The Queen's Caprice Page 13

  “Do you understand me, Henry? Who was it?”

  But he would not answer, yet as she breathed “The Italian!” he closed his eyes and she was answered. He had come to her, then, not on a surge of passion, but because he was slightly drunk and a pimp had been there to guide his steps.

  She stood silent, holding the edges of the curtains. She had had him placed for her own whim satisfying she knew not what delicate sense of mockery, in her great bed trimmed with gold and silver and lined with crimson watered silk, that had been set up in her bed-chamber in Stirling.

  He began to shiver, and she pulled over him the coverlet on which were designed the lions and thistles of Scotland.

  “Oh, well,” she said, “oh, well!”

  He opened his eyes slowly and with difficulty, for his lids were heavy, and looked at her with a suspicious discontent. In her glittering, elaborate gown she stood between the rift in the curtains; behind her he could see the room bright with summer sunshine and gleaming furniture.

  He sat up suddenly, his delusions vanishing, and snatched at her hand.

  “When will you marry me?” he asked. “Publicly! You will not leave me again, you will not play with me again?”

  “You are disabled by sickness,” she soothed him. “When you are well, only, be quiet, do not talk any more.”

  She took him unawares with her tenderness; his apprehensive defiance died away. He drew her hand under his hot cheek and slept, the clothes all awry about him, like the coverings of a child who tosses in dreams.

  The Queen, after a little while, pulled her hand away, passed into her privy closet and sent one of the French girls for David Rizzio.

  *

  The Queen closed the book she had been reading to compose her thoughts. She liked to read ancient tales as well as of the intricacies of modern love. She was at home with the actions of the Immortals and with the petty spites and furies of common folk. Lampoons, ballads, pamphlets, lay on her desk. With eyes unflinching, with smooth smile undisturbed, she had read the lewd and violent abuse circulated secretly about her among her people, which Moray’s agents gathered for her and diligently sent for her inspection. She knew her half-brother’s reason in this service — he wished to undermine her confidence, to shake her self-reliance and cause her to put herself more completely into his hands.

  When David Rizzio entered she set her handsome books on top of the ballads coarsely printed on cheap paper.

  Urbane and smooth, with his air of tender solicitude and deep reverence, the young Italian entered the room. He now spent many hours of the week alone with the Queen and was quite dizzy with his good fortune. He could scarcely believe that such marvellous luck had happened to him who had come to Edinburgh so poor, almost without shoes to his feet or clothes to his back. Sometimes in the night he would wake Giuseppe just to engage him in conversation about the extraordinary chance that had occurred to them, about the great opportunities before them. The two youths would lie in the dark and whisper excitedly about their golden prospects. The Queen quite understood his amazement, and it amused her — she was a little astonished herself at the rapid rise of this new favourite. She could understand the scandal and comments it had caused though she was indifferent as to that. They had isolated her; they had made her send back most of the French people whom she had brought with her from Paris. They had done all they could to thwart her, to frustrate her desires, even to humiliate and to circumscribe her liberty: she had to find a friend and adviser where she could.

  The Italian was so pliant, so easy, understood her without the least difficulty. He had just the knowledge, the adroitness that she required and he served her with exactly that reverent, exaggerated homage to which she had been used in everyone who came near her in the Court of France. Not one among the Scots gentlemen, not one, had touched that delicate note, the relation between a queen and her subject to which this Queen had been bred. It was a mingling of a profound homage that set her apart as a goddess to be adored, and a familiarity that recognized her as a woman to be loved.

  She set her elbow on the bureau, put her chin in her hand and laughed. Her situation was difficult, perhaps, almost desperate, but nothing could quench her zest in life.

  “David,” she said, “I am pledged to marry Henry Stewart. His father presses me. Tell me what you think of that business.”

  The Italian replied very low in his pleasing voice and in his own language, with which she was fairly familiar.

  “The Queen must have everything she wishes, the Queen must do as she wants.”

