The Captain of the Guard

Desiring his pages to admit none (even the countess), he turned to Achanna with his usually swarthy visage turned white and livid by the fierce emotions that filled his heart.

"We must dissemble, Achanna," said he in a husky voice; "we must conceal this from Albany – from all; but we must nevertheless destroy Sir Patrick Gray – yea, this night, within a few brief hours, shall Murielle Douglas be maid, wife, and widow! and as for my lord the abbot, may the curse of the souls of my kindred and of St. Bryde be on him, for a meddling mock friar! If I had him as near the Nith as we are near the Waal, I would set him a-swimming with a millstone at his neck for his handiwork to-night! Yet, laus Deo! I dare hardly address him, for, as it is, he withholds absolution from me for many, many sins already committed. Torture! men call me a tyrant, yet I am the slave of a tyrant – of a priest; – and Lady Murielle, she means to escape to-night?"

"By the window which overlooks the arbour in the garden; oh, I heard all planned very distinctly."

"I shall be there with my sword; then woe to our new-made husband," said Douglas, with a cruel smile.

"Nay, my lord, I can propose a better plan than having recourse to steel," said Achanna, with one of his wicked leers, as his plotting brain was again at work; "Gray's bones seem made of malleable iron, but fire will conquer even that."

"Your last scheme," said the earl, with a withering glance, "did not prove very successful; but what is your new one?"

"Bethink you, Douglas, of the old story of the castle of Kirkclauch."

"At Girthavon, in Galloway, or Girthon, as folk name it now?"

"Yes, Douglas," replied Achanna, who, in the old Scottish fashion, called his leader by his name as frequently as by his title.

"What of it? Speak quickly, for time is precious."

"It belonged to a desperate mosstrooper, named Græme," said Achanna, in his most insinuating voice (while adjusting his habiliments which the earl had torn in his wrath), and speaking in his native Gaëlic, which was the language of Galloway till after the reign of Mary, and, while he spoke, he seemed to purr like a pleased cat, and pleased he certainly was, when any wickedness was to be done. "This Græme had plundered, in open raid, the lands of the laird of Muirfad, who, in revenge, drew him into an ambush and slew all his men. Full of rage and shame at his defeat, Græme fled to his old tower at Kirkclauch and vowed to have a terrible vengeance; but lo, ye! Gordon of Muirfad appeared suddenly before the closed gates with his exulting followers, and summoned the almost lonely man to surrender. They had a long parley, in which Græme, while piling oiled faggots, straw, and other combustibles against the wooden barrier, offered Gordon a sum in gold as black mail. The offer was accepted, and the money was to be handed through an eyelet-hole in the top of the gate, where the warder was wont to sit watching the roadway with his arblast. Standing upon his horse's saddle to reach this shot-hole, Gordon passed through his right hand, over which Græme, with a laugh of derision, threw an iron chain, and thus noosed him hard and fast to the stone arch above. He then fired the pile below, and retired, saying, 'You're welcome to your black mail, Muirfad, but by my soul you will find it rather hot!' The flames rose fast, and the fettered man shrieked in vain, for even his own kinsmen failed to rescue him, while Græme escaped by a secret postern, leaving the tower of Kirkclauch and all who were in it a prey to destruction. Muirfad was roasted in his armour like a buttered crab, and sorely would the Gordons have revenged this, had they dared; but Græme fled to Girthavon, 'the sanctuary by the river,' and became a monk."

"Thou chattering dunce, what have I to do with all this?" asked the earl, who had listened to the story with an impatient and sombre countenance.

"Does it not give you an idea, my lord?"

"No; but what is yours?"

"That we burn Sir Patrick Gray in his boots, and in the same fashion."

"At Kirkclauch?"

"No; here in Bommel, and this very night too."

"How? Speak quickly, for I am not in a mood for trifling," said Douglas, examining the point and edge of a beautiful Parmese poniard which dangled at his girdle, as if it were the readier means of ridding him of his enemy.

"Be pleased to listen to me with a little patience, lord earl," whined Achanna, "and I shall yet win those thousand crowns of the Rhine. My plan is very simple. Lady Murielle proposes to escape at midnight from the window above the arbour in the garden, which lies between this house and the church of St. Genevieve. Instead of the bride, I shall be at the window – "

"To stab this new and most precious brother-in-law of mine?"

"No; to secure him, as Græme secured Gordon, by an iron chain, and then fire the faggots with which the arbour below shall be previously filled. By St. Bryde! he will roast in his armour like a nut in its shell."

"A rare vengeance!" said the earl, rubbing his hands, and almost laughing at the prospect of a punishment so signal and so terrible. "He will be deemed a Brabancione or housebreaker; at all events, we shall leave Bommel by day-break on our way towards Paris. Tell our master of the horse and the duke of Albany to prepare. Send hither Sir Alan Lauder, and to you, Achanna, I commit the care of this matter. You failed me once – "

"If I fail again, trust me no more," replied Achanna, as he retired to put his plans in operation, and felt with regret that by this suddenly projected departure from Bommel, he would lose the thousand guilders he had hoped to obtain by the capture of Count Ludwig.

