‘A messenger from my loving cousin,’ said she, ‘is always welcome; how much more when he comes in the person of our old and esteemed friend Mr Randolph.’
The ambassador answered in a few well-chosen words for his sovereign and himself, dropping once more on his knee and craving permission to present an autograph letter and a costly ring from Elizabeth to the cousin whom she never saw. Mary received them both with expressions of unbounded delight, and the shrewd bearer, judging from his own experience and his own heart, argued that there must be no small weakness concealed under so much affection, and that it was unnatural for one woman to be so fond of another, unless she felt herself uncomfortably in her power.
Mary questioned him of his journey.
‘You have had a long ride,’ said the Queen, ‘and we can but give you a rude, though hearty, welcome. A long ride and a dangerous, for indeed the borders of both countries are not so quiet as we could wish, or as we hope to render them before many months are past.’
Randolph answered with ready tact—
‘It is to the Queen of Scotland’s servants I owe my safe arrival at Holyrood. Permit me to recall to your Majesty’s recollection an archer of your old Scottish Guard.’
With these words he drew Maxwell forward and presented him to the Queen. Randolph was a good-natured man when it cost nothing, and, moreover, it was a part of his profession to make a friend wherever it could be done at a small outlay. Mary received Walter Maxwell with the utmost condescension. Had she followed her own impulse, she would have shaken him cordially by both hands and bidden him a hearty welcome, for the sake of old times and the memory of her dear France; but monarchs must not give way to impulse, and indeed are better without such weaknesses as affections and associations. So he knelt low before her and kissed her royal hand, the while Mary Carmichael seemed to have discovered something so engrossing in the skirt of her mistress’s robe, that she never lifted her eyes from the embroidery with which it was adorned.
‘And how fared you in the wild Border-land?’ resumed the Queen, ‘the land of moss and moor—of jack and spear—a pleasant district if you want to breathe a horse or fly a hawk; but, as our loyal burghers say, bad to sleep in for those who would pull their boots off when they retire to rest.’ The Queen spoke of the border as though it brought agreeable associations to her mind, and indeed she dearly loved the open plain and the free air of heaven.
‘Had it not been for your warden, Madam,’ answered the courtier, ‘I might have slept in my boots till the day of judgment. This gallant archer and myself would scarce have had a tale to tell, if the Earl of Bothwell did not take to spur and snaffle as kindly as the wildest freebooter on the marches.’