Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes of a lifetime in which mistakes
were plentiful was the hesitancy of the Queen of Scots in executing upon
her husband Darnley the prompt vengeance she had sworn for the murder of
David Rizzio.
When Rizzio was slain, and she herself held captive by the murderers in
her Palace of Holyrood, whilst Darnley ruled as king, she had simulated
belief in her husband's innocence that she might use him for her
vengeful ends.
She had played so craftily upon his cowardly nature as to convince
him that Morton, Ruthven, and the other traitor lords with whom he had
leagued himself were at heart his own implacable enemies; that they
pretended friendship for him to make a tool of him, and that when he had
served their turn they would destroy him.
In his consequent terror he had betrayed his associates, assisting her
to trick them by a promise to sign an act of oblivion for what was
done. Trusting to this the lords had relaxed their vigilance, whereupon,
accompanied by Darnley, she had escaped by night from Holyrood.
Hope tempering at first the rage and chagrin in the hearts of the lords
she had duped, they had sent a messenger to her at Dunbar to request
of her the fulfilment of her promise to sign the document of their
security.
But Mary put off the messenger, and whilst the army she had summoned
was hastily assembling, she used her craft to divide the rebels against
themselves.
To her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, to Argyll, and to all those
who had been exiled for their rebellion at the time of her marriage--and
who knew not where they stood in the present turn of events, since
one of the objects of the murder had been to procure their
reinstatement--she sent an offer of complete pardon, on condition that
they should at once dissociate themselves from those concerned in the
death of the Seigneur Davie.
These terms they accepted thankfully, as well they might. Thereupon,
finding themselves abandoned by all men--even by Darnley in whose
service they had engaged in the murder--Morton, Ruthven, and their
associates scattered and fled.
By the end of that month of March, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay of the
Byres, George Douglas, and some sixty others were denounced as rebels
with forfeiture of life and goods, while one Thomas Scott, who had been
in command of the guards that had kept Her Majesty prisoner at Holyrood,
was hanged, drawn, and quartered at the Market Cross.
News of this reached the fugitives to increase their desperate rage.
But what drove the iron into the soul of the arch-murderer Ruthven
was Darnley's solemn public declaration denying all knowledge of or
complicity in Rizzio's assassination; nor did it soothe his fury to know
that all Scotland rang with contemptuous laughter at that impudent and
cowardly perjury. From his sick-bed at Newcastle, whereon some six weeks
later he was to breathe his last, the forsaken wretch replied to it by
sending the Queen the bond to which he had demanded Darnley's signature
before embarking upon the business.
It was a damning document. There above the plain signature and seal of
the King was the admission, not merely of complicity, but that the thing
was done by his express will and command, that the responsibility
was his own, and that he would hold the doers scatheless from all
consequences.
Mary could scarcely have hoped to be able to confront her worthless
husband with so complete a proof of his duplicity and baseness. She sent
for him, confounded him with the sight of that appalling bond, made an
end to the amity which for her own ends she had pretended, and drove him
out of her presence with a fury before which he dared not linger.
You see him, then, crushed under his load of mortification, realizing at
last how he had been duped on every hand, first by the lords for their
own purpose, and then by the Queen for hers. Her contempt of him was now
so manifest that it spread to all who served him--for she made it plain
that who showed him friendship earned her deep displeasure--so that
he was forced to withdraw from a Court where his life was become
impossible. For a while he wandered up and down a land where every door
was shut in his face, where every man of whatsoever party, traitor or
true, despised him alike. In the end, he took himself off to his father,
Lennox, and at Glasgow he sought what amusement he could with his dogs
and his hawks, and such odd vulgar rustic love-affairs as came his way.
It was in allowing him thus to go his ways, in leaving her
vengeance--indeed, her justice--but half accomplished, that lay the
greatest of the Queen's mistakes. Better for her had she taken with
Darnley the direct way that was her right. Better for her, if acting
strongly then, she had banished or hanged him for his part in the
treason that had inspired the murder of Rizzio. Unfortunately, a factor
that served to quicken her abhorrence of him served also to set a curb
of caution upon the satisfaction of it.
