"I have promised marriage to both; and to one my plight must be broken.
What matters it? 'Tis only to a woman; and did not one whom I loved
with all the depth and holiness of a first love, slight that passion as
valueless, and laugh me to scorn when she chose another?"
"Remain here, and we shall be sent captives to Scotland, where all the
particulars of our pretended embassy to Denmark will be discovered."
"And if I return with this little Norwegian by my side, St Paul! but I
must keep my best sword buckled there too."
"Any thing thou likest, but let us leave this desolate land. Let us
once more have our feet on Scottish ground, and our hands on our
bridles; we shall then make our own terms with Huntly and the Queen. If
this dame Anna will go"----
"Go! oh, thou knowest not how the little creature loves me! Ardent and
impulsive to excess, she will follow me wherever I list."
"While the fit lasts," rejoined Ormiston drily. "Take her with thee,
but leave her with some of thy friends in Orkney till we hear how
matters go at Holyrood. There is old Sir Gilbert Balfour of Westeray,
will keep her close enough in his strong castle of Noltland, where, when
once thou seest the queen again, she may chance to remain for the term
of her natural life."
Hob paused, and scratched his rough beard with a knowing expression; for
he knew enough of his friend to foresee how matters would be in a month.
"Out upon thee, Hob!" said he; "thou art ever prompting me to some
knavery."
"But this letter of Huntly"----
"Thank heaven it came!"
"Thou wert about to throw it into the sea."
"St. Mary! but for its contents we must have sailed on a hopeless quest
to France, to Italy, or to heaven knows where; for I am already too well
known by evil repute throughout the most of Europe. But away, Ormiston,
to the harbour. Seek David Wood, our wight skipper, and that
red-breeched knave, Hans Knuber, who assists him. Let them have our
_Fleur-de-lys_ ready to sail. I will hie me to Anna, and 'tis not
unlikely we may put to sea about dusk."
A smile was exchanged.
"Gramercy!" said the knight, "I hope she will not forget to bring her
maid, who views my outward man with a favourable eye, so that we may all
sail merrily together. Hey for hame! By cock and pie! I almost fancy
myself at my ain tower-yett, with my broad banner displayed, and my
stout horsemen behind me. Ho! for one headlong gallop by Ettrickshaws
or Teviotside--_Te Deum laudamus_! God's blessing on our own land, that
lies beyond sea, for it is like no other!" and whirling his bonnet round
his head, more like a great schoolboy than a strong man of six feet
eight inches, Ormiston with one bound sprang down the steep steps
leading from the terrace to the shore; while the Earl, somewhat slowly
and thoughtfully for so ardent a lover, returned to the presence of
Anna, who, piqued by his long and unceremonious absence, was pleased to
receive him with a pouting lip and a clouded brow, which his caresses
soon dispelled.
*CHAPTER X*
*THE HERMIT OF BERGEN.*
When fortune makes the match, she rages,
And forsakes the unequal pair;
But when love two hearts engages,
The kind god is ever there.
Regard not, then, high blood nor riches,
You that would his blessings have;
Let love, untaught, guide all your wishes.
Hymen should be Cupid's slave.
_Sir Charles Sedley._
The Reformation had been accomplished in Denmark and Norway, during the
reign of Frederick I., about thirty years before the period of which we
write. It had made great progress among the simple and half barbarian
Norse, who, though they had laid the ancient hierarchy in the dust,
received nothing equal in exchange; and consequently the codes of
religion and morality lay lightly on the necks of the people.
A Catholic church was still permitted at Gluckstadt; the title of
bishop, the auricular confessional, the crucifix, and other Romish rites
and ceremonies, were still retained, though the government was avowedly
and essentially Lutheran. Some persons adhered rigidly to the ancient
form of worship, others to the new; but many more took a middle and very
convenient course, and for a time believed in--nothing.
It was while matters were in this state, particularly in the province of
Aggerhuis--that a half-crazed monk, who had belonged to a suppressed
monastery in Fuhnen, and whose brain was said to have been turned by the
severities to which he had been subjected, by the ecclesiastical
superintendent of the reformed church in that diocese, became an
anchorite, and undisputed occupant of a cavern on the fiord, near the
castle of Bergen. The fame of his austerity, the severity of his
penances, and the circumstance of his having made his dwelling in a
cavern which for ages had been the reputed habitation of Zernebok, an
evil demon, whose name is familiar to the Norse, had been quite enough
to procure him a fame beyond the province of Aggerhuis. By night the
fishermen shuddered, crossed themselves, and sedulously avoided the long
ray of light that streamed from the mouth of his deep cavern upon the
glassy waters of the bay; for, notwithstanding his reputation for
sanctity and holiness on the one hand, he was dreaded for possessing
various supernatural and unpriestly attributes on the other.
