A STRANGE RENCONTRE.
"I wake to sad reality, the days of youth have fled--
The flower, the shrub, the velvet turf have long ere now been dead;
The brook that ran so merrily has ceased to bubble by,
The pebble bed whereon it flowed is broken up and dry."
As Sir Patrick Gray had no desire to traverse again the swampy wastes
of the Peel Morass, with the chance of perhaps encountering, when
alone, Ludwig of Endhoven, and his ruffianly Brabanciones, he took the
way which led towards the principality of Ravenstein, intending to
cross the Maese and travel to Breda through Dutch Brabant.
Eagerness to see, to meet, to rejoin Murielle, or to make his presence
there known to her, made him travel without delay; but in his ignorance
of the route, through a flat country, destitute of those strong natural
features, to which his eyes were accustomed at home, caused him
frequently to make mistakes and detours; thus the evening of the first
day found him only at the town of Grave, which had a fortress, situated
by the margin of the Maese, and of such strength that it was deemed
the Key of Gueldreland, and had thus been the object of many a bloody
contest between the dukes of Brabant and the earls of Holland.
As the town was small, he soon found an hostelry, and delivered his
horse to the groom and his sword to the tapster, according to what was
then, and for long after, the custom in all places of entertainment;
but retained his chain shirt and dagger while he sat at supper in the
large public room, or chamber-of-dais, in which were two gentlemen,
apparently travellers like himself, and similarly employed, in deciding
upon the merits of broiled fowls and a stoup of Burgundy.
Full of his own thoughts and of Murielle, reckoning the miles of flat
and monotonous Flemish scenery that lay between them, the hours that
must intervene ere he could see her; the mode in which he should
discover himself, the promises he would exact, and the vows he would
repeat, Gray took no notice of the strangers, who conversed freely, and
somewhat noisily, over their wine, their brusquerie of manner appearing
to increase as the twilight deepened with their potations; so that when
Gray was at last roused from his reveries and looked towards them, the
dusk was so great that he could scarcely discern their features.
They were talking of the proceedings of the great ecclesiastical
council, which was then sitting in the Swiss archbishopric of Basle,
and of the laws it was framing for the extirpation of heresy--topics
upon which all men were beginning to question, or rather to _sound_
each other, as such questions, in those days of the stake and faggot,
were fraught with danger. They conversed in French; but finding that
Gray sat resolutely silent, one turned and said to him abruptly, "Pray,
sir, what think you of Procopius?"
"Of--who?" said Gray, with hesitation.
"Procopius, the Shaved."
"The leader of the Hussites?"
"Yes--the protesting heretics."
"I think him a bold Bohemian captain," was the cautious reply.
"What think you of his disputation at the holy council of Basle?"
continued the other.
"I am not capable of judging."
"Peste! Did he not bear hard on the monks?" persisted the querist.
"I am not aware," replied Gray, with increasing reserve, "as I have not
heard; but what said he?"
"At the head of two hundred gentlemen of his party, the valiant
Procopius came before the council, and stoutly maintained that monkery
was an invention of the devil.
"'Can you prove this?' asked Cardinal St. Julien, while his face
flushed red as his stockings.
"'Yes!' replied the Bohemian, stoutly.
"'How?' thundered the cardinal, knitting his brows.
"'Thus; will you deny that the Saviour did _not_ institute it?'
"'We do not.'
"'Then,' quoth Procopius, ''tis plainly an invention of the devil,'
whereat Ænies Sylvius Piccolomini----"
"He who was in Scotland?"
"Yes; burst into a fit of laughter, which however did not prevent him
from committing several poor devils to the flames in the course of the
evening, where they spluttered and burned bravely for the amusement of
all good Catholics."
"We have had some such work at home, where John Resby and Paul Crawar
have perished at the stake, for preaching doctrines which some term
false and others simply new."
"How do _you_ term them?" asked the second traveller.
"Sir," replied Gray, "I am a soldier, and, being neither priest nor
clerk may not know the difference."
"So you are of Scotland?" said the first stranger, suddenly
relinquishing his French for the old dialect then spoken by the upper
classes of the northern kingdom; "we bid you welcome, as countrymen.
