Chapter IV (2)

Darkness had almost set in; the long Norwegian twilight had given place to starry night, and they were unseen by the Danish sentinels, who lounged dreamily on the summit of the keep, and at the castle gate of Bergen. As he descended, Bothwell drew from his embroidered belt a small but exquisitely carved bugle-horn, accoutred with a silver mouthpiece, on which he blew one short and sharp blast of peculiar cadence, that drew an echo from every rock and indentation of the harbour. Ere the last had died away, the sound of oars was heard, the water was seen to flash in the starlight, and a boat glided into the dark shadow thrown by the castle rocks upon the deep water of the fiord; it jarred against the landing-place, and Christina Slingbunder, who was about to make some violent protestations against proceeding, had the strong arm of Ormiston thrown around her.

"Welcome, Bothwell!" said he; "never heard I sound more joyous than thy bugle; for the last hour our wight skipper hath been swearing like a pagan."

"Wherefore?"

"At thy delay."

"Then the knave most e'en solace himself by swearing on."

"He says, if this breeze continues, we will be past Frederick's-vaern by sunrise."

"All the better, Hob," replied the Earl, as he lifted Anna on board; "but I hope he hath our demi-culverins cast loose, and a few yeomen in their armour, in case of surprisal."

"Right--dost thou not see I am in harness?" said Ormiston, making his steel glove clatter on his corselet; for, save the head, his whole bulky frame was completely armed. The eight seamen who pulled the boat were all clad in pyne doublets, and armed with swords and daggers, and they wore the national head-dress, the broad bonnet of blue worsted, adorned with a silver coronet and horse's head--the Earl's crest.

"Now, my stout varlets," said their lord, "dip, and away!"

"Away for the ship!" added Ormiston.

"Nay, for the hermit's grotto under yonder rocks, where thou seest a light now gleaming on the water. Away, and a golden angel on the best oar!"

Ormiston gave a low whistle, expressive of surprise and pity at the folly of his friend, and endeavoured, by a series of somewhat unceremonious caresses, to console the sobbing and half-frightened Christina, who had begun to weep most obstreperously; but he knew enough of the Earl's temperament to be aware that any remark was now futile; and in reality, as he cared not a rush whether he married the Norwegian or not, he resolved to let matters run their course.

All sat silent, and nothing was heard but the interjections of the waiting-woman, and the suppressed breathing of the stout oarsmen, as the boat strained and creaked when their sinewy efforts shot her out into midstream. Anna reclined against the shoulder of the Earl, with her face hidden in a satin hood, and his mantle of crimson velvet rolled around her.

Now rising in her silvery glory from the sea, the broad round moon, with a splendour impossible to describe, aided the brightness of the northern night. One broad gleam of steady radiance extended up the fiord from the horizon to the shore; and when, like a black speck, the boat shot across it, the breakers of the distant ocean, like wavelets of silver, were seen rising and falling afar off, amid the liquid light.

The summit of the rocks of Bergen, and the square tower that crowned them, were shining snow-white in its splendour, but their base was hidden in more than Cimmerian gloom; for though the bright moonlight tipped the eminences and peaks of the far off mountain, the darkness of midnight rested on the bosom of the still fiords and bays that rolled in shadow a thousand feet below them.

From the murky obscurity of a mass of granite, that overhung the deepest part of the fiord, where the rocks descended like a wall abruptly to their foundations, many fathoms under the surface of the water, a faint and flickering light, that gleamed redly and fitfully, directed the steersman to the uncouth dwelling of this hermit of the sea. A sudden angle of the rocks revealed it, and the oarsmen found themselves close to a low-browed cavern, that receded away into the heart of the granite cliffs that overhung the surf.

A seaman made fast the boat, by looping a rope round a pinnacle of rock near the narrow ledge, where the fishermen of Bergen usually left such alms and offerings as fear or piety impelled them to bestow on the hermit, whom they alike dreaded and respected. On these rocks the sea-dogs basked in summer, and shared the hermit's food in winter, when they crawled through the crevices in the ice, that for six months of the year covered the water of the bay.

The Scottish mariners, who did not altogether like their vicinity to the abode of this mysterious personage, cowered together, conversing in low whispers; and their swarthy visages seemed to vary from brown to crimson, in the red smoky light that gushed at times from the mouth of the rugged cavern, as the ocean wind blew through it. Bothwell, who could not for a moment quit the trembling Anna, requested Hob of Ormiston to acquaint the recluse with the nature of the boon they had come to crave of him.

Participating in the fears of the mariners, Hob evidently did not admire venturing on this mission alone. On one hand, a powerful curiosity prompted him; on the other, a childish superstition, incident to the age, withheld him: but he was a bold fellow, whose scruples of any kind never lasted long, and in a minute he had loosened his long sword in its sheath, looked to the wheel-lock of his dague, and sprung up the rocks. His tall feather was seen to stoop for a moment as he entered the cavern, and made signs of the cross as he advanced; for though the Laird of Ormiston, like most of the lesser barons in Scotland for a generation or two after 1540, professed no particular creed, any ideas he had of religion appertained to the Church of Rome--therefore the aspect of the cavern, as he penetrated, was singularly adapted to make a deep impression on his mind.

A pile of drift-wood blazing in a cleft of the rock, through which its smoke ascended, filled the cavern with warmth; and a red glow, that lit up the rugged surface of its rocky walls and arched roof, displaying the wild lichens that spotted them, and the green tufts of weed that grew in the crannies.

