.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 55529
   :PG.Title: Bothwell, Volume \III (of 3)
   :PG.Released: 2017-09-11
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: James Grant
   :DC.Title: Bothwell
              or, The Days of Mary Queen of Scots
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1851
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

====================
BOTHWELL, VOLUME III
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      BOTHWELL:

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      OR,

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      THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

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      BY JAMES GRANT, ESQ.,

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      AUTHOR OF

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      "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH CASTLE,"
      "THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER," &c., &c.

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      IN THREE VOLUMES.

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      VOL. \III.

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      LONDON:
      PARRY & CO., LEADENHALL STREET.
      MDCCCLI.

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      M'CORQUODALE AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON.
      WORKS, NEWTON.

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CONTENTS OF VOL. \III.

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CHAPTER 

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I. `The-Kirk-Of-Field`_
II. `The Midnight Mass`_
III. `Guilt Levels All`_
IV. `The Prebend of St. Giles`_
V. `The Papists' Pillar`_
VI. `Remorse`_
VII. `The Rescue`_
VIII. `The Challenge`_
IX. `Ainslie's Supper`_
X. `Hans and Konrad`_
XI. `How Bothwell Made Use of the Bond`_
XII. `Love and Scorn`_
XIII. `The Cry`_
XIV. `Hans' Patience is Rewarded`_
XV. `The Legend of St. Mungo`_
XVI. `Mary's Despair`_
XVII. `The Bridal at Beltane`_
XVIII. `The Whirlpool`_
XIX. `Bothwell and the Great Bear`_
XX. `Christian Alborg`_
XXI. `The Castellana`_
XXII. `The Vain Resolution`_
XXIII. `Retribution`_
XXIV. `Malmö`_

——— `Notes`_





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.. _`THE-KIRK-OF-FIELD`:

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   BOTHWELL;

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   OR,

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THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

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CHAPTER I.

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THE KIRK-OF-FIELD.

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..

   |  They make me think upon the gunner's lintstock,
   |  Which yielding forth a light about the size
   |  And semblance of the glow-worm, yet applied
   |  To powder, blew a palace into atoms.
   |  Sent a young king—a young queen's mate, at least—
   |  Into the air, as high as ere flew night-hawk,
   |  And made such wild work in the realm of Scotland.
   |                                        *Auchindrane, Act ii.*

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There was not a sound heard in the
mansion, which, at that moment, had no other
occupants than the doomed prince, his two
pages, (or chamber-cheilds as the Scots name
them,) and five other attendants,—William
Taylor, Thomas Neilson, Simpson, Edwards,
and a boy.  These occupied apartments at
the extremity of the house, but on the same
floor with the king.  All the other attendants
had absconded, to partake of the festivities at
Holyrood, or had gone there in the queen's
retinue.

"French Paris—Nicholas Hubert," said
Bothwell in a husky voice, "the keys!"

Hubert produced them from beneath his
mantle.  They were a set of false keys which
had been made from waxen impressions of
the originals.  The door was softly opened,
and the conspirators entered the lower
ambulatory, on each side of which lay a vaulted
chamber.

Bolton thought of Hubert's sister, and his
heart grew sick; for the brother knew not
that his sister was at that time above them,
in the chamber of Darnley.

"Come, Master Konrad," said Ormiston,
tapping him on the shoulder; "if we are to
be friends, assist us, and make thyself useful;
for we have little time to spare."

Thus urged, Konrad, though still in profound
ignorance as to the object of his companions,
and the part he was acting, assisted
Ormiston and French Paris to unload the
sumpter-horse, and to drag the heavy mails
within doors.  These he supposed to contain
plunder, and then the whole mystery
appeared unravelled.  His companions were
robbers, and the solitary house, about and
within which they moved so stealthily, was
their haunt and hiding-place.  With affected
good-will he assisted to convey the mails into
the vaults, where, some hours before, Hubert
had deposited a large quantity of powder,
particularly under the corner or ground stones
of the edifice.

While they were thus employed, and
while the ex-Lord Chancellor and Whittinghame
kept watch, the Earl and John of Bolton
ascended softly to the corridor of the
upper story, where, by the dim light of a
small iron cresset that hung from the pointed
ceiling, they saw Andro Macaige, one of
the king's pages, lying muffled in his mantle,
and fast asleep on a bench.

"Confusion!" said the Earl fiercely; "this
reptile must be destroyed, and I have lost
my poniard!"

"Must both the pages die?" asked his
companion, in a hollow tone.

"Thou shalt soon see!" replied the Earl,
who endeavoured, by imitating Ormiston's
careless and ruffian manner, to veil from his
friends, and from himself, the horror that
was gradually paralysing his heart.

They passed the sleeping page unheard,
as the floor was freshly laid with rushes,
and entered the chamber of the young
king—that dimly-lighted chamber of sickness
and suffering; where the innumerable
grotesque designs of some old prebend of
St. Mary, seemed multiplied to a myriad
gibbering faces, as the faint and flickering
radiance of the night lamp played upon them.
The great bed looked like a dark sarcophagus,
canopied by a sable pall; and the king's
long figure, covered by a white satin coverlet,
resembled the effigy of a dead man;
and certainly the pale sharp outline of his
sleeping face, in no way tended to dispel the
dreamy illusion.

Bothwell's fascinated gaze was riveted on
him, but Bolton's turned to the page, who
was half seated and half reclined on the low
bed, and, though fast asleep, lay against the
sick king's pillow, with an arm clasping his
head.

They seemed to have fallen asleep thus.

The thick dark hair of Mariette fell in
disorder about her shoulders; her cheeks
were pale and blanched, and blistered by
weeping; her long and silky eyelashes were
wet and matted with tears; and there was
more of despondency than affection in the air
with which she drooped beside the king.
Her weariness of weeping and sorrow had
evidently given way to slumber.

Rage and jealousy swelled the heart of
Bolton.  He panted rather than breathed;
and though his long-desired hour of
vengeance on them both had come, he too was
paralysed, trembling, and irresolute.  The
Earl gave him a glance of uncertainty; but
Bolton saw only Mariette.  Conscience
whispered "to pause," while there was yet
time; but *the bond* had been signed, the
stake laid, and to waver was to die!

For a moment a blindness fell upon his
eyes, and a sickness on his heart; and the
Earl said to Hepburn in a hollow accent—

"Thy poniard—thy poniard!  Thou hast it!
The king, the king! and I will grasp this boy."

At that moment Mariette started, awoke,
and uttered a shrill cry of terror on perceiving
two armed men with their faces masked.

The king turned uneasily in bed; and, filled
with desperation by the imminence of the
danger, and the necessity for immediate
action, Bothwell approached, the couch.
But either Darnley had been awake (and
watching them for some time,) or instantly
became so, and with all his senses about
him; for like lightning he sprang from
bed—his long illness and attenuation making
his lofty stature appear more colossal; he
snatched a sword, and, clad only in his shirt
and pelisse, rushed upon the intruders.  On
this, a frenzy seemed to take possession of
both conspirators.

Parrying a sword thrust with his mailed
arm, Bothwell threw himself upon the weak
and powerless Darnley, and struck him down
by a blow of the maul he carried.

The wretched king uttered a piercing cry;
another and another succeeded, and Bothwell,
animated by all the momentary fury of
a destroyer, stuffed a handkerchief violently
into his mouth, and at that moment he
became insensible.

Meanwhile, Bolton, trembling with apprehension,
jealousy, horror, and (shall we say
it?) love, clasped Mariette in his arms, and
endeavoured to stifle her cries; but she
uttered shriek upon shriek, till, maddened by fear
and excitement, all the despair of the lover
became changed to hatred and clamorous
alarm.  A spirit of destruction possessed his
soul; his nerves seemed turned to iron, his
eyes to fire.

He became blind—mad!

He grasped her by the neck—(that delicate
and adorable neck, which it had once
been a rapture to kiss, while he toyed with
the dark ringlets that shaded it)—and as his
nervous grasp tightened, her eyeballs
protruded, her arms sank powerless, and her
form became convulsed.

She gave him one terrible glance that showed
she recognised him, and made one desperate
effort to release herself, and to embrace
him.

"O Jesu Maria! spare me, dearest
Hepburn—spare me!  I love thee still—I do—I
do!  Kill me not—destroy me not
thus—thus—with all my sins!
Man—devil—spare me!  God—God!"

She writhed herself from his hands, and
sank upon the floor, where, vibrating between
time and eternity, she lay motionless and still.
Hepburn's senses were gone—yet he could
perceive close by him the convulsed form of
the king, with Bothwell's handkerchief in his
throat.  He was dead.

The terrible deed was done!  They sprang
away, stumbling over the body of Macaige
the page, whom Hay of Tallo had slain in the
corridor; and, descending the stairs almost at
one bound, came panting and breathless to
the side of the cool and deliberate Morton,
who, with his sword drawn, stood near
Ormiston, and superintended the laying of a train
to the powder in the vaults.  Then, by the
light of the red-orbed moon, that streamed
full upon them, did the startled Konrad
perceive that Bothwell and Bolton, whose masks
were awry, appeared stunned and bewildered.
The eyes of the Earl were glazed and haggard;
his hands were clenched, and his brow
knit with horrible thoughts; his companion
was like a spectre; his eyes rolled fearfully,
and his hair seemed stiffened and erect.

Konrad recognised them both, and immediately
became aware that some deed of darkness
had been perpetrated.

"Thou hast done well!" said Ormiston,
surveying them grimly.

"*Well!*" reiterated the Earl, in a sepulchral
voice, as, overcome and exhausted by
the sudden revulsion of his terrible thoughts,
he leaned against the doorway.  "Well! saidst
thou?  Oh, Hob Ormiston! my very
soul seemed at my finger-points when I
grasped him.  My God! what am I saying?
I was intoxicated—delirious!  Cain—Cain!"

"Ah, Mariette!" groaned the repentant
Bolton; "thy dying cry, and the last glare
of thy despairing eyes, will haunt me to my
grave!"

"Cock and pie!" cried Ormiston, with
astonishment and exasperation; "have we
here two bearded men, or two schulebairns
blubbering over their Latinities?  May a
thousand yelling fiends hurl ye both to hell!"
he added savagely.  "Away! disperse—while
I fire the train.  The match—the lunt!
Hither, Paris—Hubert—thou French villain! quick!"

"Separate!" said the Earl of Morton;
"disperse—I go to Dalkeith on the spur.
Away!" and, leaping on the horse that had
borne the powder, this noble Earl, who at
all times was extremely economical of his
own person, galloped away, and disappeared
over the brae to the southward.

Bothwell's olive face glowed for a moment,
as he blew the slow match and fired the
train.  Like a fiery serpent, it glowed along
the ground, flashed through the open doorway,
and down the dark corridor of the house,
till it reached the vaulted chamber below
that of Darnley, and where the powder lay.
Then there was a pause—but for a moment
only—for, lo'——

Broad, red, and lurid, on the shadowy
night, through all the grated windows of the
house of the Kirk-of-Field, there flashed a
volume of light—dazzling and blinding
light—eclipsing the full-orbed moon and all the
sparkling stars—revealing the forms of the
shrinking conspirators, and every surrounding
object.  Full on the massive ramparts of
the city, tufted with weeds and blackened
by the smoke of years, fell that sudden glow,
revealing the strong embrasures that stretched
away into far obscurity, the grim bastel-house
close by, with its deep-mouthed gunport
and peering culverin—on the ivied aisles of
Mary's lonely kirk—on the shattered tower
of the Dominicans—and displaying even for
a gleam the distant woods of Merchiston.
The fields quaked—the walls of the mansion
shook; and then came a roar, as if the
earth was splitting.

The solid masonry rent from copestone to
foundation in a hundred ruddy fissures; the
massive vaults yawned and opened; the
window-gratings were torn asunder like gossamer
webs; and a gigantic column of fire and
smoke, dust and stones, ascended into the
air, as if vomited from the mouth of a
volcano, to descend in ruin and darkness on the
earth; and a vast pile of rubbish was all that
remained of the house of St. Mary-in-the-Fields!

"Ho! ho!" cried Ormiston, with a wild
laugh.  "Like a bolt from a bow, there goeth
Henry Stuart, Lord of Darnley, Duke of
Albany, and King of Scotland!"

For a moment Bothwell felt as if he neither
lived nor breathed; but Ormiston hurried him
away, while all their appalled comrades
dispersed in various directions.  Konrad,
although the whole affair was an
incomprehensible mystery to him, acting by
the natural instinct of self-preservation,
on finding himself deserted by companions
whom he dreaded and abhorred, instead of
returning to the city, struck into a narrow
horseway that led southward, and hurried
with all speed from the scene of this
terrible explosion; for the whole bearing of
those who had so suddenly left him to
his own reflections, informed him that it
would neither be conducive to his safety
or honour to be found in a vicinity so dangerous.

Ignorant of the country, and with no other
object than to leave the city far behind him,
he traversed the rough and winding path, on
one side of which lay a vast lake[\*] and the
ruins of a convent; on the other, fields marked
in the ancient fashion (when draining was
unknown) by high rigs, having between deep
balks or ditches, where the water lay glistening
in the moonlight.  Then he entered upon
the vast common muir of the burgh, that in
the gloom of the night appeared to be bounded
only by the distant hills.

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[\*] The Burgh loch.  *Mag. Absalom*.

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From the effect of long confinement he
soon became faint and exhausted; and, though
he dared not approach any habitation, there
was none within view, for the district seemed
strangely desolate and still.

At the verge of the muirland, near where
a little runnel meandered between banks
overhung by reeds and whin and rushes, there
stood a little chapel, dedicated in the olden
time to St. John the Baptist, having a crucifix
and altar, where the wayfarer might pause to
offer up a prayer.  There a hermit had once
resided; and the charter of foundation
mentions, that he was clothed "in a white
garment, having on his breast a portraiture of
St. John the Baptist, whose hermit he was
called."  The chapel had been partly
demolished to pave the road; and even the stone
that marked the anchorite's grave, had been
torn out for the same purpose.  The windows
were empty, and the grass grew where the
cross had stood on the altar; but there was no
other resting-place, and Konrad entered the
little ruin with caution.

A lamp was burning on the altar, but the
oratory was quite desolate.  The nuns of
St. Katherine of Sienna had kept, in other days,
a light ever burning on the Baptist's shrine,
to which they made yearly pilgrimages; and
one poor old survivor of the scattered sisterhood
still tended the lamp with the labour of
religious love.

Uttering a prayer to Heaven for protection,
overcome by weariness and exhaustion,
Konrad laid by his side the sword given him by
Ormiston, and, wrapped in the other gift of
the same remarkable personage, composed
himself to sleep, leaving to the morrow the
study and development of his future plans.

How little he knew of the deed in which he
had that night been so unwittingly a participator!

Of Darnley's attendants, all were buried
among the ruins save Neilson, who was taken
alive from amid the debris next day, and
William Taylor the page, whose body was
found lying beside the king's.  They had both
been carried through the air, over the lofty
ramparts of the city, into the garden of the
Blackfriars, where they were found in their
night-clothes, within a few yards of each other,
without much external injury, save a wound
made by the maul on the king's forehead.

Such was the generally received account
of this affair, though the recent and able
historian of Scotland asserted, that he had seen
documents which proved that the young king
had been first assassinated, and then carried
into the garden; after which the house was
blown up—a useless and dangerous means of
causing a more general and immediate alarm.





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.. _`THE MIDNIGHT MASS`:

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   CHAPTER II.


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   THE MIDNIGHT MASS.

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..

   |            What, though the men
   |  Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatise
   |  The sister-cause—religion and the law—
   |  With superstitious name!
   |                              *Grahame.*

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"Now, Lord Earl," said Ormiston, as they
paused breathlessly near the Pleasance Porte;
"which way wendest thou?"

"To Holyrood—to Holyrood!" panted
the Earl.  "And thou?"——

"Faith! to my own lodging.  Thou knowest
that I byde me at the Netherbow, in the
turnpike above Bassandyne, that rascally
proclamation printer; and we must enter
the city separately."  The Earl sighed
bitterly.  "Cock and pie! what dost thou
regret?"

"To-night."

"Then, what dost thou fear?"

"To-morrow."

"By Tantony! thou art a very woman!
Remember the bond by which this deed was
done—signed by so many noble lords and
powerful barons under that yew-tree at
Whittinghame.  Sighing again!  What dost thou
dread?"

"*Myself!*" replied the Earl, in whom the
reaction of spirit had caused an agony of
remorse.  "Thee, and the subscribers of that
bond, I may avoid—but myself—never!"

"These scruples come somewhat late, my
lord!" said Ormiston, scornfully.  "Dost
thou doubt the faith of me, or of French
Paris?  Surely thou knowest my zeal!"

"True! but faith and zeal are very
different things."

"'Sblood!  Lord Earl, dost thou doubt
mine honour?" said Ormiston, laying hand
on his sword.  "Though I owe thee suit and
knight's service, nevertheless I am a baron
of coat-armour, whose honour brooks no
handling.  But let us not quarrel, Bothwell!"
he added, on seeing that the spirit of his
ally was completely prostrated for the time.
"Suspicion will never attach to thee; besides,
that Norse knave is abroad, with the
well-known cloak and sword of Darnley,
which Hubert stole me from his chamber.
These, when he is found again, will turn all
the vengeance on him; so let us to bed ere
the alarm be given—to bed, I say, in peace;
for we have the alliance of ten thousand
hearts as brave as ever marched to battle."

"How much more would I prefer the
approbation of my own!"

"Out upon thee!  I will loose all patience.
If thou distrustest Paris, one stroke of a
poniard"——

"Peace, Ormiston! thou art a very bravo,
and would thus make one more sacrifice to
increase our list of crimes."

"Just as a name may be wanted to fill
the roll of Scotland's peers, by thy lamentable
decapitation and profitable forfeiture,"
growled Ormiston.  "I know little of
statecraft, though I have a bold heart and a
strong hand.  Come! be once more a man,
and leave remorse to children.  The crime
that passes unpunished, deserves not to be
regretted."

"Sophistry!" exclaimed the conscience-struck
Earl; "sophistry!  Avenging remorse
will blast my peace for ever.  Now, too
bitterly I begin to feel, that joy for ever ends
where crime begins!"

They separated.

Blind with confusion, and bewildered by
remorse, the Earl reeled like a drunken man,
as he hurried down by the back street of the
Canongate towards the palace, impatient, and
dreading to be missed from his apartments,
when the alarm should be given.

A burning thirst oppressed him; his tongue
felt as if scorched, and his lips were dry and
baked.  Frightful ideas pressed in crowds
through his mind; he often paused and pressed
his hands upon his temples; they were like
burning coals, and throbbed beneath his
trembling fingers.  He looked back mentally to
the eminence from which he had fallen, and
shuddered at the depth and rapidity of his
descent.  In the storm of remorse and
unavailing regret that agitated his soul, the
beauty of Mary, and the dreams of ambition
it had inspired, were alike forgotten.

He paused at times, and listened; he knew
not why.  The night was very still, and there
came no sound on the passing wind.  A pulse
was beating in his head.  How loud and
palpable it was!

There was ever before him the last unearthly
glare of those despairing eyes.  It was
ever in his ears, that expiring wail, sinking
into a convulsive sob—ever—ever, turn
where he would; if he walked fast—to leave his
burning thoughts behind him; if he stood
still—that cry and the deathlike visage were
ever before him.

"O! to be as I have been—as I was but one
long hour ago!" he exclaimed, shaking his
clenched hands above his head.  "O! for the
waves of Lethe to wash the past for ever from
my memory!  Satan—prince of hell—hear
me!  Hear me, who dares not now to address
his God!"

His frightful thirst still continued, until its
agony became insupportable; and he looked
around to find wherewith to quench it.  On
the side of St. John's hill, a green and
solitary knoll that rose some sixty feet in height
on the wayside, a light attracted his attention;
and, supposing that it shone from a
lonely cottage or small change-house, he
approached to procure a draught of any thing
that could be had for money—any liquid, from
water to *lachryma Christi*, to quench the
maddening thirst that seemed to consume him.

The light shone from an aperture in the
door of a half-ruined barn.  Bothwell grasped
his sword, and adjusted his mask; but ere
he knocked, a voice within, deep and musically
solemn, arrested him by saying—

"Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ
semper Virgini, beato Michaeli archangelo,
beato Joanni Baptistæ, Sanctis Apostolis
Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis et tibi,
Pater, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo
et operâ.  Meâ culpâ! meâ culpâ! meâ
maximâ culpâ!"

Astonished by these words, which form
part of the office of mass, and struck to the
very soul in hearing them at such a time,
when their application was so painfully
direct, he paused a moment.  The door was
opened by a man in complete armour; but
the Earl entered immediately, to behold—what
appalled and bewildered him still more.

The rude barn had been hurriedly adapted
to the purposes of a chapel.  A rough table,
representing the altar, occupied one end;
six candles burned thereon, three on each
side of a plain wooden crucifix, which stood
before an old representation of the
crucifixion, that whilome had adorned some more
consecrated fane.

Bowing down before this rude altar, with
eyes full of fervour, and piety, and glory,
was the aged priest, who, not a hundred yards
from the same spot, had, but a few hours
before, craved and received alms from the hands
of the regicide noble; but now his aspect
was very different, for he wore the rich
vestments of other days, when he was one of
St. Giles' sixteen prebendaries; and he held aloft
a round silver chalice, which he had saved
from the plunder of the church by the bailies
of Edinburgh.  The bell was ringing, and he
was in the act of celebrating mass, before
an anxious and fearful, but devout few, who,
despite the terrible laws passed against them
by the men of the new *regime*, met thus in
secret to worship God after the fashion of
their fathers, preferring the mystical forms
and ceremonies which had been handed
down to them by the priests of other years,
to a new hierarchy, upheld by the swords
of the unlettered peers and homicidal barons
of 1560.  The women, fearful and pale, were
muffled in their hoods and plaids; the men
were all well armed, and not a few grasped
their poniards, and keenly scrutinized the
Earl on his entrance.

All the long-forgotten piety of his
childhood—all the memory of those days of
innocence, when his pious mother, Agnes of
Sinclair, taught him first to raise his little
hands in prayer in Blantyre's stately Priory—gushed
back upon his heart.  Making a sign
of the cross, he knelt down among the people;
and, overcome by the influence of old
associations, by the sudden vision of an altar
and the mass, and by the terrible knowledge
of what he was now in the sight of that
Being whom he trembled to address, he
burst into an agony of prayer.

Again and again the mass-bell rang, and
lower bent every head before that humble
altar, on which all present deemed (for such
is the force of faith) that the invoked Spirit
of God was descending, and the Destroyer
trembled in his inmost soul.  He covered
his head with his mantle, and bent all his
thoughts on Heaven, in prayers for mercy
and forgiveness.

A shower of tears came to his aid, and his
thirst passed away; but oh! how deep were
those mental agonies, of which he dared to
inform no one!

It was long since he had wept, and he could
not recall the time; but his tears were salt and
bitter.  They relieved him; after a few minutes
he became more composed; and the stern
necessity of returning instantly to Holyrood
pressed vividly upon him; but he dreaded to
attract attention or suspicion of treachery, by
moving away.  Among those present, he recognised
many citizens who outwardly had conformed
to the new religion; but thus, in secret,
clung to the old.  Near him knelt young
Sir Arthur Erskine, captain of the queen's
archers, in his glittering doublet of cloth-of-gold;
and a beautiful girl of eighteen, whose
dark brown hair was but half-concealed by
her piquant hood (*à la Mary*), was kneeling
by his side, and reading from the same missal.
Their heads were bent together, and their
hair mingled, as the young girl's shoulder
almost rested on the captain's breast.

Bothwell saw that they were lovers; for
nothing could surpass the sweetness and
confidence of the girl's smile when she gazed on
Sir Arthur's face; for then the impulses of
love and religion together, lit up her eyes
with a rapture that made her seem something
divine.

The Earl thought of Mary—of the desperate
part he had yet to play; of all he had
dared and done, and had yet to dare and do;
the paroxysm passed, and he felt his heart
nerved with renewed courage.

Love revived—remorse was forgotten; and,
the moment mass was over, he stole
hurried to Holyrood—gained his apartments
unseen, swallowed a horn of brandy to drown
all recollection, and flung himself on his bed,
to await the coming discovery and the coming day.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GUILT LEVELS ALL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III.


.. class:: center medium bold

   GUILT LEVELS ALL.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  He is my lord!—my husband!  Death! twas death!—
   |  Death married us together!  Here I will dig
   |  A bridal bed, and we'll lie there for ever!
   |  I will not go!  Ha! you may pluck my heart out,
   |  But I will never go.  Help! help!  Hemeya!
   |  They drag me to Pescara's cursed bed.
   |                                      *Sheils' Apostate.*

.. vspace:: 2

A stupor, not a slumber, sank upon
him; it weighed down his eyelids, it confused
his faculties, and oppressed his heart; but
even that state of half unconsciousness was
one of bliss, compared to the mental torture
he had endured.

The tolling of the great alarm bell of the
city, which usually summoned the craftsmen
to arms, and the gathering hum of startled
multitudes, murmuring like the waves of a
distant ocean, as the citizens were roused by
those who kept watch and ward, awoke Earl
Bothwell.  He listened intently.  Loudly
and clearly the great bell rang on the wind,
above the hum of the people pouring downwards
like a sea, to chafe against the palace
gates.  Then came distant voices, crying—

"Armour!—armour!—fie!—treason!"

Steps came hastily along the resounding
corridor; there was a sharp knocking at the
door of his chamber, and, without waiting
for the usual ceremony of being introduced
by a page, Master George Halkett, the Earl
of Huntly, and Hepburn of Bolton, entered.
The latter was now in complete armour, that
the visor might conceal the terrible
expression of his altered face.

"How now, Master Halkett!" asked the
Earl with affected surprise.  "Whence this
intrusion?  What is the matter?"

"Matter enough, I trow!" replied the
other; "the king's house has been blown
up, and his majesty slain."

"Jesu!" cried the Earl, leaping from his
bed, glad to find in action a refuge from his
own solitary thoughts.  "Fie! treason!
Surely thou ravest!  Speak, Bolton!"

Bolton replied in a voice so inarticulate
that it was lost in the hollow of his helmet;
for his mind seemed a chaos of despair and
stupefaction.  Since that terrible hour he
had vainly been endeavouring to arrange
his thoughts, and act like a sane man.

"'Tis the verity, my lord!" continued
Halkett.  "Hark! how the roar increaseth
in the town."

"And who, say they, hath done this dark deed?"

"All men accuse the Earls of Morton and
Moray," replied Huntly, who had been
industriously spreading the rumour, which
their known hostility to Darnley made
common at the time.

"Fie! treason!" cried Bothwell, bustling
about.  "Armour!—a Bothwell!  Harkee,
French Paris—Calder, ho! my pyne doublet
and sword!"

"Nay! thou hadst better take armour,"
said Bolton.

"Right! there lieth a Milan suit in yonder
cabinet.  Sirs, my pages are gone Heaven
knows where—I crave service—my points,
I pray you truss them."

Huntly and Bolton brought the mail from
the carved cabinet, and hastily accoutred the
Earl.  It was a Milan suit, a very beautiful
one of the late King James's fashion, washed
with silver; the corselet was globular, having
puckered lamboys of steel in lieu of tassettes,
and a bourgoinette, with a metoniere acting
as a gorget.  He could have concealed his
face perfectly by this peculiar appendage to
the headpiece; but his natural boldness and
daring now rendered such a measure unnecessary.
The moment the accoutring was
over, he was left alone; for Master Halkett
hurried away from chamber to chamber,
being one of those who love to be the first
bearers of startling tidings; Huntly departed
to arm his retinue for any emergency, and
Bolton to array the archer guard, and bear
back the armed populace, who were clamouring
at the palace gates.

Aware how much his future fate depended
on the issue of his first interview with Mary,
the Earl could bear suspense no longer; and
aware that she would now be roused,
notwithstanding the untimely hour, he resolved
to seek her apartments; the daylight, his
sword and armour, had restored his confidence.

Coldly and palely the February dawn was
brightening: though the stillness of midnight
lay yet upon the dewy hills, there was a din
within the city that might "awake the
dead."  There was a melancholy solemnity about the
dull grey dawn, and the gloomy façade of
the old monastic edifice, that oppressed the
Earl's heart as he crossed its empty court,
and heard the jingle of his armour echoed in
the dark arcades, where pages and servitors
were hurrying to and fro; while quick steps
and sharp voices rang in the long corridors
and stone ambulatories of the old palace.  As
he approached James V.'s tower, where the
queen occupied those apartments that are now
daily exhibited to the curious, a man in a
complete suit of black armour jostled him.

"Ormiston!" he exclaimed.

"Well met, Lord Earl—good-morrow!"
replied his evil mentor, in a whisper.  "The
whole city is agog now, and every voice is
raised against the Lord Moray—a lucky
infatuation for us.  The blue banner hath been
displayed by the convener of the corporations,
whose thirty-three pennons are all unfurled;
so the rascally craftsmen are fast mustering
in their helmets for trouble and tulzie; while
Craigmillar and the Lord Lindesay, with their
lances, are coming in on the spur.—But whither
goest thou?"

"To the queen."

"Fool! fool! is this a time?"

"There was a time," replied the Earl,
bitterly, "when such a varlet as thou dared not
have spoken thus to Bothwell."

"True," replied the other, with a sardonic
grin; "but *guilt*, like misfortune, levels all
men.  Tarry—the queen"——

"No, no—I must see her!  Not hell itself
shall keep me from her!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Ormiston, as the Earl
ascended the staircase; "odsbody! why, a
stone wall or a stout cord would keep a
stronger lover than thee well enow."

Bothwell felt now all the humility and
agony of being in the power of this
unscrupulous ruffian, and he sighed bitterly
more than once as he advanced towards the
royal apartments.

"Now," thought he, "must I doubly dye
my soul in guilt—the guilt of black
hypocrisy.  Oh, to be what I have been!  How
dark are the clouds—how many the vague
alarms—that involve the horizon of my fate!
Last night—and the recollection of that
irreparable deed—could I blot them from
memory, happiness might yet be mine."

A crowd of yeomanry of the guard, in their
scarlet gaberdines, with long poniards and
partisans; archers in green, with bent bows
and bristling arrows; pages in glittering
dresses, and gentlemen in waiting, all
variously armed, made way at the entrance of
the queen's apartments, near the door marked
with Rizzio's blood.  After a brief preliminary
it was opened—the heavy Gobeline tapestry
was raised, and the earl found himself
in the presence of—Mary.

When he beheld her, every scruple and
regret, every remnant of remorse again
evaporated, and he felt that he had done nothing
that he would not repeat.

She was plainly and hurriedly attired in
a sacque of blue Florence silk, tied with a
tassel round her waist.  The absence of her
high ruff revealed more than usual of her
beautifully delicate neck and swelling bosom;
while the want of her long peaked stays and
stiffened skirts, displayed all the grace and
contour of her graceful form.  Save the
rings that flashed on her fingers, she was
without jewels; and in a profusion, such as
the Earl had never seen before—her bright
and luxuriant auburn hair fell unbound upon
her shoulders, covered only by a square of
white lace, a long and sweeping veil, that
(as old Juvenal says), "like a tissue of woven
air," floated around her.  Her snow-white
feet were without stockings, for she had just
sprung from bed, and the short slippers of
blue velvet shewed her delicately veined
insteps and taper ankles in all their naked
beauty.

Her brow and rounded cheeks were pale
as death; but, though suffused with tears,
her eyes were full of fire, and there was more
perhaps of anger than of grief in the quivering
of her short upper lip.  Aware of her
dishabille, and that the Countess of Argyle,
and other ladies of the court, who were all
in their night-dresses, had fled at the Earl's
approach, as so many doves would have done
from a vulture, leaving her almost alone with
him—the queen cast down her long dark
lashes for a moment, and then bent her keen
gaze full upon Bothwell, whose open helmet
revealed the pallor of his usually careless,
jovial, and nutbrown face.

   |  "Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,
   |    Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew;
   |  'Tis as the snake late coil'd, who pours his length,
   |  And hurls at once his venom and his strength."
   |

Powerful and daring as he was, the Earl
quailed beneath her eye; but immediately
recovering his admirable air of self-possession,
he began in the most courteous manner
to deplore the dreadful event, "which," says
the Knight of Halhill, "he termed the strangest
catastrophe that ever was heard of; for
thunder had come out of the sky, and burnt
the house of the king, whose body was found
lying dead at a little distance from the ruins
under a tree."

"Thunder, sayest thou?" reiterated the
Queen.  "Sweet mother Mary—assist me!
Some of the archers of our guard, Lord
Earl, men whose bows were drawn at Pinkiecleugh
and Ancrumford, aver that the ruins
bear marks of Friar Bacon's art rather than
electricity.  Thunder!"——

"What does your majesty mean?"

"Lord Earl," replied Mary, in a low
emphatic tone; "this—this is—*thy* doing—thine!"

"Madam—madam"—urged the Earl, but
his tongue refused its office, and clove to the
roof of his mouth.

"Hah, my Lord!" continued the Queen;
"is it the astonishment of innocence, or the
shame of guilt, that paralyses thy too ready
tongue at this terrible moment?  I see thou
art guilty," she added, in a sepulchral voice;
"and now thou comest before me covered
with the blood of my husband."

"I swear to your majesty"——

"Swear not!  Else whence do your hands
tremble?  Why is your face thus pale—yea,
pale as Ruthven's seemed on that other fatal
night—a year ago in this chamber?"

Gathering courage from desperation, the
kneeling noble, hoping to be interrupted in
his vow, replied—

"I swear to you, gracious madam, by
heaven and all that is in it—by the earth
and all that is on it—by the souls of my
Catholic ancestors—by the bones of my
father—by my own salvation and honour, which
I prize more than life—by your love, your
esteem, to win which I would gladly peril
more than a thousand lives"——

"Enough!" replied the Queen, interrupting
the terrible falsehood, and covering her
face with her hands; "pardon my grief and
horror—I believe thee.  There—kiss my hand
in token of trust."

Bothwell's heart was touched by her innocent
confidence; he became giddy, and almost
reeled.

"O Mary! my wish, my hope, my dream!
Would that I were pure enough to be worthy
of thee!" said the Earl, in a touching voice;
for a moment his heart was crushed by sorrow
and remorse, as he pressed to his lip the
soft, small hand of the queen.  But she did
not hear these pathetic exclamations, which
conveyed all the Earl's secret in their tone;
for at that moment a group that crossed the
palace yard riveted all her faculties.

Sir Arthur Erskine and Hepburn of Bolton,
both sheathed in armour, with a band of
their archers, appeared escorting a few
yeomen of the guard, who bore on their crossed
partisans a body muffled in a soldier's mantle,
and followed by a crowd of gentlemen, grooms,
pages, and armed craftsmen.

She shuddered.  The weak points of Darnley's
character, his folly, his foppery, his
profligacy, his neglect of herself, and the wanton
murder of her secretary, all vanished from
her memory for the time, and she saw him
only as she had seen him first in the hall of
Wemyss—handsome, tall, and graceful—in
all the bloom of youth, nobility, and
comeliness, with his dark eye sparkling and his
feathers waving, and all the blind devotion
which at two-and-twenty had become a part
of her very being, and which had absorbed
young Henry Stuart into her very soul,
came back vividly and painfully upon her mind.

She tottered to a seat.

Her eyes assumed a tearless and stony
aspect—a cloud of horror descended upon
her snowy brow; and the Earl felt bitterly
as he gazed on her, that his presence, and
the love he had so daringly expressed, were
alike unheeded or forgotten.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PREBEND OF ST. GILES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PREBEND OF ST. GILES.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  A "God be with thee," shall be all thy mass;
   |  Thou never lovedst those dry and droning priests.
   |  Thou'lt rot most cool and quiet in my garden;
   |  Your gay and gilded vault would be costly.
   |                                    *Fazio, a Tragedy.*

.. vspace:: 2

After an uneasy slumber, in the place
where we left him a few pages back, Konrad
was awakened by a rough grasp being laid
on his shoulder, and a voice crying—

"Harl him forth, till we find what manner
of carle he is!" and, ere he was thoroughly
roused, several strong hands dragged him to
the door of that solitary little chapel, where
he found himself in the presence of two
knights on horseback, and a band of mailed
men-at-arms, bearing hackbuts and partisans,
and carrying a banner bearing a blue
shield charged with the heart and mullets
of Morton.

It was a beautiful spring morning.  The
sun was rising above the eastern hills, and
gilding the peaks of the Pentlands, that
towered above the wreaths of gauzy mist
rolling round their heath-clad bases.

"Whence comest thou, fellow?" asked the
first knight, who was no other than our
ferocious acquaintance, Lord Lindesay of the
Byres, who, with his men-at-arms, had been
scouring the adjacent country for some one
upon whom to execute his vengeance.

"Some accomplice and abettor of the Lord
Moray!" observed the other; "art and part
at least—for all the city saith that he
committed the deed; at least, there are those who
find their interest in circulating the report
most industriously."

"Tush! the Lord Moray abideth at his
tower of Donibristle; and I will maintain
body to body against any man, that he lieth
foully in his throat who accuseth James
Stuart of being concerned in the slaughter
of last night."

"But, dustifute—knave—speak! whence
comest thou?"

"By what right dost thou ask?" said
Konrad, starting at the voice of the questioner,
who had the policy to keep his visor
down, and affected not to recognise his
acquaintance of the hostellary.

"What right? false loon! the right of my
rank.  I am James Earl of Morton; and now
that I look on thee, thou tattered villain—by
St. Paul!  I see the king's cloak on thy
shoulders.  We all know the Lord Darnley's
scarlet mantle, sirs, with its gold embroidery;
and doth its splendour not contrast curiously
with this foreigner's rags and tatters?"

"By cock and pie!" said Ormiston under
his helmet, as he pushed through the crowd
at this juncture, "I would swear to it as
I would to my own nose, or to the king's
toledo sword, which I now see by the side
of this double thief and traitor!  We all
know him, sirs!  The unco'—the foreigner—who
with John of Park attempted to assassinate
my Lord of Bothwell in Hermitage
glen.  Last night he escaped from the tower
of Holyrood."

