Mary Stuart (14 page)

With these two loyal assistants to rely upon, Mary Stuart, at twenty-three, had at length both the chief implements of power, the political and the military, firmly grasped in her hands. For the first time she could venture to rule alone, and she was never a woman to shrink from risk.

Always, however, in Scotland, when the monarch endeavoured to become an effective ruler, the Scottish lords resisted his will. Nothing could be more distasteful to these insurrectionary-minded nobles than a queen who neither wooed their favour nor was afraid of them. From England, Moray and the other outlaws were clamouring for permission to return. They exploded all possible mines, those of silver and gold as well as the others. The discontent of the nobility was concentrated upon Rizzio, and soon their castles were full of the murmur of scandalous tongues. The Protestants in Holyrood were convinced that the Italian was spinning Machiavellian webs. They suspected rather than knew that Scotland was about to be dragged into the secret schemes of the Counter-Reformation, and it is indeed possible that Mary had given some such pledge to her relatives the Guises who, a few years later, were to found the Catholic League.

Rizzio, having no longer a friend at the Scottish court, was held responsible for these plots. The shrewdest of mortals often act most imprudently. Rizzio made the usual mistake of upstarts. Instead of modestly concealing his power, he boastfully displayed it. He wore splendid attire, bestowed costly gifts, made those with whom he had as a newcomer sat in the servants’ hall feel how high he had risen above them, and he does not seem to have been himself exempt from corruption by presents. What, in any case, could be more insufferable to the Scottish nobles’ pride than that an ex-servant, a strolling musician of dubious origin, should spend hour after hour in the Queen’s private apartments, adjoining her bedchamber, in the most intimate companionship which was denied to them, the bearers of ancient names? Stronger and stronger grew their suspicions that these secret conversations must concern an attempt to make an end of the Protestant power in the country and, to be beforehand with the Queen, a number of the nobles who were devoted to the Reformed religion joined in a conspiracy.

For centuries the Scottish aristocracy had been accustomed to employ one method, and one only, for dealing with their adversaries—murder. Not until the spider which was spinning these secret threads had been crushed, not until the subtle and inscrutable Italian adventurer had been swept out of their path, would the way be opened for rendering Mary Stuart more pliable. The plan for making a violent end of Rizzio must have been conceived some months in advance, at the time when Randolph reported to Elizabeth that the Italian might expect at God’s hand either a speedy end or an intolerable life. It was long, however, before the malcontents could summon up courage to begin a definite rising. The speed and firmness with which Mary had suppressed the last rebellion was still fresh in their memories, and they had little inclination to share the fate of Moray and the other exiles. They also dreaded the iron hand of Bothwell, who loved to strike hard, and whose pride, they knew, would keep him from joining in their plot. They could only murmur among themselves and clench their fists until at length one of them thought of the brilliant but devilish plan of transforming Rizzio’s murder from a rebellious act into a legal and patriotic deed by making Darnley, the titular King of Scotland, head and front and protector of the conspiracy.

At the first glance the notion seems absurd. Involve the king of a country in a conspiracy against his own wife, the king against the queen? But the scheme proved psychologically sound, for in Darnley’s case, as in that of all weaklings, the mainspring of his activities was his measureless vanity. Since the “iron stamp”, the facsimile of the Queen’s signature, had been confided to Rizzio’s charge, the friendship between the two men had been broken, for the right to sign documents in Mary’s name gave Rizzio powers which Darnley coveted on his own account. Was this beggar on horseback to conduct diplomatic negotiations about which Darnley, Henricus Scotiae, was not informed? The secretary was wont to stay in the Queen’s room until one or two in the morning—to spend there the midnight hours when a husband had the right to demand his wife’s company—and the Italian’s power grew from day to day as, in the sight of the whole court, Darnley’s diminished. It must be Rizzio’s fault that the crown matrimonial had been refused him, and that alone would have sufficed to explain the hatred of a man who was no less mean-spirited than mortified. But the Scottish nobles instilled a yet more virulent poison into the open wound of Darnley’s vanity, stimulating him where he was most sensitive, in his virile jealousy. By numberless hints they encouraged his suspicion that Rizzio shared not only the Queen’s board, but also her bed. Though there was no proof of any such misconduct, Darnley was the readier to believe the tale because his wife had of late refused conjugal embraces. It was a hateful thought that Mary’s aloofness must be due to a preference for this black-haired musician. A man whose feelings have been wounded is easy to enrage, and one who does not trust himself is apt to distrust others. Ere long Darnley was convinced “that he had suffered the greatest dishonour which can be inflicted on a man.” The incredible became fact; the King assumed the leadership of the conspiracy against the Queen.

