Part 2

Again and again the mass-bell rang, and lower bent every head before that humble altar, on which all present deemed (for such is the force of faith) that the invoked Spirit of God was descending, and the Destroyer trembled in his inmost soul. He covered his head with his mantle, and bent all his thoughts on Heaven, in prayers for mercy and forgiveness.

A shower of tears came to his aid, and his thirst passed away; but oh! how deep were those mental agonies, of which he dared to inform no one!

It was long since he had wept, and he could not recall the time; but his tears were salt and bitter. They relieved him; after a few minutes he became more composed; and the stern necessity of returning instantly to Holyrood pressed vividly upon him; but he dreaded to attract attention or suspicion of treachery, by moving away. Among those present, he recognised many citizens who outwardly had conformed to the new religion; but thus, in secret, clung to the old. Near him knelt young Sir Arthur Erskine, captain of the queen's archers, in his glittering doublet of cloth-of-gold; and a beautiful girl of eighteen, whose dark brown hair was but half-concealed by her piquant hood (_a la Mary_), was kneeling by his side, and reading from the same missal. Their heads were bent together, and their hair mingled, as the young girl's shoulder almost rested on the captain's breast.

Bothwell saw that they were lovers; for nothing could surpass the sweetness and confidence of the girl's smile when she gazed on Sir Arthur's face; for then the impulses of love and religion together, lit up her eyes with a rapture that made her seem something divine.

The Earl thought of Mary--of the desperate part he had yet to play; of all he had dared and done, and had yet to dare and do; the paroxysm passed, and he felt his heart nerved with renewed courage.

Love revived--remorse was forgotten; and, the moment mass was over, he stole hurried to Holyrood--gained his apartments unseen, swallowed a horn of brandy to drown all recollection, and flung himself on his bed, to await the coming discovery and the coming day.

*CHAPTER III.*

*GUILT LEVELS ALL.*

He is my lord!--my husband! Death! twas death!-- Death married us together! Here I will dig A bridal bed, and we'll lie there for ever! I will not go! Ha! you may pluck my heart out, But I will never go. Help! help! Hemeya! They drag me to Pescara's cursed bed. _Sheils' Apostate._

A stupor, not a slumber, sank upon him; it weighed down his eyelids, it confused his faculties, and oppressed his heart; but even that state of half unconsciousness was one of bliss, compared to the mental torture he had endured.

The tolling of the great alarm bell of the city, which usually summoned the craftsmen to arms, and the gathering hum of startled multitudes, murmuring like the waves of a distant ocean, as the citizens were roused by those who kept watch and ward, awoke Earl Bothwell. He listened intently. Loudly and clearly the great bell rang on the wind, above the hum of the people pouring downwards like a sea, to chafe against the palace gates. Then came distant voices, crying--

"Armour!--armour!--fie!--treason!"

Steps came hastily along the resounding corridor; there was a sharp knocking at the door of his chamber, and, without waiting for the usual ceremony of being introduced by a page, Master George Halkett, the Earl of Huntly, and Hepburn of Bolton, entered. The latter was now in complete armour, that the visor might conceal the terrible expression of his altered face.

"How now, Master Halkett!" asked the Earl with affected surprise. "Whence this intrusion? What is the matter?"

"Matter enough, I trow!" replied the other; "the king's house has been blown up, and his majesty slain."

"Jesu!" cried the Earl, leaping from his bed, glad to find in action a refuge from his own solitary thoughts. "Fie! treason! Surely thou ravest! Speak, Bolton!"

Bolton replied in a voice so inarticulate that it was lost in the hollow of his helmet; for his mind seemed a chaos of despair and stupefaction. Since that terrible hour he had vainly been endeavouring to arrange his thoughts, and act like a sane man.

"'Tis the verity, my lord!" continued Halkett. "Hark! how the roar increaseth in the town."

"And who, say they, hath done this dark deed?"

"All men accuse the Earls of Morton and Moray," replied Huntly, who had been industriously spreading the rumour, which their known hostility to Darnley made common at the time.

