Rizzio: A Novella

In a distant room across the Palace two men in their early thirties are finishing a meal, telling old stories, gossiping and drinking. They’re both connected to Lady Huntly: George is her son and James is her new son-in-law, married to her daughter less than three weeks ago. They’ve been there for hours, enjoying one another’s company, talking to see the night through, oblivious to the coup.

These are genuine friends.

Unusually for the period, their friendship never feels transactional or ceremonial. It seems authentically fond: being together changes them. When they’re together they are braver and more reckless than they are alone. They find things funny. They change one another’s minds. They act in concert.

James Bothwell is famously unclubbable, an honest shit who won’t take bribes, but he’s also an adulterer, an adventurer and a rapist. George had to watch his brother’s execution, his father’s corpse tried for treason and, just like his mother, he walks past the spoils of his family’s defeat all day every day.

Both men work closely with David Rizzio and give the Queen their counsel. They’re both very loyal to her. These are circumspect times: the ruling class is very small and, essentially, you can pick and choose who your enemies are because almost every house has done something awful to someone else.

They’re laughing together at something when they hear the banging on the door of their chamber, so loud and formal – KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! – that it makes them laugh even more. They think someone is playing a joke.

‘Enter!’ calls George in a sombre bass.

‘Entrez!’ shouts Bothwell in an affected French accent.

They both gawp as a servant opens the door from outside to reveal their caller, Lord Ruthven. He stands in a full set of armour, ruddy-faced, puffing hard from climbing the stairs in all his metal, and he’s wearing some sort of bizarre steel cap with a leather strap that buckles by his ear. James knows not to laugh in his face. They pity him. The man is dying, everyone knows, and he has no sense of humour, much less a capacity for self-deprecation.

James stands up to greet him, inviting him into the room, but George, the giggliest of the two, has to bow very low, doubling over so that Ruthven can’t see him struggling not to laugh. They’re both quite drunk.

Ruthven clanks into the middle of the room and collapses in a chair, listing to one side as if his armour is digging in. His expression is careworn and distracted. They are courteous, though, and offer him wine and a stool for his feet.

‘Lord Ruthven, how nice to see you out and about again.’ This is George, who is the kinder of the two. ‘Could I offer you a cup of wine?’

Ruthven sighs. ‘Look, we have taken over the Palace, we have killed Rizzio and taken the Queen hostage. Tomorrow we’ll dissolve Parliament and restore the exiled lords. Everyone knows and everyone is coming back. Most of them are already here, hiding in town. The Queen, who you have been grooming and kowtowing to all this time? She’s out.’

He shifts in his seat, seems to forget what he’s talking about.

George pours him a cup of wine and hands it to him. ‘Lord Ruthven, is the possibility of a treason charge something that concerns you?’

‘No.’ Ruthven drinks, still looking vacantly into the fire. ‘There won’t be a charge. We’ve got Darnley.’

‘Oh.’

George suddenly feels terribly sober. He looks at Bothwell. Bothwell is watching Ruthven and nodding. He’s not agreeing, he’s just hiding what he really thinks.

This is a disaster for them. James and George had plans. Darnley is a spoiled child. They never even bothered counting him among the pieces on the board.

‘We’ve promised him the Crown Matrimonial,’ puffs Ruthven. ‘So he’ll basically do what we tell him.’

George sits down and leans forward, hands on his knees, elbows sticking out at belligerent angles. A nervous smile crackles on his face. ‘He’s a rather changeable person, my Lord Darnley, though, isn’t he?’

Ruthven puffs his burgundy lips in agreement.

‘Aren’t you even a little worried he’ll change his mind?’

‘No,’ says Ruthven. ‘We’re golden. He signed a contract ordering us to do all of this. We made it seem that we were following his orders. But I don’t want you two to worry because you’re all right with me. I’ll see to it. Don’t be alarmed.’

George makes a little cooing noise that suggests he’s impressed, surprised but impressed, and well done. And then he says, ‘We being…?’

Ruthven looks at him for the first time. ‘Me. Us. The Lords of the Congregation. The Chaseabout Lords.’

George nods as if he’s struggling to understand. ‘The Chaseabout Lords who rose in objection to Darnley and Mary’s marriage are now holding the Queen hostage until Darnley gets the Crown Matrimonial?’

‘No. He gets the crown, and they get their lands and titles restored.’ Ruthven knows it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Even if there is a contract, even if everyone gets what they want, they need a principle to justify what they’re doing, a natural law principle that makes the desired outcome seem noble and somewhat more righteous than a simple brigand’s demand.

‘Because a queen is an offence to nature?’ suggests Bothwell, helping him out.

