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

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Ebook has 852 lines and 63408 words, and 18 pages

"'Sblood! Lord Earl, dost thou doubt mine honour?" said Ormiston, laying hand on his sword. "Though I owe thee suit and knight's service, nevertheless I am a baron of coat-armour, whose honour brooks no handling. But let us not quarrel, Bothwell!" he added, on seeing that the spirit of his ally was completely prostrated for the time. "Suspicion will never attach to thee; besides, that Norse knave is abroad, with the well-known cloak and sword of Darnley, which Hubert stole me from his chamber. These, when he is found again, will turn all the vengeance on him; so let us to bed ere the alarm be given--to bed, I say, in peace; for we have the alliance of ten thousand hearts as brave as ever marched to battle."

"How much more would I prefer the approbation of my own!"

"Peace, Ormiston! thou art a very bravo, and would thus make one more sacrifice to increase our list of crimes."

"Just as a name may be wanted to fill the roll of Scotland's peers, by thy lamentable decapitation and profitable forfeiture," growled Ormiston. "I know little of statecraft, though I have a bold heart and a strong hand. Come! be once more a man, and leave remorse to children. The crime that passes unpunished, deserves not to be regretted."

"Sophistry!" exclaimed the conscience-struck Earl; "sophistry! Avenging remorse will blast my peace for ever. Now, too bitterly I begin to feel, that joy for ever ends where crime begins!"

They separated.

Blind with confusion, and bewildered by remorse, the Earl reeled like a drunken man, as he hurried down by the back street of the Canongate towards the palace, impatient, and dreading to be missed from his apartments, when the alarm should be given.

A burning thirst oppressed him; his tongue felt as if scorched, and his lips were dry and baked. Frightful ideas pressed in crowds through his mind; he often paused and pressed his hands upon his temples; they were like burning coals, and throbbed beneath his trembling fingers. He looked back mentally to the eminence from which he had fallen, and shuddered at the depth and rapidity of his descent. In the storm of remorse and unavailing regret that agitated his soul, the beauty of Mary, and the dreams of ambition it had inspired, were alike forgotten.

He paused at times, and listened; he knew not why. The night was very still, and there came no sound on the passing wind. A pulse was beating in his head. How loud and palpable it was!

There was ever before him the last unearthly glare of those despairing eyes. It was ever in his ears, that expiring wail, sinking into a convulsive sob--ever--ever, turn where he would; if he walked fast--to leave his burning thoughts behind him; if he stood still--that cry and the deathlike visage were ever before him.

"O! to be as I have been--as I was but one long hour ago!" he exclaimed, shaking his clenched hands above his head. "O! for the waves of Lethe to wash the past for ever from my memory! Satan--prince of hell--hear me! Hear me, who dares not now to address his God!"

The light shone from an aperture in the door of a half-ruined barn. Bothwell grasped his sword, and adjusted his mask; but ere he knocked, a voice within, deep and musically solemn, arrested him by saying--

"Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini, beato Michaeli archangelo, beato Joanni Baptistae, Sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis et tibi, Pater, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et oper?. Me? culp?! me? culp?! me? maxim? culp?!"

Astonished by these words, which form part of the office of mass, and struck to the very soul in hearing them at such a time, when their application was so painfully direct, he paused a moment. The door was opened by a man in complete armour; but the Earl entered immediately, to behold--what appalled and bewildered him still more.

The rude barn had been hurriedly adapted to the purposes of a chapel. A rough table, representing the altar, occupied one end; six candles burned thereon, three on each side of a plain wooden crucifix, which stood before an old representation of the crucifixion, that whilome had adorned some more consecrated fane.

All the long-forgotten piety of his childhood--all the memory of those days of innocence, when his pious mother, Agnes of Sinclair, taught him first to raise his little hands in prayer in Blantyre's stately Priory--gushed back upon his heart. Making a sign of the cross, he knelt down among the people; and, overcome by the influence of old associations, by the sudden vision of an altar and the mass, and by the terrible knowledge of what he was now in the sight of that Being whom he trembled to address, he burst into an agony of prayer.

Again and again the mass-bell rang, and lower bent every head before that humble altar, on which all present deemed 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 , 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.

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.

"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."

"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 , "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.

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