It was long since he had wept, and he could not recall the t

Produced by Al Haines.

*BOTHWELL:*

OR,

THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

BY JAMES GRANT, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF

"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH CASTLE,"

"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER," &c., &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

PARRY & CO., LEADENHALL STREET.

MDCCCLI.

M'CORQUODALE AND CO., PRINTERS, LONDON.

WORKS, NEWTON.

*CONTENTS OF VOL. III.*

CHAPTER

I. The-Kirk-Of-Field

II. The Midnight Mass

III. Guilt Levels All

IV. The Prebend of St. Giles

V. The Papists' Pillar

VI. Remorse

VII. The Rescue

VIII. The Challenge

IX. Ainslie's Supper

X. Hans and Konrad

XI. How Bothwell Made Use of the Bond

XII. Love and Scorn

XIII. The Cry

XIV. Hans' Patience is Rewarded

XV. The Legend of St. Mungo

XVI. Mary's Despair

XVII. The Bridal at Beltane

XVIII. The Whirlpool

XIX. Bothwell and the Great Bear

XX. Christian Alborg

XXI. The Castellana

XXII. The Vain Resolution

XXIII. Retribution

XXIV. Malmoe

------ Notes

*BOTHWELL;*

*OR,*

*THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.*

*CHAPTER I.*

*THE KIRK-OF-FIELD.*

They make me think upon the gunner's lintstock,

Which yielding forth a light about the size

And semblance of the glow-worm, yet applied

To powder, blew a palace into atoms.

Sent a young king--a young queen's mate, at least--

Into the air, as high as ere flew night-hawk,

And made such wild work in the realm of Scotland.

_Auchindrane, Act ii._

There was not a sound heard in the mansion, which, at that moment, had

no other occupants than the doomed prince, his two pages, (or

chamber-cheilds as the Scots name them,) and five other

attendants,--William Taylor, Thomas Neilson, Simpson, Edwards, and a

boy. These occupied apartments at the extremity of the house, but on

the same floor with the king. All the other attendants had absconded,

to partake of the festivities at Holyrood, or had gone there in the

queen's retinue.

"French Paris--Nicholas Hubert," said Bothwell in a husky voice, "the

keys!"

Hubert produced them from beneath his mantle. They were a set of false

keys which had been made from waxen impressions of the originals. The

door was softly opened, and the conspirators entered the lower

ambulatory, on each side of which lay a vaulted chamber.

Bolton thought of Hubert's sister, and his heart grew sick; for the

brother knew not that his sister was at that time above them, in the

chamber of Darnley.

"Come, Master Konrad," said Ormiston, tapping him on the shoulder; "if

we are to be friends, assist us, and make thyself useful; for we have

little time to spare."

Thus urged, Konrad, though still in profound ignorance as to the object

of his companions, and the part he was acting, assisted Ormiston and

French Paris to unload the sumpter-horse, and to drag the heavy mails

within doors. These he supposed to contain plunder, and then the whole

mystery appeared unravelled. His companions were robbers, and the

solitary house, about and within which they moved so stealthily, was

their haunt and hiding-place. With affected good-will he assisted to

convey the mails into the vaults, where, some hours before, Hubert had

deposited a large quantity of powder, particularly under the corner or

ground stones of the edifice.

While they were thus employed, and while the ex-Lord Chancellor and

Whittinghame kept watch, the Earl and John of Bolton ascended softly to

the corridor of the upper story, where, by the dim light of a small iron

cresset that hung from the pointed ceiling, they saw Andro Macaige, one

of the king's pages, lying muffled in his mantle, and fast asleep on a

bench.

"Confusion!" said the Earl fiercely; "this reptile must be destroyed,

and I have lost my poniard!"

"Must both the pages die?" asked his companion, in a hollow tone.

"Thou shalt soon see!" replied the Earl, who endeavoured, by imitating

Ormiston's careless and ruffian manner, to veil from his friends, and

from himself, the horror that was gradually paralysing his heart.

They passed the sleeping page unheard, as the floor was freshly laid

with rushes, and entered the chamber of the young king--that

dimly-lighted chamber of sickness and suffering; where the innumerable

grotesque designs of some old prebend of St. Mary, seemed multiplied to

a myriad gibbering faces, as the faint and flickering radiance of the

night lamp played upon them. The great bed looked like a dark

sarcophagus, canopied by a sable pall; and the king's long figure,

covered by a white satin coverlet, resembled the effigy of a dead man;

and certainly the pale sharp outline of his sleeping face, in no way

tended to dispel the dreamy illusion.

Bothwell's fascinated gaze was riveted on him, but Bolton's turned to

the page, who was half seated and half reclined on the low bed, and,

though fast asleep, lay against the sick king's pillow, with an arm

clasping his head.

They seemed to have fallen asleep thus.

The thick dark hair of Mariette fell in disorder about her shoulders;

her cheeks were pale and blanched, and blistered by weeping; her long

and silky eyelashes were wet and matted with tears; and there was more

of despondency than affection in the air with which she drooped beside

the king. Her weariness of weeping and sorrow had evidently given way to

slumber.

Rage and jealousy swelled the heart of Bolton. He panted rather than

breathed; and though his long-desired hour of vengeance on them both had

come, he too was paralysed, trembling, and irresolute. The Earl gave

him a glance of uncertainty; but Bolton saw only Mariette. Conscience

whispered "to pause," while there was yet time; but _the bond_ had been

signed, the stake laid, and to waver was to die!

