The Captain of the Guard

Suddenly he heard a light step and the rustling of a dress; a small hand drew rapidly aside the arras which covered a door, and Murielle, with bloodshot eyes and her sweet little face pale with tears and loss of sleep, rushed towards him.

"Oh, Patrick Gray, Patrick Gray!" she exclaimed, throwing herself in all the abandonment of grief into his arms, and laying her cold cheek upon his breast; "Oh my love, my heart – what new miseries, what new crimes and dangers, are these that come to cast their gloom and horror upon us?"

He endeavoured to calm and soothe her; but suddenly quitting him, she besought him to leave her, and return instantly to the castle.

"Leave you, Murielle?" he reiterated, "think of the time that has elapsed since I have seen you, conversed with you – since I have been with you alone; and think of the time that may elapse ere we meet again."

"Yet go – go," she added, clasping her hands, "if you love me, go!"

"If– ah! Murielle – "

"Leave me – shun me! this love will end in your destruction," she exclaimed with wild energy.

"I am almost inclined to stay, Murielle, and risk everything, were it but to prove how much I do love you."

"By making me miserable for ever, by seeing you perish before me – oh, even as my poor kinsmen perished!" she added in a piercing accent, while wringing her pretty hands, and half withdrawing from him.

"You are right, dear Murielle," replied the soldier gloomily: "I am in the king's service. To brave a useless danger and inevitable fate, would serve no end; yet, dearest Murielle, this interview may be our last."

"It may be – I know it in my aching heart; yet go – go, for the love of God and St. Bryde, lest some fresh crime be committed, and here. Alas! you know not Hugh of Ormond, or James of Abercorn, as I do. But why were our beloved William and David slain?"

"Blame not me, dear Murielle," said Gray, kissing her pale cheek with affectionate sorrow.

"Oh, Patrick, I do not blame you," replied Murielle, in a tone of misery.

"Indeed! Yet you see him before you, and clasp him to your heart like a wanton, while he has on his hands the blood of my husband!" exclaimed a clear and ringing voice. It was that of the scornful, the lovely and revengeful, yet superb Margaret, as she burst upon them through the parted arras, her pale cheek flushing and her dark eyes sparkling, but with more of anger than grief. "Vile assassin! come you here, stained with the blood of my Douglas – my brave, young, handsome lord and kinsman – of his poor boy-brother, and that hoary-headed baron, old Malcolm Fleming, whose sword was never idle when Scotland or her king required its service! Did it require three such heads to glut the hatred ye bear to the house of Douglas and Galloway? Speak!" she added, stamping her pretty foot imperiously on the rush-covered floor; "speak, thou king's minion and Falkland-bred loon!"

"Peace, sister," moaned Murielle, "oh peace – "

"Now, grant me patience, God!" exclaimed the furious countess, stretching her white hands upward – and supremely lovely that dark-eyed girl seemed, in her mingled grief and rage. "Go hence, I say, Murielle Douglas; let not that man contaminate you by his touch."

"Oh, sister Maggie, you know he loves me dearly, and I him."

"I know that he has been tutored well in the conventional hypocrisy of a court; and that you, Murielle, educated as you have been in our secluded castle of Thrave, are no match in art for such as he."

"Maggie," implored Murielle, beginning to writhe under her sister's severity, "he is generous as gentle, and gentle as brave!"

"But save him if you can," said Margaret, bitterly.

"There is, then, danger, madam?" said Gray, loosening his poniard in its sheath.

"Do you hear that growing clamour in the street?" exclaimed Margaret. "Sir Patrick Gray, away, I warn you. James of Abercorn, Pompherston, and others, all our most faithful followers, are around the house; if you tarry here a moment longer, they will hack you joint from joint."

"But, madame – countess – Murielle," said Gray, whose heart was swollen almost to bursting by the vituperative bitterness of Margaret, "I cannot go without a word of explanation or defence."

"We seek neither. It is enough for us to know that you stood by, in yonder royal shambles on the rock, and saw Douglas foully murdered, under tryst —stood idly by, with your sword in its sheath, and neither by word or blow sought to save the life of him whose cousin you profess to love. But doubtless, as captain of the king's hirelings, it was your duty to stand aloof, or guard the treble murder!"

