Chapter IV: She Looks Back Once

Just at this point in the story Des-Essars confesses to the desire having been hot within him to assassinate the Earl of Bothwell; and writing it down when the opportunity had come and was gone, he may well say, ‘What would have been the pain and loss of dear blood, had I done it, in comparison to present anguish?’ He is, however, forced to admit that he did not meditate so violent a deed for the sake of avoiding future disaster, but rather to make the present more tolerable. It was his lot to be much with the Queen and her chosen lover; he owns that he found the constant fret of their intercourse almost impossible to be borne. ‘I declare before God and the angels,’ he says, ‘that her dreadful lavishing of herself during these weeks of waste and desire caused my heart to bleed. She stripped herself bare of every grace of mind, spirit, and person, and strewed it in his way, heaping one upon another until he seemed to be wading knee-deep in her charms. Nay, but he wallowed in them like a brute-beast, unrecognising and unthankful—a state of affairs unparalleled since Galahad (who was a good knight) lay abed and was nourished upon the blood of a king’s virgin daughter. How different this knight from that, let these pages declare; and my mistress’s high mind, how similar to that spending martyr’s. For it is most certain that all her acts towards the Lord Bothwell were moved by magnanimity. Stripping herself nobly, she stood the more noble for her nakedness. She suffered horribly: his the horrible sin. Love—in the great manner of it—should be a conflict of generosity; either lover should be emulous of pain and loss. But here she gave and this accursed butcher took; she spent and he got.

‘I saw them together at their various houses of sojourn during this winter: at Drymen in Perth, a house of my Lord Drummond’s; at Tullibardine, at Callander, and again in Edinburgh. Little joy had they of each other, God wot! There are two kinds of lovers’ joys, as I think—the mellow and the sharp. The one is rooted in the heart and the other in the sense, but both alike need leisure of mind if they are to bear fruit; for in the contemplation of our happiness lies the greatest happiness of all. Now, these two were never at rest; they could never look upon each other and let the eyes dwell there with the thought, _My Beloved is mine and I am his, and as it is now so it shall be._ No, but they looked beyond each other through a tangle of sin and error, searching until their eyeballs ached if haply they might discover a gleam beyond of that windless garden of the Hesperides wherein was put their hope. Fond searching, fond hope! they could never win the garden. Her desires were boundless, unappeasable, and so were his; for she sought to be perfect slave and he to be absolute master. And how was she to be his servant, who was born a queen? and how he the master he sought to be, when no empire the world ever saw would have contented him? But the greatest bar of severance between them was this: there was no community of interest possible between them. For, to her, this Bothwell was the only End; and to him this fair sweet Queen was only a Means. This is a pregnant oracle of mine, worth your travail. Perpend it, you who read.’

Des-Essars did not believe that Lord Bothwell loved the Queen. He had been often at Hermitage, you must remember, and seen the Earl and Countess together. My lord was not regardful of bystanders when he chose to fondle his handsome wife. When the two were separated, as now they were, the observant young man was aware that they wrote frequently to each other: French Paris was for ever coming and going between Liddesdale and his master’s lodging, wherever that might chance to be. He was certain, too, that the Queen knew it. ‘Paris used to deliver to my lord his wife’s letters, and he read them in the Queen’s very presence, with scarce a “By your leave, ma’am”; and at such times I have seen her Majesty pace about the garden in great misery, pull at the rowan berries until she scattered them, pluck at the branches of trees and send the dry leaves flying; and once—as I shall never forget—she thrust her hand and bare arm into a thicket of nettles, and when she drew it out it was all red to the elbow, with sore white blotches upon it where the poison had boiled the blood. Her arm went stiff afterwards, but she never let him know the reason.’

* * * * *

After the christening, about Christmas-time, the Earl of Morton and his friends came home to Scotland, were introduced into the Queen’s presence by the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly, and upon submission (and their knees) restored to their former estates. She had nothing to say to them, but sat like one entranced, looking fixedly at the floor while Bothwell made his speech, and Morton after him, in his bluff way, expressed his contrition and desire to be of service in the future. Mr. Archie Douglas, one of a crowd of repentant rebels, contented himself with cheering. ‘God save your Majesty!’ was his cry, and ‘Confusion to all your enemies!’ whereupon my Lord Morton bethought him of the real occasion of his recall, and added to his speech a few words more.