But to return from this digression, which was necessary, as the hermit
is about to be introduced with due formality to the reader, we may
briefly state that the gay Earl, notwithstanding all his eloquence and
powers of persuasion, which were very great, failed to prevail on Anna
Rosenkrantz to make an unconditional elopement with him; nor would her
pride and self-esteem permit her to trust implicitly to one whom she
knew to have earned at Copenhagen the dubious reputation of a finished
gallant and accomplished courtier.
Much as she loved him, and--notwithstanding her inconstancy to Konrad,
she loved him well--Anna could not so utterly sacrifice the name and
honour of her family, or be so oblivious of that delicacy which a
Norwegian maiden so seldom forgets; and thus, though Bothwell urged with
all the oily eloquence that love, ardour, and gallantry lent him, the
danger of that delay which would sacrifice him to Rosenkrantz, who in
three days, by the king's mandate, would be compelled to make him a
prisoner, Anna only wept, and would not--could not--consent to accompany
him, unless--
"Unless we are wedded; is it not so, dearest Anna?" said the handsome
noble, as she reclined helplessly and in tears on his bosom, within an
alcove of the terrace that overlooked the bay.
Anna made no reply.
"Decide, dearest, decide!" urged the Earl, pointing to his ship that was
now gallantly riding in the fiord, with her white canvass half unloosed,
and glimmering white in the faint twilight of the northern evening.
"Decide! for by the express command of the governor, your uncle, I must
be far beyond yon blue horizon ere the sun rises; and then thou wilt see
me no more!"
Anna sobbed bitterly, and she thought of the triumph the rejected Konrad
might feel and display, if the Earl sailed without her. Proud, and
perhaps not a little artful, her heart was torn by love, doubt, and
anguish; and her answers were very incoherent.
"Oh! what would my uncle Rosenkrantz say, if"----
"I have bade adieu to Rosenkrantz, and he deems me already on board.
Since the arrival of King Frederick's mandate, he has been so full of
vapour and dignity, that though I cannot but laugh at it, we can hold no
further communication; and if, after my late proposal, which he so
scornfully rejected, he knew I was here--and with thee"----
"True, true, we would be separated."
"And for ever! I know your scruples, dearest Anna," said the Earl
tenderly; for, moved by her tears, and the utter abandonment in which
she reclined on his breast, with her face half hidden by the bright
masses of her hair, and by her position permitting soft glimpses of a
full and beautiful bosom, he felt that he loved her with his whole
heart; and that the troth he had plighted to Lady Gordon, the vengeance
of the fierce Highland noble her brother, and the wrath or favour of the
Scottish court, were all alike to be committed to oblivion. Love bore
all before him victoriously for the time; and Bothwell, ever the
creature of impulses, yielded to that of the moment.
"Hear me for the last time," he urged. "The good hermit, of whom I have
heard you speak so often, and whose abode is in the cavern among yonder
rocks, from which we now see a ray of light that trembles on the water,
will unite us, and in my own land will I wed thee again, with such
magnificence as becomes a bride of the house of Hailes. Consent,
dearest Anna! and one blast on my horn will bring a barge to the beach;
refuse, and we must part, Anna, never to meet again."
She could make no reply, but drew closer to her winning lover, and
exchanged with him one long and passionate kiss, and Bothwell knew that
he had triumphed.
"My beloved Anna!" he murmured, as he raised her in his arms, and felt
at the moment that ever to love another than this fair being, who
trusted to him so implicitly, would be sacrilege, and an impossibility.
"Christina--call Christina Slingbunder! Oh! I cannot go alone," she
sobbed.
Bothwell, aware that there was not a moment to lose, beckoned to the
waiting-woman, who had been lingering at the corner of the terrace; and
who, without knowing what was to ensue, followed him, while he half led
and half bore her mistress down the steep and devious pathway that led
to the beach.
