Chapter III: Descant Upon a Theme as Old as Jason

It is from Des-Essars that I borrowed that similitude of Lord Bothwell to a violin-player. The young man pictures him as such, at this very time, sitting deep in his chair at the Hermitage, his instrument upon his crossed knee—his lovely, sensitive instrument! He screws at the keys, in his leisurely, strong way, and now and again plucks out a chord, ‘until, under the throbbing notes, he judges that he hath wrung up his music to the tragic pitch.’ The figure is adroit in its fitness to the persons involved, but puzzling in this respect—that with executant so deliberate and instrument so fine the pitch should be so slow of attainment.

Face the facts, as she herself did (with a shiver of self-pity), and ask yourself what on earth he was about. Consider his fury at her dismissal of the King, his coldness through her appeals for mercy: what could they point to but one thing? ‘Over and over again,’ says Des-Essars, ‘my mistress told me that his lordship would do nothing overt while the King her husband was alive; and I acquiesced in silence. It was too evident. She added, immediately, “And I, Baptist—what can I do? What will become of me? I cannot live without my Beloved—nay, I cannot discern life or death under the canopy of Heaven unless he is there moving and directing it. As well ask me to behold a vista of days in which the sun should never shine. This is a thing which forbids thought, for it denies the wish to live.” To such effect she expressed herself often, and then would remain silent, as to be sure did I, each of us, no doubt, pondering the next question (or its answer)—What stood in the way of her happiness? What kept the King alive? The answer lay on the tip of the tongue. She! She only preserved the worthless life; she only stood in her own light. Ah, she knew that well enough, and so did I, and so did every man in Scotland save one—the blind upstart himself.

‘A dangerous knowledge, truly: dangerous by reason of the ease with which she could provide remedy for her pain. Let her move a finger, let her wink an eyelid, shrug a shoulder, and from one side or another would come on a king’s executioner, clothed in the livery of Justice, Proper Resentment, Vengeance, Envy, Greed or Malice—for under one and all of these ensigns he was threatened by death. And I will answer for it that the question flickered hourly in flame-red letters before her eyes, Why standeth the Queen of Scots in the way of Justice? O specious enemy! O reasonable Satan! What! this fellow, a drunkard, a vile thing, treacherous, a liar, a craven—this, whom to kill were to serve God, alone to shut her out from good days? I know that her hand must have itched to give the signal; I know that the Devil prevailed; but not yet, not yet awhile—not till she was reeling, faint, caught up, swirled, overwhelmed by misery and terror. At this time, though suffering made her eyes gaunt and her mouth to grin, she kept her hands rigidly from any sign.

‘It is, withal, a curious thing, not to be disregarded by the judicious, that the Countess of Bothwell, and her claims and pretentions, never entered her thoughts. In her opinion, women—other women—were the toys of men. This world of ours she saw as a garden, a flowery desert place in which stood two persons, the Lover and the Beloved. Observe this, you who read the tale; for presently after my Lord Bothwell observed it, and, by playing upon it, attuned her to his tragic pitch.’

* * * * *

She left Jedburgh on 10th November, her terrible beleaguering question not yet answered. She went a kind of progress by the Tweed valley, by Kelso, Wark, Hume, Langton, Berwick, stayed in the gaunt houses which are still to be seen fretting the ramparts of that lonely road—towers reared upon woody bluffs to command all ways of danger, square, turreted fortresses looking keenly out upon the bare lands which they scarcely called their own and had grown lean in defending. All about her as she went were the lords, every man of them with his own game in his head, watching the moves of every other. Argyll and Glencairn were shadows of Moray; Crawfurd and Atholl for the moment held with Huntly and the throne. Lethington was the dog of whoso would throw him a task; Livingstone, jocular still, kept mostly with the women.

The Queen’s moods, as she journeyed slowly through that wintering country, changed as the weather does in late autumn. Winds blow hot and winds blow cold, tempests are never far off; frost follows, when the sun glitters but is chill, and the ice-splinters lie late, like poniards in the ridged ways. She rode sometimes for a whole day in bitter silence, her face as bleak as the upland bents, and sometimes she spurred furiously in front, her hair blown back and face on fire with her mad thoughts. Unseen of any, she clenched her fists, she clenched her teeth. ‘I am a queen, a queen! I choose to do it. It is my right, it is my need.’

