Читать книгу The Duel of the Queens - Elizabeth Louisa Moresby - Страница 8

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By the end of July all was settled for Mary Stuart’s departure—all excepting only the question of whether she would be driven to run the gauntlet of the English warships at sea or might be permitted to land in England if driven by storm or illness. Elizabeth had not yet given her final answer to D’Oysell. This hindered her preparations and clouded her last days in Paris and still the oracle had not spoken.

The day before she left Paris D’Oysell returned flaming with fury. He rushed into Mary’s presence, charged to bursting with the news he had to tell, outraged as a Frenchman, as a man of gallantry, red with wrath and scorn.

“Madam, that princess, who should not be called a princess so far is she from every grace of courtesy, sent for me in audience, and when I went, expecting the privacy due to the envoy of a crowned queen with important business to declare, I found her in the midst of a crowded circle, including the Spanish ambassador. She called me as one summons a page, in a loud hectoring voice: ‘Aha, so you come to see me on behalf of the Queen of Scots!’ I bowed, madam, with the dignity I owe to myself. And she shouted like a virago, for I can use no other term: ‘Tell your mistress from me that I grant no safe conduct through the narrow seas or along my coast or through England to one who by her conduct and open enmity and bearing of my arms royal has declared herself my enemy and the enemy of the true religion and of all freedom.’ This, turning her head proudly to see that all admired her wit! A smile flew from lip to lip, though it was quickly quenched, so furious were the looks she darted. The Spanish ambassador made a step forward as if to remonstrate in the name of decency, but held back, fearing probably to make matters worse, and I, left standing alone, bowed proudly and retired. Mother of God, what a woman! What coarseness, even in a man. But no crowned man could be such a boor!”

With her own grace in full play for contrast Mary controlled her temper and smoothed the ruffled feathers.

“Sir, you endured a public slight for my sake and with a courtesy ill deserved. I shall not forget your merit. For myself I shall sail for Scotland at the appointed time trusting in God; and a band of French gentlemen as well as my own Scots will accompany me so that this queen may raise international questions if she attack me, passing on my rightful business to my kingdom. Meanwhile, I must see Monsieur de Throckmorton.”

She saw him at St. Germain-en-laye, when she had taken her last sad farewell of Paris, the beautiful and beloved now shedding true tears at her parting. Throckmorton sent in his application for an audience, D’Oysell earnestly entreating her to refuse it in view of such gross behaviour.

“And be myself as discourteous as they?” she answered with her own smile. “Alas, no, monsieur, that cannot be! But, since Throckmorton comes, forget nothing that may instruct me as to their meaning. Did you hear anything else of importance?”

“Madam, yes, and I am ashamed to tell such words, though you should know it. I have thought well to feign a slight deafness at the English court and heard her cousin, my lord Hunsdon, whisper aside to the Earl of Sussex as the Queen raged on, and what he said was this: ‘My lord, this anger will please Lord James Stuart the Scots queen’s base-born brother and the false Scots very well.’ And I warn your Majesty not to trust your brother, Lord James Stuart, nor any that are his, for all I hear in England, both from your partisans and others, assures me that he is in that queen’s pay and that she dances him and them as puppets on a string. You shall take nothing but harm from their counsels. They are her lickspittle servants and false as hell.”

Again Mary smiled.

“Sir, my brother is base-born, but I love him and he me. He appears to play a part that he may gain information for me. Oh, I can trust him! There is none in the world if he should fail me, now my wise mother is gone, for my kingdom is sorely disturbed with religion and the base plottings of this queen. But, as to my brother, he is Stuart and true. Indeed I thank you for your good will.”

She gave him her hand to kiss and little knew she had rejected a warning of the utmost and most terrible import, one which if taken would have altered the whole course of history. Fate, who had given her all gifts but wisdom and distrust of the base, blinded her. In her innocent cunning she had resolved to give Throckmorton a hint that these lies were abroad in relation to her brother and to assure the English plotters that they would get no good that way, but now it appeared that the very hint would be an insult to her own blood in James Stuart, and she determined on opening her mind fully to him only on the aspersion when they met in Scotland.

