"Thou forgettest she is of the Church of Rome, and that, being so, she
may not wed again. So what availeth a divorce?"
"Psha! 'tis long since I thought much about the Church of Rome."
"I am sure his Holiness, poor carle! deplored thy loss; but here is
French Paris with our horses. Dismount, Nick, and give thy dapple to
Bolton; so now for Craigmillar--ho! I go at all events."
They mounted and set forth by the old bridle road that ascended the hill
of St. John, and in a few minutes the great facade of the palace, the
tall and spectral edifices of the Canongate, the city, with its walls
and gates and twinkling lights, was left behind, as they debouched upon
the open country, which was all wood, and marsh, and pasture land, from
the outer walls to the castle of the Provost. On their right, for a
mile or two, lay the common muir of the city, bordered by the bleak
hills of Braid; and on the left lay Salisbury's ridgy craigs and
Arthur's seat, with the deep blue loch of Duddingstone washing its base,
reflecting the stars in its bosom, and the dark shadow of the wooded
knoll, where, then a ruin, lay the old Saxon kirk in solitude.
Skirting the lake, they struck into the horse-way, that, between
thickets of fir, led straight to the venerable stronghold of the knights
of Gourtoun, which they saw looming before them in the starlight, with
its great square keep and double flanking towers, barbican, and ditch.
*CHAPTER XX.*
*THE PLOT THICKENS--THE CONFERENCE OF CRAIGMILLAR.*
There's many a feud still slumbering in its ashes,
Whose embers yet are red. Nobles we have
Stout as old Greysteel, and as hot as Bothwell.
_Auchindrane._
The celebrated conference of Craigmillar, is recorded too particularly
in our national history to be expatiated on here; nevertheless, a brief
notice is necessary to preserve the unity of the Magister Absalom's
narrative.
In the apartment of the Lord Argyle, in that old feudal fortress, met
Bothwell and his brother-in-law Huntly, with Moray--openly their friend,
and secretly their foe--for frequently had they conspired each other's
death by secret fraud and open violence; and Moray had personally
defeated, and caused the death of the old Earl, George of Huntly, at the
recent battle of Corrichie. There, too, came the secretary of state,
the great Sir William Maitland of Lethington, who, notwithstanding his
skill in government and statecraft, lost his head in the desperate game
of politics seven years after.
This conference was held around the dais on which stood the couch of
Argyle, who was labouring under a severe illness.
Long and eloquently the talented secretary expatiated on the evils that
had resulted to the Scottish people, from Mary's ill-assorted marriage
with the young and profligate Lord of Darnley; the rebellion it had
brought forth among the adherents of Chatelherault, in the west; among
the Gordons in the north; and the general discontent it had occasioned
by the peculiar religious tenets of the house of Lennox--a marriage
against which Master Knox had bitterly and abusively inveighed, and
which, to the loving, trusting, and devoted Mary, had become a source of
hourly misery; for the passing love of the profligate, unmindful of her
exalted rank, her matchless beauty, her sweetness of manner and charming
vivacity, had wandered to many inferior and unworthy objects. Among
these he had squandered his patrimony, and the revenues of a crown which
he disgraced; thus, completely estranging the heart of the queen, by a
career of insult, neglect, and riot; by the hourly scandals he committed
in her palaces, and chief of all by the murder of her harmless
secretary--thus, making the breach irreparable by his lacking the art
and condescension to repair it.
He spoke, too, of those powerful barons who were still enduring
banishment as accessories to the destruction of the hapless Rizzio,
whose overweening pride and Italian birth had been his only crime;
barons, noble in descent and venerated in name--the kinsmen of those he
addressed; the veteran Kerr, whose ponderous ghisarma had done his
country such service at Pinkiecleugh; Patrick Lord Ruthven, then lying
ill of a deadly sickness in an English frontier village; the Laird of
Pitarrow and the Tutor of Pitcurr all brave Scottish knights, who were
enduring great misery in the land of our hereditary foes, by the seizure
of their ancestral castles and the confiscation of their estates; and
who, by the subversion of the house of Lennox, would be restored to
their country and friends, and released from a degrading position among
Englishmen--and the change he would propose, could only be effected by
the divorce of the young queen from her cousin.
The Earl of Moray, (who, with Morton, had been the secretary's active
colleague in the Rizzio murder,) for private and ambitious views of his
own, from an early period had vehemently opposed her marriage, and even
proceeded so far as to take up arms against it in 1565. He still, as we
are told, "pursued the old conspiracy against the king's life," urging
the divorce with all his eloquence; and it may easily be believed that,
though his mortal foe, Bothwell seconded him on this occasion with an
ardour the source of which the wily Earl was not slow in perceiving;
and, together, they spared not the powers of invention and persuasion in
obviating Argyle's many doubts that the queen "would consent to a
measure so indelicate and unpleasant as a divorce."
Full of ardour, as this new ray of hope dawned upon him at a time so
opportune, the Earl was more eloquent even than the subtle secretary;
but the morning sun shone through the barred windows, as red amid
October clouds he rose above Soltra edge, ere they came to a decision;
and the Earl of Moray, and Lethington, the Machiavel of Mary's court,
undertook to urge the measure upon her with all their eloquence and
skill. Bothwell, with proper delicacy, and policy too, declined being
one of the deputation, for whose success he would have prayed, had he
not forgotten the way, in these days of reformation and misrule.
They left the apartment on their mission, for the queen was now up, and
said to be walking in the castle garden, where she daily offered food to
four stately swans that floated on the lake, which, in the form of a
gigantic P, (the first letter of Preston, the baron's name,) occupied
one half of the ground. It is still distinctly traceable to the
southward of the ruins, and was then supplied by the same springs that
filled the moat on the north.
Bothwell leaned against a window, watching the sunrise, and he could
hear his own heart beating. Exhausted by illness, and the fatigue of
the conference, Argyle, after his page had given him a drink of ptisan
from a silver cup, had fallen sound asleep. Huntly, perplexed and full
of bitter thoughts, turned over the leaves of an old brass-bound and
wooden-boarded tome--The Chronicle of ye novel and valiant Earle of
Flanders quho married the Devil; and he lay back, half-hidden in the
deep recess of the tower window, and never once addressed his
brother-in-law, to whose ambitious aspirations, and open neglect of his
beautiful sister, he was now no stranger. And thus, though his eyes
were on Jehan Trepperel's black-letter pages, it was perfectly apparent,
by his knitted brows and sullen silence, that his thoughts were
elsewhere.
The sun soared high in the blue vault; white as snow the morning mists
rolled up from the dell that was traversed by Lothian burn, on the
margin of which, a little hamlet of neatly ornamented cottages had been
built for the French attendants of Mary; and these, though changed in
aspect, are still known as Little France. The pale smoke ascended in
columns into the pure air from the village of Niddry Mareschal, which,
with its chapel, dedicated to the Holy Virgin by Wauchope, baron of
Niddry, nestled among the brown autumnal copsewood to the east. The
woods of Edmiston were bare and yellow; and the hill on which the lords
of Craigmillar had reared up their strong square tower of the twelfth
century, was arid with whins, and gloomy with clumps of the dark
Scottish fir.
The time, and importance of the circumstances under which he viewed it,
deeply impressed every feature of that morning landscape on the Earl's
memory. His fate, and that of Scotland too, hung perhaps upon the
queen's decision; and love and pride, ambition to achieve, and revenge
to gratify, all kindled a glow of anxiety in his bosom, that amounted to
torture.
Slowly the minutes passed on!
An hour wore away; he thought they would never reappear. Argyle still
slept, and Huntly had at last become absorbed in the pages of "The
Valziant Earle;" for, thanks to the tutorship of old Gavin Dunbar, he
could read a little.
At last the deputation returned; Huntly closed his book, Argyle woke up,
and Moray gave one of his cold and mild smiles on seeing Bothwell's
paleness and anxiety.
"She hath consented, sirs?" he asked in a breathless tone.
"Nay, my lord, she declined so peremptorily that we felt our heads shake
on our shoulders," replied the secretary; "and, by the rood! I never
knew my statecraft and natural oiliness of tongue so far fail me in
doing service to myself and friends. So here endeth all hope of a
divorce; for, though King Henry hateth and feareth her, as a burnt child
doth the fire, and though she wept bitterly--yea, like an abandoned
Dido, at his coldness and cruelty, and small love for her--she avows
that she will rather die than divorce him."
