Виктория Холт - Royal Road to Fotheringhay

“You will not forgive me. You turn from me. I long to resume our normal married life and you will have none of it. I know that I have acted very foolishly, even wickedly. Madam, I am very young. I am not twenty-one yet. I am younger than you are. Let us try again. There is only one thing I desire: to get back to that happy relationship which was ours. Oh, Mary, you loved me once. Have you forgotten?”

She shuddered. “It was so long ago. I did not know you then.”

“You knew part of me. I was like that. I could be like that again. I have been led astray by my own folly … by the folly of others. I think of you constantly … as my Queen and as my wife. How could I ever be content without you, having known you?”

“I cannot believe you to be sincere. I know you, remember. If I took you back there would be those hideous scenes… that shameful humiliation. I cannot forget what you have said to me, how you have humiliated me—not only in private, but before my subjects.”

“Then you would take me back? You would let me be with you again?”

“How could I trust you?”

“You could! You could!”

“Hush! Do not excite yourself so. It is bad for you. Lie still. Speak calmly.”

“Speak calmly when you are here, when you have ridden here to see me?”

“I am uncertain—” she began.

“Mary, I will be a good husband to you. Mary, why should we not be happy together? We have a child … a son. We could be happy.”

“If we were different people we might be. I … I have brought a horse-litter for you.”

He was pathetically alert. “Why so? Why so?”

“I wish to take you back with me to Edinburgh.”

“To take me back!” He looked wildly about the room. “To take me back, Mary? I have too many enemies at the Court. They have sworn to be revenged on me for …”

“For David’s death,” she said. Her eyes were brilliant as she looked full at him and went on: “It is just a year since David died.” The memory of David, pulling at her skirts as he was being dragged across the floor, gave her courage. He—this sick and repulsive boy lying in the bed—had had no compunction in sending David to his death. She went on: “That is what you are thinking of, is it not? You fear them because you plotted with them to kill David and then deserted them and informed against them.”

He nodded slowly and fearfully. He said: “I hear that they have plotted to do me harm. But I would not believe that you would join them in that. Why do you wish me to go back to Edinburgh?”

“Because so many talk of the strained relations between us. I would have us appear to the world to be living in amity together.”

“Mary,” he said, “I will come back on one condition. I will rise from my sickbed and come back to Edinburgh if you will give me your promise to be my wife … in all things.”

She hesitated.

He went on: “If not, I shall stay here. I want your solemn promise, Mary. You and I shall be at bed and board as husband and wife. Promise me this, and I will leave with you tomorrow.”

She was silent for so long that he said sulkily: “Very well then, I remain here. It is far too cold for me to travel.”

“You would be comfortable in your litter. You would have the utmost care. In Edinburgh we should all be together… you, I and the child. I would care for you myself.”

“I will come only if you promise me that one thing: we shall be as husband and wife and you will never leave me as long as I live.”

“As long as you live,” she repeated, and the shivering took possession of her again. She went on: “But it would have to be after you have recovered. We could not be together until then.”

“I will recover quickly,” he said eagerly.

“Very well. We shall start tomorrow.”

“Your promise, Mary?”

“I give it.”

“And never to leave me as long as I live?”

“Never to leave you as long as you live,” she repeated.

“Then let us set out tomorrow.”

Shaken, relieved and horrified, she said to herself: It is done. Soon my task will be over.

DARNLEY WAS sleeping deeply, his disfigured face turned away from her. Mary sat in the sickroom watching through the long night. She was too distressed to sleep and she could not sit idly; so she took up her pen and wrote to her lover.

“I am weary and sleepy, yet I cannot forbear scribbling as long as there is any paper….”

She had been writing for some time without considering what she wrote but setting down her thoughts as they came into her mind. She glanced back over the paper and read:

“He would not let me go but would have me watch with him. Fain would I have excused myself from spending this night sitting up with him….

“I do a work here which I hate much….

“Excuse me if I write ill. I am ill at ease and glad to write unto you when others be asleep, seeing that I cannot do as they do according to my desire, that is between your arms, my dear life whom I beseech God to preserve from all ill….”

There were tears in her eyes and they fell on the paper.

Will this night never end? she asked herself. She looked at the man in the bed, and she thought of the man whom she loved, and she murmured: “It were better if I had never been born, better I had died long ago when a child, and so many thought I should, than that I should come to this.”

THEY LEFT Glasgow next day.

“Are we going to Holyroodhouse or the Castle?” asked Darnley.

“To neither,” she answered him. “In your state it would not be good to stay at either place. You are sick of a disease which many fear. I have had a house prepared for you, and there you shall rest until you are well enough to come to me at the palace.”

“And share your apartments,” he reminded her.

“And share my apartments,” she repeated.

“Bed and board,” he said, smiling. “Where is this house?”

“It is one of those on the southern slope of the city. You know the ruins of the Church of St. Mary. There are several houses there, and this one belongs to Robert Balfour. He has lent it to us that you may rest there until you are well enough to come to the palace.”

Darnley frowned. “Among all those worn-out and ruined houses! You would mean Kirk-o’-Field, would you not?”

“Kirk-o’-Field, yes. Close to the ruin of St. Mary’s.”

“It is an odd place to which to take me.”

“It is near Holyrood, and for that reason it seems suitable. It is an old house, it is true, but we have furnished your apartment royally. When you are within and see the bed I have had set there for you, and the rich hangings I have had put up, you will agree that you are as comfortably housed as in your fathers castle.”

“And you… will you be at this house in Kirk-o’-Field?”

“I shall have my bed taken there. I shall sleep in the room below yours, so you will not be lonely. Your man Taylor and a few others will be with you. And I shall be there too.”

He nodded. “But Kirk-o’-Field! A dismal place!”

“Only outside. Inside it will be as a palace furnished for a king.”

As they came into Edinburgh and Darnley saw the dismal surroundings of the house which had been chosen for him he was uneasy. He looked with distaste at the house itself which had been lent by Robert Balfour, the Provost of Kirk-o’-Field and brother to Sir James. It was a house of two stories. There was a spiral staircase in a turret by means of which it was possible to enter the lower chamber and the upper through two small lobbies. On each of the two floors there were a few rooms which were more like cupboards than rooms—these were the garderobes and here the servants would sleep. Sliding panels acted as doors for these garderobes. The house had been built over an arched crypt.