  “Ah, yes, that’s delicious to hear, but I fear it is as brittle as a compliment out of a poem, but at least, the Queen will be the Queen. Tell me, you have watched, you have listened. What do you think of this marriage?”

  The Italian closed his eyes for a second and drew a deep breath to steady himself — it seemed to him so incredible that he of all the men in the great city should be here closeted with the Queen and giving her advice. He replied, steadily, in French:

  “I cannot see what can suit the Queen’s gracious plans better than the marriage with the Lord Darnley. He is a member of the true Faith and as such will be acceptable to the Pope. A marriage with a Roman Catholic would encourage Your Majesty’s co-religionists in England, in Scotland, and on the Continent. It would be as a rallying-point for a strong movement to throw off these damned heretics who have dug their claws so firmly into Your Majesty’s fair lands. If Your Majesty married to please the Queen of England it would be to a heretic and you would, on that count, get no help from His Holiness nor Their Majesties of France or Spain.

  “If you marry a foreign prince there will be great difficulties and also delays. This gentleman is a prince, a near pretender to the throne. By marrying him you end that claim and that of his father. Besides,” added the Italian, suavely, yet with a short sigh, “he is young and very splendid, he is noticed everywhere he goes and he would appear magnificent as a king.”

  “For beauty,” replied the Queen carelessly, “I have never seen one like him. But he is morose and sullen, violent and insolent, and his manners are detestable.” David Rizzio put back the sweep of bronze-coloured hair with a nervous hand.

  “He is a boy, and, madame, you can make of him what you will. You torment him until he becomes half-crazed, but if you were to soothe him — bears will eat out of a fair hand that holds sugar, madame.”

  He looked at the Queen gravely as he stood before her, with even more than his wonted reverence.

  “Besides,” he added, very softly and respectfully, “there is really nothing else that Your Majesty can do.”

  The Queen did not reply, and the Italian continued:

  “After his sickness, when his father found the key in his pocket — it does not matter how discreet one is, things get about. If Your Majesty were to marry him publicly nothing could be said.”

  “All has been said,” replied the Queen, directly. “That he is the lover, I am the wanton, you are the go-between, only they use coarser terms than that, I think, David. Never mind, it is perhaps foolish to have an open scandal. Besides,” she added, with an impetuous change of manner, “I love him. Do I not love him, David?”

  The Italian bowed low, so low that she could not see his face.

  “Your Majesty knows.”

  With a quizzical and loving smile the Queen stared down at him and noticed the little pin with the white topaz head in his collar that Mary Seaton had put into the bandage on his arm the day that he had caught Florestan from the altar.

  “I have told my brother and I have told the council,” she said. “The marriage will go through.”

  “And shall I remain Your Majesty’s secretary?”

  There was a note of appeal in his low voice. She was flattered to think how much a goddess she was to this graceful, clever youth. He had nothing beyond her favour, nothing; he was literally her creature whom she had raised from obscurity to a shining brightness.

  “Your place is safe, David.
”

  At that his happiness made him radiant and with a grace that seemed to bridge the difference between them and yet with a humility that seemed to remember it, he offered her a gift.

  It was a tortoise composed of small clusters of rubies with head and neck worked in gold. He told her that it had belonged to his mother and that he had always kept it even through his neediest years. He begged her, his gracious Queen, who had given him so many noble gifts, to accept this from him, the most unworthy of her servants.

  The Queen liked the trifle and liked the manner of the giving. It did not either displease her that he had once been of sufficient rank to wear such jewels. She liked to think that his origin was mysterious, perhaps grand. Maybe he was some princely bastard of as good blood as Moray.

  She gave him her hand to kiss while she fondled the tortoise between the fingers he pressed to his lips.

