Part 8

"A sorceress--God forebode!" said Balfour, stepping back a pace; "we must have her burnt! The sheriff court of Kirkwall meets at Lammas-tide. 'Tis well!" Bothwell laughed.

"Thou mistakest me, honest Balfour! The enchantress I mean, is a fair girl whom I have brought with me from Norway, and who deals in no spells save such as win the heart. She is a lady of high birth and rare beauty too; so brush up thy rusty chivalry, Sir Gilbert, and let me have a litter forthwith for her conveyance."

"A lady! forsooth such brittle ware will find but rough accommodation among us isles-men here at Noltland, where a silken kirtle hath not been seen these ten good years, ha! ha!"

At that moment, Anna, supported by Ormiston and Christina her attendant, appeared at the side of the vessel, about to cross a broad plank that extended to the rough wooden pier, overlooked by the great donjon tower of Noltland. She was very pale; but the torchlight shed a tinge of red on her cheek, and caused her heavy locks to glitter as the night wind waved them to and fro.

The plank shook, and a half-stifled cry of fear escaped from Anna. Bothwell advanced to her assistance, but at the instant a young man sprang from the crowd of islesmen behind Sir Gilbert Balfour, dropped into the water, seized the plank with both hands to steady it, while presenting his shoulder for the lady to lean on.

She touched it lightly with her hand, and murmured her thanks as she passed.

A low sigh fell upon her ear; and, with that quick apprehension of sorrow and interest which is so characteristic of women, Anna turned to her supporter, but his face was bent down and concealed, and she felt agitated--she knew not why.

The young man trembled so much that he almost sank when she touched him. He looked up once; there was a rustling of satin--a dreamy sense of perfume and starched lace, and the vision passed away. He was Konrad!

Ah! had Anna seen the deep and earnest, the sorrowful and affectionate expression that lit his soft and upturned eyes, her heart would assuredly have smote her; but the splendid Earl of Bothwell seized her hand, and led her towards Sir Gilbert Balfour, by whom she was hurried away.

Lighted by torches that streamed and sputtered in the night wind, and flared on the rugged rocks that reared from the frothy ocean, the group ascended the narrow and winding pathway that led to the castle. Konrad gazed wistfully after them, with his hands pressed upon his forehead, and with the air of one who struggles to preserve his senses.

When drifting about at the sport of the waves of the Christiana fiord, and almost insensible from cold and misery, he had been picked up by a small galliot bound for Kirkwall, and the crew had landed him in Westeray a week before the arrival of Bothwell.

He had been protected by Balfour, who, being kind-hearted and hospitable, felt interested in the young man on witnessing the dejection and utter prostration of spirit under which he laboured.

The despair of a heart that has loved truly, and been deceived, is sometimes so deep that no one can imagine its intensity. So it was with Konrad.

The deep, dark consciousness of desolation that had been settling over him, might have become in time a more subdued and morbid feeling of regret; but now this sudden meeting brought back all his first hopes and emotions to their starting-place, and renewed in poignancy all the agony of that hour, in which he learned that he had lost her for ever.

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*NOLTLAND.*

The nicht followis, and every weary wicht Throwout the Erde has caucht anone richt, The sound pesund slepe them liket beat Woddis and rayeand sels war at rest. And the Sterne, thair myd coursis rollis doun, All the fieldis still othir, but noyis or soun. _The AEneid of Douglas_, 1518.

The long twilight of the northern eve had passed away, and the darkness of an October night had closed over Westeray.

Tall and grim and dark, save where lit by an occasional ray from a window, the Keep of Noltland towered in massive outline above the rocky isle.

This magnificent castle was built by Thomas de Tulloch, bishop and governor of Orkney under Erick king of Denmark, about 1422. It was surrounded by massive walls and outworks; the sides of the great keep were perforated by a series of loopholes for quarrelles or cannon, rising tier above tier like the gun-ports of a line-of-battle ship. Many parts of this vast baronial hold are richly decorated by the skill and fancy of the architect, whom tradition avers to have found his grave within its walls, and a large stone, shaped like a coffin, is still pointed out at the foot of the great staircase, as covering the place of his last repose.

