CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER

1. The-Kirk-Of-Field

2. The Midnight Mass

3. Guilt Levels All

4. The Prebend of St. Giles

5. The Papists' Pillar

6. Remorse

7. The Rescue

8. The Challenge

9. Ainslie's Supper

10. Hans and Konrad

11. How Bothwell Made Use of the Bond

12. Love and Scorn

13. The Cry

14. Hans' Patience is Rewarded

15. The Legend of St. Mungo

16. Mary's Despair

17. The Bridal at Beltane

18. The Whirlpool

19. Bothwell and the Great Bear

20. Christian Alborg

21. The Castellana

22. The Vain Resolution

23. Retribution

24. Malmö

——— Notes

BOTHWELL;

OR,

THE DAYS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE KIRK-OF-FIELD.

They make me think upon the gunner's lintstock,

Which yielding forth a light about the size

And semblance of the glow-worm, yet applied

To powder, blew a palace into atoms.

Sent a young king—a young queen's mate, at least—

Into the air, as high as ere flew night-hawk,

And made such wild work in the realm of Scotland.

Auchindrane, Act ii.

There was not a sound heard in the mansion, which, at that moment, had no other occupants than the doomed prince, his two pages, (or chamber-cheilds as the Scots name them,) and five other attendants,—William Taylor, Thomas Neilson, Simpson, Edwards, and a boy. These occupied apartments at the extremity of the house, but on the same floor with the king. All the other attendants had absconded, to partake of the festivities at Holyrood, or had gone there in the queen's retinue.

"French Paris—Nicholas Hubert," said Bothwell in a husky voice, "the keys!"

Hubert produced them from beneath his mantle. They were a set of false keys which had been made from waxen impressions of the originals. The door was softly opened, and the conspirators entered the lower ambulatory, on each side of which lay a vaulted chamber.

Bolton thought of Hubert's sister, and his heart grew sick; for the brother knew not that his sister was at that time above them, in the chamber of Darnley.

"Come, Master Konrad," said Ormiston, tapping him on the shoulder; "if we are to be friends, assist us, and make thyself useful; for we have little time to spare."

Thus urged, Konrad, though still in profound ignorance as to the object of his companions, and the part he was acting, assisted Ormiston and French Paris to unload the sumpter-horse, and to drag the heavy mails within doors. These he supposed to contain plunder, and then the whole mystery appeared unravelled. His companions were robbers, and the solitary house, about and within which they moved so stealthily, was their haunt and hiding-place. With affected good-will he assisted to convey the mails into the vaults, where, some hours before, Hubert had deposited a large quantity of powder, particularly under the corner or ground stones of the edifice.

While they were thus employed, and while the ex-Lord Chancellor and Whittinghame kept watch, the Earl and John of Bolton ascended softly to the corridor of the upper story, where, by the dim light of a small iron cresset that hung from the pointed ceiling, they saw Andro Macaige, one of the king's pages, lying muffled in his mantle, and fast asleep on a bench.

"Confusion!" said the Earl fiercely; "this reptile must be destroyed, and I have lost my poniard!"

"Must both the pages die?" asked his companion, in a hollow tone.

"Thou shalt soon see!" replied the Earl, who endeavoured, by imitating Ormiston's careless and ruffian manner, to veil from his friends, and from himself, the horror that was gradually paralysing his heart.

They passed the sleeping page unheard, as the floor was freshly laid with rushes, and entered the chamber of the young king—that dimly-lighted chamber of sickness and suffering; where the innumerable grotesque designs of some old prebend of St. Mary, seemed multiplied to a myriad gibbering faces, as the faint and flickering radiance of the night lamp played upon them. The great bed looked like a dark sarcophagus, canopied by a sable pall; and the king's long figure, covered by a white satin coverlet, resembled the effigy of a dead man; and certainly the pale sharp outline of his sleeping face, in no way tended to dispel the dreamy illusion.

Bothwell's fascinated gaze was riveted on him, but Bolton's turned to the page, who was half seated and half reclined on the low bed, and, though fast asleep, lay against the sick king's pillow, with an arm clasping his head.

They seemed to have fallen asleep thus.

