The Knights of England, France, and Scotland

by Henry William Herbert

CHASTELAR.

“Fired by an object so sublime,
What could I choose but strive to climb?
And as I strove I fell.
At least ’tis love, when hope is gone,
Through shame and ruin to love on.”—Anon.

The last flush of day had not yet faded from the west, although the summer moon was riding above the verge of the eastern horizon, in a flood of mellow glory, with the diamond-spark of Lucifer glittering in solitary brightness at her side. It was one of those enchanting evenings which, peculiar to the southern lands of Europe, visit, but at far and fleeting intervals, the sterner clime of Britain. Not Italy, however, could herself have boasted a more delicious twilight than this, which now was waning into night, above the rude magnificence of Scotland’s capital. The fantastic dwellings of the city, ridge above ridge, loomed broadly to the left, partially veiled by those wreaths of vapor, which have been the origin of its provincial name; while, far above the misty indistinctness of the town, the glorious castle towered aloft upon its craggy throne, displaying a hundred fronts of massive shadow, and as many salient angles jutting abruptly into sight. The lovely vale of the King’s park, with its velvet turf and shadowy foliage, shone out in quiet lustre from beneath the dark-gray buttresses of Arthur’s seat; while from the trim alleys and pleached evergreens, which at that day formed a belt of lawn, and shrubbery, and royal garden, around the venerable pile of Holyrood, the rich song of the throstle—the nightingale of Scotland—came in repeated bursts upon the ear.

Delightful as such an evening must naturally be to all who have hearts awake to the influence of sweet sounds and lovely sights, how inexpressibly soothing must it seem to one who, languishing beneath the ungenial atmosphere of a northern region, and sighing for the bluer skies and softer breezes of his fatherland, feels himself at once transported, by the unusual aspect of the heavens, to the distant home of his regrets! It was, perhaps, some fancied similarity to the nights in which he had been wont to court the favor of the high-born dames of France with voice and instrument, that had awakened the melody of some foreign cavalier, more suitable perchance to the light murmurs of the Seine than to the distant booming of the seas that lash the coasts of Scotland. Such, however, was the illusion produced by the unwonted softness of the hour, that the tinkling of a lute and the full, manly voice of the singer did not at the moment seem so inconsistent to the spirit of the country and of the times as in truth it was. The words were French, and the air, though sweet, so melancholy, that it left a vague sensation of pain upon the listener—as though none but a heart diseased could give birth to notes so plaintive. “Pensez à moi! pensez à moi!—noble dame—Pensez à moi!”—the burden of the strain swelled clearly audible in the deepest tones of feeling, although the intermediate words were lost amid the accompaniment of the silver strings. Never, perhaps, since the unfortunate Chatelain de Concy first chanted his extemporaneous farewell to the lady of his heart, had his simple words been sung with taste or execution more appropriate to their subject. In truth, it was impossible to listen to the lay without feeling a conviction that the heart of the minstrel was in his song. There were, moreover, moments in which a practised ear might have discovered variations, not in the tune only, but in the words, as the singer exerted his unrivalled powers to adapt the text, which he had chosen, to his own peculiar circumstances; nor would it have required more than a common degree of fancy to have traced the sounds, “O Reine Marie!” mingling with the proper refrain of the chant, although it would have been less easy to distinguish whether the fervent expression with which the words were invested was applied to an object of mortal idolatry or of immortal adoration. It would seem, however, that there were listeners near, to whom this doubt had not so much as once occurred; for in a shadowy bower, not far distant from the spot where the concealed musician sang, there stood a group of ladies, drinking with breathless eagerness every note that issued from his lips. Foremost in place, as first in rank, was one whose charms have been said and sung, not by the poet and the romancer only, but by the muse of history herself, who almost seems to have dipped her graver pencil in the hues of fiction when describing Mary Stuart of Scotland. Her form, rather below than above the middle stature of the female form, was fashioned with such perfect elegance, that it was equally calculated to exhibit the extremes of grace and majesty. Her ringlets of the deepest auburn, glancing in the light with a glossy, golden lustre, and melting into shadows of dark chestnut; the statue-like contour of her Grecian head; her eyes, on which no man had ever gazed with impunity to his heart—more languid and at the same time far more brilliant than those of created beauty; her mouth, whose wreathed smile might have almost tempted angels to descend and worship; her swan-like neck of dazzling whiteness; and, above all, the glorious blending of feminine ease with regal dignity—of condescension and affability toward the meanest of her fellow-men, with the exalted consciousness of all that was due, not to her rank, but to herself—combined to render her perhaps the loveliest, as after-events proved her beyond a doubt the most unfortunate, of queens or women. Sorrow at this time had scarcely cast a shadow on that transparent brow; or, if an occasional recollection of the ill-fated Francis did leave a trace behind, it was a sadness of that gentle and spiritualized description which is, perhaps, a more attractive expression to be marked in the features of a lovely woman, than the full blaze of happiness and self-enjoyment. Simple almost to plainness in her attire, the queen of Scotland moved before her four attendant Maries, ten thousand times more lovely from the contrast of her unadornment to the gorgeous dresses of those noble dames, who had been selected to be near her person, with especial regard, not to exalted rank alone, or to the distinctive name, which they bore in common with their royal mistress, but to intellect, and beauty, and all those accomplishments which, general as they are in our day, were then at least as highly valued for their rarity, as for their intrinsic merits. A robe of sable velvet, with the closely-fitted corsage peculiar to the age in which she lived, a falling ruff from the fairest looms of Flanders, and the picturesque head-gear which has ever borne her name, with its double tressure of pearls, and a single string of the same precious jewels around her neck, completed Mary’s dress, while rustling trains of many-colored satin, guarded with costly laces and stomachers studded with gems, bracelets, and carcanets, and chains of goldsmith’s work, gleamed on the persons of her ladies. Still the demeanor of the little group was more in accordance to the simplicity of the mistress than to the splendor of the others. No rigid etiquette was there; none of that high and haughty ceremonial which, in the courtly festivals of the rival queen of England, froze up the feelings even of those trusted few who bore with the caprices, in seeking for the favors, of Elizabeth. The titles of grace and majesty were lisped indeed by the lips of the fair damsels, but the character of their remarks, the polished raillery, the light laugh, and the freedom of intercourse, were rather those of the younger members of a family toward an elder sister, than of a court-circle toward a powerful queen. As the last notes of the song died away, she who was nearest to Mary’s person whispered in a sportive tone, “Your grace has heard that lute before—”

“In France, Carmichael,” answered Mary, with a breath so deeply drawn as almost to resemble a sigh, “in our beautiful France; when, when shall I look upon that lovely land again.”

While she was yet speaking the music recommenced. A dash of impatience was mingled with the plaintive sweetness of the strain, and the words “pensez à moi” swept past their ears with all the energy of disappointed feelings.

“It is the voice—”

“Of the sieur de Chastelar,” interrupted the queen; “we would thank the gentleman for his minstrelsey. Seyton, ma mignonne, hie thee across yon woodbine-maze, and summon this night-warbler to our presence.”

With an arch smile the lively girl bounded forward, and was for an instant lost among the foliage of the garden.

“Dost thou remember, Carmichael,” said the queen, whose thoughts had been reflected by the well-remembered strains—“dost thou remember our sylvan festivals in the lovely groves of Versailles, with hound and hawk for noonday pastime, and the lute, the song, and the unfettered dance upon the green sward, beneath moons unclouded by the hazy gloom of this dark Scotland’s?”

“And does your grace remember,” laughed the other in reply, “a certain fête in which the palm of minstrelsey was awarded by your royal hand to a masked hunter of the forest? Yet was his bearing somewhat gentle for a ranger of the green-wood, and his hand was passing white to have handled the tough bow-string? Does your grace’s memory serve to recall the air whose executions gained that prize of harmony? Methinks it did run somewhat thus,”—and she warbled the same notes which had formed the burthen of the serenade.

Whether some distant recollections conjured up the mantling color to the cheeks of Mary, or whether she dreaded the misconstruction of the serenader, on his hearing his own tender words repeated in a voice of female melody, it was with brow, neck and bosom of the deepest crimson that she turned to Mary Carmichael—

“Peace, silly minion!” she said, with momentary dignity; “wouldst have it said that Mary of Scotland is so light of bearing as to trill love-ditties in reply to unseen ballad-mongers? Nay, weep not neither, Marie; if I spoke somewhat shortly, ’twas that the gentleman was even then approaching. Cheer up, my girl; thou hast, we know it well, a kind, a gentle, and a trusty heart, though nature has coupled the gift to that of a thoughtless head and random tongue. Take not on thus, or I shall blame myself in that I checked thee, though surely not unkindly. Mary of Stuart loves better far to look upon a smiling lip than a wet eye, even if it be a stranger’s—much less that of one whom she loves—as I love thee, Carmichael.”

There was, perhaps, no circumstance more remarkable than the power which, at every period of her momentous life, Mary appears to have possessed of winning, as it were at a glance, the affections of all who came in contact with her. The deep devotion, not of the barons and the military chiefs alone, who bled in defence of her cause, but of the ladies, the pages, the chamberlains of her court, nay, of the very grooms and servitors, with whom she could have held no intercourse beyond a smile or inclination of the head, in return for their lowly obeisance, was ever ready for the proof, when circumstances might demand its exercise. Not shown by outward acts of heroism only, or by those deeds which men are wont to perform, no less at the instigation of their wishes for renown, or of rivalry with some more famed competitor, this devotion was constantly manifested in the eagerness of all around her to execute even the most menial duties to Mary’s satisfaction; in the promptness to anticipate her slightest wish; in the lively joy which one kind word from her could awaken, as if by magic, on every brow; and, above all, in the utter despondency which seemed to sink down upon those whom she might deem it necessary to check, even with the slightest remonstrance. In the present instance the sensitive girl, to whom the queen had uttered her commands in the nervous quickness of excitement, rather than with any feeling of harshness or offended pride, felt, it was evident, more bitterness of grief at the rebuke of one whom she loved no less than she revered, than she would have experienced beneath the pressure of some real calamity. As quickly, however, as the sense of sorrow had been excited, did it pass away, before the returning smiles, the soft caresses, and the winning manners of the most fascinating of women the most amiable of superiors.

Scarcely had the tears of Mary Carmichael ceased to flow, when the footsteps, which for some moments previously had been heard approaching, sounded close at hand; the branches of the embowering shrubbery were gently put asunder, and the lady Seyton stood again before the queen, attended by a gentleman of noble aspect, and whose very gesture was fraught with that easy and graceful politeness which, perhaps, showed even more to advantage in that iron age and warlike country, displayed, as it often was, in contrast to the rude demeanor and stern simplicity of the warrior lords of Scotland, than in his native France.

The sieur de Chastelar was at this time in the very prime of youthful manhood, and might have been some few years, and but few, the senior of the lovely being before whose presence he bent in adoration humbler, and more fervently expressed, than the reverence due from a mere subject to a mortal queen. Tall and fairly-proportioned, with a countenance in which almost feminine softness of expression was blended, with an aspect of the eye and lip, which proved the vicinity of bolder and more manly qualities, slumbering but not extinct, he seemed at the first glance a man most eminently qualified to win a female heart. And who, that looked upon the broad and massive brow, and the quick glance of that eye, fraught with intelligence, could doubt but that the mind within was equal to the more perishable beauties of the form in which it was encompassed? And when to all this was added, that the sieur de Chastelar had already won a name in his green youth that ranked with those of gray-haired veterans in the lists of glory; that in all manly exercises, as in all softer accomplishments, he owned no superior; that the most skilful master of defence, the far-famed Vicentio Saviola, confessed De Chastelar his equal in the quickness of eye, the readiness of hand and foot which had combined to render him the most distinguished swordsman of the day; that the wildest and most untameable chargers that ever were compelled to undergo the manége, might as well have striven to shake off a portion of themselves, as to dismount De Chasteler by any display of violence and power; that his hand could draw the cloth-yard arrow to the head, and speed it to its aim as truly as the fleetest archer that ever twanged a bow in Sherwood; that he moved in the stately measure of the pavon, or the livelier galliarde, with that grace peculiar to his nation; that, in the richness of his voice, his execution and taste on lute or guitar, he might have vied with the sons of Italy herself; in short, that all perfections which were deemed most requisite to form a gentleman were united in De Chastelar, what female heart, that was not proof to all the allurements of love or fancy, could hope to make an adequate resistance? Young, handsome, romantic, ardent in his hopes, enthusiastic almost to madness in his affections, he had been captivated years before in the gay salons of the French capitol, by the beauty and irresistible fascinations of the princess.

In the intercourse of French society, which even in the times of the Medici, as it has been in all succeeding ages, was far more liberal in its distinctions, and less restricted by the formalities of etiquette, than in any other court, a thousand opportunities had occurred, by which the youthful cavalier had profited to rivet the attention of the princess; at every carousel he bore her colors; in every masque he introduced some delicate allusion, some soft flattery, palpable to her alone; in every contest of musical skill, which yet survived in Paris, the sole remnant of the troubadours, some covert traces of his passion might be discovered, if not by every ear, at least by that of Mary. Intoxicated as she was, at this stage of her life, by the adulation of all, by the consciousness of beauty, power, and rank, far above all her fellows, the queen of Scotland owed much of her misery in after-years to the unclouded brilliancy of her youthful prospects, and to the wide distinction between the manners of that court, in which her happiest hours were spent; and of her northern subjects, by whom her gaieté de cour, her love for society less formal than the routine of courts, and her predilections for all innocent amusements, were ever looked upon in the light of grave derelictions from decorum and morality.

That she had regarded the gallant boy, whose accomplishments were so constantly before her eyes, with favorable inclinations was not to be doubted; and that at times she had lavished upon him marks of her good will in rather too profuse a degree, was no less true; but whether this line of conduct was dictated merely by a natural impulse, which ever leads us to distinguish those whom we approve from the common herd of our acquaintance, or by a warmer feeling, can never now be ascertained. It mattered not, however, to the youth, from which cause the conduct of the lovely princess was derived; it was enough for him that she had marked his attentions, that she had deigned to look upon him with favorable eyes, that she might at some future period learn to love.

Not long, however, was it permitted to him to indulge in those fair but fallacious dreams; the marriage of the Scottish princess with the royal Francis was ere long publicly announced, the ceremonies of the betrothal, and lastly of the wedding itself, were solemnized with all the pomp and splendor of the mightiest realm in Europe, and the aspirations of the united nations ascended in behalf of Francis and his lovely bride.

It was then, for the first time, that Mary was rendered fully aware of the misery which her unthinking freedom had entailed upon the ardent nature of De Chastelar; it was then, for the first time, that she learned how deep and powerful had been the passion which he had nourished in his heart of hearts—that she was awakened to a consciousness that she was loved, not wisely, but too well. Heretofore she had believed, that the eagerness of the gay and gallant Frenchman to display his equestrian skill, his musical accomplishments, before her presence, and as it were in her behalf, and the devotedness with which he turned all his powers to a single object, were rather to be attributed to a desire of gaining general approbation as a gentle cavalier, a slave to beauty, and a favored servant of earth’s loveliest lady, than to a passion, the romance of which, considering the wide distinction of their sphere, would have amounted to actual insanity. Now she perceived, to her deep regret, that the arrow had been shot home, and that the barb had taken hold too firmly to be disengaged by a sudden effort, how vehement soever. She saw, in the pale cheek and hollow eye, that he had cherished hopes which reason and reality must bid him discard, at once and for ever; but which he yet had not the fortitude to tear up by the roots, and cast into oblivion. For a time he had wandered about, a spectre of his former person, among the festivities and happiness of all around him, paler every day, and more abstracted in his mien; then he had exiled himself at once from rejoicings in which he could have no share, and had buried his hopes, his anxieties, his misery, in the loneliness of his own secluded chamber.

Thus had passed weeks and months; and when at length he had come forth again to join the world and all its vanities, he was, as it seemed to all, a wiser and a sadder man. The queen, ever kind and affectionate in her disposition, imagining that he had struggled with the demon which possessed him, and cast his hopeless love behind him, met his return to the courtly circle with her wonted condescension. On his preferring his request to be installed her chamberlain, willing to mark her high sense of his imagined integrity, in thus manfully shaking off his weakness, she granted his request; and trusting that his own acuteness would readily perceive the distinction between royal favor to a trusted servant and feminine affections to a preferred lover, assumed nothing of formality or etiquette, more than had characterized their former days of unrestricted intercourse. Her own first trial followed; the first year of her nuptials had not yet flown, when the gallant Francis, the earliest, the worthy object of her young love, sickened with a disease which from its very commencement permitted but slight hopes of his recovery. Then came the wretchedness of anxiety, hoping all things, yet too well aware that all was hopeless; the watchings by his feverish bed, when watching, it was too obvious, could be of no avail; the agony when the announcement that all was over, long foreseen, but never to be endured, burst on her mind; the long, heart-rending sorrow, the repinings after pleasures that were never to return; and, last of all, the cold, stern carelessness of despair. She awoke at length from her lethargy of wo; awoke to leave the lovely climate which she had learned almost to deem her own; to be torn from the friends whom she had loved, and the society of which she had been the brightest gem, to return to a country which, though it was the country of her birth, had never conjured up to her imagination any pictures save of a gloomy hue and melancholy nature.

A few who had served her in the sunny land of France adhered to her with unshaken resolution, despising all inconveniences, setting at naught all dangers, save that separation from a mistress, whom, to have attended once, was to love for ever. Among those few was De Chastelar. The alteration in her condition had undoubtedly suggested to the widowed queen the necessity of an alteration in her conduct toward De Chastelar, particularly when it was added, that familiarity between a creature so young and lovely as herself and a gentleman so noble, even in his melancholy, as the chamberlain, would have at once excited the indignation of her stern and rigid subjects. In these circumstances it would perhaps have been a wiser, though not a more considerate plan, to have confided the cause of her embarrassment to the causer of it, and to have requested his absence from her court. It was not, however, in Mary’s nature to give pain, if she could possibly avoid it, to the meanest animal, much less to a friend valued and esteemed, as he who was the innocent cause of her anxiety. She adopted, therefore, what, being always the most easy, is ever the most dangerous, an intermediate course. In public De Chastelar received no marks of approbation from the queen, much less of regard from the woman; but in her hours of retirement, when surrounded by the ladies of her court, the most of whom had followed her footsteps northward from gay Paris, she delighted to efface from his mind the recollections of neglect before the eyes of the censorious Scots, by a delicacy of attention, and a warmth of friendship, which, while it fully answered her end of soothing his wounded feelings, led him to cherish ideas most fatal in the end to his own happiness, and to that of the fair being whom he so adored. It was with a heightened color and throbbing breast that Mary turned to address her unconfessed lover, yet there was no flutter in the clear, soft voice with which she spoke.

“We would thank,” she said, “the sieur de Chastelar for the delightful sounds by which he has rendered our walk on this sweet evening even more agreeable than the mild air and cloudless heaven could have done without his minstrelsey. Yet ’twas a mournful strain, De Chastelar,” she continued, “and one which, if we err not, flows from a wounded heart. Would that we knew the object of so true a servant’s worship, that we might whisper our royal pleasure in her ear, that she should list the suit of one whom we regard so highly. Is she in truth so obdurate, this fair of thine, De Chastelar? she must be hard of heart to slight so gallant a cavalier.”

“Not so, your grace,” replied the astonished lover, in a voice scarcely less sonorous than the music he had made so lately. “She to whom all my vows are paid, she who has ever owned the passionate aspirations of a devoted heart, is as pre-eminently raised in all the sweet and amiable sentiments of the mind as is unrivalled beauty above all mortal beings.”

For an instant the queen was dumb; she had hoped, by affecting ignorance of his sentiments, that she should have been enabled to make him comprehend the madness, the utter inutility of his passion, and she felt that she had failed; that words had been addressed to her, which, however she might feign to others that she had not perceived their bearing, he must be well aware she could not possibly have failed to understand. It was with an altered mien and with an air of cold and haughty dignity, that she again addressed him as she passed onward toward the palace.

“We wish thee, then, fair sir, a better fortune hereafter, and until then good night.” Without uttering a syllable in reply, he bowed himself almost to the earth; nor did he raise his head again until the form he loved to look upon had vanished from his sight: then slowly lifting his eyes he gazed wistfully after her, dashed his hand violently upon his brow, and turning aside rushed hastily from the spot.

An hour had scarcely elapsed before the lights were extinguished throughout the vaulted halls of Holyrood; the guards were posted for the night, the officers had gone their rounds, the ladies of the royal circle were dismissed, and all was darkness and silence. In Mary’s chamber a single lamp was burning in a small recess, before a beautifully-executed painting of the virgin, but light was not sufficient to penetrate the obscurity which reigned in the many angles and alcoves of that irregular apartment, although the moonbeams were admitted through the open casement.

Her garb of ceremony laid aside, her lovely shape scantily veiled by a single robe of spotless linen, her auburn tresses flowing in unrestrained luxuriance almost to her feet, if she had been a creature of perfect human beauty, when viewed in all the pomp of royal pageantry, she now appeared a being of supernatural loveliness. Her small white feet, unsandalled, glided over the rich carpet with a grace which a slight degree of fancy might have deemed the motion peculiar to the inhabitants of another world. For an instant, ere she turned to her repose, she leaned against the carved mullions of the window, and gazed pensively, and it might be sadly, upon the garden, where she had so lately parted from the unhappy youth, whose life was thus embittered by that very feeling which, above all others, should have been its consolation. Withdrawing her eyes from the moonlit scene, she knelt before the lamp and the shrine which it illuminated, and her whispered orisons arose pure as the source from which they flowed; the prayers of a weak and humble mortal, penitent for every trivial error, breathing all confidence to Him who alone can protect or pardon; the prayers of a queen for her numerous children, and last, and holiest of all, a woman’s prayers for her unfortunate admirer. Yes, she prayed for Chastelar, that strength might be given to him from on high, to bear the crosses of a miserable life, and that by Divine mercy the hopeless love might be uprooted from his breast. The words burst passionately from her lips, her whole frame quivered with the excess of her emotion, and the big tears fell like rain from her uplifted eyes. While she was yet in the very flood of passion a sigh was breathed, so clearly audible, that the conviction flashed like lightning on her soul, that this most secret prayer was listened to by other ears than those of heavenly ministers. Terror, acute terror took possession of her mind, banishing, by its superior violence, every less engrossing idea. She snatched the lamp from its niche, waved it slowly around the chamber, and there, in the most hallowed spot of her widowed chamber, a spy upon her unguarded moments, stood a dark figure. Even in that moment of astonishment and fear, as if by instinct, the beautiful instinct of purely female modesty, she snatched a velvet mantle from the seat on which it had been cast aside, and veiled her person even before she spoke—“O God! it is De Chastelar!”

“Sweet queen,” replied the intruder, “bright, beautiful ruler of my destinies, pardon—”

“What ho!” she screamed, in notes of dread intensity, “à moi, à moi mes Français. My guards! Seyton! Carmichael! Fleming! will ye leave your queen alone! alone with treachery and black dishonor! Villain! slave!” she cried, turning her flashing eyes upon him, her whole form swelling as it were with all the fury of injured innocence, “didst thou dare to think that Mary—Mary, the wife of Francis—the anointed queen of Scotland, would brook thine infamous addresses? Nay, kneel not, or I spurn thee! What ho! will no one aid in mine extremity?”

