To one who was so staunch a supporter of the faith in which she had been brought up, not the least attractive feature in this picturesque town was its beautiful cathedral, that goodly edifice which the over-zealous followers of John Knox thought it no sacrilege to devastate, and of which a fine ruin alone remains to suggest to us what it must once have been.
The antiquary prowling about the moss-grown flag-stones that pave its aisles, or prying into nooks and corners of sinking buttress and mouldering walls, finds memory sharpened and curiosity stimulated at every turn. The philosopher, contemplating the length and breadth of that spacious area, heretofore rich with the decorations of architecture, and glowing in the pomp and pageantry of Romish piety, recalls the solemn music, the swinging censers, the carven images, the twinkling lights, the florid altar, the gilded crozier, and the mitred abbot, with his train of monks and choristers winding solemnly up the dusky nave. He speculates, half-pitying, half-sneering, on the various modes in which men offer their homage to the true God—the Mollah exhorting the faithful Moslem from a minaret, the priest pattering Latin in a corner before a crucifix, the precentor’s nasal psalmody quivering within the unsightly walls of a Presbyterian meeting-house—and he reflects that the forms of religion change like the fashion of a garment, and that the offertory of yesterday becomes the superstition of to-day, and the mummery of to-morrow; but the Christian, looking upward to that ruined arch, through the stained glass of which, as through a prism, the light was wont to stream with rainbow colouring, sees the blue sky of heaven smiling changeless in its span, and rejoices to believe that clear as the blessed light of day is the light of piety, penetrating the disguises and the ceremonials and the ignorant prejudices of weak humanity, like the sunshine that vivifies as surely the dusky slab lurking in the gloomiest corner of the cathedral, as the fresh daisy raising its head on the free mountain side. What matters the fashion of the cup, chased in gold, or of broken pottery, so the parched lips can but drain their fill of the waters of life?
It was the Queen’s habit to devote the early part of the day to such affairs of state as would not excuse neglect, even at St Andrews, and to the usual household duties, which every lady in the land, royalty included, then found to occupy a considerable portion of her time. At twelve, she dined temperately and hastily, after which she mounted her horse, and, accompanied by as small a retinue as possible, devoted the afternoon to exercise and amusement.
It was on the second day after her arrival at St Andrews that she agreed to Mary Hamilton’s request, who begged that she might be allowed to accompany her mistress in the daily ride. The Queen had seen with concern the sad change that had come over her favourite’s looks, and although surprised at this departure from her usual habits (for the maid-of-honour was a timid and unskilful horsewoman), willingly acceded to a proposal that promised to bring back the colour to her cheek and the light to her eye. With a couple of men-at-arms and a page, as their sole escort, they left the town by its southern gate, taking the horse track that led to the broad expanse of Magus-Muir, a locality destined in subsequent troubles to obtain an odious celebrity for the murder of Archbishop Sharpe at the hands of the Covenanters, but only interesting to Mary and her courtiers that it was rich in an abundance of wild fowl.
Chastelâr had been already tried on the charge of high treason, and sentenced to death; he was to be beheaded the following morning at daybreak. It was perhaps natural that neither Mary nor her maid-of-honour should have exchanged a syllable concerning his fate.
The Queen was riding ‘Black Agnes.’ As soon as they were clear of the town, she put her horse into a gallop, and never drew bridle for several miles. It did not, however, escape her Majesty’s observation that the animal on which Mary Hamilton was mounted, a bay of great strength and spirit, usually uncontrollable by the gentle hand of a lady, was going in a perfectly docile and collected form; also, that the girl seemed to-day perfectly free from the timidity which commonly left her miles behind her mistress in these scampers across a country. They had already lost sight of the sea, and had gained a wild inland district of moss and moor, varied here and there with patches of cultivation, and interspersed with a few fir-trees of stunted growth, and an occasional cairn of stones breaking the level sky-line, when the Queen pulled up at the top of an acclivity, and pointing to a solitary horseman stationed, as if expecting them, at the foot of the slope, observed to her companion, with a wild attempt at cheerfulness obviously forced—
‘You scarcely thought, Mary, I was entrapping you to witness a rendezvous. It is a romantic spot for the purpose, nevertheless, and yonder is the gallant who has kept tryst with me as he promised, faithfully enough.’
Mary Hamilton would have felt it an unspeakable relief to have burst into tears. The whole fabric of her morning’s work was swept away by the sight of that plain dark figure, so stationary yonder on his horse. She would have given her life for half-an-hour’s conversation with the Queen alone, although (strange inconsistency) she dared not ask her indulgent mistress point-blank to accord her that trifling favour, and now, this hateful stranger would probably hang about them all day, and to-morrow it would be too late. A thousand shadowy and incongruous impossibilities crossed her brain, too, at the same moment, all turning upon the one sickening certainty, that even while she grasped at their consolations, she felt too surely it would be out of mortal power to avert. She answered with a ghastly smile that startled the Queen, and totally unconscious of what she said the while—
‘Let us go to meet him, madam; it may be that he can give us some hope.’
Mary stared at her attendant vaguely, and shook her head, then, putting her horse in motion, descended the slope towards the solitary traveller, flushing a brace of wary old moor-fowl and a curlew, while she plunged and scrambled with characteristic fearlessness through the broken ground that intervened.