Chapter 7

CHAPTER XXI.THE CASTELLANA.No waking dream shall tinge my thoughtWith dyes so bright and vain;No silken net so slightly wrought,Shall tangle me again.No more I'll pay so dear for wit,I'll live upon mine own;Nor shall wild passion trouble it,I'll rather dwell alone.Scott.Next day theBiornencast anchor in the Jelta fiord, and, under a strong guard of crossbowmen, Christian Alborg carried Konrad and his prisoners ashore in a great red pinnace which bore the yellow lion of Norway floating at its stern.They landed about half a mile from the citadel, to which he was conveying the captives, and Konrad accompanied them, for he knew not where else to bestow himself; but every step of the well-known way was full of bitter memories, and fraught with the idea of Anna.And where was she?Of Christian Alborg, who had conveyed her from Scotland, he never made an enquiry; for though he knew perfectly well that it was he who had received her from the Scottish council, he had no opportunity of an interview; and, on the other hand, Alborg knew not how deep was the young man's interest still in the fate of Anna, though he knew his story well; and thus no communication on the subject passed between them.In all their old familiar features, his native hills were towering around that ancient fortress, which tradition averred to have been the work of the Sitonian giants; while, amid the deep recesses of their woods, the distant cry of the wolf was ringing as of old, and the wiry foliage of the Scandinavian pines, when they vibrated in the summer wind, as the Norse say, filled the air with the music of fairy harps, that mingled with the hum of the evening flies, and the rustle of the long reedy grass, as it waved in the rising wind like the surface of a rippled lake.Every old familiar feature brought back its own sad train of memories. By the winding path they traversed, here and there lay an ancient runic monument, covered with uncouth characters, and those fantastic hieroglyphics with which the ancient Scandinavians handed down to posterity the history of their battles, and of the mighty men of the days of other years. There, too, was the ancient chapel of St. Olaus, still perched in a cleft of the mountains, with its bell swinging on the rocks that overhung it—rocks where the wild myrtle, the geranium, and the yellow pansy, all flourished together in one luxuriant blush of flowers.As they ascended from the shore, the rocks became bolder and bolder, more sterile and abrupt; not a blade of grass waved on their basaltic faces, yet from their summits the tall and aged pines locked their branches together, and excluded the daylight from the deep chasm at the bottom of which the roadway wound.Rents in the volcanic rock afforded at times, far down below, glimpses of the narrow fiord, a deep, blue inlet of the ocean, dotted with white sails, and overlooked by the strong, dark tower of Bergen, with its rude and clustering ramparts, little windows, and loopholes for arrows.As they approached it, Konrad's sadness increased; for every stone in its walls seemed like the face of an old friend, and every feature of the scenery was associated with that first and early love which had become part of his very being.With Bothwell it was quite otherwise.He looked around him with the utmost nonchalance, and scarcely thought of Anna, though the scene was quite enough to bring her fully back to his mind; but his passion for Mary had completely absorbed or obliterated every other fancy, feeling, and sentiment.A change had come over his features; his forehead was paler and more thoughtful, his eyes had lost much of their bold and reckless expression, and there was a decided melancholy in his fine face, which excited the interest of all who regarded him. He had become more taciturn; even Hob Ormiston had lost much of his loquacity, and now, depressed by the gloomy prospect of their fortunes, walked in silence by the side of the dejected and miserable Hepburn of Bolton."Captain Alborg," said Bothwell, "whither dost thou wend with us now?""To the royal castle of Bergen—to the hereditary governor of which I must deliver thee.""Thank Heaven! 'tis not Erick Rosenkrantz who holds command there now, or I warrant me we would have had but a short shrift, and shorter mercy, for the trick I now remember me to have played him. I marvel much what manner of person this new castellan may be; for in sooth, much of our comfort, in this most dolorous case, depends thereon.""Be under no apprehension, Lord Earl," replied Alborg; "you are the king's prisoners, and, though accused of invasion and piracy, no castellan in Denmark or Norway can hang or quarter you without the king's express orders.""Hang!" grumbled Ormiston; "hang thee, thou old sea-horse! Dost forget thou speakest to James, Duke of Orkney, the mate of Mary of Scotland?"The family of Rosenkrantz were hereditary governors of Bergen, and castellans of Bergenhuis, and, as Konrad's ancestors had always followed their banner in battle, he had ever considered the castle of Bergen his home; and, with all the feeling of a returned exile, he approached its massive portal, which was flanked by broad round towers, and overhung by a strong portcullis of jagged and rusted iron, where the crossbowmen of his own Danish band were still keeping guard in their scarlet gaberdines and steel caps.At the gate they were received by Cornelius Van Dribbel, the great butler of Bergen, who, in his flutter and pomposity at the unusual arrival of such a goodly band of prisoners and visitors, never once recognised the careworn Konrad, who was too spirit-broken to address him, and, disguised by the altered fashion of his beard and garments, was borne with the throng towards the great hall, where the superior of the fortress was to receive them.There was a flush on Bothwell's brow, a fire in his eye, a scorn on his lip, and a loftiness in his bearing, that increased as he approached the presence of this Norwegian dignitary; for, all unused to the humility of his position, he had resolved to requite pride with pride, scorn with scorn; and thus, modelling their looks by those of their leader, Hob Ormiston and Hay of Tallo assumed an air of sullen defiance; but the young knight of Bolton, who was utterly careless about his ultimate fate, wore a spirit-broken aspect, more nearly allied to that of Konrad."Cornelius Van Dribbel," said Christian Alborg, puffing and blowing, as he seated himself in a capacious chair on entering the hall, and wiped his great polished head with a handkerchief. "I thought thou saidst the castellan was here to receive the king's prisoners?""St. Olaus forefend!" replied Van Dribbel; "surely thou knowest that the knight Rosenkrantz hath lain in his last home at Fredericksborg these many months.""Smite thee! yes," growled the seaman; "but I meant the new castellan.""We have none but such as thou shalt see in time—Ha! lo you, now!" he added, as the arras concealing the archway, which, at the lower end of the hall, opened upon a carpeted dais, was withdrawn, and when again it fell, Anna Rosenkrantz, attended by Christina Slingebunder and another young maiden, stood before them.Had a spectre appeared there, Bothwell and Konrad could not have appeared more disturbed, and Anna was equally so; but the Earl, now less animated by love, and, as a courtier, being habituated to keep his emotions under restraint, was the first to recover himself, and a smile of scornful surprise spread over his face, as he doffed his bonnet and bowed to the lady of the castle.Poor Konrad grew pale as death; he became giddy and breathless; and shrank behind the shadow of a column against which he leaned, for the atmosphere seemed stifling.Meanwhile Anna stood upon the dais, between two massive columns of gothic form, encrusted with old runic stones. She was looking pale, but beautiful as ever. Her tresses were gathered up in the simple fashion of the north, and, supported by a silver bodkin, formed a coronet of plaits, as they were wreathed round her head. Her dress of blue silk was massive with embroidery and silver fringe, and her stomacher was studded with jewels, as became the heiress of Welsöö and Bergenhuis.The Earl's first reflection, was his being now a captive, and completely in the power of an enraged and slighted woman, whom in the zenith of his power he had treated with cruelty, contumely, and contempt. These thoughts brought with them no qualm, no pity. He felt only apprehension for what she might now in turn make him endure; for, when in Italy and France, he heard many a tale of "woman's vengeance," that now came back full and vividly on his memory."By St. Paul! we find kenned faces wherever we go;" said Ormiston to Bolton; "this old sea-dog hath brought us to the right haven. We will have free-house and free-hold here, I doubt not.""Madam," said the stout captain of theBiornen, bowing as low as his great paunch and long basket-hilted espadone would permit him, "allow me to introduce to you the terrible pirate who, for the last month, has been the terror of our Fiords, and the scourge of the Sound, and whom we find to be no other than the great Earl of Bothwell, with whose astounding misdeeds all Europe has been ringing."Anna scarcely heard a word of the captain's address. On first beholding the Earl, she had trembled violently, and then became pale as death. Her eyes filled with fire, and she regarded him with a long, fixed, and serpent-like gaze, that even he had some trouble in meeting."Well, madam," said he, with one of his graceful smiles, "when last we stood together in this hall, we foresaw not the day when we would greet each other thus.""The meeting is as unexpected to me as our last may have been toyou, my Lord Earl," replied Anna in French, but with admirable hauteur and firmness. "So, pirate and outlaw, as I now understand thee to be, thou hast lived to see all thy wild visions and schemes of ambition crumble and fade away, and now thou art a captive in the power of her thou didst so deeply wrong, and so cruelly insult.""True, madam," replied Bothwell, curling his mustache, "and what then?""Dost thou not know that thy life and liberty are alike in my power?""I am glad of it, being assured that they could not be in safer keeping.""Oh, man! cold and heartless as thou art," said Anna, who seemed now to have forgotten her own infatuated passion