De Vaux, right glad, if the truth may be guessed, that the scene ended without Richard's descending to the unkingly act of himself slaying an unresisting prisoner, made haste to remove Sir Kenneth by a private issue to a separate tent, where he was disarmed, and put in fetters for security. De Vaux looked on with a steady and melancholy attention, while the provost's officers, to whom Sir Kenneth was now committed, took these severe precautions.
When they were ended, he said solemnly to the unhappy criminal, “It is King Richard's pleasure that you die undegraded—without mutilation of your body, or shame to your arms—and that your head be severed from the trunk by the sword of the executioner.”
“It is kind,” said the knight, in a low and rather submissive tone of voice, as one who received an unexpected favour; “my family will not then hear the worst of the tale. Oh, my father—my father!”
This muttered invocation did not escape the blunt but kindly-natured Englishman, and he brushed the back of his large hand over his rough features ere he could proceed.
“It is Richard of England's further pleasure,” he said at length, “that you have speech with a holy man; and I have met on the passage hither with a Carmelite friar, who may fit you for your passage. He waits without, until you are in a frame of mind to receive him.”
“Let it be instantly,” said the knight. “In this also Richard is kind. I cannot be more fit to see the good father at any time than now; for life and I have taken farewell, as two travellers who have arrived at the crossway, where their roads separate.”
“It is well,” said De Vaux slowly and solemnly; “for it irks me somewhat to say that which sums my message. It is King Richard's pleasure that you prepare for instant death.”
“God's pleasure and the King's be done,” replied the knight patiently. “I neither contest the justice of the sentence, nor desire delay of the execution.”
De Vaux began to leave the tent, but very slowly—paused at the door, and looked back at the Scot, from whose aspect thoughts of the world seemed banished, as if he was composing himself into deep devotion. The feelings of the stout English baron were in general none of the most acute, and yet, on the present occasion, his sympathy overpowered him in an unusual manner. He came hastily back to the bundle of reeds on which the captive lay, took one of his fettered hands, and said, with as much softness as his rough voice was capable of expressing, “Sir Kenneth, thou art yet young—thou hast a father. My Ralph, whom I left training his little galloway nag on the banks of the Irthing, may one day attain thy years, and, but for last night, would to God I saw his youth bear such promise as thine! Can nothing be said or done in thy behalf?”
“Nothing,” was the melancholy answer. “I have deserted my charge—the banner entrusted to me is lost. When the headsman and block are prepared, the head and trunk are ready to part company.”