The Caged Lion, Charlotte M. Yonge [dark books to read TXT] 📗

him up various winding stairs into a small circular chamber, with a loop-hole window, within one of the flanking towers.

Carefully closing the heavy door, Kennedy held out his hands.  ‘Fair cousin,’ he said, ‘this is bravely done of you.’

‘Will it save my sister?’ asked Malcolm, anxiously.

‘It should,’ said his kinsman; ‘but how can it be?  Whatever is done, must be ere Walter Stewart returns.’

‘Tell me all!  I know nothing—save that she was cruelly lured from St. Abbs.’

‘I know little more,’ said Kennedy.  ‘It was on a false report of your death, and Walter had well-nigh obtained a forcible marriage; when her resistance and cries to Heaven daunted the monk who was to have performed the rite, so that he, in a sort, became her protector.  When she was brought here, Walter swore he would bend her to his will; shut her up in the old keep, and kept her there, scantily fed, and a close prisoner, while he went forth on one of his forays.  The Regent coming here meantime, found the poor maiden in her captivity, and freed her so far that she lives, to all appearance, as becomes his kinswoman; but the Duchess is cruelly strict with her, being resolved, as she says, to take down her pride.’

‘They must know that I live,’ said Malcolm.

‘They do; but Walter is none the less resolved not to be balked.  Things came to a wild pass a few weeks syne.  The Regent had never dared tell him how far matters had gone for bringing back the King, when one day Walter came in, clad for hawking; and, in his rudest manner, demanded the falcon that was wont to sit on his father’s wrist, and that had never been taken out by any other.  The Regent refused to part with the bird, as he had oft done before; whereupon his son, in his fury, snatched her from his wrist, and wrung her head off before all our eyes; then turning fiercely on your poor sister, told her that “yon gled should be a token to her, of how they fared who withheld themselves from him.”  Then rose the Duke, trembling within rage; “Ay, Wat,” said he, “ye hae been owermuch for me.  We will soon have ane at home that will ken how to guide ye.”  Walter looked at him insolently, and muttered, “I’ve heard of this before!  They that wad have a master, may live under a master—but I’m not ane of them;” and then, turning upon Lady Lilias, he pointed to the dead hawk, and told her that, unless she yielded to him with a good grace, that bird showed her what she might expect, long ere the King or her brother were across the border.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘In Fife, striving to get a force together to hinder the King’s return.  He’ll not do that; men are too weary of misrule to join him against King James; but he is like, any day, to come back with reivers enough to terrify his father, and get your sister into his hands—indeed, his mother is ready to give her up to him whenever he asks.  He has sworn to have her now, were it merely to vex the King and you, and show that he is to be daunted neither by man, heaven, nor hell.’

‘And he may come?’

‘Any day or any night,’ said James.  ‘Since he went I have striven, in vain, to devise some escape for your sister; but Heaven has surely sent you to hinder so foul a wrong!  Yet, if you went to Glenuskie and raised your vassals—’

‘It would be loss of time,’ said Malcolm; ‘and this matter may not be put to the doubtful issue of a fray between my men and his villains.  Out of this place must she go at once.  But, alas! how win to the speech of her?’

‘That can I do,’ said Kennedy.  ‘For a few brief moments, each day, have I spoken to her in the chapel.  Nay, I had left this place before now, had she not prayed me to remain as her only friend.’

‘Heaven must requite you, Cousin James,’ said Malcolm, warmly.  ‘I deserved not this of you.’

‘All that I desire,’ said Kennedy, ‘is to see this land of ours cease to be full of darkness and cruel habitations.  Malcolm, you know the King better than I; may we not trust that he will come as a redresser of wrongs?’

‘Know you not his pledge to himself?—“I will make the key keep the castle, and the bracken bush keep the cow, though I live the life of a dog to bring it about!”’

‘God strengthen his hand,’ said Kennedy, with tears in his eyes; ‘and bring better days to our poor land.  Cousin, has not your heart burnt within you, to be doing somewhat to bring these countrymen of ours to better mind?’

‘I have grieved,’ said Malcolm.  ‘The sight has been the woe and horror of my whole life; and either it is worse now than when I went away, or I see it clearer.’

‘It is both,’ said Kennedy; ‘and, Malcolm, it is borne in on me that we, who have seen better things, have a heavy charge!  The King may punish marauders, and enforce peace; but it will be but the rule of the strong hand, unless men’s hearts be moved!  Our clergy—they bear the office of priests—but their fierceness and their ignorance would scarce be believed in France or England; and how should it be otherwise, with no schools at home save the abbeys—and the abbeys almost all fortresses held by fierce noblemen’s sons?’

Malcolm would much rather have discussed the means of rescuing his sister, but James Kennedy’s heart was full of a youth’s ardent plans for the re-awakening of religion in his country, chiefly through the improved education of the clergy, and it was not easy to bring his discourse to a close.

‘You—you were to wed a great Flemish heiress?’ he said.  ‘You will do your part, Cousin, in the founding of a University—such as has changed ourselves so greatly.’

Malcolm smiled.  ‘My only bride is learning,’ he said; ‘my other betrothal is but in name, for the safety of the lady.’

‘Then,’ cried Kennedy joyfully, ‘you will give yourself.  Learning and culture turned to God’s service, for this poor country’s sake, in one of birth like you, may change her indeed.’

