Meantime it should be said that there was truth in the report. The young Lord Darnley was actually in Scotland. Some held that he was in Lord Seton’s house in the Canongate, others that Glasgow had him. There was some doubt; but all the Court knew of his presence, and talked of little else. The Queen maintained her air of tutored virgin, while Mary Livingstone openly thanked God that Scotland owned a man in it at last. This honest girl had worked herself into a fevered suspicion of everything breeched at Court.
Sir James Melvill, when he sent up his name for an audience, had to run the cross-fire of the maids’ anteroom first. Few could bear the brunt better than he.
‘H’m, h’m, fair ladies, what am I to tell you? He’s a likely lad enough for a valentine; for a kiss-and-blush, jog-o’-my-knee, nobody’s-coming, pert jessamy. Oh, ay! He can lead a dance more than a little—Pavane, Galliard, what you will of the kind: advance a leg, turn a maid about, require a little favour, and ken what to do wi’t. He hath a seat for a horse, and a rough tongue for a groom. Ay, ay! young Adonis ardent for the chase, he is; and as smooth on the chin as a mistress.’
They laughed at him, while Master Adam of Gordon, page at the door, rubbed his own sharp chin, and could have sworn there was a hair. The usher came for Sir James, and cut pretty Seton short in her clamour for more.
He found his mistress and the Italian in the cabinet, their heads together over a chapter of Machiavel. He knew the book well, and could have sworn to the look of the close page. They sprang apart; at least Riccio sprang; the Queen looked up at the wall and did not face about for a while, but sat pondering the book, over which she had clasped her two hands. She was turning a ring about and about, round and round; and it seemed to Sir James, who saw most things, that this had been upon the book while the two heads were bent over it. They had been trying the Sortes, then!—the Sors Machiavelliana, eh?
When, after a time of suspense, she turned, to lift him a careless hand, limp to the touch and cold to kiss, he knew that she had been schooling herself. She was extremely composed—too much so, he judged; he had no belief in her languid manner. She asked him a few questions about her ‘good sister’; nothing of anybody else. What did her sister think of the marriage? Sir James lurked in the fastnesses of platitude. Her English Majesty had deeply at heart this Queen’s welfare; he turned it many ways, but always came back to that. As he had been sure she would, after a little of it, Queen Mary grew irritable, and drew out into the open. ‘Peace to your empty professions, Master Melvill. They are little to my liking. Did my sister send the Lord Darnley into Scotland?’
Here he had it. ‘Madam,’ quoth Sir James, ‘I will not affirm it. And yet I believe that she was glad for him to go.’
‘Why so? why so?’
‘I nail my judgment, madam, to this solid beam of truth, that my lord got his congé after but two refusals of it.’
‘Why should he be refused?’