THE QUEEN’S MARIES:

A Romance of Holyrood.

BY
G. J. WHYTE MELVILLE,

AUTHOR OF “DIGBY GRAND,” “THE INTERPRETER,” “HOLMBY HOUSE,” “GOOD FOR NOTHING,” ETC.

NEW EDITION.

LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON

TO A LADY
WHOSE UNTIRING ENERGY AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH
HAVE ADDED LARGELY TO THE LITERATURE
OF OUR COUNTRY,
AND WHOSE ELOQUENT DEFENCE OF A CALUMNIATED QUEEN HAS
IDENTIFIED WITH MARY STUART THE NAME OF
AGNES STRICKLAND,
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR.

Bartrams, Hampstead,
June 1862.

THE QUEEN’S MARIES:
A ROMANCE OF HOLYROOD.

‘Yestre’en the Queen had four Maries—

The day she’ll hae but three—

There was Mary Beton, and Mary Seton,

And Mary Carmichael and me.’

CHAPTER I.

‘Turn back, turn back, ye weel-fau’red May,

My heart will break in three;

And sae did mine on yon bonny hill-side,

When ye wadna let me be!’

Many a smiling plain, many a wooded slope and sequestered valley adorns the fair province of Picardy. Nor is it without reason that her Norman-looking sons and handsome daughters are proud of their birth-place; but the most prejudiced of them will hardly be found to affirm that her seaboard is either picturesque or interesting; and perhaps the strictest search would fail to discover a duller town than Calais in the whole bounds of France. With the gloom of night settling down upon the long low line of white sand which stretches westward from the harbour, and an angry surge rising on the adjacent shoal, while out to seaward darkness is brooding over the face of the deep, an unwilling traveller might, indeed, be induced to turn into the narrow ill-paved streets of the town, on the seaman-like principle of running for any port in a storm; but it would be from the sheer necessity of procuring food and lodging, not from any delusive expectation of gaiety and amusement, essential ingredients in a Frenchman’s every-day life. And yet Calais has been the scene of many a thrilling incident and stirring event. Could they speak, those old houses, with their pointed gables, their overhanging roofs, and quaint diamond-paned windows, they could tell some strange tales of love and war, of French and English chivalry, of deeds of arms performed for the sake of honour, and beauty, and ambition, and gold—the four strings on which most of the tunes are played that speed the Dance of Death—of failures and successes, hopes and disappointments, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the cross-purposes, the hide-and-seek, that constitute the game of life. In that very house, over the way yonder—with its silent courtyard, in which the grass shoots up vigorously between the stones, and from which to-day nothing more unusual issues than an old peasant woman in a clean cap, carrying a young child with a dirty face—slept, perhaps, the loveliest woman the world ever saw, a widow, while yet a bride, a queen while yet a child, on her way from one royal throne to take possession of another. Yes, here she lay the night before she quitted her dear France, never to see it again; the bright, the beautiful, the beloved, a very rose amongst all the flowers of the garden, a very gem amongst all the gold and tinsel that surrounded her, the link in a line of kings, the pride of two countries, the fairest of God’s creatures—Mary, Queen of Scots—here she lay, with life and love and hope before her, and slept, and dreamed not of Fotheringay.

It was a chill autumn night. Beyond the walls a rising breeze moaned fitfully over the dreary flats. The ebbing tide murmured as it receded, returning, and yet returning, as though loth to leave that comfortless expanse of wet level sand. A few drops of rain fell from time to time, and though a star struggled out here and there, the sky became momentarily more obscured. It was a gloomy night out at sea yonder; it was a gloomy night here on shore, dismal, foreboding, and suggestive of farewell.

But within the town, bustle and hurry, and a certain amount of confusion, not unmixed with revelry, imparted considerable life and animation to the hours of darkness, scaring indeed some of the quiet householders, and rousing the echoes in the narrow streets. Horses, picketed in the market-place, stamped and snorted and shook their bridles; spurs clanked on the pavement; steel corslet and head-piece flashed in the light of torches held by bearded men-at-arms, looking doubly martial in that red glare. Here might be seen a dainty page in satin doublet, with velvet cap and feather, elbowing some sturdy groom who was bearing a cuirass home from the armourer’s, or leading a charger to its stall, and inquiring, with all a page’s freedom, for the lodging of his lord, to receive, probably, an answer neither respectful nor explanatory, but productive of a stinging retort—for in those days the pages of a great house were masters of all weapons, but especially of the tongue. There might be observed a group of peasant-women, in clean hoods and aprons, with baskets on their heads, lingering somewhat longer than was absolutely necessary to exchange with harquebusiers or spearmen those compliments in which the French imagination is so prolific, and which the French language renders with such graceful facility. Anon, a lord of high degree, easily recognised by the dignity of his bearing, and the number of his retainers thronging round him with arms and torches, passed along the streets, exciting the curiosity of the vulgar and the admiration of the softer sex; while more than one churchman, threading his way quietly homeward, dropped his ‘Benedicite’ with gentle impartiality amongst the throng. The blessing was usually received with gratitude, though an exception might occur in the person of some stalwart man-at-arms, large of limb, fresh-coloured, and fair-bearded, who returned the good man’s greeting with derision or contempt. These reprobates were invariably well armed, and extremely soldier-like in their bearing, to be distinguished, moreover, by their blue velvet surcoats, on which St Andrew’s cross was embroidered in silver, and the peculiar form of their steel-lined bonnets, which they wore with a jaunty air on one side the head. Something, also, of more than the usual assumption of a soldier might be traced in their demeanour, as is apt to be the case with the members of a corps d’élite, and such the Archers of the Scottish Body-Guard had indeed a right to be considered both by friend and foe. Although in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty, many of them, including their captain, the unfortunate Earl of Arran, were staunch Protestants; and at that rancorous period, the supporters of the Reformed Church did by no means confine themselves to a silent abnegation of the errors they had renounced.

One archer, however, a young man with nothing peculiarly striking either in face or figure, save an air of frankness and quiet determination on his sun-burnt brow, acknowledged the benediction of a passing ecclesiastic with a humility that excited the jeers of two or three comrades, to which he replied with the quiet simplicity that seemed to be a part of his character, ‘An old man’s blessing, lads, can do neither you nor me any harm,’ and proceeded on his way without further remark or explanation; while the manner in which his rebuke was received by the scorners themselves, denoted that he was at least a person of some consideration and standing in the corps. Elbowing his way through a gaudy crowd, consisting of the Marquis d’Elbœuf’s retainers, who were accompanying their master in his attendance on his royal niece, and certain satellites of the House of Guise, for the duke and duchess, with Cardinal Lorraine, had already escorted the Queen of Scotland thus far upon her journey, our archer turned into an auberge, already filled with a mixture of courtiers, soldiers, pages, men-at-arms, and other officials, and seating himself at a small deal table, coarse and clean, requested to be served, in a tone of impatience that implied a vigorous appetite and a long fast. While the host, quick, courteous and smiling, bustled up to him, with napkin, trencher, and some two feet of bread, the archer removed the bonnet from his brow, and, looking around him, nodded to one or two acquaintances with an air of considerable preoccupation, ere he subsided into a profound fit of abstraction, which, to judge by his countenance, proceeded from no agreeable theme.

He was a man of less than thirty summers, sufficiently well-built, and of ordinary stature, with no peculiar advantages of person or bearing that should distinguish him from any other gentleman-private of the Scottish Body-Guard. His arms, indeed, were scrupulously clean and of the best workmanship; for when a man’s life depends daily on the quality of his blade, such details become a matter of course; and if his apparel were a thought more carefully put on, and of a more precise cut, than that of his fellows, this distinction seemed but to arise from that habitual attention to trifles which is the usual concomitant of energy and readiness for action. A sloven may be a brave man, and a capable; but if the machine is to remain in good working order, every screw should fit to a hair’s breadth, and a coat of varnish over the whole will not detract from its efficiency. Our archer, then, was well but not splendidly dressed; nor would his face more than his figure have attracted the attention of any casual observer. Nine men out of ten would have passed him by unnoticed. A woman would have been first puzzled, then interested, perhaps eventually fascinated, by the quiet repose of that stern, calm brow. It was a face of which the expression was many years older than the features. A physiognomist would have detected in it resolution, tenacity of purpose, strong feeling, repressed by habitual self-control—above all, self-denial and great power of suffering.

For the rest, his complexion, where not tanned by the weather, was fair and fresh-coloured, according well with the keen gray eye and light-brown hair of his Scottish origin.

The archer’s meditations, however, were soon put to flight by the agreeable interruption of a well-served supper (for, indeed, prior to those days, as old Froissart will bear us witness, the French excelled in cookery); and after the first cravings of appetite were appeased, he emptied a cup of red wine with a sigh of considerable satisfaction, then returned to his platter with renewed vigour, and filled his goblet once more to the brim.

‘Good wine drowns care,’ said a laughing voice behind him; ‘and Cupid himself cannot fly when his wings are drenched. Ho! drawer, quick! Another flask of Burgundy, and place me a chair by my pearl of Scottish Archers, till he tells me what brings him here eighty leagues from Paris, unless it be to mingle his tears with the salt brine of the accursed Channel that bears our White Queen[1] from the shores of France.’

[1] Mary was called ‘La Reine Blanche,’ because she mourned in white for her first husband, Francis II.

An expression of pain shot rapidly over the archer’s face as he greeted the speaker with a cordial grasp of the hand; but he answered in the deep steady tones that were habitual to him.

‘A man may have despatches to carry from the constable to his son; and d’Amville is not likely to overlook a soldier’s delay on such a road as this, where there are as many horses as poplar trees. I could take the Montmorency’s orders yesterday at noon, and be here to supper to-night, without borrowing the Pegasus you ride so recklessly, my poetical friend.’

The other laughed gaily; and when he laughed, his dark eyes flashed and sparkled like diamonds.

‘My Pegasus,’ said he, ‘needs oftener the spur than the rein; but who could not write verses, and sing them too, with such a theme before him? Listen, my friend. I am to sail to-morrow with them for Scotland. Heaven’s blessing on d’Amville that he has selected me to accompany him! Nay, we are appointed to the Queen’s galley; and Mary will take at least one heart along with her, as loyal and devoted as any she can leave behind.’

He checked himself suddenly, and a sad, wistful expression crossed his handsome brow, whilst the dark eyes dimmed, and he set down untasted the Burgundy he had lifted to his lips. Something in his voice, too, seemed to have enlisted the archer’s sympathy, and he also was silent for a moment, and averted his looks from his companion’s face.

After a while he forced himself to speak.

‘I must return,’ said he, ‘in two more days. Is it true they embark without fail to-morrow? Is there no danger from the ships of England? Is Her Majesty well accompanied? Doth the household sail with her? Ladies and all?’

‘The Maries, of course,’ replied the other, answering only the last question, which he reasonably considered the most interesting to his listener; ‘and right glad they seem to be to quit this merry land of France for that cold bleak country where I hear music is scarcely known, and dancing interdicted as a sin! I marvel much at their taste. To be sure, they accompany one who would inspire the wildest savages with chivalry, and make the veriest desert a paradise! Ah! when was such a garland of beauty ever trusted to the waves? The Queen and her satellites! One lovelier than another, but all paling before her. A bumper, my friend! on your knees, a bumper—a health to the letter M! nay, pledge me one for each of the four, and a fresh flask for the Queen—for the Queen!’

