"How ill my own plans sound when thus repeated to me! Yet I cannot but
laugh when I imagine the expression the faces of Moray, Morton, and
Lethington will assume, when those cold and calculating knaves, to whom
we owe our present forfeiture and exile, hear of my Danish league.
'Twill be a masterstroke in the game of intrigue; and certes, under my
circumstances, as Prince of Orkney and Shetland, holding the isles as a
fief of Frederick, to wed the ward of this Norwegian knight were better
than, as Bothwell, landless and penniless, to wed the untochered Jane of
Huntly, and live like a trencherman or boy of the belt on the bounty of
the proud earl, her brother."
"Doubtless," said Ormiston with an imperceptible sneer, "our vessel will
require certain refitting, which will detain her here for some days?"
"Assuredly," replied the Earl.
"During which time we must continue to fare on raw meat, sawdust, and
sour ale, by the rood! Surely we will have plenty of time to canvass
our projects to-morrow; but to-night let me sleep a-God's name! for I am
skinful of salt water, and wellnigh talked to death."
Ormiston was soon fast asleep, and the Earl, though of a happy and
thoughtless temperament, a reckless, and often (when crossed in his
pride and purposes) of a ferocious disposition, envied his ease of mind.
He too courted sleep, but in vain; for a thousand fancies and a thousand
fears intruded upon his mind. The changing expression of his fine
features, when viewed by the fitful light of the expiring cresset, would
have formed a noble study for a painter. One moment they were all fire
and animation, as his heart expanded with hope and energy; the next saw
them clouded by chagrin and bitterness, when he reflected on the more
than princely patrimony he had ruined by a long career of private
dissipation and political intrigue--for violence, turbulence, ambition,
and reckless folly, had been the leading features in the life of this
headstrong noble.
The career of Earl Bothwell had been one tissue of inconsistencies.
Revolting at the ecclesiastical executions which about the period of
James V.'s death so greatly disgusted the Scottish people, the Earl with
his father became a reformer at an early period in life, and like all
the leaders in that great movement, which was fated to convulse the
land, accepted a secret pension from the English court to maintain his
wild extravagance; but when blows were struck and banners displayed,
when the army of the Protestants took the field against Mary of Guise,
young Bothwell, in 1559, assumed the command of her French auxiliaries,
and acted with vigour and valour in her cause.
Afterwards he went on an embassy to Paris; where, by the gallantry of
his air, the splendour of his retinue, and the versatility of his
talents for flattery, diplomacy, and intrigue, together with his dutiful
and graceful demeanour, he particularly recommended himself to Mary of
Scotland, the young queen of France.
Four years afterwards, when Mary was seated on her father's throne, he
had returned to Scotland; but engaging in a desperate conspiracy for the
destruction of his mortal foe, the Earl of Moray, then in the zenith of
his power and royal favour, he had been indefinitely banished the court
and kingdom. Filled with rage against Moray, who wielded the whole power
at the court and council of his too facile sister, Bothwell, finding his
star thus completely eclipsed by a rival to whom he was fully equal in
bravery and ambition, though inferior in subtlety and guile--and that
his strong and stately castles, his fertile provinces and rich domains,
were gifted away to feudal and political foemen--sought the Danish
court, where he had intrigued so far, that, at the period when our story
opens, a conspiracy had been formed to place all the fortresses of
Orkney and Shetland in the hands of Frederick, who, in return, was to
create Lord Bothwell Prince of the Northern Isles. This plot had
gradually been developing; and the Earl, in furtherance of his daring
and revengeful scheme, was now on his way back to Orkney, where he
possessed various fiefs and adherents, especially one powerful baron of
the house of Balfour of Monkquhanny.
To a face and form that were singularly noble and prepossessing, the
unfortunate Earl of Bothwell united a bearing alike gallant and courtly;
while his known courage and suavity of manner, in the noonday of his
fortune, made him the favourite equally of the great and the humble.
Without being yet a confirmed profligate, he had plunged deeply into all
the excesses and gaieties of the age, especially when in France and
Italy; for at home in Scotland, when under the Draconian laws and iron
rule of the new regime, the arena of such follies, even to a powerful
baron, was very circumscribed.
His heart was naturally good, and its first impulses were ever those of
warmth, generosity, and gratitude--and these principles, under proper
direction, when united to his talent, courage, and ambition, might have
made him an ornament to his country. His early rectitude of purpose had
led him to trust others too indiscriminately; his warmth, to sudden
attachments and dangerous quarrels; his generosity, to lavish
extravagance. Early in life he is said to have loved deeply and
unhappily, but with all the ardour of which a first passion is capable
of firing a brave and generous heart. Who the object of his love had
been was then unknown; one report averred her to be a French princess,
and the Magister Absalom Beyer shrewdly guesses, that this means no
other than the dauphiness, Mary Stuart--but of this more anon.