She had fits of uncontrollable weeping; they caught her unawares now and then, her face all blurred with tears. This was when she had been pitying herself as victim of a new torment—new at least to her. ‘He sits alone with a woman who hates me. He pinches her chin—they laugh together over my letters. Fool! I will write no more.’ The more a fool in that she wrote within the next hour.

When she grew frightened to find how solitary she was, she turned in the saddle more than once, and hunted all faces for a friendly one. Wearisome quest, foredoomed to failure! Moray, with his straight rock of brow, sat like a cliff, looking steadfastly before him; Argyll counted the sheep on the hillside; Livingstone, a ruddy old fool, hummed a tune, or said, ‘H’m, h’m! All’s for the best in this braw world, come rain come sun.’

And the maids, the Maries, once her bosom familiars! There Livingstone bites her prudish lip, here Fleming peers askance at Lethington; Seton says something sharply witty to Lady Argyll, and makes the grim lady hinny like a mare.

Far behind, in the ruck of the cavalcade, she may catch sight of a youth on a jennet, a pale-faced youth with a widish nose and smut-rimmed light eyes. He has a French soul; he loves her. There, at least, is one that judges nothing, condemns nothing, approves nothing. She is she, and he her slave. Is she angry?—The sun’s hidden then. Does she smile?—The sun rises. Does she kiss him?—Ho! the sun atop of summer. Suppose that she were Medea: suppose for a moment that she slew—no, no, the term is inexact—suppose that she stood aside, and men justly offended came in and slew King Jason? This slave of hers would say, ‘The sun, shining, hath struck one to earth.’

Yes, here was a trusty friend who would as soon blame the sun for his sunstroke, or the lightning for his flash of murder, as blame her. She would call him to her, then, and make him ride by her for half a day. She would take his hand, lean aside to kiss him, to rest her head on his shoulder, to stroke his cheek; she would call him her lover, her fere, her true and perfect knight—fool him, in fine, to the top of his bent. And to all that she said or did, Des-Essars, if we may believe him, decently replied: ‘Yes, it is quite true that I love your Majesty. I have no other thought but that, nor have I ever had.’

Thus she rode progress towards her soul’s peril, changing from fierce heat to shrivelling cold as fast as the autumn weather.

It was at Kelso that she got letters from the King, foolish and blusterous letters in the _Quos ego ...!_ style which the Master of Sempill admired. Let her Majesty understand his mind was made up. Let her Majesty receive him in Edinburgh, or ... this was their tenor; with them in her hand and one from Bothwell burning in her bosom she showed Mr. Secretary a disturbed, dangerous face. Pale as she was nowadays, and thin, he was shocked to see her hungry lines. He thought her like some queen of old, Jocasta or Althæa, with whom the Furies held midnight traffic. ‘Do you see this? Is it never to end?’

He did not stay to peruse the letters. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘let us take order in these painful matters. Leave them to your faithful friends, and all shall be to your contentation.’

She turned away; her staring eyes saw nothing but misery. ‘Take order, say you? If you fear so much as to speak above a whisper, how shall you dare do anything? Friends! what friend have I but one? Death is my patient, waiting friend; and so I shall prove him before many more days.’

‘Alas, madam, speak not so wildly.’

She looked fiercely, wrinkling up her eyes at him. ‘But I tell you, sir, that if this load be not lifted from me, I shall end it my own way.’

That night a plan was laid before the Earls of Moray and Argyll. Lethington spoke it, but Huntly stood over him as stiffly imminent as a pine, or he had never found a word to say.

After a great deal of elliptic talk he came to terms, by saying, ‘The business can be done promptly and without scandalous parade of force. When her Majesty is at Craigmillar making ready for the Prince’s baptism, he will certainly come, for he would never endure to be passed over at such a time, when the ambassadors of France and England may be brought to acknowledge him. Well, then, my lords, if we confront him with our proofs of his oft-meditated treason he will deny them. If we essay to apprehend him he will resist us; and resistance, doubtless, might provoke our men to—to——’ Here he looked about him.

‘You have said enough, Lethington,’ Huntly broke in. ‘We shall be ready, those of us who are true men.’ He watched Moray darkly as he spoke, but drew forth no reply. It was Argyll who took up the talk—took it up to the rafters as it were, since he leaned back in his chair and cast up his eyes.

‘Look at him for a Lennox Stuart, God help us! Lennox Stuart and rank Papist he is. To leave at large the like of that is to have a collie turned rogue ranging your hillside. Why, gentlemen,’ and he looked from man to man, ‘shall we leave him to raven the flock?’

