The Queen's Caprice

by Marjorie Bowen

  Yet, partly because she was still sometimes attracted by his strength and beauty and partly because in this split kingdom she wished to keep him true to her, she wooed him back to his allegiance. She even flattered him, giving him some credit for the bloodless, easy victory. But when she lay in his arms in the castle at St. Andrews she had told him something that had not pleased him at all.

  She had recalled three broken, discredited men to Scotland and intended to set them high in command in her new army. These were the Earl of Huntly, a Papist, son of the ruined Cock o’ the North, brother to the man whom Moray had beheaded in her presence at Inverness, the Earl of Sutherland, his friend, also banished by Moray, and the wizard Earl of Bothwell.

  “It is to confound my brother,” she smiled, trying to kiss away her young husband’s frowns.

  But he was hostile and doubtful, he objected.

  “These men are rogues and scoundrels, loathed by all. They will try to set themselves up.” Maybe in his heart he thought: “They will try to dislodge me.”

  The Queen reassured him, No. These three were loyal and would be good servants. It was only the ambitious Moray whom they did not like and with whom they would not live. It would be clever, it would be cunning to restore them their lands and honours, bind them to one for ever. Bothwell commanded the Border, Huntly the North, why not unite these two leaders in one bond of loyalty? It was thought to make a marriage between Earl Bothwell and Earl Huntly’s sister.

  “But Bothwell is a heretic,” objected the King sullenly. Any such intricate combination always baffled him. He wished that this foolish war was over. He disliked riding all day in his heavy armour. He wanted to return to his field sports and his games. He was even sometimes weary of the Queen, though she could at moments completely dazzle him, when she laughed and caressed him in high spirits.

  She did not listen to the murmured criticism about her, the secret reproaches of Mary Seaton. She took no heed of the shrugs and smiles of Maitland nor the scowls of Morton, these two men whose strange loyalty she accepted so indifferently. The three Lords were recalled.

  The Queen had sent Earl Bothwell’s relative, Murray of Tullibardine, to find him in Paris. This gentleman had been arrested by the English but had contrived to send his chamber-boy to France, and in September, Earl Bothwell presented himself before the Queen with a great train of armed men from the Border. She liked that unquestioning allegiance, his coming to her despite danger, his waiting on her pleasure without comment.

  She said to her husband: “That is how I would be served!” and she promised Bothwell the Governorship of the Border which the young King wanted for his father, the Earl of Lennox, and she allowed Bothwell to ride beside Morton and Atholl in pursuit of the rebels. By October the Queen was in Edinburgh again, Moray had fled to England, Argyll was in hiding in the Highlands, and the Hamiltons had been contemptuously pardoned on condition that they remained five years in exile.

  *

  The Queen took off her armour, her helmet, her riding-gauntlets, her skirts, she set aside her pistols and her dagger, for she had no further need of weapons. All her foes were dispersed, humiliated, and vanquished. Moray might cringe and whine at the Court of Elizabeth Tudor, but he was harmless now.

  When she had ridden back to Edinburgh the people had acclaimed her. Even the Protestants had seemed gratified and excited by her brave action, by her princely quelling of the rebellion. There were no more murmurs against her, no more doubts were thrown on her shining honour.

  Money and promises of more to follow had come from the Pope, and kindly encouraging letters from her relatives in France. She had intrigues afoot with Spain. All would go well, at last she was Queen …

  Sighing with delight she told her adventures to Mary Seaton and David Rizzio when they sat by the first fires of autumn in her little closet in King James’s Tower.

  She had not taken the Italian with her on her swift expedition against the rebels because she did not wish to anger Henry Stewart when it was necessary that he should preserve the appearance of unity with her. And she had not taken Mary Seaton because the pious girl was tenderhearted and turned sick at bloodshed or violence, and there might have been both in that violent pursuit of the rebels.

  Though the Queen had lately met so many of her subjects and been gracious to them all and enjoyed their homage and their adoration, she was glad to return to these two with whom she felt so intimate — the girl who had been her companion all her life and the young man whom she had known only a few months.

