Читать книгу The Queen's Quair; or, The Six Years' Tragedy - Maurice Hewlett - Страница 10

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On the morning of Lammas Day the Queen heard mass in the Chapel Royal with a special intention, known only to herself. Red mass it should have been, since she felt sore need of the Holy Ghost; but she had given up the solemn ornament of music for the sake of peace. So Father Lesley read the office before the very few faithful: her maids, Erskine, Herries, the esquires, the pages, the French Ambassador, the Ambassador of Savoy—with him a certain large, full-blooded Italian, of whom there will be something to say anon. Mr. Knox had been scaring off the waverers of late: the Catholic religion was languid in the realm.

She knelt before the altar on her faldstool very stiffly, and looked more solitary than she felt. Her high mood and high endeavour still holding, there was but one man in Scotland who could make her feel her isolation, make her pity herself so nearly that the tears filled her eyes. Her brother James and his party, ostentatiously aloof, she could reckon with. All was said of them long ago by that old friend of hers now facing God in the mass: ‘Your brother stands on the left of your throne; but he looks for ever to the right.’ With this key to the cipher of my Lord James, what mystery in his sayings or doings? Then the grim Mr. Knox, who had worked her secret desires, and since then railed at her, scolded her, made her cry—she had his measure too. He liked her through all, and she trusted him in spite of all: at a pinch she could win him over. Whom, then, need she consider? The Earl of Bothwell—ah, the Earl of Bothwell, who laughed at everything, and had looked drolly on at her efforts to be a queen, and chosen to do nothing to help or hinder: there was a man to be feared indeed! She never knew herself less a queen or more a girl than when he was before her. Laughed he or frowned, was he eloquent or dumb as a fish, he intimidated her, diminished her, drove her cowering into herself to queen it alone. Christ was not so near, God not so far off, as this confident, free-living, shameless lord. Therefore now, because she dared not falter in what she was about to do, or see herself less than she desired to be, she had sent him into Liddesdale to hold the Justice-Court, and had not cared even to receive him when he came to take his leave. Lady Argyll, who had stood in her place, reported that he had gone out gaily, humming a French air. With him safely away, she had faced her duty—duty of a Prince, as she conceived it. And here she knelt in prayer, prone before the Holy Ghost—solitary (but that is the safeguard of the King!)—and searched the altar for a sign of assurance.

Over that altar hung Christ, enigmatic upon His cross. The red priest bent his head down to his book, and made God apace.

The Queen’s lips moved. ‘My Saviour Christ, I offer Thee the intention of my heart, a clean oblation. If I do amiss in error, O Bread of Heaven, visit it not upon me. I have been offended, I have been disobeyed; they call upon me to claim my just requital. But be not Thou offended with me, my Lord, and pardon Thou my disobedience. As for my punishment, I suffer it in seeking to punish.’

It is not often that women pray in words: an urgency, a subjection, a passionate reception is the most they do—and the best. But she prayed so now, because she felt the need of justifying herself before Heaven, and the ability to do it. For Bothwell was in far Liddesdale, and she on her throne.

In three days’ time she was to go to the North; and, though the country knew it not, she would go in force to punish the Gordons. You may judge by her prayers whether she was satisfied with the work. Plainly she was not. Her anger had had time to cool; she might have forgotten the very name of the clan, except that their men had had honest faces, and that two of them had certainly loved her once. But she had not been allowed to forget: the record remained, held up ever before her eyes in the white hand of Lord James. Contumacy! Contumacy! Old Huntly had been traitor before, when he trafficked with the enemies of her mother, and tried to sell herself to the English king. The Gordons would not surrender; they had mated with the Hamiltons, a stock next to hers for the throne. Was there not a shameful plot here? Would she not be stifled between these two houses? Yes, yes, she knew all that. But they were Catholics, they had shown her honest faces, two of them had loved her. She was not satisfied; she must have a sign from heaven.

God was made, the bell proclaimed Him enthroned, Queen Mary bowed her head. Now, now, if the Gordons were true men, let God make a sign! The tale was told that once, when a priest lifted up the Host above his head, the thin film dissolved, and took flesh in the shape of a naked child, who stood, burning white, upon the man’s two hands. Let some such marvel fall now! Intimacies between God and the Prince had been known. She hid her face, laid down her soul; the vague swam over her, the dark—a swooning, drowning sense. In that, for a moment, as vivid clouds chased each other across her field, she saw a face, a shape—mocking red mouth, vivacious, satirical hands, the gleam of two twinkling eyes: Bothwell, hued like a fiend, shadowing the world. She shuddered; God passed over, as the bell called up the people. With them she lifted her head, stiffened herself. The spell was broken. Without being more superstitious than her brethren, she may be pardoned for finding in this experience an ominous beginning of adventure.

