Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  This bruit found credit — indeed, there have been ever since those who have believed it — and, as it spread, it reached the ears of Darnley. Because it afforded him an explanation of the Queen’s hostility, since he was without the introspection that would have discovered the true explanation in his own shortcomings, he flung it as so much fuel upon the seething fires of his rancour, and became the most implacable of those who sought the ruin of Rizzio.

  He sent for Ruthven, the friend of Murray and the exiled lords — exiled, remember, on Darnley’s own account — and offered to procure the reinstatement of those outlaws if they would avenge his honour and make him King of Scots in something more than name.

  Ruthven, sick of a mortal illness, having risen from a bed of pain to come in answer to that summons, listened dourly to the frothing speeches of that silly, lovely boy.

  “No doubt you’ll be right about yon fellow Davie,” he agreed sombrely, and purposely he added things that must have outraged Darnley’s every feeling as king and as husband. Then he stated the terms on which Darnley might count upon his aid.

  “Early next month Parliament is to meet over the business of a Bill of Attainder against Murray and his friends, declaring them by their rebellion to have forfeited life, land, and goods. Ye can see the power with her o’ this foreign fiddler, that it drives her so to attaint her own brother. Murray has ever hated Davie, knowing too much of what lies ‘twixt the Queen and him to her dishonour, and Master Davie thinks so to make an end of Murray and his hatred.”

  Darnley clenched teeth and hands, tortured by the craftily administered poison.

  “What then? What is to do?” he cried,

  Ruthven told him bluntly.

  “That Bill must never pass. Parliament must never meet to pass it. You are Her Grace’s husband and King of Scots.”

  “In name!” sneered Darnley bitterly.

  “The name will serve,” said Ruthven. “In that name ye’ll sign me a bond of formal remission to Murray and his friends for all their actions and quarrels, permitting their safe return to Scotland, and charging the lieges to convoy them safely. Do that and leave the rest to us.”

  If Darnley hesitated at all, it was not because he perceived the irony of the situation — that he himself, in secret opposition to the Queen, should sign the pardon of those who had rebelled against her precisely because she had taken him to husband. He hesitated because indecision was inherent in his nature.

  “And then?” he asked at last.

  Ruthven’s blood-injected eyes considered him stonily out of a livid, gleaming face.

  “Then, whether you reign with her or without her, reign you shall as King o’ Scots. I pledge myself to that, and I pledge those others, so that we have the bond.”

  Darnley sat down to sign the death warrant of the Seigneur Davie.

  It was the night of Saturday, the 9th of March.

  A fire of pine logs burned fragrantly on the hearth of the small closet adjoining the Queen’s chamber, suffusing it with a sense of comfort, the greater by contrast with the cheerlessness out of doors, where an easterly wind swept down from Arthur’s Seat and moaned its dismal way over a snowclad world.

  The lovely, golden-headed young queen supped with a little company of intimates: her natural sister, the Countess of Argyll, the Commendator of Holyrood, Beaton, the Master of the Household, Arthur Erskine, the Captain of the Guard, and one other — that, David Rizzio, who from an errant minstrel had risen to this perilous eminence, a man of a swarthy, ill-favoured countenance redeemed by the intelligence that glowed in his dark eyes, and of a body so slight and fragile as to seem almost misshapen. His age was not above thirty, yet indifferent health, early privation, and misfortune had so set their mark upon him that he had all the appearance of a man of fifty. He was dressed with sombre magnificence, and a jewel of great price smouldered upon the middle finger of one of his slender, delicate hands.

  Supper was at an end. The Queen lounged on a long seat over against the tapestried wall. The Countess of Argyll, in a tall chair on the Queen’s left, sat with elbows on the table watching the Seigneur Davie’s fine fingers as they plucked softly at the strings of a long-necked lute. The talk, which, intimate and untrammelled, had lately been of the child of which Her Majesty was to be delivered some three months hence, was flagging now, and it was to fill the gap that Rizzio had taken up the lute.