  She spoke of the quick rides from place to place, the long hours in the saddle, the austere beauty of the countryside. “I swear I love the place, the darkness and the loneliness and the clear air.”

  She kept her narrowed eyes in the direction of the Italian, who knelt in an attitude of humility the other side of the marble hearth and listened to all her pretty talk and exultations, his lips parted, eyes downcast, his breast lightly rising and falling under the cluster of diamonds.

  The Queen had liked, while she had been abroad on her martial arrays, to think of him waiting with his patient resignation. It pleased her to think how impossible it was for him ever to attain what he must desire of her. How close he came to her in one sense, and how far away he was in another.

  She allowed Mary Seaton to take off her jacket in his presence and sat there with shoulders bare under the gauze, and feet naked on a cushion, and challenged him to let his colour rise or his eyes gleam.

  She rejoiced in the discomfiture and humiliation of Moray, who had tried to rule her, to thwart her and frustrate her, who had denied her marriage, who had tried to turn away her friends and her favourites. She told Mary Seaton to light more candles, and when the room was ablaze with radiance she sat and talked of the Earl of Bothwell, the sly wizard, the bold soldier, the elegant man all embossed in gold who had ridden beside her standard.

  It had been David’s advice that he should be brought back from Paris, David who always advised her well.

  “You always give me fine counsel, David. I think it was very wise to bring these three men home. They will serve me as no others can. It is a pity that Bothwell is a heretic, but maybe I can turn him from that.”

  So the Queen flattered the Italian, thanking him for another wise counsel he had given her, which had been not to crush utterly the Hamiltons but merely to hold them at bay, so that they might balance those of the Lennox Stewarts, “Lest my lord the King and his father grow too proud, madame,” the sly Italian had persuaded her ready ear. “Hold the balance so, one faction up and the other down, but only by a shade so that when you wish you can turn the scale by your finger’s weight.” Yes, that had been good advice, too. She held the difficult King, and his foolish father, whom she had always detested, checked, “Lest they grow too great, David. But they hate it! My good lord is very angry with me, at first because I do not give his father the Governorship of the Border but rather presented it to Earl Bothwell, and second for this matter of the Hamiltons. Oh, they were violent and bloody. They would have had all the Hamiltons butchered. As if I liked such cruel actions.”

  She spoke indifferently and smiled; she held a little mirror twisted with a serpent in her hand and painted her mouth.

  “Oh, David, it is good to be a queen and ride the heather, with thousands of men behind you. I like that cold, clean air, it is sweeter than any perfume. And the taste of the mountain brooks, and those mountains so stately and lonely with the high clouds curled above. Oh, David, it seems to me I reign at last.”

  She stretched herself on the luxurious reposing-bed, clasping her hands behind her head and looked at her bare feet pressed against the cushion by the rail. Then she glanced sideways at the young man kneeling on the hearth. He was graceful as a fine statue and almost as immovable. She had made him, he was her creation hardly to be known as the mean, half-starved lackey who had found the monkey for her in the chapel. It was amusing to fling him favours and see him snap at them and flourish and grow fat p
urely because of her whims and fancies.

  Mary Seaton broke the train of these pleasant meditations. She began to lament and complain in a high, peevish voice because Earl Bothwell had come back. He was no better than a sorcerer, a man whom everyone loathed and condemned. It would be no credit to the Queen to show him favour. She began to list, half in fear, half with relish, some of the tales of Earl Bothwell’s wickedness.

  “He will marry,” said the Queen, smiling from her cushions, “and no doubt his little wife will make an honest sober man of him.”

  “Have you seen Jane Gordon?” asked Mary Seaton prudishly.

  “No. What does it matter? She is Huntly’s sister and will bind the two Houses together.” She paused and turned this thought over in her mind. “I will see her, I will have her brought to court. She is very young and simple, I have heard.” She lifted her faint brows and sighed: “I would rather like to be Jane Gordon and marry Earl Bothwell. Yes, there are some emotions one must envy. A wizard’s wife—”

  She sat up impatiently and with a gesture bid David rise from his knees on the hearth. “Come and sit beside me on the couch, David, you are as dumb as Florestan.”

