Chapter VII: Aftertaste

The Queen woke at eight o’clock in the morning and called for a cup of cold water. She sat up to drink, and was told that Antony Standen had been at the door at half-past six, the King himself at seven. Listening to this news with her lips in the water, her eyes grew bitter-bright. ‘He shall have old waiting at my chamber door,’ she said, ‘before he wins it.’ Then she began to weep and fling herself about, to bite the coverlet and to gloom among the pillows. ‘If I forget this past night may my God forget me.’ O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery! She lay down again and shut her eyes, but fretted all the time, twitching her arms and legs, making little angry noises, shifting from side to side. Mary Seton sat by the bed, cool and discreet.

The minutes passed, she enduring, until at last, unable to bear the tripping of them, she started up so violently that a great pillow rolled on to the floor. ‘I could kill myself, Seton,’ she said, grinding her little teeth together, ‘I could kill myself for this late piece of work. Verjuice in me!—I should die to drink my own milk. And all of you there, whispering by the door, wagering, nudging one another—“He’ll never come—never. Not he!” Oh, Jesu-Christ!’ she cried, straining up her bare arms, ‘let this wound of mine keep green until the time!’

‘Hush, dear madam, oh, hush!’ says Seton, flushing to hear her; but the Queen turned her a white, hardy face.

‘Why should I be hushed? Let me cry out my shame to all the world, that am the scorn of men and wedded women. Who heeds? What matter what I say? Leave me alone—I’ll not be hushed down.’

Seton was undismayed. ‘No wedded woman am I. I love you, madam, and therefore I shall speak with you. I say that, as he has proved his unworthiness, so you must prove your pride. I say——’

There was hasty knocking at the door; the maid ran: ‘Who is it knocks?’

‘The King’s valet is without. The King asks if her Majesty is awake.’

‘Let him ask,’ said the Queen: ‘I will never see him again. Say that I am at prayers.’

Seton called, ‘Reply that Her Majesty is unable to see the King at this time. Her Majesty awoke early, and is now at prayers.’ She returned to the bed, where the Queen lay on her elbow, picking her handkerchief to pieces with her teeth.

‘Sweet madam,’ she said, ‘bethink you now of what must be done this day. You wish to be avenged of your enemies....’

The Queen looked keenly up.

‘Well, well, of all your enemies. But for this you must first be free. And it grows late.’

The Queen put her hair from her face and looked at the light coming in. She sat up briskly. ‘You are right, _ma mie_. Come and kiss me. I have been playing baby until my head aches.’

‘You will play differently now, I see,’ said Seton, ‘and other heads may wish they had a chance to ache.’

The Queen took her maid’s face in her dry hands. ‘Oh, Seton,’ she said, ‘you are a cordial to me. They have taken my poor David, but have left me you.’

‘Nay, madam,’ says Seton, ‘they might take me too, and you need none of my strong waters. There is wine enough in your honey for all your occasions.’

A shadow of her late gloom crossed over her. ‘My honey has been racked with galls. ’Tis you that have cleared it. Give me my nightgown, and send for Father Roche. I will say my prayers.’

With a spirit so responsive as hers, the will to move was a signal for scheming to begin. Up and down her mind went the bobbing looms, across and across the humming shuttles, spinning the fine threads together into a fabric whose warp was vengeance and the woof escape from self-scorn. She must be free from prison this coming night; but that was not the half: she intended to leave her captors in the bonds she quitted. So high-mettled was she that I doubt whether she would have accepted the first at the price of giving up the second. Those being the ends of her purpose, all her planning was to adjust the means; and the first thing that she saw (and, with great courage, faced) was that the King—this mutilated god, this botch, this travesty of lover and lord—must come out with her. Long before demure Father Roche could answer his summons she had admitted that, and strung herself to accept it. She must drag him after her—a hobble on a donkey’s leg—because she dared not leave him behind. He had betrayed his friends to her—true; but if she forsook him he would run to them again and twice betray her. She shrugged him out of mind. Bah! if she must take him she would take him. ’Twas to be hoped he would get pleasure of it—and so much for that. But whom dared she leave? She could think of no one as yet but her brother Moray. Overnight she had separated him from the others, and she judged that he would remain separate. Her thought was this:—‘He is a rogue among rogues, I grant. But if you trust one rogue in a pack, all the others will distrust him. Therefore he, being shunned by them, will cleave to me; and they, not knowing how far I trust him, will falter and look doubtfully at one another; and some of them will come over to him, and then the others will be stranded.’ Superficial reasoning, rough-and-ready inference, all this. She knew it quite well, but judged that it would meet the case of Scotland. It was only, as it were, the scum of the vats she had seen brewing in France.... But I keep Father Roche from his prayers.