"Close up, my merry men all!" said Morton;
"forward, pikemen—bend your hackbuts;
for we have meshed one of the knaves
at last."

There was a terrible frown gathering on
the brow of Lindesay.  This ferocious peer,
and uncompromising foe of the ancient
church, was distinguished by the sternness
and inflexibility of his character, even in
that iron age; and the fire of his keen grey
eye increased the expression of his hard
Scottish, yet noble features, and thick grizzled
beard, which consorted so well with the
antique fashion of his plain steel armour, with
its grotesque and gigantic knee and elbow
joints projecting like iron fans, with
pauldrons on the shoulders.  His salade was of
the preceding century, and was surmounted
by his crest, a silver ostrich bearing in its
beak a key—on his colours, a roll azure and
argent.  Unsheathing his long shoulder-sword,
he said with stern solemnity—

"Now, blessed be God! that hath given us
this great and good fortune to-day.  These
ruins, where that mother of blasphemy and
abomination—who hath made whole nations
drunk with the cup of her iniquities—once
practised her idolatries, seem to have rare
tenants this morning.  First, amid the walls
of Leonard's chapel, we found that worshipper
of graven images—Tarbet, the mass-priest,
with all his missals and mummery in right
order for the pillory at the Tron; and here, in
the oratory of the Baptist, we have started
our other game—one of the regicides, whose
body shall be torn piecemeal, even as Graeme
and Athol were torn of old; yea,
villain! embowelled and dismembered shalt thou be,
while the life yet flickers in thy bleeding
heart; but, first, thou shalt be half-hanged
from yonder tree.  Quick! a knotted cord,
some of ye!"

"Nay, my good Lord of Lindesay," interposed
Morton, "I would reserve him for the
queen's council, whose examination may
bring to light much of whilk we are still in
ignorance."

"Now, by my father's bones!" began fierce
Lindesay, clenching his gauntleted hand
with sudden passion, "must I remind thee,
who wert High Chancellor of Scotland, and,
as such, chief in all matters of justice—the
king's most intimate councillor, and holder
of that seal, without the touch of which not
a statute of the estates can pass forth to the
people—must I remind thee of that ancient
Scottish law, by which our forefathers decreed,
if a murderer be taken REDHAND, he should
incontinently be executed within three days
after commission of the deed; and here, within
a mile of the Kirk-of-Field, we find a known
comrade of Park, the border outlaw, with the
sword and mantle of our murdered king"—

"Yea," interrupted a voice from the band,
"a cloak which I saw in the king's chamber
but yesternight."

"What other proof lack we?" said Lindesay.

"Away with him!" cried several voices,
and Ormiston's among them; "for he hath
assuredly murdered the king!"

To all these fiercely-uttered accusations,
Konrad had not a word to reply in extenuation
or defence; and his astonishment and
confusion were easily mistaken for guilt and
fear.

"As thou pleasest, Lindesay," said Morton
coldly, for he was unused to find his advice
neglected.  "To me it mattereth not,
whether he be hanged now or a year hence.  I
have but one thing more to urge.  Let us
confront him with the mass priest Tarbet,
and I warrant that, by blow of boot and
wrench of rack, we may make some notable
discoveries.  We know not whom they may,
in their agony, accuse as accessories if we give
them a hint;" and indeed the Earl might have
added, that he did not care, while he was not
accused himself.

But his own time was measured.

Lindesay seemed struck by this advice (as
there was an estate bordering his own which
he had long coveted), and so ordering the
prisoner to be secured by cords, and gagged,
by having a branch cut from a hawthorn bush
tied across his mouth so tightly that the
blood oozed from his torn lips.  He was then
bound to the tail of a horse, and thus
ignominiously conducted back to the excited city,
escorted by Morton's band of hackbuttiers.

Had an English army, flushed with victory,
been crossing the Esk, a greater degree of
excitement could not have reigned in the
Scottish capital than its streets exhibited on this
morning, the 11th February, 1567.

The crafts were all in arms, and the
spacious Lawnmarket was swarming with men
in armour, bearing pikes, hackbuts, and
jedwood axes, two-handed swords, and partisans;
while the pennons of the various corporations—the
cheveron and triple towers of the sturdy
Masons—the shield, ermine, and triple crowns
of the Skinners—the gigantic shears of the
Tailors—and so forth, were all waving in the
morning wind.  Splendidly accoutred, a
strong band of men-at-arms stood in close
array near the deep arch of Peebles Wynd,
around the residence of the provost, Sir
Simeon Preston of Craigmillar, whose great
banner, bearing a *scudo pendente*, the
cognisance peculiar to this illustrious baron, was
borne by his knightly kinsman, Congalton of
that Ilk.

A half-mad preacher, in a short Geneva
cloak and long bands, and wearing a
long-eared velvet cap under his bonnet, had
ensconced himself in a turret of the city cross,
from whence, with violent gestures, in a shrill
intonation of voice, he was holding forth to
a scowling rabble of craftsmen, and women
in Gueldrian coifs and Galloway kirtles, who
applauded his discourse, which he was beating
down, with Knox-like emphasis, and striking
his clenched hand on the cope of the turret
with such fury, that he had frequently to
pause, make a wry face, and blow upon it.
Then, with increased wrath, he thundered
his anathemas against the "shavelings of
Rome, the priests of antichrist—the relics of
their saints—their corrupted flesh—their rags
and rotten bones—their gilded shrines and
mumming pilgrimages!"  Sternly he spoke,
and wildly, too, with all the enthusiasm of a
convert, and the rancour of an apostate, for
he was both.

A few yards further down the sunlit street,
stood one of those very shavelings against
whom he was pouring forth the vials and the
vehemence of his wrath.  At the Tron beam
stood the aged Tarbet on a platform, a few feet
above the pavement.  By a cord that encircled
his neck, his head was tied close to the wooden
column supporting the tron, or great steel-yard
where the merchants weighed their
wares; and to that his ear was fixed by a
long iron nail, from which the blood was
trickling.  Faint and exhausted, the old man
clung with feeble hands to the pillar to avoid
strangulation, as his knees were refusing their
office.  He was still in his vestments, with the
cross embroidered on his stole; a rosary
encircled his neck, and, to excite the mockery
of the mob, a missal, a chalice, and censer were
tied to it; and while enduring the greatest
indignities to which the inborn cowardice,
cruelty, and malevolence of the vulgar, can
subject the unfortunate and the fallen,
inspired by the memory of the greater martyr
who had suffered for him, he blessed them
repeatedly in return.  The boys were
yelling "Green Sleeves"—"John, cum kiss me
now," and other songs, converted from
Catholic hymns into profane ribaldry; ever and
anon, as Knox tells us, serving him with "his
Easter eggs," meaning every available
missile, and under the shower that poured upon
him the old man was sinking fast.  At last
a stone struck his forehead, the blood burst
over his wrinkled face, and drenched his
silver hair.  He tottered, sank, and hung
strangling by the neck; and then, but not
till then, he was released and borne away to
the nearest barrier, where he was again
expelled the city, with the warning, that to say
mass once more would involve the penalty
of instant death.

The tide was now completely turned
against the ancient clergy, and the sternest
means were used by the new against them.
Knox had declared that the toleration of a
single mass was more dangerous to Scotland
than 10,000 armed soldiers; and in the
spirit of this precept, so long after the
Reformation as 1615, a poor Jesuit was dragged
from his altar in an obscure cellar, and
hanged by King James's authority in the
streets of Glasgow.

It was while the minds of the people were
in the state we have described—excited by
the terrible death of the king, inspired by
the discourse of the firebrand on the cross,
and only half glutted by the persecution of
the poor old prebend of St. Giles, that,
guarded by Morton's and Lindesay's band,
Konrad of Saltzberg was led up Merlin's
Wynd, and into the High Street, where the
masses of men in a state of fury and ferment,
swayed to and fro from side to side of that
magnificent thoroughfare, like the waves of
an angry sea.  The moment he appeared,
there was given a yell that rent the air; and
a rush was made from all quarters towards
the new victim, of whose participation in the
deed at the Kirk-of-Field, a terrible account
was instantly circulated.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PAPISTS' PILLAR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PAPISTS' PILLAR.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |            Oh!  I will hail
   |  My hour when it approaches; life has been
   |  A source of sorrow, and it matters not
   |  How soon I quit the scene, for I have roved
   |  A friendless outcast in the thorny world,
   |  Upon it, but not of it; and my death
   |  Is but escape from bondage.
   |                      *The Spell of St. Wilten.*

.. vspace:: 2

We have likened the dense mass that filled
the High Street to a sea, and so like the waves
of a sea, when agitated by a stormy wind,
was that mass urged in one direction
towards this new victim, whom they demanded
of both Morton and Lindesay to be given up
to their summary vengeance.  The windows
were crowded to excess; and at the great
square casement of his mansion, overlooking
the Netherbow, was seen the grave and
serious face of Knox the Reformer, with his
portentous beard and Geneva cap, and
beside him Master George Buchanan, with
his stern visage and towering brow.  They
were observing the fray below, and making
their caustic remarks on "yat terrible fact
of yesternicht."

A deadly struggle seemed about to ensue;
faces became flushed with passion, and eyes
lit with energy—swords were drawn, bows
bent, and matches blown.

"Truncheon me those knaves!" cried Lord
Lindesay, as the people pressed upon his band
and impeded their march; "use the bolls of
your hackbutts!  Back with these rascally
burghers—how! dare they assail my banner
in open day?"

"They are ripe for a fray, my lord," said
Morton; "and in sooth, 'tis matter for
consideration, whether by resistance we should
shed the blood of our own countrymen, to
lengthen by an hour the existence of a foreign
knave, who must hang at all events."

"Right, Lord Earl—but to die thus! unhouselled
and unprayed for—by the hands
of a furious mob—to be torn piecemeal—to
be hunted like an otter"——

Lindesay could not conclude, for the
confusion increased every moment, and the dense
and well-armed multitude demanded
incessantly, and with stentorian clamour, that the
regicide should be given up to their fury.
Lindesay, who now became animated by a
sentiment of compassion, on beholding one
man in a situation so terrible, vainly endeavoured
by the influence of his rank, his known
determination and aspect, his stentorian voice
and gigantic sword, to overawe the crowd,
and convey his captive to King David's tower;
but every where the craftsmen barred his way
with levelled pikes and clubbed hackbutts.
As yet, not a shot had been exchanged, or a
blow struck; for the vassals who guarded
Konrad, being quite indifferent as to the
issue, behaved with admirable coolness.  On
seeing this, the populace demanded the
prisoner more loudly than ever, and became
more energetic and exasperated by the delay.

Gagged and bound, the unhappy Konrad
found the impossibility alike of demanding
either protection from his guards or mercy
from their assailants—to fight or to escape;
and a cold perspiration burst over him as
the soldiers swayed to and fro, when the
people pressed upon their iron ranks.

Ten thousand scowling faces were bent
upon him, and twice that number of hands
were raised against him.  His heart never
sank; but the mild precepts of Father Tarbet
were forgotten, and, with an intensity amounting
to agony, he longed to be free and armed,
to indulge that momentary and tiger-like
hatred of all mankind that swelled up within
him, that he might sell his life as dearly as
possible, and strike for vengeance ere he died!
In that terrible moment of confusion and
dread he never thought of prayer; but the
image of Anna rose to his memory, and while
he thanked Heaven that now she was probably
safe at home in their native Norway,
the recollection that he was desolate, and she
was lost to him for ever, nerved him the more
to encounter his terrible fate.

Lord Lindesay threatened them with summary
vengeance from himself, and ultimately
from the queen and lord provost; but he
might as well have addressed the wind, for,
by their nightly watches and constant
brawling, the burghers were better trained to
arms than were the vassals of the landowners,
and his threats were unheeded.

"Come on, my bold callants!" cried a fat
citizen in a vast globular corselet, a morion,
and plate sleeves with gloves of steel, brandishing
a ponderous jedwood axe with his right
hand, while opposing with his left arm a light
Scottish target to the levelled spears of
Lindesay's band.  "Come on, with a warrion!  Are
sae mony bearded men to be kept at play like
bairns by these ox-goads o' the Byres?"

"Weel spoken, Adam!—Armour! armour!—Strike
for the gude toun!" cried a thousand
voices to the host of the *Red Lion*, who was
looming about like a vast hogshead sheathed
in iron; and thus encouraged, by sheer weight
of body he burst through the ranks of Lindesay's
vassalage, striking up their levelled
lances.  The mob followed in his wake, and the
guards were immediately scattered, disarmed,
and their prisoner dragged from his shelter.

Torn and whirled from hand to hand,
Konrad was soon released from all his bonds;
but still escape was impossible.  Many a bow
was drawn, and many a blade uplifted against
him; but the very presence and blind fury
of the people saved him; and madly he was
hurled from man to man, till, alike bereft of
sense of sight and sound, he sank breathless
beneath their feet.

"Now, by the might of Heaven!" said old
Lord Lindesay, "'tis a foul shame on us, Earl
of Morton, to sit calmly here in our saddles,
and see a Christian man used thus.  Fie!—down
with the traitors!" and he spurred his
horse upon the people, only to be repelled by
a steady stand of pikes.

Konrad was loaded with mud and filth;
and every new assailant was more fierce than
the last.  Howls, yells, and execrations filled
the air, and he was bandied about like a
football, till one well-aimed blow from the boll
of a hackbutt struck him down, and, covered
with mud and bruises, and bathed in blood,
he lay upon the pavement motionless, and to
all appearance dead.

They deemed him so, and, consequently,
a momentary cessation of their cruelty
ensued, till a voice cried—

"Fie! away wi' him to the Papists' pillar!
Gar douk him in the loch!  Harl him awa'!
Gar douk! gar douk and droun!"

A shout of assent greeted this new proposition.
The inanimate form of Konrad was
raised on the shoulders of a few sturdy fellows,
who bore him along the street with as much
speed as its crowded state would permit; and
closing, like a parted sea, the mob collapsed
behind, and followed in their train.  They
bore him up the Lawnmarket, then encumbered
by innumerable sacks of grain and
wooden girnels, farm horses, and rudely
constructed carts; for at that time the meal,
and flesh, and butter markets, were held there.
Turning down Blyth's close, under the lofty
windows of the palace of Mary of Lorraine, they
hurried to the bank of that steep lake which
formed the city's northern barrier, and the
vast concourse followed; the arch of the
narrow alley receiving them all, like a small
bridge admitting a mighty river.

The rough and shelving bank descended
abruptly from the ends of the lofty closes,
which (when viewed from the east or west):
resembled a line of narrow Scottish towers
overhanging the margin of the water, which
was reedy, partly stagnant, and so much
swollen by the melted snows of the past
winter, that, on the northern side, it reached
an ancient quarry from which the Trinity
Church was built, and on the southern to
the Twin-tree, an old double-trunked thorn
that overhung the loch, and had for centuries
been famous as a trysting-place for lovers, as
it was supposed to exercise a supernatural
influence on the pair who sat between its
gnarled stems.

"Fie! gar douk!" cried the vast concourse
that debouched from all the adjoining wynds
and closes along the sloping bank.  "To the
pillar—to the pillar!  Truss him wi' a tow to
the Papists' pillar, and leave him there to
rot or row;" and this new proposal was
received with renewed applause.

The Papists' pillar was a strong oak stake
fixed in that part of the loch where the water
was about five feet deep.  It had been placed
there by the wise bailies of Edinburgh at
this time, when certain ablutions were much
in vogue, and considered so necessary for
witches, sorcerers, scolding wives, and
"obstinate papists;" for in every part of Europe
ducking was the favourite penance for offences,
against morality; and nothing afforded such
supreme delight and intense gratification to
the worthy denizens of the Lawnmarket, and
their kindly dames, as the sousing of an
unfortunate witch, a "flyting wife" of the
Calton, or a hapless Catholic, in the deep and
execrable puddle that was named the North
Loch—and so frequently were exhibitions of
the latter made, that the stake was
unanimously dubbed *the Papists' Pillar*.

To this the inanimate Konrad was fastened
by a strong cord, encircling his neck and
waist; and there he was left to perish,
wounded, bleeding, and insensible—covered
with bruises, and merged nearly to the neck
in a liquid rendered fetid and horrible by all
the slime and debris of the populous city that
towered above it, being poured down hourly
from its narrow streets, to increase the mass
of corruption that grew and festered in its
stagnant depths.

On accomplishing this, the mob retired; for
the conveyance of the bodies of the murdered
king and his attendants through the streets,
excited all the morbid sympathy of the
vulgar: the entire populace now rushed towards
the other end of the city, and all became still
as death where Konrad lay.

The coolness of the sudden immersion
partially revived him, and the bleeding of the
wound on his head ceased; but his senses
were confused—his perception indistinct—and
he hung against the column in a state
bordering on insensibility.

There was a rushing sound in his ears; for
still the roar of that vast multitude rang in
them: there was a sense of pain and languor
pervading his whole frame; a faint light shone
before his half-closed eyes, and he was
conscious of nothing more.

The noon passed away; evening came, and
cold and pale the watery sun sank behind the
summits of Corstorphine, involved in yellow
haze.  The clouds gathered in inky masses
to the westward; a few large drops of rain
plashed on the dark surface of the glassy
water; there was a low wind rushing among
the uplands; but Konrad neither saw nor heard
these precursors of a coming storm.

And there he lay—helpless and dying!

A great and ravenous gled wheeled in circles
round him.  These circles diminished by
degrees, until it had courage at last to alight
on the top of the column, where it screamed
and flapped its wings, while eyeing him with
eager and wolfish impatience.  So passed the
evening.

Night—the cold and desolate night of
February, came on, and the hungry gled was
still sitting there. \* \* \*

In the morning, the inexorable host of the
*Red Lion* and others, who had made themselves
so active in his persecution, went to
the place where they had bound him.

The water had ebbed several feet; the stake
was still standing there among the dark slime
and sedges—but the cords were cut, and the
unfortunate had disappeared.





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.. _`REMORSE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   REMORSE.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  All day and all the livelong night he pour'd,
   |  His soul in anguish, and his fate deplored;
   |  While every moment skimm'd before his sight,
   |  A thousand forms of horror and affright.
   |                                          *Tasso.*

.. vspace:: 2

Bothwell was sitting alone in his apartments
at Holyrood.  The fire burned cheerfully
in the sturdy iron grate, and threw a
ruddy glow on the gigantic forms of Darius
and Alexander, who seemed ready to start
from the gobeline tapestry into life and
action.  The Earl's sword and dagger hung
on one knob of his chair; his headpiece and
a wheel-lock caliver on the other; for there
were dangerous rumours abroad in the city,
and he knew not the moment in which he
might be required to use them.

Let us take a view of him as he sat
gazing fixedly into the fire, that glowed so
redly between the massive bars.

A change had come over his features since
the preceding night.  They had acquired a
more severe style of manly beauty.  His
noble brow was more pale and thoughtful
in expression, and was already marked by
those lines which are indicative of sorrow
and remorse.  But there were times when
his keen dark eye assumed a diabolical glitter,
and the redness of the fire shed an infernal
brightness on his face.  His lip was curled
by bitterness; his brows were knit; and then
nothing could surpass the scorn and
misanthropy pervading the aspect of the fierce
and haughty regicide.

Yes! he knew himself a destroyer; though,
strange to say, he felt his personal
importance increased by the awful reflection that
he was so.  He had more than once slain
men in mutual strife; but never till now did
he feel himself a—murderer.

*Murderer!* he repeated it in a low voice
and then started, looking round fearfully as
if he dreaded the figures might hear him.
He frequently caught himself muttering it,
coupled with his own name.  They seemed
synonymous.  His mind was full of incoherence
and dread, and a regret so intense, that
at times he smote his breast and wrung his
hands in agony, or turned to a flask of
Burgundy to drown all recollection; and so
much was he absorbed in the fierce current
of his own corroding thoughts, that he heard
not the rising storm that shook the turrets
of the palace, howled through the arcades of
its ancient courts, and tossed the branches of
its venerable trees.

A step rung in the antechamber; the tapestry
was lifted, and the slight figure of
Hepburn of Bolton, still sheathed in armour,
appeared.  His helmet was open, and the
paleness of his features was painful to look
upon.

"Well!" said his chieftain; "what say they
in the city?"

"Every where, that the Lord Moray has
slain the king, in pursuance of his ancient
feud with the house of Lennox."

"This is well!  I hope thou and Hob Ormiston
have been spreading the report with
due industry!"

"We have lacked in nothing!" replied
Bolton, gloomily, as he drank a deep draught
of the Burgundy; "but there is noised
abroad a counter-rumour, that thou art not
unconcerned in the deed."

"Hah!" ejaculated the Earl, drawing in
his breath through his clenched teeth, while a
frown of alarm contracted his brow, "Who
value life so cheaply as to bruit this abroad?"

"The vassals of the Lord Morton, with
whom certain archers of my band have been
carousing at Ainslie's hostel overnight, have
accused thee, and so strongly, that I sorely
suspect treason somewhere, and that their
lord hath prompted them."

"He dares not!" rejoined the Earl, half
assuming his sword, and setting his teeth.

"Thou knowest how false and subtle all
men deem him."

"He dare not prove so to me—I tell thee,
John of Bolton, he dare not!" replied the
Earl, in a fierce whisper, starting to his feet.
"I would level to the earth his castle of
Dalkeith, and spike his head amidst its ruins.
There is the bond, the damning deed we
signed at Whittinghame, that will cause us
all to hang together in our armour, lest we
hang separately without it.  Ha! ha! take
another horn of the Burgundy.  Thou seest,
Bolton, how it gives me both wit and spirit.
Any other tidings?"

"None, save of a horrible apparition that
last night haunted the Lord Athol's lodging,
near the Kirk-of-Field."

"And what about our Norwegian?"

"He hath been bound to the Papists'
pillar, and left to drown."

"Now, God's malison be on these rascally
burghers!"

"By this time he must be dead, for the
rain hath fallen heavily, and thou knowest
how fast the loch fills; besides, the host of
the *Red Lion* shut the sluice at the Trinity
House, so long ere this all must be over."

"One other life!" said the Earl, gloomily.

Hepburn gave a bitter laugh, and there
was a momentary pause.

"By Heaven, Bolton!  I will not permit
this stranger to perish if I can save him.
Come—'tis not yet midnight!  The deed may
in some sort atone"——

"True—true! but there will be some
danger, and much suspicion"——

"Danger—so much the better!  Suspicion—I
hope we are above it!  In a brawl about
a rascally courtesan, how readily did I draw
my sword with that blockhead d'Elboeuff;
while to-day I stood by yonder Tron, and
saw, on one hand, a consecrated priest of
God insulted, pilloried, and beaten down
senseless in his blood—a priest who yesternight
celebrated the most holy of all Christian
sacraments; on the other, I saw an
innocent man dragged away to a merciless
and dreadful death; and, like a child or a
woman, I stood paralysed, without giving a
word or a blow to save either.  Coward that
I was!  Oh, how deeply would old Earl Adam,
who fell by James's side on Flodden Field,
blush for his degenerate grandson!"

"Be it so; I will doff some of this iron
shell, and, if thou wilt lend me a pyne doublet,
will go with thee.  Hark! what a driech
storm without; and how the windows dirl in
the blast!" and, as he spoke, the rain, blown
with all the violence of a furious east wind,
came lashing on the lofty casements of the
palace, and hissed as it plashed drearily on
the pavement of its empty courts.

"Summon French Paris!" cried the Earl;
"I must first speak with him."





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.. _`THE RESCUE`:

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   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE RESCUE.

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..

   |              The lightning's flash
   |  Scarce ran before the thunder's sudden crash;
   |  Down on the lake, the rain sonorous rush'd;
   |  O'er the steep rocks, the new-born torrents gush'd.
   |                                        *Bayley's Rival.*

.. vspace:: 2

As the night closed, Konrad partially
revived, and became alive to the horror of his
situation.  Corded by the wrists and neck to
a stake, with the water almost up to his chin;
faint, exhausted by the wound on his head,
and the innumerable blows he had received,
he was so very feeble that he thought himself
dying, and endeavoured to remember a prayer;
but his mind was a chaos, and he found
himself alike unable to account for his
predicament, and to free himself from it.

Darker, and darker still, the clouds gathered
over the lofty city that towered up to the
south; and the rain-drops plashed more heavily
on the surface of the water, till the circles
became mingled, and the shower increased to a
winter torrent; for the month was February
only, and, though the first of spring, the cold
was intense.

The gled shook its wings, and croaked on
the post above his head, and Konrad feared
it might suddenly stoop and tear out his
defenceless eyes.

Poured along the gorge between the Calton
Hill and the city, the chill wind from the
German sea swept over the rippled water; and
then came the glare of the lightning to render
the darkness of the night more appalling.
Pale, blue, and sulphury, it flashed in the
north and east, dashing its forky strength
between the masses of cloud, gleaming on the
darkened water, and revealing the bleak
outline of the Calton—the high and fantastic
mansions of the city, among whose black
summits the levin-bolts seemed playing and
dancing—to be tossed from chimney to
turret, and from turret to tower—leaping from
hand to hand, ere they flashed away into
obscurity, or cast one lurid glare on the gorge
behind the church that, for four hundred years,
covered the grave of Mary of Gueldres and of Zutphen.

Then the thunder rumbled in the distance;
and, as if the air was rent, down gushed the
rain upon the midnight lake; and Konrad,
as he felt his senses and strength ebbing
together, became aware that the water rose—that,
with all his feeble struggles, he would
ultimately drown in that lake of mud, where
so many have perished; for, so lately as 1820,
the skeletons of these unfortunates have been
found in the bed, where of old the water lay.

Still the dusky gled sat on its perch, and,
by the occasional gleams of the lightning,
he could perceive its sable wings flapping
above his unsheltered head, like those of a
shadowy fiend; and oft it stooped down, as if
impatient of its feast.  Whenever its unearthly
croak rang on the passing wind, he could not
resist the inclination to raise his hands to
protect his eyes—but his arms were pinioned
below water.  Powerless, he resigned himself
to die without a murmur—save one prayer
for Anna.  His last thoughts were of her—for
the love of poor Konrad surpassed the love
of romance.

Strange visions of home and other years
floated before him; he heard the wiry rustle
of his native woods, and the voice of Anna
mingling with the music of the summer leaves.
Then came a state of stupefaction, in which
he remained, he knew not how long.

A sound roused him; it was a scream from
the gled, as, scared from its perch, it spread
its broad wings to the wind, and vanished
into obscurity like an evil spirit.  The stars
were veiled in vapour; the moon was sailing
through masses of flying cloud, and, by its
fitful light, Konrad, as he unclosed his heavy
eyes, could perceive a boat approaching.  It
contained two figures, which, as they were
between him and the light, appeared in dark
and opaque outline.

They were Bothwell and Hepburn of Bolton;
both were masked as usual to the
mustache, and wore their mantles up to
their chins.

"If we are not too late," said the first, as
they approached; "perhaps this act of mercy
may be an atonement—yea, in somewise a
small atonement—ha! heardst thou that
cry?"

"What cry?"

"By the blessed Bothan, I heard it again!"
said Bothwell, in a voice of agony.  "Now
God me defend!" he added, making the
long-forgotten sign of the cross, while a cold
perspiration burst over him; "but where is the
Norwegian?  I see but the stake only!"

"Here—here! his head is above water still.
Now praise Heaven!  Dost thou live yet?"

Konrad uttered a faint sound; upon which
both gave an exclamation of joy, and, urging
the boat towards the stake, succeeded in
raising him up, cutting the cords, and
drawing him on board; but so benumbed and
lifeless, that he sank across the thwarts and
lay there insensible.  Meanwhile, Bolton and
the Earl, after pulling a few dozen of strokes,
beached the boat (which they had stolen
from the ferryman) among the thick sedges
and reeds that fringed the northern bank of
the loch.  Bothwell sprang ashore, and gave
a low whistle.  There was a reply heard,
and French Paris came out of the ancient
quarry before mentioned, (the site of which
is now covered by the Scott monument,)
leading four horses.  Konrad was assisted
ashore, and seated upon the bank.

"Now, Paris," said the Earl; "thy
hunting bottle!"  The page unslung a round
leather flask from his waist-belt, and handed
it to the Earl, who filled a quaigh with
liquid, saying—

"I trust the cordial of which I spoke—that
rare reviving compound made by the
queen's physician—was mixed with this.
Drink, sir, if thou canst, and in three minutes
thou wilt be another man."

Konrad, who was still unable to speak,
quaffed off the proffered draught, and
immediately became revived; for a glow shot
through every vein, and warmed his quivering limbs.

"Another," said the Earl, "and thou wilt
still further bless the skill of Monsieur
Martin Picauet as a druggist and apothegar.
Now, Bolton, our task is done, and we must
hie to Holyrood ere daybreak; for this is
not a time for men of such light account as
we, to be roving about like the owls.  To
thee, Paris, we will leave the rest.  Thou art
well assured of where this crayer of Norway
lieth."

"At the New haven, immediately opposite
the chapel of St James."

A shudder ran through the heart of
Bolton; for the page's voice sounded at that
moment too painfully like his sister's—who,
though he knew it not, was probably lying,
bruised and mangled out of human form,
among the ruins of the Kirk-of-Field.

"Then here we part.  Thou wilt see this
stranger fitted with dry garments: give him
this purse, and bid him go in the name of
grace, and cross my path no more; for it is
beset with thorns, dangers, and deep
pitfalls—and I will not be accountable for the
issue of our again forgathering."

"How well I know that voice!" said
Konrad feebly.  "Tell me, ere we part, if
my suspicions are right.  For whom shall I
pray this night?"——

"Thy greatest enemy—but one who hath
every need of prayer," replied the other, in a
husky voice.

"Thou art"——

"Hush!  James, Earl of Bothwell," replied
the noble in a low voice, as he and
Bolton mounted, and, without further parley,
dashed at full gallop along the bank of the
loch and disappeared in the direction of
Dingwall's castle, a strong tower, battlemented
at the top and furnished with tourelles, that
overhung the steep bank above the Trinity
House, forming the residence of its provost.

The night was still gloomy and dark,
though occasional gleams of moonlight shot
across the varied landscape to the north,
one moment revealing it all like a picture,
and the next veiling it in obscurity.

"Mount, if thou canst," said French Paris,
"and wend with me, for we have little time
to spare.  Our burghers will be all at their
accursed pillar, like ravening wolves, by
daybreak, and if they should miss, pursue, and
overtake thee, our lives would not be worth
a brass testoon!"

"And whither wend we?"

"To the seashore—to Our Lady's port of
Grace, where there lieth at anchor a trading
crayer, commanded by a countryman of
thine—Hans Knuber, or some such uncouth
name."

"Ha, honest Hans!" exclaimed Konrad
with joy.  "But how came so great a noble
as thy lord to know of this poor skipper?"

"Knowest thou not that he is high admiral
of the realm, and that not a cock-boat
can spread a sail in the Scottish seas
unknown to him?"

"Jovial Hans!" continued Konrad; "I
would give my right hand to see thee, and
hear thy hearty welcome in our good old
Norwayn.  Let us mount and go!  Benumbed,
and stiff, and sick as I am at heart and in
body, thou shalt see, Sir Page (for I know
thee of old), that I can ride a horse like the
demon of the wind himself."

Nevertheless, Konrad mounted with difficulty,
and they progressed but slowly; for the
ancient way was steep and winding, and led
them far to the westward of the city, which
disappeared, as they traversed the steep and
broken ground that lay between it and the
Firth.

This district was all open and rural, but
generally in a high state of cultivation,
divided by hedges and fauld-dykes into fallow
fields and pasture lands, in some places shaded
by thick copsewood, especially round those
eminences on which rose the towers of Innerleith
and Waniston, between which the roadway
wound.  These square fortlets were the
residences of two of the lesser barons; the
first extended his feudal jurisdiction over the
ancient village of Silvermills; and the other
over that of Picardie, where dwelt a colony
of industrious weavers, who had left their
sunny France, and, under the wing of the
ancient alliance, came hither to teach the
Scots the art of weaving silk.

Near some ancient mills, gifted by Robert I. to
the monks of Holyrood, the horseway
crossed the pebbled bed of the Leith, which
brawled and gurgled between rough and
stony banks, jagged with rocks and boulders,
and overhung by hawthorn, whin, and
willow.  Soon wood, and tower, and path were
left behind, the city lights vanished in the
distance, and Konrad, with his guide, entered
on a broad and desolate tract, then known
as the Muir of Wardie.  There their horses
sank fetlock deep in the soft brown heather,
over which came the jarring murmur of the
distant sea, as its waves rolled on the lonely
shore of the beautiful estuary.

Then it was a lonely shore indeed!

That broad and desert moorland of many
square miles, extended to the beach uncheered
by house or homestead, by tree or bush, or
any other objects than a solitary little chapel
of Our Lady and the old tower of Wardie,
with its square chimneys and round turrets,
overhanging the rocks, on which, urged by
the wind, the waves were pouring all their
foam and fury, flecking the ocean with white
when the moonbeams glinted on its waters.

Broad and spacious links of emerald green
lay then between the little fisher-village and
the encroaching sea, which has long since
covered them; but their grassy downs had
to be traversed by our horsemen ere they
reached the wooden pier where the crayer of
bluff Hans Knuber lay, well secured by
warp and cable, and having her masts, and
yards, and rigging all covered, and made
snug, to save them from the storms which, at
that season of the year, so frequently set in
from the German sea.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CHALLENGE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CHALLENGE.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Defiled is my name full sore,
   |    Through cruel spyte and false report;
   |  That I may say for evermore,
   |    Farewell, my joy! adieu, comfort!
   |  For wrongfully ye judge of me.
   |    Unto my fame a mortall wounde;
   |  Say what ye lyst it will not be,
   |    Ye seek for that cannot be founde.
   |                          *Anne Boleyn's Lament.*

.. vspace:: 2

The remains of the unfortunate king, after
being embalmed by Picauet the French
physician, were interred among his royal
ancestors in the aisles of Holyrood, not
contemptuously, as some historians tell us, but
solemnly and privately; for Mary dared not
have had the burial service of the Catholic
church publicly performed, when, but seven
years before, those sepulchral rites were, by
the Reformers, denied to her mother.

In the southern aisle of the church of
Sanctæ Crucis, near the slab that still marks
where Rizzio lies, he was lowered into the
tomb, while the torches cast their lurid light
on the dark arcades and shadowy vistas of
the nave, amid the lamentations and the
muttered threats of vengeance—the deep
sure vengeance of the feudal days—from the
knights and barons of the Lennox.

Attired in sackcloth, poor Mary shut
herself up in a darkened chamber hung with
black serge, and there for many days she
passed the weary hours in vigil and in
prayer, for the unshriven soul of that erring
husband, whom for the past year she had
been compelled to hold in abhorrence—a
sentiment which she then remembered with
a remorse that increased her pity for his fate.

Bothwell dared not to approach her while
this paroxysm lasted; but by plunging into
gaiety and riot—by spending the days and
nights in revelry with Ormiston and
d'Elboeuff—he endeavoured to drown the
recollections of the past, to deaden the sense
of the present, and to nerve himself for the
future; but in vain—one terrible thought
was ever present!

It stood like something palpable and visible
before him.  It seemed written on the
fragrant earth, in the buoyant air, and on
the shining water, imparting to the sunny
spring the gloom of winter.  It was in his
ears, it was on his tongue, and in his soul;
there was no avoiding, no crushing, no
forgetting it!  Oh, how vividly at times, in the
calm silence of the sleepless night, *that cry*
came to his ears; and his thoughts were
riveted on that grey marble slab in the
chapel aisle, beneath which, mangled, cold,
and mouldering, lay one——he would smite
his damp forehead to drive away the thoughts,
and rush to drown his sense of misery in wine.

Amid the hum of the city, when its sunlit
thoroughfares were crowded with the gaiety
and bustle of passing crowds, all of whom
seemed so happy and so gay, it rang in his ears!

Amid the solemn deliberations of the
council on border raids and feudal broils—on
English wars and French embassies—in all
of which he was compelled to take the lead,
as the royal favourite and first of the Scottish
peers, it came to him sadly and mournfully
above the voices of the most able orators;
and then his heart sank when he looked on
the blanched visages of Morton, of Maitland,
and his other copartners in that terrible deed,
to which—as if by common consent—they
never dared to recur!

Amid the leafy rustle of the woods, as their
dewy buds expanded beneath the alternate
showers and sunshine of an early spring (if
he sought the country), still he heard it!

Amid the deep hoarse murmur of the chafing
sea, if he sought the lonely shore, he heard
it still—that sad and wailing cry of death and
of despair!

Amid the joys of the midnight revel, when
the wine sparkled in the gilded glasses—the
grapes blushed in their silver baskets—the
lofty lamps filled the chamber with rosy light
and rich perfume;—when the heedless ribaldry
of Ormiston, the courtly wit of d'Elboeuff,
the frolicsome spirit of Coldinghame, were all
there to make the *present* paramount alike to
the past and the future, still it came to
him—that terrible sound—*the last cry of Darnley*!

The queen still remained shut in her darkened
chamber, secluded from all—even from
the prying ambassador of Elizabeth, who,
when introduced, could not discern her face
amidst the sombre gloom surrounding her;
but, as he informed his mistress, the accents
of Mary were both touching and mournful.

Two strange rumours were now floating
through the city; one of a spectre which had
appeared in the lodging of the Lord Athol
on the night of the king's death; the other,
of Bothwell's implication in that terrible
deed, in which he and his companions had
endeavoured (and perhaps not without good
grounds) to implicate the Earl of Moray.

No one knew how this rumour gained
credence; but each man whispered it to his
neighbour.  Voices, accusing him of the deed,
rang at midnight in the narrow streets of the
city; the scholars chalked ribald verses at the
corners of the wynds and church-doors; while
Moray—openly Bothwell's friend, and secretly
his foe—had handbills posted on the portes,
naming him as the perpetrator.  Furtively
these things were done; for few dared to
impugn the honour of so powerful a noble, and
none could arraign him save the father of the
murdered prince, Matthew Earl of Lennox,
an aged noble, who had served with valour
and distinction in the wars of Francis I.; and
he boldly charged the Earl with the crime.