A myriad of metallic particles, green schorl, blue quartz, rock crystal, and basaltic prisms, glittered in the blaze of the hermit's fire. It revealed also the strange and ghastly fissures of the cavern, which had been formed by some vast subterranean throe of nature, that had rent asunder the solid mountains; and, by hurling one gigantic mass of rock against another, formed this deep retreat, into which Hob of Ormiston penetrated with a resolute aspect but a hesitating heart.

The roar of a subterranean cataract, that poured down white and foaming behind one of these ghastly seams, lent additional effect to the aspect of the cavern--at the upper end of which stood an altar of stone, having on it a skull polished like ivory by long use, a rude crucifix, and the words--

Sancte Olaf ora pro nobis,

painted above it on the wall in large and uncouth characters. At the approach of Ormiston, the hermit arose from his lair or bed of dried seaweed, and a more wild and unearthly object had never greeted the eyes of his visitor.

His years might number sixty; he was perfectly bald, and his scalp shone like that of the skull, to which his visage, hollow-eyed and attenuated to the last degree, would have borne no distant resemblance but for the long white beard of thin and silvery hair that flowed to his waist. He was clad in the skin of the sea-dog, and his bare legs and arms were so lean that they resembled the bones of a skeleton, with veins and fibres twisted over them. As the hermit arose, Ormiston paused; and while he gazed with irresolution, the wild man did so with wonder; for the Scottish knight was richly accoutred in a suit of plate armour; his hose were of scarlet cloth twined with gold, and the band of his blue velvet bonnet, like the hilt of his dagger, sparkled with precious stones.

"Heaven save you, father!" said he, uncovering his head, and speaking in that broken Norwegian dialect which he had acquired among the Shetlanders.

"And what, may I ask, hath procured me a visit from a son of vanity and trumpery like thee?" asked the old man of the rock, surveying Ormiston with a glance approaching to disdain.

"An errand of friendship, good father," replied the other, whose uneasiness was in no way soothed when he saw, by the restless and unearthly aspect of the hermit's eyes, that he was evidently insane; "from one who hath a boon to crave of thee."

"Of me--Ha! ha!" laughed the hermit, and the reverberations of his laughter, that echoed a hundredfold through the fissures of the cavern, seemed to the imaginative ear of Ormiston like that of fiends ringing from an abyss, and, signing the cross, he involuntarily drew back. The wild hermit seemed to enjoy his terror, and laughed louder still.

"What wouldst thou have? a blessing implored upon thy vessel, that neither the mermaids of the moskenstrom nor the water-spirit may bewitch it; nor that Nippen may come in the night and turn thy compass round from north to south, and so lead thee within the folds of the mighty Jormagundr, that great ocean snake which lieth coiled up under the frozen regions of the pole, and one dash of whose tail makes the great whirlpool to boil for a century? Hah!"

"Nay, good father," said Ormiston; "for none of these things have I sought thee, but to crave a blessing and the bands of wedlock for a knight and lady, who choose rather to receive their nuptial benediction from thee, who art a remnant of our ancient faith, (Heaven forgive me this vile blasphemy!) than from one of these newfangled parsons whom King Frederick hath planted in Norway."

"Good," replied the hermit, as a smile spread over his ghastly visage; "and what return will be made me if I concede to your request?"

"Return!" stammered Ormiston, taking a silver chain from his neck, but immediately replacing it, for he saw that he had not to deal with an ordinary man. "Holy father! though the lady is noble, and the knight is both noble and wealthy, they can make no other return than a promise to hold thy name in kind remembrance, and pray for thee daily, in memory of the blessing thou wilt bestow."

"Good again--thou pleasest me; let these strangers approach."

"By what name art thou known, father?"

"The fishermen call me the Hermit of the Rock. When I lived in the world I had another name. I was Saint Olaf of Norway."

"Now, God keep the poor hermit!" said Ormiston; "five hundred years have come and gone since that blessed preacher and converter of these wild lands from paganrie to the true faith, rested from his holy labours."

"Five hundred years!--thou sayest right well. All that time have I dwelt in this cavern, where I shall perhaps dwell five hundred more; but lead forward thy friends."

"Blessed Jupiter!" muttered Ormiston, as he hurried away, "methought the tying of this pretended nuptial knot was likely to cost more trouble than the untying of those on the enchanted cord. What, ho! my Lord of Bothwell."

"Odsbody!" exclaimed the Earl, "thou hast tarried long enough in all conscience. Is the occupant of this place man or woman?"

"Neither, by Jove! I think him half saint, half Satan, and wholly intolerable."

Anna trembled, and her attendant shrieked with terror, when they were lifted on the ledge of the rock that led to this uncouth dwelling. The seamen, whom the Earl had no wish should witness a ceremony which he might one day prefer to have forgotten, he desired imperatively to remain by their oars, and, as they were all his own vassals, they dared not to disobey.

"You will not follow me unless you hear my bugle blown, in sign that we are in some peril; and, by St. Andrew, the place looks perilous enough! But take courage, dearest Anna!" he whispered, "for I am with thee!"

Anna answered only by tears, and kept her face hidden within her hood. Her fears, and those of Christina Slingbunder, were no way allayed by the appalling aspect of Saint Olaf--the hermit of whom they had heard so many tremendous tales; and even Bothwell, as thorough a daredevil as ever drew sword, was startled for a moment; but, pressing Anna closer to him, he advanced at once to the hermit--and, in virtue of the vows he had once pronounced, requested him to unite them in marriage, and bestow his benediction upon them.

