CHAPTER XI
PROTHALAMIUM: VENUS WINS FAIR ADONIS
Mr. Thomas Randolph, Ambassador of England to the Scottish Queen, told himself more than once that in seeking the lady of his heart he did not swerve the breadth of a hair from loyalty to the sovereign of his destinies. Yet he found it necessary to protest his wisdom in the letters he wrote to his patron, the Earl of Leicester. Mary Beaton was the Nut-brown Maid of his ballatry. ‘I do assure your lordship, better friend hath no man than this worthy Mistress Beaton, who vows herself to me, by what sweet rites you shall not ask me, the humble servant of your lordship.’
All this as it might be: Mary Beaton used to smile when twitted by her mates about the Englishman’s formalised passion, and ask to be let alone.
‘He’s not for ever at the sonnets,’ she said; ‘we discourse of England between bouts; and it may be I shall learn something worth a rhyme or two.’
They played piquet, the new game, together, and each used it as a vantage-ground. He could not keep his desires, nor she her curiosity, out of the hands.
‘Is four cards good?’ he would ask her; and when she looked (or he thought she looked) quizzingly at his frosted hair: ‘Is one-and-forty good?’
Then she must laugh and shake her head: ‘One-and-forty’s too many for me, sir.’
‘I’ve a terce to my Queen, mistress.’