Part 13

"French Paris, thou art a subtle little villain, and hadst thou not been gifted to me, like a marmozet, by the Queen, I would have cracked thy head, as thy likeness would a nut, to obtain the truth! Have the lairds of Ormiston or Bolton returned yet?"

"This moment only, my lord. They are in the hall, and in their armour yet."

"Let their stout jackmen hie to horse again, and bid them look well to girth and spur-leather; so, while I arm me, boy, send the knights hither."

While Bothwell hurriedly buckled on a suit of armour that was lying near--for, as we said elsewhere, no man could with safety venture a yard from his own door unarmed--the Countess lay on the crimson settle, with her face covered by her hands, over which her long black hair was flowing in disorder.

The clank of armed heels and steel scabbards in the antechamber, heralded the approach of the knights, and their mail flashed as the heavy arras was drawn aside, and they stood before the Earl.

"The Norwegian hath been here!" whispered the latter to Ormiston.

"How--who?"

"Konrad of Saltzberg--thou rememberest him," he added aloud; "and he hath bewitched the Countess--a French sorcerer, Bolton, anent whom I will tell thee another time. Horse and spear! Thou, Ormiston, and I, must ride, scour the woods, and slay without reservation or remede if we find him. Nay, that were too cruel, perhaps; let us capture him, at all events. Tell your people, sirs, he is a tall fellow, with a long sword, a corselet, breeches and hosen of sable sarcenet. Twenty unicorns to the finder and capturer!"

"We must breathe our steeds first," said Ormiston, as he drew the clasps and buckles of the Earl's armour; "we have had a tough night's work with Clelland and Lauchope. They stood it stoutly, with a hundred lances and fifty archers a-side. We have had a raid on Bothwell-muir that will make a noise among the justiciary lords at Edinburgh."

"And how came these knaves to quarrel?"

"Because, at Candlemas last, one took precedence of the other in crossing Calder brig."

"A just cause and a proper for three hundred blockheads to tilt at each other's throats! And how comest thou, Hob, to lift lance in this wise feud?"

"Because I count kindred with Clelland."

"And thou, Bolton, why wentest thou with thy fifty lances?"

"Because I claim kindred with Ormiston."

"So may ye all _hang_ together in the end!" said the Earl, angrily; "while I, your lord and feudal superior, want you, ye are fighting under other banners. Now, Paris, my sword and salade. Summon my grooms, and let us to horse--the fellow cannot be far off yet."

Hob of Ormiston was sheathed in a favourite suit of black armour, which he usually wore to render his sobriquet more complete; but Bothwell's particular friend and ally, Hepburn of Bolton, who was captain of his castle of Hermitage, and lieutenant of Queen Mary's Archer Guard, wore a magnificent suit of polished steel, the gorget and shoulder-plates of which were riveted with rows of golded-headed nails. He was a young and handsome man, and his bright blue eyes sparkled with merriment and good humour under the uplifted visor of his helmet.

Both these gentlemen helped themselves, unasked, to wine, from a red vase of gilded crystal that stood on a buffet, and both laughed somewhat unceremoniously at the unseemly conjugal feud that had evidently taken place, and each made his remarks thereon with a blunt carelessness peculiar rather to the men than to the age.

"The Lady Bothwell seemeth ill at ease," said Ormiston, winking to Hepburn over his wine horn.

"Fore heaven! he must have been a marvellous sorcerer, this Konrad," laughed the young knight, showing all his teeth under a brown mustache; "and if I come within a lance length of him, he will have reason to remember Jock of Bolton for the short remainder of his days."

"Adieu, my bonnibel!" said the Earl, in a low voice, as he laid his hand caressingly on the shoulder of the countess, who never raised her drooping head.

"Adieu!" she sobbed; "and may it be for ever."

"Ah! my jo, Jean--these are severe words," said the Earl, with a faint attempt to laugh; for at times he really felt a sincere tenderness for his little wife.

"Would to God, thou false lord, that I had never met--never married thee!"

"Well, ladybird," said he, with a sudden hauteur that was almost cruel, "thou mayest thank thy kinsman, the politic Earl of Huntly, whose intrigues to procure a rich husband for his tocherless sister brought that bridal about. By our lady! I never sought thee, save in the mere spirit of pastime and gallantry, and in that spirit, Lady Jane, I own that I loved thee well enough for a time."

