Chapter V: Part 5

Poor Anna knew not until now the truth of what she had long ago suspected--the vile nature of the dwelling to which Morton had so infamously consigned her. Now it all burst on her like a flash of lightning, and she alternately became crimson with shame and anger, or pale as death with a mortal sickness of heart; for she saw in the sudden change of Mary's demeanour, and the half quizzical, half pitying eyes of the nobles, and the disdain of the maids of honour, how lightly her story was valued.

A perfect paralysis seemed to possess her; near the steps of the throne she sank upon her knees, with her hands clasped, her hair falling in clusters over her face, and her heart full of agony, as she thought of her father's pride, her mother's worth--of Konrad's slighted love, and old Sir Erick's kindness.

Bothwell, anxious for her immediate removal, animated alike by pity and anger, now approached the throne, and said--

"May it please your majesty, as Lord High Admiral, I was last night made acquainted by the Water Bailie of Leith, that there is now at anchor within a bowshot of the Mussel-cape, a certain ship of Denmark, the Biornen, commanded by Christian Alborg, who will sail with this evening's tide; and I move that this poor frantic damsel, who declares herself to be a subject of his Danish majesty, be sent on board, and transmitted to her home; and, if a hundred merks of silver will smooth the way to her, my purse shall not be lacking."

"Well, so be it! The presence of this vessel is indeed opportune," replied the too facile queen. "_De tout mon coeur!_ let her be removed, and this weary council be adjourned for to-day, that we may ramble into the garden, and see the bright sunshine and the autumnal flowers."

Obedient to a glance from his friend and chief, Sir John Hepburn, with a few archers, approached to raise Anna, but she started to her full height, shook back her heavy locks, and full, with flashing eyes and nostrils curled with scorn, she gazed upon Bothwell.

Pale and rigid as a statue, all save the curving lip and dilating eye, with an aspect serenely savage, she gazed upon her betrayer. Oh! at that moment, wildly as she loved him, Anna could have stabbed him to the heart.

"Farewell, Bothwell!" she said, with an icy smile; "in that dark time which is coming, when sorrow and remorse shall harrow up thy coward soul, thou wilt recall the passage of this hour--the wrongs I have endured--the shame and the contumely I have suffered. Hah! and in that dark time of ruin and regret, (and she shook her clenched hand like an enraged Pythoness,) remember Anna!"

And, as Bolton led her hurriedly away, the memory of that keen bright glance from her wild dark eyes haunted Bothwell, when the hour she foretold came upon him.

"Jesu!" said Mary, crossing herself; "what an eye! what a glance! she must be an ill woman and a vile, to look thus. Argyle! _ma belle Soeur!_--let us to the garden!" She here turned round, as usual, expecting Darnley's proffered band to lead her forth. He was again whispering to Mariette Hubert, from whose blushing cheeks and downcast eyes there was no mistaking the purport of his addresses. Mary thought how different were the days,

"When love was young, and Darnley kind!"

A shade crossed her snowy brow, a haughty smile curled her beautiful lip, and she said somewhat peremptorily--

"Lord Bothwell--your hand!"

The Earl instantly drew off his perfumed gloves, and led the Queen from the chair of state. The whole of the nobles rose, the archers of the guard drew back the heavy arras, the yeomen unfolded a strong glass door that opened towards the palace garden and ancient cloisters of the Abbey church--and from thence the Earl led Mary to her favourite seat, near the venerable and elaborate dial-stone, while Darnley, her ladies, and several courtiers, followed in groups.

*CHAPTER XVII.*

*THE BOUQUET.*

How near I am to happiness
That Earth exceeds not! not another like it:
The treasures of the deep are not so precious
As the concealed comforts of a man,
Lock'd up in woman's love.
_Women beware Women, 1567._

It was now, as we have said, October.

The falling leaves were brown and crisped; the air was cool and balmy; but in lieu of the whistling of birds that marks the merry summer, there was heard at times the harsh screaming of aquatic fowls, as they passed landward. The royal garden, which lies to the northward of the palace, was then (as now) overlooked on the south by the embattled tower of James V., the carved buttresses and aisle windows of the chapel royal; and on the east by the old turreted chateau of Mary of Lorraine. The walks were then sheltered by thick and lofty hedges of privet, thorn, and holly, according to the ancient fashion of landscape gardening; but the latter alone retained their dark-green hue, and were studded by scarlet berries. There were balustraded terraces, a wilderness of walks and hedges, treillages, and little canals; but the chief ornaments were the mossy old fruit-trees, which had been planted and reared by the industrious monks of Abbot Ballantyne's days.

The sun shone joyously in the wide blue sky, and the old towers of the palace, and the square campanile of the church of _SANCTAE CRUCIS_ gleamed in the warm light. The few flowers of the season, which the care and skill of the royal gardener reared under glasses in a sheltered place, expanded their little cups and scentless petals in the warmth; and inspired with joy by the bright sunshine and the fragrant perfume that a slight shower had drawn from the greensward, and the box-edged parterres, Mary's heart expanded like that of a beautiful bird; and forgetful of the cares of state, and the bearded conclave she had just left, she clapped her white hands, and with a girlish playfulness, (that would have horrified John Knox, and petrified the General Assembly into stone,) half hummed and half sang one of Ronsard's sonnets.

Then, seating herself by the beautifully-carved horologue which bears her name, and is still situated in the centre of the garden, fixed upon a pedestal that rises from three octagon steps, she continued her sonnet, while playing alternately with a bouquet presented to her by the keeper of the gardens, and with Fidele, her little Italian greyhound--the gift of the Conte di Mezezzo, the Savoyard ambassador.

