‘Oh, they rade on, and farther on,
And they waded through rivers above the knee,
And they saw neither the sun nor the moon,
But they heard the roaring of the sea.’
The morning broke gloomily. A thick and heavy mist clung around the
towers of Hermitage, dimming the arms and saturating the cloaks of the
escort already mounted and waiting in the Castle-yard. The moisture
dripped from the ears and nostrils of the horses, and stood upon the
beards of their riders, while the former stamped and shook their bits
impatiently, and the latter muttered a coarse jest or two, not without
fervent aspirations after a tass of brandy to keep the raw air from
their throats.
Presently ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ emerged from the turret containing the
warden’s private apartments, wearing an unusually gloomy expression
on his face, and proceeded to examine the arms and appointments of
his comrades, with a disposition to find fault, that elicited sundry
growls, murmurs, and a round oath or two from the impatient jackmen.
There was, however, but little delay, in starting the cavalcade.
Maxwell, who had been anxiously awaiting the spare horse prepared for
him, was soon in the saddle exchanging a cheerful greeting with the
troopers, to which Dick alone made no reply; and while it was yet
scarcely light, the portcullis was raised, and the party filed out,
intently watched from one of the narrow windows by a haggard eager
face, that still looked and lingered after the croup of the last
horseman had disappeared. Bothwell even made one hasty gesture, as if
to recall his mandate, and order the party back, but changing his mind
again on the instant, with a bitter laugh, he took a long draught from
a wine-flagon that stood by his bed-side, and then flinging himself on
the couch, turned doggedly to the wall and tried to force his senses
into sleep.
Maxwell felt his sovereign’s letter lying safe within his doublet. He
examined, too, the priming of his pistols, and turned his sword-belt
a little more to the front. Then he proved the mouth and mettle of
his charger with rein and spur, deriving from the experiment all the
confidence felt by a good horseman on a well-bitted steed. Satisfied
at length on these important points, his spirits rose with the morning
air and the excitement of his mission. Even Mary Carmichael’s falsehood
seemed less black in hue than it appeared yesterday. The future once
more showed promise of something beside a dull apathetic response to
the call of duty alone. He looked along its dim vistas, and saw the
light shining, though faintly, at a distance. The mission was already
in imagination half-fulfilled. He had made his journey prosperously
through the rich districts of middle England, and gained the capital
with unprecedented rapidity, thanks to good luck in procuring horses,
and his own untiring powers in the saddle. He had delivered his
credentials to Lady Lennox, and presented himself at Greenwich Palace
to the Maiden Queen. He could even conjure up a picture in his mind
of that redoubtable lady; could imagine the flaxen curls, the stately
figure, the harsh yet not uncomely features, and the dignified gestures
that veiled a woman’s vanity beneath the majestic bearing of a British
sovereign. He became a courtier for the occasion, and thought how
he could serve his own dear mistress with a well-timed compliment,
and a little apt flattery to her rival ‘Good Sister.’ He saw himself
dismissed with honour, and speeding back to the North, triumphant at
the safe accomplishment of his mission. Then he fell to thinking of
Mary’s kindly thanks, delivered with all that charm of manner which
made a word from her better than a jewel from another, and his welcome
reception at Holyrood by all the loyal and well-disposed party to whom
it was of no small moment to see their Queen happily married.
Perhaps _others_, thought Maxwell, might not have served her so well.
Perhaps _one_ of her maidens, with whom, as with the rest, loyalty was
still the master passion, might be inclined to give him a welcome far
warmer and kinder than her proud and distant farewell: might think she
had judged him harshly, prematurely: might wish when it was too late
that she had not so scornfully rejected his devotion, nay, might long
to possess now what she had valued so lightly when it was her own. Then
he would teach her a lesson that it would do her good to learn; then
how delicious would be the triumph of meeting her coldly, politely,
with calm friendship and quiet good-will, far more cutting than any
amount of assumed indifference and unconcern; then she would know that
she had altered her mind too late, that a man of energy and action was
not to be pulled hither and thither like a puppet by the weak hand of a
woman holding the string; that she had flung the falcon from her wrist
once, jesses and all, and he would soar his wing now, and never stoop
to lure of hers again.
Oh! it would be a happy moment; and yet how much happier to forgive her
freely, and without reproach to take her hand in his, look frankly in
her face, and tell her he had loved her all along, even when she was
most wilful and most unkind! Was he not a man--a bold strong man? What
had he to do with pride as regarded her? Nay, was it not his pride to
think that whilst he yielded an inch to no one else on earth, he would
always be content to accept suffering, sorrow, even humiliation, for
her dear sake?
Such is the usual conclusion of one of those love reveries in which men
indulge whilst under the influence of the malady; such is the climax
of an infinity of stem resolution and haughty self-reproach and bitter
self-examination; we make ourselves very unkind and very uncomfortable,
and after all leave off very much at the point from which we started,
if anything, in a less rational frame of mind than at first.
