The Historical Nights' Entertainment by Rafael Sabatini (most important books to read .txt) 📖
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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.
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