The Caged Lion

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Caged Lion


'Your heart is in the right place, friend,' he said; 'I look on you as an
honest man and brother in arms from this moment.'

''Tis a bargain,' said Sir James, the smile returning, and his eyes again
glistening as he wrung Sir Patrick's hand. 'When the hour comes for the
true rescue of Scotland, we will strike together.'

'And you will tell the King,' added Patrick, 'that here are true hearts,
and I could find many more, only longing to fence him from the Albany
swords, about which King Harry is so good as to fash himself.'

'But what like is the King?' asked Lilias eagerly. 'Oh, I would fain see
him. Is it true that he was the tallest man at King Harry's sacring?
more shame that he were there!'

'He and I are much of a height, lady,' returned the knight. 'Maybe I may
give you the justest notion of him by saying that I am said to be his
very marrow.'

'That explains your likeness to the poor Duke,' said Sir David,
satisfied; 'and you too count kindred with our royal house, methinks?'

'I am sprung from Walter the Stewart, so much I know; my lands lie
Carrick-wards,' said Sir James lightly, 'but I have been a prisoner so
long, that the pedigree of my house was never taught me, and I can make
no figure in describing my own descent.' And as though to put an end to
the inquiry, he walked to the window, where Malcolm so soon as they had
begun to talk of the misrule of Scotland, had ensconced himself in the
window-seat with his new book, making the most of the failing light, and
asked him whether the Monk of Iona equalled his expectations.

Malcolm was not easy to draw out at first, but it presently appeared that
he had been baffled by a tough bit of Latinity. The knight looked, and
readily expounded the sentence, so that all became plain; and then, as it
was already too dark to pursue the study with comfort, he stood over the
boy, talking to him of books and of poems, while the usually pale,
listless, uninterested countenance responded by looks of eager delight
and flushing colour.

It seemed as though each were equally pleased with the other: Sir James,
at finding so much knowledge and understanding in a Scottish castle; and
Malcolm, at, for the first time, meeting anything but contempt for his
tastes from aught but an ecclesiastic.

Their talk continued till they were summoned to supper, which had been
somewhat delayed to provide for the new-comers. It was a simple enough
meal, suited to Lent, and was merely of dried fish, with barley bread and
kail brose; but there were few other places in Scotland where it would
have been served with so much of the refinement that Sir David Drummond
and his late wife had learnt in France. A tablecloth and napkins,
separate trenchers, and water for hand cleansing, were not always to be
found in the houses of the nobles; and in fact, there were those who
charged Malcolm's delicacy and timidity on the _nisete_ or folly of his
effeminate education; the having the rushes on the floor frequently
changed, the preference of lamps for pine torches, and the not keeping
falcons, dogs, swine, and all, pell mell in the great hall.

Lilias sat between her uncle and his guest, looking so fair and bright
that Patrick felt fresh accesses of angry jealousy, while the visitor
talked as one able to report to the natives from another world, and that
world the hateful England, which as a Scotsman he was bound to abhor. Had
it been France, it had been endurable, but praise of English habits was
mere disloyalty; and yet, whenever Patrick tried to throw in a
disparaging word, he found himself met with a quiet superiority such as
he had believed no knight in Scotland could assume with him, and still it
was neither brow-beating nor insolence, nothing that could give offence.

Malcolm begged to know whether there had not been a rare good poet in
England, called Chaucer. Verily there had been, said the knight; and on
a little solicitation, so soon as supper was over, he recited to the
eager and delighted auditors the tale of patient Grisel, as rendered by
Chaucer, calling forth eager comments from both Patrick and Lily, on the
unknightliness of the Marquis. Malcolm, however, added, 'Yet, after all,
she was but a mere peasant wench.'

'What makes that, young Sir?' replied Sir James gravely. 'I would have
you to know that the husband's rank is the wife's, and the more unequal
were their lot before, the more is he bound to respect her, and to make
her be respected.'

'That may be, after the deed is done,' said Sir David, in a warning
voice; 'but it is not well that like should not match with like. Many an
evil have I seen in my time, from unequal mating.'

'And, Sir,' eagerly exclaimed Patrick, 'no doubt you can gainsay the
slander, that our noble King has been caught in the toils of an artful
Englishwoman, and been drawn in to promise her a share in his crown.'

A flush of crimson flamed forth on Sir James Stewart's cheeks, and his
tawny eye glanced with a fire like red lightning, but he seemed, as it
were, to be holding himself in, and answered with a voice forcibly kept
low and calm, and therefore the more terribly stern, 'Young Sir, I warn
you to honour your future queen.'

