Read Ebook: Bothwell; or The Days of Mary Queen of Scots Volume 1 (of 3) by Grant James

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1096 lines and 61224 words, and 22 pages

CHAPTER

It was the autumn of a bleak day in the September of 1566.

Enveloped in murky clouds, through which, at times, its red rays shot along the crested waves, the Norwegian sun was verging to the westward. From the frozen Baltic a cold wind swept down the Skager Rack, and, urged by the whole force of the Atlantic ocean, the sullen waves poured their foam upon the rocky bluffs and fissured crags that overhang the fiord of Christiana.

In those days, a vessel in the fiord proved an object of the greatest interest to the inhabitants of the hamlet; and it was with growing fears that the anxious housewives and weatherwise fishermen of Bergen, a little wooden town situated on the bay of Christiana, watched the exertions made by the crew of a small crayer or brigantine, of some eighty tons or so, that under bare poles, or having at least only her great square spritsail and jib set, endeavoured to weather the rocky headland to the east, and gain their little harbour, within which the water lay smooth as a millpond, forming by its placidity a strong contrast to the boiling and heaving ocean without.

The last rays of the September sun had died away on the pine-clad hills of Christiana and the cathedral spire of Bergen. Night came on sooner than usual, and the sky was rendered opaque by sable clouds, through which the red streaks of lightning shot red and forklike; while the hollow thunder reverberated afar off among the splintered summits of the Silverbergen.

The royal castle of Bergen, a great square tower of vast strength and unknown antiquity, reared on a point of rock, still overlooks the town that in the year of our story was little more than a fisher hamlet. Swung in an iron grating on its battlement, a huge beacon fire had been lighted by order of the governor to direct the struggling ship; and now the flames from the blazing mass of tarred fagots and well-oiled flax streamed like a torn banner on the stormy wind, and lit up the weatherbeaten visages of a few Danish soldiers who were grouped on the keep, glinting on their steel caps and mail shirts, and on the little brass minions and iron drakes that peeped between the timeworn embrasures.

Another group, which since sunset had been watching the strange ship, was crowded under the sheltering arch of the castle gate, watching for the dispersion of the clouds or the rising of the moon to reveal her whereabouts.

"Hans Knuber," said a young man who appeared at the wicket, and whose half military attire showed that he was captain of the king's crossbowmen at Bergen, "dost thou think she will weather the Devil's Nose on the next tack?"

"I doubt it much, Captain Konrad," replied the fisherman, removing his right hand from the pocket of his voluminous red breeches to the front of his fur cap, "unless they steer with the keep of Bergen and the spire of the bishop's church in a line; which I saw they did not do. Ugh! yonder she looms! and what a sea she shipped! How heavily her fore and after castles and all her top-hamper make her heel to leeward!"

"They who man her seem to have but small skill in pilot-craft," said one.

"Luff--luff--timoneer!" exclaimed the first seaman. "Now keep her full! Would I had my hands on thy tiller!"

"Every moment the night groweth darker," said the young man whom they called Konrad, and whom they treated with marked respect: "as the clouds darken the lightning brightens. A foul shame it were to old Norway, to have it said that so many of us--stout fellows all--stood idly and saw yonder struggling ship lost for lack of a little pilot-craft: for as thou sayest, Hans, if she runs so far again eastward on the next tack she must strike on the sunken reefs."

"No boat could live in such a sea," muttered the fishermen as they drew back, none appearing solicitous of the selection which they expected the young man would make.

"The mists are coming down from the Arctic ocean--the west wind always brings them," said Jans Thorson; "and we all know 'tis in these mists that the spirits of the mountain and storm travel."

"Come hither, Hans Knuber," said the captain, whose plumed cap and rich dress of scarlet velvet, trimmed with white fur, and braided with silver like a hussar pelisse, were rapidly changing their hues under the drenching rain that lashed the castle wall, and hissed through the deep-mouthed archway. "Come hither, thou great seahorse! Dost mean to tell me thou art afraid?"

"Sir captain, I fear neither the storm nor the spirit of the mist; but Zernebok the lord of evil may be abroad to-night, and he and the Hermit of the Rock may chance to remember how once in my cups, like an ass as I was, I reviled and mocked them both."

"Bah!" retorted Konrad, whose superstition did not go so far as that of the seaman; "Jans Thorson, I will give thee this silver chain to launch and put forth to yonder ship. Come, man--away, for the honour of old Norway!"

