It will be great, thou son of pride!—I have been renowned in battle; but I never told my name to a foe.—Ossian.
Consciousness returned slowly to Florence Fawside, and when his eyes unclosed, he saw first the huge misshapen figures of a large green-and-russet-coloured tapestry, which covered the walls of a dimly-lighted room, the four carved posts of a bed, the magnificent canopy of which spread its shadow over him, and the soft laced pillows whereon his head reposed. Then he became sensible of the presence of persons moving about him on tiptoe, speaking in gentle whispers.
There were two women, young, beautiful, and richly dressed; and with them was a man whose white beard flowed over the front of his long and sable robe. Then came again the sensation of faintness—the sinking sensation of one about to die,—with the agony of his sword-wounds, which felt like the searings of a red-hot iron, when the hands of his fair attendants—soft, kind, and "tremulously gentle" hands they were—unbuttoned his doublet, untied his ruff, drew aside the breast of his lace shirt, and a handkerchief which he had thrust under it when first wounded, and which were now both soaked with blood. This caused his wounds to stream anew. He felt the current of his life gush forth, and while a faint cry of pity from a female voice came feebly to his ear, the sufferer, when making a futile effort to grasp the pocket which contained his fatal letters, became once more totally insensible.
The early dawn of a clear August morning was stealing through the iron-grated windows of the apartment in which he lay, when Florence awoke again to life, and, raising himself feebly on an elbow, looked around him.
He was in a chamber the walls of which were hung with beautiful tapestry; the ceiling was painted with mythological figures, and the oak floor was strewn with green rushes and freshly-cut flowers—for carpets were yet almost unknown in Britain. From a carved beam of oak, which crossed the ceiling transversely, hung a silver night-lamp, fed with perfumed oil, amid which the light was just expiring. In a shadowy corner of the room was an altar, bearing a glittering crucifix, before which were two flickering tapers, two vases of fresh roses, and an exquisitely-carvedprie-Dieuof walnut-wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
The hangings of his bed were of the finest crimson silk, festooned by gold cords and massive tassels. On one side, through the window, he could see the green northern bank of the loch which bordered the city, and through which on the night before he had striven to swim his horse; beyond it were yellow fields, green copsewood, and purple muirland, stretching to the shores of the azure Forth. On the other side were the quaint figures of the old tapestry which represented a Scottish tradition well known in the days of Hector Boece—that on the day when the battle of Bannockburn was fought and won, a knight in armour that shone with a marvellous brilliance, mounted on a black steed, all foamy with haste and bloody with spurring, appeared suddenly in the streets of Aberdeen, and with a loud voice announced Bruce's victory to the startled citizens. Passing thence to the north with frightful speed, over hill and valley, this shining warrior was seen to quit the land and spur his steed across the raging waves of the Pentland Firth, and to vanish in the mist that shrouded the northern isles. Hence some averred he was St. Magnus of Orkney, while the more aspiring maintained that he was St. Michael the Archangel.
"Where am I?" was the first mental question of the sufferer, as he pressed his hand across his swimming forehead. "My letters!" was his next thought. On a chair near him hung his doublet: he made a great effort to ascertain if they were untouched, but sank back upon his pillow, exhausted by the attempt.
Morning was far advanced when he revived again. He found something cold and sharp in flavour poured between his lips; it refreshed him, and on looking up he became inspired with new energy on seeing again the two ladies whose forms he believed last night to have been the portions of a feverish dream, or to have been conjured by his fancy from those upon the tapestry.
One was a tall and beautiful woman, of a noble and commanding presence, about thirty years of age; her forehead was rather broad than high; her nose, long and somewhat pointed, might have been too masculine, but for the charming softness of her other features, especially her clear hazel eyes, which were full of sweetness, and expressed the deepest commiseration. That her rank was high, her attire sufficiently announced. She was dressed in a delentera of cloth-of-gold, the opened skirts of which displayed her petticoat of crimson brocade; her sleeves were of crimson satin tied by strings of pearl; her girdle was of gold surrounded by long pearl pendants; while a cross of diamonds sparkled on her breast.
Her companion seemed fully ten years younger: her stature was rather less; her complexion was equally fair; but her hair was of that deep brown which seems black by night; her features were so regular that nothing prevented them from being perhaps insipid; but the darkness of her eyebrows, with the vivacity of her deep violet-coloured blue eyes; and as she bent over the sufferer's bed, the rose-leaf tinge in her soft cheek came and went rapidly. She wore a loose robe of purple taffeta, trimmed with seed pearls; and among her dark hair there sparkled many precious stones; for the attire of people of rank in those days was gorgeously profuse in quality of material and elaboration of ornament.
"Mon Dieu!—he faints again!" said the former lady, in a soft but foreign accent, and with a tone of alarm.
"Nay, he only sleeps," whispered the other; "and see—now he wakens and recovers!"
"Saint Louis prie pour moi! but the pale aspect of this wounded boy so terrifies me!"
"Am I still in France?" murmured Fawside.
"Oh, he speaks of France!" exclaimed the elder, drawing nearer.
"Where am I, madame—in Paris?" asked Fawside faintly.
"Nay, you are safe in the city of Edinburgh."
"Safe! And who are you who condescend to treat me so humanely, so tenderly? Oh! I cannot dream. Last night—I now remember me,—I left the ship of the Sieur de Villegaignon, and was pursued by armed men,—by men who sought to murder me, and Heaven and they alone know why, for unto them I had done no wrong. I fell, wounded, I remember; but how came I here?"
"You must not speak, fair sir," replied the elder lady, placing her white and faultless hand upon the hot and parched mouth of the youth. "But listen, and I shall tell you. We heard the clash of swords (nothing singular in Edinburgh), and cries for 'help' beneath our windows; from whence we saw a man beset by many, who beat him down at last, though he fought valiantly with his back to the postern door of our mansion."
"A door!—methought it was a stone wall.
"Nay, sir, fortunately it wasnotthe stone wall, but a door: my servants opened it; you fell inwards. It was instantly shut and barricaded, by nay orders, and thus we saved you."
"And this was last night?"
"Nay," replied the beautiful lady, smiling, and using her weetest foreign accent, "it was three nights ago."
"Three!"
"I have said so, monsieur."
"You are of France, dear madame?"
"So are many ladies at the Scottish court."
"And I—I——"
"Have been in sleep under the opiates of my physician, or at times delirious; but now, thanked be kind Heaven, and his judicious skill, all danger of fever is past."
"Three days and nights! Oh! madame, to how much inconvenience I must have put you."
"Say not so. To have saved your life is reward sufficient for my friend and me."
"Thanks, madame, thanks; not that I value life much, but for the sake of one I love dearly, and for the task I have to perform."
"One!—a lady, doubtless?" asked the younger, smiling.
