long beard and little English hat, his black velvet cloak and
silver-headed cane; but, with a jocularity that was always affected, he
pinched the plump cheek of Dame Ainslie, and thumped her husband upon
the back, saying--
"How farest thou, host of mine? Faith, I need scarcely ask thee, for
thou swellest and wallowest amid the good things of this life daily."
"By Tantony and Taudry! in these kittle times, my lord"--began Adam.
"Peace, thou irreverend ronion!" whispered the Earl of Huntly fiercely,
as he grasped his poniard--"_Saint_ Anthony and _Saint_ Audry, thou
meanest."
"I mean just whatever your lordship pleases," replied the hosteller, as
he shrank abashed by the stern eye of the Catholic noble, who resented
every disrespect to the ancient church, so far as he dared.
"Nay, nay," interposed Secretary Maitland, with his bland smile and
flute-like voice; "poor Adam's slip of the tongue merited not a rebuke
so sharp; to grasp thy poniard thus amounts almost to hamesucken--a
gloomy beginning to our banquet, my Lord of Huntly."
There was present that gay scion of the house of Guise, d'Elboeuff--all
smiles and grimaces, starched lace and slashes; there was the Earl of
Sutherland, the lover of Bothwell's absent countess; Glencairn, the
ferocious; Cassilis, who once half-roasted an abbot alive; Eglinton, the
cautious; Seaton, the gallant; and Herries, the loyal; Rosse, of
Hawkhead, and many others--until the hall was crowded by the bravest and
the greatest of Scotland's peers, and many lesser barons, who, though
untitled, considered themselves in feudal dignity second to the crown
alone. All were well armed, and the nature of the time was evinced by
their dresses; for all who had not on corselets and gorgets to prevent
sudden surprises, had quilted doublets of escaupil, and all were
scrupulously accoutred with swords and Parmese poniards, without which
no gentleman could walk abroad.
As Bothwell advanced to the head of the table to assume his seat, his
eye caught one of the black-letter proclamations of the council, which
was fixed over the gothic fireplace, and offered a yearly rent, with two
thousand pounds of Scottish money, for the discovery of the perpetrators
of the crime at the Kirk-of-Field; "quhilk horribill and mischevious
deed," as the paper bore it, "almychty God would never suffer to lie
hid."
"Mass!" said the Earl, as the blood mounted to his temples, "thou hast a
roaring fire, Master Adam, this April day."
"The coals bleeze weel, Lord Earl; yet they cost a good penny, coming as
they do by the galliots frae the knight of Carnock's heughs, aboon
Cuboss."
"Little marvel is it that they burn thus," said the Earl of Glencairn;
adding, in a lower voice, "for knowest thou, gudeman, that instead of
contenting himself with such of this precious mineral as may be got
shovel-deep, by advice of that damnable sorcerer, the knight of
Merchiston, he hath sunk a pit--a cylinder--even unto the bowels of the
earth, as Hugh of Tester did at his Goblin Hall; and he is now digging
under the Forth, with intent, as Master George Buchanan told me
yesterday, to ascend and seek upper air on this side."
"Ascend!" reiterated Morton with astonishment--"Where?"
"At the gate of thy castle of Dalkeith, perhaps; thou art thought to
dabble a little in spell and philtre--like draweth to like."
"As the deil said to the collier," added old Lindesay. Several laughed
at the hit, but Morton frowned.
This famous supper at Ainslie's hostel--a supper which has been fated to
live for ever in Scottish history--was marked by all that barbaric
profusion that characterised the feasts of those days, when men feasted
seldom. Under the superintendence of a notable French _chef de cuisine_,
the first course consisted of ling, pike, haddocks, and gurnards,
dressed with eggs, cream, and butter; but there was no salmon, that
being esteemed as fitted only for servants. The chief dish of all was a
grand pie of salt herrings, minced, and prepared with almond paste,
milts, and dates; a grated manchet, sugar, sack, rose-water, and
saffron; preserved gooseberries, barberries, currants, and Heaven knows
what more; but the curious or the epicurean may still find the recipe in
worthy Master Robert May's "_Accomplished Cooke_, 1685."
