The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  Then he wanted to lie down beside her, reminding her of her promise last night, but she shook her head and pretended to sleep again.

  The young man knelt on the bedstep, thinking of the night in Stirling and began to weep softly for so much gone wrong. The killing of the Italian had been like the lancing of an abscess, leaving him relieved. He began to hope that everything might be as it had been and even that the child might be his, which was a thing that he had never believed though he had struggled to do so.

  The Queen remained immobile like a creature in a trance. She whispered from the pillow:

  “Last night I might have received you, but now I am bankrupt of every good grace.” Then she asked him in a stifled voice if he in truth had been in the affair last night. He would not commit himself, but admitted sullenly that the men who now held the palace were his friends.

  There was a scratching at the door — it was Lady Argyll, still in the dress she had worn last night. She said that Lord Moray had come to the palace and wanted to speak to the Queen, who sat up.

  “Is he your master?” she asked of her kneeling husband.

  The young man did not understand her and the Queen asked Lady Argyll to help her from the bed. Without any regard for her attire she took up a winter coat of fur and velvet, and leaning on Lady Argyll’s arm went into the Chamber of Presence, where it was very cold for the fire had gone out.

  The Queen looked down at the floor and saw a trail of dark spots and stains across the carpet, past the throne and the dais to the outer door.

  Lord Moray stood by the hearth which was filled with cold ashes. His sister, Lady Argyll, turned on him at once, crying out against the horrible murder last night, and the extremity the Queen was in and how she had been in fear of her own life and that of her child also.

  Moray allowed Lady Argyll to rail on in her fear and anger. He frowned at the Queen who sat on the steps of the dais with her mantle wrapped round her and her hair hanging down over the fur collar saying nothing.

  “Mary,” he said, “I am sorry to see you in this distress.”

  “Ah, if you had been at home perhaps I had not been so discourteously handled,” she replied. Then, in the same tone: “But were you in it?”

  He evaded the direct question as she might have known that he would. She had lost much of her sharpness.

  “It had to be done, but I would that it had been done in another manner. You might have lost your life,” he said, seeming deeply troubled.

  “Well,” said the Queen, “you are welcome. Be a good subject to me and I will behave to you as I ought.”

  There was nothing in her words or gesture to make him think that she recalled how she had driven him out of her kingdom as a rebel and issued a Proclamation forbidding any man to offer him shelter or even as much as a plate of porridge. Her tone admitted him to be the master, as if she knew that he must be wherever he went — his sudden coming now proved his hand in last night’s business.

  The King appeared in the bedchamber door. Moray spoke to him in a tone of authority, bidding his Grace, for his honour’s sake to clear his wife’s house of so much soldiery and to help the Lords to go back to their houses so that the tumult in the city might be put down before it got out of hand. And the King, with his eyes on his wife, replied that the Lords would not go on his orders.

  “Sir,” said Moray, with little heed of this excuse, “go down and answer to these gentlemen for your wife. Say that all has been arranged in amity with her, that she will grant an amnesty and full pardon to all who have offended. Do you not see,” he added as the young man hesitated, “that this is a dangerous moment and that there is much to be forgotten?”

  Thereupon the King moved away down the Chamber of Presence, and the Queen began to laugh hysterically and on top of the laughter to weep so that when the door closed on her husband she was shaken by sudden tears.

  “Am I to forgive these men? You know what they did last night? Never have I lived through hours so full of horror. I had rather died, yes, James, I had rather died myself.”

  He stood near her struggling to hold himself in check and she, even through her tears, realized this, and rising, threw herself into his arms and wept on his shoulder as if there had never been discord between them and he had always been her chosen guardian.

  “Madame, cast off your care and passion, I beg you humbly. I shall study what may be best for your safety and honour. I promise that you will receive from your subjects obedience and honour if only you will take to heart this lesson.”

  He put her away from him and looked down into her face. “Before God, Mary, I renew my offer which I made before.”

  “All these conspirators, then, all these confederate Lords, are friends of yours?” she asked.

  “I do not say so, Mary, nor that they worked under my orders. I have been in England.”

  “I know something of your doings,” said the Queen. “We infringe on politics. You say that you can answer for these men if I pardon them?”

  “Yes, for I know their grievances and their minds. Now for yourself you see to what dishonour your whims can bring you. I call them whims, Mary, I would not use an uglier word.”

  He took her by the shoulder and turned her about so that she was forced to face him.

  “The child?” he demanded. “The child is Scotland’s rightful heir?”

  “I can swear it before God,” she answered readily.

  He thought she lied, but he was relieved that she had such an answer so readily. Yet he could not be satisfied and pressed her further.

  “You know what has been thought and said. It was not that man lying below?”

  “Ah! you’ve seen him?” she asked softly. “That man lying below! Poor David! James, they killed my monkey in the struggle — poor Florestan, who was so neat and clever. Will you take him out and see him buried?”