"And wherefore, thinkest thou, Sir William?"
"He was her first love, and only one; and, changed though he be, her
heart yet yearneth towards him; for though a queen, we find her a very
woman yet."
"Then farewell, my lords," said the Earl, assuming his cloak and mantle;
"I must wend townward betimes;" and he hurried to the court-yard,
summoning Ormiston and Hepburn, who had been stretched on benches by the
hall fire, the one asleep, and the other nursing his wrath. They all
mounted and galloped back to the city.
"Well, my lord, how went the conference?" asked Hob.
"She hath declined--proudly and wrathfully declined!"
"Cock and pie!"
"Yea, Ormiston, with anger and with tears."
"All woman's caprice. Tears! Tush! they should give thee hope. The
world"--
"Malediction on the world; it smiles on all but me."
"For thy comfort, I will tell thee a project which hath just been put
into my head.'
"By whom?"
"The devil, who, as thou knowest, never lies dead in the ditch.
Approach me"--and, raising his visor, Ormiston whispered something to
the Earl, who started; and Hepburn, who watched them with a keen eye,
exclaimed--
"Speak forth, Hob of Ormiston; for I see there is assassination in thine
eye, and here stand I, John Hepburn of Bolton, ready to be thine
abettor, in any deed of stouthrief or bloodshed; for I am frantic in
heart, frenzied in head, and ready to ride above my stirrups in the
blood of the Stuarts of Lennox!"
"No, no," replied the Earl; "Hepburn, thou hast thine own wrongs, and
mayest avenge them; but Ormiston, what is this thou hast said to me?
No, no, get thee behind me, thou tall limb of Satan, I will have none of
thy tempting."
Ormiston gave one of his deep hoarse laughs that shook every joint of
the mail in which his muscular figure was sheathed; and, spurring their
steeds, they rode furiously back to the city, by the old road that then
passed close to the solitary chapel of St. John the Baptist, on the
burgh-muir, and entered Edinburgh by the Old Horse Wynd, a street that
led to the porch of Holyrood Palace.
*CHAPTER XXI.*
*FATHER TARBET.*
Let us be patient! these severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise;
But often times celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.
_Longfellow._
Three months passed away, and the spring of 1567 was at hand.
Bothwell's love for Mary had grown more and more a part of his
existence, fostered as it was by the cunning of her brother the Earl of
Moray, whose boundless ambition made him hope that ultimately something
great might accrue to himself, were this wild passion properly moulded;
for Moray had early formed a hope of usurping the throne--a hope based
upon the queen's unpopularity as a catholic, his own great influence,
and the helpless infancy of his nephew, James, the little crown prince
of Scotland.
"He hated Darnley," says Robertson; "and was no less hated by him. In
order to be revenged, he entered into a sudden friendship with Bothwell,
his ancient and mortal enemy. He encouraged him to crime, by giving him
hopes of marrying the queen. All this was done with a design to throw
upon the queen herself the imputation of being accessory to the murder
(of Darnley), and under that pretext to destroy Bothwell next--to depose
and imprison her, and to retain the sceptre which he had wrested out of
her hands."
The "godly" Earl saw all this in the distance; and the mistaken
Bothwell, whose daring hopes and unruly ambition he fostered and
cajoled, now sought his society as sedulously as before he had shunned
it. He had long been rid of Anna, who had been conveyed to her native
Norway, in charge of Christian Alborg, in the Biornen; and as for his
Countess, who resided in her father's solitary castle of Strathbolgie,
among the woods and wilds of the Garioch, he never bestowed a thought on
her. While her own brother, borne away by the tide of politics, and
infected by the spirit of ambition and intrigue that pervaded all, had
resolved to sacrifice even her to the giant projects formed by Bothwell
and the nobles of his faction.
Mary had resided alternately in Holyrood, and at her summer castle of
Craigmillar; but since the scene by the garden-dial, had never again
given the Earl an opportunity of addressing her alone; and, even in the
presence of her courtiers, she curbed her natural vivacity and gaiety of
manner, and addressed him with marked reserve.
In the old tower of Holyrood, enclosed by strong grilles and vigilant
archers of the guard, Konrad passed three months in hopeless and tedious
monotony--hopeless, because he knew not what might be his fate; and
tedious, because unmarked by any change, save the day-dawn and the
sunset, the morning visit of the archer who brought his breakfast, and
the nightly one of the warder, who secured all gates and doors when St.
Giles' bell struck ten.
So passed the time.
Winter came, and the bleak summit of the Calton was covered with snow;
the trees around the palace, and the old orchards that crowned the
Abbeyhill, were leafless and bare; and drearily looked the chapel-royal
and ancient cloisters, with snow mantling their carved battlements and
time-worn knosps and pinnacles.
Then the poor prisoner sighed for his native hills, and night, after
night his dreams brought them before him in all their wild sublimity and
picturesque desolation. Again he was among them in all the happiness of
boyhood, with Anna by his side, as she had beea in the days when first
he learned to love her--when they had sought the wild daisy and the
mountain bee by the green base of the lofty Dovrefeldt, whose summit was
glistening with impending glaciers, and crowned by eternal snows; whose
old primeval forests were the abode of the bear and eagle, and its
unfathomed caverns, of Druid ghosts, of demon dwarfs, and one-eyed
gnomes; whose sides were terrible with chasms split by the hammer of
Thor, and overshadowed by the petrified giants whom, in the days of
other years, his breath had turned into stone. In his dreams, too, he
heard the dash of the free and boundless ocean that rolled on his native
shore; and he saw the vast Moskenstrom, that dark and fearful abyss,
around which for ever boil the eternal waves; in whose deep whirl the
largest wrecks are sucked like reeds down--down--to be carried through
the bowels of the inner earth, and vomited on the desolate shores of the
Bothnian Gulf; and from these stirring dreams of his distant home, and
the love and freedom of his boyhood, poor Konrad awoke, in agony to find
himself a captive and a slave, a prisoner without a crime; in a foreign
land, unpitied and uncared for, and without, a hope of reprieve, save
death. Often he exclaimed aloud, as he clasped his lettered hands; for
loneliness had taught him to commune with himself--
"How many a giant project have I formed in secresy and solitude, when
inspired alike by the ardour of youth and love, and here they end! Oh,
Anna! dearly hath thy perfidy cost the heart that loved thee well."
He was often visited by Hepburn of Bolton, who, by Bothwell's
directions, had him under his immediate guardianship; and, being a blunt
and soldierly young man, whose heart had been as yet unseared by
jealousy or disappointment, and then felt happy in the ideal love of his
Mariette, to console the prisoner, brought now and then a staup of
Rochelle under his mantle; and was wont to converse with him so
winningly and frankly, that he learned the particulars of his story, and
the errand which made him seek the Scottish shore.
"St. Bothan! but thou art a rare fellow, Master Konrad," said Bolton.
"Loving this damsel, and yet labouring to restore her to the arms of a
rival. Rare platonism--by the mass!"
"Sir, thou knowest not the pure sentiment of love that animated me. So
refined was my passion for this fair being, that so far from being happy
in possessing her, if she loved me not, I would have preferred to see
her happiness increased by the love of a rival"----
"Mass! if I understand either this or thee," said the lieutenant of the
archers, sipping his Rochelle with a face of perplexity. "But I pray
Heaven I may never have reason to argue thus with myself! A blow from
my poniard, or a bowshot at fifty paces, were worth a thousand such
homilies."
"Oh, yes!" continued Konrad, clasping his hands; "my love, though deep,
and passionate, and true, was divested of every sensual thought. I had
schooled myself to joy when Anna rejoiced; to sorrow when Anna wept."
"I am no casuist," said Bolton; "but I think thou feedest thy
imagination rather than thy love, which must die, as it is hopeless."
"It sought her happiness, not my own--and thus it cannot die."
The young Scottish knight could not perceive this altogether; but he
admired Konrad without knowing why, and, to cheer his solitude,
introduced to the same prison Sir James Tarbet, the old priest before
mentioned, and who had still a few weeks of his term of captivity to
endure--a captivity imposed on all who dared to celebrate mass, since it
had been forbidden by law as an idolatrous ceremony, dedicated to the
devil and scarlet woman.
