Part 2

"Thou seest 'tis very likely yonder tall spectre in the gilt armour may die soon."

"Gramercy me! I knew not that he ailed."

"None are so stupid as those who are resolved not to be otherwise," said the Earl, angrily. "Men die every day about us without ailing. Dost thou not understand me?"

"Devil take me if I do!"

"Oh, head of wood! I fear thou wilt never be lost by rashness."

Ormiston laughed in the hollow of his helmet, as he replied--

"Like thee, I may lose my heart in love a thousand times; but my poor head in politics only once, therefore am I somewhat miserly about it; yet I see what thou meanest," he whispered with sudden energy. "Say forth, and fear not. Hah! knowest thou not how I hate the Lord Darnley for the ruin of my youngest and best beloved sister; and that hatred is without a love for his wife, which I see thou darest to nourish."

With a cold and deep smile they regarded each other keenly under their barred aventayles; and Hepburn of Bolton, Bothwell's most stanch friend, who had partly overheard the conversation, said--

"Ere the month be out, I think it very likely this lordling of the Lennox may die of indigestion, as an old friend of Hob's did yestreen."

"On what did thy friend sup, Ormiston?" asked the Earl.

"This piece of cold steel!" replied the black giant, touching the iron hilt of his Scottish whinger.

"How, with a murrain! is it thus that thou servest thy friends at supper?"

"When they grow captious, capricious, or quarrelsome. We came to deadly feud about a few scores of nowte we had forayed on the borders of the debateable land from the clan of the Graemes, and so"----

"Thou thinkest the king may so sup, and so die?"

Ormiston answered by a short dry cough.

"True," continued Bothwell, "there are strange whispers abroad anent the Earl of Moray and his intrigues; but here comes the king! Place for his grace. Heaven save your majesty!"

"My Lord Earl, a fair good-morning--Ormiston and Bolton, my service to ye, sirs!" said the young king, bowing with that grace which marked all his actions; for his suit of mail, which seemed absolutely to blaze in the meridian sun, fitted his handsome form with the flexibility of silk. His eyes were dark and penetrating, but his face seemed in its wan ghastliness like the visage of one who had long been in the tomb; and Bothwell, when he scanned those noble features, so livid and wasted by sickness and dissipation, and compared his slight boyish figure with Black Ormiston's powerful frame, a sentiment of pity rose in his breast, and he shrunk from the dark hints which, partly in banter, and partly in the ruffianly spirit of the age, the knights had given him. These gentle thoughts were instantly put to flight by Darnley's insolent manner.

"I marvel," said he, with a marked sneer, "that the gay Bothwell tarries here among the men-at-arms, when so many fair faces, and the queen's in particular, are at yonder casement."

"I will do all in my power to make amends," replied the Earl, with ironical suavity. "Hob of Ormiston, follow me, if it please you! I will pay my devoirs to the queen's grace;" and with a dark scowl at the king, and a furtive one at his true henchman, the Earl applied his sharp Rippon spurs to his roan charger, and moved away.

*CHAPTER III.*

*THE HANDKERCHIEF.*

Where were then these Palace warriors, That for thee they drew no brand? Verily, we all do know them, Quick of tongue, but slow of hand; Yea, time will show, for this can ne'er be hid, That they are women all, but I--the Cid! _Rodrigo de Bivar._

In those days, the manners, houses, and dresses of the Scottish aristocracy were modelled after those of France, and even to this day traces of the ancient alliance are to be found in Scotland. This imparted to the people a freedom of manner, a tone of gaiety, and a lightness of heart, which the influence of Calvinism was doomed in future years to crush, and almost obliterate.

"By St. Paul!" whispered the Earl, as he and Ormiston pushed their horses through the crowd; "Mary looks like a goddess at yonder casement."

"I will warrant her but a mere woman, after all," rejoined the matter-of-fact baron, spurring and curbing his powerful black horse. "By that dark look quhilk, just now, thou gavest the king, I can read that thou lovest"----

"Who?"

"The Queen!"

"And why not?" laughed the Earl, with a carelessness that was assumed; "has not love been the business of my life?"

