The Historical Nights' Entertainment - Rafael Sabatini (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📗
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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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
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