University of Virginia Library

THE KIRK OF FIELD.

It was a dark and stormy night without, such as is not unfrequent,
even during the height of summer, under the changeable
influences of the Scottish climate. The west wind, charged
with moisture collected from the vast expanse of ocean it had
traversed since last it had visited the habitations of man, rose
and sank in wild and melancholy cadences; now howling violently,
as it dashed the rain in torrents against the rattling casements;
now lulling till its presence could be traced alone in
the small, shrill murmur, which has been compared so aptly to
the voice of a spirit. The whole vault of heaven was wrapped
in blackness, of that dense and smothering character which
strikes the mind as pertaining rather to the gloom of a closed
chamber than to that of a midnight sky.

Yet within the halls of Holyrood neither storm nor darkness
had any influence on the excited spirits of the guests who were
collected there to celebrate, with minstrelsey and dance, the
marriage of Sebastian. Hundreds of lights flashed from the
tapestried walls; wreaths of the choicest flowers were twined
around the columns; rich odors floated on the air; and the voluptuous
swell of music entranced a hundred young and happy
hearts with its intoxicating sympathies. All that there was of
beautiful and chivalrous in old Dunedin thronged to the court

of its enchanting queen on that eventful evening; and it appeared
for once as though the hate of party and the fierce zeal
of clashing creeds had for a time agreed to sink their differences
in the gay whirl of merriment. The stern and solemn
leaders of the covenant relaxed the austerity of their frown;
the enthusiastic chieftains of the Romish faith were content to
mingle in the dance with those whom they would have met as
gladly in the fray.

With even more than her accustomed grace, brightest and
most bewitching where all were bright and lovely, did Mary
glide among her high-born visiters; no shade of sorrow dimmed
that transparent brow, or clouded the effulgence of that dazzling
smile; it was an evening of conciliation and rejoicing — of forgiveness
for the past, and hope rekindled for the future. There
was no distinction of manner as she passed from one to another
of the animated groups that conversed, or danced, or hung in
silent rapture on the musicians' strains, on every side. Her
tone was no less bland, as she addressed the gloomy Morton,
or the dark-browed Lindesay, but now returned from exile in
the sister-kingdom, than as she turned to her gayer and more
fitting associates. Never was the influence of Mary's beauty
more effective than on that occasion; never did her unaffected
grace, her sweet address, her courtesy bestowed alike on all,
exert a mightier influence over the minds of men than on the
very evening when her hopes were about to be for ever blighted,
her happiness extinguished, her very reputation blasted, by the
villany of false friends, and the violence of open foes.

The weak and vicious Darnley yet lingered on his bed of
sickness, but with the vigor of health many of the darker shades
of his character had passed away; and Mary had again watched
beside the bed of him whose foul suspicions and unmanly violence
— no less than his scandalous neglect of her unrivalled
charms, his low and infamous amours, his studied hatred of all

whom she delighted to honor — had almost alienated the affections
of that warm heart which once had beat so tenderly, so
devotedly, and, had he but deserved its constancy, so constantly
for him. Oh, how exquisite a thing is woman's love! how
beautiful, how strange a mystery, is woman's heart! 'T was
but a little month ago that she had almost hated. Neglect had
chilled the stream of her affections: that he whom she had
made a king, whom she had loved with such total devotion of
heart and mind — that he should repay her benefits with outrage,
her affections with cold, chilling, insolent disdain — these were
the thoughts that had worked her brain to the very verge of
madness and of crime.

