘When we have done his butcher’s work—he heels us out of doors! Sublime, he washes his hands and goes to bed. We are the night-men, look you. Foh, we smell of our trade! what king could endure us? Oh, lying, sleek, milky traitor!’

Lord Morton, whose rage lay much deeper, thought all this just wind and vapour. ‘To fret and cry treachery, Ruthven! Pooh, a French trick, never like to save your face. Why, poor splutterer, nothing will save that but to mar another’s face.’

‘Your talk against my talk,’ cried Ruthven; ‘and will you do it any better?’

Lord Morton flushed to a heavy crimson colour, and his eyes were almost hidden. ‘Ay, mark me, that I will. I will score him deep with this infamy.’ He went to the window and stood there alone. Nobody could draw him into talk again.

There was much bustle in Edinburgh during the week, and more suitors to the Earl of Moray than he had time to see. Mr. Secretary got no joy out of him; he was kind to the Earl of Morton and spoke him many hopeful words; he shook his finger at Lord Ruthven. ‘Fie, my lord,’ he said, ‘you should wear a finer face. Turn you to your God, Lord Ruthven, and store up grain against the lean years to come. Root up these darnels from your garden-plot, lest they choke the good seed sowed in you. Let stout Mr. Knox be your exemplar, then; behold how he can harden his brows. Farewell, my lord: be sure of my friendship; take kindly to the soil of England. There are stout hearts in Newcastle, a godly congregation, to which I commend you.’

Ruthven turned away from him without a word to say, and never saw him again. With Morton, Lindsay, and the rest, he took the English road. Mr. Secretary Lethington went to my lord Atholl’s in the west; my lord of Argyll became a Queen’s man. Within the bare week after the flight to Dunbar the ragged corse of the Italian lay as untrodden by enemies as if Jerusalem had been his sepulture. But we are out-running our matter: we must be back at Dunbar with Queen Mary.

* * * * *

From that castle Lord Bothwell wrote to his wife, to this effect:—

Attend me not these many days. The alders may bud by Hermitage
Water before I kiss the neck of my dear. For such business as
here we have was never done in the Debatable Land since Solway
Moss was reddened; such a riding in and forth of messengers,
such a sealing of dooms, rewards and forfeitures—no, nor such
a flocking of lords anxious to prove their wisdoms in their
loves.... She is hearted like a man. She rises early every
day, and sets to her blessing and banning of men’s lives with
as sharp an edge as I to my beef at noon. She has a care for
all who have served or dis-served her, and is no more frugal
of her embracing than of her spurning heel. One man only she
hath clean out of mind; for him she hath neither inclination
nor disgust. She asketh not his company, neither seeketh to
have him away. He is as though he were not—still air in the
chamber, for which you ope not the window, as needing more of
it, nor shut-to the window, for fear of more. Doth he enter her
presence—why not? the room is wide. Doth he go out—why not? the
world is wider. How this came about it were too long to tell
you; this only will I say, that it came late, for at her first
alighting here she feared him mortally, as if she viewed in him
the ghost of her old self. That was a sickness of the mind, not
against nature; now gone, and he with it. Needs must I admire
her for the banishment....

But to return. Business ended—more sharply than you would
believe by any young head but your own—she wins to the open
weather. She walks abroad, she takes my arm. Yes, and indeed, I
am grown to be somewhat in this realm. She rides o’er the brae;
your servant at her stirrup; she sails the sea, your lover
at the helm. You belie your own courage when you doubt this
princess’s, my dear heart. For, to say nothing of her trust in
me, which you will own to be bold in any lady (and most bold in
herself), she has the mettle of a blood-horse, whom to stroke
is to sting. She is far gone with child, and you may guess with
what zest, seeing her regard for her partner in it. In truth,
she hath a horror; because her aim is to forget what she can
never forgive, and so every drag upon her leaping spirit seems
to remind her of him and his deeds. Oh, but she suffers and is
strong!... I hear you say to me, ‘Fie, you are bewitched. A
spell! A spell!’—but I laugh at you. There is a still-faced,
raven-haired witch-wife in Liddesdale working upon me under the
moon. Aha, Mistress Sanctity, watch for me o’ nights.

