University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—The Upper Chamber in Holyrood.
The four Maries.
MARY BEATON
(sings):—

MARY HAMILTON.
You never sing now but it makes you sad;
Why do you sing?

MARY BEATON.
I hardly know well why;
It makes me sad to sing, and very sad
To hold my peace.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
I know what saddens you.

MARY BEATON.
Prithee, what? what?

MARY CARMICHAEL.
Why, since we came from France,
You have no lover to make stuff for songs.

MARY BEATON.
You are wise; for there my pain begins indeed,
Because I have no lovers out of France.

MARY SEYTON.
I mind me of one Olivier de Pesme,
(You knew him, sweet) a pale man with short hair,
Wore tied at sleeve the Beaton colour.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
Blue—
I know, blue scarfs. I never liked that knight.

MARY HAMILTON.
Me? I know him? I hardly knew his name.
Black, was his hair? no, brown.

MARY SEYTON.
Light pleases you:
I have seen the time brown served you well enough.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
Lord Darnley's is a mere maid's yellow.

MARY HAMILTON.
No;
A man's, good colour.

MARY SEYTON.
Ah, does that burn your blood?
Why, what a bitter colour is this red
That fills your face! if you be not in love,
I am no maiden.

MARY HAMILTON.
Nay, God help true hearts!
I must be stabbed with love then, to the bone,
Yea to the spirit, past cure.

MARY SEYTON.
What were you saying?
I see some jest run up and down your lips.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
Finish your song; I know you have more of it;
Good sweet, I pray you do.

MARY BEATON.
I am too sad.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
This will not sadden you to sing; your song
Tastes sharp of sea and the sea's bitterness,
But small pain sticks on it.

MARY BEATON.
Nay, it is sad;
For either sorrow with the beaten lips
Sings not at all, or if it does get breath
Sings quick and sharp like a hard sort of mirth:
And so this song does; or I would it did,
That it might please me better than it does.

MARY SEYTON.
Well, as you choose then. What a sort of men
Crowd all about the squares!

MARY CARMICHAEL.
Ay, hateful men;
For look how many talking mouths be there,
So many angers show their teeth at us.
Which one is that, stooped somewhat in the neck,
That walks so with his chin against the wind,
Lips sideways shut? a keen-faced man—lo there,
He that walks midmost.

MARY SEYTON.
That is Master Knox.
He carries all these folk within his skin,
Bound up as 'twere between the brows of him
Like a bad thought; their hearts beat inside his;
They gather at his lips like flies in the sun,
Thrust sides to catch his face.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
Look forth; so—push
The window—further—see you anything?

MARY HAMILTON.
They are well gone; but pull the lattice in,
The wind is like a blade aslant. Would God
I could get back one day I think upon;
The day we four and some six after us
Sat in that Louvre garden and plucked fruits
To cast love-lots with in the gathered grapes;
This way; you shut your eyes and reach and pluck,
And catch a lover for each grape you get.
I got but one, a green one, and it broke
Between my fingers and it ran down through them.

MARY SEYTON.
Ay, and the queen fell in a little wrath
Because she got so many, and tore off
Some of them she had plucked unwittingly—
She said, against her will. What fell to you?

MARY BEATON.
Me? nothing but the stalk of a stripped bunch
With clammy grape-juice leavings at the tip.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
Ay, true, the queen came first and she won all;
It was her bunch we took to cheat you with.
What, will you weep for that now? for you seem
As one that means to weep. God pardon me!
I think your throat is choking up with tears.
You are not well, sweet, for a lying jest
To shake you thus much.

MARY BEATON.
I am well enough:
Give not your pity trouble for my sake.

MARY SEYTON.
If you be well sing out your song and laugh,
Though it were but to fret the fellows there.—
Now shall we catch her secret washed and wet
In the middle of her song; for she must weep
If she sing through.

MARY HAMILTON.
I told you it was love;
I watched her eyes all through the masquing time
Feed on his face by morsels; she must weep.

MARY BEATON.

MARY SEYTON.
I know the song; a song of Chastelard's
He made in coming over with the queen.
How hard it rained! he played that over twice
Sitting before her, singing each word soft,
As if he loved the least she listened to.

