Maurice’s Song—The Franciscan Friar—Excommunication.
As Sir Patrick Hepborne retired to his apartment, he called Maurice de
Grey, to inquire into the mysterious means by which he had so
effectually defeated the false charge which had been brought against
him; but the youth hung his head in answer to his master’s inquiries,
and hesitated in replying to them.
“Sir Knight,” said he at length, “there hath been a mutual promise
passed on both sides, that neither the Earl of Buchan nor I shall
reveal what did pass in the converse held between him, the Lady
Mariota, and myself at our conference. I am therefore compelled to
refuse thee that satisfaction which I should otherwise be glad to yield
to thee.”
With this answer Hepborne was compelled to remain satisfied, and the
page being suffered to depart, he retired to rest.
Next morning the Wolfe and he met at breakfast, where were also Sir
Andrew and the younger brothers, but the Lady Mariota, with her eldest
son, Sir Alexander, were absent.
“My Lord of Buchan,” said Sir Patrick, as they sat together, “I presume
not to touch thee on the subject of the Lady Mariota, because, with
regard to her, I can have no plea or right to interfere; but wilt thou
suffer me to entreat thee again in behalf of thy son Sir Alexander
Stewart? It grieveth me much that I should in any way have contributed
to his punishment, however greatly he may have merited thy
chastisement. Forgive me, I beseech thee, for being thus solicitous;
but as an especial boon granted to myself, I crave his liberation.”
“Ha! well, Sir Patrick,” said the Wolfe, after listening to him with
more patience and moderation of aspect than he usually exhibited; “it
is somewhat strange that thou and the child Duncan are the only two
persons who have had the heart to make any appeal to me, either about
my son Alexander or his mother.” And as he said so, he darted an
indignant and reproachful glance towards Sir Andrew, who, as if nothing
amiss had occurred, had been talking of the weather, and of hunting,
and was at that moment helping himself largely to venison pasty. “As
for Sir Andrew there, he cares not who suffereth, so that his craven
bouke be well fassed with food, like a kite as he is. True indeed is
the saying, that misfortunes try hearts. But trust me, I thank thee as
heartily for the tenderness thou hast displayed, as for the spirit thou
didst show yesternight in checking that foolish boy Alexander. Let me
but finish my meal, then, and I shall hie me straight to the dungeons
of the prisoners, and observe in what temper they may now be, after a
night’s cooling, when I shall judge and act accordingly.”
The Earl having gone in pursuance of this resolution, returned, after a
considerable absence, followed by the Lady Mariota and his son. Both
seemed to have been effectually humbled. The lady’s face bore ample
trace of the night of wretchedness she had spent. She curtseyed with an
air, as if she hoped that the forced smile she wore would melt away all
remembrance of what had passed; and then, without saying a word, sidled
off to her apartment. Sir Alexander Stewart came forward manfully. His
brow still bore the black mark of Hepborne’s fist that had prostrated
him on the floor, “as butcher felleth ox,” yet the blow seemed to have
been by this time effaced from his remembrance.
“Sir Patrick,” said he, stretching out his hand, “my father tells me
that I owe my liberation to thee. Thou hast behaved generously in this
matter. The Earl hath given me to know such circumstances as
sufficiently explain his seeming harshness to my mother. I now see that
I was hasty, and I am sorry for it.”
Hepborne readily shook hands with the humbled knight.
“And now let us hunt,” cried the Wolfe. “Horses and hounds there, and
the foresters, and gear for the chase!” and away went the whole party,
to cross to the mainland.
They returned at night, after a successful day’s hunting, and the Wolfe
of Badenoch was in peculiarly good spirits. The banquet was graced by
the Lady Mariota, as usual, tricked out in all her finery, and wearing
her accustomed dimpling smiles; and the Earl seemed to have forgotten
that he had ever had any cause of displeasure against her. Instead of
the marked attention she had formerly paid to Maurice de Grey, however,
she now, much to his satisfaction, treated him with politeness, free
from that disgusting and offensive doating which had heretofore so much
tormented the poor youth. The Wolfe ate voraciously, and drank deeply;
and his mirth rose with the wine he swallowed to so great a pitch of
jollity, that he roared out loudly for music.
“Can no one sing me a roundelay?” cried he. “Mariota, thou knowest not
a single warble, nor is there, I trow, one in the Castle that can touch
even a citrial or a guittern, far less a harp. Would that our
scoundrel, Allan Stewart, were here, but—a plague on him!—he hath gone
to visit his friends in Badenoch. He could have given us romaunces,
ballads, and virelays enow, I warrant thee.”
“My Lord Earl,” said the page modestly, “had I but a harp, in truth I
should do my best to pleasure thee, though I can promise but little for
my skill.”