"My mother!" replied Fawside, as his dark eyes flashed and suffused at the same moment!
"And your task is probably a pilgrimage?" continued she with the violet-blue eyes.
"Nay, lady, nay; no pilgrimage, but a behest full of danger and death, and inspired by a hate that seems at times to be a holy one—for the blood of a slain father inspires it."
"Madame," began the younger lady uneasily, "may it please your——"
"Stay!" exclaimed the other, interrupting the title by which she doubtless was about to be addressed;—and then they whispered together.
Fawside now remarked mentally that this was the third occasion on which she had been similarly interrupted.
"Here lurketh some mystery," thought he, glancing at his doublet, in the secret pocket of which his letters were concealed, "so let me be wary."
"These are exciting thoughts for one so weak and so severely wounded as you are," resumed the matron, for such she evidently was. "Know you who those outrageous assailants were?"
"Too well!—the men who slew my father under tryst, and my brave brother too, by falsity and secrecy, as 'tis said."
"And they?" faltered the lady.
"Who?"
"Your father and brother?"
"Were good men and leal."
"I doubt not that, sir. But their names?"
"Were second to none in the three Lothians."
"You are singularly wary, fair sir," said the elder lady proudly, and with an air of pique.
"And your father fell——," began the younger in a tremulous voice, as if the young man's vehemence terrified her.
"He fell so many years ago that the interest of my debt of blood and vengeance——"
"Is, I doubt not, doubled!"
"Yea, madame, quadrupled; and I shall have it rendered back duly, every drop."
"Oh! say not so," said the young lady, shuddering. "Think of all you have escaped, and how, on that fatal night, kind Heaven spared you."
"To avenge my family feud on those who would have slain me."
"And you have been in France?" said the lady in the cloth-of-gold, to change the subject.
"Yes, madame."
"And came from thence with Nicholas de Villegaignon?"
"Yes, madame."
"Ah,mon Dieu!—dear, dear France!" she exclaimed; "and you were there how long?"
"Seven happy years, lady."
"In the army, of course?"
"No."
"At the court of Henry of Valois?"
"No—with Anne de la Tour."
"The Duchess of Albany—a proud and haughty old widow."
"But a mistress kind and gentle to me. I had the honour to kiss King Henry's hand on my way home through Paris."
"Had you any letters or messages for Scotland?" asked the lady anxiously.
"Nay, I had no letters," he replied gloomily and briefly; "but tell me, pray, your names, your rank, ladies—in pity tell me!"
"Pardon us, sir," said the elder, patting his forehead kindly with her soft white hand; "in that you must hold us excused. We tell not our names lightly to a stranger—a wild fellow who fights with every armed man, and, for aught we know, makes love to every pretty woman, and who, moreover, shrouds in such provoking mystery his own name and purpose. So adieu, sir—a little time and we shall be with you again."
"Stay, madame—stay, and pardon me," he exclaimed, as they retired through the parted arras, and disappeared when its heavy fold closed behind them. Then he sank upon his pillow, exhausted even by this short interview.
"I am right," he muttered, as he lay with his eyes closed, in a species of half-stupor, or waking dream; "my name shall never pass my lips until I have the barbican gate of Fawside Tower behind me. And yet—and yet—how hard to mistrust that lovely girl with the dark-blue eyes and deep-brown hair!"
Rendered cautious by his late adventure, he tore off and defaced the armorial bearings, which, in the French fashion, he wore on the breast of his beautiful doublet, and resolved studiously to conceal alike his name, his purpose, and his letters, to say no more of whence he had come or whither he was bound, lest those two charming women, who so kindly watched and tended his sick couch, and who so sedulously concealedtheirnames and titles, might be the wives, the loves, or kindred of his enemies.
Such were his resolves. But how weak are the resolves even of the brave and wary, when in the hands of a beautiful woman!
His qualities were beauteous as his form,For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;Yet, if men moved him, he was such a stormAs oft twixt May and April we may see.A Lover's Complaint.
Aided by his youth and strength, and doubtless by his native air, which blew upon his pale face through the northern windows of his chamber, when the breeze waved the ripening corn and wafted the perfume of the heather and the yellow broom-bells across the North Loch, Florence recovered rapidly. His wounds soon healed, under the soothing influence of the medicinal balsams applied to them, and of the subtle opiates which he received from the hands of his two fair attendants, and from those of the white-bearded physician, who, with a pardonable vanity, cared not to concealhisname, but soon announced himself to be Master Peter Posset, chirurgeon to the late King James V. of blessed memory (whose deathbed he had soothed at Falkland Palace), and deacon of the chirurgeon-barbers of Edinburgh—a body who, in virtue of their office, were exempted by their charter from serving on juries, and from the duties of keeping watch and ward within the city.
Master Posset was a man of venerable aspect, with a voluminous white beard. He was measured in tone, pedantic in manner, and bled and blistered, according to the rule of the age, only when certain stars and signs which were believed to influence the human body, were in certain mansions of the firmament,—for he was a deep dabbler alike in alchemy and astrology. Yet in 1533 he had studied and practised at Lyons as hospital physician under Rabellais, and been the medical attendant of Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, when that distinguished prelate travelled to Rome concerning the divorce of Henry VIII. of England in 1534. The residence of Master Posset was at the head of a forestair in the Lawn-market, where his uncouth sign,—a dried alligator, swung from an iron bracket, exciting fear and awe in the heart of country folks who came to buy or sell, and where the armorial cognizance of his craft,—argent, a naked corpse fesswaysproper, between a hand with an eye in its palm, the thistle and crown,—informed all that it was the domicile of the Deacon of the Chirurgeon-Barbers.
By his pedantry and prosy recollections of MM. Rabellais and Jean du Bellay, this worthy leech proved an intolerable bore to his patient; but he had evidently received due instructions to be reserved; for by no effort of cunning, of tact, and by no power of entreaty, could Fawside draw from him the secret of whose house they were in, and who were these two women so highly bred, so courtly, and so beautiful who attended him like sisters, and to whom he owed his life and rapid recovery. From a French valet who also attended him he was likewise unable to extract a syllable; for M. Antoine, though an excellent musician on the viol, made signs that he was dumb.
"Master Posset, good, kind Master Posset," said Florence one day, "I have exhausted all offers of bribes such as a gentleman in my present circumstances might make, and you have nobly rejected them all. Now I cast myself upon your pity, your humanity, to tell me who and what those two kind fairies are!"
"Who they are I dare not tell;whatthey are I may," replied the cautious leech.
"Say on, then. What are they?"
"A widow and a maid."
"The widow?" asked Florence impetuously.
"Is she with the hazel eyes and chestnut hair."
"The maid?"
"Of course the other, she with the darker hair and violet-blue eyes, and who, violet-like, secludes herself from all."
"The loveliest, thank Heaven!"