For a moment a blindness fell upon his eyes, and a sickness on his

heart; and the Earl said to Hepburn in a hollow accent--

"Thy poniard--thy poniard! Thou hast it! The king, the king! and I will

grasp this boy."

At that moment Mariette started, awoke, and uttered a shrill cry of

terror on perceiving two armed men with their faces masked.

The king turned uneasily in bed; and, filled with desperation by the

imminence of the danger, and the necessity for immediate action,

Bothwell approached, the couch. But either Darnley had been awake (and

watching them for some time,) or instantly became so, and with all his

senses about him; for like lightning he sprang from bed--his long

illness and attenuation making his lofty stature appear more colossal;

he snatched a sword, and, clad only in his shirt and pelisse, rushed

upon the intruders. On this, a frenzy seemed to take possession of both

conspirators.

Parrying a sword thrust with his mailed arm, Bothwell threw himself upon

the weak and powerless Darnley, and struck him down by a blow of the

maul he carried.

The wretched king uttered a piercing cry; another and another succeeded,

and Bothwell, animated by all the momentary fury of a destroyer, stuffed

a handkerchief violently into his mouth, and at that moment he became

insensible.

Meanwhile, Bolton, trembling with apprehension, jealousy, horror, and

(shall we say it?) love, clasped Mariette in his arms, and endeavoured

to stifle her cries; but she uttered shriek upon shriek, till, maddened

by fear and excitement, all the despair of the lover became changed to

hatred and clamorous alarm. A spirit of destruction possessed his soul;

his nerves seemed turned to iron, his eyes to fire.

He became blind--mad!

He grasped her by the neck--(that delicate and adorable neck, which it

had once been a rapture to kiss, while he toyed with the dark ringlets

that shaded it)--and as his nervous grasp tightened, her eyeballs

protruded, her arms sank powerless, and her form became convulsed.

She gave him one terrible glance that showed she recognised him, and

made one desperate effort to release herself, and to embrace him.

"O Jesu Maria! spare me, dearest Hepburn--spare me! I love thee

still--I do--I do! Kill me not--destroy me not thus--thus--with all my

sins! Man--devil--spare me! God--God!"

She writhed herself from his hands, and sank upon the floor, where,

vibrating between time and eternity, she lay motionless and still.

Hepburn's senses were gone--yet he could perceive close by him the

convulsed form of the king, with Bothwell's handkerchief in his throat.

He was dead.

The terrible deed was done! They sprang away, stumbling over the body

of Macaige the page, whom Hay of Tallo had slain in the corridor; and,

descending the stairs almost at one bound, came panting and breathless

to the side of the cool and deliberate Morton, who, with his sword

drawn, stood near Ormiston, and superintended the laying of a train to

the powder in the vaults. Then, by the light of the red-orbed moon,

that streamed full upon them, did the startled Konrad perceive that

Bothwell and Bolton, whose masks were awry, appeared stunned and

bewildered. The eyes of the Earl were glazed and haggard; his hands were

clenched, and his brow knit with horrible thoughts; his companion was

like a spectre; his eyes rolled fearfully, and his hair seemed stiffened

and erect.

Konrad recognised them both, and immediately became aware that some deed

of darkness had been perpetrated.

"Thou hast done well!" said Ormiston, surveying them grimly.

"_Well!_" reiterated the Earl, in a sepulchral voice, as, overcome and

exhausted by the sudden revulsion of his terrible thoughts, he leaned

against the doorway. "Well! saidst thou? Oh, Hob Ormiston! my very

soul seemed at my finger-points when I grasped him. My God! what am I

saying? I was intoxicated--delirious! Cain--Cain!"

"Ah, Mariette!" groaned the repentant Bolton; "thy dying cry, and the

last glare of thy despairing eyes, will haunt me to my grave!"

"Cock and pie!" cried Ormiston, with astonishment and exasperation;

"have we here two bearded men, or two schulebairns blubbering over their

Latinities? May a thousand yelling fiends hurl ye both to hell!" he

added savagely. "Away! disperse--while I fire the train. The

match--the lunt! Hither, Paris--Hubert--thou French villain! quick!"

"Separate!" said the Earl of Morton; "disperse--I go to Dalkeith on the

spur. Away!" and, leaping on the horse that had borne the powder, this

noble Earl, who at all times was extremely economical of his own person,

galloped away, and disappeared over the brae to the southward.

Bothwell's olive face glowed for a moment, as he blew the slow match and

fired the train. Like a fiery serpent, it glowed along the ground,

flashed through the open doorway, and down the dark corridor of the

house, till it reached the vaulted chamber below that of Darnley, and

where the powder lay. Then there was a pause--but for a moment

only--for, lo'----

Broad, red, and lurid, on the shadowy night, through all the grated

windows of the house of the Kirk-of-Field, there flashed a volume of

light--dazzling and blinding light--eclipsing the full-orbed moon and

all the sparkling stars--revealing the forms of the shrinking

conspirators, and every surrounding object. Full on the massive

ramparts of the city, tufted with weeds and blackened by the smoke of

years, fell that sudden glow, revealing the strong embrasures that

stretched away into far obscurity, the grim bastel-house close by, with

its deep-mouthed gunport and peering culverin--on the ivied aisles of

Mary's lonely kirk--on the shattered tower of the Dominicans--and

displaying even for a gleam the distant woods of Merchiston. The fields

quaked--the walls of the mansion shook; and then came a roar, as if the

earth was splitting.

