Part 5

A great fire blazed in the yawning hall chimney of the _Red Lion_, throwing its ruddy glow on the red ashler walls, which the host endeavoured to decorate by various pieces of tapestry, begged and borrowed from his neighbours, on the rough oak rafters that once had flourished on the burgh-muir--on the far-stretching vista of the sturdy table, flanked with wooden benches on each side for Bothwell's noble guests, covered with a scarlet broad cloth, and glittering in all the shiny splendour of French pewter and delft platters--for there had never been an atom of silver seen in an hostellary as yet; and by each dark-blue cover lay a knife, halfted with horn and shaped like a skene-dhu. A gigantic salt occupied the centre, and a carved chair raised upon a dais--a chair that whilome had held the portly Provost of St. Giles, but to which honest Adam had helped himself in 1559, that year of piety and plunder--stood at the upper end, and was designed for the great Earl of Bothwell.

A smile of the utmost satisfaction and complaisance spread over the fat rosy face of Ainslie's ample dame, as she surveyed the great table, which her taste and skill had decorated and arrayed; and she absolutely clapped her hands with glee, when the great platter, bearing a peacock roasted, and having its legs shining with gold-leaf, and all its bright-dyed pinions stuck round it, was placed upon the board at the moment that a trampling of horses in the narrow wynd announced the arrival of the Earl and his guests, among whom were such a number of dignitaries as never before had been under the rooftree of the _Red Lion_; and honest Elspat Ainslie was overwhelmed each time that she reckoned them on her fat fingers, and found there were eight bishops, nine earls, and seven barons, all the most powerful and popular in Scotland, where a man's power was then reckoned by the number of ruffians under his standard, and his popularity by his hatred of the Papists, and distribution of their gear to the preachers and pillars of the new regime.

The dame hurried to a mirror--gave her coif a last adjust--smoothed her apron and gown of crimson crammasie; while Adam brushed a speck from his fair doublet of broad cloth--practised his best bow several times to the gilt peacock; and all their trenchermen and attendants stood humbly by the door in double file as the guests entered.

Bothwell came first, with his usual air of gallantry and grace--his doublet of cloth-of-gold glittering in the light of the setting sun; his ruff buttoned by diamonds; his shoulder-belt and mantle stiff with gold embroidery; while his sword, dagger, and plumed bonnet, were flashing with precious stones. He made a profound bow to the hostess; for now he smiled less than formerly, and the pallor of his noble features was attributed by all to _grief_ at the Lord Lennox's accusation.

Morton followed, looking quite as usual, with his sinister eyes, his long beard and little English hat, his black velvet cloak and silver-headed cane; but, with a jocularity that was always affected, he pinched the plump cheek of Dame Ainslie, and thumped her husband upon the back, saying--

"How farest thou, host of mine? Faith, I need scarcely ask thee, for thou swellest and wallowest amid the good things of this life daily."

"By Tantony and Taudry! in these kittle times, my lord"--began Adam.

"Peace, thou irreverend ronion!" whispered the Earl of Huntly fiercely, as he grasped his poniard--"_Saint_ Anthony and _Saint_ Audry, thou meanest."

"I mean just whatever your lordship pleases," replied the hosteller, as he shrank abashed by the stern eye of the Catholic noble, who resented every disrespect to the ancient church, so far as he dared.

"Nay, nay," interposed Secretary Maitland, with his bland smile and flute-like voice; "poor Adam's slip of the tongue merited not a rebuke so sharp; to grasp thy poniard thus amounts almost to hamesucken--a gloomy beginning to our banquet, my Lord of Huntly."

There was present that gay scion of the house of Guise, d'Elboeuff--all smiles and grimaces, starched lace and slashes; there was the Earl of Sutherland, the lover of Bothwell's absent countess; Glencairn, the ferocious; Cassilis, who once half-roasted an abbot alive; Eglinton, the cautious; Seaton, the gallant; and Herries, the loyal; Rosse, of Hawkhead, and many others--until the hall was crowded by the bravest and the greatest of Scotland's peers, and many lesser barons, who, though untitled, considered themselves in feudal dignity second to the crown alone. All were well armed, and the nature of the time was evinced by their dresses; for all who had not on corselets and gorgets to prevent sudden surprises, had quilted doublets of escaupil, and all were scrupulously accoutred with swords and Parmese poniards, without which no gentleman could walk abroad.

