"Gif Candlemass is fair and clear,
We'll hae twa winters in the year;"
and merrily the hoodie-crow cawed in the blue sky, and the sparrow twittered on the budding hedges, while the ploughman whistled on the rigs of Lauriston and St. Leonard, and urged through the teeming earth their old Scottish ploughs, that were drawn by four oxen, and had but one stilt, like those described by Virgil in his first Georgic.
Darnley was slowly recovering, and the young queen, animated perhaps more by pity than affection, still attended him with an assiduity that was no less remarkable than praiseworthy. One of his pages slept constantly in the chamber, and was ever at his call by day and by night; while Mary, when not attending the council at Holyrood, with a few attendants occupied the rooms below.
Many of the nobles came to the house daily, and Bothwell among them, making dutiful enquiries concerning the progress of the king's illness rather than his health; for many of them hoped he yet would die, and so save them from the guilty deed designed.
It was the evening of the 10th February, and every part of the plan for the accomplishment of the king's destruction was in progress: an opportunity alone was waited.
In the antechamber of his apartment, a little room, hung with some of that rich arras which Mary had brought with her from France, she was seated with the young prince upon her knee—then a flaxen-haired and hazel-eyed infant of eight months. Mary was paler than usual; for many a night-watch by Darnley's fever couch had injured her health, and increased that pain of which she so frequently complained, in her side. The prince's nurse or governess, Annabella of Tullibardine, the venerable Countess of Mar, attired in a great tub fardingale of black brocaded satin, and a towering linen coif of Queen Margaret's days, leaned on the back of Mary's chair, toying with the infant, and making it crow and smile.
Bolton, as lieutenant of the archers, stood in the recess of a window at the lower end of the room, accoutred in half armour, and having his helmet lying near him; and Bothwell, clad in black velvet, magnificently embroidered with Venetian gold, his sword and waistbelt, his poniard and bonnet blazing with jewels, as his blue velvet mantle did with spangles, stood in another, clanking his gold spurs, and pointing his well-perfumed and pomatumed mustaches; for, however deep and deadly his projects, he now never omitted an opportunity of appearing to the best advantage in Mary's presence; and on this evening nothing could surpass the splendour of his aspect and the gallantry of his air.
How little could Mary conceive the guilty hopes then animating his proud heart, and the dark purposes concealed under an exterior so prepossessing!
"My Lady Mar!" said she, stopping suddenly in her play with the infant, on whom she was pouring all that maternal tenderness, which was the stronger because there was no other object with whom to share her love; "how goeth the time? Is it the hour at which Picauet the leech desired his grace to receive the ptisan?"
"I have no horologue," replied the aged Countess. "Beside, I deem them the work of sorcerers; but Sir John Hepburn can see the dial-stone at the corner there. What sayeth the gun?"