Here the Queen slept on several of those nights of early February, for indeed she was more often at Kirk o’ Field than at Holy-rood, and when she was not bearing Darnley company in his chamber, and beguiling the tedium of his illness, she was to be seen walking in the garden with Lady Reres, and from his bed he could hear her sometimes singing as she sauntered there.
Never since the ephemeral season of their courtship had she been on such fond terms with him, and all his fears of hostile designs entertained against him by her immediate followers were stilled at last. Yet not for long. Into his fool’s paradise came Lord Robert of Holyrood, with a warning that flung him into a sweat of panic.
The conspirators had hired a few trusted assistants to help them carry out their plans, and a rumour had got abroad—in the unaccountable way of rumours—that there was danger to the King. It was of this rumour that Lord Robert brought him word, telling him bluntly that unless he escaped quickly from this place, he would leave his life there. Yet when Darnley had repeated this to the Queen, and the Queen indignantly had sent for Lord Robert and demanded to know his meaning, his lordship denied that he had uttered any such warning, protested that his words must have been misunderstood—that they referred solely to the King’s condition, which demanded, he thought, different treatment and healthier air.
Knowing not what to believe, Darnley’s uneasiness abode with him. Yet, trusting Mary, and feeling secure so long as she was by his side, he became more and more insistent upon her presence, more and more fretful in her absence. It was to quiet him that she consented to sleep as often as might be at Kirk o’ Field. She slept there on the Wednesday of that week, and again on Friday, and she was to have done so yet again on that fateful Sunday, February 9th, but that her servant Sebastien—one who had accompanied her from France, and for whom she had a deep affection—was that day married, and Her Majesty had promised to be present at the masque that night at Holyrood, in honour of his nuptials.
Nevertheless, she did not utterly neglect her husband on that account. She rode to Kirk o’ Field early in the evening, accompanied by Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, and some others; and leaving the lords at cards below to while away the time, she repaired to Darnley, and sat beside his bed, soothing a spirit oddly perturbed, as if with some premonition of what was brewing.
“Ye’ll not leave me the night,” he begged her once.
“Alas,” she said, “I must! Sebastien is being wed, and I have promised to be present.”
He sighed and shifted uneasily.
“Soon I shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease to haunt me. But just now I cannot bear you from my sight. When you are with me I am at peace. I know that all is well. But when you go I am filled with fears, lying helpless here.”
“What should you fear?” she asked him.
“The hate that I know is alive against me.”
“You are casting shadows to affright yourself,” said she.
“What’s that?” he cried, half raising himself in sudden alarm. “Listen!”
From the room below came faintly a sound of footsteps, accompanied by a noise as of something being trundled.
“It will be my servants in my room—putting it to rights.”
“To what purpose since you do not sleep there tonight?” he asked. He raised his voice and called his page.
“Why, what will you do?” she asked him, steadying her own alarm.
He answered her by bidding the youth who had entered go see what was doing in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errand faithfully, he would have found Bothwell’s followers, Hay 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 tomorrow 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