It has never been proved, nor is ever likely to be proved, that this swarthy little musician David Rizzio was really the Queen’s lover. The very fact that Mary showed open favour for her private secretary in face of the whole court speaks against the supposition. Even if we admit that there is but a narrow line separating spiritual intimacy between a man and a woman from carnal relationship—a line which can be crossed in any incautious moment or as the outcome of an unconscious gesture—still, as regards Rizzio, Mary Queen of Scots, a woman with child, showed her royal friendship with such confidence and carelessness as would have never been shown in such circumstances by an adulteress. Had the pair really crossed the aforesaid line to become lovers, Mary’s first and most natural thought would have been to avoid giving tokens of manifest intimacy; she would not have made music or played cards with her lover until the small hours in her private apartment; nor would she have secluded herself with him in her study when diplomatic correspondence was being indited. But as had already been shown in the case of Chastelard, one of her most gracious qualities was a danger to her—her absolute self-confidence when she knew herself to be blameless, her contempt for what “they say”, her sovereign disregard of gossip, her amiable nonchalance. Almost always incaution and courage go together, as virtue and danger, like the obverse and reverse of a coin; it is only cowards and those who are unsure of themselves that dread the semblance of guilt.

But when rumour has once charged a woman with misconduct, however malicious and nonsensical the rumour may be, it continues to spread, being perpetually nourished by malicious curiosity. Forty years later, Henry IV of France was to keep the ball of calumny rolling, for he said mockingly of his fellow sovereign James I (whom, as a babe, Mary was now bearing in her womb) that he well deserved the name of “Solomon” because, like King Solomon of old, he was a son of David. For the second time Mary’s reputation was gravely damaged, not by any fault she had committed, but by her lack of caution.

At the Scottish court, no one took this fable seriously; for afterwards, when the nobles were publicly accusing Mary Stuart of all possible crimes, they simultaneously declared her son James to be the rightful King of Scotland. Hate her though they did, they knew the truth of this matter. Only in Darnley, irritated beyond endurance, his judgement confused by an inferiority complex, did the suspicion take root and grow rankly. Like fire, it coursed through his veins; like a bull, he charged the red cloth waved in front of his eyes, and entered blindly into the plot. Without stopping to reflect, he allowed himself to be entangled in a conspiracy against his own wife, so that within a few days no one thirsted more ragingly than he for the blood of Rizzio, who had been his close friend, who had shared bed and board with him—the insignificant musician from Italy who had helped Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley to a crown.

Among the Scottish nobles of those days, political assassination was a solemn affair. Those who had determined on it did not rush hastily upon their victim in the first blast of anger. The conspirators entered into a formal bargain. Word of honour was not security enough for them, for they knew one another too well. This remarkable scheme of chivalry had to be contracted for with seal and charter, as if it had been a legal undertaking. When the Scots had determined on violence, the details were clearly stipulated on parchment, upon one of the so-called “covenants” or “bonds” in which the princely bandits pledged themselves to abide by one another through weal or woe—for only as a troop, as a clan, did they feel courageous enough to rise against their sovereign lady. This time, as a novelty in Scottish history, the conspirators were honoured by having a king’s signature upon their covenant. Between Darnley and the conspirators two bonds were entered into and duly signed, bonds in which the King who had been cold-shouldered and the lords who had been banished reciprocally pledged themselves to overthrow the authority of Mary Stuart. In the first bond Darnley promised to hold the conspirators “shaithless” (unharmed), and to protect and defend them even in the palace and in the presence of the Queen. He further agreed to recall the banished lords from outlawry and to overlook their “faults”, on condition “that they would procure for him the crown matrimonial of Scotland, and that, in the event of Queen Mary’s death, he should be declared her rightful successor, and his father the next heir after himself; and that the lords would pursue, slay and extirpate all who opposed this resolution.” He also promised to defend the Kirk against any diminution of its rights. In the second bond the conspiring lords pledged themselves to procure for Darn-ley the crown matrimonial, and even (we shall see why this possibility was considered) in the event of the Queen’s premature death to leave Darnley in possession of the royal rights. These words, seemingly plain, implied more than Darn-ley realised. But Randolph, who saw the text of the bonds, understood well enough, reporting to London: “If persuasion to cause the Queen to yield to these matters” (the resignation of the crown) “do no good, they purpose to proceed we know not in what sort.” This is a broad hint of the intention of the conspirators to rid themselves of Mary during the chance medley of which Rizzio’s assassination was the avowed object.

