CHAPTER VIII.THE CHALLENGE.Defiled is my name full sore,Through cruel spyte and false report;That I may say for evermore,Farewell, my joy! adieu, comfort!For wrongfully ye judge of me.Unto my fame a mortall wounde;Say what ye lyst it will not be,Ye seek for that cannot be founde.Anne Boleyn's Lament.The remains of the unfortunate king, after being embalmed by Picauet the French physician, were interred among his royal ancestors in the aisles of Holyrood, not contemptuously, as some historians tell us, but solemnly and privately; for Mary dared not have had the burial service of the Catholic church publicly performed, when, but seven years before, those sepulchral rites were, by the Reformers, denied to her mother.In the southern aisle of the church of Sanctæ Crucis, near the slab that still marks where Rizzio lies, he was lowered into the tomb, while the torches cast their lurid light on the dark arcades and shadowy vistas of the nave, amid the lamentations and the muttered threats of vengeance—the deep sure vengeance of the feudal days—from the knights and barons of the Lennox.Attired in sackcloth, poor Mary shut herself up in a darkened chamber hung with black serge, and there for many days she passed the weary hours in vigil and in prayer, for the unshriven soul of that erring husband, whom for the past year she had been compelled to hold in abhorrence—a sentiment which she then remembered with a remorse that increased her pity for his fate.Bothwell dared not to approach her while this paroxysm lasted; but by plunging into gaiety and riot—by spending the days and nights in revelry with Ormiston and d'Elboeuff—he endeavoured to drown the recollections of the past, to deaden the sense of the present, and to nerve himself for the future; but in vain—one terrible thought was ever present!It stood like something palpable and visible before him. It seemed written on the fragrant earth, in the buoyant air, and on the shining water, imparting to the sunny spring the gloom of winter. It was in his ears, it was on his tongue, and in his soul; there was no avoiding, no crushing, no forgetting it! Oh, how vividly at times, in the calm silence of the sleepless night,that crycame to his ears; and his thoughts were riveted on that grey marble slab in the chapel aisle, beneath which, mangled, cold, and mouldering, lay one——he would smite his damp forehead to drive away the thoughts, and rush to drown his sense of misery in wine.Amid the hum of the city, when its sunlit thoroughfares were crowded with the gaiety and bustle of passing crowds, all of whom seemed so happy and so gay, it rang in his ears!Amid the solemn deliberations of the council on border raids and feudal broils—on English wars and French embassies—in all of which he was compelled to take the lead, as the royal favourite and first of the Scottish peers, it came to him sadly and mournfully above the voices of the most able orators; and then his heart sank when he looked on the blanched visages of Morton, of Maitland, and his other copartners in that terrible deed, to which—as if by common consent—they never dared to recur!Amid the leafy rustle of the woods, as their dewy buds expanded beneath the alternate showers and sunshine of an early spring (if he sought the country), still he heard it!Amid the deep hoarse murmur of the chafing sea, if he sought the lonely shore, he heard it still—that sad and wailing cry of death and of despair!Amid the joys of the midnight revel, when the wine sparkled in the gilded glasses—the grapes blushed in their silver baskets—the lofty lamps filled the chamber with rosy light and rich perfume;—when the heedless ribaldry of Ormiston, the courtly wit of d'Elboeuff, the frolicsome spirit of Coldinghame, were all there to make thepresentparamount alike to the past and the future, still it came to him—that terrible sound—the last cry of Darnley!The queen still remained shut in her darkened chamber, secluded from all—even from the prying ambassador of Elizabeth, who, when introduced, could not discern her face amidst the sombre gloom surrounding her; but, as he informed his mistress, the accents of Mary were both touching and mournful.Two strange rumours were now floating through the city; one of a spectre which had appeared in the lodging of the Lord Athol on the night of the king's death; the other, of Bothwell's implication in that terrible deed, in which he and his companions had endeavoured (and perhaps not without good grounds) to implicate the Earl of Moray.No one knew how this rumour gained credence; but each man whispered it to his neighbour. Voices, accusing him of the deed, rang at midnight in the narrow streets of the city; the scholars chalked ribald verses at the corners of the wynds and church-doors; while Moray—openly Bothwell's friend, and secretly his foe—had handbills posted on the portes, naming him as the perpetrator. Furtively these things were done; for few dared to impugn the honour of so powerful a noble, and none could arraign him save the father of the murdered prince, Matthew Earl of Lennox, an aged noble, who had served with valour and distinction in the wars of Francis I.; and he boldly charged the Earl with the crime.Bothwell saw, or imagined he saw, an accusation in the eye of every man whose glance he encountered. Pride, jealousy, and angry suspicion, now by turns animated his resentful heart, and galled his fiery spirit. He was always conferring secretly with the knights and barons of his train; he kept his vassals ever on the alert, and never went abroad without being completely armed, to prevent a surprise; but daily and hourly, slowly and surely, like an advancing and overwhelming tide, the suspicions of the people grew and waxed stronger, till, clamorously, it burst in one deep hoarse shout against him, and a hundred thousand tongues said, "Thou art the man!""Malediction on these presumptuous churls!" said the Earl angrily to Ormiston, as they met near the palace gate on the day after Darnley's funeral. "They all accuse me; and there must be treachery somewhere.""Nay, nay, never think so while that bond of Whittinghame exists. It binds us all, body and soul, to be silent as the grave, and deep as Currie brig.""But now they speak of the queen, adding all that the innate malevolence of the vulgar, the hatred that Knox and his compatriots have fostered and fanned, can add; and declaring that she is art and part with those who freed her and the nation from the dominion of the house of Lennox.""May God forefend!" said Ormiston; for, ruffian as he was, he deemed the national honour at stake under such an accusation. "I would run my sword through the brisket of the first base mechanic who breathed a word of this.""Breathed a word of it!—Gramercy! French Paris tells me, it is openly discussed by every full-fed burgess at the city cross; by every rascally clown who brings his milk and butter to the Tron; by every archer and pikeman over their cans of twopenny; by every apostate priest and pious psalmist who haunt the houses of Knox, of Craig, and Buchanan. A curse upon the hour when my secret love, my cherished hopes—the name and fame the brave old Lords of Hailes transmitted to me, so spotless and so pure—are turned to ribaldry and jest, to laughter and to scorn, by every foul-mouthed citizen.""'Tis mighty unlucky all this; for here hath been my Lord Fleming, the great chamberlain, with the queen's especial commendations to your lordship, announcing, that on the morrow she intendeth to lay aside her weeping and wailing, her dumps and dolours, and departing hence for the house of Lord Seaton, a gay place, and a merry withal; and there she hopes you will escort her with your train of lances, for the Lothians are so disturbed that she mistrusts even Arthur of Mar and his band of archers.""Be it so! Send Bolton to her grace with my dutiful answer," replied the Earl, whose eye lighted up, for he thought that, in the shock Darnley's fate had given her, the queen had forgotten him; "we will be all in our helmets, and at her service by cock-crow to-morrow; but first," he added, sternly and impressively, "take this, my better glove, and hang it on yonder city cross, and there to-day at noon announce to all, that I, James Earl of Bothwell, and Lord of Hailes, will defend mine honour against all men, body for body, on foot or on horseback, at the barriers of the Portsburgh, between the chapel of St. Mary and the castle rock, so help me God at the day of doom!"And drawing off his long buff glove, which was richly embroidered and perfumed, the Earl handed it to his faithful Achates, and returned into the palace to have his train prepared with becoming splendour, for the honourable duty of guarding the queen on the morrow.In compliance with this command, Black Hob, sheathed in his sable armour, his visor up to reveal his swarthy visage, and mounted on a strong charger of the jettiest black, attended by Hay of Tallo as esquire, French Paris as his page, and three trumpeters in the Earl's gorgeous livery, gules and argent, and having his banner, with the lions of Hepburn rending an English rose, advanced into the city, and there, amid a note of defiance, hung the Earl's glove above the fountain, together with his declaration of innocence, and offer "to decide the matter in a duel with any gentleman or person of honour who should dare to lay it to his charge."For many a day the glove hung there, and none answered the challenge; for the star of Hepburn was still in the ascendant, and none dared to encounter its chieftain in the field, for dread of the deadly feud that was sure to ensue.But the printer of pasquils and the caricaturists were still busy, and one morning there was a paper found beneath the Earl's challenge, on which was drawn a hand grasping a sword, and bearing the initials of the queen, opposed to another armed with amaul, bearing those of the Earl—a palpable allusion to the weapon by which the unfortunate prince was slain, and which could only have been made by a conspirator.The heedlessness of the unsuspecting Mary in visiting the Earl of Winton under the escort of Bothwell (of whose innocence she had been convinced by Moray), and his divorce from his countess, lent renewed energy to the voice of calumny; and then those rumours of her participation in that crime, in which all the skill of her enemies for three hundred years has failed to involve her, were noised abroad; and slowly but surely the nation, which had never loved her for her catholicity, and partiality for gaiety and splendour, was completely estranged from her. Now, on one hand, were a fierce people and a bigoted clergy; on the other, a ferocious vassalage, headed by illiterate and rapacious nobles, and to withstand them but one feeble woman.In the glamour that came over the Scottish people, they failed to remember that, animated by delicacy and honour, the unhappy Mary, only six weeks before the death of Darnley, had rejected a divorce, though urged by the most able of her ministers and powerful of her nobles; they also forgot how anxiously she had prevented his committing himself to the dangers of the ocean, when about to become an exile in another land; and they forgot, too, her assiduity and tenderness, to one who had so long slighted and ceased to love her, when he lay almost upon a deathbed, under the effects of a loathsome and terrible disease. The nobles saw only a woman, who stood between them and power—regencies, places, and command; the people saw only an idolater and worshipper of stocks and stones; and the clergy "ane unseemly woman," who dared to laugh, and sing, and dance, in defiance of their fulminations anent such sin and abomination.Exasperated by his son's death, and the rumours abroad, the aged Earl of Lennox demanded of Mary that Bothwell should submit to a trial. His prayer was granted; and Keith acquaints us that she wrote to her father-in-law, requesting him to attend the court with all his feudal power and strength.Dreading the issue of an ordeal which might blast his prospects and his fame, the politic Bothwell used every means to increase his already vast retinue, by enlisting under his banner every dissolute fellow, border outlaw, and broken man, that would assume his livery, the gules and argent; and thus his town residence, and those of his Mends, were soon swarming with these sinister-eyed and dark-visaged swashbucklers, with their