Bothwell saw, or imagined he saw, an
accusation in the eye of every man whose
glance he encountered.  Pride, jealousy, and
angry suspicion, now by turns animated his
resentful heart, and galled his fiery spirit.
He was always conferring secretly with the
knights and barons of his train; he kept his
vassals ever on the alert, and never went
abroad without being completely armed, to
prevent a surprise; but daily and hourly,
slowly and surely, like an advancing and
overwhelming tide, the suspicions of the people
grew and waxed stronger, till, clamorously,
it burst in one deep hoarse shout against him,
and a hundred thousand tongues said, "Thou
art the man!"

"Malediction on these presumptuous
churls!" said the Earl angrily to Ormiston,
as they met near the palace gate on the day
after Darnley's funeral.  "They all accuse
me; and there must be treachery somewhere."

"Nay, nay, never think so while that bond
of Whittinghame exists.  It binds us all, body
and soul, to be silent as the grave, and deep
as Currie brig."

"But now they speak of the queen, adding
all that the innate malevolence of the vulgar,
the hatred that Knox and his compatriots
have fostered and fanned, can add; and
declaring that she is art and part with those
who freed her and the nation from the
dominion of the house of Lennox."

"May God forefend!" said Ormiston; for,
ruffian as he was, he deemed the national
honour at stake under such an accusation.
"I would run my sword through the brisket
of the first base mechanic who breathed a
word of this."

"Breathed a word of it!—Gramercy!
French Paris tells me, it is openly discussed
by every full-fed burgess at the city cross; by
every rascally clown who brings his milk
and butter to the Tron; by every archer and
pikeman over their cans of twopenny; by
every apostate priest and pious psalmist who
haunt the houses of Knox, of Craig, and
Buchanan.  A curse upon the hour when
my secret love, my cherished hopes—the
name and fame the brave old Lords of
Hailes transmitted to me, so spotless and so
pure—are turned to ribaldry and jest, to
laughter and to scorn, by every foul-mouthed
citizen."

"'Tis mighty unlucky all this; for here
hath been my Lord Fleming, the great
chamberlain, with the queen's especial
commendations to your lordship, announcing,
that on the morrow she intendeth to lay
aside her weeping and wailing, her dumps
and dolours, and departing hence for the house
of Lord Seaton, a gay place, and a merry
withal; and there she hopes you will escort
her with your train of lances, for the
Lothians are so disturbed that she mistrusts
even Arthur of Mar and his band of archers."

"Be it so!  Send Bolton to her grace with
my dutiful answer," replied the Earl, whose
eye lighted up, for he thought that, in the
shock Darnley's fate had given her, the
queen had forgotten him; "we will be all in
our helmets, and at her service by cock-crow
to-morrow; but first," he added, sternly
and impressively, "take this, my better glove,
and hang it on yonder city cross, and there
to-day at noon announce to all, that I,
James Earl of Bothwell, and Lord of Hailes,
will defend mine honour against all men,
body for body, on foot or on horseback, at
the barriers of the Portsburgh, between the
chapel of St. Mary and the castle rock, so
help me God at the day of doom!"

And drawing off his long buff glove, which
was richly embroidered and perfumed, the
Earl handed it to his faithful Achates, and
returned into the palace to have his train
prepared with becoming splendour, for the
honourable duty of guarding the queen on
the morrow.

In compliance with this command, Black
Hob, sheathed in his sable armour, his visor
up to reveal his swarthy visage, and mounted
on a strong charger of the jettiest black,
attended by Hay of Tallo as esquire, French
Paris as his page, and three trumpeters in
the Earl's gorgeous livery, gules and argent,
and having his banner, with the lions of
Hepburn rending an English rose, advanced
into the city, and there, amid a note of
defiance, hung the Earl's glove above the
fountain, together with his declaration of
innocence, and offer "to decide the matter
in a duel with any gentleman or person of
honour who should dare to lay it to his
charge."

For many a day the glove hung there, and
none answered the challenge; for the star of
Hepburn was still in the ascendant, and none
dared to encounter its chieftain in the field,
for dread of the deadly feud that was sure
to ensue.

But the printer of pasquils and the
caricaturists were still busy, and one morning
there was a paper found beneath the Earl's
challenge, on which was drawn a hand
grasping a sword, and bearing the initials
of the queen, opposed to another armed with
a *maul*, bearing those of the Earl—a
palpable allusion to the weapon by which the
unfortunate prince was slain, and which
could only have been made by a conspirator.

The heedlessness of the unsuspecting Mary
in visiting the Earl of Winton under the
escort of Bothwell (of whose innocence she
had been convinced by Moray), and his
divorce from his countess, lent renewed energy
to the voice of calumny; and then those
rumours of her participation in that crime,
in which all the skill of her enemies for three
hundred years has failed to involve her, were
noised abroad; and slowly but surely the
nation, which had never loved her for her
catholicity, and partiality for gaiety and
splendour, was completely estranged from
her.  Now, on one hand, were a fierce
people and a bigoted clergy; on the other, a
ferocious vassalage, headed by illiterate and
rapacious nobles, and to withstand them but
one feeble woman.

In the glamour that came over the Scottish
people, they failed to remember that,
animated by delicacy and honour, the
unhappy Mary, only six weeks before the death
of Darnley, had rejected a divorce, though
urged by the most able of her ministers and
powerful of her nobles; they also forgot how
anxiously she had prevented his committing
himself to the dangers of the ocean, when
about to become an exile in another land;
and they forgot, too, her assiduity and
tenderness, to one who had so long slighted and
ceased to love her, when he lay almost upon
a deathbed, under the effects of a loathsome
and terrible disease.  The nobles saw only
a woman, who stood between them and
power—regencies, places, and command; the
people saw only an idolater and worshipper
of stocks and stones; and the clergy "ane
unseemly woman," who dared to laugh, and
sing, and dance, in defiance of their
fulminations anent such sin and abomination.

Exasperated by his son's death, and the
rumours abroad, the aged Earl of Lennox
demanded of Mary that Bothwell should
submit to a trial.  His prayer was granted;
and Keith acquaints us that she wrote to
her father-in-law, requesting him to attend
the court with all his feudal power and
strength.

Dreading the issue of an ordeal which
might blast his prospects and his fame, the
politic Bothwell used every means to increase
his already vast retinue, by enlisting
under his banner every dissolute fellow,
border outlaw, and broken man, that would
assume his livery, the gules and argent; and
thus his town residence, and those of his
Mends, were soon swarming with these
sinister-eyed and dark-visaged swashbucklers,
with their battered steel bonnets, their long
swords, and important swagger.  Thus, when
the day of trial came, the streets were
crowded with them; and when Bothwell, after
passing through a long lane of his own
arquebussiers, at the head of three thousand men,
(mostly barons, knights, and esquires,)
appeared at the bar, sheathed in a magnificent
suit of armour, supported on one side by
the crafty Earl of Morton, and on the other
by two able advocates—the father of the
young prince he had destroyed dared not
appear, as he dreaded to share the fate of his son.

After a long discussion, to which the high-born
culprit listened with a beating heart—though
his influence had packed the jury,
which was composed of Mary's friends and
Rizzio's murderers; and though he had bribed
the judges and deterred the prosecutor—the
court, actuated by sentiments best known to
themselves, unanimously "*acquitted* the Earl
of Bothwell of all participation in the king's
death."

With him the die had been cast.

Had they brought in a verdict of guilty,
another hour had seen his banner waving
in triumph and defiance above the capital—for
he was alike prepared to conquer or to die;
but this decision of the jury, delivered by the
mouth of Caithness, their chancellor, rendered
all his warlike preparations nugatory.  Had
they found him guilty, he would boldly have
rushed to arms in defence of his honour and
life, with an energy and wrath that would
alike have stifled the whispers of conscience
and remorse; but they had declared him
innocent, and he left the bar slowly and sadly,
feeling in his inmost soul a thousand degrees
more criminal than ever.

As he left the chamber where the High
Court sat, his friends and vassals received
him with acclamations—with brandished
swords and waving pennons; and, with
trumpets sounding, conveyed him through the
great arch of the Netherbow to St. Mary's
Wynd, where, by his command, the host of
the *Red Lion* had prepared a grand banquet
and rere-supper for the nobles and barons
attending the Parliament.

Though "one of the handsomest men of
his time," as old Crawford tells us, the Earl
feared that, notwithstanding the assiduity of
his attentions, Mary would never regard him
with other sentiments than those of mere
esteem for his services, and efficiency as an
officer of state.  "Men stop at nothing when
their hands are in," saith an old saw; and,
actuated by this spirit, Bothwell—ever
keeping steadily in view that alluring object,
which, step by step, had drawn him to the
dangerous and terrible eminence on which he
found himself—resolved, by one more desperate
act, to reach the summit of his hopes, or
sink into the gulf for ever.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AINSLIE'S SUPPER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   AINSLIE'S SUPPER.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Men talk of country, Christmasses, and court gluttony,
   |  Their thirty pound butter'd eggs, their pies of carps' tongues,
   |  Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris; the carcasses
   |  Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy, to
   |  Make sauce for a single peacock; yet their feasts
   |  Were *fasts*, compared with the City's.
   |                                  *Massinger's City Madam.*

.. vspace:: 2

It was, as we have stated, the month of
April, and on the day of the Earl's acquittal.

About seven in the evening, the sun was
setting behind the purple hills of the Ochil
range, in all the splendour of that beautiful
month of bright blue skies and opening
flowers—of the pale primrose and the drooping
blue-bell; when the dew lingers long on
the fresh grass and the sprouting hedges—when
the swallow builds its nest under the
warm eave, and the mavis sings merrily as
he spreads his pinions on the buoyant air.
It was an April evening.  The rays of the
setting sun had long since left the narrow
streets of Edinburgh, though they still
lingered on its gothic spires and gilded vanes,
throwing a farewell gleam on each tall
chimney head, each massy bartisan, and round
tourelle.

A great fire blazed in the yawning hall
chimney of the *Red Lion*, throwing its ruddy
glow on the red ashler walls, which the host
endeavoured to decorate by various pieces
of tapestry, begged and borrowed from his
neighbours, on the rough oak rafters that
once had flourished on the burgh-muir—on
the far-stretching vista of the sturdy table,
flanked with wooden benches on each side
for Bothwell's noble guests, covered with a
scarlet broad cloth, and glittering in all the
shiny splendour of French pewter and delft
platters—for there had never been an atom of
silver seen in an hostellary as yet; and by
each dark-blue cover lay a knife, halfted with
horn and shaped like a skene-dhu.  A gigantic
salt occupied the centre, and a carved
chair raised upon a dais—a chair that
whilome had held the portly Provost of
St. Giles, but to which honest Adam had helped
himself in 1559, that year of piety and
plunder—stood at the upper end, and was
designed for the great Earl of Bothwell.

A smile of the utmost satisfaction and
complaisance spread over the fat rosy face of
Ainslie's ample dame, as she surveyed the great
table, which her taste and skill had decorated
and arrayed; and she absolutely clapped her
hands with glee, when the great platter,
bearing a peacock roasted, and having its legs
shining with gold-leaf, and all its bright-dyed
pinions stuck round it, was placed upon the
board at the moment that a trampling of
horses in the narrow wynd announced the
arrival of the Earl and his guests, among
whom were such a number of dignitaries as
never before had been under the rooftree of
the *Red Lion*; and honest Elspat Ainslie was
overwhelmed each time that she reckoned
them on her fat fingers, and found there were
eight bishops, nine earls, and seven barons,
all the most powerful and popular in Scotland,
where a man's power was then reckoned
by the number of ruffians under his standard,
and his popularity by his hatred of the Papists,
and distribution of their gear to the preachers
and pillars of the new regime.

The dame hurried to a mirror—gave her
coif a last adjust—smoothed her apron and
gown of crimson crammasie; while Adam
brushed a speck from his fair doublet of broad
cloth—practised his best bow several times
to the gilt peacock; and all their trenchermen
and attendants stood humbly by the door in
double file as the guests entered.

Bothwell came first, with his usual air of
gallantry and grace—his doublet of cloth-of-gold
glittering in the light of the setting sun;
his ruff buttoned by diamonds; his shoulder-belt
and mantle stiff with gold embroidery;
while his sword, dagger, and plumed bonnet,
were flashing with precious stones.  He made
a profound bow to the hostess; for now he
smiled less than formerly, and the pallor of
his noble features was attributed by all to
*grief* at the Lord Lennox's accusation.

Morton followed, looking quite as usual,
with his sinister eyes, his long beard and little
English hat, his black velvet cloak and
silver-headed cane; but, with a jocularity that was
always affected, he pinched the plump cheek
of Dame Ainslie, and thumped her husband
upon the back, saying—

"How farest thou, host of mine?  Faith,
I need scarcely ask thee, for thou swellest and
wallowest amid the good things of this life
daily."

"By Tantony and Taudry! in these kittle
times, my lord"—began Adam.

"Peace, thou irreverend ronion!" whispered
the Earl of Huntly fiercely, as he
grasped his poniard—"*Saint* Anthony and
*Saint* Audry, thou meanest."

"I mean just whatever your lordship
pleases," replied the hosteller, as he shrank
abashed by the stern eye of the Catholic
noble, who resented every disrespect to the
ancient church, so far as he dared.

"Nay, nay," interposed Secretary Maitland,
with his bland smile and flute-like
voice; "poor Adam's slip of the tongue
merited not a rebuke so sharp; to grasp thy
poniard thus amounts almost to hamesucken—a
gloomy beginning to our banquet, my
Lord of Huntly."

There was present that gay scion of the
house of Guise, d'Elboeuff—all smiles and
grimaces, starched lace and slashes; there
was the Earl of Sutherland, the lover of
Bothwell's absent countess; Glencairn, the
ferocious; Cassilis, who once half-roasted an
abbot alive; Eglinton, the cautious; Seaton,
the gallant; and Herries, the loyal; Rosse,
of Hawkhead, and many others—until the
hall was crowded by the bravest and the
greatest of Scotland's peers, and many lesser
barons, who, though untitled, considered
themselves in feudal dignity second to the
crown alone.  All were well armed, and
the nature of the time was evinced by their
dresses; for all who had not on corselets
and gorgets to prevent sudden surprises, had
quilted doublets of escaupil, and all were
scrupulously accoutred with swords and
Parmese poniards, without which no gentleman
could walk abroad.

As Bothwell advanced to the head of the
table to assume his seat, his eye caught
one of the black-letter proclamations of the
council, which was fixed over the gothic
fireplace, and offered a yearly rent, with
two thousand pounds of Scottish money, for
the discovery of the perpetrators of the crime
at the Kirk-of-Field; "quhilk horribill and
mischevious deed," as the paper bore it,
"almychty God would never suffer to lie hid."

"Mass!" said the Earl, as the blood
mounted to his temples, "thou hast a roaring
fire, Master Adam, this April day."

"The coals bleeze weel, Lord Earl; yet
they cost a good penny, coming as they do by
the galliots frae the knight of Carnock's
heughs, aboon Cuboss."

"Little marvel is it that they burn thus,"
said the Earl of Glencairn; adding, in a lower
voice, "for knowest thou, gudeman, that
instead of contenting himself with such of
this precious mineral as may be got shovel-deep,
by advice of that damnable sorcerer,
the knight of Merchiston, he hath sunk a
pit—a cylinder—even unto the bowels of the
earth, as Hugh of Tester did at his Goblin
Hall; and he is now digging under the Forth,
with intent, as Master George Buchanan
told me yesterday, to ascend and seek upper
air on this side."

"Ascend!" reiterated Morton with
astonishment—"Where?"

"At the gate of thy castle of Dalkeith,
perhaps; thou art thought to dabble a little
in spell and philtre—like draweth to like."

"As the deil said to the collier," added
old Lindesay.  Several laughed at the hit, but
Morton frowned.

This famous supper at Ainslie's hostel—a
supper which has been fated to live for ever
in Scottish history—was marked by all that
barbaric profusion that characterised the
feasts of those days, when men feasted seldom.
Under the superintendence of a notable
French *chef de cuisine*, the first course
consisted of ling, pike, haddocks, and gurnards,
dressed with eggs, cream, and butter; but
there was no salmon, that being esteemed as
fitted only for servants.  The chief dish of all
was a grand pie of salt herrings, minced, and
prepared with almond paste, milts, and dates;
a grated manchet, sugar, sack, rose-water, and
saffron; preserved gooseberries, barberries,
currants, and Heaven knows what more; but
the curious or the epicurean may still find
the recipe in worthy Master Robert May's
"*Accomplished Cooke*, 1685."

This delightful mess threw the Marquis
d'Elboeuff into as great an ecstasy as the
artificial hens—which formed part of the second
course, and were made of puff-paste—seated
upon large eggs of the same material, each of
which contained a plump mavis, seasoned with
pepper and ambergris; and, to him, these
proved infinitely more attractive than the
haunches of venison, the chines of beef, and
roasted pigs, that loaded the table.  To suit
the palates of Lindesay, Glencairn, and other
sturdy Scots, who disdained such foreign
kickshaws, there were sottens of mutton,
platters of pouts, Scottish collops, tailyies of
beef, and sea-fowl.  Every description of
French wine was to be had in abundance—ale
and old Scots beer, seasoned with nutmeg;
and it would have been a fair sight for the
effeminate descendants of these doughty earls
and bearded barons, to have witnessed how
they did honour to this great repast, eating
and drinking like men who rose with the lark
and eagle, whose armour was seldom from
their breasts, whose swords were never from
their sides, and whose meals depended often
on the dexterity with which they bent the
bow, or levelled the arquebuss.

On each side of the Earl sat four bishops;
and all his real and pretended friends were
present except Moray, who had suddenly
departed to France, "that he might seem to
be unconcerned in what was going forward:
he failed not in this journey to circulate every
injurious report to the prejudice of his
unhappy sovereign, who, in the mean time, was
destitute of every faithful friend and proper
councillor."

The Archbishop of St. Andrew's—the last
Catholic primate of Scotland (the same noble
prelate whom, for his loyalty, Moray so
savagely hanged over Stirling bridge five years
after)—now arose, and, stretching his hands
over the board, uttered the brief grace then
fashionable:—"*Soli Deo honor et gloria*,"
whereat the Lord Lindesay muttered something
under his beard, "anent the idolatry of
Latin."

Instead of that calm, cold, and polite
reserve, that marks the modern dinner table,
their nut-brown faces shone with the broad
good-humour that shook their buirdly frames
with laughter, and they became boisterous
and jocose as the night drew on; and the
blood red wines of old France and Burgundy,
and the stiff usquebaugh of their native
hills, fired their hearts and heads.

Lord Lindesay had prevailed on d'Elboeuff
to partake of a haggis, and he was laughing
under his thick beard at the grimaces of the
French noble, whose complaisance compelled
him to sup a dish he abhorred.

"Thou findest it gude, Lord Marquis?"

"*Ah! cest admirable!*" sighed d'Elboeuff.

"Why, thou seemest to relish it pretty
much as a cat liketh mustard."

"*Oui!*" smiled the Frenchman, who did
not understand him.

"And how fares my noble friend, Coldinghame?"
asked the Earl of his brother *roué*.

"Weel enow; but sick of dangling about
this court, which is such a mess of intrigue."

"Tush!  Bethink thee, the queen hath the
wardship of many a fair heiress, and may
bestow on thee a handsome wife."

"Bah! like my Lord of Morton, I care not
for a handsome wife"—

"Unless she belong to another," said
Ormiston, coarsely closing the sentence.

"By the rood! a good jest and a merry,"
laughed Bothwell; but Morton's olive cheek
glowed with anger.

"Be not chafed, my lord," said Ormiston;
"by cock and pie!  I spoke but in boon
fellowship.  Drink with me!  This Rochelle is
famously spiced, and stirred with a rosemary
sprig for good-luck."

"Does Master Ainslie warrant it old?"

"Old! my Lord Morton," reiterated Adam,
turning up his eyes; "ay! auld as the three
trees of Dysart; for it lay many a long year
before the '59, among the stoor and cobwebs
o' the Blackfriars' binns, up the brae yonder."

"By the way," said the Lord Coldinghame,
"as thou talkest of the Blackfriars, what tale
of a roasted horse is this, anent whilk the
whole city is agog, concerning a spectre which
is said to have appeared there on the night
the king was slain, and hath haunted the
ruins of St. Mary's kirk ever since?"

"Knowest thou aught of this, Adam?"
asked Bothwell, whose mind, though he
endeavoured to maintain his usual aspect of
nonchalance, wandered constantly to the
gigantic projects he had in view.

"As ye know, my lord," replied Adam,
setting his head on one side and his left leg
forward, with the air of a man who has a
story to tell; "on the night of that deadly
crime in the Kirk-of-Field, two especial
gentlemen of the Earl of Athol, the umquhile
king's gude-cousin, were both a-bed at his
lordship's lodging, which is just within the
town wall, and not a bowshot frae auld
St. Mary's kirk.  In the mirk mid hour of the
night, Sir Dougal Stuart, who slept next the
wall, was awaked by a death-cauld hand
passing owre his cheek, and which thereafter
took him by the beard, while an unearthly
voice, sounding as if from afar off, said—'Arise,
or violence will be offered unto you!'  At
the same moment his friend, a half-wud
Hielandman, awoke, saying furiously—'Where
is my durk, for some one hath boxed
mine ear?'  And both started up to see, close by
their bed, a dusky figure, of which no feature
could be defined save a clenched hand, bare,
and long, and glistening in the siller
moonlight, that shone through the grated window;
then it melted away like morning mist; the
turnpike door was heard to close with a bang,
as if some one had left the house; and while,
with fear and alarm, they started to their
sword's, lo! they heard the explosion that
sent king and kirk-house into the air together."[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] See Buchanan.

.. vspace:: 2

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Bothwell
angrily, for this story was then current in the
city; "'tis a tale befitting only the old
dames who play basset and primero in the
queen's antechamber.  Wert thou at sermon
in the High Kirk this morning, Hob?" he
asked, to change the subject.

"Cock and pie, no!" said Ormiston, as
he gulped down his wine with surprise.

"Marry!" said Lord Lindesay; "thou
didst miss a rare discourse."

"On what did Master Knox expone?"
asked several Protestant peers; while Huntly
and other Catholics curled their mustaches,
and exchanged glances of scorn.  Lindesay
replied—

"Anent the story of that strong loon,
Samson, tying three hundred torches to the
tails of sae mony tod-lowries, to burn the
corn of the Philistines—likening himself
unto Samson—the ministry o' the reformit
kirk to the three hundred tods, and their
discourses unto the bleezing torches—the corn
o' the Philistines unto the kirk o' the Pope,
whilk their burning tails would utterly
overthrow, ruinate, and consume.  God speed the
gude wark!" added the stern peer, as he
brushed aside his heavy white beard with
one hand, and tossed over his wine-cup with
the other.

"What spell hath come over thee, compere
Bothwell?" said d'Elboeuff; "thou
seemest grave as a judge.  Here is the
*merry-thought* of a capercailzie to scare thy
melancholy."

"Marquis," replied the Earl gaily, "thy
wit would require the addition of a *wing* to
make it soar.  What a tall goblet thou hast!
Dost mean to get drunk to-night?"

"Why not, *parbleu!* when I am to ride
to Holyrood?"

"What difference doth that make?"

*"Mon Dieu!* because, if I stumble, there
is more effect when falling from a saddle,
than sprawling endlong in the kennel like a
beastly bourgeoise."

"'Tis time with thee, Marquis, that siclike
follies were left owre, for thy beard getteth
frosted wi' eild," said Lord Lindesay.

"*Tete Dieu!* dost thou say so, and live?
But remember, most sombre Lord of the
Byres, that Paris is as different from this
city as the fields of Elysium are from those
on the other side of the Styx.  There the
gaieties and glories of youth begin when we
are yet children; when ye are boys, we are
men; when ye are in your prime, we are in
old age—exhausted with pleasure, *ennui*,
drinking and gaming, roistering and"——

"Enough, Marquis!" said Bothwell, who
had two ends in view—to drench his guests
with wine, and to keep them all in excellent
humour.  "Enough!" he whispered; "for
there are some stern spirits here who do not
relish this discourse; and bethink thee of
the reverend bishops who are among us."

"*Tonnere!* apostates! heretics!"
muttered the Marquis.  Meanwhile Ormiston,
Bolton, Morton, and others who were Bothwell's
friends, seeing how his spirit alternately
flagged and flashed, left nothing undone
to increase the hilarity of the evening,
and keep the wine circulating; for there
were many present whom descent, religion,
or faction had set at deadly feud, and who,
had they met on a hillside or highway, or
perhaps in the adjacent street, would have
fought like mad bulls; but these had been
artfully and politicly separated, and thus
the unrestrained jesting and revelry
increased apace.

Some talked of creaghs upon the northern
frontier, of forays on the southern, of
partition of kirk lands, and the flavour of wines,
in the same breath.  D'Elboeuff chattered
like a magpie of new doublets and perfumes,
of Paris and pretty women: old Lindesay
spoke solemnly and portentously, over his
ale, on the prospects of the holy kirk; and
Glencairn responded with becoming gravity
and ferocity of aspect.

Morton sat opposite Lethington, and from
time to time they sipped their wine and
exchanged those deep glances which the most
acute physiognomist would have failed to
analyse; but, as they watched the ebb and
flow of the conversation around them,
Morton seemed almost to say in his eyes, "Thou
art wise as Nestor;" and the secretary to
reply, "And *thou* cunning as Ulysses."

Gradually the latter led the conversation
to the politics of the day—the misgovernment
that, since the death of James V., had
characterised each succeeding year; how the
sceptre, feebly swayed by the hands of a
facile woman, had never been capable of
aweing the great barons and their predatory
vassalage—the urgent necessity of some
powerful peer espousing the queen, and
assuming the reins of government, otherwise
the destruction of Scotland by foreign
invasion and domestic brawl—the subversion of
the rights of the nobles, the power of the
church, the courts of law, and the liberties
of the people, would assuredly ensue.

This half-false and half-fustian speech,
which the able Lethington delivered with
singular emphasis and grace, was received
with a burst of acclamation.

"My lords and gentles," said the aged
Lindesay, standing erect, and leaning on his
six feet sword as he spake; "here we are
convened, as it seemeth, as mickle for council as
carousal; albeit, ye have heard the premises
so suitably set forth by the knight of
Lethington, it causeth me mickle marvel to know
whom among us he would name as worthy
of the high honour of espousing our fair queen."

"Cock and pie!" exclaimed the impetuous
Hob Ormiston, erecting his gigantic
figure, and speaking in a voice that made
the rafters ring; "whom would we name
but her majesty's prime favourite and sorely
maligned first counsellor, James Earl of
Bothwell, Governor of Edinburgh and
Dunbar, and Lord High Admiral of the realm?
Who, I demand, would not rather see him
the mate of Mary Stuart, than the beardless
Lord of Darnley—that silken slave, that
carpet knight, and long-legged giraffe in
lace and taffeta?  What say ye, my lords
and barons, are we unanimous?"

There was a pause, and then rose a shout
of applause, mingled with cries of "A
Bothwell! a Bothwell!" from Morton and
other allies of the Earl, who were so
numerous that they completely overcame the
scruples, or hushed into silence the
objections, of the hostile and indifferent.

The Earl, whose heart was fired anew by
the glow of love and ambition—for never
did a prospect more dazzling open to the
view of a subject than the hope of sharing a
throne with a being so beautiful as Mary—thanked
his friends with a grace peculiarly
his own, and immediately produced that
famous BOND—a document in which the
nobles in parliament assembled, asserted his
innocence of the crime of the 11th February,
and earnestly recommended him to Mary as
the most proper man in Scotland to espouse
her in her widowhood—and bind themselves
by every tie, human and divine, "to fortify
the said Earl in the said marriage," so runs
the deed, "as we shall answer to God, on
our fidelity and conscience.  And in case we
do on the contrary, never to have reputation
or credit in time hereafter, but to be
accounted *unworthy and faithless traitors*."

"God temper thy wild ambition, Bothwell!"
said the Archbishop, as he signed the
document to which the seven other prelates
appended their names.  That of Moray—Mary's
dearly loved brother—had *already*
been given before his departure; and its
appearance had a powerful effect on all present.

"Deil stick me, gif I like mickle to scald
my neb in another man's brose!" growled
Glencairn; "yet I will subscrive it, albeit I
would rather have had a suitor to whose
maintainance of the Holy Reformit Kirk
Master Knox could have relied on."

Morton gave one of his cold and sinister
smiles as he appended his name in silence;
while the Marquis d'Elboeuff also smiled,
shrugged his shoulders, and applied to his
nostrils an exquisitely chased silver pouncet-box
of fragrant essences, to conceal the
merriment with which he watched the arduous
operation of fixing the signatures; for writing
was a slow and solemn process in those days.

A new and terrible difficulty occurred,
which nearly knocked the whole affair on
the head.

Very few of these potent peers could sign
their names, and others objected to making
their mark, which, from its resemblance to
a cross, savoured of popery; but Lethington
effected a conscientious compromise, by
causing them to make a T, as those did who
signed the first solemn league—a smallness
of literary attainment which did not prevent
those unlettered lords from demolishing the
hierarchy of eight hundred years, and giving
a new creed to a nation as ignorant as themselves.

Bothwell felt as if he trode on air when
consigning this tremendous paper, which had
the signatures of so many bishops, earls, and
lords, the most powerful in Scotland, to the
care of Pittendreich, the Lord President.

The rere-supper lasted long.

Deeply they drank that night, but none
deeper than the Earl and his friends; and
the morning sun was shining brightly into
the narrow wynd—the city gates had been
opened, and the booths which, from 1555
till 1817, clustered round St. Giles, were all
unclosed for business, and carlins were
brawling with the *acquaoli* at the Mile-end well,
ere the company separated; and the Earl,
accompanied by Hob Ormiston and the
knights of Tallo and Bolton, with their eyes
half closed, their cloaks and ruffs awry, and
their gait somewhat oscillating and unsteady,
threaded their way down the sunlit Canongate,
and reached Bothwell's apartments in
Holyrood—that turreted palace, where the
unconscious Mary was perhaps asleep with
her child in her bosom, and little foreseeing
the storm that was about to burst on her
unhappy head.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HANS AND KONRAD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HANS AND KONRAD.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Yes, she is ever with me!  I can feel,
   |  Here as I sit at midnight and alone,
   |  Her gentle breathing!  On my breast can feel
   |  The presence of her head!  God's benison
   |  Rest ever on it!
   |                                  *Longfellow.*

.. vspace:: 2

On this morning, the sun shone brightly
on the blue bosom of the Forth, and the
grey rocks of all its many isles.  The
sea-mews were spreading their broad white
pinions to the wind, as they skimmed from their
nests in the ruins of Inchcolm, and the caves
of Wemyss.

The little fisher-hamlet that bordered the
New haven, with its thatched and gable-ended
cottages, its street encumbered by great
brown boats, rusty anchors, and drying nets,
looked cheerful in the warm sunshine; and
troops of ruddy-cheeked children were
gamboling on those broad links that lay where
now the water rolls.

Near a little window in the confined cabin of
a Norwegian ship, lay Konrad of Saltzberg,
faint, feeble, and exhausted; for the fever of
a long and weary sickness had preyed upon
his body and mind, prostrating every energy.
He was pale, attenuated, and hollow-eyed;
and now, for the first time since the night we
last saw him, had emerged from insensibility
to a state of consciousness.  He felt the cool
air of the April morning blow freshly on his
pallid cheek; he heard the ripple of the
water, and saw its surface gleaming in the
sunshine afar off, where its waves broke in
purple and gold on a distant promontory;
and close by (for the crayer lay within ten
yards of the shore) he heard the merry voices
of the children as they gamboled and tumbled
on the bright green grass.

Konrad had been dreaming of his home, and
these voices came to his slumbering ear in old
familiar tones.  He had heard the hearty
greeting of old Sir Erick Rosenkrantz, and the
merry laugh of Anna, as it had sounded in
the days of his boyhood and joy; and he
heard the murmur of the sea, as, wafted by
the summer wind, its waves rolled upon the
rocks of Bergen.

The morning breeze from the German
ocean roused him from this dreamy lethargy,
and for the first time in many weeks he
raised his head, and endeavoured to recollect
where he was; but the aspect of the little
cabin, with its arched deck, and massive
beams, confused and puzzled him.

"I am still dreaming," he murmured, and
closed his eyes.

He opened them again, but still saw the
same objects—the same little cabin, with its
pannelled locker—a brass culverin on each
side; a crossbow, maul, and helmet hanging
on the bulkhead, and the open port affording
a glimpse of the shining estuary, with its
castled isle, and distant sails, that seemed like
white birds resting on the faint and far off
horizon.

Steps were heard, and then a stout and
thick-set man was seen slowly descending the
ladder from the deck.  First appeared a pair
of broad feet encased in rough leather
shoes—then two sturdy legs in brown stockings,
gartered with red ribbons; a vast obesity clad
in chocolate-coloured breeches, garnished
with three dozen of metal knobs at the
seams; a waist encircled by a belt, sustaining
a Norway knife; then square bulky shoulders
in a white woollen jacket, and then a great
bullet head, covered by a cap of black fox's
fur, under which, on the person turning
round, appeared the moonlike face of honest
Hans Knuber, open-mouthed and open-eyed—expressive
only of good-humour and hilarity;
and, where not hidden by his thick red
beard, exhibiting a hue that, by exposure to
the weather, had turned to something
between brick-dust and mahogany.

"Cheerily, ho!" said he, patting Konrad's
shoulder with his broad hard hand; "and
now, St. Olaus be praised, thou art come to
life again!  I knew the pure breeze that blew
right over the sea from old Norway would
revive thee."

"Honest Hans," replied Konrad, in a feeble
voice, "I have often heard thy deep tones
in the dreams of my sleep, as I thought."

"And so thou wert in a dream, lad—and
a plaguy long one! such a dream as the
wood-demon used to weave about those who
dared to take a nap under his oak.
Asleep! why, lad, thou'st been delirious"——

"How! since I came on board thy ship
last night, in a plight so pitiful?"

"St. Olaus bless thee, Master Konrad!
Thou hast lain by that gun-port for these
eight long weeks!"

"Weeks—weeks!" muttered Konrad, pressing
his hands on his temples, and endeavouring
in vain to recollect himself.

"Ay, weeks; and a sad time we have had
of it, with leeching and lancing, drugging
and dosing, plastering and patching.  Mass!
I thought thou would have slipped thy
cables altogether, though under the hands
of Maitre Picauet."  For Hans had spared
no expense, and had brought even the royal
physician to see his young charge; and so,
thanks to the same skill that brought James
VI. into the world, and nearly recovered
Darnley from the grave, Konrad, when the
delirium left him, began to find himself a
new man.

"Eight weeks!  I remember me now.
Thou hadst landed thy cargo of Norway
deals from our old pine-woods of
Aggerhuis—hazel cuts and harrowbills"——

"Ay, ay; and had stowed on board my
new lading, being crammed to the hatches
with tanned leather, earthenware, and
Scottish beer, wheat and malt, for which I
expect to realize a goodly sum in round
dollars among the cities on the Sound, where
I would long since have furled my topsails,
but for a rascally English pirate that hath
cruised off the mouth of the fiord (or frith
as the Scots call it), and I dared not put to
sea, though ready to sail, with the free
cocquet of the queen's conservator in my
pouch, and my ship hove short upon her
cable; for this is my last venture, and
under hatches I carry all that must make
or mar for ever the fortune of old Hans Knuber."

"Thou didst tell me some news from old
Norway, I now remember, on that night
Earl Bothwell's page led me here."

"Why, thou wert like the spectre of a
drowned man—St. Erick be with us!  But
here—drain thy cup of barley ptisan, and I
will tell thee more in good time."

Konrad drank the decoction prescribed by
the physician, and impatiently said—

"Thou sawest my good friend, the old
knight Rosenkrantz, I warrant?"

"I did," replied Hans gravely.

"And how looked he?"

"Stiff enow, Master Konrad; for he was
lying in his coffin, with his spurs on his
heels, and his sword girt about him."

Konrad was thunderstruck, and barely
able to articulate; he gazed inquiringly at
Hans.

"True it is, this sad story," said the
seaman, wiping a tear away with the back of his
brawny hand; "thou knowest well how all
the province loved the bluff old knight, who
was never without a smile or a kind word for
the humblest among us; and faith he never
allowed old Hans Knuber to pass his hall
door without putting a long horn of dricka
under his belt.  But Sir Erick is gone now,
and the king's castle of Bergen (ah! thou
rememberest *that*) is a desolate place enough.
And honest Sueno Throndson, that most
puffy and important of chamberlains, he is
gone to his last home too.  He went to
Zealand in the ship of Jans Thorson, to hang
Sir Erick's shield, with all his arms fairly
emblazoned thereon, among those of other
dead Knights of the Elephant, in the subterranean
chapel of Fredericksborg; but Jans,
as thou knowest, could never keep a good
reckoning, and, by not allowing duly for
variation and leeway, was sucked by the
moskenstrom, with all his crew, right down
into the bowels of the earth.  St. Olaus
sain them!"

"Poor Sir Erick!" said Konrad, heedless
of the fate of Jans, while his tears
fell fast.

"Dost thou not know that King Frederick
had created him Count of Bergen, and Lord
of Welsöö, for his services in the old
Holstein war?"

"Of all these passages, I have heard nothing."

"His niece, the Lady Anna, will be a
countess now, as well as the richest heiress
in the kingdom.  Baggage that she is!  Her
uncle never recovered her desertion of his
home for the arms of that Scottish lord,
whom, if I had him here, I would string up
to my gaff peak.  By the mass! the old
knight's heart was broken, for he loved thee
as a son, and Anna as a daughter; but to
the devil say I with women, for they all yaw
in their course somehow, and require a strong
hand at the tiller to make them lie well to
the wind.  This Anna, God's murrain"——

"Hold thee, Hans Knuber!" said Konrad,
with something of his old air of dignity and
authority; "for, nevertheless all thy kindness,
I will not permit thee to breathe one word
that is ungracious of Anna."

