Agitated, by turns, with astonishment, vexation, indignation, and fear, the queen rode on, reserving her enquiries till they should reach Dunbar.
A thousand terrors and fancies flitted across her mind. Perhaps the principal nobles had again leagued to slay her, as they had done when her brother rose in rebellion; perhaps he was again in arms, with Lindesay, Glencairn, and all the furious upholders of that new doctrine, which she openly feared and secretly abhored.
The clank of a thousand suits of armour, and the rush of four times that number of galloping hoofs on the hard dusty road, stunned and confused her; while the figures of the mail-clad riders, their tall lances, and Bothwell’s rustling banner, the hills and copsewood that overhung their way, grew darker and duskier as the sky became veiled by the heavy clouds that came up in masses from the German sea.
The summits of the mountains were veiled in descending mist; the air became close and still, and afar off the broad red gleams of the sheet lightning brightened in the sky, revealing in bold outline the ridges of the distant hills, and the waving woods that crowned their summits.
Edinburgh, with its walls and gates, was left behind in night and obscurity; the marshes of Restalrig, where every moment their chargers floundered to the girths; the dreary Figgate whins, where every pace was encumbered with roots and other remains of an old primeval forest; and the ruined chapel of Mary Magdalene—were passed; and the captive queen, with her escort, were galloping along that far expanse of sandy beach, where the white-crested waves rolled with a sullen boom on the desert shore.
Now the clanging hoofs rang like thunder on the broad flagged pavement of the ancient Roman way, that led directly over the picturesque old bridge built by the soldiers of Agricola, and where a strong iron gate, erected transversely across the centre arch, closed the passage after nightfall. But a blast from Ormiston’s bugle-horn summoned the gateward, cowering and shivering from his seat by the ingle; for now, from the darkened sky, the heavy rain was pattering upon the hurrying river. At the imperious command, to "make way for the Lord Earl of Bothwell!" the barrier was instantly unclosed, and on swept the train in all its military show, each horseman stooping his helmeted head, and lowering the point of his long Scottish spear, as he passed under the low-browed gate, and wheeled to the left, by the base of the mound, where still the Roman trenches lay, as strong and as visible as when the cohorts of the empire raised there a temple to "Apollo, the long-haired."