Scene VI
—Dunbar; a room opening on the courtyard.
Lethington is discovered guarded by Blackadder
Lethington
So we are captives!
Blackadder
With the queen's consent: ’tis her doing.
Lethington
It was her grace's command that she should
be met at Foulsbrigg, that her bridle-rein should be turned
by Lord Bothwell, her people disarmed and led captive to
Dunbar! All this is of her connivance!
Blackadder
Well, she provoked it. A lack of gunners
on the walls gives permission to enter the keep. I pray
you let not my lord find you in this temper, or, I advertise
you, you will get but slaughter at his hands.
Lethington
You give honest counsel. I have already
had contest for my life; if my sovereign lady had not
laid her white hands upon my breast, I had perished like
Riccio at her feet.
Blackadder
I must now release my lord Melvil.
Lethington
And detain an honest penman, a poor
secretary, worth no man's malice? I shall scratch the
stones with my sonnets if you do not deliver me.
Blackadder
I doubt not, when you have slept on this
business, you will devise a method of escape. Mr. Secretary,
I shall not too narrowly observe you. ’Tis the lady
must be guarded for my master with all vigilance.
Exit
Lethington
Will that villain mishandle her? Morton
blurted out the miscreant had hope to be her bridegroom,
and I let it pass. By heaven, I am persuaded responsibility
lies about the purlieus of inaction. The stripping
thieves may be corrigible; the core of evil is in the eye of
the Levite.(Pacing.)
A pretty adventure for St. Mark's
Even, the April sunshine tracing my prison-bars against
the wall. I have been an unfaithful witness; but my
sovereign lady shall never know of my infamy: for I had
as lief speak of the base things of my nature to God as to
a woman. There are vaults for the lodging of vileness:
bats are but birds of a sick conscience. Yet I know not
why I should take on me the whole enormity of her perdition,
seeing she is wrecked of her own nature, as our
first Mother, though the snake lay in the grass. Would
that Eve had been longer in the tutelage of the serpent,
and refrained from blabbing to her husband of matter that,
delicately handled, had secured her supremacy! But a
woman can by no means keep a good thing to herself.
My mistress stuffs every smile with incomparable favours.
Then to repulse him!—That repulse has been her ruin.
Let a woman set the man who loves her at her left hand,
if she crave a fiend for her torment. Alack, she has
lost God's favour, her own reputation, and the hearts of
all England, Ireland, and Scotland. All hearts? Yes, she
has lost them all; but she has covered me, the chameleon,
with the very hue of her misfortune. I am hers till death.
She shall undo me slowly.