* * * * *

Affairs in the palace and precincts kept their outward calm in the face of the buzzing town. Train-bands paraded the street, the Castle was for her Majesty, the gates were faithful. In the presence of such monitors as these the burgesses and their wives kept their mouths shut as they stood at shop-doors, and when they greeted at the close-ends they looked, but did not ask, for news. But the Earl of Morton’s men still held the palace, and he himself inspected the guard. There were no attempts to dispute his hold, so far as he could learn, no blood-sheddings above the ordinary, no libels on the Cross, no voices lifted against him in the night. He held a morning audience in the Little Throne-room, with his cousin Douglas for Chief Secretary; and to his suitors, speaking him fair, gave fair replies. But it may be admitted he was very uneasy.

That had not been a pleasant view for him overnight, when the great Earl of Moray, newly returned, walked the hall with the Queen upon his arm. His jaw had dropped to see it. Here was a turn given to our affairs! Dreams troubled him, wakefulness, and flying fancies, which to pursue was torment and not to pursue certain ruin. He slept late and rose late. At a sort of levee, which he held as he dressed, he was peevish, snapped at the faithful Archie, and almost quarrelled with Ruthven.

‘Do you bite, my lord?’ had said that savage. ‘If I am to lose my head it shall be in kinder company. I salute your lordship.’ And so he slammed out.

Morton knew that he must smooth him down before the day was over, but just now there were more pressing needs. He told his cousin that he must see the King at the earliest.

Archie wagged his silvery head, looking as wise as an old stork. ‘Why, that is very well,’ says he; ‘but how if he will not see you?’

‘What do you mean, man?’ cried the Earl upon him.

‘Why, this, cousin,’ said Archie: ‘that the King is out of all hand the morn. I went to his door betimes and listened for him, but could hear nothing forby the snivelling of his boy, therefore made so bold as to open. There I found the minion Forrest crying his heart out over the bed, and could hear our kinsman within howling blasphemy in English.’

‘Pooh, man, ’tis his way of a morning,’ said Morton, heartening himself. ‘What did you then?’

Archie screwed his lips to the whistle, and cocked one eyebrow at the expense of the other.

‘What did I? I did the foolishest thing of all my days, when I sent in my name by the boy. Strutting moorcock, call me, that hadna seen him all the day before! Oh, cousin Morton, out comes our King like a blustering gale o’ March, and takes me by the twa lugs, and wrenches at me thereby, and shakes me to and fro as if I were a sieve for seeds. “Ye black-hearted, poisonous beast!” he roars; “ye damned, nest-fouling chick of a drab and a preacher!” says he—ah, and worse nor that, cousin, if I could lay my tongue to sic filthy conversation. “I’ll teach ye,” says he thunderous, “I’ll teach ye to play your games with your King!” He was fumbling for his dagger the while, and would have stabbed me through and through but for them that stood by and got him off me. Cousin, I fairly ran.’

The Earl looked sternly at him. ‘Tell me the truth, you Archie. What devil’s trick had you played upon him?’

He looked so blankly, swore so earnestly, Nothing, upon his honour, that he had to be believed.

‘Well then,’ said Morton, ‘what may this betide?’

‘Woe can tell your lordship! Little good to you and me belike.’

Lord Morton said, ‘I doubt he’ll play us false. I doubt the knave was working the courage into him.’