The thick dark hair of Mariette fell in disorder about her shoulders; her cheeks were pale and blanched, and blistered by weeping; her long and silky eyelashes were wet and matted with tears; and there was more of despondency than affection in the air with which she drooped beside the king. Her weariness of weeping and sorrow had evidently given way to slumber.

Rage and jealousy swelled the heart of Bolton. He panted rather than breathed; and though his long-desired hour of vengeance on them both had come, he too was paralysed, trembling, and irresolute. The Earl gave him a glance of uncertainty; but Bolton saw only Mariette. Conscience whispered "to pause," while there was yet time; but the bond had been signed, the stake laid, and to waver was to die!

For a moment a blindness fell upon his eyes, and a sickness on his heart; and the Earl said to Hepburn in a hollow accent—

"Thy poniard—thy poniard! Thou hast it! The king, the king! and I will grasp this boy."

At that moment Mariette started, awoke, and uttered a shrill cry of terror on perceiving two armed men with their faces masked.

The king turned uneasily in bed; and, filled with desperation by the imminence of the danger, and the necessity for immediate action, Bothwell approached, the couch. But either Darnley had been awake (and watching them for some time,) or instantly became so, and with all his senses about him; for like lightning he sprang from bed—his long illness and attenuation making his lofty stature appear more colossal; he snatched a sword, and, clad only in his shirt and pelisse, rushed upon the intruders. On this, a frenzy seemed to take possession of both conspirators.

Parrying a sword thrust with his mailed arm, Bothwell threw himself upon the weak and powerless Darnley, and struck him down by a blow of the maul he carried.

The wretched king uttered a piercing cry; another and another succeeded, and Bothwell, animated by all the momentary fury of a destroyer, stuffed a handkerchief violently into his mouth, and at that moment he became insensible.

Meanwhile, Bolton, trembling with apprehension, jealousy, horror, and (shall we say it?) love, clasped Mariette in his arms, and endeavoured to stifle her cries; but she uttered shriek upon shriek, till, maddened by fear and excitement, all the despair of the lover became changed to hatred and clamorous alarm. A spirit of destruction possessed his soul; his nerves seemed turned to iron, his eyes to fire.

He became blind—mad!

He grasped her by the neck—(that delicate and adorable neck, which it had once been a rapture to kiss, while he toyed with the dark ringlets that shaded it)—and as his nervous grasp tightened, her eyeballs protruded, her arms sank powerless, and her form became convulsed.

She gave him one terrible glance that showed she recognised him, and made one desperate effort to release herself, and to embrace him.

"O Jesu Maria! spare me, dearest Hepburn—spare me! I love thee still—I do—I do! Kill me not—destroy me not thus—thus—with all my sins! Man—devil—spare me! God—God!"

She writhed herself from his hands, and sank upon the floor, where, vibrating between time and eternity, she lay motionless and still. Hepburn's senses were gone—yet he could perceive close by him the convulsed form of the king, with Bothwell's handkerchief in his throat. He was dead.

The terrible deed was done! They sprang away, stumbling over the body of Macaige the page, whom Hay of Tallo had slain in the corridor; and, descending the stairs almost at one bound, came panting and breathless to the side of the cool and deliberate Morton, who, with his sword drawn, stood near Ormiston, and superintended the laying of a train to the powder in the vaults. Then, by the light of the red-orbed moon, that streamed full upon them, did the startled Konrad perceive that Bothwell and Bolton, whose masks were awry, appeared stunned and bewildered. The eyes of the Earl were glazed and haggard; his hands were clenched, and his brow knit with horrible thoughts; his companion was like a spectre; his eyes rolled fearfully, and his hair seemed stiffened and erect.

Konrad recognised them both, and immediately became aware that some deed of darkness had been perpetrated.

"Thou hast done well!" said Ormiston, surveying them grimly.

"Well!" reiterated the Earl, in a sepulchral voice, as, overcome and exhausted by the sudden revulsion of his terrible thoughts, he leaned against the doorway. "Well! saidst thou? Oh, Hob Ormiston! my very soul seemed at my finger-points when I grasped him. My God! what am I saying? I was intoxicated—delirious! Cain—Cain!"