  As she spoke Mary Seaton turned with an affrighted face.

  The King had entered the audience chamber by the newel stair from his apartments and was coming towards the closet, the door of which was open.

  “What does it matter?” shrugged the Queen, and she commanded David, who had risen, to take his place on the corner of her couch.

  “Oh, madame,” sighed Mary Seaton, “the King is angry!”

  “When do I see him otherwise?”

  The Italian could no longer endure his position; as the King strode into the room he slipped to his knees beside the day-bed and seemed to be telling the rosary which hung at his gold-studded belt.

  There were many flames in the room — on the hearth and in the candles stuck in their sticks of gilded copper — and the brightness of all of them seemed reflected in the Queen’s defiant eyes. Without rising she stared at her husband as he paused on the threshold.

  He looked at the Italian, looked at her, opened his lips, but did not speak. She admired him, his size and height, the colour of his bright hair in the artificial light. She saw that he had been drinking, was fuddled and confused, and that pleased and excited her too. She, who had ten thousand victorious men behind her, was not afraid of this stupid, drunken boy.

  The Italian glanced up sideways and bent his head again, then gathered courage from the silence. Slowly he rose to his feet and went to the hearth, where against the shaft of the mantelpiece lay a lute. He picked it up and began to knot carefully the coloured ribbons on the handle. The King’s slow glance followed him, then returned to the Queen.

  “You are melancholy company to-night, Harry.”

  The young man stood silent. He had been so bewildered of late often he could think more clearly when he had drunk several large cups of wine; things then seemed to fit into place with certain, undeniable exactitude. Now, for instance, there could be no doubt the woman there was his wife by virtue of a ceremony, but before that she had been his harlot, taken as easily as a common slut. The slim young foreigner, who with such agile nimbleness was fingering the lute, had been his servant, to be beaten and kicked, even by the Antony Standens, and somewhere between the three of them had been some talk of love, honour, manhood. But now this pretence was all torn to shreds, and through the tatters of it they grinned and jeered at him, a strumpet and her pimp.

  He walked slowly to the Queen’s side and looked curiously down at her bare feet, her nude shoulders and arms. His lips were parted and his eyes bloodshot, his jacket was unbuttoned so that his full bare throat showed. He had a large dagger with hard square red stones in the hilt stuck into his belt.

  He stood over his wife and picked up her left hand and looked at the three rings he had given her, one a diamond, one of heavy cut gold, and one of blood-red he had taken from her breast the night in Stirling Castle. He dropped her hand and peered into her face and then down at her half-disclosed bosom where another cluster of diamonds lay. Then, without a word he turned and went away.

  All three were silent and then as they heard the door close Mary Seaton began to weep. The Queen sat up angrily; she had seldom felt so stung, so disturbed. In the midst of her great triumph it was as if someone had struck her across the face with a whip, as if she had been shamed publicly.

  “Go and fetch the King back,” she commanded, and Mary Seaton ran away drying her tears, but soon came back and said he would not come. He was shut in his room below; he had some man with him. She had pressed her ears to a crack and heard them talking.

  “He refused me?” asked the Queen. “He knew that I sent you yet he would not come?”

  “Yes. I met him on the threshold of his room and he said ‘No,’ and thrust me away and bolted the door.”

  The Queen said:

  “Thus it is to have married one such a fool. What did he say, Mary? It is necessary I should know. Did he say anything of me? Did he explain why he came and looked at me and went like that?”

  Mary Seaton had not the wit to dissemble or make an excuse; she could refuse her mistress nothing.

  “He said, ‘Tell her I do not want a wench to-night.’”

  The Queen put her hand to her cheek as if she felt a bruise. Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

  “Well, David will stay and keep me company. Bring in the cards, Mary, and the dice, and that last book which was sent from France.”

  Mary Seaton began to whimper, to protest, but the Queen ordered her away and when she had gone commanded the Italian to bolt the door.