Darkness had almost set in; the long Norwegian twilight had given place
to starry night, and they were unseen by the Danish sentinels, who
lounged dreamily on the summit of the keep, and at the castle gate of
Bergen. As he descended, Bothwell drew from his embroidered belt a
small but exquisitely carved bugle-horn, accoutred with a silver
mouthpiece, on which he blew one short and sharp blast of peculiar
cadence, that drew an echo from every rock and indentation of the
harbour. Ere the last had died away, the sound of oars was heard, the
water was seen to flash in the starlight, and a boat glided into the
dark shadow thrown by the castle rocks upon the deep water of the fiord;
it jarred against the landing-place, and Christina Slingbunder, who was
about to make some violent protestations against proceeding, had the
strong arm of Ormiston thrown around her.
"Welcome, Bothwell!" said he; "never heard I sound more joyous than thy
bugle; for the last hour our wight skipper hath been swearing like a
pagan."
"Wherefore?"
"At thy delay."
"Then the knave most e'en solace himself by swearing on."
"He says, if this breeze continues, we will be past Frederick's-vaern by
sunrise."
"All the better, Hob," replied the Earl, as he lifted Anna on board;
"but I hope he hath our demi-culverins cast loose, and a few yeomen in
their armour, in case of surprisal."
"Right--dost thou not see I am in harness?" said Ormiston, making his
steel glove clatter on his corselet; for, save the head, his whole bulky
frame was completely armed. The eight seamen who pulled the boat were
all clad in pyne doublets, and armed with swords and daggers, and they
wore the national head-dress, the broad bonnet of blue worsted, adorned
with a silver coronet and horse's head--the Earl's crest.
"Now, my stout varlets," said their lord, "dip, and away!"
"Away for the ship!" added Ormiston.
"Nay, for the hermit's grotto under yonder rocks, where thou seest a
light now gleaming on the water. Away, and a golden angel on the best
oar!"
Ormiston gave a low whistle, expressive of surprise and pity at the
folly of his friend, and endeavoured, by a series of somewhat
unceremonious caresses, to console the sobbing and half-frightened
Christina, who had begun to weep most obstreperously; but he knew enough
of the Earl's temperament to be aware that any remark was now futile;
and in reality, as he cared not a rush whether he married the Norwegian
or not, he resolved to let matters run their course.
All sat silent, and nothing was heard but the interjections of the
waiting-woman, and the suppressed breathing of the stout oarsmen, as the
boat strained and creaked when their sinewy efforts shot her out into
midstream. Anna reclined against the shoulder of the Earl, with her
face hidden in a satin hood, and his mantle of crimson velvet rolled
around her.
Now rising in her silvery glory from the sea, the broad round moon, with
a splendour impossible to describe, aided the brightness of the northern
night. One broad gleam of steady radiance extended up the fiord from
the horizon to the shore; and when, like a black speck, the boat shot
across it, the breakers of the distant ocean, like wavelets of silver,
were seen rising and falling afar off, amid the liquid light.
The summit of the rocks of Bergen, and the square tower that crowned
them, were shining snow-white in its splendour, but their base was
hidden in more than Cimmerian gloom; for though the bright moonlight
tipped the eminences and peaks of the far off mountain, the darkness of
midnight rested on the bosom of the still fiords and bays that rolled in
shadow a thousand feet below them.
From the murky obscurity of a mass of granite, that overhung the deepest
part of the fiord, where the rocks descended like a wall abruptly to
their foundations, many fathoms under the surface of the water, a faint
and flickering light, that gleamed redly and fitfully, directed the
steersman to the uncouth dwelling of this hermit of the sea. A sudden
angle of the rocks revealed it, and the oarsmen found themselves close
to a low-browed cavern, that receded away into the heart of the granite
cliffs that overhung the surf.
A seaman made fast the boat, by looping a rope round a pinnacle of rock
near the narrow ledge, where the fishermen of Bergen usually left such
alms and offerings as fear or piety impelled them to bestow on the
hermit, whom they alike dreaded and respected. On these rocks the
sea-dogs basked in summer, and shared the hermit's food in winter, when
they crawled through the crevices in the ice, that for six months of the
year covered the water of the bay.
The Scottish mariners, who did not altogether like their vicinity to the
abode of this mysterious personage, cowered together, conversing in low
whispers; and their swarthy visages seemed to vary from brown to
crimson, in the red smoky light that gushed at times from the mouth of
the rugged cavern, as the ocean wind blew through it. Bothwell, who
could not for a moment quit the trembling Anna, requested Hob of
Ormiston to acquaint the recluse with the nature of the boon they had
come to crave of him.
