She asked for news of the King. ‘Where is my consort, Lord Bothwell? Rode he this way?’
‘Madam, he did, and had a most mischievous scare of us. We knew him by the way he damned us all. But he’s well away by now. You may hear him yet.’
She gloomed at that. ‘Ay,’ said she, ‘I have heard him. I shall always hear him, I think.’ Then she shivered. ‘Let us ride on, sirs; the night is chill.’
Nobody spoke much. Lord Bothwell kept close to her right hand, Lord Huntly to her left. They would change horses at Gladsmuir.
The tide was breaking over wet rocks, one pale streak of light burnished the rim of the sea, as Lord Bothwell lifted down his Queen. Astounding to feel how fresh and feat she was! The dark hull of a castle could just be seen, suspended as it seemed above a cloud-bank, with sea-birds looming suddenly large or fading to be small as they swept in and out of the fog. Little tired waves broke and recoiled near by upon the weedy stones.
‘Dunbar, madam,’ says Bothwell, his hands still holding her—‘and the good grey guard of the water.’
The King, they told her, had been in bed those three hours.