Nevertheless, she so faced the heights of her task that, on the day appointed, she set out as bravely as to a hunting of stags. Jeddart pikes, bowmen from the Forest, her Lothian bodyguard—she had some five hundred men about her; too many for a progress, too few to make war. She herself rode in hunting trim, with two maids, two pages, two esquires; her brother, of course, in command; with him, of course, the Secretary. At fixed points along the road certain lords joined her: Atholl at Stirling, Glencairn and Ruthven at Perth, these with their companies. Lying at Coupar-Angus, at Glamis, at Edzell, her spirits rose as she breasted the rising country, saw the cloud-shadowed hills, the swollen rivers, the wind-swept trees, the sullen moors, the rocks. She grew happy even, for motion, newness, and physical exertion always excited her, and she was never happy unless she was excited. No fatigue daunted her. She sat out the driving days of rain, bent neither to the heat nor to the cold fog. She was always in front, always looking forward, seemed like the keen breath of war, driven before it as the wind by a rain-storm. Lethington likened her to Diana on Taygetus shrilling havoc; but the Lord James said: ‘Such similitudes are distasteful. We are serious men upon a serious business.’ She rode astraddle like a young man, longed for a breastplate and steel bonnet. She made Ruthven exercise her with the broadsword, teach her to stamp her foot and cry, ‘Ha! a touch!’ and cajoled her brother into letting her sleep one night afield. Folded in a military plaid, so indeed she did; and watched with thrills the stars shoot their autumn flights, and listened to the owls calling each other as they coursed the shrew-mice over the moor. She pillowed her head on Mary Livingstone’s knee at last, and fell asleep at about three o’clock in the morning.

In the grey mirk—sharply cold, and a fine mist drizzling—Lethington and his master came to rouse her. Mary Livingstone lifted a finger of warning. The Queen was soundly asleep, smiling a little, with parted lips and the hasty breathing of a child. Mary Seton, too, was deep, her face buried in her arm. The two men looked down at the group.

‘Come away, my lord: give them time,’ said the Secretary.

But my Lord James did not hear him. He stood broodingly, muttering to himself: ‘A girl’s frolic—this romping, fond girl! And Scotland’s neck for her footstool—and earnest men for her pastime. O King eternal, is it just? Man!’ he said aloud, ‘there’s no reason in this.’

Mr. Secretary misunderstood him, not observing his wild looks. ‘Give them a short half-hour, my lord. There are two of them sleeping; and this poor watcher hath the need of it.’

The Lord James turned upon him. ‘Who sought to have women sleeping here? Are men to wait for the like of this? Are men to wait for ever? She should have counted the cost. I shall waken her. Ay! let her have the truth.’

‘She will wake soon enough,’ says Lethington, ‘and have the truth soon enough.’

The Lord James gave him one keen glance. ‘I command here, Mr. Secretary, under the Queen’s authority. Bid them sound.’

The trumpet rang; the Queen stretched herself, moved her head, yawned, and sat up. She was wide awake directly, laughed at Livingstone for looking so glum, at Seton’s tumbled hair. She kissed them both, said her prayers with Father Roche, and was ready when the order to march was given.

When she came to Aberdeen she was told that a messenger from the Earl of Huntly was waiting for her with his chief’s humble duty, and a prayer that she would lodge in his castle of Strathbogie. This was very insolent or very foolish: she declined to receive the man. Let the Earl and his son Findlater render themselves up at Stirling Castle forthwith, she would receive them there. No more tidings came directly; but she learned from her brother news of the country which made her cheeks tingle. It was the confident belief of all the Gordon kindred, she was given to know, that her Majesty had come into the North to marry Sir John Gordon of Findlater. He was to be created Earl of Moray and Duke of Rothesay to that end. True news or false, she was in the mood to believe it, and cried out, with hot tears in her eyes, that she could have no peace until that rogue’s head was off. Needing no prompter at her side, she took instant action, marched on Inverness and summoned the keys of the castle. They told her that the Lord of Findlater was keeper; none could come in but by his leave. Findlater! But the man was out of his mind! She grew very quiet when, after many repetitions of it, she could bring herself to believe this report; then she sent for Lethington and bade him raise the country. The counsel was her brother’s, and meant that the clans—Forbeses, Grants, MacIntoshes—were to be supported and turned against the Gordons. The Lord James considered that his work was as good as done. So did the captain of the castle of Inverness; and rightly, for when his charge was surrendered he was hanged. The town did its best to appease the Queen with humble addresses and crocks full of gold pieces; but she concealed from nobody now that she had come up with war in her hands. Captains and their levies were sent for from the south; roads marked out for Kirkcaldy of Grange, Lord John Stuart, Hay of Ormiston; rendezvous given at Aberdeen. And presently she went down to meet them, full of the purpose she had.

