"My brother, noble lord! as thou perhaps mayest see by our resemblance.
We have the same fair hair, and the same light eyes."
"Thou art come hither, thou saidst, to bear a lance in some knight's
train. Dost design thy sickly brother for such rough work?"
"Not at present, my lord. He has been over-tenderly nurtured for
saddling horses and scouring armour. I would rather leave him to bear
the fardingale of some noble lady, could I meet with such, while I push
my fortune in the camp."
"So far I may have it in my power to befriend thee," rejoined the
cunning Earl, with a sly wink at his two companions. "Come hither, my
boy, and let me see thee?"
Thus commanded by this terrible peer, Anna felt herself impelled to
obey; and she approached the Earl, whose long beard appalled, while his
keen dark eyes seemed to penetrate, the most secret thoughts of her
palpitating heart. He took her by the hand; and one glance at its fair
soft fingers and beautiful form, together with the pallor of her
changing cheek, and the timidity of her downcast face, convinced him
that a very bewitching woman was concealed under that boy's plain
doublet and mantle.
"That will do, boy--seat thyself," said he, lest his companions, the
dissolute lairds of Spott and Whittinghame, might make the same
discovery. Morton formed his plan in a moment, and resolved by open
force, if not by secret fraud--a course he usually preferred--to obtain
possession of this fair foreigner. He again addressed Konrad.
"Thou knowest me, fair sir--I believe?"
"Yes, noble sir, to be the most powerful of the Scottish peers."
"After the great Earl of Bothwell," said Morton, with mock humility. "I
will place thy brother in the service of a noble lady connected with the
court, where he will be daily in the presence of her Majesty the Queen,
if thou wilt trust me so far."
"Lord Earl, I cannot find words to thank thee!" replied Konrad, touched
to the soul by this sudden kindness.
"Pest!" said Spott, "his fortune will be made. Thou knowest our queen's
partiality for strangers and outlandish people."
"Earl Morton, were I not pledged to another, (and I never break my work
even to the most humble,) thy standard alone would I follow, to requite
with my sword"----
"And to whose pennon art thou pledged?"
Here the peasant plucked Konrad by the mantle, and whispered,--"Say John
of Park, and they will hang thee from that rooftree!" but Konrad was
relieved from the dilemma by Douglas of Whittinghame exclaiming with a
hoarse laugh--
"Ha! ha! here is James of Morton, the lord of the lion's den, turning
philanthropist! ha! ha! ha!"
"Can thy brother not speak for himself?" said the Earl.
"The boy is timid and bashful."
"The women will soon teach him impudence."
"Excuse him, noble sir"----
"Say I am thankful," whispered Anna in a broken voice, while her tears
fell fast; "for though grieved to the heart at parting from thee, dear
Konrad, the protection of one of my own sex is so necessary, that--and
then to be near the queen, that she may hear my mournful story! O! what
will I not risk? Yes--yes! to this great lord say that I thank him from
my inmost soul, and will accept his generous offer."
"And what, may I ask, is the name of the noble lady who is to receive
this boy as a gift?" asked Konrad, after he had complied with Anna's
desire.
"The Dame Alison Craig," replied the Earl. "She dwells close bye here,
a few doors up the wynd, in a house that was once a convent, but is now
adapted to more useful purposes. It hath been reformed--ha! ha! She is
a lady of fair repute, and keepeth open house for the rich. By my
beard! I know not what would become of Messieurs the ambassadors of
France, Spain, and Savoy, and all the gay chevaliers and signiors of
their suites, in this gloomy city of psalms and sermonizing, but for
Dame Alison's suppers and balls."
Though Konrad did not understand this speech, he partly detected the sly
expression of eye with which it was accompanied; but, in his
Scandinavian simplicity and honesty of heart, he never imagined it was
an infamous courtesan the treacherous Earl was praising; and, pleased
with the hope that Anna would so easily obtain access to the queen's
presence, he once more thanked him, briefly and sincerely, and, after
the grace-cup had been handed round by the hostess, the guests prepared
for repose.
The Earl and his gentlemen were conducted to chambers in the upper
regions of the lofty hostell, the host marshalling the way with a
flambeau; but their jackmen lay on the hearth, on the benches, and under
the hall tables, with their steel caps for pillows, and their swords and
axes beside them.
Touched with the melancholy that was impressed on Konrad's handsome
face, and with the singular beauty of the seeming boy who accompanied
him, the hostess offered the brothers, as she deemed them, "a snug
box-bed in the guest row, bein and cosy, gif they would accept of
it--nae difference to be made in the lawing."
Though Anna understood little of the Scottish woman's language, with
quick perception she divined, by Konrad's confused expression, the
nature of the invitation, and a blush burned on her face. He hastened
to remove it, by hurriedly declining; and, wrapped up in their mantles,
they took their repose on the wooden benches as well as their sad
thoughts would permit them; while coiled up in his grey maud, with a
hand on his poniard and his bonnet drawn over his face, their first
acquaintance, the countryman, lay snoring melodiously beside them, with
his red-eyed terrier keeping watch and ward by his side.
*CHAPTER VIII.*
*JOHN OF PARK.*
"He blythely blew his silver call,
And, ere the echoes slept,
One hundred archers, stout and tall,
Appealed on right and left.
These are my body guard, fair sir:
Should fortune prove unkind,
Or foes our haunts invade, there are
Full fifty more behind."
_Ballad._
Grey morning was breaking, and its light struggled through the barred
windows of the hostellary, edging with cold lustre and bringing into
bold relief the harsh and fierce features, the muscular figures, and
uncouth accoutrements of Morton's bearded troopers. They were still
sleeping on the hard oak planks when the peasant stirred Konrad, and
whispered--
"Fair sir, I am about to depart. If thou art still in the mood to
follow John of Park to battle and foray against Bothwell--arise, and
come forth!"
"I am ready," replied Konrad, feeling for the purse that hung at his
girdle.
"Nay, nay, heed not the lawing! I will settle with our host's yeoman of
the pantry, and thou canst do me service another time. Come softly
forth; for I wish not to disturb these bloodhounds of the house of
Morton."
Rising gently, the young man clasped on his steel cap, and gave a glance
full of sorrow and anguish at Anna's fair and sleeping face, over which
he drew the skirt of her mantle; and, praying that Heaven might take her
under its peculiar care, hurried away.
"'Tis better--oh yes!--'tis better," thought he. "She is now under more
powerful protection than I could afford her; and, in the whirl of war
and strife, I may (for a time at least) forget that hopeless passion
which her presence is turning into madness."
While his new friend, and one of the drowsy servitors, whom he had
roused from his snug nest among the hay in the loft above the stables,
were removing the ponderous wooden bar of the pend or archway, Konrad
felt a hand laid lightly on his arm; he turned, and met Anna's tearful
eyes fixed sorrowfully and pleadingly on his.
"Wouldst thou really go without bidding me one kind adieu?" she said
tenderly, in the language of their native land.
"I deemed it better, Anna. Partings are ever painful, and I hoped to
see thee soon again."
"My heart is oppressed by fears and misgivings"----
"Let them cease, I pray thee; but oh! above all things, carefully
preserve thy disguise. Remain with this noble; he is great and powerful,
and in his train, three days hence will doubtless find thee in the
presence of the Scottish Queen. Once there, thou art safe. Throw
thyself at her feet, and there pour out thy tears and thy sorrows
together. Mary of Scotland, say the people of every land save her own,
is good and gentle, pious, compassionate, and kind. Thou art sure to
triumph. Farewell, Anna! may our blessed Lady, whose intercession is
never sought in vain, protect and bless thee!"
"Thou wilt come and see me sometimes, Konrad--at court, I mean; for
surely I must remain there after my story is heard!"
"And forget old Norway?" said Konrad, with a sad smile.
"_Gammle Norge!_" reiterated Anna; "ah, never! but I would wish that
some great lady, fair, beautiful, and rich, should see thee, and love
thee, and, and"----
"What?"
"Make amends for the worthless heart thou hast lost."
"Never, Anna!" responded the young man in a troubled voice, while he
regarded her with a gaze of love as deep as in the days of yore. "That
can never be--Konrad's die is cast;" and, kissing her hands, he sprang
through the archway, and, with his mind in a tumult of confusion,
hurried after his guide.
A sense of sadness, desolation, and doubt, were ever uppermost in his
thoughts, and absorbed all his faculties.
There were none stirring in the city at that early hour; the streets
were silent and deserted; and grimly in the grey morning the grated
windows of its lofty mansions, tall, and strong, and spectral, with
their turnpike towers, crow-stepped gables and Flemish roofs, frowned
over the narrow way.
"What time of the morning is it, thinkest thou, for I never could afford
me a pocket-dial?" said the peasant, as they descended St. Mary's Wynd.
