Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  He sought her in the morning emboldened by the sovereign power he was usurping confident that now that he showed himself master of the situation she would not repine over what was done beyond recall, but would submit to the inevitable, be reconciled with him, and grant him, perforce — supported as he now was by the rebellious lords — the crown matrimonial and the full kingly power he coveted.

  But her reception of him broke that confidence into shards.

  “You have done me such a Wrong,” she told him in a voice of cold hatred, “that neither the recollection of our early friendship, nor all the hope you can give me of the future, could ever make me forget it. Jamais! Jamais je n’oublierai!” she added, and upon that she dismissed him so imperiously that he went at once.

  She sought a way to deal with him, groped blindly for it, being as yet but half informed of what was taking place; and whilst she groped, the thing she sought was suddenly thrust into her land. Mary Beaton, one of the few attendants left her, brought her word later that day that the Earl of Murray, with Rothes and some other of the exiled lords, was in the palace. The news brought revelation. It flooded with light the tragic happening of the night before, showed her how Darnley was building himself a party in the state. It did more than that. She recalled the erstwhile mutual hatred and mistrust of Murray and Darnley, and saw how it might serve her in this emergency.

  Instantly she summoned Murray to her presence with the message that she welcomed his return. Yet, despite that message, he hardly expected — considering what lay between them — the reception that awaited him at her hands.

  She rose to receive him, her lovely eyes suffused with tears. She embraced him, kissed him, and then, nestling to him, as if for comfort, her cheek against his bearded face, she allowed her tears to flow unchecked.

  “I am punished,” she sobbed— “oh, I am punished! Had I kept you at home, Murray, you would never have suffered men to entreat me as I have been entreated.”

  Holding her to hin, he could but pat her shoulder, soothing her, utterly taken aback, and deeply moved, too, by this display of an affection for him that he had never hitherto suspected in her.

  “Ah, mon Dieu, Jamie, how welcome you are to one in my sorrow!” she continued. “It is the fault of others that you have been so long out of the country. I but require of you that you be a good subject to me, and you shall never find me other to you than you deserve.”

  And he, shaken to the depths of his selfish soul by her tears, her clinging caresses, and her protestations of affection, answered with an oath and a sob that no better or more loyal and devoted subject than himself could all Scotland yield her.

  “And, as for this killing of Davie,” he ended vehemently, “I swear by my soul’s salvation that I have had no part in it, nor any knowledge of it until my return!”

  “I know — I know!” she moaned. “Should I make you welcome, else? Be my friend, Jamie; be my friend!”

  He swore it readily, for he was very greedy of power, and saw the door of his return to it opening wider than he could have hoped. Then he spoke of Darnley, begging her to receive him, and hear what he might have to say, protesting that the King swore that he had not desired the murder, and that the lords had carried the matter out of his hands and much beyond all that he had intended.

  Because it suited her deep purpose, Mary consented, feigning to be persuaded. She had realized that before she could deal with Darnley, and the rebel lords who held her a prisoner, she must first win free from Holyrood.

  Darnley came. He was sullen now, mindful of his recent treatment, and in fear — notwithstanding Murray’s reassurance — of further similar rebuffs. She announced herself ready to hear what he might have to say, and she listened attentively while he spoke, her elbow on the carved arm of her chair, her chin in her hand. When he had done, she sat long in thought, gazing out through the window at the grey March sky. At length she turned and looked at him.

  “Do you pretend, my lord, to regret for what has passed?” she challenged him.

  “You tempt me to hypocrisy,” he said. “Yet I will be frank as at an Easter shrift. Since that fellow Davie fell into credit and familiarity with Your Majesty, you no longer treated me nor entertained me after your wonted fashion, nor would you ever bear me company save this Davie were the third. Can I pretend, then, to regret that one who deprived me of what I prized most highly upon earth should have been removed? I cannot. Yet I can and do proclaim my innocence of any part or share in the deed that has removed him.”

  She lowered her eyes an instant, then raised them again to meet his own.

  “You had commerce with these traitor lords,” she reminded him. “It is by your decree that they are returned from exile. What was your aim in this?”

  “To win back the things of which this fellow Davie had robbed me, a share in the ruling and the crown matrimonial that was my right, yet which you denied me. That and no more. I had not intended that Davie should be slain. I had not measured the depth of their hatred of that upstart knave. You see that I am frank with you.”

  “Aye, and I believe you,” she lied slowly, considering him as she spoke. And he drew a breath of relief, suspecting nothing of her deep guile. “And do you know why I believe you? Because you are a fool.”

  “Madame!” he cried.

  She rose, magnificently contemptuous.

  “Must I prove it? You say that the crown matrimonial which I denied you is to be conferred on you by these lawless men? Believing that, you signed their pardon and recall from exile. Ha! You do not see, my lord, that you are no more than their tool, their cat’s-paw. You do not see that they use you but for their ends, and that when they have done with you, they will serve you as they served poor Davie? No, you see none of that, which is why I call you a fool, that need a woman’s wit to open wide your eyes.”

  She was so vehement that she forced upon his dull wits some of the convictions she pretended were her own. Yet, resisting those convictions, he cried out that she was at fault.