"Of all the poems of Pierre, le gentilhomme Vendomois," began the Earl, as he leant against the pedestal, over which there drooped a venerable weeping ash, and commenced a conversation, because he saw that Darnley and the ladies of the court were promenading at a distance, and that none observed him save his friend the Knight of Bolton. "Yes, madam; of all Ronsard's poems, none has pleased me so much as that addressed to your majesty, in which he portrays three nations--Scotland, France, and England--contending around your cradle for which should possess you."

"And Monsieur Jupiter, to whom the three fair sisters referred their claims, was most favourable to my dear and beautiful France. Ah! Jupiter was very sensible which I should love most," said the Queen; then, after a pause, she added--"O what a glorious lover Pierre Ronsard must be!"

"Oh, yes! think how tender are these lines;" and the Earl sang with a good voice--

"Bon jour, mon coeur; bon jour, ma douce vie;
Bon jour, mon oeil; bon jour, ma chere amie;
He! bon jour, ma touts belle.
Ma mignardise, bon jour,
Mes delices, mon coeur.
Mon doux printempe, ma douce fleur nouvelle."

"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed Mary, with sudden animation; "I last heard those lines"--

"At the Palace de la Tournelles."

"One night"----

"Under your window?"

"Then, Mother Mary! thou knowest the singer!"

"'Twas I!" said the Earl, with a low voice.

Mary coloured deeply.

"'Twas I!" he added; "on the night before your marriage with the Dauphin, and my departure to Italy."

"Lord Earl, thou hast really a voice," said Mary, unwilling to perceive the implication of his words.

"Love will achieve any thing, when it desires to please."

"Love!" laughed the joyous Queen, in her tone of raillery. "I do not think thou very well knowest what love ought to be."

"Ah! say not so. When once kindled in a true heart," said the Earl, laying his hand upon his breast, "it can only be extinguished by death."

"_Ma foi!_ but when a heart is so flexible that a sudden flame expands within it to-day for one, and to-morrow for another," replied Mary, (thinking of her gay husband, whose white feather was visible at times above the holly hedges), "and can never love as--as one would wish to be loved. 'Tis oddly said, that few are wedded to those they first loved."

"True, madam," said the Earl, with a lower voice; "my own poor heart hath known that too bitterly."

"Indeed!" laughed the Queen, "since when?"

"Since I first beheld thee, adorable Mary! a young and smiling maiden of seventeen, standing by the side of the puny Dauphin at the Tournelles, as his affianced bride," replied the Earl, as half kneeling he lightly kissed her hand, while all the warm passion he had first cherished for her, in the days of his heedless youth, swelled up in his bosom.

"This is too much, presumptuous lord!" said the Queen, suddenly becoming grave, as she rose from her seat, and moved slowly away. "I did but begin in jest, and thou dost end in earnest."

"So it is ever with love, adorable madam!" replied the Earl, clasping his hands.

"Silence!" said the Queen trembling; "thy words are full of sin. One whisper of this to Darnley, and thou art a lost man;" and she glided away like a haughty Juno, with her long train and veil floating behind her. At this threat Bothwell's heart glowed alike with love and anger; but he remained irresolute, and confounded by her sudden transition from gaiety to gravity, and watched her approach the postern of James V.'s tower. As she was about to enter, two aged, lean, and shrivelled hands, were extended from the narrow-grated loophole of a strong and vaulted chamber in the basement story, and these immediately arrested Mary's attention. Folding her arms meekly upon her bosom, she bowed her head, and on her pure and snowy brow the forbidden sign of the cross was traced, and the hands were immediately withdrawn within the grating.

There, in that damp vault, lay Sir James Tarbet, a poor old priest, who had been discovered saying mass at midnight in the ruined chapel of St. Anthony on the Craig; and for this heinous crime had been consigned to a dungeon by those champions of toleration, who enforced the iron laws of the new _regime_.

Softened by the old man's blessing, and the sentiments it called up within her, Mary, as she entered the tower, bowed to the Earl in token of forgiveness, and dropped (but whether by chance or design, the usually acute Magister Absalom sayeth not) her bouquet, of which the enamoured lord immediately possessed himself, and placed in his bosom, bowing almost to the earth as she disappeared. His heart beat like lightning; a new and triumphant glow expanded like a flame within it, and he seemed to tread on air.

"_Parbleu!_" said the Marquis d'Elboeuff, who had observed this scene, and came pirouetting along the walk, looking like a great grasshopper, with his long rapier and short mantle; "ha! ha! art thou still for the Salique law?"

"Blockhead!" muttered the Earl impatiently.

"Remember that clause of it which saith, 'He who squeezes the hand of a free woman shall pay a fine of fifteen golden sols.'"

"Ah! but callest thou the queen a free woman, when she is a slave to the ten thousand caprices of yonder great baboon, her husband?" said the Earl, as, with a bitterness he could not conceal, he abruptly left the Marquis, and retired from the garden.

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

*JEALOUSY WITHOUT LOVE.*

_Eud._--No! we must part. 'Twill ask whole years of sorrow
To purge away this guilt. Then do not think
Thy loss in me, is worth one dropping tear;
But if thou wouldst be reconciled to Heaven,
First sacrifice to Heaven that fatal passion
Which caused thy fall.--Farewell, forget the lost!
_Siege of Damascus._

In the Earl's bosom every spark of affection for Anna had long since died away, and his anger at her sudden appearance, in such a presence, and with such a charge against him, now robbed her almost of his pity. After a day and night spent in revelling, in the city, next evening he returned to his own apartments that overlooked the southern court of the palace, rejoicing alike at his narrow escape from disgrace, which was entirely owing to Morton's mismanagement, in consigning Anna to the guardianship of Alison Craig, and at his sudden fortune in finding himself so favoured by Mary; and, with a rapture almost childish, he kissed the flower she had dropped so opportunely at the postern door, and which, like a treasure, he still preserved.

