With a small train she departed in haste to the infant capital of the west; and Bothwell, who, with all his love, could not accompany her on such a visit, (though he admired her the more for it,) accompanied by Ormiston and Bolton, set out for the house of Whittinghame, a stately fortalice in his constabulary of Haddington, and belonging to Archibald Douglas, a kinsman and adherent of the Earl of Morton.
By a strange coincidence, rather than a mutual compact, many other peers and barons who were hostile to the house of Lennox and its heir, were then also visiting the intriguing lord of Whittinghame; and, like several rills uniting in a river, the whole current of their conversation, thoughts, and sentiments, were bent on the destruction of the Stuarts of Lennox, either by secret and Machiavelian fraud, or in the good old Scottish fashion, with the displayed banner and uplifted spear.
The darkness of a winter night had closed over the keep and woods of Whittinghame; there was no snow on the ground, but as the sky was starless the gloom was intense. Sheet-lightning at times illumined the far horizon, and brought forward strong in relief from the lurid background, the black and towering cones of Gulane hill and Berwick's lofty law—that landmark of the German sea—but all was still, and not a branch stirring in the leafless woods, when silently and noiselessly, all well armed, masked, and muffled in their mantles, the guests of the lord of Whittinghame assembled under the sepulchral shadow of a great and venerable yew-tree, that still stands near the castle wall, and is pointed out to the curious as the scene of their meeting.
Thick and impervious, the yew cast its umbrageous shade above them, and formed a fitting canopy for such a conclave of darkness and desperation; and heavily the chill dew dripped from the pendant branches.
There were present four peers and several of the lesser barons; Argyle, the proud but wavering Huntly, and Morton, cool and determined, and Bothwell, now the arch conspirator and Cataline of the conclave, with knit brows and clenched hands; a bloodless cheek, and lips compressed and pallid; a tongue that trembled alternately between the very load of eloquence that oppressed it, and the darkness of the purpose to which that dangerous eloquence was directed.
How little did some of these conspirators divine the other sentiment, so wild and guilty, that was making public utility an excuse for regicide; and that filled with an agony, almost amounting to suffocation, the breast of Scotland's greatest earl.
Near him stood his friend and evil mentor, that double-tongued master of intrigue and prince of plotters, Maitland the secretary, with his broad and massive brow, so high, so pale, and intellectual, his eagle eye and thin lips; and black Ormiston, the muscular and strong, whose qualities were those of the body only—the iron baron of his time, unscrupulous and bloodthirsty; from childhood inured to rapine, strife, and slaughter; while Bolton, the young and handsome, inspired to seek all the vengeance that rivalry and scorned love could prompt, was by turns as fierce as Morton, as politic and cruel as Maitland, as sullen as Argyle.
And there in whispers, under that old sepulchral yew, was debated and resolved on that deed of treason, of darkness, and of horror, that from Scotland's capital was to send forth an echo over Europe—an echo that would never die—the murder of King Henry, as a fool and tyrant, who had rendered himself intolerable to the people. What passed is unknown, for history has failed to record it; and not even the voluminous rolls of Magister Absalom Beyer can supply the blank, save in one instance. Ormiston, with a treachery at which we blush in a Scottish baron, proposed that the Norwegian prisoner in Holyrood might easily be made a valuable tool in the affair; and that, by some adroitness, the whole blame of the projected assassination might be thrown upon him. This motion, which exactly suited his own ideas and taste, was warmly applauded by the Earl of Morton, and agreed to by the others, who cared not a jot about the matter.
The die was cast—the deed resolved on.
Then from beneath his mantle, the learned knight of Pittendriech, the Lord President of the supreme court, (a man still famous for his works on Scottish law,) drew forth a parchment, written and prepared with more than legal accuracy, and more than wolfish cruelty, by which they each and all bound themselves to stand by each other, in weal or woe, in victory or triumph, in defeat and death, with tower and vassal, life and limb; and to this bond they each in succession placed their seals and marks, or signatures; and feebly fell the light of a flickering taper on their pale visages and fierce eyes, as they appended their dishonoured titles to that Draconian deed, which the pale secretary received, and put up in his secret pocket, with such a smile as Satan would have done the assignment of their souls.[*]