“Fear naught from me,” faltered the wretched Chastelar, but with a voice like that of some inspired Pythoness she broke in—“Fear! thinkst thou that I could fear a thing, an abject coward thing like thee? a wretch that would exult in the infamy of one whom he pretends to love? Fear thee! by heavens! if I could have feared, contempt must have forbidden it.”

“Nay, Mary, hear me! hear me but one word, if that word cost my life—”

“Thy life! hadst thou ten thousand lives, they would be but a feather in the scale against thy monstrous villany. What ho!” again she cried, stamping with impotent anger at the delay of her attendants, “treason! my guards! treason!”

At length the passages rang with the hurried footsteps of the startled inmates of the palace; with torch and spear, and brandished blades, they rushed into the apartment; page, sentinel, and chamberlain, ladies with dishevelled hair, and faces blanched with terror. The queen stood erect in the centre of the room, pointing, with one white arm bare to the shoulder, toward the wretched culprit, who, with folded arms, and head erect, awaited his doom in unresisting silence. His naked rapier, with which alone he might have foiled the united efforts of his enemies, lay at his feet; his brow was white as sculptured marble, and no less rigid, but his eyes glared wildly, and his lips quivered as though he would have spoken.

The queen, still furious at the wrong which he had done her fame, marked the expression. “Silence!” she cried—“degraded! wouldst thou meanly beg thy forfeit life? Wert thou my father, thou shouldst die to-morrow! Hence with the villain! Bid Maitland execute the warrant. Ourself—ourself will sign it—away! Chastelar dies at daybreak!”

“’Tis well,” replied he, calmly, “it is well—the lips I love the best pronounce my doom, and I die happy, since I die for Mary. Wouldst thou but pity the offender, while thou dost doom the offence, De Chastelar would not exchange his shortened span of life, and violent death, for the brightest crown in Christendom. My limbs may die—my love will live for ever! Lead on, minions; I am more glad to die than ye to slay! Mary, beautiful Mary, think—think hereafter upon Chastelar!”

The guards passed onward; last of the group, unfettered and unmoved, De Chastelar stalked after them. Once, ere he stooped beneath the low-browed portal, he paused, placed both hands on his heart, bowed lowly, and then pointed upward, as he chanted once again the words, “Pensez à moi, noble dame, pensez à moi.” As he vanished from her presence she waved her hand impatiently to be left alone—and all night long she traversed and re-traversed the floor of her chamber, in paroxysms of the fiercest despair. The warrant was brought to her—silently, sternly, she traced her signature beneath it; not a sign of sympathy was on her pallid features, not a tremor shook her frame; she was passionless, majestic, and unmoved. The secretary left the chamber on his fatal errand, and Mary was again a woman. Prostrate upon her couch she lay, sobbing and weeping as though her very soul was bursting from her bosom, defying all consolation, spurning every offer at remedy. “’Tis done!” she would say, “’tis done! I have preserved my fame, and murdered mine only friend!”

The morning dawned slowly, and the heavy bells of all the churches clanged the death-peal of De Chastelar. The tramp of the cavalry defiling from the palace-gates struck on her heart as though each hoof dashed on her bosom. An hour passed away, the minute-bells still tolling; the roar of a culverin swept heavily downward from the castle, and all was over. He had died as he had lived, undaunted—as he had lived, devoted! “Mary, divine Mary,” were his latest words, “I love in death, as I loved in life, thee, and thee only.” The axe drank his blood, and the queen of Scotland had not a truer servant left behind than he, whom, for a moment’s frenzy, she was compelled to slay. Yet was his last wish satisfied; for though the queen might not relent, the woman did forgive; and in many a mournful hour did Mary think on Chastelar.

---

RIZZIO.

Bru. Do you know them?
Luc. No, sir; their hats are plucked about their brows,
And half their faces buried in their cloaks,
That by no means I may discover them
By any marks of favor.—Julius Cæsar.

The shadows of an early evening, in the ungenial month of March, were already gathering among the narrow streets and wynds of the Scottish metropolis. There was a melancholy air of solitude about the grim and dusky edifices, which towered to the height of twelve or thirteen stories against the gray horizon. No lights streamed from the casements, no voices sounded in loud revelry or chastened merriment from the dwellings of the gloomy quarter in which the scene of our narrative is laid. The cheerless aspect of the night, together with the drizzling rain, which fell in silent copiousness, had banished every human being from the streets; and, except the smoke which eddied from the dilapidated chimneys, and was instantly beat down to earth by the violence of the shower, there was no sign of any other inhabitants, than the famished dogs which were snarling over the relics of some thrice-picked bone. Suddenly the sharp clatter of hoofs, in rapid motion over the broken pavement, rose above the splashing of the flooded gutters, betokening the approach of men; and ere a minute had elapsed two horsemen, gallantly mounted, rode hotly up the street. The foremost bestriding, with the careless ease of an accomplished rider, a jennet, whose thin jaws, expanded nostril, and flashing eye, no less than the deerlike springiness of its gait, and its unrivalled symmetry, proclaimed it sprung from the best blood of the desert, was of a figure that could not be looked upon, however slightly, without awakening a sense of interest, perhaps of admiration, in all beholders.

His countenance, of an oval form, and of a darker hue than the blue-eyed sons of northern latitudes are wont to exhibit—the full and somewhat wild expression of his dark eye, the melancholy smile which played upon his curling lip, pencilled mustache, and the peaked beard—contributing to form a face that Antonio Vandyke would have loved to paint, and after ages to admire, when invested with the life of his rich coloring. His dress of russet velvet slashed with satin, his feathered cap, with its gay fanfarona[E] and enamelled medal, his jeweled rapier, and the bright spurs in his falling buskins, were well adapted to the agile limbs and slender, though symmetrical proportions of the horseman.

[E] The Fanfarona was a richly-fashioned chain of goldsmith’s work, not worn about the neck, but twisted in two or more circuits around the rim of the cap, or bonnet, and terminating in a heavy medal. It was probably of Spanish origin, but was much in vogue in the courts of Mary and Elizabeth.

The second rider was a boy, whose black and scarlet liveries—the well-known colors of all servitors of the Scottish crown—were but imperfectly hidden by the frieze cloak which had been cast over them, evidently for the purposes of concealment, rather than of comfort; yet he, too, like the gallant whom he followed—if any faith was to be placed in the evidence of raven hair and olive complexion—owed his birth to some more southern clime.

After winding rapidly through several dim and unfrequented lanes, the leading horseman, checking his speed, gazed around him with a doubtful and bewildered eye.

“Madre di Dio,” he exclaimed at length, “what a night is here; a thousand curses on this learned fool, that he must dwell in such a den of thieves as this; or rather a thousand curses on the blind and heretical Scots, that drive a man of wisdom, beyond their shallow comprehension, to bed with the very outcasts of society. Pietro, what ho!” and he raised his voice above the key in which he had pitched his soliloquy, “knowest thou the dwelling of this sage—this Johan Damietta? methought that I had noted the spot, yet have these sordid lanes banished the recollection. Presto, time fails already.”

Without uttering a syllable in reply, the page sprung from his horse, and pointed to the doorway of a mansion, dilapidated even more than those in its vicinity, yet bearing in its site the marks of having been constructed in former days for the residence of some proud baron. Nor even now—although all the appliances of comfort were utterly neglected, although the casements were void of glass, and the chimneys sent up no volumes from a cheerful hearth—were the external defences of the pile forgotten; heavy bars of iron crossed and recrossed the deep-set embrasure which once had held the windows, and the oaken gate was clenched with many a massive nail and plate of rusted iron. The cavalier alighted, cast the rein to his servitor, and with the single word “Prudence,” ascended the stone steps, and struck thrice at measured intervals upon the wicket with his rapier’s hilt. The door flew open, but without the agency, as it appeared, of any living being, and, as the visiter entered, was closed again behind him with a heavy crash.

A narrow passage was before him, scarcely rendered visible by the flickering light of a cresset suspended from the ceiling, and nourished, as it seemed, with spirit, rather than with the richer food of oil. Uncertain, however, as was the illumination, it served to show a second door, even more strongly constructed than the first, fronting the intruder at the distance of some ten paces; while the wall, perforated with loops for musketry, or more probably, if the remote antiquity of the building were considered, for arrows, proved that the hostile intruder had effected but little in forcing his way through the outward entrance. It would be wrong, in the description of this difficult passage, to omit the mention of certain orifices, or slits, extending in length from the floor even to the ceiling of the side-walls, but not exceeding a single inch in width, as they may tend perhaps to cast some light upon an invention of the darkest ages of Scottish history, the reality of which has been considered doubtful by acute antiquarians. From the upper extremity of these slits protruded on either side the blades of six enormous swords, which, being placed alternately, and worked by some concealed machinery, must inevitably hew to atoms, when once set in motion, any obstacle to their appalling sway. This was the dreaded swordmill first discovered by the wizard baron Soulis, and thence invested with superstitious error, which was needless, at the least, when the actual horrors of the engine were considered. It is, however, probable, that these gigantic relics of an earlier age were no longer capable of being rendered available at the period of which we write; at all events they hung in rusty blackness, suspended like the sword of Damocles above the head of the intruder, rendering his position awful, at least, if not in reality insecure.

Notwithstanding the warlike and turbulent character of Scotland during the reign of Mary, there was nevertheless enough of the uncommon in the defences of this dark and dangerous entrance to have riveted the attention of a man less anxiously engaged than was the foreign cavalier. Apparently undismayed by the wild contrivances around him, the gallant strode forward to repeat his signal on the inner wicket, when a broad glare of crimson light, produced by some chemical preparation, considered in that dark age supernatural, was shot into his very face from an aperture above, clearly displaying to some concealed observer the form and features of his visiter.

“Ha!” cried a voice so shrill and grating as to produce a painful impression on the nerves of the hearer. “Thou art come hither, Sir Italian; enter, then—enter in the name of Albunazar!—enter, the hour is propitious, and thou art waited for!”

The door revolved noiselessly on its hinges, and a few steps brought the Italian to the chamber of the sage. It was a small and central cell, without the slightest visible communication with the outward air. Books of strange characters and instruments of singular device were scattered on the floor, the tables, and the seats; astrolabes, globes of the terrestrial and celestial world, crucibles, and vials of rare and potent mixtures, lay beside discolored bones, reptiles, and loathsome things from tropical climes, some stuffed, and others carefully preserved in spirit. A huge furnace glimmered in the corner, covered with vessels containing, doubtless, alembics of unearthly power; a large black cat—to which inoffensive animal wild notions of infernal origin were then attached—and a gigantic owl, perched on a fleshless skull, completed the ornaments of this receptacle of superstitious quackery, which was rendered as light as day by the aid of some composition, burning in a lamp so brilliantly as to dazzle the firmest eye. In the midst of this confused assemblage of things, useless and revolting alike to reason and humanity, the master-spirit of his tribe was seated—a small old man, whose massive forehead, pencilled with the deep lines of thought, would have betokened a profound and powerful mind, had not the quick flash of the small and deeply-seated eye belied, by its crafty and malignant glances, all symptoms of a noble nature.

“Hail, Signor David!” he said, but without raising his eyes from the retort over which he was poring. “Hail! methought that thou didst hold the wisdom of the sage mere quackery! Ha! out upon such changeful, feather-pated knaves, who scoff before men at that which they respect—ay, which they tremble at in private!—tremble! well mayst thou tremble—for thy doom is fixed! See,” he cried, in a fearfully unnatural tone, as he raised the metallic rod with which he had been stirring the contents of the glass vessel, and exhibited it dripping with some crimson-colored liquid—“see! it is gore—thy gore, Signor David!—ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed with fiendish glee at the evident discomposure of his guest.

“Nay, nay, good father—” he began, when the other cut him off abruptly—

“‘Good father!’—ha, ha, ha! Good devil! Fool, dost think that thou canst change the destinies that were eternal, before so vain a thing as thou wast in existence, by thine unmeaning flatteries? I spit upon such courtesies! ‘Good father!’ listen to my words, and mark if I be good. Thou hast risen by meanness, and flattery, and cringing, and vice; thou hast disgraced thy rise by insolence and folly—weak, drivelling folly; and thou shalt fall—ha, ha, ha!—fall like a dog! Look to thyself!—‘Good father!’ Begone, or thou shalt hear more, and that which thou wilt like even less than this—begone!”

“I meant not to offend thee,” replied the astonished courtier, “and I pray thee be not distempered. I have broken in on thy retirement to witness that unearthly skill of which men speak, and I would ask of thee in courtesy mine horoscope, that I may so report thee—”

“Thou! thou report me, David Rizzio! the wire-pinching, sonned-jingling, base-born scullion, report of Johan Damietta! Get thee away! I know thee! Begone—nay, if thou wilt have it, listen: bloody shall be thine end, and base. A bastard foeman is in thy house of life. Tremble at the name—”

“Rather,” interrupted the Italian, enraged at the language of the conjurer, “rather let that bastard tremble at the name of Rizzio; and thou, old man, I leave thee as I came, undaunted by thy threats, and unconvinced by thy jugglery.”

“To-night! to-night!” hissed the old man, in notes of horrible malignity—“to-night shalt thou know if Damietta be a juggler! If thou wouldst live—for I would have thee live, poor worm—fly from the hatred of the Scottish nobles!—away!”

“Know’st thou,” asked Rizzio, tauntingly, “a Scottish proverb—if not, I will instruct thee—framed, if I read it rightly, to express the character of their own factious brawlers? ‘The bark is aye waur than the bite.’ Adieu, old man! to-morrow thou shalt learn if Rizzio fears or thee or thy most doughty brawlers.”

“Ha, ha, ha!—to-morrow! mark that—to-morrow!” and a yell of laughter burst from every corner of the chamber; the mixture in the retort exploded with a stunning crash, the lights were extinguished, and, without being aware of the manner of his exit, the royal secretary found himself beyond the outer gate of the wizard’s dwelling, with a throbbing pulse and swimming brain, but still, to do him justice, undismayed by that which his naturally incredulous and sneering turn of mind, rather than any clear conviction of the truth, led him to consider as a mere imposture.

Without replying a syllable to the inquiries of the terrified page, who had heard the frightful sounds within, he flung himself into his saddle, plunged the rowels into the flanks of the jennet until she reared and plunged with terror, and dashed homeward at a fearful rate through alleys now as dark as midnight. Nor did he draw his bridle till he had passed the guarded portals of the palace, and galloped into the inmost court of Holyrood: there indeed he checked his courser with a violence which almost hurled her on her haunches, sprang from her back, and, without looking round, hurried into the most private entrance, and disappeared.

Scarcely had he passed through the gateway, and ere yet the page had left the courtyard with the horses, when the sentinel, who had permitted the well-known secretary of the queen to pass unquestioned, brought down his partisan to the charge, and challenged, as a tall figure, whose clanging step announced him to be sheathed in armor cap-à-pie, muffled in a dark mantle, with a hood like that worn by the Romish priesthood drawn close around his head, approached him.

“Stand, ho! the word—”

“Another word, and thou never speakest more!” replied the other, in a hoarse, rapid whisper, offering a petronel, cocked, and his finger on the trigger, at the very throat of the astonished soldier; “the king requires no password!”

“The king?” replied the sentinel, doubtfully, “the king?—I know not, nor would I willingly offend; but thou art not, methinks, his majesty.”

“Take that, thou fool, to settle all thy doubts!” cried the other, in the same deep whisper as before; while, casting his weapon into the air, he caught it by the muzzle as it turned over, and sunk the loaded butt deep into the forehead of the unwary sentinel. The whole was scarcely the work of an instant; and ere the heavy body could fall to earth, the ready hand of the assailant had caught it, and suffered it to drop so gently as to create no sound. In another moment he was joined by three or four other persons similarly disguised, and followed by a powerful guard of spearmen. A heavy watch of these was posted at the principal gateway, and knots of others were disposed around the court at every private entrance, with orders to let none pass on any pretext whatsoever. “Warn them to stand back twice! the third time kill!” was the muttered order of the chief actor in the previous tragedy. “So far, my liege, all’s well!” he continued, turning with an air of some respect to another of the muffled figures, of a port somewhat less commanding than his own huge proportions; “and Morton must, ere this, have seized all the remaining avenues.” While he was yet speaking, a slight bustle was heard at a distance, and in a second’s space they were joined by him of whom they spoke.

“How goes the business, Morton?” said the first speaker.

“All well!—the gates are ours, and not a soul disturbed; the villain sentinels laid down their arms at once, and are even now in ward! Let us be doing: a deed like this permits of no delay!”

“On, friends! Be silent, and be certain!”

And one by one they filed through the same portal by which the Italian had, so short a time before, sped to the presence of his royal mistress.

In the meantime, unconscious of the fearful tragedy that was even then in preparation, the lovely queen, with her most trusted servants, the devoted David, and the noble countess of Argyle, had retired from the strict ceremonies of the court circle to the privacy of her own apartments.

In a small ante-chamber, scarcely twelve feet in width, communicating with the solitary chamber of the queen—solitary, for the notorious profligacy and insolent neglect of Darnley had left her an almost widowed wife—the board was spread, glittering with gold and crystal, and covered with the delicacies of the evening meal.

The beautiful queen, freed from the galling chains of ceremony, her robes of state thrown by, and attired in the elegant simplicity of a private lady, sat there—her lovely features beaming with condescension and with unaffected pleasure, conversing joyously with those whom she had selected from her court as worthiest of her especial favor. Bitterly, cruelly had she been deceived in the character of him whom she had in truth made a king; for whose gratification she had almost exceeded the rights of her prerogative, and given deep offence to her haughty and suspicious nobles; having discovered, when too late, that, while possessed of all the graces and accomplishments that constitute an elegant and agreeable admirer, Henry Darnley was deficient, miserably deficient, in all that can render a man eligible as a friend and husband. Deserted, neglected, outraged in a woman’s tenderest point, almost before the first month of her nuptials had elapsed, the flattering dream had passed away which had promised years of happy, peaceful communion with one loved and loving partner. Ever preferring the society of any other fair one to that of the lovely being to whom he should have been bound by every tie of love and gratitude, the king had early left his disconsolate bride to pine in total seclusion, or to seek for recreation in the society of those whose qualities of mind, if not their rank, might render them fit companions for her solitude; and she, poor victim of a brutal husband, and unhappy mistress of a turbulent and warlike nation, fell blindly but most innocently into the snare of her unrelenting enemies.

Of all who were around her person, Rizzio alone was such by habits, education, and accomplishments, as could lend attraction to the circle of a gay and youthful queen. Accustomed, from her earliest youth, to the elegant and polished manners of the French nobility, the rude and illiterate barons—with whom the highest grade of knowledge was the marshalling of a host for the battle-field, and the highest merit the fighting in the front rank when marshalled—could appear to her in no other light than that of brutal and uneducated savages. What wonder, then, that a youth well skilled as David Rizzio in all the arts and elegances most suitable to a noble cavalier, handsome withal and courteous, attentive even to adoration to her slightest wish, and ever contrasting his cultivated mind with the untutored rudeness of the warrior-lords of Scotland, should have been admitted to a degree of intimacy by his forsaken mistress, innocent, undoubtedly, and pardonable, even should we be disposed to admit that it was imprudent?

Two menials in the royal livery waited upon that noble company, but without the servile reverence which was exacted at the public festivals of royalty. The fair Argyle, who, in any other presence than that of her unrivalled mistress, would have been second to none in loveliness, jested and smiled with Mary more in the manner of a beloved companion than that of an attendant to a queen. But on the brow of David there was a deep and heavy gloom; and when he answered to the persiflage and polished railleries of the queen or that young countess, although his words were gay, and at times almost tender, the tones of his voice were grave almost to sadness.

“What has befallen our worthy secretary?” said Mary, after many fruitless efforts to inspire him with livelier feelings. “Thou art no more the gay and gallant Signor David of other days than thou resemblest the stern and steel-clad—”

Even as she spoke, it seemed as though her words had conjured up an apparition: for a figure, sheathed in steel from crest to spur, strode, with a step that faltered even amid its pride, from out the shadows of her private chamber into the full glare of the lamps. The vizor was raised, and the pale brow and haggard eye, the uncombed beard, and the corpse-like hue of the whole visage, better beseemed the character of some foul spirit released from its peculiar place, than of a noble baron in the presence of his queen. A loud shriek from the terrified Argyle first called the attention of Mary to the strange intruder. But David sat with his eye glaring, in a horrible mixture of personal apprehension and superstitious dread, upon the person of his deadliest foeman.

“Arise, David, thou minion! arise, and quit the presence to which thou art a foul and plague-like blot!” cried the deep voice of Ruthven, ere a word had yet found its way to the lips of the indignant queen.

“Sir Patrick Ruthven—if our eyes deceive us not,” she said at length, erecting her noble figure to its utmost, and bending upon him a glance which, hardened as he was in crime and cruelty, he could no more have met with his than the vile raven have gazed upon the noonday sun—“Sir Patrick Ruthven, we would learn what means this insolent intrusion?”

“It means, fair madam,” replied Darnley—who now followed his savage instrument, accompanied by his no less fierce accomplices, the base-born Douglas, the brutal Ker of Fawdonside, in bearing and in manners fitted rather for the guardhouse than the court, and the most thorough ruffian of the party, Patrick de Balantyne—“it means that your vile minion’s race is run!”

“Ha! comes the blow from thee?—I might indeed have deemed it so,” she replied, calmly but scornfully. “What is your grace’s pleasure?” and she smiled in beautiful contempt.

“My pleasure is that he—yon base Italian, yon destroyer of my honor, and of yours—of your honor, madam, if you know such a word—shall perish!”

“Never, Henry Darnley! mine own life sooner!” And she confronted him with flashing eyes and heightened color, her whole frame quivering with resolve and indignation. “Thinkst thou to put a stain like this upon the honor of a queen, and that queen, too, thine own much-injured wife? Out, out upon thee, for a heartless, coward thing! A man, a brute, hath some affection, hath some touch of love for those who have loved him, as I have once loved thee; of gratitude toward those who have elevated him—not, no! not as I have elevated thee—for never yet did woman lavish honor, power, kingdom, upon mortal man, as I have lavished them on thee! Away, insolent and ungrateful, hence! Thinkst thou to do murder, foul murder, in the presence of a woman, of a wife—a wife soon, wretch that she is, to be the mother of a child—of thy child, Henry? Hence, and I will forgive thee all—even this last offence! Banish these murderous ruffians from my presence; spare an honest and a noble servant—one who hath never, never wronged thee or thine! spare him, and I will take thee yet again unto my heart, and love thee, as I have loved thee ever, even when thou hast been most cruel—ever, Henry Darnley, ever!”

The king was moved, his lips quivered, and he would have spoken: all might still have been explained, all might have been forgiven; but it was not so decreed.

“Tush, we but dally,” cried the brutal Ruthven, “we but dally! On, gentlemen, and drag the villain from the presence!”

Foremost himself, he strode to seize the unarmed wretch, who, broken in spirits, and appalled more perhaps by the recollection of the wizard’s doom than by the sordid fear of death, clung to the robe of his adored mistress, poor wretch, as though the altar itself would have been to him a sanctuary against his ruthless murderers.

