Part 4

The unhappy influence of that misplaced or unrequited love, had thrown a long shadow on the career of Bothwell; and as the sun of his fortune set, that shadow grew darker and deeper. But there were times, when his cooler reflection had tamed his wild impulses, that a sudden act of generosity and chivalry would evince the greatness of that heart, which an unhappy combination of circumstances, a prospect the most alluring that ever opened to man, and the influence of evil counsel, spurring on a restless ambition, hurried into those dark and terrible schemes of power and greatness, that blighted his name and fame for ever!

The character of his friend and brother exile, Hob Ormiston of that Ilk, had been distinguished only for its pride, ferocity, turbulence, and rapacity. He was one of the worst examples of those brutal barons who flourished on the ruins of the Church of Rome--the only power that ever held them in check--who laughed to scorn the laws of God and man--who recognised no will save their own, and no law but that of the sword and the strongest hand--who quoted Scripture to rifle and overthrow the same church which their fathers had quoted Scripture to erect and endow; and who, in that really dark age succeeding the Scottish Reformation, embroiled their helpless and gentle sovereign in a disastrous civil war, and drenched their native land in blood!

*CHAPTER VI.*

*ANNA.*

And when the moon went down the sky, Still rose, in dreams, his native plain; And oft he thought his love was by, And charm'd him with some tender strain. _The Mermaid._

The light of the rising sun was streaming through the windows next morning when the Earl awoke; and from dreams of a stormy sea, with the din of flapping canvass and rattling cordage in his ears, was agreeably surprised by finding close to his the small fair face and bright eyes of Anna Rosenkrantz--so close, indeed, that her soft hair mingled with his own, and the breath of her prying little mouth came gently on his cheek,

"Like the sweet south, that breathes upon a bank of violets."

It was suddenly withdrawn, and Bothwell started up.

The young lady, with Christina, her attendant, arrayed in neat morning dresses, the black fur of which contrasted with the snowy whiteness of their necks and arms, stood by his bedside with a warm posset of spiced ale, according to that ancient custom, still retained in Norway, where now a dish of warm coffee is substituted for the mulled mead of their jovial ancestors, and is presented by the ladies of the house to each guest and inmate about daybreak.

In pursuance of this primitive custom, Lady Anna presented herself by the couch of the Earl, whose dark eyes sparkled with astonishment and pleasure; for various episodes of love and intrigue flashed upon his mind, when beholding the object of his admiration standing in that half dishabille at so early an hour, and a deep blush of confusion suffused the face of the beautiful girl, for the aspect of the Earl was singularly prepossessing.

His black locks curled shortly over a pale and noble forehead; his eyes were intensely dark, and the hue of his thick mustaches and short peaked beard formed a strong contrast to the whiteness of his half bare chest, which was pale as the marble of Paros.

"A good morning, my Lord!" said Anna with a delightful smile, while Christina addressed herself to Ormiston; "I hope your dreams have been pleasant?"

"They were of thee, fair Anna"----

"Then they must have been delightful," she replied with gaiety, eluding the Earl, who endeavoured to possess her hand. "And you have slept well?"

"On this downy couch I could not have reposed otherwise than well, lady."

"I am glad you appreciate what is all the work of my own fair hands; for know, sir, that this quilt of eider-down was the last essay of my perseverance and industry."

"Thine, fair Anna!"

"Thou seest I am not one to hide my candle under a bushel."

"By the wheel of St. Catherine!" said the Earl, smiling as he smoothed down the quilt, which was entirely made of soft feathers from the breast of the eider-duck, woven into bright and beautiful patterns; "there is something very adorable in the idea of reposing under what your pretty fingers have wrought!"

"Konrad scaled the highest cliffs that overhang the fiord to bring me these feathers. Poor Konrad! He has clambered for me, where not even Jans Thorson or the boldest man on the bay would dare to climb, even to win his daily bread."

"And who is this Konrad?" asked Bothwell, suspiciously.

"He who--permit me to say---saved you from the ocean last night; and but for whom, perhaps, you had now been in heaven."

"St. Mary forefend it had not been a warmer place!"

