at that moment too painfully like his sister's--who, though he knew it
not, was probably lying, bruised and mangled out of human form, among
the ruins of the Kirk-of-Field.
"Then here we part. Thou wilt see this stranger fitted with dry
garments: give him this purse, and bid him go in the name of grace, and
cross my path no more; for it is beset with thorns, dangers, and deep
pitfalls--and I will not be accountable for the issue of our again
forgathering."
"How well I know that voice!" said Konrad feebly. "Tell me, ere we
part, if my suspicions are right. For whom shall I pray this
night?"----
"Thy greatest enemy--but one who hath every need of prayer," replied the
other, in a husky voice.
"Thou art"----
"Hush! James, Earl of Bothwell," replied the noble in a low voice, as
he and Bolton mounted, and, without further parley, dashed at full
gallop along the bank of the loch and disappeared in the direction of
Dingwall's castle, a strong tower, battlemented at the top and furnished
with tourelles, that overhung the steep bank above the Trinity House,
forming the residence of its provost.
The night was still gloomy and dark, though occasional gleams of
moonlight shot across the varied landscape to the north, one moment
revealing it all like a picture, and the next veiling it in obscurity.
"Mount, if thou canst," said French Paris, "and wend with me, for we
have little time to spare. Our burghers will be all at their accursed
pillar, like ravening wolves, by daybreak, and if they should miss,
pursue, and overtake thee, our lives would not be worth a brass
testoon!"
"And whither wend we?"
"To the seashore--to Our Lady's port of Grace, where there lieth at
anchor a trading crayer, commanded by a countryman of thine--Hans
Knuber, or some such uncouth name."
"Ha, honest Hans!" exclaimed Konrad with joy. "But how came so great a
noble as thy lord to know of this poor skipper?"
"Knowest thou not that he is high admiral of the realm, and that not a
cock-boat can spread a sail in the Scottish seas unknown to him?"
"Jovial Hans!" continued Konrad; "I would give my right hand to see
thee, and hear thy hearty welcome in our good old Norwayn. Let us mount
and go! Benumbed, and stiff, and sick as I am at heart and in body,
thou shalt see, Sir Page (for I know thee of old), that I can ride a
horse like the demon of the wind himself."
Nevertheless, Konrad mounted with difficulty, and they progressed but
slowly; for the ancient way was steep and winding, and led them far to
the westward of the city, which disappeared, as they traversed the steep
and broken ground that lay between it and the Firth.
This district was all open and rural, but generally in a high state of
cultivation, divided by hedges and fauld-dykes into fallow fields and
pasture lands, in some places shaded by thick copsewood, especially
round those eminences on which rose the towers of Innerleith and
Waniston, between which the roadway wound. These square fortlets were
the residences of two of the lesser barons; the first extended his
feudal jurisdiction over the ancient village of Silvermills; and the
other over that of Picardie, where dwelt a colony of industrious
weavers, who had left their sunny France, and, under the wing of the
ancient alliance, came hither to teach the Scots the art of weaving
silk.
Near some ancient mills, gifted by Robert I. to the monks of Holyrood,
the horseway crossed the pebbled bed of the Leith, which brawled and
gurgled between rough and stony banks, jagged with rocks and boulders,
and overhung by hawthorn, whin, and willow. Soon wood, and tower, and
path were left behind, the city lights vanished in the distance, and
Konrad, with his guide, entered on a broad and desolate tract, then
known as the Muir of Wardie. There their horses sank fetlock deep in
the soft brown heather, over which came the jarring murmur of the
distant sea, as its waves rolled on the lonely shore of the beautiful
estuary.
Then it was a lonely shore indeed!
That broad and desert moorland of many square miles, extended to the
beach uncheered by house or homestead, by tree or bush, or any other
objects than a solitary little chapel of Our Lady and the old tower of
Wardie, with its square chimneys and round turrets, overhanging the
rocks, on which, urged by the wind, the waves were pouring all their
foam and fury, flecking the ocean with white when the moonbeams glinted
on its waters.
Broad and spacious links of emerald green lay then between the little
fisher-village and the encroaching sea, which has long since covered
them; but their grassy downs had to be traversed by our horsemen ere
they reached the wooden pier where the crayer of bluff Hans Knuber lay,
well secured by warp and cable, and having her masts, and yards, and
rigging all covered, and made snug, to save them from the storms which,
at that season of the year, so frequently set in from the German sea.
