Chapter IV: Part 4

"Destroy thee!" reiterated Ormiston. "Nay; but thy faintness of heart will now, at the eleventh hour, destroy all those who follow thy banner by knight's service and captainrie; by fear of Chatelherault and hatred of Lennox. Let Mary once be thine, and she dare not punish, but rather, for the reparation of her own honour, will be compelled to wed thee. Think of her alluring loveliness; and to be so near thee--so completely in thy power. Hah! art thou a child--a love-sick frightened boy--to sit there with that lackadaisy visage, when the woman thou lovest so madly is almost within arm's length? Go to! What a miserable thing is this! to see a strong and proud man the slave of a passion such as thine--a love so wild, so daring, so misdirected; his heart and soul absorbed by a wayward woman, who perhaps secretly prizes, though she outwardly affects to despise, the acquisition."

"Silence, I tell thee!" replied the Earl through his clenched teeth; but Ormiston saw, by the deep flush in his cheek--by the light that sparkled in his eye, and the tremour that passed over his frame, how deep was the impression his words had made.

"Dost thou recoil? By St. Paul! the safety of thine own house, and that of many a gallant baron, depends on the measures of this night; for to-morrow she will leave Dunbar only to return with the royal banner and all the crown vassals at her back. Take another maizer of the Rochelle, while I leave thee to ponder over what I have said, for the night wears apace."

"Begone, in God's name! and take Bolton with thee, for I would be alone."

The powerful Ormiston bore away the lieutenant of the archers as if he had been a child, and the Earl was left to his own reflections.

"He is right--he is right! To hesitate is to fall--delay is fraught with danger; and to pause, is to be immediately overwhelmed by the recoil of that fatality of which I have taken the lead. But--but--curse thee, Ormiston! why did I listen to thee?"

He drank--again and again--to deaden alike the stings of conscience and the whispers of honour--to fire yet farther his insane passion, and to make, as it were, a tool of himself.

"Revenge!" he mused; "revenge and ambition spur me on, till the dread of death and the ties of honour are alike forgotten. How irresistible has been the fatality that has led me on, from what I was to what I am to-night--a regicide! a traitor! Let me not think of it; still--still, on this hand I glut my revenge on Morton and on Mar; on the other, I grasp love and power like a kingly orb. It shall be so!" he exclaimed, after a pause; "this night I am not myself--the hand of Destiny is upon me."

He leaped from his chair, and threw off his ermined manteau; exchanged his boots for soft taffeta slippers; he laid aside the sword and belt that girt his powerful figure; he took his sheathed poniard in one hand, a lighted cresset in the other, and, leaving his apartment by a private stair which the arras concealed, rapidly traversed the corridors and staircases that led to the queen's apartment.

His face was haggard--his hands trembled--his eyes were full of fire.

As he ascended softly, taking three steps at a time, he met Ormiston, who, being well aware of the train of thought he had fired, was loitering near to watch the explosion. He paused, and the blood rushed to his brow at meeting even him at such a moment.

"Ha--whither goest thou?" he asked.

"To the tower of Black Agnes," replied Bothwell in a husky voice, while he staggered from his emotions, and the effects of the wine.

"Thou darest then at last to act like a man."

"Like a fiend, if my fate wills it! What may I not dare now, after all I have dared and done? But hark!" said the Earl, as a ghastly pallor overspread his face; "didst thou hear?"

"What?"

"That mournful cry!"

"By the mass! I heard only the skirl of a wild sea-maw."

"Hah!" said the Earl, through his clenched teeth; "comest thou from thy grave in yonder abbey church, to scare me from my purpose? Avaunt! thou shalt see that I fear thee not, and thus will trample alike on the vengeance of heaven, the fears of hell, the stings of conscience, and the slavish laws of men!" and, brandishing his cresset, he sprang up the staircase and disappeared.

Black Ormiston, that colossal ruffian, drew his long sword, and retired into a shadowy part of the corridor to keep watch and ward. The storm still rang without, though its fury was lessened, and coldly the fitful moonlight gleamed upon the frothy waste of waters that boiled around the caverned rocks. It shone at times through the strong iron gratings of the staircase window, and glinted on the dark face, the keen eyes, and bushy mustaches of the watcher, who ever and anon put forth his head to listen.

Still the wind howled--the rain pattered and hissed at intervals, and the mews shrieked like evil spirits as they were swept away on the skirts of the hurrying blast; but, lo! there came a cry from the upper chambers of that strong Saxon tower, that gave the listening bravo a shock as of electricity.

A fainter succeeded, and a cold and sinister smile spread over the face of Ormiston. * * * * *

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*HANS' PATIENCE IS REWARDED.*

While shunn'd, obscured, or thwarted and exposed,
By friends abandon'd and by foes enclosed;
Thy guardian council softens every care,
To ease soothes anguish, and to hope despair.
_Richard Savage._

The English pirate still lay in the offing at the mouth of the estuary, and honest Hans Knuber, who, like all the skippers of that time, was his own merchant and supercargo, dared not put to sea; and each fine sunny day, while the fair wind blew down the river from St. Margaret's Hope, he trod his little deck to and fro, with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his chocolate-coloured small-clothes, his Elsinore cap pulled well over his red eyebrows, and consoling himself by praying to St. Mungo (who once had voyaged in these waters), and by swearing many a round oath in guttural Norse at the obnoxious Englishman, whose broad lateen sails, dark brown at sunrise, and snow-white at sunset, were always visible, as he cruised under the lee of the May, that beautiful isle of old Saint Adrian.

