‘Damn you, I am not!’ said Bothwell.
He considered the case as closely as ever anything in his life, for he was engaged in a great game. He consulted one or two men—Melvill, Lord Livingstone, his leering old uncle of Orkney. He sounded Morton, Argyll, Bishop Lesley (as he now was become); and then he gave a supper at Ainslie’s, opened his plans, and got their promises to stand by him. He wrote these out and made them sign. This was on 19th April, and that night he certainly saw the Queen. I say ‘certainly’ because Des-Essars, who was with her afterwards, was told by her that ‘her lord’ had gone into Liddesdale to harry the reivers. Something in her tone—he could not see her eyes—made him doubt her: a little something made him suspect that she intended him to doubt.
So, ‘Reivers, ma’am!’ he cried. ‘Is this a time to consider the lifting of cattle, when yourself and him are in danger, and no man knows when the town may rise?’
Her answer was an odd one. She was sitting in a low chair by the wood fire, leaning back, looking at the red embers through her fingers. Before she spoke she lowered her head, as if to put her face in shadow, and looked up at him sideways. He saw the gleam of one eye, the edge of her cheek where the light caught it. As he read her, she was laughing at him.
‘More may be lifted than cattle by these wild men of the Border. I am going to Stirling in two days’ time, and maybe we shall meet, my lord and I.’
He asked her calmly—accustomed to her way of declaring certainties as possibilities—was such a meeting arranged for? ‘Come to me, child,’ she said (though he was not a child), and when he obeyed, ‘Kneel by my side.’ She put her arm round his neck in a sisterly fashion, and said, ‘You shall be with me to Stirling, and again when we depart from Stirling. You forget not that you are my brother? Well, then, brother, I say to you, Leave me not now, for the time is at hand when I shall need you. I believe I am to be made the happiest woman in the world, and need you to share my joy as much as ever you did my sorrow. Hereafter, for many days, I may have no time to speak privately with you. Kiss me, therefore, and wish me happy days and nights.’
He kissed her, wondering and fearing. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘bethink you what you are about! I beg of you to speak with my lord of Huntly in this business of Stirling.’
She said, ‘It is done. I have spoken with him: he was here but an hour gone. And I have Lethington on my side, and Mary Livingstone and Fleming will both be with me.’ She laughed at her thoughts; not for a long time had her old malicious gaiety been upon her. ‘I knew that I could win back Livingstone. Guess you how I did it.’ And when he could not, or would not, she whispered in his ear, ‘She believes I am with child by the King.’
Des-Essars had nothing to say, but she kept him by her, talking of her life about to begin, her joy and pride, love, duty, privilege, in a way so innocent and candid, she might have been a child at play. The hours were small when he bade her good-night, and she said laughingly, ‘Yes, go now. I shall be wise to sleep while I may.’
As he went he stretched out his arms, let them fall, and shrugged his young shoulders—gestures all of despair.