Mary Stuart Read Online

Come, sweet friend,

Let us go seek our kind with horse and hound

To keep us witless company; belike,

There shall we find our fellows.

Exeunt Mary Stuart and Mary Beaton.

PAULET.

Would to God

This day had done its office! mine till then

Holds me the verier prisoner.

Enter Phillipps.

PHILLIPPS.

She will go?

PAULET.

Gladly, poor sinful fool; more gladly, sir,

Than I go with her.

PHILLIPPS.

Yet you go not far;

She is come too near her end of wayfaring

To tire much more men's feet that follow.

PAULET.

Ay.

She walks but half blind yet to the end; even now

She spake of you, and questioned doubtfully

What here you came to do, or held what place

Or commerce with me: when you caught her eye,

It seems your courtesy by some graceless chance

Found but scant grace with her.

PHILLIPPS.

'Tis mine own blame,

Or fault of mine own feature; yet forsooth

I greatly covet not their gracious hap

Who have found or find most grace with her.

I pray,

Doth Wade go with you?

PAULET.

Nay, – what, know you not? –

But with Sir Thomas Gorges, from the court,

To drive this deer at Tixall.

PHILLIPPS.

Two years since,

He went, I think, commissioned from the queen

To treat with her at Sheffield?

PAULET.

Ay, and since

She hath not seen him; who being known of here

Had haply given her swift suspicion edge

Or cause at least of wonder.

PHILLIPPS.

And I doubt

His last year's entertainment oversea

As our queen's envoy to demand of France

Her traitor Morgan's body, whence he brought

Nought save dry blows back from the duke d'Aumale

And for that prisoner's quarters here to hang

His own not whole but beaten, should not much

Incline him to more good regard of her

For whose love's sake her friends have dealt with him

So honourably, nor she that knows of this

Be the less like to take his presence here

For no good presage to her: you have both done well

To keep his hand as close herein as mine.

PAULET.

Sir, by my faith I know not, for myself,

What part is for mine honour, or wherein

Of all this action laid upon mine hand

The name and witness of a gentleman

May gain desert or credit, and increase

In seed and harvest of good men's esteem

For heritage to his heirs, that men unborn

Whose fame is as their name derived from his

May reap in reputation; and indeed

I look for none advancement in the world

Further than this that yet for no man's sake

Would I forego, to keep the name I have

And honour, which no son of mine shall say

I have left him not for any deed of mine

As perfect as my sire bequeathed it me:

I say, for any word or work yet past

No tongue can thus far tax me of decline

From that fair forthright way of gentleman,

Nor shall for any that I think to do

Or aught I think to say alive: howbeit,

I were much bounden to the man would say

But so much for me in our mistress' ear,

The treasurer's, or your master Walsingham's,

Whose office here I have undergone thus long

And had I leave more gladly would put off

Than ever I put on me; being not one

That out of love toward England even or God

At mightiest men's desire would lightly be

For loyalty disloyal, or approved

In trustless works a trusty traitor; this

He that should tell them of me, to procure

The speedier end here of this work imposed,

Should bind me to him more heartily than thanks

Might answer.

PHILLIPPS.

Good Sir Amyas, you and I

Hold no such office in this dangerous time

As men make love to for their own name's sake

Or personal lust of honour; but herein

I pray you yet take note, and pardon me

If I for the instance mix your name with mine,

That no man's private honour lies at gage,

Nor is the stake set here to play for less

Than what is more than all men's names alive,

The great life's gage of England; in whose name

Lie all our own impledged, as all our lives

For her redemption forfeit, if the cause

Call once upon us; not this gift or this,

Or what best likes us or were gladliest given

Or might most honourably be parted with

For our more credit on her best behalf,

Doth she we serve, this land that made us men,

Require of all her children; but demands

Of our great duty toward her full deserts

Even all we have of honour or of life,

Of breath or fame to give her. What were I

Or what were you, being mean or nobly born,

Yet moulded both of one land's natural womb

And fashioned out of England, to deny

What gift she crave soever, choose and grudge

What grace we list to give or what withhold,

Refuse and reckon with her when she bids

Yield up forsooth not life but fame to come,

A good man's praise or gentleman's repute,

Or lineal pride of children, and the light

Of loyalty remembered? which of these

Were worth our mother's death, or shame that might

Fall for one hour on England? She must live

And keep in all men's sight her honour fast

Though all we die dishonoured; and myself

Know not nor seek of men's report to know

If what I do to serve her till I die

Be honourable or shameful, and its end

Good in men's eyes or evil; but for God,

I find not why the name or fear of him

Herein should make me swerve or start aside

Through faint heart's falsehood as a broken bow

Snapped in his hand that bent it, ere the shaft

Find out his enemies' heart, and I that end

Whereto I am sped for service even of him

Who put this office on us.

