“It is the curse of kings to be attendedBy slaves, that take their humors for a warrantTo break within the bloody house of life;And, on the winking of authority,To understand a law; to know the meaningOf dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frownsMore upon humor than advised respect.”—King John.
“It is the curse of kings to be attendedBy slaves, that take their humors for a warrantTo break within the bloody house of life;And, on the winking of authority,To understand a law; to know the meaningOf dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frownsMore upon humor than advised respect.”—King John.
“It is the curse of kings to be attendedBy slaves, that take their humors for a warrantTo break within the bloody house of life;And, on the winking of authority,To understand a law; to know the meaningOf dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frownsMore upon humor than advised respect.”—King John.
Itwas a dark and stormy night without, such as is not unfrequent even during the height of summer, under the changeable influences of the Scottish climate. The west wind, charged with moisture collected from the vast expanse of ocean it had traversed since last it had visited the habitations of man, rose and sank in wild and melancholy cadences; now howling violently, as it dashed the rain in torrents against the rattling casements; now lulling till its presence could be traced alone in the small, shrill murmur, which has been compared so aptly to the voice of a spirit. The whole vault of heaven was wrapped in blackness, of that dense and smothering character which strikes the mind as pertaining rather to the gloom of a closed chamber than to that of a midnight sky.
Yet within the halls of Holyrood neither storm nor darkness had any influence on the excited spirits of the guests who were collected there to celebrate, with minstrelsey and dance, the marriage of Sebastian. Hundreds of lights flashed from the tapestried walls; wreaths of the choicest flowers were twined around the columns; rich odors floated on the air; and the voluptuous swell of music entranced a hundred young and happy hearts with its intoxicating sympathies. All that there was of beautiful and chivalrous in old Dunedin thronged to the court of its enchanting queen on that eventful evening; and it appearedfor once as though the hate of party and the fierce zeal of clashing creeds had for a time agreed to sink their differences in the gay whirl of merriment. The stern and solemn leaders of the covenant relaxed the austerity of their frown; the enthusiastic chieftains of the Romish faith were content to mingle in the dance with those whom they would have met as gladly in the fray.
With even more than her accustomed grace, brightest and most bewitching where all were bright and lovely, did Mary glide among her high-born visiters; no shade of sorrow dimmed that transparent brow, or clouded the effulgence of that dazzling smile; it was an evening of conciliation and rejoicing—of forgiveness for the past, and hope rekindled for the future. There was no distinction of manner as she passed from one to another of the animated groups that conversed, or danced, or hung in silent rapture on the musicians’ strains, on every side. Her tone was no less bland, as she addressed the gloomy Morton, or the dark-browed Lindesay, but now returned from exile in the sister-kingdom, than as she turned to her gayer and more fitting associates. Never was the influence of Mary’s beauty more effective than on that occasion; never did her unaffected grace, her sweet address, her courtesy bestowed alike on all, exert a mightier influence over the minds of men than on the very evening when her hopes were about to be for ever blighted, her happiness extinguished, her very reputation blasted, by the villany of false friends, and the violence of open foes.
The weak and vicious Darnley yet lingered on his bed of sickness, but with the vigor of health many of the darker shades of his character had passed away; and Mary had again watched beside the bed of him whose foul suspicions and unmanly violence—no less than his scandalous neglect of her unrivalled charms, his low and infamous amours, his studied hatred of all whom she delighted to honor—had almost alienated the affectionsof that warm heart which once had beat so tenderly, so devotedly, and, had he but deserved its constancy, so constantly for him. Oh, how exquisite a thing is woman’s love! how beautiful, how strange a mystery, is woman’s heart! ’Twas but a little month ago that she had almost hated. Neglect had chilled the stream of her affections: that he whom she had made a king, whom she had loved with such total devotion of heart and mind—that he should repay her benefits with outrage, her affections with cold, chilling, insolent disdain—these were the thoughts that had worked her brain to the very verge of madness and of crime.
The “glorious, rash, and hazardous”Fyoung earl of Orkney had ever in these hours of bitter anguish been summoned, she knew not how, to her imagination: the warm yet delicate attentions, the reverential deference to her slightest wish, the dignified and chaste demeanor, through which gleamed ever and anon some flash of chivalrous affection—some token that in the recesses of his heart he worshipped the woman as fervently as he served the sovereign truly; the overmastering passion always apparent, but so apparent that it seemed involuntarily present; the eye dwelling for ever on her features, yet sinking modestly to earth, as shamed by his own boldness, if haply it met hers; the hand that trembled as it performed its office; the voice that faltered as it answered to the voice he seemed to love so dearly—all these, all these, had they been multiplied a hundred-fold, and aided by the deepest magic, had effected nothing to wean her heart from Darnley, had not his own infatuated cruelty furnished the strongest argument in favor of the young and noble Bothwell. As it was, harassed by the deepest wrongs from him who was most bound to cherish and support her, and assailed by the allurements of one who coupled to a beauty equal to that of angels a depth of purpose and dissimulationworthy of the fiend, Mary had tottered on the precipice’s verge! Darnley fell sick, and she was saved! Him whom she had almost learned to hate while he had rioted in all the insolence of manly strength and beauty, she now adored when he was stretched languid and helpless on the bed of anguish. She had rushed to his envenomed chamber, she had braved the perils of his contagious malady; her hand had soothed his burning brow, her lip had tasted the potion which his feverish palate had refused; day and night she had watched over him as a mother watches over her sick infant, in mingled agonies of hope and terror; she had marked the black sweat gathering on his brow, and the film veiling his bright eye, and she had felt that her very being was wound up in the weal or wo of him whose death, one little month before, she would have hailed as a release from misery. She had noted the dawn of his recovery, she had fainted from excess of happiness; she had pardoned all, all his past misdoings; she was again the doting, faithful, single-hearted wife of her repentant Henry.G
FThrogmorton’s letter to Elizabeth.GKnox and Buchanan would make it appear that his reconciliation was insincere. But Knox and Buchanan wrote under the influence of political and religious hostility, and could never allow a single merit to Mary. It is a sound rule that every mortal is innocent till proved guilty.
