The fact is that, as aforesaid, she was too sensitive an instrument for his coarse fingers. As well give Blind Jack a fiddle of Cremona for his tap-room jiggeries. If my lord wanted work from her which Moll Bawd or Kate Cutsheet would have done better, he should have known wiselier how to get it than by using the only stimulus such hacks could feel. This tremulous, starting, docile creature to be pricked on by jealousy, forsooth! Why, that had been King Darnley’s silly way. ‘I would that Glasgow might be the Hermitage and myself the Earl of Bothwell as I lie here,’ he had said; and it made her laugh and admit the truth. But this Bothwell was no finer. ‘Ohè! a many weary leagues before I win my home! Well, I am sure of a welcome there.’ And then, when she bent her head to the way, ‘Ay, Queens and Kings, and all gudemen and wives are in the like case. Bed and board—it comes down e’en to that. Love is just a flaunty scarf to draw the eye with. You see it purfling at a window, and, think you, that should be a dainty white hand a-working there!’
She lifted her face to meet the driving snow, looked into the dun sky and saw it speckled with black—her own colours henceforward! Thus would she be from her soul outwards—sodden grey, and speckled with black. The burden of her heart was so heavy that she groaned aloud. ‘You falter, you fear!’ cried that fidgety brute. ‘Mercy, mercy,’ she stammered; ‘I shall fail if you speak to me.’
The snow was falling fast, but there was no wind, when she said farewell to her lover at Callander gate. He would not go in; purposed to ride southward into Liddesdale with but one change of horses, fearing that the wind would get up after dark and make the hill-roads impossible. The Black Laird of Ormiston, Tala, and Bowton were to go with him; he left Paris behind to be her messenger if she should need to send one. There was no time to spare. ‘Set on, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I will overtake you.’
He shook the snow from his cloak, set it flying from eyelashes and beard, drew near to the sombre lady where she stood in the midst of her little company, and put his hand upon her saddle-bow. ‘God speed your Grace upon your goodly errand,’ he said—whereat she gave a little moan of the voice, but did not otherwise respond—‘and send us soon a happy meeting—Amen!’
She looked at him piercingly for a second of time, and then resumed her staring and glooming. He cried her farewell once more, saluted the lords, and pounded over the frozen marsh. One could hear him talking and laughing for a long way, and the barking answers of Ormiston.
The Queen rode up the avenue to the doors, and was taken to bed by Mary Seton and Carwood. She kept her chamber all that evening and night, but sent for Paris early in the morning. He saw her in bed, thin and drawn in the face, very narrow-eyed, and with a short cough. She handed him a great sack, sealed and tied, and a letter.
‘Take these to your master at the Hermitage. You shall have what horses you need. In that pack are four hundred crowns. You see how much trust I have in you.’
Paris assured her that her trust was well bestowed, as she should find out by his quick return to her.
She laughed, not happily. ‘I hope so. I came from France, and to France I go in my need.’
‘Why, madam,’ says Paris, ‘does your Majesty intend for my country?’