The Galliard (44 page)

The yellow eyeballs swivelled round on him like those of a startled horse. ‘You’d best stay close in your quarters,’ was the frightened man’s retort. ‘The whole place is under guard. There are eighty armed men about the Queen’s room alone. None will pass in or out of the Palace except by our command. I will go and tell Atholl of the matter, and trust he’ll show as much care for his skin as you have done.’

And the terrible old man hobbled off between his supporters. The Earls of Huntly and Bothwell went back obediently to Bothwell’s rooms and there discussed their plans. Inside the Palace they were prisoners, for even if Atholl gave active help, which they doubted, they would be a mere handful against five hundred men, who had already taken up all the strategic points.

They must escape from Holyrood in order to rescue the Queen and raise an armed force on her behalf. So much Bothwell said,
and briskly, for Gordon was overcome with rage and loathing. ‘If she should have a miscarriage—’

‘That’s what they’re working for, of course, and her death with it. But with luck it’s their plot we’ll make abortive.’

‘My mother would help,’ said Gordon. ‘If we could only get into the town and up to Huntly House—’

‘We must get there. There’s a window along here that looks on the lion-pit. That won’t be guarded.’

‘Except by the lions,’ observed Gordon.

‘It’s a cold night – they’ll be inside. Anyway, we’ll take the chance.’

And the two Earls jumped out of a first-floor window into the lion-pit.

Chapter Eight

In one way the conspirators succeeded in their purpose. There
was
a forced birth that night: the birth of a new creature in Mary, one ‘hard as steel when offended, cold as ice in danger’, the heart of a man of war in the body of a young woman three months past her twenty-third birthday and nearing her first childbed. With her unusual power of concentration she now shut her mind to everything but that moment ahead of her. Nothing else mattered. She had just seen her trusted friend and servant hacked to death, but that was not the only, nor the chief aim of her enemies. They could have chosen any other moment to dispatch him, and far more easily. It was done in her presence in order to produce her miscarriage, and in all probability her death. They had succeeded in the first part of their attack; they should not, succeed in the second.

She had fainted, but no one helped her to come to herself; her half-sister had been dragged, away from her, as well as Lord Robert and Arthur Erskine; she struggled back to consciousness slowly, unwillingly, to the dreadful awakening that was no continuation of a nightmare, as she at first thought, but the unbelievable truth.

Under her nearly closed eyelids she saw the familiar scene of her bedroom round her, but horribly distorted, as in delirium. There was blood spattered over the chimney-piece where they had struck the final blows. Her hand touched thick drying blood on her dress. She was lying, not on her bed, but hunched in a chair; she felt so ill she thought she must be dying. None of her women were here
to look after her. Instead, there was the tramp and clank of armed men marching round about her room.

She was a prisoner here, and these were her jailers. The ghoulish Ruthven limped in and out with the help of his servants, as though he were not free to die until he had done all the evil required of him by his master, Satan; he croaked and gasped out his commands to the youth he sneeringly addressed as his King.

She shut her eyes fast, thinking that when she opened them again he would be gone, and when she opened them he was – but she now saw in front of her the bestial pudgy face of the Earl of Morton with his little pig’s eyes winking out above his ragged red whiskers. Morton – head of the Douglases – yes, this was the man who had had a minister tortured and hanged for rebuking his adultery with the widow of a man that he had murdered.

And then she heard the thick fury of Lord Lindsay’s flurrying voice, blaring and roaring out orders, threats and oaths indiscriminately. He was excited to frenzy, as always by bloodshed. In the first weeks of her arrival in Scotland he had led the riot against the priest in her chapel with Arran, and yelled with bloodlust as madly as that poor lunatic. She had seen as little as she could of him since then; but now he was here, in her bedchamber, together with Morton and Ruthven.

She was in hell and in the power of the devils, and all the time there was one slender young shape, like an angel with fair hair, moving restlessly about, hovering over her when her eyes were closed, sliding away from her when they were open. That fair form in blue and gold was a worse devil than these savage old men, for he had played tennis and joked with his victim all this afternoon, so as to lull any suspicions he might have; he had been sweetly attentive and considerate to herself.

