Читать книгу The Duel of the Queens - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 7

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That short life and reign were ended indeed. The always flickering flame of life had flamed up and dropped forever. Forty days shut from sunlight in a room with black hangings lighted only by lamp-light, clad in white like a nun from head to foot—but a few inches of her face showing between the barbe on her brow and the close wimple at her chin. So must a French queen mourn for her king. The cold of the palace was appalling—the great draughty rooms, the ill-hung doors and windows, chilled her very soul, and Mary, a summer flower who withered in frosts, felt herself frozen into ice from head to foot. The face of eighteen short years was white as her flowing robes, shadowed under the great eyes, pale even to the lips. All day long she sat half stupefied, dwelling on the past with its lost glories, trembling for the future. She could not dwell as much on the lost boy. Her relation to him had been one of affectionate pity and loyalty, anxious trembling care for his suffering. Now he needed neither, and her life must begin again without him.

She turned her eyes on Mary Seton, who alone of the Marys had shut herself up with the White Queen (as the French called her) and spoke in a low voice.

“Mary Seton, have you thought—for I think of nothing else—that our happy days in France are done? It wrings my heart, but it is true. There is no place for two queens here and the Queen Mother has made me feel it already—and bitterly. She has a cruel heart. What shall I do? How can I live in that cold, cold country which killed my unhappy mother? If they would but let me stay here, living on my own lands in Touraine, I would most gladly leave Scotland to my bastard brother and live forgotten and forgetting. O that I might!”

The high spirit of Mary Seton would not bear this—she was a Scotswoman to her heart’s core, and Scotland first with her always. She rose and stood before the Queen, tall in her smothering black.

“What, Mary Stuart, you, who are queen to talk like a minikin demoiselle who will give up the world because her pet sparrow is dead! I loved your king as a sick boy whom one must pet and nurse. Did you love him otherwise? Now he is gone. Wake up! You are queen of France still. Death cannot undo it, but most you are queen of Scotland! Do great ladies throw away their duties? Certainly we go to Scotland—what else?”

The young queen stared at her. Many a home truth had she heard from the Seton girl, daughter of a great and loyal house, but this was hard to bear. Yet it was true. She knew it and responded like a generous horse to the cut of the spur.

“True. Go on. Scorn is better for me than many sermons! I have deserved it.”

But Mary Seton fell on her knees with tears.

“That I should hurt you, my heart’s darling, when you have griefs to bear!” she sobbed. “But this mourning is death in life, no better! O that someone, something, would come to break it and make the dead clocks tick and our pulses beat again. Widowhood kills one when they make it a prison like this.”

Indeed it was the old story of La Belle au bois dormante. It was as if the beauty of the world lay frozen in a death sleep of eternal winter. Who would come and wake her with a kiss? The girl hung languidly over her drawing, designing sorrowful “devices,” as she called them, and watering them with listless tears of self-pity. One lay on the table before her now—a bitter-stemmed licorice plant drooping toward its sweet root with the motto “Earth hides my sweetness.” And her new watch lay beside it, a crystal in the shape of a coffin, with another—a grinning death’s head helmeted in ebony and ivory—which she had just offered to Mary Seton. Morbid, ghastly, and unwholesome the slow days crawled by. Their youth clamoured against it.

“I believe in my soul we shall go mad if this goes on,” Mary Seton cried furiously. “Why should we see only women? I hope we know how to behave ourselves with men even if we are a three weeks’ widow! These French!”

A faint smile crinkled the corners of Mary Stuart’s lips at the quaint phrasing. Mary Seton always identified herself with her mistress. She took the device of the licorice plant and looked at it listlessly, but said nothing.

A lugubrious figure in black, hidden faced, hooded like Fate, moved solemnly from the arched doorway into the room and stood before her speaking in a voice of the grave. It was the lady of honour in charge.