Tall Ormiston held his bonnet before his mouth; for a broad laugh spread over his dark and burly visage when he saw the Earl kneeling before this uncouth priest, whose insanity was so evident that even he, a border baron, felt some shame and reluctance at the profanity and folly of the adventure. When viewed by the light of the pine fire, that at times died away and anon shot up redly and fitfully, the aspect of this wild man of the rock, with his attenuated legs and arms clad in a gaberdine of seal-skin, his long and bushy beard glistening tremulously in the flame like streaming silver, his deeply sunk yet sparkling eyes of most unearthly blue--gave him all the appearance of a half crazed scald or saga from the frozen caves of Iceland--he seemed so spectral, so shadowy, and so like the wavering vision of a dreamer.

Sinking with terror and confusion, Anna had but a faint idea of all that passed around her, until she found herself once more in the bright moonlight with another ring on her finger, Bothwell's arm around her, and her burning cheek resting against his; while the diamond-like water flashed around them as it fell from the broad-bladed oars, and the seamen pulled hard and silently away from the cavern. The appearance of the hermit, who stood on a pinnacle of rock holding aloft a blazing pine branch with one hand, while he bestowed benedictions with the other, adding not a little to the energy with which they increased the distance between them and the shore. The Earl saw that the poor recluse was perfectly insane, yet there was something singularly wild and sublime in his aspect; he seemed so like an inspired prophet, or seer, or one of those strange demons with whom Norse superstition peoples every element, every wood, and rock, and hill.

Cheerfully pulled the stout rowers, and again the towers of Bergen rose above them, shining snow-white in the light of the autumnal moon. As they neared the ship, the startled Ormiston mattered a curse and a _Hail Mary!_ in the same breath, when a long line of fire suddenly gleamed across the bosom of the water, and there shot past their bows a swift boat, in which stood a tall figure brandishing a spear; his whole outline was dark and opaque, while a blaze of light shone behind him.

"'Tis only a night-fisher!" said Anna, with a smile; and now one more stroke of the oars brought them alongside of the Earl's ship, from the mizen-peak of which his own banner, bearing the chevronels of Hepburn and the azure bend of Dirleton, waved heavily in the night wind.

The _Fleur-de-lys_ was gaudily painted and gilded, low in the waist, but high in the bows and poop, where two great wooden castles, bristling with falcons and arquebuses, towered above the water. Each mast was composed of two taper spars, fidded at the topcastles. The Earl's crest--a white horse's head--reared up at the prow, balanced by a mighty lantern at the stern. Her sails were loose, and glimmered in the moonlight as they flapped heavily against the yellow masts and spars.

The Earl was welcomed by a shout from the sailors, who, with the master and his mates, crowded, bonnet in hand, around him.

Giving orders to sail immediately for the Isles of Orkney, he bore Anna to the little cabin, that, during his wanderings by the Adriatic and Italian shores, had received many a similar tenant. Like a boudoir, it was hung with the richest arras, lighted by silver lamps that were redolent with perfume, as they swung from the deck above, and from globes of rose-coloured glass shed a warm and voluptuous glow around the lovers.

*CHAPTER XI.*

*THE FLEUR-DE-LYS.*

I'll lo'e thee, Annie, while the dew
In siller bells hangs on the tree;
Or while the burnie's waves o' blue,
Run wimplin to the rowin' sea.
_Scott Song._

It is difficult, says the Magister Absalom, to analyse the nature of the Earl's love for this fair but fickle Norwegian.

His conscience and his interest led him to remember, that adherence to those vows so solemnly exchanged with Lady Jane Gordon, was the most honourable and prudent course; but this sudden passion, conceived by him for Anna Rosenkrantz at the Court of Copenhagen, and pursued in that rash and obstinate spirit with which he plunged into every new amour and vagary, soon made him commit to oblivion those vows which one yet fondly and sadly brooded over. A temporary separation, an unexpected meeting, as shown in the beginning of our story, had fully developed his sentiments for Anna, and in this mock marriage brought them to a crisis.

Having been frequently abroad, under every variety of fortune--at one time commanding a French army during a desperate civil war; at another, charged with an important embassy; and often an exile desperate in circumstances--in the wandering life he had led for many a year, his career had been one of such wild adventure and danger, that his code of morality fitted him loosely as his gauntlet; thus, with all the love he bore Anna, though as yet he shrank from wedding her before the altar of that church where he had knelt in childhood, this espousal of her, before a half-witted Norwegian hermit, exactly suited the wildness of his fancy and the romance of his temperament.

His trusty friend and libertine follower, Hob of Ormiston, whose fate and fortune were so completely identified with his own, knew, from old experience, that the flame of his lord had expanded too suddenly to burn long; and as the love fit and the voyage would in all probability end together, he would not have objected to wedding Christina Slingbunder in the same easy and fantastic fashion, although he was already handfasted, as the phrase was, to a lady of gentle blood at home.

Though she saw not the clouds that overhung her future career, Anna was very much dejected, when next morning she lay with her head reclining on the shoulder of that lover to whom she had sacrificed herself, and the love of Konrad; and into whose hands she had committed the honour of her family and her future fate.

Bright rose the sun from the waters of the Skager Rack; the hills of Denmark were on their lee, and those of Norway, with all their pouring waterfalls and echoing woods, were lessening far astern. A gentle breeze was blowing from the westward; and as the heavily-pooped ship careened over, her great white lateen sails bellied before it, and the bright green water flashed from her sharp prows to bubble in snowy showers under the head of the white steed that, with blood-red nostrils and arching neck, reared beneath the gallant bowsprit.

The sailors, with Nicholas Hubert and the Earl's other pages and servants, were grouped in the forecastle and in the deep waist, over which peered the brass arquebuses of the poop. The skipper, Master David Wood of Bonyngtoun, in Angus, with a great gaudy chart (such as was then prepared in the Hanseatic towns for the use of mariners) spread on the capstan, was intently measuring the distance from the Naze of Norway to the Oysterhead of Denmark; from thence to Thorsmynde, and so on.

