G. J. Whyte-Melville

“ What say you, Master Maxwell, have you stomach for an adventure? Have you a mind to draw your riding-boots on for those silken hose, and don corslet and head-piece on a Queen’s errand? Or are you, too, under the spell that paralyses youth and strength and manhood? Are you, too, bound to some slender wrist by the jesses you dare not break, and a prisoner here at Holyrood because the rosy-lipped jailer will not let you go?’
Maxwell laughed a fierce, wild laugh, and dashed his goblet down upon the board with an emphasis most unusual to him. ”

“ The maid-of-honour looked wistfully at her mistress while she replied—
‘I never can know real sorrow, madam,’ she said, ‘nor real suffering; because I have a refuge more secure than even a queen’s favours, and to that refuge I betake me whenever grief becomes too heavy to endure. Ah! madam, they may take everything from us here, but they cannot rob us of that; this world is sometimes very dark and sad, but the light is always shining just the same, far away at home.’
The Queen looked at her with concern and surprise. ”

“ Apparently satisfied with his scrutiny, he patted him on the shoulder once more.
‘You are young,’ he said; ‘you have life before you; you are quick-witted, brave, and adventurous. What, man, there are more prizes than one in the lottery! If love be a false jade, ambition is a glorious mistress. Is it not better to sit at the back of the stage and pull the strings than to be one of the puppets and dance because another moves you; perhaps a fool’s dance, with a fool’s guerdon, for your pains at the end?’
Maxwell shook him off impatiently. ”

“ Am I forgiven, madam? ’Tis said that “a lady’s face should show grace”.’
‘And well it might, to such a face as yours,’ thought the Queen; but she only answered a few words of commonplace courtesy; bidding her cousin rise from his knees, and affected to busy herself in the packet of letters she had just received,—for Mary was again blushing deeply, and not unwilling to hide her confusion, in the task she had thus set herself. Truth to tell, though she had hitherto been so impervious to flattery, the words she had just heard were stealing their way very softly and pleasantly to her heart. ”

“ Bothwell smiled grimly in his beard when he heard the name of Arran. They were none of the best of friends, the Hepburns and the Hamiltons, at any time. To-night, the warden’s heart thrilled with a fierce pleasure at the thought of crossing swords with their chieftain’s son.
‘Draw, gentlemen,’ exclaimed Bothwell, putting himself at the head of the party. ‘A Hepburn! a Hepburn to the rescue! draw, and follow me!’
Thus shouting, he rushed to the stair-head, followed by his friends, who appeared, one and all, as ready for the fray as they had proved themselves for the feast. ”

“ Could they speak, those old houses, with their pointed gables, their overhanging roofs, and quaint diamond-paned windows, they could tell some strange tales of love and war, of French and English chivalry, of deeds of arms performed for the sake of honour, and beauty, and ambition, and gold—the four strings on which most of the tunes are played that speed the Dance of Death—of failures and successes, hopes and disappointments, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the cross-purposes, the hide-and-seek, that constitute the game of life. ”

“ You never neglect anything—you never forget anything. The Queen trusts you with her state-secrets, and when you carry her work to her in the Council-chamber, even Maitland and Morton look upon you as if you were one of themselves. Why are you not weak and giddy like me, or pensive and sad like Hamilton, or absent and haughty like Mary Carmichael has grown of late? Look at her yonder holding the Queen’s train as if she were the sovereign, and our beautiful Mistress the maid-of-honour!’
Mary Beton smiled, not displeased at the adroit flattery of her junior. ”

“ With Moray’s good-will, Morton’s friendship, the duke’s aid, and the favour of the godly throughout the kingdom, who so powerful at court as the Earl of Bothwell? Would it not be well to teach the Queen (for her own welfare) the indispensable lesson that a woman can only rule through the influence of men—by the brain of the wise and the arm of the strong? Would it not be well that Mary Stuart should learn, once for all, that she must look to James Hepburn as her champion and her trust?’
The picture was painted in glowing colours, and set in a vivid light. ”

“ If there was a more triumphant sparkle in Mary Seton’s eye, a tinge of deeper colour on her cheek, as she reflected on the nature of that influence, who shall blame her? Was she not a woman; and is it not a woman’s instinct, like a cat’s, to tease and tantalise her prey to the utmost? Though the mouse be as big as an elephant, it is such fun to tempt him with the prospect of indulgence, or even liberty, and then sweep him irresistibly back again with one stroke of the cruel velvet paw. ”

“ God speed the royal wedding, say I, and good luck to the bold suitor who would lie in a queen’s bed! Here, Dick, your horse is fresher than mine; gallop on to the Castle and bid them prepare for Master Maxwell’s refection; see, too, that the Lord Rothes’ men and horses be well looked to if they be come. I have guests to-night with me at Hermitage, Walter; I pray you be not so niggardly as to depart without a supper and a night’s rest. It is ill travelling on the Border after nightfall, and I will speed you on by sunrise to-morrow with the best horse in my stable and a guard of my own men. ”

