Part 13

In the antechamber of his apartment, a little room, hung with some of that rich arras which Mary had brought with her from France, she was seated with the young prince upon her knee--then a flaxen-haired and hazel-eyed infant of eight months. Mary was paler than usual; for many a night-watch by Darnley's fever couch had injured her health, and increased that pain of which she so frequently complained, in her side. The prince's nurse or governess, Annabella of Tullibardine, the venerable Countess of Mar, attired in a great tub fardingale of black brocaded satin, and a towering linen coif of Queen Margaret's days, leaned on the back of Mary's chair, toying with the infant, and making it crow and smile.

Bolton, as lieutenant of the archers, stood in the recess of a window at the lower end of the room, accoutred in half armour, and having his helmet lying near him; and Bothwell, clad in black velvet, magnificently embroidered with Venetian gold, his sword and waistbelt, his poniard and bonnet blazing with jewels, as his blue velvet mantle did with spangles, stood in another, clanking his gold spurs, and pointing his well-perfumed and pomatumed mustaches; for, however deep and deadly his projects, he now never omitted an opportunity of appearing to the best advantage in Mary's presence; and on this evening nothing could surpass the splendour of his aspect and the gallantry of his air.

How little could Mary conceive the guilty hopes then animating his proud heart, and the dark purposes concealed under an exterior so prepossessing!

"My Lady Mar!" said she, stopping suddenly in her play with the infant, on whom she was pouring all that maternal tenderness, which was the stronger because there was no other object with whom to share her love; "how goeth the time? Is it the hour at which Picauet the leech desired his grace to receive the ptisan?"

"I have no horologue," replied the aged Countess. "Beside, I deem them the work of sorcerers; but Sir John Hepburn can see the dial-stone at the corner there. What sayeth the gun?"

"'Tis three by the dial, noble lady," replied the archer, peering through the grated casement.

"_Jesu!_" exclaimed the Queen; "_comme le temps passe_! 'Tis time I were busking me for Sebastian's bridal. Lord Bothwell--thou knowest the Chevalier Sebastian? He is one of my foreign musicians, who is to be wedded to-night at Holyrood, where, in the old fashion, I have promised to put the bride to bed. _Ma foi!_ but 'tis droll!"

"Indeed!" responded the Earl, scarcely knowing what he said.

"What! hast thou not heard that I am to give a ball in consequence, despite Knox and his rebellious sermons? Did not the master of the household, Sir Gilbert Balfour, invite thee?"

"True, madam; but I have to keep a tryst with the Knight of Ormiston, which will--will preclude, as thou--pardon me, I mean your Majesty, will perceive"---- The Earl paused; he was seriously embarrassed, and his face became deadly pale; but he was relieved on the arras covering the door of Darnley's chamber being softly raised, and a slight but handsome page--a pale and delicate boy--richly attired in a jaquette of carnation velvet, laced and buttoned with gold, with his well-rounded legs encased in white silk hosen--appeared, and said in a low and hurried voice--

"Madam--his majesty is asking for the ptisan ordered by your physician, Martin de Picauet."

"It will be ready in a minute," said the stately old noblewoman, as she peered with her keen eyes into a silver pot, which had been simmering on the warm hearthstone, and contained one of those medicinal decoctions for which the dames of other days were so famous--a notable ptisan, made of barley boiled with raisins, liquorice, and other ingredients, which she carefully stirred widdershins; that is, the reverse of the sun's course, otherwise its whole power, virtue, and efficacy, would have been lost. "Lord Bothwell," said she, "wilt thou favour me so far as to see that his grace takes the whole of this, my medicated draught?"

"I assure you, noble madam, that my good friend Bolton is much more of a nurse, and hath more of a lady's nature, than I," replied the Earl, who found it impossible, at one and the same time, to love Mary and sympathize with her husband, whom he sincerely wished to take his speedy departure to a better world. Mary gave him one keen, reproachful glance; but Hepburn, who was anxious to behold, but with no compassionate eye, the man whom he had doomed to destruction--for the memory of the night-scene in the garden of Holyrood still rankled in his memory--that night, since when he had never seen his loved and lost Mariette, for the profligate king had spirited her away. Now the full glow of hatred rose darkly in his haughty and resentful heart; so, taking from the countess the old peg-tankard containing the ptisan, he raised the arras and entered the chamber of Darnley; but almost at the same moment the page and the anxious old countess followed.

