“Ha!” he whispered, with deep emotions, “what means this? Back, back, my lords, for shame, if not for pity! would ye gaze upon your sovereign, in the abandonment of utter grief, as though she were a peasant-quean? Stand back, I say, and let the halls be cleared; and hark thee, Paris,” he continued, as a cringing, terrified-looking Frenchman entered the apartment, “bid some one call Galozzi hither: the poison-vending, cozening Tuscan hath skill at least, and it shall go hardly with him so he exert it not! But ha! what ails the man? St. Andrew, he will faint! What ails thee, craven? Speak, speak, or I shake the coward soul from out thy carcass!”—and he shook the trembling servitor fiercely by the throat.
“The king—the king—” he faltered forth at length, terrified yet more by the wrath of Murray than by the scene which he had witnessed.
“What of the king, thou dastard? Speak—I say, what of Henry Darnley?”
“Murdered, your highness—murdered!”
“Nay, thou art made to say it!”
“He speaks too truly, Murray,” cried Morton, entering, with his bold visage blanched, and his dark locks bristling with unwonted terror; “the king is murdered—foully, most foully murdered!”
“By the villain Bothwell!” muttered Murray, between his hard-set teeth; “but he shall rue the deed! But say on, Morton, say on: how knowest thou this? Say on—and you, ladies, attend the queen.”
“I saw it, Murray—with these eyes I saw it—the cold, naked, strangled corpse—flung, like a carrion-carcass, on the garden-path; and the kirk of Field a pile of smoking and steaming ruins—blown up with gunpowder, to give an air of accident to this accursed treason. I tell you, man,” he continued, as he saw Murray about to speak, “I tell you that I saw, in that drear garden, cast like a murrained sheep upon a dike, all that remained of Henry Darnley!”
“’Tis false!” shrieked the wretched Mary, starting to her feet, with the wild glare of actual insanity in her eye; “who saith I slew him? Henry Darnley! ’Sdeath, lords!—the king, I say—the king! Now, by my halydom, he shall be king of Scotland! Dead—dead! who said the earl of Orkney was no more? Faugh! how the sulphur steams around us! It chokes—it smothers! Traitor, false traitor! know, earl, I will arraign thee. What! kill a king? whisper soft, low words to a queen? Hoa! this is practice, my lord duke, foul practice; and deeply shall you rue it if you but hurt a hair of Darnley!—Nay, Henry, sweet Henry, frown not on me! Oh! never woman loved as I love thee, my Darnley! Rizzio—ha! what traitor spoke of Rizzio? But think not of it, Henry: the faithful servant is lost, but ’twas not thou that did it. Lo! how dark Morton glares on me! Back, Ruthven, fiend! wouldst slay me? But I forgive thee all—all—Henry Darnley, all! Live—only live to bless my longing sight! No! no!” she shrieked more wildly, “he is not dead! to arms! what, ho!—to arms! a king, and none to rescue him! To arms, I say! I will myself to arms! Fetch forth my Milan harness; saddle me Rosabelle! French—Paris, aho! my petronels! And ye, why do ye linger, wenches—Seyton, Carmichael, Fleming?—my head-gear and my robes! The queen goes forth to-day! To horse, and to the rescue!”
She made a violent effort to rush forward, but staggered, and if her brother had not received her in his arms, she would have fallen again to the earth. “Bear her hence, ladies; bear her to her chamber!—thou hast a heavy weird—poor sister!—What ponder you so, Morton? you would not mark her words: ’tis sheer distraction—the distraction of most utter sorrow!”