The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  With her resolute and animated air she took pleasure in the fresh blue day, in the red-tiled houses, the eager faces of children pressed at the windows. The rancour of the crowd did not affect her at all, as she proceeded slowly towards Holyrood Abbey.

  The four Maries who followed her were alarmed by this atmosphere of dislike, and Mary Beaton edged her white horse close to that of the Queen and whispered with a smile on her lips as if she uttered some triviality:

  “Madame, take notice of the temper of the people. They say many evil words. Some of them look as if they held us in utter contempt.”

  “These are rogues and churls,” said the Queen, good-humouredly; “it matters not what such boors think or say. They are the disciples of John Knox, my Mary. See what joyless, crude creatures he makes of them!”

  They were approaching the forecourt of Holyrood House, and there the little escort of armed men had to put back the people who clustered round the gates. The Queen rode through the press with a good-natured smile. As she passed, one man, crippled and diseased, turned towards her filmed, half-blinded eyes and muttered an incoherent curse. The Queen made the sign of the Cross, a swift and stately gesture, as if she would avert a passing evil.

  *

  Moray, Sir William Maitland, and the Earl of Morton stood at the great entrance of Holyrood as the Queen came up with the sick man in the litter.

  Moray lived in a house that adjoined the palace gardens. He had been there with his two advisers when he had heard that the Queen, in broad daylight, was bringing Lennox’s son to her residence and he had come at once to intercept and to challenge her folly. He stood rigid, erect in his shabby black clothes with the brilliant Jewel of the Thistle rising a little on his broad breast, his underlip dragged down, eyes almost invisible between the puffy lids, the black, worn bonnet twisted in his hands.

  Maitland, elegant, fastidiously attired, bare-headed, stood beside him with an air that was at once humble and composed, watchful and alert. He had had little business to do lately for the Queen, who deliberately set him aside, using instead the services of David Rizzio, who now had nearly all her correspondence in his hands.

  Sir William Maitland bowed to the Queen. He admired her very much, for her gallantry, her kindly air, the warmth of her smile, for her courage in thus proclaiming before the whole of Edinburgh her reckless passion and her rash intentions.

  He looked at Mary Fleming, whom he was to marry in a few days; she had said that they would not marry until the Queen did so. No doubt that had all been arranged, for Mary Fleming had made no difficulty about her own wedding. He looked at her wondering what fate he was like to bring her in the future.

  He had had so little business to do of late that there had been more time to devote to her and he had got to know her better. Her great attraction for him lay in the fact that she was something like the Queen. Having lived with her for so long she had caught a little of her gestures, her intonation. She spoke French with the same pretty accent, did her hair in the same fashion. She read the same books, sang the same songs, had the same choice in colours and embroidery. For these things Sir William Maitland was glad to marry Mary Fleming.

  Behind him stood the Earl of Morton, who looked like a stout tradesman. He had red common features, a rough-cut scarlet beard, straggling, patchy hair. His attire was in the most exaggerated style of that puritanical simplicity affected by the followers of John Knox — black coat, breeches and hose, the high-crowned hat, white linen band and cuffs, soiled and crumpled. The man’s eyes shone with a powerful intelligence. In his manners, in his conversation, in his private life, he was lewd. There was no crime of which he had not been accused, there was no treachery of which he was not capable, yet he was one of the godly, and the Protestants followed him anywhere.

  The Queen detested the man, and she shot him a cold glance as she dismounted and came slowly up the shallow steps. She wondered how Moray and Maitland could endure such a detestable creature in their close counsel.

  She did not salute her half-brother, or ask him into the palace, but stepped aside and appeared to be engrossed in the carrying of the sick man. She gave directions to the bearers and the physicians, and the litter was slowly and with difficulty borne up the steps and through the wide open door. She smiled at the four Maries and the French women and Lennox, and went into the shadows of Holyrood House. Then she smiled again directly at the two young Italians who, neat, graceful, with bent heads but shooting insolent glances of triumph out of their eyes at Moray and his advisers, followed her into the palace.

  There the Queen pulled off one of her gauntlets and put her bare hand on her half-brother’s sleeve and laughed.

  “Why do you wait for me here and with such a scowl? How sad and despondent you look, sweet James! And you, Sir William! You must not overcast your nuptials with such downcast looks. Go within and talk to Mary Fleming.”

  “I have had over much time of late, madame,” replied the Secretary, “to talk to Mary Fleming. You have relieved me of so many duties that my leisure has been too long.”

  He smiled as he spoke and there was no malice in his words, only, the Queen thought, rather a compassion and a gentle warning.

  She raised her brows and sighed. How little they understood, all three of them, that she had determined to go on and meet her destiny heedless of either prudence or fear.

  “Madame,” whispered Moray, “this goes too far. How will you undo what you have done to-day in bringing Lennox’s son before all Edinburgh to your palace?”

  “Ay, to my palace and to my chambers,” replied the Queen smoothly. “He will lie next to me — there is but a corridor between — and I shall nurse him. He is my choice, James. Tell the council so, get their consent. Ay, and I would have yours, brother.” She used this last word with pointed meaning.