for the Earl, "I cannot but admire this stately calmness under a reverse of fortune so terrible. Were thy fate fully in mine own hands, I would return thee to the land from whence thou hast fled, leaving the flames of civil war to rage behind thee—to the arms of her thou didst love and win, so fatally for herself—or I would again commit thee to the wide ocean, to follow thy wayward fate on other shores; for now there can neither be love nor loyalty, nor falsehood nor truth, between us—but the will of the king sayeth nay!""And what sayeth the will of Frederick?" asked Bothwell, with proud surprise."That thou and thy followers must be separated.""Hoh, is it so?""They, to be sent home to Scotland—thou, to his castle of Kiobenhafen, in fetters.""Fetters!" cried the Earl, in a voice of thunder, while his eyes flashed fire and his hand grasped his sword. "This to Bothwell? Woman! what hast thou dared to say? Dost thou forget that I am a Scottish duke—the consort of a queen—the governor of a kingdom?""No!" replied Anna bitterly, while her eyes flashed with rage and jealousy, though every sentiment of love was long since dead; "and neither have I forgotten that thou art a regicide and a betrayer, who from this hour shall have meted out to him the stern measures he so ruthlessly dealt to others. Christian Alborg—this man is the king's prisoner, whom we have warrants from Peder Oxe, the marshal of Denmark, to detain. Away with him to theBiornen, and ere sunset be thou out of the Jelta fiord, and under sail for Kiobenhafen! Thou knowest Frederick, and that he brooks no delay."And with a glance, where spite and jealousy were mingled with a sentiment of pity and admiration, Anna withdrew; and, as the arras fell behind her, a party of red-bearded Danish bowmen, who formed the garrison at Bergen, crowded round the Earl."Ha! ha!" he laughed bitterly through his clenched teeth; "there spoke thy woman's vengeance, Anna!""Lord Earl," said Ormiston gravely, "in the name of the master of mischief, what prompted thee to beard her thus? Foul fall thee! Why didst thou not flatter, and cajole, and feign thine old love? To fleech with the devil, when thou canst not fight him, is ever good policy. An old love is easily revived: she is only a woman, and would doubtless have believed thee, for thou hast a tongue that would wile the gleds out of the sky. Cock and pie! Bothwell, till something better came to hand, thou mightest have been castellan of Bergen, and I thy lieutenant. All our fortunes had been made even here, in this land of barkened bannocks and snowballs.""To feign thus, would be to commit foul treason against her whom I will ever remember with loyalty and love, while Heaven, permits me to live. Here we part at last, stout Hob, perhaps to meet no more. If ever again thou treadest on Scottish ground, remember that in servingherthou servest Bothwell. Farewell to thee, Bolton, thou man of gloomy thoughts; and farewell thou, stout Hay of Tallo; for I fear me much, that God's vengeance forthat nightin the Kirk-of-Field is coming surely and heavily upon us all."They were rudely separated.Ormiston, Bolton, and Tallo, raised their bonnets with sadness and respect as the Earl was led off; for the bonds of old feudality, and love, and service, which knit their names and fortunes together, had been strengthened by a certainty that the terrible career on which they had run, had for ever cut them off and isolated them from the rest of mankind; and thus a feeling of loneliness and desolation fell upon their hearts, as their great leader and master-spirit was led away to that mournful captivity which was to end only in the—grave.That night a Scottish ship of war, which was commanded by two knights of distinction, and had been sent by the Earl of Moray in pursuit of Bothwell, anchored in the Jelta fiord, and to their care were consigned the shipwrecked followers of the captive noble; and soon after these knights set sail for Scotland.But many hours before they had come into Bergen, theBiornenhad vanished from that narrow inlet of the ocean, and was bearing the great Scottish captive along the shores of western Gothland, and breasting the frothy waves of the Cattegat.The sun, as he set in the western ocean, shed a mellow light upon the wide expanse of shore that stretched upon their lee—on many an impending cliff, on the dark summits of which waved the old primeval pines of Scandinavia, and on whose bases the waters of the west were dashing in foam—on many a wooded wilderness, amid the recesses of which the wolves were prowling by the Druid stones of Loda, and the long-forgotten grave of many a gothic chief.Buried in reverie, with folded arms and saddened eyes, Bothwell watched the changing features and windings of that foreign shore, with all its pathless woods, volcanic rocks, and dark blue hills, throwing their deepening shadows on each other, as the burning sun sank in the distant sea, and the dusky tints of night shed upon the scenery a gloom in unison with his own dark thoughts and bitter memories.Bitter and sad they were truly; but how unavailing!Now separated from the evil influence of Ormiston and others, he deplored his wickedness and folly with an intensity that amounted to agony. Had the universe been his, he would have given it that he might live the last year of his life over again, with the experience in his mind of what the guilt, the terrors, the anxieties, and remorse of that year had been.With sorrow, with envy, yea, with agony, he looked back to the position he had held in the estimation of others, and of himself; and felt, in the bitterness of his soul, that the eminence could never more be re-won.Never more, never more! It was a terrible reflection.He thought, too, of the native land he might never see again; and—"Of many a tale of love and warThat mingled with the scene;Of Bothwell's bank that bloom'd so dear,And Bothwell's bonny Jean."But he thought of Anna only with anger, for no human heart could ever contain two loves. Jane Gordon he remembered with feelings of compunction, when he mused on her unrepining gentleness and devoted love; but he thought most of Mary, and, forgetting that he was himself a captive, laid many a wild and futile scheme to free and to avenge her.He could not flee from his own thoughts. Theywouldcome again and again, weighing like an incubus upon his mind, alike in the bright sunshine of noon and the solemn silence of night; amid the heedless revelry of the Norwegian officers he longed for solitude, and in solitude the stings of conscience drove him back to revelry and wine; and thus the deep and morbid horror that hour by hour, and day by day, had every where pursued him, settled down like a cloud of darkness on his soul.Long since satiated with pleasure, sick of ambition, and wearied of the world, he now found how deep were the stings of unavailing regret.The day, we have said, went down, and night spread her spangled mantle on the darkened water and the moonlit sea.Brightly in its calm beauty the evening star arose from the dark-heaving line of the northern ocean, and Bothwell thought of the time when he had last watched that orb expanding on the night, as it rose above the ruined spire of St. Mary-in-the-Field.At that moment, a cry—that seemed to be wafted over the surface of the water—made his ears and heart tingle, as it passed away on the skirt of the hollow wind.Bothwell grew ghastly pale, he covered his ears with his hands, and rushed away to his cabin in despair.CHAPTER XXII.THE VAIN RESOLUTION.She told me all,And as she spoke her eyes led captive mine—Her voice was low, and thrill'd me to the bone;She ceased and all was silence, whilst I satLike one who, long entranced by melody,Feels still the music in the soulThough sound has died away.Sir C. Lindesay's Alfred.Christian Alborg had departed with his prisoners; and, unnoticed and uncared for, Konrad stood in the hall, where he had once been so welcome a guest. A sensation of loneliness and bitterness ran through his mind. There was the chair of the old knight Rosenkrantz, with his sword and long leather gloves hung upon it, just as he had last left them; his walking-cane stood in a corner, and his furred boots were beside it; the place was identified with his presence—full of his memory; and his bluff round figure, in his ample red gaberdine and trunk hose, his kind old face, with its mild blue eyes and fair bushy beard, seemed to flit between the shadowy columns of the ancient hall.Konrad had no intention of remaining in a place where all was so changed to him; but, ere he turned to leave it for ever, he paused a moment irresolutely. Since last he stood there, all that had passed appeared like a dream, but a sad and bitter one. His heart melted within him at the very thought of his own desolation; a shower of tears would have relieved him, but he had none to shed, for his eyes felt dry and stony."Why should I remain here, where not one is left to care for me now?" he said with a smile, as if in scorn of the weakness that made him linger, and, turning away, was about to retire, when a sound arrested him; once more the arras rose and fell, and Anna stood before him. He gazed upon her without the power of utterance.She was alone.With a heightened colour in her cheek, and a charming timidity in her eye, she approached, and, touching his arm, said—"Christina told me thou wert here, Konrad; and wouldst thou go without one greeting—one farewell—to me?"Her accents sank into his inmost soul; he trembled beneath her touch, and felt all his resolution melting fast away."Unkind Konrad!" said she, with one of her sad but most winning smiles, "is this the friendship thou didst vow to me at Westeray?""I have learned, Anna, that love can never be succeeded by friendship. It runs to the other extreme—the impulses of the human heart cannot pause midway.""Thou hast learned to hate me, then?""Heaven forbid!" replied Konrad, clasping his hands; "hate thee, Anna? oh no!"His eyes were full of the sweetness and ardour of the days of their first love, and Anna's filled with tears."I have long wished," she faltered, in a low and broken voice, while seating herself on the bench of one of those deeply-recessed windows near them—"I have long wished to see thee once more," she repeated, without raising her timid eyes, "to implore—not thy pardon, dear Konrad, for that I have no right