“Mercy!” shrieked the miserable queen; “mercy, for the love of Him that made you! mercy, Henry—mercy, for my sake, or, if not for mine, mercy for thine unborn infant’s sake! Ruthven—villain, false knight, uncourteous traitor—forego thy hold!” and she struggled madly with the assassins. “To arms!” she screamed in shriller tones, “to arms!—O God! O God! have I no guards, no friends, no husband? Oh, that I had been born a man, and ye should rue this day—ay, and ye shall rue it!”

Ruthven had clutched his victim with a grasp of iron, and, whirling him from his frail tenure, cast him to the attendant murderers. “Spare him!” she shrieked once more; “spare him, and I will bless you! Ay, strike!” she continued in calmer tones, as the ruffian Ker brandished his naked dagger at her throat; “and thou, too, fire—fire upon thy mistress and thy queen!” Maddened by her resistance, and fearful that the citizens might rise in her behalf, Balantyne cocked his petronel. “Fire, thou coward! why dost thou pause? I am a woman, true—a queen, a wife—about to be a mother; but what is that to such as thee? Fire, and make your butchery complete!”

But, as the words passed from her lips, the bloody deed was over. Even in the presence of the queen, dirk after dirk was plunged into the unresisting wretch. Long after life was extinguished, the maddened assassins continued to mangle the senseless clay with their bloodthirsty weapons. So long as life remained, and so long as the horrid strife was doubtful, did Mary’s fearful cries for mercy ring upon the ears of those who neither heard nor heeded her. The massacre was ended, and, with a degree of unmanly insensibility that would alone have stamped him the worst and fiercest of his race, Ruthven seated himself before the outraged woman, the insulted queen, and calmly wiped his brow, still reeking with her favorite’s life-blood. “My sickness,” he said, “must pardon me for sitting in your presence. I had arisen from my bed to do this deed, and am now somewhat weary and o’erspent. I pray your highness command your minions to bear yon winecup hither.”

Without regarding for an instant this fresh insult, she dried her streaming eyes. “We have demeaned ourselves to pray for mercy from butchers. Tears are for men! I have one duty left me, and I will fulfil it—one aim to my existence, one study for my ingenuity, and one prayer to my God: my duty, mine aim, my study, and my prayer, shall be, to be avenged!”

---

THE KIRK OF FIELD.

“It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves, that take their humors for a warrant
To break within the bloody house of life;
And, on the winking of authority,
To understand a law; to know the meaning
Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns
More upon humor than advised respect.”—King John.

It was a dark and stormy night without, such as is not unfrequent even during the height of summer, under the changeable influences of the Scottish climate. The west wind, charged with moisture collected from the vast expanse of ocean it had traversed since last it had visited the habitations of man, rose and sank in wild and melancholy cadences; now howling violently, as it dashed the rain in torrents against the rattling casements; now lulling till its presence could be traced alone in the small, shrill murmur, which has been compared so aptly to the voice of a spirit. The whole vault of heaven was wrapped in blackness, of that dense and smothering character which strikes the mind as pertaining rather to the gloom of a closed chamber than to that of a midnight sky.

Yet within the halls of Holyrood neither storm nor darkness had any influence on the excited spirits of the guests who were collected there to celebrate, with minstrelsey and dance, the marriage of Sebastian. Hundreds of lights flashed from the tapestried walls; wreaths of the choicest flowers were twined around the columns; rich odors floated on the air; and the voluptuous swell of music entranced a hundred young and happy hearts with its intoxicating sympathies. All that there was of beautiful and chivalrous in old Dunedin thronged to the court of its enchanting queen on that eventful evening; and it appeared for once as though the hate of party and the fierce zeal of clashing creeds had for a time agreed to sink their differences in the gay whirl of merriment. The stern and solemn leaders of the covenant relaxed the austerity of their frown; the enthusiastic chieftains of the Romish faith were content to mingle in the dance with those whom they would have met as gladly in the fray.

With even more than her accustomed grace, brightest and most bewitching where all were bright and lovely, did Mary glide among her high-born visiters; no shade of sorrow dimmed that transparent brow, or clouded the effulgence of that dazzling smile; it was an evening of conciliation and rejoicing—of forgiveness for the past, and hope rekindled for the future. There was no distinction of manner as she passed from one to another of the animated groups that conversed, or danced, or hung in silent rapture on the musicians’ strains, on every side. Her tone was no less bland, as she addressed the gloomy Morton, or the dark-browed Lindesay, but now returned from exile in the sister-kingdom, than as she turned to her gayer and more fitting associates. Never was the influence of Mary’s beauty more effective than on that occasion; never did her unaffected grace, her sweet address, her courtesy bestowed alike on all, exert a mightier influence over the minds of men than on the very evening when her hopes were about to be for ever blighted, her happiness extinguished, her very reputation blasted, by the villany of false friends, and the violence of open foes.

The weak and vicious Darnley yet lingered on his bed of sickness, but with the vigor of health many of the darker shades of his character had passed away; and Mary had again watched beside the bed of him whose foul suspicions and unmanly violence—no less than his scandalous neglect of her unrivalled charms, his low and infamous amours, his studied hatred of all whom she delighted to honor—had almost alienated the affections of that warm heart which once had beat so tenderly, so devotedly, and, had he but deserved its constancy, so constantly for him. Oh, how exquisite a thing is woman’s love! how beautiful, how strange a mystery, is woman’s heart! ’Twas but a little month ago that she had almost hated. Neglect had chilled the stream of her affections: that he whom she had made a king, whom she had loved with such total devotion of heart and mind—that he should repay her benefits with outrage, her affections with cold, chilling, insolent disdain—these were the thoughts that had worked her brain to the very verge of madness and of crime.

The “glorious, rash, and hazardous”[F] young earl of Orkney had ever in these hours of bitter anguish been summoned, she knew not how, to her imagination: the warm yet delicate attentions, the reverential deference to her slightest wish, the dignified and chaste demeanor, through which gleamed ever and anon some flash of chivalrous affection—some token that in the recesses of his heart he worshipped the woman as fervently as he served the sovereign truly; the overmastering passion always apparent, but so apparent that it seemed involuntarily present; the eye dwelling for ever on her features, yet sinking modestly to earth, as shamed by his own boldness, if haply it met hers; the hand that trembled as it performed its office; the voice that faltered as it answered to the voice he seemed to love so dearly—all these, all these, had they been multiplied a hundred-fold, and aided by the deepest magic, had effected nothing to wean her heart from Darnley, had not his own infatuated cruelty furnished the strongest argument in favor of the young and noble Bothwell. As it was, harassed by the deepest wrongs from him who was most bound to cherish and support her, and assailed by the allurements of one who coupled to a beauty equal to that of angels a depth of purpose and dissimulation worthy of the fiend, Mary had tottered on the precipice’s verge! Darnley fell sick, and she was saved! Him whom she had almost learned to hate while he had rioted in all the insolence of manly strength and beauty, she now adored when he was stretched languid and helpless on the bed of anguish. She had rushed to his envenomed chamber, she had braved the perils of his contagious malady; her hand had soothed his burning brow, her lip had tasted the potion which his feverish palate had refused; day and night she had watched over him as a mother watches over her sick infant, in mingled agonies of hope and terror; she had marked the black sweat gathering on his brow, and the film veiling his bright eye, and she had felt that her very being was wound up in the weal or wo of him whose death, one little month before, she would have hailed as a release from misery. She had noted the dawn of his recovery, she had fainted from excess of happiness; she had pardoned all, all his past misdoings; she was again the doting, faithful, single-hearted wife of her repentant Henry.[G]

[F] Throgmorton’s letter to Elizabeth.

[G] Knox and Buchanan would make it appear that his reconciliation was insincere. But Knox and Buchanan wrote under the influence of political and religious hostility, and could never allow a single merit to Mary. It is a sound rule that every mortal is innocent till proved guilty.

Now in the midst of song, and revelry, and mirth, while the gay masquers passed in gorgeous procession before her eyes, her mind was far away in the chamber of her recovered lord, within the solitary kirk of Field. The masque had ended, and the hall was cleared; the wedding-posset passed around, beakers were brimmed, and amid the clang of music the toast went round—“Health to Sebastian and his bride!” The hall was cleared for the dance: a hundred brilliant couples arose to lead the Branle; the minstrels tuned their prelude; when the fair young bride, blushing at the boldness of her own request, entreated that her grace would make her condescension yet more perfect by joining in that graceful measure which none could lead so gracefully.

If there was one failing in the character of Mary, which tended above all others to render her an object for unjust suspicions, and a mark for cruel reverses, it was an inability to refuse aught that might confer pleasure on any individual, however low in station—a gentle failing, if it indeed be one, but not the less pernicious to the fortunes of all, and above all of kings. With that ineffable smile beaming upon her face, she rose; and as she rose, Bothwell sprang forth, and in words of deep humility, but tones of deeper passion, besought the queen to make her slave the most happy, the most exalted of mankind, by yielding to him her inestimable hand, even for the space of one short dance.

For a single moment Mary paused; but it was destined that she should be the victim of her confidence, and she yielded. Never, never did a more perfect pair stand forth in lordly hall, or on the emerald turf, than Mary Stuart and her destroyer. Both in the flush and flower of gorgeous youth: she invested with beauty such as few before or since have ever had to show, with grace, and symmetry, and all that nameless something which goes yet further to excite the admiration, and call forth the love of men, than loveliness itself; he strong, yet elegant in strength—proud, yet with that high and spiritual pride which had nothing offensive in his display—taller and more stately than the noblest barons of the court—they were indeed a pair unmatched amid ten thousand; so rich in natural advantages, so exquisite in personal attractions, that the tasteful splendor of their habits was as little marked as is the golden halo which encompasses but adds no glory to the sainted heads of that delightful painter whose name so aptly chimes with the peculiar sweetness of his sublime creations.

Even the iron brow of Ruthven—for he, too, was there—relaxed as, leaning on her partner’s extended hand, she passed him with a smile of pardon, and he muttered to his dark comrade, Lindesay of the Byres—“She were in sooth a most fair creature, if that her mind might match the beauties of its mansion.” As he spoke, the measured symphony rang out, and in slow order the dancers moved forward; anon the measure quickened, and the motions of the young and beautiful obeyed its impulses. It was a scene more like some fairy dream than aught of hard, terrestrial reality: the waving plumes, the glittering jewels, the gorgeous robes, and, above all, the lovely forms, which rather imparted their own brilliancy to these adornments than borrowed anything from them, combined to form a picture such as imagination can scarcely depict, much less experience suggest, from aught beheld in ballrooms of the present day, wherein the stiff and graceless costume of modern times is but a poor apology for the majestic bravery of the sixteenth century.

Suddenly, while all were glancing round in the swiftest mazes of the dance, those who stood by observed the blood flash with startling splendor over brow, neck, and bosom of the youthful queen; nay, her very arms, white in their wonted hue as the snow upon Shehallion, crimsoned with the violence of her emotions. Her eyes sparkled, her bosom rose and fell almost convulsively, her lips parted, but it seemed as though her words were choked by agitation. For a single instant she stood still; then bursting through the throng, she sank nearly insensible upon one of the many cushioned seats that girded the hall; but, rallying her spirits, she murmured something of the heat and the unusual exercise, drained the goblet of pure water presented by the hand of Orkney, and again resumed her station in the dance.

“Pardon, pardon, I beseech you,” whispered the impassioned tones of the tempter—“pardon, sweet sovereign, the boldness that was born but of a moment’s madness. Believe me—I would tear my heart from out my bosom, did it cherish one thought that could offend my mistress—my honored, my adored—

“Hush! oh, hush! for my sake, Bothwell—for my sake, if for naught else, be silent! I do believe that you mean honestly and well; but words like these ’tis madness in you to utter, and sin in me to hear them! Bethink you, sir,” she continued, gaining strength as she proceeded, and speaking so low that no ear but his might catch a solitary sound amid the quick rustle of the “many twinkling feet,” and the full concert—“bethink you! you address a wife—a wedded, loyal wife—the wife of your lord, your king. I know that you are my most faithful servant, my most trusted friend; I know that these words, which sound so wildly, are not to be weighed in their full sense, but as a servant’s homage to his liege-lady: yet think what yon stern Knox would deem, think of the wrath of Darnley—”

“If there were naught more powerful than Darnley’s wrath,” he muttered, in the notes of deep determination, “to bar me from my towering hopes, then were I blest beyond all hopes of earth, of heaven—supremely blest!”

“What mean you, sir? We understand you not! What should there be more powerful than the wrath of thy lawful sovereign? Speak; I would not doubt you, yet methinks your words sound strangely. What be these towering hopes of thine? Pray God they tower not too high for honesty or honor! Say on, we do command thee!”

“I will say on, fair queen,” he replied, in a voice trembling as it were with the fear of offending and the anxiety of love—“I will say on, so you will hear me to the end, nor doubt the most devoted of your slaves!”

“Hear you?” she replied, considerably softened by his humility, “when did ever Mary Stuart refuse to hear the meanest of her subjects, much less a trusted and a valued friend, as thou hast ever been to her, as thou wilt ever be to her—wilt thou not, Bothwell?”

There was a heavenly purity, a confidence in his integrity, and a firm and full reliance on her own dignity, in every word she uttered, that might have converted the wildest libertine from his career of sin; that might have confirmed the wariest and most subtle spirit that its guilty craft could never prevail against a heart fortified against its attacks by purity and by the stronger and more holy influences of wedded love; but on the fixed purpose, on the interminable pride, the desperate passion, and the unscrupulous will of Bothwell, every warning was lost.

“I have adored you,” he said, slowly and impressively—“adored you, not as a queen, but as a woman. Mary, angelic Mary, pardon—pity—and oh, love me! You do, you do already love me! I have read it in your eye, I have marked it in your flushing cheek, in your heaving bosom! If this night you were free, would you not, sweet lady, lovely queen, would you not reward the adoration, the honest adoration of your devoted Bothwell?”

“Stand back, my lord of Bothwell!” cried the now indignant queen, “stand back! your words are madness! Nay, but we will be heard,” she continued, with increasing impetuosity, as he endeavored again to speak. “Thinkest thou, vain lord, that I—I, Mary of France and Scotland—because I have favored and distinguished a subject, who, God aid me, merited not favor nor distinction—thinkest thou that I, a queen anointed—a mother and a wife—that I could love so wantonly as to descend to thee? Back, sir, I say! and if I punish not at once thy daring insolence, ’tis that thy past services, in some sort, nullify thy present boldness. Oh, my lord!” she proceeded, in a softer tone, and a big tear-drop trembled in her bright eye as she spoke, “Mary has miseries enough, that thou shouldst spare to add thy quota to the general ingratitude. If thou didst love me, as thou sayest, thy love would be displayed as that of a zealous votary to the shrine at which he worships; as that of the magi bending before their particular star—not as that of a wild and wicked wanton to a frail, fickle woman!”

It may be that the words with which Mary concluded her reproof kindled again the hope which had well nigh passed away from Bothwell’s breast.

“Nay, Mary, say not thus. Do I not know thy trials? have I not marked thy miseries? and will I not avenge them? If thou wert free—did I say, if? By Heaven, fair queen, those locks of thine, that flow so unrestrained down that most glorious neck, are not more free than thou art! Did I not hear thy cry for vengeance on the slaughterers of hapless Rizzio? did I not hear, and have I not achieved the deed that secures at once thy freedom and thy vengeance?”

The spell was broken on the instant: the soft, the tender-hearted, the most gentle of women, was aroused almost to frenzy. The blood rushed in torrents to her princely brow, and left it again pale as the sculptured marble, but to return once more in deeper hues of crimson. Her eyes flashed with unnatural brightness; her bosom heaved and fell like that of a young priestess laboring with the throes of prophetic inspiration; she shook the tresses, he had dared to praise, back from her lovely face, and stamping her delicate foot in the passion of the moment on the oaken floor—

“A guard!” she cried, in notes that might have vied with the clangor of a trumpet, so shrilly did they pierce the ears of all; “a guard for my lord of Bothwell!”

Had the thunder of heaven darted its sulphurous and scathing bolt into the midst of that assembly, a greater change its terrors could not have effected than did that thrilling cry. A hundred rapiers flashed in the bright torchlight, as with bent brows and angry voices the barons of the realm rushed to the aid of their liege-lady. An air of cool defiance sat on the massive forehead of the culprit; his eye was fixed upon the queen in sorrow, as it would seem, rather than in anger; his sword lay quietly in his scabbard, although there were a hundred there with weapons thirsting for his blood, and hearts burning with the insatiable hate of ancient feuds. Murray and Morton, speaking eagerly and even sternly to the queen, urged his immediate seizure; and the gray-haired duke of Lennox, clutching his poniard’s hilt with the palsied gripe of eighty years, awaited but a sign to slay, he knew not and he recked not why, the ancient foeman of his race.

But so it was not fated! Before a word was spoken, the deep and sullen roar as of an earthquake burst upon their ears, and stunned their very hearts; a second din, as of some mighty tower rushing from its base, succeeded, ere the casements had ceased to rattle with the shock of the first.

“God of my fathers!” shouted Murray, “what means that din? Treason, my lords, treason! Look to the queen—secure the traitor! Thou, duke of Lennox, with thy followers, haste straight to the kirk of Field! Without, there—let my trumpets sound to horse! By Him that made me,” he continued, “the populace are rising!”—for the deep swell of voices, that rose without, announced the presence of a mighty multitude.

In an instant the vaulted arches of the palace echoed with the flourished cadences of the royal trumpets, the ringing steps of steel-clad men, the tramp of hoofs in the courtyard, the gathering cries of the followers of each fierce baron, succeeding wildly to the soft breathings of minstrelsey and song. At this instant Murray had resolved himself to act, and, with his hand upon the pommel of his sword, slowly but resolutely stepped forward. “Yield thee!” he said, in stern, low tones; “yield thee, my lord of Bothwell! Hence from this presence thou canst not pass until all this night’s strange occurrences be fully manifested; ay, and if there be guilt—as I misdoubt me much there is—till it be fearfully avenged!”

The touch of Murray on his shoulder, lightly as it fell, and grave as were the words of that high baron, aroused the reckless disposition of Bothwell almost to madness. “Thou liest, lord!” he shouted, in the fierce impulse of the moment—“thou liest, if thou dare to couple the name of guilt with Bothwell! Forego thy hold, or perish!”—and his dagger’s blade was seen slowly emerging from its sheath, while his clinched teeth and the starting veins of his broad forehead spoke volumes of the bitterness of his wrath. Another second, and blood, the blood of Scotland’s noblest, would have been poured forth like water, and in the presence of the queen; the destinies of a great kingdom would have perchance been altered, and the history of ages changed, all by the madness of a single moment. In the fearful crisis, a wild shriek was heard from the upper end of the hall, to which the ladies of the court had congregated, round the queen, like the songsters of spring when the dark pinions of the hawk are casting down a shadow of terror on their peaceful groves.

“Help! help!—her grace is dying!” And, in truth, it did seem as though she were about to pass away. Better, a thousand times better, and happier, had it been for her, to have then died quietly in the palace of her forefathers, with the nobles of her land around her, than to have borne, for many an after-year, the chilling miseries which were showered by pitiless fortune on her head, till that most fatal hour of her tragic life arrived, and Mary was at length at rest!

Murray relaxed his hold, turned on his heel, and strode abruptly to the elevated dais, on which the queen had sunk in worn-out nature’s weariness. For a minute’s space Bothwell glared on him as he strode away, like a tiger balked of his dear revenge. It was most evident he doubted—doubted whether he should set all, even now, upon a cast, strike down a foeman in the very fortress of his power, and if he must die, like the crushed wasp, sting home in dying. Prudence, however, conquered: he also turned upon his heel, and with a glance of the deepest scorn and hatred on the baffled lords, who, in the absence of their master-spirit, had lost all unison, stalked slowly through the portal of the hall, and disappeared.

Before ten seconds had elapsed, the rapid clatter of hoofs, the jingling of mail, and the war-cry—“A Bothwell! ho! a Bothwell!” proclaimed that he had escaped the toils, and was surrounded by his faithful followers.

When Murray reached the couch on which the queen was extended, gasping as though in the last extremity, her case indeed was pitiable. Her long locks had burst from their confinement, and flowed over her person like a veil; her corsage had been cut asunder by the damsels of her court, and her bosom, bare in its unspeakable beauty, was disclosed to the licentious gaze of the haughty nobles. An angle of the couch, as she had fallen, had grazed her temple, and the blood streamed down her cheek and neck, giving, by the contrast of its dark crimson, an ashy, deathlike whiteness to her whole complexion.

“Ha!” he whispered, with deep emotions, “what means this? Back, back, my lords, for shame, if not for pity! would ye gaze upon your sovereign, in the abandonment of utter grief, as though she were a peasant-quean? Stand back, I say, and let the halls be cleared; and hark thee, Paris,” he continued, as a cringing, terrified-looking Frenchman entered the apartment, “bid some one call Galozzi hither: the poison-vending, cozening Tuscan hath skill at least, and it shall go hardly with him so he exert it not! But ha! what ails the man? St. Andrew, he will faint! What ails thee, craven? Speak, speak, or I shake the coward soul from out thy carcass!”—and he shook the trembling servitor fiercely by the throat.

“The king—the king—” he faltered forth at length, terrified yet more by the wrath of Murray than by the scene which he had witnessed.

“What of the king, thou dastard? Speak—I say, what of Henry Darnley?”

“Murdered, your highness—murdered!”

“Nay, thou art made to say it!”

“He speaks too truly, Murray,” cried Morton, entering, with his bold visage blanched, and his dark locks bristling with unwonted terror; “the king is murdered—foully, most foully murdered!”

“By the villain Bothwell!” muttered Murray, between his hard-set teeth; “but he shall rue the deed! But say on, Morton, say on: how knowest thou this? Say on—and you, ladies, attend the queen.”

“I saw it, Murray—with these eyes I saw it—the cold, naked, strangled corpse—flung, like a carrion-carcass, on the garden-path; and the kirk of Field a pile of smoking and steaming ruins—blown up with gunpowder, to give an air of accident to this accursed treason. I tell you, man,” he continued, as he saw Murray about to speak, “I tell you that I saw, in that drear garden, cast like a murrained sheep upon a dike, all that remained of Henry Darnley!”

“’Tis false!” shrieked the wretched Mary, starting to her feet, with the wild glare of actual insanity in her eye; “who saith I slew him? Henry Darnley! ’Sdeath, lords!—the king, I say—the king! Now, by my halydom, he shall be king of Scotland! Dead—dead! who said the earl of Orkney was no more? Faugh! how the sulphur steams around us! It chokes—it smothers! Traitor, false traitor! know, earl, I will arraign thee. What! kill a king? whisper soft, low words to a queen? Hoa! this is practice, my lord duke, foul practice; and deeply shall you rue it if you but hurt a hair of Darnley!—Nay, Henry, sweet Henry, frown not on me! Oh! never woman loved as I love thee, my Darnley! Rizzio—ha! what traitor spoke of Rizzio? But think not of it, Henry: the faithful servant is lost, but ’twas not thou that did it. Lo! how dark Morton glares on me! Back, Ruthven, fiend! wouldst slay me? But I forgive thee all—all—Henry Darnley, all! Live—only live to bless my longing sight! No! no!” she shrieked more wildly, “he is not dead! to arms! what, ho!—to arms! a king, and none to rescue him! To arms, I say! I will myself to arms! Fetch forth my Milan harness; saddle me Rosabelle! French—Paris, aho! my petronels! And ye, why do ye linger, wenches—Seyton, Carmichael, Fleming?—my head-gear and my robes! The queen goes forth to-day! To horse, and to the rescue!”

