She looked strangely at the glowing, golden-haired girl before her; the green-eyed, the sharp-tongued Mary Seton, last of her co-adventurers of six years agone. Fair Seton made no promises; but all the world knows that she alone stayed by her lady to the long and very end.
Returned from Stirling, my Lord of Argyll, with perturbed face, disorderly dress, and entire absence of manners, broke in upon the Queen’s privacy, claiming secret words. The lords were prepared for the field. They intended an attack upon the lower town by land and water; they would surround Holyroodhouse, seize her person.
She flamed. ‘You mean my husband’s. It is him they seek.’
He did not affect to deny it. She sent for Bothwell and told him all.
Bothwell said: ‘You are right. They want me. Well, they shall not have me so easily. You and I will away this night to Borthwick. Arbroath will be half way to us by now, and the Gordons not far behind. Let Adam go and hasten his brother. Madam, we should be speedy.’
She took Seton with her—having no other left; she took Des-Essars. Arthur Erskine was to captain Holyroodhouse. Bothwell had, perhaps, half a dozen of his dependents. They went after dark, but in safety.
There, at Borthwick, they stayed quietly through the 8th and 9th of June: close weather, with thunder brewing.
No news of Huntly, none of the Hamiltons. Bothwell was out each day for long spells, spying and judging. He opened communication with Dunbar, got in touch with his own country. At home sat the Queen with her two friends, very silent.
What was there to say? Who could nurse her broken heart save this one man, who had no thought to do it, nor any heart of his own, either, to spare for her? Spited had he been by Fortune, without doubt. He had had the Crown and Mantle of Scotland in his pair of hands; having schemed for six years to get them, he had had them, and felt their goodly weight: and here he was now in hiding, trusting for bare life to the help of men who had no reason to love him. Where, then, were his friends? He had none, nor ever had but one—this fair, frail woman, whom he had desired for her store, and had emptied, and would now be rid of.
If his was a sorry case, what was hers? Alas, the heart sickens to think of it. With how high a head came she in, she and her cohort of maids, to win wild Scotland! Where were they? They had received their crowns, but she had besoiled and bedrabbled hers. They had lovers, they had children, they had troops of friends; but she, who had sought with panting mouth for very love, had had husbands who made love stink, and a child denied her, and no friend in Scotland but a girl and a poor boy. You say she had sought wrongly. I say she had overmastering need to seek. Love she must; and if she loved amiss it was that she loved too well. You say that she misused her friends. I deny that a girl set up where she was could have any friends at all. She was a well of sweet profit—the Honeypot; and they swarmed about her for their meat like house-flies; and when that was got, and she drained dry, they departed by the window in clouds, to settle and fasten about the nearest provand they could meet with: carrion or honeycomb, man’s flesh, dog’s flesh or maid’s flesh, what was it to them? In those days of dreadful silent waiting at Borthwick, less than a month after marriage, I tell you very plainly that she was beggared of all she had in the world, and knew it. The glutted flies had gone by the window, the gorged rats had scampered by the doors. So she remained alone with the man she had risked all to get, who was scheming to be rid of her. Her heart was broken, her love was murdered, her spirit was gone: what more could she suffer? One more thing—bodily terror, bodily fear.