The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  She was the Queen and had created a King. Together they would rule. Would he be difficult, grow restive, would she find him tiresome to manage? These little doubts pricked at her exalted mood. Already she, who knew the temper of her people better than he could, or else had a sharper understanding, had to warn him of his sudden bursts of rage against his inferiors, his curtness and insolence to his equals, all rising from his untrained youth and his wretched uncertainty as to his position together with his consciousness that he had not one true friend in Scotland.

  She thought to tell him of this now, but looking up and seeing him there enthroned on the dais with the lions and the Cross of St. Andrew and all the imposing insignia of her splendours about him, and seeing him staring down at her with love in his eyes, she only saw again that lover of the night at Stirling and could not broach serious matters.

  She let him take her up, which he did eagerly, and place her on the throne beside him — there was room enough for two. She slipped her arms round his neck and had a sense of gathering to her all his strength and courage, so that she felt impregnable against the world. Beauty is a dower of itself, she thought; he is like a god, splendour of purple, gold, diamond …

  The summer twilight took on a soft golden quality making strange and unfamiliar to her eyes the shapes of the room. Through the open door she saw the small oratory, glittering in the light of the holy red lamp. She thought of the large Abbey church ruined, stripped, and profaned near the burial-place of her forefathers and she resolved that soon she and her new lord would rebuild it and furnish in great splendour.

  “Shall we not be happy?” she whispered, defiantly. “Say we shall be happy.”

  But he did not give her the reassurances she confidently expected, and what he did say was quite astonishing to her.

  “You should see less now of the Italian. He becomes very pert and everybody detests him.”

  Her spontaneous laughter sounded in the room. Did he not know that this was exactly what was said of him?

  “You found David useful once,” she reminded him, with her head on his breast.

  He frowned, not caring to hear that. Deep in his heart he held uneasily and sincerely the opinion of her expressed by the common people in the streets — scorn for her easy, shameless lightness. Although it had been a rich and splendid experience to possess her he never thought of those stolen delights without hearing in his ears the sneers of the gutter-urchins behind her coach, the shrill mockery of housewives standing arms akimbo in their doorways, the stolid looks of Puritans who saw her go by and made no mark of respect. But she, even now when she was his wife sitting on the throne with him with her arms round his neck, must remind him of Stirling and David the go-between. He said with sullen force:

  “Send the scoundrel back to Italy. Stuff his pockets with gold and send him away.”

  “Because we do not need him now?” she smiled. “Is this your gratitude? And why is he ‘scoundrel’? It was you who first promoted him and now he has served his term—”

  “Let him go, I say.”

  She began to kiss him passionately.

  “Ah, let him go to-night, at least. Is not the world shut out, all the doors are locked, there is no one here, not even Mary Seaton!” She pressed close on him. “To-night you do not need to stand cold on a secret stair against a bolted door, my love.”

  The Queen woke; her bridal night was over. She had not drawn the curtains last night because she liked the moonbeams in the room and now the sun shone in clearly. She looked at the man sleeping heavily beside her, and she sighed, thinking of all the days to come.

  She pulled the curtains from the bed and stared at him keenly, wondering if he would serve her purpose, if she would weary of him. She had never expected to be happy with any man, but she might find one who would know the game she played and appreciate her and give her a fair deal, who could be gay and good-humoured over it all.

  She passed her fine hand curiously over his beautiful fair hair on the pillow, she marked his light lashes like a line of gilding on his flushed face, the down on his unshaven lip and cheeks. How young he was, only a boy! But powerful as a lion, strong as a giant and quite fearless, she believed.

  Could she set this golden Colossus up, striding over Scotland, his feet on the necks of her vassals? Perhaps she might, with the help of David Rizzio. She smiled to herself as she recalled her lord, huge and elegant, on the dais last night, and her smile deepened as she recalled the hours that had followed. He loved her. He loved her. She would be able to do what she would with him.

  It was still very early when the Queen went warily from her room where her husband lay asleep. She dressed and went into the audience chamber where the empty throne stood under the ceiling painted with the insignia of three noble Houses and the initials of her dead husband and. his father.

  She went into the little oratory where it was cold and solitary and the red lamp still burned above the painted alabaster. And there she knelt on the cold white stone and became absorbed in a sense of security and Divine guidance, while outside the city woke to angry comments on the Queen, on her rash and foolish behaviour, on her sudden and reckless marriage.

  Part 2

  THE VIOLET-BROWN BED

  “You have heard what the Devil can do of himself: now you shall hear what he can perform by his instruments, who are many times worse (if it be possible) than he himself, and, to satisfy their revenge and lust, cause more mischief.”

  Democritus Junior

  2: The Violet-Brown Bed

  THERE were hurried, furtive movements in the capital which gradually spread all over Scotland so that the whole land and even the islands seemed alert with fear and suspicion.

  The Queen was married, and to a boy who was unpopular with everyone. She had a foreign favourite who had been a groom. Every lord gathered round him his clansmen and armed, restless and impatient in holds and castles, cities and villages — waiting. All looked to Lord Moray, who had ruled them to their liking, to give a signal, but he, enclosed in his Edinburgh house, made no sign.

