CHAPTER II
GRIEFS AND CONSOLATIONS OF ADONIS
In these dark February days the King was prone to regard his troubles as the consequence, and not the verification, of certain words spoken by Archie Douglas on the braeside by Falkirk—that being a trick of the unreasonable, to date their misfortunes from the time when they first find them out. And yet it was an odd thing that Archie should have spoken in his private ear shortly after Michaelmas, and that here was Candlemas come and gone, with everything turning to prove Archie right. Now, which of the three was the grey-polled youth—prophet, philosopher, or bird of boding?
Consider his Majesty’s affairs in order. The Queen, before marriage and at the time of it, had been as meek as a girl newly parted from her mother, newly launched from that familiar shore to be seethed in the deep, secret waters of matrimony. Something of that exquisite docility he had discerned when he experienced, for instance, the prerogatives of a man. One name before another is a very small matter; but it had given him a magnanimous thrill to read Henricus et Maria upon the white money, and to feel the confidence that Henricus et Maria, in very fact, it was now and was to be. Little things of the sort swelled his comfort up: the style royal, the chief seat, the gravity of the Council (attendant upon his), the awe of the mob, the Italian’s punctilio, his father’s unfeigned reverence. Even Mr. Randolph’s remarked abstention was flattering, for it must have cost the ambassador more to ignore the King than the King could ever have to pay for the slight. Now, a man needs time to get the flavours of such toothsome tribute; he must roll it on his tongue, dally over it with his intimates. Little Forrest, the chamber-child, could have told a thing or two: how the King used to wear his gold circlet in private, and walk the room in his crimson mantle. Antony Standen knew something. Yes, yes, a man needs time; and such time was denied him—and (by Heaven!) denied him by the Queen herself.
By the Queen! From the hour when she heard the news from Argyll, that the rebels, her brother at their head, had called out the clans of the west—Campbells, Leslies, Hamiltons—against her authority, she was a creature whom her King had never conceived of. He was told by Archie Douglas then, and partly believed, that she was slighting him; but the plain truth is, of course, that all her keen love for him was running now in a narrow channel—that of strenuous loyalty to the young man she had chosen to set beside her. These hounds to deny his kingly right! Let them learn then what a King he was, for what a King she held him! She strained every nerve, put edge to every wit in his vindication. While he lay abed, stretching, dreaming—sometimes of her, more often of her love for him, most often of what he should do when he was fairly roused: ‘Let them not try me too far, little Forrest! I say, they had best not!’ etc.—at these times she was in her cabinet with the Italian, writing to her brother of France, her father of Rome, her uncles and cousins of Lorraine, promising, wheedling, threatening, imploring. Or she was in audience, say, with George Gordon, winning back his devotion with smiles and tender looks, with a hand to the chin, or two clasping her knee—with all the girlish wiles she knew so well and so divinely used. For his sake—that slug-abed—she dared see Bothwell again; and greater pride hath no woman than this, to brave the old love for the sake of the new. Finally, when cajolery and bravado had done their best for her, she sprang starry-eyed into battle, headed her ragged musters in a short petticoat, and dragged him after her in gilded armour. That is what a man—by the mass, a King!—may fairly call being docked of his time to get the flavours.
He went out unwillingly to war, with sulky English eyes for all the petty detriments. He sniffed at her array, her redshanks armed with bills, her Jeddart bowmen, haggard hillmen from Badenoch and Gowrie. Where were the broad pavilions, the camp-furniture, the pennons and pensels, the siege-train, the led horses, the Prince’s cloth of estate? Was he to huddle with reivers under a pent of green boughs, and with packed cowdung keep the wind from his anointed person? King of kings, Ruler of princes! was she to do the like? How she laughed, tossed back her hair, to hear him!
‘Hey, dear heart, you are in wild Scotland, where all fare alike. O King of Scots, forget your smug England, and teach me, the Queen, to laugh at stately France! Battle, my prince, battle! The great game!’
She galloped down the line, looking back for him to follow. Line! it was no line, but a jostling horde of market-drovers clumped upon a knowe. There were no formation, no livery, no standard—unless that scarecrow scarf were one. Why should he follow her to review a pack of thieves?
Hark, hark, how the rascals cheered her! They ran all about her, tossing up their bonnets on pikes. They were insulting her.
‘By God!’ he cried out, ‘who was to teach them behaviour? Was this the King’s office?’
‘It is the Queen’s, my good lord; she will teach them,’ said the Italian at his elbow. ‘And what her Majesty omits the enemy will teach them, at his own charges. I know your countrymen by now. Manners? Out of place in the field. Courage? They have never wanted for that.’