"I have brought you our morning grace-cup," said Anna, placing it in his hand; "drink to the prosperity of the Lords of Welsoeoe, my lord, and let me begone, for I have my uncle, Sir Erick, and others, to visit with the same gift."

The Earl promptly kissed her hand, and emptied the cup, thus displaying the difference between his open nature and that of Ormiston, who, being ever on the alert against treachery and surprise, declined tasting the ale, until, as a compliment, Christina Slingbunder first put it to her rosy lips, after which he drained the goblet at one gulp, and clasping the buxom damsel in his arms imprinted a kiss upon each of her cheeks, for which she roundly boxed his ears; and, when the ladies had withdrawn, both he and the Earl lay back in their beds, bursting with laughter, for Ormiston exercised his wit in various jests on this unusual visit--jests which the modest Magister Absalom Beyer has failed or declined to record.

To his great satisfaction, the Earl found that his vessel, the Fleur-de-lys, a stout little brigantine, had been so much shattered by the late storm, that by the solemnly delivered verdict of David Wood his skipper, Hans Knuber, and other seafaring men of Bergen, the work of several days would be required to refit her for sea--and these days, with the recklessness of his nature, he resolved to devote entirely to the prosecution of an amour, the end of which he could not entirely foresee.

Though solemnly betrothed to Lady Jane Gordon, second daughter of George Earl of Huntly, who had been slain at the battle of Corrichie, the love he once felt and avowed for her, had evaporated during his wandering life and long absence from Scotland; and as it happened that the heart of the amorous Earl abhorred a vacuum, he gave way to all the impulses of this new passion, which the beauty and winning manner of Anna were so well calculated to inspire and confirm, and which he thought would prove a pleasing variety and amusement in his exile. A month had elapsed since they separated at Copenhagen, and that short separation had served but to increase the flame which a longer one would as surely have extinguished.

The morning meal was over; the castle hall had been converted into a court of justice, where, seated in his red leather chair, with his orders on his breast, Erick Rosenkrantz heard pleas and quarrels, and gave those decisions which constituted him the Solon of Aggerhuis and Lycurgus of Bergen. The Earl had returned from the beach, where the entire population of the little town had crowded to witness the unusual sight of hauling his vessel into a rude dock, constructed in a creek of the rocks, where Hans Knuber and all the fishermen on the fiord had been lounging since daybreak, with their hands stuffed into the pockets of their voluminous red breeches, criticising with seaman-like eyes, and commenting in most nautical Norse, on the rig, mould, and aspect of the Scottish ship.

As Bothwell, with his white plume dancing above his lofty head, the embroidery of his mantle, and the brilliants of his belt and bonnet sparkling in the sunshine, ascended to a terrace of the castle that overlooked the fiord, the notes of a harp struck with great skill, mingling with the voice of Anna, fell upon his ear, and he paused.

She was singing an old Scandinavian air, which, being chiefly remarkable for its melody and simplicity, was admirably adapted to her soft low voice. Nothing could surpass the grace of her figure, as she bent forward over the rudely formed but classic instrument--her face half shaded by her glossy hair, that fell in profusion from under the little velvet cap before mentioned, and glittered in the sunshine, like the wiry strings among which her small white hands were moving so swiftly.

The grass of the terrace was smooth as velvet, and permitted the Earl to approach so softly, that not even his gold spurs were heard to jangle as he walked. Though Anna appeared not to perceive him, she was perfectly aware of his approach. Conscious of her skill as a musician, and of her own beauty, which she had that day taken every precaution and care to enhance, and animated by a coquettish desire to please one whom she well knew to be her lover, she continued to sing unheedingly, and the Earl was thus permitted to approach (as he thought unobserved) until he leant over the parapet close beside her. He felt his heart stirred by the pathos of her voice; for, animated by an intense desire to please and to conquer, she sang exquisitely an old song, with which, in her childhood, she had heard the Wandering Lapps welcome the approach of summer.

I

"The snows are dissolving On Tornao's rude side; And the ice of Lulhea Flows down its dark tide. Thy stream, O Lulhea! Flows freely away; And the snowdrop unfolds Its pale leaves to the day.