She made a violent effort to rush forward, but staggered, and if her brother had not received her in his arms, she would have fallen again to the earth. “Bear her hence, ladies; bear her to her chamber!—thou hast a heavy weird—poor sister!—What ponder you so, Morton? you would not mark her words: ’tis sheer distraction—the distraction of most utter sorrow!”

“Distraction! I say ay! but sorrow, no! Sorrow takes it not on thus wildly. It savors more of guilt, Lord Murray—dark, damning, bloody guilt! Heard ye not what she said of Orkney? Distraction, but no sorrow: guilt, believe me, guilt!”

“Not for my life would I believe it, nor must thou: if Morton and Murray hunt henceforth in couples—hark in thine ear!”—and he whispered, glancing his eyes uneasily around, as though the very stones might bear his words to other listeners. A grim smile passed athwart Morton’s visage; he bowed his head in token of assent. They passed forth from the banquet-hall together, and Mary was left to her misery.

---

BOTHWELL.

“Marshal, demand of yonder champion
The cause of his arrival here in arms:
Ask him his name, and orderly proceed
To swear him in the justice of his cause.”—King Richard II.

The summer sun was pouring down a flood of lustre over wood and moorland, tangled glen, and heathery fells, with the broad and blue expanse of the German ocean sparkling in ten thousand ripples far away in the distance. But the radiance of high noon fell not upon the forest and the plain in their solitary loveliness, but on the marshalled multitudes of two vast hosts, arrayed in all the pomp and circumstance of antique warfare, glittering with helms and actons, harquebuss and pike, and waving with a thousand banners, of every brilliant hue and proud device. On a gentle eminence, the very eminence on which, a few short years before, the English Somerset had posted his gallant forces, lay the army of the queen, its long front bristling with rows of the formidable Scottish spear, its wings protected by chosen corps of cavalry, the firm and true adherents of the house of Stuart, or the daring, though licentious vassals of the duke of Orkney, and the royal banner, with its rich embroidery, floating in loud supremacy. Yet, gay and glorious as it showed upon its ground of vantage, and gallantly as it might have contested that field against even superior numbers, that array was but in name an army. Thousands were there who, though they had flocked with bow and arrow to the call of their sovereign, felt not distaste alone, but actual disgust to the services on which they were about to be employed; and not a few were among them who knew too well how little was the probability that they, a raw, tumultuary force, led on by men of gallantry indeed, but not of that well-proved experience which, to a leader, is more than the truncheon of his command, should come off with victory, or even without defeat, from an encounter with veteran troops, retainers of the most warlike lords in Scotland, marshalled by soldiers with whose fame the air of every European kingdom was already rife—soldiers such as Lyndesay of the Byres, Kirkaldy of the Grange, Murray of Tullibardin, and a hundred others of reputation, if second, second to none but these. Nor was this all; voices were not wanting, even in the army of the queen, to exclaim, that if the royal banner were displayed, its purity was sullied by the presence of a murderer; and that success could never be hoped for, so long as Bothwell rode by the right hand of Mary. One exception there was, however, to this general feeling of dissatisfaction, if not of despair. A band of determined men, whose scar-seamed visages and stern demeanor, no less than the splendid accuracy of their equipments, and the admirable discipline with which they maintained their post, far in advance of the main body, and exposed to inevitable destruction on the advance of the confederated forces, should they be suffered, as it appeared too probable that they would, to remain unsupported against such desperate odds. But these were men to whom the most deadly conflict was but a game of chance; inured from their youth upward to deeds of blood and danger—lawless and licentious in time of peace, even as they were cruel, brave, and fearless in the fight—the picked retainers, the desperate, of the duke of Orkney.

Dark glances of contempt, if not of hatred, were shot ever and anon from beneath the scowling brows of these wild desperadoes toward the wavering ranks of the main army, as, unrestrained by the exhortations or menaces of their officers—unmoved by the eloquent beauty of Mary herself, who rode among the trembling ranks, praying them, as they loved their country, as they valued honor, as they would not see their wives, their mothers, and their daughters, delivered to the malice of unrelenting foemen, to strike one blow for Scotland’s crown—to give once, once only, their voices to the exulting clamor, “God and the queen”—troop after troop broke away from the rear, and scattering themselves, singly, or in parties of two or three, over the open country, sought for that safety in mean and dastard flight, which they should have asked from their own bold hearts and strong right hands.

It was at this moment that the heads of the confederated columns were seen advancing, in dark and dense masses, at three different points, against the front, which was still preserved in Mary’s army by the strenuous exertions of the leaders, rather than by any soldierly feelings on the part of the common herd. So nearly had they advanced to the royal lines that the stern and solemn countenances of the leaders, as they rode in complete steel, but with their vizors raised, each at the head of his own leading, were visible, feature for feature. The matches of the arquebusses might be clearly distinguished, blown already into a bright flame, while the pieces themselves were evidently grasped by ready and impatient hands, and the long spears of the vanguard were already lowered; but not a movement of eagerness, not a murmur, or a shout, was heard throughout the thousands, whose approach was ushered to the ears alone by the incessant trampling sound, borne steadily onward, like the flow of some great river, occasionally broken by the shrill neighing of a charger, or the jingling clash of arms.

The borderers of Bothwell, on the contrary, as they noted the advance, raised, from time to time, the wild and fearful yells with which it was their custom to engage, brandishing their long lances, and giving the spur to their horses, till they sprang and bolted like hunted deer; and it required all the influence of hereditary chiefs to restrain these savage moss-troopers from rushing headlong with their handful of men against the unbroken line of the confederate pikes, which swept onward, sullen and steady as the tide when it comes in six feet abreast. The effect of such a movement would have been at once fatal to their wretched mistress. It was too evident that, for a wavering, coward multitude, like that arrayed beneath the banner of the queen, there could be no hope to fight against men such as those who were marching, in determined resolution, up that gentle eminence; and all that now remained was an attempt at negotiation.

It was at this moment, when the advanced guard of the two armies were scarcely ten spear’s-lengths asunder, when the determination or wavering of every individual might be read by the opposite party in his features as clearly as in the pages of a book, that a single trumpet from the centre of the queen’s army broke the silence with a wild and prolonged flourish. It was no point of war, however, that issued from its brazen mouth, no martial appeal to the spirits and courage of either host, but the prelude to a pacific parley—and straightway the banners throughout the host were lowered, and a white flag was waved aloft, in place of Scotland’s blazonry. The ranks were slowly opened, and from their centre, with trumpeter and pursuivant, and king-at-arms, rode forth Le Croc, the French embassador. This movement, as it seemed, was wholly unexpected by the confederate lords; at least, the ranks continued their deliberate advance unchecked by the symbols of peace that glittered above the weapons of the rival host, till suddenly a foaming horse and panting rider furiously galloped from the rear. A single word was uttered, in a low, impressive whisper; it passed from mouth to mouth like an electric spark; and, as though it were but a single man, that mighty column halted on the instant. There was no confusion in the manœuvre, no hurry, nor apparent effort: the long lines of lances, so beautifully regular in their advance, sank as regularly to their rest; and, but for the fluttering of their plumage in the summer air, those beings, strangely composed of every vehement and stirring passion, might have passed for images of molten steel. But a few seconds had elapsed, and the flourish of the peaceful trumpets was yet ringing in the ears of all, when a dozen horsemen proceeded slowly forward, to meet the royal cavalcade.

It was a singular and most impressive spectacle, that meeting. It was, as it were, the fearful pause between life and death—the moment of breathless silence that precedes the first crash of the thunderstorm. Every eye was riveted in either army on those two groups; every heart beat thick, and every ear tingled with excitement. And, even independent of the appalling interest of the crisis, there was much to mark, much to admire, in the handful that had come together to speak the doom of thousands; to decide whether hundreds and tens of hundreds of those living creatures, who stood around them now, so glorious in the pride, the beauty, and the strength of manhood, should, ere the sun might sink, be as the clods of the valley; to decree, with their ephemeral breath, whether the soft west wind, that wafted now the perfumes of a thousand hills to their invigorated senses, should, ere the morrow, be tainted like the vapor from some foul charnel-house!

On the one side, on his light and graceful Arab, champing its gilded bits and shaking its velvet housings, sat the gay and gallant Frenchman—his long, dark locks uncovered, and his fair proportions displayed to the best advantage in his rich garb of peace. No weapon did he bear—not even the rapier, without which no gentleman of that period ever went abroad—but which, the more fully to manifest the candor and sincerity of his instructions, a handsome page held by his master’s stirrup. Behind him, with pale visages and anxious mien, Marchmont, and Bute, and Islay, and the lion King, awaited the result of this their last resource.

On the other hand, distinguished from their followers only by the beauty of their powerful chargers, and their own knightly bearing, halted the rebel chiefs. Plain almost to meanness in his attire, with his armor stained and rusty, and his embroidered baldrick frayed and rent, Lord Lyndesay of the Byres was foremost in the group. Morton was there, and Murray, all steel from crest to spur; the best warrior, where all were good, the noblest spirit, the most upright man, Kirkaldy of the Grange.

“Nobles and knights of Scotland,” said the proud envoy, in a tone so calm and yet so clear that every accent could be noted far and wide, “I come to ye—a gentleman of France—the servant of a mighty monarch, unbought by friendship and unprejudiced by favor. For myself, or for my royal master, it recks us little whether or not ye choose to turn those swords, which should be the bulwarks of your country, against her vitals. Yet should it not be said that Scottishmen, like ill-trained dogs of chase, prefer to turn their fangs against each other, than to chase a nobler quarry. Ye are in arms against your queen—nay, interrupt me not, my lords—against your queen, I say! or, as perchance ye word it, against her counsellors. That ye complain of grievances I know, and, for aught I know, justly complain. Yet pause, brave gentlemen, pause and reflect which is the greater grievance—a country torn with civil factions, internal war with all its dread accompaniments of massacre and conflagration, or those ills which now have stung you to exchange your loyalty for rebel arms? Bethink ye, that in such a cause as this it matters not who wins—to vanquish countrymen and brothers is but a worse and deadlier evil than defeat by foreign foemen. Think ye this fatal field of Pinkie, whereon ye are arrayed, hath not already drunk enough of Scottish blood, that ye we would deluge it again?—or that its name is not yet terrible enough to Scottish ears, that ye would now bestow a deeper blazonry of sin and shame? Brave warriors, noble gentlemen, forbear! Let the sword of civil discord, I beseech you, enter its scabbard for once bloodless; let amicable parley gain the terms which bloodless news purchased! Strive ye for your country’s glory?—lo, it calls on you to pause! For your own peculiar fame?—it bids ye halt while there is yet the time, lest neither birth, nor rank, nor valor, nor high deeds, nor haughty virtues, preserve ye from the blot which lies even yet, though ages have passed, on those who have warred against their country! Is it terms, fair terms, for which ye crowd in arms around yon awful banner?”—pointing to the colors of the rebel lords, emblazoned with the corpse of the murdered Darnley, and his orphan infant praying for judgment and revenge—“lo, terms are here! Peace, then, my lords; give peace to Scotland, and eternal credit to yourselves. Her majesty bears not the wonted temper, the stern resentment of offended kings: even now she offers peace and amity, pardon for all offences—ay, and the hand of friendship, to all who will at once retire from this sacrilegious field. Subjects, your queen commands you; nobles and knights, a lady, the fairest lady of her sex, appeals to your chivalry and honor. Hear, and be forgiven!—”

“Forgiven!” shouted Glencairn, in tones of deep feeling and yet deeper scorn—“forgiven! we came not here to ask for pardon, but for vengeance, and vengeance will we have! The blood of Darnley craves for punishment upon his murderers! We are come to punish; not to sue for pardon, not to return in peace, until our end is gained, and Scotland’s slaughtered king avenged!”

“Fair sir,” cried Morton—calmer, and for that very reason more to be dreaded, than his impetuous comrades—“fair sir, we rear no banner and we lift no blade against her grace of Scotland! Against her husband’s murderer have we marched, nor will we turn a face, or draw a bridle, till that murderer lies in his blood, or flies for ever from the land he has polluted by his unnatural homicide! Thou hast thine answer, sir. Yet thus much for our ancient friendship, and to testify our high esteem for the noble monarch whom thy services here represent: here will we pause an hour. That passed, our word is, ‘Forward! forward!’ and may the God of battles judge between us! Brothers in arms, and leaders of our host, say, have I spoken fairly?”

“Fairly hast thou spoken, noble Morton; and as thou hast spoken, we will it so to be. An hour we pause, and then forward!” The voices of the barons, as they replied, gave no signs of hesitation; there was no faltering in their tones, no wavering in their fixed and steady glances. At once the gallant mediator saw that he had failed in his appeal, and that all further words were needless. Slowly and disconsolately he bent his way back to the royal armament, where the miserable Mary awaited, in an agony of shame and anguish, the doom, for such in truth it was, of her rebellious subjects.

On the summit of a little knoll she sat, girt by the few undaunted spirits who clung to the last to Mary’s cause, and who were ready at her least word to perish, if by perishing they might preserve her. Lovely as she had seemed in the gay halls of Holyrood, her brow beaming with rapture, innocence, majesty, far lovelier was she now in pale and hopeless sorrow. In the vain hope of inspiring ardor to her dispirited and coward forces, she had girt her slender form in glittering steel. A light, polished cavinet reflected the bright sunshine above her auburn tresses, and a cuirass of inlaid and jewelled metal flashed on her bosom. Not a warrior in either host sat firmer or more gracefully upon his destrier than Mary upon Rosabelle. A demipique of steel and loaded petronels, with the butt of which her fingers played in thoughtless nervousness, had replaced the rich housings of that favored jennet; but though arrayed in all the pride and pomp of war, there was neither pride nor pomp in the expression of that pallid cheek and quivering lip.

“Noble Le Croc,” she cried, breathless with eagerness as he approached her presence, “what tidings from our misguided subjects? will they depart in peace? Speak out, speak fully: this is no time for well-turned sentences or courteous etiquette. Say, is it peace or war?”

With deep feeling painted on his dark lineaments, the Frenchman answered: “War, your grace, war to the knife; or peace on terms such as I dare not name to you.”

“Then be it war!” cried she, the eloquent blood mantling to her cheeks in glorious indignation, her eyes flashing, and her bosom heaving with emotion; “then be it war! We have stooped low enough in suing thus for peace from those whom we are born to govern, and we will stoop no longer. Better to die, to fall as our gallant father fell, leading his faithful countrymen, devoted subjects, against enemies not half so fierce as these, who should be brothers. Sound trumpets, advance our guards! Seyton, Fleming, Huntley, to your leadings, and advance! ourselves will see the tourney.”

“Your grace forgets,” replied the experienced leader to whom she first addressed herself, “your grace forgets that not one dastard of this fair army, as it shows upon this ground of vantage, will advance one lance’s length against the foe. Some scores there are, in truth, followers oft tried and ever-faithful of mine own, and some if I mistake not of the earl of Orkney, who will fight well when shaft and steel-point hold together; but ’twere but butchery to lead the rugged vassals upon certain death! for what are scores to thousands such as stand thirsting for the battle yonder—thousands led on, too, by the first martialists of Europe? Nevertheless, say but the word, and it is done. Seyton hath ever lived for Stuart—it rests but now to die!” He paused—but in an instant, taking his cue from Mary’s extended nostril and still-flashing eye, he shouted, in a voice of thunder: “Mount, mount, and make ready! A Seyton, a Seyton for the Stuart!” Already had he dashed the rowels into his steed, and another instant would have precipitated his little band upon the inevitable destruction that awaited them in the crowded ranks which, at the well-known sound of that wild slogan, had brought their lances to the charge, and waited but a word to bear down all opposition.

Happily, so miserable a consummation was warded off. The earl of Orkney, who had stood silent and thunder-stricken by the side of his lovely bride, sprang forward, and grasping with impetuous vehemence the bridle-rein of Seyton—

“Not so!” he hissed through his set teeth, “not so, brave baron; this is my quarrel now, mine only; and dost think that I will veil my crest to mortal man? Lo! in yonder lines the haughty rebels have drawn their weapons, and against me only shall they wield them! What, ho there, heralds! take pursuivant and trumpet, and bear my gauntlet, the earl of Orkney’s gauntlet, to yonder misproud caitiffs: say that Bothwell defies them—defies them to the mortal combat, here before this company, here in the presence of men and angels, to prove his innocence, their bold and overweening treason!”—and he hurled his ponderous glove to earth.

“Well said and nobly, gallant earl!” cried Seyton; “so shall this foul calumny be stayed, and floods of Scottish blood be spared. On to thy devoir, and God will shield the right.”

And at the word the heralds rode forth again, the foremost bearing the glove of the challenger high on a lance’s point. Again the trumpets flourished, but not now as before, in peaceful strains. At the loud clangor of defiance, the confederate chiefs again strode to the front, their horses led behind them by page or squire; and as the menace of the challenger was proclaimed loudly and clearly by the king-at-arms, a smile of fierce delight flashed over every brow.

“I claim the privilege of battle!” shouted the impetuous Glencairn.

“And I!”—“And I!”—“And I!” rose hoarsely into air the mingled tones of Morton, Lyndesay, and Kirkaldy, as each sprang forth to seize the proffered gauntlet. “I am the senior baron!” shouted one. “And I the leader of the van!” cried another; and for a minute’s space all was confusion, verging fast toward strife, among those chiefs of late so closely linked together—till the deep, sonorous voice of Murray, in after-days the regent of the realm, was heard above the tumult.

“For shame, my lords, for shame! Seems it so much of honor to do the hangman’s office on a murderer, that ye would mar our fair array with this disgraceful bruit for the base privilege? By Heaven, should the duty fall on me, I should perform it, doubtless, even as I would prefer the meanest work that came before me under the name of duty; but, trust me, I should hold the deed a blot upon mine ancient escutcheon, rather than honor! But to the deed, my lords; the herald awaits our answer. Lord Lyndesay, thine is the strongest claim: if thou wilt undertake the deed, thou hast my voice.”

“As joyfully,” muttered Lyndesay beneath his grizzly mustache, “as joyfully as to the banquet do I go forth against the craven traitor! Morton, lend me thy falchion for the trial—the two-handed espaldron which slew Spens of Kilspindie, at the brook of Fala, in the hands of Archibald of Douglas, thy renowned forefather. God give me grace to wield it, and it shall do as trusty service on the carcass of yon miscreant!”

“It is decided, then,” cried Murray; and not a voice replied, for none had the presumption to dispute the fitness of the choice which thus had fallen on a leader so renowned for strength and valor. “Herald,” he continued, “go bear our greeting to her majesty of Scotland, and say to her, we do accept the challenge. An hour’s truce we grant—an equal field here, on this hill of Carbury. The noble earl of Lyndesay will here prove, upon the crest and limbs of that false recreant, James, some time the earl of Bothwell, the justice of our cause: and so may God defend the right!”

The shout which rang from earth to heaven, at the noble confidence of Murray, bore to the ears of Mary and her trembling followers the assurance that the challenge was accepted; an assurance that sounded joyfully in every ear but that of his who uttered the bravado. Many a time and oft had Bothwell’s crest shone foremost in the tide of battle; many a time had he confronted deadliest odds with an undaunted visage and a victorious blade. Yet now he faltered; his bold brow blanched with sudden apprehension; his frame, muscular and lofty as a giant’s, actually shook with terror; and his quivering lip paled, ere he heard the name of his antagonist. Whether it was that guilt sat heavy on his heart, and weighed his strong arm down, or that his soul was cowed by the consciousness that he was unsupported and forsaken by all his friends, he turned upon his heel, and, muttering some inarticulate sounds, half lost within the hollows of his beaver, he strode to his pavilion, and thence sent his squire forth, to say that he was ill at ease, and could not fight until the morrow! Mary herself—the fond, confiding, deceived Mary—burst on the instant into loud contempt at this hardly-credible baseness.

“What! James of Bothwell false!” she cried; “then perish hope! I yield me to the malice of my foes; I will resist no longer. O man, man—base, coward, miserable man!—is it for this we give our hearts, our lives, ourselves, to your vile guidance? is it for this that I have given thee mine all—mine honor, and, perchance, my soul? that thou shouldst cowardly desert me at mine utmost need! Little, oh how little, doth the cold world know of woman’s heart and woman’s courage! For thee would I have perished, oh, how joyfully!—and thou, O God! O God! it is a bitter, bitter punishment for my credulity and love: but if I have deserved to suffer, I deserved it not at thy hands, James of Bothwell! Seyton, true friend, to thee I trust mine all. Go summon Kirkaldy to a parley: say Mary, queen of Scotland, rather than look upon the blood of Scottishmen, will grant to her rebellious lords those terms which they desire! Nay, interrupt us not, Lord Seyton. We care not what befall that frozen viper whom we warmed within our bosom till he stung us! Away!—let Orkney quit our camp; for, by the glorious light of heaven, we never will behold him more!”

She spoke with an elevated voice, and features glowing with contending passions, till the faithful baron had departed on his mission; but then, then the false strength yielded to despair, and in an agony of unfettered grief she sank into the arms of her attendants, murmuring amid her tears, “O God, how I did adore that man!” and was borne, almost a corpse, into her tent.

An hour passed heavily away, and at its close Mary came forth, with a brow from which, though pale as the first dawning, every trace of grief had vanished. The terms had been accepted. Without a tear she saw the man for whom she had sacrificed all—all, to her very reputation—mount and depart for ever! Without a tear she backed her own brave palfrey, and rode, attended by a dozen servitors, faithful amid her sorrows as they had been in brighter days, into the rebel host. Little was there of courtesy, of that demeanor which becomes a subject in presence of his queen, a true knight before a lady. Amid the taunts and jeers of the vile soldiery, covered with dust and humiliation, she entered upon that fatal progress which, commencing in a conditional surrender, ended only when she was immured, beyond a hope of rescue or redemption, within the dungeon-towers of Loch Leven!

---

THE CAPTIVITY.

“Long years!—It tries the thrilling frame to bear,
And eagle-spirit of a child of song—
Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
And the mind’s canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Scorches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain!”—Lament of Tasso.

Eighteen long years of solitary grief—of that most wretched sickness that arises, even to a proverb, from hope too long deferred—had already passed away since, in the fatal action of Langside, the wretched Mary had for the last time seen her banner fall, and her adherents scattered like chaff before the wind by the determined valor of her foes. All, all was lost! It had been the work of months to draw that gallant army to a head, of which so many now lay stark in their curdled gore; while the miserable remnant were hunted like beasts of chase, to perish, when taken, upon the ignominious scaffold. And now, of all the noble gentlemen who had thronged to her bridle-rein on that fatal morning, high in hope as in valor, the merest had escaped to guard the person of that sovereign whom they loved so truly, and in behalf of whom they had endured so deeply. Her crown was lost for ever; nor her crown only, but her country.