This good man, who was now in his seventieth year, had served his
country in his youth at the fields of Flodden, Solway Moss, and
Pinkiecleugh, and, though bent by the infirmities of age and three
spear-wounds, somewhat of the old bearing of the knight shone through
the mild manner and chastened aspect of the Catholic priest; and in his
eye and voice there were those mild and winning expressions, which the
followers of Ignatius Loyola are said alone to acquire. His forehead was
high, and his failing locks were thin. His magnificent beard, white as
snow, lent a dignity to his aspect; and his figure had a stateliness, of
which not even his tattered doublet of grey cloth, his hodden mantle,
and ruffless shirt, could deprive it. And yet, though changed in aspect,
the time had been, when, sheathed in bright armour, he had spurred his
barbed horse through the thickest battalions of Surrey and Somerset;
and, in the rich vestments of a canon of St. Giles, had held aloft the
consecrated host on the great altar of that grand Cathedral, when the
sance bell rang, the organ pealed through all its echoing aisles, and
while thousands of Edina's best and bravest, her noblest and her
greatest, knelt with bent knees and bowed heads on the pavement of the
chancel, choir, and nave, before the glittering star of the upheld
Eucharist.
By his manner, when bestowing upon him a silent benediction, Eonrad at
once recognised a priest of the ancient church, and he kissed the old
man's hand with fervour.
"For what art thou here, father?" he asked.
"For worshiping God as he has been worshipped since his son left the
earth," replied the old man. "But now Scotland's apostate priests and
unlettered barons have discovered, that the forms and prayers of fifteen
centuries are idolatrous and superstitious, and severe laws are laid
upon us. A gentleman pays a hundred pounds to the crown if he be
discovered at mass; a yeoman forty for the first fault, and death for
the second."
"I would then, father, that I were back in old Norway, and thou with me;
for there we can worship God as we will."
Interested by the young man's gentle manner, Sir James Tarbet requested
to be informed of the crime for which he suffered; and Konrad, who had
but a confused idea of the chain of circumstances by which he was then a
prisoner, attributed the whole to the malevolence of Bothwell; and when
he concluded the history of his life and troubles--for to the aged canon
he told every thing with confidence and hope, and without
reservation--he mingled with it several threats of ultimate vengeance on
the author of his long oppression, and Anna's wrongs.
"This must not be!" replied the priest. "By studying vengeance thou
keepest open thine own wounds, and pourest salt into them, so that they
never heal, or are forgotten. Forgive this sinful Earl, and thou
conquerest him; forgive him for the sake of the sisterly love thou
bearest this Lady Anna, who loves him so well. 'Be patient,' saith a
wise Arabian, 'and the leaf of the mulberry-tree will become satin.' By
avoiding misery, thou wilt find happiness; for misery tormenteth itself.
O my son! if, like me, thou wert aged and insensible to every emotion
save pity and compassion, thou wouldst know that the expectation of
eternal happiness in the world that is to come, will raise one far above
the petty strife and turmoil of this."
Konrad sighed, but made no reply.
"One virtue," continued the priest, "will counterbalance a hundred
vices; and if the Earl of Bothwell--ha! thou knittest thy brow with
wrath and hatred. Remember that he who cherisheth either, is like unto
the fallen angels."
"I am but a mere man, father; and know that none would scorn me more for
woman weakness than that proud noble, were I to say unto him--Earl
Bothwell, I forgive thee!"
"Nay--bethink thee! he is most deserving of scorn who scorneth the
humble; even as he is the weakest who oppresseth the weak."
"True it is, father!" exclaimed Konrad, striking together his fettered
hands; "then here end all my visions of love and honour--my day-dreams
of ambition and joy."
"Say not of joy, or to what purpose serve my exhortations?"
"Father," said Konrad; "I am very desolate and broken in spirit, and
there are moments in my times of exceeding misery and depression, when I
would willingly seek in the church for that refuge which our holy
religion affords us; but I fear I am too much wedded to the world, and
am too young for a sacrifice so serious."
"Say not so!" replied Sir James Tarbet, with animation, for at such a
crisis of the Catholic church such sentiments were priceless to its
upholders. "Youth lendeth additional grace to the practice of religion.
Of this I will talk with thee more anon; and I trust that the day may
come when I shall see thee hold aloft the blessed sacrament, on that
holy altar which this infatuated people have prostrated for a time--I
say, but for a time; for lo! again I see it rising phoenix-like from its
ashes, in greater splendour than ever the middle ages saw!"
Fired by the energy of the priest, who seemed like something ethereal,
as the noon-day sun streamed in a blaze of glory through the grated
window on his kindling eyes and silver beard, and soothed by his manner
and discourse, Konrad felt a new and hitherto unknown glow in his bosom,
especially when the old man knelt down, saying--
"Pray with me, for this is the festival of Saint Edmund, the king and
martyr; but, like many another consecrated day, it passes now in
Scotland's hills and glens, unmarked by piety and prayer; for now, her
sons can view with apathy the ruins of her altars, and the grass growing
green in the aisles where their fathers prayed, and where their bones
repose."
*CHAPTER XXII.*
*THE WHISPER.*
Thence rugged toil attends his mazy way,
And misery marks him for her prey;
_Sedition, envy, murder, passion, strife,_
Spread horror o'er his path of life;
These to the hated mansion lead,
Where cheerless age reclines his drooping head.
_Sophocles._
The whisper of Hob of Ormiston had not been lost on the Earl; hourly it
haunted him; he thought of it by day, he dreamt of it by night.
Amid the pleasures of the table, the noise of the midnight revel, the
ceremonies of the court, the debates of the council, the solemnities of
the church, in the glare of the noonday sun, and, worst of all, in the
silence of the voiceless night, that fatal whisper was in his ear, and
fanning the latent spark of hell that lay smouldering in his heart.
He deemed himself predestined to accomplish that terrible advice; but
still his soul recoiled within itself, and even the ardour of his love
for Mary, and his hatred of her husband, were stifled for a time at the
terrible contemplation. Life lost its pleasures--power and feudal
splendour their zest; his employments were neglected; his attire,
usually so magnificent, was never as it used to be--for a change had
come over him, and that change was apparent to all. Mary could perceive
that, at times, a dusky fire filled his dark and gloomy eyes, and then
she immediately shunned their gaze. His brow had become pale and
veined, and marked by thought and care. The gentle queen pitied him;
and when compelled to address him (for he was still her most
distinguished courtier), she did so with a kindness and reserve that
only added fuel to the secret flame that preyed upon the Earl's heart.
The coldness, separation, and unconcealed dislike between Mary and King
Henry still continued, and they were, to all appearance, irreconcilable;
till he, after running headlong on a frightful career of luxury and mad
riot at Glasgow, where he was residing at his father's mansion of
Limmerfield, was seized with a deadly fever, which ended in that
dreadful and loathsome disease, the smallpox, then very prevalent in the
west country. And now, when prostrated in all his energies, abandoned by
friends and foes, by the panders, and jockies, and boon companions among
whom he had squandered his health and wealth, his own peace and the
peace of his queen and wife--she nobly was the _first_ who flew to his
succour.
With a small train she departed in haste to the infant capital of the
west; and Bothwell, who, with all his love, could not accompany her on
such a visit, (though he admired her the more for it,) accompanied by
Ormiston and Bolton, set out for the house of Whittinghame, a stately
fortalice in his constabulary of Haddington, and belonging to Archibald
Douglas, a kinsman and adherent of the Earl of Morton.
By a strange coincidence, rather than a mutual compact, many other peers
and barons who were hostile to the house of Lennox and its heir, were
then also visiting the intriguing lord of Whittinghame; and, like
several rills uniting in a river, the whole current of their
conversation, thoughts, and sentiments, were bent on the destruction of
the Stuarts of Lennox, either by secret and Machiavelian fraud, or in
the good old Scottish fashion, with the displayed banner and uplifted
spear.
The darkness of a winter night had closed over the keep and woods of
Whittinghame; there was no snow on the ground, but as the sky was
starless the gloom was intense. Sheet-lightning at times illumined the
far horizon, and brought forward strong in relief from the lurid
background, the black and towering cones of Gulane hill and Berwick's
lofty law--that landmark of the German sea--but all was still, and not a
branch stirring in the leafless woods, when silently and noiselessly,
all well armed, masked, and muffled in their mantles, the guests of the
lord of Whittinghame assembled under the sepulchral shadow of a great
and venerable yew-tree, that still stands near the castle wall, and is
pointed out to the curious as the scene of their meeting.
