Читать книгу The Queen's Quair; or, The Six Years' Tragedy - Maurice Hewlett - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The Earl of Huntly came to town, with three tall sons, three hundred Gordons, and his pipers at quickstep before him, playing, ‘Cock o’ the North.’ He came to seek the earldom of Moray, a Queen’s hand for his son George, and to set the realm’s affairs on a proper footing; let Mr. Knox and his men, therefore, look to themselves. His three sons were George, John, and Adam. George, his eldest, was Lord Gordon, with undoubted birthrights; but John of Findlater, so called, was his dearest, and should have married the Queen if he had not been burdened with a stolen wife in a tower, whom he would not put out of his head while her husband was alive. So George must have the Queen, said Huntly. That once decided, his line was clear. ‘Madam, my cousin,’ he intended to say, ‘I give you all Scotland above the Highland line in exchange for your light hand upon the South. Straighter lad or cleanlier built will no maid have in the country, nor appanage so broad. Is it a match?’ Should it not be a match, indeed? Both Catholics, both sovereign rulers, both young, both fine imps. If she traced her descent from Malcolm Canmore, he got his from Gadiffer, who, as every one knows, was the brother of Perceforest, whose right name was Betis, whose ancestor was Brutus’ self, whose root was fast in Laomedon, King of Troy. ‘The boy and girl were born for each other,’ said Huntly. So he crossed the Forth at Stirling Brig, and marched down through the green lowland country like a king, with colours to the wind and the pipes screaming his hopes and degree in the world. But he came slowly because of his unwieldy size. He was exceedingly fat, white-haired and white-bearded, and had a high-coloured, windy, passionate face, flaming blue eyes, and a husky voice, worn by shrieking at his Gordons. Such was the old Earl of Huntly, the star of whose house was destined to make fatal conjunctions with Queen Mary’s.

His entry into Edinburgh began at the same rate of pomp, but ended in the screaming of men whose pipes were slit. There were Hamiltons in the city, Hepburns, Murrays, Keiths, Douglases, red-haired Campbells. The close wynds vomited armed men at every interchange of civilities on the cawsey; a match to the death could be seen at any hour in the tilt-yard; the chiefs stalked grandly up and down before their enemies’ houses, daring one another do their worst. It seemed that only Huntly and his Gordons had been wanting to set half Scotland by the ears. The very night of their incoming young John of Findlater spied his enemy Ogilvy—the husband of the stolen wife—walking down the Luckenbooths arm-in-arm with his kinsman Boyne. He stepped up in front of him, lithe as an otter, and says he, ‘Have I timed my coming well, Mr. Ogilvy?’ Ogilvy, desperate of his wife, may be excused for drawing upon him; and (the fray once begun) you cannot blame John Gordon of Findlater for killing him clean, or Ogilvy of Boyne for wounding John of Findlater. Hurt as he was, the young man was saved by his friends. Little he cared for the summons of slaughter sued out against him in the morning, with his enemy dead and three hundred Gordons to keep his doors.

The Earl his father treated the affair as so much thistledown thickening the wind; but his own performances were as exorbitant as his proposals. He quarrelled with the high Lord James Stuart about precedence. Flicking his glove in the sour face, ‘Hoots, my lord, you are too new an Earl to take the gate of me,’ he said. He assumed the title of Moray—which was what he had come to beg for—in addition to his own. ‘She dare not refuse me, man. It is well known I have the lands.’ The Lord James turned stately away at this hearing, and Huntly ruffled past him into the presence, muttering as he went, ‘A king’s mischance, my sakes!’ He had a fine command of scornful nicknames; that was one of them. He called Mr. Secretary Lethington the Grey Goose—no bad name for a tried gentleman whose tone was always symptomatic of his anxieties. The Earl of Bothwell was a ‘Jack-Earl,’ he said; but Bothwell laughed at him. The Duke and his Hamiltons were ‘Glasgow tinklers’; the Earl of Morton, ‘Flesher Morton.’ His pride, indeed, seemed to be of that inordinate sort which will not allow a man to hate his equals. He hated whole races of less-descended men; he hated burgesses, Forbeses, Frenchmen, Englishmen; but his peers he despised. Catholic as he was, he went to the preaching at Saint Giles’ in a great red cloak, wearing his hat, and stood apart, clacking with his tongue, while Mr. Knox thundered out prophecies. ‘Let yon bubbly-jock bide,’ he told his son, who was with him. ‘’Tis a congested rogue, full of bad wind. What! Give him vent, man, and see him poison the whole assembly.’ Mr. Knox denounced him to his face as a Prophet of the Grove, and bid him cry upon his painted goddess. The great Huntly tapped his nose, then the basket of his sword, and presently strode out of church by a way which his people made for him.