‘Oh, ay!’ he said: ‘by our fruits you shall judge us, madam, whether we be gratefully replanted in this dear soil or no. Try us, madam, upon whomsoever hath aggrieved you, or endangered your throne, or the thrones of them that are to follow you—try us, I say, and see whether our appetites to serve you are not whetted by our long absence.’

She had started and looked hastily at Bothwell,—evidently she was frightened. Her lips moved for some time before any sound came forth from them, but presently she said that she should not fail to call for service in the field when she required it. ‘But the realm is now at peace,’ she added, ‘and I hope will remain so.’

Morton said: ‘Amen to that. Yet be prepared, madam, as the sailors are, when they lie becalmed upon a sea like oil, but see a brown haze hang where sky and water meet. And, madam, trust yourself to them that are weatherwise in this country.’

She stammered. ‘I know not what you need fear for me—I hardly understand. I am very well served—very well advised—but I thank you for your friendly warning....’ She forced herself to speak, but could not make a coherent sentence. Bothwell intervened, and presently took away his new friends.

Lord Morton went to the Douglas house of Whittingehame, a leafy place in Haddington, not far from the sea. Thither in the first days of January repaired Bothwell and Huntly, while the Queen stayed in Edinburgh, friendless, except for Des-Essars and Mary Seton. She passed her days like one in a dream, speaking seldom, kneeling at altars but not praying, negligent of her surroundings, sometimes of her person, only alert when a messenger might be looked for with a letter. Often found in tears, either she could not or she would not account for them. One day she bade Des-Essars go with her letter-carriers to Whittingehame. ‘What would you have me do there, madam?’ he asked.

She played drearily with his sword-strap. ‘Do? What do spies in general? See—judge for yourself—look through my eyes if you can.’

He turned to go, and she caught at his arm. ‘Baptist,’ she said, ‘I am in the dark, and horribly afraid. Look you, I know not what they are doing there together. They whisper and wink and nod at each other; they say little and mean much. I cannot divine what they intend—or what they will presently ask me to do. I saw Archie Douglas grin like a wolf that day he was here—I know not what he grinned at. They tell me nothing—nothing! Do not suppose but that I trust my lord; but, Baptist, find out something. I need courage.’ She lay back exhausted, and when he came to her waved him off, whispering that he was to be quick and go.

He departed, reached Whittingehame within the day, saw what he could—which was precisely nothing, for Lord Bothwell was away and Lord Morton not visible—and on his road home again heard that the King lay dangerously ill at Glasgow, of smallpox or worse. He took that news in his pocket, and none that he could have gleaned from the whispers of Whittingehame could have had effect so surprising. For the first time for many a month he saw his Queen sane, sweet, crying woman. She fell on her knees, hiding her face in his sleeve, and gave thanks to God. When she rose up and went back to her chair he saw the tears in her eyes. She asked him no further of Bothwell and Morton at their secrets, or of Archie’s grins. When he came and knelt before her she took his face in her hands and kissed it. ‘God hath saved me, my dear, and by you,’ she said. ‘He hath heard my prayers. I am sure now that I shall find mercy. O fortunate messenger! O happy soul, whom thou hast redeemed!’

‘Madam,’ he said eagerly, seeing now why she was so thankful, ‘let me go to Glasgow. You cannot otherwise be sure of this report. The King may be ill, and yet not mortally. Let us be sure before we give thanks.’

She was crying freely. ‘I have not deserved so great a mercy, God knoweth. I have been near to deadly sin. Yes, yes—go, Baptist. Go at once, and return with speed.’ It was settled that he should take with him her physician and a message of excuse that business kept her from him. He went to prepare himself; she to write to Bothwell a brave and hopeful letter concerning this streak of blue in her storm-packed sky. Before dark Des-Essars was away on a fresh horse.