"As thou pleasest, lad," replied the seaman,
taking off his fur cap to wipe his capacious
head; "I thought 'twould relieve thee
somewhat to hear one who had so shamefully
misused thee roundly cursed."

"Oh no! never!" replied the young man in
a low voice; "Oh, Hans! thou knowest not the
depth and the enthusiasm of this passion that
hath bewitched me.  It banishes every angry
thought from my mind, and leaves only a
sense of desolation and agony, that can never
die but with myself."

"Now, by the bones of Lodbrog! but I
have no patience with this.  How! a bold
fellow like thee to be caterwauling thus, like
a cat on a gutter?  Go to!  The Lubeckers
and Holsteiners are again displaying their
banners on the Elbe and Weser.  Assume
thy sword and helmet again.  Thou hast
the world before thee, with a fair wind; and
what matters it leaving a false woman and
a slighted love behind?  Cheerily, ho!  Master
Konrad; a love that is easily won is lightly
lost."

"False as this girl has been to me, Hans,
there are times when her bright smile and
her winning voice, and all the memory of
our happy early days, come back to me
in their first freshness and joy, and my
soul melts within me.  *Then*, Hans—in
moments like these—I feel that, were she
repentant, I could love her as of old.  Oh,
yes!  I could forgive her—I could press her
to my breast, and worship her as I did even
in those days that have passed to return no
more.

"Well, well—as thou pleasest.  Take
another gulp of this barley drench—thy
ptisan.  Get strong and healthy ere we see
old Norway, where she is gone before thee
with Christian Alborg, in the *Biornen*, and
who knoweth what the clouds of futurity
may conceal?  An old love is easily
rekindled, I have heard, though, by the mass!
I know little of such gear; though *this* I
know, that the castle of Bergen, with the
young countess's lordship of Welsöö, would
make a very snug roadstead to drop one's
anchor in;" and, with a leering wink, Hans
Knuber once more clambered to the upper
deck, where he drew his fur cap over his
bushy brows, thrust his hands into his
pockets, and scowled defiance at the small
white speck that, near the Isle of May, still
marked where the English pirate lay cruising
in the offing.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOW BOTHWELL MADE USE OF THE BOND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW BOTHWELL MADE USE OF THE BOND.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  I love you better—oh! better far than
   |  Woman was ever loved.  There's not an hour
   |  Of day or dreaming night, but I am with thee;
   |  There's not a wind but whispers of thy name,
   |  And not a flower that sleeps beneath the moon,
   |  But in its hues or fragrance tells a tale
   |  Of thee, my love!
   |                            *Mirandola, a Tragedy.*

.. vspace:: 2

It was the 23rd of April, four days after
the great supper described in chapter 9th,
when the queen, without her guard of
archers, and accompanied only by a slender
retinue, passed along the Stirling road
towards Edinburgh.  She was mounted on
her celebrated white palfrey, with its bridle
and housings covered with silver bosses
and elaborate embroidery; and with
surpassing grace she managed it, the stately
animal bowing its arched neck, and
champing the burnished bit, as if proud of its
beautiful rider.

Mary wore a long and flowing riding-habit
of dark cloth, laced with silver about the neck
and sleeves.  It came close up to her dimpled
chin, where a thick frill, or little ruff, stuck
stiffly out all round.  She had her glossy hair
drawn back from her snow-white temples,
under her lace cap of widowhood (the far-famed
Queen Mary cap), that drooped over
her brow, while cocked jauntily a little on one
side, she wore one of those small sugar-loaf hats
which were then so fashionable.  A diamond
band encircled it, and a veil of the richest lace
danced from it in the evening wind, as she
caricoled along the old narrow horseway that
wound among the fields near the ancient
manor of Sauchton.

She was accompanied by only five attendants,
among whom were Huntly, Lethington
the secretary, and Sir James Melville
of Halhill.  With her colour brightened by
the exercise of riding, and her eyes sparkling
with animation and pleasure, (for she had
just been paying a visit to the infant prince
at Stirling—a visit fated to be her last,)
when her veil was wafted aside, Mary's face
seemed to glow with a beauty and vivacity,
to which her smart beaver hat lent additional
piquancy; and she conversed with more than
her usual gaiety and thoughtlessness to the
politic Melville, the subtle secretary, and
their better man, the stately young chieftain
of the house of Gordon.  On her wrist sat
the gift of her father's aged falconer, (James
Lindesay of Westschaw,) one of those
beautiful falcons which made their eyry in a
perpendicular rock on the West-hill of Alva,
where, says the Magister Absalom, never
more than one pair have been known to
build a nest, even unto this time.

The day was serene; the sun was verging
westward, and large masses of shadow lay
deepening on the Pentland hills, while the
bright flush of the sunlight beamed upon
their steep acclivities and heather-brows with
a golden tint.  The sky was cloudless, and the
whole of that magnificent plain, which spreads
from the western gates of Edinburgh to those
of Glasgow, was clad in all the rural beauty of
an early summer.  Warmed by the April
showers, the trees were putting forth their
greenest leaves, and the pink foxglove and
blue-bells were bordering the highway; while
the wildbrier, the mountain thyme, and the
rose of Gueldres, filled the air with perfume.

"Oh joy! how beautiful!" said Mary, as
she checked her palfrey on the high and
ancient bridge that crossed the Leith near
the old baronial manor of the Elphinstones,
whose broad dark chimneys were seen peeping
above a grove of beeches.  "See! yonder
is the town, with its castle and St. Giles'
spire shining blood-red in the light of the
sunset, above the bright green copsewood.
And look, Monsieur Huntly, what a delightful
little cottage by the side of that river!
The green ivy, the wild roses, and the
woodbine, are all clambering about its thatched
roof—nothing is visible but its little door.
Ah, Jane, *ma bonne*!" she exclaimed to her
sister Argyle, "how I should love to live
there, with nothing to attend to but my
flowers and music, and a nice little cow to milk."

"I fear your majesty would soon be ennuéeyed
to death, and longing for Holyrood, with
its floors of oak and walls of velvet tapestry,
with your archers at the gate and pages in
the corridor," replied the grave Lethington,
with a smile of something between amusement
and sarcasm at the simplicity of the
young queen.

At the cottage door an old woman was
sprinkling water on a herd of cattle, with
broom dipped from time to time in a tub,
at the bottom of which lay a perforated stone,
which was deemed a sovereign remedy
against all witchcraft; but, suddenly ceasing
her employment, she curtsied lowly to the
lady, of whose exalted rank she was ignorant.

The scenery was very fine, for the country
was then more thickly wooded almost than
now, and afar off shone the rugged outline of
Edinburgh, rearing up on its ridgy hills,
with the great square spire of its cathedral,
and the lofty towers and bastel-houses of its
castle, clustering on lofty and perpendicular
rocks.  Close by the road, arose the double
peaks of Craiglockhart; one covered with
pastures of emerald green, the other bluff
with whin-tufted basalt, and crowned with
gloomy firs; while, following its winding and
devious course, the Leith brawled and
gurgled over its pebbled bed.  Brightly the
sunlight danced upon the dimpled water;
already in blossom, the lilac groves that
shaded it were filling the air with fragrance;
their white and purple flowers being at times
relieved by the pale green of the willow, the
golden laburnum, and the pink cups of the
wild-roses; while every flower and blade of
grass were glittering in the early dew of the
April evening.  Unseen, amid the thick
foliage that bordered the highway, a thousand
birds were filling the air with a melody,
that died away even as the sun's rays died
upon the distant hills, and the saffron glow
of the west assumed the sombre tint of the
gloaming.

The young Highland earl, who rode by
Mary's side, was charmed with her vivacity,
and conversed with her alone; while the
more phlegmatic Lethington and Melville
jogged together a few paces behind, very
intent on their own intrigues and correspondence
with Elizabeth of England, with Cecil,
and with Killigrew; both of whom, though
able statesmen and subtle politicians, will be
found, if tried by the rules of justice and
honour, the greatest villains that ever breathed.
The beauty of the scenery, and the buoyancy
of the air, raised Mary's vivacity, and increased
her brilliant wit; and she often made the
thickets echo with her musical laugh, or a
verse of a merry French song; till a
sudden turn of the road brought them full in
view of a sight that made her utter a faint
cry of alarm, rein up her palfrey with
one hand, and with the other grasp the
arm of Huntly, who instantly drew his
sword.

Right across that narrow path was drawn
up the imposing line of a thousand horsemen
in close array, all sheathed in armour,
with the points of their uplifted lances, their
breastplates, and conical helmets, glittering
in the setting sun.  Their flanks, which
extended into the fields on each side, were
well thrown forward, so as completely to
encircle the terrified queen and her little
retinue.  A few yards in front were two
knights with their visors up; one bore a
standard displaying two Scottish lions
rending a red rose, and by his sable armour,
his negro-like visage, and colossal frame, all
recognised Hob of Ormiston; but in the
other, whose light suit of mail, engrained
with gold, was white as winter frost, and
reached only to the knees of his scarlet hose,
they knew the Earl of Bothwell.  He leaped
from his horse, and, drawing off his right
gauntlet, advanced reverentially towards
the queen on foot.

"What foul treason is meditated here?"
asked Huntly sternly, as the Earl passed
him.

"None; but thou shalt see," replied the
other with a smile, "that I will now wed
the queen—yea, *whether she will or not*!"[\*]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[\*] See Melville.

.. vspace:: 2

"Now by my father's soul!" began Huntly
furiously.

"How!" said Secretary Lethington, with
one of his cold and placid smiles; "has your
lordship already forgotten the supper, and
the bond?"

"Jesu Maria!" muttered Huntly; "I
foresaw not this!"

"Your grace will hold me excused," said
the Earl of Bothwell, grasping the bridle of
Mary's palfrey; "but your own safety and
the commonweal require that I should, without
a moment's delay, lead you to my castle
of Dunbar."

"Mother of God!  How—why?" asked
Mary in an agitated voice, as she gazed on
the face of the Earl, which was pale as death;
for the magnitude of the crime he contemplated,
had for a moment appalled even himself.
"With what am I menaced?  Is there a
raid among the Lennox men—an invasion of
the English—or what?  Who is my enemy?"

"James of Bothwell, as this sword shall
prove!" exclaimed the young Earl of Huntly,
making a furious blow at the noble's tempered
helmet—a blow that must have cloven him
to the chin, had not Bolton and Hob Ormiston
crossed their lances, and interfered with
the speed of light; but Hob's tough ash
standard pole was cut in two.

"Mass!" he exclaimed; "now hold thee,
Earl Huntly, or, with my jeddart staff, I
will deal thee a dirl on the crown that will
hang a scutcheon on the gate of castle
Gordon for the next year."

The horsemen closed up with levelled
lances, and the gentlemen of the queen's
train were immediately disarmed.

"To Dunbar! to Dunbar!" cried Bothwell,
leaping on horseback, but still retaining
the queen's bridle.

"For what end, Lord Earl, and for what
purpose, am I to be thus escorted, or made
captive, I know not which?  Tell me, I
implore—nay, I demand of thee as my
liegeman and vassal?"

"I refer your majesty to my advisers here
present, to the Earl of Huntly and the
Knight of Lethington; but fear not, dearest
madam, for I am devoted to you in body
and in soul, and I swear to you by the four
blessed gospels, that I have only your weal
at heart.  Oh, come with me—come without
resistance; for resistance would be vain!"

"Darest thou to say so?"

"Pardon me; but once within the gates
of Dunbar, that stately castle with which
thou didst so graciously gift me, I will tell
thee all.  On, on—knights and horsemen! for
the night is closing fast, and I can foresee
that, natheless the beauty of this April eve,
we shall have a storm of no common potency."

Mary's pride, which never for a moment
deserted her, impelled resistance; her dark
eyes filled with fire; she grew very pale;
her beautiful mouth expressed all the scorn
and anger that swelled up in her breast,
and she endeavoured to snatch her bridle
from the hand of the Earl; but at that
moment the soft persuasive voice of
Secretary Maitland addressed her, and his hand
touched her arm lightly.  He spoke in an
under tone, and what he said was unheard
by the Earl; but his wily eloquence was
never exercised in vain, and that tact which
bent the most stubborn nobles to his purpose,
was not likely to prove ineffectual upon the
too facile and gentle Mary.

"Be it so!" she replied with hauteur.  "*De
tout, mon coeur*!  I will bide my time; but,
Sir William of Lethington, if this raid should
prove as my mind misgiveth me, by every
blessed saint my vengeance will be terrible!"

The cold statesman bowed with one of his
inexplicable smiles as he reined back his
horse; and then, by the command of Bothwell,
the whole train set forward at a furious
pace, which the Earl had no wish to diminish,
for the double purpose of avoiding the
alternate questions, threats, and intreaties
of the queen, and escaping the fury of a
sudden storm, that, with singular rapidity,
had converted that beautiful evening into
one of darkness and gloom.

Agitated, by turns, with astonishment,
vexation, indignation, and fear, the queen
rode on, reserving her enquiries till they
should reach Dunbar.

But why to Dunbar, and not to Holyrood?

A thousand terrors and fancies flitted
across her mind.  Perhaps the principal
nobles had again leagued to slay her, as
they had done when her brother rose in
rebellion; perhaps he was again in arms,
with Lindesay, Glencairn, and all the furious
upholders of that new doctrine, which she
openly feared and secretly abhored.

The clank of a thousand suits of armour,
and the rush of four times that number of
galloping hoofs on the hard dusty road,
stunned and confused her; while the figures
of the mail-clad riders, their tall lances, and
Bothwell's rustling banner, the hills and
copsewood that overhung their way, grew
darker and duskier as the sky became veiled
by the heavy clouds that came up in masses
from the German sea.

The summits of the mountains were veiled
in descending mist; the air became close
and still, and afar off the broad red gleams
of the sheet lightning brightened in the
sky, revealing in bold outline the ridges of
the distant hills, and the waving woods that
crowned their summits.

Edinburgh, with its walls and gates, was
left behind in night and obscurity; the
marshes of Restalrig, where every moment
their chargers floundered to the girths; the
dreary Figgate whins, where every pace was
encumbered with roots and other remains
of an old primeval forest; and the ruined
chapel of Mary Magdalene—were passed;
and the captive queen, with her escort,
were galloping along that far expanse
of sandy beach, where the white-crested
waves rolled with a sullen boom on the desert
shore.

Now the clanging hoofs rang like thunder
on the broad flagged pavement of the ancient
Roman way, that led directly over the
picturesque old bridge built by the soldiers of
Agricola, and where a strong iron gate,
erected transversely across the centre arch,
closed the passage after nightfall.  But a
blast from Ormiston's bugle-horn summoned
the gateward, cowering and shivering from
his seat by the ingle; for now, from the
darkened sky, the heavy rain was pattering
upon the hurrying river.  At the imperious
command, to "make way for the Lord Earl
of Bothwell!" the barrier was instantly
unclosed, and on swept the train in all its
military show, each horseman stooping his
helmeted head, and lowering the point of
his long Scottish spear, as he passed under
the low-browed gate, and wheeled to the left,
by the base of the mound, where still the
Roman trenches lay, as strong and as visible
as when the cohorts of the empire raised
there a temple to "Apollo, the long-haired."

Then Musselburgh, the chapel of Loretto,
with its demolished tombs and desecrated
shrines, old Pinkiecleugh, with its woods and
tower, where Abbot Durie dwelt, were left
behind, and once more the train was sweeping
along the echoing shore, by the margin of
the midnight sea—with the thunder rumbling
among the hills, and the rain and the storm
adding spurs to their headlong speed.  By
midnight they reined up before the castle of
Dunbar, where broad and vast, in all their
ancient strength and feudal pride, the strong
round towers of Bothwell's princely dwelling
stood in clusters on the sea-beaten rocks.

Despite the darkness of the night, and the
fury of the storm, which was pouring the
German sea in waves of snow-white foam
against the castle cliffs, the roar of three
salvoes of brass culverins from the lower
battlements, burst like peals of thunder on the air;
while, red and forky, the flashes shot forth
between the strong embrasures and deep-mouthed
gun-ports of curtain-wall and flanking
tower, as the drawbridge fell, the portcullis
ascended, and the glare of twenty blazing
torches flashed under its iron teeth,
displaying a court-yard crowded with the Earl's
retainers in jack and morion, his servitors in
livery, and pages glittering in lace and
embroidery, grouped beneath the strong-ribbed
archway to receive the queen.

Somewhat assured by this display of loyalty,
respect, and security, the queen permitted
Bothwell to kiss her hand as he assisted
her to alight, and led her half sinking from
fatigue to the hall, where every thing appeared
as if prepared for her reception; for, thanks
to the forethought of Hob of Ormiston,
nothing was ever wanting to complete those
dangerous dramas in which the Earl was now
the leading actor; and, by his contrivance,
while the Earl led Mary up the great staircase,
French Paris conducted Sir James Melville
and the other gentlemen of her retinue
to a detached tower, where some of his
vassals guarded them till daybreak, when
they were expelled from the castle, the gates
closed, and they were left (as Sir James tells
us in his memoirs) somewhat unceremoniously
to shift for themselves, and to bear to
Edinburgh and its astonished citizens, the
tidings of Bothwell's daring and the queen's
captivity.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LOVE AND SCORN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   LOVE AND SCORN.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |                This gushing life
   |  Is all that I can give in reparation
   |  Of all the wrongs I have done thee.
   |  We shall lie down together in the grave;
   |  And, when the sound of Heaven shall rouse the dead,
   |  We shall awake in one another's arms.
   |                                *Shiels' Apostate.*

.. vspace:: 2

Though the ardour of Bothwell's daring
and ambitious passion for Mary was increased
almost to a frenzy, on finding her completely
in his power, within the strong gates and
stronger walls of that magnificent fortress, of
which, in an unfortunate moment of liberality,
she had made him governor; he felt his
courage sink when the moment came for revealing
the bond of the nobles, the hopes he had
cherished, and the deed of which he had been
guilty.

Three great chandeliers of wax candles,
which hung from the arched roof of the
lofty hall, shed a blaze of light upon the
gobeline tapestry that covered its walls, from
the base to the spring of the vault, which
was profusely decorated with the richest
fresco work, where the royal cipher and the
*fleur-de-lys* were prominently seen.  Four
gothic pillars sustained the carved arch of
the fireplace, where an enormous grate,
standing on four knobs of brass, was filled
with blazing coal.  The floor was covered
with thick rush matting; and a magnificent
collation of fruit, confections, and dainties,
in baskets of chased silver, flasks of crystal,
and jasper vases, were laid upon the tables
by French Paris, little Calder, and other
attendants.

Meanwhile the storm continued with
unabated fury without; with the noise of
thunder the ocean dashed against the bluffs
on which the castle stood, and roared in the
far recesses of those deep caverns that
perforate its cliffs of dark red basalt.  The rain
poured like a cataract against the barred
windows, and hissed in the wide chimney;
the mournful cry of the solan goose, and the
shriek of the seamew, were heard on the
passing wind, as it dashed them with the
surf against the castle walls; and the
streaming of the wax lights, and undulations of the
tapestry within, increased the dreary effect
of the tempest without; and its fury seemed
the greater, from very contrast with the
beautiful evening which had preceded it.

The Earl, like other men of his time, was
not without a tinge of superstition; and the
storm contributed greatly to increase his
irresolution.

"Being at Dunbar," says Mary in one of
her letters, "we reproached him with the
favour we had always shewn him—his
ingratitude, and all other remonstrances that
might serve to release us out of his hands;
albeit we found his doings rude, yet his
words and answers were gentle, that he
would honour and serve us.  He asked
pardon for the boldness of conveying us to
one of our own houses, constrained by love,
the vehemence of which made him set apart
the reverence which naturally he bore us as
our subject, as also the safety of his own life."

Thus far the artless Mary; but the papers
of the worthy Magister Absalom Beyer are
more full in their details.

Pale, from the hurry of the journey, and
the current of her own thoughts, Mary stood
in the centre of the hall, divested of her hat
and riding-habit, which had been drenched
by rain.  Her plain but rich dress of black
satin fell in deep and shining folds around
her figure, but presented nothing to indicate
her rank; for, save her amber beads, her
gold crucifix, and celebrated diamond ring,
she was without other ornament than her
own bright auburn hair.  In some degree
damp and disordered, it fell in heavy braids
upon her neck, which, on her ruff being
removed, contrasted by its delicate whiteness
with her black satin dress.

Bothwell had hurriedly thrown aside his
wet armour, and assumed a manteau, or
robe of scarlet, which was trimmed with
ermine, and usually worn by knights upon
state occasions; and it lent additional dignity
to his towering figure, as, with a beating
heart, he approached Mary, and welcomed
her to the castle of Dunbar.

Her eyes were full of enquiry, and her
mouth, half-opened, displayed all her
beautiful teeth; and Bothwell, dazzled and
intoxicated, dreaded only that his own eyes
might too soon reveal the passion which
now, when he gazed upon its object, made
every scruple to vanish.

"And now, Lord Earl," said the Queen
gravely, but with a slight tinge of her usual
playfulness, "for what have we had this
terrible ride to Dunbar, passing in our
hurry even the gates of our own palace and
capital?  Now, say—for what didst thou
bring me here?"

"To say, madam, that I love you with
other sentiments than those a subject bears
a sovereign," replied the Earl, as he pressed
her hand to his heart, for at the end of that
vast hall they were almost alone.  "Oh! thou
too winning Mary," he added, in his low and
most persuasive tones; "I have long adored
thee, and with a love surpassing that of men."

Starting back a pace, the queen withdrew
her hand; her brow crimsoned, and her
flashing eyes were firmly bent on Bothwell.

"Lord Earl," she replied, in a voice that
trembled between anger and dread, "what
is this thou hast dared to do?"

"To love thee—is it a crime?"

"No, if it be such love as I may receive;
but such is not thine, Lord Earl."

"Oh! visionary that I have been!" exclaimed
the astonished noble, as he clasped
his hands; "and to a dream have I given
up my soul, my peace, my honour!  Oh,
madam! shew me some way in which I may
yet farther prove the ardour of this passion,
of which thou art the idol!  Give me sufferings
to be borne—difficulties to surmount—dangers
to encounter; shew me battles to
fight and fortresses to storm.  Didst thou
wish it, I would invade England to-morrow,
and carry fire and sword even to the gates
of York; for five hundred knights and ten
thousand horsemen follow my banner."

"*Je vous remercie!*" exclaimed Mary, with
irony, as she turned away—"I thank thee,
Lord Earl; but ere I go to war with my good
cousin Elizabeth, I must punish my rebels at
home."

"Oh, madam! thou, to win whose love I
have dared so much—thou, the object of my
boyish dreams and manhood's bold ambition—towards
whom I have ever been borne by an
irresistible and inevitable tide—the sure, dark
current of fatality—hear me?  But look not
upon me thus, for an aspect so stony will
wither my heart."

"Lord Bothwell," replied the Queen gravely;
"thou deceivest thyself with a volume
of sounding words, but seek not to delude
me, too.  Till morning, I will rest me in this,
my castle of Dunbar; and to-morrow in
Holyrood will seek a sure vengeance for the
raid of to-night."

"Sayest thou so, madam?" replied the
Earl, whose proud heart fired for a moment
at her scorn; "then thine will be the greater
remorse."

"Remorse? *mon Dieu!*" said Mary, laughing.

"Ah, madam! why didst thou encourage
me to love thee?"

"I encourage you!" reiterated the Queen
with astonishment.  "Mother Mary! thou
ravest.  Never! never!  I needed not to
encourage men to love me."

"Thou didst so to me, madam.  By God's
death! thou didst; and it was cruel to inspire
me with a passion which thou couldst not
return."

"Thou hast mistaken my too affable manner,"
replied the Queen; "but I will not
stoop to defend myself before thee,
presumptuous vassal!"

Bothwell's spirit now fell as the queen's
rose; for he felt certain that, should she
continue in this mood, he was lost.

Ambition and policy supplied him with
that eloquence, of which, perhaps, the excess
of his romantic passion might have deprived
him; and his voice, ever persuasive and
seductive, poured all his practised blandishments
like a flood upon her ear.  Borne
away by the tide of feeling, he painted his
torments, his ardour, his long-treasured love,
his stifled despair; and Mary listened with
pity and interest, for her heart was the
gentlest of the gentle; and she saw in him a
handsome and gallant noble, who had drawn
his sword in her service when a whole
peerage held aloof—who had shed his blood to
uphold her authority—and who had lately
suffered deeply (so she thought) by the mere
malevolence of his enemies; but not one
glance even of kindness would she bestow
upon him.

Even the bond signed by those reverend
prelates, whom she almost worshipped—those
powerful peers, whom she sometimes
respected, but more often feared—and that
politic brother, whom she had ever loved
better than herself—even that document
was urged upon her in vain.  It served
but to increase her anger, and she told
Bothwell she "could never, never, love him!"

"Madam, madam, repulse me not!  Oh,
thou knowest not how long, how deeply,
I have loved thee!"

"Summon my attendants!  This night I
will rest me here; but," she added threateningly,
"to-morrow is a new day; and thou,
Lord Earl, mayest tremble when I leave
Dunbar!"

"Madam," replied the Earl proudly, but
sadly, "from the hour my eyes first opened
on the light, I have never trembled; and
now I swear to thee, by the joys of heaven
and the terrors of hell, thou shalt NEVER
leave Dunbar but as the bride of Bothwell!"

And turning, he retired abruptly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CRY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CRY.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd;
   |  She is a woman, therefore may be won.
   |                              *Titus Andronicus.*

.. vspace:: 2

That night, in his private apartment,
Bothwell drank deeply with Ormiston and
Bolton.

The storm still raged without; the dash of
the waves on the bluffs, their clangour in the
caverns below, and the mournful moaning
of the wind as it swept round the battlements
above, were heard incessantly; but the fire
burned merrily on the broad flagged hearth;
the hounds yawned lazily as they stretched
themselves before it; a supper of mutton
sottens, broiled capon, a solan goose, and
pout-pie, lay untouched on a buffet, which
two oak wyverns upheld on their outspread
wings.

The bright wines of Rochelle and Bordeaux
sparkled as they were poured from
great Flemish jugs into the elaborately chased
silver maizers, from which the Earl and his
friends were drinking—and drinking, as we
have said, deeply; Bolton, to drown the
memory of a deed that was likely to drive him
distracted; Bothwell, to obtain nerve for
whatever might ensue; and Hob Ormiston,
to please himself, and keep them company.
After a pause—

"Courage, brave Bothwell!" he exclaimed,
striking the Earl on the shoulder; "for thou
seemest the chosen son of the fickle little
goddess."

"Fortune has been smiling on me of late;
but, as I have told thee, I begin to scorn
her favour since the rejection of my suit by
Mary."

"All coy reluctance.  By St. Anthony's
pig! were I thou"——

"Nay, Nay!  Mary is above acting so
childishly.  But wert thou me, what then?"

"By cock and pie!  I would make her mine
ere the sun rises from the sea to-morrow."

"Peace!" said the Earl, through whose
heart there thrilled a fierce and sudden joy
as Ormiston spoke.

"Take courage; for the same day that
sees thee Duke of Orkney and Regent of
Scotland, beholds me Earl of Ormiston and
Marquis of Teviotdale; and by Tantony's
bell and bones, and pig to boot, the sooner
the better say I, for every rood of my barony,
main and milne, holm and haugh, are mortgaged
to the chin among the rascally notaries
and usurers of Edinburgh, whom the devil
confound!  What sayest thou, Bolton?
Sorrow take him! he is drunk and asleep.  Poor
fool! he hath never been himself since that
night.  Hearken," continued this ruffian,
approaching the Earl, whom it was his interest
to urge yet further on that desperate course
in which they had embarked together;
"doth not the queen and her sister, the
Lady Argyle, sleep in the chambers of the
Agnes tower?"

"Yes; so sayeth Sandy of Whitelaw, my
seneschal.  The queen is in the vaulted
chamber on the first floor; Jane of Argyle
above."

"Well!" said Ormiston, fixing his keen
dark eyes on those of the Earl.

"Well?" reiterated the Earl.

"It is folly to pause midway in the
career of ambition; and it lies with thyself
to make this woman thine; for what is she
but a pretty woman after all?  It lieth with
thyself, I say, to make her thine, to end her
scruples, and to close for ever the web thou
hast woven around her."

"Silence!" said the Earl, rising abruptly,
but immediately reseating himself; "silence! thy
villanous counsels will destroy me."

"Destroy thee!" reiterated Ormiston.
"Nay; but thy faintness of heart will now,
at the eleventh hour, destroy all those who
follow thy banner by knight's service and
captainrie; by fear of Chatelherault and
hatred of Lennox.  Let Mary once be
thine, and she dare not punish, but rather,
for the reparation of her own honour, will
be compelled to wed thee.  Think of her
alluring loveliness; and to be so near
thee—so completely in thy power.  Hah! art thou
a child—a love-sick frightened boy—to sit
there with that lackadaisy visage, when the
woman thou lovest so madly is almost
within arm's length?  Go to!  What a
miserable thing is this! to see a strong and
proud man the slave of a passion such as
thine—a love so wild, so daring, so
misdirected; his heart and soul absorbed by a
wayward woman, who perhaps secretly
prizes, though she outwardly affects to
despise, the acquisition."

"Silence, I tell thee!" replied the Earl
through his clenched teeth; but Ormiston
saw, by the deep flush in his cheek—by the
light that sparkled in his eye, and the
tremour that passed over his frame, how
deep was the impression his words had made.

"Dost thou recoil?  By St. Paul! the
safety of thine own house, and that of many
a gallant baron, depends on the measures
of this night; for to-morrow she will leave
Dunbar only to return with the royal banner
and all the crown vassals at her back.  Take
another maizer of the Rochelle, while I
leave thee to ponder over what I have said,
for the night wears apace."

"Begone, in God's name! and take Bolton
with thee, for I would be alone."

The powerful Ormiston bore away the
lieutenant of the archers as if he had been a
child, and the Earl was left to his own
reflections.

"He is right—he is right!  To hesitate is
to fall—delay is fraught with danger; and
to pause, is to be immediately overwhelmed
by the recoil of that fatality of which I have
taken the lead.  But—but—curse thee,
Ormiston! why did I listen to thee?"

He drank—again and again—to deaden
alike the stings of conscience and the whispers
of honour—to fire yet farther his insane
passion, and to make, as it were, a tool of
himself.

"Revenge!" he mused; "revenge and
ambition spur me on, till the dread of death
and the ties of honour are alike forgotten.
How irresistible has been the fatality that
has led me on, from what I was to what I am
to-night—a regicide! a traitor!  Let me not
think of it; still—still, on this hand I glut
my revenge on Morton and on Mar; on the
other, I grasp love and power like a kingly
orb.  It shall be so!" he exclaimed, after a
pause; "this night I am not myself—the
hand of Destiny is upon me."

He leaped from his chair, and threw off his
ermined manteau; exchanged his boots for
soft taffeta slippers; he laid aside the sword
and belt that girt his powerful figure; he
took his sheathed poniard in one hand, a
lighted cresset in the other, and, leaving his
apartment by a private stair which the arras
concealed, rapidly traversed the corridors and
staircases that led to the queen's apartment.

His face was haggard—his hands trembled—his
eyes were full of fire.

As he ascended softly, taking three steps
at a time, he met Ormiston, who, being well
aware of the train of thought he had fired,
was loitering near to watch the explosion.
He paused, and the blood rushed to his brow
at meeting even him at such a moment.

"Ha—whither goest thou?" he asked.

"To the tower of Black Agnes," replied
Bothwell in a husky voice, while he staggered
from his emotions, and the effects of the
wine.

"Thou darest then at last to act like a man."

"Like a fiend, if my fate wills it!  What
may I not dare now, after all I have dared
and done?  But hark!" said the Earl, as a
ghastly pallor overspread his face; "didst
thou hear?"

"What?"

"That mournful cry!"

"By the mass!  I heard only the skirl of a
wild sea-maw."

"Hah!" said the Earl, through his clenched
teeth; "comest thou from thy grave in
yonder abbey church, to scare me from my
purpose?  Avaunt! thou shalt see that I fear
thee not, and thus will trample alike on the
vengeance of heaven, the fears of hell, the
stings of conscience, and the slavish laws of
men!" and, brandishing his cresset, he sprang
up the staircase and disappeared.

Black Ormiston, that colossal ruffian,
drew his long sword, and retired into a
shadowy part of the corridor to keep watch and
ward.  The storm still rang without, though
its fury was lessened, and coldly the fitful
moonlight gleamed upon the frothy waste of
waters that boiled around the caverned rocks.
It shone at times through the strong iron
gratings of the staircase window, and glinted
on the dark face, the keen eyes, and bushy
mustaches of the watcher, who ever and anon
put forth his head to listen.

Still the wind howled—the rain pattered
and hissed at intervals, and the mews shrieked
like evil spirits as they were swept away on
the skirts of the hurrying blast; but,
lo! there came a cry from the upper chambers
of that strong Saxon tower, that gave the
listening bravo a shock as of electricity.

A fainter succeeded, and a cold and sinister
smile spread over the face of Ormiston. \* \* \* \* \*





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.. _`HANS' PATIENCE IS REWARDED`:

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   CHAPTER XIV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   HANS' PATIENCE IS REWARDED.

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..

   |  While shunn'd, obscured, or thwarted and exposed,
   |  By friends abandon'd and by foes enclosed;
   |  Thy guardian council softens every care,
   |  To ease soothes anguish, and to hope despair.
   |                                          *Richard Savage.*

.. vspace:: 2

The English pirate still lay in the offing
at the mouth of the estuary, and honest Hans
Knuber, who, like all the skippers of that
time, was his own merchant and supercargo,
dared not put to sea; and each fine sunny
day, while the fair wind blew down the river
from St. Margaret's Hope, he trod his little
deck to and fro, with his hands stuffed into the
pockets of his chocolate-coloured small-clothes,
his Elsinore cap pulled well over his red
eyebrows, and consoling himself by praying
to St. Mungo (who once had voyaged in these
waters), and by swearing many a round oath in
guttural Norse at the obnoxious Englishman,
whose broad lateen sails, dark brown at
sunrise, and snow-white at sunset, were always
visible, as he cruised under the lee of the May,
that beautiful isle of old Saint Adrian.

Meanwhile the sunny month of May approached,
and when Hans thought of the good
prices his cargo of wheat and malt would
bring in the market of Kiobenhafen, his
vexation increased hourly; and every morning he
solemnly gave over the Englishman to the
devil and the jormagundr, or great sea-snake,
that lies coiled round the foot of the north
pole, and makes the whirlpool of Lofoden by
wagging its tail.

During this, by the strength of his constitution
and the care of Martin Picauet, Konrad
recovered strength daily.  He shook off
the torpor that weighed upon his spirit; and,
while he endeavoured to efface the image of
Anna from his memory, it was evident to
Hans Knuber (and *he* was no subtle love
casuist), that the prospect of returning to
Norway and meeting her again, contributed
more than all the skill of the queen's
apothegar to make him a new man.

And though, at times, when bluff Hans
would thump him between the shoulders,
and drink to Anna's health and his success,
in their native dricka or brown Scottish
beer, he was wont earnestly to assert, that
were she queen of all Scandinavia, from the
Naze of Norway to the Isles of Lofoden, he
could not, and would not, wed her, after all
that had passed; and he felt so: for now,
deadened a little by absence, by bitter
recollection, and the excess of his first despair,
there was at times something of indignation
mingled with his memory of her.  At others,
all his old tenderness would painfully revive,
and come gushing back like a flood upon
his heart; and she was then remembered
only as the Anna of his boyhood's days—the
Anna of that early love, which had first been
told in whispers and confusion among the
druid groves of Aggerhuis.

From time to time he heard tidings of
Bothwell's daring deeds, but all, of course,
distorted or discoloured by the malevolence
of the narrators; for in that early age, when
newspapers were unknown, the only means
of intelligence were the "common bruit," as
rumour was named; and the simple Norseman,
who knew nothing of statecraft, of
lawless ambition, the lust of power, and the
boldness of such a spirit as Bothwell, heard
with astonishment how he had slain the
king of the land, by blowing his palace, with
all his court and attendants, to the number
of thousands, his guards, grooms, and horses,
into the air; how he had seized the queen
and crown; and how he had strangled the
young prince before her eyes, because she
had refused to marry him; and of how he
had imprisoned her in chains in a dark
dungeon, where her food was bread and
black beer; and, assuming the sceptre, had
seated himself on the throne.  Poor Hans
trembled for his cargo of malt when he
heard of these terrible passages, prayed to
St. Tradewell of Orkney, and wished himself
safe at home.

He and Konrad knew not how common
was the stratagem of seizing the Scottish
sovereign in those days, and that the seizure
of Mary had twice before been attempted—once
by the old Earl of Huntly, and once by
her brother Moray, on his rebellion in 1565;
and consequently, had Mary viewed Bothwell
with any favour, there had been no
necessity for his wooing her at the head of
a thousand horse.

Meanwhile, Hans waited anxiously the
arrival of those French galleys, which at
times, under the pennon of the Chevalier
de Villaignon, made their appearance in the
Scottish firth—for Scotland had then but six
or eight ships for military purposes, under the
pennons of David Wood, Sir Edmund Blackadder,
Thomas Dixon, and Edward Robertson,
who (though Buchanan styles them
"pirates of known rapacity") were Scottish
sea-officers, and vassals of the Lord High
Admiral.  These ships were then in the
Western seas; thus, the pirate of Hull,
which was the bane of Hans' existence, lay
there unmolested, like a wolf waiting for his
prey, and the fishers from the New haven
daily brought terrible accounts of her crew;
how they were plundering the coast about
Crail—how they cruised with a man hanging
at each yard-arm—how her poop lanterns
were human skulls—and the skipper was
said to be the devil himself; for he came
ashore every night, not in his jolly-boat,
like any other respectable shipman, but in
his broad beaver inverted on the water, to
attend the witches of Pittenweem, who held
the meeting in the weem, or great cavern,
below St. Mary's priory; and thus poor
Hans was denied the hope of escaping even
in the night, by creeping along the shore,
under the brows of Kincraigie and Elie-ness
on the north, or by the broad and beautiful
bay of Preston on the south; and so the
time wore on—the month of May was
passing—and still the *Skottefruin* of Bergen lay
off the New haven, with her canvass bent,
her brown sides and curved deck blistering
in the summer sun.