“ Many a bold baron who spends half his life sheathed in armour, walks none the less stately to-night that he has donned satin doublet and silken hose, that his brow is bare of its steel head-piece, and he carries his plumed bonnet in his hand. Many a dame of clear blue eye and dazzling fairness scans with critical glance every fold of the royal drapery, and watches if she cannot catch and appropriate another grace from her Queen. They are thronging round her now, for the dissensions which shall mar her unhappy reign are as yet only in the bud. ”

“ Tears of shame and vexation started to the boy’s eyes, yet he looked pleadingly at his sovereign, as if with a confused hope that the great ambition of his life might be realised.
Mary was always gentle and considerate. She smiled on him encouragingly.
‘It is mettle that makes the man-at-arms,’ said she. ‘I would have chosen you, indeed, young sir, had these merry gossips of yours brought you to me sooner. Never mind, you shall ride to-day for Mary Hamilton.’
The young eyes glistened with pride and happiness; the young heart swelled. ”

“ No woman alive could have looked unmoved on the depth of intense devotion that glowed in Chastelâr’s face.
‘Ay, madam,’ he replied, ‘you have ever been kind and condescending and gracious to your slave. You know not what your notice is to him: how he watches every turn of your face, and hangs on every word of your lips. What the blessed sunlight is to creation—its hope, its love, its pride, its whole existence—such is your presence, O Mary! O my Queen! ”

“ Bethink thee, man, ’tis a dangerous burden; art not afraid to carry it?’
‘Your Majesty is jesting with me,’ replied Maxwell, raising his head proudly, almost angrily, ‘and I can but answer with a jest; yes, I fear to do your bidding as I fear a good horse when I am in haste, a cup of wine when I am thirsty, or a down pillow when I am weary and would fain lay my head down to rest.’
Mary Carmichael shot at him one glance of ineffable pride and tenderness, then busied herself amongst the flowers deeper than before. He could not see it; his head was turned towards the Queen ”

“ Though habitually possessed of much self-command, for an instant the tide of his feelings surged up beyond control.
‘Holyrood!’ he exclaimed, mockingly; ‘what is Holyrood to me? One place is like another, and all are barren! Talk not to me of jesses. Your wild-hawk soars her pitch, and strikes her quarry, and buries beak and singles in the dripping flesh; but, bird of the air though she be, she knows the false from the true, and will not stoop to the lure. There is no spell can fetter the limbs of a brave man who is determined to be free ”

“ Queen though she be, nay, because she is a Queen, Mary Stuart may not listen for a moment to the voice of her own feelings, nor the impulse of her own heart, pitying as it does those who are in trouble, though their sufferings and their sorrows spring from their own deed. Nay,’ she added, seeing him about to speak, and deprecating his words, as it were, with a gentle, almost a caressing gesture of her white hand, ‘there is nothing you can urge that shall induce me to alter my determination. A woman’s heart is weak, but her will is iron as a man’s. ”

“ Heated with wine, stung with jealousy, torn by conflicting feelings, Earl Bothwell paced the stone-floor of his bed-chamber, as a wild beast traverses to and fro between the sides of his cage. His step had the same noiseless elasticity, his air the same subdued ferocity, his eye the same lurid sparkle that seems struck from some quenchless fire within. If there are indeed hours at which the master-fiend is permitted to vex those human souls, who, for some wise purpose, are delivered like Job into his hand, the Lord Warden must have been that night a prey to the arch-enemy of our race. ”

“ I marvel that ye are not abashed to look thus boldly in the face of an anointed Queen!’
‘Nay, young lady,’ answered the preacher, in a tone of pleasant humour, ‘why should the fair face of a gentlewoman frighten me, who have fronted many angry men? Think ye a bonny brow, unscored by guilt, can be an object of terror, whether it be crowned with a circle of gold like hers, or a wealth of bright hair like your own? No, no, the old man can neither be coaxed nor frightened from doing his duty.’
The Maries looked from one to the other in uncertainty. ”

“ On leaving her chapel, and emerging into the courtyard of her palace, the Queen found it crowded by an assemblage of her nobility, whose motley apparel, of the gayest and gaudiest hues, contrasted offensively with her own sad mourning garb. Not one of them had shown sufficient sympathy with her feelings to wear so much as a black ribbon on his doublet, or to doff the plume that flaunted from his rich velvet bonnet. Stung to the quick by such disrespect, Mary determined to meet it by an insult as injudicious as it was unworthy. ”