The stately hall of the Bishop's castle glowed cheerfully in the blaze of the fire that crackled in the arched fireplace, where a pile of driftwood blazed, the fragments of old wrecks that, could they have spoken, might have told many a tale of suffering and of war, with logs of resinous pine brought from Norway, or washed on the beach from the savage and then unknown coasts of the Labrador.

From the roof hung a large brazen chandelier, in which the flames of twelve tall candles were streaming in the currents of air that swept through the vast apartment. The floor was paved with stone, which, though originally of red rock like the walls, was carefully whitened and sanded. The great oak girnels and cabinets, the tables and chairs, were all of the fashion of James III.; and behind them, on rusty tenterhooks, hung long pieces of rude and carpet-like tapestry, representing, in dark and gigantic figures, the voyage of AEneas, and other passages from Virgil. As the wind moved the arras, the great mishapen figure of the pious Trojan, his long-haired Creusa and chubby Ascanius, seemed at times as if starting into life. At the lower end of the hall, and almost lost in the shadow of its vast vacuity, were several retainers of Westeray, clad in their mail shirts and brown kilts, lolling on hard wooden settles, conversing in guttural whispers, or sleeping under the side tables rolled up in their plaids, looking like bundles of tartan with a mop stick through them--the latter being represented by their shock heads of hair.

A trivet table, marked with a diagram for playing the old chivalric game of Troy, was placed near the fire, and thereon lay cards and dice, and a tall pewter tankard of malmsey wine, from which the silver-mounted horns were incessantly replenished by Bothwell, Ormiston, and the Knight of Noltland, who, with their doublets unbuttoned and their gorgets and swordbelts flung aside were lounging by the ruddy fire and conversing with animation, but marked by a gravity rather unusual for the two first-named personages.

Anna, who, with her attendant, had been conducted to suitable apartments, had retired for the night, leaving Bothwell and his friends to pursue their political conversation, and to drink their wine undisturbed, which they did with the devotion of three Germans quaffing for a wager.

"And this is all thou knowest of the machinations of Moray? Ah! false bastard, I shall live to mar thee yet!" exclaimed the Earl, with kindling eyes, on hearing Balfour unfold the web of intrigue that surrounded the young Queen Mary. "And my barony of Crichtoun too! saidst thou, Sir Gilbert, that Morton had cast his gloating eyes on that?"

"Yea, and but for this late raid at Holyrood, had added it to his adjacent fiefs of Dalkeith and Vogrie."

"And so they have slain this Rizzio! I remember him well--a smooth-tongued old Italian, somewhat gay in his garb, but crooked in form, and weasoned in visage. Did he not succeed Monsieur Raulet as foreign secretary?"

"The same."

"And they slew him, poor knave!"

"It was on the evening of the 9th of March last, when the Queen's Grace sat at supper with her sister, the Countess Jane of Argyle, and Rizzio seated between their tabourettes twangling on his ghittern, when the High Chancellor seized the palace gates at the head of a hundred and fifty tall spearmen, in corselets and steel bonnets, while my Lords of Lindesay and Ruthven, with King Henry and a hundred more, in their armour, ascended by the secret stair to the turret chamber in James V.'s tower. The poor Italian skipped about like a maukin, and cried aloud in his native gibberish for mercy; but, by the mass! he found little of that, for they dragged him from the skirt of the shrieking Queen, and slew him within earshot of her Majesty, whom Andrew Kerr"----

"Of Fawdounside?" said Ormiston; "a stout man, and a bold--I know tall Andrew well."

"Is said to have handled somewhat roughly, for he bent a cocked pistolette against her breast."

"Of Mary?--of a woman about to become a mother!" said the Earl, grasping his poniard. "Would to St. Paul I had been within arm's length of him! but what hath drawn the ire of his most sapient Majesty and the Protestant Lords upon this poor Italian?"

"Heaven alone knoweth,[*] unless it be that her Majesty favoured him greatly for his superior scholarcraft; which, like witchcraft and every other craft, is often like unto a sharp sword that cutteth its own scabbard. Royal favour, as thou well knowest, Bothwell, will soon make a man hated by his compeers; and thus Rizzio was hated, and so slain, for they left him in the adjoining chamber, gashed by six-and-fifty sword and dagger wounds, with the King's poniard driven to the hilt in his brisket, to show by whose mandate the deed was done."