* * * * *

Up from Whittingehame in a day or two came Mr. Secretary Lethington, very busy; and had private speech with the Queen, reporting the councils of her friends down there. She listened idly to his urgings of this and that. What interest had she now in plots woven under yew trees or in panelled chambers, when high Heaven itself had declared for her quarrel? Did Archie grin like a wolf, Morton flush and handle his dagger? Let them—let them! An angel with a flaming sword stood on the house-roof at Glasgow, and their little rages were nought.

At the end of his circuitous oration—‘Well, have you ended?’ she asked him.

‘Madam, I have no more to say.’

She took a scrap of paper and scribbled on it with a pen. ‘Read that, if you please, and take it with you back again.’

‘_Show to the Earl of Morton_,’ he read, ‘_that the Queen will hear no speech of the matter arranged with him_.’

Bothwell laughed to see the dropped jaws, aghast at this rebuff. But she, confident in the help of high Heaven—which had plucked her, as she said, from the brink of the pit—had recovered all her audacity. And so she waited, almost happy again, for the return of her messenger.

* * * * *

Des-Essars was gone for more than a week; it was not until the ninth day from his departure that he brought back his report. I know not what she had expected—some miraculous dealing or another by which God was to signify that she was set free to follow her desires; but whatever it was, the young Brabanter could not end her suspense. So far as the doctors could judge, the King’s illness might be sweated out of him: they were trying that when he left. The fever must run its course; no one could say that it must needs end fatally. Her Majesty was to hope, said the doctors; and so said Des-Essars, giving the word a twist round. To hope! She was worn thin with hoping.

The King was horrible, he told her, and wore a taffeta mask. He was peevish, but not furious; had not enough strength left him for that. He lay and snapped at all who came near him, harmlessly, like a snake robbed of its fang. The light hurt his eyes, so he lay in the dark; but, being extremely curious about himself, he had a candle burning constantly beside him, and a hand-glass on the bed, in which he was always looking at his face: a sign of morbid affection of the brain, the doctors considered. The Queen said carelessly, ‘Why, what else hath he ever cared for in life but his own person?’

She asked what he had replied to her message of excuse. Des-Essars, who had not been allowed to talk with him, and had only seen what he did see when the sick man slept, had delivered it by Standen. Through Standen also came the answer. The King’s words were, ‘This much you shall say to the Queen: that I wish Stirling were Jedburgh, and Glasgow the Hermitage, and I the Earl of Bothwell as I lie here; and then I doubt not but she would be quickly with me undesired.’

She flushed, but not with shame. ‘Doth he think me at Stirling? He is out there; but otherwise, my dear, he is right enough.’ She turned away with a sigh. ‘Well, what can I do but wait?’ She was not allowed to wait long.

Bothwell came to see her, and stayed till near midnight in secret talk. It was wild and snowy, much like that night, as Des-Essars remembered, in which Davy had been slain, near a year ago; one of those nights when the mind, unhappy and querulous, calls up every nerve to the extreme point of tension. The young man, apprehensive of any and every evil, kept the watch. He heard the door shut, Bothwell’s step in the corridor; he flew to the antechamber, hoping that she might send for him. But though he waited there an hour or more in miserable suspense, neither daring to show himself nor to leave the place, he heard nothing. Between two and three o’clock in the morning he fell asleep over the table, wrapped in his cloak. As once before, she came in, a candle in her hand, and awoke him by touching his head.

He sprang up, broad awake in an instant; he saw her. ‘Oh, your face!’ he cried out. ‘Haunted! haunted!’ It was a face all grey, and as still as marble save for the looming eyes.

‘You sleep,’ she said, ‘but I keep vigil. Bid me good-bye. I am going away.’

He said, ‘Where you go, I go. I dare not leave you as now you are.’

She was in a stare. ‘I am going to the King.’

‘To the King!’ It horrified him. ‘You—alone?’

‘I am sent: I must go.’

‘I go with you.’

She shook her head. ‘You cannot. What I do I must do myself. Now bid me good speed upon my journey.’

