Chapter III: Part 3

Leaping their horses across the mossy and reedy margin of a mountain runnel, the Earl and his companion rode leisurely to within twenty paces of the other horsemen, and then, for a minute, they all steadily surveyed each other by the fading twilight of the valley.

"These are tall fellows, and their bright armour would seem to announce them gentlemen of name," said the Earl. "Mass! is not that John of Park in the fluted steel?"

"And our Norwegian!"

"Now, by Heaven!" exclaimed the Earl, grasping his long sharp sword, and adjusting his iron gloves; "our bout will be a tough and a bloody one--man to man! 'Tis good chivalry this for a moss-trooping knave. Have at thee, Sir John of Park! I am James, Earl of Bothwell."

"Come on, lord warden, and welcome to a Liddesdale lick!" exclaimed the moss-trooper, putting spurs to his steed. "Thy head or mine, for a hundred unicorns! ha! ha!"--and rushing on, they encountered hand to hand.

Konrad, who had been most anxious to meet Bothwell in a solemn and vengeful single combat, finding himself thus anticipated, turned the whole tide of his wrath upon the gigantic Ormiston, whom he engaged with greater determination than fury.

The Knight of Park wielded his light Jedwood axe with such skill and dexterity, that the fourth blow broke Bothwell's tempered blade like a crystal wand, and left him defenceless.

The powerful borderer pressed on, and, with his axe upraised, was about to hew the Earl down, through head and helmet, to the neck, when the latter suddenly reined back his horse, blew the match of a poitronal (so named from its having a square butt, and being discharged from the breast) and fired! The large bullet passed through the neck of Park, piercing like silk his jointed gorget; he fell forward supinely on his horse's mane, and rolled upon the turf with the blood gushing through the bars of his aventayle.

Leaping from his horse, Bothwell bent for a moment over the wounded man, whose broad bosom heaved convulsively under its steel case; but for a moment only, till, inspired with new strength by the agonies of death and despair, he made one sudden and serpent-like bound, and, swinging his Jedwood axe by both hands, dealt the Earl a furious blow on the helmet, and again sunk prostrate on the turf. The tempered headpiece partly saved the warden, who reeled a pace or two, half blinded by his own blood, for the blade had penetrated and slightly wounded him.

"Base ronion!" he exclaimed, compressing the throat of the dying moss-trooper with his armed heel, "dost thou surrender now?"

"Yes--my soul to God! but _never_ my sword to thee," he muttered, and expired.

Faint and giddy, the Earl leant against the saddle of his horse, while the combat was waged fiercely between Konrad and Ormiston, whose horses were alternately beaten down on their haunches by the fury of the conflict; but the skill of the former was completely overborne by that of the latter, when united to his vast muscular power. Often they paused and panted, and surveyed each other with tiger-like ferocity, while their warded weapons were pressed together, and then again they engaged with all the fury of two mad bulls.

Bothwell watched the fray with interest, for he had a firm friend to lose on one hand, and a dangerous foe on the other; thus he was doubly anxious for the success of Ormiston, who, after a long pause, suddenly, by one tremendous back-stroke, that fell like a thunderbolt on the helmet of his younger and more slender adversary, unhorsed and stretched him motionless on the turf, where the strong and ruthless victor sprang upon him like a demon, with his vengeful blade withdrawn for the death-thrust.

"Nay, nay!" said the Earl, staying the hand and weapon. "To Hermitage! to Hermitage!--its gates are strong, and its vaults are deep enow to hold a wilder thief than this. To-morrow I will hold a court in the hall, and consign him to the dule-tree for foraging in the wardenrie. I would rather he should perish thus, by the hand of justice, than by thine or mine; and now let us hence, ho! lest yonder band of knaves leave their quarry under escort on the muir, and return to the rescue."

"And John of Park's dainty suit of mail, and his corselet, worth--how much didst thou say?"

"A pest upon thee, man! I did but jest; yet thou speakest like a rascally Lombard Jew. Is this a time to think of such things? There, hide the carrion under yonder bush, and I will send John of Bolton down the glen, with a few lances, to bring thee the suit of mail, and me the wearer's head. But assist me to bind this knave on horseback, and then, away!"

The Earl was immediately obeyed, and the half senseless captive was lifted on his horse, bound to it by the scarfs of the victors, who took each his horse by the bridle, and following the windings of the glen and stream, whose clear surface was now shining in the starlight, set off on the spur for the famous old border stronghold of Hermitage, which had been built in the thirteenth century by Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith.

Blind and faint by loss of blood, the Earl almost sank from his horse on reining up at the castle gate, where he was received into the arms of Hepburn of Bolton, and other faithful retainers, who bore him to his apartments.

Alarmed on beholding his dark hair clotted and his features disfigured with blood, when his helmet was removed his attendants conducted him to bed, and despatched a horseman to the village of Castleton for the leech of the district, Mass John of the Priesthaugh, a friar of the suppressed Priory of Canobieholm; while an express, announcing the severe wound of the Earl, and the death of John of Park, was immediately despatched to the queen at Jedburgh, where she was then residing, and occupying a small house that still remains in a sequestered street of that venerable burgh. This edifice is styled (no one knows why, says the Magister Absalom) the House of the Lord Compositor, and some of the tapestry with which it was adorned for her occupation is still preserved.

The moss-trooper who bore the message, Pate of the Prickinghaugh, tarried at every peel-house and cottage in the vale of the Hermitage, to have his thirst quenched and announce the fall of John of Park, the "prettiest man" in all the wide borders; but Pate drained so many horns of whisky and ale, that, by the time he reached Jedburgh, he reversed the order of matters, and created a tremendous sensation among the courtiers by announcing that John of Park had been victorious, and the great Earl of Bothwell slain.

