‘I knew this quilt well—a handsome piece of work, of Genoa velvet, much overlaid with gold thread, which they say had belonged to the old Queen.
‘I asked, “By whose order come you, my good Carwood?” for I was not everybody’s man.
‘She replied, “By the Queen’s own, given to me by word of mouth, not an hour since. Go now, go, Paris. She is in a rare fluster, and will not rest.”
‘“Toho!” I say, “she disquieteth herself about this quilt.”
‘And Carwood said, “Ay, for it belonged to her lady mother, and is therefore worth rubies in her sight. She hath not slept a wink since she woke dreaming of it.”
‘To be short, this gave me, as they say, food for thoughts. Then, about the eleven o’clock, as the people were coming out from their sermon, I had more of the same provender—and a full meal of it. Judge for yourselves when I tell you with what the vomiting church doors were buzzing. My lord of Moray had left Edinburgh overnight and gone northward, to Lochleven, to see his mother, the Lady Douglas. He had taken secret leave of the Queen, and immediately after was away. Oh, Monsieur de Moray, Monsieur de Moray! is not your lordship the archetype and everlasting pattern of all rats that are and shall be in the world?
‘Now, putting the one thing on the top of the other, you may believe that I was not at all surprised to get my master’s orders the same day, to convey certain gunpowder from Hamilton House through the King’s garden into the Queen’s chamber so soon as it was quite dark. There you have the reason why the quilt had been saved. Powrie, Dalgleish, and Patrick Wilson were to help me; Monsieur Hob d’Ormiston would show us how to dispose of our loads and spread the train for the slow match. In Hamilton House it lay, mark you well! I will make the figs in the face of anybody who tells me that the Hamiltons were not up to the chin in the affair. How should we use their house without their leave? There were the Archbishop and Monsieur d’Arbroath involved. But enough! It is obvious. And I can tell you of another gentleman heavily involved, no one more certainly than I. It was my lord of Huntly: yes, gentlemen, no less a man.
‘It fell out about the five o’clock that, judging it dark enough for far more delicate work than this of powder-laying, I was setting out to join my colleagues by Hamilton House, when my Lord Huntly sends down a valet for me to go to his cabinet. I had had very few dealings with this young nobleman, whom (to say truth) I had always considered something of a dunce. He was as silent as his sister, my master’s lady, and, after his fashion, as good to look upon. You never saw a straighter-legged man, nor a straighter-looking, nor one who carried, as I had thought, an empty head higher in the air. That was my mistake. He was an old lover of the Queen’s, whom she fancied less than his brother Sir Adam. He, that Sir Adam, had been bosom-friend of Monsieur Des-Essars when the pair of them were boys, and had shared the Queen’s favours together, which very likely were not so bountiful as common rumour would have them. He certainly was a fiery youth, who may one day do greatly. But I admit that I had held my Lord Huntly for a want-wit—and that I was very much mistaken.
‘I went up and into his cabinet, and found him standing before the fire, with his legs spread out.
‘“Paris,” says he, “you are off on an errand of your master’s, I jealouse; one that might take you not a hundred miles from the Blackfriars’ Garden.”