but Roland Graeme was not of an age or temper to waste much time
in endeavoring to decipher her meaning. All that was obvious to his
perception in the present journey, promised pleasure and novelty. He
rejoiced that he was travelling towards Edinburgh, in order to assume
the character of a man, and lay aside that of a boy. He was delighted to
think that he would have an opportunity of rejoining Catherine
Seyton, whose bright eyes and lively manners had made so favourable an
impression on his imagination; and, as an experienced, yet high-spirited
youth, entering for the first time upon active life, his heart bounded
at the thought, that he was about to see all those scenes of courtly
splendour and warlike adventures, of which the followers of Sir Halbert
used to boast on their occasional visits to Avenel, to the wonderment
and envy of those who, like Roland, knew courts and camps only by
hearsay, and were condemned to the solitary sports and almost monastic
seclusion of Avenel, surrounded by its lonely lake, and embossed
among its pathless mountains. “They shall mention my name,” he said
to himself, “if the risk of my life can purchase me opportunities of
distinction, and Catherine Seyton's saucy eye shall rest with more
respect on the distinguished soldier, than that with which she laughed
to scorn the raw and inexperienced page.”--There was wanting but
one accessary to complete the sense of rapturous excitation, and he
possessed it by being once more mounted on the back of a fiery and
active horse, instead of plodding along on foot, as had been the case
during the preceding days.
Impelled by the liveliness of his own spirits, which so many
circumstances tended naturally to exalt, Roland Graeme's voice and his
laughter were soon distinguished amid the trampling of the horses of the
retinue, and more than once attracted the attention of the leader, who
remarked with satisfaction, that the youth replied with good-humoured
raillery to such of the train as jested with him on his dismissal and
return to the service of the House of Avenel.
“I thought the holly-branch in your bonnet had been blighted, Master
Roland?” said one of the men-at-arms.
“Only pinched with half an hour's frost; you see it flourishes as green
as ever.”
“It is too grave a plant to flourish on so hot a soil as that headpiece
of thine, Master Roland Graeme,” retorted the other, who was an old
equerry of Sir Halbert Glendinning.
“If it will not flourish alone,” said Roland, “I will mix it with the
laurel and the myrtle--and I will carry them so near the sky, that it
shall make amends for their stinted growth.”
Thus speaking, he dashed his spurs into his horse's sides, and, checking
him at the same time, compelled him to execute a lofty caracole. Sir
Halbert Glendinning looked at the demeanour of his new attendant with
that sort of melancholy pleasure with which those who have long followed
the pursuits of life, and are sensible of their vanity, regard the gay,
young, and buoyant spirits to whom existence, as yet, is only hope and
promise.
In the meanwhile, Adam Woodcock, the falconer, stripped of his masquing
habit, and attired, according to his rank and calling, in a green
jerkin, with a hawking-bag on the one side, and a short hanger on the
other, a glove on his left hand which reached half way up his arm, and
a bonnet and feather upon his head, came after the party as fast as
his active little galloway-nag could trot, and immediately entered into
parley with Roland Graeme.
“So, my youngster, you are once more under shadow of the holly-branch?”
“And in case to repay you, my good friend,” answered Roland, “your ten
groats of silver.”
“Which, but an hour since,” said the falconer, “you had nearly paid me
with ten inches of steel. On my faith, it is written in the book of our
destiny, that I must brook your dagger after all.”
“Nay, speak not of that, my good friend,” said the youth, “I would
rather have broached my own bosom than yours; but who could have known
you in the mumming dress you wore?”
“Yes,” the falconer resumed,--for both as a poet and actor he had
his own professional share of self-conceit,--“I think I was as good a
Howleglas as ever played part at a Shrovetide revelry, and not a much
worse Abbot of Unreason. I defy the Old Enemy to unmask me when I choose
to keep my vizard on. What the devil brought the Knight on us before we
had the game out? You would have heard me hollo my own new ballad with a
voice should have reached to Berwick. But I pray you, Master Roland, be
less free of cold steel on slight occasions; since, but for the stuffing
of my reverend doublet, I had only left the kirk to take my place in the
kirkyard.”
“Nay, spare me that feud,” said Roland Graeme, “we shall have no time to
fight it out; for, by our lord's command, I am bound for Edinburgh.”
