Chapter VII: The Red Bridegroom

Margaret Carwood, the Queen’s woman, had a tale to tell, if she could be got to repeat it. She had undressed her mistress, who came in exceedingly late from Bastien’s masque, and put the bedgown upon her: then was the time for Father Roche to come in for prayers—if any time were left, which Carwood could not think was the case. Would her Majesty, considering the lateness of the hour, excuse his Reverence?

But her Majesty looked wildly at Carwood and began to rave. ‘Do you think me leprous, Carwood? Am I not to be prayed with? Why, this is treason!’ And she continued to shiver and mutter, ‘Treason! Treason!’ until the woman, terrified, called up the Chaplain, and he came in with the rest of the household and began the accustomed prayers. Gradually the Queen composed herself, and you could hear her voice—as usual—above all the others, leading the responses.

In the midst of the psalms of the hour, Carwood said, there struck on all ears a dull thud, like the booming of water upon a rock in the sea; the windows of the house shook, and litter was heard to fall behind the wainscot. Then complete silence—and out of that, far off in the city, rose a low and long wailing cry, ‘as of one hurt to death and desolate.’ Father Roche, who had stopped his _Gloria Patri_ at the first shock, when he heard that cry, said sharply, ‘O King of Glory, what’s that?’ and stared at the window, trembling like a very old man; and nobody else was much bolder than he. But the Queen, stiff as a stone, went on where he had left off, driving the words out of herself, higher and higher, faster and faster, until she finished on a shrill, fierce note:—‘_Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen_‘; and only stopped there because it was not her part to begin the next psalm.

A strange midnight picture! There was Father Roche, the old Dominican, looking all ways for danger, twittering before the candles and cross; there Des-Essars on his knees, with his white face peaked and taut; there poor Carwood, her apron over her head, swaying about; there old Mother Reres spying wickedly out of the corners of her eyes at Mary Livingstone, stern as thunder. Erskine with his white staff stood at the door, two clinging pages about him; in the midst, at her faldstool, the slim, fever-bright Queen in her furred gown, praying aloud, she alone, like a nun in ecstasy. With Father Roche _in extremis_, Des-Essars was the first to relieve the strain by boldly intoning the versicle; but there were no more prayers. Carwood and Livingstone took the Queen to bed, and Livingstone stayed with her. Carwood says that she herself slept ‘like drowned weed.’ When Livingstone woke her next morning, she heard the great bell tolling at Saint Giles’. She asked first of the Queen, and was told she was ‘quiet.’ She did not dare any more questions, and remained until midday inmate of the only house in town which did not know the news.

Mary Livingstone would say nothing to any one: in fact, so grim were her looks that no one cared to question her. Lady Reres kept her chamber. At nine o’clock the Earl of Huntly came up, with a very fixed face, and was taken to the Queen’s bedchamber door by Des-Essars, who went no farther himself, but hung about the corridor and anteroom in case he might be sent for. Before long he heard the Queen in distress, crying and talking at once, a flood of broken words; and, whiles, Lord Huntly’s voice, sombre and restrained, ill calculated to calm her. Presently Mary Livingstone opened the door, and he heard the Queen calling for him: ‘Baptist, O Baptist, come—quick, quick!’

‘Go to her,’ says Livingstone drily; ‘this is beyond my powers.’

He ran into the room, and saw her lying half-naked on her bed, face downwards, her hair all over her eyes. She looked like one in mortal agony.

‘O madam, O sweet madam——’ he began, being on his knees before her.

She lifted her head. ‘Who calls me?’

She sat up, and parted her hair from her face with her finger-tips. He saw her transfigured, flushed like one with a heat-rash, and her eyes cloudy black, glazed and undiscerning. She was in a transport of feeling, far beyond his scope; but she knew him, and cleared in his sight.

‘Baptist, the King is dead.’

‘Dead, madam! Oh, alas!’

She gripped him by the arm and steadied herself by it. She read his very soul; her eyes seemed to bite him. And she answered a question which he had not asked.

‘How should I know who slew him? How should I? I know not—I do not ask—nor need you—nor should you. But there is one who had no hand in it—be you sure of that. Let none call him murderer—he did nothing amiss. Do you hear? Do you understand? He is clean as new snow—and I—and I—clean as the snow, Baptist. O God! O God!’

She loosed his arm and flung herself down, shaken to pieces by her hard sobbing. Her face had been dry, her eyes tearless. If she could not weep, he thought, it must go hard with her. Livingstone came into the room and went to her help. She used no ceremony, got into the bed, and drew the poor distraught creature to her bosom, whispered to her, kissed and stroked her, mothered her as if it were one of her own children she was tending. The Queen clung to her. Lord Huntly drew Des-Essars aside, into the embrasure of the window.

