MASTER POSSET.
I am thy friend, thy best of friends;
No bud in constant heats can blow--
The green fruit withers in the drought,
But ripens where the waters flow.
_Mackay._
The morrow came with its sunshine; but the two fair faces which had
been wont to shed even a more cheering influence over the couch of
the wounded youth were no longer there. Hour after hour passed, yet
they did not come; and Fawside recalled with anxiety the too evident
sounds or signs of a rapid departure on the preceding evening.
So passed the day. Dumb Antoine alone appeared; but from his
grimaces nothing could be gathered. Night came on, and with it
sleep, but a sleep disturbed by more than one dream of a fair face,
with dark-blue eyes and lashes black and long, deep thoughtful
glances and alluring smiles.
At last there came a sound that roused the dreamer; a ray of light
flashed through the parted arras from another room.
"She comes!" was the first thought of Florence. "At this hour,
impossible!" was the second.
There was a light step. Dawn was just breaking; but the good folks
of that age were ever afoot betimes. At last the arras was parted
boldly, and Master Posset, bearing a lamp, with his long silvery
beard glittering over the front of his black serge gown, which hung
in wavy folds to his feet, approached, bearing on a silver salver the
patient's usual breakfast of weak hippocras, with maccaroon biscuits.
He felt the youth's pulse, looked anxiously at his eyes and wounds,
pronounced him infinitely better, and added that he "might on this
day leave his couch."
"And the ladies?" asked Florence, unable to restrain his curiosity
longer.
"What ladies?" queried the discreet Master Posset.
"Those who for so many days have watched my pillow like sisters--the
hazel-eyed and the blue-eyed--for, alas! I know not their names.
Where were they all yesterday, and where are they to-day?"
"Gone!"
"_Gone!_" faintly echoed Florence;--"but whither?"
"To Stirling."
"But why to Stirling?" asked Florence impetuously.
"Because they have business with the Lord Regent."
"I will follow them. My doublet--my boots and hose. Good Master
Posset, your hand. Ah! great Heaven! how my head swims, and the room
runs round as if each corner was in pursuit of the other!" exclaimed
Florence, who sprang from bed, and would have fallen had not the
attentive leech caught him in his arms.
"We must creep before we walk; and you must walk, sir, before you can
ride a horse."
"When may I sit in my saddle?"
"In three days, perhaps."
"In three days I shall be in Stirling!" said the other impetuously.
"You had better go home," said Posset bluntly. "'Tis the advice of a
sincere friend, who would not have you ride to Stirling on a bootless
errand."
"Why bootless, Master Possett, when I tell you that I love, dearly
love, one of those who have so abruptly forsaken me."
Master Posset's face, at least so much of it as his voluminous beard
and moustache permitted one to see, underwent various expressions at
this sudden announcement---astonishment and perplexity, alarm, and
then merriment.
"Fair sir," said he, laughing and shrugging his shoulders (a habit he
had probably acquired from M. Rabelais), "you forget yourself."
"Wherefore, forsooth? Are they so high in rank above a landed baron?"
"In Scotland few are higher."
"Do not say these discouraging things, but tell me their names; for
the hundredth time I implore you."
"I dare not."
"If I used threats, what would you say?"
"As my friend Rabelais said to a French knight at Lyons, when
similarly threatened."
"And what said your devil of a Rabelais?"
"That threats ill became a sick man, when used to his friend; and
worse still from one of your junior years, to a man in whose beard so
few black hairs can be reckoned as in mine."
"Most true--forgive me; but when once free of this house, I shall
soon solve the mystery. A woman so lovely as the younger lady must
be well known, and must have many lovers."
"Doubtless."
"Thou art a most discreet apothecary, Master Posset--yea, a most
wonderful apothecary!" said Fawside, gnawing the end of his
moustache, and continuing to attire himself during this conversation;
"and you really think she has _many_?"
"Yes; yet from her strength of character, I am assured she is a woman
who in her lifetime will have but _one_ love."
