The Galliard (43 page)

He was going to dine in the town tonight with some friends ‘You don’t mind, do you, chérie?’ he asked Mary, who wondered if she were looking very ill. Nothing else could explain such consideration from him after his months of neglect. But of course Harry hadn’t found it amusing to dance attendance on an ailing wife; now her time was getting near, he had at last begun to realize the importance of her health. She was so happy at that that she squeezed his hand, but he pulled it away and muttered something apologetic about it being too hot and sticky. She laughed and told him to enjoy himself tonight and she would too, for she was having a little informal supper-party for her half-brother Lord Robert and her half-sister the Countess of Argyll (really her father had been very thoughtful in providing her with so many half-relations) and Davie here, who would give them some music first – they would all make music; with the four of them they should have some charming madrigals.

He smiled at her in a gentle absent-minded fashion and said, ‘Well, don’t tire yourself. You’ve got to be careful now, you know.’

He was strangely unlike himself. But it was a very pleasant way of being unlike himself. Certainly nothing to worry about. She went to lie down for an hour, then put on a loose filmy grey dress
with hanging sleeves to hide her figure, and joined her guests in the little anteroom. She could never come into that room without looking to see if Bothwell were still there, standing, watching her as he had stood and watched her that night after the banquet.

Others were there instead: dear Davie, still smiling all over his face at his victory at tennis, for he had the vanity of the small and misshapen, prouder of his athletic prowess than of all his wits or his musical and poetic genius. Rob was there, so merry and affectionate, so like but never really like his brother Johnnie. Alison was there, the fat jolly Countess of Argyll, in high spirits at getting away from her dour husband, whom she could never abide. It was a gay little company.

The cold pale green light of the March evening made the small room seem like a cave under water; their voices trilled out into it as they sang their madrigals, and mingled with the long fluting notes of a nesting blackbird in a pear tree near by. Then a man’s deep voice rang out alone into the still air, the magnificent voice of David Rizzio.

Soon the pale gloaming and its one star were shut out with silk curtains; candles were lit, supper was served, with Arthur Erskine, the Captain of the Guard, in attendance. It was Lent, but Mary had been ordered meat by her doctor and they laughed over her special privileges, Lady Argyll advising her always to be with child each spring. They had just finished supper, and were sipping their wine and eating sweets out of a carved silver dish, when Darnley suddenly appeared in the doorway at the top of the little spiral stairway that led straight up into this room.

Mary looked up startled. Whatever could have brought him away from his merry-making in the town? He was drunk, of course, she knew him well enough to see that at the first glance, but it was in a quiet dazed way, thank heaven.

She at once asked if he would not join them, and tried to make room for him between herself and Lord Robert, though it was difficult to get even four round that oval French table. He grinned at her in a vacant silly way, lurched over to her and put an arm round her shoulders, too drunk, it seemed, even to speak.

She could not bear that foolish grinning face hanging over her. She looked down instead at his hand; it was twitching and plucking at the agate-hilted dagger that she had given him. The emeralds and diamonds winked back at her between his fumbling fingers; he was always restless, always fidgeting with something or other, but tonight his hand seemed almost convulsive. What could be the matter with him?

There was a gasp from the table, a sudden stir; she saw the gaunt form and livid face of Lord Ruthven coming in at the door where just now Darnley had entered. She saw murder in that dreadful yellow face, in the staring eyes, before she saw his drawn sword and steel cap and the breastplate over his loose bedgown. She knew what he had come for before he spoke in the ghastly wheezing voice of a very sick man.

‘Let that man David come out of Your Majesty’s chamber, where he has been too long.’ And he rapped out at Darnley as to a dog, ‘Sir, take the Queen!’

For she had already sprung up and in front of Rizzio, who cowered down behind her, clutching at her dress, while Darnley stood and gaped like a man in a dream.

‘Is this your work?’ she demanded, with sudden horrible conviction.

‘I know nothing about it,’ he stammered thickly. His red face was turning grey.

She turned on Ruthven. ‘On pain of treason, I command you to go,’ she cried; and to Arthur Erskine, ‘Take him away!’

Erskine drew his sword. Ruthven shouted, ‘Lay a hand on me at your peril!’