FThrogmorton’s letter to Elizabeth.
GKnox and Buchanan would make it appear that his reconciliation was insincere. But Knox and Buchanan wrote under the influence of political and religious hostility, and could never allow a single merit to Mary. It is a sound rule that every mortal is innocent till proved guilty.
Now in the midst of song, and revelry, and mirth, while the gay masquers passed in gorgeous procession before her eyes, her mind was far away in the chamber of her recovered lord, within the solitary kirk of Field. The masque had ended, and the hall was cleared; the wedding-posset passed around, beakers were brimmed, and amid the clang of music the toast went round—“Health to Sebastian and his bride!” The hall was cleared for the dance: a hundred brilliant couples arose to lead the Branle; the minstrels tuned their prelude; when the fair young bride, blushing at the boldness of her own request, entreated that her grace would make her condescension yet more perfect by joining in that graceful measure which none couldlead so gracefully.
If there was one failing in the character of Mary, which tended above all others to render her an object for unjust suspicions, and a mark for cruel reverses, it was an inability to refuse aught that might confer pleasure on any individual, however low in station—a gentle failing, if it indeed be one, but not the less pernicious to the fortunes of all, and above all of kings. With that ineffable smile beaming upon her face, she rose; and as she rose, Bothwell sprang forth, and in words of deep humility, but tones of deeper passion, besought the queen to make her slave the most happy, the most exalted of mankind, by yielding to him her inestimable hand, even for the space of one short dance.
For a single moment Mary paused; but it was destined that she should be the victim of her confidence, and she yielded. Never, never did a more perfect pair stand forth in lordly hall, or on the emerald turf, than Mary Stuart and her destroyer. Both in the flush and flower of gorgeous youth: she invested with beauty such as few before or since have ever had to show, with grace, and symmetry, and all that nameless something which goes yet further to excite the admiration, and call forth the love of men, than loveliness itself; he strong, yet elegant in strength—proud, yet with that high and spiritual pride which had nothing offensive in his display—taller and more stately than the noblest barons of the court—they were indeed a pair unmatched amid ten thousand; so rich in natural advantages, so exquisite in personal attractions, that the tasteful splendor of their habits was as little marked as is the golden halo which encompasses but adds no glory to the sainted heads of that delightful painter whose name so aptly chimes with the peculiar sweetness of his sublime creations.
Even the iron brow of Ruthven—for he, too, was there—relaxed as, leaning on her partner’s extended hand, she passedhim with a smile of pardon, and he muttered to his dark comrade, Lindesay of the Byres—“She were in sooth a most fair creature, if that her mind might match the beauties of its mansion.” As he spoke, the measured symphony rang out, and in slow order the dancers moved forward; anon the measure quickened, and the motions of the young and beautiful obeyed its impulses. It was a scene more like some fairy dream than aught of hard, terrestrial reality: the waving plumes, the glittering jewels, the gorgeous robes, and, above all, the lovely forms, which rather imparted their own brilliancy to these adornments than borrowed anything from them, combined to form a picture such as imagination can scarcely depict, much less experience suggest, from aught beheld in ballrooms of the present day, wherein the stiff and graceless costume of modern times is but a poor apology for the majestic bravery of the sixteenth century.
Suddenly, while all were glancing round in the swiftest mazes of the dance, those who stood by observed the blood flash with startling splendor over brow, neck, and bosom of the youthful queen; nay, her very arms, white in their wonted hue as the snow upon Shehallion, crimsoned with the violence of her emotions. Her eyes sparkled, her bosom rose and fell almost convulsively, her lips parted, but it seemed as though her words were choked by agitation. For a single instant she stood still; then bursting through the throng, she sank nearly insensible upon one of the many cushioned seats that girded the hall; but, rallying her spirits, she murmured something of the heat and the unusual exercise, drained the goblet of pure water presented by the hand of Orkney, and again resumed her station in the dance.
“Pardon, pardon, I beseech you,” whispered the impassioned tones of the tempter—“pardon, sweet sovereign, the boldness that was born but of a moment’s madness. Believe me—Iwould tear my heart from out my bosom, did it cherish one thought that could offend my mistress—my honored, myadored—
“Hush! oh, hush! for my sake, Bothwell—for my sake, if for naught else, be silent! I do believe that you mean honestly and well; but words like these ’tis madness in you to utter, and sin in me to hear them! Bethink you, sir,” she continued, gaining strength as she proceeded, and speaking so low that no ear but his might catch a solitary sound amid the quick rustle of the “many twinkling feet,” and the full concert—“bethink you! you address a wife—a wedded, loyal wife—the wife of your lord, your king. I know that you are my most faithful servant, my most trusted friend; I know that these words, which sound so wildly, are not to be weighed in their full sense, but as a servant’s homage to his liege-lady: yet think what yon stern Knox would deem, think of the wrath of Darnley—”
“If there were naught more powerful than Darnley’s wrath,” he muttered, in the notes of deep determination, “to bar me from my towering hopes, then were I blest beyond all hopes of earth, of heaven—supremely blest!”
“What mean you, sir? We understand you not! What should there be more powerful than the wrath of thy lawful sovereign? Speak; I would not doubt you, yet methinks your words sound strangely. What be these towering hopes of thine? Pray God they tower not too high for honesty or honor! Say on, we do command thee!”