"About two hours of matin-prime yet."
"Matin-prime hath not rung for these ten years and more from the
steeples of Edinburgh," replied the other, with a dark look; "but please
God a day shall come, when all the services of our blessed church, the
_sexte and *none_, the _vesper_ and _nocturnal_, shall toll from every
steeple in broad Scotland."
"Shall we meet John of Park in the city?"
"Marry, come up! thinkest thou he values his poor head so lightly that
he trusts it there? Though of a sooth to say, 'tis worth more than I
thought it; for there, on yonder gate, we will find that the lords of
the land offer a hundred unicorns of gold for it. I never could read a
line myself; but I heard a certain notary's servitor, a dainty youth in
black buckram and a white ruff, read it to the gaping rabble
yesternight. A hundred golden unicorns! ha! ha! John of Park, my poor
knave! look well to thy harnpan, lest some day thou findest it grinning
on yonder spikes!"
With a boisterous laugh, his guide directed Konrad's attention to a huge
placard posted on the Porte of St. Mary. This barrier, which extended
from east to west across the Pleasance, and gave access to the Wynd and
Canongate, was removed in the seventeenth century.
The paper, which was surmounted by the rude engraving of a thistle and
crown, with the initials M.R., purported to be the offer of one hundred
unicorns for the "notour rebelle, traitor, and murtherour, at ye Queen's
majesties home, John Elliot, umquhile designate of Parke." Imprinted by
Thomas Bassandyne, one of the earliest Edinburgh printers, whose
establishment was near the Netherbow.
As they left the city behind, pursuing the path that skirted the royal
park, and (by the same narrow way that the good St. Margaret had rode on
many a day to her gifted well) led towards the old collegiate church of
Restalrig, with the ruined dwellings of its banished prebendaries
nestling among the old orchards of the monkish days--the sun came up in
splendour from his burnished bed in the German sea, and the summits of
the city, and of the dark-green hills that overhung it, were reddened by
the joyous light. Up, and farther up, soared the god of day in his
glory; and Gulane Hill, St. Baldred's isle of rock, and the volcanic
cone of Berwick Law, were mellowed in the morning haze.
Leaving the bridle path that led to the dwelling of the factious and
turbulent Lord of Restalrig, they entered upon the dreary waste named
the Figgate Whins, where, from time immemorial, the monks of Holyrood
had grazed their flocks of sheep and cattle. Bordered by a low and sandy
shore, and uncheered by a single habitation, this wide and lonely waste
extended from the western ramparts of Leith to the chapel of
Magdalene--a little oratory by the seaside, nearly four miles distant.
The fragment of an ancient Roman way traversed the moorland, which was
still as death, save where a few cattle browsed on the patches of grass;
and each of them had a sprig of ash-tree tied with red tape to their
horns, as a charm against disease and witchcraft. The gurgle of the
Figgate burn flowing into the ocean, whose crested waves rolled in light
on the yellow sand--and the cawing of the rooks, that were wheeling
aloft from their nests in the ruined oratory--were the only sounds that
broke the stillness; for Konrad, oppressed by his own sad thoughts, did
not converse much--and his companion had also become somewhat taciturn
and reserved.
This muir was studded by great thickets of dark-green whin, and mossy
knolls, marking the roots of gigantic oaks, the remnants of that great
forest whose shady dingles had once spread from the hills of Braid to
the ocean, and which many a time and oft had echoed to the trumpets and
timbrels of the Emperor Severus and Julius Agricola. There were deep
hollows, mosshags, and sandpits, by the wayside; and, altogether, the
place, as they progressed, seemed to become so fitted for outrage,
murder, and robbery, that Konrad began to view with suspicion the tall
and brawny fellow who had led him thus far, and who marched on a pace or
two before, with his grey plaid waving in the wind, his bonnet drawn
over his face, while with his knotty staff he hewed in a swordsman-like
fashion at the broom-bells and thistle-heads that bordered the Roman
causeway.
"Is it in this place we are to meet the knight whose pennon I am to
follow?" asked Konrad.
"Yes!"
"And how saidest thou he was named?"
"The Laird of Park! a name at which men cock their lugs in Liddesdale."
"And where is he now?"
"Before thee!" said the other, drawing himself up, and raising his
bonnet from his broad and manly brow. "I am Sir John Elliot of Park!"
"Thou!" exclaimed the young Norwegian, stepping back a pace, with a
frown of anger and surprise, that his helmet partly concealed. "Peasant
churl! how canst thou be that brave knight whom all men characterise as
the foe of the great Earl of Bothwell, though thou mayest well be the
strong thief he is said to be!"
"A salmon from the pool, a wand from the wood, a deer from the hill, or
a drove of nolt from our English foemen, are thefts that no man hath
need to blush for."
"By St. Olaf! I will rather forego my chance of meeting Bothwell in
battle than follow such as thee. Nay, nay; fallen as he is, Konrad of
Saltzberg hath not yet come so low as to seek suit or service from a
low-born peasant!"
Long and loudly laughed the borderer at this remark, till his sunburnt
face grew purple.
"Dost thou think, when I ventured into Edinburgh to learn how matters
were likely to go with us in Liddesdale, I would enter with my pennon
borne before me, and sound a trumpet at its gates? By St. Mary! no--and
I care not mickle whether I don a blue bonnet, or Naples beaver, or a
steel basinet, provided it keeps my head on my shoulders for the time.
But tarry a moment, gentle sir; and, peradventure, thou wilt acknowledge
there may be worse leaders than Jock Elliot of Park."
On approaching the chapel and bridge of Mary Magdalene, he placed to his
mouth a small bugle of ivory, exquisitely carved and mounted with
silver, and blew one clear low blast, that rang along the sandy shore,
and immediately a knight's pennon and the glittering heads of sixty
bright lances appeared above the broom, as they were uplifted in the
sunshine, and there rode down the opposite bank a band of moss-troopers,
armed, after the Scottish border fashion, in jacks of leather covered
with little iron plates, steel gloves, gorgets, and basinets, and having
two-handed swords slung from their shoulder-belts. As they approached
the bridge-end, their strong, fleet, and active horses, though covered
with dew and dust, seemed still fresh and active.
"Behold my pennon, fair sir!" said the Knight of Park, pointing to the
scarlet bannerole, which bore on a golden bend _a flute_, the pastoral
cognizance of the Elliot clan. "And these are a few of my Liddesdale
lads; so, if thou art ashamed to follow the one in the ranks of the
other, here we part, and in all friendship I say--God keep thee!"
"Nay--I crave pardon! I pledged my word to serve, and will keep the
pledge."
"Then be it so. Ho there, Edie o' Earlshope!--Lauchey wi' the lang
spear!--my horse and armour!" cried the knight, throwing down his bonnet
and plaid; and immediately a strong and beautiful horse, stoutly, but
plainly, bitted and caparisoned, bearing on its saddle a bundle of
armour, was led forward by the laird's henchman, the said Edie, a
muscular but spare sample of the thorough-bred moss-trooper.
His eyes and hair were of the deepest black, his face was long and lean,
and by constant exposure had been tanned to the colour of mahogany. The
bristly mustaches that overhung the clasps of his battered morion, were
like iron wire. His powerful form seemed a model of muscular strength
and activity, but his legs were considerably curved by constant riding;
his armour was well worn, and by frequent use, rather than care, the
grasp and pommel of his long and ponderous sword, that hung from a chain
over his shoulder, was polished as brightly as if by a cutler's hand.
Though Edie was merely the chartered portioner or crofter of Earlshope
from the laird, there was much more of the outlaw than the farmer, and
still more of the ruffian than the soldier, in his aspect.
"Park, thou art right welcome among us!" said he, with the respectful
familiarity of a Scottish vassal to his lord in those days, when the
interests of the people and their superiors were _one_. "What may be
the tidings in yonder city?"
"Such as will cause sharp swords and sure watches to be kept in every
tower that looks down on the Liddle, good gossip."
"Wow, laird!--and what be they?"
"The Lord Warden of the three marches, with four thousand lances in his
train, is about to lead a raid among us, and meaneth to pay me such a
visit as King James did John of Gilnokie."
"Weel--I carena a brass bodle!" growled the moss-trooper, as with a
ready hand he buckled on his leader's coat-of-mail, and assisted him to
mount. "I havena had a straw growing on Earlhope-rigs since Lammas-tide
was 1560; nor a cow in the byre, save what I won in fair foray;--sae,
gif we take to hill and moss again, we canna be mickle the waur."
"By the blood of Broomholm!" swore his chief; "gif I take to moss and
moor, let the Lord Warden look to it, for I may chance one day to whet
my lance on the groundstone of his own castle of Bothwell! Hast thou a
horse for my friend?"
