There she was out-generalled: there she was beaten. Match for all these men’s wit, she was outwitted by one man’s sodden flesh. They undressed her, prepared her for bed. She lay there in her pale, fragrant beauty, solace for any lord’s desire, and conscious of it, and more fine for the knowledge. She took deep breaths and draughts of ease; she assured herself that she was very fair; she watched the glimmering taper and read the shadows on the pictured wall as she waited for the crowning of her toil. The day had been hers against all odds; the day is not always to Venus, but the night is her demesne. So she waited and drowsed, smiling her wise smile, secure, superb, and at ease. But King Harry Darnley, very drunk, lay stertorous in his own bed; nor dared Forrest, nor Standen, nor any man of his household, stir him out of that. The Queen of Wine and Honey had digged a pit of sweetness and hidden a fine web all about it, and was fallen into the midst of it herself.
And so, it is like enough, if the boar had not timely rent the thigh of Adonis, Dame Venus herself might have writhed, helpless in just such toils.
CHAPTER VII
AFTERTASTE
The Queen woke at eight o’clock in the morning and called for a cup of cold water. She sat up to drink, and was told that Antony Standen had been at the door at half-past six, the King himself at seven. Listening to this news with her lips in the water, her eyes grew bitter-bright. ‘He shall have old waiting at my chamber door,’ she said, ‘before he wins it.’ Then she began to weep and fling herself about, to bite the coverlet and to gloom among the pillows. ‘If I forget this past night may my God forget me.’ O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery! She lay down again and shut her eyes, but fretted all the time, twitching her arms and legs, making little angry noises, shifting from side to side. Mary Seton sat by the bed, cool and discreet.
The minutes passed, she enduring, until at last, unable to bear the tripping of them, she started up so violently that a great pillow rolled on to the floor. ‘I could kill myself, Seton,’ she said, grinding her little teeth together, ‘I could kill myself for this late piece of work. Verjuice in me!—I should die to drink my own milk. And all of you there, whispering by the door, wagering, nudging one another—“He’ll never come—never. Not he!” Oh, Jesu-Christ!’ she cried, straining up her bare arms, ‘let this wound of mine keep green until the time!’
‘Hush, dear madam, oh, hush!’ says Seton, flushing to hear her; but the Queen turned her a white, hardy face.
‘Why should I be hushed? Let me cry out my shame to all the world, that am the scorn of men and wedded women. Who heeds? What matter what I say? Leave me alone—I’ll not be hushed down.’
Seton was undismayed. ‘No wedded woman am I. I love you, madam, and therefore I shall speak with you. I say that, as he has proved his unworthiness, so you must prove your pride. I say——’