Bothwell, who had been relieved by the presence of others, now trembled; for the continual restraint he imposed upon his ardour, made him feel how dangerous was the predicament in which he stood. Should he not shun this dark temptation, that was gradually verging him, like a rudderless ship, on the shoals of destruction? Should he not fly the witcheries of Mary, and the charm of her presence, while he yet had the power? No! For the hatred he cherished against Darnley, the secret favour which he fondly imagined was borne him in Mary's heart, his own unbounded ambition and haughty pride, all forbade such a measure.

His better angel wept, and Bothwell stayed!

He drew nearer the queen.

There, in the full glory of the setting sun, in the curtained recess of that tall pointed window, sat the young and royal mother, in all the bloom of four-and-twenty, and the charms of her innocence and beauty. The little prince (he who, in future times, would "a twofold ball and treble sceptre carry,") lay in her lap, pulling with his dimpled hands the massive tresses of her bright auburn hair, that, like the softest silk, unbound by his playfulness, rolled over her thick ruff, and pure alabaster neck.

The Earl thought her more beautiful and touching in her maternity, then she seemed when in all her maiden loveliness at the court of the Tournelles. Mary, who felt a little confused on finding herself alone with one to whose secret hopes she was now no stranger, never once raised her dark eyes to the glowing face that she knew full well was bent with ardour upon her; and, though secure in the innocence of her own heart, she felt that she was in a dangerous vicinity; and, blushing at the recollection of the garden scene, never once addressed the Earl, who, restrained by etiquette, remained silent and in his place, playing with the gold tassel of his long rapier.

How loveable, how amiable Mary seemed, and how different from her cousin of England, the puissant Elizabeth; in her cold and stale virginity--her old maiden folly, and youthful frippery; her dancing at seventy years of age before the ambassadors of Scotland and Spain, to shew how very young she was!

As the Earl gazed upon Mary, love filled his mind with the most glittering illusions, and cast a halo round her that dazzled bun. He almost fancied himself the husband of the beautiful being before him, and the father of the little cherub on her knee; a glow, to which his heart had yet been a stranger, swelled up within it, as the brief hallucination became more complete. His passing flame for Anna and his Countess--his schemes of power and grandeur--were all forgotten and merged in the joy that filled his bosom. There was something almost pure and holy in it; and he felt, that were he really what he strove to imagine himself, he would become an altered man--he could for evermore be good, and just, and saintly.

The sound of a shrill silver whistle (there were then no handbells) from the next room where Darnley lay sick, dispelled the illusion; the queen hurriedly placed her babe in its cradle of carved oak, and hastened away, with buoyancy in her step, and anxiety in her eye.

Dark as midnight was the expression that lowered on Bothwell's brow, when thus brought suddenly back to the world of realities, and, like a flood, the stern compact made under that baleful yew at Whittinghame--that doubly attested bond of blood--the danger to be dared and the deed to be done, all rushed upon his memory, and he smote his pale forehead, as with confusion and agony he staggered under the very gush of his own dreadful thoughts.

But there was no time to be lost.

The sun was verging towards the Pentland's western peaks. He had to meet his friends at the lodging of the laird of Ormiston in the High Street, for much had yet to be done ere.......

He thrust away the thought, and, bowing to the Countess of Mar, drew his mantle about him and rushed away.

*CHAPTER XXIV.*

*THE KING'S PAGE.*

And thou, my heart, That idly tremblest at the thought of death, Soon in the tomb thy anxious pulse shall cease To slumber in eternal rest. _Panthea, a Tragedy._

The chamber was dark, for its grated windows faced the east, and the time was evening; the curtains were half drawn, to exclude the light, which was already partly secluded by a great gloomy bastel-house of the town rampart. The walls of the room were panneled, and, like the ceiling, painted with a variety of grotesque designs, amid which, as usual, the thistle and fleur-de-lys bore conspicuous places; but, according to the ancient and primitive mode, the floor was strewn with green rushes, freshly pulled from the margin of the neighbouring lake.[*]

[*] Hentzner, in his _Itineray_, writing of Queen Elizabeth's chamber at Greenwich, says, "the floor, after the English mode, was strewed with _hay_," evidently meaning rushes--See _Brand_.

