Читать книгу The Queen's Maries - G. J. Whyte-Melville - Страница 6

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‘Oh! ’gin I had a bonny ship,

And men to sail wi’ me,

It’s I wad gang to my true love,

Sin’ my love comes not to me.’

About the same hour at which the galley bearing Mary Stuart and her fortunes, eluded, in the increasing darkness, the vigilance of the English cruisers, an archer of the Scottish Body-guard, with whom we have already made acquaintance, might have been seen pacing to and fro on a strip of white sand adjoining Calais harbour. After a long day of labour and excitement, preparatory also to a ride of some two hundred miles on the morrow, this midnight walk was perhaps the least judicious method of passing the hours sensible persons devote to repose. Our archer, nevertheless, continued it with a perseverance that denoted considerable preoccupation, pausing at intervals to gaze wistfully on the sea, and anon resuming his exercise, as if goaded to bodily effort by some acute mental conflict.

In honest truth, like Sinbad the Sailor, he was oppressed by a metaphorical Old Man of the Sea, that he could not get rid of, although in his case the unwelcome equestrian had assumed the form of a prevailing idea, connected with a young woman instead of an old man, and resembling Sinbad’s encumbrance in no particular except the tenacity with which it clung.

Reader, it is worth while to go to the Pampas to see a Gaucho lasso and mount a hitherto unbroken horse. How the animal, conscious of his degradation, fights and rears and plunges, wincing from the cruel spurs to rise at the maddening bit! How his eye dilates and his nostril reddens, and his whole form contracts with mingled fear and rage! Shaking his head wildly, he dashes ere long into a headlong gallop, and becomes stupefied to discover that, even at his fiercest speed, he bears his tormentor along with him. Subdued at last, he bends his neck to the hand that has tamed him, and experiences a new sensation of increased power and confidence in submitting to the master-will. So is it with a manly, resolute nature, when it first feels the influence of another’s existence on its own. There is a certain charm, indeed, in the novelty of the sentiment, but there is also surprise, apprehension, and a strong disposition to oppose and crush the unaccustomed usurpation. After many an unavailing struggle, the conquered must, however, submit to the conqueror; and, like other slaves, he loses the desire for liberty with the consciousness of incapacity to be free. Use in time renders him perfectly docile and broken-in; at last he is perfect in all the paces of the manége, and carries one rider nearly as pleasantly as another. He is a useful hack now, but the mettle of the wild-horse has left him for evermore.

Our archer was in the first stages of his tuition. He was, so to speak, only lately caught and mounted. We can but wish him a merciful rider with a kind heart and a light hand!

Walter Maxwell, for such was the name in which he stood enrolled on the list of the Archer-guard, was the younger son of an old Scottish family, possessed of an unblemished pedigree, considerable territorial possessions, and a sad lack of broad pieces. Then, as now, the upper classes in Scotland, with many noble qualities, were cursed with a morbid desire for the shadow rather than the substance of wealth. In Queen Mary’s days, the pound Scots represented in value the shilling English. In Queen Victoria’s, the laird on one side the Tweed, with his few hundreds a year, would fain make believe that his possessions equal those of the squire on the other, who owns as many thousands. His difficulties, his shortcomings, his meannesses originate in this, the paltriest of all ambition, that would make his shilling look like half-a-crown. Frugal and industrious as are her peasantry, prosperous and enterprising as are her yeomen and traders, probably the gentry of Scotland are at this moment more oppressed with difficulties than the parallel class in any other country under the sun.

In the time of which we write, the Scottish nobility were afflicted with the same unfortunate tendencies. There was then even more of display abroad and less of ease at home; whilst the unsettled state of the country, compelling every baron to entertain as many feudal retainers as he could arm and feed, helped to drain their resources to the very dregs. Violence and intrigue, political as well as private, were naturally resorted to by those who had no other means of replenishing their empty purses; and what with old feuds strictly entailed, and new differences perpetually arising, Scotland could only be likened to some huge cauldron, in which a thousand different ingredients were boiling, and the scum perpetually rising to the surface.

In such a state of things there was not much provision for younger brothers; and as the somewhat heathenish doctrine, not yet eradicated, then prevailed of considering individuals simply as links in a line, and postponing all personal claims to those of that great myth—the family—it may easily be imagined that the younger sons of a noble Scotch house had small cause to congratulate themselves on their aristocratic lineage.

