University of Virginia Library

Scene III

—Seton; the great ball
Mary Seton and Lady Lethington
Mary Seton
Methinks she grows each day more beautiful;
There's change, and when I go to waken her,
She is not lying dormant in her grace,
But ready for me, leaning toward the window
With her great, buoyant eyes; she has such talk
Of stars above the city seen at dawn,
Like flowers in blow, so round and luminous
They are a joy to look on; and the birds
Keep her alert from daybreak. Like a child,
With a soft wildness in serenity,
She lies, and I must love her.

Lady Lethington
Recollect,
Among the daffodils of Inchmahome
You found her perfect; she forgot too soon
When the young robins died. I thought her hard.

Mary Seton
She was not hard to the rough city-cries;
As often as they reached her she bent down,
And sobbed through heaving shoulders.

Lady Lethington
She neglects
Her broidery-frame for shooting at the butts;
’Tis ill advised.

Mary Seton
To take physicians' counsel?

Lady Lethington
But her dule!
At Seton she discards her heavy veil,
And glides, a shepherdess, among the trees,
Her head so lightly covered that the wind
Raises and drops her hair. It vexes me
More than aught else to see her noblemen
Gather together in a knot, while she
Carelessly paces up and down the sward,
With the Lord Bothwell as ambassador.

Mary Seton
He brings her tidings of the prince.

Lady Lethington
Ah, so;
If you believe it. Enter the Queen and Bothwell

They will cross the room.
Seton, she lets him lead her by the hand.

Queen
This slander that is just hypocrisy
At gossip with dame malice in the sun!
Since you will have it so, an open trial!
Let your accusers look upon your brow;
They shall be summoned to the Tolbooth—there
To meet you, happy that you are a man
With sword to finger. When you are acquitted,
The traitor who still doubts you in his heart
Shall answer to your challenge, and myself
By regal proclamation stamp you pure:
For I have strangely felt about my heart
The blight of sudden, outward blackness cast
By winds, from who knows whence, upon my name.
I must be merry, or the withering threads
Would show among my hairs! This world of grass,
The sappy buds, and of the luting birds . . .
I run into the springtide for my trial;
The dews and lights acquit me. Yet, my lord,
The knowledge that another has been covered
With like suspicion, one who will be strong
To make men cry Not Guilty, is a pleasure
Beyond the voice of earth which sanctions all
That I can prove of innocence. Remember,
We are companions, and you fight for me
Slaying our accusation.

Bothwell
Gracious queen,
I am unworthy . . . I can only stablish
A point of law, an alibi.

Queen
Enough!
What twisted minds will after that dispute
Our foreignness to guilt. (To Mary Seton)
Here, sweet, unpin
My little hat of taffety.

Bothwell
(Apart)
Amulets
Are always small, yet work on fate and hell:
That charm, that bit of black and feathered stuff,
Amid the glints of hair, is masterful
O'er sense and and reason—I could kiss the thing,
And half possess the owner: such distraction
Shoots from a trifle in a woman's dress,
If she conjure it to be beautiful
By what she is herself. That little hat!

Queen
I long to see you triumph! You must ride
Straight down the High Street back to Holyrood,
With flying banners. Is there anything
Can give you warrant of my favour? See,
This sleeve of my own stitching.

Mary Seton
Pardon, madam,
You wrought it for the king: it was not worn.

Queen.
But he shall wear it who alone of all
My subjects never quarrelled with my lord,
But served him with a loyal constancy
No variable humour could remit.
(To Bothwell)
Take this and cherish it as you have heard
Its history.

Bothwell
It would not fit my wrist.
Will you not broider me another sleeve,
With Kiip Trest, my own motto, for device,
So I be found by judgment of my peers,
Worthy such wondrous, condescending love?

Queen
I will not wait their verdict. To my silks
The first o'erclouded day! Farewell, my lord.
Exit Bothwell
Girls, you have stubborn brows, and, I must think,
Sweethearts among the Tolbooth renegades;
You stand as very elders of the kirk,
So rigid and admonishing. Go, play
Out in the sunshine; I will rest awhile:
Give me the amber cushions. Exeunt Maries
’Tis for wrath
I weep, for very wrath; such hardihood,
And none conceive his stature! Ah, in all
A man, how he evokes my womanhood!
I have not dreamed so since I saw him first
As captain of the Scottish Guard in France.
How I remember!—for his hair and beard
Were brown, of colour like a squirrel, brighter
A little than his skin's deep-shadowed brown;
And it was magic to me how his eyes
Were grey with purple rims: my Maries then
Could see no beauty in his resolute,
Gashed brow, and hasty lips. I trusted him,
And turned me over many a night to dream
How he had dragged me from my enemies.
Ah, then, what golden rills
Of youth coursed through me, sudden bounties, gifts
Of goodness, incommensurable joys
That never had an issue. And to think
The name I honoured in my childish thoughts,
And wove my visions of . . . O monstrous world!