"Why thank you Heaven so fervently?" asked Master Posset with surprise.
"Ask me not!—ask me not!" exclaimed Fawside, in whose heart every glance, every action, and every trivial question or remark of the younger lady had made a deep impression.
"Their rank?"
"I may not, must not tell you," interrupted the physician hastily.
"It is high?"
"Few are nobler in the land."
"Ah! Master Posset, each looks like a queen."
"Perhaps they are so,—queens of Elfen," replied Master Posset, with a smile which his heavy white moustache concealed.
"You are most discreet, Master Apothecary," sighed Florence with impatience.
"To be discreet was one of my chief orders, and I am in the mansion of those who brook no trifling; and, as the great Rabellais was wont to say, discretion to a physician was as necessary as a needle to a compass."
"All this mystery seems rather peculiar and unnecessary; but thus much I can discern, that the younger gentlewoman treats the other with such deference and respect, that her rank must be inferior, though her beauty is second to none that I have seen even at the court of France."
"You are an acute observer, sir," replied the leech, reddening, and with some alarm; "but may not such deference and respect arise from her junior years?"
"Scarcely; for I can perceive that the elder is barely thirty years of age."
"Yet she has buried a second husband and at least two children."
"I shall soon discoverherif you give me but one or two more such other details," said Florence laughing.
"You will not attempt it, I hope," said Master Posset, with growing alarm, and preparing to withdraw.
"Most worthy doctor, what is that which succeeds best in this world?"
"I know not."
"Shall I tell you?"
"Yes."
"Success. I have great faith in it."
"The very words of the great Rabelais!"
"The devil take Rabelais!" said Florence with annoyance.
"Shame on you, young sir!" said Master Posset, who considered this rank blasphemy.
"Pardon me; but by this faith in success I shall never fail," replied Fawside laughing. "I shall soon be gone from here, where I have played the owl too long, and when well enough I shall soar like the lark. Ah! good Master Posset, most worthy deacon, dost think I have spent seven years of my life between Paris and Vendome without being able to discover a pretty demoiselle's name when I had the wish to do so. She cannot conceal herself long from me, be assured of that."
"Is it gallant to talk thus of those gentlewomen whose roof shelters you, and from whom you also conceal your own name?" asked Posset angrily.
"It is not; and yet, by my faith,threesword wounds have given me more reason for caution than I ever thought would fall to my lot. But I will take patience, for time unravelleth all things."
"As I have heard the divine Jean de Bellay preach in Notre Dame at Paris many a time—yea, sir, verily time unravelleth all things."
"Yea, andavengethall things," said a soft voice on the other side of his couch; and on turning, Fawside met the bright eyes of the lady and her friend fixed upon him.
The young man was very handsome. His features were regular, but striking and marked; his hair was cut short, but was black and curly; his nose was straight, with a well-curved nostril; his chin was well defined, and fringed by a short-clipped French beard. His shirt-collar being open, displayed a muscular chest, white as the marble of Paros, but crossed by the ligatures and bandages which retained the healing balsams on his wounds. His features had all the freshness and charm of youth, but over them was spread the languor of recent suffering and loss of blood; thus his fine eyes were unnaturally bright and restless. Finding that the noble lady had overheard his heedless remarks, Fawside made efforts to rise to bow, and, reddening deeply, said,—
"Pardon me, madam, I knew not that you were so near; noryou, sweet mistress," he added in a tremulous voice, as he addressed the younger and more beautiful of those striking women, in whose charming society he had been thrown, and to whose care he had found himself confided for more than a week.
Long conscious of the power of her beauty, it was impossible for this young lady not to perceive and feel pleased with the interest she was exciting in the breast of Florence, the expression of whose dark eyes and the tone of whose voice too surely revealed it.
This morning her sweetly feminine face was more than usually lovely in an ermined triangular hood, trimmed with Isla pearls from Angus, and these were not whiter than her delicate neck and ring-laden fingers; she seldom spoke, save when addressed by her friend, and her replies were always brief.
"I heard you mention Paris and the Vendomois," said the latter to the patient, as she bent her clear hazel eyes upon him, and as Master Posset respectfully withdrew from the chamber by retiring backwards through the arras. "I know the latter well, and every bend of the beautiful Loire, with the old castle of the Comtes de la Marche and the ducal mansion of Charles of Bourbon——"
"And the great old abbey of the Holy Trinity, with its huge towers, its pointed windows, and the reliquary——"
"Where the Benedictines keep in a crystal case the Holy Tear——"
"Wept by our Blessed Saviour over the grave of Lazarus."
"Ah, I see we shall have some recollections in common," said the proud lady, smiling; "and fair Paris—how looketh it?"
"Gay and great as ever, forming, to my eyes,—in its life, bustle, and magnitude,—a wondrous contrast to our grim Scottish burghs, with their barred houses, their walls and gates, and steep streets encumbered by stacks of peat and fuel and heather."
"Mon Dieu, yes; one may caracole a horse along the Rue St. Jacques or the Rue St. Honore without meeting such uncouth obstructions as these. Is the Hotel de Ville finished yet?"
"Nearly so."
"Are those four delightful monsters of M—M—oh, I forget his name—completed on the tower of St. Jacques de la Boucharie?"
"Yes, madam, and grin over Paris all day long."
"You see, I know Paris, sir."
"Madame is doubtless only Scottish by adoption."
The lady smiled sadly, while her friend laughed aloud.
"I can see it before me now, in fancy," said she while her fine eyes dilated and sparkled, "smiling amid the plain that is covered with golden corn, and bounded by the vine-clad hills that spread from Mont l'Hery to Poissy; Paris with its busy streets of brick-fronts and stone-angles, of slated roofs and many-coloured houses—the huge masses of thecité, theville, the great Bastile, and the double towers of mighty Notre Dame! I see them all glittering in the cloudless sun of noon, as one day my little daughter shall see them too!"
"A daughter—you have a daughter, madam," said Fawside with growing interest, "and are a widow; in pity tell me who you are?"
"We two have our little secrets, fair sir," she replied, holding up a slender finger with a waggish expression.
"By the cross on my dagger, I swear to you, madam——"
"But your dagger is lost."
"I regret that deeply, for it was the present of a noble dame."
"Since we are so bent on fruitlessly questioning each other, may I askhername?" said the younger lady.
"Diana de Poictiers, the Duchess of Valentinois; it bears her three crescents engraved upon the hilt; but I left it in some knave's body on the night of the brawl. If he lives, the diamonds in the pommel may perhaps prove a salve for his sores; if he dies, a fund for his funeral—but a pest on't! my brave dagger is gone."
"Accept this from me," said the taller lady, taking from an ebony buffet that stood near, a jewelled poniard, and presenting it to Florence.
"A thousand thanks, madam—a lady's gift can never be declined; but what do I see? The cipher of James V.—of his late majesty."