[*] At this date, the calumnies recorded by Buchanan were yet uncirculated. H. le Guyon and _Blackwood_ expressly state David Rizzio to have been an _old man_.

"'Twas right Venetian that."

"And further, knowest thou that Master Craig, the minister of St. Giles, that Master Knox, and the father of that buxom bride whom he won by his damnable sorceries--even the pious and godly lord of Ochiltree--are all art and part in the assassination of this poor stranger, whom they deemed their only barrier to the ear and eye of her Majesty?"

"How!" said Bothwell ironically, "darest thou thus malign our Scottish apostles?"

"Nay, I malign none; but this is well known to my brother the President, who, as thou art aware, is ever fishing in troubled waters, that they were in the conspiracy. Ha!" he added, with a dark frown, "thinkest thou that this knave Knox, who leagued with the sacrilegious murderers of my kinsman, the great Cardinal of St. Stephen, would quail at crushing this harmless bookworm--this poor Italian violer? I trow not!"

"'Tis nothing to me," replied the Earl; "for Master Knox was never friend of mine."

"Nor mine!" added Ormiston, with a furious oath; "he ever gave me the breadth of the causeway, as if there was contamination in the touch of my cloak; and so he, too, can league with murderers--with jackmen, and men-at-arms, eh?"

"Doubtless," replied Balfour with a sneer, "when, as he hath it, 'God raiseth them up to slay those whom the kirk hateth;' since Rizzio's death, Morton, Lindesay, Ochiltree, Fawdounside, and others, have been exiles in England; the Catholic lords are again in the ascendant, and want but the appearance of Huntly and yourself at court (united by other ties, as I have no doubt you soon will be,) to crush by the strong hand, and perhaps for ever, those dark and dour-visaged Protestants. God's murrain on their long prayers and Geneva cloaks! for the sound of one and sight of the other, gives me a fit of the spleen. But we have had enough of these matters--fill thy wine-bicker, noble Bothwell; here's to black-eyed Jane of Huntly--drink, Ormiston, a fair carouse to the Lady of Hailes and Bothwell-hall!"

The Earl drank his wine in silence, and black Hob did so too, twirling his mustache the while, with his eyes half-closed by a leer.

"Odsbody! thou receivest this sentiment rather coldly!" said Sir Gilbert, setting down his horn with surprise.

"Thou forgettest there is this lady of Norway," said the Earl.

"By St. Magnus! dost thou speak of letting thy gay lemane stand in the way of thine advancement, to an eminence more glorious than ever Scottish subject (save this lordling of Lennox) attained to; for thou and Huntly shall govern the realm, and the King and Queen will be but as painted puppets in thy hands; for the memory of Rizzio's bloody corpse, and that night of horror in the turret-chamber, will ever rise in Mary's mind as a barrier between thee and the exiles. Bethink thee! Thou hast many a wrong to revenge on the tribe that have triumphed in thine absence."

"True, true," replied Bothwell, with a louring eye; "but I have promised to this girl"----

"Not marriage! thou wouldst not say that," laughed Sir Gilbert. "No, no; thou wouldst not be such a jack-a-lent (the blood rushed to the Earl's brow). But if thou fearest that Jane Gordon should hear of thy wandering fancies, why, bethink thee that Noltland is a strong castle, and that the rocks of this islet are washed by the deep salt sea. It would form a prison for the giants of Amadis, then how much more for one poor fragile girl?"

Whatever Bothwell thought of this insidious advice, or how much it coincided with the ideas that were then beginning to obtrude on his mind, we shall not say, but now return to Konrad.

He sat by the lonely shore, and its waves rolled up the shelving rock to his feet. He was in a waking dream, and felt neither the cold night wind or the misty spray of the sea as they blew on his fevered cheek. A sense of desolation pressed heavily on his heart, and it was not unmingled with a desire of vengeance on Bothwell. But Konrad was alike brave and generous, and the sentiments of jealousy and rage, that made him at one time grip the haft of his Norwegian knife, were almost immediately stilled by those of a gentler nature--pity and commiseration.