“I will say on, fair queen,” he replied, in a voice trembling as it were with the fear of offending and the anxiety of love—“I will say on, so you will hear me to the end, nor doubt the most devoted of your slaves!”
“Hear you?” she replied, considerably softened by his humility, “when did ever Mary Stuart refuse to hear the meanestof her subjects, much less a trusted and a valued friend, as thou hast ever been to her, as thou wilt ever be to her—wilt thou not, Bothwell?”
There was a heavenly purity, a confidence in his integrity, and a firm and full reliance on her own dignity, in every word she uttered, that might have converted the wildest libertine from his career of sin; that might have confirmed the wariest and most subtle spirit that its guilty craft could never prevail against a heart fortified against its attacks by purity and by the stronger and more holy influences of wedded love; but on the fixed purpose, on the interminable pride, the desperate passion, and the unscrupulous will of Bothwell, every warning was lost.
“I have adored you,” he said, slowly and impressively—“adored you, not as a queen, but as a woman. Mary, angelic Mary, pardon—pity—and oh, love me! You do, you do already love me! I have read it in your eye, I have marked it in your flushing cheek, in your heaving bosom! If this night you were free, would you not, sweet lady, lovely queen, would you not reward the adoration, the honest adoration of your devoted Bothwell?”
“Stand back, my lord of Bothwell!” cried the now indignant queen, “stand back! your words are madness! Nay, but we will be heard,” she continued, with increasing impetuosity, as he endeavored again to speak. “Thinkest thou, vain lord, that I—I, Mary of France and Scotland—because I have favored and distinguished a subject, who, God aid me, merited not favor nor distinction—thinkest thou that I, a queen anointed—a mother and a wife—that I could love so wantonly as to descend to thee? Back, sir, I say! and if I punish not at once thy daring insolence, ’tis that thy past services, in some sort, nullify thy present boldness. Oh, my lord!” she proceeded, in a softer tone, and a big tear-drop trembled in her bright eye as she spoke, “Mary has miseries enough, that thou shouldstspare to add thy quota to the general ingratitude. If thou didst love me, as thou sayest, thy love would be displayed as that of a zealous votary to the shrine at which he worships; as that of the magi bending before their particular star—not as that of a wild and wicked wanton to a frail, fickle woman!”
It may be that the words with which Mary concluded her reproof kindled again the hope which had well nigh passed away from Bothwell’s breast.
“Nay, Mary, say not thus. Do I not know thy trials? have I not marked thy miseries? and will I not avenge them? If thou wert free—did I say, if? By Heaven, fair queen, those locks of thine, that flow so unrestrained down that most glorious neck, are not more free than thou art! Did I not hear thy cry for vengeance on the slaughterers of hapless Rizzio? did I not hear, and have I not achieved the deed that secures at once thy freedom and thy vengeance?”
The spell was broken on the instant: the soft, the tender-hearted, the most gentle of women, was aroused almost to frenzy. The blood rushed in torrents to her princely brow, and left it again pale as the sculptured marble, but to return once more in deeper hues of crimson. Her eyes flashed with unnatural brightness; her bosom heaved and fell like that of a young priestess laboring with the throes of prophetic inspiration; she shook the tresses, he had dared to praise, back from her lovely face, and stamping her delicate foot in the passion of the moment on the oakenfloor—
“A guard!” she cried, in notes that might have vied with the clangor of a trumpet, so shrilly did they pierce the ears of all; “a guard for my lord of Bothwell!”
Had the thunder of heaven darted its sulphurous and scathing bolt into the midst of that assembly, a greater change its terrors could not have effected than did that thrilling cry. A hundred rapiers flashed in the bright torchlight, as with bent brows andangry voices the barons of the realm rushed to the aid of their liege-lady. An air of cool defiance sat on the massive forehead of the culprit; his eye was fixed upon the queen in sorrow, as it would seem, rather than in anger; his sword lay quietly in his scabbard, although there were a hundred there with weapons thirsting for his blood, and hearts burning with the insatiable hate of ancient feuds. Murray and Morton, speaking eagerly and even sternly to the queen, urged his immediate seizure; and the gray-haired duke of Lennox, clutching his poniard’s hilt with the palsied gripe of eighty years, awaited but a sign to slay, he knew not and he recked not why, the ancient foeman of his race.
But so it was not fated! Before a word was spoken, the deep and sullen roar as of an earthquake burst upon their ears, and stunned their very hearts; a second din, as of some mighty tower rushing from its base, succeeded, ere the casements had ceased to rattle with the shock of the first.
“God of my fathers!” shouted Murray, “what means that din? Treason, my lords, treason! Look to the queen—secure the traitor! Thou, duke of Lennox, with thy followers, haste straight to the kirk of Field! Without, there—let my trumpets sound to horse! By Him that made me,” he continued, “the populace are rising!”—for the deep swell of voices, that rose without, announced the presence of a mighty multitude.
In an instant the vaulted arches of the palace echoed with the flourished cadences of the royal trumpets, the ringing steps of steel-clad men, the tramp of hoofs in the courtyard, the gathering cries of the followers of each fierce baron, succeeding wildly to the soft breathings of minstrelsey and song. At this instant Murray had resolved himself to act, and, with his hand upon the pommel of his sword, slowly but resolutely stepped forward. “Yield thee!” he said, in stern, low tones;“yield thee, my lord of Bothwell! Hence from this presence thou canst not pass until all this night’s strange occurrences be fully manifested; ay, and if there be guilt—as I misdoubt me much there is—till it be fearfully avenged!”