Sir David made a gesture with his hand, enforcing restraint upon his son,
and turning to Sir James, said, 'Our queen will we honour, when such she
is, Sir; but if you are returning to the King, it were well that he
should know that our hot Scottish bloods, here, could scarce brook an
English alliance, and certainly not one beneath his birth.'

'The King would answer, Sir,' returned Sir James, haughtily, but with
recovered command over himself, 'that it is for him to judge whom his
subjects shall brook as their queen. Moreover,' he added, in a different
and more conciliatory voice, 'Scotsmen must be proud indeed who disdain
the late King's niece, the great-granddaughter of King Edward III., and
as noble and queenly a demoiselle as ever was born in a palace.'

'She is so very fair, then?' said Lilies, who was of course on the side
of true love. 'You have seen her, gentle Sir? Oh, tell us what are her
beauties?'

'Fair damsel,' said Sir James, in a much more gentle tone, 'you forget
that I am only a poor prisoner, who have only now and then viewed the
lady Joan Beaufort with distant reverence, as destined to be my queen.
All I can tell is, that her walk and bearing mark her out for a throne.'

'And oh!' cried Malcolm, 'is it not true that the King hath composed
songs and poems in her honour?'

'Pah!' muttered Patrick; 'as though the King would be no better than a
wandering minstrel rhymester!'

'Or than King David!' dryly said Sir James.

'It is true, then, Sir,' exclaimed Lilias. 'He doth verily add
minstrelsy to his other graces? Know you the lines, Sir? Can you sing
them to us? Oh, I pray you.'

'Nay, fair maid,' returned Sir James, 'methinks I might but add to the
scorn wherewith Sir Patrick is but too much inclined to regard the
captive King.'

'A captive, a captive--ay, minstrelsy is the right solace for a captive,'
said Patrick; 'at least, so they say and sing. Our king will have better
work when he gains his freedom. Only there will come before me a
subtilty I once saw in jelly and blanc-mange, at a banquet in France,
where a lion fell in love with a hunter's daughter, and let her, for
love's sake, draw his teeth and clip his claws, whereupon he found
himself made a sport for her father's hounds.'

'I promise you, Sir Patrick,' replied the guest, 'that the Lady Joan is
more hike to send her Lion forth from the hunter's toils, with claws and
teeth fresh-whetted by the desire of honour.

'But the lay--the hay, Sir,' entreated Lilias; 'who knows that it may not
win Patrick to be the Lady Joan's devoted servant? Malcolm, your harp!'

Malcolm had already gone in quest of the harp he loved all the better for
the discouragement thrown on his gentle tastes.

The knight leant back, with a pensive look softening his features as he
said, after a little consideration, 'Then, fair lady, I will sing you the
song made by King James, when he had first seen the fair mistress of his
heart, on the slopes of Windsor, looking from his chamber window. He
feigns her to be a nightingale.'

'And what is that, Sir?' demanded Lilias. 'I have heard the word in
romances, and deemed it a kind of angel that sings by night.'

'It is a bird, sister,' replied Malcolm; 'Philomel, that pierces her
breast with a thorn, and sings sweetly even to her death.'

'That's mere minstrel leasing, Malcolm,' said Patrick. 'I have both seen
and heard the bird in France--_Rossignol_, as we call it there; and were
I a lady, I should deem it small compliment to be likened to a little
russet-backed, homely fowl such as that.'

'While I,' replied the prisoner, 'feel so much with your fair sister,
that nightingales are a sort of angels that sing by night, that it pains
me, when I think of winning my freedom, to remember that I shall never
again hear their songs answering one another through the forest of
Windsor.'

Patrick shrugged his shoulders, but Lilias was so anxious to hear the
lay, that she entreated him to be silent; and Sir James, with a manly
mellow voice, with an exceedingly sweet strain in it, and a skill, both
of modulation and finger, such as showed admirable taste and instruction,
poured forth that beautiful song of the nightingale at Windsor, which
commences King James's story of his love, in his poem of the King's
Quhair.

There was an eager pressing round to hear, and not only were Lilias and
Malcolm, but old Sir David himself, much affected by the strain, which
the latter said put him in mind of the days of King Robert III., which,
sad as they were, now seemed like good old times, so much worse was the
present state of affairs. Sir James, however, seemed anxious to prevent
discussion of the verses he had sung, and applied to Malcolm to give a
specimen of his powers: and thus, with music, ballad, and lay, the
evening passed away, till the parting cup was sent round, and the Tutor
of Glenuskie and Malcolm marshalled their guest to the apartment where he
was to sleep, in a wainscoted box bedstead, and his two attendant
squires, a great iron-gray Scot and a rosy honest-faced Englishman, on
pallets on the floor.

