abbey, within whose aisles the dead of ages lay, looked dark and dreary;
the silence of his prison increased, and a deep reverie--a
stupefaction--fell upon the mind of Bolton.
A hand that touched his shoulder lightly aroused him; he looked up, and
saw--could it be possible?
Mariette!
"Oh no! it is a spectre!" he muttered, and covered his face with his
hands! Again he ventured to look up, and the same figure met his
eye--the same face was gazing sadly upon him. The features--for he
summoned courage to regard them fixedly--were indeed those of the
Mariette Hubert he had loved so well; but the bloom of their beauty had
fled; her dark French eyes had lost their lustre and vivacity; her
cheeks their roses, and her lips their smiles.
Her countenance was full of grief, and expressed the most imploring
pity. Hepburn gazed steadily upon her; and though for a moment he
deemed her a supernatural vision, he felt no fear. Suddenly he sprang
to her side, and threw an arm around her form--her passive but round and
palpable form--exclaiming as he did so,--
"Mariette--my own Mariette, is it thou? By what miracle did the mercy of
God enable thee to escape me? Speak--speak--convince me that it is
thee, and to-morrow I will die happy; for I will be guiltless of thy
death, Mariette--thine--thine! Oh, that moment of crime, of vengeance,
of madness--how dear it has cost me! Speak to me, adorable
Mariette--thou livest?"
"I do, dearest Bolton, by the mercy of Heaven."
"True, true!" he gasped; "for thy lover had none." He groaned aloud,
and regarded her with eyes full of grief, astonishment, and passion.
"I found myself, when day was breaking, lying near the ruins of the
king's house. I had been insensible I know not how long, and was
covered with bruises, and almost dying; for" (she shuddered, and added
with a sad but tender smile) "thou, dear heart! in the blindness of thy
fury, did so nearly destroy me"----
"Oh, now! when standing upon the verge of my grave, Mariette, remind me
not of that moment of dread and despair. Thou wert found"----
"By an aged man, in other days a prebend of St. Giles, Father Tarbet,
who conveyed me to a cottage near the ruined convent of Placentia, where
an old woman, that in a better time had been a sister of St. Katherine,
dwelt; and to her care he bequeathed me. A raging fever preyed upon me
long; but, by the goodness of Heaven, and the tenderness of the poor old
recluse, I recovered; and, disguised in this long cloak, by presenting
to the javellour of Holyrood a forged order purporting to be from the
Regent Moray, have gained admittance to thy cell, and am come to save
thee, John of Bolton, and to take thy place till to-morrow--to be freed
as a woman, or to die in thy name as fate may direct."
Hepburn wept with rapture to find that he had not destroyed her in that
fit of insanity which jealousy and passion had brought upon him; hot and
salt were the tears that fell upon her hands, as he kissed them again
and again.
"The darkness increases apace," said Mariette; "take thou this mantle
and broad hat, lower thy stature, stoop if thou canst, pass forth, and
may God attend thee! Leave me in thy place--they cannot have the heart
to destroy me, a poor French girl; and yet," she added, in an under
tone, "what matters it now?"
"Destroy thee? thou the sister of French Paris--of that Nicholas Hubert,
who this day died amid the yells of the infuriated thousands who crowded
the Lawnmarket like a living sea!"
"True, true, I am his sister!" said Mariette, wringing her hands; "God
sain and assoilzie thee, my dear, dear brother; but in this, my disguise
of page, I have another chance of escaping, for Charles la Fram, Duval,
and Dionese la Brone, who, thou mayest remember, were in thy band of
archers, and now serve as arquebusiers in the guards of the Regent
Moray, are at this moment sentinels in the Abbey Close, and by their
connivance, for the love of old France, I am sure--oh! quite sure--of
escaping in safety. Be persuaded, dearest monsieur, I am as certain of
freedom as thou art of a terrible death."
"And by the ignominious rope--the badge of shame--amid a gazing and
reviling multitude. John Hepburn, of the house of Bolton--the last of a
line whose pennons waved at Halidon--to die thus! God of mercy! any
risk were better than the agony of such an end."
"Away, then, and long ere the sun rises we shall both be free."
"At this hour, then, to-morrow eve, thou wilt meet me, Mariette."
"Meet thee--meet thee!--where?"
"At the Rood Chapel, by the loan side that leads to Leith."
"Ah, monsieur! 'tis a wild and solitary place."