‘Listen to me, Monsieur Des-Essars,’ he said: ‘I speak to you because I know that you are in her Majesty’s confidence. It is very necessary that her friends should understand what I am going to tell you. My Lord Bothwell had no part in the King’s death. It is true he intended it—I do not attempt to conceal that from you—and even that he went farther than intent; but the King was dead before he came. He had his own plans, and laid them well. But there were other plans of which he had no suspicion.’ Des-Essars would have spoken; Lord Huntly put a hand over his mouth. ‘Say nothing. Ask me not who did it. I was there, and saw it done. I believe that it was just, and will answer for my part when it is required of me.’

‘My lord,’ said Des-Essars, ‘your secret is safe with me. I will only say this: If that person of whom you spake had no part in the deed, then she is free.’

‘She is free,’ said Huntly. ‘I saw to that.’

‘You saw to it—you?’

‘I saw to it. It was I who deceived—that person—and delayed his plans. There was a time, long ago, when I played her false. She trusted me, believing in my honesty, and I forsook her. I have never been able to forgive myself or ceased to call myself traitor until now. And this time, when she has trusted me but little, I have served her.’

‘I hope you may have served her, my lord, but——’

‘Man,’ said Huntly sternly, ‘what are your hopes or mine to the purpose in a case of the sort? Do you not know her better? She would have had him, had he been soaked in blood. Well! now she can have him clean.’

Des-Essars knelt down and kissed the other’s hand. ‘My lord, you have given me a schooling in great love. If the time comes when there shall be need of me, I hope to prove myself your good pupil.’

‘Get up,’ said Huntly, not pleased with this tribute; ‘they serve best who talk least. But you may be sure that the time is at hand when there will be need of more than you and me.’ He looked sadly out of window, across the red roofs, out into the slowly brightening sky. Des-Essars was silent.

They announced the Earl of Bothwell. The Queen put back her hair and wiped her eyes—for Mary Livingstone had thawed her hard grief. She covered herself up to the neck. Bothwell came in, with a low reverence at the door, and made room for Livingstone to go out. She swept by him like a Queen-mother. Queen Mary beckoned him to the bedside, and gave him both her hands to hold. ‘Oh, you have come to me! Oh, you have come to me!’ was all she could say. She could not speak coherently for her full heart. He bent over and kissed her; and for a time they remained so, whispering brokenly to each other and kissing. ‘Have you heard Huntly’s tale?’ she asked him aloud.

He was now sitting composedly by her bed, one leg over the other.

‘Yes, yes, long ago! We have had our talk together.’

She fingered the counterpane. ‘Belike he told you more than I could win of him. He will name no names.’

Bothwell laughed shortly.

‘He is wise. Names make mischief. I could wish his own were as well out of that as mine is. Heard you of Archie’s shoe?’

She had not. He told her of Paris’s discovery in the garden; they both laughed at Archie’s mishap. Bothwell supposed it would cost him five hundred crowns to redeem. We know from Paris that it cost him six.

My Lord Bothwell’s opinion, which he expressed with great freedom, was that Morton and the Douglases had killed the King soon after he had been put to bed. The body had been cold when Paris found it—cold and stiff. Then there was a woman, who had been talking with her neighbours, and found herself under examination in the Tolbooth before she could end her tale. She lived in Thieves’ Row. She declared, and nothing so far had shaken her, that a tick or two after midnight she had heard the scuffling of many feet in the road, and a voice which cried aloud, ‘Pity me, kinsmen, for the love of Him who pitied all the world!’ She heard it distinctly; but, being in bed, and accustomed to hear such petitions, did not get up, and soon after fell asleep. Also there had been heard a boy crying, ‘Enough to break your heart,’ she said. But it had not broken her rest, for all that. This was the story, and——‘Well, now,’ says my Lord Bothwell, ‘what else are you to make of that?’

Des-Essars, watching the Queen’s face under this recital, saw the clouds gather for a storm. Lord Huntly had listened to it with unmoved face. At the end he said gravely, ‘He was long dying’; and no one spoke or moved for some minutes until the Queen suddenly hid her face and sobbed, and cried out that she wished she herself were dead. Lord Bothwell, at that, put his arms about her with rough familiarity, lifted her half out of bed to his own breast, kissed her lax lips, and said, ‘That wilt thou unwish within these few days. What! when thou art thine own mistress and all? No, but thou wilt desire to live rather, to be my dear comfort and delight. For now, look thou, my honey-Queen, thou and I are to get our bliss of one another.’ She, not responding by word or sign, but struggling and striving to be free of his arms, presently he put her down again, and left her. Huntly followed him; and they went up to the Council, which was set for noon.