"Ah, Mariette!" groaned the repentant Bolton; "thy dying cry, and the last glare of thy despairing eyes, will haunt me to my grave!"

"Cock and pie!" cried Ormiston, with astonishment and exasperation; "have we here two bearded men, or two schulebairns blubbering over their Latinities? May a thousand yelling fiends hurl ye both to hell!" he added savagely. "Away! disperse—while I fire the train. The match—the lunt! Hither, Paris—Hubert—thou French villain! quick!"

"Separate!" said the Earl of Morton; "disperse—I go to Dalkeith on the spur. Away!" and, leaping on the horse that had borne the powder, this noble Earl, who at all times was extremely economical of his own person, galloped away, and disappeared over the brae to the southward.

Bothwell's olive face glowed for a moment, as he blew the slow match and fired the train. Like a fiery serpent, it glowed along the ground, flashed through the open doorway, and down the dark corridor of the house, till it reached the vaulted chamber below that of Darnley, and where the powder lay. Then there was a pause—but for a moment only—for, lo'——

Broad, red, and lurid, on the shadowy night, through all the grated windows of the house of the Kirk-of-Field, there flashed a volume of light—dazzling and blinding light—eclipsing the full-orbed moon and all the sparkling stars—revealing the forms of the shrinking conspirators, and every surrounding object. Full on the massive ramparts of the city, tufted with weeds and blackened by the smoke of years, fell that sudden glow, revealing the strong embrasures that stretched away into far obscurity, the grim bastel-house close by, with its deep-mouthed gunport and peering culverin—on the ivied aisles of Mary's lonely kirk—on the shattered tower of the Dominicans—and displaying even for a gleam the distant woods of Merchiston. The fields quaked—the walls of the mansion shook; and then came a roar, as if the earth was splitting.

The solid masonry rent from copestone to foundation in a hundred ruddy fissures; the massive vaults yawned and opened; the window-gratings were torn asunder like gossamer webs; and a gigantic column of fire and smoke, dust and stones, ascended into the air, as if vomited from the mouth of a volcano, to descend in ruin and darkness on the earth; and a vast pile of rubbish was all that remained of the house of St. Mary-in-the-Fields!

"Ho! ho!" cried Ormiston, with a wild laugh. "Like a bolt from a bow, there goeth Henry Stuart, Lord of Darnley, Duke of Albany, and King of Scotland!"

For a moment Bothwell felt as if he neither lived nor breathed; but Ormiston hurried him away, while all their appalled comrades dispersed in various directions. Konrad, although the whole affair was an incomprehensible mystery to him, acting by the natural instinct of self-preservation, on finding himself deserted by companions whom he dreaded and abhorred, instead of returning to the city, struck into a narrow horseway that led southward, and hurried with all speed from the scene of this terrible explosion; for the whole bearing of those who had so suddenly left him to his own reflections, informed him that it would neither be conducive to his safety or honour to be found in a vicinity so dangerous.

Ignorant of the country, and with no other object than to leave the city far behind him, he traversed the rough and winding path, on one side of which lay a vast lake[*] and the ruins of a convent; on the other, fields marked in the ancient fashion (when draining was unknown) by high rigs, having between deep balks or ditches, where the water lay glistening in the moonlight. Then he entered upon the vast common muir of the burgh, that in the gloom of the night appeared to be bounded only by the distant hills.

[*] The Burgh loch. Mag. Absalom.

From the effect of long confinement he soon became faint and exhausted; and, though he dared not approach any habitation, there was none within view, for the district seemed strangely desolate and still.

At the verge of the muirland, near where a little runnel meandered between banks overhung by reeds and whin and rushes, there stood a little chapel, dedicated in the olden time to St. John the Baptist, having a crucifix and altar, where the wayfarer might pause to offer up a prayer. There a hermit had once resided; and the charter of foundation mentions, that he was clothed "in a white garment, having on his breast a portraiture of St. John the Baptist, whose hermit he was called." The chapel had been partly demolished to pave the road; and even the stone that marked the anchorite's grave, had been torn out for the same purpose. The windows were empty, and the grass grew where the cross had stood on the altar; but there was no other resting-place, and Konrad entered the little ruin with caution.

