Mary Sempill wrung her hands over talk of the sort. ‘Out, alas! My foolish, fond, sweet lass!’
But Mary Fleming considered, nursing her cheek in the way she had. ‘The strength of a man overrides all your politics, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘The Salic Law is the law of nature, I have heard men say.’
‘God smite this youth if he try it!’ said Sempill fiercely. ‘He’ll set the heather afire and burn us all in our beds. And you, Fleming, will have need of mercy in your turn, if you hearken to your grey-faced Lethington.’
‘Mr. Secretary has a very noble heart, Mary. I hope I may say the same of your Master.’
Mary Sempill sniffed. ‘My Master, as you call him, has a head for figures. He can cipher you two and two. And he says of your Lethington that he is working mischief in England.’
Mary Fleming rose with spirit to this challenge. ‘I cannot believe it. You are angry with me because you are vexed with the King.’
Then it was Mary Sempill to bounce away. ‘The King! Never use that word to me, woman. There shall be no King in Scotland till my mistress bears him.’
But she was talking without her book.
They moved to Stirling as soon as the young lord was mended; and thither came the Earl of Lennox, in a high taking—foxy, close-eyed, crop-bearded, fussy and foolish—to pay his respects to the Prince his son. Never was a more disastrous combination made: they cut the Court in half, as shears a length of cloth. The garrulity of the old man set everybody on edge; then came the insolent son, to prove the truth even worse than they had feared. His father egged him on to preposterous lengths, intolerable behaviour; so the ‘pretty cockerel,’ as they called him in France, made wild work in the hill-town. He quarrelled so fiercely with my Lord Rothes that Davy had to pull him off by main force, and then he drew his dagger on the Lord Justice Clerk, who came to his lodging with a message from the Queen.
‘Tell your mistress,’ he had cried out to that astonished officer, ‘that I pay honour to none but the honourable. You have come here with lies in your throat. She sent me no such message. You are a very dirty fellow.’