A BOTHWELL! A BOTHWELL!
Yet might not Aquilante's spirit fail,
Though shivered was his shield, and gashed his mail!
Cautious but firm he struck; no sign of dread,
His aspect or his manly port displayed.
_Roncesvalles._
With a burst of laughter these turbulent nobles and their armed
followers, who were numerous, unsheathed their swords; and Florence
boldly confronted them all, while his heart beat rapidly,---for he
knew that entreaty or concession would avail him nothing. He knew,
too, that he had been foully ensnared. He found himself in a
perilous predicament, for he soon recognized the voices, if not the
faces, of nearly all the same men by whom he had been so sorely beset
on the first night of his landing from the galley of M. de
Villegaignon.
"So, so! Our worthy Millheugh has brought the boar to bay!"
exclaimed Kilmaurs, the wound on whose sinister visage grew purple in
his excitement as he pressed forward.
"Ha-ha! Fawside, most worthy messenger," added Bothwell; "thou art
quite alone, eh!"
"Alone; but not as St. John was, in the Isle of Patmos; for he is
with his betters and much good company," said Glencairn.
"Do cease with this irreverence, Glencairn," said Bothwell, who, like
all that still adhered to Rome, was nervously sensitive of all that
appertained to the faith of his forefathers.
"Ye haver, my lord," was the surly rejoinder. "That whilk our
forbears of auld deemed reverence we now term but rank idolatry, and
an abomination in the nostrils of the Lord."
"Like loyalty to the crown and faith to our country--folly, eh? But
enough of this," said the selfish and blood-thirsty Kilmaurs. "And
now for the matter in hand. Worthy Master Florence Fawside----"
"A spruce young cock o' the game, my masters!" said Symon Brodie. "I
warrant ye will find him tough enough."
"We should keep him for fighting on Fasterns e'en," added Millheugh,
who was not quite sober.
"Silence!" cried Kilmaurs. "We have other ends in view for him, and
need not this ribaldry."
"What am I to understand by all this studied insolence, and by my
being thus beset?" demanded Florence, standing on his guard, sternly
eyeing them all, and waving his sword in a circle around him.
"Speak, sirs, lest I slay the most silent man among you."
"You have brought letters," began Kilmaurs.
"One to the laird of Millheugh, most certainly. That letter I
delivered."
"Oh, yes; of a verity we doubt not that," continued his chief
tormentor Kilmaurs;--"the letter from a fair court lady--a countess,
at least, who was in sore trouble, and lacked a messenger to her dear
kinsman here. We mean not that. Ha-ha! Champfleurie played his
cards well!"
"I have been snared and deluded!" said the poor youth, while his
heart beat like lightning; and he glanced round him vainly for means
of escape, or, at least, for a desperate and protracted resistance.
"Precisely so; you have been deluded. Champfleurie----"
"Like each one of you, is a villain, whom, will God, I shall yet
unmask and slay!" exclaimed their victim.
"By St. Bride! poor devil, I almost pity thee!" said Bothwell.
"Thou'lt fare hardly enough at the hands of Millheugh and his ragged
Robins."
"Florence Fawside," said Kilmaurs, "we know thee to be a spy of the
Guises and bearer of their letters to Mary of Lorraine and the Regent
Arran. We can easily slay thee, and obtain such papers as may be
concealed in secret pockets; but we care not, by cracking the nut, to
gain the kernel so hastily. Ye may be the custodier of other and
more important secrets than men care to commit to paper, especially
such men as the Cardinal de Guise and Monseigneur the Duc de Mayenne:
and these secrets we must have!"
"Sirs, I swear to you, as a gentleman and a true Scottish man, I am
the depositary of no such secrets as you suppose," said the
unfortunate youth, with great earnestness; for though brave, even to
temerity, he thought of his old mother and his young love, while all
their swords seemed to glitter death before him, and his sinking
heart grew sad.
"A cock-laird like thee may swear to anything," said Kilmaurs
insolently.