"But a safe one. Thou knowest it then--near the Gallowlee. I have
much--oh, very much--to say to thee, and many a question to ask.
Promise thou wilt come, Mariette, for the sake of that dear love thou
didst once bear me!"
"Once," she repeated mournfully; "well, be it so. I promise--at this
hour, then; but away while all around us is so quiet and still--take
this pass, and leave me to my own ingenuity for the rest."
Bolton wrapped himself in the mantle, and drew the broad Spanish hat
over his face.
"Ah, _mon Dieu_! La Fram and Duval will never be deceived!" said
Mariette, with anguish, as she surveyed his towering figure.
"Trust to me and the gloom of this autumnal night. To-morrow, then--at
the Rood Chapel--remember!" said Hepburn, taking her hands in his, and
pausing irresolutely, until impelled by that old regard which, when once
kindled in the human heart, can never wholly die, he drew her towards
him, and kissed her; but with more calm tenderness, and with less of
passion, than ever he had done in other days.
"Go, go!" said Mariette, in a choking voice, "I deserve not this honour
from thee. Guilty have I been, and false; but St. Mary be my witness
that I speak the truth--I was besieged, betrayed, and dazzled by the
artful king; the rest was fear, despair, and frenzy all!"
She pressed her hands upon her bosom, as if it was about to burst.
"I can conceive all that _now_, Mariette," replied Hepburn, in the same
broken voice, while he pressed her to his heart; "from my soul I forgive
thee, as thou hast done me, the greater, the more awful ill, I meditated
against thee."
They separated; but he had lingered so long, and time had fled so fast,
that midnight tolled from the spire of the old abbey church before he
had shown the pass bearing the forged signature of _James, Regent_, to
the drowsy javellour, or gateward, avoided the sentinels at the outer
porch, and issued into the palace gardens, from which, by scaling a
wall, he easily made his way to the bare and desolate Calton.
At the east end of the hill there then lay many deep pits, overgrown
with whin and bushes; deep, dangerous, and half-filled with water, the
haunt of the hare and fuimart. These were known as the Quarry Holes, and
were often the scene of a ducking for sorcery, and legal drowning for
various crimes; and to these he fled for shelter and concealment; for
though hundreds would gladly have afforded him both on his own barony of
Bolton, which was only eighteen miles distant, and had been gifted to
the (as yet unsuspected) secretary Maitland--there was not a man in
Edinburgh but would instantly have surrendered him into the hands of the
civil authorities--and to that punishment awarded him as Bothwell's
abettor in the death of the Lord Darnley.
There, overcome by long deprivation of sleep, and the bitterness of his
thoughts for many a weary night and day, a deep slumber fell upon him,
and the noonday sun of the morrow had soared into the wide blue vault of
heaven, ere he awoke to consciousness and a remembrance of where he
was--the fate from which he had escaped--the existence and the last
devotion of Mariette.
Her existence! While lying in that desolate spot, he knew not what had
been acted in the city that lay below the brow of the hill where he
lurked in security.
In the grey twilight of that autumnal morning, which a dense and murky
mist from the German sea rendered yet more gloomy, the prisoner in the
tower of Holyrood had been led forth by the half-intoxicated doomster to
die; and passing in her male disguise for Hepburn of Bolton, the
repentant Mariette--as an atonement for the falsehood she had practised
towards him--a faithlessness that had hurried him into crimes against
his country, and plans of vengeance on his king--died on the scaffold,
where her brother had perished but the day before--died with the secret
of her sex on her lips--and died happy, that in doing so she might, by
allaying all suspicion and pursuit, enable her lover to escape.
Young Hepburn knew not of this; but anxiously watched the passing day,
and longed for evening, when he was to meet her at the Rood Chapel, a
lonely little oratory situated on the open muirland midway between the
Calton Hill and St. Anthony's Porte, the southern gate of Leith.
He heard the hum of Edinburgh ascending the hill-side, and the notes of
its clocks on the passing wind as they struck the slow-seceding hours.
The blue sky was above, and the dark-green whins were nodding from the
rocks around him; at times, a red fox put forth its sharp nose and
glancing eyes from its secret hole, or a fuimart, with its long body and
bushy tail, shot past like an evil spirit; but nothing else disturbed
the solitude of the place where he lay. Slowly the weary day rolled on,
and he hailed with joy the last red rays of the sun, as they stole up
the steep rocks of Salisbury, lingered for a moment on Arthur's rifted
cone, and then died away.
