Chapter V: Medea in the Bedchamber

Women, in the experience of French Paris, as he once informed a select company of his acquaintance, could only be trusted to do a thing, and never to cause a thing to be done. ‘They will always find a thousand reasons why it should not be done, or why it should be done another way—their way, an older way, a newer way, any way in the world but yours. Burn the boats, burn the boats, dear sirs, when you need a woman to help you, as you constantly do in delicate affairs.’ He instanced, as a case in point, his own confidence in Queen Mary, and his master’s want of confidence, when the pair of them rode with her part of her way to Glasgow; and how he was entirely justified by her subsequent behaviour. It made little difference in the end, to be sure; but no doubt she would have been saved a good deal of distress if Bothwell had been as instructed as his lacquey. As it is, it is to be feared that he fretted her sadly. It was not only heartless to play upon her jealousy, to put her so sharply upon her honour, but it was bad policy on his part; for if the creature of your use starts a-quivering at the touch of your hand, how are you served if by your whip and spurs you set her plunging madly into the dark, shying and swerving and cracking her heart? You wear out your tool before the time. That is just what Bothwell did.

The fact is that, as aforesaid, she was too sensitive an instrument for his coarse fingers. As well give Blind Jack a fiddle of Cremona for his tap-room jiggeries. If my lord wanted work from her which Moll Bawd or Kate Cutsheet would have done better, he should have known wiselier how to get it than by using the only stimulus such hacks could feel. This tremulous, starting, docile creature to be pricked on by jealousy, forsooth! Why, that had been King Darnley’s silly way. ‘I would that Glasgow might be the Hermitage and myself the Earl of Bothwell as I lie here,’ he had said; and it made her laugh and admit the truth. But this Bothwell was no finer. ‘Ohè! a many weary leagues before I win my home! Well, I am sure of a welcome there.’ And then, when she bent her head to the way, ‘Ay, Queens and Kings, and all gudemen and wives are in the like case. Bed and board—it comes down e’en to that. Love is just a flaunty scarf to draw the eye with. You see it purfling at a window, and, think you, that should be a dainty white hand a-working there!’

She lifted her face to meet the driving snow, looked into the dun sky and saw it speckled with black—her own colours henceforward! Thus would she be from her soul outwards—sodden grey, and speckled with black. The burden of her heart was so heavy that she groaned aloud. ‘You falter, you fear!’ cried that fidgety brute. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she stammered; ‘I shall fail if you speak to me.’

The snow was falling fast, but there was no wind, when she said farewell to her lover at Callander gate. He would not go in; purposed to ride southward into Liddesdale with but one change of horses, fearing that the wind would get up after dark and make the hill-roads impossible. The Black Laird of Ormiston, Tala, and Bowton were to go with him; he left Paris behind to be her messenger if she should need to send one. There was no time to spare. ‘Set on, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I will overtake you.’

He shook the snow from his cloak, set it flying from eyelashes and beard, drew near to the sombre lady where she stood in the midst of her little company, and put his hand upon her saddle-bow. ‘God speed your Grace upon your goodly errand,’ he said—whereat she gave a little moan of the voice, but did not otherwise respond—‘and send us soon a happy meeting—Amen!’

She looked at him piercingly for a second of time, and then resumed her staring and glooming. He cried her farewell once more, saluted the lords, and pounded over the frozen marsh. One could hear him talking and laughing for a long way, and the barking answers of Ormiston.

The Queen rode up the avenue to the doors, and was taken to bed by Mary Seton and Carwood. She kept her chamber all that evening and night, but sent for Paris early in the morning. He saw her in bed, thin and drawn in the face, very narrow-eyed, and with a short cough. She handed him a great sack, sealed and tied, and a letter.

‘Take these to your master at the Hermitage. You shall have what horses you need. In that pack are four hundred crowns. You see how much trust I have in you.’

Paris assured her that her trust was well bestowed, as she should find out by his quick return to her.

She laughed, not happily. ‘I hope so. I came from France, and to France I go in my need.’

‘Why, madam,’ says Paris, ‘does your Majesty intend for my country?’

‘No, no. I shall see the land of France no more. I spoke of Frenchmen, who are tender towards women.’

