The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  The King replied with difficulty:

  “He has had more of you than I for two months. How often have I come to your door and been turned away saying you would not or you were sick, while he was within?” Then “Oh!” he said, drawing back; “what is that you have on your lap?”

  “It is Florestan, who was killed in this brutality.”

  “It looks like a child,” said the King staring.

  “It is your good luck it’s not a child — yours!”

  “My child!” he sneered, and went to the window where Lord Ruthven sat on a great chest and asked for God’s sake for a moment of repose and a drink of wine for he was a very sick man and had got up from a bed where he had lain three weeks to be present at this night’s work.

  Lady Argyll, who could scarcely move for fright, went into the little closet and found a decanter of wine, filled a horn cup with it and brought it back to Lord Ruthven. In between his drinking he stared at the Queen, telling her that she should be dutiful to her husband and obey him and not set him down for any favourite. And she, not moving, replied:

  “Well, if he had a hand in it I shall leave him.”

  Lord Ruthven said that a woman might not leave her husband.

  “Sir,” said she, “your wife left you and I might leave my husband.”

  At that Lord Ruthven, glancing on the King, who still leant against the bed, answered:

  “Think, madame, upon the baseness of this man — he was a worthless creature!”

  There was a great sound in the forecourt and the Queen sprang up, thinking it might be a rescue or the Provost who had turned out to see what the uproar was at the palace. But Ruthven, with all his feebleness, was quickly in front of the window and the King had her by the wrist.

  “I’ll go downstairs,” she cried. “I’ll see who holds the great hall.”

  Ruthven answered:

  “Lindsay and his men are down there, no one will get in. And, madame, were you to force yourself on their company—”

  “Why not?” she asked, twisting her wrist in her husband’s fingers and with the other hand holding the dead monkey as if it were a baby to her breast. “Why not? May I not ask help from my city?”

  “There are those who would sooner see you cut in pieces and flung over the Abbey wall,” replied Ruthven.

  “If you have killed David” she began. Thinking of this, and the memory of his shrieks and his eyes as he had crouched in the comer, her lips quivered and she began to cry hysterically. She reminded them of the powerful relatives she had — the King of France and the Princes of the House of Guise. She told them that she was under the protection of the Pope and in the friendship of the King of Spain, “And if any harm comes to me or my child for these outrages, you shall answer to them.”

  Ruthven replied indifferently,

  “Madame, these names are too much for me who am nothing but your humble subject. And as for what I have done to-night, I am answerable to God alone.”

  Then Lady Argyll, whose nerves were strained to breaking-point, cried out to the King:

  “In the name of pity, sir, let go of her hand, she will rub the skin off her wrist struggling. Think of her state.”

  “Who has thought of that?” sighed the Queen. “If I and the child had both perished to-night I believe none of you would have been disappointed.”

  She sat down on the bed, laying the corpse of Florestan on the pillow, and pulling out her kerchief wiped her face, which was damp, and with this gesture took off all the pomades and painting. She looked suddenly pale and haggard and quite different. She pushed off her coif and ran her fingers through her hair and loosened her dress as if she could bear no burden.

  The King looked at her intently with a rising desire. She whispered:

  “Have I no friends? Where is Earl Bothwell and Lord Huntly?”

  Ruthven told her directly.

  “On the tumult first arising they thought themselves too much your friends and escaped out of a window and so are gone. There is no help there, madame, you must satisfy yourself and take what has happened.”

  The Queen looked at the King’s belt and saw an empty dagger sheath there.

  “Where is your dagger?” she asked. — He seemed confused and muttered,

  “I dropped it somewhere, I don’t know.”

  “You have taken your last from me and your farewell,” said the Queen.

  Upon which Lord Ruthven scolded:

  “That were a pity. He is Your Majesty’s husband and you must yield duty each to another. For your honour’s sake, madame, make no quarrel about this man who was an enemy to nobility, a shame to you and a destruction to Your Grace’s company. And remember, madame, that the more Your Grace shows yourself offended, the more the world will judge the worst.”

