"Well – Saint Andrew further the fray!" said Le Balafré. "I had it foretold me ten, ay, twenty years since, that I was to make the fortune of my house by marriage. Who knows what may happen, if once we come to fight for honour and ladies' love, as they do in the old romaunts?"
"Thou name ladies' love, with such a trench in thy visage!" said Guthrie.
"As well not love at all, as love a Bohemian woman of Heathenesse," retorted La Balafré.
"Hold there, comrades," said Lord Crawford; "no tilting with sharp weapons, no jesting with keen scoffs – friends all. And for the lady, she is too wealthy to fall to a poor Scottish lord, or I would put in my own claim, fourscore years and all, or not very far from it. But here is her health, nevertheless, for they say she is a lamp of beauty."
"I think I saw her," said another soldier, "when I was upon guard this morning at the inner barrier; but she was more like a dark lantern than a lamp, for she and another were brought into the Chateau in close litters."
"Shame! shame! Arnot!" said Lord Crawford; "a solider on duty should say nought of what he sees. Besides," he added after a pause, his own curiosity prevailing over the show of discipline which he had thought it necessary to exert, "why should these litters contain this very same Countess Isabelle de Croye?"
"Nay, my Lord," replied Arnot, "I know nothing of it save this, that my coutelier was airing my horses in the road to the village, and fell in with Doguin the muleteer, who brought back the litters to the inn, for they belong to the fellow of the Mulberry Grove yonder – he of the Fleur-de-Lys, I mean – and so Doguin asked Saunders Steed to take a cup of wine, as they were acquainted, which he was no doubt willing enough to do" –
"No doubt – no doubt," said the old Lord; "it is a thing I wish were corrected among you, gentlemen; but all your grooms and couteliers, and jackmen, as we should call them in Scotland, are but too ready to take a cup of wine with any one – It is a thing perilous in war, and must be amended. But, Andrew Arnot, this is a long tale of yours, and we will cut it with a drink; as the Highlander says, Skeoch doch nan skial[18]; and that's good Gaelic. – Here is to the Countess Isabelle of Croye, and a better husband to her than Campo-basso, who is a base Italian cullion! – And now, Andrew Arnot, what said the muleteer to this yeoman of thine?"
"Why he told him in secrecy, if it please your Lordship," continued Arnot, "that these two ladies whom he had presently before convoyed up to the Castle in the close litters, were great ladies, who had been living in secret at his master's house for some days, and that the King had visited them more than once very privately, and had done them great honour; and that they had fled up to the Castle, as he believed, for fear of the Count de Crèvecoeur, the Duke of Burgundy's ambassador, whose approach was just announced by an advanced courier."
"Ay, Andrew, come you there to me?" said Guthrie; "then I will be sworn it was the Countess whose voice I heard singing to the lute, as I came even now through the inner court – the sound came from the bay-windows of the Dauphin's Tower; and such melody was there as no one ever heard before in the Castle of Plessis of the Park. By my faith, I thought it was the music of the Fairy Melusina's making. There I stood – though I knew your board was covered, and that you were all impatient – there I stood, like" – "Like an ass, Johnny Guthrie," said his commander; "thy long nose smelling the dinner, thy long ears hearing the music, and thy short discretion not enabling thee to decide which of them thou didst prefer. – Hark! is not that the Cathedral bell tolling to vespers? – Sure it cannot be that time yet? – The mad old sexton has toll'd even-song an hour too soon."