THE MARRIAGE
She is mine own;
And I as rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
Their water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
SHAKSPEARE.
The threads were spun, warp and woof laid on, and Fate busily took up
the shuttle, which was to entwine the histories of two beings, at whose
birth pomp and royalty stood sponsors, whose career was marked by every
circumstance that least accorded with such a nativity. A thousand
obstacles stood in the way; the king, with all his fervour, hesitated
before he proposed to the earl of Huntley to bestow his daughter, of
whom he was justly proud, on a fugitive sovereign, without a kingdom,
almost without a name. Fortune, superstition, ten thousand of those
imperceptible threads which fate uses when she weaves her most
indissoluble webs, all served to bring about the apparently impossible.
The earl of Huntley was a man of a plain, straightforward, resolved
ambition. His head was warm, his heart cold, his purpose one--to
advance his house, and himself at the head of it, to as high a situation
as the position of subject would permit. In the rebellion which
occasioned the death of James the Third, he had vacillated, unable quite
to ascertain which party would prove triumphant; and when the rebels,
rebels then no more, but lieges to James the Fourth, won the day, they
looked coldly on their lukewarm partizan. Huntley grew discontented:
though still permitted to hold the baton of Earl Marshal, he saw a cloud
of royal disfavour darkening his fortunes; in high indignation he joined
in the nefarious plot of Buchan, Bothwell; and Sir Thomas Todd, to
deliver his sovereign into the hands of Henry of England, a project
afterwards abandoned.
Time had softened the bitter animosities which attended James at the
beginning of his reign. He extended his favour to all parties, and
reconciled them to each other. A wonder it was, to see the Douglases,
Hamiltons, Gordons, Homes, the Murrays, and Lennoxes, and a thousand
others, at peace with each other, and obedient to their sovereign. The
earl of Huntley, a man advanced in life, prudent, resolute, and politic,
grew into favour. He was among the principal of the Scottish peers; he
had sons, to whom the honours of his race would descend, and this one
daughter, whom he loved as well as he could love anything, and respected
from the extent of her influence, and the perfect prudence of her
conduct; she was his friend and counsellor, the mediator between him and
her brothers; the kind mistress to his vassals, a gentle, but
all-powerful link between him and his king, whose value he duly
appreciated.
Her marriage was often the subject of his meditation. Superstition was
ever rife in Scotland. James the Third had driven all his brothers from
him, because he had been told to beware of one near of kin; and his
death, of which his sou was the ostensible agent, fulfilled the
prophecy. Second-sight, in the Highlands, was of more avail than the
predictions of a Lowland sibyl. The seer of the house of Gordon had, on
the day of her birth, seen the Lady Katherine receive homage as a queen,
and standing at the altar with one, on whose young brow he perceived,
all dim and shadowy, "the likeness of a kingly crown." True, this
elevation was succeeded by disasters: he had beheld her a fugitive; he
saw her stand on the brow of a cliff that overlooked the sea, while the
wild clouds careered over the pale moon, alone, deserted; he saw her a
prisoner; he saw her stand desolate beside the corpse of him she had
wedded--the diadem was still there, dimly seen amid the disarray of his
golden curls. These images haunted the earl's imagination, and made him
turn a slighting ear to Sir Patrick Hamilton, and other noble suitors of
his lovely child. Sometimes he thought of the king, her cousin, or one
of his brothers: flight, desolation, and death, were no strange
attendants on the state of the king of Scotland, and these miseries he
regarded as necessary and predestined; he could not avert, and so he
hardly regarded them, while his proud bosom swelled at the anticipation
of the thorny diadem, which was to press the brow of a daughter of the
Gordon.