And there you see why he was uneasy in his ruling of the palace. Heavy, ox-like, slow-footed man, thick-blooded, fond of thick pleasures, slow to see, slow to follow, slow to give up—he felt now, without more rhyme or reason to support him, that his peril was great. The King was about to betray him. A hot mist of rage flooded his eyes at the thought; and then his heart gave a surge upwards and he felt the thick water on his tongue. ‘If he betray me, may God help him if He cares!’

After his duties in the Little Throne-room, in this grave conjuncture, it seemed good to him to get speech with Mr. Secretary, who had been let out of the house, but had let himself in again when his master, my lord of Moray, came home.

‘Pray, Mr. Secretar,’ says he, ‘have you any tidings of my lord of Moray?’

Lethington became dry. ‘I had proposed to meet my lord, as your lordship may recollect. It seemed good to your lordship that I should not go, but that Sir James Melvill should—with results which I need not particularise. I have not been sent for by my lord of Moray since his home-coming, therefore I know no more of his lordship than your lordship’s self knows.’

The Earl of Morton rumbled his lips. ‘Prutt! Prutt! I wonder now....’ He began to feel sick of his authority.

‘The King, Mr. Secretar,’ he began again, ‘is in some distemperature at this present. I am in doubt—it is not yet plain to me—I regret the fact, I say.’

‘One should see his Majesty,’ says Lethington. ‘No doubt but Mr. Archibald here——’

‘By my soul, man,’ said Mr. Archibald with fervour, ‘I don’t go near him again for a thousand pound—English.’

‘No, no, Mr. Secretar,’ says my lord; ‘but consider whether yourself should not adventure my lord of Moray.’

‘My lord——’

Morton lifted his hand. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘you _must_ do it. I tell you, the sooner the better.’ The hand fell upon the table with a thud. Lethington started, then left the room without a word.

Very little was said between the two gentlemen at this moment in charge of Holyrood until the Secretary’s return. The Master of Lindsay intruded upon them to report that the Earl of Lennox had left the palace, had left Edinburgh, and had ridden hard to the west. Lord Morton nodded to signify that his ears could do their duty.

‘Like son, like father,’ said Archie when the Master had gone.

Soon afterwards Lethington knocked at the door, entered, advanced to the table, and stood there, looking at the ink-horn, which he moved gently about.

‘Well, sir! We are here to listen,’ cried Morton, in a fever.

Lethington was slow to answer even then.

‘I have been admitted to my lord of Moray,—so much there is to say. He had his reader with him, but came out to me. When I began to speak he regretted at once that he could not hear me at any length. He showed me his table encumbered with business, and declined at the present to add any more to the litter. I urged your lordship’s desire to have speech with him as soon as might be; he replied that his own desire was always, in all things, to serve your lordship. I said, “Serve his lordship then in this”: upon the which he owned that he failed of strength. “I have a traveller’s ache in my bones,” saith he. “Let my Lord Morton have patience.”’

He stopped there.

Lord Morton took a turn about the room. ‘No more than that said he, Lethington? No more than that?’

‘His lordship said no more, my lord. And therefore, seeing that he plainly wished it, I took my leave.’

The Earl looked at Archie Douglas: some secret intelligence passed between them in which the Secretary had no share.

‘I am going to speak with my lord of Ruthven in his chamber,’ then said he. ‘And, cousin, do you come also.’

The guard presented arms to the great man as he went down the hall, and a few underlings—women of the house, grooms of the closet and coffer—ran after him with petitions; but he waved away all and sundry. They fell back, herded into groups and whispered together. The Secretary came out alone and paced the hall deep in thought. One or two eyed him anxiously. How did he stand now? It was a parlous time for Scotland when nobody knew to whom to cringe for a favour.

* * * * *

Then—two hours after dinner—word was brought down into the hall that the Queen would receive the Earl of Morton and certain other named persons in the Throne-room. Great debate over this. Lord Ruthven was for declining to go. ‘We are masters here. ’Tis for us to receive.’

But Lord Lindsay shook his ragged head. ‘No, no, Ruthven,’ he says, ‘take counsel, my fine man. It is ill to go, but worse to stay away.’

‘How’s that, then?’ cries Ruthven, white and fierce.

