As Mary Stuart stood forward to welcome Elizabeth’s ambassador to her court, many an eye dwelt on the face and figure of the Scottish Queen with enthusiastic admiration. Though dressed in the mourning which she still wore for her first husband, the dark folds of her robe did but enhance the brilliancy of her complexion, and, whilst even the spotless ruff did not detract from the fairness of her neck, the whitest hand in Europe hung like a snowdrop against the black volume of her draperies. Even Randolph, cynic though he were, could not repress a thrill of delight as he approached so beautiful an object, though the sentiment uppermost in his diplomatic heart, had he put it into words, would probably have been as follows:—

‘It is lucky my mistress cannot see you at this moment, or she would hate you more cordially than ever, and my task would be even more difficult than it is!’

He made his obeisance, nevertheless, with the cool assurance and easy grace of a practised courtier. The Queen received him with a cordiality that she seemed anxious should not be lost on the bystanders.

‘A messenger from my loving cousin,’ said she, ‘is always welcome; how much more when he comes in the person of our old and esteemed friend Mr Randolph.’

The ambassador answered in a few well-chosen words for his sovereign and himself, dropping once more on his knee and craving permission to present an autograph letter and a costly ring from Elizabeth to the cousin whom she never saw. Mary received them both with expressions of unbounded delight, and the shrewd bearer, judging from his own experience and his own heart, argued that there must be no small weakness concealed under so much affection, and that it was unnatural for one woman to be so fond of another, unless she felt herself uncomfortably in her power.

Mary questioned him of his journey.

‘You have had a long ride,’ said the Queen, ‘and we can but give you a rude, though hearty, welcome. A long ride and a dangerous, for indeed the borders of both countries are not so quiet as we could wish, or as we hope to render them before many months are past.’

Randolph answered with ready tact—

‘It is to the Queen of Scotland’s servants I owe my safe arrival at Holyrood. Permit me to recall to your Majesty’s recollection an archer of your old Scottish Guard.’

With these words he drew Maxwell forward and presented him to the Queen. Randolph was a good-natured man when it cost nothing, and, moreover, it was a part of his profession to make a friend wherever it could be done at a small outlay. Mary received Walter Maxwell with the utmost condescension. Had she followed her own impulse, she would have shaken him cordially by both hands and bidden him a hearty welcome, for the sake of old times and the memory of her dear France; but monarchs must not give way to impulse, and indeed are better without such weaknesses as affections and associations. So he knelt low before her and kissed her royal hand, the while Mary Carmichael seemed to have discovered something so engrossing in the skirt of her mistress’s robe, that she never lifted her eyes from the embroidery with which it was adorned.

‘And how fared you in the wild Border-land?’ resumed the Queen, ‘the land of moss and moor—of jack and spear—a pleasant district if you want to breathe a horse or fly a hawk; but, as our loyal burghers say, bad to sleep in for those who would pull their boots off when they retire to rest.’ The Queen spoke of the border as though it brought agreeable associations to her mind, and indeed she dearly loved the open plain and the free air of heaven.

‘Had it not been for your warden, Madam,’ answered the courtier, ‘I might have slept in my boots till the day of judgment. This gallant archer and myself would scarce have had a tale to tell, if the Earl of Bothwell did not take to spur and snaffle as kindly as the wildest freebooter on the marches.’

‘How so?’ inquired Mary, the colour mantling to her cheek, and her eye sparkling with animated interest. The Queen was a Stuart to the marrow, and loved well to hear of a gallant feat of arms.

‘Why, thus, Madam,’ replied the ambassador. ‘Ere the moon had been up an hour, we saw ourselves beset by a party of some ten or twelve horsemen, who occupied a pass in front of us, and as we were but three, I leave your Majesty to judge that my feelings as a man whose trade is rather peace than war, were by no means agreeable. My companion, I may observe, was all for fighting, without counting.’ He spoke, as usual, in a tone that might be either jest or earnest; also, as usual, nothing within the range of his eye escaped him. He noted the Queen’s interest. He observed Mary Carmichael look up for an instant, and resume the study of her embroidery with a heightened colour. He caught Mistress Beton in the fact, examining his own person with an air of dignified approval that amounted to admiration; and it was not lost upon him, that while Lord James looked more anxious than common, others of the circle exchanged glances of deeper meaning than his plain tale would at first appear to warrant. All this he saw without seeming to see, and made a note of his observations.