‘You don’t mind, do you,
chérie?
’ – and then that gentle, absent-minded, foolishly loving smile. Did Judas smile so when he kissed Jesus the same night that he betrayed Him?

‘You’ve got to be careful now, you know.’ He had said that when plotting this thrust at their child’s life and her own. To get a woman with child and use that child as a weapon against her, a knife in her
womb to be turned on herself – such treachery was past all human thought. ‘But then he doesn’t think, he drinks,’ she told herself, and all his brains were rotted at the roots. She watched him under those half-shut lids as he drifted about her room, uneasy, unhappy, almost as much a prisoner of these brutal murderers as she was herself. He didn’t realize it, of course – he realized nothing. But he could be made to do so. And a plan began to form itself behind the white ravaged mask of her face.

She had heard the uproar at the end of the gallery die down; but now that she could think again she did not believe Ruthven would dare have the Earls Bothwell and Huntly murdered at this juncture. They were more likely to have been taken prisoner. But to what end?

Now there came another uproar, from outside the Palace this time. She heard the clanging of the Common Bell away in the town; the hurried, uneven hammer-strokes upon it came hurtling down the hillside on the night wind. Someone must have got out of the Palace and given the alarm to the citizens; they were arming, they were calling to each other, hurrying down the long steep street to her defence. She heard the running tread of hundreds of feet, and the clamour as they beat upon the locked gates. Now they were shouting from the outer courtyard, and the light of their torches flared across the ceiling. There was a hush while someone parleyed with them, but a murmur grew, a muttering growl of dissatisfaction, then shouts louder than before. She could hear now that they were calling, ‘The Queen! Let us see the Queen!’

She had lain cramped and huddled in her chair for about two hours, apparently lifeless; now she sprang in one movement to the window and got her hands on the latch. But before she could open it Lord Lindsay seized her arms and wrenched her back.

‘Show yourself at that window,’ he shouted, ‘say one word to them, and I’ll cut you in collops and throw you down the wall!’

His mouth seemed to slip over his face, his eyes glared; she was staring into the face of a wild beast. The next moment he threw her with all his force back into the chair; she gave a low moan and lay limp, her eyes shut, her mouth half open and saliva running
from it. That brought Darnley to her side, fumbling, inarticulate. He rubbed his hand over her head in some vague attempt at reassurance. Deliberately she laid her cheek against it; it was cold and blue, she felt as though she were caressing a snake. This hand, too, had struck down Davie; under her eyelids she saw his belt, and that his dagger was missing from it. Her father’s dagger, her wedding present to Darnley, that dagger had been used by her young husband to kill her friend, perhaps her child, perhaps herself. Its steel had entered her own heart; she felt nothing now, not even horror, as she laid her lips against that hand and whispered, ‘Speak to the people, Harry. Tell them I am in danger.’

‘Yes, yes, I’ll do it,’ he stammered.

The noise outside was growing; there was the clash of weapons, and the shouting came louder and angrier for the Queen. Damley had left her side and was hurriedly conferring in low tones with Lindsay and Morton. Then he went to the window and opened it, and her hopes rose fast.

‘My Lord Provost and loyal citizens of Edinburgh!’ she heard him cry, and then, ‘Justice has been done on a criminal within the Palace, a spy and infidel, the foreigner David Rizzio. But the Queen and I are safe. All is well. Return quietly to your homes. The Queen is quite safe, she is with me, and surrounded by her loyal servants.’

A shriek, piercing and agonized, from behind him was strangled as Lord Lindsay thrust his hand over the Queen’s mouth. Then Darnley closed the window. This time she fainted again in good earnest.

When she came to at last she was quite alone. The guards marched up and down outside, but there was no one with her in the room where that night David had been murdered. She was light-headed for a time, for she had found herself whispering to him, telling him she would avenge him. Then she grew afraid that she heard him answer her. How foolish to be afraid of Davie’s ghost, who would never harm her, as would all these living men about her door. She crawled to the bed and lay there, hour after hour. At first she shrieked wildly, but nobody came. Then she lay silent.

Some time next morning Lord Lindsay brought her food, but she would not touch it. She gasped out that she was very ill and must have her women.

