"Art thou the man whom my husband saved from the river?"
"I am, lady; but, had he known me, I had been left to perish amid its
waters."
"Thou art quite a youth, and a handsome one, too--a Frenchman, I think?"
"Nay, noble lady, I am of old Norway in the distant north; but a good
Catholic, as I see thou art by thy crucifix."
"Our religion is a bond of friendship in these dangerous days of
obdurate heresy," said the Countess, whose eyes lighted up; "but
wherefore sayest thou my lord would rather thou hadst perished, though
he risked his life to save thee?"
"Because," replied the other with a lowering brow, "I am the bearer of a
secret that if, unfolded to thee, would make the Lord Bothwell slay me,
even if I stood with the grace-cup on his own hearthstone."
"And what is this secret?" she asked with a hauteur that was assumed to
hide her trembling curiosity.
"Excuse my revealing it, lady, and let me begone, I pray you, for an
agony of anxiety oppresses me. One day, perhaps, you may--you must know
all!"
"Now--tell me now, I implore thee? Behold this ring; it contains four
diamonds, each worth I know not how many angels"--
"I am a gentleman, and a captain of arblastiers under Frederick of
Denmark, and to me your bribe is proffered in vain. I repeat, madam,
that I must decline to reveal the secret."
"This is alike insolent and cruel!" said the Countess, raising her
voice, while her dark eyes flashed, and her little hands were clenched.
"Tell me this instant all thou knowest, or I will summon those who will
make thee. I have a proud lord, and a jealous. Beware! Think what he
may do if thou art found in my chamber at this hour. Now, the
secret--the secret! Man, thy life is in my hands!" She seized a silver
whistle that lay on the table--hand-bells were not then in use--and
there was something so malevolent in the threat, and so serpent-like in
the expression of her wild dark eyes, that Konrad was both startled and
provoked. "The secret"----
"Is--That _thou art not_ Countess of Bothwell!" he replied, with quiet
scorn.
"What hast thou dared to say?" she asked, in a breathless voice, and
grew paler than marble.
"That thy husband is a villain, lady--a villain who hath deceived thee
cruelly! He has another Countess, who shall one day claim him, and
compel him to acknowledge her as such before the assembled peers of
Scotland; for she is of noble birth in her own country, and the warlike
King Frederick will not permit the honour of her house to be trifled
with."
"Man, thou hast lied--oh, say thou hast lied! Oh, say that thou art
mistaken!" said the Countess, in a low and broken voice, as she sank
upon a settle with a ghastliness of face, which the darkness of her eyes
and hair increased.
"I am not mistaken, lady. I swear to thee by every saint who is blessed
in heaven, and by their shrines that are revered on earth, that I am
_not_! He is solemnly espoused to Anna"----
"_Anna!_ 'tis the name he has muttered thrice in his sleep."
"Anna Rosenkrantz, a lady of Norway, who at this hour wears on her
marriage finger the emerald ring which the hermit of Bergen blessed, and
with which she was solemnly espoused."
"Sayest thou an emerald ring?" demanded the Countess, a sudden light
flashing in her eyes, while her lips became more white and parched.
"Yea, lady, wherein the traitor had inscribed a legend, purporting that
'the gift and the giver were hers for ever.'"
The Countess uttered a wild cry, and threw her clasped hands above her
head.
"Holy Mother look upon me, that my senses may be preserved! That ring
was mine--my betrothal gift to him. He said 'twas lost during his
exile; and with that gift (which my good and pious kinsman, the Bishop
of Dunblane, blessed on our plighting day) he hath espoused another!
But I will be avenged! and by the soul of my murdered father, who with
his sword in his hand and the cross on his brow, fell on the field of
Corrichie, I will raise through all Strathbolgie and Aboyne a cry for
vengeance, that Scotland will long remember!"
"Against whom, lady?" asked Konrad, who had now a dash of the cynic in
his manner. "The man thou lovest?"
But there was no reply. Exhausted by the fury of that tempest of
passion, which convulsed a frame at all times too excitable and nervous,
the Countess had become insensible; and then Konrad, full of the
tenderest concern, was approaching, when French Paris, who had been
listening intently to the whole interview, and now began to tremble for
his own bones, raised the arras, and, plucking him by the sword, said--
"If thou valuest thy life, follow me and begone! Her cries have reached
the hall, and already I hear the voice of the Earl."
They rushed down the secret stair to the postern, the arras barely
closing over Konrad at one end of the bower chamber, when the astonished
Earl raised it at the other.
*CHAPTER XXI.*
*DISAPPOINTMENT.*
Once more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the moulder'd abbey walls
That stand within the chase.
_Tennyson._
Konrad stood on Bothwell bank, the wooded declivity that sloped abruptly
to the margin of the Clyde, in whose deep bosom the stars were now
reflected; for all traces of the storm had died away, and the wet
foliage of the woodlands was rustling in the soft west wind that blew
from the darkened hills of Lanark.
High and sombre in its feudal strength and architectural pride, towered
up the keep of Bothwell, and its grass-tufted barbican wall. Lights
flashed through the casements of turret and corridor, and loud voices
were heard calling clamorously in the echoing court.
"There lies thy path," said the page, pointing towards the river;
"traverse its banks for about a mile till thou reachest the bridge of
Bothwell. The hamlet of the same name is near it, and there thou canst
pass the night."
"Is there no place nearer? consider again, good lad," said Konrad,
thinking more for Anna than himself, as he slipped the promised crown
into the page's hand.
"The warder of the bridge resides in a house above the archway, which is
closed after nightfall. He keeps an hostelry which affordeth good
up-putting both for men and horses; but mark me, fair sir! seek neither
hamlet nor hostel to-night, for we know not what evil may come of thy
plaguy interview with the countess. Keep in the woods, and lie _en
perdu_ till daybreak, and then God speed thee!"
The postern closed, and Konrad stood alone.
A vague sense of danger impelled him to hurry from the vicinity of the
castle; but he was less actuated by that motive than by his anxiety to
rejoin Anna, from whom he had now been two hours absent, without
procuring the succour she required so much.
He found the passage of the river open, for the warder had partaken
somewhat freely of the potations of a traveller who had tarried there
about curfew-time, and consequently he had forgotten to secure the
barrier-gate that closed the roadway after dark, and which none could
pass without paying toll, or drinking a can of ale at his hostel.
Konrad passed on; and just as day was brightening in purple and orange
on the distant hills, he began to ascend the eminence which was crowned
by the ruined priory of the Augustines of Blantyre.
