Part 9

"Speak not, think not thus, dearest Anna!" replied Bothwell, who felt his resolution wavering, though the thoughts of ambition and the taunts of Ormiston urged him on the path he had commenced. "We must separate--but we must meet again."

"Well, be it so!" she said, bending her eyes that were blinded with tears upon him; "but O, Bothwell! thou art dearer to me than life, and knowest all that I have sacrificed for thee,--home--friends--myself--every thing"----

"True--true, Anna;" he was touched to the soul by her manner and accent.

"Then leave me not--but take me with thee. I will go happily in the meanest disguise thou mayest assign me--O, I will never be discovered!"

"It may not be, Anna; it is impossible. By St. Paul! I tell thee it is impossible at present."

"In the confidence of thy love I have been dreaming a pleasant dream, and now perhaps am waking from it. Wilt thou love me in thine absence as thou dost now?"

"After my solemn espousal of thee before that holy hermit--canst thou doubt it?" rejoined the Earl, in a voice that faltered with very shame, though to Anna it seemed that grief had rendered it tremulous in tone. The supposed emotion inspired her with sudden confidence in him, and she said--

"Go--and never again will I suspect thy love; but oh! when wilt thou return to me?"

"By Yule-tide, dear Anna, if I am in life;" and, kissing her once again, he hurried from her presence like one who had been guilty of a crime, and--returned no more!

"Oh! how base, how ignoble is this duplicity!" he exclaimed on rejoining Hob Ormiston, who with folded arms had been leaning on the parapet, whistling the "Hunts of Cheviot" to wile away the time. "She weeps so bitterly at my departure, and speaks so trustingly of my return, that my heart is wrung with the misery my damnable deceit and criminal ambition will bring upon her."

"Whew! yet she cared not to deceive one who loved her earlier, longer, and better than thee."

"True," replied the Earl; he became silent for a moment, and while the idea of her ever having loved another caused a pang of mortification in his breast, it was mingled with a coldness from which he drew a consolation for the part he was about to act.

"By cock and pie!" continued Hob, pursuing the advantage his sophistry had gained; "ten thousand women should never stand in my path. I never pursued love so fast as to lose a stirrup by the way; and what the foul fiend matters it whether thou weddest Jane Gordon or not? Thou canst still come and see thy Norwegian sometimes, and I warrant ye Sir Gilbert will prevent her from feeling thine absence much. He is a courtier of jolly King James the Fifth; and he, as thou knowest, kept a dame at every hunting lodge to manage the household. Ha! nay, nay, do not chafe; 'tis but marrying the Lady Jane, and handfasting the Lady Anna; and methinks I need not cite examples among our nobility and knighthood."

"In the days when I was young, generous, and unspotted in honour and faith, I was alternately the tool and the plaything of a woman, of that female fiend, Catherine of Medicis, who saw my love for--pshaw! since then I have grown wiser. I have, as we say at chess, turned the tables upon the sex, and view them merely as the objects of my pleasure--the tools of my ambition. Yet I feel that I am on the eve of taking a step, that, however cruel, must make or mar my fortune."

"Fortune! defy her, and the fickle jade will favour thee. I love a bold fellow, who, with his helmet on his brow and a whinger by his side, becomes the artificer of his own fortune."

"Ah! could we but have a glimpse through that thick veil that ever involves the future. Hast thou ever read Cicero?"

"Nay, thank God! I never could read aught save my missal, and, without spelling, very little of that; but since 1560, when missal and mass went out of fashion together, I have done nothing in that way. But this book"----

"'Tis a man, Marcus Tullius Cicero, an illustrious Roman."

"A sorcerer, by his name, I doubt not; well, and what said he?"

"There is a fine passage in his works, wherein he speaks of the capability of seeing effects in their _causes_; and supposes that Priam, and Pompey, and Caesar, had each laid before them their pages in the great book of fate, in the noonday of their prosperity--ere the first fell with his Troy, ere the second was defeated at Pharsalia, and the third perished by the dagger of Brutus. But I warrant thou canst not fathom this."