‘Why, thus,’ the elder replied. ‘If you go, you show that you are master. If you go not, you betray that you doubt it.’

‘I see it precisely contrary,’ says Ruthven.

‘Then,’ he was told, ‘you have a short vision. It is the strong man can afford to unbar the door.’

The Earl of Morton was clearly for going. ‘I take it, my lord of Moray is behind this message. Let us see what he will do. He is bound to us as fast as man can be.’

They sent up Lethington, who came back with the answer that my lord of Moray had been summoned in like wise, and would not fail of attendance upon her Majesty. This settled the masters of Holyrood. ‘Where he goes there must we needs be also.’

Archie Douglas and Lethington had not been required by the Queen; but when Archie was for rubbing his hands over that, the other advised him to take his time.

‘You are not the less surely hanged because they let you see you are not worth hanging,’ said the Secretary. Archie damned him for a black Genevan.

At the time set the Earls of Morton, Argyll, and Glencairn, the Lords Ruthven, Rothes, and Lindsay, and some few more, went upstairs with what state they could muster.

They found the Queen on the throne, pale, stiff in the set of her head, but perfectly self-possessed. Three of her maids and Lady Argyll were behind the throne. Upon her right hand stood the King in a long ermine cloak, upon her left the Earl of Moray in black velvet. Lord John Stuart and a sprinkling of young men held the inner door, and a secretary, in poor Davy’s shoes, sat at a little table in the window. The six lords filed in according to their degrees of ranking. Ruthven, behind Lindsay, jogged his elbow: ‘See the pair of them there. Betrayed, man, betrayed!’

None of them was pleased to see that Moray had been admitted first, and yet none of them in his heart had expected anything else. It was the King who drew all their reproaches: in some sense or another Moray was chartered in villainy.

The Queen, looking straight before her, moistened her lips twice, and spoke in a low voice, very slowly and distinctly.

‘I have sent for you, my lords, that I may hear in the presence of the King my consort, and of these my kindred and friends, what your wisdoms may have to declare concerning some late doings of yours. As I ask without heat, so I shall expect to be answered.’ Pausing here, she looked down at her hands placid in her lap. So unconscious did she seem of anything but her own dignity and sweet estate, you might have taken her for a girl at her first Communion.

The Earl of Morton moved out a step, and made the best speech he could of it. He had the gift, permitted to slow-witted men, of appearing more honest than he was; for tardiness of utterance is easily mistaken for gravity, and gravity (in due season) for uprightness. One has got into the idle habit of connecting roguery with fluency. But it must be allowed to Morton that he did not attempt to disavow his colleagues. If he urged his own great wrongs as an excuse for violence, he claimed that the wrongs of Scotland had cried to him louder still. He now held the palace, he said, for the prevention of mischief, and should be glad to be relieved of the heavy duty. Then he talked roundabout—of requitals in general—how violent griefs provoked violent medicines—how men will fight tooth and nail for their consciences. Lastly he made bolder. ‘If I fear not, madam, to invoke the holy eyes of my God upon my doings, it would not become me to quail under your Majesty’s. And if that which I hold dearest is enchained, I should be a recreant knight indeed if I failed of a rescue.’ He glanced toward the King at this point; but the young man might have been a carven effigy. His end therefore—for he knew now that he had been betrayed—was a lame one: a plea for mutual recovery of esteem, an act of oblivion, articles to be drawn up and signed, _et cætera_. The Queen, placidly regarding her fingers, drew on the others after him one by one.