"By my faith have we--for ten friends!" replied the henchman, pointing
to a troop of led horses, whose halters were fastened to troopers'
bridles.
"And where got ye these nags?"
"Ou! just in the onsteadings owre the hill yonder, where I took a turn
wi' Dandy Dumpie and Langspear, between the night and morning, to keep
us frae wearying when waiting on ye. But as the crofters may be missing
their cattle about this time, and set the countryside astir, 'twere wise
to make use of rowel and rein till the Lammermuir is between us and the
sea."
"Our Lady!--yes; for ere noonday this bridge will be echoing to the
tramp of Bothwell's bands, who bring with them the Comptroller's cannon,
to batter down every obnoxious peelhouse in the wardenrie, and my poor
little tower of Park in particular. Mount, friend Konrad, and let us
begone; for we have to ride fast and far ere we breakfast yet!"
Konrad sprang into the saddle of the charger proffered him--(a strong
and active bay)--and rode forward by the side of his new friend, to whom
he was completely reconciled, on beholding that his pennon was borne by
a gentleman--and that his armour, though plain and unornamented, was of
the finest steel, and every way such as became a knight. He rode with a
jed-wood axe resting on his thigh; and his visor, which was lighted by
two horizontal slits, clasped down.
Passing the turreted house of Crichton of Brunstan, who had taken such a
leading part in the recent Reformation, they struck into a narrow
horseway, that, crossing the Esk by a ford, led to the hill of
Carberry--and, as they ascended, the districts of Newton and Inveresk
lay spread at their feet like a beautiful map. The waves were rolling
in silver and blue around the Inch and the May--St. Adrian's gifted
isle--while the point of Elie, the peak of Kincraig, and all the shore
of Fife, was mellowed by distance into faint and shadowy tints; but when
John of Park and his troop of lances diverged along the heights that are
crowned by the old tower of Falside, whose ruined turrets still overtop
their grove of firs, the broad and beautiful bay of Preston opened out
before them, dotted by the dark lug-sails of northern fisher-boats, and
shining in golden light--yellow almost as the long expanse of sand that
edged its ample margin.
Accustomed to the savage landscapes of his native Norway, there was a
soft charm in that varied and magnificent panorama which for a time won
Konrad from his melancholy thoughts.
An amphitheatre of fertile hills, and rich copsewood of the darkest
green, rose gently upwards from the encircling shore, till their long
blue undulating line stood defined distinctly and clearly against the
pale and azure horizon. From the strongholds of the Lords of Winton and
Dolphinton, and many a baronial dwelling, whose lofty turrets and
crested gateway have long since crumbled into dust--from many a thatched
cottage and many a snug home-farm--the smoke was rising amid the summer
woods, to mingle with the morning mist, and melt in thin air.
Afar off, like a speck at the edge of the distant sea, a sail was
visible, marking the faint line where sky and ocean blended into one;
and Konrad gazed at it long and wistfully. It might be bound for his
northern home; and for a time his eyes, his heart, and his wishes,
followed it. But he soon lost sight of the sea and the distant capital,
on entering the moorlands that lay to the southward of Falside and
Carberry; for the experienced border knight and his moss-troopers, to
avoid the Earl of Bothwell's line of route, had resolved, by taking a
circuitous and solitary way, to gain, unseen, their native wilds of
Liddesdale.
*CHAPTER IX.*
*THE CONFLICT IN HERMITAGE GLEN.*
And it's hame, and it's hame, my bonny brown steed,
And it's riderless hame ye maun gang;
For the warden has me fast, this night is my last,
The morn he swears I maun hang.
_Old Ballad._
Anxious to forget both Anna and his Countess, Bothwell hastened to
plunge into the ardour and excitement of that wild and predatory warfare
which was then maintained on the frontiers of the two countries. The
memory of the wrong he had done his wife, stung him more than those
endured by Anna; for he deemed his marriage with her a jest, a nullity,
while his espousal of Lady Jane had been as solemn as the church could
make it.
He salved his conscience, too, with the recollection of Anna's facility
and faithlessness to her former lover, and made it an excuse for
endeavouring utterly to obliterate from his mind all memory of his
intrigue with her--for he deemed it nothing more. And now, when finding
himself rising into eminence and power at court, he only viewed with
fear her probable escape from Noltland, and the custody of Sir Gilbert
Balfour; and that fear engendered a sentiment very much akin to
hatred--for to such a bitter feeling will the most passionate love turn
at times.
The complaints of the Earl of Bedford, lieutenant of the English
marches, concerning the incessant forays of the border clans, caused the
queen and her ministers to resolve on holding an assize, or court of
justice, at Jedburgh, upon the 27th of August, and the nobles, barons,
and freeholders of the adjacent shires were summoned by writ to meet
their majesties, Henry and Mary, on the 23d, at Peebles; while the
magistrates of the former place made preparations to accommodate such a
vast retinue of men and horses.
While Bothwell continued warring on the borders, the approach of harvest
caused a postponement of the royal visit till the 8th of October, when
the queen joined him at Melrose, not alone, or nearly so, (as we are
falsely informed by Buchanan,) but attended by her whole court and
council, her archer guard, the officers of justice, and a strong armed
force, as her father, James V., had come there thirty years before.
King Henry, either from cowardice, caprice, or whim, chose to absent
himself, and go no one knew whither, but as the queen shrewdly guessed,
to visit one of his innumerable inamoratos.
After capturing many of those moss-troopers who were known to be lawless
and predatory, who harried the beeves of their countrymen as well as
those of the English, and delivering them to all the brief severities of
Jeddart justice, especially our late acquaintances, Edie of Earlshope
and Lauchey-with-the-lang-spear; after storming and dismantling many of
their dwellings--those strong but solitary peelhouses which are either
situated on rocks almost inaccessible, in the depths of forests, or
among the pathless wilds of the border morasses--the impetuous Earl
turned the whole tide of war and justice against the great master-reiver
of that district, John of Park and the clan Elliot, who had hitherto
successfully eluded his desultory operations.
Careless of his future fate, and glorying in the dangers of the
wandering and Bedouin-like life of the Scottish moss-troopers--now
garrisoning some solitary peel that overlooked many a silvan strath and
silver stream; now biding in some unfathomed cavern; now stabling their
steeds among the haggs of some deep moss, from whence they issued all in
their armour, with uplifted lances, on the terrified troops of the
wardenrie--the young Norwegian engaged with ardour in every desperate
foray and attack on which John of Park dispatched him; and his daring,
his activity, and indomitable hardihood, made him the byword and the
idol of the wild spirits among whom his fortune had cast him; but they
knew not that, in every action, in every deed of arms and essay of
danger, one thought--one hope--was ever uppermost in his mind, to come
within a lance length of the Earl of Bothwell.
On the other hand, that gallant noble having heard of this new
desperado, with whose wild chivalry all the borders were ringing, and
also of Anna's flight from Noltland, became doubly anxious for his
capture, if not for his destruction.
Now many a time the reflection came home to his mind, how bitter were
the dregs of the cup of deceit--and now he found how one false step
required a hundred to repair it.
These foes had their long wished-for interview sooner than they
anticipated.
On hearing of the queen's arrival at Jedburgh, Bothwell had ridden from
his stately castle of Hermitage to visit her, and was returning,
accompanied only by his gossip and boon companion, Hob of Ormiston.
They were both lightly, but well armed, and splendidly mounted; for, by
the ancient way, the castle of Hermitage is nearly twenty-five miles
distant from Jedburgh.
The latter, a populous town, then twice the size of Berwick (as a letter
of the English protector Somerset informs us), with its lofty abbey
tower, its embattled ramparts, and six great bastel-houses, had been
left behind; and the sun was setting when the Earl and his friend
penetrated into the bleak and mountainous district of Liddesdale.
The vale of the winding Hermitage, with its fertile borders of fine
holmland and rich copsewood, was then growing dark, and the sun's last
rays were fading on the summits of Tudhope-hill and Millenwood-fell,
whose steep and silent outlines stood in bold relief against the cold
blue sky of October. This region was then almost without roads, and
destitute of other inhabitants than the fox and the fuimart, the deer
and the eagle. The country was swarming with exasperated outlaws and
broken men of every description; and thus the Earl and the Knight rode
fast without exchanging a word, for they knew that they ran considerable
risk of being roughly interrupted, ere they reached the gates of
Hermitage.
"By cock and pie!" grumbled Ormiston, under his barred aventayle, as he
breathed his horse a little; "'twas a rash deed and a perilous, to come
on this hellicate errand alone, like two knights of the Round Table,
when we might so easily have had a hundred good lances at our cruppers."
