‘Nay, madam,’ says Seton, ‘they might take me too, and you need none of my strong waters. There is wine enough in your honey for all your occasions.’
A shadow of her late gloom crossed over her. ‘My honey has been racked with galls. ’Tis you that have cleared it. Give me my nightgown, and send for Father Roche. I will say my prayers.’
With a spirit so responsive as hers, the will to move was a signal for scheming to begin. Up and down her mind went the bobbing looms, across and across the humming shuttles, spinning the fine threads together into a fabric whose warp was vengeance and the woof escape from self-scorn. She must be free from prison this coming night; but that was not the half: she intended to leave her captors in the bonds she quitted. So high-mettled was she that I doubt whether she would have accepted the first at the price of giving up the second. Those being the ends of her purpose, all her planning was to adjust the means; and the first thing that she saw (and, with great courage, faced) was that the King—this mutilated god, this botch, this travesty of lover and lord—must come out with her. Long before demure Father Roche could answer his summons she had admitted that, and strung herself to accept it. She must drag him after her—a hobble on a donkey’s leg—because she dared not leave him behind. He had betrayed his friends to her—true; but if she forsook him he would run to them again and twice betray her. She shrugged him out of mind. Bah! if she must take him she would take him. ’Twas to be hoped he would get pleasure of it—and so much for that. But whom dared she leave? She could think of no one as yet but her brother Moray. Overnight she had separated him from the others, and she judged that he would remain separate. Her thought was this:—‘He is a rogue among rogues, I grant. But if you trust one rogue in a pack, all the others will distrust him. Therefore he, being shunned by them, will cleave to me; and they, not knowing how far I trust him, will falter and look doubtfully at one another; and some of them will come over to him, and then the others will be stranded.’ Superficial reasoning, rough-and-ready inference, all this. She knew it quite well, but judged that it would meet the case of Scotland. It was only, as it were, the scum of the vats she had seen brewing in France.... But I keep Father Roche from his prayers.
Affairs in the palace and precincts kept their outward calm in the face of the buzzing town. Train-bands paraded the street, the Castle was for her Majesty, the gates were faithful. In the presence of such monitors as these the burgesses and their wives kept their mouths shut as they stood at shop-doors, and when they greeted at the close-ends they looked, but did not ask, for news. But the Earl of Morton’s men still held the palace, and he himself inspected the guard. There were no attempts to dispute his hold, so far as he could learn, no blood-sheddings above the ordinary, no libels on the Cross, no voices lifted against him in the night. He held a morning audience in the Little Throne-room, with his cousin Douglas for Chief Secretary; and to his suitors, speaking him fair, gave fair replies. But it may be admitted he was very uneasy.
That had not been a pleasant view for him overnight, when the great Earl of Moray, newly returned, walked the hall with the Queen upon his arm. His jaw had dropped to see it. Here was a turn given to our affairs! Dreams troubled him, wakefulness, and flying fancies, which to pursue was torment and not to pursue certain ruin. He slept late and rose late. At a sort of levee, which he held as he dressed, he was peevish, snapped at the faithful Archie, and almost quarrelled with Ruthven.
‘Do you bite, my lord?’ had said that savage. ‘If I am to lose my head it shall be in kinder company. I salute your lordship.’ And so he slammed out.
Morton knew that he must smooth him down before the day was over, but just now there were more pressing needs. He told his cousin that he must see the King at the earliest.
Archie wagged his silvery head, looking as wise as an old stork. ‘Why, that is very well,’ says he; ‘but how if he will not see you?’
‘What do you mean, man?’ cried the Earl upon him.