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

>“There is something else you are to do,” she said, “if we are to

turn the tables on these traitorous gentlemen. Listen.” And she

added matter that begat fresh hope in Darnley’s despairing soul.

 

He kissed her hands, lowly now and obedient as a hound that had

been whipped to heel, and went below to bear her message to the

lords.

 

Morton and Ruthven heard him out, but betrayed no eagerness to

seize the opportunity.

 

“All this is but words that we hear,” growled Ruthven , who lay

stretched upon a couch, grimly suffering from the disease that

was, slowly eating up his life.

 

“She is guileful as the serpent,” Morton added, “being bred up in

the Court of France. She will make you follow her will and desire,

but she will not so lead us. We hold her fast, and we do not let

her go without some good security of what shall follow.”

 

“What security will satisfy you?” quoth Darnley.

 

Murray and Lindsay came in as he was speaking, and Morton told them

of the message that Darnley had brought. Murray moved heavily

across to a window-seat, and sat down. He cleared a windowpane with

his hand, and looked out upon the wintry landscape as if the matter

had no interest for him. But Lindsay echoed what the other twain

had said already.

 

“We want a deal more than promises that need not be kept,” he said.

 

Darnley looked from one to the other of them, seeing in their

uncompromising attitude a confirmation of what the Queen had told

him, and noting, too - as at another time he might not have noted

- their utter lack of deference to himself, their King.

 

“Sirs,” he said, “I vow you wrong Her Majesty. I will stake my

life upon her honour.”

 

“Why, so you may,” sneered Ruthven, “but you’ll not stake ours.”

 

“Take what security you please, and I will subscribe it.”

 

“Aye, but will the Queen?” wondered Morton.

 

“She will. I have her word for it.”

 

It took them the whole of that day to consider the terms of the

articles that would satisfy them. Towards evening the document

was ready, and Morton and Ruthven representing all, accompanied by

Murray, and introduced by Darnley, came to the chamber to which Her

Majesty was confined by the guard they had set upon her.

 

She sat as if in state awaiting them, very lovely and very tearful,

knowing that woman’s greatest strength is in her weakness, that

tears would serve her best by presenting her as if broken to their

will.

 

In outward submission they knelt before her to make the pretence

of suing for the pardon which they extorted by force of arms and

duress. When each in his turn had made the brief pleading oration

he had prepared, she dried her eyes and controlled herself by

obvious effort.

 

“My lords,” she said, in a voice that quivered and broke on every

other word, “when have ye ever found me blood-thirsty, or greedy

of your lands or goods that you must use me so, and take such means

with me? Ye have set my authority at naught, and wrought sedition

in this realm. Yet I forgive you all, that by this clemency I may

move you to a better love and loyalty. I desire that all that is

passed may be buried in oblivion, so that you swear to me that in

the future you will stand my friends and serve me faithfully, who

am but a weak woman, and sorely need stout men to be my friends.”

 

For a moment her utterance was checked by sobs. Then she controlled

herself again by an effort so piteous to behold that even the

flinty-hearted Ruthven was moved to some compassion.

 

“Forgive this weakness in me, who am very weak, for very soon I am

to be brought to bed as you well know, and I am in no case to offer

resistance to any. I have no more to say, my lords. Since you

promise on your side that you will put all disloyalty behind you,

I pledge myself to remit and pardon all those that were banished

for their share in the late rising, and likewise to pardon those

that were concerned in the killing of Seigneur Davie. All this

shall be as if it had never been. I pray you, my lords, make your

own security in what sort you best please, and I will subscribe it.”

 

Morton proffered her the document they had prepared. She conned

it slowly, what time they watched her, pausing ever and anon to

brush aside the tears that blurred her vision. At last she nodded

her lovely golden head.

 

“It is very well,” she said. “All is here as I would have it be

between us.” And she turned to Darnley. “Give me pen and ink,

my lord.”

 

Darnley dipped a quill and handed it to her. She set the

parchment on the little pulpit at her side. Then, as she bent to

sign, the pen fluttered from her fingers, and with a deep,

shuddering sigh she sank back in her chair, her eyes closed, her

face piteously white.

 

“The Queen is faint!” cried Murray, springing forward.

 

But she rallied instantly, smiling upon them wanly.

 

“It is naught; it is past,” she said. But even as she spoke she

put a hand to her brow. “I am something dizzy. My condition - “

She faltered on a trembling note of appeal that increased their

compassion, and aroused in them a shame of their own harshness.

“Leave this security with me. I will subscribe it in the morning

- indeed, as soon as I am sufficiently recovered.”

 

They rose from their knees at her bidding, and Morton in the name

of all professed himself full satisfied, and deplored the affliction

they had caused her, for which in the future they should make her

their amends.