"A time!" reiterated the Countess.

"Yes--what more wouldest thou have, thou exacting little fairy?"

"A time!" she repeated, and bent her bright but humid eyes upon him, while pressing her white hands tightly together, "Oh, 'twas a pity that love so tender should ever have been spoiled by marriage!"

"Thou growest sarcastic," said the Earl, as he nodded to her jocosely, adjusted his helmet, and began to whistle "_My Jollie Lemane_"--then after a time, he added, "we were never quite suited for each other, my bonnibel. Thou wert too exacting--I too gay."

The poor young Countess wrung her hands, and uttered that low laugh which thrilled through Bothwell's heart. His countenance changed; he drew back, and regarded her anxiously through his closed visor.

"Thou makest a devil of a fuss about this escapade, Lady Bothwell!" said Hob of Ormiston, in his deep bass voice; he had been intently polishing his cuirass with the lining of his gauntlet, and endeavouring to repress his disdain for the Earl's quietness, this fierce baron being in his own household despotic and terrible as a Tartar king or a Bedouin chief, "Why should not thy husband, the Earl, have a gay lemane as well as the godly Arran, the pious Morton, and other nobles, who hold natheless a fair repute in kirk and state?"

"True," said Hepburn, laughing heartily at this coarse remark, "even Master Knox, too! Is there not a story abroad in the Luckenbooths, of his having been found gamboling with a wight-wapping lass in a covered killogie?"[*]

[*] See Life of Knox.

"Mother Mary!" exclaimed the Countess wildly, as she rose to her full height, and turned her eyes of fire upon the speaker; "have I fallen so low, that I have become the sport of ruffians such as you? Begone from my bower ere I die! Is this a place, Lord Earl, for thy cut-throats and swashbucklers to bully and swagger in?"

Black Ormiston uttered a loud laugh.

"Sweet Madam," began Hepburn--

"And thou, too, John of Bolton; begone, for an officious fool!"

"By St. Paul!" said the Earl angrily, "when thou insultest my friends thus, the atmosphere of the house must be too hot to suit me. Paris--ho! attend to thy mistress; and now, sirs, to horse and away, for by the honour of Hepburn, the rascally Norseman who hath brought all this mischief about, shall dree his reward ere the sun goes down."

As they descended to the castle-yard, a wild hyena-like cry came from the Countess's bower, but instead of pausing they hastened their steps.

Horribly it rang in the hollow of Bothwell's helmet, and by it he knew that what he had dreaded was now come to pass--

That his Countess was mad!

*CHAPTER XXIII.*

*THE PURSUIT.*

The drawbridge falls, they hurry out-- Clatters each plank and swinging chain, At, dashing o'er, the jovial route Urge the shy steed, and slack rein. _Scott._

The morning sun rose brightly upon the windings of the azure Clyde, and on the green woodlands whose foliage was reflected on its surface, as Bothwell and his two friends, at the head of about fifty jackmen, mounted on strong and fleet horses, of border training, and armed with steel caps, shirts of mail, two-handed swords and long lances, dashed at full gallop from the archway of the castle, rumbled over the sounding drawbridge, and descending from the height through the barbican gate, plunged into the bosky coppice below, where their bright armour and weapons were seen flashing and glinting among the green foliage, as they spurred towards the bridge and village of Bothwell.

"We must have this Norwegian either killed or captured," said Bothwell emphatically to Ormiston, as they galloped at the head of their train. "To have him at large with such a story on his tongue, would be submitting to my own destruction."

"True, my lord!" replied the unscrupulous retainer; "suppose he fell in the way of Moray or of Morton--what a notable discovery! Thou sayest aright; to leave him at liberty on Scottish ground, with this secret in his fool's noddle, would but serve to ruin thee at Holyrood, and injure all who follow thy banner."

"He has, as we know, wrongs to avenge; and men, in these brisk days of ours, are not wont to follow those precepts of scripture, which Knox and Wishart have dinned into our ears--by turning one cheek to the foe who smites us on the other--and these wrongs may lead him straight to the ears of Huntly. Fool that I was, when he stood on my own hall floor"----

"Where was then thy dagger?" asked black Hob, with a ferocious look.