"No--an it had been a winepot I might; but, cock and pie! 'tis all Greek to me. See! yonder cometh Sir Gilbert from the shore to announce that our ship is ready; and so, once more, my Lord, let us seaward, ho!"

The sun was setting that evening on the Firth of Westeray. Its impetuous waves, that rolled in saffron and purple, broke in golden breakers crested with silver surf upon the shining rocks. The distant peaks of Rousay were bathed in yellow light, but, mellowed by distance, the sea lay cold and blue around their bases. The sky was clear and cloudless, and the purity of the atmosphere imparted many beautiful tints to the ocean, that rolled its restless tides around these lonely isles. Like a white bird floating on the distant azure, afar off at the horizon's verge, a sail was visible from the keep of Noltland about sunset. It was the _Fleur-de-lys_, that had borne Bothwell away from the arms of Anna Rosenkrantz. The whole day, with tear-swollen eyes, she had watched its course through the Firth of Westeray; now it had diminished to a speck in the distance, and ere the sun dipped into the Atlantic, had disappeared behind the fertile Isle of Eglise-oy, where then, as now, the pyramidal spire of the chapel of Saint Magnus rose above the verdant holms, as a landmark to the fishers of the isles.

As slowly the sail vanished round that dim and distant promontory, a low cry almost of despair burst from Anna, and she clung to the weeping Christina. The waiting-woman wept from mere sympathy; but the grief of her mistress (sudden, like all her impulses) was of that violent kind which can only find relief in tears and loud ejaculations.

Near her stood one of Sir Gilbert's retainers, clad in a long shirt of mail, such as was then common in the Orcades; he was leaning on his long axe, and regarding her attentively through the horizontal slit in his salade, a species of helmet with an immovable visor which completely concealed the face; but beneath the impassible front of that iron casque, were features distorted by the grief and anguish that wrung the wearer's generous heart. He was Konrad, who, thus disguised, had the mortification of beholding the wildness of her grief for another.

Often he made a motion, as if to approach her, and as often retired; for though on one hand the most sincere pity urged him to comfort her, the invidious whispers of anger and disdain on the other, together with the necessity of preserving his incognito, withheld him. And there, scarcely a lance's length apart, were the lover and his idol, with the night descending on their sorrows.

From Rousay's hills, and on the distant sea, the sunlight died away. The Firth of Westeray turned from saffron to purple, and from purple to the darkest blue, in whose vast depths were reflected the star-studded firmament, till the moon arose, and then once more its waters rolled in light of the purest silver; and each breaker, as its impetuous wrath was poured upon the bluffs of basalt, fell back into the ocean a shower of brilliants.

*CHAPTER XV.*

*DOUBT AND DESPAIR.*

_Antony_ -------------- How I loved, Witness ye nights and days, and all ye hours That danced away with down upon your feet, As all your business were to count my passion. _All for Love, or the World well lost._

Yule-tide came--and passed away.

Three months rolled on, and in that time Anna heard no tidings of Bothwell.

Those who, like her, have waited in all the agony of anxiety and love, degenerating into fear and doubt, can alone know how long those weary months appeared.

In that lonely island her amusements were few. Kind-hearted, honest, and bluff in manner, Sir Gilbert Balfour, though having been something of a courtier in his youth, had gradually acquired much of that rude austerity, with which the Reformation had impressed the manners of the Scottish people, and, being unable to converse with his fair prisoner either in French or Norse, he soon abandoned in despair any attempts to soothe her melancholy, either by signs or condolences offered in the Scottish tongue, which was quite unknown to her.

She soon grew tired of watching the sails that now and then appeared in the narrow strait between Rousay and Westeray. At first she had been wont to hail them with delight, and to watch their approach with a beating heart, full of hope that each successive one might be his returning to her; but hope and exultation died away together, when the ship passed on towards her Scandinavian home; and then she thought of old Sir Erick Rosenkrantz, sitting lonely in his hall at Bergen; and bitter were the tears she wept, at the memory of that kind old face she might never behold again.

