"True, madam," replied Bothwell, curling his mustache, "and what then?"
"Dost thou not know that thy life and liberty are alike in my power?"
"I am glad of it, being assured that they could not be in safer keeping."
"Oh, man! cold and heartless as thou art," said Anna, who seemed now to have forgotten her own infatuated passion for the Earl, "I cannot but admire this stately calmness under a reverse of fortune so terrible. Were thy fate fully in mine own hands, I would return thee to the land from whence thou hast fled, leaving the flames of civil war to rage behind thee—to the arms of her thou didst love and win, so fatally for herself—or I would again commit thee to the wide ocean, to follow thy wayward fate on other shores; for now there can neither be love nor loyalty, nor falsehood nor truth, between us—but the will of the king sayeth nay!"
"And what sayeth the will of Frederick?" asked Bothwell, with proud surprise.
"That thou and thy followers must be separated."
"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!"