The touch of Murray on his shoulder, lightly as it fell, and grave as were the words of that high baron, aroused the reckless disposition of Bothwell almost to madness. “Thou liest, lord!” he shouted, in the fierce impulse of the moment—“thou liest, if thou dare to couple the name of guilt with Bothwell! Forego thy hold, or perish!”—and his dagger’s blade was seen slowly emerging from its sheath, while his clinched teeth and the starting veins of his broad forehead spoke volumes of the bitterness of his wrath. Another second, and blood, the blood of Scotland’s noblest, would have been poured forth like water, and in the presence of the queen; the destinies of a great kingdom would have perchance been altered, and the history of ages changed, all by the madness of a single moment. In the fearful crisis, a wild shriek was heard from the upper end of the hall, to which the ladies of the court had congregated, round the queen, like the songsters of spring when the dark pinions of the hawk are casting down a shadow of terror on their peaceful groves.
“Help! help!—her grace is dying!” And, in truth, it did seem as though she were about to pass away. Better, a thousand times better, and happier, had it been for her, to have then died quietly in the palace of her forefathers, with the nobles of her land around her, than to have borne, for many an after-year, the chilling miseries which were showered by pitiless fortune on her head, till that most fatal hour of her tragic life arrived, and Mary was at length at rest!
Murray relaxed his hold, turned on his heel, and strode abruptly to the elevated dais, on which the queen had sunk in worn-out nature’s weariness. For a minute’s space Bothwellglared on him as he strode away, like a tiger balked of his dear revenge. It was most evident he doubted—doubted whether he should set all, even now, upon a cast, strike down a foeman in the very fortress of his power, and if he must die, like the crushed wasp, sting home in dying. Prudence, however, conquered: he also turned upon his heel, and with a glance of the deepest scorn and hatred on the baffled lords, who, in the absence of their master-spirit, had lost all unison, stalked slowly through the portal of the hall, and disappeared.
Before ten seconds had elapsed, the rapid clatter of hoofs, the jingling of mail, and the war-cry—“A Bothwell! ho! a Bothwell!” proclaimed that he had escaped the toils, and was surrounded by his faithful followers.
When Murray reached the couch on which the queen was extended, gasping as though in the last extremity, her case indeed was pitiable. Her long locks had burst from their confinement, and flowed over her person like a veil; her corsage had been cut asunder by the damsels of her court, and her bosom, bare in its unspeakable beauty, was disclosed to the licentious gaze of the haughty nobles. An angle of the couch, as she had fallen, had grazed her temple, and the blood streamed down her cheek and neck, giving, by the contrast of its dark crimson, an ashy, deathlike whiteness to her whole complexion.
“Ha!” he whispered, with deep emotions, “what means this? Back, back, my lords, for shame, if not for pity! would ye gaze upon your sovereign, in the abandonment of utter grief, as though she were a peasant-quean? Stand back, I say, and let the halls be cleared; and hark thee, Paris,” he continued, as a cringing, terrified-looking Frenchman entered the apartment, “bid some one call Galozzi hither: the poison-vending, cozening Tuscan hath skill at least, and it shall go hardly with him so he exert it not! But ha! what ails the man? St. Andrew, he will faint! What ails thee, craven? Speak, speak,or I shake the coward soul from out thy carcass!”—and he shook the trembling servitor fiercely by the throat.
“The king—the king—” he faltered forth at length, terrified yet more by the wrath of Murray than by the scene which he had witnessed.
“What of the king, thou dastard? Speak—I say, what of Henry Darnley?”
“Murdered, your highness—murdered!”
“Nay, thou art made to say it!”
“He speaks too truly, Murray,” cried Morton, entering, with his bold visage blanched, and his dark locks bristling with unwonted terror; “the king is murdered—foully, most foully murdered!”
“By the villain Bothwell!” muttered Murray, between his hard-set teeth; “but he shall rue the deed! But say on, Morton, say on: how knowest thou this? Say on—and you, ladies, attend the queen.”
“I saw it, Murray—with these eyes I saw it—the cold, naked, strangled corpse—flung, like a carrion-carcass, on the garden-path; and the kirk of Field a pile of smoking and steaming ruins—blown up with gunpowder, to give an air of accident to this accursed treason. I tell you, man,” he continued, as he saw Murray about to speak, “I tell you that I saw, in that drear garden, cast like a murrained sheep upon a dike, all that remained of Henry Darnley!”
“’Tis false!” shrieked the wretched Mary, starting to her feet, with the wild glare of actual insanity in her eye; “who saith I slew him? Henry Darnley! ’Sdeath, lords!—the king, I say—the king! Now, by my halydom, he shall be king of Scotland! Dead—dead! who said the earl of Orkney was no more? Faugh! how the sulphur steams around us! It chokes—it smothers! Traitor, false traitor! know, earl, I will arraign thee. What! kill a king? whisper soft, low words to a queen? Hoa! this is practice, my lord duke, foul practice;and deeply shall you rue it if you but hurt a hair of Darnley!—Nay, Henry, sweet Henry, frown not on me! Oh! never woman loved as I love thee, my Darnley! Rizzio—ha! what traitor spoke of Rizzio? But think not of it, Henry: the faithful servant is lost, but ’twas not thou that did it. Lo! how dark Morton glares on me! Back, Ruthven, fiend! wouldst slay me? But I forgive thee all—all—Henry Darnley, all! Live—only live to bless my longing sight! No! no!” she shrieked more wildly, “he is not dead! to arms! what, ho!—to arms! a king, and none to rescue him! To arms, I say! I will myself to arms! Fetch forth my Milan harness; saddle me Rosabelle! French—Paris, aho! my petronels! And ye, why do ye linger, wenches—Seyton, Carmichael, Fleming?—my head-gear and my robes! The queen goes forth to-day! To horse, and to the rescue!”