  “At fault?” She laughed. “Let my memory inform your judgment. When these lords, with Murray at their head, protested against our marriage, in what terms did they frame their protest? They complained that I had set over them without consulting them one who had no title to it, whether by lineal descent of blood, by nature, or by consent of the Estates. Consider that! They added, remember — I repeat to you the very words they wrote and published — that while they deemed it their duty to endure under me, they deemed it intolerable to suffer under you.”

  She was flushed, and her eyes gleamed with excitement. She clutched his sleeve, and brought her face close to his own, looked deep and compellingly into his eyes as she continued:

  “Such was their proclamation, and they took arms against me to enforce it, to pull you down from the place to which I had raised you out of the dust. Yet you can forget it, and in your purblind folly turn to these very men to right the wrongs you fancy I have done you. Do you think that men, holding you in such esteem as that, can keep any sort of faith with you? Do you think these are the men who are likely to fortify and maintain your title to the crown? Ask yourself, and answer for yourself.”

  He was white to the lips. As much by her vehement pretence of sincerity as by the apparently irrefragable logic of her arguments, she forced conviction upon him. This brought a loathly fear in its train, and the gates of his heart stood ever wide to fear. He stepped aside to a chair, and sank into it, looking at her with dilating eyes — a fool confronted with the likely fruits of his folly.

  “Then — then — why did they proffer me their help? How can they achieve their ends this way?”

  “How? Do you still ask? Do you not see what a blind tool you have been in their crafty hands? In name at least you are king, and your signature is binding upon my subjects. Have you not brought them back from exile by one royal decree, whilst by another you have dispersed the Parliament that was assembled to attaint them of treason?”

  She stepped cl
ose up to him, and bending over him as he sat there, crushed by realization, she lowered her voice.

  “Pray God, my lord, that all their purpose with you is not yet complete, else in their hands I do not think your life is to be valued at an apple-paring. You go the ways poor Davie went.”

  He sank his handsome head to his hands, and covered his face. A while he sat huddled there, she watching him with gleaming, crafty eyes. At length he rallied. He looked up, tossing back the auburn hair from his white brow, still fighting, though weakly, against persuasion. “It is not possible,” he, cried. “They could not! They could not!”

  She laughed, betwixt bitterness and sadness.

  “Trust to that,” she bade him. “Yet look well at matters as they are already. I am a prisoner here in these men’s hands. They will not let me go until their full purpose is accomplished — perhaps,” she added wistfully, “perhaps not even then.”

  “Ah, not that!” he cried out.

  “Even that,” she answered firmly. “But,” and again she grew vehement, “is it less so with you? Are you less a prisoner than I? D’ye think you will be suffered to come and go at will?” She saw the increase of fear in him, and then she struck boldly, setting all upon the gamble of a guess. “I am kept here until I shall have been brought to such a state that I will add my signature to your own and so pardon one and all for what is done.”

  His sudden start, the sudden quickening of his glance told her how shrewdly she had struck home. Fearlessly, then, sure of herself, she continued. “To that end they use you. When you shall have served it you will but cumber them. When they shall have used you to procure their security from me, then they will deal with you as they have ever sought to deal with you — so that you trouble them no more. Ah, at last you understand!”

  He came to his feet, his brow gleaming with sweat, his slender hands nervously interlocked.

  “Oh, God!” he cried in a stifled voice.

  “Aye, you are in a trap, my lord. Yourself you’ve sprung it.”

  And now you behold him broken by the terror she had so cunningly evoked. He flung himself upon his knees before her, and with upturned face and hands that caught and clawed at her own, he implored her pardon for the wrong that in his folly he had done her in taking sides with her enemies.

  She dissembled under a mask of gentleness the loathing that his cowardice aroused in her.

  “My enemies?” she echoed wistfully. “Say rather your own enemies. It was their enmity to you that drove them into exile. In your rashness you have recalled them, whilst at the same time you have so bound my hands that I cannot now help you if I would.”

  “You can, Mary,” he cried, “or else no one can. Withhold the pardon they will presently be seeking of you. Refuse to sign any remission of their deed.”

  “And leave them to force you to sign it, and so destroy us both,” she answered.

  He ranted then, invoking the saints of heaven, and imploring her in their name — she who was so wise and strong — to discover some way out of this tangle in which his madness had enmeshed them.

  “What way is there short of flight?” she asked him. “And how are we to fly who are imprisoned here you as well as myself? Alas, Darnley, I fear our lives will end by paying the price of your folly.”

  Thus she played upon his terrors, so that he would not be dismissed until she had promised that she would consider and seek some means of saving him, enjoining him meanwhile to keep strict watch upon himself and see that he betrayed nothing of his thoughts.

  She left him to the chastening of a sleepless night, then sent for him betimes on Monday morning, and bade him repair to the lords and tell them that realizing herself a prisoner in their hands she was disposed to make terms with them. She would grant them pardon for what was done if on their side they undertook to be loyal henceforth and allowed her to resume her liberty.

  The message startled him. But the smile with which she followed it was reassuring.