This factor that came so inopportunely into her life was her regard for
the arrogant, unscrupulous Earl of Bothwell. Her hand was stayed by fear
that men should say that for Bothwell's sake she had rid herself of a
husband become troublesome. That Bothwell had been her friend in the
hour when she had needed friends, and knew not whom she might trust;
that by his masterfulness he seemed a man upon whom a woman might lean
with confidence, may account for the beginnings of the extraordinary
influence he came so swiftly to exercise over her, and the passion he
awakened in her to such a degree that she was unable to dissemble it.
Her regard for him, the more flagrant by contrast with her contempt for
Darnley, is betrayed in the will she made before her confinement in
the following June. Whilst to Darnley she bequeathed nothing but the
red-enamelled diamond ring with which he had married her--“It was with
this that I was married,” she wrote almost contemptuously. “I leave it
to the King who gave it me”--she appointed Bothwell to the tutelage of
her child in the event of her not surviving it, and to the government of
the realm.
The King came to visit her during her convalescence, and was scowled
upon by Murray and Argyll, who were at Holyrood, and most of all
by Bothwell, whose arrogance by now was such that he was become the
best-hated man in Scotland. The Queen received him very coldly, whilst
using Bothwell more than cordially in his very presence, so that he
departed again in a deeper humiliation than before.
Then before the end of July there was her sudden visit to Bothwell
at Alloa, which gave rise to so much scandal. Hearing of it, Darnley
followed in a vain attempt to assert his rights as king and husband,
only to be flouted and dismissed with the conviction that his life was
no longer safe in Scotland, and that he had best cross the Border.
Yet, to his undoing, detained perhaps by the overweening pride that
is usually part of a fool's equipment, he did not act upon that wise
resolve. He returned instead to his hawking and his hunting, and was
seldom seen at Court thereafter.
Even when in the following October, Mary lay at the point of death at
Jedburgh, Darnley came but to stay a day, and left her again without any
assurance that she would recover. But then the facts of her illness, and
how it had been contracted, were not such as to encourage kindness in
him, even had he been inclined to kindness.
Bothwell had taken three wounds in a Border affray some weeks before,
and Mary, hearing of this and that he lay in grievous case at Hermitage,
had ridden thither in her fond solicitude--a distance of thirty
miles--and back again in the same day, thus contracting a chill which
had brought her to the very gates of death.
Darnley had not only heard of this, but he had found Bothwell at
Jedburgh, whither he had been borne in a litter, when in his turn he had
heard of how it was with Mary; and Bothwell had treated him with more
than the contempt which all men now showed him, but which from none
could wound him so deeply as from this man whom rumour accounted Mary's
lover.
Matters between husband and wife were thus come to a pass in which they
could not continue, as all men saw, and as she herself confessed at
Craigmillar, whither she repaired, still weak in body, towards the end
of November.
Over a great fire that blazed in a vast chamber of the castle she sat
sick at heart and shivering, for all that her wasted body was swathed in
a long cloak of deepest purple reversed with ermine. Her face was thin
and of a transparent pallor, her eyes great pools of wistfulness amid
the shadows which her illness had set about them.
“I do wish I could be dead!” she sighed.
Bothwell's eyes narrowed. He was leaning on the back of her tall chair,
a long, virile figure with a hawk-nosed, bearded face that was sternly
handsome. He thrust back the crisp dark hair that clustered about his
brow, and fetched a sigh.
“It was never my own death I wished when a man stood in my road to aught
I craved,” he said, lowering his voice, for Maitland of Lethington--now
restored to his secretaryship--was writing at a table across the room,
and my Lord of Argyll was leaning over him.
She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes startled.
“What devil's counsel do you whisper?” she asked him. And when he would
have answered, she raised a hand. “No,” she said. “Not that way.”
“There is another,” said Bothwell coolly. He moved, came round, and
stood squarely upon the hearth, his back to the fire, confronting her,
nor did he further trouble to lower his voice. “We have considered it
already.”
