“That will not do,” said the Queen impatiently. “Am I allowed to send letters?”
“I believe so, madame, if Sir William Douglas sees them first.”
“Well, he shall take no exception to this, it is not a conspiracy. Write to Sir Robert Melville.”
Mary Seaton ventured to murmur: “He is no longer your Lord Chamberlain, madame, and would scarcely do your bidding.”
“No matter for that. Tell him to go to Servais de Conde. Even if he is not,” she added, smiling, “still the Keeper of my Wardrobe, yet he must know where my clothes are. I will have a white satin gown and one of a carnation colour and one of black. And while you write have some silk and taffeta and satin for our embroideries, and twists of silk thread. And some clothes for yourselves. I marvel he has not sent before, you are ragged, Mary.”
*
By Earl Moray’s wish the Queen’s properties and fineries were sent from Holyrood to Lochleven. He was insistent that these should be in her possession before his arrival at the island fortress, for he did not wish to see her humiliated. He thought that he could scarcely have endured to see her as she must have appeared after Carberry Hill, and he hated those who had seen her half naked, with streaming hair and disfigured face, screaming from the window of the Provost’s House. All that should have been spared. He blamed and hated Morton for it, and himself for staying away too long.
He arrived at Lochleven with Lord Atholl and Earl Morton, and all three were admitted immediately into the presence of the Queen. She ignored the others coming straight to him to take his hand, and he allowed her to lead him apart. And then he looked at her, first at the hand held in his, then at her ruffled sleeve of white satin and then up to her face. She was not in mourning (he thought she should have been), but she wore a robe that he remembered from Holyrood and was again in possession of her smooth beauty.
“Madame,” he said, “I have nothing to say that the others may not hear,” and he turned to include them in the conversation. The Queen said: “You are master of us all.” And ignoring the other two, she asked him what he intended to do with her? Earl Moray answered her covertly, evading a plain issue. He was wondering if she hated him, he was recalling how she hunted him from the kingdom, forbidding anyone to give him even a bowl of porridge.
The Queen began to weep, softly, into her gold-edged handkerchief, and he turned aside to the other two who stared at her with grim hostility. Morton, at least, was determined to have her life. Moray resented that look of contempt on the Red Earl’s face, and he ordered his sister to have her supper apart, not wishing to expose her to the gibes of Morton.
After supper he went into her apartment again. When he entered she looked up and said:
“You’ve had all of me — I am at your mercy.”
Walking up and down the room, he began to reproach her with her misconduct. The Queen wept bitterly. And at last, seeing the uselessness of this criticism he paused before her and asked her what she hoped from him.
She demanded her liberty, her realm, and her son.
At which he exclaimed:
“Is it possible that you do not realize even now the trouble you are in? That your life hangs on a thread, and that only my return to Scotland and the instances of Queen Elizabeth’s Ambassador have saved you?”
She began to flatter him, calling him powerful, merciful. She reminded him that it was in his power not only to save her but to put her where she had been before.
But he denied this, saying:
“Even your liberty is not in my power. Fix your hopes in God’s mercy for there, surely, is your safest refuge.”
Then sighed, and added:
“I will assure you of your life and as much as lies in me of the preservation of your honour, but as for your liberty, it is not, I say, in my power. Nor is it good for you to seek it nor to have it for many reasons.”
“I hope,” said the Queen quietly, “you will not refuse the Regency, but accept it as my desire.”
“You wish that?” he asked.
“Why, surely,” said she, in a broken voice, “for if you are Regent my son shall be preserved, my realm well-governed, and I in safety and able to enjoy more liberty than I should have any other way. And I hope,” said she with a sigh, “you will get all the forces of the realm into your hands for I know there is none I can trust but you.”
He did not answer this and she began to plead with him. Might she not have her son?
“Ah, madame,” said he, stung by what seemed her incredible lightness, “do you not realize that you are balladed up and down this country? God forbid that I should shame my mouth and your ears by repeating the words they say of you.”
“I have been most foully slandered. Never has a princess been so outraged.”
“You are not on trial, nor I your judge.” He looked at her inquisitively: “Do you never think of the late King?”
“Why do you ask me that?” asked the Queen, unmoved. “Do you think to convict me of cruelty?”
“Ah, madame, you harden your heart. You have learnt this attitude from Earl Bothwell. I suppose you would be with him now — an outlaw on the high seas.”
Her face became pinched with longing.
“I would indeed follow him to the ends of the earth.”
“Well, madame, this inordinate affection will be your ruin. Listen. I have given you, madame, assurance for your life, and I intend to spend my own to save you, employing all my power to that purpose. It does not rest with me only. I think a while ago I warned you?”
“Oh,” said she, plaintively, “this talk is nothing but a recital of my faults.”
“I must tell you, madame, why you are in jeopardy. Your existence disturbs the quiet of the realm, and the reign of your son; your possible attempts to escape from where you are, your appeals to the Queen of England or the French King to molest this realm inflame the people, your passion for the Earl Bothwell disgusts all.”
“Well,” said the Queen, meekly, sinking back into her chair so that the candlelight did not reach her face, “what may I do to amend these faults?”