Queen Mary was amused with the large, boisterous, florid man, and very much admired his sons. They were taller than the generality of Scots, sanguine, black-haired, small-headed, with the intent far gaze in their grey eyes which hawks have, and all dwellers in the open. She saw but two of them, the eldest and the youngest—for John of Findlater, having slain his man, lay at home—and set herself to work to break down their shy respect. For their sakes she humoured their preposterous father; allowed, what all her court was at swords drawn against, that his pipers should play him into her presence; listened to what he had to say about Gadiffer, brother of Perceforest, about Knox and his ravings, about the loyal North. He expanded like a warmed bladder, exhibited his sons’ graces as if he were a horsedealer, openly hinted at his proposals in her regard. She needed none of his nods and winks, being perfectly well able to read him, and of judgment perfectly clear upon the inflated text. In private she laughed it away. ‘I think my Lord of Gordon a very proper gentleman,’ she said to Livingstone; ‘but am I to marry the first long pair of legs I meet with? Moreover, I should have to woo him, for he fears me more than the devil. Yet it is a comely young man. I believe him honest.’

‘The only Gordon to be so, then,’ said Livingstone tersely. This was the prevailing belief: ‘False as Gordon.’

Then came Ogilvy of Boyne and his friends before the council, demanding the forfeiture of John Gordon of Findlater for slaughter. Old Huntly pished and fumed. ‘What! For pecking the feathers out of a daw! My fine little man, you and your Ogilvys should keep within your own march. You meet with men on the highways.’ The young Queen, isolated on her throne above these angry men, looked from one to another faltering. Suddenly she found that she could count certainly upon nobody. Her brother James had kept away; the Earl of Bothwell was not present; my Lord Morton the Chancellor blinked a pair of sleepy eyes upon the scene at large. ‘Let the law take its course,’ she faintly said; and old Huntly left the chamber, sweeping the Ogilvys out of his road. That was no way to get the Earldom of Moray and a royal daughter-in-law into one’s family. He himself confessed that the time had come for serious talk with the Queen.

Even this she bore, knowing him Catholic and believing him honest. When, after some purparley, at a privy audience, he came to what he called ‘close quarters,’ and spoke his piece about holy church, sovereign rulers, and fine imps, she laughed still, it is true, but more shrewdly than before. ‘Not too fast, my good lord, not too fast. I approve of my Lord Gordon, and should come thankfully to his wedding. Yet I should be content with a lowlier office there than you seem to propose me. And if he come to my wedding, I hope he will bring his lady.’ She turned to the Secretary. ‘Tell my lord, Mr. Secretary, what other work is afoot.’

Hereupon Lethington enlarged upon royal marriages, their nature and scope, and flourished styles and titles before the mortified old man. He spoke of the Archduke Ferdinand, that son of Cæsar; of Charles the Most Christian King, a boy in years, but a very forward boy. He dwelt freely and at length upon King Philip’s son of Spain, Don Carlos, a magnificent young man. Mostly he spoke of the advantage there would be if his royal mistress should please to walk hand in hand with her sister of England in this affair. Surely that were a lovely vision! The hearts of two realms would be pricked to tears by the spectacle—two great and ancient thrones, each stained with the blood of the other, flowering now with two roses, the red and the white! The blood-stains all washed out by happy tears—ah, my good lord, and by the kisses of innocent lips! It were a perilous thing, it were an unwarrantable thing, for one to move without the other. ‘I speak thus freely, my Lord of Huntly,’ says Lethington, warming to the work, ‘that ye may see the whole mind of my mistress, her carefulness, and how large a field her new-scaled eyes must take in. This is not a business of knitting North to South. She may trust always to the affection of her subjects to tie so natural a bond. Nay, but the comforting of kingdoms is at issue here. Ponder this well, my lord, and you will see.’

The Earl of Huntly was crimson in the face. ‘I do see, madam, how it is, that my house shall have little tenderness from your Majesty’s’—he was very angry. ‘I see that community of honour, community of religion count for nothing. Foh! My life and death upon it!’ He puffed and blew, glaring about him; then burst out again. ‘I will pay my thanks for this where they are most due. I know the doer—I spit upon his deed. Who is that man that cometh creeping after my earldom? Who looketh aslant at all my designs? Base blood stirreth base work. Who seeketh the life of my fine son?’

