She started, forced herself to listen, knew the truth. ‘He is hunting! Take me—hide me—keep me safe! Bothwell, keep him off me!’
She knew not what she said or did; but he, full of pity now, drew her behind a clump of whims and held her with his arm.
‘There, there, madam, comfort yourself,’ he said. ‘None shall harm you that harm not me first. How shall you be hurt if you are not to be seen? Trust yourself to me.’
She shook in his arm like a man in an ague; uncontrollable fits of shaking possessed her, under which, as they passed through her, she shut her eyes, and with bent head endured them. So much she suffered that, if he had not let his wits go to work, he would have hailed the King as he went pounding by. He supposed that she had been shocked mad by that late business of hasty blood. Of course he was wrong, but the guess was enough to prevent him following his first purpose, and so killing her outright.
The King came rocking down the brae, red and furious, intent upon the truant horse; and as he went, Bothwell made bold to glance at the Queen. What he saw in her hag-ridden face was curious enough to set him thinking hard; curious, but yet, as he saw it, unmistakable. There was vacancy there, the inability to reason which troubles the mentally afflicted; there were despair and misery, natural enough if the poor lady was going mad—and knew it. But—oh, there was no doubt of it!—there was in the drawn lines of her face blank, undisguised disappointment. He saw it all now. She had believed him dead, her heart had leaped; and now she had just seen him alive, galloping his horse. Clang goes the cage door again upon my lady! Now, here was a state of things!
When the King was out of sight and hearing, swallowed in the growing fog, and she a little recovered, and a little ashamed, he began to talk with her; and in time she listened to what he had to say. He spoke well, neither forgetting the respect due to her, which before he had been prone to do, nor that due to himself as a man of the world. He did not disguise from her that he thought very lightly of David’s killing.
‘Saucy servants, in my opinion,’ he said, ‘must take what they deserve if they expect more than they are worth. They demand equality—well, and when they meet gentlemen with daggers, they get it.’ But he hastened to add that to have killed the fellow before her face must have been the act of beasts or madmen—‘and, saving his respect, madam, your consort was one and your Ruthven the other.’
To his great surprise she then said quietly that she was of the same mind, and not greatly afflicted by the deed, or the manner of it either. She had seen men killed in France; queens should be blooded as well as hounds. She also considered that Davy had been presumptuous. He had known his aptitudes too well. But useful he had certainly been, and she intended to have another out of the same nest—Joseph, his brother. Singular lady! she had found time to write into Piedmont for him.
‘Well then, madam,’ says Bothwell, with a shrug, ‘all this being your true mind, I own myself at a loss how to take your extreme alarms.’
She bit her lip. ‘I am better. Maybe they were foolish. Who knows? I cannot tell you any more than this. I had nearly forgot that wicked deed. But there are other offences—women find—which cannot, can never be forgotten.’ She grew impatient. ‘Ah, but it is not tolerable to discuss such things.’