‘I remained kneeling by her,’ says Des-Essars, ‘while she lay without motion, until presently I found that she was in a heavy sleep. When I went downstairs I heard that Mistress Livingstone had left the Court and gone to her husband, Sempill, at Beltrees.’

* * * * *

The silence of the town during those first few days of doubt was a terrifying thing, enough to try the nerves of the stoutest man; it drove the Queen to such dangerous excesses of exaltation and despondency that all her friends were on tenterhooks to get her away before the storm (which all knew must be brooding) should burst. For what could it portend but a storm, this fatal silence, this unearthly suspense of clamour and judgment? It was not that the citizens merely held their tongues from rumour: it was more literally silence; they talked not at all. If you walked up the Netherbow or round the porch of Saint Giles’; if you hung about the Luckenbooths at noon or ventured any of the Wynds at sun-setting—wheresoever you went about Edinburgh, you heard the padding of feet sparsely on the flagstones; but no voices, no hawkers’ cries, no women calling their children out of the gutters, nor bickering of men in the ale-shops, nor laughter, nor bewailing. The great houses were closely shut and guarded; the Lords of the Privy Council transacted their business behind close doors; messengers came and went, none questioning; the post came galloping down the hill with a clatter which you would have thought enough to open every window in the High Street and show you every pretty girl at her best. But no! So long as the King remained above ground, Death kept his wrinkled hand upon Edinburgh and made the place seem like a burying-ground, whose people were the mourners, crouched, whispering, against the walls—and all together huddled under the cold spell of the graves.

This continued until the day of the funeral, by which time it was absolutely necessary that the Queen should be got away. She agreed—was eager to go; and, before she went, saw the body of the King, which lay in the Chapel Royal, upon a tressle bed, dressed up in the gilt cuirass and white mantle which in life it had worn so bravely. Mary Seton and Des-Essars, who took her in, were so relieved to find their anxieties vain that they had no thought to be surprised. ‘Not only did she stand and look upon the corpse without change of countenance or any sign of distress, but she had her wits all at command. The first thing she said was, “He looks nobly lying there so still: in life he was ever fidgeting with his person,”—which was quite true. And the next thing was, “Look you, look you, he lies just over Davy’s grave!” And then she remembered that we were within one month of the anniversary of that poor wretch’s undoing by this very dead; she reminded us of it. Without any more words, she remained there standing, looking earnestly at him and round about him; and bade one of the priests who watched go fetch a new candle, for one was nearly spent. So far as I could ascertain, she did not kneel or offer any prayer; and after a time she walked slowly away, without reverence to the altar—a strange omission in her—or any looking back. Nor did I ever hear her, of her own motion, speak of him again; but he became to her as though he had never been—which, in a sense that means he had touched or moved her, he never had. Before the funeral celebrations she went to my Lord Seton’s house, and there remained waiting until the Earl of Bothwell could find time to visit her, full of projects, very sanguine and contented. She said to me one day, “You think my maids have forsaken me; you grieve over Livingstone and Fleming. Of the last I say nothing; but I can fetch Livingstone back to me whenever I choose. You shall see.” And she did it before very long.’

On the night following the funeral the profound silence of Edinburgh was broken by a long shrill cry, as of a wandering man. Several people heard him, and shivered in their beds; only one, bolder than the rest, saw him in a broad patch of moonlight. He came slowly down the midst of the Canongate, flap-hatted and cloaked; and as he went, now and again he threw up his head towards the moon, and cried, like one calling the news, ‘Vengeance on those who caused me to shed innocent blood! O Lord, open the heavens and pour down vengeance on those that have destroyed the innocent!’ Upon the hushed city the effect was terrible, as you may judge by this, that no windows were opened and no watchman ventured to stop the man. But next morning there was found a bill upon the Cross which accused Bothwell by name of the deed. It drew a crowd, and then, as by one consent, all tongues were loosened and all pens set free to rail. The Queen was not spared; pictures of her as the Siren, fish-tailed, ogling, naked, malign, made the walls shameful. The preachers took up the text and shrieked her name; and every night the shrouded crier went his rounds. The Red Bridegroom was on all tongues, the Pale Bride in all men’s thoughts.

