city he founded, the tree under which he built his bower, with his
mass-bell hanging on a branch thereof; across its stem is the salmon
with the ring of the Scottish queen in its mouth, and the bird that
first bore it away has also a place on that armorial tree. Before the
Reformation, St. Mungo's head, mitred, appeared in the dexter side of
the shield; and on an escroll are the last words of that good man, which
were a blessing upon the city and a prayer to God that in all future
time Glasgow should _flourish_.
* * * * *
Such was the tale related by the old monk of Glasgow to Hans, who had no
sooner concluded, than he drew a hand from his breeches pocket, and
directed Konrad's attention to a low streak of blue that, on their
lee-quarter, marked the distant Oyster-head of Denmark, and a shout of
joy rang through the ship.
*CHAPTER XVI.*
*MARY'S DESPAIR.*
You never loved me.
And you are come to triumph o'er my sorrows,
To smile upon the ruin you have made;
To part----
_Sheil._
We return to Dunbar.
The sun was rising from the sea, and redly its morning splendour shone
upon the rock-built towers of old Dunbar, as they frowned upon the
bright green ocean and its snow-white foam. The estuary of the Forth
shone like gold in the glory of the east; fed by the streams from a
thousand hills it there expanded to an ocean, and its broad bosom,
dotted by fisher boats and by Flemish caravells, swept round its rocky
isles in surf, and washed with tiny waves of silver the shells and
pebbles that bordered its sandy margins--margins shaded by the summer
woods of Fife and Lothian, and overlooked by many a green and many a
purple peak.
One great window that lit the queen's apartment in the Agnes Tower,
overlooked this beautiful prospect. It was open, and the morning breeze
from the eastern sea blew freely upon Mary's pallid cheek, and lifted
her dishevelled hair; she seemed very desolate and broken-hearted. She
was reclining in a large velvet chair, in the shadow of one of the thick
brocaded window curtains, which made the corner she occupied so dark,
that to a pair of eyes which were observing her through a hole in the
arras behind the high and canopied bed, little else was visible than her
snow-white hands clasped before her, a jewel that sparkled in her
unbound hair, a spangle or two that glittered on the stomacher of her
disordered dress, or among the folds of her torn veil--that white and
flowing veil, which had won for her the romantic sobriquet of _la Reine
Blanche_.
Her face was blistered by weeping; her lips were pale; she drooped her
graceful head, and closed her blood-shot eyes, as if oppressed by an
ocean of heavy thoughts. All that pride, energy, and indomitable courage
which had sustained her unshaken amid a thousand scenes of outrage,
insult, and sorrow, had now deserted her, laying her noble spirit
prostrate; nothing but her gentle nature and woman softness remained
behind. She was then, as she touchingly tells in one of her letters,
"desolate of all council, and separated from all female attendance."
The very stupor of despair seemed to have settled upon her soul; she sat
still--motionless as a statue, and nothing but the heaving of her bosom
would have indicated that she lived. Yesterday she seemed so full of
vivacity, so pure, so beautiful.
In this poor crushed being--this butterfly, formed only for the light
and the sunshine of life--in this lonely and desolate woman, with her
weeping eyes, her dishevelled hair, and torn dress, who could have
recognised the same beautiful queen that shone so lately at Sebastian's
hall, in all the pride of royalty; and a loveliness heightened to the
utmost by magnificence of dress; and who, only five days before, had sat
on the throne in the hall of the Scottish estates, with the crown of the
Bruce on her brow, the St. Andrew sparkling on her bosom, and the
sceptre of the Jameses in her hand, assenting to those laws by which we
are still governed?
"Alas, for the Queen of Scotland and of France!" exclaims the old
Magister Absalom; "Oh, for twenty knights of that good chivalry her
grandsire led to Flodden, or of that glittering gendarmerie that many a
time and oft had lowered their white pennons before her at the Tilts of
the Tournelles, and on the Plains of Montmartre!"
A sound made her raise her head; the arras rose and fell, and Bothwell
stood before her.
Shame crimsoned his brow, and confusion dimmed his eye; he felt
compassion and remorse, together with the bitter conviction that he had
gone too far to recede. The dreadful gulf between himself and other men
was now wider than before; but he felt that to stand still was to sink
into it and perish. He had yet to progress. He knew not how to address
his victim. Her aspect filled him with pity, sorrow, and a horror of
himself. He knew that he had irreparably ruined her honour, and
destroyed her peace; and this was the woman he loved!