He was a short, squat man, with a thick scrubby beard and heavy eyebrows; he wore his blue bonnet drawn well over his forehead, to keep the sun from his eyes, and had a gaberdine of blue broadcloth, with immense pockets at the sides, red trunk breeches, which met a pair of black funnel boots about three inches below the knee. He carried a pocket-dial and a long dagger at his girdle.

Hob of Ormiston, minus weapons and armour, without which he was never seen on shore, was yawning with ennui, wishing, as he often said, "sea-voyaging at the devil," and (in absence of Christina, who was very sick a-bed) endeavouring to wile away the time by watching for an occasional shot at the passing birds with his wheel-lock caliver, and whistling the old air then so much in vogue--

"The Frog cam to the Myll doore."

Anna and the Earl were seated under a small tapestry awning, which screened them from the view of the groups in the waist on one hand, and from the watch and timoneer on the other. Her eyes were full of tears.

"Anna, dearest, why so sad?" said the Earl, pressing his dark mustaches against her white forehead. "Do you regret the step you have taken for my sake?"

"Oh no!" she whispered in a soft low tone; "but I sorrow when I think of the knight Rosenkrantz, my poor old uncle, who since infancy has been so kind to me; my dear and only kinsman, when worn out by years and their infirmities, to be left alone by me in his old age--by me whom he loves so well! Who now will soothe him in sickness as I have done, and cheer him in the long nights of winter when I am far away? My place will be vacant at the board to-day, my chair by the fire to-night. My harp stands there beside it, but he will hear my voice no more. Oh! he will be very lonely--desolate!" Her tears fell fast and bitterly.

"Speak not thus, dear Anna!" said the Earl, kissing her again; and, glad to say any thing that might soothe her, he added, "We will return to him again, and together will we cheer his declining years."

"But he never will forgive me, nor love me as of old."

"He will! We shall kneel at his feet and implore his forgiveness, (Ormiston whistled very loud); and, if he loves you so well, he could never resist your supplications."

He kissed her with ardour, and the girl was soothed.

Fondly and trustfully she looked in his face. There was a light in her clear eyes, a flush on her soft cheek, and an infantile smile on her cherry lips, that made her quite bewitching, as she lay half fainting on Bothwell's breast and half embraced by him, listening to his oft-repeated, and perhaps too voluble, vows of constancy and love.

"Farewell, dear Norway--a long farewell!" she exclaimed, kissing her hand with playful sadness to the distant stripe of blue that shewed where her native hills were fading far astern. "I may no more hear the rush of thy waterfalls, or see thy pine-clad hills, and deep salt fiords, overhung by the sweetbrier and purple lilac that scent their waters in summer, or the silver birch and dark-green pine that shadow them in autumn and in whiter; but oh! _Gammle Norge_, I never will forget thee!"

"Anna," said the Earl, "from the ramparts of my castle of Bothwell, I will shew thee a valley of the Clyde, and such a territory as no lord in all Scandinavia could shew his bride; and bethink thee, that hold of Bothwell is thrice more magnificent than Frederick's castle of Elsineur. I have eight stately fortresses, the least of which would make four of yonder castle of Bergen; I have four lordships, each of which is richer than your native province of Aggerhuis; and I have four sheriffdoms, each of which is worth three of it--and thou shalt be lady of them all! When I wind this horn from Bothwell castle gate, it finds so ready an echo at the tower of Lawhope, the house of Clelland, the keep of Orbiestoun, and the place of Calder, that five thousand men, all dight for battle, are in their stirrups, and a hundred knights, the best in Scotland, are proud to unfurl their pennons beneath the banner of James Hepburn of Hailes!"

The Earl's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and those of Anna lit up with delight and pride; while Ormiston, who considered himself the representative of these hundred good palladia, adjusted his ruff complacently, and drew himself to the full extent of his six feet odd inches.

"And," whispered Anna, "and will you always love me as you do now?"

"O yes--ever and always!" replied the impassioned lover.

Ormiston whistled dubiously, and then continued his ditty--

"The Frog cam to the Myll doore,
And a low bow made he, O!
Saying, 'Gie, Sir Miller, a scrap o' thy store
To a Frog of gentle degree, O!'"

*CHAPTER XII.*

*THE ISLE OF WESTERAY.*

'Tis evening quick;----'tis night:----the rain
Is towing wide the fruitless main;
Thick, thick;--no sight remains the while
From the farthest Orkeny Isle,
No sight to seahorse or to seer,
But of a little pallid sail
That seems as if 'twould straggle near.
_Leigh Hunt._

The course of the Earl's ship lay westward; but heavy gales blew her far to the north, and for many days she beat about in that tempestuous ocean which roars around the hundred Isles of Shetland, pouring its foam upon their bluff precipices and into the vast and resounding caverns that perforate their stern shores, many of which have never seen other inhabitants than the gigantic erne that built its nest in the cliffs, the wild horse that browsed on the moor, and the whiskered walrus that basked on the beach below.

On others lie the rude towers and dwellings of the hardy Udallers, the ruined forts and runic tombs of those old ocean kings, who were so long the terror of Britain, of Belgium, and of Gaul--the temples of the Druids, the uncouth crosses and gothic chapels of that later creed which Columba preached, and for which Saint Erick died--and the obelisks that mark the lonely graves of the old Kuldei overlook the reedy moors, the foaming maelstroms, and the rushing surges of the Ultima Thule.