“ Slowly pacing over the open moor, where everything breathed peace and repose, where not a tuft of heather stirred in the soft still air, and the call of a moor-fowl or the dull flap of a heron’s wing alone broke the surrounding silence; where the softened gleams of a winter sun came down in sheets of mellowed light, and heaven above and earth below seemed wrapped in security and content, Maxwell poured into no inattentive ears the tale that was rousing all the fiercest passions of our nature in the heart of one of his listeners. ”

“ Does my Lord Scrope think that James Hepburn has been superseded at Hermitage? or that I am a likely man to submit to the slight he has endeavoured to put upon me? Faith, not while this arm of mine can lay lance in the rest. If you come across the English warden, Dick Rutherford, you shall cast James Hepburn’s defiance in his teeth. Within twenty-one days, alone, or with his following, on foot or on horseback, with spear, sword, or axe, and not more than three English miles from the border, I challenge him to meet me, if he be a man, and “God defend the right!” ”

“ But what were the musings of a weary courtier, or even the misgivings of a baffled diplomatist, to the tide of anxiety and anguish that surged through the overwrought brain of Chastelâr, till the poet felt as if he must go mad? Alas! for the gift, dangerous as it is brilliant, of a vivid imagination acting on a deep and tender heart. There are certain insects in the tropics, with which, unconscious of the cruelty, ladies are wont to trim their dresses, that sparkle like diamonds, when thus impaled in torture: while they suffer they glow, and when they cease to glow they die. ”

“ And now, when the moment had at last arrived, the colour faded in his bronzed cheek, and he trembled, that strong man-at-arms, like a girl.
Agitated and frightened as she was, Mary recovered herself sufficiently to receive him with becoming dignity. As his stalwart figure bent in homage, and the upturned face, with its manly features and fair short-curling beard, softened visibly beneath her glance, the Queen might well leave her hand in her subject’s for an instant longer than the customs of a court required. He looked like a man who had both strength and will to help a woman at her need ”

“ And yet Mr Randolph, with his clever scheming, well-balanced mind, and his thoroughly disciplined heart, was but human after all: none other was so pleasant to him as this daily duty of making love to Mary Beton; her dignity and her beauty gratified his fastidious taste, and her obvious admiration of himself could not but make an impression on his callous heart.
Sometimes, even over him, the hardened man of the world, stole a soft vision of something better than ciphers, and protocols, and despatches—of pleasant words and loving looks, and little children and a home ”

“ A sloven may be a brave man, and a capable; but if the machine is to remain in good working order, every screw should fit to a hair’s breadth, and a coat of varnish over the whole will not detract from its efficiency. Our archer, then, was well but not splendidly dressed; nor would his face more than his figure have attracted the attention of any casual observer. Nine men out of ten would have passed him by unnoticed. A woman would have been first puzzled, then interested, perhaps eventually fascinated, by the quiet repose of that stern, calm brow. ”

“ Nay, was it not his pride to think that whilst he yielded an inch to no one else on earth, he would always be content to accept suffering, sorrow, even humiliation, for her dear sake?
Such is the usual conclusion of one of those love reveries in which men indulge whilst under the influence of the malady; such is the climax of an infinity of stem resolution and haughty self-reproach and bitter self-examination; we make ourselves very unkind and very uncomfortable, and after all leave off very much at the point from which we started, if anything, in a less rational frame of mind than at first. ”

“ He was more composed now, and felt as if he were about the most rational proceeding in the world.
Acting on this suggestion, Chastelâr, with his offering in his hand, stole softly through the gallery and up the staircase that led to the Queen’s private apartments. The lights were already extinguished, and none were moving in the palace, save one or two tired domestics, loitering drowsily to bed. With a beating heart and noiseless tread he reached the door of an ante-room that led to the Queen’s chamber, and paused for an instant to listen. ”

“ Horses stamped and snorted, and shook their bridles merrily, as they were mounted at the palace gates to move on in gay procession down the winding causeway that led towards the Firth. Feathers waved, spurs jingled, men’s voices rose in merriment, and the soft laughter of women floated like music on the pure calm air. The dames of Queen Mary’s household, like their mistress, were skilful horsewomen, yet it was wonderful how many of those little attentions, which are so delightful to render and so welcome to receive, they exacted from the cavaliers who accompanied them. ”

“ In that very house, over the way yonder—with its silent courtyard, in which the grass shoots up vigorously between the stones, and from which to-day nothing more unusual issues than an old peasant woman in a clean cap, carrying a young child with a dirty face—slept, perhaps, the loveliest woman the world ever saw, a widow, while yet a bride, a queen while yet a child, on her way from one royal throne to take possession of another. ”

“ At fifteen Walter Maxwell went out upon the world. A year after, he was the youngest gentleman private in the French king’s Archer-guard. Many a dame in Paris would turn round to look again on the blooming youthful face—almost a child’s still—so pleasing in its contrast with that manly form, clad in the showy armour of the guard. The Duchess of Valentinois herself had desired to have the young boy-archer presented to her; and it is to be presumed that Diane de Poitiers, a lady of mature experience, was no mean judge of masculine attractions. ”