Strange it was, that now he felt himself alike attracted and repelled by
her; but the necessity of soothing her compelled him to speak, and as
policy ever supplied him with words, hurriedly, gently, and eloquently
(for he too felt deeply, now when the storm of passion had died away),
he endeavoured to console her; to declare his contrition; his
willingness to die as an atonement; and then, stung with remorse on
witnessing the agony of her grief, he attempted to destroy himself with
his own sword, and turned her despair into momentary terror, by
inflicting on his own person a wound, from which the blood flowed
freely.[*] Then he ventured to fold her in his arms, and to kiss her
pale brow respectfully, assuring her again and again that she was now a
thousand times dearer to him than ever. Then, sinking on his knees, he
bowed down his head, and abjectly implored her pardon; but Mary remained
silent, passive, speechless, cold as marble; and her situation seemed so
hopeless, so wobegone, and irrelievable, that the Earl in despair knew
not what more to urge. He received no answer, and his heart trembled
between love, remorse for the past, and apprehension of the future.
"Speak, dearest madam," said he; "for the mercy of Heaven, speak to me!
Dost thou wish to leave Dunbar?"
[*] Whittaker.
"Yes!" replied Mary, rising with sudden energy, as if all her spirit had
suddenly welled up in her breast. "Yes!" she continued, gathering up
her dishevelled hair with her slender and trembling fingers. "My
train!--my people!--summon them!--I will go"----
"Thou wilt go?" said the Earl, whose dark eyes shone with a sad and wild
expression, "and where?"
"To Edinburgh."
"To denounce me to its purse-proud citizens--to proclaim me at the
barrier gates and market cross of every Scottish burgh--at the court of
every European king, to be what I am--what I shrink from contemplating.
That I am a craven knight, a perjured peer, a rebel, and a ruffian! Ha,
ha! No! hence shalt thou never go but with Bothwell at thy bridle rein,
with his banner before, his knights around, and his spearmen behind
thee. What has hurried me on, step by step, in the terrible career on
which my destiny has driven me--from being the leader of the Scottish
peers, esteemed in council as in battle, respected by mine equals, loved
by my vassals, and feared by mine enemies--what hath made me, from being
all this, a man whose name will perhaps be remembered in the land with
reprobation, with curses, and with bitterness--what, but thy beauty, thy
fatal beauty? Oh, wretched woman! a curse upon it, I say, for it hath
been the cause of all! Fatal sorceress, thou still smilest upon me with
scorn. In undoing thee, I have perhaps but undone myself; though from
this time our fates and lives are entwined together; for, bethink thee,
for very dread of what may ensue, for very shame, and for the reparation
of thine own honour, thou canst not destroy me. Yet can I read in thine
eye, that thou hast visions of the dungeon, the block, the axe, the
dismembered limbs, and the severed head of Bothwell, spiked on yonder
city cross to welter in the midnight dew, and broil in the noonday
sun--hah!"
And, rendered half furious by the picture his fancy conjured up, he gave
her a push, so violent that she sank down on her knees, trembling and in
tears.
Suddenly she arose again to her full height, her dark eyes flashing, and
her proud nostrils appearing almost to dilate with the anger that curled
her beautiful lip; she gave him one full, bright glance of reproach and
anger, as she attempted to sweep from his presence; but the Earl firmly
held her back, and, aware of the futility of attempting to pacify her at
present, retired abruptly, leaving her still unattended, to sorrow and
to tears.
Sir James Melville, who, as we have elsewhere stated, had been expelled
that morning from Dunbar, relates that Bothwell's fury compelled her
every day to weep--that she would have left him, but dared not--and that
she would have _destroyed herself_, could she have found a knife or
dagger; but a strict watch was kept over all her actions.
And thus passed twelve long and weary days, during which no attempt was
made by her nobles, her knights, or her people, to relieve her. Each
man gossiped to his neighbour of the unco' doings at Dunbar--citizens
stared stupidly at each other, and contented themselves by marvelling
sorely where all these startling events were likely to end.
So much of this part of our story belongs to the chronicles of the time,
that it must be glanced at briefly, that we may hasten to the portion
involving the fate of Konrad, and more particularly of the great Earl
himself.
