"Heaven alone knoweth,[*] unless it be that her Majesty favoured him greatly for his superior scholarcraft; which, like witchcraft and every other craft, is often like unto a sharp sword that cutteth its own scabbard. Royal favour, as thou well knowest, Bothwell, will soon make a man hated by his compeers; and thus Rizzio was hated, and so slain, for they left him in the adjoining chamber, gashed by six-and-fifty sword and dagger wounds, with the King's poniard driven to the hilt in his brisket, to show by whose mandate the deed was done."
[*] At this date, the calumnies recorded by Buchanan were yet uncirculated. H. le Guyon and Blackwood expressly state David Rizzio to have been an old man.
"'Twas right Venetian that."
"And further, knowest thou that Master Craig, the minister of St. Giles, that Master Knox, and the father of that buxom bride whom he won by his damnable sorceries—even the pious and godly lord of Ochiltree—are all art and part in the assassination of this poor stranger, whom they deemed their only barrier to the ear and eye of her Majesty?"
"How!" said Bothwell ironically, "darest thou thus malign our Scottish apostles?"
"Nay, I malign none; but this is well known to my brother the President, who, as thou art aware, is ever fishing in troubled waters, that they were in the conspiracy. Ha!" he added, with a dark frown, "thinkest thou that this knave Knox, who leagued with the sacrilegious murderers of my kinsman, the great Cardinal of St. Stephen, would quail at crushing this harmless bookworm—this poor Italian violer? I trow not!"
"'Tis nothing to me," replied the Earl; "for Master Knox was never friend of mine."
"Nor mine!" added Ormiston, with a furious oath; "he ever gave me the breadth of the causeway, as if there was contamination in the touch of my cloak; and so he, too, can league with murderers—with jackmen, and men-at-arms, eh?"
"Doubtless," replied Balfour with a sneer, "when, as he hath it, 'God raiseth them up to slay those whom the kirk hateth;' since Rizzio's death, Morton, Lindesay, Ochiltree, Fawdounside, and others, have been exiles in England; the Catholic lords are again in the ascendant, and want but the appearance of Huntly and yourself at court (united by other ties, as I have no doubt you soon will be,) to crush by the strong hand, and perhaps for ever, those dark and dour-visaged Protestants. God's murrain on their long prayers and Geneva cloaks! for the sound of one and sight of the other, gives me a fit of the spleen. But we have had enough of these matters—fill thy wine-bicker, noble Bothwell; here's to black-eyed Jane of Huntly—drink, Ormiston, a fair carouse to the Lady of Hailes and Bothwell-hall!"
The Earl drank his wine in silence, and black Hob did so too, twirling his mustache the while, with his eyes half-closed by a leer.