‘In my poor judgment,’ he said, ‘the kindling-spark will be struck when she sees the scribbling of her love-image. She hath fashioned a very Eros out of George Gordon.’
‘I conceive, Mr. Secretary,’ said the Lord James, making no sign that he had heard him, ‘that the times are ripe for our budget of news.’
‘I think with your lordship,’ the Secretary replied, ‘but will you be your own post-boy?’
‘Ah! I am a dullard, Mr. Secretary,’ said my lord. ‘Your mind forges in front of mine.’
He was fond of penning his agents in close corners. Let them be explicit since he would never be. Lethington gulped his chagrin.
‘My meaning was, my lord, that it will advantage you more to confirm than to spread your news concerning the Lord Gordon. Whoso tells her Majesty a thing to anger her, I have observed that he will surely receive some part of her wrath. Not so the man who is forced to admit the truth of a report. He, on the contrary, gains trust; for delicacy in a courtier outweighs integrity with our mistress. Therefore let the Duke bring the news, and do you wait until you can bow your head over it. Perhaps I speak more plainly than I ought.’
‘I think you do, sir, indeed,’ says the Lord James, and lacerates his Lethington.
There was a masque upon Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnival, and much folly done, which ended, like a child’s romp, in a sobbing fit. Amid the lights, music, laughter of the throng, the Queen and her maids braved it as saucy young men, trunked, puffed, pointed, trussed and doubleted; short French cloaks over one shoulder, flat French caps over one ear. Mary Livingstone was the properest, being so tall, Mary Fleming the least at ease, Mary Beaton the pertest, and Mary Seton the prettiest boy. But Mary the Queen was the most provoking, the trimmest, most assured little gallant that ever you saw; and yet, by that art she had, that extraordinary tact, never more a queen than when now so much a youth. Her trunks were green and her doublet white velvet; her cloak was violet threaded with gold. Her cap was as scarlet as her lips; but there was no jewel in her ear or her girdle to match her glancing eyes. By a perverse French courtesy, which became them very ill, such men as dared to do it, or had chins to show, were habited like women. Queen Mary led out Monsieur de Châtelard in a ruff and hooped gown; Des-Essars made a nun of himself, most demure and most uncomfortable; Mary Fleming chose the Earl of Arran—the only Scot in the mummery—a shepherdess with a crook. Mary Livingstone would not dance. ‘Never, never, never!’ cried she. ‘Let women ape men, as I am doing: the thing is natural; we would all be men if we could. But a man in a petticoat, a man that can blush—ah, bah! pourriture de France!’
That night, rotten or not, Monsieur de Châtelard played the French game. Queen Mary held him, led him about, bowed where he curtsied, stood while he sat. He grew bolder as the din grew wilder; he said he was the Queen’s wife. She thought him a fool, but owned to a kind of sneaking tenderness for folly of the sort. He called her his dear lord, his sweet lord, said he was faint and must lean upon her arm. He promised to make her jealous—went very far in his part. He swore that it was all a lie—he loved his husband only: ‘Kiss me, dear hub, I am sick of love!’ he languished, and she did kiss his cheek. More she would not; indeed, when she saw the old Duke of Châtelherault struggling through the crowd about the doors, she felt that here was a chance of getting out of a tangle. She flung the sick monkey off and went directly towards the Duke. He had come to town that day, she knew, directly from his lands in the west: perhaps he would know something of the Gordons. He was a frail, pink-cheeked old man, with a pointed white beard and delicate hands; so simple as to be nearly a fool, and yet not so nearly but that he had been able to beget Lord Arran, a real fool. When he understood that this swaggering young prince was indeed his queen, he gave up bowing and waving his hands, and dropped upon his knee, having very courtly old ways with him.
‘Dear madam, dear my cousin, the Lothians show the greener for your abiding. ’Tis shrewish weather yet in the hills; but you make a summer here.’