‘And you charged them and cut your way through!’ exclaimed the Queen, with head up and flashing eyes, like some beautiful Amazon, clenching her slender hand the while as though it held a sword.

‘Charge them, your Majesty, we did perforce, for it was more dangerous to go back than forward; but the cutting seemed more on their part than ours. The situation, too, was ridiculous enough, had a man been in cue to laugh!’ resumed Randolph, in the same dry sneering tones. ‘My comrade’s horse was rolling on the heather, and he defending himself, like a second St George, on foot. My servant, saving your Grace’s presence, a beef-fed knave from Smithfield, roared and plunged about like a baited bull, till he received a coup-de-grÂce that would have cracked any skull but a Londoner’s, from a useful instrument that my Lord Bothwell tells me is called a Jedwood-axe. Whilst I myself, vainly endeavouring to protect person and property, was forced to abandon my valise, and turn all my attention to the defence of my own head.’

‘And they robbed you of your despatches!’ exclaimed Lord James, interrupting the narrator with ill-concealed anxiety, while three or four nobles glanced at each other with looks of covert triumph and amusement. ‘Indeed, Madam,’ added the future Regent, recovering himself with an effort, ‘these outrages are insupportable; they must be promptly punished and put down!’

‘And they shall be so,’ answered Mary, drawing herself up proudly, ‘if I ride through the “Debatable Land” myself in corslet and head-piece, as my fathers did before me. Alas! I fear steel harness is the most fitting attire for a Scottish Queen.—But you have not told us how you escaped,’ proceeded she, turning to Randolph with marked courtesy, and a softened manner. ‘You were rescued, were you not, at your utmost need, by our warden?’

‘The Earl of Bothwell did, indeed, come riding in like a whirlwind,’ replied Randolph, ‘at the very moment when I had resolved that my last sleep must be that booted one to which your Majesty’s citizens have such a rational objection. If the Warden of the Marches be chosen for his prowess in single combat, there never was a better selection! Man and horse went down before his lance without a struggle, and his very war-cry seemed to act upon the freebooters like the shriek of a hawk on a wisp of wild-fowl. Faith, they took to their wings like wild-fowl too, where it was hopeless to follow them, and I rode home to supper at Hermitage without the slightest wish to cultivate a farther acquaintance with that portion of your Majesty’s domains.’

The Queen laughed as he concluded. She had listened with obvious interest to the Englishman’s account of the skirmish, and seemed in heightened spirits when it was over. She beckoned to Mary Beton, and whispered in that lady’s ear, who retired from the circle, and presently returned, followed by a page, bearing a small gold cup, richly chased and decorated with precious stones. It was filled with wine, and Mary put her own lips to it ere she offered it to Randolph.

‘You will pledge us,’ said the Queen, with her sunny smile; ‘and when you drink to a lady, sir, not a drop must remain in the cup. If you examine it, you will see that its sides are ornamented with lance heads and trophies of arms. Will you favour Mary Stuart by keeping it in remembrance of your rough ride and the dangers you affronted in her service?’

Randolph bowed to the ground. He knew and appreciated the value of such a compliment, and whilst he saw in the giver’s frank countenance and cordial manner the sincerity of her good-will, his heart never smote him for the double part he was expressly sent there to play.

The Queen’s curiosity did not yet seem, however, to be thoroughly satisfied, and she questioned the ambassador with considerable minuteness as to the appearance and bearing of his foes. Randolph’s answers were marked by his usual tone of covert sarcasm; but she elicited no more from him than he had already detailed, save that the valise which he had lost contained in reality no papers of importance, or, indeed, any papers whatever, except a few private memoranda of his own—an announcement which seemed to clear Lord James’s brow from a load of care, while it created obvious disappointment on two or three other anxious faces.

The truth was, that Randolph, faithful to his own Queen in the faithless part which he enacted to another, was the bearer of certain instructions to Lord James, which were very different in tenor from the cordial letter he was charged by Elizabeth to deliver to her cousin. There was even yet a strong Catholic party about the court, to whom the possession of these despatches would have been an inestimable windfall; no less, indeed, than a foundation for a charge of treason against the Queen’s Protestant half-brother.

