The King would answer, Sir, returned Sir James, haughtily, but with recovered command over himself, that it is for him to judge whom his subjects shall brook as their queen. Moreover, he added, in a different and more conciliatory voice, Scotsmen must be proud indeed who disdain the late Kings niece, the great-granddaughter of King Edward III., and as noble and queenly a demoiselle as ever was born in a palace.
She is so very fair, then? said Lilies, who was of course on the side of true love. You have seen her, gentle Sir? Oh, tell us what are her beauties?
Fair damsel, said Sir James, in a much more gentle tone, you forget that I am only a poor prisoner, who have only now and then viewed the lady Joan Beaufort with distant reverence, as destined to be my queen. All I can tell is, that her walk and bearing mark her out for a throne.
And oh! cried Malcolm, is it not true that the King hath composed songs and poems in her honour?
Pah! muttered Patrick; as though the King would be no better than a wandering minstrel rhymester!
Or than King David! dryly said Sir James.
It is true, then, Sir, exclaimed Lilias. He doth verily add minstrelsy to his other graces? Know you the lines, Sir? Can you sing them to us? Oh, I pray you.
Nay, fair maid, returned Sir James, methinks I might but add to the scorn wherewith Sir Patrick is but too much inclined to regard the captive King.
A captive, a captiveay, minstrelsy is the right solace for a captive, said Patrick; at least, so they say and sing. Our king will have better work when he gains his freedom. Only there will come before me a subtilty I once saw in jelly and blanc-mange, at a banquet in France, where a lion fell in love with a hunters daughter, and let her, for loves sake, draw his teeth and clip his claws, whereupon he found himself made a sport for her fathers hounds.
I promise you, Sir Patrick, replied the guest, that the Lady Joan is more hike to send her Lion forth from the hunters toils, with claws and teeth fresh-whetted by the desire of honour.
But the laythe hay, Sir, entreated Lilias; who knows that it may not win Patrick to be the Lady Joans devoted servant? Malcolm, your harp!
Malcolm had already gone in quest of the harp he loved all the better for the discouragement thrown on his gentle tastes.
The knight leant back, with a pensive look softening his features as he said, after a little consideration, Then, fair lady, I will sing you the song made by King James, when he had first seen the fair mistress of his heart, on the slopes of Windsor, looking from his chamber window. He feigns her to be a nightingale.
And what is that, Sir? demanded Lilias. I have heard the word in romances, and deemed it a kind of angel that sings by night.
It is a bird, sister, replied Malcolm; Philomel, that pierces her breast with a thorn, and sings sweetly even to her death.
Thats mere minstrel leasing, Malcolm, said Patrick. I have both seen and heard the bird in FranceRossignol, as we call it there; and were I a lady, I should deem it small compliment to be likened to a little russet-backed, homely fowl such as that.
While I, replied the prisoner, feel so much with your fair sister, that nightingales are a sort of angels that sing by night, that it pains me, when I think of winning my freedom, to remember that I shall never again hear their songs answering one another through the forest of Windsor.
Patrick shrugged his shoulders, but Lilias was so anxious to hear the lay, that she entreated him to be silent; and Sir James, with a manly mellow voice, with an exceedingly sweet strain in it, and a skill, both of modulation and finger, such as showed admirable taste and instruction, poured forth that beautiful song of the nightingale at Windsor, which commences King Jamess story of his love, in his poem of the Kings Quhair.
There was an eager pressing round to hear, and not only were Lilias and Malcolm, but old Sir David himself, much affected by the strain, which the latter said put him in mind of the days of King Robert III., which, sad as they were, now seemed like good old times, so much worse was the present state of affairs. Sir James, however, seemed anxious to prevent discussion of the verses he had sung, and applied to Malcolm to give a specimen of his powers: and thus, with music, ballad, and lay, the evening passed away, till the parting cup was sent round, and the Tutor of Glenuskie and Malcolm marshalled their guest to the apartment where he was to sleep, in a wainscoted box bedstead, and his two attendant squires, a great iron-gray Scot and a rosy honest-faced Englishman, on pallets on the floor.
In the morning he went on his journey, but not without an invitation to rest there again on his way back, whether with or without his ransom. He promised to come, saying that he should gladly bear to the King the last advices from one so honoured as the Tutor of Glenuskie; and, on their sides, Malcolm and Sir David resolved to do their best to have some gold pieces to contribute, rather than so proper a knight should fail in raising his ransom; but gold was never plenty, and Patrick needed all that his uncle could supply, to bear him to those wars in France, where he looked for renown and fortune.