The Queen flushed. ‘Stay, sir,’ she said, ‘I cannot hear you. You waste words and honour alike.’

He shook his head at her, as if she were a naughty child; raised his forefinger, almost threatened. ‘Madam, madam, your brother James——’

She got up, the fire throbbing in her. ‘Be silent, my lord!’

‘Madam——’

‘Be silent.’

‘But, madam——’

Lethington, much agitated, whispered in her ear; she shook him away, stamped, clenched her hands.

‘You are dismissed, sir. The audience is finished. Do you hear me?’

‘How finished? How finished?’

‘Go, go, my lord, for God’s sake!’ urged the Secretary.

‘A pest!’ cried he, and fumed out of the Castle.

She rode down the Canongate to dinner that day at a hand-gallop, the people scouring to right and left to be clear of heels. Her colour was bright and hot, her hair streamed to the wind. ‘Fly, fly, fly!’ she cried, and whipped her horse. ‘A hateful fool, to dare me so!’ Lethington, Argyll, James her brother, came clattering and pounding behind. ‘She is fey! She is fey! She rides like a witch!’ women said to one another; but Mr. Knox, who saw her go, said to himself, ‘She is nimble as a boy.’ Publicly—since this wild bout made a great commotion in men’s thoughts—he declared, ‘If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth me.’ Neither he nor his judgments were anything to her in those days; she heard little of his music, rough or not. And yet, just at that time, had she sent for him she could have won him for ever. ‘Happy for her,’ says Des-Essars, writing after the event, ‘thrice happy for her if she had! For I know very well—and she knew it also afterwards—that the man was in love with her.’

At night, having recovered herself, she was able to laugh with the maids at old Huntly, and to look with kind eyes upon the graces of his son Gordon.

‘If I cared to do it,’ she said, ‘I could have that young man at my feet. But I fear he is a fool like his father.’

She tried him: he danced stiffly, talked no French, and did not know what to do with her hand when he had it, or with his own either. She sparkled, she glittered before him, smiled at his confusion, encouraged him by softness, befooled him. It was plain that he was elated; but she held her own powers so lightly, and thought so little of his, that she had no notion of what she was doing—to what soaring heights she was sending him. When she had done with him, a strange tremor took the young lord—a fixed, hard look, as if he saw something through the wall.

‘What you see? What you fear, my lord?’ she stammered in her pretty Scots.

‘I see misfortune, and shame, and loss. I see women at the loom—a shroud for a man—hey, a shroud, a shroud!’ He stared about at all the company, and at her, knowing nobody. Slowly recovering himself, he seemed to scrape cobwebs from his face. ‘I have drunk knowledge this night, I think.’

She plumbed the depth of his case. ‘Go now, my lord; leave me, now.’

‘One last word to you, madam, with my face to your face.’

‘What would you say to me?’

He took her by the hand, with more strength than she had believed in him. ‘Trust Gordon,’ he said, and left her.

‘I shall believe your word,’ she called softly after him, ‘and remember it.’

He lifted his hand, but made no other sign; he carried a high head through the full hall, striding like a man through heather, not to be stopped by any.

She thought that she had never seen a prouder action. He went, carrying his devotion, like a flag into battle. Beside him the Earl of Bothwell looked a pirate, and Châtelherault a pantaloon.

‘He deserves a fair wife, for he would pleasure her well,’ she considered; then laughed softly to herself, and shook her head. ‘No, no, not for me—such a dreamer as that. I should direct his dreams—I, who need a man.’

That pirate Earl of Bothwell used a different way. He bowed before her the same night, straightened his back immediately, and looked her full in the face. No fear that this man would peer through walls for ghosts! She was still tender from the thoughts of her young Highlander; but you know that she trusted this bluff ally, and was not easily offended by honest freedoms. She had seen gallants of his stamp in France.

‘Pleasure and good answers to your Grace’s good desires,’ he laughed.

She looked wisely up at him, keeping her mouth demure.

‘Monsieur de Boduel, you shall lead me to dance if you will.’

‘Madam, I shall.’ He took her out with no more ceremony, and acquitted himself gaily: a good dancer, and very strong, as she had already discovered. What arms to uphold authority! What nerve to drive our rebels into church! Ah, if one need a man!...

