“_Madre di Dio_,” he exclaimed at length, “what a night is here; a

thousand curses on this learned fool, that he must dwell in such a

den of thieves as this; or rather a thousand curses on the blind and

heretical Scots, that drive a man of wisdom, beyond their shallow

comprehension, to bed with the very outcasts of society. Pietro, what

ho!” and he raised his voice above the key in which he had pitched

his soliloquy, “knowest thou the dwelling of this sage--this Johan

Damietta? methought that I had noted the spot, yet have these sordid

lanes banished the recollection. _Presto_, time fails already.”

Without uttering a syllable in reply, the page sprung from his horse,

and pointed to the doorway of a mansion, dilapidated even more than

those in its vicinity, yet bearing in its site the marks of having

been constructed in former days for the residence of some proud baron.

Nor even now--although all the appliances of comfort were utterly

neglected, although the casements were void of glass, and the chimneys

sent up no volumes from a cheerful hearth--were the external defences

of the pile forgotten; heavy bars of iron crossed and recrossed the

deep-set embrasure which once had held the windows, and the oaken

gate was clenched with many a massive nail and plate of rusted iron.

The cavalier alighted, cast the rein to his servitor, and with the

single word “Prudence,” ascended the stone steps, and struck thrice at

measured intervals upon the wicket with his rapier’s hilt. The door

flew open, but without the agency, as it appeared, of any living being,

and, as the visiter entered, was closed again behind him with a heavy

crash.

A narrow passage was before him, scarcely rendered visible by the

flickering light of a cresset suspended from the ceiling, and

nourished, as it seemed, with spirit, rather than with the richer

food of oil. Uncertain, however, as was the illumination, it served

to show a second door, even more strongly constructed than the first,

fronting the intruder at the distance of some ten paces; while the

wall, perforated with loops for musketry, or more probably, if the

remote antiquity of the building were considered, for arrows, proved

that the hostile intruder had effected but little in forcing his way

through the outward entrance. It would be wrong, in the description

of this difficult passage, to omit the mention of certain orifices, or

slits, extending in length from the floor even to the ceiling of the

side-walls, but not exceeding a single inch in width, as they may tend

perhaps to cast some light upon an invention of the darkest ages of

Scottish history, the reality of which has been considered doubtful by

acute antiquarians. From the upper extremity of these slits protruded

on either side the blades of six enormous swords, which, being placed

alternately, and worked by some concealed machinery, must inevitably

hew to atoms, when once set in motion, any obstacle to their appalling

sway. This was the dreaded swordmill first discovered by the wizard

baron Soulis, and thence invested with superstitious error, which was

needless, at the least, when the actual horrors of the engine were

considered. It is, however, probable, that these gigantic relics of an

earlier age were no longer capable of being rendered available at the

period of which we write; at all events they hung in rusty blackness,

suspended like the sword of Damocles above the head of the intruder,

rendering his position awful, at least, if not in reality insecure.

Notwithstanding the warlike and turbulent character of Scotland during

the reign of Mary, there was nevertheless enough of the uncommon in

the defences of this dark and dangerous entrance to have riveted

the attention of a man less anxiously engaged than was the foreign

cavalier. Apparently undismayed by the wild contrivances around him,

the gallant strode forward to repeat his signal on the inner wicket,

when a broad glare of crimson light, produced by some chemical

preparation, considered in that dark age supernatural, was shot into

his very face from an aperture above, clearly displaying to some

concealed observer the form and features of his visiter.

“Ha!” cried a voice so shrill and grating as to produce a painful

impression on the nerves of the hearer. “Thou art come hither, Sir

Italian; enter, then--enter in the name of Albunazar!--enter, the hour

is propitious, and thou art waited for!”

The door revolved noiselessly on its hinges, and a few steps brought

the Italian to the chamber of the sage. It was a small and central

cell, without the slightest visible communication with the outward

air. Books of strange characters and instruments of singular device

were scattered on the floor, the tables, and the seats; astrolabes,

globes of the terrestrial and celestial world, crucibles, and vials

of rare and potent mixtures, lay beside discolored bones, reptiles,

and loathsome things from tropical climes, some stuffed, and others

carefully preserved in spirit. A huge furnace glimmered in the corner,

covered with vessels containing, doubtless, alembics of unearthly

power; a large black cat--to which inoffensive animal wild notions

of infernal origin were then attached--and a gigantic owl, perched

on a fleshless skull, completed the ornaments of this receptacle of

superstitious quackery, which was rendered as light as day by the aid

of some composition, burning in a lamp so brilliantly as to dazzle

the firmest eye. In the midst of this confused assemblage of things,

useless and revolting alike to reason and humanity, the master-spirit

of his tribe was seated--a small old man, whose massive forehead,

pencilled with the deep lines of thought, would have betokened a

profound and powerful mind, had not the quick flash of the small and

deeply-seated eye belied, by its crafty and malignant glances, all

symptoms of a noble nature.

“Hail, Signor David!” he said, but without raising his eyes from the

retort over which he was poring. “Hail! methought that thou didst hold

the wisdom of the sage mere quackery! Ha! out upon such changeful,

feather-pated knaves, who scoff before men at that which they

respect--ay, which they tremble at in private!--tremble! well mayst

thou tremble--for thy doom is fixed! See,” he cried, in a fearfully

unnatural tone, as he raised the metallic rod with which he had been

stirring the contents of the glass vessel, and exhibited it dripping

with some crimson-colored liquid--“see! it is gore--thy gore, Signor

David!--ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed with fiendish glee at the evident

discomposure of his guest.

“Nay, nay, good father--” he began, when the other cut him off

abruptly--

“‘Good father!’--ha, ha, ha! Good devil! Fool, dost think that thou

canst change the destinies that were eternal, before so vain a thing as

thou wast in existence, by thine unmeaning flatteries? I spit upon such

courtesies! ‘Good father!’ listen to my words, and mark if I be good.

Thou hast risen by meanness, and flattery, and cringing, and vice;

thou hast disgraced thy rise by insolence and folly--weak, drivelling

folly; and thou shalt fall--ha, ha, ha!--fall like a dog! Look to

thyself!--‘Good father!’ Begone, or thou shalt hear more, and that

which thou wilt like even less than this--begone!”

“I meant not to offend thee,” replied the astonished courtier, “and I

pray thee be not distempered. I have broken in on thy retirement to

witness that unearthly skill of which men speak, and I would ask of

thee in courtesy mine horoscope, that I may so report thee--”

“Thou! thou report me, David Rizzio! the wire-pinching,

sonned-jingling, base-born scullion, report of Johan Damietta! Get thee

away! I know thee! Begone--nay, if thou wilt have it, listen: bloody

shall be thine end, and base. A bastard foeman is in thy house of life.

Tremble at the name--”

“Rather,” interrupted the Italian, enraged at the language of the

conjurer, “rather let that bastard tremble at the name of Rizzio; and

thou, old man, I leave thee as I came, undaunted by thy threats, and

unconvinced by thy jugglery.”

“To-night! to-night!” hissed the old man, in notes of horrible

malignity--“to-night shalt thou know if Damietta be a juggler! If thou

wouldst live--for I would have thee live, poor worm--fly from the

hatred of the Scottish nobles!--away!”

“Know’st thou,” asked Rizzio, tauntingly, “a Scottish proverb--if not,

I will instruct thee--framed, if I read it rightly, to express the

character of their own factious brawlers? ‘The bark is aye waur than

the bite.’ Adieu, old man! to-morrow thou shalt learn if Rizzio fears

or thee or thy most doughty brawlers.”

“Ha, ha, ha!--to-morrow! mark that--to-morrow!” and a yell of laughter

burst from every corner of the chamber; the mixture in the retort

exploded with a stunning crash, the lights were extinguished, and,

without being aware of the manner of his exit, the royal secretary

found himself beyond the outer gate of the wizard’s dwelling, with

a throbbing pulse and swimming brain, but still, to do him justice,

undismayed by that which his naturally incredulous and sneering turn

of mind, rather than any clear conviction of the truth, led him to

consider as a mere imposture.

Without replying a syllable to the inquiries of the terrified page,

who had heard the frightful sounds within, he flung himself into his

saddle, plunged the rowels into the flanks of the jennet until she

reared and plunged with terror, and dashed homeward at a fearful rate

through alleys now as dark as midnight. Nor did he draw his bridle till

he had passed the guarded portals of the palace, and galloped into the

inmost court of Holyrood: there indeed he checked his courser with a

violence which almost hurled her on her haunches, sprang from her back,

and, without looking round, hurried into the most private entrance, and

disappeared.

Scarcely had he passed through the gateway, and ere yet the page

had left the courtyard with the horses, when the sentinel, who had

permitted the well-known secretary of the queen to pass unquestioned,

brought down his partisan to the charge, and challenged, as a tall

figure, whose clanging step announced him to be sheathed in armor

cap-à-pie, muffled in a dark mantle, with a hood like that worn by the

Romish priesthood drawn close around his head, approached him.

“Stand, ho! the word--”

“Another word, and thou never speakest more!” replied the other, in a

hoarse, rapid whisper, offering a petronel, cocked, and his finger on

the trigger, at the very throat of the astonished soldier; “the king

requires no password!”

“The king?” replied the sentinel, doubtfully, “the king?--I know not,

nor would I willingly offend; but thou art not, methinks, his majesty.”

“Take that, thou fool, to settle all thy doubts!” cried the other,

in the same deep whisper as before; while, casting his weapon into

the air, he caught it by the muzzle as it turned over, and sunk the

loaded butt deep into the forehead of the unwary sentinel. The whole

was scarcely the work of an instant; and ere the heavy body could fall

to earth, the ready hand of the assailant had caught it, and suffered

it to drop so gently as to create no sound. In another moment he was

joined by three or four other persons similarly disguised, and followed

by a powerful guard of spearmen. A heavy watch of these was posted

at the principal gateway, and knots of others were disposed around

the court at every private entrance, with orders to let none pass on

any pretext whatsoever. “Warn them to stand back twice! the third

time kill!” was the muttered order of the chief actor in the previous

tragedy. “So far, my liege, all’s well!” he continued, turning with

an air of some respect to another of the muffled figures, of a port

somewhat less commanding than his own huge proportions; “and Morton

must, ere this, have seized all the remaining avenues.” While he

was yet speaking, a slight bustle was heard at a distance, and in a

second’s space they were joined by him of whom they spoke.

