The Captain of the Guard

"The foul slaughter of the laird of Sandwick, whom the Douglas troopers fell upon in Kirkandrews, and killed when at his prayers, – and this was yesternight."

"Another act of sacrilege?"

"Air mhuire! so my lord the abbot of Tongland terms it; but they were dainty gentlemen who followed the laird of Glendoning," said the other, with bitter irony; "they cared not to stain the floor or altar of God's consecrated church with blood; so they dragged old Sandwick forth, though he clung to the iron altar-rail, and drew him to the louping-on-stane at the grave-yard gate, and there hacked him to pieces."

"It was like these men of Thrave," said Sir Patrick; "but a day of vengeance for these continued atrocities must come, and speedily too."

As he said this the host, who was making a posset of Alicant on the hearth, looked up with terror; but the strong man with the mace laughed bitterly, and added, as he struck the floor with his mace,

"Dioul! the sooner the better for me."

"And who are you?" asked Sir Patrick.

"Would you be a wiser man for knowing?" was the cautious and not over-courteous response; "yet I care not if I tell: I am Malise MacKim, – "

"What – Malise, the hereditary smith of Thrave – MacKim the Brawny?" exclaimed Gray, with something of alarm in his tone.

"Yes," said the other through his clenched teeth.

Gray, by a twitch of his belt, brought his dagger conveniently to his hand; MacKim saw the movement, and smiled disdainfully.

"Has the earl wronged you?" asked Sir Patrick.

"To the heart's core," was the emphatic reply. "Oh, mhuire as truidh! mhuire as truidh! that I should ever have it to say – I, whose fathers have eaten the bread of his race for generations – ay, since the first handful of earth was laid there to form the Moat of Urr – yea, yea, since first the Urr waters ran, and leaves grew in the wood of Dalbeattie!"

"What has happened?"

"His people have this day slain my brother Donacha MacKim, near the Bush aboon Tracquair, and have carried off his daughter, who was the love of my youngest son; but I have seven – SEVEN sons, each taller and stronger than myself, and I will have sure vengeance on Douglas, if he grants it not to me; and this I have sworn by the cross of St. Cuthbert, and by the soul of her I love best on earth, my wife Meg."

The black eyes of the gigantic smith glared with genuine Celtic fury and hate as he said this; he beat the floor with his roughly-shod feet, and his strong fingers played nervously with the shaft of his mace, the chain and morning-star of which (a ball a pound in weight, furnished with four sharp iron spikes) lay on the floor. Gray, as he surveyed him, reflected that it was extremely fortunate that the smith's fealty to Douglas had been broken, otherwise he might have proved a very unpleasant companion for the night in that small and solitary hostelry, situated, as it was, in a hostile and lawless district. This meeting, however, taught Gray to be wary, and thus, though knowing the country well, he affected to be a stranger.

"Is the abbot of Tongland at Thrave?" he asked.

"No; the earl, in sport, poured a ladleful of gold down the throat of the Raeberry warder; so his father confessor pronounced a malediction upon him, and retired to the abbey at Tongland, in disgust and despair at his cruelty."

"How far is it from hence to the clachan?"

"About ten miles."

"And to the abbey?"

"It is beside the clachan." – "Good."

During that night Gray slept with his door and window well secured, with his sword drawn under his head, and his armour on a chair by his bedside, to be ready for any emergency. The lassitude incident to his long journey on horseback by such rough roads – for then they went straight over hill and down valley, through forest, swamp, and river – made him sleep long and late on his bed of freshly-pulled heather; thus the noon of the next was far advanced before he set out once more.

Malise MacKim, his sullen acquaintance of the preceding evening, conducted him for some distance beyond the Urr, and told him, what Gray already knew well, that if he wished to reach the clachan of Tongland, he must pass the Loch of Carlinwark on his right, and pursue the road that lay through the wood on the left bank of the Dee.

"And whither go you, my friend?" he asked, as the gigantic smith was about to leave him.

"To join my seven sons, and scheme our vengeance; yet what can mortal vengeance avail against the earl of Douglas?" – "How?" said Gray; "in what manner?"

"Know you not that he wears a warlock jacket, against which the sharpest swords are pointless?"

"What do you mean?" asked the soldier, keeping his horse in check.