Lord Huntley had looked coldly on the English prince. Lord Bothwell, as
he called himself, otherwise Sir John Ramsay, of Balmayne, his former
accomplice, tampered with him on the part of Henry the Seventh, to
induce him to oppose warmly the reception of this "feigned boy," and to
negative every proposition to advance his claims. King Henry's urgent
letters, and Ramsay's zeal, awakened the earl's suspicions; a manifest
impostor could hardly engender such fears, such hate; and, when midnight
assassination, or the poisoned bowl, were plainly hinted at by the
monarch of wide England, Huntley felt assured that the enemy he so
bitterly pursued was no pretender, but the rightful heir of the sceptre
Henry held. He did not quite refuse to join with Bothwell, especially
when he heard that he was listened to by the bishop of Moray and the
earl of Buchan; but involuntarily he assumed a different language with
regard to York, became more respectful to him, and by his demeanour
crushed at once the little party who had hitherto spoken of him with
contempt. The king perceived this change; it was the foundation-stone of
his project. "Tell me, you who are wise, my lord," said the monarch to
his earl marshal, "how I may raise our English prince in the eyes of
Scotland. We fight for him in the spring--for him, we say--but few of
ours echo the word; they disdain to fight for any not akin to them."
"They would fight for the Foul Fiend," said Huntley, "whom they would be
ill-pleased to call cousin, if he led them over the English border."
"Ay, if he took them there to foray; but the duke of York will look on
England as his own, and when the nobles of the land gather round him, it
will be chauncy work to keep them and our Scots from shedding each
other's blood; they would spill Duke Richard's like water, if no drop of
it can be deemed Scotch."
"It were giving him a new father and mother," replied the earl, "to call
him thus."
"When two even of hostile houses intermarry, our heralds pale their
arms; the offspring pale their blood."
"But what Scottish lady would your grace bestow on him whose rank were a
match for royalty? There is no princess of the Stuarts."
"And were there," asked James, quickly, "would it beseem us to bestow
our sister on a King Lackland?"
"Or would your majesty wait till he were king of England, when France,
Burgundy, and Spain would compete with you? I do believe that this noble
gentleman has fair right to his father's crown; he is gallant and
generous, so is not King Henry; he is made to be the idol of a warlike
people, such as the English, so is not his rival. Do you strike one
stroke, the whole realm rises for him, and he becomes its sovereign:
then it were a pride and a glory for us, for him a tie to bind him for
ever, did he place his diadem on the head of a Scottish damsel."
"You are sanguine and speak warmly," replied the king: "see you beyond
your own words? to me they suggest a thought which I entertain, or not,
as is your pleasure: there is but one lady in our kingdom fitting mate
for him, and she is more Gordon than Stuart. Did your lordship glance at
the Lady Katherine in your speech?"
Lord Huntley changed colour: a sudden rush of thought palsied the
beatings of his heart. Was he called upon to give his child, his
throne-destined daughter, to this king-errant? Nay, nay, thus did
fortune blindly work; her hand would insure to him the crown, and so
fulfil to her the dark meaning of the seer: hesitating, lost to his
wonted presence of mind, Huntley could only find words to ask for a day
for reflection. James wondered at this show of emotion; he could not
read its full meaning: "At your pleasure, my lord," he said, "but if you
decide against my honoured, royal friend, remember that this question
dies without record--you will preserve our secret."
Every reflection that could most disquiet an ambitious man possessed the
earl marshal. That his daughter should be queen of England was beyond
his hopes; that she should be the errant wife of a pretender, who passed
his life in seeking ineffectual aid at foreign courts, was far beneath
them. He canvassed every likelihood of York's success; now they dwindled
like summer-snow on the southern mountain's side--now they strode high
and triumphant over every obstacle; the clinging feeling was--destiny
had decreed it--she being his wife, both would succeed and reign.
"There is fate in it," was his last reflection, "and I will not gainsay
the fulfilment. Andrew of the Shawe was the prince of seers, as I have
good proof. Still to a monarch alone shall she give her hand, and I must
make one condition."
This one condition Lord Huntley communicated to his royal master. It was
that York should, as of right he might, assume the style and title of
king. James smiled at his earl marshal's childish love of gauds, and did
not doubt that the duke would pay so easy price for a jewel invaluable
as Katherine. But granting this, the king, knowing the noble's despotic
character, required one condition also on his part, that he should first
announce the intended union to the lady, and that it should not have
place without her free and entire consent. Huntley was surprised:
"Surely, my liege," he began, "if your majesty and I command----"
"Our sweet Kate will obey," interrupted James; "but this is no mere
marriage of policy; hazards, fearful hazards may attend it. Did I not
believe that all would end well, by the Holy Rood he should not have
her; but she may see things with different eyes--she may shrink from
becoming the wife of an exile, a wanderer without a home: yet that need
never be."
