Chapter IX: Mistrust

It will be great, thou son of pride!--I have been renowned in battle; but I never told my name to a foe.--_Ossian._

Consciousness returned slowly to Florence Fawside, and when his eyes unclosed, he saw first the huge misshapen figures of a large green-and-russet-coloured tapestry, which covered the walls of a dimly-lighted room, the four carved posts of a bed, the magnificent canopy of which spread its shadow over him, and the soft laced pillows whereon his head reposed. Then he became sensible of the presence of persons moving about him on tiptoe, speaking in gentle whispers.

There were two women, young, beautiful, and richly dressed; and with them was a man whose white beard flowed over the front of his long and sable robe. Then came again the sensation of faintness--the sinking sensation of one about to die,--with the agony of his sword-wounds, which felt like the searings of a red-hot iron, when the hands of his fair attendants--soft, kind, and "tremulously gentle" hands they were--unbuttoned his doublet, untied his ruff, drew aside the breast of his lace shirt, and a handkerchief which he had thrust under it when first wounded, and which were now both soaked with blood. This caused his wounds to stream anew. He felt the current of his life gush forth, and while a faint cry of pity from a female voice came feebly to his ear, the sufferer, when making a futile effort to grasp the pocket which contained his fatal letters, became once more totally insensible.

The early dawn of a clear August morning was stealing through the iron-grated windows of the apartment in which he lay, when Florence awoke again to life, and, raising himself feebly on an elbow, looked around him.

He was in a chamber the walls of which were hung with beautiful tapestry; the ceiling was painted with mythological figures, and the oak floor was strewn with green rushes and freshly-cut flowers--for carpets were yet almost unknown in Britain. From a carved beam of oak, which crossed the ceiling transversely, hung a silver night-lamp, fed with perfumed oil, amid which the light was just expiring. In a shadowy corner of the room was an altar, bearing a glittering crucifix, before which were two flickering tapers, two vases of fresh roses, and an exquisitely-carved _prie-Dieu_ of walnut-wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

The hangings of his bed were of the finest crimson silk, festooned by gold cords and massive tassels. On one side, through the window, he could see the green northern bank of the loch which bordered the city, and through which on the night before he had striven to swim his horse; beyond it were yellow fields, green copsewood, and purple muirland, stretching to the shores of the azure Forth. On the other side were the quaint figures of the old tapestry which represented a Scottish tradition well known in the days of Hector Boece--that on the day when the battle of Bannockburn was fought and won, a knight in armour that shone with a marvellous brilliance, mounted on a black steed, all foamy with haste and bloody with spurring, appeared suddenly in the streets of Aberdeen, and with a loud voice announced Bruce's victory to the startled citizens. Passing thence to the north with frightful speed, over hill and valley, this shining warrior was seen to quit the land and spur his steed across the raging waves of the Pentland Firth, and to vanish in the mist that shrouded the northern isles. Hence some averred he was St. Magnus of Orkney, while the more aspiring maintained that he was St. Michael the Archangel.

"Where am I?" was the first mental question of the sufferer, as he pressed his hand across his swimming forehead. "My letters!" was his next thought. On a chair near him hung his doublet: he made a great effort to ascertain if they were untouched, but sank back upon his pillow, exhausted by the attempt.

Morning was far advanced when he revived again. He found something cold and sharp in flavour poured between his lips; it refreshed him, and on looking up he became inspired with new energy on seeing again the two ladies whose forms he believed last night to have been the portions of a feverish dream, or to have been conjured by his fancy from those upon the tapestry.

One was a tall and beautiful woman, of a noble and commanding presence, about thirty years of age; her forehead was rather broad than high; her nose, long and somewhat pointed, might have been too masculine, but for the charming softness of her other features, especially her clear hazel eyes, which were full of sweetness, and expressed the deepest commiseration. That her rank was high, her attire sufficiently announced. She was dressed in a delentera of cloth-of-gold, the opened skirts of which displayed her petticoat of crimson brocade; her sleeves were of crimson satin tied by strings of pearl; her girdle was of gold surrounded by long pearl pendants; while a cross of diamonds sparkled on her breast.

Her companion seemed fully ten years younger: her stature was rather less; her complexion was equally fair; but her hair was of that deep brown which seems black by night; her features were so regular that nothing prevented them from being perhaps insipid; but the darkness of her eyebrows, with the vivacity of her deep violet-coloured blue eyes; and as she bent over the sufferer's bed, the rose-leaf tinge in her soft cheek came and went rapidly. She wore a loose robe of purple taffeta, trimmed with seed pearls; and among her dark hair there sparkled many precious stones; for the attire of people of rank in those days was gorgeously profuse in quality of material and elaboration of ornament.

"Mon Dieu!--he faints again!" said the former lady, in a soft but foreign accent, and with a tone of alarm.

"Nay, he only sleeps," whispered the other; "and see--now he wakens and recovers!"

"Saint Louis prie pour moi! but the pale aspect of this wounded boy so terrifies me!"

"Am I still in France?" murmured Fawside.

"Oh, he speaks of France!" exclaimed the elder, drawing nearer.

"Where am I, madame--in Paris?" asked Fawside faintly.

"Nay, you are safe in the city of Edinburgh."