Again the speaker’s voice sank to a whisper, and the archer, who had ere now recovered the usual indifference of his demeanour, proceeded to do justice to a toast which could not, according to the manners of the age, have been refused, and which, in truth, for reasons of his own, he was by no means loth to pledge. The table at which they sat, however, was by this time surrounded by the different frequenters of the auberge, for the archer’s companion, no other than the poet Chastelâr, was too well-known and popular an individual in the gay circles of France to remain long unnoticed, where so many of her nobility were congregated. Young, handsome, and well-born, his romantic disposition and undoubted talents had rendered him an especial favourite with a people who, above all things, delight to be amused, and with whom enthusiasm, whether real or affected, is generally accepted as an equivalent for merit. To look on Chastelâr, with his long dark curls and his bright eyes, was to behold the poet-type in its most attractive form; and when to beauty of feature and delicacy of mind were added a graceful figure, skill in horsemanship, as in all knightly exercises, great kindliness of disposition, and gentle birth, what wonder that with the ladies of the French Court to be in love with Chastelâr, was as indispensable a fashion as to wear a pointed stomacher, or a delicate lace-edging to the ruff? And Chastelâr, with true poet-nature, sunned himself in their smiles, and enjoyed life intensely, as only such natures can, and bore about with him the while, unsuspected and incurable, a sorrow near akin to madness in his heart.

As gallant after gallant strode up to the table at which the two friends sat, the conversation became general, turning, as such conversations usually do, on the congenial themes of love and war. Again and again was mine host summoned for fresh supplies of wine, and the archer, whose recent arrival from Paris made him an object of general interest, was plied with questions as to the latest news and gossip of the capital. Richly-mounted swords were laid aside on the coarse deal table, cloaks of velvet and embroidery draped the uncouth chairs, gilt spurs jingled on the humble floor, and voices that had bandied opinions with kings in council, or shouted ‘St Denis!’ in the field, were now exchanging jest and laugh and repartee under the homely roof of a common wine-shop.

Even the Marquis d’Elbœuf, the Queen’s uncle, a lord of the princely house of Guise, and Admiral of France, joined with a sailor’s frankness in the gay revel, and taking a seat between Chastelâr and the archer, questioned the latter as to his late interview with the constable, and the well-being of that distinguished veteran, a soldier of whom every man in France was proud.

‘And you made sail with the despatches the moment you were out of his sight,’ observed the marquis. ‘I’ll warrant, you made a fair wind of it all the way to Calais, for the Montmorency brooks no delay in the execution of his orders. How looked he, my friend?—and what said he? Come tell us the exact words.’

‘He looked like an old lion, as he always does,’ answered the archer, simply; ‘and he said to me in so many words, “These letters must be in my son’s hands within eight-and-forty hours. I can depend upon you Scots. May the blessing of Our Lady be upon you, my child. And now, Right—Face! and go to the devil!”’

The Marquis laughed heartily.

‘He loves your countrymen well,’ said he, ‘and with reason. I have heard him swear the bravest man he ever saw was a Scot.’

A murmur of dissent, if not disapproval, rose around the table, and many of the Frenchmen present bent their brows in manifest impatience; but the marquis, who had his own reasons for wishing to be well with the Scottish nation, and whose frank nature brooked no withdrawal or modification of his opinions, struck his hand on the board, till the cups leaped again, and repeated in loud tones—

‘A Scot!—yes, gentlemen—a Scot. And I know why he said so—for I too was present at the boldest feat-of-arms even the constable ever witnessed; and so was my modest friend here with the cross of St Andrew on his breast—only he was but a stripling then, and had hardly strength to hold his pike at the advance. A health, gentlemen! Do me reason. To the memory of Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes! one of your difficult Scotch names. Norman Leslie, the bravest of the brave!—Will you hear the story?’

‘Tell it, marquis!’ was repeated on all sides, and cups were set down empty on the board, as many an eager warlike face turned towards the Admiral of France.

‘It was at Rentz, then,’ proceeded d’Elbœuf, ‘where the old Emperor out-generalled us as completely as we outfought him, and the two armies were almost within bow-shot of each other. We resembled a couple of angry dogs that are not permitted by their masters to fight. A clear slope of some two or three hundred paces divided us, and the German light-horsemen came galloping out to skirmish, tossing their lances in the air and bantering us. There must have been, at least, a hundred of them within a pistol-shot of our lines. The blood of Frenchmen soon boils up, gentlemen; but we had no orders to engage, and I, for one, kept my men-at-arms in hand, for the king was commanding in person, and Condé, and the constable, and the Duc d’Anguien were present, and likely to visit any breach of discipline with severe reproof. Ah! they cannot thus interfere with us at sea; but I ground my teeth at intervals, and thought, if the order would only come, what short work we would make with the German dogs.

‘Norman Leslie, however, had come up after the council was over in the king’s tent, and so, I suppose, fancied himself free to act. He had but half a score men with him at most; but he formed them into line, and charged up the hill into the thick of the enemy. It was a noble sight to see him, gentlemen, in his coat of black velvet, with its broad white crosses, and his burnished armour, with a red Scotch bonnet on his head. How he drove that good gray horse of his a dozen lances’ lengths ahead of his following! He rode through and through the Germans as if they were a troop of children at play. We, in the lines, I tell you, counted five of them go down before his lance broke. Then he drew his sword, and though they shot at him with musquetoons and culverines, we could still see the red bonnet glancing to and fro, like fire among the smoke. At last they detached a company of spearmen to surround him, and then striking spurs into his horse, he came galloping back to our lines, and rode gallantly to salute the constable in the centre. As he kissed his sword-hilt, the good gray fell dead at Montmorency’s feet. Alas! his master followed him in less than a fortnight, for though the king sent his own leech to dress his wounds, brave Norman Leslie was hurt in so many places, that it was out of the power of leech-craft to save him. What say you, gentlemen? a bolder feat-of-arms than that was never attempted by a soldier, and it was executed by a Scot! What say you of a man that would ride through an armed host single-handed to fetch away a laurel leaf?’

The archer smiled, and bowed low at this flattering tribute to his nation.

‘I might return your compliments, marquis,’ said he, ‘had we not a Scotch proverb which implies “Stroke me, and I will stroke thee.” And yet it is but fair to say I have known a rougher ride than even Norman Leslie’s taken for a silk handkerchief, and by a Frenchman.’

‘A silk handkerchief! a lady’s of course,’ said one. ‘A love-token!’ exclaimed another. ‘Undertaken in deliverance of a vow,’ suggested a third. ‘Done by an Englishman for a wager,’ laughed a fourth.—All had some remark to make except Chastelâr, whose colour rose visibly, and who looked distressed and ill at ease.

‘A handkerchief of the softest Cyprus silk,’ insisted the archer in his quiet expressive voice, ‘and rescued by the very man to whom I this day presented his father’s letters. And yet it is no wonder that the constable’s son and a Marshal of France should be a brave man. I tell you, gentlemen, that I saw d’Amville at the head of a band of Huguenots sorely pressed, and outnumbered by his countrymen of the Catholic faith, so that he had but one chance of retreat in placing a rapid stream betwixt himself and his pursuers. As he was facing the enemy, whilst the last of his followers entered the water, a handkerchief dropped unnoticed from beneath his corslet. He discovered his loss, however, as soon as he reached the opposite bank; and dashing once more into the stream, under a murderous fire, charged through the press of men-at-arms to the spot where it lay, dismounted, picked it up, and cut his way back again to his own troop. There was blood on the handkerchief when his page unarmed him that night; but I think it was the blood of the bravest man in France.’

‘And the handkerchief?’—cried several voices. ‘Whose was it?’ ‘Who gave it to him?’ ‘Happy the lady who owned so true a knight!’

The archer smiled once more.

‘Nay, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘it was no love-token after all. But the marshal is the soul of loyalty as of honour. There was an M and a crown-royal embroidered on the margin. It belonged to the White Queen—to her whom France is to lose to-morrow for ever.’

‘What a theme for the minstrel!’ exclaimed d’Elbœuf gaily. ‘Chastelâr! canst thou hear and be silent? Awake, man! drench thy brain with Burgundy, and improvise us some stanzas!’

The poet looked up with the air of one who shakes some painful burden off his mind. He put his cup to his lips, and answered gaily enough.

‘Not on that theme, marquis, at least to-night. Is it not the eve of our departure? And can there be merriment for France when she thinks of all she is to lose on the morrow? Nay, gentlemen, if you must have a song, let it be a lament. Let France mourn the absence of one whose like she may never hope to see again.’

Seats were drawn nearer the table; the guests’ faces assumed an air of interest and expectation. Through the open doorway might be seen the humbler servants of the household crowding eagerly to listen. Chastelâr looked around him well-pleased, and sang, in a rich mellow voice, the following stanzas, after the model of his old instructor, the celebrated Ronsard:—

‘As an upland bare and sere,

In the waning of the year,

When the golden drops are wither’d off the broom;

As a picture when the pride

Of its colouring hath died,

And faded like a phantom into gloom:

‘As a night without a star,

Or a ship without a spar,

Or a mist that broods and gathers o’er the sea;

As a court without a throne,

Or a ring without a stone,

Seems the widow’d land of France bereft of thee.

‘Our darling, pearl, and pride!

Our blossom and our bride!

Wilt thou never gladden eyes of ours again?

Would the waves might rise and drown

Barren Scotland and her crown,

So thou wert back with us in fair Touraine!’

Amidst the applause which followed the notes of their favourite, cloaks and swords were assumed, reckonings were discharged, farewells exchanged, and laughing, light-hearted gallants streamed up the dark street in quest of their respective lodgings. Soon each was housed, and all was quiet ere the first streaks of dawn rose upon the sleeping town, and the cold bleak shore, and the dull waves of the brooding Channel.

CHAPTER II.

‘Farewell! Farewell! How soon ’tis said!

The wind is off the bay,

The sweeps are out, the sail is spread,

The galley gathers way.

‘Farewell! Farewell! The words, how light!

Yet what can words say more?

Sad hearts are on the sea to-night,

And sadder on the shore.’

Twenty-four hours had elapsed since Chastelâr sang his farewell song in the little auberge at Calais.

He now stood on the deck of a large galley, manned by a sturdy crew of rowers, whose efforts, however, were but little assisted by the light airs that blew off the shore. The ample sail would fill at intervals, and then flap idly against the mast. The measured stroke of the oars seemed on that wide expanse of water to have but little effect in propelling the labouring craft, and the companionship of a corresponding vessel at some quarter of a mile distance proceeding at the same rate, and in the same direction, neutralised all appearance of locomotion. A bright moon shone down upon the Channel; and the coast of France, still at no great distance, was distinctly visible in her light. Comparatively little way had been made since the galley’s departure, nor did her course bear her in a direct line from the shore. The rowers also had flagged somewhat in their usual efforts. Rank upon rank, these brawny ruffians chained to their heavy oars were accustomed to labour doggedly, yet effectually, under the stimulus of the whip. To-night, however, a gentle voice had interceded even for the rude galley-slaves, and while they enjoyed this rare respite from over-exertion, many a foul lip, that had long forgotten to form anything but curses, writhed itself into an unaccustomed blessing for the fair widowed Queen of France. Yes, what a strange companionship in that dark hull, having indeed nothing in common but the thin plank that was equally the hope of all! Down below, forcing her through the water, men who had almost lost the outward semblance of humanity, whose hearts were as black with crime as their bodies were disfigured with the hardships of their lot; men whom their fellows had been forced to hunt like wild beasts out of the society of their kind, and to keep chained and guarded at an enforced labour worse than death; and seated on deck within ten paces of these convicts, a bevy of the fairest and gentlest of the human race, a knot of lovely maidens chosen for their birth, and beauty, and womanly accomplishments, to surround a mistress who was herself the most fascinating of them all, the very pearl of her sex, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.

Chastelâr, leaning against the mast, gazed aft upon the deck, and listened to the talk of Mary and her maidens as they chatted together in the freedom of that unrestrained intercourse which the Stuarts have ever encouraged with their household. It was pleasant to hear the women’s soft tones mingling with the plash of the water, and the flap of the empty sail; but there was one voice of which every note thrilled, even painfully, to the poet’s heart.