For fourteen days dark grey clouds had overhung that struggling ship. The sullenness of the sailors at the continuance of an adverse wind was communicated to the Earl, who became petulant; for Anna and her attendant were very unwell, and nothing cures love so much as a dose of sea-sickness. On the fifteenth day the sun rose brightly from the ocean, and tipped with light the dreary hills of Unst; the clouds dispersed, a fair wind swept over the water, and the _Fleur-de-lys_ bore away merrily for Westeray, an isle of Innistore, where stood the stronghold of Noltland, possessed by one of Bothwell's chief friends and adherents, Sir Gilbert Balfour, a powerful baron, and cadet of the house of Monkquhanny, in Fifeshire.

Anna, we have said, was very sick and sorrowful. The Earl scarcely left the side of her couch in the little tapestried cabin; and though in her pallor and helplessness she was as beautiful as ever, the Magister Absalom records, in his stiff, dry way, that Bothwell could not resist the bitter and obtruding reflection, that it might have been better (considering the turn of fortune in his favour at home) if his vessel had not been driven into the harbour of Bergen, on the night in which this history opened.

In their bud he endeavoured to crush these ungenerous and ungrateful thoughts; but they recurred to him again and again, till one glance of Anna's pleading eyes, one smile of her pretty mouth, would put them all to flight, and he felt that he could brave both Huntly and the queen for her sake. Yet whenever he was alone, or beyond the immediate influence of her charms, ambition, as of old, began to whisper in his ear and to gnaw at his heart; pride and self-interest were on one hand--love and generosity on the other.

The first flush of love was over.

Though he did not as yet entirely repent his strange espousal of this fair northern girl, he foresaw that it would prove a formidable barrier to his gaining any permanent ascendency over the faction of Moray and Morton, as the principal strength of the Catholic lords consisted in their unanimity, which was certain of being at an end, whenever Huntly learned how Bothwell had broken his promise to his sister, Lady Jane Gordon.

Ormiston had mentally been making similar reflections; and when a dark cloud gathered on the broad and noble brow of Bothwell, or an expression of deep meditation veiled the brightness of his fine dark eyes, he knew well what visions were struggling for mastery in his bold and ambitious heart. But the knight never intruded a remark of his own; and remembering how often, when in the full glow of his new amour, the Earl had so scornfully rejected his more sage advice, he resolved quietly to let fate have its own way.

At the close of a stormy day, the isle of Westeray, like a dark blue cloud, arose from ocean on their lee. Dark and louring, the sky communicated its inky hue to the sea, which was flecked by spots of white, that marked the crests of the waves. Like snow, their surf was poured upon the jutting rocks and hidden reefs that fringe the island; and thus, when night closed in, a white line of breakers alone indicated where it lay.

As the sun set, his sickly rays poured a yellow light along the waste of waters, and lit up with a parting gleam the gigantic facade of the castle of Noltland, which towered above the rocks of Westeray, with its heavy battlements and tourelles at the angles, its broad chimneys and stone-flagged tophouses gleaming redly and duskily against the murky sky beyond. The light faded away from its casements, one by one they grew dark, and an hour after the sun had set, the _Fleur-de-lys_ anchored on that side of the isle which is sheltered from the waves of the Atlantic.

Joyously the Earl and his companions sprang upon the rude pier, alongside of which their vessel was hauled after great labour, and much swearing and vociferation by the seamen. The night was now intensely black, but the darkness of the beach was partially dispelled by the blaze of ten or twelve torches, which were upheld by the retainers of the Baron of Noltland, who hastened to the pier to receive the Earl.

Sir Gilbert Balfour of Westeray, who, to the office of master of the household to Queen Mary, united the captaincy of the royal castle of Kirkwall, was a man above the middle height, strongly made, powerfully limbed, and well browned by constant exposure to the weather. His hair and beard, which were trimmed very short, were of the deepest black. He was richly attired in a doublet of yellow satin, embroidered with Venetian gold; a scarlet mantle lined with white silk hung from his left shoulder, and a small ruff fringed the top of a bright steel gorget that encircled his neck. His bonnet and trunk-hose were of black velvet. He carried a walking-cane, but was without other arms than one of those long daggers such as were then made at the Bowhead of Edinburgh. The magnificence of his attire, which glittered in the torchlight, contrasted forcibly with that of his islesmen who crowded about him.

Four or five, who seemed to act as a bodyguard, wore iron helmets adorned with eagles' feathers, coats-of-mail composed of minute rings of steel linked together, and reaching nearly to their ankles. They carried battle-axes and short but powerful handbows slung on their backs, and crossed saltirewise by sheafs of barbed arrows. Others were clad in sealskin doublets, with plaids of purple and blue check, and kilts of dark-brown stuff; but all were barefooted, barelegged, and barearmed--strong, muscular, red-haired, and savage-looking men--whose hazel eyes glistened through their matted locks in the light of the streaming torches.

"Noble Bothwell--welcome to Westeray!" exclaimed Sir Gilbert, vailing his bonnet. "I knew thy banner at a mile distant, when it glittered in that brief blink of sunshine. Ha! stout Ormiston, I have not seen thee since the day we fought side by side at the battle of Corrichie! Welcome home!"

"Balfour, I thank thee!" said Ormiston; "but dost thou call this home? By Jove! I deem that we have many a long Scottish mile to travel yet, ere we find ourselves under our own rafters."

"And if the same mischances attend me," said Bothwell, "I may cruise about in these northern seas like another Ulysses, but without acquiring his wisdom. However, I have brought my Calypso with me. Ha! ha! now I warrant, my trusty Gib Balfour, thou hast never read of this same Sir Ulysses!"