  All the while the King, leaning on the bed tester, was staring at his wife, and Ruthven, not liking the look of him and remembering how fearful he and his fellows had always been of this young man’s weakness and the woman’s power over him, plucked him by the sleeve and drew him away, reminding him that the commotion in the court continued. It might mean that Bothwell and some of his following had returned or that the Provost would not be pacified. How did they know what friends she had? Argyll, who should have been here with his forces had not yet arrived.

  So they went away and left her alone with Lady Argyll, who was useless with fright, and the dead monkey whose blood was staining the pillow. She got up and walked about the rooms, and found that on every side she was shut in by guards who even filled the corridor, the other side of which slept Mary Seaton and the French girls. She was a prisoner in her own house.

  *

  The Italian’s body, in which were fifty-six wounds, lay on the chest in the porter’s lodge. He had been killed in the Chamber of Presence, the Scots nobles so crowding upon one another to thrust their knives into him that he had been trampled underfoot, his damask gown wrenched from his back, his jewels snatched away, his hose torn from knee to ankle. Unrecognizable, a heap of clotted blood and naked bones, he had been thrown down the stairs, to Lindsay’s men who had kicked him to the porter’s lodge, the King’s dagger stuck between his ribs.

  His face was featureless from blood and dirt, from his split skull the brains oozed on to his tangled hair. The porter grumbled at the mess in his lodgings, but he was glad of the death of the wretched Italian. He fetched a sack to put over the corpse and told the grooms and scullions who were crowding in the doorway with lanterns to see this sight that it was “fitting the rascal should lie there. It was his first bed when he came to Holyrood and one given him then, as now, for charity, an ungrateful, insolent villain.”

  The Queen washed her hands and face. She made an effort to control her weakness, her disgust, anger and fear as she would have made one to overcome her enemies. She kept telling herself she must think of nothing except how to get away, how to escape. Once she could get free of Holyrood she could rally her people round her. Every entrance barred, every way guarded, not even her women were allowed to pass … Her thoughts went round and round this fact till her senses reeled.

  Lady Argyll had gone out several times on to the stairhead and asked some of the men whom she saw coming up and down if the Queen might have her women, but she had been bluntly refused. She entreated the Queen to undress and go to bed and try to rest for the remainder of this fearful night.

  “Madame, you must think of the child. You ought to think of nothing but that.”

  “The child is safe enough, do not fear for that,” replied the Queen. “I am quite calm and resolved, indeed I am. But we must get away from here. Would you have thought Lord Bothwell would have gone? I took him for so brave a man! No one comes! Do they leave us all alone? What did you see when you went out just now?”

  “Only that the house is full of armed men. I saw Lord Ruthven again, looking like death, and Lord Lindsay and Archibald Douglas.”

  “Did you hear anything of David?”

  “No, madame. Nor
dare I ask. I begged one of them to let the midwife pass, I thought at least they could not refuse that. It would have been a chance to get a message out. But he said no, all must wait till my Lord Moray came.”

  “Moray!” breathed the Queen. All the night’s events took on a different aspect. She had not thought of him. “I might have known these brutes were only tools,” she said fearfully, then controlled herself. “Moray.”

  “Yes, madame. They think he comes to-night or tomorrow morning with my Lord Argyll.”

  “They must have been lurking very close, waiting for this signal. But you will be glad to see your husband, again,” said the Queen faintly.

  “Madame! Not if he comes on this bloody business. I fear it is a revolt.”

  “My brother Moray is a man of peace,” said the Queen, still with that thin smile on her colourless lips. “He is never present when these ugly deeds are done. Do you not remark that? But he may have directed it from afar.”

  “He will surely see you, madame, as soon as he arrives. You will be able to arrange something with him.”

  “He is not my best hope.”