*CHAPTER X.*

*THE PIT OF HERMITAGE.*

------The dusky vale
Of Hermitage in Liddesdale,
Its dungeons and its towers,
Where Bothwell's turrets brave the air--
_Marmion._

In the middle and darker ages, the first chambers of every Scottish castle were a range of vaults, arched with stone, rising from walls usually ten or sixteen feet in thickness. In these the winter stores were kept; but there was _one_, generally the lowest, the darkest, and most damp, which was emphatically named the PIT; where the lord of the barony kept the most refractory of his vassals, and the most hated of his feudal enemies; for every Scottish peer and lesser baron had the right of pit and gallows attached to his fortified dwelling.

In a hundred castles we could name, the pit is immediately below the hall--in Hermitage it was lower still; and though, perhaps, it was no worse than many others in Scotland, to poor Konrad, who, on the day (or night, for both were alike there) succeeding the combat in the valley, found himself a captive therein, never, as he imagined, did human cruelty devise a den more horrible. But he knew not of the _oubliettes_ of Linlithgow and St. Andrews.

He found himself buried, entombed, and lost in pitchy darkness.

The atmosphere was close, and damp, and still--so very still, that he heard the regular and monotonous plash of a drop of fetid water, that fell at intervals from one of the long stalactites that hung pendant from the low slimy arch of the vault.

He was cold as death, and miserable, and broken in spirit.

The memory of Park's fall, and his own capture, seemed like a dream; all was chaos and confusion in his mind. Altogether, he had but an indistinct sense of existence; and after a time became without one idea of where he was. A torpor was stealing over him, conduced by the monotonous plash, plash, plashing of the before-mentioned drop into the little pool below it; at times, it seemed to echo through the vault like the fall of a goblet of water, for to this only sound his sharpened sense had become painfully acute.

Still the benumbing torpor continued gradually to steal over him, and at length he slept on the damp, moist floor of that frightful vault, which yet survives, and is recorded in the Scottish annals as being the scene of a terrible event.

He slumbered; but even then his mind was active and sleepless. His last waking thoughts were of Anna; his first dream was of his home--and old Norway, in all its stern beauty of wood, and rock, and mountain, rose before him. He saw his native hills, with their blue and hoary summits of thunder-riven rock, towering far into the azure sky in shadowy masses; and he could trace the rough paths where he had often pursued the bear and the roebuck, diminished to threads in the distance, as they wound up precipices overhung by the gloomy pine. He saw grey Bergen on its chasmed cliff, and Christiana's rock-bound bay. Old and familiar faces were before him; loved voices were in his ear; and, with a sob of astonishment and joy, he awoke.

A lambent and flickering light was burning near him; like a great glow-worm, it glimmered in the fetid atmosphere. He thought some spirit of the darkness was visible: to this day the Norse are full of such superstitions; but though his eyes (after being nearly twelve hours in such intense darkness) ached on beholding the lamp, he soon perceived the dun outline of a human countenance peering into the gloom, with its eyes shaded by a hand.

It was the saucy face of French Paris, Bothwell's favourite and most trusted page, to whom he had given particular charge of Konrad, that none other should approach him, or become acquainted with the important secret he possessed.

"Where the devil art thou?" he asked; "for I cannot see the length of my own nose in this accursed pit. O ho! good-morrow--I see thee now. So thou art the rider who was with John of Park when he so sorely wounded my lord, who now lieth in deadly peril."

"If thy lord is the Earl of Bothwell, I would thank God for the tidings, if I dared to thank him for aught so unchristian. How dares he to confine me in such a place as this?"

"Lest thou shouldst slip through his fingers like a Teviot eel," replied the page with a grin. "Thou art not a Scot, by thine accent; how camest thou to be involved with my lord, the Earl, in _that_ affair--thou wottest of what I mean? I am somewhat curious about it. 'Twas I who conducted thee to his countess, and then to the postern door at Bothwell castle."

"True--I remember thee now."

"Why art thou here?"

"By a combination of circumstances over which I had no immediate control; because I knew not the merits, and saw not the issue, of this border war, in which I had taken service; by destiny--or the guidance of an evil spirit--which you will."

"Holy Paul!" said the page, retreating a pace or two, but immediately advancing again, for he was burning with curiosity to learn the Earl's secret. "If thou talkest thus, I must have thee burned for sorcery!"

"Thou! And who art thou?" asked Konrad, with more surprise than scorn.

"One whose favour may set thee free, but whose anger may leave thee here to rot," replied the pert page, assuming an aspect of dignity. "Dost thou not know that thy life is in my hands, and that, instead of leaving thee the choice food and good wine sent thee by the Captain of Hermitage, I may keep them and leave thee to perish, even as the Knight of Dalhousie perished here two hundred years ago. Ha! dost thou see these relics?" continued the young ruffian, raising his light and revealing a few human bones, and part of a jaw, lying amid the little pool before mentioned, and amid which the monotonous plash of the drop constantly made concentric circles to glitter and expand.

"What terrible history is concealed here!" exclaimed Konrad, with a louring brow.

"A history well known alike in Lothian and Liddesdale," replied the page, drawing nearer him with a horror that he could not repress; "and a foul shame it is to Christian men, that these poor bones have lain here so long unburied. But verily the place hath few tenants."

"Whose are they?" asked Konrad, with deep interest.