"'Twas his dagger," said the lady gloomily, "and with it he threatened to stab Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, the inquisitor-general of Scotland; but I arrested his hand and took away the weapon; for the gentle King James would never refuse aught to a woman, a priest, or a child."
"And so you were known to the fair mistress of Francis I.?" asked the young lady with a slightly disdainful pout on her pretty lip.
"Nay, madam, I cannot say that she knew me; but once when she and her royal lover quarrelled, I bore a letter from her to Francis, and at a time when no other person would venture to approach him, his majesty being furious on the arrival of tidings that his fleet before Nice had been destroyed by the galleys of Andrew Doria."
"This was three years ago."
"I was loitering one day in the gallery of the Louvre, when she approached me, 'M. le Page,' said she, placing a little pink note in my hand, 'will you do a service for me?'
"'I belong to Madame la Duchesse d'Albany,' said I; 'yet I shall gladly obey you, madam.'
"'Then you shall have ten golden crowns.'
"'Ten crowns! Ah, madam,' said I, gallantly, 'I would rather have ten gifts less tangible.'
"'You shall have both, boy,' said she, laughing merrily; 'the crowns now and the kisses hereafter.'
"Her note to Francis proved successful: in less than ten minutes that princely monarch was at her feet. But with her kiss, she gave me a Parmese dagger, which she wore at her girdle, the gift of her present lover, Henry of Valois, and which you, madam, have so nobly replaced by this."
As he spoke, Florence, with the true loyal devotion of the olden time, kissed the cipher which was engraved on its hilt.
At that moment Master Posset reappeared, and whispered in the ear of the lady of the mansion.
"Excuse me, sir," said she; "there are those without who would speak with me."
And on her retiring suddenly with the physician, Florence, somewhat to his confusion, found himself for a time left alone with the younger and, as we have more than once said, more attractive of his two attendants, and in whom, though as yet nameless, we have little doubt the sagacious reader has already recognized the heroine of our story.
Late my spring-time came, but quicklyYouth's rejoicing currents run,And my inner life unfoldedLike a flower before the sun.Hopes, and aims, and aspirations,Grew within the growing boy;Life had new interpretations;Manhood brought increase of joy.Mary Howitt.
After a pause their eyes met, and the lady's were instantly averted; the cheeks of both were suffused by a blush, for they "were so young, and one so innocent," that they were incapable of feeling emotion without exhibiting this charming, but, at times, most troublesome symptom of it.
The lady spoke first.
"And so, sir, you are still resolved to preserve yourincognito—to maintain your character of the unknown knight?"
"Yes, madam," said he in the same spirit of banter, "while in the castle of an enchantress—for here, indeed, am I under a spell. And, more than all, my wounds have made me cautious to the extent, perhaps, of ingratitude."
"So you actually mistrust us!" exclaimed the lady colouring deeply, while her dark-blue eyes sparkled with mingled amusement and surprise.
"I will risk anything rather than lie longer under an imputation such as your words convey," replied the young man impetuously: "I am Florence Fawside of that ilk. And, now that you know my name, I pray you tell not my enemies of it, for I might be slaughtered here perhaps, without once more striking a gallant blow in my own defence. I have told you my name," he added, lowering his voice to an accent of tenderness, while attempting to take her hand; but she started back; "and now, dear lady, honour me with yours."
But the lady had grown deadly pale; her fine eyes surveyed the speaker with an expression of gloomy and startled interest, mingled with pity and alarm. Florence, on beholding this emotion, at once detected that he had made a mistake by the sudden revelation of his name, and a vague sense of helplessness and danger possessed his heart.
"I shall never forget the kindness, the humanity, and the tenderness with which you have treated me, lady; but why all this strange mystery—foryoucannot be unfriended and alone here, as I at present am? Why have I been concealed even from your servants? None have approached me but Master Posset the leech, and a Frenchman, Antoine, who pretends—as I suspect—to be deaf or dumb. All betokens some mystery, if not some pressing danger. Oh, that I were again strong enough to use my sword—to sit on horseback and begone!"
"To all these questions I can only reply by others. Why all these complaints—whence this alarm?"
"I must begone, lady," said Florence with a tremulous voice; for though dazzled and lured by the beauty of the speaker on one hand, he dreaded falling into some deadly snare on the other; "I long to see my aged mother—and I have letters——"
"Notfor the Regent, I hope?" said the young lady, coming forward a pace.
"Probe not my secrets, lady. I have told you my name—I am the last of an old race that never failed Scotland or her king in the hour of need or peril. I shall be faithful to you——"
"Tome!" reiterated the beautiful girl in a low voice, while blushing deeply. "I need not your faith, good sir?"
"To you and to my royal mistress; but I long to leave this—to see once more the aged mother who tended my infant years——"
"A harsh and stern woman, who, if men say true, will urge you to the committal of dreadful deeds!"
"Say not so—she was ever gentle and loving to me, and to my brave brother Willie, who now, alas! sleeps in his father's grave."
"Gentle and loving!—so are the bear or the tigress to their cubs; but their fierce nature still remains."
"Remember that she you speak of is my mother, lady," said Florence, colouring with vexation.
"Pardon me—I speak but from report."
"I long, too, to see honest old Roger of the Westmains, with his white beard and hale nut-brown visage—my tutor in the science of defence, he who taught me to handle sword and dagger, arquebuse and pike, as if I had come into the world cap-a-pie; and next there is Father John of Tranent, the kind old vicar, who was wont in the long nights of winter to take me on his knee, and tell me such wondrous tales of Arthur's round table, of William Wallace, of Alexander, and of Hector—the prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer, and how they never fail to be fulfilled—the story of Red Ettin, the giant who had three heads, and of the Gyre Carlin, the mother-witch of all our Scottish witches, till my hair stood on end with terror of men so bold and people so weird and strange. I long to see my old nurse Maud, who was wont to rock me to sleep in the old turret, and sing me the 'Flowers of the Forest,' or the sweet old song of 'Gynkertoun;' and I long once more to find myself under the moss-covered roof of the old tower, where my mother waits and, it may be, weeps for me—that grim old mansion, with its barred gate, its dark loopholes, and narrow stairs, whose steps have been hallowed by time, and by the feet of generations of my forefathers who are now gone to God, and whose bones sleep under the shadow of His cross in the green kirkyard of Tranent."
"In short," said the lady, with a very decided pout on her beautiful red lips, "you are tired of dwelling here, and long to be gone."
"Here—ah, madam, say not so! Here, here with you, could I dwell for ever; but I have beloved ties and stern duties, that demand my presence elsewhere."
The dark-haired girl smiled and drooped her eyelids, while her confusion increased; for affection soon ripened in young hearts in those old days of nature and of impulse, before well-bred folks had learned to veil alike their hatred and their love under the same calm and impenetrable exterior.
