The Caged Lion Part 33

'Stay, Patrick,' he said, rising, though forced to hold by his chair; 'that must be my part.'

'You-why, the laddie is white as a sheet! He well-nigh swooned at the tidings. You seek her, forsooth!' and Patrick laughed bitterly.

'Yes, Patie,' said Malcolm, 'for this I am strong. It is my duty and not yours, and G.o.d will strengthen me for it.'

Patrick burst out at this: 'Neither man nor devil shall tell me it is not mine!'

'You are the King's prisoner still,' said Malcolm, rising to energy; 'you are bound to return to him. The tidings must be taken to him at once.'

'A groom could do that.'

'Neither so swiftly nor surely as you. Moreover, your word of honour binds you not to wander at your own pleasure.'

'My honour binds me not to trust you-wee Malcolm-to wander into the wolf's cage alone.'

'I am not the silly f.e.c.kless callant I once was, Patie,' answered Malcolm. 'There are many places where my student's serge gown will take me safely, where your corslet and lance would never find entrance. No one will know me again as I am now: will they, holy Mother?'

'a.s.suredly not,' said the Abbess.

'A student is too mean a prey to be meddled with,' proceeded Malcolm, 'and is sure of hospitality in castle or convent. I can try at Coldingham to find out whither the two monks are gone, and then follow up the track.'

Patrick stormed at the plan, and was most unwilling it should be adopted. He at least must follow, and keep watch over his young cousin, or it would be a mere throwing the helve after the hatchet-a betrayal of his trust.

But a little reflection convinced him that thus to follow would only bring suspicion on Malcolm and defeat his plans; and that it were better to obtain some certain information ere the King should come home, and have to interfere with a high hand; and Malcolm's arguments about his obligations as a captive, too, had their effect. He perceived his own incapacity to act; and in his despair at nothing being done consented to risk Malcolm in the search, while he himself should proceed to the King, only ascertaining on the way that Lilias was not at Whitby. And so, in grief and anxiety, the cousins parted, and Malcolm alone durst speak a word of hope.

CHAPTER XVII: THE BEGGING SCHOLAR

'The poor scholar,' now only existing in Ireland and Brittany-nay, we believe extinct there since the schoolmaster has become not abroad, but at home, in Government colleges-was to be found throughout the commonwealth of Europe in the Middle Ages. Young lads, in whom convent schools had developed a thirst for learning, could only gratify it by making their way to some university, where between begging, singing, teaching, receiving doles, earning rewards in encounters of wit and learning, doing menial services and using all manner of shifts, they contrived to live a hard life, half savage on the one side, highly intellectual upon the other. They would suck the marrow of one university, and then migrate to another; and the rank they had gained in the first was available in the second, so that it was no means uncommon for them to bring away degrees from half the universities in Europe, all of which formed one general system-all were like islands of one country, whose common language was queer Latin, and whose terms, manners, and customs were alike in all main points.

Scotland contributed many of her sons to this curious race of vagabond students, when she herself was without any university to satisfy the cravings of her thoughtful and intellectual people. 'No country without a Scot or a flea' was an uncomplimentary proverb due to the numerous young clerks, equally fierce for frays and for lectures, who flocked to the seats of learning on the Continent, and sometimes became naturalized there, sometimes came home again, to fight their way to the higher benefices of the Church, or to become councillors of state.

It was true that Malcolm was an Oxford scholar, or rather bachelor, and that Oxford and Cambridge were almost the only universities where Scots were not-their place being taken by mult.i.tudinous Irish; yet not only were all universities alike in essentials, but he had seen and heard enough of that at Paris to be able to personate a clerk from thence.

It was no small plunge for one hitherto watched, tended, and guarded as Malcolm had been, to set forth entirely alone; but as he had approached manhood, and strengthened in body, his spirit had gained much in courage, and the anxiety about his sister swallowed up all other considerations. Even while he entreated the prayers of the Abbess, he felt quite sure that he had those of Esclairmonde; and when he had hunted out of his mails the plain bachelor's rabbit-skin hood and black gown-which, perhaps, was a little too fine in texture for the poor wanderer-and fastened on his back, with a leathern thong, a package containing a few books and a change of linen, his pale and intellectual face made him look so entirely the young clerk, that Patrick hardly believed it was Malcolm.

And when the roads parted, and Drummond and his escort had to turn towards Berwick, while Malcolm took the path to the monastery, it was the younger who was the stronger and more resolute of the two; for Patrick could neither reconcile himself to peril the boy, who had always been his anxious trust, nor to return to the King without him; and yet no one who loved Lilias could withhold him from his quest.

Malcolm did not immediately speed to the monastery on taking leave of Patrick. He stood first to watch the armour flashes gradually die away, and the little troop grow smaller to his eye, across the brown moor, till they were entirely out of sight, and he himself left alone. Then he knelt by a bush of gorse, told his beads, and earnestly entreated direction and aid for himself, and protection for his sister; and when the sun grew so low as to make it time for a wanderer to seek harbour, he stained and daggled his gown in the mire and water of a peat-moss, so as to destroy its Oxford gloss, took a book in his hand, and walked towards the monastery, reciting Latin verses in the sing-song tone then universally followed.

As he came among the fields, he saw that the peasants, and lay brethren who had been working among them, were returning, some from sowing, others from herding the cattle, which they drove before them to the byre within the protecting wall of the monastery.

A monk-with a weather-beaten face and athletic figure, much like a farmer's of the present day-overtook him, and hailed him with 'Benedicite, you there and welcome to your clerkship! Are you coming for supper and bed in the convent?'

