This was not heard; but Lethington saw Bothwell’s eye gleam red upon him.
‘Him? I would as soon go myself. If he wormed in there, do you suppose we could ever draw him out again?’
‘No,’ she said aloud, ‘I am of your mind. Send we Melvill, then.’
He would not have Melvill: he chose Herries.
They sent out Lord Herries on a fruitless errand; fruitless in the main sense, but fruitful in another, since he brought back a waverer. This was the Earl of Argyll, head of a great name, but with no head of his own worth speaking about. He might have been welcome but for the news that came with him. All access to the Prince had been refused to Herries the moment it was known on whose behalf he asked it. The Countess of Mar mounted guard over the door, and would not leave until the Queen’s emissary was out of the house. There was more than statecraft here, as Herries had to confess: witchcraft from the Queen was in question, from the mother upon the child. The last time she had been to see him, they said, she had given him an apple, which he played with and presently cast down. A dog picked it up, ran under the table with it and began to mumble it. The dog, foaming and snaping, jerked away its life. ‘Treason and lies!’ roared Bothwell, who was present; ‘treason heaped on lies! Why, when was your Majesty last at Stirling?’ He had forgotten, though she had not.
‘It was the night before you took me at Almond Brig,’ she said; and, when he chuckled, broke out with vehemence of pain, ‘You laugh at it! You laugh still, O Christ! Will you laugh at my graveside, Bothwell?’ She hid her head in her arm and wept miserably. It was grievous to see her and not weep too. Yet these were no times in which to weep.
On the same day in which Lord Lindsay departed, to join the Lords at Stirling, Huntly also, most unhappily, asked leave to go to his lands. The Queen used him bitterly. She could be gentle with any other and move their pity: with him she must always be girding. ‘Do you turn traitor like your father? Have you too kept a dagger for my last hours?’ He did not break into reproaches, nor seek to justify himself, as he might have done—for no one had tried to serve her at more peril to himself. He said, ‘Madam, I have tried to repair my faults committed against you,’ and turned away with a black look of despair. He went north, as she thought, lost to her: it was Bothwell who afterwards told her that he had gone to summon his kindred against the war which he saw could not be far off. So scornful are women to those who love them in vain—that should surely have touched her, but did not. Lord John Hamilton took Huntly’s empty place, too powerful an ally to be despised.
The Earl of Argyll came and went between Stirling and Edinburgh, very diligent to accommodate the two cities, if that might be. He dared—or was fool enough—to tell the Queen that all would be well if she would give up the King’s murderers. She replied: ‘Go back to Stirling, then, and take them. I do give them up. It is there you shall find them.’ Whether he knew this to be truth or not, for certain he did not report the message to the Earl of Morton. It would have fared ill with him if he had.
Before he could come back, a baffled but honest intermediary, Lethington had fled the Court and taken his wife with him. He went out, as he said, to ride in the meadows; he did ride there, but did not return. His wife slipt away separately, and joined her man at Callander; thence, when Lord Livingstone sent them word that he could not harbour the Queen’s enemies, they went on to Lord Fleming’s, Mary’s father’s house, and finally to Stirling. It was a bad sign that the gentle girl, flying like a thief at her husband’s bidding, should write no word, nor send any message to the Queen; it was a worse to the last few faithful that the Queen took no notice. All she was heard to say was that Fleming could not be blamed for paying her merchet.
Mercheta Mulicrum, Market of Women—the money-fee exacted by the lord of the soil before a girl could be wed, clean, to the man who chose her! Livingstone had paid it, Beaton had paid it; she, Queen Mary, God knows! had paid it deep. She shook her head—and was Fleming to escape? ‘No! but Love—that exorbitant lord—will have it of all of us women. And now’s for you, Seton!’