At last there came tidings that the high
admiral was about to put to sea, and that
five Scottish frigates were anchored near his
castle of Dunbar.  Upon this, the pirate
disappeared, and Hans Knuber rubbed his
eyes again and again, one morning, to assure
himself that the offing was clear.  Then,
impatient to bend his course homeward, he
took immediate advantage of the gentle
summer breeze that blew from the western
hills, and spread his canvass on a beautiful
morning in May—though a Friday, of all
days in the week, by ancient superstition,
the most unpropitious for putting to sea.

Then, with a heart that grew lighter as
the Scottish mountains lessened in the
distance, Konrad hailed the blue sky and the
dark ocean; for he knew that, when land
again was visible, it would be the pine-covered
hills and thunder-riven cliffs of his
native Norway.





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.. _`THE LEGEND OF ST. MUNGO`:

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   CHAPTER XV.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LEGEND OF ST. MUNGO.

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..

   |  A famous sanct St. Mungo was,
   |    And ane cantye carle was he;
   |  He drank o ye Molendinar burne,
   |    Quhan he oouldna better prie!
   |                              *Ballad.*

.. vspace:: 2

"Mass!" said Hans Knuber to Konrad,
as they walked to and fro one day on the lee
side of his quarter-deck; "we have voyaged
prosperously.  I knew I should not implore
the aid of good St. Mungo for nought; though,
poor man! his work was like our anchorage in
yonder firth—like to have no end."

"Thou seemest ever in a rare mood now,
Hans;" replied Konrad; "but what made
St. Mungo thy particular patron, and how came
it that the work of so holy a man was never done?"

"Why, Master Konrad, 'tis a long story,
which I heard from a certain old friar when
my crayer was once discharging her cargo at
the ancient Stockwell bridge of Glasgow.  I
care not if I tell it thee to wile away an hour
or so; so here cometh like a rope out of the
coil, with a wanion on it!—the story I mean,
not the saint—the Lord forbid!  It happened
somewhere about the time that Erick Blodiaxe
was among us here in Norway—the year
530—a long time ago, Master Konrad."

We here present the legend, not in the
words of honest Hans, but as we find it in
the MSS. of Magister Absalom, who has
entitled it,

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center

   The Legend of St. Mungo.

.. vspace:: 1

In the days when Eugene III. was king of
Scotland, and Lothus ruled the race of the
Picts, there was a certain holy woman who
dwelt in a cavern on the shore of the river
Forth, above where the ruins of the Roman
invaders overlooked the mouth of the Carron.

The place was then all desolate, and the
land was covered with wood from the dark
summit of the distant rock of Stirling, where
there frowned the fragments of a Roman
tower, to the yellow shore of the river, where
the rippling waves rolled up in all their
echoing loneliness.

The only traces of men near her dwelling
were a circle of stones—large and upright; in
the centre lay one whereon the Druids of
other times, on the first day of every ninth
year, had sacrificed to Odin a foeman taken in
battle; and to that mysterious circle, there
yet came more than one white-bearded believer
in his wild pagan faith to adore the
morning sun, as he arose from his bed in the
shining eastern sea.  Where a busy town
now stands, a few squalid huts, built of
turf, and mud, and bows freshly torn from
the pine woods, straggled up the rough
ascent; and among them grazed a herd of
wild cattle, watched by wilder-looking men,
half naked and half clad in skins and coats
of jointed mail, armed with bows and clubs,
long reedy spears, and shields of black bull's
hide; while their hair, long, yellow, and
uncombed, flowed like horse-manes from
beneath their caps of steel.

These were Scottish warriors, who had
come on a hunting expedition from their
native wilds in the west of Braidalbyn, to
drive the deer in the woods of the Pictish
race; for Lothus the Just was then at peace
with Eugene.

The Scottish prince had wearied of hunting;
he had tarried many days among the
vast forests that bordered on Bodoria, and
more than a hundred noble stags, and a
score of the snow-white bulls of Caledonia,
had fallen beneath the spears of his huntsmen.

It chanced that on Beltane morning, a
beautiful white deer, scared from the mountains
by the beal-fires that were lit on their
summits, passed the young king, as slowly,
dreamily, and alone, he rode along the
sandy shore of that broad river, whose
glassy surface had been unploughed by a
keel since the galleys of Rome had, a hundred
years before, quitted, and for ever, their now
desolate harbours at Alauna and Alterva.
It bounded close by him, lightly and gracefully
as a spirit, and disappeared into a
gloomy weem or cavern, up to the mouth of
which the white-edged waves were rolling.

He sprang from his horse, threw its bridle,
which was massive with brazen ornaments,
over the branch of a tree, and, grasping his
short hunting-spear, advanced fearlessly into
the cavern; but he had not gone ten paces
before his steps were arrested, and, removing
his steel cap, which was encircled by the
rude representation of an ancient diadem,
he knelt before St. Thena, the recluse of
that desert, and as yet nameless, solitude.

No man knew from whence St. Thena
came; she was the daughter of a distant
race, and her beauty, which was very great,
had doubtless made her seek the wilderness,
that there, separated from the temptations of
the world, she might dedicate her days to
God.  For years her food had been barley
bread and a few wild-beans, to which, in
times of great scarcity, she added a little
milk, and now and then a small fish, when
the receding waves left it on the shore near
her cavern.  Her prayer was continual, and
her tears often flowed for the benighted
and still Pagan state of many of her
countrymen.  She was good and gentle, and her
face, which was seldom seen (for, like her
form, it was enveloped in her long sackcloth
garment), was said to be one of wondrous
beauty.  Many feared but more loved her;
and the wild huntsmen, and wilder warriors,
when they tracked either the foe or the red
deer, through the vast woods or along the
desert shores of that far-winding river,
avoided to disturb the recluse, and blessed
her peaceful life, after their own rude fashion.

The fame of her virtue spread abroad;
and through all the land of King Lothus,
from the waters of the Tay to those of the
Abios, among the northern Saxons, she
became known for the austerity of her fasts
and other mortifications.  Some averred she
was the daughter of a king, and that, like
the blessed St. Ebba, she had fled to avoid
an evil marriage; others, that she was an
angel, for the man who obtained even a
glimpse of her figure, with its floating
garments, never bent the bow nor threw the
net in vain that day.

She stood with one arm around the neck
of the deer, to protect it from the intruder;
that arm was bare to the elbow, and its
whiteness was not surpassed by the snowy
coat of the fugitive.  Her face was concealed
by the overshadowing hood; a rosy little
mouth and one long ringlet of golden hair
were visible.  The young king saw with pain,
that her tender feet had no protection from the
flinty floor of the cavern—that flinty floor
whereon she knelt daily, before a rough wooden
cross, which St. Serf of Lochleven had
fashioned for her with his own holy hands.

Timidly she gazed on the young Scottish
king, whose strong and graceful form was
clad in a close-fitting hauberk of steel scales,
and a tunic of bright-coloured breacan, that
reached to his knees, which were bare; his
sandals were covered with plates of polished
brass, and were plaited saltirewise to within
six inches of his tunic.  A crimson mantle
hung from his left shoulder, and on his right
were his bow, fashioned of yew from the
forest of Glenure, and his arrows, feathered
from the wings of the swift eagles of Lochtreig.

"Warrior!" said the Recluse, "spare me
this deer; it is the only living thing that
clings to me, or to which my heart yearns
in this wilderness."

"It is spared," replied the huntsman,
lowering the bright point of his spear; "but
whence is it, gentle voice, that so much
beauty and goodness are hidden from the
world; and that one so fair, so young, and
so queen-like, is vowed to this life of
austerity and seclusion."

"Because my heart told me it was my
vocation; and now, warrior, I pray you to
leave me, for I may not, and must not hold
converse with men."

"Saint Thena, thou seest that I know
thee," replied the young man gently; "I am
Eugene, the King of the fierce Scottish
tribes that dwell beyond the Grampians.
Even there, among these distant mountains,
we have heard of thy holiness and piety; and
I will bless the hour that led me to thy
cavern, for I have looked on a form that
will never be forgotten."

"And, king, what seekest thou here
among these woods?"

"The white bull with its eyes of fire, and
the great stags and wild elks of this rich
land of the Cruitnich; but say, gentle Thena,
may I not come again to have thy blessing
ere I return to the wilds and wars of my own
dark mountains in the land of the west?"

The saint paused, and the young king saw
that her bosom heaved.  Another long
golden tress fell from her dark hood, and he
could perceive, when her lips unclosed, that
her teeth were white as the pearls of his
diadem; again he urged, for an unholy
curiosity burned within him, and the poor
Recluse replied,—

"Why should I shun thee? come, yes,
and I shall bless thee; go, and I shall bless
thee likewise.  God's will be done!  I am
armed against temptation; but, O king!  I
am not above the tongue of reproach."

"Art thou not Thena, the saint, and the
holy one?" replied the young king; and,
fearful lest she should retract her promise,
he withdrew, and, still more slowly and
thoughtfully than before, pursued his way
by the echoing strand to the camp, where
his bare-kneed Dalriads were stretched on
the grassy sward, with their bucklers cast
aside and bows unstrung, wiling away the
sunny hours with bowls of blaedium, while
the harpers sang of the wars of Fingal of
Selma, and Fergus the son of Erc.

But a spell had fallen upon the Recluse, and
after the king was gone, his voice seemed to
linger in her ear, and his stately form was
still before her; with his shining hauberk,
and his bright curling locks, that glittered
in the sunlight.

The next day's eve was declining.

The sun was setting, like a circle of flame,
behind the western hills; the waters of
Bodoria rolled in light, and the bright green
leaves of its pathless shores were glittering
with the early dew, when the king, with
a bugle in his baldrick, and a spear in his
hand, again approached the cavern of
Thena.  He was alone and unattended, save
by his favourite dog; one of those
dark-eyed and deep-chested hounds of Albyn,
rough, shaggy, and gigantic, like the Bran
of other days.

He entered softly.  The saint was at
prayer, and she knelt on the bare step of
her altar, which was a fragment of the living
rock; a skull, thrown by the waves upon
the shore, was placed thereon; and above it
stood the cross of St. Serf.  The white deer,
which was asleep on the Recluse's bed of dry
leaves, sprang up on the stranger's entrance,
and cowered beside her.

Eugene paused till her orisons were over,
and gazed the while with wonder.  Her
hood had fallen back, and her long flowing
hair, which steel had never touched, fell
in luxuriance to her knees.  Reflected from
the glassy waters of the river, a ray of the
setting sun entered the cavern; her tresses
shone in light, and she seemed something
ethereal, for they glittered like a halo of glory
around her.  The young king was intoxicated;
and a deep sigh escaped him.

It startled the Recluse, and as she turned,
a glow of shame, perhaps of anger, overspread
her beautiful countenance.

The king implored her forgiveness.

And the gentle St. Thena forgave him;
and in token, gave him a ring which she had
that morning found upon the shore; and
the king vowed to offer up a prayer for the
donor, whenever he looked upon it.

Again and again the young king came to
visit the fair inmate of that lonely cavern.
After a time she ceased to chide his visits;
and though she wept and prayed after his
departure, and vowed to fly from him into
the wild-woods that covered the howe of the
Lowland Ross, she still lingered; and thus,
day by day, the spell closed around her, and,
day by day, the king came to lay the
unwished for, and unrequested, spoils of the
chase at her feet, until St. Thena learned to
welcome him with smiles, to wreathe her ringlets
with her white fingers, to long for evening,
and to watch the fading sunlight as it died
on the distant sea—yea, to watch it with
impatience, but not, as in other days, for
the hour of evening prayer.

It was surely a snare of the evil one to
throw a handsome and heedless young prince
in the path of this poor recluse, who had
neither the power of St. Dunstan, when the
fell spirit came to him in his cell at
Glastonbury, nor the virtue of St. Anthony, when
he tempted him so sorely in the old sepulchre
wherein he dwelt at Como.  Nothing short
of a blessed miracle could have saved her,
and no miracle was wrought.

Her good angel covered his face with his
wings, and St. Thena fell, as her mother Eve
had fallen before her......

On his caparisoned horse, with all the
bells of its bridle jangling, the wicked young
king rode merrily along the sandy shore of
the shining river; and the red eyes of his
great hound sparkled when he hallooed to the
dun deer, that on the distant ridges were
seen against the western sky, for it was
evening now.  Thus merrily King Eugene
sought the camp where his warrior huntsmen,
impatient at his tarrying so long in the
land of the wheat-eaters, muttered under
their thick beards that waved in the rising
wind, and pointed to the blue peak of the
distant Benlomond, that looked down on
the lake, with all its wooded isles—the lake
where the fish swam without fins, the waves
rolled without wind, and the fairies dwelt on
a floating islet.

St. Thena was very sad.

A deep grief and a sore remorse fell upon
her; she confessed her errors to good St. Serf,
who dwelt on an isle of the lonely Leven,
and the saint blessed and absolved her,
because she had sinned and repented.  Daily
she prayed—yea, hourly—for the forgiveness
of God; that the youth might return no
more; and, though he had seduced her
from her vows to heaven, that his presence
might not be permitted to disturb her sincere
repentance.

But he came not; war had broken out on
the western hills of Caledonia, and, leaguing
with Dovenald of Athole, Arthur, the son
of Uther Pendragon, was coming with his
white-mantled Britons against the
bare-knee'd Dalreudini; and hastening to his
home, where the seven towers of Josina
look down on the mountains of Appin, King
Eugene returned to St. Thena no more.
Her remorse was bitter; but time, which
cureth all things, brought no relief to her,
for she found that she had become a mother;
and there, unseen in that lonely cavern,
gave birth to a boy—the son of a Scottish
king; and when she laid him on her bed of
soft leaves and dried grass, she thought of
the little child Jesus, as he lay in the
manger at Bethlehem, and thought herself
happy, vowing the child to the service of
God as an atonement for her own sin.

And, lo! it seemed to her as if, for a time,
that the same star which shone above
Bethlehem sparkled on the pure forehead of the
sinless babe, and from that moment the heart
of St. Thena rejoiced.  All the mother gushed
upon her troubled soul, and she would
have worshipped the infant, for it was a
miracle of beauty—and its feet and hands,
they were so tiny and so rosy, she was never
tired of kissing them, and bedewing them
with her tears.

That night she felt happy, as, nestling
beside her tame deer, the poor recluse
hushed her babe to sleep, and covered its
little form with her only garment, that it
might not hear the wind mourning in those
vast forests that overshadowed the shore,
where the waves of the eternal sea were
breaking in their loneliness.

I have said that Lothus was king of the
land: he dwelt on the opposite shore, which
he called Lothian, from himself.  Now it
chanced that a daughter of this king,
attended by a train of maormars and ladies
on horseback, came to visit St. Thena, the
fame of whose holiness had spread from the
rising to the setting sun.  This princess, who
was soon to be espoused by Eugene king of
the Scots, was a proud and a wicked woman.
St. Serf had recently converted her from
Paganrie to the blessed faith; but her
secret love yet lingered after the false gods
of her fathers, and she still (as in her
childhood) worshipped the crystal waters of a
fountain that flowed at her father's palace
gate; for her mother was of the tribe of the
Lavernani, who dwelt on the banks of the Gryfe.

Dismounting with softness and fear near
the cavern, the princess paused a moment to
have her attire adjusted, that she might
over-awe the poor recluse by the splendour of its
aspect.  According to the fashion of the
Pictish virgins, her flaxen hair flowed over
her shoulders; her tunic was of scarlet cloth,
and reached to her sandals; her mantle was
of the yellow linen then woven by the
distant Gauls, and it was fastened on her right
shoulder by a shining beryl—an amulet of
great virtue, which had been given to her
mother by the last arch-druid of the Lavernani,
and, filled with the vain thought of
these things, she sought the presence of
St. Thena.  She was sleeping.

Softly the princess drew near, and, lo! she
saw the babe that slept in the bosom of the
recluse, and uttered a cry of spite and anger.
St. Thena awoke, and, while her face
reddened with modest shame, she raised one
hand to shield the child, and the other in
supplication.

"Hypocrite that thou art!" exclaimed
the half Pagan princess, "is it for *this* that
thou dwellest in caverns and lonely places,
like the good druids of our forefathers!
Truly it was wise of thee; for thy deeds
require the cloak of darkness and obscurity.
Ha!" she continued scornfully, seeing that
the saint wept, "dost thou weep in contrition
for thine abominable hypocrisy, or in
terror of the punishment it so justly merits,
and which I may mete out to thee?  And is
it to visit such as thee that I have endured
so much in journeying through wild places,
by pathless woods and rocky rivers?  Ha! if
such as thou art a priestess of the Christians'
triple God, I say, welcome again be
those of Him who rideth on the north wind,
and whose dwelling-place is in yonder
glorious sun, which we now see rising from
his bed in the waters."

This imperious lady, as a mark of disgrace,
then ordered the beautiful hair of
St. Thena to be entirely cut off, and
committed to the winds, that the birds might
line their nests with it; and she further
commanded her Pagan followers to place
the poor recluse and her infant in a crazy
little currach, or boat of wickerwork and
deerskin, and commit them to the waters
of the great river, that they might be borne
to the distant sea.

The boat was old and decayed; it had
been used in war, and flint arrows and spears
had pierced its sides of skin.  A human
head and shoulders dried in the wind, and
tanned with the bark of the oak-tree,
ornamented its prow.  Long ringlets of fair
Saxon hair waved about its shrunken ears,
and two clam-shells filled its hollow eyelids;
it was a horrible and ghastly companion,
and, when night came on, seemed like a
demon of the sea, leading the fallen saint
to destruction.

Endlong and sidelong, the sport of the
waves and the current, the boat drifted
down the broad Bodoria; the sun set behind
the hills of the west, and its last rays
faded away from the mountain peaks that
look down on the valley of Dolour, and the
waters of Sorrow and Care.  The sky grew
dark, and the shores grew darker; there were
no stars, but the red sheet lightning gleamed
afar off, revealing the rocky isles of the
widening estuary.  Still the boat floated on,
darkly and silently; and, resigned to her
fate, and pouring all her soul in prayer—but
prayer only for the poor infant that nestled
in her bosom—St. Thena, overcome with
weariness, after a time sank to sleep; and
then, more than ever, did her good angel
watch over her.

When she awoke, the sun had risen again;
there was no motion; the little bark was
still.  Thena looked around her.  The
currach was fast, high and dry, upon a sandy
beach; on one side, the broad and glassy
river was flowing past; on the other, were
the green and waving woods of Rosse.[\*]  An
old man, with long flowing garments, and a
beard of snow that floated in the passing
wind, approached; and in his bent form,
and the cross-staff on which he leant, she
recognised St. Serf of the Isle, and hurried
to meet him, and implore his blessing on her
babe.  Then the good man blessed it, and
taking a little water from a limpid fountain that
poured over a neighbouring rock, he marked
its little forehead with the cross, and called
the babe *Mungo*—a name which, he prophesied,
would become famous in future times.

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[\*] Fife, so called as it lay between the
Tay and Forth; hence *Kinross*
and *Culross*, the head and back of Rosse.

.. vspace:: 2

And there, in that lonely place, where the
fountain ran, the mother built a cell, where
she dwelt in holiness, rearing her boy for
the service of God; there she died in the
odour of sanctity, and there she was interred;
and above her grave her son built an oratory,
which is called, even unto this day, by
the burghers of Culross, the chapel of St. Mungo.

His mother's feast is the 18th of July, in
the Scottish calendar.

Reared by St. Serf, and trained up in the
way he was to pursue, the little boy, who
imitated that man of God in all things,
became, as he waxed older, a pattern of
Christian humility and piety; and those hours
which were not spent in labouring with
his hands, that he might have food and
raiment to bestow on the sick, the aged,
and the poor, (for he called the poor the
children of God,) he spent in prayer for the
sins of men; and long after the blessed Serf
had passed to the company of the saints, who
are in heaven, the young man had waxed
tall and strong, stately in figure and
beautiful in face; but the fame of his goodness
and sanctity exceeded even those of his
pastor, until the simple people of the
land, who knew not he was the son of
their king, began to assert that his birth
had been miraculous.

Now, after many days of deep meditation
in the dark woods of Rosse, and of prayer at
the shrine of his sainted mother, for her
intercession and support, the young man took
the staff of St. Serf, and set forth on a
pilgrimage to convert the benighted heathens
of the south and west; for there were many
still in Mercia and the land of the Deirii, who
in their secret hearts worshipped fountains
that sprung in lonely places, or made human
sacrifices in the depths of forests, and lit
Beltane fires on the lofty hills in honour of the
rising sun; and so, moved by these things,
St. Mungo gave the little he possessed to the
poor, and, undeterred by the terrors of the
journey, by the hostile tribes of savage men,
and the equally savage denizens of the vast
forests that covered the plains and mountains
of Caledonia, the prowling wolves, the howling
bulls, the grisly bears and ravenous boars,
he went forth to teach and baptize, to
convert and to save.

His under garment was sackcloth; his
upper was the white skin of a sheep; his head
had no other covering than his own fair hair,
which curled upon his shoulders and mingled
with his beard.

In that age there was no money in the land,
save the old coins of the Roman invaders,
which the women wore as amulets, and so
the saint took no care for his sustenance.  He
had ever eternity before him; in the morning
reflecting that he might not see the night, in
the night reflecting that he might not see the
morning.  The acorns and the wild herbs of
the forest were his food; a little water in the
hollow of his hand quenched his thirst; and
he regretted the time spent in these necessities,
as so much taken from the service of his
Master.  He travelled throughout the whole
isle of Britain, preaching, and taking no rest;
hence cometh the old proverb—Like the work
of St. Mungo, which never was done.

Now the fame of his preaching went far
and wide, throughout the length and breadth
of the land, till King Eugene in his distant
castle of Dunolli, on the mountains of Midlorn,
heard of the fame of St. Mungo, and
dedicated to him an island in western Lochleven,
which still bears his name, and it became
the burial-place of the men of Glencoe, who
name it *Eilan Mundh*, or the Island of
St. Mungo.  But Eugene knew not that the
saint was his son, and as little did his queen,
(with whom he lived in continual strife,)
suppose that he was the same little boy,
whom, with his mother, in that wicked
moment of wrath and pride, she had committed
to the waters of Bodoria; and tidings
came that he was preaching and teaching
the four gospels in the kingdom of Strathclyde,
where he was daily bringing into the
fold of God those red-haired Attacotti, who
were said to be worshippers of fire and eaters
of human flesh.  He brought them to
repentance and a horror of their ways; they
levelled the stones of Loda, the altars of their
wickedness, and destroyed the temples of
their dreadful idols.  He baptized them in
thousands at a little stream that meandered
through a plain to pour its waters in the
Clyde.

To the saint it seemed that this was like
the place where his mother lay; and there
he built a bower among the alder-bushes,
and rested for a time from his pious labours.

Now, about this time, it chanced that the
ring which St. Thena had found upon the
shore was the occasion of much discord
between Eugene and his Pictish queen; for,
having bestowed it upon her as a gift at
Yule-tide, she had lost it, and thereby
excited his jealousy.  He swore by the *black
stones of Iona*, the great oath of the Gael,
that she should die a terrible death if the
ring appeared not before the Beltane day;
and, within three days of that time, the
queen in great tribulation appeared at the
bower on the Clyde, to seek the advice and
consolation of St. Mungo; for she had not
evilly bestowed the jewel, but had lost it,
and knew not where or how; though she
dreamt that a bird had flown away with it,
and dropped it in the sea.

Though he had learned, from his mother's
prayers, of the wrong this proud queen had
done her, St. Mungo chid her not, but heard
her story benignantly; and she told him in
touching language of the king's wrath, and
the value of the ring, for it had in it a pearl
of great value: only two such were found in
the Dee—one was in that trinket, and the
other is at this hour in the Scottish diadem,
where King Eugene placed it.

St. Mungo ordered one who stood near him
to throw a baited line into the Clyde, and,
lo! there was drawn forth a noble salmon,
having in its mouth a beautiful ring.  The
queen knew it to be her own, and in a
transport of joy she vowed to found there a
cathedral church, in honour of God and
St. Mungo, who should be first bishop of that
see; and there, where the alder-bower had
stood, the great lamp of the western tribes
was founded and built, and the city that
rose around was named Glasgow; but the
spot was then, as the old Cistertian monk of
Furness tells us, made pleasant by the shade
of many a stately tree.

There, after preaching the gospel with
St. David, and turning many away from
Pelagianism, after converting all the northern
Picts, and building an abbey at Culross,
where his mother lay, St. Mungo, the first
bishop of Glasgow, passed away to the
company of the saints, on the 13th day of
January, 603, having reached the miraculous
age of a hundred and eighty-five years; and
there, in his cathedral church, we may yet
see his shrine, where many a miracle was
wrought of old, when faith was strong in
the land, and where the pious of other days
gifted many a stone of wax for the candles
at a daily mass for the repose of his soul.

In honour of St. Mungo we may to this
hour see, in the arms of the great city he
founded, the tree under which he built his
bower, with his mass-bell hanging on a branch
thereof; across its stem is the salmon with
the ring of the Scottish queen in its mouth,
and the bird that first bore it away has also
a place on that armorial tree.  Before the
Reformation, St. Mungo's head, mitred,
appeared in the dexter side of the shield; and
on an escroll are the last words of that good
man, which were a blessing upon the city
and a prayer to God that in all future time
Glasgow should *flourish*.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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Such was the tale related by the old monk
of Glasgow to Hans, who had no sooner
concluded, than he drew a hand from his
breeches pocket, and directed Konrad's attention
to a low streak of blue that, on their
lee-quarter, marked the distant Oyster-head
of Denmark, and a shout of joy rang through
the ship.





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.. _`MARY'S DESPAIR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   MARY'S DESPAIR.

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..

   |              You never loved me.
   |  And you are come to triumph o'er my sorrows,
   |  To smile upon the ruin you have made;
   |  To part——
   |                                      *Sheil.*

.. vspace:: 2

We return to Dunbar.

The sun was rising from the sea, and redly
its morning splendour shone upon the
rock-built towers of old Dunbar, as they frowned
upon the bright green ocean and its snow-white
foam.  The estuary of the Forth shone
like gold in the glory of the east; fed by the
streams from a thousand hills it there
expanded to an ocean, and its broad bosom,
dotted by fisher boats and by Flemish caravells,
swept round its rocky isles in surf, and
washed with tiny waves of silver the shells
and pebbles that bordered its sandy
margins—margins shaded by the summer woods of
Fife and Lothian, and overlooked by many a
green and many a purple peak.

One great window that lit the queen's
apartment in the Agnes Tower, overlooked
this beautiful prospect.  It was open, and
the morning breeze from the eastern sea
blew freely upon Mary's pallid cheek, and
lifted her dishevelled hair; she seemed very
desolate and broken-hearted.  She was
reclining in a large velvet chair, in the shadow
of one of the thick brocaded window curtains,
which made the corner she occupied
so dark, that to a pair of eyes which were
observing her through a hole in the arras
behind the high and canopied bed, little else
was visible than her snow-white hands clasped
before her, a jewel that sparkled in her
unbound hair, a spangle or two that glittered
on the stomacher of her disordered dress,
or among the folds of her torn veil—that
white and flowing veil, which had won for her
the romantic sobriquet of *la Reine Blanche*.

Her face was blistered by weeping; her
lips were pale; she drooped her graceful
head, and closed her blood-shot eyes, as if
oppressed by an ocean of heavy thoughts.
All that pride, energy, and indomitable
courage which had sustained her unshaken
amid a thousand scenes of outrage, insult,
and sorrow, had now deserted her, laying
her noble spirit prostrate; nothing but her
gentle nature and woman softness remained
behind.  She was then, as she touchingly
tells in one of her letters, "desolate of all
council, and separated from all female
attendance."

The very stupor of despair seemed to have
settled upon her soul; she sat still—motionless
as a statue, and nothing but the heaving
of her bosom would have indicated that she
lived.  Yesterday she seemed so full of
vivacity, so pure, so beautiful.

In this poor crushed being—this butterfly,
formed only for the light and the sunshine
of life—in this lonely and desolate
woman, with her weeping eyes, her
dishevelled hair, and torn dress, who could
have recognised the same beautiful queen
that shone so lately at Sebastian's hall, in
all the pride of royalty; and a loveliness
heightened to the utmost by magnificence of
dress; and who, only five days before, had
sat on the throne in the hall of the Scottish
estates, with the crown of the Bruce on her
brow, the St. Andrew sparkling on her
bosom, and the sceptre of the Jameses in her
hand, assenting to those laws by which we
are still governed?

"Alas, for the Queen of Scotland and of
France!" exclaims the old Magister Absalom;
"Oh, for twenty knights of that good
chivalry her grandsire led to Flodden, or of
that glittering gendarmerie that many a
time and oft had lowered their white pennons
before her at the Tilts of the Tournelles,
and on the Plains of Montmartre!"

A sound made her raise her head; the arras
rose and fell, and Bothwell stood before her.

Shame crimsoned his brow, and confusion
dimmed his eye; he felt compassion and
remorse, together with the bitter conviction
that he had gone too far to recede.  The
dreadful gulf between himself and other
men was now wider than before; but he felt
that to stand still was to sink into it and
perish.  He had yet to progress.  He knew
not how to address his victim.  Her aspect
filled him with pity, sorrow, and a horror of
himself.  He knew that he had irreparably
ruined her honour, and destroyed her peace;
and this was the woman he loved!

Strange it was, that now he felt himself
alike attracted and repelled by her; but the
necessity of soothing her compelled him to
speak, and as policy ever supplied him with
words, hurriedly, gently, and eloquently
(for he too felt deeply, now when the storm of
passion had died away), he endeavoured to
console her; to declare his contrition; his
willingness to die as an atonement; and then,
stung with remorse on witnessing the agony
of her grief, he attempted to destroy himself
with his own sword, and turned her despair
into momentary terror, by inflicting on his
own person a wound, from which the blood
flowed freely.[\*]  Then he ventured to fold
her in his arms, and to kiss her pale brow
respectfully, assuring her again and again that
she was now a thousand times dearer to him
than ever.  Then, sinking on his knees, he
bowed down his head, and abjectly implored
her pardon; but Mary remained silent,
passive, speechless, cold as marble; and her
situation seemed so hopeless, so wobegone, and
irrelievable, that the Earl in despair knew not
what more to urge.  He received no answer,
and his heart trembled between love, remorse
for the past, and apprehension of the future.
"Speak, dearest madam," said he; "for
the mercy of Heaven, speak to me!  Dost
thou wish to leave Dunbar?"

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.. class:: noindent small

[\*] Whittaker.

.. vspace:: 2

"Yes!" replied Mary, rising with sudden
energy, as if all her spirit had suddenly
welled up in her breast.  "Yes!" she continued,
gathering up her dishevelled hair with
her slender and trembling fingers.  "My
train!—my people!—summon them!—I will
go"——

"Thou wilt go?" said the Earl, whose
dark eyes shone with a sad and wild
expression, "and where?"

"To Edinburgh."

"To denounce me to its purse-proud
citizens—to proclaim me at the barrier gates
and market cross of every Scottish burgh—at
the court of every European king, to be
what I am—what I shrink from contemplating.
That I am a craven knight, a perjured
peer, a rebel, and a ruffian!  Ha, ha!
No! hence shalt thou never go but with
Bothwell at thy bridle rein, with his banner
before, his knights around, and his
spearmen behind thee.  What has hurried me on,
step by step, in the terrible career on which
my destiny has driven me—from being the
leader of the Scottish peers, esteemed in
council as in battle, respected by mine
equals, loved by my vassals, and feared by
mine enemies—what hath made me, from
being all this, a man whose name will
perhaps be remembered in the land with
reprobation, with curses, and with bitterness—what,
but thy beauty, thy fatal beauty?  Oh,
wretched woman! a curse upon it, I say, for
it hath been the cause of all!  Fatal
sorceress, thou still smilest upon me with scorn.
In undoing thee, I have perhaps but
undone myself; though from this time our
fates and lives are entwined together; for,
bethink thee, for very dread of what may
ensue, for very shame, and for the
reparation of thine own honour, thou canst not
destroy me.  Yet can I read in thine eye,
that thou hast visions of the dungeon, the
block, the axe, the dismembered limbs, and
the severed head of Bothwell, spiked on
yonder city cross to welter in the midnight
dew, and broil in the noonday sun—hah!"

And, rendered half furious by the picture
his fancy conjured up, he gave her a push,
so violent that she sank down on her knees,
trembling and in tears.

Suddenly she arose again to her full height,
her dark eyes flashing, and her proud
nostrils appearing almost to dilate with the
anger that curled her beautiful lip; she
gave him one full, bright glance of reproach
and anger, as she attempted to sweep from
his presence; but the Earl firmly held her
back, and, aware of the futility of attempting
to pacify her at present, retired abruptly,
leaving her still unattended, to sorrow and
to tears.

Sir James Melville, who, as we have
elsewhere stated, had been expelled that
morning from Dunbar, relates that Bothwell's
fury compelled her every day to weep—that
she would have left him, but dared not—and
that she would have *destroyed herself*,
could she have found a knife or dagger; but
a strict watch was kept over all her actions.

And thus passed twelve long and weary
days, during which no attempt was made
by her nobles, her knights, or her people,
to relieve her.  Each man gossiped to his
neighbour of the unco' doings at Dunbar—citizens
stared stupidly at each other, and
contented themselves by marvelling sorely
where all these startling events were likely
to end.

So much of this part of our story belongs
to the chronicles of the time, that it must be
glanced at briefly, that we may hasten to
the portion involving the fate of Konrad, and
more particularly of the great Earl himself.

How he conducted Mary to Edinburgh,
guarded by 1200 spearmen on horseback,
and compelled her to appear in presence of
the new chancellor and the nobles, and there
to declare herself at full liberty—how he
had the dukedom of Orkney, a marquisate,
and other titles, conferred upon himself—and
how he caused the banns of marriage
between Mary and himself to be proclaimed
in the great church of St. Giles, while she
remained a captive in the castle of
Edinburgh, which was garrisoned by his own
vassals, and commanded by Sir James Balfour,
the holder of the bond of blood, the
brother of the Lord of Noltland, and of
Robert Balfour, proprietor of the lonely
house of the Kirk-of-Field—are known to
every historical reader.

Still Mary withheld her consent to the
marriage, for which the impetuous Earl
made every preparation with determined
deliberation.

A woman—a widow—a catholic—without
a husband—she could never have governed
Protestant Scotland, crowded as it was with
rapacious peers and turbulent serfs, inured
to blood and blows; and now, after all that
had occurred at Dunbar, and after being
so completely abandoned by her people to
Bothwell's mercy for twelve weary days, no
foreign prince, no Scottish noble or gentleman
of honour, and indeed no man, save he
who had wronged her, would seek her hand.
She had but two misfortunes to choose
between; on one hand to lose her crown, her
liberty, perhaps her life; on the other, to
accept of Bothwell, whom (though she never
loved, and now abhorred,) she knew to be
devoted to her, and as crafty as he was
gallant and bold; and might, if he chose, wrest
the sceptre from her grasp; for, by the
number of his vassals, and the strength of his
fortresses, he was one of Scotland's most
powerful peers.  Should she wed him,
acquitted as he had been by the peers and
prelates of the crime of which he had been
charged, and recommended by these same
reverend prelates and statecrafty peers, with
her brother at their head, to her earnest and
favourable notice, a new dawn might shine
upon her gloomy fortune.  She knew that
he had made every preparation for their public
nuptials; and that *bongré malgré* she must
wed, but still she withheld her consent until
the very night before, and then, but not till
the fatal promise was given.

In that wide and gloomy flood of desperation
through which she struggled, her destroyer
was the last plank to whom she could
cling; and, abhorrent as he was to her now,
she knew that he loved her deeply, and that
sad, and terrible, and guilty, were the ties
which bound them together, and would link
their names in one to the latest posterity.





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.. _`THE BRIDAL AT BELTANE`:

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   CHAPTER XVII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BRIDAL AT BELTANE.

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..

   |  Slowly at length with no consenting will,
   |  And eyes averse, she stretch'd her beauteous hand,
   |  To that detested bridegroom, and received
   |  The nuptial blessing, to her anguish'd heart,
   |  Worse than a malediction.  Then burst forth
   |  Grief impotent.
   |                          *Attila, King of the Huns.*

.. vspace:: 2

Now came sweet May with its flowers and
sunshine.  Yellow buttercups sprinkled with
gold the sides of Arthur's seat, and the blue
hyacinth and the mountain-daisy unfolded
their petals on the steep slopes of Salisbury.
The mavis and the merle sang merrily in the
abbey orchards and old primeval oaks that
shaded the grey walls of Holyrood; and sheltered
by the thorn hedges that, in its ancient
garden, grew like thick and impervious
ramparts, the flowers of summer that Mary loved
so well, were all, like herself, in the noon of
their beauty and fragrance.

And now came Beltane-eve, when this soft
season of sunshine and perfume was welcomed
by those ancient merry-makings of which we
read in Polydore Virgil, and which were a
remnant of those joyous rites offered to the
Flora of the Romans, and the great fire-god
of the Scandinavians and the Celtæ—when
the stern and mysterious Druids of Emona
and Iona collected the dew of the morning,
and sprinkled it on the fair-haired savages of
Caledonia, as they blessed them in the name
of the god of fire—the Beal of Scandinavia,
and the Baal of the Moabites and Chaldeans.

Blooming Beltane came, but not as of old;
for there was no maypole on the burgh links,
or at the abbey-cross, and no queen of the
May or stout Robin Hude to receive the
homage of happy hearts; for the thunders of
the reformed clergy had gone forth like a
chill over the land, and the same iron laws
that prevented the poor "papist" from
praying before the symbol of his redemption,
punished the merry for dancing round a
garlanded tree.

