The Historical Nights' Entertainment: First Series

by Rafael Sabatini

  II. THE NIGHT OF KIRK O' FIELD--The Murder of Darnley

  Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes of a lifetime in which mistakeswere plentiful was the hesitancy of the Queen of Scots in executing uponher husband Darnley the prompt vengeance she had sworn for the murder ofDavid Rizzio.

  When Rizzio was slain, and she herself held captive by the murderers inher Palace of Holyrood, whilst Darnley ruled as king, she had simulatedbelief in her husband's innocence that she might use him for hervengeful ends.

  She had played so craftily upon his cowardly nature as to convincehim that Morton, Ruthven, and the other traitor lords with whom he hadleagued himself were at heart his own implacable enemies; that theypretended friendship for him to make a tool of him, and that when he hadserved their turn they would destroy him.

  In his consequent terror he had betrayed his associates, assisting herto trick them by a promise to sign an act of oblivion for what wasdone. 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 lordsshe had duped, they had sent a messenger to her at Dunbar to requestof her the fulfilment of her promise to sign the document of theirsecurity.

  But Mary put off the messenger, and whilst the army she had summonedwas hastily assembling, she used her craft to divide the rebels againstthemselves.

  To her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, to Argyll, and to all thosewho had been exiled for their rebellion at the time of her marriage--andwho knew not where they stood in the present turn of events, sinceone of the objects of the murder had been to procure theirreinstatement--she sent an offer of complete pardon, on condition thatthey should at once dissociate themselves from those concerned in thedeath of the Seigneur Davie.

  These terms they accepted thankfully, as well they might. Thereupon,finding themselves abandoned by all men--even by Darnley in whoseservice they had engaged in the murder--Morton, Ruthven, and theirassociates scattered and fled.

  By the end of that month of March, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay of theByres, George Douglas, and some sixty others were denounced as rebelswith forfeiture of life and goods, while one Thomas Scott, who had beenin 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 Ruthvenwas Darnley's solemn public declaration denying all knowledge of orcomplicity in Rizzio's assassination; nor did it soothe his fury to knowthat all Scotland rang with contemptuous laughter at that impudent andcowardly perjury. From his sick-bed at Newcastle, whereon some six weekslater he was to breathe his last, the forsaken wretch replied to it bysending the Queen the bond to which he had demanded Darnley's signaturebefore embarking upon the business.

  It was a damning document. There above the plain signature and seal ofthe King was the admission, not merely of complicity, but that the thingwas done by his express will and command, that the responsibilitywas his own, and that he would hold the doers scatheless from allconsequences.

  Mary could scarcely have hoped to be able to confront her worthlesshusband with so complete a proof of his duplicity and baseness. She sentfor him, confounded him with the sight of that appalling bond, made anend to the amity which for her own ends she had pretended, and drove himout of her presence with a fury before which he dared not linger.

  You see him, then, crushed under his load of mortification, realizing atlast how he had been duped on every hand, first by the lords for theirown purpose, and then by the Queen for hers. Her contempt of him was nowso manifest that it spread to all who served him--for she made it plainthat who showed him friendship earned her deep displeasure--so thathe was forced to withdraw from a Court where his life was becomeimpossible. For a while he wandered up and down a land where every doorwas shut in his face, where every man of whatsoever party, traitor ortrue, 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 dogsand 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 hervengeance--indeed, her justice--but half accomplished, that lay thegreatest of the Queen's mistakes. Better for her had she taken withDarnley the direct way that was her right. Better for her, if actingstrongly then, she had banished or hanged him for his part in thetreason that had inspired the murder of Rizzio. Unfortunately, a factorthat served to quicken her abhorrence of him served also to set a curbof caution upon the satisfaction of it.

  This factor that came so inopportunely into her life was her regard forthe arrogant, unscrupulous Earl of Bothwell. Her hand was stayed by fearthat men should say that for Bothwell's sake she had rid herself of ahusband become troublesome. That Bothwell had been her friend in thehour 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 leanwith confidence, may account for the beginnings of the extraordinaryinfluence he came so swiftly to exercise over her, and the passion heawakened 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 forDarnley, is betrayed in the will she made before her confinement inthe following June. Whilst to Darnley she bequeathed nothing but thered-enamelled diamond ring with which he had married her--"It was withthis that I was married," she wrote almost contemptuously. "I leave itto the King who gave it me"--she appointed Bothwell to the tutelage ofher child in the event of her not surviving it, and to the government ofthe realm.