"I hope it hath proved a profitable occupation. But remember that yonder face, with its bright hazel eyes and fascinating smile, is like that of the Gorgon in the old romaunt--for whoever looketh thereon too freely, shall die. Bethink thee: there was the poor archer of the Scottish guard at Les Tournelles, who died with a rope round his neck in the Place de Greve at Paris; there was Chatelard, that accomplished chevalier and poet; Sir John Gordon of Deskford, a young knight as brave as ever rode to battle, and who loved her with his whole heart, yet perished on the scaffold at Aberdeen. Did not young Arran love her even to madness, and raved as a maniac in the tower of St. Andrews? and then Signor David the secretary, who, as Master George Buchanan will swear upon the gospel"----

"Add not the scandal of that most accomplished of liars to thy croaking!" said the Earl, impatiently, as the dust of the court-yard came through his helmet. "Hob, hold in thy bridle; for thou makest a devil of a fray with that curveting horse of thine! Good-morrow to your majesty, and every noble lady!" he added, as he caprioled up to the window where the beautiful Mary, with the ladies of her court, were viewing the bustle and show of the martial weaponshaw.

"Ah, _bon jour_, Monsieur Bothwell!" she replied, with one of her delightful smiles; "how comes it that I see thee only now?"

"Because your majesty is like yonder glorious sun," replied the Earl; "thousands see and admire you, but few are noticed in return."

"Oh, what a hyperbole!" said the Queen, with a sad smile; "that compliment would suit the sunny sphere of Les Tournelles better than Linlithgow."

Memory cast a shade over the Earl's brow; but his cheek glowed with pleasure as the smiling queen continued--

"The vassals of the crown muster gaily for this Border war."

"And still more gaily muster the nobles of the court, to curvet and capriole their steeds before these fair ladies; but, verily, few will venture their gilt armour under dint of spear or whinger for their sake."

"Thinkest thou so--even when Bothwell leads?"

"Yes, adorable madam," replied the Earl, in a low thick voice; "even when Bothwell leads!"

"Had so many chevaliers of crest and coat-armour assembled at Versailles, there would have been many a spear broken in our names to-day.

'For Mary Beatoun, and Mary Seatoun, And Mary Fleming, and _me_!'"

added the Queen, singing with all her gaiety of heart those lines from the old ballad of the _Four Maries_.

"And why not here, madam?" said the Earl with ardour; "give me but the guerdon you promised--a ribbon, a glove, a favour to flutter from my lance; and may I die the death of a faulty hound, if I do not make it ring like a mass-bell on the best coat-of-mail among us."

The head of the Earl's lance was close to the window, and the queen with her usual heedlessness, tied her laced handkerchief below its glittering point; and a sinister smile spread over the face of the English ambassador when he saw this incident, and thought how famously he would twist it up into one of those tissues of court scandal and gossip, which nightly he was wont to indite for the perusal of Elizabeth and her satellites, Cecil and Killigrew.

The Earl kissed his hand as he reined back his horse.

"Courage, brave Bothwell!" cried the gay Countess of Argyle; and all the ladies clapped their hands and cried, "A Bothwell!--a Bothwell!"

"Now, ho, for Hepburn!" exclaimed the Earl, spurring his beautiful charger. "Come on, Ormiston! and we will meet all yonder tall fellows in battle _a l'outrance_, if they will."

"I am right well content," growled the giant; "but whom shall I encounter--yonder grasshopper, d'Elboeuff?"

"I would give my best helmet full of angels to see him measure his length on the gravel, were it but to cure him of his pouncet-box and villanous perfumes," said Hepburn of Bolton; "but he is the queen's kinsman, and she may be displeased."

"Diabolus spit me!" said Ormiston, "if I care whether she is pleased or not. I will break one lance and his head together, if I can; for he styled me a Goth and a savage, last night, in his cups."

"And I will run one course with Darnley," said the Earl.

"Good! may it fere with thee, as with old; Montgomerie and Henry of France!"

"How?"

"A splinter may make his wife a widow. Cock and pie, sirs! A ring--a ring! To the baresse!--Back, sirs, back!--We would break a spear for honour and for beauty. Have at thee, Marquis!" exclaimed Ormiston, as he made the point of his long lance ring on the splendid armour of the Frenchman.

"_Bon diable!_" grinned the Marquis; "_J'en suis ravis_! I am delighted!"

"And have at your grace!" said Bothwell, slightly touching Darnley; "I have made a vow, in the queen's name, to run a course with the tallest man on the ground, and the tallest man is thee."

"By St. John! Lord Earl, thou art somewhat over-valiant," said Darnley, bestowing an unmistakeable frown upon the rash noble, who laughed like a madcap as he backed his horse among the startled men-at-arms and spectators, crying--

"A ring! a ring!--Back, caitiffs and gomerals! and then we shall see who are good knights, as King William said of old."

"Wouldst thou have me maintain the field against the beauty of my own wife?" asked the young king, with a terrible frown.

"Certes, yes! for thou seemest least sensible of it."

"Less than thee, perhaps!"

"Yes--ha! ha!"

"Then, God's death! Take up thy ground!"

The queen's archers cleared a space before the gateway, while Bothwell and Ormiston ranged themselves opposite the king and D'Elboeuff, with their visors down, their bodies bending forward to the rush, and their lances in the rest, but having wooden balls wedged on their keen steel points.

The Earl Marischal raised his baton, handkerchiefs were waved from the windows, a shout burst from the people, and, urged from a full gallop to the most rapid speed, the four heavy chargers and their glittering riders met with a fierce shock in the centre, and recoiled on their haunches, as the riders reeled in their saddles. D'Elboeuff's lance missed Ormiston, who planted the hard wooden ball that blunted the tip of his tough Scottish spear full into the pit of the Frenchman's stomach, whirling him from his saddle to the ground with a force that completely stunned him.

"Now, Marquis, lie thou there!" cried Ormiston, who was uncouth as a bear in his manner, "and pray to every saint that ever had a broken head before thee."

The lance of Bothwell smote Darnley full on the breastplate, and its splinters flew twenty feet into the air; but the king's, being by chance or design deprived of its ball, entered the bars of the Earl's embossed helmet, and wounded him on the cheek.

Deeming this an act of Darnley's usual treachery and malevolence, animated by a storm of passion, the Earl drew his sword, exclaiming--

"Ha, thou false lord and craven king! what the devil kind of demi-pommada was that?"

But the Earl Marischal, Ormiston, Bolton, and a crowd of courtiers, pushed their horses between them, and they were separated, with anger in their eyes and muttered invectives on their tongues.

"It matters not, my lords!" said Bothwell, as he wiped the wound with his white silk scarf and regained the queen's handkerchief from the point of his broken lance; "'tis a mere school-boy scratch."

"May Heaven avert the omen!--but I have known such scratches become sword-cuts," observed the Earl of Moray, with one of his cold and inexplicable smiles, for he mortally hated both the King and the Earl.

The morning was now far advanced, and the troops prepared to depart. Slowly and laboriously the little wheels of the two brass culverins, with their clumsy stocks, studded with large nails and cramped with plates of polished brass, were put in motion, by the cannoniers whipping up the six powerful horses that drew them, and the carts containing the bullets of stone and lead, the powder, and other appurtenances for the field.

Surrounded by four hundred arquebussiers, who wore conical helmets, pyne-doublets, swords and knives, and were each attended by a boy to bear his gun-rest and ammunition, the artillery, commanded by Chisholm the Comptroller, departed first through the deep-mouthed archway of the ancient palace. Then followed the several bands of horsemen and pikemen, each under their various leaders--and all riding or marching very much at their ease, according to the discipline incident to the days of feudalism, when steadiness in the field was more valued than mere military show. The long Scottish spears, six ells in length, and the white harness of the knights and landed gentlemen, flashed incessantly in the sunshine; while many a square banner and swallow-tailed bannerole waved above the summer dust that marked the route of the marching column.

They soon left behind them old Linlithgow's turreted palace and gothic spire, its azure lake and straggling burgh, as they wound among the thick woodlands that bordered the road to Ecclesmachin; and, long ere the sun set, the rattle of their kettledrums, the twang of their trumpets, and clash of their cymbals, had wakened the echoes of the Bathgate hills.

The queen and her courtiers watched their departure, together with Darnley, who had joined them, and seemed in better humour from the issue of his encounter with the Earl; but being naturally proud and jealous, he found to his no small exasperation that the ladies were more than ever inclined to praise the handsome peer, and then, for the first time, the demon of jealousy began to whisper in his ear.