“Madam, two gentlemen of England have come riding post, though not together, and desire to see you. Not for God’s salvation would I intrude on your Majesty’s grief but that each holds a letter from the Queen Mother requesting you to give him audience. That you will refuse with indignation I know well, but the royal message must be given. I entreat forgiveness for a shameful disturbance of woe.”

Mary Seton had risen at once to stand on duty beside her mistress’s chair. She laid her fingers on the back, and it was not by accident that one touched Mary’s shoulder. It said as plain as finger could speak:

“However dull, however political these men may be, they will not be women! They will bring a breath of the outer world where human beings still live and laugh. For the sake of common sense let them come. We need them.”

Mary understood that finger, and the young blood in her answered the message. She knew very well, though no word had been uttered, that Europe outside must be ringing and gonging with speculations as to her remarriage. Cabinets and councils would be held. Kings and ministers would plot and queens lend their aid of merry or angry whispers and tattle. All that plotting filled the air with secret whispering when her boy husband’s illness was known to be hopeless, but she had deafened her ears. Now—a little palpitation of curiosity stirred under the iced surface. It presaged a faint far-off interest to see what was proposed by those who did not know her resolution to rule, a lifelong widowed queen. She spoke gravely and sadly, however.

“Madam, I think with you. It is cruel that my hours of grief should be broken. Yet if I am a broken-hearted widow I am also a queen, and these gentlemen may bring stern news. Who is the first?”

The lady spoke through starched lips.

“Madam, it is a grace they could hardly expect and they will be prepared if you refuse. The first announces himself as a kinsman of your Majesty’s, the Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lennox.”

Mary, amazed, put up her white fan to conceal a twitch of the lips. She had never seen the “long lad,” as men called him, but some scapegrace tales recurred which made her glad that Mary Seton stood decorously behind her. Eyes meeting eyes, the two girls might have laughed, in which case the sky itself must have fallen.

“Tell my lord Darnley that I cannot refuse to see my cousin as commanded by the Queen Mother, but bid him remember, madam, that this is a chamber of mourning where a broken heart hides itself from the light of day. He will know how to respect it.”

The lady swept an awful curtsy and retreated backward. In her opinion the Queen Mother and the widowed queen had both taken leave of their senses. A man in the presence of the white nun who had been queen? and that man young! Disapproval was in every line of her stiff shrouded figure as she moved toward the door.

“A glass—a glass!” Mary whispered, directly she had vanished. “Run, Mary Seton! It is not vanity. No; but a queen must look as she should when a subject has audience, and this subject is as much mine as Elizabeth’s. I may hear something of the red-headed witch. Hurry!”

Already it had done her good. Already there was a touch of life and youth in the lifeless stillness of the great room. Mary Seton sped for the glass with lighter feet than for the past three weeks and returned running. With delicate fingers she coaxed out a mesh or two of silken-soft hair from under the hard white barbe that bound the forehead. She soothed the eyes with the refreshing lotion that obliterated tear traces and brightened them, then stopped and surveyed her work.

“And now, madam, permit me to hide these dreadful watches that give me the shudders as I look at them. Yes, it is well to meditate upon our latter end, but we have done it enough and too much in the last three weeks. It has drained us of blood—of life. Have a little pity on my lord Darnley, I beseech you.”

A quick glance that was nearly a smile passed between them as slow steps were heard approaching, with the rustle of a silken dress. No man might conduct him—only ladies in black marshalled his quaking steps. Few young men have felt more discomfiture. She ought to weep at him and probably would! He appeared at the door, with the lady of honour preceding him.

Mary sat stiff as an image in chilled ivory. The fiction of custom insisted that the ravages of grief had made her unable to move. But a quick glance shared impressions with Mary Seton as she stood a little in advance and at one side.