PAULET.

Truly, sir,

I lack the wordy wit to match with yours,

Who speak no more than soldier; this I know,

I am sick in spirit and heart to have in hand

Such work or such device of yours as yet

For fear and conscience of what worst may come

I dare not well bear through.

PHILLIPPS.

Why, so last month

You writ my master word and me to boot

I had set you down a course for many things

You durst not put in execution, nor

Consign the packet to this lady's hand

That was returned from mine, seeing all was well,

And you should hold yourself most wretched man

If by your mean or order there should spring

Suspicion 'twixt the several messengers

Whose hands unwitting each of other ply

The same close trade for the same golden end,

While either holds his mate a faithful fool

And all their souls, baseborn or gently bred,

Are coined and stamped and minted for our use

And current in our service; I thereon

To assuage your doubt and fortify your fear

Was posted hither, where by craft and pains

The web is wound up of our enterprise

And in our hands we hold her very heart

As fast as all this while we held impawned

The faith of Barnes that stood for Gifford here

To take what letters for his mistress came

From southward through the ambassador of France

And bear them to the brewer, your honest man,

Who wist no further of his fellowship

Than he of Gifford's, being as simple knaves

As knavish each in his simplicity,

And either serviceable alike, to shift

Between my master's hands and yours and mine

Her letters writ and answered to and fro;

And all these faiths as weathertight and safe

As was the box that held those letters close

At bottom of the barrel, to give up

The charge there sealed and ciphered, and receive

A charge as great in peril and in price

To yield again, when they drew off the beer

That weekly served this lady's household whom

We have drained as dry of secrets drugged with death

As ever they this vessel, and return

To her own lips the dregs she brewed or we

For her to drink have tempered. What of this

Should seem so strange now to you, or distaste

So much the daintier palate of your thoughts,

That I should need reiterate you by word

The work of us o'erpast, or fill your ear

With long foregone recital, that at last

Your soul may start not or your sense recoil

To know what end we are come to, or what hope

We took in hand to cut this peril off

By what close mean soe'er and what foul hands

Unwashed of treason, which it yet mislikes

Your knightly palm to touch or close with, seeing

The grime of gold is baser than of blood

That barks their filthy fingers? yet with these

Must you cross hands and grapple, or let fall

The trust you took to treasure.

PAULET.

Sir, I will,

Even till the queen take back that gave it; yet

Will not join hands with these, nor take on mine

The taint of their contagion; knowing no cause

That should confound or couple my good name

With theirs more hateful than the reek of hell.

You had these knaveries and these knaves in charge,

Not I that knew not how to handle them

Nor whom to choose for chief of treasons, him

That in mine ignorant eye, unused to read

The shameful scripture of such faces, bare

Graved on his smooth and simple cheek and brow

No token of a traitor; yet this boy,

This milk-mouthed weanling with his maiden chin,

This soft-lipped knave, late suckled as on blood

And nursed of poisonous nipples, have you not

Found false or feared by this, whom first you found

A trustier thief and worthier of his wage

Than I, poor man, had wit to find him? I,

That trust no changelings of the church of hell,

No babes reared priestlike at the paps of Rome,

Who have left the old harlot's deadly dugs drawn dry,

I lacked the craft to rate this knave of price,

Your smock-faced Gifford, at his worth aright,

Which now comes short of promise.

PHILLIPPS.

O, not he;

Let not your knighthood for a slippery word

So much misdoubt his knaveship; here from France,

On hint of our suspicion in his ear

Half jestingly recorded, that his hand

Were set against us in one politic track

With his old yoke-fellows in craft and creed,

Betraying not them to us but ourselves to them,

My Gilbert writes me with such heat of hand

Such piteous protestation of his faith

So stuffed and swoln with burly-bellied oaths

And God and Christ confound him if he lie

And Jesus save him as he speaks mere truth,

My gracious godly priestling, that yourself

Must sure be moved to take his truth on trust

Or stand for him approved an atheist.

PAULET.