"Read! St. Mary forefend! though my brother, the Lord President, hath compiled a notable book of 'Practiques,' I never could read nor write either, praise God! and by his aid never shall. I can bite the pen and make my mark, in sign of the blessed cross, like my father, the stout knight of Monkquhanny, before me. Of what service are booklear or scholar-craft to a knight or gentleman of coat-armour? Nay, pshaw! I leave all such to monks and scribes--to knaves and notaries--and content me with the knowledge of arms, stable-craft, and falconrie, siclike as becometh me; but this Sir Ulysses--what manner of knight was he? came he from the Mearns or the west country?"

"A wise warrior he was, who fought valiantly at Troy, and he loved an enchantress such as I have with me now."

"Thou, my lord!"

"Ay, in yonder vessel."

"A sorceress--God forebode!" said Balfour, stepping back a pace; "we must have her burnt! The sheriff court of Kirkwall meets at Lammas-tide. 'Tis well!" Bothwell laughed.

"Thou mistakest me, honest Balfour! The enchantress I mean, is a fair girl whom I have brought with me from Norway, and who deals in no spells save such as win the heart. She is a lady of high birth and rare beauty too; so brush up thy rusty chivalry, Sir Gilbert, and let me have a litter forthwith for her conveyance."

"A lady! forsooth such brittle ware will find but rough accommodation among us isles-men here at Noltland, where a silken kirtle hath not been seen these ten good years, ha! ha!"

At that moment, Anna, supported by Ormiston and Christina her attendant, appeared at the side of the vessel, about to cross a broad plank that extended to the rough wooden pier, overlooked by the great donjon tower of Noltland. She was very pale; but the torchlight shed a tinge of red on her cheek, and caused her heavy locks to glitter as the night wind waved them to and fro.

The plank shook, and a half-stifled cry of fear escaped from Anna. Bothwell advanced to her assistance, but at the instant a young man sprang from the crowd of islesmen behind Sir Gilbert Balfour, dropped into the water, seized the plank with both hands to steady it, while presenting his shoulder for the lady to lean on.

She touched it lightly with her hand, and murmured her thanks as she passed.

A low sigh fell upon her ear; and, with that quick apprehension of sorrow and interest which is so characteristic of women, Anna turned to her supporter, but his face was bent down and concealed, and she felt agitated--she knew not why.

The young man trembled so much that he almost sank when she touched him. He looked up once; there was a rustling of satin--a dreamy sense of perfume and starched lace, and the vision passed away. He was Konrad!

Ah! had Anna seen the deep and earnest, the sorrowful and affectionate expression that lit his soft and upturned eyes, her heart would assuredly have smote her; but the splendid Earl of Bothwell seized her hand, and led her towards Sir Gilbert Balfour, by whom she was hurried away.

Lighted by torches that streamed and sputtered in the night wind, and flared on the rugged rocks that reared from the frothy ocean, the group ascended the narrow and winding pathway that led to the castle. Konrad gazed wistfully after them, with his hands pressed upon his forehead, and with the air of one who struggles to preserve his senses.

When drifting about at the sport of the waves of the Christiana fiord, and almost insensible from cold and misery, he had been picked up by a small galliot bound for Kirkwall, and the crew had landed him in Westeray a week before the arrival of Bothwell.

He had been protected by Balfour, who, being kind-hearted and hospitable, felt interested in the young man on witnessing the dejection and utter prostration of spirit under which he laboured.

The despair of a heart that has loved truly, and been deceived, is sometimes so deep that no one can imagine its intensity. So it was with Konrad.

The deep, dark consciousness of desolation that had been settling over him, might have become in time a more subdued and morbid feeling of regret; but now this sudden meeting brought back all his first hopes and emotions to their starting-place, and renewed in poignancy all the agony of that hour, in which he learned that he had lost her for ever.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*NOLTLAND.*

The nicht followis, and every weary wicht
Throwout the Erde has caucht anone richt,
The sound pesund slepe them liket beat
Woddis and rayeand sels war at rest.
And the Sterne, thair myd coursis rollis doun,
All the fieldis still othir, but noyis or soun.
_The AEneid of Douglas_, 1518.

The long twilight of the northern eve had passed away, and the darkness of an October night had closed over Westeray.

Tall and grim and dark, save where lit by an occasional ray from a window, the Keep of Noltland towered in massive outline above the rocky isle.

This magnificent castle was built by Thomas de Tulloch, bishop and governor of Orkney under Erick king of Denmark, about 1422. It was surrounded by massive walls and outworks; the sides of the great keep were perforated by a series of loopholes for quarrelles or cannon, rising tier above tier like the gun-ports of a line-of-battle ship. Many parts of this vast baronial hold are richly decorated by the skill and fancy of the architect, whom tradition avers to have found his grave within its walls, and a large stone, shaped like a coffin, is still pointed out at the foot of the great staircase, as covering the place of his last repose.

The stately hall of the Bishop's castle glowed cheerfully in the blaze of the fire that crackled in the arched fireplace, where a pile of driftwood blazed, the fragments of old wrecks that, could they have spoken, might have told many a tale of suffering and of war, with logs of resinous pine brought from Norway, or washed on the beach from the savage and then unknown coasts of the Labrador.

From the roof hung a large brazen chandelier, in which the flames of twelve tall candles were streaming in the currents of air that swept through the vast apartment. The floor was paved with stone, which, though originally of red rock like the walls, was carefully whitened and sanded. The great oak girnels and cabinets, the tables and chairs, were all of the fashion of James III.; and behind them, on rusty tenterhooks, hung long pieces of rude and carpet-like tapestry, representing, in dark and gigantic figures, the voyage of AEneas, and other passages from Virgil. As the wind moved the arras, the great mishapen figure of the pious Trojan, his long-haired Creusa and chubby Ascanius, seemed at times as if starting into life. At the lower end of the hall, and almost lost in the shadow of its vast vacuity, were several retainers of Westeray, clad in their mail shirts and brown kilts, lolling on hard wooden settles, conversing in guttural whispers, or sleeping under the side tables rolled up in their plaids, looking like bundles of tartan with a mop stick through them--the latter being represented by their shock heads of hair.