"Not for all the silver in yonder hills, sir captain, nor the copper in the mines of Fahlun to boot, would I trust myself beyond the Devil's Nose to-night," said the old fisherman bluntly. "I have just refused Master Sueno, the chamberlain."

"On a venture which I would not attempt myself!" exclaimed the young man, whose dark blue eyes flashed at his own suggestion. "Now, Saint Olaus forefend thou shouldst say so!"

"But thou dost think so?"

The fisherman was silent.

A flush crossed the handsome face of Konrad of Saltzberg. He looked seaward a moment. The wind was roaring fearfully among the bare summits of the cliffs that towered abruptly from the shore to the very clouds--absolute mountains of rock rising peak above peak; and when the blue lightning flashed among them, their granite tops were seen stretching away in the distance, while the giant pines that flourished in their clefts and gorges, were tossing like black ostrich feathers in the storm.

At the harbour mouth the waves of snow-white foam were visible through the gloom, as they lashed, and hissed, and burst in successive mountains on the rocks of worn granite that fringed the entrance of the haven.

Konrad cast a rapid glance around him, and the appalling fury of the northern storm made even his gallant heart waver for a moment in its generous purpose; but a fair female face, that with all its waving ringlets appeared at a little casement overlooking the portal, and a kiss wafted to him from "a quick small hand," decided him. His eyes sparkled, and turning briskly round to the fishermen, he said,--

And, throwing aside his sword and short mantle, the young man rushed down the steep pathway that led to the little pier, and leaped on board one of the long light whaleboats that lay there; but ere his ready hand had quite cast off the rope that bound it to a ringbolt on the mole, both Hans Knuber and Jans Thorson, fired by his example, sprang on board, and with more of the action of elephants, in their wide fur boots and mighty breeches, than the agility of seamen, they seized each an oar, and pushed off.

In Denmark and Norway, there were and are few titles of honour; but there has always existed in the latter an untitled nobility, like our Scottish lairds and English squires, consisting of very old families, who are more highly revered than those ennobled by Norway's Danish rulers; and many of these can trace their blood back to those terrible vikingr or ocean kings, who were so long the conquerors of the English Saxons, and the scourge of the Scottish shores.

Konrad of the Saltzberg was the representative of one of those time-honoured races.

The fame his brave ancestors had won under the enchanted banner of Regner Lodbrog, Erick with the bloody axe, and Sigwardis Ring, yet lived in the songs and stories of the northern harpers; and Konrad was revered for these old memories of Norway's ancient days, while his own bravery, affability, and handsome exterior, gained him the love of the Norse burghers of Bergen, the Danish bowmen he commanded, the fishermen of the fiord, and the huntsmen of the woods of Aggerhuis.

The fishers gazed on the gloom with intensity, but could discover nothing; and there was no other sound came on the bellowing wind, save the roar of the resounding breakers as they broke on the impending bluffs.

The hall of the castle of Bergen was a spacious but rude apartment, spanned by a stone arch, ribbed with massive groins, that sprung from the ponderous walls.

Its floor was composed of oak planks, and two clumsy stone columns, surmounted by grotesque capitals, supported the round archway of the fireplace, above which was a rudely carved, and still more rudely painted, shield, bearing the golden lion of ancient Norway in a field gules. Piled within the arch lay a heap of roots and billets, blazing and rumbling in the recesses of the great stone chimney. Eight tall candles, each like a small flambeau, flared in an iron candelabrum, and sputtered in the currents of air that swept through the hall.

Various weapons hung on the rough walls of red sandstone; there were heavy Danish ghisannas or battle-axes of steel, iron mauls, ponderous maces, and deadly morglays, two-handed swords of enormous length, iron bucklers, chain hauberks, and leathern surcoats, all of uncouth fashion, and fully two hundred years behind the arms then used by the more southern nations of Europe.

The long table occupying the centre of the hall was of wood that had grown in the forests of Memel; it was black as ebony with age, and the clumsy chairs and stools that were ranged against the walls were all of the same homely material. Several deerskins were spread before the hearth, and thereon reposed a couple of shaggy wolf-hounds, that ever and anon cocked their ears when a louder gust than usual shook the hall windows, or when the rain swept the feathery soot down the wide chimney to hiss in the sparkling fire.

