Then a certain Lord Ruthven entered her field, sent for out of Gowrie—a dour, pallid man, with fatality pressing heavily on his forehead. It seemed to weigh his brows over his eyes, and to goad him at certain stressful times to outbursts of savagery—snarling, tooth-baring—terrible to behold. He hated Huntly as one Scots lord could hate another, for no known reason.
‘You ask me what you shall do with Huntly, madam? I say, hang him on a tree, and poison crows with him. It will be the best service he can ever do you.’
He said this at the council board, and dismayed her sorely. It seemed to her that he churned his spleen between his teeth till it foamed at his loose lips.
She flew to the comfort of her maids: here was her cabinet of last resource! They throned her among them, put their heads near together, and considered the case of Scotland. Mary Livingstone could see but one remedy for the one deep-set disease. Bothwell’s broad chest shadowed all the realm as with a cloud: chase that away, you might get a glimpse of poor Scotland; but while the dreadful gloom endured the Gordons seemed to her a swarm of gnats, harmless at a distance. ‘Let them starve in their own quags, my dear heart,’ she said; ‘you will have them humble when they are hungry. Theirs is the sin of pride—but, O Mother of Heaven, keep us clean from the sin that laughs at sinning!’
Mary Fleming put in a word for the advice of Mr. Secretary Lethington, but blushed when the others nudged each other. The Secretary was known to be her servant. Mary Beaton said, ‘I thought we were to speak of Huntly? Ma belle dame, touch his heart with your finger-tips.’
‘So I would if I knew the way,’ said the Queen, frowning.
‘Send him back his bonny boy Adam,’ says Beaton; ‘I undertake that he will plead your cause. You have given him good reason.’
The Queen thought well of this; so presently Adam Gordon was sent north as legate a latere.
Christmas went out, Lent drew on, the months passed. The Ark of State tossed in unrestful waters, but young Adam of Gordon came not again with a slip of olive. ‘If that child should prove untrue,’ said the Queen, ‘then his father is the lying traitor you report him.’ This to Mr. Secretary Lethington, very much with her just now, at work for Mr. Secretary Cecil of England, trying his hardest to bring about a meeting between his mistress and the mistress of his friend. Lethington, knowing what he did know, had little consolation for her; but he bore word to his master, the Lord James, that the Queen was angering fast with the Gordons; a very little more and the fire would leap.