The old duchess, her grandam, talked marriages and the throne of Scotland, therefore, into ears only half willing. The little Queen was by no means averse to either, but could not bring herself to lose hold upon France. ‘Better to be Dowager of France than an Empress in the north,’ she said; and then ‘Fiddle-de-dee, my child,’ the old lady retorted; ‘give me a live dog before a dead lion. Your desire here is to vex La Medicis. You would make eyes at King Charles, and we should all lose our heads. Do you wish to end your days at Loches? The Duke of Milan found cold quarters there, they tell me. No, no. Marry a king’s son and recover England from the Bastard.’ Thus all France spake of our great Elizabeth.
Queen Mary, though she loved her grandmother, pinched her lip, looked meek, and hardened her heart. She had obstinacy by the father’s mother’s side—a Tudor virtue.
It was just after she had gone to Nancy, to the court of her cousin of Lorraine, that she veered across to the side of the Guises and determined to adventure in Scotland. Two Scots lords came overseas to visit her there: one was the Lord James Stuart, her base-brother, the other a certain Father Lesley, an old friend of her mother’s. The priest was a timid man, but by good hap and slenderness of equipage gained her first. She might have been sure he was a faithful friend, though doubtful if a very wise one. Faithful enough he proved in days to come: at this present she found him a simple, fatherly man, of wandering mind, familiar, benevolent, soon scared. He was enchanted with her, and said so. He praised her person, the scarlet of her lips, the bright hue of her hair. ‘A bonny brown, my child,’ he said, touching it, ‘to my partial eyes.’ She laughed as she told him that in Paris also they had liked the colour. ‘They will call it foxy in Scotland,’ he said, with a sniff; and she found out afterwards that they did. At first she was ‘madam’ here, and ‘your Majesty’ there; but as the talk warmed him he forgot her queenship in her extreme youth, had her hand in his own and patted it with the other. Then it came to ‘Child, this you should do,’ or ‘Child, I hope that is not your usage’; and once he went so far as to hold her by the hands at arms’ length and peer at her through his kind, weak eyes, up and down, as he said to himself, ‘Eh, sirs, a tall bit lassie to stand by Bruce’s chair! But her mother was just such another one—just such another.’
She thought this too far to go, even for a churchman, and drew off with a smile and shake of the head—not enough to humiliate him.
He cautioned her with fearful winks and nods against the Lord James Stuart, her half-brother, hinting more than he dared to tell. ‘That man hath narrow eyes,’ he said; then, recollecting himself, ‘and so hath your Majesty by right of blood. All the Stuarts have them—the base and the true. But his, remark, are most guarded eyes, so that you shall not easily discover in what direction he casts his looks. But I say, madam,’—and he raised his wiry voice,—‘I say that the throne is ever at his right hand; and I do think that he looks ever to the right.’
The Queen’s eyes were plain enough at this—squirrel-colour, straight as arrows. Being free-spoken herself, she disliked periphrasis. ‘Does my brother desire my throne? Is this your meaning?’
He jumped back as if she had whipped him, and crossed himself vehemently, saying, ‘God forbid it! God forbid it!’
‘I shall forbid it, whether or no,’ said the Queen. ‘But I suppose you had some such meaning behind your speech.’ And she pressed him until she learned that such indeed was the belief in Scotland.
‘Your misborn brother, madam,’ he said, whispering, ‘will tell you nothing that he believeth, and ask you nothing that he desireth; nor will he any man. He will urge you to the contrary of what he truly requires. He will take his profit of another man’s sin and rejoice to see his own hands clean. My heart,’ he said, forgetting himself,—and ‘Ah, Jesu!’ she records, ‘I was called that again, and by another mouth,’—‘My heart, if you tender the peace of Holy Church in your land, keep your brother James in France under lock and key.’
She laughed at his alarms. ‘I wish liberty to all men and their consciences sir. I am sure I shall find friends in Scotland.’