"Fie! treason!" cried Bothwell, bustling about. "Armour!--a Bothwell! Harkee, French Paris--Calder, ho! my pyne doublet and sword!"

"Nay! thou hadst better take armour," said Bolton.

"Right! there lieth a Milan suit in yonder cabinet. Sirs, my pages are gone Heaven knows where--I crave service--my points, I pray you truss them."

Huntly and Bolton brought the mail from the carved cabinet, and hastily accoutred the Earl. It was a Milan suit, a very beautiful one of the late King James's fashion, washed with silver; the corselet was globular, having puckered lamboys of steel in lieu of tassettes, and a bourgoinette, with a metoniere acting as a gorget. He could have concealed his face perfectly by this peculiar appendage to the headpiece; but his natural boldness and daring now rendered such a measure unnecessary. The moment the accoutring was over, he was left alone; for Master Halkett hurried away from chamber to chamber, being one of those who love to be the first bearers of startling tidings; Huntly departed to arm his retinue for any emergency, and Bolton to array the archer guard, and bear back the armed populace, who were clamouring at the palace gates.

Aware how much his future fate depended on the issue of his first interview with Mary, the Earl could bear suspense no longer; and aware that she would now be roused, notwithstanding the untimely hour, he resolved to seek her apartments; the daylight, his sword and armour, had restored his confidence.

Coldly and palely the February dawn was brightening: though the stillness of midnight lay yet upon the dewy hills, there was a din within the city that might "awake the dead." There was a melancholy solemnity about the dull grey dawn, and the gloomy facade of the old monastic edifice, that oppressed the Earl's heart as he crossed its empty court, and heard the jingle of his armour echoed in the dark arcades, where pages and servitors were hurrying to and fro; while quick steps and sharp voices rang in the long corridors and stone ambulatories of the old palace. As he approached James V.'s tower, where the queen occupied those apartments that are now daily exhibited to the curious, a man in a complete suit of black armour jostled him.

"Ormiston!" he exclaimed.

"Well met, Lord Earl--good-morrow!" replied his evil mentor, in a whisper. "The whole city is agog now, and every voice is raised against the Lord Moray--a lucky infatuation for us. The blue banner hath been displayed by the convener of the corporations, whose thirty-three pennons are all unfurled; so the rascally craftsmen are fast mustering in their helmets for trouble and tulzie; while Craigmillar and the Lord Lindesay, with their lances, are coming in on the spur.--But whither goest thou?"

"To the queen."

"Fool! fool! is this a time?"

"There was a time," replied the Earl, bitterly, "when such a varlet as thou dared not have spoken thus to Bothwell."

"True," replied the other, with a sardonic grin; "but _guilt_, like misfortune, levels all men. Tarry--the queen"----

"No, no--I must see her! Not hell itself shall keep me from her!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Ormiston, as the Earl ascended the staircase; "odsbody! why, a stone wall or a stout cord would keep a stronger lover than thee well enow."

Bothwell felt now all the humility and agony of being in the power of this unscrupulous ruffian, and he sighed bitterly more than once as he advanced towards the royal apartments.

"Now," thought he, "must I doubly dye my soul in guilt--the guilt of black hypocrisy. Oh, to be what I have been! How dark are the clouds--how many the vague alarms--that involve the horizon of my fate! Last night--and the recollection of that irreparable deed--could I blot them from memory, happiness might yet be mine."

A crowd of yeomanry of the guard, in their scarlet gaberdines, with long poniards and partisans; archers in green, with bent bows and bristling arrows; pages in glittering dresses, and gentlemen in waiting, all variously armed, made way at the entrance of the queen's apartments, near the door marked with Rizzio's blood. After a brief preliminary it was opened--the heavy Gobeline tapestry was raised, and the earl found himself in the presence of--Mary.

When he beheld her, every scruple and regret, every remnant of remorse again evaporated, and he felt that he had done nothing that he would not repeat.