to expect—but—but that thou wilt not remember me with bitterness"——Konrad muttered something—he knew not what."I feel, Konrad, that I owe thee much for all I have made thee suffer; and I have now seen the worth and faith of thy heart when contrasted with mine own, and I blush for my weakness—my wickedness—my folly. Thou mayest deem this unwomanly—indelicate; but in love we are equal, and why may not one make reparation as the other—I as well as thou? I have lived, I say, to learn the value of the heart that loved me so well, and which, in a moment of frenzy—infatuation—O, dearest Konrad! call it what thou wilt—I forsook for another—another who betrayed me by a semblance of religious rites—oh! spare me the rest!" ...."Anna," said Konrad, in a choking voice, as he rose to retire—but, instead, drew nearer to her; "though my eye may be hollow, my cheek pale, and my heart soured and saddened, its first sentiment for thee hath never altered. Anna—Anna, God knoweth that it hath not! For all thou hast made me endure for the past two years—from my heart—from my soul, I forgive thee, and I pray that thou mayest be happy. Anna—dearest Anna—I am going far away from the hills and woods of Bergen, to join the Lubeckers, or perhaps the Knights of Rhodes in their warfare in the distant East, for I have doomed myself to exile; but I still regard thee as I did, when we were in yon far isle of Westeray—as my sister—as my friend. As we first met in this old castle hall, when thou wert but a guileless girl and I a heedless boy, so shall we now part. All is forgotten—all is forgiven. And now—farewell; may the mother of God bless thee!"He kissed her hand, and his tears fell upon it; he turned to leave the hall, but a giddiness came over him, and a film overspread his eyes.He still felt the hand of Anna in his: another moment, and she sank upon his breast. All her love for him had returned; and all her womanly delicacy, and overweening pride, had given way before the more tender and generous impulses this sudden reunion with her early lover had called up within her."Oh, Konrad!" she whispered, while almost suffocated by her tears, "if my heart, though seared and saddened, is still prized by thee, it is thine, as in the days of our first love."And, borne away by his passion, the forgiving Konrad pressed her close and closer to his breast. "And here," sayeth the Magister Absalom in his quaint papers, "here endeth the most important Boke in this our Historie."CHAPTER XXIII.RETRIBUTION.Vanish'd each pleasure—vanish'd all his woes,Nor Hope nor Fear disturb his long repose;He saw the busy world—'twas but to-day!A keen spectator of life's motley play—The curtain falls—the scene is o'er.Hallor's Eternity.The summer wore away—and the winter approached.By order of Frederick II., the conqueror of the Ditmarsians, Bothwell had been transmitted, heavily ironed—an insult under which his proud spirit writhed in agony—from the great castle of Kiobenhafen to that of Malmö, a strong and gloomy fortress on the Swedish coast, washed by the waters of the Sound, and overlooking a little town then possessed by the Danes.There he was kept, in sure and strict ward, by a knight named Beirn Gowes, captain of Malmö and governor of Draxholm, in a vaulted apartment, with windows grated, and doors sheathed with iron, grooved in the enormous granite walls, to prevent escape; and there, the long and weary days, and weeks, and months, rolled on in dull and unchanging monotony.Of those stirring events that were acting at home he knew nothing, for never a voice fell on his ear in that far-northern prison; and thus he heard not of Mary's escape from the isle of Lochleven—her futile flight to seek succour of the false Elizabeth, and that she, too, was pining a captive in the castle of Nottingham. He knew not that all his sounding titles, and those old heraldic honours which, by their good swords, his brave forefathers had acquired, and borne on their bucklers through many a Scottish battle-field, had been gifted away with his lordly castles, his fertile fiefs, and noble baronies, to the upholders of the newrégime—the Lords of the Secret Council. Of the fury of the Douglas wars—of Moray's death, and Lennox's fall—of Morton's power and pride, his lust and wrath, under which the capital languished and the country writhed. Of all these he heard not a word; for he was utterly forgotten and deserted by all. Even Jane of Huntly, his countess, that gentle being who had once loved him so well, after their divorce had soon learned to forget him in the arms of her former lover, the Earl of Sutherland, and to commit to oblivion that she had once been the happy bride of the splendid Bothwell.He knew not, too, of the terrible vengeance that had fallen upon his numerous adherents,—how their heads were bleaching on the battlements of Edinburgh—how their castles were ruined, their families forfeited, their names proscribed; while James, Earl of Morton, the mainspring and prime mover of all these plots and conspiracies, of which his (Bothwell's) frantic love and mad ambition had made him the too ready tool, was flourishing, for a brief term, in unrestricted pride and plenitude of power, as Regent and Governor of Scotland.Black Hob of Ormiston, Bolton, Hay of Tallo, with French Paris and others, who had been transmitted by Anna Rosenkrantz to Scotland, were solemnly arraigned as traitors and regicides before the supreme legal tribunal at Edinburgh, and sentenced to be decapitated and quartered.In that grated chamber of the old tower of Holyrood, in which Konrad had been confined, young Hepburn of Bolton sat counting the minutes that yet remained to him between time and eternity.The hand of retribution had come heavily upon him.That day he had seen his three companions led forth to die—to be dismembered as traitors, to have their bowels torn out from their half-strangled and yet breathing bodies, and their limbs fixed to the ramparts of the city barriers; and that day, with sorrow and contrition, he had confessed to the ministers of Moray all his share in Bothwell's plots and crimes.As if in mockery of his sad thoughts, bright through the iron grating streamed the setting sunlight in all the beauty of a warm autumnal eve.At that sunset he gazed long and fixedly, for it was the last he would ever behold, and the tears filled his sunken eyes and bedewed his faded cheek, for more lovely was that evening sun than ever he had seen it, as, sinking behind the long ridge of the Calton, it cast a farewell gleam on the old rood spire and abbey towers of Holyrood—on the hills of emerald green and rocks of grey basalt that overhang them—on the woods of Restalrig, and the narrow glimpse of the blue and distant ocean beyond them—and he felt that on all this his eyes were about to be closed for ever.For ever I did his mind recoil at this terrible reflection? No; but it often trembled between the depth of thought and the abyss of despair.Better it was to die, than to linger out a life, haunted by the burning recollection of those crimes, upon which the force of circumstances, rather than any evil propensity of his own, had hurried him.And Mariette—since the hour when first he knew her love was lost, he had felt comparatively happy, to what he had been since that terrible night on which he took such vengeance upon her, and on her kingly lover, in the house of the Kirk-of-Field—that vengeance for which he was now to die.As he mused on all his blighted hopes and blasted prospects—of what he was and what he might have been—the young man groaned aloud in the agony of his soul; he wreathed his hands among his heavy dark-brown hair, and bowed his head upon the hard wooden bench, which served him alike for bed and table.The sunlight died away—the gloaming came, and the walls of the old abbey, within whose aisles the dead of ages lay, looked dark and dreary; the silence of his prison increased, and a deep reverie—a stupefaction—fell upon the mind of Bolton.A hand that touched his shoulder lightly aroused him; he looked up, and saw—could it be possible?Mariette!"Oh no! it is a spectre!" he muttered, and covered his face with his hands! Again he ventured to look up, and the same figure met his eye—the same face was gazing sadly upon him. The features—for he summoned courage to regard them fixedly—were indeed those of the Mariette Hubert he had loved so well; but the bloom of their beauty had fled; her dark French eyes had lost their lustre and vivacity; her cheeks their roses, and her lips their smiles.Her countenance was full of grief, and expressed the most imploring pity. Hepburn gazed steadily upon her; and though for a moment he deemed her a supernatural vision, he felt no fear. Suddenly he sprang to her side, and threw an arm around her form—her passive but round and palpable form—exclaiming as he did so,—"Mariette—my own Mariette, is it thou? By what miracle did the mercy of God enable thee to escape me? Speak—speak—convince me that it is thee, and to-morrow I will die happy; for I will be guiltless of thy death, Mariette—thine—thine! Oh, that moment of crime, of vengeance, of madness—how dear it has cost me! Speak to me, adorable Mariette—thou livest?""I do, dearest Bolton, by the mercy of Heaven.""True, true!" he gasped; "for thy lover had none." He groaned aloud, and regarded her with eyes full of grief, astonishment, and passion."I found myself, when day was breaking, lying near the ruins of the king's house. I had been insensible I know not how long, and was covered with bruises, and almost dying; for" (she shuddered, and added with a sad but tender smile) "thou, dear heart! in the blindness of thy fury, did so nearly destroy me"——"Oh, now! when standing upon the verge of my grave, Mariette, remind me not of that moment of dread and despair. Thou wert found"——"By an aged man, in other days a prebend of St. Giles, Father Tarbet, who conveyed me to a cottage near the ruined convent of Placentia, where an old woman, that in a better time had been a sister of St. Katherine, dwelt; and to her care he bequeathed me. A raging fever preyed upon me long; but, by the goodness of Heaven, and the tenderness of the poor old recluse, I recovered; and, disguised in this long cloak, by presenting to the javellour of Holyrood a forged order purporting to be from the Regent Moray, have gained admittance to thy cell, and am come to save