The Franciscan stood mute and unmoved, with his cowl over his head, and his arms folded across his breast. The silver lamps threw a pale light upon his face, and his shadow rose gigantically upon the wall.
“Whence comest thou?—Speak!” cried the Wolfe, impatiently. “Are we to be kept waiting all night, till thou dost choose to effunde the cause of thy strange visitation?”
“Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and Lord of Badenoch,” said the Franciscan slowly, and in a deep solemn tone; “Alexander Stewart, I come here as the messenger of the Bishop of Moray, to tell thee that the tidings of thy daring, outrageous, and sacrilegious seizure of the lands belonging to the Holy Church, have reached him: the cries alswa of the helpless peasants, whom thou hast ousted from their dwellings, have sounded in his ears. Thy cruelties are bruited abroad from one end of the kingdom to the other, and it is now time that thy savage career should be arrested. The godly Bishop doth, through me, his organ of speech, call on thee to give up the lands thou hast sacrilegiously seized in Badenoch; to restore the plundered herds and flocks, and the rents thou hast theftuously taken by masterful strength; to replace those honest and innocent peasants, who, resisting thy aggression, like true vassals, were, with their wives and little ones, driven from their homes and possessions by thee in thy brutish fury; and, finally, to make such reparation to Holy Mother Church, by fine to her treasuries, and personal abasement before her altars, as may stay her just wrath against thee. In default of all which, the Holy Bishop hath commanded me to announce to thee, that the lesser and greater excommunications shall go forth against thee; and that thou shalt be accursed as a vagabond on the face of this earth, and damned to all eternity in the next world.”
The fiery and ferocious Wolfe of Badenoch was so utterly confounded by what he considered the unexampled audacity of this denunciation, that amazement kept him silent from absolute want of words, otherwise his limited stock of patience could not have endured the Franciscan till he had uttered the tenth part of his long speech. He gnashed his teeth, curled up his nose, and foamed at the mouth; and striking [[244]]the table furiously, as was his custom when violently moved, he shouted out—
“Ha! Devils! Furies! Fiends of Erebus! What is this I hear? The Earl of Buchan—the son of a King—the Wolfe of Badenoch—to be thus insulted by a chough! Out, thou carrion-hooded crow! Thinkest thou to brave me down with thine accursed crawing? By the beard of my grandfather, but thou shalt swing twenty ell high, an thou voidest not the Castle of thy loathsome carcase in less time than thou didst ware in effunding one-fourth part of thy venomous and impudent harangue.”
The monk stood motionless, in the same fixed and composed attitude he had at first assumed, altogether unmoved by these tremendous threats.
“Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and Lord of Badenoch,” he again repeated in the same slow and solemn manner, “I call upon thee again to declare whether thou be’st disposed to submit thyself patiently to the healthful discipline of our Holy Mother Church? or whether thou be’st resolved that she shall cut thee off, like a rotten and diseased branch, to fall headlong into the pit where eternal fire shall consume thee? Already, ere this, hadst thou incurred her just vengeance by living in abominable adultery with Mariota Athyn, thy wanton leman, who now sitteth in abomination beside thee; and by the abandonment of thy leal, true and virtuous wife, whom thou hast left to mourn in a worse than widowhood. In addition to the solemn appeal I have already made, I am commanded to call on thee now to fulfil the sentence of the Bishops of Moray and Ross, to pay down two hundred broad pieces of gold as the mulct of thine offence, and forthwith to discharge thy foul and sinful mate, and recal to thy bosom her who hath the true and lawful claim to lay her head there. Wilt thou do these things, yea or not?”
This ripping up of the old feud not only redoubled the rage of the Wolfe of Badenoch, but roused that of the Lady Mariota and her sons. She burst into a flood of tears, a violent fit of sobbing followed, and she finally rushed from the banquet hall. The hot and fierce Sir Alexander was broiling with fury; but the Wolfe took the speech of him——
“Ha! so thou hast come to the kernel of this matter at last, thou ape of Satan, hast thou? Now I do clearly ken how far I was right in guessing at the tale-pyet that chattered in the ear of the King, my father. But, by the blood of the Bruce, I have revenged his impertinent meddling, by ousting him from the [[245]]roost he had in my lands; and, by all the hot fiends of perdition, if he rouseth the Wolfe of Badenoch more, his neck shall be twisted about. Art content with my answer now, thou hooded-carrion-crow?”
“Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and Lord of Badenoch,” said the Franciscan, with the same imperturbable gravity, firmness, and composure, “hast thou no better response than this to make to the holy Bishop of Moray? Bethink thee well———”