by Mary Shelley
It was dangerous to provoke the spirit of criticism by excessive praise; Richard felt half inclined to assert that there was something in the style of the King’s painting that showed he should not like this lauded lady; but she was his cousin, he was proud of her, and so he was silent. There was a ball at court that night; and he would see many he had never seen before; James made it a point that he should discover which was his cousin. He could not mistake. “She is loveliness itself!” burst from his lips; and from that moment he felt what James had said, that there was a “music breathing from her face,” an unearthly, spirit-stirring beauty, that inspired awe, had not her perfect want of pretension, her quiet, unassuming simplicity, at once led him back to every thought associated with the charms and virtues of woman. Lady Brampton was already a link between them; and, in a few minutes, he found himself conversing with more unreserve and pleasure than he had ever done. There are two pleasures in our intercourse in society, one is to listen, another to speak. We may frequently meet agreeable, entertaining people, and even sometimes individuals, whose conversation, either by its wit, its profundity or its variety, commands our whole rapt attention: but very seldom during the course of our lives do we meet those who thaw every lingering particle of ice, who set the warm life-springs flowing, and entice us, with our hearts upon our lips, to give utterance to its most secret mysteries; to disentangle every knot and fold of thought, and, like sea-weed in the wave, to spread the disregarded herbage, as a tracery matchlessly fair before another’s eyes. Such pleasure Richard felt with Katherine; and, ever and anon, her melodious voice interposed with some remark, some explanation of his own feelings, at once brilliant and true.
Richard knew that Sir Patrick Hamilton loved the Lady Katherine Gordon; he also was related to the royal family. Hamilton in the eyes of all, fair ladies and sage counsellors, was acknowledged to be the most perfect Knight of Scotland; what obstacle could there be to their union? Probably it was already projected, and acceded to. Richard did not derogate from the faith that he told himself he owed to Monina, by cultivating a friendship for the promised bride of another, and moreover one whom, after the interval of a few short months, he would never see again. Satisfied with this reasoning, York lost no opportunity of devoting himself to the Lady Katherine.
His interests were the continual subject of discussion in the royal council-chamber. There were a few who did not speak in his favour. The principal of these was the Earl of Moray, the King’s uncle: the least in consideration, for he was not of the council, though he influenced it: but the bitterest in feeling, was Sir John Ramsey, Laird of Balmayne, who styled himself Lord Bothwell. He had been a favourite of James the Third. His dark, fierce temper was exasperated by his master’s death, and he brooded perpetually for revenge. He had once, with several other nobles, entered into a conspiracy to deliver up the present King to Henry the Seventh; and the traitorous intent was defeated, not from want of will, but want of power in his abettors. Since then, Lord Bothwell, though nominally banished and attainted, was suffered to live in Edinburgh, nay, to have access to the royal person. James, whose conscience suffered so dearly by the death of his father, had no desire to display severity towards his ancient faithful servant; besides, one who was really so insignificant as Sir John Ramsey. This man was turbulent, dissatisfied: he was sold to Henry of England, and had long acted as a spy; the appearance of York at Edinburgh gave activity and importance to his function his secret influence and covert intrigues retarded somewhat the projects and desires of the King.
When the first opposition made to acknowledging this pretender to the English crown was set aside, other difficulties ensued. Some of the counsellors were for making hard conditions with the young Duke, saying, that half a kingdom were gift enough to a Prince Lackland: a golden opportunity was this, they averred, to slice away a bonny county or two from wide England; he whom they gifted with the rest could hardly say them nay. But James was indignant at the base proposal, and felt mortified and vexed when obliged to concede in part, and to make conditions which he thought hard with his guest. After a noisy debate, these propositions were drawn out, and York was invited to attend the council, where they were submitted for his assent.
These conditions principally consisted in the surrender of Berwick, and the promised payment of a hundred thousand marks. They were hard; for it would touch the new monarch’s honour not to dismember his kingdom; and it were his policy not to burthen himself with a debt which his already oppressed subjects must be drawn on to pay. The Duke asked for a day for consideration, which was readily granted.
