Still, we have seen no contemporary evidence, or hint of evidence, that love for Bothwell was Mary’s master. Her conduct, from her recovery of power, after Riccio’s murder, to her reconciliation of Lethington with Bothwell, is, on the face of it, in accordance with the interests and wishes of her brother, Moray, who hated Bothwell. As the English envoy, Randolph, had desired, she brought Moray to Court. She permitted him to attend in the Castle while she was in child-bed, and ‘refused Bothwell.’ She protected Moray from Bothwell’s and Darnley’s intrigues. She took Moray’s side, as to the readmission of Lethington to favour, though Bothwell stormed. She even made Moray her confidant as to money received from the Pope: perhaps Moray had his share! Lethington and Moray, not Bothwell, seem to have had her confidence. At Moray’s request she annulled her restoration of consistorial jurisdiction to Archbishop Hamilton. Moray and Lethington, not Bothwell, opened the proposals at Craigmillar. Such is the evidence of history. On the other side are the scandals reported by Buchanan, and, in details, Buchanan erred: for example, as to the ride to Hermitage. If Mary knew too much, how much was known by ‘the noble, stainless Moray’? As to Moray’s foreknowledge of Darnley’s murder, can it be denied? He did not deny that he was at Craigmillar during the conference as to ‘dispatching’ Darnley. If the news of the plan for arresting or killing him reached underlings like Hiegait and Walker, could it be hidden from Moray, the man most in Mary’s confidence, and likely to be best served by spies? He glosses over his signature to the band of early October, 1566--the anti-Darnley band--as if it were a mere ‘sign of reconciliation’ which he promised to subscribe ‘before I could be admitted to the Queen’s presence, or have any show of her favour.’ But, when he did sign, he had possessed Mary’s favour for more than three months, and she had even saved him from a joint intrigue of Bothwell and Darnley. In January, 1569, Moray declared that, except the band of early October, 1566, ‘no other band was proposed to me in any wise,’ either before or after Darnley’s murder. And next he says that he would never subscribe any band, ‘howbeit I was earnestly urged and pressed thereto by the Queen’s commandment.’[118] Does he mean that no band was proposed to him, and yet that the Queen did press him to sign a band? Or does he mean that he would never have signed, even if the Queen had asked him to do so? We can never see this man’s face; the fingers through which he looks on at murder hide his shifty eyes. VI _THE MURDER OF DARNLEY_