MISTRUST.
It will be great, thou son of pride!--I have been renowned in battle;
but I never told my name to a foe.--_Ossian._
Consciousness returned slowly to Florence Fawside, and when his eyes
unclosed, he saw first the huge misshapen figures of a large
green-and-russet-coloured tapestry, which covered the walls of a
dimly-lighted room, the four carved posts of a bed, the magnificent
canopy of which spread its shadow over him, and the soft laced
pillows whereon his head reposed. Then he became sensible of the
presence of persons moving about him on tiptoe, speaking in gentle
whispers.
There were two women, young, beautiful, and richly dressed; and with
them was a man whose white beard flowed over the front of his long
and sable robe. Then came again the sensation of faintness--the
sinking sensation of one about to die,--with the agony of his
sword-wounds, which felt like the searings of a red-hot iron, when
the hands of his fair attendants--soft, kind, and "tremulously
gentle" hands they were--unbuttoned his doublet, untied his ruff,
drew aside the breast of his lace shirt, and a handkerchief which he
had thrust under it when first wounded, and which were now both
soaked with blood. This caused his wounds to stream anew. He felt
the current of his life gush forth, and while a faint cry of pity
from a female voice came feebly to his ear, the sufferer, when making
a futile effort to grasp the pocket which contained his fatal
letters, became once more totally insensible.
The early dawn of a clear August morning was stealing through the
iron-grated windows of the apartment in which he lay, when Florence
awoke again to life, and, raising himself feebly on an elbow, looked
around him.
He was in a chamber the walls of which were hung with beautiful
tapestry; the ceiling was painted with mythological figures, and the
oak floor was strewn with green rushes and freshly-cut flowers--for
carpets were yet almost unknown in Britain. From a carved beam of
oak, which crossed the ceiling transversely, hung a silver
night-lamp, fed with perfumed oil, amid which the light was just
expiring. In a shadowy corner of the room was an altar, bearing a
glittering crucifix, before which were two flickering tapers, two
vases of fresh roses, and an exquisitely-carved _prie-Dieu_ of
walnut-wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
The hangings of his bed were of the finest crimson silk, festooned by
gold cords and massive tassels. On one side, through the window, he
could see the green northern bank of the loch which bordered the
city, and through which on the night before he had striven to swim
his horse; beyond it were yellow fields, green copsewood, and purple
muirland, stretching to the shores of the azure Forth. On the other
side were the quaint figures of the old tapestry which represented a
Scottish tradition well known in the days of Hector Boece--that on
the day when the battle of Bannockburn was fought and won, a knight
in armour that shone with a marvellous brilliance, mounted on a black
steed, all foamy with haste and bloody with spurring, appeared
suddenly in the streets of Aberdeen, and with a loud voice announced
Bruce's victory to the startled citizens. Passing thence to the
north with frightful speed, over hill and valley, this shining
warrior was seen to quit the land and spur his steed across the
raging waves of the Pentland Firth, and to vanish in the mist that
shrouded the northern isles. Hence some averred he was St. Magnus of
Orkney, while the more aspiring maintained that he was St. Michael
the Archangel.
"Where am I?" was the first mental question of the sufferer, as he
pressed his hand across his swimming forehead. "My letters!" was his
next thought. On a chair near him hung his doublet: he made a great
effort to ascertain if they were untouched, but sank back upon his
pillow, exhausted by the attempt.
Morning was far advanced when he revived again. He found something
cold and sharp in flavour poured between his lips; it refreshed him,
and on looking up he became inspired with new energy on seeing again
the two ladies whose forms he believed last night to have been the
portions of a feverish dream, or to have been conjured by his fancy
from those upon the tapestry.
One was a tall and beautiful woman, of a noble and commanding
presence, about thirty years of age; her forehead was rather broad
than high; her nose, long and somewhat pointed, might have been too
masculine, but for the charming softness of her other features,
especially her clear hazel eyes, which were full of sweetness, and
expressed the deepest commiseration. That her rank was high, her
attire sufficiently announced. She was dressed in a delentera of
cloth-of-gold, the opened skirts of which displayed her petticoat of
crimson brocade; her sleeves were of crimson satin tied by strings of
pearl; her girdle was of gold surrounded by long pearl pendants;
while a cross of diamonds sparkled on her breast.
Her companion seemed fully ten years younger: her stature was rather
less; her complexion was equally fair; but her hair was of that deep
brown which seems black by night; her features were so regular that
nothing prevented them from being perhaps insipid; but the darkness
of her eyebrows, with the vivacity of her deep violet-coloured blue
eyes; and as she bent over the sufferer's bed, the rose-leaf tinge in
her soft cheek came and went rapidly. She wore a loose robe of
purple taffeta, trimmed with seed pearls; and among her dark hair
there sparkled many precious stones; for the attire of people of rank
in those days was gorgeously profuse in quality of material and
elaboration of ornament.
"Mon Dieu!--he faints again!" said the former lady, in a soft but
foreign accent, and with a tone of alarm.
"Nay, he only sleeps," whispered the other; "and see--now he wakens
and recovers!"
"Saint Louis prie pour moi! but the pale aspect of this wounded boy
so terrifies me!"
"Am I still in France?" murmured Fawside.
"Oh, he speaks of France!" exclaimed the elder, drawing nearer.
"Where am I, madame--in Paris?" asked Fawside faintly.
"Nay, you are safe in the city of Edinburgh."