*CHAPTER VIII.*
*THE CHALLENGE.*
Defiled is my name full sore,
Through cruel spyte and false report;
That I may say for evermore,
Farewell, my joy! adieu, comfort!
For wrongfully ye judge of me.
Unto my fame a mortall wounde;
Say what ye lyst it will not be,
Ye seek for that cannot be founde.
_Anne Boleyn's Lament._
The remains of the unfortunate king, after being embalmed by Picauet the
French physician, were interred among his royal ancestors in the aisles
of Holyrood, not contemptuously, as some historians tell us, but
solemnly and privately; for Mary dared not have had the burial service
of the Catholic church publicly performed, when, but seven years before,
those sepulchral rites were, by the Reformers, denied to her mother.
In the southern aisle of the church of Sanctae Crucis, near the slab
that still marks where Rizzio lies, he was lowered into the tomb, while
the torches cast their lurid light on the dark arcades and shadowy
vistas of the nave, amid the lamentations and the muttered threats of
vengeance--the deep sure vengeance of the feudal days--from the knights
and barons of the Lennox.
Attired in sackcloth, poor Mary shut herself up in a darkened chamber
hung with black serge, and there for many days she passed the weary
hours in vigil and in prayer, for the unshriven soul of that erring
husband, whom for the past year she had been compelled to hold in
abhorrence--a sentiment which she then remembered with a remorse that
increased her pity for his fate.
Bothwell dared not to approach her while this paroxysm lasted; but by
plunging into gaiety and riot--by spending the days and nights in
revelry with Ormiston and d'Elboeuff--he endeavoured to drown the
recollections of the past, to deaden the sense of the present, and to
nerve himself for the future; but in vain--one terrible thought was ever
present!
It stood like something palpable and visible before him. It seemed
written on the fragrant earth, in the buoyant air, and on the shining
water, imparting to the sunny spring the gloom of winter. It was in his
ears, it was on his tongue, and in his soul; there was no avoiding, no
crushing, no forgetting it! Oh, how vividly at times, in the calm
silence of the sleepless night, _that cry_ came to his ears; and his
thoughts were riveted on that grey marble slab in the chapel aisle,
beneath which, mangled, cold, and mouldering, lay one----he would smite
his damp forehead to drive away the thoughts, and rush to drown his
sense of misery in wine.
Amid the hum of the city, when its sunlit thoroughfares were crowded
with the gaiety and bustle of passing crowds, all of whom seemed so
happy and so gay, it rang in his ears!
Amid the solemn deliberations of the council on border raids and feudal
broils--on English wars and French embassies--in all of which he was
compelled to take the lead, as the royal favourite and first of the
Scottish peers, it came to him sadly and mournfully above the voices of
the most able orators; and then his heart sank when he looked on the
blanched visages of Morton, of Maitland, and his other copartners in
that terrible deed, to which--as if by common consent--they never dared
to recur!
Amid the leafy rustle of the woods, as their dewy buds expanded beneath
the alternate showers and sunshine of an early spring (if he sought the
country), still he heard it!
Amid the deep hoarse murmur of the chafing sea, if he sought the lonely
shore, he heard it still--that sad and wailing cry of death and of
despair!
Amid the joys of the midnight revel, when the wine sparkled in the
gilded glasses--the grapes blushed in their silver baskets--the lofty
lamps filled the chamber with rosy light and rich perfume;--when the
heedless ribaldry of Ormiston, the courtly wit of d'Elboeuff, the
frolicsome spirit of Coldinghame, were all there to make the _present_
paramount alike to the past and the future, still it came to him--that
terrible sound--_the last cry of Darnley_!
The queen still remained shut in her darkened chamber, secluded from
all--even from the prying ambassador of Elizabeth, who, when introduced,
could not discern her face amidst the sombre gloom surrounding her; but,
as he informed his mistress, the accents of Mary were both touching and
mournful.
Two strange rumours were now floating through the city; one of a spectre
which had appeared in the lodging of the Lord Athol on the night of the
king's death; the other, of Bothwell's implication in that terrible
deed, in which he and his companions had endeavoured (and perhaps not
without good grounds) to implicate the Earl of Moray.
