He worked himself crimson in the face, his eyes savage and red. ‘Mind your ways, young sir, mind your ways’—he threatened with his fist,—‘I warn ye mind your ways just now—lest you come into the deep mire, man, where no ground is.’
Des-Essars drilled his slim body to attention, and fixed his eyes on the opposite wall. The Earl glared at him open-mouthed, and fingered his dagger as though he itched to be at it. But presently he scoffed at himself—‘A white-faced boy to stand by side o’ me!’ He turned: ‘Take your coffer, master, and be out of this. A little more and I might colour you finely.’
Des-Essars removed both coffer and himself. Paris was trembling: he knew that what he had to report of Edinburgh’s doings would not make matters any better. Nor did they—though it may be doubted whether they could have made matters any worse.
The joys of love—love’s moment of victory, love’s rest, and possession of the spoils—are gossamer things: an adverse breath may shred them away. As for Love himself, you may call him a Lord or a Beast, give him his roseate wings or his cloven hoofs and tail: certainly there never was in the world so refined a glutton. Perfection is what he claims, no less; perfection of leisure to obtain, perfection of content, and all according to that standard of mind which, in a field without limit, grudges the stirring of a filament as a hindrance to the enormous calm he covets, and sees in a speck of sand a blemish upon his prize. ‘Alas! no man, no kingdom of this world, no ordering attainable by mortal minister could have appeased Queen Mary. She was made to hunt for happiness and never to find it. She had risked all upon this cast of hers, had made it, at her last gasp had fallen upon the quarry. And now, clutching it, eyeing the coverts fearfully to right and left, starting at a whisper, cowering at the lightest shadow—like a beast of prey, she had no time to taste what she had so hardly won. O miserably stung by the rankling arrow! Poor Io, spurred by the gad-fly, what rest for thee? Come, ye calm-browed beneficent goddesses of the night! Handmaids of Death, come in! and with cool finger-tips close down these aching lids, and on these burning cheeks lay the balm of the last kiss; so the mutinous, famishing heart shall contend with Heaven no more!’ The dithyrambic cry of Des-Essars does not indicate a comfortable state of things at Dunbar.
The Queen was madly in love, aching to be possessed, but knowing herself insecurely possessed. Her tyrant, master, beloved—whatever Bothwell may have desired to be—was harassed by events, and could not play the great lover even if he would. Rebellion gathered outside his stronghold, and he knew every surge of it; he was not safe from disaffection within doors, and had to watch for it like a cat at a mousehole. If the Queen had sinned to get a lover, he had risked his head to wive a queen. Well, and he had not got her yet, though she asked for nothing better all day and night. Queens and what they carry are not got by highway robbery: it’s not only a question of kissing. You may steal a Queen for the bedchamber—but there’s the Antechamber to be quieted, there’s the Presence Chamber to be awed, there’s the Throne Room to be shocked into obsequiousness: ah, and the Citadel to be taught to fly your banner. Brooding on these things—all to do except one—his lordship had no time for transports, and no temper neither. When the Queen wept he swore, when she pleaded he refused her, when she sulked he showed his satisfaction at being let alone, and when she stormed he stormed loudlier. He was not a man of fine perceptions: that was his strength, he knew. By the Lord, said he, let others, let her, know it too! And the sooner the better.
She would not discuss politics. Dunbar, which was to have been her bride-bower, should be so still, in defiance of beastly fact. She refused to hear what Paris had to say of Edinburgh pulpits, of Morton’s men-at-arms, Grange’s flying messengers. When Bothwell spoke of the Prince at Stirling she promised him a new prince at Dunbar; when he cried out threats against Archie Douglas she stopped his mouth with kisses; when he summoned Liddesdale to arms she pouted because her arms were not enough for him. It was mad, it was unreasonable, it fretted him to feverish rages. He gnashed his teeth. Lethington kept rigidly out of his way: he was really in danger, and knew it; not a day passed but he made some plan of escape. Melvill spoke in whispers, could not have stood on more ceremony with his Maker. Huntly was always on the verge of a quarrel; and as for poor little Des-Essars, you know how he stood.
There came anon swift confirmation of Paris’ fears: a letter from Hob Ormiston, now in Edinburgh, to his brother the Black Laird. Both worthies had been, as we know, with Bothwell on the night of Kirk o’ Field. Hob wrote that Kirkcaldy of Grange had met him after sermon in a company of people, taxed him with the King’s murder and threatened him with arrest ‘in the Queen’s name and for her honour.’ He went in fear, did Hob; his life was in it. Now, might he not clear himself? Let his lordship of Bothwell be sounded upon that, who knew that he was as guiltless of that blood as his lordship’s self. It would be black injustice that an innocent Hob should suffer while a blood-guttered Archie went scot-free, and a crowning indignity that he should perish under the actual guilty hands. For well he knew that my L—d of M——n stood behind Grange. Ormiston, with this crying letter in hand, sought out his master, and found him on the terrace overlooking the sea, walking up and down with the Queen and Lord Huntly. As he approached he saw her Majesty cover her mouth and strangle a yawn at birth.
Bothwell read the letter through, and handed it to the Queen. She also read it hastily. ‘Innocent!’ she mocked, with a curling, sulky lip, ‘the innocent Hob—a good word! But this letter concerns you, Huntly, more than me.’
In turn the dark young lord read it. He was much longer at it, slower-witted; and before he was half-way through for the second time the Queen was out of patience.
‘Well! well! What do you make of it, you who know the very truth and do not choose to declare it? Are our friends to be cleared, or will you see them all butchered for the Douglases’ sake?’