Yet there were some remnants of other
days that could not be repressed; and fires
of straw were lit in the yard of many a castle
and homestead, through which, as a charm
against witchcraft, all the cattle were driven,
amid furious fun and shouts of laughter;
while the bluff laird regaled his vassals, and
the bonneted farmer his sun-burned hinds,
on pease-bannocks and nut-brown ale.  Every
old woman still marked her Beltane-bannock
with the cross of life and the cipher of death,
and covering it with a mixture of meal,
milk and eggs, threw two pieces over her
left shoulder at sunrise, saying as she did so—

   |  "*This* for the mist and storm,
   |  To spare our grass and corn;
   |  *This* for the eagle and gled,
   |  To spare the lamb and kid."

Door-lintels were still decorated with twigs
of rowan-tree tied crosswise with red thread;
and though the idolatrous Beltane-fire blazed
on the summits of the Calton and Blackford,
(as on St. Margaret's day they do still on
those of Dairy in Ayrshire,) there was not the
same jollity in the land; for as a mist from
the ocean blights the ripening corn, so had
the morose influence of the new clergy cast
a gloom upon the temper, the manners, and
the habits of the people—a gloom that is
only now fading away, though its shadow
still lingers in the rural valleys of the south
and west.

But there is much to relate, and we must
be brief.

Encompassed by the intrigues of the Earl,
surrounded by his creatures, and overwhelmed
by the terrible situation in which
she found herself, at midnight Mary
consented to become his bride, and at four
o'clock next morning he led her into the
great hall of Holyrood, where one of his
minions, Adam Bothwell, the Protestant
Bishop of Orkney—(his new dukedom)—together
with Craig, the colleague of Knox,
prepared to officiate.

Mary was attired in her widow-weeds of
sable velvet, without other ornament than
a few diamonds, that sparkled on her
stomacher, and in her ear-rings.  Cold, placid,
still, and thoughtful, there were signs of
suffering and sorrow on her pure and open
brow, and in her deep, dark, melancholy
eyes, and there was a nun-like solemnity in
her beautiful face, that touched the heart of
Bothwell with more, perhaps, of pity than
love.

She seemed a changed and miserable woman.

A sprig of rosemary and a lily were in
her hand; the first, because of the old
superstition that it was necessary at a
wedding as denoting love and truth; the second,
because the month was that of St. Mary, and
the lily is the flower of the Virgin.  Mary
Stuart could not forget these little things,
though she accepted of a Protestant ritual
because her own Church is averse to second
marriages.

Day was breaking in the distant east, and
coldly the dull grey twilight struggled with
the lamps and wax candles that illuminated
the long and ancient hall of the palace, from
the walls of which the grim visage of many
an antique king, and many a solemn prelate,
seemed to stare starkly and desolately on
that sombre bridal group, on Bothwell's
magnificent costume, sparkling with precious
stones, on tall Ormiston, in his half
military and half gala costume, and a crowd
of adherents of the house of Hepburn,
whose dresses of velvet and satin,
enriched with embroidery and precious stones,
fluttering mantles, waving feathers, glittering
spurs, and daggers, filled up the background.

When Mary's hand touched his, the Earl
found it cold as death: it trembled.  He
thought of Darnley's quivering throat on
that terrible night, and a thrill shot through
his heart..........

The ceremony was over, and Bothwell led
forth that high-born and beautiful bride,
to win whom he had dared and done so
much.

For that hour he had perilled every thing
in this world, and the hour had come, but
there was not in his heart that fierce
triumph—that exultation and joy, he had so long
anticipated.  A deadly coldness had succeeded,
and there was a clamorous anxiety in his
breast as he looked forward to the future.

"Mary, star of heaven, and mother of God,"
prayed the poor queen, kissing the lily, as
they descended the gloomy stone staircase of
the Albany Tower; "intercede for me, that
I may be forgiven this dark sacrilege in the
month so solemnly dedicated to thee!" for,
according to the ancient usage, it is still
ominous to wed in the month of May—or
*Mary*.  Her piety was deep and fervent;
when very young she had wished to assume
the veil, that she might dwell with her aunt,
the Prioress of Rheims; happy would it
have been for her had she done so; and full
upon her heart came back the first pious
wish in that hour of humiliation and evil.

No pageants or rejoicings marked the
ill-omened bridal; not a bell was rung, nor a
cannon fired, and gloomily and in silence the
few loiterers who were abroad at that early
hour, or had never been a-bed, greeted their
sovereign, and that presumptuous peer who
had so determinedly espoused her.

That dawn, to Mary, was but the opening
of another chapter in her life of misery and
tears.

In one month from that day, Bothwell,
instead of seating himself upon the Scottish
throne, and making Black Hob an Earl,
found all his stupendous projects fade
away, like mist in the sunshine, and saw
himself a homeless fugitive, cast, like a weed,
upon the ocean of events.

The general, but somewhat curious indignation
this marriage excited among those
nobles who had *urged it* (having never had
any other object in view than the gratification
of their own greed and ambition), and
their armed confederation against Bothwell,
soon followed, for they accused him of
intending to destroy the young prince, who
was kept at Stirling by the Countess of Mar,
and whom ostensibly they rose in arms to
defend.

On this measure he was frequently urged
by Black Hob.

"Cock and pie!" that worthy would
frequently exclaim; "were this young cub
once strangled *too*, thou mightst be king of
broad Scotland, and I a belted earl."

"Tempter, begone!" replied the Earl,
grasping his poniard; "far enough hast thou
driven me on this desperate career—but
another whisper of this, and thou diest!"

The armed combination soon made the
Earl and his knights rush to arms; and, of
all who followed his banner, there were none
who hailed the approaching civil war with
greater ardour than Ormiston and Bolton.
The first, because, by a long career of
profligacy, he had utterly ruined an ancient
patrimony; the second, with a stern joy,
because he was reckless, tired of life, and
longing only for an honourable death, that
in the oblivion of the grave he might for ever
forget Mariette, and that remorse which
rendered him miserable.

But Mary's surrender to the peers, and
Bothwell's flight, frustrated their hopes for
a time.

On the hill of Carberry, within view of
the adverse lines, Mary and the Earl were
parted to meet no more; and it is recorded
that he bade her adieu with more sincerity
of sorrow than might have been expected in
one so long hardened by private and
political profligacy.

"Farewell to thee, Lord Earl!" said the
Queen kindly, for she was ever gentle;
"nathless all that hath passed, Mary Stuart
can still with kindness say farewell, and God
attend thee."

"Farewell to your grace!" replied the
Earl, as he kissed her hand with tenderness.
"Adieu, Mary! thou who hast been the light,
the hope, the pole-star of my life, and whom,
more than that life, I have held dear.  A
long good-night to thee, and all the visions
my ambition so vainly pictured, and so
ruthlessly attempted to grasp.  I go; but,
while life remains, I will bear in sad
remembrance thy goodness, thy beauty, and
thy wrongs.  I go—to exile and despair!"

And turning his horse's head, attended
only by Ormiston and Bolton, he galloped
down the hill to his castle of Dunbar, never
once daring to look back towards that fair
being whom a reverse of fortune had
delivered to his enemies; and, save a message
she sent to Denmark on her escape from
Lochleven, never once from that hour did
the name of Bothwell sully the lips of Mary.
In one week from that day he was a pirate
among the Isles of Orkney, while Mary was
a captive in the hands of the confederates,
and led through the streets of her own
capital, where—

   |  "Around her numberless the rabble flow'd,
   |  Shouldering each other, crowding for view,
   |  Gaping and gazing, taunting and reviling;
   |  Some pitying; but those, alas! how few.
   |  The most, such iron hearts we are, and such
   |  The base barbarity of human kind,
   |  With insolence and loud reproach pursued her,
   |  Hooting and railing, and with villanous hands
   |  Gathering the filth from out the common ways
   |  To hurl it on her head."





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.. _`THE WHIRLPOOL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WHIRLPOOL.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  On Norway's shore the widowit dame
   |    May wash the rocks with tears;
   |  May long, long look o'er the shipless seas
   |    Before her mate appears.

.. vspace:: 2

Tossed by adverse winds in the German
sea, the labouring crayer of Hans Knuber,
after several weeks (during which he became
more and more convinced that Nippen, the
spirit of evil, and the demons of the waves
and wind, were in league against him), made
a haven in the bleak isles of Shetland, where
they found those uddallers, who inhabited the
rude round towers and strong houses on the
bluffs and promontories that overhung the
ocean, all on the alert; for tidings were abroad
that the great Earl of Bothwell, now a fugitive
and a wanderer upon the face of the
deep, in the madness and impotence of his
wrath against his enemies, was spreading
devastation and dismay among the northern isles.

After suffering a severe repulse at the
Orcadian capital from the cannon of his old
ally, Sir Gilbert Balfour of Noltland, he
poured his fury upon the stray vessels he met
in firth and bay, giving the poor hamlets of
these half-desolate coasts to the flames, storming
the fortlets of their lords, and, like a wild
vikingr of old, spreading terror wherever
his banner was unfurled.

Hans Knuber trembled again for his cargo
of malt and beer when he heard of these
terrible doings, and without other delay than
that caused by procuring fresh water from a
certain gifted well among those dreary hills
that overlooked the sound of Balta, he bore
away for the Skager Rack; but, notwithstanding
every exertion of seamanship, whistling
most perseveringly for fair winds, and
sprinkling salt on the sea to lay the foul, the
middle of June arrived before he prepared to
enter the fiord of Christiana, and ere Konrad
saw the shore of his native province rising
from the dark blue water, and hailed those
peaks, known as the hills of Paradise, that
encircle the sea, arise before him with all
their echoing woods and snow-white cataracts.

But there even, in their native seas, the
fame and terror of the outlawed Earl had
gone before them; and many a dismasted
and many a shattered hull, with bloodstained
decks and broken hatches, rolling on the
Skager Back or stranded on the rocks of
the fiord, attested the recklessness of that
desperate noble and his followers, who were
now at war with all mankind.

"I pray to Heaven we may meet this
bold marauder, now that our keel is ploughing
our own waters," said Konrad, whose
old Norwegian spirit flashed up in his bosom
at the sight of his native hills.  "Would I
had a score of my old crossbowmen that I
left behind me at Bergen, and thou with
thy two culverins"——

"St. Olaf forefend!" rejoined Hans, hastily
hitching up his wide chocolate-coloured
inexpressibles, as he thought of his
investment in wheat and malt and tanned leather,
and the risk they would run.  "I would I
were safe under the batteries of our old
castle of Bergen, where, please Heaven and
honest Nippen, I will drop my anchor
to-night.  And now, Master Konrad, that once
again we are in sight of *Gamle Norgé*, how
meanest thou to shape thy course, and keep
to the windward of misfortune?  Dost thou
steer for the Elbe or the Weser?  There the
Lubeckers and Holsteiners are every day
playing at ding-dong with arquebuse and
caliver."

"Thou askest, Hans, what I scarcely know
how to answer.  My band of crossbowmen
will, of course, be still at Bergen, but the
king, doubtless, will have given them another
captain.  Sir Erick is in his grave; and
Anna, Heaven only knows where.  I have
nothing now to tie me to the spot I love so
well," he continued, sighing, "but many
sad and bitter memories, which are better
committed to oblivion; so, as thou sayest, I
will even wend me to the Elbe, and there
follow the fortunes of the war."

"Then be it so: I can give thee a letter
to Arnold Heidhammer, a certain burgomaster,
which may avail thee much; and if
a hundred rose nobles will be of service,
thou mayest have them.  For this cargo,
above which we are now treading—But,
ho! yonder is a sail that beareth towards us
somewhat suspiciously.  St. Olaf! but she
shot round that promontory like a sea-gull!"

Hans sprang upon one of the culverins
Konrad had referred to, and, shading his
eyes with his hand (for his fur cap was
minus a peak, and there were then no
telescopes), he peered intently at the stranger.

"Friend Hans, what dost thou make her
out to be?" asked Konrad, whose heart beat
strangely.

"A great frigate, galley rigged—with ten
culverins a-side—crossbows on her
forecastle—and hackbuts on her poop; full of men,
too—see how many helmets are glinting in
the sunshine!"

The shore was five or six miles distant.
The noonday sun shone joyously on the
bright blue sea, and full upon the snow-white
canvass of the approaching vessel,
which was bellying in the land breeze, above
the tier of brass-mouthed culverins that
peered from the red port-holes of the bow, waist,
and her towering poop and forecastle, which
were covered with a profusion of heraldic
and symbolical carving and gilding.  Her
masts were each composed of two tall spars,
having four large square sails; she had
ponderous basketed tops and poop-lanterns—a
great square sprit-sail, under which the
water that boiled against her bow was flashing,
as it wreathed and foamed in the light
of the meridian sun, and bubbled under the
counters of her towering stern.

Several men in armour were visible above
the gunnel, and their pikes glinted as she
approached, rolling over the long waves; and
there was one whose suit of polished steel
shone like silver, as he stood on the lofty
poop.

She was still above half a mile distant, and
Hans, who liked not her appearance (for he
had a mortal aversion to every thing like
cannon, or coats-of-mail, on board ship)
crowded all sail, and stood away, right up
the Fiord.  Upon this a red flash broke from
the tall forecastle of the stranger—a wreath
of white smoke curled aloft through her thick
rattlins and white canvass, and a stone
bullet, that whistled over the water, cut
Hans' foreyard in the slings, and brought a
ruin of splintered wood, and rope, and
fluttering canvass, down upon his deck.

Deprived of her head-sails, the crayer
immediately proved unmanageable; and the
stranger, spreading his broad canvass more
fully to the breeze, soon sheered ahead, and
backing his fore-yard with an air of considerable
seamanship, lay too across the bows of
the *Skottefruin*.

Poor Hans now with dismay beheld a great
foreign banner displayed; but though he
knew it not, Konrad immediately recognised
the cheverons and lions of Bothwell, and he
perceived that the figure on the bow was
the Earl's coroneted crest, a white horse's-head,
with a gilded bridle; and one glance
at the lofty sides, the grim cannon tier, and
gigantic poop of the Scottish frigate, and her
gunnels lined by pikemen and arquebusiers
in their steel caps and coats-of-mail, sufficed
to shew him that he was again completely in
the power of his ancient enemy; though by
what miracle he, who, when they left the
Forth, seemed to have all Scotland prostrate
under his hand, should thus again be a
cruiser in the Scandinavian seas, he could
not comprehend.

A small boat was lowered with a plash
into the water; a tall man in dark armour,
whose weight nearly overset it, dropped into
it, and six seamen, armed with whingers and
jedwood axes, followed, and immediately
pushed off towards the vessel of the terrified
Norwegian skipper, who stood as usual with
his hands stuffed into his chocolate-coloured
breeches, his Elsinore cap pulled over his
bushy brows, his teeth set hard, and
desperation in his eyes, viewing the approach of
this armed and unknown enemy.

The dark knight put a foot on one of the
forechain-plates, grasped the rattlins, and
vaulted on board with singular agility,
considering the bulk of his frame and the weight
of his armour.

"Cock and pie!" he exclaimed, as he
threw up his visor, and recognised both
Konrad and Hans.  "I find myself among
acquaintances here."

"And what want ye now, Sir Knight?"
said Konrad, as he threateningly grasped a
handspike, the first and only weapon that
lay at hand; "and how dare ye to bend
cannon on a ship of the Danish king, within
the Norwegian seas?"

"To the first question, Master Konrad,"
replied Ormiston, with mock deliberation,
"as to what we want, I reply, a sight of
this good skipper's invoice, for we mightily
lack various things since our repulse before
the harbour of Kirkwall, and an examination
thereof will save us much trouble in
overhauling a cargo which may consist of
nought else than hazel-wands and
wheel-barrows.  To the second—as to why we
dared to bend our cannon against thee,
thou hadst better ask my Lord the Earl of
Bothwell—nay, I mean James, Duke of
Orkney, who dare do just whatever pleaseth
himself on the land, and I see no reason
why he should curb his frolicsome fancies
on the open sea.  By St. Paul! skipper, thou
hast the very gloom of a Nordland bear;
but bring up thy jar of hollands—let us
drink and be friends, and then I will examine
thine invoice, for I love not trifling,
and lack time."

This formidable knight had all the air of a
man who was to be obeyed; the unhappy
Hans produced his round and capacious
leathern bottle of Dutch gin, of which
Ormiston, who had seated himself upon a
culverin, drank a deep draught, and then
handed the remainder to his boat's crew.

"Now, sirrah, for thine invoice of the
victual under these hatches; for we lack
nought else."

From a tin case, concealed in the breast
of his rough doublet, Hans, with trembling
fingers, produced from among several others
a small piece of parchment.  Ormiston
adjusted his steel glove, unfolded the invoice,
and, after viewing it in various ways, handed
it to Konrad, saying—

"I request of thee to read me this, and
read it truly for thine own sake.  By the
mass!  I never could read much at any time,
and such a cramped scrawl baffles my skill
in writing, which never went much beyond
making my mark on an Englishman's hide."

Aware of the futility of resistance, and
feeling for the agony of poor Hans, whose
all was shipped on board his crayer, Konrad
read the following invoice, which we give
verbatim from the papers of the Magister
Absalom:—

"Shippit by ye grace of God, in goode
order and weel-conditioned, by Ihone
Middiltoune, at the Timber Holfe, in and upon
ye goode shippe *Skottefruin* of Bergen,
quherof Hans Knuber is maister, now lying
in the harberie of Leith, bound for Bergen—to
saye, 113 baggs containing aucht tons, four
bollis, three lippies, and twa pecks of wheaten
flour, to be delivered at Bergen, in ye like
gude order (the act of God, the queen's
enemies of England, fire, and all other
dangeris of ye sea excepted), as customarie; and
so God send yis gude and noble shippe to
her destined port in safety.—Amen.

"At Leith, ye 23d April, in ye zeir of
our Lord 1567."

"Now God be with thee, thou dour carle!"
said Ormiston, leaping up; "thou hast
enough and to spare of the very provender
we lack most.  One hundred and thirteen
bags of wheaten flour!  St. Mary—I have
not broken a flour bannock since we left
Dunbar!  Thou must hand me over, say
fifty bags of this ware, and I will make
thee a free gift of the three-and-sixty other
bags, with the bolls, lippies, and pecks to
boot—so up with thy hatches, for our
stomachs and tempers lack no delay."

It was only on hearing this that Hans
seemed to shake oft his lethargy, and his rage
burst suddenly forth.  He seized a handspike,
and, grasping it with nervous hands, flourished
it aloft, and planted his broad sturdy feet,
which were cased in rough leather shoes,
upon the hatchway, vowing to dash out the
brains of the first man who approached it.

"Presumptuous fool!" said the gigantic
knight, laying his hand on his sword; "were
it worth while to draw, I might by one sliver
cut thee in two.  I have no wish to harm
thee; but beware, for thou hast to deal with
ruined and outlawed men, whom toil by sea—a
narrow escape from a superior force, that
hath pursued and driven us into these
waters—starvation, and Heaven knows what
more—have rendered desperate—so beware thee,
Sir Skipper, or I will hang thee at thine own
mast-head!"

"And who art thou, robber and pirate! that
I, a free trader, should unclose my
hatches at thy bidding on the open sea?"
cried Hans in broken Scottish, as he flourished
his club within an inch of the speaker's nose.

"Black Hob of Ormiston, a name that
would find an echo in bonny Teviotdale,
Master Knuber, ha! ha!"

"And what wantest thou with my goods?"

"Nay, 'tis his grace the Duke of Orkney."

"And by whom shall I be paid?"

"The lords of the secret council at
Edinburgh—ha! ha!—gif thou bringest to them
our heads, thou old sea-dog!  Mass!  Hans
Knuber, knowest thou not mine is well worth
a hundred merks of silver, and that of his
grace of Orkney two thousand pounds of
Scottish gold.  But I trifle.  Back, fellow! and
desire thy knaves to open the hatch and up
with these wheaten bags; for, by St. Mary! my
mouth waters at the thought of the bannocks."

Rendered furious by the prospect of being
jocularly plundered by marauders, for such
adventures were far from uncommon on the
ocean in those days of ill-defined liberty and
right, the long smothered passion of Hans
broke forth; and, swinging the handspike
aloft, he dealt a deadly blow at the head of
Ormiston, who without much effort avoided
it.  The stroke glanced harmlessly off his
polished helmet; but, ere it could be repeated,
he grasped the portly assailant like a child,
and with a strength that astonished Konrad,
and none more than Hans himself, lifted him
over the gunnel and dropped him into the
boat alongside, saying,—

"Thank Heaven and thy patron, Sir Skipper,
that I have not popped thee into the
sea, with a bunch of cannon-balls at thy
neck; yet for that rash blow I shall punish
thee with a severity I meant not to practise."

Other boats now came off from the Earl's
frigate; the hatches were raised, and in a few
minutes fifty bags of flour, that had grown
on the corn rigs of fertile Lothian, and been
ground in the mills of Leith, were transferred
to the possession of Bothwell, whose outlawed
crew, hollow-eyed and wolfish with long
travail, danger, and scanty fare, received them
with shouts of rapture—greeting each white
dusty sack with a round of applause as it was
hoisted on board.  Last of all, Ormiston came
off, bringing Hans Knuber and fourteen men
who composed the crayer's crew.

"Now, sirrah," said he sternly to Hans;
"lift thy pumpkin head, and behold how I
will punish thee for that dirl on the sconce
thou gavest me!"

Hans, whom rage and the shock of falling
into the boat, had reduced to a state bordering
on stupefaction, raised his heavy leaden-like
grey eyes, and gazed at his crayer.  The
sprit-sail and fore-topsail had been hastily
re-rigged and braced up—the helm lashed, to
keep her head to the wind; she was again
under sail, and, without a soul on board, was
bearing full towards a dangerous eddy, that
in those days boiled near the shore of Bergen;
and Hans, as the distance increased between
him and his vessel, gradually raised his hands
to the ears of his fur cap, which he grasped
with a tenacity that tightened as she neared
the vortex, or little moskenstrom.

The rowers paused with their oars in the
air, and looked back with curiosity and
interest; for there was something very absorbing
in the aspect of the abandoned ship, running
full tilt on the career of destruction with all
her sails set.  Onward she went, rolling over
the heavy swells caused by the waters of the
fiord meeting those of the Skager Rack; the
sun shone full upon her stern windows from
the western hills—on her white canvass and
the sparkling water that curled under her
counter—and nearer and nearer she drew to
the boiling circle, that with rapidity whirled
white and frothy under the brow of an almost
perpendicular cliff, that was overhung by an
ancient wood of drooping pine.

Drawn within its influence, and dragged
round by its irresistible current, with sails
torn, cordage snapping, and her yards flying
round like those of a windmill, she was borne
about in a circle that narrowed at every
turn—faster and faster, deeper and deeper, round
she went, till in one wild whirl, with a sound
that came over the water like the sob of a
drowning giant, she vanished—sucked into
the watery profundity of the abyss!





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.. _`BOTHWELL AND THE GREAT BEAR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   BOTHWELL AND THE GREAT BEAR.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  And do not fear the English rogues,
   |    Nor stand of them in awe;
   |  But hold ye fast by St. Andrew's cross
   |    Till ye hear my whistle blaw.
   |  Thus boarded they this gallant ship,
   |    With right good-will and main;
   |  But eighteen Scots were left alive,
   |    And eighteen more were slain.
   |                      *Old Ballad of Sir A. Barton.*

.. vspace:: 2

When Konrad with Hans Knuber, and the
fourteen Norsemen who composed his crew,
were brought on board the ship of the Earl,
they were immediately led towards him.
Completely armed, save the helmet, which
was placed upon the capstan, against which
he leaned, the handsome form of Bothwell
never appeared to greater advantage than
when among his uncouth mariners, in their
wide breeches and fur boots.  His face was
paler and more grave than when Konrad
had last seen him; his deep dark eyes were
melancholy and thoughtful; but his
compressed lips and knitted brows showed a
steadiness of purpose and determination of
aspect, that failed not to impress the beholder.
Still more pale and grave, Hepburn of Bolton
stood near him, leaning on his long sword;
and, among the group that pressed forward
to scrutinize the prisoners, Konrad recognised
the faces of French Paris, Hay of
Tallo, and others of the Earl's retinue.

"What strange freak of fate hath thrown
thee in my path again?" he asked, with a
calm smile.

"The waves, the winds, and mine own
evil destiny; for Heaven knoweth, Lord Earl,
I had no desire again to see thy face,"
replied Konrad.

"Well, well, I cannot feel chafed by thine
honest plainness, Konrad; for I know well I
have given thee deep reason to hate me.  A
strange fatality has woven our adventures
together.  Thou didst save me once from the
waves of this very ocean, when last for my
sins I was traversing these Norwegian seas;
and I saved thee twice from drowning—first
in the crystal Clyde, under the windows of
my own castle of Bothwell; and once again
when thou wert chained like a baited bear
to yonder pillar in the North Loch of
Edinburgh.  But come," added the Earl, clapping
him on the shoulder; "let us be friends; are
the faith or falsehood of a woman matters
for two brave men to quarrel about?"

Konrad, who could not conceal the repugnance
he felt at the presence of the Earl,
whom he hated as his rival, and Anna's
betrayer, drew back with a hauteur that stung
the outlawed lord to the heart.

"Nay, Earl or Duke, for I know not
which thou art—men style thee both—though
but a simple gentleman of Norway,
a captain of crossbowmen, with a rixmark
in the day, I would not follow thy banner
to obtain the noblest of thy baronies.  Our
paths must be far separate.  I never could
owe thee friendship, suit, service, or
captainrie; and I have but one request to
make, that thou wilt land us on the nearest
point of our native shore, and we will gladly
say, God speed thee on thy voyage."

"I love and esteem few, and by fewer am
I loved and esteemed," replied the Earl
calmly; "but, fallen though I am, I have
not yet sunk so low as to beg the friendship
of any man.  Be it so.  Ere nightfall, I will
land thee on yonder promontory, and the
skipper knave likewise, though in good
sooth he deserves to be hanged up at yonder
yard-arm, for declining me the use of a
few pitiful bags of our own Scottish wheat,
when he saw my ducal banner displayed
before his eyes."

With a brief reverence the Earl retired
into his cabin, where French Paris attended
to relieve him of part of that armour which
he wore constantly; for he was in hourly
expectation of being assailed—from the
seaward, by ships sent in pursuit of him from
Scotland—or from the land, for his piracies
and plundering on the Danish and Norwegian shores.

"The raven's fate befall thee!" muttered
Hans, thrusting his clenched hands farther
into his pockets, and gazing with blank
despair upon the vortex that, almost in sight
of his haven, had swallowed up his ship.

The wind blew freshly from the fiord
ahead of them, and David Wood, the Earl's
skipper, found the impossibility of making
the point where he desired to land their
captives; and the sudden appearance of a
large three-masted vessel of war, which,
under easy sail, came round one of those
steep headlands that overhung the water,
made him bear away into the open channel;
for so great was the rage and terror their
depredations had spread on both sides of
the Skager Rack, that the Earl knew he
must greet a foe in every ship under the
banner of Frederick of Denmark.

The sun had set, but the clear twilight of
the long northern night played upon the dark
blue waters of the fiord, which still rippled in
silver against the wall-like rocks that
hemmed them in; the air was mild and balmy;
the whole sky had that clear, cold blue,
which it exhibits among our lowland hills
before sunrise; but the northern lights, that
gleamed from Iceland's snow-clad peaks, the
bright pole-star, and the myriad spangles of
the milky-way, were all coming forth in
their glory; nothing could surpass the beauty
of the former, as their rays, like the gleams
of a gigantic sword, flashed along the
cerulean sky, behind the wooded summits of the
dark and distant hills.

"Dost thou know aught of yonder ship,
Sir Skipper?" asked Bothwell of Hans
Knuber, who had been observing her approach
with a stern joy which he took no pains to
conceal.

"Yes, I know her!" said Hans.  "Ay, by
St. Olaf! every plank in her hull and every
rope in her rigging—for my own hands
helped to nail one and reeve the other.
There sails not a better craft, nor a swifter,
in the Danish waters."

"A swifter!" rejoined the Earl, looking
over his poop at the waves that curled under
the counter.  "I need care little for that,
as Scottish men are unused to run either on
sea or land, Master Knuber.  She is a warship,
I perceive."

"Thou art right, Lord Earl.  She is the
*Biornen*, or Great Bear, a ship of King
Frederick's, carrying sixteen great carthouns,
and as many demi-culverins; manned by
three hundred mariners, and as many more
crossbowmen and cannoniers.  Christian
Alborg commands—an old sea-horse as ever
dipped his whiskers in salt-water—Knight
of the Dannebrog and Commandant of
Ottenbrocht.  Ha! dost thou behold?"

At that moment, the red Norwegian flag,
bearing a golden lion grasping a blue
battle-axe, was unfurled upon the wind; the
redder flash of a cannon, gleaming across
the darkening water, and the whiz of the
ball, as it passed through the rigging of the
Earl's ship, announced his recognition by
the stranger.

Hans drew his hands out of his chocolate-coloured
breeches, and capered with revenge
and joy as he heard it.

The ship of Bothwell was the *Fleur-de-Lys*,
a galliot carrying twenty demi-culverins,
and had been one of the war-ships of James
V.  The Earl, as Lord High Admiral of
Scotland, had all the affairs and stores of
the naval force under his control, and thus
selected her, with all her cannon and gear,
for his own particular service, and manned
her with a crew of his vassals, on whose
valour and fidelity he could rely to the last
of their blood and breath.

Instead of the standard of Scotland, he
ordered his own great banner, bearing the
ducal arms of Orkney quartered with those
of Bothwell, to be again displayed at the
gaff-peak; from the mast-heads floated
banneroles, bearing the three red pelicans of
Ormiston, the cheverons of Bolton, the three
red escutcheons of Hay of Tallo, and the
pennons of other gentlemen who followed
his desperate fortune; while enraged by the
insult thus offered, in firing at once upon
him, he gave immediate orders to open the
gun-ports—shot the culverins—man the
poop and topcastles with crossbowmen, and
clear all for battle—orders which were
obeyed by his people with alacrity.  So now
we will have to describe a sea-fight of the
sixteenth century.

Both vessels were going under easy sail;
but as the Earl had resolved to give battle to
his heavy antagonist, careless of the
result, he gradually shortened his way,
making all secure on board as the distance
lessened between him and his Danish
Majesty's ship.  The crossbowmen, with their
weapons bent and bolts laid, and the
arquebusiers, with muzzles pointed and matches
lit, were crouching behind the wooden parapets
of the poop and forecastle, which, like
those round the tops, were all fashioned in
the shape of battlements; the cannoniers stood
by their culverins with linstock and rammer;
the waist of the ship bristled with steel caps,
short pikes, two-handed swords, and jedwood
axes; while on the towering poop and forecastle
were seen the mail-clad figures of Bothwell
and his knights; but, notwithstanding
all this display of bravery, as they neared the
foe, they saw how fearful were the odds to be
encountered.

Each vessel came on under topsails; the
courses being hauled up, displayed the
steel-bristling decks, and the polished mouths of
the brass cannon, that gleamed upon the dark
blue water as they were run through the
carved and painted sides of the gunwall
(*gunnel*), loaded with bullets of stone and
iron, and pebbles lapped in lead.  Both
vessels were now running in the same direction,
but gradually neared each other.  They were
within three lance-lengths, and not a sound
was heard on board of either but the ripple
under their bows; and in breathless silence
as the still twilight deepened on the ocean,
the adverse crews continued gazing on each
other.

All at once a line of lights glittered along
the deck of the Norwegian.

"Yare, my hearts!" cried Wood, the Earl's
skipper, "down, and save yourselves!"

Except Bothwell and his knights, every
man threw himself flat on the deck; and while
fire flashed from the wide muzzles of eight
great carthouns and as many demi-culverins,
their shot tore across the *Fleur-de-Lys*,
splintering her bulwarks, rending her rigging and
canvass, but doing little other personal
injury than slaying a few of the arquebusiers,
who occupied the little wooden turrets with
which the angles of the poop were furnished.

"A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" cried the
Earl brandishing his sword; "cannoniers to
your lintstocks—crossbowmen to your duty,
and show yourselves men, my rough-footed
Scots.  Fight bravely! for know ye, that if
taken we shall all die the death of caitiffs
and felons; for there is not a man among us
but will hang from the yards of yonder
Norseman, for so hath King Frederick sworn.
Shoot aloft, and fire below!  St. Bothan and on!"

A volley of cannon, crossbows, and arquebuses
was poured upon the great quarter
and stern of the *Biornen*, while her people
were slowly and laboriously re-charging
their pieces.  The bolts whistled from the
crossbows, the bullets whizzed from the
arquebuses *à croc*, and the cannon-shot
boomed as they flew over the decks, or sank
with a heavy crash into the echoing hulls of
the adverse ships; while, ascending from the
still bosom of that narrow inlet of the ocean,
the reports were reverberated like thunder,
as the echoes rolled from peak to peak along
those high mountains that overlooked it.

From the poops and forecastles the
arquebuses maintained an incessant roar,
and their bullets, each containing three
ounces of lead, did deadly execution, being
fired point-blank, beating great pieces of
buff and mail into the bodies of those they
slew.

"Yare, yare—my yeomen of the sheets
and braces!  Cheerily now—my timoneer!"
bellowed the skipper of the *Fleur-de-Lys*,
through his speaking trumpet, as he, by a
rapidity of manoeuvre and superior seamanship,
sheered his vessel upon the larboard
side of the *Biornen* in the smoke, and poured
another broadside upon the Norwegians, who
did not expect it from that point, and the
sudden crash and slaughter filled them with
alarm and irresolution.

"By St. John of the Desart!" exclaimed
Bothwell, in the excitement of the moment
forgetting his assumed Protestantism, "ye
do well my true cannoniers.  Shoot—shoot,
and spare not! or never again will ye see
the woods of Clyde, and the blooming bank
of Bothwell.  To it, Bolton, with thy
bowmen!  Shoot me down those rascal archers
on their tops; for by St. Peter, who smote
off the lug of a loon, I have wellnigh lost
mine by their hands.  Shoot—shoot, and
spare not!"

A loud cheer replied to the Earl, and his
vassals bent to their toil with renewed
ardour and alacrity.

The decks were rapidly becoming encumbered
with the dead and wounded; for there
were neither accommodation or due attendance
for the latter, and so they were permitted
to lie just where they fell, with their blood
streaming away to leeward, and dripping
from the scuppers into the ocean; while the
shot ploughed and tore up the oak planking
of the deck, beat down the bulwarks, rending
mast and boom and spars to shreds and
splinters; and each time the ponderous stone
bullets of the great Danish carthouns
thundered and crashed through the side of the
*Fleur-de-Lys*, she staggered and trembled in
every rib and plank.

"Sweep me the gunwall with your arquebuses!"
cried the Earl, leaping upon the
corpse-strewn forecastle, where Ormiston, like
a swarthy Moor, was handling one of those
ponderous fire-arms as easily as a bird caliver;
"for one more salvoe from those accursed
carthouns will hurl us from the ocean like
a flash of lightning!"

"Cock and pie!" said Ormiston, as he
levelled the long arquebuse in its iron sling;
"we have been putting pelloks into their
doublets ever since the tulzie began; and I
doubt not have scored a hundred by the
head, but the gloomy night is increasing so
fast that we aim now at random."

The darkness, as he said, had increased
very much.  The clouds were gathering in
heavy masses, and the red sheet lightning
was gleaming behind the rocky peaks of
those hills, where the northern lights had
been flashing one hour before.  Dark as ink
grew the waters of the fiord, and the
increasing wind that blew down it, between
the high shores on either side, flecked its
surface with foam, as it passed away into the
turbulent waste of the Skager Rack.  This
change was unseen or unheeded by the
combatants, who were now lying to with their
foresails backed, and pouring their missiles
upon each other with a deadly animosity,
that increased as the slaughter and the
darkness deepened around them together.
Notwithstanding the superior size of the
Norwegian ship, and the heavier metal of her
cannon, the little *Fleur-de-Lys* stood to her
bravely; for she was manned by bold and
desperate hearts, whom outlawry and revenge
had urged to the utmost pitch of rashness
and valour.

Meanwhile, Konrad and Hans Knuber
watched with beating hearts the varying ebb
and flow of the tide of battle in which they
had so suddenly been involved.  They remained
passive spectators, exposed to the fire
of their friends and countrymen, by whose
hands they expected every instant to be
decimated or decapitated.  Whenever a barbed
crossbow-shot from the *Biornen* struck down
a poor Scottish mariner to writhe in agony
and welter in his blood, or when a shot tore
up plank and beam almost beneath his feet,
Hans growled a Norse malediction, and
thought of the ruin these Scots had that day
brought upon him.  Suddenly he grasped
Konrad by the hand, and pointed to a part
of the water that appeared covered with white
froth.

"Seest thou that, Master Konrad?—hah!"
he exclaimed.

"The lesser moskenstrom—the eddy that
swallowed up thy ship.  God shield us!"
said Konrad; "for we are just upon its verge."

"Those accursed Scots perceive it not; but
Christian Alborg doth.  See, he hath hauled his
wind and braced up his foreyard—another
moment will see us sucked into the whirl, or
stranded on the shoal made between us and
the coast by the eddy, ha! ha!" and Hans,
who was pale as death under the influence of
wrath and fear, laughed like a hyena at the
terrors about to replace those of the battle.

A shout of triumph burst from the little
crew of Bothwell's shattered ship; but it was
answered by one of derision and exultation
from the Norwegian; for at that moment, as
Hans had predicted, the *Fleur-de-Lys* bilged
upon the reef or rocky shoal that lay between
the eddy and the shore—striking with a crash
that made her foremast bend like a willow
wand ere it went by the board, bringing down
the main-topmast; the heavy culverins went
surging all to leeward, and, crashing away
the bulwarks, plunged into the sea, which,
being agitated by the increasing gale, broke
in foam upon the ridgy summit of the reef,
and hurled its breakers over the parting frame
of the *Fleur-de-Lys*, which thus in a moment
became a shattered and desolate wreck.