No one knew how this rumour gained credence; but each man whispered it
to his neighbour. Voices, accusing him of the deed, rang at midnight in
the narrow streets of the city; the scholars chalked ribald verses at
the corners of the wynds and church-doors; while Moray--openly
Bothwell's friend, and secretly his foe--had handbills posted on the
portes, naming him as the perpetrator. Furtively these things were
done; for few dared to impugn the honour of so powerful a noble, and
none could arraign him save the father of the murdered prince, Matthew
Earl of Lennox, an aged noble, who had served with valour and
distinction in the wars of Francis I.; and he boldly charged the Earl
with the crime.
Bothwell saw, or imagined he saw, an accusation in the eye of every man
whose glance he encountered. Pride, jealousy, and angry suspicion, now
by turns animated his resentful heart, and galled his fiery spirit. He
was always conferring secretly with the knights and barons of his train;
he kept his vassals ever on the alert, and never went abroad without
being completely armed, to prevent a surprise; but daily and hourly,
slowly and surely, like an advancing and overwhelming tide, the
suspicions of the people grew and waxed stronger, till, clamorously, it
burst in one deep hoarse shout against him, and a hundred thousand
tongues said, "Thou art the man!"
"Malediction on these presumptuous churls!" said the Earl angrily to
Ormiston, as they met near the palace gate on the day after Darnley's
funeral. "They all accuse me; and there must be treachery somewhere."
"Nay, nay, never think so while that bond of Whittinghame exists. It
binds us all, body and soul, to be silent as the grave, and deep as
Currie brig."
"But now they speak of the queen, adding all that the innate malevolence
of the vulgar, the hatred that Knox and his compatriots have fostered
and fanned, can add; and declaring that she is art and part with those
who freed her and the nation from the dominion of the house of Lennox."
"May God forefend!" said Ormiston; for, ruffian as he was, he deemed the
national honour at stake under such an accusation. "I would run my sword
through the brisket of the first base mechanic who breathed a word of
this."
"Breathed a word of it!--Gramercy! French Paris tells me, it is openly
discussed by every full-fed burgess at the city cross; by every rascally
clown who brings his milk and butter to the Tron; by every archer and
pikeman over their cans of twopenny; by every apostate priest and pious
psalmist who haunt the houses of Knox, of Craig, and Buchanan. A curse
upon the hour when my secret love, my cherished hopes--the name and fame
the brave old Lords of Hailes transmitted to me, so spotless and so
pure--are turned to ribaldry and jest, to laughter and to scorn, by
every foul-mouthed citizen."
"'Tis mighty unlucky all this; for here hath been my Lord Fleming, the
great chamberlain, with the queen's especial commendations to your
lordship, announcing, that on the morrow she intendeth to lay aside her
weeping and wailing, her dumps and dolours, and departing hence for the
house of Lord Seaton, a gay place, and a merry withal; and there she
hopes you will escort her with your train of lances, for the Lothians
are so disturbed that she mistrusts even Arthur of Mar and his band of
archers."
"Be it so! Send Bolton to her grace with my dutiful answer," replied
the Earl, whose eye lighted up, for he thought that, in the shock
Darnley's fate had given her, the queen had forgotten him; "we will be
all in our helmets, and at her service by cock-crow to-morrow; but
first," he added, sternly and impressively, "take this, my better glove,
and hang it on yonder city cross, and there to-day at noon announce to
all, that I, James Earl of Bothwell, and Lord of Hailes, will defend
mine honour against all men, body for body, on foot or on horseback, at
the barriers of the Portsburgh, between the chapel of St. Mary and the
castle rock, so help me God at the day of doom!"
And drawing off his long buff glove, which was richly embroidered and
perfumed, the Earl handed it to his faithful Achates, and returned into
the palace to have his train prepared with becoming splendour, for the
honourable duty of guarding the queen on the morrow.
In compliance with this command, Black Hob, sheathed in his sable
armour, his visor up to reveal his swarthy visage, and mounted on a
strong charger of the jettiest black, attended by Hay of Tallo as
esquire, French Paris as his page, and three trumpeters in the Earl's
gorgeous livery, gules and argent, and having his banner, with the lions
of Hepburn rending an English rose, advanced into the city, and there,
amid a note of defiance, hung the Earl's glove above the fountain,
together with his declaration of innocence, and offer "to decide the
matter in a duel with any gentleman or person of honour who should dare
to lay it to his charge."