thee, John of Bolton, and to take thy place till to-morrow—to be freed as a woman, or to die in thy name as fate may direct."Hepburn wept with rapture to find that he had not destroyed her in that fit of insanity which jealousy and passion had brought upon him; hot and salt were the tears that fell upon her hands, as he kissed them again and again."The darkness increases apace," said Mariette; "take thou this mantle and broad hat, lower thy stature, stoop if thou canst, pass forth, and may God attend thee! Leave me in thy place—they cannot have the heart to destroy me, a poor French girl; and yet," she added, in an under tone, "what matters it now?""Destroy thee? thou the sister of French Paris—of that Nicholas Hubert, who this day died amid the yells of the infuriated thousands who crowded the Lawnmarket like a living sea!""True, true, I am his sister!" said Mariette, wringing her hands; "God sain and assoilzie thee, my dear, dear brother; but in this, my disguise of page, I have another chance of escaping, for Charles la Fram, Duval, and Dionese la Brone, who, thou mayest remember, were in thy band of archers, and now serve as arquebusiers in the guards of the Regent Moray, are at this moment sentinels in the Abbey Close, and by their connivance, for the love of old France, I am sure—oh! quite sure—of escaping in safety. Be persuaded, dearest monsieur, I am as certain of freedom as thou art of a terrible death.""And by the ignominious rope—the badge of shame—amid a gazing and reviling multitude. John Hepburn, of the house of Bolton—the last of a line whose pennons waved at Halidon—to die thus! God of mercy! any risk were better than the agony of such an end.""Away, then, and long ere the sun rises we shall both be free.""At this hour, then, to-morrow eve, thou wilt meet me, Mariette.""Meet thee—meet thee!—where?""At the Rood Chapel, by the loan side that leads to Leith.""Ah, monsieur! 'tis a wild and solitary place.""But a safe one. Thou knowest it then—near the Gallowlee. I have much—oh, very much—to say to thee, and many a question to ask. Promise thou wilt come, Mariette, for the sake of that dear love thou didst once bear me!""Once," she repeated mournfully; "well, be it so. I promise—at this hour, then; but away while all around us is so quiet and still—take this pass, and leave me to my own ingenuity for the rest."Bolton wrapped himself in the mantle, and drew the broad Spanish hat over his face."Ah,mon Dieu! La Fram and Duval will never be deceived!" said Mariette, with anguish, as she surveyed his towering figure."Trust to me and the gloom of this autumnal night. To-morrow, then—at the Rood Chapel—remember!" said Hepburn, taking her hands in his, and pausing irresolutely, until impelled by that old regard which, when once kindled in the human heart, can never wholly die, he drew her towards him, and kissed her; but with more calm tenderness, and with less of passion, than ever he had done in other days."Go, go!" said Mariette, in a choking voice, "I deserve not this honour from thee. Guilty have I been, and false; but St. Mary be my witness that I speak the truth—I was besieged, betrayed, and dazzled by the artful king; the rest was fear, despair, and frenzy all!"She pressed her hands upon her bosom, as if it was about to burst."I can conceive all thatnow, Mariette," replied Hepburn, in the same broken voice, while he pressed her to his heart; "from my soul I forgive thee, as thou hast done me, the greater, the more awful ill, I meditated against thee."They separated; but he had lingered so long, and time had fled so fast, that midnight tolled from the spire of the old abbey church before he had shown the pass bearing the forged signature ofJames, Regent, to the drowsy javellour, or gateward, avoided the sentinels at the outer porch, and issued into the palace gardens, from which, by scaling a wall, he easily made his way to the bare and desolate Calton.At the east end of the hill there then lay many deep pits, overgrown with whin and bushes; deep, dangerous, and half-filled with water, the haunt of the hare and fuimart. These were known as the Quarry Holes, and were often the scene of a ducking for sorcery, and legal drowning for various crimes; and to these he fled for shelter and concealment; for though hundreds would gladly have afforded him both on his own barony of Bolton, which was only eighteen miles distant, and had been gifted to the (as yet unsuspected) secretary Maitland—there was not a man in Edinburgh but would instantly have surrendered him into the hands of the civil authorities—and to that punishment awarded him as Bothwell's abettor in the death of the Lord Darnley.There, overcome by long deprivation of sleep, and the bitterness of his thoughts for many a weary night and day, a deep slumber fell upon him, and the noonday sun of the morrow had soared into the wide blue vault of heaven, ere he awoke to consciousness and a remembrance of where he was—the fate from which he had escaped—the existence and the last devotion of Mariette.Her existence! While lying in that desolate spot, he knew not what had been acted in the city that lay below the brow of the hill where he lurked in security.In the grey twilight of that autumnal morning, which a dense and murky mist from the German sea rendered yet more gloomy, the prisoner in the tower of Holyrood had been led forth by the half-intoxicated doomster to die; and passing in her male disguise for Hepburn of Bolton, the repentant Mariette—as an atonement for the falsehood she had practised towards him—a faithlessness that had hurried him into crimes against his country, and plans of vengeance on his king—died on the scaffold, where her brother had perished but the day before—died with the secret of her sex on her lips—and died happy, that in doing so she might, by allaying all suspicion and pursuit, enable her lover to escape.Young Hepburn knew not of this; but anxiously watched the passing day, and longed for evening, when he was to meet her at the Rood Chapel, a lonely little oratory situated on the open muirland midway between the Calton Hill and St. Anthony's Porte, the southern gate of Leith.He heard the hum of Edinburgh ascending the hill-side, and the notes of its clocks on the passing wind as they struck the slow-seceding hours. The blue sky was above, and the dark-green whins were nodding from the rocks around him; at times, a red fox put forth its sharp nose and glancing eyes from its secret hole, or a fuimart, with its long body and bushy tail, shot past like an evil spirit; but nothing else disturbed the solitude of the place where he lay. Slowly the weary day rolled on, and he hailed with joy the last red rays of the sun, as they stole up the steep rocks of Salisbury, lingered for a moment on Arthur's rifted cone, and then died away.The twilight soon came on; the young man crept from his hiding-place, and with an anxious heart descended the northern side of the hill, towards the place of meeting. The last flush of the set sun was lingering still behind the darkening Ochils; and amidst the smoke of busy Leith, the old spire of St. Mary, and St. Anthony's shattered tower, were still visible, but a favourable gloom and obscurity were veiling every thing; and Bolton hurried with a beating heart to the old oratory, burning to give Mariette the warm embrace, her devotion to him in his worst extremity so well deserved.There was no one there.Dismantled of its ornaments and statues, its font and altar, its door and windows, by reformers and thieves, the old chapel of the Holy Rood was desolate and empty. The stone arches still sustained the groined roof; but the velvet moss and the tufted grass grew in the joints of the masonry, and clung to the carved crockets and grotesque corbels.Long he waited, and anxiously he watched the loan, that, from the chasm below the Calton's western brow, led to Leith; but no one approached—not a footstep or a sound met his ear—but the wind, as it swept over the Gallowlee, whistling drearily in the open tracery of the chapel windows, and waving the tufts of grass and wallflower that grew in its mouldering niches.Hour succeeded hour.Midnight came, and an agony entered his soul, for he then feared, he knew not what—he dared not to think of it, but began hastily to traverse the rough horse-way that led to the city.Near the chapel there stood a clump of ancient sycamores, and among them were two from which the branches had been lopped, and across the tops of these divested trunks, a beam was extended to serve for the gibbet, which obtained for the place the name it bears even unto this day—the Gallowlee—and thereon were usually exposed in chains the bodies of those who had been executed—a barbarous practice, which was common in England until a comparatively recent period.A crowd of horrible thoughts filled the mind of Bolton; but, above all, two were most palpable before him—the image of Mariette as she had been when he loved her of old, and the gibbet.He drew near it fearfully.Behind this ill-omened spot, the landscape to the eastward was level, extending to the seashore; here and there low clumps of coppice and the rocks of Restalrig broke its horizontal outline. The sky was all of a cloudless white tint; there were no stars, there was no moon; but against that cold pale background, the trees and the beam of the gallows stood forth in strong relief and black outline.On the right towered up the rocky Calton, a dark and undistinguishable mass.A number of full-fed gleds and monstrous ravens, who built their nests in the sycamores, were perched on the beam of the gallows, where they clapped their dusky wings, and cawed and screamed as the disturber of their feast approached.Two skeletons were swinging there in the night wind; and the remains of two other beings, evidently fresh from the hands of the doomster, swung beside them. One was headless and handless; but, by its bulk and vast conformation, Hepburn knew the body to be that of Black Hob of Ormiston.The other, which was of much shorter stature and slighter make, hung by the neck vibrating in the passing wind, which swayed it round and waved its long dark hair.Fearfully, tremblingly, and scarcely daring to breathe, Hepburn of Bolton drew near it.One glance sufficed him, and he rushed from the spot to return no more.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CASTELLANA.