His shout was a signal. Men came crowding in now at both doors, men with drawn swords or daggers, their faces agape like hounds for blood. Rizzio yelled, ‘Justice! Justice!’ Mary cried to him frantically, ‘The King will prevent it – he has not forgotten all you have done for him.’

Did Darnley even hear her? He stood there shaking, gibbering, while the armed men surged past him, knocking over the table. There was a crash of glass and silver, the candles fell and went out,
Lady Argyll had the presence of mind to snatch one and hold it up high or the room would have been in total darkness. Lord Robert and Arthur Erskine were at once overpowered, pinioned, and dragged off down the stairway.

A man thrust at Rizzio across Mary so that his blood spurted out over her dress. He still clung to it, but Kerr of Fawdonside bent back his middle finger till in agony he had to let go, and then Ruthven seized her and thrust her into Darnley’s hands, telling her as she fought and struggled that no harm was intended to her person. She laughed, dreadfully, for while Darnley held her down by force in a chair, Kerr pushed a pistol against her side. She tried to hold it off. ‘You are hurting the child!’ she cried; then as they pushed and thrust against her she saw that that was indeed part of their intention. But what she was seeing and hearing in front of her should surely be enough for their purpose.

Davie was being stabbed again and again, and screaming in a horrible thin whine unlike any human voice, and Darnley never spoke to save him, but pressed her down, down into the chair as if he were falling on her. Blood was on her dress, blood was spurting everywhere; that huddled, writhing, whining thing on the floor was being dragged into the bed-chamber and finished off there, all the men thrusting after it, panting and grunting in their bloodlust. Darnley went too. There came a moment’s silence, and then the sound of something soft and heavy rattling and bumping down the bedroom stairs.

Ruthven came back, fell into a chair, with a refinement of courtesy asked her pardon for sitting in her presence, and called for a drink, ‘for God’s sake.’ He was moribund; it seemed for a moment that there would be another death before her eyes.

As he sat there gasping and holding his side, there came an uproar from the end of the gallery. Men came in and told him that the Lords Bothwell and Huntly were trying to force an entry with a few scullions. Ruthven laughed in answer, with a dry rattling hollow sound in his throat.

‘Much good they’ll do against five hundred men!’ he wheezed. ‘I’ll soon settle the scullions.’

She fainted at that. He finished his drink, dragged himself together, and with two of his servants holding him up by the arms, limped down the stairs.

Chapter Seven

The Hepburn was supping with the Gordon that evening in his quarters at Holyrood. They had walked first in the gardens, where a blackbird was singing like mad on a branch of budding pear blossom. The huge shape of Arthur’s Seat rose dark against the pale evening sky, and the tourelles of the Palace pierced it with tapering points graceful as those of a château in Touraine. From one of them came the sound of music and a man’s deep voice singing a triumphant song. They stood for a moment to listen, then saw lights warm and golden in the window; the curtains were drawn across it and there was silence.

They went indoors, and Lord Atholl joined them at supper. They talked of the impending trial of Lord James and his colleagues. Atholl was of opinion that it would come to nothing. ‘The Bastard has too strong a party, and none knows where it spreads. It works underground.’

Bothwell gave a cracking yawn of disgust. ‘I hate politics,’ he said in explanation. ‘I think I hate all mankind and all their filthy little businesses.’

These Timonesque reflections were interrupted by a shout:

‘A Douglas! A Douglas!’ The war-cry was ringing through the Palace, and the hurried tramp of armed men, hundreds of them.

Bothwell sprang to his feet with an oath, pushed back his plate and gave a shout to his servants. ‘Call your men too,’ he told the others. ‘What the devil is this? Are the Douglases out?’ And then as he realized the smallness of their numbers he called to the cooks
and scullions to follow too, and to bring their spits for weapons.

They ran in the direction of the shouting, and Bothwell turned cold with fear as he realized it was coming from the Queen’s apartments.

They flung themselves against the door of the gallery that led, to them, and found it barred and held fast. They sent back some of the servants for crowbars. Bothwell shouted to the men on the other side to let him and the Earls of Huntly and Atholl pass. They called back that they were holding the doors for the Earl of Morton, the head of the Douglas clan, and had orders to let none pass.