The attack, then, on Randolph and his companion, was prompted by nobler names than the Armstrongs and Elliotts, who lived by rapine on the borders; but their schemes had been baffled by the wily Englishman, who fought like a demon to preserve the valise, of which he was, in reality, utterly careless, and by that means led his assailants to believe that, in carrying it off, they had become possessed of a valuable prize.

‘I am charged by the Earl of Bothwell,’ said Randolph, at the conclusion of his narrative, ‘to present his unalterable duty to your Majesty. His lordship, not satisfied with extricating me from the sloughs of the “Debatable Land,” has sent his own henchman to conduct me safely to the capital.’

Mary started perceptibly, and the colour she could not entirely repress rose faintly to her cheek. Well did she know that her warden was thoroughly devoted to her interests, and that, in whatever intrigues he might be mixed, Bothwell’s loyalty was unshaken to his Queen. Perhaps she may have already asked herself whether it did not partake of that devotion which shed a halo over the days of chivalry. At all events, his sending his own henchman to the court, denoted some more than usual necessity for communicating with his sovereign; and Mary prepared to take her measures accordingly.

At that unhappy period, when not a day passed without the hatching of some plot, the development of some intrigue—when every man’s hand was against his neighbour, and noble preyed upon noble without scruple or remorse—even the Queen was obliged to remember that jealous eyes were on the watch for her every movement, and to practise dissimulation where dissimulation was alike unsafe and unworthy.

She turned to Mary Seton, who had been listening with an appearance of great amusement, and gave her some directions in a low voice, that even Randolph’s quick ear could not overhear.

The young lady curtseyed and withdrew, first casting a glance of considerable meaning at Mary Carmichael, who replied to it, by assuming as unconscious an air as was compatible with the red spot that burned in either cheek.

Walter Maxwell now found himself in the presence of the lady whom he had been determining so many long weeks that he would forget, and to see whom once more he had consistently abandoned his profession, and undertaken a long journey by sea and land. As is usually the case, the moment he had looked forward to, hardly repaid the anxiety of expectation. The maid-of-honour’s greeting was formal in the extreme, betraying a degree of coldness that seemed almost to argue aversion; and he was, of course, fool enough to be hurt and angry, instead of pleased and triumphant. Whoever saw a woman accost the man she loves with half the cordiality she displays to the merest acquaintance? On the contrary, she receives his greeting with a reserve that to any one else would be positive rudeness; and even when alone with him, preserves, for a space, a certain embarrassment in her womanly shame and fear, lest she should betray the tenth part of all she feels.

Mary Carmichael was no exception to the rule of her sex. In fact, she possessed more than her due share of that pride which, when brought in contact with a kind nature, produces so much sorrow, and with a proud one so much dissension. Although the Queen, who was again seated, had dismissed her from her duty as train-bearer, and she was at liberty to converse with all the freedom a crowded assembly permits, she could think of no more pertinent remark to make to her admirer than the following:—

‘You have brought us news from the French Court, Master Maxwell? Is it as gay as it used to be? I wonder you had the heart to leave it.’

There was something in her manner that repelled and irritated him.

‘I came to serve my Queen,’ he replied, stiffly, and in a tone as cold as her own. ‘Our sovereign knows how to appreciate loyalty, and does not forget her old adherents in the short space of a few months.’

‘Our sovereign would welcome a lapdog if it came from France, I think,’ replied the other, indifferently, utterly disregarding the future suffering her insincerity would cause herself. ‘Our sovereign has already expressed her satisfaction at seeing you, and would probably give you a yet heartier greeting if you could inform her of the latest fashions in head-tire and farthingale. We are far behindhand here, you see, in these barbarous regions!’

She spoke with an assumption of levity so unlike herself, that he was disgusted as well as angry; and, indeed, it was somewhat unjust that the maid-of-honour should thus revenge upon him her own confusion at his appearance.

‘I am no silk-mercer,’ he answered, rudely; ‘nor have I travelled so far to bring a lady the colour of a ribbon.’ And with a swelling heart and a feeling of pain he could not have believed possible without experiencing it, Walter Maxwell turned away, and lost himself amongst the crowd of surrounding courtiers.