As day broke on the green woods of Bothwell, and the magnificent river,
a hundred yards in breadth, that flowed in blue and silver light between
them, no other silvan scene could surpass that landscape in beauty and
romance. Contrasting strongly with the bright green of the summer
forest, which was seen at intervals between the ivied buttresses and
shattered windows of the gothic priory, rose Bothwell's broad round
towers and ponderous ramparts, shining almost blood-red in the rising
sun, being all built of ruddy-coloured stone. White and silvery, from
the margin of the deep and crystal river, the morning mist curled up
through the heavy foliage in a thousand fantastic shapes, and melted
away in the thin air of the blue and balmy sky.
Hurrying among the grass-grown masses of the broken tombs and fallen
walls, Konrad entered the vault where he had left Anna, and a pang shot
through his bosom on beholding her lying at full length, still and
motionless, on her bed of leaves. Her face seemed pale as death when
viewed by the dim light that struggled through the arched chamber, from
a little pointed window in the massive wall.
"If she should be dead!" he thought, as he stooped tenderly over her.
"Ah! Heaven be thanked, she only sleeps!"
The contour and pallor of her beautiful fece, then attenuated by mental
suffering and bodily fatigue, seemed almost sublime in the placidity of
its aspect. Tears were oozing heavily from her long lashes, and her
respirations were short and quick as her lover bent over her, and,
taking one of her passive hands in his, pressed it gently to his lips.
Anna awoke, and started on beholding Konrad, whose attire had been
changed; for the pages of the Earl had given him a sombre suit of black
sarcenet in lieu of his wet garments.
"Konrad," she said faintly, "thou hast tarried long."
"Not one moment longer than I could avoid, dearest Anna! Thou canst not
guess where I have been, and whom I have seen."
"Thou hast seen _him_," she replied, with a radiant face; "whom else
couldst thou see that I care for?"
"I _have_ seen him, lady," said Konrad, over whose countenance there
fell a deeper shade of melancholy. "I have seen him, and stood with him
face to face in his own castle hall."
"Oh!" exclaimed Anna; and, half-clinging to Konrad's neck, she turned
upon him a face and eyes that were radiant with eagerness and joy; "and
what said he? what message sent he to me--to his well-loved Anna? why
came he not himself?"
"Thou hast forgotten, Anna"----
"Ah! my God! yes--the story. He is still faithful to me--say that he
is, dear Konrad!"
"Six months ago, with all formality and magnificence, he was married to
another, and thou art no more remembered than the last year's snow."
"This must--must be some dreadful dream or fantasy!" said Anna, pressing
her hands upon her temples.
"I have seen his bride."
"Is she beautiful?"
"Yes, singularly beautiful, and gentle, and winning."
"Hah!" muttered Anna sharply through the teeth, which were set like a
vice.
Her face was pale and colourless. An expression of jealous bitterness,
of anger, and reproach, were on her forehead, and sparkling in her eyes,
which were almost white with an aspect of passion, such as Konrad had
never before witnessed in her usually calm features; and, taking her
hands in his, he said tenderly--
"Be composed, dearest Anna! for I never will forsake thee while hie
remains; and even were I to die, my spirit, I am assured, will hover
near thee still."
"_Thou!_" said she bitterly, as she snatched away her hands; "what art
thou to me?"
The young man trembled, for at these cruel words a heavy palsy seemed to
fall upon his heart.
"And where is his castle, Konrad?" she demanded abruptly.
"Behold!" he replied; and, drawing back a mass of the pendant ivy and
wild-roses that overhung the entrance of the vault, he displayed the
beautiful valley or dell, through which the noble Clyde, so broad, blue,
and crystalline, was winding between its banks of lofty wood, and
overlooked by the dark facade of Bothwell's princely stronghold.
Full on the long line of its crenelated rampart, on the strong round
towers that the patriot Wallace, and "proud Pembroke's haughty Earl,"
had built, on its shining casements and lofty keep, overtopping the
summer foliage and the morning mist, shone the warm splendour of the
early sun. Anna gave one fixed and fierce glance at the edifice, and
then arose with tottering steps, and wildness in her air and eyes.
"Whither wouldst thou, Anna?" said Konrad imploringly, retaining her
hand.
"I am going to him"----
"To Bothwell?"
"I will--I shall see him once again, though only to expire at his feet.
One interview may"----
"Dear Anna," said Konrad, who never for an instant, under all her
petulance and neglect, altered his gentle and loverlike tone; "thou
forgettest that he is wedded to another--a great lady of the land--and
that thou art now but as a weed, a bramble in his path, to be crushed or
thrown aside."
"Go to! Konrad--'tis but jealousy that makes thee speak thus."
"Thou wrongest me, Lady Anna; 'tis long since jealousy died within me.
Oh! _that_ was an agony that could not last with life. Tarry but one
hour, I implore--thou art so faint, Anna"----
"Dare you detain me, sir?"
"Go, then; and Bothwell's boorish warders and flippant pages will drive
thee like some poor wanton from his gates; and think then--when with
insult and opprobrium they are closed upon thee--what thy father, the
brave old knight of Aggerhuis, who died with one hand on his sword and
the other on the standard of the Lubeckers, would have felt, could he
have thought that such an hour was reserved for the only daughter of
that wife he loved so dearly."
"True--true!" replied Anna, giving way to a passionate burst of tears;
for the mention of her parents subdued her. "O Mary! blessed mother of
compassion, intercede for me! Inspire me with resignation and strength
to endure my fate. Ah, pardon me, kind and good Konrad! for my heart is
so torn by love and shame and indignation, that at times I know not what
I say. From what I was in Frederick's court, to become what I am--a
poor outcast on a foreign shore--an object of scorn to the proud, and
pity to the good! Oh, how frightful! Be still kind to me, Konrad--and
end my misery by putting thy poniard into the heart that so cruelly
deceived thee."
Konrad was deeply moved by this passionate burst of grief; he leaned
against a fragment of the ruin, and covered his face with his hands.
"Anna!" said he, after a pause; "bethink thee that Scotland hath a queen
whose goodness of heart and gentleness of spirit are revered in every
land save her own?"
"True! and at her feet will I pour forth my sorrow and my tears
together. As a woman she will sympathize with me, and lend a kind ear
to the story of my wrongs, Thou wilt go with me, Konrad?"
He kissed her hand again, and led her to the arch of the vault, and then
they paused--for at that moment the blast of a bugle, clear and ringing,
ascended from the bosky dell below the ruined Priory. Then the flash of
steel was seen among the foliage, and a band of between forty and fifty
men-at-arms on horseback, three abreast, having two swallow-tailed
pennons displayed, and with their steel caps and tall uplifted lances
glittering in the morning sun, swept at full gallop round the steep
knoll on which the castle stood.