Meanwhile the sunny month of May approached, and when Hans thought of the good prices his cargo of wheat and malt would bring in the market of Kiobenhafen, his vexation increased hourly; and every morning he solemnly gave over the Englishman to the devil and the jormagundr, or great sea-snake, that lies coiled round the foot of the north pole, and makes the whirlpool of Lofoden by wagging its tail.

During this, by the strength of his constitution and the care of Martin Picauet, Konrad recovered strength daily. He shook off the torpor that weighed upon his spirit; and, while he endeavoured to efface the image of Anna from his memory, it was evident to Hans Knuber (and _he_ was no subtle love casuist), that the prospect of returning to Norway and meeting her again, contributed more than all the skill of the queen's apothegar to make him a new man.

And though, at times, when bluff Hans would thump him between the shoulders, and drink to Anna's health and his success, in their native dricka or brown Scottish beer, he was wont earnestly to assert, that were she queen of all Scandinavia, from the Naze of Norway to the Isles of Lofoden, he could not, and would not, wed her, after all that had passed; and he felt so: for now, deadened a little by absence, by bitter recollection, and the excess of his first despair, there was at times something of indignation mingled with his memory of her. At others, all his old tenderness would painfully revive, and come gushing back like a flood upon his heart; and she was then remembered only as the Anna of his boyhood's days--the Anna of that early love, which had first been told in whispers and confusion among the druid groves of Aggerhuis.

From time to time he heard tidings of Bothwell's daring deeds, but all, of course, distorted or discoloured by the malevolence of the narrators; for in that early age, when newspapers were unknown, the only means of intelligence were the "common bruit," as rumour was named; and the simple Norseman, who knew nothing of statecraft, of lawless ambition, the lust of power, and the boldness of such a spirit as Bothwell, heard with astonishment how he had slain the king of the land, by blowing his palace, with all his court and attendants, to the number of thousands, his guards, grooms, and horses, into the air; how he had seized the queen and crown; and how he had strangled the young prince before her eyes, because she had refused to marry him; and of how he had imprisoned her in chains in a dark dungeon, where her food was bread and black beer; and, assuming the sceptre, had seated himself on the throne. Poor Hans trembled for his cargo of malt when he heard of these terrible passages, prayed to St. Tradewell of Orkney, and wished himself safe at home.

He and Konrad knew not how common was the stratagem of seizing the Scottish sovereign in those days, and that the seizure of Mary had twice before been attempted--once by the old Earl of Huntly, and once by her brother Moray, on his rebellion in 1565; and consequently, had Mary viewed Bothwell with any favour, there had been no necessity for his wooing her at the head of a thousand horse.

Meanwhile, Hans waited anxiously the arrival of those French galleys, which at times, under the pennon of the Chevalier de Villaignon, made their appearance in the Scottish firth--for Scotland had then but six or eight ships for military purposes, under the pennons of David Wood, Sir Edmund Blackadder, Thomas Dixon, and Edward Robertson, who (though Buchanan styles them "pirates of known rapacity") were Scottish sea-officers, and vassals of the Lord High Admiral. These ships were then in the Western seas; thus, the pirate of Hull, which was the bane of Hans' existence, lay there unmolested, like a wolf waiting for his prey, and the fishers from the New haven daily brought terrible accounts of her crew; how they were plundering the coast about Crail--how they cruised with a man hanging at each yard-arm--how her poop lanterns were human skulls--and the skipper was said to be the devil himself; for he came ashore every night, not in his jolly-boat, like any other respectable shipman, but in his broad beaver inverted on the water, to attend the witches of Pittenweem, who held the meeting in the weem, or great cavern, below St. Mary's priory; and thus poor Hans was denied the hope of escaping even in the night, by creeping along the shore, under the brows of Kincraigie and Elie-ness on the north, or by the broad and beautiful bay of Preston on the south; and so the time wore on--the month of May was passing--and still the _Skottefruin_ of Bergen lay off the New haven, with her canvass bent, her brown sides and curved deck blistering in the summer sun.

At last there came tidings that the high admiral was about to put to sea, and that five Scottish frigates were anchored near his castle of Dunbar. Upon this, the pirate disappeared, and Hans Knuber rubbed his eyes again and again, one morning, to assure himself that the offing was clear. Then, impatient to bend his course homeward, he took immediate advantage of the gentle summer breeze that blew from the western hills, and spread his canvass on a beautiful morning in May--though a Friday, of all days in the week, by ancient superstition, the most unpropitious for putting to sea.

Then, with a heart that grew lighter as the Scottish mountains lessened in the distance, Konrad hailed the blue sky and the dark ocean; for he knew that, when land again was visible, it would be the pine-covered hills and thunder-riven cliffs of his native Norway.

*CHAPTER XV.*

*THE LEGEND OF ST. MUNGO.*

A famous sanct St. Mungo was,
And ane cantye carle was he;
He drank o ye Molendinar burne,
Quhan he oouldna better prie!
_Ballad._

"Mass!" said Hans Knuber to Konrad, as they walked to and fro one day on the lee side of his quarter-deck; "we have voyaged prosperously. I knew I should not implore the aid of good St. Mungo for nought; though, poor man! his work was like our anchorage in yonder firth--like to have no end."

