“Arise, David, thou minion! arise, and quit the presence to which thou art a foul and plague-like blot!” cried the deep voice of Ruthven, ere a word had yet found its way to the lips of the indignant queen.
“Sir Patrick Ruthven—if our eyes deceive us not,” she said at length, erecting her noble figure to its utmost, and bending upon him a glance which, hardened as he was in crime and cruelty, he could no more have met with his than the vile raven have gazed upon the noonday sun—“Sir Patrick Ruthven, we would learn what means this insolent intrusion?”
“It means, fair madam,” replied Darnley—who now followed his savage instrument, accompanied by his no less fierce accomplices, the base-born Douglas, the brutal Ker of Fawdonside, in bearing and in manners fitted rather for the guardhouse than the court, and the most thorough ruffian of the party, Patrick de Balantyne—“it means that your vile minion’s race is run!”
“Ha! comes the blow from thee?—I might indeed have deemed it so,” she replied, calmly but scornfully. “What is your grace’s pleasure?” and she smiled in beautiful contempt.
“My pleasure is that he—yon base Italian, yon destroyer of my honor, and of yours—of your honor, madam, if you know such a word—shall perish!”
“Never, Henry Darnley! mine own life sooner!” And she confronted him with flashing eyes and heightened color, her whole frame quivering with resolve and indignation. “Thinkst thou to put a stain like this upon the honor of a queen, and that queen, too, thine own much-injured wife? Out, out upon thee, for a heartless, coward thing! A man, a brute, hath some affection, hath some touch of love for those who have loved him, as I have once loved thee; of gratitude toward those who have elevated him—not, no! not as I have elevated thee—for never yet did woman lavish honor, power, kingdom, upon mortal man, as I have lavished them on thee! Away, insolent and ungrateful, hence! Thinkst thou to do murder, foul murder, in the presence of a woman, of a wife—a wife soon, wretch that she is, to be the mother of a child—of thy child, Henry? Hence, and I will forgive thee all—even this last offence! Banish these murderous ruffians from my presence; spare an honest and a noble servant—one who hath never, never wronged thee or thine! spare him, and I will take thee yet again unto my heart, and love thee, as I have loved thee ever, even when thou hast been most cruel—ever, Henry Darnley, ever!”
The king was moved, his lips quivered, and he would have spoken: all might still have been explained, all might have been forgiven; but it was not so decreed.
“Tush, we but dally,” cried the brutal Ruthven, “we but dally! On, gentlemen, and drag the villain from the presence!”
Foremost himself, he strode to seize the unarmed wretch, who, broken in spirits, and appalled more perhaps by the recollection of the wizard’s doom than by the sordid fear of death, clung to the robe of his adored mistress, poor wretch, as though the altar itself would have been to him a sanctuary against his ruthless murderers.
“Mercy!” shrieked the miserable queen; “mercy, for the love of Him that made you! mercy, Henry—mercy, for my sake, or, if not for mine, mercy for thine unborn infant’s sake! Ruthven—villain, false knight, uncourteous traitor—forego thy hold!” and she struggled madly with the assassins. “To arms!” she screamed in shriller tones, “to arms!—O God! O God! have I no guards, no friends, no husband? Oh, that I had been born a man, and ye should rue this day—ay, and ye shall rue it!”