The Earl his father treated the affair as so much thistledown thickening the wind; but his own performances were as exorbitant as his proposals. He quarrelled with the high Lord James Stuart about precedence. Flicking his glove in the sour face, ‘Hoots, my lord, you are too new an Earl to take the gate of me,’ he said. He assumed the title of Moray—which was what he had come to beg for—in addition to his own. ‘She dare not refuse me, man. It is well known I have the lands.’ The Lord James turned stately away at this hearing, and Huntly ruffled past him into the presence, muttering as he went, ‘A king’s mischance, my sakes!’ He had a fine command of scornful nicknames; that was one of them. He called Mr. Secretary Lethington the Grey Goose—no bad name for a tried gentleman whose tone was always symptomatic of his anxieties. The Earl of Bothwell was a ‘Jack-Earl,’ he said; but Bothwell laughed at him. The Duke and his Hamiltons were ‘Glasgow tinklers’; the Earl of Morton, ‘Flesher Morton.’ His pride, indeed, seemed to be of that inordinate sort which will not allow a man to hate his equals. He hated whole races of less-descended men; he hated burgesses, Forbeses, Frenchmen, Englishmen; but his peers he despised. Catholic as he was, he went to the preaching at Saint Giles’ in a great red cloak, wearing his hat, and stood apart, clacking with his tongue, while Mr. Knox thundered out prophecies. ‘Let yon bubbly-jock bide,’ he told his son, who was with him. ‘’Tis a congested rogue, full of bad wind. What! Give him vent, man, and see him poison the whole assembly.’ Mr. Knox denounced him to his face as a Prophet of the Grove, and bid him cry upon his painted goddess. The great Huntly tapped his nose, then the basket of his sword, and presently strode out of church by a way which his people made for him.
Queen Mary was amused with the large, boisterous, florid man, and very much admired his sons. They were taller than the generality of Scots, sanguine, black-haired, small-headed, with the intent far gaze in their grey eyes which hawks have, and all dwellers in the open. She saw but two of them, the eldest and the youngest—for John of Findlater, having slain his man, lay at home—and set herself to work to break down their shy respect. For their sakes she humoured their preposterous father; allowed, what all her court was at swords drawn against, that his pipers should play him into her presence; listened to what he had to say about Gadiffer, brother of Perceforest, about Knox and his ravings, about the loyal North. He expanded like a warmed bladder, exhibited his sons’ graces as if he were a horsedealer, openly hinted at his proposals in her regard. She needed none of his nods and winks, being perfectly well able to read him, and of judgment perfectly clear upon the inflated text. In private she laughed it away. ‘I think my Lord of Gordon a very proper gentleman,’ she said to Livingstone; ‘but am I to marry the first long pair of legs I meet with? Moreover, I should have to woo him, for he fears me more than the devil. Yet it is a comely young man. I believe him honest.’
‘The only Gordon to be so, then,’ said Livingstone tersely. This was the prevailing belief: ‘False as Gordon.’
Then came Ogilvy of Boyne and his friends before the council, demanding the forfeiture of John Gordon of Findlater for slaughter. Old Huntly pished and fumed. ‘What! For pecking the feathers out of a daw! My fine little man, you and your Ogilvys should keep within your own march. You meet with men on the highways.’ The young Queen, isolated on her throne above these angry men, looked from one to another faltering. Suddenly she found that she could count certainly upon nobody. Her brother James had kept away; the Earl of Bothwell was not present; my Lord Morton the Chancellor blinked a pair of sleepy eyes upon the scene at large. ‘Let the law take its course,’ she faintly said; and old Huntly left the chamber, sweeping the Ogilvys out of his road. That was no way to get the Earldom of Moray and a royal daughter-in-law into one’s family. He himself confessed that the time had come for serious talk with the Queen.
Even this she bore, knowing him Catholic and believing him honest. When, after some purparley, at a privy audience, he came to what he called ‘close quarters,’ and spoke his piece about holy church, sovereign rulers, and fine imps, she laughed still, it is true, but more shrewdly than before. ‘Not too fast, my good lord, not too fast. I approve of my Lord Gordon, and should come thankfully to his wedding. Yet I should be content with a lowlier office there than you seem to propose me. And if he come to my wedding, I hope he will bring his lady.’ She turned to the Secretary. ‘Tell my lord, Mr. Secretary, what other work is afoot.’
Hereupon Lethington enlarged upon royal marriages, their nature and scope, and flourished styles and titles before the mortified old man. He spoke of the Archduke Ferdinand, that son of Cæsar; of Charles the Most Christian King, a boy in years, but a very forward boy. He dwelt freely and at length upon King Philip’s son of Spain, Don Carlos, a magnificent young man. Mostly he spoke of the advantage there would be if his royal mistress should please to walk hand in hand with her sister of England in this affair. Surely that were a lovely vision! The hearts of two realms would be pricked to tears by the spectacle—two great and ancient thrones, each stained with the blood of the other, flowering now with two roses, the red and the white! The blood-stains all washed out by happy tears—ah, my good lord, and by the kisses of innocent lips! It were a perilous thing, it were an unwarrantable thing, for one to move without the other. ‘I speak thus freely, my Lord of Huntly,’ says Lethington, warming to the work, ‘that ye may see the whole mind of my mistress, her carefulness, and how large a field her new-scaled eyes must take in. This is not a business of knitting North to South. She may trust always to the affection of her subjects to tie so natural a bond. Nay, but the comforting of kingdoms is at issue here. Ponder this well, my lord, and you will see.’
The Earl of Huntly was crimson in the face. ‘I do see, madam, how it is, that my house shall have little tenderness from your Majesty’s’—he was very angry. ‘I see that community of honour, community of religion count for nothing. Foh! My life and death upon it!’ He puffed and blew, glaring about him; then burst out again. ‘I will pay my thanks for this where they are most due. I know the doer—I spit upon his deed. Who is that man that cometh creeping after my earldom? Who looketh aslant at all my designs? Base blood stirreth base work. Who seeketh the life of my fine son?’
The Queen flushed. ‘Stay, sir,’ she said, ‘I cannot hear you. You waste words and honour alike.’
He shook his head at her, as if she were a naughty child; raised his forefinger, almost threatened. ‘Madam, madam, your brother James——’
She got up, the fire throbbing in her. ‘Be silent, my lord!’