Thick and impervious, the yew cast its umbrageous shade above them, and
formed a fitting canopy for such a conclave of darkness and desperation;
and heavily the chill dew dripped from the pendant branches.
There were present four peers and several of the lesser barons; Argyle,
the proud but wavering Huntly, and Morton, cool and determined, and
Bothwell, now the arch conspirator and Cataline of the conclave, with
knit brows and clenched hands; a bloodless cheek, and lips compressed
and pallid; a tongue that trembled alternately between the very load of
eloquence that oppressed it, and the darkness of the purpose to which
that dangerous eloquence was directed.
How little did some of these conspirators divine the other sentiment, so
wild and guilty, that was making public utility an excuse for regicide;
and that filled with an agony, almost amounting to suffocation, the
breast of Scotland's greatest earl.
Near him stood his friend and evil mentor, that double-tongued master of
intrigue and prince of plotters, Maitland the secretary, with his broad
and massive brow, so high, so pale, and intellectual, his eagle eye and
thin lips; and black Ormiston, the muscular and strong, whose qualities
were those of the body only--the iron baron of his time, unscrupulous
and bloodthirsty; from childhood inured to rapine, strife, and
slaughter; while Bolton, the young and handsome, inspired to seek all
the vengeance that rivalry and scorned love could prompt, was by turns
as fierce as Morton, as politic and cruel as Maitland, as sullen as
Argyle.
And there in whispers, under that old sepulchral yew, was debated and
resolved on that deed of treason, of darkness, and of horror, that from
Scotland's capital was to send forth an echo over Europe--an echo that
would never die--the murder of King Henry, as a fool and tyrant, who had
rendered himself intolerable to the people. What passed is unknown, for
history has failed to record it; and not even the voluminous rolls of
Magister Absalom Beyer can supply the blank, save in one instance.
Ormiston, with a treachery at which we blush in a Scottish baron,
proposed that the Norwegian prisoner in Holyrood might easily be made a
valuable tool in the affair; and that, by some adroitness, the whole
blame of the projected assassination might be thrown upon him. This
motion, which exactly suited his own ideas and taste, was warmly
applauded by the Earl of Morton, and agreed to by the others, who cared
not a jot about the matter.
The die was cast--the deed resolved on.
Then from beneath his mantle, the learned knight of Pittendriech, the
Lord President of the supreme court, (a man still famous for his works
on Scottish law,) drew forth a parchment, written and prepared with more
than legal accuracy, and more than wolfish cruelty, by which they each
and all bound themselves to stand by each other, in weal or woe, in
victory or triumph, in defeat and death, with tower and vassal, life and
limb; and to this bond they each in succession placed their seals and
marks, or signatures; and feebly fell the light of a flickering taper on
their pale visages and fierce eyes, as they appended their dishonoured
titles to that Draconian deed, which the pale secretary received, and
put up in his secret pocket, with such a smile as Satan would have done
the assignment of their souls.[*]
[*] Mr. Carte, from a letter of Monsieur de Fenelon, 5th January, 1574,
acquaints us, that Ormiston confessed that the Earl of Bothwell shewed
him a paper subscribed by the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Morton, Sir
James Balfour, and Secretary Maitland, promising him assistance in
murdering the king. Various other authors give us proofs of the
existence of the document.--See _Goodal_, vol. i.
Now with some precipitation they all prepared to separate.
"Farewell, laird of Whittinghame!" said Bothwell, as he leaped upon his
horse, feeling that the probable excitement of a hard gallop would be a
relief from his own thoughts, or more congenial with their impetuosity;
"and farewell, my lords and gentlemen! Now for the bloody game, and
Scotland be thou my chess-board of battle! There shall I make knights
and queens, and rooks and pawns, to move at my will, and to vanish when
I list. Mount, Ormiston! and ho--for Edinburgh!"
*CHAPTER XXIII.*
*THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD.*
_Victorian_. Let me hear thy voice, and I am happy;
For every tone, like some secret incantation,
Calls up the buried past to plead for me--
Speak my beloved--speak onto my heart,
Whatever fills and agitates thine own.
_The Spanish Student, Act III._
With the dogged resolution of one who neither will nor knows how to
swerve from a purpose, Bothwell, with Ormiston and Bolton, laid their
plans with Morton and others for the accomplishment of their terrible
compact.
Any qualms the Earl had, were nearly stifled by the intelligence of
Mary's complete reconciliation with her husband, for whom all her
natural tenderness, as the first love and choice of her heart, returned;
and, notwithstanding the loathly and disfiguring disease under which he
laboured, and the great personal risk incurred by herself, like a
"ministering angel" she hung over the sick-bed of the repentant
profligate, who frequently implored her pardon and forgiveness--and in
tears poor Mary blessed and forgave him.
Exaggerated tidings of these passages fired the fierce soul of the Earl
with jealousy and wrath, at what he deemed the mere caprice of a pretty
woman; but the gage had been thrown to fate, and a cloud was gathering
over Mary's thorny crown, which as yet she neither saw nor felt.
His youth, and the natural strength of his constitution, enabled the
young king to surmount that disease which had baffled the skill of
Maitre Picauet, the half quack, half astrologer leech, who attended him;
and, as soon as he was convalescent, the queen had him conveyed in a
soft litter, by easy stages, to the capital, hoping that by the luxuries
procurable there, the purity of the air, and better attendance, he might
be fully restored to health and to her.
Upon this the conspirators, still alive to their intentions, sent the
Lord President of the College of Justice to make offer of an ancient
mansion that was situated on rising ground to the southward of
Edinburgh, exposed to the pure breeze beyond the city walls, from the
woods of the burgh-muir, and the beautiful sheet of water which they
bordered. The unsuspecting Mary gratefully accepted the courteous
offer, and there the poor young king was conveyed to----die.
This house belonged to the Lord President's brother, Robert Balfour,
Provost of "the Collegiate Kirk of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the
Fields." It had long been uninhabited; and was situated, says Buchanan,
in a lonesome and solitary place, between the ruins of two churches,
"where no noise or outcry could be heard." It stood without the city
walls, on the site now occupied by Drummond Street.
Small, ancient, and massive, it was probably coeval with its church,
which had been built in 1220 by Alexander II. Its front faced the west;
and from thence a view from the windows extended over fields to the
hamlet of Lauriston. Its northern gable was so close to the strong wall
of the city, that its principal door was but one pace distant from an
arched postern which is still discernible in the former, and was then
flanked by a massive tower. To the westward lay the Kirk-of-Field, a
great cross church with buttressed walls and pointed windows, for so it
is shown in a print of 1544. To the eastward lay the ruins of the
Dominican monastery, which had been burned down in 1528. Of these the
fragment of a tower still survived, with an ancient gate, bearing in
Saxon characters the same legend still remaining to this day in the wall
of the Kirk-of-Field Wynd, which now bears another name--
Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus Terum,
_i.e._, "Hail Mary! full with grace--the Lord be with you." On the
south the fields extended to the spacious common muir of the city, which
was shaded by many a Druid oak; and to the eastward the ground descended
suddenly into the lonely valley at the foot of Salisbury craigs. To the
north lay the long line of the city ramparts, with the barrier-portes of
the Kirk-of-Field and Bristo, with their round arches flanked by strong
towers, where the brass culverins scowled through deep embrasures, and
the heads of Rizzio's minor murderers grinned on iron spikes.
The humble dwelling in which Mary's incaution and the conspirators'
cunning had lodged the young king, was a two-storied house; a small
corridor, having a room on each side, led to a tower behind, wherein
(after the Scottish fashion) a circular stair gave access to the upper
story, which contained but two apartments, corresponding with two on the
ground floor.
Darnley occupied one; the queen had the chamber below, and beneath it
were those vaults of which the conspirators made a use so fatal; on the
south lay a spacious garden shaded by many venerable fruit-trees, which
had been reared by prebendaries of St. Mary.
It was now the month of February, 1567.
Thaws, and the increasing heat of the sun, had dispelled the snow from
moor and mountain side, though a little still lingered on the peaks of
the beautiful Pentlands. The atmosphere was teeming with humid vapours,
and the ice that had so long bound the loch of the city, had been
dissipated, and once more the snowy swan and the sable coot floated on
its azure bosom. The thatch on the cottage roofs of Lauriston was once
again of emerald green, and the tufted grass began to droop, where for
the past winter the icicle had hung.