"Thou seemest ever in a rare mood now, Hans;" replied Konrad; "but what made St. Mungo thy particular patron, and how came it that the work of so holy a man was never done?"

"Why, Master Konrad, 'tis a long story, which I heard from a certain old friar when my crayer was once discharging her cargo at the ancient Stockwell bridge of Glasgow. I care not if I tell it thee to wile away an hour or so; so here cometh like a rope out of the coil, with a wanion on it!--the story I mean, not the saint--the Lord forbid! It happened somewhere about the time that Erick Blodiaxe was among us here in Norway--the year 530--a long time ago, Master Konrad."

We here present the legend, not in the words of honest Hans, but as we find it in the MSS. of Magister Absalom, who has entitled it,

The Legend of St. Mungo.

In the days when Eugene III. was king of Scotland, and Lothus ruled the race of the Picts, there was a certain holy woman who dwelt in a cavern on the shore of the river Forth, above where the ruins of the Roman invaders overlooked the mouth of the Carron.

The place was then all desolate, and the land was covered with wood from the dark summit of the distant rock of Stirling, where there frowned the fragments of a Roman tower, to the yellow shore of the river, where the rippling waves rolled up in all their echoing loneliness.

The only traces of men near her dwelling were a circle of stones--large and upright; in the centre lay one whereon the Druids of other times, on the first day of every ninth year, had sacrificed to Odin a foeman taken in battle; and to that mysterious circle, there yet came more than one white-bearded believer in his wild pagan faith to adore the morning sun, as he arose from his bed in the shining eastern sea. Where a busy town now stands, a few squalid huts, built of turf, and mud, and bows freshly torn from the pine woods, straggled up the rough ascent; and among them grazed a herd of wild cattle, watched by wilder-looking men, half naked and half clad in skins and coats of jointed mail, armed with bows and clubs, long reedy spears, and shields of black bull's hide; while their hair, long, yellow, and uncombed, flowed like horse-manes from beneath their caps of steel.

These were Scottish warriors, who had come on a hunting expedition from their native wilds in the west of Braidalbyn, to drive the deer in the woods of the Pictish race; for Lothus the Just was then at peace with Eugene.

The Scottish prince had wearied of hunting; he had tarried many days among the vast forests that bordered on Bodoria, and more than a hundred noble stags, and a score of the snow-white bulls of Caledonia, had fallen beneath the spears of his huntsmen.

It chanced that on Beltane morning, a beautiful white deer, scared from the mountains by the beal-fires that were lit on their summits, passed the young king, as slowly, dreamily, and alone, he rode along the sandy shore of that broad river, whose glassy surface had been unploughed by a keel since the galleys of Rome had, a hundred years before, quitted, and for ever, their now desolate harbours at Alauna and Alterva. It bounded close by him, lightly and gracefully as a spirit, and disappeared into a gloomy weem or cavern, up to the mouth of which the white-edged waves were rolling.

He sprang from his horse, threw its bridle, which was massive with brazen ornaments, over the branch of a tree, and, grasping his short hunting-spear, advanced fearlessly into the cavern; but he had not gone ten paces before his steps were arrested, and, removing his steel cap, which was encircled by the rude representation of an ancient diadem, he knelt before St. Thena, the recluse of that desert, and as yet nameless, solitude.

No man knew from whence St. Thena came; she was the daughter of a distant race, and her beauty, which was very great, had doubtless made her seek the wilderness, that there, separated from the temptations of the world, she might dedicate her days to God. For years her food had been barley bread and a few wild-beans, to which, in times of great scarcity, she added a little milk, and now and then a small fish, when the receding waves left it on the shore near her cavern. Her prayer was continual, and her tears often flowed for the benighted and still Pagan state of many of her countrymen. She was good and gentle, and her face, which was seldom seen (for, like her form, it was enveloped in her long sackcloth garment), was said to be one of wondrous beauty. Many feared but more loved her; and the wild huntsmen, and wilder warriors, when they tracked either the foe or the red deer, through the vast woods or along the desert shores of that far-winding river, avoided to disturb the recluse, and blessed her peaceful life, after their own rude fashion.

The fame of her virtue spread abroad; and through all the land of King Lothus, from the waters of the Tay to those of the Abios, among the northern Saxons, she became known for the austerity of her fasts and other mortifications. Some averred she was the daughter of a king, and that, like the blessed St. Ebba, she had fled to avoid an evil marriage; others, that she was an angel, for the man who obtained even a glimpse of her figure, with its floating garments, never bent the bow nor threw the net in vain that day.

She stood with one arm around the neck of the deer, to protect it from the intruder; that arm was bare to the elbow, and its whiteness was not surpassed by the snowy coat of the fugitive. Her face was concealed by the overshadowing hood; a rosy little mouth and one long ringlet of golden hair were visible. The young king saw with pain, that her tender feet had no protection from the flinty floor of the cavern--that flinty floor whereon she knelt daily, before a rough wooden cross, which St. Serf of Lochleven had fashioned for her with his own holy hands.

