The Queen's Quair; or, The Six Years' Tragedy

by Maurice Hewlett

Great days were these for Mr. Secretary Lethington: to feel the sun of royal favour genially warm upon his back once more; to seek (and surely find) assurance of good fortune in the brown eyes of the sweetest, most modest, gentlest-hearted lady in Scotland. Did he not owe everything to Mary Fleming? And was she not a sweet creditor? And next to her he stood indebted to the weather. The man was sensitive to climate, and, like all sensitive men, loved autumn best. ‘This slope sun, which will neither scorch nor refuse his clemency, dearest lady,’ he said; ‘these milky skies, which never seem to lose the freshness of dawn; the very gentle death—most merciful!—which each Day suffers; the balm of Night’s dipped fingers shed upon our brows: are not these things an augury (O my true love!) of even life for you and me? Even life, a peaceful ending of our days, with the angry solstice turned, the dry heat, the bared wrath of the sun far from us! Indeed, indeed, I do believe it.’ Mary Fleming, looking steadfastly into the pale sky, would be too sure of herself to feel abashed by his fervour. ‘And I, sir,’ she would answer, ‘pray for it daily.’

Mr. Secretary, at such times as these, felt purified, ennobled, a clean man. Working with the Queen through mornings of golden mist and veiled heat, he did his very best in her service, and laboured to respond to all her moods with that alacrity, clear sight, and good-humour which he saw very well his present state required. He was one of those men who, like beasts of chase, take colour from their surroundings. If you stroke your dormouse his coat will answer; he will burnish to a foxy brightness under the hand. And so with Mr. Secretary. His lady-love was kind, his sovereign trusted him again: he shone under such favour, dared to be in charity with all men, and was most worthy of trust. He thought little of bygone stresses, of the late months when he had lurked, gnawing his cheek, in the hills of the west; it was impossible for the like of him to believe that he had ever been otherwise than now he was. He fancied himself a book opened at a clean page, and never turned back to regard earlier chapters, blotted and ugly. Forward, rather, looked he—upon many fair folios of untouched vellum. ‘Upon these we will print in golden types, my heart, the gestes of the twin-flight to the stars of William Maitland of Lethington and Mary Fleming, his spouse: deux cors, ung coer!’ And she, loving soul, believed the man.

The Queen, since that summer’s day when, with ritual, she had washed her hands in rose-water, had known many moods. Some were of dangerous sweetness, as of treading a brink hand in hand; some of full joy in air and weather, as when Lord Bothwell and his men steered her across the dancing sea, and the little ship, plunging in blue waters, tossed up the spray to kiss her cheeks, or sting unmannerly her happy eyes. There had been days also of high revelry at Stirling—dancings, hawkings, romping games, disguises; days of bravado, where Memory was dared to do her worst. All of these, as Mary Livingstone told her husband, with Lord Bothwell at her side and the King out of mind. Some days she had had of doubtful questioning, of heart-probing, drawing-back; a sense (to be nursed) of nothing yet lost, of all being yet well; and others—but then she had been quite alone—when, upon her knees, with bent-down head and hands crossed over the breast, she had whispered to herself the words of fate: ‘Behold one stronger than I, who, coming, shall overshadow me. Take me, lord, take me, take me, such as I am.’ After such times as these she would walk among her women with a rapt, pure face, her soul sitting in her eyes, or half-risen, quivering there, trembling in strength, sensing the air, beating, ready to fly. Then, as they looked at her wondering, she would sit with them and talk gently, in a low kind voice, about their affairs; and Mary Livingstone, who knew her at her best when she was quick and masterful, feared most for her then; and Mary Fleming, who had but one thought in her heart, took courage—and at some such time pleaded for, and won back, her banished lover.