Participating in the fears of the mariners, Hob evidently did not admire
venturing on this mission alone. On one hand, a powerful curiosity
prompted him; on the other, a childish superstition, incident to the
age, withheld him: but he was a bold fellow, whose scruples of any kind
never lasted long, and in a minute he had loosened his long sword in its
sheath, looked to the wheel-lock of his dague, and sprung up the rocks.
His tall feather was seen to stoop for a moment as he entered the
cavern, and made signs of the cross as he advanced; for though the Laird
of Ormiston, like most of the lesser barons in Scotland for a generation
or two after 1540, professed no particular creed, any ideas he had of
religion appertained to the Church of Rome--therefore the aspect of the
cavern, as he penetrated, was singularly adapted to make a deep
impression on his mind.
A pile of drift-wood blazing in a cleft of the rock, through which its
smoke ascended, filled the cavern with warmth; and a red glow, that lit
up the rugged surface of its rocky walls and arched roof, displaying the
wild lichens that spotted them, and the green tufts of weed that grew in
the crannies.
A myriad of metallic particles, green schorl, blue quartz, rock crystal,
and basaltic prisms, glittered in the blaze of the hermit's fire. It
revealed also the strange and ghastly fissures of the cavern, which had
been formed by some vast subterranean throe of nature, that had rent
asunder the solid mountains; and, by hurling one gigantic mass of rock
against another, formed this deep retreat, into which Hob of Ormiston
penetrated with a resolute aspect but a hesitating heart.
The roar of a subterranean cataract, that poured down white and foaming
behind one of these ghastly seams, lent additional effect to the aspect
of the cavern--at the upper end of which stood an altar of stone, having
on it a skull polished like ivory by long use, a rude crucifix, and the
words--
Sancte Olaf ora pro nobis,
painted above it on the wall in large and uncouth characters. At the
approach of Ormiston, the hermit arose from his lair or bed of dried
seaweed, and a more wild and unearthly object had never greeted the eyes
of his visitor.
His years might number sixty; he was perfectly bald, and his scalp shone
like that of the skull, to which his visage, hollow-eyed and attenuated
to the last degree, would have borne no distant resemblance but for the
long white beard of thin and silvery hair that flowed to his waist. He
was clad in the skin of the sea-dog, and his bare legs and arms were so
lean that they resembled the bones of a skeleton, with veins and fibres
twisted over them. As the hermit arose, Ormiston paused; and while he
gazed with irresolution, the wild man did so with wonder; for the
Scottish knight was richly accoutred in a suit of plate armour; his hose
were of scarlet cloth twined with gold, and the band of his blue velvet
bonnet, like the hilt of his dagger, sparkled with precious stones.
"Heaven save you, father!" said he, uncovering his head, and speaking in
that broken Norwegian dialect which he had acquired among the
Shetlanders.
"And what, may I ask, hath procured me a visit from a son of vanity and
trumpery like thee?" asked the old man of the rock, surveying Ormiston
with a glance approaching to disdain.
"An errand of friendship, good father," replied the other, whose
uneasiness was in no way soothed when he saw, by the restless and
unearthly aspect of the hermit's eyes, that he was evidently insane;
"from one who hath a boon to crave of thee."
"Of me--Ha! ha!" laughed the hermit, and the reverberations of his
laughter, that echoed a hundredfold through the fissures of the cavern,
seemed to the imaginative ear of Ormiston like that of fiends ringing
from an abyss, and, signing the cross, he involuntarily drew back. The
wild hermit seemed to enjoy his terror, and laughed louder still.
"What wouldst thou have? a blessing implored upon thy vessel, that
neither the mermaids of the moskenstrom nor the water-spirit may bewitch
it; nor that Nippen may come in the night and turn thy compass round
from north to south, and so lead thee within the folds of the mighty
Jormagundr, that great ocean snake which lieth coiled up under the
frozen regions of the pole, and one dash of whose tail makes the great
whirlpool to boil for a century? Hah!"