He now felt both for Anna, and felt acutely, though she had so heedlessly and ruthlessly cast him from her heart and remembrance. Chance had thrown them together on a foreign shore, and feeling, he knew not why, an intense distrust of the sincerity of that gay and glittering noble, whom she had preferred to an earlier and better lover, he resolved to watch over her safety and interests in secresy, and with the affection of a friend; for he now deemed her no longer worthy of a deeper sentiment of regard--and yet withal he felt that he loved her still--yea passionately, as of old, though hope was dead for ever.

The moon arose at the distant horizon, and cold and pale its light fell on the restless ocean; clearly and brightly the stars sparkled in the dark blue sky, and at times the red wavering streamers of the north shot across it.

High and grim in all its baronial pride and feudal strength, the embattled keep of the Scottish stronghold towered above the slimy rocks--slimy with drifting spray and drenched seaweed. Three long flakes of yellow lustre streamed out into the night from the grated windows of the hall. One starlike ray shone from a chamber in the guest-row, and long and wistfully Konrad gazed at it, for he believed it was the apartment of Anna, and his conjecture was right.

Young and enthusiastic, he felt that many a vision of future fame and happiness had perished now, and passed away for ever, with the passion that had cherished such dreams--dreams that arise only in the noon of life and love.

The moon went down into the dark blue ocean; the diamond stars faded one by one, and the first rays of the early morning began to play upon the floating clouds, to tinge the east with orange hues, and tip the turrets of Noltland with warm light; but Konrad was still seated by the murmuring sea.

All sense of time and place had been forgotten, or were merged in one idea.

And that idea was Anna.

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*THE SEPARATION.*

Why no tender word at parting---- Why no kiss, no farewell take? Would that I could but forget thee-- Would this throbbing heart might break! Is my face no longer blooming? Are my eyes no longer bright? Ah! my tears have made them dimmer, And my cheeks are pale and white. _Edmonstoune-Aytoun._

"I have resolved!" exclaimed the Earl, breaking a long silence, as he walked to and fro with Ormiston on the bartisan of Noltland next morning. "With a prospect before me so magnificent--the attainment of the administration, the civil and military power on one hand, the sweets of successful rivalry and vengeance on the other! Oh! I would be worse than mad to forego it, by marring my union with the sister of Huntly, and for what? This love so suddenly conceived, and for a foreign girl!"

"Cocknails! but now thou speakest like a man of mettle!" growled Hob through his coal-black beard.

"If," said the Earl musingly; "if I could love her as I once loved one who--pshaw! why these old thoughts? Anna is not my first love; and have I not felt how feeble, how falling, how sickly, have been the sentiments entertained for all who have succeeded _her_?"

"Then thou wilt sail"----

"From Westeray; and, like AEneas, leaving my Dido behind me."

"Right! Sir Gilbert shewed me letters from Lethington the secretary, and his brother Sir James of Pittendriech, wherein they state that her Majesty is most anxious for your return, and daily groweth more weary of her husband; that Huntly (the moment thou art fairly espoused to his sister) will strike some vigorous blow to lay for ever prostrate the adherents of Morton and of Moray."

"What a jack-a-lent! what a blockhead I have been, to give way thus to my passion for the niece of Rosenkrantz! I have done myself, and so may mar a thousand giant schemes of triumph and ambition."

"I thought that sense would return when perhaps too late; but the affair is not irredeemable."

"Ha!--how?"

"A marriage tie blessed by yon mad priest cannot be very indissoluble, and the damsel may easily be got rid of."

"Dog of hell!" exclaimed the Earl furiously, "wouldst thou counsel me to murder her?"

"Nay," replied Hob sternly; "may God forgive thee the thought, so freely as I do this foul offence; but as Sir Gilbert offers to keep thy troublesome lemane, let him do so a-God's name. He is a gay man and a gallant, this old Balfour--we know him well; and, cock and pie! I warrant he will soon find means to turn this damsel's sorrow into joy."

At this probability a darker frown gathered on the brow of Bothwell; for, though half tired of Anna, and wholly repenting of his intrigue with her, he felt a pang at the idea of another supplanting his image in her heart.

"Thou art but a cold-blooded and iron-hearted mosstrooper, Hob," said he; "one inured to rapine and cruelty; nursled and nurtured among wilds and morasses, and thirty years of incessant feud and foray, stouthrief and bloodshed, and cannot judge of my feelings in this matter. I will myself see Anna, and break the matter to her--bid her adieu, and will meet thee here, if thou tarriest for me."