"May God forbid--and forefend its use in such a place!" replied the Earl. "Such a trick were worse than that old Douglas played the Knight of Bombie at the Castle of Threave, and a deed deserving such meed as I pray Heaven may mete to me, in that hour when I fall so far in guilt. Nay--nay! under my own roof to take the life of a trusting guest! Go to, Ormiston! thou art stark mad, or stark bad!"

"Cock and pie! what a fuss thou makest! Then thou hadst the dungeon, and it might have spared us this ride, which to say truth, after our last night's hard work in plate and mail, with lance and maul, I could very well have spared. I have been cheated of breakfast, too! But mayhap the warder at the bridge hath a bowie of porridge, or a slice of beef and a can of ale, to spare."

"Hob, do thou take the bridle-path that leads to the tower of Clelland; after the drubbing thou gavest him overnight, the laird will not likely molest thy pennon. Scatter twenty lances to prick among the woodlands. Bolton, thou wilt ride with ten men by Calderside, and do likewise; while I cross the Clyde, and search by Blantyre Priory. _Keep tryste_ on Bothwell-muir! So now adieu, sirs!--Forward, my stout prickers, and remember, my merry men all--twenty unicorns of gold to the finder of this knave! He is a tall fellow, with a fair curly head, a corselet, and black hosen."

Dividing into three, at a wave of his hand the horsemen separated, and galloped off on their different routes.

Leaving the Knight of Ormiston and the Lieutenant of the Archers to pursue their various roads, which happily they did without success, we will accompany the Earl, who, with twenty prickers, or light-armed horsemen, rode towards the bridge of Bothwell, pursuing the ancient Roman way.

It was a glorious summer morning; the air was balmy, and all nature wore its brightest hue; the green fields and the waving foliage were rich and verdant, and glittered in the silver dew, which the sun was exhaling in gauzy mist. Bothwell, full of anxiety to recapture Konrad, and thereafter to find some means necessary for stifling the dangerous secret he possessed, rode furiously on, despatching his riders by couples along the various narrow paths that led from the ancient way, to the different baronial towers and hamlets whose smoke was seen curling from the woods on each side.

With their mossy roofs and clay-built lums, the latter were generally nestling in the wooded dingles which were overlooked by the battlemented peels, that stood in bold outline against the sky, with their red walls glancing, and dark smoke ascending in the sunshine. From their summits many a watchman looked sharply and keenly at the distant horsemen as they rode through the thickets below, appearing at times on the dusty highway, or spurring along the steep Hill-sides, with their lance-heads flashing like silver stars among the bright green leaves.

With all the impetuosity of his nature, Bothwell rode fast and furiously on, and till he reached the muir never drew bridle, save once, to cross himself and mutter an _ave_ on passing one of those little chapels or roadside shrines, which are still so common in Spain and Italy, and which the pious spirit of the olden time erected by the wayside to remind the passers of their religious duties. It was rudely formed, and had been erected by his pious ancestress, Agnes Stewart of Buchan, that the wayfarer might say one prayer for the soul of her husband, Adam Earl of Bothwell, who had fallen fighting for Scotland on Flodden field.

And here the Earl, even in his path of vengeance, paused to offer up a prayer.

The little chapel was formed by a single gothic arch, containing an altar, a niche, and pedestal graven with the words, _Saint Mary, pray for me!_ but the hands of the Reformers had been there; the shrine was empty, the altar mutilated, the weeds and wallflower were growing in luxuriance about it, and the fountain, that once had flowed from a carved face into a stone basin below, in consequence of the wanton and fanatical destruction of the latter, was running across the roadway, where it had long since made for itself a little channel.

The extensive muir of Bothwell, which is now so beautiful in its modern state of cultivation and fertility, was then a wide sequestered waste of purple heather, dotted by grey rocks, tufts of golden broom, and masses of dark green whin.

Traces of that recent feudal conflict, in which Ormiston and Bolton had been handling their swords, were met at every rood of the way, by the Earl and six horsemen who now accompanied him. Broken swords and splintered lances were lying by the roadside, and parties of peasantry were passed, bearing away the dead and wounded in grey plaids, on biers of pikes or branches of trees; the women tearing their hair and lamenting aloud; the men, with their bonnets drawn over their knitted brows, brooding on that future vengeance which, in those days of feudalism, and of bold hearts and ready hands, was never far distant.