For many a day the glove hung there, and none answered the challenge;
for the star of Hepburn was still in the ascendant, and none dared to
encounter its chieftain in the field, for dread of the deadly feud that
was sure to ensue.
But the printer of pasquils and the caricaturists were still busy, and
one morning there was a paper found beneath the Earl's challenge, on
which was drawn a hand grasping a sword, and bearing the initials of the
queen, opposed to another armed with a _maul_, bearing those of the
Earl--a palpable allusion to the weapon by which the unfortunate prince
was slain, and which could only have been made by a conspirator.
The heedlessness of the unsuspecting Mary in visiting the Earl of Winton
under the escort of Bothwell (of whose innocence she had been convinced
by Moray), and his divorce from his countess, lent renewed energy to the
voice of calumny; and then those rumours of her participation in that
crime, in which all the skill of her enemies for three hundred years has
failed to involve her, were noised abroad; and slowly but surely the
nation, which had never loved her for her catholicity, and partiality
for gaiety and splendour, was completely estranged from her. Now, on
one hand, were a fierce people and a bigoted clergy; on the other, a
ferocious vassalage, headed by illiterate and rapacious nobles, and to
withstand them but one feeble woman.
In the glamour that came over the Scottish people, they failed to
remember that, animated by delicacy and honour, the unhappy Mary, only
six weeks before the death of Darnley, had rejected a divorce, though
urged by the most able of her ministers and powerful of her nobles; they
also forgot how anxiously she had prevented his committing himself to
the dangers of the ocean, when about to become an exile in another land;
and they forgot, too, her assiduity and tenderness, to one who had so
long slighted and ceased to love her, when he lay almost upon a
deathbed, under the effects of a loathsome and terrible disease. The
nobles saw only a woman, who stood between them and power--regencies,
places, and command; the people saw only an idolater and worshipper of
stocks and stones; and the clergy "ane unseemly woman," who dared to
laugh, and sing, and dance, in defiance of their fulminations anent such
sin and abomination.
Exasperated by his son's death, and the rumours abroad, the aged Earl of
Lennox demanded of Mary that Bothwell should submit to a trial. His
prayer was granted; and Keith acquaints us that she wrote to her
father-in-law, requesting him to attend the court with all his feudal
power and strength.
Dreading the issue of an ordeal which might blast his prospects and his
fame, the politic Bothwell used every means to increase his already vast
retinue, by enlisting under his banner every dissolute fellow, border
outlaw, and broken man, that would assume his livery, the gules and
argent; and thus his town residence, and those of his Mends, were soon
swarming with these sinister-eyed and dark-visaged swashbucklers, with
their battered steel bonnets, their long swords, and important swagger.
Thus, when the day of trial came, the streets were crowded with them;
and when Bothwell, after passing through a long lane of his own
arquebussiers, at the head of three thousand men, (mostly barons,
knights, and esquires,) appeared at the bar, sheathed in a magnificent
suit of armour, supported on one side by the crafty Earl of Morton, and
on the other by two able advocates--the father of the young prince he
had destroyed dared not appear, as he dreaded to share the fate of his
son.
After a long discussion, to which the high-born culprit listened with a
beating heart--though his influence had packed the jury, which was
composed of Mary's friends and Rizzio's murderers; and though he had
bribed the judges and deterred the prosecutor--the court, actuated by
sentiments best known to themselves, unanimously "_acquitted_ the Earl
of Bothwell of all participation in the king's death."
With him the die had been cast.
Had they brought in a verdict of guilty, another hour had seen his
banner waving in triumph and defiance above the capital--for he was
alike prepared to conquer or to die; but this decision of the jury,
delivered by the mouth of Caithness, their chancellor, rendered all his
warlike preparations nugatory. Had they found him guilty, he would
boldly have rushed to arms in defence of his honour and life, with an
energy and wrath that would alike have stifled the whispers of
conscience and remorse; but they had declared him innocent, and he left
the bar slowly and sadly, feeling in his inmost soul a thousand degrees
more criminal than ever.
As he left the chamber where the High Court sat, his friends and vassals
received him with acclamations--with brandished swords and waving
pennons; and, with trumpets sounding, conveyed him through the great
arch of the Netherbow to St. Mary's Wynd, where, by his command, the
host of the _Red Lion_ had prepared a grand banquet and rere-supper for
the nobles and barons attending the Parliament.
