The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  “Lord Moray has a mixed nature, madame. Part of him cares for gaudy things — houses and lands and money and power, the lure of common men. And part of him would throw all away rather than be brought to behold a sight which repulses him.”

  The Queen picked up the grey, wrinkled monkey from her skirt-hem and placed it on her lap.

  “Why,” she asked serenely, “should it disturb Lord Moray or you or any other gentleman that I take this industrious Italian for my servant?”

  “Do you not really know, madame? The rat is quite a dainty animal with smooth fur and bright eye, very nimble in his gait, but he is bred to stench and filth, he is fed on garbage and crouches in the dungeons. When we find him in a pretty chamber we kill him.”

  The Queen drooped her head in her hands as she stared down at the monkey.

  “I am fastidious, too,” said Sir William smiling. “I do not care to sniff at a fly-blown flower, to see the rot creep into the peach. Yet, curiosity overcomes all.”

  “Curiosity, sir?”

  “Yes. To see what may grow out of this corruption.”

  The Queen sighed lightly. She seemed neither vexed nor greatly moved.

  “Sir, you see things one way, and I another. Corruption! Are you to preach like old John Knox? When he used to come up to the palace he would shake his fist in my ladies’ faces and remind them of these same noisome things — your rat, your fly, your maggot, your spoiled peach, your bruised flowers, decay and corruption to make the squeamish sick. Ay, and without any stuttering, sir, he told us plain tales of how one day the worm would pick our bones completely. He did not frighten me, Sir William.” She lifted from her waist the watch in the form of a skull. “That was given me by my first husband; he died young and wretchedly, corrupting while the breath was still in him. Do you think it is easy to frighten me? I always wear this at my waist, and I too can see the blowfly and the worms beneath the flower and the leaf.”

  “Madame, you have mistook and purposely, I think, my allegory. Let me say directly that Lord Moray could not stand by and see the Queen’s Majesty defiled by the company she keeps.”

  “And do you think him justified, Sir William?”

  “Madame, I do.”

  “Then why did you not follow him?”

  “As I have said — out of curiosity and to help you if I can.”

  She continued to caress the monkey and to smile without looking up. Sir William saw that he had pleased her by this confession of loyalty. He had not troubled to be subtle with her, he had spoken the truth when he had stated his motives. He was inquisitive as to what would befall this strange, bold, foolish woman and he did wish to help her although he had long ago, in silence, given up his once strong hope of seeing her a powerful sovereign and himself her powerful minister.

  Yet, besmirched and tarnished as she might be, she was still the Queen and worth saving, if indeed she could yet be saved. He looked at her tenderly. Her complexion did not seem so clear nor her eyes so radiant nor her hair so brilliant, there was a blur over her loveliness that had always been smooth and bright like a pearl.

  She sat silent, withdrawn into her own thoughts as if oblivious of his scrutiny. And the able, keen-witted man who believed he understood her began to feel that she was, after all, something of a mystery. What had she learnt in France? She might have been brought up by a fanatic prude of a grandmother, lived under the wing of an austere mother-in-law, her own mother might have been the chastest woman in the world, priests, cardinals, nuns, might have hedged her round about, but what had she learnt in France where every woman of her rank knew too much?

  He saw her as fickle, inconstant, ravenous for the hearts and souls of others but without either heart or soul herself — an elegant harpy, cold, knowing nothing even of passion. Then he thought that this was a false picture. She might be without tenderness, fidelity, affection, or spirituality, but even so, why should she be thought of as worthless? Did not this rather make her a goddess? Had not she, by virtue of some divinity, enshrined in her person, a right to her whims and fancies, her cruelties? Might not all be forgiven to the woman whose look, whose touch, whose smile could start a bright dream in the mind like a brilliant bird started from the coverts of a wood? Corrupt, depraved, a trivial, shallow creature — or a goddess beyond all their codes and traditions, their petty human reserves and denials? Sir William Maitland did not know, though he had a clear judgment and believed in nothing, and alone of all the men in Scotland was free of superstition.