She was plainly and hurriedly attired in a sacque of blue Florence silk, tied with a tassel round her waist. The absence of her high ruff revealed more than usual of her beautifully delicate neck and swelling bosom; while the want of her long peaked stays and stiffened skirts, displayed all the grace and contour of her graceful form. Save the rings that flashed on her fingers, she was without jewels; and in a profusion, such as the Earl had never seen before--her bright and luxuriant auburn hair fell unbound upon her shoulders, covered only by a square of white lace, a long and sweeping veil, that (as old Juvenal says), "like a tissue of woven air," floated around her. Her snow-white feet were without stockings, for she had just sprung from bed, and the short slippers of blue velvet shewed her delicately veined insteps and taper ankles in all their naked beauty.

Her brow and rounded cheeks were pale as death; but, though suffused with tears, her eyes were full of fire, and there was more perhaps of anger than of grief in the quivering of her short upper lip. Aware of her dishabille, and that the Countess of Argyle, and other ladies of the court, who were all in their night-dresses, had fled at the Earl's approach, as so many doves would have done from a vulture, leaving her almost alone with him--the queen cast down her long dark lashes for a moment, and then bent her keen gaze full upon Bothwell, whose open helmet revealed the pallor of his usually careless, jovial, and nutbrown face.

"Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies, Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew; 'Tis as the snake late coil'd, who pours his length, And hurls at once his venom and his strength."

Powerful and daring as he was, the Earl quailed beneath her eye; but immediately recovering his admirable air of self-possession, he began in the most courteous manner to deplore the dreadful event, "which," says the Knight of Halhill, "he termed the strangest catastrophe that ever was heard of; for thunder had come out of the sky, and burnt the house of the king, whose body was found lying dead at a little distance from the ruins under a tree."

"Thunder, sayest thou?" reiterated the Queen. "Sweet mother Mary--assist me! Some of the archers of our guard, Lord Earl, men whose bows were drawn at Pinkiecleugh and Ancrumford, aver that the ruins bear marks of Friar Bacon's art rather than electricity. Thunder!"----

"What does your majesty mean?"

"Lord Earl," replied Mary, in a low emphatic tone; "this--this is--_thy_ doing--thine!"

"Madam--madam"--urged the Earl, but his tongue refused its office, and clove to the roof of his mouth.

"Hah, my Lord!" continued the Queen; "is it the astonishment of innocence, or the shame of guilt, that paralyses thy too ready tongue at this terrible moment? I see thou art guilty," she added, in a sepulchral voice; "and now thou comest before me covered with the blood of my husband."

"I swear to your majesty"----

"Swear not! Else whence do your hands tremble? Why is your face thus pale--yea, pale as Ruthven's seemed on that other fatal night--a year ago in this chamber?"

Gathering courage from desperation, the kneeling noble, hoping to be interrupted in his vow, replied--

"I swear to you, gracious madam, by heaven and all that is in it--by the earth and all that is on it--by the souls of my Catholic ancestors--by the bones of my father--by my own salvation and honour, which I prize more than life--by your love, your esteem, to win which I would gladly peril more than a thousand lives"----

"Enough!" replied the Queen, interrupting the terrible falsehood, and covering her face with her hands; "pardon my grief and horror--I believe thee. There--kiss my hand in token of trust."

Bothwell's heart was touched by her innocent confidence; he became giddy, and almost reeled.

"O Mary! my wish, my hope, my dream! Would that I were pure enough to be worthy of thee!" said the Earl, in a touching voice; for a moment his heart was crushed by sorrow and remorse, as he pressed to his lip the soft, small hand of the queen. But she did not hear these pathetic exclamations, which conveyed all the Earl's secret in their tone; for at that moment a group that crossed the palace yard riveted all her faculties.

Sir Arthur Erskine and Hepburn of Bolton, both sheathed in armour, with a band of their archers, appeared escorting a few yeomen of the guard, who bore on their crossed partisans a body muffled in a soldier's mantle, and followed by a crowd of gentlemen, grooms, pages, and armed craftsmen.

She shuddered. The weak points of Darnley's character, his folly, his foppery, his profligacy, his neglect of herself, and the wanton murder of her secretary, all vanished from her memory for the time, and she saw him only as she had seen him first in the hall of Wemyss--handsome, tall, and graceful--in all the bloom of youth, nobility, and comeliness, with his dark eye sparkling and his feathers waving, and all the blind devotion which at two-and-twenty had become a part of her very being, and which had absorbed young Henry Stuart into her very soul, came back vividly and painfully upon her mind.