Timidly she gazed on the young Scottish king, whose strong and graceful form was clad in a close-fitting hauberk of steel scales, and a tunic of bright-coloured breacan, that reached to his knees, which were bare; his sandals were covered with plates of polished brass, and were plaited saltirewise to within six inches of his tunic. A crimson mantle hung from his left shoulder, and on his right were his bow, fashioned of yew from the forest of Glenure, and his arrows, feathered from the wings of the swift eagles of Lochtreig.

"Warrior!" said the Recluse, "spare me this deer; it is the only living thing that clings to me, or to which my heart yearns in this wilderness."

"It is spared," replied the huntsman, lowering the bright point of his spear; "but whence is it, gentle voice, that so much beauty and goodness are hidden from the world; and that one so fair, so young, and so queen-like, is vowed to this life of austerity and seclusion."

"Because my heart told me it was my vocation; and now, warrior, I pray you to leave me, for I may not, and must not hold converse with men."

"Saint Thena, thou seest that I know thee," replied the young man gently; "I am Eugene, the King of the fierce Scottish tribes that dwell beyond the Grampians. Even there, among these distant mountains, we have heard of thy holiness and piety; and I will bless the hour that led me to thy cavern, for I have looked on a form that will never be forgotten."

"And, king, what seekest thou here among these woods?"

"The white bull with its eyes of fire, and the great stags and wild elks of this rich land of the Cruitnich; but say, gentle Thena, may I not come again to have thy blessing ere I return to the wilds and wars of my own dark mountains in the land of the west?"

The saint paused, and the young king saw that her bosom heaved. Another long golden tress fell from her dark hood, and he could perceive, when her lips unclosed, that her teeth were white as the pearls of his diadem; again he urged, for an unholy curiosity burned within him, and the poor Recluse replied,--

"Why should I shun thee? come, yes, and I shall bless thee; go, and I shall bless thee likewise. God's will be done! I am armed against temptation; but, O king! I am not above the tongue of reproach."

"Art thou not Thena, the saint, and the holy one?" replied the young king; and, fearful lest she should retract her promise, he withdrew, and, still more slowly and thoughtfully than before, pursued his way by the echoing strand to the camp, where his bare-kneed Dalriads were stretched on the grassy sward, with their bucklers cast aside and bows unstrung, wiling away the sunny hours with bowls of blaedium, while the harpers sang of the wars of Fingal of Selma, and Fergus the son of Erc.

But a spell had fallen upon the Recluse, and after the king was gone, his voice seemed to linger in her ear, and his stately form was still before her; with his shining hauberk, and his bright curling locks, that glittered in the sunlight.

The next day's eve was declining.

The sun was setting, like a circle of flame, behind the western hills; the waters of Bodoria rolled in light, and the bright green leaves of its pathless shores were glittering with the early dew, when the king, with a bugle in his baldrick, and a spear in his hand, again approached the cavern of Thena. He was alone and unattended, save by his favourite dog; one of those dark-eyed and deep-chested hounds of Albyn, rough, shaggy, and gigantic, like the Bran of other days.

He entered softly. The saint was at prayer, and she knelt on the bare step of her altar, which was a fragment of the living rock; a skull, thrown by the waves upon the shore, was placed thereon; and above it stood the cross of St. Serf. The white deer, which was asleep on the Recluse's bed of dry leaves, sprang up on the stranger's entrance, and cowered beside her.

Eugene paused till her orisons were over, and gazed the while with wonder. Her hood had fallen back, and her long flowing hair, which steel had never touched, fell in luxuriance to her knees. Reflected from the glassy waters of the river, a ray of the setting sun entered the cavern; her tresses shone in light, and she seemed something ethereal, for they glittered like a halo of glory around her. The young king was intoxicated; and a deep sigh escaped him.

It startled the Recluse, and as she turned, a glow of shame, perhaps of anger, overspread her beautiful countenance.

The king implored her forgiveness.

And the gentle St. Thena forgave him; and in token, gave him a ring which she had that morning found upon the shore; and the king vowed to offer up a prayer for the donor, whenever he looked upon it.

Again and again the young king came to visit the fair inmate of that lonely cavern. After a time she ceased to chide his visits; and though she wept and prayed after his departure, and vowed to fly from him into the wild-woods that covered the howe of the Lowland Ross, she still lingered; and thus, day by day, the spell closed around her, and, day by day, the king came to lay the unwished for, and unrequested, spoils of the chase at her feet, until St. Thena learned to welcome him with smiles, to wreathe her ringlets with her white fingers, to long for evening, and to watch the fading sunlight as it died on the distant sea--yea, to watch it with impatience, but not, as in other days, for the hour of evening prayer.

It was surely a snare of the evil one to throw a handsome and heedless young prince in the path of this poor recluse, who had neither the power of St. Dunstan, when the fell spirit came to him in his cell at Glastonbury, nor the virtue of St. Anthony, when he tempted him so sorely in the old sepulchre wherein he dwelt at Como. Nothing short of a blessed miracle could have saved her, and no miracle was wrought.

Her good angel covered his face with his wings, and St. Thena fell, as her mother Eve had fallen before her......

