Mr. Knox gathered himself together. ‘Why, this, my man, that the harlotry of old Babylon is not dead yet, but like a snake lifteth a dry head from the dust wherein you think to have crushed her. Bite, snake, bite, I say; for the rather thou bitest, the rather shall thy latter end come. Heard ye not, sirs, how they trounced a bare-polled priest in the house of Rimmon, before the idol of abomination herself, these two days by past? I praise not, I blame not; I say, him that is drunken let him be drunken still. More becomes me not as yet, for all is yet to do. I fear to prejudge, I fear to offend; let us walk warily, brethren, until the day break. But I remember David, ruler in Israel, when he hoped against hope and knew not certainly that his cry should go up as far as God. For no more than that chosen minister can I look to see the number of the elect made up from a froward and stiff-necked generation. Nay, but I can cry aloud in the desert, I can fast, I can watch for the cloud of the gathering wrath of God. And this shall be my prayer for you and for yours, Be wise, etc.’ He did pray as he spoke, with his strong eyes lifted up above the housetops—a bidding prayer, you may call it, to which the people’s answer rumbled and grew in strength. One or two in the street struck into a savage song, and soon the roar of it filled the long street:
The hunter is Christ, that hunts in haste,
The hounds are Peter and Paul;
The Pope is the fox, Rome is the rocks,
That rubs us on the gall.
A gun in the valley told them that the Queen was away. It was well that she was guarded.
Des-Essars, the Queen’s French page, in that curious work of his, half reminiscence and half confession, which he dubs Le Secret des Secrets, has a note upon this day, and the aspect of the crowd, which he says was dangerous. ‘Looking up the hill,’ he writes, ‘towards the Netherbow Port, where we were to stop for the ceremony of the keys, I could see that the line of sightseers was uneven, ever surging and ebbing like an incoming sea. Also I had no relish for the faces I saw—I speak not of them at the windows. Certainly, all were highly curious to see my mistress and their own; and yet—or so I judged—they found in her and her company food for the eyes and none for the heart. They appeared to consider her their property; would have had her go slow, that they might fill themselves with her sight; or fast, that they might judge of her horsemanship. We were a show, forsooth; not come in to take possession of our own; rather admitted, that these close-lipped people might possess us if they found us worthy—ah, or dispossess us if they did not. Here and there men among them hailed their favourites: the Lord James Stuart was received with bonnets in the air; and at least once I heard it said, “There rides the true King of Scots.” My Lord Chancellor Morton, riding immediately before the Queen’s Grace, did not disdain to bandy words with them that cried out upon him, “The Douglas! The Douglas!” He, looking round about, “Ay, ye rascals,” I heard him say, “ye know your masters fine when they carry the sword.” He was a very portly, hearty gentleman in those days, high-coloured, with a full round beard. But above all things in the world the Scots lack fineness of manners. It was not that this Earl of Morton desired to grieve the Queen by any freedom of his; but worse than that, to my thinking, he did not know that he did it. As for my lords her Majesty’s uncles, their reception was exceedingly unhappy; but they cared little for that. Foolish Monsieur de Châtelard made matters worse by singing like a boy in quire as he rode behind his master, Monsieur d’Amville. This he did, as he said, to show his contempt for the rabble; but all the result was that he earned theirs. I saw a tall, gaunt, bearded man at a window, in a black cloak and bonnet. They told me that was Master Knox, the strongest man in Scotland.’
It is true that Master Knox watched the Queen go up, with sharp eyes which missed nothing. He saw her eager head turn this way and that at any chance of a welcome. He saw her meet gladness with gladness, deprecate doubt, plead for affection. ‘Out of the strong came forth sweetness: but she is too keen after sweet food.’ She smiled all the while, but with differences which he was jealous to note. ‘She deals carefully; she is no so sure of her ground. Eh, man, she goes warily to work.’
A child at a window leaped in arms and called out clearly: ‘Oh, mother, mother, the braw leddy!’ The Queen laughed outright, looked up, nodded, and kissed her hand.