A lamp was burning on the altar, but the oratory was quite desolate. The nuns of St. Katherine of Sienna had kept, in other days, a light ever burning on the Baptist's shrine, to which they made yearly pilgrimages; and one poor old survivor of the scattered sisterhood still tended the lamp with the labour of religious love.

Uttering a prayer to Heaven for protection, overcome by weariness and exhaustion, Konrad laid by his side the sword given him by Ormiston, and, wrapped in the other gift of the same remarkable personage, composed himself to sleep, leaving to the morrow the study and development of his future plans.

How little he knew of the deed in which he had that night been so unwittingly a participator!

Of Darnley's attendants, all were buried among the ruins save Neilson, who was taken alive from amid the debris next day, and William Taylor the page, whose body was found lying beside the king's. They had both been carried through the air, over the lofty ramparts of the city, into the garden of the Blackfriars, where they were found in their night-clothes, within a few yards of each other, without much external injury, save a wound made by the maul on the king's forehead.

Such was the generally received account of this affair, though the recent and able historian of Scotland asserted, that he had seen documents which proved that the young king had been first assassinated, and then carried into the garden; after which the house was blown up—a useless and dangerous means of causing a more general and immediate alarm.

CHAPTER II.

THE MIDNIGHT MASS.

What, though the men

Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatise

The sister-cause—religion and the law—

With superstitious name!

Grahame.

"Now, Lord Earl," said Ormiston, as they paused breathlessly near the Pleasance Porte; "which way wendest thou?"

"To Holyrood—to Holyrood!" panted the Earl. "And thou?"——

"Faith! to my own lodging. Thou knowest that I byde me at the Netherbow, in the turnpike above Bassandyne, that rascally proclamation printer; and we must enter the city separately." The Earl sighed bitterly. "Cock and pie! what dost thou regret?"

"To-night."

"Then, what dost thou fear?"

"To-morrow."

"By Tantony! thou art a very woman! Remember the bond by which this deed was done—signed by so many noble lords and powerful barons under that yew-tree at Whittinghame. Sighing again! What dost thou dread?"

"Myself!" replied the Earl, in whom the reaction of spirit had caused an agony of remorse. "Thee, and the subscribers of that bond, I may avoid—but myself—never!"

"These scruples come somewhat late, my lord!" said Ormiston, scornfully. "Dost thou doubt the faith of me, or of French Paris? Surely thou knowest my zeal!"

"True! but faith and zeal are very different things."

"'Sblood! Lord Earl, dost thou doubt mine honour?" said Ormiston, laying hand on his sword. "Though I owe thee suit and knight's service, nevertheless I am a baron of coat-armour, whose honour brooks no handling. But let us not quarrel, Bothwell!" he added, on seeing that the spirit of his ally was completely prostrated for the time. "Suspicion will never attach to thee; besides, that Norse knave is abroad, with the well-known cloak and sword of Darnley, which Hubert stole me from his chamber. These, when he is found again, will turn all the vengeance on him; so let us to bed ere the alarm be given—to bed, I say, in peace; for we have the alliance of ten thousand hearts as brave as ever marched to battle."

"How much more would I prefer the approbation of my own!"

"Out upon thee! I will loose all patience. If thou distrustest Paris, one stroke of a poniard"——

"Peace, Ormiston! thou art a very bravo, and would thus make one more sacrifice to increase our list of crimes."

"Just as a name may be wanted to fill the roll of Scotland's peers, by thy lamentable decapitation and profitable forfeiture," growled Ormiston. "I know little of statecraft, though I have a bold heart and a strong hand. Come! be once more a man, and leave remorse to children. The crime that passes unpunished, deserves not to be regretted."

"Sophistry!" exclaimed the conscience-struck Earl; "sophistry! Avenging remorse will blast my peace for ever. Now, too bitterly I begin to feel, that joy for ever ends where crime begins!"

They separated.

Blind with confusion, and bewildered by remorse, the Earl reeled like a drunken man, as he hurried down by the back street of the Canongate towards the palace, impatient, and dreading to be missed from his apartments, when the alarm should be given.