Re-enter Lady Lethington
Lady Lethington
Madam, the earl your brother is arrived,
And craves to speak with you—he stays without.

(She ushers in Moray and retires)
Moray
My dearest sister.

Queen
You return at last!
James, you have tarried cruelly in Fife,
And left me helpless in a ring of foes
Invisible. I know not who they are,
Who thus entoil me in mysterious,
Fresh hate: the principalities of hell
It seems are loosed against me. You are come,
I trust, to lay the storm of evil tongues,
And speed the trial.

Moray
If there were a way . . .

Queen
Be bold.

Moray
I cannot. Yet if you were truly
A Protestant—within the Bible leaves
There is an awful word . . .

Queen
Such tenderness
Is no wise to my mind. Since slander now
Shrieks on the housetops, let the truth be spread
From vantage as surpassing.

Moray
God Himself
Averts his eyes from such iniquity
As were exposed, if, with too pitiless
A zeal to punish, we laid bare the facts.

Queen
Whom can they injure? Noble names are hurt
In this unchecked suspicion: let me hear
The worst you can disclose. You have a gaunt
And hollow paleness, almost of the tint
Of very guilt itself.

Moray
I suffer, Mary.
It is incredible! Now God forgive
My weakness that I cannot bear the truth.

Queen
Dismiss this speech of broken sentences,
These peddling prayers that turn asquint to hell.
Arraign yourself! If through your ancient hate
To that poor, murdered boy, you could not brook
To see in place of kingship, you so far
Stooped as to mix in the conspiracy
For his undoing, speak!

Moray
(Apart)
A subtle Guise!
Mary, I am not come here to condemn—

Queen
That is my office, when the criminal
Hath made confession. Then you knew of this
From the beginning? Do not lower your eyes;
It was your way of vengeance for his fits
Of pouting insolence, to get him strangled,
My Henry, in his bed at Kirk o' Field?
You had no pity—such a very boy!
O vile—as your own origin! To think
That I have called you brother, set you up
As tutor to my youth . . .

Moray
I hold the keys
Of life and death to you—take note of that!
There is a ruin as of yawning hell
In which I can engulf your paramour.
Be patient! Cease from railing. You might hoot
From your own palace windows—the reply
Would be an execration. Mary Stuart,
Look in your heart, or, if you will not, turn
Your face and in that mirror recognize
Your husband's murderer. The accomplices
I will not question; to my heart it sticks
That you are tottering underneath a load
Of murderous guilt and lust so infinite . . .

Queen
Lust! Have you lost your senses?

Moray
So extreme
I cannot extricate you, cannot hope
To save you from the executioner,
If you confide not your whole sin to me,
And suffer me to arbitrate.

Queen
What sin?
I know not any sin. I am distraught.
Who are in league against me?

Moray
Do not fear
That death by stoning that the church declares
Your portion. If you heartily repent
Your former life, desist from your affection
For the Lord Bothwell— (The Queen makes an indignant movement)
Stay, you will not do't,
I know: therefore I must abandon you,
I must retire, and learn in Italy
That you have lost your kingdom.—Do not move!
I know your madness and persistency.
The time is come that I must give you up
To Satan for a season; while in peace
I spend my exile.

Queen
James, you frighten me.
Has Knox been dinning this into your brain?
Stay with me, let me understand. Protect
The earl—he is most innocent.

Moray
Alas,
You dare not plead I should extend protection
To your fair, ruined head.

Queen
You must not go.

Moray
Will you not suffer it? Must I remain
To have my blood shed in the open streets?
Lord Bothwell sets a price upon my life.

Queen
He has a violent temper. You must go;
But—then what is to follow?

Moray
Kiss me, Mary;
For all my life I would not have you guess
The wild work of the morrow. Fare you well.