“How goes the business, Morton?” said the first speaker.

“All well!--the gates are ours, and not a soul disturbed; the villain

sentinels laid down their arms at once, and are even now in ward! Let

us be doing: a deed like this permits of no delay!”

“On, friends! Be silent, and be certain!”

And one by one they filed through the same portal by which the Italian

had, so short a time before, sped to the presence of his royal mistress.

In the meantime, unconscious of the fearful tragedy that was even then

in preparation, the lovely queen, with her most trusted servants, the

devoted David, and the noble countess of Argyle, had retired from

the strict ceremonies of the court circle to the privacy of her own

apartments.

In a small ante-chamber, scarcely twelve feet in width, communicating

with the solitary chamber of the queen--solitary, for the notorious

profligacy and insolent neglect of Darnley had left her an almost

widowed wife--the board was spread, glittering with gold and crystal,

and covered with the delicacies of the evening meal.

The beautiful queen, freed from the galling chains of ceremony, her

robes of state thrown by, and attired in the elegant simplicity of a

private lady, sat there--her lovely features beaming with condescension

and with unaffected pleasure, conversing joyously with those whom

she had selected from her court as worthiest of her especial favor.

Bitterly, cruelly had she been deceived in the character of him whom

she had in truth made a king; for whose gratification she had almost

exceeded the rights of her prerogative, and given deep offence to her

haughty and suspicious nobles; having discovered, when too late, that,

while possessed of all the graces and accomplishments that constitute

an elegant and agreeable admirer, Henry Darnley was deficient,

miserably deficient, in all that can render a man eligible as a friend

and husband. Deserted, neglected, outraged in a woman’s tenderest

point, almost before the first month of her nuptials had elapsed, the

flattering dream had passed away which had promised years of happy,

peaceful communion with one loved and loving partner. Ever preferring

the society of any other fair one to that of the lovely being to whom

he should have been bound by every tie of love and gratitude, the king

had early left his disconsolate bride to pine in total seclusion, or to

seek for recreation in the society of those whose qualities of mind,

if not their rank, might render them fit companions for her solitude;

and she, poor victim of a brutal husband, and unhappy mistress of a

turbulent and warlike nation, fell blindly but most innocently into the

snare of her unrelenting enemies.

Of all who were around her person, Rizzio alone was such by habits,

education, and accomplishments, as could lend attraction to the circle

of a gay and youthful queen. Accustomed, from her earliest youth, to

the elegant and polished manners of the French nobility, the rude and

illiterate barons--with whom the highest grade of knowledge was the

marshalling of a host for the battle-field, and the highest merit

the fighting in the front rank when marshalled--could appear to her

in no other light than that of brutal and uneducated savages. What

wonder, then, that a youth well skilled as David Rizzio in all the

arts and elegances most suitable to a noble cavalier, handsome withal

and courteous, attentive even to adoration to her slightest wish, and

ever contrasting his cultivated mind with the untutored rudeness of

the warrior-lords of Scotland, should have been admitted to a degree

of intimacy by his forsaken mistress, innocent, undoubtedly, and

pardonable, even should we be disposed to admit that it was imprudent?

Two menials in the royal livery waited upon that noble company, but

without the servile reverence which was exacted at the public festivals

of royalty. The fair Argyle, who, in any other presence than that of

her unrivalled mistress, would have been second to none in loveliness,

jested and smiled with Mary more in the manner of a beloved companion

than that of an attendant to a queen. But on the brow of David there

was a deep and heavy gloom; and when he answered to the persiflage and

polished railleries of the queen or that young countess, although his

words were gay, and at times almost tender, the tones of his voice were

grave almost to sadness.

“What has befallen our worthy secretary?” said Mary, after many

fruitless efforts to inspire him with livelier feelings. “Thou art

no more the gay and gallant Signor David of other days than thou

resemblest the stern and steel-clad--”

Even as she spoke, it seemed as though her words had conjured up an

apparition: for a figure, sheathed in steel from crest to spur, strode,

with a step that faltered even amid its pride, from out the shadows of

her private chamber into the full glare of the lamps. The vizor was

raised, and the pale brow and haggard eye, the uncombed beard, and the

corpse-like hue of the whole visage, better beseemed the character of

some foul spirit released from its peculiar place, than of a noble

baron in the presence of his queen. A loud shriek from the terrified

Argyle first called the attention of Mary to the strange intruder.

But David sat with his eye glaring, in a horrible mixture of personal

apprehension and superstitious dread, upon the person of his deadliest

foeman.

“Arise, David, thou minion! arise, and quit the presence to which thou

art a foul and plague-like blot!” cried the deep voice of Ruthven, ere

a word had yet found its way to the lips of the indignant queen.

“Sir Patrick Ruthven--if our eyes deceive us not,” she said at length,

erecting her noble figure to its utmost, and bending upon him a glance

which, hardened as he was in crime and cruelty, he could no more have

met with his than the vile raven have gazed upon the noonday sun--“Sir

Patrick Ruthven, we would learn what means this insolent intrusion?”

“It means, fair madam,” replied Darnley--who now followed his savage

instrument, accompanied by his no less fierce accomplices, the

base-born Douglas, the brutal Ker of Fawdonside, in bearing and in

manners fitted rather for the guardhouse than the court, and the most

thorough ruffian of the party, Patrick de Balantyne--“it means that

your vile minion’s race is run!”

“Ha! comes the blow from thee?--I might indeed have deemed it so,” she

replied, calmly but scornfully. “What is your grace’s pleasure?” and

she smiled in beautiful contempt.

“My pleasure is that he--yon base Italian, yon destroyer of my honor,

and of yours--of your honor, madam, if you know such a word--shall

perish!”

“Never, Henry Darnley! mine own life sooner!” And she confronted him

with flashing eyes and heightened color, her whole frame quivering with

resolve and indignation. “Thinkst thou to put a stain like this upon

the honor of a queen, and that queen, too, thine own much-injured wife?

Out, out upon thee, for a heartless, coward thing! A man, a brute,

hath some affection, hath some touch of love for those who have loved

him, as I have once loved thee; of gratitude toward those who have

elevated him--not, no! not as I have elevated thee--for never yet did

woman lavish honor, power, kingdom, upon mortal man, as I have lavished

them on thee! Away, insolent and ungrateful, hence! Thinkst thou to

do murder, foul murder, in the presence of a woman, of a wife--a wife

soon, wretch that she is, to be the mother of a child--of thy child,

Henry? Hence, and I will forgive thee all--even this last offence!

Banish these murderous ruffians from my presence; spare an honest and a

noble servant--one who hath never, never wronged thee or thine! spare

him, and I will take thee yet again unto my heart, and love thee, as I

have loved thee ever, even when thou hast been most cruel--ever, Henry

Darnley, ever!”

The king was moved, his lips quivered, and he would have spoken: all

might still have been explained, all might have been forgiven; but it

was not so decreed.

“Tush, we but dally,” cried the brutal Ruthven, “we but dally! On,

gentlemen, and drag the villain from the presence!”

Foremost himself, he strode to seize the unarmed wretch, who, broken in

spirits, and appalled more perhaps by the recollection of the wizard’s

doom than by the sordid fear of death, clung to the robe of his adored

mistress, poor wretch, as though the altar itself would have been to

him a sanctuary against his ruthless murderers.

“Mercy!” shrieked the miserable queen; “mercy, for the love of Him

that made you! mercy, Henry--mercy, for my sake, or, if not for mine,

mercy for thine unborn infant’s sake! Ruthven--villain, false knight,

uncourteous traitor--forego thy hold!” and she struggled madly with the

assassins. “To arms!” she screamed in shriller tones, “to arms!--O God!

O God! have I no guards, no friends, no husband? Oh, that I had been

born a man, and ye should rue this day--ay, and ye shall rue it!”

Ruthven had clutched his victim with a grasp of iron, and, whirling

him from his frail tenure, cast him to the attendant murderers. “Spare

him!” she shrieked once more; “spare him, and I will bless you! Ay,

strike!” she continued in calmer tones, as the ruffian Ker brandished

his naked dagger at her throat; “and thou, too, fire--fire upon thy

mistress and thy queen!” Maddened by her resistance, and fearful that

the citizens might rise in her behalf, Balantyne cocked his petronel.

“Fire, thou coward! why dost thou pause? I am a woman, true--a queen, a

wife--about to be a mother; but what is that to such as thee? Fire, and

make your butchery complete!”

But, as the words passed from her lips, the bloody deed was over.

Even in the presence of the queen, dirk after dirk was plunged

into the unresisting wretch. Long after life was extinguished, the

maddened assassins continued to mangle the senseless clay with their

bloodthirsty weapons. So long as life remained, and so long as the

horrid strife was doubtful, did Mary’s fearful cries for mercy ring

upon the ears of those who neither heard nor heeded her. The massacre

was ended, and, with a degree of unmanly insensibility that would alone

have stamped him the worst and fiercest of his race, Ruthven seated

himself before the outraged woman, the insulted queen, and calmly wiped

his brow, still reeking with her favorite’s life-blood. “My sickness,”

he said, “must pardon me for sitting in your presence. I had arisen

from my bed to do this deed, and am now somewhat weary and o’erspent. I

pray your highness command your minions to bear yon winecup hither.”

Without regarding for an instant this fresh insult, she dried her

streaming eyes. “We have demeaned ourselves to pray for mercy from

butchers. Tears are for men! I have one duty left me, and I will fulfil

it--one aim to my existence, one study for my ingenuity, and one prayer

to my God: my duty, mine aim, my study, and my prayer, shall be, to be

avenged!”

THE KIRK OF FIELD.

“It is the curse of kings to be attended

By slaves, that take their humors for a warrant

To break within the bloody house of life;

And, on the winking of authority,

To understand a law; to know the meaning

Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns

More upon humor than advised respect.”--KING JOHN.

It was a dark and stormy night without, such as is not unfrequent even

during the height of summer, under the changeable influences of the

Scottish climate. The west wind, charged with moisture collected from

the vast expanse of ocean it had traversed since last it had visited

the habitations of man, rose and sank in wild and melancholy cadences;

now howling violently, as it dashed the rain in torrents against the

rattling casements; now lulling till its presence could be traced alone

in the small, shrill murmur, which has been compared so aptly to the

voice of a spirit. The whole vault of heaven was wrapped in blackness,

of that dense and smothering character which strikes the mind as

pertaining rather to the gloom of a closed chamber than to that of a

midnight sky.