The “glorious, rask, and hazardous”[2] young carl of Orkney
had ever in these hours of bitter anguish been summoned, she
knew not how, to her imagination: the warm yet delicate attentions,
the reverential deference to her slightest wish, the
dignified and chaste demeanor, through which gleamed ever
and anon some flash of chivalrous affection — some token that
in the recesses of his heart he worshipped the woman as fervently
as he served the sovereign truly; the overmastering passion
always apparent, but so apparent that it seemed involuntarily
present; the eye dwelling for ever on her features, yet
sinking modestly to earth, as shamed by his own boldness, if
haply it met hers; the hand that trembled as it performed its
office; the voice that faltered as it answered to the voice he
seemed to love so dearly — all these, all these, had they been
multiplied a hundred-fold, and aided by the deepest magic, had
effected nothing to wean her heart from Darnley, had not his
own infatuated cruelty furnished the strongest argument in favor
of the young and noble Bothwell. As it was, harassed by the
deepest wrongs from him who was most bound to cherish and
support her, and assailed by the allurements of one who coupled

to a beauty equal to that of angels a depth of purpose and dissimulation
worthy of the fiend, Mary had tottered on the precipice's
verge! Darnley fell sick, and she was saved! Him
whom she had almost learned to hate while he had rioted in
all the insolence of manly strength and beauty, she now adored
when he was stretched languid and helpless on the bed of anguish.
She had rushed to his envenomed chamber, she had
braved the perils of his contagious malady; her hand had
soothed his burning brow, her lip had tasted the potion which
his feverish palate had refused; day and night she had watched
over him as a mother watches over her sick infant, in mingled
agonies of hope and terror; she had marked the black sweat
gathering on his brow, and the film veiling his bright eye, and
she had felt that her very being was wound up in the weal or
wo of him whose death, one little month before, she would have
hailed as a release from misery. She had noted the dawn of
his recovery, she had fainted from excess of happiness; she had
pardoned all, all his past misdoings; she was again the doting,
faithful, single-hearted wife of her repentant Henry.[3]

Now in the midst of song, and revelry, and mirth, while the
gay masquers passed in gorgeous procession before her eyes,
her mind was far away in the chamber of her recovered lord,
within the solitary kirk of Field. The masque had ended, and
the hall was cleared; the wedding-posset passed around, beakers
were brimmed, and amid the clang of music the toast went
round — “Health to Sebastian and his bride!” The hall was
cleared for the dance: a hundred brilliant couples arose to lead
the Branle; the minstrels tuned their prelude; when the fair
young bride, blushing at the boldness of her own request, entreated
that her grace would make her condescension yet more

perfect by joining in that graceful measure which none could
lead so gracefully.

If there was one failing in the character of Mary, which
tended above all others to render her an object for unjust suspicions,
and a mark for cruel reverses, it was an inability to refuse
aught that might confer pleasure on any individual, however
low in station — a gentle failing, if it indeed be one, but
not the less pernicious to the fortunes of all, and above all of
kings. With that ineffable smile beaming upon her face, she
rose; and as she rose, Bothwell sprang forth, and in words of
deep humility, but tones of deeper passion, besought the queen
to make her slave the most happy, the most exalted of mankind,
by yielding to him her inestimable hand, even for the
space of one short dance.

For a single moment Mary paused; but it was destined that
she should be the victim of her confidence, and she yielded.
Never, never did a more perfect pair stand forth in lordly hall,
or on the emerald turf, than Mary Stuart and her destroyer.
Both in the flush and flower of gorgeous youth: she invested
with beauty such as few before or since have ever had to show,
with grace, and symmetry, and all that nameless something
which goes yet further to excite the admiration, and call forth
the love of men, than loveliness itself; he strong, yet elegant
in strength — proud, yet with that high and spiritual pride which
had nothing offensive in his display — taller and more stately
than the noblest barons of the court — they were indeed a pair
unmatched amid ten thousand; so rich in natural advantages,
so exquisite in personal attractions, that the tasteful splendor
of their habits was as little marked as is the golden halo which
encompasses but adds no glory to the sainted heads of that delightful
painter whose name so aptly chimes with the peculiar
sweetness of his sublime creations.