The Earl of Bothwell, strongly guarded as he was, took, or affected to take, no notice of the clamour; but Archie Douglas became very uneasy, and induced his cousin Morton to have the nightly brawler apprehended. He was therefore taken on the fourth night, and shut up in a pestilential prison called the Thief’s Pit, where no doubt he shortly died. But his words lived after him, and he testified through all men’s tongues. Among the many thousand rumours that got about was one, intolerable to Bothwell, that the Earl of Moray was about to return to Edinburgh, and, _in the absence of the Queen_, act for the general good of the realm. It was said also that Morton was in correspondence with him, and that it was by his orders that Mr. James Balfour, parson of Fliske, was to be arrested and confined to his own house. Adding to these things the daily letters of the Earl of Lennox to the Privy Council, appealing, in a father’s name, to the honour of Scotland; adding also the Queen’s letters to himself, my Lord Bothwell judged it wise to depart the town; so went down to her Majesty in the country, to Lord Seton’s house, where she still lay. And as he rode out of town, close hemmed in the ranks of his own spearmen, he heard for the first time that name which had been his ever since tongues began to wag: ‘Ay, there he goes for his wages, the Red Bridegroom.’

The night of his coming, old Lady Reres made mischief, if any were left to be made; for after supper, fiddlers being in the gallery, what must she to do but clap her hands to them and call for a tune. ‘Fiddlers,’ says she, ‘I call for “Well is me since I am free”‘; and she got it too. Lord Bothwell gave one of his great guffaws, and held out his hand at the signal; the Queen laughed as she took it and was pleased. They danced long and late. But next morning my Lord Seton made some kind of excuse, and left his own house, nor would he come back to it until the Court had removed. With him went the Earl of Argyll.

These departures were the signal for the most insensate revelry—led by the Queen, insisted upon by her, satisfying neither herself nor her lover, nor any of her friends. Des-Essars and the few faithful of the old stock looked on as best they could, always in silence. Not one of them would talk to another, for fear he should hear something with which he would be forced to agree. _Le Secret des Secrets_ is extremely reticent over this insane ten days, in which the Queen—it must be said—was to be seen (by those who had the heart to observe) wooing a man to sin; and when he would not, after torments of deferred desire, of mortification, and of that reproach which never fails a baffled sinner, springing hot-eyed to the chase next day, following him about, wreathing her arms, kissing and whispering, beckoning, inviting, trying all ways to lure him on; heart-rending spectacle for any modest young man, but, to a worshipper-at-a-distance like our chronicler, an almost irremediable disaster, since it kept an open sore in the fair image he had made, and showed him horrible people, with eyesight as good as his own, leering at it. Yes! French Paris, Bastien, Carwood, Joachim, the baser sort—grooms, valets, chamber-women, scullions of the kitchen, saw his flame-proud Queen craving, and craving in vain. He ground his teeth over the squalid comedy. His pen is as secret as death; but it is said that, on one occasion, when he had seen Bothwell stalk into the labyrinth, and soon afterwards the Queen, her head hooded, steal lightly after him, the comments of other beholders roused him to vehement action. It is said that he heard chuckling from the base court, and a ‘Did you mark that? She is close on his heels—a good hound she!’ and saw two greasy heads hobnobbing. He waited, blinking his eyes, until one began to whistle the ramping tune of ‘O, gin Jocky wad but steal me!’ then flashed into the court and drubbed a grinning cook-boy within a few inches of his life. What satisfaction this just exercise may have been was spoiled by the reflection that the flogged rascal knew why he had been made to smart: enough to make our young knight cut off the avenging hand.

These things weighed and considered, I think that what little he does say is curiously judicial. He remarks that the Queen his mistress, restless and miserable as she was, invited oblivion by eating and drinking too much, by dancing too much, by riding too hard; that she suffered from want of sleep; that, as for her love-affair, it was no joy to her. ‘Hers was a plain case of mental love. But I say, _Hum!_—where the Lover makes an _eidolon_ of the Beloved, and is happiest contemplating that, adorning it with flowers of fancy, and planning delights which can only be realised in solitude,—then the bodily presence of the adored creature effectually destroys the image: a seeming paradox.

‘Thus, however, it was with my mistress. Never was man less suited to lady than this burly lord; never did lady contrive out of material so clumsy master of her bosom so divine. But his presence marred all, because it led her to indulge the monstrous reality instead of the idea. She was generous to a fault (all her faults, indeed, were due to excess of nobility), and most injudicious. Her submission to him tempted him all ways—to domineer, to be overbearing, insolent, a brute; to treat her on occasion as I am very sure my Lady Bothwell would never have allowed herself to be treated. But the Queen bowed her head for still greater ignominy, although more than once I saw her flinch and look away, as if, poor soul, she turned quickly, to comfort herself, from the hateful, real Bothwell of fed flesh to that shining Bothwell of her heart and mind. In all this she was her own enemy; but (by a misfortune two-edged) in other ways she contrived enemies for him. Thus it was an act of madness to make him presents of the late king’s stud, of his dogs and horse-furniture. She added—O doting, most unhappy prodigal!—the gilt armour and great golden casque with crimson plumes, by which the dolt king had been best known. Nothing that she could have done could have been worse judged. _Quem Deus vult perdere!_ Alas and alas!