“What have you considered?”
Her voice was strained; fear and excitement blended in her face.
“How the shackles that fetter you might be broken. Be not alarmed.
It was the virtuous Murray himself propounded it to Argyll and
Lethington--for the good of Scotland and yourself.” A sneer flitted
across his tanned face. “Let them speak for themselves.” He raised his
voice and called to them across the room.
They came at once, and the four made an odd group as they stood there in
the firelit gloom of that November day--the lovely young Queen, so frail
and wistful in her high-backed chair; the stalwart, arrogant Bothwell,
magnificent in a doublet of peach-coloured velvet that tapered to a
golden girdle; Argyll, portly and sober in a rich suit of black; and
Maitland of Lethington, lean and crafty of face, in a long furred gown
that flapped about his bony shanks.
It was to Lethington that Bothwell addressed himself.
“Her Grace is in a mood to hear how the Gordian knot of her marriage
might be unravelled,” said he, grimly ironic.
Lethington raised his eyebrows, licked his thin lips, and rubbed his
bony hands one in the other.
“Unravelled?” he echoed with wondering stress. “Unravelled? Ha!” His
dark eyes flashed round at them. “Better adopt Alexander's plan, and cut
it. 'Twill be more complete, and--and final.”
“No, no!” she cried. “I will not have you shed his blood.”
“He himself was none so tender where another was concerned,” Bothwell
reminded her--as if the memory of Rizzio were dear to him.
“What he may have done does not weigh upon my conscience,” was her
answer.
“He might,” put in Argyll, “be convicted of treason for having consented
to Your Grace's retention in ward at Holyrood after Rizzio's murder.”
She considered an instant, then shook her head.
“It is too late. It should have been done long since. Now men will say
that it is but a pretext to be rid of him.” She looked up at Bothwell,
who remained standing immediately before her, between her and the fire.
“You said that my Lord of Murray had discussed this matter. Was it in
such terms as these?”
Bothwell laughed silently at the thought of the sly Murray rendering
himself a party to anything so direct and desperate. It was Lethington
who answered her.
“My Lord Murray was for a divorce. That would set Your Grace free,
and it might be obtained, he said, by tearing up the Pope's bull of
dispensation that permitted the marriage. Yet, madame, although Lord
Murray would himself go no further, I have no cause to doubt that were
other means concerted, he would be content to look through his fingers.”
Her mind, however, did not seem to follow his speech beyond the matter
of the divorce. A faint flush of eagerness stirred in her pale cheeks.
“Ah, yes!” she cried. “I, too, have thought of that--of this divorce.
And God knows I do not want for grounds. And it could be obtained, you
say, by tearing up this papal bull?”
“The marriage could be proclaimed void thereafter,” Argyll explained.
She looked past Bothwell into the fire, and took her chin in her hand.
“Yes,” she said slowly, musingly, and again, “yes. That were a way. That
is the way.” And then suddenly she looked up, and they saw doubt and
dread in her eyes. “But in that case--what of my son?”
“Aye!” said Lethington grimly. He shrugged his narrow shoulders, parted
his hands, and brought them together again. “That's the obstacle, as we
perceived. It would imperil his succession.”
“It would make a bastard of him, you mean?” she cried, demanding the
full expansion of their thoughts.
“Indeed it would do no less,” the secretary assented.
“So that,” said Bothwell, softly, “we come back to Alexander's method.
What the fingers may not unravel, the knife can sever.”
She shivered, and drew her furred cloak the more closely about her.
Lethington leaned forward. He spoke in kindly, soothing accents.
“Let us guide this matter among us, madame,” he murmured, “and we'll
find means to rid Your Grace of this young fool, without hurt to your
honour or prejudice to your son. And the Earl of Murray will look the
other way, provided you pardon Morton and his friends for the killing
they did in Darnley's service.”
She looked from one to the other of them, scanning each face in turn.
Then her eyes returned to a contemplation of the flaming logs, and she
spoke very softly.