Yestreen the Q. spake of your Serenity. ‘She hates me,’ quoth
she, ‘for her father’s sake, in whose cruel disgrace I vow I
had no part; but I shall make her love me yet.’ And when I
laughed somewhat, she gave a thring of the shoulder. ‘I’ld have
you know, Lord Bothwell,’ saith she, ‘that there’s no wife nor
bairn in this land can refuse the kisses of my mouth.’ Thinks
I, ‘You are bold to say it. You may come to crave them.’ _Quant
à moy, ma doulce amye, je te bayse les mains._

You can see that he had been laughing at her in the old way, not boisterously this time, but under the beard, in his little twinkling eyes; and that, in the old way, she had been braced by his bravery. He had guessed—you can see that too—that she had some need of him, and how necessary it was that her loathing for her husband should pass into mere indifference. But he had no notion at that time how pressing that need was. Not she herself had realised the horror she had until the night after reaching Dunbar, when the King, by Standen, had renewed certain proposals, frustrate before by his laches. It may have been sudden panic, it may have been a trick of memory—God knows what it was; but she had flooded with scarlet, then turned dead white, had murmured some excuse, and with bowed head and feeble, expostulating hands, had left the room. She did not come back that night. She had called Des-Essars, fled with him into the turret, found an empty chamber under the leads, had the door locked, a great coffer jammed against it—and had stayed there so till morning. The young man, writing a word or two upon it, says that she was almost rigid at first, in a waking trance; and that she sat ‘pinned to his side’ while the maids and valets hunted her high and low. ‘I did what I could,’ he writes; ‘talked nonsense, told old tales, sang saucy songs, which by that time of my life I had been glad to have forgotten, and, affecting a nonchalance which I was far from feeling, recovered her a little. She began to be curious whether they would find her, judged by the ear how the scent lay, laughed to hear Mistress Seton panting on the stair, and Carwood screaming—“There’s a great rat in my road!” Presently she slept, with her head on my knees and my jacket over her shoulders. I took her down to bed before morning, and in the daylight she had partly recovered herself. She transacted business, ate a meal; but I remarked that she trembled whenever the King entered the room, and faltered when she was obliged to reply to him—faltered and turned up her eyes, as fowls do when they are sleepy. Fortunately for her, he was sulky, and did not renew his advances.’

I suspect that she found out—for she was rigid in self-probing—that if she allowed herself to abhor him for an unspeakable affront, she would have to scorn herself even more for having given him the means of affronting her. Right punishment: she would admit that she had deserved it. She had been the basest of women (she would say) when she offered that which was to her a sacrament, in barter for mere political advantage. Why, yes! she had prepared to sell herself to this wallowing swine in order to escape her prison; and if he snored the bargain out of his head it was because he was a hog,—but then, O God! what was she? So, from not daring to think of that night of shame, she passed to fearing to think of the shameful recreants in it; and as we ever peer at what we dread, it came about that she could think of nothing else, and was in torment. Des-Essars gives none of this; it was not in his power to get at it; but he saw, what we can never see, that she suffered atrociously, that her case grew desperate. Hear him. ‘One day I came with a message to her chamber door, early; the door was half-open. I had a shocking vision of her abed, lying there in a bed of torture, like one stung; on her face, writhing and moaning, tossing her hands—short breath, tearless sobbing, sharp cries to God; while Mary Seton read aloud out of Saint-Augustin by the fog-bound cresset light. She read on through everything—pausing only to put our Mistress back into the middle of the bed, for fear lest she might fall out and hurt herself.’

If this is true—and we know that it is—why, then, out of such waking delirium, out of anguish so dry, Queen Mary must have been delivered if she were not to die of it.

* * * * *

The Earl of Bothwell was not a man of imagination, though he had a quick fancy. He read his Queen in this state of hers with interest at first, and some amusement, not then knowing how dire it was. He saw that she would turn white and leave any room into which King Darnley entered; he knew that she would ride far to avoid him, and sometimes, indeed, under sudden stress, would use whip and spur and fly from him like a hunted thief. When he found out something—not very much, for Des-Essars would not speak—of the events of the night in the turret, moved by good-nature, he put himself in the way to help her. He got more maids fetched from Edinburgh—Fleming and Mary Sempill—and himself stayed with her as long as he dared, and longer than he cared. And then, one day by chance, he got a full view of her haunted mind—a field of broken lights indeed! and saw how far he might travel there if he chose, and with what profit to himself.

