The Caged Lion by Charlotte M. Yonge (best fantasy books to read txt) 📖

be put into ward myself. In any case you are safe, by the good King's grace, so you pledge yourself to draw no sword against England in Scotland or France till ransom be accepted for you.'

'Alack!' said Patrick, 'I have neither sword nor ransom. I would I knew what was to be done with the life you have given me, my lord.'

'I will find a use for it, never fear,' said James, sadly, but kindly. 'Be my knight for the present, till better days come for us both.'

'With my whole heart!' said Patrick, fervently. 'Yours am I for ever, my liege.'

'Then my first command is that you should rise, and rest,' said James, assisting the knight to regain his feet, and placing him in the only chair in the room. 'You must become a whole man as soon as may be.'

For Patrick's arm was in a sling, and evidently still painful and useless, and he sank back, breathless and unresisting, like one who had by no means regained perfect health, while his handsome features looked worn and pale. 'I fear me,' said James, as the two cousins silently shook hands, 'that you have moved over soon.--You surely had my message, Bairdsbrae?'

'Oh yes, my lord,' replied Baird; 'but the lad was the harder to hold; and after the fever was gone, we deemed he could well brook the journey by water. 'Twas time I was here to guide ye too, my lord; you and the callant baith look sair forfaughten.'

'We have had a sad time of it, Nigel,' said James, with trembling lip.

'And if Brewster tells me right, ye've not tasted food the whole day?' said Nigel, laying an authoritative hand on his royal pupil. 'Nay, sit ye down; here come the varlets with the meal I bade them have ready.'

James passively yielded, courteously signing to the others to share the food that was spread on a table; and with the same scarcely conscious grace, making inquiries, which elicited that Patrick Drummond's hurts had been caused by his horse falling and rolling over with him, whilst with Sir John Swinton and other Scottish knights he was reconnoitring the line of the English march. He was too much injured to be taken back to the far distant camp, and had accordingly been intrusted to the French farmer, with no attendant but a young French horse-boy, since he was too poor to keep a squire. He knew nothing more, for fever had run high; and he had not even been sensible of his desertion by his French hosts on the approach of the English, far less of the fire, and of his rescue by the King and Malcolm; but for this he seemed inclined to compensate to the utmost, by the intense eagerness of devotion with which he regarded James, who sat meanwhile crushed down by the weight of his own grief.

'I can eat no more, Baird,' said he, swallowing down a draught of wine, and pushing aside his trencher. 'Your license, gentlemen. I must be alone. Take care of the lads, Nigel. Malcolm is spent too. His deft service was welcome to--to my dearest brother.'

And though he hastily shut himself into his own inner chamber, it was not till they had seen that his grief was becoming uncontrollable.

Patrick could not but murmur, 'Dearest brother!'

'Ay, like brothers they loved!' said Baird, gravely.

'A strange brotherhood,' began Drummond.

But Malcolm cried, with much agitation, 'Not a word, Patie! You know not what you say. Take heed of profaning the name of one who is gone to the Sion above.'

'You turned English, our wee Malcolm!' exclaimed Drummond, in amaze.

'There is no English, French, or Scot where he is gone!' cried Malcolm. 'No Babel! O Patie, I have been far fallen! I have done you in heart a grievous wrong! but if I have turned back in time, it is his doing that lies there.'

'His! what, Harry of Lancaster's?' demanded the bewildered Patrick. 'What had he to do with you?'

'He has been my only true friend here!' cried Malcolm. 'Oh, if my hand be free from actual spoil and bloodshed, it was his doing! Oh, that he could hear me bless him for the chastisement I took so bitterly!'

'Chastisement!' demanded Patrick. 'The English King dared chastise _you_! of Scots blood royal! 'Tis well he is dead!'

'The laddie's well-nigh beside himself!' said Baird. 'But he speaks true. This king whom Heaven assolizie, kept a tight hand over the youngsters; and falling on Lord Malcolm and some other callants making free with a house at Meaux, dealt some blows, of which my young lord found it hard to stomach his share; though I am glad to see he is come to a better mind. Ay, 'tis pity of this King Harry! Brave and leal was he; never spake an untrue word; never turned eye for fear, nor foot for weariness, nor hand for toil, nor nose for ill savour. A man, look you, to be trusted; never failing his word for good or ill! Right little love has there been between him and me; but I could weep like my own lad in there, to think I shall never see that knightly presence more, nor hear those frank gladsome voices of the boys, as they used to shout up and down Windsor Forest.'

'You too, Sir Nigel! and with a king like ours!'

