The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  A gleam of happiness passed over Mary Seaton’s face; this seemed to her a lawful and generous design. The Queen pressed her advantage.

  “Do you not see, Mary — I mean to overturn the State? I have endured quite enough and for long enough. You will see how I, with my husband as I must call him, and such an instrument as David Rizzio, shall pull their plans about their heads. We’ll have Mass said yet in every village in Scotland, Mary.”

  The girl was satisfied; she sighed with relief. This made all that the Queen did sanctified. The Queen saw her friend’s expression and smiled mischievously:

  “The Pope sent me his blessing, Mary,” she remarked, “and promised me some money, too. That is a great secret, is it not? Mind you keep it carefully.”

  *

  The Queen sat in her closet in the blue gown dictating her secret letters to David Rizzio. She was astonished at what she had accomplished with such celerity and ease. With only the help of this patient foreigner she would be able to upset the policies of men like Moray and Maitland and turn the destiny of an impious kingdom, with as little effort as it took to knock the billiard balls from one end of the table to the other. They thought themselves so invincible, these ponderous men, with their carefully thought out plans. They had forgotten that she was not only a queen but a woman, and though she knew they were always reminding each other that she was French-bred and cardinal-trained, they seemed to have overlooked what that really meant. She had rare talents too; she could use finesse, intrigue delicately.

  She snuffed the two candles that stood on the desk where David Rizzio wrote slowly, in his careful cipher. Near his hand were the rough drafts in Mary’s own writing of letters to the Duke of Savoy, His Holiness the Pope, the King of France, the King of Spain, and her uncles, the Cardinal and the Duke. All these people would help her to re-establish the true Faith in Scotland.

  “How careful you are, David,” she said, leaning towards him.

  “Madame, the least mistake in the cipher might mean so much.”

  He leant back in his chair, for his shoulders were stiff from bowing so long over the desk. For two hours he had been in the Queen’s closet, working all that while steadily. Giuseppe had found a messenger who was leaving for Italy to-morrow and some of the letters, at least, had to be ready by the dawn.

  The Queen gazed at him with admiration. Never had she had a servant so diligent, so uncomplaining, always full of interest and enthusiasm. His mind, too, was very like her own; he would often understand her on the barest speech. In this he was a sharp contrast with Henry Stewart, who was so easily bewildered and confused, who understood nothing unless it was put before him clearly and repeatedly.

  By almost imperceptible degrees, during the days at Stirling, David Rizzio had left the service of Henry Stewart for that of the Queen, and now he lived in Holyrood in the official position of the Queen’s secretary for her foreign letters. Why might she not keep such a one to write to her relatives and friends abroad? Where could she find a Scotsman with such knowledge of languages, of ciphers?

  She was not in the least tired, though she had sat there half the night. She was animated by the success of her tricks, she was inspired by the thought of the future. She could already see the great French ships arriving at Leith, Papal galleys being anchored in the Clyde, the trim ranks of foreign soldiers marching through the streets of Edinburgh, overawing the dirty, insolent rabble. She could see Knox and all his fellow-preachers flying for their lives out of Scotland while patient workmen from Italy and France rebuilt, stone by stone, the broken abbeys, the blackened churches, the cast-down convents. She could see in Holyrood a train of Church dignitaries, a Papal Nuncio, a Cardinal with his train — she would kneel to kiss his ring. No Protestant would dare to show his workaday face and drab clothes on that occasion. Next Easter should be more splendid than the last — she wanted lilies, the trumpets of the angels, like she had had in France. If they would not grow in Scotland she would have them made — curling wood, painted white with jewelled hearts.

  A half-sigh of fatigue from the secretary checked her dreams.

  “Are you tired, David?” she asked. Her breast was open, her arms half-bare; her air was tender and merry.

  She had, from those days in Stirling, always called him by his name. Why not? She called her monkey Florestan, her parrot Pierrot, she had pet names for all her dogs.

  “I am not tired, madame, I am thinking.”

