Bidding Riccio follow in her train, the Queen passed on through the cloisters of the palace towards her own apartments, returning with cold courtesy the salutations of her nobility. The courtiers looked meaningly at each other, and then at the new favourite, who slunk along behind his mistress, bearing her gorgeous missal, in ludicrous dismay. Secretary Maitland, a man whose wits were always at hand, and who could transact more business in ten minutes than the rest of the Privy Council in as many days, approached her Majesty with a huge bundle of papers under his arm, and the Queen, taking them from him without remark, handed the whole at once to Riccio. The secretary ventured on an expostulation.
‘They are for your Majesty’s _private_ information,’ said he, deferentially, but in a tone of marked disapproval.
‘And I have given them to my _private_ secretary,’ replied Mary, haughtily; thus hastily and injudiciously confirming the appointment that led to such disastrous results.
‘Shall I attend your Grace to explain their contents?’ asked Maitland, as coolly as if nothing unusual had taken place.
‘When I send for you, sir,’ answered the Queen; and even Maitland’s assurance was compelled to give way. He could but bow and fall back amongst the crowd.
Some of the nobles were so offended that they quitted the court on the spot; others thought it a bad opportunity to press their respective suits with the sovereign, and lounged off, as it were inadvertently, to their different amusements and occupations--one to fly a hawk, another to try a horse, not a few to break their fast on rich food and strong potations; the while they discussed the gossip of the court, which had received no inconsiderable fillip from the events of the morning.
Lord James walked gravely away to Mr Randolph’s lodging. His brother, the gay lay-prior of Coldinghame, mounted his horse to join a merry-making on Leith sands. The Earl of Huntly and the Earl Mareschal departed to prepare an ordinance for the council, discussing, to all appearance, weighty matters of state; yet, perhaps, could their dialogue have been overheard, it related to far less important topics. The courtyard of the palace was almost deserted, and Mary, dismissing her maid-of-honour and the Italian, prepared to take a solitary turn up and down the cloisters, to soothe her temper and compose her troubled mind.
