"You need not doubt it, lord Douglas. I was. And I think during our first intimacy that I teazed you sufficiently."
"Then that delicate neck of yours, for all its taper form and lily hue is a charmed one, and rope proof; for, sure as I look on you now, I saw you swing from a beam's end on the battlement of this same tower."
"Oh! no, no, my lord! It was not I. Never trust this head again if it should suffer its neck to be noosed. You suffered it though; that you must confess. And I dare say, though a little sorry, felt a dead weight removed from about your neck. You suffered me to be taken prisoner out of your tent, and mured up among rude and desperate men in a dungeon. It cost me all my wits then to obtain my release. But I effected it. Swung from a beam's end. quoth he! Och! what a vulgar idea! No my lord, the page whom you saw swung was a tailor's apprentice, whom I hired to carry a packet up to your lordship, with my green suit of clothes, and a promise of a high place of preferment, and I kept my word to the brat! An intolerable ape it was. Many better lives have been lost in this contention; few of less value—I never deemed he was so soon to be strung, and my heart smote me for the part I had acted. But the scheme of turning monk and confessor suited me best of all: I then got my shacles of mystery riveted on you; and, heavens! what secrets I have found out."
At this part of the narrative, Isaac the curate bestows a whole chapter and a half on the description of the wedding, and all the processions, games, and feasting that ensued; but as none of these things bore the slightest resemblance to ought that has ever been witnessed in the present age, like a judicious editor I have passed them over. Suffice it that the Border never witnessed such splendor of array, such tournaments, such feasting, and such high wassail. For why? because it never witnessed the marriage of a king's daughter before. The streets of the city, and the square of the fortress, that had so lately been dyed with blood, now "ran red with Rhenish wine." And be it farther known, that Sir Charles Scott and his horse Corbie bore off every prize in the tilting matches, till at last no knight would enter the lists with him; but the fair dames were all in raptures with the gallantry of his bearing, and the suavity of his manners. As for the Queen, she became so much enamoured of the hero, that she was scarcely to be kept in due bounds, and if she had not been advanced in years he might have deemed she was in love with him. In the lists she drew up her snow-white palfrey by Corbie's side, and in the revel hall the royal dame herself was sure to be at the knight's side, except when at table, on pretence of hearing something more about his perils at Aikwood, and in particular about the scene with the beautiful and splendid witches; at which, as Sir Charles related it with abashed countenance, the Queen and her Maries laughed till the salt tears ran from their eyes. As for the description of their appearance the succeeding morning, and the feelings of the warrior, both then and afterward when transformed to a huge bull, these never failed to throw the gamesome group into convulsions of mirth. In short, the knight of Raeburn was of all the gallants quite the favourite at that splendid festival in the hall, as well as the hero in the lists, in which he six times received the prize of honour from the hands of the royal bride and those of lady Jane Howard, who, at the Queen's earnest request was made principal bride's-maid, and presiding lady at the sports.
But if Charles was the hero of those engaged in the games, his friend the gospel friar was as completely so among the gay onlookers, and created them more sport often than all in the lists. Ever since the various affrays in which his mule had been engaged, and come off with such decided success, the mongrel had learned to value himself solely as a beast of warfare, and no man who rode near him was sure of keeping his seat a minute, especially if he rode a high mettled and capricious charger. By the side of a horse of modesty that bore himself with candour and humility of countenance, the mule was a beast of sociality and decorum; but whenever he saw a steed begin to cut any unnecessary capers, he deemed himself insulted or put to the challenge, and on the instant began to lay back his long ears and switch with his tail, while his grey sunk eyes emitted a hellish gleam. It was no matter at what distance such a horse made his appearance, if the mule disliked his deportment, he would have flown across a whole field to attack and humble him. He had borne his master headlong into so many unpremeditated and unwarrantable scuffles since his return from Aikwood, that he had bestowed on him the name of Goliah of Gath; and besides giving him that veteran title, he often averred that he believed one of the necromancer's imps of darkness had taken possession of his beast.
The friar had, however, learned to distinguish all his motions, and knew from these the exact points and stages of his irritation; and when his offence began to reach its acme, he had no other resource than that of wheeling his head forcibly around, and turning his tail toward the object of his displeasure. Without this precaution, the friar would have been carried into the lists every day merely to gratify the spleen of Goliah, who could not endure the curvetting and jangling that was going on there. And even this inverse precaution did not at all times prove effectual, as in the following pleasant instance.
