‘Hood her up, man, I tell thee!’ said he, with an oath or two, ‘and fasten up my girths; it is time we were back at Hermitage.’
Thus speaking, he threw himself into the saddle, and, followed by his henchman, proceeded down the glen at a gallop.
The earl was at this period of his reckless and chequered life, perhaps more than at any other, a dissatisfied and miserable man. After his imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle subsequent to his brawl with the Hamiltons, an imprisonment he felt he did not deserve, at least at the hands of the Queen, he had returned to his fastness in Liddesdale, where he had been obliged to remain in a state of seclusion and inaction, extremely galling to one of his adventurous nature and ardent temperament. Here he received no direct communication from Mary herself, a neglect which irritated whilst it distressed him; and he only heard of her continued displeasure through others in whom he could place no reliance, and whose interest he more than half suspected it was to create dissension and mistrust between him and his Sovereign. He then went for a short period into France, hoping, perhaps, that this self-imposed exile might elicit a recall to Holyrood; but finding no notice taken of his movements, and assured on all sides of the Queen’s continued coldness, he returned to his strong Castle of Hermitage in a maddening state of uncertainty as to the future position he should assume. The wild borderers were all as devoted as ever to their chief. He had at no time been actually deprived of his office as Warden of the Marches and Lieutenant of the Southern Border, nor had he been superseded, was it probable that a successor could be found bold enough to take upon him the duties of the office. Accordingly the earl remained at Hermitage in the anomalous position of a sovereign’s representative whilst held to be an avowed rebel to that sovereign’s authority; in the agitating dilemma of one who is at variance with the person to whom he is most devoted on earth, and whom self-love forbids to offer that reparation which pride whispers may be contemptuously refused.
The warden galloped on in silence for several minutes, till the nature of the ground and the jaded condition of his good horse brought him perforce to a more sedate pace. With an impatient jerk at the bridle and a curse on the stumble that provoked it, he relapsed into a walk, and summoning ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ to his side, proceeded to vent the remainder of his petulance on his companion. That worthy’s good-humour, however, was proof against all such attacks, and Bothwell, calming down after a time, took back the favourite falcon to his own wrist, and began to caress the bird whose wild flight had so much aroused his wrath.
‘’Tis a royal pastime, in good truth, Dick,’ said he, as they emerged from a deep, narrow glen, and beheld spread out before them a broad expanse of moorland, patched and brown and sombre, yet suggestive of sport and freedom, a sound sward whereon to breathe a horse, and a soft gray winter’s sky in which to watch the flight of a hawk. ‘I would rather be here in the saddle than mewed up in the old keep over yonder,’ pointing while he spoke to the square towers of Hermitage, looming dim and grand in the distance; ‘would rather handle any weapon than a pen, and track any slot rather than unravel a cipher. I marvel that the Earl of Moray can keep his chamber, as he doth, the live-long day, writing, plotting, calculating; never a stoup of wine to cheer his heart, never a breath of the free air of heaven to cool his brow. I’ll wager you a hundred merks, Dick, that how long soever he remains in my poor castle he never sets foot beyond the moat till the stirrup cup is in his hand.’
‘The brock[9] likes fine to lie at earth,’ answered Dick, with a loud laugh, ‘and I doubt there’s no a brock in Liddesdale that’s a match for the Earl of Moray in takin’ his ain part. But hegh! Warden, there’s a sight for sair een!’ exclaimed the henchman, interrupting himself suddenly. ‘See to yon canny lad ridin’ down the glen; if yon’s no Maister Maxwell, may I never lift cattle nor plenishing more! I wad ken the back o’ him ’mang a thousand. ’Odd, man! but ye’re welcome to Liddesdale again.’
[9] The badger.
In truth, while the borderer spoke, Maxwell made his appearance on the track that led to Hermitage, exchanging, as soon as he spied the earl and his henchman, for a brisk hand-gallop the more steady pace at which he had been prosecuting his journey. The greeting between the kinsmen was sufficiently cordial, between ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ and the new arrival, of the most boisterous and demonstrative nature. The rough borderer would have been at a loss to explain to himself why he entertained so warm a regard for Walter Maxwell. As the three rode slowly on together towards Hermitage, the emissary thought it a good time to broach the business which had been entrusted to him by his sovereign.
Slowly pacing over the open moor, where everything breathed peace and repose, where not a tuft of heather stirred in the soft still air, and the call of a moor-fowl or the dull flap of a heron’s wing alone broke the surrounding silence; where the softened gleams of a winter sun came down in sheets of mellowed light, and heaven above and earth below seemed wrapped in security and content, Maxwell poured into no inattentive ears the tale that was rousing all the fiercest passions of our nature in the heart of one of his listeners.
Bothwell, after bidding him a hearty welcome to the border, heard him patiently and in silence, with an enforced composure that was more ominous of subsequent evil than would have been the wildest outbreak of that wrath which he suppressed with such an effort. His jaded horse, indeed, felt his rider’s thighs tightening on him like a vice as the tale proceeded, and exerted himself gallantly to meet the unusual pressure; but only a very close observer could have marked, by the clenched jaw, the widened nostril, and dilated eye, that every word was driving its sting deeper and deeper, poisoned and festering, into the warden’s heart.