“Well said, boy,” cried the Wolfe. “By the mass, but thou shalt have a
harp. Ho, there!—bring hither Allan Stewart’s harp. The knave hath two,
and it is to be hoped he hath not carried both with him.”
The harp was brought, and Maurice de Grey having tuned it, began to
accompany himself in the following ballad:—
There was a damsel loved a knight,
You’ll weep to hear her story,
For he ne’er guess’d her heart’s sad plight,
Nor cared for aught but glory.
Lured by its bright and dazzling gleam,
He left the woe-worn maiden,
Nor in her eyes beheld the beam
Of love, from heart o’erladen.
She sigh’d; her sighs ne’er touch’d his ear,
For still his heart was bounding
For neighing steeds, and clashing spear,
And warlike bugle sounding.
She wept; but though he saw her tears,
He dreamt not he had wrought them,
But ween’d that woman’s idle fears,
Or silly woes, had brought them.
He left her then to weep alone,
And droop in secret sadness,
Like some fair lily early blown,
’Reft of the sunbeam’s gladness.
But love will make e’en maidens dare
What most their sex hath frighten’d—
Beneath a helm she crush’d her hair,
In steel her bosom brighten’d.
She seized a lance, she donn’d a brand,
A sprightly war-horse bore her,
She hied her to the Holy Land,
Where went her Knight before her.
She sought him out—she won his heart—
Amidst the battle’s bluster;
As friends they ne’er were seen to part,
Howe’er the foes might cluster.
But ah! I grieve to tell the tale!
A random arrow flying,
Pierced through her corslet’s jointed mail,
And down she fell a-dying.
He bore her quickly from the field,
Through Paynim ranks opposing,
But when her helmet was unseal’d,
Her maiden blush disclosing.
He cried, “Blest Virgin be our aid!
What piteous sight appals me!
It is—it is that gentle maid,
Whose lovely form still thralls me.
“Lift, lift those heavy drooping eyes,
And with one kind look cheer me!”
She smiled like beam in freezing skies,
“Ah, Rodolph, art thou near me?
“My life ebbs fast, my heart’s blood flows,
That long hath beat for thee, love;
And still for thee my bosom glows,
Though death’s hand is on me, love.
“For thee in secret did I sigh,
Nor ween’d that love could warm thee,
Nor that my lustre-lacking eye
Could e’er have power to charm thee.”
“Nay, Angeline,” cried Rodolph then,
“I wist not that I loved thee,
Till left my home, and native glen,
Remembrance of thee moved me.
“Let him who woos not health nor joy,
Till lost are both the treasures,
My heart held love as childish toy,
Nor cared to sip its pleasures.
“But follow’d by the form so fair,
I saw it on each billow;
I saw it float in empty air—
It hover’d o’er my pillow.
“And e’en when hardy deeds I wrought,
’Midst murderous ranks contending,
Thy figure ever filled my thought,
Mine arm new vigour lending.
“And then the fame of deeds of arms
Had lost all power to cheer me,
Save that, methought, its dazzling charms
To thee might yet endear me.
“And have I pluck’d these laurels green,
To deck thy dying brow, love?
Oh, lift for once those lovely een,
To hear my plighted vow, love!”
“I’m happy now,” she faintly said,
“But, oh, ’tis cruel to sever!”—
Upon his breast her head she laid,
And closed her eyes for ever.
“Sir Page,” cried the Wolfe, at the close of this ballad, “by my
knighthood, but thou dost sing and harp it better than Allan Stewart
himself, though thy lays are something of the saddest. Meseems if thou
didst ween that our mirth had waxed somewhat too high, and that it
lacked a damper. In sooth,” continued he, turning to Hepborne with an
arch look, “thou art much to be envied, Sir Patrick, for the possession
of this lovely, this accomplished—ha! ha! ha!—this—this boy of
thine—ha! ha! ha!—this Maurice de Grey.—Come, Maurice, my sweet youth,”
said he, addressing the page, “essay again to tune thy throat, and let
it, I beseech thee, be in a strain more jocund than the last. Here,
quaff wine, boy, to give thee jollier heart.”
“Thanks, my noble Lord,” replied Maurice de Grey, “I will exert my poor
powers to fulfil thy wishes without drinking.”
And, taking up the harp again, he ran his fingers nimbly over the
strings, with great display of execution, in a sprightly prelude,
enlivening his auditors, and preparing them to sympathize with
something more in unison with the highly-screwed chords of the Earl’s
heart, when he was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a new
personage.
A tall monk of the order of St. Francis suddenly entered, and, gliding
like a spirit into the middle of the hall, darted a pair of keen
searching eyes towards the upper end of the festive board.