Throckmorton entered, bowing coldly with only the exact measure of respect due to a foreign sovereign who must be made to feel the weight of English displeasure. She rose to receive him and hear Elizabeth’s reply as though she herself had been present, tall and very stately in the sweeping robe of black satin which was now her mourning, and with no emblem of queendom but a long and most magnificent chain of black muscatel pearls wound about her throat. They were, indeed, a world’s wonder by reason of their size and unique colour and matching. In perfect silence she listened until he had brought his lengthy declaration to an end, standing motionless to hear.

“Will you sit, monsieur?” she said at last. “And I will beg these ladies and gentlemen to retire to the distance of the chamber that we may be private. For I am not without pride and temper, and if they overcome me I prefer a smaller audience than that which your queen was content to have when she talked with Monsieur D’Oysell.”

Men and women looked at each other as they drew back to the farthest distance. There was a subdued whisper of approval of this dignified rebuke and red flushed into Throckmorton’s harsh face. Not of anger with her. He was angry with Elizabeth. She had been too coarse, too loud, too public. The thing had to be done but should have been done with Italian diplomacy and French finesse. If she could but control her temper like this one—could be less of a virago and more of a great lady! His only quarrel with Mary was fear of the graces which won him in spite of himself and made the worse appear the better reason while she spoke and smiled. And unlike Elizabeth she showed no anger against him. He was a mouthpiece only.

“I welcome your safe return, monsieur, and thank you for your embassage. As to your queen I shall speak plainly. There is nothing grieves me more than that I made any request of her, for I may well go to my kingdom without her leave. When I came here, a child, the English tried to catch me and failed. Let them try again. Sir, you have dwelt on the need of friendship between your queen and me? Is this behaviour a sign that she desires it? She makes her friends of my rebel subjects and not with me, their queen. I know well the understanding between her and my rebels. Can you deny it?”

She was speaking with force and energy that he had never seen in her before, and it struck him speechless. So she knew that! How much else did she know? How far would it set her on guard where most they wished her defenceless? He knew there were spies at the English court whom no wit could detect. Was it not believed that Elizabeth’s Robin himself had eyes fixed on the idol of Europe in case his suit with Elizabeth should fail? Who could one trust but one’s self in such a world of lies? Waiting in vain for an answer, Mary continued:

“I ask nothing but friendship. I do not trick with her subjects nor trouble her kingdom—and yet I know—I know, that in her kingdom there are those who would accept offers if I made them!”

The glance that pointed this thrust was keen as a sword’s edge, and he could plot no answer. It was true and might be even more terribly true than he guessed. Her look of triumph seemed to give her height and majesty as she ended, and this in spite of her sweet youth.

Throckmorton was compelled to answer, for he had no instructions to break off relations; he stuttered out something about the stale question of bearing the English arms. Mary waved it gently aside. She knew by this time that Elizabeth would force a quarrel, do what she would. The Queen Mother of France had worded the astonishment of all European princes in the remonstrance she addressed to Elizabeth on her intention of capturing a free and independent ruler on the high seas, but in vain. What was the use of further words? She uttered her last remonstrance.

“Sir, it is useless to waste breath. I shall adventure, come what may. I go in the belief that she is determined to quarrel. Well,—so be it! If the wind blows me on the coast of England then she may do her will and sacrifice me, for all I know, if she be so hard-hearted as to desire my death. Perhaps that might be better for me than to live. In this matter God’s will be done.”

She dismissed him, bowing with her usual sweetness, but there was a tone new to him, a deep foreboding of a dangerous future. That future, indeed, loomed blacker and blacker as the return to Scotland drew near, for it was her firm belief that as France sank under the horizon her happy days, her youth and all careless joy would sink with it. There were moments when the voice of Doom tolled an everlasting “No” in her ear to forbid her going. Yet stay she could not. The past had broken under her; the future must be met with calm and constancy. As for him, he wrote half angrily, half warily to the English Privy Council:

I see her behaviour to be such and her queenly modesty to be so great that she does not think herself to be too wise.

And again:

The Queen of Scotland bears herself so honourably and discreetly that I cannot but fear her progress.