She made a violent effort to rush forward, but staggered, and if her brother had not received her in his arms, she would have fallen again to the earth. “Bear her hence, ladies; bear her to her chamber!—thou hast a heavy weird—poor sister!—What ponder you so, Morton? you would not mark her words: ’tis sheer distraction—the distraction of most utter sorrow!”
“Distraction! I say ay! but sorrow, no! Sorrow takes it not on thus wildly. It savors more of guilt, Lord Murray—dark, damning, bloody guilt! Heard ye not what she said of Orkney? Distraction, but no sorrow: guilt, believe me, guilt!”
“Not for my life would I believe it, nor must thou: if Morton and Murray hunt henceforth in couples—hark in thine ear!”—and he whispered, glancing his eyes uneasily around, as though the very stones might bear his words to other listeners. A grim smile passed athwart Morton’s visage; he bowed his head in token of assent. They passed forth from the banquet-hall together, and Mary was left to her misery.
“Marshal, demand of yonder championThe cause of his arrival here in arms:Ask him his name, and orderly proceedTo swear him in the justice of his cause.”—King Richard II.
“Marshal, demand of yonder championThe cause of his arrival here in arms:Ask him his name, and orderly proceedTo swear him in the justice of his cause.”—King Richard II.
“Marshal, demand of yonder championThe cause of his arrival here in arms:Ask him his name, and orderly proceedTo swear him in the justice of his cause.”—King Richard II.
Thesummer sun was pouring down a flood of lustre over wood and moorland, tangled glen, and heathery fells, with the broad and blue expanse of the German ocean sparkling in ten thousand ripples far away in the distance. But the radiance of high noon fell not upon the forest and the plain in their solitary loveliness, but on the marshalled multitudes of two vast hosts, arrayed in all the pomp and circumstance of antique warfare, glittering with helms and actons, harquebuss and pike, and waving with a thousand banners, of every brilliant hue and proud device. On a gentle eminence, the very eminence on which, a few short years before, the English Somerset had posted his gallant forces, lay the army of the queen, its long front bristling with rows of the formidable Scottish spear, its wings protected by chosen corps of cavalry, the firm and true adherents of the house of Stuart, or the daring, though licentious vassals of the duke of Orkney, and the royal banner, with its rich embroidery, floating in loud supremacy. Yet, gay and glorious as it showed upon its ground of vantage, and gallantly as it might have contested that field against even superior numbers, that array was but in name an army. Thousands were there who, though they had flocked with bow and arrow to the call of their sovereign, felt not distaste alone, but actual disgust to the services on which they were about to be employed; and not a few were among them who knew too well how little was the probability that they, a raw, tumultuary force, led on by men of gallantry indeed, but not of that well-proved experiencewhich, to a leader, is more than the truncheon of his command, should come off with victory, or even without defeat, from an encounter with veteran troops, retainers of the most warlike lords in Scotland, marshalled by soldiers with whose fame the air of every European kingdom was already rife—soldiers such as Lyndesay of the Byres, Kirkaldy of the Grange, Murray of Tullibardin, and a hundred others of reputation, if second, second to none but these. Nor was this all; voices were not wanting, even in the army of the queen, to exclaim, that if the royal banner were displayed, its purity was sullied by the presence of a murderer; and that success could never be hoped for, so long as Bothwell rode by the right hand of Mary. One exception there was, however, to this general feeling of dissatisfaction, if not of despair. A band of determined men, whose scar-seamed visages and stern demeanor, no less than the splendid accuracy of their equipments, and the admirable discipline with which they maintained their post, far in advance of the main body, and exposed to inevitable destruction on the advance of the confederated forces, should they be suffered, as it appeared too probable that they would, to remain unsupported against such desperate odds. But these were men to whom the most deadly conflict was but a game of chance; inured from their youth upward to deeds of blood and danger—lawless and licentious in time of peace, even as they were cruel, brave, and fearless in the fight—the picked retainers, the desperate, of the duke of Orkney.
Dark glances of contempt, if not of hatred, were shot ever and anon from beneath the scowling brows of these wild desperadoes toward the wavering ranks of the main army, as, unrestrained by the exhortations or menaces of their officers—unmoved by the eloquent beauty of Mary herself, who rode among the trembling ranks, praying them, as they loved their country, as they valued honor, as they would not see theirwives, their mothers, and their daughters, delivered to the malice of unrelenting foemen, to strike one blow for Scotland’s crown—to give once, once only, their voices to the exulting clamor, “God and the queen”—troop after troop broke away from the rear, and scattering themselves, singly, or in parties of two or three, over the open country, sought for that safety in mean and dastard flight, which they should have asked from their own bold hearts and strong right hands.
It was at this moment that the heads of the confederated columns were seen advancing, in dark and dense masses, at three different points, against the front, which was still preserved in Mary’s army by the strenuous exertions of the leaders, rather than by any soldierly feelings on the part of the common herd. So nearly had they advanced to the royal lines that the stern and solemn countenances of the leaders, as they rode in complete steel, but with their vizors raised, each at the head of his own leading, were visible, feature for feature. The matches of the arquebusses might be clearly distinguished, blown already into a bright flame, while the pieces themselves were evidently grasped by ready and impatient hands, and the long spears of the vanguard were already lowered; but not a movement of eagerness, not a murmur, or a shout, was heard throughout the thousands, whose approach was ushered to the ears alone by the incessant trampling sound, borne steadily onward, like the flow of some great river, occasionally broken by the shrill neighing of a charger, or the jingling clash of arms.