"Tell me, Henri, _mon ami_," said Mary, with perfect innocence, "did not the Lord Bothwell look enchanting in his plate armour?"

"God wot, I neither ken nor care, fair madam!" replied the young King sulkily, as he handed his helmet to a page.

"He looked the same as when I saw him at Versailles," said the Lady Lethington.

"Ah, Mary Fleming, _ma bonne_!" said the Queen, in one of her touching accents; "we were only fifteen years old then."

The ladies, finding Mary in a mood to praise the Earl, all chimed in, greatly to Darnley's chagrin and annoyance.

"He is a winsome man, and a gallant," lisped the Countess of Argyle over her pouncet-box.

"He has an eye that looks well below a helmet peak," added the Lady Athole, as she adjusted her long fardingale.

"O, were he single, I would marry him to-morrow!" laughed little Mariette Hubert, glancing furtively at Darnley's shining figure.

"If thou art anxious to be a rich widow, 'twere a good match, Mariette," replied the young King, with one of his icy smiles, as he turned away; and, whistling a hunting air, descended to the court-yard, and departed on a hawking expedition, attended by a few of his own personal retinue, who were invariably composed of his father's Catholic vassals from the district known as the Lennox.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*THE LEITH WYND PORTE.*

----On they pass'd, And reach'd the city gate at last; Where all around a wakeful guard, Arm'd burghers, kept their watch and ward. _Marmion._

Towards the close of a sultry day, two travellers approached one of the eastern gates of Edinburgh, when the burgher guard were about to close it for the night.

The sun of June had set behind the distant Ochils, and his last rays were fading away from the reddened summit of St. Giles's spire, and the dark grey mansions of that ancient capital, whose history is like a romance.

The mowers, who the livelong day had bent them over the grass on many a verdant rig and holm, that are now covered by the streets and squares of the new city, had quitted their rural occupations. Between green hedgerows and fields of ripening corn, the lowing herds were driven to pen and byre in many a rural grange and thatch-roofed homestead; the bonneted shepherd that washed his sheep in the city lochs, and tended them by night on the braes of Warriston and Halkerston's crofts, could little foresee the new world of stone and lime, of gas, of steam, of bustle, and business, that was to spread over these lonely and sequestered places.

Gentlemen in glittering doublets and laced mantles, with hawks on their wrists, and well-armed serving-men in attendance, rode into the city, singly or together, from hawking the gled and the heron by Corstorphine loch and Wardie muir, or from visiting the towers and mansions in the neighbourhood. Few remained without the fortifications after nightfall, for our ancestors were all a-bed betimes.

In half an hour more, the foliage darkened in the cold and steady twilight of June; but a crimson flush yet lingered in the west to show where the sun had set.

The two wearied wayfarers approached the lower barrier of Edinburgh, which faced the steep street known as Leith Wynd, the whole eastern side of which was in ruins, having been burned by the English invaders, under the Earl of Hertford, sixteen years before.

In the fair young man, armed with a round headpiece and corselet, the reader will recognise Konrad the Norwegian, and in the boy that accompanied him, may perceive the soft features and long tresses of Anna, notwithstanding the plain grey gaberdine, the sarcenet hosen, and blue cloth bonnet, under which she had veiled her beauty and concealed her sex. She had all the appearance of a slender and sickly boy, with hollow eyes and parched lips, exhausted by fatigue and privation.

Tremblingly she clung to Konrad as they drew near the low but massive arch of the Leith Wynd Porte, where he knocked on the nail-studded wicket with the pommel of his Norwayn dagger. A small vizzying-hole was unclosed, and the keen grey eye of one of the burghers on guard was seen to survey them strictly under the peak of his morion; for, by an act of the city council, every fourth citizen capable of bearing armour, had to keep watch and ward by night, completely armed with sword and jedwood axe, arquebuss and dagger, for the prevention of surprise from without, and suppression of disturbance within the burgh.

"Now, wha may ye be, and what want ye?" asked the burgher gruffly and suspiciously.

"Who I may be matters little to such as thou," replied Konrad, haughtily; "what I seek is entrance and civility, for I like not thy bearing, sirrah."