For a few minutes the reflection of their passing files was seen to
glitter in the mirror-like bosom of the river, as horse and rider, spear
and pennon, vanished among the apple bowers and birchen glades that
clothed the braes of Bothwell.
Konrad felt instinctively that they were in pursuit of him; and, with a
sadness and anxiety caused only by the reflection that, if he were
slain, Anna would be friendless and desolate, he led her slowly from the
ruins, and, hand in hand, the forlorn pair traversed the thickets of old
and gnarled oak surrounding Blantyre Priory, and reached the rough and
dusty highway which was to lead them--but how they knew not--to the
court and palace of the Queen of Scotland.
*CHAPTER XXII.*
*THE COUNTESS JANE.*
What was once a source of pleasure,
Now becomes the cause of pain;
Day no more displays its treasure,
Endless night o'erspreads the plain:
The powers of nature and of art
Cease to charm the wounded heart.
_Sonnet by Queen Mary._
The Earl of Bothwell was more astonished than alarmed on finding his
Countess insensible; but hastening forward with proper solicitude, he
raised her from the ground, and the moment he did so she partially
recovered.
Her deep dark eyes gave him one full, bright, sickening glance of sorrow
and reproach, then she closed them again, and her head drooped over his
shoulder.
Again she recovered suddenly, and, trembling in every limb, withdrew
from the Earl's encircling arm, and cold, passionless, and rigid in
feature as a statue, gazed steadily upon him for a moment, and, removing
her wedding ring from the marriage finger, laid it on a little marble
table that stood near her.
"Now, my Lord," said she, in a voice that struggled to be firm, "now, I
have done with thee. Give this ring to _her_ who now wears my betrothal
gift, and may she be happier than I have been! Oh! Bothwell, Bothwell!
if ever"----
"Woman, art thou mad?" exclaimed the astonished noble, growing pale with
surprise and increasing anger.
The Countess laughed bitterly.
"Mad!" she repeated, and pressed her little hands upon her throbbing
temples. A strange light blazed in her dark eyes, that were liquid and
swimming, though not one of the hot salt tears that trembled in them
rolled over her pallid cheek. "Yes--I am mad! ha, ha!"
A shudder crept over Bothwell on hearing that ghastly laugh, and he
said--
"Take up thy ring, Jane, for thy manner makes me tremble."
"Hah! doth it so? Oh, Bothwell! did I not love thee almost to
adoration, I should spit upon thee! Thy ring--oh! never more shall ring
of thine disgrace the hand of Lord Huntly's daughter. Where is the ring
that I gave thee in exchange for _this_ on the day of our betrothal,
when together we knelt before the Bishop of Dunblane, and the old man
blessed us both? Oh, false and faithless! dishonourable and base!"----
"Speak louder, lady!" said the Earl, whose brow darkened with suppressed
passion,--"speak louder, I pray thee! Let every groom and gossiping
page hear how Bothwell and his Countess can bandy hard words in their
quarrels, like two tavern brawlers. What a plague have I to do with thy
quips and quirks?--thy freaks and wild fancies? Thou hast found thy
tongue, (a wanion upon it!) pray, endeavour to recover thy temper also.
Lady--by St. Paul thy best wits have gone woolgathering!"
"Oh! why didst thou wed me, Bothwell?" she exclaimed, in a passionate
burst of grief, as she threw herself upon a cushioned settle, and
covered her face with her hands. The Earl was touched; he approached,
and bent over her.
"Jane, Jane!" he began, in a faltering voice.
"Why didst thou take me from hearts that loved me so well?"
Scorn curled the Earl's lip at this question, for he thought it referred
regretfully to Lord Sutherland, who, in her girlish days, had been an
assiduous admirer of the Countess. He replied coldly--
"I doubt not there are still hearts who love thee in Strathbolgie--and
_Strathnaver_, too."
"Begone!" she exclaimed, in a voice that thrilled through him; for her
terrible malady was then fast stealing upon her senses and energies.
"Begone to thine Anna, and leave Jane of Gordon to die!
Away--begone!--dost thou hear?" And, in the childish bitterness of her
passion, she spat upon him.
The Earl withdrew a pace or two; rage crimsoned his features, and he
rolled his eyes about for some object to vent his fury upon.
"Oh! why didst thou teach me to love thee?" continued the Countess in
her piercing voice. "What led thee to woo and to wed me?"
"_Fatality!_" replied the Earl, with a cold and haughty smile.
"Fatality! O woman! knowest thou not that every action of my life has
been impelled by an overruling principle, which I could neither see, nor
avert, nor avoid? and I know not on what other shoals and rocks of
danger and intrigue, this current of my inevitable fete may hurry me.
But I feel within me a solemn presentiment that this right hand shall
yet do deeds at which the boldest hearts--and my own, too--shall be
startled and dismayed."
"Away from me further; for now I see thou art tainted with the cursed
heresies of Calvin. Fatality! This is not the Catholic doctrine thy
pious mother, Agnes of Sinclair, instilled into thy mind. Now I no
longer need to marvel at thy duplicity. Thou who art false to thy God,
may well be false to me; or art thou growing mad, too? Away to Anna,
and leave me!"
"Anna?"
"Yes, Anna--'tis the name thou hast often muttered in thy sleep, when,
with a heart full of love, I lay waking and watching by thy side, and
these evil dreams were my meed. Hence to thy Norwegian!"
"By St. Paul! this fellow, Konrad, hath been with thee! Ah, villain and
traitor! beware how thou comest again within the reach of Bothwell's
dagger. Ho, Hob of Ormiston!--John of Bolton!--Calder!--Paris!--ho
there! What a blockhead, what a jack-a-lent I have been!"
The page appeared, and too frightened to remember his fee now, trembled
in every limb at the domestic storm he had been partly the means of
raising.
"Has any one had access to the Countess?" asked the Earl, with a
terrible frown.
"None--none, my lord, that I know aught of."
"French Paris, thou art a subtle little villain, and hadst thou not been
gifted to me, like a marmozet, by the Queen, I would have cracked thy
head, as thy likeness would a nut, to obtain the truth! Have the lairds
of Ormiston or Bolton returned yet?"
"This moment only, my lord. They are in the hall, and in their armour
yet."
"Let their stout jackmen hie to horse again, and bid them look well to
girth and spur-leather; so, while I arm me, boy, send the knights
hither."
While Bothwell hurriedly buckled on a suit of armour that was lying
near--for, as we said elsewhere, no man could with safety venture a yard
from his own door unarmed--the Countess lay on the crimson settle, with
her face covered by her hands, over which her long black hair was
flowing in disorder.
The clank of armed heels and steel scabbards in the antechamber,
heralded the approach of the knights, and their mail flashed as the
heavy arras was drawn aside, and they stood before the Earl.
