CHAPTER IV
SHE LOOKS BACK ONCE
Just at this point in the story Des-Essars confesses to the desire having been hot within him to assassinate the Earl of Bothwell; and writing it down when the opportunity had come and was gone, he may well say, ‘What would have been the pain and loss of dear blood, had I done it, in comparison to present anguish?’ He is, however, forced to admit that he did not meditate so violent a deed for the sake of avoiding future disaster, but rather to make the present more tolerable. It was his lot to be much with the Queen and her chosen lover; he owns that he found the constant fret of their intercourse almost impossible to be borne. ‘I declare before God and the angels,’ he says, ‘that her dreadful lavishing of herself during these weeks of waste and desire caused my heart to bleed. She stripped herself bare of every grace of mind, spirit, and person, and strewed it in his way, heaping one upon another until he seemed to be wading knee-deep in her charms. Nay, but he wallowed in them like a brute-beast, unrecognising and unthankful—a state of affairs unparalleled since Galahad (who was a good knight) lay abed and was nourished upon the blood of a king’s virgin daughter. How different this knight from that, let these pages declare; and my mistress’s high mind, how similar to that spending martyr’s. For it is most certain that all her acts towards the Lord Bothwell were moved by magnanimity. Stripping herself nobly, she stood the more noble for her nakedness. She suffered horribly: his the horrible sin. Love—in the great manner of it—should be a conflict of generosity; either lover should be emulous of pain and loss. But here she gave and this accursed butcher took; she spent and he got.
‘I saw them together at their various houses of sojourn during this winter: at Drymen in Perth, a house of my Lord Drummond’s; at Tullibardine, at Callander, and again in Edinburgh. Little joy had they of each other, God wot! There are two kinds of lovers’ joys, as I think—the mellow and the sharp. The one is rooted in the heart and the other in the sense, but both alike need leisure of mind if they are to bear fruit; for in the contemplation of our happiness lies the greatest happiness of all. Now, these two were never at rest; they could never look upon each other and let the eyes dwell there with the thought, My Beloved is mine and I am his, and as it is now so it shall be. No, but they looked beyond each other through a tangle of sin and error, searching until their eyeballs ached if haply they might discover a gleam beyond of that windless garden of the Hesperides wherein was put their hope. Fond searching, fond hope! they could never win the garden. Her desires were boundless, unappeasable, and so were his; for she sought to be perfect slave and he to be absolute master. And how was she to be his servant, who was born a queen? and how he the master he sought to be, when no empire the world ever saw would have contented him? But the greatest bar of severance between them was this: there was no community of interest possible between them. For, to her, this Bothwell was the only End; and to him this fair sweet Queen was only a Means. This is a pregnant oracle of mine, worth your travail. Perpend it, you who read.’
Des-Essars did not believe that Lord Bothwell loved the Queen. He had been often at Hermitage, you must remember, and seen the Earl and Countess together. My lord was not regardful of bystanders when he chose to fondle his handsome wife. When the two were separated, as now they were, the observant young man was aware that they wrote frequently to each other: French Paris was for ever coming and going between Liddesdale and his master’s lodging, wherever that might chance to be. He was certain, too, that the Queen knew it. ‘Paris used to deliver to my lord his wife’s letters, and he read them in the Queen’s very presence, with scarce a “By your leave, ma’am”; and at such times I have seen her Majesty pace about the garden in great misery, pull at the rowan berries until she scattered them, pluck at the branches of trees and send the dry leaves flying; and once—as I shall never forget—she thrust her hand and bare arm into a thicket of nettles, and when she drew it out it was all red to the elbow, with sore white blotches upon it where the poison had boiled the blood. Her arm went stiff afterwards, but she never let him know the reason.’
After the christening, about Christmas-time, the Earl of Morton and his friends came home to Scotland, were introduced into the Queen’s presence by the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly, and upon submission (and their knees) restored to their former estates. She had nothing to say to them, but sat like one entranced, looking fixedly at the floor while Bothwell made his speech, and Morton after him, in his bluff way, expressed his contrition and desire to be of service in the future. Mr. Archie Douglas, one of a crowd of repentant rebels, contented himself with cheering. ‘God save your Majesty!’ was his cry, and ‘Confusion to all your enemies!’ whereupon my Lord Morton bethought him of the real occasion of his recall, and added to his speech a few words more.
‘Oh, ay!’ he said: ‘by our fruits you shall judge us, madam, whether we be gratefully replanted in this dear soil or no. Try us, madam, upon whomsoever hath aggrieved you, or endangered your throne, or the thrones of them that are to follow you—try us, I say, and see whether our appetites to serve you are not whetted by our long absence.’
She had started and looked hastily at Bothwell,—evidently she was frightened. Her lips moved for some time before any sound came forth from them, but presently she said that she should not fail to call for service in the field when she required it. ‘But the realm is now at peace,’ she added, ‘and I hope will remain so.’