Even the iron brow of Ruthven — for he, too, was there —

relaxed as, leaning on her partner's extended hand, she passed
him with a smile of pardon, and he muttered to his dark comrade,
Lindesay of the Byres — “She were in sooth a most fair
creature, if that her mind might match the beauties of its mansion.”
As he spoke, the measured symphony rang out, and in
slow order the dancers moved forward; anon the measure
quickened, and the motions of the young and beautiful obeyed
its impulses. It was a scene more like some fairy dream than
aught of hard, terrestrial reality: the waving plumes, the glittering
jewels, the gorgeous robes, and, above all, the lovely
forms, which rather imparted their own brilliancy to these
adornments than borrowed anything from them, combined to
form a picture such as imagination can scarcely depict, much
less experience suggest, from aught beheld in ballrooms of the
present day, wherein the stiff and graceless costume of modern
times is but a poor apology for the majestic bravery of the sixteenth
century.

Suddenly, while all were glancing round in the swiftest
mazes of the dance, those who stood by observed the blood
flash with startling splendor over brow, neck, and bosom of the
youthful queen; nay, her very arms, white in their wonted hue
as the snow upon Shehallion, crimsoned with the violence of
her emotions. Her eyes sparkled, her bosom rose and fell
almost convulsively, her lips parted, but it seemed as though
her words were choked by agitation. For a single instant she
stood still; then bursting through the throng, she sank nearly
insensible upon one of the many cushioned seats that girded
the hall; but, rallying her spirits, she murmured something of
the heat and the unusual exercise, drained the goblet of pure
water presented by the hand of Orkney, and again resumed her
station in the dance.

“Pardon, pardon, I beseech you,” whispered the impassioned
tones of the tempter — “pardon, sweet sovereign, the boldness

that was born but of a moment's madness. Believe me — I
would tear my heart from out my bosom, did it cherish one
thought that could offend my mistress — my honored, my
adored —

“Hush! oh, hush! for my sake, Bothwell — for my sake, if
for naught else, be silent! I do believe that you mean honestly
and well; but words like these 'tis madness in you to utter,
and sin in me to hear them! Bethink you, sir,” she continued,
gaining strength as she proceeded, and speaking so low that no
ear but his might catch a solitary sound amid the quick rustle
of the “many twinkling feet,” and the full concert — “bethink
you! you address a wife — a wedded, loyal wife — the wife of
your lord, your king. I know that you are my most faithful
servant, my most trusted friend; I know that these words,
which sound so wildly, are not to be weighed in their full
sense, but as a servant's homage to his liege-lady: yet think
what you stern Knox would deem, think of the wrath of Darnley
—”

“If there were naught more powerful than Darnley's wrath,”
he muttered, in the notes of deep determination, “to bar me
from my towering hopes, then were I blest beyond all hopes
of earth, of heaven — supremely blest!”

“What mean you, sir? We understand you not! What
should there be more powerful than the wrath of thy lawful
sovereign? Speak; I would not doubt you, yet methinks your
words sound strangely. What be these towering hopes of
thine? Pray God they tower not too high for honesty or honor!
Say on, we do command thee!”

“I will say on, fair queen,” he replied, in a voice trembling
as it were with the fear of offending and the anxiety of love —
“I will say on, so you will hear me to the end, nor doubt the
most devoted of your slaves!”

“Hear you?” she replied, considerably softened by his humility,

“when did ever Mary Stuart refuse to hear the meanest
of her subjects, much less a trusted and a valued friend, as thou
hast ever been to her, as thou wilt ever be to her — wilt thou
not, Bothwell?”

There was a heavenly purity, a confidence in his integrity,
and a firm and full reliance on her own dignity, in every word
she uttered, that might have converted the wildest libertine
from his career of sin; that might have confirmed the wariest
and most subtle spirit that its guilty craft could never prevail
against a heart fortified against its attacks by purity and by the
stronger and more holy influences of wedded love; but on the
fixed purpose, on the interminable pride, the desperate passion,
and the unscrupulous will of Bothwell, every warning was lost.