No waking dream shall tinge my thoughtWith dyes so bright and vain;No silken net so slightly wrought,Shall tangle me again.No more I'll pay so dear for wit,I'll live upon mine own;Nor shall wild passion trouble it,I'll rather dwell alone.Scott.

No waking dream shall tinge my thought

With dyes so bright and vain;

No silken net so slightly wrought,

Shall tangle me again.

No more I'll pay so dear for wit,

I'll live upon mine own;

Nor shall wild passion trouble it,

I'll rather dwell alone.Scott.

I'll rather dwell alone.

Scott.

Next day theBiornencast anchor in the Jelta fiord, and, under a strong guard of crossbowmen, Christian Alborg carried Konrad and his prisoners ashore in a great red pinnace which bore the yellow lion of Norway floating at its stern.

They landed about half a mile from the citadel, to which he was conveying the captives, and Konrad accompanied them, for he knew not where else to bestow himself; but every step of the well-known way was full of bitter memories, and fraught with the idea of Anna.

And where was she?

Of Christian Alborg, who had conveyed her from Scotland, he never made an enquiry; for though he knew perfectly well that it was he who had received her from the Scottish council, he had no opportunity of an interview; and, on the other hand, Alborg knew not how deep was the young man's interest still in the fate of Anna, though he knew his story well; and thus no communication on the subject passed between them.

In all their old familiar features, his native hills were towering around that ancient fortress, which tradition averred to have been the work of the Sitonian giants; while, amid the deep recesses of their woods, the distant cry of the wolf was ringing as of old, and the wiry foliage of the Scandinavian pines, when they vibrated in the summer wind, as the Norse say, filled the air with the music of fairy harps, that mingled with the hum of the evening flies, and the rustle of the long reedy grass, as it waved in the rising wind like the surface of a rippled lake.

Every old familiar feature brought back its own sad train of memories. By the winding path they traversed, here and there lay an ancient runic monument, covered with uncouth characters, and those fantastic hieroglyphics with which the ancient Scandinavians handed down to posterity the history of their battles, and of the mighty men of the days of other years. There, too, was the ancient chapel of St. Olaus, still perched in a cleft of the mountains, with its bell swinging on the rocks that overhung it—rocks where the wild myrtle, the geranium, and the yellow pansy, all flourished together in one luxuriant blush of flowers.

As they ascended from the shore, the rocks became bolder and bolder, more sterile and abrupt; not a blade of grass waved on their basaltic faces, yet from their summits the tall and aged pines locked their branches together, and excluded the daylight from the deep chasm at the bottom of which the roadway wound.

Rents in the volcanic rock afforded at times, far down below, glimpses of the narrow fiord, a deep, blue inlet of the ocean, dotted with white sails, and overlooked by the strong, dark tower of Bergen, with its rude and clustering ramparts, little windows, and loopholes for arrows.

As they approached it, Konrad's sadness increased; for every stone in its walls seemed like the face of an old friend, and every feature of the scenery was associated with that first and early love which had become part of his very being.

With Bothwell it was quite otherwise.

He looked around him with the utmost nonchalance, and scarcely thought of Anna, though the scene was quite enough to bring her fully back to his mind; but his passion for Mary had completely absorbed or obliterated every other fancy, feeling, and sentiment.

A change had come over his features; his forehead was paler and more thoughtful, his eyes had lost much of their bold and reckless expression, and there was a decided melancholy in his fine face, which excited the interest of all who regarded him. He had become more taciturn; even Hob Ormiston had lost much of his loquacity, and now, depressed by the gloomy prospect of their fortunes, walked in silence by the side of the dejected and miserable Hepburn of Bolton.

"Captain Alborg," said Bothwell, "whither dost thou wend with us now?"

"To the royal castle of Bergen—to the hereditary governor of which I must deliver thee."

"Thank Heaven! 'tis not Erick Rosenkrantz who holds command there now, or I warrant me we would have had but a short shrift, and shorter mercy, for the trick I now remember me to have played him. I marvel much what manner of person this new castellan may be; for in sooth, much of our comfort, in this most dolorous case, depends thereon."

"Be under no apprehension, Lord Earl," replied Alborg; "you are the king's prisoners, and, though accused of invasion and piracy, no castellan in Denmark or Norway can hang or quarter you without the king's express orders."

"Hang!" grumbled Ormiston; "hang thee, thou old sea-horse! Dost forget thou speakest to James, Duke of Orkney, the mate of Mary of Scotland?"

The family of Rosenkrantz were hereditary governors of Bergen, and castellans of Bergenhuis, and, as Konrad's ancestors had always followed their banner in battle, he had ever considered the castle of Bergen his home; and, with all the feeling of a returned exile, he approached its massive portal, which was flanked by broad round towers, and overhung by a strong portcullis of jagged and rusted iron, where the crossbowmen of his own Danish band were still keeping guard in their scarlet gaberdines and steel caps.

At the gate they were received by Cornelius Van Dribbel, the great butler of Bergen, who, in his flutter and pomposity at the unusual arrival of such a goodly band of prisoners and visitors, never once recognised the careworn Konrad, who was too spirit-broken to address him, and, disguised by the altered fashion of his beard and garments, was borne with the throng towards the great hall, where the superior of the fortress was to receive them.

There was a flush on Bothwell's brow, a fire in his eye, a scorn on his lip, and a loftiness in his bearing, that increased as he approached the presence of this Norwegian dignitary; for, all unused to the humility of his position, he had resolved to requite pride with pride, scorn with scorn; and thus, modelling their looks by those of their leader, Hob Ormiston and Hay of Tallo assumed an air of sullen defiance; but the young knight of Bolton, who was utterly careless about his ultimate fate, wore a spirit-broken aspect, more nearly allied to that of Konrad.

"Cornelius Van Dribbel," said Christian Alborg, puffing and blowing, as he seated himself in a capacious chair on entering the hall, and wiped his great polished head with a handkerchief. "I thought thou saidst the castellan was here to receive the king's prisoners?"

"St. Olaus forefend!" replied Van Dribbel; "surely thou knowest that the knight Rosenkrantz hath lain in his last home at Fredericksborg these many months."

"Smite thee! yes," growled the seaman; "but I meant the new castellan."

"We have none but such as thou shalt see in time—Ha! lo you, now!" he added, as the arras concealing the archway, which, at the lower end of the hall, opened upon a carpeted dais, was withdrawn, and when again it fell, Anna Rosenkrantz, attended by Christina Slingebunder and another young maiden, stood before them.

Had a spectre appeared there, Bothwell and Konrad could not have appeared more disturbed, and Anna was equally so; but the Earl, now less animated by love, and, as a courtier, being habituated to keep his emotions under restraint, was the first to recover himself, and a smile of scornful surprise spread over his face, as he doffed his bonnet and bowed to the lady of the castle.

Poor Konrad grew pale as death; he became giddy and breathless; and shrank behind the shadow of a column against which he leaned, for the atmosphere seemed stifling.

Meanwhile Anna stood upon the dais, between two massive columns of gothic form, encrusted with old runic stones. She was looking pale, but beautiful as ever. Her tresses were gathered up in the simple fashion of the north, and, supported by a silver bodkin, formed a coronet of plaits, as they were wreathed round her head. Her dress of blue silk was massive with embroidery and silver fringe, and her stomacher was studded with jewels, as became the heiress of Welsöö and Bergenhuis.

The Earl's first reflection, was his being now a captive, and completely in the power of an enraged and slighted woman, whom in the zenith of his power he had treated with cruelty, contumely, and contempt. These thoughts brought with them no qualm, no pity. He felt only apprehension for what she might now in turn make him endure; for, when in Italy and France, he heard many a tale of "woman's vengeance," that now came back full and vividly on his memory.

"By St. Paul! we find kenned faces wherever we go;" said Ormiston to Bolton; "this old sea-dog hath brought us to the right haven. We will have free-house and free-hold here, I doubt not."

"Madam," said the stout captain of theBiornen, bowing as low as his great paunch and long basket-hilted espadone would permit him, "allow me to introduce to you the terrible pirate who, for the last month, has been the terror of our Fiords, and the scourge of the Sound, and whom we find to be no other than the great Earl of Bothwell, with whose astounding misdeeds all Europe has been ringing."

Anna scarcely heard a word of the captain's address. On first beholding the Earl, she had trembled violently, and then became pale as death. Her eyes filled with fire, and she regarded him with a long, fixed, and serpent-like gaze, that even he had some trouble in meeting.

"Well, madam," said he, with one of his graceful smiles, "when last we stood together in this hall, we foresaw not the day when we would greet each other thus."

"The meeting is as unexpected to me as our last may have been toyou, my Lord Earl," replied Anna in French, but with admirable hauteur and firmness. "So, pirate and outlaw, as I now understand thee to be, thou hast lived to see all thy wild visions and schemes of ambition crumble and fade away, and now thou art a captive in the power of her thou didst so deeply wrong, and so cruelly insult."

"True, madam," replied Bothwell, curling his mustache, "and what then?"

"Dost thou not know that thy life and liberty are alike in my power?"

"I am glad of it, being assured that they could not be in safer keeping."

"Oh, man! cold and heartless as thou art," said Anna, who seemed now to have forgotten her own infatuated passion for the Earl, "I cannot but admire this stately calmness under a reverse of fortune so terrible. Were thy fate fully in mine own hands, I would return thee to the land from whence thou hast fled, leaving the flames of civil war to rage behind thee—to the arms of her thou didst love and win, so fatally for herself—or I would again commit thee to the wide ocean, to follow thy wayward fate on other shores; for now there can neither be love nor loyalty, nor falsehood nor truth, between us—but the will of the king sayeth nay!"

"And what sayeth the will of Frederick?" asked Bothwell, with proud surprise.

"That thou and thy followers must be separated."