With real zeal for his cause on one side, and perfect confidence in his friends’ integrity on the other, these difficulties became merely nominal, and the treaty was speedily arranged. But the month of September was near its close; a winter campaign would be of small avail: money, arms, and trained men, were wanting. The winter was to be devoted to preparation; with the spring the Scottish army was to pass the English border. In every discussion, in every act, James acted as his guest’s brother, the sharer of his risks and fortunes: one will, one desire, was theirs. Sir Patrick Hamilton went into the west to raise levies: no third person interposed between them. It was the King’s disposition to yield himself wholly up to the passion of the hour. He saw in Richard, not only a prince deprived of his own, and driven into exile, but a youth of royal lineage, exposed to the opprobium of nick-names and the accusation of imposture. The King of France acknowledged, but he had deserted him; the Archduke had done the same: how could James prove that he would not follow in these steps? He levied the armies of his kingdom in his favour; he was to fight and conquer for him next spring. The intervening months were intolerable to the fervent spirit of the Stuart — something speedy, something now, he longed, he resolved to do; which, with a trumpet-note, should to all corners of the world declare, that he upheld Richard of York’s right — that he was his defender, his champion. Once he penned a universal challenge, then another specially addressed to Henry Tudor; but his invasion were a better mode than this. Should he give him rank in Scotland? — that would ill beseem one who aspired to the English crown. Should he proclaim him Richard the Fourth in Edinburgh? — York strongly objected to this. Money? — it were a base gilding; besides, James was very poor, and had melted down his plate, and put his jewels to pawn, to furnish forth the intended expedition. Yet there was one way, — the idea was as lightning — James felt satisfied and proud; and then devoted all his sagacity, all his influence, all his ardent soul, to the accomplishment of a plan, which, while it ensured young Richard’s happiness, stampt him indelibly as being no vagabond impostor, but the honoured prince, the kinsman and ally of Scotland’s royal house.
King James and the Duke of York had ridden out to inspect a Lowland regiment, which the Earl of Angus proudly displayed as the force of the Douglas. As they returned, James was melancholy and meditative. “It is strange and hard to endure,” he said at last, fixing on his companion his eyes at once so full of fire and thought, “when two spirits contend within the little microcosm of man. I felt joy at sight of those bold followers of the Douglas, to think that your enemy could not resist them; but I do myself foolish service, when I place you on the English throne. You will leave us, my Lord: you will learn in your bonny realm to despise our barren wilds: it will be irksome to you in prosperity, to think of your friends of the dark hour.”
There was sincerity in these expressions, but exaggeration in the feelings that dictated them. Richard felt half-embarrassed, in spite of gratitude and friendship. The King, following the bent of his own thoughts, not those of others, suddenly continued: “Our cousin Kate at last finds grace in your eyes; is she not good and beautiful, all cold and passionless as she is?”
“Cold!” the Lady Katherine, whose heart felt sympathy, was a sunny clime in which he basked — whose sensibility perpetually varied the bright expression of her features — York repeated the word in astonishment.
“Thou findest her wax?”
enquired James, smiling; “by my troth, she has proved but marble before.”
“I cannot guess even at your meaning,” replied York, with all the warmth of a champion; “the lady is in the estimation of all, in your own account, the best daughter, the most devoted friend, the kindest mistress in the world. How can we call that spirit cold, which animates her to these acts? It is not easy to perform, as she does, our simplest duties. How much of self-will, of engrossing humour, even of our innocent desires and cherished tastes, must we not sacrifice, when we devote ourselves to the pleasure and service of others? How much attention does it not require, how sleepless a feeling of interest, merely to perceive and understand the moods and wishes of those around us! An inert, sluggish nature, half ice, half rock, cannot do this. To achieve it, as methinks your fair kinswoman does, requires all her understanding, all her sweetness, all that exquisite tact and penetrative feeling I never saw but in her.”
“I am glad you say this,” said James. “Yes, Kate has a warm heart: none has a better right to say so than I. There are — there were times, for the gloom of the dark hour is somewhat mitigated — when no priest, no penance, had such power over me as my cousin Katherine’s sweet voice. Like a witch she dived into the recesses of my heart, plucking thence my unholy distrust in God’s mercy. By St. Andrew! when I look at her, all simple and gentle as she is, I wonder in what part of her resides the wisdom and the eloquence I have heard fall from her lips; nor have I had the heart to reprove her, when I have been angered to see our cousin Sir Patrick driven mad by her sugared courtesies.”
