Queen Honeypot, page 14
“Who dares?” he cried. “Who is the traitor?”
“Bothwell,” growled Douglas. “I warrant it was Bothwell. The dog has slipped his leash and roused the town. I told you he should die.”
“He’ll die,” snarled Ruthven, staggering to his feet. Seeing the joy on Mary’s face, he raised his fist, then shrugged from her and pushed past his comrades to the window.
“Mother of grace,” stuttered Darnley, crossing himself, “treason!”
Sweating despite the cold, he gaped at Mary, then he turned to the conspirators, as though seeking help from either side; but none noticed him. Almost gay with hope, Mary raised her hands in prayer, but before she had run to the window, Lindsay had gripped her and forced her back into her chair. His dagger gleamed in his hand, a rib of light.
“One word,” he said, “and I’ll cut you into collops and throw you from the window.”
“My lord!” — Ruthven seized Darnley and shook him — “the city’s roused and the provost’s there. All Edinburgh’s out of bed and they surround us. Speak to them. You are their king and must speak to them. Tell them to be gone.”
The murmuring of a multitude could be heard, that humming impersonal sound of numerous voices, men’s and women’s, merged to an insect-like drone. Against the stars and the snow, yellow and red torches flared.
On lagging legs, chalk-white his face, Darnley was dragged to the window. Outside he saw night as bright as day and faces, pink faces, upturned, rank upon rank, staring at him; and at the head stood the fat provost, his furred hood back that his face might be seen.
“Gentlemen,” stuttered Darnley. Then he gasped, gripping the sill, as the humming stilled to silence. “Mr. Provost,” he cried, “what would you? At this earthly hour, and on the sabbath, why are we disturbed, Mr. Provost?”
“Your majesty,” said the provost, using his hands for a funnel, and his voice sounded thin from that distance, “there have been wild rumours and many strange men in the city. One knocked on my door and cried that the queen’s grace was held a prisoner. I pray your lordship, pardon our intrusion, but we would know —”
“Know then,” shouted Darnley reedily, “that all is well with the queen and me.” Behind him he heard Mary laugh, then heard the laughter gurgle to silence when a hand was clapped over her mouth. “Here grace is still sleeping,” he shouted. “She is, as is well known, in delicate health. She has had poor rest of late and must not be disturbed. Get you all about your affairs and be assured of our perfect safety and comfort.”
“Let us see the queen,” cried the provost, and the multitude murmured, “Ay!” and the sound, like the growling of a huge beast, brought out the sweat on Darnley’s throat and brow.
“The queen and I are merry together,” he croaked. “Provost, know you not that I am the king? I command you and your company to pass home to your houses.”
They shouted in reply. The torches shook before the wind of their roaring, and Darnley started back, eyes huge with fear, to look into his comrades’ faces. Ruthven pushed him aside and, gripping the ledge in both hands, leaned into the night.
“Provost,” he cried shrilly, “you know me, Lord Ruthven? All is peace here now. A brawl amongst her majesty’s French servants disturbed the peace, but all is quiet now. I pray you, get you home. You disturb the queen.”
Still they shouted, calling for the queen, while Ruthven shook and cursed them in his beard.
“I must tell the truth, I see,” he bawled, then he sank down, exhausted by the effort. He waved his arms loosely as though they were unjointed until, the clamour lessening, he croaked: “The truth, good provost, the truth! The Italian secretary has been slain. You know the fellow, an enemy of the true religion, a cringing papist spy, a hanging villain and treacherous. We snared him in his conspiracy, we have his letters here and will show them tomorrow, letters to the pope of hell, letters to Rome, good friends, to the King of Spain, to France, to all religion’s enemies, that he might destroy the true Evangile and bring popery back to Scotland. And catching him thus, guilty-fingered in his treason, we hanged him like a dog. And there’s the truth of it.”
“If that’s the truth, my lord, we are grateful to you. Have you proof of it?” cried the provost.
“Proofs, yea! In the morning we’ll show you proofs enough. Please, good folk, go you home and let us sleep.”