The earl concealed his recently acquired information from all, even from the countess, as he mistrusted her discretion. He contrived to meet even his father confessor with a bland smile at supper, though he trembled with suppressed passion on perceiving the timid, constrained, preoccupied manner of Murielle; and then he laughed inwardly as he thought of the grim tragedy about to ensue.

After supper, he suddenly and emphatically desired the countess to remove Murielle from her present sleeping chamber, to one in a more distant part of the mansion, and there to lock her in for the night.

His will, immutable as the laws of Draco, was immediately obeyed, and thus, at the time when Murielle expected to join her lover, she found herself terrified, bewildered, and weeping in a solitary room, the grated windows of which faced the high black wall of the old Canonry.

Achanna meanwhile had filled the arbour with wooden faggots, dry branches, straw, and other fuel, on which he poured more than one jar of oil. He procured a strong chain bridle, and stationed himself at the window of the apartment, which Murielle had hitherto occupied, and there awaited his prey.

"What do these changes mean?" asked the countess.

"To-morrow you shall know all," replied the earl, with one of his crafty smiles, as he turned and left her.

Slowly passed the hours, and they were hours of agony to Murielle. She knew not how much, or how little, was known to her family of late events, but that they suspected something her sudden seclusion fully evinced. What would be the sequel?

The hours were tolled in succession from the spire of the church of St. Genevieve – ten, eleven, and at last twelve —midnight. So certainly as these hours struck, Gray would come and find himself deluded. He would now be in the garden – now at the arbour – with his eyes anxiously fixed on her window, and she – a sudden emotion of rage filled her heart – rage that they should arrogate such power over her, and dare to treat her like a child; but this gust did not last long, and was followed by a shower of tears.

She rushed to the iron gratings of her windows, and strove to shake them with her tender little hands. There was no escape, no hope, no succour, and as the last stroke of twelve reverberated in her heart and died away, life seemed to die with it.

Then came a sound upon the night wind. It was the clamour of voices, mingled with the clash of weapons; and next there spread upon the darkness a red and lurid light, that wavered on the gloomy walls of the Canonry, that lit up the buttresses of the Church of St. Genevieve, and the wainscoting of her room. What did all this portend? Where was Patrick Gray, her world, her all, now more than ever her Alpha and Omega? Was he beset by the Douglases? Oh, if so, she would soon learn to abhor her own name.

She muffled her face and ears in her skirt, to shut out sight and sound, for both seemed to portend but death and woe.

When she looked up again the light had disappeared, all was dark, and all was still, save the beating of her heart, and the throbbing of her temples.

Let us return to Sir Patrick Gray.

He made all his arrangements with the prudence and rapidity of a soldier. He had his horse (his favourite roan) prepared, and carefully saddled; he had procured a stout nag, with a lady's pad, for Murielle, and he acquainted himself thoroughly with the route to be pursued by Op Andel and Alm Kerque to Altena. Then he waited with impatience for midnight, the time that would give him freely and for ever his bride, his wife, his long-loved Murielle, despite the wiles, the overweening power, and the unrelenting treachery of Douglas and his adherents.

Brightly shone the moon in the clear blue sky; the church spires, snowy white, with all their carvings and tracery, their painted windows, and glittering crosses, stood sharply up from the sea of pointed roofs which covered the city of Bommel, but Gray wished for darkness and obscurity. A small cloud came from the flat horizon, and anxiously he watched its progress; but it was of fleecy whiteness, and passed over the moon's yellow disc like a gauze veil. He prayed that she would go down before the appointed time, and being on the wane, she luckily did so – at least, ere half-past eleven, fair Luna was hidden by the thick woods that grew near Ameldroyen, and by the yellow haze exhaled from the sedgy banks of the Waal.

The time was near! He could count the minutes now; before he had reckoned by hours.

His heart beat quicker; he felt athirst, and drank a last cup of wine, as he bade adieu to his hostelry for ever, and mounting his roan, took the palfrey by the bridle, and forgetting all about the closed gates of Bommel, and that he was without an order from Jacques de Lalain (unless the abbot had procured it), turned his steps towards the church of St. Genevieve.

The padlocked chains which closed the ends of the streets were a serious obstruction in the dark, but he made his horses clear them by a bound, and each time they did so, he dreaded that the patrols of the Burgher Guard, or night watch, might hurry after him, to discover what horseman was abroad so late, and on what errand. But unseen he reached the church, and securing the horses in a dark recess, between two deep buttresses, by fastening their bridles to the carving of a niche, he hastened through the north aisle, and issued by the postern into the garden of the Dyck Graf's house. Then he saw the trellised arbour, and above it the window of Murielle's apartments.

A light was burning there; a shadow crossed it – it was she, and his heart leaped! All around was still and dark and sombre as he could have wished.

