Ruthven, squinting fearfully, slammed the table. ‘Whose bairn, by the Lord? Tell me whose?’
Morton shook his head. ‘Yon’s hell-work,’ he said. ‘I’ll have nothing to do wi’t. I guess who’s had the devising of it. ’Tis Lethington—a grey-faced thief.’
Here Archie Douglas, after looking to Ruthven, intervened, and talked for nearly half an hour to his cousin. Morton, very gloomy, heard him out; then made his own proposition. He would stand by the King, he said; he would hold the palace. No man should come in or out without the password. But he would not go upstairs, nor know who went up or what went on. This also he would have them all promise before he touched the band with a pen:—Whatever was done to the Italian should be done in the passage. There should be no filthy butchery of a girl and her child, either directly or by implication, where he had a hand at a job. Such was his firm stipulation. Archie swore to observe it; Fawdonsyde, Lindsay, swore; Ruthven said nothing.
‘Archie,’ said his cousin, ‘go you and fetch me the Scriptures. I shall fasten down Ruthven with the keys of God.’ Ruthven put his hand upon the book and swore. Then the Earl of Morton signed the band.
CHAPTER V
MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCES OF JEAN-MARIE-BAPTISTE DES-ESSARS
On that appointed night of Saturday, the 9th of March—a blowy, snowy night, harrowing for men at sea, with a mort of vessels pitching at their cables in Leith Roads—Des-Essars was late for his service. He should have come on to the door at ten o’clock, and it wanted but two minutes to that when he was beating down the Castle hill in the teeth of the wind.
Never mind his errand, and expect fibs if you ask what had kept him. Remember that he was older at this time than when you first saw him, a French boy ‘with smut-rimmed eyes,’ crop-headed, pale, shrewd, and reticent. That was a matter of three years ago: the Queen was but nineteen and he four years younger. He was eighteen now, and may have had evening affairs like other people, no concern of yours or mine. Whatever they may have been, they had kept him unduly; he had two minutes and wanted seven. He drew his bonnet close, his short cape about him, and went scudding down the hill as fast as the snow would let him in shoes dangerously thin for the weather, but useful for tiptoe purposes. The snow had been heaped upon the cawsey, but in the street trodden, thawed, and then frozen again to a surface of ice. From it came enough light to show that few people were abroad, and none lawfully, and that otherwise it was infernally dark. A strangely diffused, essential light it was, that of the snow. It put to shame three dying candles left in the Luckenbooths and the sick flame of an oil lamp above the Netherbow Port. After passing that, there was no sign of man or man’s comforts until you were in the Abbey precincts.
Des-Essars knew—being as sharp as a needle—that something was changed the moment he reached those precincts; knew by the pricking of his skin, as they say. A double guard set; knots of men-at-arms; some horses led about; low voices talking in strange accents,—something was altered. Worse than all this, he found the word of the night unavailing: no manner of entry for him.