'Ay, Sir Patrick! and if he be such a king as Scotland never had since St. David, and maybe not then, I'm free to own as much of it is due to King Harry as to his own noble self.--Did ye say they had streekit him in the chapel, Lord Malcolm? I'd fain look on the bonnie face of him; I'll ne'er look on his like again.'

No sooner had old Bairdsbrae gone, than Malcolm flung himself down before his cousin, crying, 'Oh, Patrick, you will hear me! I cannot rest till you know how changed I have been.'

'Changed!' said Patrick; 'ay, and for the better! Why, Malcolm, I never durst hope to see you so sturdy and so heartsome. My father would have been blithe to see you such a gallant young squire. Even the halt is gone!'

'Nearly,' said Malcolm. 'But I would fain be puny and puling, to have the clear heart that once I had. Oh, hear me! hear me! and pardon me, Patie!'

And Malcolm, in his agitation, poured forth the whole story of his having shifted from his old cherished purpose of devoting himself to the service of Heaven, and leaving lands and vassals to the stronger hands of Patrick and Lilias; how, having thus given himself to the world, he had fallen into temptation; how he had let himself be led to persecute with his suit a noble lady, vowed like himself; how he had almost agreed to marry her by force: and how he had been running into the ordinary dissipations of the camp, abstaining from confession, avoiding mass; disobeying orders, plunging into scenes of plunder, till he had almost been the death of Patrick, whom he had already so cruelly wronged.

So felt the boy. Fresh from that death-bed, the evils his conscience had protested against from the first appeared to him frightfully heinous, and his anguish of self-reproach was such, that Patrick listened in the greatest anxiety lest he should hear of some deadly stain on his young kinsman's scutcheon; but when the tale was told, and he had demanded 'Is that all?' and found that no further overt act was alleged against Malcolm, he breathed a long sigh, and muttered, 'You daft laddie! you had fairly startled me! So this is the coil, is it? Who ever told you to put on a cowl, I should like to know? Why, 'twas what my poor father ever declared against. I take your lands! By my troth! 'twould be enough to make me break faith with your sister, if I _could_!'

'The vow was in my heart,' faltered Malcolm.

'In a fule's head!' said Patrick. 'What right have babes to be talking of vows? 'Twould be the best tidings I've heard for many a long day, that you were wedded to a lass with a good tocher, and fit to guide your silly pate. What's that? Her vows! If they are no better than yours, the sooner they are forgot the better. If she had another love, 'twould be another matter, but with a bishop on your side, you've naught to fear.'

Malcolm turned away, sick at heart. To him his present position had become absolute terror. His own words had worked him up to an alarming sense of having lapsed from high aims to mere selfishness; of having profaned vows, consented to violence, and fallen away from grace; and he was in an almost feverish passion to utter something that would irrevocably bind him to his former intentions; but here were the King and Patrick both conspiring to silence him, and hold him back to his fallen and perilous state. Nay, Patrick even derided his penitence. Patrick was an honourable knight, a religious man, as times went, but he had been brought up in a much rougher and more unscrupulous school than Malcolm, and had been hardened by years of service as a soldier of fortune. The Armagnac camp was not like that of England. Warriors of such piety and strictness as Henry and Bedford had never come within his ken; and that any man, professing to be a soldier, should hesitate at the license of war, was incomprehensible to him. The discipline of Henry's army had been scoffed at in the French camp, and every infraction of it hailed as a token of hypocrisy; and to the stout Scot Malcolm's grief for the rapine at Meaux, which after all he had not committed, seemed a simple absurdity. Even his own danger, on the second occasion, did not make him alter his opinion; it was all the fortune of war. And he was not sure that he had not best have been stifled at once, since his hands were tied from warfare. And as for Lily--how was he to win her now? Then, as Malcolm opened his mouth, Patrick sharply charged him to hold his tongue as to that folly, unless he wanted to drive him to make a vow on his side, that he would turn Knight of Rhodes, and never wed.

Malcolm, wearied out with excitement, came at last to weeping that no one would hear or understand him; but the scene was ended by Bairdsbrae, who, returning, brought a leech with him, who at once took the command of Patrick, and ordered him to his bed.

Malcolm could not rest. He was feverish with the shock of grief and awe, and absorbed in the thought which had mastered him, and which was much dwelt on in the middle ages:--the monastic path, going towards heaven straight as a sunbeam; the secular, twining its way through a tortuous difficult course--the 'broad way,' tending downward to the abyss. To his terrified apprehension, he had abandoned the direct and narrow path for the fatal road, and there might at any moment be captured, and whirled away by the grisly phantom Death, who had just snatched the mightiest in his inevitable clutch; and