Paris felt inspired to say that none loved her Majesty more entirely than the men of his nation, who had delicate sensibility for the perfections of ladies. And he modestly adduced as another example Monsieur Des-Essars, lately advanced to be one of her esquires.

She coloured faintly. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I believe he loves me well. Him also I trust—you, Paris, and Monsieur Des-Essars.’

Paris fell upon his knees. She changed her mood instantly, bade him begone with the treasure, and rejoin her at Glasgow with letters from my lord.

Paris faithfully performed his errand, in spite of the snow with which the country was blanketed as deeply as in a fleece.

‘My lord was glad of the money,’ he tells us, ‘and sent Monsieur de Tala away with it immediately. Before I left him to go to the Queen at Glasgow he told me of his plot, which was to blow the King up with gunpowder as he lay in a lodging at Edinburgh. I said, the King was not at Edinburgh yet. “No, fool,” says he, “but he soon will be.” He showed me papers of association whereon I was to believe stood the names of my lord himself, of my Lords Morton, Argyll, Huntly, Ruthven, and Lindsay, of Mr. Douglas, Mr. James Balfour, and others. He pointed to one name far below the others. “That,” he said, “is of our friend the White Rat,”—my own name for Mr. Secretary. He asked me what I thought of it; I told him, I thought no good of it. “Why not, you fool?” he jeered at me. I replied, “Because, my lord, you do not show me the name of names.”

‘Although he knew entirely well what name I meant, he forced me to mention Monsieur de Moray, and then was angry that I did so. He said that lord would not meddle. I said, “He is wise.” Then he began to jump about the chamber, hopping from board to board like a crow with his wing cut. “My lord of Moray! My lord of Moray!” cried he out. “He will neither help nor hinder; but it is all one. It is late now to change advice—as why should we change for a fool’s word such as thine? If we have Lethington, blockhead, have we not his master?”

‘I said, No; for those gentlemen who interested themselves in the late David had Mr. Secretary, and thought they had the Earl of Moray also. But they found out their mistake the next day, when he came back and, rounding upon them, turned every one of them out.

‘“Well,” he cried—“Well! What then? What is all that to the purpose? Did he not sign my bond at the Council of October?” That bond was what we used to call “Of the Scotchmen’s Business,” because all present signed a paper in favour of the Queen, which was not read aloud. I admitted that he had signed it; but I was not convinced by that. I considered that it pledged him to nothing. I thought it my duty to add, “You are my master, my lord. If you command me in this I shall serve you, because in my opinion it is the business of servants to obey, not to advise. But I say, for the last time, Beware the Earl of Moray.” My master began to rail and swear at his lordship—a natural but vain thing to do. I was silent.

‘The next day after, he told me that he had revealed his plan to Monsieur Hob of Ormiston and to his brother-in-law, my lord of Huntly. If I had dared I should have asked him whether my lady the Countess had been informed; and I did ask it of her woman Torles, who was a friend of mine. But Torles said that, so far as she knew, the Countess never spoke with my lord about the Queen’s affairs.

‘I was curious about another thing, exceedingly curious. “Tell me, my dear Torles,” I said, “our lord and lady—are they still good friends?” From the way that she looked at me, her sly way, and grinned, I knew the answer. “They are better friends, my fine man, than you and I are ever likely to be.” I said something gallant, to the effect that there might be better reasons, and played some little foolishness or other, which pleased her very much. Next morning I started to go to Glasgow with letters for the Queen’s Majesty.’

That was on the 26th January, the very day when Mr. Secretary Lethington was married to his Fleming. Paris heard that he took her to his house of Lethington, but (as he truly adds) the affair is of no moment, where he took her, or whether he took her at all. ‘It was long since she had been of the Queen’s party; indeed, I always understood that it was a love-match between them, entered into at first sight; and that Mistress Fleming had been alienated from her allegiance from the beginning.’ Paris was sorry. ‘She was a pretty and a modest lady, in a Court where those two graces were seldom in partnership.’

