Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

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

  She found him abed, with a piece of taffeta over his face to hide its disfigurement, and she was so moved — as it seemed — by his condition, that she fell on her knees beside him, and wept in the presence of her attendants and his own; confessing penitence if anything she had done in the past could have contributed to their estrangement. Thus reconciliation followed, and she used him tenderly, grew solicitous concerning him, and vowed that as soon as he could be moved, he must be taken to surroundings more salubrious and more befitting the dignity of his station.

  Gladly then he agreed to return with her to Holyrood.

  “Not to Holyrood,” she said. “At least, not until your health is mended, lest you should carry thither infection dangerous to your little son.”

  “Whither then?” he asked her, and when she mentioned Craigmillar, he started up in bed, so that the taffeta slipped from his face, and it was with difficulty that she dissembled the loathing with which the sight of its pustules inspired her.

  “Craigmillar!” he cried. “Then what I was told is true.”

  “What were you told?” quoth she, staring at him, brows knit, her face blank.

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

  “You have been told lies,” she answered him. “I saw no such letter; I subscribed none, nor was ever asked to subscribe any,” which indeed was literally true. “To this I swear. As for your going to Craigmillar, you shall go whithersoever you please, yourself.”

  He sank back on his pillows, and his trembling subsided.

  “I believe thee, Mary. I believe thou’ld never do me any harm,” he repeated, “and if any other would,” he added on a bombastic note, “they shall buy it dear, unless they take me sleeping. But I’ll never to Craigmillar.”

  “I have said you shall go where you please,” she assured him again.

  He considered.

  “There is the house at Kirk o’ Field. It has a fine garden, and is in a position that is deemed the healthiest about Edinburgh. I need good air; good air and baths have been prescribed me to cleanse me of this plague. Kirk o’ Field will serve, if it be your pleasure.”

  She gave a ready consent, dispatched messengers ahead to prepare the house, and to take from Holyrood certain furnishings that should improve the interior, and render it as fitting as possible a dwelling for a king.

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

  It was a tenderness that grew steadily during those twelve days in which he lay in convalescence in the house at Kirk o’ Field; she was playful and coquettish with him as a maid with her lover, so that nothing was talked of but the completeness of this reconciliation, and the hope that it would lead to a peace within the realm that would be a benefit to all. Yet many there were who marvelled at it, wondering whether the waywardness and caprice of woman could account for so sudden a change from hatred to affection.

  Darnley was lodged on the upper floor, in a room comfortably furnished from the palace. It was hung with six pieces of tapestry, and the floor was partly covered by an Eastern carpet. It contained, besides the handsome bed — which once had belonged to the Queen’s mother — a couple of high chairs in purple velvet, a little table with a green velvet cover, and some cushions in red. By the side of the bed stood the specially prepared bath that was part of the cure which Darnley was undergoing. It had for its incongruous lid a door that had been lifted from its hinges.

  Immediately underneath was a room that had been prepared for the Queen, with a little bed of yellow and green damask, and a furred coverlet. The windows looked out upon the close, and the door opened upon the passage leading to the garden.

  Here the Queen slept on several of those nights of early February, for indeed she was more often at Kirk o’ Field than at Holy-rood, and when she was not bearing Darnley company in his chamber, and beguiling the tedium of his illness, she was to be seen walking in the garden with Lady Reres, and from his bed he could hear her sometimes singing as she sauntered there.

  Never since the ephemeral season of their courtship had she been on such fond terms with him, and all his fears of hostile designs entertained against him by her immediate followers were stilled at last. Yet not for long. Into his fool’s paradise came Lord Robert of Holyrood, with a warning that flung him into a sweat of panic.

  The conspirators had hired a few trusted assistants to help them carry out their plans, and a rumour had got abroad — in the unaccountable way of rumours — that there was danger to the King. It was of this rumour that Lord Robert brought him word, telling him bluntly that unless he escaped quickly from this place, he would leave his life there. Yet when Darnley had repeated this to the Queen, and the Queen indignantly had sent for Lord Robert and demanded to know his meaning, his lordship denied that he had uttered any such warning, protested that his words must have been misunderstood — that they referred solely to the King’s condition, which demanded, he thought, different treatment and healthier air.

  Knowing not what to believe, Darnley’s uneasiness abode with him. Yet, trusting Mary, and feeling secure so long as she was by his side, he became more and more insistent upon her presence, more and more fretful in her absence. It was to quiet him that she consented to sleep as often as might be at Kirk o’ Field. She slept there on the Wednesday of that week, and again on Friday, and she was to have done so yet again on that fateful Sunday, February 9th, but that her servant Sebastien — one who had accompanied her from France, and for whom she had a deep affection — was that day married, and Her Majesty had promised to be present at the masque that night at Holyrood, in honour of his nuptials.

