Darnley is slim and tall and, even at tennis, a bit pissed. He is handsome in a shallow way: his face is symmetrical, his cheeks have remarkably few craters from the pox, but he is a mealy man. The petty resentments, the bitterness, the self-pity – they all show in his eyes and pinch at his mouth. Darnley takes. No one ever leaves his company feeling better about anything. Darnley tries to make other people unhappy because he is unhappy. With a father like Lennox, who could be happy? But Rizzio has not fully understood the intricate disputational customs here. In Savonese courts a coup d’état is a hot fight, a charge and call to arms. It is not preceded by months spent drawing up legally binding contracts, negotiating the spoils, redrafting, getting their secretary to read over the proposals before they sign. It’s a sort of Horrible Histories for adults. For those, like me, whose knowledge of the history of the day may have fallen away somewhat since schooldays, it is a thoroughly entertaining couple of hours of reading. Mary was a powerful woman whose gender made her vulnerable both physically and in terms of her hold on that power. Although Mina touches on this idea throughout, it feels at times as though this short novel is a step towards a longer work, one in which the predicament and point of view of the queen are explored in much greater depth. Perhaps she will write that book one day. Rizzio, meanwhile, is an intriguing sketch in blood.

HMC Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Salisbury preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, vol. 1 (London, 1883), p. 333, and in Thomas Wright, Queen Elizabeth and her Times, vol. 1 (London, 1838), pp. 226-235.The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, edited by John Hill Burton, LL.D., vol.1. 1545–1569, Edinburgh, 1877, p.437, lists all those charged with "the slauchter of David Riccio." Given the very many names shown, it presumably includes those in the wider conspiracy.

Mina is good on the institutionalised and individual misogyny of the period, subtly connecting it to those issues in our own time. Mary will not be believed when she later describes the personal outrages she suffered on the night of Rizzio’s death: “They will say she’s making them up to gain sympathy, a charge levelled at victims by powerful men since time immemorial.” The Earl of Bothwell, her future husband, is introduced as “an adulterer, an adventurer and a rapist”. Mina seems to hold most of her male characters in contempt, stepping outside the story to point out the distance between how they see themselves – as “the Great Men of History” – and what they really are: ridiculous killers and drunks. This is an absolutely brilliant book! I am deeply interested in Mary Queen of Scots, yet have never managed to finish any of the many books about her. Denise Mina, who has written a number of crime novels set in gritty Glasgow, was the perfect person to pen the story of the murder of David Rizzio, servant and confidant of the Queen. James Crawford, editor-at-large at Polygon, commissioned the series. He says: “These books are sharp, provocative and darkly comic, mining that seam of sedition and psychological drama that has always featured in the best of Scottish literature.” Far more gory is the scene of Rizzio’s stabbing, by all who were party to the deed: “It takes quite a long time for everyone to have a go,” writes Mina, portraying some of the murderers as giggling. And although Darnley does not take part, his dagger is left in the corpse, so there is no doubt of his involvement. Ruefully, one of the lords later reflects: “They went a bit mad that night.” George Buchanan wrote in 1581 that David was first buried outside the door of Holyrood Abbey, and then Mary arranged for him to be buried in the tomb of her father James V and Madeleine of France within. Buchanan described this circumstance as reflecting badly on the Queen. Fearing that Mary's son, James VI, would suppress his book, Buchanan's friend James Melville tried to get Buchanan to rewrite the passage while the book was at the printers. Buchanan asked his cousin, Thomas Buchanan, a schoolmaster in Stirling, if he thought the story was true, and the cousin agreed. The story was published. [40]

Rizzio: Darkland Tales

Burn’s book about Fred and Rosemary West’s lives and murders affected me in a way that perhaps all true crime should: it left me feeling saddened and soiled. He vividly portrays the actual life of serial killers, the shallow affect, the casual brutality and suburban brutalising around the explosive events we hear about when the bodies are found. He talks a lot about the way Fred West’s language was a signal and uses phrases over and over in reprises that are operatic. I know he found the book harder to write than Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son, his study of Peter Sutcliffe, and the depth of his immersion shows. It is profoundly moving in a way that true crime very rarely is. Other Calvinists congratulate him on his passion, overlook the implied violence of his fanaticism, because he’s on their side. The Reformation is recent, the issue undecided. It’s not yet safe. Everyone is afraid of a revival of the Roman religion, of being killed for their beliefs, of spies and foreign interventions. Men as hot and spirited as Yair are useful to the Protestant movement. Rizzio was played by John Carradine in the 1936 RKO picture Mary of Scotland; by Ian Holm in the 1971 movie Mary, Queen of Scots; by Tadeusz Pasternak in the BBC mini-series Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot; by Andrew Shaver in The CW network television show Reign; and by Ismael Cruz Córdova in the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots. Rizzio thinks that, if Darnley wanted him dead, he could run him through right here. Rizzio knows something is going on, but something is always going on – that’s how it is in the orbit of regal power.