Malcolm knew good-natured Brother Nicolas, and kept his hood well over his face after the first salutation; though he felt confident that Lord Malcolm could hardly be recognized in the begging scholar, as he made reply, 'Salve, reverende frater. Venio de Lutetia Parisiorum.' {1}

'Whisht with your Latin, laddie,' said the brother. 'Speak out, if you've a Scots tongue in your head, and have not left it in foreign parts.'

'For bed and board, holy father, I shall be most thankful,' replied Malcolm.

'That's more like it,' said the brother, who acted as a kind of farming steward, and was a hearty, good-natured gossip. 'An' what's the name of ye?'

He gave his real Christian name; and added that he came from Glenuskie, where the good Tutor of Glenuskie had been kind enough to notice him.

'Ay,' said Brother Nicolas, 'he was a guid man to all towardly youths. He died in this house, more's the pity.'

'Yea, Sir-so I heard say,' returned Malcolm. 'He was a good friend to me!' he added, to cover his heavy sigh. 'And, Sir, how went it with the young laird and leddy?'

'For the young laird-a f.e.c.kless, ugsome, sickly wean he was, puir laddie-a knight cam by, an' behoved to take him to the King. Nay, but if you've been at Parish-if that's what ye mean with your Lutetia-ye'll have seen him an' the King.'

'I saw the King,' answered Malcolm; 'but among the Englishry.'

'A sorry sight enow!' said the monk; 'but he'll soon find his Scots heart again; and here we've got rid of the English leaven from the house, and be all sound and leal Scots here.'

'And the lady?' Malcolm ventured to ask. 'She had a winsome face.'

'Ho! ho! what have young clerks to do wi' winsome faces?' laughed the Benedictine.

'She was good to me,' Malcolm could truly say.

'They had her in St. Abbs yonder,' said the monk.

'Is she there?' asked Malcolm. 'I would pay my duty and thanks to her.'

'Now-there I cannot say,' replied Brother Nicolas. 'My good Mother Abbess and our Prior are not the friends they were in Prior Akefield's time; and there's less coming and going between the houses. There was a noise that Lord Malcolm had been slain, and I did hear that, thereupon, she had been claimed as a ward of the Crown. But I cannot say. If ye gang to St. Abbs the morn, ye may hear if she be there-and at any rate get the dole.'

It was clear that the good brother knew no more, and Malcolm could only thank him for his condescension, and follow among the herdsmen into the well-known monastery court.

Here he availed himself of his avowed connection with Glenuskie, to beg to be shown good old Sir David Drummond's grave. A flat gray stone in the porch was pointed out to him; and beside this he knelt, until the monks flocked in for prayers-which were but carelessly and hurriedly sung; and then followed supper. It was all so natural to him, that it was with an effort that he recalled that his place was not at the high table, as Lord Malcolm Stewart, but that Malcolm, the nameless begging scholar, must be trencher-fellow with the servants and lay brethren. He was the less concerned, that here there was less danger of recognition, and more freedom of conversation.

Things were evidently much altered. A novice was indeed, as usual, placed aloft in the refectory pulpit, to read aloud to the brethren during their repast, but no one seemed to think it needful to preserve the decorous silence that had been rigidly exacted during Prior Akefield's time, and there was a continual buzz of conversation. Lent though it was, the fish was of the most esteemed kinds, and it was evident that, like the monks of Melrose, they 'made gude kale.' Few of the kindly old faces that Malcolm remembered were to be seen under their cowls. Prior Drax himself had much more the countenance of a moss-trooper than of a monk-mayhap he was then meditating that which he afterwards carried out successfully, i.e. the capture and appropriation of a whole instalment of King James's ransom, on its way across the Border; and there was a rude recklessness and self-indulgence about the looks, voices, and manners of the brethren he had brought with him, such as made Malcolm feel that if he had had his wish, and remained at Coldingham, he should soon have found it no haven of peace.

The lay-brothers and old servants were fixtures, but the old faithful and devout ones looked forlorn and unhappy and there had been a great importation of the ruffianly men-at-arms, whom the more pugnacious ecclesiastics, as well as n.o.bles, of Scotland, were apt to maintain. Guards there had been in old times, but kept under strict discipline; whereas, in the rude conduct of these men, there was no sign that they knew themselves to be in a religious house. Malcolm, keeping aloof from these as much as might be, gave such an account of himself as was most consistent with truth, since it was necessary to account for his returning so young from his studies. He had, he said, been told that there was an inheritance fallen due to him, and that the kinsman, in whose charge his sister had been left, was dead; and he had come home to seek her out, and inquire into the matter of his heirship.

Rude jokes, from some of the new denizens of the monastery, were spent on the improbability of his finding sister or lands; if it were in the Barony of Glenuskie, the House of Albany had taken the administration of that into their own hands.

'Nay-but,' said Malcolm, 'could I but see my young Lady Lilias, she might make suit for me.'

The gray-headed lay-brother, to whom he addressed himself, replied that it was little the Lady Lilias could do, but directed him to St. Abbs to find her; whereat one of the men-at-arms burst out laughing, and crying, 'That's a' that ye ken, auld Davie! As though the Master of Albany would let a bonnie la.s.sie ware hersel' and her tocher on stone walls and dour old nuns.'

'Has she wedded the Master of Albany, then?' asked Malcolm, concealing his anxiety as best he might.

'That's as he pleases; and by my troth he took pains enow to get her!'

'What pains?'