Pray join us--and harkee, tapster, let us have lights and more wine--we
too, sir, are of Scotland."
More Burgundy was promptly brought, and on four torch-like candles of
yellow wax being lighted in four great brass sconces, Gray was enabled
to observe the aspect and bearing of his fellow travellers, or rather
sojourners at the hostelry.
Both had their hair cut closely round above their ears, in the
unbecoming fashion of twenty years before. They were moustached, but
had their beards and whiskers shaved off in what was then the Scottish
mode; they wore armour, with skirts composed of horizontal steel bands,
called taces, with circular epaulets, to protect the armpits from sword
thrusts, with spikes on the oriellets of their helmets.
The tallest and most handsome forcibly recalled to Gray's memory
the late King James I.; he seemed to have something of that unhappy
monarch's voice too, but his air and manner, though soldierly and
stately, were reckless and blasé, and at times even abrupt and rough,
yet not altogether unpleasing.
The other had pale grey cunning eyes, which were either bloodshot
by dissipation, or reddened by the fire of innate cruelty, and they
twinkled so far apart from his nose that it appeared almost impossible
for him to see an object with _both_ at once, for each seemed to be
looking at the ear which adjoined it, and his hair and beard were a
fiery red. But what were the emotions of Gray, and how firmly did he
grasp his dagger, while a gust of fury filled his heart--a fury which
he had great difficulty in repressing--when, in this person we have
just described, he recognized that venal wretch, James Achanna!
By the light of the sconces the latter and his companion had a full
view of Gray, but they seemed not to recognize him, for, as already
stated, the ghisarma of Earl James had laid both cheeks open, thus a
hideous wound traversed his whole face like a livid bar sinister. It
was slowly passing away, however, for the old duchess of Gueldres had
given him a rare balsam, which she said would effectually efface the
scars; but as yet they, and a new curl which Gray had fancifully given
his moustache, had so effectually altered his appearance, as to conceal
his identity from this ruffianly swashbuckler of the earl of Douglas.
"So you are of Scotland, sir?" resumed the other traveller.
"I am come from thence but lately," replied Gray; "and may I ask your
names?"
"Certainly," replied our old acquaintance, with perfect confidence; "I
am James Achanna, a gentleman of the Lord Douglas, a name at which men
prick their ears in Nithsdale, whatever they may do in foggy Flanders."
"And I," said the other, "am the Lord Rosse."
"Rosse!" reiterated Gray; "pardon me, sir, but, under favour, we have
no such lord in Scotland."
"Not when I am _out_ of it," said he, laughing.
"I know not the title," added Gray, coldly.
"Indeed! one seems to be soon forgotten then. Shall I state to you more
fully that I am Robert Stewart, duke of Albany and earl of Rosse."
"The son of Duke Murdoch!" exclaimed Gray, starting from his seat with
mingled surprise and respect.
"Yes; son of that Duke Murdoch, who, with his second son, and Duncan,
earl of Lennox, was foully butchered at the Lady's Rock, before the
castle gates of Stirling. Vengeance has a long and bitter memory! and
by that extrajudicial murder, for such I will maintain it to be in the
face of Europe, I have been since boyhood an exile, a wanderer, and
now, when little more than thirty years of age, my hair is greyer than
my poor old father's was, when his venerable head rolled in the sand
beneath the doomster's axe."
Gray bowed low, for respect to the royal blood was strongly graven then
in the hearts of the Scots, in none more than his, and Albany, though
exiled and outlawed, in consequence of the malpractices of his father
(who had been regent during the detention of James I. in England), was
the cousin of King James II.
"And _you_, sir?" asked Albany, loftily.
"I am your grace's most humble servant," replied Gray pausing, as he
dreaded to tell his name before Achanna, lest it might reveal to the
Douglases his royal mission, and blight his hope of meeting Murielle.
"But your name, sir," said the duke, with growing displeasure; "your
name?"
"Yes," added Achanna, imitating him, "we must have your name."
"I am the laird of Luaig," replied Gray, with ready wit, taking the
name of a little obscure loch, which lies in a narrow glen near his
father's castle of Foulis.