Part 5

"Anna, dearest Anna!" he said in a breathless voice; "oh, never was there a love more pure or more devoted than mine! Long, long ago, I endeavoured to crush this passion as it grew in my breast, for I knew the gulf that lay between us--thou, the daughter of Svend of Bergenhuis, the wealthy and ennobled merchant, famous alike for his treasures and his conquests over the Burghers of Lubeck and the Dukes of Holstein--I, the representative of a race that have decayed and fallen with the pride of old Norway, even as their old dwelling on yonder hill," and he pointed to the ruined tower on the distant Saltzberg; "even as it has fallen almost to its foundations. As these convictions came home to my heart, I strove to crush the expanding flower--to shun thee--to avoid thy presence, as thou mayest remember; but still thine image came ever before me with all its witchery, and a thousand chances threw us ever together. Ah! why wert thou so affable, so winning, when, knowing the secret that preyed on my heart, thou mightest so much more kindly have repulsed me? why encourage me to hope--to love--when thou wert to treat me thus?"

"Enough of this," faltered Anna; "permit me to pass--I can hear no more."

"How cruel--how cold--how calculating! It is very wicked to trifle thus with the best affections of a poor human heart. O Anna! in all the time I have loved you so truly and so well, it was long ere I had even the courage to kiss your hand."

"Because thou wert ever so timid," said Anna, with a half smile.

"Timid only because my love was a deep and a sincere one. But what were my sensations," and he grasped his dagger as he spoke; "what agony I endured, on seeing this accursed stranger kiss your cheek?"

Anna's colour deepened, and again she endeavoured to retire.

"Oh, tarry one moment, Anna!" continued the poor lover in a touching voice, and kneeling down while his eyes filled alternately with the languor of love and the fire of anger. "In memory of those pleasant hours that are gone for ever, permit me once again to kiss this hand--and never more will I address you. Refuse me not, Anna!"

"Thou tirest me!" she replied, stretching out her hand, but averting her face; for the beautiful coquette had "a smile on her lip and a tear in her eye"--a smile, for she could not repress her triumph in exciting so much love--and a tear, for she could not stifle her pity.

Konrad kissed her hand with the utmost tenderness. It lingered a moment in his, but was suddenly withdrawn. The light left his eyes; a curtain seemed to have fallen between him and the world--and he was alone.

On the terrace which had been the scene of this sad interview, he lingered long, with his heart crushed beneath a load of conflicting emotions. The love he had so long borne Anna now began to struggle with emotions of wounded self-esteem and anger at her cold desertion. Jealousy prompted him to seek some deadly vengeance, and from time to time he cast furtive glances at his steel arblast, with its sheaf of winged bolts, that lay among the spoil he had brought from the forest. Had the Earl of Bothwell appeared within bowshot while these evil thoughts floated through the brain of Konrad, our history had ended, perhaps, with the present chapter; but, luckily, he was at that moment engaged at the old game of Troy with Sir Erick in the hall.

"I could not slay him!" thought the young man, generously, as other emotions rose within him; "no, not even if he smote me with his clenched hand. She seems to love him so much, that his death would be alike a source of misery to her and deep remorse to me. Dear Anna! thy happiness will still be as much my aim as if I had wedded thee; but I pray God thou mayest not be deceived, and endure--what I am now enduring!"

These generous thoughts soothed not his agony; and bitter was the sense of loneliness, of misery, and desolation, that closed over his heart in unison with the shadows of evening that were then setting over the wide landscape below.

"And she coldly saw me weep!" he exclaimed.

He felt that he must leave Bergen and the presence of Anna--but for whence? Whether for the desolate settlements of the half-barbarian Lapps, or the wars of the Lubeckers and Holsteiners, he could not decide. His love of the chase inclined him to the first; his weariness of life, to the last.

Such were his thoughts; but at two-and-twenty one seldom tires of existence, whatever its disappointments and bitterness may have been.

The sun had set on the distant sea, and the long line of saffron light it shed across the dark blue water died away; the gloomy shadows of the rocks and keep of Bergen faded from the bosom of the harbour, and red lights began to twinkle one by one, in the little windows of the wooden fisher-huts, that nestled on the shelving rocks far down below, among a wilderness of nets, and boats, and anchors.

