Lethington had a late autumnal smile, with teeth showing through like the first frost. ‘I will tell your lordship what he will do. He will see and not see. He will look on and not behold.’
‘You mean, I gather, that he will be at his prayers, looking through his fingers while we foul ours?’
‘Your lordship is most precise.’
However, his plan went before the Queen, who gave it a gloomy approval. ‘He is so clogged with treason, he will never run. You will have an easy capture. Let nothing be done till my son be christened.’
Immediately afterwards she was instructed by Bothwell that the project was as vain as wind, because it depended upon two unstable things. First, if he allowed himself to be taken, what on earth was to be done with him? There must be an assize. And to which side in that would Moray lean?
She could not answer him.
‘No,’ said he, ‘you cannot; nor can any man in Scotland.’
‘I am of your mind,’ she said—superfluous assurance!
‘Well, then,’ he went on, ‘let them stir their broth of grouts. They are all greedy knaves together: perchance one or another will tumble into the stew and we be quit of him.’