“Do nothing by which a spot might be laid on my honour or conscience,”
she said, with an odd deliberateness that seemed to insist upon the
strictly literal meaning of her words. “Rather I pray you let the matter
rest until God remedy it.”
Lethington looked at the other two, the other two looked at him. He
rubbed his hands softly.
“Trust to us, madame,” he answered. “We will so guide the matter
that Your Grace shall see nothing but what is good and approved by
Parliament.”
She committed herself to no reply, and so they were content to take
their answer from her silence. They went in quest of Huntly and
Sir James Balfour, and the five of them entered into a bond for the
destruction of him whom they named “the young fool and proud tiranne,”
to be engaged in when Mary should have pardoned Morton and his
fellow-conspirators.
It was not until Christmas Eve that she signed this pardon of some
seventy fugitives, proscribed for their participation in the Rizzio
murder, towards whom she had hitherto shown herself so implacable.
The world saw in this no more than a deed of clemency and charity
befitting the solemn festival of good-will. But the five who had entered
into that bond at Craigmillar Castle beheld in it more accurately the
fulfilment of her part of the suggested bargain, the price she paid in
advance to be rid of Darnley, the sign of her full agreement that the
knot which might not be unravelled should be cut.
On that same day Her Grace went with Bothwell to Lord Drummond's, where
they abode for the best part of a week, and thence they went on
together to Tullibardine, the rash and open intimacy between them giving
nourishment to scandal.
At the same time Darnley quitted Stirling, where he had lately been
living in miserable conditions, ignored by the nobles, and even stinted
in his necessary expenses, deprived of his ordinary servants, and his
silver replaced by pewter. The miserable youth reached Glasgow deadly
sick. He had been taken ill on the way, and the inevitable rumour was
spread that he had been poisoned. Later, when it became known that his
once lovely countenance was now blotched and disfigured, it was realized
that his illness was no more than the inevitable result of the debauched
life he led.
Conceiving himself on the point of death, Darnley wrote piteously to the
Queen; but she ignored his letters until she learnt that his condition
was improving, when at last (on January 29th) she went to visit him at
Glasgow. It may well be that she nourished some hope that nature would
resolve the matter for her, and remove the need for such desperate
measures as had been concerted. But seeing him likely to recover, two
things became necessary, to bring him to the place that was suitable for
the fulfilment of her designs, and to simulate reconciliation with him,
and even renewed and tender affection, so that none might hereafter
charge her with complicity in what should follow.
I hope that in this I do her memory no injustice. It is thus that I read
the sequel, nor can I read it in any other way.
She found him abed, with a piece of taffeta over his face to hide its
disfigurement, and she was so moved--as it seemed--by his condition,
that she fell on her knees beside him, and wept in the presence of her
attendants and his own; confessing penitence if anything she had done
in the past could have contributed to their estrangement. Thus
reconciliation followed, and she used him tenderly, grew solicitous
concerning him, and vowed that as soon as he could be moved, he must be
taken to surroundings more salubrious and more befitting the dignity of
his station.
Gladly then he agreed to return with her to Holyrood.
“Not to Holyrood,” she said. “At least, not until your health is mended,
lest you should carry thither infection dangerous to your little son.”
“Whither then?” he asked her, and when she mentioned Craigmillar, he
started up in bed, so that the taffeta slipped from his face, and it was
with difficulty that she dissembled the loathing with which the sight of
its pustules inspired her.
“Craigmillar!” he cried. “Then what I was told is true.”
“What were you told?” quoth she, staring at him, brows knit, her face
blank.
A rumour had filtered through to him of the Craigmillar bond. He had
been told that a letter drawn up there had been presented to her for her
signature, which she had refused. Thus much he told her, adding that he
could not believe that she would do him any hurt; and yet why did she
desire to bear him to Craigmillar?
“You have been told lies,” she answered him. “I saw no such letter; I
subscribed none, nor was ever asked to subscribe any,” which indeed was
literally true. “To this I swear. As for your going to Craigmillar, you
shall go whithersoever you please, yourself.”