York little guessed the projects of his royal friend. Love, in its most
subtle guise, had insinuated itself into his soul, becoming a very
portion of himself. That part of our nature, which to our reflections
appears the most human, and yet which forms the best part of humanity,
is our desire of sympathy; the intense essence of sympathy is love. Love
has been called selfish, engrossing, tyrannic--as the root, so the
green leaf that shoots from it--love is a part of us--it is our
manifestation of life; and poisonous or sweet will be the foliage,
according to the stock. When we love, it is our aim and conclusion to
make the object a part of ourselves--if we are self-willed and evilly
inclined, little good can arise; but deep is the fount of generous,
devoted, godlike feeling, which this silver key unlocks in gentle
hearts. Richard had found in the Lady Katherine a magic mirror, which
gave him back himself, arrayed with a thousand alien virtues; his soul
was in her hands, plastic to her fairy touch, and tenderness and worship
and wonder took his heart, ere passion woke, and threw a chain over
these bosom guests, so that they could never depart. A mild, yet golden
light dawned upon his soul, and beamed from it, lighting up creation
with splendour--filling his mind with mute, yet entrancing melody. He
walked in a dream; but far from being rendered by his abstraction morose
or inattentive to others, never had he been so gay, never so considerate
and amiable. He felt that, beneath the surface of his life, there was
the calm and even the bliss of Paradise; and his lightest word or act
must be, by its grace and benevolence, in concord with the tranquil
spirit that brooded over his deeper-hidden self. All loved him the
better for the change, save Frion; there was something in him that the
wily Frenchman did not understand; he went about and about, but how
could this man of "low-thoughted care" understand the holy mysteries of
love.
Katherine accompanied her father to Gordon Castle, in Aberdeenshire.
Where was the light now, that had made a summer noon in Richard's soul?
There was memory: it brought before him her cherub-face, her voice, the
hours when at her side he had poured out his overbrimming soul in
talk--not of love, but of ideas, feelings, imaginations he had never
spoken before. Two days passed, and by that time he had collected a
whole volume of things he wished to say--and she was far: then hope
claimed entrance to his heart, and with her came a train he dreamt not
of--of fears, anticipations, terror, despair; and then a tenfold ardour
for his enterprise. Should he not win Katherine and a kingdom?
On the third day after her departure, King James informed the prince,
that Lord Huntley had invited them to visit him at his castle, "Will
your grace venture," he asked, "so far into the frozen circles of the
icy north? You will traverse many a savage defile and wild mountain-top;
torrents and dark pine forests bar the way, and barrenness spreads her
hag's arms to scare the intruder. I speak your language, the effeminate
language of an Andalusian, who loves the craggy heights, only when
summer basks upon them; and the deep sunless dell, when myrtles and
geranium impregnate the air with sweets. I love the mist and snow, the
tameless winds and howling torrent, the bleak unadorned precipice, the
giant pines where the north makes music. The grassy upland and the
corn-field, these belong to man, and to her they call Nature, the fair,
gaudy dame; but God takes to himself, and lives among these sublime
rocks, where power, majesty and eternity are shaped forth, and the
grandeur of heaven-piercing cliffs allies us to a simple but elevating
image of the Creator."
King James was a poet, and could feel thus--York might smile at his
enthusiasm for the bleak and horrific. But had the path to Gordon Castle
been ten times more frightful, the thoughts of love were roses, the
hopes of love vernal breezes, to adorn it with beauty. "Say, my lord,"
continued James, "shall we go throwing aside the cumbrous burthen of
pomp? We are here in Perth. Yonder, over those peaks, lies our direct
path. Shall we, two woodland rovers, with bows in our hand and quivers
at our back, take our solitary way through the wild region? It is my
pastime ofttimes so to do; and well I know the path that leads me to the
abode of my cousin Kate. We will send our attendants by the easier path
to the eastern sea-shore, at once to announce our approach, and bear
such gear as we may need, not to play too humble a part in Huntley's
eyes."