  The King came to visit her during her convalescence, and was scowledupon by Murray and Argyll, who were at Holyrood, and most of allby Bothwell, whose arrogance by now was such that he was become thebest-hated man in Scotland. The Queen received him very coldly, whilstusing Bothwell more than cordially in his very presence, so that hedeparted again in a deeper humiliation than before.

  Then before the end of July there was her sudden visit to Bothwellat Alloa, which gave rise to so much scandal. Hearing of it, Darnleyfollowed in a vain attempt to assert his rights as king and husband,only to be flouted and dismissed with the conviction that his life wasno longer safe in Scotland, and that he had best cross the Border.Yet, to his undoing, detained perhaps by the overweening pride thatis usually part of a fool's equipment, he did not act upon that wiseresolve. He returned instead to his hawking and his hunting, and wasseldom seen at Court thereafter.

  Even when in the following October, Mary lay at the point of death atJedburgh, Darnley came but to stay a day, and left her again without anyassurance that she would recover. But then the facts of her illness, andhow it had been contracted, were not such as to encourage kindness inhim, 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 thirtymiles--and back again in the same day, thus contracting a chill whichhad brought her to the very gates of death.

  Darnley had not only heard of this, but he had found Bothwell atJedburgh, whither he had been borne in a litter, when in his turn he hadheard of how it was with Mary; and Bothwell had treated him with morethan the contempt which all men now showed him, but which from nonecould wound him so deeply as from this man whom rumour accounted Mary'slover.

  Matters between husband and wife were thus come to a pass in which theycould not continue, as all men saw, and as she herself confessed atCraigmillar, whither she repaired, still weak in body, towards the endof November.

  Over a great fire that blazed in a vast chamber of the castle she satsick at heart and shivering, for all that her wasted body was swathed ina long cloak of deepest purple reversed with ermine. Her face was thinand of a transparent pallor, her eyes great pools of wistfulness amidthe shado
ws 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 sternlyhandsome. He thrust back the crisp dark hair that clustered about hisbrow, and fetched a sigh.

  "It was never my own death I wished when a man stood in my road to aughtI craved," he said, lowering his voice, for Maitland of Lethington--nowrestored 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 wouldhave answered, she raised a hand. "No," she said. "Not that way."

  "There is another," said Bothwell coolly. He moved, came round, andstood squarely upon the hearth, his back to the fire, confronting her,nor did he further trouble to lower his voice. "We have considered italready."

  "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 andLethington--for the good of Scotland and yourself." A sneer flittedacross his tanned face. "Let them speak for themselves." He raised hisvoice and called to them across the room.

  They came at once, and the four made an odd group as they stood there inthe firelit gloom of that November day--the lovely young Queen, so frailand wistful in her high-backed chair; the stalwart, arrogant Bothwell,magnificent in a doublet of peach-coloured velvet that tapered to agolden girdle; Argyll, portly and sober in a rich suit of black; andMaitland of Lethington, lean and crafty of face, in a long furred gownthat 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 marriagemight be unravelled," said he, grimly ironic.

  Lethington raised his eyebrows, licked his thin lips, and rubbed hisbony hands one in the other.

  "Unravelled?" he echoed with wondering stress. "Unravelled? Ha!" Hisdark eyes flashed round at them. "Better adopt Alexander's plan, and cutit. '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," Bothwellreminded her--as if the memory of Rizzio were dear to him.

  "What he may have done does not weigh upon my conscience," was heranswer.

  "He might," put in Argyll, "be convicted of treason for having consentedto 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 saythat 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 insuch terms as these?"

  Bothwell laughed silently at the thought of the sly Murray renderinghimself a party to anything so direct and desperate. It was Lethingtonwho 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 ofdispensation that permitted the marriage. Yet, madame, although LordMurray would himself go no further, I have no cause to doubt that wereother means concerted, he would be content to look through his fingers."

  Her mind, however, did not seem to follow his speech beyond the matterof 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, yousay, 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. Thatis the way." And then suddenly she looked up, and they saw doubt anddread in her eyes. "But in that case--what of my son?"

  "Aye!" said Lethington grimly. He shrugged his narrow shoulders, partedhis hands, and brought them together again. "That's the obstacle, as weperceived. It would imperil his succession."

  "It would make a bastard of him, you mean?" she cried, demanding thefull 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'llfind means to rid Your Grace of this young fool, without hurt to yourhonour or prejudice to your son. And the Earl of Murray will look theother way, provided you pardon Morton and his friends for the killingthey 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 shespoke 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 thestrictly literal meaning of her words. "Rather I pray you let the matterrest until God remedy it."

  Lethington looked at the other two, the other two looked at him. Herubbed his hands softly.