  He leant forward, his elbows on the desk, his face in his long hands. The corners of his fingers lightly raised the long tresses of bronze-coloured hair.

  “What are you thinking of then?”

  “I am thinking, madame, of this business with which I help you.”

  He spoke with the utmost deference, and yet with a familiarity which was, somehow, sweet to her, for it conveyed that he had become part of all her schemes and hopes and had no wish nor desire apart from her wishes or desires. And who else was there in Scotland of that mind?

  “I am thinking, madame, that you will need men, an armed force. From what I can understand, the Protestants would have almost the whole country behind them.”

  “Not quite!” The Queen rose. “Finish your letters to-morrow, all but the Italian — that is ready?”

  “Yes, madame, it only requires sealing. I have put on it the secret stamp of black wax that we arranged. But for the men? All Scotland would be behind Lord Moray.”

  “Not all, I think, David. I know where I can get help against the Protestants.”

  The secretary had risen, but the Queen got to her feet, standing before the desk as he sealed up the letters and placed them in the bosom of his jacket of ruffled satin. He always went very richly attired; his mistress was lavish with presents far beyond his agreed wage.

  “I will tell you a secret, David. There is a man whom I can recall, now in disgrace, who would rouse the north — the Gordon, Lord Huntly.”

  The Italian looked at her expectantly, very pleased, for nothing gave him more delight than to think of her triumph soon approaching; he saw himself as the favourite of a mighty sovereign.

  “There is another who will get me the Border, that is Lord Bothwell. If he is really a sorcerer I shall desire him to blast — ah, several people.”

  The Italian knew both these great gentlemen to be ruined and disgraced, but he could grasp at once how they might be used in the Papist service.

  “You see,” said the Queen, “I am not quite unprepared. I have my cavaliers in readiness.”

  The Italian noted that she had not mentioned her husband as her foremost champion. Delicately, he touched upon this subject, as one who gives a hint without wounding.

  “The Lord Henry Darnley, he will lead Your Majesty’s armies?”

  “Yes. Tell me, David, will he not look splendid in full armour? Blued, gilt, with a vast panache of feathers, yellow, red, above a lion crest?”

  “Madame, most magnificent.”

  “You must go now, David, it is the middle of the night. Mary Seaton will be half-asleep. How patiently she watches for me! She is a good, pious girl. What a pity her lover died. She thinks herself happy in her cold dreams. She says she despises the allurements of lust — which are mere flashes of fire.”

  The Queen stood by the desk looking intently at the elegant, dark young man. She felt avid for great events, for mighty happenings. She wanted everybody’s life emptied into her life; she wanted the pain and rage of Moray, the passion and bewilderment of Henry Stewart, the devotion and fawning service of David Rizzio. She even wanted the services of scoundrels like Earl Bothwell, of the discredited rebels like Earl Huntly. She wanted the meek, half-reproachful tenderness of Mary Seaton and the warm affection of Mary Fleming, the homage and affection of William Maitland.

  David Rizzio moved noiselessly behind her, and they left the little closet together. He could scarcely control his delight in thus leaving the apartment of the Queen in the middle of the night: he might almost have been the Queen’s lover. S
ome people thought he was and he took good care to let no one know that he had done no more than touch her hand; after all, how many had done that? Even Giuseppe was doubtful as to the exact place he held in the Queen’s regard. David, dropping half-hints, was careful to keep him so. How glad he was that he had been industrious as a boy and in his passion for selfadvancement had learnt everything that had come his way which might be useful. He was well trained now; he could do everything that she wanted of him — write her letters, do her ciphers, play a lute, sing a song.

  As she herself opened the door for him, he felt such a lift of triumph at seeing the Queen standing there with a candle to light his way down the corridor that it seemed to him as if Henry Stewart had only been the stepping-stone to his fortune. He knew, though he pretended not to, how many nights the Queen’s husband had been turned away from her apartment. He knew how the wretched, bewildered youth fretted and sickened in a position that was almost intolerable. Even that very night when the Queen had been sitting with him, the servant, he had heard Mary Seaton arguing in a low tone with Henry Stewart, who had come by the secret way wanting to speak with his wife.