"The Norwegian hath been here!" whispered the latter to Ormiston.
"How--who?"
"Konrad of Saltzberg--thou rememberest him," he added aloud; "and he
hath bewitched the Countess--a French sorcerer, Bolton, anent whom I
will tell thee another time. Horse and spear! Thou, Ormiston, and I,
must ride, scour the woods, and slay without reservation or remede if we
find him. Nay, that were too cruel, perhaps; let us capture him, at all
events. Tell your people, sirs, he is a tall fellow, with a long sword,
a corselet, breeches and hosen of sable sarcenet. Twenty unicorns to
the finder and capturer!"
"We must breathe our steeds first," said Ormiston, as he drew the clasps
and buckles of the Earl's armour; "we have had a tough night's work with
Clelland and Lauchope. They stood it stoutly, with a hundred lances and
fifty archers a-side. We have had a raid on Bothwell-muir that will
make a noise among the justiciary lords at Edinburgh."
"And how came these knaves to quarrel?"
"Because, at Candlemas last, one took precedence of the other in
crossing Calder brig."
"A just cause and a proper for three hundred blockheads to tilt at each
other's throats! And how comest thou, Hob, to lift lance in this wise
feud?"
"Because I count kindred with Clelland."
"And thou, Bolton, why wentest thou with thy fifty lances?"
"Because I claim kindred with Ormiston."
"So may ye all _hang_ together in the end!" said the Earl, angrily;
"while I, your lord and feudal superior, want you, ye are fighting under
other banners. Now, Paris, my sword and salade. Summon my grooms, and
let us to horse--the fellow cannot be far off yet."
Hob of Ormiston was sheathed in a favourite suit of black armour, which
he usually wore to render his sobriquet more complete; but Bothwell's
particular friend and ally, Hepburn of Bolton, who was captain of his
castle of Hermitage, and lieutenant of Queen Mary's Archer Guard, wore a
magnificent suit of polished steel, the gorget and shoulder-plates of
which were riveted with rows of golded-headed nails. He was a young and
handsome man, and his bright blue eyes sparkled with merriment and good
humour under the uplifted visor of his helmet.
Both these gentlemen helped themselves, unasked, to wine, from a red
vase of gilded crystal that stood on a buffet, and both laughed somewhat
unceremoniously at the unseemly conjugal feud that had evidently taken
place, and each made his remarks thereon with a blunt carelessness
peculiar rather to the men than to the age.
"The Lady Bothwell seemeth ill at ease," said Ormiston, winking to
Hepburn over his wine horn.
"Fore heaven! he must have been a marvellous sorcerer, this Konrad,"
laughed the young knight, showing all his teeth under a brown mustache;
"and if I come within a lance length of him, he will have reason to
remember Jock of Bolton for the short remainder of his days."
"Adieu, my bonnibel!" said the Earl, in a low voice, as he laid his hand
caressingly on the shoulder of the countess, who never raised her
drooping head.
"Adieu!" she sobbed; "and may it be for ever."
"Ah! my jo, Jean--these are severe words," said the Earl, with a faint
attempt to laugh; for at times he really felt a sincere tenderness for
his little wife.
"Would to God, thou false lord, that I had never met--never married
thee!"
"Well, ladybird," said he, with a sudden hauteur that was almost cruel,
"thou mayest thank thy kinsman, the politic Earl of Huntly, whose
intrigues to procure a rich husband for his tocherless sister brought
that bridal about. By our lady! I never sought thee, save in the mere
spirit of pastime and gallantry, and in that spirit, Lady Jane, I own
that I loved thee well enough for a time."
"A time!" reiterated the Countess.
"Yes--what more wouldest thou have, thou exacting little fairy?"
"A time!" she repeated, and bent her bright but humid eyes upon him,
while pressing her white hands tightly together, "Oh, 'twas a pity that
love so tender should ever have been spoiled by marriage!"
"Thou growest sarcastic," said the Earl, as he nodded to her jocosely,
adjusted his helmet, and began to whistle "_My Jollie Lemane_"--then
after a time, he added, "we were never quite suited for each other, my
bonnibel. Thou wert too exacting--I too gay."
The poor young Countess wrung her hands, and uttered that low laugh
which thrilled through Bothwell's heart. His countenance changed; he
drew back, and regarded her anxiously through his closed visor.
"Thou makest a devil of a fuss about this escapade, Lady Bothwell!" said
Hob of Ormiston, in his deep bass voice; he had been intently polishing
his cuirass with the lining of his gauntlet, and endeavouring to repress
his disdain for the Earl's quietness, this fierce baron being in his own
household despotic and terrible as a Tartar king or a Bedouin chief,
"Why should not thy husband, the Earl, have a gay lemane as well as the
godly Arran, the pious Morton, and other nobles, who hold natheless a
fair repute in kirk and state?"
"True," said Hepburn, laughing heartily at this coarse remark, "even
Master Knox, too! Is there not a story abroad in the Luckenbooths, of
his having been found gamboling with a wight-wapping lass in a covered
killogie?"[*]
[*] See Life of Knox.
"Mother Mary!" exclaimed the Countess wildly, as she rose to her full
height, and turned her eyes of fire upon the speaker; "have I fallen so
low, that I have become the sport of ruffians such as you? Begone from
my bower ere I die! Is this a place, Lord Earl, for thy cut-throats and
swashbucklers to bully and swagger in?"
Black Ormiston uttered a loud laugh.
"Sweet Madam," began Hepburn--
"And thou, too, John of Bolton; begone, for an officious fool!"
"By St. Paul!" said the Earl angrily, "when thou insultest my friends
thus, the atmosphere of the house must be too hot to suit me.
Paris--ho! attend to thy mistress; and now, sirs, to horse and away, for
by the honour of Hepburn, the rascally Norseman who hath brought all
this mischief about, shall dree his reward ere the sun goes down."
As they descended to the castle-yard, a wild hyena-like cry came from
the Countess's bower, but instead of pausing they hastened their steps.
Horribly it rang in the hollow of Bothwell's helmet, and by it he knew
that what he had dreaded was now come to pass--
That his Countess was mad!
*CHAPTER XXIII.*
*THE PURSUIT.*
The drawbridge falls, they hurry out--
Clatters each plank and swinging chain,
At, dashing o'er, the jovial route
Urge the shy steed, and slack rein.
_Scott._
The morning sun rose brightly upon the windings of the azure Clyde, and
on the green woodlands whose foliage was reflected on its surface, as
Bothwell and his two friends, at the head of about fifty jackmen,
mounted on strong and fleet horses, of border training, and armed with
steel caps, shirts of mail, two-handed swords and long lances, dashed at
full gallop from the archway of the castle, rumbled over the sounding
drawbridge, and descending from the height through the barbican gate,
plunged into the bosky coppice below, where their bright armour and
weapons were seen flashing and glinting among the green foliage, as they
spurred towards the bridge and village of Bothwell.