  His harsh countenance was transfigured as he caressed the strings, his soul absorbed in the theme of his inspiration. Very softly — indeed, no more than tentatively as yet — he was beginning one of those wistful airs in which his spirit survives in Scotland to this day, when suddenly the expectant hush was broken by a clash of curtain-rings. The tapestries that masked the door had been swept aside, and on the threshold, unheralded, stood the tall, stripling figure of the young King.

  Darnley’s appearance abruptly scattered the Italian’s inspiration. The melody broke off sharply on the single loud note of a string too rudely plucked.

  That and the silence that followed it irked them all, conveying a sense that here something had been broken which never could be made whole again.

  Darnley shuffled forward. His handsome face was pale save for the two burning spots upon his cheekbones, and his eyes glittered feveredly. He had been drinking, so much was clear; and that he should seek the Queen thus, who so seldom sought her sober, angered those intimates who had come to share her well-founded dislike of him. King though he might be in name, into such contempt was he fallen that not one of them rose in deference, whilst Mary herself watched his approach with hostile, mistrusting eyes.

  “What is it, my lord?” she asked him coldly, as he flung himself down on the settle beside her.

  He leered at her, put an arm about her waist, pulled her to him, and kissed her oafishly.

  None stirred. All eyes were upon them, and all faces blank. After all, he was the King and she his wife. And then upon the silence, ominous as the very steps of doom, came a ponderous, clanking tread from the ante-room beyond. Again the curtains were thrust aside, and the Countess of Argyll uttered a gasp of sudden fear at the grim spectre she beheld there. It was a figure armed as for a tourney, in gleaming steel from head to foot, girt with a sword, the right hand resting upon the hilt of the heavy dagger in the girdle. The helmet’s vizor was raised, revealing the ghastly face of Ruthven — so ghastly that it must have seemed the face of a dead man but for the blazing life in the eyes that scanned the company. Those questing eyes went round the table, settled upon Rizzio, and seemed horribly to smile.

  Startled, disquieted by this apparition, the Queen half rose, Darnley’s hindering arm still flung about her waist.

  “What’s this?” she cried, her voice sharp.

  And then, as if she guessed intuitively what it might portend, she considered her husband with pale-faced contempt.

  “Judas!” she called him, flung away from his detaining arm, and stood forth to confront that man in steel. “What seek ye here, my lord — and in this guise?” was her angry challenge.

  Ruthven’s burning eyes fell away before her glance. He clanked forward a step or two, flung out a mailed arm, and with a hand that shook pointed to the Seigneur Davie, who stood blankly watching him.

  “I seek yon man,” he said gruffly. “Let him come forth.”

  “He is here by my will,” she told him, her anger mounting. “And so are not you — for which you shall be made to answer.”

  Then to Darnley, who sat hunched on the settle:

  “What does this mean, sir?” she demanded.

  “Why — how should I know? Why — why, nothing,” he faltered foolishly.

  “Pray God that you are right,” said she, “for your own sake. And you,” she continued, addressing Ruthven again and waving a hand in imperious dismissal, “be you gone, and wait until I send for you, which I promise you shall be right soon.”

  If she divined some of the evil of their purpose, if any fear assailed her, yet she betrayed
nothing of it. She was finely tempered steel.

  But Ruthven, sullen and menacing, stood his ground.

  “Let yon man come forth,” he repeated. “He has been here ower lang.”

  “Over long?” she echoed, betrayed by her quick resentment.

  “Aye, ower lang for the good o’ Scotland and your husband,” was the brutal answer.

  Erskine, of her guards, leapt to his feet.

  “Will you begone, sir?” he cried; and after him came Beaton and the Commendator, both echoing the captain’s threatening question.

  A smile overspread Ruthven’s livid face. The heavy dagger flashed from his belt.

  “My affair is not with any o’ ye, but if ye thrust yersels too close upon my notice—”

  The Queen stepped clear of the table to intervene, lest violence should be done here in her presence. Rizzio, who had risen, stood now beside her, watching all with a white, startled face. And then, before more could be said, the curtains were torn away and half a score of men, whose approach had passed unnoticed, poured into the room. First came Morton, the Chancellor, who was to be dispossessed of the great seal in Rizzio’s favour. After him followed the brutal Lindsay of the Byres, Kerr of Faudonside, black-browed Brunston, red-headed Douglas, and a half-dozen others.