Of all the glorious gifts which, at an earlier period of her eventful life, nature appeared to shower upon her head, freedom alone remained. The palfrey which bore her from the battle-field was now the sole possession of the titular monarch of three fair domains; the wild moors, over which she fled in desperate haste, her only refuge from persecutors the most unrelenting that ever joined sagacity to hatred in the performance of their plans; the dozen gallant hearts who rallied yet around their queen, beneath the guiding of the stout and loyal Herries, her only court, her only subjects. Still she was free; and to one who for months before had never seen the blessed light of heaven but its lustre was sullied by the dim panes through which it forced its way, to lend no solace to her captivity, the fresh breeze which eddied across the purple moorlands of her native land had still the power to impart a sense of pleasure, fleeting, it is true, and doubtful, but still, in all its forms and essentials, absolute and real pleasure.

At the full distance of sixty Scottish miles from the accursed field which had witnessed the downfall of all her hopes, worn out in body and depressed in spirit, she paused to take, in the abbey of Dundrennan, a few hours of that repose without which, even in the most trying circumstances, the mind can not exist in its undiminished powers. At this juncture, it appeared to those about her person that Mary was utterly deserted by that wonderful sagacity, that clear insight into the motives of others, which had ever constituted one of the strongest points of her character. The chief object of the faithful few, who had clung to her with unblenching steadiness through this her last misfortune, had been to bear her in security to some point whence she might effect her escape to the sunny shores of that land wherein she had passed the happiest, the only truly happy, hours of her checkered existence. Queen-dowager herself of France, knit by the closest ties of interest and friendship to the court of Versailles—to which, moreover, Scotland had ever been considered an auxiliar and well-affected state, no less than an easy pretext for hostilities against its natural antagonist—she had been there secure, not of safety only, but of the full enjoyment of rank, and wealth, and dignity, and pleasure, if indeed pleasure were yet within the reach of one who had herself suffered, and who had beheld all those that loved her suffer, as Mary the last queen of Scotland. Inclination, it would have seemed, no less than policy, should have urged the hapless sovereign to the measure advocated by each and all of her devoted train; for but a few years had flown since she had felt all those pangs which render exile to a delicate and sensitive mind the heaviest of human punishments, on parting from the fair shores of that land, which even then perhaps some prophetic spirit whispered, she must behold no more! Herries, the bold and loyal Herries, bent his knee, stiffened with years of toil and exposure, to sue of his adored mistress the only boon of all his labors, all his sufferings, that she would avoid the fatal soil of England.

“Remember,” he had cried, in tones which seemed in after-days of more than human foresight—“remember how the false and wily woman, who sways the sceptre of England with absolute and undisputed sway—remember, I say, with what unflinching determination she has thwarted you in every wish of your heart; with what depth of secret enmity she has at all times, and in all places, cherished your foes, and injured all who were most dear to you! and wherefore, oh wherefore, my beloved mistress, wherefore should her course of action now be altered, when she has no longer a powerful queen with whom to strive, but rather a fugitive rival to oppress? Elizabeth of England—believe me, noble lady—has marked this crisis as it drew nigh, with that unerring instinct which directs the blood-raven to its destined victim while life yet revels in its veins; and surely, so surely as you enter her accursed eyry, shall you feel her vulture-talons busy about your heartstrings! For years, my noble mistress, has Herries been your servant; at council or in field, with ready hand and true word, has he ever served the Stuart. It becomes me not to boast, yet will I speak: when Seyton, and Ogilvy, and Huntley, were dismayed—when Hamilton himself hung back—Herries was ever nigh.”

“Ever, ever true and loyal!” cried the hapless queen, touched even beyond the consideration of her own calamities by the speech of the brave veteran—“my noble, noble Herries, and bitter, most bitter has been the reward of truth and valor; but so has it ever been with Mary. I tell thee, baron, for me to love a bird, a tree, a flower, much less a creature such as thou art, an honorable, upright, and devoted friend, was but that creature’s doom: all whom I have loved have I destroyed! Alas, alas for the undaunted spirits that were severed from the forms they filled so nobly, on that dark battle-field!”

“Think not of them, my liege—mourn not for them,” interrupted the baron. “Knightly, and in their duty, have they fallen. Their last blow was stricken, and their last slogan shouted, in a cause the fairest that ever hallowed warrior’s blade. They are at rest, and they are happy. But think of those who, having lost their earthly all to save thee, would yet esteem themselves pre-eminently happy so they might see thee free and in security. Oh! hear me, Mary—hear for the first, last time—hear the prayer of Herries! Go not, go not—as you love life, and dignity, and liberty—as you would prove your faith to those who have never been faithless to you—go not to this accursed England!”

But it had all been vain. The fiat had gone forth, and reason had deserted, as it would seem, the destined victim. No arguments, however lucid—no fears, however natural, could divert her from this fatal project. With the choice of good and evil fairly set before her—honor, and rank, and liberty, in France, a prison and an axe in England—deliberately and resolutely she rushed upon her fate! And when she might have found a willing asylum in the arms of kindred monarchs, she yielded herself to the tender mercies of a rival queen, a rival beauty; a fierce, unforgiving, unfeminine foe; a being who, as she aped the name, so also displayed the attributes and nature of the lion! How could Mary—a professed foe, a claimant of her crown, a woman fairer, and of brighter parts even than her own—a mother, while she was but a barren stake—how could Mary, with so many causes to awaken her deathless hostility, hope for generosity or for mercy from a queen who could even sacrifice without a pang her inclinations to her interest; whose favors but marshalled those on whom they fell to the scaffold and the block; whose dearest favorites, whose most faithful servants had fallen, one by one, beneath the headsman’s axe; who had proved herself, in short, a worthy heiress to the soulless tyrant from whom she had sprung, by the violence of her uncurbed passions, and by the hereditary pleasure with which, through all her long and glorious reign (glorious, as it is termed, for with the multitude the ends will ever justify the means, and foreign conquest hallow domestic tyranny), she rioted in innocent and noble blood!

The Rubicon had been passed—and scarcely passed, before Mary had discovered the entire justice, no less than the deep love, manifested by the parting words of Herries. As her last sovereignty, she had stepped aboard the barge that was to waft her from her discontented and ungrateful subjects to a free and happy home, as she too fondly hoped, in merry England. Girt with the bills and bows which had battened so deeply and so often in the gore of Scottishmen, gallantly dressed, and himself of gallant bearing, Lowther, the sheriff of the marches, received the royal fugitive. With every mark of deference that manly strength is bound to show to female weakness, with all the chivalrous respect a good knight is compelled by his order to display to innocence and beauty—nay, more, with all the profound humility of a subject before his queen—did he conduct the hapless lady aboard his bark. Yet, while the words of welcome were upon his tongue, while he dwelt with loyal eagerness on the sincerity and love of England’s Elizabeth toward her sister-queen—by his refusal to admit above a limited and trifling portion of her train to share the asylum of their mistress, he had already drawn the distinction between the royal captive and the royal guest.

And so it afterward appeared. In vain did Mary petition as a favor, or claim as a right, an interview with her relentless persecutor. She should have known that even if Elizabeth could, by her constitution, have pardoned her assumption of the style or titles of the English monarchy, she could yet never overlook, never forgive her surpassing loveliness, her elegant accomplishments, her brilliant wit, her more than mortal grace! She might have condescended to despise the rival queen—she could only stoop to hate the rival beauty. From castle to castle had she been transferred, with no regard for either her rank or convenience. From prison to prison, from warder to warder, had she been conveyed, as each abode seemed in turn insecure to the lynx-eyed jealousy of her tormentor, or every jailer in turn sickened at the loathsome weariness of his hateful and degrading employment. No better proof—if proof were needed—could be adduced of Elizabeth’s tyrannical and cruel despotism, than the unconstitutional authority by which she forced noble after noble, the very pride and flower of the English aristocracy, to change their castles into prisonhouses, their households into warders and turnkeys, their very lives into a state of anxious misery, which could only be surpassed by that of the unhappy prisoner they were, so contrary to their will, compelled to guard.

After the base mockery of the trial instituted at York, but a few months after her arrival—that trial wherein a brother was brought forward to convict his sister of adultery and murder—that trial which, though it pronounced the prisoner unconvicted, yet inflicted on her all the penalties of conviction—it scarcely appears that Mary ever entertained a hope of obtaining her liberty, much less the station which was her right, from either the justice or the generosity of the lion-queen. In vain had every course been tried, in vain had every human means been employed. In vain had Scotland sued; in vain had France and Spain threatened, and even prepared to act upon their threats. For Mary there was no amelioration, no change!

From day to day, from year to year, her hopes had fallen away one by one. Her spirits, so buoyant and elastic once, had now subsided into a heavy, settled gloom; her very charms were but a wreck and shadow of their former glory. For a time she had endeavored, by all those beautiful occupations of the pencil, the needle, or the lyre, in which none had equalled her in her young days of happiness, to while away the deep and engrossing weariness which by long endurance becomes even worse than pain. For a time she had been permitted to vary the monotony of her domestic labors by her favorite exercises in the field and forest. Surrounded by a train of mail-clad horsemen, warders with bended bows and loaded arquebuses, she had a few times been allowed to ride forth into the free woodland, and to forget, amid the gay sights and heart-stirring sounds of the chase, the cares that were heavy at her heart. But how should that heart forget, when at every turn it encountered the haggard eye of the anxious keeper—anxious, for the slightest relaxation of his duty were certain death! How should the ear thrill to the enlivening music of the pack, or to the wild flourish of the bugles, when the clash of steel announced on every side the minions of her oppressor? How should the gallop over the velvet turf, beneath the luxuriant shadow of the immemorial oaks, convey aught of freshness to the spirit that was about to return thence to chambers no less a dungeon for being decked with the mockeries of state, than though they had presented to the eye those common accessories of bar, and grate, and chain, which they failed not to set before the mind? After a while, even these liberties were curtailed! It seemed too much of freedom, that the titular sovereign of three realms—the cynosure of every eye, the beauty at whose very name every heart thrilled and every pulse bounded—should be permitted to taste the common air of heaven, even when hemmed in, without the possibility of escape, by guards armed to the teeth, and sworn to exercise those arms, not only against all who should attempt the rescue, but against the miserable captive herself, should she attempt to profit by any efforts made for her release!

And efforts were made—efforts by the best and noblest of the British peerage—by men whose names were almost sufficient to turn defeat to victory and shame to glory. Norfolk and Westmoreland, and a hundred others, of birth scarcely less distinguished, and of virtues no less brilliant, revolted from the soul-debasing despotism of Elizabeth, and attempted, now by secret stratagem, and now by open warfare, to force the victim from the clutches of the lion. With the deepest regret did Mary witness the destruction of so many noble spirits, and with yet deeper fury did Elizabeth behold star after star of her boasted galaxy of nobles shoot madly from their spheres in pursuit of a meteor. Bitter were her feelings, and deadly was her vengeance. The bloody reign of Mary might almost have been deemed to have returned, as day by day the death-bells tolled, as the traitor’s gate admitted another and another occupant to that above, whence the only egress was by the axe and scaffold. Nor was this all. A thousand wild and fearful rumors began to float among the multitude. The perils of a catholic insurrection, the intended assassination of the queen, the establishment of a papistical dynasty upon the throne of England, were topics of ordinary conversation, but of no ordinary excitement. At one time it was reported that a Spanish fleet was actually in the channel; at another that the duke of Guise, with a vast army, had effected a landing on the Kentish coast, and might hourly be expected in the capital. Nor is it uncharitable to suppose that these reports were designedly spread abroad, this excitement purposely kept alive, by the wily ministers of Elizabeth. That the despot-queen had long ago determined on the slaughter of her rival, is certain; nor have we any just cause for doubting that Bacon and Walsingham were men as fully capable of goading the terrors of a multitude into fury as was their mistress of recommending the private murder of her hapless victim!

It was at this period that popular madness was raised to its utmost height by the detection of Babington’s conspiracy. Rich, young, brave, and romantic; stimulated by the hope of gaining the hand of Mary, forgetful that the personal loveliness for which she had once been conspicuous must long have yielded to the joint influence of misery and time; and deceived by the fatal maxim, then too much in vogue, that means are justified by ends—this gentleman resolved on bringing about the liberation of the Scottish by the murder of the English queen. The affair was not looked upon as so atrocious, but that twelve associates were easily found for the execution of the plot; and it is barely possible that, had they proceeded at once to action, their desperate effort might have been crowned with success. They delayed—they talked—they were discovered! Beneath the protracted agonies of the question, one was found of these convicted traitors who asserted the privity of Mary to the whole affair; and at once, as though a torch had been applied to some train long prepared, the whole of England burst forth into a perfect frenzy of terror. A people are never so terrible, never so barbarous, as when they are thoroughly and needlessly terrified. From every quarter of the kingdom the cry was at once for blood; and Elizabeth, looking in cool delight upon the tumult, perceived that the moment had arrived when she might gratify, without fear, her jealous thirst for her hated guest’s destruction. Addresses showered into either house of parliament, beseeching the queen and her ministers to awaken themselves at once to the perils of the people; to provide against the impended dangers of a catholic succession; and to remove at once all possibility of future conspiracies by the immediate removal of her who was, as they asserted, not the cause only, but the principal mover of every successive plot.

It is not to be supposed that, after pining so long in secret for an opportunity of gratifying her malice, Elizabeth doubted an instant. It is true indeed that, with a loathsome affectation of tender-heartedness, she pretended to regret the stern necessity; that she whined forth doleful remonstrances to her trusty ministers, entreating them to discover some mode by which she might herself be preserved from the risk of assassination, without undergoing the misery of seeing her well-beloved cousin of Scotland suffer in her stead! Well, however, did those ministers know the meaning of the motives of their odious mistress; well were they aware that there was no more of pity or reluctance in the bosom of Elizabeth than there is of mirth in that of the hyena when he sends forth his yells of laughter above his mangled prey!

It was a lovely morning in the autumn; the sun was shedding a mellow light upon the long glades and velvet turf of a park-like lawn before the feudal towers of the earl of Shrewsbury. Before the gate were assembled a group of liveried domestics, with many a noble steed pawing the earth and champing its foamy bits; hounds clamored in their couples, and falcons shook themselves and clapped their restless wings in vain impatience. It was evident that the attendants were but awaiting the approach of some distinguished personage, to commence their sports; and by their whispered conversation it appeared that this personage was no other than the wretched Mary. The castle-gates were thrown open; a heavy guard, with arquebuss, and pike, and bow, filed through the gloomy gateway; and then, leaning upon the arm of the still stately Shrewsbury, the poor victim of inveterate persecution came slowly forward. Several gentlemen in rich attire, and among them Sir Thomas Georges, blazing in the royal liveries of England, yet bearing on his soiled buskins and the bloody spurs that graced them tokens of a long and hasty journey, followed; and another band of warders brought up the rear.

The charms which had once rendered Mary the loveliest of her sex, had faded, it is true; the dimpled cheek was sunken, and its hues, that once had vied with the carnation, had fled for ever; her tresses were no longer of that rich and golden brown that had furnished subjects for a thousand sonnets, for many a line of gray marked the premature and wintry blight which had been cast upon her beauties by the sternness and misery of her latter years. Still, there was an air of such sweet resignation in every feature, such a dignity in the port of her person—still symmetrical, though it had lost something of its roundness—such a majesty in her still-brilliant eyes—that even the wretches who had determined on her destruction dared not meet the glance of her whom they so foully wronged.

She was already seated in the saddle, and the reins just grasped in a delicate but masterly hand, when Georges, stepping forward and bending a knee—almost, as it would seem, in mockery—informed her that her confederates in the meditated slaughter of Elizabeth were convicted; that it was the pleasure of the queen that her grace of Scotland should proceed at once to the sure castle of Fotheringay, and that it was resolved that she should set forth upon the instant. For a moment, but for a single moment, did Mary gaze into the eyes of the courtly speaker, with a gaze of incredulity, almost of terror; a quick shudder ran through every limb; and once she wrung her hands bitterly—but not a word escaped her pallid lips, not a tear disgraced her noble race.

“It is well, sir,” she said, “it is well. We thank you, no less for your pleasant tidings, than the knightly considerations which prompted you to choose so well your opportunity for conveying them to our ear when we were about to set forth in search of such brief pleasure as might for a moment gild the monotony of a prisoner’s life! We thank you, sir, most warmly, and we doubt not your own noble heart will reward you by that best of gifts, a happy and approving conscience! For the rest—lead on! it matters little to the wretched and the captive by what title the prison-bars, which shut them out from light, and liberty, and hope, are dignified; and well do we know that for us there is but one exit from our dungeon, or rest from our calamities—the grave!”

She had commenced her speech in that tone of calm and polished raillery for which she had in her earlier days been so renowned, and which even pierced deeper into the feelings of those who writhed beneath it than the most bitter sarcasm; but her concluding sentences were uttered with deep feeling: and, as she turned her liquid eyes toward heaven, it seemed most wonderful that men should exist capable of exciting a single pang in the heart of such a creature.

The gates of Fotheringay received her; and, as she rode beneath the gloomy archway, a prophetic chill fell upon her soul, and she felt that here her wanderings and her sorrows would shortly be brought to a close! Scarcely had she reached the miserable privacy of her chamber, when steps were heard without. Mildmay, Paulet, and Barker, entered, and delivering a letter full of hypocritical regrets and feigned affection, informed her that the queen’s commissioners were even then assembled in the castle-hall, and prayed the lady Mary to descend and refute the foul charges preferred against her name.

Enfeebled as she had been by sufferings and sorrows, wearied by her long and rapid journey, and, above all things, crushed by this last blow, it little seemed that so frail and delicate a form could have contained a soul so mighty as flashed forth in one blaze of indignation. Her pale cheek crimsoned, her sunken eye glared with unwonted fire; she started upon her feet, her limbs trembling, not with terror or debility, but with strong and terrible excitement.

“Knows not your mistress,” she cried, in clear, high tones, “that I, too, am a queen? or would she knowingly debase the dignity which is common to her with me? Away! I will not deign to plead! I—I, the queen of Scotland, the mother and the wife of kings—I plead to mine inferiors? Go tell your mistress that neither eighteen years of vile captivity, nor dread, nor misery, has sunk the soul of Mary Stuart so low, that she will speak one syllable to guard her life, save in the presence of her peers! Let her assemble her high courts of parliament, if she so will it: to them, and to them only, will I plead. Here she may slay me, it is true; but she must slay me by the assassin’s knife, not by the prostituted sword of justice. I have spoken!”—and she threw herself at once into a seat, immoveable alike in position and in resolve.

Well had it been for her had she continued firm in that determination; but what could a weak woman’s unassisted intellect avail against the united force of talents such as those of Hatton and Burleigh? A thousand specious arguments were summoned to overcome her scruples, but summoned all in vain, till the last hint—that her unwillingness to plead could arise only from a consciousness of guilt—aroused her. Pride, fatal pride, determined the debate, and she descended. Eloquently, sorrowfully, manfully, did she plead her cause, combating the vile chicaneries, the extorted evidences, the absence or the want of legal witnesses, with the native powers of a clear and vigorous mind. Once during that judicial mockery did her passions burst the control of her judgment, and she openly, in full court, charged the secretary, Walsingham—and, as many now believe, most justly charged him—with the forgery of the only documents that bore upon her character, or on the case in point. But all was fruitless! For what eloquence should convince men resolved in any circumstances to convict? what facts should clear away the imputed guilt of one whom it was fully determined to destroy?

The trial was concluded. With the air of a queen she stood erect, with a calm brow and serene eye, as the commissioners departed, one by one. No doom had been pronounced against her, but she read it in the eyes of all; and as she saw her misnamed judges quit her presence, she muttered, in the low notes of a determined spirit: “The tragedy is well nigh closed—the last act is at hand! Peace—peace—I soon shall find thee in the grave.”

---

THE CLOSING SCENE.

“Still as the lips that’s closed in death,
Each gazer’s bosom held his breath;
But yet afar, from man to man,
A cold, electric shiver ran,
As down the deadly blow descended,
On her whose love and life thus ended.”—Parisina.

It was a dark, but lovely night; moonless, but liquid and transparent; the stars which gemmed the firmament glittered more brightly from the absence of the mightier planet, and from the influence of a slight degree of frost upon the atmosphere, although it was indeed so slight, that its presence could be traced only in the crispness of the herbage, and in the uncommon purity of the heavens. Beneath a sky such as I have vainly endeavored to portray, the towers of Fotheringay rose black and dismal above the ancestral oaks and sweeping glades of its demesne. It would have appeared to a casual observer that all were at rest, buried in utter forgetfulness of all their hopes and sorrows, within that massive pile, save the lonely sentinel, whose progress round the battlements, although invisible, might be traced by the clatter of his harness, and the sullen echoes of his steel-shod stride. But to a nearer and more accurate survey, a single light, feebly twinkling through a casement of the dungeon-keep, told a far different tale. At times that solitary ray streamed in unbroken lines far into the bosom of the darkness; at times it was momentarily obscured, as if by the passage of some opaque body, though the transit, if such it were, was too brief to reveal the form or motions of the obstacle. Once, however, the shadow paused, and then, as its outlines stood forth in strong relief against the illumination of the chamber, the delicate proportions and musing attitude of a female might be discerned with certainty. It was the queen of Scotland. Her earthly sorrows were drawing to their close; the peace, for which she had long ceased to look, save in the silence of the tomb, was now within her grasp. Mary’s last sun had set.

Of life she had taken her farewell long, long ago; and death—the bugbear of the happy, the terror of the dastard—dark, mysterious, unknown death—had become to her an intimate, and, as it were, familiar friend. It was not that she had lessoned her shrinking spirit to endure with calmness that which it had shuddered to encounter; it was not that she had weaned her heart, yet clinging to the vanities of a heartless world, with difficulty and trembling, to their abandonment; least of all was it that she had been taught to regard that final separation with the stoic’s apathy, or to look for that dull and sunless rest, that absence of all feelings, whether of good or evil; that total annihilation of mind, in the great hereafter, which, to a sensitive temperament, and soul not rendered wholly callous by the debasing contact with this world’s idols, must seem a punishment secondary, if secondary, only to an eternity of wo. Born to a station lofty as the most vaulting ambition could desire, nurtured in gentleness and luxury, gifted with a mind such as rarely dwells within a mortal form, and having that mind invested in a frame, by its resplendent beauty fitted to be the door of immortality, she had felt, in a succession of sorrows almost unexampled, that the very qualities which should have ministered to her for bliss, had been converted into the instruments of misery and pain. Attached to her native land with the Switzer’s patriotism, she had endured from it the extremities of scorn and hatred. Full of the warmest sympathies even for the meanest of mankind, she had never loved a single being but he had recompensed that love with coals of fire heaped upon her head; or if a few had passed unscathed through the trying ordeal of benefits received, they had themselves miserably perished for their gratitude toward one whose love seemed fated to blight the virtues, or destroy the being of all on whom it was bestowed. If the sun of her morning had ridden gloriously forth in a serene heaven, with the promise of a splendid noontide and an unclouded setting, yet scarcely had it scaled one half of its meridian height, ere it had been compassed about with gloom and darkness; and ere its setting the thunders had rolled and the deadly lightnings flashed between the daygod and its scattered worshippers. She had been led step by step from the keenest enjoyment to the utmost disregard of the pleasures of the earth; she had drained the cup, and knew its bitterness too well to languish for a second draught. Yet there was nothing of resentment, nothing of hard-heartedness or scorn, in the feelings with which she looked back on the world and its adorers. She did not despise the many for that they still lingered in pursuit of a star which she had found, by sad experience, to be but a delusive meteor; much less did she hate the happy few to whom that valley, which had been to her indeed a vale of tears and of the shadow of death, had been a region of perpetual sunshine and unclouded happiness.

