[6] Sorrel or chestnut—next to bay, the favourite colour of the borderers.
‘Follow them to hell!’ answered Bothwell. ‘I will have that gray gelding back if he is stabled in Carlisle. I’ll have him from under Lord Scrope himself, if the Englishman never gets across a horse again. What! there is peace between the two countries, more’s the pity, or I had been at his castle-gate by this time with all Teviotdale at my back; and so you may tell him, if you can meet with him under steel.’
‘They might ha’ been ta’en by the Langholme lads,’ interposed Dick, whose spirits were rising considerably with the prospect of a foray, but who looked upon the whole affair, nevertheless, as a matter of business combined with wholesome recreation. ‘They lifted a score o’ runts frae “daft Davie,” in Lammas time, an’ took the vara’ coverlet aff his wife’s bed. He saw it himsel’ at Dumfries, puir fallow!’
‘Nay, nay,’ answered Bothwell, ‘the Langholme riders do not come down by the score, with dags, and petronels, and St George’s cross on their basnets. If it’s not a warden-raid, as, indeed, it can hardly be, it has been done by the warden’s orders; and he shall answer it to me as sure as I serve Queen Mary! At least, with all her pride, she shall know that Bothwell never suffered it to be lowered an inch,’ he muttered between his teeth as he turned away.
‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ put the men in motion and himself at their head. As they emerged upon the open ground from the gray walls of the square old keep, the slanting beams of an autumn sun gilded the brown heather, and shed a soft lustre over the undulating moorland ere it flashed from the steel armour of the troop. The riders were in high spirits at the prospect of a change from their long period of inaction. The horses snorted and shook their bridles gaily. It was a party of pleasure and adventurous excitement to all concerned, and even now they were anticipating their plunder and jesting about their profits. Only one heart felt more softened than usual under its steel breastplate. ‘Dick-o’-the-Cleugh’ acknowledged the influence of the mellow sunlight and the balmy breeze. Somehow the very earth and sky seemed to connect themselves with a pair of laughing eyes and a shower of bright hair, with a fairy figure tripping up the High Street, a basket on its arm; or, as he had seen it first, shining like a vision of light in the dark passages of Holyrood, with a voice that used to thrill so sweetly once, that he never heard now but in his dreams. The henchman would have fought like a lion, and yet he felt tenderly disposed towards all living things. He would have met death more cheerfully than ever, yet he seemed only to have learned the value of life within the last few months; another contradiction—but is it not full of contradictions, that engrossing folly in which the true believer is as sure to suffer martyrdom as the false worshipper is to obtain his reward?
The earl and his visitor watched the troop defiling round the base of a low acclivity that soon hid them from sight. As they disappeared, Bothwell turned away with a bitter curse. He scarcely felt as if he had a right to order an expedition on the border in the name of his sovereign; and again Mary’s injustice and neglect rankled like a poisoned shaft in his breast. But the earl was in no mood for balancing probabilities or counting cost. The horses that had been driven were his own, and he had reason to believe that Lord Scrope was not ignorant of the theft. This was sufficient to rouse his ire to the utmost, and he had despatched a force to follow and retake them, strong enough to preclude the possibility of failure. It was maddening, though, to be compelled to stay within the four walls of Hermitage, when his retainers were in the field; maddening, all the more that his present false position, as he argued, was owing to a queen’s injustice and a woman’s ingratitude.
A few short turns upon the rampart, with the soft west wind fanning his brow, restored his composure, and addressing his companion, he professed his readiness to enter at once upon the business which had brought the latter to Hermitage.
The preacher pointed to the surrounding scenery, the waving tracts of moorland bathed in the lustre of an afternoon sun, the cattle feeding securely in the green nooks and pasturage which broke the uniformity of the undulating waste, the yellow patch of cultivation under the very shadow of the keep, and the clear, autumnal heaven above all, pale and serene, and dappled here and there by flaky clouds edged with gold.
‘It is not my business,’ said the preacher, ‘nor is it thine, Lord Warden, that hath brought me here, but the will of Him who holdeth this glorious universe in the hollow of His hand. It is to do His work that I have ridden through these wastes from dawn till mid-day, and that I must depart again ere set of sun. I charge thee to aid me, heart and hand, in the service of my Master!’
It is the misfortune of earnest men that, in this self-seeking world of ours, they seldom obtain the credit they deserve for sincerity and singleness of heart. Bothwell listened with outward respect, yet unworthy suspicions would not be kept down.