battered steel bonnets, their long swords, and important swagger. Thus, when the day of trial came, the streets were crowded with them; and when Bothwell, after passing through a long lane of his own arquebussiers, at the head of three thousand men, (mostly barons, knights, and esquires,) appeared at the bar, sheathed in a magnificent suit of armour, supported on one side by the crafty Earl of Morton, and on the other by two able advocates—the father of the young prince he had destroyed dared not appear, as he dreaded to share the fate of his son.After a long discussion, to which the high-born culprit listened with a beating heart—though his influence had packed the jury, which was composed of Mary's friends and Rizzio's murderers; and though he had bribed the judges and deterred the prosecutor—the court, actuated by sentiments best known to themselves, unanimously "acquittedthe Earl of Bothwell of all participation in the king's death."With him the die had been cast.Had they brought in a verdict of guilty, another hour had seen his banner waving in triumph and defiance above the capital—for he was alike prepared to conquer or to die; but this decision of the jury, delivered by the mouth of Caithness, their chancellor, rendered all his warlike preparations nugatory. Had they found him guilty, he would boldly have rushed to arms in defence of his honour and life, with an energy and wrath that would alike have stifled the whispers of conscience and remorse; but they had declared him innocent, and he left the bar slowly and sadly, feeling in his inmost soul a thousand degrees more criminal than ever.As he left the chamber where the High Court sat, his friends and vassals received him with acclamations—with brandished swords and waving pennons; and, with trumpets sounding, conveyed him through the great arch of the Netherbow to St. Mary's Wynd, where, by his command, the host of theRed Lionhad prepared a grand banquet and rere-supper for the nobles and barons attending the Parliament.Though "one of the handsomest men of his time," as old Crawford tells us, the Earl feared that, notwithstanding the assiduity of his attentions, Mary would never regard him with other sentiments than those of mere esteem for his services, and efficiency as an officer of state. "Men stop at nothing when their hands are in," saith an old saw; and, actuated by this spirit, Bothwell—ever keeping steadily in view that alluring object, which, step by step, had drawn him to the dangerous and terrible eminence on which he found himself—resolved, by one more desperate act, to reach the summit of his hopes, or sink into the gulf for ever.CHAPTER IX.AINSLIE'S SUPPER.Men talk of country, Christmasses, and court gluttony,Their thirty pound butter'd eggs, their pies of carps' tongues,Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris; the carcassesOf three fat wethers bruised for gravy, toMake sauce for a single peacock; yet their feastsWerefasts, compared with the City's.Massinger's City Madam.It was, as we have stated, the month of April, and on the day of the Earl's acquittal.About seven in the evening, the sun was setting behind the purple hills of the Ochil range, in all the splendour of that beautiful month of bright blue skies and opening flowers—of the pale primrose and the drooping blue-bell; when the dew lingers long on the fresh grass and the sprouting hedges—when the swallow builds its nest under the warm eave, and the mavis sings merrily as he spreads his pinions on the buoyant air. It was an April evening. The rays of the setting sun had long since left the narrow streets of Edinburgh, though they still lingered on its gothic spires and gilded vanes, throwing a farewell gleam on each tall chimney head, each massy bartisan, and round tourelle.A great fire blazed in the yawning hall chimney of theRed Lion, throwing its ruddy glow on the red ashler walls, which the host endeavoured to decorate by various pieces of tapestry, begged and borrowed from his neighbours, on the rough oak rafters that once had flourished on the burgh-muir—on the far-stretching vista of the sturdy table, flanked with wooden benches on each side for Bothwell's noble guests, covered with a scarlet broad cloth, and glittering in all the shiny splendour of French pewter and delft platters—for there had never been an atom of silver seen in an hostellary as yet; and by each dark-blue cover lay a knife, halfted with horn and shaped like a skene-dhu. A gigantic salt occupied the centre, and a carved chair raised upon a dais—a chair that whilome had held the portly Provost of St. Giles, but to which honest Adam had helped himself in 1559, that year of piety and plunder—stood at the upper end, and was designed for the great Earl of Bothwell.A smile of the utmost satisfaction and complaisance spread over the fat rosy face of Ainslie's ample dame, as she surveyed the great table, which her taste and skill had decorated and arrayed; and she absolutely clapped her hands with glee, when the great platter, bearing a peacock roasted, and having its legs shining with gold-leaf, and all its bright-dyed pinions stuck round it, was placed upon the board at the moment that a trampling of horses in the narrow wynd announced the arrival of the Earl and his guests, among whom were such a number of dignitaries as never before had been under the rooftree of theRed Lion; and honest Elspat Ainslie was overwhelmed each time that she reckoned them on her fat fingers, and found there were eight bishops, nine earls, and seven barons, all the most powerful and popular in Scotland, where a man's power was then reckoned by the number of ruffians under his standard, and his popularity by his hatred of the Papists, and distribution of their gear to the preachers and pillars of the new regime.The dame hurried to a mirror—gave her coif a last adjust—smoothed her apron and gown of crimson crammasie; while Adam brushed a speck from his fair doublet of broad cloth—practised his best bow several times to the gilt peacock; and all their trenchermen and attendants stood humbly by the door in double file as the guests entered.Bothwell came first, with his usual air of gallantry and grace—his doublet of cloth-of-gold glittering in the light of the setting sun; his ruff buttoned by diamonds; his shoulder-belt and mantle stiff with gold embroidery; while his sword, dagger, and plumed bonnet, were flashing with precious stones. He made a profound bow to the hostess; for now he smiled less than formerly, and the pallor of his noble features was attributed by all togriefat the Lord Lennox's accusation.Morton followed, looking quite as usual, with his sinister eyes, his long beard and little English hat, his black velvet cloak and silver-headed cane; but, with a jocularity that was always affected, he pinched the plump cheek of Dame Ainslie, and thumped her husband upon the back, saying—"How farest thou, host of mine? Faith, I need scarcely ask thee, for thou swellest and wallowest amid the good things of this life daily.""By Tantony and Taudry! in these kittle times, my lord"—began Adam."Peace, thou irreverend ronion!" whispered the Earl of Huntly fiercely, as he grasped his poniard—"SaintAnthony andSaintAudry, thou meanest.""I mean just whatever your lordship pleases," replied the hosteller, as he shrank abashed by the stern eye of the Catholic noble, who resented every disrespect to the ancient church, so far as he dared."Nay, nay," interposed Secretary Maitland, with his bland smile and flute-like voice; "poor Adam's slip of the tongue merited not a rebuke so sharp; to grasp thy poniard thus amounts almost to hamesucken—a gloomy beginning to our banquet, my Lord of Huntly."There was present that gay scion of the house of Guise, d'Elboeuff—all smiles and grimaces, starched lace and slashes; there was the Earl of Sutherland, the lover of Bothwell's absent countess; Glencairn, the ferocious; Cassilis, who once half-roasted an abbot alive; Eglinton, the cautious; Seaton, the gallant; and Herries, the loyal; Rosse, of Hawkhead, and many others—until the hall was crowded by the bravest and the greatest of Scotland's peers, and many lesser barons, who, though untitled, considered themselves in feudal dignity second to the crown alone. All were well armed, and the nature of the time was evinced by their dresses; for all who had not on corselets and gorgets to prevent sudden surprises, had quilted doublets of escaupil, and all were scrupulously accoutred with swords and Parmese poniards, without which no gentleman could walk abroad.As Bothwell advanced to the head of the table to assume his seat, his eye caught one of the black-letter proclamations of the council, which was fixed over the gothic fireplace, and offered a yearly rent, with two thousand pounds of Scottish money, for the discovery of the perpetrators of the crime at the Kirk-of-Field; "quhilk horribill and mischevious deed," as the paper bore it, "almychty God would never suffer to lie hid.""Mass!" said the Earl, as the blood mounted to his temples, "thou hast a roaring fire, Master Adam, this April day.""The coals bleeze weel, Lord Earl; yet they cost a good penny, coming as they do by the galliots frae the knight of Carnock's heughs, aboon Cuboss.""Little marvel is it that they burn thus," said the Earl of Glencairn; adding, in a lower voice, "for knowest thou, gudeman, that instead of contenting himself with such of this precious mineral as may be got shovel-deep, by advice of that damnable sorcerer, the knight of Merchiston, he hath sunk a pit—a cylinder—even unto the bowels of the earth, as Hugh of Tester did at his Goblin Hall; and he is now digging under the Forth, with intent, as Master George Buchanan told me yesterday, to ascend and seek upper air on this side.""Ascend!" reiterated Morton with astonishment—"Where?""At the gate of thy castle of Dalkeith, perhaps; thou art thought to dabble a little in spell and philtre—like draweth to like.""As the deil said to the collier," added old Lindesay. Several laughed at the hit, but Morton frowned.This famous supper at Ainslie's hostel—a supper which has been fated to live for ever in Scottish history—was marked by all that barbaric profusion that characterised the feasts of those days, when men feasted seldom. Under the superintendence of a notable Frenchchef de cuisine, the first course consisted of ling, pike, haddocks, and gurnards, dressed with eggs, cream, and butter; but there was no salmon, that being esteemed as fitted only for servants. The chief dish of all was a grand pie of salt herrings, minced, and prepared with almond paste, milts, and dates; a grated manchet, sugar, sack, rose-water, and saffron; preserved gooseberries, barberries, currants, and Heaven knows what more; but the curious or the epicurean may still find the recipe in worthy Master Robert May's "Accomplished Cooke, 1685."This delightful mess threw the Marquis d'Elboeuff into as great an ecstasy as the artificial hens—which formed part of the second course, and were made of puff-paste—seated upon large eggs of the same material, each of which contained a plump mavis, seasoned with pepper and ambergris; and, to him, these proved infinitely more attractive than the haunches of venison, the chines of beef, and roasted pigs, that loaded the table. To suit the palates of Lindesay, Glencairn, and other sturdy Scots, who disdained such foreign kickshaws, there were sottens of mutton, platters of pouts, Scottish collops, tailyies of beef, and sea-fowl. Every description of French wine was to be had in abundance—ale and old Scots beer, seasoned with nutmeg; and it would have been a fair sight for the effeminate descendants of these doughty earls and bearded barons, to have witnessed how they did honour to this great repast, eating and drinking like men who rose with the lark and eagle, whose armour was seldom from their breasts, whose swords were never from their sides, and whose meals depended often on the dexterity with which they bent the bow, or levelled the arquebuss.On each side of the Earl sat four bishops; and all his real and pretended friends were present except Moray, who had suddenly departed to France, "that he might seem to be unconcerned in what was going forward: he failed not in this journey to circulate every injurious report to the prejudice of his unhappy sovereign, who, in the mean time, was destitute of every faithful friend and proper