How he conducted Mary to Edinburgh, guarded by 1200 spearmen on
horseback, and compelled her to appear in presence of the new chancellor
and the nobles, and there to declare herself at full liberty--how he had
the dukedom of Orkney, a marquisate, and other titles, conferred upon
himself--and how he caused the banns of marriage between Mary and
himself to be proclaimed in the great church of St. Giles, while she
remained a captive in the castle of Edinburgh, which was garrisoned by
his own vassals, and commanded by Sir James Balfour, the holder of the
bond of blood, the brother of the Lord of Noltland, and of Robert
Balfour, proprietor of the lonely house of the Kirk-of-Field--are known
to every historical reader.
Still Mary withheld her consent to the marriage, for which the impetuous
Earl made every preparation with determined deliberation.
A woman--a widow--a catholic--without a husband--she could never have
governed Protestant Scotland, crowded as it was with rapacious peers and
turbulent serfs, inured to blood and blows; and now, after all that had
occurred at Dunbar, and after being so completely abandoned by her
people to Bothwell's mercy for twelve weary days, no foreign prince, no
Scottish noble or gentleman of honour, and indeed no man, save he who
had wronged her, would seek her hand. She had but two misfortunes to
choose between; on one hand to lose her crown, her liberty, perhaps her
life; on the other, to accept of Bothwell, whom (though she never loved,
and now abhorred,) she knew to be devoted to her, and as crafty as he
was gallant and bold; and might, if he chose, wrest the sceptre from her
grasp; for, by the number of his vassals, and the strength of his
fortresses, he was one of Scotland's most powerful peers. Should she
wed him, acquitted as he had been by the peers and prelates of the crime
of which he had been charged, and recommended by these same reverend
prelates and statecrafty peers, with her brother at their head, to her
earnest and favourable notice, a new dawn might shine upon her gloomy
fortune. She knew that he had made every preparation for their public
nuptials; and that _bongre malgre_ she must wed, but still she withheld
her consent until the very night before, and then, but not till the
fatal promise was given.
In that wide and gloomy flood of desperation through which she
struggled, her destroyer was the last plank to whom she could cling;
and, abhorrent as he was to her now, she knew that he loved her deeply,
and that sad, and terrible, and guilty, were the ties which bound them
together, and would link their names in one to the latest posterity.
*CHAPTER XVII.*
*THE BRIDAL AT BELTANE.*
Slowly at length with no consenting will,
And eyes averse, she stretch'd her beauteous hand,
To that detested bridegroom, and received
The nuptial blessing, to her anguish'd heart,
Worse than a malediction. Then burst forth
Grief impotent.
_Attila, King of the Huns._
Now came sweet May with its flowers and sunshine. Yellow buttercups
sprinkled with gold the sides of Arthur's seat, and the blue hyacinth
and the mountain-daisy unfolded their petals on the steep slopes of
Salisbury. The mavis and the merle sang merrily in the abbey orchards
and old primeval oaks that shaded the grey walls of Holyrood; and
sheltered by the thorn hedges that, in its ancient garden, grew like
thick and impervious ramparts, the flowers of summer that Mary loved so
well, were all, like herself, in the noon of their beauty and fragrance.
And now came Beltane-eve, when this soft season of sunshine and perfume
was welcomed by those ancient merry-makings of which we read in Polydore
Virgil, and which were a remnant of those joyous rites offered to the
Flora of the Romans, and the great fire-god of the Scandinavians and the
Celtae--when the stern and mysterious Druids of Emona and Iona collected
the dew of the morning, and sprinkled it on the fair-haired savages of
Caledonia, as they blessed them in the name of the god of fire--the Beal
of Scandinavia, and the Baal of the Moabites and Chaldeans.
Blooming Beltane came, but not as of old; for there was no maypole on
the burgh links, or at the abbey-cross, and no queen of the May or stout
Robin Hude to receive the homage of happy hearts; for the thunders of
the reformed clergy had gone forth like a chill over the land, and the
same iron laws that prevented the poor "papist" from praying before the
symbol of his redemption, punished the merry for dancing round a
garlanded tree.
