The only cheerful apartment in the castle was the guard-room; although the night was dark and stormy, the wind sighing, and the waves beating without, a huge wood-fire blazed and crackled in the ample chimney, reddening the weather-beaten faces of the men-at-arms, and glancing fitfully from their shining head-pieces and bright steel corslets. Small care had these rude hearts for the weather without or the woe within; the spray might dash against their casement, and the weary prisoner moan his wrongs in the neighbouring cell.
‘What would you have? ’tis but the fortune of war,’ quoth the soldier; ‘my luck to-day, yours to-morrow; a bed of heather for this one, a lair of straw for that; a free discharge and a fresh enlistment at last. Put another log on the fire; I wish we had got something more to drink.’
Their captain sat somewhat apart, his head resting on his hand, and his sheathed broadsword lying idle on the floor. As the flame flickered on his forehead a frown seemed to pass and repass across its surface, but his eyes were intently fixed on the red glow of the embers, and perhaps he was drawing pictures that had no semblance of reality in their glare.
A moody man of late was Alexander Ogilvy; once the best of comrades, and the blithest of merry-makers, he was becoming captious, contradictory, and quarrelsome. The hand stole to the sword-hilt now on the lightest word of provocation, and although he was still ready to pledge his brethren-in-arms with the wine cup, it seemed to be no longer the desire of good fellowship that stimulated him, but a fierce morose thirst that he was resolved to slake in gloomy defiance.
Perhaps some of the phantoms he was watching in the fire might have accounted for this untoward change in the young soldier; perhaps it was not pleasant to picture to himself in those glowing depths the stately figure of Mary Beton, with her flowing skirts and quivering ruff, bending her lofty head so graciously towards a sharp spare man, in gorgeous apparel, with a clever face and a sneer, that if Ogilvy had ever formed any idea of Mephistopheles, would have presented to his mind’s eye the very expression of that sarcastic personage; perhaps it did not enhance the harmony of the group to recognise in the hottest corner a figure bearing a grotesque resemblance to himself, watching the pair with jealous supervision, and presenting the undignified, if not ridiculous exterior, of one who runs second in the race of love.
With a movement of impatience he drove his heavy heel against the logs, dispelling the whole representation at a blow, and causing the fire to burn out fiercely, and the sparks to fly in thousands up the chimney.
At this moment a man-at-arms entered the guard-room, and approaching his captain informed him that two persons at the gate demanded admittance.
‘Impossible,’ said Ogilvy; ‘the wicket is locked, and the watch set; bid them go to the devil.’
‘One of them bears the Queen’s signet,’ answered the man, ‘though she winna let it out of her hand. I doubt it’s one of the leddies,’ he added, ‘an’ I ken the tither yane fine; it’s daft James Geddes, the fule.’
This altered matters considerably. The royal signet-ring was esteemed a voucher for any one who bore it, and all guards, warders, and such officers of the sovereign, had strict orders to consider it in the light of a direct communication from Majesty itself. So Ogilvy, taking down a torch from the wall, proceeded to the wicket in person.