A trivet table, marked with a diagram for playing the old chivalric game of Troy, was placed near the fire, and thereon lay cards and dice, and a tall pewter tankard of malmsey wine, from which the silver-mounted horns were incessantly replenished by Bothwell, Ormiston, and the Knight of Noltland, who, with their doublets unbuttoned and their gorgets and swordbelts flung aside were lounging by the ruddy fire and conversing with animation, but marked by a gravity rather unusual for the two first-named personages.

Anna, who, with her attendant, had been conducted to suitable apartments, had retired for the night, leaving Bothwell and his friends to pursue their political conversation, and to drink their wine undisturbed, which they did with the devotion of three Germans quaffing for a wager.

"And this is all thou knowest of the machinations of Moray? Ah! false bastard, I shall live to mar thee yet!" exclaimed the Earl, with kindling eyes, on hearing Balfour unfold the web of intrigue that surrounded the young Queen Mary. "And my barony of Crichtoun too! saidst thou, Sir Gilbert, that Morton had cast his gloating eyes on that?"

"Yea, and but for this late raid at Holyrood, had added it to his adjacent fiefs of Dalkeith and Vogrie."

"And so they have slain this Rizzio! I remember him well--a smooth-tongued old Italian, somewhat gay in his garb, but crooked in form, and weasoned in visage. Did he not succeed Monsieur Raulet as foreign secretary?"

"The same."

"And they slew him, poor knave!"

"It was on the evening of the 9th of March last, when the Queen's Grace sat at supper with her sister, the Countess Jane of Argyle, and Rizzio seated between their tabourettes twangling on his ghittern, when the High Chancellor seized the palace gates at the head of a hundred and fifty tall spearmen, in corselets and steel bonnets, while my Lords of Lindesay and Ruthven, with King Henry and a hundred more, in their armour, ascended by the secret stair to the turret chamber in James V.'s tower. The poor Italian skipped about like a maukin, and cried aloud in his native gibberish for mercy; but, by the mass! he found little of that, for they dragged him from the skirt of the shrieking Queen, and slew him within earshot of her Majesty, whom Andrew Kerr"----

"Of Fawdounside?" said Ormiston; "a stout man, and a bold--I know tall Andrew well."

"Is said to have handled somewhat roughly, for he bent a cocked pistolette against her breast."

"Of Mary?--of a woman about to become a mother!" said the Earl, grasping his poniard. "Would to St. Paul I had been within arm's length of him! but what hath drawn the ire of his most sapient Majesty and the Protestant Lords upon this poor Italian?"

"Heaven alone knoweth,[*] unless it be that her Majesty favoured him greatly for his superior scholarcraft; which, like witchcraft and every other craft, is often like unto a sharp sword that cutteth its own scabbard. Royal favour, as thou well knowest, Bothwell, will soon make a man hated by his compeers; and thus Rizzio was hated, and so slain, for they left him in the adjoining chamber, gashed by six-and-fifty sword and dagger wounds, with the King's poniard driven to the hilt in his brisket, to show by whose mandate the deed was done."

[*] At this date, the calumnies recorded by Buchanan were yet uncirculated. H. le Guyon and _Blackwood_ expressly state David Rizzio to have been an _old man_.

"'Twas right Venetian that."

"And further, knowest thou that Master Craig, the minister of St. Giles, that Master Knox, and the father of that buxom bride whom he won by his damnable sorceries--even the pious and godly lord of Ochiltree--are all art and part in the assassination of this poor stranger, whom they deemed their only barrier to the ear and eye of her Majesty?"

"How!" said Bothwell ironically, "darest thou thus malign our Scottish apostles?"

"Nay, I malign none; but this is well known to my brother the President, who, as thou art aware, is ever fishing in troubled waters, that they were in the conspiracy. Ha!" he added, with a dark frown, "thinkest thou that this knave Knox, who leagued with the sacrilegious murderers of my kinsman, the great Cardinal of St. Stephen, would quail at crushing this harmless bookworm--this poor Italian violer? I trow not!"

"'Tis nothing to me," replied the Earl; "for Master Knox was never friend of mine."

"Nor mine!" added Ormiston, with a furious oath; "he ever gave me the breadth of the causeway, as if there was contamination in the touch of my cloak; and so he, too, can league with murderers--with jackmen, and men-at-arms, eh?"

"Doubtless," replied Balfour with a sneer, "when, as he hath it, 'God raiseth them up to slay those whom the kirk hateth;' since Rizzio's death, Morton, Lindesay, Ochiltree, Fawdounside, and others, have been exiles in England; the Catholic lords are again in the ascendant, and want but the appearance of Huntly and yourself at court (united by other ties, as I have no doubt you soon will be,) to crush by the strong hand, and perhaps for ever, those dark and dour-visaged Protestants. God's murrain on their long prayers and Geneva cloaks! for the sound of one and sight of the other, gives me a fit of the spleen. But we have had enough of these matters--fill thy wine-bicker, noble Bothwell; here's to black-eyed Jane of Huntly--drink, Ormiston, a fair carouse to the Lady of Hailes and Bothwell-hall!"

The Earl drank his wine in silence, and black Hob did so too, twirling his mustache the while, with his eyes half-closed by a leer.

"Odsbody! thou receivest this sentiment rather coldly!" said Sir Gilbert, setting down his horn with surprise.