Mary was reclining on a couch that had been prepared for her against the taffrail of the vessel. Though the tears were still wet upon her cheek, and a fresh burst was imminent every time she looked upon the coast, she could yet force herself to speak gaily, and strove to keep up the spirits of her maidens with that charm of manner which never failed her at the very worst.

‘And where is our Duenna?’ said the Queen, archly; ‘I have scarce seen her since the hour we embarked, when she walked the deck with her head up and the port of an admiral. D’Amville yonder, studying his charts as if he were in unknown seas, instead of the ditch that divides France from Britain, could scarce have looked more seaman-like.’

The young lady she addressed, a provoking specimen of the saucy style of beauty, with mischievous eyes, the whitest of teeth, and an exquisite little foot that was always conspicuous, laughed most unfeelingly in reply.

‘Your Majesty should see her now,’ she said. ‘I shall never call her proud Mary Beton again. She is below, in the darkest corner of the cabin. She has buried her head in the cushions. She is ill. She is frightened, and her velvet dress is creased and tumbled, and stained all over with sea-water!’

‘You cruel child,’ said the Queen, good-humouredly. ‘Mary Seton, you are incorrigible. But we must send down to succour her, poor thing! Ah! it is only a heart-ache like mine that makes one insensible to all other sufferings. Mary Hamilton is too susceptible—she will be ill also; but you, Mary Carmichael, you have a kind disposition and a ready hand. You will not laugh in her face like this saucy girl here; go down and succour poor Beton. Give her our love—tell her she will yet be well enough to come and look her last with us on the dear land of France.’

The young lady whom she addressed rose at once from her occupation, which, like that of her mistress, seemed to consist in gazing steadfastly at the French coast, and with a graceful reverence to the Queen, departed on her errand of consolation.

As she passed Mary Seton, the latter’s quick eye detected a few drops, it might be of spray, upon her cheek. The Maries could sympathise with their Queen’s regret in leaving a country that had been to them a pleasant home; and a woman’s sorrow, as we all know, while it is more easily cured, is also more easily excited, than that of the sterner sex. Mary Carmichael’s was not a disposition to give way to unavailing grief; above all, was one in which the instinct to conceal strong emotion predominated. With much kindliness of heart and real good-nature, she was yet somewhat intolerant of weakness in herself and others. Brave and self-reliant, she could make small allowance for timidity or vacillation even in her own sex; and had either mental or bodily pain been able to extort one exclamation of suffering from her lips, she would have been bitterly ashamed of it a moment afterwards. To look on her clear blue eyes, her finely-cut and regular features, her smooth brow, and determined mouth and chin, determined and uncompromising, despite of red lips, white teeth, and dimples, you would have decided that the one drawback to her attractions was the want of that yielding softness which is a woman’s greatest charm. ‘On aime ce qu’on protège;’ and the haughty beauty who humbles while she conquers, little guesses how a man’s rude heart warms to the gentler suppliant, who clings to him, and trusts in him, and seems to say she has but ‘him in the world.’ Masses of soft brown hair, and a rounded outline of form, feminine and symmetrical, somewhat redeemed Mary Carmichael’s appearance from the charge of hardness. Altogether she gave the gallants of the French court the impression of a woman whom it would be difficult to like a little, and hazardous to like much. So what with the danger of her charms, and her own dignified and reserved demeanour, she had received less admiration than was due to the undoubted beauty of her face and figure.

While she goes below to succour her friend, who is suffering from sea-sickness, we will give some account of the four ladies of honour, commonly called the Maries, who waited on the Queen of Scots.

Mary Stuart herself, with all her predilections in favour of France, a country in which she spent the few tranquil years of her disturbed and sorrowful life, never suffered her connexion with Scotland to be weakened or neglected. She kept up an active correspondence with her mother, Mary of Guise, who held the reins of government with no inefficient hand in that country, till her death. Many of her household were Scotch. She showed especial favour to the archer-guard, all of whom were of Scotch extraction,—favour which, over-estimated and misunderstood by their captain, the heir of the house of Hamilton, was, perhaps, the original cause that ‘turned weak Arran’s brain.’ She gave such appointments in her household, as were nearest her person, to the Scotch nobility; and she chose for her own immediate attendants, four young ladies of ancient Scottish families, whose qualifications were birth, beauty, and the possession of her own Christian name. ‘The Maries,’ as they were called, accordingly occupy a prominent position in the court-history of the time; and as their number was always kept up to four, several of the oldest families in Scotland, such as the Setons, the Flemings, the Livingstones, &c., had the honour of furnishing recruits to the lovely body-guard. At the time of her embarkation for Leith, the Queen was accompanied by a very devoted quartette, as conspicuous for their personal attractions as for their loyalty to their sovereign. It was even rumoured that the faithful maidens had bound themselves by a vow not to marry till their Queen did. Be this, however, as it may, not one of them but might have chosen from the flower of the French Court, had she been so disposed. Nay, gossips were found to affirm that many a warlike count and stately marquis would have been happy to take any one of the four; only too blest in the possession of a Mary, be she Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael, or Mary Hamilton.

A short sketch of each, at the commencement of our narrative, may serve, perhaps, to prevent confusion, and to elucidate the actions of some of the humbler characters in our drama. We are of honest Bottom’s opinion that it is best ‘to call forth the actors generally according to the scrip. First say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point.’

We will begin, then, with the eldest of the four—the lady who, with her head buried in cushions, was groaning afresh at every lurch of the creaking galley, and who suffered despondently, refusing to be comforted.

To-day it is scarcely fair to bring her before the public. Yesterday she might have been seen to the greatest advantage, for Mary Beton was one of those people who seem to have been placed in the world for the express purpose of wearing full dress. The most romantic imagination could not have associated her with homely duties, déshabille, or dishevelled hair; and the Queen used to observe, laughingly, that he must be a bold man who could venture to ask her hand for a galliard, and contemplate the possibility of disarranging a fold of her robe, even in that stateliest of measures.

And yet she was handsome, too, in a cold, unfeeling, haughty style. She had large handsome eyes, and a large handsome figure, and large handsome hands, which she loved to display. She was perfect in all matters of court étiquette, in which it was impossible to find her tripping, and would have died rather than ’bate one of the accustomed ceremonies with which she delighted to glorify her mistress and herself. When she stood behind the throne with the Queen’s gloves in her hand, she was the admiration of all chamberlains, grand carvers, seneschals, and such court officials, so unmoved and dignified was her bearing, so scrupulously rigid her demeanour, so completely did she sink the woman in the maid-of-honour. And her disposition corresponded with her lofty manners, and her fine, well-dressed form. Less unfeeling than careless of all matters that did not appertain directly or indirectly to the court, she neither seemed to seek nor to afford sympathy for the petty vexations and annoyances which a little coterie of women is pretty sure to find or create for itself. None of the Maries ever went to her for advice and assistance, only for instructions and commands. Though but little their senior, she was always considered and treated as a kind of lady-superior by the other three, and even the Queen used to call her jestingly ‘The Duenna,’ and vowed that she never felt so unlike a Stuart as, when after some trifling breach of court étiquette, she encountered the tacit rebuke of Mary Beton’s grave, cold eye.

If she had a weakness, it was ambition. If there was any one road that led to her heart, it must have been through the portals of a palace, along tapestried passages, between lines of bowing lackeys, with a gentleman-usher at each turning to point out the way. She wrapped herself in the folds of a majestic decorum, and paced along the journey of life gravely and disposedly, as if it were a minuet.

What a contrast to laughing, roguish, Mary Seton, that Will-o’-the-wisp in petticoats, who flitted hither and thither amongst the courtiers, and pervaded every apartment of the palace with the air of a spoiled child whom nobody ventured to thwart or to chide. White-headed statesmen, grave ambassadors, ponderous in the double weight of their sovereign’s dignity and their personal appearance, iron-handed warriors, and haughty cardinals, all acknowledged the influence of the bewitching little maid-of-honour; and it seemed that the most devoted of her slaves were those whose years and station afforded the strongest contrast to her own.

The constable himself, the famous Montmorency, from whom the faintest gesture of approval could have lured every brave man in France willingly to death, would follow her about like a tame dog, and Cardinal Lorraine, churchmen though he were, would have entrusted her with state secrets that he scarcely ventured to whisper to his own pillow. She might have done a deal of mischief if she had chosen, that lively, laughing, little maiden. Fortunately she was thoroughly good-natured—so heedless that she forgot in the afternoon everything that was told her in the morning, and had, moreover, not the slightest taste for mystery or political intrigue. It would be difficult to say what was the especial charm people found in Mary Seton. Her features were irregular, and her figure, though exquisitely shaped, of the smallest. Dark eyes and eyelashes, with a profusion of light hair, gave a singular expression to the upper part of her face, whilst a mischievous smile, disclosing the pearliest of teeth, completed all the personal attractions of which she could boast. It was, indeed, one of those haunting faces, which, once seen, make an unaccountable impression, and which, if ever permitted to engrave themselves on the heart, do so in lines that are not to be obliterated without considerable pain. There was something piquante, too, in her continual restlessness. Even here, on shipboard, she could not be still for five minutes together. She had already pervaded the whole vessel from stem to stern, above and below, nor was her curiosity satisfied till she had personally inspected the poor galley-slaves, returning to the Queen, brimful of the private history of the two or three greatest criminals amongst them, with which, according to custom, she had made herself familiar, ere she had been an hour on board. Her mistress, though in no merry mood, could not forbear being amused.

‘I believe,’ said she, ‘that you would rather work, chained to an oar, like these poor wretches, than sit still.’

And Mary Seton replied, demurely—

‘Indeed, madam, idleness is the parent of evil; and, doubtless, even at the galleys, my good behaviour would soon raise me to be captain of the gang.’

A pair of dark eyes, that had hitherto been fixed on some object amidships, were raised in wonder to the laughing speaker, reproachful, as it were, of her levity at such a time; and Mary Hamilton’s beautiful face, paler and more beautiful than ever in the moonlight, seemed to take a deeper shade of sadness as she resumed the occupation in which she had been interrupted with an unconscious sigh. Sitting at the Queen’s feet, she was ready, as usual, at the shortest notice, to fulfil her mistress’s wishes; but the latter remarked, with concern, that her favourite maid-of-honour had been silent for hours, and that the novelties incidental to their situation had failed to rouse her from the abstraction in which, of late, she had been habitually plunged. It grieved the Queen’s kind heart, for, though she loved the others dearly, perhaps she loved Mary Hamilton the best of all; and it was no wonder. Beautiful as she was, with her large solemn eyes and her black hair, framing the oval of a perfect face, pale and serene like an autumn evening, with her tall graceful figure and womanly gestures, there was yet an undefinable charm about Mary Hamilton that seemed independent of all outward advantages; as though she must still have been lovable, had she been old, ugly, and deformed.

It is a melancholy, nay, a morbid sentiment which bids us feel in all exceeding beauty something akin to sorrow—and yet, who will deny the uncomfortable fact? Perhaps it arises from the longing after perfection which appertains to our immortality. Perhaps it is but the hopeless consciousness that our ideal can never be attained. At least the feeling exists; and in Mary Hamilton’s beauty, doubtless, the melancholy element predominated. It did not make her the less beloved, we may be sure; and the black-eyed maid-of-honour was worthy of the attachments she kindled wherever she was known. A kinder heart than hers never beat beneath a bodice. Wherever she heard of a sorrow, however trivial the cause, she was there to soothe. Utterly unselfish, she was ever ready to sacrifice her own will, her own amusements, her own advantage, to the lightest wish of another. And although the very sentinels at the palace-gate blessed her for her beauty, as she passed through, she seemed the only person about the Court who was insensible to her own attractions. Gentle, yielding, trusting, and enthusiastic, here was a woman ready prepared and bound, as it were, for the sacrifice. Need we say the victim could not fail to be offered up?