* * * * *

He learned at Glasgow that the King was still very sick, and the Queen in a low condition of body. It seems that when she had reached the house she would not have the patient informed of the fact, and would not go to him that same night. Some of the Hamiltons had met her on the road, and returned with her into the town. There was a full house, quite a Court, and a great company about her at supper. Lady Reres was there, an old friend of her Majesty’s, and of Lord Bothwell’s too, and Lord Livingstone, full of his pranks. He, it seems, had rallied the Queen finely about her despondency and long silences; said in a loud whisper that he was ready for a toast to an absentee if she would promise to drink to the name he would cry; and although she would not do it, but shook her head and looked away, his broad tongue was always hovering about Bothwell’s name. It is to be supposed that he drank to many distant friends, for Bastien, the Queen’s valet, told Paris that his lordship grew very blithe after supper. ‘If you will believe me, Paris,’ he said, ‘as her Majesty was warming her foot at the fire, leaning upon this Monsieur de Livingstone’s shoulder, his jolly lordship took her round the middle as if she had been his wench, and cried out upon her doleful visage. “Be merry,” says he, “and leave the dumps to him you have left behind you.” She flung away from him as if he teased her, but allowed his arm to be where it was, and his hardy hand too.’

Great dealings for the Parises and Bastiens to snigger at. I suppose it is no wonder that they unqueened her, since, however fast they went to work, it was never so fast as she did it to herself. They tell me it was always the way with her family, to choose rather to be easy in low company than stiff with the great folk about them. The common sort, therefore, loved the race of Stuart, and the lords detested it. But we must follow Paris if we are to see the Queen.

Though he delivered his letters as soon as he arrived, he was not sent for until late at night. The King’s man, Joachim, took him upstairs, saying as they went, ‘I hope thou hast a stout stomach; for take it from me, all is not very savoury up here.’

Paris replied that he had been so long in the service of gentlemen that their savour meant little to him, even that of diseased gentlemen.

‘Right,’ says Joachim; ‘right for thee, my little game-cock. But thou shalt not find the Queen in too merry pin, be assured.’

Carwood, her finger to her lip, met him in the corridor, passed him in through the anteroom, and pulled aside the heavy curtain. ‘Go in softly,’ she said, ‘and be careful of your feet. It is very dark, and the King sleeps. In with you.’

She drew back and let the curtain drive him forward. Certainly it was plaguey dark. He saw the Queen at the far end of the chamber writing a letter, haloed in the light of a single taper. She looked up when she heard him, but did not beckon him nearer; so he stayed where he was, and, as his eyes grew used to the gloom, looked about him.

It was a spacious room, but low in the ceiling, and raftered, with heavy curtains across the windows, which were embayed. A great bed was in the midst of the wall, canopied and crowned, with plumes at the corners and hangings on all sides but one—the door side. He could not see the King lying there, though he could hear his short breaths, ‘like a dog’s with its tongue out’; but presently, to his huge discomfort, he made out a sitting figure close to the pillow on the farther side, and not six paces from him across the bed—man or woman he never knew. It might have been a dead person, he said, for all the motion that it made. ‘It sat deep in the shadow, hooded, so that you could not see its face, or whether it had a face; and one white hand supported the hood. It did not stir when the sufferer needed assistance, such as water, or the turning of a pillow, or a handkerchief. It was a silent witness of everything done and to be gone through with; gave me lead in the bowels, as they say, the horrors in the hair.’

It may have been Mary Seton, or a priest, or a watching nun; at any rate, it terrified Paris, his head already weakened by the burden of that fetid chamber. The air was overpowering, tainted to sourness, seeming to clog the eyelids and stifle the light.

By and by the Queen beckoned him forward, putting up her finger to enjoin a soft tread. He came on like a cat, and stood within touching distance of her, and saw that she was kneeling at a table, writing with extreme rapidity, tears running down her face. There was a silver crucifix in front of her, to which she turned her eyes from time to time, as if referring to it the words which cost her so much to put down. Once, after a frenzy of penmanship, she held out her hands to it in protest; then reverently took it up and kissed it, to sanctify so the words she was writing: ‘The good year send us that God knit us together for ever for the most faithful couple that ever He did knit together.’ Paris knew very well to whom she wrote so fully, who was to read this stained, passionate letter, ill scrawled on scraps of old paper, scored with guilt, blotted with shameful tears, loving, repentant, wilful, petulant, unspeakably loyal and tender, all by turns. At this moment the King called to her.

