[*] Mr. Carte, from a letter of Monsieur de Fenelon, 5th January, 1574, acquaints us, that Ormiston confessed that the Earl of Bothwell shewed him a paper subscribed by the Earls of Argyle, Huntly, and Morton, Sir James Balfour, and Secretary Maitland, promising him assistance in murdering the king. Various other authors give us proofs of the existence of the document.—See Goodal, vol. i.
Now with some precipitation they all prepared to separate.
"Farewell, laird of Whittinghame!" said Bothwell, as he leaped upon his horse, feeling that the probable excitement of a hard gallop would be a relief from his own thoughts, or more congenial with their impetuosity; "and farewell, my lords and gentlemen! Now for the bloody game, and Scotland be thou my chess-board of battle! There shall I make knights and queens, and rooks and pawns, to move at my will, and to vanish when I list. Mount, Ormiston! and ho—for Edinburgh!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD.
Victorian. Let me hear thy voice, and I am happy;
For every tone, like some secret incantation,
Calls up the buried past to plead for me—
Speak my beloved—speak onto my heart,
Whatever fills and agitates thine own.
The Spanish Student, Act III.
With the dogged resolution of one who neither will nor knows how to swerve from a purpose, Bothwell, with Ormiston and Bolton, laid their plans with Morton and others for the accomplishment of their terrible compact.
Any qualms the Earl had, were nearly stifled by the intelligence of Mary's complete reconciliation with her husband, for whom all her natural tenderness, as the first love and choice of her heart, returned; and, notwithstanding the loathly and disfiguring disease under which he laboured, and the great personal risk incurred by herself, like a "ministering angel" she hung over the sick-bed of the repentant profligate, who frequently implored her pardon and forgiveness—and in tears poor Mary blessed and forgave him.
Exaggerated tidings of these passages fired the fierce soul of the Earl with jealousy and wrath, at what he deemed the mere caprice of a pretty woman; but the gage had been thrown to fate, and a cloud was gathering over Mary's thorny crown, which as yet she neither saw nor felt.
His youth, and the natural strength of his constitution, enabled the young king to surmount that disease which had baffled the skill of Maitre Picauet, the half quack, half astrologer leech, who attended him; and, as soon as he was convalescent, the queen had him conveyed in a soft litter, by easy stages, to the capital, hoping that by the luxuries procurable there, the purity of the air, and better attendance, he might be fully restored to health and to her.