This delightful mess threw the Marquis d'Elboeuff into as great an
ecstasy as the artificial hens--which formed part of the second course,
and were made of puff-paste--seated upon large eggs of the same
material, each of which contained a plump mavis, seasoned with pepper
and ambergris; and, to him, these proved infinitely more attractive than
the haunches of venison, the chines of beef, and roasted pigs, that
loaded the table. To suit the palates of Lindesay, Glencairn, and other
sturdy Scots, who disdained such foreign kickshaws, there were sottens
of mutton, platters of pouts, Scottish collops, tailyies of beef, and
sea-fowl. Every description of French wine was to be had in
abundance--ale and old Scots beer, seasoned with nutmeg; and it would
have been a fair sight for the effeminate descendants of these doughty
earls and bearded barons, to have witnessed how they did honour to this
great repast, eating and drinking like men who rose with the lark and
eagle, whose armour was seldom from their breasts, whose swords were
never from their sides, and whose meals depended often on the dexterity
with which they bent the bow, or levelled the arquebuss.
On each side of the Earl sat four bishops; and all his real and
pretended friends were present except Moray, who had suddenly departed
to France, "that he might seem to be unconcerned in what was going
forward: he failed not in this journey to circulate every injurious
report to the prejudice of his unhappy sovereign, who, in the mean time,
was destitute of every faithful friend and proper councillor."
The Archbishop of St. Andrew's--the last Catholic primate of Scotland
(the same noble prelate whom, for his loyalty, Moray so savagely hanged
over Stirling bridge five years after)--now arose, and, stretching his
hands over the board, uttered the brief grace then fashionable:--"_Soli
Deo honor et gloria_," whereat the Lord Lindesay muttered something
under his beard, "anent the idolatry of Latin."
Instead of that calm, cold, and polite reserve, that marks the modern
dinner table, their nut-brown faces shone with the broad good-humour
that shook their buirdly frames with laughter, and they became
boisterous and jocose as the night drew on; and the blood red wines of
old France and Burgundy, and the stiff usquebaugh of their native hills,
fired their hearts and heads.
Lord Lindesay had prevailed on d'Elboeuff to partake of a haggis, and he
was laughing under his thick beard at the grimaces of the French noble,
whose complaisance compelled him to sup a dish he abhorred.
"Thou findest it gude, Lord Marquis?"
"_Ah! cest admirable!_" sighed d'Elboeuff.
"Why, thou seemest to relish it pretty much as a cat liketh mustard."
"_Oui!_" smiled the Frenchman, who did not understand him.
"And how fares my noble friend, Coldinghame?" asked the Earl of his
brother _roue_.
"Weel enow; but sick of dangling about this court, which is such a mess
of intrigue."
"Tush! Bethink thee, the queen hath the wardship of many a fair
heiress, and may bestow on thee a handsome wife."
"Bah! like my Lord of Morton, I care not for a handsome wife"--
"Unless she belong to another," said Ormiston, coarsely closing the
sentence.
"By the rood! a good jest and a merry," laughed Bothwell; but Morton's
olive cheek glowed with anger.
"Be not chafed, my lord," said Ormiston; "by cock and pie! I spoke but
in boon fellowship. Drink with me! This Rochelle is famously spiced,
and stirred with a rosemary sprig for good-luck."
"Does Master Ainslie warrant it old?"
"Old! my Lord Morton," reiterated Adam, turning up his eyes; "ay! auld
as the three trees of Dysart; for it lay many a long year before the
'59, among the stoor and cobwebs o' the Blackfriars' binns, up the brae
yonder."
"By the way," said the Lord Coldinghame, "as thou talkest of the
Blackfriars, what tale of a roasted horse is this, anent whilk the whole
city is agog, concerning a spectre which is said to have appeared there
on the night the king was slain, and hath haunted the ruins of St.
Mary's kirk ever since?"
"Knowest thou aught of this, Adam?" asked Bothwell, whose mind, though
he endeavoured to maintain his usual aspect of nonchalance, wandered
constantly to the gigantic projects he had in view.
"As ye know, my lord," replied Adam, setting his head on one side and
his left leg forward, with the air of a man who has a story to tell; "on
the night of that deadly crime in the Kirk-of-Field, two especial
gentlemen of the Earl of Athol, the umquhile king's gude-cousin, were
both a-bed at his lordship's lodging, which is just within the town
wall, and not a bowshot frae auld St. Mary's kirk. In the mirk mid hour
of the night, Sir Dougal Stuart, who slept next the wall, was awaked by
a death-cauld hand passing owre his cheek, and which thereafter took him
by the beard, while an unearthly voice, sounding as if from afar off,
said--'Arise, or violence will be offered unto you!' At the same moment
his friend, a half-wud Hielandman, awoke, saying furiously--'Where is my
durk, for some one hath boxed mine ear?' And both started up to see,
close by their bed, a dusky figure, of which no feature could be defined
save a clenched hand, bare, and long, and glistening in the siller
moonlight, that shone through the grated window; then it melted away
like morning mist; the turnpike door was heard to close with a bang, as
if some one had left the house; and while, with fear and alarm, they
started to their sword's, lo! they heard the explosion that sent king
and kirk-house into the air together."[*]
[*] See Buchanan.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Bothwell angrily, for this story was then
current in the city; "'tis a tale befitting only the old dames who play
basset and primero in the queen's antechamber. Wert thou at sermon in
the High Kirk this morning, Hob?" he asked, to change the subject.