Yet within the halls of Holyrood neither storm nor darkness had any

influence on the excited spirits of the guests who were collected there

to celebrate, with minstrelsey and dance, the marriage of Sebastian.

Hundreds of lights flashed from the tapestried walls; wreaths of the

choicest flowers were twined around the columns; rich odors floated on

the air; and the voluptuous swell of music entranced a hundred young

and happy hearts with its intoxicating sympathies. All that there was

of beautiful and chivalrous in old Dunedin thronged to the court of its

enchanting queen on that eventful evening; and it appeared for once as

though the hate of party and the fierce zeal of clashing creeds had for

a time agreed to sink their differences in the gay whirl of merriment.

The stern and solemn leaders of the covenant relaxed the austerity

of their frown; the enthusiastic chieftains of the Romish faith were

content to mingle in the dance with those whom they would have met as

gladly in the fray.

With even more than her accustomed grace, brightest and most

bewitching where all were bright and lovely, did Mary glide among her

high-born visiters; no shade of sorrow dimmed that transparent brow,

or clouded the effulgence of that dazzling smile; it was an evening

of conciliation and rejoicing--of forgiveness for the past, and hope

rekindled for the future. There was no distinction of manner as she

passed from one to another of the animated groups that conversed,

or danced, or hung in silent rapture on the musicians’ strains, on

every side. Her tone was no less bland, as she addressed the gloomy

Morton, or the dark-browed Lindesay, but now returned from exile in

the sister-kingdom, than as she turned to her gayer and more fitting

associates. Never was the influence of Mary’s beauty more effective

than on that occasion; never did her unaffected grace, her sweet

address, her courtesy bestowed alike on all, exert a mightier influence

over the minds of men than on the very evening when her hopes were

about to be for ever blighted, her happiness extinguished, her very

reputation blasted, by the villany of false friends, and the violence

of open foes.

The weak and vicious Darnley yet lingered on his bed of sickness, but

with the vigor of health many of the darker shades of his character had

passed away; and Mary had again watched beside the bed of him whose

foul suspicions and unmanly violence--no less than his scandalous

neglect of her unrivalled charms, his low and infamous amours, his

studied hatred of all whom she delighted to honor--had almost alienated

the affections of that warm heart which once had beat so tenderly,

so devotedly, and, had he but deserved its constancy, so constantly

for him. Oh, how exquisite a thing is woman’s love! how beautiful, how

strange a mystery, is woman’s heart! ’Twas but a little month ago that

she had almost hated. Neglect had chilled the stream of her affections:

that he whom she had made a king, whom she had loved with such total

devotion of heart and mind--that he should repay her benefits with

outrage, her affections with cold, chilling, insolent disdain--these

were the thoughts that had worked her brain to the very verge of

madness and of crime.

The “glorious, rash, and hazardous”[F] young earl of Orkney had

ever in these hours of bitter anguish been summoned, she knew not

how, to her imagination: the warm yet delicate attentions, the

reverential deference to her slightest wish, the dignified and

chaste demeanor, through which gleamed ever and anon some flash of

chivalrous affection--some token that in the recesses of his heart he

worshipped the woman as fervently as he served the sovereign truly; the

overmastering passion always apparent, but so apparent that it seemed

involuntarily present; the eye dwelling for ever on her features, yet

sinking modestly to earth, as shamed by his own boldness, if haply

it met hers; the hand that trembled as it performed its office; the

voice that faltered as it answered to the voice he seemed to love so

dearly--all these, all these, had they been multiplied a hundred-fold,

and aided by the deepest magic, had effected nothing to wean her

heart from Darnley, had not his own infatuated cruelty furnished the

strongest argument in favor of the young and noble Bothwell. As it was,

harassed by the deepest wrongs from him who was most bound to cherish

and support her, and assailed by the allurements of one who coupled to

a beauty equal to that of angels a depth of purpose and dissimulation

worthy of the fiend, Mary had tottered on the precipice’s verge!

Darnley fell sick, and she was saved! Him whom she had almost learned

to hate while he had rioted in all the insolence of manly strength and

beauty, she now adored when he was stretched languid and helpless on

the bed of anguish. She had rushed to his envenomed chamber, she had

braved the perils of his contagious malady; her hand had soothed his

burning brow, her lip had tasted the potion which his feverish palate

had refused; day and night she had watched over him as a mother watches

over her sick infant, in mingled agonies of hope and terror; she had

marked the black sweat gathering on his brow, and the film veiling

his bright eye, and she had felt that her very being was wound up in

the weal or wo of him whose death, one little month before, she would

have hailed as a release from misery. She had noted the dawn of his

recovery, she had fainted from excess of happiness; she had pardoned

all, all his past misdoings; she was again the doting, faithful,

single-hearted wife of her repentant Henry.[G]

[F] Throgmorton’s letter to Elizabeth.

[G] Knox and Buchanan would make it appear that his

reconciliation was insincere. But Knox and Buchanan wrote

under the influence of political and religious hostility,

and could never allow a single merit to Mary. It is a sound

rule that every mortal is innocent till proved guilty.

Now in the midst of song, and revelry, and mirth, while the gay

masquers passed in gorgeous procession before her eyes, her mind was

far away in the chamber of her recovered lord, within the solitary

kirk of Field. The masque had ended, and the hall was cleared; the

wedding-posset passed around, beakers were brimmed, and amid the clang

of music the toast went round--“Health to Sebastian and his bride!” The

hall was cleared for the dance: a hundred brilliant couples arose to

lead the Branle; the minstrels tuned their prelude; when the fair young

bride, blushing at the boldness of her own request, entreated that her

grace would make her condescension yet more perfect by joining in that

graceful measure which none could lead so gracefully.

If there was one failing in the character of Mary, which tended above

all others to render her an object for unjust suspicions, and a mark

for cruel reverses, it was an inability to refuse aught that might

confer pleasure on any individual, however low in station--a gentle

failing, if it indeed be one, but not the less pernicious to the

fortunes of all, and above all of kings. With that ineffable smile

beaming upon her face, she rose; and as she rose, Bothwell sprang

forth, and in words of deep humility, but tones of deeper passion,

besought the queen to make her slave the most happy, the most exalted

of mankind, by yielding to him her inestimable hand, even for the space

of one short dance.

For a single moment Mary paused; but it was destined that she should

be the victim of her confidence, and she yielded. Never, never did a

more perfect pair stand forth in lordly hall, or on the emerald turf,

than Mary Stuart and her destroyer. Both in the flush and flower of

gorgeous youth: she invested with beauty such as few before or since

have ever had to show, with grace, and symmetry, and all that nameless

something which goes yet further to excite the admiration, and call

forth the love of men, than loveliness itself; he strong, yet elegant

in strength--proud, yet with that high and spiritual pride which had

nothing offensive in his display--taller and more stately than the

noblest barons of the court--they were indeed a pair unmatched amid

ten thousand; so rich in natural advantages, so exquisite in personal

attractions, that the tasteful splendor of their habits was as little

marked as is the golden halo which encompasses but adds no glory to the

sainted heads of that delightful painter whose name so aptly chimes

with the peculiar sweetness of his sublime creations.

Even the iron brow of Ruthven--for he, too, was there--relaxed as,

leaning on her partner’s extended hand, she passed him with a smile

of pardon, and he muttered to his dark comrade, Lindesay of the

Byres--“She were in sooth a most fair creature, if that her mind might

match the beauties of its mansion.” As he spoke, the measured symphony

rang out, and in slow order the dancers moved forward; anon the measure

quickened, and the motions of the young and beautiful obeyed its

impulses. It was a scene more like some fairy dream than aught of hard,

terrestrial reality: the waving plumes, the glittering jewels, the

gorgeous robes, and, above all, the lovely forms, which rather imparted

their own brilliancy to these adornments than borrowed anything from

them, combined to form a picture such as imagination can scarcely

depict, much less experience suggest, from aught beheld in ballrooms

of the present day, wherein the stiff and graceless costume of modern

times is but a poor apology for the majestic bravery of the sixteenth

century.

Suddenly, while all were glancing round in the swiftest mazes of the

dance, those who stood by observed the blood flash with startling

splendor over brow, neck, and bosom of the youthful queen; nay, her

very arms, white in their wonted hue as the snow upon Shehallion,

crimsoned with the violence of her emotions. Her eyes sparkled, her

bosom rose and fell almost convulsively, her lips parted, but it seemed

as though her words were choked by agitation. For a single instant

she stood still; then bursting through the throng, she sank nearly

insensible upon one of the many cushioned seats that girded the hall;

but, rallying her spirits, she murmured something of the heat and the

unusual exercise, drained the goblet of pure water presented by the

hand of Orkney, and again resumed her station in the dance.

“Pardon, pardon, I beseech you,” whispered the impassioned tones of the

tempter--“pardon, sweet sovereign, the boldness that was born but of a

moment’s madness. Believe me--I would tear my heart from out my bosom,

did it cherish one thought that could offend my mistress--my honored,

my adored--

“Hush! oh, hush! for my sake, Bothwell--for my sake, if for naught

else, be silent! I do believe that you mean honestly and well; but

words like these ’tis madness in you to utter, and sin in me to hear

them! Bethink you, sir,” she continued, gaining strength as she

proceeded, and speaking so low that no ear but his might catch a

solitary sound amid the quick rustle of the “many twinkling feet,” and

the full concert--“bethink you! you address a wife--a wedded, loyal

wife--the wife of your lord, your king. I know that you are my most

faithful servant, my most trusted friend; I know that these words,

which sound so wildly, are not to be weighed in their full sense, but

as a servant’s homage to his liege-lady: yet think what yon stern Knox

would deem, think of the wrath of Darnley--”

“If there were naught more powerful than Darnley’s wrath,” he muttered,

in the notes of deep determination, “to bar me from my towering hopes,

then were I blest beyond all hopes of earth, of heaven--supremely

blest!”

“What mean you, sir? We understand you not! What should there be more

powerful than the wrath of thy lawful sovereign? Speak; I would not

doubt you, yet methinks your words sound strangely. What be these

towering hopes of thine? Pray God they tower not too high for honesty

or honor! Say on, we do command thee!”

“I will say on, fair queen,” he replied, in a voice trembling as it

were with the fear of offending and the anxiety of love--“I will say

on, so you will hear me to the end, nor doubt the most devoted of your

slaves!”

