Erskine drew his sword. Ruthven shouted, ‘Lay a hand on me at your peril!’
His shout was a signal. Men came crowding in now at both doors, men with drawn swords or daggers, their faces agape like hounds for blood. Rizzio yelled, ‘Justice! Justice!’ Mary cried to him frantically, ‘The King will prevent it – he has not forgotten all you have done for him.’
Did Darnley even hear her? He stood there shaking, gibbering, while the armed men surged past him, knocking over the table. There was a crash of glass and silver, the candles fell and went out, Lady Argyll had the presence of mind to snatch one and hold it up high or the room would have been in total darkness. Lord Robert and Arthur Erskine were at once overpowered, pinioned, and dragged off down the stairway.
A man thrust at Rizzio across Mary so that his blood spurted out over her dress. He still clung to it, but Kerr of Fawdonside bent back his middle finger till in agony he had to let go, and then Ruthven seized her and thrust her into Darnley’s hands, telling her as she fought and struggled that no harm was intended to her person. She laughed, dreadfully, for while Darnley held her down by force in a chair, Kerr pushed a pistol against her side. She tried to hold it off. ‘You are hurting the child!’ she cried; then as they pushed and thrust against her she saw that that was indeed part of their intention. But what she was seeing and hearing in front of her should surely be enough for their purpose.
Davie was being stabbed again and again, and screaming in a horrible thin whine unlike any human voice, and Darnley never spoke to save him, but pressed her down, down into the chair as if he were falling on her. Blood was on her dress, blood was spurting everywhere; that huddled, writhing, whining thing on the floor was being dragged into the bed-chamber and finished off there, all the men thrusting after it, panting and grunting in their bloodlust. Darnley went too. There came a moment’s silence, and then the sound of something soft and heavy rattling and bumping down the bedroom stairs.
Ruthven came back, fell into a chair, with a refinement of courtesy asked her pardon for sitting in her presence, and called for a drink, ‘for God’s sake.’ He was moribund; it seemed for a moment that there would be another death before her eyes.
As he sat there gasping and holding his side, there came an uproar from the end of the gallery. Men came in and told him that the Lords Bothwell and Huntly were trying to force an entry with a few scullions. Ruthven laughed in answer, with a dry rattling hollow sound in his throat.
‘Much good they’ll do against five hundred men!’ he wheezed. ‘I’ll soon settle the scullions.’
She fainted at that. He finished his drink, dragged himself together, and with two of his servants holding him up by the arms, limped down the stairs.
Chapter Seven
The Hepburn was supping with the Gordon that evening in his quarters at Holyrood. They had walked first in the gardens, where a blackbird was singing like mad on a branch of budding pear blossom. The huge shape of Arthur’s Seat rose dark against the pale evening sky, and the tourelles of the Palace pierced it with tapering points graceful as those of a château in Touraine. From one of them came the sound of music and a man’s deep voice singing a triumphant song. They stood for a moment to listen, then saw lights warm and golden in the window; the curtains were drawn across it and there was silence.
They went indoors, and Lord Atholl joined them at supper. They talked of the impending trial of Lord James and his colleagues. Atholl was of opinion that it would come to nothing. ‘The Bastard has too strong a party, and none knows where it spreads. It works underground.’
Bothwell gave a cracking yawn of disgust. ‘I hate politics,’ he said in explanation. ‘I think I hate all mankind and all their filthy little businesses.’
These Timonesque reflections were interrupted by a shout:
‘A Douglas! A Douglas!’ The war-cry was ringing through the Palace, and the hurried tramp of armed men, hundreds of them.
Bothwell sprang to his feet with an oath, pushed back his plate and gave a shout to his servants. ‘Call your men too,’ he told the others. ‘What the devil is this? Are the Douglases out?’ And then as he realized the smallness of their numbers he called to the cooks and scullions to follow too, and to bring their spits for weapons.
They ran in the direction of the shouting, and Bothwell turned cold with fear as he realized it was coming from the Queen’s apartments.