"Cock and pie, no!" said Ormiston, as he gulped down his wine with
surprise.
"Marry!" said Lord Lindesay; "thou didst miss a rare discourse."
"On what did Master Knox expone?" asked several Protestant peers; while
Huntly and other Catholics curled their mustaches, and exchanged glances
of scorn. Lindesay replied--
"Anent the story of that strong loon, Samson, tying three hundred
torches to the tails of sae mony tod-lowries, to burn the corn of the
Philistines--likening himself unto Samson--the ministry o' the reformit
kirk to the three hundred tods, and their discourses unto the bleezing
torches--the corn o' the Philistines unto the kirk o' the Pope, whilk
their burning tails would utterly overthrow, ruinate, and consume. God
speed the gude wark!" added the stern peer, as he brushed aside his
heavy white beard with one hand, and tossed over his wine-cup with the
other.
"What spell hath come over thee, compere Bothwell?" said d'Elboeuff;
"thou seemest grave as a judge. Here is the _merry-thought_ of a
capercailzie to scare thy melancholy."
"Marquis," replied the Earl gaily, "thy wit would require the addition
of a _wing_ to make it soar. What a tall goblet thou hast! Dost mean to
get drunk to-night?"
"Why not, _parbleu!_ when I am to ride to Holyrood?"
"What difference doth that make?"
_"Mon Dieu!_ because, if I stumble, there is more effect when falling
from a saddle, than sprawling endlong in the kennel like a beastly
bourgeoise."
"'Tis time with thee, Marquis, that siclike follies were left owre, for
thy beard getteth frosted wi' eild," said Lord Lindesay.
"_Tete Dieu!_ dost thou say so, and live? But remember, most sombre Lord
of the Byres, that Paris is as different from this city as the fields of
Elysium are from those on the other side of the Styx. There the
gaieties and glories of youth begin when we are yet children; when ye
are boys, we are men; when ye are in your prime, we are in old
age--exhausted with pleasure, _ennui_, drinking and gaming, roistering
and"----
"Enough, Marquis!" said Bothwell, who had two ends in view--to drench
his guests with wine, and to keep them all in excellent humour.
"Enough!" he whispered; "for there are some stern spirits here who do
not relish this discourse; and bethink thee of the reverend bishops who
are among us."
"_Tonnere!_ apostates! heretics!" muttered the Marquis. Meanwhile
Ormiston, Bolton, Morton, and others who were Bothwell's friends, seeing
how his spirit alternately flagged and flashed, left nothing undone to
increase the hilarity of the evening, and keep the wine circulating; for
there were many present whom descent, religion, or faction had set at
deadly feud, and who, had they met on a hillside or highway, or perhaps
in the adjacent street, would have fought like mad bulls; but these had
been artfully and politicly separated, and thus the unrestrained jesting
and revelry increased apace.
Some talked of creaghs upon the northern frontier, of forays on the
southern, of partition of kirk lands, and the flavour of wines, in the
same breath. D'Elboeuff chattered like a magpie of new doublets and
perfumes, of Paris and pretty women: old Lindesay spoke solemnly and
portentously, over his ale, on the prospects of the holy kirk; and
Glencairn responded with becoming gravity and ferocity of aspect.
Morton sat opposite Lethington, and from time to time they sipped their
wine and exchanged those deep glances which the most acute physiognomist
would have failed to analyse; but, as they watched the ebb and flow of
the conversation around them, Morton seemed almost to say in his eyes,
"Thou art wise as Nestor;" and the secretary to reply, "And _thou_
cunning as Ulysses."
Gradually the latter led the conversation to the politics of the
day--the misgovernment that, since the death of James V., had
characterised each succeeding year; how the sceptre, feebly swayed by
the hands of a facile woman, had never been capable of aweing the great
barons and their predatory vassalage--the urgent necessity of some
powerful peer espousing the queen, and assuming the reins of government,
otherwise the destruction of Scotland by foreign invasion and domestic
brawl--the subversion of the rights of the nobles, the power of the
church, the courts of law, and the liberties of the people, would
assuredly ensue.
