The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  For the last months of his life he had been quite imbecile, staring, with his finger in his mouth, and shaking his head for the pain of his diseased ear.

  The Queen’s thoughts turned again to Henry Stewart. How different marriage would be with him! She felt brushed by light when she thought of him. With a carefree movement she rose and stepped out of the bath, the drops of milk like pearls on her nude body.

  The French girls were chattering with Mary Seaton, giggling over love, clothes, and satanism. Mary Seaton was pious, but sometimes she liked to hear of these things. How could one live in the Court and not know of these smooth seducements and tempting sorceries? These amorous tales that made all the prudes secretly malcontent?

  The Queen entered the bath of pure, greenish water that became delicately clouded by the drops of milk from her body.

  “He was seen setting spells in the tennis court,” laughed Renee.

  “Who?” asked the Queen. “And in the tennis court! So public a place?”

  “It was at dusk, madame, and lonely, being the winter, you understand. Another saw his familiar — a great ape, as I live—”

  “Who is this?” asked the Queen. She moved languidly in the bath, watching her white limbs, slightly distorted under the water; nearly everyone was accused of sorcery. Some said that John Knox was a wizard. Lord Ruthven knew about black arts; he had given her a protective amulet, half ashamed of his own beliefs.

  The French girls would not reply; they laughed together, fingering the jars of cream, the pots of unguents, the combs and tweezers needed for the adornment of their mistress.

  “You’re fooling me,” said the Queen pleasantly.

  “Madame,” said Mary Seaton, “they speak of Earl Bothwell.”

  The Queen was silenced, but her narrowed eyes shone with interest. The man had an infamous reputation, he was disgraced, outlawed for plots and brawls. He had broken prison and gone to France. People still talked of him with dread and fear.

  Encouraged by the silence of their mistress the girls continued their gossip.

  “He has three wives and one is a witch. He can raise the wind.”

  “What makes you talk about him?” asked the Queen keenly.

  “Idleness,” said Mary Seaton. “They must chatter about ghosts and devils and demon lovers, so the talk turned on to Lord Bothwell.”

  “Is he a demon?” demanded the Queen.

  “Oh, madame! But you know what is said of him!”

  “Do I? Not all, I suppose. He was my mother’s faithful servant, I cannot hate him.”

  She lay in her bath musing on this man whose image had been suddenly evoked. Moray loathed him, Moray had enclosed him in the Castle because of some lunatic talk on the part of Arran, who was imbecile. But she, the Queen, had contrived his escape. If Moray had known that, he would have said some terrible things. Being a woman and so hemmed in, she had to use guile and sometimes it was successful.

  How the girls loved to talk about Bothwell and his vices, his black arts, his courage, his strength, his treacheries in love! How the men detested him, except his own kin, and men like Huntly, who were ruined and desperate!

  The Queen splashed in the bath.

  Bothwell was the superior of all of them. Until Henry Stewart came to Scotland there was not his peer in the country. He had been bred a Frenchman and was so elegant and accomplished, so gay and courteous, he made his fellow Scots appear like boors, filthy boors some of them, the Red Douglas, Morton, for instance — she could never think of him without nausea.

  She listened, as she moved idly under the water, to the girls gossiping over Bothwell’s mistresses, all the creatures whom he had ruined, trampling simplicity, trust and gaiety into the dirt, like a swine, for all his beauty. The Queen laughed in her throat. She knew that all these deserted women had offered themselves to the man with the infamous reputation, pleading to be taken.

  She rose out of the bath and stood while the girls dried her with fine linen. She compared in her mind these three men, Moray, Bothwell, Darnley. There was something to admire in all of them. She glanced at the blood-red ring that hung between her breasts. She remembered how her half-brother had looked at it when he sat by her bed, and she laughed with a joyous sense of power.

  *

  The festival to welcome Lord Lennox and his son to Holyrood had been devised by the Queen herself. She was very adroit in elegant entertainments which she had learnt at the Louvre in Paris, at Chenonceaux, the château on the water, and Saint Germain-en-Laye. She liked something surprising, odd, fantastic. The Feast of the Bean that she had held the other day, that had been delightful. Mary Livingstone had found the Bean in her slice of the cake, and she had been chosen Queen of the Feast.