Undecided, the provost stood as the crowd broke into groups, arguing together. Ruthven was delighted to see some move away, but others remained about the provost, staring at the window.
“Good, my lord,” said the provost at last, “we will attend you in the morning. Guard well the queen.”
“Now,” said Ruthven, “you see, lady, why you must bear my company. Murray will be here by dawn. Then let him talk to the provost. I have talked enough.”
“Too much,” cried Mary.
“Yea, too much,” said he, grimacing as he spat. “If I’d not wasted words on that smooth-tongued villain, Bothwell, and had acted as I meant to, he’d have lain with your Italian lover in the porter’s lodge, my lady. But I’ll cut his crag for him yet.”
Mary did not answer and her heart beat fast. Bothwell was free. Doubtless he had sent to rouse the provost, and he and Huntly would be riding to their men, Huntly to the Highlands and Bothwell to the border, and soon armies would come with a noose for Ruthven and a crown for her, and for Darnley… From the corners of her eyes she looked at Darnley shivering in a corner… For Darnley some slow and agonizing punishment that she might watch him in his pain and taunt him with the memory of Rizzio, over fifty knife-wounds in his poor twisted body lying in the porter’s lodge.
Chapter VIII
ESCAPE
Iron was for men. For them, swords and bucklers, helmets and gauntlets. Thus concealed, moving slowly, steel-fingered, they felt safe, not only from the wrath of enemies, but from the touch of women; and women had no such protection. Unarmoured, soft-fleshed, they could rely only on their guile and beauty; and beauty, Mary had found, brought distrust rather than worship in this barren land with its unforgiving God. How could she touch the bitter devil in Ruthven, a dying man gazing with hatred on life? or soften Lindsay or Fawdonsyde, those barbarous Lutherans, their skin leather, incapable of feeling aught but a blow? or bring pity to Douglas, the priest turned blasphemer, who purred at suffering, smiled at others’ wounds and liked to watch her weep? or make Morton see her as a distressed woman and not as a white demon who might take his lands and power from him? These were not men as she had known men in France. Lacking poetry, lacking humour, lacking tolerance, lacking all the courtesies — cheats often though such be, assumed to wheedle ladies into a false feeling of security that they might give at the knees — lacking everything that made life joyous and beautiful, they cared only for gold and their savage God; and all her arts were useless to entice them, her loveliness and desirability being in their eyes damnable.
Yet with that desirability she swore to take revenge and appease the ghost of Rizzio. With her charm and her cunning, she would outwit and destroy these men, Ruthven in particular, for at the heart of the conspiracy there was weakness. Darnley was no man, a coward, a drunkard; and despise and even loathe him though Mary did, she was ready to greet him with kisses and caresses. Her women had been taken from her, save for old Lady Huntly, and guards were outside her doors. She heard them talking in the ante-chamber, heard them laugh and cough and spit; but no one came to her. Washed and painted in readiness for the encounter with her husband, she sat before the fire in artfully prepared disarray, her combed hair unbound and falling down her back, her nightgown sliding off the shoulders to reveal her chest and the bosom cleft with shadows; and all, it seemed, for nothing. No man came. When Lady Huntly spoke to the guards they told her that they had been ordered to admit only those with an express order from the council. Even Darnley’s master of the horse, Sir William Standen, was halted with crossed halberds.
“Sir William,” cried Lady Huntly, seeing him before the door was closed on her, “tell your master how ill-treated is his lady.”
He tried to run to her, furious that the king’s servant should be denied, but the door was quickly closed and Lady Huntly pushed back into the closet.
“Ah,” said she, “when my son returns, there’ll be a different song to sing and more food for the crows. To treat a queen like this, and so fair a lady!” She wrung her hands while Mary gazed sadly at her, leaning back in her chair.
