When Maxwell had retired, his host sat moodily for a while, wrapped in meditation, drinking cup after cup in gloomy silence, and playing ominously with the haft of his dudgeon-dagger, a weapon that was never for an instant laid aside.
Moray seemed to divine his thoughts. After a few whispered words to Rothes, who treated the whole affair as an excellent jest, he observed in a cold measured voice, and as if continuing the thread of a conversation in which they had already been engaged.
‘You cannot so prudently bestow him here, my lord, though it were a good jest to keep a queen’s ambassador mewed up in a queen’s fortress, and the prisoner would be well lodged with his affectionate kinsman.’
‘Why not?’ demanded Bothwell, rather fiercely. ‘The walls of Hermitage are pretty strong, my lord, and these riders of mine are held to have a somewhat close grip when once they lay hold.’
‘Nevertheless,’ argued the other, ‘this would be the first place suspected. Nay, it might be well that you should even deliver up the Castle to Her Majesty with a clean breast. I have thought more than once of urging you to demand an audience at Holyrood, to resign your lieutenancy or obtain a just acknowledgment of your loyalty from my royal sister.’
Bothwell’s face brightened.
‘True!’ he exclaimed, dashing his heavy hand on the board. ‘We must have no stolen horse in the stall when the ransom is told down! A clean breast and a “toom-byre,”[10] as we say here on the Border. I must send him elsewhere.’
[10] An empty cow-house.
Rothes filled his cup, with a laugh.
‘I can lodge him at Leslie,’ said he; ‘any kinsman of Lord Bothwell’s is welcome in my poor house. “Food and wine he shall not lack,” as the old song says; ay, and a bed too, my lord, if so you will it, that shall serve him till doomsday.’