The Earl of Morton stopped in the act of whistling.
‘Moray comes home?’
‘Ay. His forfeiture is set for the 12th. He is coming home to meet it. All’s ready.’
Morton was greatly interested. To gain time he asked an idle question. ‘Who has written him to come? Lethington?’
‘Ay, Michael Wylie.’
This was the name they gave him. Machiavelli may be intended—if so, an injustice to each.
‘Who returns with my lord?’ Morton asked him next; and Archie held up his fingers.
‘All of them that are now in England. Rothes, Pitarrow, Grange—all of them. Stout men, cousin.’
Stout indeed! One of them had been enough for Master Davy. My Lord Morton, his head sunk into his portly chest, considered this news. Moray was an assurance—for how did Moray strike? In the dark—quickly—when no one was by. Well, then, if Moray were coming to strike one’s enemy, why should one meddle? He was never at his ease in that great man’s company, because he could never be sure of his own aims while he doubted those of his colleague. You could not tell—you never could tell—what James Stuart intended. He would cut at one for the sake of hitting another at a distance. If he were coming back to cut at the Italian, for instance—at what other did he hope to reach? Morton drove his slow wits to work as he sat staring at his papers, trying vainly to bottom the designs of a man whom he admired and distrusted profoundly. Why so much force to scrag a wretched Italian? The King, Archie, Moray, Grange, Pitarrow, Argyll! And now himself, Morton! At whom was Moray aiming? Was he entangling the King, whom he hated? Could he be working against the Queen, his sister? They used to say he coveted the throne. Could this be his intent?
Such possibilities disturbed him. Let me do Lord Morton the justice to say that his very grossness saved him from any more curious villainy than a quick blow at an enemy. The Italian had galled his dignity: damn the dog! he would kill him for it. But to intend otherwise than loyalty to the King, his kinsman—no, no! And as for the Queen’s Majesty—why, she was a lass, and a pretty lass too, though a wilful. She would never have stood in his way but for that beastly foreign whisperer. Yet—if the King had been dishonoured by the fiddler, and Moray (knowing that) meant honestly ... Eh, sirs! So he pondered in his dull, muddled way—his poor wits, like yoked oxen, heavily plodding the fields of speculation, turning furrow after furrow! Guess how he vexed the nimble Archie.