‘I adhere to the plan,’ said Huntly. ‘Count upon me and mine. I take it you stand in with us, my Lord of Argyll. What says my Lord of Moray?’

The great man became judicial. He gave them the feeling, as he intended, that he had been surveying a far wider field than they could scan. Under that arching sky, which he was able to range in, and from whose study they had called him down, their little schemes took up that just inch which was their proper scope. If he had not remarked them earlier, not his the all-seeing eye; but he was obliged to his friends for drawing him to the care of matters so curious, so well-deserving of a quiet hour.

‘We must talk at large of these somewhat serious concerns, my lords. We must take our time, hasten so far as we may, but with a temperate spur—ay, a temperate spur. We must consult, discriminate those who stand our friends from those who are unfriendly; from those who cry, not without reason, for recognition. We must not omit those who are afar off, nor those who will come about us asking questions—what is to be lost, what gained? Many considerations rise up on the instant, others will crowd upon us. Where are my lords of Crawfurd and Atholl? Are they behind you? I cannot see them. What says my lord of Lindsay, that very steadfast Christian? Where, alas, is my lord of Morton’s honour?’

‘Sir,’ cried Huntly, fuming, ‘we can resolve your many questions when you have answered our one. We asked you not, what says one or what says another? but, rather, what says your lordship?’

Lord Moray smiled. ‘Ah, my Lord Chancellor, if your lordship had not been so long a stranger to my poor house, your question had hardly been put to me. Those who know me best, my lord, do not need to confirm by vain assurances my love of country, or desire to serve the throne of my dear sister. Forgive me if I say that, with older eyes than your lordship’s, I take a wider range. I see your distresses—perhaps I see a remedy. Perhaps your proposal is one, perhaps it is a danger worse than the disease. It may be——’

He threatened to become interminable, so Huntly, with no patience at command, left him in the midst. With disapproval in every prim line of his face Lord Moray watched him go. He said nothing more; and why should he say anything, when all was forwarding as he wished? He did repeat to the Secretary, afterwards and in private, that it was sore pity to have the Earl of Morton still in exile—a saying which that worthy misapprehended. But here the Councils stopped, though the Queen did not, but pushed on to Berwick, and reached Edinburgh by mid-November. At Craigmillar, where she chose to stay, they were resumed under the more hopeful auspices of Lord Bothwell, whom at last she summoned to her side out of Liddesdale.

This is because jealousy, that canker in the green-wood, was groping in her now, though not, even yet, of that sordid kind which is concerned with its own wound. She no longer wrote to Bothwell save on details of business, because she conceived her letters distasteful to him; and she would not have recalled him had not Lethington assured her of the common need of his counsel. The sort of jealousy she suffered filled her, rather, with a kind of noble zeal to do him honour. Although she would not write to him, she could never rest without news of his daily doings. So when she heard that he and his Countess were reading Petrarch together, many hurt lines, but no vulgar splenetic lines, were committed to the casket.

Elle pour son honneur vous doibt obeyssance,
Moy vous obeyssant j’en puis recevoir blasme,
N’estant, à mon regret, comme elle, vostre femme.

She wrote, and believed, that she grudged Lady Bothwell nothing:

Je ne la playns d’aymer done ardamment
Celuy qui n’a en sens, ny en vaillance,
En beauté, en bonté, ny en constance
Point de seconde. Je vis en ceste foy.

‘God pity this poor lady!’ Des-Essars bursts forth, having been imparted these outrageous lines. ‘She who could believe that my Lord Bothwell was without peer in beauty, kindness, and constancy, might very well believe that she herself was not jealous of his wife.’

Jealous or no, it was jealousy of a strange kind. When her beloved answered his summons by attending her at Craigmillar, she received him with a dewy gratefulness which went near to touch him. ‘You have come, then! Oh, but you are good to your friend,’—a speech which for the moment bereft him of speech. She asked after the Countess, spoke of her as her sister, pitied her sitting alone at Hermitage, and inspired the gross-minded man with enthusiasm for her exalted mood.

He threw himself into the plotting and whispering with which the Court was rife, talked long hours with Lethington, was civil to Moray and his ‘flock,’ as he called Argyll and the rest. Nothing much came of it all. Moray went so far as to suggest divorce. Lethington thought much of it, and carried it to Bothwell, who thought nothing of it. He declined to discuss it with her Majesty.

‘Take your proposal to her if you choose,’ he said; ‘lay it before her. I know what she will say, and agree with her beforehand. This is no way of doing for men, or for crowned women.’