"Hoh, is it so?"

"They, to be sent home to Scotland—thou, to his castle of Kiobenhafen, in fetters."

"Fetters!" cried the Earl, in a voice of thunder, while his eyes flashed fire and his hand grasped his sword. "This to Bothwell? Woman! what hast thou dared to say? Dost thou forget that I am a Scottish duke—the consort of a queen—the governor of a kingdom?"

"No!" replied Anna bitterly, while her eyes flashed with rage and jealousy, though every sentiment of love was long since dead; "and neither have I forgotten that thou art a regicide and a betrayer, who from this hour shall have meted out to him the stern measures he so ruthlessly dealt to others. Christian Alborg—this man is the king's prisoner, whom we have warrants from Peder Oxe, the marshal of Denmark, to detain. Away with him to theBiornen, and ere sunset be thou out of the Jelta fiord, and under sail for Kiobenhafen! Thou knowest Frederick, and that he brooks no delay."

And with a glance, where spite and jealousy were mingled with a sentiment of pity and admiration, Anna withdrew; and, as the arras fell behind her, a party of red-bearded Danish bowmen, who formed the garrison at Bergen, crowded round the Earl.

"Ha! ha!" he laughed bitterly through his clenched teeth; "there spoke thy woman's vengeance, Anna!"

"Lord Earl," said Ormiston gravely, "in the name of the master of mischief, what prompted thee to beard her thus? Foul fall thee! Why didst thou not flatter, and cajole, and feign thine old love? To fleech with the devil, when thou canst not fight him, is ever good policy. An old love is easily revived: she is only a woman, and would doubtless have believed thee, for thou hast a tongue that would wile the gleds out of the sky. Cock and pie! Bothwell, till something better came to hand, thou mightest have been castellan of Bergen, and I thy lieutenant. All our fortunes had been made even here, in this land of barkened bannocks and snowballs."

"To feign thus, would be to commit foul treason against her whom I will ever remember with loyalty and love, while Heaven, permits me to live. Here we part at last, stout Hob, perhaps to meet no more. If ever again thou treadest on Scottish ground, remember that in servingherthou servest Bothwell. Farewell to thee, Bolton, thou man of gloomy thoughts; and farewell thou, stout Hay of Tallo; for I fear me much, that God's vengeance forthat nightin the Kirk-of-Field is coming surely and heavily upon us all."

They were rudely separated.

Ormiston, Bolton, and Tallo, raised their bonnets with sadness and respect as the Earl was led off; for the bonds of old feudality, and love, and service, which knit their names and fortunes together, had been strengthened by a certainty that the terrible career on which they had run, had for ever cut them off and isolated them from the rest of mankind; and thus a feeling of loneliness and desolation fell upon their hearts, as their great leader and master-spirit was led away to that mournful captivity which was to end only in the—grave.

That night a Scottish ship of war, which was commanded by two knights of distinction, and had been sent by the Earl of Moray in pursuit of Bothwell, anchored in the Jelta fiord, and to their care were consigned the shipwrecked followers of the captive noble; and soon after these knights set sail for Scotland.

But many hours before they had come into Bergen, theBiornenhad vanished from that narrow inlet of the ocean, and was bearing the great Scottish captive along the shores of western Gothland, and breasting the frothy waves of the Cattegat.

The sun, as he set in the western ocean, shed a mellow light upon the wide expanse of shore that stretched upon their lee—on many an impending cliff, on the dark summits of which waved the old primeval pines of Scandinavia, and on whose bases the waters of the west were dashing in foam—on many a wooded wilderness, amid the recesses of which the wolves were prowling by the Druid stones of Loda, and the long-forgotten grave of many a gothic chief.

Buried in reverie, with folded arms and saddened eyes, Bothwell watched the changing features and windings of that foreign shore, with all its pathless woods, volcanic rocks, and dark blue hills, throwing their deepening shadows on each other, as the burning sun sank in the distant sea, and the dusky tints of night shed upon the scenery a gloom in unison with his own dark thoughts and bitter memories.

Bitter and sad they were truly; but how unavailing!

Now separated from the evil influence of Ormiston and others, he deplored his wickedness and folly with an intensity that amounted to agony. Had the universe been his, he would have given it that he might live the last year of his life over again, with the experience in his mind of what the guilt, the terrors, the anxieties, and remorse of that year had been.

With sorrow, with envy, yea, with agony, he looked back to the position he had held in the estimation of others, and of himself; and felt, in the bitterness of his soul, that the eminence could never more be re-won.

Never more, never more! It was a terrible reflection.

He thought, too, of the native land he might never see again; and—

"Of many a tale of love and warThat mingled with the scene;Of Bothwell's bank that bloom'd so dear,And Bothwell's bonny Jean."

"Of many a tale of love and war

That mingled with the scene;

Of Bothwell's bank that bloom'd so dear,

And Bothwell's bonny Jean."

But he thought of Anna only with anger, for no human heart could ever contain two loves. Jane Gordon he remembered with feelings of compunction, when he mused on her unrepining gentleness and devoted love; but he thought most of Mary, and, forgetting that he was himself a captive, laid many a wild and futile scheme to free and to avenge her.

He could not flee from his own thoughts. Theywouldcome again and again, weighing like an incubus upon his mind, alike in the bright sunshine of noon and the solemn silence of night; amid the heedless revelry of the Norwegian officers he longed for solitude, and in solitude the stings of conscience drove him back to revelry and wine; and thus the deep and morbid horror that hour by hour, and day by day, had every where pursued him, settled down like a cloud of darkness on his soul.

Long since satiated with pleasure, sick of ambition, and wearied of the world, he now found how deep were the stings of unavailing regret.

The day, we have said, went down, and night spread her spangled mantle on the darkened water and the moonlit sea.

Brightly in its calm beauty the evening star arose from the dark-heaving line of the northern ocean, and Bothwell thought of the time when he had last watched that orb expanding on the night, as it rose above the ruined spire of St. Mary-in-the-Field.

At that moment, a cry—that seemed to be wafted over the surface of the water—made his ears and heart tingle, as it passed away on the skirt of the hollow wind.

Bothwell grew ghastly pale, he covered his ears with his hands, and rushed away to his cabin in despair.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE VAIN RESOLUTION.

She told me all,And as she spoke her eyes led captive mine—Her voice was low, and thrill'd me to the bone;She ceased and all was silence, whilst I satLike one who, long entranced by melody,Feels still the music in the soulThough sound has died away.Sir C. Lindesay's Alfred.

She told me all,

And as she spoke her eyes led captive mine—

Her voice was low, and thrill'd me to the bone;

She ceased and all was silence, whilst I sat

Like one who, long entranced by melody,

Feels still the music in the soul

Though sound has died away.

Sir C. Lindesay's Alfred.

Christian Alborg had departed with his prisoners; and, unnoticed and uncared for, Konrad stood in the hall, where he had once been so welcome a guest. A sensation of loneliness and bitterness ran through his mind. There was the chair of the old knight Rosenkrantz, with his sword and long leather gloves hung upon it, just as he had last left them; his walking-cane stood in a corner, and his furred boots were beside it; the place was identified with his presence—full of his memory; and his bluff round figure, in his ample red gaberdine and trunk hose, his kind old face, with its mild blue eyes and fair bushy beard, seemed to flit between the shadowy columns of the ancient hall.

Konrad had no intention of remaining in a place where all was so changed to him; but, ere he turned to leave it for ever, he paused a moment irresolutely. Since last he stood there, all that had passed appeared like a dream, but a sad and bitter one. His heart melted within him at the very thought of his own desolation; a shower of tears would have relieved him, but he had none to shed, for his eyes felt dry and stony.

"Why should I remain here, where not one is left to care for me now?" he said with a smile, as if in scorn of the weakness that made him linger, and, turning away, was about to retire, when a sound arrested him; once more the arras rose and fell, and Anna stood before him. He gazed upon her without the power of utterance.

She was alone.

With a heightened colour in her cheek, and a charming timidity in her eye, she approached, and, touching his arm, said—

"Christina told me thou wert here, Konrad; and wouldst thou go without one greeting—one farewell—to me?"

Her accents sank into his inmost soul; he trembled beneath her touch, and felt all his resolution melting fast away.

"Unkind Konrad!" said she, with one of her sad but most winning smiles, "is this the friendship thou didst vow to me at Westeray?"

"I have learned, Anna, that love can never be succeeded by friendship. It runs to the other extreme—the impulses of the human heart cannot pause midway."

"Thou hast learned to hate me, then?"

"Heaven forbid!" replied Konrad, clasping his hands; "hate thee, Anna? oh no!"

His eyes were full of the sweetness and ardour of the days of their first love, and Anna's filled with tears.

"I have long wished," she faltered, in a low and broken voice, while seating herself on the bench of one of those deeply-recessed windows near them—"I have long wished to see thee once more," she repeated, without raising her timid eyes, "to implore—not thy pardon, dear Konrad, for that I have no right to expect—but—but that thou wilt not remember me with bitterness"——

Konrad muttered something—he knew not what.