  "Trust to us, madame," he answered. "We will so guide the matterthat Your Grace shall see nothing but what is good and approved byParliament."

  She committed herself to no reply, and so they were content to taketheir answer from her silence. They went in quest of Huntly andSir James Balfour, and the five of them entered into a bond for thedestruction of him whom they named "the young fool and proud tiranne,"to be engaged in when Mary should have pardoned Morton and hisfellow-conspirators.

  It was not until Christmas Eve that she signed this pardon of someseventy fugitives, proscribed for their participation in the Rizziomurder, towards whom she had hitherto shown herself so implacable.

  The world saw in this no more than a deed of clemency and charitybefitting the solemn festival of good-will. But the five who had enteredinto that bond at Craigmillar Castle beheld in it more accurately thefulfilment of her part of the suggested bargain, the price she paid inadvance to be rid of Darnley, the sign of her full agreement that theknot which might not be unravelled should be cut.

  On that same day Her Grace went with Bothwell to Lord Drummond's, wherethey abode for the best part of a week, and thence they went ontogether to Tullibardine, the rash and open intimacy between them givingnourishment to scandal.

  At the same time Darnley quitted Stirling, where he had lately beenliving in miserable conditions, ignored by the nobles, and even stintedin his necessary expenses, deprived of his ordinary servants, and hissilver replaced by pewter. The miserable youth reached Glasgow deadlysick. He had been taken ill on the way, and the inevitable rumour wasspread that he had been poisoned. Later, when it became known that hisonce lovely countenance was now blotched and disfigured, it was realizedthat his illness was no more than the inevitable result of the debauchedlife he led.

  Conceiving himself on the point of death, Darnley wrote piteously to theQueen; but she ignored his letters until she learnt that his conditionwas improving, when at last (on January 29th) she went to visit him atGlasgow. It may well be that she nourished some hope that nature wouldresolve the matter for her, and remove the need for such desperatemeasures as had been concerted. But seeing him likely to recover, twothings became necessary, to bring him to the place that was suitable forthe fulfilment of her designs, and to simulate reconciliation with him,and even renewed and tender affection, so that none might hereaftercharge her with complicity in what should follow.


  I hope that in this I do her memory no injustice. It is thus that I readthe sequel, nor can I read it in any other way.

  She found him abed, with a piece of taffeta over his face to hide itsdisfigurement, 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 herattendants and his own; confessing penitence if anything she had donein the past could have contributed to their estrangement. Thusreconciliation followed, and she used him tenderly, grew solicitousconcerning him, and vowed that as soon as he could be moved, he must betaken to surroundings more salubrious and more befitting the dignity ofhis 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, hestarted up in bed, so that the taffeta slipped from his face, and it waswith difficulty that she dissembled the loathing with which the sight ofits 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 faceblank.

  A rumour had filtered through to him of the Craigmillar bond. He hadbeen told that a letter drawn up there had been presented to her for hersignature, which she had refused. Thus much he told her, adding that hecould not believe that she would do him any hurt; and yet why did shedesire to bear him to Craigmillar?

  "You have been told lies," she answered him. "I saw no such letter; Isubscribed none, nor was ever asked to subscribe any," which indeed wasliterally true. "To this I swear. As for your going to Craigmillar, youshall 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," herepeated, "and if any other would," he added on a bombastic note, "theyshall buy it dear, unless they take me sleeping. But I'll never toCraigmillar."

  "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 aposition 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 thehouse, and to take from Holyrood certain furnishings that should improvethe interior, and render it as fitting as possible a dwelling for aking.

  Some days later they set out, his misgivings quieted by the tendernesswhich she now showed him--particularly when witnesses were at hand.

  It was a tenderness that grew steadily during those twelve days in whichhe lay in convalescence in the house at Kirk o' Field; she was playfuland coquettish with him as a maid with her lover, so that nothing wastalked of but the completeness of this reconciliation, and the hope thatit would lead to a peace within the realm that would be a benefit toall. Yet many there were who marvelled at it, wondering whether thewaywardness and caprice of woman could account for so sudden a changefrom hatred to affection.

  Darnley was lodged on the upper floor, in a room comfortably furnishedfrom the palace. It was hung with six pieces of tapestry, and the floorwas partly covered by an Eastern carpet. It contained, besides thehandsome bed--which once had belonged to the Queen's mother--a couple ofhigh 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 speciallyprepared bath that was part of the cure which Darnley was undergoing. Ithad 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. Thewindows looked out upon the close, and the door opened upon the passageleading to the garden.