  “There is no other, madame.”

  “Yes. There is my husband.” She spoke these words with such bitterness and contempt that the woman who listened winced. “Can you go down softly and find him or send him a message and say I wish to see him?” She drew the blood-red wedding-ring off her finger and gave it to her companion. “Show him this, hold it in the palm of your hand then open the fingers and let him see it. Perhaps it is true that he did not know what they intended. If David is dead, maybe his jealousy is spent and he will come. Yes, lately I have denied him. Did you note how he looked at me?”

  Lady Argyll stared at her, horrified.

  “You want him to come to you to-night?”

  “Yes.” With a deliberate smile at her own degradation, she said: “Tell him that I will lie with him to-night.”

  *

  The Queen went to the tall mirror she had brought with her from France and looked at her newly washed face. It was quite colourless, and her hair straggled on to her shoulders and hung in wet rings on her high forehead.

  Her dress was all dishevelled, the monkey’s blood had stained it across the front and the disarray of her heavy brocade skirt showed her pregnancy. With steady hands, she adjusted her clothes and out of a great casket stamped with fleurs-de-lis, she took out all the pearls she had brought from France and hung them on her neck and wrists. With firm strokes she brushed her hair and pulled it into a little caul studded with emeralds.

  It was a long time since she had dressed herself, but she found she could manage very well without the French girls or Mary Seaton. She took out her box of paints and coloured her mouth, put gold dust on her eyebrows, and violet powder on her hair, and smoothed her cheeks with orris dust. Then she emptied a phial of perfume on to her dress and returning to the bed, picked up the corpse of Florestan, kissed it, and laid it beneath the shrine in the corner, then turned the pillow and put it with the bloodstains underneath.

  She heard his step outside, and looked at herself again in the mirror. She was more like a statue than a woman, there was something unnatural in her face, in her movements, in the splendour of her over-gaudy clothes and jewels.

  He came in, pushing back the door violently with the flat of his hand. He was not alone; she could scarcely restrain a cry of fury when she saw Ruthven, still in the clanging armour, behind him. No doubt they feared her, no doubt they had guessed what she was about to try to do and they would not let the fool out of their sight.

  But he, lustful and half-drunk was half-won. His eyes were bright, the tension had gone from his face. He was proud and confident again. Yes, undoubtedly he had murdered the Italian, she could almost smell blood on him.

  He approached the bed, stared at her with reddened eyes and took her hand with the one on which he had put the crimson wedding-ring.

  “Lord Ruthven,” said the Queen smiling, “you desired me to yield to my husband, and so I intend to do. Let to-night’s work be overlooked.”

  “Your Grace asks us no more of David?” asked Ruthven, leaning exhausted in the tall doorway.

  “I ask no more of anything,” said the Queen steadily. “Leave me with my husband that I may make my pact and peace with him.”

  She smiled at the young man and asked: “You’ll stay?”

  He replied thickly: “Then I may pass the night with you?”

  She nodded, but Ruthven had advanced and gripped him by the arm.

  “Sir, you must show yourself below. There are those who are not satisfied. They want to speak to you that you may answer for the Queen.”

  The King hesitated, then was swayed by the stronger will.

  “I’ll return,” he muttered to his wife. “In a few minutes, maybe half an hour, I’ll return. If you’ll be kind at last, and let me lie with you.”

  She moved after him heavily and detained him as Lord Ruthven passed into the ante-chamber. She touched the red ring on his finger, whispering, entreating:

  “Remember the night at Stirling when I gave you that. I shall wait for you.”

  She saw the colour rise into his face and eyes, the veins in his neck swell. She could smell the wine on his breath and she looked again at the empty dagger sheath.

  “I’ll wait,” she repeated before Ruthven pulled him away.

  When they had gone Lady Argyll could not restrain herself from reproaching her mistress, “Oh, madame, how can you let him stay with you to-night! He was in that business if ever a man was. Signor David has been murdered, I dare swear. Oh, madame, it is not many hours passed since we heard him shrieking! Can you forget?”

