The cardinal put up his chin and cupped his beard. ‘The rich may call themselves poor, the poor dare not. You have a realm, my niece, and a fair realm. You stand at the door of a second. You may yet have a third, it seems to me.’
Queen Mary looked at him then, with a gleam in her eyes which answered for a smile. But she hid her mind almost at once, and resumed her drumming.
‘King Charles is hot for me,’ she said. ‘He is a brave lad. I should be Queen of France again—of France and England and Scotland.’ She laughed softly to herself, as if snug in the remembrance that she was still sought.
The cardinal became exceedingly serious. ‘I have thought of that. To my mind there is a beautiful justice——! What our family can do shall be done—but, alas——!’
She broke in upon him here. ‘Our family, my lord! Your family! Ah, that was a good marriage for me, for example, which you made! That ailing child! Death was in his bed before ever I was put there. My marriage! My husband! He used to cry all night of the pain in his head. He clung to the coverlet, and to me, lest they should pull him out to prayers. Marriage! He was cankered from his birth. What king was Francis, to make me a queen?’
The cardinal lifted his fine head. ‘It was my sister Marie who made you a queen, madam, by the grace of God and King James. Through your parentage you are Queen of Scotland, and should be Queen of England—and you shall be. God of gods, you may be queen of whatso realm you please. What do I learn? The whole world’s mind runs upon the marrying of you. The Archduke Ferdinand hath here his ambassadors, attendant on the Queen-Mother’s pleasure—which you allow to be yours also. Don Carlos, his own hand at the pen, writes for a hope of your Majesty’s. The Earl of Huntly, a great and religious prince in Scotland, urges the pretensions of his son, the Lord of Gordon. Are these to be laid before the Queen-Mother? To the duchess, your grandmother, writeth daily the Duke of Châtelherault concerning his son, the Earl of Arran. On his side is my brother the Constable. More! They bring me word from England that the Earl of Lennox, next in blood to your Majesty, next indeed to both your thrones, is hopeful to come to France—he, too, with a son in his pocket, young, apt, and lovely as a love-apple. All these hopeful princes, madam——’
Queen Mary coloured. With difficulty she said: ‘I hear of every one of them for the first time.’
‘Oh, madam,’ cried the cardinal, ‘so long as you sit on your maids’ knees and give the keys of your chamber to the Queen-Mother, you will only hear what she please to tell you. And more’—he raised his voice, and gave it severity—‘I take leave to add that so long as your Majesty hath Mistress Livingstone here for your husband, your Majesty can look for no other.’
‘I am never likely to look on a better,’ says Queen Mary, and put her hand behind her. Mary Livingstone stooped quickly and snatched a kiss from the palm, while the cardinal gazed steadily out of doors. But he felt more at ease, being sure that he had leavened his lump.
And so he had. The sweet fact of great marriages beyond her doors, and the sour fact of the Queen-Mother within them, worked a ferment in her brain and set her at her darling joy of busy scheming. What turned the scale over was the mortifying discovery that Catherine de’ Medici was in reality dying to get rid of her. She flew into a great rage, changed her black mourning for white, announced her departure, paid her farewells, and went to her grandmother’s court at Rheims. Queen Catherine watched her, darkling, from a turret as she rode gaily out in her troop of Guises. ‘There,’ she is reported to have said, I know not whether truly or not, ‘there goes Madam Venus a-hunting the apple. Alas for Shepherd Paris!’ The reflection is a shrewd one at least; but it was not then so certain that Orleans had seen the last of Queen Mary. It was no way to get her out of France to tell her there was nothing you desired so much.