He was with her afoot on the links behind the town—sandy hillocks of dry bents, and a grey waste at such a season, abode of the wind and the plovers; he with her, almost alone. Des-Essars, who walked behind them, had strayed with the dogs after a hare; the wind, blowing in from the sea, brought up wisps and patches of fog in which the boy was hidden. Talking as she went, carelessly, of the things of France, he listening more or less, she stopped of a sudden, choked a cry in the throat, and caught at his arm. ‘Look, look, look!’ she said: ‘what comes this way?’ He followed the direction of her fixed eyes, and saw a riderless horse loom out of the vapour, come on doubtingly at a free trot, shaking his head and snuffing about him as if he partly believed in his freedom. It shaped as a great grey Flemish horse, assuredly one of the King’s.

The Queen began to tremble, to mutter and moan. ‘Oh, oh, the great horse! Free—it’s free! Oh, if it could be so! Oh, my lord, oh——I’m afraid!’

‘It is indeed the King’s horse, madam,’ he said. ‘I fear—some misfortune.’

But she stared at him. ‘Misfortune!’ she cried out. ‘Oh, are you blind? Go and see—go and make sure. I must be assured—nothing is certain yet. Run, my lord, run fast!’

He made to obey, and instantly she clung to his arm to stop him. She was in wild fear.

‘No—no—no—you must not leave me here! There are voices in the sea-wind—too many voices. A clamour, a clamour! Those that cry at me through the door, those that are out on the sea—a many, a many! I tell you I am afraid.’ Her fear irritated her; she stamped her foot. ‘Do you hear me? I am afraid. You shall not leave me.’

There was no doubt. She was beside herself—looking all about, her teeth chattering, fingers griping his arm.

‘Why, then, I will send the lad, ma’am,’ says Bothwell. ‘You need have no fear with me. I hear no voices in the wind.’

She looked at him wonderfully. ‘Do you never hear them at night?’ Then her eyes paled, and the pupils dwindled to little specks of black. ‘Come with me,’ she said in whisper, ‘a-tiptoe; come softly with me. We must find him—we can never be sure till we see him lying. There is one way: you lift the eyelids. Better than a mirror to the nose. Come, come: I must look at him, to be very sure.’ She stared into the white sky, and gave a sudden gasp, pointing outwards while her eyes searched his face. ‘Look!’ she said: ‘the birds over there. They are about him already. Come, we shall be too late.’ She led him away in a feverish hurry, through bush and briar, talking all the time. ‘Blood on his face—on his mouth and shut hands. He gripped his dagger by the blade, and it bit to the bone. He comes and cries at my door—all foul from his work—and asks me let him in. But I hold it—I am very strong. He always comes—but now!’ She laughed insanely, and gave a skip in the air. ‘O come, my lord—hurry, hurry!’

The loose horse had trotted gaily by them as the astonished Lord Bothwell followed where he was haled. Presently, however, he heard another sound, and pulled back to listen to it. ‘Hearken a moment,’ says he. ‘Yes, yes! I thought as much. Here comes another horse—galloping like a fiend—a ridden horse.’

She started, forced herself to listen, knew the truth. ‘He is hunting! Take me—hide me—keep me safe! Bothwell, keep him off me!’

She knew not what she said or did; but he, full of pity now, drew her behind a clump of whims and held her with his arm.

‘There, there, madam, comfort yourself,’ he said. ‘None shall harm you that harm not me first. How shall you be hurt if you are not to be seen? Trust yourself to me.’

She shook in his arm like a man in an ague; uncontrollable fits of shaking possessed her, under which, as they passed through her, she shut her eyes, and with bent head endured them. So much she suffered that, if he had not let his wits go to work, he would have hailed the King as he went pounding by. He supposed that she had been shocked mad by that late business of hasty blood. Of course he was wrong, but the guess was enough to prevent him following his first purpose, and so killing her outright.

The King came rocking down the brae, red and furious, intent upon the truant horse; and as he went, Bothwell made bold to glance at the Queen. What he saw in her hag-ridden face was curious enough to set him thinking hard; curious, but yet, as he saw it, unmistakable. There was vacancy there, the inability to reason which troubles the mentally afflicted; there were despair and misery, natural enough if the poor lady was going mad—and knew it. But—oh, there was no doubt of it!—there was in the drawn lines of her face blank, undisguised disappointment. He saw it all now. She had believed him dead, her heart had leaped; and now she had just seen him alive, galloping his horse. Clang goes the cage door again upon my lady! Now, here was a state of things!

When the King was out of sight and hearing, swallowed in the growing fog, and she a little recovered, and a little ashamed, he began to talk with her; and in time she listened to what he had to say. He spoke well, neither forgetting the respect due to her, which before he had been prone to do, nor that due to himself as a man of the world. He did not disguise from her that he thought very lightly of David’s killing.