"I feel, Konrad, that I owe thee much for all I have made thee suffer; and I have now seen the worth and faith of thy heart when contrasted with mine own, and I blush for my weakness—my wickedness—my folly. Thou mayest deem this unwomanly—indelicate; but in love we are equal, and why may not one make reparation as the other—I as well as thou? I have lived, I say, to learn the value of the heart that loved me so well, and which, in a moment of frenzy—infatuation—O, dearest Konrad! call it what thou wilt—I forsook for another—another who betrayed me by a semblance of religious rites—oh! spare me the rest!" ....

"Anna," said Konrad, in a choking voice, as he rose to retire—but, instead, drew nearer to her; "though my eye may be hollow, my cheek pale, and my heart soured and saddened, its first sentiment for thee hath never altered. Anna—Anna, God knoweth that it hath not! For all thou hast made me endure for the past two years—from my heart—from my soul, I forgive thee, and I pray that thou mayest be happy. Anna—dearest Anna—I am going far away from the hills and woods of Bergen, to join the Lubeckers, or perhaps the Knights of Rhodes in their warfare in the distant East, for I have doomed myself to exile; but I still regard thee as I did, when we were in yon far isle of Westeray—as my sister—as my friend. As we first met in this old castle hall, when thou wert but a guileless girl and I a heedless boy, so shall we now part. All is forgotten—all is forgiven. And now—farewell; may the mother of God bless thee!"

He kissed her hand, and his tears fell upon it; he turned to leave the hall, but a giddiness came over him, and a film overspread his eyes.

He still felt the hand of Anna in his: another moment, and she sank upon his breast. All her love for him had returned; and all her womanly delicacy, and overweening pride, had given way before the more tender and generous impulses this sudden reunion with her early lover had called up within her.

"Oh, Konrad!" she whispered, while almost suffocated by her tears, "if my heart, though seared and saddened, is still prized by thee, it is thine, as in the days of our first love."

And, borne away by his passion, the forgiving Konrad pressed her close and closer to his breast. "And here," sayeth the Magister Absalom in his quaint papers, "here endeth the most important Boke in this our Historie."

CHAPTER XXIII.

RETRIBUTION.

Vanish'd each pleasure—vanish'd all his woes,Nor Hope nor Fear disturb his long repose;He saw the busy world—'twas but to-day!A keen spectator of life's motley play—The curtain falls—the scene is o'er.Hallor's Eternity.

Vanish'd each pleasure—vanish'd all his woes,

Nor Hope nor Fear disturb his long repose;

He saw the busy world—'twas but to-day!

A keen spectator of life's motley play—

The curtain falls—the scene is o'er.

Hallor's Eternity.

The summer wore away—and the winter approached.

By order of Frederick II., the conqueror of the Ditmarsians, Bothwell had been transmitted, heavily ironed—an insult under which his proud spirit writhed in agony—from the great castle of Kiobenhafen to that of Malmö, a strong and gloomy fortress on the Swedish coast, washed by the waters of the Sound, and overlooking a little town then possessed by the Danes.

There he was kept, in sure and strict ward, by a knight named Beirn Gowes, captain of Malmö and governor of Draxholm, in a vaulted apartment, with windows grated, and doors sheathed with iron, grooved in the enormous granite walls, to prevent escape; and there, the long and weary days, and weeks, and months, rolled on in dull and unchanging monotony.

Of those stirring events that were acting at home he knew nothing, for never a voice fell on his ear in that far-northern prison; and thus he heard not of Mary's escape from the isle of Lochleven—her futile flight to seek succour of the false Elizabeth, and that she, too, was pining a captive in the castle of Nottingham. He knew not that all his sounding titles, and those old heraldic honours which, by their good swords, his brave forefathers had acquired, and borne on their bucklers through many a Scottish battle-field, had been gifted away with his lordly castles, his fertile fiefs, and noble baronies, to the upholders of the newrégime—the Lords of the Secret Council. Of the fury of the Douglas wars—of Moray's death, and Lennox's fall—of Morton's power and pride, his lust and wrath, under which the capital languished and the country writhed. Of all these he heard not a word; for he was utterly forgotten and deserted by all. Even Jane of Huntly, his countess, that gentle being who had once loved him so well, after their divorce had soon learned to forget him in the arms of her former lover, the Earl of Sutherland, and to commit to oblivion that she had once been the happy bride of the splendid Bothwell.

He knew not, too, of the terrible vengeance that had fallen upon his numerous adherents,—how their heads were bleaching on the battlements of Edinburgh—how their castles were ruined, their families forfeited, their names proscribed; while James, Earl of Morton, the mainspring and prime mover of all these plots and conspiracies, of which his (Bothwell's) frantic love and mad ambition had made him the too ready tool, was flourishing, for a brief term, in unrestricted pride and plenitude of power, as Regent and Governor of Scotland.

Black Hob of Ormiston, Bolton, Hay of Tallo, with French Paris and others, who had been transmitted by Anna Rosenkrantz to Scotland, were solemnly arraigned as traitors and regicides before the supreme legal tribunal at Edinburgh, and sentenced to be decapitated and quartered.

In that grated chamber of the old tower of Holyrood, in which Konrad had been confined, young Hepburn of Bolton sat counting the minutes that yet remained to him between time and eternity.

The hand of retribution had come heavily upon him.

That day he had seen his three companions led forth to die—to be dismembered as traitors, to have their bowels torn out from their half-strangled and yet breathing bodies, and their limbs fixed to the ramparts of the city barriers; and that day, with sorrow and contrition, he had confessed to the ministers of Moray all his share in Bothwell's plots and crimes.

As if in mockery of his sad thoughts, bright through the iron grating streamed the setting sunlight in all the beauty of a warm autumnal eve.

At that sunset he gazed long and fixedly, for it was the last he would ever behold, and the tears filled his sunken eyes and bedewed his faded cheek, for more lovely was that evening sun than ever he had seen it, as, sinking behind the long ridge of the Calton, it cast a farewell gleam on the old rood spire and abbey towers of Holyrood—on the hills of emerald green and rocks of grey basalt that overhang them—on the woods of Restalrig, and the narrow glimpse of the blue and distant ocean beyond them—and he felt that on all this his eyes were about to be closed for ever.

For ever I did his mind recoil at this terrible reflection? No; but it often trembled between the depth of thought and the abyss of despair.

Better it was to die, than to linger out a life, haunted by the burning recollection of those crimes, upon which the force of circumstances, rather than any evil propensity of his own, had hurried him.

And Mariette—since the hour when first he knew her love was lost, he had felt comparatively happy, to what he had been since that terrible night on which he took such vengeance upon her, and on her kingly lover, in the house of the Kirk-of-Field—that vengeance for which he was now to die.

As he mused on all his blighted hopes and blasted prospects—of what he was and what he might have been—the young man groaned aloud in the agony of his soul; he wreathed his hands among his heavy dark-brown hair, and bowed his head upon the hard wooden bench, which served him alike for bed and table.

The sunlight died away—the gloaming came, and the walls of the old abbey, within whose aisles the dead of ages lay, looked dark and dreary; the silence of his prison increased, and a deep reverie—a stupefaction—fell upon the mind of Bolton.

A hand that touched his shoulder lightly aroused him; he looked up, and saw—could it be possible?

Mariette!

"Oh no! it is a spectre!" he muttered, and covered his face with his hands! Again he ventured to look up, and the same figure met his eye—the same face was gazing sadly upon him. The features—for he summoned courage to regard them fixedly—were indeed those of the Mariette Hubert he had loved so well; but the bloom of their beauty had fled; her dark French eyes had lost their lustre and vivacity; her cheeks their roses, and her lips their smiles.

Her countenance was full of grief, and expressed the most imploring pity. Hepburn gazed steadily upon her; and though for a moment he deemed her a supernatural vision, he felt no fear. Suddenly he sprang to her side, and threw an arm around her form—her passive but round and palpable form—exclaiming as he did so,—

"Mariette—my own Mariette, is it thou? By what miracle did the mercy of God enable thee to escape me? Speak—speak—convince me that it is thee, and to-morrow I will die happy; for I will be guiltless of thy death, Mariette—thine—thine! Oh, that moment of crime, of vengeance, of madness—how dear it has cost me! Speak to me, adorable Mariette—thou livest?"

"I do, dearest Bolton, by the mercy of Heaven."

"True, true!" he gasped; "for thy lover had none." He groaned aloud, and regarded her with eyes full of grief, astonishment, and passion.

"I found myself, when day was breaking, lying near the ruins of the king's house. I had been insensible I know not how long, and was covered with bruises, and almost dying; for" (she shuddered, and added with a sad but tender smile) "thou, dear heart! in the blindness of thy fury, did so nearly destroy me"——

"Oh, now! when standing upon the verge of my grave, Mariette, remind me not of that moment of dread and despair. Thou wert found"——

"By an aged man, in other days a prebend of St. Giles, Father Tarbet, who conveyed me to a cottage near the ruined convent of Placentia, where an old woman, that in a better time had been a sister of St. Katherine, dwelt; and to her care he bequeathed me. A raging fever preyed upon me long; but, by the goodness of Heaven, and the tenderness of the poor old recluse, I recovered; and, disguised in this long cloak, by presenting to the javellour of Holyrood a forged order purporting to be from the Regent Moray, have gained admittance to thy cell, and am come to save thee, John of Bolton, and to take thy place till to-morrow—to be freed as a woman, or to die in thy name as fate may direct."