"Then I let ye to wit, that without kenning the first, thou canst not hae the second," replied the citizen, whose Protestant prejudices began to rise against one, whom he shrewdly deemed by his foreign accent to be a Frenchman, and consequently, a "trafficking messe preist," as the term was. "I fear me we hae enow o' your kind doon the gate at Holyrood. Some mass-monger, I warrant! Hast thou ever heard Master Knox preach?"

"No--who is he?"

"Wha is he!" reiterated the citizen, opening the pannel, his eyes and his mouth wider in his breathless astonishment. "What country is yours, or wharawa is't, that ye havena heard o' him, who is wise as Soloman, upright as David, patient as Job, as stark as the deevil himsel?"

"I am come from a far and foreign land," continued Konrad, endeavouring to make himself understood by the medium of a little of the Scottish tongue he had acquired.

"Ye are a merchant, maybe? I am one mysel, and deal in a' manner o' hardware that cometh out o' Flanders by the way o' Sluice, frae brass culverins to porridge cogues and kail-pats. Are ye a merchant, fair sir?"

"Yes--at your service, I am a trader," replied Konrad, glad to conciliate the man, and to hear him withdrawing the bolts.

"And in what do ye deal?" he asked, still lingering.

"Hard blows--thou dog and caitiff--and I would fain barter with thee!" replied Konrad, giving way to rage as he felt poor Anna sinking from his arm, under the very excess of exhaustion.

"Awa wi' ye! thou art some thigger or licht-fingered loon--some frontless papist or French sorner--or maybe a' thegether, as I doubt not by the fashion o' thy dusty duds! Awa! or I sall hae ye baith branded on the cheek, and brankit at the burgh cross, or my name's no Dandy the dagger-maker!" and the vizzy-hole was closed with a bang.

Konrad turned away exasperated and sorrowful. Though by this time pretty well used to insult and opprobrium from the reformed Scots, who deemed every foreigner a Frenchman, and consequently an upholder of the ancient faith, evinced their hatred in a thousand ways; and once proceeded so far as to stone, in the streets of Edinburgh, an ambassador of the Most Christian king, who was fool-hardy enough to exhibit himself in a mantle of purple velvet, adorned with the white cross of the knights of the Holy Ghost. Konrad's exchequer was now reduced to a very low ebb, for he possessed but one gold angel and two unicorns--the former being worth only twenty-four, and the latter eighteen, shillings Scots; and though he and his companion had found no difficulty in procuring food and shelter in the rural districts, where every baron and farmer gladly afforded a seat by his hall fire, a place at his board, and a hearty welcome to every wayfarer; now, when arrived at the end of their destination, in a crowded capital, the residence of a court, a trading and grasping middle class, a fierce aristocracy, and their fiercer retainers--the case was altogether different; and he gazed about, with doubt and irresolution, to find a place wherein to pass the night.

The roofless relics of the English invasion would have afforded a sufficient shelter for one so hardy as himself; but his tender and fainting companion----

"Courage, dearest Anna!" he whispered in their native language; "we have now reached the place of our destination."

"True, Konrad," murmured Anna; "but to what end? Oh, I have no wish now but to lie down here, and die! Forgive me, Konrad, this ingratitude; but I feel that I will not now--trouble you very long."

The young man once more put an arm around her; and, with a glance that conveyed a world of grief and passion, supported her to the summit of the steep street, where, between two broad, round towers, another massive barrier, that separated the city from the suburban burgh of the Canongate, frowned over the long vista to the east. The grimness of its aspect, its heavy battlements, and deep, round portal, were no way enlivened by the bare white skulls of two of Rizzio's murderers--Henry Yair, and Thomas Scott, sheriff-depute of Perth--on long spikes.

Lest Anna might perceive them, Konrad turned hastily away; and, looking round, hailed with satisfaction a house, having the appearance of a comfortable hostelry, furnished with a broad sign-board that creaked on a rusty iron rod; and half leading, half supporting Anna, he approached it.

*CHAPTER V.*

*THE RED LION.*

A seemly man our Hoste was withall For to have been a marshall in a hall; A large man he was with eyen steep, A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap; Bold of his speech he was, and well y taught, And of his manhood him lacked righte nought: Eke thereto was he right a merry man. _Chaucer._