"I mean a doublet made for him by a warlock in Glenkens, woven of the skins of water-snakes caught in a south-running burn where three lairds' lands met, and woven for him under the beams of a March moon, on the haunted Moat of Urr."

Gray laughed and said, "I should like to test this dagger, my poor MacLellan's gift, upon that same doublet."

"Moreover," said the smith, lowering his voice, while a deeper scowl impressed his grisly visage, "it is said in Galloway here, that when Earl James, a child, was held by his godmother at the font in Tongland Abbey Kirk, the blessed water, as it fell from the hand of Abbot John, hissed upon his little face as upon iron in a white heat."

"Peace, carle! can a stout fellow like thee be moonling enough to give such stories credence?"

"'Tis folly, perhaps, to think of them, betouch us, too! so near the Moat of Urr," said the smith, with a perceptible shudder, as he glanced covertly over his shoulder.

"And why here more than elsewhere?"

"Know ye not?" asked the smith, in a whisper.

"You forget that I am a stranger."

"True. Then it was on this spot that James Achanna, the earl's sooth fast-friend and henchman, sold himself to Satan, after conjuring him up by performing some nameless rites of hell."

"Adieu, and God be wi' you," said Gray, laughing, yet nevertheless making the sign of the cross, for the place was savage and solitary, and he was not without a due share of the superstition incident to his age and country. Turning his horse, he rode rapidly off.

As he did so, a cunning smile passed over the swarthy face of Malise MacKim, who swung his mace round his head as if he were about to brain an enemy.

The day was far advanced, when, at Kelton, Gray crossed the Dee by a flat-bottomed boat, near a place where a group of peasants were assembled under a gallows-tree. Thereon hung a man, and there, by paying a fee to the doomster of Thrave, persons afflicted by wens, or similar excrescences, came to obtain the benefit of the deid-strake– a touch of the dead hand being deemed a certain cure.

When Gray saw the poor corse swinging in the wind, he remembered the fate of Sir Herbert Maxwell, and reflected how easily Douglas might release Murielle from her marriage-ties by putting him to death, as he had done that powerful baron; yet his heart never trembled, nor did he swerve from his resolution of attempting to save MacLellan, in spite of every danger.

CHAPTER XLVI

AN UNEXPECTED GUIDE

And a good evening to my friend Don Carlos.

Some lucky star has led my steps this way:

I was in search of you. —

The Spanish Student.

Before Gray crossed the Dee at Kelton, there came over the scenery a dense white mist, which rolled like smoke along the hills, and hung in dewdrops on his horse's mane and bridle, dimming the brightness of his armour and the embroidery of his surcoat. In this obscurity he lost his way amid the waste muirlands which the road, a mere bridle-path destitute of wall or fence, traversed. Then a sharp shower of hail fell, the stones rattling on his steel trappings as on a latticed window; and through the openings in the haze, the far-stretching dells and pastoral hills of Galloway seemed wet and grey and dreary.

The country was singularly desolate; he met no person to direct him; thus, amid the obscurity of the mist and the approaching evening, he knew not where he was, but continued to ride slowly and vaguely on.

Anon a breeze came, and the grey clouds began to disperse; the hail ceased, and the haze rolled away like finely-carded wool along the sides of the hills. The setting sun of August beamed forth in his farewell splendour, the mavis and merle chorused merrily in the sauch and hawthorn trees; for a time the hill-tops became green, and the high corn that waved on the upland slopes seemed to brighten with the partial heat and moisture. After a time, Sir Patrick found that he had penetrated to the border of Glenkens, then the wildest and most savage part of Galloway. Wheeling round his horse, he rode fast in the direction from whence he had come, and just as the sun's broad disc began to dip behind the grassy hills, and to shed its warm light upon the windings of the Dee, from an eminence he could see afar off the vast square keep of Thrave looming black and sombre, with the dusky smoke ascending from its great chimney-stalks into the calm sky in steady columns, unbroken by the breeze.

Soft was the evening light, and softer now the air, and no sound but the occasional lowing of the black cattle, or those nameless country noises which seem to come from afar, broke the stillness of the vast pastoral landscape.