Old Huntly came out to watch. They saw his men, some hundred or more, in loose order at the ford of Spey. Queen Mary’s heart leapt for battle, real crossing of swords to crown all this feigning and waiting; but the enemy drew off to the woods, and nobody barred her road to Aberdeen. Uncomfortably for herself, she lodged at Spynie on the way, where Bishop Patrick of Moray made her very welcome. He was Lord Bothwell’s uncle, true Hepburn, a scapegrace old Catholic, anathema to the good Lord James, and proud of it. Something of Bothwell’s gleam was in his cushioned eyes, something of Bothwell’s infectious gaiety in his rich laugh. Like Bothwell, too, he was a mocker, who saw things sacred and profane a uniform, ridiculous drab, shrugged at the ruin of the faith in Scotland, and supposed Huntly had been paid to be a traitor. The Queen’s fine temper made her sensitive to depreciation of the things she strove at; under such rough fingers she was bruised. She felt cheapened by her intercourse with this bishop; and not only so, but her business sickened her. The old pagan made light of it.

‘’Tis but a day in the hedgerows for ye, madam. Send your terriers—Lethington and siclike—into the bury, you shall see the Gordons bolt to your nets like rabbits, and old Huntly squealing loudest of all.’

Now, the Gordons had been fair in her sight, noble friends and hardy foes. But if George Gordon was to squeal like a rabbit, then war was playing at soldiers, and she a tomboy out for a romp. She left Spynie feeling that she hated the Gordons, hated their fault, hated their chastisement, and hated above all men under the tent-roof of heaven the whole race of Hepburn.

‘Vile, vile scoffers at God and His vicars! They make a toy of me, these Hepburns. Uncle and nephew—I am a plaything for them.’

‘Just a Honeypot, madam,’ said Livingstone, and was snapped at for her respect.

‘Am I “Madam” to you now? What have I done to make you so petulant?’

‘I wish you would be more “Madam” to the Hepburns,’ replied the maid. ‘I could curse the whole brood of them.’

John Gordon defended two good castles, Findlater and Auchindoune. He expected, and was prepared for, a siege; but when the reinforcements came up from the Lowlands, somewhat to his consternation the Queen joined them at Aberdeen and hung about that region indefinitely, as if the autumn were but begun. Perhaps the suspense, the menace, told on old Huntly’s nerves; at any rate, something brought him to his knees. He sent petition after petition, promise upon promise; was reported by Ormiston to be very much aged, tremulous, given to sobbing, and when not so engaged, incoherent. This worthy went to Strathbogie, hoping to surprise him; failed to find him at home, but saw the Countess and a young girl, strangely beautiful, the Lady Jean, sole unmarried daughter of the house. The Countess took him into the chapel.

‘Do you see that, Captain Hay?’ says she.

‘What in particular, ma’am?’

There were lighted candles on the altar, a cross, the priest’s vestments of cloth of gold laid ready. She pointed to these adornments.

‘There is why they hunt us down, Captain Hay, because my lord is a faithful Christian gentleman. And woe,’ cried she, ‘woe upon her who, following wicked counsels, persecutes her own holy religion! It had been better for her that she had never been born. Tell your mistress that. Tell her that Gordon’s bane is her own bane. Ah, tell her that.’

He repeated the piece to the Queen in council, and she received it in a cold silence, looking furtively round about her at the lords present, for all the world (says Hay of Ormiston) as if she would see whether they believed the words or not. Her brother sat on her left, Morton the Chancellor on her right; Argyll was there, Ruthven, Atholl, Cassilis, Eglinton. Not one of them looked up from the table, or saw her anxious peering. Atholl whispered Cassilis without moving his head, and Cassilis nodded and stared on. What did she think during that constrained silence? Gordon’s bane her own bane! Could it be true? Perhaps the gibe of old Bishop Hepburn came to her timely help: ‘Rabbits in a bury, and old Huntly squealing first and loudest.’

She threw up her head, like a fretful horse. ‘My lords,’ she said in her ringing, boyish voice, ‘you have heard the message sent me by the Countess of Huntly. I am not of her mind. Gordon has tried to be my bane, but is not so now. I think Gordon’s bane is Gordon’s self, and fear not what he can do against me. And if not I, why need you fear? Take order now, how best to make an end of it all.’ Order was taken.