“ The maid-of-honour blushed to her very temples, and the lustrous eyes that had been gazing fondly into the Queen’s face were lowered for an instant; but she raised them with an effort, and drawing herself up, with her colour deepening every moment, answered proudly—
‘Nay, madam; we Hamiltons have your own princely blood in our veins, and do not give our love unasked or unreturned. The Maries, too, follow their Queen’s example, and would deem it worse than unmaidenly to entertain a secret or unacknowledged preference. ”

“ It is well for the philosopher who has learned to create for himself his life’s essentials. Blessed is the barmecide who can make believe that the tasteless water from his earthen pitcher is a draught of nectar from a cup of gold. But woe to the sanguine enthusiast who cannot be convinced that ‘half a loaf is better than no bread;’ the fool who shouts—‘all or none,’ for his war-cry, while he runs a tilt against the invincible windmill of conventionalism, and getting, as he deserves, none instead of all, has every bone in his body broken into the bargain for his pains. ”

“ It is my calling, madam, to reprove sin from the pulpit, whether it be found rearing its head on high in the palace, or crawling among the sewers of the street. I tell you, Mary Stuart, that the day will come when your masques and your music and your mummeries shall be recorded against you in such characters of fire as roused Belshazzar and his nobles from their last revelry on earth. In your feastings and fiddlings and dancings, do ye remember the dance of death, down which ye are footing it so thoughtlessly? ”

“ Mary’s hand was a model for a sculptor, whilst every gesture and every movement of her body was at once womanly and dignified. But it was the Queen’s face that riveted the attention, and fascinated both sexes with its entrancing loveliness. Other women might be beautiful; other women might have had the same smooth, open brow, the same chiselled features and pencilled eyebrows, the same delicate chin and white full neck and bosom—ay, even the same long, soft hazel eyes, and rich dark chestnut hair ”

“ If the Warden of the Marches be chosen for his prowess in single combat, there never was a better selection! Man and horse went down before his lance without a struggle, and his very war-cry seemed to act upon the freebooters like the shriek of a hawk on a wisp of wild-fowl. Faith, they took to their wings like wild-fowl too, where it was hopeless to follow them, and I rode home to supper at Hermitage without the slightest wish to cultivate a farther acquaintance with that portion of your Majesty’s domains.’
The Queen laughed as he concluded. ”

“ In that flood of harmony the Queen bathed her wounded spirit, bidding it contemn the reefs and rocks that beset its earthly course as it floated, if but for an instant, towards the eternal shore; and Mary Hamilton, joining in the tide of prayer and praise, forgot her hopes and fears, her tottering happiness and earthly misgivings, while she felt that there was yet in store for her a home of endless welcome, a joy that no uncertainty could poison, a love no falsehood could take away. ”

“ At times he would be tempted to forego ambition, pride, revenge, consistency, everything but his wild unreasoning affection, and, galloping to Holyrood or Stirling, fling himself at Mary’s feet, entreat her to forgive him, and pledge himself, if it would make her happier, that he would never see her face again. Yes, there were moments when the proud, strong man felt he would ask no more welcome relief than to bow his head and pour his heart out like a woman in tears before his Queen ”

“ Rothes filled his cup, with a laugh.
‘I can lodge him at Leslie,’ said he; ‘any kinsman of Lord Bothwell’s is welcome in my poor house. “Food and wine he shall not lack,” as the old song says; ay, and a bed too, my lord, if so you will it, that shall serve him till doomsday.’
Bothwell flushed dark red with wrath and shame.
‘Not a hair of his head must be jeopardied!’ he exclaimed passionately; then controlling himself, added in a more friendly tone, ‘I am beholden to you, Leslie, nor will I forget your courtesy. I shall, indeed, commit my kinsman to your care for a brief space. ”

“ All the engines of an unscrupulous diplomacy were ready to be put in motion for the purpose of thwarting Don Carlos, and over-reaching his emissaries. Nor were Elizabeth and her agents likely to be restrained by any over-refinement of delicacy in a matter which concerned the stability of the English Queen’s power, and the very existence of her government.
In the meantime, Mary and her maidens floated, so to speak, on the surface of all this turbulence and vexation, as the sea-bird floats with unruffled plumage on the restless waves. ”

“ Already she anticipates the moment of triumph. Shall she enjoy it coldly and with dignified displeasure, making him as unhappy as she has been herself? No; she longs to forgive him, and be friends. All these disquietudes are wholly unnecessary; as he arrives within a stride of the object, his horse falls, rolls over him, and both disappear in a cloud of dust. Mary Carmichael utters a faint shriek, and then sits cold and rigid like a statue. At this moment the Queen discovers the secret of her maid-of-honour. ”