As he approached the window, a female figure in a hood and veil appeared. Gray hurriedly clambered to the roof of the arbour, the trellis-work of which formed a most efficient scaling-ladder, and reached the window, which was about twelve feet from the ground.

"Murielle – your hand – we have not a moment to lose!" he whispered, and held up his arms to receive and assist her.

At that moment he felt his right hand strongly grasped and seemingly fettered, as a chain was thrown round his wrist. He attempted to withdraw, but was firmly held.

"Murielle!" he exclaimed, in astonishment. There was a mocking laugh, and as the hood fell off, his eyes met those of James Achanna, glittering far apart like those of a huge bird.

"Pray to St. Simon that he may lend you his saw, or to St. Jude for his club, to break this fetter," said Achanna, as he secured the chain to an iron staple in the window-sill; "but the flames will be here, hot and red, before either of them," he added, suddenly brandishing a lighted torch, in the bright glare of which his flushed face and protruding green eyes now resembled those of a devil. Astonishment and rage trebled the great natural strength of Gray. He grasped Achanna by the throat with his left hand, and though the would-be assassin strove to free himself, by savagely thrusting the blazing torch in the face of his victim, the latter dragged him over the window: down they came, battling together – the chain and staple parted, and the two enemies fell crash through the frail arbour, upon the heap of combustibles below. These, by their previous preparation, the torch ignited in a moment. A fiery blaze at once lit all the garden, while Sir Patrick Gray and Achanna rolled over each over, struggling to get at their daggers, each to despatch his antagonist.

Achanna was below and Gray above, and as the dagger was worn far back on the right side in those days, the first could by no means get at his weapon, as it was completely under him. Gray's strong left hand clutched his throat with deadly tenacity, and his chest was also crushed; but Gray searched in vain for his dagger. It had dropped from his belt in their fall, and his sword was broken in three places by the same circumstance, but with the heavy hilt and a fragment of the blade which adhered to it, he rained a torrent of blows upon the head and face of his adversary, whom he resolved to despatch as he would have done a snake, or a viper, for it was now a combat to the death between them.

All this terrible episode occurred in a few moments, and Gray in his fury, would inevitably have destroyed Achanna, had there not rushed from the house, the earl of Douglas, the lairds of Pompherston, Glendoning, and Cairnglas, with Sir Alan Lauder, and several other persons, some of whom were in their breeches and shirts, others in helmets and cuirasses; but all with torches or candles, and drawn swords.

Fortunately for Gray, twelve soldiers of the burgher guard, whom the uproar had alarmed, came up at the same moment, with their ponderous Flemish partizans, or our story and his life had ended there together, for the Douglases would infallibly have cut him to pieces.

Intent now on escaping, and preserving both his life and his incognito, Gray fought with the vigour of despair. Wrenching a partizan from a Waloon soldier, he struck right and left to hew a passage through his assailants. He knocked down Douglas of Pompherston, and severely wounded two of the night watch, by piercing their cuirasses of boiled bull-hide; but being pressed furiously by their comrades, he was soon beaten to the ground, disarmed, dragged away through the streets, and carried to the castle of Bommel, where he was thrust into a common dungeon and left to his own reflections, which were neither very lucid nor lively.

His horses, his leathern mail or portmanteau, and papers became the spoil of the Douglases; his rich cassock coat, the gift of Duke Arnold, and the ring which he was commissioned by Katharine, the duchess of Gueldres, to convey to the young king, her future son-in-law, became the prey of James Achanna, who openly appropriated and wore both, and whom the earl sent to Messire Jacques de Lalain, the Dyck Graf, to request that Gray, "as a notorious outlaw and consorter with Ludwig of Endhoven, should be broken alive upon the wheel, by noon next day."

All his papers were gone; thus he could afford no written or satisfactory account of himself, and obstinately refused to say what object brought him into conflict with Achanna, as he was determined that the name of Murielle – his wife – should not be compromised, even in a foreign country.

It was soon known and proved by the evidence of the officious and now terrified keeper of the hostelry, at which he lately lodged, that he had assumed at times, if not constantly, the dress and character of a Muscovite merchant.

"For what reason?" asked De Lalain; but Gray declined to answer.

Was he a spy of Philip of Burgundy, or of Charles of France? was the next surmise. But the latter at that time had no thought of war or politics, and was forgetting everything in the arms of Agnes Soreau (commonly called Sorel), a beautiful demoiselle of Touraine. The fact of disguise looked very suspicious, but none knew exactly of what.

Again Douglas urged that he should be executed without delay; but grief and despair threw Gray into a burning fever, "ane het sicknesse," the abbot, his kinsman terms it; so the Dyck Graf declined to be precipitate, but kept him a close prisoner, and on the day after this affair, the earl of Douglas, with all his retinue, accompanied by the duke of Albany, left Bommel, and took the road by Ameldroyen, towards the frontier of France.