  “There is something else you are to do,” she said, “if we are to turn the tables on these traitorous gentlemen. Listen.” And she added matter that begat fresh hope in Darnley’s despairing soul.

  He kissed her hands, lowly now and obedient as a hound that had been whipped to heel, and went below to bear her message to the lords.

  Morton and Ruthven heard him out, but betrayed no eagerness to seize the opportunity.

  “All this is but words that we hear,” growled Ruthven, who lay stretched upon a couch, grimly suffering from the disease that was, slowly eating up his life.

  “She is guileful as the serpent,” Morton added, “being bred up in the Court of France. She will make you follow her will and desire, but she will not so lead us. We hold her fast, and we do not let her go without some good security of what shall follow.”

  “What security will satisfy you?” quoth Darnley.

  Murray and Lindsay came in as he was speaking, and Morton told them of the message that Darnley had brought. Murray moved heavily across to a window-seat, and sat down. He cleared a windowpane with his hand, and looked out upon the wintry landscape as if the matter had no interest for him. But Lindsay echoed what the other twain had said already.

  “We want a deal more than promises that need not be kept,” he said.

  Darnley looked from one to the other of them, seeing in their uncompromising attitude a confirmation of what the Queen had told him, and noting, too — as at another time he might not have noted — their utter lack of deference to himself, their King.

  “Sirs,” he said, “I vow you wrong Her Majesty. I will stake my life upon her honour.”

  “Why, so you may,” sneered Ruthven, “but you’ll not stake ours.”

  “Take what security you please, and I will subscribe it.”

  “Aye, but will the Queen?” wondered Morton.

  “She will. I have her word for it.”

  It took them the whole of that day to consider the terms of the articles that would satisfy them. Towards evening the document was ready, and Morton and Ruthven representing all, accompanied by Murray, and introduced by Darnley, came to the chamber to which Her Majesty was confined by the guard they had set upon her.

  She sat as if in state awaiting them, very lovely and very tearful, knowing that woman’s greatest strength is in her weakness, that tears would serve her best by presenting her as if broken to their will.

  In outward submission they knelt before her to make the pretence of suing for the pardon which they extorted by force of arms and duress. When each in his turn had made the brief pleading oration he had prepared, she dried her eyes and controlled herself by obvious effort.

  “My lords,” she said, in a voice that quivered and broke on every other word, “when have ye ever found me blood-thirsty, or greedy of your lands or goods that you must use me so, and take such means with me? Ye have set my authority at naught, and wrought sedition in this realm. Yet I forgive you all, that by this clemency I may move you to a better love and loyalty. I desire that all that is passed may be buried in oblivion, so that you swear to me that in the future you will stand my friends and serve me faithfully, who am but a weak woman, and sorely need stout men to be my friends.”

  For a moment her utterance was checked by sobs. Then she controlled herself again by an effort so piteous to behold that even the flinty-hearted Ruthven was moved to some compassion.

  “Forgive this weakness in me, who am very weak, for very soon I am to be brought to bed as you well know, and I am in no case to offer resistance to any. I have no more to say, my lords. Since you promise on your side that you will put all disloyalty behind you, I pledge myself to remit and pardon all those that were banished for their share in the late rising, and likewise to pardon those that were concerned in the killing of Seigneur Davie. All this shall be as if it had never been. I pray you, my lords, make your own security in what sort you best please, and I will subscribe it.”

  Morton proffered her the document they had prepared. She co
nned it slowly, what time they watched her, pausing ever and anon to brush aside the tears that blurred her vision. At last she nodded her lovely golden head.

  “It is very well,” she said. “All is here as I would have it be between us.” And she turned to Darnley. “Give me pen and ink, my lord.”

  Darnley dipped a quill and handed it to her. She set the parchment on the little pulpit at her side. Then, as she bent to sign, the pen fluttered from her fingers, and with a deep, shuddering sigh she sank back in her chair, her eyes closed, her face piteously white.

  “The Queen is faint!” cried Murray, springing forward.

  But she rallied instantly, smiling upon them wanly.

  “It is naught; it is past,” she said. But even as she spoke she put a hand to her brow. “I am something dizzy. My condition—” She faltered on a trembling note of appeal that increased their compassion, and aroused in them a shame of their own harshness. “Leave this security with me. I will subscribe it in the morning — indeed, as soon as I am sufficiently recovered.”

  They rose from their knees at her bidding, and Morton in the name of all professed himself full satisfied, and deplored the affliction they had caused her, for which in the future they should make her their amends.

  “I thank you,” she answered simply. “You have leave to go.”

  They departed well satisfied; and, counting the matter at an end, they quitted the palace and rode to their various lodgings in Edinburgh town, Murray going with Morton.

  Anon to Maitland of Lethington, who had remained behind, came one of the Queen’s women to summon him to her presence. He found her disposing herself for bed, and was received by her with tearful upbraidings.

  “Sir,” she said, “one of the conditions upon which I consented to the will of their lordships was that an immediate term should be set to the insulting state of imprisonment in which I am kept here. Yet men-at-arms still guard the very door of my chamber, and my very attendants are hindered in their comings and goings. Do you call this keeping faith with me? Have I not granted all the requests of the lords?”