There was now a dash of the cynic in his nature, and he was fast
schooling himself to consider women merely what he was, in his gayer
moments, habitually averring them to be--the mere instruments of
pleasure, and tools of ambition.
The unhappy influence of that misplaced or unrequited love, had thrown a
long shadow on the career of Bothwell; and as the sun of his fortune
set, that shadow grew darker and deeper. But there were times, when his
cooler reflection had tamed his wild impulses, that a sudden act of
generosity and chivalry would evince the greatness of that heart, which
an unhappy combination of circumstances, a prospect the most alluring
that ever opened to man, and the influence of evil counsel, spurring on
a restless ambition, hurried into those dark and terrible schemes of
power and greatness, that blighted his name and fame for ever!
The character of his friend and brother exile, Hob Ormiston of that Ilk,
had been distinguished only for its pride, ferocity, turbulence, and
rapacity. He was one of the worst examples of those brutal barons who
flourished on the ruins of the Church of Rome--the only power that ever
held them in check--who laughed to scorn the laws of God and man--who
recognised no will save their own, and no law but that of the sword and
the strongest hand--who quoted Scripture to rifle and overthrow the same
church which their fathers had quoted Scripture to erect and endow; and
who, in that really dark age succeeding the Scottish Reformation,
embroiled their helpless and gentle sovereign in a disastrous civil war,
and drenched their native land in blood!
*CHAPTER VI.*
*ANNA.*
And when the moon went down the sky,
Still rose, in dreams, his native plain;
And oft he thought his love was by,
And charm'd him with some tender strain.
_The Mermaid._
The light of the rising sun was streaming through the windows next
morning when the Earl awoke; and from dreams of a stormy sea, with the
din of flapping canvass and rattling cordage in his ears, was agreeably
surprised by finding close to his the small fair face and bright eyes of
Anna Rosenkrantz--so close, indeed, that her soft hair mingled with his
own, and the breath of her prying little mouth came gently on his cheek,
"Like the sweet south, that breathes upon a bank of violets."
It was suddenly withdrawn, and Bothwell started up.
The young lady, with Christina, her attendant, arrayed in neat morning
dresses, the black fur of which contrasted with the snowy whiteness of
their necks and arms, stood by his bedside with a warm posset of spiced
ale, according to that ancient custom, still retained in Norway, where
now a dish of warm coffee is substituted for the mulled mead of their
jovial ancestors, and is presented by the ladies of the house to each
guest and inmate about daybreak.
In pursuance of this primitive custom, Lady Anna presented herself by
the couch of the Earl, whose dark eyes sparkled with astonishment and
pleasure; for various episodes of love and intrigue flashed upon his
mind, when beholding the object of his admiration standing in that half
dishabille at so early an hour, and a deep blush of confusion suffused
the face of the beautiful girl, for the aspect of the Earl was
singularly prepossessing.
His black locks curled shortly over a pale and noble forehead; his eyes
were intensely dark, and the hue of his thick mustaches and short peaked
beard formed a strong contrast to the whiteness of his half bare chest,
which was pale as the marble of Paros.
"A good morning, my Lord!" said Anna with a delightful smile, while
Christina addressed herself to Ormiston; "I hope your dreams have been
pleasant?"
"They were of thee, fair Anna"----
"Then they must have been delightful," she replied with gaiety, eluding
the Earl, who endeavoured to possess her hand. "And you have slept
well?"
"On this downy couch I could not have reposed otherwise than well,
lady."
"I am glad you appreciate what is all the work of my own fair hands; for
know, sir, that this quilt of eider-down was the last essay of my
perseverance and industry."
"Thine, fair Anna!"
"Thou seest I am not one to hide my candle under a bushel."
"By the wheel of St. Catherine!" said the Earl, smiling as he smoothed
down the quilt, which was entirely made of soft feathers from the breast
of the eider-duck, woven into bright and beautiful patterns; "there is
something very adorable in the idea of reposing under what your pretty
fingers have wrought!"
"Konrad scaled the highest cliffs that overhang the fiord to bring me
these feathers. Poor Konrad! He has clambered for me, where not even
Jans Thorson or the boldest man on the bay would dare to climb, even to
win his daily bread."