She asked him questions boldly. ‘What think you, my lord, of the Earl of Huntly?’

‘Madam, a bladder, holding a few pease. Eh, and he rattles when you do shake him! Prick him, he is gone; but the birds will flock about for the seeds you scatter. They are safer where they lie covered, I consider.’

She followed this. ‘I would ask you further. There is here a remarkable Mr. Knox: what am I to think of him?’

He stayed awhile, stroking his beard, before he shrugged in the French manner, that is, with the head and eyebrow.

‘In Rome, madam, we doff caps to the Pope. I am friendly with Mr. Knox. He is a strong man.’

‘As Samson was of old?’

He laughed freely. ‘Oh, my faith, madam, Delilah is not awanting. There’s a many and many.’

She changed the subject. ‘They tell me that you are of the religion, Monsieur de Boduel, but I am slow to believe that. In France I remember——’

‘Madam,’ says he, ‘my religion is one thing, my philosophy another. Let us talk of the latter. There is one God in a great cloud; but the world, observe, is many-sided. Sometimes, therefore, the cloud is rent towards the south; and the men of the south say, “Behold! our God is hued like a fire.” Or if, looking up, they see the sun pale in a fog, with high faith they say one to another, “Yonder white disc, do you mark, that is the Son of God.” Sometimes also your cloud is parted towards the north. Then cry the men of those parts, “Lo! our God, like a snow-mountain!” Now, when I am in the south I see with the men of the south, for I cannot doubt all the dwellers in the land; but when I am in the north, likewise I say, There is something in what you report. So much for philosophy—to which Religion, with a rod in hand, cries out: “You fool, you fool! God is neither there nor here; but He is in the heart.” There you have it, madam.’

She bowed gravely. ‘I have heard the late king, my father-in-law, say the same to Madame de Valentinois; and she agreed with him, as she always did in such matters. It is a good thought. But in whose heart do you place God? Not in all?’

‘In a good heart, madam. In a crowned heart.’

‘The crowned heart,’ said she, ‘is the Douglas badge. Do you place Him then in the heart of Monsieur de Morton?’

This tickled him, but he felt it also monstrous. ‘God forbid me! No, no, madam. Douglas wears it abroad—not always with credit. But the crowned heart was the heart of the Bruce.’

She was pleased; the sudden turn warmed her. ‘You spoke that well, and like a courtier, my lord.’

‘Madam,’ he cried, covering his own heart, ‘that is what I would always do if I had the wit. For I am a courtier at this hour.’

Pondering this in silence, she suffered him to lead her where he would; and took snugly to bed with her the thought that, in her growing perplexities, she had a sure hand upon hers when she chose to call for it.

As for him, Bothwell, he must have gone directly from this adventure in the tender to play his bass in some of the roughest music of those days. That very night—and for the third time—he, with D’Elbœuf and Lord John Stuart, went in arms, with men and torches, to Cuthbert Ramsay’s house, hard by the Market Cross; and, being refused as before, this time made forceful entry.

To the gudeman’s ‘What would ye with me, sirs, good lack?’ they demanded sight of Alison, his handsome daughter, now quaking in her bed by her man’s side; and not sight only, but a kiss apiece for the sake of my Lord Arran. She was, by common report, that lord’s mistress—but the fact is immaterial.

‘Come down with me, man—stand by me in this hour,’ quoth she.

But her husband plainly refused to come. ‘Na, na, my woman, thou must thole the assize by thysel’,’ said the honest fellow.

She donned her bedgown, tied up her hair, and was brought down shamefast by her father.

‘Do me no harm, sirs, do me no harm!’

‘Less than your braw Lord of Arran,’ says Bothwell, and took the firstfruits.

The low-roofed parlour full of the smoke of torches, flaring lights, wild, unsteady gentlemen in short cloaks, flushed Alison in the midst—one can picture the scene. The ceremony was prolonged; there were two nights’ vigil to be made up. On a sudden, half-way to the girl’s cold lips, Lord Bothwell stops, looks sidelong, listens.

‘The burgh is awake. Hark to that! Gentlemen, we must draw off.’

They hear cries in the street, men racing along the flags. From the door below one calls, ‘The Hamiltons! Look to yourselves! The Hamiltons!’