"We must have this Norwegian either killed or captured," said Bothwell
emphatically to Ormiston, as they galloped at the head of their train.
"To have him at large with such a story on his tongue, would be
submitting to my own destruction."
"True, my lord!" replied the unscrupulous retainer; "suppose he fell in
the way of Moray or of Morton--what a notable discovery! Thou sayest
aright; to leave him at liberty on Scottish ground, with this secret in
his fool's noddle, would but serve to ruin thee at Holyrood, and injure
all who follow thy banner."
"He has, as we know, wrongs to avenge; and men, in these brisk days of
ours, are not wont to follow those precepts of scripture, which Knox and
Wishart have dinned into our ears--by turning one cheek to the foe who
smites us on the other--and these wrongs may lead him straight to the
ears of Huntly. Fool that I was, when he stood on my own hall floor"----
"Where was then thy dagger?" asked black Hob, with a ferocious look.
"May God forbid--and forefend its use in such a place!" replied the
Earl. "Such a trick were worse than that old Douglas played the Knight
of Bombie at the Castle of Threave, and a deed deserving such meed as I
pray Heaven may mete to me, in that hour when I fall so far in guilt.
Nay--nay! under my own roof to take the life of a trusting guest! Go to,
Ormiston! thou art stark mad, or stark bad!"
"Cock and pie! what a fuss thou makest! Then thou hadst the dungeon, and
it might have spared us this ride, which to say truth, after our last
night's hard work in plate and mail, with lance and maul, I could very
well have spared. I have been cheated of breakfast, too! But mayhap
the warder at the bridge hath a bowie of porridge, or a slice of beef
and a can of ale, to spare."
"Hob, do thou take the bridle-path that leads to the tower of Clelland;
after the drubbing thou gavest him overnight, the laird will not likely
molest thy pennon. Scatter twenty lances to prick among the woodlands.
Bolton, thou wilt ride with ten men by Calderside, and do likewise;
while I cross the Clyde, and search by Blantyre Priory. _Keep tryste_
on Bothwell-muir! So now adieu, sirs!--Forward, my stout prickers, and
remember, my merry men all--twenty unicorns of gold to the finder of
this knave! He is a tall fellow, with a fair curly head, a corselet, and
black hosen."
Dividing into three, at a wave of his hand the horsemen separated, and
galloped off on their different routes.
Leaving the Knight of Ormiston and the Lieutenant of the Archers to
pursue their various roads, which happily they did without success, we
will accompany the Earl, who, with twenty prickers, or light-armed
horsemen, rode towards the bridge of Bothwell, pursuing the ancient
Roman way.
It was a glorious summer morning; the air was balmy, and all nature wore
its brightest hue; the green fields and the waving foliage were rich and
verdant, and glittered in the silver dew, which the sun was exhaling in
gauzy mist. Bothwell, full of anxiety to recapture Konrad, and
thereafter to find some means necessary for stifling the dangerous
secret he possessed, rode furiously on, despatching his riders by
couples along the various narrow paths that led from the ancient way, to
the different baronial towers and hamlets whose smoke was seen curling
from the woods on each side.
With their mossy roofs and clay-built lums, the latter were generally
nestling in the wooded dingles which were overlooked by the battlemented
peels, that stood in bold outline against the sky, with their red walls
glancing, and dark smoke ascending in the sunshine. From their summits
many a watchman looked sharply and keenly at the distant horsemen as
they rode through the thickets below, appearing at times on the dusty
highway, or spurring along the steep Hill-sides, with their lance-heads
flashing like silver stars among the bright green leaves.
With all the impetuosity of his nature, Bothwell rode fast and furiously
on, and till he reached the muir never drew bridle, save once, to cross
himself and mutter an _ave_ on passing one of those little chapels or
roadside shrines, which are still so common in Spain and Italy, and
which the pious spirit of the olden time erected by the wayside to
remind the passers of their religious duties. It was rudely formed, and
had been erected by his pious ancestress, Agnes Stewart of Buchan, that
the wayfarer might say one prayer for the soul of her husband, Adam Earl
of Bothwell, who had fallen fighting for Scotland on Flodden field.
And here the Earl, even in his path of vengeance, paused to offer up a
prayer.
The little chapel was formed by a single gothic arch, containing an
altar, a niche, and pedestal graven with the words, _Saint Mary, pray
for me!_ but the hands of the Reformers had been there; the shrine was
empty, the altar mutilated, the weeds and wallflower were growing in
luxuriance about it, and the fountain, that once had flowed from a
carved face into a stone basin below, in consequence of the wanton and
fanatical destruction of the latter, was running across the roadway,
where it had long since made for itself a little channel.
The extensive muir of Bothwell, which is now so beautiful in its modern
state of cultivation and fertility, was then a wide sequestered waste of
purple heather, dotted by grey rocks, tufts of golden broom, and masses
of dark green whin.
Traces of that recent feudal conflict, in which Ormiston and Bolton had
been handling their swords, were met at every rood of the way, by the
Earl and six horsemen who now accompanied him. Broken swords and
splintered lances were lying by the roadside, and parties of peasantry
were passed, bearing away the dead and wounded in grey plaids, on biers
of pikes or branches of trees; the women tearing their hair and
lamenting aloud; the men, with their bonnets drawn over their knitted
brows, brooding on that future vengeance which, in those days of
feudalism, and of bold hearts and ready hands, was never far distant.
A ride of a mile and a half from his castle gate brought the Earl to the
village of Bothwell, which bordered the ancient way known as the Watling
street. Then it was but a little thatched hamlet, clustered with gable
ends and clay lums, near the venerable church founded by Archibald the
Grim, Lord of Galloway. Beyond, lay the mains and groves of
Bothwellhaugh, possessed by a lesser baron of the house of Hamilton.
Here the vassal villagers came crowding, bonnet in hand, around the
Earl, and in courtesy he was compelled to touch his helmet and rein up;
while the parish beadle, after tinkling the skelloche bell, issued,
according to an ancient custom now obsolete in Scotland, the following
burial proclamation:--
"All brethren and sisters! I let you to wit, there is a brother, Ninian
Liddal of the Nettlestanebrae, hath been slain by the Laird of
Lauchope's riders, in a raid yestreen, on Bothwell-muir, as was the will
and pleasure of Almighty God (lifting his bonnet). The burying will be
at twelve o'clock the morn, and the corpse is streekit and kistit at the
change-house, up by the townhead!"