‘Yet, I must say, it is due to my Lord Bothwell to remember that he was now what he had always been—not consciously cruel, not wilful to torment her, and by no means withholding from her what she so sorely needed of him by any scruples of conscience. Coarse in grain he was, and candidly appetent, but as continent as Joseph when his cautionary side was alert; and, true to his nation, he was at once greedy and cautious. He was never one to refuse gratification to a woman who loved him, if by granting it he could afford any real gratification to himself. It was a question of the scales with him. Now, in the present state of his ventures everything must wait upon security: and security was the last thing he had gained. He would have pleased her if he could, for he was by no means an ill-tempered man, nor a cruel man, unless his necessities drove him that way. And just now they did drive him. His position in Scotland was full of peril: he was universally credited with the King’s death, had few friends, and could not count upon keeping those he had. In fine, everything that he had consistently striven after from the hour when he first saw the Queen at Nancy was just within his grasp. He had climbed the tree inch by inch, bruised himself, scratched himself, torn his clothes to rags; and now it seemed that he hung by a thread—and the fruit could not be plucked yet. The fruit was dropping ripe, but he dared not stretch out his hand for it, lest it should fall by his shaking of the branch, or he by moving too soon. If either fell, he was a dead man. What wonder if he were fretful, gloomy, suspicious, full of harsh mockery? What wonder, again, if he seemed cruel in refusing to ease her smart until his neck were safe? No, I do not blame him. But I curse the hour in which his mother bore him—to be the bane of his country and his Queen. No more.’

* * * * *

The Court returned to Edinburgh upon the news that an Ambassador Extraordinary was come from England. Although there could be no doubt of the matter of his errand, Bothwell insisted upon his reception. In other respects the Queen was glad to go. Her malady kept her from any rest; the emptiness of the days aggravated it until it devoured the substance of her flesh. She had grown painfully thin; she had a constant cough—could not sleep, and was not nourished by meat and drink. Her eyes burned like sunken fires, her lips were as bright as blood, but all the rest of her was a dead, unwholesome white. She said that there was a rat gnawing at her heart. In such a desperate case it seemed to her friends that the murmurs and mutterings of Edinburgh could bring her no further harm: so she went, entered in semi-state, and got a fright.

Her reception was bad: not cold, but accompanied by the murmurs of a great and suspicious crowd. She heard the name they had for Bothwell—‘The Red Bridegroom’—half-voiced with a grim snarl of humour in the tone. Nothing was actually said against herself, but she was acutely sensitive to shades of difference; and after riding rigidly down to Holyrood, the moment she had alighted she caught Des-Essars by the arm, and, ‘You see! You see! They hate me!’

But Mr. Killigrew, from England, and the Earl of Morton, when she summoned him, soon assured her that what Scotland felt towards her was as nothing compared to the common abhorrence of her lover.

Bothwell went away to Liddesdale to see his wife. It is supposed that there was an understanding between him and the Queen, because she made no objection to his going, and did not fret in his absence. She saw Mr. Killigrew alone, in a darkened room, saying: ‘The first thing his mistress, my sister, will ask him, is of my favour in affliction; and I know,’—she put her hand on her bosom—‘I know how thin I am become, and how the tears have worn themselves caves in my cheeks; and would not for all the world that they in England should know.’ The audience lasted half-an-hour; and when Mr. Killigrew left Holyrood, he went to Lord Morton’s house. Thence, it was afterwards found out, he made a journey to Dunkeld, and paid a two days’ visit to the Earl of Moray. There is no doubt he went back full charged to England.

Des-Essars gleaned all the news he could. He told the whole to Huntly, to the Queen what he must. The town was full of dangerous ferment, which at any moment might burst out. Most of the lords were in the country; most of them were, or had been, at Dunkeld: Seton, Argyll, Atholl, Lindsay, Morton, Mar had all conferred with Moray. What had they to say to him? What, above all, had Morton to say to him—Morton, who had killed the King? When Huntly had this question put, and could find no answer to it, he went directly to the Queen and advised her to send for her brother. She hated the necessity, but allowed it. Meanwhile, the King’s father, old Lennox, wrote daily letters to her and to the Council, crying vengeance on the murder. He did not hesitate, in writing to the lords, to name Bothwell, Tala, and Ormiston as the murderers; and they did not hesitate to repeat his charges to the Queen. Old Lady Reres, delighting in mischief, underscored the names in red whenever she could. The Queen was furious.