“I have adored you,” he said, slowly and impressively —
“adored you, not as a queen, but as a woman. Mary, angelic
Mary, pardon — pity — and oh, love me! You do, you do already
love me! I have read it in your eye, I have marked it
in your flushing cheek, in your heaving bosom! If this night
you were free, would you not, sweet lady, lovely queen, would
you not reward the adoration, the honest adoration of your devoted
Bothwell?”

“Stand back, my lord of Bothwell!” cried the now indignant
queen, “stand back! your words are madness! Nay, but we
will be heard,” she continued, with increasing impetuosity, as
he endeavored again to speak. “Thinkest thou, vain lord, that
I — I, Mary of France and Scotland — because I have favored
and distinguished a subject, who, God aid me, merited not favor
nor distinction — thinkest thou that I, a queen anointed — a
mother and a wife — that I could love so wantonly as to descend
to thee? Back, sir, I say! and if I punish not at once
thy daring insolence, 'tis that thy past services, in some sort,
nullify thy present boldness. Oh, my lord!” she proceeded, in
a softer tone, and a big tear-drop trembled in her bright eye as

she spoke, “Mary has miseries enough, that thou shouldst
spare to add thy quota to the general ingratitude. If thou didst
love me, as thou sayest, thy love would be displayed as that of
a zealous votary to the shrine at which he worships; as that
of the magi bending before their particular star — not as that of
a wild and wicked wanton to a frail, fickle woman!”

It may be that the words with which Mary concluded her
reproof kindled again the hope which had well nigh passed
away from Bothwell's breast.

“Nay, Mary, say not thus. Do I not know thy trials? have
I not marked thy miseries? and will I not avenge them? If
thou wert free — did I say, if? By Heaven, fair queen, those
locks of thine, that flow so unrestrained down that most glorious
neck, are not more free than thou art! Did I not hear thy
cry for vengeance on the slaughterers of hapless Rizzio? did I
not hear, and have I not achieved the deed that secures at once
thy freedom and thy vengeance?”

The spell was broken on the instant: the soft, the tender-hearted,
the most gentle of women, was aroused almost to
frenzy. The blood rushed in torrents to her princely brow,
and left it again pale as the sculptured marble, but to return
once more in deeper hues of crimson. Her eyes flashed with
unnatural brightness; her bosom heaved and fell like that of a
young priestess laboring with the throes of prophetic inspiration;
she shook the tresses, he had dared to praise, back from
her lovely face, and stamping her delicate foot in the passion
of the moment on the oaken floor —

“A guard!” she cried, in notes that might have vied with the
clangor of a trumpet, so shrilly did they pierce the ears of all;
“a guard for my lord of Bothwell!”

Had the thunder of heaven darted its sulphurous and scathing
bolt into the midst of that assembly, a greater change its terrors
could not have effected than did that thrilling cry. A hundred

rapiers flashed in the bright torchlight, as with bent brows and
angry voices the barons of the realm rushed to the aid of their
liege-lady. An air of cool defiance sat on the massive forehead
of the culprit; his eye was fixed upon the queen in sorrow, as
it would seem, rather than in anger; his sword lay quietly in
his scabbard, although there were a hundred there with weapons
thirsting for his blood, and hearts burning with the insatiable
hate of ancient feuds. Murray and Morton, speaking
eagerly and even sternly to the queen, urged his immediate
seizure; and the gray-haired duke of Lennox, clutching his
poniard's hilt with the palsied gripe of eighty years, awaited
but a sign to slay, he knew not and he recked not why, the
ancient foeman of his race.

But so it was not fated! Before a word was spoken, the
deep and sullen roar as of an earthquake burst upon their ears,
and stunned their very hearts; a second din, as of some mighty
tower rushing from its base, succeeded, ere the casements had
ceased to rattle with the shock of the first.

“God of my fathers!” shouted Murray, “what means that
din? Treason, my lords, treason! Look to the queen — secure
the traitor! Thou, duke of Lennox, with thy followers,
haste straight to the kirk of Field! Without, there — let my
trumpets sound to horse! By Him that made me,” he continued,
“the populace are rising!” — for the deep swell of voices,
that rose without, announced the presence of a mighty multitude.