“I am glad of it,” said Mary. “The crueller the treachery, the fiercer my hate. My brother’s coming from England. They have brought him, they think, but he is a Stuart, though a bastard. You will see, my lady, whose side he takes when I have wept in his arms. And there’s my husband…as craven a cur as ever should be hanged. But I can twist him on a ringlet. I am glad Sir William saw you. Mayhap he’ll tell my husband and the rogue will come to me now…”
Darnley came to her, as Mary expected. Not remorse for the killing of Rizzio, not desire for her beauty drew him to her, but hurt pride that he, the king, should be shut out from his wife. Raging in the antechamber, he cursed the guards and swore to have them whipped. Mary heard his shrill boy’s voice, and she smiled, tossing her hair to have it fall over one shoulder, ringlets sliding on her bosom half-displayed.
Then the door was hurled open and Darnley strode in, still shouting that he was king and he’d not have his servants insulted and refused admission when he sent them. His face was red and swollen, the eyes bloodshot, and his lips trembled, and Mary knew that he was drunk.
“I wish my lord had played the man like this last night,” she said.
“I played an honest husband’s part,” he growled, “as I play it now. These fellows take too much upon themselves. I pray I find you well, lady, and contrite?”
Mary turned aside that she might suck her finger and, with it, wet her eyes, being no longer able to weep.
“O, my lord,” she wailed, “I have not slept, I cannot sleep, I cannot think, sit still or eat or drink for terror. Wherever I look I see that monster Ruthven. At every sound I swoon, fearing he comes to murder me.”
“He’ll not harm you. I’ll see to that, lady.”
“I have none but the good Lady Huntly to tend me, and she is old and in distress because she knows not where her son has gone. Please, my lord, let me have Seton or Livingstone, just one of them…”
“You shall have them all,” he cried, and licked his lips. “Madam, I would have you know I meant no harm to you. What I did I did for honour’s sake. Else I’d have been shamed, men mocking me…”
“Let’s not talk of last night,” she shuddered. “Give me my women; that is all I ask…”
“You will have them,” he cried and strode to the door. Irresolute he stood, watching her as she sat bowed before the blaze of the fire, her back in shadow so that her face was hidden, while her hair glittered with red threads and was glossed with gold. The desire to console her in his arms grew so strong that Darnley had to clench his teeth and turn hurriedly, slamming the door behind him.
“He is yours lady,” laughed Lady Huntly; “a pitiful loon may God be thanked.”
*
Not Darnley but Murray came to her. Mary had expected Darnley and had again prepared for his seduction, and when she saw her brother, she could only gape at him, thinking him still in England. Then hurriedly she tossed back her hair and drew her gown to her throat.
“May God be thanked, my lord!” she cried.
With outstretched arms she ran to him before he could bow and take her hand to kiss; she caught him in her arms and kissed his mouth.
“O, my brother,” she cried, “had you been here you’d never have let them handle me so!”
Startled, having expected recriminations, he almost overbalanced, then he caught her tightly, though gingerly, and gazed into her wet eyes.
“I have but heard of the outrage,” he said. “They called to me and here I am, lady, your servant.”
“No servant, my brother, no, my only honest minister.” Smiling and weeping, she looked into his dark face and saw to her delight that he, too, wept.
“Honest have I always striven to be,” he said, “and the quarrel there was between us should not have driven so deep. I was afraid. You had advisers I could not trust, men who hated me. But that is over. Let there be peace between us, sister, and love.”
“My love has never ceased,” she said. “Come, brother, you must help me. I am imprisoned here, my ladies kept from me. I sit in terror of my life. Ah, had you seen Ruthven and his snake-eyes and the brand between his legs, and he taunting me as though I were a drab… To have been handled thus, a dagger on my heart. Yea! Lindsay pressed a dagger here and swore to make me a dead queen. Fawdonsyde cocked his pistol and it bruised me. The bruise is there yet. I heard the hammer click and I would be a dead woman had not good Erskine struck the pistol up. All this, brother, they did to me, and my false husband watched, Over my shoulder so that still it aches Douglas plunged his poignard into poor Davy’s heart and the blood spouted out and filled my shoes. Was ever a queen treated in this fashion! They dragged him into my bedchamber, on to my very bed, and struck and struck at him. In their madness they struck one another until the floor was deep in blood. It will never wash away. And now they keep me prisoner, keep my ladies from me. O, had you been here, had you been here!”