‘He is innocent of all—I know it for a truth. Who accuses my Lord of Bothwell accuses me. It is rank treason.’

These sort of speeches cannot acquit a man, and may convict their speaker.

Then my Lord Moray, in a courteous letter, excused himself from attendance upon his sovereign at this conjuncture. His health, he regretted to say, was far from good, or he should not have failed to obey her Majesty. The Queen was much put about. Send a peremptory summons to the Earl of Morton, says Huntly; she did it without question. Morton came on the night of 8th March, and Des-Essars, who saw him ride into the courtyard at the head of a troop in his livery, remembered that on the same night a year ago he and these pikemen of his had been masters of Holyrood. What a whirligig! Masters of Holyrood; then outwitted, ruined, and banished; now back in favour, and, by the look of them, in a fair way to be masters again. The bluff lord had the masterful air; the way in which he announced himself seemed to say, ‘Oh, she’ll see me quick enough! She hath need of me, look you!’ He was very much at his ease—cracked his jokes with Erskine all the way upstairs, and, meeting Lethington at the head of them, asked after his new wife, with a gross and somewhat premature rider to the general question.

She sent for her young confidant when the audience was over, and greeted him with, ‘Now, foolish boy, you shall be contented. He is fast for us—will say nothing if we say nothing.’

‘Oh, madam, did he seek to bargain with your Majesty?’

She laughed. ‘No, no! Nor did I cross his palm with earnest-money. But there would have been no harm.’

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘you shall forgive me for saying that there would have been much. It is not for the prince to compound with treason, nor for a noble, innocent lady to traffic with the guilty.’

She stopped his mouth, her hand upon it. ‘Hush, thou foolish boy! What treason did he do? To set me free—is this treason? To rid me of my tyrant—was this guilt?’

He hung his head, and she watched his confusion; then, repenting, stroked his face, murmuring, ‘Foolish boy! Fond boy! Fond and foolish both—to love a lover!’

She told him a secret. She had heard two women talking beyond the garden wall. They spoke laughingly together of the Red Bridegroom—‘and of me, Baptist, they spake somewhat.’

‘I know, I know! Tell me no more.’

‘Of me they spake,’ she went on. ‘“Bothwell’s wench,” they said, “Bothwell’s——”’

He caught at her wrist. ‘Stop! I will not hear you! I shall kill myself if you say that word!’

She swung her hand to and fro, and his with it, which held her so fast. ‘The word,’ she said, ‘is nothing without the thing—and the thing is not true. I would that it were! Do you set so much store by names and framed breaths and idle ceremonies, and call yourself my lover? Do you tell me to my face that if I called you to come to me, to stretch open your two arms and clasp me within them, and to fly with me this world of garniture and bending backs and wicked scheming heads, and abide night and morning, through noon-heat and evening glow and the secrets of long nights under the watching stars, fast by my side, with our mouths together and our hearts kissing, and our two souls molten to one—do you tell me now that you would deny me? Answer you.’

He faced her steadfastly. ‘I do say so. I should deny you. I serve God, and honour you. How should I dare do you dishonour?’

She was very angry—shook him off. ‘Leave my wrist. How do you presume to hold your Queen? Leave me alone! You insult me by look and word.’

He left her at once, but she sent for him early next morning and easily made amends.

Driven to it at last, on the 24th of the month she wrote to old Lennox that Bothwell should be tried by his peers. She did it partly because Huntly advised it as the only possible way to stop the growing clamour, but much more because she wanted Bothwell back. He had been with his wife all the month; Huntly also had been there more than once—Adam Gordon, old Lady Huntly. A family council was, perhaps, in the nature of the case; but all the members of that had returned a week ago, and why should he remain? Why, indeed, if (as all Scotland believed) he had gone to urge divorce upon his Countess? So the excuse was made to serve: he was formally summoned; returned to town on the 28th; made public entry with an imposing force of his friends and adherents; kissed the Queen’s hand in all men’s sight, and on the same day sat at the Council board, and discussed with the others, who were to try him, the precedents for his own trial. This was no way to satisfy Lennox or Edinburgh.