  The Queen shook her head.

  “Undress me! Do me this service for they will not let the girls or Mary Seaton come to me. See, poor Florestan beneath his shrine — he looks almost human in his shroud. I suppose David lies like that now, with just as many wounds, battered so beneath their feet. He had no absolution, not as much as a Cross to kiss … ”

  “Madame, you must put that out of your mind. Yet to allow the King—”

  “Get me my nightgown with the cypress border. This is the bed I had at Stirling. I thought to use another but my mother loved this.”

  Lady Argyll could only suppose that her mistress was unwell in her mind for such a triviality at such a moment to interest her. She helped the Queen take off all her jewels and her dress and get into her nightgown with the border of golden cypress. She was embarrassed but overawed. When the Queen had undressed she began to shiver violently, went to the shrine, knelt beside Florestan and made the sign of the Cross over the small corpse.

  “I do this for David,” she said. “God has mercy upon strange creatures.”

  Then she climbed into the sumptuous bed and lay there telling Lady Argyll to go out to her own apartment. “Leave the rest of this night to me.”

  The Queen waited with one candle on the side table. The bed no longer seemed to her as it had seemed in Stirling. It had become a mausoleum enclosing her for ever in solitude.

  She almost savoured her humiliation. David had been a coward. She had noted his fear when he had seen Ruthven in the doorway of the stairs, she had heard his shrieks, he had got behind her and held out her skirts to protect himself. They were right, he was no better than Florestan, who stole and picked and was insolent and fled at a cross word. She felt an infinite compassion for both of them. Though she admired, above all virtues, courage, she had been fond of this man who had had none. She put her hands to her side to feel the weight of the child. She was already avenged there. Stewart would never be sure that the heir to Scotland was his.

  The candles burnt out, the winter dawn light slid between the stiff curtains of the window. The Queen remained alone.

  *

  In the chamber below, the King sprawled in a drunken stupor. When Ruthven had brought him down from his wife’s room the word had got round to the Lords in possession of the palace that the woman
was setting her traps. The sick man, with his last ounce of strength told the conspirators that the Queen had attired herself in pearls and brocade and painted her face and persuaded the King to lie with her and that he had consented.

  So they pulled him, already sagging from drink, into his own room and Ruthven, who knew of many such tricks, put a potion into the wine they forced on him, so that after two or three cups he sank between them, utterly drunk.

  The two Antony Standens, who acted under the direction of Lord Ruthven, then heaved him up and laid him on his bed under the grim scrutiny of the Lords. Then they went below into the entrance place and into the forecourts to wait for the coming of Lord Moray and Argyll, the two men who should take the lead in this disorder. The Earl Morton had arrived at the palace soon after the murder, at which he appeared very well satisfied.

  So they took their repose, David in the porter’s lodge, the King drugged on his couch, the Queen waiting in her bed.

  *

  The King woke, still feeling half-drugged. He yawned and sat up, saw his gentlemen moving about the room and called for water and drank avidly. Then he remembered with a sudden shock, the Queen’s promise of last night and how he had not gone to her.

  So, without a word to anyone, he went up the newel stair and into her room where she lay quite alone in the great bed with the corpse of the monkey beneath the shrine in the corner. In her hand, stretched slack on the coverlet, was a little reliquary which she looked at now and then.

  The young man sat down by the bed and in a broken voice began to reason with her and to excuse himself, but she did not reply and pretended to be asleep. He began to plead with her, reminding her that though he might be of low estate compared to hers yet at the altar she had promised to be obedient to him. He said that his life had been like hell from loneliness, humiliation, and frustration. He could never have a game of cards with her but that David must be the third, or sing a song but that David must play the accompaniment … As he said that name she opened her eyes and asked:

  “What has become of David?”

  “David is dead.” He said it sullenly.