The solid masonry rent from copestone to foundation in a hundred ruddy

fissures; the massive vaults yawned and opened; the window-gratings were

torn asunder like gossamer webs; and a gigantic column of fire and

smoke, dust and stones, ascended into the air, as if vomited from the

mouth of a volcano, to descend in ruin and darkness on the earth; and a

vast pile of rubbish was all that remained of the house of St.

Mary-in-the-Fields!

"Ho! ho!" cried Ormiston, with a wild laugh. "Like a bolt from a bow,

there goeth Henry Stuart, Lord of Darnley, Duke of Albany, and King of

Scotland!"

For a moment Bothwell felt as if he neither lived nor breathed; but

Ormiston hurried him away, while all their appalled comrades dispersed

in various directions. Konrad, although the whole affair was an

incomprehensible mystery to him, acting by the natural instinct of

self-preservation, on finding himself deserted by companions whom he

dreaded and abhorred, instead of returning to the city, struck into a

narrow horseway that led southward, and hurried with all speed from the

scene of this terrible explosion; for the whole bearing of those who had

so suddenly left him to his own reflections, informed him that it would

neither be conducive to his safety or honour to be found in a vicinity

so dangerous.

Ignorant of the country, and with no other object than to leave the city

far behind him, he traversed the rough and winding path, on one side of

which lay a vast lake[*] and the ruins of a convent; on the other,

fields marked in the ancient fashion (when draining was unknown) by high

rigs, having between deep balks or ditches, where the water lay

glistening in the moonlight. Then he entered upon the vast common muir

of the burgh, that in the gloom of the night appeared to be bounded only

by the distant hills.

*[*] The Burgh loch. *_*Mag. Absalom*_*.*

*From the effect of long confinement he soon became faint and exhausted;

and, though he dared not approach any habitation, there was none within

view, for the district seemed strangely desolate and still.*

At the verge of the muirland, near where a little runnel meandered

between banks overhung by reeds and whin and rushes, there stood a

little chapel, dedicated in the olden time to St. John the Baptist,

having a crucifix and altar, where the wayfarer might pause to offer up

a prayer. There a hermit had once resided; and the charter of

foundation mentions, that he was clothed "in a white garment, having on

his breast a portraiture of St. John the Baptist, whose hermit he was

called." The chapel had been partly demolished to pave the road; and

even the stone that marked the anchorite's grave, had been torn out for

the same purpose. The windows were empty, and the grass grew where the

cross had stood on the altar; but there was no other resting-place, and

Konrad entered the little ruin with caution.

A lamp was burning on the altar, but the oratory was quite desolate.

The nuns of St. Katherine of Sienna had kept, in other days, a light

ever burning on the Baptist's shrine, to which they made yearly

pilgrimages; and one poor old survivor of the scattered sisterhood still

tended the lamp with the labour of religious love.

Uttering a prayer to Heaven for protection, overcome by weariness and

exhaustion, Konrad laid by his side the sword given him by Ormiston,

and, wrapped in the other gift of the same remarkable personage,

composed himself to sleep, leaving to the morrow the study and

development of his future plans.

How little he knew of the deed in which he had that night been so

unwittingly a participator!

Of Darnley's attendants, all were buried among the ruins save Neilson,

who was taken alive from amid the debris next day, and William Taylor

the page, whose body was found lying beside the king's. They had both

been carried through the air, over the lofty ramparts of the city, into

the garden of the Blackfriars, where they were found in their

night-clothes, within a few yards of each other, without much external

injury, save a wound made by the maul on the king's forehead.

Such was the generally received account of this affair, though the

recent and able historian of Scotland asserted, that he had seen

documents which proved that the young king had been first assassinated,

and then carried into the garden; after which the house was blown up--a

useless and dangerous means of causing a more general and immediate

alarm.

*CHAPTER II.*

*THE MIDNIGHT MASS.*

What, though the men

Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatise

The sister-cause--religion and the law--

With superstitious name!

_Grahame._

"Now, Lord Earl," said Ormiston, as they paused breathlessly near the

Pleasance Porte; "which way wendest thou?"

"To Holyrood--to Holyrood!" panted the Earl. "And thou?"----

"Faith! to my own lodging. Thou knowest that I byde me at the

Netherbow, in the turnpike above Bassandyne, that rascally proclamation

printer; and we must enter the city separately." The Earl sighed

bitterly. "Cock and pie! what dost thou regret?"

"To-night."

"Then, what dost thou fear?"

"To-morrow."

"By Tantony! thou art a very woman! Remember the bond by which this deed

was done--signed by so many noble lords and powerful barons under that

yew-tree at Whittinghame. Sighing again! What dost thou dread?"

"_Myself!_" replied the Earl, in whom the reaction of spirit had caused

an agony of remorse. "Thee, and the subscribers of that bond, I may

avoid--but myself--never!"

"These scruples come somewhat late, my lord!" said Ormiston, scornfully.

"Dost thou doubt the faith of me, or of French Paris? Surely thou

knowest my zeal!"

"True! but faith and zeal are very different things."

"'Sblood! Lord Earl, dost thou doubt mine honour?" said Ormiston,

laying hand on his sword. "Though I owe thee suit and knight's service,

nevertheless I am a baron of coat-armour, whose honour brooks no

handling. But let us not quarrel, Bothwell!" he added, on seeing that

the spirit of his ally was completely prostrated for the time.

"Suspicion will never attach to thee; besides, that Norse knave is

abroad, with the well-known cloak and sword of Darnley, which Hubert

stole me from his chamber. These, when he is found again, will turn all

the vengeance on him; so let us to bed ere the alarm be given--to bed, I

say, in peace; for we have the alliance of ten thousand hearts as brave

as ever marched to battle."