"Sister," said Murielle imploringly, while her tears fell fast and hotly, "have we not heard the Abbot of Tongland and the Prior of St. Mary's Isle both preach, that man was born to evil, even as the sparks fly upward; but that with fortitude, patience, and resignation, we should bear our cross – the destiny assigned us; and what are we, to set ourselves in opposition to what they, the men of God, teach, preach, and practise?"

"Such cowardly precepts may suit their droning monks, but not the Douglases of Thrave," responded her fiery sister. "We have been foully wronged, and I have sworn by our Lady of Whitekirk – by her son and St. Bryde – to have a vengeance on this boy-king and his chancellor, – a vengeance so sure and deep, that every king in Christendom shall feel his heart tremble within him, if he dares to wrong a subject as they have wronged me. Ha! – hear ye that?" she added, as a strangely malignant gleam passed over her dark eyes.

"Death to Gray – bring him forth – a rope! a rope!"

"'Tis the voice of Achanna," said Sir Patrick, starting; while Murielle, on hearing the roar of men's voices and the clatter of arms without and within the house, uttered a low cry of terror, and clung to his breast.

By a hasty glance from the window, Gray saw that the court-yard was full of armed men, who, with drawn swords and bent cross bows, were crowding into the staircase. He saw James of Abercorn, who was on horseback, and who shook his gauntleted hand towards him; he saw that the garden, the gate, the wynd, and every avenue to escape were beset by glittering pikes and partisans, and a cold perspiration burst over his brow at the sudden prospect of helplessly suffering a cruel and violent death. His heart was almost too full for words; but he kissed Murielle tenderly.

"Long, long, it may be," he said, with a foreboding sigh, "ere that dear kiss can be repeated – it may be never; but oh, Murielle, tide what may, let no other efface it from your beloved lips!"

The voices and clatter of arms came nearer.

"Save him, sister – save him, Maggie. You may and can do it!" exclaimed Murielle, rushing to the door of the large chamber, which she closed, and drew across into the stone socket the massive oak bar by which it was secured. She had barely achieved this ere the din of blows from mailed hands, from sword-hilts, and the butts of crossbows and partisans, rang upon it in a shower.

Many fierce voices summoned those who were within to open; otherwise, that fire would be applied to force an entrance.

Drawing his sword and dagger, Gray was about to unclose it, and attempt to hew a passage through them – an attempt which would inevitably have ended where it began, as there were a legion of foes without, all thirsting for vengeance, eager for outrage and homicide – all men inured to daily turbulence, peril, and bloodshed.

The clatter and uproar increased rapidly, as the numbers outside seemed to multiply. The door, though of solid oak, was yielding fast, and already the blades of several swords were repeatedly passed through it, and withdrawn to give place to others.

"Save him, Maggie dear – dear sister, save him, in mercy to me, if not to himself," implored Murielle, clinging to the waist of Margaret, who stood haughtily erect, like a tragedy-queen, with a sneer upon her proud lip, while undisguised alarm was now expressed in her fine eyes, at the prospect of seeing Gray butchered in her presence, though she hated him in her heart; "save him, sister, save him!"

"Am I an armed man?" she asked coldly. "In what fashion am I to save your minion?"

"Ha! – by the stair – the secret stair. Oh God, how that door shakes – in another moment it will yield! – the secret stair – the abbot gave you the key."

"True," said Margaret, as she drew a key from her bosom, and tossed it contemptuously on the floor.

With a cry of joy Murielle picked it up, and, seizing Gray by the hand, said,

"You are saved – quick – come this way."

At the side of one of the deeply-embayed windows she withdrew the arras, and unlocked a little door which gave access to a narrow passage, formed in the thickness of the ancient wall.

"Descend here. There are twenty-one steps; the passage at the foot leads to the garden, and the wall there is low. Push open the door at the lower end among the ivy, and you are free. Heaven, in its goodness, be your guide!"

"Ah, that I had but twelve pikes of my guard to scatter this rabble like winnowed chaff! Adieu, Murielle; I shall live and escape, if I can! If not, look from your window, my love – my dear, dear love – and you shall see how toughly a brave and loyal gentleman can die!"

With these words, and full of desperate thoughts, Gray rushed down the secret stair, while Murielle, with a sigh almost of rapture, locked the door. Then, with a prayer of thankfulness, she thrust the key into her bosom; but, fearing it might not be quite safe even there, she cast it into the great fire of coals and oak roots which burned on the hearth.

At that moment the door was burst open, and the tall grim laird of Pompherston, with his helmet open and his sword drawn, rushed in, with a confused mob of pikemen and archers at his back.

