SCENE THREE — QUEENS AND MAIDS
LA CORBIE: (rhyming) Ony queen has an army o’ ladies and maids
That she juist snaps her fingers tae summon.
And yet … I ask you, when’s a queen a queen
And when’s a queen juist a wummin?
(She cracks her whip, and the hectic and garish but proud ELIZABETH bobs a curtsy, immediately becoming BESSIE)
MARY: Bessie, do you think she’ll meet me?
BESSIE: Aye, your majesty, she’ll meet wi’ ye face to face at York, an’ you’re richt, gin ye talk thegither it’ll a’ be soarted oot. If ye hunt a’ they courtiers and politicians an’ men awa!
LA CORBIE: She shall never meet you face to face.
MARY: They say she wears my portrait I sent her in that wee jewelled case hanging’ fae her girdle. And she sent me an emerald.
LA CORBIE: Oh aye …!
MARY: I’m shivering … (Laughing it off unsuccessfully) Maytime, and it’s cauld enough to gie me chair de poule … Ah dinna think Ah’ll ever understand this country o’ mine.
BESSIE: The doctor says we have to mak’ shair you dinna get a’ melancholick, your majesty.
MARY: Three years! I mind me and the Maries oot on deck chitterin’ in oor fine French frocks peerin’ through the glaur o’ the air for ae glimpse o’ my kingdom! Three years and I havena seen it yet!
BESSIE: Naw, naw, ye’ve never seen your country! You’ve never made your progresses through the length and breadth o’ the land.
MARY: The stour o’ the air clears, then, sherp, kafuffle atween a Lennox an’ Hamilton, a Hamilton and a Douglas … Haar fae the sea … Cauld … rebecks and chanters a pretty masque and a goldhaired bairn presents me wi’ a filigree hert that’s fu’ o’ golden coins, new minted. Clouds. A flytin’ fae Knox. Daurkness. A mad poet tries to mak’ a hoor o’ me. Wisps … A revel! Smoke … A Banquet for the ambassador new fae Spain. Fog. Α bricht affray in the Canongate, a bloody clash at the Butter Tron, a murdered bairn in the Grassmarket, sunshine, and a ragged, starvin’ crowd o’ cheerin’ cheerin’ weans jostle to touch ma velvet goon as I go by. My kingdom. Alternately brutal and boring. And I canny mak sense o’ it at a’.
BESSIE: It’s the weather, it’s yir sair side. Doctor says we’ll hae to gie ye duck eggs whiskit up in wine tae keep the mist o’ yir melancholia awa’.
MARY: It’s daein’ nothin’, Bess! The Queen. And nae power tae mak’ my country flourish.
I want to marry, Bessie, I want to marry and begin my reign at last.
BESSIE: In good time. A guid man in guid time, madam.
LA CORBIE: Aye, gie her a guid man, she’ll gie him a guid time! (And with a drumbeat, or a flash of lightning — change, ELIZABETH, proud queen, is on a pedestal, preening, as MARY becomes, in that instant, modest MARIAN, ELIZABETH’s gentlewoman)
ELIZABETH: Marian, what do they say she is like?
MARIAN: I don’t know, madam.
ELIZABETH: Is she fairer than me? What do they say?
MARIAN: They say she is the fairest queen in Scotland, and you are the fairest queen in England, madam.
(ELIZABETH pinches MARIAN’s cheek and laughs. They get playful, parodic …)
ELIZABETH: And how do you know this?
MARIAN: (laughing) Because I heard you ask her envoy Melville.
ELIZABETH: And what did he say — when I pressed him? (She pinches her face again)
MARIAN: That you were the whiter, their queen ‘very lusome’.
ELIZABETH: And who is the higher?
MARIAN: She is!
ELIZABETH: Then she is too high.
MARIAN: (laughing) You told him!
ELIZABETH: What are her other amusements?
MARIAN: She writes poems apparently …
ELIZABETH: Poems? In English?
MARIAN: In French. And in ‘Scots’. (Scornful laugh)
ELIZABETH: What else?
MARIAN: She plays on the lute and the virginals.
ELIZABETH: And does she play well?
MARIAN: ‘Tolerably well. For a queen.’ (Them laughing together)
ELIZABETH: And does she dance?
MARIAN: She dances. She dances, though not so high or so disposedly as you, your majesty.
(They laugh. A beat’s pause)
(Hesitating) Madam, you know I love you well.
ELIZABETH: Yes, Marian, like all good subjects, I hope.
MARIAN: Then, madam, I beg you marry the Earl of Leicester, for there is such scandal, a babble getting louder and louder all the time.
(ELIZABETH light and playful all through this)
ELIZABETH: They say what, Marian?
MARIAN: Madam, I think you know right well.
ELIZABETH: I cannot imagine what they would say about Us.
MARIAN: Just that … you behave together as if you were married already.
ELIZABETH: We do love him right well, indeed.
MARIAN: And he you — madam, I do not think much heed is paid to the bad things some people say, and if you married …
ELIZABETH: I have always said I shall marry — if I marry — as queen and not as Elizabeth. You think because my subjects love me as their queen they’ll have me marry where I will?
MARIAN: Madam, I know so. Marry my Lord Leicester, and live in happiness, that England shall be a peaceable kingdom.
(ELIZABETH’s smile says ‘perhaps’. Is she tempted? We think so …)
LA CORBIE: (indicating ELIZABETH)
Och, when a Queen wad wed,
Or tak’ a man tae bed,
She only does whit ony maid funns chancy.
So dinna argue the toss,
Just show them wha’s boss —
You’re the Queen so mairry wha ye fancy.
ELIZABETH: (to herself, thinking of him) Robert Dudley, my darling, my Lord Leicester …. my love.
LA CORBIE: Oh, in England there’s a wild floo’erin love
That the saicret daurkness nourishes
But in Scotlan’ — in the braid daylicht! —
The daurk bloom o’ hatred flourishes.