"How much more would I prefer the approbation of my own!"

"Out upon thee! I will loose all patience. If thou distrustest Paris,

one stroke of a poniard"----

"Peace, Ormiston! thou art a very bravo, and would thus make one more

sacrifice to increase our list of crimes."

"Just as a name may be wanted to fill the roll of Scotland's peers, by

thy lamentable decapitation and profitable forfeiture," growled

Ormiston. "I know little of statecraft, though I have a bold heart and

a strong hand. Come! be once more a man, and leave remorse to children.

The crime that passes unpunished, deserves not to be regretted."

"Sophistry!" exclaimed the conscience-struck Earl; "sophistry! Avenging

remorse will blast my peace for ever. Now, too bitterly I begin to

feel, that joy for ever ends where crime begins!"

They separated.

Blind with confusion, and bewildered by remorse, the Earl reeled like a

drunken man, as he hurried down by the back street of the Canongate

towards the palace, impatient, and dreading to be missed from his

apartments, when the alarm should be given.

A burning thirst oppressed him; his tongue felt as if scorched, and his

lips were dry and baked. Frightful ideas pressed in crowds through his

mind; he often paused and pressed his hands upon his temples; they were

like burning coals, and throbbed beneath his trembling fingers. He

looked back mentally to the eminence from which he had fallen, and

shuddered at the depth and rapidity of his descent. In the storm of

remorse and unavailing regret that agitated his soul, the beauty of

Mary, and the dreams of ambition it had inspired, were alike forgotten.

He paused at times, and listened; he knew not why. The night was very

still, and there came no sound on the passing wind. A pulse was beating

in his head. How loud and palpable it was!

There was ever before him the last unearthly glare of those despairing

eyes. It was ever in his ears, that expiring wail, sinking into a

convulsive sob--ever--ever, turn where he would; if he walked fast--to

leave his burning thoughts behind him; if he stood still--that cry and

the deathlike visage were ever before him.

"O! to be as I have been--as I was but one long hour ago!" he exclaimed,

shaking his clenched hands above his head. "O! for the waves of Lethe

to wash the past for ever from my memory! Satan--prince of hell--hear

me! Hear me, who dares not now to address his God!"

His frightful thirst still continued, until its agony became

insupportable; and he looked around to find wherewith to quench it. On

the side of St. John's hill, a green and solitary knoll that rose some

sixty feet in height on the wayside, a light attracted his attention;

and, supposing that it shone from a lonely cottage or small

change-house, he approached to procure a draught of any thing that could

be had for money--any liquid, from water to _lachryma Christi_, to

quench the maddening thirst that seemed to consume him.

The light shone from an aperture in the door of a half-ruined barn.

Bothwell grasped his sword, and adjusted his mask; but ere he knocked, a

voice within, deep and musically solemn, arrested him by saying--

"Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini, beato Michaeli

archangelo, beato Joanni Baptistae, Sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo,

omnibus Sanctis et tibi, Pater, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et

opera. Mea culpa! mea culpa! mea maxima culpa!"

Astonished by these words, which form part of the office of mass, and

struck to the very soul in hearing them at such a time, when their

application was so painfully direct, he paused a moment. The door was

opened by a man in complete armour; but the Earl entered immediately, to

behold--what appalled and bewildered him still more.

The rude barn had been hurriedly adapted to the purposes of a chapel. A

rough table, representing the altar, occupied one end; six candles

burned thereon, three on each side of a plain wooden crucifix, which

stood before an old representation of the crucifixion, that whilome had

adorned some more consecrated fane.

Bowing down before this rude altar, with eyes full of fervour, and

piety, and glory, was the aged priest, who, not a hundred yards from the

same spot, had, but a few hours before, craved and received alms from

the hands of the regicide noble; but now his aspect was very different,

for he wore the rich vestments of other days, when he was one of St.

Giles' sixteen prebendaries; and he held aloft a round silver chalice,

which he had saved from the plunder of the church by the bailies of

Edinburgh. The bell was ringing, and he was in the act of celebrating

mass, before an anxious and fearful, but devout few, who, despite the

terrible laws passed against them by the men of the new _regime_, met

thus in secret to worship God after the fashion of their fathers,

preferring the mystical forms and ceremonies which had been handed down

to them by the priests of other years, to a new hierarchy, upheld by the

swords of the unlettered peers and homicidal barons of 1560. The women,

fearful and pale, were muffled in their hoods and plaids; the men were

all well armed, and not a few grasped their poniards, and keenly

scrutinized the Earl on his entrance.

All the long-forgotten piety of his childhood--all the memory of those

days of innocence, when his pious mother, Agnes of Sinclair, taught him

first to raise his little hands in prayer in Blantyre's stately

Priory--gushed back upon his heart. Making a sign of the cross, he

knelt down among the people; and, overcome by the influence of old

associations, by the sudden vision of an altar and the mass, and by the

terrible knowledge of what he was now in the sight of that Being whom he

trembled to address, he burst into an agony of prayer.

Again and again the mass-bell rang, and lower bent every head before

that humble altar, on which all present deemed (for such is the force of

faith) that the invoked Spirit of God was descending, and the Destroyer

trembled in his inmost soul. He covered his head with his mantle, and

bent all his thoughts on Heaven, in prayers for mercy and forgiveness.

A shower of tears came to his aid, and his thirst passed away; but oh!

how deep were those mental agonies, of which he dared to inform no one!