  Her mistress had lent her a superb white and blue gown covered with silver pailettes that she had worn as Queen of France, and many of the Valois jewels that she had brought from Paris. That was a pretty, dainty fancy. It had been delicious to stand aside and see this mock queen receive homage. To-night there was to be some newfangled fancies, a masque of Russians, a masque of monsters, and, perhaps, Mary Fleming as queen. She was going to marry William Maitland, who was much too old for her, and who was really a little in love with the true Queen. She liked him, he was so fine, so adroit, so unscrupulous, so open-minded; he despised rough, coarse Calvinists like Lindsay or Ruthven, he even a little despised Moray.

  *

  The Queen was dressed. She wore a black velvet jacket with a pinched waist that was unbuttoned on a shirt of cut needlework, breeches with silver tags and laces, and black hose. Her crimped hair was tied with a gold ribbon in long tresses above one ear, and on the other side of the head the hair was gathered under a fiat cap on which was a tiny circlet of pearls, a jest of a royal crown.

  Her face was exquisitely painted, crimson on the pouting lips, gold dust on the shaven brows. This disguise of an insolent boy, a pert manikin, a court monkey, made her appear seductively, dangerously feminine.

  It was Mary Livingstone, a little uneasy, who was dressed like a queen and forced to hold a mock court in the centre of the long gallery at Holyrood. This left the Queen quite free to follow her whim. She stood apart with Mary Seaton and the French girls. A great many people were there, even those who most disliked festivals, even those grim Lords of the Congregation whom she took to be no better than rebels. Clumsy and rough, they stood aside in groups, condemning, wondering, hostile, and rude. They were not bred for palaces nor even for cities. They were at home in their own castles, stern moated holds, or riding the heather with a bag of porridge and a plate slung on their saddles for their day’s rations. Some of them could bring a thousand men into the field if there was a foray or a raid or a rebellion. The Queen was first amused at them, then annoyed at the poor show they made.

  Henry Stewart came from England where he had been at the Court of Elizabeth; no doubt Windsor, Richmond, and Greenwich were far more splendid than Holyrood. The Queen did not want her estate despised by Henry Stewart; she wished she could have received him in the Louvre or at Fontainebleau. She was vexed that she was no longer Queen of France; she had fitted so exactly into that setting, like a cut and polished jewel into the circle of a ring. She was glad that Earl Bothwell had seen her in Paris in her sophisticated magnificence.

  *

  Moray saw her and frowned at her disguise; it was just these tricks that made the preachers thunder against her wantonness. He whispered to Maitland, who shrugged, amused. He thought that the Queen’s coquetry was delicious.

  “It is a charming symbol of royalty,” he said, “as pretty as a carkanet or a sceptre, a chain or a globe.”

  Moray did not reply; the lightness of Maitland often jarred on him; the man always edged away from definite action, definite speeches.

  The angered Lords, who felt humiliated by their own uncouthness, gathered round Moray, though he did not encourage them. They admired him for his intelligence, his clean living, his disdain of violence, his godliness. He kept hims
elf aloof from them though he was aware of all they did. He smiled at Lindsay and Argyll who were his sisters’ husbands, he spoke to Ruthven and Cassilis, he was friendly with Erskine and Atholl, men far more moderate and. intelligent than the others, but he disclosed his mind to none.

  Lennox and his son were late. This caused great dissatisfaction that swelled into angry talk under cover of the masque of the Muscovites.

  This dance of men in skins, with white masks, shaking bells, and moving in and out of one another in mazy patterns seemed absurd and childish to the Scots Lords. Nor could they understand the French jests uttered by the dancers, at which the Queen’s household laughed so shrilly.

  They discussed the recall of Lennox in whose honour this feast was given; comments, opinion, maledictions leaped in and out of dark conjecture and surmise.