Walter Maxwell might consider himself fortunate that he had the shelter of the old tower at home until he had arrived at the strength and stature of a man—that he was permitted to feed at the same board, and enjoy the same pastimes as his elder brother, the heir—that he might follow to her grave with a son’s decorous grief the mother who had doted on her youngest—and that his share of the family possessions was not limited to its name, but included a right to breathe the moorland air round the old place till he had attained his fifteenth year. Perhaps, after all, he inherited his share of the patrimony. He gained health and strength, and good manhood, on its broad acres. He learned to back a horse in its meadows, and fly a hawk on its hills, to swim in its dark loch, and to wield a blade within its walls. Perhaps, in bequeathing him an iron constitution, a vigorous frame, and a courageous heart, the old lord had done enough for the golden-haired child who used to come running to him after supper, and pull his gray moustaches, and climb merrily upon one knee, whilst the heir occupied the other.

At fifteen Walter Maxwell went out upon the world. A year after, he was the youngest gentleman private in the French king’s Archer-guard. Many a dame in Paris would turn round to look again on the blooming youthful face—almost a child’s still—so pleasing in its contrast with that manly form, clad in the showy armour of the guard. The Duchess of Valentinois herself had desired to have the young boy-archer presented to her; and it is to be presumed that Diane de Poitiers, a lady of mature experience, was no mean judge of masculine attractions. A word from the woman he so adored was sufficient to interest Henry II. in the Scottish recruit, and Walter Maxwell was more than once selected for duties demanding discretion as well as fidelity and courage. All these qualities were, indeed, in constant request at such a court as that of the French king. At a more advanced age, the young soldier had also distinguished himself in the disastrous affairs of St. Quentin and Gravelines, where the French suffered serious defeats; and it was but the consistency with which he remained steadfast to the Protestant religion that stood in the way of his rapid promotion. He was a favourite, too, with his comrades for his courage and soldier-like bearing beyond his years, as well as for the indefinable attraction of those buoyant spirits which, like the bloom of youth on the cheek, seldom outlast maturity.

During the reign of Henry II., that chivalrous monarch, notwithstanding his severity to the Protestants, and the prevalence of their religion amongst his Scottish Archers, placed the most implicit confidence in his body-guard, riveting their unshaken loyalty with many favours and immunities, till they walked the streets of the capital objects of admiration and envy to the very grandees themselves. Perhaps the warlike Henry was of opinion that a soldier’s religion need not interfere with his obedience; and, indeed, too many of the Archers might have made the same answer, that some two centuries and a half later the old grenadier of the Empire gave on a question of doctrine to the Pope—‘Et de quelle religion es tu, mon fils?’ asked his Holiness of the grim sentry who kept the door that led into the awful presence of Napoleon I. ‘Je suis de la religion de la Vieille Garde,’ replied the veteran, with an astounding clatter of his musket, as he ‘carried arms’ to the Pontiff. We take leave to doubt if the Protestantism of the Scotch Guard often stood in the way of Henry’s commands to his favourites.

But the evil day dawned at last. In the pride of his manly beauty, and the vigour of his warlike frame, the king of France rode gallantly into the lists, to break a lance in sport for the bright eyes of his ladye-love. On his helmet he wore the colours of Diane de Poitiers. And the duchess herself, looking down from the gallery, felt her heart leap with pride in the noble appearance of her royal lover. What shall we say of Henry’s infatuation for this seductive woman, nearly twenty years his senior, himself the husband of the most accomplished lady in Europe, for Catherine of Medicis was notoriously as wise as she was beautiful? What, but that it is folly to argue on the wilfulness of the human heart, and that the most untoward and ill-advised attachments are apt to prove the strongest and the most fatal. The king loved her madly, and was not ashamed to avow his passion openly in the sight of France. Walter Maxwell attended the sovereign as one of his squires, and bore a knot of the same coloured ribbons on his bonnet.

And now the trumpet sounds a flourish, and the king, raising his vizor, calls for a bowl of wine, and without dismounting, quaffs it with an ill-concealed gesture of courtesy to some one in the gallery—then, a perfect horseman, he backs his charger to his post. Opposite, like a statue sheathed in steel, sits his antagonist, the captain of the Archer-guard. A proud man to-day is Gabriel, Earl of Montgomery, for the Scottish peer has been chosen to break a lance with the French king, in presence of two royal brides and their bridegrooms! There is a hush of pleased expectation and interest over the whole assembly; only the Duchess of Valentinois turns pale with ill-defined apprehension. She feels the value of her last love, wildest and dearest of all, lawless though it be. It was but this morning the king told her in jest, he should not close his vizor lest she might not recognise him; and she had chidden him, half playfully, half in earnest, for the insinuation. She would know that warlike form she thinks in any disguise—and the colour mounts again to her face as she catches his last glance, while he settles himself in the saddle, and lays his lance in the rest. He has not closed his helmet, after all! She will chide him seriously, though, to-night, for his selfish carelessness of danger. Again the trumpet sounds, and the lances shiver fairly in mid-career. Firm and erect, the king reaches the opposite extremity of the lists; then, swaying heavily in the saddle, falls in his ringing harness to the ground. The Queen and her ladies rushed tumultuously into the lists. Catherine de Medicis has a right to succour her husband. Diane de Poitiers, sick and faint, loses her consciousness in a swoon. She is scarcely noticed, for all are crowding round the king.