"As Heaven hears me, the spirit that once tenanted these poor remains was that of as brave a knight as ever rode to battle!" rejoined the page, with a sudden earnestness; for the aspect of the mouldering bones, lying amid that green and slimy pool, and the gloom of the black dungeon, were not without producing a strong effect on his feelings and fancy. "Listen! It was in the year of our Redemption 1341, when David II. sat upon the Scottish throne. In those days, when the southern Edwards, with all the chivalry of England, the tribes of Wales, the kerne of Ireland, the knights of Normandy, Guienne, and Aquitaine, and all the lanzknechts of Flanders and Alinayne, strove for many a year on many a bloody field to win broad Scotland to their crown, this stronghold of Hermitage belonged to one of the bravest of the Scottish patriots, Sir William Douglas, the Lord of Liddesdale, whose feats of arms had won him the title of Flower of Chivalry. His dearest friend and most loved companion in arms was Sir Alexander Ramsay, Lord of Dalhousie, on the wooded Esk, one of those brave knights whose mailed bosoms had formed in all these wicked wars the best bulwarks of Scottish liberty. In every field, Douglas and Dalhousie were side by side in rivalry and love; at the rescue of Black Agnes, the Lady of Dunbar, and at that brave battle on the Muir of Edinburgh, where the banner of Guy Count of Namur was beaten to the earth, and his Flemish bands destroyed.

"It chanced in these wars, that Ramsay, having won by storm the strong castle of Roxburgh, King David bestowed on him the sheriffdom of that district, an office which, by ancient usage, had ever appertained to the lords of Hermitage and Liddesdale.

"From that hour a deadly and a mortal hatred possessed the heart of Douglas; and on his knees before the altar of St. Bryde, in Douglas-dale, he made a deep and impious vow of vengeance. Hearing that the new sheriff was administering justice in the kirk of the blessed Mary at Hawick, he entered the town at the head of his vassals; and the Knight of Dalhousie, having no suspicion of injury from his old friend and comrade in arms, was easily taken at vantage, wounded, and overpowered.

"Stripped of his armour, and loaded with chains, he was dragged through many a wild moss and moorland to this strong fortress, and _here_ into this deep vault his captor thrust him down, manacled and bleeding with all his rankling wounds, and here the doomed man was left to die!

"It is a dark story, and I see thou startest. Here the wounded knight was left to struggle with hunger and with thirst, with cold and with agony. Above the place of his confinement there lay a heap of corn, and through a joint in the arch the grains fell one by one, yet few and far between--even as the water now drops from the same place--and with these he prolonged life for seventeen days, despite the agony of his festering wounds. On the seventeenth he died!

"And here his bones still lie, for the dampness of the vault has preserved them."[*]

[*] Some of these remains were found by Sir W. Scott, and by him presented to the Earl of Dalhousie. He was taken on the 20th June, sayeth the "Black Book of Scone."--_Mag. Absalom._

"Rest him, God!" ejaculated Konrad, with a shudder which he could not repress.

"Such will be thy fate if thou art left here!"

"Whatever Heaven hath in store for me is welcome. I am tired of life."

"Thou snufflest like a Reformer. What! tired of life, and thou so young?"

"'Tis the verity!" responded the prisoner with a sigh; "but what thinkest thou, page, will be my fate?"

"Why, if my lord dieth of his wound, thou shalt assuredly hang over Hermitage gate; if he recovers, thou shalt hang, too, as a disturber of the borders, and be gibbeted somewhere to feed the crows, and frighten thy comrades. So, it is hang any way!" added the page, with one of his malicious grins.

A deep sigh, inspired as much perhaps by anger as by grief, heaved Konrad's breast; but he made no reply.

"How now!" exclaimed the page, as through the open door of the dungeon the report of a falconet on the tower-head came faintly down the windings of the narrow stair that led to the vault; "that will be a raid of the Elliots or Armstrongs! They will all be riding to revenge thy comrade, John of Park; if so, thou wilt soon have company here. But lo, now--eat and drink while thou mayest; and omit not to bless Sir John Hepburn of Bolton, who sent thee this good fare in lieu of oatcakes and cold water."

Another and another falconet rang on the bartisan of the great tower of Hermitage, and, double-locking the door of the pit, French Paris hurried away.

*CHAPTER XI.*

*BOTHWELL REVIVES AN EARLY DREAM.*

_Fiorello_.--Gramercy for the boon!
Seek, sir, henceforth, the love of those you trust,
_And never more seek mine_. Sir, fare you well!
Excuse the blunder which beguiled me hither;
And hie you, if conveniently you can,
To some more distant spot than whence you came.
_The Virgin Widow._

Let us change the scene.

Clad in a rich gown of damask furred with miniver, a white satin doublet, and hose of russet velvet, the Earl was reclining on a well-cushioned settle, or what would now be named a sofa. A velvet cap was drawn well over his brow, to conceal the bandaging that retained certain cooling and healing herbs upon the scar which the moss-trooper's axe had inflicted, and which Mass John of the Priesthaugh had carefully dressed about an hour before.

The great noble was in a dreamy mood; for he too had his visions, like poor Konrad, who occupied the terrible pit where Dalhousie died, some eighty feet below. The boom of the brass falconets was barely decernible in the remote apartment of the Earl, so massive were its walls, so close its wainscoting, and so thick the tapestry that lined it; and he slept on undisturbed by the warlike sound.

He dreamt of Anna; her upbraiding eyes were fixed on his, and he heard her voice like a confused murmur in his ear; every expression of her face was before him as of old, by turns tender and love-like, haughty and sad. Then her features changed, and rapidly as thought became those of his unhappy and almost forgotten Countess, in all her pallid beauty, her infantile smiles and black beseeching eyes. Anon they changed again, and, fading or altering into others, grew more and more like those of Mary the Queen, with her pure broad open brow, and deep dark thoughtful eye; her aquiline nose and haughty nostrils; her smiling mouth and dimpled chin. A sound awoke him.