The Dee has all the characteristics of a Scottish stream: now gliding stealthily and sullenly through deep pools and dark rocky chasms, where the wiry pine, the crisp-leaved oak, and the feathery silver birch cast their shadows on the darting trout or the lurking salmon; now chafing and brawling in white foam over a precipitous ledge of red sandstone, then gurgling down a bed of "unnumbered pebbles;" and now sweeping broad and stilly past a thatched clachan, a baron's moated tower, a ruined chapel, where bells were rung and masses said when Alan was lord of Galloway and constable of Scotland; then round some statelier fane like Tongland, or a vast feudal strength like Thrave of the Douglases.

After seeing the latter, Gray rode slowly and thoughtfully, for it brought the face, the form, the voice, the smile, and all the image of Murielle more vividly before him. The scenery, the place, the very air, seemed full of the presence of her, his loved and lost one.

And now the moon arose, but not brilliantly; it shot fitful gleams between weird masses of flying cloud, with a pale and ghastly effect which made the gnarled trunks of the old trees seem like spectres or fantastic figures. Erelong, Gray entered a long and narrow glen, clothed on each side by a thick fir forest, where the density of the wiry foliage was such that the darkness became quite opaque.

Here he suddenly found himself joined by a horseman, who came either from the wayside thicket or out of the ground – it might have been either, so unexpected was his appearance. A gleam of the moon, as it came down a ravine, showed that this man and his horse were of great strength and stature. He wore a hunting suit, with a sword, bugle, and small steel cap which glittered in the moonlight.

"Under favour, I presume, we may travel together?" said he, bluntly.

"Provided the road be broad enough," replied Gray in the same manner, for there was something in this man's voice which strangely affected him, causing his hair to bristle up, his pulses to quicken, and the almost obliterated wounds on his face to smart.

Whence was this emotion? Where had he heard that voice before? Where seen that grim and sturdy figure? Each looked from time to time at the other, and seemed anxious to make out who or what he was.

"Go you far this way?" asked the stranger.

"No," replied Gray, curtly.

"May I ask how far?" – "I am bound for Thrave."

"Indeed," said the other, looking fixedly at Gray, as they walked their horses side by side; "have you made a long journey?" – "From Edinburgh," replied Gray, briefly.

"You are a bold man to pass through the Johnstones of Annandale and the Borderland at this time."

"How bolder at this time than at any other?"

"That you may soon learn," replied the stranger, laughing at Gray's tone of displeasure.

"I am Sir Patrick Gray of Foulis, captain of the king's guard, and am bound to ride wherever he may order, and woe to those who dare obstruct me," said Gray, peering forward to discern the speaker, who started visibly at this reply, and after the silence of a moment said, "I too am bound for Thrave. For two days past I have been abroad hunting, but have missed or outridden my friends. Well, what may the news be from the good town of Edinburgh? and how fare the king, his carpet knights, and cock-sparrow courtiers, eh?"

"Were I not riding on the king's errand, which makes my life more precious than if I were riding on my own, I would find you a more fitting reply than words," said Gray, who could scarcely repress his rising wrath, for the tone of the other chafed him.

"You have chosen a perilous time, assuredly, to enter Galloway on the king's service," observed the stranger, loftily; "and if my words displease, I can give full reparation when your errand is sped."

"'Tis enough, sir," said Gray, hoarsely; "on the morrow I shall have sure vengeance. No man shall slight the king in my presence, and live."

"By my sooth, his last messenger – the Rothsay herald, who came hither anent the laird of Teregles – left Galloway faster than he entered it. We are about to teach this James Stuart, that the realm of Scotland was not made for his especial use. What? after fighting for centuries, and defeating Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans – in short, all the invaders of England – we are now to tremble before this boy-king and his little Gueldrian wife? Has he forgotten how his father died?"

"How – what mean you?" asked Gray, making a vigorous effort to control his passion.

"In the Black Friary at Perth," said the other, grinding his teeth, "with the swords of Grahame and Athole clashing in his heart."

"Be assured our king has not forgotten it – but hush – be wary."

"And wherefore hush?" was the fierce response.

"Because they who did that deed, the most foul murder of God's anointed king, perished miserably on the scaffold more than twenty years ago. Their ashes have long since mingled with the earth, for fire consumed and the wind of heaven scattered them; but their names exist in the execration of all good men and true."