Far different was the conversation carried on at the same moment by that courtly pair, the diplomatic Mr Thomas Randolph and the stately Mistress Mary Beton. The former, with his keen political foresight, had lately been reflecting that a close intimacy with at least one of the household, would open a fertile channel for information regarding the Queen’s private thoughts and doings, such as would be invaluable to him in his present capacity as confidential agent to Elizabeth. He had also observed the admiration which his late appearance had obviously elicited from the senior maid-of-honour; and he had no more scruple in deliberately proceeding to make love to that austere damsel than he would have had in putting her to the torture, had the latter process, rather than the former, been the most effectual way of gaining her confidence.

Mary Beton was not insensible to admiration. She was a woman, and, with all her magnificence of deportment, consequently inherited the propensities of her sex; but she would not have appreciated indiscriminate homage; and the dish to please her palate, if we may so speak, required to be elaborately dressed and seasoned, and sent up on a silver trencher at least.

To have won Mr Randolph’s good opinion, however, was a conquest of which any lady might be proud. The ambassador’s high position, his invariable assurance and self-reliance, his thorough knowledge of the world, and sarcastic readiness of tongue, had rendered him an object of considerable interest to the dames of the Scottish court. They exaggerated, as women will, his influence, his talents, his successes—diplomatic as well as social—and the favour with which he was regarded by the English Queen. They quoted him, they talked about him—above all, they were a little afraid of him; and the latter sensation possesses an indefinable charm for the venturous tendencies of the female character.

Mary Beton was startled to find how gratifying to her self-love were the attentions of the English courtier.

It was difficult to say by what subtle process he led her to infer that he took pleasure in her society. Every word he said might have been proclaimed unblushingly by the Lion-King-at-Arms. And yet before Randolph had spoken a dozen sentences to Mary Beton, he had dexterously led her to infer that she was the only woman in that crowded assemblage whom he considered worthy of his notice; that their ideas were sympathetic, their tastes similar, and that a mutual alliance must necessarily be established between them.

To-night he confined himself to a few adroit questions respecting the costumes in a proposed masque; and Mary Beton answered them with a freedom far different from her usual reticence. All he wanted was to pave the way to her confidence; and he was the last man to scare the steed by showing the halter while he proffered the corn. So he took his leave as soon as he saw he had made a favourable impression, and went his way cheerfully to sup with Morton and Maitland, leaving Mistress Beton in a most agreeable frame of mind, with her head, at least, an inch higher than usual.

We must now follow Mary Seton as she glided stealthily away from the presence to fulfil the Queen’s whispered command.

With an expression of more than usual intelligence on her saucy features, that active damsel hurried through the ante-rooms and galleries, and along certain dark stone passages, which she threaded with the confidence of one to whom these intricacies were familiar, till she reached a small vaulted apartment, from whence emanated a prevailing odour of beef and ale, denoting it to be the buttery. Spur and steel scabbard clattered on the stone floor of this resort, and rough voices might be heard jeering and pledging each other with a rude cordiality proportioned to the extent in which, as the Scotch say, ‘The malt got above the meal.’

A grave individual in black, however, presided over these festivities, and could always keep order by the summary process of refusing to draw more ale. This official started to behold the white figure of the maid-of-honour standing in the doorway; but Mary Seton, with a finger on her lip, simply said, ‘Lord Bothwell’s henchman;’ and the seneschal, interrupting that personage with the black jack of ale at his lips, brought him into the dark stone passage, and confided him to the radiant messenger before he was aware.

Dick Rutherford, though his faculties were of the keenest on a moonless night in Liddesdale, was somewhat confused on this his first visit to Holyrood; nor were his intellects necessarily brightened by a huge repast of beef, washed down with strong ale, after a long ride and a fourteen hours’ fast.

Once in the passage, he thought he was dreaming. A vision of loveliness in shining array, whose head reached to about the middle of his corslet, accosted him with hasty frankness.

‘You left Hermitage this morning?’ said she, laconically.

‘At daybreak,’ answered the borderer, scarcely reassured by this accurate knowledge of his movements.

‘You have a letter from the warden for the Queen?’ proceeded the damsel.