Huntly was summoned before the council, and sent his wife. The Queen would not see her. The royal forces moved out of Aberdeen; John Gordon cut to pieces an outlying party; then the Earl joined hands with his son, and the pair marched on Aberdeen. The fight was on the rolling hills of Corrichie, down in the swampy valley between, over and up a burn. Their cry of ‘Aboyne! Aboyne!’ bore the Gordons into battle; their pride made them heroic; their pride caused them to fall. It was a case, one of the first, of the ordnance against the pipes. No gallantry—and they were gallant; no screaming of music, no slogan nor sword-work, nor locking of arms, could hold out against Kirkcaldy’s cannon or Lord James’s horse. They huddled about their standard and so died; some few fled into the lonely hills; but Huntly was taken, and two of his tall sons, and all three brought to the Queen. John of Findlater and Adam were in chains; the old man needed none, for he was dead. They say that when he was taken he was frantic, struggled with his captors to the last, induced so an apoplexy, stiffened and died in their arms. They guessed by the weight of him that he was dead. All this they told her. She neither looked at the body nor chose to see the two prisoners; received the news in dull silence. ‘Where is the Lord Gordon?’ She did ask that; and was told that he had not been engaged.

‘Coward as well as traitor,’ she gloomed; ‘what else is left him to adorn?’

‘Madam, tumbril and gallows,’ croaked Ruthven, like a hoody crow.

Next morning she awoke utterly disenchanted of the whole affair. Nothing would content her but to be quit of it. ‘I seem to smell of blood and filthy reek,’ she said to her brother James. ‘Take what measures you choose. Ruin the ruins to your heart’s content. The house was Catholic, and I suppose the stones and mortar are abominable in your eyes. Pull them down; do as you choose—but let me go.’

He asked her desire concerning the prisoners. This caught villain Findlater, for instance.

‘You seek more blood?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Take his, then. He has had his fill of it in his day; now let him afford you a share.’

Adam Gordon? She took fire at his name. ‘You shall not touch a hair of his head. I do not choose—I will not suffer it. He is for me to deal with.’

He swore that she should be obeyed; but she called in Lethington, and put the lad in his personal charge, to be brought after her to Stirling. At this time Lethington was the only man she could trust.

Lastly, her brother hinted at the reward of his humble services to her realm.

‘Oh, yes, yes, brother, you shall have your bonny earldom. God knows how you have wrought for it. But if you keep me here one more hour, I declare I shall bestow it on Mr. Secretary.’

He thanked her, saying that he hoped to deserve such condescension by ever closer attention to her business. She chafed and fidgeted till he was gone, then set about her escape. With a very small escort, she pushed them to the last extreme in her anxiety to be south.

There should have been something of the pathetic in this struggle of a girl to get out of throne-room and council-chamber; one might almost hear the shrilling of wings; but Scots gentlemen fearful of their treadings must be excused for disregarding it. They told her at Dundee that the Duke of Châtelherault lay there, awaiting her censures. Hateful reminder!

‘What can he want with me at such an hour, in such a place as this?’

‘Madam, it is for his son-in-law’s sake he hath come so far.’

She flamed forth in her royalest rage. ‘Is the Lord Gordon so poor in heart? Can he not beg for himself? Can he not lie? Can he not run? He can hide himself, I know, while his kinsmen take the field. Let him learn to whine also, and then he will be armed cap-à-pie.’ The old Duke was refused: let the Lord Gordon surrender himself at Stirling Castle.

Thither went she, shivering in the cold which followed her late fires; and sat in the kingly seat to make an end of the Gordons. Thither then came the young lord whom she had once chosen to bewitch, walking upright, without his sword. He could not take his eyes from her face when he stood before her; nor could she restrain her fury, though many were present; no, but she leaned forward, holding by the balls of the chair, and drove in her hateful words fiercely and quick.

‘Ah, false heart, you dare to meet me at last!’

He said, ‘I have offended you, and am here at your mercy.’

‘What mercy for a liar?’

‘There should be none.’

‘For a disobedient servant?’

‘None, madam, none.’

‘For a craven that hides when war is adoing?’

He answered her steadily. ‘Whether is that man the greater coward who fears such taunts as these, and for fear of them does hardily; or he that refuses to draw sword upon his sovereign, though she throw in his face his refusal? If I was able to dare your enmity, it is a small thing to me that now I must have your scorn. There is no man in this place shall call me craven; but from your Majesty I care not to receive the name, because I am proud to have deserved it.’

This was well spoken, had she not been too fretful to know it.

‘Do you think, sir,’ cried she, ‘to scold me? Do you think me so light as to forget? I am of longer memory than you. Trust Gordon, said you! Trust Gordon? I would as lief trust Judas that sold his master, or Zimri that slew his.’

Young Gordon held his peace, not knowing how to wrangle with a woman. At the door there was some commotion—hackbutters looking about for orders, the captain of the guard forbidding the entry, his hand uplifted to shut men out. They told her that Lady Huntly was there.

‘Let her in,’ says the Queen. ‘I will show her this son of hers.’