He sank back on his pillows, and his trembling subsided.
“I believe thee, Mary. I believe thou'ld never do me any harm,” he
repeated, “and if any other would,” he added on a bombastic note, “they
shall buy it dear, unless they take me sleeping. But I'll never to
Craigmillar.”
“I have said you shall go where you please,” she assured him again.
He considered.
“There is the house at Kirk o' Field. It has a fine garden, and is in a
position that is deemed the healthiest about Edinburgh. I need good air;
good air and baths have been prescribed me to cleanse me of this plague.
Kirk o' Field will serve, if it be your pleasure.”
She gave a ready consent, dispatched messengers ahead to prepare the
house, and to take from Holyrood certain furnishings that should improve
the interior, and render it as fitting as possible a dwelling for a
king.
Some days later they set out, his misgivings quieted by the tenderness
which she now showed him--particularly when witnesses were at hand.
It was a tenderness that grew steadily during those twelve days in which
he lay in convalescence in the house at Kirk o' Field; she was playful
and coquettish with him as a maid with her lover, so that nothing was
talked of but the completeness of this reconciliation, and the hope that
it would lead to a peace within the realm that would be a benefit to
all. Yet many there were who marvelled at it, wondering whether the
waywardness and caprice of woman could account for so sudden a change
from hatred to affection.
Darnley was lodged on the upper floor, in a room comfortably furnished
from the palace. It was hung with six pieces of tapestry, and the floor
was partly covered by an Eastern carpet. It contained, besides the
handsome bed--which once had belonged to the Queen's mother--a couple of
high chairs in purple velvet, a little table with a green velvet cover,
and some cushions in red. By the side of the bed stood the specially
prepared bath that was part of the cure which Darnley was undergoing. It
had for its incongruous lid a door that had been lifted from its hinges.
Immediately underneath was a room that had been prepared for the Queen,
with a little bed of yellow and green damask, and a furred coverlet. The
windows looked out upon the close, and the door opened upon the passage
leading to the garden.
Here the Queen slept on several of those nights of early February, for
indeed she was more often at Kirk o' Field than at Holy-rood, and when
she was not bearing Darnley company in his chamber, and beguiling the
tedium of his illness, she was to be seen walking in the garden with
Lady Reres, and from his bed he could hear her sometimes singing as she
sauntered there.
Never since the ephemeral season of their courtship had she been on such
fond terms with him, and all his fears of hostile designs entertained
against him by her immediate followers were stilled at last. Yet not
for long. Into his fool's paradise came Lord Robert of Holyrood, with a
warning that flung him into a sweat of panic.
The conspirators had hired a few trusted assistants to help them carry
out their plans, and a rumour had got abroad--in the unaccountable way
of rumours--that there was danger to the King. It was of this rumour
that Lord Robert brought him word, telling him bluntly that unless he
escaped quickly from this place, he would leave his life there. Yet when
Darnley had repeated this to the Queen, and the Queen indignantly had
sent for Lord Robert and demanded to know his meaning, his lordship
denied that he had uttered any such warning, protested that his words
must have been misunderstood--that they referred solely to the King's
condition, which demanded, he thought, different treatment and healthier
air.
Knowing not what to believe, Darnley's uneasiness abode with him. Yet,
trusting Mary, and feeling secure so long as she was by his side, he
became more and more insistent upon her presence, more and more fretful
in her absence. It was to quiet him that she consented to sleep as often
as might be at Kirk o' Field. She slept there on the Wednesday of that
week, and again on Friday, and she was to have done so yet again on that
fateful Sunday, February 9th, but that her servant Sebastien--one
who had accompanied her from France, and for whom she had a deep
affection--was that day married, and Her Majesty had promised to be
present at the masque that night at Holyrood, in honour of his nuptials.
Nevertheless, she did not utterly neglect her husband on that account.
She rode to Kirk o' Field early in the evening, accompanied by Bothwell,
Huntly, Argyll, and some others; and leaving the lords at cards below
to while away the time, she repaired to Darnley, and sat beside his bed,
soothing a spirit oddly perturbed, as if with some premonition of what
was brewing.