In the morning he went on his journey, but not without an invitation to
rest there again on his way back, whether with or without his ransom. He
promised to come, saying that he should gladly bear to the King the last
advices from one so honoured as the Tutor of Glenuskie; and, on their
sides, Malcolm and Sir David resolved to do their best to have some gold
pieces to contribute, rather than so 'proper a knight' should fail in
raising his ransom; but gold was never plenty, and Patrick needed all
that his uncle could supply, to bear him to those wars in France, where
he looked for renown and fortune.

For these were, as may have been gathered, those evil days when James I.
of Scotland was still a captive to England, and when the House of Albany
exercised its cruel misrule upon Scotland; delaying to ransom the King,
lest they should bring home a master.

Old Robert of Albany had been King Stork, his son Murdoch was King Log;
and the misery was infinitely increased by the violence and lawlessness
of Murdoch's sons. King Robert II. had left Scotland the fearful legacy
of, as Froissart says, 'eleven sons who loved arms.' Of these, Robert
III. was the eldest, the Duke of Albany the second. These were both
dead, and were represented, the one by the captive young King James, the
other by the Regent, Duke Murdoch of Albany, and his brother John, Earl
of Buchan, now about to head a Scottish force, among whom Patrick
Drummond intended to sail, to assist the French.

Others of the eleven, Earls of Athol, Menteith, &c., survived; but the
youngest of the brotherhood, by name Malcolm, who had married the heiress
of Glenuskie, had been killed at Homildon Hill, when he had solemnly
charged his Stewart nephews and brothers to leave his two orphan children
to the sole charge of their mother's cousin, Sir David Drummond, a good
old man, who had been the best supporter and confidant of poor Robert
III. in his unhappy reign, and in embassies to France had lost much of
the rugged barbarism to which Scotland had retrograded during the wars
with England.




CHAPTER II: THE RESCUE OF COLDINGHAM


It was a lonely tract of road, marked only by the bare space trodden by
feet of man and horse, and yet, in truth, the highway between Berwick and
Edinburgh, which descended from a heathery moorland into a somewhat
spacious valley, with copsewood clothing one side, in the midst of which
rose a high mound or knoll, probably once the site of a camp, for it
still bore lines of circumvallation, although it was entirely deserted,
except by the wandering shepherds of the neighbourhood, or occasionally
by outlaws, who found an admirable ambush in the rear.

The spring had hung the hazels with tassels, bedecked the willows with
golden downy tufts, and opened the primroses and celandines beneath them,
when the solitary dale was disturbed by the hasty clatter of horses'
feet, and hard, heavy breathing as of those who had galloped headlong
beyond their strength. Here, however, the foremost of the party, an old
esquire, who grasped the bridle-rein of youth by his side, drew up his
own horse, and that which he was dragging on with him, saying--

'We may breathe here a moment; there is shelter in the wood. And you,
Rab, get ye up to the top of Jill's Knowe, and keep a good look-out.'

'Let me go back, you false villain!' sobbed the boy, with the first use
of his recovered breath.

'Do not be so daft, Lord Malcolm,' replied the Squire, retaining his hold
on the boy's bridle; 'what, rin your head into the wolf's mouth again,
when we've barely brought you off haill and sain?'

'Haill and sain? Dastard and forlorn,' cried Malcolm, with passionate
weeping. 'I--I to flee and leave my sister--my uncle! Oh, where are
they? Halbert, let me go; I'll never pardon thee.'

'Hoot, my lord! would I let you gang, when the Tutor spak to me as plain
as I hear you now? "Take off Lord Malcolm," says he; "save him, and you
save the rest. See him safe to the Earl of Mar." Those were his words,
my lord; and if you wilna heed them, I will.'

'What, and leave my sister to the reivers? Oh, what may not they be
doing to her? Let us go back and fall on them, Halbert; better die
saving her than know her in Walter Stewart's hands. Then were I the
wretched craven he calls me.'

'Look you, Lord Malcolm,' said Halbert, laying his finger on his nose,
with a knowing expression, 'my young lady is safe from harm so long as
you are out of the Master of Albany's reach. Had you come by a canny
thrust in the fray, as no doubt was his purpose, or were you in his hands
to be mewed in a convent, then were your sister worth the wedding; but
the Master will never wed her while you live and have friends to back
you, and his father, the Regent, will see she has no ill-usage. You'll
do best for yourself and her too, as well as Sir David, if you make for
Dunbar, and call ben your uncles of Athole and Strathern.--How now, Rab?
are the loons making this way?'