The walrus and the sea-dog, that at times arose in droves from the waves, with their round heads breasting the foam; the vast whale that floundered in the shallows, and blew clouds of water in the air; the shoals of finless porpoises, that rushed through the surge like a flock of ocean devils, failed, after a time, to interest or amuse her. Week succeeded week;--there were days of storm, when the grey clouds and the white mists came down from the Arctic circle; when the waves roared and foamed through the narrow strait, and the lightning flashed afar off among the heath-clad hills of Rousay--days of cloudless sunshine, or of listless calm, succeeded each other; and nothing marked the time, which passed by unmarked, even as the wind that swept over the pathless ocean,--but there came no word of Bothwell. The spring of 1566 approached, and all hope in the bosom of Anna began to die away.

Konrad still preserved his incognito most rigidly; but though life seemed to stagnate on the little Isle of Westeray, and in its great but dreary baronial castle, the world beyond it was busy as ever. One night a messenger arrived from the lieutenant-governor of Kirkwall, bearing despatches for Sir Gilbert, who, without taking leave of Anna, but merely giving strict orders to his bailie, that "she was to be kept in sure ward, and treated with every respect," had thrown himself on board a small crayer, and sailed for the mainland of Orkney.

Then passing fishermen brought rumours of civil war and bloodshed--of battles fought and castles stormed; and Anna, when she heard the name of Bothwell, looked anxiously in the faces of those around her, to read in their expression those tidings she was dying with eagerness to learn, but which it was impossible for her to gather from the barbarous, and half Gaelic half Pictish, jargon of the speakers.

The festival of Easter passed away--summer drew on; yet Bothwell did not come, and then the heart of poor Anna began to sicken within her.

The evening was declining drearily, as many others had declined, on Westeray.

A prey to the deepest dejection, Anna reclined on a stone seat in an angle of the battlement, through an embrasure of which she was watching the setting sun. Christina sat near her on the steps of this stone sofa, and her eyes were anxiously fixed on the pallid face of her mistress, whose fine but humid eyes were bent on the distant horizon; but their expression was dreamy, sad, and vacant. The eyes of another were fixed on her, with an intensity of which she was unaware; and indeed she knew not that any one was near save her female attendant.

Leaning against the battlement, and but a few paces distant, stood Konrad of Saltzberg, clad in the same long shirt of mail, and wearing the same salade that have already been described. For more than an hour he had been regarding Anna as a lover alone could have regarded her; but she was thinking only of her absent Earl, and watching the passing ships.

Many had been visible that day; for the vessels of Elizabeth, the English queen, were then sailing to the shores of Iceland, where her people had been permitted by the Danish king to fish for cod. The sun was dipping into the Atlantic, and, when half his circle was hidden by the horizon, the crimsoned waves became as an ocean of blushing wine, but their breakers were glittering in green and gold where they burst on the rocky beach of the isle.

The sun set; his rays died away from land and sea; the pink that edged the changing clouds, and the flush that reddened the water, grew paler and yet more pale, and the stars began to twinkle in the yet sunny blue of the sky. The last white sail, diminished to the size of a nautilus, had faded away in the distance, and Anna covered her face with her hands, and wept; from beneath the lappets of her little velvet cap, her bright hair fell forward in masses, and Konrad, though he saw not her tears, felt all his sympathy and his old love glow within him.

Resolving at all risks to discover himself, he removed his salade and advanced towards her. Anna raised her head at the clink of the shirt of mail, and, starting up, gazed upon him with astonishment while clinging to the parapet, for her strength almost left her. She would have become paler were it possible; but she was already so colourless, that death could not have made her more so.

Konrad expected a greater ebullition of fear, or joy, or astonishment, at his presence and safety; but Anna, who imagined he had merely expatriated himself from Aggerhuis, according to his threat at their last interview, expressed only the latter emotion in her features; and Konrad could not help feeling a little piqued, at her supposed indifference to the dangers he had run, and the watery grave he had so miraculously escaped.

"Konrad," she faltered--"thou here!"

"Anna, dear Anna!" exclaimed the unhappy young man, deeply moved by the sound of her voice, which, like an old and beloved air, stirred the inmost chords of his heart. "I did not expect to hear your lips again utter my name so tenderly."

