A SECRET STAIR.
Bluidie was the braid saddle lap,
And bluidie was the crupper;
Sae bluidie as my true love's hands,
When we sat down to supper.
"There's water in the siller dish,
Gae wash thy hands so bluidie;"
But my love wash'd in the water clear,
And never made it ruddie.
CROMEK.
Sir Patrick Gray reached the wainscoted hall, or chamber of dais, the
arched roof of which was covered, as already described, with frescoed
legends of the Abbey of Tongland.
There yet stood the little Scottish harp of Murielle, and a sense
of her sweet presence seemed to linger about it, with the memory of
her song--"Sir Hugh le Blond." There stood the seat of her sister,
the dark and beautiful Margaret, with the velvet tabourettes of her
bower-maidens grouped around it. There was the chair of the young
earl, with one of his leather gloves, and beside it his little Bologna
spaniel asleep.
The gay groups of the other night seemed to rise before the troubled
eye of Gray, as he surveyed the chamber. He sighed bitterly, and could
recall with painful distinctness the faces of the unfortunate earl and
the petulant boy, his brother. He forgave poor little David all his
petulance now.
How difficult to realize the conviction, that within an hour he had
stood by their bloody tomb--poor victims of misguided ambition, of
feudal pride, and political misrule! Yet an age seemed to have elapsed
since last he had seen their faces.
Suddenly he heard a light step and the rustling of a dress; a small
hand drew rapidly aside the arras which covered a door, and Murielle,
with bloodshot eyes and her sweet little face pale with tears and loss
of sleep, rushed towards him.
"Oh, Patrick Gray, Patrick Gray!" she exclaimed, throwing herself in
all the abandonment of grief into his arms, and laying her cold cheek
upon his breast; "Oh my love, my heart--what new miseries, what new
crimes and dangers, are these that come to cast their gloom and horror
upon us?"
He endeavoured to calm and soothe her; but suddenly quitting him, she
besought him to leave her, and return instantly to the castle.
"Leave you, Murielle?" he reiterated, "think of the time that has
elapsed since I have seen you, conversed with you--since I have been
with you alone; and think of the time that may elapse ere we meet
again."
"Yet go--go," she added, clasping her hands, "if you love me, go!"
"_If_--ah! Murielle----"
"Leave me--shun me! this love will end in your destruction," she
exclaimed with wild energy.
"I am almost inclined to stay, Murielle, and risk everything, were it
but to prove how much I do love you."
"By making me miserable for ever, by seeing you perish before me--oh,
even as my poor kinsmen perished!" she added in a piercing accent,
while wringing her pretty hands, and half withdrawing from him.
"You are right, dear Murielle," replied the soldier gloomily: "I am
in the king's service. To brave a useless danger and inevitable fate,
would serve no end; yet, dearest Murielle, this interview may be our
last."
"It may be--I know it in my aching heart; yet go--go, for the love of
God and St. Bryde, lest some fresh crime be committed, and here. Alas!
you know not Hugh of Ormond, or James of Abercorn, as I do. But why
were our beloved William and David slain?"
"Blame not me, dear Murielle," said Gray, kissing her pale cheek with
affectionate sorrow.
"Oh, Patrick, I do not blame you," replied Murielle, in a tone of
misery.
"Indeed! Yet you see him before you, and clasp him to your heart like a
wanton, while he has on his hands the blood of my husband!" exclaimed
a clear and ringing voice. It was that of the scornful, the lovely and
revengeful, yet superb Margaret, as she burst upon them through the
parted arras, her pale cheek flushing and her dark eyes sparkling,
but with more of anger than grief. "Vile assassin! come you here,
stained with the blood of my Douglas--my brave, young, handsome lord
and kinsman--of his poor boy-brother, and that hoary-headed baron,
old Malcolm Fleming, whose sword was never idle when Scotland or her
king required its service! Did it require three such heads to glut
the hatred ye bear to the house of Douglas and Galloway? Speak!" she
added, stamping her pretty foot imperiously on the rush-covered floor;
"speak, thou king's minion and Falkland-bred loon!"
"Peace, sister," moaned Murielle, "oh peace----"
"Now, grant me patience, God!" exclaimed the furious countess,
stretching her white hands upward--and supremely lovely that dark-eyed
girl seemed, in her mingled grief and rage. "Go hence, I say, Murielle
Douglas; let not that man contaminate you by his touch."
"Oh, sister Maggie, you know he loves me dearly, and I him."
"I know that he has been tutored well in the conventional hypocrisy
of a court; and that you, Murielle, educated as you have been in our
secluded castle of Thrave, are no match in art for such as he."