She tottered to a seat.

Her eyes assumed a tearless and stony aspect--a cloud of horror descended upon her snowy brow; and the Earl felt bitterly as he gazed on her, that his presence, and the love he had so daringly expressed, were alike unheeded or forgotten.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*THE PREBEND OF ST. GILES.*

A "God be with thee," shall be all thy mass; Thou never lovedst those dry and droning priests. Thou'lt rot most cool and quiet in my garden; Your gay and gilded vault would be costly. _Fazio, a Tragedy._

After an uneasy slumber, in the place where we left him a few pages back, Konrad was awakened by a rough grasp being laid on his shoulder, and a voice crying--

"Harl him forth, till we find what manner of carle he is!" and, ere he was thoroughly roused, several strong hands dragged him to the door of that solitary little chapel, where he found himself in the presence of two knights on horseback, and a band of mailed men-at-arms, bearing hackbuts and partisans, and carrying a banner bearing a blue shield charged with the heart and mullets of Morton.

It was a beautiful spring morning. The sun was rising above the eastern hills, and gilding the peaks of the Pentlands, that towered above the wreaths of gauzy mist rolling round their heath-clad bases.

"Whence comest thou, fellow?" asked the first knight, who was no other than our ferocious acquaintance, Lord Lindesay of the Byres, who, with his men-at-arms, had been scouring the adjacent country for some one upon whom to execute his vengeance.

"Some accomplice and abettor of the Lord Moray!" observed the other; "art and part at least--for all the city saith that he committed the deed; at least, there are those who find their interest in circulating the report most industriously."

"Tush! the Lord Moray abideth at his tower of Donibristle; and I will maintain body to body against any man, that he lieth foully in his throat who accuseth James Stuart of being concerned in the slaughter of last night."

"But, dustifute--knave--speak! whence comest thou?"

"By what right dost thou ask?" said Konrad, starting at the voice of the questioner, who had the policy to keep his visor down, and affected not to recognise his acquaintance of the hostellary.

"What right? false loon! the right of my rank. I am James Earl of Morton; and now that I look on thee, thou tattered villain--by St. Paul! I see the king's cloak on thy shoulders. We all know the Lord Darnley's scarlet mantle, sirs, with its gold embroidery; and doth its splendour not contrast curiously with this foreigner's rags and tatters?"

"By cock and pie!" said Ormiston under his helmet, as he pushed through the crowd at this juncture, "I would swear to it as I would to my own nose, or to the king's toledo sword, which I now see by the side of this double thief and traitor! We all know him, sirs! The unco'--the foreigner--who with John of Park attempted to assassinate my Lord of Bothwell in Hermitage glen. Last night he escaped from the tower of Holyrood."

"Close up, my merry men all!" said Morton; "forward, pikemen--bend your hackbuts; for we have meshed one of the knaves at last."

There was a terrible frown gathering on the brow of Lindesay. This ferocious peer, and uncompromising foe of the ancient church, was distinguished by the sternness and inflexibility of his character, even in that iron age; and the fire of his keen grey eye increased the expression of his hard Scottish, yet noble features, and thick grizzled beard, which consorted so well with the antique fashion of his plain steel armour, with its grotesque and gigantic knee and elbow joints projecting like iron fans, with pauldrons on the shoulders. His salade was of the preceding century, and was surmounted by his crest, a silver ostrich bearing in its beak a key--on his colours, a roll azure and argent. Unsheathing his long shoulder-sword, he said with stern solemnity--

"Now, blessed be God! that hath given us this great and good fortune to-day. These ruins, where that mother of blasphemy and abomination--who hath made whole nations drunk with the cup of her iniquities--once practised her idolatries, seem to have rare tenants this morning. First, amid the walls of Leonard's chapel, we found that worshipper of graven images--Tarbet, the mass-priest, with all his missals and mummery in right order for the pillory at the Tron; and here, in the oratory of the Baptist, we have started our other game--one of the regicides, whose body shall be torn piecemeal, even as Graeme and Athol were torn of old; yea, villain! embowelled and dismembered shalt thou be, while the life yet flickers in thy bleeding heart; but, first, thou shalt be half-hanged from yonder tree. Quick! a knotted cord, some of ye!"