  The Queen glanced at him sideways and began to plead with him. Her marriage, now? She supposed everyone talked ill of that. Perhaps she had been mistaken, but she had married Henry Stewart to bring peace to the kingdom, to put a claimant to the throne out of the way.

  “You know, Sir William, it has always been your desire and mine that one day my House might reign over the whole Island. Well, is this not a step towards it? If we should have a child—” She put her hand to her waist and smiled timidly. “And David, now. You are mistaken there, he is so humble and so good and not what you think. He has had a hard life, he and his poor young brother. They are only boys and I try to make amends to them for all they have suffered. They work very diligently.”

  She continued in her low persuasive voice, which seemed to Sir William to have no feeling in it at all, to put forward the case of the two Italians, to praise them, to excuse herself for employing them. But Sir William took no more heed than if he had been listening to the chatter of the sparrows in the hedge, and when she paused he said, looking up at the sky:

  “The Queen’s Grace may pity two poor foreign boys and give them charity, but she may not have them in her closet clothed in sable and purple and entrust them with her secrets. What letters does Signor David write for you, madame, that I may not see?”

  “Why, only on my private matters, to my friends and relatives in France.”

  Sir William smiled at this childish lie. Surely she knew that he was aware that she conducted clumsy and complicated intrigues with the Roman Catholic church through the medium of the Italians. He began to weary of the purposeless conversation which seemed to him to mean no more than the buzzing of flies in the air. He no longer expected anything from her that would serve either Scotland or himself. All her little lies and beguilements to entice him to his old allegiance (for he knew that that was what she wanted of him; she was jealous of any loss of respect or affection) were to him but a waste of breath. So he said:

  “I shall remain in Edinburgh and so will the Lord Morton.”

  At that she burst out in anger against the Lord Chancellor, detailing all his lewd habits and puritanical hypocrisy.

  She rose, shaking the monkey into the window-place where she had sat, leaving it to curl up on the cushions.

  “I so detest the Earl Morton that I have half a mind to put David in his place.”

  “Excellent and noble lady,” said Sir William smiling, “all that you say of Earl Morton is very true and you may well be astonished that your brother had such an adviser and that I have such a friend. We have but one reason, madame, the man knows how to govern Scotland.”

  “I do not need a governor, neither does the country,” replied the Queen. “I have a husband now.”

  Sir William did not trouble to answer these boasts. Why should he trouble himself for her and her young lord who was so detested? She herself who might have made something of him, perhaps a worthy wearer of the crown, was herself spoiling his manliness by her tricks and her inconstancy.

  Maitland pitied the wretched young King as he might have pitied the mayfly caught in the almost invisible menace of the spider’s web.

  “Madame, the day is hot, let us not play with words. In Edinburgh I await your pleasure.”

  By the emphasis he gave this last word he invested it with a double meaning so that even she was a little discomposed and began to walk up and down the sun-drenched parlour. He watched her, admiring the flow of her blue gown, the grace of her bearing, but caring no
more for what she said than for the cooing of the doves in the trees, but he was pleased with the modulations in her voice, as she railed against Moray.

  She knew, she cried, that he had long wished to be a traitor, that he intended to set the crown on his own head. She vowed that she would harry him out of Scotland, and declared vehemently that she knew who would help her to do this. He thought she alluded to her miserable husband or the Italian, and he did not trouble to answer.

  But while she paced up and down, exhausting herself in her anger against Moray, expressing also her rage against many other things, perhaps against her own destiny, Maitland thought of a crafty trick that he might try. When the Queen paused and stood sighing again in the window-place looking up at the gold leaves against the sky, he said:

  “Madame, might I speak to Signor David?”

  She looked startled, for she could not understand this, but she gave her consent out of curiosity.

  “He is in the next room.”

  “I am to wait on him, then?” asked Sir William Maitland pleasantly. “It shall be as the Queen’s Grace says.”