“Does she not affect Sir Patrick?” asked Richard, while he wondered at the thrilling sensation of fear that accompanied his words.
“‘Yea, heartily,’ she will reply,” replied the King; “‘Would you have me disdain our kinsman? She asks when I rail; but you, who are of gender masculine, though, by the mass! a smooth specimen of our rough kind, know full well that pride and impertinence are better than equable, smiling, impenetrable sweetness. Did the lady of my love treat me thus, ‘sdeath, I think I should order myself the rack for pastime. But we forget ourselves; push on, dear Prince. It is the hour, when the hawks and their fair mistresses are to meet us on the hill’s side. I serve no such glassy damsel; nor would I that little Kennedy’s eye darted fires on me in scorn of my delay. Are not my pretty Lady Jane’s eyes bright, Sir Duke?’”
“As a fire-fly among dark-leaved myrtles.”
“Or a dew-drop on the heather, when the morning sun glances on it, as we take our mountain morning-way to the chace. You look grave, my friend; surely her eyes are nought save as nature’s miracle to you?”
“Assuredly not,” replie York; “are they other to your Majesty — you do not love the lady?”
“Oh, no,” reiterated James with a meaning glance, “I do not love the Lady Jane; only I would bathe in fire, bask in ice, do each and every impossibility woman’s caprice could frame for trials to gain — but I talk wildly to a youthful sage. Say, most revered anchorite, wherefore doubt you my love to my pretty mistress?”
“Love!” exclaimed Richard; his eyes grew lustrous in their own soft dew as he spoke. “Oh, what profanation is this! And this you think is love? to select a young, innocent and beauteous girl — who, did she wed her equal, would become an honoured wife and happy mother — to select her, the more entirely to deprive her of these blessings — to bar her out for ever from a woman’s paradise, a happy home; you, who even now are in treaty for a princess-bride, would entice this young thing to give up her heart, her all, into your hands, who will crush it, as boys a gaudy butterfly when the chace is over. Dear my Lord, spare her the pain, yourself, remorse; you are too good, too wise, too generous, to commit this deed and not to suffer bitterly.”
A cloud came over James’s features. The very word ‘remorse’ was a sound of terror to him. He smote his right hand against his side, where dwelt his heart in sore neighbourhood to the iron of his penance.
At this moment, sweeping down the near hillside, came a gallant array of ladies and courtiers. The King even lagged behind; when near, he accosted Katherine, he spoke to the Earl of Angus, to Mary Boyd, to all save the Lady Jane, who first looked disdainful, then hurt, and at last, unable to struggle with her pain, rode sorrowfully apart. James tried to see, to feel nothing. Her pride he resisted; her anger he strove to contemn, her dejection he could not endure: and, when riding up to her unaware, he saw the traces of tears on her cheek, usually so sunny bright with smiles, he forgot every thing save his wish to console, to mollify, to cheer her. As they returned, his hand was on her saddle-bow, his head bent down, his eyes looking into hers, and she was smiling, though less gay than usual. From that hour James less coveted the Prince’s society. He began a little to fear him: not the less did he love and esteem him; and more, far more did he deem him worthy of the honour, the happiness he intended to bestow upon him.
CHAPTER XIII.
She is mine own;
And I as rich in having such a jewel.
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl.
Their water nectar, and the rocks pure gold!
— SHAKSPEARE.
The threads were spun, warp and woof laid on, and Fate busily took up the shuttle, which was to entwine the histories of two beings, at whose birth pomp and royalty stood sponsors, whose career was marked by every circumstance that least accorded with such a nativity. A thousand obstacles stood in the way; the King, with all his fervour, hesitated before he proposed to the Earl of Huntley to bestow his daughter, of whom he was justly proud, on a fugitive sovereign, without a kingdom, almost without a name. Fortune, superstition, ten thousand of those imperceptible threads which fate uses when she weaves her most indissoluble webs, all served to bring about the apparently impossible.
