A strange midnight picture! There was Father Roche, the old Dominican, looking all ways for danger, twittering before the candles and cross; there Des-Essars on his knees, with his white face peaked and taut; there poor Carwood, her apron over her head, swaying about; there old Mother Reres spying wickedly out of the corners of her eyes at Mary Livingstone, stern as thunder. Erskine with his white staff stood at the door, two clinging pages about him; in the midst, at her faldstool, the slim, fever-bright Queen in her furred gown, praying aloud, she alone, like a nun in ecstasy. With Father Roche in extremis, Des-Essars was the first to relieve the strain by boldly intoning the versicle; but there were no more prayers. Carwood and Livingstone took the Queen to bed, and Livingstone stayed with her. Carwood says that she herself slept ‘like drowned weed.’ When Livingstone woke her next morning, she heard the great bell tolling at Saint Giles’. She asked first of the Queen, and was told she was ‘quiet.’ She did not dare any more questions, and remained until midday inmate of the only house in town which did not know the news.
Mary Livingstone would say nothing to any one: in fact, so grim were her looks that no one cared to question her. Lady Reres kept her chamber. At nine o’clock the Earl of Huntly came up, with a very fixed face, and was taken to the Queen’s bedchamber door by Des-Essars, who went no farther himself, but hung about the corridor and anteroom in case he might be sent for. Before long he heard the Queen in distress, crying and talking at once, a flood of broken words; and, whiles, Lord Huntly’s voice, sombre and restrained, ill calculated to calm her. Presently Mary Livingstone opened the door, and he heard the Queen calling for him: ‘Baptist, O Baptist, come—quick, quick!’
‘Go to her,’ says Livingstone drily; ‘this is beyond my powers.’
He ran into the room, and saw her lying half-naked on her bed, face downwards, her hair all over her eyes. She looked like one in mortal agony.
‘O madam, O sweet madam——’ he began, being on his knees before her.
She lifted her head. ‘Who calls me?’
She sat up, and parted her hair from her face with her finger-tips. He saw her transfigured, flushed like one with a heat-rash, and her eyes cloudy black, glazed and undiscerning. She was in a transport of feeling, far beyond his scope; but she knew him, and cleared in his sight.
‘Baptist, the King is dead.’
‘Dead, madam! Oh, alas!’