The twilight soon came on; the young man crept from his hiding-place,
and with an anxious heart descended the northern side of the hill,
towards the place of meeting. The last flush of the set sun was
lingering still behind the darkening Ochils; and amidst the smoke of
busy Leith, the old spire of St. Mary, and St. Anthony's shattered
tower, were still visible, but a favourable gloom and obscurity were
veiling every thing; and Bolton hurried with a beating heart to the old
oratory, burning to give Mariette the warm embrace, her devotion to him
in his worst extremity so well deserved.
There was no one there.
Dismantled of its ornaments and statues, its font and altar, its door
and windows, by reformers and thieves, the old chapel of the Holy Rood
was desolate and empty. The stone arches still sustained the groined
roof; but the velvet moss and the tufted grass grew in the joints of the
masonry, and clung to the carved crockets and grotesque corbels.
Long he waited, and anxiously he watched the loan, that, from the chasm
below the Calton's western brow, led to Leith; but no one
approached--not a footstep or a sound met his ear--but the wind, as it
swept over the Gallowlee, whistling drearily in the open tracery of the
chapel windows, and waving the tufts of grass and wallflower that grew
in its mouldering niches.
Hour succeeded hour.
Midnight came, and an agony entered his soul, for he then feared, he
knew not what--he dared not to think of it, but began hastily to
traverse the rough horse-way that led to the city.
Near the chapel there stood a clump of ancient sycamores, and among them
were two from which the branches had been lopped, and across the tops of
these divested trunks, a beam was extended to serve for the gibbet,
which obtained for the place the name it bears even unto this day--the
Gallowlee--and thereon were usually exposed in chains the bodies of
those who had been executed--a barbarous practice, which was common in
England until a comparatively recent period.
A crowd of horrible thoughts filled the mind of Bolton; but, above all,
two were most palpable before him--the image of Mariette as she had been
when he loved her of old, and the gibbet.
He drew near it fearfully.
Behind this ill-omened spot, the landscape to the eastward was level,
extending to the seashore; here and there low clumps of coppice and the
rocks of Restalrig broke its horizontal outline. The sky was all of a
cloudless white tint; there were no stars, there was no moon; but
against that cold pale background, the trees and the beam of the gallows
stood forth in strong relief and black outline.
On the right towered up the rocky Calton, a dark and undistinguishable
mass.
A number of full-fed gleds and monstrous ravens, who built their nests
in the sycamores, were perched on the beam of the gallows, where they
clapped their dusky wings, and cawed and screamed as the disturber of
their feast approached.
Two skeletons were swinging there in the night wind; and the remains of
two other beings, evidently fresh from the hands of the doomster, swung
beside them. One was headless and handless; but, by its bulk and vast
conformation, Hepburn knew the body to be that of Black Hob of Ormiston.
The other, which was of much shorter stature and slighter make, hung by
the neck vibrating in the passing wind, which swayed it round and waved
its long dark hair.
Fearfully, tremblingly, and scarcely daring to breathe, Hepburn of
Bolton drew near it.
One glance sufficed him, and he rushed from the spot to return no more.
* * * * * * *
*CHAPTER XXIV.*
*MALMO.*
Yes! there are sighs for the bursting heart,
And tears for the sleepless eye;
But tears and sighs and sympathy,
Are luxuries unknown to _me_.
The wretch immured in the dungeon-keep
May snatch an hour's repose;
And dream of home and the light of heaven
Ere he wake to misery's throes;
If _Hope_ with her radiant light be there--
I mate with the swarthy fiend Despair!
_Vedder._
Here, for a page or so, we resume the MSS. of the reverend and worthy
Magister Absalom Beyer.
About this period, his diary, journal, or history (which you will), for
it partakes of them all, suddenly breaks off, and there are left but a
few fragments, referring to a later period.
One records the baptism of the sixth son of Anna and Konrad, whom King
Frederick, for his valour in capturing a Lubeck frigate that ravaged the
shores of Bergen, had created Count of Saltzberg, Lord of Welsoeoe, and
governor of Bergenhuis; and the garrulous Magister records that this
baptismal ceremony, at which he officiated, and which was celebrated
with great splendour, was the seventh anniversary of that joyous day on
which he had blessed the nuptial ring of Anna and Konrad in the old
cathedral of the bishopric of Bergen; and he further records the
quantity of ale, wine, and dricka imbibed on the occasion, and the loads
of venison, bread, and bergenvisch, eaten by the tenantry at the baptism
of young Hans (for so baby the sixth was named); and how he screamed and
kicked when the holy water fell on him, till he nearly sprang from his
carved cradle, which was hollowed like a boat in the Norse fashion,
lined with moss and velvet, and was borne by Christina Slingebunder, who
had found her way from Westeray back to Bergen.
