Afterwards he went on an embassy to Paris; where, by the gallantry of his air, the splendour of his retinue, and the versatility of his talents for flattery, diplomacy, and intrigue, together with his dutiful and graceful demeanour, he particularly recommended himself to Mary of Scotland, the young queen of France.
Four years afterwards, when Mary was seated on her father's throne, he had returned to Scotland; but engaging in a desperate conspiracy for the destruction of his mortal foe, the Earl of Moray, then in the zenith of his power and royal favour, he had been indefinitely banished the court and kingdom. Filled with rage against Moray, who wielded the whole power at the court and council of his too facile sister, Bothwell, finding his star thus completely eclipsed by a rival to whom he was fully equal in bravery and ambition, though inferior in subtlety and guile—and that his strong and stately castles, his fertile provinces and rich domains, were gifted away to feudal and political foemen—sought the Danish court, where he had intrigued so far, that, at the period when our story opens, a conspiracy had been formed to place all the fortresses of Orkney and Shetland in the hands of Frederick, who, in return, was to create Lord Bothwell Prince of the Northern Isles. This plot had gradually been developing; and the Earl, in furtherance of his daring and revengeful scheme, was now on his way back to Orkney, where he possessed various fiefs and adherents, especially one powerful baron of the house of Balfour of Monkquhanny.
To a face and form that were singularly noble and prepossessing, the unfortunate Earl of Bothwell united a bearing alike gallant and courtly; while his known courage and suavity of manner, in the noonday of his fortune, made him the favourite equally of the great and the humble.
Without being yet a confirmed profligate, he had plunged deeply into all the excesses and gaieties of the age, especially when in France and Italy; for at home in Scotland, when under the Draconian laws and iron rule of the new regime, the arena of such follies, even to a powerful baron, was very circumscribed.
His heart was naturally good, and its first impulses were ever those of warmth, generosity, and gratitude—and these principles, under proper direction, when united to his talent, courage, and ambition, might have made him an ornament to his country. His early rectitude of purpose had led him to trust others too indiscriminately; his warmth, to sudden attachments and dangerous quarrels; his generosity, to lavish extravagance. Early in life he is said to have loved deeply and unhappily, but with all the ardour of which a first passion is capable of firing a brave and generous heart. Who the object of his love had been was then unknown; one report averred her to be a French princess, and the Magister Absalom Beyer shrewdly guesses, that this means no other than the dauphiness, Mary Stuart—but of this more anon.
There was now a dash of the cynic in his nature, and he was fast schooling himself to consider women merely what he was, in his gayer moments, habitually averring them to be—the mere instruments of pleasure, and tools of ambition.
The unhappy influence of that misplaced or unrequited love, had thrown a long shadow on the career of Bothwell; and as the sun of his fortune set, that shadow grew darker and deeper. But there were times, when his cooler reflection had tamed his wild impulses, that a sudden act of generosity and chivalry would evince the greatness of that heart, which an unhappy combination of circumstances, a prospect the most alluring that ever opened to man, and the influence of evil counsel, spurring on a restless ambition, hurried into those dark and terrible schemes of power and greatness, that blighted his name and fame for ever!
The character of his friend and brother exile, Hob Ormiston of that Ilk, had been distinguished only for its pride, ferocity, turbulence, and rapacity. He was one of the worst examples of those brutal barons who flourished on the ruins of the Church of Rome—the only power that ever held them in check—who laughed to scorn the laws of God and man—who recognised no will save their own, and no law but that of the sword and the strongest hand—who quoted Scripture to rifle and overthrow the same church which their fathers had quoted Scripture to erect and endow; and who, in that really dark age succeeding the Scottish Reformation, embroiled their helpless and gentle sovereign in a disastrous civil war, and drenched their native land in blood!
CHAPTER VI.
ANNA.