'Na, na!' said Rab, descending; ''tis from the other gate; 'tis a knight
in blue damasked steel: he, methinks, that harboured in our castle some
weeks syne.'

'Hm!' said Halbert, considering; 'he looked like a trusty cheild: maybe
he'd guide my lord here to a wiser wit, and a good lance on the way to
Dunbar is not to be scorned.'

In fact, there would have been no time for one party to conceal
themselves from the other; for, hidden by the copsewood, and unheeded by
the watchers who were gazing in the opposite direction, Sir James Stewart
and his two attendants suddenly came round the foot of Jill's Knowe upon
the fugitives, who were profiting by the interval to loosen the girths of
their horses, and water them at the pool under the thicket, whilst
Halbert in vain tried to pacify and reason with the young master, who had
thrown himself on the grass in an agony of grief and despair. Sir James,
after the first momentary start, recognized the party in an instant, and
at once leapt from his horse, exclaiming--

'How now, my bonnie man--my kind host--what is it? what makes this
grief?'

'Do not speak to me, Sir,' muttered the unhappy boy. 'They have been
reft--reft from me, and I have done nothing for them. Walter of Albany
has them, and I am here.'

And he gave way to another paroxysm of grief, while Halbert explained to
Sir James Stewart that when Sir Patrick Drummond had gone to embark for
France, with the army led to the aid of Charles VI. by the Earl of
Buchan, his father and cousins, with a large escort, had accompanied him
to Eyemouth; whence, after taking leave of him, they had set out to spend
Passion-tide and Easter at Coldingham Abbey, after the frequent fashion
of the devoutly inclined among the Scottish nobility, in whose castles
there was often little commodity for religious observances. Short,
however, as was the distance, they had in the midst of it been suddenly
assailed by a band of armed men, among whom might easily be recognized
the giant form of young Walter Stewart, the Master of Albany, the Regent
Duke Murdoch's eldest son, who was well known for his lawless excesses
and violence. His father's silky sayings, and his own ruder speeches,
had long made it known to the House of Glenuskie that the family policy
was to cajole or to drive the sickly heir into a convent, and, rendering
Lilias the possessor of the broad lands inherited from both parents,
unite her and them to the Albany family.

The almost barbarous fierceness and wild licentiousness of Walter would
have made the arrangement abhorrent to Lilias, even had not love passages
already passed between her and her cousin, Patrick Drummond, and Sir
David had hitherto protected her by keeping Malcolm in the secular life;
but Walter, it seemed, had grown impatient, and had made this treacherous
attack, evidently hoping to rid himself of the brother, and secure the
sister. No sooner had the Tutor of Glenuskie perceived that his own
party were overmatched, than he had bidden his faithful squire to secure
the bairns--if not both, at least the boy; and Halbert, perceiving that
Lilias had already been pounced upon by Sir Walter himself and several
more, seized the bridle of the bewildered Malcolm, who was still trying
to draw his sword, and had absolutely swept him away from the scene of
action before he had well realized what was passing; and now that the
poor lad understood the whole, his horror, grief, and shame were
unspeakable.

Before Sir James had done more than hear the outline of Halbert's tale,
however, the watchers on the mound gave the signal that the reivers were
coming that way--a matter hitherto doubtful, since no one could guess
whether Walter Stewart would make for Edinburgh or for Doune. With the
utmost agility Sir James sprang up the side of the mound, reconnoitred,
and returned again just as Halbert was trying to stir his master from the
ground, and Malcolm answering sullenly that he would not move--he would
be taken and die with the rest.

'You may save them instead, if you will attend to me,' said Sir James;
and at his words the boy suddenly started up with a look of hope.

'How many fell upon you?' demanded Sir James.

'Full a hundred lances,' replied Halbert (and a lance meant at least
three men). 'It wad be a fule's wark to withstand them. Best bide fast
in the covert, for our horses are sair forfaughten.'

'If there are now more than twenty lances, I am greatly mistaken,'
returned Sir James. 'They must have broken up after striking their blow,
or have sent to secure Glenuskie; and we, falling on them from this
thicket--'

'I see, I see,' cried Halbert. 'Back, ye loons; back among the hazels.
Hold every one his horse ready to mount.'