Well,

That you find stuff of laughter in such gear

And mirth to make out of the godless mouth

Of such a twice-turned villain, for my part

I take in token of your certain trust,

And make therewith mine own assurance sure,

To see betimes an end of all such craft

As takes the faith forsworn of loud-tongued liars

And blasphemies of brothel-breathing knaves

To build its hope or break its jest upon;

And so commend you to your charge, and take

Mine own on me less gladly; for by this

She should be girt to ride, as the old saw saith,

Out of God's blessing into the warm sun

And out of the warm sun into the pit

That men have dug before her, as herself

Had dug for England else a deeper grave

To hide our hope for ever: yet I would

This day and all that hang on it were done.

Exeunt.

Scene III. Before Tixall Park

Mary Stuart, Mary Beaton, Paulet, Curle, Nau, and Attendants.

MARY STUART.

If I should never more back steed alive

But now had ridden hither this fair day

The last road ever I must ride on earth,

Yet would I praise it, saying of all days gone

And all roads ridden in sight of stars and sun

Since first I sprang to saddle, here at last

I had found no joyless end. These ways are smooth,

And all this land's face merry; yet I find

The ways even therefore not so good to ride,

And all the land's face therefore less worth love,

Being smoother for a palfrey's maiden pace

And merrier than our moors for outlook; nay,

I lie to say so; there the wind and sun

Make madder mirth by midsummer, and fill

With broader breath and lustier length of light

The heartier hours that clothe for even and dawn

Our bosom-belted billowy-blossoming hills

Whose hearts break out in laughter like the sea

For miles of heaving heather. Ye should mock

My banished praise of Scotland; and in faith

I praised it but to prick you on to praise

Of your own goodly land; though field and wood

Be parked and parcelled to the sky's edge out,

And this green Stafford moorland smooth and strait

That we but now rode over, and by ours

Look pale for lack of large live mountain bloom

Wind-buffeted with morning, it should be

Worth praise of men whose lineal honour lives

In keeping here of history: but meseems

I have heard, Sir Amyas, of your liberal west

As of a land more affluent-souled than this

And fruitful-hearted as the south-wind; here

I find a fair-faced change of temperate clime

From that bald hill-brow in a broad bare plain

Where winter laid us both his prisoners late

Fast by the feet at Tutbury; but men say

Your birthright in this land is fallen more fair

In goodlier ground of heritage: perchance,

Grief to be now barred thence by mean of me,

Who less than you can help it or myself,

Makes you ride sad and sullen.

PAULET.

Madam, no;

I pray you lay not to my wilful charge

The blame or burden of discourtesy

That but the time should bear which lays on me

This weight of thoughts untimely.

MARY STUART.

Nay, fair sir,

If I, that have no cause in life to seem

Glad of my sad life more than prisoners may,

Take comfort yet of sunshine, he methinks

That holds in ward my days and nights might well

Take no less pleasure of this broad blithe air

Than his poor charge that too much troubles him.

What, are we nigh the chase?

PAULET.

Even hard at hand.

MARY STUART.

Can I not see between the glittering leaves

Gleam the dun hides and flash the startled horns

That we must charge and scatter? Were I queen

And had a crown to wager on my hand,

Sir, I would set it on the chance to-day

To shoot a flight beyond you.

PAULET.

Verily,

The hazard were too heavy for my skill:

I would not hold your wager.

MARY STUART.

No! and why?

PAULET.

For fear to come a bowshot short of you

On the left hand, unluckily.

MARY STUART.

My friend,

Our keeper's wit-shaft is too keen for ours

To match its edge with pointless iron. – Sir,

Your tongue shoots further than my hand or eye

With sense or aim can follow. – Gilbert Curle,

Your heart yet halts behind this cry of hounds,

Hunting your own deer's trail at home, who lies

Now close in covert till her bearing-time

Be full to bring forth kindly fruit of kind

To love that yet lacks issue; and in sooth

I blame you not to bid all sport go by

For one white doe's sake travailing, who myself

Think long till I may take within mine arm

The soft fawn suckling that is yeaned not yet

But is to make her mother. We must hold

A goodly christening feast with prisoner's cheer

And mirth enow for such a tender thing

As will not weep more to be born in bonds

Than babes born out of gaoler's ward, nor grudge

To find no friend more fortunate than I

Nor happier hand to welcome it, nor name

More prosperous than poor mine to wear, if God

Shall send the new-made mother's breast, for love

Of us that love his mother's maidenhood,

A maid to be my namechild, and in all

Save love to them that love her, by God's grace,

Most unlike me; for whose unborn sweet sake

Pray you meantime be merry. – 'Faith, methinks

Here be more huntsmen out afield to-day

And merrier than my guardian. Sir, look up;

What think you of these riders? – All my friends,

Make on to meet them.

PAULET.

There shall need no haste;

They ride not slack or lamely.