Hardly was the ink dry upon the signatures to this iniquitous bargain, when messengers galloped off to inform Moray, who was at Newcastle awaiting the issue of the plot, that he might make ready for his return to Scotland, while Randolph, who was likewise across the border at Berwick, and was actively participating in the conspiracy, hastened to inform Elizabeth of the bloody surprise which was preparing for her royal sister. On 13th February 1566, several weeks before the murder, he wrote to London:

There can then be no doubt that the conspiracy had more extensive aims than those disclosed to the foolish Darnley; that the blow which was ostensibly directed against Rizzio alone was intended to destroy Mary as well, so that her life was just as much in peril as her secretary’s. Darnley, however, being cruel, as cowards always are when they win power, was blindly longing for vengeance upon the man who had wormed his way into Mary’s confidence, and who signed documents in her name. He insisted, therefore, wishing to debase his wife as much as possible, that the murder must take place in her presence; being moved by the illusion of a weakling, who hopes that “punishment” will make a strong nature pliable, and believing that a brutal exhibition of force would render once more submissive the wife who had come to despise him. Such crude and vengeful natures as his are capable of the last extremity of baseness. The conspirators acceded to the wretched creature’s desire that the slaughter should take place in Mary’s apartment, and in her presence, with child though she was. The 9th of March was chosen for the deed, whose performance was to prove even more abominable than its planning had been.

While Elizabeth and her ministers in London had for weeks been fully informed of the details (though the English Queen had no thought of conveying a friendly warning to her cousin and “good sister”), and while Moray was waiting across the border ready to spring into the saddle and John Knox had already prepared the sermon in which he was to extol the murder as “a deed most worthy of all praise”—Mary Stuart, betrayed on every hand, was utterly without forebodings and void of suspicion. During the last few days Darnley, making treachery more hideous by simulated affection, had been kindlier than usual, so that there was nothing to show, at sunset on the appointed day, what a night of horror was awaiting her with its promise of doom that would overshadow her for years to come. Rizzio had received an anonymous warning, to which he paid no heed, for in the afternoon when Darnley came to ask him to play a game of tennis, the musician cheerfully accepted the invitation of his former comrade.

Now it was dark. Mary, following her usual custom at this period, had commanded that supper be served in the turret chamber adjoining her bedroom on the first storey of the tower. It was a little cabinet, fitted only for the entertainment of a small company—a few nobles and Mary’s half-sister were seated round the heavy oaken table, which was lit by wax candles in silver candelabra. Opposite the Queen sat David Rizzio, dressed as a fine gentleman, his head covered (the French fashion in those days), and wearing a coat trimmed with damask and fur. He was in a cheerful conversational vein, probably expecting that there would be some music after supper, or that in some other way the time would be passed pleasantly. There was no sign of anything unusual—until the tapestry which veiled the Queen’s bedroom was drawn aside and Darnley, the King, the husband, entered. Everyone rose to greet him; place was made for the distinguished guest at the crowded table, beside his wife, round whom he put his arm affectionately, kissing her with a Judas kiss. Lively talk was resumed; plates rattled and glasses clinked; then there was some agreeable music.