"Nay, good father," said Ormiston; "for none of these things have I
sought thee, but to crave a blessing and the bands of wedlock for a
knight and lady, who choose rather to receive their nuptial benediction
from thee, who art a remnant of our ancient faith, (Heaven forgive me
this vile blasphemy!) than from one of these newfangled parsons whom
King Frederick hath planted in Norway."
"Good," replied the hermit, as a smile spread over his ghastly visage;
"and what return will be made me if I concede to your request?"
"Return!" stammered Ormiston, taking a silver chain from his neck, but
immediately replacing it, for he saw that he had not to deal with an
ordinary man. "Holy father! though the lady is noble, and the knight is
both noble and wealthy, they can make no other return than a promise to
hold thy name in kind remembrance, and pray for thee daily, in memory of
the blessing thou wilt bestow."
"Good again--thou pleasest me; let these strangers approach."
"By what name art thou known, father?"
"The fishermen call me the Hermit of the Rock. When I lived in the
world I had another name. I was Saint Olaf of Norway."
"Now, God keep the poor hermit!" said Ormiston; "five hundred years have
come and gone since that blessed preacher and converter of these wild
lands from paganrie to the true faith, rested from his holy labours."
"Five hundred years!--thou sayest right well. All that time have I
dwelt in this cavern, where I shall perhaps dwell five hundred more; but
lead forward thy friends."
"Blessed Jupiter!" muttered Ormiston, as he hurried away, "methought the
tying of this pretended nuptial knot was likely to cost more trouble
than the untying of those on the enchanted cord. What, ho! my Lord of
Bothwell."
"Odsbody!" exclaimed the Earl, "thou hast tarried long enough in all
conscience. Is the occupant of this place man or woman?"
"Neither, by Jove! I think him half saint, half Satan, and wholly
intolerable."
Anna trembled, and her attendant shrieked with terror, when they were
lifted on the ledge of the rock that led to this uncouth dwelling. The
seamen, whom the Earl had no wish should witness a ceremony which he
might one day prefer to have forgotten, he desired imperatively to
remain by their oars, and, as they were all his own vassals, they dared
not to disobey.
"You will not follow me unless you hear my bugle blown, in sign that we
are in some peril; and, by St. Andrew, the place looks perilous enough!
But take courage, dearest Anna!" he whispered, "for I am with thee!"
Anna answered only by tears, and kept her face hidden within her hood.
Her fears, and those of Christina Slingbunder, were no way allayed by
the appalling aspect of Saint Olaf--the hermit of whom they had heard so
many tremendous tales; and even Bothwell, as thorough a daredevil as
ever drew sword, was startled for a moment; but, pressing Anna closer to
him, he advanced at once to the hermit--and, in virtue of the vows he
had once pronounced, requested him to unite them in marriage, and bestow
his benediction upon them.
Tall Ormiston held his bonnet before his mouth; for a broad laugh spread
over his dark and burly visage when he saw the Earl kneeling before this
uncouth priest, whose insanity was so evident that even he, a border
baron, felt some shame and reluctance at the profanity and folly of the
adventure. When viewed by the light of the pine fire, that at times died
away and anon shot up redly and fitfully, the aspect of this wild man of
the rock, with his attenuated legs and arms clad in a gaberdine of
seal-skin, his long and bushy beard glistening tremulously in the flame
like streaming silver, his deeply sunk yet sparkling eyes of most
unearthly blue--gave him all the appearance of a half crazed scald or
saga from the frozen caves of Iceland--he seemed so spectral, so
shadowy, and so like the wavering vision of a dreamer.
Sinking with terror and confusion, Anna had but a faint idea of all that
passed around her, until she found herself once more in the bright
moonlight with another ring on her finger, Bothwell's arm around her,
and her burning cheek resting against his; while the diamond-like water
flashed around them as it fell from the broad-bladed oars, and the
seamen pulled hard and silently away from the cavern. The appearance of
the hermit, who stood on a pinnacle of rock holding aloft a blazing pine
branch with one hand, while he bestowed benedictions with the other,
adding not a little to the energy with which they increased the distance
between them and the shore. The Earl saw that the poor recluse was
perfectly insane, yet there was something singularly wild and sublime in
his aspect; he seemed so like an inspired prophet, or seer, or one of
those strange demons with whom Norse superstition peoples every element,
every wood, and rock, and hill.