The Earl of Huntley was a man of plain, straightforward, resolved ambition. His head was warm, his heart cold, his purpose one — to advance his house, and himself as the head of it, to as high a situation as the position of subject would permit. In the rebellion which occasioned the death of James the Third, he had vacillated, unable quite to ascertain which party would prove triumphant; and when the rebels, rebels then no more, but lieges to James the Fourth, won the day, they looked coldly on their lukewarm partizan. Huntley grew discontented: though still permitted to hold the baton of Earl Marshal, he saw a cloud of royal disfavour darkening his fortunes; in high indignation he joined in the nefarious plot of Buchan, Bothwell, and Sir Thomas Todd, to deliver his sovereign into the hands of Henry of England, a project afterwards abandoned.
Time had softened the bitter animosities which attended James at the beginning of his reign. He extended his favour to all parties, and reconciled them to each other. A wonder it was, to see the Douglas’s, Hamiltons, Gordons, Homes, the Murrays, and Lennoxes, and a thousand others, at peace with each other, and obedient to their sovereign. The Earl of Huntley, a man advanced in life, prudent, resolute and politic, grew into favour. He was among the principal of the Scottish peers; he had sons to whom the honours of his race would descend; and this one daughter, whom he loved as well as he could love any thing, and respected from the extent of her influence and the perfect prudence of her conduct, she was his friend and counsellor, the mediator between him and her brothers; the kind mistress to his vassals; a gentle, but all powerful link between him and his king, whose value he duly appreciated.
Her marraige was often the subject of his meditation. Superstition was ever rife in Scotland. James the Third had driven all his brothers from him, because he had been told to beware of one near of kin; and his death, of which his son was the ostensible agent, fulfilled the prophecy. Second-sight in the Highlands was of more avail than the predictions of a low-land sibyl. The seer of the house of Gordon had, on the day of her birth, seen the Lady Katherine receive homage as a Queen, and standing at the altar with one on whose young brow he perceived all dim and shadowy, “the likeness of a kingly crown.” True, this elevation was succeeded by disasters:
he had beheld her a fugitive; he saw her stand on the brow of a cliff that overlooked the sea, while the wild clouds careered over the pale moon, alone, deserted; he saw her a prisoner; he saw her stand desolate beside the corpse of him she had wedded — the diadem was still there, dimly seen amid the disarray of his golden curls. These images haunted the Earl’s imagination, and made him turn a slighting ear to Sir Patrick Hamilton and other noble suitors of his lovely child. Sometimes he thought of the King, her cousin, or one of his brothers: flight, desolation and death were no strange attendants on the state of the King of Scotland, and these miseries he regarded as necessary and predestined; he could not avert, and so he hardly regarded them, while his proud bosom swelled at the anticipation of the thorny diadem which was to press the brow of a daughter of the Gordon.
Lord Huntley had looked coldly on the English Prince. Lord Bothwell, as he called himself, otherwise Sir John Ramsay of Balmaine, his former accomplice, tampered with him on the part of Henry the Seventh, to induce him to oppose warmly the reception of this “feigned boy,” and to negative every proposition to advance his claims. King Henry’s urgent letters, and Ramsay’s zeal, awakened the Earl’s suspicions; a manifest impostor could hardly engender such fears, such hate; and, when midnight assassination, or the poisoned bowl were plainly hinted at by the monarch of wide England, Huntley felt assured that the enemy he so bitterly pursued was no pretender, but the rightful heir of the sceptre Henry held. He did not quite refuse to join with Bothwell, especially when he heard that he was listened to by the Bishop of Moray and the Earl of Buchan; but involuntarily he assumed a different language with regard to York, became more respectful to him, and by his demeanour crushed at once the little party who had hitherto spoken of him with contempt. The King perceived this change; it was the foundation-stone of his project. “Tell me, you who are wise, my lord,” said the Monarch to his Earl Marshal, “how I may raise our English Prince in the eyes of Scotland. We fight for him in the spring, for him, we say: but few of ours echo the word; they disdain to fight for any not akin to them.”
