‘The Liddesdale lads are aye welcome at Holyrood,’ said she frankly, and with the Scottish accent she knew how to assume so gracefully. ‘Take a Stuart’s word for it,’ she added, giving him at the same time her hand to kiss, ‘both for yourself and your chief.’
‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ kissed the beautiful hand with the devotion of a worshipper to a saint; but his eyes wandered beyond the royal form and sought that of a lady in her train.
At this moment Darnley came up from behind and accosted the henchman with his usual overbearing assumption of manner.
‘How now, whom have we here, my fair cousin?’ said the young noble, flinging a contemptuous glance at the borderer. ‘An ambassador from Limbo Castle, sometimes called Hermitage, by his crest! Accredited messenger from all the thieves and sorners in the Debateable Land. How ranges the price of good nags on the Border, knave? The nights are moonless just now, though they be something short; the droves should be coming in pretty fast from Cumberland.’
The moss-trooper’s eye brightened.
‘If it was Her Grace’s wish,’ said he, looking respectfully towards the Queen, ‘we could bring the wale[13] o’ the countryside up to Holyrood in a fortnight from this day. Lord Scrope rides a soar gelding,’ he added, warming with the congenial subject, ‘that steps as daintily as a bird lights on a bough. Forbye the colour would become rarely Her Grace’s housings and foot-mantle. If I might make so bold, I wad engage he should be in Her Majesty’s stable or he was weel missed at Warkworth. I wad send ain o’ my lads back for him this very night!’
[13] Pick.
Darnley burst into a loud mocking laugh.
‘A thorough moss-trooper,’ he exclaimed, ‘rider, jackman, plunderer, thief; call them what you will, they are all alike; fit followers of such a chief. Were I king of Scotland I would have the halters off the horses and put them on the men, and string them up in rows with this tall knave at their head, not forgetting his worthy master, the leader of the gang.’
The young man spoke in laughing boisterous accents that might be taken either for jest or earnest, but the borderer’s face flushed dark-red, and the fingers of his left hand closed like a vice upon his sheathed sword.