"Thou, Kilmaurs, art an empty boaster, and a coward. My race is
among the oldest in the land."
"Being descended, in the male line, direct from Adam."
"Despite this insolence, I repeat, my lords, that I tell you--truth!"
"Knave, thou dost not tell the truth," exclaimed Kilmaurs, who became
pallid with fury; "so, beware, lest we have thy tongue torn out by
the roots and nailed on Hamilton cross, to feed the gleds and
hoodicrows. I have seen such done ere this."
"If he lieth, the event shall prove," said Glencairn; "let him be
disarmed, and bound to the iron cruick above the hall fire; then pile
on wetted wood and green boughs, till we smoke the secrets out of
him."
A shout of fierce and derisive acclamation greeted this suggestion of
an impromptu mode of torture not uncommon in those old lawless times;
and the tone of defiance assumed by the victim was lost amid the
bantering laughter and insults of more than thirty voices.
Surrounded on all hands, he had only power left to run one assailant
through the body, and before he could withdraw his sword to repeat
the thrust, a score of heavy hands were laid upon him, those of his
host, Allan of Millheugh, being among the most active. His sword and
poniard were at once rent away, and he was dragged over the
blood-stained floor towards the large arched fireplace. In the lust
of blood, the feudal, or political, or religious rancour which
animated those at whose mercy he was now so completely cast, they
struggled with each other for who should give him a blow or a buffet,
and contended vehemently for the office of binding him to the iron
beam that swung over the blazing fire.
Florence struggled also--but in vain. The united strength and the
iron hands of his numerous enemies, noble and ignoble, were
irresistible and overpowering.
He strove to cry aloud, but whether for mercy or in defiance, in his
bewilderment, he knew not; his voice was gone, and he could scarcely
gasp for breath: then how much less was he able to articulate.
"A rope--a rope!" cried Millheugh; "weel wetted, too, lest it burn
when we birsel him. Quick, ye loons, quick!"
"Heap damp boughs and green peats on the fire," said Glencairn.
"Quick--lest instead of only _smoking_ the secret out of him, we
roast him before the right time."
Bruised, bleeding, pale, and powerless, Florence now found himself
under the rough arch of the yawning fireplace and the flame of the
large pile of blazing fuel that lay heaped on the hearth was already
scorching him to the quick! Above his head swung the smoke-blackened
bar of the cruick whereon occasionally large pots and cauldrons were
hung, and which moved outward or inward, in sockets, like a crane.
His hands were roughly forced behind him by the united strength of
several men, and held thus while Mungo Tennant, the warder of
Preston, proceeded to tie them. Meantime others were piling green
boughs on the flame, partially to quench its heat, and to fill the
vast tunnel-like chimney with black smoke, amid which they seemed
like demons superintending infernal orgies. While this was
proceeding, there was a snaky glare in the glistening and triumphant
eyes of Kilmaurs. This fierce young lord was popularly believed to
possess an _evil eye_, and that his gaze had the power of blighting
whatever it fell upon. Friend or foe, horse or sheep, were averred
to wither away. In Cunninghame, it was said that corn died in the
ear, and the leaves of a tree shrivelled and dropped off, if he
looked at them fixedly; and this dangerous attribute made him a
source of terror to all--even to the irreverend Reformer, his father.
All was nearly complete: the fire, half suppressed by the damp fuel,
now emitted a dense column of black smoke, and a well-wetted rope was
already made fast to the iron bar.
"Up wi' him, now, to the cruick, by craig and heels," said Glencairn;
"and then let him sneeze in the reek, like a carlin in the mist."
"God have mercy on me; for men will have none!" was the mental prayer
of Florence, with a half-stifled groan, as he felt himself lifted off
the floor and held over the smoke:--but ere the principal cord was
made fast, a powerful man burst through the crowd around the vast
fireplace, and, forcing them asunder, commanded all, "on pain of
death, to hold their hands!"
"A Bothwell! a Bothwell!" cried Earl Patrick, in a voice of thunder.
"Who dares cry hold, when I command to strike?"