At the palace gate the discomfited pair met Marion Logan, Alison Hume, and Sybil Douglas, who were all muffled in their hoods and mantles, and surrounded by an escort of serving-men, armed with steel caps and bucklers, swords, and wheel-lock dagues, and who bore lighted links. A few cavaliers with whom they had danced (Roland among them, of course) accompanied them, and in this order they hurried home on foot, for wheeled vehicles were as yet unknown in the kingdom.
Terrified by the practical jokes of the king's jester and the din of his bladder and bells, Sabrino had long since fled the precincts of the court, and taken refuge in his usual sleeping-place (a small alcove near the door of the countess's apartment), which he shared in common with a large black stag-hound.
"Come early to-morrow, dear Roland, and we will talk over the adventures of the last few hours," whispered Jane, as she bade adieu to her lover; "alas! father St. Bernard warned me against going to-night; but I have gone, and what has been the result?"
CHAPTER XI.
SWORDBLADES AND SALVE.
"Quhen Marche with variand windis wes past,
And Apryll had with her silver shouris
Tane leif of Nature with an orient blast;
And lusty May, that mother is of flouris.
Had maid the birdis to begyn their houris,
Amang the tender odouris red and quhyt,
Quhais harmony to heir it was delyt."
DUNBAR'S Thrissal and the Rois, 1503.
The next morning was bright and beautiful; the birds sang merrily in the old orchards of the palace and the older oak trees of the abbey of Sancte Crucis. The sunlight, as it poured over the dark craigs of Salisbury, and through chasms and fissures in their rocks, shone upon the green valleys below like a golden haze, and tipped with yellow light the grey masses of the strong old city. The fresh grass and the open flowers loaded the soft west wind perfume, and gladdened the hearts of the happy hawking party, which left the palace an hour after sunrise, and all gaily mounted, with bugles sounding, horses prancing, plumes waving, and accompanied by a dozen of falconers in the royal livery, running on foot, with perches of hawks slung on their shoulders.
As they rode eastward, by the base of Arthur's Seat, and past the green and mossy bank where, among the clambering wild roses, stood the little pillared well, dedicated in the old time "to the good Saint Margaret, queen of Scotland, and mother of the poor," and pursued thence their merry route towards the Loch of Restalrig, which lay amongst its rocks and sedges, like a lake of blue and gold, Roland was compelled, by the cold manner of the king, to retire from his side. He saw with pain that the clear and benevolent eye of the monarch was clouded—that anger, unmistakeable anger, lowered upon his open brow. The inquiries of Roland for the health of the queen were received so haughtily, and replied to so briefly, that, with a heart full of wrath and pride, before the first heron had been raised from among the rushes and water-lilies to do battle in the air, he turned abruptly away, and resigned his place to Sir Adam Otterburn of Redhall, whose face was lighted with an indescribable smile, as he pressed forward to the side of the young king.
The bells of the Carmelites, on the north side of the city, of the Dominicans on the south, of the Franciscans in the Grassmarket, and other large establishments, were all ringing for morning mass, when the cavalcade returned; and Roland, sick at heart, and dispirited, without bidding adieu to the king (who with his company passed on to prayer in the abbey church), dismounted at the door of his own lodgings, and throwing the bridle of his horse to his servant, demanded breakfast, for he was in too furious a mood to attend mass. He was anxious to see Lord Ashkirk, but, encouraged by his disguise, and trusting implicitly in the old domestics of the house, that rash noble had gone to visit his family.
Breakfast was prepared and laid on the table by Roland's servant, Linton Stock, whose name had been professionally shortened into Lintstock. He was an old, iron-visaged culvernier, of King James IV.'s days (as the countess would say), hard-featured, wiry-haired, weather-beaten, and empurpled with hard drinking. It was his constant boast that he had levelled one of Borthwick's Brass Sisters on the field of Flodden, and thrawn Mow at the siege of Tantallan. Like Hannibal, this veteran had only one eye, for Mow (a famous cannon of Scottish antiquity) lost a piece of her muzzle every time she was discharged; and one of the said pieces deprived Lintstock of his dexter eye, which, as he said, ever after saved him the trouble of closing it when taking aim, or adjusting the quoins under the breach of a culverin. For wages he had all his master's cast cloaks, doublets, and breeches; and being borne on the muster-roll of the king's gunners, his pay, which was somewhere about three-halfpence Scots per diem made him independent of all mankind.