But the Earl knew not that in avoiding Scylla he had fallen into Charybdis; for on ascending to his apartments, up the stair to which he was formally preceded by French Paris and little Calder, he found himself confronted by one, of whom he now thought very little, but whose dark eyes--so soft, so pleading, and so imploring--he was confounded and abashed to meet;--the Countess!

She looked paler and thinner than when they had last met, and a pang of remorse wrung the Earl's heart as he surveyed her beautiful and slender form, so evidently wasted by sorrow and suffering; but the momentary sentiment passed away; ambition resumed its wonted power in his heart; and, though he kissed his wife's brow, it was done with an air so cold and conventional that she withdrew from his embrace, and at that time he cordially wished her ten thousand leagues away.

A moment the peer gazed upon her fair and sinless brow, and the steady gaze of her full dark eye, and he felt himself immensely her inferior in nobility of spirit, in truth, and love, and honour; and to his overweening pride that momentary sense of humiliation was bitter in the extreme.

"Welcome to Holyrood, Jane!" said he, assuming his usual gaiety of manner. "I warrant thou art come to upbraid me for playing the truant so long from thee and the bonny banks of Bothwell."

"Nay, my lord, I am on the way to my father's castle of Strathbolgie in the Garioch, and I seek but one night's shelter in these apartments. To-morrow I will continue my journey."

"Heaven be praised!" thought the Earl, who found it necessary to affect that proper regard which his cold expression showed plainly to have evaporated. "Seat thyself beside me, bonnibel--thou lookest sickly and ill. How comes this?"

"Canst thou ask?" she replied, with a mournful glance, and quietly withdrawing from the arm with which he had endeavoured to encircle her. "Thou hast been absent from me very long."

"And thou art tremendously angry with me, ladybird--is it not so?"

"Oh, no!" she replied gently; "but sorrowful--exceeding sorrowful."

"And so thou lovest me still, Jane?"

"More than thou dost me," she replied, with her eyes full of tears; and Bothwell felt one small ray of his old love kindle in his heart.

"I would a thousand times rather that thou didst reproach me bitterly than weep thus, Jane," said the Earl. "Thy scorn I might repel; thine anger I might meet; but thy tears--now, now, for Heaven's sake and thine own, be pacified; for I do love thee fondly still."

"Love me!" reiterated the Countess, half suffocated by tears.

"Do not doubt me, dear one," replied the Earl, in whose bosom at that moment there was indeed something of a struggle; "be pacified, bonnibel! See--here is a charming bouquet for thee; its perfume is alike reviving and delicious. I had it from the queen."

The Countess made no reply, but her tears fell faster.

"And she, having heard of thy arrival, desired me to give it to thee," said the lying Earl, glad to say any thing that would please her.

"Hah!" exclaimed the Countess, sharply, setting her teeth and growing deadly pale; "is it so? To me? thou shalt see me inhale its perfume, _poisoned though it be_--for, oh, my husband! even death at thy hands is welcome." And tremblingly she pressed her beautiful face into the bouquet, and then turned pale and placidly to the Earl.

"Poisoned!" he exclaimed, with astonishment. "Thou art mad, Jane! Pshaw! dost thou think that Mary of Scotland, (that being, pure as the new fallen snow,) is like her fiendish gudemother, Catherine of Medici, a vendor of poisoned flowers, and gloves, and ribbons? _Benedicite_! Jane of Huntly, shame on thy vile suspicions!"

"Well, I thank Heaven it is all as thou sayest!" replied the Countess, mildly; "but after all I have heard of the love passages between Mary and thee at Hermitage, I expected somewhat worse."

"Love passages? Woman, what hast thou dared to say?" asked the Earl, gravely.

"Only a hint of what I have heard."

"From whom?"

"The Earl of Sutherland."

"Babbler that he is!" exclaimed Bothwell, with a dark frown. "He hath foully lied, and so become guilty of lese-majesty."

"Oh! do not look on me thus, my dear lord--I can bear any thing but your frown. Thou wilt bring war, and death, and shame on the houses of Bothwell and Aboyne; but I mean not to upbraid thee. As thou sowest, so shalt thou reap; but for thy own sake, for the sake of thine ancestors, their name and fame and honour, the honour of me, whose peace thou hast destroyed, whose love thou hast scorned, whose ties thou hast forgotten, whose prospects thou hast blighted; I implore thee, by each and all of these, to pause, lest thou art crushed by the fall of the castle thine ambition is building."

"I thank thee, Lady Bothwell," replied the Earl, rising and putting on his bonnet, the lofty plumes of which he shook with ineffable hauteur; "I thank thee for these good intentions and kind regards, though, by the mass! I know not thine aim. And so thou art bound for Strathbolgie on the morrow, my gay Gordon? Who of my people accompany thee? Is it long Cockburn of Langton, with his lances of the Merse?"

"Nay; 'tis the Earl of Sutherland."

A cloud gathered on Bothwell's brow. The Earl of Sutherland had been a lover of the Countess from her girlhood, and had only given up his faithful suit on her accepting Bothwell; so there was a very unpleasant association of ideas in the mind of the latter, who was generally apt to view incidents through an evil medium.

"I trust the Lord Sutherland is well," he said scornfully; "and that his bare-legged gillies, in brogues and breacan, will escort thee through Strathbolgie, as safely as Bothwell's knights in their Milan mail would have done."

"His sister, the Lady Elinora, accompanies us," said the Countess colouring deeply, even at the suspicions of this husband, who loved her now no more.