"Maggie," implored Murielle, beginning to writhe under her sister's
severity, "he is generous as gentle, and gentle as brave!"
"But save him if you can," said Margaret, bitterly.
"There is, then, danger, madam?" said Gray, loosening his poniard in
its sheath.
"Do you hear that growing clamour in the street?" exclaimed Margaret.
"Sir Patrick Gray, away, I warn you. James of Abercorn, Pompherston,
and others, all our most faithful followers, are around the house; if
you tarry here a moment longer, they will hack you joint from joint."
"But, madame--countess--Murielle," said Gray, whose heart was swollen
almost to bursting by the vituperative bitterness of Margaret, "I
cannot go without a word of explanation or defence."
"We seek neither. It is enough for us to know that you stood by, in
yonder royal shambles on the rock, and saw Douglas foully murdered,
under tryst--_stood idly by_, with your sword in its sheath, and
neither by word or blow sought to save the life of him whose cousin you
profess to love. But doubtless, as captain of the king's hirelings, it
was your duty to stand aloof, or guard the treble murder!"
"Sister," said Murielle imploringly, while her tears fell fast and
hotly, "have we not heard the Abbot of Tongland and the Prior of St.
Mary's Isle both preach, that man was born to evil, even as the sparks
fly upward; but that with fortitude, patience, and resignation, we
should bear our cross--the destiny assigned us; and what are we, to set
ourselves in opposition to what they, the men of God, teach, preach,
and practise?"
"Such cowardly precepts may suit their droning monks, but not the
Douglases of Thrave," responded her fiery sister. "We have been foully
wronged, and I have sworn by our Lady of Whitekirk--by her son and St.
Bryde--to have a vengeance on this boy-king and his chancellor,--a
vengeance so sure and deep, that every king in Christendom shall feel
his heart tremble within him, if he dares to wrong a subject as they
have wronged me. Ha!--hear ye _that_?" she added, as a strangely
malignant gleam passed over her dark eyes.
"_Death to Gray--bring him forth--a rope! a rope!_"
"'Tis the voice of Achanna," said Sir Patrick, starting; while
Murielle, on hearing the roar of men's voices and the clatter of arms
without and within the house, uttered a low cry of terror, and clung to
his breast.
By a hasty glance from the window, Gray saw that the court-yard was
full of armed men, who, with drawn swords and bent cross bows, were
crowding into the staircase. He saw James of Abercorn, who was on
horseback, and who shook his gauntleted hand towards him; he saw that
the garden, the gate, the wynd, and every avenue to escape were beset
by glittering pikes and partisans, and a cold perspiration burst over
his brow at the sudden prospect of helplessly suffering a cruel and
violent death. His heart was almost too full for words; but he kissed
Murielle tenderly.
"Long, long, it may be," he said, with a foreboding sigh, "ere that
dear kiss can be repeated--it may be _never_; but oh, Murielle, tide
what may, let no other efface it from your beloved lips!"
The voices and clatter of arms came nearer.
"Save him, sister--save him, Maggie. You may and _can_ do it!"
exclaimed Murielle, rushing to the door of the large chamber, which she
closed, and drew across into the stone socket the massive oak bar by
which it was secured. She had barely achieved this ere the din of blows
from mailed hands, from sword-hilts, and the butts of crossbows and
partisans, rang upon it in a shower.
Many fierce voices summoned those who were within to open; otherwise,
that fire would be applied to force an entrance.
Drawing his sword and dagger, Gray was about to unclose it, and attempt
to hew a passage through them--an attempt which would inevitably have
ended where it began, as there were a legion of foes without, all
thirsting for vengeance, eager for outrage and homicide--all men inured
to daily turbulence, peril, and bloodshed.
The clatter and uproar increased rapidly, as the numbers outside seemed
to multiply. The door, though of solid oak, was yielding fast, and
already the blades of several swords were repeatedly passed through
it, and withdrawn to give place to others.
"Save him, Maggie dear--dear sister, save him, in mercy to me, if not
to himself," implored Murielle, clinging to the waist of Margaret, who
stood haughtily erect, like a tragedy-queen, with a sneer upon her
proud lip, while undisguised alarm was now expressed in her fine eyes,
at the prospect of seeing Gray butchered in her presence, though she
hated him in her heart; "save him, sister, save him!"
"Am I an armed man?" she asked coldly. "In what fashion am I to save
your minion?"
"Ha!--by the stair--the secret stair. Oh God, how that door shakes--in
another moment it will yield!--the secret stair--the abbot gave you the
key."
"True," said Margaret, as she drew a key from her bosom, and tossed it
contemptuously on the floor.