The borderers of Bothwell, on the contrary, as they noted the advance, raised, from time to time, the wild and fearful yells with which it was their custom to engage, brandishing their long lances, and giving the spur to their horses, till they sprang and bolted like hunted deer; and it required all the influence of hereditary chiefs to restrain these savage moss-troopers from rushing headlong with their handful of men againstthe unbroken line of the confederate pikes, which swept onward, sullen and steady as the tide when it comes in six feet abreast. The effect of such a movement would have been at once fatal to their wretched mistress. It was too evident that, for a wavering, coward multitude, like that arrayed beneath the banner of the queen, there could be no hope to fight against men such as those who were marching, in determined resolution, up that gentle eminence; and all that now remained was an attempt at negotiation.
It was at this moment, when the advanced guard of the two armies were scarcely ten spear’s-lengths asunder, when the determination or wavering of every individual might be read by the opposite party in his features as clearly as in the pages of a book, that a single trumpet from the centre of the queen’s army broke the silence with a wild and prolonged flourish. It was no point of war, however, that issued from its brazen mouth, no martial appeal to the spirits and courage of either host, but the prelude to a pacific parley—and straightway the banners throughout the host were lowered, and a white flag was waved aloft, in place of Scotland’s blazonry. The ranks were slowly opened, and from their centre, with trumpeter and pursuivant, and king-at-arms, rode forth Le Croc, the French embassador. This movement, as it seemed, was wholly unexpected by the confederate lords; at least, the ranks continued their deliberate advance unchecked by the symbols of peace that glittered above the weapons of the rival host, till suddenly a foaming horse and panting rider furiously galloped from the rear. A single word was uttered, in a low, impressive whisper; it passed from mouth to mouth like an electric spark; and, as though it were but a single man, that mighty column halted on the instant. There was no confusion in the manœuvre, no hurry, nor apparent effort: the long lines of lances, so beautifully regular in their advance, sank as regularly to their rest;and, but for the fluttering of their plumage in the summer air, those beings, strangely composed of every vehement and stirring passion, might have passed for images of molten steel. But a few seconds had elapsed, and the flourish of the peaceful trumpets was yet ringing in the ears of all, when a dozen horsemen proceeded slowly forward, to meet the royal cavalcade.
It was a singular and most impressive spectacle, that meeting. It was, as it were, the fearful pause between life and death—the moment of breathless silence that precedes the first crash of the thunderstorm. Every eye was riveted in either army on those two groups; every heart beat thick, and every ear tingled with excitement. And, even independent of the appalling interest of the crisis, there was much to mark, much to admire, in the handful that had come together to speak the doom of thousands; to decide whether hundreds and tens of hundreds of those living creatures, who stood around them now, so glorious in the pride, the beauty, and the strength of manhood, should, ere the sun might sink, be as the clods of the valley; to decree, with their ephemeral breath, whether the soft west wind, that wafted now the perfumes of a thousand hills to their invigorated senses, should, ere the morrow, be tainted like the vapor from some foul charnel-house!
On the one side, on his light and graceful Arab, champing its gilded bits and shaking its velvet housings, sat the gay and gallant Frenchman—his long, dark locks uncovered, and his fair proportions displayed to the best advantage in his rich garb of peace. No weapon did he bear—not even the rapier, without which no gentleman of that period ever went abroad—but which, the more fully to manifest the candor and sincerity of his instructions, a handsome page held by his master’s stirrup. Behind him, with pale visages and anxious mien, Marchmont, and Bute, and Islay, and the lion King, awaited the result ofthis their last resource.
On the other hand, distinguished from their followers only by the beauty of their powerful chargers, and their own knightly bearing, halted the rebel chiefs. Plain almost to meanness in his attire, with his armor stained and rusty, and his embroidered baldrick frayed and rent, Lord Lyndesay of the Byres was foremost in the group. Morton was there, and Murray, all steel from crest to spur; the best warrior, where all were good, the noblest spirit, the most upright man, Kirkaldy of the Grange.
“Nobles and knights of Scotland,” said the proud envoy, in a tone so calm and yet so clear that every accent could be noted far and wide, “I come to ye—a gentleman of France—the servant of a mighty monarch, unbought by friendship and unprejudiced by favor. For myself, or for my royal master, it recks us little whether or not ye choose to turn those swords, which should be the bulwarks of your country, against her vitals. Yet should it not be said that Scottishmen, like ill-trained dogs of chase, prefer to turn their fangs against each other, than to chase a nobler quarry. Ye are in arms against your queen—nay, interrupt me not, my lords—against your queen, I say! or, as perchance ye word it, against her counsellors. That ye complain of grievances I know, and, for aught I know, justly complain. Yet pause, brave gentlemen, pause and reflect which is the greater grievance—a country torn with civil factions, internal war with all its dread accompaniments of massacre and conflagration, or those ills which now have stung you to exchange your loyalty for rebel arms? Bethink ye, that in such a cause as this it matters not who wins—to vanquish countrymen and brothers is but a worse and deadlier evil than defeat by foreign foemen. Think ye this fatal field of Pinkie, whereon ye are arrayed, hath not already drunk enough of Scottish blood, that ye we would deluge it again?—or that its name is not yet terrible enough to Scottish ears, thatye would now bestow a deeper blazonry of sin and shame? Brave warriors, noble gentlemen, forbear! Let the sword of civil discord, I beseech you, enter its scabbard for once bloodless; let amicable parley gain the terms which bloodless news purchased! Strive ye for your country’s glory?—lo, it calls on you to pause! For your own peculiar fame?—it bids ye halt while there is yet the time, lest neither birth, nor rank, nor valor, nor high deeds, nor haughty virtues, preserve ye from the blot which lies even yet, though ages have passed, on those who have warred against their country! Is it terms, fair terms, for which ye crowd in arms around yon awful banner?”—pointing to the colors of the rebel lords, emblazoned with the corpse of the murdered Darnley, and his orphan infant praying for judgment and revenge—“lo, terms are here! Peace, then, my lords; give peace to Scotland, and eternal credit to yourselves. Her majesty bears not the wonted temper, the stern resentment of offended kings: even now she offers peace and amity, pardon for all offences—ay, and the hand of friendship, to all who will at once retire from this sacrilegious field. Subjects, your queen commands you; nobles and knights, a lady, the fairest lady of her sex, appeals to your chivalry and honor. Hear, and be forgiven!—”
“Forgiven!” shouted Glencairn, in tones of deep feeling and yet deeper scorn—“forgiven! we came not here to ask for pardon, but for vengeance, and vengeance will we have! The blood of Darnley craves for punishment upon his murderers! We are come to punish; not to sue for pardon, not to return in peace, until our end is gained, and Scotland’s slaughtered king avenged!”