The ice was now fairly broken, but their conversation became broken too.
After a pause, during which Florence had succeeded in capturing the little hand of the unknown, and kissing it at least thrice.
"You mean still to conceal your name from me!" said he with a tone of tender reproach.
"I act under the orders of another——"
"Another!—to whom do you yield this obedience? To me you seem inferior to none on earth."
"To none, I trust, in your estimation," said she, coquettishly.
"But to esteem, to love you as I do—to have intrusted you with my name, and yet to know not yours, is unkind, unfair, and subjecting me to torture and anxiety."
"I cannot give you my name—oh, pardon me, for in this matter, be assured, I am not my own mistress," said she, in a trembling voice.
"This is most strange, and like a chapter of Amadis, or some old romance. Then how shall I name you?"
"'Urganda the unknown,'[*] or aught you please," she replied, smiling to conceal her confusion as she withdrew her hand; and, taking from one of her fair and slender fingers a ring, she dropped it on the pillow of Florence, adding, "take this trinket—it has asecretby which one day you may know me. Take it, Florence Fawside, and wear it in memory of one who will never cease to regard you with most mournful interest, but who can never even be your—friend!"
[*] A famous enchantress inAmadis de Gaul.
"In memory—as if I could forget you while life and breath remained?" exclaimed Florence, bending over the jewel (an opal) to kiss it.
When he looked up the fair donor was gone. A tremulous motion of the arras in the twilight—eve had now closed in—indicated where she had vanished, before he could arrest her by word or deed, and implore an explanation of the strange and enigmatical words which had accompanied a gift so priceless to a lover.
She was gone; and, exhausted by the excitement of the interview, by the sudden turn it had taken, and the mutual revelation of a mutual interest in each other's hearts, Florence fell back upon his pillow, and lay long with his eyes closed and his whole being vibrating with joy, while the sober shadows of evening deepened in the tapestried room around him.
He was filled with a new happiness, his soul roved far away in the land of sunny dreams, his whole pulses seemed to quicken, and, with the conviction that this beautiful unknown loved him, he suddenly discovered there was in the world something else to live for than feudal vengeance.
"To-morrow I shall see her again," thought he; "to-morrow I shall hear her voice, and see her dear dove-like eyes assure me that she loves me still; and her name—oh, she must assuredly reveal it to me then. But are this interview and this ring, her gift, no fantasies of mine? Oh, to solve this strange mystery and concealment!"
As he thought thus, and gave utterance to his ideas half audibly, a red light flashed across the tapestried walls of the room. It came from the outside, and on raising himself he saw the wavering gleam of several torches on the well-grated windows, while the voices of men, one of whom, uttered hoarsely several words of command, the clatter of horses' hoofs, and the clank of iron-shod halberds and arquebuses, rang in the adjacent street. What did all these unusual sounds mean?
A vague emotion of alarm, filled his breast; he glanced round for his sword, and kept it in his hand in case of a sudden attack; but anon the gleam of the torches faded away, and the clatter of hoofs and spurs seemed to pass up the narrow street, and to lessen in distance.
Then all became still in the mansion and around it; and a foreboding, that portended he knew not what, fell upon the heart of the listener.
I am thy friend, thy best of friends;No bud in constant heats can blow—The green fruit withers in the drought,But ripens where the waters flow.Mackay.
The morrow came with its sunshine; but the two fair faces which had been wont to shed even a more cheering influence over the couch of the wounded youth were no longer there. Hour after hour passed, yet they did not come; and Fawside recalled with anxiety the too evident sounds or signs of a rapid departure on the preceding evening.
So passed the day. Dumb Antoine alone appeared; but from his grimaces nothing could be gathered. Night came on, and with it sleep, but a sleep disturbed by more than one dream of a fair face, with dark-blue eyes and lashes black and long, deep thoughtful glances and alluring smiles.
At last there came a sound that roused the dreamer; a ray of light flashed through the parted arras from another room.
"She comes!" was the first thought of Florence. "At this hour, impossible!" was the second.
There was a light step. Dawn was just breaking; but the good folks of that age were ever afoot betimes. At last the arras was parted boldly, and Master Posset, bearing a lamp, with his long silvery beard glittering over the front of his black serge gown, which hung in wavy folds to his feet, approached, bearing on a silver salver the patient's usual breakfast of weak hippocras, with maccaroon biscuits. He felt the youth's pulse, looked anxiously at his eyes and wounds, pronounced him infinitely better, and added that he "might on this day leave his couch."
"And the ladies?" asked Florence, unable to restrain his curiosity longer.
"What ladies?" queried the discreet Master Posset.
"Those who for so many days have watched my pillow like sisters—the hazel-eyed and the blue-eyed—for, alas! I know not their names. Where were they all yesterday, and where are they to-day?"
"Gone!"
"Gone!" faintly echoed Florence;—"but whither?"
"To Stirling."
"But why to Stirling?" asked Florence impetuously.
"Because they have business with the Lord Regent."
"I will follow them. My doublet—my boots and hose. Good Master Posset, your hand. Ah! great Heaven! how my head swims, and the room runs round as if each corner was in pursuit of the other!" exclaimed Florence, who sprang from bed, and would have fallen had not the attentive leech caught him in his arms.
"We must creep before we walk; and you must walk, sir, before you can ride a horse."
"When may I sit in my saddle?"
"In three days, perhaps."
"In three days I shall be in Stirling!" said the other impetuously.
"You had better go home," said Posset bluntly. "'Tis the advice of a sincere friend, who would not have you ride to Stirling on a bootless errand."
"Why bootless, Master Possett, when I tell you that I love, dearly love, one of those who have so abruptly forsaken me."
Master Posset's face, at least so much of it as his voluminous beard and moustache permitted one to see, underwent various expressions at this sudden announcement—-astonishment and perplexity, alarm, and then merriment.
"Fair sir," said he, laughing and shrugging his shoulders (a habit he had probably acquired from M. Rabelais), "you forget yourself."
"Wherefore, forsooth? Are they so high in rank above a landed baron?"
"In Scotland few are higher."
"Do not say these discouraging things, but tell me their names; for the hundredth time I implore you."
"I dare not."
"If I used threats, what would you say?"
"As my friend Rabelais said to a French knight at Lyons, when similarly threatened."
"And what said your devil of a Rabelais?"
"That threats ill became a sick man, when used to his friend; and worse still from one of your junior years, to a man in whose beard so few black hairs can be reckoned as in mine."
"Most true—forgive me; but when once free of this house, I shall soon solve the mystery. A woman so lovely as the younger lady must be well known, and must have many lovers."
"Doubtless."
"Thou art a most discreet apothecary, Master Posset—yea, a most wonderful apothecary!" said Fawside, gnawing the end of his moustache, and continuing to attire himself during this conversation; "and you really think she hasmany?"