The young king was sleeping heavily and uneasily.

Raised upon a dais of steps, his bed was ancient and massive; the posts, of walnut-tree, were covered with quaint designs, and carved into four tall figures, having the heads of men, with eagle's wings and lion's bodies; rising from pedestals, they seemed like dusky demons upholding the canopy of a tomb; for the festoons of the bed were of crimson velvet, flowered by the fair hands of Mary and her ladies; the seats of the high-backed chairs were all of the same costly materials.

Sharpened and attenuated by disease, Darnley's features glimmered in the subdued light, like those of a rigid corpse; and the myriad pustules incident to the hideous ailment under which he suffered, were apparent to the louring eye of Bolton, who, remembering that night in the garden of Holyrood, gazed upon him with sensations akin to those of a tigress robbed of her cubs; and the age was not one when men sat placidly under a sense of wrong, or repressed their impulses either of good or evil.

He gave the goblet to the page, whose hand trembled, and whose eye was averted as he received it; then, creeping softly to the side of the slumberer, he placed an arm affectionately under his head, raised it, awoke him, and placed the ptisan to his parched lips, and thirstily Darnley drank of the grateful beverage.

At that moment a ray of sunset, reflected from the wall of the adjacent bastel-house, lit up the chamber, and the hollow recess of that great bed, where the kingly sufferer lay; and through the disguise of a page's jaquette and ruff, the trunk hosen and shorn hair, Bolton recognised Mariette Hubert--his lost, his fallen Mariette, with her arm round Darnley's head, that head pressed against her breast; and this was under his own eyes.

He gave an involuntary start--an exclamation rose to his lips, but died there; and all he had lately heard of this false page's tenderness and assiduity, flashed like fire upon his memory, and his hand wandered to the halft of his dagger, for grimly the thoughts of assassination and revenge floated before him.

Darnley kissed her hand as he sank back exhausted; thus showing that he was aware of her sex, and a blindness seemed to fall upon the eyes of Bolton, for he had loved that French coquette with all the depth and truth of a brave and romantic heart; but the sight of all this tenderness lavished on a rival, and the consciousness that Mariette, whom he would have raised to the rank of a Scottish baron's wife, was content to be the mistress of this profligate king, entered like ice into his heart. There was a terrible expression in his face, when Mariette gave him one furtive glance of her timid eyes, and saw that she was discovered.

Fascinated and terrified by the sad and tender, yet serpent-like gaze of her former lover, she dared not remove her eyes; but sank down on the dais of the bed, and, clasping her hands, said in a low voice,--

"Ah, monsieur! forgive me? If ever thou didst love, in pity now forgive me! Thou knowest not what I have endured since I wronged thee--and how I have endeavoured to atone for it"----

"By such a scene as this?" replied Bolton, with a bitter smile; "but enough! I hope his majesty hath enjoyed his draught of the ptisan; for I doubt mickle if my Lady Mar will make such another browst--for _him_ at least."

"Dost thou think he will die?" asked Mariette, breathlessly.

"_Not_ of the fever!" replied Bolton, grimly. "But be true to thy charge, Mademoiselle Hubert--anon I will be with thee."

"Thou--when?" asked Mariette, gathering courage from his stoical coldness of manner.

"_To-night!_" he replied, with a smile that terrified her, as he took the ptisan cap from her passive hand, and left the chamber by a door opposite to that by which he had entered.

There was an agony in his heart that impelled him to seek solitude. Descending the turnpike stair by three steps at a time, and issuing into the fields, he traversed the path that led under the city walls towards the Porte of St. Mary's Wynd.

The shadows of evening deepened into those of night, and the hour approached when Mary was to set forth to attend the espousal of her favourite damsel, Margaret Corewood, to Sebastian the musician; which ceremony, with her usual love of gaiety and society, she resolved to celebrate by a ball, or, as it was then named, a _hall_.