Though "one of the handsomest men of his time," as old Crawford tells
us, the Earl feared that, notwithstanding the assiduity of his
attentions, Mary would never regard him with other sentiments than those
of mere esteem for his services, and efficiency as an officer of state.
"Men stop at nothing when their hands are in," saith an old saw; and,
actuated by this spirit, Bothwell--ever keeping steadily in view that
alluring object, which, step by step, had drawn him to the dangerous and
terrible eminence on which he found himself--resolved, by one more
desperate act, to reach the summit of his hopes, or sink into the gulf
for ever.
*CHAPTER IX.*
*AINSLIE'S SUPPER.*
Men talk of country, Christmasses, and court gluttony,
Their thirty pound butter'd eggs, their pies of carps' tongues,
Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris; the carcasses
Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy, to
Make sauce for a single peacock; yet their feasts
Were _fasts_, compared with the City's.
_Massinger's City Madam._
It was, as we have stated, the month of April, and on the day of the
Earl's acquittal.
About seven in the evening, the sun was setting behind the purple hills
of the Ochil range, in all the splendour of that beautiful month of
bright blue skies and opening flowers--of the pale primrose and the
drooping blue-bell; when the dew lingers long on the fresh grass and the
sprouting hedges--when the swallow builds its nest under the warm eave,
and the mavis sings merrily as he spreads his pinions on the buoyant
air. It was an April evening. The rays of the setting sun had long
since left the narrow streets of Edinburgh, though they still lingered
on its gothic spires and gilded vanes, throwing a farewell gleam on each
tall chimney head, each massy bartisan, and round tourelle.
A great fire blazed in the yawning hall chimney of the _Red Lion_,
throwing its ruddy glow on the red ashler walls, which the host
endeavoured to decorate by various pieces of tapestry, begged and
borrowed from his neighbours, on the rough oak rafters that once had
flourished on the burgh-muir--on the far-stretching vista of the sturdy
table, flanked with wooden benches on each side for Bothwell's noble
guests, covered with a scarlet broad cloth, and glittering in all the
shiny splendour of French pewter and delft platters--for there had never
been an atom of silver seen in an hostellary as yet; and by each
dark-blue cover lay a knife, halfted with horn and shaped like a
skene-dhu. A gigantic salt occupied the centre, and a carved chair
raised upon a dais--a chair that whilome had held the portly Provost of
St. Giles, but to which honest Adam had helped himself in 1559, that
year of piety and plunder--stood at the upper end, and was designed for
the great Earl of Bothwell.
A smile of the utmost satisfaction and complaisance spread over the fat
rosy face of Ainslie's ample dame, as she surveyed the great table,
which her taste and skill had decorated and arrayed; and she absolutely
clapped her hands with glee, when the great platter, bearing a peacock
roasted, and having its legs shining with gold-leaf, and all its
bright-dyed pinions stuck round it, was placed upon the board at the
moment that a trampling of horses in the narrow wynd announced the
arrival of the Earl and his guests, among whom were such a number of
dignitaries as never before had been under the rooftree of the _Red
Lion_; and honest Elspat Ainslie was overwhelmed each time that she
reckoned them on her fat fingers, and found there were eight bishops,
nine earls, and seven barons, all the most powerful and popular in
Scotland, where a man's power was then reckoned by the number of
ruffians under his standard, and his popularity by his hatred of the
Papists, and distribution of their gear to the preachers and pillars of
the new regime.
The dame hurried to a mirror--gave her coif a last adjust--smoothed her
apron and gown of crimson crammasie; while Adam brushed a speck from his
fair doublet of broad cloth--practised his best bow several times to the
gilt peacock; and all their trenchermen and attendants stood humbly by
the door in double file as the guests entered.
Bothwell came first, with his usual air of gallantry and grace--his
doublet of cloth-of-gold glittering in the light of the setting sun; his
ruff buttoned by diamonds; his shoulder-belt and mantle stiff with gold
embroidery; while his sword, dagger, and plumed bonnet, were flashing
with precious stones. He made a profound bow to the hostess; for now he
smiled less than formerly, and the pallor of his noble features was
attributed by all to _grief_ at the Lord Lennox's accusation.