At Saint Andrews the Queen lodged in a plain house, where simplicity was the rule, and she kept no state. The ladies wore short kirtles and hoods for their heads; gossiped with fishwives on the shore, shot at butts, rode out with hawks over the dunes, coursed hares, walked the sands of the bay when the sea was down. The long evenings were spent in needlework and books; or one sang, or told a tale of France—of Garin de Montglane or the Enfances Vivien. Looking back each upon his life in after years, Adam Gordon was sure that he had loved her best in her bodice of snow and grey petticoat; Des-Essars when, with hair blown back and eyes alight, she had led the chase over the marsh and looked behind her, laughing, to call him nearer. She was never mistress of herself on horseback, but stung always by some divine tenant to be—or to seem—the most beautiful, most baleful, most merciless of women. And although her hues varied in the house, so did not her powers. She was tender there to a fault, sensitive to change as a filmy wing, with quick little touches, little sighs, lowering of eyelids, smiles half-seen, provoking cool lips, long searching looks. She meant no harm—but consider Monsieur de Châtelard, drawn in as a pigeon to the lure!—she must always bewitch something, girl or boy, poet or little dog; and indeed, there was not one of these youths now about her who was not crazy with love. She chose at this time to be more with them than with the maids; a boy at heart herself, she was just now as blowsed as a boy. She used to sit whispering with them; told them much, and promised more than she told.
Monsieur de Châtelard—having ventured to present himself—expanded in the sun of that Peace of Saint Andrew until he resembled some gay prismatic bubble, which may be puffed up to the ceiling and bob there until it bursts. The Queen had forgiven him his trespass and forgotten it. She resumed him on the old footing, sang with him, let him whisper in her ear, dared greatly, and supposed all danger averted by laughter. Having high spirits and high health, she was in the mood to romp. So they played country games by the light of the fire: blind man’s buff, hot codlings, Queen o’ the Bean. You come to close quarters at such times. You venture: it’s in the bargain. If a Queen runs to hide she shall not blame a poet who runs to seek—or she should not. When, in the early spring, Mr. Secretary was gone to Edinburgh to see the Earl of Lennox about that suit of his—lawsuit or other—the Queen went further in her frolics. In the garden one day she found a dry peascod intact, nine peas in it. There is a country augury in this. Nothing would content her but she must put it on the lintel like a dairymaid, and sit conscious in the dusk until her fate crossed the threshold. Anon there stepped in Monsieur de Châtelard with a song. When the joke was made clear to him he took it gravely. An omen, an omen!
The sense of freedom which you have when you have made your election took her fancies a-romping as well as her humours. They strayed with Lord Bothwell on the Castle rock, they visited Lord Gordon at Dunbar. Allez, all’s safe now! Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die; let us take pity on our lovers, since to-morrow we are to wed. And—so we juggle with ourselves!—she wrote an unnecessary letter to the one in order that she might write an imprudent letter to the other.
‘Monsieur de Gordon,’ ran the first—and Adam carried it to Dunbar in his bosom—‘I am content to believe that your constancy in affliction proceedeth from a heart well-affected towards me at this last. You will find me always mindful of my friends, among whom I look to reckon yourself in time to come. Attachment to the prince floweth only from good faith towards God. Holding to the one, needs must it follow that you find the other. Your brother Adam will tell you the same.—Your good mistress, Marie R.’
Then she wrote this—for Des-Essars to deliver or perish; and you may catch the throb of the pulse in the lines of the pen:—
‘Monsieur de Bothwell, they tell me you deal more temperately in these days, having more space for a little thought the less your person is enlarged. They report you to me as well in body, the which I must not grieve for; but repining in mind. Can I be sorry, or wonder at it, seeing to what gusty airs your phrenzy drove you? This glove, which I send, is for one plain purpose. You see, my lord, that the fingers are stiff where water hath wetted them of late. You offended your Queen, who had always wished you very well: the tears were for sorrow that a heart so bold should prompt a deed so outrageous.’
Lord Bothwell, when he had this letter, sat looking at it and its guest for a long while, in a stare. His mouth smiled, but his eyes did not; and he sang softly to himself, La-la-la, and a la-la-laido! A night or two later, by means of the seal upon it and his uncle’s influence, he walked out of the Castle, and was presently in the Hermitage with Des-Essars. Hence he wrote to the Queen: ‘O Lady, O Sovereign! I shall carry a token upon my helm, and break lances under its whisper until I die,’—but neither signed nor dated the letter.
‘Say to your mistress, boy, that I gave you this; but breathe not a word of whence I wrote it. Disobey me, you who know me of old, and when I come again I will make of your skin but a leaky bottle of blood.’
Des-Essars gave his pledge, and kept it for some time.
If the Queen said nothing about all this to her maids, it is no wonder. She had done foolishly, and knew it in part, and took secret glory in it. At certain still hours of the day, when she could afford herself the luxury of lonely thought, she would go over what she had done, phrase after phrase of her letter; recover the trembling with which she had put in the glove; picture its receipt, read and re-read his words. And then, as she thought, the heat of her cheeks burnt up all thought; and, as she stayed to feel her heart beat, it drummed in her ears like nuptial music. But they frightened her, these signs and wonders; she ran away from herself—into the maids’ closet, into the hall among the lounging men, into the windy weather—and cooled her cheeks with the salt sea-spray, and drowned the clamour of her heart in the rude welcome of March.