"Yes; yet from her strength of character, I am assured she is a woman who in her lifetime will have butonelove."
"One; come, that is encouraging!"
"Though little more than a girl in years, she is a woman in heart, in soul, and in mind. Do you understand me?"
"Yes—truss me those ribbons—thanks, Master Posset—I understand you, but only so far that if I am not the love referred to, I shall pass my sword through the body of the other who may occupy that position. Her faintest smile is worth a hundred golden crowns!"
"A sentiment worthy of Rabelais; but as your friend, Florence Fawside—one your senior in life and experience by many years—cease to speak or think of her thus."
"Why, if I love her?" demanded the young man, with a mixture of sadness and that impetuosity which formed one of the chief elements of his character.
"Because there are (as I call Heaven to witness!) barriers between you——"
"Grace me guide! mean you to say she is married?"
"No; but still there are barriers insuperable to the success of such a love."
"To the brave?" asked Florence proudly.
"Yea, to the bravest."
"God alone knoweth what you all mean by this cruel enigma; but in three days I will set forth to solve it—to solve it or to die!"
The old doctor smiled at the young man's energy, and kindly offered the assistance of his arm to enable him to walk about the chamber, after obtaining from him his parole of honour, that without permission duly accorded he would not attempt to leave it or penetrate into other parts of the mansion.
The evening of the third day had faded into night, and night was passing into morning, when Master Posset appeared and said,—"Come, sir, horses are in waiting; we leave this immediately."
"In the dark?" asked Florence, with surprise.
"'Tis within an hour of dawn."
"A fresh mystery!—for whence—Stirling?"——"No."
"Whither then?"
"Fawside Tower—have you no ties there?"
"My mother—yes, my mother," said Florence, with a gush of tenderness in his heart, as he hastily dressed; "but once to embrace her, and then for Stirling—ho!"
"You may spare yourself the toil of such a journey; for I assure you, on the word of an honest man, that in less than three days perhaps those you seek will be again in Edinburgh."
To this the sole reply of Florence, was to kiss the opal ring, the secret of which he had as yet failed to discover.
"You must permit me to muffle your eyes."
"Wherefore, Master Posset? this precaution savours of mistrust, and becomes an insult."
"Laird of Fawside, I insist upon it; and she whose orders we must both obey also insists upon it."
"She—who?"
"The giver of the opal ring," whispered the doctor.
"Lead on—I obey," replied the young man, suddenly reduced to docility; "all things must end—and so this mystery."
Posset tied a handkerchief over the eyes of Florence, and taking his hand led him from the chamber, wherein he had suffered so much, and which he had now occupied for more than thirteen or fourteen days. He became conscious of the change of atmosphere as they proceeded from a corridor down a cold, stone staircase, and from thence to a street, evidently one of those steep, but paved closes of the ancient city, as they continued to ascend for some little distance. Then an iron gate in an archway (to judge by the echo) was opened and shut; then they walked about a hundred yards further, before Posset removed the muffling and permitted Fawside to gaze around him. On one side towered the lofty and fantastic mansions of the Landmarket[*] rising on arcades of oak and stone. Near him the quaint church of St. Giles reared its many-carved pinnacles and beautiful spire. Within its lofty aisles scarcely a taper was twinkling now; for already the careless prebendaries were finding other uses for their money than spending it in wax for its forty altars. Even the great brazen shrine in the chancel was dark; the money gifted so vainly by the pious and valiant men of old, to light God's altar until the day of doom—for so they phrased it—had been pounced upon by Lollard bailies for other purposes, and thirteen years later were to behold the shrine itself fall under the axe and hammer of the iconoclast, with the expulsion of the faith and its priesthood.
[*] An abbreviation ofInland-market.
The wide and lofty thoroughfare was dark. Here and there an occasional ray shot from some of the grated windows, pouring a stream of light athwart the obscurity, which the stacks of peat, heather, and timber, already referred to as standing before almost every door, according to common use and wont, made more confusing to a wayfarer. Fawside recognized the spot where Kilmaurs and his pursuers on that eventful night first overtook him, where he received his first wound, and where he made his first resolute stand against them, before he was beaten further up the street.
On a signal from Master Posset, a groom leading two saddled horses came from under the stone arcade of a lofty mansion, then occupied by Robert Logan of Coatfield, who in 1520 was provost of Edinburgh, and was the first official of that rank who had halberds carried before him. This groom, whom Fawside suspected to be no other than the Frenchman Antoine, lifted his bonnet respectfully and withdrew.
"Fawside, the white or grey nag is yours," said the physician; "mount, and let us be gone, for the morning draws on apace, and my time is precious."
Almost trembling with eagerness, if not with weakness, Florence leaped into the saddle of the white horse, which was a beautiful animal, as he could easily perceive by the amplitude of its mane and tail, by the action of its proud head and slender fore-legs; and as he vaulted to his seat, without even using a stirrup, he felt all his wounds twinge, as if they would burst forth anew, for they were merely skinned over.
In ten minutes more they had left the city, after tossing a gratuity (a fewhardies, i.e.liards of Guienne, worth three halfpence each in Scotland, where they were then current) to the warder at the Watergate, and were galloping by the eastern road towards the tower of Fawside. The stars were still shining brightly, and their light was reflected in the glassy bosom of the estuary that opened on the north and east, beyond a vast extent of desert beach and open moor. The steep and ancient bridge of Musselburgh was soon reached, and then Master Posset drew his bridle, saying,—
"Here, Fawside, I must bid you farewell."
"Farewell! you who have treated me so kindly, so generously—farewell, when we are within three Scots miles of my mother's hearth! Nay, nay, good Master Posset, this can never be."
"It must—I repeat. Entreaties and invitations are alike needless. I obey but the instructions of those I serve, and they are dames who brook no trifling."
"Bethink you, dear sir, of the danger of being abroad at this early and untimeous hour, when broken men, Egyptians and all manner of thieves, beset every highway and hover in every thicket."
The physician smiled, and, opening the breast of his furred cassock, showed beneath it a fine shirt of mail, which was flexible, and fitted him closely as a kid glove. "Ihavethought cf all that," said he, "and I have, moreover, my dagger and a pair of wheel-lock petronels at my saddle-bow. So now, adieu."
"But my fees to you, and this horse, Master Posset——"
"You will find it a beautiful grey, though he looks milky-white under the stars."
"To whom am I to return it?"
"To none—it is a free gift to you."
"To me—a gift," said Florence with astonishment; "from whom?"
"The lady——"
"Who—which lady?"
"The taller, with the hazel eyes and blonde hair; and you must accept; for 'twere ungallant to refuse."
"All this but bewilders and perplexes me the more. Would it had been the gift of the other! Ah, Master Posset, I have but one dread."
"Come," said the physician, laughing, "that is fortunate—lovers usually have many."