More men came running past; Bothwell seized one of them and spun him round.

‘What’s the business? Is it an attempt on the Queen?’

‘No, no, only that Popish rascal Rizzio.’ He grinned as the servants came running back with the crowbars. ‘You’ll find that no good, my lord. There are five hundred men in all about the Palace, the gates are closed and the porter’s keys taken.’

Bothwell let him go and turned to the others. ‘We may as well go back and finish our supper, Gordon.’ He winked as he spoke; they must go cannily for the moment. Atholl left them for his own quarters, Gordon and Bothwell sat down to plates of congealed gravy.

They had not long to wait before Lord Ruthven came limping in, held up by two servants. He fell panting into a chair, and they gave him drink with expressions of respectful sympathy. Bothwell insisted on making it whisky instead of wine. ‘You need it, my lord.’ He further said it was a good thing the Italian was dead – ‘we want no foreigners here.’

The invalid, gulping down raw whisky as if it were water, gasped out, ‘We should have hanged him; we brought the rope for it, but there wasn’t time.’

Bothwell filled his glass again. The blue lips writhed in a grin and repeated. ‘No time. We made short work of him. Come and see.’ He poured the second glassful down his throat, then dragged himself up and led them down the passage to the porter’s lodge. There on a wooden chest lay a lumpish blood-boultered body,
the gashed and twisted face scarcely recognizable as that of David Rizzio.

The porter was leaning over it, fingering the jewelled hilt of a dagger stuck deep in the ribs; he sprang back and began talking very fast, to distract their attention from what he had been doing.

‘Aye, there he lies,’ he said, ‘and right it is he should. It’s his due. That chest was all he had to lie on when he first came to this place, and for all he jumped so high in the world it’s all he’s got to lie on now, the niggardly knave.’

‘Wasn’t free enough with drink-money for you, hey?’ said Bothwell. ‘Well, you’ll get enough out of him dead.’

‘My lord, I’ve not touched the body except to count the thrusts in it – fifty-six in all. Hardly room for ’em all on a little fellow like him. And this whinger here, it’s the King’s, and should go back to him, but it’s a tough job to pull out.’

He gave another tug, and out came the dagger, which Bothwell had also recognised. Ruthven held out his hand for it, and turned with a grin to Bothwell.

‘Here you see the outward sign and proof that we acted in the King’s business, led and instigated by the King. This rascal David stood between him and the Crown Matrimonial, lay between him and his wife.’

Gordon’s hand flew to his sword, but Bothwell moved in front of him so quickly as to hide the gesture.

‘And the Douglases?’ he said. ‘Why are they in it?’

‘As we’re all in it, all good Protestants who’ll never stand by and see a base-born Popish intriguer rule this kingdom and the Queen. They’re Darnley’s kinsmen too, aren’t they?’

They were, but a stronger and more likely motive was Morton’s personal grievance (he had been afraid that Rizzio’s influence would deprive him of the Chancellorship), combined with the hereditary policy of his Douglas clan in its venomous rivalry with the royal Stewarts.

‘All sound men are with us,’ said Ruthven. ‘Lethington said a month ago we must chop at the root of the evil.’

‘Lethington? And is James Stewart with you too?’

‘That he is – and in the flesh before many hours are out. He’s left Newcastle and should be here in Edinburgh by dawn, and the rest of the exiles with him. That slave there thought to pull him down in the coming trial, but the noose has been fitted round his own neck instead.’

‘So they hanged Haman high upon the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.’ The weak bodiless voice of the preacher seemed to be whispering in exultation over the mutilated corpse.

‘What of the Queen?’ cried Gordon hoarsely. ‘Was this done in her presence?’

‘We dragged him away from her, into the next room, and killed him there. She’s safe with her husband – if she doesn’t like that, let her learn to, as an honest woman should.’ Again there came that ghastly writhing of the lips, grinning back from the pallid gums. Ruthven had been in bed for over three months with inflammation of the liver and kidney disease. It gave Bothwell his opportunity at last for revenge.

‘I hope indeed, my lord,’ he said, with a grave sympathy that showed he had no hope at all, ‘that this death here tonight will not cause your own.’