"Heed it not, good Ormiston!" laughed the Earl, who was in excellent
humour with himself and every thing else; for Mary had received him so
affably, and thanked his good service so graciously. "Heed it not, I
pray thee! If thou reachest the gate of Hermitage with a whole skin,
thou canst stuff it well with wine and baked beef; but if thou gettest a
Lockerby lick between this and its gates--why"----
"Thou must pay the masses for my soul, as I have not had a plack in my
pouch since Michaelmas, and I doubt mickle if Mass John of the
Priesthaugh will credit me."
"'Tis said that John of Park wears a corselet of Milan inlaid with gold,
and worth a hundred angels. 'Twould be a rare prize for thee, did we
meet him here by the Birkwoodshaws."
"By the mass! I hope not; for I have no wish to lose that which will
not make the laird of Park one jot the richer--my poor life--which he
will have lances enow to send to the devil in a twinkling!"
"If we _are_ to be intercepted," rejoined the Earl, "by broken knaves, I
wish they would show face while our horses are fresh, and we could run a
course on the level sward here with some pith and spirit."
A pause ensued, during which nothing was heard but the dull tramp of the
steeds on the grassy waste, its echo from the mountains, the hard
breathing of the riders, half suppressed in the hollow of their helmets,
and the clinking of their mail. Suddenly the Earl drew up; for an
abrupt turn of the path traversing that beautiful valley, which is ten
miles in length, brought them close to a band of some twenty
moss-troopers, riding leisurely down the hill side in full harness, with
their steel caps and lofty lances glinting above the hazel bushes that
tufted the mountains. They were trotting in a circle, and goading on a
herd of fifty or sixty fat oxen, which they had harried from the holme
of Canonbie Priory, which had been ruined and destroyed by the English,
on their retreat from Solway Moss, twenty-four years before.
"Cock and pie!" exclaimed Ormiston.
"Devil take thine oath of cock and pie!" exclaimed the Earl, testily.
"It cometh in on all occasions--grave as well as gay. Seest thou not
that yonder is a band of Liddesdale lances, and we have now a chance of
being overborne, slam, and thrown into the Hermitage, with a stone at
our necks, to make amends for our late hard justice at Jedburgh."
"The knaves will scarcely dare to slay thee, who art the queen's
lieutenant, and warden of the three marshes; but I doubt mickle if their
scruples will extend to Hob Ormiston."
"Think not they will spare either of us, gossip of mine; and thou
biddest fair to feed the crows, as the pelicans in thy banner do their
young."
"I will be right well content to die in my helmet, if I cannot redeem my
life with that of the best knave among them!"
"Then come on, a-God's name!" cried the Earl; and, brandishing his
sword, he rode straight towards two of the moss-troopers who had
advanced to reconnoitre; while the remainder, spurring at full gallop,
and goading on the plunging and maddened herd of cattle with their sharp
lances, pursued their path at full speed towards the wildest district of
the mountains.
Leaping their horses across the mossy and reedy margin of a mountain
runnel, the Earl and his companion rode leisurely to within twenty paces
of the other horsemen, and then, for a minute, they all steadily
surveyed each other by the fading twilight of the valley.
"These are tall fellows, and their bright armour would seem to announce
them gentlemen of name," said the Earl. "Mass! is not that John of Park
in the fluted steel?"
"And our Norwegian!"
"Now, by Heaven!" exclaimed the Earl, grasping his long sharp sword, and
adjusting his iron gloves; "our bout will be a tough and a bloody
one--man to man! 'Tis good chivalry this for a moss-trooping knave.
Have at thee, Sir John of Park! I am James, Earl of Bothwell."
"Come on, lord warden, and welcome to a Liddesdale lick!" exclaimed the
moss-trooper, putting spurs to his steed. "Thy head or mine, for a
hundred unicorns! ha! ha!"--and rushing on, they encountered hand to
hand.
Konrad, who had been most anxious to meet Bothwell in a solemn and
vengeful single combat, finding himself thus anticipated, turned the
whole tide of his wrath upon the gigantic Ormiston, whom he engaged with
greater determination than fury.
The Knight of Park wielded his light Jedwood axe with such skill and
dexterity, that the fourth blow broke Bothwell's tempered blade like a
crystal wand, and left him defenceless.
The powerful borderer pressed on, and, with his axe upraised, was about
to hew the Earl down, through head and helmet, to the neck, when the
latter suddenly reined back his horse, blew the match of a poitronal (so
named from its having a square butt, and being discharged from the
breast) and fired! The large bullet passed through the neck of Park,
piercing like silk his jointed gorget; he fell forward supinely on his
horse's mane, and rolled upon the turf with the blood gushing through
the bars of his aventayle.
Leaping from his horse, Bothwell bent for a moment over the wounded man,
whose broad bosom heaved convulsively under its steel case; but for a
moment only, till, inspired with new strength by the agonies of death
and despair, he made one sudden and serpent-like bound, and, swinging
his Jedwood axe by both hands, dealt the Earl a furious blow on the
helmet, and again sunk prostrate on the turf. The tempered headpiece
partly saved the warden, who reeled a pace or two, half blinded by his
own blood, for the blade had penetrated and slightly wounded him.
"Base ronion!" he exclaimed, compressing the throat of the dying
moss-trooper with his armed heel, "dost thou surrender now?"
"Yes--my soul to God! but _never_ my sword to thee," he muttered, and
expired.
Faint and giddy, the Earl leant against the saddle of his horse, while
the combat was waged fiercely between Konrad and Ormiston, whose horses
were alternately beaten down on their haunches by the fury of the
conflict; but the skill of the former was completely overborne by that
of the latter, when united to his vast muscular power. Often they
paused and panted, and surveyed each other with tiger-like ferocity,
while their warded weapons were pressed together, and then again they
engaged with all the fury of two mad bulls.
Bothwell watched the fray with interest, for he had a firm friend to
lose on one hand, and a dangerous foe on the other; thus he was doubly
anxious for the success of Ormiston, who, after a long pause, suddenly,
by one tremendous back-stroke, that fell like a thunderbolt on the
helmet of his younger and more slender adversary, unhorsed and stretched
him motionless on the turf, where the strong and ruthless victor sprang
upon him like a demon, with his vengeful blade withdrawn for the
death-thrust.
"Nay, nay!" said the Earl, staying the hand and weapon. "To Hermitage!
to Hermitage!--its gates are strong, and its vaults are deep enow to
hold a wilder thief than this. To-morrow I will hold a court in the
hall, and consign him to the dule-tree for foraging in the wardenrie. I
would rather he should perish thus, by the hand of justice, than by
thine or mine; and now let us hence, ho! lest yonder band of knaves
leave their quarry under escort on the muir, and return to the rescue."
"And John of Park's dainty suit of mail, and his corselet, worth--how
much didst thou say?"
"A pest upon thee, man! I did but jest; yet thou speakest like a
rascally Lombard Jew. Is this a time to think of such things? There,
hide the carrion under yonder bush, and I will send John of Bolton down
the glen, with a few lances, to bring thee the suit of mail, and me the
wearer's head. But assist me to bind this knave on horseback, and then,
away!"
The Earl was immediately obeyed, and the half senseless captive was
lifted on his horse, bound to it by the scarfs of the victors, who took
each his horse by the bridle, and following the windings of the glen and
stream, whose clear surface was now shining in the starlight, set off on
the spur for the famous old border stronghold of Hermitage, which had
been built in the thirteenth century by Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith.
Blind and faint by loss of blood, the Earl almost sank from his horse on
reining up at the castle gate, where he was received into the arms of
Hepburn of Bolton, and other faithful retainers, who bore him to his
apartments.
Alarmed on beholding his dark hair clotted and his features disfigured
with blood, when his helmet was removed his attendants conducted him to
bed, and despatched a horseman to the village of Castleton for the leech
of the district, Mass John of the Priesthaugh, a friar of the suppressed
Priory of Canobieholm; while an express, announcing the severe wound of
the Earl, and the death of John of Park, was immediately despatched to
the queen at Jedburgh, where she was then residing, and occupying a
small house that still remains in a sequestered street of that venerable
burgh. This edifice is styled (no one knows why, says the Magister
Absalom) the House of the Lord Compositor, and some of the tapestry with
which it was adorned for her occupation is still preserved.
The moss-trooper who bore the message, Pate of the Prickinghaugh,
tarried at every peel-house and cottage in the vale of the Hermitage, to
have his thirst quenched and announce the fall of John of Park, the
"prettiest man" in all the wide borders; but Pate drained so many horns
of whisky and ale, that, by the time he reached Jedburgh, he reversed
the order of matters, and created a tremendous sensation among the
courtiers by announcing that John of Park had been victorious, and the
great Earl of Bothwell slain.
