‘To tell you the truth, sir,’ Des-Essars replied, ‘we do not look upon them at all.’
Monsieur de Châtelard was satisfied. ‘I think you are very wise,’ he said. ‘No eye should look upon the deed which I meditate. Fare you well, Jean-Marie. I speak as a man forewarned.’
Jean-Marie returned to his problems.
Standing at the Queen’s door, he had his plan cut and dried. When the preacher should be brought in by the usher, he would require a word with him before he pulled back the curtain. He does not confess to it in his memoirs; but I have no doubt what that word was to have been. Remember that there was this much sound sense on the boy’s side: he knew very well that the Queen had thought more of Mr. Knox than she had cared to allow. His inferences may have been ridiculous; it is one thing to read into the hearts of kings, another to dispose them. However that may be, the Captain of the Guard had received his orders. He himself introduced the great man into the antechamber, and led him directly to the entry of the Queen’s closet. Mr. Erskine, who held this office, was also Master of the Pages, and no mere gentleman-usher. He brushed aside his subaltern with no more ceremony than consists in a flack of the ear, and, ‘Back, thou French pullet—the Queen’s command.’ Immediately afterwards he announced at the door, ‘Madam, Mr. Knox, to serve your Majesty.’
‘Enter boldly, Mr. Knox,’ he bade his convoy then, and departed, leaving him in the doorway face to face with the Queen of Scots.
She sat in a low chair, tapestry on her knees, her needle flying fast; in her white mourning, as always when she had her own way, she looked a sweet and wholesome young woman. Mary Livingstone, self-possessed and busy, was on a higher chair behind her, watching the work; Mary Fleming in the bay of the window, Lord Lindsay near by her, leaning against the wall. Mary Beaton and Mary Seton were on cushions on the floor, each holding an end of the long frame. Mr. Secretary regardful by the door, and a lady who sat at a little table reading out of Perceforest or Amadis, or some such, completed as quiet an interior as you could wish to see. While Mr. Knox stood primed for his duty, scrutinised by half a dozen pair of eyes, the Queen alone did not lift hers up, but picked at a knot with her needle.
The tangle out, ‘Let Mr. Knox take heart,’ she said, with the needle’s eye to the light and the wool made sharp by her tongue: ‘here he shall find a few busy girls putting to shame some idle men.’ Seeing that Mr. Knox made no sign—as how should he, who needed not take what he had never lost?—she presently turned her head and looked cheerfully at him, her first sight of a redoubtable critic. Singly her thoughts came, one on the heels of the other: her first, This man is very tall; the second, He looks kind; the third, He loves a jest; the fourth, which stayed long by her, The deep wise eyes he hath! In a long head of great bones and little flesh those far-set, far-seeing, large, considering eyes shone like lamps in the daylight—full of power at command, kept in control, content to wait. They told her nothing, yet she saw that they had a store behind. No doubt but the flame was there. If the day made it mild, in the dark it would beacon men. She saw that he had a strong nose, like a raven’s beak, a fleshy mouth, the beard of a prophet, the shoulders and height of a mountaineer. In one large hand he held his black bonnet, the other was across his breast, hidden in the folds of his cloak. There was no man present of his height, save Lethington, and he looked a weed. There was no man (within her knowledge) of his patience, save the Lord James; and she knew him at heart a coward. Peering through her narrowed eyes for those few seconds, she had the fancy that this Knox was like a ragged granite cross, full of runes, wounded, weather-fretted, twisted awry. Yet her four thoughts persisted: He is very tall, he looks kind, he loves a jest—and oh! the deep wise eyes he hath! Nothing that he did or spoke against her afterwards moved the roots of those opinions. She may have feared, but she never shrank from the man.
Now she took up her words where she had left them. ‘You, who love not idleness, Mr. Knox, are here to help me, I hope?’
He blinked before he answered. ‘Madam,’ then said he, ‘I am here upon your summons, since subjects are bound to obey, that I may know your pleasure of me.’ ‘A sweet, dangerous woman,’ he thought her still; but he added now, ‘And of all these dainty ladies the daintiest, and the shrewdest reader of men.’
‘Come then, Mr. Knox, and be idle or busy as likes you best,’ she said, and resumed her needle. ‘I am glad to know,’ she added, ‘that you consider yourself bound anyways to me.’