councillor."The Archbishop of St. Andrew's—the last Catholic primate of Scotland (the same noble prelate whom, for his loyalty, Moray so savagely hanged over Stirling bridge five years after)—now arose, and, stretching his hands over the board, uttered the brief grace then fashionable:—"Soli Deo honor et gloria," whereat the Lord Lindesay muttered something under his beard, "anent the idolatry of Latin."Instead of that calm, cold, and polite reserve, that marks the modern dinner table, their nut-brown faces shone with the broad good-humour that shook their buirdly frames with laughter, and they became boisterous and jocose as the night drew on; and the blood red wines of old France and Burgundy, and the stiff usquebaugh of their native hills, fired their hearts and heads.Lord Lindesay had prevailed on d'Elboeuff to partake of a haggis, and he was laughing under his thick beard at the grimaces of the French noble, whose complaisance compelled him to sup a dish he abhorred."Thou findest it gude, Lord Marquis?""Ah! cest admirable!" sighed d'Elboeuff."Why, thou seemest to relish it pretty much as a cat liketh mustard.""Oui!" smiled the Frenchman, who did not understand him."And how fares my noble friend, Coldinghame?" asked the Earl of his brotherroué."Weel enow; but sick of dangling about this court, which is such a mess of intrigue.""Tush! Bethink thee, the queen hath the wardship of many a fair heiress, and may bestow on thee a handsome wife.""Bah! like my Lord of Morton, I care not for a handsome wife"—"Unless she belong to another," said Ormiston, coarsely closing the sentence."By the rood! a good jest and a merry," laughed Bothwell; but Morton's olive cheek glowed with anger."Be not chafed, my lord," said Ormiston; "by cock and pie! I spoke but in boon fellowship. Drink with me! This Rochelle is famously spiced, and stirred with a rosemary sprig for good-luck.""Does Master Ainslie warrant it old?""Old! my Lord Morton," reiterated Adam, turning up his eyes; "ay! auld as the three trees of Dysart; for it lay many a long year before the '59, among the stoor and cobwebs o' the Blackfriars' binns, up the brae yonder.""By the way," said the Lord Coldinghame, "as thou talkest of the Blackfriars, what tale of a roasted horse is this, anent whilk the whole city is agog, concerning a spectre which is said to have appeared there on the night the king was slain, and hath haunted the ruins of St. Mary's kirk ever since?""Knowest thou aught of this, Adam?" asked Bothwell, whose mind, though he endeavoured to maintain his usual aspect of nonchalance, wandered constantly to the gigantic projects he had in view."As ye know, my lord," replied Adam, setting his head on one side and his left leg forward, with the air of a man who has a story to tell; "on the night of that deadly crime in the Kirk-of-Field, two especial gentlemen of the Earl of Athol, the umquhile king's gude-cousin, were both a-bed at his lordship's lodging, which is just within the town wall, and not a bowshot frae auld St. Mary's kirk. In the mirk mid hour of the night, Sir Dougal Stuart, who slept next the wall, was awaked by a death-cauld hand passing owre his cheek, and which thereafter took him by the beard, while an unearthly voice, sounding as if from afar off, said—'Arise, or violence will be offered unto you!' At the same moment his friend, a half-wud Hielandman, awoke, saying furiously—'Where is my durk, for some one hath boxed mine ear?' And both started up to see, close by their bed, a dusky figure, of which no feature could be defined save a clenched hand, bare, and long, and glistening in the siller moonlight, that shone through the grated window; then it melted away like morning mist; the turnpike door was heard to close with a bang, as if some one had left the house; and while, with fear and alarm, they started to their sword's, lo! they heard the explosion that sent king and kirk-house into the air together."[*][*] See Buchanan."Stuff and nonsense!" said Bothwell angrily, for this story was then current in the city; "'tis a tale befitting only the old dames who play basset and primero in the queen's antechamber. Wert thou at sermon in the High Kirk this morning, Hob?" he asked, to change the subject."Cock and pie, no!" said Ormiston, as he gulped down his wine with surprise."Marry!" said Lord Lindesay; "thou didst miss a rare discourse.""On what did Master Knox expone?" asked several Protestant peers; while Huntly and other Catholics curled their mustaches, and exchanged glances of scorn. Lindesay replied—"Anent the story of that strong loon, Samson, tying three hundred torches to the tails of sae mony tod-lowries, to burn the corn of the Philistines—likening himself unto Samson—the ministry o' the reformit kirk to the three hundred tods, and their discourses unto the bleezing torches—the corn o' the Philistines unto the kirk o' the Pope, whilk their burning tails would utterly overthrow, ruinate, and consume. God speed the gude wark!" added the stern peer, as he brushed aside his heavy white beard with one hand, and tossed over his wine-cup with the other."What spell hath come over thee, compere Bothwell?" said d'Elboeuff; "thou seemest grave as a judge. Here is themerry-thoughtof a capercailzie to scare thy melancholy.""Marquis," replied the Earl gaily, "thy wit would require the addition of awingto make it soar. What a tall goblet thou hast! Dost mean to get drunk to-night?""Why not,parbleu!when I am to ride to Holyrood?""What difference doth that make?""Mon Dieu!because, if I stumble, there is more effect when falling from a saddle, than sprawling endlong in the kennel like a beastly bourgeoise.""'Tis time with thee, Marquis, that siclike follies were left owre, for thy beard getteth frosted wi' eild," said Lord Lindesay."Tete Dieu!dost thou say so, and live? But remember, most sombre Lord of the Byres, that Paris is as different from this city as the fields of Elysium are from those on the other side of the Styx. There the gaieties and glories of youth begin when we are yet children; when ye are boys, we are men; when ye are in your prime, we are in old age—exhausted with pleasure,ennui, drinking and gaming, roistering and"——"Enough, Marquis!" said Bothwell, who had two ends in view—to drench his guests with wine, and to keep them all in excellent humour. "Enough!" he whispered; "for there are some stern spirits here who do not relish this discourse; and bethink thee of the reverend bishops who are among us.""Tonnere!apostates! heretics!" muttered the Marquis. Meanwhile Ormiston, Bolton, Morton, and others who were Bothwell's friends, seeing how his spirit alternately flagged and flashed, left nothing undone to increase the hilarity of the evening, and keep the wine circulating; for there were many present whom descent, religion, or faction had set at deadly feud, and who, had they met on a hillside or highway, or perhaps in the adjacent street, would have fought like mad bulls; but these had been artfully and politicly separated, and thus the unrestrained jesting and revelry increased apace.Some talked of creaghs upon the northern frontier, of forays on the southern, of partition of kirk lands, and the flavour of wines, in the same breath. D'Elboeuff chattered like a magpie of new doublets and perfumes, of Paris and pretty women: old Lindesay spoke solemnly and portentously, over his ale, on the prospects of the holy kirk; and Glencairn responded with becoming gravity and ferocity of aspect.Morton sat opposite Lethington, and from time to time they sipped their wine and exchanged those deep glances which the most acute physiognomist would have failed to analyse; but, as they watched the ebb and flow of the conversation around them, Morton seemed almost to say in his eyes, "Thou art wise as Nestor;" and the secretary to reply, "Andthoucunning as Ulysses."Gradually the latter led the conversation to the politics of the day—the misgovernment that, since the death of James V., had characterised each succeeding year; how the sceptre, feebly swayed by the hands of a facile woman, had never been capable of aweing the great barons and their predatory vassalage—the urgent necessity of some powerful peer espousing the queen, and assuming the reins of government, otherwise the destruction of Scotland by foreign invasion and domestic brawl—the subversion of the rights of the nobles, the power of the church, the courts of law, and the liberties of the people, would assuredly ensue.This half-false and half-fustian speech, which the able Lethington delivered with singular emphasis and grace, was received with a burst of acclamation."My lords and gentles," said the aged Lindesay, standing erect, and leaning on his six feet sword as he spake; "here we are convened, as it seemeth, as mickle for council as carousal; albeit, ye have heard the premises so suitably set forth by the knight of Lethington, it causeth me mickle marvel to know whom among us he would name as worthy of the high honour of espousing our fair queen.""Cock and pie!" exclaimed the impetuous Hob Ormiston, erecting his gigantic figure, and speaking in a voice that made the rafters ring; "whom would we name but her majesty's prime favourite and sorely maligned first counsellor, James Earl of Bothwell, Governor of Edinburgh and Dunbar, and Lord High Admiral of the realm? Who, I demand, would not rather see him the mate of Mary Stuart, than the beardless Lord of Darnley—that silken slave, that carpet knight, and long-legged giraffe in lace and taffeta? What say ye, my lords and barons, are we unanimous?"There was a pause, and then rose a shout of applause, mingled with cries of "A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" from Morton and other allies of the Earl, who were so numerous that they completely overcame the scruples, or hushed into silence the objections, of the hostile and indifferent.The Earl, whose heart was fired anew by the glow of love and ambition—for never did a prospect more dazzling open to the view of a subject than the hope of sharing a throne with a being so beautiful as Mary—thanked his friends with a grace peculiarly his own, and immediately produced that famous BOND—a document in which the nobles in parliament assembled, asserted his innocence of the crime of the 11th February, and earnestly recommended him to Mary as the most proper man in Scotland to espouse her in her widowhood—and bind themselves by every tie, human and divine, "to fortify the said Earl in the said marriage," so runs the deed, "as we shall answer to God, on our fidelity and conscience. And in case we do on the contrary, never to have reputation or credit in time hereafter, but to be accountedunworthy and faithless traitors.""God temper thy wild ambition, Bothwell!" said the Archbishop, as he signed the document to which the seven other prelates appended their names. That of Moray—Mary's dearly loved brother—hadalreadybeen given before his departure; and its appearance had a powerful effect on all present."Deil stick me, gif I like mickle to scald my neb in another man's brose!" growled Glencairn; "yet I will subscrive it, albeit I would rather have had a suitor to whose maintainance of the Holy Reformit Kirk Master Knox could have relied on."Morton gave one of his cold and sinister smiles as he appended his name in silence; while the Marquis d'Elboeuff also smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and applied to his nostrils an exquisitely chased silver pouncet-box of fragrant essences, to conceal the merriment with which he watched the arduous operation of fixing the signatures; for writing was a slow and solemn process in those days.A new and terrible difficulty occurred, which nearly knocked the whole affair on the head.Very few of these potent peers could sign their names, and others objected to making their mark, which, from its resemblance to a cross, savoured of popery; but Lethington effected a conscientious compromise, by causing them to make a T, as those did who signed the first solemn league—a smallness of literary attainment which did not prevent those unlettered lords from demolishing the hierarchy of eight hundred years, and giving a new creed to a nation as ignorant as themselves.Bothwell felt as if he trode on air when consigning this tremendous paper, which had the signatures of so many bishops, earls, and lords, the most powerful in Scotland, to the care of Pittendreich, the