"Hoh, is it so?"
"They, to be sent home to Scotland—thou, to his castle of Kiobenhafen, in fetters."
"Fetters!" cried the Earl, in a voice of thunder, while his eyes flashed fire and his hand grasped his sword. "This to Bothwell? Woman! what hast thou dared to say? Dost thou forget that I am a Scottish duke—the consort of a queen—the governor of a kingdom?"
"No!" replied Anna bitterly, while her eyes flashed with rage and jealousy, though every sentiment of love was long since dead; "and neither have I forgotten that thou art a regicide and a betrayer, who from this hour shall have meted out to him the stern measures he so ruthlessly dealt to others. Christian Alborg—this man is the king's prisoner, whom we have warrants from Peder Oxe, the marshal of Denmark, to detain. Away with him to the Biornen, and ere sunset be thou out of the Jelta fiord, and under sail for Kiobenhafen! Thou knowest Frederick, and that he brooks no delay."
And with a glance, where spite and jealousy were mingled with a sentiment of pity and admiration, Anna withdrew; and, as the arras fell behind her, a party of red-bearded Danish bowmen, who formed the garrison at Bergen, crowded round the Earl.
"Ha! ha!" he laughed bitterly through his clenched teeth; "there spoke thy woman's vengeance, Anna!"
"Lord Earl," said Ormiston gravely, "in the name of the master of mischief, what prompted thee to beard her thus? Foul fall thee! Why didst thou not flatter, and cajole, and feign thine old love? To fleech with the devil, when thou canst not fight him, is ever good policy. An old love is easily revived: she is only a woman, and would doubtless have believed thee, for thou hast a tongue that would wile the gleds out of the sky. Cock and pie! Bothwell, till something better came to hand, thou mightest have been castellan of Bergen, and I thy lieutenant. All our fortunes had been made even here, in this land of barkened bannocks and snowballs."
"To feign thus, would be to commit foul treason against her whom I will ever remember with loyalty and love, while Heaven, permits me to live. Here we part at last, stout Hob, perhaps to meet no more. If ever again thou treadest on Scottish ground, remember that in serving her thou servest Bothwell. Farewell to thee, Bolton, thou man of gloomy thoughts; and farewell thou, stout Hay of Tallo; for I fear me much, that God's vengeance for that night in the Kirk-of-Field is coming surely and heavily upon us all."
They were rudely separated.
Ormiston, Bolton, and Tallo, raised their bonnets with sadness and respect as the Earl was led off; for the bonds of old feudality, and love, and service, which knit their names and fortunes together, had been strengthened by a certainty that the terrible career on which they had run, had for ever cut them off and isolated them from the rest of mankind; and thus a feeling of loneliness and desolation fell upon their hearts, as their great leader and master-spirit was led away to that mournful captivity which was to end only in the—grave.