A ride of a mile and a half from his castle gate brought the Earl to the village of Bothwell, which bordered the ancient way known as the Watling street. Then it was but a little thatched hamlet, clustered with gable ends and clay lums, near the venerable church founded by Archibald the Grim, Lord of Galloway. Beyond, lay the mains and groves of Bothwellhaugh, possessed by a lesser baron of the house of Hamilton.

Here the vassal villagers came crowding, bonnet in hand, around the Earl, and in courtesy he was compelled to touch his helmet and rein up; while the parish beadle, after tinkling the skelloche bell, issued, according to an ancient custom now obsolete in Scotland, the following burial proclamation:--

"All brethren and sisters! I let you to wit, there is a brother, Ninian Liddal of the Nettlestanebrae, hath been slain by the Laird of Lauchope's riders, in a raid yestreen, on Bothwell-muir, as was the will and pleasure of Almighty God (lifting his bonnet). The burying will be at twelve o'clock the morn, and the corpse is streekit and kistit at the change-house, up by the townhead!"

And he departed, ringing his bell in the same slow fashion with which he usually preceded funerals, to the collegiate kirk of Bothwell.

On the purple muirland many unclaimed bodies were lying stark and rigid--

"With the dew on their brow, and the rust on their mail;"

while the black corbies and ravenous gleds were wheeling in circles above them, in that blue sky on which the eyes of the dead had closed for ever.

"Gramercy!" said Hay of Tallo, a follower of the Earl, as a man, whose beard was white as snow, and whose loose grey gown was torn in many places, hurried out of their path; "is not yonder fellow some mass-monging priest?"

"Gif I thought so," growled a jackman, lifting his lance, "I would cleave his croon! He hath been searching the scrips and pouches of the dead."

"Shriving the dying, more likely, thou knave!" said the Earl; "'tis Father Tarbet, a poor monk of a Reformed monastery, and I dare thee to offer him insult under peril of pit and gyves."

A powerful horse, bearing its steel-bowed military saddle, accoutred with caliver and jedwood axe, lay rolling in the last agonies of death, with a broken lance thrust far into its broad bosom.

Such sights and incidents were rather too common in that age to attract much attention; so the Earl and his followers, without even remarking them, rode on to the end of the extensive muir, and there wound their horns to call together such of their companions as might be within hearing.

One by one the wearied riders came in, but brought no tidings of the fugitive.

Every sheeptrack and pathway through all the extensive barony had been searched--by Woodhall and Sweethope; by the old tower of Lauchope on its steep rock; by the banks of the Calder that flowed beneath it, and in that great cavern where Wight Wallace found a refuge in the days of old; by Bothwell brig, and muir, and haugh; by the old gothic kirk and the Prebend's Yards; but without finding a trace of Konrad.

Hob of Ormiston, and Hepburn, the captain of Hermitage, came in last, with the same tidings; and, with uplifted hand, the wrathful Earl made a vow of vengeance upon the fugitive.

The armour of the whole troop was covered with summer dust, and their horses were jaded by hard and devious riding.

"And now, my lord," said Hepburn of Bolton, "whither wend we?"

"To court--to court! As warden of the three marches, I have received a summons to attend the queen, who holds her court at Linlithgow; and I will return to Bothwell no more--not to night at least," added the Earl; "are all our knaves come up?"

"Every lance, my lord," replied young Hepburn, counting the files with his spear.

"Then set forward, sirs--and, John of Bolton, do thou lead the van," and at the head of his numerous train the Earl departed from Clydesdale.

A band of so many armed retainers, attending a great baron to court, excited no surprise in that age. A feudal landholder's influence being exactly measured, not by the number of merks Scots he drew per annum, but by the number of men he could lead to battle on behalf of the King or himself. Godscroft informs us that the great Earl of Douglas, who was slain at Edinburgh about a hundred years before the days of Bothwell, never rode abroad with less than two thousand mailed horsemen under his banner.