  Morton opened his mouth showing his decaying teeth; his eyes glittered from one to the other of the two men.

  “Your Majesty’s Grace means to marry Henry Stewart?”

  “Oh, fie, sir!” said the Queen, “that is no tone in which to question a gentlewoman of so tender an affair.”

  She turned into the palace entrance as unconcerned as if they had been talking of trivial matters, and Moray followed her into the darkness of the porch.

  “If you make this marriage—” he began.

  She turned on him with a swiftness which reminded him of the pounce of a hawk on its prey, a clean swoop in mid-air.

  “Yes? If I make this marriage?” she asked.

  “I’ll split your kingdom for you!” he replied, goaded by her defiance. “I’ll break your world into pieces about your feet.”

  The Queen gazed at him intensely. Then she smiled slowly, breathing in an excited fashion as if his definite defiance pleased her.

  “Go and make your plans and I shall make mine,” she said.

  He sank on to his knees, moved by custom, prudence, and sincere remorse into this instant expiation of his fury.

  “May God forgive me, may Your Grace forgive me! What I said was treason.”

  “Treason that you long meditated,” replied the Queen, still smiling, “and long have I known it.”

  She made no attempt to raise him from his knees. She did not accept his immediate and profound contrition.

  “David,” she called over her shoulder, and the proud Moray, as if he had been touched by a lash, sprang to his feet to see that the sly Italian with triumph in his very place, had been lurking in the shadows, unseen.

  “The rat! The filthy vermin!” thought Moray, furiously, very pace, had been lurking in the shadows, unseen.

  The Queen smiled at David in a friendly understanding way. With humble reverence that was yet familiar, the Italian followed her into the palace, like a pampered and protected pet.

  Moray turned slowly to where his two advisers waited on the steps. Life to him was stale and arid. He was an ambitious man and his entire hopes, his greatness, hung in the balance of events which he judged to be immediat
e. He was an avaricious man with vast estates and huge fortunes which might be snatched from him on the next throw of the dice. He was a man who loved his country after his own fashion, and his country might, in his judgment, soon be cast into tumult and ruin.

  Yet it was neither his greatness nor his wealth nor his country that occupied him as he walked silently between his two friends, through the forecourt where the Lennox men gathered in groups stared, whispered, and nudged as much as they dare at the Queen’s half-brother, the enemy of the Earl, their master.

  Moray was considering a greater loss than that of any material thing — that of the Queen herself, the Queen smirched and tainted and perhaps cast down. Maitland knew his thoughts and echoed them:

  “If she marries that boy she is lost to us.”

  His voice was more wistful than menacing, but Morton nodded.

  “She is lost to herself, to Scotland, to all,” he said. He glanced towards the gates where the crowd still hung about, though now and then dispersed by the men-at-arms. They were talking of the Queen, those people. They could not get the Queen out of their minds, the strange things she did, the high ways she had, her vanity and her brightness, her rich fashions which made her appear like a creature of another sphere.

  They whispered of witchery and enchantments, there was not one of them who had not some queer tale to tell of warning raps at night, of hands on the shutter, a voice in the comer, the air full of devils. One who had come in from the hills had seen a troop of ghostly warriors sweep down a deserted glen; another a fairy horseman riding the waters of a lake; a third, going through the forest had stared up at a rustling to see the summer boughs pulled apart and the devil’s face peering out, mumbling prophecies of woe. Satan, the prince of witches, was abroad and looking for sacrifices.

  They accused the Queen of cruelty. There were those there who could remember how heretics had been burnt on the day that Mary of Guise had married King James. There were those who had heard tales of what had happened in France when she had reigned there. Moray noted the people and their mood. He remarked, staring directly at Morton: “In anything I do I should have a large backing.”

  Morton said: “There is nothing to be feared.”

  But Maitland added: “There is no one to be feared but Bothwell and Huntly.”

  “She does not,” answered Moray, very bitterly, “forgive me that. She would have liked Bothwell recalled, I think I can guess why. To cast him in my face, perhaps, if she needs another protector besides that boy. Bothwell did not come to answer his challenge, and I—” Moray gave one of his rare laughs which transformed his features into a slightly ferocious expression and gave his countenance a wolf-like cast.

  Maitland smiled also, for he knew that Bothwell had not come to Edinburgh because Moray had got together six thousand men to meet him. Moray checked his laugh instantly and put his finger on his lips.

  “We know where we are, and in a little while we shall know how to act. We might very well sit aside and take our ease and rest in quietness. We busybodies waste our time. What impels us to go on to make a rope of sand?”

  *

  The Queen sat by Henry Stewart’s bed. The physicians had done all they could for him with their curious devices; there was nothing but to let the ebb and flow of the fever take its course.

  In uncertainty and distress, Lennox waited in the outer chamber. He had had sour news from England — his wife, Margaret Lennox, of Tudor blood, had been thrown into prison by Elizabeth because her husband and son had refused to return from Edinburgh. Lennox felt that he had lost the favour of the Queen of England, which might be worth a great deal more to him than the favour of the Queen of Scots, yet he believed he had her securely when he had used his son’s key and entered her private apartment and found her waiting for a lover. Surely she would not dare defy him after that, for he knew too much.

