The Fair Maid of Perth; Or, St. Valentine's Day by Walter Scott (popular romance novels txt) 📗

“I will follow you,” said Catharine. “You cannot do more to me than you are permitted.”

He led the way into the tower, and mounted staircase after staircase and ladder after ladder.

Catharine’s resolution failed her. “I will follow no farther,” she said. “Whither would you lead me? If to my death, I can die here.”

“Only to the battlements of the castle, fool,” said Ramorny, throwing wide a barred door which opened upon the vaulted roof of the castle, where men were bending mangonels, as they called them (military engines, that is, for throwing arrows or stones), getting ready crossbows, and piling stones together. But the defenders did not exceed twenty in number, and Catharine thought she could observe doubt and irresolution amongst them.

“Catharine,” said Ramorny, “I must not quit this station, which is necessary for my defence; but I can speak with you here as well as elsewhere.”

“Say on,” answered Catharine, “I am prepared to hear you.”

“You have thrust yourself, Catharine, into a bloody secret. Have you the firmness to keep it?”

“I do not understand you, Sir John,” answered the maiden.

“Look you. I have slain—murdered, if you will—my late master, the Duke of Rothsay. The spark of life which your kindness would have fed was easily smothered. His last words called on his father. You are faint—bear up—you have more to hear. You know the crime, but you know not the provocation. See! this gauntlet is empty; I lost my right hand in his cause, and when I was no longer fit to serve him, I was cast off like a worn out hound, my loss ridiculed, and a cloister recommended, instead of the halls and palaces in which I had my natural sphere! Think on this—pity and assist me.”

“In what manner can you require my assistance?” said the trembling maiden; “I can neither repair your loss nor cancel your crime.”

“Thou canst be silent, Catharine, on what thou hast seen and heard in yonder thicket. It is but a brief oblivion I ask of you, whose word will, I know, be listened to, whether you say such things were or were not. That of your mountebank companion, the foreigner, none will hold to be of a pin point’s value. If you grant me this, I will take your promise for my security, and throw the gate open to those who now approach it. If you will not promise silence, I defend this castle till every one perishes, and I fling you headlong from these battlements. Ay, look at them—it is not a leap to be rashly braved. Seven courses of stairs brought you up hither with fatigue and shortened breath; but you shall go from the top to the bottom in briefer time than you can breathe a sigh! Speak the word, fair maid; for you speak to one unwilling to harm you, but determined in his purpose.”

Catharine stood terrified, and without power of answering a man who seemed so desperate; but she was saved the necessity of reply by the approach of Dwining. He spoke with the same humble conges which at all times distinguished his manner, and with his usual suppressed ironical sneer, which gave that manner the lie.

“I do you wrong, noble sir, to intrude on your valiancie when engaged with a fair damsel. But I come to ask a trifling question.”

“Speak, tormentor!” said Ramorny; “ill news are sport to thee even when they affect thyself, so that they concern others also.”

“Hem!—he, he!—I only desired to know if your knighthood proposed the chivalrous task of defending the castle with your single hand—I crave pardon, I meant your single arm? The question is worth asking, for I am good for little to aid the defence, unless you could prevail on the besiegers to take physic—he, he, he!—and Bonthron is as drunk as ale and strong waters can make him; and you, he, and I make up the whole garrison who are disposed for resistance.”

“How! Will the other dogs not fight?” said Ramorny.

“Never saw men who showed less stomach to the work,” answered Dwining—“never. But here come a brace of them. Venit extrema dies. He, he, he!”

Eviot and his companion Buncle now approached, with sullen resolution in their faces, like men who had made their minds up to resist that authority which they had so long obeyed.

“How now!” said Ramorny, stepping forward to meet them. “Wherefore from your posts? Why have you left the barbican, Eviot? And you other fellow, did I not charge you to look to the mangonels?”

“We have something to tell you, Sir John Ramorny,” answered Eviot. “We will not fight in this quarrel.”

“How—my own squires control me?” exclaimed Ramorny.

“We were your squires and pages, my lord, while you were master of the Duke of Rothsay’s household. It is bruited about the Duke no longer lives; we desire to know the truth.”

“What traitor dares spread such falsehoods?” said Ramorny.

“All who have gone out to skirt the forest, my lord, and I myself among others, bring back the same news. The minstrel woman who left the castle yesterday has spread the report everywhere that the Duke of Rothsay is murdered, or at death’s door. The Douglas comes on us with a strong force—”

“And you, cowards, take advantage of an idle report to forsake your master?” said Ramorny, indignantly.

“My lord,” said Eviot, “let Buncle and myself see the Duke of Rothsay, and receive his personal orders for defence of this castle, and if we do not fight to the death in that quarrel, I will consent to be hanged on its highest turret. But if he be gone by natural disease, we will yield up the castle to the Earl of Douglas, who is, they say, the King’s lieutenant. Or if—which Heaven forefend!—the noble Prince has had foul play, we will not involve ourselves in the guilt of using arms in defence of the murderers, be they who they will.”

“Eviot,” said Ramorny, raising his mutilated arm, “had not that glove been empty, thou hadst not lived to utter two words of this insolence.”

“It is as it is,” answered Evict, “and we do but our duty. I have followed you long, my lord, but here I draw bridle.”

“Farewell, then, and a curse light on all of you!” exclaimed the incensed baron. “Let my horse be brought forth!”

“Our valiancie is about to run away,” said the mediciner, who had crept close to Catharine’s side before she was aware. “Catharine, thou art a superstitious fool, like most women; nevertheless thou hast some mind, and I speak to thee as one of more understanding than the buffaloes which are herding about us. These haughty barons who overstride the world, what are they in the day of adversity? Chaff before the wind. Let their sledge hammer hands or their column resembling legs have injury, and bah! the men at arms are gone. Heart and courage is nothing to them, lith and limb everything: give them animal strength, what are they better than furious bulls; take that away, and your hero of chivalry lies grovelling like the