  He had lied about the gem; he had obtained it from a Lombard money-lender and money-changer in the Netherbow, the man to whom he had pledged the Queen’s white topaz which he had since redeemed and now wore as if he had never parted with it. It had taken him almost all the money that he was able to spare from the Queen’s generosity, to purchase the jewel. And that had been only on account. The merchant had allowed him to have an ornament of such considerable value because it was well known that he was so high in the Queen’s favour and would soon be able to pay the complete value of the gift.

  She allowed him to kiss her fingers and her wrist, and he became quite intoxicated, and feeling the impossibility of any longer keeping his head, he left her abruptly with an emotion that did not displease the Queen. As he left she said lightly, “So it was you who planned it at Stirling? I might have known that he was too stupid.”

  *

  The Scotch Council debated with hostile gravity the question of the Lennox marriage. The English Council passed a resolution declaring such an alliance contrary to English interests. Elizabeth sent Sir Nicholas Throckmorton to Edinburgh to warn the Queen not to make this marriage. Moray refused his formal consent. But, when Henry Stewart recovered from his fever, he and the Queen were wedded in Holyrood Chapel with full Roman Catholic rites.

  The Queen came to her wedding in a full suit of mourning, hood and cloak and gown. She was serene and a little distracted as if for the second time she gave away her hand and her crown with a certain indifference. She entered the chapel between Lennox, alert, anxious, scarcely daring to be triumphant, and Atholl. Her household, such as were Roman Catholics, followed.

  The bridegroom, it was noted, seemed greatly troubled. He had been early in the chapel and prayed much at the altar before the coming of the Queen, and, what was strange for one who had been so eager to show splendour, he was plainly dressed in a dark satin without jewels.

  But when he saw the Queen, he came forward as if about to talk to her, eagerly, as if he had something on his mind to declare to her before them all at this solemn moment. His father twitched him by the sleeve and gave him a look that reminded him of the formalities of the occasion. And at that he went quietly back to his place in front of the altar and knelt with the Queen on the stiff, embroidered cushions, and when the moment came wedded her with three rings, one of which was a circlet of gold with a motto inside and out, another was a rich diamond, and the third the red ring he had taken from her breast that night at Stirling Castle when David Rizzio had brought him to her door.

  When the ceremony was over, those who stood about the Queen were permitted to take out the pins of her mourning attire so that the veils of black lawn crepe which Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton had carefully pinned up into the likeness of a gown, fell on the chapel floor, a sable cloud, and the Queen stepped out in a robe of glittering silk the colour of blue ice, with all her French diamonds laid about her breast and shoulders.

  “I hope,” she said, “I may never have to wear that sad raiment again.”

  She looked at her husband graciously, but his answering glance was questioning and troubled.

  Who had attended these nuptials to which all had been summoned?

  Moray was not there, nor Maitland, nor Morton, nor any of their hangers-on, and not many other great Scottish names. Only a few, and those Lennox men.

  As they came into the ante-chamber, someone cried, “God save the King!” but there was only one cap raised and only one answering shout. The gesture and the voice came from old Lennox who, in embarrassed defiance, echoed: “God save His Majesty!”

  *

  The banquet to which so few had come and which had been so dull was over. The bride and groom were in the apartments of the Queen.

  When she had first come to Scotland she had chosen for her own rooms those in the tower built by her grandfather and completed by her father. She had assigned the lower floor in this handsome quarter to her husband, keeping only the upper portion for herself, and he was as splendidly housed as the Queen with audience chamber, bedrooms, closets in the turret, and a private oratory. The staircase with which he was already familiar, for it had been his means of private access to the Queen, led from the garden to his apartments and by the newel stair in the wall from his chambers to her apartment.

  There had been nothing niggardly in the manner with which the Queen had prepared for the reception of the husband who brought her nothing. Italian tapestries of playing boys and sporting animals, a dais, embroidered velvet chairs of state, pictures, vessels of crystal and agate, mirrors and painted coffers, lavishly furnished the chamber to which Mary carelessly gave him the key in a casket of silver filigree.