Maxwell could not but compare himself at the moment to the horse of
one of the leading files of his escort, which had got bogged up to the
girths in a _well-head_, as those particularly soft pieces of morass
are called, which abound on the Scottish moorland. The poor animal made
two or three gallant efforts to extricate itself, stimulated not only
by the great terror a horse entertains of such a catastrophe, but by a
fierce application of its long-legged rider’s spurs; each plunge only
hampered it more irrevocably, and at last amidst the loud jeers of his
comrades and a volley of oaths from himself, the trooper abandoned the
saddle and wisely allowed the beast to be still for a few moments and
recover its wind.
Maxwell’s attention, which had hitherto been somewhat taken up with his
own thoughts, was now directed towards the locality in which he found
himself, and the mist clearing away as the day drew on, enabled him to
recognise one or two of those acclivities and breaks of the sky-line
which constitute the landmarks of an open moorland district, such as he
was at present traversing.
Though he had been but once before at Hermitage, his soldier’s eye
had not failed to acquaint itself with the general outline of the
surrounding country. He now recognised a conical-shaped hill on his
left hand, that he distinctly remembered to have passed yesterday in
riding from Edinburgh on his right; the wind, too, which from the
appearance of the weather he judged to be easterly, struck cold upon
his right cheek; he was convinced they must be going north. His first
impression was that the party had lost its way in the mist; his first
impulse to jeer its leader, his old friend Dick, on such a want of
moss-trooping sagacity.
‘How now, master Dick?’ said Maxwell, cheerily, looking round for his
friend, who rode silent and sullen in the rear; ‘I should have thought
you knew your way to the southern side better than this! If you wanted
to drive Lord Scrope’s horses, or empty a byre or two in Cumberland,
you wouldn’t take the road to Holyrood, as I am much mistaken if we are
not doing, this morning. Why, man, I came by that very cairn on the
green hill yesterday. Thou must be asleep, Dick, for I know the ale is
not yet brewed that will make thee drunk!’
Dick shook himself sulkily in reply, and moving his horse alongside his
questioner, laid his hand on the other’s bridle-rein as if to guide him
into a sounder path.
‘I’m thinkin’, Maister Maxwell,’ said Dick, with an assumption of
extreme friendliness and great caution, ‘that it wud be mair wise-like
just to whig cannily back to Holyrood, and leave a fule to gang a
fule’s errand for himself.’
Maxwell laughed good-humouredly. Even now he was persuaded the
borderer had missed the southern tract, and was annoyed at his own
stupidity, perhaps inclined to veil it from his men by affecting
ignorance of his charge’s destination.
‘Holyrood is a fair palace, Dick,’ said he, ‘and I left it but
yesterday at daybreak. Do you think I came all the way to Hermitage
only to push the wine-cup round with wild Lord Rothes, and so back
again, with red eyes and a singing brain, to my duties in the Queen’s
ante-room? Nay, nay, the sooner we strike the right track and cross
the Border the better. Why, man, I should be half-way to York before
sun-down!’
Dick seemed sadly disturbed. He fidgeted with his bridle, he loosened
his sword in its sheath, he looked up and down and on all sides of him
in obvious vexation. Once when a jackman rode nearer Maxwell than was
convenient, he bade the man keep his distance with a hearty curse. He
seemed hurried, and yet anxious to put off time, and talked at random
as one does who has some engrossing subject of no pleasant nature to
occupy his thoughts.
‘Ye wad be better at Holyrood, Maister Maxwell,’ said he, still harping
on the old subject. ‘An’ ye were at the palace yesterday, nae doot, wi’
the Queen an’ her leddies, an’ who but you? I wish ye were there at
this moment, Maister Maxwell, an’ that’s the dooms truth o’ it!’
‘Orders must be obeyed, Dick,’ answered the other, vainly trying to
induce the whole cavalcade to increase their pace, which had now
dwindled down to a very funeral walk. ‘That reminds me, I have a
message for you from one of the Queen’s maids-of-honour.’
All the blood in the borderer’s great body seemed to rush into as much
of his face as was visible beneath his morion, then the colour faded
visibly, and for the first time in his life ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ turned
as white as a sheet.
‘It wad no be from Mistress Seton!’ said he, almost unconsciously, and
with the true Scottish negative that affirms so much. ‘Man! I wad like
fine to hear it,’ and he bent over his horse’s neck and looked Walter
in the face with something of the wistful eager expression that the
Newfoundland dog, to whom he has already been compared, assumes when
his master is going to throw a stick for him to retrieve out of the
water. In the animal goes! A plumper off the pier, be it never so
high, and the waves breaking never so angrily below, and you may be
sure that in his noble instinct of fidelity he would drown ten times
over before he would let go.
Walter freed his rein from the other’s grasp, and struck into a trot.
‘It was but to hope you had not forgotten all she taught you, Dick,
good manners and such like. I may tell her when I see her again that
you are such a courteous squire now, you guide the bridle-rein of a
mounted man-at-arms as carefully as a lady’s palfrey. Tush, man! we are
wasting time; let us strike into the right path and get on. I tell thee
mine errand admits of no delay!’
