But when he was at Hermitage, his proud wife upon his knee, my lord swore to himself over and over again that he was the happiest rogue not yet hanged. And yet he could not but hear, beneath all his protestations, that slow, wounded voice,—‘Afterwards—come soon.’ Good lord! what was the meaning of the like of that?
CHAPTER IX
THE WASHING OF HANDS
To a woman’s affair flocked matron and maid, till the castle seemed a hive of rock-bees. Afar off, it was said, you could hear them humming within; on sudden alarms out they came in a swarm, and ill fared physician or priest, or discreet, wide-eared gentleman sent by his wife to get a piece of news. June was in and well in, skies were clean, the twilight long in coming and loth to go. Queen Mary lay idle by her window, and watched the red roofs turn purple, the hills grow black, the paling of the light from yellow to green, the night’s solemn gathering-in, the star shine clear in a dark-blue bed out there over Arthur’s Seat. Her time was short—but one could scarcely tell. She often felt that she scarcely cared to tell when this crowning hour was to come.
Quick-spirited, sanguine young woman, she bade fair to be weary of matron and maid alike, with their everlasting talk of ‘the promise of Scotland,’ their midwifery stories, their nods and winks, their portentous cares over what she had supposed a pretty ordinary business. It was to be seen that she was fretting, and the truth was that she was in much too good health: bodily ease had never been pleasant to her, and never been safe. Her mind grew arrogant and luxurious at once, felt itself free to range in regions unlawful; and so did range, the lax flesh playing courier. So while the humming and swarming of the household bees went on over and about her listless head, while she snapped twice at the maids for every once the matrons chafed her, in her mind she walked where she fain would have had her body to be: and then, sick of this futility, she grew peevish and wished she had never been born. Upon such a crisis, intending for the best, Mary Beaton superinduced a stout, easily-flushed, gamesome lady, her aunt Lady Forbes of Reres.
Mary Beaton was now the wife of Mr. Ogilvy of Boyne; but this aunt of hers was of the father’s side. A Beaton, she, niece of the great murdered cardinal, sister of the witch-wife of Buccleuch, and in these, no less than in her own respects, a lady to be aware of. She was in her days of silver and russet now, who before may have been of dangerous beauty—of that quickly-ripe, drowsy, blowsy, Venetian sort, disastrous to mankind. Of it, indeed, the clear ravages remained, though cushioned deep in comfortable flesh; traceable there, as in the velvety bosses of a green hill you mark the contours of what was once a citadel of war. Her grey hair she now wore over her ears, to conceal (as the Queen averred) members which were so well stuffed with gallant lore as to be independent for the rest of their lives. She had a pretty mouth—a little overhung—and dimpled chin, light green eyes, fat, pleasurable hands, a merry voice and a railing tongue. Thanks to the combination, she could be malicious without ceasing to amuse. To those who know—and by this time I hope they are many—it is good evidence of her abilities and merits alike that Mary Livingstone could not abide the woman.
It was not required that she should. The Queen, too languid to judge her, listened to the savoury tales of this Reres by the hour together, neither laughing nor chuckling, but for all that fully content. So one might watch audacious archery, and admire the barbed flights, even when some pricked oneself. Lady Reres was of that kind of woman who can never speak of men without marking the gender of them. All the persons on her scene wore transparent draperies; to hear her you would have supposed that the one business of man were to pursue his helpmate, and of woman to stroke her own beauties. She spared neither age nor sex from her categories: all must be stuffed in somewhere; nor did the very throne exempt the sitter from service. The throne of Scotland, for instance! She made it sufficiently appear to Queen Mary that her royal father had been a mighty hunter. She knew the romantic origin of all the by-blows—‘Cupid’s trophies,’ as she called them (O my Lord of Moray!)—and did not scruple to reveal them to the ears of Lady Argyll, herself the daughter of Margaret Erskine, and quite aware of it. Then she must adventure Queen Marie of Lorraine—the one saint whose lamp had never grown dim upon her daughter’s altar—and hint that she had been consciously fair and not unconsciously pursued. ‘And I speak as one who should know, sweet madam,’ said this old Reres; ‘for the Cardinal, fine man, was of my own kindred, and differed noways from the rest of the men. I mind very well—’twas at Linlithgow, where you were born, my Queen—Queen Marie sat by the window on a day, her hand at her side, at her foot a dropped rose. But oh! that flower was wan beside the roses in her face. Your Majesty hath not her hues—no, but you favour the Stuarts. “Dear sakes, madam,” say I, “you have dropped your rose.” So faintly as she smiled, I heard her sigh, and knew she could not answer me then. “Some one will pick up what I have let fall,” saith she at last—and then, behind the curtain, I see a red shoe. I touched my lips—they were as red as your own in those days, madam—and slipped away, knowing my book. Hey! but red was the hue of the Court at that tide—with the tall Cardinal, and the tall rosy Queen, and the dropping, dropping roses.’ The Queen let her talk. She had a soft, wheedling voice—a murmurous accompaniment to luxurious thought.
No doubt, when the body is unstrung you pet your thought, and indulge it in its wanton ways. There is no harm in dreaming. The Queen lay waiting there, thrilled faintly with the sense of what was to come upon her, softly served and softly lapped. And in soft guise came into ministry the figures of her dreams, inviting, craving, imploring, grieving, clinging about her. She communed again with all her lovers, the highest and the lowest—from Charles of France, Most Christian King, a stormy boy, who frowned his black brows upon her and kissed so hotly on that day she saw him last, down to slim, grey-eyed Jean-Marie-Baptiste, whom by kindness she had made man. Others there were, stored in her mind, a many and a many—and any one of them would have died for her once. What of Mr. Knox, of the great hands? What of John Gordon, fiercest of old Huntly’s sons? What of George Gordon, romantic, speechless lover at this hour? To each his own sweetness, to each the secret of his own desire: she savoured each by each as she lay, turning and snuggling and dreaming among her pillows. And when the cooing old Reres by the bed spoke of Lord Bothwell, she listened, sharply intent; and wondered if there were light enough left to betray her, and hoped not. Dangerous, desperate, hardy man! He was a theme upon which Lady Reres descanted at large. Let his draperies be as they would, his gender was never in doubt.
Reres had known James Bothwell—so she always called him—for many years; for although his only numbered thirty yet, and she confessed to five-and-forty, he had come into blossom as quick as a pear-tree in a mild Lent: at fifteen and a half James Bothwell——! She lifted up her hands to end the sentence.