  Lennox was of royal descent, so was his wife, Margaret. He had played the traitor and fought with the English on the Borders, because his rival, the head of the Hamiltons, had been chosen Regent for the young Queen. For twenty years he had been banished, his estates confiscated, his sons had been bred as Englishmen — now he was suddenly recalled and restored to his honours. Why? Because he was a Roman Catholic? Because of some subtle policy on the part of tricky Elizabeth and her Cecil?

  The Hamiltons were furious; not one of them was there. The chief of them, the Duke of Châtelherault, who had been the Regent, pretended to be sick. His son, Arran, had aspired to marry one of the Queens. He was now a lunatic and shut up.

  What did Lennox hope to do? The Lords thought of him with fury; he would not find a friend, no, not one, except the Lennox Stewarts on his own lands at Glasgow.

  There had been some talk of the elder Lennox boy marrying the Queen. Did anyone think that the Lords would endure that? Those who had seen him at Wemyss Castle said he looked like a girl; he was quite beardless and smooth and everything he said was silly and insolent. Could the Queen fancy such a one?

  Under the shield of the Muscovites’ bells and the scrape of the violins and the giddy laughter of the French at the indecent jokes of the masquers, Patrick, Lord Ruthven, muttered the name of Chastelard — was not he also ladyfaced, a weedy nothing, fond of lute strumming and sickly verses? How could one tell where the caprice of a woman would lead her?

  So the Lords, with no regard for civility or good company, muttered and complained, uneasy, hostile, while the masquers ran about the smooth floor of the gallery shaking their branches of bells, bouncing up and down in their furs.

  *

  Moray sought out the Queen where she sat in her fantastic disguise under the musicians’ gallery. She looked pensive and he thought this a good moment to give her some honest advice.

  “No one is pleased about the return of Lennox,” he said.

  “No one is pleased with anything that I do.”

  “Have you done this? Didn’t the English Queen send him?”

  “Why should she?” the Queen shrugged away. “Is it to her advantage that I should marry the heir to Scotland?”

  “She knows the boy. She can, perhaps, guess at you — since you are both in her way. Maybe she would be pleased if you destroyed each other.”

  The Queen seemed startled; the smooth face under the page’s cap frowned.

  “How could we — destroy each other?”

  Moray sighed. He was a gloomy figure in his rubbed velvet, his sole jewel the Order of the Thistle on his broad breast.

  “Scotland,” he said, “would not endure this marriage — there is not a man would hail Henry Stewart as King.” He seated himself stiffly on the stool beside her. How small, how ridiculous the tall woman, who could be so majestic, looked in the page’s dress!

  It seemed absurd that she was his Queen — his sister. He began to plead with her, warmly, awkwardly, dropping all titles of respect. His thick eyebrows twitched over his intense dark eyes, his sulky, sensual mouth was dry.

  The Queen listened, lolling on her cushion.

  “Do not do it, Mary. Lennox is a weak, rascally adventurer; to set him up will offend everyone. The boy is untamed, a downright fool, some say. A Papist, too. You know how badly that will go down. Do not marry him.”

  “Whom am I to marry, then?” She looked down the spacious gallery where the candles shone above the masquers and the grumbling Lords. Her voice was humble, her attitude meek. Moray stared at the crimped tresses tied under the jaunty cap.

  “Wait. I will find you a husband. A man, one capable of ruling Scotland.”

  “You can do that for me, James — rule Scotland.”

  “But not for Henry Stewart.”

  She glanced sharply over her shoulder at him; she seemed pleased to see him moved; she laughed as if his urgent gaze excited her, as if his husky voice roused her curiosity.

  “Go on,” she whispered.

  “You mock me. I want to save you. Don’t you see? You are in such a perilous place. Only I, helped by Maitland, could keep you there!” He began to plead. “Mary, couldn’t you trust me? Believe in me and no one else?” He took her slack hand and began to caress it with his large, smooth fingers. “Remain without a husband, Mary, play a long patient game, wait, till we find the man who suits us—”

  She gazed at him tenderly; he held stubbornly to his impossible desire. Then he added:

  “Leave it to me. If you will stay unmarried — I — I could forgive — I could excuse some womanish weakness. If you were discreet, I might endure your singers and chamber boys—”

  “No, you are too jealous.”