On his caparisoned horse, with all the bells of its bridle jangling, the wicked young king rode merrily along the sandy shore of the shining river; and the red eyes of his great hound sparkled when he hallooed to the dun deer, that on the distant ridges were seen against the western sky, for it was evening now. Thus merrily King Eugene sought the camp where his warrior huntsmen, impatient at his tarrying so long in the land of the wheat-eaters, muttered under their thick beards that waved in the rising wind, and pointed to the blue peak of the distant Benlomond, that looked down on the lake, with all its wooded isles--the lake where the fish swam without fins, the waves rolled without wind, and the fairies dwelt on a floating islet.

St. Thena was very sad.

A deep grief and a sore remorse fell upon her; she confessed her errors to good St. Serf, who dwelt on an isle of the lonely Leven, and the saint blessed and absolved her, because she had sinned and repented. Daily she prayed--yea, hourly--for the forgiveness of God; that the youth might return no more; and, though he had seduced her from her vows to heaven, that his presence might not be permitted to disturb her sincere repentance.

But he came not; war had broken out on the western hills of Caledonia, and, leaguing with Dovenald of Athole, Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon, was coming with his white-mantled Britons against the bare-knee'd Dalreudini; and hastening to his home, where the seven towers of Josina look down on the mountains of Appin, King Eugene returned to St. Thena no more. Her remorse was bitter; but time, which cureth all things, brought no relief to her, for she found that she had become a mother; and there, unseen in that lonely cavern, gave birth to a boy--the son of a Scottish king; and when she laid him on her bed of soft leaves and dried grass, she thought of the little child Jesus, as he lay in the manger at Bethlehem, and thought herself happy, vowing the child to the service of God as an atonement for her own sin.

And, lo! it seemed to her as if, for a time, that the same star which shone above Bethlehem sparkled on the pure forehead of the sinless babe, and from that moment the heart of St. Thena rejoiced. All the mother gushed upon her troubled soul, and she would have worshipped the infant, for it was a miracle of beauty--and its feet and hands, they were so tiny and so rosy, she was never tired of kissing them, and bedewing them with her tears.

That night she felt happy, as, nestling beside her tame deer, the poor recluse hushed her babe to sleep, and covered its little form with her only garment, that it might not hear the wind mourning in those vast forests that overshadowed the shore, where the waves of the eternal sea were breaking in their loneliness.

I have said that Lothus was king of the land: he dwelt on the opposite shore, which he called Lothian, from himself. Now it chanced that a daughter of this king, attended by a train of maormars and ladies on horseback, came to visit St. Thena, the fame of whose holiness had spread from the rising to the setting sun. This princess, who was soon to be espoused by Eugene king of the Scots, was a proud and a wicked woman. St. Serf had recently converted her from Paganrie to the blessed faith; but her secret love yet lingered after the false gods of her fathers, and she still (as in her childhood) worshipped the crystal waters of a fountain that flowed at her father's palace gate; for her mother was of the tribe of the Lavernani, who dwelt on the banks of the Gryfe.

Dismounting with softness and fear near the cavern, the princess paused a moment to have her attire adjusted, that she might over-awe the poor recluse by the splendour of its aspect. According to the fashion of the Pictish virgins, her flaxen hair flowed over her shoulders; her tunic was of scarlet cloth, and reached to her sandals; her mantle was of the yellow linen then woven by the distant Gauls, and it was fastened on her right shoulder by a shining beryl--an amulet of great virtue, which had been given to her mother by the last arch-druid of the Lavernani, and, filled with the vain thought of these things, she sought the presence of St. Thena. She was sleeping.

Softly the princess drew near, and, lo! she saw the babe that slept in the bosom of the recluse, and uttered a cry of spite and anger. St. Thena awoke, and, while her face reddened with modest shame, she raised one hand to shield the child, and the other in supplication.

"Hypocrite that thou art!" exclaimed the half Pagan princess, "is it for _this_ that thou dwellest in caverns and lonely places, like the good druids of our forefathers! Truly it was wise of thee; for thy deeds require the cloak of darkness and obscurity. Ha!" she continued scornfully, seeing that the saint wept, "dost thou weep in contrition for thine abominable hypocrisy, or in terror of the punishment it so justly merits, and which I may mete out to thee? And is it to visit such as thee that I have endured so much in journeying through wild places, by pathless woods and rocky rivers? Ha! if such as thou art a priestess of the Christians' triple God, I say, welcome again be those of Him who rideth on the north wind, and whose dwelling-place is in yonder glorious sun, which we now see rising from his bed in the waters."

This imperious lady, as a mark of disgrace, then ordered the beautiful hair of St. Thena to be entirely cut off, and committed to the winds, that the birds might line their nests with it; and she further commanded her Pagan followers to place the poor recluse and her infant in a crazy little currach, or boat of wickerwork and deerskin, and commit them to the waters of the great river, that they might be borne to the distant sea.

The boat was old and decayed; it had been used in war, and flint arrows and spears had pierced its sides of skin. A human head and shoulders dried in the wind, and tanned with the bark of the oak-tree, ornamented its prow. Long ringlets of fair Saxon hair waved about its shrunken ears, and two clam-shells filled its hollow eyelids; it was a horrible and ghastly companion, and, when night came on, seemed like a demon of the sea, leading the fallen saint to destruction.