Of that strange flash of prophecy which came from her she had planned nothing. To her it had always seemed reasonable and natural that they should live in peace, she as Elizabeth’s heir if her determination to die a virgin were real—but in any case friends. She could not understand nor could Throckmorton declare to her that her offensive youth and beauty and fatal charm would have made the Englishwoman her enemy even if heirship and religion had not existed. Yet that was the feminine element for which statesmen must allow, for it complicated every one of Elizabeth’s thoughts and actions. Throckmorton knew that at that moment she was half insane with jealousy of Mary’s return to Scotland lest King Eric of Sweden, who had been her suitor, should turn his attentions to his lovely neighbour. He trembled to think what the result might be for the peace of the world if such a thing should happen. But what could he say? He bowed and muttered something to the effect that those who deserved his mistress’s friendship would be certain to secure it and so retreated from the room in disorder—for the first time in his life—realizing that Elizabeth was capable of putting her servants in positions from which no wit could extricate them. Several of the French lords laid hand to sword as he walked stiffly and alone past them.

“She desires my death, that woman,” said Mary tragically to Mary Seton as she unfastened the black transparent veil which flowed so delicately about her large-eyed pallor. Mary Seton looked up with sparkling confidence.

“Let her try, the ugly red-haired witch! Mary Stuart will be a match for her and more! What! We have friends, I hope! We have moss troopers on the border. We have the clans—the Highland clans, and none truer in the wide world. We have the Edinburgh men-at-arms! Oh, my lady, my liege, when they see your bonny face not a man of them all but will ride to hell at your bidding. Look at the Hamiltons—look at my own brave Setons! Come without a fear to your own people, my heart’s darling, my Mary Stuart!”

It was like music to hear that passionate assurance. Some day it might comfort her, but at the moment the pang of leaving France was too sore. France itself would have come with her had that been possible. Chastelard, the poet, Brantôme, the historian, both would stake their lives on the adventure with the queen of all romance. Romance—that was what she meant to men—to all men who saw her except those pledged to another cause, and even of them many fell to the lure. It was laughable that Mary could afford to be careless of her choice of envoys to the English court, but Elizabeth must think warily before she exposed any man to that soft fire. Only where money was the market could she outbid the beauty. That sharpened the arrow of her hate.

So with some of the noblest of France to keep her company Mary embarked in the ship which might lead her to an English prison. The Marshal D’Amville was one, so madly her lover that in battle, when retreating for his life, he had returned and all but flung it away to retrieve a little handkerchief of silk which she had dropped but had not even given him. It was, indeed, a band of lovers who followed her to that cold kingdom of the North—men who had dared the anger of the Regent Queen Mother in asking permission to go. She gave it scornfully, saying:

“Yes, go! A glance of that girl’s eyes is worth more than home or country or wife or decency to the men besotted on her, and she as cold as a woman cast in ice! I have known women more beautiful, but none contents a man who has once seen her. What is it?”

So it was—the rose and white and golden Diane de Poitiers, who had won and held the love of two kings of France, had charms more flamboyant, more luxuriant, but Mary was Mary. There could be no attempt at definition of that most winning beauty. To this day the charm can only be acknowledged. It cannot be captured.

She leaned on the rail of the ship at Calais, the last farewells said, the galley slaves sitting to their oars; unfortunates upon whom her life and safety depended. Behind her were the Marys, waving their own good-byes to the noble ladies, the light lovers, whom they would see no more. But she, her eyes glazed with tears, fixed on no man, on no woman—only on the beloved land that had adopted her as a child and sheltered and warmed her since with tender love and worship, her thoughts on her mother lying dead at Rheims in that sacred earth, the heart of her young king at Orleans in the country sanctified by the glory of Joan the Maid. What could matter but such memories as those of the love great and beautiful which France had given and received from her?

Chastelard, with folded arms, stood as near as he dared to taste what he called “the loveliness of her grief.” He would turn it into verse that should last when the fair flesh was dust. Was it an omen that a boat trying to enter Calais struck on the bar and sank with wild cries from the men struggling in the sea with death?