  When he had challenged her to her face with the marriage at Stirling she had not denied it. When he had told her that for her own reputation and safety she had better have a public marriage she had not denied that either.

  With her gallant, gay, and good-humoured air she had come down to his house and fetched his son away and installed him at Holyrood as if he were the King: but still Lennox was not satisfied. The woman was so difficult to reach, so much of what she did was incredible. Then he greatly misliked, distrusted and feared the young Italian who seemed ever at her elbow with his excuses of letters or lutes or books and his whispered advice.

  Lennox knew that he had no friends in Scotland but his own men, that the feeling against him was gathering daily, stirred up by his great enemy, Moray, and that man’s two advisers, Morton and Maitland. Most of the other Lords were against him too, treating him as a Papist and a pretender to the Crown. His money was nearly all spent, and what had he to rely on except this boy, who had fallen sick on his hands?

  He did not believe in the Queen’s serenity. He thought she must, perforce, appear much easier than she was, and in this he was right.

  The Queen was true to her long training, begun when she was a child and had first stepped into France, and she was true to her courage, which she had inherited from many kings and from the fearless House of Guise. But in her mind and soul she was much troubled, as she sat by the side of the pale youth, and her thoughts were uneasy.

  She had another reason than compassion for nursing him herself. She did not know what secrets of hers he might, unwary, mutter in his delirium; already she had learnt from his mumbled words, now whispered into his pillow, now half-shouted as he started up in his bed, the reason of his disorder.

  One night, when he had come up the secret way through the tower to her apartments, the way that she had shown him, to the door to which she had given him the key, he had found it bolted and heard Mary Seaton’s voice telling him once more that the Queen would not see him, that the Queen was weary and slept. Then he had gone away, not even caring to find his usual companions, Antony Standens, nor seeking his chamber-page, John Taylor, but going right away by himself down to a tavern in the Canongate, and there he had drank and drank of any wine or spirit they could give him. Finally, when the reckoning came, he found he had no money in his pocket, and had left behind him his cloak in payment.

  After that, with his brain on fire and his blood overheated, with all his mind and senses a whirl of wretchedness and desire, he had turned back to Holyrood once more, swearing that this time she must let him in. But when he had reached the garden his strength had all gone and he had fallen down under one of the trees that grew by the ruined part of the great church which had been stripped and half destroyed in the last invasion of the English. And there he had lain through a long cloudy night with the rain beating on his thin silk clothes, without cloak or hat, weeping and cursing until, when the dawn came, he was light-headed and half delirious and had only the sense left to drag himself back to his father’s lodgings.

  *

  The Queen watched him and struggled with her own feelings. Would she be relieved or sorry if he died from this fit of fever? If he were dead he would be gone, like a song that has been sung, a poem that has been read, a flower that has been plucked, like a rainbow on a summer day.

  She mused over that. Never had she had such a strong fancy for any man, but this was so pitiful and transient that it seemed only to exist when he actually held her in his arms, caressed her, and pressed his lips to her neck, or gazed down into her eyes or muttered in clumsy fashion rash endearments.

  Yes, in those moments, he had meant much to her. She had felt exalted and enthusiastic, ready to set him up as her hero and champion and to dare the world by his side. But now, as he lay mumbling in the fever, she thought of all the cares and troubles involved in this intimacy and she almost wished that he might, without further pain or bother, die and leave her free.

  Poor youth! She slowly waved to and fro a fan of white feathers to keep the air stirring round his hot forehead. She glanced approvingly at his great length in the bed, at the
width of his shoulders, at the grace, even in this distress, of his movements, at the tarnished beauty of his features and hands. In his armour, now, on a great warrior horse, would he not make a figure to fright the sour Scots?

  She laughed, and though the sound was very gentle it seemed to rouse him. He sat up suddenly, his shirt falling open on his bare chest that glistened with sweat. She looked at him curiously, waiting for him to speak, then she saw that he did not know she was there.

  “I cannot write French,” he said rapidly, “they never taught me that. I do not know how to compose a letter — only a few words, you understand, not a letter like that. I tell you I should not dare; this is not a common girl but a great princess. Not that way, that is to my own room. There was a filthy old witch made me an ugly prophecy” he began to fumble at his bare throat.

  “Deliver us from evil,” he whispered, “deliver us from evil, from violent fairies and strutting apes, from cankers that need harsh plasters.”

  The Queen leant between the curtains of the bed.

  “Henry,” she whispered in an insinuating tone, “look! look at me. I am here, waiting on you. You are in the palace, you are in my apartment!”

  He stared at her and a slow look of comprehension came into his eyes. He sighed, and fell back on the pillows and she leant over him, pursuing a fragment of truth.

  “Tell me — you did not write that French letter at Stirling?”

  He shook his head stupidly.

  “Who brought you there that night?”

  His eyes, hot and confused stared at her with a pathetic sullenness, with the look of a child caught in wrongdoing and unrepentant.