In the meantime Riccio revelled in the exercise of his delightful talent—filling the crape-hung building with his notes of mournful melody—and Mary listened entranced, and forgot for the moment her troubles, her widowhood, and her crown.
But the charms of music, and even the consolations of religion, can but stave off earthly cares for a brief period of repose, after which they are prone to thrust themselves on our notice with a vigour all the more imperative for such temporary respite. When mass was concluded, and Mary, with her maid-of-honour, was about to quit the chapel, she could not but observe how none, save her immediate attendants and personal household, had assisted to form the congregation; how the nobility of her court, with but few exceptions, had remained outside, with a certain ostentatious assumption of dissent from the religion of their Queen. She could not help remarking as much to her attendant.
‘Do you not see, my dear,’ said she, bitterly, ‘how the new religion is disposed to charity and toleration? My Protestant lords will not even join in the devotions of their Sovereign, when she prays for the welfare of her husband’s soul. They will not “weep with those who weep,” nor “rejoice with those who rejoice,” unless it be by Master Knox’s permission, and in black cassock and Geneva band. Verily, Mary Hamilton, it is a weary lot to be a woman, but it is a daily humiliation to be a Queen!’
‘I know not what a Queen’s trials may be, madam,’ answered the other, on whose sweet face the halo of devotion had not yet faded away; ‘but a woman’s sorrows, I fancy, may be too hard for a woman to bear, unless she brings them with her unreservedly and lays them all down here.’
While she spoke she stood near the chapel-door, and the December sun, shedding its rays through the deep red cross of the stained window above, streamed full upon her fair and gentle face. It seemed to her mistress, even then, that she looked like some patient saint, purified by suffering, and bearing the cross of her Master in the red glory of martyrdom.
But such holy thoughts as these were soon driven from Mary’s mind by fresh annoyances. On leaving her chapel, and emerging into the courtyard of her palace, the Queen found it crowded by an assemblage of her nobility, whose motley apparel, of the gayest and gaudiest hues, contrasted offensively with her own sad mourning garb. Not one of them had shown sufficient sympathy with her feelings to wear so much as a black ribbon on his doublet, or to doff the plume that flaunted from his rich velvet bonnet. Stung to the quick by such disrespect, Mary determined to meet it by an insult as injudicious as it was unworthy. Halting on the threshold of her chapel, she took not the slightest notice of the salutations offered her by the proudest lords in Scotland, but beckoned to the new singer, whose voice had recently so much delighted her, and giving him her missal to carry, complimented him with marked familiarity on his performance; and so, holding the astonished Italian in conversation at the chapel-door, kept every one else waiting uncovered until she had done with him.
Many a haughty brow was already bent on the unknown stranger. Gray moustaches, that had bristled in the teeth of the English archers at Flodden, were pulled in mingled astonishment and anger; while hands, always too prompt to shed blood, gripped dagger and sword-hilt, as though neither the sacred locality nor the presence of the sovereign would long restrain them from open violence. The first impulse of the Scottish noble was to resent an insult or avenge an injury on the spot. Morton alone, of all the crowd, seemed to experience neither indignation nor surprise. The smile that gave his face so fiendish an expression only deepened and hardened round his mouth. He glanced from the Queen to her ill-chosen favourite with looks rather of amused malignity than offended pride. Morton’s will was strong in proportion to his passions, and these, with all their abiding energy, were thoroughly under the control of his hard unfeeling nature. The Douglas was, indeed, one of those who would ‘strike sooner than speak, and drink sooner than pray;’ yet he only glared on the singer with a kind of comic ferocity, and the poor little Italian shrunk nearer his protectress with a prophetic horror of the hard-featured earl.
Bidding Riccio follow in her train, the Queen passed on through the cloisters of the palace towards her own apartments, returning with cold courtesy the salutations of her nobility. The courtiers looked meaningly at each other, and then at the new favourite, who slunk along behind his mistress, bearing her gorgeous missal, in ludicrous dismay. Secretary Maitland, a man whose wits were always at hand, and who could transact more business in ten minutes than the rest of the Privy Council in as many days, approached her Majesty with a huge bundle of papers under his arm, and the Queen, taking them from him without remark, handed the whole at once to Riccio. The secretary ventured on an expostulation.
‘They are for your Majesty’s private information,’ said he, deferentially, but in a tone of marked disapproval.
‘And I have given them to my private secretary,’ replied Mary, haughtily; thus hastily and injudiciously confirming the appointment that led to such disastrous results.