  He made her his reverence and crossed to the door that he had recently shut, opened it, and entered the presence of the Italian secretary and his assistants.

  *

  Signor David felt very proud when he saw Sir William Maitland, that great famous gentleman, approaching him with a pliant, courteous, almost suppliant air. Lately many people, some of them of considerable importance, had begun to flatter the Italian secretary, even to fawn on him, and he made a large amount of money in bribes and presents from many of those whose shoes he would have been glad to tie a few months ago; some even now pulled off their caps to him. He did not think it at all impossible that even Sir William Maitland might have come to beg him to plead with the Queen. No doubt the Secretary of State was troubled for his future now that his patron, the Earl of Moray, had fled the capital.

  The Italian rose, made a slight reverence and then seated himself again, leaving Sir William standing. The servant was quite intoxicated by his success and felt very able to hold it with his own cunning and cleverness. All the letters that he sent abroad seemed to him like strong ties to keep him in his place. He was the keeper of the Queen’s secrets, one who had ousted her young husband in her favour. He believed it was wise to be presumptuous, bold and pert. He stared at Sir William steadily.

  Sir William looked at him casually as if he glanced over some object he might be about to purchase, say a handsome young horse or a sporting dog.

  The Italian was carefully barbered, tailored, and perfumed. Not a hair of his trim person was awry; the smooth hair in curled ends was tucked behind the left ear in which hung a pearl.

  Maitland’s scrutiny travelled from that costly ornament to a cross of five diamonds on the young man’s breast and then to a ring of emeralds on the slender finger.

  “Signor David, there are few in Scotland who care to give you good advice. You are a foreigner, a stranger here and have not many friends.”

  “Sir,” replied the Italian, leaning back in his chair, “I do very well.”

  Sir William Maitland gazed at him serenely. He thought him vile, worthless and shallow, a fool. He recalled that Moray had tried to warn the foolish master, make friends with him and save him, for the Queen’s sake. Now he, whose feelings were not as involved as Moray’s had been, was trying to save the servant — for the Queen’s sake always. He doubted if it could be done, but in what seemed a simple, a natural way, he made the attempt.

  “Signor David, I have travelled much and observed men and women closely. I speak, therefore, from a long experience when I say that I have seen many a lackey lifted to his master’s place and there beheld him glitter for a little while like a false marshflare, ay, even splutter and sparkle on the threshold of his lady’s chamber, but always, in the conclusion, I have seen him stamped out. Underfoot, Signor David, like a spark from a torch.”

  The Italian listened keenly. His lean fingers played over the papers in front of him. He had been copying an inventory of the Queen’s jewels, a task that he loved. Sir William spoke so wisely, so coolly, that the Italian was impressed and alarmed. He did not answer but glanced at his brother, who was sitting tense the other side of the table listening, his bright eyes searching Sir William’s impassive face.

  “Leave Scotland,” advised the Secretary of State. “Pack up your velvets and your furs, your brooches and your rings and be gone while you can.”

  The Italian fondled his chin and looked away. Then he crossed himself, heaved his shoulders, and began to laugh, staring down at the diamonds on his breast to give himself confidence.

  “Sir William Maitland, when the Queen bids me to do so I shall leave Scotland, and that will not be yet, I think, for I have no reason to believe that I displease her.”

  He smiled, showing his white, sharp teeth, and Giuseppe, the young brother, laughed and began to pull about the ledger and turn the pages, absorbed in his task as if Sir William’s visit was an interruption and an annoyance.

  “How absurd,” remarked the Secretary lightly, “is it to see those, as common as a barber’s chair, who think to gain renown by a web of little lies.”

  *

  The Queen had her book between her fingers and seemed drowsy. When Sir William returned to her parlour she did not concern herself to ask him what had passed between him and the Italian. She could find that out afterwards. She nodded to him and looked down again at her great book of amorous tales.

  Sir William glanced pleasantly at the clock above the table on which was the tumbled needlework.