Meanwhile, the galley strained and laboured on. The dripping oars fell with measured cadence on the water; but the land-breeze, dying away towards midnight, refused to second the efforts of the rowers, so that the distance from the French seaboard appeared scarcely to increase. The Queen evinced no intention of going to rest. Reclining on deck, she kept her eyes fixed on the cherished land she was so loth to leave, and inwardly longed for a storm, or any other contingency, that should drive them back into port, and give her a few more days’ respite from her banishment.

Probably so unwilling a journey was never taken to claim a crown; and yet Mary was accompanied by many good friends, and true affectionate relatives, and loyal subjects, all anxious to see her securely established on the Scottish throne. Another galley of like tonnage accompanied her with a portion of her household, whilst two ships of war furnished an escort, by no means unnecessary, for Elizabeth’s friendship was little to be relied on, and England, as usual, commanded the Channel with her fleet.

On board the Queen’s own ship, d’Amville had taken the personal command, and studiously refrained from indulgence in the society of his charge, lest her fascinating conversation should have seduced him from his seaman-like duties. D’Amville, too, had long since yielded to the charm of that beautiful face, which only to look on was to love, and worshipped the Queen of Scotland with a devotion as touching as it was chivalrous in its hopeless generosity;—d’Amville, who sat now in the small dimly-lighted cabin, with his charts before him, and pressed to his bosom the Cyprus silk handkerchief of which we have already heard—the one treasure prized by that loyal, manly heart—the guerdon for which he gave up ambition, and comfort, and even hope. Truly there are strange bargains driven in love, reminding us of our traffic in beads, and brass, and tinsel, with naked savages—a few inches of silk, a half-worn glove, a thread of soft hair, in exchange for the noblest efforts of body and mind, the best years of life, perhaps the eternity of an immortal soul! Not that the coveted prize is reserved for such adoration. Alas! that it should be so. Rude hands pluck down the fruit that fond eyes have gazed on for so many sunny hours in vain, and the Sabine maiden loves her Roman bridegroom none the less that he carried her off by sheer force of manhood, not, perhaps, entirely so reluctant as she seemed.

Chastelâr had been standing motionless for a considerable period, leaning against the mast, apparently wrapped in meditation. At a signal from the Queen, however, his whole bearing altered, his face lighted up, and in an instant he was at her side. Mary Hamilton changed her position somewhat restlessly, and Mary Seton, rejoicing in the capture of a fresh listener, immediately took upon herself to communicate the commands of her mistress.

‘Fair sir,’ said the laughing maid-of-honour, ‘although you are certainly an ornamental object, measuring your stature yonder against the mast, you will be more useful here, at Her Majesty’s feet, to give us some information as to the progress of our voyage. Doubtless you are in Monsieur d’Amville’s confidence, who seems to think himself relieved of all care of us, now he has got his unprotected charge fairly out to sea.’

‘Hush! madcap,’ said the Queen. ‘And do you, Chastelâr, go below and inquire of our courteous commander whether by to-morrow at daybreak we shall, indeed, have lost sight of our beloved France. Already the beacon off the harbour is low down on the horizon, and the weather seems thickening to windward. Ah! the next lights we see will be on the bleak shores of Scotland—a dark, sad voyage, indeed, with a dreary termination!’

The poet bowed low and retired to fulfil the royal commands, whilst the Queen, leaning her white arms upon the bulwark, gazed longingly towards the shore. Tears coursed each other down her beautiful face, as she murmured forth her unavailing sorrow in such broken sentences as these—

‘France! France! my own beloved France! I shall never see you again. Country of my adoption! country of my love! Ah! it is sad to step at once, like this, from youth to age; it is cruel to feel still young and hopeful and capable of happiness, and to know that the bright days have departed from us for evermore. Poor Dido! you too gazed, in your agony, upon the sea, as I look ever towards the land; and your fond heart ached as mine aches now, and broke at last, as mine, I feel, will break ere long. My case is worse than yours; you had at least your home and country left, though you lost your Trojan love that the sea gave you, and the sea took back again!’

Whilst she spoke, she felt Mary Hamilton’s cold lips pressed against her hand. The kind heart, alas! itself not wholly ignorant of sorrow, could not bear to witness the sufferings of its mistress. Her other maid-of-honour, however, took a livelier view of their position, and was not slow to express her dissent.

‘Nay, madam,’ said she; ‘Dido gave up a throne for a bonfire, as I have heard your Majesty relate, whereas you are but losing sight of that faint beacon over yonder for the certainty of a crown. Besides, are there not Trojans in plenty where we are bound? What say you, Mary Hamilton? we need not look long for an Æneas a-piece, without counting those we take across with us. Listen, there is one of them singing even now.’

Mary Hamilton felt her face burning in the darkness, though none could see her blush; and indeed, whilst her companion spoke, the Calais light sank beneath the black line of the horizon. As it disappeared, Chastelâr’s mellow voice was heard, rising above the rush and ripple of the water and the jerk of the massive oars.

‘What need have we of beacon sheen

To warn us or to save,

With the star-bright eyes of our lovely Queen

Guiding us o’er the wave?

‘What need have we of a following tide?

What need of a smiling sky?

’Tis sunshine ever at Mary’s side,

And summer when she is by.

‘Her glances, like the day-god’s light,

On each and all are thrown;

Like him she shines, impartial, bright,

Unrivall’d, and alone.

‘Alone! alone! an ice-queen’s lot,

Though dazzling on a throne;

Ah! better to love in the lowliest cot

Than pine in a palace—alone!’

As he concluded, the singer approached Her Majesty with the information she had sent him to seek.

Softened by her sorrows, influenced by the time, the scene, the devotion of her follower, feeling now more than ever the value of such kind adherents, what could Mary do but reach him graciously the white hand that was not the least attractive of her peerless charms? And if Chastelâr pressed it to his lips with a fervour that partook more of the lover’s worship than the subject’s loyalty, what less was to be expected from an overwrought imagination, and a susceptible heart, thus brought in contact with the most fascinating woman of the age? And the Queen drew away her hand hurriedly, rather than unkindly, with a consciousness not wholly displeasing, and Mary Seton looked discreetly into the far distance, as though there was something unusually interesting in that dull expanse of sea. And Mary Hamilton, clasping both hands tightly to her heart, leaned her head against the bulwark, and said nothing; but rose, as if intensely relieved, when an increasing bustle on board the galley, and a general movement amongst its inmates, denoted some fresh alarm, and the necessity for increased watchfulness and exertion.

It was even so. Their consort, holding a parallel course at no great distance, had caught sight of the English cruisers, who, whatever might be their orders from ‘good Queen Bess,’ were as much mistrusted by d’Elbœuf in his command of the Scottish Queen’s little squadron, as by d’Amville who took her own galley under his especial charge. In those days the sea and land services were not so distinct as now.

Signals were exchanged between the two galleys to make all possible speed, and the slaves, grateful for Mary’s interposition on their behalf, laid to their oars with a will, in a manner that could never have been extorted from them by the lash. As there was but little wind, they soon increased their distance from the English men-of-war, who, however, came up with and captured one of the French ships containing the Earl of Eglinton and the Queen’s favourite saddle-horses. Mary herself, nevertheless, escaped their vigilance, and an increasing fog soon shrouded the little convoy from its pursuers.

Thus in darkness and danger, too ominous, alas! of her subsequent career, Mary Stuart sped on towards the coast of Scotland, leaving behind her the sunny plains of her beloved France, as she left behind her the bright days of her youth,—days that she seemed instinctively to feel were never to dawn for her again through the storms and clouds that brooded over the destinies of her future kingdom.

CHAPTER III.

‘Oh! ’gin I had a bonny ship,

And men to sail wi’ me,

It’s I wad gang to my true love,

Sin’ my love comes not to me.’

About the same hour at which the galley bearing Mary Stuart and her fortunes, eluded, in the increasing darkness, the vigilance of the English cruisers, an archer of the Scottish Body-guard, with whom we have already made acquaintance, might have been seen pacing to and fro on a strip of white sand adjoining Calais harbour. After a long day of labour and excitement, preparatory also to a ride of some two hundred miles on the morrow, this midnight walk was perhaps the least judicious method of passing the hours sensible persons devote to repose. Our archer, nevertheless, continued it with a perseverance that denoted considerable preoccupation, pausing at intervals to gaze wistfully on the sea, and anon resuming his exercise, as if goaded to bodily effort by some acute mental conflict.

In honest truth, like Sinbad the Sailor, he was oppressed by a metaphorical Old Man of the Sea, that he could not get rid of, although in his case the unwelcome equestrian had assumed the form of a prevailing idea, connected with a young woman instead of an old man, and resembling Sinbad’s encumbrance in no particular except the tenacity with which it clung.

Reader, it is worth while to go to the Pampas to see a Gaucho lasso and mount a hitherto unbroken horse. How the animal, conscious of his degradation, fights and rears and plunges, wincing from the cruel spurs to rise at the maddening bit! How his eye dilates and his nostril reddens, and his whole form contracts with mingled fear and rage! Shaking his head wildly, he dashes ere long into a headlong gallop, and becomes stupefied to discover that, even at his fiercest speed, he bears his tormentor along with him. Subdued at last, he bends his neck to the hand that has tamed him, and experiences a new sensation of increased power and confidence in submitting to the master-will. So is it with a manly, resolute nature, when it first feels the influence of another’s existence on its own. There is a certain charm, indeed, in the novelty of the sentiment, but there is also surprise, apprehension, and a strong disposition to oppose and crush the unaccustomed usurpation. After many an unavailing struggle, the conquered must, however, submit to the conqueror; and, like other slaves, he loses the desire for liberty with the consciousness of incapacity to be free. Use in time renders him perfectly docile and broken-in; at last he is perfect in all the paces of the manége, and carries one rider nearly as pleasantly as another. He is a useful hack now, but the mettle of the wild-horse has left him for evermore.

Our archer was in the first stages of his tuition. He was, so to speak, only lately caught and mounted. We can but wish him a merciful rider with a kind heart and a light hand!

Walter Maxwell, for such was the name in which he stood enrolled on the list of the Archer-guard, was the younger son of an old Scottish family, possessed of an unblemished pedigree, considerable territorial possessions, and a sad lack of broad pieces. Then, as now, the upper classes in Scotland, with many noble qualities, were cursed with a morbid desire for the shadow rather than the substance of wealth. In Queen Mary’s days, the pound Scots represented in value the shilling English. In Queen Victoria’s, the laird on one side the Tweed, with his few hundreds a year, would fain make believe that his possessions equal those of the squire on the other, who owns as many thousands. His difficulties, his shortcomings, his meannesses originate in this, the paltriest of all ambition, that would make his shilling look like half-a-crown. Frugal and industrious as are her peasantry, prosperous and enterprising as are her yeomen and traders, probably the gentry of Scotland are at this moment more oppressed with difficulties than the parallel class in any other country under the sun.

In the time of which we write, the Scottish nobility were afflicted with the same unfortunate tendencies. There was then even more of display abroad and less of ease at home; whilst the unsettled state of the country, compelling every baron to entertain as many feudal retainers as he could arm and feed, helped to drain their resources to the very dregs. Violence and intrigue, political as well as private, were naturally resorted to by those who had no other means of replenishing their empty purses; and what with old feuds strictly entailed, and new differences perpetually arising, Scotland could only be likened to some huge cauldron, in which a thousand different ingredients were boiling, and the scum perpetually rising to the surface.

In such a state of things there was not much provision for younger brothers; and as the somewhat heathenish doctrine, not yet eradicated, then prevailed of considering individuals simply as links in a line, and postponing all personal claims to those of that great myth—the family—it may easily be imagined that the younger sons of a noble Scotch house had small cause to congratulate themselves on their aristocratic lineage.

