the plain. Neither was able to arise, for the black horseman was pierced through with Glendinning's lance, and the Knight of Avenel, oppressed with the weight of his own horse and sorely bruised besides, seemed in little better plight than he whom he had mortally wounded.
'Yield thee, Sir Knight of Avenel, rescue or no rescue,' said Roland, who had put a second antagonist out of condition to combat, and hastened to prevent Glendinning from renewing the conflict.
'I may not choose but yield,' said Sir Halbert, 'since I can no longer fight; but it shames me to speak such a word to a coward like thee!'
'Call me not coward,' said Roland, lifting his visor, and helping his prisoner to rise, 'since but for old kindness at thy hands, and yet more at thy lady's, I had met thee as a brave man should.'
'The favourite page of my wife!' said Sir Halbert, astonished; 'Ah! wretched boy, I have heard of thy treason at Lochleven.'
'Reproach him not, my brother,' said the Abbot, 'he was but an agent in the hands of Heaven.'
'To horse, to horse!' said Catherine Seyton; 'mount and begone, or we are all lost. I see our gallant army flying for many a league?To horse, my Lord Abbot?To horse, Roland?my gracious Liege, to horse! Ere this, we should have ridden many a mile.'
'Look on these features,' said Mary, pointing to the dying knight, who had been unhelmed by some compassionate hand; 'look there, and tell me if she who ruins all who love her, ought to fly a foot farther to save her wretched life!'
The reader must have long anticipated the discovery which the Queen's feelings had made before her eyes confirmed it. It was the features of the unhappy George Douglas, on which death was stamping his mark.
'Look?look at him well,' said the Queen, 'thus has it been with all who loved Mary Stewart!?The royalty of Francis, the wit of Chastelar, the power and gallantry of the gay Gordon, the melody of Rizzio, the portly form and youthful grace of Darnley, the bold address and courtly manners of Bothwell?and now the deep-devoted passion of the noble Douglas?nought could save them!?they looked on the wretched Mary, and to have loved her was crime enough to deserve early death! No sooner had the victim formed a kind thought of me, than the poisoned cup, the axe and block, the dagger, the mine, were ready to punish them for casting away affection on such a wretch as I am!?Importune me not?I will fly no farther?I can die but once, and I will die here.'
While she spoke, her tears fell fast on the face of the dying man, who continued to fix his eyes on her with an eagerness of passion, which death itself could hardly subdue.?'Mourn not for me,' he said faintly, 'but care for your own safety?I die in mine armour as a Douglas should, and I die pitied by Mary Stewart!'
He expired with these words, and without withdrawing his eyes from her face; and the Queen, whose heart was of that soft and gentle mould, which in domestic life, and with a more suitable partner than Darnley, might have made her happy, remained weeping by the dead man, until recalled to herself by the Abbot, who found it necessary to use a style of unusual remonstrance. 'We also, madam,' he said, 'we, your Grace's devoted followers, have friends and relatives to weep for. I leave a brother in imminent jeopardy?the husband of the Lady Fleming?the father and brothers of the Lady Catherine, are all in yonder bloody field, slain, it is to be feared, or prisoners. We forget the fate of our nearest and dearest, to wait on our Queen, and she is too much occupied with her own sorrows to give one thought to ours.'
'I deserve not your reproach, father,' said the Queen, checking her tears; 'but I am docile to it?where must we go?what must we do?'
'We must fly, and that instantly,' said the Abbot; 'whither is not so easily answered, but we may dispute it upon the road?Lift her to her saddle, and set forward.'[45]
They set off accordingly?Roland lingered a moment to command the attendants of the Knight of Avenel to convey their master to the Castle of Crookstone, and to say that he demanded from him no other condition of liberty, than his word, that he and his followers would keep secret the direction in which the Queen fled. As he turned his rein to depart, the honest countenance of Adam Woodcock stared upon him with an expression of surprise, which, at another time, would have excited his hearty mirth. He had been one of the followers who had experienced the weight of Roland's arm, and they now knew each other, Roland having put up his visor, and the good yeoman having thrown away his barret-cap, with the iron bars in front, that he might the more readily assist his master. Into this barret-cap, as it lay on the ground, Roland forgot not to drop a few gold pieces, (fruits of the Queen's liberality,) and with a signal of kind recollection and enduring friendship, he departed at full gallop to overtake the Queen, the dust raised by her train being already far down the hill.
'It is not fairy-money,' said honest Adam, weighing and handling the gold?'And it was Master Roland himself, that is a certain thing?the same open hand, and, by our Lady!' (shrugging his shoulders)?'the same ready fist!?My Lady will hear of this gladly, for she mourns for him as if he were her son. And to see how gay he is! But these light lads are as sure to be uppermost as the froth to be on the top of the quart-pot?Your man of solid parts remains ever a falconer.' So saying, he went to aid his comrades, who had now come up in greater numbers, to carry his master into the Castle of Crookstone.
Chapter the Thirty-Eighth.
Many a bitter tear was shed, during the hasty flight of Queen Mary, over fallen hopes, future prospects, and slaughtered friends. The deaths of the brave Douglas, and of the fiery but gallant young Seyton, seemed to affect the Queen as much as the fall from the throne, on which she had so nearly been again seated. Catherine Seyton devoured in secret her own grief, anxious to support the broken spirits of her mistress; and the Abbot, bending his troubled thoughts upon futurity, endeavoured in vain to form some plan which had a shadow of hope. The spirit of young Roland?for he also mingled in the hasty debates held by the companions of the Queen's flight?continued unchecked and unbroken.
'Your Majesty,' he said, 'has lost a battle?Your ancestor, Bruce, lost seven successively, ere he sat triumphant on the Scottish throne, and proclaimed with the voice of a victor, in the field of Bannockburn, the independence of his country. Are not these heaths, which we may traverse at will, better than the locked, guarded, and lake-moated Castle of Lochleven??We are free?in that one word there is comfort for all our losses.'