A strong instance of Mary's returning love for her husband, was this night evinced by her leaving the hall at nine o'clock, and hurrying back to the lonely house of the Kirk-of-Field, with a few attendants, to visit him once more before the dancing began.

Whether the marriage of Margaret Corewood had brought back the memory of their own, in all its first freshness, in Mary's ardent mind, or that joy to behold the changed manner and subdued aspect of her haughty and profligate husband, had rekindled her early love for him, is unknown; but this last interview between them was marked by unusual tenderness.

She kissed him repeatedly, soothed him by her winning and playful manner--and, placing a valuable ring upon his hand, blessed him with fervour; and then, with a light heart and a happy spirit, hurried away to finish the festivities at Holyrood, and "put the bride to bed."

The malevolent Buchanan, who, forgetful of many a favour, was Mary's bitterest enemy, and but for whose elegant Latin the vulgar Edinburgh gossip of 1567 would never have reached us, states, that during this interview the queen was aware that the conspirators were placing powder in the chambers below. But the depositions taken in the presence of the Lords of the Secret Council evince the contrary; and Camden assures us, that Buchanan, on his death-bed, deplored with tears the falsehoods he had handed down to posterity.

It is remarkable that a presentiment of his approaching fate haunted the mind of the young king, who frequently said that he knew he was to be slain. He became sad and thoughtful; and, chanting the 55th Psalm, fell asleep with his head on the shoulder of Mariette Hubert.

*CHAPTER XXV.*

*IN THREE HOURS IT WILL BE TIME.*

Thou sure and firm-set earth! Hear not my footsteps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from a time Which now suits with it. _Macbeth._

Evening drew on, while, buried in deep thought, the Earl walked from the house of the Kirk-of-Field, without knowing whence his steps led, until he found himself on the hill of St. Leonard, where the ruined chapel, dedicated to that holy hermit, overlooked the deep and grassy vale that lay between it and the imposing craigs of Salisbury, whose brows of rugged basalt towered up against the blue sky in rigid outline.

All around these ruins was desolate and bare; and, save a few sheep browsing on the sprouting herbage, there was no living thing near him. Bothwell could hear the pulses of his heart. He leant against the shaft of Umfraville's cross--a time-worn relic of antiquity, that in those days stood on the pathway near the chapel; and, folding his arms in his mantle, endeavoured to compose and arrange the tumult of his thoughts.

The spring evening was serene, and the scenery beautiful. Afar off, amid a blaze of saffron, the sun's flaming circle seemed to rest on the western flank of the magnificent Pentland chain; and each mountain came forward in strong warm light, while the valleys between were veiled in shadow.

The sound of a distant bell fell on the ear of the Earl.

"Seven o'clock," said he; "in three hours it will be time!"

Sheltered by towering hills, and overhung by the aspiring city, he saw the old monastic palace, sleeping, as it were, at the bottom of a dell, all seemed so still around it; and far beyond lay the dark blue German sea, dotted with the sails of Flemish crayers and galleys of Rochelle; but its bosom grew darker as the daylight died away behind the distant hills.

The shadows grew longer and darker, and obscurity veiled the valley where the palace lay.

Full upon Edina's castled rock and all her lofty hills, fell the last light of the western sun, from between glowing bars of golden cloud; and their giant shadows, broad, vast, and dewy, were thrown to the eastward, becoming, as the sun sunk, longer and longer, till they reached the ocean, that rolled upon the almost desert shore of the Figgate muir. The gradual fading of the light amid the mountain solitude that overhung the city, soothed and saddened the Earl, for the spot was wild and lonely; the black eagle and the osprey then built their nests in the craigs of Salisbury; and the red fox and the dun fuimart reared their cubs undisturbed in the valley below.

He felt an agitation and a compunction hitherto unknown, in his bosom; and, as the day faded, he watched its decline with the anxiety of a man who was to die at nightfall.

The shadows ascended from the low places to the higher, rising slowly, surely, broadly, like a transparent tide, on the trunks of the lofty oaks that shaded the city muir, on the slopes of Arthur's Seat and Samson's stony ribs, on St. Giles's diademed tower, and the castle's bannered keep--up, up the Pentlands' sides it crept slowly and silently, the coming night (that night which was never to be forgotten by him), till the last gleam of the west died away on the heath-clad peak of Torduff, the loftiest of that magnificent chain of mountains.