Lord President.The rere-supper lasted long.Deeply they drank that night, but none deeper than the Earl and his friends; and the morning sun was shining brightly into the narrow wynd—the city gates had been opened, and the booths which, from 1555 till 1817, clustered round St. Giles, were all unclosed for business, and carlins were brawling with theacquaoliat the Mile-end well, ere the company separated; and the Earl, accompanied by Hob Ormiston and the knights of Tallo and Bolton, with their eyes half closed, their cloaks and ruffs awry, and their gait somewhat oscillating and unsteady, threaded their way down the sunlit Canongate, and reached Bothwell's apartments in Holyrood—that turreted palace, where the unconscious Mary was perhaps asleep with her child in her bosom, and little foreseeing the storm that was about to burst on her unhappy head.CHAPTER X.HANS AND KONRAD.Yes, she is ever with me! I can feel,Here as I sit at midnight and alone,Her gentle breathing! On my breast can feelThe presence of her head! God's benisonRest ever on it!Longfellow.On this morning, the sun shone brightly on the blue bosom of the Forth, and the grey rocks of all its many isles. The sea-mews were spreading their broad white pinions to the wind, as they skimmed from their nests in the ruins of Inchcolm, and the caves of Wemyss.The little fisher-hamlet that bordered the New haven, with its thatched and gable-ended cottages, its street encumbered by great brown boats, rusty anchors, and drying nets, looked cheerful in the warm sunshine; and troops of ruddy-cheeked children were gamboling on those broad links that lay where now the water rolls.Near a little window in the confined cabin of a Norwegian ship, lay Konrad of Saltzberg, faint, feeble, and exhausted; for the fever of a long and weary sickness had preyed upon his body and mind, prostrating every energy. He was pale, attenuated, and hollow-eyed; and now, for the first time since the night we last saw him, had emerged from insensibility to a state of consciousness. He felt the cool air of the April morning blow freshly on his pallid cheek; he heard the ripple of the water, and saw its surface gleaming in the sunshine afar off, where its waves broke in purple and gold on a distant promontory; and close by (for the crayer lay within ten yards of the shore) he heard the merry voices of the children as they gamboled and tumbled on the bright green grass.Konrad had been dreaming of his home, and these voices came to his slumbering ear in old familiar tones. He had heard the hearty greeting of old Sir Erick Rosenkrantz, and the merry laugh of Anna, as it had sounded in the days of his boyhood and joy; and he heard the murmur of the sea, as, wafted by the summer wind, its waves rolled upon the rocks of Bergen.The morning breeze from the German ocean roused him from this dreamy lethargy, and for the first time in many weeks he raised his head, and endeavoured to recollect where he was; but the aspect of the little cabin, with its arched deck, and massive beams, confused and puzzled him."I am still dreaming," he murmured, and closed his eyes.He opened them again, but still saw the same objects—the same little cabin, with its pannelled locker—a brass culverin on each side; a crossbow, maul, and helmet hanging on the bulkhead, and the open port affording a glimpse of the shining estuary, with its castled isle, and distant sails, that seemed like white birds resting on the faint and far off horizon.Steps were heard, and then a stout and thick-set man was seen slowly descending the ladder from the deck. First appeared a pair of broad feet encased in rough leather shoes—then two sturdy legs in brown stockings, gartered with red ribbons; a vast obesity clad in chocolate-coloured breeches, garnished with three dozen of metal knobs at the seams; a waist encircled by a belt, sustaining a Norway knife; then square bulky shoulders in a white woollen jacket, and then a great bullet head, covered by a cap of black fox's fur, under which, on the person turning round, appeared the moonlike face of honest Hans Knuber, open-mouthed and open-eyed—expressive only of good-humour and hilarity; and, where not hidden by his thick red beard, exhibiting a hue that, by exposure to the weather, had turned to something between brick-dust and mahogany."Cheerily, ho!" said he, patting Konrad's shoulder with his broad hard hand; "and now, St. Olaus be praised, thou art come to life again! I knew the pure breeze that blew right over the sea from old Norway would revive thee.""Honest Hans," replied Konrad, in a feeble voice, "I have often heard thy deep tones in the dreams of my sleep, as I thought.""And so thou wert in a dream, lad—and a plaguy long one! such a dream as the wood-demon used to weave about those who dared to take a nap under his oak. Asleep! why, lad, thou'st been delirious"——"How! since I came on board thy ship last night, in a plight so pitiful?""St. Olaus bless thee, Master Konrad! Thou hast lain by that gun-port for these eight long weeks!""Weeks—weeks!" muttered Konrad, pressing his hands on his temples, and endeavouring in vain to recollect himself."Ay, weeks; and a sad time we have had of it, with leeching and lancing, drugging and dosing, plastering and patching. Mass! I thought thou would have slipped thy cables altogether, though under the hands of Maitre Picauet." For Hans had spared no expense, and had brought even the royal physician to see his young charge; and so, thanks to the same skill that brought James VI. into the world, and nearly recovered Darnley from the grave, Konrad, when the delirium left him, began to find himself a new man."Eight weeks! I remember me now. Thou hadst landed thy cargo of Norway deals from our old pine-woods of Aggerhuis—hazel cuts and harrowbills"——"Ay, ay; and had stowed on board my new lading, being crammed to the hatches with tanned leather, earthenware, and Scottish beer, wheat and malt, for which I expect to realize a goodly sum in round dollars among the cities on the Sound, where I would long since have furled my topsails, but for a rascally English pirate that hath cruised off the mouth of the fiord (or frith as the Scots call it), and I dared not put to sea, though ready to sail, with the free cocquet of the queen's conservator in my pouch, and my ship hove short upon her cable; for this is my last venture, and under hatches I carry all that must make or mar for ever the fortune of old Hans Knuber.""Thou didst tell me some news from old Norway, I now remember, on that night Earl Bothwell's page led me here.""Why, thou wert like the spectre of a drowned man—St. Erick be with us! But here—drain thy cup of barley ptisan, and I will tell thee more in good time."Konrad drank the decoction prescribed by the physician, and impatiently said—"Thou sawest my good friend, the old knight Rosenkrantz, I warrant?""I did," replied Hans gravely."And how looked he?""Stiff enow, Master Konrad; for he was lying in his coffin, with his spurs on his heels, and his sword girt about him."Konrad was thunderstruck, and barely able to articulate; he gazed inquiringly at Hans."True it is, this sad story," said the seaman, wiping a tear away with the back of his brawny hand; "thou knowest well how all the province loved the bluff old knight, who was never without a smile or a kind word for the humblest among us; and faith he never allowed old Hans Knuber to pass his hall door without putting a long horn of dricka under his belt. But Sir Erick is gone now, and the king's castle of Bergen (ah! thou rememberestthat) is a desolate place enough. And honest Sueno Throndson, that most puffy and important of chamberlains, he is gone to his last home too. He went to Zealand in the ship of Jans Thorson, to hang Sir Erick's shield, with all his arms fairly emblazoned thereon, among those of other dead Knights of the Elephant, in the subterranean chapel of Fredericksborg; but Jans, as thou knowest, could never keep a good reckoning, and, by not allowing duly for variation and leeway, was sucked by the moskenstrom, with all his crew, right down into the bowels of the earth. St. Olaus sain them!""Poor Sir Erick!" said Konrad, heedless of the fate of Jans, while his tears fell fast."Dost thou not know that King Frederick had created him Count of Bergen, and Lord of Welsöö, for his services in the old Holstein war?""Of all these passages, I have heard nothing.""His niece, the Lady Anna, will be a countess now, as well as the richest heiress in the kingdom. Baggage that she is! Her uncle never recovered her desertion of his home for the arms of that Scottish lord, whom, if I had him here, I would string up to my gaff peak. By the mass! the old knight's heart was broken, for he loved thee as a son, and Anna as a daughter; but to the devil say I with women, for they all yaw in their course somehow, and require a strong hand at the tiller to make them lie well to the wind. This Anna, God's murrain"——"Hold thee, Hans Knuber!" said Konrad, with something of his old air of dignity and authority; "for, nevertheless all thy kindness, I will not permit thee to breathe one word that is ungracious of Anna.""As thou pleasest, lad," replied the seaman, taking off his fur cap to wipe his capacious head; "I thought 'twould relieve thee somewhat to hear one who had so shamefully misused thee roundly cursed.""Oh no! never!" replied the young man in a low voice; "Oh, Hans! thou knowest not the depth and the enthusiasm of this passion that hath bewitched me. It banishes every angry thought from my mind, and leaves only a sense of desolation and agony, that can never die but with myself.""Now, by the bones of Lodbrog! but I have no patience with this. How! a bold fellow like thee to be caterwauling thus, like a cat on a gutter? Go to! The Lubeckers and Holsteiners are again displaying their banners on the Elbe and Weser. Assume thy sword and helmet again. Thou hast the world before thee, with a fair wind; and what matters it leaving a false woman and a slighted love behind? Cheerily, ho! Master Konrad; a love that is easily won is lightly lost.""False as this girl has been to me, Hans, there are times when her bright smile and her winning voice, and all the memory of our happy early days, come back to me in their first freshness and joy, and my soul melts within me.Then, Hans—in moments like these—I feel that, were she repentant, I could love her as of old. Oh, yes! I could forgive her—I could press her to my breast, and worship her as I did even in those days that have passed to return no more."Well, well—as thou pleasest. Take another gulp of this barley drench—thy ptisan. Get strong and healthy ere we see old Norway, where she is gone before thee with Christian Alborg, in theBiornen, and who knoweth what the clouds of futurity may conceal? An old love is easily rekindled, I have heard, though, by the mass! I know little of such gear; thoughthisI know, that the castle of Bergen, with the young countess's lordship of Welsöö, would make a very snug roadstead to drop one's anchor in;" and, with a leering wink, Hans Knuber once more clambered to the upper deck, where he drew his fur cap over his bushy brows, thrust his hands into his pockets, and scowled defiance at the small white speck that, near the Isle of May, still marked where the English pirate lay cruising in the offing.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CHALLENGE.
Defiled is my name full sore,Through cruel spyte and false report;That I may say for evermore,Farewell, my joy! adieu, comfort!For wrongfully ye judge of me.Unto my fame a mortall wounde;Say what ye lyst it will not be,Ye seek for that cannot be founde.Anne Boleyn's Lament.
Defiled is my name full sore,Through cruel spyte and false report;That I may say for evermore,Farewell, my joy! adieu, comfort!For wrongfully ye judge of me.Unto my fame a mortall wounde;Say what ye lyst it will not be,Ye seek for that cannot be founde.Anne Boleyn's Lament.
Defiled is my name full sore,
Through cruel spyte and false report;
Through cruel spyte and false report;
That I may say for evermore,
Farewell, my joy! adieu, comfort!
Farewell, my joy! adieu, comfort!
For wrongfully ye judge of me.
Unto my fame a mortall wounde;
Unto my fame a mortall wounde;
Say what ye lyst it will not be,
Ye seek for that cannot be founde.Anne Boleyn's Lament.
Ye seek for that cannot be founde.
Anne Boleyn's Lament.
Anne Boleyn's Lament.