“What, ha! brother of St. Francis,” cried the Wolfe of Badenoch, “what
wouldst thou? If thou be’st wayfaring, and need cheer, sit thee down
there at the end of our festive board, and call for what thou lackest.”
The Franciscan stood mute and unmoved, with his cowl over his head, and
his arms folded across his breast. The silver lamps threw a pale light
upon his face, and his shadow rose gigantically upon the wall.
“Whence comest thou?—Speak!” cried the Wolfe, impatiently. “Are we to
be kept waiting all night, till thou dost choose to effunde the cause
of thy strange visitation?”
“Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and Lord of Badenoch,” said the
Franciscan slowly, and in a deep solemn tone; “Alexander Stewart, I
come here as the messenger of the Bishop of Moray, to tell thee that
the tidings of thy daring, outrageous, and sacrilegious seizure of the
lands belonging to the Holy Church, have reached him: the cries alswa
of the helpless peasants, whom thou hast ousted from their dwellings,
have sounded in his ears. Thy cruelties are bruited abroad from one end
of the kingdom to the other, and it is now time that thy savage career
should be arrested. The godly Bishop doth, through me, his organ of
speech, call on thee to give up the lands thou hast sacrilegiously
seized in Badenoch; to restore the plundered herds and flocks, and the
rents thou hast theftuously taken by masterful strength; to replace
those honest and innocent peasants, who, resisting thy aggression, like
true vassals, were, with their wives and little ones, driven from their
homes and possessions by thee in thy brutish fury; and, finally, to
make such reparation to Holy Mother Church, by fine to her treasuries,
and personal abasement before her altars, as may stay her just wrath
against thee. In default of all which, the Holy Bishop hath commanded
me to announce to thee, that the lesser and greater excommunications
shall go forth against thee; and that thou shalt be accursed as a
vagabond on the face of this earth, and damned to all eternity in the
next world.”
The fiery and ferocious Wolfe of Badenoch was so utterly confounded by
what he considered the unexampled audacity of this denunciation, that
amazement kept him silent from absolute want of words, otherwise his
limited stock of patience could not have endured the Franciscan till he
had uttered the tenth part of his long speech. He gnashed his teeth,
curled up his nose, and foamed at the mouth; and striking the table
furiously, as was his custom when violently moved, he shouted out—
“Ha! Devils! Furies! Fiends of Erebus! What is this I hear? The Earl of
Buchan—the son of a King—the Wolfe of Badenoch—to be thus insulted by a
chough! Out, thou carrion-hooded crow! Thinkest thou to brave me down
with thine accursed crawing? By the beard of my grandfather, but thou
shalt swing twenty ell high, an thou voidest not the Castle of thy
loathsome carcase in less time than thou didst ware in effunding
one-fourth part of thy venomous and impudent harangue.”
The monk stood motionless, in the same fixed and composed attitude he
had at first assumed, altogether unmoved by these tremendous threats.
“Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and Lord of Badenoch,” he again
repeated in the same slow and solemn manner, “I call upon thee again to
declare whether thou be’st disposed to submit thyself patiently to the
healthful discipline of our Holy Mother Church? or whether thou be’st
resolved that she shall cut thee off, like a rotten and diseased
branch, to fall headlong into the pit where eternal fire shall consume
thee? Already, ere this, hadst thou incurred her just vengeance by
living in abominable adultery with Mariota Athyn, thy wanton leman, who
now sitteth in abomination beside thee; and by the abandonment of thy
leal, true and virtuous wife, whom thou hast left to mourn in a worse
than widowhood. In addition to the solemn appeal I have already made, I
am commanded to call on thee now to fulfil the sentence of the Bishops
of Moray and Ross, to pay down two hundred broad pieces of gold as the
mulct of thine offence, and forthwith to discharge thy foul and sinful
mate, and recal to thy bosom her who hath the true and lawful claim to
lay her head there. Wilt thou do these things, yea or not?”
This ripping up of the old feud not only redoubled the rage of the
Wolfe of Badenoch, but roused that of the Lady Mariota and her sons.
She burst into a flood of tears, a violent fit of sobbing followed, and
she finally rushed from the banquet hall. The hot and fierce Sir
Alexander was broiling with fury; but the Wolfe took the speech of
him——
“Ha! so thou hast come to the kernel of this matter at last, thou ape
of Satan, hast thou? Now I do clearly ken how far I was right in
guessing at the tale-pyet that chattered in the ear of the King, my
father. But, by the blood of the Bruce, I have revenged his impertinent
meddling, by ousting him from the roost he had in my lands; and, by all
the hot fiends of perdition, if he rouseth the Wolfe of Badenoch more,
his neck shall be twisted about. Art content with my answer now, thou
hooded-carrion-crow?”
“Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and Lord of Badenoch,” said the
Franciscan, with the same imperturbable gravity, firmness, and
composure, “hast thou no better response than this to make to the holy
Bishop of Moray? Bethink thee well———”
“Scoundrel chough, begone!” cried the Wolfe, interrupting him. “Thou
hast already more than outstaid my patience, which hath in itself been
miraculous. If thou wouldst escape hence in safety, avoid thee
instantly; for if thou goest not in the twinkling of an eye, may
infernal demons seize me if thou shalt have leave to go at all.”
“Then, Alexander Stewart,” said the Franciscan, “the Bishop’s curse be
upon thee and upon thine; for thou shalt be an outcast from our Holy
Mother Church, and———”
“And the red fiend’s curse be upon thee and the split-crowned Bishop!”
cried the Wolfe, interrupting him. “Why stand these kestrel rogues to
see their lord, to see the Wolfe of Badenoch flouted by that stinking
and venomous weasel! Seize the vermin, knaves, and let him be tossed
into the Water Pit Vault; if I mistake not, the loch is high enow at
present to keep him company there; but, let him sink or swim, I care
not; away with the toad, I say. He may thank his good stars that I gave
him a chance for his life. By the infernal host, I was much tempted to
string him up, without more ado, to the gallows in the court-yard, that
he might dance a bargaret for our sport, sith he hath spoilt our mirth
and music by his ill-omened croaking. Away with him, I say!”
“Beware of touching the servant of Heaven,” cried the firm and
undismayed Franciscan; “whosoever dareth to lay impious hands on me,
shall be subjected to the same curse as the sacrilegious tyrant who
sitteth yonder.”
“Why stand ye hesitating, knaves?” roared the Wolfe. “Let him not utter
another word, or, by the pit of darkness, I shall have ye all flayed
alive.”
The Franciscan’s threat had operated too strongly on the lacqueys to
permit them to secure the monk with their own hands, yet, afraid to
risk their master’s hasty displeasure, one or two of them had not
scrupled to fly off for the jailors and executioners of the Castle, men
who, like tutored bears, had neither fears nor hopes, nor, indeed,
thoughts of aught else but obedience to the will of a master, engrafted
upon their savage natures by early nurture and long usage. Four or five
of these entered as the Wolfe of Badenoch was speaking. They appeared
like creatures that had inhabited the bowels of the earth; bulky of
bone and muscle; their hair and beards were long and matted, their eyes
inanimate and unfeeling, and their hands, features, and garments alike
coarse and begrimed with filth, as if the blood of their murderous
trade still adhered to them.
“Ha! ay! there ye come, my trusty terriers; seize that polecat there in
the cowl, and toss him into the Water Pit Vault. Quick, away with him!”
The bold Franciscan had trusted to the sanctity of his character, but
he had presumed too far on its protecting influence; these reckless
minions of the Wolfe had him in their fell gripe in an instant, and
dragged him unresisting towards the door of the banquet hall, as if he
had been but a huge black goat. There, however, his eyes happened to
catch the figure and countenance of the page, Maurice de Grey; he
started, and, in spite of the nervous exertions of the ruffians who had
him in charge, he planted his feet so firmly on the pavement, that he
compelled them to halt, while he stood for a moment fixed like a
Colossus, darting a keen look at the page. The boy’s eyes sunk beneath
the sternness of his gaze.
“Thou here!” exclaimed he with an expression of extreme surprise; “by
what miracle do I behold thee here? Would that I had seen thee
before—would that I had known——”
But the sturdy and callous knaves who held him, noticed his sudden halt
and mysterious speech no otherwise than they would have done the voice
or struggles of the goat we have compared him to; they only put forth a
little more strength, and, before he could get another word out,
whirled him through the door-way, and lugged him sprawling down the
stair. Hepborne had been more than once on the eve of interceding for
the monk, but he saw that anything he could have said would have been
of little avail, amidst the general fury that prevailed against him,
and might have even provoked a more immediate and fatal vengeance; so
that all thoughts of running a hopeless tilt in his behalf, against the
highly excited ferocity of the Stewarts, were abandoned by him for the
present.
The Wolfe of Badenoch was too much unhinged in temper, by the visit of
the Franciscan monk, to be in a humour to prolong the feast.
“Caitiff! carrion! corby!” cried he after he was gone; “the red fiend
swallow me, but the bold Bishop shall bide for the return of his
messenger. Ho! bring me that stoup, knave.”
He put the stoup of Rhenish to his head, and quaffing a potent draught
from it, set it down on the table with a violent crash, and calling
out, “Lights there—lights for the apartments,” he broke up the feast.