  Confusion ensued; the three men of the Queen’s household were instantly surrounded and overpowered. In the brief, sharp struggle the table was overturned, and all would have been in darkness but that as the table went over the Countess of Argyll had snatched up the candle-branch, and stood now holding it aloft to light that extraordinary scene. Rizzio, to whom the sight of Morton had been as the removal of his last illusion, flung himself upon his knees before the Queen. Frail and feeble of body, and never a man of his hands, he was hopelessly unequal to the occasion.

  “Justice, madame!” he cried. “Faites justice! Sauvez ma vie!”

  Fearlessly, she stepped between him and the advancing horde of murderers, making of her body a buckler for his protection. White of face, with heaving bosom and eyes like two glowing sapphires, she confronted them.

  “Back, on your lives!” she bade them.

  But they were lost to all sense of reverence, even to all sense of decency, in their blind rage against this foreign upstart who had trampled their Scottish vanity in the dust. George Douglas, without regard for her condition either as queen or woman — and a woman almost upon the threshold of motherhood — clapped a pistol to her breast and roughly bade her stand aside.

  Undaunted, she looked at him with eyes that froze his trigger-finger, whilst behind her Rizzio grovelled in his terror, clutching her petticoat. Thus, until suddenly she was seized about the waist and half dragged, half-lifted aside by Darnley, who at the same time spurned Rizzio forward with his foot.

  The murderers swooped down upon their prey. Kerr of Faudonside flung a noose about his body, and drew it tight with a jerk that pulled the secretary from his knees. Then he and Morton took the rope between them, and so dragged their victim across the room towards the door. He struggled blindly as he went, vainly clutching first at an overset chair, then at a leg of the table, and screeching piteously the while to the Queen to save him. And Mary, trembling with passion, herself struggling in the arms of Darnley, flung an angry warning after them.

  “If Davie’s blood be spilt, it shall be dear blood to some of you! Remember that, sirs!”

  But they were beyond control by now, hounds unleashed upon the quarry of their hate. Out of her presence Morton and Douglas dragged him, the rest of the baying pack going after them. They dragged him, screeching still, across the ante-chamber to the head of the great stairs, and there they fell on him all together, and so wildly that they wounded one another in their fury to rend him into pieces. The tattered body, gushing blood from six-and-fifty wounds, was hurled from top to bottom of the stairs, with a gold-hilted dagger — Darnley’s, in token of his participation in the deed — still sticking in his breast.

  Ruthven stood forward from the group, his reeking poniard clutched in his right hand, a grin distorting his ghastly, vulturine face. Then he stalked back alone into the royal presence, dragging his feet a little, like a man who is weary.

  He found the room much as he had left it, save that the Queen had sunk back to her seat on the settle, and Darnley was now standing over her, whilst her people were still hemmed about by his own men. Without a “by your leave,” he flung himself into a chair and called hoarsely for a cup of wine.

  Mary’s white face frowned at him across the room.

  “You shall yet drink the wine that I shall pour you for this night’s work, my lord, and for this insolence! Who gave you leave to sit before me?”

  He waved a hand as if to dismiss the matter. It may have seemed to him frivolous to dwell upon such a trifle amid so much.

  “It’s no’ frae lack o’ respect, Your Grace,” he growled, “but frae lack o’ strength. I am ill, and I should ha’ been abed but for what was here to do.”

  “Ah!” She looked at him with cold repugnance. “What have you done with Davie?”

  He shrugged, yet his eyes quailed before her own.

  “He’ll be out yonder,” he answered, grimly evasive; and he took the wine one of his followers proffered him.

  “Go see,” she bade the Countess.

  And the Countess, setting the candle-branch upon the buffet, went out, none attempting to hinder her.

  Then, with narrowed eyes, the Queen watched Ruthven while he drank.