"One ever present dread, common to every lover—that she does not love me in return, but may be playing with my affection to prove the power of her own charms."
"Take courage—you have seen no rival."
"No; yet she must have many admirers of her beauty, and more aspirants to her hand and wealth; and one of these might soon become a formidable rival."
"Then you have your sword."
"In such a case a poor resource."
"But one that never fails," responded the warlike apothecary, turning his horse; and, after reiterating their adieux, they separated, and in a short space Florence Fawside found himself cantering up the steep crowned by the church of St. Michael, and thence by a narrow bridle-road that led up the hill-side to his mother's tower.
Fourteen nights had elapsed since last we saw her sitting lonely by her hearth; and now she had long since learned to weep for her only son as for one who was numbered with the dead.
Hail, land of spearmen! seed of those who scorn'dTo stoop the proud crest to imperial Rome!Hail! dearest half of Albion sea-wall'd!Hail! state unconquer'd by the fire of war,—Red war that twenty ages round thee blazed!Albania.
Some thoughts such as these which inspired this now forgotten Scottish bard filled the swelling heart of Florence Fawside, as he urged his horse up the winding way which led to his paternal tower. The morning sun had now risen brightly above the long pastoral ridges of the Lammermuir, and he could see the widening Forth, with all its rocky isles, and the long sweep of sandy beach which borders the beautiful bay that lies between the mouth of the Esk and the green links of Gulane, whereon, in those days, there stood an ancient church of St. Andrew, which William the Lion gifted unto the monks of Dryburgh. The blue estuary was studded by merchant barks and fisher craft, with their square and brown lug-sails, beating up against the ebb tide and a gentle breeze from the west.
The sky was of a light azure tint, flecked by floating masses of snowy cloud, which, on their eastern and lower edges, were tinged with burning gold.
The hottest days of the summer were now gone, the pastures had become somewhat parched, and the shrivelled foliage that rustled in the woods of Carberry seemed athirst for the rains of autumn. Amid the coppice, the corn-craik and the cushat dove sent up their peculiar notes. The corn-fields were turning from pale green to a golden brown; and, as the morning breeze passed over it, the bearded grain swayed heavily to and fro, like ripples on the bosom of a yellow lake. The white smoke curled from the green cottage roofs of moss and thatch; the blue-bonneted peasants were at work in the sunny fields—the women with their snooded hair, or their white Flemish curchies (that came into fashion when James II. espoused Mary the Rose of Gueldres), were milking the cattle, grinding their hand-mills, or busy about their little garden-plots; and to Florence all seemed to illustrate his country, and speak to his heart with that love ofhome, whichthen, even more than now, was the purest passion of the Scottish people, and which, in all their wanderings, they never forget, however distant the land in which their lot in life may be cast.
Florence felt all this as he spurred up the green braeside, and heard the people in his mother-tongue cry, "God him speed;" for though they knew him not, they saw that he was a handsome youth, a stranger, nobly mounted and bravely apparelled.
Every step he took brought some old recollection to his heart. The gurgling brooks in which he had fished and the leafy thickets in which he had bird-nested, the old trees up which he had clambered, were before him now, and the days of his boyhood, the familiar voices and faces of his slaughtered father and brother, came vividly to memory. The song of a farmer who was driving his team of horses to the field, the lowing of the cattle, the barking of the shepherds' collies, the perfume of the broom and the harebell on the upland slope, all spoke of country and of home. But with this emotion others mingled.
With all the genuine rapture of a boyish lover, he kissed again and again his opal ring, the gift of that beautiful unknown, who had filled his heart with a secret joy and given life a new impulse.
"What can its secret be? Oh! to unravel all this mystery!" he exclaimed to himself a hundred times; but the ring baffled all his scrutiny and ingenuity.
He had now four projects to put in force immediately after his return home.
First, to deliver his letter to the Regent, Earl of Arran.
Second, to deliver the other missive of Henry of Valois to the queen-mother, Mary of Lorraine.
Third, to discover his unknown mistress.
Fourth, to avenge his father's feud and fall by ridding the world of Claude Hamilton of Preston, the Lord Kilmaurs, and a few others; after which he would settle soberly down in his mother's house, and, for a time, lead the quiet life of a country gentleman—at least, such a life as they led in those days, when their swords were never from their sides.
And now, as he surmounted the long ridge of Fawside, the landscape opened further to the south and eastward, and he saw the old square keep of Elphinstone, in which George Wishart had been confined in the preceding year by Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, and the wall of which had rent with a mighty sound—rent from battlement to basement, as we may yet see it, at the moment of his martyrdom before the castle of St. Andrews.
The heart of Florence beat six pulses in a second as he drew nearer home, and saw the huge column of smoke ascending lazily from the square chimney of the hall, and the black crows and white pigeons fraternizing together on the stone ridge of the copehouse; and now he passed old Roger's thatched domicile, the Westmains or Grange, from whence the inmates of the castle were supplied with farm produce. It was all under fine cultivation save one wild spot named the Deilsrig, which was set aside, or left totally unused, for the propitiation of evil spirits; and none in the neigbourhood doubted that cattle which strayed or grazed thereon were elf-shot by the evil one, for they were frequently found dead within the turf boundary of this infernal spot, as their huge bones whitening among the dog-grass remained to attest; and there, too, lay the unblessed graves of certain Egyptians, who, despite the protections granted by James IV to "Anthony Gavino, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt," had been judicially drowned in the river Esk by Earl Bothwell, the sheriff of Haddington.
Florence glanced at the place, which had so many terrors for him as a child, and dashed up to the arched gate of the tower, where his emotion was such, that it was not until after three attempts he could sound the copper horn which hung by a chain to the wall; for such was the fashion then, when door-bells and brass knockers, like gas and steam and electricity, were still in the womb of time.
In a minute more he had sprung from his horse and rushed up the stair to the hall, where his mother, with a cry of mingled fear and joy, clasped him to her breast, and wept like a true woman rather than the stern and Spartan dame she usually seemed. Then old Roger of the Westmains, in the exuberance of his joy, flung his bonnet in the fire and danced about the hall table; and the grey-haired nurse, Maud, contended with the vicar, Mass John of Tranent, for the next and longest embrace of the returned one; for all welcomed him back to his home as one reprieved from the dead; for surmise had been exhausted, and all ingenuity had failed to afford a clue to his mysterious disappearance after landing at Leith from the galley of M. de Villegaignon.
After the first transports of her joy had subsided—and, indeed, they subsided soon, for her natural sternness of manner and ferocity of purpose soon resumed their sway in her angry and widowed heart, his mother kissed him thrice upon the forehead, held him at arm's length from her breast, surveying his features with an expression of mingled love, tenderness, anxiety, and anger.