‘Saucy servants, in my opinion,’ he said, ‘must take what they deserve if they expect more than they are worth. They demand equality—well, and when they meet gentlemen with daggers, they get it.’ But he hastened to add that to have killed the fellow before her face must have been the act of beasts or madmen—‘and, saving his respect, madam, your consort was one and your Ruthven the other.’

To his great surprise she then said quietly that she was of the same mind, and not greatly afflicted by the deed, or the manner of it either. She had seen men killed in France; queens should be blooded as well as hounds. She also considered that Davy had been presumptuous. He had known his aptitudes too well. But useful he had certainly been, and she intended to have another out of the same nest—Joseph, his brother. Singular lady! she had found time to write into Piedmont for him.

‘Well then, madam,’ says Bothwell, with a shrug, ‘all this being your true mind, I own myself at a loss how to take your extreme alarms.’

She bit her lip. ‘I am better. Maybe they were foolish. Who knows? I cannot tell you any more than this. I had nearly forgot that wicked deed. But there are other offences—women find—which cannot, can never be forgotten.’ She grew impatient. ‘Ah, but it is not tolerable to discuss such things.’

Even then he did not know what she meant. She had been mortally offended by the King, and offended to the point of horror—but by something worse than murder and strife in the chamber, by something which she could not speak of! What under Heaven had that red-faced, stable-legged lad in him which could terrify her?

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘if you cannot talk of it, you cannot tell it me, and there is an end. My counsel to you is this: put the young lord and his sottishness out of your royal head. Look at him stoutly and aver that he is naught. You have shown that you can face a rebel kingdom; face now your rebel heart. For I say that your heart is a rebel against your head, swerving and backing like a jade that needs the spur. Ride your heart, madam! Ply whip to the flanks, bring it up to the boggart in the corn. Thus only your heart shall nose out the empty truth. Why, good lack! what is there to credit all your alarm but silly fed flesh and seething liquor? Look at him, judge him, flick your fingers at him, and forget him. Madam, I speak freely.’

She said faintly that he was very right. She had suffered much of late in all ways: she spoke of pains in the side, in the head, of fancies at night, etc. She owned that she desired his good opinion of her courage, and promised she would try to earn it. Looking tired and ill, smiling as if she knew only too well there was no smiling matter, she held out her hand to him at the entry of the town. He bowed over and kissed it. Mildly she thanked him and went her ways with Des-Essars.

He wrote to the countess soon after:—

Very strange matters chance here daily, of the which I write
not exactly for fear of misreading. One thing I plainly
understand, the K. shall never more prosper here. While he was
beloved he was something, and when he was dreaded he was much;
but now that he comes and goes unnoticed he is nothing at all.
And so he will remain, I suppose, until the lying-in, which
will be in June coming they say. Ill betide him then if, when
she is reminded of him in his son, he play her any trick. I
would not give a snap of the finger and thumb for his life. We
are for Edinburgh on Monday morn, whence look infallibly for my
tidings.

The King, then, was nothing at all. Nerved by her brawny councillor, she had faced her ‘boggart in the corn,’ and in two days’ time could curl her fine lip to remember him. That is a proof that she was sane at the root, needing no more than such bitter as his rough tongue could give to restore her tone. And, having ridded her fears, she soon found that she could rid her memory altogether. The King went out and in, as Bothwell had written, unnoticed. He made no more attempts to come at her, spoke to none but his own company, felt that he was in disgrace, and sulked. Lord Bothwell scoffed at him by implication—by every keen shaft from his eyes and every wag of his head; Lord Huntly kept at a distance; Sir James altered his salutation. On the Sunday before they should move back to town they were speaking of the rebel lords, whether they were now in England or yet on the road; and Bothwell began to cry up Ruthven, his madness, his knives, his friends’ knives. The King got up and left the table. He told Standen afterwards that he should not go to Edinburgh. Standen told Des-Essars, and he told the Queen.

‘Oh, but he shall,’ she said at once, consulted her friends, and sent him a verbal message that she should need him there. He felt this badly—but obeyed it.

For, much against her inclination, she had made up her mind that she must drag the chain which had been forged upon her; she must keep the King in her eye for fear he should work her a mischief. His father Lennox was in Glasgow, an escaped enemy: it would never do for him to go thither. Or suppose he were to return to England! No, no, she must keep him in Edinburgh, keep him cowed, and yet not allow him to grow desperate. Worse than that, the time was coming on when she must have him by her side, in the house, perhaps nearer still. He was now ‘the Queen’s dearest Consort,’ but soon he would be ‘the Prince’s dearest father’ and a power in the land. The Earl of Bothwell, consulted, was precise about that—awkwardly precise.