So it was with her during all that summer and early autumn, while the Master of Sempill (healthy-faced man) was filling his Diurnall, and doing his best to fill his pocket, by emptying his wife of confidences and betraying her afterwards. But when she came back from Stirling, enriched in divers ways, she had to find that the graceless King had not lost his power of the spur. By degrees and degrees dark rumours gathered about her, of which he was the nucleus. She heard of his quarrelling at Dunfermline, of a night-fray at Cameron Brig in which he was suspected of a share; of his man Standen with a wounded head, and the King swearing he would burn the doer of it out of house and jacket. Now, who had wounded Standen’s head? Nobody could tell her.

Then there were threats sent about town and country by craped messengers: ‘The Earl of Moray should beware how he rides abroad’; or ‘Let the Lord of Bothwell look to the inmates of his house’—and so forth. Worse than these were the hints thrown out to Du Croc, the French Ambassador—hints which pointed at the safety of the prince her son, and at the King as the author of them. Flying words had been caught in galleries and corridors; somebody saw the white face of Forrest, his chamber-child, frozen by terror into silence. They had him in among them, and twisted his arm: he would not deny, he would not affirm, but wept copiously and moaned for his mother in Winchester. Mysteries and mischiefs were all about her; and everything she could gather insisted on one fact—that the King intended action of his own oversea or in England—she could not tell which.

Loathing the task as much as the taskmaster, she looked her affairs in the face. For one thing, they gave her back a distorted image of her own face. She had washed her hands, she had been happy, thought herself free,—why, why, what a purblind fool! She had been playing the May Day queen, like any chimney-sweeper’s wench, in a torn petticoat. A rent panoply to cover her, a mantle-royal full of old clouts! The discovery threw her into despair: ‘Here am I, Mary of France and Scotland, a crowned woman—bankrupt, at the mercy of a sot to whom I lent my honour twice!’ Under the bite and rankle of this thought, grown fearfully eager, she looked about all ways for escape. Divorce! No, no, that would bastardise her son. The strong hand, then! Let her lay hands upon the traitor to her throne and bed. There was ample proof against him; the Riccio plot had been enough by itself—but what stayed her was the question, whose hands should she set at him? Why, who was there in all Scotland at this hour who would show him any mercy, once he had him? She could not answer that; there was nobody. No. She stood—she was sure of it—between the King and his murder. ‘But for me,’ she said bitterly, ‘but for me, whom he has dipped in shame, he is a dead man.’ For a long time she stood pondering this, a bleak smile on her lips, and one finger touching her breast.

So might she remain standing; but she could not have him slain. Not though he had sought to betray her, spurned her worth, made her a mock; not though he would steal her child, tamper with her enemies, sell her for a price. All this was true, and more. She grew scarlet to admit to herself that more was true. She was his wedded wife, at his beck and call: and now she loved a Man; and love (as always) made her pure virgin. The shame of the truth flooded her with colour.—But no! She stood between the King and his murderers. If he persisted in his misdeeds, she had but to stand aside and they would kill him. Well, she could not stand aside; therefore she must coax him back to decency—by the arts of women.

Hateful necessity! And yet if you had seen her at her window as she faced it, looking askance at the green sky, you would have thought her just a love-sick girl spying for her lover: for that was her wont, to smile, and peer, and turn her pretty head; pick with her fingers at the pleats of her gown, and be most winning when at the verge of loss. And even when she had decided upon bargaining with the man she abhorred, she did not abhor the act. It would be a delicate exercise of the wits—most delicate. For observe this well, you who desire to know her: although she stood between the man and his murder, while she stood there she was absolutely at his mercy. He could do what he chose with her. Bargaining! He could drive the most terrible bargain. If she decided that he must not be killed, she must needs deal tenderly with him, and fib and cheat to save him. For she knew very well that whatever compunction she had, he would have none. In a word, she must prepare to save him alive, and pay him dearly for the hateful privilege.

Very well. These conclusions worked out, she deliberately sent word that she would see him, and he came to her (as she had foreseen) in his worst mood—the hectoring mood which knew her extremity and built upon it.