II

Far off thy keen terrors, O winter! retire; And the north's dancing streamers Relinquish their fire. The sun's warm rays Swell the buds on the tree; And Enna chants forth Her wild warblings with glee.

III

Our reindeer unharness'd In freedom shall play, And safely by Odin's Steep precipice stray. The wolf to the forest's Recesses shall fly, And howl to the moon As she glides through the sky:

IV

Then haste my fair Luah"----

She paused, and gradually a blush deepened on her cheek, for with all her graceful coquetry and gaiety, there was at times a dash of charming timidity in her manner; so, suddenly becoming abashed, she raised her mild eyes to those of the Earl, and immediately cast them down again, for his cheek had flushed in turn, increasing the manly beauty of his dark features, which the shadow of his blue velvet bonnet, and the graceful droop of his white ostrich feather, enhanced; and she knew that his eyes were beaming upon her with the sentiment her performance and her presence had inspired.

She had read it all in his burning glance, and at the moment she cast down her eyes, a new sensation of joy and triumph filled her heart. The experienced Earl was aware that the fair citadel was tottering to its fall.

"Gentle Anna," said he, in his softest and most dulcet French, "for my unseasonable interruption I crave pardon, and beg that you will continue, for every chord of my heart is stirred when you sing."

"There is but one verse more," replied Anna, as she bent her head with a graceful inclination, and shaking back her long fair tresses, continued--

IV

"Then haste my fear Luah, O haste to the grove! To pass the sweet season Of summer in love. In youth let our bosoms With ecstasy glow; For the winter of life Ne'er a transport can know."

"Sadly true it is, fair Anna," said the amorous Earl, as he leaned against the gothic parapet, and very nonchalantly played with his fingers among her flowing ringlets; "youth is indeed the only season for love and joy--for due susceptibility of the blooming and the beautiful."

"And for futile wishes and dreamy fancies," replied the young lady with a sad smile.

"Dost thou moralize?" laughed the Earl; "why, gentle one, I who am ten years thy senior have never once dreamt of morality yet--moralizing I would say--ha! ha! that will suit when my years number sixty or so, if some unlucky lance or sword-thrust does not, ere that time, spoil me for being a doting old monk; for, as the white-haired Earl Douglas said, when he in old age assumed the cowl, 'One who may no better be, must be a monk.' (By the mass I would make a rare friar!) To me there is something very droll in hearing a pretty woman moralize. And so thou considerest youth the season for dreams and fancies?"

"O yes! for now I am ever full of them."

"'Tis well," replied Bothwell, glancing at the rugged castle, and its still more rugged scenery; "for there are times when the realities of life are not very pleasant. But hath not old age its fancies too, and its dreams?"

"True, my Lord, but dreams of the past."

"Nay, of the present. Faith! I remember me when I was but a boy at Paris, old Anne, Madame la Duchesse d'Estampes, who might have been my grandmother, fell in love with my slender limbs and beardless chin, and wellnigh brought me to death's door with her villanous love philtres. From those days upward, my own mind has been full of its fancies, fair Anna, and I have had my daydreams of power and ambition, of love and grandeur, and wakened but to find them dreams indeed!"

"Those of love, too," murmured Anna.

"Yes--yes," said the Earl, whose face was crossed by a sudden shade, which Anna's anxious eye soon perceived; "why should I conceal that, like other boys, I have had my vision of that land of light and roses--visions that faded away, even as the sunlight is now fading on yonder mountain tops--and the hour came when I wondered how such wild hopes had ever been cherished--how such dreams had ever dawned--and I could look back upon my boyish folly with a smile of mingled sadness and of scorn."

"'Tis a bitter reflection that a time may come when one may marvel that one ever loved, my lord."

"And hoped and feared, and made one's-self alternately the victim of misery or of joy--raised to heaven by one glance, and sunk into despair by another. Yet, dear as a first love is while it lasts--at least so say minstrel and romancer--there are thousands who live to thank Heaven that they were not wedded to that first loved one."