From Mary’s earliest years there had been a deep spring of piety in her heart which, never utterly dried up, though choked at times, and turned from its true course by the thorny cares and troubles of life, had burst from the briers which so long concealed it in redoubled purity as it flowed nearer to the close. There was an innate tenderness in all her sentiments toward all men and all things which could never degenerate into hatred, much less into misanthropy. She looked then upon life in its true light; as a mingled landscape, now obscured by clouds, now called into glory by the sunshine; as a region, tangled here with forests, and cumbered with barren rocks, there swelling into hills of vintage, or subsiding into glens of verdure. And if to her the landscape had been most viewed beneath the influence of a dark and threatening sky—if to her life’s path had lain, for the most part, through the wilderness and over the mountains—she knew that such was the result of her own misfortune, perhaps of her own misconduct, not of defect in the wonderful contrivance, or of improvidence in the all-glorious contriver.

In proportion as she had learned to dwell on the insufficiency of earthly good to satiate that deep thirst for happiness which is not the least among the proofs of the soul’s immortality, she had come to look upon the void of futurity as the unexplored region of bliss; upon death as the portal through which we must pass from the desert of toil and sorrow to the Eden of hope and happiness. That she was drawing rapidly near to this portal she had for a long time been aware; and, during the latter years of her captivity, she had longed to see the leaves of that gate unfolded for her exit, with a sense of pining sickness, similar to that of the imprisoned eagle. The mockery of her trial she had beheld as the avenue through which she should arrive, and that right shortly, at the desired end; and although she knew that the scaffold and the axe, or the secret knife of the assassin, must need be the key to that gate, she recked but little of the means, so that the way of escape was left open to her.

She had pleaded, it is true, with brilliant eloquence and earnestness, in behalf, not of life, but of her honor. She wished for death, and she cared not for the vulgar ignominy of the scaffold; but she did care, she did shrink from the ignominy of a condemnation—a condemnation not by the suborned commissioners, not by the jealous rival, not by the perjured and terror-stricken populace of the day, but by Time and by Eternity. This was the condemnation from which she shrank; this was the ignominy which she combated; this was the doom which, by the masterly and dauntless efforts of her unassisted woman heart, she turned not only from herself, but back upon her murderers.

From the departure of the commissioners, she had been convinced that she was hovering as it were on the confines of life and immortality. Happy and calm herself, she had labored to render calm and happy the little group of friends—for domestics when faithful, are friends—who still preserved their allegiance. She craved no more the wanderings in the green-wood; she had even refused to join in her once-loved sports of field and forest, which, denied to her when she would have grasped the boon, were freely proffered now, as though her enemies, with a far-reaching malignity that would stretch its arm beyond the grave, had wished to reawaken in her bosom that love for things of this life which had sunk to sleep, and to sharpen the bitterness of death by the added tortures of regret. If such, indeed, were their intentions—and who shall presume to judge?—their barbarity was frustrated; and if they indeed envied their poor victim the miserable consolation of passing cheerfully and in peace from the sphere of her sorrows, we may be assured that the frustration of their wicked views was sufficient punishment to them while here, and none can even dare to conjecture what will be their doom hereafter.

This night had brought at length the balm to all her cares—the restless eagerness to be assured of that which was to come was over—the goal was reached, the gates were half-unclosed, and, to her enthusiastic and poetical imagination, the hymns and harpings of expectant seraphs seemed to pour in their soothing chimes, whispering of peace, pardon, and beatitude for evermore between the parted portals. With a bigotry, which in these days of universal toleration it is equally difficult to conceive or to condemn sufficiently, it was denied to the departing sinner—for who that is most perfect here is other than a sinner—to enjoy the consolations of a priest of her own persuasion. A firm and conscientious, though not a bigoted catholic, it was a cruelty of the worst and most outrageous nature, to deny her that which she deemed of the highest importance to her eternal welfare, and which they could not deem prejudicial, without being themselves victims of a superstition so slavish as to disprove their participation in a faith which boasts itself no less a religion of freedom than of truth.

Steadily refusing the aid of the protestant divines, who harassed her with an assiduity that spoke more of polemical pride than of Christian sincerity, she had performed her orisons with deep devotion, and had arisen from their performance assured of forgiveness, confident in her own repentance, and in the mercy of Him who alone is perfect; in peace and charity even with her direst foes, and happy in the anticipation of the morrow. She had sat down to her last earthly meal with an appetite unimpaired by the knowledge that it was to be her last; she had conversed cheerfully, gayly, with her weeping friends; she had drunk one cup of wine to their health and happiness, and, in token of her own gratitude, to each she had distributed some little pledge of her affectionate regard; and then—amid the notes of dreadful preparation, the creaking of saws and the clang of hammers, busily converting the castle-hall into a place of slaughter, as it had been not long before a place of misnamed justice—she had sunk to sleep so calmly, and slumbered on with a countenance so moveless in its innocent repose, and with a bosom so regular in its healthful pulsations, that her admiring ladies began to look on her as one about to start upon a pleasant voyage to the harbor of all her wishes, rather than as one about to perish by a cruel and ignominious death on the scaffold. Hours flew over the lovely sleeper, and the eyes of her watchers waxed heavier, till they wept themselves to sleep; and one—an aged woman, who had watched her infancy and gloried in the promise of her youth—after her eyes were sealed in sleep, yet continued, by the heavy sobs which burst from the lips of the slumberer, to manifest the extent of that misery which abode in all its vividness within the mind, although the body was wrapt in that state which men have called oblivion.

Such had been the state of things in Mary’s chamber from the first close of evening to the dead hour of midnight; but ere the east had begun again to redden with the returning glories of its luminary, sleep, which still sat leadlike on the eyelids of her attendants, forsook the hapless sovereign. Silently she arose, and, throwing a single garment carelessly about her person, passed from her sleeping-apartment into a little oratory adjoining, without disturbing from her painful slumbers one of those faithful beings to whom the distinct consciousness of waking sorrow must have been yet more painfully acute.

Here, as with a quick but regular step she traversed the narrow turret, she viewed as it were in the space of a single hour the crowded events of a life which, unnaturally shortened as it was about to be, yet contained naught of remote and rare occurrence, but in rapid and complete succession—those events which make an epoch and an era of every hour, and lengthen years of time into ages of the mind.

Calmly, piously, without a shade of sorrow for the past or of solicitude for the future, save that mysterious and yet natural anxiety which must haunt every mind, however well prepared to endure its final separation from the body, as the hour of dissolution approaches, did she expect the morning. This anxiety and this alone was blended with the various feelings which coursed through the soul of Mary during this the last night of her existence.

It was in such a frame of mind that Mary, in the solitude of that last earthly night, diverting her attention entirely from the terrible shock she was about to undergo on the morrow, thought upon her native land, still dear though still ungrateful, a prey to the fierce contentions of her own factious offspring—of her son, torn at the earliest dawn of his affections from the arms of a mother, nurtured among those who would teach him to eradicate every warmer recollection—to pluck forth, as if it were an offending eye, every lingering tenderness for that being, who, amid all her sins and all her sorrows, had never ceased to love him with an entire and perfect love. There is, in truth, something more evidently divine, partaking more nearly of that which we believe to be the very essence of Divinity, in a mother’s love, than in any other pang or passion—for every passion, how sweet soever it may be, has something of a pang mingled with it—in the human soul. All other love is liable to diminution, to change, or to extinction; all other love may be alienated by the neglect, chilled by the coldness, frozen to the core by the worthlessness, of the object once beloved. All other affections are influenced by a thousand trivial circumstances of time and place: absence may weaken their influence, time obscure their vividness, and, above all, custom may rob them of their value. But on the love of a mother—commencing as it does before the object of her solicitude possesses form or being; springing from agony and sorrow; ripening in anxiety and care, and reaping too often the bitter harvest of ingratitude—all incidental causes, all external influences, are powerless and vain. Time but excites her admiration, but increases her solicitude, but redoubles her affections. Absence but causes her to dwell with a more engrossing memory on him from whom her heart is never absent. Custom but hallows the sentiment to which nature has given birth. Neglect and coldness but cause her to strain every nerve to merit more and more the poor return of filial love—the solitary aim of her existence, if heartlessly denied to her. Nay, worthlessness itself but binds her more closely to him whom the hard world has cast aside, to find a refuge in the only bosom which will not perceive his errors or credit his utter destitution.

Thus it was with Mary! She knew that the child of her affections regarded those affections as vile and worthless weeds! She knew that he was selfish, vain, and heartless! She knew that a single word from that child whom she still adored—if conveyed to her persecutor in the strong language of sincerity and earnestness—if borne, not by a fawning courtier, but by one of those high spirits which Scotland has found ever ready to her need—if enforced by threats of instant war—would have broken her fetters in a moment, and conveyed her from the dungeons of Fotheringay to the courts of Holyrood! All this she knew, yet her heart would not know it! And when all Europe rang with curses on the unnatural vacillation of that son; when every Scottish heart, whatever might be its policy or its party, despised his abject cringing; while Elizabeth herself, while she flattered his vanity, and affected to honor and esteem his virtue, scoffed in her royal privacy at the tool she designed to use in public—Mary alone, Mary, the only sufferer and victim of his baseness, still clung to the idea of his worth, still adored the child who was driving her out, as the scape-goat of the Jews, to expiate the sins of himself and his people by her own destruction! But it was not on James alone that her wayward memory was fixed. At a time when any soul less dauntless, any spirit less exalted, would have failed beneath its load of sorrows, Mary had a fond regret, a tear of sorrow, a sigh of sincere gratitude, for every gallant life that had devoted itself to ward from her that fate which their united loyalty had availed only to defer, not to avert. Chastelar passed before her, with his tones of sweetest melancholy, and that unutterable love, which made him invoke blessings on her who had doomed him to the block: and Darnley, as he had seemed in the few short hours when he had been, when he had deserved to be, the idol of her heart: and Bothwell, the eloquent, the glorious, but guilty Bothwell, her ruin and her betrayer: and Douglas, the noble, hapless Douglas, he who had riven the bolts of Loch Leven, and sent her forth to a short freedom and worse captivity: Huntley, and Hamilton, and Seyton, and Kirkaldy, the most formidable of her foes until he became the firmest of her friends—all passed in sad review before the eyes of her entranced imagination.

Thus it was that the last queen of Scotland passed the latest night of her existence. With no consciousness of time, with no care for the present, no apprehension for the future, she had paced the narrow floor of her apartment during the still hours of midnight. Unperceived by her had the stars paled, then vanished from the brightening firmament; unseen had the first dappling of the east gone into the clear, cold light of a wintry morning; unheeded had the castle clock sent forth its giant echoes hour after hour, to be heard by every watcher over leagues of field and forest. Another sound rose heavily, and she was at once collected—time, place, and circumstances, flashed fully on her mind—she was prepared to meet them: it was the roar of the morning culverin; and scarcely had its deafening voice passed over, before a single bell, hoarse, slow, and solemn, pealed minute after minute, the signal of her approaching dissolution.

Calmly, as if she were about to prepare for some gay festival, she turned to the apartment where her ladies, overdone by wo and watching, yet slumbered, forgetful of the dread occasion.

“Arise,” she said, in sweet, low tones; “arise, my girls, and do your last of duties for the mistress ye have served so well! Nay, start not up so wildly, nor blush that ye have slept while we were watching. Dear girls, the time has come—the time for which my soul so long has thirsted. Array me, then, as to a banquet, a glorious banquet of immortality! See,” she continued, scattering her long locks over her shoulders—“see, they were bright of yore as the last sunbeam of a summer day, yet I am prouder of them now, with their long streaks of untimely snow—for they now tell a tale of sorrows, borne as it becomes a queen to bear them. Braid them with all your skill, and place yon pearls around my velvet head-gear. We will go forth to die, clad as a bride; and now methinks the queen of France and Scotland owns but a single robe of fair device. Bring forth our royal train and broidered farthingale: it fits us not to die with our limbs clad in the garb of mourning, when Heaven knows that our heart is clothed in gladness!”

Tearless, while all around were drowned in lamentations, she strove to cheer them to the performance of this last sad office—not with the commonplace assurances, the miserable resources of earthly consolation, much less with aught of heartless levity, or of that unfeeling parade which has so often adorned the scaffold with a jest, and concealed the anxiety of a heart ill at ease beneath the semblance of ill-timed merriment—but by suffering them to read her inmost soul; by showing them the true position of her existence; by pointing out to them the actual hardships of the body, and the yet deeper humiliations of the soul, from which the door of her escape was even now unclosing.

Scarcely had she completed her attire, and tasted of the consecrated wafer—long ago procured from the holy Pius, and preserved for this extremity—when the tread of many feet without, and a slight clash of weapons at the door of the ante-chamber, announced that the hour had arrived.

Once and again, ere she gave the signal to unclose the door, she embraced each one of her attendants. “Dear, faithful friends, adieu, adieu,” she said, “for ever; and now remember, remember the last words of Mary. Weep not for me, and, if ye love me, shake not my steadfastness, which, thanks to Him who is the Father and the Friend of the afflicted, the fear of death can not shake, by useless fear or lamentation. We would die as a martyr cheerfully, as a queen nobly! Fare ye well, and remember!” With an air of royal dignity she seated herself, and, with her maidens standing around her chair, she bore the mien of a high sovereign awaiting the arrival of some proud legation, rather than that of a captive awaiting a summons to the block. “And now,” she said, as she arranged her draperies with dignified serenity, “admit their envoy.”

The doors were instantly thrown open as she spoke, the sheriff uttered his ordinary summons, and without a shudder she rose. “Lead on,” she said; “we follow thee more joyously than thou, methinks, canst marshal us. Sir Amias Paulet, lend us thine arm; it fits us not that we proceed, even to the death, without some show of courtesy. Maidens, bear up our train; and now, sir, we are ready.”

But a heavier trial than the axe awaited the unhappy sovereign; for as she set her foot on the first step of the stairs, Melville, her faithful steward, flung himself at her feet, with almost girlish wailings. Friendly and familiarly she raised him from the ground. “Nay, sorrow not for me,” she said, “true friend. Subject for sorrow there is none, unless thou grievest that Mary is set free—that for the captive’s weeds she shall put on a robe of immortality, and, for a crown of earthly misery, the glory of beatitude.”

“Alas! alas! God grant that I may die, rather than look upon this damned deed.”

“Nay, live, good Melville, for my sake live; commend me to my son, and say to him, Mary’s last thoughts on earth were given to France and Scotland, her last but these to him: say, that she died unshaken in her faith to God, unswerving in her courage, confident in her reward. Farewell, true servant, take from the lips of Mary the last kiss that mortal e’er shall take of them, and fare thee well for ever.”

At this moment the earl of Kent stepped forward, and roughly bade her dismiss her women also, “for the present matter tasked other ministers than such as these.” For a moment she condescended to plead that they might be suffered to attend her to the last; but when she was again refused, her ancient spirit flashed out in every tone, as she cried, trumpet-like and clear, “Proud lord, beware! I too am cousin to your queen—I too am sprung from the high-blood of England’s royalty—I too am an anointed queen. I say thou shalt obey, and these shall follow their mistress to the death, or with foul violence shall they force me thither. Beware! beware, I say, how thou shalt answer doing me this dishonor!”

Her words prevailed. Without a shudder she descended, entered the fatal hall, looked with an air of smiling condescension, almost of pity, on the spectators crowded almost to suffocation, and, mounting the scaffold, stood in proud and abstracted unconcern, while, in the measured sounds of a proclamation, the warrant for her death was read beside her elbow.

The bishop of Peterborough then drew nigh, and, in a loud voice and inflated style, harassed her ears with an oration, which, whatever might have been its merits, was at that time but a barbarous and useless outrage.

“Trouble not yourself,” she broke in at length, disgusted with his intemperate eloquence, “trouble not yourself any more about this matter, for I was born in this religion, I have lived in this religion, and in this religion I am resolved to die.” Turning suddenly aside, as if determined to hear no further, she knelt apart, fervently prayed, and repeatedly kissed the sculptured image which she bore of Him who died to save. As she arose from her orisons, the earl of Kent, her constant and unrelenting persecutor, with heartless cruelty burst into loud revilings against “that popish trumpery” which she adored. “Suffer me now,” she said, gazing on him with an expression of beautiful resignation, that might have disarmed the malice of a fiend, “suffer me now to depart in peace. I have come hither, not to dispute on points of doctrine, but to die.”

Without another word she began to disrobe herself; but once, as her maidens hung weeping about her person, she laid her finger on her lips, and repeated emphatically the word “Remember.” And once again, as the executioner would have lent his aid to remove her upper garments, “Good friend,” she said, with a smile of ineffable sweetness, “we will dispense with thine assistance. The queen of Scotland is not wont to be disrobed before so many eyes, nor yet by varlets such as thou.”

All now was ready. The lovely neck was bared. The wretch who was to perform the deed of blood stood grasping the fatal axe, and the fierce earl of Kent beat the ground with his heel in savage eagerness. Without a sigh she knelt; without a sign of trepidation, a quicker heave of her bosom, or a brighter flush on her brow, she laid down her innocent head, and without a struggle, or convulsion of her limbs, as the axe flashed, and the life-blood spouted, did her spirit pass away.

A general burst of lamentation broke the silence; but amidst that burst the heavy stride of Kent was heard, as he sprang upon the scaffold, and raised the ghastly visage, the eyes yet twinkling, and the lips quivering in the death-struggle. A single voice, that of the zealot bishop, cried aloud, “Thus perish all the foes of Queen Elizabeth.” But ere the response had passed the lips of Kent, a shriller cry rang through the hall—the sharp yell of a small greyhound, the fond companion of the queen’s captivity. Bursting from the attendants, who vainly strove to hold her back, with a short, sharp cry she dashed full at the throat of the astonished earl; but ere he could move a limb the danger, if danger there were, was passed. The spirit was too mighty for the little frame. The energies of the faithful animal were exhausted, its heart broken, in that death-spring. It struck the headless body of its mistress as it fell, and in an agony of tenderness, died licking the hand that had fed and cherished it so long. Wonderful, that when all men had deserted her, a brute should be found so constant in its pure allegiance! And yet more wonderful, that the same blow should have completed the destiny of the two rival sovereigns! and yet so it was! The same axe gave the death-blow to the body of the Scottish, and to the fame of the English queen! The same stroke completed the sorrows of Mary, and the infamy of Elizabeth.

---

ELIZABETH’S REMORSE.

——“Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair! There is no creature loves me:
And, if I die, no soul will pity me!
Nay, wherefore should they? since I myself
Find in myself no mercy to myself!”—King Richard III.

The twelfth hour of the night had already been announced from half the steeples of England’s metropolis, and the echoes of its last stroke lingered in mournful cadences among the vaulted aisles of Westminster. It was not then, as now, the season of festivity, the high-tides of the banquet and the ball, that witching time of night. No din of carriages or glare of torches disturbed the sober silence of the streets, illuminated only by the waning light of an uncertain moon; no music streamed upon the night-wind from the latticed casements of the great, who were contented, in the days of their lion-queen, to portion out their hours for toil or merriment, for action or repose, according to the ministration of those great lights which rule the heavens with an indifferent and impartial sway, and register their brief career of moments to the peer as to the peasant by one unvarying standard.

A solitary lamp burned dim and cheerlessly before a low-browed portal in St. Stephen’s; and a solitary warder, in the rich garb still preserved by the yeomen of the guard, walked to and fro with almost noiseless steps—his corslet and the broad head of his shouldered partisan flashing momentarily out from the shadow of the arch, as he passed and repassed beneath the light which indicated the royal residence—distinguished by no prouder decorations—of her before whose wrath the mightiest of Europe’s sovereigns shuddered. A pile of the clumsy fire-arms then in use, stacked beneath the eye of the sentinel, and the dark outlines of several bulky figures outstretched in slumber upon the pavement, seemed to prove that some occurrences of late had called for more than common vigilance in the guarding of the place.

The prolonged cry of the watcher, telling at each successive hour that all was well, had scarcely passed his lips, before the distant tramp of a horse, and the challenge of a sentry from the bridge, came heavily up the wind. For a moment the yeoman listened with all his senses; then, as it became evident that the rider was approaching, he stirred the nearest sleeper with the butt of his heavy halbert. “Up, Gilbert! up, man, and to your tools, ere they be wanted. What though the earl’s proud head lie low?—he hath friends and fautors enough in the city, I trow, to raise a coil whene’er it lists them!” The slumbers of the yeomen were exchanged on the instant for the guarded bustle of preparations; and, before the horseman, whose approach had caused so much excitement, drew bridle at the palace-gate, a dozen bright sparks glimmering under the dark portal, like glow-worms beneath some bushy coppice, announced the readiness of as many levelled matchlocks.

“Stand, ho! the word—”

“A post to her grace of England!” was the irregular reply, as the rider, hastily throwing himself from off his jaded hackney, advanced toward the yeoman.

“Stand there, I say!—no nearer, on your life! Shoot, Gilbert, shoot, an’ he stir but a hand-breadth!”

“Tush! friend, delay me not,” replied the intruder, halting, however, as he was required to do; “my haste is urgent, and that which I bear with me passeth ceremony—a letter to the queen! On your heads be it, if I meet impediment! See that ye pass it to her grace forthwith.”

“A letter? ha! There may be some device in this; yet pass it hitherward.” A broad parchment, secured by a fold of floss silk, with its deeply-sealed wax attached, was placed in his hand. A light was obtained from the hatch of a caliver, and the superscription, evidently too important for delay, hurried the guards to action. “The earl of Nottingham”—it ran—“to his most high and sovereign lady, Elizabeth of England. For life! for life! for life!—Ride and run—haste, haste, post-haste, till this be delivered!”

After a moment’s conference among the warders, the bearer was directed to advance; a yeoman led the panting horse away to the royal meuf; and the corporal of the guard, striking the wicket with his dagger-hilt, shortly obtained a hearing and admission from the gentleman-pensioner on duty. Within the palace no result was immediately perceived from the occurrence which had caused so much bustle outside the gates; the soldiers on duty conversed for a while in stifled whispers, then relapsed into their customary silence; the night wore on without further interruption to their watch, and ere they were relieved they had well nigh forgotten the messenger’s arrival.

Not so, however, was the letter received by the inmates of the royal residence. Ushers and pages were awakened, lights glanced, and hurried steps and whispering voices echoed through the corridors. The chamberlain, so great was considered the urgency of the matter, was summoned from his pillow; and he with no small trepidation proceeded at once to the apartment of Elizabeth. His hesitating tap at the door of the ante-chamber—occupied by the ladies whose duty it was to watch the person of their imperious mistress by night—failed indeed to excite the attention of the sleeping maidens, but caught at once the ear of the extraordinary woman whom they served.

“Without there!” she cried, in a clear, unbroken tone, although full sixty winters had passed over her head.

“Hunsdon, so please your grace, with a despatch of import from the earl of Nottingham.”

“God’s death! ye lazy wenches! hear ye not the man without, that I must rive my throat with clamoring? Up, hussies, up—or, by the soul of my father, ye shall sleep for ever!” The frightened girls sprang from their couches at the raised voice of their angry queen, like a covey of partridges at the yelp of the springer, and for a moment all was confusion.

