‘Hard-faced was the Queen through these disastrous days, and all stony within; bearing alike, with weary, proud looks, the indifference of her trusted friends, the insolent suspicions of my lord of Bothwell, the constant rumours, even the shameful reports, put about concerning herself, as if she was ignorant of them. She was not, she could not be ignorant, but she was utterly negligent. To her but one thing was of concern—his love; and until she was sure of that all else might go as it would. True, he was jealous: at one time she had thought that a hopeful sign. But when she found out that in spite of her kindness he remained indifferent; when he abstained from her company and bed, when he absented himself for two days together—and was still jealous—she was bound to doubt the symptom. It wanted but one thing, in truth, to break down her pride and trail her lovely honour in the dust: and she had it sharp and stinging. O unutterable Secret of Secrets, never to be divulged but in this dying hour when she must ask for pity, since honest dealing is denied to her! She was stung—down fell she—and I saw her fall—heart-broken, and was never more the high Huntress, the Queen “delighting in arrows.” My pen falters, my tears blind me; but write it I must: her fame, her birthright, nay, her gracious head, are in dire peril.[10]
‘It was commonly suspected that Lethington was desirous of escaping to the lords at Stirling, among whom he could count upon one firm friend in the Earl of Atholl. To say nothing that he went hourly in fear of my lord of Bothwell, and believed that the Queen distrusted him, he had been too long in the Earl of Moray’s pocket—kept there as a man keeps a ferret—to be happy out of it. Nominally at large, a pretty shrewd watch was kept upon him, since it would not have been at all convenient to have him at large among her Majesty’s enemies. He knew too much, and his wife, that had been Mistress Fleming, more than he. Therefore it was not intended that he should leave us. Yet I am certain that no day passed in which he did not make some plan of escape.
‘It was for a step in one of such schemes, I suppose, though I cannot see how it should have helped him, that on the day before my lord of Bothwell was created Duke of Orkney, and three days before the marriage, he gave the Queen a thought which very soon possessed her altogether.
‘My lord was away, but expected back that night; Lethington, being with some others in the Queen’s Cabinet when the talk fell upon the Countess of Bothwell, told her Majesty that the lady was dwelling at Crichton. He said it very skilfully—quasi negligently and by the way—but instantly she caught at it, and took it amiss. “She has cast him off—let him cast her off. Crichton! Crichton! Why, he holds it of me! How then should Jean Gordon be there? Or do we share, she and I?” She spoke in her petulant, random way of hit or miss, meaning (it is likely) no more than that she was weary of Lethington. But he coughed behind his hand, and rising up suddenly, went to the window. The Queen marked the action, and called him back.
‘“Come hither, Mr. Secretary,” said she quietly; and he returned at once to her side.
‘“You will please to explain yourself,” she said. Very quiet she was, and so were we all.
‘He began vast excuses, floundering and gasping like a man in deep water. The more he prevaricated the more steadfast she became in pursuit; and so remained until she had dragged out of him what he knew or had intended to imply. The sum and substance was that Paris (a valet of my lord’s) had of late taken letters to and from Crichton: common knowledge, said Lethington. And then, after a good deal, not to the purpose, he declared that my lord had spent two several nights there since the Court had returned to Edinburgh from Dunbar.
‘The Queen, being white even to the lips, said faintly at the end that she did not believe him. Lethington replied that nothing but his duty to her would have induced him to relate facts so curious; the which, he added, must needs concern her Majesty, the Fountain of Honour, who, unsullied herself, could not brook defilement in any of the tributaries of her splendour. She dismissed us all with a wave of her hand—all but Mistress Sempill (who had been Mistress Livingstone), who stayed behind, and whose ringing voice I heard, as I shut the door, leap forward to be at grips with the calumny.
‘She had recovered her gallantry by the evening. Incredible as it may seem, it is true that she publicly taxed my lord with the facts charged against him, when he returned. He did not start or change colour—looked sharply at her for an instant, no more.
‘“Jealous, my Queen?” he asked her, laughing.