‘Sister and spouse!’ cries Lethington with ardour. ‘Sister and spouse!’
For the sake of some such miraculous consummation she gave up all thoughts of Don Carlos, put away the Archduke, King Charles, the Swedish prince. Her sister of England should marry her how she would. Lethington, on the day it was decided that Sir James Melvill should go to London upon the business, knelt before his sovereign in a really honest transport, transfigured in the glory of his own fancy. ‘I salute on my knees the Empress of the Isles! I touch the sacred stem of the Tree of the New World!’
Very serious, very subdued, very modest, the Queen cast virginal eyes to her lap.
‘God willing, Mr. Secretary, I will do His pleasure in all things,’ she said.
The Lord James, observing her melting mood, made a stroke for the Earldom of Moray. Were the Gordons to defy the Majesty of Scotland? With these great hopes new born, with old shames dead and buried—never, never! The Queen said she would go to the North and hound the Gordons out.
CHAPTER VII
GORDON’S BANE
On the morning of Lammas Day the Queen heard mass in the Chapel Royal with a special intention, known only to herself. Red mass it should have been, since she felt sore need of the Holy Ghost; but she had given up the solemn ornament of music for the sake of peace. So Father Lesley read the office before the very few faithful: her maids, Erskine, Herries, the esquires, the pages, the French Ambassador, the Ambassador of Savoy—with him a certain large, full-blooded Italian, of whom there will be something to say anon. Mr. Knox had been scaring off the waverers of late: the Catholic religion was languid in the realm.
She knelt before the altar on her faldstool very stiffly, and looked more solitary than she felt. Her high mood and high endeavour still holding, there was but one man in Scotland who could make her feel her isolation, make her pity herself so nearly that the tears filled her eyes. Her brother James and his party, ostentatiously aloof, she could reckon with. All was said of them long ago by that old friend of hers now facing God in the mass: ‘Your brother stands on the left of your throne; but he looks for ever to the right.’ With this key to the cipher of my Lord James, what mystery in his sayings or doings? Then the grim Mr. Knox, who had worked her secret desires, and since then railed at her, scolded her, made her cry—she had his measure too. He liked her through all, and she trusted him in spite of all: at a pinch she could win him over. Whom, then, need she consider? The Earl of Bothwell—ah, the Earl of Bothwell, who laughed at everything, and had looked drolly on at her efforts to be a queen, and chosen to do nothing to help or hinder: there was a man to be feared indeed! She never knew herself less a queen or more a girl than when he was before her. Laughed he or frowned, was he eloquent or dumb as a fish, he intimidated her, diminished her, drove her cowering into herself to queen it alone. Christ was not so near, God not so far off, as this confident, free-living, shameless lord. Therefore now, because she dared not falter in what she was about to do, or see herself less than she desired to be, she had sent him into Liddesdale to hold the Justice-Court, and had not cared even to receive him when he came to take his leave. Lady Argyll, who had stood in her place, reported that he had gone out gaily, humming a French air. With him safely away, she had faced her duty—duty of a Prince, as she conceived it. And here she knelt in prayer, prone before the Holy Ghost—solitary (but that is the safeguard of the King!)—and searched the altar for a sign of assurance.