On seeing only the countess and her sister, he and his flushed followers seemed perplexed, and turned away to prosecute their search elsewhere. But soon the clash of weapons and shouts of exultation and ferocity in the garden drew all there to join the fray.

Murielle sprang to the nearest window, and oh, what a sight she saw there!

Sir Patrick Gray issuing from the doorway of the secret passage, covered with blood and wounds; his pourpoint rent and torn; his sword and dagger bloody, after a combat maintained in the dark against Achanna and six others, who, as already related, had beset the way and attacked him, with terrible advantage, in the obscurity, which concealed alike their number and their deadly purpose.

Undismayed, with his sword in his right hand and a long Scottish dagger in his left, Gray rushed upon his assailants, and they quickly parted before him; but only to close in his rear, while fresh foes met him in front.

What a sight for Murielle to gaze upon, while, gasping and shrieking, she clung to the iron bars of the hall window, and surveyed the terrible scene below, where one poor human life was struggling so nobly and so desperately for existence against so many!

Brave heart! he will sell that life dearly, for it is doubly valuable now. Youth and love – the love of Murielle – are his, and for both he has to live and to conquer!

No slogan or shout, entreaty or threat, are uttered by him, as, with teeth clenched, brows knit, and every nerve and fibre strained, he stabs and shreds and hews about him, trampling underfoot those who fall beneath his hand.

He casts one brief and despairing glance at the window, for he knows that she is there; and to the horror of being thus helplessly butchered by the kinsmen of Murielle, is added the bitter consciousness that she beholds it, alike unable to assist or save him.

He is the aim of a hundred flashing weapons and infuriated men, who, in their blind eagerness to destroy him, impede and inflict severe wounds on each other.

His pourpoint hangs from his shoulders in rags, and more than one long arrow dangles by its barbed point from his shirt of mail. Now his helmet is struck from his head; an exulting cheer rises from the rabble that surge around him; but still he towers above them like a rock, and hews another, another, and another down!

Now, as he concentrates all his energies, the crowd parts before him; he has reached the outer gate, and then a cry for "rescue" rises in the street beyond.

He reels, he staggers to his knee!

Yet up he springs again. Heavens! there is a long and bloody streak across his pallid face; and now his sword-blade breaks; but he wrests another from an assailant, whom he hurls to the earth and treads under foot, lest he should rise and fight again!

On, on yet, and now he has fought his way through the gate, beyond which, on horseback, sits grim Earl James of Abercorn, like a mailed statue, surveying with fierce eyes this appalling scene; and now, faint with wounds and loss of blood, Gray staggers like a dying man towards him, and clutches his stirrup-leather.

"James of Abercorn," he cries, "by your knighthood, by God's mercy and the honour of your name, save me!"

But, with the smile of a demon, James the Gross raises his ponderous ghisarma, and strikes him twice on his bare head and upturned despairing face, which in a moment are covered with blood.

"Murielle! Murielle!" exclaims Gray, as he sinks, to all appearance, lifeless in the street; and then the wild rabble sweep over him like a human flood, to complete his destruction.

On beholding this last barbarous act, a shriek burst even from the countess, and she turned to her sister; but, alas! poor Murielle had long since sunk insensible on the cushioned window-seat.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CASTLE OF THRAVE

Sad airs like those she heard in infancy,

Fell on her soul and filled her eyes with tears;

And recollections came of happier years,

Thronging from all the cells of memory.

Barry Cornwall.

More than a year had elapsed since the terrible scene with which the preceding chapter has closed.

It was the sweet season of summer. A soft wind was passing over the pastoral uplands of Galloway, and rippling the black water of the Dee where it swept round the green islet on which stands the great feudal fortress of Thrave. It rippled, in some places, the growing cornfields, in others, the greener wild grass, bearing with it the freshness of the dew that loaded the leaves of the wayside flowers (for a shower had just fallen), with the perfume of the honeycomb, of the mountain bee that hummed over the yellow broom or purple heather-bells, on the rugged braes of Balmaghie; or over the crimson cups of the wild roses overhanging the brawling burn that rushed through bank and scaur to Woodhall Loch.

It was a summer noon; the sunny shower had passed away, and the rose-linnet, the wild mavis, and the gold-spink sang merrily on every bush and bank; and the bright sun cast the great shadow of the castle of Thrave upon the Dee, which moats it round.