MARY HAMILTON.
No marvel if he loved it for her sake;
She is the choice of women in the world,
Is she not, sweet?

MARY BEATON.
I have seen no fairer one.

MARY SEYTON.
And the most loving: did you note last night
How long she held him with her hands and eyes,
Looking a little sadly, and at last
Kissed him below the chin and parted so
As the dance ended?

MARY HAMILTON.
This was courtesy;
So might I kiss my singing-bird's red bill
After some song, till he bit short my lip.

MARY SEYTON.
But if a lady hold her bird anights
To sing to her between her fingers—ha?
I have seen such birds.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
O, you talk emptily;
She is full of grace; and marriage in good time
Will wash the fool called scandal off men's lips.

MARY HAMILTON.
I know not that; I know how folk would gibe
If one of us pushed courtesy so far.
She has always loved love's fashions well; you wot,
The marshal, head friend of this Chastelard's,
She used to talk with ere he brought her here
And sow their talk with little kisses thick
As roses in rose-harvest. For myself,
I cannot see which side of her that lurks
Which snares in such wise all the sense of men;
What special beauty, subtle as man's eye
And tender as the inside of the eyelid is,
There grows about her.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
I think her cunning speech—
The soft and rapid shudder of her breath
In talking—the rare tender little laugh—
The pitiful sweet sound like a bird's sigh
When her voice breaks; her talking does it all.

MARY SEYTON.
I say, her eyes with those clear perfect brows:
It is the playing of those eyelashes,
The lure of amorous looks as sad as love,
Plucks all souls toward her like a net.

MARY HAMILTON.
What, what!
You praise her in too lover-like a wise
For women that praise women; such report
Is like robes worn the rough side next the skin,
Frets where it warms.

MARY SEYTON.
You think too much in French.

Enter Darnley.
Here comes your thorn; what glove against it now?

MARY HAMILTON.
O, God's good pity! this a thorn of mine?
It has not run deep in yet.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
I am not sure:
The red runs over to your face's edge.

DARNLEY.
Give me one word; nay, lady, for love's sake;
Here, come this way; I will not keep you; no.
—O my sweet soul, why do you wrong me thus?

MARY HAMILTON.
Why will you give me for men's eyes to burn?

DARNLEY.
What, sweet, I love you as mine own soul loves me;
They shall divide when we do.

MARY HAMILTON.
I cannot say.

DARNLEY.
Why, look you, I am broken with the queen;
This is the rancour and the bitter heart
That grows in you; by God it is nought else.
Why, this last night she held me for a fool—
Ay, God wot, for a thing of stripe and bell.
I bade her make me marshal in her masque—
I had the dress here painted, gold and grey
(That is, not grey but a blue-green like this)—
She tells me she had chosen her marshal, she,
The best o'the world for cunning and sweet wit;
And what sweet fool but her sweet knight, God help!
To serve her with that three-inch wit of his?
She is all fool and fiddling now; for me,
I am well pleased; God knows, if I might choose
I would not be more troubled with her love.
Her love is like a briar that rasps the flesh,
And yours is soft like flowers. Come this way, love;
So, further in this window; hark you here.

Enter Chastelard.
MARY BEATON.
Good morrow, sir.

CHASTELARD.
Good morrow, noble lady.

MARY CARMICHAEL.
You have heard no news? what news?

CHASTELARD.
Nay, I have none.
That maiden-tongued male-faced Elizabeth
Hath eyes unlike our queen's, hair not so soft,
And hands more sudden save for courtesy;
And lips no kiss of love's could bring to flower
In such red wise as our queen's; save this news,
I know none English.

MARY SEYTON.
Come, no news of her;
For God's love talk still rather of our queen.

MARY BEATON.
God give us grace then to speak well of her.
You did right joyfully in our masque last night;
I saw you when the queen lost breath (her head
Bent back, her chin and lips catching the air—
A goodly thing to see her) how you smiled
Across her head, between your lips—no doubt
You had great joy, sir. Did not you take note
Once how one lock fell? that was good to see.