“I know it,” said Adam Woodcock, “and even therefore we shall have time
to solder up this rent by the way, for Sir Halbert has appointed me your
companion and guide.”
“Ay? and with what purpose?” said the page.
“That,” said the falconer, “is a question I cannot answer; but I know,
that be the food of the eyases washed or unwashed, and, indeed, whatever
becomes of perch and mew, I am to go with you to Edinburgh, and see you
safely delivered to the Regent at Holyrood.”
“How, to the Regent?” said Roland, in surprise.
“Ay, by my faith, to the Regent,” replied Woodcock; “I promise you, that
if you are not to enter his service, at least you are to wait upon him
in the character of a retainer of our Knight of Avenel.”
“I know no right,” said the youth, “which the Knight of Avenel hath to
transfer my service, supposing that I owe it to himself.”
“Hush, hush!” said the falconer; “that is a question I advise no one to
stir in until he has the mountain or the lake, or the march of another
kingdom, which is better than either, betwixt him and his feudal
superior.”
“But Sir Halbert Glendinning,” said the youth, “is not my feudal
superior; nor has he aught of authority--”
“I pray you, my son, to rein your tongue,” answered Adam Woodcock; “my
lord's displeasure, if you provoke it, will be worse to appease than
my lady's. The touch of his least finger were heavier than her hardest
blow. And, by my faith, he is a man of steel, as true and as pure, but
as hard and as pitiless. You remember the Cock of Capperlaw, whom he
hanged over his gate for a mere mistake--a poor yoke of oxen taken in
Scotland, when he thought he was taking them in English land? I loved
the Cock of Capperlaw; the Kerrs had not an honester man in their clan,
and they have had men that might have been a pattern to the Border--men
that would not have lifted under twenty cows at once, and would have
held themselves dishonoured if they had taken a drift of sheep, or the
like, but always managed their raids in full credit and honour.--But
see, his worship halts, and we are close by the bridge. Ride up--ride
up--we must have his last instructions.”
It was as Adam Woodcock said. In the hollow way descending towards the
bridge, which was still in the guardianship of Peter Bridgeward, as he
was called, though he was now very old, Sir Halbert Glendinning halted
his retinue, and beckoned to Woodcock and Graeme to advance to the head
of the train.
“Woodcock,” said he, “thou knowest to whom thou art to conduct this
youth. And thou, young man, obey discreetly and with diligence the
orders that shall be given thee. Curb thy vain and peevish temper. Be
just, true, and faithful; and there is in thee that which may raise
thee many a degree above thy present station. Neither shalt thou--always
supposing thine efforts to be fair and honest--want the protection and
countenance of Avenel.”
Leaving them in front of the bridge, the centre tower of which now began
to cast a prolonged shade upon the river, the Knight of Avenel turned
to the left, without crossing the river, and pursued his way towards the
chain of hills within whose recesses are situated the Lake and Castle
of Avenel. There remained behind, the falconer, Roland Graeme, and a
domestic of the Knight, of inferior rank, who was left with them to look
after their horses while on the road, to carry their baggage, and to
attend to their convenience.
So soon as the more numerous body of riders had turned off to pursue
their journey westward, those whose route lay across the river, and was
directed towards the north, summoned the Bridgeward, and demanded a free
passage.
“I will not lower the bridge,” answered Peter, in a voice querulous with
age and ill-humour.--“Come Papist, come Protestant, ye are all the
same. The Papist threatened us with Purgatory, and fleeched us with
pardons--the Protestant mints at us with his sword, and cuttles us with
the liberty of conscience; but never a one of either says, 'Peter, there
is your penny.' I am well tired of all this, and for no man shall the
bridge fall that pays me not ready money; and I would have you know I
care as little for Geneva as for Rome--as little for homilies as for
pardons; and the silver pennies are the only passports I will hear of.”
“Here is a proper old chuff!” said Woodcock to his companion; then
raising his voice, he exclaimed, “Hark thee, dog--Bridgeward, villain,
dost thou think we have refused thy namesake Peter's pence to Rome, to
pay thine at the bridge of Kennaquhair? Let thy bridge down instantly to
the followers of the house of Avenel, or by the hand of my father, and
that handled many a bridle rein, for he was a bluff Yorkshireman--I say,
by my father's hand, our Knight will blow thee out of thy solan-goose's
nest there in the middle of the water, with the light falconet which we
are bringing southward from Edinburgh to-morrow.”