Almost immediately follows a scuffle, a broken oath, the ‘Oh, Christ!’ and fall of a man. Lord Bothwell regards his friends—posterior parts of three or four craning out of window, D’Elbœuf tying up his points, John Stuart dancing about the floor. ‘Gentlemen, come down.’

He wrapped his cloak round his left arm, whipped out his blade, and went clattering down the stair. The others came behind him. From the passage they heard the fighting; from the door, as they stood spying there, the whole town seemed a roaring cave of men. Through and above the din they could catch the screaming of Lord Arran, choked with rage, tears, and impotence.

‘Who is the doxy, I shall ask ye: Arran or the lass?’ says Bothwell, making ready to rush the entry.

Just as he cleared the door he was stabbed by a dirk in the upper arm, and felt the blood go from him. All Edinburgh seemed awake—a light in every window and a woman to hold it. Hamiltons and their friends packed the street: some twenty Hepburns about Ramsay’s door kept their backs to the wall. For a time there was great work.

In the midst of the hubbub they heard the pipes skirling in the Cowgate.

‘Here comes old Huntly from his lodging,’ says Lord John to his neighbour. This was Bothwell, engaged with three men at the moment, and in a gay humour.

‘Ay, hark to him!’ he called over his shoulder; and then, purring like some fierce cat, ‘Softly now—aha, I have thee, friend!’ and ran one of his men through the body.

The pipes blew shrilly, close at hand, the Gordons plunged into the street. Led by their chief, by John of Findlater and Adam (a mere boy), they came rioting into battle.

‘Aboyne! Aboyne! Watch for the Gordon!’—they held together and clove through the massed men like a bolt.

‘Hold your ground! I’ll gar them give back!’ cried old Huntly; and Bothwell, rallying his friends, pushed out to meet him: if he had succeeded the Hamiltons had been cut in two. As it was, the fighting was more scattered, the mêlée broken up; and this was the state of affairs when the Lord James chose to appear with a company of the Queen’s men from the Castle.

For the Lord James, in his great house at the head of Peebles Wynd—awake over his papers when all the world was asleep or at wickedness—had heard the rumours of the fight; and then, even while he considered it, heard the Gordons go by. He heard old Huntly encouraging his men, heard John of Findlater: if he had needed just advantage over his scornful enemy he might have it now. He got up from his chair and stood gazing at his papers, rubbing together his soft white hands. Anon he went to the closet, awoke his servant, and bade him make ready for the street. Cloaked, armed and bonneted, followed by the man, he went by silent ways to the Castle.

When he came upon the scene of the fray, he found John Gordon of Findlater at grapple with a Hamilton amid a litter of fallen men. He found Adam Gordon pale by the wall, wounded, smiling at his first wound. He could not find old Huntly, for he was far afield, chasing men down the wynds. D’Elbœuf had slipped away on other mischief, Bothwell (with a troublesome gash) had gone home to bed. He saw Arran battering at Ramsay’s door, calling on his Alison to open to him—and left the fool to his folly. It was Huntly he wanted, and, failing him, took what hostages he could get. He had John of Findlater pinioned from behind, young Adam from before, and the pair sent off guarded to the Castle.

To Arran, then, who ceased not his lamentations, he sternly said, ‘Fie, my lord, trouble not for such a jade at such an hour; but help me rather to punish the Queen’s enemies.’

Arran turned upon him, pouring out his injuries in a stream.

The Lord James listened closely: so many great names involved! Ah, the Earl of Bothwell! Alas, my lord, rashness and vainglory are hand-in-hand, I fear. The Marquis D’Elbœuf! Deplorable cousin of her Majesty. The Lord John! Tush—my own unhappy brother! One must go deeply, make free with the knife, to cut out of our commonwealth the knot of so much disease.

‘My Lord of Arran,’ he concluded solemnly, ‘your offence is deep, but the Queen’s deeper than you suppose. I cannot stay your resentment against the Earl of Bothwell; it is in the course of nature and of man that you should be moved. But the Earl of Huntly is the more dangerous person.’

My Lord James it was who led the now sobbing Arran to his lodging, and sought his own afterwards, well content with the night’s work. It is not always that you find two of your enemies united in wrong-doing, and the service of the state the service of private grudges.

When the archers had cleared the streets of the quick, afterwards came down silently the women and carried off the hurt and the dead. The women’s office, this, in Edinburgh.

