‘Enough!’ he exclaimed, ‘it shall never be. What! am I not warden here? Have I not power of life and death on the marches? But no blood shall be shed; no blood, Moray. Can we not bestow him in safe keeping? Counsel me, my lord, for I am at my wits’ end.’
Moray laughed outright.
‘I will tell you a story,’ said he, whilst he shuffled his papers together and tied them up, preparatory to changing his dress for supper. ‘When we were studying at college in France, my brothers and I had great dread that the prize would be carried off by one of our companions who had more book-learning than all the rest of us put together; well, we invited the clever youth to an entertainment, and we drenched his brains with wine—just such a red generous Bordeaux as I saw a runlet of pierced only yester even here in the buttery—then we tied him on a horse, a sorry French nag enough, but able to carry him some ten leagues away into the country, where we left him to sleep off his carouse. When he returned next day the examinations were over, and I myself, for as dull as you may think me, had taken the first prize. All is fair in love and war, my lord. The curfew is already ringing; it is time for both of us to meet Rothes at the supper-table.’
The hint was not thrown away upon Bothwell.
‘I will bestow him securely,’ said he, as a bright idea seemed to flash across him; and he too departed hastily to make preparations for meeting his guests at supper.
Contrary to the usual custom of Hermitage, this meal, instead of being served in the great hall and shared with Bothwell’s jackmen and retainers, was brought into a smaller apartment furnished with extreme splendour, and as near an approach to luxury as the times and locality permitted. This was perhaps done as a compliment to the presence of Moray, who was already beginning to accustom the nobility to his assumptions, and while he treated them with the outward cordiality of an equal, to cozen them insensibly of the attentions due to a superior.
The dishes were served with great pomp by the grave major-domo and two staid attendants splendidly dressed; the Lord Rothes, a dark handsome man, with a sinister expression of countenance, sat on the left hand of his host, Maxwell faced the latter, and the Queen’s half-brother was in the place of honour on his right; also Moray’s chair was somewhat higher than those of his companions, and of a different form.
When the meal was over, the wine, according to custom, circulated freely; whatever designs might be lurking in the breasts of the four men, the conversation was merry and jovial enough, embracing the usual topics of hawk and hound and horseflesh, with a good-humoured gibe or two at the opposite sex, and a free criticism of their charms.
Maxwell might be pondering on the difficulties of his task; Moray weaving additional meshes in that web which entangled himself at last; Rothes reflecting on his frailties or his debts his past follies or his coming embarrassments; and Bothwell eating his own heart in combined pique, disappointment, and vexation; but each man filled his cup, and pushed round the flask, and passed his frank opinion or his loud jest, with a merry voice, an open brow, and a cordial smile upon his face.
When the wine began to take effect, Maxwell excused himself from further participation in the carouse, and asked permission to retire on the plea of his early departure in the morning. After a faint resistance exacted by the laws of hospitality, Bothwell acceded freely to his request; meditating, as he did, a foul treachery against him, the earl felt his cousin’s absence would be a relief. Moray, indeed, would have had small hesitation in so spicing his wine that he would need a sleeping-draught no more, and few scruples would have deterred Rothes from ridding himself of a troublesome guest with six inches of cold steel; but the lord warden had still some rough soldier-like notions of fair play about him, and had not lost all at once every trace of the chivalry and manhood that had made him heretofore the stoutest champion of his Queen.