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 at his two sons, boys in age, but seniors in excess. ‘I would we had mair lads like you. I fear me a heavy reckoning is coming.’
‘You have ever been good lord to all, Sir,’ said Kennedy, affectionately, for he really loved and pitied the soft-hearted Duke.
‘Too good, maybe,’ said Murdoch. ‘What! the scholar goes with you?’ and he fixed a look on Lily’s face that brought the colour deep into it under her hood.
‘Yes, Sir,’ answered Kennedy, respectfully. ‘Here, you Tam,’ indicating Malcolm, ‘take him behind you on the sumpter-horse.’
‘Fare ye weel, gentle scholar,’ said Murdoch, taking the hand that Lily was far from offering. ‘May ye win to your journey’s end safe and sound; and remember,’ he added, holding the fingers tight, and speaking under the hood, ‘if ye have been hardly served, ’twas to make ye the second lady in Scotland. Take care of her—him, young laddie,’ he added, turning on Malcolm: ‘’tis best so; and mind’ (he spoke in the same wheedling tone of self-excuse), ‘if ye tell the tale down south, nae ill hath been dune till her, and where could she have been mair fitly than beneath her kinsman’s roof? I’d not let her go, but that young blude is hot and ill to guide.’
An answer would have been hard to find; and it was well that he did not look for any. Indeed, Malcolm could not have spoken without being heard by the seneschal, and therefore could only bow, take his seat on the baggage-horse, and then feel his sister mounting behind him in an attitude less unfamiliar on occasion even to the high-born ladies of the fifteenth century than to those of our day. Four years it was since he had felt her touch, four years since she had sat behind him as they followed the King to Coldingham! His heart swelled with thankfulness as he passed under the gateway, and the arms that clung round his waist clasped him fervently; but neither ventured on a word, amid Kennedy’s escort, and they rode on a couple of miles in the same silence. Then Kennedy, pausing, said, ‘There lies your way, Brother. Tam, you may show the scholar the way to the Gray Friars’ Grange, bear them greetings frae me, and halt till ye hear from me. Fare ye well.’