CHASTELARD.
Yea, good enough to live for.

MARY BEATON.
Nay, but sweet
Enough to die. When she broke off the dance,
Turning round short and soft—I never saw
Such supple ways of walking as she has.

CHASTELARD.
Why do you praise her gracious looks to me?

MARY BEATON.
Sir, for mere sport: but tell me even for love
How much you love her.

CHASTELARD.
I know not: it may be
If I had set mine eyes to find that out,
I should not know it. She hath fair eyes: may be
I love her for sweet eyes or brows or hair,
For the smooth temples, where God touching her
Made blue with sweeter veins the flower-sweet white;
Or for the tender turning of her wrist,
Or marriage of the eyelid with the cheek;
I cannot tell; or flush of lifting throat,
I know not if the colour get a name
This side of heaven—no man knows; or her mouth,
A flower's lip with a snake's lip, stinging sweet,
And sweet to sting with: face that one would see
And then fall blind and die with sight of it
Held fast between the eyelids—oh, all these
And all her body and the soul to that,
The speech and shape and hand and foot and heart
That I would die of—yea, her name that turns
My face to fire being written—I know no whit
How much I love them.

MARY BEATON.
Nor how she loves you back?

CHASTELARD.
I know her ways of loving, all of them:
A sweet soft way the first is; afterward
It burns and bites like fire; the end of that,
Charred dust, and eyelids bitten through with smoke.

MARY BEATON.
What has she done for you to gird at her?

CHASTELARD.
Nothing. You do not greatly love her, you,
Who do not—gird, you call it. I am bound to France;
Shall I take word from you to any one?
So it be harmless, not a gird, I will.

MARY BEATON.
I doubt you will not go hence with your life.

CHASTELARD.
Why, who should slay me? no man northwards born,
In my poor mind; my sword's lip is no maid's
To fear the iron biting of their own,
Though they kiss hard for hate's sake.

MARY BEATON.
Lo you, sir,
How sharp he whispers, what close breath and eyes—
And hers are fast upon him, do you see?

CHASTELARD.
Well, which of these must take my life in hand?
Pray God it be the better: nay, which hand?

MARY BEATON.
I think, none such. The man is goodly made;
She is tender-hearted toward his courtesies,
And would not have them fall too low to find.
Look, they slip forth.

[Exeunt Darnley and Mary Hamilton.
MARY SEYTON.
For love's sake, after them,
And soft as love can.

[Exeunt Mary Carmichael and Mary Seyton.
CHASTELARD.
True, a goodly man.
What shapeliness and state he hath, what eyes,
Brave brow and lordly lip! were it not fit
Great queens should love him?

MARY BEATON.
See you now, fair lord,
I have but scant breath's time to help myself,
And I must cast my heart out on a chance;
So bear with me. That we twain have loved well,
I have no heart nor wit to say; God wot
We had never made good lovers, you and I.
Look you, I would not have you love me, sir,
For all the love's sake in the world. I say,
You love the queen, and loving burns you up,
And mars the grace and joyous wit you had,
Turning your speech to sad, your face to strange,
Your mirth to nothing: and I am piteous, I,
Even as the queen is, and such women are;
And if I helped you to your love-longing,
Meseems some grain of love might fall my way
And love's god help me when I came to love;
I have read tales of men that won their loves
On some such wise.

CHASTELARD.
If you mean mercifully,
I am bound to you past thought and thank; if worse,
I will but thank your lips and not your heart.

MARY BEATON.
Nay, let love wait and praise me, in God's name,
Some day when he shall find me; yet, God wot,
My lips are of one colour with my heart.
Withdraw now from me, and about midnight
In some close chamber without light or noise
It may be I shall get you speech of her:
She loves you well: it may be she will speak,
I wot not what; she loves you at her heart.
Let her not see that I have given you word,
Lest she take shame and hate her love. Till night.
Let her not see it.

CHASTELARD.
I will not thank you now,
And then I'll die what sort of death you will.
Farewell.

[Exit.
MARY BEATON.
And by God's mercy and my love's
I will find ways to earn such thank of you.

[Exit.