*CHAPTER X.*
*THE PIT OF HERMITAGE.*
------The dusky vale
Of Hermitage in Liddesdale,
Its dungeons and its towers,
Where Bothwell's turrets brave the air--
_Marmion._
In the middle and darker ages, the first chambers of every Scottish
castle were a range of vaults, arched with stone, rising from walls
usually ten or sixteen feet in thickness. In these the winter stores
were kept; but there was _one_, generally the lowest, the darkest, and
most damp, which was emphatically named the PIT; where the lord of the
barony kept the most refractory of his vassals, and the most hated of
his feudal enemies; for every Scottish peer and lesser baron had the
right of pit and gallows attached to his fortified dwelling.
In a hundred castles we could name, the pit is immediately below the
hall--in Hermitage it was lower still; and though, perhaps, it was no
worse than many others in Scotland, to poor Konrad, who, on the day (or
night, for both were alike there) succeeding the combat in the valley,
found himself a captive therein, never, as he imagined, did human
cruelty devise a den more horrible. But he knew not of the _oubliettes_
of Linlithgow and St. Andrews.
He found himself buried, entombed, and lost in pitchy darkness.
The atmosphere was close, and damp, and still--so very still, that he
heard the regular and monotonous plash of a drop of fetid water, that
fell at intervals from one of the long stalactites that hung pendant
from the low slimy arch of the vault.
He was cold as death, and miserable, and broken in spirit.
The memory of Park's fall, and his own capture, seemed like a dream; all
was chaos and confusion in his mind. Altogether, he had but an
indistinct sense of existence; and after a time became without one idea
of where he was. A torpor was stealing over him, conduced by the
monotonous plash, plash, plashing of the before-mentioned drop into the
little pool below it; at times, it seemed to echo through the vault like
the fall of a goblet of water, for to this only sound his sharpened
sense had become painfully acute.
Still the benumbing torpor continued gradually to steal over him, and at
length he slept on the damp, moist floor of that frightful vault, which
yet survives, and is recorded in the Scottish annals as being the scene
of a terrible event.
He slumbered; but even then his mind was active and sleepless. His last
waking thoughts were of Anna; his first dream was of his home--and old
Norway, in all its stern beauty of wood, and rock, and mountain, rose
before him. He saw his native hills, with their blue and hoary summits
of thunder-riven rock, towering far into the azure sky in shadowy
masses; and he could trace the rough paths where he had often pursued
the bear and the roebuck, diminished to threads in the distance, as they
wound up precipices overhung by the gloomy pine. He saw grey Bergen on
its chasmed cliff, and Christiana's rock-bound bay. Old and familiar
faces were before him; loved voices were in his ear; and, with a sob of
astonishment and joy, he awoke.
A lambent and flickering light was burning near him; like a great
glow-worm, it glimmered in the fetid atmosphere. He thought some spirit
of the darkness was visible: to this day the Norse are full of such
superstitions; but though his eyes (after being nearly twelve hours in
such intense darkness) ached on beholding the lamp, he soon perceived
the dun outline of a human countenance peering into the gloom, with its
eyes shaded by a hand.
It was the saucy face of French Paris, Bothwell's favourite and most
trusted page, to whom he had given particular charge of Konrad, that
none other should approach him, or become acquainted with the important
secret he possessed.
"Where the devil art thou?" he asked; "for I cannot see the length of my
own nose in this accursed pit. O ho! good-morrow--I see thee now. So
thou art the rider who was with John of Park when he so sorely wounded
my lord, who now lieth in deadly peril."
"If thy lord is the Earl of Bothwell, I would thank God for the tidings,
if I dared to thank him for aught so unchristian. How dares he to
confine me in such a place as this?"
"Lest thou shouldst slip through his fingers like a Teviot eel," replied
the page with a grin. "Thou art not a Scot, by thine accent; how camest
thou to be involved with my lord, the Earl, in _that_ affair--thou
wottest of what I mean? I am somewhat curious about it. 'Twas I who
conducted thee to his countess, and then to the postern door at Bothwell
castle."
"True--I remember thee now."
"Why art thou here?"
"By a combination of circumstances over which I had no immediate
control; because I knew not the merits, and saw not the issue, of this
border war, in which I had taken service; by destiny--or the guidance of
an evil spirit--which you will."
"Holy Paul!" said the page, retreating a pace or two, but immediately
advancing again, for he was burning with curiosity to learn the Earl's
secret. "If thou talkest thus, I must have thee burned for sorcery!"
"Thou! And who art thou?" asked Konrad, with more surprise than scorn.
"One whose favour may set thee free, but whose anger may leave thee here
to rot," replied the pert page, assuming an aspect of dignity. "Dost
thou not know that thy life is in my hands, and that, instead of leaving
thee the choice food and good wine sent thee by the Captain of
Hermitage, I may keep them and leave thee to perish, even as the Knight
of Dalhousie perished here two hundred years ago. Ha! dost thou see
these relics?" continued the young ruffian, raising his light and
revealing a few human bones, and part of a jaw, lying amid the little
pool before mentioned, and amid which the monotonous plash of the drop
constantly made concentric circles to glitter and expand.
"What terrible history is concealed here!" exclaimed Konrad, with a
louring brow.
"A history well known alike in Lothian and Liddesdale," replied the
page, drawing nearer him with a horror that he could not repress; "and a
foul shame it is to Christian men, that these poor bones have lain here
so long unburied. But verily the place hath few tenants."
"Whose are they?" asked Konrad, with deep interest.
"As Heaven hears me, the spirit that once tenanted these poor remains
was that of as brave a knight as ever rode to battle!" rejoined the
page, with a sudden earnestness; for the aspect of the mouldering bones,
lying amid that green and slimy pool, and the gloom of the black
dungeon, were not without producing a strong effect on his feelings and
fancy. "Listen! It was in the year of our Redemption 1341, when David
II. sat upon the Scottish throne. In those days, when the southern
Edwards, with all the chivalry of England, the tribes of Wales, the
kerne of Ireland, the knights of Normandy, Guienne, and Aquitaine, and
all the lanzknechts of Flanders and Alinayne, strove for many a year on
many a bloody field to win broad Scotland to their crown, this
stronghold of Hermitage belonged to one of the bravest of the Scottish
patriots, Sir William Douglas, the Lord of Liddesdale, whose feats of
arms had won him the title of Flower of Chivalry. His dearest friend and
most loved companion in arms was Sir Alexander Ramsay, Lord of
Dalhousie, on the wooded Esk, one of those brave knights whose mailed
bosoms had formed in all these wicked wars the best bulwarks of Scottish
liberty. In every field, Douglas and Dalhousie were side by side in
rivalry and love; at the rescue of Black Agnes, the Lady of Dunbar, and
at that brave battle on the Muir of Edinburgh, where the banner of Guy
Count of Namur was beaten to the earth, and his Flemish bands destroyed.
"It chanced in these wars, that Ramsay, having won by storm the strong
castle of Roxburgh, King David bestowed on him the sheriffdom of that
district, an office which, by ancient usage, had ever appertained to the
lords of Hermitage and Liddesdale.
"From that hour a deadly and a mortal hatred possessed the heart of
Douglas; and on his knees before the altar of St. Bryde, in
Douglas-dale, he made a deep and impious vow of vengeance. Hearing that
the new sheriff was administering justice in the kirk of the blessed
Mary at Hawick, he entered the town at the head of his vassals; and the
Knight of Dalhousie, having no suspicion of injury from his old friend
and comrade in arms, was easily taken at vantage, wounded, and
overpowered.
"Stripped of his armour, and loaded with chains, he was dragged through
many a wild moss and moorland to this strong fortress, and _here_ into
this deep vault his captor thrust him down, manacled and bleeding with
all his rankling wounds, and here the doomed man was left to die!
"It is a dark story, and I see thou startest. Here the wounded knight
was left to struggle with hunger and with thirst, with cold and with
agony. Above the place of his confinement there lay a heap of corn, and
through a joint in the arch the grains fell one by one, yet few and far
between--even as the water now drops from the same place--and with these
he prolonged life for seventeen days, despite the agony of his festering
wounds. On the seventeenth he died!
"And here his bones still lie, for the dampness of the vault has
preserved them."[*]
[*] Some of these remains were found by Sir W. Scott, and by him
presented to the Earl of Dalhousie. He was taken on the 20th June,
sayeth the "Black Book of Scone."--_Mag. Absalom._
"Rest him, God!" ejaculated Konrad, with a shudder which he could not
repress.
"Such will be thy fate if thou art left here!"
"Whatever Heaven hath in store for me is welcome. I am tired of life."
"Thou snufflest like a Reformer. What! tired of life, and thou so
young?"
"'Tis the verity!" responded the prisoner with a sigh; "but what
thinkest thou, page, will be my fate?"