“Fair sir,” cried Morton—calmer, and for that very reason more to be dreaded, than his impetuous comrades—“fair sir, we rear no banner and we lift no blade against her grace of Scotland! Against her husband’s murderer have we marched,nor will we turn a face, or draw a bridle, till that murderer lies in his blood, or flies for ever from the land he has polluted by his unnatural homicide! Thou hast thine answer, sir. Yet thus much for our ancient friendship, and to testify our high esteem for the noble monarch whom thy services here represent: here will we pause an hour. That passed, our word is, ‘Forward! forward!’ and may the God of battles judge between us! Brothers in arms, and leaders of our host, say, have I spoken fairly?”
“Fairly hast thou spoken, noble Morton; and as thou hast spoken, we will it so to be. An hour we pause, and then forward!” The voices of the barons, as they replied, gave no signs of hesitation; there was no faltering in their tones, no wavering in their fixed and steady glances. At once the gallant mediator saw that he had failed in his appeal, and that all further words were needless. Slowly and disconsolately he bent his way back to the royal armament, where the miserable Mary awaited, in an agony of shame and anguish, the doom, for such in truth it was, of her rebellious subjects.
On the summit of a little knoll she sat, girt by the few undaunted spirits who clung to the last to Mary’s cause, and who were ready at her least word to perish, if by perishing they might preserve her. Lovely as she had seemed in the gay halls of Holyrood, her brow beaming with rapture, innocence, majesty, far lovelier was she now in pale and hopeless sorrow. In the vain hope of inspiring ardor to her dispirited and coward forces, she had girt her slender form in glittering steel. A light, polished cavinet reflected the bright sunshine above her auburn tresses, and a cuirass of inlaid and jewelled metal flashed on her bosom. Not a warrior in either host sat firmer or more gracefully upon his destrier than Mary upon Rosabelle. A demipique of steel and loaded petronels, with the butt of which her fingers played in thoughtless nervousness, had replaced therich housings of that favored jennet; but though arrayed in all the pride and pomp of war, there was neither pride nor pomp in the expression of that pallid cheek and quivering lip.
“Noble Le Croc,” she cried, breathless with eagerness as he approached her presence, “what tidings from our misguided subjects? will they depart in peace? Speak out, speak fully: this is no time for well-turned sentences or courteous etiquette. Say, is it peace or war?”
With deep feeling painted on his dark lineaments, the Frenchman answered: “War, your grace, war to the knife; or peace on terms such as I dare not name to you.”
“Then be it war!” cried she, the eloquent blood mantling to her cheeks in glorious indignation, her eyes flashing, and her bosom heaving with emotion; “then be it war! We have stooped low enough in suing thus for peace from those whom we are born to govern, and we will stoop no longer. Better to die, to fall as our gallant father fell, leading his faithful countrymen, devoted subjects, against enemies not half so fierce as these, who should be brothers. Sound trumpets, advance our guards! Seyton, Fleming, Huntley, to your leadings, and advance! ourselves will see the tourney.”
“Your grace forgets,” replied the experienced leader to whom she first addressed herself, “your grace forgets that not one dastard of this fair army, as it shows upon this ground of vantage, will advance one lance’s length against the foe. Some scores there are, in truth, followers oft tried and ever-faithful of mine own, and some if I mistake not of the earl of Orkney, who will fight well when shaft and steel-point hold together; but ’twere but butchery to lead the rugged vassals upon certain death! for what are scores to thousands such as stand thirsting for the battle yonder—thousands led on, too, by the first martialists of Europe? Nevertheless, say but the word, and it is done. Seyton hath ever lived for Stuart—it rests but nowto die!” He paused—but in an instant, taking his cue from Mary’s extended nostril and still-flashing eye, he shouted, in a voice of thunder: “Mount, mount, and make ready! A Seyton, a Seyton for the Stuart!” Already had he dashed the rowels into his steed, and another instant would have precipitated his little band upon the inevitable destruction that awaited them in the crowded ranks which, at the well-known sound of that wild slogan, had brought their lances to the charge, and waited but a word to bear down all opposition.
Happily, so miserable a consummation was warded off. The earl of Orkney, who had stood silent and thunder-stricken by the side of his lovely bride, sprang forward, and grasping with impetuous vehemence the bridle-rein ofSeyton—
“Not so!” he hissed through his set teeth, “not so, brave baron; this is my quarrel now, mine only; and dost think that I will veil my crest to mortal man? Lo! in yonder lines the haughty rebels have drawn their weapons, and against me only shall they wield them! What, ho there, heralds! take pursuivant and trumpet, and bear my gauntlet, the earl of Orkney’s gauntlet, to yonder misproud caitiffs: say that Bothwell defies them—defies them to the mortal combat, here before this company, here in the presence of men and angels, to prove his innocence, their bold and overweening treason!”—and he hurled his ponderous glove to earth.