There now dwelt Murielle, and others who have borne a part in our story, though a change had come over their position in life.

The Lord Chancellor Crichton had scarcely foreseen the immediate consequences of that "black dinour" in the castle of Edinburgh – a deed of detestable cruelty, though deemed politic in the spirit of the time. It naturally excited the deep-rooted hatred and fierce indignation of the numerous vassalage and powerful friends of the house of Douglas; while the youth of the noble victims on one hand, with the age and valour of Sir Malcolm Fleming on the other, together with the cold-blooded treachery which lured them all to a doom so disastrous – a mock trial and execution in the young king's presence, despite his tears and entreaties – all conduced to excite a strong sympathy among the people, who only remembered the worth and loyalty of their ancestors, and forgot those excesses, or were ignorant of that mad ambition, which had filled with jealousy the ministers of James the Second.

But while treasuring this deed of blood in their resentful hearts, and scheming for the downfall of the regent and chancellor, the Douglases were too wary now to trust themselves out of their own fastnesses, or to take immediate revenge.

The dukedom of Touraine and the county of Longueville had reverted to the crown of France; but James the Gross, earl of Abercorn and Avondale, through whose connivance the trial and execution of his kinsmen took place, succeeded quietly to all their Scottish estates. Then, to prevent the dismemberment of a territory so princely, and to preserve to the house of Douglas the Countess Margaret's portion, which comprehended Galloway, Wigton, Balvenie, Ormond, and Annandale, on the promise of obtaining a papal dispensation, through the good offices of the abbot of Tongland, she consented to espouse Earl James, that they might the better plot their vengeance and unite their power against the regent and chancellor, who, by this unexpected consolidation, saw their views baffled, and the family of Douglas, within six months, restored to its former strength and splendour.

Thus, twice before her twentieth year, had the Fair Maid of Galloway worn a wreath of roses and lucky four-leaved clover, which formed then the bridal chaplet. The young lord of her great fortress by the Dee had passed away; yet it seemed strange he had left no vacancy of heart or hearth behind him: for his place had been rapidly filled by another; and none knew Margaret's secret thoughts.

In the vast but solitary castle of Thrave, Murielle had long wept for her lover, and mourned him as one who was dead. Whether he had been slain outright, or been simply but barbarously mutilated, she had no means of ascertaining, as the countess and her armed train had taken their departure from Edinburgh within an hour after the fatal conflict; and since then she had resided in Thrave, the most remote and strong of all her many fortresses.

Since that fatal day, Murielle had felt as if her little heart had been crushed by a hand of steel; while the society of the stern, malevolent, and gloomy Earl James, who was now lord of all their heritage, and as such assumed to be the master of her hand and destiny – a mastery in which he was joined by her proud, fiery, and, at times, cruel sister – made her long for a refuge among the Benedictine nuns of Lincluden; and she as often wished, in the sorrow and bitterness of her soul, that she were at rest among the graves of her forefathers, in Melrose or Dundrennan. She never saw the earl without experiencing a shudder of horror and aversion, for the memory of that terrible day in Edinburgh was ever before her; her lover's upturned face, with its despairing eyes, imploring pity from the fierce noble who smote him down with his bloody ghisarma, as he would have done a reptile.

In that age there were no newspapers; no posts or telegraphs; no books or printing, for it was twenty years before Caxton set his first types for Raoul le Fevre; thus the library of the great countess was limited to her missal, and a little whity-brown volume in which she engrossed recipes and so forth. Save a few games of hazard, there were no in-door amusements, or food for the mind. How wearily and drearily must the days have been passed by the dwellers in those old Scottish castles, secluded in roadless and mountain districts, when there was peace (which was seldom), and no fighting, burning, or hanging going on!

No tidings came from the court or capital to Thrave, save the strange and floating rumours brought by a passing harper on his way towards Ireland or the south; or by a cunning pardoner, travelling with his holy wares and relics to Tongland, Dundrennan, or St. Mary Isle; or by an armed mosstrooper, in his steel cap and vambraces; or a bein-bonnet laird, or gudeman (i. e. one who holds his land from a baron), on his Galloway cob, passing to or from the next burgh town, who, after bartering his beef, butter, and eggs, for a bilbo or suit of harness, tarried at lordly Thrave, belated or storm-stayed.

