The Abbot, Walter Scott [best novels to read for beginners txt] 📗

into the earth, the court-bred dame, no longer daring to refuse obedience, faltered out—“Gracious Lady—if my memory err not—it was at a masque in Holyrood—at the marriage of Sebastian.”

The unhappy Queen, who had hitherto listened with a melancholy smile, provoked by the reluctance with which the Lady Fleming brought out her story, at this ill-fated word interrupted her with a shriek so wild and loud that the vaulted apartment rang, and both Roland and Catherine sprang to their feet in the utmost terror and alarm. Meantime, Mary seemed, by the train of horrible ideas thus suddenly excited, surprised not only beyond self-command, but for the moment beyond the verge of reason.

“Traitress!” she said to the Lady Fleming, “thou wouldst slay thy sovereign—Call my French guards—a moi! a moi! mes Français!—I am beset with traitors in mine own palace—they have murdered my husband—Rescue! rescue for the Queen of Scotland!” She started up from her chair—her features, late so exquisitely lovely in their paleness, now inflamed with the fury of frenzy, and resembling those of a Bellona. “We will take the field ourself,” she said; “warn the city—warn Lothian and Fife—saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French Paris see our petronel be charged!—Better to die at the head of our brave Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, than of a broken heart, like our ill-starred father!”

“Be patient—be composed, dearest Sovereign,” said Catherine: and then addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she added, “How could you say aught that reminded her of her husband?”

The word reached the ear of the unhappy Princess, who caught it up, speaking with great rapidity. “Husband!—what husband?—Not his most Christian Majesty—he is ill at ease—he cannot mount on horseback.—Not him of the Lennox—but it was the Duke of Orkney thou wouldst say.”

“For God's love, madam, be patient!” said the Lady Fleming.

But the Queen's excited imagination could by no entreaty be diverted from its course. “Bid him come hither to our aid,” she said, “and bring with him his lambs, as he calls them—Bowton, Hay of Talla, Black Ormiston, and his kinsman Hob—Fie! how swart they are, and how they smell of sulphur! What! closeted with Morton? Nay, if the Douglas and the Hepburn hatch the complot together, the bird, when it breaks the shell, will scare Scotland. Will it not, my Fleming?”

“She grows wilder and wilder,” said Fleming; “we have too many hearers for these strange words.”

“Roland,” said Catherine, “in the name of God, begone! You cannot aid us here—Leave us to deal with her alone—Away—away!”

She thrust him to the door of the anteroom; yet even when he had entered that apartment, and shut the door, he could still hear the Queen talk in a loud and determined tone, as if giving forth orders, until at length the voice died away in a feeble and continued lamentation.

At this crisis Catherine entered the anteroom. “Be not too anxious,” she said, “the crisis is now over; but keep the door fast—let no one enter until she is more composed.”

“In the name of God, what does this mean?” said the page; “or what was there in the Lady Fleming's words to excite so wild a transport?”

“Oh, the Lady Fleming, the Lady Fleming,” said Catherine, repeating the words impatiently; “the Lady Fleming is a fool—she loves her mistress, yet knows so little how to express her love, that were the Queen to ask her for very poison, she would deem it a point of duty not to resist her commands. I could have torn her starched head-tire from her formal head—The Queen should have as soon had the heart out of my body, as the word Sebastian out of my lips—That that piece of weaved tapestry should be a woman, and yet not have wit enough to tell a lie!”

“And what was this story of Sebastian?” said the page. “By Heaven, Catherine, you are all riddles alike!”

“You are as great a fool as Fleming,” returned the impatient maiden; “know ye not, that on the night of Henry Darnley's murder, and at the blowing up of the Kirk of Field, the Queen's absence was owing to her attending on a masque at Holyrood, given by her to grace the marriage of this same Sebastian, who, himself a favoured servant, married one of her female attendants, who was near to her person?”

“By Saint Giles,” said the page, “I wonder not at her passion, but only marvel by what forgetfulness it was that she could urge the Lady Fleming with such a question.”

“I cannot account for it,” said Catherine; “but it seems as if great and violent grief and horror sometimes obscure the memory, and spread a cloud like that of an exploding cannon, over the circumstances with which they are accompanied. But I may not stay here, where I came not to moralize with your wisdom, but simply to cool my resentment against that unwise Lady Fleming, which I think hath now somewhat abated, so that I shall endure her presence without any desire to damage either her curch or vasquine. Meanwhile, keep fast that door—I would not for my life that any of these heretics saw her in the unhappy state, which, brought on her as it has been by the success of their own diabolical plottings, they would not stick to call, in their snuffling cant, the judgment of Providence.”

She left the apartment just as the latch of the outward door was raised from without. But the bolt which Roland had drawn on the inside, resisted the efforts of the person desirous to enter. “Who is there?” said Graeme aloud.

“It is I,” replied the harsh and yet slow voice of the steward Dryfesdale.

“You cannot enter now,” returned the youth.

“And wherefore?” demanded Dryfesdale, “seeing I come but to do my duty, and inquire what mean the shrieks from the apartment of the Moabitish woman. Wherefore, I say, since such is mine errand, can I not enter?”

“Simply,” replied the youth, “because the bolt is drawn, and I have no fancy to undo it. I have the right side of the door to-day, as you had last night.”

“Thou art ill-advised, thou malapert boy,” replied the steward, “to speak to me in such fashion; but I shall inform my Lady of thine insolence.”

“The insolence,” said the page, “is meant for thee only, in fair guerdon of thy discourtesy to me. For thy Lady's information, I have answer more courteous—you may say that the Queen is ill at ease, and desires to be disturbed neither by visits nor messages.”

“I conjure you, in the name of God,” said the old man, with more solemnity in his tone than he had hitherto used, “to let me know if her malady really gains power on her!”

“She will have no aid at your hand, or at your Lady's—wherefore, begone, and trouble us no more—we neither want, nor will accept of, aid at your hands.”

With this positive reply, the steward, grumbling and dissatisfied, returned down stairs.