"See her, and be lost! one smile--one tender word--a few tears--will seal thy fate; and while thou playest the lover and the laggard here at Westeray, Morton, Lindesay, and their allies, aided by the English Queen, regain place and power, and reverse thy pardon and recall. Yonder lieth the _Fleur-de-lys_, with her canvass flapping in the friendly gale, that streams her pennons towards the Caithness coast. Be wise--be wary; away, and see not Anna again!"

"Trust me, Ormiston. In my youth I was the plaything of a proud, a cold, and calculating beauty; the slave of her charms and caprice in hall and bower--the upholder of her name and loveliness amid the dust and blood of the battle and tiltyard; but these follies have passed with the years and the passion that produced them; and now thou shalt see, that, like that woman, I can be cold as ice, and impassible as marble, when my interest jars with my love. In half an hour I will meet thee here; till then, adieu!"

One of the numerous boys, who fed like the dogs on the offals at the hall-table of the great island baron, conducted the Earl to the chamber of Anna. He was little, but strong and active as a deer. His whole attire was a kilt of brown stuff belted about him, a sealskin vest, and the leathern fillet confining the masses of his thick red hair, which, from the hour of his birth, a comb had never touched. Leading the way, he sprang like a squirrel up the steps of the great stair, his bare and sinewy legs taking three steps at a time.

The space and magnificence of the staircase made the Earl pause as he ascended, notwithstanding the bitter thoughts that oppressed him. The great stone column upon which the steps turn, is a yard in diameter, and has a capital decorated with a statue of the Bishop of Orkney, Thomas de Tulloch. The nature of the times of which we write, was evinced by the architecture of this grand stair; for, at every turn of the ascent, there are concealed loopholes pointing inwards, to gall the foe who might penetrate thus far; while, at the summit, there is still remaining the guard-room, where five or six islesmen, who formed the body-guard of Balfour, clad in their shirts of mail, and armed with bow and battle-axe, lay stretched on the stone benches dozing listlessly, like sleepy dogs.

The Earl stood within the apartment where Anna had passed the night; it was wainscoted with fir-wood, and on the centre of each pannel was carved a quaint device, the design of some rude genius of the Orcadian Isles. These were principally of a religious nature, and the hands and feet of our Saviour, pierced by the nail-holes and encircled by a crown of thorns, appeared alternately with the _otter-head_ of Balfour, and satyr-like visages that grinned from bunches of gothic leaves. The stone fireplace was surmounted by a bishop's mitre, and a fire of driftwood was still smouldering on the hearth.

Christina, who had been watching her mistress, retired on the entrance of the Earl.

He approached the bed where Anna, still oppressed by the illness and lassitude consequent to her voyage, was reposing and slumbering soundly, unaware that her lover was bending over her.

Raised upon a dais, and having a heavy wooden canopy supported by four grotesque columns, the bed resembled a gothic tomb rather than a couch, and Anna might have passed for a statue, as her face and bosom were white as Parian marble. On each cheek her hair fell in heavy braids, which glowed like bars of gold when the rays of the morning sun streamed through the embrasured casement on her placid face.

More than usual was revealed of a bosom that, in its whiteness and roundness, was, like that face, surpassing beautiful. The colour came and went in the cheek of the Earl, and he became irresolute as he gazed upon her. He sighed deeply, and, animated by a sudden tenderness, pressed his lip to her cheek; she awoke, and twined her arms around him.

"My dear Lord!" said she, in a faint voice, "so thou art come to me again!"

"I have come, Anna, but to bid thee farewell." Her large eyes dilated with sudden alarm and grief.

"I told thee, Anna, that in Orkney we might have to separate for a time, ere I could convey thee to my household and my home. The wind is blowing right across the stormy Frith toward the mainland of Scotland, and though love cries ho! my skipper is urgent, and still more so is stern necessity. Farewell for a time--for a brief time, sweet Anna, I must leave thee," continued the Earl kissing her repeatedly to pacify her.

Her beauty was very alluring, and until that moment he knew not how deep was his passion for her.

"In that busy world of turmoil and intrigue on which thou art about to re-enter--I will be forgotten. Thou mayest not return to me, and I--I will"----

"What?"

"Die!"