But she crowed over that. ‘And I’ve a quint to a knave, Mr. Randolph; and three kings I have in my hand!’
She found out that they were not best pleased in England at the turn of affairs in Fife.
‘My Queen, Mistress Beaton,’ said the enamoured Randolph, ‘cannot view with comfort the unqueening of a sister. Nay, but it is so. Your mistress courts the young lord with too open a face. To sit like one forsworn when he is away; or when he is present, to crouch at his feet! To beg his gauntlet for a plaything—to fondle his hunter’s whip! To be meek, to cast down the eyes; to falter and breathe low, “At your will, my lord”! Thus does not my Queen go to work.’
Mary Beaton looked wise. ‘Sir James Melvill hath reported her manner of working, sir. We are well advertised how she disports.’
‘I take your leave to say,’ replied the ambassador, ‘her plan is at once more queenly and more satisfying. For why? She charges men upon their obedience to love her. And they do—and they do! No, no, I am troubled: I own to it. If you find me backward, sweet Beaton, you shall not be harsh. How or whence I am to get temper to bear much longer with this toss-pot boy, I know not. He is the subject of my Queen; he is—I say it stoutly—my own subject in this realm. But what does he? How comports himself? “Ha, Randolph, you are here yet?” This, as he parades my Lord Ruthven before me, with a hand on his shoulder, my faith! I tell you, a dangerous friend for the young man. And one day it was thus, when we passed in the tennis-court. “Stay, Randolph, my man”—his man! “I had something for your ear; but it’s gone.” It’s gone, saith he! Oh, mistress, this is unhappy work. He doth not use the like at Greenwich, I promise you.’
‘He is not now at Greenwich,’ says Beaton. ‘He is come back to his own.’
Mr. Randolph jumped about. ‘His own? Have at you on that! How if his own receive him not? He may prove a very fish-bone in some fine throats here. Well, we shall see, we shall see. To-day or to-morrow comes my Lord of Moray into the lists. The Black Knight, we may call him. Then let the Green Knight look to himself—ho, ho! We shall see some jousting then.’
Mary Beaton shuffled the cards.
These joustings occurred, not at Callander, where Livingstone had been wedded to her Sempill and the Queen had danced all the night after, but at Wemyss, in the midst of a full court, kept and made splendid in the prince’s honour. The place pleased its mistress in its young spring dress, attuned itself with her thoughts and desires. Blue, white, and green was all this world: a gentle, April sky; not far off, the sea; white lambs in the pastures, and the trees in the forest studded with golden buds. Wemyss had for her an air of France, with its great winged house of stone, its tourelles, balustrades, ordered avenues raying out from the terrace, each tapering to a sunny point; its marble nymphs and sea-gods with shells; its bowers, and the music of lutes in hidden grass-walks, not too loud to quell the music in her heart. It was a pity that the prince knew so little of the tongue, or it had been pleasant to read with him—
Filz de Venus, voz deux yeux despendez,