"Why, if my lord dieth of his wound, thou shalt assuredly hang over
Hermitage gate; if he recovers, thou shalt hang, too, as a disturber of
the borders, and be gibbeted somewhere to feed the crows, and frighten
thy comrades. So, it is hang any way!" added the page, with one of his
malicious grins.
A deep sigh, inspired as much perhaps by anger as by grief, heaved
Konrad's breast; but he made no reply.
"How now!" exclaimed the page, as through the open door of the dungeon
the report of a falconet on the tower-head came faintly down the
windings of the narrow stair that led to the vault; "that will be a raid
of the Elliots or Armstrongs! They will all be riding to revenge thy
comrade, John of Park; if so, thou wilt soon have company here. But lo,
now--eat and drink while thou mayest; and omit not to bless Sir John
Hepburn of Bolton, who sent thee this good fare in lieu of oatcakes and
cold water."
Another and another falconet rang on the bartisan of the great tower of
Hermitage, and, double-locking the door of the pit, French Paris hurried
away.
*CHAPTER XI.*
*BOTHWELL REVIVES AN EARLY DREAM.*
_Fiorello_.--Gramercy for the boon!
Seek, sir, henceforth, the love of those you trust,
_And never more seek mine_. Sir, fare you well!
Excuse the blunder which beguiled me hither;
And hie you, if conveniently you can,
To some more distant spot than whence you came.
_The Virgin Widow._
Let us change the scene.
Clad in a rich gown of damask furred with miniver, a white satin
doublet, and hose of russet velvet, the Earl was reclining on a
well-cushioned settle, or what would now be named a sofa. A velvet cap
was drawn well over his brow, to conceal the bandaging that retained
certain cooling and healing herbs upon the scar which the moss-trooper's
axe had inflicted, and which Mass John of the Priesthaugh had carefully
dressed about an hour before.
The great noble was in a dreamy mood; for he too had his visions, like
poor Konrad, who occupied the terrible pit where Dalhousie died, some
eighty feet below. The boom of the brass falconets was barely
decernible in the remote apartment of the Earl, so massive were its
walls, so close its wainscoting, and so thick the tapestry that lined
it; and he slept on undisturbed by the warlike sound.
He dreamt of Anna; her upbraiding eyes were fixed on his, and he heard
her voice like a confused murmur in his ear; every expression of her
face was before him as of old, by turns tender and love-like, haughty
and sad. Then her features changed, and rapidly as thought became those
of his unhappy and almost forgotten Countess, in all her pallid beauty,
her infantile smiles and black beseeching eyes. Anon they changed
again, and, fading or altering into others, grew more and more like
those of Mary the Queen, with her pure broad open brow, and deep dark
thoughtful eye; her aquiline nose and haughty nostrils; her smiling
mouth and dimpled chin. A sound awoke him.
He started, and arose to find the very face of which he dreamt before
him; the same eyes and laughing little mouth, so full of archness and
drollery.
It was, indeed, Mary the Queen, in her little lace coif, her velvet hood
and ruff, her long diamond stomacher and longer fardingale, just as we
see her in the old paintings at Holyrood. She was leaning on the arm of
her sister, the stately Countess of Argyle; the Earl of Moray, Hob
Ormiston, and French Paris, were grouped, with several ladies, a pace or
two behind, and all were attentively regarding Bothwell, whose strong
figure, cased in his close-fitting vest and velvet hose, seemed a model
of manly symmetry and grace, as his features, dark, regular, and
classic, did of that kind of beauty which we find in the pictures of the
old Italians--the white and martial forehead, with its short black curly
hair, the straight nose and jetty eyebrows, the curved mouth, and
well-defined chin.
"Madame--Madame! is this a dream?" exclaimed Bothwell, starting from his
couch, and, though giddy with debility, kneeling before her with a
reverence almost unknown in the Scottish court since her father's days.
"To what is my house of Hermitage indebted for the unmerited honour of
this sudden visit? Have the Liddesdale thieves been at Jedburgh gates?"
"Oh, Jesu Maria!--no," said the Queen. "I hope that if all the Elliots
came, and the Armstrongs too, that with Erskine's archer guard and the
burgesses, we could have maintained yonder town, with its tall
bastel-houses, till the lord warden sent his lances to our rescue."
"Then hath the English marshal of Berwick or his prickers dared"--began
the Earl again, as with a kindling eye he looked round for his sword.
"Nay, nay, my dear Earl--thou thinkest ever but of blows and battle.
Thou hast none other than thy dull-witted messenger to thank for a visit
from all this good company."
"Pate of Prickinghaugh!"
"Ah, _mon Dieu!_ the same," replied Mary, laughing at the name. "Well,
this Maitre Preekinhaw brought us tidings that thou wert either dead or
dying. So, setting out with a small train from Jedburgh, with my noble
brother, the Earl, (here Bothwell, with an eye that was full of irony,
exchanged a profound bow with Moray,) I rode hither, intent on learning
in person the truth or falsity of this sad news; and that I might, if
they were so, avenge on the whole sirname of Elliot, the loss of the
only Scottish peer that would draw his sword at the command of his
sovereign. So you see, Monseigneur Bothwell, that whatever the
Protestants say of poor Mary Stuart, she is not ungrateful for service
promptly rendered."
"Oh, Madame!" said the Earl, in a thick voice, as he clasped his hands,
and bent his eyes on the ground; "you overpower me! I never deemed thee
otherwise than something angelic, and such I find thee now."
"Ah!" replied the Queen merrily, as she seated herself; "every pretty
woman is so in the eyes of a brave gallant!"
The Earl bowed profoundly; but how little did the gay and thoughtless
queen divine the secret sentiment that made his voice to tremble, and
his eye, that was ever so clear, and calm, and dark, to flash and
sparkle.
While French Paris and little Calder served round confections,
refreshments, and wine, in slender Venetian glasses, fruit on silver
salvers, and milk-possets in crystal jugs; and while the grave Earl of
Moray, the burly Hob of Ormiston, and the courtly young Lieutenant of
the Archers, chatted with the ladies at the further end of that long and
stately chamber, the lofty and painted casements of which overlooked the
steep bank on which the double donjon of the castle rose, and from its
height commanded a view of the far-stretching Hermitage, winding like an
azure snake through the green and pastoral valley--the queen, with all
that vivacity and French gaiety of manner which were so natural to her,
was detailing the particulars of that celebrated ride to Hermitage,
which was to bear so prominent a place in all the histories of her
actions, and which has always been adduced by her enemies as a proof of
what had never entered her mind--a passion for Bothwell, to whom she had
never evinced any other sentiment than gratitude.
On hearing the alarming tidings of his death, as brought by Pate of
Prickinghaugh, she had immediately set out from Jedburgh; and,
accompanied by her brother Moray and a slender retinue, penetrated into
the wild and mountainous district between Liddesdale and Teviotdale--a
journey twenty-five miles in length--obstructed by every local
difficulty; steep rocks and deep morasses, foaming waters, peat haggs,
and slippery scaurs--to her a terra incognita--where the solitary peels
of moss-troopers and savage outlaws, perched like eagles' nests on the
hill-summits, overlooked the pastoral glens below. In an almost
impassable morass her horse sank to the saddle-girths; and she was only
rescued from her perilous condition with the utmost difficulty. The
place is still named _The Queen's Mire_.
Of all these past dangers she spoke with a raillery that made yet more
charming her great beauty, which the exercise of so long a ride in the
pure morning air had greatly enhanced; and the Earl, as he gazed upon
her, thought in his secret heart that never was there a being more
beautiful and glorious.
Anna and his Countess were alike forgotten!
Mary, the dream of his boyhood at the gay Tournelles--Mary, the bright,
the beautiful, and joyous girl of seventeen--rose on his memory as he
had seen her, when bestowed in marriage on the sickly Dauphin. Now that
being, so long and so hopelessly his idol, was before him, expanded into
one of those magnificent women that are believed to exist only in the
most enthusiastic visions of the poet and the painter; she was with him,
seated by his side, in his own stronghold of Hermitage, amid the
wilderness of Liddesdale.
They were looking into each other's dark eyes, and Bothwell felt his
heart tremble; for thoughts both wild and strange were floating through
his mind. But they faded away when again he gazed on the pure serene
brow and clear full gaze of Mary, who in her heedlessness and conscious
rectitude, never dreamt of the view the Earl was taking, and the
censorious world would yet take, of that unfortunate visit to his castle
of Hermitage.
"And so it was the falsity of this drunken jackman, Pate of the
Prickinghaugh, that led your grace into this deadly peril," said
Bothwell. "Sir John of Bolton," he added to his friend, who stood near,
and who, at a silver chain, wore an embossed key of the same metal,
indicative of his office as Captain of Hermitage; "thou wilt look well
to this, and see if a month or two in the pit will cure him of exceeding
in his cups for the future."