The Earl of Glencairn had nothing to say, as he proved by every word he uttered; the Earl of Argyll began a speech, but caught his wife’s eye and never finished it. Lord Lindsay, an honest, hot-gospel, rough sort of man—who might have been a Knox in his way—said a great deal. But he was long over it, and slow, and prolix; and the Queen none too patient. At ‘Secondly, madam, you shall mark——’ she began to tap with her toe; and then one yet more impatient broke in, feeling that he must shriek under his irritation unless he could relieve it by speech. This was Lord Ruthven, a monomaniac, with one cry for the world and one upon whom to cry it. If he spoke his rages to the Queen in form, he aimed them at the King in substance, and never once looked elsewhere, or threatened with his finger any other than that stock-headed starer out of painted eyes. He thrust away Lindsay with a pawing hand, and—‘Oh, madam, will you listen to me now?’ says he. ‘We speak our pieces before ye like bairns on a bench, who have acted not long since like men, and men wronged. And who are we, when all’s said, to justify ourselves? Who was the most aggrieved among us? Let that man speak. Who had most cause to cry out, Down with the thief of my honour? Let him say it now. What was our injury compared to that man’s? If we played in his scene, who gave out the parts? If we laid hands upon our Queen, by whose command did we so? And into whose hands did we commit her royal person? Let him answer, and beat us down with his words, if to any hands but his own.’ Wrought up by his own eloquence, driving home his terrible questions, he had advanced unawares close to the man he threatened. The King jumped back with a short cry; but the Queen, who had been straining forward to listen, like a racer at his mark, interposed.

‘I am listening,’ she said; ‘continue, Ruthven.’

Ruthven, at this check, began to cast about for his words. He had lost his flow. ‘As for yon Davy, madam, I’ll not deny airt and pairt in his taking——’

‘Why, how should you indeed?’ says the Queen, smiling rather sharply.

‘I say I will not, madam,’ says Ruthven, flurried; then with a savage snarl he turned short on the King and fleshed his tooth there.

‘And you!’ he raved at him: ‘deny it you, if you dare!’

The King went white as a sheet.

‘Man,’ said the Earl of Morton finely, ‘hold your peace. I lead this company.’

Lord Ruthven said no more, and Morton took up anew his parable. What he did was well done: he did not give ground, yet was conciliatory. It was a case for terms, he said. Let articles be drawn up, lands be restored, offices stand as before the slaughter, the old forfeitures be overlooked, religion on either side be as it had been: in fact, let that come which all hoped for, the Golden Age of Peace.

The Queen consulted with her brother, ignored her husband, then accepted. Lethington was to draw up articles and submit them. For Peace’s sake, if it were possible, she would sign them. Rising from her throne, she dismissed her gaolers. She took Moray’s arm, just touched the King’s with two fingers, and walked through the lines made by her friends, a page going before to clear the way. The moment she was in her room she sent Des-Essars out with a letter, which she had ready-written, for the Earl of Bothwell.

Left with his fellow-tragedians, Ruthven for a time was ungovernable, with no words but ‘black traitor—false, perjuring beast of a thief’—and the like. Morton, to the full as bartered as himself, did not try to hold him. He too was working into a steady resentment, and kindling a grudge which would smoulder the longer but burn the more fiercely than the madman’s spluttering bonfire. And he was against all sudden follies. When Ruthven, foaming, howled that he would stab the King in the back, Morton grumbled, ‘Too quick a death for him’; and Lindsay said drily, ‘No death at all. Yon lad is wiser than Davy—wears a shirt that would turn any blade.’ ‘Then I’ll have at him in his bed,’ says Ruthven. And Lindsay, to clinch the matter, scoffs at him with, ‘Pooh, man, the Queen is his shirt of mail. Are you blind?’

Into this yeasty flood, with courage truly remarkable, the Earl of Moray steered his barque, coming sedately back from his escort of the Queen. At first they were so curious about his visit that they forgot the vehement suspicion there was of treachery from him also. The precision of his steering was admirable, but he ran too close to the rocks when he spoke of the Queen as ‘a young lady in delicate health, for whom, considering her eager temper and frail body, the worst might have been feared in the late violent doings.’

Here Morton cut in. ‘I call God to witness, my lord, and you, too, Ruthven, shall answer for me, whether or not I forbade the slaughter of that fellow before her face. For I feared, my lord, that very health of hers.’

‘And you did well to fear it, my lord,’ said the Earl of Moray; and that was the turn too much.

Said Ruthven to him dangerously, ‘You make me sick of my work.’ He peered with grinning malice into the inscrutable face. ‘Tell me, you, my lord of Moray, what did _you_ look for in the business? What thought _you_ would come of murder at the feet of a woman big? God in heaven, sir, what is it you look for? what is it you think of day after day?’