For these were, as may have been gathered, those evil days when James I. of Scotland was still a captive to England, and when the House of Albany exercised its cruel misrule upon Scotland; delaying to ransom the King, lest they should bring home a master.
Old Robert of Albany had been King Stork, his son Murdoch was King Log; and the misery was infinitely increased by the violence and lawlessness of Murdochs sons. King Robert II. had left Scotland the fearful legacy of, as Froissart says, eleven sons who loved arms. Of these, Robert III. was the eldest, the Duke of Albany the second. These were both dead, and were represented, the one by the captive young King James, the other by the Regent, Duke Murdoch of Albany, and his brother John, Earl of Buchan, now about to head a Scottish force, among whom Patrick Drummond intended to sail, to assist the French.
Others of the eleven, Earls of Athol, Menteith, &c., survived; but the youngest of the brotherhood, by name Malcolm, who had married the heiress of Glenuskie, had been killed at Homildon Hill, when he had solemnly charged his Stewart nephews and brothers to leave his two orphan children to the sole charge of their mothers cousin, Sir David Drummond, a good old man, who had been the best supporter and confidant of poor Robert III. in his unhappy reign, and in embassies to France had lost much of the rugged barbarism to which Scotland had retrograded during the wars with England.
CHAPTER II: THE RESCUE OF COLDINGHAM
It was a lonely tract of road, marked only by the bare space trodden by feet of man and horse, and yet, in truth, the highway between Berwick and Edinburgh, which descended from a heathery moorland into a somewhat spacious valley, with copsewood clothing one side, in the midst of which rose a high mound or knoll, probably once the site of a camp, for it still bore lines of circumvallation, although it was entirely deserted, except by the wandering shepherds of the neighbourhood, or occasionally by outlaws, who found an admirable ambush in the rear.
The spring had hung the hazels with tassels, bedecked the willows with golden downy tufts, and opened the primroses and celandines beneath them, when the solitary dale was disturbed by the hasty clatter of horses feet, and hard, heavy breathing as of those who had galloped headlong beyond their strength. Here, however, the foremost of the party, an old esquire, who grasped the bridle-rein of youth by his side, drew up his own horse, and that which he was dragging on with him, saying
The spring had hung the hazels with tassels, bedecked the willows with golden downy tufts, and opened the primroses and celandines beneath them, when the solitary dale was disturbed by the hasty clatter of horses feet, and hard, heavy breathing as of those who had galloped headlong beyond their strength. Here, however, the foremost of the party, an old esquire, who grasped the bridle-rein of youth by his side, drew up his own horse, and that which he was dragging on with him, saying
We may breathe here a moment; there is shelter in the wood. And you, Rab, get ye up to the top of Jills Knowe, and keep a good look-out.
Let me go back, you false villain! sobbed the boy, with the first use of his recovered breath.
Do not be so daft, Lord Malcolm, replied the Squire, retaining his hold on the boys bridle; what, rin your head into the wolfs mouth again, when weve barely brought you off haill and sain?
Haill and sain? Dastard and forlorn, cried Malcolm, with passionate weeping. II to flee and leave my sistermy uncle! Oh, where are they? Halbert, let me go; Ill never pardon thee.
Hoot, my lord! would I let you gang, when the Tutor spak to me as plain as I hear you now? Take off Lord Malcolm, says he; save him, and you save the rest. See him safe to the Earl of Mar. Those were his words, my lord; and if you wilna heed them, I will.
What, and leave my sister to the reivers? Oh, what may not they be doing to her? Let us go back and fall on them, Halbert; better die saving her than know her in Walter Stewarts hands. Then were I the wretched craven he calls me.
Look you, Lord Malcolm, said Halbert, laying his finger on his nose, with a knowing expression, my young lady is safe from harm so long as you are out of the Master of Albanys reach. Had you come by a canny thrust in the fray, as no doubt was his purpose, or were you in his hands to be mewed in a convent, then were your sister worth the wedding; but the Master will never wed her while you live and have friends to back you, and his father, the Regent, will see she has no ill-usage. Youll do best for yourself and her too, as well as Sir David, if you make for Dunbar, and call ben your uncles of Athole and Strathern.How now, Rab? are the loons making this way?
Na, na! said Rab, descending; tis from the other gate; tis a knight in blue damasked steel: he, methinks, that harboured in our castle some weeks syne.
Hm! said Halbert, considering; he looked like a trusty cheild: maybe hed guide my lord here to a wiser wit, and a good lance on the way to Dunbar is not to be scorned.
