“My lady! my good lord,” said the terrified girl; “holy St. Baldrid! is she not with thee then?”
“No,” said Sir Patrick, with increasing amazement and alarm, [[112]]“she went not with us. We left her here with my son, when he rode forth in the morning.”
“Nay, I knew that,” said the terrified Mary Hay, “but—good angels be about us—I weened that her pages and palfrey might have gone with thee, and that she might ha’ been to join thee in the woods, after having given her brother the convoy.”
“Merciful powers! did she leave the Castle with her brother?” “Good Heavens! hath she never been seen since morning?” exclaimed Sir Patrick and Assueton, both in the same breath, and looking eagerly in the faces of the people around them for something satisfactory; but no one had seen her since morning. Some of the domestics ran out to question those who had kept guard; but though she had been seen as she went out with her brother, neither warder or sentinel had observed her return. Meantime the whole Castle was searched over from garret to cellar by Assueton, Sir Patrick, and the servants, all without success.
The consternation and misery of the father and the lover were greater than language can describe. Broken sentences burst from them at short intervals, but altogether void of connection. A thousand conjectures were hazarded, and again abandoned as impossible. Plans of search without number were proposed, and then given up as hopeless; while all they said, thought, or did, was without concert, and only calculated to show their utter distraction. But matters did not long continue thus.
“My horse, my horse!” cried the agonized and frenzied father; and “My horse, my horse!” responded Assueton, in a state no less wild and despairing.
Both rushed down to the stable, and the horses which yet remained saddled from the chase being hurriedly brought out, they struck the spurs into their sweltering sides, and, almost without exchanging a word, galloped furiously from the gateway, each, as if by a species of instinct, taking a different way, and each followed by a handful of his people, who mounted in reeking haste to attend his master. They scoured the woodlands, lawns, and alleys, from side to side, and all around; they beat through the shaws and copses, and hollowed and shouted to the very cracking of their voices. By and by, to those who listened from the walls, their circles appeared to become wider, and their shouts were no longer heard. Forth rushed, one by one, as they could horse them in haste, or gird themselves for running, grooms, lacqueys, spearmen, billmen, bowmen, and foresters, until none were left within the place but the men on guard, the old, the feeble, and some of the women. Even Mary Hay ran [[113]]out into the woods, beating her breast, tearing her hair, screaming like a maniac, and searching wildly among the bushes, even less rationally than those who had gone before her.
Sir Patrick, as he rode, began, in the midst of his affliction, to collect his scattered ideas, and, calling to mind what they had told him of Lady Isabelle having gone to convoy her brother, he immediately halted from the unprofitable search he was pursuing, and turned his horse’s head towards that direction which they must have necessarily taken. He rode on as far as the knoll where the brother and sister had bid adieu to each other, and there being a cluster of cottages at the bottom of the hill, he made towards one of them himself, and sent his attendants to all the others in search of information. From several of the churls, and from their wives, he learned that his son had been seen taking an affectionate leave of a lady whom they now supposed to have been the Lady Isabelle, among the oaks on the knoll, and that he had afterwards joined his party, waiting for him under the trees by the river’s side, whilst the lady seemed to turn back, as if to take the way to the Castle. With this new scent, Sir Patrick made his panting horse breast the hill, and, assisted by his men, beat the ground in close traverse, backwards and forwards, from one side to another, with so great care and minuteness that the smallest object could not have escaped their observation. They tried all the by-routes that might have been taken, but all without success; though they spent so much time in the search that darkness had already begun to descend over the earth ere they were compelled to desist from it as hopeless.
They returned towards the Castle, still catching at the frail chance, as they hurried thither, that though they had been unsuccessful, some one else might have been more fortunate, and that probably the Lady Isabelle had been already brought back in safety. But unhappily the guards, who crowded round them at the gate, and to whom both master and men all at once opened in accents of loud inquiry, had no such heart-healing tidings to give them. They obtained such intelligence, however, as had awakened a spark of hope. Sir John Assueton had returned a short time before Sir Patrick, with the horse he had ridden so exhausted that the wretched animal had dropped to the ground, and died instantly after his rider had quitted the saddle. He had called loudly for fresh horses and a party of spearmen, and had then rushed into the Castle to arm himself in haste; and a number of those who had gone to search independently having fortunately by this time come in one by one, [[114]]some fifteen or twenty bowmen, spearmen, and billmen had been hastily got together, and provided with brisk and still unbreathed horses. Without taking time, however, to give the particulars of what he had gathered, or to say whither he was bound, Sir John had merely called out to the guard, as he was mounting, to tell Sir Patrick, if he should return before him, that he had heard some tidings of the Lady Isabelle, and that he would bring her safely back, or perish in the attempt; and after having said so, he had given the word to his men and scoured off at the head of them in a southern direction.
The miserable father was more than ever perplexed by this information. From the preparations Sir John had so effectually though hastily made, it was evident that the scene of the enterprise he went on was distant; and that it was not without doubt or danger, appeared from the few words he had let fall. Could Sir Patrick have had any guess whither to go, he would have instantly armed himself, and such men as he could have got together, to follow and aid Sir John Assueton; but such a chase was evidently more wild and hopeless than the fruitless search he had just returned from; and the pitchy darkness which by this time prevailed was in itself an insurmountable obstacle to his discovering the route that Sir John had taken. He was compelled, therefore, most unwillingly and most sorrowfully, to give up all idea of further exertion for the present; but he resolved to start in the morning long ere the first lark had arisen from its nest, and, if he should hear nothing before then that might change his determination, to ride towards England. He accordingly gave orders to his esquires to have a body of armed horsemen ready equipped to accompany him, an hour before the first streak of red should tinge the eastern welkin.