And he departed, ringing his bell in the same slow fashion with which he
usually preceded funerals, to the collegiate kirk of Bothwell.
On the purple muirland many unclaimed bodies were lying stark and
rigid--
"With the dew on their brow, and the rust on their mail;"
while the black corbies and ravenous gleds were wheeling in circles
above them, in that blue sky on which the eyes of the dead had closed
for ever.
"Gramercy!" said Hay of Tallo, a follower of the Earl, as a man, whose
beard was white as snow, and whose loose grey gown was torn in many
places, hurried out of their path; "is not yonder fellow some
mass-monging priest?"
"Gif I thought so," growled a jackman, lifting his lance, "I would
cleave his croon! He hath been searching the scrips and pouches of the
dead."
"Shriving the dying, more likely, thou knave!" said the Earl; "'tis
Father Tarbet, a poor monk of a Reformed monastery, and I dare thee to
offer him insult under peril of pit and gyves."
A powerful horse, bearing its steel-bowed military saddle, accoutred
with caliver and jedwood axe, lay rolling in the last agonies of death,
with a broken lance thrust far into its broad bosom.
Such sights and incidents were rather too common in that age to attract
much attention; so the Earl and his followers, without even remarking
them, rode on to the end of the extensive muir, and there wound their
horns to call together such of their companions as might be within
hearing.
One by one the wearied riders came in, but brought no tidings of the
fugitive.
Every sheeptrack and pathway through all the extensive barony had been
searched--by Woodhall and Sweethope; by the old tower of Lauchope on its
steep rock; by the banks of the Calder that flowed beneath it, and in
that great cavern where Wight Wallace found a refuge in the days of old;
by Bothwell brig, and muir, and haugh; by the old gothic kirk and the
Prebend's Yards; but without finding a trace of Konrad.
Hob of Ormiston, and Hepburn, the captain of Hermitage, came in last,
with the same tidings; and, with uplifted hand, the wrathful Earl made a
vow of vengeance upon the fugitive.
The armour of the whole troop was covered with summer dust, and their
horses were jaded by hard and devious riding.
"And now, my lord," said Hepburn of Bolton, "whither wend we?"
"To court--to court! As warden of the three marches, I have received a
summons to attend the queen, who holds her court at Linlithgow; and I
will return to Bothwell no more--not to night at least," added the Earl;
"are all our knaves come up?"
"Every lance, my lord," replied young Hepburn, counting the files with
his spear.
"Then set forward, sirs--and, John of Bolton, do thou lead the van," and
at the head of his numerous train the Earl departed from Clydesdale.
A band of so many armed retainers, attending a great baron to court,
excited no surprise in that age. A feudal landholder's influence being
exactly measured, not by the number of merks Scots he drew per annum,
but by the number of men he could lead to battle on behalf of the King
or himself. Godscroft informs us that the great Earl of Douglas, who was
slain at Edinburgh about a hundred years before the days of Bothwell,
never rode abroad with less than two thousand mailed horsemen under his
banner.
*CHAPTER XXIV.*
*MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.*
O king! in an evil day was I beloved by you,
Since that, love has cost me dear!
_Amadis de Gaul._
It was in the month of June, and in the meridian of one of June's most
beautiful days. The sun shone joyously on old Linlithgow's wooded loch
and magnificent palace; on its carved towers, the clustered gables of
its grand facade; and on the belfry of St. Michael, the friend of
strangers; on the venerable oaks and graceful ashes that fringed its
azure lake, where the snow-white swans were floating in crystal and
light; on the steep and narrow streets of the town, with their
high-peaked roofs and crow-stepped gables, encrusted with coats-of-arms
and quaint devices--on all its varied scenery, fell the bright radiance
of a cloudless noon.
The sky was of the purest blue, and the lake gleamed like a vast mirror
of polished crystal, reflecting in its depths the banks of emerald
green, the beautiful palace, with all its mullioned windows and long
perspective of crenelated battlements, the summer woodlands, and the
floating swans.
Though the poverty and gloom that spread over Scotland with the
Reformation, had dimmed the splendour of her court, and depressed the
spirit of her people, turning their gaiety into stolid gravity and
moroseness, the palace then bore an aspect very different from that it
bears to-day.
In many a hall and chamber, where now the long reedy grass, the
tenacious ivy, the scented wallflower, and the wild docken, flourish in
luxuriance, the well-brushed tapestries of silk and cloth of gold hung
on tenterhooks of polished steel; and casements of stained glass, rich
with the armorial bearings of Bourbon, Lorraine, Guise, England, and
other alliances of the house of Stuart, filled up those mullioned
windows, where now the owl and the ravenous gled build their nests; for
now the velvet moss and the long grass, are growing green on the floors
of Queen Margaret's crumbling bower, and Mary's roofless birthplace--in
the stately hall where Scotland's peers, in parliament assembled, gave
laws to her lawless clans; and the beautiful chapel, where, for many an
age, the most solemn sacraments of the first church were dispensed to
her gallant rulers.
In the June of the year of God 1567, its aspect was the same as when
King James, of gallant memory, had left it for Flodden field.
The leaves were as green and the grass as verdant, the lake was as blue
and the sun as bright, as they are to-day, and may be a thousand years
after the last stone of Linlithgow shall have fallen from its place.
Its casements were glittering in the sunshine; the royal standard of
Scotland, the yellow banner with the lion gules, was waving from one of
the great towers; steel was flashing on parapet and tourelle, as the
polished basinets and pikeheads of the soldiers of the guard appeared at
intervals on the stone bartisans, from which a number of those little
brass cannon known as drakes and moyennes peeped between the massive
embrasures. And in that deep archway, which is guarded by two strong
octagon towers, perforated with numerous arrow-holes, and surmounted by
a gorgeous battlement, representing in four carved compartments the
orders of knighthood borne by James V.--the Saint Andrew, Saint George,
Saint Michael, and the Golden Fleece--were crowding a group of liverymen
and swashbucklers in half-armour, with sword, target, and dagger, their
arrogance and pride of clanship being displayed by their bearing and
ferocity of aspect, their cocked bonnets, and embroidered sleeve-badges.
Mingling with them were gaily attired pages, grooms, falconers, and
archers of the queen's body guard, clad in green gaberdines with gorgets
and caps of steel, each bearing his unstrung bow, and having a sheaf of
arrows bristling in the same belt that sustained his short cross-hilted
sword and long double-edged dagger.
The bustle about the palace gates was unusual, for the Lords of the
Privy Council were assembled in the Parliament hall, and Mary was seated
on the throne.