  She went back to her room and Moray returned to the Lords gathered in various groups in the palace, unsure what to do. He told them that the Queen would pardon them and hold them immune from punishment in the future. She had promised as much to himself, he said, and the King confirmed this with an oath saying she would do as he bid. Moray added that they might do more than demand pardon for the outrage done in her house and even exact from her further concessions for the Protestants and a promise to have no more Mass performed in Holyrood and no more foreign favourites. He, Moray, once more master of Scotland, would see that she kept these promises.

  *

  Lady Argyll came to her brother, Lord Moray, and implored that a midwife and some women might be sent to the Queen for she had fallen ill and seemed to be losing her strength. It could be that her child was to be born before its time endangering her life, and seeing that she had pardoned the Lords and granted their requests, surely the guards might be moved from her door and Mary Seaton and the French girls, at least, allowed to go in freely?

  Moray granted that but said that the Queen must not come out of her chamber. Many of the Lords disliked even this concession and said she seemed strong enough and perhaps her sickness was only a pretence.

  Then the Queen sent for Sir William Maitland and tried to persuade him, saying she had promised pardon and was that not enough? Might she not go away to, say, Dunbar? While she spoke she was wondering what part this crafty man had had in the murder of David and how much he was her enemy. But this she could not discover, and although he was gentle and almost humble her tears and entreaties did not move him. He told her that the Lords would not allow her to leave the palace, which was still heavily guarded so that there was only one way by which she could escape and that was through the newel staircase by which the murderers had entered which led through her husband’s rooms and beyond them out into the garden and the old burial-ground.

  *

  About the middle of the afternoon there was a scratch at the door of the room where Giuseppe Rizzio had been cowering all night. The boy stifled an instinctive shriek with the back of his hand. The scratchi
ng was repeated and as it seemed timid, almost apprehensive, and in no way associated with violence, he found courage to rise from his bed and creep to the door.

  In a voice shaking with fear he asked who was there.

  A wheezy female voice replied: “A friend!”

  Giuseppe hesitated, fearing a trap, but he realized his own desperate situation. He could not for ever remain a prisoner in his room without water or food, so he slipped the bolts with fingers that fumbled at the first attempts and stared out into the dimly-lit corridor, and what he saw reassured him. A stout woman of about forty stood there. She had a bundle on her arm and panted from quick walking. Giuseppe knew her as Lady Reres and also as a woman of bad reputation who had lately been shown some favours by the Queen.

  She pushed past the boy without an invitation and sank on to the painted chest inside the door which he again bolted.

  “Listen! You know what happened?”

  Giuseppe nodded and quick tears over-brimmed his eyes.

  “Bah!” said Lady Reres, striking her fat thigh with a podgy hand. “What is done is done and there is plenty of work for the future without thinking over the past. I suppose you want to get out of here?”

  Giuseppe nodded, his throat and lips were dry, he could hardly speak, especially this foreign tongue with which he was so little familiar. He strained his attention to catch what the fat woman said.

  “The Queen’s a prisoner, boy, do you hear? Moray and Maitland are in charge now. It seems the other Lords are only their tools. That is a pretty state of affairs, is it not? The Queen has had to pardon all the murderers.”

  “She pardoned the men who killed David?”

  “She had to. In the Chamber of Presence where his blood had hardly been wiped up they went on their knees and asked for pardon. She said she bore no malice to any of them and what was done was done. They allowed the midwife to go in to her and she sent her out with a letter to me. The Queen has no hope but in one man and to him you must take a message.”

  The Italian began to shake. He did not want to do anything that was difficult or responsible. Lady Reres observed his fear and exclaimed contemptuously:

  “Ha! What do you think will happen to you, shut away here? Presently they will remember you and hunt you out, but for an hour or two they will not think of you; they are busy ransacking your brother’s chamber.”

  “Ah! poor David, all his fine clothes and savings!”

  “Ay, indeed, too much of either for his credit’s sake,” sneered Lady Reres. “I hear they have found two thousand crowns in gold hidden away, together with jewels and many suits of velvet and furs. Fourteen pairs of hose!” She rocked to and fro, laughing, her hands on her fat sides. Then, recollecting her business, she gave her bundle, which she had dropped on the floor on her entrance, a kick towards the boy.

  “Put that on, it is a set of girl’s garments. With a kerchief tied over your head you should pass as a washer-maid, and be able to set out without question. Here!” From her enormous bosom she drew a letter. “It is a message you are to deliver. You are to wait for the answer and bring it back to me in the Exchequer House, where I shall be waiting. You had better be honest and quick, for your life depends upon this, too.”

  “To whom am I to deliver the letter, madame?”

  “To Earl Bothwell. You will find him at Earl Huntly’s house. You know where that is, or can easily find out. If Earl Bothwell is not there you will give it to Lord Huntly. If Lord Huntly is not there to Lord Sutherland, and if you can find none of them you must run round till you do.”

  Giuseppe did not like this errand at all. He was quite unnerved by his brother’s murder, and by the night he had just spent. He reached to the bed and picked up the crucifix.

  “Earl Bothwell is a son of Satan,” he muttered. “I do not want to get into his power. I have heard such stories of him—”

  “Ay, I suppose so,” replied Lady Reres comfortably, “among the scullions and grooms who used to be your company there would be such tales. Ah, well, if he has any infernal arts they may be useful now.”