‘Aye, and pass out from here in their clothes!’ he snorted. ‘Do you think I don’t know your tricks?’

Her answer was a cry with her hands at her side, and he flung away from her.

Again there was silence, on and on, it seemed for ever. Was she to be left here alone to miscarry and die? She began to scream with a sound that frightened even herself.

And again Lindsay came back, but this time there was someone with him.

‘Now mind,’ he was saying, ‘no woman is going to come out of here muffled up to the eyes; whoever comes out shall show her face, and if it’s the Queen’s, so much the worse for her. No, there’s a better way than that!’

And closing the door, he stood there in the room, leaning against it, while Lady Huntly ran over to the bed and took that crouched figure in her arms, soothing her with her plump hands.

‘My bairn, my bairn,’ she murmured.

Mary clung to her but could not speak.

Lady Huntly bathed her face, asked if she had had food. It was now four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and Mary had had none since supper the evening before. Rounding on Lord Lindsay, Lady Huntly demanded to know if he meant to starve the Queen to death.

‘I brought her food,’ he said sullenly, ‘and she’d have none of it.’

‘Very likely, from such hands as yours.’

She bustled out, and presently came back with a servant bearing a tray. Lord Lindsay, still on guard, insisted on examining all the dishes. Then Lady Huntly, paying no more attention to him than if he had been a doorpost, coaxed the Queen to eat and drink, chatting away as if there were nothing abnormal in the situation.

‘And now we must get you to bed,’ she said cheerfully.

Mary shuddered. ‘Not here – in this room—’ but Lady Huntly pressed her arm and she was silent.

Even now it was difficult to get rid of Lord Lindsay, but the old lady told him roundly that if he insisted on staying to watch the Queen undress, she would bring a charge of attempted rape against him. At that he hurriedly departed, telling them he would give them five minutes and no more.

As soon as the door shut on him, Lady Huntly whispered very fast as she undressed the Queen, ‘I’ve been trying to get in here ever since last night. My son and Lord Bothwell escaped from the Palace and came and told me. Now they’re planning to rescue you. Lord Bothwell gave me a long rope to smuggle in to you on a covered dish, but you saw how it was, they are examining everything that comes in. Luckily I waited to see if that would be so.’

Mary’s heart had given a great leap. So Bothwell was not a prisoner. Hope, life, anything now was possible. She asked what the rope would be for, and was told that Bothwell planned to lower her in a chair from the clock tower. So different was the change in her mood since she had heard of his safety that she began to laugh unsteadily.

‘How like him!
He
climbed down the Castle rock in the dark, so he thinks a woman seven months gone with child can swing down from a clock tower!’

‘Yes, I told him it was impossible. But he has so great an opinion of you he swore you’d manage anything.’

‘So I will, I will!’ Her heart was soaring now. She would prove herself to him. ‘That’s impossible, the guard anyway would make it so. But I’ve another plan. I’ll tell him. Give me a scrap of paper from that writing-desk – there’s the ink – quick!’

Lady Huntly brought them to her just as Lord Lindsay began to thump on the door.

The Dowager gave the usual formula. ‘Wait one moment,’ she called impressively: then, as he presently banged again, she went to the door and said in a lower voice through the keyhole that the Queen was on the
chaise percée.
Mary took the hint and seated herself on that article of domestic furniture while she scribbled her
note. She was in her bed-gown by now. Lady Huntly hurried back to her, put away the pen and ink, and just had time to shove the note inside the neck of her dress before Lord Lindsay, disregarding their exclamations, pushed into the room.

‘How dare you enter at this moment?’ exclaimed the Dowager.

He was somewhat disconcerted to find that the Queen actually was on the
chaise percée,
and roared back, ‘How dare you stay here muttering and whispering long past the time I gave you? You’ll go now, whatever excuse you trump up, and you’ll not come back.’

She helped the Queen into bed, speaking the while as though she were continuing a conversation – ‘and as I was telling Your Majesty, the King has dissolved your new Parliament, at midday today. There was a proclamation read at the Market Cross telling all the members of Parliament, only just assembled, to leave Edinburgh within three hours, on pain of death.’