"Dost thou really think so?" colouring with something of pique at the tenor of this conversation, which made her think of Konrad.

"The experience of my friends in a thousand instances hath taught me so," said the politic Earl, who began to feel that the topic was unfortunately chosen; "but," he added adroitly, as sinking his voice he took her hand in his, "dear Anna, never will the day come when I shall thank Heaven that I was not wedded to thee."

Again the quick blush rushed to Anna's neck and temples; she bent over her harp, and said in a low but laughing voice--

"Fie! Lord Bothwell, surely I am not your first love?"

"Thou art, indeed, dear Anna!"

"Go, go! I will never believe it."

"My first, my last, my only one!" said the Earl, encircling her gently with his arms, and pressing her forehead against his cheek; and, though this assertion was not strictly true, in the ardour of the moment he almost believed it so. "Until the moment we parted at Frederick's palace gate--parted as I thought to meet no more--I knew not how deep was my unavowed love for thee. Hear me, Anna, dear Anna! I love thee with my heart of hearts--my whole soul! My name, my coronet, all I possess, are at thy feet; say, dear one, canst thou love me?"

Borne away by the ardour of his passion, he brought out this avowal all at a breath--"for," sayeth the Magister Absalom, "he had repeated it, on similar occasions, twenty times"--and, pressing her to his heart, slipped upon her finger a very valuable ring.

"Canst thou love me, Anna," he continued in a broken voice, "as I love thee--as my bride, my wife? and"----Anna replied an inaudible something, as she hung half-fainting with confusion on his breast.

Bothwell had almost paused as he spoke, half scared by his own impetuosity, and feeling, even in that moment of transport, a pang, as the thoughts of ambition and the world arose before him.

And the ring!

By the false Earl, the fond giver of that little emblem of love was forgotten. On the inside was engraved--

"The gift and the giver, Are thine for-ever."

It was the pledge of betrothal from Jane Gordon of Huntly, and now it sparkled on the hand of her rival!

"As this circlet is without end, so without end will be my love for thee, Anna," said the impassioned noble, forgetting that with these very words, for that ring he had given another, before the prelate of Dunblane. Anna trembled violently; she felt his heart beating against her own, and a new, rapid, and consuming sensation thrilled like lightning through every vein and fibre. She became giddy, faint; and, like a rose surcharged with dew, reclined her head upon the shoulder of the handsome Earl.

"And thou art mine, Anna--mine, for ever!"

"O, yes--for ever!" she whispered; and passionately and repeatedly Bothwell's dark and well mustached mouth was pressed on her dewy lip.

Footsteps approached!

He started, and hurriedly led her to a seat; placed her harp close by, raised her hands to his lips with an air in which love and tenderness were exquisitely blended with courtesy and respect, and then hurried away.

Overcome, and trembling with the excitement of this brief interview, Anna bent with closed eyes over her harp for a moment; but becoming suddenly aware that some one stood near her, she started, and the pallor of death and guilt overspread her flushed face when her eyes met those of--Konrad.

*CHAPTER VII.*

*KONRAD.*

To lose thee! O, to lose thee! To live on To see the sun--not thee! Will the sun shine, Will the birds sing, flowers bloom, when thou art gone? Desolate--desolate! Thy right hand in mine. _King Arthur._

Konrad's dark blue eyes were regarding her with a peculiar expression, such as she had never before seen them wear. There was an intense sadness in it, mingled with pity and scorn. It was searching and reproachful, too; and, though Anna felt all that single glance conveyed, she never quailed beneath it; but the blood came and went in her changing cheek as she surveyed her indignant lover.

The appearance and bearing of young Konrad were very prepossessing.