It was long since he had wept, and he could not recall the time; but his

tears were salt and bitter. They relieved him; after a few minutes he

became more composed; and the stern necessity of returning instantly to

Holyrood pressed vividly upon him; but he dreaded to attract attention

or suspicion of treachery, by moving away. Among those present, he

recognised many citizens who outwardly had conformed to the new

religion; but thus, in secret, clung to the old. Near him knelt young

Sir Arthur Erskine, captain of the queen's archers, in his glittering

doublet of cloth-of-gold; and a beautiful girl of eighteen, whose dark

brown hair was but half-concealed by her piquant hood (_a la Mary_), was

kneeling by his side, and reading from the same missal. Their heads were

bent together, and their hair mingled, as the young girl's shoulder

almost rested on the captain's breast.

Bothwell saw that they were lovers; for nothing could surpass the

sweetness and confidence of the girl's smile when she gazed on Sir

Arthur's face; for then the impulses of love and religion together, lit

up her eyes with a rapture that made her seem something divine.

The Earl thought of Mary--of the desperate part he had yet to play; of

all he had dared and done, and had yet to dare and do; the paroxysm

passed, and he felt his heart nerved with renewed courage.

Love revived--remorse was forgotten; and, the moment mass was over, he

stole hurried to Holyrood--gained his apartments unseen, swallowed a

horn of brandy to drown all recollection, and flung himself on his bed,

to await the coming discovery and the coming day.

*CHAPTER III.*

*GUILT LEVELS ALL.*

He is my lord!--my husband! Death! twas death!--

Death married us together! Here I will dig

A bridal bed, and we'll lie there for ever!

I will not go! Ha! you may pluck my heart out,

But I will never go. Help! help! Hemeya!

They drag me to Pescara's cursed bed.

_Sheils' Apostate._

A stupor, not a slumber, sank upon him; it weighed down his eyelids, it

confused his faculties, and oppressed his heart; but even that state of

half unconsciousness was one of bliss, compared to the mental torture he

had endured.

The tolling of the great alarm bell of the city, which usually summoned

the craftsmen to arms, and the gathering hum of startled multitudes,

murmuring like the waves of a distant ocean, as the citizens were roused

by those who kept watch and ward, awoke Earl Bothwell. He listened

intently. Loudly and clearly the great bell rang on the wind, above the

hum of the people pouring downwards like a sea, to chafe against the

palace gates. Then came distant voices, crying--

"Armour!--armour!--fie!--treason!"

Steps came hastily along the resounding corridor; there was a sharp

knocking at the door of his chamber, and, without waiting for the usual

ceremony of being introduced by a page, Master George Halkett, the Earl

of Huntly, and Hepburn of Bolton, entered. The latter was now in

complete armour, that the visor might conceal the terrible expression of

his altered face.

"How now, Master Halkett!" asked the Earl with affected surprise.

"Whence this intrusion? What is the matter?"

"Matter enough, I trow!" replied the other; "the king's house has been

blown up, and his majesty slain."

"Jesu!" cried the Earl, leaping from his bed, glad to find in action a

refuge from his own solitary thoughts. "Fie! treason! Surely thou

ravest! Speak, Bolton!"

Bolton replied in a voice so inarticulate that it was lost in the hollow

of his helmet; for his mind seemed a chaos of despair and stupefaction.

Since that terrible hour he had vainly been endeavouring to arrange his

thoughts, and act like a sane man.

"'Tis the verity, my lord!" continued Halkett. "Hark! how the roar

increaseth in the town."

"And who, say they, hath done this dark deed?"

"All men accuse the Earls of Morton and Moray," replied Huntly, who had

been industriously spreading the rumour, which their known hostility to

Darnley made common at the time.

"Fie! treason!" cried Bothwell, bustling about. "Armour!--a Bothwell!

Harkee, French Paris--Calder, ho! my pyne doublet and sword!"

"Nay! thou hadst better take armour," said Bolton.

"Right! there lieth a Milan suit in yonder cabinet. Sirs, my pages are

gone Heaven knows where--I crave service--my points, I pray you truss

them."

Huntly and Bolton brought the mail from the carved cabinet, and hastily

accoutred the Earl. It was a Milan suit, a very beautiful one of the

late King James's fashion, washed with silver; the corselet was

globular, having puckered lamboys of steel in lieu of tassettes, and a

bourgoinette, with a metoniere acting as a gorget. He could have

concealed his face perfectly by this peculiar appendage to the

headpiece; but his natural boldness and daring now rendered such a

measure unnecessary. The moment the accoutring was over, he was left

alone; for Master Halkett hurried away from chamber to chamber, being

one of those who love to be the first bearers of startling tidings;

Huntly departed to arm his retinue for any emergency, and Bolton to

array the archer guard, and bear back the armed populace, who were

clamouring at the palace gates.

Aware how much his future fate depended on the issue of his first

interview with Mary, the Earl could bear suspense no longer; and aware

that she would now be roused, notwithstanding the untimely hour, he

resolved to seek her apartments; the daylight, his sword and armour, had

restored his confidence.

Coldly and palely the February dawn was brightening: though the

stillness of midnight lay yet upon the dewy hills, there was a din

within the city that might "awake the dead." There was a melancholy

solemnity about the dull grey dawn, and the gloomy facade of the old

monastic edifice, that oppressed the Earl's heart as he crossed its

empty court, and heard the jingle of his armour echoed in the dark

arcades, where pages and servitors were hurrying to and fro; while quick

steps and sharp voices rang in the long corridors and stone ambulatories

of the old palace. As he approached James V.'s tower, where the queen

occupied those apartments that are now daily exhibited to the curious, a

man in a complete suit of black armour jostled him.