  She smiled, nodded, and turned away with the air of one whose business is done and Giuseppe Rizzio remembered, with a shock of fear, that she also was credited with being a witch.

  *

  Lord Moray was not much given to laughter, but he had a dry humour and this was tickled by the situation in which he found himself, as he returned to his house in the palace grounds where his wife, Agnes Keith, had lived during his rebellion.

  He was master again, of the Queen of Scotland, after being completely defeated in the field and forced to fly to the English Court. The Queen’s foolish flirtation had after all caused only a short interruption in his rule of her kingdom. She had, with her armed men, chased him from town to town and across the Border, and when she had felt herself safe he had suddenly walked into her palace, master of all she possessed, even her life.

  The main part of their quarrel had been her inexplicable marriage and he had used that marriage as a weapon against her, employing her infatuated young husband as an instrument to remove her favourite.

  Moray had not been able to live in peace while David Rizzio breathed. But he had gone, and the Queen, who had defied him had flung herself sobbing into his arms and begged him humbly for the meanest favours, the company of her woman, the removal of her guards, a little liberty, the attendance of a midwife in her distress.

  He had exacted handsome terms. She was to pardon all his accomplices who in his absence had done the dirty work for him. She was to restore him to all his estates, and Maitland to his power, and Morton to the full exercise of his office of which he had been lately deprived.

  He greeted his wife tenderly and listened with an affectionate smile while she pleaded for the Queen. Agnes Keith insisted that she had no knowledge of politics, nor could she greatly commend the Queen’s behaviour, but, she argued, the Queen was generous and kind, it was impossible to dislike her.

  “Look how I have lived, sir, while you were a proclaimed rebel — used with every courtesy, living here like a princess, allowed to touch your revenues, maintain your liveries on my servants, received into her intimacy. And the same with Lady Argyll, your sister, whose husband was in arms against her—”

  “That is his business, I have other things to think of. Do not upset yourself, madame, I shall deal generously with the Queen.”

  It gave him great pleasure to say these words; it gave him intense satisfaction to think that it was in his power to fulfil that boast — to save the Queen.

  *

  Sir William Maitland waited on Lord Moray to decide exactly what they should do. David was dead, the Lords were indemnified, the Queen was a prisoner, repentant, submissive to all their demands. Everything might be as it had been before the Queen’s marriage, except that they would have more power over her — they might even force her to change her religion.

  But Moray, walking up and down the darkening room said there was one difficulty — King Henry. They had used him as an instrument of their revenge, as an instrument of their recall but, once again, was he an instrument that might break in their hands?

  Their eyes met.

  “He answered for his wife,” said Maitland. “He said she was a true princess and would keep her word. That was when Ruthven and Lindsay mistrusted her promises. They fear her cunning and his weakness — it seems they were reconciled last night within a few hours of the making away of the servant David. Had not Ruthven doctored his drink he would have gone with her.”

  Moray did not answer. He put his hand over his tired eyes. He had ridden hard in the last few hours and not slept at all since he had come to Holyrood, but his mind was still alert.

  “Can she forgive him?” urged Maitland.

  “She might pretend to do so. She has chosen him as her husband and now she must keep him. She promised him the Crown Matrimonial in return for our recall. Let him have it, he will scarcely interfere in serious affairs. He only wants a sham dignity
— call him Grace and Majesty and doff the cap and it is enough. He’ll be away with his sports, his hawks and hounds, and his English friends.”

  “Can he forgive her?” asked Maitland. “We deal with a man and a woman although we name them King and Queen. They are very young and the Queen I know to be vindictive.”

  “Her claws are cut, her sting is drawn, her vindictiveness will spend itself as her other passions have. Rizzio will be forgotten as others were forgotten.”

  The names of John Gordon and Chastelard hung in the air, but neither men spoke them.

  “Can he forgive her? I do not know, but she is young and beautiful, and soon it seems brought him to her side again — two hours after David’s death, you say?”

  Moray thrust off that thought with a frown.

  “Surely,” he said, “I can manage Henry Stewart, and his father, too, and all the Lennox faction. If they go warily they will have no cause for complaint.”

  Maitland shook his head.

  “I do not think it quite as easy as that. She is very subtle.” Then he asked directly: “What of the child? Do you know anything of that?”

  Again the two men looked at each other.

  “It is Scotland’s heir,” said Moray distinctly, and Maitland nodded. “It is the Queen’s child and will be born in full safety and honour. And anyone who dares to think—”

  Maitland’s thin, dry smile completed the sentence.

  “So be it.”

  “Perhaps out of all of this,” mused Moray, “the child alone is important. If we look beyond this present chaos the only thing that matters is that these two kingdoms be united, and in the child we have a definite hope.”

  Maitland asked delicately:

  “But if the King should not acknowledge it? Remember that he has spoken his opinion on this matter.”

  “He must be brought to discretion,” said Moray. “I stayed a little too long upon the road,” he added. “They outran their instructions in letting it be done in her presence. That was wrong, Maitland, that might have killed her. We might have lost the child too.”