Cheerfully pulled the stout rowers, and again the towers of Bergen rose
above them, shining snow-white in the light of the autumnal moon. As
they neared the ship, the startled Ormiston mattered a curse and a _Hail
Mary!_ in the same breath, when a long line of fire suddenly gleamed
across the bosom of the water, and there shot past their bows a swift
boat, in which stood a tall figure brandishing a spear; his whole
outline was dark and opaque, while a blaze of light shone behind him.
"'Tis only a night-fisher!" said Anna, with a smile; and now one more
stroke of the oars brought them alongside of the Earl's ship, from the
mizen-peak of which his own banner, bearing the chevronels of Hepburn
and the azure bend of Dirleton, waved heavily in the night wind.
The _Fleur-de-lys_ was gaudily painted and gilded, low in the waist, but
high in the bows and poop, where two great wooden castles, bristling
with falcons and arquebuses, towered above the water. Each mast was
composed of two taper spars, fidded at the topcastles. The Earl's
crest--a white horse's head--reared up at the prow, balanced by a mighty
lantern at the stern. Her sails were loose, and glimmered in the
moonlight as they flapped heavily against the yellow masts and spars.
The Earl was welcomed by a shout from the sailors, who, with the master
and his mates, crowded, bonnet in hand, around him.
Giving orders to sail immediately for the Isles of Orkney, he bore Anna
to the little cabin, that, during his wanderings by the Adriatic and
Italian shores, had received many a similar tenant. Like a boudoir, it
was hung with the richest arras, lighted by silver lamps that were
redolent with perfume, as they swung from the deck above, and from
globes of rose-coloured glass shed a warm and voluptuous glow around the
lovers.
*CHAPTER XI.*
*THE FLEUR-DE-LYS.*
I'll lo'e thee, Annie, while the dew
In siller bells hangs on the tree;
Or while the burnie's waves o' blue,
Run wimplin to the rowin' sea.
_Scott Song._
It is difficult, says the Magister Absalom, to analyse the nature of the
Earl's love for this fair but fickle Norwegian.
His conscience and his interest led him to remember, that adherence to
those vows so solemnly exchanged with Lady Jane Gordon, was the most
honourable and prudent course; but this sudden passion, conceived by him
for Anna Rosenkrantz at the Court of Copenhagen, and pursued in that
rash and obstinate spirit with which he plunged into every new amour and
vagary, soon made him commit to oblivion those vows which one yet fondly
and sadly brooded over. A temporary separation, an unexpected meeting,
as shown in the beginning of our story, had fully developed his
sentiments for Anna, and in this mock marriage brought them to a crisis.
Having been frequently abroad, under every variety of fortune--at one
time commanding a French army during a desperate civil war; at another,
charged with an important embassy; and often an exile desperate in
circumstances--in the wandering life he had led for many a year, his
career had been one of such wild adventure and danger, that his code of
morality fitted him loosely as his gauntlet; thus, with all the love he
bore Anna, though as yet he shrank from wedding her before the altar of
that church where he had knelt in childhood, this espousal of her,
before a half-witted Norwegian hermit, exactly suited the wildness of
his fancy and the romance of his temperament.
His trusty friend and libertine follower, Hob of Ormiston, whose fate
and fortune were so completely identified with his own, knew, from old
experience, that the flame of his lord had expanded too suddenly to burn
long; and as the love fit and the voyage would in all probability end
together, he would not have objected to wedding Christina Slingbunder in
the same easy and fantastic fashion, although he was already handfasted,
as the phrase was, to a lady of gentle blood at home.
Though she saw not the clouds that overhung her future career, Anna was
very much dejected, when next morning she lay with her head reclining on
the shoulder of that lover to whom she had sacrificed herself, and the
love of Konrad; and into whose hands she had committed the honour of her
family and her future fate.
Bright rose the sun from the waters of the Skager Rack; the hills of
Denmark were on their lee, and those of Norway, with all their pouring
waterfalls and echoing woods, were lessening far astern. A gentle
breeze was blowing from the westward; and as the heavily-pooped ship
careened over, her great white lateen sails bellied before it, and the
bright green water flashed from her sharp prows to bubble in snowy
showers under the head of the white steed that, with blood-red nostrils
and arching neck, reared beneath the gallant bowsprit.