As Bothwell advanced to the head of the table to assume his seat, his eye caught one of the black-letter proclamations of the council, which was fixed over the gothic fireplace, and offered a yearly rent, with two thousand pounds of Scottish money, for the discovery of the perpetrators of the crime at the Kirk-of-Field; "quhilk horribill and mischevious deed," as the paper bore it, "almychty God would never suffer to lie hid."

"Mass!" said the Earl, as the blood mounted to his temples, "thou hast a roaring fire, Master Adam, this April day."

"The coals bleeze weel, Lord Earl; yet they cost a good penny, coming as they do by the galliots frae the knight of Carnock's heughs, aboon Cuboss."

"Little marvel is it that they burn thus," said the Earl of Glencairn; adding, in a lower voice, "for knowest thou, gudeman, that instead of contenting himself with such of this precious mineral as may be got shovel-deep, by advice of that damnable sorcerer, the knight of Merchiston, he hath sunk a pit--a cylinder--even unto the bowels of the earth, as Hugh of Tester did at his Goblin Hall; and he is now digging under the Forth, with intent, as Master George Buchanan told me yesterday, to ascend and seek upper air on this side."

"Ascend!" reiterated Morton with astonishment--"Where?"

"At the gate of thy castle of Dalkeith, perhaps; thou art thought to dabble a little in spell and philtre--like draweth to like."

"As the deil said to the collier," added old Lindesay. Several laughed at the hit, but Morton frowned.

This famous supper at Ainslie's hostel--a supper which has been fated to live for ever in Scottish history--was marked by all that barbaric profusion that characterised the feasts of those days, when men feasted seldom. Under the superintendence of a notable French _chef de cuisine_, the first course consisted of ling, pike, haddocks, and gurnards, dressed with eggs, cream, and butter; but there was no salmon, that being esteemed as fitted only for servants. The chief dish of all was a grand pie of salt herrings, minced, and prepared with almond paste, milts, and dates; a grated manchet, sugar, sack, rose-water, and saffron; preserved gooseberries, barberries, currants, and Heaven knows what more; but the curious or the epicurean may still find the recipe in worthy Master Robert May's "_Accomplished Cooke_, 1685."

This delightful mess threw the Marquis d'Elboeuff into as great an ecstasy as the artificial hens--which formed part of the second course, and were made of puff-paste--seated upon large eggs of the same material, each of which contained a plump mavis, seasoned with pepper and ambergris; and, to him, these proved infinitely more attractive than the haunches of venison, the chines of beef, and roasted pigs, that loaded the table. To suit the palates of Lindesay, Glencairn, and other sturdy Scots, who disdained such foreign kickshaws, there were sottens of mutton, platters of pouts, Scottish collops, tailyies of beef, and sea-fowl. Every description of French wine was to be had in abundance--ale and old Scots beer, seasoned with nutmeg; and it would have been a fair sight for the effeminate descendants of these doughty earls and bearded barons, to have witnessed how they did honour to this great repast, eating and drinking like men who rose with the lark and eagle, whose armour was seldom from their breasts, whose swords were never from their sides, and whose meals depended often on the dexterity with which they bent the bow, or levelled the arquebuss.

On each side of the Earl sat four bishops; and all his real and pretended friends were present except Moray, who had suddenly departed to France, "that he might seem to be unconcerned in what was going forward: he failed not in this journey to circulate every injurious report to the prejudice of his unhappy sovereign, who, in the mean time, was destitute of every faithful friend and proper councillor."

The Archbishop of St. Andrew's--the last Catholic primate of Scotland (the same noble prelate whom, for his loyalty, Moray so savagely hanged over Stirling bridge five years after)--now arose, and, stretching his hands over the board, uttered the brief grace then fashionable:--"_Soli Deo honor et gloria_," whereat the Lord Lindesay muttered something under his beard, "anent the idolatry of Latin."

Instead of that calm, cold, and polite reserve, that marks the modern dinner table, their nut-brown faces shone with the broad good-humour that shook their buirdly frames with laughter, and they became boisterous and jocose as the night drew on; and the blood red wines of old France and Burgundy, and the stiff usquebaugh of their native hills, fired their hearts and heads.