“Hear you?” she replied, considerably softened by his humility, “when

did ever Mary Stuart refuse to hear the meanest of her subjects, much

less a trusted and a valued friend, as thou hast ever been to her, as

thou wilt ever be to her--wilt thou not, Bothwell?”

There was a heavenly purity, a confidence in his integrity, and a firm

and full reliance on her own dignity, in every word she uttered, that

might have converted the wildest libertine from his career of sin; that

might have confirmed the wariest and most subtle spirit that its guilty

craft could never prevail against a heart fortified against its attacks

by purity and by the stronger and more holy influences of wedded love;

but on the fixed purpose, on the interminable pride, the desperate

passion, and the unscrupulous will of Bothwell, every warning was lost.

“I have adored you,” he said, slowly and impressively--“adored you, not

as a queen, but as a woman. Mary, angelic Mary, pardon--pity--and oh,

love me! You do, you do already love me! I have read it in your eye, I

have marked it in your flushing cheek, in your heaving bosom! If this

night you were free, would you not, sweet lady, lovely queen, would

you not reward the adoration, the honest adoration of your devoted

Bothwell?”

“Stand back, my lord of Bothwell!” cried the now indignant queen,

“stand back! your words are madness! Nay, but we will be heard,”

she continued, with increasing impetuosity, as he endeavored again

to speak. “Thinkest thou, vain lord, that I--I, Mary of France and

Scotland--because I have favored and distinguished a subject, who, God

aid me, merited not favor nor distinction--thinkest thou that I, a

queen anointed--a mother and a wife--that I could love so wantonly as

to descend to thee? Back, sir, I say! and if I punish not at once thy

daring insolence, ’tis that thy past services, in some sort, nullify

thy present boldness. Oh, my lord!” she proceeded, in a softer tone,

and a big tear-drop trembled in her bright eye as she spoke, “Mary

has miseries enough, that thou shouldst spare to add thy quota to

the general ingratitude. If thou didst love me, as thou sayest, thy

love would be displayed as that of a zealous votary to the shrine at

which he worships; as that of the magi bending before their particular

star--not as that of a wild and wicked wanton to a frail, fickle woman!”

It may be that the words with which Mary concluded her reproof kindled

again the hope which had well nigh passed away from Bothwell’s breast.

“Nay, Mary, say not thus. Do I not know thy trials? have I not marked

thy miseries? and will I not avenge them? If thou wert free--did I

say, if? By Heaven, fair queen, those locks of thine, that flow so

unrestrained down that most glorious neck, are not more free than

thou art! Did I not hear thy cry for vengeance on the slaughterers of

hapless Rizzio? did I not hear, and have I not achieved the deed that

secures at once thy freedom and thy vengeance?”

The spell was broken on the instant: the soft, the tender-hearted, the

most gentle of women, was aroused almost to frenzy. The blood rushed in

torrents to her princely brow, and left it again pale as the sculptured

marble, but to return once more in deeper hues of crimson. Her eyes

flashed with unnatural brightness; her bosom heaved and fell like that

of a young priestess laboring with the throes of prophetic inspiration;

she shook the tresses, he had dared to praise, back from her lovely

face, and stamping her delicate foot in the passion of the moment on

the oaken floor--

“A guard!” she cried, in notes that might have vied with the clangor of

a trumpet, so shrilly did they pierce the ears of all; “a guard for my

lord of Bothwell!”

Had the thunder of heaven darted its sulphurous and scathing bolt into

the midst of that assembly, a greater change its terrors could not

have effected than did that thrilling cry. A hundred rapiers flashed

in the bright torchlight, as with bent brows and angry voices the

barons of the realm rushed to the aid of their liege-lady. An air of

cool defiance sat on the massive forehead of the culprit; his eye

was fixed upon the queen in sorrow, as it would seem, rather than in

anger; his sword lay quietly in his scabbard, although there were a

hundred there with weapons thirsting for his blood, and hearts burning

with the insatiable hate of ancient feuds. Murray and Morton, speaking

eagerly and even sternly to the queen, urged his immediate seizure; and

the gray-haired duke of Lennox, clutching his poniard’s hilt with the

palsied gripe of eighty years, awaited but a sign to slay, he knew not

and he recked not why, the ancient foeman of his race.

But so it was not fated! Before a word was spoken, the deep and sullen

roar as of an earthquake burst upon their ears, and stunned their very

hearts; a second din, as of some mighty tower rushing from its base,

succeeded, ere the casements had ceased to rattle with the shock of the

first.

“God of my fathers!” shouted Murray, “what means that din? Treason,

my lords, treason! Look to the queen--secure the traitor! Thou, duke

of Lennox, with thy followers, haste straight to the kirk of Field!

Without, there--let my trumpets sound to horse! By Him that made me,”

he continued, “the populace are rising!”--for the deep swell of voices,

that rose without, announced the presence of a mighty multitude.

In an instant the vaulted arches of the palace echoed with the

flourished cadences of the royal trumpets, the ringing steps of

steel-clad men, the tramp of hoofs in the courtyard, the gathering

cries of the followers of each fierce baron, succeeding wildly to the

soft breathings of minstrelsey and song. At this instant Murray had

resolved himself to act, and, with his hand upon the pommel of his

sword, slowly but resolutely stepped forward. “Yield thee!” he said, in

stern, low tones; “yield thee, my lord of Bothwell! Hence from this

presence thou canst not pass until all this night’s strange occurrences

be fully manifested; ay, and if there be guilt--as I misdoubt me much

there is--till it be fearfully avenged!”

The touch of Murray on his shoulder, lightly as it fell, and grave as

were the words of that high baron, aroused the reckless disposition

of Bothwell almost to madness. “Thou liest, lord!” he shouted, in the

fierce impulse of the moment--“thou liest, if thou dare to couple the

name of guilt with Bothwell! Forego thy hold, or perish!”--and his

dagger’s blade was seen slowly emerging from its sheath, while his

clinched teeth and the starting veins of his broad forehead spoke

volumes of the bitterness of his wrath. Another second, and blood, the

blood of Scotland’s noblest, would have been poured forth like water,

and in the presence of the queen; the destinies of a great kingdom

would have perchance been altered, and the history of ages changed, all

by the madness of a single moment. In the fearful crisis, a wild shriek

was heard from the upper end of the hall, to which the ladies of the

court had congregated, round the queen, like the songsters of spring

when the dark pinions of the hawk are casting down a shadow of terror

on their peaceful groves.

“Help! help!--her grace is dying!” And, in truth, it did seem as though

she were about to pass away. Better, a thousand times better, and

happier, had it been for her, to have then died quietly in the palace

of her forefathers, with the nobles of her land around her, than to

have borne, for many an after-year, the chilling miseries which were

showered by pitiless fortune on her head, till that most fatal hour of

her tragic life arrived, and Mary was at length at rest!

Murray relaxed his hold, turned on his heel, and strode abruptly to

the elevated dais, on which the queen had sunk in worn-out nature’s

weariness. For a minute’s space Bothwell glared on him as he strode

away, like a tiger balked of his dear revenge. It was most evident he

doubted--doubted whether he should set all, even now, upon a cast,

strike down a foeman in the very fortress of his power, and if he must

die, like the crushed wasp, sting home in dying. Prudence, however,

conquered: he also turned upon his heel, and with a glance of the

deepest scorn and hatred on the baffled lords, who, in the absence of

their master-spirit, had lost all unison, stalked slowly through the

portal of the hall, and disappeared.

Before ten seconds had elapsed, the rapid clatter of hoofs, the

jingling of mail, and the war-cry--“A Bothwell! ho! a Bothwell!”

proclaimed that he had escaped the toils, and was surrounded by his

faithful followers.

When Murray reached the couch on which the queen was extended, gasping

as though in the last extremity, her case indeed was pitiable. Her long

locks had burst from their confinement, and flowed over her person

like a veil; her corsage had been cut asunder by the damsels of her

court, and her bosom, bare in its unspeakable beauty, was disclosed to

the licentious gaze of the haughty nobles. An angle of the couch, as

she had fallen, had grazed her temple, and the blood streamed down her

cheek and neck, giving, by the contrast of its dark crimson, an ashy,

deathlike whiteness to her whole complexion.

“Ha!” he whispered, with deep emotions, “what means this? Back,

back, my lords, for shame, if not for pity! would ye gaze upon your

sovereign, in the abandonment of utter grief, as though she were a

peasant-quean? Stand back, I say, and let the halls be cleared; and

hark thee, Paris,” he continued, as a cringing, terrified-looking

Frenchman entered the apartment, “bid some one call Galozzi hither:

the poison-vending, cozening Tuscan hath skill at least, and it shall

go hardly with him so he exert it not! But ha! what ails the man?

St. Andrew, he will faint! What ails thee, craven? Speak, speak,

or I shake the coward soul from out thy carcass!”--and he shook the

trembling servitor fiercely by the throat.

“The king--the king--” he faltered forth at length, terrified yet more

by the wrath of Murray than by the scene which he had witnessed.

“What of the king, thou dastard? Speak--I say, what of Henry Darnley?”

“Murdered, your highness--murdered!”

“Nay, thou art made to say it!”

“He speaks too truly, Murray,” cried Morton, entering, with his bold

visage blanched, and his dark locks bristling with unwonted terror;

“the king is murdered--foully, most foully murdered!”

“By the villain Bothwell!” muttered Murray, between his hard-set teeth;

“but he shall rue the deed! But say on, Morton, say on: how knowest

thou this? Say on--and you, ladies, attend the queen.”

“I saw it, Murray--with these eyes I saw it--the cold, naked, strangled

corpse--flung, like a carrion-carcass, on the garden-path; and the kirk

of Field a pile of smoking and steaming ruins--blown up with gunpowder,

to give an air of accident to this accursed treason. I tell you, man,”

he continued, as he saw Murray about to speak, “I tell you that I saw,

in that drear garden, cast like a murrained sheep upon a dike, all that

remained of Henry Darnley!”

“’Tis false!” shrieked the wretched Mary, starting to her feet, with

the wild glare of actual insanity in her eye; “who saith I slew him?

Henry Darnley! ’Sdeath, lords!--the king, I say--the king! Now, by

my halydom, he shall be king of Scotland! Dead--dead! who said the

earl of Orkney was no more? Faugh! how the sulphur steams around us!

It chokes--it smothers! Traitor, false traitor! know, earl, I will

arraign thee. What! kill a king? whisper soft, low words to a queen?

Hoa! this is practice, my lord duke, foul practice; and deeply shall

you rue it if you but hurt a hair of Darnley!--Nay, Henry, sweet Henry,

frown not on me! Oh! never woman loved as I love thee, my Darnley!

Rizzio--ha! what traitor spoke of Rizzio? But think not of it, Henry:

the faithful servant is lost, but ’twas not thou that did it. Lo! how

dark Morton glares on me! Back, Ruthven, fiend! wouldst slay me? But

I forgive thee all--all--Henry Darnley, all! Live--only live to bless

my longing sight! No! no!” she shrieked more wildly, “he is not dead!

to arms! what, ho!--to arms! a king, and none to rescue him! To arms,

I say! I will myself to arms! Fetch forth my Milan harness; saddle me

Rosabelle! French--Paris, aho! my petronels! And ye, why do ye linger,

wenches--Seyton, Carmichael, Fleming?--my head-gear and my robes! The

queen goes forth to-day! To horse, and to the rescue!”

She made a violent effort to rush forward, but staggered, and if her

brother had not received her in his arms, she would have fallen again

to the earth. “Bear her hence, ladies; bear her to her chamber!--thou

hast a heavy weird--poor sister!--What ponder you so, Morton? you would

not mark her words: ’tis sheer distraction--the distraction of most

utter sorrow!”

“Distraction! I say ay! but sorrow, no! Sorrow takes it not on thus

wildly. It savors more of guilt, Lord Murray--dark, damning, bloody

guilt! Heard ye not what she said of Orkney? Distraction, but no

sorrow: guilt, believe me, guilt!”

“Not for my life would I believe it, nor must thou: if Morton and

Murray hunt henceforth in couples--hark in thine ear!”--and he

whispered, glancing his eyes uneasily around, as though the very stones

might bear his words to other listeners. A grim smile passed athwart

Morton’s visage; he bowed his head in token of assent. They passed

forth from the banquet-hall together, and Mary was left to her misery.

BOTHWELL.

“Marshal, demand of yonder champion

The cause of his arrival here in arms:

Ask him his name, and orderly proceed

To swear him in the justice of his cause.”--KING RICHARD II.

The summer sun was pouring down a flood of lustre over wood and

moorland, tangled glen, and heathery fells, with the broad and blue

expanse of the German ocean sparkling in ten thousand ripples far away

in the distance. But the radiance of high noon fell not upon the forest

and the plain in their solitary loveliness, but on the marshalled

multitudes of two vast hosts, arrayed in all the pomp and circumstance

of antique warfare, glittering with helms and actons, harquebuss and

pike, and waving with a thousand banners, of every brilliant hue and

proud device. On a gentle eminence, the very eminence on which, a

few short years before, the English Somerset had posted his gallant

forces, lay the army of the queen, its long front bristling with rows

of the formidable Scottish spear, its wings protected by chosen corps

of cavalry, the firm and true adherents of the house of Stuart, or the

daring, though licentious vassals of the duke of Orkney, and the royal

banner, with its rich embroidery, floating in loud supremacy. Yet, gay

and glorious as it showed upon its ground of vantage, and gallantly as

it might have contested that field against even superior numbers, that

array was but in name an army. Thousands were there who, though they

had flocked with bow and arrow to the call of their sovereign, felt not

distaste alone, but actual disgust to the services on which they were

about to be employed; and not a few were among them who knew too well

how little was the probability that they, a raw, tumultuary force, led

on by men of gallantry indeed, but not of that well-proved experience

which, to a leader, is more than the truncheon of his command, should

come off with victory, or even without defeat, from an encounter with

veteran troops, retainers of the most warlike lords in Scotland,

marshalled by soldiers with whose fame the air of every European

kingdom was already rife--soldiers such as Lyndesay of the Byres,

Kirkaldy of the Grange, Murray of Tullibardin, and a hundred others

of reputation, if second, second to none but these. Nor was this all;

voices were not wanting, even in the army of the queen, to exclaim,

that if the royal banner were displayed, its purity was sullied by the

presence of a murderer; and that success could never be hoped for, so

long as Bothwell rode by the right hand of Mary. One exception there

was, however, to this general feeling of dissatisfaction, if not of

despair. A band of determined men, whose scar-seamed visages and stern

demeanor, no less than the splendid accuracy of their equipments, and

the admirable discipline with which they maintained their post, far

in advance of the main body, and exposed to inevitable destruction

on the advance of the confederated forces, should they be suffered,

as it appeared too probable that they would, to remain unsupported

against such desperate odds. But these were men to whom the most deadly

conflict was but a game of chance; inured from their youth upward to

deeds of blood and danger--lawless and licentious in time of peace,

even as they were cruel, brave, and fearless in the fight--the picked

retainers, the desperate, of the duke of Orkney.

Dark glances of contempt, if not of hatred, were shot ever and anon

from beneath the scowling brows of these wild desperadoes toward the

wavering ranks of the main army, as, unrestrained by the exhortations

or menaces of their officers--unmoved by the eloquent beauty of Mary

herself, who rode among the trembling ranks, praying them, as they

loved their country, as they valued honor, as they would not see their

wives, their mothers, and their daughters, delivered to the malice of

unrelenting foemen, to strike one blow for Scotland’s crown--to give

once, once only, their voices to the exulting clamor, “God and the

queen”--troop after troop broke away from the rear, and scattering

themselves, singly, or in parties of two or three, over the open

country, sought for that safety in mean and dastard flight, which they

should have asked from their own bold hearts and strong right hands.

It was at this moment that the heads of the confederated columns were

seen advancing, in dark and dense masses, at three different points,

against the front, which was still preserved in Mary’s army by the

strenuous exertions of the leaders, rather than by any soldierly

feelings on the part of the common herd. So nearly had they advanced to

the royal lines that the stern and solemn countenances of the leaders,

as they rode in complete steel, but with their vizors raised, each

at the head of his own leading, were visible, feature for feature.

The matches of the arquebusses might be clearly distinguished, blown

already into a bright flame, while the pieces themselves were evidently

grasped by ready and impatient hands, and the long spears of the

vanguard were already lowered; but not a movement of eagerness, not a

murmur, or a shout, was heard throughout the thousands, whose approach

was ushered to the ears alone by the incessant trampling sound, borne

steadily onward, like the flow of some great river, occasionally broken

by the shrill neighing of a charger, or the jingling clash of arms.

The borderers of Bothwell, on the contrary, as they noted the advance,

raised, from time to time, the wild and fearful yells with which it was

their custom to engage, brandishing their long lances, and giving the

spur to their horses, till they sprang and bolted like hunted deer;

and it required all the influence of hereditary chiefs to restrain

these savage moss-troopers from rushing headlong with their handful

of men against the unbroken line of the confederate pikes, which

swept onward, sullen and steady as the tide when it comes in six feet

abreast. The effect of such a movement would have been at once fatal

to their wretched mistress. It was too evident that, for a wavering,

coward multitude, like that arrayed beneath the banner of the queen,

there could be no hope to fight against men such as those who were

marching, in determined resolution, up that gentle eminence; and all

that now remained was an attempt at negotiation.

It was at this moment, when the advanced guard of the two armies

were scarcely ten spear’s-lengths asunder, when the determination or

wavering of every individual might be read by the opposite party in his

features as clearly as in the pages of a book, that a single trumpet

from the centre of the queen’s army broke the silence with a wild and

prolonged flourish. It was no point of war, however, that issued from

its brazen mouth, no martial appeal to the spirits and courage of

either host, but the prelude to a pacific parley--and straightway the

banners throughout the host were lowered, and a white flag was waved

aloft, in place of Scotland’s blazonry. The ranks were slowly opened,

and from their centre, with trumpeter and pursuivant, and king-at-arms,

rode forth Le Croc, the French embassador. This movement, as it seemed,

was wholly unexpected by the confederate lords; at least, the ranks

continued their deliberate advance unchecked by the symbols of peace

that glittered above the weapons of the rival host, till suddenly a

foaming horse and panting rider furiously galloped from the rear. A

single word was uttered, in a low, impressive whisper; it passed from

mouth to mouth like an electric spark; and, as though it were but a

single man, that mighty column halted on the instant. There was no

confusion in the manœuvre, no hurry, nor apparent effort: the long

lines of lances, so beautifully regular in their advance, sank as

regularly to their rest; and, but for the fluttering of their plumage

in the summer air, those beings, strangely composed of every vehement

and stirring passion, might have passed for images of molten steel. But

a few seconds had elapsed, and the flourish of the peaceful trumpets

was yet ringing in the ears of all, when a dozen horsemen proceeded

slowly forward, to meet the royal cavalcade.

It was a singular and most impressive spectacle, that meeting. It was,

as it were, the fearful pause between life and death--the moment of

breathless silence that precedes the first crash of the thunderstorm.

Every eye was riveted in either army on those two groups; every

heart beat thick, and every ear tingled with excitement. And, even

independent of the appalling interest of the crisis, there was much to

mark, much to admire, in the handful that had come together to speak

the doom of thousands; to decide whether hundreds and tens of hundreds

of those living creatures, who stood around them now, so glorious in

the pride, the beauty, and the strength of manhood, should, ere the

sun might sink, be as the clods of the valley; to decree, with their

ephemeral breath, whether the soft west wind, that wafted now the

perfumes of a thousand hills to their invigorated senses, should, ere

the morrow, be tainted like the vapor from some foul charnel-house!

On the one side, on his light and graceful Arab, champing its gilded

bits and shaking its velvet housings, sat the gay and gallant

Frenchman--his long, dark locks uncovered, and his fair proportions

displayed to the best advantage in his rich garb of peace. No weapon

did he bear--not even the rapier, without which no gentleman of that

period ever went abroad--but which, the more fully to manifest the

candor and sincerity of his instructions, a handsome page held by his

master’s stirrup. Behind him, with pale visages and anxious mien,

Marchmont, and Bute, and Islay, and the lion King, awaited the result

of this their last resource.

On the other hand, distinguished from their followers only by the

beauty of their powerful chargers, and their own knightly bearing,

halted the rebel chiefs. Plain almost to meanness in his attire, with

his armor stained and rusty, and his embroidered baldrick frayed and

rent, Lord Lyndesay of the Byres was foremost in the group. Morton was

there, and Murray, all steel from crest to spur; the best warrior,

where all were good, the noblest spirit, the most upright man, Kirkaldy

of the Grange.

