"May Heaven avert the omen!—but I have known such scratches become sword-cuts," observed the Earl of Moray, with one of his cold and inexplicable smiles, for he mortally hated both the King and the Earl.
The morning was now far advanced, and the troops prepared to depart. Slowly and laboriously the little wheels of the two brass culverins, with their clumsy stocks, studded with large nails and cramped with plates of polished brass, were put in motion, by the cannoniers whipping up the six powerful horses that drew them, and the carts containing the bullets of stone and lead, the powder, and other appurtenances for the field.
Surrounded by four hundred arquebussiers, who wore conical helmets, pyne-doublets, swords and knives, and were each attended by a boy to bear his gun-rest and ammunition, the artillery, commanded by Chisholm the Comptroller, departed first through the deep-mouthed archway of the ancient palace. Then followed the several bands of horsemen and pikemen, each under their various leaders—and all riding or marching very much at their ease, according to the discipline incident to the days of feudalism, when steadiness in the field was more valued than mere military show. The long Scottish spears, six ells in length, and the white harness of the knights and landed gentlemen, flashed incessantly in the sunshine; while many a square banner and swallow-tailed bannerole waved above the summer dust that marked the route of the marching column.
They soon left behind them old Linlithgow's turreted palace and gothic spire, its azure lake and straggling burgh, as they wound among the thick woodlands that bordered the road to Ecclesmachin; and, long ere the sun set, the rattle of their kettledrums, the twang of their trumpets, and clash of their cymbals, had wakened the echoes of the Bathgate hills.
The queen and her courtiers watched their departure, together with Darnley, who had joined them, and seemed in better humour from the issue of his encounter with the Earl; but being naturally proud and jealous, he found to his no small exasperation that the ladies were more than ever inclined to praise the handsome peer, and then, for the first time, the demon of jealousy began to whisper in his ear.
"Tell me, Henri, mon ami," said Mary, with perfect innocence, "did not the Lord Bothwell look enchanting in his plate armour?"
"God wot, I neither ken nor care, fair madam!" replied the young King sulkily, as he handed his helmet to a page.
"He looked the same as when I saw him at Versailles," said the Lady Lethington.
"Ah, Mary Fleming, ma bonne!" said the Queen, in one of her touching accents; "we were only fifteen years old then."
The ladies, finding Mary in a mood to praise the Earl, all chimed in, greatly to Darnley's chagrin and annoyance.