He had the rights of it. ‘What!’ she cried, ‘and make my son a bastard! And he to be King of England! I think they have had bastards enough on that throne. Your plan is foolish.’

Lethington was upon his mettle. He was to be married come Christmas, and, indebted for this prospect to the Queen and Bothwell, was desirous to owe her as much more as she would lend him. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I cannot admit my plan to be so dangerous to the Prince’s highness; but I will content you yet. Give me leave to devise yet once more.’

‘Devise as you will, sir,’ said she, ‘but be quick, or I shall begin with devices of my own. You know that a foumart in a trap scruples not to use tooth and claw. And he is wise, since soft glances are never likely to help him.’ Almost immediately she began to cry at the thought of herself in a trap, ‘to cry and torment herself,’ says the annalist. And one night, at supper with a few of them, she lashed out in a fury at her impotence. ‘Ah, it is too much, what I suffer among you all! I have borne him a son, and he would steal him from my breast. He would tip that innocent tongue with poison that he may envenom his mother. If I am not soon quit of this there is but one end to it.’

Patience, they counselled. ‘Ay, madam,’ said foolish old Livingstone, ‘patience, and shuffle the cards.’

‘Shuffle you yours, my lord,’ she said, looking lofty, ‘if you think them worthy of Fortune’s second thoughts. For me, I know a shorter way to end the game.’

In private, she and Bothwell were in full accord. She was to obey him, and leave him alone. ‘No questions, my soul!’ he was for ever saying to her, half jocularly, half with meaning that she was to be blind, deaf, and dumb. She shut her eyes and mouth and put her fingers to her ears; and in time this became a habit. ‘My prince, my master,’ she said once, and gave him both her hands, ‘I am your servant, and submit to you in all things. Use me well.’ He kissed her fondly as he swore that so he would.

It was after the King had visited her and gone again, whither no one knew, that Lethington produced his second plan. As before, he was careful to submit it to Bothwell. What did his good lordship think of this? The King was to meet her Majesty at Stirling for the Prince’s baptism; he would be ill received by the ambassadors, and therefore mutinous, probably with outcry. Let one then, with all proofs in his hands, indict him of treason. Let him be summoned to answer, and upon refusal, arrested. He would certainly resist, with violence. The end was sure. Now, what did his good lordship think?

His good lordship spoke his plain mind, as he always did to Lethington, whom he scorned. ‘You don’t kill a sheep with hounds and horn. Pray, my friend, where will be my lord of Moray all this while? Will he wind the horn? I do not remember that that is his way. Or will he find occasions to be in his lands? Or turn his coat and cry, God bless our King-Consort and the True Kirk?’

Lethington had a late autumnal smile, with teeth showing through like the first frost. ‘I will tell your lordship what he will do. He will see and not see. He will look on and not behold.’

‘You mean, I gather, that he will be at his prayers, looking through his fingers while we foul ours?’

‘Your lordship is most precise.’

However, his plan went before the Queen, who gave it a gloomy approval. ‘He is so clogged with treason, he will never run. You will have an easy capture. Let nothing be done till my son be christened.’

Immediately afterwards she was instructed by Bothwell that the project was as vain as wind, because it depended upon two unstable things. First, if he allowed himself to be taken, what on earth was to be done with him? There must be an assize. And to which side in that would Moray lean?

She could not answer him.

‘No,’ said he, ‘you cannot; nor can any man in Scotland.’

‘I am of your mind,’ she said—superfluous assurance!

‘Well, then,’ he went on, ‘let them stir their broth of grouts. They are all greedy knaves together: perchance one or another will tumble into the stew and we be quit of him.’

‘But if we leave them,’ she hesitated, ‘they may attempt to take him—and then——’

Bothwell laughed. ‘Nay, I will see to it that they do not. Oh, madam, trust your honest lover, and all shall go greatly for you and me.’

She threw herself into his arms. Trust him! O God, had she not found a man at last?

* * * * *

When they all met at Stirling to christen the Prince, the King was so ill received that, as Lethington had expected, he refused to leave his lodging even for the ceremony. He was literally alone, without his father, without any Scots lord to his name; sitting for the most part in a small room, drinking and playing cards. He used to ride out at night so that he need not tempt the discourtesy of the wayfarers; and once, when the guard at the gate hesitated about passing him in, he flew into a tempest of rage, drew, and killed the man on the spot. Lethington flew from lord to lord. What better opportunity than this?