“Nobles and knights of Scotland,” said the proud envoy, in a tone

so calm and yet so clear that every accent could be noted far and

wide, “I come to ye--a gentleman of France--the servant of a mighty

monarch, unbought by friendship and unprejudiced by favor. For myself,

or for my royal master, it recks us little whether or not ye choose

to turn those swords, which should be the bulwarks of your country,

against her vitals. Yet should it not be said that Scottishmen, like

ill-trained dogs of chase, prefer to turn their fangs against each

other, than to chase a nobler quarry. Ye are in arms against your

queen--nay, interrupt me not, my lords--against your queen, I say! or,

as perchance ye word it, against her counsellors. That ye complain of

grievances I know, and, for aught I know, justly complain. Yet pause,

brave gentlemen, pause and reflect which is the greater grievance--a

country torn with civil factions, internal war with all its dread

accompaniments of massacre and conflagration, or those ills which now

have stung you to exchange your loyalty for rebel arms? Bethink ye,

that in such a cause as this it matters not who wins--to vanquish

countrymen and brothers is but a worse and deadlier evil than defeat

by foreign foemen. Think ye this fatal field of Pinkie, whereon ye are

arrayed, hath not already drunk enough of Scottish blood, that ye we

would deluge it again?--or that its name is not yet terrible enough

to Scottish ears, that ye would now bestow a deeper blazonry of sin

and shame? Brave warriors, noble gentlemen, forbear! Let the sword of

civil discord, I beseech you, enter its scabbard for once bloodless;

let amicable parley gain the terms which bloodless news purchased!

Strive ye for your country’s glory?--lo, it calls on you to pause!

For your own peculiar fame?--it bids ye halt while there is yet the

time, lest neither birth, nor rank, nor valor, nor high deeds, nor

haughty virtues, preserve ye from the blot which lies even yet, though

ages have passed, on those who have warred against their country! Is

it terms, fair terms, for which ye crowd in arms around yon awful

banner?”--pointing to the colors of the rebel lords, emblazoned with

the corpse of the murdered Darnley, and his orphan infant praying for

judgment and revenge--“lo, terms are here! Peace, then, my lords; give

peace to Scotland, and eternal credit to yourselves. Her majesty bears

not the wonted temper, the stern resentment of offended kings: even now

she offers peace and amity, pardon for all offences--ay, and the hand

of friendship, to all who will at once retire from this sacrilegious

field. Subjects, your queen commands you; nobles and knights, a lady,

the fairest lady of her sex, appeals to your chivalry and honor. Hear,

and be forgiven!--”

“Forgiven!” shouted Glencairn, in tones of deep feeling and yet

deeper scorn--“forgiven! we came not here to ask for pardon, but for

vengeance, and vengeance will we have! The blood of Darnley craves for

punishment upon his murderers! We are come to punish; not to sue for

pardon, not to return in peace, until our end is gained, and Scotland’s

slaughtered king avenged!”

“Fair sir,” cried Morton--calmer, and for that very reason more to be

dreaded, than his impetuous comrades--“fair sir, we rear no banner and

we lift no blade against her grace of Scotland! Against her husband’s

murderer have we marched, nor will we turn a face, or draw a bridle,

till that murderer lies in his blood, or flies for ever from the land

he has polluted by his unnatural homicide! Thou hast thine answer,

sir. Yet thus much for our ancient friendship, and to testify our high

esteem for the noble monarch whom thy services here represent: here

will we pause an hour. That passed, our word is, ‘Forward! forward!’

and may the God of battles judge between us! Brothers in arms, and

leaders of our host, say, have I spoken fairly?”

“Fairly hast thou spoken, noble Morton; and as thou hast spoken, we

will it so to be. An hour we pause, and then forward!” The voices

of the barons, as they replied, gave no signs of hesitation; there

was no faltering in their tones, no wavering in their fixed and

steady glances. At once the gallant mediator saw that he had failed

in his appeal, and that all further words were needless. Slowly and

disconsolately he bent his way back to the royal armament, where the

miserable Mary awaited, in an agony of shame and anguish, the doom, for

such in truth it was, of her rebellious subjects.

On the summit of a little knoll she sat, girt by the few undaunted

spirits who clung to the last to Mary’s cause, and who were ready at

her least word to perish, if by perishing they might preserve her.

Lovely as she had seemed in the gay halls of Holyrood, her brow beaming

with rapture, innocence, majesty, far lovelier was she now in pale and

hopeless sorrow. In the vain hope of inspiring ardor to her dispirited

and coward forces, she had girt her slender form in glittering steel. A

light, polished cavinet reflected the bright sunshine above her auburn

tresses, and a cuirass of inlaid and jewelled metal flashed on her

bosom. Not a warrior in either host sat firmer or more gracefully upon

his destrier than Mary upon Rosabelle. A demipique of steel and loaded

petronels, with the butt of which her fingers played in thoughtless

nervousness, had replaced the rich housings of that favored jennet;

but though arrayed in all the pride and pomp of war, there was neither

pride nor pomp in the expression of that pallid cheek and quivering lip.

“Noble Le Croc,” she cried, breathless with eagerness as he approached

her presence, “what tidings from our misguided subjects? will

they depart in peace? Speak out, speak fully: this is no time for

well-turned sentences or courteous etiquette. Say, is it peace or war?”

With deep feeling painted on his dark lineaments, the Frenchman

answered: “War, your grace, war to the knife; or peace on terms such as

I dare not name to you.”

“Then be it war!” cried she, the eloquent blood mantling to her cheeks

in glorious indignation, her eyes flashing, and her bosom heaving with

emotion; “then be it war! We have stooped low enough in suing thus

for peace from those whom we are born to govern, and we will stoop no

longer. Better to die, to fall as our gallant father fell, leading

his faithful countrymen, devoted subjects, against enemies not half

so fierce as these, who should be brothers. Sound trumpets, advance

our guards! Seyton, Fleming, Huntley, to your leadings, and advance!

ourselves will see the tourney.”

“Your grace forgets,” replied the experienced leader to whom she

first addressed herself, “your grace forgets that not one dastard of

this fair army, as it shows upon this ground of vantage, will advance

one lance’s length against the foe. Some scores there are, in truth,

followers oft tried and ever-faithful of mine own, and some if I

mistake not of the earl of Orkney, who will fight well when shaft and

steel-point hold together; but ’twere but butchery to lead the rugged

vassals upon certain death! for what are scores to thousands such as

stand thirsting for the battle yonder--thousands led on, too, by the

first martialists of Europe? Nevertheless, say but the word, and it is

done. Seyton hath ever lived for Stuart--it rests but now to die!” He

paused--but in an instant, taking his cue from Mary’s extended nostril

and still-flashing eye, he shouted, in a voice of thunder: “Mount,

mount, and make ready! A Seyton, a Seyton for the Stuart!” Already

had he dashed the rowels into his steed, and another instant would

have precipitated his little band upon the inevitable destruction that

awaited them in the crowded ranks which, at the well-known sound of

that wild slogan, had brought their lances to the charge, and waited

but a word to bear down all opposition.

Happily, so miserable a consummation was warded off. The earl of

Orkney, who had stood silent and thunder-stricken by the side of his

lovely bride, sprang forward, and grasping with impetuous vehemence the

bridle-rein of Seyton--

“Not so!” he hissed through his set teeth, “not so, brave baron;

this is my quarrel now, mine only; and dost think that I will veil

my crest to mortal man? Lo! in yonder lines the haughty rebels have

drawn their weapons, and against me only shall they wield them! What,

ho there, heralds! take pursuivant and trumpet, and bear my gauntlet,

the earl of Orkney’s gauntlet, to yonder misproud caitiffs: say that

Bothwell defies them--defies them to the mortal combat, here before

this company, here in the presence of men and angels, to prove his

innocence, their bold and overweening treason!”--and he hurled his

ponderous glove to earth.

“Well said and nobly, gallant earl!” cried Seyton; “so shall this foul

calumny be stayed, and floods of Scottish blood be spared. On to thy

devoir, and God will shield the right.”

And at the word the heralds rode forth again, the foremost bearing the

glove of the challenger high on a lance’s point. Again the trumpets

flourished, but not now as before, in peaceful strains. At the loud

clangor of defiance, the confederate chiefs again strode to the front,

their horses led behind them by page or squire; and as the menace of

the challenger was proclaimed loudly and clearly by the king-at-arms,

a smile of fierce delight flashed over every brow.

“I claim the privilege of battle!” shouted the impetuous Glencairn.

“And I!”--“And I!”--“And I!” rose hoarsely into air the mingled tones

of Morton, Lyndesay, and Kirkaldy, as each sprang forth to seize the

proffered gauntlet. “I am the senior baron!” shouted one. “And I the

leader of the van!” cried another; and for a minute’s space all was

confusion, verging fast toward strife, among those chiefs of late so

closely linked together--till the deep, sonorous voice of Murray, in

after-days the regent of the realm, was heard above the tumult.

“For shame, my lords, for shame! Seems it so much of honor to do the

hangman’s office on a murderer, that ye would mar our fair array with

this disgraceful bruit for the base privilege? By Heaven, should the

duty fall on me, I should perform it, doubtless, even as I would prefer

the meanest work that came before me under the name of duty; but, trust

me, I should hold the deed a blot upon mine ancient escutcheon, rather

than honor! But to the deed, my lords; the herald awaits our answer.

Lord Lyndesay, thine is the strongest claim: if thou wilt undertake the

deed, thou hast my voice.”

“As joyfully,” muttered Lyndesay beneath his grizzly mustache, “as

joyfully as to the banquet do I go forth against the craven traitor!

Morton, lend me thy falchion for the trial--the two-handed espaldron

which slew Spens of Kilspindie, at the brook of Fala, in the hands

of Archibald of Douglas, thy renowned forefather. God give me grace

to wield it, and it shall do as trusty service on the carcass of yon

miscreant!”

“It is decided, then,” cried Murray; and not a voice replied, for none

had the presumption to dispute the fitness of the choice which thus had

fallen on a leader so renowned for strength and valor. “Herald,” he

continued, “go bear our greeting to her majesty of Scotland, and say

to her, we do accept the challenge. An hour’s truce we grant--an equal

field here, on this hill of Carbury. The noble earl of Lyndesay will

here prove, upon the crest and limbs of that false recreant, James,

some time the earl of Bothwell, the justice of our cause: and so may

God defend the right!”