He started, and arose to find the very face of which he dreamt before him; the same eyes and laughing little mouth, so full of archness and drollery.

It was, indeed, Mary the Queen, in her little lace coif, her velvet hood and ruff, her long diamond stomacher and longer fardingale, just as we see her in the old paintings at Holyrood. She was leaning on the arm of her sister, the stately Countess of Argyle; the Earl of Moray, Hob Ormiston, and French Paris, were grouped, with several ladies, a pace or two behind, and all were attentively regarding Bothwell, whose strong figure, cased in his close-fitting vest and velvet hose, seemed a model of manly symmetry and grace, as his features, dark, regular, and classic, did of that kind of beauty which we find in the pictures of the old Italians--the white and martial forehead, with its short black curly hair, the straight nose and jetty eyebrows, the curved mouth, and well-defined chin.

"Madame--Madame! is this a dream?" exclaimed Bothwell, starting from his couch, and, though giddy with debility, kneeling before her with a reverence almost unknown in the Scottish court since her father's days. "To what is my house of Hermitage indebted for the unmerited honour of this sudden visit? Have the Liddesdale thieves been at Jedburgh gates?"

"Oh, Jesu Maria!--no," said the Queen. "I hope that if all the Elliots came, and the Armstrongs too, that with Erskine's archer guard and the burgesses, we could have maintained yonder town, with its tall bastel-houses, till the lord warden sent his lances to our rescue."

"Then hath the English marshal of Berwick or his prickers dared"--began the Earl again, as with a kindling eye he looked round for his sword.

"Nay, nay, my dear Earl--thou thinkest ever but of blows and battle. Thou hast none other than thy dull-witted messenger to thank for a visit from all this good company."

"Pate of Prickinghaugh!"

"Ah, _mon Dieu!_ the same," replied Mary, laughing at the name. "Well, this Maitre Preekinhaw brought us tidings that thou wert either dead or dying. So, setting out with a small train from Jedburgh, with my noble brother, the Earl, (here Bothwell, with an eye that was full of irony, exchanged a profound bow with Moray,) I rode hither, intent on learning in person the truth or falsity of this sad news; and that I might, if they were so, avenge on the whole sirname of Elliot, the loss of the only Scottish peer that would draw his sword at the command of his sovereign. So you see, Monseigneur Bothwell, that whatever the Protestants say of poor Mary Stuart, she is not ungrateful for service promptly rendered."

"Oh, Madame!" said the Earl, in a thick voice, as he clasped his hands, and bent his eyes on the ground; "you overpower me! I never deemed thee otherwise than something angelic, and such I find thee now."

"Ah!" replied the Queen merrily, as she seated herself; "every pretty woman is so in the eyes of a brave gallant!"

The Earl bowed profoundly; but how little did the gay and thoughtless queen divine the secret sentiment that made his voice to tremble, and his eye, that was ever so clear, and calm, and dark, to flash and sparkle.

While French Paris and little Calder served round confections, refreshments, and wine, in slender Venetian glasses, fruit on silver salvers, and milk-possets in crystal jugs; and while the grave Earl of Moray, the burly Hob of Ormiston, and the courtly young Lieutenant of the Archers, chatted with the ladies at the further end of that long and stately chamber, the lofty and painted casements of which overlooked the steep bank on which the double donjon of the castle rose, and from its height commanded a view of the far-stretching Hermitage, winding like an azure snake through the green and pastoral valley--the queen, with all that vivacity and French gaiety of manner which were so natural to her, was detailing the particulars of that celebrated ride to Hermitage, which was to bear so prominent a place in all the histories of her actions, and which has always been adduced by her enemies as a proof of what had never entered her mind--a passion for Bothwell, to whom she had never evinced any other sentiment than gratitude.

On hearing the alarming tidings of his death, as brought by Pate of Prickinghaugh, she had immediately set out from Jedburgh; and, accompanied by her brother Moray and a slender retinue, penetrated into the wild and mountainous district between Liddesdale and Teviotdale--a journey twenty-five miles in length--obstructed by every local difficulty; steep rocks and deep morasses, foaming waters, peat haggs, and slippery scaurs--to her a terra incognita--where the solitary peels of moss-troopers and savage outlaws, perched like eagles' nests on the hill-summits, overlooked the pastoral glens below. In an almost impassable morass her horse sank to the saddle-girths; and she was only rescued from her perilous condition with the utmost difficulty. The place is still named _The Queen's Mire_.

Of all these past dangers she spoke with a raillery that made yet more charming her great beauty, which the exercise of so long a ride in the pure morning air had greatly enhanced; and the Earl, as he gazed upon her, thought in his secret heart that never was there a being more beautiful and glorious.

Anna and his Countess were alike forgotten!

Mary, the dream of his boyhood at the gay Tournelles--Mary, the bright, the beautiful, and joyous girl of seventeen--rose on his memory as he had seen her, when bestowed in marriage on the sickly Dauphin. Now that being, so long and so hopelessly his idol, was before him, expanded into one of those magnificent women that are believed to exist only in the most enthusiastic visions of the poet and the painter; she was with him, seated by his side, in his own stronghold of Hermitage, amid the wilderness of Liddesdale.

They were looking into each other's dark eyes, and Bothwell felt his heart tremble; for thoughts both wild and strange were floating through his mind. But they faded away when again he gazed on the pure serene brow and clear full gaze of Mary, who in her heedlessness and conscious rectitude, never dreamt of the view the Earl was taking, and the censorious world would yet take, of that unfortunate visit to his castle of Hermitage.