  Nevertheless, she did not utterly neglect her husband on that account. She rode to Kirk o’ Field early in the evening, accompanied by Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, and some others; and leaving the lords at cards below to while away the time, she repaired to Darnley, and sat beside his bed, soothing a spirit oddly perturbed, as if with some premonition of what was brewing.

  “Ye’ll not leave me the night,” he begged her once.

  “Alas,” she said, “I must! Sebastien is being wed, and I have promised to be present.”

  He sighed and shifted uneasily.

  “Soon I shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease to haunt me. But just now I cannot bear you from my sight. When you are with me I am at peace. I know that all is well. But when you go I am filled with fears, lying helpless here.”

  “What should you fear?” she asked him.

  “The hate that I know is alive against me.”

  “You are casting shadows to affright yourself,” said she.

  “What’s that?” he cried, half raising himself in sudden alarm. “Listen!”

  From the room below came faintly a sound of footsteps, accompanied by a noise as of something being trundled.

  “It will be my servants in my room — putting it to rights.”

  “To what purpose since you do not sleep there tonight?” he asked. He raised his voice and called his page.

  “Why, what will you do?” she asked him, steadying her own alarm.

  He answered her by bidding the youth who had entered go see what was doing in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errand faithfully, he would have found Bothwell’s followers, Hay and Hepburn, and the Queen’s man, Nicholas Hubert better known as French Paris — emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately under the King’s bed. But it happened that in the passage he came suddenly face to face with the splendid figure of Bothwell, cloaked and hatted, and Bothwell asked him whither he w
ent.

  The boy told him.

  “It is nothing,” Bothwell said. “They are moving Her Grace’s bed in accordance with her wishes.”

  And the lad, overborne by that commanding figure which so effectively blocked his path, chose the line of lesser resistance. He went back to bear the King that message as if for himself he had seen what my Lord Bothwell had but told him.

  Darnley was pacified by the assurance, and the lad withdrew.

  “Did I not tell you how it was?” quoth Mary. “Is not my word enough?”

  “Forgive the doubt,” Darnley begged her. “Indeed, there was no doubt of you, who have shown me so much charity in my affliction.” He sighed, and looked at her with melancholy eyes.

  “I would the past had been other than it has been between you and me,” he said. “I was too young for kingship, I think. In my green youth I listened to false counsellors, and was quick to jealousy and the follies it begets. Then, when you cast me out and I wandered friendless, a devil took possession of me. Yet, if you will but consent to bury all the past into oblivion, I will make amends, and you shall find me worthier hereafter.”

  She rose, white to the lips, her bosom heaving under her long cloak. She turned aside and stepped to the window. She stood there, peering out into the gloom of the close, her knees trembling under her.

  “Why do you not answer me?” he cried.

  “What answer do you need?” she said, and her voice shook. “Are you not answered already?” And then, breathlessly, she added: “It is time to go, I think.”

  They heard a heavy step upon the stairs and the clank of a sword against the rails. The door opened, and Bothwell, wrapped in his scarlet cloak, stood bending his tall shoulders under the low lintel. His gleaming eyes, so oddly mocking in their glance, for all that his face was set, fell upon Darnley, and with their look flung him into an inward state of blending fear and rage.

  “Your Grace,” said Bothwell’s deep voice, “it is close upon midnight.”

  He came no more than in time; it needed the sight of him with its reminder of all that he meant to her to sustain a purpose that was being sapped by pity.

  “Very well,” she said. “I come.”

  Bothwell stood aside to give her egress and to invite it. But the King delayed her.

  “A moment — a word!” he begged, and to Bothwell: “Give us leave apart, sir!”

  Yet, King though he might be, there was no ready obedience from the arrogant Border lord, her lover. It was to Mary that Bothwell looked for commands, nor stirred until she signed to him to go. And even then he went no farther than the other side of the door, so that he might be close at hand to fortify her should any weakness assail her now in this supreme hour.

  Darnley struggled up in bed, caught her hand, and pulled her to him.

  “Do not leave me, Mary. Do not leave me!” he implored her.

  “Why, what is this?” she cried, but her voice lacked steadiness. “Would you have me disappoint poor Sebastien, who loves me?”

  “I see. Sebastien is more to you than I?”

  “Now this is folly. Sebastien is my faithful servant.”

  “And am I less? Do you not believe that my one aim henceforth will be to serve you and faithfully? Oh, forgive this weakness. I am full of evil foreboding to-night. Go, then, if go you must, but give me at least some assurance of your love, some pledge of it in earnest that you will come again to-morrow nor part from me again.”

  She looked into the white, piteous young face that had once been so lovely, and her soul faltered. It needed the knowledge that Bothwell waited just beyond the door, that he could overhear what was being said, to strengthen her fearfully in her tragic purpose.

  She has been censured most for what next she did. Murray himself spoke of it afterwards as the worst part of the business. But it is possible that she was concerned only at the moment to put an end to a scene that was unnerving her, and that she took the readiest means to it.