Was this the reading of Esclairmonde’s riddle? suddenly thought Malcolm.  Was the true search for heavenly Light, then, to consist in holding up to his countrymen the lamp he was kindling for himself?  Must true wisdom consist in treasuring knowledge, not for his own honour among learned men, or the delectation of his own mind, but to scatter it among these rude northern souls?  Must the vision of learned research and scholarly calm vanish, as cloistral peace, and chivalrous love and glory, had vanished before? and was the lot of a hard-working secular priest that which called him?

CHAPTER XVIII: CLERK DAVIE

For Malcolm to speak with his sister was well-nigh an impossibility.  Had he been detected, he would have been immediately treated as a spy, and the suspicion thus excited would have been a dangerous preparation for the King as well as for himself; nor was there any pretext for giving the wandering scholar an interview with her.

But harsh and strict as was the Duchess of Albany—a tall, raw-boned, red-haired woman, daughter of the fierce old Earl of Lennox—and resolved as she was to bend Lilias by persecution to accept her son, she could not debar a young gentleman of the royal kindred, like James Kennedy, from entering the apartment where the ladies of the family sat with their needles; and the Regent, half from pity, half from shame, had refused to permit Lilias Stewart’s being treated as a mere captive.

Thus Malcolm remained in Kennedy’s room in much anxiety, while his cousin went forth to do his best in his cause, and after some hours returned to him with the tidings that he had succeeded in letting Lily know that he was in the Castle.  Standing over her while she bent over her embroidery, and thus concealing her trembling agitation, he had found it possible to whisper in her ears the tidings of her brother having come to save her, and of hearing her insist that Malcolm, ‘wee Malcolm, must run no peril, but that she would do and dare everything—nay, would prefer death itself to Walter Stewart.’

‘Have you any device in this matter?’ demanded James Kennedy, when he had thus spoken.

‘Have you your college gown here?’ inquired Malcolm.

‘I have, in yon kist,’ said Kennedy.  ‘Would you disguise her therein?  You and she are nearly of a height.’

‘Ay,’ said Malcolm.  ‘The plot I thought on is this—the worst is that the risk rests with you.’

‘That is naught, less than naught,’ said Kennedy.  ‘I had risked myself ten times over had I seen any hope for her in so doing.’

Malcolm then explained his plan, namely, that if Lilias could have Kennedy’s gown conveyed to her, she should array herself therein, and be conducted out of the castle by her cousin by one gate, he himself in secular garb going by another, and joining at some place of meeting, whence, as a pair of brothers, Malcolm and she might gain the English border.

James Kennedy considered, and then added that he could improve on the plan.  He had long intended leaving Doune for his brother’s castle, but only tarried in case he could do anything for Lilias.  He would at supper publicly announce to the Regent his departure for the next day, and also say that he had detained his fellow-scholar to go within him.  Then arranging for Malcolm’s exit in a secular dress among his escort, as one of the many unobserved loungers, Lilias should go with him in very early morning in the bachelor’s gown, which he would place in a corner of a dark passage, where she could find it.  Then if Malcolm and she turned aside from his escort, as the pursuit as soon as her evasion was discovered would be immediately directed on himself, they would have the more time for escape.

It was a complicated plan, but there was this recommendation, that Malcolm need not lose sight of his sister.  Clerk as he was, young Kennedy could not ride without an escort, and among his followers he could place Malcolm.  Accordingly at supper he announced his desire to leave Doune at dawn next morning, and was, as a matter of course, courteously pressed to remain.  Malcolm in the meantime eluded observation as much as possible while watching his sister, who, in spite of all her efforts, was pale and red by turns, never durst glance towards him, and trembled whenever any one went near him.

The ladies at length swept out of the hall, and Robert and Alexander called for more wine for a rere-supper to drink to James’s good journey; but Kennedy tore himself from their hospitable violence, and again he and Malcolm were alone, spending a night of anxiety and consultation.

Morning came; Malcolm arrayed himself in a somewhat worn dress of Kennedy’s, with the belt and dirk he had carried under his scholar’s garb now without, and a steel cap that his cousin had procured for him on his head.  With a parcel in his arms of Kennedy’s gear, he might pass for a servant sent from home to meet him; and so soon as this disguise was complete, Kennedy opened the door.  On the turret stair stood a hooded black figure, that started as the door opened.

Malcolm’s heart might well seem to leap to his lips, but both brother and sister felt the tension of nerve that caution required too much to give way for a moment.

Kennedy whispered, ‘Your license, fair Cousin,’ and passed on with the free step of lordly birth, while a few paces behind the seeming scholar humbly followed, and Malcolm, putting on his soldier’s tread and the careless free-and-easy bearing he had affected before Meaux, brought up the rear with Master Kennedy’s mails.

As they anticipated, the household was not troubling itself to rise to see the priest off.  Not that this made the coast clear, for the floor of the hall was cumbered with snoring sleepers in all sorts of attitudes—nay, at the upper table, the flushed, debauched, though young and handsome, faces of Robert and Alexander Stewart might have been detected among those who lay snoring among the relics of their last night’s revel.

The old steward was, however, up and alert, ready to offer the stirrup-cup, and the horses were waiting in the court; but what they had by no means expected or desired was that Duke Murdoch himself, in his long furred gown, came slowly across the hall to bid his young kinsman Kennedy farewell.

‘Speed you well, my lad,’ he said kindly.  ‘I ask ye not to tarry in what ye must deem a graceless household;’ and he looked sadly across