“A wicked deed,” said Murray. “I did not love the fellow, as you know, but there are trees and ropes for such. To kill him here, before your gentle feet, lady, that was cruel.”
“’Twas villainous,” she cried, “and Ruthven’ll suffer for it; Douglas, too; I’ll have their heads for this. And Lindsay’s, all the rogues’.”
“Hush,” he whispered and placed his hand gently over her mouth. “Your rage is from the heart and honourable,” he said gently, “but honour is of no avail against such fellows. You must learn to lie, to play their game, and I’ll be with you. Let them alone, let them run to the end of the noose and think themselves free. Then you can strike. Not now. Their armies fill all Edinburgh and you and I live by their sufferance. That is why I came back when they whistled. Not to help them in their murder-work but to be ready to help you. Be guided by me, learn craft, my lady, smile on them —”
“On Ruthven, no!”
“Even on Ruthven, yea, on all of them. Pardon them, honour them. Let them disband their men. Then strike, my lady.”
“I…I cannot do it, not Ruthven…”
“Ruthven will soon be dead. Let the devil deal with him. Your task, your duty, is to live and rule. Come,” said he, “this disarray makes plain you are a mother. Remember that. Your life is no longer your own, and for the prince — or the princess — you carry you must learn to smile on treason and to kiss the traitors. Leave all to me, have patience, and you will be revenged.”
“God help me,” she moaned, and shivered, “I will try.”
*
Such had been her own resolution during that lonely night with Lady Huntly and the ghost of Rizzio, his blood still wet on the floor: to have patience and to destroy her enemies under a mask of friendship. But not Ruthven. She could not, she swore, bear to look upon that man again. Even Lindsay she might pardon. He was a savage, the slave of Knox and his God; even Douglas who could wheedle and weep she might forgive. But never Ruthven. He had said unforgivable things to her and must die for it.
Now with Murray back, Mary’s courage returned. She could not trust him; she knew he had been deep in the murder-plot, but also she knew that he would never permit her to be harmed. Unable himself to be crowned, at least under her he could act the king. Therefore was she prepared to obey him and to simulate friendship to everyone save Ruthven; only, above all, was her longing for freedom. These chambers stank of Rizzio’s blood. She choked within them and feared she would go mad if she had to remain there longer.
When Darnley returned, seeming paler even than usual, his eyes more bloodshot, and when he found that his commands had not been obeyed and her ladies were still kept from her, he cursed and kicked a cushion into the fire.
“I will bring them to you,” he snarled. “You will have them, by God, lady. Am I not king?”
They came to her at last, whether by her brother’s or her husband’s command Mary knew not, nor did she care. Weeping with excitement, she kissed and fondled them and they crowed over her, clucking at her distress, wiping away her tears and bathing her in perfumes. No longer dispirited, with energy she set to work to win her freedom. Livingstone she despatched to tell her husband to bring a black box from under Rizzio’s bed; and this Sempill was able secretly to do, the dead man’s effects having been placed in his father’s care. Not until Mary had burned the papers did she feel able to breathe. Then seeing the letters that might have cost her her head, proving as they did her alliance with the pope and the Catholic sovereigns, become ash on the fire, she turned her ladies into secretaries and dictated to them messages to all the lords she believed she might trust, imploring succour.
“Now,” she said, “can I smile again. David will be avenged.”
Yet still she remained a prisoner and soon it would be night. Night to be spent in a room of death, the stain of Rizzio’s blood to be seen on the floor.
“Mother of God,” she shuddered, “I’ll never sleep again.”
“We’ll all sleep with you,” said Beaton. “One either side of you in bed, and the others on the floor.”
“Thank you, my loves,” she said, her face seeming to grow pointed when she smiled, “but I hope to have a different bedfellow. God willing.”