‘Yes!’ says Ruthven wagging a finger at him. ‘Yes, the second sex! A trumpet cry and so on. A king is what we need.’

‘Quite so,’ says George, unconvinced and thinking about Darnley.

‘Just so,’ says Bothwell, half smiling at Ruthven.

Ruthven feels a bit confused now and tries to get up but can’t. George jumps to help him, using the old method of getting a nobleman in armour up from a chair: he stands on Ruthven’s metal-covered toes and holds his upper arms, using his own weight to lever him up. This makes Ruthven nostalgic, and he grins and says he hasn’t seen that done in a long time. George says he used to do it for his father; he and his brother used to take an arm each.

Then they mill around in the middle of the room, smiling as each remembers other times and older ways until Ruthven very abruptly says he has to leave.

‘Well, thank you very much for coming to tell us,’ says George at the door, and they all shake hands.

Ruthven clanks off down the corridor to tell Lord Atholl he isn’t going to be murdered either, nor will the other Mary loyalists, and Bothwell shuts the door.

The two men stand behind it.

‘It’s Lennox behind this,’ says Bothwell quietly.

‘How do you know?’

‘Lords of the Congregation are run on English money and, with Darnley at the head, it’s got to be.’

George and Bothwell don’t hate Lennox for any moral reason. Their beef is Europe or England. The Lords of the Congregation, the Protestant reformers, want closer ties with England to cement their religion but Bothwell and George, while Protestant themselves, know that an allegiance with England will dilute their power. European ties, however, would bring less money but fewer obligations. No one in Europe really cares about Scotland; they just want to mess with England. European ties mean Bothwell and George Huntly will be better able to exert control here.

‘They all know we’re loyal to her,’ says Bothwell.

‘Hmm.’

‘It isn’t within Ruthven’s power to grant us mercy.’

‘I know.’

There was a time when Ruthven would have worked this out himself, and it’s a little embarrassing that the old beast came lumbering into their room trying to grant clemency when what he was really doing was warning them.

George excuses Ruthven with a shrug. ‘He’s dying.’

Bothwell nods kindly. ‘I see that. He’ll go back up and tell the others he came to see us. Then they’ll realise that they’ll have to kill us.’

‘Yes, they will.’

James and George stand still in the darkened room, listening. The soundscape in the Palace is unfamiliar. It’s busy and chaotic compared to the usual orderly night guard.

The invading soldiers are all over the Palace, elated by their win. They’re sitting on chairs and rifling through the kitchens, taking anything that isn’t nailed down, wrestling each other in the throne room. There’s no discipline. It bodes ill for the rest of the night. They can’t escape through the main doors, and the only other way out that either of them is familiar with is through this back door. They can see the small, shuttered window at the far end, a semi-circle of muted grey moonlight. They can hear the guard but don’t know if they’re outside or upstairs.

They listen but they can’t map what they’re hearing. It tells them nothing about who is coming or going. There is no order. Finally, James shrugs at George, points at the window and goes towards it. George follows, eyes trained on his friend, expecting a door to burst open, a troop to arrive, swords to swing, a cry of alarm to go up, but no one stops them.

They lift the shutter, open the window, and James slithers out easily. George is less graceful, and James has to pull him through by the arm.

They stand outside in the Palace garden in the dark. Their eyes meet, the cold pinches their cheeks. Suddenly they hear feet tramping in unison nearby – not necessarily coming for them, just marching sounds. But they’re full of adrenaline, and they take it as a cue and they bolt.

They sprint over lawns and through rose bushes, past seats and high hedges, clamber up and over a walled enclosure, silent and swift. They’re remembering being young and being fast, and, not yet out of breath, they feel invincible and joyous running together, young bucks running with terror at their back and courage ahead.

The moon comes out and sudden detail crystallises: silver dew on blades of grass, the flashing eyes of a mouse startled still, Bothwell’s eyelashes, George’s freckles.

They speed up, racing each other for the joy. Neither of them will ever feel this strong again.

Bothwell sees something on his right and gives a yip of delight. He peels away from his running mate’s side and heads towards a low wall.

It’s the lion pit.

Holyrood keeps two mangy lions in an underground cell. The pit is a wide circular well used to view the scrawny creatures from above. The brick walls amplify their roars and make them seem more frightening than frightened.

James leaps onto the low wall and skips along it, dancing and grinning back at George. George laughs silently at his crazy friend, still running, turning when he overtakes, running backwards so he can stay watching Bothwell for longer.

And the Earl of Bothwell dances a jig on the lip of a lion pit in the middle of the night.