Hands clasped, she rushed to the stern, calling on every gentleman of France and Scotland to save them, ready to spring in herself to the rescue if they had not restrained her. He noted that also in the strange frenzy of the poet to whom all human agony and joy are but plastic clay to be moulded into beauty; noted, too, when it was too late and they had found the mercy of death, how her clasped hands and lips moving in prayer made her for the moment a saint beyond the reach of mortal passion—and then the human reaction—bitter weeping for these men—poor fishermen, so little to the great!

“My God, what a portent for our voyage!”

But it was done. The oars plunged, and France had become a memory most tragically sweet. She clung to the rails.

“I will not leave this deck—no, not while one sight of my France can be seen. Not the grand cabin below. Make me a tent on deck that all night I may see her in moonlight and in the dawn still see her once more.”

Many have loved France, but none with a more poignant agony. It was said by Mary Seton and more that she left half her heart there forever and ever. She knew well in that strange spirit of prophecy which sometimes inspired her that not all the years nor all her prayers would ever again restore that lost joy. Chastelard noted also—as what did he not note in her?—how her eyes fell on the galley slaves who were her safeguard, straining their hearts to bursting under the cruel lash of the overseer as he walked the deck. Criminals they might be, but they had a place in her heart.

“Let the captain come here instantly!” He could envy the captain her entreaty as he stood bareheaded before her.

“Captain, I cannot free these poor men, but I can reward them. And to you I say that while I am aboard, and forever, if you value a queen’s memory, the lash is to be laid aside. I answer for them that they will do their best, and more they cannot.”

One of them heard. The news flew along the oar benches and they raised a wavering cheer for the Queen. There, too—even there, thought Chastelard, that all-conquering grace justified itself, although she forgot them next moment in the vanishing dream of France. He heard her murmur in the bitterness of her soul:

“Farewell, my own France, my dear heart, my beloved, farewell,” as to a lover, so absorbed in sorrow that she neither knew nor cared who saw, who heard. All night she lay in the tent on deck watching for the first gray of dawn. Her ladies slept but not she, and he, watching also, saw her steal from its shelter that she might be alone in that last parting, salt and bitter as death, a farewell to youth.

The light touched France, cloudlike now on the horizon, faint as memory in age. Was it land, was it cloud, or—nothing? Nothing. Never again to the end of time!

She covered her face with her hands and walked blindly to the tent. Could he sympathize? To him her agony was only another form of beauty—beauty unspeakable. A poet must rejoice that such things exist to enlighten the world. True worshippers are cruel to all else than their deity.

Once they sighted the ships of Elizabeth watching sharp eyed as her hate for the Scots queen.

“Touch and go!” said Brantôme, standing beside him in the stern. “And if they get her the English will never set her free. A prison for her and a new chapter for my history. Pray, Master Chastelard, if you have a prayer anywhere up your sleeve, that the watchman may be asleep aboard the witch’s watchdogs!”

“Of prayers I have not many!” Chastelard answered, “save to our Lady Venus, Star of the Sea—but her own beauty is her salvation. She needs no God. Look here!”

He pointed to the galley slaves. They too had seen the danger. It did not need the empty-handed overseer as he walked his round to hearten them. They laughed aloud and bent their scarred backs to the oars as never yet. One man fainted and hung over his oar, a dead weight. His fellow with foam on his lips pulled for two. Yes, the English ships were hounds on the scent; they were setting every sail to catch the faint flicker of the breeze. Fainter and fainter it blew, the sails wrinkled, they hung flaccid—what could they do against the desperate resolve of the muscles of men? They told her. She came and leaned down like the compassion of God looking into the pit of hell to bless the lost souls. She stretched her hands laden with gratitude, and with no breath to cheer they pulled the harder.

Far behind, the maddened English ships did their best, and it was nothing. They could not overhaul the flying galley.

And then again the heavens favoured her. As the men dropped all but dead over their oars, and indeed two bodies were cut loose from the benches and flung into the sea, that sea breathed up a faint gray vapour that dimmed and then obscured the waste of gray water until they were one blank. Dimmer and dimmer grew the shadowy English ships, losing themselves in the vast twilight of the ocean. So strange and uncanny was it that voices softened as the fog thickened silently muting all sound, and they were alone in a world not so large as the galley’s length and beam.