Into that magnificent apartment, which measures a hundred feet in length
by thirty in breadth, and which had a roof nearly forty feet in height,
light was admitted by two rows of arched windows, between each of which
projected a double tier of beautiful corbels, the lower upholding a line
of statues--the upper sustaining the ceiling of elaborate oak, which
sprung away aloft into intricacy and brown obscurity. A vast fireplace
yawned at one end; it was supported by four gothic columns, clustered
and capitalled with the richest embossage.
The young King Henry, a tall and handsome, but pale and beardless youth,
whose effeminate aspect contrasted strongly with those of the mustached
and sunburned lords of the council, sat on the Queen's left hand. His
face was a perfect oval, and his eyes were dark like his hair, which was
short and curly. His attire was fashioned in the extreme of gorgeous
extravagance; the sleeves and breast of his blue satin doublet being
loaded with lace and precious stones. He had nothing military about him
save a small walking-sword, for arms were not King Henry's forte, which
was quite enough to make the Scots heartily despise him.
A long career of debauchery, drinking, and excess, had ruined his
constitution, and now a pallor like unto that of death was visible in
his hollow cheek and lustreless eye; and as he lounged back in his
cushioned seat, much more interested in flirting with the maids of
honour than listening to affairs debated by the council, he had all the
aspect of the prematurely worn out man of pleasure--the satiated
_roue_--the _ennuyee_, whom the slightest exertion of mind or body was
sufficient to bore to death. Mary, disgusted by his daily excesses,
which shocked her delicacy and wounded her pride, had long since ceased
to love him, and had learned to deplore that alliance which youthful
inclination, and the ardour of her impulsive nature, rather than the
dictates of prudence, had led her to form; when from among all her
suitors, many of whom were the sons of kings--the Archduke of Austria,
Don Carlos of Spain, and others--she, the most beautiful woman in
Europe, she, whose genius equalled her beauty, and whose piety equalled
her genius, preferred the worthless heir of the exiled house of Lennox!
This ill-fated marriage began the long series of those disastrous events
which ended in the towers of Fotheringay; but who then, when Mary was
seated on the throne of a hundred kings, in the palace of her fathers,
with the crown of Bruce, the sceptre of James V., and the consecrated
sword of Pope Julius before her, could have foreseen that dark hour of
humiliation and of death?
The beauty of Darnley's person was his only merit. He was alike
destitute of honour, religion, and morality--in all, the reverse of
Mary. Vain and imperious, fierce, jealous, and capricious, his temper
soon excited disgust in her sensitive mind; and the ruthless murder of
her poor Italian secretary, had converted her rash and youthful love
into contempt and hatred--for such at times is the transition; such is
the fickleness of the human heart; and "the vivacity of Mary's spirit,"
says an historian, "not being sufficiently tempered with sound judgment,
and the warmth of her heart, which was not at all times under the
restraint of discretion, betrayed her into errors."
At this very time, when the council were most intent upon some knotty
points of state policy, the king, oblivious of all, or affecting to be
so, was alternately playing with the gold tassels of his embroidered
mantle, and coquetting with Mariette Hubert, a young French lady, by
conversing in the symbolical language of flowers; for each had taken a
bouquet from a row of Venetian vases that decorated the hall windows,
and filled its vast space with delightful perfume. When addressed by
the Queen, he replied with a hauteur and brevity that she could ill
brook; for, although he had acquired the title of King, and been
admitted to share her councils, he was dissatisfied that she did not
invest him with greater power, and content herself with the rank of mere
queen-consort. To this measure, Mary, aware of his utter incapacity for
governing, and the aversion of the fierce noblesse, wisely declined an
assent; and Darnley's haughty spirit never forgave the affront, which he
attributed to the influence of Rizzio; hence his leaguing with Moray and
Morton; and hence the murder in the queen's chamber at Holyrood, fifteen
months before.
A succession of strong flakes of light fell through the lozenged
casements of the stained windows on one side of the hall, and threw
their prismatic hues on the long table which was covered with green
cloth, and on the bearded peers who sat around it. All were richly
attired in satin and velvet, slashed and furred with miniver; all were
well armed, some having corselets and plate sleeves, others pyne
doublets, calculated to resist the points and edges of the best-tempered
weapons.
There were present the Earl of Morton, lord high chancellor, whose fine
countenance compensated in some degree for the shortness of his stature.
His face was dark and swarthy; his beard long and sweeping, but its
blackness was now beginning to be touched with grey; his eyes, quick and
cunning, keen and penetrating, watched every visage, but chiefly that of
his colleague and compatriot--his partner in many a deep intrigue and
desperate counter-plot, James Stuart, the still more famous Earl of
Moray, who seemed the living image of his handsome father, James V. He
had the same dark oval face, so melancholy and dignified in its contour,
the same short beard and close shorn chin, the same thick brown
mustache, and deep dark hazel-eye. But under that calm exterior were a
heart and mind unequalled in ambition, and unsurpassed in state-craft--a
wisdom that bordered on cunning--a caution that (at times) bordered on
cowardice--a bravery that bordered on rashness; yet never for an instant
did he lose sight of that object which every secret energy had for years
been bent to attain, and for which his life was staked--POWER!
And there were Cassilis, Lindesay, and Olencairn, dark-browed, savage,
brutal, and illiterate as any barons that ever figured in the pages of
romance--each the beau-ideal of a feudal tyrant; morose by fanaticism,
and inflated by power; for a few short years had seen them and their
compatriots gorged to their full with the plundered temporalities of the
fallen hierarchy. And there, too, were the venerable Le Crocq, the good
and wise ambassador of Charles IX., wearing the silver shells of St.
Michael glittering on his plain doublet of black taffeta; and Monsieur
le Marquis d'Elboeuff, brother of the late Queen Regent, Mary of
Lorraine.
This gay and thoughtless, but handsome noble, was dressed in the
extremity of Parisian foppery. His doublet was cloth of gold; his
breeches, of crimson velvet, reached to within six inches of his knees,
from whence he had long hose of white silk. He wore a very high ruff,
with the Golden Fleece of Burgundy, and the Thistle of the order of
Bourbon under it. A yellow satin mantle dangled from his left shoulder;
his gloves were perfumed to excess; his hat was conical and
broad-brimmed, but he carried it tinder his left arm. His short Parmese
poniard and long Toledo sword were covered with precious stones, and in
imitation of the great English beau, the effeminate Earl of Pembroke, in
addition to ear-rings, he had dangling at his right ear a
flower--presumed to be the gift of some enamoured belle--while from the
left depended a long love-lock.
Contrasting strongly with all this frippery, in the dignity of his
aspect and bearing, and the plainness of his dress, Sir William Maitland
of Lethington, secretary of the kingdom--the Scottish Machiavel, the
greatest and most vacillating statesman Scotland ever produced--stood at
the foot of the green table.