"Ormiston!" he exclaimed.

"Well met, Lord Earl--good-morrow!" replied his evil mentor, in a

whisper. "The whole city is agog now, and every voice is raised against

the Lord Moray--a lucky infatuation for us. The blue banner hath been

displayed by the convener of the corporations, whose thirty-three

pennons are all unfurled; so the rascally craftsmen are fast mustering

in their helmets for trouble and tulzie; while Craigmillar and the Lord

Lindesay, with their lances, are coming in on the spur.--But whither

goest thou?"

"To the queen."

"Fool! fool! is this a time?"

"There was a time," replied the Earl, bitterly, "when such a varlet as

thou dared not have spoken thus to Bothwell."

"True," replied the other, with a sardonic grin; "but _guilt_, like

misfortune, levels all men. Tarry--the queen"----

"No, no--I must see her! Not hell itself shall keep me from her!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Ormiston, as the Earl ascended the staircase;

"odsbody! why, a stone wall or a stout cord would keep a stronger lover

than thee well enow."

Bothwell felt now all the humility and agony of being in the power of

this unscrupulous ruffian, and he sighed bitterly more than once as he

advanced towards the royal apartments.

"Now," thought he, "must I doubly dye my soul in guilt--the guilt of

black hypocrisy. Oh, to be what I have been! How dark are the

clouds--how many the vague alarms--that involve the horizon of my fate!

Last night--and the recollection of that irreparable deed--could I blot

them from memory, happiness might yet be mine."

A crowd of yeomanry of the guard, in their scarlet gaberdines, with long

poniards and partisans; archers in green, with bent bows and bristling

arrows; pages in glittering dresses, and gentlemen in waiting, all

variously armed, made way at the entrance of the queen's apartments,

near the door marked with Rizzio's blood. After a brief preliminary it

was opened--the heavy Gobeline tapestry was raised, and the earl found

himself in the presence of--Mary.

When he beheld her, every scruple and regret, every remnant of remorse

again evaporated, and he felt that he had done nothing that he would not

repeat.

She was plainly and hurriedly attired in a sacque of blue Florence silk,

tied with a tassel round her waist. The absence of her high ruff

revealed more than usual of her beautifully delicate neck and swelling

bosom; while the want of her long peaked stays and stiffened skirts,

displayed all the grace and contour of her graceful form. Save the

rings that flashed on her fingers, she was without jewels; and in a

profusion, such as the Earl had never seen before--her bright and

luxuriant auburn hair fell unbound upon her shoulders, covered only by a

square of white lace, a long and sweeping veil, that (as old Juvenal

says), "like a tissue of woven air," floated around her. Her snow-white

feet were without stockings, for she had just sprung from bed, and the

short slippers of blue velvet shewed her delicately veined insteps and

taper ankles in all their naked beauty.

Her brow and rounded cheeks were pale as death; but, though suffused

with tears, her eyes were full of fire, and there was more perhaps of

anger than of grief in the quivering of her short upper lip. Aware of

her dishabille, and that the Countess of Argyle, and other ladies of the

court, who were all in their night-dresses, had fled at the Earl's

approach, as so many doves would have done from a vulture, leaving her

almost alone with him--the queen cast down her long dark lashes for a

moment, and then bent her keen gaze full upon Bothwell, whose open

helmet revealed the pallor of his usually careless, jovial, and nutbrown

face.

"Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,

Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew;

'Tis as the snake late coil'd, who pours his length,

And hurls at once his venom and his strength."

Powerful and daring as he was, the Earl quailed beneath her eye; but

immediately recovering his admirable air of self-possession, he began in

the most courteous manner to deplore the dreadful event, "which," says

the Knight of Halhill, "he termed the strangest catastrophe that ever

was heard of; for thunder had come out of the sky, and burnt the house

of the king, whose body was found lying dead at a little distance from

the ruins under a tree."

"Thunder, sayest thou?" reiterated the Queen. "Sweet mother

Mary--assist me! Some of the archers of our guard, Lord Earl, men whose

bows were drawn at Pinkiecleugh and Ancrumford, aver that the ruins bear

marks of Friar Bacon's art rather than electricity. Thunder!"----

"What does your majesty mean?"

"Lord Earl," replied Mary, in a low emphatic tone; "this--this is--_thy_

doing--thine!"

"Madam--madam"--urged the Earl, but his tongue refused its office, and

clove to the roof of his mouth.

"Hah, my Lord!" continued the Queen; "is it the astonishment of

innocence, or the shame of guilt, that paralyses thy too ready tongue at

this terrible moment? I see thou art guilty," she added, in a

sepulchral voice; "and now thou comest before me covered with the blood

of my husband."

"I swear to your majesty"----

"Swear not! Else whence do your hands tremble? Why is your face thus

pale--yea, pale as Ruthven's seemed on that other fatal night--a year

ago in this chamber?"

Gathering courage from desperation, the kneeling noble, hoping to be

interrupted in his vow, replied--

"I swear to you, gracious madam, by heaven and all that is in it--by the

earth and all that is on it--by the souls of my Catholic ancestors--by

the bones of my father--by my own salvation and honour, which I prize

more than life--by your love, your esteem, to win which I would gladly

peril more than a thousand lives"----

"Enough!" replied the Queen, interrupting the terrible falsehood, and

covering her face with her hands; "pardon my grief and horror--I believe

thee. There--kiss my hand in token of trust."