The Queen was yet in her bed when Huntly came swelling into Holyroodhouse, demanding audience as his right. But the Lord James had been beforehand with him, and was in the bedchamber with the Secretary, able to stay, with a look, the usher at the door. ‘It is proper that your Majesty should be informed of certain grave occurrents,’ he began to explain; and told her the story of the night so far as was convenient. According to him, the Earl of Bothwell mixed the brew and the Earl of Huntly stirred it. D’Elbœuf was not named, John Stuart not named—when the Queen asked, what was the broil about? Ah, her Majesty must hold him excused: it was an unsavoury tale for a lady’s ear. ‘I should need to be a deaf lady in order to have comfortable ears, upon your showing,’ she said sharply. How well he had the secret of egging her on! ‘Rehearse the tale from the beginning, my lord; and consider my ears as hardened as your own.’ He let her drag it out of him by degrees: Arran’s mistress, Bothwell’s night work, so hard following upon night talk with her; Huntly’s furious pride: rough music indeed for young ears. But she had no time to shrink from the sound or to nurse any wound to her own pride. At the mere mention of Bothwell’s name Mary Livingstone was up in a red fury, and drove her mistress to her wiles.

‘And this is the brave gentleman,’ cried the maid, ‘this is the gallant who holds my Queen in his arms, and goes warm from them to a trollop’s of the town! Fit and right for the courtier who blasphemes with grooms in the court—but for you, madam, for you! Well—I hope you will know your friends in time.’

The Queen looked innocently at her, with the pure inquiry of a child. ‘What did he want with the girl? Some folly to gall my Lord Arran, belike.’ Incredible questions to Livingstone!

Just then they could hear old Lord Huntly storming in the antechamber. ‘There hurtles the true offender, in my judgment,’ said the Lord James.

‘He uses an unmannerly way of excuse,’ says the Queen, listening to his rhetoric.

‘Madam,’ said Mr. Secretary here, ‘I think he rather accuses. For his sort are so, that they regard every wrong they do as a wrong done to themselves. And so, perchance, it is to be regarded in the ethic part of philosophy.’

‘Why does he rail at my pages? Why does he not come in?’ the Queen asked. Whereupon the Lord James nodded to the usher at the door.

Delay had been troublesome to the furious old man, fretting his nerves and exhausting his indignation before the time. He was out of breath as well as patience; so the Queen had the first word, which he had by no means intended. She held up her finger at him.

‘Ah, my Lord of Huntly, you angered me the other day, and I overlooked it for the love I bear to your family. And now, when you have angered me again, you storm in my house as if it was your own. What am I to think?’

He looked at her with stormy, wet eyes, and spoke brokenly, being full of his injuries. ‘I am hurt, madam, I am sore affronted, traduced, stabbed in the back. My son, madam——!’

She showed anger. ‘Your son! Your son! You have presumed too far. You offer me marriage with your son, and he leaves me for a fray in the street!’

Startled, he puffed out his cheeks. ‘I take God to witness, liars have been behind me. Madam, my son Gordon had no hand in the night’s work. He was not in my house; he was not with me; I know not where he was. A fine young man of his years, look you, madam, may not be penned up like a sucking calf. No, no. But gallant sons of mine there were—who have suffered—whose injuries cry aloud for redress. And, madam, I am here to claim it at your hands.’

‘Speak your desires of me: I shall listen,’ said she.

The old man looked fixedly at his enemy across the bed. ‘Ay, madam, and so I will.’ He folded his arms, and the action, and the weight of his wrongs, stemmed his vehemence for a while. Dignity also he gained by his restraint, a quality of which he stood in need; and truly he was dignified. To hear his account, loyalty to the throne and to his friends was all the source of his troubles. He had come down with proffers of alliance to the Queen, and they laughed him to scorn. He with his two sons rose out of their beds to quell a riot, to succour their friends——

‘And whom do you call your friends?’ cried the Queen, interrupting him quickly.

He told her the Hamiltons—but there certainly he lied—good friends of his and hopeful to be better. The Queen calmed herself. ‘I had understood that you went to the rescue of my Lord Bothwell,’ she began; and true it was, he had. But now he laughed at the thought, and maybe found it laughable.

