Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

24 : RAFAEL SABATINI -thud of a score of overtaking feet. Soon they were surrounded. The King turned this way and that, desperately seeking a way out of the murderous human ring that fenced them round. “What d’ye seek? What d’ye seek?” he screeched, in a pitiful at- tempt to question with authority. 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 re- laxed 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 to- gether in the end. EO PMICLOO KS (E)