Each morning, as he rose above Arthur's Seat, the sun shone more merrily
on the barred windows of the close chamber where the sick king lay; and
he heard the voices of the mavis and merle, as they sang on the dewy
trees of the ancient orchard. A showery Candlemas-tide had come and
gone, unmarked by ceremony or prayer; but old people congratulated each
other on the prospect of a beautiful spring, as they repeated the
ancient saw--
"Gif Candlemass is fair and clear,
We'll hae twa winters in the year;"
and merrily the hoodie-crow cawed in the blue sky, and the sparrow
twittered on the budding hedges, while the ploughman whistled on the
rigs of Lauriston and St. Leonard, and urged through the teeming earth
their old Scottish ploughs, that were drawn by four oxen, and had but
one stilt, like those described by Virgil in his first Georgic.
Darnley was slowly recovering, and the young queen, animated perhaps
more by pity than affection, still attended him with an assiduity that
was no less remarkable than praiseworthy. One of his pages slept
constantly in the chamber, and was ever at his call by day and by night;
while Mary, when not attending the council at Holyrood, with a few
attendants occupied the rooms below.
Many of the nobles came to the house daily, and Bothwell among them,
making dutiful enquiries concerning the progress of the king's illness
rather than his health; for many of them hoped he yet would die, and so
save them from the guilty deed designed.
It was the evening of the 10th February, and every part of the plan for
the accomplishment of the king's destruction was in progress: an
opportunity alone was waited.
In the antechamber of his apartment, a little room, hung with some of
that rich arras which Mary had brought with her from France, she was
seated with the young prince upon her knee--then a flaxen-haired and
hazel-eyed infant of eight months. Mary was paler than usual; for many
a night-watch by Darnley's fever couch had injured her health, and
increased that pain of which she so frequently complained, in her side.
The prince's nurse or governess, Annabella of Tullibardine, the
venerable Countess of Mar, attired in a great tub fardingale of black
brocaded satin, and a towering linen coif of Queen Margaret's days,
leaned on the back of Mary's chair, toying with the infant, and making
it crow and smile.
Bolton, as lieutenant of the archers, stood in the recess of a window at
the lower end of the room, accoutred in half armour, and having his
helmet lying near him; and Bothwell, clad in black velvet, magnificently
embroidered with Venetian gold, his sword and waistbelt, his poniard and
bonnet blazing with jewels, as his blue velvet mantle did with spangles,
stood in another, clanking his gold spurs, and pointing his
well-perfumed and pomatumed mustaches; for, however deep and deadly his
projects, he now never omitted an opportunity of appearing to the best
advantage in Mary's presence; and on this evening nothing could surpass
the splendour of his aspect and the gallantry of his air.
How little could Mary conceive the guilty hopes then animating his proud
heart, and the dark purposes concealed under an exterior so
prepossessing!
"My Lady Mar!" said she, stopping suddenly in her play with the infant,
on whom she was pouring all that maternal tenderness, which was the
stronger because there was no other object with whom to share her love;
"how goeth the time? Is it the hour at which Picauet the leech desired
his grace to receive the ptisan?"
"I have no horologue," replied the aged Countess. "Beside, I deem them
the work of sorcerers; but Sir John Hepburn can see the dial-stone at
the corner there. What sayeth the gun?"
"'Tis three by the dial, noble lady," replied the archer, peering
through the grated casement.
"_Jesu!_" exclaimed the Queen; "_comme le temps passe_! 'Tis time I
were busking me for Sebastian's bridal. Lord Bothwell--thou knowest the
Chevalier Sebastian? He is one of my foreign musicians, who is to be
wedded to-night at Holyrood, where, in the old fashion, I have promised
to put the bride to bed. _Ma foi!_ but 'tis droll!"
"Indeed!" responded the Earl, scarcely knowing what he said.
"What! hast thou not heard that I am to give a ball in consequence,
despite Knox and his rebellious sermons? Did not the master of the
household, Sir Gilbert Balfour, invite thee?"
"True, madam; but I have to keep a tryst with the Knight of Ormiston,
which will--will preclude, as thou--pardon me, I mean your Majesty, will
perceive"---- The Earl paused; he was seriously embarrassed, and his
face became deadly pale; but he was relieved on the arras covering the
door of Darnley's chamber being softly raised, and a slight but handsome
page--a pale and delicate boy--richly attired in a jaquette of carnation
velvet, laced and buttoned with gold, with his well-rounded legs encased
in white silk hosen--appeared, and said in a low and hurried voice--
"Madam--his majesty is asking for the ptisan ordered by your physician,
Martin de Picauet."
"It will be ready in a minute," said the stately old noblewoman, as she
peered with her keen eyes into a silver pot, which had been simmering on
the warm hearthstone, and contained one of those medicinal decoctions
for which the dames of other days were so famous--a notable ptisan, made
of barley boiled with raisins, liquorice, and other ingredients, which
she carefully stirred widdershins; that is, the reverse of the sun's
course, otherwise its whole power, virtue, and efficacy, would have been
lost. "Lord Bothwell," said she, "wilt thou favour me so far as to see
that his grace takes the whole of this, my medicated draught?"
"I assure you, noble madam, that my good friend Bolton is much more of a
nurse, and hath more of a lady's nature, than I," replied the Earl, who
found it impossible, at one and the same time, to love Mary and
sympathize with her husband, whom he sincerely wished to take his speedy
departure to a better world. Mary gave him one keen, reproachful
glance; but Hepburn, who was anxious to behold, but with no
compassionate eye, the man whom he had doomed to destruction--for the
memory of the night-scene in the garden of Holyrood still rankled in his
memory--that night, since when he had never seen his loved and lost
Mariette, for the profligate king had spirited her away. Now the full
glow of hatred rose darkly in his haughty and resentful heart; so,
taking from the countess the old peg-tankard containing the ptisan, he
raised the arras and entered the chamber of Darnley; but almost at the
same moment the page and the anxious old countess followed.
Bothwell, who had been relieved by the presence of others, now trembled;
for the continual restraint he imposed upon his ardour, made him feel
how dangerous was the predicament in which he stood. Should he not shun
this dark temptation, that was gradually verging him, like a rudderless
ship, on the shoals of destruction? Should he not fly the witcheries of
Mary, and the charm of her presence, while he yet had the power? No!
For the hatred he cherished against Darnley, the secret favour which he
fondly imagined was borne him in Mary's heart, his own unbounded
ambition and haughty pride, all forbade such a measure.
His better angel wept, and Bothwell stayed!
He drew nearer the queen.
There, in the full glory of the setting sun, in the curtained recess of
that tall pointed window, sat the young and royal mother, in all the
bloom of four-and-twenty, and the charms of her innocence and beauty.
The little prince (he who, in future times, would "a twofold ball and
treble sceptre carry,") lay in her lap, pulling with his dimpled hands
the massive tresses of her bright auburn hair, that, like the softest
silk, unbound by his playfulness, rolled over her thick ruff, and pure
alabaster neck.
The Earl thought her more beautiful and touching in her maternity, then
she seemed when in all her maiden loveliness at the court of the
Tournelles. Mary, who felt a little confused on finding herself alone
with one to whose secret hopes she was now no stranger, never once
raised her dark eyes to the glowing face that she knew full well was
bent with ardour upon her; and, though secure in the innocence of her
own heart, she felt that she was in a dangerous vicinity; and, blushing
at the recollection of the garden scene, never once addressed the Earl,
who, restrained by etiquette, remained silent and in his place, playing
with the gold tassel of his long rapier.
How loveable, how amiable Mary seemed, and how different from her cousin
of England, the puissant Elizabeth; in her cold and stale virginity--her
old maiden folly, and youthful frippery; her dancing at seventy years of
age before the ambassadors of Scotland and Spain, to shew how very young
she was!
As the Earl gazed upon Mary, love filled his mind with the most
glittering illusions, and cast a halo round her that dazzled bun. He
almost fancied himself the husband of the beautiful being before him,
and the father of the little cherub on her knee; a glow, to which his
heart had yet been a stranger, swelled up within it, as the brief
hallucination became more complete. His passing flame for Anna and his
Countess--his schemes of power and grandeur--were all forgotten and
merged in the joy that filled his bosom. There was something almost
pure and holy in it; and he felt, that were he really what he strove to
imagine himself, he would become an altered man--he could for evermore
be good, and just, and saintly.