"Then, my bonnibel, when thou goest hence to-morrow, fail not to make my very particular commendations to the Lady Elinora Sutherland, and the noble lord her brother, and so the benison of God be with thee, and him, and her;" and making a profound bow, he swaggered from the apartment, and hurried down-stairs, glad to escape from the presence of the unhappy Countess.

His heart was moved when he saw her sink despairingly down on a cushioned window-seat; but her having mentioned the Earl of Sutherland, had armed his better spirit against her; and, not ill pleased that she had given a legitimate cause for anger and jealousy, affording him an apology to himself, he hurriedly crossed the palace yard, and without any defined purpose, entered the Artillery Park, a large common that lay to the eastward, and there he gave vent to his exciting reflections.

Mary was uppermost in his thoughts. The _flower_ had sealed his fate, and that of Darnley too! There had now opened before him a new vista of the most alluring kind--a vista which he determined to pursue. The love of the most beautiful of her sex--one occupying the summit of earthly rank, with his own indomitable pride, ambition, and obstinacy, led him on. Were Darnley, the sickly boy-king, to die of the premature disease that so evidently preyed upon him, or were he luckily to be slain in one of the innumerable brawls and feuds in which his life of debauchery and intrigue involved him, then Bothwell might hope to hold Mary, the bright, the beautiful, and the winning, in his arms. He already felt the sceptre of Scotland in his grasp; he saw the house of Hepburn seated on its throne; and Moray, Morton, Mar, and all who had ever hated; feared, and wronged, or triumphed over him, in the days of his exile and poverty, grovelling at his feet.

If Mary (as he was bold enough to believe) loved him in secret, as a man of courage and gallantry it was _his_ part to progress, as she could not make advances towards him. But Darnley must be removed; and how? for, though weak and ailing, he might live long enough; and now was the time to strike some vigorous political stroke, which might raise him (Bothwell) to the giddy summit of his hopes, or hurl him for ever to destruction and infamy.

"The die is cast!" he exclaimed. "To this will I devote my life, my soul, my existence; and my very energy will raise me even as a demigod above my compeers. Yes, she loves me! Curse on my blinded folly, that saw it not before; and thrice cursed be this lordling of the Lennox, that bars my path to rapture and to power!"

"Pho! hast thou not thy dagger?" said a voice.

The Earl turned, and beheld the lairds of Ormiston and Bolton; the latter looking pale, and fierce, and agitated.

"How now, stout Bolton," said the Earl, "what hath ruffled thy easy temper, and clouded that merry face of thine?"

"By the Rood of Broomholme! I will slay him, even as Fynart slew his ancestor at Lithgow Bridge, by one thrust of a sharp rapier--yea, in the face of men!" exclaimed Bolton.

"Whom meanest thou?"

"The Lord Darnley!"

"Soh! a rare speech, and a bold one too, for the lieutenant of the guard!" said the Earl. "This is treason."

"But even-handed justice though," began Ormiston; "and by"----

"Now, peace with thy 'cock and pie.'"

"Bear with me a moment, my lord and friend, and I will tell thee how and whence this anger sprung."

But the cause thereof is of so much importance to this history, that it deserves a chapter to itself.

*CHAPTER XIX.*

*MARIETTE AND DARNLEY.*

Lightly from fair to fair he flew.
And loved to plead, lament, and sue;
Suit lightly won, and short-lived pain!
For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.
_Scott._

Mariette Hubert, the sister of Nicholas Hubert or French Paris, one of Mary's favourite maids of honour, was the belle-ideal of a lively Parisian girl of eighteen; her eyes were large, and dark, and laughing; her features regular, piquant, and beautiful; her teeth like a row of orient pearls. She was always like a laughing Hebe: fresh, blooming, and smiling. Her black, glossy hair, was drawn upwards, from temples whose snowy whiteness contrasted well with the sable wreaths. She was ever good humoured, and gay to a fault, with a strong dash of wilfulness and coquetry.

In drollery, her lover, Sir John Hepburn, who had admired her long, was her very counterpart; though, by the influence of circumstances and the manners of the time, he was impetuous, obstinate, and quarrelsome; but there were few gallants who were otherwise at that factious and intriguing court. Mariette, however, could smile him out of his anger, laugh him out of his obstinacies, coquette with him to please him, and with others to please herself. She could prattle, too, and caress him with a playfulness that were quite enchanting; and many a fierce feud and desperate brawl were prevented by her tact, and by the power she could exert over her lover, who, in virtue of his command in Mary's archer guard, was hourly brought in angry contact with the armed nobles and their poor but proud followers; but never was he more enchanted than when he discovered that his pretty and provoking Mariette, was a better shot with the long bow at the butts, than the best archer in the royal guard.

Though young Hepburn loved Mariette deeply and enthusiastically, he had failed in inspiring the volatile and fanciful French girl with a passion equal to his own.

She was gratified to find herself the object of attention, from one who stood so high in the favour of Mary and the great Earl of Bothwell, and who was esteemed one of the handsomest gallants at a court, which, though shorn of the splendour that had characterised it under the late King James, nevertheless retained within its circle all that was splendid in Scotland. With all her coquetry, she dreaded to trifle with the jealousy of her assiduous lover; for there was in his bosom a latent spark, that a little ruffling fanned into a flame; and in the use of his sword, he possessed that cavalier-like prompitude, which was the leading characteristic of the Scottish gentleman before he lost caste.

The love he bore Mariette had become so much a part of himself, that Hepburn was no longer like other men, or what he had formerly been. He never had an idea in his head, of which Mariette did not form a part. This passion affected his very manner, and interfered with his duties and occupations, imparting a newness and peculiarity to his bearing and manner, which drew upon him the raillery of Mary and her ladies, and the wicked waggery of the fair object herself.