*CHAPTER XXIV.*

*MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.*

O king! in an evil day was I beloved by you, Since that, love has cost me dear! _Amadis de Gaul._

It was in the month of June, and in the meridian of one of June's most beautiful days. The sun shone joyously on old Linlithgow's wooded loch and magnificent palace; on its carved towers, the clustered gables of its grand facade; and on the belfry of St. Michael, the friend of strangers; on the venerable oaks and graceful ashes that fringed its azure lake, where the snow-white swans were floating in crystal and light; on the steep and narrow streets of the town, with their high-peaked roofs and crow-stepped gables, encrusted with coats-of-arms and quaint devices--on all its varied scenery, fell the bright radiance of a cloudless noon.

The sky was of the purest blue, and the lake gleamed like a vast mirror of polished crystal, reflecting in its depths the banks of emerald green, the beautiful palace, with all its mullioned windows and long perspective of crenelated battlements, the summer woodlands, and the floating swans.

Though the poverty and gloom that spread over Scotland with the Reformation, had dimmed the splendour of her court, and depressed the spirit of her people, turning their gaiety into stolid gravity and moroseness, the palace then bore an aspect very different from that it bears to-day.

In many a hall and chamber, where now the long reedy grass, the tenacious ivy, the scented wallflower, and the wild docken, flourish in luxuriance, the well-brushed tapestries of silk and cloth of gold hung on tenterhooks of polished steel; and casements of stained glass, rich with the armorial bearings of Bourbon, Lorraine, Guise, England, and other alliances of the house of Stuart, filled up those mullioned windows, where now the owl and the ravenous gled build their nests; for now the velvet moss and the long grass, are growing green on the floors of Queen Margaret's crumbling bower, and Mary's roofless birthplace--in the stately hall where Scotland's peers, in parliament assembled, gave laws to her lawless clans; and the beautiful chapel, where, for many an age, the most solemn sacraments of the first church were dispensed to her gallant rulers.

In the June of the year of God 1567, its aspect was the same as when King James, of gallant memory, had left it for Flodden field.

The leaves were as green and the grass as verdant, the lake was as blue and the sun as bright, as they are to-day, and may be a thousand years after the last stone of Linlithgow shall have fallen from its place.

Its casements were glittering in the sunshine; the royal standard of Scotland, the yellow banner with the lion gules, was waving from one of the great towers; steel was flashing on parapet and tourelle, as the polished basinets and pikeheads of the soldiers of the guard appeared at intervals on the stone bartisans, from which a number of those little brass cannon known as drakes and moyennes peeped between the massive embrasures. And in that deep archway, which is guarded by two strong octagon towers, perforated with numerous arrow-holes, and surmounted by a gorgeous battlement, representing in four carved compartments the orders of knighthood borne by James V.--the Saint Andrew, Saint George, Saint Michael, and the Golden Fleece--were crowding a group of liverymen and swashbucklers in half-armour, with sword, target, and dagger, their arrogance and pride of clanship being displayed by their bearing and ferocity of aspect, their cocked bonnets, and embroidered sleeve-badges. Mingling with them were gaily attired pages, grooms, falconers, and archers of the queen's body guard, clad in green gaberdines with gorgets and caps of steel, each bearing his unstrung bow, and having a sheaf of arrows bristling in the same belt that sustained his short cross-hilted sword and long double-edged dagger.

The bustle about the palace gates was unusual, for the Lords of the Privy Council were assembled in the Parliament hall, and Mary was seated on the throne.

Into that magnificent apartment, which measures a hundred feet in length by thirty in breadth, and which had a roof nearly forty feet in height, light was admitted by two rows of arched windows, between each of which projected a double tier of beautiful corbels, the lower upholding a line of statues--the upper sustaining the ceiling of elaborate oak, which sprung away aloft into intricacy and brown obscurity. A vast fireplace yawned at one end; it was supported by four gothic columns, clustered and capitalled with the richest embossage.

The young King Henry, a tall and handsome, but pale and beardless youth, whose effeminate aspect contrasted strongly with those of the mustached and sunburned lords of the council, sat on the Queen's left hand. His face was a perfect oval, and his eyes were dark like his hair, which was short and curly. His attire was fashioned in the extreme of gorgeous extravagance; the sleeves and breast of his blue satin doublet being loaded with lace and precious stones. He had nothing military about him save a small walking-sword, for arms were not King Henry's forte, which was quite enough to make the Scots heartily despise him.