  Here the Queen slept on several of those nights of early February, forindeed she was more often at Kirk o' Field than at Holy-rood, and whenshe was not bearing Darnley company in his chamber, and beguiling thetedium of his illness, she was to be seen walking in the garden withLady Reres, and from his bed he could hear her sometimes singing as shesauntered there.

  Never since the ephemeral season of their courtship had she been on suchfond terms with him, and all his fears of hostile designs entertainedagainst him by her immediate followers were stilled at last. Yet notfor long. Into his fool's paradise came Lord Robert of Holyrood, with awarning that flung him into a sweat of panic.

  The conspirators had hired a few trusted assistants to help them carryout their plans, and a rumour had got abroad--in the unaccountable wayof rumours--that there was danger to the King. It was of this rumourthat Lord Robert brought him word, telling him bluntly that unless heescaped quickly from this place, he would leave his life there. Yet whenDarnley had repeated this to the Queen, and the Queen indignantly hadsent for Lord Robert and demanded to know his meaning, his lordshipdenied that he had uttered any such warning, protested that his wordsmust have been misunderstood--that they referred solely to the King'scondition, which demanded, he thought, different treatment and healthierair.

  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, hebecame more and more insistent upon her presence, more and more fretfulin her absence. It was to quiet him that she consented to sleep as oftenas might be at Kirk o' Field. She slept there on the Wednesday of thatweek, and again on Friday, and she was to have done so yet again on thatfateful Sunday, February 9th, but that her servant Sebastien--onewho had accompanied her from France, and for whom she had a deepaffection--was that day married, and Her Majesty had promised to bepresent 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 belowto while away the time, she repaired to Darnley, and sat beside his bed,soothing a spirit oddly perturbed, as if with some premonition of whatwas brewing.

  "Ye'll not leave me the night," he begged her once.

  "Alas," she said, "I must! Sebastien is being wed, and I have promisedto be present."

  He sighed and shifted uneasily.

  "Soon I shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease tohaunt me. But just now I cannot bear you from my sight. When you arewith me I am at peace. I know that all is well. But when you go I amfilled 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 anoise 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. Heraised 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 wasdoing in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errandfaithfully, he would have found Bothwell's followers, Hay andHepburn, and the Queen's man, Nicholas Hubert better known as FrenchParis--emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately under theKing's bed. But it happened that in the passage he came suddenly faceto face with the splendid figure of Bothwell, cloaked and hatted, andBothwell asked him whither he went.

  The boy told him.

  "It is nothing," Bothwell said. "They are moving Her Grace's bed inaccordance with her wishes."

  And the lad, overborne by that commanding figure which so effectivelyblocked his path, chose the line of
lesser resistance. He went back tobear the King that message as if for himself he had seen what my LordBothwell 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 ofyou, who have shown me so much charity in my affliction." He sighed, andlooked 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 Ilistened to false counsellors, and was quick to jealousy and the folliesit begets. Then, when you cast me out and I wandered friendless, a deviltook possession of me. Yet, if you will but consent to bury all thepast into oblivion, I will make amends, and you shall find me worthierhereafter."

  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 outinto 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 notanswered 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 againstthe rails. The door opened, and Bothwell, wrapped in his scarlet cloak,stood bending his tall shoulders under the low lintel. His gleamingeyes, 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 ofblending 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 itsreminder of all that he meant to her to sustain a purpose that was beingsapped by pity.

  "Very well," she said. "I come."

  Bothwell stood aside to give her egress and to invite it. But the Kingdelayed 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 thearrogant Border lord, her lover. It was to Mary that Bothwell looked forcommands, nor stirred until she signed to him to go. And even then hewent no farther than the other side of the door, so that he might beclose at hand to fortify her should any weakness assail her now in thissupreme 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. "Wouldyou 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 toserve you and faithfully? Oh, forgive this weakness. I am full of evilforeboding to-night. Go, then, if go you must, but give me at least someassurance of your love, some pledge of it in earnest that you will comeagain to-morrow nor part from me again."

  She looked into the white, piteous young face that had once been solovely, and her soul faltered. It needed the knowledge that Bothwellwaited 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 spokeof it afterwards as the worst part of the business. But it is possiblethat she was concerned only at the moment to put an end to a scene thatwas 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 restyourself."

  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 thathe was smiling, and perhaps horror of her betrayal of him overwhelmedher. It must be that she then desired to warn him, yet with Bothwellwithin earshot she realized that any warning must precipitate thetragedy, with direst consequences to Bothwell and herself.