Lord Moray blinked—but no more. ‘Hush, hush, Lord Ruthven, lest you utter what would grieve all who love Scotland.’

Ruthven howled. ‘Man, do you talk of Scotland? Are we friends here? Are we in the kirk? If we are in council, for God’s sake talk your mind. Ah!—talk of that, my good lord——’ he pointed to the empty throne. ‘Man, man, man! there’s your kirk and your altar—you prater about Scotland’s love.’ For a moment he fairly withered the man; but then, as drowning in a flood-tide of despair, he lifted up his hands and covered his tormented eyes. ‘Oh, I am sick just,’ he said, ‘sick of your lying—sick, I tell you, sick—sick to death!’

The Earl of Moray made a little sign with his eyebrows and closed eyes; and they left him alone with Ruthven. It should never be denied of this man that he had the courage of his father’s race.

The ‘Articles of Peace and Oblivion’ were drawn up, tendered on knees, and overlooked by her Majesty.

‘I see your name here, Mr. Secretary, as in need of mercy,’ she said, with a finger on the place. Of course she had known that he was up to the chin in the plot, but she could rarely resist making the sensitive man wriggle.

He murmured something unusually fatuous, painfully conscious of his standing.

‘Oh, sir,’ she said, ‘if you seek for my pardon you shall have it. I am contented with a few things. But go you now and sue for it in the maids’ closet. You will find Fleming there. I cannot answer for her, I warn you; for if you say to a maid, “Love me, love my dog,” it is possible she may rejoin, “Serve me, serve my mistress.” That, at least, is the old-fashioned pleading in the courts of love.’

He was greatly confused, the obsequious, fertile man, and she greatly entertained.

‘Go, Mr. Secretary, and pray you find some phrases as you go. Tongues ring sharply in the closet.’ She signed the Articles, and he was backing himself out when she stopped him with a seemingly careless word. ‘Ah, I had almost forgot. These Articles breathe peace.’ She took them from him and read the words. ‘“Peace, mutual forbearance and goodwill”: very fair words, upon which we must hope for fair performance. The guard at the doors and gates is removed no doubt? See to that, Mr. Secretary, before you can hope for pardon in the maids’ closet. Your lady will not love you the more because you keep her in a cage.’

This was kittle work, as they say. Unless the guard were off she could never get out. Lethington, however, took the hint, acted upon his own responsibility, and found none to stop him. The lords—masters of Holyrood—were otherwise employed: Lord Ruthven spoke of hanging himself; the Earl of Morton was inclining to think that Articles might, for this once, make all safe. Alone, the Earl of Moray admonished his servant, not for removing the guard, but for not having done so earlier. What peace he made afterwards in the maids’ closet hath never been revealed.

The Queen went to bed very early and slept like a child in arms. Everything was in train.

* * * * *

At two o’clock in the morning the King was called, but answered the summons himself, fully dressed, armed and cloaked.

‘I am ready,’ he said, before the messenger could speak. ‘Fetch Standen. I go to the Queen.’

He crept along the passage to the dimly lighted cabinet, where he had of late seen murder, and had to wait there as best he could. He spent the time in walking up and down—an exercise whereby a man, in fear already, gains terror with every pace: so agitated was he that when, after an age of squittering misery, the Queen came in deeply hooded, he forgot everything and burst out with ‘O God, madam, make haste!’

She gave him no answer, but poured herself some wine, added water, and drank. It was terrible to him to see how much at her ease she was, sipping her drink, looking about the cabinet, recalling critically (if the truth is to be told) the stasimons of the late tragic scene.

Mary Seton came in, and Des-Essars, labouring with a portmantle and some pistols.

‘Drink, my children,’ she bade them in French, and they obeyed, taking stay and leisure from her.

The King bit his nails, fretted and fumed—had not had the nerve to drink, even if he had had the invitation.

Standen stood by the wall, stolid as his habit was—the flaxen, solemn English youth, with but one cherubic face for a rape, a funeral, a battle, a christening, or the sacrament. The Queen drew Seton’s attention to him in a whisper, and made the girl laugh.