  She drew a ring from her finger and slipped it on to one of his.

  “Be this the pledge, then,” she said; “and so content and rest yourself.”

  With that she broke from him, white and scared, and reached the door. Yet with her hand upon the latch she paused. Looking at him she saw that he was smiling, and perhaps horror of her betrayal of him overwhelmed her. It must be that she then desired to warn him, yet with Bothwell within earshot she realized that any warning must precipitate the tragedy, with direst consequences to Bothwell and herself.

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

  Standing tense and white by the door, regarding him with dilating eyes, she spoke her last words to him.

  “It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain,” she said, and on that passed out to the waiting Bothwell.

  Once on the stairs she paused and set a hand upon the shoulder of the stalwart Borderer.

  “Must it be? Oh, must it be?” she whispered fearfully.

  She caught the flash of his eyes in the half gloom as he leaned over her, his arm about her waist drawing her to him.

  “Is it not just? Is it not full merited?” he asked her.

  “And yet I would that we did not profit by it,” she complained.

  “Shall we pity him on that account?” he asked, and laughed softly and shortly. “Come away,” he added abruptly. “They wait for you!” And so, by the suasion of his arm and his imperious will, she was swept onward along the road of her destiny.

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

  “Lord, Paris, how begrimed you are!” she cried; and, mounting, rode away towards Holyrood with her torchbearers and attendants.

  In the room above, Darnley lay considering her last words. He turned them over in his thoughts, assured by the tone she had used and how she had looked that they contained some message.

  “It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain.”

  In themselves, those words were not strictly accurate. It wanted yet a month to the anniversary of Rizzio’s death. And why, at parting, should she have reminded him of that which she had agreed should be forgotten? Instantly came the answer that she sought to warn him that retribution was impending. He thought again of the rumours that he had heard of a bond signed at Craigmillar; he recalled Lord Robert’s warning to him, afterwards denied.

  He recalled her words to himself at the time of Rizzio’s death: “Consider well what I now say. Consider and remember. I shall never rest until I give you as sore a heart as I have presently.” And further, he remembered her cry at once agonized and fiercely vengeful: “Jamais, jamais je n’oublierai.”

  His terrors mounted swiftly, to be quieted again at last when he looked at the ring she had put upon his finger in pledge of her renewed affection. The past was dead and buried, surely. Though danger might threaten, she would guard him against it, setting her love about him like a panoply of steel. When she came to-morrow, he would question her closely, and she should be more frank and open with him, and tell him all. Meanwhile, he would take his precautions for to-night.

  He sent his page to make fast all doors. The youth went and did as he was bidden, with the exception of the door that led to the garden. It had no bolts, and the key was missing; yet, seeing his master’s nervous, excited state, he forbore from any mention of that circumstance when presently he returned to him.
<
br />   Darnley requested a book of Psalms, that he might read himself to sleep. The page dozed in a chair, and so the hours passed; and at last the King himself fell into a light slumber. Out of this he started suddenly at a little before two o’clock, and sat upright in bed, alarmed without knowing why, listening with straining ears and throbbing pulses.

  He caught a repetition of the sound that had aroused him, a sound akin to that which had drawn his attention earlier, when Mary had been with him. It came up faintly from the room immediately beneath: her room. Some one was moving there, he thought. Then, as he continued to listen, all became quiet again, save his fears, which would not be quieted. He extinguished the light, slipped from the bed, and, crossing to the window, peered out into the close that was faintly illumined by a moon in its first quarter. A shadow moved, he thought. He watched with increasing panic for confirmation, and presently saw that he had been right. Not one, but several shadows were shifting there among the trees. Shadows of men, they were, and as he peered, he saw one that went running from the house across the lawn and joined the others, now clustered together in a group. What could be their purpose here? In the silence, he seemed to hear again the echo of Mary’s last words to him:

  “It would be just about this time last year that Davie was slain.”

  In terror, he groped his way to the chair where the page slept and shook the lad vigorously.

  “Afoot, boy!” he said, in a hoarse whisper. He had meant to shout it, but his voice failed him, his windpipe clutched by panic. “Afoot — we are beset by enemies!”

  At once the youth was wide awake, and together the King just in his shirt as he was — they made their way from the room in the dark, groping their way, and so reached the windows at the back. Darnley opened one of these very softly, then sent the boy back for a sheet. Making this fast, they descended by it to the garden, and started towards the wall, intending to climb it, that they might reach the open.

  The boy led the way, and the King followed, his teeth chattering as much from the cold as from the terror that possessed him. And then, quite suddenly, without the least warning, the ground, it seemed to them, heaved under their feet, and they were flung violently forward on their faces. A great blaze rent the darkness of the night, accompanied by the thunders of an explosion so terrific that it seemed as if the whole world must have been shattered by it.