A burning thirst oppressed him; his tongue felt as if scorched, and his lips were dry and baked. Frightful ideas pressed in crowds through his mind; he often paused and pressed his hands upon his temples; they were like burning coals, and throbbed beneath his trembling fingers. He looked back mentally to the eminence from which he had fallen, and shuddered at the depth and rapidity of his descent. In the storm of remorse and unavailing regret that agitated his soul, the beauty of Mary, and the dreams of ambition it had inspired, were alike forgotten.

He paused at times, and listened; he knew not why. The night was very still, and there came no sound on the passing wind. A pulse was beating in his head. How loud and palpable it was!

There was ever before him the last unearthly glare of those despairing eyes. It was ever in his ears, that expiring wail, sinking into a convulsive sob—ever—ever, turn where he would; if he walked fast—to leave his burning thoughts behind him; if he stood still—that cry and the deathlike visage were ever before him.

"O! to be as I have been—as I was but one long hour ago!" he exclaimed, shaking his clenched hands above his head. "O! for the waves of Lethe to wash the past for ever from my memory! Satan—prince of hell—hear me! Hear me, who dares not now to address his God!"

His frightful thirst still continued, until its agony became insupportable; and he looked around to find wherewith to quench it. On the side of St. John's hill, a green and solitary knoll that rose some sixty feet in height on the wayside, a light attracted his attention; and, supposing that it shone from a lonely cottage or small change-house, he approached to procure a draught of any thing that could be had for money—any liquid, from water to lachryma Christi, to quench the maddening thirst that seemed to consume him.

The light shone from an aperture in the door of a half-ruined barn. Bothwell grasped his sword, and adjusted his mask; but ere he knocked, a voice within, deep and musically solemn, arrested him by saying—

"Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini, beato Michaeli archangelo, beato Joanni Baptistæ, Sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis et tibi, Pater, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et operâ. Meâ culpâ! meâ culpâ! meâ maximâ culpâ!"

Astonished by these words, which form part of the office of mass, and struck to the very soul in hearing them at such a time, when their application was so painfully direct, he paused a moment. The door was opened by a man in complete armour; but the Earl entered immediately, to behold—what appalled and bewildered him still more.

The rude barn had been hurriedly adapted to the purposes of a chapel. A rough table, representing the altar, occupied one end; six candles burned thereon, three on each side of a plain wooden crucifix, which stood before an old representation of the crucifixion, that whilome had adorned some more consecrated fane.

Bowing down before this rude altar, with eyes full of fervour, and piety, and glory, was the aged priest, who, not a hundred yards from the same spot, had, but a few hours before, craved and received alms from the hands of the regicide noble; but now his aspect was very different, for he wore the rich vestments of other days, when he was one of St. Giles' sixteen prebendaries; and he held aloft a round silver chalice, which he had saved from the plunder of the church by the bailies of Edinburgh. The bell was ringing, and he was in the act of celebrating mass, before an anxious and fearful, but devout few, who, despite the terrible laws passed against them by the men of the new regime, met thus in secret to worship God after the fashion of their fathers, preferring the mystical forms and ceremonies which had been handed down to them by the priests of other years, to a new hierarchy, upheld by the swords of the unlettered peers and homicidal barons of 1560. The women, fearful and pale, were muffled in their hoods and plaids; the men were all well armed, and not a few grasped their poniards, and keenly scrutinized the Earl on his entrance.

All the long-forgotten piety of his childhood—all the memory of those days of innocence, when his pious mother, Agnes of Sinclair, taught him first to raise his little hands in prayer in Blantyre's stately Priory—gushed back upon his heart. Making a sign of the cross, he knelt down among the people; and, overcome by the influence of old associations, by the sudden vision of an altar and the mass, and by the terrible knowledge of what he was now in the sight of that Being whom he trembled to address, he burst into an agony of prayer.

Again and again the mass-bell rang, and lower bent every head before that humble altar, on which all present deemed (for such is the force of faith) that the invoked Spirit of God was descending, and the Destroyer trembled in his inmost soul. He covered his head with his mantle, and bent all his thoughts on Heaven, in prayers for mercy and forgiveness.