‘Folk will talk, madam, about you and him. He’ll not want for a faction to cry, “The King keeps aloof! Well he may, knowing what he knows.” Oh, have him with you, ma’am, as near as may be. For hawks dinna pick out hawks’ een, as they say; and if he owns to the child—why, he should know his own.’

She flushed. ‘You speak too plainly, my lord.’

‘Not if I mean honestly, ma’am.’

‘I hope you mean so,’ said she, ‘but the sound of your phrase is otherwise.’

‘I was speaking in character, ma’am. Mark that.’

She was looking down at her lap when next she spoke, carelessly at her careless fingers. ‘Whose child do they allege it?’

The directness of the question and indirectness of its manner puzzled him. He could not tell whether to be blunt or fine.

‘Madam, I am no scandal-monger, I hope, and have little pleasure in the grunting of hogs in a sty. But hogs will grunt, as your Majesty knows.’

She did not raise her eyes, but said: ‘It will be better that you answer me in a few words. One will suffice.’

He tried—he began—but could not do it. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘you must answer for yourself. All I will ask is this: what, think you, drew the King to the deed he did?’

She lifted her head and gave him one long look. Rather, it seemed long. He knelt down quickly and kissed her knee.

He rose and began to justify himself. ‘You forced me to say it—it may have been my duty—make it not my offence. God knows I needed no such royal answer as you have given me—not I! I think no evil of your Majesty, nor have I ever.’

She flashed her eyes upon him—not angrily by any means. ‘Oh, my lord, may I be sure of that? Come, I will tell you what I seem to remember. There was a day when you enlarged yourself from my prison and rode, a free man, to Haddington. What said you of me there among your friends?’

He puzzled over this. ‘I can charge myself with nothing. Your Grace knows more of me than I do.’

‘Did you not speak in the hearing of one Pringle concerning me and my uncle the Cardinal? Did you give me a name then? Come, come, my lord, be plain. Did you not?’

He burst out laughing. ‘The voice is the voice of Queen Mary, but the words are of Black James Stuart! Oho, madam, you will hear finer tales than this concerning me, if you sound that thoughtful man.’

She pressed him, but he would neither deny nor affirm. ‘I shall not defend myself, madam, before your Majesty. But I will meet the Earl of Moray, and wager him in battle, if you give me leave: in battle of one and one, or of a score, or of ten score. Let him repeat his charge in the Grassmarket if he dare.’

Baffled here, she harped back upon the child. She said that she needed to be sure of his good opinion of her. Then he made her heart beat fast, for he came and put his hand upon the back of her chair and stood right over her: she could feel the strength of his eyes, like beams from the sun, driving down upon her.

‘Madam, and my sovereign lady, as God is my judge, this is the truth. I loved you once, and, at love’s bidding, staked all on a great design. My plot was unmannerly, but so is love; you were offended with me, as your right was. I loved you no less, but honoured you the more, because of that. If now I thought evil of you—such evil as you suspect in me—I would tell you so for the sake of that love I gave you before.’

She bowed her head and thanked him humbly; did not look up, nor stir from her place below him.

‘As meek as a mouse!’—he could not remember ever to have seen her so before. What was in her heart? It sent him away thoughtful. Next day he rode at her side to Edinburgh.

* * * * *

Established there more firmly than at any time since her reign began; with a council packed with her friends, with Lord Huntly (her slave) for Chancellor; with her open enemies ruined and in exile, her secret enemies abject at her knees, her husband in disgrace, and her child near its birth—in this comfortable state of her affairs, the Earl of Bothwell suddenly asked leave to go into his own country. She was piqued, and could not help showing it.

‘You desire to—you will consort with—one who loves me little? Well, my lord, well! How should I hinder your going, since I cannot quench your desire?’

Thinks he, ‘Now, now, what root of grievance is this, sprouting here?’ Aloud he said, ‘Madam, I am content—and more than content—to stay by your Majesty so long as you find me of use. But the time is at hand, and you have said it, when you will refuse me harbourage.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she said quickly, her face aflame: ‘you cannot be with me in the castle.’