The shout which rang from earth to heaven, at the noble confidence

of Murray, bore to the ears of Mary and her trembling followers the

assurance that the challenge was accepted; an assurance that sounded

joyfully in every ear but that of his who uttered the bravado. Many a

time and oft had Bothwell’s crest shone foremost in the tide of battle;

many a time had he confronted deadliest odds with an undaunted visage

and a victorious blade. Yet now he faltered; his bold brow blanched

with sudden apprehension; his frame, muscular and lofty as a giant’s,

actually shook with terror; and his quivering lip paled, ere he heard

the name of his antagonist. Whether it was that guilt sat heavy on his

heart, and weighed his strong arm down, or that his soul was cowed

by the consciousness that he was unsupported and forsaken by all his

friends, he turned upon his heel, and, muttering some inarticulate

sounds, half lost within the hollows of his beaver, he strode to his

pavilion, and thence sent his squire forth, to say that he was ill at

ease, and could not fight until the morrow! Mary herself--the fond,

confiding, deceived Mary--burst on the instant into loud contempt at

this hardly-credible baseness.

“What! James of Bothwell false!” she cried; “then perish hope! I yield

me to the malice of my foes; I will resist no longer. O man, man--base,

coward, miserable man!--is it for this we give our hearts, our lives,

ourselves, to your vile guidance? is it for this that I have given

thee mine all--mine honor, and, perchance, my soul? that thou shouldst

cowardly desert me at mine utmost need! Little, oh how little, doth

the cold world know of woman’s heart and woman’s courage! For thee

would I have perished, oh, how joyfully!--and thou, O God! O God! it is

a bitter, bitter punishment for my credulity and love: but if I have

deserved to suffer, I deserved it not at thy hands, James of Bothwell!

Seyton, true friend, to thee I trust mine all. Go summon Kirkaldy to a

parley: say Mary, queen of Scotland, rather than look upon the blood of

Scottishmen, will grant to her rebellious lords those terms which they

desire! Nay, interrupt us not, Lord Seyton. We care not what befall

that frozen viper whom we warmed within our bosom till he stung us!

Away!--let Orkney quit our camp; for, by the glorious light of heaven,

we never will behold him more!”

She spoke with an elevated voice, and features glowing with contending

passions, till the faithful baron had departed on his mission; but

then, then the false strength yielded to despair, and in an agony of

unfettered grief she sank into the arms of her attendants, murmuring

amid her tears, “O God, how I did adore that man!” and was borne,

almost a corpse, into her tent.

An hour passed heavily away, and at its close Mary came forth, with a

brow from which, though pale as the first dawning, every trace of grief

had vanished. The terms had been accepted. Without a tear she saw the

man for whom she had sacrificed all--all, to her very reputation--mount

and depart for ever! Without a tear she backed her own brave palfrey,

and rode, attended by a dozen servitors, faithful amid her sorrows as

they had been in brighter days, into the rebel host. Little was there

of courtesy, of that demeanor which becomes a subject in presence of

his queen, a true knight before a lady. Amid the taunts and jeers of

the vile soldiery, covered with dust and humiliation, she entered upon

that fatal progress which, commencing in a conditional surrender, ended

only when she was immured, beyond a hope of rescue or redemption,

within the dungeon-towers of Loch Leven!

THE CAPTIVITY.

“Long years!--It tries the thrilling frame to bear,

And eagle-spirit of a child of song--

Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;

And the mind’s canker in its savage mood,

When the impatient thirst of light and air

Scorches the heart; and the abhorred grate,

Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,

Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain

With a hot sense of heaviness and pain!”--LAMENT OF TASSO.

Eighteen long years of solitary grief--of that most wretched sickness

that arises, even to a proverb, from hope too long deferred--had

already passed away since, in the fatal action of Langside, the

wretched Mary had for the last time seen her banner fall, and her

adherents scattered like chaff before the wind by the determined valor

of her foes. All, all was lost! It had been the work of months to draw

that gallant army to a head, of which so many now lay stark in their

curdled gore; while the miserable remnant were hunted like beasts of

chase, to perish, when taken, upon the ignominious scaffold. And now,

of all the noble gentlemen who had thronged to her bridle-rein on that

fatal morning, high in hope as in valor, the merest had escaped to

guard the person of that sovereign whom they loved so truly, and in

behalf of whom they had endured so deeply. Her crown was lost for ever;

nor her crown only, but her country.

Of all the glorious gifts which, at an earlier period of her eventful

life, nature appeared to shower upon her head, freedom alone remained.

The palfrey which bore her from the battle-field was now the sole

possession of the titular monarch of three fair domains; the wild

moors, over which she fled in desperate haste, her only refuge from

persecutors the most unrelenting that ever joined sagacity to hatred

in the performance of their plans; the dozen gallant hearts who rallied

yet around their queen, beneath the guiding of the stout and loyal

Herries, her only court, her only subjects. Still she was free; and to

one who for months before had never seen the blessed light of heaven

but its lustre was sullied by the dim panes through which it forced its

way, to lend no solace to her captivity, the fresh breeze which eddied

across the purple moorlands of her native land had still the power to

impart a sense of pleasure, fleeting, it is true, and doubtful, but

still, in all its forms and essentials, absolute and real pleasure.

At the full distance of sixty Scottish miles from the accursed field

which had witnessed the downfall of all her hopes, worn out in body and

depressed in spirit, she paused to take, in the abbey of Dundrennan,

a few hours of that repose without which, even in the most trying

circumstances, the mind can not exist in its undiminished powers. At

this juncture, it appeared to those about her person that Mary was

utterly deserted by that wonderful sagacity, that clear insight into

the motives of others, which had ever constituted one of the strongest

points of her character. The chief object of the faithful few, who

had clung to her with unblenching steadiness through this her last

misfortune, had been to bear her in security to some point whence she

might effect her escape to the sunny shores of that land wherein she

had passed the happiest, the only truly happy, hours of her checkered

existence. Queen-dowager herself of France, knit by the closest ties of

interest and friendship to the court of Versailles--to which, moreover,

Scotland had ever been considered an auxiliar and well-affected state,

no less than an easy pretext for hostilities against its natural

antagonist--she had been there secure, not of safety only, but of

the full enjoyment of rank, and wealth, and dignity, and pleasure,

if indeed pleasure were yet within the reach of one who had herself

suffered, and who had beheld all those that loved her suffer, as Mary

the last queen of Scotland. Inclination, it would have seemed, no less

than policy, should have urged the hapless sovereign to the measure

advocated by each and all of her devoted train; for but a few years

had flown since she had felt all those pangs which render exile to

a delicate and sensitive mind the heaviest of human punishments, on

parting from the fair shores of that land, which even then perhaps

some prophetic spirit whispered, she must behold no more! Herries, the

bold and loyal Herries, bent his knee, stiffened with years of toil

and exposure, to sue of his adored mistress the only boon of all his

labors, all his sufferings, that she would avoid the fatal soil of

England.

“Remember,” he had cried, in tones which seemed in after-days of more

than human foresight--“remember how the false and wily woman, who sways

the sceptre of England with absolute and undisputed sway--remember, I

say, with what unflinching determination she has thwarted you in every

wish of your heart; with what depth of secret enmity she has at all

times, and in all places, cherished your foes, and injured all who were

most dear to you! and wherefore, oh wherefore, my beloved mistress,

wherefore should her course of action now be altered, when she has no

longer a powerful queen with whom to strive, but rather a fugitive

rival to oppress? Elizabeth of England--believe me, noble lady--has

marked this crisis as it drew nigh, with that unerring instinct which

directs the blood-raven to its destined victim while life yet revels in

its veins; and surely, so surely as you enter her accursed eyry, shall

you feel her vulture-talons busy about your heartstrings! For years,

my noble mistress, has Herries been your servant; at council or in

field, with ready hand and true word, has he ever served the Stuart. It

becomes me not to boast, yet will I speak: when Seyton, and Ogilvy, and

Huntley, were dismayed--when Hamilton himself hung back--Herries was

ever nigh.”

“Ever, ever true and loyal!” cried the hapless queen, touched even

beyond the consideration of her own calamities by the speech of the

brave veteran--“my noble, noble Herries, and bitter, most bitter has

been the reward of truth and valor; but so has it ever been with Mary.

I tell thee, baron, for me to love a bird, a tree, a flower, much less

a creature such as thou art, an honorable, upright, and devoted friend,

was but that creature’s doom: all whom I have loved have I destroyed!

Alas, alas for the undaunted spirits that were severed from the forms

they filled so nobly, on that dark battle-field!”

“Think not of them, my liege--mourn not for them,” interrupted the

baron. “Knightly, and in their duty, have they fallen. Their last blow

was stricken, and their last slogan shouted, in a cause the fairest

that ever hallowed warrior’s blade. They are at rest, and they are

happy. But think of those who, having lost their earthly all to save

thee, would yet esteem themselves pre-eminently happy so they might see

thee free and in security. Oh! hear me, Mary--hear for the first, last

time--hear the prayer of Herries! Go not, go not--as you love life, and

dignity, and liberty--as you would prove your faith to those who have

never been faithless to you--go not to this accursed England!”

But it had all been vain. The fiat had gone forth, and reason had

deserted, as it would seem, the destined victim. No arguments,

however lucid--no fears, however natural, could divert her from this

fatal project. With the choice of good and evil fairly set before

her--honor, and rank, and liberty, in France, a prison and an axe in

England--deliberately and resolutely she rushed upon her fate! And

when she might have found a willing asylum in the arms of kindred

monarchs, she yielded herself to the tender mercies of a rival queen,

a rival beauty; a fierce, unforgiving, unfeminine foe; a being who,

as she aped the name, so also displayed the attributes and nature of

the lion! How could Mary--a professed foe, a claimant of her crown, a

woman fairer, and of brighter parts even than her own--a mother, while

she was but a barren stake--how could Mary, with so many causes to

awaken her deathless hostility, hope for generosity or for mercy from a

queen who could even sacrifice without a pang her inclinations to her

interest; whose favors but marshalled those on whom they fell to the

scaffold and the block; whose dearest favorites, whose most faithful

servants had fallen, one by one, beneath the headsman’s axe; who had

proved herself, in short, a worthy heiress to the soulless tyrant from

whom she had sprung, by the violence of her uncurbed passions, and by

the hereditary pleasure with which, through all her long and glorious

reign (glorious, as it is termed, for with the multitude the ends will

ever justify the means, and foreign conquest hallow domestic tyranny),

she rioted in innocent and noble blood!