He covered his eyes with his hand, and then the girl in turn was moved; she laid her hand gently on his arm, but he trembled so much that she withdrew it.

"Poor Konrad! you seem indeed changed; your eyes are hollow, and your cheek--it is very pale!"

"I have endured great grief; God alone knoweth how much agony has been concentrated in a heart that felt too narrow to contain it."

"I do pity thee, Konrad!"

"It is too late now. Thou didst love me once, Anna, and I feel bitterly how cold a substitute is pity. Oh! thou alone wert the link that bound me to the world; the link is snapped, and I am very desolate now!"

Anna sighed. She would have said _forgive me_; but her pride forbade it.

"The memory of hopes that are blighted, and wishes that were futile, presses heavily on me now," continued Konrad, whose brave spirit seemed to be completely broken; "and, at times, I feel nothing but despair."

"Ah, Konrad!" she replied, with a sickly attempt to smile, "in a few years we learn to laugh at the love of our youth, just as we do at an old-fashioned dress."

"With some it may be so, and 'tis a sad reflection; but, oh Anna! (pardon me repeating that well-loved name as of old,) in all my dreams of the future, I had so entwined our lives, and thoughts, and feelings, into one--I had so long viewed thee as my--my wife--that"----

"I must listen no more to this," said Anna, turning away with a reddening cheek.

"Thou art angry with me; but there was a time--and hast thou forgotten it quite?--when that word _wife_ fell otherwise on thine ear. I trifle, lady. I have tidings to tell thee."

"I will not--I cannot--listen."

"For Heaven sake and your own, hear me!"

"This is alike sinful and insulting--this from the captain of my uncle's archers! Leave me, Konrad of Saltzberg!"

"By my past grief, by my blighted hope and present sorrow, I conjure thee, Anna, to hear me! I would speak to you of this man"----

"My husband?"

"The Lord of Bothwell," said Konrad, with a smile of scorn.

"Hah--well!" continued Anna in a breathless voice, while all her pride and petulance became immediately merged in intense eagerness.

"Thou hast not heard from him since his departure for the court of Scotland?"

"No--not one message hath come to Noltland, at least so sayeth the castellan."

"The castellan hath lied!" replied Konrad, with sparkling eyes; "he hath heard daily, and knows that this false Earl, whom he is now going to join and assist, hath been espoused, with every magnificence, to the sister of the Lord Huntly."

"And I--I"--gasped Anna.

"Thou art a captive for life in this island castle."

Anna clasped her hands passionately above her head, and would have fallen backward had not Konrad sprung to her assistance; but, unable to trust himself with the part of upholding her almost inanimate form, he seated her gently, and hung over her with the utmost tenderness.

"Konrad," she said, with pale and quivering lips, but firm and tearless earnestness; "thou, thou didst never deceive me in word, in deed, or thought--say, how didst thou learn this?"

"How, matters not--'tis the sad verity."

"Thou triflest!" she said, with sudden passion and stamping her foot, while her eyes filled with tears, and she endeavoured to control the unutterable anguish that was expressed in every feature. "From whom, I demand, heardst thou these evil tidings?"

"From Hans Knuber, Lady Anna," replied Konrad, lowering his voice. "He trades, as thou knowest, with certain udallers of Shetland and Orkney, and this night his little crayer, the Skottefruin, (for so has he named her to please the Scots,) is about to sail for the river Clyde. The night is closing--if thou wouldst escape, an hour will set thee free."

"I do not--O no! I cannot--believe this tale; yet I will go with Hans--and whither? Is not anywhere better than this island prison? Yes--land me once in Scotland, and I will soon make my way to Bothwell."

"Thou art perhaps without money, and knowest not the Scottish tongue."

"Love and despair will sustain me without the first, and I shall soon acquire the second. How I will upbraid, how I will implore him; but he cannot have deceived me--Hans must be mistaken."

"But if he is not," said Konrad, piqued at the excess of her regard for another.

"Then I will throw myself at the feet of his sovereign; she is a woman, and, feeling as a woman, will do me justice."