Hepburn wept with rapture to find that he had not destroyed her in that fit of insanity which jealousy and passion had brought upon him; hot and salt were the tears that fell upon her hands, as he kissed them again and again.

"The darkness increases apace," said Mariette; "take thou this mantle and broad hat, lower thy stature, stoop if thou canst, pass forth, and may God attend thee! Leave me in thy place—they cannot have the heart to destroy me, a poor French girl; and yet," she added, in an under tone, "what matters it now?"

"Destroy thee? thou the sister of French Paris—of that Nicholas Hubert, who this day died amid the yells of the infuriated thousands who crowded the Lawnmarket like a living sea!"

"True, true, I am his sister!" said Mariette, wringing her hands; "God sain and assoilzie thee, my dear, dear brother; but in this, my disguise of page, I have another chance of escaping, for Charles la Fram, Duval, and Dionese la Brone, who, thou mayest remember, were in thy band of archers, and now serve as arquebusiers in the guards of the Regent Moray, are at this moment sentinels in the Abbey Close, and by their connivance, for the love of old France, I am sure—oh! quite sure—of escaping in safety. Be persuaded, dearest monsieur, I am as certain of freedom as thou art of a terrible death."

"And by the ignominious rope—the badge of shame—amid a gazing and reviling multitude. John Hepburn, of the house of Bolton—the last of a line whose pennons waved at Halidon—to die thus! God of mercy! any risk were better than the agony of such an end."

"Away, then, and long ere the sun rises we shall both be free."

"At this hour, then, to-morrow eve, thou wilt meet me, Mariette."

"Meet thee—meet thee!—where?"

"At the Rood Chapel, by the loan side that leads to Leith."

"Ah, monsieur! 'tis a wild and solitary place."

"But a safe one. Thou knowest it then—near the Gallowlee. I have much—oh, very much—to say to thee, and many a question to ask. Promise thou wilt come, Mariette, for the sake of that dear love thou didst once bear me!"

"Once," she repeated mournfully; "well, be it so. I promise—at this hour, then; but away while all around us is so quiet and still—take this pass, and leave me to my own ingenuity for the rest."

Bolton wrapped himself in the mantle, and drew the broad Spanish hat over his face.

"Ah,mon Dieu! La Fram and Duval will never be deceived!" said Mariette, with anguish, as she surveyed his towering figure.

"Trust to me and the gloom of this autumnal night. To-morrow, then—at the Rood Chapel—remember!" said Hepburn, taking her hands in his, and pausing irresolutely, until impelled by that old regard which, when once kindled in the human heart, can never wholly die, he drew her towards him, and kissed her; but with more calm tenderness, and with less of passion, than ever he had done in other days.

"Go, go!" said Mariette, in a choking voice, "I deserve not this honour from thee. Guilty have I been, and false; but St. Mary be my witness that I speak the truth—I was besieged, betrayed, and dazzled by the artful king; the rest was fear, despair, and frenzy all!"

She pressed her hands upon her bosom, as if it was about to burst.

"I can conceive all thatnow, Mariette," replied Hepburn, in the same broken voice, while he pressed her to his heart; "from my soul I forgive thee, as thou hast done me, the greater, the more awful ill, I meditated against thee."

They separated; but he had lingered so long, and time had fled so fast, that midnight tolled from the spire of the old abbey church before he had shown the pass bearing the forged signature ofJames, Regent, to the drowsy javellour, or gateward, avoided the sentinels at the outer porch, and issued into the palace gardens, from which, by scaling a wall, he easily made his way to the bare and desolate Calton.

At the east end of the hill there then lay many deep pits, overgrown with whin and bushes; deep, dangerous, and half-filled with water, the haunt of the hare and fuimart. These were known as the Quarry Holes, and were often the scene of a ducking for sorcery, and legal drowning for various crimes; and to these he fled for shelter and concealment; for though hundreds would gladly have afforded him both on his own barony of Bolton, which was only eighteen miles distant, and had been gifted to the (as yet unsuspected) secretary Maitland—there was not a man in Edinburgh but would instantly have surrendered him into the hands of the civil authorities—and to that punishment awarded him as Bothwell's abettor in the death of the Lord Darnley.

There, overcome by long deprivation of sleep, and the bitterness of his thoughts for many a weary night and day, a deep slumber fell upon him, and the noonday sun of the morrow had soared into the wide blue vault of heaven, ere he awoke to consciousness and a remembrance of where he was—the fate from which he had escaped—the existence and the last devotion of Mariette.

Her existence! While lying in that desolate spot, he knew not what had been acted in the city that lay below the brow of the hill where he lurked in security.

In the grey twilight of that autumnal morning, which a dense and murky mist from the German sea rendered yet more gloomy, the prisoner in the tower of Holyrood had been led forth by the half-intoxicated doomster to die; and passing in her male disguise for Hepburn of Bolton, the repentant Mariette—as an atonement for the falsehood she had practised towards him—a faithlessness that had hurried him into crimes against his country, and plans of vengeance on his king—died on the scaffold, where her brother had perished but the day before—died with the secret of her sex on her lips—and died happy, that in doing so she might, by allaying all suspicion and pursuit, enable her lover to escape.

Young Hepburn knew not of this; but anxiously watched the passing day, and longed for evening, when he was to meet her at the Rood Chapel, a lonely little oratory situated on the open muirland midway between the Calton Hill and St. Anthony's Porte, the southern gate of Leith.

He heard the hum of Edinburgh ascending the hill-side, and the notes of its clocks on the passing wind as they struck the slow-seceding hours. The blue sky was above, and the dark-green whins were nodding from the rocks around him; at times, a red fox put forth its sharp nose and glancing eyes from its secret hole, or a fuimart, with its long body and bushy tail, shot past like an evil spirit; but nothing else disturbed the solitude of the place where he lay. Slowly the weary day rolled on, and he hailed with joy the last red rays of the sun, as they stole up the steep rocks of Salisbury, lingered for a moment on Arthur's rifted cone, and then died away.

The twilight soon came on; the young man crept from his hiding-place, and with an anxious heart descended the northern side of the hill, towards the place of meeting. The last flush of the set sun was lingering still behind the darkening Ochils; and amidst the smoke of busy Leith, the old spire of St. Mary, and St. Anthony's shattered tower, were still visible, but a favourable gloom and obscurity were veiling every thing; and Bolton hurried with a beating heart to the old oratory, burning to give Mariette the warm embrace, her devotion to him in his worst extremity so well deserved.

There was no one there.

Dismantled of its ornaments and statues, its font and altar, its door and windows, by reformers and thieves, the old chapel of the Holy Rood was desolate and empty. The stone arches still sustained the groined roof; but the velvet moss and the tufted grass grew in the joints of the masonry, and clung to the carved crockets and grotesque corbels.

Long he waited, and anxiously he watched the loan, that, from the chasm below the Calton's western brow, led to Leith; but no one approached—not a footstep or a sound met his ear—but the wind, as it swept over the Gallowlee, whistling drearily in the open tracery of the chapel windows, and waving the tufts of grass and wallflower that grew in its mouldering niches.

Hour succeeded hour.

Midnight came, and an agony entered his soul, for he then feared, he knew not what—he dared not to think of it, but began hastily to traverse the rough horse-way that led to the city.

Near the chapel there stood a clump of ancient sycamores, and among them were two from which the branches had been lopped, and across the tops of these divested trunks, a beam was extended to serve for the gibbet, which obtained for the place the name it bears even unto this day—the Gallowlee—and thereon were usually exposed in chains the bodies of those who had been executed—a barbarous practice, which was common in England until a comparatively recent period.

A crowd of horrible thoughts filled the mind of Bolton; but, above all, two were most palpable before him—the image of Mariette as she had been when he loved her of old, and the gibbet.

He drew near it fearfully.

Behind this ill-omened spot, the landscape to the eastward was level, extending to the seashore; here and there low clumps of coppice and the rocks of Restalrig broke its horizontal outline. The sky was all of a cloudless white tint; there were no stars, there was no moon; but against that cold pale background, the trees and the beam of the gallows stood forth in strong relief and black outline.

On the right towered up the rocky Calton, a dark and undistinguishable mass.

A number of full-fed gleds and monstrous ravens, who built their nests in the sycamores, were perched on the beam of the gallows, where they clapped their dusky wings, and cawed and screamed as the disturber of their feast approached.

Two skeletons were swinging there in the night wind; and the remains of two other beings, evidently fresh from the hands of the doomster, swung beside them. One was headless and handless; but, by its bulk and vast conformation, Hepburn knew the body to be that of Black Hob of Ormiston.

The other, which was of much shorter stature and slighter make, hung by the neck vibrating in the passing wind, which swayed it round and waved its long dark hair.

Fearfully, tremblingly, and scarcely daring to breathe, Hepburn of Bolton drew near it.

One glance sufficed him, and he rushed from the spot to return no more.

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