Though never perfectly certain of possessing her whole and undivided heart, Hepburn received all the encouragement a lover could desire; for Mariette loved to keep him in leading-strings, and attracted or repelled him just as she was in the mood to dally or be petulant; and so between hope and fear, and love and joy, a year had stolen away; and though Hepburn fully considered Mariette as his ultimate wife, he knew not when the volatile girl, who wore his bracelets and rings, and gave him ribbons and ringlets in exchange, would yield her consent.

But a change came over the spirit of his dream, and suddenly he discovered (he knew not why) a change in Mariette.

He had frequently observed the profligate young king by her side, and then he began to experience a new and hitherto unknown agony gnawing at his heart, and from thence it seemed to spread through every nerve and fibre. When they were together, he followed with painful interest every movement and expression of Darnley, and could easily perceive that his eyes were full of ardour when he gazed on Mariette, and that her downcast face, so interesting by its waving locks and long dark lashes, wore a soft smile whenever he whispered in her ear.

The lover's impetuous heart became torn by wrath and jealousy, and terrible ideas of revenge began to float before him; for, daring and profligate as he knew Darnley to be, he was more than ever astonished at his cool presumption in addressing Mariette Hubert as a lover under his very eyes.

On the day succeeding that we have mentioned, when the famous scene took place at the dial-stone in the royal garden, the lieutenant of the archers, watching a time when the indefatigable royal _roue_ left Mariette alone, approached her. She was seated on a stone sofa; and she who was wont to have eyes only for him, neither saw nor heard him, till he lightly touched her soft shoulder, and then she raised her blushing face, which immediately became ashy pale.

"Thou seemest absent, dear Mariette," said he.

"I wish that thou wert absent, too," she replied, pettishly, plucking leaf by leaf a flower the king had given her.

"Mariette, look at me. What hath come over thee? Art thou bewitched?" asked the young man, in a voice of anger and tenderness curiously blended; for he could not stoop to acknowledge the suspicions which filled his heart with bitterness and rage. "Wherefore art thou now so strange, so altered, so reserved, to one who loves thee so well, whose every thought is of thee, and whose whole heart is full of thee? Oh, unkind Mariette!"

She changed colour and trembled; but, without raising her dark eyes, continued in confusion and abstraction to pluck the leaves of the flower.

"Grant me patience, Heaven!" muttered her impetuous lover, whose sorrow still overpowered his rising wrath; "dearest Mariette, the gossips of our court (God's malison on them!) say that thy heart is changed towards me; is--is this true?"

"No."

"By St. Bothan! that no sounds too like yes to mean anything else," exclaimed Bolton, giving way to his passion and jealousy; "but if thou forgettest my faithful love, and preferrest the passing admiration of this silken squire o' dames--this carpet-king and holiday moth--whose proffered love is alike insulting and dishonourable, marry, come up! I say, Mademoiselle Mariette--I wish thee joy!" and, with a profound bow and glance of irony, he turned away.

Stung by his words and manner, which were partly assumed, Mariette Hubert, who had been repenting the too serious encouragement given, and still more a fatal promise made to the young king, now bent all her thoughts upon him, and endeavoured to banish Hepburn from her memory; while he, with all a lover's indecision, walked slowly away, deploring in his heart the outburst, which he was too proud and still too indignant to repair. Mariette gazed after him with her cheek flushing, and her dark eyes full of fire, and so they parted--for the last time.

"Fool that I was to love a Frenchwoman!" thought the lover.

That night, as was his wont and duty, Hepburn, as lieutenant of the guard, made his round of the archer sentinels posted at the various gates of the palace, which was then, as we have said, a very irregular but spacious edifice, containing five courts, with various offices, stables, falconries, and kennels attached.

The night was dark and still, and a few large drops of rain plashed on the pavement as he passed through the palace yard; while the red sheet-lightning, flashing in the north, revealed at times the black outline of the Calton hill. Hepburn, in half armour, with his visor up, entered the gardens by that ancient doorway which faces the south, and is ornamented by the Scottish arms and order of the Thistle. The clock of the chapel tolled ten, and on passing the corner of James V.'s tower, he looked up to the tall casements of the Queen's apartments, to discover the usual light in that of Mariette, though he knew she would not be visible to him to-night. Every window was dark as that of the deserted chamber in which Rizzio was murdered, and the floor of which was yet stained with his blood.

As Hepburn stood among the shrubbery, he perceived two figures approach with all the caution of conspirators; and at once discovered one of them, from his stature and bearing, to be the king. He was muffled in a mantle, and wore a mask and coat-of-mail. The other was his favourite page, Master Andrew Macaige, and they carried between them a long light ladder, which they had purloined from the stable yard.

Darnley clapped his hands, and then, from amid the square colossal mass of James V.'s tower, which was all buried in darkness and obscurity, a single ray of light shot forth into the garden, a female appeared, and, while thoughts of grief, and wrath, and horror, poured like a deluge upon the mind of Hepburn, he recognised his long-loved Mariette Hubert! He remained in a stupor, and heard the ladder jar as the adventurous prince placed it against the wall, and saw him, after wrapping his mantle round his left arm, and belting his sword higher up, ascend with considerable agility into the apartment, after which the window was immediately closed, and the light extinguished. The page carried off the ladder to a secret place, not three yards from where Hepburn stood, and, rolling himself up in his mantle, lay composedly down upon it to sleep until he was summoned by the king.

The spell that had weighed like an incubus upon the faculties of the lover, now passed away. His first impulse prompted him to put his foot upon the page's neck and strangle him; his second, to wait the reappearance of the king, and slay him without mercy. But these fierce promptings were left unacted, and he turned away to seek Bothwell, of whose secret hopes and long-cherished rivalry and hatred to Darnley he had seen so many proofs. He raised his visor higher, for he felt almost suffocated as he hurried through the cloisters. There he met Hob of Ormiston, also searching for the Earl, who, an archer informed them, had just entered the Artillery Park.