"Thou forgettest there is this lady of Norway," said the Earl.

"By St. Magnus! dost thou speak of letting thy gay lemane stand in the way of thine advancement, to an eminence more glorious than ever Scottish subject (save this lordling of Lennox) attained to; for thou and Huntly shall govern the realm, and the King and Queen will be but as painted puppets in thy hands; for the memory of Rizzio's bloody corpse, and that night of horror in the turret-chamber, will ever rise in Mary's mind as a barrier between thee and the exiles. Bethink thee! Thou hast many a wrong to revenge on the tribe that have triumphed in thine absence."

"True, true," replied Bothwell, with a louring eye; "but I have promised to this girl"----

"Not marriage! thou wouldst not say that," laughed Sir Gilbert. "No, no; thou wouldst not be such a jack-a-lent (the blood rushed to the Earl's brow). But if thou fearest that Jane Gordon should hear of thy wandering fancies, why, bethink thee that Noltland is a strong castle, and that the rocks of this islet are washed by the deep salt sea. It would form a prison for the giants of Amadis, then how much more for one poor fragile girl?"

Whatever Bothwell thought of this insidious advice, or how much it coincided with the ideas that were then beginning to obtrude on his mind, we shall not say, but now return to Konrad.

He sat by the lonely shore, and its waves rolled up the shelving rock to his feet. He was in a waking dream, and felt neither the cold night wind or the misty spray of the sea as they blew on his fevered cheek. A sense of desolation pressed heavily on his heart, and it was not unmingled with a desire of vengeance on Bothwell. But Konrad was alike brave and generous, and the sentiments of jealousy and rage, that made him at one time grip the haft of his Norwegian knife, were almost immediately stilled by those of a gentler nature--pity and commiseration.

He now felt both for Anna, and felt acutely, though she had so heedlessly and ruthlessly cast him from her heart and remembrance. Chance had thrown them together on a foreign shore, and feeling, he knew not why, an intense distrust of the sincerity of that gay and glittering noble, whom she had preferred to an earlier and better lover, he resolved to watch over her safety and interests in secresy, and with the affection of a friend; for he now deemed her no longer worthy of a deeper sentiment of regard--and yet withal he felt that he loved her still--yea passionately, as of old, though hope was dead for ever.

The moon arose at the distant horizon, and cold and pale its light fell on the restless ocean; clearly and brightly the stars sparkled in the dark blue sky, and at times the red wavering streamers of the north shot across it.

High and grim in all its baronial pride and feudal strength, the embattled keep of the Scottish stronghold towered above the slimy rocks--slimy with drifting spray and drenched seaweed. Three long flakes of yellow lustre streamed out into the night from the grated windows of the hall. One starlike ray shone from a chamber in the guest-row, and long and wistfully Konrad gazed at it, for he believed it was the apartment of Anna, and his conjecture was right.

Young and enthusiastic, he felt that many a vision of future fame and happiness had perished now, and passed away for ever, with the passion that had cherished such dreams--dreams that arise only in the noon of life and love.

The moon went down into the dark blue ocean; the diamond stars faded one by one, and the first rays of the early morning began to play upon the floating clouds, to tinge the east with orange hues, and tip the turrets of Noltland with warm light; but Konrad was still seated by the murmuring sea.

All sense of time and place had been forgotten, or were merged in one idea.

And that idea was Anna.

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*THE SEPARATION.*

Why no tender word at parting----
Why no kiss, no farewell take?
Would that I could but forget thee--
Would this throbbing heart might break!
Is my face no longer blooming?
Are my eyes no longer bright?
Ah! my tears have made them dimmer,
And my cheeks are pale and white.
_Edmonstoune-Aytoun._

"I have resolved!" exclaimed the Earl, breaking a long silence, as he walked to and fro with Ormiston on the bartisan of Noltland next morning. "With a prospect before me so magnificent--the attainment of the administration, the civil and military power on one hand, the sweets of successful rivalry and vengeance on the other! Oh! I would be worse than mad to forego it, by marring my union with the sister of Huntly, and for what? This love so suddenly conceived, and for a foreign girl!"

"Cocknails! but now thou speakest like a man of mettle!" growled Hob through his coal-black beard.

"If," said the Earl musingly; "if I could love her as I once loved one who--pshaw! why these old thoughts? Anna is not my first love; and have I not felt how feeble, how falling, how sickly, have been the sentiments entertained for all who have succeeded _her_?"

"Then thou wilt sail"----

"From Westeray; and, like AEneas, leaving my Dido behind me."

"Right! Sir Gilbert shewed me letters from Lethington the secretary, and his brother Sir James of Pittendriech, wherein they state that her Majesty is most anxious for your return, and daily groweth more weary of her husband; that Huntly (the moment thou art fairly espoused to his sister) will strike some vigorous blow to lay for ever prostrate the adherents of Morton and of Moray."

"What a jack-a-lent! what a blockhead I have been, to give way thus to my passion for the niece of Rosenkrantz! I have done myself, and so may mar a thousand giant schemes of triumph and ambition."

"I thought that sense would return when perhaps too late; but the affair is not irredeemable."

"Ha!--how?"

"A marriage tie blessed by yon mad priest cannot be very indissoluble, and the damsel may easily be got rid of."

"Dog of hell!" exclaimed the Earl furiously, "wouldst thou counsel me to murder her?"

"Nay," replied Hob sternly; "may God forgive thee the thought, so freely as I do this foul offence; but as Sir Gilbert offers to keep thy troublesome lemane, let him do so a-God's name. He is a gay man and a gallant, this old Balfour--we know him well; and, cock and pie! I warrant he will soon find means to turn this damsel's sorrow into joy."