Two Penniless Princesses by Charlotte M. Yonge (the two towers ebook TXT) 📖

‘O St. Andrew! St. Bride! Our Lady of Succour! St. Denys!—all the lave of you, that may be nearest in this fremd land,—come and aid him. It is the Master of Angus, ye ken—the hope of his house. He’ll build you churches, gie ye siller cups and braw vestments gin ye’ll bring him back. St. Andrew! St. Rule! St. Ninian!—you ken a Scots tongue! Stay his blood,—open his een,—come to help ane that ever loved you and did you honour!’

So wailed Ringan of the Raefoot, holding his master’s head on his knees, and binding up as best he might an ugly thrust in the side, and a blow which had crushed the steel cap into the midst of the hair. When he saw his master fall and the ladies captured, he had, with the better part of valour, rushed aside and hid himself in the thicket of thorns and hazels, where, being manifestly only a stray horseboy, no search was made for him. He rightly concluded that, dead or alive, his master might thus be better served than by vainly struggling over his fallen body.

It seemed as though, in answer to his invocation, a tremor began to pass through Douglas’s frame, and as Ringan exclaimed, ‘There! there!—he lives! Sir, sir! Blessings on the saints! I was sure that a French reiver’s lance could never be the end of the Master,’ George opened his eyes.

‘What is it?’ he said faintly. ‘Where are the ladies?’

‘Heed not the leddies the noo, sir, but let me bind your head. That cap has crushed like an egg-shell, and has cut you worse than the sword. Bide still, sir, I say, if ye mean to do any gude another time!’

‘The ladies—Ringan—’

‘The loons rid aff wi’ them, sir—up towards the hills yonder. Nay! but if ye winna thole to let me bind your wound, how d’ye think to win to their aid, or ever to see bonnie Scotland again?’

George submitted to this reasoning; but, as his senses returned, asked if all the troop had gone.

‘Na, sir; the ane with that knight who was at the tourney—a plague light on him—went aff with the leddies—up yonder; but they, as they called the escort—the Archers of the Guard, as they behoved to call themselves—they rid aff by the way that we came by—the traitor loons!’

‘Ah! it was black treachery. Follow the track of the ladies, Ringan;—heed not me.’

‘Mickle gude that wad do, sir, if I left you bleeding here! Na, na; I maun see you safely bestowed first before I meet with ony other. I’m the Douglas’s man, no the Stewart’s.’

‘Then will I after them!’ cried George of Angus, starting up; but he staggered and had to catch at Ringan.

There was no water near; nothing to refresh or revive him had been left. Ringan looked about in anxiety and distress on the desolate scene—bare heath on one side, thicket, gradually rising into forest and mountain, on the other. Suddenly he gave a long whistle, and to his great joy there was a crackling among the bushes and he beheld the shaggy-faced pony on which he had ridden all the way from Yorkshire, and which had no doubt eluded the robbers. There was a bundle at the saddle-bow, and after a little coquetting the pony allowed itself to be caught, and a leathern bottle was produced from the bag, containing something exceedingly sour, but with an amount of strength in it which did something towards reviving the Master.

‘I can sit the pony,’ he said; ‘let us after them.’

‘Nae sic fulery,’ said Ringan. ‘I ken better what sorts a green wound like yours, sir! Sit the pony ye may, but to be safely bestowed, ere I stir a foot after the leddies.’

George broke out into fierce language and angry commands, none of which Ringan heeded in the least.

‘Hist:’ he cried, ‘there’s some one on the road. Come into shelter, sir.’

He was half dragging, half supporting his master to the concealment of the bushes, when he perceived that the new-comers were two friars, cowled, black gowned, corded, and barefooted.

‘There will be help in them,’ he muttered, placing his master with his back against a tree; for the late contention had produced such fresh exhaustion that it was plain the wounds were more serious than he had thought at first.

The two friars, men with homely, weather-beaten, but simple good faces, came up, startled at seeing a wounded man on the way-side, and ready to proffer assistance.

Need like George Douglas’s was of all languages, and besides, Ringan had, among the exigencies of the journey, picked up something by which he could make himself moderately well understood. The brethren stooped over the wounded man and examined his wounds. One of them produced some oil from a flask in his wallet, and though poor George’s own shirt was the only linen available, they contrived to bandage both hurts far more effectually than Ringan could.

They asked whether this was the effect of a quarrel or the work of robbers.

‘Routiers,’ Ringan said. ‘The ladies—we guarded them—they carried them off—up there.’

‘What ladies?—the Scottish princesses?’ asked one of the friars; for they had been at Nanci, and knew who had been assembled there; besides that, the Scot was known enough all over France for the nationality of Ringan and his master to have been perceived at once.

George understood this, and answered vehemently, ‘I must follow them and save them!’