"Hard words," said the other, scoffingly; "hard words, sir, for us, who are on the eve, perhaps, of a most just rebellion against his son, if he and his Flemish princess, with that old fox, Crichton, push us too severely; and then I think his dainty Falkland knights, and well-fed Lothian infantry, may find it perilous work to march through Nithsdale and penetrate among the wild hills of Galloway."

Gray did not answer; they had now emerged from the wood, and the Loch of Carlinwark was shining like a mirror in the full splendour of the moonlight. At some distance he could discern the three old thorn-trees, where, on a similarly calm and lovely moonlit night, he had first plighted love, life, and hope, to Murielle; and now, as then, he could see Thrave, her home and her prison, casting its long black shadows on the Dee.

"Here is Thrave," said the stranger, reining up his powerful horse beside the barbican-gate.

"And you, sir? – "

"I am James, earl of Douglas," replied the other, sternly and loftily; "you are on the king's errand, Sir Patrick Gray – 'tis well; I bid you welcome; but remember, save for that tabard which you wear, by the bones of St. Bryde, I would hang you by the neck from that stone knob above the gate!"

Gray bowed and smiled bitterly, as they rode into the court-yard, and he found himself inclosed by the gates and surrounded by the followers of his mortal enemy.

He had shuddered on passing under the barbican-gate, for a man was hanging at the gallows-knob above it. Gray knew the dread custom there – that each culprit or victim was replaced by another, and he knew not who the next "tassel" might be.

The night-wind lifted the dead man's hair at times as the body swung mournfully to and fro. Beneath this ghastly object, in the blaze of the torches which were upheld by a crowd of liveried serving-men and savage-looking kilted Galwegians, there shone a great shield of carved and painted stone. It bore the arms of the ancient lords of Galloway – azure a lion rampant, argent crowned with an imperial diadem, impaled with the countless quarterings of the Douglases.

The moon was waning now; but the number of torches, as they flared on the walls and grated windows of the vast keep, made the court-yard seem light as if the night was noon.

As Gray dismounted, a familiar voice reached his ear, saying, "Thanks, brave friend and kinsman – you have perilled much to save me!"

"Thou art right, MacLellan – I come by the king's orders, so take courage!" replied Gray, looking about him; but from which of the black gratings of that lofty edifice the voice came his eye failed to discover.

A cruel smile passed over the grim face of the earl, as he said, "Sir Patrick Gray, it is ill speaking between a full man and a fasting; so get you to bed for to-night; after breakfast to-morrow, we will consider your errand from the king; and you have my knightly word for your safety while within the walls of Thrave."

"And how, when I leave them, my lord?"

"That is as may be," said the other, turning on his heel.

With these dubious, or rather ominous words, the earl retired, and within an hour, Gray, after partaking of some refreshment alone, found himself lying on a couch with his armour on and his drawn sword by his side, endeavouring to court sleep, with his mind full of the terrible novelty of his situation; and not without a sense of charm, for he knew that Murielle was near him, and that the same roof covered them both.

On a tabourette by the bedside were placed a night-lamp, a cup of sack posset, and the earl of Douglas's dagger as a symbol of peace and protection – that he had armed his unwelcome guest against even his own household; for such was the custom of the age and country.

CHAPTER XLVII

HUSBAND AND WIFE

First rose a star out owre the hill,

And next the lovelier moon;

While the bonnie bride o' Galloway

Looked for her blythe bridegroom;

Lythlie she sang as the new moon rose,

Blythe as a young bride may,

When the new moon lights her lamp o' love,

And blinks the bride away. —

Cromek.

Sir Patrick Gray sprang from a couch, where dreams, rather than sleep, had pressed thick and fast upon him. He rose while yet the summer sun was below the green Galloway hills, and while the dark waters of the Dee were veiled by the white mists of the early morning.

His mind was full of Murielle, and he was not without hope, that while all the numerous household and powerful feudal garrison were yet abed, he might find some means to communicate with her – to see, to speak to one so beloved – one from whom he had been so long, so wickedly separated – his seven years' wedded wife!

It seemed to Gray, while thinking of this, that some one had been softly and timidly tapping at his door.