The assize was fixed for 12th April. On the 7th of that month the Earl of Moray left Scotland without leave asked or leave-taking of the Queen. He stayed a day at Berwick, and had a long conference with the English Warden, then took ship and sailed for France. This should have given her pause, and did for a day or two; but to a craving nymph, stalking gauntly the waste places, what matters but the one thing? It made Des-Essars serious enough, and put French Paris in a dreadful fright. His master, he said, ‘was fool enough to be glad at his going; but the Queen knew better. M. Des-Essars told me that she wept, and would have sent messengers after him to get him back if she could. Ah, and she was right! For when yet did that lord’s departure betoken her anything but harm? Never, never, never!’ says French Paris.

The trial itself was a form from beginning to end, with the Queen a declared partisan, and the assize packed with her friends or his. My lord rode down to it as to a wedding; he rode one of the dead king’s horses—rode it gaily; and as he departed he looked up at the window and waved his hat, and all men saw the flutter of the Queen’s white handkerchief; and some say that she herself was to be seen smiling and nodding to him. Certain it is that when he was cleared—a matter of a few hours—and came out into the light of day and the face of a huge crowd, which blocked the street from side to side, he was met by Lethington, bareheaded, and by Melvill, bowing to the earth, and by the concourse with a chill and rather terrible silence. One shrill cry went up in all that quiet, and one alone. ‘Burn the hure!’ was shrieked by a woman, but instantly hushed down, and nothing was heard after it but the trampling of horses as Bothwell’s troop went by. When the Queen met him at the foot of the palace stairs, he went down on his knees; but many saw the smile that looped up his mouth. She was very much moved, could not say more than, ‘Get up—come—I must speak with you.’

He went upstairs with her—they two alone. The courts and yards of Holyrood were like a camp.

Such a state of things might not last for long. Bothwell could not go out of doors alone. Even in company his hand was always at his dagger, his eye for ever casting round, probing corners for ambushes, searching men’s faces for signs of wavering or fixed purpose. Strong man as he was, circumstances were too many for him: he told Paris one day that he was ‘near done.’

‘Sir,’ says Paris, ‘and so, I take leave to say, is the Queen’s majesty. If your lordship is for the seas——’

‘Damn you, I am not!’ said Bothwell.

He considered the case as closely as ever anything in his life, for he was engaged in a great game. He consulted one or two men—Melvill, Lord Livingstone, his leering old uncle of Orkney. He sounded Morton, Argyll, Bishop Lesley (as he now was become); and then he gave a supper at Ainslie’s, opened his plans, and got their promises to stand by him. He wrote these out and made them sign. This was on 19th April, and that night he certainly saw the Queen. I say ‘certainly’ because Des-Essars, who was with her afterwards, was told by her that ‘her lord’ had gone into Liddesdale to harry the reivers. Something in her tone—he could not see her eyes—made him doubt her: a little something made him suspect that she intended him to doubt.

So, ‘Reivers, ma’am!’ he cried. ‘Is this a time to consider the lifting of cattle, when yourself and him are in danger, and no man knows when the town may rise?’

Her answer was an odd one. She was sitting in a low chair by the wood fire, leaning back, looking at the red embers through her fingers. Before she spoke she lowered her head, as if to put her face in shadow, and looked up at him sideways. He saw the gleam of one eye, the edge of her cheek where the light caught it. As he read her, she was laughing at him.

‘More may be lifted than cattle by these wild men of the Border. I am going to Stirling in two days’ time, and maybe we shall meet, my lord and I.’

He asked her calmly—accustomed to her way of declaring certainties as possibilities—was such a meeting arranged for? ‘Come to me, child,’ she said (though he was not a child), and when he obeyed, ‘Kneel by my side.’ She put her arm round his neck in a sisterly fashion, and said, ‘You shall be with me to Stirling, and again when we depart from Stirling. You forget not that you are my brother? Well, then, brother, I say to you, Leave me not now, for the time is at hand when I shall need you. I believe I am to be made the happiest woman in the world, and need you to share my joy as much as ever you did my sorrow. Hereafter, for many days, I may have no time to speak privately with you. Kiss me, therefore, and wish me happy days and nights.’

He kissed her, wondering and fearing. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘bethink you what you are about! I beg of you to speak with my lord of Huntly in this business of Stirling.’

She said, ‘It is done. I have spoken with him: he was here but an hour gone. And I have Lethington on my side, and Mary Livingstone and Fleming will both be with me.’ She laughed at her thoughts; not for a long time had her old malicious gaiety been upon her. ‘I knew that I could win back Livingstone. Guess you how I did it.’ And when he could not, or would not, she whispered in his ear, ‘She believes I am with child by the King.’

Des-Essars had nothing to say, but she kept him by her, talking of her life about to begin, her joy and pride, love, duty, privilege, in a way so innocent and candid, she might have been a child at play. The hours were small when he bade her good-night, and she said laughingly, ‘Yes, go now. I shall be wise to sleep while I may.’