  Her face, warm, pale, with the freshly painted mouth, was close to his; this proximity forced him to reveal himself.

  “Mary! Cannot you remain as you are? The Queen. Without lovers or a husband? Enclosed in royalty? Scotland!” He bowed his head over her hand. “I swear to God,” came his muffled voice, “that you should always be safe and happy.”

  She did not disturb him; many unspoken thoughts went to and fro like shuttles between them as they sat in the alcove. What he said tempted her facile mind. To be the Queen and nothing else! A decked, immaculate image high above the heads of men, regarded with reverence and awe, a symbol of royalty, of purity, of grandeur, every man in love with her, no one daring to approach her, she above the need of love, wedded to her regal state. While Moray, the royal born, who had missed the throne by a Church ceremony, stood for ever guarding her, keeping everyone at bay, exalting her, making her admired, prosperous, great. He saw her hesitation and for a second cherished a stupid hope.

  “Could you do it, Mary?”

  She played with him, half deluded by her own subterfuge.

  “Why not? I trust you.”

  She meant that, though she knew that he had taken money from England and once intrigued with Elizabeth against her sovereignty. But she was sure that as long as she was near him, smiling at him, deferring to him, he would serve her well, as no other could or would.

  “Well, then, let this silly youth go.”

  She sat so meekly that he ventured further.

  “I can only do it if you listen to me, obey me, follow my advice. I cannot protect you if there are scandals.” The Queen drew a lazy breath; his hopes increased. He reminded himself that she had stood beside him to see John Gordon mangled, that she had called him in to slay Chastelard. Perhaps, after all, she did secretly prefer him to any other man. He saw himself master of Scotland, and the Queen, disdaining all pretenders, hated, perhaps, but high-set and proudly enclosed in the people’s esteem.

  He began to kiss her fingers, which he had kept in his until their two palms were moist.

  The noisy masque came to an end. The mummers trooped off, chattering in French.

  The violins began to fill the silence with a delicate concord. The Queen’s mood changed, like water running out from shade into open places changes in colour. She rose, taking her hand swiftly from Moray’s lips.

  “What a poor, ragged company,” she smiled. “Everywhere the work of country tailors and the manners
of boors. We need Earl Bothwell here — I thought of recalling him, if it is only for the grace he gives to a festival.” Moray was deeply angered by this sudden insult as he took it to be. All his hopes sank, leaving bitterness behind.

  “When Earl Bothwell returns to Scotland, I leave it, madame.”

  “Oh James, you are too sullen and precise. What has the man done? No worse than any other.”

  Furious at the introduction of this detested name, Moray replied sternly:

  “I hope you do not know what he has done. His name stinks. Don’t speak of him. There are some things not to be named for honour’s sake.”

  “How odd that he escaped from the Castle,” smiled the Queen, ignoring this rebuke. “He twisted the iron bars apart with his hands and slid down the face of the rock with a rope—”

  “A tale to amuse children,” sneered Moray. “Some foul bribery got him out.”

  “But he is very strong. He can dance in full armour. So skilful, too; whenever he rides at the ring he takes the prize.”

  Moray moved away; he had no more words for her to mock. How could she, when he had opened his heart to her, wound him by the mention of the abominable man whom he, with every justification, loathed? Again, and painfully, he doubted her integrity, and her innocence. How much did she know of James Hepburn, this damned Earl Bothwell, enmeshed in the infernal arts? Moray made a movement as if washing his hands and turned away. Accursed swine of a sorcerer!

  *

  Lord Lennox and his son, with a retinue of Stewarts, arrived as the masque of monsters was beginning. They were exactly at the time that the Queen had named and Lennox was troubled to find that the festival was so well advanced. This gave him an air of negligence and he was very anxious to please. He hoped that the Queen would remember the time that she had set. He paused inside the low door, biting his forefinger, with his son beside him.

  The entrance was quite filled up by his followers; he was very careful how he went about Edinburgh, where he had no friends, where he had not set foot for twenty years. He was a tall, nobly shaped man, but stooped as if he bore a burden on his back and his face was yellow, puffy, and swollen about the eyes.