He spoke impatiently, but yet in perfect good-humour, and looking on
his companion’s face, was startled at the expression of intense pain
that was apparent in its features. ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ looked like a
man who had been shot through the body, and was endeavouring to hide
his internal agony under an appearance of outward composure.
Inside that stalwart frame of his a terrible conflict was going on.
Good feeling, manhood, a certain reflective sense of the duties of
hospitality, above all, loyalty to the Queen, represented by an intense
devotion to one of her maids-of-honour; all these sentiments were at
war with the habits of a lifetime and the first feudal instinct of the
henchman--implicit obedience to his chief. It is needless to say that
the latter obtained the mastery.
Maxwell was a friend, and he had come from the immediate presence
of her who was the one bright image that gladdened the man’s honest
unsophisticated heart, that elevated his rude nature and gave him a
glimpse of something better than clash of steel and clang of drinking
cups, the excitement of a foray, and the pleasures of a debauch; but,
on the other hand, Bothwell was the master whom he had venerated and
obeyed from childhood; whose mandate it never occurred to him to
dispute; whose will was law. The Rutherfords had served the Hepburns by
flood and field as long as either family could count their line. It was
not for Dick, so he thought, to be the first traitor of his race; yet
he loathed his task, too, this frank-hearted borderer, and his face was
very stern and his voice rung hoarse and harsh when he spoke again.
‘Ye say true, Maister Maxwell. Orders _must_ be obeyed, Gude forgi’e
us! and _the Laird’s bidding must be done_!’
Startled by the altered tone, Maxwell turned in his saddle, and at
the same instant a thick woollen plaid, thrown over him from behind,
was drawn tight across his head and face, a sword-belt was as quickly
strapped round his arms above the elbows, a stout moss-trooper pinioned
him on either side, two more were at his horse’s head, his weapons were
secured, and he found himself, in the space of about half a minute,
helpless, blindfold, half-stifled, and a prisoner!
Accustomed as he had been in his adventurous life to every sort of
catastrophe, the present seemed to him the most unaccountable and
startling of all. He had not witnessed the chafing warden’s interview
yesterday with calm, impassible, unscrupulous Moray, nor guessed how
much he had to thank his host, that imprisonment rather than death was
his present fate. He knew nothing of the conclave held over their wine
after he had retired last night by the three nobles, when Rothes had
suggested so jovially that he might be blinded or left in a dungeon for
life, or hidden out of the way altogether, in any manner that was most
agreeable to his boon companions.
‘For,’ as the peer politely put it, while he filled his cup to the
brim, ‘you need have no fear of inconveniencing _me_. We have a saying
in Fife of which I have always endeavoured to uphold the truth--“Ask no
questions of the Leslies, for their answers are sharp, silent, and to
the point.” If he goes down a certain winding-stair in my poor house
you might never hear of him again till you wanted him; and if need be,
I could produce you his bones, at any rate, twenty years hence. Do
not hesitate, I pray you; I am only happy to accommodate the warden.
Bothwell, your good health!’
Nor had he overheard the orders accepted so unwillingly by poor
‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ an hour or two before dawn, nor that worthy’s
eager remonstrance and extreme unwillingness to fulfil his chief’s
behests. Perhaps the henchman never felt so keenly that he was a vassal
as when he told off six stout jackmen for the unwelcome duty, and
informed them of the catchword, ‘_the Laird’s bidding_,’ at which they
were to muffle and pinion their prisoner.
Maxwell knew it was useless to complain. A request for a little air
was so far complied with that the plaid, while it still blinded him,
was enough loosened to admit of his breathing more freely; but no
answer was vouchsafed to the few indignant questions that, in his first
surprise, he had put to his captors. The pace, too, at which they were
now going, forbade conversation, and in the few words exchanged at
intervals between the jackman, their prisoner failed to distinguish
the tones of ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh.’ Notwithstanding the henchman’s
treachery, Maxwell’s heart sank a little within him to think that he
was deserted by his last friend.
After many hours of hard riding, and when he could not but feel that
his horse was becoming completely exhausted, the fresh sea-breeze
made him aware that he was approaching the Firth. With no unnecessary
violence, though with much rapidity, he was, ere long, lifted from the
saddle and placed in a boat, but the plaid was still kept round his
head, and an unbroken silence preserved even by the men who handled
the oars. It must have been long after nightfall when they made the
opposite shore, and Maxwell, despite his hardy frame, was becoming
faint and exhausted from fatigue, vexation, and want of food.
As he was again forced into the saddle, however, a flask of brandy was
applied to his mouth, and at the same time a strong bony hand grasped
his own warmly, and ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’s’ welcome voice whispered in
his ear--
‘Tak’ anither sup, lad, and keep your heart up. Ye’ve gotten a friend
to your back for a’ that’s come and gone yet.’