He was a long lad, indeed, tall, excellently well knit, with fair curling hair and the blue eyes of a Scotsman set in a broad forehead. Also there was an ardent sparkle in them from which it might be read or guessed that any likely lass would receive the same salute. His position was peculiar and one which gave him great advantage in the cunning game now to be played for her hand, since he was her cousin of Scots blood as royal as her own, and on his mother’s side of English blood royal and well in the race for the succession to that crown. These were hopes which gave his worldly father and mother the keenest interest in getting the two acquainted and entangled as soon as decency allowed it, and if this visit leaked out the whole of Europe would be agog. Still, he had sprung at his chance. Luck must be hunted with whip and spur, and other men would be at the same game.

Dressed to perfection in black and white, trained in courts to catch the eye of Elizabeth or Mary as might chance in his destined profession of king consort, the long lad performed his first bow exquisitely by the door, the next in the middle of the room. The third brought him to her feet where he knelt to kiss the hand she extended, bowing a bright young head over it.

He was life, he was youth, and all these names inspire in dancing blood. A wave of spring broke into the room of death and life became importunate once more—not only life but the frivolities which make it lovely. Mary found herself noting the grace of his black velvet sleeves slashed with silver and the sunshine of his golden head. He had certainly taken time and thought to wash the travel stains away! But she spoke with cold grace as befitted a queen whose only thoughts are heavenward.

“Monsieur, my cousin, it gives me such satisfaction as my sorrow permits me to see you. And are your noble parents well?”

But while he answered the stiff courtesy his eyes were roving, for he knew none better that if the wishes of his parents were fulfilled here sat his royal wife. Elizabeth was too old for him and, it was whispered, sterile. This would be the better wife if her ambition were not too high. A great young lady, indeed, but had not the King’s daughter of Hungary loved a humble squire? And of his own good looks and manners he was amply confident.

He sat on the low stool placed near her. His royal Scots blood commanded that observance, otherwise he must have stood. And now, left alone with the Queen and Mary Seton, he did his best to win both hearts, not knowing how far the maid of honour might influence the mistress. He had the good taste to avoid the lighter topics of mask and revel, for so his mother had warned him, and struck a graver note by mentioning Elizabeth’s health. Mary caught at that.

“My cousin, I have heard that queen mentioned only by statesmen bound to describe her as a world’s wonder. Tell me, is she beautiful?”

Darnley hesitated.

It would almost be as much as his life was worth in England if he disparaged Elizabeth’s pretensions as reigning beauty of the world, but it was vital also that the Scots queen should be made to understand that in his own opinion as a man of taste she herself was the first—she only. He considered a second before speaking.

“She is like a noble Greek head cut on a gold medal, madam, with pride, stateliness, and fire which become her Majesty excellently. Her eyes are dark and piercing, her hair auburn, gold threaded, her hand exquisite—especially on the lute which she plays like a siren. I can answer also for her foot and ankle. They do not live very secluded!”

Had he gone too far in his praises? Yet it was needful. A bird of the air might carry the matter, not to mention Mary Seton, who herself might be the spy of Elizabeth, which another of the Marys was to prove later. Certainly Mary’s brow was grave, but she spoke while he hunted for a phrase insinuating that necessity rather than truth had driven him.

“That is what princes should be in the eyes of their subjects. I have heard of my good sister’s good beauty and rejoice in it. I wish I may win such a noble person’s affection, since we come of the same blood. You, no doubt, wish the same, my lord!” she added, including him gracefully.

He bridled at that. Never was man vainer and in some ways simpler than Darnley—a lad at the mercy of any flatterer. Mary Seton took his measure in a moment and stamped it on her brain for future reference. She knew as well as he did the motive of his headlong ride to see his cousin, and her lips shut with finality. That would not do! He was no sword for the Queen’s hand. No prop for her weakness. For, that she had her weaknesses as queen and woman, none knew better than Mary Seton.

“And has so lovely a lady thoughts of marriage, as all her faithful subjects must wish?” Mary asked courteously at last.

Darnley giggled. No other word suits his meaning bubble of laughter. Surely he was safe with those young women in that shut-in hearse-like room—they would see the absurdity of what he had to tell.