The sound of a shrill silver whistle (there were then no handbells) from
the next room where Darnley lay sick, dispelled the illusion; the queen
hurriedly placed her babe in its cradle of carved oak, and hastened
away, with buoyancy in her step, and anxiety in her eye.
Dark as midnight was the expression that lowered on Bothwell's brow,
when thus brought suddenly back to the world of realities, and, like a
flood, the stern compact made under that baleful yew at
Whittinghame--that doubly attested bond of blood--the danger to be dared
and the deed to be done, all rushed upon his memory, and he smote his
pale forehead, as with confusion and agony he staggered under the very
gush of his own dreadful thoughts.
But there was no time to be lost.
The sun was verging towards the Pentland's western peaks. He had to
meet his friends at the lodging of the laird of Ormiston in the High
Street, for much had yet to be done ere.......
He thrust away the thought, and, bowing to the Countess of Mar, drew his
mantle about him and rushed away.
*CHAPTER XXIV.*
*THE KING'S PAGE.*
And thou, my heart,
That idly tremblest at the thought of death,
Soon in the tomb thy anxious pulse shall cease
To slumber in eternal rest.
_Panthea, a Tragedy._
The chamber was dark, for its grated windows faced the east, and the
time was evening; the curtains were half drawn, to exclude the light,
which was already partly secluded by a great gloomy bastel-house of the
town rampart. The walls of the room were panneled, and, like the
ceiling, painted with a variety of grotesque designs, amid which, as
usual, the thistle and fleur-de-lys bore conspicuous places; but,
according to the ancient and primitive mode, the floor was strewn with
green rushes, freshly pulled from the margin of the neighbouring
lake.[*]
[*] Hentzner, in his _Itineray_, writing of Queen Elizabeth's chamber at
Greenwich, says, "the floor, after the English mode, was strewed with
_hay_," evidently meaning rushes--See _Brand_.
The young king was sleeping heavily and uneasily.
Raised upon a dais of steps, his bed was ancient and massive; the posts,
of walnut-tree, were covered with quaint designs, and carved into four
tall figures, having the heads of men, with eagle's wings and lion's
bodies; rising from pedestals, they seemed like dusky demons upholding
the canopy of a tomb; for the festoons of the bed were of crimson
velvet, flowered by the fair hands of Mary and her ladies; the seats of
the high-backed chairs were all of the same costly materials.
Sharpened and attenuated by disease, Darnley's features glimmered in the
subdued light, like those of a rigid corpse; and the myriad pustules
incident to the hideous ailment under which he suffered, were apparent
to the louring eye of Bolton, who, remembering that night in the garden
of Holyrood, gazed upon him with sensations akin to those of a tigress
robbed of her cubs; and the age was not one when men sat placidly under
a sense of wrong, or repressed their impulses either of good or evil.
He gave the goblet to the page, whose hand trembled, and whose eye was
averted as he received it; then, creeping softly to the side of the
slumberer, he placed an arm affectionately under his head, raised it,
awoke him, and placed the ptisan to his parched lips, and thirstily
Darnley drank of the grateful beverage.
At that moment a ray of sunset, reflected from the wall of the adjacent
bastel-house, lit up the chamber, and the hollow recess of that great
bed, where the kingly sufferer lay; and through the disguise of a page's
jaquette and ruff, the trunk hosen and shorn hair, Bolton recognised
Mariette Hubert--his lost, his fallen Mariette, with her arm round
Darnley's head, that head pressed against her breast; and this was under
his own eyes.
He gave an involuntary start--an exclamation rose to his lips, but died
there; and all he had lately heard of this false page's tenderness and
assiduity, flashed like fire upon his memory, and his hand wandered to
the halft of his dagger, for grimly the thoughts of assassination and
revenge floated before him.
Darnley kissed her hand as he sank back exhausted; thus showing that he
was aware of her sex, and a blindness seemed to fall upon the eyes of
Bolton, for he had loved that French coquette with all the depth and
truth of a brave and romantic heart; but the sight of all this
tenderness lavished on a rival, and the consciousness that Mariette,
whom he would have raised to the rank of a Scottish baron's wife, was
content to be the mistress of this profligate king, entered like ice
into his heart. There was a terrible expression in his face, when
Mariette gave him one furtive glance of her timid eyes, and saw that she
was discovered.
Fascinated and terrified by the sad and tender, yet serpent-like gaze of
her former lover, she dared not remove her eyes; but sank down on the
dais of the bed, and, clasping her hands, said in a low voice,--
"Ah, monsieur! forgive me? If ever thou didst love, in pity now forgive
me! Thou knowest not what I have endured since I wronged thee--and how
I have endeavoured to atone for it"----
"By such a scene as this?" replied Bolton, with a bitter smile; "but
enough! I hope his majesty hath enjoyed his draught of the ptisan; for
I doubt mickle if my Lady Mar will make such another browst--for _him_
at least."
"Dost thou think he will die?" asked Mariette, breathlessly.
"_Not_ of the fever!" replied Bolton, grimly. "But be true to thy
charge, Mademoiselle Hubert--anon I will be with thee."
"Thou--when?" asked Mariette, gathering courage from his stoical
coldness of manner.
"_To-night!_" he replied, with a smile that terrified her, as he took
the ptisan cap from her passive hand, and left the chamber by a door
opposite to that by which he had entered.
There was an agony in his heart that impelled him to seek solitude.
Descending the turnpike stair by three steps at a time, and issuing into
the fields, he traversed the path that led under the city walls towards
the Porte of St. Mary's Wynd.
The shadows of evening deepened into those of night, and the hour
approached when Mary was to set forth to attend the espousal of her
favourite damsel, Margaret Corewood, to Sebastian the musician; which
ceremony, with her usual love of gaiety and society, she resolved to
celebrate by a ball, or, as it was then named, a _hall_.
A strong instance of Mary's returning love for her husband, was this
night evinced by her leaving the hall at nine o'clock, and hurrying back
to the lonely house of the Kirk-of-Field, with a few attendants, to
visit him once more before the dancing began.
Whether the marriage of Margaret Corewood had brought back the memory of
their own, in all its first freshness, in Mary's ardent mind, or that
joy to behold the changed manner and subdued aspect of her haughty and
profligate husband, had rekindled her early love for him, is unknown;
but this last interview between them was marked by unusual tenderness.
She kissed him repeatedly, soothed him by her winning and playful
manner--and, placing a valuable ring upon his hand, blessed him with
fervour; and then, with a light heart and a happy spirit, hurried away
to finish the festivities at Holyrood, and "put the bride to bed."
The malevolent Buchanan, who, forgetful of many a favour, was Mary's
bitterest enemy, and but for whose elegant Latin the vulgar Edinburgh
gossip of 1567 would never have reached us, states, that during this
interview the queen was aware that the conspirators were placing powder
in the chambers below. But the depositions taken in the presence of the
Lords of the Secret Council evince the contrary; and Camden assures us,
that Buchanan, on his death-bed, deplored with tears the falsehoods he
had handed down to posterity.
It is remarkable that a presentiment of his approaching fate haunted the
mind of the young king, who frequently said that he knew he was to be
slain. He became sad and thoughtful; and, chanting the 55th Psalm, fell
asleep with his head on the shoulder of Mariette Hubert.
*CHAPTER XXV.*
*IN THREE HOURS IT WILL BE TIME.*
Thou sure and firm-set earth!
Hear not my footsteps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from a time
Which now suits with it.
_Macbeth._
Evening drew on, while, buried in deep thought, the Earl walked from the
house of the Kirk-of-Field, without knowing whence his steps led, until
he found himself on the hill of St. Leonard, where the ruined chapel,
dedicated to that holy hermit, overlooked the deep and grassy vale that
lay between it and the imposing craigs of Salisbury, whose brows of
rugged basalt towered up against the blue sky in rigid outline.
All around these ruins was desolate and bare; and, save a few sheep
browsing on the sprouting herbage, there was no living thing near him.
Bothwell could hear the pulses of his heart. He leant against the shaft
of Umfraville's cross--a time-worn relic of antiquity, that in those
days stood on the pathway near the chapel; and, folding his arms in his
mantle, endeavoured to compose and arrange the tumult of his thoughts.
