As Gray wished to avoid every one, he withdrew; but resolved that, come what might of it, in his next interview with Murielle, to save her from the perils that were impending. She still loved him truly, and there was every consolation in the knowledge that she did so; yet her love would not save her from Albany when Douglas chose to play the tyrant.
But the abbot's protégé, the serpent, was abroad, and there were many mischiefs to be plotted and many to be worked ere Murielle could be saved from her persecutors.
As she and the abbot passed through the postern door which opened from one of the aisles into the garden of the Dyck Graf—a door over which there may be seen to this day, a strange sculpture of a mitred cat preaching to twelve little mice—a man who had evidently been listening shrunk back into the shade. This person was the somewhat ubiquitous James Achanna, who, inspired alike by impatience and malevolence, repaired immediately to his lord and chief the earl.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HOUSE OF THE DYCK GRAF.
With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good; but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do indescribable mischief.—Washington Irving.
While the lonely Sir Patrick Gray, full of sombre and exciting thoughts, retired to his hostelry to consider and to plan the deliverance of Murielle from her own family, the house of Messire Jacques de Lalain, the Dyck Graf or hereditary governor of Bommel, which had been assigned as a temporary residence to the powerful Scottish noble and his retinue, became brilliantly lighted up.
In the principal chamber were grouped together many of the personages whom we last saw together, at the abbot's house in Edinburgh, on that eventful evening of November, 1440. It was noble in aspect, loftily ceiled, and floridly decorated in the Flemish fashion of that age of profusion, the walls and roof being covered with quaint devices and heraldic blazons, by Jan Van Eyck, a native of Maeseyk, who, in 1410, attained great perfection in the mixing of oil colours. Within a fireplace, lined with Dutch tiles, blazed a pile of logs across the massive bar of the and-irons. On an oaken buffet stood a gigantic lion, formed entirely of Delft ware, the crest of Gueldres, as it sprang from a ducal crown. From the ceiling hung a gilded chandelier, a veritable pyramid of candles, which shed a flood of light upon the guests below.
And striking groups they formed, the ladies having long veils of the richest white lace, falling from the summits of their lofty horned head-dresses; while their other garments, cote-hardies and skirts, were of the finest silk, taffeta, and gauze, covered with pearls, jewels, and embroidery; the hues and fashion of the attire of all these noble demoiselles making them resemble the queens of clubs and spades, just as we may see them on a pack of cards.
The apparel of the gentlemen was much of the same material—gay in colour, and gorgeous as embroidery and jewels could make it, with here and there a richly engraved cuirass of Milan plate, a gorget of burnished steel, or a diamond studded dagger-hilt, to impart a military character to the wearer.
An old cavalier, with a high bald forehead, a beard so long that Ferdinand of Toledo might have envied it, and who wore the mantle and jewel of the Golden Fleece of Burgundy, was conversing in French with the earl of Douglas. He was Jacques de Lalain, a noble Burgundian knight, hereditary Burg Graf of the town and castle of Bommel. While seeming to converse with the earl, who was speaking of King Charles VII. and Duke Philip the Good, and what might result from a war between France and Burgundy, with the adverse parts which Scotland and England were certain to take therein, he was gazing with pleasure on a group of Scottish girls, who by the fine carriage of their heads, their general bearing, and more than all by the whiteness of their hands, evinced that they inherited the best blood and highest breeding in the land.