"Nay, nay!" exclaimed the Queen, turning pale, "God and Saint Mary
forbid! If I forgive him, surely thou well mayest."
"Your Majesty will excuse me--I am sufficiently rebuked by that glance
of displeasure. But this man is only a rascally border pricker."
"True, my lord," said Hepburn; "but one over whom thou hast no control."
"How! doth he not follow my banner?"
"Yes--but merely as an excuse to plunder the Elliots on the one hand and
the Armstrongs on the other. He brings twenty tall troopers, all
well-lanced and horsed; his kinsman, Watt of the Puddingburn, brings as
many more from his tower on the Liddle; and these would each and all be
notable disturbers of the wardenrie, did it not suit Pate's humour at
present to follow your banner."
"Droll personages!" said the Queen; "but, Lord Bothwell, thou shouldest
feel nought but gratitude to this moss-trooper, when it is to his
mistake alone thou art indebted for this visit from me."
"I was upon the point of saying so," rejoined the Earl, who felt, he
knew not why, a confused sense of awkwardness and timidity, hitherto
unknown to him; and this caused pauses in the conversation which served
to increase his confusion; for the more he taxed his mind for gay
topics, the more seriously he became embarassed.
"Fidele," said the Queen, in her softest tone to a favourite Italian
greyhound, which, with a silver bell jangling at its neck, leaped
gracefully upon her brocaded dress. "Fair Fidele, of all the world thou
alone lovest thy mistress best; and in good sooth I may well love thee
better than the world, for thou lovest me for myself alone. Ah!
Monsieur Bothwell, thou knowest not how dearly I love all little dogs,
and parrots, and pigeons, and every little animal. I have quite a large
family to feed every morning at Holyrood. Monsieur my uncle, the
Cardinal de Guise, has sent me a beautiful cage full of red-legged
partridges; and my kinsman, the Marquis d'Elboeuff, has brought me from
Madame my aunt, the good Prioress of Rheims, a vase full of the most
beautiful little fishes, which I mean to put into Lochmaben. I fear
thou wilt think all this very childish in me, who am a queen--and queen
of such an austere people;" and, while shaking a bunch of grapes at the
leaping hound, she began to sing--
"Bon jour, mon coeur,
Bon jour, ma douce vie!
Bon jour, mon oeil,
Bon jour, ma chere amie!"
She ceased suddenly; the hound looked up wistfully in her face, her eyes
filled with tears, and Bothwell seemed disturbed.
"Your Majesty is thinking of France?" said he in a low tone.
"Nay, I am thinking of poor David Rizzio," replied the Queen sadly.
"'Twas a song of his. But I have heard it elsewhere."
"You loved much to hear this old man sing."
"Oh yes! for the long forgotten memories, the buried hopes, and all the
tenderness of his soft French, and softer Italian airs, called up within
me--drew me ever away from the bitter present to brood upon the happy
past, or to muse upon the dubious future. Oh, thou canst not know how
dearly I love music! Music and sunshine--I wish I was a bird! Poor old
Rizzio!" she continued, with sparkling eyes. "Though indifferent in
person, he was the best in the suite of the Count de Mezezzo, the
Savoyard ambassador; and was a gentleman of such attainments as few in
Scotland save thyself can boast. How my heart fires within me, when I
think of the dark and savage noblesse who destroyed him! So illiterate
and unlettered; and yet these base barons, not one of whom could sign
his own barbarous name, were the men who broke my gallant father's
heart, who debarred my mother the rights of sepulchre, and who have
dared to become the spiritual judges of my people, levelling in the dust
the church that was founded on a rock, and against which not even the
gates of hell were to prevail!"
"For Heaven's sake, madame, hush!--walls have ears."
"_Les murielles ont des orielles_; it was a saying of _ma bon mere_,
Catharine de Medicis," said the Queen ironically.
"Nothing that is said in Hermitage shall go beyond its walls," replied
the Earl, who was pleased to find that the courtiers at the lower end of
the room were intently viewing the landscape, or observing a game at
Troy between the Lady Argyle and the flippant page, French Paris, who
was a great proficient. The whole group was partly concealed by a loose
festoon of arras that divided the chamber. "But," continued the Earl,
who despised Rizzio as an upstart favourite, and, like all the nobility,
regretted his death but little; "the destruction of a royal favourite is
nothing new in Scotland. There was the Raid of Lauder brig, where Angus
and the nobles hanged half King James's court over the parapet in
horse-halters--but I beseech your majesty to think of these things no
more."
"True! Few can recall the past with pleasure, and Mary Stuart least of
all," replied the Queen, whose melancholy eyes filled again with tears;
and then Bothwell knew that she was thinking of the weak and profligate
debauchee, on whom, in the first flush of youth and love, she had thrown
away her hand and heart, and crown; "so pray, my good lord, let us talk
of whatever is most pleasing to yourself."
"Then I must talk of--thee."
"Ah!" rejoined the Queen, with one of those artless and engaging smiles
which a pretty woman always assumes on receiving a compliment; "and do
you really think often of me?"
"Madame," replied the Earl in a low voice, while his colour came and
went, and he could hear his heart beating; "I have thought more than I
have ever dared to tell."
"Jesu Maria!" laughed the Queen, clapping her white hands; "have you
lost your tongue?"
"Nay, madame--my heart!"
"That is very serious--but search for another, Monseigneur Bothwell."
The voice of the Earl trembled as he replied, "I want no other
but--_thine_!"
At this daring avowal, a blush crossed the queen's cheek; but, supposing
that the Earl was merely pursuing a jocular strain of gallantly, she
replied--
"Oh fie! remember, Lord Earl, that at Versailles, the old hunting-lodge
of Francis I. (all that is long--oh! very long--ago), thou didst taunt
me with being without a heart."
"I did, as I now remember me," said Bothwell, over whose brow a shadow
passed. "That was ere your grace became Dauphiness--yet it seems as if
'twere yesterday. But you have a heart, madame--one that is warm,
affectionate, and well worth the winning."
"Well!" replied Mary, rising with a cold and haughty smile, as she
thought of Darnley; "it is already lost and won."
"By one who appreciates its value?"
The queen gave him a glance full of reproach, for she felt all the taunt
contained in the quiet query.
"I hope so!" she said.
"Dear madame," replied the Earl, in the same low, earnest voice; "you
can neither deceive yourself nor me by these replies. The Lord Darnley
is my foe; but you are aware that I speak more in a sentiment of dutiful
love towards your majesty, than enmity to him who stirred up John of
Park, and the whole clan Elliot, to slay me. On him thou hast
sacrificed a love the bravest of our Scottish peers, and the proudest
princes of Europe--Charles of France, Carlos of Spain, and the Archduke
of Austria--have sued for in vain. Oh, madame!" continued the Earl,
with pathos in his voice, while his cheek flushed and his eye kindled as
he recalled the boyish love of his early day, when he had first seen
Mary at the court of France. "I know that the human heart can love
truly, fondly, and sincerely, but once--and once only. Let that love be
blighted or crushed, and all future impressions are but fancies, to be
begun with a smile and relinquished without a sigh. Oh, yes! there is
an amount of love, of ardour, of agony, despair, that we feel but once,
and then we become deadened and callous. Oh! who in a second love ever
felt the same freshness, the same depth of anxiety, the same fear and
hope and joy, that alternately filled his heart in the dawn of that
first passion, that grew like a flower in Eden, and fills the whole
creation with happiness, rendering us blind and oblivious of all save
the object we love?"
"And since when has your volatile lordship known all this?" asked Mary,
with her usual raillery.
"Madame, since I first beheld--thee!" replied the Earl; and, borne away
by the gush of his old and long-cherished love, he sank on his knee, and
pressed to his lips the hand of Mary, over whose fair brow and beautiful
face a deep and crimson blush of anger passed, as the shadow of a summer
cloud flits over a corn-field.
"Rise, my lord!" she said with a hauteur that froze her admirer. "Lord
Bothwell, thou art in a dream!"
"It was, indeed, a dream," replied the Earl sadly, as he thought of the
double vows that separated them for ever. "St. Bothan help me! a dream
of other days, that can return no more! Oh, madame, I pray you, pardon
me"----
"I do pardon thee," replied the Queen, with one of her calm smiles; but
added, significantly, "I think 'tis time we were riding from Hermitage."
"So soon! after your escape--your fatigue--and when a storm is
gathering? See, the peaks of Millenwood-fell and Tudhope-head are
veiled in mist."
"This instant!" replied Mary, with one of those gestures which there was
no disputing. "Jane, Lady Argyle, we are about to depart. Sir John
Hepburn, summon our train."
"Permit me, madame, to accompany you. Ho!--French Paris--my armour!"----
"Lord Bothwell--in thy wounded state! I command thee, nay!"