The shout of the Norsemen was their last
display of hostility; for, on beholding the
terrible trap into which the foe had so
suddenly fallen, the gallant old Knight of the
Dannebrog suspended his firing, and lowered
his boats to pick up the survivors of the
battle and wreck; for so fierce was the tumult
of water that boiled around her, and so great
his dread of the whirlpool, that he continued
rather to stand off than towards the scene of
the catastrophe.

The towering forecastle of the bilged ship
was highest above the water, and to that
Konrad, after seeing poor Hans Knuber
washed from his side, to be dashed again and
again a lifeless corpse upon the brow of the
reef, clung with all the energy of despair,
clambering up step by step, clutching the
ruin of spars and cordage that hung over it,
till he reached the iron rail enclosing the
top, which he embraced with both arms, and
looked down upon the scene of terror and
desolation presented by the lower half of
the wreck, which was submerged in water.

Fitfully the white moon gleamed upon it,
through the openings in the hurrying clouds;
its cold lustre rather adding to, than lessening,
the ghastly horror of the wreck and reef.

Far down in the deep waste, which was
full of water—for every instant the surf broke
over it in mountains of foam—was a swarm
of struggling men, many of them in armour,
clinging to whatever would support them.
Ever and anon they sent forth cries of terror
and despair; while every plank and spar
creaked and groaned as the waves beat and
lashed around, as if eager to overwhelm and
engulf them all.

The wind was increasing, and, urged by
the long fetch of the Skager Rack, the waves
broke in stupendous volumes over the reef
and the bilged wreck, at every return
washing away some unfortunate into the abyss
of the whirlpool, that yawned and foamed and
growled on one side; while on the other lay
the wide waste of the ocean, and the *Biornen*
about a mile distant, with her white canvass
gleaming, like the garments of a spirit, in
the light of the fitful moon.  Behind the
reef towered up the black Norwegian hills,
like a wall of steep and frowning rock,
fringed by nodding pines, and bordered by
a white line of froth, that marked where the
breakers reared their fronts to lash and roar
upon the impending cliffs—but all these were
buried in the long and sombre shadow which
the tremendous bluffs threw far on the
restless sea.

Meanwhile, Bothwell and his knights,
though landsmen, and more at home in the
tiltyard, in the tavern, the castle hall, or on
the mountain side, never for a moment lost
their presence of mind.  Throwing off the
heavier parts of their armour, they contrived
to secure one of the boats, into which the
Earl, with Ormiston, Bolton, Hay of Tallo,
French Paris, and several others, sprang
with all the speed that fear of a terrible fate
could lend them.

"A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" cried the
Earl waving his hand, as the light shallop
was one moment buoyed aloft like a cork,
and the next plunged down into the deep,
dark trough of the midnight sea.  "Save
yourselves by spars and booms, my brave
hearts!" he cried to those whom his heart
bled to leave behind—but it was impossible
that one boat could save them all; "or lash
yourselves to the wreck, and we will return
for you."

"Bend to your oars, my stout knaves,
cheerily," cried Wood, the skipper.

"Yare!" added Ormiston, whose tall
figure loomed in the labouring shallop like
that of an armed giant; "cheerily, ho! for if
it is our fate to be hanged we will never be
drowned."

"Hold!" exclaimed the Earl, as they
pulled under the lee of the lofty poop,
"yonder is one whom I would rather die than
leave behind to perish, for then I would
forfeit mine honour."

"Cock and pie!  Lord Earl, art thou mad?"
cried Ormiston, in great wrath; "is this a
time to have thy qualms about honour,
when ten minutes more may see us all in the
pit of hell?"

"Peace, peace; shame on thee, laird of
Ormiston!" cried David Wood.  "Mother of
God, watch over us!"

"Hob, peace with thy blasphemy!" said
the Earl, "or I will have thee cast into the
sea.  Is this a time for such dreadful
thoughts as thine?  By the bones of my
father, I *shall* save him.  Ho, there!  Konrad
of Saltzberg, I pledged my word to land
thee on thy native shore, and even in this
moment of dread I will redeem it, or perish
with thee.  Leap with a bold heart, and a
ready will, and gain our boat if thou canst,
albeit that it is laden so heavily."

Aware that the chance was a last one,
Konrad, who could swim like a duck, sprang
at once into the waters of his native fiord,
and, rising a short distance from the boat,
was pulled in by the athletic Ormiston.
Then the oars were dipped in the frothy
water, and, urged by wind and tide, the
laden boat shot away from the desolate
wreck.

At that moment a wild shriek—the last
despairing cry of the strong and the brave,
who had never flinched when the arrow flew
and the culverin boomed around them—ascended
from the seething ocean to the sky;
the wreck parted into a thousand fragments,
that covered the face of the water; and these,
with the poor fellows who clung to them
with the blind tenacity of despair and death,
were again and again, at the sport of the
waves, dashed against the ridgy summits,
that were one moment visible in terrible
array in the moonlight, and the next were
hidden, as a mountain of foam swept over
them, hurrying into the deep vortex of the
whirlpool the last fragments and the corpses
of the *Fleur-de-Lys*.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHRISTIAN ALBORG`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX.


.. class:: center medium bold

   CHRISTIAN ALBORG.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Where the wave is tinged with red,
   |    And the russet sea-leaves grow;
   |  Mariners, with prudent dread,
   |    Shun the whelming reefs below.
   |  Thus, all to soothe the chieftain's woe,
   |    Far from the maid he loved so dear,
   |  The song arose so soft and slow,
   |    He seem'd her parting sigh to hear.
   |                          *Leyden's Mermaid.*

.. vspace:: 2

"Which way, Lord Earl?" asked the
laird of Bolton; "steer we shoreward?"

"Nay!" cried Ormiston, in his usual tone
of banter, for now his spirits rose as the
danger lessened; "nay—a malison on thee,
Norway!  Woe worth the day I again set
foot on thy devilish shore, where there is
nought but bran-bannocks and sour beer
in summer, and bears' hams with toasted
snowballs in winter!"

"To yonder ship?" continued Hepburn.

"Yes!" replied the Earl.  "Row briskly,
my merry men; she hath altered her course,
and stands towards us.  We must yield; but
my mind misgives me sorely, that we shall
have but sorry treatment."

A few minutes' pulling brought them
under the lee of the lofty Norwegian ship—a
ladder was lowered, and the Earl and his
attendants sprang fearlessly on board.  They
immediately found themselves surrounded by
a crowd of savage-looking Norwegian
seamen and Danish soldiers, the former in
garments of singular fashion, and the latter
wearing armour of an age at least two centuries
older than their own.  Their red bushy
beards protruded from their little steel caps,
and flowed over their gourgerins, as they
leaned upon their iron mauls, chain maces,
and the bolls of their slackened bows, and
gazed with wild eyes on the strangers who
thus voluntarily yielded themselves prisoners.

The whole group were immediately led to
the summit of the lofty poop, where the
captain stood surrounded by his officers; and
Bothwell could perceive, by many a
splintered plank and battered boom—by many a
torn rope and shattered block—by spots of
blood, and broken heads, and bandaged
arms, that the *Biornen* had not come off
scatheless in the late encounter.

The Norwegian captain was a fat and
pompous little man; his round bulbous
figure was clad in a quilted doublet of fine
crimson cloth, the gold lacing of which shone
in the light of three large poop lanterns that
were blazing close by; his short, thick legs
were covered by yellow silk stockings; he
wore a thick ruff that came up to his ears,
and a beaver hat nearly four feet in diameter;
his mustaches were preposterously long,
and he rolled his saucer eyes in a way that
was very appalling, as the Earl stepped up to
him, and, in no degree abashed by the
magnificence of his portly presence, raised his
blue velvet bonnet, saying in French as he
bowed gracefully—

"I believe I have the honour of addressing
the knight Christian Alborg, captain of
his Danish Majesty's galley, the *Biornen*?"

"Yes!" replied the captain gruffly; "and
what art thou?"

"Boatswain of the Scottish ship."

"And where is the pirate, thy master?"

"He stands before thee," replied the Earl,
pointing to David Wood; for he was anxious
to preserve an incognito which he hoped his
disordered attire might favour.

"Thou hast but little the air of a shipman,"
rejoined the captain of the *Biornen*
incredulously; "and I think that, were this
knave thy leader, *he* would have addressed
me, and not *thou*.  So, sirrah, art thou really
captain of that ship which dared to abide
my cannon in the Danish seas?"

"Yes!" replied Wood boldly; "and how
darest thou, Sir Captain, to doubt the word
of a true Scottishman?"

"Because I would save thee, if I could,
from the doom such an acknowledgment
merits—away with him to the yard-arm!"

And in another moment, almost ere a
word could be spoken or a hand raised in
his defence, a rope was looped round the
neck of David Wood, and he was run up to
the arm of the main-yard, where he hung,
quivering and writhing in the moonlight,
while his last half-stifled shriek tingled in
the ears of his companions, who were silenced
and appalled by a catastrophe so sudden.

"By St. Paul! my poor skipper," thought
the Earl, "if thou farest so for telling the
truth, how shall I fare for telling a falsity?
Knave of a Norseman! thou hast destroyed
the cadet of a gallant race—the line of
Bonnington, in Angus!"

"Hah! this is not the bearing of a Scottish
boatswain," said old Christian Alborg, stepping
back a pace at the menacing aspect of
his prisoner; "and now, I bethink me that
such wear neither corselets of steel nor
spurs of gold; so tell me who thou art, or,
by the hand of the king, I will run thee up
at the other arm of yonder yard.  Thy name?"

"James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and
Duke of Orkney, Knight of the Thistle, and
Governor of the Kingdom of Scotland!"
replied the Earl, drawing himself up with
an aspect of dignity and pride, that was not
lost upon the portly Norseman and his
helmeted officers.

"Unhappy lord!" replied Christian Alborg,
making a profound reverence; "I have heard
of thine evil fame, and envy thee not the
grandeur of thy titles."

"Thou sayest truly," said Bothwell, in a
tone of sadness, "I am not to be envied;
but withhold thy pity, for I am not yet
fallen so low as find commiseration
acceptable from any man."

"But if thou art governor of the kingdom
of Scotland, what brought thee into these
seas?"

"Foul wind, or fatality—which you will."

"And wherefore hast thou sacked the
villages, stormed the castles, plundered the
ships of thine own countrymen, who have
done thee no wrong, and also committed
innumerable piracies on the subjects of his
Danish majesty, with whom thy people are
at peace?"

"Because of my sore extremity!"

"That will form but a lame excuse to King
Frederick, at whose palace of Kiobenhafen the
tidings of thine outrages were sent from his
castle of Bergenhuis, whither I have an order
to convey thee, dead or alive.  Though a
bold man and a bad one, thou hast fought as
became a Scottish noble, and I can respect
valour wherever I find it.  I had resolved to
chain thee neck and heels, like a villanous
pirate; but trusting to thine honour, that
thou wilt not attempt to compromise me by
escaping, I will permit thee to retain thy
sword, to be at liberty, and to receive all due
courtesy, till thou art committed to the
custody of the king's garrison at Bergen."

The Earl was led to a cabin, and there left
to his own melancholy reflections, which were
rendered a hundred degrees worse by the
reaction consequent to such a day of stirring
activity and wild excitement.

He heard the ripple of the water as the
waves that had swallowed up his companions
flowed past; he heard the straining of the
timbers, the creaking of the decks and
cordage, as the wind bellied the full spread
canvass of the *Biornen*, and urged her up the
fiord of Bergen; but his thoughts were far
away in the land he had left behind him, in
the island tower of that lonely lake,
overlooked by steep hills and girdled by the
guarding water, where Mary of Scotland
mourned in crownless captivity the shame,
the contumely, and the hopeless fate *his* wiles
and ambition had brought upon her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CASTELLANA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CASTELLANA.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  No waking dream shall tinge my thought
   |    With dyes so bright and vain;
   |  No silken net so slightly wrought,
   |    Shall tangle me again.
   |  No more I'll pay so dear for wit,
   |    I'll live upon mine own;
   |  Nor shall wild passion trouble it,
   |    I'll rather dwell alone.
   |                              *Scott.*

.. vspace:: 2

Next day the *Biornen* cast anchor in the
Jelta fiord, and, under a strong guard of
crossbowmen, Christian Alborg carried
Konrad and his prisoners ashore in a great red
pinnace which bore the yellow lion of
Norway floating at its stern.

They landed about half a mile from the
citadel, to which he was conveying the
captives, and Konrad accompanied them, for
he knew not where else to bestow himself;
but every step of the well-known way was
full of bitter memories, and fraught with the
idea of Anna.

And where was she?

Of Christian Alborg, who had conveyed
her from Scotland, he never made an
enquiry; for though he knew perfectly well
that it was he who had received her from
the Scottish council, he had no opportunity
of an interview; and, on the other hand,
Alborg knew not how deep was the young
man's interest still in the fate of Anna,
though he knew his story well; and thus no
communication on the subject passed between
them.

In all their old familiar features, his native
hills were towering around that ancient
fortress, which tradition averred to have
been the work of the Sitonian giants; while,
amid the deep recesses of their woods, the
distant cry of the wolf was ringing as of
old, and the wiry foliage of the Scandinavian
pines, when they vibrated in the summer
wind, as the Norse say, filled the air with the
music of fairy harps, that mingled with the
hum of the evening flies, and the rustle of
the long reedy grass, as it waved in the
rising wind like the surface of a rippled lake.

Every old familiar feature brought back
its own sad train of memories.  By the
winding path they traversed, here and there
lay an ancient runic monument, covered
with uncouth characters, and those fantastic
hieroglyphics with which the ancient Scandinavians
handed down to posterity the history
of their battles, and of the mighty men of the
days of other years.  There, too, was the
ancient chapel of St. Olaus, still perched in
a cleft of the mountains, with its bell
swinging on the rocks that overhung it—rocks
where the wild myrtle, the geranium, and
the yellow pansy, all flourished together in
one luxuriant blush of flowers.

As they ascended from the shore, the
rocks became bolder and bolder, more sterile
and abrupt; not a blade of grass waved
on their basaltic faces, yet from their
summits the tall and aged pines locked their
branches together, and excluded the daylight
from the deep chasm at the bottom of which
the roadway wound.

Rents in the volcanic rock afforded at
times, far down below, glimpses of the narrow
fiord, a deep, blue inlet of the ocean, dotted
with white sails, and overlooked by the
strong, dark tower of Bergen, with its
rude and clustering ramparts, little windows,
and loopholes for arrows.

As they approached it, Konrad's sadness
increased; for every stone in its walls seemed
like the face of an old friend, and every
feature of the scenery was associated with that
first and early love which had become part
of his very being.

With Bothwell it was quite otherwise.

He looked around him with the utmost
nonchalance, and scarcely thought of Anna,
though the scene was quite enough to bring
her fully back to his mind; but his passion for
Mary had completely absorbed or obliterated
every other fancy, feeling, and sentiment.

A change had come over his features; his
forehead was paler and more thoughtful, his
eyes had lost much of their bold and reckless
expression, and there was a decided melancholy
in his fine face, which excited the
interest of all who regarded him.  He had
become more taciturn; even Hob Ormiston
had lost much of his loquacity, and now,
depressed by the gloomy prospect of their
fortunes, walked in silence by the side of the
dejected and miserable Hepburn of Bolton.

"Captain Alborg," said Bothwell, "whither
dost thou wend with us now?"

"To the royal castle of Bergen—to the
hereditary governor of which I must deliver
thee."

"Thank Heaven! 'tis not Erick Rosenkrantz
who holds command there now, or I warrant
me we would have had but a short shrift,
and shorter mercy, for the trick I now
remember me to have played him.  I marvel
much what manner of person this new
castellan may be; for in sooth, much of our
comfort, in this most dolorous case, depends
thereon."

"Be under no apprehension, Lord Earl,"
replied Alborg; "you are the king's
prisoners, and, though accused of invasion and
piracy, no castellan in Denmark or Norway
can hang or quarter you without the king's
express orders."

"Hang!" grumbled Ormiston; "hang
thee, thou old sea-horse!  Dost forget thou
speakest to James, Duke of Orkney, the mate
of Mary of Scotland?"

The family of Rosenkrantz were hereditary
governors of Bergen, and castellans of
Bergenhuis, and, as Konrad's ancestors had
always followed their banner in battle, he had
ever considered the castle of Bergen his home;
and, with all the feeling of a returned exile,
he approached its massive portal, which was
flanked by broad round towers, and overhung
by a strong portcullis of jagged and rusted
iron, where the crossbowmen of his own
Danish band were still keeping guard in
their scarlet gaberdines and steel caps.

At the gate they were received by Cornelius
Van Dribbel, the great butler of Bergen,
who, in his flutter and pomposity at the
unusual arrival of such a goodly band of
prisoners and visitors, never once recognised the
careworn Konrad, who was too spirit-broken
to address him, and, disguised by the altered
fashion of his beard and garments, was borne
with the throng towards the great hall, where
the superior of the fortress was to receive them.

There was a flush on Bothwell's brow, a
fire in his eye, a scorn on his lip, and a
loftiness in his bearing, that increased as he
approached the presence of this Norwegian
dignitary; for, all unused to the humility of
his position, he had resolved to requite pride
with pride, scorn with scorn; and thus,
modelling their looks by those of their leader,
Hob Ormiston and Hay of Tallo assumed an
air of sullen defiance; but the young knight
of Bolton, who was utterly careless about his
ultimate fate, wore a spirit-broken aspect,
more nearly allied to that of Konrad.

"Cornelius Van Dribbel," said Christian
Alborg, puffing and blowing, as he seated
himself in a capacious chair on entering the
hall, and wiped his great polished head with
a handkerchief.  "I thought thou saidst the
castellan was here to receive the king's prisoners?"

"St. Olaus forefend!" replied Van Dribbel;
"surely thou knowest that the knight
Rosenkrantz hath lain in his last home at
Fredericksborg these many months."

"Smite thee! yes," growled the seaman;
"but I meant the new castellan."

"We have none but such as thou shalt
see in time—Ha! lo you, now!" he added, as
the arras concealing the archway, which, at
the lower end of the hall, opened upon a
carpeted dais, was withdrawn, and when
again it fell, Anna Rosenkrantz, attended by
Christina Slingebunder and another young
maiden, stood before them.

Had a spectre appeared there, Bothwell
and Konrad could not have appeared more
disturbed, and Anna was equally so; but
the Earl, now less animated by love, and, as
a courtier, being habituated to keep his
emotions under restraint, was the first to
recover himself, and a smile of scornful
surprise spread over his face, as he doffed
his bonnet and bowed to the lady of the
castle.

Poor Konrad grew pale as death; he
became giddy and breathless; and shrank
behind the shadow of a column against which
he leaned, for the atmosphere seemed
stifling.

Meanwhile Anna stood upon the dais,
between two massive columns of gothic form,
encrusted with old runic stones.  She was
looking pale, but beautiful as ever.  Her
tresses were gathered up in the simple
fashion of the north, and, supported by a
silver bodkin, formed a coronet of plaits, as
they were wreathed round her head.  Her
dress of blue silk was massive with embroidery
and silver fringe, and her stomacher
was studded with jewels, as became the
heiress of Welsöö and Bergenhuis.

The Earl's first reflection, was his being
now a captive, and completely in the power
of an enraged and slighted woman, whom in
the zenith of his power he had treated with
cruelty, contumely, and contempt.  These
thoughts brought with them no qualm, no
pity.  He felt only apprehension for what
she might now in turn make him endure;
for, when in Italy and France, he heard
many a tale of "woman's vengeance," that
now came back full and vividly on his
memory.

"By St. Paul! we find kenned faces
wherever we go;" said Ormiston to Bolton;
"this old sea-dog hath brought us to the
right haven.  We will have free-house and
free-hold here, I doubt not."

"Madam," said the stout captain of the
*Biornen*, bowing as low as his great paunch
and long basket-hilted espadone would permit
him, "allow me to introduce to you the
terrible pirate who, for the last month, has
been the terror of our Fiords, and the
scourge of the Sound, and whom we find to
be no other than the great Earl of Bothwell,
with whose astounding misdeeds all Europe
has been ringing."

Anna scarcely heard a word of the captain's
address.  On first beholding the Earl,
she had trembled violently, and then became
pale as death.  Her eyes filled with fire, and
she regarded him with a long, fixed, and
serpent-like gaze, that even he had some
trouble in meeting.

"Well, madam," said he, with one of his
graceful smiles, "when last we stood together
in this hall, we foresaw not the day when
we would greet each other thus."

"The meeting is as unexpected to me as
our last may have been to *you*, my Lord
Earl," replied Anna in French, but with
admirable hauteur and firmness.  "So,
pirate and outlaw, as I now understand thee
to be, thou hast lived to see all thy wild
visions and schemes of ambition crumble and
fade away, and now thou art a captive in
the power of her thou didst so deeply wrong,
and so cruelly insult."

"True, madam," replied Bothwell, curling
his mustache, "and what then?"

"Dost thou not know that thy life and
liberty are alike in my power?"

"I am glad of it, being assured that they
could not be in safer keeping."

"Oh, man! cold and heartless as thou
art," said Anna, who seemed now to have
forgotten her own infatuated passion for the
Earl, "I cannot but admire this stately
calmness under a reverse of fortune so
terrible.  Were thy fate fully in mine own
hands, I would return thee to the land from
whence thou hast fled, leaving the flames of
civil war to rage behind thee—to the arms
of her thou didst love and win, so fatally for
herself—or I would again commit thee to
the wide ocean, to follow thy wayward fate
on other shores; for now there can neither
be love nor loyalty, nor falsehood nor truth,
between us—but the will of the king sayeth nay!"

"And what sayeth the will of Frederick?"
asked Bothwell, with proud surprise.

"That thou and thy followers must be
separated."

"Hoh, is it so?"

"They, to be sent home to Scotland—thou,
to his castle of Kiobenhafen, in fetters."

"Fetters!" cried the Earl, in a voice of
thunder, while his eyes flashed fire and his
hand grasped his sword.  "This to
Bothwell?  Woman! what hast thou dared to
say?  Dost thou forget that I am a Scottish
duke—the consort of a queen—the governor
of a kingdom?"

"No!" replied Anna bitterly, while her
eyes flashed with rage and jealousy, though
every sentiment of love was long since dead;
"and neither have I forgotten that thou art
a regicide and a betrayer, who from this
hour shall have meted out to him the stern
measures he so ruthlessly dealt to others.
Christian Alborg—this man is the king's
prisoner, whom we have warrants from
Peder Oxe, the marshal of Denmark, to
detain.  Away with him to the *Biornen*, and
ere sunset be thou out of the Jelta fiord,
and under sail for Kiobenhafen!  Thou
knowest Frederick, and that he brooks no
delay."

And with a glance, where spite and jealousy
were mingled with a sentiment of pity
and admiration, Anna withdrew; and, as the
arras fell behind her, a party of red-bearded
Danish bowmen, who formed the garrison
at Bergen, crowded round the Earl.

"Ha! ha!" he laughed bitterly through his
clenched teeth; "there spoke thy woman's
vengeance, Anna!"

"Lord Earl," said Ormiston gravely, "in
the name of the master of mischief, what
prompted thee to beard her thus?  Foul
fall thee!  Why didst thou not flatter, and
cajole, and feign thine old love?  To fleech
with the devil, when thou canst not fight
him, is ever good policy.  An old love is
easily revived: she is only a woman, and
would doubtless have believed thee, for thou
hast a tongue that would wile the gleds out
of the sky.  Cock and pie!  Bothwell, till
something better came to hand, thou mightest
have been castellan of Bergen, and I thy
lieutenant.  All our fortunes had been made
even here, in this land of barkened bannocks
and snowballs."

"To feign thus, would be to commit foul
treason against her whom I will ever
remember with loyalty and love, while Heaven,
permits me to live.  Here we part at last,
stout Hob, perhaps to meet no more.  If
ever again thou treadest on Scottish ground,
remember that in serving *her* thou servest
Bothwell.  Farewell to thee, Bolton, thou
man of gloomy thoughts; and farewell thou,
stout Hay of Tallo; for I fear me much,
that God's vengeance for *that night* in the
Kirk-of-Field is coming surely and heavily
upon us all."

They were rudely separated.

Ormiston, Bolton, and Tallo, raised their
bonnets with sadness and respect as the Earl
was led off; for the bonds of old feudality,
and love, and service, which knit their names
and fortunes together, had been strengthened
by a certainty that the terrible career on which
they had run, had for ever cut them off and
isolated them from the rest of mankind; and
thus a feeling of loneliness and desolation fell
upon their hearts, as their great leader and
master-spirit was led away to that mournful
captivity which was to end only in the—grave.

That night a Scottish ship of war, which
was commanded by two knights of distinction,
and had been sent by the Earl of Moray
in pursuit of Bothwell, anchored in the Jelta
fiord, and to their care were consigned the
shipwrecked followers of the captive noble;
and soon after these knights set sail for Scotland.

But many hours before they had come into
Bergen, the *Biornen* had vanished from that
narrow inlet of the ocean, and was bearing
the great Scottish captive along the shores of
western Gothland, and breasting the frothy
waves of the Cattegat.

The sun, as he set in the western ocean,
shed a mellow light upon the wide expanse of
shore that stretched upon their lee—on many
an impending cliff, on the dark summits of
which waved the old primeval pines of
Scandinavia, and on whose bases the waters of the
west were dashing in foam—on many a
wooded wilderness, amid the recesses of which
the wolves were prowling by the Druid stones
of Loda, and the long-forgotten grave of
many a gothic chief.

Buried in reverie, with folded arms and
saddened eyes, Bothwell watched the changing
features and windings of that foreign
shore, with all its pathless woods, volcanic
rocks, and dark blue hills, throwing their
deepening shadows on each other, as the
burning sun sank in the distant sea, and the
dusky tints of night shed upon the scenery a
gloom in unison with his own dark thoughts
and bitter memories.

Bitter and sad they were truly; but how
unavailing!

Now separated from the evil influence of
Ormiston and others, he deplored his wickedness
and folly with an intensity that amounted
to agony.  Had the universe been his, he
would have given it that he might live the
last year of his life over again, with the
experience in his mind of what the guilt, the
terrors, the anxieties, and remorse of that
year had been.

With sorrow, with envy, yea, with agony,
he looked back to the position he had held
in the estimation of others, and of himself;
and felt, in the bitterness of his soul, that
the eminence could never more be re-won.

Never more, never more!  It was a terrible
reflection.

He thought, too, of the native land he
might never see again; and—

   |  "Of many a tale of love and war
   |    That mingled with the scene;
   |  Of Bothwell's bank that bloom'd so dear,
   |    And Bothwell's bonny Jean."

But he thought of Anna only with anger,
for no human heart could ever contain two
loves.  Jane Gordon he remembered with
feelings of compunction, when he mused on
her unrepining gentleness and devoted love;
but he thought most of Mary, and, forgetting
that he was himself a captive, laid many a
wild and futile scheme to free and to avenge
her.

He could not flee from his own thoughts.
They *would* come again and again, weighing
like an incubus upon his mind, alike in the
bright sunshine of noon and the solemn
silence of night; amid the heedless revelry
of the Norwegian officers he longed for solitude,
and in solitude the stings of conscience
drove him back to revelry and wine; and
thus the deep and morbid horror that hour
by hour, and day by day, had every where
pursued him, settled down like a cloud of
darkness on his soul.

Long since satiated with pleasure, sick of
ambition, and wearied of the world, he now
found how deep were the stings of unavailing
regret.

The day, we have said, went down, and
night spread her spangled mantle on the
darkened water and the moonlit sea.

Brightly in its calm beauty the evening
star arose from the dark-heaving line of the
northern ocean, and Bothwell thought of
the time when he had last watched that orb
expanding on the night, as it rose above the
ruined spire of St. Mary-in-the-Field.

At that moment, a cry—that seemed to be
wafted over the surface of the water—made
his ears and heart tingle, as it passed away
on the skirt of the hollow wind.

Bothwell grew ghastly pale, he covered
his ears with his hands, and rushed away to
his cabin in despair.





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.. _`THE VAIN RESOLUTION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE VAIN RESOLUTION.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |              She told me all,
   |  And as she spoke her eyes led captive mine—
   |  Her voice was low, and thrill'd me to the bone;
   |  She ceased and all was silence, whilst I sat
   |  Like one who, long entranced by melody,
   |  Feels still the music in the soul
   |  Though sound has died away.
   |                      *Sir C. Lindesay's Alfred.*

.. vspace:: 2

Christian Alborg had departed with his
prisoners; and, unnoticed and uncared for,
Konrad stood in the hall, where he had once
been so welcome a guest.  A sensation of
loneliness and bitterness ran through his mind.
There was the chair of the old knight
Rosenkrantz, with his sword and long leather
gloves hung upon it, just as he had last left
them; his walking-cane stood in a corner,
and his furred boots were beside it; the
place was identified with his presence—full
of his memory; and his bluff round figure, in
his ample red gaberdine and trunk hose, his
kind old face, with its mild blue eyes and
fair bushy beard, seemed to flit between the
shadowy columns of the ancient hall.

Konrad had no intention of remaining in
a place where all was so changed to him; but,
ere he turned to leave it for ever, he paused
a moment irresolutely.  Since last he stood
there, all that had passed appeared like a
dream, but a sad and bitter one.  His heart
melted within him at the very thought of
his own desolation; a shower of tears would
have relieved him, but he had none to shed,
for his eyes felt dry and stony.

"Why should I remain here, where not
one is left to care for me now?" he said
with a smile, as if in scorn of the weakness
that made him linger, and, turning away,
was about to retire, when a sound arrested
him; once more the arras rose and fell, and
Anna stood before him.  He gazed upon
her without the power of utterance.

She was alone.

With a heightened colour in her cheek,
and a charming timidity in her eye, she
approached, and, touching his arm, said—

"Christina told me thou wert here,
Konrad; and wouldst thou go without one
greeting—one farewell—to me?"

Her accents sank into his inmost soul;
he trembled beneath her touch, and felt all
his resolution melting fast away.

"Unkind Konrad!" said she, with one of
her sad but most winning smiles, "is this the
friendship thou didst vow to me at Westeray?"

"I have learned, Anna, that love can
never be succeeded by friendship.  It runs
to the other extreme—the impulses of the
human heart cannot pause midway."

"Thou hast learned to hate me, then?"

"Heaven forbid!" replied Konrad, clasping
his hands; "hate thee, Anna? oh no!"

His eyes were full of the sweetness and
ardour of the days of their first love, and
Anna's filled with tears.

"I have long wished," she faltered, in a
low and broken voice, while seating herself
on the bench of one of those deeply-recessed
windows near them—"I have long wished to
see thee once more," she repeated, without
raising her timid eyes, "to implore—not thy
pardon, dear Konrad, for that I have no
right to expect—but—but that thou wilt not
remember me with bitterness"——

Konrad muttered something—he knew
not what.

"I feel, Konrad, that I owe thee much
for all I have made thee suffer; and I have
now seen the worth and faith of thy heart
when contrasted with mine own, and I blush
for my weakness—my wickedness—my folly.
Thou mayest deem this unwomanly—indelicate;
but in love we are equal, and why
may not one make reparation as the other—I
as well as thou?  I have lived, I say, to
learn the value of the heart that loved me
so well, and which, in a moment of
frenzy—infatuation—O, dearest Konrad! call it what
thou wilt—I forsook for another—another
who betrayed me by a semblance of religious
rites—oh! spare me the rest!" ....

"Anna," said Konrad, in a choking voice,
as he rose to retire—but, instead, drew nearer
to her; "though my eye may be hollow,
my cheek pale, and my heart soured and
saddened, its first sentiment for thee hath
never altered.  Anna—Anna, God knoweth
that it hath not!  For all thou hast made
me endure for the past two years—from my
heart—from my soul, I forgive thee, and I
pray that thou mayest be happy.  Anna—dearest
Anna—I am going far away from
the hills and woods of Bergen, to join the
Lubeckers, or perhaps the Knights of Rhodes
in their warfare in the distant East, for I
have doomed myself to exile; but I still
regard thee as I did, when we were in yon far
isle of Westeray—as my sister—as my
friend.  As we first met in this old castle
hall, when thou wert but a guileless girl
and I a heedless boy, so shall we now part.
All is forgotten—all is forgiven.  And
now—farewell; may the mother of God bless
thee!"

He kissed her hand, and his tears fell upon
it; he turned to leave the hall, but a giddiness
came over him, and a film overspread his eyes.

He still felt the hand of Anna in his:
another moment, and she sank upon his
breast.  All her love for him had returned;
and all her womanly delicacy, and overweening
pride, had given way before the
more tender and generous impulses this
sudden reunion with her early lover had
called up within her.

"Oh, Konrad!" she whispered, while
almost suffocated by her tears, "if my heart,
though seared and saddened, is still prized
by thee, it is thine, as in the days of our
first love."

And, borne away by his passion, the
forgiving Konrad pressed her close and closer
to his breast.  "And here," sayeth the
Magister Absalom in his quaint papers,
"here endeth the most important Boke in
this our Historie."





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.. _`RETRIBUTION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII.


.. class:: center medium bold

   RETRIBUTION.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  Vanish'd each pleasure—vanish'd all his woes,
   |  Nor Hope nor Fear disturb his long repose;
   |  He saw the busy world—'twas but to-day!
   |  A keen spectator of life's motley play—
   |  The curtain falls—the scene is o'er.
   |                                  *Hallor's Eternity.*

.. vspace:: 2

The summer wore away—and the winter
approached.

By order of Frederick II., the conqueror
of the Ditmarsians, Bothwell had been
transmitted, heavily ironed—an insult under
which his proud spirit writhed in agony—from
the great castle of Kiobenhafen to that
of Malmö, a strong and gloomy fortress on
the Swedish coast, washed by the waters of
the Sound, and overlooking a little town
then possessed by the Danes.

There he was kept, in sure and strict
ward, by a knight named Beirn Gowes,
captain of Malmö and governor of Draxholm,
in a vaulted apartment, with windows
grated, and doors sheathed with iron, grooved
in the enormous granite walls, to prevent
escape; and there, the long and weary days,
and weeks, and months, rolled on in dull
and unchanging monotony.

Of those stirring events that were acting
at home he knew nothing, for never a voice
fell on his ear in that far-northern prison;
and thus he heard not of Mary's escape
from the isle of Lochleven—her futile flight
to seek succour of the false Elizabeth, and
that she, too, was pining a captive in the
castle of Nottingham.  He knew not that
all his sounding titles, and those old heraldic
honours which, by their good swords, his
brave forefathers had acquired, and borne
on their bucklers through many a Scottish
battle-field, had been gifted away with his
lordly castles, his fertile fiefs, and noble
baronies, to the upholders of the new
*régime*—the Lords of the Secret Council.  Of the
fury of the Douglas wars—of Moray's death,
and Lennox's fall—of Morton's power and
pride, his lust and wrath, under which the
capital languished and the country writhed.
Of all these he heard not a word; for he
was utterly forgotten and deserted by all.
Even Jane of Huntly, his countess, that
gentle being who had once loved him so
well, after their divorce had soon learned to
forget him in the arms of her former lover,
the Earl of Sutherland, and to commit to
oblivion that she had once been the happy
bride of the splendid Bothwell.

He knew not, too, of the terrible vengeance
that had fallen upon his numerous adherents,—how
their heads were bleaching on the
battlements of Edinburgh—how their castles
were ruined, their families forfeited, their
names proscribed; while James, Earl of
Morton, the mainspring and prime mover of
all these plots and conspiracies, of which his
(Bothwell's) frantic love and mad ambition
had made him the too ready tool, was flourishing,
for a brief term, in unrestricted pride
and plenitude of power, as Regent and
Governor of Scotland.

Black Hob of Ormiston, Bolton, Hay of
Tallo, with French Paris and others, who
had been transmitted by Anna Rosenkrantz
to Scotland, were solemnly arraigned as
traitors and regicides before the supreme
legal tribunal at Edinburgh, and sentenced
to be decapitated and quartered.

In that grated chamber of the old tower
of Holyrood, in which Konrad had been
confined, young Hepburn of Bolton sat
counting the minutes that yet remained to
him between time and eternity.

The hand of retribution had come heavily
upon him.

That day he had seen his three companions
led forth to die—to be dismembered as
traitors, to have their bowels torn out from
their half-strangled and yet breathing bodies,
and their limbs fixed to the ramparts of
the city barriers; and that day, with sorrow
and contrition, he had confessed to the
ministers of Moray all his share in Bothwell's
plots and crimes.

As if in mockery of his sad thoughts,
bright through the iron grating streamed
the setting sunlight in all the beauty of a
warm autumnal eve.

At that sunset he gazed long and fixedly,
for it was the last he would ever behold, and
the tears filled his sunken eyes and bedewed
his faded cheek, for more lovely was that
evening sun than ever he had seen it, as,
sinking behind the long ridge of the Calton, it
cast a farewell gleam on the old rood spire and
abbey towers of Holyrood—on the hills of
emerald green and rocks of grey basalt that
overhang them—on the woods of Restalrig,
and the narrow glimpse of the blue and
distant ocean beyond them—and he felt that
on all this his eyes were about to be closed
for ever.

For ever I did his mind recoil at this
terrible reflection?  No; but it often trembled
between the depth of thought and the abyss
of despair.

Better it was to die, than to linger out a
life, haunted by the burning recollection of
those crimes, upon which the force of
circumstances, rather than any evil propensity
of his own, had hurried him.

And Mariette—since the hour when first
he knew her love was lost, he had felt
comparatively happy, to what he had been since
that terrible night on which he took such
vengeance upon her, and on her kingly lover,
in the house of the Kirk-of-Field—that
vengeance for which he was now to die.

As he mused on all his blighted hopes and
blasted prospects—of what he was and what
he might have been—the young man groaned
aloud in the agony of his soul; he wreathed
his hands among his heavy dark-brown hair,
and bowed his head upon the hard wooden
bench, which served him alike for bed and
table.

The sunlight died away—the gloaming
came, and the walls of the old abbey, within
whose aisles the dead of ages lay, looked
dark and dreary; the silence of his prison
increased, and a deep reverie—a
stupefaction—fell upon the mind of Bolton.