 

“I thank you,” she answered simply. “You have leave to go.”

 

They departed well satisfied; and, counting the matter at an end,

they quitted the palace and rode to their various lodgings in

Edinburgh town, Murray going with Morton.

 

Anon to Maitland of Lethington, who had remained behind, came one

of the Queen’s women to summon him to her presence. He found her

disposing herself for bed, and was received by her with tearful

upbraidings.

 

“Sir,” she said, “one of the conditions upon which I consented to

the will of their lordships was that an immediate term should be

set to the insulting state of imprisonment in which I am kept here.

Yet men-at-arms still guard the very door of my chamber, and my

very attendants are hindered in their comings and goings. Do you

call this keeping faith with me? Have I not granted all the

requests of the lords?”

 

Lethington, perceiving the justice of what she urged, withdrew

shamed and confused at once to remedy the matter by removing the

guards from the passage and the stairs and elsewhere, leaving none

but those who paced outside the palace.

 

It was a rashness he was bitterly to repent him on the morrow, when

it was discovered that in the night Mary had not only escaped, but

had taken Darnley with her. Accompanied by him and a few attendants,

she had executed the plan in which earlier that day she had secured

her scared husband’s cooperation. At midnight they had made their

way along the now unguarded corridors, and descended to the vaults

of the palace, whence a secret passage communicated with the chapel.

Through this and across the graveyard where lay the newly buried

body of the Siegneur Davie - almost across the very grave itself

which stood near the chapel door they had won to the horses waiting

by Darnley’s orders in the open. And they had ridden so hard that

by five o’clock of that Tuesday morning they were in Dunbar.

 

In vain did the alarmed lords send a message after her to demand

her signature of the security upon which she had duped them into

counting prematurely.

 

Within a week they were in full flight before the army at the head

of which the prisoner who had slipped through their hands was

returning to destroy them. Too late did they perceive the arts by

which she had fooled them, and seduced the shallow Darnley to

betray them.

 

II. THE NIGHT OF KIRK O’ FIELD

The Murder of Darnley

 

Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes of a lifetime in which mistakes

were plentiful was the hesitancy of the Queen of Scots in executing

upon her husband Darnley the prompt vengeance she had sworn for the

murder of David Rizzio.

 

When Rizzio was slain, and she herself held captive by the murderers

in her Palace of Holyrood, whilst Darnley ruled as king, she had

simulated belief in her husband’s innocence that she might use him

for her vengeful ends.

 

She had played so craftily upon his cowardly nature as to convince

him that Morton, Ruthven, and the other traitor lords with whom he

had leagued himself were at heart his own implacable enemies; that

they pretended friendship for him to make a tool of him, and that

when he had served their turn they would destroy him.

 

In his consequent terror he had betrayed his associates, assisting

her to trick them by a promise to sign an act of oblivion for what

was done. Trusting to this the lords had relaxed their vigilance,

whereupon, accompanied by Darnley, she had escaped by night from

Holyrood.

 

Hope tempering at first the rage and chagrin in the hearts of the

lords she had duped, they had sent a messenger to her at Dunbar to

request of her the fulfilment of her promise to sign the document

of their security.

 

But Mary put off the messenger, and whilst the army she had summoned

was hastily assembling, she used her craft to divide the rebels

against themselves.

 

To her natural brother, the Earl of Murray, to Argyll, and to all

those who had been exiled for their rebellion at the time of her

marriage - and who knew not where they stood in the present turn of

events, since one of the objects of the murder had been to procure

their reinstatement - she sent an offer of complete pardon, on

condition that they should at once dissociate themselves from those

concerned in the death of the Seigneur Davie.

 

These terms they accepted thankfully, as well they might. Thereupon,

finding themselves abandoned by all men - even by Darnley in whose

service they had engaged in the murder - Morton, Ruthven, and their

associates scattered and fled.

 

By the end of that month of March, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay of the

Byres, George Douglas, and some sixty others were denounced as

rebels with forfeiture of life and goods, while one Thomas Scott,

who had been in command of the guards that had kept Her Majesty

prisoner at Holyrood, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at the

Market Cross.

 

News of this reached the fugitives to increase their desperate rage.

But what drove the iron into the soul of the arch-murderer Ruthven

was Darnley’s solemn public declaration denying all knowledge of or

complicity in Rizzio’s assassination; nor did it soothe his fury to

know that all Scotland rang with contemptuous laughter at that

impudent and cowardly perjury. From his sick-bed at Newcastle,

whereon some six weeks later he was to breathe his last, the

forsaken wretch replied to it by sending the Queen the bond to

which he had demanded Darnley’s signature before embarking upon

the business.

 

It was a damning document. There above the plain signature and