To his great satisfaction, the Earl found that his vessel, the Fleur-de-lys, a stout little brigantine, had been so much shattered by the late storm, that by the solemnly delivered verdict of David Wood his skipper, Hans Knuber, and other seafaring men of Bergen, the work of several days would be required to refit her for sea--and these days, with the recklessness of his nature, he resolved to devote entirely to the prosecution of an amour, the end of which he could not entirely foresee.
Though solemnly betrothed to Lady Jane Gordon, second daughter of George Earl of Huntly, who had been slain at the battle of Corrichie, the love he once felt and avowed for her, had evaporated during his wandering life and long absence from Scotland; and as it happened that the heart of the amorous Earl abhorred a vacuum, he gave way to all the impulses of this new passion, which the beauty and winning manner of Anna were so well calculated to inspire and confirm, and which he thought would prove a pleasing variety and amusement in his exile. A month had elapsed since they separated at Copenhagen, and that short separation had served but to increase the flame which a longer one would as surely have extinguished.
The morning meal was over; the castle hall had been converted into a court of justice, where, seated in his red leather chair, with his orders on his breast, Erick Rosenkrantz heard pleas and quarrels, and gave those decisions which constituted him the Solon of Aggerhuis and Lycurgus of Bergen. The Earl had returned from the beach, where the entire population of the little town had crowded to witness the unusual sight of hauling his vessel into a rude dock, constructed in a creek of the rocks, where Hans Knuber and all the fishermen on the fiord had been lounging since daybreak, with their hands stuffed into the pockets of their voluminous red breeches, criticising with seaman-like eyes, and commenting in most nautical Norse, on the rig, mould, and aspect of the Scottish ship.
As Bothwell, with his white plume dancing above his lofty head, the embroidery of his mantle, and the brilliants of his belt and bonnet sparkling in the sunshine, ascended to a terrace of the castle that overlooked the fiord, the notes of a harp struck with great skill, mingling with the voice of Anna, fell upon his ear, and he paused.