The remains of the unfortunate king, after being embalmed by Picauet the French physician, were interred among his royal ancestors in the aisles of Holyrood, not contemptuously, as some historians tell us, but solemnly and privately; for Mary dared not have had the burial service of the Catholic church publicly performed, when, but seven years before, those sepulchral rites were, by the Reformers, denied to her mother.
In the southern aisle of the church of Sanctæ Crucis, near the slab that still marks where Rizzio lies, he was lowered into the tomb, while the torches cast their lurid light on the dark arcades and shadowy vistas of the nave, amid the lamentations and the muttered threats of vengeance—the deep sure vengeance of the feudal days—from the knights and barons of the Lennox.
Attired in sackcloth, poor Mary shut herself up in a darkened chamber hung with black serge, and there for many days she passed the weary hours in vigil and in prayer, for the unshriven soul of that erring husband, whom for the past year she had been compelled to hold in abhorrence—a sentiment which she then remembered with a remorse that increased her pity for his fate.
Bothwell dared not to approach her while this paroxysm lasted; but by plunging into gaiety and riot—by spending the days and nights in revelry with Ormiston and d'Elboeuff—he endeavoured to drown the recollections of the past, to deaden the sense of the present, and to nerve himself for the future; but in vain—one terrible thought was ever present!
It stood like something palpable and visible before him. It seemed written on the fragrant earth, in the buoyant air, and on the shining water, imparting to the sunny spring the gloom of winter. It was in his ears, it was on his tongue, and in his soul; there was no avoiding, no crushing, no forgetting it! Oh, how vividly at times, in the calm silence of the sleepless night,that crycame to his ears; and his thoughts were riveted on that grey marble slab in the chapel aisle, beneath which, mangled, cold, and mouldering, lay one——he would smite his damp forehead to drive away the thoughts, and rush to drown his sense of misery in wine.
Amid the hum of the city, when its sunlit thoroughfares were crowded with the gaiety and bustle of passing crowds, all of whom seemed so happy and so gay, it rang in his ears!
Amid the solemn deliberations of the council on border raids and feudal broils—on English wars and French embassies—in all of which he was compelled to take the lead, as the royal favourite and first of the Scottish peers, it came to him sadly and mournfully above the voices of the most able orators; and then his heart sank when he looked on the blanched visages of Morton, of Maitland, and his other copartners in that terrible deed, to which—as if by common consent—they never dared to recur!
Amid the leafy rustle of the woods, as their dewy buds expanded beneath the alternate showers and sunshine of an early spring (if he sought the country), still he heard it!
Amid the deep hoarse murmur of the chafing sea, if he sought the lonely shore, he heard it still—that sad and wailing cry of death and of despair!
Amid the joys of the midnight revel, when the wine sparkled in the gilded glasses—the grapes blushed in their silver baskets—the lofty lamps filled the chamber with rosy light and rich perfume;—when the heedless ribaldry of Ormiston, the courtly wit of d'Elboeuff, the frolicsome spirit of Coldinghame, were all there to make thepresentparamount alike to the past and the future, still it came to him—that terrible sound—the last cry of Darnley!
The queen still remained shut in her darkened chamber, secluded from all—even from the prying ambassador of Elizabeth, who, when introduced, could not discern her face amidst the sombre gloom surrounding her; but, as he informed his mistress, the accents of Mary were both touching and mournful.
Two strange rumours were now floating through the city; one of a spectre which had appeared in the lodging of the Lord Athol on the night of the king's death; the other, of Bothwell's implication in that terrible deed, in which he and his companions had endeavoured (and perhaps not without good grounds) to implicate the Earl of Moray.
No one knew how this rumour gained credence; but each man whispered it to his neighbour. Voices, accusing him of the deed, rang at midnight in the narrow streets of the city; the scholars chalked ribald verses at the corners of the wynds and church-doors; while Moray—openly Bothwell's friend, and secretly his foe—had handbills posted on the portes, naming him as the perpetrator. Furtively these things were done; for few dared to impugn the honour of so powerful a noble, and none could arraign him save the father of the murdered prince, Matthew Earl of Lennox, an aged noble, who had served with valour and distinction in the wars of Francis I.; and he boldly charged the Earl with the crime.
Bothwell saw, or imagined he saw, an accusation in the eye of every man whose glance he encountered. Pride, jealousy, and angry suspicion, now by turns animated his resentful heart, and galled his fiery spirit. He was always conferring secretly with the knights and barons of his train; he kept his vassals ever on the alert, and never went abroad without being completely armed, to prevent a surprise; but daily and hourly, slowly and surely, like an advancing and overwhelming tide, the suspicions of the people grew and waxed stronger, till, clamorously, it burst in one deep hoarse shout against him, and a hundred thousand tongues said, "Thou art the man!"
"Malediction on these presumptuous churls!" said the Earl angrily to Ormiston, as they met near the palace gate on the day after Darnley's funeral. "They all accuse me; and there must be treachery somewhere."
"Nay, nay, never think so while that bond of Whittinghame exists. It binds us all, body and soul, to be silent as the grave, and deep as Currie brig."
"But now they speak of the queen, adding all that the innate malevolence of the vulgar, the hatred that Knox and his compatriots have fostered and fanned, can add; and declaring that she is art and part with those who freed her and the nation from the dominion of the house of Lennox."
"May God forefend!" said Ormiston; for, ruffian as he was, he deemed the national honour at stake under such an accusation. "I would run my sword through the brisket of the first base mechanic who breathed a word of this."
"Breathed a word of it!—Gramercy! French Paris tells me, it is openly discussed by every full-fed burgess at the city cross; by every rascally clown who brings his milk and butter to the Tron; by every archer and pikeman over their cans of twopenny; by every apostate priest and pious psalmist who haunt the houses of Knox, of Craig, and Buchanan. A curse upon the hour when my secret love, my cherished hopes—the name and fame the brave old Lords of Hailes transmitted to me, so spotless and so pure—are turned to ribaldry and jest, to laughter and to scorn, by every foul-mouthed citizen."
"'Tis mighty unlucky all this; for here hath been my Lord Fleming, the great chamberlain, with the queen's especial commendations to your lordship, announcing, that on the morrow she intendeth to lay aside her weeping and wailing, her dumps and dolours, and departing hence for the house of Lord Seaton, a gay place, and a merry withal; and there she hopes you will escort her with your train of lances, for the Lothians are so disturbed that she mistrusts even Arthur of Mar and his band of archers."
"Be it so! Send Bolton to her grace with my dutiful answer," replied the Earl, whose eye lighted up, for he thought that, in the shock Darnley's fate had given her, the queen had forgotten him; "we will be all in our helmets, and at her service by cock-crow to-morrow; but first," he added, sternly and impressively, "take this, my better glove, and hang it on yonder city cross, and there to-day at noon announce to all, that I, James Earl of Bothwell, and Lord of Hailes, will defend mine honour against all men, body for body, on foot or on horseback, at the barriers of the Portsburgh, between the chapel of St. Mary and the castle rock, so help me God at the day of doom!"
And drawing off his long buff glove, which was richly embroidered and perfumed, the Earl handed it to his faithful Achates, and returned into the palace to have his train prepared with becoming splendour, for the honourable duty of guarding the queen on the morrow.
In compliance with this command, Black Hob, sheathed in his sable armour, his visor up to reveal his swarthy visage, and mounted on a strong charger of the jettiest black, attended by Hay of Tallo as esquire, French Paris as his page, and three trumpeters in the Earl's gorgeous livery, gules and argent, and having his banner, with the lions of Hepburn rending an English rose, advanced into the city, and there, amid a note of defiance, hung the Earl's glove above the fountain, together with his declaration of innocence, and offer "to decide the matter in a duel with any gentleman or person of honour who should dare to lay it to his charge."
For many a day the glove hung there, and none answered the challenge; for the star of Hepburn was still in the ascendant, and none dared to encounter its chieftain in the field, for dread of the deadly feud that was sure to ensue.
But the printer of pasquils and the caricaturists were still busy, and one morning there was a paper found beneath the Earl's challenge, on which was drawn a hand grasping a sword, and bearing the initials of the queen, opposed to another armed with amaul, bearing those of the Earl—a palpable allusion to the weapon by which the unfortunate prince was slain, and which could only have been made by a conspirator.
The heedlessness of the unsuspecting Mary in visiting the Earl of Winton under the escort of Bothwell (of whose innocence she had been convinced by Moray), and his divorce from his countess, lent renewed energy to the voice of calumny; and then those rumours of her participation in that crime, in which all the skill of her enemies for three hundred years has failed to involve her, were noised abroad; and slowly but surely the nation, which had never loved her for her catholicity, and partiality for gaiety and splendour, was completely estranged from her. Now, on one hand, were a fierce people and a bigoted clergy; on the other, a ferocious vassalage, headed by illiterate and rapacious nobles, and to withstand them but one feeble woman.
In the glamour that came over the Scottish people, they failed to remember that, animated by delicacy and honour, the unhappy Mary, only six weeks before the death of Darnley, had rejected a divorce, though urged by the most able of her ministers and powerful of her nobles; they also forgot how anxiously she had prevented his committing himself to the dangers of the ocean, when about to become an exile in another land; and they forgot, too, her assiduity and tenderness, to one who had so long slighted and ceased to love her, when he lay almost upon a deathbed, under the effects of a loathsome and terrible disease. The nobles saw only a woman, who stood between them and power—regencies, places, and command; the people saw only an idolater and worshipper of stocks and stones; and the clergy "ane unseemly woman," who dared to laugh, and sing, and dance, in defiance of their fulminations anent such sin and abomination.
Exasperated by his son's death, and the rumours abroad, the aged Earl of Lennox demanded of Mary that Bothwell should submit to a trial. His prayer was granted; and Keith acquaints us that she wrote to her father-in-law, requesting him to attend the court with all his feudal power and strength.
Dreading the issue of an ordeal which might blast his prospects and his fame, the politic Bothwell used every means to increase his already vast retinue, by enlisting under his banner every dissolute fellow, border outlaw, and broken man, that would assume his livery, the gules and argent; and thus his town residence, and those of his Mends, were soon swarming with these sinister-eyed and dark-visaged swashbucklers, with their battered steel bonnets, their long swords, and important swagger. Thus, when the day of trial came, the streets were crowded with them; and when Bothwell, after passing through a long lane of his own arquebussiers, at the head of three thousand men, (mostly barons, knights, and esquires,) appeared at the bar, sheathed in a magnificent suit of armour, supported on one side by the crafty Earl of Morton, and on the other by two able advocates—the father of the young prince he had destroyed dared not appear, as he dreaded to share the fate of his son.