‘A letter!’ repeated ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ his Scottish caution coming rapidly to the rescue. ‘I’ll no say but there might be a bit parcel, or such like. If I’ve no lost it by the way,’ he added, doubtfully, and feeling the while under his corslet for the safety of the packet.

Mary Seton’s little foot stamped impatiently, whereat the giant started in his boots. She turned upon him quite fiercely.

‘A jackman does not lose a Queen’s packet,’ said she. ‘If he does, he may chance to lose his own head. Follow me!’ And she flitted on through the dark passages, turning at intervals to see that she was followed by the astonished borderer.

Presently they climbed a narrow, winding stair. After ascending several steps, the maid-of-honour stopped, opened a door, and pushing aside some heavy folds of tapestry, bade her follower enter, warning him not to strike his head against the low doorway.

‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh,’ dazzled and confused, found himself in a very small and brilliantly-lighted apartment. The roof was high; but the room itself was scarcely large enough to contain six or eight persons. A table prepared for supper, and laid for two, occupied the whole space between the window and the ample hearth, on which a wood fire blazed and crackled cheerfully. The borderer’s gaze was riveted at once by the gold plate on the supper-table, richly chased, and bearing the crown-royal on its burnished surface.

Mary Seton could not forbear a smile at his astonishment.

‘This is somewhat different from the head of a glen in Liddesdale,’ said she, with a ringing laugh. ‘Thanks to my good-nature, you have now seen a Queen’s chamber. Give me your packet, and get you gone!’

While she spoke, she ran her eye over the athletic figure of the borderer, magnificent in its size and strength when seen in that small apartment, and well set off by his warlike gear.

‘What a fine man!’ thought Mary Seton, as she scanned him. ‘And oh! what a good face, and how unlike a courtier!’

But on ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’s’ honest countenance might be seen an expression of great perplexity. In the first place, he was a good deal charmed, and not a little stupefied, by the beauty of his guide; in the next, he was extremely apprehensive of an immediate apparition of royalty; and, lastly, he was embarrassed how to refuse anything to the most fascinating young lady he had ever yet set eyes on. Nevertheless he answered stoutly, though deferentially—

‘My packet must be delivered into the Queen’s ain hand. You’re no the Queen hersel’, I’m thinking, though well you might be, my bonny lady, for I never saw the like o’ ye.’

The tone of admiration in which he spoke was so obviously involuntary as to be flattering in the extreme.

Mary Seton looked pleased, and continued more graciously—

‘I spoke to prove you. You can be faithful to a trust, can you? What is your name?’

‘They call me Dick Rutherford,’ he answered; ‘but in Liddesdale I’m “Dick-o’-the-Cleugh.” Ask the Liddesdale lads if I’m to be trusted! But I’m havering. The like o’ you will never set your bonny foot in Liddesdale, nor ask tidings o’ the like o’ me.’

Dick spoke almost despondently for a moment. He brightened up though at her reply.

‘A brave man and an honest is the noblest of God’s creatures. I believe you to be both. Although,’ she added, mischievously, ‘they’re scarce enough at Holyrood, there are a good many more brave men than honest on your side the country, or I’ve been misinformed.’

Dick was on the eve of entering into an elaborate defence of his kindred, and an explanation of border probity, which could not but have been edifying, when he was interrupted by the entrance of the Queen herself, about to sup, after the fatigues of the day, private and quietly, with her kinswoman the Countess of Argyle.

The borderer was now completely overwhelmed. Nevertheless, he delivered his packet with an honest simplicity, in favourable contrast to the manners of most of her ambassadors; and Mary Stuart acknowledged its receipt with a few gold pieces, and dismissed him with her pleasantest smile.

His previous conductor guided him back till she landed him in the court of the palace; and although ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ possessed to the full the loyalty of his countrymen, and a borderer’s devoted admiration for womanly beauty, he had no distinct recollection of the sovereign’s countenance, so completely was it effaced from his memory by her bewitching maid-of-honour.

Poor Dick! Many a long day afterwards his honest heart ached when he thought of that memorable night, recalling the merry eyes and the sunny hair and the dazzling figure of his fascinating guide. Brave, simple ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh!’ He had better have been up to his neck in the softest moss in all Liddesdale.