In fact, there would have been no time for one party to conceal themselves from the other; for, hidden by the copsewood, and unheeded by the watchers who were gazing in the opposite direction, Sir James Stewart and his two attendants suddenly came round the foot of Jills Knowe upon the fugitives, who were profiting by the interval to loosen the girths of their horses, and water them at the pool under the thicket, whilst Halbert in vain tried to pacify and reason with the young master, who had thrown himself on the grass in an agony of grief and despair. Sir James, after the first momentary start, recognized the party in an instant, and at once leapt from his horse, exclaiming
How now, my bonnie manmy kind hostwhat is it? what makes this grief?
Do not speak to me, Sir, muttered the unhappy boy. They have been reftreft from me, and I have done nothing for them. Walter of Albany has them, and I am here.
And he gave way to another paroxysm of grief, while Halbert explained to Sir James Stewart that when Sir Patrick Drummond had gone to embark for France, with the army led to the aid of Charles VI. by the Earl of Buchan, his father and cousins, with a large escort, had accompanied him to Eyemouth; whence, after taking leave of him, they had set out to spend Passion-tide and Easter at Coldingham Abbey, after the frequent fashion of the devoutly inclined among the Scottish nobility, in whose castles there was often little commodity for religious observances. Short, however, as was the distance, they had in the midst of it been suddenly assailed by a band of armed men, among whom might easily be recognized the giant form of young Walter Stewart, the Master of Albany, the Regent Duke Murdochs eldest son, who was well known for his lawless excesses and violence. His fathers silky sayings, and his own ruder speeches, had long made it known to the House of Glenuskie that the family policy was to cajole or to drive the sickly heir into a convent, and, rendering Lilias the possessor of the broad lands inherited from both parents, unite her and them to the Albany family.
The almost barbarous fierceness and wild licentiousness of Walter would have made the arrangement abhorrent to Lilias, even had not love passages already passed between her and her cousin, Patrick Drummond, and Sir David had hitherto protected her by keeping Malcolm in the secular life; but Walter, it seemed, had grown impatient, and had made this treacherous attack, evidently hoping to rid himself of the brother, and secure the sister. No sooner had the Tutor of Glenuskie perceived that his own party were overmatched, than he had bidden his faithful squire to secure the bairnsif not both, at least the boy; and Halbert, perceiving that Lilias had already been pounced upon by Sir Walter himself and several more, seized the bridle of the bewildered Malcolm, who was still trying to draw his sword, and had absolutely swept him away from the scene of action before he had well realized what was passing; and now that the poor lad understood the whole, his horror, grief, and shame were unspeakable.
Before Sir James had done more than hear the outline of Halberts tale, however, the watchers on the mound gave the signal that the reivers were coming that waya matter hitherto doubtful, since no one could guess whether Walter Stewart would make for Edinburgh or for Doune. With the utmost agility Sir James sprang up the side of the mound, reconnoitred, and returned again just as Halbert was trying to stir his master from the ground, and Malcolm answering sullenly that he would not movehe would be taken and die with the rest.
You may save them instead, if you will attend to me, said Sir James; and at his words the boy suddenly started up with a look of hope.
How many fell upon you? demanded Sir James.
Full a hundred lances, replied Halbert (and a lance meant at least three men). It wad be a fules wark to withstand them. Best bide fast in the covert, for our horses are sair forfaughten.
If there are now more than twenty lances, I am greatly mistaken, returned Sir James. They must have broken up after striking their blow, or have sent to secure Glenuskie; and we, falling on them from this thicket
I see, I see, cried Halbert. Back, ye loons; back among the hazels. Hold every one his horse ready to mount.
With your favour, Sir Squire, I say, bind each man his horse to a tree. The skene and broadsword, which I see you all wear, will be ten times as effective on foot.
Do as the knight bids, said Malcolm, starting forth with colour on his cheek, light in his eye, that made him another being. In him there is help.
Ay, ay, Lord Malcolm, muttered Halbert; you need not tell me that: I know my duty better than not to do the bidding of a belted knight, and pretty man too of his inches.
The two attendants of Sir James were meantime apparently uttering some remonstrance, to which he lightly replied, Tut, Nigel; it will do thine heart good to hew down a minion of Albany. What were I worth could I not strike a blow against so foul a wrong to my own orphan kindred? Brewster, Ill answer it to thy master. These are his foes, as well as those of all honest men. Ha! thou art as glad to be at them as I myself.