The Rubicon had been passed--and scarcely passed, before Mary had

discovered the entire justice, no less than the deep love, manifested

by the parting words of Herries. As her last sovereignty, she had

stepped aboard the barge that was to waft her from her discontented and

ungrateful subjects to a free and happy home, as she too fondly hoped,

in merry England. Girt with the bills and bows which had battened so

deeply and so often in the gore of Scottishmen, gallantly dressed,

and himself of gallant bearing, Lowther, the sheriff of the marches,

received the royal fugitive. With every mark of deference that manly

strength is bound to show to female weakness, with all the chivalrous

respect a good knight is compelled by his order to display to innocence

and beauty--nay, more, with all the profound humility of a subject

before his queen--did he conduct the hapless lady aboard his bark.

Yet, while the words of welcome were upon his tongue, while he dwelt

with loyal eagerness on the sincerity and love of England’s Elizabeth

toward her sister-queen--by his refusal to admit above a limited and

trifling portion of her train to share the asylum of their mistress,

he had already drawn the distinction between the royal captive and the

royal guest.

And so it afterward appeared. In vain did Mary petition as a favor,

or claim as a right, an interview with her relentless persecutor. She

should have known that even if Elizabeth could, by her constitution,

have pardoned her assumption of the style or titles of the English

monarchy, she could yet never overlook, never forgive her surpassing

loveliness, her elegant accomplishments, her brilliant wit, her more

than mortal grace! She might have condescended to despise the rival

queen--she could only stoop to hate the rival beauty. From castle

to castle had she been transferred, with no regard for either her

rank or convenience. From prison to prison, from warder to warder,

had she been conveyed, as each abode seemed in turn insecure to the

lynx-eyed jealousy of her tormentor, or every jailer in turn sickened

at the loathsome weariness of his hateful and degrading employment. No

better proof--if proof were needed--could be adduced of Elizabeth’s

tyrannical and cruel despotism, than the unconstitutional authority by

which she forced noble after noble, the very pride and flower of the

English aristocracy, to change their castles into prisonhouses, their

households into warders and turnkeys, their very lives into a state of

anxious misery, which could only be surpassed by that of the unhappy

prisoner they were, so contrary to their will, compelled to guard.

After the base mockery of the trial instituted at York, but a few

months after her arrival--that trial wherein a brother was brought

forward to convict his sister of adultery and murder--that trial

which, though it pronounced the prisoner unconvicted, yet inflicted

on her all the penalties of conviction--it scarcely appears that

Mary ever entertained a hope of obtaining her liberty, much less the

station which was her right, from either the justice or the generosity

of the lion-queen. In vain had every course been tried, in vain had

every human means been employed. In vain had Scotland sued; in vain

had France and Spain threatened, and even prepared to act upon their

threats. For Mary there was no amelioration, no change!

From day to day, from year to year, her hopes had fallen away one by

one. Her spirits, so buoyant and elastic once, had now subsided into

a heavy, settled gloom; her very charms were but a wreck and shadow

of their former glory. For a time she had endeavored, by all those

beautiful occupations of the pencil, the needle, or the lyre, in which

none had equalled her in her young days of happiness, to while away

the deep and engrossing weariness which by long endurance becomes

even worse than pain. For a time she had been permitted to vary the

monotony of her domestic labors by her favorite exercises in the field

and forest. Surrounded by a train of mail-clad horsemen, warders with

bended bows and loaded arquebuses, she had a few times been allowed to

ride forth into the free woodland, and to forget, amid the gay sights

and heart-stirring sounds of the chase, the cares that were heavy at

her heart. But how should that heart forget, when at every turn it

encountered the haggard eye of the anxious keeper--anxious, for the

slightest relaxation of his duty were certain death! How should the ear

thrill to the enlivening music of the pack, or to the wild flourish of

the bugles, when the clash of steel announced on every side the minions

of her oppressor? How should the gallop over the velvet turf, beneath

the luxuriant shadow of the immemorial oaks, convey aught of freshness

to the spirit that was about to return thence to chambers no less a

dungeon for being decked with the mockeries of state, than though they

had presented to the eye those common accessories of bar, and grate,

and chain, which they failed not to set before the mind? After a while,

even these liberties were curtailed! It seemed too much of freedom,

that the titular sovereign of three realms--the cynosure of every eye,

the beauty at whose very name every heart thrilled and every pulse

bounded--should be permitted to taste the common air of heaven, even

when hemmed in, without the possibility of escape, by guards armed to

the teeth, and sworn to exercise those arms, not only against all who

should attempt the rescue, but against the miserable captive herself,

should she attempt to profit by any efforts made for her release!

And efforts were made--efforts by the best and noblest of the British

peerage--by men whose names were almost sufficient to turn defeat to

victory and shame to glory. Norfolk and Westmoreland, and a hundred

others, of birth scarcely less distinguished, and of virtues no less

brilliant, revolted from the soul-debasing despotism of Elizabeth, and

attempted, now by secret stratagem, and now by open warfare, to force

the victim from the clutches of the lion. With the deepest regret did

Mary witness the destruction of so many noble spirits, and with yet

deeper fury did Elizabeth behold star after star of her boasted galaxy

of nobles shoot madly from their spheres in pursuit of a meteor. Bitter

were her feelings, and deadly was her vengeance. The bloody reign of

Mary might almost have been deemed to have returned, as day by day the

death-bells tolled, as the traitor’s gate admitted another and another

occupant to that above, whence the only egress was by the axe and

scaffold. Nor was this all. A thousand wild and fearful rumors began

to float among the multitude. The perils of a catholic insurrection,

the intended assassination of the queen, the establishment of a

papistical dynasty upon the throne of England, were topics of ordinary

conversation, but of no ordinary excitement. At one time it was

reported that a Spanish fleet was actually in the channel; at another

that the duke of Guise, with a vast army, had effected a landing on

the Kentish coast, and might hourly be expected in the capital. Nor

is it uncharitable to suppose that these reports were designedly

spread abroad, this excitement purposely kept alive, by the wily

ministers of Elizabeth. That the despot-queen had long ago determined

on the slaughter of her rival, is certain; nor have we any just cause

for doubting that Bacon and Walsingham were men as fully capable of

goading the terrors of a multitude into fury as was their mistress of

recommending the private murder of her hapless victim!

It was at this period that popular madness was raised to its utmost

height by the detection of Babington’s conspiracy. Rich, young,

brave, and romantic; stimulated by the hope of gaining the hand of

Mary, forgetful that the personal loveliness for which she had once

been conspicuous must long have yielded to the joint influence of

misery and time; and deceived by the fatal maxim, then too much in

vogue, that means are justified by ends--this gentleman resolved on

bringing about the liberation of the Scottish by the murder of the

English queen. The affair was not looked upon as so atrocious, but

that twelve associates were easily found for the execution of the

plot; and it is barely possible that, had they proceeded at once to

action, their desperate effort might have been crowned with success.

They delayed--they talked--they were discovered! Beneath the protracted

agonies of the question, one was found of these convicted traitors

who asserted the privity of Mary to the whole affair; and at once, as

though a torch had been applied to some train long prepared, the whole

of England burst forth into a perfect frenzy of terror. A people are

never so terrible, never so barbarous, as when they are thoroughly and

needlessly terrified. From every quarter of the kingdom the cry was at

once for blood; and Elizabeth, looking in cool delight upon the tumult,

perceived that the moment had arrived when she might gratify, without

fear, her jealous thirst for her hated guest’s destruction. Addresses

showered into either house of parliament, beseeching the queen and her

ministers to awaken themselves at once to the perils of the people; to

provide against the impended dangers of a catholic succession; and to

remove at once all possibility of future conspiracies by the immediate

removal of her who was, as they asserted, not the cause only, but the

principal mover of every successive plot.

It is not to be supposed that, after pining so long in secret for

an opportunity of gratifying her malice, Elizabeth doubted an

instant. It is true indeed that, with a loathsome affectation of

tender-heartedness, she pretended to regret the stern necessity;

that she whined forth doleful remonstrances to her trusty ministers,

entreating them to discover some mode by which she might herself be

preserved from the risk of assassination, without undergoing the misery

of seeing her well-beloved cousin of Scotland suffer in her stead!

Well, however, did those ministers know the meaning of the motives of

their odious mistress; well were they aware that there was no more of

pity or reluctance in the bosom of Elizabeth than there is of mirth in

that of the hyena when he sends forth his yells of laughter above his

mangled prey!

It was a lovely morning in the autumn; the sun was shedding a mellow

light upon the long glades and velvet turf of a park-like lawn before

the feudal towers of the earl of Shrewsbury. Before the gate were

assembled a group of liveried domestics, with many a noble steed

pawing the earth and champing its foamy bits; hounds clamored in their

couples, and falcons shook themselves and clapped their restless

wings in vain impatience. It was evident that the attendants were but

awaiting the approach of some distinguished personage, to commence

their sports; and by their whispered conversation it appeared that

this personage was no other than the wretched Mary. The castle-gates

were thrown open; a heavy guard, with arquebuss, and pike, and bow,

filed through the gloomy gateway; and then, leaning upon the arm of the

still stately Shrewsbury, the poor victim of inveterate persecution

came slowly forward. Several gentlemen in rich attire, and among them

Sir Thomas Georges, blazing in the royal liveries of England, yet

bearing on his soiled buskins and the bloody spurs that graced them

tokens of a long and hasty journey, followed; and another band of

warders brought up the rear.

The charms which had once rendered Mary the loveliest of her sex, had

faded, it is true; the dimpled cheek was sunken, and its hues, that

once had vied with the carnation, had fled for ever; her tresses were

no longer of that rich and golden brown that had furnished subjects

for a thousand sonnets, for many a line of gray marked the premature

and wintry blight which had been cast upon her beauties by the

sternness and misery of her latter years. Still, there was an air of

such sweet resignation in every feature, such a dignity in the port

of her person--still symmetrical, though it had lost something of its

roundness--such a majesty in her still-brilliant eyes--that even the

wretches who had determined on her destruction dared not meet the

glance of her whom they so foully wronged.