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Updated: June 28, 2025
And meanwhile, with poor Rizzio's last cry of "justice!" still ringing in her ears, Mary sat alone in her chamber, studying revenge as she had promised.
It was Rizzio's skill upon the rebec that had first attracted Mary's attention. Later he had become her secretary for French affairs and the young Queen, reared amid the elegancies of the Court of France, grew attached to him as to a fellow-exile in the uncouth and turbulent land over which a harsh destiny ordained that she should rule.
First Rizzio's murder, which the distant spectators would discuss, no doubt, with a thrill not entirely of horror, a stern sense that justice had been done, a satisfied prejudice and no doubt some patriotic, if still prejudiced, hope that now the Italian was removed there would be less of foreign policy, and a more entire regard for the welfare of affairs at home.
By way of an outpost, you can single out the little peak-roofed lodge, over which Rizzio's murderers made their escape, and where Queen Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed in white wine to retain her loveliness. Behind and overhead lie the Queen's Park, from Musehat's Cairn to Dumbiedykes, St.
In themselves, those words were not strictly accurate. It wanted yet a month to the anniversary of Rizzio's death. And why, at parting, should she have reminded him of that which she had agreed should be forgotten? Instantly came the answer that she sought to warn him that retribution was impending.
In his reading and travel it is by no means to the ostensible monuments and trophies of the past that his observation and inquiry are confined: the Letters of Madame de Sévigné give him authentic hints for the social tendencies of France and their influence upon politics, as the blood-stains at Holyrood identify the place of Rizzio's murder; the "Edinburgh Review" reveals the spirit of the Reform movement as clearly as the Parliamentary records its letter; the South-Sea House and the Temple are as suggestive as Whitehall and the Abbey, for trade and jurisprudence, in the retrospect, are as much a part of the by-gone life and present character of a nation, as the fate and the fame of her dead kings; and a Spanish ballad is as valuable an illustration as a Madrid state-paper; while the life of Harry Vane vindicates the Puritan nature as clearly as the letter of a Venetian ambassador exhibits the domestic life of a Pope.
" . . . The ring was taken off Mary's finger by a man in anger and jealousy: he threw it into the water. Just before Rizzio's murder Mary was enceinte, and might well be carried in a litter, though she usually rode. The seer then had a view of Sizzle's murder, which he had probably read about. Three weeks later, in another trance, the seer finished his design of the vellum. The words
The blood-stain covers a large space, much larger than I supposed, and it gives the impression that there must have been a great pool and sop of blood on all the spot covered by Rizzio's body, staining the floor deeply enough never to be washed out. It is now of a dark brown hue; and I do not see why it may not be the genuine, veritable stain.
She pored over the old furniture, the needlework of which she was told was at least in part the work of the beautiful Queen's own fingers; gazed at the stains in the floor of the bed-chamber, said to be those of Rizzio's blood; meditated over the trap- door in the passage, by which the conspirators had come up; and finally sat down in the room, and tried to realize the scene which had once been acted there.
Mary had used Darnley as a tool to bring about the ruin of his confederates and to further her policy; but from the moment that she discovered his actual complicity in the plot for Rizzio's murder she had loathed and avoided him. Ominous words dropped from her lips. "Unless she were free of him some way," Mary was heard to mutter, "she had no pleasure to live."
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