"And so it was the falsity of this drunken jackman, Pate of the Prickinghaugh, that led your grace into this deadly peril," said Bothwell. "Sir John of Bolton," he added to his friend, who stood near, and who, at a silver chain, wore an embossed key of the same metal, indicative of his office as Captain of Hermitage; "thou wilt look well to this, and see if a month or two in the pit will cure him of exceeding in his cups for the future."

"Nay, nay!" exclaimed the Queen, turning pale, "God and Saint Mary forbid! If I forgive him, surely thou well mayest."

"Your Majesty will excuse me--I am sufficiently rebuked by that glance of displeasure. But this man is only a rascally border pricker."

"True, my lord," said Hepburn; "but one over whom thou hast no control."

"How! doth he not follow my banner?"

"Yes--but merely as an excuse to plunder the Elliots on the one hand and the Armstrongs on the other. He brings twenty tall troopers, all well-lanced and horsed; his kinsman, Watt of the Puddingburn, brings as many more from his tower on the Liddle; and these would each and all be notable disturbers of the wardenrie, did it not suit Pate's humour at present to follow your banner."

"Droll personages!" said the Queen; "but, Lord Bothwell, thou shouldest feel nought but gratitude to this moss-trooper, when it is to his mistake alone thou art indebted for this visit from me."

"I was upon the point of saying so," rejoined the Earl, who felt, he knew not why, a confused sense of awkwardness and timidity, hitherto unknown to him; and this caused pauses in the conversation which served to increase his confusion; for the more he taxed his mind for gay topics, the more seriously he became embarassed.

"Fidele," said the Queen, in her softest tone to a favourite Italian greyhound, which, with a silver bell jangling at its neck, leaped gracefully upon her brocaded dress. "Fair Fidele, of all the world thou alone lovest thy mistress best; and in good sooth I may well love thee better than the world, for thou lovest me for myself alone. Ah! Monsieur Bothwell, thou knowest not how dearly I love all little dogs, and parrots, and pigeons, and every little animal. I have quite a large family to feed every morning at Holyrood. Monsieur my uncle, the Cardinal de Guise, has sent me a beautiful cage full of red-legged partridges; and my kinsman, the Marquis d'Elboeuff, has brought me from Madame my aunt, the good Prioress of Rheims, a vase full of the most beautiful little fishes, which I mean to put into Lochmaben. I fear thou wilt think all this very childish in me, who am a queen--and queen of such an austere people;" and, while shaking a bunch of grapes at the leaping hound, she began to sing--

"Bon jour, mon coeur,
Bon jour, ma douce vie!
Bon jour, mon oeil,
Bon jour, ma chere amie!"

She ceased suddenly; the hound looked up wistfully in her face, her eyes filled with tears, and Bothwell seemed disturbed.

"Your Majesty is thinking of France?" said he in a low tone.

"Nay, I am thinking of poor David Rizzio," replied the Queen sadly. "'Twas a song of his. But I have heard it elsewhere."

"You loved much to hear this old man sing."

"Oh yes! for the long forgotten memories, the buried hopes, and all the tenderness of his soft French, and softer Italian airs, called up within me--drew me ever away from the bitter present to brood upon the happy past, or to muse upon the dubious future. Oh, thou canst not know how dearly I love music! Music and sunshine--I wish I was a bird! Poor old Rizzio!" she continued, with sparkling eyes. "Though indifferent in person, he was the best in the suite of the Count de Mezezzo, the Savoyard ambassador; and was a gentleman of such attainments as few in Scotland save thyself can boast. How my heart fires within me, when I think of the dark and savage noblesse who destroyed him! So illiterate and unlettered; and yet these base barons, not one of whom could sign his own barbarous name, were the men who broke my gallant father's heart, who debarred my mother the rights of sepulchre, and who have dared to become the spiritual judges of my people, levelling in the dust the church that was founded on a rock, and against which not even the gates of hell were to prevail!"

"For Heaven's sake, madame, hush!--walls have ears."

"_Les murielles ont des orielles_; it was a saying of _ma bon mere_, Catharine de Medicis," said the Queen ironically.

"Nothing that is said in Hermitage shall go beyond its walls," replied the Earl, who was pleased to find that the courtiers at the lower end of the room were intently viewing the landscape, or observing a game at Troy between the Lady Argyle and the flippant page, French Paris, who was a great proficient. The whole group was partly concealed by a loose festoon of arras that divided the chamber. "But," continued the Earl, who despised Rizzio as an upstart favourite, and, like all the nobility, regretted his death but little; "the destruction of a royal favourite is nothing new in Scotland. There was the Raid of Lauder brig, where Angus and the nobles hanged half King James's court over the parapet in horse-halters--but I beseech your majesty to think of these things no more."

"True! Few can recall the past with pleasure, and Mary Stuart least of all," replied the Queen, whose melancholy eyes filled again with tears; and then Bothwell knew that she was thinking of the weak and profligate debauchee, on whom, in the first flush of youth and love, she had thrown away her hand and heart, and crown; "so pray, my good lord, let us talk of whatever is most pleasing to yourself."

"Then I must talk of--thee."

"Ah!" rejoined the Queen, with one of those artless and engaging smiles which a pretty woman always assumes on receiving a compliment; "and do you really think often of me?"

"Madame," replied the Earl in a low voice, while his colour came and went, and he could hear his heart beating; "I have thought more than I have ever dared to tell."

"Jesu Maria!" laughed the Queen, clapping her white hands; "have you lost your tongue?"

"Nay, madame--my heart!"

"That is very serious--but search for another, Monseigneur Bothwell."

The voice of the Earl trembled as he replied, "I want no other but--_thine_!"