"Thou hast been ill, Florence; thy cheeks are pale, wan, and hollow. Thou hast been suffering, my son—yea, suffering deeply. How came this about? Say!—thou hast no secrets from thine old mother!"
"Ask these wounds, dear mother; they have kept me for fourteen days a-bed and absent from you," he replied, as he tore open his crimson doublet, and shirt, and displayed on his bosom the sword-thrust, which was scarcely skinned over.
"Kyrie eleison!" muttered the white-haired vicar, lifting up his thin hands and hollow eyes.
Roger of the Westmains uttered a shout of rage and grasped his dagger.
"My bairn—my braw, bonnie bairn!" exclaimed the old nurse with tender commiseration.
"Florence," said his mother through her clenched teeth, "whose sword did this?"
"Can you ask me, mother?"
"His!—would you say?" she asked in a voice like a shriek, while pointing with her lean white hand to Preston Tower, the walls of which above the level landscape shone redly in the morning sun.
"Nay, not his, but the swords of his followers."
"Of Symon Brodie and Mungo Tennant?"
"Even so; I heard their names in themêlée."
"Accursed be the brood; for their swords were reddest and readiest in the fray in which your father fell!"
"They and others dogged me close on the night I landed. I fought long and bravely——"
"My own son!—my dear dead husband's only son!"
"But what could one sword avail against twenty others? Struck down at last, I would have been hewn to pieces but for the stout arm of a friendly burgher and the kindness of——of——those who salved my wounds and tended me—yea, mother, kindly and tenderly as you would have done," he added, while the colour deepened in his face, and he sank wearily into the chair in which his slain father had last sat, and which since that day none had dared to occupy, as his widow would have deemed it a sacrilege.
It required but the description of this last outrage to rouse the blood of Dame Alison and of all her domestics to boiling heat.
"Be calm, dear mother, be calm," said Florence, pressing her trembling hand to his heart. "In three days I shall be well enough to handle my sword, and then I shall scheme out vengeance for all I have endured."
"Thou hearest him, vicar?" exclaimed Lady Alison, striking her hands together, while her dark eyes shot fire. "The spirit of my buried husband lives again in his boy!"
"Lord make us thankfu' therefor!" muttered the listening servants, who shared every sentiment of their mistress.
"Be wary, madam!" said the tall thin priest. "Whence still this mad craving for revenge?"
"In the presence of this poor lamb, who has so narrowly escaped a dreadful death, weak, pale, and wounded, dost thou ask me this, thou very shaveling?" she exclaimed with scornful energy. "My husband's feud and fall!—Oh, woe is me!—and my winsome Willie's death——"
"Demand a fearful reprisal!" said Florence, with a vehemence increased by his mother's presence and example; "and fearful it shall be!"
"Vengeance," replied the priest firmly, but meekly, "is ever the offspring of the weakest and least tutored mind."
"Father John!" exclaimed the pale widow.
"I say so with all deference, my son, and with all respect for our good lady your mother. In her thirst for vengeance, like the last stake of a gamester, she will risk you, her only son—risk you by invading the province of God; for to Him alone belongeth vengeance. Remember the holy words, Dame Alison: 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay it.'"
"So priests must preach," said Florence; "but, under favour, father, laymen find forgiveness hard to practise."
"So hard," hissed Lady Alison through her sharp and firm-set teeth, "that for each drop of Preston's blood I would give a rood of land—yea, for every drop a yellow rig of corn! 'Twas but three weeks ago, come the feast of Bartholomew, he followed a thief with a sleuth-hound of Gueldreland within the bounds of our barony."
"He dared?" said Florence, sharing all his mother's anger.
"He or some of his people; and without asking our license, took and hanged him on a thorn-tree at the Bucklea. Did not his swine root holes in the corn on our grange, destroying ten rigs of grain and more, and he scornfully refused our demands to make the damage good? Yet he burned the byres of our kinsman Roger for taking a deer in his wood at Bankton, though any man may hunt in any forest—even a royal one—so far as he may fling his bugle-horn before him; yet he broke Roger's bow and arrows, took away his arquebuse, and hanged all his dogs. And wherefore? Because he was a Fawside and a kinsman of thine. And now they would have slain thee, my son—thee, in whom my joy, my hope, my future all are centred!" she added, embracing Florence, the expression of whose handsome face had completely changed to gloom and anger under her influence. "But while fish swim in yonder Firth, and mussels grow on its rocks, our hatred shall live!"
The vicar, a priest of benign and venerable aspect, smiled sadly, and shook his white head with an air of deprecation.
"I fear me, madam," said he, "that the fish and the mussels are races that bid fair to outlive alike the Fawsides of that Ilk and the Hamiltons of Preston, their folly, feuds, and wickedness."
"On Rood-day in harvest, a year past, as I sat here alone by my spinning-wheel, my husband's armour clattered where it hangs on yonder wall,—and wot yewhy? Preston was riding over the hill, and near our gate. Preston! and alone! Could I have got the old falcon ready on the bartizan, he had been shot like a hoodiecrow, as surely as the breath of heaven was in his nostrils!"
"Fie! madam—fie! I cannot listen to language such as this!" said the vicar, erecting his tall figure and preparing to retire.
"The wrongs I have endured in this world, yea, and the sorrows, too——"
"Should teach you to look for comfort in that which is to come," said the priest, with asperity.
"Not till I have had vengeance swift, sure, and deep on the house of Preston. No, friar! preach as you may, Alison Kennedy will never rest in the grave where her murdered husband lies, but with the assurance that Claude Hamilton lies mangled in his shroud—mangled by the sword of her son Florence! And he may slay him in open war; for so surely as the souls and bodies of men are governed by stars and climates, we shall have war with the English ere the autumn leaves are off the trees, and so surely shall that traitor Hamilton join them, for he was one of those whom Henry took at Solway, and feasted in London, to suit his own nefarious ends—like Cassilis, Lennox, and Glencairn."
Roger of the Westmains heard with grim satisfaction all this outpouring of bitterness of spirit; for he shared to the full her animosity to the unlucky laird of Preston. To Roger, old Lady Alison was the greatest potentate on earth. Had the Regent Arran, or Mary of Lorraine, commanded him to ride with his single spear against a brigade of English, he might have hesitated; but had Lady Alison desired him to leap off Salisbury Craigs, he would probably have done so, without the consideration of a moment, and had his old body dashed to pieces at the foot thereof.
In joy for her son's return, the lady of the tower ordered the bailie to distribute drink-silver (as it was then termed) to all her servants and followers; largesses to the town piper and drummer of Musselburgh, and to the poor gaberlunzies who sat on the kirk styles of Tranent and St. Michael. She then directed all the harness and warlike weapons to be thoroughly examined, preparatory to commencing hostilities against the grand enemy, who, as we shall shortly see, was in his tower of Preston, thinking of other things than the mischief she was brewing against him.