She had agreed to lie-in there, and had forbidden quarters to Lords Bothwell and Huntly alike. Do you ask why? Mary Seton might have answered you in part—but scornfully, since women have no need to ask such things. They know them. ‘Lord Huntly! Lord Huntly!’ I can hear her say—a pretty, vehement little creature—‘Lord Huntly! And he a known lover of our mistress? How should he be there?’ Pass Lord Huntly: what of Lord Bothwell? She would shake her head. ‘No, no,’ she would say, ‘it could not be. He is a faithful friend.’ Well, then, what of that? She would rise quickly and walk to the window. ‘I cannot tell you, sir, why he is not to be there. But I am very clear that she would not suffer it. Oh, for example——impossible!’ You would get no more from her. And what more could you want?

But the Queen was still frowning over his leave of absence, and pinching her lip. Then she broke out, in the midst of her private thoughts: ‘But I cannot refuse you! How can I? You having asked to go—what is the worth of your staying, when your heart is——And yet—there is the King——’ She looked slily up. ‘My lord, do you dare to trust your pupil alone?’

His face took a gay air. ‘If I am your tutor, madam——’

‘Why,’ said she, ‘what else can you be? My confessor? My cousin? My brother? What else?’

He laughed, avoiding her inquiry. ‘To be your brother would be to own kinship with my lord of Moray. A dangerous degree, ma’am, for one of the pair.’

‘I would not have you for my brother,’ she said thoughtfully.

Responsive thought struck fire in his eyes. ‘I will ask you this. Will your Grace receive me into the castle? There I could be of service—maybe.’

He watched her intently now—watched until he saw the flag come fluttering down. She lowered her eyes; he could hardly hear her words.

‘No, no. You must not be there. Afterwards—come soon.’ She waited there, hanging on the last word; then rose. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is better that you should go. I will not——’ She spoke wildly. ‘Go, my lord, go.’

He knelt to her before he obeyed; at the door she called him back. Quickly he returned, but she would not look at him.

‘I wish to tell you—as plainly as I can——’ So she began, speaking slowly, feeling for her words. ‘The King shall be there with me—in the castle. It is painful to me—I conceive that you must know it. But I shall do as you advise—that scandal may be averted.’ She strained her arms down, stiffening them, gave an impatient shake of the head. ‘Heaven watch over me! And you, my lord, do you pray. Ah, but you use not prayer!’ She seemed conscious that she was speaking double and he not understanding. It made her angry enough to look at him. ‘Well, well, why are you here still? Go quickly, I say—go.’

Go he did, a puzzling, excited man.

Before he left the city he saw his brother-in-law, Lord Huntly, for a moment. ‘Geordie,’ he said, ‘I’m for the Border. I’m going to my wife. Are you for yours or do you stay here?’

‘I stay.’

‘You may be wise. I am going to my wife—and I may be wise. God knows that I know not. I have not seen her for five months.’

Lord Huntly had no answer. He had not seen his for over a year. Presently Bothwell makes another cast.

‘I took leave of the Queen of late. She was greatly wrought upon—distempered. Sent me off—called me back—sent me off again, after some wild words. I know not what to make of it.’

‘Help her through it, God!’ said Huntly.

‘I think it is a matter for Lucina,’ said Bothwell, and went his road.

He travelled musingly by the hill-ways into Liddesdale, French Paris behind him. At the top of the pass—Note o’ the Gate, they call it—whence first you see the brown valley of the Liddel, and all the hills, quiet guardians about the silver water, he reined up, and stood looking over his lands.

‘Yonder awaits me the fairest dark lady in Scotland, and (to my mind) the fairest demesne: the open country and the good red deer. Oh, the bonny holms, the green knowes, and the ledged rocks! Houp, man! We are free of the scented chambers and all their whisperings here.’

‘It is most certain, my lord,’ said French Paris, ‘that we have left the direction of those whisperings to Monsieur de Moray.’

Lord Bothwell was stung. ‘Monsieur de Moray! Monsieur de Moray! Pooh, rascal, she has her husband with her now. And that may be even worse for me.’

French Paris looked demurely at the reins sliding in his fingers. ‘True, my lord, she has his Majesty. I have remarked that women in the Queen’s condition have extraordinary inclination for their husbands. It is reasonable.’

‘You are a fool, Paris,’ said the Earl.

But when he was at Hermitage, his proud wife upon his knee, my lord swore to himself over and over again that he was the happiest rogue not yet hanged. And yet he could not but hear, beneath all his protestations, that slow, wounded voice,—‘Afterwards—come soon.’ Good lord! what was the meaning of the like of that?