“Ye'll not leave me the night,” he begged her once.
“Alas,” she said, “I must! Sebastien is being wed, and I have promised
to be present.”
He sighed and shifted uneasily.
“Soon I shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease to
haunt me. But just now I cannot bear you from my sight. When you are
with me I am at peace. I know that all is well. But when you go I am
filled with fears, lying helpless here.”
“What should you fear?” she asked him.
“The hate that I know is alive against me.”
“You are casting shadows to affright yourself,” said she.
“What's that?” he cried, half raising himself in sudden alarm. “Listen!”
From the room below came faintly a sound of footsteps, accompanied by a
noise as of something being trundled.
“It will be my servants in my room--putting it to rights.”
“To what purpose since you do not sleep there tonight?” he asked. He
raised his voice and called his page.
“Why, what will you do?” she asked him, steadying her own alarm.
He answered her by bidding the youth who had entered go see what was
doing in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errand
faithfully, he would have found Bothwell's followers, Hay and
Hepburn, and the Queen's man, Nicholas Hubert better known as French
Paris--emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately under the
King's bed. But it happened that in the passage he came suddenly face
to face with the splendid figure of Bothwell, cloaked and hatted, and
Bothwell asked him whither he went.
The boy told him.
“It is nothing,” Bothwell said. “They are moving Her Grace's bed in
accordance with her wishes.”
And the lad, overborne by that commanding figure which so effectively
blocked his path, chose the line of lesser resistance. He went back to
bear the King that message as if for himself he had seen what my Lord
Bothwell had but told him.
Darnley was pacified by the assurance, and the lad withdrew.
“Did I not tell you how it was?” quoth Mary. “Is not my word enough?”
“Forgive the doubt,” Darnley begged her. “Indeed, there was no doubt of
you, who have shown me so much charity in my affliction.” He sighed, and
looked at her with melancholy eyes.
“I would the past had been other than it has been between you and me,”
he said. “I was too young for kingship, I think. In my green youth I
listened to false counsellors, and was quick to jealousy and the follies
it begets. Then, when you cast me out and I wandered friendless, a devil
took possession of me. Yet, if you will but consent to bury all the
past into oblivion, I will make amends, and you shall find me worthier
hereafter.”
She rose, white to the lips, her bosom heaving under her long cloak.
She turned aside and stepped to the window. She stood there, peering out
into the gloom of the close, her knees trembling under her.
“Why do you not answer me?” he cried.
“What answer do you need?” she said, and her voice shook. “Are you not
answered already?” And then, breathlessly, she added: “It is time to go,
I think.”
They heard a heavy step upon the stairs and the clank of a sword against
the rails. The door opened, and Bothwell, wrapped in his scarlet cloak,
stood bending his tall shoulders under the low lintel. His gleaming
eyes, so oddly mocking in their glance, for all that his face was set,
fell upon Darnley, and with their look flung him into an inward state of
blending fear and rage.
“Your Grace,” said Bothwell's deep voice, “it is close upon midnight.”
He came no more than in time; it needed the sight of him with its
reminder of all that he meant to her to sustain a purpose that was being
sapped by pity.
“Very well,” she said. “I come.”
Bothwell stood aside to give her egress and to invite it. But the King
delayed her.
“A moment--a word!” he begged, and to Bothwell: “Give us leave apart,
sir!”
Yet, King though he might be, there was no ready obedience from the
arrogant Border lord, her lover. It was to Mary that Bothwell looked for
commands, nor stirred until she signed to him to go. And even then he
went no farther than the other side of the door, so that he might be
close at hand to fortify her should any weakness assail her now in this
supreme hour.
Darnley struggled up in bed, caught her hand, and pulled her to him.
“Do not leave me, Mary. Do not leave me!” he implored her.
“Why, what is this?” she cried, but her voice lacked steadiness. “Would
you have me disappoint poor Sebastien, who loves me?”
“I see. Sebastien is more to you than I?”