"One; come, that is encouraging!"
"Though little more than a girl in years, she is a woman in heart, in
soul, and in mind. Do you understand me?"
"Yes--truss me those ribbons--thanks, Master Posset--I understand
you, but only so far that if I am not the love referred to, I shall
pass my sword through the body of the other who may occupy that
position. Her faintest smile is worth a hundred golden crowns!"
"A sentiment worthy of Rabelais; but as your friend, Florence
Fawside--one your senior in life and experience by many years--cease
to speak or think of her thus."
"Why, if I love her?" demanded the young man, with a mixture of
sadness and that impetuosity which formed one of the chief elements
of his character.
"Because there are (as I call Heaven to witness!) barriers between
you----"
"Grace me guide! mean you to say she is married?"
"No; but still there are barriers insuperable to the success of such
a love."
"To the brave?" asked Florence proudly.
"Yea, to the bravest."
"God alone knoweth what you all mean by this cruel enigma; but in
three days I will set forth to solve it--to solve it or to die!"
The old doctor smiled at the young man's energy, and kindly offered
the assistance of his arm to enable him to walk about the chamber,
after obtaining from him his parole of honour, that without
permission duly accorded he would not attempt to leave it or
penetrate into other parts of the mansion.
The evening of the third day had faded into night, and night was
passing into morning, when Master Posset appeared and said,--"Come,
sir, horses are in waiting; we leave this immediately."
"In the dark?" asked Florence, with surprise.
"'Tis within an hour of dawn."
"A fresh mystery!--for whence--Stirling?"----"No."
"Whither then?"
"Fawside Tower--have you no ties there?"
"My mother--yes, my mother," said Florence, with a gush of tenderness
in his heart, as he hastily dressed; "but once to embrace her, and
then for Stirling--ho!"
"You may spare yourself the toil of such a journey; for I assure you,
on the word of an honest man, that in less than three days perhaps
those you seek will be again in Edinburgh."
To this the sole reply of Florence, was to kiss the opal ring, the
secret of which he had as yet failed to discover.
"You must permit me to muffle your eyes."
"Wherefore, Master Posset? this precaution savours of mistrust, and
becomes an insult."
"Laird of Fawside, I insist upon it; and she whose orders we must
both obey also insists upon it."
"She--who?"
"The giver of the opal ring," whispered the doctor.
"Lead on--I obey," replied the young man, suddenly reduced to
docility; "all things must end--and so this mystery."
Posset tied a handkerchief over the eyes of Florence, and taking his
hand led him from the chamber, wherein he had suffered so much, and
which he had now occupied for more than thirteen or fourteen days.
He became conscious of the change of atmosphere as they proceeded
from a corridor down a cold, stone staircase, and from thence to a
street, evidently one of those steep, but paved closes of the ancient
city, as they continued to ascend for some little distance. Then an
iron gate in an archway (to judge by the echo) was opened and shut;
then they walked about a hundred yards further, before Posset removed
the muffling and permitted Fawside to gaze around him. On one side
towered the lofty and fantastic mansions of the Landmarket[*] rising
on arcades of oak and stone. Near him the quaint church of St. Giles
reared its many-carved pinnacles and beautiful spire. Within its
lofty aisles scarcely a taper was twinkling now; for already the
careless prebendaries were finding other uses for their money than
spending it in wax for its forty altars. Even the great brazen
shrine in the chancel was dark; the money gifted so vainly by the
pious and valiant men of old, to light God's altar until the day of
doom--for so they phrased it--had been pounced upon by Lollard
bailies for other purposes, and thirteen years later were to behold
the shrine itself fall under the axe and hammer of the iconoclast,
with the expulsion of the faith and its priesthood.
[*] An abbreviation of _In_land-market.