They flung themselves against the door of the gallery that led, to them, and found it barred and held fast. They sent back some of the servants for crowbars. Bothwell shouted to the men on the other side to let him and the Earls of Huntly and Atholl pass. They called back that they were holding the doors for the Earl of Morton, the head of the Douglas clan, and had orders to let none pass.
More men came running past; Bothwell seized one of them and spun him round.
‘What’s the business? Is it an attempt on the Queen?’
‘No, no, only that Popish rascal Rizzio.’ He grinned as the servants came running back with the crowbars. ‘You’ll find that no good, my lord. There are five hundred men in all about the Palace, the gates are closed and the porter’s keys taken.’
Bothwell let him go and turned to the others. ‘We may as well go back and finish our supper, Gordon.’ He winked as he spoke; they must go cannily for the moment. Atholl left them for his own quarters, Gordon and Bothwell sat down to plates of congealed gravy.
They had not long to wait before Lord Ruthven came limping in, held up by two servants. He fell panting into a chair, and they gave him drink with expressions of respectful sympathy. Bothwell insisted on making it whisky instead of wine. ‘You need it, my lord.’ He further said it was a good thing the Italian was dead – ‘we want no foreigners here.’
The invalid, gulping down raw whisky as if it were water, gasped out, ‘We should have hanged him; we brought the rope for it, but there wasn’t time.’
Bothwell filled his glass again. The blue lips writhed in a grin and repeated. ‘No time. We made short work of him. Come and see.’ He poured the second glassful down his throat, then dragged himself up and led them down the passage to the porter’s lodge. There on a wooden chest lay a lumpish blood-boultered body, the gashed and twisted face scarcely recognizable as that of David Rizzio.
The porter was leaning over it, fingering the jewelled hilt of a dagger stuck deep in the ribs; he sprang back and began talking very fast, to distract their attention from what he had been doing.
‘Aye, there he lies,’ he said, ‘and right it is he should. It’s his due. That chest was all he had to lie on when he first came to this place, and for all he jumped so high in the world it’s all he’s got to lie on now, the niggardly knave.’
‘Wasn’t free enough with drink-money for you, hey?’ said Bothwell. ‘Well, you’ll get enough out of him dead.’
‘My lord, I’ve not touched the body except to count the thrusts in it – fifty-six in all. Hardly room for ’em all on a little fellow like him. And this whinger here, it’s the King’s, and should go back to him, but it’s a tough job to pull out.’
He gave another tug, and out came the dagger, which Bothwell had also recognised. Ruthven held out his hand for it, and turned with a grin to Bothwell.
‘Here you see the outward sign and proof that we acted in the King’s business, led and instigated by the King. This rascal David stood between him and the Crown Matrimonial, lay between him and his wife.’
Gordon’s hand flew to his sword, but Bothwell moved in front of him so quickly as to hide the gesture.
‘And the Douglases?’ he said. ‘Why are they in it?’
‘As we’re all in it, all good Protestants who’ll never stand by and see a base-born Popish intriguer rule this kingdom and the Queen. They’re Darnley’s kinsmen too, aren’t they?’
They were, but a stronger and more likely motive was Morton’s personal grievance (he had been afraid that Rizzio’s influence would deprive him of the Chancellorship), combined with the heredita
ry policy of his Douglas clan in its venomous rivalry with the royal Stewarts.
‘All sound men are with us,’ said Ruthven. ‘Lethington said a month ago we must chop at the root of the evil.’
‘Lethington? And is James Stewart with you too?’
‘That he is – and in the flesh before many hours are out. He’s left Newcastle and should be here in Edinburgh by dawn, and the rest of the exiles with him. That slave there thought to pull him down in the coming trial, but the noose has been fitted round his own neck instead.’
‘So they hanged Haman high upon the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.’ The weak bodiless voice of the preacher seemed to be whispering in exultation over the mutilated corpse.
‘What of the Queen?’ cried Gordon hoarsely. ‘Was this done in her presence?’