“What now, ye fools!” she cried again, in harsh and excited accents, that reached the ears of the old earl without—“hear ye not that my chamberlain awaits an audience? Fling yonder robe of velvet o’er our person, and rid us of this night-gear—so!—the mirror now! my ruff and curch! and now—admit him!”

“Admit him! an’ it list your grace, it were scarce seemly in ladies to appear thus disarrayed—”

“Heard ye, or heard ye not? I say, admit him! Think ye old Hunsdon cares to look upon such trumpery as ye, or must I wait upon my wenches’ pleasure? God’s head, but ye grow malapert!”

The old queen’s voice had not yet ceased, before the door was opened; and although the ladies had taken the precaution of extinguishing the light, and seeking such concealment as the angles of the chamber afforded, the sturdy old earl—who, notwithstanding the queen’s assertion, had as quick an eye for beauty as many a younger gallant—could easily discover that the modesty which had demurred to the admission of a man was not by any means uncalled for or even squeamish. Had he been, however, much more inclined to linger by the way than his old-fashioned courtesy permitted, he must have been a bold man to delay; for twice, ere he could cross the floor to her chamber, did his name reach his ears in the impatient accents of Elizabeth: “Hunsdon! I say—Hunsdon! ’s death! art thou crippled, man?”

There was little of the neatness or taste of modern days displayed in the decorations of the royal chamber. Tapestries there were, and velvet hangings, carpets from Turkey, and huge mirrors of Venetian steel; but a plentiful lack of linen, and of those thousand nameless comforts, which a peasant’s dame would miss to-day, uncared for in those rude times by princesses. Huge waxen torches flared in the wind, which found its way through the ill-constructed lattice; and a greater proportion of the smoke, from the logs smouldering in the jams of a chimney wider than that of a modern kitchen, reeked upward to the blackened rafters of the unceiled roof.

Rigid and haughty, in the midst of this strange medley of negligence and splendor, sat the dreaded monarch, approached by none even of her most favored ministers save with fear and trembling. Her person, tall and slender from her earliest years, and now emaciated to almost superhuman leanness by the workings of her own restless spirit, even more than by her years, presented an aspect terrible, yet magnificent withal. It seemed as though the dauntless firmness of a more than masculine soul had won the power to support and animate a frame which it had rescued from the grave; it seemed as though the years which had blighted had failed in their efforts to destroy; it seemed as though that faded tenement of clay might yet endure, like the blasted oak, for countless years, although the summer foliage, which rendered it so beautiful of yore, had long since been scattered by the wild autumnal hurricane, or seared by the nipping frosts of winter. Her eye alone, in the general decay of her person, retained its wonted brilliancy, shining forth from her pale and withered features with a lustre so remarkable as to appear almost supernatural.

“So! give us the letter—there! Pause not for thy knee, man; give us the letter!”—and tearing the frail band by which it was secured asunder, she was in a moment entirely engrossed, as it would seem, in its contents. Her countenance waxed paler and paler as she read; and the shadows of an autumn morning flit not more changefully across the landscape, as cloud after cloud is driven over the sun’s disk, than did the varying expressions of anxiety, doubt, and sorrow, chase one another from the speaking lineaments of Elizabeth.

“Ha!” she exclaimed, after a long pause, “this must be looked to. See that our barge be manned forthwith, and tarry not for aught of state or ceremony. Thyself will go with us, and stop not thou to don thy newest-fashioned doublet: this is no matter that brooks ruffling!—’Sdeath, man! ’tis life or death! And now begone, sir! we lack our tirewoman’s service!”

An hour had not elapsed before a barge—easily distinguished as one belonging to the royal household, by its decorations, and the garb of the rowers—shot through a side arch of Westminster bridge, and passed rapidly, under sail and oar, down the swift current of the river, now almost at ebb tide. It was not, however, the barge of state, in which the progresses of the sovereign were usually made; nor was it followed by the long train of vessels, freighted with ladies of the court, guards, and musicians, which were wont to follow in its wake. In the stern-sheets sat two persons: a man advanced in years, and remarkable for an air of nobility, which could not be disguised even by the thick boat-cloak he had wrapped about him, as much perhaps to afford protection against the eyes of the inquisitive as against the dense mists of the Thames; and a lady, whose tall person was folded in wrappings so voluminous as to defy the closest scrutiny. At a short distance in the rear, another boat came sweeping along, in the crew and passengers of which it would have required a penetrating glance to discover a dozen or two of the yeomen of the guard, in their undress liveries of gray and black, without either badge or cognizance, and their carbines concealed beneath a pile of cloaks.

It was Elizabeth herself, who, in compliance with the mysterious despatch she had so lately received, was braving the cold damps of the river at an hour so unusual, and in a guise so far short of her accustomed state. The moon had already set, and the stars were feebly twinkling through the haze that rose in massive volumes from the steaming surface of the water, but no symptoms of approaching day were as yet visible in the east; the buildings on the shore were entirely shrouded from view by the fog, and the few lighters and smaller craft, moored here and there between the bridges, could scarcely be discovered in time to suffer the barge to be sheered clear of their moorings. It was perhaps on account of these obstacles that their progress was less rapid than might reasonably have been expected from the rate at which they cut the water.

Of the six stately piles which may now be seen spanning the noble stream, but two were standing at the period of which we write; and several long reaches were to be passed before the fantastic mass of London bridge, with its dwelling-houses and stalls for merchandise towering above the irregular thoroughfares of the city, loomed darkly up against the horizon. Scarcely had they threaded its narrow and cavern-like arches, before a pale and sickly light, of a faint yellow hue, more resembling the glare of torches than the blessed radiance of the sun, gilded the decreasing fog-wreaths, and glanced upon the level water. The sun had risen, and for a time hung blinking on the misty horizon, and shorn of half his beams, till a fresh breeze from the westward brushed the vapors aloft, and hurried them seaward with a velocity which shortly left the scenery to be viewed in unobscured beauty. Just as this change was wrought upon the face of nature, the royal barge was darting, with a speed that increased every instant, before the esplanade and frowning artillery of the Tower; the short waves were squabbling and splashing beneath the dark jaws and lowered portcullis of the “Traitor’s Gate,” that fatal passage through which so many of the best and bravest of England’s nobility had entered, never to return!

Brief as was the moment of their transit in front of that sad portal, Hunsdon had yet time to mark the terrible expression of misery, almost of despair, that gleamed across the features of the queen. She spoke not, but she wrung her hands with a sigh, that uttered volumes of repentance and regret, too late to be availing; and the stern old chamberlain, who felt his heart yearn at the sorrows of a mistress whom he loved no less than he revered, knew that the mute gesture and the painful sigh were extorted from that masculine bosom only by the extremity of anguish. She had not looked upon that “den of drunkards with the blood of princes” since it had been glutted with its last and noblest victim. Essex, the princely, the valiant, the generous, and the noble Essex—the favorite of the people, the admired of men, the idol, the cherished idol of Elizabeth—had gone, a few short moons before, through that abhorred gateway—had gone to die—had died by her unwilling mandate! Bitter and long had been the struggle between her wounded pride and her sincere affection; between her love for the man and her wrath against the rebel: thrice had she signed the fatal warrant, and as often consigned it to the flames; and when at length her indignation prevailed, and she affixed her name to the fell scroll—which, once executed, she never smiled again—that indignation was excited, not so much by the violence of his proceedings against her crown, as by his obstinate delay in claiming pity and pardon from an offended but indulgent mistress.

Onward, onward they went, the light boat dancing over the waves that added to its speed, the canvass fluttering merrily, and the swell which their own velocity excited laughing in their wake. It was a time and a scene to enliven every bosom, to make every English heart bound happily and proudly. Vessels-of-war, and traders, galliot, and caravel, and bark, and ship, lay moored in the centre of the pool and along the wharves, the thousand dwellings of a floating city. All this Elizabeth herself had done: the commerce of England was the fruit of her fostering; the power of her courage and sagacity; the mighty navy of her creation.

They passed below the dark broadsides and massive armaments of forty ships-of-war, some of the unwonted bulk of a thousand tons, with the victorious flags of Howard, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, streaming from mast and yard; but not a smile chased the dull expression of fixed grief from the brow of her who had “marred the Armada’s pride;” nor did the slightest symptom on board her three most chosen vessels—the Speedwell, the Tryeright, or the Blak-Galley, the very models of the world for naval architecture—show that the queen and mistress of them all was gliding in such humble trim below their victorious batteries.

The limits of the city were already left far behind; green meadows and noble trees now filled the place of the crowded haunts of wealth and industry, while here and there a lordly dwelling, with its trim avenues, and terraced gardens sloping to the water’s edge, adorned the prospect. The turrets of Nottingham house, the suburban palace of that powerful peer, were soon in view; when a pageant swept along the river, stemming the ebb tide with a proud and stately motion—a pageant which, at any other period, would have been calculated, above all things else, to wake the lion-like exultation of the queen, though now it was passed in silence, and unheeded. The rover Cavendish[H]—who, a few years before, a gentleman of wealth and worship, had dissipated his paternal fortunes, and in the southern seas and on the Spanish main had become a famous free-booter—was entering the river with his prizes in goodly triumph. The flag-ship, a caravel of a hundred and twenty tons only, led the van, close-hauled and laden almost gunwale-deep with the precious spoils of Spain. Her distended topsail flashed in the sunlight like a royal banner, a single sheet of the richest cloth of gold; her courses were of crimson damask, her mariners clad in garments of the finest silk; banners flaunted from every part of the rigging; and over all the “meteor flag of England,” the red cross of St. George, streamed rearward, as if pointing to the long train of prizes which followed. Nineteen vessels, of every size and description then in use—carracks of the western Indies, galleons of Castile and Leon, with the flag of Spain, so late the mistress of the sea, disgracefully reversed beneath the captor’s ensign—sailed on in long and even array; while in the rear of all, the remainder of the predatory squadron, two little sea-wasps of forty and sixty tons burden, presented themselves in proud contrast to their bulky prizes, the hardy crews filling the air with clamors, and the light cannon booming in feeble but proud exultation. Time was when such a sight had roused her enthusiastic spirit almost to frenzy, but now that spirit was occupied, engrossed by cares peculiarly its own. The coxswain of the royal barge, his eye kindling with patriotic pride, and presuming a little on his long and faithful services, put up the helm, as if about to run alongside of the leading galley; but a cold frown and a forward wafture of the hand repelled his ardor; and the men their oars bending to the work, the barge was at her moorings ere many minutes had elapsed, by the water-gate of Nottingham-house—and the queen made her way, unannounced and almost unattended, to the chamber of the aged countess.

[H] This incident, which is strictly historical, even to the smallest details, did in fact occur several years earlier; as the death of Elizabeth did not take place until the year 1603, whereas the triumphant return of Thomas Cavendish is related by Hume as having happened A. D. 1587. It is hoped that the anachronism will be pardoned, in behalf of the picture of the times afforded by its introduction.

The sick woman had been for weeks wasting away beneath a slow and painful malady; her strength had failed her, and for days her end had been almost hourly expected. Still, with that strange and unnatural tenacity through which the dying sometimes cling to earth, even after every rational hope of a day’s prolonged existence has been extinguished—she had hovered as it were on the confines of life and death, the vital flame flickering like that of a lamp whose aliment has long since been exhausted, fitfully playing about the wick which can no longer support it. Her reason, which had been partially obscured during the latter period of her malady, had been restored to its full vigor on the preceding evening; but the only fruit of its restoration was the utmost anguish of mental suffering and conscientious remorse. From the moment when the messenger, whose arrival we have already witnessed, had been despatched on his nocturnal mission, she had passed the time in fearful struggles with the last foe, wrestling as it were bodily with the dark angel; now pleading with the Almighty, and adjuring him by her sufferings and by her very sins, to spare her yet a little while; now shrieking on the name of Elizabeth, and calling her, as she valued her soul’s salvation, to make no long tarrying. In the opinion of the leeches who watched around her pillow, and of the terrified preacher who communed with his own heart and was still, her life was kept up only by this fierce and feverish excitement.

At a glance she recognised the queen, before another eye had marked her entrance. “Ha!” she groaned, in deep, sepulchral tones, “she is come, before whose coming my guilty soul had not the power to pass away! She is come to witness the damnation of an immortal spirit! to hear a tale of sin and sorrow that has no parallel! Hear my words, O queen! hear my words now, and laugh—laugh if you can; for, by Him who made us both, and is now dealing with me according to my merits, never shall you laugh again! Hereafter you shall groan, and weep, and tremble, and curse yourself, as I do! Laugh, I say, Elizabeth of England—laugh now, or never laugh again!”

For a moment the spirit of the queen, manly and strong as it was, beyond perhaps all precedent, was fairly overawed and cowed by the fierce intensity of the dying woman’s manner. Not long, however, could that proud soul quail to any created thing.

“’Fore God, woman,” she cried, “thou art bewitched, or desperately wicked! What, in the fiend’s name, mean ye?”

“In the fiend’s name truly, for he alone inspired me! Look here—and then pardon me, Elizabeth; in God’s name, pardon me!”

As she spoke, she held aloft, in her thin and bird-like fingers, a massive ring of gold, from which a sapphire of rare price gleamed brilliantly, casting a bright, dancing spark of blue reflection upon her hollow, ghastly features. “Know you,” she screamed, “this token?”

“Where got you it, woman? Speak, I say, speak, or I curse you!—where got you that same token?” The proud queen shook and shuddered as she spoke, like one in an ague-fit.

“Essex!” sighed the dying countess, through her set teeth—“the murthered Essex!”

“Murthered? God’s death, thou liest! He was a traitor—done to death! O God! O God! I know not what I say!” and a big tear-drop—the first in many a year, the first perhaps that ever had bedewed that iron cheek—slid slowly down the face of Elizabeth, and fell heavily on the brow of the glaring sufferer, who still held the ring aloft, in hands clasped close in attitude of supplication. “Speak,” she said again, in milder accents, “speak, Nottingham: what of—of Essex?”

“That ring he gave to me, to bear it to thy footstool, and to pray a gracious mistress’s favor to an erring but a grateful servant—”

“And thou, woman—thou!” absolutely shrieked the queen.

“Gave it not to thee—that Essex might die, not live!” was the steady reply. “Pardon me before I die; pardon me, as God shall pardon thee!—”

“God shall not pardon me, woman!—neither do I pardon thee! He, an’ he will, may pardon thee; but that will I do never! never!—by the life of the Eternal, NEVER!”—and, in the overpowering fury and agitation of the moment, she seized the dying sinner with an iron gripe, and shook her in the bed, till the ponderous fabric creaked and quivered. Not another word, not another sob passed the lips of the old countess: her frame was shaken by a mightier hand than that of the indignant queen; a deep, harsh rattle came from her chest; she raised one skinny arm aloft, and after the jaw had dropped, and the glaring eyeball fixed, that wretched limb stood erect, appealing as it were from a mortal to an immortal Judge!

The paroxysm was over. Speechless, and all but motionless, the miserable queen was borne by her attendants to the barge; the tide had shifted, and was still in their favor, though their course was altered. On their return, they again passed the triumphant fleet of Cavendish, bearing the mightiest sovereign of the world, the envied of all the earth—a wretched, feeble, heart-broken woman, grovelling like a crushed worm beneath the bitterest of human pangs, the agonies of self-merited misery! A few hours found her outstretched upon the floor of her chamber, giving away to anguish uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Refusing the earnest prayers of her women, and of her physicians, to suffer herself to be disrobed, and to recline upon her bed; feeding on tears and groans alone; uttering no sound but the name of Essex, in one plaintive and oft-repeated cry; mocking at all consolation; acknowledging no comforter except despair—ten long days and nights she lingered thus, in pangs a thousand times more intolerable than those which she had inflicted on her Scottish rival: and when, at length, the council of the state assembled, in her last moments, around the death-bed of a sovereign truly and not metaphorically lying in dust and ashes—she named to them, as her successor in the kingdom, the son of that same rival. Who shall say that the death of Mary Stuart went unavenged?

---

THE MOORISH FATHER.
A TALE OF MALAGA.

It was the morning of the day succeeding that which had beheld the terrible defeat, among the savage glens and mountain fastnesses of Axarquia, of that magnificent array of cavaliers which, not a week before, had pranced forth from the walls of Antiquera, superbly mounted on Andalusian steeds, fiery, and fleet, and fearless, with helm and shield and corslet engrailed with arabesques of gold, surcoats of velvet and rich broidery, plumes of the desert bird, and all in short that can add pomp and circumstance to the dread game of war. The strife was over in the mountain valleys; the lonely hollows on the bare hill-side, the stony channels of the torrent, the tangled thicket, and the bleak barren summit, were cumbered with the carcasses of Spain’s most noble cavaliers. War-steeds beside their riders, knights of the proudest lineage among their lowliest vassals, lay cold and grim and ghastly, each where the shaft, the stone, the assagay, had stretched beneath him, beneath the garish lustre of the broad southern sun. The Moorish foe had vanished from the field, which he had won almost without a struggle—the plunderer of the dead plied his hateful trade even to satiety, and, gorged with booty that might well satiate the wildest avarice, had left the field of slaughter to the possession of his brute comrades, the wolf, the raven, and the eagle.

It was now morning, and the broad sun, high already, was pouring down a flood of light over the giant crags, the deep precipitous defiles, and all the stern though glorious features which mark the mountain scenery of Malaga; and far beyond over the broad, luxuriant Vega, watered by its ten thousand streams of crystal, waving with olive-groves, and vineyards, and dark woodlands; and farther yet over the laughing waters of the bright Mediterranean. But one, who having found concealment during that night of wo and slaughter in some dark cave, or gully so sequestered that it had escaped the keen eyes of the Moorish mountaineers, now plied his bloody spurs almost in vain, so weary and so faint was the beautiful bay steed which bore him. He paused not to look upon the wonders of his road, tarried not to observe the play of light and shadow over that glorious plain, although by nature he was fitted to admire and to love all that she had framed of wild, of beautiful, or of romantic. Nay more, he scarcely turned his eye to gaze upon the miserable relics of some beloved comrade, who had so often revelled gayly, and in that last awful carnage had striven fearlessly and well, even when all was lost, beside him. He was a tall dark-featured youth, with a profusion of black hair clustered in short close curls about a high pale forehead; an eye that glanced like fire at every touch of passion, yet melted at the slightest claim upon his pity; an aquiline, thin nose, and mouth well cut, but compressed and closely set, completed the detail of his eminently handsome features. But the dark curls—for he had been on the preceding day unhelmed and slightly wounded—were clotted with stiff gore, matted with dust, and bleached by the hot sun under which he had for hours fought bareheaded. The keen, quick eye was dull and glazed, the haughty lineaments clouded with shame, anxiety, and grief, and the chiselled lips pale and cold as ashes. His armor, which had been splendid in the extreme, richly embossed and sculptured, was all defaced with dust and gore, broken and dinted, and in many places riven quite asunder. The surcoat which he had donned a few short days before, of azure damask, charged with the bearings of his proud ancestral race, fluttered in rags upon the morning breeze—his shield was gone, as were the mace and battle-axe which had swung from his saddle-bow—his sword, a long, cross-handled blade, and his lance, its azure pennoncelle no less than its steel head, crusted and black with blood, alone remained to him. The scabbard of his poignard was empty, and the silver hilt of his sword, ill-matched with the gilded sheath, showed plainly that it was not the weapon to which his hand was used. Yet still, though disarrayed, weary, and travel-spent, and worn with wo and watching, no eye could have looked on him without recognising in every trait, in every gesture, the undaunted knight and the accomplished noble.