Men travelled little then by night in Scotland. Vast districts were almost roadless; and deep rivers, the fabled abode of the mischievous kelpie and dreadful water-horse, were bridgeless, and the fords were few and precarious. Lawless moss-troopers, broken men, and wandering gipsies rendered the paths insecure; nor were supernatural terrors wanting, in the shapes of bogles, spunkies, wraiths, and fairies, to render the ingle-lum of the nearest farm, the refectory of a monastery, or the hall of a baron or landholder an acceptable refuge after dark.

Of the old abbot of Tongland the inhabitants of Thrave had seen little. He had secluded himself in his abbey, which lay in a deep and woody hollow formed by the Dee, and adjoining the clachan which slopes down to the verge of the stream – for so they named their villages in Celtic Galloway. There he spent day after day entrenched among illuminated manuscripts and yellow parchments, searching, writing, quoting, collating, and preparing anew his application to Pope Eugene, that the Prince of Darkness might be forgiven, so that evil and discord in the world might cease for ever.

On the eccentric, but kind old abbot, Murielle rested all her hope for succour, information, advice, and assistance; but he failed to obtain authentic tidings of her lover's fate. Thus, in that great castle, which was crowded by armed men, she pined and sorrowed in secret, without a friend.

Meanwhile quantities of armour, helmets, corslets, spurs, and bridles, that came in hampers by ships from Holland, bundles of arrows and spears brought on horseback from Dumfries to the arsenal in the barbican, indicated the events that were on the tapis. Many couriers, such as Pompherston, Glendoning, Achanna, and Sir Alan Lauder, were dispatched in all directions under cloud of night, while others were arriving with secret parchments, and slips of paper concealed in the lining of their doublets, the sheaths of their daggers, and the tops of their gambadoes; missives from the turbulent John, earl of Ross, lord of the isles; from Sir Magnus Redmain, the English governor of Berwick; from Robert, the exiled and intriguing duke of Albany; from John Garm Stewart, of Athole; from Christian I., count of Oldenburg and king of Norway: and all these signs filled Murielle with anxiety and alarm, as they indicated the magnitude of the schemes and intrigues in which the fierce and subtle Earl James and her bold and ambitious sister were engaged, and the designs they were forming against the regent, the chancellor, the unfortunate people, and the young and innocent king.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BOWER CHAMBER

The summer brook flows in the bed

The winter torrent tore asunder;

The skylark's gentle wings are spread

Where walk'd the lightning and the thunder:

And thus you'll find the sternest soul,

The gayest tenderness concealing;

And minds that seem to mock control

Are order'd by some fairy feeling.

Poems by Thomas Davis.

It was, as related, a summer noon.

Earl James of Douglas, whilom of Abercorn and Avondale, still in half rebellion against a king and court from both of which he kept sullenly aloof, was hawking on the bank of the Carlinwark Loch, with Sir Alan Lauder, Achanna, and other friends, while the countess was in her bower-chamber with Murielle and other ladies of her household.

As a reward for his services, Achanna, that worthy Scottish liberal and utilitarian of the year of grace 1441, had received a purse of gold from the chancellor, and from Abercorn the office of seneschal of Thrave. Like many of his countrymen in more modern times, master James Achanna was a noisy professor of religion, and never missed a mass or service of his church; he wore an enormous rosary, and crossed himself at least a hundred times daily when any one was present. Scotland has always been peculiarly unfortunate in producing such pretenders; and doubtless, had James Achanna lived now, the same cunning and coldness of heart, the same selfishness of purpose and anti-nationality which he possessed, would have brought him fortune, place, or power, political, and assuredly provincial fame; but, under James II., he was merely a hireling swordsman, a smooth-tongued intriguer, and occasionally a "rowdy" in a suit of armour.

The windows of the bower chamber were open, and afforded an ample view of the far-stretching pastoral landscape, through which the Dee, between banks shrouded by groves of beech and willow, the fragrant hawthorn, or those old oaks which, ages ago, had echoed to the horn of the great crusader, Alan, lord of Galloway, wound to pour its waters in the Solway Firth. Through the deep and arched embayments in the old castle wall, the summer sunshine shed a flood of radiance upon the arched necks, the white hands, and glossy tresses of the group of handsome girls who drew their tabourettes around the chair of the Countess Margaret, who had just entered; for, with few exceptions, these damoiselles in silk and costly attire were the same who had attended her on that unhappy visit to Edinburgh in the November of 1440.