“Marriage, madam? That is not a word which her Majesty’s pride will swallow for a long time yet. She will love perhaps—it has been known in queens of England—and all her time and thoughts are set on my lord Robert Dudley. The world knows it.”

Mary looked studied unbelief. It piqued him.

“Madam, I dare assure you she shows it openly. Knighting him the other day, she could not resist tickling her white fingers in his neck, with all the court about them; and he comes and goes in her bedchamber as much or more than his office directs.”

But Mary stiffened. This was most dangerous for her to hear and, however interesting, not the talk for a young widow with the tears still wet on her cheek. Her voice was ice-edged.

“I understood, my lord, that you had urgent business and with the Queen Mother’s recommendation.”

He thought it scarcely fair after she had drawn him on with a question and stiffened in his turn. “Sulked” would be the better word. His father and mother had spoiled him from the cradle as the priceless baby who might be king of England one day through one cousin or another. Indeed, his mother was next heiress to England if Queen Mary failed, and therefore he was watched by Elizabeth with an eye whose jealousy pointed his comments. Business, indeed! He felt his visit a favour in that hideous gloom set up for a mere schoolboy in his grave!

“My business, madam, was to see you with my mother’s recommendation and to implore your favour for the restoration of her great estates in Scotland partly swallowed by your Grace’s brother, Lord James Stuart.”

It was all as silly as could be. The long lad had no sense, Mary Seton said to herself as she stood at attention. She despised his folly. He should have known that Mary loved her bastard brother, and if mere greed were the spur that had brought him here at a gallop! But he was speaking again:

“And, madam, for I do not hide the truth. I wish to see the face of a cousin which is rumoured to be the loveliest on God’s earth. And for that reason I told the Queen Mother——”

“What, sir?” Mary was biting a smile back into the dimple at the corner of her mouth.

“I said—God forgive me!—that I had a letter of the utmost consequence from the English queen desiring a meeting with your Grace as soon as possible. And I said——”

Mary made a motion with her hand. Her face was inscrutable again, for she had been well trained in her royal profession. Only Mary Seton could read the hidden thought; not he.

“Then, my lord, I thank you and must drop again into my sad thoughts which you interrupted. They would have been more cheerful if you had really borne the letter you speak of. There is nothing in the world I desire more than a happy meeting between two queens, cousins and husbandless in the same island. Two——”

He caught at the word.

“You go to Scotland, madam?”

“I did not say so. I say farewell with good wishes and prayers for your noble parents, and——”

“And for myself, madam?” He caught at that, rising tragically.

“A good share more of discretion!” she said with dropped demure eyelids.

How it reassured him! He fell on his knees to kiss her hand, not once or twice, but most indiscreetly often. His upward look gave her the truth of his opinion upon the vaunted beauty he had come to seek in a way that was itself a blazing indiscretion. He remained so long upon his knees that it became a passionate homage to beauty and not to the widowed grief of the French queen. Mary Seton hurriedly revised her opinion. He was indiscretion itself, but indiscretion which might succeed where wisdom failed. Should beauty-blinded manhood calculate each period?

As he made his final bow at the door and the black old lady resumed custody of him like age imprisoning youth, there was a lovely flush on Mary Stuart’s pale face and a dipping light of laughter in her eyes.

“The young fool!” she said. “To talk like that and on such an errand! But the long lad is a handsome one and his royal blood tells. Mary, ma mie, are they talking outside in the world of whom I must marry? The cruel, cruel politicians! No—do not tell me. It hurts. Listen instead to these verses I have made for my dear dead little king. He loved my verses.”

Mary Seton interpreted this quite rightly. It meant:

“I have been happy for a moment. My vanity and youth breathed again. That was a crime. Now I must remember. That question I asked was a disgrace to a widow of eighteen. I must use all means to sharpen my grief.”