  The Queen’s half-brother had suffered so much from the Queen’s marriage that it seemed to him as if he had been through a long and exhausting illness that had left him enfeebled. He had been so absorbed by his own thoughts and anguish that he had hardly heard, although he had appeared to listen, the advice of his followers and counsellors. He had scarcely noticed that Maitland had said nothing but smiled and had gone his way with his young wife, who was a little like the Queen.

  They were both of them retired from affairs. The Queen never sent for them nor wrote to them, and though they still nominally held their offices they had become nonentities where once they had been all-powerful. Like a delicate destruction, fear of the idolatrous Queen lay on the land.

  *

  Lord Moray went to Holyrood and begged an audience of the Queen’s husband. He was received at once in the King’s audience chamber which was directly beneath that of the Queen in the Tower of James IV. Moray thought at one time that he would have never come to this, asking what seemed a favour, offering what seemed friendship to one so despised and detested. But his inner resolution had overcome this squeamishness and it was quite serenely that he faced the young man who had completely reversed his policies, overthrown his power, and taken from him the dearest thing he had under Heaven. He even looked at him with a certain compassion, for he saw with that clarity that suffering sometimes gives to perception, that the boy was not happy.

  Moray always spoke little and chose his words well, and he came directly to the matter of his visit, which he could see had astonished the King.

  “I, sir, thinking well of our circumstances and of the state of this kingdom, have come to offer you a pact. Will you, since you are master, allow me to serve Scotland in my old way?”

  The King was not immediately equal to this calculated candour. He could neither grasp the spirit nor thoroughly understand the words of this offer. He stammered and glanced uneasily fr
om side to side. Moray proceeded slowly, precisely, to explain himself.

  Would he, King Henry, accept his, Lord Moray’s services? Would he deal with him in a spirit of frankness and loyalty, accepting a certain amount of toleration for the Papists, but keeping the English Alliance and the supremacy of the Puritans? Would he be guided by the experience, the knowledge of the older man, would he retain the services of Maitland and Morton, two men so different and each in his way, perhaps, unacceptable to the King, but indispensable to Scotland?

  Moray said Scotland again and again, but when he used that word he meant the Queen.

  Henry Stewart listened, at last understood, and had an impulse of gratitude and desire to accept. He was very glad to be King, but he had no desire for the burdens of government. Nothing would induce him to go to the councils or interest himself in political affairs, and he reflected that if he could get some one like Moray to do all these matters for him and leave him the credit it would be just as well. But he checked these impulses. He reminded himself that he must not trust anyone; least of all must he trust Moray, who had always been his enemy and no doubt now hated him keenly.

  Then, Moray was a heretic, and he had pledged himself to the Queen to support her in restoring the Roman Catholics, and he was known to be a friend, perhaps on the payroll, of the English Queen and Henry was pledged against England. With his naturally candid mind poisoned by these reflections, he stood sullenly, his hands thrust on the hip of his doublet, and stared at the ground, so that Moray’s anger rose at the ungraciousness of one whom he had condescended to flatter.

  “Sir, I am obliged to you,” said Henry Stewart at last, in that slurred voice and with that English accent that the Scots had found so exasperating, “but it seems to me if I am a king I must rule for myself.”

  Nothing could have been more absurd than these ill-chosen words. Moray gave his ugly smile; the young King saw it and flushed miserably.

  “I am led by none,” he cried; “I am master of my house, I suppose? I need no counsellors nor advisers I—” Encouraging himself with bold words, for the older man secretly overawed him, he bragged: “Your discontents are well known, Lord Moray. Look to it that they do not border on treason.”

  “Treason to whom?” asked Moray softly. “There is no man whom I acknowledge as King.”

  “I speak for the Queen — she will not be ruled.”

  “By any save yourself, I suppose, sir,” added Moray suavely. “Well, I see how matters stand. I thought we might come to some understanding. Before God,” he added with a fervency that caused the youth to start, “I had but one desire in my mind when I came here and that was to save the Queen.”

  “To save the Queen? From what?”

  “Perhaps you know,” said Moray, moving towards the door. “Indeed, sir, it is hardly a matter that you or I can put into words. If you had accepted of my friendship and I had stayed, I might have done it.”

  “If you had stayed, Lord Moray? Do you mean to leave Edinburgh?”

  “I can scarcely hang at your doors to be discarded like a lackey whose term of service is past,” said Moray smiling with the easiness of one too great to take offence. “Sir, you will not take my advice and yet you will find that none other will counsel you so surely.”

  Bewildered, distracted, changing from this emotion to that from hour to hour, the unhappy young man exclaimed:

  “Tell me, Lord Moray, tell me what I am to do, for indeed I often do not know myself!”

  Moray looked away so that the other might not be embarrassed by this confession of weakness.

  “What can I tell you, sir? You must take me in all or in nothing. I’ll tell you this — look out for the Italian. You call yourself the King, at least you are the Queen’s husband — if you have any manhood left remove the Italian.” Henry Stewart turned away peevishly and stood rigid against the wall, his face bent against the tapestry of unicorns and playing boys which his weight dragged tight above his bright hair; his broad shoulders heaved slightly, there was something uncouth in his shape, distorted by the fashionable padded garments. Gazing at this unspeakable misery, Moray felt healed. His own sickening jealousy which afflicted him with physical nausea disappeared. “So that’s it! I can meddle with him no more.”

