Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 18

by Unknown

"I was a broken and ruined man. But how wondrous the force of true affection! My Agnes knew this; and yet, knowing all, she contrived to elude her guardians, and fled with me to the sea-shore, where we embarked, in a ship of Normandy, for the south of Ireland. From that hour De Longoville has fought under no banner but his own. I renounced, in my anger, my allegiance to my country-nay, declared war with the sovereign who had so injured me. The years passed, and desperate and dishonoured men like myself came flocking to me as their leader, till not Philip himself, or my old enemy Charles, had more kingly authority on land than De Longoville on the sea. But let no man again deceive himself as I have done. I had reasoned on the lax morality and doubtful honour of kings, and asked myself why I might not, as the admiral and prince of my fleet, achieve a less guilty, though not less splendid glory than the bastard William of Normandy, or Edward of England, or my old enemy Charles of Anjou. But I have long since been taught that what were high achievements and honourable conquest in the admiral of a hundred vessels, is but sheer piracy in the captain of six. I can trust, however, that the last days of De Longoville may yet be deemed equal to the first; and that the middle term of his life may be forgiven him for its beginning and its close. Not a month since, I carried my wife and daughter to France, and took final leave of them, with the purpose of setting out on my pilgrimage to Palestine. That intention, noble Wallace! is now altered; and I must again seek them out, that they may accompany me to Scotland."

"The foul stain of treason, brave Longoville, must be removed," said the Governor. "Charles of Anjou has long since gone to his account: does the Lord of Languedoc still survive!"

"He still lives," replied the admiral; "his years do not outnumber my own."

"Then must he either retract the vile calumny, or grant you the combat. The young Philip has pledged his knightly word, when he solicited the visit I am now voyaging to pay him, that he would grant me the first boon I craved in person, should it involve the alienation of his fairest province. That boon, brave De Longoville, will, at least, present you with the means of regaining your fair fame."

De Longoville knelt on the cabin floor, and kissed the hand of the Governor. The conversation glided imperceptibly to other and lighter matters; time passed gaily in the recital of stories of chivalrous endurance or exploit; and the gale, which still blew steadily from the north-west, promised a speedy accomplishment of their voyage. For four days they sailed without shifting back or lowering sail; and, on the morning of the fifth, cast anchor in the harbour of Rochelle.

On the evening of the second day after their arrival, a single knight was pricking his steed through one of the glades of the immense forest which, at this period, covered the greater part of the province of Poitiers. He had been passing, ever since morning, through what seemed an interminable wilderness of wood—here clustered into almost impenetrable thickets shagged with an undergrowth of thorn, there opening into long bosky glades and avenues that seemed, however, only to lead into recesses still more solitary and remote than those that darkened around him. During the early part of the day, the sun had looked down gaily among the trees, checkering the sward below with a carpeting of alternate light and shadow; and the knight, a lover of falconry and the chase, had rode jocundly on through the peopled solitude; ever and anon grasping his spear, with the eager spirit of the huntsman, as the fawn started up beside his courser, and shot like a meteor across the avenue, or the wild boar or wolf rustled in the neighbouring brake. Towards evening, however, the eternal sameness of the landscape had begun to fatigue him; the sun, too, had disappeared, long before his setting, in a veil of impenetrable vapour, mottled with grey, ponderous clouds, betokening an approaching storm; and the horseman pressed eagerly onward, in the hope of reaching, ere its bursting, the hostelry in which he had purposed to pass the evening. He had either, however, mistaken his way or miscalculated his distance; for after passing dell and dingle, glade and thicket, in monotonous succession, for hours on hours, the forest still seemed as dense and unending, and the hostelry as distant as ever. A brown and sleepy horror seemed to settle over the trees as the evening darkened; the thunder began to bellow in long peals, far to the south, and a few heavy drops to patter from time to time on the leaves, giving indication of the approaching deluge. The knight had just resigned himself to encounter all the horrors of the storm, when, on descending into a little bosky hollow, through which there passed a minute streamlet, he found himself in front of a deserted hermitage. It was a cell, opening, like an Egyptian tomb, in the face of a low precipice. A rude stone-cross, tapestried with ivy, rose immediately over the narrow door-way.