From the terrace of the castle, miles beyond miles of rocky mountains were seen stretching afar off in blue perspective towards the surf-beaten Isles of Lofoden; and, tipped by the last red light of the sun that had set, their splintered and rifted peaks shot up in fantastic cones from those endless forests, so deep, and dark, and solemn--so voiceless, and so still. Konrad's melancholy meditations were uninterrupted by a sound; no living thing seemed near, save a red-eyed hawk that sat on a fragment of rock.

He could hear his own heart beating.

Though his mind was a prey to bitterness the most intense, he watched the sunset, and the changing features of the landscape, with all the attention that trifles often receive, even in moments of the deepest anguish.

Gradually the shadows crept upward from the low places to the mountain tops. Each long promontory that jutted into the far perspective of the narrow fiord, was a steep mountain that towered from its glassy bosom in waveworn precipices; between these lay the smaller inlets, long and narrow valleys full of deep and dark blue water, that reflected the solemn pines by day, and the diamond stars by night. Some were dark and sunless, but others glittered still in purple, gold, and green, where the eider-duck floated in the last light of the west; and all was still as death along the margin of that beautiful bay, save the roar of a distant cataract, where a river poured over the chasmed rock, and sought the ocean in a column of foam.

Night drew on; the bleating of the home-driven kids, the flap of the owlet's wing, and faint howl of a wandering wolf, broke the stillness of the balmy northern eve; while the wiry foliage of the vast pine-forests, that flourished almost to the castle gates, vibrated in the rising wind, and seemed to fill the dewy air with the hum of a thousand fairy harps.

Konrad, who, with his face buried in his hands, had long reclined against the rampart of the terrace, was startled to find close beside him a tall dark man, whose proportions, when looming in the twilight, seemed almost herculean, intently examining the great wood-cock, in the bosom of which a cross-bow bolt was firmly barbed.

Filled with that inborn superstition which is still common to all Scandinavia, his first thought was of the terrible _Wood Demon_, in whose venerated oak he had so heedlessly and daringly shot the bird. Animated by terror, such as he had never known before, a prickly sensation spread over his whole frame, and even Anna was partially forgotten in the sudden horror that thrilled through him, as, with an invocation to God, he sprang upon the battlement of the terrace.

The dark stranger uttered a shout, and sprang forward. Konrad's terror was completed.

He toppled over, made one palsied and fruitless effort to clutch the grass that grew in the clefts of the ancient wall, and failing, launched out into the air; down, down, he went, disappearing headlong into that dark abyss, at the bottom of which rolled the ocean.

"Cock and pie!" muttered Black Hob, with astonishment; (for it was no other than he,) as he peered over the rampart, "was it a madman or a bogle that vanished over the wall like the blink of a sunbeam?"

He stretched over, cast down one hasty glance, and instinctively drew back; for far down at the base of the beetling crags, he saw the ocean boiling, white and frothy, through the obscurity below.

A wild and unearthly cry ascended to his ear.

"By the blessed mass, a water-kelpie!" muttered Ormiston, as he hurried away in great disorder.

Konrad escaped a death on the rocks, but, falling into the ocean, arose to the surface at some distance from the shore. Breathless and faint by his descent from such a height, he could scarcely (though an excellent swimmer) make one stroke to save his life. A strong current running seaward round the promontory, drove a piece of drift-wood--a pine log--past him. He clutched it with all the despair of the drowning, and, twining himself among its branches, was thus swiftly, by the currents of the fiord, borne out into the wide waste of the Skager Rack.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE COCK-OF-THE-WOODS.*

In woman thou'rt deceived; but that we Had mothers, I could say how women are, In their own natures, models of mere change; Of change from what is nought, to what is worse. _The Lady's Trial._

In Norway there existed (and exists even unto this day) a certain malicious spirit, who is ever on the alert to poke a finger in every body's affairs, and to put every thing wrong that ought to be right. He hides whatever is missing, and brings about every mischance that happens to man, woman, or child--to horse and to dog--to the huntsman in the woods--to the fisher on the fiord. The blame of every ill is laid on the shoulders of this unfortunate and omnipresent sprite--NIPPEN; who, though secretly blamed, cursed, and feared, must outwardly be spoken of with reverence and respect, or his unremitting vengeance and malevolence are certain and sure.