Walter Maxwell might consider himself fortunate that he had the shelter of the old tower at home until he had arrived at the strength and stature of a man—that he was permitted to feed at the same board, and enjoy the same pastimes as his elder brother, the heir—that he might follow to her grave with a son’s decorous grief the mother who had doted on her youngest—and that his share of the family possessions was not limited to its name, but included a right to breathe the moorland air round the old place till he had attained his fifteenth year. Perhaps, after all, he inherited his share of the patrimony. He gained health and strength, and good manhood, on its broad acres. He learned to back a horse in its meadows, and fly a hawk on its hills, to swim in its dark loch, and to wield a blade within its walls. Perhaps, in bequeathing him an iron constitution, a vigorous frame, and a courageous heart, the old lord had done enough for the golden-haired child who used to come running to him after supper, and pull his gray moustaches, and climb merrily upon one knee, whilst the heir occupied the other.

At fifteen Walter Maxwell went out upon the world. A year after, he was the youngest gentleman private in the French king’s Archer-guard. Many a dame in Paris would turn round to look again on the blooming youthful face—almost a child’s still—so pleasing in its contrast with that manly form, clad in the showy armour of the guard. The Duchess of Valentinois herself had desired to have the young boy-archer presented to her; and it is to be presumed that Diane de Poitiers, a lady of mature experience, was no mean judge of masculine attractions. A word from the woman he so adored was sufficient to interest Henry II. in the Scottish recruit, and Walter Maxwell was more than once selected for duties demanding discretion as well as fidelity and courage. All these qualities were, indeed, in constant request at such a court as that of the French king. At a more advanced age, the young soldier had also distinguished himself in the disastrous affairs of St Quentin and Gravelines, where the French suffered serious defeats; and it was but the consistency with which he remained steadfast to the Protestant religion that stood in the way of his rapid promotion. He was a favourite, too, with his comrades for his courage and soldier-like bearing beyond his years, as well as for the indefinable attraction of those buoyant spirits which, like the bloom of youth on the cheek, seldom outlast maturity.

During the reign of Henry II., that chivalrous monarch, notwithstanding his severity to the Protestants, and the prevalence of their religion amongst his Scottish Archers, placed the most implicit confidence in his body-guard, riveting their unshaken loyalty with many favours and immunities, till they walked the streets of the capital objects of admiration and envy to the very grandees themselves. Perhaps the warlike Henry was of opinion that a soldier’s religion need not interfere with his obedience; and, indeed, too many of the Archers might have made the same answer, that some two centuries and a half later the old grenadier of the Empire gave on a question of doctrine to the Pope,—‘Et de quelle religion es tu, mon fils?’ asked his Holiness of the grim sentry who kept the door that led into the awful presence of Napoleon I. ‘Je suis de la religion de la Vieille Garde,’ replied the veteran, with an astounding clatter of his musket, as he ‘carried arms’ to the Pontiff. We take leave to doubt if the Protestantism of the Scotch Guard often stood in the way of Henry’s commands to his favourites.

But the evil day dawned at last. In the pride of his manly beauty, and the vigour of his warlike frame, the king of France rode gallantly into the lists, to break a lance in sport for the bright eyes of his ladye-love. On his helmet he wore the colours of Diane de Poitiers. And the duchess herself, looking down from the gallery, felt her heart leap with pride in the noble appearance of her royal lover. What shall we say of Henry’s infatuation for this seductive woman, nearly twenty years his senior, himself the husband of the most accomplished lady in Europe, for Catherine of Medicis was notoriously as wise as she was beautiful? What, but that it is folly to argue on the wilfulness of the human heart, and that the most untoward and ill-advised attachments are apt to prove the strongest and the most fatal. The king loved her madly, and was not ashamed to avow his passion openly in the sight of France. Walter Maxwell attended the sovereign as one of his squires, and bore a knot of the same coloured ribbons on his bonnet.

And now the trumpet sounds a flourish, and the king, raising his vizor, calls for a bowl of wine, and without dismounting, quaffs it with an ill-concealed gesture of courtesy to some one in the gallery—then, a perfect horseman, he backs his charger to his post. Opposite, like a statue sheathed in steel, sits his antagonist, the captain of the Archer-guard. A proud man to-day is Gabriel, Earl of Montgomery, for the Scottish peer has been chosen to break a lance with the French king, in presence of two royal brides and their bridegrooms! There is a hush of pleased expectation and interest over the whole assembly; only the Duchess of Valentinois turns pale with ill-defined apprehension. She feels the value of her last love, wildest and dearest of all, lawless though it be. It was but this morning the king told her in jest, he should not close his vizor lest she might not recognise him; and she had chidden him, half playfully, half in earnest, for the insinuation. She would know that warlike form she thinks in any disguise—and the colour mounts again to her face as she catches his last glance, while he settles himself in the saddle, and lays his lance in the rest. He has not closed his helmet, after all! She will chide him seriously, though, to-night, for his selfish carelessness of danger. Again the trumpet sounds, and the lances shiver fairly in mid-career. Firm and erect, the king reaches the opposite extremity of the lists; then, swaying heavily in the saddle, falls in his ringing harness to the ground. The Queen and her ladies rushed tumultuously into the lists. Catherine de Medicis has a right to succour her husband. Diane de Poitiers, sick and faint, loses her consciousness in a swoon. She is scarcely noticed, for all are crowding round the king.

Alas for the gallant monarch! Alas for the bold man-at-arms! A splinter from Montgomery’s lance has entered the eye through the unclosed helmet, and penetrated nearly to the brain. Ere twelve days elapse, Catherine de Medicis is a widow. Francis II. has succeeded to the throne, and Mary Stuart is Queen of France.

The favour of the Duchess of Valentinois was no passport, we may fairly suppose, to the good graces of the queen-mother; and although Walter Maxwell retained his appointment in the guard, his hopes of advancement perished with the death of his royal patron. Such disappointments, however, though they press heavily on an enthusiastic spirit, are lightly borne by such a temperament as Maxwell’s. His disposition was naturally calm and unimpressionable beyond the average. He possessed the rare quality of seeing things as they were, and not as he wished them to be. Above all, he had that quiet confidence in himself which could wait patiently for an occasion, and seize it without hurry or agitation when it arrived. Moreover, he had been brought up in the stern school, that turns out the most finished pupils, after all. Poverty and hardship give their lessons for nothing; but men remember them better than Latin and Greek. We may be allowed to doubt whether all George Buchanan’s classic lore and pedantic periods were as well worth acquiring as Maxwell’s aptitude to saddle, shoe, and groom his own horse, cook his own rations, burnish his own corslet, and keep his head with his hand.

Changes also took place in the Scottish Guard. The Earl of Arran, heir to the house of Hamilton, was appointed to its command, and already that eccentricity began to manifest itself which was fostered, at last, into madness, by the sunshine of Mary’s unconscious smiles. Arran chose to alter the discipline, the accoutrements, and the whole system of the corps, and such interference with their old habits was by no means relished by its members. During the short reign of Francis II., Mary Stuart’s sympathies with her countrymen, and knowledge of their customs and prejudices, checked many a proposed innovation that would have created open dissatisfaction; but when she became a dowager Queen, and Charles IX. succeeded to the throne, the archers found themselves curtailed of many of their privileges, and no longer looked upon as what they considered themselves—the élite of the French army. Seeing, however, that, like the famous ‘gants glacés’ of a later period, they had earned this position by constantly volunteering for all dangerous duties, they might well be uneasy at the prospect of forfeiting a distinction it had cost so much hard fighting to attain.

It was during the short eighteen months of Mary’s reign as Queen of France, that our archer, in virtue of his office, was brought in contact with the fascinating sovereign and her court. That he became the devoted adherent of his royal countrywoman is not to be wondered at; but in Maxwell’s consistent loyalty to the Stuart there lurked a deeper feeling of interest than he liked to allow even to himself; an interest that he could not but connect with another Mary attached to the person of her mistress. The Queen, as is well known, was a daring and skilful horsewoman; a masculine accomplishment, by the way, that many womanly natures acquire with great ease. Perhaps, as its chief art consists in ruling by judicious concession, they have learned half the lesson before they get into the saddle. As a natural consequence, Mary was passionately fond of the chase, and followed it with a degree of recklessness somewhat discomfiting to her less courageous or worse-mounted attendants. In fact, she sustained more than one severe fall without its curing her in the least of her galloping propensities.

It fell out on one occasion, near the Castle of Chambord, whither the court had repaired for this princely recreation, that our archer was in attendance on Mary and her suite at the moment the stag was unharboured, and, with a burst of inspiriting music, the hounds were laid on. The Queen, as was her custom, went off at a gallop, outstripping her attendants, and followed, at unequal distances, by the whole cavalcade. Walter Maxwell, on a clambering, Roman-nosed French horse, was plying his spurs to keep within sight of the chase, when a faint scream of distress, and a young lady borne past him at a pace that showed she was run away with, diverted his attention from the pleasures to the exigencies of the moment. Though the animal beneath him was neither speedy nor active, he managed, by a skilful turn, to reach her bridle rein, and so, guiding her impetuous horse into an alley that diverged from the line of the chase, succeeded in stopping him before his own was completely exhausted. While the young lady did not, in the least, lose her presence of mind, she was naturally a little discomposed and a good deal out of breath. Nevertheless, she thanked her preserver with frank and graceful courtesy, avowing, at the same time, in very broken sentences, her inability to control the animal she rode.

The confession was tantamount to a request that her new friend would not leave her. The most determined Nimrod could scarcely have abandoned a lady who thus placed herself under his charge, and Walter Maxwell, with his passionless exterior, had a good deal of that manly generosity in his composition, which warms at once to the unprotected and the weak. Instead of toiling after the whole company, then, on a tired horse, behold him riding quietly through beautiful woods, by the side of a young lady, whose peace of mind seemed to depend on his keeping his hand on her bridle rein.

People soon become acquainted when thus associated. Mary Carmichael, with a colour much heightened from a variety of causes, and her rich brown hair disordered by her gallop, had never looked prettier in her life; whilst a glance or two shot at her protector from under her riding-hat satisfied her that he was a gentleman of good nature and lineage, also that she had remarked him more than once before, when fulfilling his duties as a guardsman about the court. Before they had ridden a mile, he had told her his name and all about himself.

‘A Maxwell!’ exclaimed the young lady, whose apprehensions were by this time considerably soothed. ‘I ought to have known you for a Maxwell at once. You’ve got the frank brow, and the ready hand, and the silent tongue of the Maxwells.’ Here she checked herself with a laugh and blush, whereat her companion laughed and coloured a little too. ‘Why, we are kinsfolk at that rate,’ she added, courteously. ‘My mother’s niece married a Maxwell of the Den, and they are a branch of the Terreagles Maxwells, and so are you.’

‘I have left home so long,’ answered Walter, gravely, ‘I cannot count my kin; and yet I will take your word for it. I should think the better of myself,’ he added with a smile, ‘to have a right to call you cousin.’

The archer rarely smiled; when he did, his usually stern features softened and lighted up almost into beauty. The change was not unmarked by the maid-of-honour.

‘A Carmichael never failed a kinsman,’ said she, and her voice shook a little, while her soft eyes gleamed;—‘or the old tower would be looking down still upon Dumfries, and there would be more than a blackened arch, and a few mounds of grass standing by the hearth-stone, where my father once received King James. Well, Sir Archer, you have done a cousinly deed for me at least to-day.’

Perhaps she expected he would make some acknowledgment of his good fortune in the opportunity, but Maxwell rode on in silence. A French gallant would have overwhelmed her with eloquence, and few men but would have hazarded a few compliments, however trifling. She scarcely seemed offended, nevertheless. Her mute companion was absorbed in a brown study, thinking how well she looked in her riding-gear. It may be that her woman’s intuition told her as much.