  The King’s bastard took his leave and softly descended the newel stairway that he had often run up in his father’s time when he was a child with lesson books under his arm. He walked across the park where all the trees were yellow, and he thought of the hare that he had seen there, peering through the mist. How inexplicable was the evil in one who seemed the quintessence of beauty!

  In his house Morton was awaiting him, sitting stiffly, his podgy hands on his black-clad knees, his worn doublet split at the seams, unbuttoned over his bulging stomach because of the heat.

  Moray looked at the man keenly. He found comfort in knowing that such instruments were ready to his hand.

  “There is nothing to be done with the boy, nothing. He’ll help you to get rid of the Italian — that must be done quite soon, unless—”

  Morton nodded, and sniggered one word with relish: “Cuckold, eh?”

  “Oh, she must go!” cried Moray impetuously, “she must go!”

  *

  That evening the Queen learned that her brother and many of his followers had left Edinburgh. She summoned them to return immediately or to hold themselves as rebels.

  She sent for Sir William Maitland and commanded him to come to her in the Exchequer House where she was casting up her accounts which she did every year at this time with her secretary. “For she had a mind,” she said in her message, “to open her heart to him,” and on a beautiful purple summer evening Sir William waited on the Queen. He had long been estranged from the court.

  The fading day had the sweetness of high summer, the parlour in the summer-house was drenched with sunshine. The Queen sat in the window and watched the golden leaves that half hid the sky making a shifting pattern as the hot breeze fanned them to and fro.

  She was alone but for Florestan, the monkey, asleep on the borders of her skirt, but through a half-open door she could see her secretaries at work — the two Italians and the Frenchman who had been in the service of her uncle, the Cardinal, busy with their books and ledgers.

  As soon as Sir William Maitland had entered the Queen’s presence his strained glance took in that distant scene and he smiled good-humouredly. He was still the Queen’s Secretary of State, though since her marriage he had had little work to do.

  Why had she sent for him? He was pleased but not flattered at the summons.

  The Secretary, perhaps among all the men who had something to do with the Queen, knew exactly how she regarded him. He could almost be sure what she was going to say — no doubt she wished to sound him as to the intentions of Moray, Morton, and himself. She considered herself very adroit and subtle in these matters and it pleased him to watch her spread her wiles, like it pleased him to watch a peacock spread his tail. That her caprice or fancy might ruin him, already had, perhaps, ruined him, did not greatly affect him. His whole life was in intellectual activity, he played the game for the sake of the game purely, he cared little for the stakes.

  The Queen looked at him as he came in and made his reverence and then, as he returned her gaze, her eyes shifted; they were never steady for long.

  “Are you come to scold me?” she asked.

  At which the Secretary replied simply that he had come because he had been sent for, and waited for her to speak.

  “Oh,” replied the Queen, with an air, candid, almost timid. “We have always been open with each other, you and I, Sir William, we understood each other from the first. You were my mother’s faithful servant.”

  Sir William smiled in silence. She knew how often he had betrayed Mary of Guise, as he swung from this side to that as his temper moved him, caring only to work out his own schemes to the end he had appointed for them.

  She was silent for a moment breathing deeply as if she
drank in the sunshine, but he knew that she was wondering what course to take with him. All her tricks amused him, as did the darting of his cat after a ball of silk. She decided on a mock frankness, and said directly: “The Earl of Moray has left Edinburgh.”

  “Ay, madame, to raise a rebellion.”

  “And the Earl of Morton?” she asked.

  “He is still Lord High Chancellor, madame, as I am Secretary of State.”

  “Do not either of you, Sir William, follow the Earl of Moray?”

  “Madame, no.”

  “Why?”

  “Need I answer that, madame, and how shall you be satisfied with any answer that I might make?”

  “Knowing that you never tell the truth?”

  “Knowing that there is no need for me to do so. Besides, your own wit shall give you the reply.”

  “It is this, then,” said the Queen. “The Earl of Morton and you and many others besides who fawned on Moray when he was here, remain with me. Because you think that after all I am the Queen and that if I raise my standard, more will rally to that than will follow the Earl of Moray, who is, after all, but my bastard brother.”

  “That answer is as good as another,” replied Sir William, indifferently. “But we remain, madame, we remain! We are in your service and you must give your orders.”

  He crossed the room deliberately, and shut the door that opened into the counting-house where the two Italians worked.

  “Why did Moray go?” insisted the Queen. “You are his closest friend, tell me that. I took nothing from him, I offered him no affront.”

  “The man is squeamish,” replied Sir William, “and he does not like to see the maggots deflower the apricot; his stomach turns when he sees vermin in a lady’s chamber.” She understood him at once, he saw, and seemed more interested than offended. Maitland continued to expound his theme for it always pleased him to put into words his careful, shrewd opinions of his fellow-men, the result of observation.