A shower of tears came to his aid, and his thirst passed away; but oh! how deep were those mental agonies, of which he dared to inform no one!

It was long since he had wept, and he could not recall the time; but his tears were salt and bitter. They relieved him; after a few minutes he became more composed; and the stern necessity of returning instantly to Holyrood pressed vividly upon him; but he dreaded to attract attention or suspicion of treachery, by moving away. Among those present, he recognised many citizens who outwardly had conformed to the new religion; but thus, in secret, clung to the old. Near him knelt young Sir Arthur Erskine, captain of the queen's archers, in his glittering doublet of cloth-of-gold; and a beautiful girl of eighteen, whose dark brown hair was but half-concealed by her piquant hood (à la Mary), was kneeling by his side, and reading from the same missal. Their heads were bent together, and their hair mingled, as the young girl's shoulder almost rested on the captain's breast.

Bothwell saw that they were lovers; for nothing could surpass the sweetness and confidence of the girl's smile when she gazed on Sir Arthur's face; for then the impulses of love and religion together, lit up her eyes with a rapture that made her seem something divine.

The Earl thought of Mary—of the desperate part he had yet to play; of all he had dared and done, and had yet to dare and do; the paroxysm passed, and he felt his heart nerved with renewed courage.

Love revived—remorse was forgotten; and, the moment mass was over, he stole hurried to Holyrood—gained his apartments unseen, swallowed a horn of brandy to drown all recollection, and flung himself on his bed, to await the coming discovery and the coming day.

CHAPTER III.

GUILT LEVELS ALL.

He is my lord!—my husband! Death! twas death!—

Death married us together! Here I will dig

A bridal bed, and we'll lie there for ever!

I will not go! Ha! you may pluck my heart out,

But I will never go. Help! help! Hemeya!

They drag me to Pescara's cursed bed.

Sheils' Apostate.

A stupor, not a slumber, sank upon him; it weighed down his eyelids, it confused his faculties, and oppressed his heart; but even that state of half unconsciousness was one of bliss, compared to the mental torture he had endured.

The tolling of the great alarm bell of the city, which usually summoned the craftsmen to arms, and the gathering hum of startled multitudes, murmuring like the waves of a distant ocean, as the citizens were roused by those who kept watch and ward, awoke Earl Bothwell. He listened intently. Loudly and clearly the great bell rang on the wind, above the hum of the people pouring downwards like a sea, to chafe against the palace gates. Then came distant voices, crying—

"Armour!—armour!—fie!—treason!"

Steps came hastily along the resounding corridor; there was a sharp knocking at the door of his chamber, and, without waiting for the usual ceremony of being introduced by a page, Master George Halkett, the Earl of Huntly, and Hepburn of Bolton, entered. The latter was now in complete armour, that the visor might conceal the terrible expression of his altered face.

"How now, Master Halkett!" asked the Earl with affected surprise. "Whence this intrusion? What is the matter?"

"Matter enough, I trow!" replied the other; "the king's house has been blown up, and his majesty slain."

"Jesu!" cried the Earl, leaping from his bed, glad to find in action a refuge from his own solitary thoughts. "Fie! treason! Surely thou ravest! Speak, Bolton!"

Bolton replied in a voice so inarticulate that it was lost in the hollow of his helmet; for his mind seemed a chaos of despair and stupefaction. Since that terrible hour he had vainly been endeavouring to arrange his thoughts, and act like a sane man.

"'Tis the verity, my lord!" continued Halkett. "Hark! how the roar increaseth in the town."

"And who, say they, hath done this dark deed?"

"All men accuse the Earls of Morton and Moray," replied Huntly, who had been industriously spreading the rumour, which their known hostility to Darnley made common at the time.

"Fie! treason!" cried Bothwell, bustling about. "Armour!—a Bothwell! Harkee, French Paris—Calder, ho! my pyne doublet and sword!"

"Nay! thou hadst better take armour," said Bolton.

"Right! there lieth a Milan suit in yonder cabinet. Sirs, my pages are gone Heaven knows where—I crave service—my points, I pray you truss them."