The Bridgeward heard, and muttered, “A plague on falcon and falconet,
on cannon and demicannon, and all the barking bull-dogs whom they halloo
against stone and lime in these our days! It was a merry time when there
was little besides handy blows, and it may be a flight of arrows that
harmed an ashler wall as little as so many hailstones. But we must jouk
and let the jaw gang by.” Comforting himself in his state of diminished
consequence with this pithy old proverb, Peter Bridgeward lowered the
drawbridge, and permitted them to pass over. At the sight of his white
hair, albeit it discovered a visage equally peevish through age and
misfortune, Roland was inclined to give him an alms, but Adam Woodcock
prevented him. “E'en let him pay the penalty of his former churlishness
and greed,” he said; “the wolf, when he has lost his teeth, should be
treated no better than a cur.”
Leaving the Bridgeward to lament the alteration of times, which sent
domineering soldiers and feudal retainers to his place of passage,
instead of peaceful pilgrims, and reduced him to become the oppressed,
instead of playing the extortioner, the travellers turned them
northward; and Adam Woodcock, well acquainted with that part of the
country, proposed to cut short a considerable portion of the road, by
traversing the little vale of Glendearg, so famous for the adventures
which befell therein during the earlier part of the Benedictine's
manuscript. With these, and with the thousand commentaries,
representations, and misrepresentations, to which they had given rise,
Roland Graeme was, of course, well acquainted; for in the Castle of
Avenel, as well as in other great establishments, the inmates talked of
nothing so often, or with such pleasure, as of the private affairs of
their lord and lady. But while Roland was viewing with interest these
haunted scenes, in which things were said to have passed beyond the
ordinary laws of nature, Adam Woodcock was still regretting in his
secret soul the unfinished revel and the unsung ballad, and kept every
now and then, breaking out with some such verses as these:--
“The Friars of Fail drank berry-brown ale,
The best that e'er was tasted;
The Monks of Melrose made gude kale
On Fridays, when they fasted.
Saint Monance' sister.
The gray priest kist her--
Fiend save the company!
Sing hay trix, trim-go-trix.
Under the greenwood tree.”
“By my hand, friend Woodcock,” said the page, “though I know you for a
hardy gospeller, that fear neither saint nor devil, yet, if I were
you, I would not sing your profane songs in this valley of Glendearg,
considering what has happened here before our time.”
“A straw for your wandering spirits!” said Adam Woodcock; “I mind them
no more than an earn cares for a string of wild-geese--they have all
fled since the pulpits were filled with honest men, and the people's
ears with sound doctrine. Nay, I have a touch at them in my ballad, an I
had but had the good luck to have it sung to end;” and again he set off
in the same key:
From haunted spring and grassy ring,
Troop goblin, elf, and fairy;
And the kelpie must flit from the black bog-pit,
And the brownie must not tarry;
To Limbo-lake,
Their way they take,
With scarce the pith to flee.
Sing hay trix, trim-go-trix,
Under the greenwood tree.
“I think,” he added, “that could Sir Halbert's patience have stretched
till we came that length, he would have had a hearty laugh, and that is
what he seldom enjoys.”
“If it be all true that men tell of his early life,” said Roland, “he
has less right to laugh at goblins than most men.”
“Ay, _if_ it be all true,” answered Adam Woodcock; “but who can ensure
us of that? Moreover, these were but tales the monks used to gull us
simple laymen withal; they knew that fairies and hobgoblins brought
aves and paternosters into repute; but, now we have given up worship
of images in wood and stone, methinks it were no time to be afraid of
bubbles in the water, or shadows in the air.”
“However,” said Roland Graeme, “as the Catholics say they do not worship
wood or stone, but only as emblems of the holy saints, and not as things
holy in themselves----”
“Pshaw! pshaw!” answered the falconer; “a rush for their prating.
They told us another story when these baptized idols of theirs brought
pike-staves and sandalled shoon from all the four winds, and whillied
the old women out of their corn and their candle ends, and their butter,
bacon, wool, and cheese, and when not so much as a gray groat escaped
tithing.”