  She had appointed for him a retinue as large as her own — secretaries, pages, gentlemen, ushers, an escort of armed soldiers. She named him King, promised him the Crown Matrimonial, said his name should come first in all writings. And to this lavishness she added a further generosity — suits of blued Greenwich armour, suits of damascened Genoa armour, daggers, swords, robes of velvet and sable, horses, some English hawks and hounds.

  “What can I give you in return, madame?”

  His demeanour did not seem like that of one who had gained a throne and a queen.

  “You must be my husband.”

  “Nay, I have been that for several weeks now, and little comfort has it brought either of us.”

  “But you are my husband now before everyone.”

  She put her arm through his and drew him into the audience chamber into which the newel stairway from his room ascended.

  This was a very bright and pleasant apartment. On the ceiling under which they walked were the new decorations set up on the occasion of her first marriage where all the insignia of the Houses of Lorraine and Valois, the alerions and the lilies, the dolphins and the royal initials were cunningly interlaced on lozenges with the Royal Arms of Scotland.

  The room was furnished with great luxury; though the country might be poor the Queen was rich enough to indulge personal splendour. Her jointure as Dowager-Queen of France sufficed to keep her with a brilliance that had no parallel in Scotland.

  “Yes, you are my husband now,” she exclaimed with a proud and excited air, “and you must help me.”

  “To what?” he asked apprehensively. He had neither the mind nor the capacity for this position; he did not want to be the master of this brilliant, brittle creature whom he so distrusted. Ambition, wounded pride, his father’s goading, had urged him on to become the husband of this enchanting and perilous Queen, and now he stood abashed, feeling buffeted by the dark wings of chance.

  She paused before the oratory, her private praying place. Setting the door wide she stared in at the painted alabaster altar and white alabaster steps, the holy winged pictures, the gilt rails and the candles. Tears came to her eyes, brought there by childhood memories, by nostalgia and loneliness. She turned and clung with a passion he could not read to the tall youth.

  “We must triumph. Don’t you see, my brother and his friends, Morton, Maitland, Knox, and all the Calvinists — we must set them down, you and I.”


  She laughed, coaxing and caressing him, took his arm again and paced with him the length of the regal audience chamber.

  “I have never been a queen yet, and you must make me one now.”

  “I’ve no head for policies or intrigue, Mary. I hardly understand what any of these people would be at. It is true that your brother is puffed up and greedy, but would it not be better to let him rule—”

  She interrupted swiftly.

  “Do you think that he will wish to continue to rule while you are there? No! You have lost me my brother, Harry, and you must take his place. The place of all of them! Do you hear, do you understand?”

  Her swift eagerness baffled him.

  “If you make me King,” he replied slowly, “I suppose I shall know what to do with that title.”

  “If there is any trouble, any resistance, if they stir up revolts we will arm and chase them from place to place until we have run them out of the kingdom.”

  Such violent and resolute ideas confused him. He frowned, looking at her steadily, trying to understand her, wondering why she had chosen him and in what lay her transient enchantment for him. There were hours, even days, when he would not think of her at all, and there were moments when he wished he had not met her.

  She was a paragon and his wife; he tried to solace himself with these thoughts. His wife — the Queen — and he the King, the master of all that snarling troop of Puritans. She set him over Moray! He flushed, half-ashamed, half-pleased at this pre-eminence.

  She led him to the dais at the end of the room which was now in the shadows of the gathering twilight, and the gold of the crown on the seat showed clearly. She set him there in the great chair with arms, persuading him into it with kisses, and when he was settled, half-reluctant, half-smiling in that high place, she stepped back and stared at him as so many had stared at her seated there in elegant royalty.

  Outwardly her choice did not disappoint her, for the man was splendid. Whom else could she have chosen in all Europe who would have so gallantly filled a throne? For physique and grace there could be none who was his equal. Her passion for him and the dreams that passion inspired, revived, as she sat on the steps of the throne, looking up at him.