He had to steel himself not to turn from his principles and offer her his help. He might have told her that certain of the nobles were planning to liberate her. That Huntley, the Cock o’ the North, and the leading Catholic, was ready to bring his Highlanders to her support. That Fleming, Argyle, Herries and others were with him. But to do so would merely serve to stiffen her resistance and he had not been sent to Lochleven to do that.

Mary said mournfully: “Sir Robert Melville, have I not always dealt fairly with you? Why do you place yourself beside my enemies?”

“Your Majesty, if it were in my power to help you . . . ”

She turned back to him and stretched out a white hand, perfectly shaped but very fragile.

“You can help me,” she said. “You can take a message to my friends. Surely I have some friends. The Flemings . . . the Setons. I can always rely on them. Mary Fleming and Mary Seton were as my sisters. Where is my brother? Why cannot I see him? I do not believe he would act against me.”

“I can take no message from you to anyone outside Lochleven,” Melville told her. “I came here but to advise you to take this course which is the only one left to you.”

“Abdication!” she repeated.

Melville took a step closer to the bed and looked furtively over his shoulder.

“Your Majesty, if you signed a formal Abdication now, and later escaped from this place . . . you could always repudiate that signature with the plea that you had signed under compulsion.”

She looked at him sharply. “And that is your advice?”

He did not answer, but lowered his eyes.

“How can I know whom to trust?” she demanded.

Melville seemed to come to a sudden decision. “Your Majesty, may I speak frankly?”

“I should be pleased if you would.”

“I believe Scotland would be happy to see you on the throne if you would but repudiate Bothwell.”

“Repudiate my husband!”

“Scotland will never accept him, Madam . . . nor you while you remain his wife.”

“I am his wife. Nothing can alter that.”

“That unholy marriage must be repudiated. Only if you are ready to mount the throne without him at your side will you be allowed to do so.”

Mary was silent. To speak of him was to make his image rise vividly before her eyes; she could almost hear his rough laugh, feel his rough hands on her. Bothwell, she thought, where are you now? And she was sick with longing for the touch of his flesh against hers.

“It is the only way, Madam. I implore you to realize this before it is too late.”

“Where is Bothwell?” she asked, and she sounded breathless.

“I heard that he is in the North with Huntley.”

“Then he is collecting troops. He will come to rescue me from my enemies. Then it will be their turn to despair.”

Melville shook his head. “The whole country is against him. Scotland finished with him on the night Darnley was murdered.”

“There is much you do not understand.”

“Come, Your Majesty, give me your promise that you will sign the deed of Abdication. Give me your promise that you will repudiate Bothwell.”

Mary crossed her hands over her breasts and suddenly cried: “You are asking me to repudiate the father of the child I am carrying. I will never do that.”

“So . . . you are carrying a child?”

Mary lowered her head. “I long for its birth,” she said. “I long to have a living being to remind me of him.”

Melville looked at her sadly.

Was there ever such an unfortunate woman? Turned from the throne! Loyal to a murderer whose child she now carried!

Indeed she must be persuaded to sign her Abdication.

“Please leave me,” said Mary. “I am too weak as yet to deal with state matters.”

Sorrowfully Melville left her apartments.

He would have to report his failure to Lindsay and Ruthven.

THAT NIGHT Mary awoke in pain. She called in alarm for Jane Kennedy who came hurrying to her bedside.

“Bring me my apothecary,” she cried. “I feel sick unto death.”

The apothecary came with Marie Courcelles in his wake.

The man took one look at his royal mistress and, turning to the two women, he wrung his hands and cried: “The Queen is grievously sick.”

Then he recovered himself and began to give orders. He wanted to call a physician but Mary heard this and forbade him to do so.

“You three are the only ones in this castle whom I have reason to trust. Do what you can for me and we will leave the rest to God.”

The apothecary mixed a hot brew for her and when Mary had taken it, he whispered to Jane: “What can be expected! She has suffered so much. It is bound to affect the child she carried.”

“She is in danger?” whispered Marie Courcelles.

“Birth is always dangerous; but an unnatural birth doubly so.”

Tossing on her bed Mary was calling for Bothwell and little James, then murmuring in French, her mind obviously wandering, while Jane and Marie knelt and prayed that their mistress might emerge from this new trial as she had from all others. Their prayers were answered, for before morning Mary had been delivered of stillborn twins. “With care she will recover,” the apothecary assured them.

Marie and Jane exchanged glances. Bothwell’s twins! they were thinking. And they hoped, for the sake of the Queen, that the loss of his children would be the end of his connection with Mary.

MARY had not left her bed since her miscarriage. She felt physically weak, but strangely enough she could contemplate the future in a different light.

She mourned the loss of her twins and thought of them continually. His twins. She could not help wondering how like him they would have been. It had been too early to determine their sex, and she was almost glad of this; she had enough sorrow, and it seemed easy to forget them if she did not know them as belonging to either sex.

She shuddered to contemplate what their future would have been.

But her listlessness was less defined. Pregnancy had had its effect on her mentally as well as physically; and now that she was no longer pregnant, her thoughts turned more and more to the prospects of escape; and the desire to win back her crown was stronger than it had been since she had turned her back on Carberry Hill.

She lay in bed watching the wild geese flying across the lake, listening to the tramp of the sentinel outside her window, wondering now and then whether that fresh-faced boy, who had given her looks which long experience, both in the French and Scottish Courts, had taught her to interpret, was still in the castle.

As she lay there Jane Kennedy came into the room to tell her that Melville was back at Lochleven and that he, with Lindsay and Ruthven, were now demanding to be brought to the Queen without delay.

“I will receive them,” said Mary; and within a few minutes they were at her bedside.

Melville began by expressing his sorrow to find her still indisposed and his hopes that she would soon recover.

She nodded in acknowledgment of his good wishes, but her eyes went to the scroll he carried and which she guessed to be the documents relative to the Abdication. Her hazel eye hardened as she looked up to find Lindsay’s baleful black ones fixed upon her.

“I think I know to what I owe the honor of your coming, my lords,” she said with a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

“Sir Robert Melville has acquainted you already with the wishes of the Confederate Lords,” began Lindsay.

“They are not my wishes,” retorted the Queen.

“You will realize, Madam, that on account of your present position, your wishes are of no great moment.”

The man was insolent; and this depressed her. Lindsay must believe that her hopes of escape were poor, since he treated her with such a lack of respect. How she hated him!

She addressed herself to Melville. “I gave you my answer when you visited me on a previous occasion. Need you inflict this on me again?”