Lord Lindesay had prevailed on d'Elboeuff to partake of a haggis, and he was laughing under his thick beard at the grimaces of the French noble, whose complaisance compelled him to sup a dish he abhorred.

"Thou findest it gude, Lord Marquis?"

"_Ah! cest admirable!_" sighed d'Elboeuff.

"Why, thou seemest to relish it pretty much as a cat liketh mustard."

"_Oui!_" smiled the Frenchman, who did not understand him.

"And how fares my noble friend, Coldinghame?" asked the Earl of his brother _roue_.

"Weel enow; but sick of dangling about this court, which is such a mess of intrigue."

"Tush! Bethink thee, the queen hath the wardship of many a fair heiress, and may bestow on thee a handsome wife."

"Bah! like my Lord of Morton, I care not for a handsome wife"--

"Unless she belong to another," said Ormiston, coarsely closing the sentence.

"By the rood! a good jest and a merry," laughed Bothwell; but Morton's olive cheek glowed with anger.

"Be not chafed, my lord," said Ormiston; "by cock and pie! I spoke but in boon fellowship. Drink with me! This Rochelle is famously spiced, and stirred with a rosemary sprig for good-luck."

"Does Master Ainslie warrant it old?"

"Old! my Lord Morton," reiterated Adam, turning up his eyes; "ay! auld as the three trees of Dysart; for it lay many a long year before the '59, among the stoor and cobwebs o' the Blackfriars' binns, up the brae yonder."

"By the way," said the Lord Coldinghame, "as thou talkest of the Blackfriars, what tale of a roasted horse is this, anent whilk the whole city is agog, concerning a spectre which is said to have appeared there on the night the king was slain, and hath haunted the ruins of St. Mary's kirk ever since?"

"Knowest thou aught of this, Adam?" asked Bothwell, whose mind, though he endeavoured to maintain his usual aspect of nonchalance, wandered constantly to the gigantic projects he had in view.

"As ye know, my lord," replied Adam, setting his head on one side and his left leg forward, with the air of a man who has a story to tell; "on the night of that deadly crime in the Kirk-of-Field, two especial gentlemen of the Earl of Athol, the umquhile king's gude-cousin, were both a-bed at his lordship's lodging, which is just within the town wall, and not a bowshot frae auld St. Mary's kirk. In the mirk mid hour of the night, Sir Dougal Stuart, who slept next the wall, was awaked by a death-cauld hand passing owre his cheek, and which thereafter took him by the beard, while an unearthly voice, sounding as if from afar off, said--'Arise, or violence will be offered unto you!' At the same moment his friend, a half-wud Hielandman, awoke, saying furiously--'Where is my durk, for some one hath boxed mine ear?' And both started up to see, close by their bed, a dusky figure, of which no feature could be defined save a clenched hand, bare, and long, and glistening in the siller moonlight, that shone through the grated window; then it melted away like morning mist; the turnpike door was heard to close with a bang, as if some one had left the house; and while, with fear and alarm, they started to their sword's, lo! they heard the explosion that sent king and kirk-house into the air together."[*]

[*] See Buchanan.

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Bothwell angrily, for this story was then current in the city; "'tis a tale befitting only the old dames who play basset and primero in the queen's antechamber. Wert thou at sermon in the High Kirk this morning, Hob?" he asked, to change the subject.

"Cock and pie, no!" said Ormiston, as he gulped down his wine with surprise.

"Marry!" said Lord Lindesay; "thou didst miss a rare discourse."

"On what did Master Knox expone?" asked several Protestant peers; while Huntly and other Catholics curled their mustaches, and exchanged glances of scorn. Lindesay replied--

"Anent the story of that strong loon, Samson, tying three hundred torches to the tails of sae mony tod-lowries, to burn the corn of the Philistines--likening himself unto Samson--the ministry o' the reformit kirk to the three hundred tods, and their discourses unto the bleezing torches--the corn o' the Philistines unto the kirk o' the Pope, whilk their burning tails would utterly overthrow, ruinate, and consume. God speed the gude wark!" added the stern peer, as he brushed aside his heavy white beard with one hand, and tossed over his wine-cup with the other.

"What spell hath come over thee, compere Bothwell?" said d'Elboeuff; "thou seemest grave as a judge. Here is the _merry-thought_ of a capercailzie to scare thy melancholy."

