Jane Kennedy suggested that she should retire early and sleep while she could, for at any moment she might hear that the journey must continue.
Jane and Lady Livingstone were helping her to retire when the door of the chamber was silently pushed open. All three turned somewhat startled. There was no one at the door; but while they stared at it, it was gently opened further and a child came into the room. He was little more than a baby, and he was chuckling as though he were enjoying himself. He stopped a short distance from the group at the mirror and then, with a gurgle of laughter, darted at the Queen and threw himself against her.
Mary picked him up and sat him on her lap.
“And who are you?” she asked.
He stared at her wonderingly.
“So you have come to see me?” she asked.
He nodded and caught at one of the rings on her fingers which completely absorbed his attention.
He was beautiful and, as she looked at the plump wrists with their creases of soft flesh, Mary was overcome with emotion. This child was about the same age as her little James. In that moment she forgot all ambitions, all desires but one—to have her baby with her again. She caught at the boy and held him against her so tightly that he wriggled in protest while she kissed the soft hair and the rounded cheek. He submitted, not without some displeasure, and when she loosened her embrace he seized her fingers again and returned to his examination of the ring.
There were sounds of consternation outside the apartment, and when Jane Kennedy went to the door she found the child’s nurse there.
“He is safe,” Jane told the woman. “He is now on the Queen’s lap examining her jewels. Come in. The Queen will wish to speak to you.”
So the nurse entered and, at the sight of her, the child turned toward Mary and gripped her hand tightly, and began to chant “No—go away. He wants to stay.”
“You are his nurse and come to look for him?” said the Queen with a smile. “Do you know, I think he would prefer to stay with me.”
The nurse made an embarrassed curtsy and said: “Now that he can toddle about he’s more than one body’s work, Your Majesty.”
“I am glad he toddled into my apartment,” said the Queen. “And you, my little man, are you glad you came to see me?”
The child regarded her solemnly and chuckled. “He stay,” he announced.
“Could you leave him with me for a while?” asked the Queen.
“Why . . . yes, I suppose so, Your Majesty. It was just that . . . it’s his bedtime and . . . ”
“Leave him for a while,” said the Queen. “I will tell his parents that he is with me.”
As the nurse curtsied and went out, Mary said: “My little one must be very like this. While I hold this child in my arms I can almost believe that he is my own son.”
Then she saw that about the child were attached leading-strings, and she thought of those which little James had once worn and how, when she had visited him in Stirling Castle and knew that she had to be parted from him, she had taken his leading-strings with her and kept them as something precious. They had been lost to her after Carberry Hill, but she often thought of them with regret.
The little boy was absorbed with interest in the Queen’s fingers; he then examined her face and, as his plump fingers explored it, Mary caught them and kissed the little palms.
The boy wriggled off her lap and toddled over to a table behind which he hid himself, to emerge after a second or so almost choking with laughter. Then he hid himself again, and the Queen and her women pretended to hunt for him.
This game was in progress when the boy’s mother appeared.
“You have come for your son?” asked Mary.
“I fear he is disturbing Your Majesty.”
“He is giving me much pleasure. May I keep him awhile?”
“If it is Your Majesty’s wish.”
The child had come out and threw himself at his mother’s skirts. He pointed to the Queen, as though to draw his mother’s attention to her.
“Look” he cried. “Look!”
His mother lifted him up and he continued to cry: “Look!” turning to point at Mary.
“Come,” said his mother, “it is time you were in bed. I am sorry, Your Majesty. I know you wish to rest.”
“It was a pleasure to meet your son,” Mary answered.
The little boy, sensing that he was about to be taken away, turned in his mother’s arms and held out his own to the Queen.
“He wants to stay with that one,” he cried.
“Hush! Hush!” said his mother.
But Mary went to him and again took him in her arms. “I should like to keep him with me this night.”
“Your Majesty, he will disturb you.”
“I do not think so. If he is agreeable, it would please me to have him in my bed this night.”
The child’s mother was secretly delighted at the Queen’s pleasure in her son, so she kissed him and left him. As for the boy, he was delighted to be with Mary and her ladies; and when the Queen lay in bed, the boy was beside her.
He slept almost at once and Mary slept too, although several times during the night she awoke and remembered the child; and she wept a little out of longing for her own little James who had been taken from her.
In the morning she left Hazlefield for Dundrennan Abbey, but before she went she took a little ruby ring from her finger and gave it to the boy’s mother.
“I pray you,” she said, “give him this when he is a little older, and tell him that it is a gift from the Queen to whom his company gave such pleasure on what may well be her last night in Scotland for many a long year.”
MARY WAITED with her friends at the secluded Bay of the Abbey of Burn-foot on the Solway Firth. The vessel which George had been able to procure was nothing but a fishing-boat, and there was great misgiving among those assembled there.
Mary uttered a prayer as she stepped into the boat: A safe passage across the water, a warm welcome from the English Queen, the help she needed, and soon she would be back in Scotland.
Several of her friends were looking at her anxiously reminding her that there was still time to change her mind; but Mary had no intention of doing that. She was filled with hope on that beautiful May morning.
The surf in the Abbey Creek impeded the boat for some minutes, and then they were out on the Firth.
Scotland lay behind them—before them was England and what Mary believed to be the way back to her throne.
IV
Carlisle
THE ENGLISH COAST WAS IN SIGHT. For four hours the fishing-boat in which were the Queen and her sixteen followers, together with four sailors, had been on the Solway Firth endeavoring to battle its way against a strong breeze. There had been an occasion during the trip when Mary had thought that they would be blown out to sea; in which case she knew that her friends would have taken that as an omen that their destination should have been France.
But now they were within a few minutes of landing, and already the inhabitants of that stretch of coast had noticed the ship and were coming down to the shore to see who was descending upon them.
These simple people stared in astonishment at the strangers, and immediately all eyes were focused on the tall woman who carried herself with such dignity and whose beauty, in spite of her tattered and soiled gown and the fact that her hair was escaping from her coif, was such as to startle them.
It was Herries who spoke. “This is the Queen of Scotland. Who is the lord of these parts?”
While some of the people pointed to a mansion on an incline a little distance from the coast, one or two of the younger men began to run in that direction, and with satisfaction Herries understood that they were going to acquaint someone of importance of the arrival.