At this daring avowal, a blush crossed the queen's cheek; but, supposing that the Earl was merely pursuing a jocular strain of gallantly, she replied--

"Oh fie! remember, Lord Earl, that at Versailles, the old hunting-lodge of Francis I. (all that is long--oh! very long--ago), thou didst taunt me with being without a heart."

"I did, as I now remember me," said Bothwell, over whose brow a shadow passed. "That was ere your grace became Dauphiness--yet it seems as if 'twere yesterday. But you have a heart, madame--one that is warm, affectionate, and well worth the winning."

"Well!" replied Mary, rising with a cold and haughty smile, as she thought of Darnley; "it is already lost and won."

"By one who appreciates its value?"

The queen gave him a glance full of reproach, for she felt all the taunt contained in the quiet query.

"I hope so!" she said.

"Dear madame," replied the Earl, in the same low, earnest voice; "you can neither deceive yourself nor me by these replies. The Lord Darnley is my foe; but you are aware that I speak more in a sentiment of dutiful love towards your majesty, than enmity to him who stirred up John of Park, and the whole clan Elliot, to slay me. On him thou hast sacrificed a love the bravest of our Scottish peers, and the proudest princes of Europe--Charles of France, Carlos of Spain, and the Archduke of Austria--have sued for in vain. Oh, madame!" continued the Earl, with pathos in his voice, while his cheek flushed and his eye kindled as he recalled the boyish love of his early day, when he had first seen Mary at the court of France. "I know that the human heart can love truly, fondly, and sincerely, but once--and once only. Let that love be blighted or crushed, and all future impressions are but fancies, to be begun with a smile and relinquished without a sigh. Oh, yes! there is an amount of love, of ardour, of agony, despair, that we feel but once, and then we become deadened and callous. Oh! who in a second love ever felt the same freshness, the same depth of anxiety, the same fear and hope and joy, that alternately filled his heart in the dawn of that first passion, that grew like a flower in Eden, and fills the whole creation with happiness, rendering us blind and oblivious of all save the object we love?"

"And since when has your volatile lordship known all this?" asked Mary, with her usual raillery.

"Madame, since I first beheld--thee!" replied the Earl; and, borne away by the gush of his old and long-cherished love, he sank on his knee, and pressed to his lips the hand of Mary, over whose fair brow and beautiful face a deep and crimson blush of anger passed, as the shadow of a summer cloud flits over a corn-field.

"Rise, my lord!" she said with a hauteur that froze her admirer. "Lord Bothwell, thou art in a dream!"

"It was, indeed, a dream," replied the Earl sadly, as he thought of the double vows that separated them for ever. "St. Bothan help me! a dream of other days, that can return no more! Oh, madame, I pray you, pardon me"----

"I do pardon thee," replied the Queen, with one of her calm smiles; but added, significantly, "I think 'tis time we were riding from Hermitage."

"So soon! after your escape--your fatigue--and when a storm is gathering? See, the peaks of Millenwood-fell and Tudhope-head are veiled in mist."

"This instant!" replied Mary, with one of those gestures which there was no disputing. "Jane, Lady Argyle, we are about to depart. Sir John Hepburn, summon our train."

"Permit me, madame, to accompany you. Ho!--French Paris--my armour!"----

"Lord Bothwell--in thy wounded state! I command thee, nay!"

"True--true; I thank your majesty," stammered the Earl, whose head swam between the effect of his wound and this interview. "But Hob Ormiston, with his train of lances, will see you to the gates of Jedburgh."

In five minutes more Mary was gone, after being only two hours in Hermitage, as the Lord Scrope saith quaintly, "to Bothwell's great pleasure and contentment." There was a clatter of horses in the court, a discharge of brass cannon from the keep, and all again was as still in the great and solitary castle of Hermitage as in the pit below it.

From a window the wounded Earl watched the train of the queen and her ladies, the tall and mail-clad figures of Ormiston and his men, with their long spears glinting in the glow of the western sun, as they followed the windings of the mountain stream, and traversed the long and desolate dell that led to Jedburgh.

They disappeared in the distance; and then, overcome by excitement and loss of blood, the Earl threw himself upon a couch, from which he did not rise for many days.

On Mary's return to Jedburgh, a severe cold, caught during this visit to Hermitage, ended in a fever, that was aggravated by a pain or constitutional weakness in her side, of which she had long complained; and notwithstanding that she lay on a couch of sickness so deadly, that Monsieur Picauet, her physician, despaired of her life, the conduct of Darnley was singularly cruel and ungrateful. A letter of the French ambassador shews, that he treated with contempt the tidings sent to him of the queen's illness, and that he remained spending his time in idleness and dissipation at Glasgow. It is probable that though his absence wounded her pride, it caused her no great grief, as she had almost ceased to love him.

The Earl of Bothwell, though not without a strong dash of that profligacy which tainted the Scottish nobles in the age succeeding the Reformation, was immensely inferior as a _roue_ to Darnley; whose coldness, insolence, and brutality, formed a vivid contrast to the artfully preferred addresses, readily performed services, and gallant demeanour, of the handsome Earl.

A month passed away.

Bothwell remained at Hermitage under the care of Mass John; the queen at Jedburgh under the more able hands of M. Picauet, and slowly recovering from her illness. Hob Ormiston, and other barons, guarded her with a thousand lances, while Darnley remained at his father's house of Limmerfield, near Glasgow, wiling away the days in hunting and hawking by Kelvin grove and Campsie fells; and spending the nights in dicing, drinking, and "wantonesse" in the bordels and hostellaries of the Tron and Drygate.

Meanwhile, Konrad continued to be a close prisoner at Hermitage; for the Earl, though urged on one hand by Ormiston to dispatch him by brief border law, was advised on the other, by the gentle Hepburn of Bolton, to transmit him to the Justice Court.