Presently a burst of horns in the distance announced the direction of the chase. Mary Carmichael’s steed pricked his ears, and showed symptoms of insubordination once more. Walter’s grasp was on the bridle in an instant, and the rider thanked him with a grateful smile.

‘The ready hand!’ she said, laughing. ‘Was I not right in saying you inherited the gifts of your family?’

‘It must excuse the silent tongue,’ he answered. ‘I am no squire of dames, and you ladies of the court must needs look down on the unpolished soldier. And yet his silence may offer more of respect and regard in its humility than the loudest professions of admiration from those who have never been taught to say less than they think, and think less than they feel.’

‘And receive twice as much in return,’ she replied, in a very low voice, and averting her face from her companion as she spoke. Then she put her horse into a quicker pace, and ere long they met and joined a party of the courtiers returning from the chase.

After this, though they saw each other but seldom, and had no more rides together, there was a sort of tacit understanding between the two. Nobody remarked that if Walter Maxwell was on guard, Mary Carmichael’s manner displayed more animation, and her dress was, if possible, more becomingly arranged than usual. Nobody remarked that one of the archers, more than any of his comrades, displayed unusual readiness in volunteering for all duties that brought him near the Queen’s person, and never seemed so contented as when riding in her escort, or mounting guard at her door. Yet it was true, notwithstanding; and, although not a word had been exchanged by these young persons of a more explicit tendency than those we have related, there had yet sprung up between them one of those mysterious affinities, that in this world of ours lead to such troublesome results.

It was not till Mary Carmichael had sailed for Scotland in the suite of her royal mistress, that it occurred to Maxwell he was losing time and opportunities by remaining in his present service at the court of France. He wondered it had never before struck him so forcibly, that the Archer-guard no longer occupied its proud position in the land of its adoption—that its privates were no longer so well born, its drill so exact, nor its discipline so perfect as in the days of its old commander, Montgomery—that Arran was a weak-minded enthusiast, who would finish by disgusting both officers and men—and that Charles IX. was already beginning to look coldly upon them, and depriving them, one by one, of the privileges by which they set such store. Then his patron, Montmorency, was getting infirm and worn out; and with the constable’s demise, adieu to his hopes of advancement in the service of France!

Mary Stuart, too, in her new kingdom, would need all the stout hands and loyal hearts that she could muster. It was clearly the duty of every Scotchman to rally round the fair young queen.

Ere our archer had concluded his midnight walk, he had made up his mind; and as he posted back his long ride to Paris, the following day, he resolved to claim his dismissal from the French king, and to seek his fortune once more in the land of his birth.

CHAPTER IV.

‘We are the boys that can wrestle and ride,

Empty a saddle, and empty a can,

Keeping the rights of the border side,

Warden to warden, and man to man;

Never another go welcome here

As the lads of the snaffle, spur, and spear.’

At the time of which we write there were few worse places wherein to be benighted than that wild district on the borders of England and Scotland, appropriately called the ‘Debatable Land.’ Bleak and barren, on a gusty evening late in autumn, a less desirable locality for the traveller could scarcely be imagined; and he must have been a hardy adventurer who would not have preferred the dirtiest corner of the smokiest hostelry to the uncertain track that led through its morasses, especially on a tired horse. Such was the reflection uppermost in Walter Maxwell’s mind as he marked the dusky horizon becoming more and more indistinct, and calculated the diminishing chances of his reaching the Castle of Hermitage, where he had hoped to find rest and refreshment with his kinsman, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and, doubtless, in that country where horses were so easily come by, a fresh mount to take him northward on the morrow. No longer an archer of the Scottish Guard, Maxwell was on his way to Edinburgh from the English seaport at which he had landed in returning from France. With his reputation as a soldier and his family connexions, he had little doubt but that he would be welcome at Holyrood; and indeed, had it been otherwise, an indefinable attraction, that he would not have confessed, seemed to draw him irresistibly towards the Scottish capital.

During the whole of his journey, however, by land and sea, his destination had never seemed so remote, nor the likelihood of his reaching it so small, as at present.

‘Hold up, you brute!’ said Maxwell, as he felt if the straps of his corslet were secure and his sword loose in its sheath, whilst his poor horse took that opportunity of floundering on its head.

‘Hold up! If you fall you’ll never get up again; and unless mine host’s directions were inspired by beer and brandy, we must be a good way off Hermitage yet. Happily the moon is rising every minute. Well, you were a good beast this morning, though you’re not worth your four shoes now!’

While he spoke, he patted the poor animal on the neck, and, as if encouraged by the caress, it pricked its ears and mended its pace of its own accord.

Maxwell was too old a soldier not to be on the alert in such a situation: it was with a feeling more of annoyance than surprise that he heard the tramp of horses advancing at a rapid pace over the sounder sward he had left behind him; and whilst he shortened his reins and hitched his sword-belt to the front, it was but with a dogged consciousness that, though he meant to fight to the last, he was sure to get the worst of it, outnumbered, and on a tired horse.

He had, however, the caution to halt on the far side of some broken and boggy ground; so that the new comers, whom he now made out to be but two, must attack him at a disadvantage, if they intended violence; and he thought how he could best separate them, that they might not both set on him at once.

The horsemen, however, halted immediately they caught sight of him, and the foremost called out in a loud, frank voice, undoubtedly English in its tone—

‘Is it friend or foe? A man must be one or other in the Debatable Land!’

‘Friend!’ answered Maxwell confidently, adding, as an earnest of his sincerity, ‘Keep near the big stone, or you’ll go in up to your girths!’

Following his advice, the horseman and his attendant, who appeared nothing more than a simple domestic, emerged upon sound ground. The former was admirably mounted, and although his dress denoted the gentleman rather than the soldier, he sat his horse with the ease of a skilful cavalier.

Maxwell made out also in the moonlight that he was perfectly armed, wearing both pistols and rapier, and carried a small valise, with somewhat ostentatious care, on the saddle in front of him.

‘Friend!’ he repeated, bowing ceremoniously, as he brought his horse alongside Maxwell’s, ‘foes are more plentiful in this district on a moonlight night. We may meet some gentlemen hereabouts who would give us anything but a “Highland welcome.” As we are going in the same direction, by your good leave we will travel together. Union is strength; although,’ he added, glancing at the other’s tired horse, ‘haste is not speed.’

His manner was courtly, or rather courtier-like, in the extreme, and Maxwell saw at a glance he had to do with one of the porcelain vessels of the earth; yet there was a conventional tone of indifference, a something of covert sarcasm, and implied superiority in his voice, that jarred upon the franker nature of the soldier.

They rode on, however, amicably together—the attendant, a burly Southron, apparently by no means easy either in mind or body, keeping close behind his master. The latter was bound, he said, for Hermitage, which he hoped to reach before midnight, and he seemed to treat his new companion with a shade more deference when he learned that Maxwell was a kinsman of the redoubted Earl of Bothwell.

Some men have a knack of extracting information without affording any in return, and this faculty appeared to be largely possessed by the well-mounted traveller, who, while he conversed with the ease and freedom of a thorough man of the world, dropped every now and then a leading question that denoted an insatiable and unscrupulous curiosity.

The Scotch have generally an insurmountable dislike to being ‘pumped,’ and Maxwell, whose shrewdness soon perceived his new friend’s intention of subjecting him to that process, resented it by an increased reserve, which subsided ere long into an almost unbroken silence.

They rode on for some time, accordingly, interchanging only an occasional remark—the stranger accommodating his horse’s pace to that of his new acquaintance, whilst his servant jogged painfully along behind him, suffering obviously from abrasion, the curse of unpractised riders, and seeking relief, as well by sighs and groans, as by fruitless changes of position in the saddle. The moon shone out brightly, and its light enabled Maxwell to examine the face and figure of his comrade.

He was a spare man, of less than middle age, with the marks of good breeding apparent in his thin, sharp features, and small feet and hands. His figure, though too angular, was sufficiently graceful; and his face, though pale, bore the clear hue of a healthy and enduring constitution;—although he would have been a well-looking man enough, but for the restless expression of his small gray eyes, which peered from under the straight thick eyebrows with a vigilance amounting to suspicion, and the thin, firmly-compressed lips, a little drawn in at the corners, as if by an habitual sneer.

Maxwell, accustomed, in his warlike life, to judge of men at a glance, found himself vaguely speculating on an exterior beyond which he could not penetrate. The shaven lip and cheek denoted a man of peaceful profession; but the finished horsemanship, the hanging of the sword, the readiness with which his hand sought his pistol-holsters, savoured of the soldier. Again, his thoughtful brow and worn face might well become some distinguished scholar or man of science; but the tone of his conversation, and the levity of his bearing, contradicted the supposition that he could belong to the ‘wise ones of the earth.’ He seemed conscious, too, of his new friend’s observation, and more inclined to court than shrink from it, as if priding himself on the impenetrable reserve, with which he could combine an appearance of extreme cordiality. The restless eyes, however, were not still for an instant; and the soldier, in the midst of his speculations, was equally startled and shamed by the observation which aroused him, and proved that the civilian’s vigilance had been far more active than his own.

‘I thought so!’ said the latter, speaking in quiet, rapid tones. ‘There are night-hawks abroad, as usual, in this cursed wilderness. Did you not see the glitter of a head-piece over the height yonder? Now, if these are jackmen out on their own account, you and I will have to trust to the speed of our horses, which is doubtful, and our knowledge of the locality, which is negative—this poor devil will have his throat cut to a certainty.’

Even at this disagreeable juncture, the man spoke in a bantering tone, as it were between jest and earnest. His servant, a stout, able-bodied fellow enough, regarded his master with a ludicrous expression of dismay.

‘Your horse is fresh, and looks like a good one,’ answered Maxwell, somewhat contemptuously; ‘keep round the shoulder of that hill, and you will find a beaten track that leads to Hermitage. At least, so they directed me. Mine is tired; I can’t run; so I must fight. If I arrive not by daybreak, you will know what has become of me, and can tell the Warden he should keep better order on the Marches.’

The other laughed outright.

‘A sharp pair of spurs are no bad weapons on occasion,’ said he; ‘but I am much afraid I must trust to other friends to-night.’ He laid his hand on his holsters, and continued, ‘Those fellows will come in again in front of us, and I had rather face every outlaw in Britain, from Robin Hood downwards, than turn back into the wilderness. Let us halt for a minute. I can hear the tramp of their horses even now.’

As the three drew up under the shadow of some rising ground, they could distinctly hear the gallop of horses and the clatter of arms on the other side of the acclivity.

‘There are half a score at least,’ observed Maxwell, with increasing animation. ‘You are quite right—they want to intercept us in the pass yonder. What say you, sir? Shall we pay them in steel or silver? for metal they will have. Can your servant fight?’

‘Like a devil,’ answered the other, ‘when it is impossible to run away; and, faith, he’ll be between two fires to-night, for I can hear a body of horse in our rear as well. What say you, Jenkin? Had you not rather be lying drunk in the filthiest gutter in Eastcheap than make your bed here on the heather, with a rough-footed borderer to pull your boots off, and an Armstrong’s lance through your body to make you sleep well?’

The man gave a sulky grunt in answer. He was evidently irritated at the heartless levity of his master, but he looked all the more dogged and resolute, and seemed likely to fight till the last. The night wind, too, bore on their ears the tramp of a body of horse behind them; and it was simply a question whether it were not better to charge through those in front, and take their chance.

After a hurried consultation, they agreed to ride steadily forward to the pass, at a good round pace, yet not fast enough to convey the idea of flight. If their enemies were there before them, they must charge without hesitation and try to cut their way through, the Englishman remarking with grim sarcasm, that ‘the Warden was likely to have a good appetite if he waited supper until his guests arrived.’