Endlong and sidelong, the sport of the waves and the current, the boat drifted down the broad Bodoria; the sun set behind the hills of the west, and its last rays faded away from the mountain peaks that look down on the valley of Dolour, and the waters of Sorrow and Care. The sky grew dark, and the shores grew darker; there were no stars, but the red sheet lightning gleamed afar off, revealing the rocky isles of the widening estuary. Still the boat floated on, darkly and silently; and, resigned to her fate, and pouring all her soul in prayer--but prayer only for the poor infant that nestled in her bosom--St. Thena, overcome with weariness, after a time sank to sleep; and then, more than ever, did her good angel watch over her.

When she awoke, the sun had risen again; there was no motion; the little bark was still. Thena looked around her. The currach was fast, high and dry, upon a sandy beach; on one side, the broad and glassy river was flowing past; on the other, were the green and waving woods of Rosse.[*] An old man, with long flowing garments, and a beard of snow that floated in the passing wind, approached; and in his bent form, and the cross-staff on which he leant, she recognised St. Serf of the Isle, and hurried to meet him, and implore his blessing on her babe. Then the good man blessed it, and taking a little water from a limpid fountain that poured over a neighbouring rock, he marked its little forehead with the cross, and called the babe _Mungo_--a name which, he prophesied, would become famous in future times.

[*] Fife, so called as it lay between the Tay and Forth; hence _Kinross_ and _Culross_, the head and back of Rosse.

And there, in that lonely place, where the fountain ran, the mother built a cell, where she dwelt in holiness, rearing her boy for the service of God; there she died in the odour of sanctity, and there she was interred; and above her grave her son built an oratory, which is called, even unto this day, by the burghers of Culross, the chapel of St. Mungo.

His mother's feast is the 18th of July, in the Scottish calendar.

Reared by St. Serf, and trained up in the way he was to pursue, the little boy, who imitated that man of God in all things, became, as he waxed older, a pattern of Christian humility and piety; and those hours which were not spent in labouring with his hands, that he might have food and raiment to bestow on the sick, the aged, and the poor, (for he called the poor the children of God,) he spent in prayer for the sins of men; and long after the blessed Serf had passed to the company of the saints, who are in heaven, the young man had waxed tall and strong, stately in figure and beautiful in face; but the fame of his goodness and sanctity exceeded even those of his pastor, until the simple people of the land, who knew not he was the son of their king, began to assert that his birth had been miraculous.

Now, after many days of deep meditation in the dark woods of Rosse, and of prayer at the shrine of his sainted mother, for her intercession and support, the young man took the staff of St. Serf, and set forth on a pilgrimage to convert the benighted heathens of the south and west; for there were many still in Mercia and the land of the Deirii, who in their secret hearts worshipped fountains that sprung in lonely places, or made human sacrifices in the depths of forests, and lit Beltane fires on the lofty hills in honour of the rising sun; and so, moved by these things, St. Mungo gave the little he possessed to the poor, and, undeterred by the terrors of the journey, by the hostile tribes of savage men, and the equally savage denizens of the vast forests that covered the plains and mountains of Caledonia, the prowling wolves, the howling bulls, the grisly bears and ravenous boars, he went forth to teach and baptize, to convert and to save.

His under garment was sackcloth; his upper was the white skin of a sheep; his head had no other covering than his own fair hair, which curled upon his shoulders and mingled with his beard.

In that age there was no money in the land, save the old coins of the Roman invaders, which the women wore as amulets, and so the saint took no care for his sustenance. He had ever eternity before him; in the morning reflecting that he might not see the night, in the night reflecting that he might not see the morning. The acorns and the wild herbs of the forest were his food; a little water in the hollow of his hand quenched his thirst; and he regretted the time spent in these necessities, as so much taken from the service of his Master. He travelled throughout the whole isle of Britain, preaching, and taking no rest; hence cometh the old proverb--Like the work of St. Mungo, which never was done.

Now the fame of his preaching went far and wide, throughout the length and breadth of the land, till King Eugene in his distant castle of Dunolli, on the mountains of Midlorn, heard of the fame of St. Mungo, and dedicated to him an island in western Lochleven, which still bears his name, and it became the burial-place of the men of Glencoe, who name it _Eilan Mundh_, or the Island of St. Mungo. But Eugene knew not that the saint was his son, and as little did his queen, (with whom he lived in continual strife,) suppose that he was the same little boy, whom, with his mother, in that wicked moment of wrath and pride, she had committed to the waters of Bodoria; and tidings came that he was preaching and teaching the four gospels in the kingdom of Strathclyde, where he was daily bringing into the fold of God those red-haired Attacotti, who were said to be worshippers of fire and eaters of human flesh. He brought them to repentance and a horror of their ways; they levelled the stones of Loda, the altars of their wickedness, and destroyed the temples of their dreadful idols. He baptized them in thousands at a little stream that meandered through a plain to pour its waters in the Clyde.

To the saint it seemed that this was like the place where his mother lay; and there he built a bower among the alder-bushes, and rested for a time from his pious labours.

Now, about this time, it chanced that the ring which St. Thena had found upon the shore was the occasion of much discord between Eugene and his Pictish queen; for, having bestowed it upon her as a gift at Yule-tide, she had lost it, and thereby excited his jealousy. He swore by the _black stones of Iona_, the great oath of the Gael, that she should die a terrible death if the ring appeared not before the Beltane day; and, within three days of that time, the queen in great tribulation appeared at the bower on the Clyde, to seek the advice and consolation of St. Mungo; for she had not evilly bestowed the jewel, but had lost it, and knew not where or how; though she dreamt that a bird had flown away with it, and dropped it in the sea.