"Nay, my good Lord of Lindesay," interposed Morton, "I would reserve him for the queen's council, whose examination may bring to light much of whilk we are still in ignorance."

"Now, by my father's bones!" began fierce Lindesay, clenching his gauntleted hand with sudden passion, "must I remind thee, who wert High Chancellor of Scotland, and, as such, chief in all matters of justice--the king's most intimate councillor, and holder of that seal, without the touch of which not a statute of the estates can pass forth to the people--must I remind thee of that ancient Scottish law, by which our forefathers decreed, if a murderer be taken REDHAND, he should incontinently be executed within three days after commission of the deed; and here, within a mile of the Kirk-of-Field, we find a known comrade of Park, the border outlaw, with the sword and mantle of our murdered king"--

"Yea," interrupted a voice from the band, "a cloak which I saw in the king's chamber but yesternight."

"What other proof lack we?" said Lindesay.

"Away with him!" cried several voices, and Ormiston's among them; "for he hath assuredly murdered the king!"

To all these fiercely-uttered accusations, Konrad had not a word to reply in extenuation or defence; and his astonishment and confusion were easily mistaken for guilt and fear.

"As thou pleasest, Lindesay," said Morton coldly, for he was unused to find his advice neglected. "To me it mattereth not, whether he be hanged now or a year hence. I have but one thing more to urge. Let us confront him with the mass priest Tarbet, and I warrant that, by blow of boot and wrench of rack, we may make some notable discoveries. We know not whom they may, in their agony, accuse as accessories if we give them a hint;" and indeed the Earl might have added, that he did not care, while he was not accused himself.

But his own time was measured.

Lindesay seemed struck by this advice (as there was an estate bordering his own which he had long coveted), and so ordering the prisoner to be secured by cords, and gagged, by having a branch cut from a hawthorn bush tied across his mouth so tightly that the blood oozed from his torn lips. He was then bound to the tail of a horse, and thus ignominiously conducted back to the excited city, escorted by Morton's band of hackbuttiers.

Had an English army, flushed with victory, been crossing the Esk, a greater degree of excitement could not have reigned in the Scottish capital than its streets exhibited on this morning, the 11th February, 1567.

The crafts were all in arms, and the spacious Lawnmarket was swarming with men in armour, bearing pikes, hackbuts, and jedwood axes, two-handed swords, and partisans; while the pennons of the various corporations--the cheveron and triple towers of the sturdy Masons--the shield, ermine, and triple crowns of the Skinners--the gigantic shears of the Tailors--and so forth, were all waving in the morning wind. Splendidly accoutred, a strong band of men-at-arms stood in close array near the deep arch of Peebles Wynd, around the residence of the provost, Sir Simeon Preston of Craigmillar, whose great banner, bearing a _scudo pendente_, the cognisance peculiar to this illustrious baron, was borne by his knightly kinsman, Congalton of that Ilk.

A half-mad preacher, in a short Geneva cloak and long bands, and wearing a long-eared velvet cap under his bonnet, had ensconced himself in a turret of the city cross, from whence, with violent gestures, in a shrill intonation of voice, he was holding forth to a scowling rabble of craftsmen, and women in Gueldrian coifs and Galloway kirtles, who applauded his discourse, which he was beating down, with Knox-like emphasis, and striking his clenched hand on the cope of the turret with such fury, that he had frequently to pause, make a wry face, and blow upon it. Then, with increased wrath, he thundered his anathemas against the "shavelings of Rome, the priests of antichrist--the relics of their saints--their corrupted flesh--their rags and rotten bones--their gilded shrines and mumming pilgrimages!" Sternly he spoke, and wildly, too, with all the enthusiasm of a convert, and the rancour of an apostate, for he was both.