It is quite true that when they had buried the little wasted King Francis, and while the days of Black Dule still held, the Cardinal of Lorraine tried three times to see his niece, and was three times refused. Not being man enough to break a way in, he retired; but as he knew very well that the Queen-Mother, the King, the King of Navarre, and Madame Marguerite went in and out all day long, he had a suspicion that they, or the seasons, were more at fault than the hidden mourner. ‘A time, times, and half a time,’ he said, ‘have good scriptural warrant. I will try once more—at this hour of high mass.’ So he did, and saw Mary Livingstone, that strapping girl, who came into the antechamber, rather flushed, and devoutly kissed his ring.
‘How is it with the Queen my niece?’
‘Sadly, Eminence.’
‘I must know how sadly, my girl. I must see her. It is of great concern.’
The young woman looked scared. ‘Eminence, she sees only the Queen-Mother.’
‘The more reason,’ says he, ‘why she should see somebody else. She may be praying one of these fine days that she never see the Queen-Mother again.’
Livingstone coloured up to the eyes. ‘Oh, sir! Oh, Lord Cardinal, and so she doth, and so do we all! They are dealing wickedly with our mistress. It is true, what I told you, that she sees the Queen-Mother: that is because her Majesty will not be denied. She forces the doors—she hath had a door taken down. She comes and goes as she will; rails at our lady before us all. She, poor lamb, what can she do? Oh, sir, if you could stop this traffic I would let you in of my own venture.’
‘Take me in, then,’ said the cardinal: ‘I will stop it.’
In the semi-dark he found his niece, throned upon the knee of Mary Beaton for comfort, in heavy black weeds, out of which the sharp oval of her face and the crescent white coif gleamed like two moons, the old within the new. Two other maids sat on the floor near by; each had a hand of her—pitiful sentinels of spoiled treasure. When the gentleman-usher at the curtain was forestalled by the great man’s quick entry, four girls rose at once, as a covey of partridges out of corn, and all but the Queen fell upon their knees. She, hugging herself as if suddenly chilled, came forward a little, not very far, and held out to the cardinal an unwilling hand. He took it, laid it on his own, kissed, and let it drop immediately. Then he stood upright, sniffed, and looked about him, being so near the blood royal himself that he could use familiarity with princes. It was clear that he disapproved.
‘Faith of a gentleman!’ he said: ‘one might see a little better, one might breathe a little better, here, my niece.’