This half-false and half-fustian speech, which the able Lethington
delivered with singular emphasis and grace, was received with a burst of
acclamation.
"My lords and gentles," said the aged Lindesay, standing erect, and
leaning on his six feet sword as he spake; "here we are convened, as it
seemeth, as mickle for council as carousal; albeit, ye have heard the
premises so suitably set forth by the knight of Lethington, it causeth
me mickle marvel to know whom among us he would name as worthy of the
high honour of espousing our fair queen."
"Cock and pie!" exclaimed the impetuous Hob Ormiston, erecting his
gigantic figure, and speaking in a voice that made the rafters ring;
"whom would we name but her majesty's prime favourite and sorely
maligned first counsellor, James Earl of Bothwell, Governor of Edinburgh
and Dunbar, and Lord High Admiral of the realm? Who, I demand, would not
rather see him the mate of Mary Stuart, than the beardless Lord of
Darnley--that silken slave, that carpet knight, and long-legged giraffe
in lace and taffeta? What say ye, my lords and barons, are we
unanimous?"
There was a pause, and then rose a shout of applause, mingled with cries
of "A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" from Morton and other allies of the Earl,
who were so numerous that they completely overcame the scruples, or
hushed into silence the objections, of the hostile and indifferent.
The Earl, whose heart was fired anew by the glow of love and
ambition--for never did a prospect more dazzling open to the view of a
subject than the hope of sharing a throne with a being so beautiful as
Mary--thanked his friends with a grace peculiarly his own, and
immediately produced that famous BOND--a document in which the nobles in
parliament assembled, asserted his innocence of the crime of the 11th
February, and earnestly recommended him to Mary as the most proper man
in Scotland to espouse her in her widowhood--and bind themselves by
every tie, human and divine, "to fortify the said Earl in the said
marriage," so runs the deed, "as we shall answer to God, on our fidelity
and conscience. And in case we do on the contrary, never to have
reputation or credit in time hereafter, but to be accounted _unworthy
and faithless traitors_."
"God temper thy wild ambition, Bothwell!" said the Archbishop, as he
signed the document to which the seven other prelates appended their
names. That of Moray--Mary's dearly loved brother--had _already_ been
given before his departure; and its appearance had a powerful effect on
all present.
"Deil stick me, gif I like mickle to scald my neb in another man's
brose!" growled Glencairn; "yet I will subscrive it, albeit I would
rather have had a suitor to whose maintainance of the Holy Reformit Kirk
Master Knox could have relied on."
Morton gave one of his cold and sinister smiles as he appended his name
in silence; while the Marquis d'Elboeuff also smiled, shrugged his
shoulders, and applied to his nostrils an exquisitely chased silver
pouncet-box of fragrant essences, to conceal the merriment with which he
watched the arduous operation of fixing the signatures; for writing was
a slow and solemn process in those days.
A new and terrible difficulty occurred, which nearly knocked the whole
affair on the head.
Very few of these potent peers could sign their names, and others
objected to making their mark, which, from its resemblance to a cross,
savoured of popery; but Lethington effected a conscientious compromise,
by causing them to make a T, as those did who signed the first solemn
league--a smallness of literary attainment which did not prevent those
unlettered lords from demolishing the hierarchy of eight hundred years,
and giving a new creed to a nation as ignorant as themselves.
Bothwell felt as if he trode on air when consigning this tremendous
paper, which had the signatures of so many bishops, earls, and lords,
the most powerful in Scotland, to the care of Pittendreich, the Lord
President.
The rere-supper lasted long.
Deeply they drank that night, but none deeper than the Earl and his
friends; and the morning sun was shining brightly into the narrow
wynd--the city gates had been opened, and the booths which, from 1555
till 1817, clustered round St. Giles, were all unclosed for business,
and carlins were brawling with the _acquaoli_ at the Mile-end well, ere
the company separated; and the Earl, accompanied by Hob Ormiston and the
knights of Tallo and Bolton, with their eyes half closed, their cloaks
and ruffs awry, and their gait somewhat oscillating and unsteady,
threaded their way down the sunlit Canongate, and reached Bothwell's
apartments in Holyrood--that turreted palace, where the unconscious Mary
was perhaps asleep with her child in her bosom, and little foreseeing
the storm that was about to burst on her unhappy head.