Everything was prepared, all the proofs gathered in. There were letters of his to the Queen-Mother of France, to his own mother, Lady Lennox, to the English Catholics, to the Duke of Norfolk, to certain Jesuits in the West. One Highgate brought intercepted papers—a chart of Scilly, a plan of Scarborough Castle: and some other fellow was fished up, a bladder full of whispers of a plot to steal the Prince. Lastly, to crown the image of a perfect traitor, there was a draft proclamation of himself as Regent of Scotland. Enough here to hang a better man!

‘Well,’ said Huntly, when Lethington showed him the whole budget, ‘take your measures, show me my place, and meet me at your own time. I’ll not fail you.’

That night Lord Bothwell came into the Queen’s chamber while she was at her prayers. She saw him, but pretended that she did not, finished her rosary, and bowed her head over it; then got up and kissed him before all her circle. Very soon they were alone together.

‘I disturbed you,’ he said; ‘I regret it.’

‘Regret it not—it was sweet disturbance. My heart flew faster than my beads.’

He took her hand up. ‘Why do you tell me such things? Do you know what disorder they work in me?’

She pretended that she must disengage her hand, but he would not allow it.

‘Alas, sir,’ she said, ‘we whip each other, you and I. Each is a torment to the other. One runs, the other chases,—but whither?’

‘Quick, quick to the goal!’

‘Take me thither in your arms, my Bothwell. Carry me, lest I faint by the way.’

‘No fainting now. The hour is come, and I with it. I have counsel for you.’

‘Counsel me—I will be faithful.’

‘I recommend, then, to your clemency the Earl of Morton, his kinsman Douglas of Whittinghame, and all their factions.’

She pondered the saying, not discerning at first what it purported, yet fearing to ask him lest he should be impatient of her stupidity. No man had ever made her feel stupid but this one.

‘Do you wish it?’ she asked him.

‘I advise it.’

‘They are no friends of yours?’

‘They may become so.’

‘And you remember that they greatly offended me?’

‘Oh, madam,’ he cried out irritably, ‘who has not offended you in this wicked land? Did not your sour brother offend you? Has not Lethington offended? Have not Huntly and I? Believe me, this Morton has himself been offended, and by the very man who has offended you more vilely than any other. There was one who betrayed you to the Douglases, but that same man betrayed the Douglases to you. Therefore I say, if you wish to redeem your honour, let Morton redeem his, and your affair is done. You force me to speak plainly.’

She saw his meaning now, and her eyes grew blank with fear. ‘Hush,’ she said, ‘speak no plainer. Those two will kill him.’

He shrugged. ‘You speak plainer than I. In advising you, however, to send open letters of pardon to Morton and his cousin, I have but done my duty, as we had agreed it should be. But it is for your Majesty to follow or to leave, as you will. I am still the servant.’

She went slowly to him, took up his hands and put them on her shoulders. He let her have the weight. ‘Now I feel your strong hands, Bothwell.’

‘It is you that put them there.’

‘It is where they should be. Servants use not so their hands, but only masters. And good servants soon grow to love the yoke.’ Suddenly she dropped to his feet and embraced his knees. ‘I am yours, I am yours! Do as you will with me and all.’

Open letters were despatched to Lord Morton and Mr. Archie Douglas, that, on certain terms, they and their factions might gain pardon and remission of forfeitures. On the evening of the same day the King left Stirling without any farewells and sped to Glasgow.

Lethington, completely fooled, ran open-mouthed to Bothwell. ‘Here is a discomfiture, my lord! I am dumbfounded. Just when we were sure of him.’

‘Maybe you were too sure. There will be a vent-hole in your body politic.’

‘My lord, I can answer for the entirety of it. Tush, my credit is gone! I am vexed to death.’

‘I see that it puts you out. But courage, man! you will find a way yet.’

‘If I find one now, after this rebuff, it will be owing to your lordship’s good opinion,’ said the guileless Lethington: ‘a sharp spur to me, I do assure you.’

Bothwell took him by the arm. ‘Do you feel so sure,’ he asked him, ‘that our man hath not had a fright?’

‘What fright? Not possible—or I am not up with your lordship.’

Bothwell half-closed his eyes. ‘How do you suppose he would look upon the return of Morton and the Douglases?’

Lethington started, then stared at the floor. ‘Ay,’ he said—‘ay! I had not given that a thought. Man, Lord Bothwell,’ he whispered, ‘yon’s his death-warrant, and he knows it.’

Lord Bothwell clacked his tongue.