"True--true; I thank your majesty," stammered the Earl, whose head swam
between the effect of his wound and this interview. "But Hob Ormiston,
with his train of lances, will see you to the gates of Jedburgh."
In five minutes more Mary was gone, after being only two hours in
Hermitage, as the Lord Scrope saith quaintly, "to Bothwell's great
pleasure and contentment." There was a clatter of horses in the court,
a discharge of brass cannon from the keep, and all again was as still in
the great and solitary castle of Hermitage as in the pit below it.
From a window the wounded Earl watched the train of the queen and her
ladies, the tall and mail-clad figures of Ormiston and his men, with
their long spears glinting in the glow of the western sun, as they
followed the windings of the mountain stream, and traversed the long and
desolate dell that led to Jedburgh.
They disappeared in the distance; and then, overcome by excitement and
loss of blood, the Earl threw himself upon a couch, from which he did
not rise for many days.
On Mary's return to Jedburgh, a severe cold, caught during this visit to
Hermitage, ended in a fever, that was aggravated by a pain or
constitutional weakness in her side, of which she had long complained;
and notwithstanding that she lay on a couch of sickness so deadly, that
Monsieur Picauet, her physician, despaired of her life, the conduct of
Darnley was singularly cruel and ungrateful. A letter of the French
ambassador shews, that he treated with contempt the tidings sent to him
of the queen's illness, and that he remained spending his time in
idleness and dissipation at Glasgow. It is probable that though his
absence wounded her pride, it caused her no great grief, as she had
almost ceased to love him.
The Earl of Bothwell, though not without a strong dash of that
profligacy which tainted the Scottish nobles in the age succeeding the
Reformation, was immensely inferior as a _roue_ to Darnley; whose
coldness, insolence, and brutality, formed a vivid contrast to the
artfully preferred addresses, readily performed services, and gallant
demeanour, of the handsome Earl.
A month passed away.
Bothwell remained at Hermitage under the care of Mass John; the queen at
Jedburgh under the more able hands of M. Picauet, and slowly recovering
from her illness. Hob Ormiston, and other barons, guarded her with a
thousand lances, while Darnley remained at his father's house of
Limmerfield, near Glasgow, wiling away the days in hunting and hawking
by Kelvin grove and Campsie fells; and spending the nights in dicing,
drinking, and "wantonesse" in the bordels and hostellaries of the Tron
and Drygate.
Meanwhile, Konrad continued to be a close prisoner at Hermitage; for the
Earl, though urged on one hand by Ormiston to dispatch him by brief
border law, was advised on the other, by the gentle Hepburn of Bolton,
to transmit him to the Justice Court.
Thus he wavered; for a sentiment of pity, while it withheld the
execution of either of these measures, struggled with a sense of the
danger that might spring from the secret his prisoner possessed; and
then at times there came a demon's whisper that urged the proud Earl to
destroy!
Konrad neither sued for mercy or liberty; but feeling happy in the
nourished hope that Anna was now under the sure protection of the queen,
he awaited with patience whatever fate had in store for him.
Thus day after day rolled on, and he never saw other face than that of
French Paris; who, as the most trusted of all Bothwell's numerous
retinue, was alone permitted to approach him.
*CHAPTER XII.*
*ALISON CRAIG.*
And death and life she hated equally,
And nothing saw, for her despair,
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity,
No comfort anywhere;
Remaining utterly confused with fears,
And ever worse with growing time,
And ever unrelieved by dismal tears,
And all alone in crime.
_Tennyson._
Poor Anna! All that she had made Konrad endure by her desertion, was
now endured by her in turn, with the additional bitterness, that the
retribution was merited; and the memory of the last glance of Konrad's
melancholy eyes, when he parted with her at the gate of the hostellary,
was indelibly engraven on her mind.
The Earl of Morton, the most treacherous, cruel, and debauched man of
that profligate age, had her now completely in his power, and could,
when he chose, make her his victim either by secret flattery or open
force; he could keep her in some quiet dwelling of the city, or send her
to his strong castle of Dalkeith, where she would never have been heard
of again; but this godly upholder of the new faith preferred the former
and more gentle course.
In St. Mary's Wynd, not many yards from the famous Red Lion, and on the
west side thereof, stood a small edifice, having three rows of gothic
windows, the upper being more than half on the roof, all grated by half
circular baskets of iron, and having a low-ribbed doorway, bearing on
its lintel a pious legend in old contracted Latin.
In Catholic days this had been a convent for Cistertian nuns, and an
hospital founded and dedicated in honour of the blessed Virgin Mary, by
some pious citizen, whose name and era local history has failed to
record. This hospital was so poor, that its inmates were supported by
the voluntary contributions of the good and charitable; its revenues
were so small, that the salary of the chaplain in 1499 was only sixteen
shillings and eight-pence yearly.
The change of manners and religion had wrought their wonders here as
elsewhere; for the little gothic oratory, where the fair Cistertians in
their white tunics, scapularies, and hoods, had offered up their prayers
to God, and to his mother their patron; the little hospital, where the
sisters of mercy had attended to the sick and infirm; the kitchen, where
they fed the poor; and the gloomy dormitories, where they slept on their
hard pallets between the nocturnal and the matin prayers--had all been
wofully perverted from such purposes; for, favoured by the Earl of Arran
and other gay courtiers, on the universal plunder of the temporalities,
this edifice had been gifted to Alison Craig, a celebrated courtesan,
who, though living under protection of the "godly Erl of Arrane," as
Knox tells us, in language which we choose not to repeat, yet contrived
to be on very friendly terms with many other nobles, some of whom were
his deadly enemies.
Though deeming her a lady of high birth, the appearance of Alison Craig
did not prepossess the timid Anna much in her favour, when, on the noon
of the day after parting with Konrad, she was introduced by Morton with
much mock formality. The dame was seated before a little mirror of
thick plate-glass inserted in a ponderous oak frame, that nearly filled
up the recess of a little window, overlooking what had once been the
convent garden, but was now a piece of waste ground, extending to the
back of a neighbouring close. The windows at the other end overlooked
the wynd, which was then a central and great thoroughfare, being the
only entrance to the city from the southern roads.
The apartment was in confusion; a broken sword and a velvet mantle were
lying on the floor, attesting that a brawl had taken place there
overnight; the candles had all burned down in their sockets, and the
girandoles were covered with grease; a close smell of wine and perfume
made the atmosphere of the panneled chamber oppressive.
Alison Craig was tall and corpulent, and about thirty-five years of age.
Her features, which were not without beauty, were somewhat coarse, and
undisguisedly bold and wanton in expression. She wore no other
head-dress than her own luxuriant hair extravagantly frizzled, and
having a bob-jewel dropping on her forehead, which was as white as
daffodil water could make it. She wore a huge double ruff, a long
peaked stomacher of damask brocade, a petticoat of prodigious
circumference, and sleeves barrelled and hooped; while, contrary to the
modest fashion of the time, she displayed very much of a fair neck and
full bosom, which the Earl of Morton immediately kissed on his entrance,
to the no small astonishment of Anna, who began to think it was the
fashion of the country.
A slovenly damsel was rouging the pallid cheeks of the fair Cyprian,
whose plump fingers were toying with a rare jewel, that Morton
recognised as one he had frequently seen at the neck of King Henry, whom
he knew to be one of Alison's patrons, though a mortal foe to Arran,
Chatelherault, and all the clan of Hamilton.
"Sweetheart, good-morrow," said the Earl, running his fingers through
the perfumed tresses of Alison. "I have brought thee a pretty page, of
whom, as thou valuest the friendship of Morton, particular care must be
taken."
"What is the friendship of Morton to me?" she asked with an air of
pretty disdain. "Thou seest this bauble?"
"'Twas once that blockhead, Darnley's. Woman, thou holdest that which
has been worn by the most beautiful queen in Europe!"
"And may be worn by a queen again, gif this giglet Mary were dead or set
aside."
"How?" said Morton, knitting his brow, for the woman's insolence
irritated him, "at what dost thou dare to hint?"
"What Darnley has dared to promise--here, ay--here in this very
chamber!"
"Go to, woman! thou art stark mad, and he had been drunk, like a fool as
he is. But let us not quarrel, pretty sweetheart; for seest thou"----and
here the Earl whispered something in the ear of the woman, whose eyes
were lighted with a malicious smile as she surveyed Anna. "Thou wilt
see to this? I know thee of old, sweet dulcibelle--eh?"
"My lord, when thou art good to me, I will obey thy pleasure in all
things."
"And now tell me what news are abroad in the city, for I have not been
within its gates yet?"
"Nought but Bothwell's expedition to the borders, and the queen's wrath
at the luke-warm loyalty and cautious valour of such as thee, and thy
boon-fellow the Earl of Moray."