"Safe! And who are you who condescend to treat me so humanely, so
tenderly? Oh! I cannot dream. Last night--I now remember me,--I
left the ship of the Sieur de Villegaignon, and was pursued by armed
men,--by men who sought to murder me, and Heaven and they alone know
why, for unto them I had done no wrong. I fell, wounded, I remember;
but how came I here?"
"You must not speak, fair sir," replied the elder lady, placing her
white and faultless hand upon the hot and parched mouth of the youth.
"But listen, and I shall tell you. We heard the clash of swords
(nothing singular in Edinburgh), and cries for 'help' beneath our
windows; from whence we saw a man beset by many, who beat him down at
last, though he fought valiantly with his back to the postern door of
our mansion."
"A door!--methought it was a stone wall.
"Nay, sir, fortunately it was _not_ the stone wall, but a door: my
servants opened it; you fell inwards. It was instantly shut and
barricaded, by nay orders, and thus we saved you."
"And this was last night?"
"Nay," replied the beautiful lady, smiling, and using her
sweetest foreign accent, "it was three nights ago."
"Three!"
"I have said so, monsieur."
"You are of France, dear madame?"
"So are many ladies at the Scottish court."
"And I--I----"
"Have been in sleep under the opiates of my physician, or at times
delirious; but now, thanked be kind Heaven, and his judicious skill,
all danger of fever is past."
"Three days and nights! Oh! madame, to how much inconvenience I must
have put you."
"Say not so. To have saved your life is reward sufficient for my
friend and me."
"Thanks, madame, thanks; not that I value life much, but for the sake
of one I love dearly, and for the task I have to perform."
"One!--a lady, doubtless?" asked the younger, smiling.
"My mother!" replied Fawside, as his dark eyes flashed and suffused
at the same moment!
"And your task is probably a pilgrimage?" continued she with the
violet-blue eyes.
"Nay, lady, nay; no pilgrimage, but a behest full of danger and
death, and inspired by a hate that seems at times to be a holy
one--for the blood of a slain father inspires it."
"Madame," began the younger lady uneasily, "may it please your----"
"_Stay!_" exclaimed the other, interrupting the title by which she
doubtless was about to be addressed;--and then they whispered
together.
Fawside now remarked mentally that this was the third occasion on
which she had been similarly interrupted.
"Here lurketh some mystery," thought he, glancing at his doublet, in
the secret pocket of which his letters were concealed, "so let me be
wary."
"These are exciting thoughts for one so weak and so severely wounded
as you are," resumed the matron, for such she evidently was. "Know
you who those outrageous assailants were?"
"Too well!--the men who slew my father under tryst, and my brave
brother too, by falsity and secrecy, as 'tis said."
"And they?" faltered the lady.
"Who?"
"Your father and brother?"
"Were good men and leal."
"I doubt not that, sir. But their names?"
"Were second to none in the three Lothians."
"You are singularly wary, fair sir," said the elder lady proudly, and
with an air of pique.
"And your father fell----," began the younger in a tremulous voice,
as if the young man's vehemence terrified her.
"He fell so many years ago that the interest of my debt of blood and
vengeance----"
"Is, I doubt not, doubled!"
"Yea, madame, quadrupled; and I shall have it rendered back duly,
every drop."
"Oh! say not so," said the young lady, shuddering. "Think of all you
have escaped, and how, on that fatal night, kind Heaven spared you."
"To avenge my family feud on those who would have slain me."
"And you have been in France?" said the lady in the cloth-of-gold, to
change the subject.
"Yes, madame."
"And came from thence with Nicholas de Villegaignon?"
"Yes, madame."
"Ah, _mon Dieu!_--dear, dear France!" she exclaimed; "and you were
there how long?"
"Seven happy years, lady."
"In the army, of course?"
"No."
"At the court of Henry of Valois?"
"No--with Anne de la Tour."
"The Duchess of Albany--a proud and haughty old widow."
"But a mistress kind and gentle to me. I had the honour to kiss King
Henry's hand on my way home through Paris."
"Had you any letters or messages for Scotland?" asked the lady
anxiously.
"Nay, I had no letters," he replied gloomily and briefly; "but tell
me, pray, your names, your rank, ladies--in pity tell me!"
"Pardon us, sir," said the elder, patting his forehead kindly with
her soft white hand; "in that you must hold us excused. We tell not
our names lightly to a stranger--a wild fellow who fights with every
armed man, and, for aught we know, makes love to every pretty woman,
and who, moreover, shrouds in such provoking mystery his own name and
purpose. So adieu, sir--a little time and we shall be with you
again."
"Stay, madame--stay, and pardon me," he exclaimed, as they retired
through the parted arras, and disappeared when its heavy fold closed
behind them. Then he sank upon his pillow, exhausted even by this
short interview.
"I am right," he muttered, as he lay with his eyes closed, in a
species of half-stupor, or waking dream; "my name shall never pass my
lips until I have the barbican gate of Fawside Tower behind me. And
yet--and yet--how hard to mistrust that lovely girl with the
dark-blue eyes and deep-brown hair!"
Rendered cautious by his late adventure, he tore off and defaced the
armorial bearings, which, in the French fashion, he wore on the
breast of his beautiful doublet, and resolved studiously to conceal
alike his name, his purpose, and his letters, to say no more of
whence he had come or whither he was bound, lest those two charming
women, who so kindly watched and tended his sick couch, and who so
sedulously concealed _their_ names and titles, might be the wives,
the loves, or kindred of his enemies.
Such were his resolves. But how weak are the resolves even of the
brave and wary, when in the hands of a beautiful woman!