  The Queen closed the door and the Italian fumbled in the dark down the corridor. When he reached his own room he lit a lamp, and the first thing he did was to look at himself in the French mirror the Queen had given him. He was pleased with his reflection, even now when he was pale with fatigue. As he gazed at himself, he thought that he compared very well with others, even with princes, even with Henry Stewart.

  Not able to sleep for excitement, he went into the next room and roused Giuseppe under the excuse of telling him that in an hour or so he must be on his way with the letter to Italy, which was first to be taken to Leith, where the man with whom they had arranged the matter would be waiting.

  *

  Henry Stewart lay in his father’s house. He had refused to return to the palace. Lennox was in despair. How often had he not shaken the curtains, staring down at the face of his son with the obstinately closed eyes, and said angrily: “You are the Queen’s husband! Why do you not proclaim it out loud? Is she only to acknowledge you by candlelight or in her bed?”

  He had repeated those taunts until he was sick of them. There was nothing more to be said on that score. The boy would not act and he, the father, could not, dare not. He might, by meddling, spoil everything. He tried to console himself by thinking that this was some lover’s quarrel, but he was really paralysed by an intense fear — a woman like that, a capricious wanton woman, who in a few weeks had taken him! Might she not in a few weeks leave him! It ought to have been a public wedding at once. This secret ceremony, what had it been? It was invalid, anyhow, without a Papal Dispensation, for they were related within the fourth degree. She might repudiate it, laugh at both of them.

  Nagging worries tortured the old man’s mind. He wished he had never left England and the wise counsels of his wife. He felt an aversion to Scotland and all that Scotland represented as he sat in the shrouded room while the boy on whom all his hopes had been centred for years lay on the hired bed like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  Restless in his anxiety, the old man rose and peered again into the face of his son. He could not tell if he was sleeping or feigning sleep, or even unconscious: he seemed sunk in a profound lethargy. His round, smooth face looked quite boyish. Timidly, he touched his son’s hand lying palm upwards on the coverlet. How hot it was!

  Lennox touched the brow — it was burning, too, and the hair was wet with sweat.

  A fever! The wretched man thought of poison. Had some enemies thought of that way of defeating him? He snatched at his son’s shoulders and gripped him so forcibly, called him so piteously that the young man sighed out of his lethargy, opened his eyes, and sat up.

  When he saw who had disturbed him he tried to repulse his father. But Lennox was persistent. He felt he must know.

  “Go back to the Abbey. Speak to her, insist upon an audience. Have you quarrelled? What has she done? Remember with whom you deal — this is a moment for firmness!”

  “Sir,” interrupted the boy in a voice that pleaded for peace, “I can tell you no more than this, that she is my wife and will not say so. I think my blood has been poisoned” He could not find the words to finish the sentence.

  But his father finished it for him:

  “It is some drug. You have been bewitched.”

  “I do not know. It is true that I feel ill. I wish that I had never come to Scotland. We understand none of it, you and I.”

  His senses began to stray as the fever rose. He groaned that the air of the chamber was close, his teeth chattered.

  “She shuts me out, she laughs at me. Do you hear that? The servant goes in and I’m locked out. She has her secrets but they’re not for me.”

  “You’ve humbled yourself too much. You should have played the master.”

  “Sometimes I hate her. She has made me pay too high for a few nights’ lodging.”

  He fell back upon his pillow, overcome by drowsiness; his heavy lids fell over his eyes, but the old man bent over him, pursuing him.

  “Come, you are married, you’ve sworn that to me! How many nights have you passed with her since you came back from Stirling? What was this marriage — a lie to save her reputation? Don’t lie there,” cried the Earl in a sudden fury of exasperation, “like a fool caught in a silly snare. She’s your wife or she’s a strumpet; either way we ought to catch her, if you’ll leave off whining and raise your head.”

  The young man did not answer. He was sunk in fever, and his face twitched as if bad dreams disturbed him.