“Well said and nobly, gallant earl!” cried Seyton; “so shall this foul calumny be stayed, and floods of Scottish blood be spared. On to thy devoir, and God will shield the right.”
And at the word the heralds rode forth again, the foremost bearing the glove of the challenger high on a lance’s point. Again the trumpets flourished, but not now as before, in peaceful strains. At the loud clangor of defiance, the confederate chiefs again strode to the front, their horses led behind them by page or squire; and as the menace of the challenger was proclaimedloudly and clearly by the king-at-arms, a smile of fierce delight flashed over every brow.
“I claim the privilege of battle!” shouted the impetuous Glencairn.
“And I!”—“And I!”—“And I!” rose hoarsely into air the mingled tones of Morton, Lyndesay, and Kirkaldy, as each sprang forth to seize the proffered gauntlet. “I am the senior baron!” shouted one. “And I the leader of the van!” cried another; and for a minute’s space all was confusion, verging fast toward strife, among those chiefs of late so closely linked together—till the deep, sonorous voice of Murray, in after-days the regent of the realm, was heard above the tumult.
“For shame, my lords, for shame! Seems it so much of honor to do the hangman’s office on a murderer, that ye would mar our fair array with this disgraceful bruit for the base privilege? By Heaven, should the duty fall on me, I should perform it, doubtless, even as I would prefer the meanest work that came before me under the name of duty; but, trust me, I should hold the deed a blot upon mine ancient escutcheon, rather than honor! But to the deed, my lords; the herald awaits our answer. Lord Lyndesay, thine is the strongest claim: if thou wilt undertake the deed, thou hast my voice.”
“As joyfully,” muttered Lyndesay beneath his grizzly mustache, “as joyfully as to the banquet do I go forth against the craven traitor! Morton, lend me thy falchion for the trial—the two-handed espaldron which slew Spens of Kilspindie, at the brook of Fala, in the hands of Archibald of Douglas, thy renowned forefather. God give me grace to wield it, and it shall do as trusty service on the carcass of yon miscreant!”
“It is decided, then,” cried Murray; and not a voice replied, for none had the presumption to dispute the fitness of the choice which thus had fallen on a leader so renowned for strength and valor. “Herald,” he continued, “go bear our greeting to hermajesty of Scotland, and say to her, we do accept the challenge. An hour’s truce we grant—an equal field here, on this hill of Carbury. The noble earl of Lyndesay will here prove, upon the crest and limbs of that false recreant, James, some time the earl of Bothwell, the justice of our cause: and so may God defend the right!”
The shout which rang from earth to heaven, at the noble confidence of Murray, bore to the ears of Mary and her trembling followers the assurance that the challenge was accepted; an assurance that sounded joyfully in every ear but that of his who uttered the bravado. Many a time and oft had Bothwell’s crest shone foremost in the tide of battle; many a time had he confronted deadliest odds with an undaunted visage and a victorious blade. Yet now he faltered; his bold brow blanched with sudden apprehension; his frame, muscular and lofty as a giant’s, actually shook with terror; and his quivering lip paled, ere he heard the name of his antagonist. Whether it was that guilt sat heavy on his heart, and weighed his strong arm down, or that his soul was cowed by the consciousness that he was unsupported and forsaken by all his friends, he turned upon his heel, and, muttering some inarticulate sounds, half lost within the hollows of his beaver, he strode to his pavilion, and thence sent his squire forth, to say that he was ill at ease, and could not fight until the morrow! Mary herself—the fond, confiding, deceived Mary—burst on the instant into loud contempt at this hardly-credible baseness.
“What! James of Bothwell false!” she cried; “then perish hope! I yield me to the malice of my foes; I will resist no longer. O man, man—base, coward, miserable man!—is it for this we give our hearts, our lives, ourselves, to your vile guidance? is it for this that I have given thee mine all—mine honor, and, perchance, my soul? that thou shouldst cowardly desert me at mine utmost need! Little, oh how little, doththe cold world know of woman’s heart and woman’s courage! For thee would I have perished, oh, how joyfully!—and thou, O God! O God! it is a bitter, bitter punishment for my credulity and love: but if I have deserved to suffer, I deserved it not at thy hands, James of Bothwell! Seyton, true friend, to thee I trust mine all. Go summon Kirkaldy to a parley: say Mary, queen of Scotland, rather than look upon the blood of Scottishmen, will grant to her rebellious lords those terms which they desire! Nay, interrupt us not, Lord Seyton. We care not what befall that frozen viper whom we warmed within our bosom till he stung us! Away!—let Orkney quit our camp; for, by the glorious light of heaven, we never will behold him more!”
She spoke with an elevated voice, and features glowing with contending passions, till the faithful baron had departed on his mission; but then, then the false strength yielded to despair, and in an agony of unfettered grief she sank into the arms of her attendants, murmuring amid her tears, “O God, how I did adore that man!” and was borne, almost a corpse, into her tent.
An hour passed heavily away, and at its close Mary came forth, with a brow from which, though pale as the first dawning, every trace of grief had vanished. The terms had been accepted. Without a tear she saw the man for whom she had sacrificed all—all, to her very reputation—mount and depart for ever! Without a tear she backed her own brave palfrey, and rode, attended by a dozen servitors, faithful amid her sorrows as they had been in brighter days, into the rebel host. Little was there of courtesy, of that demeanor which becomes a subject in presence of his queen, a true knight before a lady. Amid the taunts and jeers of the vile soldiery, covered with dust and humiliation, she entered upon that fatal progress which, commencing in a conditional surrender, ended only when she was immured, beyond a hope of rescue or redemption, within the dungeon-towers of Loch Leven!