As the three wayfarers neared the pass, the dusky forms of their enemies were already drawn up in its shadow; and a shot, fired at Maxwell, which cut the ribbon from his sleeve, sufficiently denoted their intentions. A voice, too, from the midst of the little black mass was heard to exclaim, in more polished language than might have been expected—

‘Dead or alive, Rough Rob! take the man in the centre, and let the others go free!’

‘Thank you,’ observed the Englishman, who occupied that position between his servant and Maxwell, adding, through his set teeth, ‘I shall owe you one, whoever you are, and pay it before I’ve done with you, or my name is not Thomas Randolph!’

Maxwell heard the promise, but had no time for astonishment at thus finding himself the companion of Elizabeth’s ambassador to the Scotch court under such uncomfortable circumstances, inasmuch as a grim borderer, on a tall bay horse, was already within lance’s length of him, and in another stride his own tired animal was rolling on the heather, and he was defending himself as well as he could on his feet.

Two or three shots were fired, the flashes from the pistols and musquetoons lighting up the faces of the combatants, as they rode to and fro through the skirmish. With the exception, however, of Mr Randolph’s first shot, which made ‘Rough Rob’s’ good gray mare masterless, the fire-arms did little damage, save rendering three or four of the horses perfectly unmanageable.

As Maxwell shifted his ground, and traversed here and there, parrying with his sword the thrusts of his adversary’s long lance, a tall man rode up to him, and shouting, ‘A Carmichael!’ seemed about to cut him down; then, as if perceiving his mistake, he checked his raised arm, and turned upon Mr Randolph, whom he attacked with considerable energy, shouting his war-cry, as though from the force of habit, once more.

The latter defended himself valiantly, but notwithstanding the assistance of his servant who fought with the cool intrepidity of an Englishman in a difficulty, he had too great odds to contend with, and must have fared badly, had not assistance come from an unexpected quarter at the very moment when honest Jenkin fell from the saddle with an awkward knock on his pate from the back of a Jedwood axe, running his assailant through the arm, however, as he went down.

Mr Randolph’s bridle had already been seized, and the valise torn from his saddle by the tall man who seemed to command the party. Both Maxwell and the ambassador were now surrounded and nearly overpowered, when two more horseman, followed by a numerous troop of cavalry, came galloping up from the rear, and charged into the mêlée, with a violence that made a clean breach through the outlaws. One of them, a gigantic borderer, with a broad, good-humoured face, rolled Maxwell’s antagonist, horse and man, to the ground, knocking the rider down again with the butt end of his lance, when he strove to rise; whilst the other, a tall cavalier magnificently accoutred, turned Mr Randolph’s horse courteously out of the press, dealing one of his assailants a buffet, that must have cut him in two, had it not been mercifully delivered with the flat of the sword, and rebuking the others in a voice of authority that all seemed to recognise. Indeed, a cry of ‘the Warden! the Warden!’ was by this time passed from lip to lip amongst the outlaws, and horses’ heads were already turned, and spurs plied to seek safety in flight. For the third time, too, to-night, Maxwell heard the name spoken which kindled so many recollections in his breast. Disembarrassed of his enemies by the rescue that arrived so opportunely, he noticed the Warden ride rapidly up to the leader of the band, and say in a low voice, ‘You here, Carmichael! for shame!’ after which, the other turned rein, and galloped off at the utmost speed, accompanied by all his followers save two, one of whom was dead, and the other disabled. It struck him also that the pursuit was not nearly so vigorous as might have been expected from the rescue, and that the Warden appeared far more anxious to pay every attention to Mr Randolph than to take vengeance on those who had attacked him. The latter had never lost his sang froid during the encounter, and was, if possible, more self-possessed than usual at its termination.

‘Your Scottish welcomes, my Lord Earl,’ said he, ‘are hearty, though rough. I never was more glad to see your lordship. It is fortunate for us all, except this gentleman, whose acquaintance I regret to have made so inopportunely, that you came to-night somewhat further than the drawbridge to meet your guests.’ As he spoke he pointed to the dead body of ‘Rough Rob,’ which was lying at his horse’s feet.

‘Who is it?’ asked Bothwell of his henchman anxiously, ere he replied to the courtier; and the gigantic horseman who had rescued Maxwell, dismounting, turned the dead man’s face to the moonlight.

‘It is but “Rough Rob,”’ replied he, carelessly, after a brief examination of the corpse. ‘A likely lad too, though he was a kinsman of my ain. Ay, Rob, thou’rt out of the saddle at last, man; but I would like weel to ken wha’s gotten the gude gray mare.’

‘Secure the other rascal,’ said the Warden, turning his horse’s head homeward. ‘Let Dick Rutherford and two more jackmen bring him on in the rear. Help Mr Maxwell to his horse, some of you, and leave that carrion to the crows.’

The cavalcade was now set in motion, Bothwell and Mr Randolph riding together in front; the former, after a hasty greeting to his kinsman, appearing to devote his whole attention to the ambassador. Maxwell, whose relationship to the Warden made him an object of interest to the jackmen, came on in the rear at a slower pace, for his horse was now completely exhausted. He was, however, accompanied by the borderer who had rescued him, and who seemed to have taken a great fancy to him for his swordsmanship.

Dick Rutherford, or, as he was more commonly called, ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ set much store by that cool courage which he himself possessed in no common degree; and as he looked on every hand-to-hand encounter in the light of a pastime, at which he was himself a first-rate performer, so he could never withhold a certain amount of facetious approbation from any other skilful player at the game. He was, at this period, the Warden’s henchman or principal man-at-arms, and would have followed his chief to the death, for Bothwell had the knack of winning the hearts of his retainers by a rude cordiality and boisterous frankness akin to their own.

The Warden could drain a deeper cup, back a wilder horse, and couch a heavier spear than the rudest of his jackmen; his fine manly person, great strength, and soldier-like bearing, fascinated while they controlled these savage natures; and whatever deep designs may have lurked beneath this frank exterior, James Hepburn seemed to have no ambition beyond the reputation of being the boldest borderer on the Marches. He would ride alone, or attended only by ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ through the worst of these lawless districts, and the latter was never tired of detailing the hand-to-hand encounters with freebooters, in which the Warden had come off victorious. Dick, too, was an adept in all the intricacies of his profession. He could follow a trail like a bloodhound, fight like a demon, and drink and ride like—a borderer. With all this, his great strong body contained a soft heart, and an inexhaustible fund of good-humour.

After looking at Maxwell in silent admiration for a space of five minutes, he began—

‘I would ha’ wagered a hundred merks now that there wasna’ a man in Scotland could ha’ kept little Jock Elliott at half-sword like that; and he on his white-footed gelding with his long lance in his hand. Jock will no’ hear the last o’ it from me in a hurry. I trow he’s found his match o’ this side Teviotdale, brag how he may!’

‘You know him, then?’ asked Maxwell, somewhat surprised to discover such an intimate acquaintance with an outlaw on the part of the Warden’s henchman.

‘Know him?’ repeated the other; ‘he broke my head at Bewcastle market only yesterday was three weeks; but I’m thinking, I’m even with ye now, Jock, my man! All in good part though,’ he added, ‘for little Jock Elliott’s a canny lad, and a far-off cousin o’ my ain.’

‘Little Jock Elliott!’ observed Maxwell in return. ‘Why, he looked to me nearly as big a man as yourself.’

‘It’s a name he got when a boy,’ answered the borderer, ‘to know him from his brother, big Jock Elliott, that’s gone to his rest. Ye see they were all Elliotts and Armstrongs that were in the slack[2] the night, forbye “Rough Rob,” and he was a Rutherford,—more shame till him that let himself get guided that way by a Southron!’

[2] The pass.

‘I heard another name too,’ said Maxwell, whose curiosity was thoroughly aroused. ‘Who was the tall man that seemed to be the leader of the party? the man that rode by me just before you struck in so opportunely, and shouted, “A Carmichael!” when he drew his sword.’

‘Oh! it would be just one o’ the Carmichaels that happened there by chance,’ replied Dick, with an expression of hopeless stolidity overspreading his broad countenance; and Maxwell, seeing it would be useless to question him further on that subject, turned the conversation to the more congenial topics of horses and weapons, and the advantages and disadvantages of the new-fashioned musquetoon. In this manner they journeyed on in rear of the party till the dark towers of Hermitage loomed against the midnight sky, and the clatter of the drawbridge, as it was lowered, together with a considerable bustle inside the walls, announced that preparations were being made for their entrance.

Bothwell and Randolph, who had been riding at the head of the party, halted at the postern until the rest came up, and the former proceeded to muster his troop once more ere they crossed the bridge. Maxwell remarked that the prisoner had escaped, but as no one else seemed to take any notice of the circumstance, he discreetly held his tongue. Whilst the gates were being opened, and the drawbridge secured, operations which occupied a considerable time, Bothwell welcomed his guests formally to his ‘poor tower,’ addressing himself, as before, more particularly to Randolph.

‘I regret much,’ said he to the latter, ‘that your duty compels you to be in the saddle again to-morrow at daybreak; but he who serves a Queen, as well I know, must never flag for an hour in his zeal. It shall be my care to provide you with a proper escort, and my own henchman shall accompany you to Edinburgh.’

Randolph thanked the Warden courteously.

‘Your kinsman,’ said he, ‘will perhaps accompany me. He, too, as he tells me, has urgent affairs in the capital, and I could not wish a stouter escort if I carried a king’s ransom along with me.’

Maxwell accepted the offer eagerly, notwithstanding the earl’s hospitable objections; and Bothwell, as they turned to cross the drawbridge, once more expressed his sorrow that the English ambassador should have been attacked within his jurisdiction.

‘I must take yet stricter order with these knaves,’ said the Warden; ‘there are too many broken men still in the Debatable Land who get their living by what they can lift. Your valise is gone, but that we can easily replace. I fear, however, that it contained something more valuable than wearing apparel. Despatches probably for the Queen, and—and—Lord James, Her Majesty’s half-brother?’

Mr Randolph could not repress a sneer.

‘Certain letters,’ he answered, ‘indeed there were, of no great value to those knaves, if, as your lordship seems satisfied, they are illiterate freebooters who cannot read. I have a few more here,’ he added, pointing to a packet that peeped from his boot; ‘and, indeed, the only one of importance is written in a cipher with which I myself am unacquainted. Your lordship need not, therefore, be uneasy about the safety of my despatches.’

Bothwell looked considerably put out, though he strove to mask his annoyance under an affectation of great cordiality; and Randolph, as he followed him into the castle, seemed hugely to enjoy the discomfiture of his host.

CHAPTER V.

‘She could whisper, and smile, and sigh,

Pleading, flattering, … so can the rest;

But oh! the light in her roving eye

Would have wiled the babe from its mother’s breast.’

The Queen of Scotland was fairly settled in her own palace of Holyrood. We must now shift the scene to the royal presence-chamber in that picturesque old building. It is a lofty and well-proportioned apartment, of which, however, the small windows and thick walls denote that it was originally constructed with a view to purposes of defence. It is hung round with a quaint and elaborate tapestry, more curious, perhaps, than tasteful, representing various incidents in the heathenish history of Diana; whereon the goddess bares her knee and draws her bow, to the discomfiture of her rival’s children, with mythological effrontery. Beautiful oak carvings adorn its massive chimney-piece, and its panelled roof is richly emblazoned with the armorial bearings of a line of kings. The floor, instead of being strewed with rushes, is carefully waxed and polished, a foreign innovation which has already excited some displeasure amongst the graver courtiers. Such furniture as the room contains is heavily gilt and decorated. The sovereign’s chair of state seems to blaze with embroidery and cloth of gold. It is a right royal apartment, not unworthy of the company by which it is occupied.