Bothwell's heart was touched by her innocent confidence; he became

giddy, and almost reeled.

"O Mary! my wish, my hope, my dream! Would that I were pure enough to be

worthy of thee!" said the Earl, in a touching voice; for a moment his

heart was crushed by sorrow and remorse, as he pressed to his lip the

soft, small hand of the queen. But she did not hear these pathetic

exclamations, which conveyed all the Earl's secret in their tone; for at

that moment a group that crossed the palace yard riveted all her

faculties.

Sir Arthur Erskine and Hepburn of Bolton, both sheathed in armour, with

a band of their archers, appeared escorting a few yeomen of the guard,

who bore on their crossed partisans a body muffled in a soldier's

mantle, and followed by a crowd of gentlemen, grooms, pages, and armed

craftsmen.

She shuddered. The weak points of Darnley's character, his folly, his

foppery, his profligacy, his neglect of herself, and the wanton murder

of her secretary, all vanished from her memory for the time, and she saw

him only as she had seen him first in the hall of Wemyss--handsome,

tall, and graceful--in all the bloom of youth, nobility, and comeliness,

with his dark eye sparkling and his feathers waving, and all the blind

devotion which at two-and-twenty had become a part of her very being,

and which had absorbed young Henry Stuart into her very soul, came back

vividly and painfully upon her mind.

She tottered to a seat.

Her eyes assumed a tearless and stony aspect--a cloud of horror

descended upon her snowy brow; and the Earl felt bitterly as he gazed on

her, that his presence, and the love he had so daringly expressed, were

alike unheeded or forgotten.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*THE PREBEND OF ST. GILES.*

A "God be with thee," shall be all thy mass;

Thou never lovedst those dry and droning priests.

Thou'lt rot most cool and quiet in my garden;

Your gay and gilded vault would be costly.

_Fazio, a Tragedy._

After an uneasy slumber, in the place where we left him a few pages

back, Konrad was awakened by a rough grasp being laid on his shoulder,

and a voice crying--

"Harl him forth, till we find what manner of carle he is!" and, ere he

was thoroughly roused, several strong hands dragged him to the door of

that solitary little chapel, where he found himself in the presence of

two knights on horseback, and a band of mailed men-at-arms, bearing

hackbuts and partisans, and carrying a banner bearing a blue shield

charged with the heart and mullets of Morton.

It was a beautiful spring morning. The sun was rising above the eastern

hills, and gilding the peaks of the Pentlands, that towered above the

wreaths of gauzy mist rolling round their heath-clad bases.

"Whence comest thou, fellow?" asked the first knight, who was no other

than our ferocious acquaintance, Lord Lindesay of the Byres, who, with

his men-at-arms, had been scouring the adjacent country for some one

upon whom to execute his vengeance.

"Some accomplice and abettor of the Lord Moray!" observed the other;

"art and part at least--for all the city saith that he committed the

deed; at least, there are those who find their interest in circulating

the report most industriously."

"Tush! the Lord Moray abideth at his tower of Donibristle; and I will

maintain body to body against any man, that he lieth foully in his

throat who accuseth James Stuart of being concerned in the slaughter of

last night."

"But, dustifute--knave--speak! whence comest thou?"

"By what right dost thou ask?" said Konrad, starting at the voice of the

questioner, who had the policy to keep his visor down, and affected not

to recognise his acquaintance of the hostellary.

"What right? false loon! the right of my rank. I am James Earl of

Morton; and now that I look on thee, thou tattered villain--by St. Paul!

I see the king's cloak on thy shoulders. We all know the Lord Darnley's

scarlet mantle, sirs, with its gold embroidery; and doth its splendour

not contrast curiously with this foreigner's rags and tatters?"

"By cock and pie!" said Ormiston under his helmet, as he pushed through

the crowd at this juncture, "I would swear to it as I would to my own

nose, or to the king's toledo sword, which I now see by the side of this

double thief and traitor! We all know him, sirs! The unco'--the

foreigner--who with John of Park attempted to assassinate my Lord of

Bothwell in Hermitage glen. Last night he escaped from the tower of

Holyrood."

"Close up, my merry men all!" said Morton; "forward, pikemen--bend your

hackbuts; for we have meshed one of the knaves at last."

There was a terrible frown gathering on the brow of Lindesay. This

ferocious peer, and uncompromising foe of the ancient church, was

distinguished by the sternness and inflexibility of his character, even

in that iron age; and the fire of his keen grey eye increased the

expression of his hard Scottish, yet noble features, and thick grizzled

beard, which consorted so well with the antique fashion of his plain

steel armour, with its grotesque and gigantic knee and elbow joints

projecting like iron fans, with pauldrons on the shoulders. His salade

was of the preceding century, and was surmounted by his crest, a silver

ostrich bearing in its beak a key--on his colours, a roll azure and

argent. Unsheathing his long shoulder-sword, he said with stern

solemnity--

"Now, blessed be God! that hath given us this great and good fortune

to-day. These ruins, where that mother of blasphemy and

abomination--who hath made whole nations drunk with the cup of her

iniquities--once practised her idolatries, seem to have rare tenants

this morning. First, amid the walls of Leonard's chapel, we found that

worshipper of graven images--Tarbet, the mass-priest, with all his

missals and mummery in right order for the pillory at the Tron; and

here, in the oratory of the Baptist, we have started our other game--one

of the regicides, whose body shall be torn piecemeal, even as Graeme and

Athol were torn of old; yea, villain! embowelled and dismembered shalt

thou be, while the life yet flickers in thy bleeding heart; but, first,

thou shalt be half-hanged from yonder tree. Quick! a knotted cord, some

of ye!"