Roland Graeme had been long taught, by necessity, to consider his form
of religion as a profound secret, and to say nothing whatever in its
defence when assailed, lest he should draw on himself the suspicion of
belonging to the unpopular and exploded church. He therefore suffered
Adam Woodcock to triumph without farther opposition, marvelling in his
own mind whether any of the goblins, formerly such active agents, would
avenge his rude raillery before they left the valley of Glendearg.
But no such consequences followed. They passed the night quietly in a
cottage in the glen, and the next day resumed their route to Edinburgh.
Chapter the Seventeenth.
Edina! Scotia's darling seat, All hail thy palaces and towers,
Where once, beneath a monarch's feet, Sate legislation's sovereign powers.
BURNS.
“This, then, is Edinburgh?” said the youth, as the fellow-travellers
arrived at one of the heights to the southward, which commanded a view
of the great northern capital--“This is that Edinburgh of which we have
heard so much!”
“Even so,” said the falconer; “yonder stands Auld Reekie--you may see
the smoke hover over her at twenty miles' distance, as the gosshawk
hangs over a plump of young wild-ducks--ay, yonder is the heart of
Scotland, and each throb that she gives is felt from the edge of Solway
to Duncan's-bay-head. See, yonder is the old Castle; and see to the
right, on yon rising ground, that is the Castle of Craigmillar, which I
have known a merry place in my time.”
“Was it not there,” said the page in a low voice, “that the Queen held
her court?”
“Ay, ay,” replied the falconer, “Queen she was then, though you must not
call her so now. Well, they may say what they will--many a true heart
will be sad for Mary Stewart, e'en if all be true men say of her; for
look you, Master Roland--she was the loveliest creature to look upon
that I ever saw with eye, and no lady in the land liked better the fair
flight of a falcon. I was at the great match on Roslin Moor betwixt
Bothwell--he was a black sight to her that Bothwell--and the Baron
of Roslin, who could judge a hawk's flight as well as any man in
Scotland--a butt of Rhenish and a ring of gold was the wager, and it was
flown as fairly for as ever was red gold and bright wine. And to see
her there on her white palfrey, that flew as if it scorned to touch more
than the heather blossom; and to hear her voice, as clear and sweet as
the mavis's whistle, mix among our jolly whooping and whistling; and to
mark all the nobles dashing round her; happiest he who got a word or a
look--tearing through moss and hagg, and venturing neck and limb to
gain the praise of a bold rider, and the blink of a bonny Queen's bright
eye!--she will see little hawking where she lies now--ay, ay, pomp and
pleasure pass away as speedily as the wap of a falcon's wing.”
“And where is this poor Queen now confined?” said Roland Graeme,
interested in the fate of a woman whose beauty and grace had made so
strong an impression even on the blunt and careless character of Adam
Woodcock.
“Where is she now imprisoned?” said honest Adam; “why, in some castle
in the north, they say--I know not where, for my part, nor is it worth
while to vex one's sell anent what cannot be mended--An she had guided
her power well whilst she had it, she had not come to so evil a pass.
Men say she must resign her crown to this little baby of a prince, for
that they will trust her with it no longer. Our master has been as busy
as his neighbours in all this work. If the Queen should come to her
own again, Avenel Castle is like to smoke for it, unless he makes
his bargain all the better.” “In a castle in the north Queen Mary is
confined?” said the page. “Why, ay--they say so, at least--In a castle
beyond that great river which comes down yonder, and looks like a river,
but it is a branch of the sea, and as bitter as brine.”
“And amongst all her subjects,” said the page, with some emotion, “is
there none that will adventure anything for her relief?”
“That is a kittle question,” said the falconer; “and if you ask it
often, Master Roland, I am fain to tell you that you will be mewed up
yourself in some of those castles, if they do not prefer twisting your
head off, to save farther trouble with you--Adventure any thing? Lord,
why, Murray has the wind in his poop now, man, and flies so high and
strong, that the devil a wing of them can match him--No, no; there she
is, and there she must lie, till Heaven send her deliverance, or till
her son has the management of all--But Murray will never let her loose
again, he knows her too well.--And hark thee, we are now bound for
Holyrood, where thou wilt find plenty of news, and of courtiers to tell
it--But, take my counsel, and keep a calm sough, as the Scots say--hear
every man's counsel, and keep your own. And if you hap to learn any
news you like, leap not up as if you were to put on armour direct in the
cause--Our old Mr. Wingate says--and he knows court-cattle well--that if
you are told old King Coul is come alive again, you should turn it off
with, 'And is he in truth?--I heard not of it,' and should seem no more
moved, than if one told you, by way of novelty, that old King Coul was
dead and buried. Wherefore, look well to your bearing, Master Roland,
for, I promise you, you come among a generation that are keen as a
hungry hawk--And never be dagger out of sheath at every wry word you
hear spoken; for you will find as hot blades as yourself, and then will
be letting of blood without advice either of leech or almanack.”