"Marquis," replied the Earl gaily, "thy wit would require the addition of a _wing_ to make it soar. What a tall goblet thou hast! Dost mean to get drunk to-night?"

"Why not, _parbleu!_ when I am to ride to Holyrood?"

"What difference doth that make?"

_"Mon Dieu!_ because, if I stumble, there is more effect when falling from a saddle, than sprawling endlong in the kennel like a beastly bourgeoise."

"'Tis time with thee, Marquis, that siclike follies were left owre, for thy beard getteth frosted wi' eild," said Lord Lindesay.

"_Tete Dieu!_ dost thou say so, and live? But remember, most sombre Lord of the Byres, that Paris is as different from this city as the fields of Elysium are from those on the other side of the Styx. There the gaieties and glories of youth begin when we are yet children; when ye are boys, we are men; when ye are in your prime, we are in old age--exhausted with pleasure, _ennui_, drinking and gaming, roistering and"----

"Enough, Marquis!" said Bothwell, who had two ends in view--to drench his guests with wine, and to keep them all in excellent humour. "Enough!" he whispered; "for there are some stern spirits here who do not relish this discourse; and bethink thee of the reverend bishops who are among us."

"_Tonnere!_ apostates! heretics!" muttered the Marquis. Meanwhile Ormiston, Bolton, Morton, and others who were Bothwell's friends, seeing how his spirit alternately flagged and flashed, left nothing undone to increase the hilarity of the evening, and keep the wine circulating; for there were many present whom descent, religion, or faction had set at deadly feud, and who, had they met on a hillside or highway, or perhaps in the adjacent street, would have fought like mad bulls; but these had been artfully and politicly separated, and thus the unrestrained jesting and revelry increased apace.

Some talked of creaghs upon the northern frontier, of forays on the southern, of partition of kirk lands, and the flavour of wines, in the same breath. D'Elboeuff chattered like a magpie of new doublets and perfumes, of Paris and pretty women: old Lindesay spoke solemnly and portentously, over his ale, on the prospects of the holy kirk; and Glencairn responded with becoming gravity and ferocity of aspect.

Morton sat opposite Lethington, and from time to time they sipped their wine and exchanged those deep glances which the most acute physiognomist would have failed to analyse; but, as they watched the ebb and flow of the conversation around them, Morton seemed almost to say in his eyes, "Thou art wise as Nestor;" and the secretary to reply, "And _thou_ cunning as Ulysses."

Gradually the latter led the conversation to the politics of the day--the misgovernment that, since the death of James V., had characterised each succeeding year; how the sceptre, feebly swayed by the hands of a facile woman, had never been capable of aweing the great barons and their predatory vassalage--the urgent necessity of some powerful peer espousing the queen, and assuming the reins of government, otherwise the destruction of Scotland by foreign invasion and domestic brawl--the subversion of the rights of the nobles, the power of the church, the courts of law, and the liberties of the people, would assuredly ensue.

This half-false and half-fustian speech, which the able Lethington delivered with singular emphasis and grace, was received with a burst of acclamation.

"My lords and gentles," said the aged Lindesay, standing erect, and leaning on his six feet sword as he spake; "here we are convened, as it seemeth, as mickle for council as carousal; albeit, ye have heard the premises so suitably set forth by the knight of Lethington, it causeth me mickle marvel to know whom among us he would name as worthy of the high honour of espousing our fair queen."

"Cock and pie!" exclaimed the impetuous Hob Ormiston, erecting his gigantic figure, and speaking in a voice that made the rafters ring; "whom would we name but her majesty's prime favourite and sorely maligned first counsellor, James Earl of Bothwell, Governor of Edinburgh and Dunbar, and Lord High Admiral of the realm? Who, I demand, would not rather see him the mate of Mary Stuart, than the beardless Lord of Darnley--that silken slave, that carpet knight, and long-legged giraffe in lace and taffeta? What say ye, my lords and barons, are we unanimous?"

There was a pause, and then rose a shout of applause, mingled with cries of "A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" from Morton and other allies of the Earl, who were so numerous that they completely overcame the scruples, or hushed into silence the objections, of the hostile and indifferent.