"Wherever thou goest, Anna, permit me to be thy protector; and I will go, for am I not wedded to thee in spirit--thy brother, thy friend, if I cannot be thy lover? Unhappy one! thou dost now experience for another, the pangs that I endured for thee; thou who didst betray me, art now in thy turn betrayed. But think not, gentle one, that I upbraid thee," he continued, on seeing that she wept bitterly, "for now I am thy brother, Anna, since God denies me to be more; and by his blessed name I swear that I will lead, protect, and avenge thee! Come--be once again the daughter of stout old Svend of Aggerhuis, the conqueror of Lubeck--be once again a Norwegian!"

Like a ray of sunlight across a cold sky, a faint and sickly smile spread over Anna's face, and she kissed the hand of Konrad, who was deeply moved by the humility of the action.

"In an hour the night will be dark; have all prepared for flight, and then I will meet thee here. Meanwhile I go to Hans."

"Ah! if Hans should be mistaken, and Bothwell returning find me gone."

"Honest Hans is not mistaken; for Bothwell's marriage is known throughout all Scotland and the isles. Bethink thee, Anna! Hans' ship is bound for the Clyde, a river of that country, and he tells me that Bothwell's princely dwelling overlooks that very water; thus, with him, thou goest direct to the castle gates of thy deceiver."

"Enough! enough! Come triumph or death, despair or joy, I will go with thee. Away to Hans; bid him hasten our departure; he knows how well I can reward him when we are at home in dear Norway. In an hour from this time, Konrad, I will meet thee here."

As she hurried away, accompanied by her attendant, who had withdrawn during this painful interview, Konrad gazed wistfully after her, and, clasping his hands, convulsively muttered--

"O Anna! by what fatality did I ever love thee?".......

That night the moon shone brightly upon the strait of Westeray, and the snow-white sails of the Norwegian ship were bellying in the breeze that curled the impetuous waves. Above, was the blue and star-studded sky; below, was the shining sea. Afar off, the full-orbed moon was rising like a silver shield from the ocean, and between lay a black speck--it was the Keep of Noltland.

On their lee lay the isle of Eglise-oy, with its green holms and yellow sands shining in the merry light of the summer moon, that turned to silver and emerald the waves that murmured on its pebbled shore.

A bell was heard to toll in the distance; its tone was deep and solemn, as it swung in the vaulted spire of old St. Magnus' church, that crowned a rocky headland. It was the signal of nocturnal prayer; for in those remote isles God was still worshipped as of old--the new creed of the Reformers, the clang of their hammers and levers, had been as yet unheard.

The outline of the old gothic church, with its solid tower and pointed spire, stood darkly out in bold relief upon the sea-beat promontory; the stars gleamed through the painted windows of its vaulted aisles; beneath, the waves were rolling in light, and the deep tones of the nocturnal bell were mingled with their hollow murmur.

Hans doffed his Elsinore cap, and prayed for the intercession of the friend and patron of the Orcadian mariner, Saint Tradewell of Papay; while Anna, in attendance to the distant call to prayer, knelt down on the deck with her crucifix and rosary.

Konrad was beside her.

She prayed intently for herself and for Bothwell, but Konrad offered up his orisons for her alone.

*CHAPTER XVI.*

*BLANTYRE PRIORY.*

I fain would sing, but will be silent now, For pain is sitting on my Lover's brow; And he would hear me, and though silent, deem I pleased myself, but little thought of him, While of nought else I think; to him I give My spirit, and for him alone I live. _Pop. Poetry of Servia._

An evening of June was closing upon the "apple-bowers" of Clydesdale and the woods of Bothwellhaugh, when two pedestrians, a male and a female, pursued the ancient Roman way, that by a high and narrow bridge of one arch, which had been constructed by the warriors of Agricola, spanned the stream named the South Calder, a tributary of the Clyde. Fair in complexion and athletic in figure, the young man was attired somewhat like a lowland yeoman. He wore a plain black breastplate and headpiece, for at that time in Scotland, no man ever ventured beyond his own door without armour; he carried a sealskin wallet and pouch, and was armed with a sword, dagger, and quarterstaff. His breeches and hose were of coarse red sarcenet, his gloves and boots of yellow buff.