‘We dragged him away from her, into the next room, and killed him there. She’s safe with her husband – if she doesn’t like that, let her learn to, as an honest woman should.’ Again there came that ghastly writhing of the lips, grinning back from the pallid gums. Ruthven had been in bed for over three months with inflammation of the liver and kidney disease. It gave Bothwell his opportunity at last for revenge.
‘I hope indeed, my lord,’ he said, with a grave sympathy that showed he had no hope at all, ‘that this death here tonight will not cause your own.’
The yellow eyeballs swivelled round on him like those of a startled horse. ‘You’d best stay close in your quarters,’ was the frightened man’s retort. ‘The whole place is under guard. There are eighty armed men about the Queen’s room alone. None will pass in or out of the Palace except by our command. I will go and tell Atholl of the matter, and trust he’ll show as much care for his skin as you have done.’
And the terrible old man hobbled off between his supporters. The Earls of Huntly and Bothwell went back obediently to Bothwell’s rooms and there discussed their plans. Inside the Palace they were prisoners, for even if Atholl gave active help, which they doubted, they would be a mere handful against five hundred men, who had already taken up all the strategic points.
They must escape from Holyrood in order to rescue the Queen and raise an armed force on her behalf. So much Bothwell said, and briskly, for Gordon was overcome with rage and loathing. ‘If she should have a miscarriage—’
‘That’s what they’re working for, of course, and her death with it. But with luck it’s their plot we’ll make abortive.’
‘My mother would help,’ said Gordon. ‘If we could only get into the town and up to Huntly House—’
‘We must get there. There’s a window along here that looks on the lion-pit. That won’t be guarded.’
‘Except by the lions,’ observed Gordon.
‘It’s a cold night – they’ll be inside. Anyway, we’ll take the chance.’
And the two Earls jumped out of a first-floor window into the lion-pit.
Chapter Eight
In one way the conspirators succeeded in their purpose. There was a forced birth that night: the birth of a new creature in Mary, one ‘hard as steel when offended, cold as ice in danger’, the heart of a man of war in the body of a young woman three months past her twenty-third birthday and nearing her first childbed. With her unusual power of concentration she now shut her mind to everything but that moment ahead of her. Nothing else mattered. She had just seen her trusted friend and servant hacked to death, but that was not the only, nor the chief aim of her enemies. They could have chosen any other moment to dispatch him, and far more easily. It was done in her presence in order to produce her miscarriage, and in all probability her death. They had succeeded in the first part of their attack; they should not, succeed in the second.
She had fainted, but no one helped her to come to herself; her half-sister had been dragged, away from her, as well as Lord Robert and Arthur Erskine; she struggled back to consciousness slowly, unwillingly, to the dreadful awakening that was no continuation of a nightmare, as she at first thought, but the unbelievable truth.
Under her nearly closed eyelids she saw the familiar scene of her bedroom round her, but horribly distorted, as in delirium. There was blood spattered over the chimney-piece where they had struck the final blows. Her hand touched thick drying blood on her dress. She was lying, not on her bed, but hunched in a chair; she felt so ill she thought she must be dying. None of her women were here to look after her. Instead, there was the tramp and clank of armed men marching round about her room.
She was a prisoner here, and these were her jailers. The ghoulish Ruthven limped in and out with the help of his servants, as though he were not free to die until he had done all the evil required of him by his master, Satan; he croaked and gasped out his commands to the youth he sneeringly addressed as his King.
She shut her eyes fast, thinking that when she opened them again he would be gone, and when she opened them he was – but she now saw in front of her the bestial pudgy face of the Earl of Morton with his little pig’s eyes winking out above his ragged red whiskers. Morton – head of the Douglases – yes, this was the man who had had a minister tortured and hanged for rebuking his adultery with the widow of a man that he had murdered.