The Earl, whose heart was fired anew by the glow of love and ambition--for never did a prospect more dazzling open to the view of a subject than the hope of sharing a throne with a being so beautiful as Mary--thanked his friends with a grace peculiarly his own, and immediately produced that famous BOND--a document in which the nobles in parliament assembled, asserted his innocence of the crime of the 11th February, and earnestly recommended him to Mary as the most proper man in Scotland to espouse her in her widowhood--and bind themselves by every tie, human and divine, "to fortify the said Earl in the said marriage," so runs the deed, "as we shall answer to God, on our fidelity and conscience. And in case we do on the contrary, never to have reputation or credit in time hereafter, but to be accounted _unworthy and faithless traitors_."

"God temper thy wild ambition, Bothwell!" said the Archbishop, as he signed the document to which the seven other prelates appended their names. That of Moray--Mary's dearly loved brother--had _already_ been given before his departure; and its appearance had a powerful effect on all present.

"Deil stick me, gif I like mickle to scald my neb in another man's brose!" growled Glencairn; "yet I will subscrive it, albeit I would rather have had a suitor to whose maintainance of the Holy Reformit Kirk Master Knox could have relied on."

Morton gave one of his cold and sinister smiles as he appended his name in silence; while the Marquis d'Elboeuff also smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and applied to his nostrils an exquisitely chased silver pouncet-box of fragrant essences, to conceal the merriment with which he watched the arduous operation of fixing the signatures; for writing was a slow and solemn process in those days.

A new and terrible difficulty occurred, which nearly knocked the whole affair on the head.

Very few of these potent peers could sign their names, and others objected to making their mark, which, from its resemblance to a cross, savoured of popery; but Lethington effected a conscientious compromise, by causing them to make a T, as those did who signed the first solemn league--a smallness of literary attainment which did not prevent those unlettered lords from demolishing the hierarchy of eight hundred years, and giving a new creed to a nation as ignorant as themselves.

Bothwell felt as if he trode on air when consigning this tremendous paper, which had the signatures of so many bishops, earls, and lords, the most powerful in Scotland, to the care of Pittendreich, the Lord President.

The rere-supper lasted long.

Deeply they drank that night, but none deeper than the Earl and his friends; and the morning sun was shining brightly into the narrow wynd--the city gates had been opened, and the booths which, from 1555 till 1817, clustered round St. Giles, were all unclosed for business, and carlins were brawling with the _acquaoli_ at the Mile-end well, ere the company separated; and the Earl, accompanied by Hob Ormiston and the knights of Tallo and Bolton, with their eyes half closed, their cloaks and ruffs awry, and their gait somewhat oscillating and unsteady, threaded their way down the sunlit Canongate, and reached Bothwell's apartments in Holyrood--that turreted palace, where the unconscious Mary was perhaps asleep with her child in her bosom, and little foreseeing the storm that was about to burst on her unhappy head.

*CHAPTER X.*

*HANS AND KONRAD.*

Yes, she is ever with me! I can feel, Here as I sit at midnight and alone, Her gentle breathing! On my breast can feel The presence of her head! God's benison Rest ever on it! _Longfellow._

On this morning, the sun shone brightly on the blue bosom of the Forth, and the grey rocks of all its many isles. The sea-mews were spreading their broad white pinions to the wind, as they skimmed from their nests in the ruins of Inchcolm, and the caves of Wemyss.

The little fisher-hamlet that bordered the New haven, with its thatched and gable-ended cottages, its street encumbered by great brown boats, rusty anchors, and drying nets, looked cheerful in the warm sunshine; and troops of ruddy-cheeked children were gamboling on those broad links that lay where now the water rolls.

Near a little window in the confined cabin of a Norwegian ship, lay Konrad of Saltzberg, faint, feeble, and exhausted; for the fever of a long and weary sickness had preyed upon his body and mind, prostrating every energy. He was pale, attenuated, and hollow-eyed; and now, for the first time since the night we last saw him, had emerged from insensibility to a state of consciousness. He felt the cool air of the April morning blow freshly on his pallid cheek; he heard the ripple of the water, and saw its surface gleaming in the sunshine afar off, where its waves broke in purple and gold on a distant promontory; and close by (for the crayer lay within ten yards of the shore) he heard the merry voices of the children as they gamboled and tumbled on the bright green grass.