Page:The Queens of England.djvu/468

 the close of the ceremony, a fleet of twelve Danish ships set sail for Scotland, to convey the wife to her new home; but adverse winds arose, and after making- the Scottish coast the Danish admiral was twice driven back to the coast of Norway. It was not thought expedient to hazard a third attempt; and the young queen remained at Upslo till her husband should be made acquainted with this unlooked-for interruption to her voyage. A messenger was sent to James.

He swore at once that witchcraft was at the bottom of it, and he had great faith in his power over witches. He had been busy torturing and burning old women for this imaginary crime while Elizabeth of England was murdering his mother; and his experience gave him confidence that he might voyage safely to Upslo himself, and bring his wife safely home. Of any notion that such an enterprise might be prompted by conjugal eagerness he has been careful to disabuse posterity; having drawn up a statement of its secret reasons for the members of his privy council, in which he laboriously clears himself of that imputation. He begins the paper by stating that public and no private considerations had governed him altogether in the matter of his marriage; for as to his "ain nature,". God be his witness, he could have abstained "langer nor the welfare of his country" could possibly have permitted. As to the journey over the sea he was now about to make, he describes it as a determination of his own, "not ane of the haiil council being present;" and which he had taken thus privately as a contradiction to the common slanders that his chancellor led him daily by the nose, and that he was an irresolute ass who could do nothing of himself. Besides, he characteristically adds, there was really no danger. Set aside the witches, and he was quite safe. "The shortness of the way; the surety of the passage, being clean of all sands, foirlands, or sic like dangers; the harbouries in these parts sa suir; and na foreign fleets resorting upon these seas;" are among the amusing assurances he gives his council that he is not going to put himself in jeopardy for his wife, or any other mortal.

In November, 1589, at Upslo. James and Anne, he in his twenty-fourth and she in her fifteenth year, for the first time saw each other. He presented himself unannounced, just as he had landed, "buites and all;" and straightway volunteered a kiss, "quhilk ;" startled not a little at the first sight of her lord, "the queen refusit." Whatever her dreams may have been, on this wind-swept coast of Norway or by the stormy steep of El-