“Enough is as good as a feast!” said Brantôme to Chastelard, hugging his fur mantle about him, for the sea’s breath was dank and raw from her deepest depths. “If this lasts and the captain loses his noddle, which if I mistake not he has already done, we stand a very fair chance of leaving our bones among the rocks of that highly unpleasant country Scotland. Therefore that chapter of my history will not be written in which I hoped to commend the courage of this lady, which indeed excels that of other women. I was standing by once when her uncle, the Constable de Montmorency, said to her: ‘My niece, I am of opinion that like the men of our race you would know how to die extremely well in battle—an accomplishment rare for a lady. And so also said your uncle the Duc de Guise.’ Her eyes shone but she made no answer.”

“Her eyes still shine!” answered Chastelard. “We shall see no stars to steer by in this fog, but what need of them with such beacons?”

Brantôme looked at him with his wise humorous smile.

“Yes, we shall reach Scotland, I believe, but when we reach it, beware, my friend! They do not there understand the lover of romance who asks only a smile. Keep your head in both senses of the word!”

Chastelard turned angrily away. There were moments when he hated the ironic historical pose of Brantôme, who in return called him “the lunatic poet” and really did him little wrong. He was right; the fog did its work too thoroughly, and two days later it lifted its gray pall and lo! they were among the barbed rocks of the coast of Scotland—reckoning adrift, certainty nowhere, but that they had escaped the witch’s war dogs.

Chastelard rushed to Mary’s side only to find D’Amville there before him, steadfast in guard upon her as she stood with her Marys, Mary Seton holding a casket of jewels under her arm from which nothing would part her.

“I will die sooner,” she said as Chastelard would have taken it, “for this contains the jewel of all others which her Majesty values next to her marriage ring, namely the fair diamond that the King, her husband, gave her at their betrothal. And if she would be said by me she would never venture a second marriage, for she is by nature so gentle and trusting as to be the prey of any ambitious and cruel man who wishes to make his market of her beauty and her crown.”

Brantôme standing by smiled even in that moment of peril at the mingled feelings in Chastelard’s face. He was no advocate for the marriage of his inspiration with an adoring lover, mad with jealousy of the very dog who lay at her feet, and yet still less could he abide the thought of the loveliest lady of her time frozen in lifelong celibacy.

“Cruel demoiselle!” he said bitterly to Mary Seton, “and is this your counsel to the Queen? Have you forgotten that you and your three sister maids of honour are vowed to be celibate yourselves until she shall marry? And do you all four resolve to condemn the world to the extinction of hope because she has a heart of marble!”

Mary Seton turned her bright cold glance upon him.

“I speak for none but myself when I say that in all the world the man does not breathe for whom I would sacrifice the service of my mistress. And I say no man worthy of her breathes on this earth, and that if he did and were present he would busy himself with a boat to save her life instead of talking like a mad poet.”

Brantôme smiled drily.

“The lady speaks very truly, monsieur, and if I am not mistaken I see what looks like a fisherman’s boat, which may yet save our lady from rocks as cruel as the tender mercies of the Queen of England.”

It was true. A boatload of honest fishermen had stopped on their work of hauling in a net, amazed by the strange ship and the richness of the men and women aboard her. The news was carried to Mary.

“Ask them the direction to Leith harbour,” was all she said. “If we are to die we die, and for my part I care little enough now unless my life be of some use to Scotland, for I have lost all else.”

But at that moment life was decreed, for the fishermen, richly rewarded, piloted them from the dangers and set them in a fair way for Leith, and there, a week sooner than she was expected, since she had embarked earlier to outwit Elizabeth’s snares, Mary Stuart set foot on the Scottish soil after as desperate an adventure as the heart of any man could desire or any woman fear. And all the Queen of England had gained was a shipload of horses and splendid trappings for the Scots queen’s use and the general dislike and contempt of Europe for a dirty trick upon the beauty of the world.