As he went he stretched out his arms, let them fall, and shrugged his young shoulders—gestures all of despair.

Where all was prepared beforehand it was not hard to forecast the turn of events. It fell out much as Des-Essars had reasoned it over to himself. Upon a fresh spring morning of flitting clouds and dancing grasses, the Queen’s party, rounding the shoulder of a green hill, was suddenly advised of a company of horsemen, advancing at a leisurely trot, at some quarter mile’s distance. One could look upon what followed as at a play; for it may be taken for truth that not a man, soldier or other, so much as swept the uplands with his eye, so conscious was he that a play indeed it was! The oncoming troop was observed in silence; in silence, without word of command or lifted hand, each halted at a spear’s throw. The Earl of Bothwell, with two lieutenants, rode forward, baring his head as he came. Nobody of the Queen’s men went out to meet him; nobody hailed him; nobody moved to safeguard the Queen, who herself sat motionless upon her little white jennet, in the forefront of her escort, Mary Livingstone on one side of her and Mary Fleming on the other. The Earl came to her side, reining up short as his stirrup clicked against hers.

‘Madam, for your Grace’s protection and honour I am come to lead you to a safe hold. I beseech your Majesty take it not amiss in one who desires above all things to serve you.’

The Queen, in a very low voice, replied, ‘Lead me, sir, according to your good judgment.’

He took up the rein of her horse, wheeled, and led her away to his own troop, no one staying him. Mary Livingstone whipped after her, Mary Fleming followed. Then the Earl of Huntly, looking round upon the remnant, free there and armed upon the road, said in measured tones, ‘Follow, sirs, since it seems we are prisoners.’

If play it was, it was not even played properly, but had been reduced to a spiritless rite. Yet, as Des-Essars has the wit to remark, to the Queen the whole had been an act of very beautiful symbolism. He had noticed, as no one else did, the gesture with which she gave herself up—her opened palms, bowed head, good eyes, at once trusting and thankful. Ah! she had been immodest once in her dire need, panting, blowsed, scratched, dishevelled by her ardent chase. He had seen her so, and shuddered. But now she was modest, but now she had regained virginity. A folded maid sought in marriage by a man, she had bowed her head. ‘Lead me, sir, according to your good judgment!’ Thus Des-Essars, fond lover! It is safe to assert that he was alone in discerning these fine things, as the lining of a very vulgar business.

* * * * *

The moment he had the Queen at Dunbar, which was reached by nightfall, my lord dismounted her and took her away. Led by his hand, she went without a word to her women, without any looking back. The rest of the company was left to shift as best it could. There were meat and drink on the spread tables; there may have been beds or there may not. The Queen was no more seen.

Sir James Melvill made an effort, let off a quip or two, ruminated aloud in an anecdotic vein, rallied Lethington, flattered Huntly, felt himself snubbed and knew that he deserved it, but waived off the feeling with his ‘H’m, h’m!’ and recovered his dignity. Huntly gloomed upright; Des-Essars was bent double, head in hands; Lethington walked up and down the hall, marking with his eye flagstones upon which he must alight at every step, or be ruined. To watch his mad athletics made his gentle wife grieve and Mary Sempill rage. Most of Bothwell’s men were asleep; Ormiston was drunk; Hob, his brother, was both. Gradually silence, which had been fitful, became universal; and then they heard the wind moaning round the great house and the sea beating at the black rock on which it stands. The casements shook, doors far off slammed again and again, gulls and kittiwakes screamed as they swept to and fro over the strand; and as the doomed company sat on in the dark listening to all this, and some thinking with horror of what could be doing between those two in the vast wind-possessed house, and some with pity welling like blood, and some shamefully, and some with wisely nodding heads—presently, when the shrilling of the birds grew piercingly loud, one of these banged against the window, and fought there at the glass, battling with wings of panic.

Mary Sempill rose with a shriek. ‘O God, save her! O God, save her!’ She was thinking of her Queen.

Nobody moved except Mary Fleming, who felt out the way to her and put arms about her.

Thus the night went on.

In the morning Paris came down and said that her Majesty desired to see Mistress Sempill. She was taken up, and found the Queen in bed in a darkened room. She walked to the edge of the bed and looked down, seeing little. The Queen lay still, one of her bare arms out of bed; this arm she slowly raised and touched her Livingstone’s cheek, then dropped it again heavily.

But her Livingstone had now recovered herself, and could afford to be cynical.

‘Well—Honeypot?’ said she.

‘Empty,’ said the Queen.

Then her Livingstone kissed her.