"Safe! And who are you who condescend to treat me so humanely, so tenderly? Oh! I cannot dream. Last night--I now remember me,--I left the ship of the Sieur de Villegaignon, and was pursued by armed men,--by men who sought to murder me, and Heaven and they alone know why, for unto them I had done no wrong. I fell, wounded, I remember; but how came I here?"

"You must not speak, fair sir," replied the elder lady, placing her white and faultless hand upon the hot and parched mouth of the youth. "But listen, and I shall tell you. We heard the clash of swords (nothing singular in Edinburgh), and cries for 'help' beneath our windows; from whence we saw a man beset by many, who beat him down at last, though he fought valiantly with his back to the postern door of our mansion."

"A door!--methought it was a stone wall.

"Nay, sir, fortunately it was _not_ the stone wall, but a door: my servants opened it; you fell inwards. It was instantly shut and barricaded, by nay orders, and thus we saved you."

"And this was last night?"

"Nay," replied the beautiful lady, smiling, and using her sweetest foreign accent, "it was three nights ago."

"Three!"

"I have said so, monsieur."

"You are of France, dear madame?"

"So are many ladies at the Scottish court."

"And I--I----"

"Have been in sleep under the opiates of my physician, or at times delirious; but now, thanked be kind Heaven, and his judicious skill, all danger of fever is past."

"Three days and nights! Oh! madame, to how much inconvenience I must have put you."

"Say not so. To have saved your life is reward sufficient for my friend and me."

"Thanks, madame, thanks; not that I value life much, but for the sake of one I love dearly, and for the task I have to perform."

"One!--a lady, doubtless?" asked the younger, smiling.

"My mother!" replied Fawside, as his dark eyes flashed and suffused at the same moment!

"And your task is probably a pilgrimage?" continued she with the violet-blue eyes.

"Nay, lady, nay; no pilgrimage, but a behest full of danger and death, and inspired by a hate that seems at times to be a holy one--for the blood of a slain father inspires it."

"Madame," began the younger lady uneasily, "may it please your----"

"_Stay!_" exclaimed the other, interrupting the title by which she doubtless was about to be addressed;--and then they whispered together.

Fawside now remarked mentally that this was the third occasion on which she had been similarly interrupted.

"Here lurketh some mystery," thought he, glancing at his doublet, in the secret pocket of which his letters were concealed, "so let me be wary."

"These are exciting thoughts for one so weak and so severely wounded as you are," resumed the matron, for such she evidently was. "Know you who those outrageous assailants were?"

"Too well!--the men who slew my father under tryst, and my brave brother too, by falsity and secrecy, as 'tis said."

"And they?" faltered the lady.

"Who?"

"Your father and brother?"

"Were good men and leal."

"I doubt not that, sir. But their names?"

"Were second to none in the three Lothians."

"You are singularly wary, fair sir," said the elder lady proudly, and with an air of pique.

"And your father fell----," began the younger in a tremulous voice, as if the young man's vehemence terrified her.

"He fell so many years ago that the interest of my debt of blood and vengeance----"

"Is, I doubt not, doubled!"

"Yea, madame, quadrupled; and I shall have it rendered back duly, every drop."

"Oh! say not so," said the young lady, shuddering. "Think of all you have escaped, and how, on that fatal night, kind Heaven spared you."

"To avenge my family feud on those who would have slain me."

"And you have been in France?" said the lady in the cloth-of-gold, to change the subject.

"Yes, madame."

"And came from thence with Nicholas de Villegaignon?"

"Yes, madame."

"Ah, _mon Dieu!_--dear, dear France!" she exclaimed; "and you were there how long?"

"Seven happy years, lady."

"In the army, of course?"

"No."

"At the court of Henry of Valois?"

"No--with Anne de la Tour."

"The Duchess of Albany--a proud and haughty old widow."

"But a mistress kind and gentle to me. I had the honour to kiss King Henry's hand on my way home through Paris."

"Had you any letters or messages for Scotland?" asked the lady anxiously.

"Nay, I had no letters," he replied gloomily and briefly; "but tell me, pray, your names, your rank, ladies--in pity tell me!"

"Pardon us, sir," said the elder, patting his forehead kindly with her soft white hand; "in that you must hold us excused. We tell not our names lightly to a stranger--a wild fellow who fights with every armed man, and, for aught we know, makes love to every pretty woman, and who, moreover, shrouds in such provoking mystery his own name and purpose. So adieu, sir--a little time and we shall be with you again."

"Stay, madame--stay, and pardon me," he exclaimed, as they retired through the parted arras, and disappeared when its heavy fold closed behind them. Then he sank upon his pillow, exhausted even by this short interview.

"I am right," he muttered, as he lay with his eyes closed, in a species of half-stupor, or waking dream; "my name shall never pass my lips until I have the barbican gate of Fawside Tower behind me. And yet--and yet--how hard to mistrust that lovely girl with the dark-blue eyes and deep-brown hair!"

Rendered cautious by his late adventure, he tore off and defaced the armorial bearings, which, in the French fashion, he wore on the breast of his beautiful doublet, and resolved studiously to conceal alike his name, his purpose, and his letters, to say no more of whence he had come or whither he was bound, lest those two charming women, who so kindly watched and tended his sick couch, and who so sedulously concealed _their_ names and titles, might be the wives, the loves, or kindred of his enemies.

Such were his resolves. But how weak are the resolves even of the brave and wary, when in the hands of a beautiful woman!