The spring evening was serene, and the scenery beautiful. Afar off,
amid a blaze of saffron, the sun's flaming circle seemed to rest on the
western flank of the magnificent Pentland chain; and each mountain came
forward in strong warm light, while the valleys between were veiled in
shadow.
The sound of a distant bell fell on the ear of the Earl.
"Seven o'clock," said he; "in three hours it will be time!"
Sheltered by towering hills, and overhung by the aspiring city, he saw
the old monastic palace, sleeping, as it were, at the bottom of a dell,
all seemed so still around it; and far beyond lay the dark blue German
sea, dotted with the sails of Flemish crayers and galleys of Rochelle;
but its bosom grew darker as the daylight died away behind the distant
hills.
The shadows grew longer and darker, and obscurity veiled the valley
where the palace lay.
Full upon Edina's castled rock and all her lofty hills, fell the last
light of the western sun, from between glowing bars of golden cloud; and
their giant shadows, broad, vast, and dewy, were thrown to the eastward,
becoming, as the sun sunk, longer and longer, till they reached the
ocean, that rolled upon the almost desert shore of the Figgate muir. The
gradual fading of the light amid the mountain solitude that overhung the
city, soothed and saddened the Earl, for the spot was wild and lonely;
the black eagle and the osprey then built their nests in the craigs of
Salisbury; and the red fox and the dun fuimart reared their cubs
undisturbed in the valley below.
He felt an agitation and a compunction hitherto unknown, in his bosom;
and, as the day faded, he watched its decline with the anxiety of a man
who was to die at nightfall.
The shadows ascended from the low places to the higher, rising slowly,
surely, broadly, like a transparent tide, on the trunks of the lofty
oaks that shaded the city muir, on the slopes of Arthur's Seat and
Samson's stony ribs, on St. Giles's diademed tower, and the castle's
bannered keep--up, up the Pentlands' sides it crept slowly and silently,
the coming night (that night which was never to be forgotten by him),
till the last gleam of the west died away on the heath-clad peak of
Torduff, the loftiest of that magnificent chain of mountains.
It was gone! the whole hills were sunk in sombre shadow; the evening
star began to twinkle above the ruined spire of St. Mary's Kirk, and
night and silence stole upon the world together.
"Would this night were over!" muttered the Earl, passing his hand across
his clammy brow. "Would to God it were!--God! how dare I to name
_him_?".....
He gave one long, keen glance at the distant house of the Kirk-of-Field,
and saw its lofty outline, with crowstepped roofs and turnpike tower,
standing in dark relief between him and the blushing west; a light was
beginning to twinkle in one of the apartments.
It was from that where Darnley lay.
Already, with remorse, Bothwell thought of poor Konrad of Saltzberg; for
aware that, in its first fury, the popular vengeance would require some
victim to glut its outpouring, Ormiston--ever cool, calculating and
ruthless--had recommended, as we have stated, that the friendless
foreigner should be involved in that night's deed of darkness; and
rendered almost blindly selfish, in the magnitude of the risk about to
be incurred by himself and so many great nobles, he had assented to this
additional act of cruelty.
"Alms, noble Earl, for God and our blessed Lady's sake!" said a voice
near the ruined cross. Bothwell started and turned, and encountered the
reverend figure of Sir James Tarbet, leaning on a long staff; and stung
to the soul by the momentary contemplation of this old man's poverty and
humility, when contrasted with his own pride and guilt, he turned
abruptly away.
"Thou hast not heeded me, Lord Earl," said the old man; "but may they
whose names I implored, bless thee not the less."
Touched by this resignation, he approached the poor priest with averted
eyes.
"Alms, sir! for the sake of the soul of old Earl Adam of Bothwell; had
he been alive, I had not needed to crave them to-day. He fell by my side
at Flodden; and this poor hand was raised to save him from the English
billmen."
Bothwell hurriedly placed his purse in the withered fingers of the
priest; and thus, with the greatest of all human virtues in his hand,
and the blackest of all human crimes in his heart, he drew his bonnet
over his eyes, and at a rapid pace, as if he would leave his own fierce
ambition and desperate thoughts behind him, began to descend the hill of
St. Leonard, towards the palace of Holyrood, where a line of brilliantly
illuminated windows recalled to his memory the royal ball given in
honour of the nuptials of Sebastian.
*CHAPTER XXVI.*
*THE OLD TOWNE OF HOLYROOD.*
Mine is the fortune of a simple child,
That in the glass his image looks upon;
And by the shadow of himself beguiled,
Breaks quick the brittle charm, and joy is gone.
So gazed I--and I deemed my joy would last--
On the bright image of my lady fair;
But ah! the dream of my delight is past,
And lore and rapture yield to dark despair.
_Henri of Morunge, the Minnesinger._
Above the northern shoulder of Arthur's Seat, the moon rose red and
fiery. Slowly its lurid circle cleared the ridge of the darkened
mountain, and ascended into the grey sky, through which the clouds were
hurrying, like banners of black crape.
Konrad watched it from a slit in the prison wall where he was confined;
and even that slit, though scarcely four inches broad, was secured by a
cross bar of iron; and the pale moonlight and the cold wind played on
his face together, as they penetrated his strong chamber in the Albany
tower, and served but to make it seem more comfortless and desolate.
He was alone now; for Father Tarbet had been released, and "expelled the
walls of the city, with all his idolatrous crosses and pictures."
He and Konrad had parted in sorrow, and now every night he missed the
soothing prayers and kind consolations of the good old priest; and
imagined, with pity and indignation, the insults to which he was certain
of being exposed, when wandering in a Reformed and hostile land, without
a shelter for his venerable head.
From many of the palace windows, bright flakes of light fell on the
green holly-hedges and dewy grass of the royal gardens, and on the dusky
buttresses and pointed windows of the chapel, throwing their steady
radiance on the grim outline of James V.'s tower, and the aged sycamore
that shaded its massive wall. A faint strain of music stole upon the
soft night wind, and then died away.
Again it came, and the chapel's hollow aisles replied--again and again,
through the opened casements, burst in full chorus the music of the
queen's Italian singers performing Sebastian's bridal hymn.
The pulses of Konrad's enthusiastic heart rose and fell with the music;
for he was borne away from himself on the stream of harmony that swept
past him. The air resembled one that he had frequently heard Anna sing,
and all her memory came rushing on his mind. Bowing his face upon his
hands, he pressed his flushed brow against the rusty bars, and groaned
aloud.
At that moment some one, who had entered his prison unheard, touched him
on the shoulder. He started from his reverie, to be confronted by the
same dark and colossal figure, that met his gaze on the night when he
fell from the Terrace of Bergen into the Fiord below. Tall, dusky, and
muffled in a mantle, he wore a black mask, partially concealing his
face; but his bright, fierce eyes shown through it like red stars.
"Groaning--eh! art thou sick?" he asked.
"Yes--of life!"
"Faith! I thought it was the mulligrubs. God-den to thee, Konrad of
Saltzberg--whilk I believe is thy title--'tis long since we have spoken;
yet, methinks, thou mayest still remember me."
"I do, for mine enemy!" replied Konrad, whose indignation rose at the
voice.
"Cock and pie! say not that," replied Ormiston; "for may the great devil
spit me, if I owe thee any ill-will, or mean thee aught like mischief!"
"Then for what end dost thou seek me now? I have endured here exceeding
misery. Who is there that has known sorrow without some relief--despair
without hope--who, but I? An irresistible current of misfortunes has
hurried me on, and--I am here--here, where I am almost forgetting the
use of my limbs, while life is in its bloom; yea, and the very tone of
my own voice. What have I done among ye, sirs, in this land of
Scotland, to be treated thus?"
"By Jove! I can scarcely tell; but there are those about Holyrood who
say, that keeping thee caged up here, is only feeding what ought to be
hanged to feed the corbies; yet, if thou wouldest attain that liberty
for which thou longest, do as I bid thee, and thou shalt escape to thine
beloved Norway--God amend it! for the flavour of its sawdust bannocks
and sour ale are yet fresh in my memory."
"Thou hast some selfish end of thine own to serve in this."
"By cock and pie! Sir Konrad, thou measurest thy friends by a low
standard, especially such a long-limbed one as I. Thou canst not well
be worse. Stay here, and thou wilt assuredly be hanged, whenever honest
Gilbert Balfour, the Master of the Household, grows tired of feeding
thee; follow me, and thou mayest escape."