A thousand motives of policy and pride had induced the earl to desire
that this marriage should be celebrated in the Highlands. Here he would
appear almost a sovereign to his royal son-in-law; here also he should
avoid the sarcasms of the Tudor party, and the anger of those who had
pretended to fair Katherine's hand. James consented to his wish, and now
led his friend and guest, through the very heart of his craggy kingdom
over the Grampians, towards Aberdeen. It was the end of October; a few
sweet autumnal days still lingered among these northern hills, as if to
light on their way the last feathered migrators hastening towards the
south; but dark mists invested their morning progress. The rivers were
swollen; and the mountain peaks often saluted the rising sun, garmented
in radiant snow. It was a little drear, yet grand, sublime, wondrous.
York suppressed his chilling distaste, till it grew into admiration; the
king played the guide featly; and the honoured name of the Bruce, which
peopled this region with proud memories, was the burthen of many a tale;
nor was his account of the fierce people of these wilds unwelcome to a
warrior. York remarked that the king was generally known to them, not,
indeed, as a monarch, but as a hunter, a traveller, sometimes as a
skilful mediciner, or as a bard, and always hospitably received.
After three days they drew near their journey's end: curiosity as to the
cause of their visit, anxiety concerning his reception, all faded in
Richard's heart; dimmed by the glad expectation of seeing her again, who
had dawned the glowing orient of his darkened heart. They had departed
from their rude shelter before the sun rose: the mountain peaks were
awake with day, while night still slumbered in the plain below: some
natural sights speak to the heart more than others, wherefore we know
not: the most eloquent is that of the birth of day on the untrodden
hill-tops, while we, who behold it, are encompassed by shadows. York
paused: the scene appeared to close in on him, and to fill him, even to
overflowing, with its imagery. They were toiling up the mountain's side:
below, above, the dark pines, in many a tortuous shape, clung to the
rifted rocks; the fern clustered round some solitary old oak; while,
beetling over, were dark frowning crags, or the foldings of the
mountains, softened into upland, painted by the many coloured heather.
With the steady pace of a mountaineer, King James breasted the
hill-side; nor did York bely his rugged Spanish home. As a bravado, the
king, in the very sheer ascent, trolled a ballad, a wild Scottish song,
and Richard answered by a few notes of a Moorish air. A voice seemed to
answer him, not an echo, for it was not his own, but taking the
thrilling sweetness of Monina's tones. Ah! ungentle waves, and untaught
winds, whither bear ye now the soft nursling of Andalusia? Such a
thought darkened York's brow; when the king, pausing in his toil, leaned
against a jutting crag--both young, both gallant, both so noble and so
beautiful; of what could they think--of what speak? Not of the
well-governed realm of the one, nor the yet unconquered kingdom of the
other; of such they might have spoken among statesmen and warriors, in
palaces or on the battle plain; but here, in this wild solitude, the
vast theatre whose shifting scenes and splendid decorations were the
clouds, the mountain, the forest, and the wave, where man stood, not as
one of the links of society, forced by his relative position to consider
his station and his rank, but as a human being, animated only by such
emotions as were the growth of his own nature--of what should they
speak--the young, the beautiful--but love!
"Tell me, gentle cavalier," cried James, suddenly; "hast thou ever been
in love? Now would I give my jewel-hilted dagger to tear thy secret from
thee," continued the king, laughing; for York's eyes had flashed with
sudden light, and then fell downcast. Where were his thoughts? at his
journey's goal, or on the ocean sea? If he smiled, it was for Kate; but
the tear that glittered on his long eyelashes, spoke of his Spanish
maid. Yet it was not the passion of love that he now felt for his
childhood companion; it was tenderness, a brother's care, a friend's
watchfulness, all that man can feel for woman, unblended with the desire
of making her his; but gratitude and distance had so blended and mingled
his emotions, that, thus addressed, he almost felt as if he had been
detected in a crime.