Yet there were some remnants of other days that could not be repressed;
and fires of straw were lit in the yard of many a castle and homestead,
through which, as a charm against witchcraft, all the cattle were
driven, amid furious fun and shouts of laughter; while the bluff laird
regaled his vassals, and the bonneted farmer his sun-burned hinds, on
pease-bannocks and nut-brown ale. Every old woman still marked her
Beltane-bannock with the cross of life and the cipher of death, and
covering it with a mixture of meal, milk and eggs, threw two pieces over
her left shoulder at sunrise, saying as she did so--
"_This_ for the mist and storm,
To spare our grass and corn;
_This_ for the eagle and gled,
To spare the lamb and kid."
Door-lintels were still decorated with twigs of rowan-tree tied
crosswise with red thread; and though the idolatrous Beltane-fire blazed
on the summits of the Calton and Blackford, (as on St. Margaret's day
they do still on those of Dairy in Ayrshire,) there was not the same
jollity in the land; for as a mist from the ocean blights the ripening
corn, so had the morose influence of the new clergy cast a gloom upon
the temper, the manners, and the habits of the people--a gloom that is
only now fading away, though its shadow still lingers in the rural
valleys of the south and west.
But there is much to relate, and we must be brief.
Encompassed by the intrigues of the Earl, surrounded by his creatures,
and overwhelmed by the terrible situation in which she found herself, at
midnight Mary consented to become his bride, and at four o'clock next
morning he led her into the great hall of Holyrood, where one of his
minions, Adam Bothwell, the Protestant Bishop of Orkney--(his new
dukedom)--together with Craig, the colleague of Knox, prepared to
officiate.
Mary was attired in her widow-weeds of sable velvet, without other
ornament than a few diamonds, that sparkled on her stomacher, and in her
ear-rings. Cold, placid, still, and thoughtful, there were signs of
suffering and sorrow on her pure and open brow, and in her deep, dark,
melancholy eyes, and there was a nun-like solemnity in her beautiful
face, that touched the heart of Bothwell with more, perhaps, of pity
than love.
She seemed a changed and miserable woman.
A sprig of rosemary and a lily were in her hand; the first, because of
the old superstition that it was necessary at a wedding as denoting love
and truth; the second, because the month was that of St. Mary, and the
lily is the flower of the Virgin. Mary Stuart could not forget these
little things, though she accepted of a Protestant ritual because her
own Church is averse to second marriages.
Day was breaking in the distant east, and coldly the dull grey twilight
struggled with the lamps and wax candles that illuminated the long and
ancient hall of the palace, from the walls of which the grim visage of
many an antique king, and many a solemn prelate, seemed to stare starkly
and desolately on that sombre bridal group, on Bothwell's magnificent
costume, sparkling with precious stones, on tall Ormiston, in his half
military and half gala costume, and a crowd of adherents of the house of
Hepburn, whose dresses of velvet and satin, enriched with embroidery and
precious stones, fluttering mantles, waving feathers, glittering spurs,
and daggers, filled up the background.
When Mary's hand touched his, the Earl found it cold as death: it
trembled. He thought of Darnley's quivering throat on that terrible
night, and a thrill shot through his heart..........
The ceremony was over, and Bothwell led forth that high-born and
beautiful bride, to win whom he had dared and done so much.
For that hour he had perilled every thing in this world, and the hour
had come, but there was not in his heart that fierce triumph--that
exultation and joy, he had so long anticipated. A deadly coldness had
succeeded, and there was a clamorous anxiety in his breast as he looked
forward to the future.
"Mary, star of heaven, and mother of God," prayed the poor queen,
kissing the lily, as they descended the gloomy stone staircase of the
Albany Tower; "intercede for me, that I may be forgiven this dark
sacrilege in the month so solemnly dedicated to thee!" for, according to
the ancient usage, it is still ominous to wed in the month of May--or
_Mary_. Her piety was deep and fervent; when very young she had wished
to assume the veil, that she might dwell with her aunt, the Prioress of
Rheims; happy would it have been for her had she done so; and full upon
her heart came back the first pious wish in that hour of humiliation and
evil.
No pageants or rejoicings marked the ill-omened bridal; not a bell was
rung, nor a cannon fired, and gloomily and in silence the few loiterers
who were abroad at that early hour, or had never been a-bed, greeted
their sovereign, and that presumptuous peer who had so determinedly
espoused her.
That dawn, to Mary, was but the opening of another chapter in her life
of misery and tears.