  The young man obeyed in silence. The Queen eyed him, amused to think how his blood must be beating, his senses trembling. Never had her careless favour gone so far. A servant, a scullion. Well, in France she had heard of great ladies who had taken their grooms just out of idleness, a caprice. It was such an easy intrigue and not without piquancy — Venus and the stableman. David was trim and neat, he did not smell of the cellar or the kitchen; there was nothing about his person to offend the most fastidious. How he adored her, and so humbly, with such exquisite courtesy! Never would he insult her as she had just been insulted by one of royal blood, a prince who aspired to be a king, but who was, nevertheless, a stupid boor, a blundering youth.

  She turned in her bed.

  “David, come here.”

  He was instantly kneeling before her, hiding his face in the fringed ends of her coverlets. She thought that he wept.

  “Oh, madame! Oh, madame!”

  She smiled. It was like a goddess to be able to grant such happiness. She was victorious now, she could do as she wished. Moray was no longer there to scold or to blame.

  “Do you love me, David?”

  He became suddenly bold, a king, a conqueror, and stood over her, tall and urgent, speaking thickly in his own harsh tongue.

  The Queen put up her hands and laced her fingers behind his smooth bronze hair. She laughed under his desperate kisses, thinking of the fool, who was so soon being punished.

  *

  It was Maitland who was enclosed in the King’s chamber. It was Maitland who had persuaded him, so subtly that the young man did not know he was being guided, to go up into his wife’s chamber and see if the Signor David was there. It was Maitland who said to him as he sat with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands: “Your Grace will know what to do.” And who added lightly: “It would have been done long ago if Your Grace had had good advice.”

  Still staring down at the carpet the young man said in a thick, blurred voice:

  “It is true I have been betrayed. I took him out of squalor, some damnable obscurity. He was quick and useful.”

  “There is no need for Your Grace to run over the tale, which is one to make an honest man retch.”

  “Sir,” said the young King with a sudden simplicity that was more powerful than his rage or his drunkenness, �
��I would get it clear about the Queen my wife.”

  “Let His Grace take his mind off that.” With an odd, almost tender smile Sir William looked down at the youth. “Perhaps,” he said, “when one has cut the canker off the rose”

  “Eh?” asked the miserable young man, staring up with bloodshot eyes. “Eh? Speak plainly!”

  “I mean, when this base foreigner has gone”

  “He’s upstairs now. I ought to go and do it at once.” Maitland shook his head like one admonishing a child. “No! Not now! Not that way! It is too easy, and too perilous also. Your Grace must have support.”

  Earl Morton approached, with business-like dexterity and coolness, the affair that Maitland broached delicately to him. The Red Douglas had been not a whit less Moray’s friend because he remained in the Queen’s service. He had thought that he could serve his own interests and that of Moray and the Protestant Church better by remaining an intimate of the Queen’s Council than by going into rebellion.

  He had none of Maitland’s delicate, reluctant desire to serve and save the Queen with the dregs of a one-time tender fidelity. To him she was just a woman, and when he spoke of her it was with scorn. But he continued to remain in her council although she flouted him, to hold office under her though she showed him no favour, to endure her foreign favourites because he believed that hers was the folly that would soon ruin itself.

  Now the opportunity had come sooner than he had expected, just when she had felt herself so triumphant. To Moray, lurking in England, secretly helped by Elizabeth Tudor though openly shown an angry countenance by her, Morton and Maitland sent secretly by cipher an account of the proposed affair.

  Moray approved, a bargain was made. The King would indemnify all, he would bring back the outlawed Lords, and they would avenge his honour and secure him what his wife denied completely — the Crown Matrimonial. But there was a hitch in the plot; both Earl Morton and his friends, Lord Ruthven and Lord Lindsay, Moray’s brother-in-law, were contemptuously suspicious of the King, a light, unstable young man — “who drinks too much, who has a sly, amorous woman to his wife. How are we to trust him?” They protested thus, reluctant, hostile and hesitating even after Henry Stewart had set his name to the bond.