Gently drawing back the numerous bars of wood and iron, with which the doors of all bed-chambers in old Scottish mansions were furnished in those days and for long after, he stepped into an arched corridor; then, on looking along its dusky vista, he saw a female figure approach, and what were his emotions on beholding the sudden realization of his dearest wish – Murielle, who had left the room thus early on the same errand and with the same desperate yet tenderly loving hope, had been watching the door of his chamber.

She seemed pale and wan, as one who had been sleepless; but though more womanly and more full in figure, she was otherwise unchanged as when he had seen her last, on that happy and yet unfortunate night, in the church of St. Genevieve, in Flanders.

"At last, my Murielle!"

"At last we meet – but oh! for a moment only."

They clasped each other in a tender embrace – heart to heart, and lip to lip. His face was bent on hers, and her tears of joy and fear fell fast.

"You love me still, Murielle?"

"Still!" she reiterated reproachfully – "oh, with all my life and strength."

"But to what a hopeless love and aimless life have my passion and its selfish ties consigned you!" said he; "we are the slaves of others and of destiny."

"Such have we ever been, since that fatal day on which my cousins, William and David, were slain. That was in 1440, ten long, long years ago; but – "

"A crisis in our fate is coming now, dear Murielle."

"But say why – oh, why are you here – here in Thrave, here, where your life is in peril so deadly?"

"I am come, in our good king's name, to demand MacLellan's release, and to invite the earl, under cartel, to meet the council at Stirling, that all these evils may be peacefully ended."

"I pray to the kind Father of all, and to his Blessed Mother, who is in heaven, that it may be so," sighed poor Murielle. "But oh, I am so weary, weary – so sad and weary here! They keep me quite a prisoner, though not so cruelly as they keep Sir Thomas MacLellan; for I am told by Marion Douglas that he is confined in the pit."

"Mahoun! say you so, dearest – in that horrid vault?"

"Yes; but hush – we may be overheard."

"Ah! my brave and noble kinsman – such a doom! Was it not in that dungeon that Earl Archibald, the first duke of Touraine, kept MacLellan, the laird of Borgue, chained, like a wild beast, till he became a jabbering idiot, and when found by the prior of St. Mary's Isle, he was laughing as he strove to catch the single sunbeam that fell through the grated slit into his prison – yea, striving fatuously to catch it with his thin, wan, fettered hand – the same hand that carried the king's banner at the battle of Homildon!"

"Do not frown thus, my dearest heart," said Murielle, weeping; "I have little need to add to the hatred that grows apace in every breast against the name of Douglas."

"Do not say in every breast, sweet Murielle – sweet wife," he added, pressing her close and closer still in his embrace; "for my heart is wrung with anguish and with love for you, and of this love God alone knoweth the depth and the strength!"

Murielle continued to weep in silence.

"My love for you," resumed Gray, "and my duty to the king, whom my father, old Sir Andrew Gray, taught me to love, respect, and almost worship, are impulses that rend my heart between them. At the risk of my life I have ridden here on the king's service, alone, with no protection but my sword, my hand, and, it may be, this royal tabard – a badge but little respected on this side of the Nith or Annan."

"And you came – "

"To see you, and to save MacLellan from the fate of Sir Herbert Herries. God wot, though, I would give the last drop of my blood to serve my kinsman. A king's herald might have borne the mandate as well as I; but the hope of seeing you – of hearing your dear voice, of concerting some plan for your escape and future freedom from a tyranny that is maddening, – chiefly, if not alone, brought me into the wilds of Galloway – the very land and stronghold of the enemies of the throne."

"Say not the enemies," said Murielle mournfully. "I hope that men misjudge us sorely."

"I hope they do; yet there are strange whispers abroad of a rebel league with the earls of Ross and Crawford, with Henry of England, and the lord of the Isles – a league to dethrone the king and plunge the land in ruin. But let us speak at present of escape – of flight – "

"My disappearance would be your destruction; all Galloway, with hound and horn, would be upon your track."

"True – Douglas gave me his word for safety only while within the walls of Thrave," said Gray, bitterly.

"The most sunny summer-day may have its clouds, dear Patrick; but here, in this dull residence, with me it is ever cloud, and never sunshine – I mean the sunshine of the heart. My time is passed, as it were, in perpetual winter. I have no solace – no friend – no amusement, but my cithern and the songs you loved so well – "

"And love still, Murielle, for the sake of you!"