Though he had learned, from his mother's prayers, of the wrong this proud queen had done her, St. Mungo chid her not, but heard her story benignantly; and she told him in touching language of the king's wrath, and the value of the ring, for it had in it a pearl of great value: only two such were found in the Dee--one was in that trinket, and the other is at this hour in the Scottish diadem, where King Eugene placed it.

St. Mungo ordered one who stood near him to throw a baited line into the Clyde, and, lo! there was drawn forth a noble salmon, having in its mouth a beautiful ring. The queen knew it to be her own, and in a transport of joy she vowed to found there a cathedral church, in honour of God and St. Mungo, who should be first bishop of that see; and there, where the alder-bower had stood, the great lamp of the western tribes was founded and built, and the city that rose around was named Glasgow; but the spot was then, as the old Cistertian monk of Furness tells us, made pleasant by the shade of many a stately tree.

There, after preaching the gospel with St. David, and turning many away from Pelagianism, after converting all the northern Picts, and building an abbey at Culross, where his mother lay, St. Mungo, the first bishop of Glasgow, passed away to the company of the saints, on the 13th day of January, 603, having reached the miraculous age of a hundred and eighty-five years; and there, in his cathedral church, we may yet see his shrine, where many a miracle was wrought of old, when faith was strong in the land, and where the pious of other days gifted many a stone of wax for the candles at a daily mass for the repose of his soul.

In honour of St. Mungo we may to this hour see, in the arms of the great city he founded, the tree under which he built his bower, with his mass-bell hanging on a branch thereof; across its stem is the salmon with the ring of the Scottish queen in its mouth, and the bird that first bore it away has also a place on that armorial tree. Before the Reformation, St. Mungo's head, mitred, appeared in the dexter side of the shield; and on an escroll are the last words of that good man, which were a blessing upon the city and a prayer to God that in all future time Glasgow should _flourish_.

* * * * *

Such was the tale related by the old monk of Glasgow to Hans, who had no sooner concluded, than he drew a hand from his breeches pocket, and directed Konrad's attention to a low streak of blue that, on their lee-quarter, marked the distant Oyster-head of Denmark, and a shout of joy rang through the ship.

*CHAPTER XVI.*

*MARY'S DESPAIR.*

You never loved me.
And you are come to triumph o'er my sorrows,
To smile upon the ruin you have made;
To part----
_Sheil._

We return to Dunbar.

The sun was rising from the sea, and redly its morning splendour shone upon the rock-built towers of old Dunbar, as they frowned upon the bright green ocean and its snow-white foam. The estuary of the Forth shone like gold in the glory of the east; fed by the streams from a thousand hills it there expanded to an ocean, and its broad bosom, dotted by fisher boats and by Flemish caravells, swept round its rocky isles in surf, and washed with tiny waves of silver the shells and pebbles that bordered its sandy margins--margins shaded by the summer woods of Fife and Lothian, and overlooked by many a green and many a purple peak.

One great window that lit the queen's apartment in the Agnes Tower, overlooked this beautiful prospect. It was open, and the morning breeze from the eastern sea blew freely upon Mary's pallid cheek, and lifted her dishevelled hair; she seemed very desolate and broken-hearted. She was reclining in a large velvet chair, in the shadow of one of the thick brocaded window curtains, which made the corner she occupied so dark, that to a pair of eyes which were observing her through a hole in the arras behind the high and canopied bed, little else was visible than her snow-white hands clasped before her, a jewel that sparkled in her unbound hair, a spangle or two that glittered on the stomacher of her disordered dress, or among the folds of her torn veil--that white and flowing veil, which had won for her the romantic sobriquet of _la Reine Blanche_.

Her face was blistered by weeping; her lips were pale; she drooped her graceful head, and closed her blood-shot eyes, as if oppressed by an ocean of heavy thoughts. All that pride, energy, and indomitable courage which had sustained her unshaken amid a thousand scenes of outrage, insult, and sorrow, had now deserted her, laying her noble spirit prostrate; nothing but her gentle nature and woman softness remained behind. She was then, as she touchingly tells in one of her letters, "desolate of all council, and separated from all female attendance."

The very stupor of despair seemed to have settled upon her soul; she sat still--motionless as a statue, and nothing but the heaving of her bosom would have indicated that she lived. Yesterday she seemed so full of vivacity, so pure, so beautiful.

In this poor crushed being--this butterfly, formed only for the light and the sunshine of life--in this lonely and desolate woman, with her weeping eyes, her dishevelled hair, and torn dress, who could have recognised the same beautiful queen that shone so lately at Sebastian's hall, in all the pride of royalty; and a loveliness heightened to the utmost by magnificence of dress; and who, only five days before, had sat on the throne in the hall of the Scottish estates, with the crown of the Bruce on her brow, the St. Andrew sparkling on her bosom, and the sceptre of the Jameses in her hand, assenting to those laws by which we are still governed?

"Alas, for the Queen of Scotland and of France!" exclaims the old Magister Absalom; "Oh, for twenty knights of that good chivalry her grandsire led to Flodden, or of that glittering gendarmerie that many a time and oft had lowered their white pennons before her at the Tilts of the Tournelles, and on the Plains of Montmartre!"