  “Your time is past, madame. Your clock has lost the hour.”

  *

  The Queen flamed suddenly like a furled banner broken into the sky. She came glittering, flushed, triumphant to a meeting of the Privy Council and insisted that her brother and the Lords who had followed him, the chief of whom was Argyll, his brother-in-law, should be plainly denounced as rebels. She signed the Proclamation which charged all her subjects not to give these men meat, drink, armour, any succour or obedience. She signed another desiring all her subjects with fifteen days’ provisions to meet at the great cities of the country — Edinburgh, Linlithgow, Falkirk, Glasgow, Stirling.

  She appointed the Earl of Atholl Lieutenant of the North, and charged him to seek out the rebels and pursue them with fire and sword. All men between the ages of sixteen and sixty under pain of forfeiture of their goods were to support the Queen against the Earl of Moray.

  It was the Queen, beautiful, animated, with an air of power and authority who made all arrangements and issued all orders. Her husband was sometimes with her but more often she was alone, with her women and the Italian secretary. Morton and Maitland remained in her service, although they had been Moray’s friends.

  In the warm autumn weather the Queen rode to St. Andrews with the King in splendid armour by her side, and she herself in gold and scarlet with a seal cap garnished with the red and yellow plumes, and, people whispered, a steel corselet beneath her jacket. She appeared upright, one who would vanquish not only her enemies but her own weakness.

  The Scots applauded her sudden action, her courage and her activity. She seemed suddenly not only popular but triumphant. Scotland rallied to her as she had always declared Scotland would. The Queen, shaking off her languors and her parasites, galloped after rebels.

  At St. Andrews she signed a Proclamation against her brother, accusing him of insatiable ambition, of using his religion to cover his ungodly designs, of creating unrest by means of which he might obtain the Crown for himself. In plain language, he would be King himself and administer the kingdom, “leaving us as a mere title.”

  By the end of August she had five thousand armed, provisioned men behind her. This excited her and gave her an air of nobility and grandeur. It seemed as if she really loved these people who had taken up her quarrels, so generously did she speak to them, so graciously did she smile upon them. It seemed as if she re
ally cared for this country of her father’s. She became admired, beloved, a symbol of ancient royalty. Men forgot her unwise marriage, forgot her foreign favourite and took up her quarrels gladly.

  *

  Twelve hundred men gathered round the Earl of Moray. He was penniless; his sole reliance was on possible help from England. His estates, his revenues, his honour were all forfeit. The Queen pursued him and his small force from Stirling to Glasgow, from Paisley to Hamilton, from Hamilton to Edinburgh.

  Moray and Argyll led their irregular rabble of troops through Edinburgh streets and were fired on by Lord Erskine, who held the Castle. They escaped to Dumfries, where on hearing that the Queen was pursuing them with a growing force of nearly ten thousand men, Moray dispersed his few troops and retired over the Border.

  When the Queen heard this she laughed, as if there was nothing more to be feared in the world. She was Queen indeed, she was great, she was powerful, she was triumphant.

  With her victory, a flicker of her old passion for her husband returned. She considered him and cautiously approved him. He had not been called upon for any heroic or difficult action and he was often sullen and violent. She knew that the very Lords and men who followed him detested him, yet he had looked well enough at the head of his troops, on his sombrely appointed horse as he rode through the rough country ways, cities, and streets. He had been, this man of her impetuous and sudden choice, at least a fine symbol of a king and her malice was gratified to think how sore Moray’s pride would be that this gilded puppet had driven him from the kingdom after which he hankered so greedily.

  At St. Andrews she had been very loving with her sulky and bewildered lord and had wooed him out of his mistrustful silence. She could scarcely afford to quarrel with him, and yet she meant to keep him in his place. She would not give him the Crown Matrimonial so easily, and she would not let him attend the Privy Council; documents should pass with her name alone on them. It would be very foolish to resign any power to one so unstable and jealous.