"Now, by the Holy Rood, thou blushest," said James, much amused; "not
more deeply was fair Katherine's cheek bedyed, when I put the self-same
question to her. Does your grace guess, wherefore we journey
northwards?"
Richard turned an inquiring and unquiet look upon his royal companion. A
kind of doubt was communicated to James's mind; he knew little of his
friend's former life: was it not possible that engagements were already
formed, incompatible with his plans? With some haughtiness, for his
impetuous spirit ill brooked the slightest check, he disclosed the
object of their visit to Castle Gordon, and the proposal he had made to
the earl to unite him in marriage to the Scottish princess.
"When I shall possess my kingdom--when I may name my wife, that which
she is, or nothing--queen!" Richard exclaimed.
"Nay, I speak of no millenium, but of the present hour," said James.
The enthusiastic king, bent upon his purpose, went on to speak of all
the advantages that would result from this union. York's silence nettled
him: the prince's thoughts were, indeed, opposed to the exultation and
delight which his friend had expected to see painted on his face. The
first glad thought of a lover is to protect and exalt her he loves.
Katherine was a princess in her native land;--and what was he?--an
outcast and a beggar--a vagabond upon the earth--a man allied to all
that was magnificent in hope--to all that imagination could paint of
gallant and true in himself, and devoted and noble in his friends. But
these were idealities to the vulgar eye; and he had only a title as
unreal as these, and a mere shadowy right, to bestow. It had been sinful
even to ally Monina to his broken fortunes; but this high offspring of a
palace--the very offer, generous as it was, humbled him. A few minutes'
silence intervened; and, in a colder tone James was about to address
him, when York gave words to all the conflicting emotions in his
breast--speaking such gratitude, love, hope, and despair, as reassured
his friend, and made him the more resolved to conquer the difficulties
unexpectedly given birth to by the disinterestedness of his guest.
A contest ensued; Richard deprecating the rich gift offered to him--the
king warmly asserting that he must accept it. The words vagabond and
outcast were treason to his friendship: if, which was impossible, they
did not succeed in enforcing the rights to his ancestral kingdom, was
not Scotland his home--for ever his home--if he married Katherine? And
the monarch went on to describe the happiness of their future lives--a
trio bound by the ties of kindred--by affection--by the virtues, nay,
even by the faults of each. He spoke also of the disturbances that so
often had wrecked the fortunes of the proudest Scottish nobles, and
said, that a princess of that land, united, it might be, to one of its
chiefs, trimmed her bark for no summer sea. "Like these wild Highlands
are our storm-nursed lives," continued James. "By our ruder thanes the
beautiful and weak are not respected; and tempest and ruin visit ever
the topmost places. Kate is familiar to such fears, or rather to the
resignation and courage such prospects may inspire. Look around on these
crags! listen! the storm is rising on the hills--howling among the
pines. Such has been my cousin's nursery--such the school which has
made her no slave of luxury; no frail floweret, to be scared when the
rough wind visits her cheek."
In such discussions the travellers beguiled the time. The day was
stormy; but, eager to arrive, they did not heed its pelting. York had a
sun in his own heart, that beamed on him in spite of the clouds
overhead. Notwithstanding his first keen emotion of pain at the idea of
linking one so lovely to his dark fate, the entrancing thought of
possessing Katherine--that she had already consented to be
his--animated him with delight, vague indeed; for yet he struggled
against the flattering illusion.
After battling the whole day against a succession of steep acclivities,
as evening drew near, the friends gained the last hill-top, and stood on
its brow, overlooking a fertile plain or strath--an island of verdure
amidst the black, precipitous mountains that girded it. The sun was
hidden by the western mountains, which cast their shadow into the
valley; but the clouds were dispersed, and the round full silvery moon
was pacing up the eastern heaven. The plain at their feet was studded by
villages, adorned by groves, and threaded by two rivers, whose high,
romantic banks varied the scene. An extensive, strongly-built castle
stood on the hill that overhung one of the streams, looking proudly down
on this strath, which contained nearly thirty-six square miles of
fertile ground. "Behold," said James, "the kingdom of Lord Huntley,
where he is far more absolute than I in my bonny Edinburgh. The Gordon
fought for the Bruce; and the monarch bestowed on him this fair, wide
plain as his reward. Bruce flying before his enemies, on foot, almost
alone, among these savage Grampians, then looked upon it as now we do."