"And who is this Konrad?" asked Bothwell, suspiciously.
"He who--permit me to say---saved you from the ocean last night; and but
for whom, perhaps, you had now been in heaven."
"St. Mary forefend it had not been a warmer place!"
"I have brought you our morning grace-cup," said Anna, placing it in his
hand; "drink to the prosperity of the Lords of Welsoeoe, my lord, and
let me begone, for I have my uncle, Sir Erick, and others, to visit with
the same gift."
The Earl promptly kissed her hand, and emptied the cup, thus displaying
the difference between his open nature and that of Ormiston, who, being
ever on the alert against treachery and surprise, declined tasting the
ale, until, as a compliment, Christina Slingbunder first put it to her
rosy lips, after which he drained the goblet at one gulp, and clasping
the buxom damsel in his arms imprinted a kiss upon each of her cheeks,
for which she roundly boxed his ears; and, when the ladies had
withdrawn, both he and the Earl lay back in their beds, bursting with
laughter, for Ormiston exercised his wit in various jests on this
unusual visit--jests which the modest Magister Absalom Beyer has failed
or declined to record.
To his great satisfaction, the Earl found that his vessel, the
Fleur-de-lys, a stout little brigantine, had been so much shattered by
the late storm, that by the solemnly delivered verdict of David Wood his
skipper, Hans Knuber, and other seafaring men of Bergen, the work of
several days would be required to refit her for sea--and these days,
with the recklessness of his nature, he resolved to devote entirely to
the prosecution of an amour, the end of which he could not entirely
foresee.
Though solemnly betrothed to Lady Jane Gordon, second daughter of George
Earl of Huntly, who had been slain at the battle of Corrichie, the love
he once felt and avowed for her, had evaporated during his wandering
life and long absence from Scotland; and as it happened that the heart
of the amorous Earl abhorred a vacuum, he gave way to all the impulses
of this new passion, which the beauty and winning manner of Anna were so
well calculated to inspire and confirm, and which he thought would prove
a pleasing variety and amusement in his exile. A month had elapsed
since they separated at Copenhagen, and that short separation had served
but to increase the flame which a longer one would as surely have
extinguished.
The morning meal was over; the castle hall had been converted into a
court of justice, where, seated in his red leather chair, with his
orders on his breast, Erick Rosenkrantz heard pleas and quarrels, and
gave those decisions which constituted him the Solon of Aggerhuis and
Lycurgus of Bergen. The Earl had returned from the beach, where the
entire population of the little town had crowded to witness the unusual
sight of hauling his vessel into a rude dock, constructed in a creek of
the rocks, where Hans Knuber and all the fishermen on the fiord had been
lounging since daybreak, with their hands stuffed into the pockets of
their voluminous red breeches, criticising with seaman-like eyes, and
commenting in most nautical Norse, on the rig, mould, and aspect of the
Scottish ship.
As Bothwell, with his white plume dancing above his lofty head, the
embroidery of his mantle, and the brilliants of his belt and bonnet
sparkling in the sunshine, ascended to a terrace of the castle that
overlooked the fiord, the notes of a harp struck with great skill,
mingling with the voice of Anna, fell upon his ear, and he paused.
She was singing an old Scandinavian air, which, being chiefly remarkable
for its melody and simplicity, was admirably adapted to her soft low
voice. Nothing could surpass the grace of her figure, as she bent
forward over the rudely formed but classic instrument--her face half
shaded by her glossy hair, that fell in profusion from under the little
velvet cap before mentioned, and glittered in the sunshine, like the
wiry strings among which her small white hands were moving so swiftly.
The grass of the terrace was smooth as velvet, and permitted the Earl to
approach so softly, that not even his gold spurs were heard to jangle as
he walked. Though Anna appeared not to perceive him, she was perfectly
aware of his approach. Conscious of her skill as a musician, and of her
own beauty, which she had that day taken every precaution and care to
enhance, and animated by a coquettish desire to please one whom she well
knew to be her lover, she continued to sing unheedingly, and the Earl
was thus permitted to approach (as he thought unobserved) until he leant
over the parapet close beside her. He felt his heart stirred by the
pathos of her voice; for, animated by an intense desire to please and to
conquer, she sang exquisitely an old song, with which, in her childhood,
she had heard the Wandering Lapps welcome the approach of summer.
I
"The snows are dissolving
On Tornao's rude side;
And the ice of Lulhea
Flows down its dark tide.
Thy stream, O Lulhea!
Flows freely away;
And the snowdrop unfolds
Its pale leaves to the day.