With a cry of joy Murielle picked it up, and, seizing Gray by the hand,
said,
"You are saved--quick--come this way."
At the side of one of the deeply-embayed windows she withdrew the
arras, and unlocked a little door which gave access to a narrow
passage, formed in the thickness of the ancient wall.
"Descend here. There are twenty-one steps; the passage at the foot
leads to the garden, and the wall there is low. Push open the door at
the lower end among the ivy, and you are free. Heaven, in its goodness,
be your guide!"
"Ah, that I had but twelve pikes of my guard to scatter this rabble
like winnowed chaff! Adieu, Murielle; I shall live and escape, if I
can! If not, look from your window, my love--my dear, dear love--and
you shall see how toughly a brave and loyal gentleman can _die_!"
With these words, and full of desperate thoughts, Gray rushed down the
secret stair, while Murielle, with a sigh almost of rapture, locked the
door. Then, with a prayer of thankfulness, she thrust the key into her
bosom; but, fearing it might not be quite safe even there, she cast it
into the great fire of coals and oak roots which burned on the hearth.
At that moment the door was burst open, and the tall grim laird of
Pompherston, with his helmet open and his sword drawn, rushed in, with
a confused mob of pikemen and archers at his back.
On seeing only the countess and her sister, he and his flushed
followers seemed perplexed, and turned away to prosecute their search
elsewhere. But soon the clash of weapons and shouts of exultation and
ferocity in the garden drew all there to join the fray.
Murielle sprang to the nearest window, and oh, what a sight she saw
there!
Sir Patrick Gray issuing from the doorway of the secret passage,
covered with blood and wounds; his pourpoint rent and torn; his sword
and dagger bloody, after a combat maintained in the dark against
Achanna and six others, who, as already related, had beset the way
and attacked him, with terrible advantage, in the obscurity, which
concealed alike their number and their deadly purpose.
Undismayed, with his sword in his right hand and a long Scottish dagger
in his left, Gray rushed upon his assailants, and they quickly parted
before him; but only to close in his rear, while fresh foes met him in
front.
What a sight for Murielle to gaze upon, while, gasping and shrieking,
she clung to the iron bars of the hall window, and surveyed the
terrible scene below, where one poor human life was struggling so nobly
and so desperately for existence against so many!
Brave heart! he will sell that life dearly, for it is doubly valuable
now. Youth and love--the love of Murielle--are his, and for both he has
to live and to conquer!
No slogan or shout, entreaty or threat, are uttered by him, as, with
teeth clenched, brows knit, and every nerve and fibre strained, he
stabs and shreds and hews about him, trampling underfoot those who fall
beneath his hand.
He casts one brief and despairing glance at the window, for he knows
that _she_ is there; and to the horror of being thus helplessly
butchered by the kinsmen of Murielle, is added the bitter consciousness
that she beholds it, alike unable to assist or save him.
He is the aim of a hundred flashing weapons and infuriated men, who, in
their blind eagerness to destroy him, impede and inflict severe wounds
on each other.
His pourpoint hangs from his shoulders in rags, and more than one long
arrow dangles by its barbed point from his shirt of mail. Now his
helmet is struck from his head; an exulting cheer rises from the rabble
that surge around him; but still he towers above them like a rock, and
hews another, another, and another down!
Now, as he concentrates all his energies, the crowd parts before him;
he has reached the outer gate, and then a cry for "rescue" rises in the
street beyond.
He reels, he staggers to his knee!
Yet up he springs again. Heavens! there is a long and bloody streak
across his pallid face; and now his sword-blade breaks; but he wrests
another from an assailant, whom he hurls to the earth and treads under
foot, lest he should rise and fight again!
On, on yet, and now he has fought his way through the gate, beyond
which, on horseback, sits grim Earl James of Abercorn, like a mailed
statue, surveying with fierce eyes this appalling scene; and now, faint
with wounds and loss of blood, Gray staggers like a dying man towards
him, and clutches his stirrup-leather.
"James of Abercorn," he cries, "by your knighthood, by God's mercy and
the honour of your name, save me!"
But, with the smile of a demon, James the Gross raises his ponderous
ghisarma, and strikes him twice on his bare head and upturned
despairing face, which in a moment are covered with blood.
"Murielle! Murielle!" exclaims Gray, as he sinks, to all appearance,
lifeless in the street; and then the wild rabble sweep over him like a
human flood, to complete his destruction.
On beholding this last barbarous act, a shriek burst even from the
countess, and she turned to her sister; but, alas! poor Murielle had
long since sunk insensible on the cushioned window-seat.