It was gone! the whole hills were sunk in sombre shadow; the evening star began to twinkle above the ruined spire of St. Mary's Kirk, and night and silence stole upon the world together.

"Would this night were over!" muttered the Earl, passing his hand across his clammy brow. "Would to God it were!--God! how dare I to name _him_?".....

He gave one long, keen glance at the distant house of the Kirk-of-Field, and saw its lofty outline, with crowstepped roofs and turnpike tower, standing in dark relief between him and the blushing west; a light was beginning to twinkle in one of the apartments.

It was from that where Darnley lay.

Already, with remorse, Bothwell thought of poor Konrad of Saltzberg; for aware that, in its first fury, the popular vengeance would require some victim to glut its outpouring, Ormiston--ever cool, calculating and ruthless--had recommended, as we have stated, that the friendless foreigner should be involved in that night's deed of darkness; and rendered almost blindly selfish, in the magnitude of the risk about to be incurred by himself and so many great nobles, he had assented to this additional act of cruelty.

"Alms, noble Earl, for God and our blessed Lady's sake!" said a voice near the ruined cross. Bothwell started and turned, and encountered the reverend figure of Sir James Tarbet, leaning on a long staff; and stung to the soul by the momentary contemplation of this old man's poverty and humility, when contrasted with his own pride and guilt, he turned abruptly away.

"Thou hast not heeded me, Lord Earl," said the old man; "but may they whose names I implored, bless thee not the less."

Touched by this resignation, he approached the poor priest with averted eyes.

"Alms, sir! for the sake of the soul of old Earl Adam of Bothwell; had he been alive, I had not needed to crave them to-day. He fell by my side at Flodden; and this poor hand was raised to save him from the English billmen."

Bothwell hurriedly placed his purse in the withered fingers of the priest; and thus, with the greatest of all human virtues in his hand, and the blackest of all human crimes in his heart, he drew his bonnet over his eyes, and at a rapid pace, as if he would leave his own fierce ambition and desperate thoughts behind him, began to descend the hill of St. Leonard, towards the palace of Holyrood, where a line of brilliantly illuminated windows recalled to his memory the royal ball given in honour of the nuptials of Sebastian.

*CHAPTER XXVI.*

*THE OLD TOWNE OF HOLYROOD.*

Mine is the fortune of a simple child, That in the glass his image looks upon; And by the shadow of himself beguiled, Breaks quick the brittle charm, and joy is gone. So gazed I--and I deemed my joy would last-- On the bright image of my lady fair; But ah! the dream of my delight is past, And lore and rapture yield to dark despair. _Henri of Morunge, the Minnesinger._

Above the northern shoulder of Arthur's Seat, the moon rose red and fiery. Slowly its lurid circle cleared the ridge of the darkened mountain, and ascended into the grey sky, through which the clouds were hurrying, like banners of black crape.

Konrad watched it from a slit in the prison wall where he was confined; and even that slit, though scarcely four inches broad, was secured by a cross bar of iron; and the pale moonlight and the cold wind played on his face together, as they penetrated his strong chamber in the Albany tower, and served but to make it seem more comfortless and desolate.

He was alone now; for Father Tarbet had been released, and "expelled the walls of the city, with all his idolatrous crosses and pictures."

He and Konrad had parted in sorrow, and now every night he missed the soothing prayers and kind consolations of the good old priest; and imagined, with pity and indignation, the insults to which he was certain of being exposed, when wandering in a Reformed and hostile land, without a shelter for his venerable head.

From many of the palace windows, bright flakes of light fell on the green holly-hedges and dewy grass of the royal gardens, and on the dusky buttresses and pointed windows of the chapel, throwing their steady radiance on the grim outline of James V.'s tower, and the aged sycamore that shaded its massive wall. A faint strain of music stole upon the soft night wind, and then died away.

Again it came, and the chapel's hollow aisles replied--again and again, through the opened casements, burst in full chorus the music of the queen's Italian singers performing Sebastian's bridal hymn.