Always after nightfall, to obtain his good-will, a can of spiced ale is deposited in a certain nook of every household for the especial behoof of the thirsty imp; who, if he cannot find time to empty all the cans so liberally bestowed, generally permits some of the wandering Lapps, the houseless dogs or questing foxes, that are ever wandering after nightfall, to have that pleasure; so that next morning Nippen's ale-can is usually found empty in its place.

In the castle of Bergen it was the morning occupation of Anna to spice a cup of ale until it was exquisitely flavoured, and then, in accordance with the still existing superstition, Christina Slingbunder placed it in a solitary nook of the terrace, for the prowling spirit of mischief, who nightly found it there; but Sueno Throndson frequently and somewhat suspiciously averred, that Nippen came in the shape of a Danish crossbowman to drink it.

On the evening mentioned in the preceding chapter, Ormiston, chancing to pass that way, observed the bright flagon standing in its sequestered niche, and drew it forth. He surveyed it with great interest in various ways--and then tasted it. The flavour was delicious, and he drained it to the bottom.

The spiced liquor mounting at once to the brain of Hob, threw a sudden cloud over all his faculties, which were never very bright at any time; and thus next morning he had no remembrance of his adventure with Konrad on the terrace, on the preceding evening. At the same hour, however, he failed not to examine the same place; and finding there another mug of that divinely flavoured beverage, without hesitation transferred the contents to his stomach, much to the disappointment of a certain Danish soldier, who, finding himself anticipated a second and third time, began with some terror to imagine that Nippen was at last beginning to look after his property in person.

The fumes mounted to the Knight of Ormiston's brain; and carolling the merry old ditty of "The Frog that came to the Mill Door," he danced round the terrace, kicking before him the cock-of-the-woods, that was still lying where Konrad had left it. As he was about to descend, Bothwell, gaily attired, with his eyes and countenance radiant with pleasure, sprang up the stair, taking three steps at a time.

"Good-morrow, noble Bothwell!" said Ormiston, balancing himself on each leg alternately.

"What the devil art thou following now, eh?" asked the Earl.

"My nose, for lack of something better!"

"Thou seemest very drunk! Surely the ale at dinner to-day was not over strong for thee. But, harkee, I have triumphed!"

"Indeed! but the fact is, I am too drunk at the present moment to see exactly how!"

"Guzzler! thou understandest me very well!"

"A notable triumph for one who, if rumour sayeth true, broke many a sconce and many a spear at the Tournelles for the love of a French princess!"

Bothwell coloured deeply; a dark frown gathered on his broad brow, and his dark, expressive eyes filled with light; but the expression and the momentary emotion passed away together.

"I value thy gibes not a rush. To me all the world is now concentrated in this rude Norwegian castle!"

"What a difference between a man who is in love like thee, and one who is not, like me!"

"My stout Hob, thou knowest more of foraying by Cheviot side, and harrying the beeves of Westmoreland, than of making love!"

"Heaven be praised, for I have known this same love turn many a bearded man into a puling boy."

"It can exalt the heart of a coward into that of a hero. It can expand the bosom of the austere hermit into that of a jovial toper"----

"And endow Bothwell, the hellicate rake, with all the virtues of Bothan, the saint and confessor."

"I wish all the imps in hell had thee!" said the Earl, turning away.

"I thank thee for thy good wishes," replied his friend, reeling a little; "and so thou hast really and irrevocably given thy heart to this grey-eyed Norwegian."

"Grey-eyed, thou blind mole! Her eyes are of the brightest and purest blue."

"I say _grey_, by all the furies! and I protest, that I love neither grey-eyes nor the name of Anna."

"Wherefore, most sapient Hob?"

"Because I never knew an Anne that was not cold-hearted, or a grey-eyed woman that was not cunning as a red tod."

"Marry! a proper squire to judge of beauty," said the Earl laughing; but, nevertheless, feeling very much provoked. "But thou wilt know how to shape thy discourse, when I say that I am about to ask her hand of Erick Rosenkrantz."

