CHAPTER I
STORMY OPENING
It is rather better than five years since you first met with Des-Essars in the sunny garden at Nancy, and as yet I have but dipped into the curious little furtive book which, for my own part, although its authenticity has been disputed, I attribute to him without hesitation—Le Secret des Secrets, as it is called. For such neglect as this may be I have the first-rate excuse that it contains nothing to what has been my purpose; all that there is of it, prior to the October 1566 where now we are, seeming to have been added by way of prologue to the Revealed Mysteries he thought himself inspired to declare. Probably, no secrets had, so far, come in his way, or none worth speaking of. ‘Boys’ secrets,’ as he says somewhere, ‘are truly but a mode of communicating news, which when it is particularly urgent to be spread, is called a secret. The term ensures that it will be listened to with attention and repeated instantly.’ You may gather, therefore, that Le Secret des Secrets was not of this order, more especially since he tells us himself that it would never have been imparted at all but for the Queen’s, his mistress’s, danger. Plainly, then, he compiled his book in Queen Mary’s extreme hour of need, when her neck was beneath her ‘good Sister’s’ heel—and only in the hope of withdrawing it. Those were hasty times for all who loved the poor lady; the Secret des Secrets bears signs of haste. Its author scamped his prologue, took his title for granted, and plunged off into the turmoil of his matter like the swimmer who goes to save life. But you and I, who know something about him by this time, have intelligence enough to determine whether he was worthy, or likely to be judged worthy, of the keeping of a Queen’s heart. So much only I have thought fit to declare concerning the origin of a curious little book: for curious it is, partly in the facts it contains, and even more in the facts it seems to search for—facts of mental process, as I may call them.
He begins in this manner:—
‘About ten of the clock on the night of the 6th-7th October’—that is, the reader sees, on the night when Bothwell kissed her in the Chequer Garden—‘the Queen’s Majesty, who had been supposed alone, meditating in the garden, came stilly into the house, passed the hall, up the stair, and through the anteroom where I, Mr. Erskine, Mistress Seton and Mistress Fleming were playing at trumps; and on to her cabinet without word said by any one of us. We stood up as she came in, but none spake, for her looks and motions forbade it. She walked evenly and quickly, in a rapt state of the soul, her head bent and hands clasped together under her chin, just as a priest will go, carrying the Sacrament to the bedridden or dying. But presently, after she was gone, Mistress Fleming went to see whether she had need of anything; and returned, saying that her Majesty had been made ready for bed and lain down in it, without word, without prayers. Shortly afterwards the ladies went to their beds, and I sat alone in the antechamber on my duty of the night; and so sitting fell asleep with my face in my arm.
‘I suppose that it was midnight or thereabout when I was awakened by a touch on my head, and starting up, saw the Queen in her bedgown, her hair all loose about her, standing above me. Being unable to sleep, she said, she desired company. I asked her, should I read, sing, or tell her a tale? But she, still smiling, being, as I thought, in a rapt condition of trance, shook her head. “If you were to read I should not listen, if you were to sing the household would wake. Stay as you are,” said she, and began to walk about the chamber and to speak of a variety of matters, but not at all connectedly. I replied as best I was able, which was heavily and without wit—for I had been sound asleep a few moments before. Something was presently said of my lord of Bothwell: I think that she led the talk towards him. I said, I marvelled he should stay so long in Liddesdale, with the Court here in town. She stopped her pacing and crossed her arms at her neck, as I had seen her do when she came in from the garden. Looking closely and strangely at me, she said, “He is not in Liddesdale. He is here. I have seen him this night.” Then, as I wondered, she sat down by the table, her face shaded from the candle by her hand, and regarded me for some time without speaking.
‘She then said that, although it might seem very extraordinary to me, she had good reason for what she was about to do; that for the present I must believe that, and be sure that she would not impart to me her greatest secret had she not proved me worthy of the trust. She then told me, without any more preface, that she should be called the happiest of women, in that, being beloved, she loved truly again. She said that she had been consecrated a lover that very night by a pledge not only sweet in itself, but sweet as the assurance of all sweetness. She touched her mouth; and “Yes,” she said, “all unworthy as I am, this great treasure hath been bestowed into my keeping. See henceforward in me, most faithful, proved friend, not your mistress so much as your sister, a servant even as you are, devoted to the greatest service a woman can take upon her—subjection, namely, to Love, that puissant and terrible lord.”
‘While I wondered still more greatly, she grew largely eloquent. Her soul, she said, was in two certain hands “like a caught bird”; but such bondage was true freedom to the generous heart, being liberty to give. She owned that she was telling me things known to no others but herself and her beloved. “I am your sister and fellow-servant,” said she, “whispering secrets in the dark. Marvel not at it; for women are so made that if they cannot confide in one or another they must die of the burning knowledge they have; and I, alas, am so placed that, with women all about me, and loving women, there is none, no, not one, in whom I can trust.”