* * * * *
It was in the year of grace 1577, when a Scottish priest, one of those whom the Reformation had compelled to wander, in misery and penury, far from their native lands, appeared at the gates of Malmö, and sought permission of Beirn Gowes, knight castellan, to visit the unhappy captive.
The priest was a man about five-and-thirty; but the duties of his office, toil, and hardship, made him seem considerably older; his head was already becoming bald, even where he had no tonsure; his blue eyes were mild, and deep, and thoughtful; he leaned a little on a staff, and bore on his back the wallet containing a few of the necessaries required by him on his solitary pilgrimage; for he was one of those whose life had been devoted to spreading and upholding the Catholic faith in those northern lands, where it had been most severely shaken; and, amid hardship and danger, his days were spent in exhorting the faithful, recovering the faithless, and confirming the wavering.
He stood within the vault where Bothwell lay, and, folding his hands upon his breast, regarded him fixedly with eyes that filled with tears.
Oh, what a change was there!
Visible only in the twilight that struggled through the open grating of that vaulted dungeon, the captive lay in a corner upon a little damp straw, chained by the middle to the wall like a wild animal; he was completely nude, and his coal-black hair and beard, now beginning to be grizzled, flourished in one thick matted and luxuriant mass, from amid which his wild black eyes gleamed like two bright stars. They were hollow, dilated, and ghastly. His form was attenuated to the last degree; every rib, joint, and muscle being horribly visible; he resembled an inmate of the grave—a chained fiend—any thing but a man in the prime of life, for the miserable being had barely reached his fortieth year.
When he moved, the straw rustled, and the rusty chain that fretted his tender skin rattled grimly in the ears of the priest, who knelt down in the further end of the dungeon, and prayed with fervour; but Bothwell neither saw nor heard him.
One of those glimmerings of the past that so frequently haunted him, was at that moment coming like a vision before his mind. Exhausted by illness, and the fever of his spirit, the poor maniac had become calm; and his thoughts were slowly emerging from the mist that obscured them, and arranging themselves in order and form, as he struggled back into a consciousness of existence—the brief consciousness that so often precedes the oblivion of the grave.
In the figures made by the damp on his dungeon wall, he saw the same pale face, with its weeping eyes and white veil, that had haunted him so often, ere his overcharged mind found a relief in insanity. Mary—la Reine Blanche! he stretched his bony arms towards the figure; but still it remained there, neither advancing nor retiring, till a change came over its features.
Then its eyes seemed to fill with a terrible glare, and the shriek that once rang through the Kirk-of-Field, seemed to rend the massive vault, and to pierce his tingling ears like a poniard. Then he dashed his hands against them, and grovelled down among the straw, to shut out that dreadful sound—the dying cry of Darnley!