"By St. Christopher the giant, thou art mad!" said Ormiston, with a gravity that shewed the assertion had sobered him; "be wary, be prudent. Should the Lord Huntly"----

"My malediction on Huntly! He shall never see my face again; so it matters not. He may bestow his pale sister, the Lady Jane, on some ruffling minion of the bastard Moray, the crafty Morton, the craftier Maitland, or of the thundering Knox, who now have all the sway in that court, where the outlawed Bothwell shall never more be seen." And with one hand twisting his mustaches, and the other playing with the pommel of his dagger, the Earl strode away, and left his friend and vassal to his own confused reflections.

Bothwell, who had ever been the creature of impulse, without delay sought old Sir Erick of Welsoeoe, whom he found seated in a nook of the ramparts, basking in the long lingering sunshine, and sheltered from the evening wind by the angle of the turret. His long sword rested against one arm of his chair, a pewter mug of dricka was placed on the other, and before him stood Sueno, cap in hand, receiving certain orders with all due reverence.

"What the devil is this Van Dribbel tells me?" he was saying as Bothwell approached. "All the beer soured by the thunder-storm! I marvel that it hath not soured my temper too, for there never was a man so crossed, I tell thee, Sueno. It was my wish that Konrad should have undertaken the capture of this necromancer, and seen him hanged in one of his own devilish cords; and now Konrad is nowhere to be found. How dares he leave the precincts of Bergen without my permission?"

"His Danish archers have searched every where," said Sueno, "even to the base of the Silverbergen, sounding their horns through the forest, along the shores of the fiord, and the margin of the bay; and I would venture my better hand to a boar's claw, that the Captain Konrad is not within the province of Aggerhuis."

"Sayest thou so!" exclaimed the Knight Rosenkrantz, who, between the attention required by his offices of castellan and governor,--the machinations of a water-sprite who dwelt in the harbour of Bergen, where he daily wrought all manner of evil to the fishermen,--Nippen, who made himself so busy in the affairs of all honest people on the land,--the gnomes of the Silverbergen, who stole his poultry,--and the cantrips of a certain mischievous demon inhabiting the adjacent wood, and had thrice turned three fair flocks of Sir Erick's sheep into field mice, in which shape he had seen them vanishing into mole-tracks in the turf, where a moment before they had been browsing,--the old governor, we say, who, with all these things to divert his attention, never found time hang heavy on his hands, made a gesture of anger and impatience, and he swore a Norse oath, which the Magister Absalom Beyer has written so hurriedly that our powers of translation fail us; but he added--

"My mind misgiveth me that something is wrong. Away, Sueno, take a band of archers, and once more beat the woods with shout and bugle, and if Konrad appears not by sunrise to-morrow, by the holy Hansdag I will--not know what to think."

The threat evaporated; for honest Rosenkrantz loved the youth as if he had been his own son.

Though Bothwell had a grace, effrontery, or assurance (which you will) that usually carried him well through almost every thing he undertook, and which won every one to his purpose, he could not have chosen a more unfortunate crisis for the startling proposal, which he made with admirable deliberation and nonchalance to the portly Rosenkrantz; who no sooner heard the conclusion, than he said with a hauteur, to which Bothwell, at all times proud and fiery, was totally unaccustomed, and which he did not think this plain unvarnished Nordlander could assume--

"Excuse me, I pray thee, my Lord Earl of Bothwell. Though I venerate your rank and mission, as ambassador from the Queen of the Scots (here the Earl's cheek glowed crimson), I cannot give my niece to you, even were I willing to bestow her. She is the first and only love of my young friend, Konrad of Saltzberg, as gallant a heart as Norway owns; he to whose daring you and your friends owed preservation on the night of the storm. From childhood they have known and loved each other, yea, since they were no higher than _that_," holding his hand about six inches from the ground; "growing up, as it were, like two little birds in the same nest, twining into each other like two tendrils from the same tree; and a foul stain it would be on me to part them now, even though King Frederick came in person to sue for the hand of Anna."

"Hear me, Lord Erick," began Bothwell, alike astonished and offended at the rejection of a suit, which he secretly thought was somewhat degrading to himself.

"I know all thou wouldst urge," said Erick, shaking his hand; "but this may not, cannot be; for thou art a man too gay and gallant to mate with one of our timid Norwegian maidens."