A hand that touched his shoulder lightly
aroused him; he looked up, and saw—could
it be possible?

Mariette!

"Oh no! it is a spectre!" he muttered,
and covered his face with his hands!  Again
he ventured to look up, and the same figure
met his eye—the same face was gazing sadly
upon him.  The features—for he summoned
courage to regard them fixedly—were indeed
those of the Mariette Hubert he had loved so
well; but the bloom of their beauty had
fled; her dark French eyes had lost their
lustre and vivacity; her cheeks their roses,
and her lips their smiles.

Her countenance was full of grief, and
expressed the most imploring pity.  Hepburn
gazed steadily upon her; and though for a
moment he deemed her a supernatural vision,
he felt no fear.  Suddenly he sprang to her
side, and threw an arm around her form—her
passive but round and palpable
form—exclaiming as he did so,—

"Mariette—my own Mariette, is it thou?
By what miracle did the mercy of God
enable thee to escape me?  Speak—speak—convince
me that it is thee, and to-morrow I
will die happy; for I will be guiltless of thy
death, Mariette—thine—thine!  Oh, that
moment of crime, of vengeance, of
madness—how dear it has cost me!  Speak to me,
adorable Mariette—thou livest?"

"I do, dearest Bolton, by the mercy of
Heaven."

"True, true!" he gasped; "for thy lover
had none."  He groaned aloud, and regarded
her with eyes full of grief, astonishment, and
passion.

"I found myself, when day was breaking,
lying near the ruins of the king's house.  I
had been insensible I know not how long,
and was covered with bruises, and almost
dying; for" (she shuddered, and added with
a sad but tender smile) "thou, dear heart! in
the blindness of thy fury, did so nearly
destroy me"——

"Oh, now! when standing upon the verge
of my grave, Mariette, remind me not of that
moment of dread and despair.  Thou wert
found"——

"By an aged man, in other days a prebend
of St. Giles, Father Tarbet, who conveyed me
to a cottage near the ruined convent of
Placentia, where an old woman, that in a better
time had been a sister of St. Katherine, dwelt;
and to her care he bequeathed me.  A raging
fever preyed upon me long; but, by the
goodness of Heaven, and the tenderness of the
poor old recluse, I recovered; and, disguised
in this long cloak, by presenting to the
javellour of Holyrood a forged order purporting
to be from the Regent Moray, have gained
admittance to thy cell, and am come to save
thee, John of Bolton, and to take thy place
till to-morrow—to be freed as a woman, or
to die in thy name as fate may direct."

Hepburn wept with rapture to find that he
had not destroyed her in that fit of insanity
which jealousy and passion had brought upon
him; hot and salt were the tears that fell
upon her hands, as he kissed them again and
again.

"The darkness increases apace," said
Mariette; "take thou this mantle and
broad hat, lower thy stature, stoop if thou
canst, pass forth, and may God attend thee!
Leave me in thy place—they cannot have
the heart to destroy me, a poor French girl;
and yet," she added, in an under tone, "what
matters it now?"

"Destroy thee? thou the sister of French
Paris—of that Nicholas Hubert, who this
day died amid the yells of the infuriated
thousands who crowded the Lawnmarket
like a living sea!"

"True, true, I am his sister!" said Mariette,
wringing her hands; "God sain and assoilzie
thee, my dear, dear brother; but in this,
my disguise of page, I have another chance
of escaping, for Charles la Fram, Duval, and
Dionese la Brone, who, thou mayest remember,
were in thy band of archers, and now
serve as arquebusiers in the guards of the
Regent Moray, are at this moment sentinels
in the Abbey Close, and by their connivance,
for the love of old France, I am sure—oh! quite
sure—of escaping in safety.  Be persuaded,
dearest monsieur, I am as certain
of freedom as thou art of a terrible death."

"And by the ignominious rope—the badge
of shame—amid a gazing and reviling
multitude.  John Hepburn, of the house of
Bolton—the last of a line whose pennons waved
at Halidon—to die thus!  God of mercy! any
risk were better than the agony of such
an end."

"Away, then, and long ere the sun rises
we shall both be free."

"At this hour, then, to-morrow eve, thou
wilt meet me, Mariette."

"Meet thee—meet thee!—where?"

"At the Rood Chapel, by the loan side
that leads to Leith."

"Ah, monsieur! 'tis a wild and solitary place."

"But a safe one.  Thou knowest it then—near
the Gallowlee.  I have much—oh, very
much—to say to thee, and many a question
to ask.  Promise thou wilt come, Mariette,
for the sake of that dear love thou didst
once bear me!"

"Once," she repeated mournfully; "well,
be it so.  I promise—at this hour, then; but
away while all around us is so quiet and
still—take this pass, and leave me to my own
ingenuity for the rest."

Bolton wrapped himself in the mantle,
and drew the broad Spanish hat over his
face.

"Ah, *mon Dieu*!  La Fram and Duval will
never be deceived!" said Mariette, with
anguish, as she surveyed his towering figure.

"Trust to me and the gloom of this
autumnal night.  To-morrow, then—at the
Rood Chapel—remember!" said Hepburn,
taking her hands in his, and pausing irresolutely,
until impelled by that old regard
which, when once kindled in the human heart,
can never wholly die, he drew her towards
him, and kissed her; but with more calm
tenderness, and with less of passion, than
ever he had done in other days.

"Go, go!" said Mariette, in a choking voice,
"I deserve not this honour from thee.  Guilty
have I been, and false; but St. Mary be my
witness that I speak the truth—I was besieged,
betrayed, and dazzled by the artful king;
the rest was fear, despair, and frenzy all!"

She pressed her hands upon her bosom, as
if it was about to burst.

"I can conceive all that *now*, Mariette,"
replied Hepburn, in the same broken voice, while
he pressed her to his heart; "from my soul I
forgive thee, as thou hast done me, the
greater, the more awful ill, I meditated
against thee."

They separated; but he had lingered so
long, and time had fled so fast, that midnight
tolled from the spire of the old abbey
church before he had shown the pass
bearing the forged signature of *James, Regent*, to
the drowsy javellour, or gateward, avoided
the sentinels at the outer porch, and issued
into the palace gardens, from which, by
scaling a wall, he easily made his way to the
bare and desolate Calton.

At the east end of the hill there then lay
many deep pits, overgrown with whin and
bushes; deep, dangerous, and half-filled with
water, the haunt of the hare and fuimart.
These were known as the Quarry Holes, and
were often the scene of a ducking for sorcery,
and legal drowning for various crimes; and
to these he fled for shelter and concealment;
for though hundreds would gladly have
afforded him both on his own barony of
Bolton, which was only eighteen miles distant,
and had been gifted to the (as yet unsuspected)
secretary Maitland—there was not a man in
Edinburgh but would instantly have
surrendered him into the hands of the civil
authorities—and to that punishment awarded
him as Bothwell's abettor in the death of
the Lord Darnley.

There, overcome by long deprivation of
sleep, and the bitterness of his thoughts for
many a weary night and day, a deep slumber
fell upon him, and the noonday sun of
the morrow had soared into the wide blue
vault of heaven, ere he awoke to consciousness
and a remembrance of where he was—the
fate from which he had escaped—the
existence and the last devotion of Mariette.

Her existence!  While lying in that desolate
spot, he knew not what had been acted
in the city that lay below the brow of the
hill where he lurked in security.

In the grey twilight of that autumnal
morning, which a dense and murky mist
from the German sea rendered yet more
gloomy, the prisoner in the tower of Holyrood
had been led forth by the half-intoxicated
doomster to die; and passing in her
male disguise for Hepburn of Bolton, the
repentant Mariette—as an atonement for the
falsehood she had practised towards him—a
faithlessness that had hurried him into
crimes against his country, and plans of
vengeance on his king—died on the scaffold,
where her brother had perished but the day
before—died with the secret of her sex on
her lips—and died happy, that in doing so
she might, by allaying all suspicion and
pursuit, enable her lover to escape.

Young Hepburn knew not of this; but
anxiously watched the passing day, and
longed for evening, when he was to meet
her at the Rood Chapel, a lonely little
oratory situated on the open muirland midway
between the Calton Hill and St. Anthony's
Porte, the southern gate of Leith.

He heard the hum of Edinburgh ascending
the hill-side, and the notes of its clocks
on the passing wind as they struck the
slow-seceding hours.  The blue sky was above,
and the dark-green whins were nodding
from the rocks around him; at times, a red
fox put forth its sharp nose and glancing
eyes from its secret hole, or a fuimart, with
its long body and bushy tail, shot past like
an evil spirit; but nothing else disturbed the
solitude of the place where he lay.  Slowly
the weary day rolled on, and he hailed with
joy the last red rays of the sun, as they
stole up the steep rocks of Salisbury,
lingered for a moment on Arthur's rifted cone,
and then died away.

The twilight soon came on; the young
man crept from his hiding-place, and with an
anxious heart descended the northern side of
the hill, towards the place of meeting.  The
last flush of the set sun was lingering still
behind the darkening Ochils; and amidst
the smoke of busy Leith, the old spire of
St. Mary, and St. Anthony's shattered tower,
were still visible, but a favourable gloom and
obscurity were veiling every thing; and
Bolton hurried with a beating heart to the old
oratory, burning to give Mariette the warm
embrace, her devotion to him in his worst
extremity so well deserved.

There was no one there.

Dismantled of its ornaments and statues,
its font and altar, its door and windows, by
reformers and thieves, the old chapel of the
Holy Rood was desolate and empty.  The
stone arches still sustained the groined roof;
but the velvet moss and the tufted grass
grew in the joints of the masonry, and clung
to the carved crockets and grotesque corbels.

Long he waited, and anxiously he watched
the loan, that, from the chasm below the
Calton's western brow, led to Leith; but no
one approached—not a footstep or a sound
met his ear—but the wind, as it swept over
the Gallowlee, whistling drearily in the open
tracery of the chapel windows, and waving
the tufts of grass and wallflower that grew
in its mouldering niches.

Hour succeeded hour.

Midnight came, and an agony entered his
soul, for he then feared, he knew not what—he
dared not to think of it, but began hastily to
traverse the rough horse-way that led to the
city.

Near the chapel there stood a clump of
ancient sycamores, and among them were
two from which the branches had been
lopped, and across the tops of these divested
trunks, a beam was extended to serve for
the gibbet, which obtained for the place
the name it bears even unto this day—the
Gallowlee—and thereon were usually exposed
in chains the bodies of those who had
been executed—a barbarous practice, which
was common in England until a comparatively
recent period.

A crowd of horrible thoughts filled the mind
of Bolton; but, above all, two were most
palpable before him—the image of Mariette as
she had been when he loved her of old, and
the gibbet.

He drew near it fearfully.

Behind this ill-omened spot, the landscape
to the eastward was level, extending to the
seashore; here and there low clumps of
coppice and the rocks of Restalrig broke its
horizontal outline.  The sky was all of a
cloudless white tint; there were no stars, there
was no moon; but against that cold pale
background, the trees and the beam of the
gallows stood forth in strong relief and black
outline.

On the right towered up the rocky Calton,
a dark and undistinguishable mass.

A number of full-fed gleds and monstrous
ravens, who built their nests in the sycamores,
were perched on the beam of the gallows,
where they clapped their dusky wings, and
cawed and screamed as the disturber of their
feast approached.

Two skeletons were swinging there in the
night wind; and the remains of two other
beings, evidently fresh from the hands of the
doomster, swung beside them.  One was
headless and handless; but, by its bulk and
vast conformation, Hepburn knew the body
to be that of Black Hob of Ormiston.

The other, which was of much shorter
stature and slighter make, hung by the neck
vibrating in the passing wind, which swayed
it round and waved its long dark hair.

Fearfully, tremblingly, and scarcely daring
to breathe, Hepburn of Bolton drew near it.

One glance sufficed him, and he rushed
from the spot to return no more.

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.. _`MALMÖ`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV.


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   MALMO.

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..

   |  Yes! there are sighs for the bursting heart,
   |    And tears for the sleepless eye;
   |  But tears and sighs and sympathy,
   |  Are luxuries unknown to *me*.
   |  The wretch immured in the dungeon-keep
   |    May snatch an hour's repose;
   |  And dream of home and the light of heaven
   |    Ere he wake to misery's throes;
   |  If *Hope* with her radiant light be there—
   |  I mate with the swarthy fiend Despair!
   |                                      *Vedder.*

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Here, for a page or so, we resume the
MSS. of the reverend and worthy Magister
Absalom Beyer.

About this period, his diary, journal, or
history (which you will), for it partakes of
them all, suddenly breaks off, and there are
left but a few fragments, referring to a later
period.

One records the baptism of the sixth son
of Anna and Konrad, whom King Frederick,
for his valour in capturing a Lubeck frigate
that ravaged the shores of Bergen, had created
Count of Saltzberg, Lord of Welsöö, and
governor of Bergenhuis; and the garrulous
Magister records that this baptismal ceremony,
at which he officiated, and which was
celebrated with great splendour, was the
seventh anniversary of that joyous day on
which he had blessed the nuptial ring of
Anna and Konrad in the old cathedral of the
bishopric of Bergen; and he further records
the quantity of ale, wine, and dricka imbibed
on the occasion, and the loads of venison,
bread, and bergenvisch, eaten by the tenantry
at the baptism of young Hans (for so baby
the sixth was named); and how he screamed
and kicked when the holy water fell on him,
till he nearly sprang from his carved cradle,
which was hollowed like a boat in the Norse
fashion, lined with moss and velvet, and was
borne by Christina Slingebunder, who had
found her way from Westeray back to Bergen.

He also mentions that Konrad had grown
somewhat florid, and rather more round in
form, than when he had placed the ring on
Anna's hand before that magnificent altar;
and that she too, though retaining her
youthful bloom, had (alas, for romance!) lost
much of her slender and graceful aspect, and
looked quite like the mother of the five
chubby little ones, each of whom clung to
her skirts with one hand, while the other
was occupied with a great piece of the spiced
christening cake, on which they were regaling
with a satisfaction, equalled only by that of the
Danish soldier, who, having again found the
can and the cake offered on this occasion to
Nippen, had appropriated them both to himself.

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Ten years have elapsed since the reader
last heard in these pages of Bothwell's
hapless earl, and the lonely towers of Malmö.

Ten years!

And in all that long and weary time he
had been a fettered felon within the iron
walls of Malmö.  Pining hopelessly in a
captivity the most crushing to a heart so
fierce and proud—to a soul so high-spirited
and restless, with one thought ever before
him—liberty and home; and though
forgotten by Mary, or remembered only with a
shudder, his old love for her had never died;
and many a futile effort he made, by piteous
letters and petitions, to Frederick II. of
Demark—petitions so humble, that his once
proud nature would have shrunk from their
tenor—to interest himself, "pour la deliverance
de la Royne sa Princesse Marie."[\*]

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[\*] See Les Affaires de le Cante du Boduel.

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But neither her deliverance or his own
were ever achieved; for, were such a thing
possible, even God seemed to have abandoned
them to a fate that was alike inexorable and
irresistible.

Year after year wore away, and the seasons
succeeded each other in dreary and
monotonous succession.  This monotony was
most intolerable in winter—the long and
desolate winter of the north; when the
descending avalanche roared between the
frozen peaks—when the ice cracked and
burst in the narrow fiords, where the seals
and walrusses slept in the rays of the
moon—and when the northern lights, as they
flashed behind the summits of the distant
hills, filled the midnight sky with figures
that were equally beautiful and terrible.

Ever and anon, in one of those dreary
winters, when (as in A.D. 1333) all the
harbours of the Sound were sheeted over with
ice, and the shallow Baltic was frozen from
Lubeck to the castle of Kiobenhafen, Bothwell
sighed, as he thought of the great
Yule-logs that blazed so merrily in many a Scottish
hall, of the nut-brown ale and wine that
flowed in many a quaigh and luggie; while
the green holly branch and the mistletoe
bough hung from the old roof-trees, and the
mirth and joy of the season expanded every
heart.

Then came the short spring, that lasted
but a month, when the snow melted or
lingered only on the distant peaks; when
the streams burst their frosty barriers, and,
with the roar of a thousand waterfalls,
poured in silver currents over the rocks of
the fiord, where the wild rasp, the dwarf
birch, and the barberry, sprouted in the
warmth of the coming sun.

And then, in the early mornings and the
late nights of that northern region—nights
when the sun sets at twelve P.M., he would
gaze, dreamily, from his prison window on
the waters of the Sound, until, to his fancy,
they became like those of the Clyde, that
swept round Bothwell bank, amid its dark
green woods and sylvan solitude.

The summer passed, and winter would
come again to spread snow and desolation
over the face of the land; and so the time
wore on, until its very monotony turned his
impetuous brain, and he became a raving
maniac!

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It was in the year of grace 1577, when a
Scottish priest, one of those whom the
Reformation had compelled to wander, in
misery and penury, far from their native
lands, appeared at the gates of Malmö, and
sought permission of Beirn Gowes, knight
castellan, to visit the unhappy captive.

The priest was a man about five-and-thirty;
but the duties of his office, toil, and
hardship, made him seem considerably older;
his head was already becoming bald, even
where he had no tonsure; his blue eyes
were mild, and deep, and thoughtful; he
leaned a little on a staff, and bore on his
back the wallet containing a few of the
necessaries required by him on his solitary
pilgrimage; for he was one of those whose
life had been devoted to spreading and
upholding the Catholic faith in those
northern lands, where it had been most
severely shaken; and, amid hardship and
danger, his days were spent in exhorting
the faithful, recovering the faithless, and
confirming the wavering.

He stood within the vault where Bothwell
lay, and, folding his hands upon his breast,
regarded him fixedly with eyes that filled
with tears.

Oh, what a change was there!

Visible only in the twilight that struggled
through the open grating of that vaulted
dungeon, the captive lay in a corner upon a
little damp straw, chained by the middle to
the wall like a wild animal; he was
completely nude, and his coal-black hair and
beard, now beginning to be grizzled, flourished
in one thick matted and luxuriant mass,
from amid which his wild black eyes gleamed
like two bright stars.  They were hollow,
dilated, and ghastly.  His form was attenuated
to the last degree; every rib, joint, and
muscle being horribly visible; he resembled
an inmate of the grave—a chained fiend—any
thing but a man in the prime of life, for
the miserable being had barely reached his
fortieth year.

When he moved, the straw rustled, and
the rusty chain that fretted his tender skin
rattled grimly in the ears of the priest, who
knelt down in the further end of the dungeon,
and prayed with fervour; but Bothwell
neither saw nor heard him.

One of those glimmerings of the past that
so frequently haunted him, was at that
moment coming like a vision before his
mind.  Exhausted by illness, and the fever
of his spirit, the poor maniac had become
calm; and his thoughts were slowly emerging
from the mist that obscured them, and
arranging themselves in order and form, as he
struggled back into a consciousness of
existence—the brief consciousness that so often
precedes the oblivion of the grave.

In the figures made by the damp on his
dungeon wall, he saw the same pale face,
with its weeping eyes and white veil, that
had haunted him so often, ere his
overcharged mind found a relief in insanity.
Mary—*la Reine Blanche!* he stretched his
bony arms towards the figure; but still it
remained there, neither advancing nor
retiring, till a change came over its features.

Then its eyes seemed to fill with a terrible
glare, and the shriek that once rang through
the Kirk-of-Field, seemed to rend the massive
vault, and to pierce his tingling ears like a
poniard.  Then he dashed his hands against
them, and grovelled down among the straw,
to shut out that dreadful sound—the dying
cry of Darnley!

"Oh, Father of mercy and of justice!"
said the priest, beating himself upon the
breast; "how dreadful is thy vengeance,
when thou permittest the sinner to mete out
the meed of his own sin!"

"A voice! a voice—who spoke?" said the
Earl, struck by the unusual sound.  "Hah! was
it thee?"

His tone was low and husky, and the
sounds seemed to come with labour from his
furry throat.

"Was it thee—oh, say it was thee!" he
continued, as he paused, and seemed to
wrestle mentally with his madness, till he
overcame it, and, by obtaining one further
revelation of the past, became more and more
cognizant of the present, and alive to the
real horrors of his situation.  "Memory,"
said he, passing a hand thoughtfully over
his brow—"Oh, memory! what a curse art
thou; and, when united to remorse, how
doubly so!  Hah! those eyes," he groaned;
"those weeping eyes again! ... But
that voice—it was hers! so soft—so gentle! it
came back to me like a strain of old music
on the wind of memory—as it has often come
in the slow hours of many a cheerless day,
and the dead calm silence of many a changeless
night—through the long dark vista of
many monotonous years.  Years—how
many! oh, how many!  Dost thou smile
with thine unearthly features? ha! ha!" ...

Like sunshine emerging from a mist, the
past was coming gradually back; and suddenly,
like a flash of light, one bright gleam
of thought brought all the long-forgotten
days of other years before him.

The visionary saw her—Mary—the bright,
the beautiful, the innocent, as she had shone
in the buoyancy of youth and loveliness,
when surrounded by the chivalry of France,
and the splendour of the house of Bourbon.

The scene changed—she was standing
timidly, irresolute, and pale, on the shores
of her half-barbarized native land; again she
appeared—it was with the diadem of the
Bruces on her brow, and the orb of the
Alexanders on her sceptre, as she presided
over the first of her factious parliaments, in
the ancient hall of the Scottish estates.  He
saw her standing with the triumphant Darnley
at the altar of Sancte Crucis, with more
in her air and eye of the timid bride than
the stately queen, blushing and abashed by
the side of her handsome and exulting
vassal.

Then came the memory of that terrible
hour in the Kirk-of-Field—the night in the
towers of Dunbar, and that fruitless cry
for mercy—the sad low wail that chilled the
ruffian heart of Ormiston.

He saw to what he had reduced that
bright and happy being, who, like a
butterfly or an Indian bird, was born alone for
the sunshine and the most flowery paths of
life!  He saw her robbed of her purity and
sweetness—crushed like a rose beneath the
coil of a snake; and fancy painted her in a
prison like his own, sad, solitary, and
desolate—broken in heart, and crushed in
spirit—blighted in name and fame and
honour—withered in hope, and faded in form—a
household word of scorn to the cruel and
the factious, and all by him—by him, who
had loved her so madly and so wickedly.

These thoughts poured like a current
through the floodgate of memory; each
and all came back with returning consciousness;
and gradually his career arose before
him, like one stupendous curse.

He sighed heavily.

"God be with thee, thou sinful and
vainglorious—thou rash and headstrong—lord!"
said the priest; "now thou seest to what thy
manifold transgressions against the blessed
law have brought thee."

"It was my doom—my destiny," replied
the Earl, pressing his bony hands upon his
thin, wan temples.

"Nay, Lord Earl," replied the other, in a
sad and broken accent; "unless it be that
a man maketh his own destiny, as assuredly
thou didst thine."

"And who," he asked, endeavouring to
pierce the gloom with his hopeless eye; "who
art thou that speakest thus to Bothwell?"

"One, in other days, Lord Bothwell's
steadfast friend.  I am John Hepburn of
Bolton—hast thou quite forgotten me?  I
was long the partner of thy folly—the
abettor of thine insane ambition—the partaker
of thy damning guilt!  *O miserere mei
Deus!*"

"Oh, Bolton!  John of Bolton!" exclaimed
the fettered Earl, bursting into tears, and
stretching forth his thin worn hands, which
the priest grasped with fervour; "I know
thee now—and where I am, and *what* I am.
And thou art now a priest?  Oh, how much
thou art to be envied!  Years—years have
gone past me as the wind passes over the
ocean.  As the waves arise and sink, these
years have come and gone, and have left no
trace on my memory.  But I feel that I
am dying now!" he exclaimed in an unearthly
voice; "Oh, God of my fathers! look down
with pity on me, the most abject of their
race!  Oh, John of Bolton! if Heaven should
be as unforgiving as earth—if God should be
as inexorable as man!"

"Think not so, Bothwell"——

"Oh! it were indeed better that I should
perish altogether, and pass into oblivion."

"Say not so," replied Bolton; "behold
the flowers of the field, and the fruits of the
earth; they spring up—they bloom—they
wither, and die, but only to be reproduced
at another season, more beautiful and
blooming than before.  So it is with men—and so
will it be with thee.  All human memory
is freighted with care and sad remembrance"——

"But few with such remorse as mine."

"This contrition and grief are good,"
replied the priest, as, with kindling eyes, he
pointed upwards to Heaven; "by perishing
thou shalt be preserved, and die but to be
renewed for ever, and in such glory as
the mind of angels can alone conceive; for
He who is above us, beareth aloft those
scales, from which, on one hand, he metes
out eternal life to the good and contrite—on
the other, the eternal punishment to the
unrepentant."

"Thou hast been lately in Scotland," said
the Earl abruptly.

"Nay; not for ten long years," replied
the priest calmly.

"Ten, ten!" reiterated Bothwell, passing
his hands across his brow; "and what of Mary?"

"She is still a captive, with the axe of the
English queen hanging over her devoted head."

Bothwell started, as if he would have
leaped from the ground; but his strength
failed him, and he sank heavily on the straw
among which he was chained.

"My energies, so briefly gained, are
sinking fast again; but ere they leave me, and
perhaps for ever—oh! thou who art a priest,
bless me, for I have sinned!  Hear my
confession—let it be written out, and attested
by the captain of my prison, that my last
earthly act may be one of justice to her
whom I have so deeply wronged.  Oh,
John of Bolton! thou knowest well that she
was the most innocent and artless of all
God's creatures!  Quick, quick! as an
atonement to her, and to the world, for all
I have done—hasten, ere it be too late!"
cried the Earl sinking back, overcome by
weakness and despair.

The friar knocked hurriedly on the
dungeon door; it was opened by a Danish
pikeman, who, by his request, hastened to
summon the attendance of Biern Gowes,
the castellan of Malmö and governor of
Draxholm.  Unwillingly he came,
accompanied by Christian Alborg, Otto Brawe,
captain of the king's castle of Ottenbrocht,
Baron Gullemstierne, and others, with whom
he had been drinking skiedam, till their faces,
where visible through their red Danish beards
and outrageous whiskers, were flushed like
scarlet—and in their presence, that document
now so well known, the CONFESSION
of Bothwell's many crimes, and Mary's
innocence of all that she had ever been accused
of, was written, attested, and sealed up for
transmission to King Frederick.

What a subject for a picture would this
episode have formed!

That dreary vault of red granite, half-veiled
in dusky obscurity, save where the
moonlight struggled through a narrow slit
on one hand; while, on the other, the flickering
light of a single torch shed its fitful
glare on the unearthly form of the dying
Earl—hollow-eyed, pale, and attenuated to
a skeleton—chained by the waist to his bed
of straw, and sinking fast, with the death
rattle almost in his throat; the bald head
and dark robe of the priest, who knelt by
his side writing down his dying words—that
priest in other days his friend and knightly
comrade—on the tall, burly figures of the
sleepy Danish governor and his friends, with
their long beards, and fantastic costumes
trimmed with sable fur, stooping over the
sputtering torch, to hear the faint but terrible
words of those pale lips that were about
to close for ever.

"Now, blessed be God, it is done!" cried
the Earl, closing his eyes; "for I feel that I
am passing from among you.  I am dying!
Oh, John of Bolton! in this dread moment
let me think that thou at least will stand by
my grave—will say one prayer for my soul;
and, in memory of the days of other years,
will remember me with pity and forgiveness!"

Bolton pressed his clammy hand, but
there was no return, for the jaw relaxed,
and the eyes turned back within their sockets,
announced that the soul of the Earl
had fled.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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His grave lay under the old castle wall, in
a lonely little dell.

It was shaded by the light leaves of the
dwarf-birch and the purple flowers of the
lilac tree; the blue forget-me-not, the white
strawberry, and the yellow daisy, were planted
there by the kind-hearted Swedes, in memory
of the poor stranger that had found a grave
so far from his home, and from where the
dust of his forefathers lay.

On St. Bothan's eve, for many a returning
year, a wandering priest was seen to kneel
beside that lonely grave, with eyes downcast,
and a crucifix in his clasped hands; and after
praying he would go sadly away, but whither
no one knew.

Year after year passed on, and still he came
to offer up that promised prayer for the
repose of the dead man's soul; though on the
grave the weeds grew long and rank, and he
who lay within it had long since mingled
with the dust.

Those who first remembered the priest
when they were little children, saw him still
returning when they were men and women
in the prime of life—but then he was
decrepit and old.

The last time he was seen was in the reign
of King Christian IV., about the year 1622.
His form was then bent with extreme old age,
and he leaned upon a staff; his hair was thin
and white—his cheeks were hollow, and he
wept as he prayed.

He gazed long and wistfully at the grassy
tomb, and tottered away to return no more.

Where that poor priest died, no man knew.

And there lay the deserted grave in its
loneliness, by the shore of the northern sea,
with the long grass waving on its solemn
ridge, till in time it became flattened and
effaced, and its memory was forgotten; for
no kind hand ever raised a stone to mark
where that memorable instance of ambition
and misrule, the last Earl of the old line of
Hailes and Bothwell, lay.





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   NOTES.


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   ANNA ROSENKRANTZ.

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The foregoing story has been conceived from a passage in
SUHM'S "SAMLINGES," or Collections for the History of Denmark.

As stated in the romance, there is every reason to believe that
James Hepburn, the famous Earl of Bothwell, was married early
in life to a Norwegian lady, Anne Throndson (daughter of
Christopher Throndson), prior to his marriage with Lady Jean
Gordon, of the house of Huntly, and that his possessing, by her,
certain lands in Orkney, was the reason for his obtaining the
Dukedom of these Isles in 1567.—(See *Les Affaires du Conte de
Boduel*: Bannatyne Club.)

After his battle with, and defeat at sea by, the celebrated Sir
William Kirkaldy of Grange, Bothwell entered Karmesound, a
harbour between the island of Karm and the mainland, where
he was found by Captain Christian Alborg, commander of the
*Biornen*, or Great Bear, a Danish ship of war.  He immediately
demanded Bothwell's passports and licence for sailing with flag
displayed and cannon bent in the Danish seas; and, failing their
production, requested the Earl to follow him to Bergen up the
Jelta Fiord.  In his declaration or report, Alborg states, "That
among the Scottish crew there was one dressed in old torn and
patched boatswain's clothes, who, some time afterwards, stated
himself to be the supreme ruler of all Scotland."

This was the Earl, with whom he reached the castle of Bergen
on the 2nd September, 1567.

The governor of the castle and province, as stated in the
romance, was Erick Rosenkrantz, a wealthy Danish noble, who,
on the captain's report, appointed a committee of twenty-four
gentlemen to examine the captive.  They met on the 23rd
September; among them were the bishop and four councillors of
Bergen, who successively questioned Bothwell.  He requested
and obtained leave to reside in the city.  Among his followers,
we are told, there was found "one David Wood, a famous
pirate."

Magister Absalom Beyer, the minister of Bergen, who has
left behind him a diary, called *The Chapter Book*, extending from
the year 1533 to 1570, recorded the following, which is extracted
from SUHM'S "SAMLINGES."

"1567, *September* 2—Came in (to Bergen harbour) the ship
*Royal David*, of which Christian Alborg is captain.  He had
captured a Scottish noble, named James Hepburn, Earl of
Bothwell, Duke of Orkney and Shetland, who had been wedded
to the Queen of Scotland.  He was suspected to have been in
the plot against the King's life.  The Council of the kingdom
having revolted against the Queen, this Earl escaped, and has
come hither to Norway.

"1567, *September* 17—I upbraided the Lady Anne, the daughter
of Christopher Throndson, that the Earl of Bothwell had taken
her from her native country, and yet would not keep her as his
lawful wife, which he had promised her to do, with hand, mouth,
and letters, which letters she caused to be read before him; and,
whereas, he has three wives living—firstly, herself—secondly,
another in Scotland, from whom he has bought (divorced?)
himself—and, thirdly, Queen Mary.  The Lady Anne opined, 'that
he was good for nothing.'  Then he promised her an annual
rent of a hundred dollars from Scotland, and a ship with all her
anchors and cordage complete.

"1567, *September* 25—The Earl went to the Castle, where
Erick Rosenkrantz did him great honour.

"1567, *September* 28—Erick Rosenkrantz made a splendid
banquet for the Earl and his followers.

"1567, *September* 30—The Earl departed on board the David,
and was carried captive into Denmark, *where he yet remains* in
the Castle of Malmo at this time, 1568.

"1567, *October* 10—Part of the Earl's men were returned to
Scotland, on beard a small pink which Erick Rosenkrantz lent
them, and, it is said, they were all put to death on their
landing."

The only discrepancy lies in one statement of the Magister
and the Committee; the former calls the Danish ship, the David;
the latter, *Biornen*; but probably the Captain Alborg commanded
two bearing these names.

From other passages in the diary, we find that so early as
1563, Lady Anna Rosenkrantz moved in the best circle in the
province (which she could not have done as Bothwell's mistress);
and also that she was usually named *Skottefruin*, or the Scottish
lady.  Her second sister, Dorothy, was married to John Stewart,
a gentleman of Shetland; and the third, Else', was thrice
married—the last time to Axel Mouatt, a Scottish gentleman settled
in Norway.

The song sung by Anna in the first volume, is an old Norse
or Lapland ballad, and is taken from Consett's *Remarks* in a Tour
through Lapland.

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\II.—THE QUEEN'S APOTHECARY.

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Three documents are still preserved in the General Register
House of Edinburgh, from which we learn the name of this
person, and other interesting items concerning that murder in
the Kirk-of-Field, which bears so prominent a place in the
romance.

On the 12th February, this precept, written by the Earl of
Huntly, was issued by the Queen's order to Mr Robert Richardson,
treasurer of Scotland, to pay £40 for perfuming the King's
body.

"My Lord Thesaurar, forsamekle as the Queenis Majestie
and Counsell has direckett ane Pottinger and Schirurgen to
caus perfume the Kingis body, and in respect that there is syndri
thingis requirit to the samyn quhilkis thay hadde nocht, heirfore
the Queenis Majestie has ordanit me to advertis you, that ye
cans delyver fourtie pundis for performance of sick necessars as
appertenis thairtill, quhilkis sal be allouit to you, and delyver the
same to the Pottinger, and tak his vritting thairon; and for my
awin part, I vald pray you effectualy that the said soume war
perfarmit with diligence and delyverit in all haist, in respect
the same rynis to the Queenis Majesties honor and the hale
cuntrey.

"At the Palyce of Halirudhous, the xij. februar, 1566.

"Your L. guid freind, HUNTLYE."

"To my Lord Thesraur."

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   (In dorso.)

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"Je, Martin Picauet, appore de la Royne de Scosse, Douairiere
de France, confesse auair Recu de Mr. Robert Richardson, tresorier
des finances de la diste dame, la soume de quatre vintz livres
Tourn., pour la fourniture des drogues pour l'ambamemente de
Roy, de la quelle soume prometz en tenir compt au dist tresoreir,
et a tous auttres Tesmointz mon seing Manuel cy mis le xij.,
jour de februier mil cinq cent soixante et six, auant pasques.

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"E. PICAUET."

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The High Treasurer's Accounts contain two interesting
entries for the above purpose,

"*Item*, the xij. day of Februar, be the Queenis grace's speciall
command to *Martine Picauet*, ypothegar, to mak furnesing of
droggis, spices, and utheris necessaris for oppining and perfuming
of the Kingis grace Majesties umquhile bodie, as his
acquittance shawin upon compt beris, ... xl. li.

"*Item*, for colis, tubbis, hardis, barrellis, and utheris necessaris
preparit for bowalling of the Kingis grace. ... xlvj. s."

For more information concerning this, see the third volume of
ARCHÆOLOGIA SCOTICA, from which this is taken.

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\III.—QUEEN MARY'S ARCHERS.

"The Archearis of our Soverane Ladyis Gaird," seem to have
numbered only seventy-five on their muster roll, in the books of
the Comptroller and Collector of the Thirds of Benefices, 1st
April, 1562.  The pay list is as follows:—

::

  "*Item*, To the Captain of the Guard, . . . . . v. c. lib.
  "To Robert Stewart, Ensign, . . . . . . . . . . j. c. l. lib.
  "To Corporal Jenat  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l. v. li.
  "To Captain Bello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . j. c. lib.
  "To Captain Hew Lawder  . . . . . . . . . . . . lxxv. lib."

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Six Frenchmen, Dionese and Charles La Brone, Duval, La
Bram, La Fram, Savoy, and a Trumpeter, appear on the list.

This garde-du-corps, which were enrolled under Sir Arthur
Erskine, 1st April, 1562, or not quite a year after the Queen's
return from France, continued under pay till 1567, when they
were disbanded on her imprisonment in Lochleven.  See the
*Maitland Club Miscellany*.

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\IV.—BOTHWELL.

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The following document is so little known, and so immediately
relates to the melancholy fate of the unhappy hero of
these pages, that an apology is almost unnecessary for presenting
it here to the reader.  It is the royal order for imprisoning him
in the Castle of Malmö:—

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   *Til Biorn Kaas*.

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"FREDERICK—Be it known unto you, that we have ordered
our well-beloved Peder Oxe, our man, Councillor and Marshall
of the Kingdom of Denmark, to send the Scottish Earl, who
resides in the Castle of Copenhagen, over to our Castle of Malmo,
where he is to remain for some time.  Therefore we request of
you, that you will prepare the same vaulted room in the Castle
where the Marshal Eyler Hardenberg had his apartment; and
that you will cover with mason-work the private place in the
same chamber; and where the iron bars of the windows may not
be sufficiently strong and well guarded, that you will have them
repaired; and when he arrives, that you will put him in the said
chamber, give him a bed and good entertainment, as Peder Oxe
will further direct and advise you; and that you, *before all things*,
will keep a strong guard, and hold in good security, the said
Earl, as you may best devise, in order that he shall not escape.

"THER MET SKEER WOR WILGE.  (Thereby our will is done.)

"Written at Fredericksborg, the 28th day of December, of the
year after the birth of Christ, 1567."

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(See *Les Affaires du Conte de Boduel*, 4to.)

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   END OF VOL. \III.

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   M'CORQUODALE AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON.
   WORKS, NEWTON.

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