He also mentions that Konrad had grown somewhat florid, and rather more
round in form, than when he had placed the ring on Anna's hand before
that magnificent altar; and that she too, though retaining her youthful
bloom, had (alas, for romance!) lost much of her slender and graceful
aspect, and looked quite like the mother of the five chubby little ones,
each of whom clung to her skirts with one hand, while the other was
occupied with a great piece of the spiced christening cake, on which
they were regaling with a satisfaction, equalled only by that of the
Danish soldier, who, having again found the can and the cake offered on
this occasion to Nippen, had appropriated them both to himself.
* * * * *
Ten years have elapsed since the reader last heard in these pages of
Bothwell's hapless earl, and the lonely towers of Malmoe.
Ten years!
And in all that long and weary time he had been a fettered felon within
the iron walls of Malmoe. Pining hopelessly in a captivity the most
crushing to a heart so fierce and proud--to a soul so high-spirited and
restless, with one thought ever before him--liberty and home; and though
forgotten by Mary, or remembered only with a shudder, his old love for
her had never died; and many a futile effort he made, by piteous letters
and petitions, to Frederick II. of Demark--petitions so humble, that his
once proud nature would have shrunk from their tenor--to interest
himself, "pour la deliverance de la Royne sa Princesse Marie."[*]
[*] See Les Affaires de le Cante du Boduel.
But neither her deliverance or his own were ever achieved; for, were
such a thing possible, even God seemed to have abandoned them to a fate
that was alike inexorable and irresistible.
Year after year wore away, and the seasons succeeded each other in
dreary and monotonous succession. This monotony was most intolerable in
winter--the long and desolate winter of the north; when the descending
avalanche roared between the frozen peaks--when the ice cracked and
burst in the narrow fiords, where the seals and walrusses slept in the
rays of the moon--and when the northern lights, as they flashed behind
the summits of the distant hills, filled the midnight sky with figures
that were equally beautiful and terrible.
Ever and anon, in one of those dreary winters, when (as in A.D. 1333)
all the harbours of the Sound were sheeted over with ice, and the
shallow Baltic was frozen from Lubeck to the castle of Kiobenhafen,
Bothwell sighed, as he thought of the great Yule-logs that blazed so
merrily in many a Scottish hall, of the nut-brown ale and wine that
flowed in many a quaigh and luggie; while the green holly branch and the
mistletoe bough hung from the old roof-trees, and the mirth and joy of
the season expanded every heart.
Then came the short spring, that lasted but a month, when the snow
melted or lingered only on the distant peaks; when the streams burst
their frosty barriers, and, with the roar of a thousand waterfalls,
poured in silver currents over the rocks of the fiord, where the wild
rasp, the dwarf birch, and the barberry, sprouted in the warmth of the
coming sun.
And then, in the early mornings and the late nights of that northern
region--nights when the sun sets at twelve P.M., he would gaze,
dreamily, from his prison window on the waters of the Sound, until, to
his fancy, they became like those of the Clyde, that swept round
Bothwell bank, amid its dark green woods and sylvan solitude.
The summer passed, and winter would come again to spread snow and
desolation over the face of the land; and so the time wore on, until its
very monotony turned his impetuous brain, and he became a raving maniac!
* * * * *
* * * * *
It was in the year of grace 1577, when a Scottish priest, one of those
whom the Reformation had compelled to wander, in misery and penury, far
from their native lands, appeared at the gates of Malmoe, and sought
permission of Beirn Gowes, knight castellan, to visit the unhappy
captive.
The priest was a man about five-and-thirty; but the duties of his
office, toil, and hardship, made him seem considerably older; his head
was already becoming bald, even where he had no tonsure; his blue eyes
were mild, and deep, and thoughtful; he leaned a little on a staff, and
bore on his back the wallet containing a few of the necessaries required
by him on his solitary pilgrimage; for he was one of those whose life
had been devoted to spreading and upholding the Catholic faith in those
northern lands, where it had been most severely shaken; and, amid
hardship and danger, his days were spent in exhorting the faithful,
recovering the faithless, and confirming the wavering.