Hours had passed away, since, with the first gray twilight of the dawn he had come forth from the precarious hiding-place wherein he had spent a terrible and painful night; and so far he had seen no human form, living at least, and heard no human voice! Unimpaired, save by the faintness of his reeling charger, he had ridden six long leagues over the perilous and rugged path by which, late on the previous night, the bravest of the brave, Alonzo de Aguilar, had by hard dint of hoof and spur escaped from the wild infantry of El Zagal to the far walls of Antiquera; and now from a bold and projecting summit he looked down upon the ramparts of that city, across a rich and level plain, into which sloped abruptly the steep ridge on which he stood, at less than a league’s distance. Here, for the first time, since he had set forth on his toilsome route, the knight drew up his staggering horse—for the first time a gleam of hope irradiating his wan brow—and, as a pious cavalier is ever bound to do, stretched forth his gauntleted hands to Heaven, and in a low, deep murmur breathed forth his heartfelt thanksgivings to Him, who had preserved him from the clutches of the pitiless heathen. This duty finished, with a lighter heart he wheeled his charger round an abrupt angle of the limestone-rock, and, plunging into the shade of the dense cork-woods which clothed the whole descent, followed the steep and zigzag path, by which he hoped ere long to reach his friends in safety. His horse, too, which had staggered wearily and stumbled often, as he ascended the rude hills, seemed to have gained new courage; for as he turned the corner of the rock, he pricked his ears and snorted, and the next moment uttered a long, tremulous, shrill neigh, quickening his pace—which for the last two hours he had hardly done at the solicitation of the spur—into a brisk and lively canter. Before, however, his rider had found time to debate upon the cause of this fresh vigor, the neigh was answered from below by the sharp whinny of a war-horse, which was succeeded instantly by the clatter of several hoofs, and the long barbaric blast of a Moorish horn. The first impulse of the cavalier was to quit the beaten path, and dashing into the thickets to conceal himself until his foemen should have passed by. Prudent, however, as was his determination, and promptly as he turned to execute it, he was anticipated by the appearance of at least half a score of Moorish horsemen—who, sitting erect in their deep Turkish saddles, goring the sides of their slight Arabian coursers with the edges of their broad sharp stirrups, and brandishing their long assagays above their heads, dashed forward with their loud ringing Lelilies, to charge the solitary Spaniard. Faint as he was, and in ill-plight for battle, there needed but the sight of the heathen foe to send each drop of his Castilian blood eddying in hot currents through every vein of the brave Spaniard. “St. Jago!” he cried, in clear and musical tones, “St. Jago and God aid!” and with the word he laid his long lance in the rest, and spurred his charger to the shock. It was not, however, either the usual mode of warfare with the Moors, or their intent at present to meet the shock of the impetuous and heavily armed cavalier. One of their number, it is true, dashed out as if to meet him—a spare gray-headed man, whose years, although they had worn away the soundness, and destroyed the muscular symmetry of his frame, had spared the lithe and wiry sinews; had dried up all that was superfluous of his flesh, and withered all that was comely of his aspect; but had left him erect, and strong and hardy as in his youngest days of warfare. His dress, caftan and turban both, were of that dark-green hue, which bespoke an emir, or lineal descendant of the prophet—the only order of nobility acknowledged by the Moslemin—while the rich materials of which they were composed, the jewels which bedecked the hilt and scabbard of both cimeter and yatagan, the necklaces of gold which encircled the broad glossy chest of his high-blooded black Arabian, proved as unerringly his wealth and consequence. Forth he dashed then, with the national war-cry, “La illah allah la!” brandishing in his right hand the long, light javelin, grasped by the middle, which his countrymen were wont to hurl against their adversaries, with such unerring accuracy both of hand and eye; and swinging on his left arm a light round buckler, of the tough hide of the African buffalo, studded with knobs of silver; while with his long reins flying as it would seem quite loose, by aid of his sharp Moorish curb, he wheeled his fiery horse from side to side so rapidly as quite to balk the aim of the Spaniard’s level lance. As the old mussulman advanced, fearlessly as it seemed, against the Christian knight, his comrades galloped on abreast with him, but by no means with the same steadiness of purpose, the track was indeed so narrow that three could hardly ride abreast in it; yet narrow as it was, the nearest followers of the emir did not attempt to keep it; on the contrary, giving their wild coursers the sharp edge of their stirrups, they leaped and bolted from one side to the other of the path now plunging into the open wood on either hand, and dashing furiously over rock and stone, now pressing straightforward for perhaps a hundred yards as if to bear down bodily on their antagonist. All this, it must be understood, passed in less time than it has taken to describe it; for though the enemies, when first their eyes caught sight of one another, were some five hundred yards apart, the speed of their fleet horses brought them rapidly to close quarters. And now they were upon the very point of meeting—the Spaniard bowing his unhelmed head behind his charger’s neck, to shield as best he might that vital part from the thrust of the flashing assagay with his lance projecting ten feet at the least, before the chamfront which protected the brow of his barbed war-horse, and the sheath of his twohanded broadsword clanging and rattling at every bound of the horse against the steel-plates which protected the legs of the man-at-arms!—the Moor sitting erect, nay, almost standing up in his short stirrups, with his keen, black eye glancing from beneath the shadow of his turban, and his spear poised and quivering on high. Now they were scarce a horse’s length asunder, when, with a shrill, peculiar yell, the old Moor wheeled his horse out of the road, and dashed into the wood, his balked antagonist being borne aimlessly right onward into the little knot of men who followed on the emir’s track. Not far, however, was he borne onward; for, with a second yell, even shriller than before, the moslem curbed his Arab, till he stood bolt upright, and turning sharp round, with such velocity that he seemed actually to whirl about as if upon a pivot, darted back on him, and with the speed of light hurled the long assagay. Just at that point of time the lance point of the Spaniard was within a hand’s breadth of the buckler—frail guard to the breast—of the second of those eastern warriors, but it was never doomed to pierce it. The light reed hurtled through the air, and its keen head of steel, hurled with most accurate aim, found a joint in the barbings of the war-horse. Exactly in that open and unguarded spot, which intervenes between the hip-bone and the ribs, it entered—it drove through the bright and glistening hide, through muscle, brawn, and sinew—clear through the vitals of the tortured brute, and even—with such tremendous vigor was it sent from that old arm—through the ribs on the farther side. With an appalling shriek, the agonized animal sprung up, with all his feet into the air, six feet at least in height, then plunged head foremost! Yet, strange to say, such was the masterly and splendid horsemanship, such was the cool steadiness of the European warrior, that, as his charger fell, rolling over and over, writhing and kicking in the fierce death-struggle, he alighted firmly and fairly on his feet. Without a second’s interval, for he had cast his heavy lance far from him, while his steed was yet in air, he whirled his long sword from its scabbard, and struck with the full sweep of his practised arm at the nearest of the Saracens, who were now wheeling round him, circling and yelling like a flock of sea-fowl. Full on the neck of a delicate and fine-limbed Arab, just at the juncture of the spine and skull, did the sheer blow take place; and cleaving the vertebræ asunder, and half the thickness of the muscular flesh below them, hurled the horse lifeless, and the rider stunned and senseless to the earth at his feet. A second sweep of the same ponderous blade brought down a second warrior, with his right arm half-severed from his body; a third time it was raised; but ere it fell, another javelin, launched by the same aged hand, whizzed through the air, and took effect a little way below the elbow-joint, just where the brassard and the gauntlet met, the trenchant-point pierced through between the bones, narrowly missing the great artery, and the uplifted sword sunk harmless! A dull expression of despair settled at once over the bright expressive features, which had so lately been enkindled by the fierce ardor and excitement of the conflict. His left hand dropped, as it were instinctively, to the place where it should have found the hilt of his dagger; but the sheath was empty, and the proud warrior stood, with his right arm dropping to his side, transfixed by the long lance, and streaming with dark blood, glaring, in impotent defiance, upon his now triumphant enemies. The nature of the Moorish tribes had been, it should be here observed, very materially altered, since they had crossed the straits; they were no longer the cruel, pitiless invaders offering no option to the vanquished, but of the Koran or the cimeter; but, softened by intercourse with the Christians, and having imbibed, during the lapse of ages spent in continual warfare against the most gallant and accomplished cavaliers of Europe, much of the true spirit of chivalry, they had adopted many of the best points of that singular institution. Among the principal results of this alteration in the national character was this—that they now no longer ruthlessly slaughtered unresisting foes, but, affecting to be guided by the principles of knightly courtesy, held all to mercy who were willing to confess themselves overcome. When, therefore, it was evident that any farther resistance was out of the question, the old emir leaping down from his charger’s back, with all the agility of a boy, unsheathed his Damascus cimeter, a narrow, crooked blade, with a hilt elaborately carved and jewelled, and strode slowly up to face the wounded Christian.

“Yield thee,” he said, in calm and almost courteous tones—using the lingua Franca, or mixed tongue, half Arabic, half Spanish, which formed the ordinary medium of communication between the two discordant races which at that time occupied the great peninsula of Europe—“yield thee, sir knight! thou art sore wounded, and enough hast thou done already, and enough suffered, to entitle thee to all praise of valor, to all privilege of courtesy.”

“To whom must I yield me, emir?” queried the Christian, in reply; “to whom must I yield? since yield I needs must; for, as you truly say, I can indeed resist no longer. I pray thee, of thy courtesy, inform me?”

“To me—Muley Abdallah el Zagal!”

“Nor unto nobler chief or braver warrior could any cavalier surrender. Therefore, I yield myself true captive, rescue or no rescue!” and as he spoke he handed the long silver-hilted sword, which he had so well wielded, to his captor. But the old Moor put aside the proffered weapon. “Wear it,” he said, “wear it, sir, your pledged word suffices that you will not unsheath it. Shame were it to deprive so good a cavalier of the sword he hath used so gallantly! But lo! your wound bleeds grievously. I pray you sit, and let your hurt be tended—Ho! Hamet, Hassan, lend a hand here to unarm this good gentleman. I pray you, sir, inform me of your style and title.”

“I am styled Roderigo de Narvaez,” returned the cavalier, “equerry and banner-bearer to the most noble Don Diego de Cordova, the famous count of Cabra!”

“Then be assured, Don Roderigo, of being, at my hands, entreated with all due courtesy and honor—till that the good count shall arrange for thy ransom or exchange.”

A little while sufficed to draw off the gauntlet, to cut the shaft of the lance, where the steel protruded entirely through the wounded arm, and to draw it out by main force from between the bones, which it had actually strained asunder. But so great was the violence which it was necessary to exert, and so great was the suffering which it caused, that the stout warrior actually swooned away; nor did he altogether recover his senses, although every possible means at that time known were applied for his restoration, until the blood had been stanched, and a rude, temporary litter, framed of lances bound together by the scarfs and baldrics of the emir’s retinue, and strewn with war-cloaks was prepared for him. Just as this slender vehicle was perfected and slung between the saddles of four warriors, the color returned to the pallid lips and cheeks of the brave Spaniard, and gradually animation was restored. In the meantime, the escort of El Zagal had been increased by the arrival of many bands of steel-clad warriors, returning from the pursuit of the routed Spaniards; until at length a grand host was collected, comprising several thousands of soldiery, of every species of force at that time in use—cavalry, archers, infantry, arrayed beneath hundreds of many colored banners, and marching gayly on to the blithe music of war-drum, atabal, and clarion. The direction of the route taken by this martial company was the same wild, desolate, and toilsome road, by which Don Roderigo had so nearly escaped that morning. All day long did they march beneath a burning sun and cloudless sky, the fierce heat insupportably reflected from the white limestone crags, and sandy surface of the roads; and so tremendous were its effects, that many of the horses and mules, laden with baggage, which accompanied the cavalcade, died on the wayside; while the wounded captive, between anxiety and pain, and the incessant jolting of the litter, was in a state of fever bordering nearly on delirium, during the whole of the long march.

At length, just when the sun was setting, and the soft dews of evening were falling silently on the parched and scanty herbage, the train of El Zagal reached the foot of a rugged and precipitous hill, crowned by a lofty watch-tower. Ordering his troops to bivouac as best they might, at the base of the steep acclivity, the old Moor spurred up its side with his immediate train and his enfeebled captive. Just as he reached the brow the gates flew open, and the loveliest girl that ever met a sire’s embrace, rushed forth with her attendants—the sternness melted from the old warrior’s brow, as he clasped her to his bosom, before he entered the dark portal. Within that mountain fortalice long lay the Christian warrior, struggling midway between the gates of life and death; and when at length he awoke from his appalling dreams, strange visions of dark eyes compassionately beaming upon his, soft hands that tended his worn limbs, and shapes angelically graceful floating about his pillow, were blent with the dark recollections of his hot delirium, and that too so distinctly, that he long doubted whether these too were the creations of his fevered fancy. Well had it been for him, well for one lovelier and frailer being, had they indeed been dreams; but who shall struggle against his destiny!

Hours, days, and weeks, rolled onward; and, as they fled, brought health and vigor to the body of the wounded knight; but brought no restoration to his overwrought and excited mind. The war still raged in ruthless and unsparing fury, between the politic and crafty Ferdinand, backed by the chivalry of the most puissant realm of Europe, and the ill-fated Moorish prince, who, last and least of a proud race, survived to weep the downfall of that lovely kingdom which he had lacked the energy to govern or defend. Field after field was fought, and foray followed foray, till every streamlet of Grenada had been empurpled by the mingled streams of Saracen and Christian gore, till every plain and valley had teemed with that rank verdure, which betrays a soil watered by human blood. So constant was the strife, so general the havoc, so wide the desolation, that those who fell were scarcely mourned by their surviving comrades, forgotten almost ere the life had left them. Hardly a family in Spain but had lost sire, son, husband, brother; and so fast came the tidings in, of slaughter and of death, that the ear scarce could drink one tale of sorrow, before another banished it. And thus it was with Roderigo de Narvaez. For a brief space, indeed, after the fatal day of Axarquia, his name had been syllabled by those who had escaped from the dread slaughter, with those of others as illustrious in birth, as famous in renown, and as unfortunate, for all believed that he had fallen in the catastrophe of their career. For a brief space his name had swelled the charging cry of Antiquera’s chivalry, when thirsting for revenge, and all on fire to retrieve their tarnished laurels, they burst upon their dark-complexioned foemen. A brief space, and he was forgotten! His death avenged by tenfold slaughter—his soul redeemed by many a midnight mass—his virtues celebrated, and his name recorded, even while yet he lived, on the sepulchral marble, and the bold banner-bearer was even as though he had never been. Alone, alone in the small mountain tower, he passed his weary days, his long and woful nights. Ever alone! He gazed forth from the lofty lattices over the bare and sun-scourged summits of the wild crags of Malaga, and sighed for the fair huertas, the rich vineyards, and the shadowy olives of his dear native province. He listened to the clank of harness, to the wild summons of the Moorish horn, to the thick-beating clatter of the hoofs, as with his fiery hordes old Muley el Zagal swooped like some bird of rapine from his far mountain eyry on the rich booty of the vales below; but he saw not, marked not, at least, the gorgeousness and pomp of their array; for, when he would have looked forth on their merry mustering, his heart would swell within him as though it would have burst from his proud bosom—his eyes would dazzle and grow dim, filled with unbidden tears, that his manhood vainly strove to check—his ears would be heavy with a sound, as it were of many falling waters. Thus, hour by hour, the heavy days lagged on, and though the flesh of the imprisoned knight waxed stronger still and stronger, the spirit daily flagged and faltered. The fierce old emir noted the yielding of his captive soul, noted the dimness of the eye, the absence of the high and sparkling fire, that had so won his admiration on their first encounter; he noted, and to do him justice, noted it with compassion; and ever, when he sallied forth to battle, determined that he would grasp the earliest opportunity, afforded by the capture of any one of his own stout adherents, to ransom or exchange his prisoner. But, as at times, things will fall out perversely, and, as it were, directly contrary to their accustomed course; though he lost many by the lance, the harquebus, the sword, no man of his brave followers was taken; nay more, so rancorous and savage had the war latterly become, that Moor and Spaniard now, where’er they met, charged instantly—with neither word nor parley—and fought it out with murderous fury, till one or both had fallen. And thus it chanced, that, while his friends esteemed him dead, and dropped him quietly into oblivion, and his more generous captor would, had he possessed the power, have sent him forth to liberty on easy terms of ransom, fate kept him still in thrall.

After a while, there came a change in his demeanor; the head no longer was propped listlessly from morn to noon, from noon “to dewy eve,” upon his burning hand; the cheek regained its hue, the eye its quick clear glance, keen and pervading as the falcon’s; the features beamed with their old energy of pride and valiant resolution; his movements were elastic, his step free and bold, his head erect and fearless; and the old Moor observed the change, and watched, if he perchance might fathom the mysterious cause, and queried of his menials; and yet remained long, very long, in darkness and in doubt.

And what was that mysterious cause, that sudden overmastering power, that spell, potent as the magician’s charm, which weaned the prisoner from its melancholy yearnings; which kindled his eye once again with its old fire; which roused him from his oblivious stupor, and made him bear himself once more, not as the tame heart-broken captive, but as the free, bold, dauntless, energetic champion; clothed as in arms of proof, in the complete, invulnerable panoply of a soul; proud, active, and enthusiastic, and, at a moment’s notice, prepared for every fortune? What should it be but love—the tamer of the proud and strong—the strengthener of the weak and timid—the tyrant of all minds—the change of all natures—what should it be but love?

The half-remembered images of his delirium—the strong and palpable impressions, which had so wildly floated among his feverish dreams, had been clothed with reality—the form, which he had viewed so often through the half-shut lids of agony and sickness, had stood revealed in the perfection of substantial beauty before his waking eyesight; the soft voice, which had soothed his anguish, had answered his in audible and actual converse. In truth, that form, that voice, those lineaments, were all-sufficient to have spell-bound the sternest and the coldest heart, that ever manned itself against the fascinations of the sex. Framed in the slightest and most sylph-like mould, yet of proportions exquisitely true, of symmetry most rare, of roundness most voluptuous, of grace unrivalled, Zelica was in sooth a creature, formed not so much for mortal love as for ideal adoration. Her coal-black hair, profuse almost unto redundancy, waving in natural ringlets, glossy and soft as silk—her wild, full, liquid eyes, now blazing with intolerable lustre, now melting into the veriest luxury of languor; her high, pale, intellectual brow; her delicately-chiselled lineaments, the perfect arch of her small ruby mouth, and, above all, the fleet and changeful gleams of soul that would flit over that rare face—the flash of intellect, bright and pervading as the prophet’s glance of inspiration; the sweet, soft, dream-like melancholy, half lustre and half shadow, like the transparent twilight of her own lovely skies; the beaming, soul-entrancing smiles, that laughed out from the eyes before they curled the ever-dimpling lips—these were the spells that roused the Christian captive from his dark lethargy of wo.

A first chance interview in the small garden of the fortress—for in the smallest and most iron fastnesses of the Moors of Spain, the decoration of a garden, with its dark cypresses, its orange-bowers, its marble fountains, and arabesque kiosk among its group of fan-like palms, imported with great care and cost from their far native sands, was never lacking—a first chance interview, wherein the Moorish maiden, bashful at being seen beyond the precincts of the harem unveiled, and that too by a giaour, was all tears, flutter, and dismay; while the enamored Spaniard—enamored at first sight, and recognising in the fair, trembling shape before him the ministering angel who had smoothed his feverish pillow, and flitted round his bed during those hours of dark and dread delirium—poured forth his gratitude, his love, his admiration, in a rich flood of soul-fraught and resistless eloquence: a first chance interview led by degrees, and after interchange of flowery tokens, and wavings of white kerchiefs by hands whiter yet, from latticed casements, and all those thousand nothings, which, imperceptible and nothing worth to the dull world, are to the lover confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ, to frequent meetings—meetings sweeter that they were stolen, fonder that they were brief, during the fierce heat of the noontide, when all beside were buried in the soft siesta, or by the pale light of the amorous moon, when every eye that might have spied out their clandestine interviews was sealed in deepest slumber.

Hours, days, and weeks, rolled onward, and still the Spanish cavalier remained a double captive in the lone tower of El Zagal. Captive in spirit, yet more than in the body—for, having spent the whole of his gay youth, the whole of his young, fiery manhood, in the midst of courts and cities; having from early boyhood basked in the smiles of beauty, endured unharmed the ordeal of most familiar intercourse with the most lovely maids and matrons of old Spain, and borne away a heart untouched by any passion, by any fancy, how transient or how brief soever; and having, at that period of his life when man’s passions are perhaps the strongest, and surely the most permanent, surrendered almost at first sight his affections to this wild Moorish maiden—it seemed as if he voluntarily devoted his whole energies of soul and body to this one passion; as if he purposely lay by all other wishes, hopes, pursuits; as if he made himself designedly a slave, a blinded worshipper.

It was, indeed, a singular, a wondrous subject for the contemplation of philosophy, to see the keen, cool, polished courtier, the warrior of a hundred battles, the cavalier of the most glowing courts, the bland, sagacious, wily, and perhaps cold-hearted citizen of the great world, bowing a willing slave, surrendering his very privilege of thought and action, to a mere girl, artless, and frank, and inexperienced; devoid, as it would seem, of every charm that could have wrought upon a spirit such as his; skilled in no art, possessing no accomplishment, whereby to win the field against the deep sagacity, the wily worldly-heartedness of him whom she had conquered almost without a struggle. And yet this very artlessness it was which first enchained him; this very free, clear candor, which, as a thing he never had before encountered, set all his art at nothing.

Happily fled the winged days in this sweet dream; until at length the Spaniard woke—woke to envisage his position; to take deep thought as to his future conduct; to ponder, to resolve, to execute. It needed not much of the deep knowledge of the world for which, above all else, Roderigo was so famous, to see that under no contingency would the old Moor—the fiercest foeman of Spain’s chivalry, the bitterest hater of the very name of Spaniard—consent to such a union. It needed even less to teach him that, so thoroughly had he enchained the heart, the fancy, the affections of the young Zelica, that for him she would willingly resign, not the home only, and the country, and the creed of her forefathers, but name and fame, and life itself, if such a sacrifice were called for. Fervently, passionately did the young Spaniard love—honestly too, and in all honor; nor would he, to have gained an empire, have wronged that innocent, confiding, artless being, who had set all the confidence of a young heart, which, guileless in itself, feared naught of guile from others, upon the faith and honor of her lover. At a glance he perceived that their only chance was flight. A few soft moments of persuasion prevailed with the fair girl; nor was it long ere opportunity, and bribery, and the quick wit of Roderigo, wrought on the avarice of one, the trustiest of old Muley’s followers, to plan for them an exit from the guarded walls, to furnish them with horses and a guide, the very first time the old emir should go forth to battle.

Not long had they to wait. As the month waned, and the nights grew dark and moonless, the note of preparation once again was heard in hall, and armory, and stable. Harness was buckled on, war-steeds were barbed for battle, and, for a foray destined to last three weeks, forth sallied El Zagal.

Three days they waited, waited in wild suspense, in order that the host might have advanced so far, that they should risk no interruption from the stragglers of the rear. The destined day arrived, and slowly, one by one, the weary hours lagged on. At last—at last—the skies are darkened, and Lucifer, love’s harbinger, is twinkling in the west. Three saddled barbs, of the best blood of Araby, stand in a gloomy dingle, about a bow-shot from the castle-walls, tended by one dark, turbaned servitor. Evening has passed, and midnight, dark, silent, and serene, broods o’er the sleeping world. Two figures steal down from the postern gate: one a tall, stately form, sheathed cap-à-pie in European panoply; the other a slight female figure, veiled closely, and bedecked with the rich, flowing draperies that, form the costume of all oriental nations. ’Tis Roderigo and Zelica. Now they have reached the horses; the cavalier has raised the damsel to her saddle, has vaulted to his demipique. Stealthily for a hundred yards they creep away at a foot’s pace, till they have gained the greensward, whence no loud clank will bruit abroad their progress. Now they give free head to their steeds—they spur, they gallop! Ha! whence that wild and pealing yell—“La illah, allah la!” On every side it rings—on every side—and from bush, brake, and thicket, on every side, up spring turban, and assagay, and cimeter—all the wild cavalry of El Zagal!

Resistance was vain; but, ere resistance could be offered, up strode the veteran emir. “This, then,” he said, in tones of bitter scorn, “this is a Christian’s gratitude—a Spaniard’s honor!—to bring disgrace—”

“No, sir!” thundered the Spaniard, “no disgrace! A Christian cavalier disgraces not the noblest demoiselle or dame by offer of his hand!”

“His hand?” again the old Moor interrupted him; “his hand—wouldst thou then marry—”

“Had we reached Antiquera’s walls this night, to-morrow’s dawn had seen Zelica the all-honored bride of Roderigo de Narvaez!”

“Ha! is it so, fair sir?” replied the father; “and thou, I trow, young mistress, thou too art nothing loath?” and taking her embarrassed silence for assent—“be it so!” he continued, “be it so! deep will we feast to-night, and with to-morrow’s dawn Zelica shall be the bride of Roderigo de Narvaez!”

Astonishment rendered the Spaniard mute, but ere long gratitude found words, and they returned gay, joyous, and supremely happy, to the lone fortress.

There, in the vaulted hall, the board was set, the feast was spread, the red wine flowed profusely, the old Moor on his seat of state, and right and left of him that fair young couple; and music flowed from unseen minstrels’ harps, and perfumes steamed the hall with their rich incense, and lights blazed high, and garlands glittered: but blithe as were all appliances, naught was so blithe or joyous as those young, happy hearts.

The feast was ended; and Abdallah rose, and filled a goblet to the brim—a mighty goblet, golden and richly gemmed—with the rare wine of Shiraz. “Drink,” he said, “Christian, after your country’s fashion—drink to your bride, and let her too assist in draining this your nuptial chalice.”

Roderigo seized the cup, and with a lightsome smile drank to his lovely bride—and deeply he quaffed, and passed it to Zelica; and she, too, pleased with the ominous pledge, drank as she ne’er had drank before, as never did she drink thereafter!

The goblet was drained, drained to the very dregs; and, with a fiendish sneer, Muley Abdallah uprose once again.

“Christian, I said to-morrow’s dawn should see Zelica Roderigo’s bride, and it shall—in the grave! To prayer—to prayer! if prayer may now avail ye! Lo! your last cup on earth is drained; your lives are forfeit—nay, they are gone already!”

Why dwell upon the hateful scene—the agony, the anguish, the despair? For one short hour, in all the extremities of torture, that hapless pair writhed, wretchedly convulsed, before the gloating eyes of the stern murderer! Repressing each all outward symptoms of the tortures they endured, lest they should add to the dread torments of the other—not a sigh, not a groan, not a reproach was heard! Locked in each other’s arms, they wrestled to the last with the dread venom; locked in each other’s arms, when the last moment came, they lay together on the cold floor of snowy marble—unhappy victims, fearful monuments of the dread vengeance of a Moorish father!

THE END.