And then she heard the thick fury of Lord Lindsay’s flurrying voice, blaring and roaring out orders, threats and oaths indiscriminately. He was excited to frenzy, as always by bloodshed. In the first weeks of her arrival in Scotland he had led the riot against the priest in her chapel with Arran, and yelled with bloodlust as madly as that poor lunatic. She had seen as little as she could of him since then; but now he was here, in her bedchamber, together with Morton and Ruthven.
She was in hell and in the power of the devils, and all the time there was one slender young shape, like an angel with fair hair, moving restlessly about, hovering over her when her eyes were closed, sliding away from her when they were open. That fair form in blue and gold was a worse devil than these savage old men, for he had played tennis and joked with his victim all this afternoon, so as to lull any suspicions he might have; he had been sweetly attentive and considerate to herself.
‘You don’t mind, do you, chérie?’ – and then that gentle, absent-minded, foolishly loving smile. Did Judas smile so when he kissed Jesus the same night that he betrayed Him?
‘You’ve got to be careful now, you know.’ He had said that when plotting this thrust at their child’s life and her own. To get a woman with child and use that child as a weapon against her, a knife in her womb to be turned on herself – such treachery was past all human thought. ‘But then he doesn’t think, he drinks,’ she told herself, and all his brains were rotted at the roots. She watched him under those half-shut lids as he drifted about her room, uneasy, unhappy, almost as much a prisoner of these brutal murderers as she was herself. He didn’t realize it, of course – he realized nothing. But he could be made to do so. And a plan began to form itself behind the white ravaged mask of her face.
She had heard the uproar at the end of the gallery die down; but now that she could think again she did not believe Ruthven would dare have the Earls Bothwell and Huntly murdered at this juncture. They were more likely to have been taken prisoner. But to what end?
Now there came another uproar, from outside the Palace this time. She heard the clanging of the Common Bell away in the town; the hurried, uneven hammer-strokes upon it came hurtling down the hillside on the night wind. Someone must have got out of the Palace and given the alarm to the citizens; they were arming, they were calling to each other, hurrying down the long steep street to her defence. She heard the running tread of hundreds of feet, and the clamour as they beat upon the locked gates. Now they were shouting from the outer courtyard, and the light of their torches flared across the ceiling. There was a hush while someone parleyed with them, but a murmur grew, a muttering growl of dissatisfaction, then shouts louder than before. She could hear now that they were calling, ‘The Queen! Let us see the Queen!’
She had lain cramped and huddled in her chair for about two hours,
apparently lifeless; now she sprang in one movement to the window and got her hands on the latch. But before she could open it Lord Lindsay seized her arms and wrenched her back.
‘Show yourself at that window,’ he shouted, ‘say one word to them, and I’ll cut you in collops and throw you down the wall!’
His mouth seemed to slip over his face, his eyes glared; she was staring into the face of a wild beast. The next moment he threw her with all his force back into the chair; she gave a low moan and lay limp, her eyes shut, her mouth half open and saliva running from it. That brought Darnley to her side, fumbling, inarticulate. He rubbed his hand over her head in some vague attempt at reassurance. Deliberately she laid her cheek against it; it was cold and blue, she felt as though she were caressing a snake. This hand, too, had struck down Davie; under her eyelids she saw his belt, and that his dagger was missing from it. Her father’s dagger, her wedding present to Darnley, that dagger had been used by her young husband to kill her friend, perhaps her child, perhaps herself. Its steel had entered her own heart; she felt nothing now, not even horror, as she laid her lips against that hand and whispered, ‘Speak to the people, Harry. Tell them I am in danger.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll do it,’ he stammered.
The noise outside was growing; there was the clash of weapons, and the shouting came louder and angrier for the Queen. Damley had left her side and was hurriedly conferring in low tones with Lindsay and Morton. Then he went to the window and opened it, and her hopes rose fast.
‘My Lord Provost and loyal citizens of Edinburgh!’ she heard him cry, and then, ‘Justice has been done on a criminal within the Palace, a spy and infidel, the foreigner David Rizzio. But the Queen and I are safe. All is well. Return quietly to your homes. The Queen is quite safe, she is with me, and surrounded by her loyal servants.’
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