It chanced one day that the knight of Kraeland entered the lists alone, no opponent appearing against him, owing to some mistake made in the arrangement by the officers. He was a goodly youth, but uplifted above the earth with vanity, and of his vapouring and airs there were no end. Imagining that he attracted the eyes of all the beholders, and elated because no one had the courage to appear against him, for so he affected to regard the circumstance, he paraded the circle round and round, brandished his lance, and made his horse to curvette, rear, and wheel, accomplishing many grand evolutions. The lookers on were all beginning to get sick of him, and to view his vaporous manœuvres with disdain, but amongst them all there was none so much moved with spleen as Goliah of Gath. From the first moment that the knight entered the lists that uncircumcised Philistine began to manifest a mortal dislike towards him; the more so it was believed that he was mounted on a milk-white steed, a colour peculiarly disagreeable to the mule's optics. The judges of the games wist not what to do, and appealed to the King, who gave it as his opinion that this unchallenged appearance should be accounted as a victory, and that the knight should take his course in the next round; and the heralds got directions to make proclamation accordingly.
But long before this period the friar had been compelled to turn away the face of Goliah from this scene of vanity, and, as chance would have had it, he was in the innermost circle, so that retreat outward through the innumerable files was utterly impracticable, and there sat the gruff uncourtly form of the gospel friar, with the tail of his beast where the head should have been, to the great amusement of the spectators. For all this the malevolent eye of Goliah, as well accustomed to look backward as forward, perceived all the outrageous rearings and snortings of that proud and gaudy animal, and became moved with so much indignation that he would no longer be restrained, either by bit or spur, soothing or threatening. Just as the herald had taken his place to make proclamation, the mule fell a running backward; and the more fiercely that the friar spurred, and the more bitterly he threatened, the beast of Belial retrogaded the faster, till at last, after two or three intemperate plunges, he got his head straight to the white charger, and then in one moment he was upon him, and had him by the brisket with his teeth. The horse reared furiously, but the mule pressed still closer to him, fixing his long teeth in the horse's shoulder, till on a sudden, in an attempt to clear both Goliah and his rider, or, at least, to leap over the mule's neck, the white steed was overturned, and thrown right on his back, above his overweening rider. All this was transacted in a space of time shorter than the time taken up in reading the relation; and the moment that Goliah of Gath had achieved this overthrow, he wheeled about with a mettledness and inveteracy beyond all description, and attacked the couple with his heels, prostrate as they were, yerk for yerk, indiscriminately. The friar sunk the rowels of his spurs to the head in his sides, and uttered some strong declamatory sentences against him in the style of the nations of the East; but Goliah plied his iron-heels still the faster, although he groaned, as he kicked, in the bitterness of his spirit. The scene was perfectly irresistible, grievous as the consequences threatened to be on the one side. The lists were all in convulsions of laughter, and involuntary shouts of applause shook the storeys of the firmament. The King laughed till he sunk down in his litter, and his attendants had some fears that he would expire in a convulsive fit. The knight of Kraeland was carried out of the lists, maimed, and in a state of insensibility; and the friar, maugre all he could advance in opposition to the award, was proclaimed the victor in that course, and obliged to appear in the next encounter in opposition to the knight who had been the conqueror in the preceding combat.
Had Goliah of Gath restrained his wrath when this conquest was achieved, it would have been all very well, save for Kraeland and his white charger; but the mongrel's wrath once aroused was not easily abated. Therefore, when the friends of the fallen knight and his squire forced the Philistine to forego his attack and battery, his gleaming eyes glanced all around for another proper object whereon to wreak his horrid revenge. Now it so happened, that the Queen and her Maries were all mounted on white palfreys; and as these stood in the inner circles, arching their proud necks, and champing the bits, he was moved with choler against them, and resolved within himself to give them a surprise, and shew them the prowess of a veteran warrior; for, over and above their saucy demeanor, the glaring whiteness of colour that pervaded them and their riders his heart could not endure: And, besides all these, the shouts and laughter of the multitude were thought to have added greatly to his ire. The friar, who knew him well, said so; "for" added he, "the shouts of joy and laughter are unto him as a portion of gall and of worm-wood." Certes, when he was driven from the prostrate champion, by dint of club and lance, he straightway laid back his long ears, and with a swiftness hardly imaginable, scoured the plain to the attack of the dames and their strutting genets. The friar soon perceived the dangerous dilemma into which he was about to be precipitated; and, all unable to restrain this champion of the Philistines, he cried out with a loud voice, "O wretched man that I am! lo, I shall work destruction among the daughters of women! Will no man come to the assistance of those who have no strength of man at all? Wo is me! will the mighty men stand and look on till the daughters of their people are cut off from the face of the earth?"
Long ere this sentence had proceeded out of the friar's mouth, the work of deray and confusion was begun. The column of white palfreys were routed in one moment, and their gentle and affrighted riders kicked off in pairs, like so many diving swans. Never was there a warrior like Goliah of Gath! for he tore with his teeth, and struck with both hind feet and fore feet, all at the same instant. The Queen of Scotland would in all probability have been laid low with the rest, had it not been for the prowess of her favourite hero, who sprung from Corbie's back, and seized the audacious mule by the bridle. "Smite him, my son!" cried the friar, with a loud voice: "Draw thou forth thy sword, and smite him to the earth, for it is better for him to die than to live."