‘No, no, madam,’ he said: ‘there are no dealings betwixt me and the border-thieves. But the Duke hath made a treaty with me; and it was to help my Lord Arran, his son, that I and mine went out.’ Well! he had stayed the riot, he had carved out peace at the sword’s edge. ‘Anon’—and he pointed out the man—‘Anon comes that creeper by darksome ways, and rewards my sons with prison-bars—he, that has sought my fair earldom and all! Ay, madam, ay!’—his voice rose—‘so it is. Of all the souls in peril last night, some for villainy’s sake, some to serve their wicked lusts, some for love of the game, and some for honesty and truth—these last are rewarded by the jail. Madam, madam, I tell your Majesty, honest men are not to be bought and sold. You may stretch heart-strings till they crack; you may tempt the North, and rue the spoiling of the North. I know whose work this is, what black infernal stain of blood is in turmoil here. I know, madam, I say, and you know not. Some are begotten by night, and some in stealth by day—when the great world is at its affairs, and the house left empty, and nought rife in it but wicked humours. Beware this kind, madam—beware it. What they have lost by the bed they may retrieve by the head. Unlawful, unlawful—a black strain.’

The Lord James was stung out of himself. ‘By heaven, madam, this should be stopped!’

The Queen put up her hand. ‘Enough said. My Lord Huntly, what is your pleasure of me?’

Old Huntly folded up his wrath in his arms once more. ‘I ask, madam, the release of my two sons—of my son Findlater, and of Adam, my young son, wounded in your service, sorely wounded, and in bonds.’

‘You frame your petition unhappily,’ said the Queen with spirit. ‘This is not the way for subjects to handle the prince.’

He extended his arms, and gaped about him. ‘Subjects, she saith! Handling, she saith! Oh, now, look you, madam, how they handle your subject and my boy. He hath fifteen years to his head, madam, and a chin as smooth as your own. I fear he is hurt to the death—I fear it sadly; and it turns me sick to face his mother with the news. Three sons take I out, and all the hopes I have nursed since your Majesty lay a babe in your mother’s arm. With one only I must return, with one only—and no hopes, no hopes at a’—madam, an old and broken man.’ He was greatly moved; tears pricked his eyelids and made him fretful. ‘Folly, folly of an old fool! To greet before a bairn!’ He brought tears into the Queen’s eyes.

‘I am sorry for your son Adam,’ she said gently; ‘but do not you grieve for him. He is too young to suffer for what he did under duress. You shall not weep before me. I hate it. It makes me weep with you, and that is forbidden to queens, they say.’

A man had appeared at the curtain of the door, and stood hidden in it. The Lord James went to him while the Queen was turned to the Secretary.

‘Mr. Secretary,’ said she, ‘you shall send up presently to the Castle. I desire to know how doth Sir Adam of Gordon. Bring me word as soon as may be.’ She had returned kindly to the old Earl when her brother was back by the bed.

‘Madam,’ he said to her, but looked directly at his foe, ‘the injuries of my Lord Huntly’s family are not ended, it appears. They bring me news——’

That was a slip; the Queen’s cheeks burned. ‘Ah, they bring you news, my lord!’

He hastened to add: ‘And I, as my duty is, report to your Majesty, that Sir John Gordon of Findlater hath, within this hour, broken ward. He is away, madam, leaving an honest man dead in his room.’ He had made a false step in the beginning, but the news redeemed him.

The Queen looked very grave. ‘What have you to say to this, Lord of Huntly?’

‘I say that he is my very son, madam,’ cried the stout old chief, ‘and readier with his wits than that encroacher over there.’

Mr. Secretary Lethington covered a smile; the Queen did not. But she replied: ‘And I say that he is too ready with his wits; and to you, my lord, I say that you must fetch him back. I will not be defied.’

She saw his dogged look, and admired it in him. Well she knew how to soften him now!

‘There shall be no bargain between you and me,’ she continued, looking keenly at him; ‘but as I have passed my word, now pass you yours. I will take care of the boy. He shall be here, and I will teach him to love his Queen better than his father can do it, I believe. That is my part. Now for yours: go you out and bring me back Sir John.’

Old Huntly ran forward to the bed, fell on his knees beside it, and took the girl’s hand. The tears he now felt were kindlier, and he let them come. ‘Oh, if you and I could deal, my Queen,’ he said, ‘all Scotland should go laughing. If we could deal, as now we have, with the hearts’ doors open, and none between! Why, I see the brave days yet! I shall bring back Findlater, fear not for it; and there shall be Gordons about you like a green forest—and yourself the bonny, bonny rose bowered in the midst! God give your Majesty comfort, who have given back comfort and pride unto me!’

The Queen’s eyes shone with wet as she laughed her pleasure. ‘Go then, my lord; deal fairly by me.’