Moray looked away, resisting that magic she had for him and which he now believed to be wholly evil. Moray knew of the birth of the child in Lochleven, as he knew of everything that happened to the Queen. Maitland had told him that only her imprisonment had saved her from the people who would have burnt her as a witch, and adulteress.
To test her he asked:
“Would you, to regain your Crown, forsake your husband, as you call Bothwell?”
The Queen was silent. She thought with regret of the man, but her sense of loss grew less every day. Besides, he was so far away, he had not sent to her — how could she be faithful to a mere memory?
She lifted her shoulder without replying. Moray was answered. She knew nothing of love nor fidelity. Maitland had said, “A goddess or a slut? Upon my word, I don’t know.”
“Nor I,” thought Moray. She was in his power, though he had disclaimed that, he could do with her exactly as he pleased, there was no one in Scotland would dare to withstand him. There were so many secret ways by which he might come to his desire.
He stared at her, so lovely, so corrupt, waiting his pleasure, waiting his permission to be gay and kind. How happy he could make her! Yet, without a doubt she hated him, the only man who had ever mastered her — to quiet his own thoughts he began to admonish her; he spoke like a priest, like a ghostly confessor:
“To preserve yourself, you must acknowledge your sins before God. You must make it appear that you detest your former life and intend a more modest behaviour. Ay, madame, and make at least an apparent show that you abhor the murder of your husband and mislike your former life with Earl Bothwell. And last, you must make it clear to all that you intend no revenge on the Lords who have sought your reformation and preservation.”
The Queen showed no resentment at these grim reprimands. She sighed faintly and stirred a little in the shadows of the great chair as he approached h
er. His virtue was forgotten — there was no woman like her. As he bent over her she opened her eyes, and said very gently:
“I thank you for all your care of me here, for the kindness you had in sending me your lady mother and your lady wife to hold me company, for the clothes, and all you allowed me to have.”
“I have done what I could for you.”
She caught him by the arm as he stood by the side of her chair.
“Sweet James, could you not set me up again? You and I could rule together. I would give everything into your hands, you know you offered this once. Set me free and I shall not offend you again. James, I love you, my brother, my protector. There shall never be another man — I have done with lovers.”
She spoke humbly, her eyes were pleading. When she thought he hesitated, half-seduced, she put more passion into her entreaties and drew closer to him, finally throwing herself against his breast, sobbing, imploring.
“We are of the same family, we ought to understand, to help one another. I have been so unfortunate.”
If he left her now he would lose her for ever, he would never see her again. She would wither slowly in an unvisited prison.
Alarmed at his silence, at his frowns (for he was her only hope), she put her arms round his neck and tried to draw his face down towards hers, as she pleaded for pardon, for mercy.
Moray shuddered as he untwisted her fingers from behind his neck.
“Don’t go! Don’t go!”
But he put her away from him and said:
“Madame, I can answer for your life — for the rest, I commend you to God.”
He set her back in her chair and turned towards the door, a man walking away from temptation. As he fumbled with the door handle, not yet in command of himself, he heard her speak again out of the shadow behind him. It was as if another woman was in the room, so altered was the ironic voice that said:
“Farewell, my bastard brother,”
*
With the departure of the Earl Moray from her prison, the Queen’s last hope was gone. She fell again into the apathy from which her attendants could not arouse her, not even Mary Seaton.
She was allowed her books, her music, and her embroidery, but she took no more pleasure in any of them, or in the fine clothes from Holyrood. Without delight the future hung before her, tedious, melancholy. She was to have her life, perhaps some dignity and respect, but she was to be a prisoner in this fortress forever round which the grey water flowed.
Would it not be preferable to die?
She was so young, there might be years of this. She had no chance even to write a letter, she was kept without news. Even if her friends intrigued or fought for her she would never hear of it. They had crowned her son in her stead — yes, she would prefer to die.
“I have been trying to get you some roses,” said Mary Seaton, worn with tears and prayers, still full of devotion for her mistress. “I thought if you could see a few roses —”
“There are none here. It is too far north, too late in the year.”
“Yes there are one or two little bushes with blooms. When I was out yesterday I wanted to pluck them for you, but Lady Douglas was watching—”
“Roses at Lochleven!”
“If you would only go out, even on the ramparts, you would see them.”
The Queen shook her head on the pillow.
“Look at least from the window,” pleaded Mary Seaton. “Look on the water and the sky. Rise up from your bed, madame, and breathe the fresher air.”
The Queen, wearied by this nagging, got up, and leaning on Mary Seaton’s arm, went to the window which looked upon a little enclosed grass, then on to the outer ramparts and beyond that the lake.
The Queen looked down into the garden where a few poor red roses bloomed on long stems.
A tall young man was walking pensively up and down the narrow path.
“Who is he? I do not seem to have noticed him before.”
“That is George Douglas, madame, Sir William’s brother. He has been kept away from us.”
“Moray’s half-brother,” said the Queen curiously. “Perhaps he will gather some roses, Mary.”
At the sound of her voice, the young man in the garden glanced up eagerly. The Queen stared from the window of her prison, then moved into the room.
“I will, after all, walk by the lake. The gown with the ruffled sleeves — that I wore for Lord Moray.”
He had looked at her as if he were already deeply in love, Moray’s half-brother, George Douglas.
The Queen laughed.
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