“Madam,” said Lord Seyton, leading her into a room prepared for her for
nine months, “your Majesty must have need of repose, after the fatigue
and the emotions you have gone through since yesterday morning; you may
sleep here in peace, and disquiet yourself for nothing: any noise you
may hear will be made by a reinforcement of friends which we are
expecting. As to our enemies, your Majesty has nothing to fear from them
so long as you inhabit the castle of a Seyton.”
The queen again thanked all her deliverers, gave her hand to Douglas to
kiss one last time, kissed Little William on the forehead, and named him
her favourite page for the future; then, profiting by the advice given
her, entered her room where Mary Seyton, to the exclusion of every other
woman, claimed the privilege of performing about her the duties with
which she had been charged during their eleven months’ captivity in
Lochleven Castle.
On opening her eyes, Mary Stuart thought she had had one of those dreams
so gainful to prisoners, when waking they see again the bolts on their
doors and the bars on their windows. So the queen, unable to believe the
evidence of her senses, ran, half dressed, to the window. The courtyard
was filled with soldiers, and these soldiers all friends who had
hastened at the news of her escape; she recognised the banners of her
faithful friends, the Seytons, the Arbroaths, the Herries, and the
Hamiltons, and scarcely had she been seen at the window than all these
banners bent before her, with the shouts a hundred times repeated of
“Long live Mary of Scotland! Long live our queen!” Then, without giving
heed to the disarray of her toilet, lovely and chaste with her emotion
and her happiness, she greeted them in her turn, her eyes full of tears;
but this time they were tears of joy. However, the queen recollected
that she was barely covered, and blushing at having allowed herself to
be thus carried away in her ecstasy, she abruptly drew back, quite rosy
with confusion.
Then she had an instant’s womanly fright: she had fled from Lochleven
Castle in the Douglas livery, and without either the leisure or the
opportunity for taking women’s clothes with her. But she could not
remain attired as a man; so she explained her uneasiness to Mary Seyton,
who responded by opening the closets in the queen’s room. They were
furnished, not only with robes, the measure for which, like that of the
suit, had been taken from Mary Fleming, but also with all the
necessaries for a woman’s toilet. The queen was astonished: it was like
being in a fairy castle.
“Mignonne,” said she, looking one after another at the robes, all the
stuffs of which were chosen with exquisite taste, “I knew your father
was a brave and loyal knight, but I did not think him so learned in the
matter of the toilet. We shall name him groom of the wardrobe.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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