  To conquer her weakness, she thought of David Rizzio, whom Darnley hadmurdered almost at her feet, and whom this night was to avenge. Shethought of the Judas part that he had played in that affair, and soughtpersuasion that it was fitting he should now be paid in kind. Yet,very woman that she was, failing to find any such persuasion, she foundinstead in the very thought of Rizzio the very means to convey herwarning.

  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," shesaid, and on that passed out to the waiting Bothwell.

  Once on the stairs she paused and set a hand upon the shoulder of thestalwart 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 overher, 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 andshortly. "Come away," he added abruptly. "They wait for you!" And so,by the suasion of his arm and his imperious will, she was swept onwardalong the road of her destiny.

  Outside the horses were ready. There was a little group of gentlemen toescort her, and half a dozen servants with lighted torches, whilst LadyReres was in waiting. A man stood forward to assist her to mount, hisface and hands so blackened by gunpowder that for a moment she failed torecognize him. She laughed nervously when he named himself.

  "Lord, Paris, how begrimed you are!" she cried; and, mounting, rode awaytowards Holyrood with her torchbearers and attendants.

  In the room above, Darnley lay considering her last words. He turnedthem over in his thoughts, assured by the tone she had used and how shehad 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 amonth to the anniversary of Rizzio's death. And why, at parting, shouldshe have reminded him of that which she had agreed should be forgotten?Instantly came the answer that she sought to warn him that retributionwas impending. He thought again of the rumours that he had heard of abond 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 restuntil 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 helooked at the ring she had put upon his finger in pledge of her renewedaffection. The past was dead and buried, surely. Though danger mightthreaten, she would guard him against it, setting her love about himlike a panoply of steel. When she came to-morrow, he would question herclosely, and she should be more frank and open with him, and tell himall. Meanwhile, he would take his precautions for to-night.

  He sent his page to make fast all doors. The youth went and did as hewas bidden, with the exception of the door that led to the garden. Ithad no bolts, and the key was missing; yet, seeing his master's nervous,excited state, he forbore from any mention of that circumstance whenpresently 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 Kinghimself fell into a light slumber. Out of this he started suddenly ata little before two o'clock, and sat upright in bed, alarmed withoutknowing why, listening with straining ears and throbbing pulses.

  He caught a repetition of the sound that had aroused him, a sound akinto that which had drawn his attention earlier, when Mary had been withhim. 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 thewindow, peered out into the close that was faintly illumined by amoon in its first quarter. A shadow moved, he thought. He watched withincreasing panic for confirmation, and presently saw that he had beenright. Not one, but several shadows were shifting there among thetrees. Shadows of men, they were, and as he peered, he saw one thatwent running from the house across the lawn and joined the others, nowclustered together in a group. What could be their purpose here? In thesilence, 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 shookthe 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 arebeset by enemies!"

  At once the youth was wide awake, and together the King just in hisshirt as he was--they made their way from the room in the dark, gropingtheir way, and so reached the windows at the back. Darnley opened one ofthese very softly, then sent the boy back for a sheet. Making thisfast, 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 muchfrom the cold as from the terror that possessed him. And then, quitesuddenly, without the least warning, the ground, it seemed to them,heaved under their feet, and they were flung violently forward on theirfaces. A great blaze rent the darkness of the night, accompanied bythe thunders of an explosion so terrific that it seemed as if the wholeworld must have been shattered by it.

  For some instants the King and his page lay half stunned where they hadfallen, and well might it have been for them had they so continued. ButDarnley, recovering, staggered to his feet, pulling the boy up with himand supporting him. Then, as he began to move, he heard a soft whistlein the gloom behind him. Over his shoulder he looked towards the house,to behold a great, smoking gap now yawning in it. Through this gaphe caught a glimpse of shadowy men moving in the close beyond, and herealized that he had been seen. The white shirt he wore had betrayed hispresence to them.

  With a stifled scream, he began to run towards the wall, the pagestaggering after him. Behind them now came the clank and thud of a scoreof overtaking feet. Soon they were surrounded. The King turned this wayand that, desperately seeking a way out of the murderous human ring thatfenced them round.

  "What d'ye seek? What d'ye seek?" he screeched, in a pitiful attempt toquestion 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 fellfrom 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 pulledit from his shivering body; then, flinging the sleeves about the royalneck, slipped one over the other and drew them tight, nor relaxed hishold until the young man's struggles had entirely ceased.

  Four days later, Mary went to visit the body of her husband in thechapel of Holyrood House, whither it had been conveyed, and there, as acontemporary tells us, she looked upon it long, "not only without grief,but with greedy eyes." Thereafter it was buried secretly in the night byRizzio's side, so that murderer and victim lay at peace together in theend.