"Nay, my good Lord of Lindesay," interposed Morton, "I would reserve him

for the queen's council, whose examination may bring to light much of

whilk we are still in ignorance."

"Now, by my father's bones!" began fierce Lindesay, clenching his

gauntleted hand with sudden passion, "must I remind thee, who wert High

Chancellor of Scotland, and, as such, chief in all matters of

justice--the king's most intimate councillor, and holder of that seal,

without the touch of which not a statute of the estates can pass forth

to the people--must I remind thee of that ancient Scottish law, by which

our forefathers decreed, if a murderer be taken REDHAND, he should

incontinently be executed within three days after commission of the

deed; and here, within a mile of the Kirk-of-Field, we find a known

comrade of Park, the border outlaw, with the sword and mantle of our

murdered king"--

"Yea," interrupted a voice from the band, "a cloak which I saw in the

king's chamber but yesternight."

"What other proof lack we?" said Lindesay.

"Away with him!" cried several voices, and Ormiston's among them; "for

he hath assuredly murdered the king!"

To all these fiercely-uttered accusations, Konrad had not a word to

reply in extenuation or defence; and his astonishment and confusion were

easily mistaken for guilt and fear.

"As thou pleasest, Lindesay," said Morton coldly, for he was unused to

find his advice neglected. "To me it mattereth not, whether he be

hanged now or a year hence. I have but one thing more to urge. Let us

confront him with the mass priest Tarbet, and I warrant that, by blow of

boot and wrench of rack, we may make some notable discoveries. We know

not whom they may, in their agony, accuse as accessories if we give them

a hint;" and indeed the Earl might have added, that he did not care,

while he was not accused himself.

But his own time was measured.

Lindesay seemed struck by this advice (as there was an estate bordering

his own which he had long coveted), and so ordering the prisoner to be

secured by cords, and gagged, by having a branch cut from a hawthorn

bush tied across his mouth so tightly that the blood oozed from his torn

lips. He was then bound to the tail of a horse, and thus ignominiously

conducted back to the excited city, escorted by Morton's band of

hackbuttiers.

Had an English army, flushed with victory, been crossing the Esk, a

greater degree of excitement could not have reigned in the Scottish

capital than its streets exhibited on this morning, the 11th February,

1567.

The crafts were all in arms, and the spacious Lawnmarket was swarming

with men in armour, bearing pikes, hackbuts, and jedwood axes,

two-handed swords, and partisans; while the pennons of the various

corporations--the cheveron and triple towers of the sturdy Masons--the

shield, ermine, and triple crowns of the Skinners--the gigantic shears

of the Tailors--and so forth, were all waving in the morning wind.

Splendidly accoutred, a strong band of men-at-arms stood in close array

near the deep arch of Peebles Wynd, around the residence of the provost,

Sir Simeon Preston of Craigmillar, whose great banner, bearing a _scudo

pendente_, the cognisance peculiar to this illustrious baron, was borne

by his knightly kinsman, Congalton of that Ilk.

A half-mad preacher, in a short Geneva cloak and long bands, and wearing

a long-eared velvet cap under his bonnet, had ensconced himself in a

turret of the city cross, from whence, with violent gestures, in a

shrill intonation of voice, he was holding forth to a scowling rabble of

craftsmen, and women in Gueldrian coifs and Galloway kirtles, who

applauded his discourse, which he was beating down, with Knox-like

emphasis, and striking his clenched hand on the cope of the turret with

such fury, that he had frequently to pause, make a wry face, and blow

upon it. Then, with increased wrath, he thundered his anathemas against

the "shavelings of Rome, the priests of antichrist--the relics of their

saints--their corrupted flesh--their rags and rotten bones--their gilded

shrines and mumming pilgrimages!" Sternly he spoke, and wildly, too,

with all the enthusiasm of a convert, and the rancour of an apostate,

for he was both.

A few yards further down the sunlit street, stood one of those very

shavelings against whom he was pouring forth the vials and the vehemence

of his wrath. At the Tron beam stood the aged Tarbet on a platform, a

few feet above the pavement. By a cord that encircled his neck, his

head was tied close to the wooden column supporting the tron, or great

steel-yard where the merchants weighed their wares; and to that his ear

was fixed by a long iron nail, from which the blood was trickling.

Faint and exhausted, the old man clung with feeble hands to the pillar

to avoid strangulation, as his knees were refusing their office. He was

still in his vestments, with the cross embroidered on his stole; a

rosary encircled his neck, and, to excite the mockery of the mob, a

missal, a chalice, and censer were tied to it; and while enduring the

greatest indignities to which the inborn cowardice, cruelty, and

malevolence of the vulgar, can subject the unfortunate and the fallen,

inspired by the memory of the greater martyr who had suffered for him,

he blessed them repeatedly in return. The boys were yelling "Green

Sleeves"--"John, cum kiss me now," and other songs, converted from

Catholic hymns into profane ribaldry; ever and anon, as Knox tells us,

serving him with "his Easter eggs," meaning every available missile, and

under the shower that poured upon him the old man was sinking fast. At

last a stone struck his forehead, the blood burst over his wrinkled

face, and drenched his silver hair. He tottered, sank, and hung

strangling by the neck; and then, but not till then, he was released and

borne away to the nearest barrier, where he was again expelled the city,

with the warning, that to say mass once more would involve the penalty

of instant death.