“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 soldier on duty should say naught 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 ['Cut a tale with a drink;' an expression used when a man preaches over his liquor, as bons vivants say in England. S.]; and that 's good Gaelic.—Here is to the Countess Isabelle of Croye, and a better husband to her than Campobasso, 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 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 Crevecoeur, 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—”
[The Fairy Melusina: a water fay who married a mortal on condition that she should be allowed to spend her Saturdays in deep seclusion. This promise, after many years, was broken, and Melusina, half serpent, half woman, was discovered swimming in a bath. For this breach of faith on the part of her husband, Melusina was compelled to leave her home. She regularly returned, however, before the death of any of the lords of her family, and by her wailings foretold that event. Her history is closely interwoven with the legends of the Banshee and Mermaid.]
“—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 that not the Cathedral bell tolling to vespers?—Sure it cannot be that time yet? The mad old sexton has toll'd evensong an hour too soon.”
“In faith, the bell rings but too justly the hour,” said Cunningham; “yonder the sun is sinking on the west side of the fair plain.”
“Ay,” said the Lord Crawford, “is it even so?—Well, lads, we must live within compass.—Fair and soft goes far—slow fire makes sweet malt—to be merry and wise is a sound proverb.—One other rouse to the weal of old Scotland, and then each man to his duty.”