Presently they heard a step, and then Stewart of Traquair was to be seen, stalwart and watchful, in the doorway.

‘Ready, Traquair?’—the Queen’s voice.

‘All’s ready, ma’am.’

She fastened her hood, patting the bows flat. ‘Come, Seton, come, Baptist,’ she said, and gave her hand into Traquair’s.

He kissed it before he led her away. Des-Essars went first with a shaded lantern.

The great dark house was perfectly quiet as they went downstairs and through the chapel by the tombs of the kings. Just here, however, the Queen stopped and called back Des-Essars. ‘Where does he lie?’ she asked him; and he pointed out the stone—she was standing almost upon it—and for many a day remembered the curious regard she had for it: how she hovered, as it were, over the place, looking at it, smiling quietly towards it, as if it afforded her some quaint thought. Words have been put into her mouth which, according to him, she never said—melodramatic words they are, rough makeshifts of some kind of art embodying what was to come. According to Des-Essars, she said nothing, neither resolved, nor promised, nor predicted; nothing broke her smiling, considering silence over this new grave.

‘To see her there,’ he says, ‘in the lantern-light, so easy, so absorbed, so _amused_, was terrible to more witnesses than one. It opened to me secret doors never yet suspected. Was murder only curious to her? Was horror a kind of joy?’

But it frightened Mary Seton out of her courage. ‘Oh, what do you see in there, madam?’ she whispered. ‘What moves your mirth in his grave?’

The Queen turned her head as if shaken out of a stare. She met Mary Seton’s eyes in the lantern-light, and laughed.

‘Come away, madam, come away. Look no more. There’s a taint.’

‘Yes, yes,’ says the Queen; ‘I am ready. Where is the King?’

‘The King is gone, madam,’ said Stewart of Traquair; ‘and I think your Majesty will do well to be after him.’

This was true. Arthur Erskine, holding the horses outside the town wall, told her that the King had ridden forward at once, at a gallop, with his man Standen. She was therefore left with but two—himself and Traquair—for escort; but he assured her that every step had been taken, she would be in no sort of danger.

‘Danger!’ she said, laughing lightly. ‘No, no, Erskine, I do not fear it. Ruthven’s dagger seeks not my back.’

They lifted her up, the rest mounted after her; they walked their horses clear of the suburb. After some half-mile or more of steady trotting the Queen reined up and stopped the party. She listened; they all did. Far away you could hear the regular galloping of a horse, pulsing in the dark like some muffled pendulum. Now and again another’s broke into it and confused the rhythm.

‘There rides in haste our sovereign lord,’ said the Queen. ‘Come, we must follow him.’

* * * * *

By Niddry House—under the lee of the wall—she found the Earls of Huntly and Bothwell, Lord Seton, and a company of twenty horsemen waiting. The hour had gone five.

‘God save Scotland!’ had called Traquair, and Bothwell’s strident voice had countercried, ‘God save the Queen of Scotland!’

‘That voice hath blithe assurance,’ said she when she heard it. She joyed in adventure and adventurers.

She asked for news of the King. ‘Where is my consort, Lord Bothwell? Rode he this way?’

‘Madam, he did, and had a most mischievous scare of us. We knew him by the way he damned us all. But he’s well away by now. You may hear him yet.’

She gloomed at that. ‘Ay,’ said she, ‘I have heard him. I shall always hear him, I think.’ Then she shivered. ‘Let us ride on, sirs; the night is chill.’

Nobody spoke much. Lord Bothwell kept close to her right hand, Lord Huntly to her left. They would change horses at Gladsmuir.

* * * * *

The tide was breaking over wet rocks, one pale streak of light burnished the rim of the sea, as Lord Bothwell lifted down his Queen. Astounding to feel how fresh and feat she was! The dark hull of a castle could just be seen, suspended as it seemed above a cloud-bank, with sea-birds looming suddenly large or fading to be small as they swept in and out of the fog. Little tired waves broke and recoiled near by upon the weedy stones.

‘Dunbar, madam,’ says Bothwell, his hands still holding her—‘and the good grey guard of the water.’

The King, they told her, had been in bed those three hours.