A sound made her raise her head; the arras rose and fell, and Bothwell stood before her.

Shame crimsoned his brow, and confusion dimmed his eye; he felt compassion and remorse, together with the bitter conviction that he had gone too far to recede. The dreadful gulf between himself and other men was now wider than before; but he felt that to stand still was to sink into it and perish. He had yet to progress. He knew not how to address his victim. Her aspect filled him with pity, sorrow, and a horror of himself. He knew that he had irreparably ruined her honour, and destroyed her peace; and this was the woman he loved!

Strange it was, that now he felt himself alike attracted and repelled by her; but the necessity of soothing her compelled him to speak, and as policy ever supplied him with words, hurriedly, gently, and eloquently (for he too felt deeply, now when the storm of passion had died away), he endeavoured to console her; to declare his contrition; his willingness to die as an atonement; and then, stung with remorse on witnessing the agony of her grief, he attempted to destroy himself with his own sword, and turned her despair into momentary terror, by inflicting on his own person a wound, from which the blood flowed freely.[*] Then he ventured to fold her in his arms, and to kiss her pale brow respectfully, assuring her again and again that she was now a thousand times dearer to him than ever. Then, sinking on his knees, he bowed down his head, and abjectly implored her pardon; but Mary remained silent, passive, speechless, cold as marble; and her situation seemed so hopeless, so wobegone, and irrelievable, that the Earl in despair knew not what more to urge. He received no answer, and his heart trembled between love, remorse for the past, and apprehension of the future. "Speak, dearest madam," said he; "for the mercy of Heaven, speak to me! Dost thou wish to leave Dunbar?"

[*] Whittaker.

"Yes!" replied Mary, rising with sudden energy, as if all her spirit had suddenly welled up in her breast. "Yes!" she continued, gathering up her dishevelled hair with her slender and trembling fingers. "My train!--my people!--summon them!--I will go"----

"Thou wilt go?" said the Earl, whose dark eyes shone with a sad and wild expression, "and where?"

"To Edinburgh."

"To denounce me to its purse-proud citizens--to proclaim me at the barrier gates and market cross of every Scottish burgh--at the court of every European king, to be what I am--what I shrink from contemplating. That I am a craven knight, a perjured peer, a rebel, and a ruffian! Ha, ha! No! hence shalt thou never go but with Bothwell at thy bridle rein, with his banner before, his knights around, and his spearmen behind thee. What has hurried me on, step by step, in the terrible career on which my destiny has driven me--from being the leader of the Scottish peers, esteemed in council as in battle, respected by mine equals, loved by my vassals, and feared by mine enemies--what hath made me, from being all this, a man whose name will perhaps be remembered in the land with reprobation, with curses, and with bitterness--what, but thy beauty, thy fatal beauty? Oh, wretched woman! a curse upon it, I say, for it hath been the cause of all! Fatal sorceress, thou still smilest upon me with scorn. In undoing thee, I have perhaps but undone myself; though from this time our fates and lives are entwined together; for, bethink thee, for very dread of what may ensue, for very shame, and for the reparation of thine own honour, thou canst not destroy me. Yet can I read in thine eye, that thou hast visions of the dungeon, the block, the axe, the dismembered limbs, and the severed head of Bothwell, spiked on yonder city cross to welter in the midnight dew, and broil in the noonday sun--hah!"

And, rendered half furious by the picture his fancy conjured up, he gave her a push, so violent that she sank down on her knees, trembling and in tears.

Suddenly she arose again to her full height, her dark eyes flashing, and her proud nostrils appearing almost to dilate with the anger that curled her beautiful lip; she gave him one full, bright glance of reproach and anger, as she attempted to sweep from his presence; but the Earl firmly held her back, and, aware of the futility of attempting to pacify her at present, retired abruptly, leaving her still unattended, to sorrow and to tears.

Sir James Melville, who, as we have elsewhere stated, had been expelled that morning from Dunbar, relates that Bothwell's fury compelled her every day to weep--that she would have left him, but dared not--and that she would have _destroyed herself_, could she have found a knife or dagger; but a strict watch was kept over all her actions.

And thus passed twelve long and weary days, during which no attempt was made by her nobles, her knights, or her people, to relieve her. Each man gossiped to his neighbour of the unco' doings at Dunbar--citizens stared stupidly at each other, and contented themselves by marvelling sorely where all these startling events were likely to end.

So much of this part of our story belongs to the chronicles of the time, that it must be glanced at briefly, that we may hasten to the portion involving the fate of Konrad, and more particularly of the great Earl himself.

How he conducted Mary to Edinburgh, guarded by 1200 spearmen on horseback, and compelled her to appear in presence of the new chancellor and the nobles, and there to declare herself at full liberty--how he had the dukedom of Orkney, a marquisate, and other titles, conferred upon himself--and how he caused the banns of marriage between Mary and himself to be proclaimed in the great church of St. Giles, while she remained a captive in the castle of Edinburgh, which was garrisoned by his own vassals, and commanded by Sir James Balfour, the holder of the bond of blood, the brother of the Lord of Noltland, and of Robert Balfour, proprietor of the lonely house of the Kirk-of-Field--are known to every historical reader.

Still Mary withheld her consent to the marriage, for which the impetuous Earl made every preparation with determined deliberation.