"Thou sayest true; I cannot be worse; lead on--I follow thee!"
Ormiston gave him a mantle, unclasped the massive fetterlocks that
secured his stiffened ankles, and led him down the narrow stair of the
tower into the outer court of Holyrood, where Konrad almost tottered and
fell, on finding himself fully exposed to the keen night wind of
February; but black Ormiston, with rough kindness, forced him to take a
draught from a hunting-flask that hung at his girdle, and then gave him
a sword, saying,--
"If we are assailed, thou must stand by me!"
"To the death!" replied Konrad, as he grasped the sword, and felt his
spirit rise with his old energy and ardour on finding himself once again
armed, fetterless, and free. His sinews became strong; his bosom fired;
his heart danced with joy; and, little dreaming of the treachery
designed him, or the trap into which he was falling, he shook the strong
hand of the gigantic Ormiston in token of confidence and thankfulness.
The greater part of the vast and irregular facade of Holyrood was buried
in darkness; the buildings were of various heights and ages, the highest
portion being that which now forms the north wing; and heavily its great
round towers and corbelled battlements loomed against the murky sky.
The moon was now veiled by a cloud; scarcely a star was visible; and the
chill wind whistled drearily in the empty courts, and through the low
gothic cloisters built by St. David I. for the monks of the Holy Cross.
Passing James V.'s tower, Ormiston led Konrad to the southern doorway of
the royal garden, and thereon he knocked thrice with the pommel of his
long heavy sword.
"Who is without there?" asked a voice.
"One who would _keep tryst_!" replied Ormiston, using Bothwell's family
motto--the parole agreed upon.
The gate was immediately opened, and six or seven men well muffled in
dark mantles, and wearing swords and black velvet masks, came forth
cautiously, one at a time. As they stepped into the palace-yard, the
clank of steel made it apparent to Konrad that they were all well armed;
and in their general bearing and aspect there was no mistaking them for
any thing else than what they were--conspirators; and, though he knew
them not, many of them were no other than the very men who had met
beneath that baleful yew-tree at the castle of Whittinghame.
"'Tis high time we were fairly set forth!" said one, in whom, by his
short stature and long beard, Ormiston recognised the Earl of Morton.
"True," added his vassal, the Laird of Whittinghame; "for the city
horologue has struck ten, and by that hour the queen was to leave for
Sebastian's ball."
"Bothwell, thou hast wisely changed all thine outward trumpery," said
Ormiston.
"Behold," replied the Earl, displaying a coarse, canvass gaberdine above
a coat-of-mail, for which he had exchanged his ball costume, "a pair of
black velvet hoise, trimit with silver, and ane doublet of satin," as we
are minutely informed by the _Depositions in Proesentia Dominorum
Secreti Concilii_.
He carried in his hand a maul, to beat down doors or other obstructions.
The other conspirators, John of Bolton, Hob Ormiston of that Ilk, Hay of
Tallo, Hume of Spott, and John Binney, a vassal of Whittinghame, were
all well armed with coats-of-mail and pyne-doublets. At the palace
porch, a gothic edifice, flanked on one side by a round tower, on the
other by a projecting turret, they were met by French Paris, leading a
sumpter-horse, laden with leathern mails. These contained powder, taken
by the Earl from the royal store in the castle of Dunbar, of which he
was governor.
Konrad imagined correctly, that some of the voices of his strange
companions were not unfamiliar to his ear, but they conversed in low
whispers; and feeling no way very comfortable in the company of men
whose aspect, in armour and disguise, revealed that they were bent on
some mission of darkness and danger, he thought only of escape. But, as
if this very thought was divined, Black Ormiston stuck to his skirts
like a burr; and, as they passed through the long dark arch of the
portal, he whispered hoarsely,--
"Attempt not to escape; for I have here a dague that shoots a
three-ounce ball, and I will not be slow in using it!"
Konrad, whose spirit could ill brook this, would have made some suitable
rejoinder; but at this moment two archers of the guard challenged.
"Who are there?"
"Friends," replied the Earl of Morton.
"What friends?"
"My Lord of Bothwell's friends," and the whole party issued into the
Canongate.[*]
[*] Such really appears to have been the incautious answer given to the
various sentinels.--_Depositiones, I. P. D._
Where revealed by the mask, which came only down to his dark mustaches,
Bothwell's face was white as marble; and, as they passed the Mint, he
looked up at the dark windows of David Rizzio's empty mansion, which
stood at the corner of the Horse Wynd.
"He was slain just about this time last year," said the Earl.
"And this night will be avenged," replied Ormiston, as if to apologise
for the purpose which had brought them together.
At the back of the south garden, they were again challenged by two
archers with bent bows, and, replying in the same unguarded manner,
passed on.
They ascended the dark and silent Canongate, where not a sound was heard
save their own footfalls, and the dull tramp of the felt-shod
sumpter-horse that bore the powder mails; and, passing the lofty barrier
that divided the burghs by its strong round towers and double arch, they
descended with silence and rapidity the broad and spacious wynd of the
Blackfriars, and reached the foot unseen.
Here, we are told, they paused a moment, while Bolton purchased a
"candell frae Geordie Burnis wife in the Cowgate;" and at that time a
blaze of light, flashing along the narrow street, on the octagon turrets
of that picturesque old house, where whilome dwelt the great Cardinal of
St. Stephen, made them shrink under its shadow with some dismay; for lo!
the unconscious queen, attended by three Earls (two of whom were also
conspirators), Argyle, Huntly, and Cassilis, with her sister, the
Countess Jane, and other ladies, the whole escorted by Sir Arthur
Erskine's archers, passed down the opposite wynd, en route for the
palace. She was on foot; six soldiers of the guard bore a blue silk
canopy over her head, and twelve others carried torches.
She was returning to Holyrood, from her hurried visit to that very place
for which all these muffled men were bound--the lonely house of the
Kirk-of-Field!
On her beautiful face and smart hood, the black velvet of which
contrasted so well with her snowy brow, fell the full glare of the
streaming torches, imparting to her usually pale cheek a tinge of red,
and to her auburn hair the hue of gold. Mary Erskine, sister to the
captain of the archers, bore her train, and the long stomacher from
which it fell was sparkling with jewels; for she was arrayed in all the
lavish richness of the time.
Intoxicated by her beauty, every scruple that the impressive gloom of
the night, and the cooler reflections of the last few hours, had raised
in the Earl's breast, died away; and, with eyes that beamed with the
most eager and impassioned love, he saw her pass down the street, and
disappear.
Her light heart was full of visions of anticipated gaiety; and, already
revelling amid the brilliance, the music, and the dancers at Sebastian's
ball, how little could she anticipate what was about to ensue!
Passing through Todrick's Wynd, and the spacious gardens of the monks of
St. Dominic (where now the Infirmary stands), they issued from a little
postern in the city wall (the keys of which Bothwell had secured), and
found themselves under the shadow of _the House_ of the Kirk, which was
buried in obscurity and darkness, save where one solitary ray of faint
light streamed into the desolate garden, from the apartment where the
sick king lay.
Every eye was fixed upon it.
All around was silent as the grave; there was nothing stirring save the
branches of the leafless orchard, which creaked mournfully in the rising
wind, and the tufts of long reedy grass that waved in the rough masonry
of the dark old Flodden wall.
At times, the red rays of the moon shot forth tremulously between the
flying vapour upon that dreary spot, and the high sepulchral dwelling,
throwing light and shadow fitfully upon its dark discoloured walls.
The conspirators drew close together.
They were all pale as death; but their masks concealed the trepidation
that would, nevertheless, have been visible in every face, as their
voices betrayed it to be in every heart.
"Hist! dost thou not hear groans?" whispered Bothwell, plucking Black
Ormiston by the cloak.
"Groans!" reiterated the startled conspirator. "No"----
"By Heaven! I even heard a low wailing cry upon the wind."
"Go to! if thou hearest this before, what wilt thou hear _after_?"
* * * * *
It is very remarkable that the Earl of Moray, (who is not said to have
had any share in this conspiracy,) on the morning of that day should
have left Holyrood suddenly, to visit his countess, who, he said, was
seriously ill at St. Andrews; and it is still more remarkable, that when
riding along the coast of Fife, attended by only one confidential
retainer, he should--as Bishop Lesly informs us--burst out with these
ominous words--
"This night, ere morning, the Lord Darnley shall lose his life!"