Near the hearth stood a chair covered with gilded leather, and studded with brass nails; and so different was its aspect from the rest of the unornamented furniture, that there was no difficulty in recognising it as the seat of state. A long sword, the silver hilt of which was covered with a curious network of steel, hung by an embroidered baldrick on one knob thereof, balanced by a little velvet cap adorned with a long scarlet feather, on the other.

The proprietor of these articles, a stout old man, somewhere about sixty-five, whose rotundity had been considerably increased by good living, was standing in the arched recess of a well-grated window, peering earnestly out upon the blackness of the night, in hope to discern some trace of that strange vessel, concerning which all Bergen was agog. His complexion was fair and florid, and though his head was bald and polished, the long hair that hung from his temples and mingled with his bushy beard and heavy mustaches, was, like them, of a decided yellow; but his round visage was of the ruddiest and most weatherbeaten brown. There was a bold and frank expression in his keen blue eye, that with his air and aspect forcibly realized the idea of those Scandinavian vikingr who were once the tyrants of Saxons, and the terror of the Scots.

His flowing robe of scarlet cloth, trimmed with black fur and laced with gold, his Norwayn anlace or dagger, sheathed in crimson leather sown with pearls, and the large rowelled spurs that glittered on the heels of his Muscovite leather boots, announced him one of Norway's untitled noblesse. He was Erick Rosenkrantz of Wels??, governor of the province of Aggerhuis, castellan of Bergen, and knight of the Danish orders of the Elephant and Dannebrog.

"Sueno Throndson," said he to a little old man who entered the hall, muffled in a mantle of red deerskin, which was drenched with rain, "dost thou think there is any chance of yonder strange bark weathering the storm, and getting under the lee of our ramparts?"

"I know not, noble sir," replied Sueno, casting his drenched cloak on the floor, and displaying his under attire, which consisted of a green cloth gaberdine, trimmed with the fur of the black fox, and girt at the waist by a broad belt, sustaining a black bugle-horn and short hunting sword. "I have serious doubts; for the waves of the fiord are combating with the currents from the Skager Rack, and whirling like a maelstrom. I have been through the whole town of Bergen; but neither offer nor bribe--no, not even the bishop's blessing, a hundred pieces of silver, and thrice as many deer hides--will induce one of the knavish fishermen or white-livered pilots to put forth a boat to pick up any of these strangers, who must all drown the moment their ship strikes; and strike she must, if the wind holds."

"The curse of Saint Olaus be on them!" grumbled the governor, glancing at a rude image of Norway's tutelary saint.

"Amen!" added Sueno, as he wrung the wet tails of his gaberdine.

"Didst thou try threats, then?"

"Dost thou gibe me, Throndson? This to me, the governor of Aggerhuis, and captain of the king's castle of Bergen!" muttered the portly official, walking to and fro, and swelling with importance as he spoke.

"The oldest of our fishermen are ready to swear on the blessed gospels that there has not been seen such a storm since Christian Alborg, in the Biornen, was blown from his moorings."

"I said all this, noble sir," replied Sueno, brushing the rain from his fur bonnet; "but none attended to me save young Konrad of the Saltzberg, the captain of our Danish crossbowmen, who cursed them for white-livered coistrils, and launching a boat, with Hans Knuber and Jans Thorson the pilot, pushed off from the mole, like brave hearts as they are, in the direction of the labouring ship, which Konrad vowed to pilot round the Devil's Nose or perish."

"Fool! and thou only tellest me of this now! Konrad--the boldest youth and the best in all old Norway!" exclaimed the burly governor. "Hah! and hath the last of an ancient and gallant race to peril his life on such a night as this, when these baseborn drawers of nets and fishers of seals hang back?"

"His boat vanished into the gloom in a moment, and we heard but one gallant blast from his bugle ring above the roar of the waves that boil round that terrible promontory."

"From Denmark."

"Nay, nay, Sir Governor, they know her to be a good ship of Scotland, commanded by a certain great lord of that country, who is on an embassy to Frederick of Denmark, and hath been cruising in these seas."

"Then my double malediction on the Scots, too!" said the governor, as he turned away from the hall window.

"And so say I, noble Sir," chimed in the obsequious chamberlain, as he raised the skirts of his gaberdine, and warmed his voluminous trunk hosen before the great fire.

"Right, Throndson! though eight of our monarchs are buried in Iona, under the Ridge of the Kings, the death of Coelus of Norway, who is graved in the Scottish Kyles, still lives in our songs; and the fatal field of Largs, when aided by such a storm as this, the Scots laid Haco's enchanted banner in the waves."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet