The Captain of the Guard

"Your name?"

"Sir Patrick Gray, younger of that ilk."

"And this mission?" said the other hastily.

"Concerns not you, messire, but the marriage of the Princess Mary d'Egmont," replied Gray, moving his horse away.

"To your young king? – good. You have, then, a letter for – for the duke?" said the other, following him.

"Yes."

"Permit me to see it. Excuse me, messire, but I have both reason and authority for my request."

Gray, who thought he had been rather unwise in stating the object of his mission to a total stranger, reluctantly opened a pocket in his saddlelap, and drew forth a large square letter, which was covered with a silken wrapper, tied with white ribbon crosswise, and sealed with yellow wax, the colour used by the kings of Scotland and France.

"Messire, you will perceive that it is correctly addressed," said Sir Patrick; "and it is my best credential for being reserved."

"Exactly; I thank you," replied the other, taking the letter in his gauntletted hand, and deliberately tearing it open.

"Messire!" exclaimed Gray, furiously, as he drew his sword; "are you mad, or weary of life, that you dare to open a letter – "

"For Arnold d'Egmont, count of Zutphen, and duke of Gueldres, you would say?"

"Yes, surrender it, messire, or by every saint in heaven, I shall kill you where you stand!"

"Beware – beware!" exclaimed some of the attendants, lowering their lances.

"And why beware?" demanded the sturdy Scot.

"Because I am Arnold himself," replied the old duke, with a hearty laugh, in which the three knights of the Golden Fleece joined.

"You, monseigneur?" said Gray, sinking the point of his sword, and reining back his horse.

"Behold my banner and escort, with Ravenstein, Berg, and Nassau, my three most faithful friends."

"Pardon me," said Gray, sheathing his sword, and reining back his horse.

"I have nothing to pardon, Sir Patrick Gray," replied the duke; "we shall all ride forward together, but this letter, which you have travelled so far to lay before me, is written in the young king's name, and announces, that so soon as affairs are peaceful in his kingdom, his lord chancellor, accompanied by John, bishop of Dunkeld, and Messire Nicholas Otterbourne, official of Lothian, with a suitable train, will visit our court at Gueldres, to receive the Princess Mary, and conduct her to her new home. Poor child! she is very young and tender, to be trusted among your unruly mountaineers. The letter shall be laid before the duchess and council. Meantime, messire, I thank you for the care with which you have brought hither the missive of your king, and the valour with which you were ready to defend it, at all hazards, even against four-and-twenty mounted men."

Sir Patrick bowed low, and kissed the hand which the duke extended towards him.

"You will ride on with us, Sir Patrick," he resumed. "I have a hunting-lodge near Vlierden, on this side of Peel Morass, seventeen miles distant. There we shall halt for to-night, and to-morrow depart for the capital."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE CASTLE OF ENDHOVEN

I behold the pageants splendid

That adorned those days of old;

Stately dames like queens attended,

Knights who wore the Fleece of Gold.

Longfellow.

The three knights who wore the Golden Fleece of Burgundy, proved to be the prince of Ravenstein, the marquis of Berg, and Englebert, count of Nassau, who was hereditary burg graf, or governor of Antwerp, and who, when a mere boy, in 1404, had espoused the heiress of Loeke and Breda. The prince of Ravenstein's territory lay between Gueldres and Brabant; it is now merged in the duchy of Cleves, but his castle still stands near the Maese.

Gueldres was an ancient and then very powerful dukedom, though it shrank to a petty state after the declaration of independence by the maritime provinces of the Netherlands in 1579, when it lost Nimeguen, the county of Zutphen, and Arnheim, and afterwards Ruremond, which was made over to Prussia; and since then, these portions have frequently changed their masters and form of government.

In the days of Arnold d'Egmont the duchy contained sixteen cities, two hundred and thirty villages, five great fortresses, and a vast number of castles.

The old duke treated Gray with great condescension, and conversed freely with him as they rode on together.

He inquired in what battle Gray received the severe wound the mark of which yet remained upon his face; and for the first time since he had left Scotland, our hero felt his heart glow with petty anger, in having to acknowledge that he had gained it in a mere street brawl with the enemies of the king, – the adherents of the turbulent and unruly house of Douglas.

"Tête Dieu!" said the duke; "that is the family which gives the king, your master, so much trouble. By Saint Louis, I would make quick work in disposing of them."

"They can bring twenty thousand men into the field," urged Sir Patrick.

"The great lord of Douglas is now in Flanders."

"Here – here in Flanders!" exclaimed Gray.

"Not in my territories; but on the other side of Brabant, and when last heard of he was travelling with a brilliant train of knights towards Breda, for the purpose of visiting that city, after which he passes forward to France. He was at the Feast of the Assumption in Antwerp, but proudly and haughtily kept aloof from all."

This unexpected intelligence filled Gray with emotions of a varied character, and solved a great mystery, the recollection of which had greatly troubled him.

It was, then, really Murielle Douglas whom he had seen, and no visionary or fancied resemblance; and he felt a glow of pleasure at the conviction that he had looked upon her face so recently, that he had breathed the same air with her; and that even now she was separated from him, not by the stormy German Ocean, and many a league of hill and glen; but only by a few miles of level land, and he mentally resolved, at every hazard and danger, that on leaving the duke of Gueldres, he would follow the Douglases to Breda, and that if they had departed, he would track them elsewhere; so powerful a noble, with so brilliant a retinue, would be easily traced in Flanders.

Pleasure, anticipation, and excitement, made him alternately gay and abstracted; thus he could barely attend with becoming reverence to the kind old prince who, being anxious to make a favourable impression on one who seemed the trusted subject of his intended son-in-law, drew his attention to the various castles, spires, and other features of the country, beguiling the way by many a story and legend, as they rode towards his hunting-lodge, at which they were to pass the night.

It stood upon the Gueldrian side of the Peel Morass. The latter included great tracts of land now dry and fertile, which were then deep swamps; and strange old stories lingered there, of broken dykes and bursting sluices – of overflowings from the Waal and Maese, with inundations from the Zuider Zee, by which whole farms were swept away, strong castles overthrown, and villages submerged; and of mermaids and mermen being swept by the retiring waters to flounder in the slough until they were captured; and the duke averred that in the days of his ancestor, Reinold II., duke of Gueldres, two had been instructed in Christianity and taught to make reverence to a crucifix, – a story corroborated in later times.

The "History of the Seven United Provinces," published at London in 1705, tells us, that "one day, when the sea had broken the banks and overflowed one part of the country, some young damsels of Ednam, going in a boat to milk their cows, found a nymph, or sea-woman, who lay half-covered in the mud, after the waters had been drained off. They drew her out and carried her to Ednam, where they taught her to spin and dress herself like other women; but they could not teach her to speak, nor lose the inclination which she had to return to her former element. There is an author who pretends that they imprinted in her some knowledge of a God, and that she made her reverence as she passed a crucifix. But it was not in Holland only," adds the historian, "that they found mermen in those days. There were some taken on the coast of Norway, which had on them the cross, the mitre, and all the pontifical habits of a bishop; but they only sighed after they were taken, and died very quickly."

Night had closed when the party reached the hunting-lodge, which was an old castle of some extent and considerable antiquity.

"This," said the duke, "is the hereditary mansion of the counts of Endhoven; and under its roof Count Ludwig, the last of that line, was born."

"Where he is not likely to die," added the count of Nassau.

"Since his attainder it has been mine."

"There is a strange story connected with it – or rather with the parents of Ludwig," said the count of Nassau, a noble with a long grave and pleasing countenance.

"His father was a cruel passionate and vindictive man, who used his countess so barbarously that she was wont to carry a dagger in her boddice, for her protection. Six months after Ludwig was born, she died of a broken heart, and the dagger, as she requested with her last breath, was buried with her. For a few weeks the count drank deeply, gamed and hunted, it seemed to all, as if to drown thought; but after a time he recovered, and to lighten the old castle, which seemed so grim and gloomy now, he carried off a beautiful peasant girl from the neighbourhood of Endhoven. Long and bitterly did the girl weep, on finding herself in his power, and earnestly she prayed to be permitted to return to her parents and to her lover, with whom she had been on the point of marriage; but the wild count only laughed, and forced her to drink cup after cup of Rhenish wine, and to sing and play on her ghittern.

"One day, when he was caressing and endeavouring to console her in his own rough way, he swore a terrible oath that he would love her till death, and no one else!

"Believe him not!" exclaimed a hollow voice behind – a voice like that of the dead countess. At the same moment a lean and wasted arm and hand, grasping a dagger, came out of the stone wall, and the count fell dead, stabbed to the heart!

"In his breast was found the countess's dagger – the same weapon that had been buried with her!"

As the count of Nassau concluded this strange story, they rode through the dark archway into the barbican of the castle, which seemed old and gloomy, even to Gray, who had come from a land of grim and guarded fortresses.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE COURT OF GUELDRES

Here he saw the king approaching,

And he ended gallantly;

Left the crowd of knights about him,

Bending to the king his knee.

Poetry of Spain.

As we have much to narrate, we must hasten over the mere diplomacy in which the captain of the guard was concerned.

Next day the duke's party traversed the marshes of Peeland, and reached the city of Gueldres. A fleet horseman having been sent on before, Gray was received with considerable state at the ducal castle, in honour of the king, his master.

The capital city of Gueldres was then surrounded by marshes which added materially to its security, by making all approaches to it difficult and dangerous to invaders or strangers. It was girt by ramparts and deep trenches, through which flowed the river Niers, and thus it was deemed the strongest place in Flanders.

It was a curious little town of narrow streets, overshadowed by galleried houses of quaint aspect, with projecting eaves and steep roofs; old churches, grim and mysterious in architecture; and convents with high and sombre walls. The mass of the population seemed to be industrious Flemish artisans, mingled with the usual number of peasants, who brought their wares to market; cowled monks, dozing at the gates in the sunshine; and helmeted men-at-arms dicing and drinking in the hostelries.

Twenty great bombards were fired from the ramparts of the ducal castle, as a salute in honour of Sir Patrick's arrival, and the great banner of the duchy, azure a lion or crowned, for Gueldres; with a lion gules for Zutphen, was displayed on the keep, while a body of knights, archers, and well-mounted men-at-arms stood in military array within the gates. Gueldres was then famous for its cavalry, and for the spirit of its people, who were deemed so warlike, that to lessen their military genius and secure the possession of that province in his family, Charles V., in after times, excluded its natives from his armies.

The great ducal fortress, a portion of which was built in 878 by Wichardus a Ponte, the first lord of Gueldres, on his marriage with a daughter of the count of Zutphen, was deemed the strongest castle in the Netherlands, till its demolition by the Prussians in 1764.

There, in that old castle, situated amid the thick woods and rushlands, through which the Niers flows towards the Maese, Gray was presented to the duchess, Katherine of Cleves; to her daughter, the future queen of Scotland; the little princess Mary, then in her ninth year; and to her brother, prince Adolphus, by whose wickedness in after years the house of Gueldres was ruined, and its possessions merged into the line of Burgundy.

For when Adolphus rebelled against his father, old Arnold d'Egmont, and shut him up in a close prison, he was disinherited, and his title and patrimony sold in 1473 to Charles the Terrible, Duke of Burgundy, for a yearly pension of fourscore and ten thousand golden crowns of the Rhine; but no thought or anticipation had they then of those dark days that were coming, when civil war and misrule would rend the land asunder; and so old Duke Arnold feasted royally the knight who had come from the Scottish court, in presence of all his peers, the knights of the duchy, the governors of the country districts, and the deputies of Nimeguen, Arnheim, Ruremond, and Zutphen, his four great counties or provinces.

He presented him with a cassock, embroidered with gold and precious stones, worth a thousand ducats. The Duchess Katherine in the name of the princess, her daughter, entrusted him with a valuable ring for the young king, her future son-in-law, to whose ministers letters were prepared, expressive of the pleasure with which the coming ambassadors would be received.

Four days Sir Patrick remained at the castle of Gueldres, and then, leaving with impatience to overtake the Douglases about Breda, he bade adieu to the ducal court, and was convoyed, as the abbot of Tongland relates, twelve miles on his way, as far as Wees, by Prince Adolphus, the counts of Bommel and Nassau, with forty gentlemen on horseback "in cassocks of brocade, each with a gold chain at his neck."

Sir Patrick rejoiced when all this ceremony and state were over; when he was once more alone, and at liberty to pursue his own way towards Breda, which, however, he was fated never to reach.

CHAPTER XXIX

A STRANGE RENCONTRE

"I wake to sad reality, the days of youth have fled —

The flower, the shrub, the velvet turf have long ere now been dead;

The brook that ran so merrily has ceased to bubble by,

The pebble bed whereon it flowed is broken up and dry."

As Sir Patrick Gray had no desire to traverse again the swampy wastes of the Peel Morass, with the chance of perhaps encountering, when alone, Ludwig of Endhoven, and his ruffianly Brabanciones, he took the way which led towards the principality of Ravenstein, intending to cross the Maese and travel to Breda through Dutch Brabant.

Eagerness to see, to meet, to rejoin Murielle, or to make his presence there known to her, made him travel without delay; but in his ignorance of the route, through a flat country, destitute of those strong natural features, to which his eyes were accustomed at home, caused him frequently to make mistakes and detours; thus the evening of the first day found him only at the town of Grave, which had a fortress, situated by the margin of the Maese, and of such strength that it was deemed the Key of Gueldreland, and had thus been the object of many a bloody contest between the dukes of Brabant and the earls of Holland.

As the town was small, he soon found an hostelry, and delivered his horse to the groom and his sword to the tapster, according to what was then, and for long after, the custom in all places of entertainment; but retained his chain shirt and dagger while he sat at supper in the large public room, or chamber-of-dais, in which were two gentlemen, apparently travellers like himself, and similarly employed, in deciding upon the merits of broiled fowls and a stoup of Burgundy.

Full of his own thoughts and of Murielle, reckoning the miles of flat and monotonous Flemish scenery that lay between them, the hours that must intervene ere he could see her; the mode in which he should discover himself, the promises he would exact, and the vows he would repeat, Gray took no notice of the strangers, who conversed freely, and somewhat noisily, over their wine, their brusquerie of manner appearing to increase as the twilight deepened with their potations; so that when Gray was at last roused from his reveries and looked towards them, the dusk was so great that he could scarcely discern their features.

They were talking of the proceedings of the great ecclesiastical council, which was then sitting in the Swiss archbishopric of Basle, and of the laws it was framing for the extirpation of heresy – topics upon which all men were beginning to question, or rather to sound each other, as such questions, in those days of the stake and faggot, were fraught with danger. They conversed in French; but finding that Gray sat resolutely silent, one turned and said to him abruptly, "Pray, sir, what think you of Procopius?"

"Of – who?" said Gray, with hesitation.

"Procopius, the Shaved."

"The leader of the Hussites?"

"Yes – the protesting heretics."

"I think him a bold Bohemian captain," was the cautious reply.

"What think you of his disputation at the holy council of Basle?" continued the other.

"I am not capable of judging."

"Peste! Did he not bear hard on the monks?" persisted the querist.

"I am not aware," replied Gray, with increasing reserve, "as I have not heard; but what said he?"

"At the head of two hundred gentlemen of his party, the valiant Procopius came before the council, and stoutly maintained that monkery was an invention of the devil.

"'Can you prove this?' asked Cardinal St. Julien, while his face flushed red as his stockings.

"'Yes!' replied the Bohemian, stoutly.

"'How?' thundered the cardinal, knitting his brows.

"'Thus; will you deny that the Saviour did not institute it?'

"'We do not.'

"'Then,' quoth Procopius, ''tis plainly an invention of the devil,' whereat Ænies Sylvius Piccolomini – "

"He who was in Scotland?"

"Yes; burst into a fit of laughter, which however did not prevent him from committing several poor devils to the flames in the course of the evening, where they spluttered and burned bravely for the amusement of all good Catholics."

"We have had some such work at home, where John Resby and Paul Crawar have perished at the stake, for preaching doctrines which some term false and others simply new."

"How do you term them?" asked the second traveller.

"Sir," replied Gray, "I am a soldier, and, being neither priest nor clerk may not know the difference."

"So you are of Scotland?" said the first stranger, suddenly relinquishing his French for the old dialect then spoken by the upper classes of the northern kingdom; "we bid you welcome, as countrymen. Pray join us – and harkee, tapster, let us have lights and more wine – we too, sir, are of Scotland."

More Burgundy was promptly brought, and on four torch-like candles of yellow wax being lighted in four great brass sconces, Gray was enabled to observe the aspect and bearing of his fellow travellers, or rather sojourners at the hostelry.

Both had their hair cut closely round above their ears, in the unbecoming fashion of twenty years before. They were moustached, but had their beards and whiskers shaved off in what was then the Scottish mode; they wore armour, with skirts composed of horizontal steel bands, called taces, with circular epaulets, to protect the armpits from sword thrusts, with spikes on the oriellets of their helmets.

The tallest and most handsome forcibly recalled to Gray's memory the late King James I.; he seemed to have something of that unhappy monarch's voice too, but his air and manner, though soldierly and stately, were reckless and blasé, and at times even abrupt and rough, yet not altogether unpleasing.

The other had pale grey cunning eyes, which were either bloodshot by dissipation, or reddened by the fire of innate cruelty, and they twinkled so far apart from his nose that it appeared almost impossible for him to see an object with both at once, for each seemed to be looking at the ear which adjoined it, and his hair and beard were a fiery red. But what were the emotions of Gray, and how firmly did he grasp his dagger, while a gust of fury filled his heart – a fury which he had great difficulty in repressing – when, in this person we have just described, he recognized that venal wretch, James Achanna!

By the light of the sconces the latter and his companion had a full view of Gray, but they seemed not to recognize him, for, as already stated, the ghisarma of Earl James had laid both cheeks open, thus a hideous wound traversed his whole face like a livid bar sinister. It was slowly passing away, however, for the old duchess of Gueldres had given him a rare balsam, which she said would effectually efface the scars; but as yet they, and a new curl which Gray had fancifully given his moustache, had so effectually altered his appearance, as to conceal his identity from this ruffianly swashbuckler of the earl of Douglas.

"So you are of Scotland, sir?" resumed the other traveller.

"I am come from thence but lately," replied Gray; "and may I ask your names?"

"Certainly," replied our old acquaintance, with perfect confidence; "I am James Achanna, a gentleman of the Lord Douglas, a name at which men prick their ears in Nithsdale, whatever they may do in foggy Flanders."

"And I," said the other, "am the Lord Rosse."

"Rosse!" reiterated Gray; "pardon me, sir, but, under favour, we have no such lord in Scotland."

"Not when I am out of it," said he, laughing.

"I know not the title," added Gray, coldly.

"Indeed! one seems to be soon forgotten then. Shall I state to you more fully that I am Robert Stewart, duke of Albany and earl of Rosse."

"The son of Duke Murdoch!" exclaimed Gray, starting from his seat with mingled surprise and respect.

"Yes; son of that Duke Murdoch, who, with his second son, and Duncan, earl of Lennox, was foully butchered at the Lady's Rock, before the castle gates of Stirling. Vengeance has a long and bitter memory! and by that extrajudicial murder, for such I will maintain it to be in the face of Europe, I have been since boyhood an exile, a wanderer, and now, when little more than thirty years of age, my hair is greyer than my poor old father's was, when his venerable head rolled in the sand beneath the doomster's axe."

Gray bowed low, for respect to the royal blood was strongly graven then in the hearts of the Scots, in none more than his, and Albany, though exiled and outlawed, in consequence of the malpractices of his father (who had been regent during the detention of James I. in England), was the cousin of King James II.

"And you, sir?" asked Albany, loftily.

"I am your grace's most humble servant," replied Gray pausing, as he dreaded to tell his name before Achanna, lest it might reveal to the Douglases his royal mission, and blight his hope of meeting Murielle.

"But your name, sir," said the duke, with growing displeasure; "your name?"

"Yes," added Achanna, imitating him, "we must have your name."

"I am the laird of Luaig," replied Gray, with ready wit, taking the name of a little obscure loch, which lies in a narrow glen near his father's castle of Foulis.

CHAPTER XXX

BOLD SCHEMES

Many have ruined their fortunes; many have escaped ruin by want of fortune. To obtain it the great have become little, and the little great. – Zimmerman.