Attired in simple black velvet, but having a long stomacher dotted with
seed pearls, an enormous fardingale, and a little ruff round her
delicate neck, Mary, having little other adornment than those which
nature had given her, sat under the purple canopy of her grandsire,
James IV. From a brow that bore the impress of intelligence and
candour, her auburn hair that gleamed like gold (when, from a lofty
casement above, the sunlight fell upon it), was drawn back from her
snowy temples, and, by being puffed out on each side, while her little
velvet cap was depressed in the centre by a gold drop, increased the
dignified contour of a face that was never beheld without exciting
admiration and love. The steady brilliance of her splendid dark eyes,
the form of her nostrils, together with the exquisite curve of her short
upper lip, and dimpled chin, all expressed in an eminent degree the
various emotions of her acute and sensitive mind; while they were ever
full of a sweetness and beauty that were no less singular in their
character than remarkable in their degree.
Every turn of her beautiful head, every motion of her rounded arms and
dimpled hands, were full of grace; so that even "dark Morton," the
ferocious Lindesay, and subtle Moray, while at that moment plotting her
downfall and destruction, could not but in their secret souls
acknowledge how noble and bewitching was that being whom they were
seeking to hurl from the Scottish throne.
She carried at her waist a little amber rosary, or Saviour's chaplet, of
thirty-three beads, being one for each year that Christ dwelt among us
on earth; and, true to that religion which formed her last and best
consolation in that terrible hour which none could then foresee, she
wore on her bosom a little crucifix of gold.
Behind her state chair were several ladies of the court, wearing
enormous fardingales and high ruffs, and some of them--particularly the
Countesses of Argyle and Huntly--having their heads loaded with
ornaments.
The captain of the archer guard, Arthur Erskine, a handsome young cadet
of the house of Mar, clad in half armour of the richest steel, and
having his helmet borne by a page, stood near the doorway of the hall,
about thirty yards from the green table, and quite beyond earshot.
Close by the door stood his lieutenant, the knight of Bolton, leaning on
his drawn sword, and dividing his time between watching the ladies of
the court, tracing diagrams on the oak floor with the point of his
weapon, and complacently viewing his own handsome person in a large
mirror that hung opposite.
Mary's pleading eyes were full of tears; for the rudeness and rebellious
spirit of her council stung her pride and wounded her delicacy.
The principal matter in debate had been the muster of troops and
commissioning of a noble to lead them to the borders, where a court of
justice was to be held for the repression of turbulence among the
moss-trooping lairds of Teviotdale; but the proceedings had been
constantly interrupted by the boisterous Patrick Lord Lindesay, and
William Earl of Glencairn, who in harsh and scandalous terms urged upon
their compeers the necessity of enforcing stringent laws against the
church of Rome, as a just meed for its tyranny in the noon of pride and
power.
"Yea, my lords," continued the latter, pursuing with kindling eyes and
furious gesture the train of his address; "methinks I need not inform
you, that there have been divers and sundry acts of estate passed in the
days of the James's, her majesty's royal predecessors, yea, and in our
sovereign lady's time, quhilk aggreith not with the holy word of
God--acts tending to the maintenance and upholding of idolatory and the
mass, the superstition and the mummery of the Church of Rome"----
"_Ma chere, Madame!_" began the Marquis d'Elboeuff, rising with his hand
on his sword, and his kindling eyes fixed on Mary.
"My lord--my lord!" exclaimed Lethington and the politic Moray together,
on seeing that the queen's eyes were flashing through their tears.
"He speaketh like a stout man and true," said old Lord Lindesay,
starting up on the opposite side of the table, and leaning on his long
and well-rusted Flemish sword. "He sayeth the truth, quhilk I will
maintain against all gainsayers with this gude whinger, body for body,
on foot or on horseback. For what, my lords, was the mumming of the
mass but ane superstition devisit of auld by the devil, and his godson,
the Bishop of Rome--callit the Paip; and I swear, and avow, and aver,
that no man should, or shall, be permitted to uphold him or them, in
thought, or word, or deed, from this time forward, within the realm and
isles of Scotland, under pain of proscription, banishment,
barratrie--yea, and death!"
"Stout Lindesay, thou sayest well!" responded Glencairn; "and a bright
day was it for Scotland, when the bellygods and shavelings of Rome lay
grovelling in the dust of their gilded altars and painted blasphemies."
"Gramercy! my lords," said Mary, sarcastically. "I think that few men
should be more merciful to our fallen church than you. Fie! Lord
Lindsay: is not thy daughter Margaret wedded to David Beatoun of Creich,
a son of the great cardinal who was the very emperor of those Roman
bellygods; while thou, my Lord Glencairn, brookest all the broad lands
and rich livings, chapelries and altarages, of the noble Abbey of
Kilwinning?"
Lindesay's swarthy cheek glowed brick-red, and Glencairn's brow was
darkened by a deeper frown.
"_Ah, ma bonne!_" said Mary, turning to her sister, the Countess of
Argyle, and whispering something in French, at which they both laughed;
while the two pillars of the Reformation, who knew as much of French as
they did of Choctaw or Cherokee, exchanged mutual glances expressive of
unutterable ferocity. Moray and Morton also exchanged two of those deep
smiles which their faces always assumed when any thing like a storm was
brewing at the council board.
"My lords," said the poor Queen, in her most persuasive voice, "let us
again return to the matter in debate, which is of more importance than
framing acts for the further oppression of a fallen church, the
prosecution of sorcerers, or enforcing sombre attire and scanty fere
upon our poor lieges."
"Matter, madam!" growled Lindesay.
"I mean the bearing of the royal banner to the borders. Lord Lindesay,
what sayest thou to assume the baton?"
"I thank your Majesty, but may the devil break my bones gif I will."
"Wherefore, thou silly carle?" asked Morton in a low voice.
"Because the papists of the house of Lennox are ranked under the Queen's
banner," replied the rough baron, bluntly.
"By the holy Paul!" said Darnley yawning; "but I deem thee Lindesay the
most obdurate, as well as insolent heretic in all broad Scotland."
Lindesay was almost choking with passion at what he deemed the petulance
of a pampered boy; but the storm that might have broken forth was
allayed for a time, by the Queen saying hastily to the secretary of
state--
"Sir William Maitland, will it please you to read the last letter of _ma
bonne soeur_ Elizabeth, concerning the broken men of Tarras moss and
Teviotdale?"
That most subtle of secretaries bowed very low, and while the lords of
the council courteously arose to hear the Queen of England's letter
read, he carefully unfastened the white ribbon and red seal bearing
three lions, and unfolded the missive of the cold and crafty Tudor.