With a manner that was marked by the deepest excitement, the young knight related, not very coherently, the substance of the preceding affair; and, unseen in the dark, a quiet laugh spread over Hob's malicious visage at the wrath and disappointment of his friend; but it was otherwise with the Earl, who foresaw in all this something to further his own ambitious schemes.

"I sought thee, Bothwell," said Hob, "to say, that an especial gentleman of the Lord Morton's train (no other than the knight of Spott), hath come with the Earl's best commendations to your lordship, and to say that he and the Lord Moray, and one or two others thou wottest of, are even now assembled at the castle of Craigmillar, where the queen went about sunset, and where they crave your lordship's suit, service, and attendance. I have ordered our horses!"--

"Thou ravest, Ormiston. Morton and Moray are my mortal foes; and truly no fault is it of mine that they breathe the breath of this life to-nigh! Anent what is this meeting?"

"The Lord Darnley," replied Ormiston, lowering his gruff voice.

"Ha!"

"And the best mode to rid Scotland and the queen too of his foolish misgovernment, and the tyranny of Earl Matthew and the house of Lennox, who, thou knowest, would gladly cut off thee and them, and every body but themselves, if an opportunity occurred."

"By Jove, Hob! thou art a rash knave, and a bold one, to speak thus; but thou knowest that the queen declined peremptorily the divorce offered her by several Lords of the Parliament."

"True; hence this meeting, at which thou art expected to be leader and chief, to obtain"----

"What?"

"A divorce from Darnley! that Mary may marry again, for her own happiness and the commonweal of Scotland. Thou well knowest how miserable this popinjay squire maketh her. And are we--bearded men who rebelled against James V.--to submit to this new caterpillar? I trow not!"

Bothwell's bosom glowed as Ormiston spoke; but he said sadly--

"Thou forgettest she is of the Church of Rome, and that, being so, she may not wed again. So what availeth a divorce?"

"Psha! 'tis long since I thought much about the Church of Rome."

"I am sure his Holiness, poor carle! deplored thy loss; but here is French Paris with our horses. Dismount, Nick, and give thy dapple to Bolton; so now for Craigmillar--ho! I go at all events."

They mounted and set forth by the old bridle road that ascended the hill of St. John, and in a few minutes the great facade of the palace, the tall and spectral edifices of the Canongate, the city, with its walls and gates and twinkling lights, was left behind, as they debouched upon the open country, which was all wood, and marsh, and pasture land, from the outer walls to the castle of the Provost. On their right, for a mile or two, lay the common muir of the city, bordered by the bleak hills of Braid; and on the left lay Salisbury's ridgy craigs and Arthur's seat, with the deep blue loch of Duddingstone washing its base, reflecting the stars in its bosom, and the dark shadow of the wooded knoll, where, then a ruin, lay the old Saxon kirk in solitude.

Skirting the lake, they struck into the horse-way, that, between thickets of fir, led straight to the venerable stronghold of the knights of Gourtoun, which they saw looming before them in the starlight, with its great square keep and double flanking towers, barbican, and ditch.

*CHAPTER XX.*

*THE PLOT THICKENS--THE CONFERENCE OF CRAIGMILLAR.*

There's many a feud still slumbering in its ashes,
Whose embers yet are red. Nobles we have
Stout as old Greysteel, and as hot as Bothwell.
_Auchindrane._

The celebrated conference of Craigmillar, is recorded too particularly in our national history to be expatiated on here; nevertheless, a brief notice is necessary to preserve the unity of the Magister Absalom's narrative.

In the apartment of the Lord Argyle, in that old feudal fortress, met Bothwell and his brother-in-law Huntly, with Moray--openly their friend, and secretly their foe--for frequently had they conspired each other's death by secret fraud and open violence; and Moray had personally defeated, and caused the death of the old Earl, George of Huntly, at the recent battle of Corrichie. There, too, came the secretary of state, the great Sir William Maitland of Lethington, who, notwithstanding his skill in government and statecraft, lost his head in the desperate game of politics seven years after.

This conference was held around the dais on which stood the couch of Argyle, who was labouring under a severe illness.

Long and eloquently the talented secretary expatiated on the evils that had resulted to the Scottish people, from Mary's ill-assorted marriage with the young and profligate Lord of Darnley; the rebellion it had brought forth among the adherents of Chatelherault, in the west; among the Gordons in the north; and the general discontent it had occasioned by the peculiar religious tenets of the house of Lennox--a marriage against which Master Knox had bitterly and abusively inveighed, and which, to the loving, trusting, and devoted Mary, had become a source of hourly misery; for the passing love of the profligate, unmindful of her exalted rank, her matchless beauty, her sweetness of manner and charming vivacity, had wandered to many inferior and unworthy objects. Among these he had squandered his patrimony, and the revenues of a crown which he disgraced; thus, completely estranging the heart of the queen, by a career of insult, neglect, and riot; by the hourly scandals he committed in her palaces, and chief of all by the murder of her harmless secretary--thus, making the breach irreparable by his lacking the art and condescension to repair it.

He spoke, too, of those powerful barons who were still enduring banishment as accessories to the destruction of the hapless Rizzio, whose overweening pride and Italian birth had been his only crime; barons, noble in descent and venerated in name--the kinsmen of those he addressed; the veteran Kerr, whose ponderous ghisarma had done his country such service at Pinkiecleugh; Patrick Lord Ruthven, then lying ill of a deadly sickness in an English frontier village; the Laird of Pitarrow and the Tutor of Pitcurr all brave Scottish knights, who were enduring great misery in the land of our hereditary foes, by the seizure of their ancestral castles and the confiscation of their estates; and who, by the subversion of the house of Lennox, would be restored to their country and friends, and released from a degrading position among Englishmen--and the change he would propose, could only be effected by the divorce of the young queen from her cousin.