He left her there and then, swelling with pride, emotion, and vanity inflamed, meaning to do well if any man ever did. He brushed aside Lethington with a sweep of the arm—‘Clear a way there—clear a way!’

In this Gordon conflict the iniquities of Lord Bothwell were forgotten, for the Queen’s mind was now set upon kind offices. She took young Adam into her house and visited him every day. As you might have expected, where the lad was handsome and the lady predisposed to be generous, she looked more than she said, and said more than she need. Young Adam fell in love with this glimmering, murmuring, golden princess. Fell, do I say? He slipped, rather, as in summer one lets oneself slip into the warm still water. Even so slipped he, and was over the ears before he was aware. Whatever she may have said, he made mighty little reply: the Gordons were always modest before women, and this one but a boy. He hardly dared look at her when she came, though for a matter of three hours before he had never taken his eyes from the door through which she was to glide in upon him like a Queen of Fays. And the fragrance she carried about her, the wonder of her which filled the little chamber where he lay, the sense of a goddess unveiling, of daily miracle, of her stooping (glorious condescension!), and of his lifting-up—ah, let him who has deified a lady tell the glory if he dare! The work was done: she was amused, the miracle wrought. She had found him a sulky boy, she left him a budded knight. Here was one of the conquests she made every day without the drawing of a sword. Most women loved her, and all boys and girls. But although these are, after all, the pick of the world—to whom she was the Rose of roses—we must consider, unhappily, the refuse. They were the flies at the Honeypot.

Mary Livingstone, not seriously, chid her mistress. ‘Oh, fie! oh, fie!’ she would say. ‘Do you waste your sweet store on a bairn? They call you too fond already. Do you wish to have none but fools about you?’

‘If it is foolish to love me, child,’ said the Queen, pretending to pout, ‘you condemn yourself. And if it is foolish of me to love you, or to love Love—again you condemn yourself, who teach me day by day. Are you jealous of the little Gordon, or of the little Jean-Marie? Or is it Monsieur de Châtelard whom you fear?’

‘Châtelard, forsooth! A parrokeet!’

The Queen laughed. ‘If you are jealous, Mary Livingstone, you must cut off my hands and seal my mouth; for should you take away all my lovers, I should stroke the pillars of the house till they were warm, and kiss the maids in the kitchen until they were clean. I must love, my dear, and be loved: that I devoutly believe.’

‘Lord Jesus, and so do I!’ groaned the good girl, and thanked Him on whom she called that Bothwell’s day was over. For although she said not a word of the late scandal, she watched every day and lay awake o’ nights for any sign that he was in the Queen’s thoughts. All she could discover for certain was that he came no more to Court. And yet he was in or near Edinburgh. The old Duke of Châtelherault had himself announced one day in a great taking, with a pitiful story of his son Arran. Lord Bothwell’s name rang loud in it. His son Arran, cousin (he was careful to say) of her Majesty’s, being highly incensed at the affront he had suffered, had challenged the Earl of Bothwell to a battle of three on a side. The weapons had been named, the men chosen. My Lord Bothwell had kept tryst, Arran (on his father’s counsel) had not. Thereupon my Lord Bothwell cries aloud, in the hearing of a score persons, ‘We’ll drag him out by the lugs, gentlemen!’ and set about to do it. ‘My son Arran, madam, goes in deadly fear; for so ruthless a man, a man so arrogant upon the laws as this Lord of Bothwell vexeth not your Majesty’s once prosperous realm. Alas, that such things should be! Madam, I gravely doubt for my son’s safety.’

‘Why, what would you have of me, cousin?’ says the Queen. ‘I cannot fight your son’s battle. Courage I cannot give him. Am I to protect him in my house?’

‘It is protection, indeed, madam, that I crave. But your Majesty knows very well in what guise I would have him enter your house.’

This was too open dealing to be dextrous in such a delicate market.

‘Upon my word, cousin,’ says the Queen, ‘I think that you carry your plans of protection too far if you propose that I should shelter him in my bed.’

The old Duke looked so confounded at this blunt commentary that she repented later, and promised that she would try a reconciliation. ‘But I cannot move in it myself,’ she told him. ‘There are many reasons against that. Do you say that my Lord Bothwell threatens the life of your son?’

‘Indeed, madam, I do fear it.’

‘Well, I will see that he does not get it. Leave me to deal as I can.’

The Queen sent for Mr. Knox.