In one month from that day, Bothwell, instead of seating himself upon
the Scottish throne, and making Black Hob an Earl, found all his
stupendous projects fade away, like mist in the sunshine, and saw
himself a homeless fugitive, cast, like a weed, upon the ocean of
events.
The general, but somewhat curious indignation this marriage excited
among those nobles who had _urged it_ (having never had any other object
in view than the gratification of their own greed and ambition), and
their armed confederation against Bothwell, soon followed, for they
accused him of intending to destroy the young prince, who was kept at
Stirling by the Countess of Mar, and whom ostensibly they rose in arms
to defend.
On this measure he was frequently urged by Black Hob.
"Cock and pie!" that worthy would frequently exclaim; "were this young
cub once strangled _too_, thou mightst be king of broad Scotland, and I
a belted earl."
"Tempter, begone!" replied the Earl, grasping his poniard; "far enough
hast thou driven me on this desperate career--but another whisper of
this, and thou diest!"
The armed combination soon made the Earl and his knights rush to arms;
and, of all who followed his banner, there were none who hailed the
approaching civil war with greater ardour than Ormiston and Bolton. The
first, because, by a long career of profligacy, he had utterly ruined an
ancient patrimony; the second, with a stern joy, because he was
reckless, tired of life, and longing only for an honourable death, that
in the oblivion of the grave he might for ever forget Mariette, and that
remorse which rendered him miserable.
But Mary's surrender to the peers, and Bothwell's flight, frustrated
their hopes for a time.
On the hill of Carberry, within view of the adverse lines, Mary and the
Earl were parted to meet no more; and it is recorded that he bade her
adieu with more sincerity of sorrow than might have been expected in one
so long hardened by private and political profligacy.
"Farewell to thee, Lord Earl!" said the Queen kindly, for she was ever
gentle; "nathless all that hath passed, Mary Stuart can still with
kindness say farewell, and God attend thee."
"Farewell to your grace!" replied the Earl, as he kissed her hand with
tenderness. "Adieu, Mary! thou who hast been the light, the hope, the
pole-star of my life, and whom, more than that life, I have held dear.
A long good-night to thee, and all the visions my ambition so vainly
pictured, and so ruthlessly attempted to grasp. I go; but, while life
remains, I will bear in sad remembrance thy goodness, thy beauty, and
thy wrongs. I go--to exile and despair!"
And turning his horse's head, attended only by Ormiston and Bolton, he
galloped down the hill to his castle of Dunbar, never once daring to
look back towards that fair being whom a reverse of fortune had
delivered to his enemies; and, save a message she sent to Denmark on her
escape from Lochleven, never once from that hour did the name of
Bothwell sully the lips of Mary. In one week from that day he was a
pirate among the Isles of Orkney, while Mary was a captive in the hands
of the confederates, and led through the streets of her own capital,
where--
"Around her numberless the rabble flow'd,
Shouldering each other, crowding for view,
Gaping and gazing, taunting and reviling;
Some pitying; but those, alas! how few.
The most, such iron hearts we are, and such
The base barbarity of human kind,
With insolence and loud reproach pursued her,
Hooting and railing, and with villanous hands
Gathering the filth from out the common ways
To hurl it on her head."
*CHAPTER XVIII.*
*THE WHIRLPOOL.*
On Norway's shore the widowit dame
May wash the rocks with tears;
May long, long look o'er the shipless seas
Before her mate appears.
Tossed by adverse winds in the German sea, the labouring crayer of Hans
Knuber, after several weeks (during which he became more and more
convinced that Nippen, the spirit of evil, and the demons of the waves
and wind, were in league against him), made a haven in the bleak isles
of Shetland, where they found those uddallers, who inhabited the rude
round towers and strong houses on the bluffs and promontories that
overhung the ocean, all on the alert; for tidings were abroad that the
great Earl of Bothwell, now a fugitive and a wanderer upon the face of
the deep, in the madness and impotence of his wrath against his enemies,
was spreading devastation and dismay among the northern isles.
After suffering a severe repulse at the Orcadian capital from the cannon
of his old ally, Sir Gilbert Balfour of Noltland, he poured his fury
upon the stray vessels he met in firth and bay, giving the poor hamlets
of these half-desolate coasts to the flames, storming the fortlets of
their lords, and, like a wild vikingr of old, spreading terror wherever
his banner was unfurled.