After a long discussion, to which the high-born culprit listened with a beating heart—though his influence had packed the jury, which was composed of Mary's friends and Rizzio's murderers; and though he had bribed the judges and deterred the prosecutor—the court, actuated by sentiments best known to themselves, unanimously "acquittedthe Earl of Bothwell of all participation in the king's death."
With him the die had been cast.
Had they brought in a verdict of guilty, another hour had seen his banner waving in triumph and defiance above the capital—for he was alike prepared to conquer or to die; but this decision of the jury, delivered by the mouth of Caithness, their chancellor, rendered all his warlike preparations nugatory. Had they found him guilty, he would boldly have rushed to arms in defence of his honour and life, with an energy and wrath that would alike have stifled the whispers of conscience and remorse; but they had declared him innocent, and he left the bar slowly and sadly, feeling in his inmost soul a thousand degrees more criminal than ever.
As he left the chamber where the High Court sat, his friends and vassals received him with acclamations—with brandished swords and waving pennons; and, with trumpets sounding, conveyed him through the great arch of the Netherbow to St. Mary's Wynd, where, by his command, the host of theRed Lionhad prepared a grand banquet and rere-supper for the nobles and barons attending the Parliament.
Though "one of the handsomest men of his time," as old Crawford tells us, the Earl feared that, notwithstanding the assiduity of his attentions, Mary would never regard him with other sentiments than those of mere esteem for his services, and efficiency as an officer of state. "Men stop at nothing when their hands are in," saith an old saw; and, actuated by this spirit, Bothwell—ever keeping steadily in view that alluring object, which, step by step, had drawn him to the dangerous and terrible eminence on which he found himself—resolved, by one more desperate act, to reach the summit of his hopes, or sink into the gulf for ever.
CHAPTER IX.
AINSLIE'S SUPPER.
Men talk of country, Christmasses, and court gluttony,Their thirty pound butter'd eggs, their pies of carps' tongues,Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris; the carcassesOf three fat wethers bruised for gravy, toMake sauce for a single peacock; yet their feastsWerefasts, compared with the City's.Massinger's City Madam.
Men talk of country, Christmasses, and court gluttony,Their thirty pound butter'd eggs, their pies of carps' tongues,Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris; the carcassesOf three fat wethers bruised for gravy, toMake sauce for a single peacock; yet their feastsWerefasts, compared with the City's.Massinger's City Madam.
Men talk of country, Christmasses, and court gluttony,
Their thirty pound butter'd eggs, their pies of carps' tongues,
Their pheasants drench'd with ambergris; the carcasses
Of three fat wethers bruised for gravy, to
Make sauce for a single peacock; yet their feasts
Werefasts, compared with the City's.
Massinger's City Madam.
Massinger's City Madam.
It was, as we have stated, the month of April, and on the day of the Earl's acquittal.
About seven in the evening, the sun was setting behind the purple hills of the Ochil range, in all the splendour of that beautiful month of bright blue skies and opening flowers—of the pale primrose and the drooping blue-bell; when the dew lingers long on the fresh grass and the sprouting hedges—when the swallow builds its nest under the warm eave, and the mavis sings merrily as he spreads his pinions on the buoyant air. It was an April evening. The rays of the setting sun had long since left the narrow streets of Edinburgh, though they still lingered on its gothic spires and gilded vanes, throwing a farewell gleam on each tall chimney head, each massy bartisan, and round tourelle.
A great fire blazed in the yawning hall chimney of theRed Lion, throwing its ruddy glow on the red ashler walls, which the host endeavoured to decorate by various pieces of tapestry, begged and borrowed from his neighbours, on the rough oak rafters that once had flourished on the burgh-muir—on the far-stretching vista of the sturdy table, flanked with wooden benches on each side for Bothwell's noble guests, covered with a scarlet broad cloth, and glittering in all the shiny splendour of French pewter and delft platters—for there had never been an atom of silver seen in an hostellary as yet; and by each dark-blue cover lay a knife, halfted with horn and shaped like a skene-dhu. A gigantic salt occupied the centre, and a carved chair raised upon a dais—a chair that whilome had held the portly Provost of St. Giles, but to which honest Adam had helped himself in 1559, that year of piety and plunder—stood at the upper end, and was designed for the great Earl of Bothwell.
A smile of the utmost satisfaction and complaisance spread over the fat rosy face of Ainslie's ample dame, as she surveyed the great table, which her taste and skill had decorated and arrayed; and she absolutely clapped her hands with glee, when the great platter, bearing a peacock roasted, and having its legs shining with gold-leaf, and all its bright-dyed pinions stuck round it, was placed upon the board at the moment that a trampling of horses in the narrow wynd announced the arrival of the Earl and his guests, among whom were such a number of dignitaries as never before had been under the rooftree of theRed Lion; and honest Elspat Ainslie was overwhelmed each time that she reckoned them on her fat fingers, and found there were eight bishops, nine earls, and seven barons, all the most powerful and popular in Scotland, where a man's power was then reckoned by the number of ruffians under his standard, and his popularity by his hatred of the Papists, and distribution of their gear to the preachers and pillars of the new regime.
The dame hurried to a mirror—gave her coif a last adjust—smoothed her apron and gown of crimson crammasie; while Adam brushed a speck from his fair doublet of broad cloth—practised his best bow several times to the gilt peacock; and all their trenchermen and attendants stood humbly by the door in double file as the guests entered.
Bothwell came first, with his usual air of gallantry and grace—his doublet of cloth-of-gold glittering in the light of the setting sun; his ruff buttoned by diamonds; his shoulder-belt and mantle stiff with gold embroidery; while his sword, dagger, and plumed bonnet, were flashing with precious stones. He made a profound bow to the hostess; for now he smiled less than formerly, and the pallor of his noble features was attributed by all togriefat the Lord Lennox's accusation.
Morton followed, looking quite as usual, with his sinister eyes, his long beard and little English hat, his black velvet cloak and silver-headed cane; but, with a jocularity that was always affected, he pinched the plump cheek of Dame Ainslie, and thumped her husband upon the back, saying—
"How farest thou, host of mine? Faith, I need scarcely ask thee, for thou swellest and wallowest amid the good things of this life daily."
"By Tantony and Taudry! in these kittle times, my lord"—began Adam.
"Peace, thou irreverend ronion!" whispered the Earl of Huntly fiercely, as he grasped his poniard—"SaintAnthony andSaintAudry, thou meanest."
"I mean just whatever your lordship pleases," replied the hosteller, as he shrank abashed by the stern eye of the Catholic noble, who resented every disrespect to the ancient church, so far as he dared.
"Nay, nay," interposed Secretary Maitland, with his bland smile and flute-like voice; "poor Adam's slip of the tongue merited not a rebuke so sharp; to grasp thy poniard thus amounts almost to hamesucken—a gloomy beginning to our banquet, my Lord of Huntly."
There was present that gay scion of the house of Guise, d'Elboeuff—all smiles and grimaces, starched lace and slashes; there was the Earl of Sutherland, the lover of Bothwell's absent countess; Glencairn, the ferocious; Cassilis, who once half-roasted an abbot alive; Eglinton, the cautious; Seaton, the gallant; and Herries, the loyal; Rosse, of Hawkhead, and many others—until the hall was crowded by the bravest and the greatest of Scotland's peers, and many lesser barons, who, though untitled, considered themselves in feudal dignity second to the crown alone. All were well armed, and the nature of the time was evinced by their dresses; for all who had not on corselets and gorgets to prevent sudden surprises, had quilted doublets of escaupil, and all were scrupulously accoutred with swords and Parmese poniards, without which no gentleman could walk abroad.
As Bothwell advanced to the head of the table to assume his seat, his eye caught one of the black-letter proclamations of the council, which was fixed over the gothic fireplace, and offered a yearly rent, with two thousand pounds of Scottish money, for the discovery of the perpetrators of the crime at the Kirk-of-Field; "quhilk horribill and mischevious deed," as the paper bore it, "almychty God would never suffer to lie hid."
"Mass!" said the Earl, as the blood mounted to his temples, "thou hast a roaring fire, Master Adam, this April day."
"The coals bleeze weel, Lord Earl; yet they cost a good penny, coming as they do by the galliots frae the knight of Carnock's heughs, aboon Cuboss."
"Little marvel is it that they burn thus," said the Earl of Glencairn; adding, in a lower voice, "for knowest thou, gudeman, that instead of contenting himself with such of this precious mineral as may be got shovel-deep, by advice of that damnable sorcerer, the knight of Merchiston, he hath sunk a pit—a cylinder—even unto the bowels of the earth, as Hugh of Tester did at his Goblin Hall; and he is now digging under the Forth, with intent, as Master George Buchanan told me yesterday, to ascend and seek upper air on this side."
"Ascend!" reiterated Morton with astonishment—"Where?"
"At the gate of thy castle of Dalkeith, perhaps; thou art thought to dabble a little in spell and philtre—like draweth to like."
"As the deil said to the collier," added old Lindesay. Several laughed at the hit, but Morton frowned.
This famous supper at Ainslie's hostel—a supper which has been fated to live for ever in Scottish history—was marked by all that barbaric profusion that characterised the feasts of those days, when men feasted seldom. Under the superintendence of a notable Frenchchef de cuisine, the first course consisted of ling, pike, haddocks, and gurnards, dressed with eggs, cream, and butter; but there was no salmon, that being esteemed as fitted only for servants. The chief dish of all was a grand pie of salt herrings, minced, and prepared with almond paste, milts, and dates; a grated manchet, sugar, sack, rose-water, and saffron; preserved gooseberries, barberries, currants, and Heaven knows what more; but the curious or the epicurean may still find the recipe in worthy Master Robert May's "Accomplished Cooke, 1685."
This delightful mess threw the Marquis d'Elboeuff into as great an ecstasy as the artificial hens—which formed part of the second course, and were made of puff-paste—seated upon large eggs of the same material, each of which contained a plump mavis, seasoned with pepper and ambergris; and, to him, these proved infinitely more attractive than the haunches of venison, the chines of beef, and roasted pigs, that loaded the table. To suit the palates of Lindesay, Glencairn, and other sturdy Scots, who disdained such foreign kickshaws, there were sottens of mutton, platters of pouts, Scottish collops, tailyies of beef, and sea-fowl. Every description of French wine was to be had in abundance—ale and old Scots beer, seasoned with nutmeg; and it would have been a fair sight for the effeminate descendants of these doughty earls and bearded barons, to have witnessed how they did honour to this great repast, eating and drinking like men who rose with the lark and eagle, whose armour was seldom from their breasts, whose swords were never from their sides, and whose meals depended often on the dexterity with which they bent the bow, or levelled the arquebuss.
On each side of the Earl sat four bishops; and all his real and pretended friends were present except Moray, who had suddenly departed to France, "that he might seem to be unconcerned in what was going forward: he failed not in this journey to circulate every injurious report to the prejudice of his unhappy sovereign, who, in the mean time, was destitute of every faithful friend and proper councillor."
