The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

Mary’s

attention. Later he had become her secretary for French affairs

and the young Queen, reared amid the elegancies of the Court of

France, grew attached to him as to a fellow-exile in the uncouth

and turbulent land over which a harsh destiny ordained that she

should rule. Using his opportunities and his subtle Italian

intelligence, he had advanced so rapidly that soon there was no man

in Scotland who stood higher with the Queen. When Maitland of

Lethington was dismissed under suspicion of favouring the exiled

Protestant lords, the Seigneur Davie succeeded him as her secretary;

and now that Morton was under the same suspicion, it was openly said

that the Seigneur Davie would be made chancellor in his stead.

 

Thus the Seigneur Davie was become the most powerful man in Scotland,

and it is not to be dreamt that a dour, stiff-necked nobility would

suffer it without demur. They intrigued against him, putting it

abroad, amongst other things, that this foreign upstart was an

emissary, of the Pope’s, scheming to overthrow the Protestant

religion in Scotland. But in the duel that followed their blunt

Scotch wits were no match for his Italian subtlety. Intrigue as

they might his power remained unshaken. And then, at last it began

to be whispered that he owed his high favour with the beautiful

young Queen to other than his secretarial abilities, so that Bedford

wrote to Cecil:

 

“What countenance the Queen shows David I will not write, for the

honour due to the person of a queen.”

 

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