In an instant the vaulted arches of the palace echoed with
the flourished cadences of the royal trumpets, the ringing steps
of steel-clad men, the tramp of hoofs in the courtyard, the
gathering cries of the followers of each fierce baron, succeeding
wildly to the soft breathings of minstrelsey and song.
At this instant Murray had resolved himself to act, and, with
his hand upon the pommel of his sword, slowly but resolutely

stepped forward. “Yield thee!” he said, in stern, low tones;
“yield thee, my lord of Bothwell! Hence from this presence
thou canst not pass until all this night's strange occurrences be
fully manifested; ay, and if there be guilt — as I misdoubt me
much there is — till it be fearfully avenged!”

The touch of Murray on his shoulder, lightly as it fell, and
grave as were the words of that high baron, aroused the reckless
disposition of Bothwell almost to madness. “Thou liest,
lord!” he shouted, in the fierce impulse of the moment — “thou
liest, if thou dare to couple the name of guilt with Bothwell!
Forego thy hold, or perish!” — and his dagger's blade was seen
slowly emerging from its sheath, while his clinched teeth and
the starting veins of his broad forehead spoke volumes of the
bitterness of his wrath. Another second, and blood, the blood
of Scotland's noblest, would have been poured forth like water,
and in the presence of the queen; the destinies of a great kingdom
would have perchance been altered, and the history of
ages changed, all by the madness of a single moment. In the
fearful crisis, a wild shriek was heard from the upper end of
the hall, to which the ladies of the court had congregated, round
the queen, like the songsters of spring when the dark pinions
of the hawk are casting down a shadow of terror on their peaceful
groves.

“Help! help! — her grace is dying!” And, in truth, it did
seem as though she were about to pass away. Better, a thousand
times better, and happier, had it been for her, to have then
died quietly in the palace of her forefathers, with the nobles
of her land around her, than to have borne, for many an after-year,
the chilling miseries which were showered by pitiless
fortune on her head, till that most fatal hour of her tragic life
arrived, and Mary was at length at rest!

Murray relaxed his hold, turned on his heel, and strode abruptly
to the elevated dais, on which the queen had sunk in

worn-out nature's weariness. For a minute's space Bothwell
glared on him as he strode away, like a tiger balked of his dear
revenge. It was most evident he doubted — doubted whether
he should set all, even now, upon a cast, strike down a foeman
in the very fortress of his power, and if he must die, like the
crushed wasp, sting home in dying. Prudence, however, conquered:
he also turned upon his heel, and with a glance of the
deepest scorn and hatred on the baffled lords, who, in the absence
of their master-spirit, had lost all unison, stalked slowly
through the portal of the hall, and disappeared.

Before ten seconds had elapsed, the rapid clatter of hoofs, the
jingling of mail, and the war-cry — “A Bothwell! ho! a Bothwell!”
proclaimed that he had escaped the toils, and was surrounded
by his faithful followers.

When Murray reached the couch on which the queen was
extended, gasping as though in the last extremity, her case indeed
was pitiable. Her long locks had burst from their confinement,
and flowed over her person like a veil; her corsage
had been cut asunder by the damsels of her court, and her
bosom, bare in its unspeakable beauty, was disclosed to the
licentious gaze of the haughty nobles. An angle of the couch,
as she had fallen, had grazed her temple, and the blood streamed
down her cheek and neck, giving, by the contrast of its dark
crimson, an ashy, deathlike whiteness to her whole complexion.

