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

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 went.

 

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 tonight. 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 tonight.

 

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.

 

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