The Queen went to bed very early and slept like a child in arms. Everything was in train.
At two o’clock in the morning the King was called, but answered the summons himself, fully dressed, armed and cloaked.
‘I am ready,’ he said, before the messenger could speak. ‘Fetch Standen. I go to the Queen.’
He crept along the passage to the dimly lighted cabinet, where he had of late seen murder, and had to wait there as best he could. He spent the time in walking up and down—an exercise whereby a man, in fear already, gains terror with every pace: so agitated was he that when, after an age of squittering misery, the Queen came in deeply hooded, he forgot everything and burst out with ‘O God, madam, make haste!’
She gave him no answer, but poured herself some wine, added water, and drank. It was terrible to him to see how much at her ease she was, sipping her drink, looking about the cabinet, recalling critically (if the truth is to be told) the stasimons of the late tragic scene.
Mary Seton came in, and Des-Essars, labouring with a portmantle and some pistols.
‘Drink, my children,’ she bade them in French, and they obeyed, taking stay and leisure from her.
The King bit his nails, fretted and fumed—had not had the nerve to drink, even if he had had the invitation.
Standen stood by the wall, stolid as his habit was—the flaxen, solemn English youth, with but one cherubic face for a rape, a funeral, a battle, a christening, or the sacrament. The Queen drew Seton’s attention to him in a whisper, and made the girl laugh.
Presently they heard a step, and then Stewart of Traquair was to be seen, stalwart and watchful, in the doorway.