The inexplicable smile that spread over the Earl's face, shewed there was more in his mind than the honest Norseman could read. He was about to speak, when Sueno approached bearing in his hand a dead bird, and having great alarm powerfully depicted in his usually unmeaning face.

"Oh, Sir Erick--Sir Erick--what think you? last night Konrad of Saltzburg shot this cock in the Wood Demon's oak!"

"Now, heaven forefend!" exclaimed the Castellan, sinking back in grief and alarm. "Then, Sueno, thou needst search no more. God save thee, poor Konrad!"

"How--how, wherefore?" asked Bothwell; "what has happened?"

"We shall never behold him more. He hath assuredly been spirited away," replied Rosenkrantz in great tribulation; for in the existence of all those elementary beings incident to Norse superstition, he believed devoutly as in the gospel; "he hath been spirited away, and enclosed Heaven alone knoweth where--perhaps in a rock or tree close beside us here--perhaps in an iceberg at the pole"----

"Amen!" thought Bothwell, who would have laughed had he dared; "I would that the Captain of Bergen were keeping him company!"

"O Sueno! thou rememberest how it fared with thy brother Rolf, when he stole acorns from that very tree?"

"Yes--yes--as he crossed the Fiord in the moonlight, a great hand arose from the water, and drew down his boat to the bottom--and so he perished. Poor Rolf!"

"And with the father of Hans Knuber, who left his axe resting against it one evening, in the summer of 1540?"

"An invisible hand hurled it after him, and broke both his legs."

"And Gustaf Slingbunder, who pursued a fox into its branches, was bewitched by the demon in such wise, that he ran in a circle round the tree for six days and nights, till his bones dropped asunder."

"Saint Olaus be with us!"

Erick Rosenkrantz and Sueno continued to gaze at each other in great consternation, while Bothwell looked at them alternately with astonishment, till the blast of a horn at the gate arrested their attention, and a Danish archer approached, to inform his excellency the Governor of Aggerhuis, that a royal messenger from Copenhagen required an audience.

"So this unmannerly boor hath rejected my suit!" muttered the haughty Earl, as he turned away; "mine--by St. Paul! I can scarcely believe my senses. If my _roue_ friends d'Elboeuff or Coldinghame heard of it, they would cast a die to decide which was the greater fool--Bothwell or Rosenkrantz. Rejected! Be it so; but to have this damsel on my own terms shall now be my future care."

*CHAPTER IX.*

*LORD HUNTLY'S LETTER.*

All self-command is now gone by, E'er since the luckless hour when she Became a mirror to my eye, Whereon I gazed complacently. Thou, fatal mirror! where I spy Love's image. _Bernard de Pentadour._

Anna, who might have formed some excuse for Konrad, (whom she supposed to have voluntarily expatriated himself, as he threatened,) maintained a silence on the subject of their last interview, and, wholly occupied with her new and glittering lover, troubled herself no more about the old one.

She was teaching the Earl the polsk, the national dance of the Norse, and to which they are enthusiastically attached. Christina and three other attendants played on the ghittern, harp, and tabor, taking at times a part in the figures of the dance.

While the Earl, with his cloak and rapier flung aside, and having one arm round the waist of Anna, was performing with her a succession of those rapid whirls which make this dance so closely to resemble the modern waltz, Black Hob of Ormiston entered the hall, and beckoned him with impatience in his gestures.

"How now!" said the Earl, pausing; "is the devil in the bush again? Thou hast a face of vast importance, Hob. By Jove! it seems to swell out even that voluminous ruff of thine!"

"Peradventure there be reason. Behold! here are letters from Copenhagen."

"Hah! say you so?"----

"Sent by that king's messenger who came hither but an hour ago!"

"Pardon me, Lady Anna," said the Earl with sudden confusion; "I must speak with my friend, but will rejoin you in a few minutes. Whose seals are these, Hob?" he asked, as they descended to the terrace, hurriedly by the way, examining the square packets, which were tied with ribbons, and sealed with wax at the crossing. "By the Holy Paul! 'tis from Frederick of Denmark this!"

"And this from the Earl of Huntly; see! it bears the boar-heads of Gordon and the lions of Badenoch!"