'With your favour, Sir Squire, I say, bind each man his horse to a tree.
The skene and broadsword, which I see you all wear, will be ten times as
effective on foot.'

'Do as the knight bids,' said Malcolm, starting forth with colour on his
cheek, light in his eye, that made him another being. 'In him there is
help.'

'Ay, ay, Lord Malcolm,' muttered Halbert; 'you need not tell me that: I
know my duty better than not to do the bidding of a belted knight, and
pretty man too of his inches.'

The two attendants of Sir James were meantime apparently uttering some
remonstrance, to which he lightly replied, 'Tut, Nigel; it will do thine
heart good to hew down a minion of Albany. What were I worth could I not
strike a blow against so foul a wrong to my own orphan kindred? Brewster,
I'll answer it to thy master. These are his foes, as well as those of
all honest men. Ha! thou art as glad to be at them as I myself.'

By this time he had exchanged his cap for a steel helmet, and was
assuming the command as his natural right, as he placed the men in their
ambush behind the knoll, received reports from those he had set to watch,
and concerted the signal with Halbert and his own followers. Malcolm
kept by him, shivering with intense excitement and eagerness; and thus
they waited till the horses' hoofs and clank of armour were distinctly
audible. But even then Sir James, with outstretched hand, signed his
followers back, and kept them in the leash, as it were, until the troop
was fairly in the valley, those in front beginning to halt to give their
horses water. They were, in effect, riding somewhat carelessly, and with
the ease of men whose feat was performed, and who expected no more
opposition. Full in the midst was Lilias, entirely muffled and pinioned
by a large plaid drawn closely round her, and held upon the front of the
saddle of a large tall horse, ridden by a slender, light-limbed, wiry
groom, whom Malcolm knew as Christopher Hall, a retainer of the Duke of
Albany; and beside him rode her captor, Sir Walter Stewart, a man little
above twenty, but with a bronzed, hardened, reckless expression that made
him look much older, and of huge height and giant build. Malcolm knew
him well, and regarded him with unmitigated horror and dread, both from
the knowledge of his ruffianly violence even towards his father, from
fear of his intentions, and from the misery that his brutal jests,
scoffs, and practical jokes had often personally inflicted: and the sight
of his sister in the power of this wicked man was the realization of all
his worst fears. But ere there was time for more than one strong pang of
consternation and constitutional terror, Sir James's shout of 'St. Andrew
for the right!' was ringing out, echoed by all the fifteen in ambush with
him, as simultaneously they leapt forward. Malcolm, among the first,
darting with one spring, as it were, to the horse where his sister was
carried, seized the bridle with his left hand, and flashing his sword
upon the ruffian with the other, shouted, 'Let go, villain; give me my
sister!' Hall's first impulse was to push his horse forward so as to
trample the boy down, but Malcolm's hold rendered this impossible;
besides, there was the shouting, the clang, the confusion of the outburst
of an ambush all around and on every side, and before the man could free
his hand to draw his weapon he necessarily loosed his grasp of Lilias,
who, half springing, half falling, came to the ground, almost
overthrowing her brother in her descent, but just saved by him from
coming down prostrate. The horse, suddenly released, started forward
with its rider and at the same moment Malcolm, recovering himself, stood
with his sword in his hand, his arm round his sister's waist, assuring
her that she was safe, and himself glowing for the first time with manly
exultation. Had he not saved and rescued her himself?

It was as well, however, that the rescue did not depend on his sole
prowess. Indeed, by the time the brother and sister were clinging
together and turning to look round, the first shock was over, and the
retainers of Albany, probably fancying the attack made by a much larger
troop, were either in full flight, or getting decidedly the worst in
their encounters with their assailants.

Sir James Stewart had at the first onset sprung like a lion upon the
Master of Albany, and without drawing his sword had grappled with him.
'In the name of St. Andrew and the King, yield thy prey, thou dastard,'
were his words as he threw his arms round the body of Sir Walter, and
exerted his full strength to drag him from his horse. The young giant
writhed, struggled, cursed, raged; he had not space to draw sword or even
dagger, but he struck furiously with his gauntleted hand, strove to drive
his horse forward. The struggle like that of Hercules and Antaeus, so
desperate and mighty was the strength put forth on either side, but
nothing could unclasp the iron grip of those sinewy arms, and almost as
soon as Malcolm and Lilias had eyes to see what was passing, Walter
Stewart was being dragged off his horse by that tremendous grapple, and
the next moment his armour rung as he lay prostrate on his back upon the
ground.