He stood within the vault where Bothwell lay, and, folding his hands
upon his breast, regarded him fixedly with eyes that filled with tears.
Oh, what a change was there!
Visible only in the twilight that struggled through the open grating of
that vaulted dungeon, the captive lay in a corner upon a little damp
straw, chained by the middle to the wall like a wild animal; he was
completely nude, and his coal-black hair and beard, now beginning to be
grizzled, flourished in one thick matted and luxuriant mass, from amid
which his wild black eyes gleamed like two bright stars. They were
hollow, dilated, and ghastly. His form was attenuated to the last
degree; every rib, joint, and muscle being horribly visible; he
resembled an inmate of the grave--a chained fiend--any thing but a man
in the prime of life, for the miserable being had barely reached his
fortieth year.
When he moved, the straw rustled, and the rusty chain that fretted his
tender skin rattled grimly in the ears of the priest, who knelt down in
the further end of the dungeon, and prayed with fervour; but Bothwell
neither saw nor heard him.
One of those glimmerings of the past that so frequently haunted him, was
at that moment coming like a vision before his mind. Exhausted by
illness, and the fever of his spirit, the poor maniac had become calm;
and his thoughts were slowly emerging from the mist that obscured them,
and arranging themselves in order and form, as he struggled back into a
consciousness of existence--the brief consciousness that so often
precedes the oblivion of the grave.
In the figures made by the damp on his dungeon wall, he saw the same
pale face, with its weeping eyes and white veil, that had haunted him so
often, ere his overcharged mind found a relief in insanity. Mary--_la
Reine Blanche!_ he stretched his bony arms towards the figure; but still
it remained there, neither advancing nor retiring, till a change came
over its features.
Then its eyes seemed to fill with a terrible glare, and the shriek that
once rang through the Kirk-of-Field, seemed to rend the massive vault,
and to pierce his tingling ears like a poniard. Then he dashed his
hands against them, and grovelled down among the straw, to shut out that
dreadful sound--the dying cry of Darnley!
"Oh, Father of mercy and of justice!" said the priest, beating himself
upon the breast; "how dreadful is thy vengeance, when thou permittest
the sinner to mete out the meed of his own sin!"
"A voice! a voice--who spoke?" said the Earl, struck by the unusual
sound. "Hah! was it thee?"
His tone was low and husky, and the sounds seemed to come with labour
from his furry throat.
"Was it thee--oh, say it was thee!" he continued, as he paused, and
seemed to wrestle mentally with his madness, till he overcame it, and,
by obtaining one further revelation of the past, became more and more
cognizant of the present, and alive to the real horrors of his
situation. "Memory," said he, passing a hand thoughtfully over his
brow--"Oh, memory! what a curse art thou; and, when united to remorse,
how doubly so! Hah! those eyes," he groaned; "those weeping eyes again!
... But that voice--it was hers! so soft--so gentle! it came back to me
like a strain of old music on the wind of memory--as it has often come
in the slow hours of many a cheerless day, and the dead calm silence of
many a changeless night--through the long dark vista of many monotonous
years. Years--how many! oh, how many! Dost thou smile with thine
unearthly features? ha! ha!" ...
Like sunshine emerging from a mist, the past was coming gradually back;
and suddenly, like a flash of light, one bright gleam of thought brought
all the long-forgotten days of other years before him.
The visionary saw her--Mary--the bright, the beautiful, the innocent, as
she had shone in the buoyancy of youth and loveliness, when surrounded
by the chivalry of France, and the splendour of the house of Bourbon.
The scene changed--she was standing timidly, irresolute, and pale, on
the shores of her half-barbarized native land; again she appeared--it
was with the diadem of the Bruces on her brow, and the orb of the
Alexanders on her sceptre, as she presided over the first of her
factious parliaments, in the ancient hall of the Scottish estates. He
saw her standing with the triumphant Darnley at the altar of Sancte
Crucis, with more in her air and eye of the timid bride than the stately
queen, blushing and abashed by the side of her handsome and exulting
vassal.
Then came the memory of that terrible hour in the Kirk-of-Field--the
night in the towers of Dunbar, and that fruitless cry for mercy--the sad
low wail that chilled the ruffian heart of Ormiston.