Even then he did not know what she meant. She had been mortally offended by the King, and offended to the point of horror—but by something worse than murder and strife in the chamber, by something which she could not speak of! What under Heaven had that red-faced, stable-legged lad in him which could terrify her?
‘Madam,’ he said, ‘if you cannot talk of it, you cannot tell it me, and there is an end. My counsel to you is this: put the young lord and his sottishness out of your royal head. Look at him stoutly and aver that he is naught. You have shown that you can face a rebel kingdom; face now your rebel heart. For I say that your heart is a rebel against your head, swerving and backing like a jade that needs the spur. Ride your heart, madam! Ply whip to the flanks, bring it up to the boggart in the corn. Thus only your heart shall nose out the empty truth. Why, good lack! what is there to credit all your alarm but silly fed flesh and seething liquor? Look at him, judge him, flick your fingers at him, and forget him. Madam, I speak freely.’
She said faintly that he was very right. She had suffered much of late in all ways: she spoke of pains in the side, in the head, of fancies at night, etc. She owned that she desired his good opinion of her courage, and promised she would try to earn it. Looking tired and ill, smiling as if she knew only too well there was no smiling matter, she held out her hand to him at the entry of the town. He bowed over and kissed it. Mildly she thanked him and went her ways with Des-Essars.
He wrote to the countess soon after:—
Very strange matters chance here daily, of the which I write not exactly for fear of misreading. One thing I plainly understand, the K. shall never more prosper here. While he was beloved he was something, and when he was dreaded he was much; but now that he comes and goes unnoticed he is nothing at all. And so he will remain, I suppose, until the lying-in, which will be in June coming they say. Ill betide him then if, when she is reminded of him in his son, he play her any trick. I would not give a snap of the finger and thumb for his life. We are for Edinburgh on Monday morn, whence look infallibly for my tidings.
The King, then, was nothing at all. Nerved by her brawny councillor, she had faced her ‘boggart in the corn,’ and in two days’ time could curl her fine lip to remember him. That is a proof that she was sane at the root, needing no more than such bitter as his rough tongue could give to restore her tone. And, having ridded her fears, she soon found that she could rid her memory altogether. The King went out and in, as Bothwell had written, unnoticed. He made no more attempts to come at her, spoke to none but his own company, felt that he was in disgrace, and sulked. Lord Bothwell scoffed at him by implication—by every keen shaft from his eyes and every wag of his head; Lord Huntly kept at a distance; Sir James altered his salutation. On the Sunday before they should move back to town they were speaking of the rebel lords, whether they were now in England or yet on the road; and Bothwell began to cry up Ruthven, his madness, his knives, his friends’ knives. The King got up and left the table. He told Standen afterwards that he should not go to Edinburgh. Standen told Des-Essars, and he told the Queen.
‘Oh, but he shall,’ she said at once, consulted her friends, and sent him a verbal message that she should need him there. He felt this badly—but obeyed it.
For, much against her inclination, she had made up her mind that she must drag the chain which had been forged upon her; she must keep the King in her eye for fear he should work her a mischief. His father Lennox was in Glasgow, an escaped enemy: it would never do for him to go thither. Or suppose he were to return to England! No, no, she must keep him in Edinburgh, keep him cowed, and yet not allow him to grow desperate. Worse than that, the time was coming on when she must have him by her side, in the house, perhaps nearer still. He was now ‘the Queen’s dearest Consort,’ but soon he would be ‘the Prince’s dearest father’ and a power in the land. The Earl of Bothwell, consulted, was precise about that—awkwardly precise.
‘Folk will talk, madam, about you and him. He’ll not want for a faction to cry, “The King keeps aloof! Well he may, knowing what he knows.” Oh, have him with you, ma’am, as near as may be. For hawks dinna pick out hawks’ een, as they say; and if he owns to the child—why, he should know his own.’