"The saints be praised!" exclaimed the knight, leaping lightly from his horse. "I shall e'en avail myself of the good shelter they have provided. But thou, poor Biscay," he continued, patting his steed, "wouldst that thou wert with thy master, mine host of the Three Fleurs de Lis!—there is scant stabling for thee here. This way, however, good Biscay—this way. Thou must bide the storm as thou best may'st in yonder hollow of the rock." And, leading the animal to the hollow, he fastened him to the stem of a huge ivy, and then entered the hermitage.

It consisted of one small rude apartment, hewn, apparently with immense labour, in the living rock. A seat and bed of stone occupied the opposite sides; and in the extreme end, fronting the door, there was a rude image of the Virgin, with a small altar of mouldering stone, placed before it. The evening was oppressively sultry, and, taking his seat on the bedside, the knight unlaced and set aside his helmet, exhibiting to the fast-dying light, the brown curling hair and handsome features of our old acquaintance Clelland—for it was no other than he. The thunder began to roll in louder and longer peals, and the lightning to illumine, at brief intervals, every glade and dingle without, and every minute object within; when a loud scream of dismay and terror, blent with the infuriated howl of some wild animal, rose from the upper part of the dell, and Clelland had but snatched up his spear and leaped out into the storm, when a young female, closely pursued by an enormous wolf, came rushing down the declivity, in the direction of the hermitage; but, in crossing the little stream, overcome apparently by fatigue and terror, she stumbled and fell. To interpose his person between the poor girl and her ravenous pursuer was with Clelland the work of one moment; to make such prompt and efficient use of his spear that the steel head passed through and through the monster, and then buried itself in the earth beneath, was his employment in the next. The black blood came spouting out along the shaft, crimsoning both his hands to the wrists; and the transfixed savage, writhing itself round on the wood in its mortal agony, and gnashing its immense fangs, just uttered one tremendous howl that could be heard even above the pealing of the thunder, and then belched out his life at his feet. He raised the fallen girl, who seemed for a moment to have sunk into a state of partial swoon, and, disengaging his good weapon from the bleeding carcass, he supported her to the hermitage in the rock.

She was attired in the garb of a common peasant of the age and country; but there was even yet light enough to shew that her beauty was of a more dignified expression than is almost ever to be found in a cottage—exquisite in colour and form as that which we meet with in the latter, may often be. There was a subdued elegance, too, in her few brief, but earnest expressions of gratitude to her deliverer, that consorted equally ill with her attire. On entering the hermitage, she knelt before the altar, and prayed in silence; while Clelland took his seat on the stone couch where he had before placed his helmet, leaving to his new companion the settle on the opposite side. Meanwhile the storm without had increased tenfold. The thunder rolled overhead, peal after peal, without break or pause; so that the outbursting of every fresh clap was mingled with the echoes in which the wide-spread forest had replied to the last. At times, the opposite acclivity, with all its thickets, seemed as if enveloped in an atmosphere of fire—at times one immense seam of forked lightning came ploughing the pitchy gloom of the heavens, from the centre to the horizon. The wild beasts of the forest were abroad. Clelland could hear their fierce howlings mingled with the terrific bellowings of the heavens. The dead sultry calm was suddenly broken. A hurricane went raging through the woods. There was a creaking, crackling, rushing sound among the trees, as they strained and quivered to the blast; and a roaring, like that of some huge cataract, showed that a waterspout had burst in the upper part of the dell, and that the little stream was coming down in thunder—a wide and impetuous torrent. Clelland's fair companion still remained kneeling before the altar. 'Twould seem as her prayer of thanks for her great deliverance had changed into an earnest and oft-reiterated petition for still further protection.

In a pause of the storm, the frightful howlings of a flock of wolves were heard rising from over the hermitage, as if hundreds had assembled on its roof of rock. Clelland sprung from his seat, and, grasping his spear, stood in the doorway.