She took up a paper from the table. Ronsard had commended her as a poet; therefore she had some right to think herself one and was given to versifying alike in French and Latin. In spite of her resolution a gleam of author’s vanity pierced the feeling with which she read.

“The voice of my sad song

With mournful sweetness guides

My piercing eye along

The track that death divides.

With sharp and bitter sighs

My youth’s bright morning dies.

Within my heart and eye

His image is portrayed.

My dress of grief is nigh

My weeping eyelids fade

To the wan violet’s blue

The mourning lover’s hue.

“I hear his voice once more

I thrill to that dear touch——”

But here she broke down, sobbing. She took it for grief unquenchable. Mary Seton saw it for youth trying to lash itself into an eternal covenant with death. It could not last. The future had already thrust its way to them.

“My heart, my heart!” she said, passing a tender arm round the girl’s shaking shoulders as the tears dropped on her paper. “Time will be good to you. And now let us see the other man. It is Monsieur de Throckmorton, ambassador of the Queen of England.”

Mary rallied as at the call of necessity. But this time she asked no glass. And into that mood Throckmorton walked, unmoved by pity, with a cold clear weighing eye to estimate her chances against his queen’s. Too young, he thought, too beautiful, soft, and womanly. Queens, indeed, should be beautiful because it moved the multitude, but this one had gone too far. The thing was overdone. No one wanted a crowned Helen to drive the jealousies of Europe mad and exasperate Elizabeth into a perpetual fury. The thing was ridiculous!

He came in the black lady’s custody, bowing stiffly, stiff and angular alike in his opinions and the court ruff supporting his lean face, like another John the Baptist’s head on the charger. He thought angrily that she wore her grief like a flower. She should not look so angelically fair and pale—such a tragedy of grief with upraised eyes filmed with tears that besought all men’s love and pity. Such a face would be a positive danger in England, where all the young hot-heads would have swords out in her cause, however foolish. He wished he could find some fault that would show like mud on her chastity, and nose and lips swollen and red with crying would have cheered him. But he was a truthful man for a statesman, and honesty had compelled him to write to Elizabeth who must know the truth, however palatably presented:

Now, that God has disposed of the King, what we must reckon with is the Queen’s marriage. During his life no great account was made of her, for being under the bond of marriage there was no great occasion to know what was in her. But since his death she has shown great wisdom for her years, modesty and judgment. And some who made no great account of her now honour and pity her.

And again he had spoken of her “queenly modesty”! All of which was wormwood to Elizabeth, with whom modesty was not a foremost virtue. Perhaps Throckmorton was not unwilling to give an oblique hint in that direction, for Rumour was laughing with her ugliest glee over Elizabeth and Robert Dudley. Anyhow, she must know the facts, and would to God she would learn from them! There were moments when not only he but many wished they could exchange the two queens, barring only Mary’s fatal Catholicism.

Him she rose to meet as representing Elizabeth and carrying her condolences which she received very sweetly, seating herself after.

“And it has done my heart more good, monsieur, than anything yet that my good sister of England should so pity my grief, for in her I hope to find much comfort as from a queen who understands a queen’s heart, beside the bond of kindred blood.”

It gave even Throckmorton a feeling as near sympathy as he was ever likely to attain. She was so young and solitary, with only another young girl as her guard in that black room. Both glimmered like night moths in it. He bowed gravely.

“I say, madam, that in this grief you have carried yourself so honourably and discreetly that it is a thing to be wished by all Englishmen and wise men that one of the two queens of the isle of Britain could be transformed into the shape of a man, for that would make the happiest marriage in all the wide world!”

“Marriage—ah, if that could be!” said Mary, sighing. “But otherwise, never! If she has the mind to be a virgin queen I have the same for a widowed life and in that we well agree. So I hope. But, sir, I have a question to ask. It was always hoped and prayed by my subjects that if death separated me from the French kingdom I should return to my own. Will my good sister give me a safe conduct through England to my kingdom that we may meet and so lay friendship’s foundation?”

