Sempill, prepared or not, started back, on fire. ‘You’ll never do it. You’ll never dare to do it.’
‘I shall dare to do it, if I dare avouch it.’
Sempill was trembling. ‘I cannot endure it, cannot face it—most wicked! Oh, my dear love and my friend, you that have been all the world to me in times bygone, never go so far from me that I cannot follow you!’
The Queen bit her lip, and wrinkled her eyes where the tears were brimming, drowning her sight. ‘I must, I must—I cannot go back. Oh, have mercy upon me! Oh, Mary——’
Sempill hid her face. ‘I cannot see it done. I cannot know of it. I am—I do my best to be—an honest woman. These things be far from me—unholy things. As Christ is my Saviour, I believe He will pardon you and me all our sins of the hot blood. But not of the cold blood—not of the dry!’ She changed suddenly, as if struck chill. ‘Why, you will be an harlot!’ she said.
The Queen turned over in her bed and faced the wall.
Sempill went down on her knees. ‘I conjure you—I beseech you! Madam, I implore you! By your mother’s bliss and your father’s crown imperial, by the great calling of your birth! By Christ’s dear blood shed for you and all, by the sorrows of Our Lady—the swords in her heart—the tears that she shed; by her swooning at the Cross—I implore, I implore!—make not all these woes to be in vain. By your young child I conjure you—by my own upon earth and the other in my womb—by all calm and innocent things—oh, put it from you: suffer all things—even death, even death!’
There was no response. She rose and stood over the bed. ‘We have loved much, and had sweet commerce, you and I. Many have had sweetness of you and left you: Beaton is gone, Fleming is alienate. You drive me to go their way, you drive me from you. For if you do this, go I must. Honour is above all—and yon man, by my soul, is as foul as hell. Turn to me, my Mary, look at me once, and I shall never leave you till I die.’
She did not stir nor utter a sound; she lay like a log. Mary Sempill, with a sob that shook her to pieces, and a gesture of drowning hands, went out of the room, and at midnight left the palace. Those two, who had been lovers once and friends always, never met again in this world.