After giving way for some time to ineffectual ravings, the offspring of intense feeling, and having then vented his rage in threats against Sir Miers de Willoughby, Assueton began by degrees to become more calm, and seeing the necessity of exerting his cool judgment, that he might determine how to act, he was at length persuaded by Sir Walter de Selby to go into his tent for a short time, till the horses and men could be refreshed. Sir Walter had no disposition to screen his unworthy relative from the wrath with which Assueton threatened him; or, if he had, he conceived himself bound to make it give way to a sense of justice. He therefore readily answered the Scottish knight’s hasty questions, and told him that it was more than likely that the lady had been carried to a certain castle belonging to de Willoughby, situated about the Cheviot hills.
Assueton’s impatience brooked no longer delay. Accordingly, with a soul agonized by the passions of love, grief, rage, and revenge, he summoned his party to horse, and set off at a furious pace on his anxious and uncertain quest.
CHAPTER XV.
Norham Castle again—The Ancient’s Divination—Sir Walter Bewitched—The Franciscan Friar to the Rescue.
Sir Walter de Selby, who was enduring all the bitterness of grief that a father could suffer, whose only child, a daughter too, on whose disposal hung a whole legion of superstitious hopes and fears, had been rent from him in a manner so mysterious, broke up his little camp with as much impatience as Assueton had exhibited. But age did not admit of his motions being so rapid as those of the younger knight. He moved, however, with all the celerity he could exert, for he remembered the warning flame which had appeared on the fatal shield; and the very [[122]]thought of his daughter’s disappearance, with the frightful consequences which might result from her being thus beyond his control, filled his heart with horror and dismay. He was also exceedingly perplexed how the wizard, Master Ancient Haggerstone Fenwick, could have so erred in his divination as to occasion him the fruitless and mortifying expedition into Scotland; for Sir Walter, in the first fever of distraction he was thrown into by the discovery of his daughter’s disappearance, had immediately made his way to the aerial den of the Ancient. The cunning diviner instantly recollected that he had seen Sir Patrick Hepborne going towards the rampart, where he had reason to know the Lady Eleanore de Selby had been walking, from which he was led to suspect an appointment between them. He was too artful to make Sir Walter aware of this circumstance, but, proceeding upon it, he enacted some hasty farce of conjuration, and then with all due solemnity boldly and confidently pronounced that Sir Patrick Hepborne had secretly returned, and, obtaining possession of the person of the Lady Eleanore, had carried her over the Border.
Some time after Sir Walter de Selby had gone into Scotland, however, a discovery was accidentally made that seemed to throw light on the disappearance of his daughter. The mantle she usually wore had been found by a patrole, at several miles’ distance to the south of Norham, lying by the way-side leading towards Alnwick—a circumstance which left no doubt remaining that she had been carried off in that direction. But ere this could be communicated to Sir Walter on his return, his impatience for an interview with his oracle was so great that, putting aside all obstructions, he hastened to climb to the den of the monster on the top of the keep.
“What sayest thou, Master Ancient Fenwick?” said the old man, as he entered the cap-house door, his breath gone with the steepness of the ascent and the anxiety of his mind; “for once thy skill seemeth to have failed thee.”
The Ancient was seated in his usual corner, immersed in his favourite study: a large circle was delineated on the floor, and in the centre of it lay the Lady Eleanore’s mantle.
“Blame, then, thine own impatience and haste,” said the Ancient. “The signs were drawn awry, and no wonder that the calculations were erroneous; but thou wert not gone half-a-day until I discovered the error; and now thou shalt thyself behold it remedied. Dost see there thy daughter’s mantle?”