The Archbishop of St. Andrew's—the last Catholic primate of Scotland (the same noble prelate whom, for his loyalty, Moray so savagely hanged over Stirling bridge five years after)—now arose, and, stretching his hands over the board, uttered the brief grace then fashionable:—"Soli Deo honor et gloria," whereat the Lord Lindesay muttered something under his beard, "anent the idolatry of Latin."
Instead of that calm, cold, and polite reserve, that marks the modern dinner table, their nut-brown faces shone with the broad good-humour that shook their buirdly frames with laughter, and they became boisterous and jocose as the night drew on; and the blood red wines of old France and Burgundy, and the stiff usquebaugh of their native hills, fired their hearts and heads.
Lord Lindesay had prevailed on d'Elboeuff to partake of a haggis, and he was laughing under his thick beard at the grimaces of the French noble, whose complaisance compelled him to sup a dish he abhorred.
"Thou findest it gude, Lord Marquis?"
"Ah! cest admirable!" sighed d'Elboeuff.
"Why, thou seemest to relish it pretty much as a cat liketh mustard."
"Oui!" smiled the Frenchman, who did not understand him.
"And how fares my noble friend, Coldinghame?" asked the Earl of his brotherroué.
"Weel enow; but sick of dangling about this court, which is such a mess of intrigue."
"Tush! Bethink thee, the queen hath the wardship of many a fair heiress, and may bestow on thee a handsome wife."
"Bah! like my Lord of Morton, I care not for a handsome wife"—
"Unless she belong to another," said Ormiston, coarsely closing the sentence.
"By the rood! a good jest and a merry," laughed Bothwell; but Morton's olive cheek glowed with anger.
"Be not chafed, my lord," said Ormiston; "by cock and pie! I spoke but in boon fellowship. Drink with me! This Rochelle is famously spiced, and stirred with a rosemary sprig for good-luck."
"Does Master Ainslie warrant it old?"
"Old! my Lord Morton," reiterated Adam, turning up his eyes; "ay! auld as the three trees of Dysart; for it lay many a long year before the '59, among the stoor and cobwebs o' the Blackfriars' binns, up the brae yonder."
"By the way," said the Lord Coldinghame, "as thou talkest of the Blackfriars, what tale of a roasted horse is this, anent whilk the whole city is agog, concerning a spectre which is said to have appeared there on the night the king was slain, and hath haunted the ruins of St. Mary's kirk ever since?"
"Knowest thou aught of this, Adam?" asked Bothwell, whose mind, though he endeavoured to maintain his usual aspect of nonchalance, wandered constantly to the gigantic projects he had in view.
"As ye know, my lord," replied Adam, setting his head on one side and his left leg forward, with the air of a man who has a story to tell; "on the night of that deadly crime in the Kirk-of-Field, two especial gentlemen of the Earl of Athol, the umquhile king's gude-cousin, were both a-bed at his lordship's lodging, which is just within the town wall, and not a bowshot frae auld St. Mary's kirk. In the mirk mid hour of the night, Sir Dougal Stuart, who slept next the wall, was awaked by a death-cauld hand passing owre his cheek, and which thereafter took him by the beard, while an unearthly voice, sounding as if from afar off, said—'Arise, or violence will be offered unto you!' At the same moment his friend, a half-wud Hielandman, awoke, saying furiously—'Where is my durk, for some one hath boxed mine ear?' And both started up to see, close by their bed, a dusky figure, of which no feature could be defined save a clenched hand, bare, and long, and glistening in the siller moonlight, that shone through the grated window; then it melted away like morning mist; the turnpike door was heard to close with a bang, as if some one had left the house; and while, with fear and alarm, they started to their sword's, lo! they heard the explosion that sent king and kirk-house into the air together."[*]
[*] See Buchanan.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Bothwell angrily, for this story was then current in the city; "'tis a tale befitting only the old dames who play basset and primero in the queen's antechamber. Wert thou at sermon in the High Kirk this morning, Hob?" he asked, to change the subject.
"Cock and pie, no!" said Ormiston, as he gulped down his wine with surprise.
"Marry!" said Lord Lindesay; "thou didst miss a rare discourse."
"On what did Master Knox expone?" asked several Protestant peers; while Huntly and other Catholics curled their mustaches, and exchanged glances of scorn. Lindesay replied—
"Anent the story of that strong loon, Samson, tying three hundred torches to the tails of sae mony tod-lowries, to burn the corn of the Philistines—likening himself unto Samson—the ministry o' the reformit kirk to the three hundred tods, and their discourses unto the bleezing torches—the corn o' the Philistines unto the kirk o' the Pope, whilk their burning tails would utterly overthrow, ruinate, and consume. God speed the gude wark!" added the stern peer, as he brushed aside his heavy white beard with one hand, and tossed over his wine-cup with the other.
"What spell hath come over thee, compere Bothwell?" said d'Elboeuff; "thou seemest grave as a judge. Here is themerry-thoughtof a capercailzie to scare thy melancholy."
"Marquis," replied the Earl gaily, "thy wit would require the addition of awingto make it soar. What a tall goblet thou hast! Dost mean to get drunk to-night?"
"Why not,parbleu!when I am to ride to Holyrood?"
"What difference doth that make?"
"Mon Dieu!because, if I stumble, there is more effect when falling from a saddle, than sprawling endlong in the kennel like a beastly bourgeoise."
"'Tis time with thee, Marquis, that siclike follies were left owre, for thy beard getteth frosted wi' eild," said Lord Lindesay.
"Tete Dieu!dost thou say so, and live? But remember, most sombre Lord of the Byres, that Paris is as different from this city as the fields of Elysium are from those on the other side of the Styx. There the gaieties and glories of youth begin when we are yet children; when ye are boys, we are men; when ye are in your prime, we are in old age—exhausted with pleasure,ennui, drinking and gaming, roistering and"——
"Enough, Marquis!" said Bothwell, who had two ends in view—to drench his guests with wine, and to keep them all in excellent humour. "Enough!" he whispered; "for there are some stern spirits here who do not relish this discourse; and bethink thee of the reverend bishops who are among us."
"Tonnere!apostates! heretics!" muttered the Marquis. Meanwhile Ormiston, Bolton, Morton, and others who were Bothwell's friends, seeing how his spirit alternately flagged and flashed, left nothing undone to increase the hilarity of the evening, and keep the wine circulating; for there were many present whom descent, religion, or faction had set at deadly feud, and who, had they met on a hillside or highway, or perhaps in the adjacent street, would have fought like mad bulls; but these had been artfully and politicly separated, and thus the unrestrained jesting and revelry increased apace.
Some talked of creaghs upon the northern frontier, of forays on the southern, of partition of kirk lands, and the flavour of wines, in the same breath. D'Elboeuff chattered like a magpie of new doublets and perfumes, of Paris and pretty women: old Lindesay spoke solemnly and portentously, over his ale, on the prospects of the holy kirk; and Glencairn responded with becoming gravity and ferocity of aspect.
Morton sat opposite Lethington, and from time to time they sipped their wine and exchanged those deep glances which the most acute physiognomist would have failed to analyse; but, as they watched the ebb and flow of the conversation around them, Morton seemed almost to say in his eyes, "Thou art wise as Nestor;" and the secretary to reply, "Andthoucunning as Ulysses."
Gradually the latter led the conversation to the politics of the day—the misgovernment that, since the death of James V., had characterised each succeeding year; how the sceptre, feebly swayed by the hands of a facile woman, had never been capable of aweing the great barons and their predatory vassalage—the urgent necessity of some powerful peer espousing the queen, and assuming the reins of government, otherwise the destruction of Scotland by foreign invasion and domestic brawl—the subversion of the rights of the nobles, the power of the church, the courts of law, and the liberties of the people, would assuredly ensue.
This half-false and half-fustian speech, which the able Lethington delivered with singular emphasis and grace, was received with a burst of acclamation.
"My lords and gentles," said the aged Lindesay, standing erect, and leaning on his six feet sword as he spake; "here we are convened, as it seemeth, as mickle for council as carousal; albeit, ye have heard the premises so suitably set forth by the knight of Lethington, it causeth me mickle marvel to know whom among us he would name as worthy of the high honour of espousing our fair queen."
"Cock and pie!" exclaimed the impetuous Hob Ormiston, erecting his gigantic figure, and speaking in a voice that made the rafters ring; "whom would we name but her majesty's prime favourite and sorely maligned first counsellor, James Earl of Bothwell, Governor of Edinburgh and Dunbar, and Lord High Admiral of the realm? Who, I demand, would not rather see him the mate of Mary Stuart, than the beardless Lord of Darnley—that silken slave, that carpet knight, and long-legged giraffe in lace and taffeta? What say ye, my lords and barons, are we unanimous?"
There was a pause, and then rose a shout of applause, mingled with cries of "A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" from Morton and other allies of the Earl, who were so numerous that they completely overcame the scruples, or hushed into silence the objections, of the hostile and indifferent.
The Earl, whose heart was fired anew by the glow of love and ambition—for never did a prospect more dazzling open to the view of a subject than the hope of sharing a throne with a being so beautiful as Mary—thanked his friends with a grace peculiarly his own, and immediately produced that famous BOND—a document in which the nobles in parliament assembled, asserted his innocence of the crime of the 11th February, and earnestly recommended him to Mary as the most proper man in Scotland to espouse her in her widowhood—and bind themselves by every tie, human and divine, "to fortify the said Earl in the said marriage," so runs the deed, "as we shall answer to God, on our fidelity and conscience. And in case we do on the contrary, never to have reputation or credit in time hereafter, but to be accountedunworthy and faithless traitors."
"God temper thy wild ambition, Bothwell!" said the Archbishop, as he signed the document to which the seven other prelates appended their names. That of Moray—Mary's dearly loved brother—hadalreadybeen given before his departure; and its appearance had a powerful effect on all present.
"Deil stick me, gif I like mickle to scald my neb in another man's brose!" growled Glencairn; "yet I will subscrive it, albeit I would rather have had a suitor to whose maintainance of the Holy Reformit Kirk Master Knox could have relied on."
Morton gave one of his cold and sinister smiles as he appended his name in silence; while the Marquis d'Elboeuff also smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and applied to his nostrils an exquisitely chased silver pouncet-box of fragrant essences, to conceal the merriment with which he watched the arduous operation of fixing the signatures; for writing was a slow and solemn process in those days.
A new and terrible difficulty occurred, which nearly knocked the whole affair on the head.
Very few of these potent peers could sign their names, and others objected to making their mark, which, from its resemblance to a cross, savoured of popery; but Lethington effected a conscientious compromise, by causing them to make a T, as those did who signed the first solemn league—a smallness of literary attainment which did not prevent those unlettered lords from demolishing the hierarchy of eight hundred years, and giving a new creed to a nation as ignorant as themselves.