The Earl of Moray, (who, with Morton, had been the secretary's active colleague in the Rizzio murder,) for private and ambitious views of his own, from an early period had vehemently opposed her marriage, and even proceeded so far as to take up arms against it in 1565. He still, as we are told, "pursued the old conspiracy against the king's life," urging the divorce with all his eloquence; and it may easily be believed that, though his mortal foe, Bothwell seconded him on this occasion with an ardour the source of which the wily Earl was not slow in perceiving; and, together, they spared not the powers of invention and persuasion in obviating Argyle's many doubts that the queen "would consent to a measure so indelicate and unpleasant as a divorce."

Full of ardour, as this new ray of hope dawned upon him at a time so opportune, the Earl was more eloquent even than the subtle secretary; but the morning sun shone through the barred windows, as red amid October clouds he rose above Soltra edge, ere they came to a decision; and the Earl of Moray, and Lethington, the Machiavel of Mary's court, undertook to urge the measure upon her with all their eloquence and skill. Bothwell, with proper delicacy, and policy too, declined being one of the deputation, for whose success he would have prayed, had he not forgotten the way, in these days of reformation and misrule.

They left the apartment on their mission, for the queen was now up, and said to be walking in the castle garden, where she daily offered food to four stately swans that floated on the lake, which, in the form of a gigantic P, (the first letter of Preston, the baron's name,) occupied one half of the ground. It is still distinctly traceable to the southward of the ruins, and was then supplied by the same springs that filled the moat on the north.

Bothwell leaned against a window, watching the sunrise, and he could hear his own heart beating. Exhausted by illness, and the fatigue of the conference, Argyle, after his page had given him a drink of ptisan from a silver cup, had fallen sound asleep. Huntly, perplexed and full of bitter thoughts, turned over the leaves of an old brass-bound and wooden-boarded tome--The Chronicle of ye novel and valiant Earle of Flanders quho married the Devil; and he lay back, half-hidden in the deep recess of the tower window, and never once addressed his brother-in-law, to whose ambitious aspirations, and open neglect of his beautiful sister, he was now no stranger. And thus, though his eyes were on Jehan Trepperel's black-letter pages, it was perfectly apparent, by his knitted brows and sullen silence, that his thoughts were elsewhere.

The sun soared high in the blue vault; white as snow the morning mists rolled up from the dell that was traversed by Lothian burn, on the margin of which, a little hamlet of neatly ornamented cottages had been built for the French attendants of Mary; and these, though changed in aspect, are still known as Little France. The pale smoke ascended in columns into the pure air from the village of Niddry Mareschal, which, with its chapel, dedicated to the Holy Virgin by Wauchope, baron of Niddry, nestled among the brown autumnal copsewood to the east. The woods of Edmiston were bare and yellow; and the hill on which the lords of Craigmillar had reared up their strong square tower of the twelfth century, was arid with whins, and gloomy with clumps of the dark Scottish fir.

The time, and importance of the circumstances under which he viewed it, deeply impressed every feature of that morning landscape on the Earl's memory. His fate, and that of Scotland too, hung perhaps upon the queen's decision; and love and pride, ambition to achieve, and revenge to gratify, all kindled a glow of anxiety in his bosom, that amounted to torture.

Slowly the minutes passed on!

An hour wore away; he thought they would never reappear. Argyle still slept, and Huntly had at last become absorbed in the pages of "The Valziant Earle;" for, thanks to the tutorship of old Gavin Dunbar, he could read a little.

At last the deputation returned; Huntly closed his book, Argyle woke up, and Moray gave one of his cold and mild smiles on seeing Bothwell's paleness and anxiety.

"She hath consented, sirs?" he asked in a breathless tone.

"Nay, my lord, she declined so peremptorily that we felt our heads shake on our shoulders," replied the secretary; "and, by the rood! I never knew my statecraft and natural oiliness of tongue so far fail me in doing service to myself and friends. So here endeth all hope of a divorce; for, though King Henry hateth and feareth her, as a burnt child doth the fire, and though she wept bitterly--yea, like an abandoned Dido, at his coldness and cruelty, and small love for her--she avows that she will rather die than divorce him."

"And wherefore, thinkest thou, Sir William?"

"He was her first love, and only one; and, changed though he be, her heart yet yearneth towards him; for though a queen, we find her a very woman yet."

"Then farewell, my lords," said the Earl, assuming his cloak and mantle; "I must wend townward betimes;" and he hurried to the court-yard, summoning Ormiston and Hepburn, who had been stretched on benches by the hall fire, the one asleep, and the other nursing his wrath. They all mounted and galloped back to the city.

"Well, my lord, how went the conference?" asked Hob.

"She hath declined--proudly and wrathfully declined!"

"Cock and pie!"

"Yea, Ormiston, with anger and with tears."

"All woman's caprice. Tears! Tush! they should give thee hope. The world"--

"Malediction on the world; it smiles on all but me."

"For thy comfort, I will tell thee a project which hath just been put into my head.'

"By whom?"

"The devil, who, as thou knowest, never lies dead in the ditch. Approach me"--and, raising his visor, Ormiston whispered something to the Earl, who started; and Hepburn, who watched them with a keen eye, exclaimed--

"Speak forth, Hob of Ormiston; for I see there is assassination in thine eye, and here stand I, John Hepburn of Bolton, ready to be thine abettor, in any deed of stouthrief or bloodshed; for I am frantic in heart, frenzied in head, and ready to ride above my stirrups in the blood of the Stuarts of Lennox!"