To-night the Queen holds one of her state-receptions, and around her person are gathered the flower of the Scottish aristocracy. Many a bold baron who spends half his life sheathed in armour, walks none the less stately to-night that he has donned satin doublet and silken hose, that his brow is bare of its steel head-piece, and he carries his plumed bonnet in his hand. Many a dame of clear blue eye and dazzling fairness scans with critical glance every fold of the royal drapery, and watches if she cannot catch and appropriate another grace from her Queen. They are thronging round her now, for the dissensions which shall mar her unhappy reign are as yet only in the bud. Each may expect some fresh boon from a new sovereign, and the baron’s ambition to become an earl is just as eager, and probably twice as unprincipled, as the varlet’s to become a page, or the page’s to become a squire. Even thoughtful Lord James, the Queen’s half-brother, the lay-churchman, the soldier-statesman—the staff on which she leans, little dreaming it can ever break in her hand and pierce her to the quick—has forgotten his sister in his sovereign, and wears on his calm sad face an unusual expression of deference to-night, because of prospective advancement and his promised earldom of Mar, and the broad lands and additional title of Moray, to which he hopes it may lead. He has taken his stand on the right of the Queen’s chair, and Mary whispers to him ever and anon as she requires information concerning her new subjects; although, with the tact of her family and her own kindly acuteness, she has already mastered the names of most of them, and has even gained the good-will of more than one rugged baron by a happy question regarding his old gray tower or his favourite horse.

But amongst many eager countenances, of which, with all their different expressions, each wears a family likeness of curiosity and expectation, it is touching to observe the chivalrous face and the lofty bearing of the Maréchal d’Amville, who has come to bid farewell to his Queen and his ladye-love. With all the polish of a courtier, with all the pride of a soldier, and with that dignity of manner which noble natures, and these alone, acquire from a hopeless sorrow bravely borne, d’Amville kneels before her who was Queen of France in the sunny days that seem to have shone so long ago. Many a weary year has he knelt in spirit before that magic beauty which he now feels he looks on for the last time. He never expected for a moment that his wild hopeless love could win him anything but sorrow, yet he grudged it not, nor strove to conquer the idolatry for which he was prepared to pay its cruel penalty,—he is paying it even now. Kneeling there to kiss the white hand that reaches him a letter for her kinsfolk in France so gently and so gracefully, looking up once more at the face that will haunt him to his grave, and feeling that none but himself will ever know his folly or its punishment; and that she, its object, smiling so frankly upon him, little guesses how gladly he would give her his blighted life, then and there, at her feet.

But, gentleman and soldier as he is, none can guess his heart by the unmoved brow, the unshaken voice, and the scrupulous deference with which he pays his homage. Gracefully he insists on the reception he will meet with in France, as bearing the latest news from her who was the pleasure and the pride of the whole kingdom, and his own good fortune in having been permitted to accompany her and see her safely bestowed on her Scottish throne. Mary can scarcely keep back her tears at the allusion; but, with so many jealous eyes around her, well she knows she must play her part at any cost, and she gulps them down with an effort.

‘Farewell,’ she says, ‘my brave protector and pilot; be assured Mary Stuart never forgets a friend. You will advise the Guises of my welfare and happiness. You will tell the French court and the French people,’ she added, drawing herself up and speaking in a louder tone, so as to be heard by all, ‘that you left me on a royal throne, surrounded by the bravest and the most loyal nobility in Europe.’

A murmur of applause went the round of the circle at this spirited declaration, and Lord James gave the Queen a glance of mingled surprise and approval.

As d’Amville rose from his knee and retired, Chastelâr, who followed in the train of the Maréchal, passed before the Queen to make his farewell obeisance. The poet’s face wore an expression of determination foreign to its usual character; but it was observed by one who watched its every turn, that he never lifted his eyes above the hem of Mary’s robe. She inclined her head graciously to him, nevertheless, and he passed into the outer circle, and was soon conversing lightly with the maids-of-honour and other of the courtiers.

It chanced, however, that the Queen had forgotten some additional message for her kinsfolk, with which she intended to charge d’Amville, and ere he had reached the door, she wished to call him back. The first person whose eye she caught happened to be the Earl of Arran, who had taken up a position opposite Her Majesty, and seemed to observe her narrowly.

Not unwilling to pay the house of Hamilton every compliment in her power, Mary beckoned the Earl to her side and charged him with her commission. Arran’s wild eye flashed fire at the proposal!

‘I will obey your commands, madam,’ said he, rudely, ‘though there be pages enough in the gallery to send after a French adventurer. It seems that France had better come to Holyrood and abide with your Majesty once for all.’

His tone was so loud, and his bearing so excited, that the bystanders gazed in astonishment on one another and on the Queen.

Mary looked surprised, almost scared for a moment, and then flushed with displeasure; but her sweet temper soon prevailed, and she answered gently,—

‘Nay, cousin, you shall do my bidding yourself as you have always done. Have not you and I reason to look back upon the days we spent in France as the happiest of our lives? Youth comes but once, my lord, and we shall neither of us ever be so light-hearted again.’

The unfortunate nobleman trembled from head to foot, and turned deadly pale. He seemed about to indulge in some frantic outbreak, which he repressed with an effort; then with writhing lip and dilated nostril, he strode towards the doorway, the courtiers making way for him as he passed with looks of astonishment and alarm.

Lord James, glancing at Morton, put his finger to his brow and shook his head gravely. The grim Douglas laughed his ghastly laugh, and with his hand on the haft of his dudgeon-dagger, muttered something about ‘blood-letting’ and ‘melancholy,’ that, had he been the physician, would have boded no good to the patient; and Arran, rushing tumultuously through the gallery to cool his brow in the night air, reappeared in the Presence no more that night.

It seems to us there is a strange, sad moral in the history of this beautiful Queen. Probably the gift that women most desire, beyond riches, wisdom, even virtue itself, is a power of fascination over the other sex; and this dangerous charm must have been possessed by Mary to a degree that in the days of Greece and Rome would have been attributed to supernatural influence. With all her advantages of rank, talent, and education, this very quality, so far from adding to her happiness, seems to have been the one engine which worked her own destruction, and that of every kindly heart that came within her sphere. Few of the other sex could look upon Mary without an inclination, at least, to love her; and how many, like high-minded d’Amville and poor half-crazed Arran, had cause to curse the day when first they felt the spell of that sweet face, apparently so unconscious of its power! Of all the eminently beautiful women the world has seen, Mary Stuart wrought the most of wreck and utter ruin with the kindliest disposition and the best intentions. Dalilah, we have never doubted, was a heartless sensualist, covetous only of pleasure and gold. The Phrynes and Aspasias were, probably, finished courtesans, with whom the affections were but instruments necessary to a profession of which they were thorough mistresses. Cleopatra, like a royal voluptuary, grudged no price for her desire; and in her love of conquest, blazoned forth and made the most of her rich southern charms. Marguérite de Valois knew and cultivated her resplendent beauty with the diligence of a devotee and the scientific aptitude of a Frenchwoman. But the Queen of Scotland alone seems to have been half ignorant and wholly careless of those advantages which women most prize and cherish; seems to have regarded her loveliness as little as the flower its fragrance, and to have gone about frankly and freely dispensing her dangerous notice with the innocence of an involuntary and unconscious coquette.

It is notorious, that even the lower animals acknowledged the influence of this captivating nature. Dogs attached themselves to the Queen with their brave fidelity, from the instant they came into her presence. She loved to dress her own hawks, and was pleased to boast that she could reclaim the wild bird of the air with greater facility than the most experienced of her falconers. Horses that fretted and chafed under the boldest cavaliers, would bend at once to the gentle hand of the royal equestrian, and carry her with safety and docility. The brute yielded gladly, as though proud to contribute to her happiness; and man looked and longed and grieved, and did his best to make both himself and her miserable.

Of physical beauty there is no question that she possessed an extraordinary share—perhaps more than any woman of that or any other age. Like her mother, she was of lofty stature and peculiar dignity of bearing, whilst she inherited from her father an exact symmetry and the most graceful proportions. James V., though he made bad use of his physical advantages, was one of the comeliest and best-limbed men in his dominions. Mary’s hand was a model for a sculptor, whilst every gesture and every movement of her body was at once womanly and dignified. But it was the Queen’s face that riveted the attention, and fascinated both sexes with its entrancing loveliness. Other women might be beautiful; other women might have had the same smooth, open brow, the same chiselled features and pencilled eyebrows, the same delicate chin and white full neck and bosom—ay, even the same long, soft hazel eyes, and rich dark chestnut hair; but where was the woman in Europe whose glance, like hers, raised from under those sweeping eyelashes, found its way straight to the heart; whose smile seemed at once to entreat and to command, to extort obedience and bestow reward, like sunlight penetrating the coldest object and warming and brightening all within its sphere? Yes, there was many a beautiful woman in France and Scotland, not to mention such fair dames at the English court as did not fear to provoke the displeasure of ‘good Queen Bess’ by too engaging a deportment or too becoming an attire; but there was only one Mary Stuart, as many an aching heart in steel-clad bosom was fain to confess to its cost.

And yet on that fair face was often to be remarked an expression of melancholy, as though produced by some vague foreboding of evil, such as cast a shadow over the countenances of so many of the Stuarts.

Even James V., though he could revel with the noisiest, and sing many a merry stave of his own writing, amongst which

‘We’ll go no more a roving

By the light of the moon,’

is not the least suggestive and poetical, bore on his brow this mysterious presage of evil, although it was perhaps more apparent, as well it might be, in the pensive lineaments of his descendant, the first Charles, and the surpassing beauty of his peerless daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. Was it this that the soothsayer meant, when Mary of Guise took her beautiful child, then a mere infant, to the famous Nostradamus, and bade him cast her horoscope, and fortell her destinies? The sage looked on the blooming face, turned so artlessly towards his own, and announced in his deep grave tones, ‘There is blood on that fair young brow!’

Through her happy childhood in the peaceful islet of Inch-ma-home—through her graceful youth, spent with the daughters of France in the quiet retreats of Amboise and Fontainebleau—through her early wedded life and short supremacy, as through her widowhood, when the Blanche Reine was the darling and pride of the French court, this shadow of evil never left her. It pervaded her turbulent reign in Scotland, her many reverses, her cruel injuries, her disheartening defeats, her dreary captivity. Perhaps it never faded from her brow till the glory of death shone over it, in the hands of the headsman at Fotheringay.

Mary looked round her courtiers in dismay at Arran’s extraordinary conduct. The sad expression was more than usually apparent on her fair forehead: she whispered a few words to her brother, who seemed to be her refuge, as was natural, in her difficulties, and Lord James, darting another glance at Morton, quitted the apartment with his usual staid impassive air.

Then the Queen, rising, broke up the circle by which she was surrounded, and pacing through the room, addressed herself by turns to the different nobles present, and was observed to be more than usually condescending to the Earl of Morton, as though some instinctive prescience bade her deprecate, as early as possible, the hostility of that fierce uncompromising nature.

The Earl’s grim countenance relaxed into a smile that added to its natural ghastliness, as she passed; and Secretary Maitland whispered to Lord John Stuart that—

‘The Douglas was in a courtly mood to-night, and reminded him of the lion in George Buchanan’s elegy that was led by the lady in a silken chain;’ to which the gay prior of Coldinghame, contemplating a shapely leg he loved well to display in a galliard, replied with a light laugh—

‘I never mistrust the lion so much as when he shows his fangs,’ alluding to the prominent teeth and unshapely mouth of the redoubted Earl.

‘Nor I the Douglas so much as when he hides his claws,’ answered Secretary Maitland; and the two passed gaily on to take part in the amusements and revelry that once more enlivened the walls of old Holyrood.