“Ha!” he whispered, with deep emotions, “what means
this? Back, back, my lords, for shame, if not for pity! would
ye gaze upon your sovereign, in the abandonment of utter grief,
as though she were a peasant-quean? Stand back, I say, and
let the halls be cleared; and hark thee, Paris,” he continued,
as a cringing, terrified-looking Frenchman entered the apartment,
“bid some one call Galozzi hither: the poison-vending,
cozening Tuscan hath skill at least, and it shall go hardly with
him so he exert it not! But ha! what ails the man? St. Andrew,

he will faint! What ails thee, craven? Speak, speak,
or I shake the coward soul from out thy carcass!” — and he
shook the trembling servitor fiercely by the throat.

“The king — the king —” he faltered forth at length, terrified
yet more by the wrath of Murray than by the scene which
he had witnessed.

“What of the king, thou dastard? Speak — I say, what of
Henry Darnley?”

“Murdered, your highness — murdered!”

“Nay, thou art made to say it!”

“He speaks too truly, Murray,” cried Morton, entering, with his
bold visage blanched, and his dark locks bristling with unwonted
terror; “the king is murdered — foully, most foully murdered!”

“By the villain Bothwell!” muttered Murray, between his
hard-set teeth; “but he shall rue the deed! But say on, Morton,
say on: how knowest thou this? Say on — and you, ladies,
attend the queen.”

“I saw it, Murray — with these eyes I saw it — the cold,
naked, strangled corpse — flung, like a carrion-carcass, on the
garden-path; and the kirk of Field a pile of smoking and steaming
ruins — blown up with gunpowder, to give an air of accident
to this accursed treason. I tell you, man,” he continued,
as he saw Murray about to speak, “I tell you that I saw, in
that drear garden, cast like a murrained sheep upon a dike, all
that remained of Henry Darnley!”

“'T is false!” shrieked the wretched Mary, starting to her
feet, with the wild glare of actual insanity in her eye; “who
saith I slew him? Henry Darnley! 'S death, lords! — the
king, I say — the king! Now, by my halydom, he shall be
king of Scotland! Dead — dead! who said the earl of Orkney
was no more? Faugh! how the sulphur steams around us!
It chokes — it smothers! Traitor, false traitor! know, earl, I
will arraign thee. What! kill a king? whisper soft, low words

to a queen? Hoa! this is practice, my lord duke, foul practice;
and deeply shall you rue it if you but hurt a hair of Darnley!
— Nay, Henry, sweet Henry, frown not on me! Oh! never
woman loved as I love thee, my Darnley! Rizzio — ha! what
traitor spoke of Rizzio? But think not of it, Henry: the faithful
servant is lost, but 't was not thou that did it. Lo! how
dark Morton glares on me! Back, Ruthven, fiend! wouldst
slay me? But I forgive thee all — all — Henry Darnley, all!
Live — only live to bless my longing sight! No! no!” she
shrieked more wildly, “he is not dead! to arms! what, ho! —
to arms! a king, and none to rescue him! To arms, I say! I
will myself to arms! Fetch forth my Milan harness; saddle
me Rosabelle! French — Paris, aho! my petronels! And ye,
why do ye linger, wenches — Seyton, Carmichael, Fleming? —
my head-gear and my robes! The queen goes forth to day!
To horse, and to the rescue!”

She made a violent effort to rush forward, but staggered, and
if her brother had not received her in his arms, she would have
fallen again to the earth. “Bear her hence, ladies; bear her
to her chamber! — thou hast a heavy weird — poor sister! —
What ponder you so, Morton? you would not mark her words:
't is sheer distraction — the distraction of most utter sorrow!”

“Distraction! I say ay! but sorrow, no! Sorrow takes it
not on thus wildly. It savors more of guilt, Lord Murray —
dark, damning, bloody guilt! Heard ye not what she said of
Orkney? Distraction, but no sorrow: guilt, believe me, guilt!”

“Not for my life would I believe it, nor must thou: if Morton
and Murray hunt henceforth in couples — hark in thine ear!” —
and he whispered, glancing his eyes uneasily around, as though
the very stones might bear his words to other listeners. A grim
smile passed athwart Morton's visage; he bowed his head in
token of assent. They passed forth from the banquet-hall together,
and Mary was left to her misery.