  “It will be for the sake of Murray and his friends that you do this,” she said slowly. “Tell me, my lord, what great kindness is there between Murray and you that, to save him from forfeiture, you run the risk of being forfeited with him?”

  “What I have done,” he said, “I have done for others, and under a bond that shall hold me scatheless.”

  “Under a bond?” said she, and now she looked up at Darnley, standing ever at her side. “And was the bond yours, my lord?”

  “Me?” He started back. “I know naught of it.”

  But as he moved she saw something else. She leaned forward, pointing to the empty sheath at his girdle.

  “Where is your dagger, my lord?” she asked him sharply.

  “My dagger? Ha! How should I know?”

  “But I shall know!” she threatened, as if she were not virtually a prisoner in the hands of these violent men who had invaded her palace and dragged Rizzio from her side. “I shall not rest until I know!”

  The Countess came in, white to the lips, bearing in her eyes something of the horror she had beheld.

  “What is it?” Mary asked her, her voice suddenly hushed and faltering.

  “Madame — he is dead! Murdered!” she announced.

  The Queen looked at her, her face of marble. Then her voice came hushed and tense:

  “Are — you sure?”

  “Myself I saw his body, madame.”

  There was a long pause. A low moan escaped the Queen, and her lovely eyes were filled with tears; slowly these coursed down her cheeks. Something compelling in her grief hushed every voice, and the craven husband at her side shivered as her glance fell upon him once more.

  “And is it so?” she said at length, considering him. She dried her eyes. “Then farewell tears; I must study revenge.” She rose as if with labour, and standing, clung a moment to the table’s edge. A moment she looked at Ruthven, who sat glooming there, dagger in one hand and empty wine-cup in the other; then her glance passed on, and came to rest balefully on Darnley’s face. “You have had your will, my lord,” she said, “but 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.”

  That said she staggered forward. The Countess hastened to her, and leaning upon her arm, Mary passed through the little door of the closet into her chamber.

  That night the common bell was rung, and Edinburgh roused in alarm. Bothwell, Huntly, Atholl, and others who were at Holyrood when Rizzio
was murdered, finding it impossible to go to the Queen’s assistance, and fearing to share the secretary’s fate — for the palace was a-swarm with the murderers’ men-at-arms — had escaped by one of the windows. The alarm they spread in Edinburgh brought the provost and townsmen in arms to the palace by torchlight, demanding to see the Queen, and refusing to depart until Darnley had shown himself and assured them that all was well with the Queen and with himself. And what time Darnley gave them this reassurance from a window of her room, Mary herself stood pale and taut amid the brutal horde that on this alarm had violated the privacy of her chamber, while the ruffianly Red Douglas flashed his dagger before her eyes, swearing that if she made a sound they would cut her into collops.

  When at last they withdrew and left her to herself, they left her no illusions as to her true condition. She was a prisoner in her own palace. The ante-rooms and courts were thronged with the soldiers of Morton and Ruthven, the palace itself was hemmed about, and none might come or go save at the good pleasure of the murderers.

  At last Darnley grasped the authority he had coveted. He dictated forthwith a proclamation which was read next morning at Edinburgh Market Cross — commanding that the nobles who had assembled in Edinburgh to compose the Parliament that was to pass the Bill of Attainder should quit the city within three hours, under pain of treason and forfeiture.

  And meanwhile, with poor Rizzio’s last cry of “justice!” still ringing in her ears, Mary sat alone in her chamber, studying revenge as she had promised. So that life be spared her, justice, she vowed, should be done — punishment not only for that barbarous deed, but for the very manner of the doing of it, for all the insult to which she had been subjected, for the monstrous violence done her feelings and her very person, for the present detention and peril of which she was full conscious.

  Her anger was the more intense because she never permitted it to diffuse itself over the several offenders. Ruthven, who had insulted her so grossly; Douglas, who had offered her personal violence; the Laird of Faudonside, Morton, and all the others who held her now a helpless prisoner, she hew for no more than the instruments of Darnley. It was against Darnley that all her rage was concentrated. She recalled in those bitter hours all that she had suffered at his vile hands, and swore that at whatever cost to herself he should yield a full atonement.