He folded his arms. ‘I think I will not. I think the best wish I could make for you would be that you should die.’

This she did not deny; but said she: ‘Vain wishing! I know that I shall not die until my lord has made me his. After that it had better be soon.’

He asked her, with trembling voice, what she wanted with the King; for he verily thought that she was going there for one dreadful purpose. She avoided the question. The King had been asking for her, she said, and it was her duty to obey him. ‘He is mending fast, they tell me; and with his health his strength will return. I had rather’—she said it with a sick shudder—‘I had rather see him before he is able to move.’

‘Madam,’ urged the young man, much agitated, ‘I entreat you, for the love of Christ! You must not touch him, or allow.... He is one sore—hideous—poisoned through and through. On my knees I beg of you. Nay, before you go you shall kill me.’

She looked beside and beyond him in her set, pinched way; he saw the doom written plain on her face. In an agony, not knowing what he did, he confronted her boldly. ‘I shall prevent you. You shall not go.’

She said, looking at him now with softened eyes: ‘Oh, if it were possible even now that I might be as once I was, even now I would say to thee, my friend, Take me, O true heart, for I would be true like thee! Ah, if it were possible! Ah, if it were possible!’ Her great eyes seemed homes of mournful light; so longingly did she look that, for a moment, he thought he had conquered her. She gave a shake of the head, and when she looked at him again the kindly hue had gone. ‘But it is not possible—and I am a soiled woman, wounded in the side and defiled by my own blood; for my desire is not as thine.’

‘Oh,’ cried he, ‘what are you saying? Do you condemn yourself?’

She shook her head. ‘I neither condemn nor condone: I speak the truth. I ache for my lover; I must work my fingers to the bone for him.’

‘Not while I have mine—to work for you—to sin for you.’

‘You cannot. Your fingers are too tender.’

This angered him. ‘How can you say that, madam? How can you hurt me so? You know that I love you. Is it nothing to you? Less than nothing?’

She said, ‘It is much. Come, you and I will kiss together for the last time.’ She smiled a welcome, held out her arms; sobbing, he put them down and took her in his own instead, and held her close. There for a while she was content to be. But when he began to take more than his due, she gently disengaged herself, having won her object, which was to depart without him. ‘Adieu, dear faithful friend,’ she said—‘pray for me’; and as he knelt before her, she stooped down and lifted up his head by the chin, and kissed him on the forehead, and was gone. After that, she was inaccessible to him, her door denied.

In three days’ time—on the 23rd of January—she started for Glasgow with Lords Livingstone, Herries, and Traquair. Bothwell went part of her way, to where the roads divide. Her last public act had been to allow of the marriage between Fleming and Lethington. ‘And now,’ she said, ‘I shall have but one Mary left, who came hither with four. So endeth our Maids’ Adventure.’ But if I am right, it had ended long before. Now she was but a beast driven by the herdsmen to the market, there to be cheapened by the butcher.

* * * * *

Of his own moving adventure of the night when, for one moment, she assuredly looked back over her shoulder, Des-Essars writes what I consider his most fatuous page. ‘There was,’ he says, ‘a kind of very passion in that close embrace; and I knew, _by the way she returned my kisses_, that she was strongly inclined to me. Indeed, she said as much when she told me that it would have been possible, at an earlier day, for her to love me as she had once loved the King; with ardour, namely, like a fanciful child, in the secret mind, with the body but little concerned in the matter.[7] But it was too late. She owned herself tainted; he had taught her vice. She could be child no more, girl in love no more; alas, no, but a thirsty nymph stung by an evil spirit, ever restless, ever craving, never to be appeased....’

There is more in the same strain, which I say is fatuous. Whether she had a tenderness for him or not—and no doubt she had one—she was not revealing it then. Far from it, she wanted to escape, and this was her readiest way. She was at her old cajolery when she let him embrace and kiss her; and maybe she did kiss back. It is to be observed that she got her way immediately afterwards.

[7] His own report stultifies him here. According to him, she did not say it would have been possible, but oh, that it had been possible.