Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ig ROSS RAFAEL SABATINI sat beside his bed, soothing a spirit oddly perturbed, as if with some premonition of what was brewing. “Yell not leave me the night,” he begged her once. “Alas,” she said, “I must! Sebastien is being wed, and I have - promised to be present.” He sighed and shifted uneasily. “Soon-I shall be well, and then these foolish humours will cease to haunt me. But just now I cannot bear you from my-sight. When you are with me | am at peace. I know that all is well. But when you go 1 am filled with fears, lying helpless here.” “What should you fear?” she.asked him. “The hate that I know is alive against me.” “Youare casting shadows to affright yourself,” said she. “What's that?” he cried, half ‘raising himself in sudden alarm. “Listen!” From the room below came faintly a sound of footsteps, accom- panied by a noise as of something being trundled. “Tt will be my servants in my room—putting it to rights.” “To what purpose since you do not sleep there tonight?” he asked. He raised his voice and called his page. “Why, what will you do?” she asked him, siaailping her own alarm. He answered her by bidding the youth who had entered go see what was doing.in the room below. The lad departed, and had he done his errand faithfully, he would have found Bothwell’s followers, Hay and Hepburn, and the Queen’s man, Nicholas Hubert—better known as French Paris—emptying a keg of gunpowder on the floor immediately under the King’s bed. But-it happened that in the pas- sage he. came suddenly face.to face with the splendid figure of Both- well, cloaked and hatted, and Bothwell asked him whither he went. The boy told him. “It is nothing,” Bothwell said. “They are moving Her Grace’s bed in accordance with her wishes.” And the lad, overborne by that commanding figure which so effectively blocked his path, chose the line of- lesser resistance. He went back to bear the King that message as if he for himself had* _ seen what my Lord Bothwell had but told him. Gomichbooks (E(0)