‘My courage, my courage.’
Carwood, with a scream—‘God’s sake, ma’am, put down that knife!’
‘The knife is well enough,’ says she, ‘but the hand is numb. Feel me, Carwood: I am dead in the hand.’
Du Croc heard Carwood grunt as she tussled. ‘Leave it—leave it—give it me! But you shall. You are Queen, but my God to me. Leave it, I say——’ The Queen began to whimper and coax for the knife—called it her lover. Carwood flung open the window and threw it on to the grass.
No doubt the worst was to be feared, no doubt Bothwell had reason to be nervous. At the council-board, to which he ordered her to come, he told her what was before her. The lords were in league, clustered about the Prince: he was not ashamed to tell her in the hearing of all that she was useless without the child. Dejected, almost abject as she was become, she quailed—shrinking back, with wide eyes upon him—at this monstrous insult, as if she herself had been a child struck to the soul by something more brutish than your whips. Lord Herries rose in his place—‘By the living God, my lord, I cannot hear such talk——’ Bothwell was driven to extenuate. ‘My meaning, madam, is that your Majesty can have no force in your arm, nor can your loyal friends have any force, without the Prince your son be with you. You know very well how your late consort desired to have him; and no man can say he was not wise. Believe me, madam—and these lords will bear me out—he is every whit as necessary to your Majesty and me.’
Huntly, on the Queen’s left, leaned behind her chair and spoke in a fierce whisper: ‘You forget, I think, that you speak to the Queen, and of the Queen. The Prince hath nothing but through her.’
‘By God, Geordie,’ he said, whispering back, but heard everywhere, ‘and what have I but through her? I tell you fairly we have lost the main unless we can put up that cockerel.’
The Queen tried to justify herself to her tyrant. ‘You know that I have tried—you know that my brother worked against me——’
‘And he was wise. But now he is from home; we must try again.’
She let her head sink. ‘I am weary—I am weary. Whom have we to send? Do you trust Lethington?’