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

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 hint, 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 close 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. Ali, 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.