Huntly and Bolton brought the mail from the carved cabinet, and hastily accoutred the Earl. It was a Milan suit, a very beautiful one of the late King James's fashion, washed with silver; the corselet was globular, having puckered lamboys of steel in lieu of tassettes, and a bourgoinette, with a metoniere acting as a gorget. He could have concealed his face perfectly by this peculiar appendage to the headpiece; but his natural boldness and daring now rendered such a measure unnecessary. The moment the accoutring was over, he was left alone; for Master Halkett hurried away from chamber to chamber, being one of those who love to be the first bearers of startling tidings; Huntly departed to arm his retinue for any emergency, and Bolton to array the archer guard, and bear back the armed populace, who were clamouring at the palace gates.

Aware how much his future fate depended on the issue of his first interview with Mary, the Earl could bear suspense no longer; and aware that she would now be roused, notwithstanding the untimely hour, he resolved to seek her apartments; the daylight, his sword and armour, had restored his confidence.

Coldly and palely the February dawn was brightening: though the stillness of midnight lay yet upon the dewy hills, there was a din within the city that might "awake the dead." There was a melancholy solemnity about the dull grey dawn, and the gloomy façade of the old monastic edifice, that oppressed the Earl's heart as he crossed its empty court, and heard the jingle of his armour echoed in the dark arcades, where pages and servitors were hurrying to and fro; while quick steps and sharp voices rang in the long corridors and stone ambulatories of the old palace. As he approached James V.'s tower, where the queen occupied those apartments that are now daily exhibited to the curious, a man in a complete suit of black armour jostled him.

"Ormiston!" he exclaimed.

"Well met, Lord Earl—good-morrow!" replied his evil mentor, in a whisper. "The whole city is agog now, and every voice is raised against the Lord Moray—a lucky infatuation for us. The blue banner hath been displayed by the convener of the corporations, whose thirty-three pennons are all unfurled; so the rascally craftsmen are fast mustering in their helmets for trouble and tulzie; while Craigmillar and the Lord Lindesay, with their lances, are coming in on the spur.—But whither goest thou?"

"To the queen."

"Fool! fool! is this a time?"

"There was a time," replied the Earl, bitterly, "when such a varlet as thou dared not have spoken thus to Bothwell."

"True," replied the other, with a sardonic grin; "but guilt, like misfortune, levels all men. Tarry—the queen"——

"No, no—I must see her! Not hell itself shall keep me from her!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Ormiston, as the Earl ascended the staircase; "odsbody! why, a stone wall or a stout cord would keep a stronger lover than thee well enow."

Bothwell felt now all the humility and agony of being in the power of this unscrupulous ruffian, and he sighed bitterly more than once as he advanced towards the royal apartments.

"Now," thought he, "must I doubly dye my soul in guilt—the guilt of black hypocrisy. Oh, to be what I have been! How dark are the clouds—how many the vague alarms—that involve the horizon of my fate! Last night—and the recollection of that irreparable deed—could I blot them from memory, happiness might yet be mine."

A crowd of yeomanry of the guard, in their scarlet gaberdines, with long poniards and partisans; archers in green, with bent bows and bristling arrows; pages in glittering dresses, and gentlemen in waiting, all variously armed, made way at the entrance of the queen's apartments, near the door marked with Rizzio's blood. After a brief preliminary it was opened—the heavy Gobeline tapestry was raised, and the earl found himself in the presence of—Mary.

When he beheld her, every scruple and regret, every remnant of remorse again evaporated, and he felt that he had done nothing that he would not repeat.

She was plainly and hurriedly attired in a sacque of blue Florence silk, tied with a tassel round her waist. The absence of her high ruff revealed more than usual of her beautifully delicate neck and swelling bosom; while the want of her long peaked stays and stiffened skirts, displayed all the grace and contour of her graceful form. Save the rings that flashed on her fingers, she was without jewels; and in a profusion, such as the Earl had never seen before—her bright and luxuriant auburn hair fell unbound upon her shoulders, covered only by a square of white lace, a long and sweeping veil, that (as old Juvenal says), "like a tissue of woven air," floated around her. Her snow-white feet were without stockings, for she had just sprung from bed, and the short slippers of blue velvet shewed her delicately veined insteps and taper ankles in all their naked beauty.