Bothwell felt as if he trode on air when consigning this tremendous paper, which had the signatures of so many bishops, earls, and lords, the most powerful in Scotland, to the care of Pittendreich, the Lord President.
The rere-supper lasted long.
Deeply they drank that night, but none deeper than the Earl and his friends; and the morning sun was shining brightly into the narrow wynd—the city gates had been opened, and the booths which, from 1555 till 1817, clustered round St. Giles, were all unclosed for business, and carlins were brawling with theacquaoliat the Mile-end well, ere the company separated; and the Earl, accompanied by Hob Ormiston and the knights of Tallo and Bolton, with their eyes half closed, their cloaks and ruffs awry, and their gait somewhat oscillating and unsteady, threaded their way down the sunlit Canongate, and reached Bothwell's apartments in Holyrood—that turreted palace, where the unconscious Mary was perhaps asleep with her child in her bosom, and little foreseeing the storm that was about to burst on her unhappy head.
CHAPTER X.
HANS AND KONRAD.
Yes, she is ever with me! I can feel,Here as I sit at midnight and alone,Her gentle breathing! On my breast can feelThe presence of her head! God's benisonRest ever on it!Longfellow.
Yes, she is ever with me! I can feel,Here as I sit at midnight and alone,Her gentle breathing! On my breast can feelThe presence of her head! God's benisonRest ever on it!Longfellow.
Yes, she is ever with me! I can feel,
Here as I sit at midnight and alone,
Her gentle breathing! On my breast can feel
The presence of her head! God's benison
Rest ever on it!
Longfellow.
Longfellow.
On this morning, the sun shone brightly on the blue bosom of the Forth, and the grey rocks of all its many isles. The sea-mews were spreading their broad white pinions to the wind, as they skimmed from their nests in the ruins of Inchcolm, and the caves of Wemyss.
The little fisher-hamlet that bordered the New haven, with its thatched and gable-ended cottages, its street encumbered by great brown boats, rusty anchors, and drying nets, looked cheerful in the warm sunshine; and troops of ruddy-cheeked children were gamboling on those broad links that lay where now the water rolls.
Near a little window in the confined cabin of a Norwegian ship, lay Konrad of Saltzberg, faint, feeble, and exhausted; for the fever of a long and weary sickness had preyed upon his body and mind, prostrating every energy. He was pale, attenuated, and hollow-eyed; and now, for the first time since the night we last saw him, had emerged from insensibility to a state of consciousness. He felt the cool air of the April morning blow freshly on his pallid cheek; he heard the ripple of the water, and saw its surface gleaming in the sunshine afar off, where its waves broke in purple and gold on a distant promontory; and close by (for the crayer lay within ten yards of the shore) he heard the merry voices of the children as they gamboled and tumbled on the bright green grass.
Konrad had been dreaming of his home, and these voices came to his slumbering ear in old familiar tones. He had heard the hearty greeting of old Sir Erick Rosenkrantz, and the merry laugh of Anna, as it had sounded in the days of his boyhood and joy; and he heard the murmur of the sea, as, wafted by the summer wind, its waves rolled upon the rocks of Bergen.
The morning breeze from the German ocean roused him from this dreamy lethargy, and for the first time in many weeks he raised his head, and endeavoured to recollect where he was; but the aspect of the little cabin, with its arched deck, and massive beams, confused and puzzled him.
"I am still dreaming," he murmured, and closed his eyes.
He opened them again, but still saw the same objects—the same little cabin, with its pannelled locker—a brass culverin on each side; a crossbow, maul, and helmet hanging on the bulkhead, and the open port affording a glimpse of the shining estuary, with its castled isle, and distant sails, that seemed like white birds resting on the faint and far off horizon.
Steps were heard, and then a stout and thick-set man was seen slowly descending the ladder from the deck. First appeared a pair of broad feet encased in rough leather shoes—then two sturdy legs in brown stockings, gartered with red ribbons; a vast obesity clad in chocolate-coloured breeches, garnished with three dozen of metal knobs at the seams; a waist encircled by a belt, sustaining a Norway knife; then square bulky shoulders in a white woollen jacket, and then a great bullet head, covered by a cap of black fox's fur, under which, on the person turning round, appeared the moonlike face of honest Hans Knuber, open-mouthed and open-eyed—expressive only of good-humour and hilarity; and, where not hidden by his thick red beard, exhibiting a hue that, by exposure to the weather, had turned to something between brick-dust and mahogany.
"Cheerily, ho!" said he, patting Konrad's shoulder with his broad hard hand; "and now, St. Olaus be praised, thou art come to life again! I knew the pure breeze that blew right over the sea from old Norway would revive thee."
"Honest Hans," replied Konrad, in a feeble voice, "I have often heard thy deep tones in the dreams of my sleep, as I thought."
"And so thou wert in a dream, lad—and a plaguy long one! such a dream as the wood-demon used to weave about those who dared to take a nap under his oak. Asleep! why, lad, thou'st been delirious"——
"How! since I came on board thy ship last night, in a plight so pitiful?"
"St. Olaus bless thee, Master Konrad! Thou hast lain by that gun-port for these eight long weeks!"
"Weeks—weeks!" muttered Konrad, pressing his hands on his temples, and endeavouring in vain to recollect himself.
"Ay, weeks; and a sad time we have had of it, with leeching and lancing, drugging and dosing, plastering and patching. Mass! I thought thou would have slipped thy cables altogether, though under the hands of Maitre Picauet." For Hans had spared no expense, and had brought even the royal physician to see his young charge; and so, thanks to the same skill that brought James VI. into the world, and nearly recovered Darnley from the grave, Konrad, when the delirium left him, began to find himself a new man.
"Eight weeks! I remember me now. Thou hadst landed thy cargo of Norway deals from our old pine-woods of Aggerhuis—hazel cuts and harrowbills"——
"Ay, ay; and had stowed on board my new lading, being crammed to the hatches with tanned leather, earthenware, and Scottish beer, wheat and malt, for which I expect to realize a goodly sum in round dollars among the cities on the Sound, where I would long since have furled my topsails, but for a rascally English pirate that hath cruised off the mouth of the fiord (or frith as the Scots call it), and I dared not put to sea, though ready to sail, with the free cocquet of the queen's conservator in my pouch, and my ship hove short upon her cable; for this is my last venture, and under hatches I carry all that must make or mar for ever the fortune of old Hans Knuber."
"Thou didst tell me some news from old Norway, I now remember, on that night Earl Bothwell's page led me here."
"Why, thou wert like the spectre of a drowned man—St. Erick be with us! But here—drain thy cup of barley ptisan, and I will tell thee more in good time."
Konrad drank the decoction prescribed by the physician, and impatiently said—
"Thou sawest my good friend, the old knight Rosenkrantz, I warrant?"
"I did," replied Hans gravely.
"And how looked he?"
"Stiff enow, Master Konrad; for he was lying in his coffin, with his spurs on his heels, and his sword girt about him."
Konrad was thunderstruck, and barely able to articulate; he gazed inquiringly at Hans.
"True it is, this sad story," said the seaman, wiping a tear away with the back of his brawny hand; "thou knowest well how all the province loved the bluff old knight, who was never without a smile or a kind word for the humblest among us; and faith he never allowed old Hans Knuber to pass his hall door without putting a long horn of dricka under his belt. But Sir Erick is gone now, and the king's castle of Bergen (ah! thou rememberestthat) is a desolate place enough. And honest Sueno Throndson, that most puffy and important of chamberlains, he is gone to his last home too. He went to Zealand in the ship of Jans Thorson, to hang Sir Erick's shield, with all his arms fairly emblazoned thereon, among those of other dead Knights of the Elephant, in the subterranean chapel of Fredericksborg; but Jans, as thou knowest, could never keep a good reckoning, and, by not allowing duly for variation and leeway, was sucked by the moskenstrom, with all his crew, right down into the bowels of the earth. St. Olaus sain them!"
"Poor Sir Erick!" said Konrad, heedless of the fate of Jans, while his tears fell fast.
"Dost thou not know that King Frederick had created him Count of Bergen, and Lord of Welsöö, for his services in the old Holstein war?"
"Of all these passages, I have heard nothing."
"His niece, the Lady Anna, will be a countess now, as well as the richest heiress in the kingdom. Baggage that she is! Her uncle never recovered her desertion of his home for the arms of that Scottish lord, whom, if I had him here, I would string up to my gaff peak. By the mass! the old knight's heart was broken, for he loved thee as a son, and Anna as a daughter; but to the devil say I with women, for they all yaw in their course somehow, and require a strong hand at the tiller to make them lie well to the wind. This Anna, God's murrain"——
"Hold thee, Hans Knuber!" said Konrad, with something of his old air of dignity and authority; "for, nevertheless all thy kindness, I will not permit thee to breathe one word that is ungracious of Anna."
"As thou pleasest, lad," replied the seaman, taking off his fur cap to wipe his capacious head; "I thought 'twould relieve thee somewhat to hear one who had so shamefully misused thee roundly cursed."
"Oh no! never!" replied the young man in a low voice; "Oh, Hans! thou knowest not the depth and the enthusiasm of this passion that hath bewitched me. It banishes every angry thought from my mind, and leaves only a sense of desolation and agony, that can never die but with myself."
"Now, by the bones of Lodbrog! but I have no patience with this. How! a bold fellow like thee to be caterwauling thus, like a cat on a gutter? Go to! The Lubeckers and Holsteiners are again displaying their banners on the Elbe and Weser. Assume thy sword and helmet again. Thou hast the world before thee, with a fair wind; and what matters it leaving a false woman and a slighted love behind? Cheerily, ho! Master Konrad; a love that is easily won is lightly lost."
"False as this girl has been to me, Hans, there are times when her bright smile and her winning voice, and all the memory of our happy early days, come back to me in their first freshness and joy, and my soul melts within me.Then, Hans—in moments like these—I feel that, were she repentant, I could love her as of old. Oh, yes! I could forgive her—I could press her to my breast, and worship her as I did even in those days that have passed to return no more.
"Well, well—as thou pleasest. Take another gulp of this barley drench—thy ptisan. Get strong and healthy ere we see old Norway, where she is gone before thee with Christian Alborg, in theBiornen, and who knoweth what the clouds of futurity may conceal? An old love is easily rekindled, I have heard, though, by the mass! I know little of such gear; thoughthisI know, that the castle of Bergen, with the young countess's lordship of Welsöö, would make a very snug roadstead to drop one's anchor in;" and, with a leering wink, Hans Knuber once more clambered to the upper deck, where he drew his fur cap over his bushy brows, thrust his hands into his pockets, and scowled defiance at the small white speck that, near the Isle of May, still marked where the English pirate lay cruising in the offing.