BOTHWELL:
OR,
THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
BY JAMES GRANT, ESQ.,
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH CASTLE,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER," &c., &c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
PARRY & CO., LEADENHALL STREET.
MDCCCLI.
M'CORQUODALE AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON.
WORKS, NEWTON.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAPTER
- [The-Kirk-Of-Field]
- [The Midnight Mass]
- [Guilt Levels All]
- [The Prebend of St. Giles]
- [The Papists' Pillar]
- [Remorse]
- [The Rescue]
- [The Challenge]
- [Ainslie's Supper]
- [Hans and Konrad]
- [How Bothwell Made Use of the Bond]
- [Love and Scorn]
- [The Cry]
- [Hans' Patience is Rewarded]
- [The Legend of St. Mungo]
- [Mary's Despair]
- [The Bridal at Beltane]
- [The Whirlpool]
- [Bothwell and the Great Bear]
- [Christian Alborg]
- [The Castellana]
- [The Vain Resolution]
- [Retribution]
- [Malmö]
——— [Notes]
BOTHWELL;
OR,
THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE KIRK-OF-FIELD.
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.
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.
[*] The Burgh loch. Mag. Absalom.
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.
CHAPTER II.
THE MIDNIGHT MASS.
What, though the men
Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatise
The sister-cause—religion and the law—
With superstitious name!
Grahame.
"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.
CHAPTER III.
GUILT LEVELS ALL.
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.
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.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PREBEND OF ST. GILES.
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.
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.
CHAPTER V.
THE PAPISTS' PILLAR.
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.
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.
CHAPTER VI.
REMORSE.
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.
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."
CHAPTER VII.
THE RESCUE.
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.
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.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CHALLENGE.
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.
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!