A tall man in a trailing cloak advanced and seized him.
“We seek thee, fool!” said the voice of Bothwell.
The kingliness that he had never known how to wear becomingly now fell from him utterly.
“Mercy—mercy!” he cried.
“Such mercy as you had on David Rizzio!” answered the Border lord.
Darnley fell on his knees and sought to embrace the murderer's legs. Bothwell stooped over him, seized the wretched man's shirt, and pulled it from his shivering body; then, flinging the sleeves about the royal neck, slipped one over the other and drew them tight, nor relaxed his hold until the young man's struggles had entirely ceased.
Four days later, Mary went to visit the body of her husband in the chapel of Holyrood House, whither it had been conveyed, and there, as a contemporary tells us, she looked upon it long, “not only without grief, but with greedy eyes.” Thereafter it was buried secretly in the night by Rizzio's side, so that murderer and victim lay at peace together in the end.
III. THE NIGHT OF BETRAYAL—Antonio Perez and Philip II of Spain
“You a Spaniard of Spain?” had been her taunt, dry and contemptuous. “I do not believe it.”