  *

  The Queen had completed the correspondence that her lover must not know of, and her mind, emptied of this preoccupation, turned to him again so when Mary Seaton reminded her that for a week the private door had been shut to him she said: “Open it to-night.” After all, she loved him, and she thought of this love with delight, even with a little regret for her cruelty.

  She would make up to him for her neglect. She knew how to silence his reproaches, how to soothe his fears, disperse his jealousies. And yet, perhaps, she would say nothing at all, merely rest in his arms, a helpless woman in a man’s embrace. He was stupid with words, and so often did not understand. Perhaps she would ask him to sing.

  Mary Seaton waited in the privy closet. He always came that way, a convenient entrance to the Queen’s apartments, not particularly secret or mysterious but merely a servants’ stairway which led to the disused chambers on the floor beneath and then by a subterranean passage to the garden and the church. There was access to this way through the burial ground; a shrubbery of trees cloaked the wall, and one might come and go there freely enough.

  Mary Seaton heard the step, heard the key turn in the lock and rose to greet the man whom for her conscience’ sake she must regard as the Queen’s husband and her King. She was glad that to-night she would not have to say: “You must go back, the Queen is ill,” or “the Queen prays,” or “the Queen fears that Mary Fleming may come in,” or some such other excuse. No, to-night she could stand aside and leave the young man’s way free to his wife’s chamber.

  He did not, as was his custom, knock on the panel or scratch, but used the key which the Queen had given him. It turned in the lock.

  But when Mary Seaton saw who it was who entered the room she felt sick with fright for it was not the tall bridegroom who bent his shoulders in the narrow doorway but the stout form of his father, the Earl of Lennox, muffled to his chin, in the common clothes of a citizen.

  “Tell Her Grace,” he said with a menacing frown, “that her husband is sick and cannot come to-night.”

  He put aside the girl, and stared rudely across the closet into the bedchamber where the woman, who had suddenly ceased to smile, sat in the huge marriage bed.

  *

  The Queen fetched Henry Stewart from his lodgings to Holyrood Palace. He was too ill to stand on his feet and chattered foolishly in the bouts of fever t
hat left him hot and cold by turns, so she had him carried in a litter borne by some of his father’s men. Two of her French doctors walked either side of him, and she followed on horseback with the four Maries and the French girls, and the two Italian boys.

  All was done openly by the light of day, and the people of Edinburgh crowded to windows and doors and paused in their occupations and hurried down side streets to stare and wonder and say foul things.

  The Queen had left off her usual mourning and was attired in an excess of that splendour which had always irritated the people from the moment she had landed at Leith. Her gown was of ruffled yellow silk with a great collar of lace falling open on her bosom and sewn and knotted with pearls. Two long tresses of chestnut hair fell to her waist; she wore her hat with a long, black feather over a coif in the Italian fashion. People asked each other where was her widow’s black? Only on State occasions had she been without it during her reign. Were these fineries the signs of another marriage?

  The crowd could get no sight of the young man in the litter, for the curtains were drawn. But they knew who it was being borne to the palace and they peered and jostled to get a sight of his father’s face as he rode behind. What could they read from that bloated, sullen countenance? Was this the triumph of the Lennox faction and of Papistry?

  Some of them began to hiss the stout old man who had sold the Queen for English gold when she was a child and brought the English over the Border to cut the throats of honest Scots. A few of the women started a murmur against the Queen herself. When she had first ridden through Edinburgh blessings had been called upon her, but there were none to-day.

  She looked about, wondering at this enmity, at these faces grim with hostility, these drab, diseased, and filthy creatures who challenged her with looks of hate.

  How strange and unfamiliar these people were to her! She stared at them with a fearless curiosity. She felt kindly towards them and wanted them to be happy and contented; when she had money she would fling it abroad with the utmost generosity or spend it on feasts for their benefit. She never interfered with their liberties nor their hideous religion and she had only asked a little toleration for herself. Why then did they dislike her so? There was not one of them, even when she looked directly into the crowd, who threw up his hat and shouted for the Queen.