Now this was a most ticklish question for more reasons than one.

To journey through England to Berwick, winning the hearts of all the dutifully loyal Northern lords—Throckmorton trembled. The appearance of so much beauty and charm would be intolerable to Elizabeth. He foresaw, what Shakespeare was later to write from sad experience, that certain stars would shoot madly from their spheres to hear that sea-maid’s music, for England was still half Catholic and a lovely Catholic queen could not be risked within her bounds for a moment. But yet the request was very natural, and how to refuse it in the face of Europe? He looked at this large-eyed lady (were her eyes truly so innocent?) as she went on:

“I intend to send Monsieur D’Oysell to my good sister to declare that the King of France has lent me galleys to take me to Scotland, and I shall ask of her what I have said, though the terms on which we have stood have been not what I have wished up to the present.”

Now that was a foolish reminder which showed her youth. Let sleeping dogs lie! He caught at it instantly with a long penetrating stare intended to frighten her.

“Madam, those terms were not of my queen’s seeking. If your Grace had not used her coat of arms and had made such a treaty as she earnestly wished, you would have been welcome in England as flowers in May and to her bosom also. And your religion also is a grief to her.”

Mary, who knew Elizabeth had cheerfully sold her private convictions for a crown and cared little enough for anything but policy, lifted her lip a little proudly.

“Religion? I shall have trouble for it, yet shall not change. Many of my own subjects have joined the new religion, which seems to consist in forcing others to do as you do. For myself I am not so. Let each worship God as he will, provided he gives others the same liberty. And if that is to be the price of a safe conduct through England it is not for me. I shall constrain none, but neither will I be constrained.”

He smiled to himself under his appearance of gravity. If that was to be her course in Scotland he foresaw difficulties by which England would be quick to profit. That was one rock she would split on, and he could foresee plenty more.

She rose with a wearied air, as a sign that the audience was at an end.

“Do your best for me, monsieur, that I and my sister may live in peace. I know ministers have it in their power to do much harm and much good, and you must be my voice to her. Show her my true heart.”

He bowed low and perhaps at the moment had the will to do her bidding, but as she stood in her flowing white, like a beautiful nun who has renounced the world, a prevision was on him that it might be better for the girl here and now if she took that decision rather than affront the brutalities of Scotland and the fierce jealousies of Elizabeth as queen and woman. He judged her unfitted for times when religion was judged by the zest with which it persecuted others, too young and hopeful, too easy to weep, launching her bright boat in seas inconceivably stormy. Could God himself bring her safe to harbour? He hoped not, for there would be England’s advantage.

Elizabeth certainly would not aid the Almighty. So delicate was the position that Throckmorton himself, in spite of a stomach that loathed the channel, sick and soured with a three days’ tossing, journeyed over to see her at Greenwich.

She received him in the luxurious little room which she kept for her intimates, looking out over the trees of the park, still leafless and stark, though summer reigned in the room itself, with a great log fire and sumptuous velvet and tapestry hangings like a casket for a jewel. A great Holbein portrait of her father hung over the fireplace, broad and burly with thin sensuous lips in a fleshy face, his small eyes keen as knives even in paint and canvas. No portrait of her mother attended him. It was Elizabeth’s policy to neglect the memory of that besmirched lady whom the hideous accusations of incest and adultery made a black background for the purities of a virgin queen. It was said of her, indeed, that she would willingly have sprung like Minerva from the head of Jupiter without the aid of a mortal mother, and certainly the Boleyn’s name never passed her lips.