King James's thoughts were full of that wild exhilaration of spirit,
which none, save the inhabitant of a mountainous country, knows, when
desolation is around--a desolation which is to him the pledge of
freedom and of power. But York had other ideas: he had been told that
the Lady Katherine had yielded a willing consent to the proposal made;
and she whom he had before conversed with only as a gentle friend--she,
the lovely and the good--his young heart beat thick,--it had no
imagery, far less words, expressive of the rapture of love, tortured by
the belief that such a prize he ought to--he must--resign.
The petty tyranny of trivial circumstance often has more power over our
best-judged designs, than our pride permits us to confess. From the
moment York entered Castle Gordon, he found an almost invisible, but
all-conquering net thrown over him. The Gordon, for thus the earl of
Huntley preferred being called, when surrounded by his clan in his
northern fastness, received the princes with barbaric, but extreme
magnificence: his dress was resplendent; his followers numerous, and
richly clad according to Highland ideas of pomp. But no Lady Katherine
was there, and it soon became apparent that Richard was first to see her
at the altar. Sounds of nuptial festivity rang through the castle;
instead of grace or generosity attending his meditated declining of the
honour, it would have borne the guise of an arrogant refusal. There was
also something in the savage look of the clansmen, in the rude
uncivilization of her native halls, where defence and attack formed the
creed and practice of all, that reconciled him to the idea of leading
her from the wild north to softer, milder scenes; where every disaster
wears a gentler shape; soothed, not exasperated by the ministrations of
nature.
At midnight, but a very few hours after his arrival, he stood, beside
her in the chapel to interchange their vows. The earl had decorated the
holy place with every emblem that spoke of his own greatness, and that
of his son-in-law. The style of royalty was applied to him, and the
ambitious noble, "overleaping" himself, grasped with childish or savage
impetuosity at the shadowy sceptre, and obscure cloud-wrapt crown of the
royal exile. York, when he saw the princess, summoned all his
discernment to read content or dissatisfaction in her eyes; if any of
the latter should appear, even there he would renounce his hopes. All
was calm, celestially serene. Nay, something almost of exultation
struggled through the placid expression of her features, as she cast her
eyes up to heaven, till modest gentleness veiled them again, and they
were bent to earth.
The generosity and pride of woman had kindled these sentiments. The Lady
Katherine, a princess by birth, would scarcely have dreamed of resisting
her father's behests, even if they had been in opposition to her
desires; but here she was to sacrifice no inclination, nothing but
prosperity; that must depart for ever, she felt she knew, when she
became the bride of England's outcast prince. Yet should aught of good
and great cling to him, it was her gift; and to bestow was the passion
of her guileless heart. It was not reason; it was feeling, perhaps
superstition, that inspired these ideas. The seer who foretold her
fortunes, had been her tutor and her poet; she believed in him, and
believed that all would be accomplished; even to the death of the
beautiful and beloved being who stood in the pride and strength of youth
at her side. All must be endured; for it was the will of Heaven.
Meanwhile, that he should be happy during his mortal career was to be
her study, her gift, the aim of her life. In consenting to be his, she
also had made a condition, that, if defeat awaited his arms, and that
again a wanderer he was obliged to fly before his enemies, she was not
to be divided from him; if no longer here, she was to be permitted to
join him; if he departed, she should accompany him.
As the priest bestowed his benediction on the illustrious and beauteous
pair, a silent vow was formed in the heart of either. Doomed by his
ill-fate to hardship and dependence, he would find in her a medicine for
all his woes, a wife, even the better, purer part of himself, who would
never suffer him to despair; but who would take the bitterer portion of
his sorrow on herself, giving in return the heroism, the piety, the
serene content which was the essence of her being. His vow, it depended
not on himself, poor fellow! "Never through me shall she suffer," was
the fervent resolve. Alas! as if weak mortal hands could hold back giant
Calamity, when he seizes the heart, and rends it at his pleasure.