He lay, you must know, with a handkerchief over his face. Paris had believed him asleep, for his breathing, though short, was regular, and his moaning and the working of his tongue counted for little in a sick man’s slumber. But while she was in the thick of her work at the table he coughed and called out to her in distress, ‘Mary, O Mary! where are you gone?’ And when she did not answer, but went on with the unspinning of the thought in her mind, and let him call ‘Mary, O Mary!’ Paris, looking from one to the other—and awfully on that shrouded third—found blame for her in his heart.

She finished her line, got up, and went to the foot of the bed. ‘You call me? What is your pleasure?’

‘His pleasure! Faith of a Christian!’ thinks Paris.

The King whispered, ‘Water, in Christ’s name’; and Paris heard the clicking of his dry tongue. Nevertheless he said, ‘Let me fetch you the water, madam.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘fetch it you. And I would that one of us could be drowned in the water.’

He poured some into a cup and took it to her.

‘Give it him,’ says she, ‘give it him. I dare not go nearer.’

The King heard that, and became sadly agitated. He wriggled his legs, tossed about, and began to wail feebly. In the end she had to take it, but you could see that she was nearly sick with loathing of him, natural and otherwise. For to say nothing that she had to lift the handkerchief, that he was hideous, his breath like poison, she was so made that only one could possess her at a time. If she loved a man she could not abide that any other should claim a right of her—least of all one who had a title to claim it.

The water cooled his fever for a time and brought him vitality. He talked, babbled, in the random way of the very sick, plunging headlong into the heart of a trouble and flying out before one can help with a hand. But he was quick enough to see that she did not respond readily, and sly enough to try her upon themes which he judged would be stimulating. He confessed with facile tears the faults of his youth and temper, begged her pardon times and again for his offences against her. ‘Oh, I have done wickedly by you, my love, but all’s over now. You shall see how well we will do together.’

Said she, ‘It will be better to wait a while. Talk not too much, lest you tax yourself.’

He rolled about, blinking his sightless eyes. ‘Do not be hard upon me! I repent—I tell you that I do. Pardon me, my Mary, pardon my faults. Let us be as we were once—lovers—wedded lovers—all in all!’ Paris saw her sway, with shut eyes, as she listened to him. ‘I would have you sleep now, my lord. It will be best for you. You tire yourself by talking.’

He begged for a kiss, and, when she affected not to hear him, grew very wild. It was a curious thing that she did then, watched by Paris with wonder. She dipped the tips of her two forefingers in the cup of water, and, putting them together, touched the back of his hand with them. ‘Ah, the balm of your cool sweet lips!’ he cried out, and was satisfied. But when he asked her to kiss his forehead she, in turn, became agitated, laughing and crying at once, and rocked herself about before she could repeat the touch of her two wet fingers on so foul a place. Again he sighed his content, and lay quiet, and presently dozed again.

She left him instantly and went back to her writing. She wrote fast; the fierce pen screamed over the paper: ‘You make me dissemble so much that I am afraid thereof with horror.... You almost make me play the part of a traitor.... If it were not for obeying I had rather be dead. My heart bleedeth at it....’ And again, ‘Alas! I never deceived anybody, but I remit myself wholly to your will. Send me word what I shall do, and whatsoever happen unto me I will obey you.... Think also if you will not find some invention more secret by physic; for he is to take physic at Craigmillar and the baths also, and shall not come forth for a long time....

... ‘It is very late; and although I should never be tired in writing to you, yet I will end after kissing your hands. Excuse my evil writing and read this over twice.... Pray remember your friend and write to her, and often. Love me always as I shall love you.’

She put a bracelet of twisted hair in between the sheets, made a packet of the whole, and beckoned Paris to follow her into the next room. ‘Take you this,’ she said, ‘whither you know well, and tell my lord all that you have seen and heard. He will learn so that I am a faithful and obedient lover. And if he should be jealous, and ask you in what manner I have behaved myself here, you may show him.’ So speaking, she joined her two forefingers, as he had seen her do before, and touched the table with them. He was not likely to forget that, however. It struck him as an ingenious and quaint device.

‘If my lord need me,’ she went on, ‘he can send you to Linlithgow, where I shall lie one night. Thence I shall go directly to Craigmillar with the King’s litter. It is late, and I must go to bed, if not to sleep. Other women lie abed, comforted, or to be comforted before daylight; but that cannot I be as yet. Now go, Paris.’

He said, ‘Madam, be of good heart. All things come by waiting.’

She sighed, but said nothing. He made his reverence, and away.