“You shall see how staid I will be, and how cautious, my good friend,”
said Graeme; “but, blessed Lady, what goodly house is that which is
lying all in ruins so close to the city? Have they been playing at the
Abbot of Unreason here, and ended the gambol by burning the church?”
“There again now,” replied his companion, “you go down the wind like a
wild haggard, that minds neither lure nor beck--that is a question you
should have asked in as low a tone as I shall answer it.”
“If I stay here long,” said Roland Graeme, “it is like I shall lose the
natural use of my voice--but what are the ruins then?”
“The Kirk of Field,” said the falconer, in a low and impressive whisper,
laying at the same time his finger on his lip; “ask no more about
it--somebody got foul play, and somebody got the blame of it; and the
game began there which perhaps may not be played out in our time.--Poor
Henry Darnley! to be an ass, he understood somewhat of a hawk; but
they sent him on the wing through the air himself one bright moonlight
night.”
The memory of this catastrophe was so recent, that the page averted his
eyes with horror from the scathed ruins in which it had taken place; and
the accusations against the Queen, to which it had given rise, came over
his mind with such strength as to balance the compassion he had begun to
entertain for her present forlorn situation.
It was, indeed, with that agitating state of mind which arises partly
from horror, but more from anxious interest and curiosity, that young
Graeme found himself actually traversing the scene of those tremendous
events, the report of which had disturbed the most distant solitudes
in Scotland, like the echoes of distant thunder rolling among the
mountains.
“Now,” he thought, “now or never shall I become a man, and bear my part
in those deeds which the simple inhabitants of our hamlets repeat to
each other, as if they were wrought by beings of a superior order to
their own. I will know now, wherefore the Knight of Avenel carries his
crest so much above those of the neighbouring baronage, and how it is
that men, by valour and wisdom, work their way from the hoddin-gray
coat to the cloak of scarlet and gold. Men say I have not much wisdom to
recommend me; and if that be true, courage must do it; for I will be a
man amongst living men, or a dead corpse amongst the dead.”
From these dreams of ambition he turned his thoughts to those of
pleasure, and began to form many conjectures, when and where he should
see Catherine Seyton, and in what manner their acquaintance was to be
renewed. With such conjectures he was amusing himself, when he found
that they had entered the city, and all other feelings were suspended
in the sensation of giddy astonishment with which an inhabitant of the
country is affected, when, for the first time, he finds himself in the
streets of a large and populous city, a unit in the midst of thousands.
The principal street of Edinburgh was then, as now, one of the most
spacious in Europe. The extreme height of the houses, and the variety of
Gothic gables and battlements, and balconies, by which the sky-line on
each side was crowned and terminated, together with the width of the
street itself, might have struck with surprise a more practised eye than
that of young Graeme. The population, close packed within the walls of
the city, and at this time increased by the number of the lords of
the King's party who had thronged to Edinburgh to wait upon the Regent
Murray, absolutely swarmed like bees on the wide and stately street.
Instead of the shop-windows, which are now calculated for the display
of goods, the traders had their open booths projecting on the street,
in which, as in the fashion of the modern bazaars, all was exposed which
they had upon sale. And though the commodities were not of the richest
kinds, yet Graeme thought he beheld the wealth of the whole world in the
various bales of Flanders cloths, and the specimens of tapestry; and,
at other places, the display of domestic utensils and pieces of plate
struck him with wonder. The sight of cutlers' booths, furnished with
swords and poniards, which were manufactured in Scotland, and with
pieces of defensive armour, imported from Flanders, added to his
surprise; and, at every step, he found so much to admire and gaze upon,
that Adam Woodcock had no little difficulty in prevailing on him to
advance through such a scene of enchantment.