CHAPTER VI
THE FOOL’S WHIP
After a progress about the kingdom, which she thought it well to make for many reasons—room for the pacifying arm of Mr. Knox being one—it befell as she had hoped. Speedily and well had the preacher gone to work: the Earl of Arran walked abroad without a bodyguard, the Earl of Bothwell showed himself at Court and was received upon his former footing. The Queen had looked sharply at him, on his first appearance, for any sign of a shameful face; there was not to be seen the shadow of a shade. It is not too much to say that she would have been greatly disappointed if there had been any; for to take away hardihood from this man would be to make his raillery a ridiculous offence, his gay humour a mere symptom of the tavern. No, but he laughed at her as slyly as ever before; he reassumed his old pretensions, he gave back no inch of ground—and, remember, in an affair of the sort, if the man holds his place the maid must yield something of hers. It is bound to be a case of give or take. She felt herself in the act to give, was glad of it, and concealed it from Mary Livingstone. When this girl, her bosom friend and bedfellow, made the outcry you might expect of her, the Queen pretended extreme surprise.
‘Do you suppose this country the Garden of Eden, my dear? Are all the Scots lords wise virgins, careful over lamp-wicks? Am I Queen of a Court of Love by chance, and is my Lord of Bothwell a postulant? You tell me news. I assure you he is nothing to me.’
Now these words were spoken on a day when he had declared himself something as plainly as was convenient. Exactly what had happened was this:—
On the anniversary-day of the death of little King Francis of France, the Queen kept the house with her maids, and professed to see nobody. A requiem had been sung, the faithful few attending in black mourning. She, upon a faldstool, solitary before the altar at the pall, looked a very emblem of pure sorrow—exquisitely dressed in long nun-like weeds; no relief of white; her face very pale, hands thin and fragile, only one ring to the whole eight fingers. Motionless, not observed to open her lips, wink her eyes, scarcely seen to breathe, there she stayed when mass was done and the chapel empty, save for women and a page or two.
At noon, just before dinner, she walked in the garden, kept empty by her directions—a few turns with Beaton and Fleming, and Des-Essars for escort—then, bidding them leave her, sat alone in a yew-tree bower in full sun. It was warm dry weather for the season.
Presently, as she sat pensive, toying perhaps with grief, trying to recall it or maintain it—who knows?—she heard footsteps not far off, voices in debate; and looked sidelong up to see who could be coming. It was the Earl of Bothwell who showed himself first round the angle of the terrace, arm-in-arm of that Lord Arran whom she had procured to be his friend; behind these two were Ormiston, some Hamilton or another, and Paris, Lord Bothwell’s valet. They were in high spirits and free talk, those two lords, unconscious or careless of her privacy; Bothwell was gesticulating in that French way he had; the other, with his head inclined, listened closely, and sniggered in spite of himself. Both were in cheerful colours; notably, Bothwell wore crimson cloth with a cloak of the same, a purpoint of lace, a white feather in his cap. Arran first saw the Queen, stopped instantly, uncovered, and said something hasty to his companion; he stared with his light fish-eyes and kept his mouth open. Bothwell looked up in his good time and bared his head as he did so. It seems that he muttered some order or advice, for when Lord Arran slipped by on the tips of his toes, all the rest followed him; but Lord Bothwell walked leisurely over the grass towards the Queen, as who should say, ‘I am in the wrong—in truth I am a careless devil. Well, give me my due; admit I am not a timorous devil.’
As he stood before her, attentive and respectful in his easy way, she watched him nearly, and he waited for her words. It is a sign of how they stood to one another at this time that she began her speech in the middle—as if her thoughts, in spite of herself, became at a point articulate.