"No, no," replied the Earl; "Hepburn, thou hast thine own wrongs, and mayest avenge them; but Ormiston, what is this thou hast said to me? No, no, get thee behind me, thou tall limb of Satan, I will have none of thy tempting."

Ormiston gave one of his deep hoarse laughs that shook every joint of the mail in which his muscular figure was sheathed; and, spurring their steeds, they rode furiously back to the city, by the old road that then passed close to the solitary chapel of St. John the Baptist, on the burgh-muir, and entered Edinburgh by the Old Horse Wynd, a street that led to the porch of Holyrood Palace.

*CHAPTER XXI.*

*FATHER TARBET.*

Let us be patient! these severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise;
But often times celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.
_Longfellow._

Three months passed away, and the spring of 1567 was at hand.

Bothwell's love for Mary had grown more and more a part of his existence, fostered as it was by the cunning of her brother the Earl of Moray, whose boundless ambition made him hope that ultimately something great might accrue to himself, were this wild passion properly moulded; for Moray had early formed a hope of usurping the throne--a hope based upon the queen's unpopularity as a catholic, his own great influence, and the helpless infancy of his nephew, James, the little crown prince of Scotland.

"He hated Darnley," says Robertson; "and was no less hated by him. In order to be revenged, he entered into a sudden friendship with Bothwell, his ancient and mortal enemy. He encouraged him to crime, by giving him hopes of marrying the queen. All this was done with a design to throw upon the queen herself the imputation of being accessory to the murder (of Darnley), and under that pretext to destroy Bothwell next--to depose and imprison her, and to retain the sceptre which he had wrested out of her hands."

The "godly" Earl saw all this in the distance; and the mistaken Bothwell, whose daring hopes and unruly ambition he fostered and cajoled, now sought his society as sedulously as before he had shunned it. He had long been rid of Anna, who had been conveyed to her native Norway, in charge of Christian Alborg, in the Biornen; and as for his Countess, who resided in her father's solitary castle of Strathbolgie, among the woods and wilds of the Garioch, he never bestowed a thought on her. While her own brother, borne away by the tide of politics, and infected by the spirit of ambition and intrigue that pervaded all, had resolved to sacrifice even her to the giant projects formed by Bothwell and the nobles of his faction.

Mary had resided alternately in Holyrood, and at her summer castle of Craigmillar; but since the scene by the garden-dial, had never again given the Earl an opportunity of addressing her alone; and, even in the presence of her courtiers, she curbed her natural vivacity and gaiety of manner, and addressed him with marked reserve.

In the old tower of Holyrood, enclosed by strong grilles and vigilant archers of the guard, Konrad passed three months in hopeless and tedious monotony--hopeless, because he knew not what might be his fate; and tedious, because unmarked by any change, save the day-dawn and the sunset, the morning visit of the archer who brought his breakfast, and the nightly one of the warder, who secured all gates and doors when St. Giles' bell struck ten.

So passed the time.

Winter came, and the bleak summit of the Calton was covered with snow; the trees around the palace, and the old orchards that crowned the Abbeyhill, were leafless and bare; and drearily looked the chapel-royal and ancient cloisters, with snow mantling their carved battlements and time-worn knosps and pinnacles.

Then the poor prisoner sighed for his native hills, and night, after night his dreams brought them before him in all their wild sublimity and picturesque desolation. Again he was among them in all the happiness of boyhood, with Anna by his side, as she had beea in the days when first he learned to love her--when they had sought the wild daisy and the mountain bee by the green base of the lofty Dovrefeldt, whose summit was glistening with impending glaciers, and crowned by eternal snows; whose old primeval forests were the abode of the bear and eagle, and its unfathomed caverns, of Druid ghosts, of demon dwarfs, and one-eyed gnomes; whose sides were terrible with chasms split by the hammer of Thor, and overshadowed by the petrified giants whom, in the days of other years, his breath had turned into stone. In his dreams, too, he heard the dash of the free and boundless ocean that rolled on his native shore; and he saw the vast Moskenstrom, that dark and fearful abyss, around which for ever boil the eternal waves; in whose deep whirl the largest wrecks are sucked like reeds down--down--to be carried through the bowels of the inner earth, and vomited on the desolate shores of the Bothnian Gulf; and from these stirring dreams of his distant home, and the love and freedom of his boyhood, poor Konrad awoke, in agony to find himself a captive and a slave, a prisoner without a crime; in a foreign land, unpitied and uncared for, and without, a hope of reprieve, save death. Often he exclaimed aloud, as he clasped his lettered hands; for loneliness had taught him to commune with himself--

"How many a giant project have I formed in secresy and solitude, when inspired alike by the ardour of youth and love, and here they end! Oh, Anna! dearly hath thy perfidy cost the heart that loved thee well."

He was often visited by Hepburn of Bolton, who, by Bothwell's directions, had him under his immediate guardianship; and, being a blunt and soldierly young man, whose heart had been as yet unseared by jealousy or disappointment, and then felt happy in the ideal love of his Mariette, to console the prisoner, brought now and then a staup of Rochelle under his mantle; and was wont to converse with him so winningly and frankly, that he learned the particulars of his story, and the errand which made him seek the Scottish shore.

"St. Bothan! but thou art a rare fellow, Master Konrad," said Bolton. "Loving this damsel, and yet labouring to restore her to the arms of a rival. Rare platonism--by the mass!"

"Sir, thou knowest not the pure sentiment of love that animated me. So refined was my passion for this fair being, that so far from being happy in possessing her, if she loved me not, I would have preferred to see her happiness increased by the love of a rival"----