During the whole of that day he had been out hunting, and was now returned laden with the spoil of forest and fiord. A doublet of white cloth, trimmed with black fur, slashed with scarlet sarcenet at the breast and sleeves, and adorned with a profusion of silver knobs, fitted tightly to his handsome figure; his trunk hose were fashioned of the same materials, and he wore rough leather boots, and a smart velvet cap adorned by an eagle feather, under which his long hair descended in fair locks upon his shoulders. He was equipped with a crossbow, hunting-knife, and bugle-horn, and a sheaf of short arrows bristled in his baldrick. An immense cock-of-the-wood and a bag of golden plover were slung over one shoulder, balanced on the other by a pouch of seabirds' eggs, taken from their eyries in those impending cliffs that overhang the bay, where, clinging as a fly clings to a wall, he had scrambled and swung fearlessly above the surf; and, chief spoil of the day, he bore upon his shoulder a black fox, which he had slain by a single bolt from his crossbow.

His natural colour had been increased by exercise; and he looked so handsome and gallant as he sprang up the terrace steps with his unwound arblast in his hand, that Christina Slingbunder sighed as he kissed her dimpled hand a moment before, when enquiring for her mistress; but now the mind of that fickle mistress was too full of Bothwell's image to think much, if at all, on her former lover.

Unwilling to admit to her those bitter suspicions and jealousies that were harrowing up his heart, Konrad addressed her as usual, and with an air of affected gaiety laid the spoil of his bow and spear at her feet. She bowed in silence, and regarded them dreamily.

"See how beautiful is the fur of this fox! Will not its blackness contrast well with your snowy skin, dear Anna?"

"Tush!" said she, a little pettishly; "flatter not thyself, good Konrad, I will make me trimmings of an odious fox-skin; away with it!"

Konrad was piqued by this unusual reply, but he still continued--

"Then behold this great woodcock; see how broad, how dark and beautiful are its pinions!"

"Truly, good Konrad, thou teazest me," replied Anna, stroking them with her white hands, but thinking the while how much its plumage resembled Bothwell's black locks.

"And where thinkest thou I winged him, Anna, with a single bolt from my arblast?"

"I know not," she replied vacantly.

"Thou wilt never guess," continued Konrad, resuming something of his tender and playful manner, despite the palsy in his heart. "In the Wood Demon's _oak_."

"Then this bird may cost thee dear, for the demon will avenge it some day!"

"Already he is avenged!" said Konrad, with sudden bitterness.

Anna smiled, for she knew his meaning well.

"Oh, Anna!" said the young man, laying his hand earnestly on hers; "how changed thou art! what have I done to offend thee?"

"Nothing!"

"Then, by some accursed magic this ring hath bewitched thee!"

"Ring!" she reiterated, changing colour.

Konrad dashed his crossbow on the earth.

"And is it so?" he exclaimed; "O Anna! Anna! like Zernebok, the spirit of darkness and of evil, this Scottish Earl hath crossed my path. I saw him salute thy cheek again and again, yet thou didst not reprove him. Even wert thou to love me again as of old, the charm would be broken; and O, my God! there is nothing left me but to wish we had never met!"

Anna leaned upon the parapet, and averted her face a little. The accents of Konrad's voice--that voice she had once loved so well--sank deep in her heart; but Bothwell's kiss, still glowed upon her cheek, and her heart was steeled against remorse.

"Anna," continued her lover, in a tone of sadness, "so completely was my life identified with thine, that we seemed to have but one being--one existence: the love of thee was a part of myself. I have often thought if thou wert to die, I could never live without thee; but I have lost thee now by a separation more bitter than death. Thou knowest, Anna Rosenkrantz, how long, how well I loved thee, ere thou went to Frederick's court; and in truth I had many a bitter doubt if, at thy return, I would find thee the same artless and confiding girl that left me."

"And when I did return?" asked Anna, with a smile.

"Thou hadst forgotten to love me," replied Konrad clasping his hands.

"'Tis the way of the world," laughed Anna.

"The cruel and selfish world only."

"Be it so."

"Then thou lovest me no more?"

Anna played for a moment with the fringe of her stomacher, and then replied "_No!_"

The young man turned away with an unsteady step, and pressed his hand upon his forehead, as if he would crush some overpowering emotion. Anna lifted her little harp, and was about to retire. Konrad took her hand, but she abruptly withdrew it; a pang shot through his heart, and something of remorse ran through her own at the unkindness of the action.

He caught her skirt, and besought her to listen to him for the last time.