Alas for the gallant monarch! Alas for the bold man-at-arms! A splinter from Montgomery’s lance has entered the eye through the unclosed helmet, and penetrated nearly to the brain. Ere twelve days elapse, Catherine de Medicis is a widow. Francis II. has succeeded to the throne, and Mary Stuart is Queen of France.

The favour of the Duchess of Valentinois was no passport, we may fairly suppose, to the good graces of the queen-mother; and although Walter Maxwell retained his appointment in the guard, his hopes of advancement perished with the death of his royal patron. Such disappointments, however, though they press heavily on an enthusiastic spirit, are lightly borne by such a temperament as Maxwell’s. His disposition was naturally calm and unimpressionable beyond the average. He possessed the rare quality of seeing things as they were, and not as he wished them to be. Above all, he had that quiet confidence in himself which could wait patiently for an occasion, and seize it without hurry or agitation when it arrived. Moreover, he had been brought up in the stern school, that turns out the most finished pupils, after all. Poverty and hardship give their lessons for nothing; but men remember them better than Latin and Greek. We may be allowed to doubt whether all George Buchanan’s classic lore and pedantic periods were as well worth acquiring as Maxwell’s aptitude to saddle, shoe, and groom his own horse, cook his own rations, burnish his own corslet, and keep his head with his hand.

Changes also took place in the Scottish Guard. The Earl of Arran, heir to the house of Hamilton, was appointed to its command, and already that eccentricity began to manifest itself which was fostered, at last, into madness, by the sunshine of Mary’s unconscious smiles. Arran chose to alter the discipline, the accoutrements, and the whole system of the corps, and such interference with their old habits was by no means relished by its members. During the short reign of Francis II., Mary Stuart’s sympathies with her countrymen, and knowledge of their customs and prejudices, checked many a proposed innovation that would have created open dissatisfaction; but when she became a dowager Queen, and Charles IX. succeeded to the throne, the archers found themselves curtailed of many of their privileges, and no longer looked upon as what they considered themselves—the élite of the French army. Seeing, however, that, like the famous ‘gants glacés’ of a later period, they had earned this position by constantly volunteering for all dangerous duties, they might well be uneasy at the prospect of forfeiting a distinction it had cost so much hard fighting to attain.

It was during the short eighteen months of Mary’s reign as Queen of France, that our archer, in virtue of his office, was brought in contact with the fascinating sovereign and her court. That he became the devoted adherent of his royal countrywoman is not to be wondered at; but in Maxwell’s consistent loyalty to the Stuart there lurked a deeper feeling of interest than he liked to allow even to himself; an interest that he could not but connect with another Mary attached to the person of her mistress. The Queen, as is well known, was a daring and skilful horsewoman; a masculine accomplishment, by the way, that many womanly natures acquire with great ease. Perhaps, as its chief art consists in ruling by judicious concession, they have learned half the lesson before they get into the saddle. As a natural consequence, Mary was passionately fond of the chase, and followed it with a degree of recklessness somewhat discomfiting to her less courageous or worse-mounted attendants. In fact, she sustained more than one severe fall without its curing her in the least of her galloping propensities.

It fell out on one occasion, near the Castle of Chambord, whither the court had repaired for this princely recreation, that our archer was in attendance on Mary and her suite at the moment the stag was unharboured, and, with a burst of inspiriting music, the hounds were laid on. The Queen, as was her custom, went off at a gallop, outstripping her attendants, and followed, at unequal distances, by the whole cavalcade. Walter Maxwell, on a clambering, Roman-nosed French horse, was plying his spurs to keep within sight of the chase, when a faint scream of distress, and a young lady borne past him at a pace that showed she was run away with, diverted his attention from the pleasures to the exigencies of the moment. Though the animal beneath him was neither speedy nor active, he managed, by a skilful turn, to reach her bridle rein, and so, guiding her impetuous horse into an alley that diverged from the line of the chase, succeeded in stopping him before his own was completely exhausted. While the young lady did not, in the least, lose her presence of mind, she was naturally a little discomposed and a good deal out of breath. Nevertheless, she thanked her preserver with frank and graceful courtesy, avowing, at the same time, in very broken sentences, her inability to control the animal she rode.

The confession was tantamount to a request that her new friend would not leave her. The most determined Nimrod could scarcely have abandoned a lady who thus placed herself under his charge, and Walter Maxwell, with his passionless exterior, had a good deal of that manly generosity in his composition, which warms at once to the unprotected and the weak. Instead of toiling after the whole company, then, on a tired horse, behold him riding quietly through beautiful woods, by the side of a young lady, whose peace of mind seemed to depend on his keeping his hand on her bridle rein.