Her brow and rounded cheeks were pale as death; but, though suffused with tears, her eyes were full of fire, and there was more perhaps of anger than of grief in the quivering of her short upper lip. Aware of her dishabille, and that the Countess of Argyle, and other ladies of the court, who were all in their night-dresses, had fled at the Earl's approach, as so many doves would have done from a vulture, leaving her almost alone with him—the queen cast down her long dark lashes for a moment, and then bent her keen gaze full upon Bothwell, whose open helmet revealed the pallor of his usually careless, jovial, and nutbrown face.

"Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies,

Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew;

'Tis as the snake late coil'd, who pours his length,

And hurls at once his venom and his strength."

 

Powerful and daring as he was, the Earl quailed beneath her eye; but immediately recovering his admirable air of self-possession, he began in the most courteous manner to deplore the dreadful event, "which," says the Knight of Halhill, "he termed the strangest catastrophe that ever was heard of; for thunder had come out of the sky, and burnt the house of the king, whose body was found lying dead at a little distance from the ruins under a tree."

"Thunder, sayest thou?" reiterated the Queen. "Sweet mother Mary—assist me! Some of the archers of our guard, Lord Earl, men whose bows were drawn at Pinkiecleugh and Ancrumford, aver that the ruins bear marks of Friar Bacon's art rather than electricity. Thunder!"——

"What does your majesty mean?"

"Lord Earl," replied Mary, in a low emphatic tone; "this—this is—thy doing—thine!"

"Madam—madam"—urged the Earl, but his tongue refused its office, and clove to the roof of his mouth.

"Hah, my Lord!" continued the Queen; "is it the astonishment of innocence, or the shame of guilt, that paralyses thy too ready tongue at this terrible moment? I see thou art guilty," she added, in a sepulchral voice; "and now thou comest before me covered with the blood of my husband."

"I swear to your majesty"——

"Swear not! Else whence do your hands tremble? Why is your face thus pale—yea, pale as Ruthven's seemed on that other fatal night—a year ago in this chamber?"

Gathering courage from desperation, the kneeling noble, hoping to be interrupted in his vow, replied—

"I swear to you, gracious madam, by heaven and all that is in it—by the earth and all that is on it—by the souls of my Catholic ancestors—by the bones of my father—by my own salvation and honour, which I prize more than life—by your love, your esteem, to win which I would gladly peril more than a thousand lives"——

"Enough!" replied the Queen, interrupting the terrible falsehood, and covering her face with her hands; "pardon my grief and horror—I believe thee. There—kiss my hand in token of trust."

Bothwell's heart was touched by her innocent confidence; he became giddy, and almost reeled.

"O Mary! my wish, my hope, my dream! Would that I were pure enough to be worthy of thee!" said the Earl, in a touching voice; for a moment his heart was crushed by sorrow and remorse, as he pressed to his lip the soft, small hand of the queen. But she did not hear these pathetic exclamations, which conveyed all the Earl's secret in their tone; for at that moment a group that crossed the palace yard riveted all her faculties.

Sir Arthur Erskine and Hepburn of Bolton, both sheathed in armour, with a band of their archers, appeared escorting a few yeomen of the guard, who bore on their crossed partisans a body muffled in a soldier's mantle, and followed by a crowd of gentlemen, grooms, pages, and armed craftsmen.

She shuddered. The weak points of Darnley's character, his folly, his foppery, his profligacy, his neglect of herself, and the wanton murder of her secretary, all vanished from her memory for the time, and she saw him only as she had seen him first in the hall of Wemyss—handsome, tall, and graceful—in all the bloom of youth, nobility, and comeliness, with his dark eye sparkling and his feathers waving, and all the blind devotion which at two-and-twenty had become a part of her very being, and which had absorbed young Henry Stuart into her very soul, came back vividly and painfully upon her mind.

She tottered to a seat.

Her eyes assumed a tearless and stony aspect—a cloud of horror descended upon her snowy brow; and the Earl felt bitterly as he gazed on her, that his presence, and the love he had so daringly expressed, were alike unheeded or forgotten.