Therefore her own portrait by Zucchero faced her father’s, young yet stripped of youth by the stiff and tasteless dress, flat and jewelled as the queen of diamonds in a pack of cards, not a shadow on the sharp-chinned face, lest it should fail to flatter her milky skin. She wore the same dress at the moment, crimson satin of excessive richness, with golden eyes and ears embroidered all over it to denote her omniscience, which nothing could escape, and a snake of wisdom coiled in gold on one sleeve. The dress spread in a broad stiff hoop straight out from the waist, which gave her middle wooden slenderness and her breasts prominence perhaps a little accentuated by art. The fine throat rose above it, and her aquiline face, thin lipped but handsome and with piercing dark eyes, pale lashed but well set, was impressive against the hard background of a wired ruff edged with pearls. But the crimson went ill with the red of her hair, and the dress, while it left her stately as a matured woman, divested her of grace. Unconsciously Throckmorton must compare her with the white slender figure whose cause he was come to—was it to plead or stab? He was not himself certain at the moment, for a kind of angry shame rose in him to see her Robin, as she called Robert Dudley, lounging on the back of her chair with assured familiarity that made every man who valued her position desire to smite good manners into him. The young Scots queen knew better than that—the Tudor blood in her was not adulterated with the Boleyn mixture that had always made Elizabeth insensitive to certain points of behaviour and vulgar in her familiarities. It had ruined her mother. It might ruin her yet.

She welcomed Throckmorton warmly and with a jest to Robin on his seasickness more free than enough, and then:

“And the widow—does she cry her eyes out for the crown of France? A comedown in the world, look at it how you will! And who does she set her cap at now?”

It jarred on Throckmorton, thinking of the young dignity and loneliness of the girl in France, and Dudley’s coarse laugh accentuated his distaste. But politics were politics and he conquered it.

“Why, madam, all the world in France talks of who it shall be and offers come as thick as snowflakes in December. But it is of more consequence at the moment that the lady wants to be at home—no love lost between her and the French queen! And I have a message for your own ear——”

He looked meaningly at Dudley, who lounged and laughed, assured, and Elizabeth put a caressing hand on his as it lay on the back of her chair.

“My Robin can stay. What is there Robin may not know?”—so that Throckmorton was forced to open the business before him.

Instantly she was on her feet, raging:

“What? The Scots hussy asks to come through this country that she may make her mischiefs from here to Edinburgh and poison every man’s mind against his lawful sovereign! God’s death! does she indeed? But I will put her and her plots to open shame before the Spanish ambassador to-morrow and show them that I am a match for all the Catholics in Europe. What? She to bear my arms and come to flaunt herself as my heir and reckon over her inheritance! If you have encouraged it, Throckmorton, you are a traitor and no servant of mine!”

And so forth with due encouragement from Dudley. Of the matter Throckmorton could not complain. He, too, knew that there was no place for Catholicism in England and that Elizabeth was right. But the manner he detested. And next day, with the Spanish ambassador present, permission was coarsely and loudly refused for Mary’s journey through England, and he caught himself wishing once again that the queens could be changed and Scotland made a part of England (as it must be) without the sacrifice of decency and honour which he foresaw too well. There was still some decency left in his crinkled walnut of a heart, though he would lie and cheat for Elizabeth as well as another. She was a necessity of the moment. Most Englishmen allowed that.

Dudley lounged up with his meaning laugh when the Queen had gone.

“Is she as fair faced as they say, Master Throckmorton? I would like to have a sly look at the pretty widow. Mewtas says he has never seen her like.”

“For me, I have no time for pretty ladies,” Throckmorton answered drily. “My own sovereign is my only care.”

“That saying may be taken two ways! You had better not let our great lady hear the distinction,” said Dudley, laughing and fingering the great jewel of emeralds and diamonds which Elizabeth had given him the day before. He was as sure at that moment of becoming king consort of England as Throckmorton was certain he would not. But that belief did not stand in the way of a very sharp eye for other beauties than Gloriana, as it was becoming the fashion for the poets to call her.

Throckmorton frowned and went off. He detested Dudley, and though he would have been hung, drawn, and quartered for Elizabeth he wished her father had flogged manners into her. The lack of them left her better-bred servants ashamed in the face of Europe.