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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
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