Thus he wavered; for a sentiment of pity, while it withheld the execution of either of these measures, struggled with a sense of the danger that might spring from the secret his prisoner possessed; and then at times there came a demon's whisper that urged the proud Earl to destroy!

Konrad neither sued for mercy or liberty; but feeling happy in the nourished hope that Anna was now under the sure protection of the queen, he awaited with patience whatever fate had in store for him.

Thus day after day rolled on, and he never saw other face than that of French Paris; who, as the most trusted of all Bothwell's numerous retinue, was alone permitted to approach him.

*CHAPTER XII.*

*ALISON CRAIG.*

And death and life she hated equally,
And nothing saw, for her despair,
But dreadful time, dreadful eternity,
No comfort anywhere;
Remaining utterly confused with fears,
And ever worse with growing time,
And ever unrelieved by dismal tears,
And all alone in crime.
_Tennyson._

Poor Anna! All that she had made Konrad endure by her desertion, was now endured by her in turn, with the additional bitterness, that the retribution was merited; and the memory of the last glance of Konrad's melancholy eyes, when he parted with her at the gate of the hostellary, was indelibly engraven on her mind.

The Earl of Morton, the most treacherous, cruel, and debauched man of that profligate age, had her now completely in his power, and could, when he chose, make her his victim either by secret flattery or open force; he could keep her in some quiet dwelling of the city, or send her to his strong castle of Dalkeith, where she would never have been heard of again; but this godly upholder of the new faith preferred the former and more gentle course.

In St. Mary's Wynd, not many yards from the famous Red Lion, and on the west side thereof, stood a small edifice, having three rows of gothic windows, the upper being more than half on the roof, all grated by half circular baskets of iron, and having a low-ribbed doorway, bearing on its lintel a pious legend in old contracted Latin.

In Catholic days this had been a convent for Cistertian nuns, and an hospital founded and dedicated in honour of the blessed Virgin Mary, by some pious citizen, whose name and era local history has failed to record. This hospital was so poor, that its inmates were supported by the voluntary contributions of the good and charitable; its revenues were so small, that the salary of the chaplain in 1499 was only sixteen shillings and eight-pence yearly.

The change of manners and religion had wrought their wonders here as elsewhere; for the little gothic oratory, where the fair Cistertians in their white tunics, scapularies, and hoods, had offered up their prayers to God, and to his mother their patron; the little hospital, where the sisters of mercy had attended to the sick and infirm; the kitchen, where they fed the poor; and the gloomy dormitories, where they slept on their hard pallets between the nocturnal and the matin prayers--had all been wofully perverted from such purposes; for, favoured by the Earl of Arran and other gay courtiers, on the universal plunder of the temporalities, this edifice had been gifted to Alison Craig, a celebrated courtesan, who, though living under protection of the "godly Erl of Arrane," as Knox tells us, in language which we choose not to repeat, yet contrived to be on very friendly terms with many other nobles, some of whom were his deadly enemies.

Though deeming her a lady of high birth, the appearance of Alison Craig did not prepossess the timid Anna much in her favour, when, on the noon of the day after parting with Konrad, she was introduced by Morton with much mock formality. The dame was seated before a little mirror of thick plate-glass inserted in a ponderous oak frame, that nearly filled up the recess of a little window, overlooking what had once been the convent garden, but was now a piece of waste ground, extending to the back of a neighbouring close. The windows at the other end overlooked the wynd, which was then a central and great thoroughfare, being the only entrance to the city from the southern roads.

The apartment was in confusion; a broken sword and a velvet mantle were lying on the floor, attesting that a brawl had taken place there overnight; the candles had all burned down in their sockets, and the girandoles were covered with grease; a close smell of wine and perfume made the atmosphere of the panneled chamber oppressive.

Alison Craig was tall and corpulent, and about thirty-five years of age. Her features, which were not without beauty, were somewhat coarse, and undisguisedly bold and wanton in expression. She wore no other head-dress than her own luxuriant hair extravagantly frizzled, and having a bob-jewel dropping on her forehead, which was as white as daffodil water could make it. She wore a huge double ruff, a long peaked stomacher of damask brocade, a petticoat of prodigious circumference, and sleeves barrelled and hooped; while, contrary to the modest fashion of the time, she displayed very much of a fair neck and full bosom, which the Earl of Morton immediately kissed on his entrance, to the no small astonishment of Anna, who began to think it was the fashion of the country.

A slovenly damsel was rouging the pallid cheeks of the fair Cyprian, whose plump fingers were toying with a rare jewel, that Morton recognised as one he had frequently seen at the neck of King Henry, whom he knew to be one of Alison's patrons, though a mortal foe to Arran, Chatelherault, and all the clan of Hamilton.

"Sweetheart, good-morrow," said the Earl, running his fingers through the perfumed tresses of Alison. "I have brought thee a pretty page, of whom, as thou valuest the friendship of Morton, particular care must be taken."

"What is the friendship of Morton to me?" she asked with an air of pretty disdain. "Thou seest this bauble?"

"'Twas once that blockhead, Darnley's. Woman, thou holdest that which has been worn by the most beautiful queen in Europe!"

"And may be worn by a queen again, gif this giglet Mary were dead or set aside."

"How?" said Morton, knitting his brow, for the woman's insolence irritated him, "at what dost thou dare to hint?"

"What Darnley has dared to promise--here, ay--here in this very chamber!"

"Go to, woman! thou art stark mad, and he had been drunk, like a fool as he is. But let us not quarrel, pretty sweetheart; for seest thou"----and here the Earl whispered something in the ear of the woman, whose eyes were lighted with a malicious smile as she surveyed Anna. "Thou wilt see to this? I know thee of old, sweet dulcibelle--eh?"