“Now this is folly. Sebastien is my faithful servant.”
“And am I less? Do you not believe that my one aim henceforth will be to
serve you and faithfully? Oh, forgive this weakness. I am full of evil
foreboding to-night. Go, then, if go you must, but give me at least some
assurance of your love, some pledge of it in earnest that you will come
again to-morrow nor part from me again.”
She looked into the white, piteous young face that had once been so
lovely, and her soul faltered. It needed the knowledge that Bothwell
waited just beyond the door, that he could overhear what was being said,
to strengthen her fearfully in her tragic purpose.
She has been censured most for what next she did. Murray himself spoke
of it afterwards as the worst part of the business. But it is possible
that she was concerned only at the moment to put an end to a scene that
was unnerving her, and that she took the readiest means to it.
She drew a ring from her finger and slipped it on to one of his.
“Be this the pledge, then,” she said; “and so content and rest
yourself.”
With that she broke from him, white and scared, and reached the door.
Yet with her hand upon the latch she paused. Looking at him she saw that
he was smiling, and perhaps horror of her betrayal of him overwhelmed
her. It must be that she then desired to warn him, yet with Bothwell
within earshot she realized that any warning must precipitate the
tragedy, with direst consequences to Bothwell and herself.
To conquer her weakness, she thought of David Rizzio, whom Darnley had
murdered almost at her feet, and whom this night was to avenge. She
thought of the Judas part that he had played in that affair, and sought
persuasion that it was fitting he should now be paid in kind. Yet,
very woman that she was, failing to find any such persuasion, she found
instead in the very thought of Rizzio the very means to convey her
warning.
Standing tense and white by the door, regarding him with dilating eyes,
she spoke her last words to him.
“It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain,” she
said, and on that passed out to the waiting Bothwell.
Once on the stairs she paused and set a hand upon the shoulder of the
stalwart Borderer.
“Must it be? Oh, must it be?” she whispered fearfully.
She caught the flash of his eyes in the half gloom as he leaned over
her, his arm about her waist drawing her to him.
“Is it not just? Is it not full merited?” he asked her.
“And yet I would that we did not profit by it,” she complained.
“Shall we pity him on that account?” he asked, and laughed softly and
shortly. “Come away,” he added abruptly. “They wait for you!” And so,
by the suasion of his arm and his imperious will, she was swept onward
along the road of her destiny.
Outside the horses were ready. There was a little group of gentlemen to
escort her, and half a dozen servants with lighted torches, whilst Lady
Reres was in waiting. A man stood forward to assist her to mount, his
face and hands so blackened by gunpowder that for a moment she failed to
recognize him. She laughed nervously when he named himself.
“Lord, Paris, how begrimed you are!” she cried; and, mounting, rode away
towards Holyrood with her torchbearers and attendants.
In the room above, Darnley lay considering her last words. He turned
them over in his thoughts, assured by the tone she had used and how she
had looked that they contained some message.
“It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain.”
In themselves, those words were not strictly accurate. It wanted yet a
month to the anniversary of Rizzio's death. And why, at parting, should
she have reminded him of that which she had agreed should be forgotten?
Instantly came the answer that she sought to warn him that retribution
was impending. He thought again of the rumours that he had heard of a
bond signed at Craigmillar; he recalled Lord Robert's warning to him,
afterwards denied.
He recalled her words to himself at the time of Rizzio's death:
“Consider well what I now say. Consider and remember. I shall never rest
until I give you as sore a heart as I have presently.” And further,
he remembered her cry at once agonized and fiercely vengeful: “Jamais,
jamais je n'oublierai.”
His terrors mounted swiftly, to be quieted again at last when he
looked at the ring she had put upon his finger in pledge of her renewed
affection. The past was dead and buried, surely. Though danger might
threaten, she would guard him against it, setting her love about him
like a panoply of steel. When she came to-morrow, he would question her
closely, and she should be more frank and open with him, and tell him
all. Meanwhile, he would take his precautions for to-night.