People soon become acquainted when thus associated. Mary Carmichael, with a colour much heightened from a variety of causes, and her rich brown hair disordered by her gallop, had never looked prettier in her life; whilst a glance or two shot at her protector from under her riding-hat satisfied her that he was a gentleman of good nature and lineage, also that she had remarked him more than once before, when fulfilling his duties as a guardsman about the court. Before they had ridden a mile, he had told her his name and all about himself.

‘A Maxwell!’ exclaimed the young lady, whose apprehensions were by this time considerably soothed. ‘I ought to have known you for a Maxwell at once. You’ve got the frank brow, and the ready hand, and the silent tongue of the Maxwells.’ Here she checked herself with a laugh and blush, whereat her companion laughed and coloured a little too. ‘Why, we are kinsfolk at that rate,’ she added, courteously. ‘My mother’s niece married a Maxwell of the Den, and they are a branch of the Terreagles Maxwells, and so are you.’

‘I have left home so long,’ answered Walter, gravely, ‘I cannot count my kin; and yet I will take your word for it. I should think the better of myself,’ he added with a smile, ‘to have a right to call you cousin.’

The archer rarely smiled; when he did, his usually stern features softened and lighted up almost into beauty. The change was not unmarked by the maid-of-honour.

‘A Carmichael never failed a kinsman,’ said she, and her voice shook a little, while her soft eyes gleamed;—‘or the old tower would be looking down still upon Dumfries, and there would be more than a blackened arch, and a few mounds of grass standing by the hearth-stone, where my father once received King James. Well, Sir Archer, you have done a cousinly deed for me at least to-day.’

Perhaps she expected he would make some acknowledgment of his good fortune in the opportunity, but Maxwell rode on in silence. A French gallant would have overwhelmed her with eloquence, and few men but would have hazarded a few compliments, however trifling. She scarcely seemed offended, nevertheless. Her mute companion was absorbed in a brown study, thinking how well she looked in her riding-gear. It may be that her woman’s intuition told her as much.

Presently a burst of horns in the distance announced the direction of the chase. Mary Carmichael’s steed pricked his ears, and showed symptoms of insubordination once more. Walter’s grasp was on the bridle in an instant, and the rider thanked him with a grateful smile.

‘The ready hand!’ she said, laughing. ‘Was I not right in saying you inherited the gifts of your family?’

‘It must excuse the silent tongue,’ he answered. ‘I am no squire of dames, and you ladies of the court must needs look down on the unpolished soldier. And yet his silence may offer more of respect and regard in its humility than the loudest professions of admiration from those who have never been taught to say less than they think, and think less than they feel.’

‘And receive twice as much in return,’ she replied, in a very low voice, and averting her face from her companion as she spoke. Then she put her horse into a quicker pace, and ere long they met and joined a party of the courtiers returning from the chase.

After this, though they saw each other but seldom, and had no more rides together, there was a sort of tacit understanding between the two. Nobody remarked that if Walter Maxwell was on guard, Mary Carmichael’s manner displayed more animation, and her dress was, if possible, more becomingly arranged than usual. Nobody remarked that one of the archers, more than any of his comrades, displayed unusual readiness in volunteering for all duties that brought him near the Queen’s person, and never seemed so contented as when riding in her escort, or mounting guard at her door. Yet it was true, notwithstanding; and, although not a word had been exchanged by these young persons of a more explicit tendency than those we have related, there had yet sprung up between them one of those mysterious affinities, that in this world of ours lead to such troublesome results.

It was not till Mary Carmichael had sailed for Scotland in the suite of her royal mistress, that it occurred to Maxwell he was losing time and opportunities by remaining in his present service at the court of France. He wondered it had never before struck him so forcibly, that the Archer-guard no longer occupied its proud position in the land of its adoption—that its privates were no longer so well born, its drill so exact, nor its discipline so perfect as in the days of its old commander, Montgomery—that Arran was a weak-minded enthusiast, who would finish by disgusting both officers and men—and that Charles IX. was already beginning to look coldly upon them, and depriving them, one by one, of the privileges by which they set such store. Then his patron, Montmorency, was getting infirm and worn out; and with the constable’s demise, adieu to his hopes of advancement in the service of France!

Mary Stuart, too, in her new kingdom, would need all the stout hands and loyal hearts that she could muster. It was clearly the duty of every Scotchman to rally round the fair young queen.

Ere our archer had concluded his midnight walk, he had made up his mind; and as he posted back his long ride to Paris, the following day, he resolved to claim his dismissal from the French king, and to seek his fortune once more in the land of his birth.