"My lord, when thou art good to me, I will obey thy pleasure in all things."

"And now tell me what news are abroad in the city, for I have not been within its gates yet?"

"Nought but Bothwell's expedition to the borders, and the queen's wrath at the luke-warm loyalty and cautious valour of such as thee, and thy boon-fellow the Earl of Moray."

Morton smiled, as he patted her painted cheek, and said--

"Thou art sarcastic, and out of humour, sweet mistress; what lackest thou?"

"A runlet of right Rhenish to bathe me in. Thou knowest, Lord Earl, that all the great ladies of our court bathe so; for its powers, say physicians, are miraculous on the skin."

"Thou shalt have the Rhenish, only excuse me, I pray, ever drinking any of that wine with thee thereafter. Any thing more?"

"Perfume: I lack some, and must have it from Monsieur Picauet."

"How! will no other than the queen's physician and perfumer serve thee? Thou shalt have the essences, too, and"----

"A hundred angels of silver, too--eh?"

"A hundred yelling devils!" replied the Earl.

"I will not require thy page with so many attendants."

"Thou art a cunning gipsy," said Morton, grinning under his long beard, and taking a purse from his girdle, where (as pockets were not then invented) it hung beside his dagger. "Here are eighty for thee; and not one devilish tester more can I give, even were it to purchase my own salvation--so, now let us kiss and be friends."

Alison was now in excellent humour; she sang a few snatches of "Gilquhiskar," and "Troly loly Lemendow," two merry old ditties, while she played with Morton's preposterous beard, and acted the coquette, and he affected the gallant--each in secret despising the other. But after a time, relinquishing the frizzling of her locks and adjustment of her Elizabethan pearl bobs, Alison turned her attention to the crowd of jostling passengers, that now, as the morning had advanced, and the Porte of St. Mary was open, streamed through the wynd.

Meanwhile that Anna, timid, confused, and broken-spirited, in her character of page, had retired a little into the background, Alison Craig was amusing the Earl by quizzing the appearance and gait of every person who passed--handling them with all due severity.

"Marry, come up! look, Lord Earl! yonder goeth Master George Buchanan, in his conical beaver and threadbare cloak, with a great book under his arm. Tantony! but he looketh very rusty to be Director of the Chancery--but, lo!" she exclaimed, as a burly country gentleman, in a whalebone ruff, and barrelled doublet of green broad cloth, with a great broadsword belted about him, and his lady riding lovingly on a pillion behind him, ambled up the street; "'Tis the old laird of Braid, and Dame Marjory Fairly, his gudewife."

"They are just married, sweetheart--else why ride they so lovingly?"

"Nay! they have been wedded these thirty years, and had two tall sons shot at the siege of Leith, by Monsieur Brissac," replied the lady, with an explosion of laughter. "But the laird is a gomeral, and his dame in her great tub-fardingale--O Jesu! see yonder gay galliard, with a feather in his hat and a falcon on his thumb!"

"'Tis Master Sebastian, who playeth the viol at Holyrood."

"Ah! the Savoyard. And, lo you! there goeth the Knight of Spott, without a cloak to hide his threadbare doublet. Well! were I thee, Sir Knight, I would buy me worse garments, or avoid the city. But I warrant he hath spent his last bodle on a can of Flemish beer at the Red Lion."

"He is a gentleman of my following," said the Earl with a frown. "His gudesire spent his all in the wars of King James, and fell at Flodden like a true Scottish knight, with his pennon before and his kindred behind him; his son, else, had been a richer man to-day."

"Gramercy me! here cometh Mistress Cullen, too, in her top-knots and flaunters, walking daintily, as if she trod on egg-shells, with a lace ruff under her saucy chin, and her nose in the air. St. Mary! she wears three bob-jewels while I have only one."

A very pretty woman, whose face was shewn to the utmost advantage by her little white coif, and whose uplifted train displayed her handsome ankles cased in stockings of red silk, stept mincingly up the wynd; and as this was a lady with whom Morton had an intrigue, and whose husband he ultimately put to death in furtherance thereof, he assumed his beaver-hat and walking-sword, hurriedly kissed Alison, and patted the cheek of the page, saying significantly--

"When next we meet again, little one, I hope to see thee in more fitting attire."

But as he bowed himself out, by the bright glance of his cunning eyes Anna knew with terror that the secret of her sex had been discovered.

And she was left alone with this dangerous woman, of whose character she was wholly ignorant, though her surprise and suspicion were naturally excited by the too evident lightness of her demeanour. As the worthy Dame Craig knew neither French nor Norwegian, and Anna had no Scottish, the latter was wholly at a loss to make her story known; and resolved to await in patience an opportunity of ending all her tribulation, by throwing herself at the feet of Mary, which she doubted not to have soon an opportunity of doing, when in the train of a lady who was on such terms of intimacy with the most powerful nobles of the court.

On waking next morning, she found on a chair by her couch, in lieu of the well-worn doublet with which poor Konrad had disguised her, a double ruff of Brussels lace, a peaked stomacher of blue Genoese velvet, sewn with seed pearls, and a skirt of blue Florence silk, covered with the richest needlework: there was a suite of beautiful jewels for her hair; bracelets, and a carcanet of rubies for her neck, all of one set. These, and the entrance of one of Dame Alison's flippant and tawdry damsels, announced to Anna that now all disguise was at an end.

The jewels had been sent by the Earl, who, by force or fraud (but seldom by purchase), had always an immense assortment of such things at his castle of Dalkeith, in the vaults of which he is said by tradition to have buried twelve casks filled with plate, precious stones, and bullion, the plunder of desecrated churches, demolished abbeys, and stormed fortalices.