The wide and lofty thoroughfare was dark. Here and there an
occasional ray shot from some of the grated windows, pouring a stream
of light athwart the obscurity, which the stacks of peat, heather,
and timber, already referred to as standing before almost every door,
according to common use and wont, made more confusing to a wayfarer.
Fawside recognized the spot where Kilmaurs and his pursuers on that
eventful night first overtook him, where he received his first wound,
and where he made his first resolute stand against them, before he
was beaten further up the street.
On a signal from Master Posset, a groom leading two saddled horses
came from under the stone arcade of a lofty mansion, then occupied by
Robert Logan of Coatfield, who in 1520 was provost of Edinburgh, and
was the first official of that rank who had halberds carried before
him. This groom, whom Fawside suspected to be no other than the
Frenchman Antoine, lifted his bonnet respectfully and withdrew.
"Fawside, the white or grey nag is yours," said the physician;
"mount, and let us be gone, for the morning draws on apace, and my
time is precious."
Almost trembling with eagerness, if not with weakness, Florence
leaped into the saddle of the white horse, which was a beautiful
animal, as he could easily perceive by the amplitude of its mane and
tail, by the action of its proud head and slender fore-legs; and as
he vaulted to his seat, without even using a stirrup, he felt all his
wounds twinge, as if they would burst forth anew, for they were
merely skinned over.
In ten minutes more they had left the city, after tossing a gratuity
(a few _hardies, i.e._ liards of Guienne, worth three halfpence each
in Scotland, where they were then current) to the warder at the
Watergate, and were galloping by the eastern road towards the tower
of Fawside. The stars were still shining brightly, and their light
was reflected in the glassy bosom of the estuary that opened on the
north and east, beyond a vast extent of desert beach and open moor.
The steep and ancient bridge of Musselburgh was soon reached, and
then Master Posset drew his bridle, saying,--
"Here, Fawside, I must bid you farewell."
"Farewell! you who have treated me so kindly, so
generously--farewell, when we are within three Scots miles of my
mother's hearth! Nay, nay, good Master Posset, this can never be."
"It must--I repeat. Entreaties and invitations are alike needless.
I obey but the instructions of those I serve, and they are dames who
brook no trifling."
"Bethink you, dear sir, of the danger of being abroad at this early
and untimeous hour, when broken men, Egyptians and all manner of
thieves, beset every highway and hover in every thicket."
The physician smiled, and, opening the breast of his furred cassock,
showed beneath it a fine shirt of mail, which was flexible, and
fitted him closely as a kid glove. "I _have_ thought cf all that,"
said he, "and I have, moreover, my dagger and a pair of wheel-lock
petronels at my saddle-bow. So now, adieu."
"But my fees to you, and this horse, Master Posset----"
"You will find it a beautiful grey, though he looks milky-white under
the stars."
"To whom am I to return it?"
"To none--it is a free gift to you."
"To me--a gift," said Florence with astonishment; "from whom?"
"The lady----"
"Who--which lady?"
"The taller, with the hazel eyes and blonde hair; and you must
accept; for 'twere ungallant to refuse."
"All this but bewilders and perplexes me the more. Would it had been
the gift of the other! Ah, Master Posset, I have but one dread."
"Come," said the physician, laughing, "that is fortunate--lovers
usually have many."
"One ever present dread, common to every lover--that she does not
love me in return, but may be playing with my affection to prove the
power of her own charms."
"Take courage--you have seen no rival."
"No; yet she must have many admirers of her beauty, and more
aspirants to her hand and wealth; and one of these might soon become
a formidable rival."
"Then you have your sword."
"In such a case a poor resource."
"But one that never fails," responded the warlike apothecary, turning
his horse; and, after reiterating their adieux, they separated, and
in a short space Florence Fawside found himself cantering up the
steep crowned by the church of St. Michael, and thence by a narrow
bridle-road that led up the hill-side to his mother's tower.
Fourteen nights had elapsed since last we saw her sitting lonely by
her hearth; and now she had long since learned to weep for her only
son as for one who was numbered with the dead.