*CHAPTER X.*
*HANS AND KONRAD.*
Yes, she is ever with me! I can feel,
Here as I sit at midnight and alone,
Her gentle breathing! On my breast can feel
The presence of her head! God's benison
Rest ever on it!
_Longfellow._
On this morning, the sun shone brightly on the blue bosom of the Forth,
and the grey rocks of all its many isles. The sea-mews were spreading
their broad white pinions to the wind, as they skimmed from their nests
in the ruins of Inchcolm, and the caves of Wemyss.
The little fisher-hamlet that bordered the New haven, with its thatched
and gable-ended cottages, its street encumbered by great brown boats,
rusty anchors, and drying nets, looked cheerful in the warm sunshine;
and troops of ruddy-cheeked children were gamboling on those broad links
that lay where now the water rolls.
Near a little window in the confined cabin of a Norwegian ship, lay
Konrad of Saltzberg, faint, feeble, and exhausted; for the fever of a
long and weary sickness had preyed upon his body and mind, prostrating
every energy. He was pale, attenuated, and hollow-eyed; and now, for the
first time since the night we last saw him, had emerged from
insensibility to a state of consciousness. He felt the cool air of the
April morning blow freshly on his pallid cheek; he heard the ripple of
the water, and saw its surface gleaming in the sunshine afar off, where
its waves broke in purple and gold on a distant promontory; and close by
(for the crayer lay within ten yards of the shore) he heard the merry
voices of the children as they gamboled and tumbled on the bright green
grass.
Konrad had been dreaming of his home, and these voices came to his
slumbering ear in old familiar tones. He had heard the hearty greeting
of old Sir Erick Rosenkrantz, and the merry laugh of Anna, as it had
sounded in the days of his boyhood and joy; and he heard the murmur of
the sea, as, wafted by the summer wind, its waves rolled upon the rocks
of Bergen.
The morning breeze from the German ocean roused him from this dreamy
lethargy, and for the first time in many weeks he raised his head, and
endeavoured to recollect where he was; but the aspect of the little
cabin, with its arched deck, and massive beams, confused and puzzled
him.
"I am still dreaming," he murmured, and closed his eyes.
He opened them again, but still saw the same objects--the same little
cabin, with its pannelled locker--a brass culverin on each side; a
crossbow, maul, and helmet hanging on the bulkhead, and the open port
affording a glimpse of the shining estuary, with its castled isle, and
distant sails, that seemed like white birds resting on the faint and far
off horizon.
Steps were heard, and then a stout and thick-set man was seen slowly
descending the ladder from the deck. First appeared a pair of broad
feet encased in rough leather shoes--then two sturdy legs in brown
stockings, gartered with red ribbons; a vast obesity clad in
chocolate-coloured breeches, garnished with three dozen of metal knobs
at the seams; a waist encircled by a belt, sustaining a Norway knife;
then square bulky shoulders in a white woollen jacket, and then a great
bullet head, covered by a cap of black fox's fur, under which, on the
person turning round, appeared the moonlike face of honest Hans Knuber,
open-mouthed and open-eyed--expressive only of good-humour and hilarity;
and, where not hidden by his thick red beard, exhibiting a hue that, by
exposure to the weather, had turned to something between brick-dust and
mahogany.
"Cheerily, ho!" said he, patting Konrad's shoulder with his broad hard
hand; "and now, St. Olaus be praised, thou art come to life again! I
knew the pure breeze that blew right over the sea from old Norway would
revive thee."
"Honest Hans," replied Konrad, in a feeble voice, "I have often heard
thy deep tones in the dreams of my sleep, as I thought."
"And so thou wert in a dream, lad--and a plaguy long one! such a dream
as the wood-demon used to weave about those who dared to take a nap
under his oak. Asleep! why, lad, thou'st been delirious"----
"How! since I came on board thy ship last night, in a plight so
pitiful?"
"St. Olaus bless thee, Master Konrad! Thou hast lain by that gun-port
for these eight long weeks!"
"Weeks--weeks!" muttered Konrad, pressing his hands on his temples, and
endeavouring in vain to recollect himself.
"Ay, weeks; and a sad time we have had of it, with leeching and lancing,
drugging and dosing, plastering and patching. Mass! I thought thou
would have slipped thy cables altogether, though under the hands of
Maitre Picauet." For Hans had spared no expense, and had brought even
the royal physician to see his young charge; and so, thanks to the same
skill that brought James VI. into the world, and nearly recovered
Darnley from the grave, Konrad, when the delirium left him, began to
find himself a new man.