The sailors, with Nicholas Hubert and the Earl's other pages and
servants, were grouped in the forecastle and in the deep waist, over
which peered the brass arquebuses of the poop. The skipper, Master
David Wood of Bonyngtoun, in Angus, with a great gaudy chart (such as
was then prepared in the Hanseatic towns for the use of mariners) spread
on the capstan, was intently measuring the distance from the Naze of
Norway to the Oysterhead of Denmark; from thence to Thorsmynde, and so
on.
He was a short, squat man, with a thick scrubby beard and heavy
eyebrows; he wore his blue bonnet drawn well over his forehead, to keep
the sun from his eyes, and had a gaberdine of blue broadcloth, with
immense pockets at the sides, red trunk breeches, which met a pair of
black funnel boots about three inches below the knee. He carried a
pocket-dial and a long dagger at his girdle.
Hob of Ormiston, minus weapons and armour, without which he was never
seen on shore, was yawning with ennui, wishing, as he often said,
"sea-voyaging at the devil," and (in absence of Christina, who was very
sick a-bed) endeavouring to wile away the time by watching for an
occasional shot at the passing birds with his wheel-lock caliver, and
whistling the old air then so much in vogue--
"The Frog cam to the Myll doore."
Anna and the Earl were seated under a small tapestry awning, which
screened them from the view of the groups in the waist on one hand, and
from the watch and timoneer on the other. Her eyes were full of tears.
"Anna, dearest, why so sad?" said the Earl, pressing his dark mustaches
against her white forehead. "Do you regret the step you have taken for
my sake?"
"Oh no!" she whispered in a soft low tone; "but I sorrow when I think of
the knight Rosenkrantz, my poor old uncle, who since infancy has been so
kind to me; my dear and only kinsman, when worn out by years and their
infirmities, to be left alone by me in his old age--by me whom he loves
so well! Who now will soothe him in sickness as I have done, and cheer
him in the long nights of winter when I am far away? My place will be
vacant at the board to-day, my chair by the fire to-night. My harp
stands there beside it, but he will hear my voice no more. Oh! he will
be very lonely--desolate!" Her tears fell fast and bitterly.
"Speak not thus, dear Anna!" said the Earl, kissing her again; and, glad
to say any thing that might soothe her, he added, "We will return to him
again, and together will we cheer his declining years."
"But he never will forgive me, nor love me as of old."
"He will! We shall kneel at his feet and implore his forgiveness,
(Ormiston whistled very loud); and, if he loves you so well, he could
never resist your supplications."
He kissed her with ardour, and the girl was soothed.
Fondly and trustfully she looked in his face. There was a light in her
clear eyes, a flush on her soft cheek, and an infantile smile on her
cherry lips, that made her quite bewitching, as she lay half fainting on
Bothwell's breast and half embraced by him, listening to his
oft-repeated, and perhaps too voluble, vows of constancy and love.
"Farewell, dear Norway--a long farewell!" she exclaimed, kissing her
hand with playful sadness to the distant stripe of blue that shewed
where her native hills were fading far astern. "I may no more hear the
rush of thy waterfalls, or see thy pine-clad hills, and deep salt
fiords, overhung by the sweetbrier and purple lilac that scent their
waters in summer, or the silver birch and dark-green pine that shadow
them in autumn and in whiter; but oh! _Gammle Norge_, I never will
forget thee!"
"Anna," said the Earl, "from the ramparts of my castle of Bothwell, I
will shew thee a valley of the Clyde, and such a territory as no lord in
all Scandinavia could shew his bride; and bethink thee, that hold of
Bothwell is thrice more magnificent than Frederick's castle of Elsineur.
I have eight stately fortresses, the least of which would make four of
yonder castle of Bergen; I have four lordships, each of which is richer
than your native province of Aggerhuis; and I have four sheriffdoms,
each of which is worth three of it--and thou shalt be lady of them all!
When I wind this horn from Bothwell castle gate, it finds so ready an
echo at the tower of Lawhope, the house of Clelland, the keep of
Orbiestoun, and the place of Calder, that five thousand men, all dight
for battle, are in their stirrups, and a hundred knights, the best in
Scotland, are proud to unfurl their pennons beneath the banner of James
Hepburn of Hailes!"
The Earl's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and those of Anna lit up with
delight and pride; while Ormiston, who considered himself the
representative of these hundred good palladia, adjusted his ruff
complacently, and drew himself to the full extent of his six feet odd
inches.
"And," whispered Anna, "and will you always love me as you do now?"
"O yes--ever and always!" replied the impassioned lover.