He sent his page to make fast all doors. The youth went and did as he
was bidden, with the exception of the door that led to the garden. It
had no bolts, and the key was missing; yet, seeing his master's nervous,
excited state, he forbore from any mention of that circumstance when
presently he returned to him.
Darnley requested a book of Psalms, that he might read himself to sleep.
The page dozed in a chair, and so the hours passed; and at last the King
himself fell into a light slumber. Out of this he started suddenly at
a little before two o'clock, and sat upright in bed, alarmed without
knowing why, listening with straining ears and throbbing pulses.
He caught a repetition of the sound that had aroused him, a sound akin
to that which had drawn his attention earlier, when Mary had been with
him. It came up faintly from the room immediately beneath: her room.
Some one was moving there, he thought. Then, as he continued to listen,
all became quiet again, save his fears, which would not be quieted.
He extinguished the light, slipped from the bed, and, crossing to the
window, peered out into the close that was faintly illumined by a
moon in its first quarter. A shadow moved, he thought. He watched with
increasing panic for confirmation, and presently saw that he had been
right. Not one, but several shadows were shifting there among the
trees. Shadows of men, they were, and as he peered, he saw one that
went running from the house across the lawn and joined the others, now
clustered together in a group. What could be their purpose here? In the
silence, he seemed to hear again the echo of Mary's last words to him:
“It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain.”
In terror, he groped his way to the chair where the page slept and shook
the lad vigorously.
“Afoot, boy!” he said, in a hoarse whisper. He had meant to shout it,
but his voice failed him, his windpipe clutched by panic. “Afoot--we are
beset by enemies!”
At once the youth was wide awake, and together the King just in his
shirt as he was--they made their way from the room in the dark, groping
their way, and so reached the windows at the back. Darnley opened one of
these very softly, then sent the boy back for a sheet. Making this
fast, they descended by it to the garden, and started towards the wall,
intending to climb it, that they might reach the open.
The boy led the way, and the King followed, his teeth chattering as much
from the cold as from the terror that possessed him. And then, quite
suddenly, without the least warning, the ground, it seemed to them,
heaved under their feet, and they were flung violently forward on their
faces. A great blaze rent the darkness of the night, accompanied by
the thunders of an explosion so terrific that it seemed as if the whole
world must have been shattered by it.
For some instants the King and his page lay half stunned where they had
fallen, and well might it have been for them had they so continued. But
Darnley, recovering, staggered to his feet, pulling the boy up with him
and supporting him. Then, as he began to move, he heard a soft whistle
in the gloom behind him. Over his shoulder he looked towards the house,
to behold a great, smoking gap now yawning in it. Through this gap
he caught a glimpse of shadowy men moving in the close beyond, and he
realized that he had been seen. The white shirt he wore had betrayed his
presence to them.
With a stifled scream, he began to run towards the wall, the page
staggering after him. Behind them now came the clank and thud of a score
of overtaking feet. Soon they were surrounded. The King turned this way
and that, desperately seeking a way out of the murderous human ring that
fenced them round.
“What d'ye seek? What d'ye seek?” he screeched, in a pitiful attempt to
question with authority.
A tall man in a trailing cloak advanced and seized him.
“We seek thee, fool!” said the voice of Bothwell.
The kingliness that he had never known how to wear becomingly now fell
from him utterly.
“Mercy--mercy!” he cried.
“Such mercy as you had on David Rizzio!” answered the Border lord.
Darnley fell on his knees and sought to embrace the murderer's legs.
Bothwell stooped over him, seized the wretched man's shirt, and pulled
it from his shivering body; then, flinging the sleeves about the royal
neck, slipped one over the other and drew them tight, nor relaxed his
hold until the young man's struggles had entirely ceased.
Four days later, Mary went to visit the body of her husband in the
chapel of Holyrood House, whither it had been conveyed, and there, as a
contemporary tells us, she looked upon it long, “not only without grief,
but with greedy eyes.” Thereafter it was buried secretly in the night by
Rizzio's side, so that murderer and victim lay at peace together in the
end.