The Abbot

Chapter 16

Young Roland Graeme now trotted gaily forward in the train of Sir

Halbert Glendinning. He was relieved from his most galling

apprehension,--the encounter of the scorn and taunt which might

possibly hail his immediate return to the Castle of Avenel. "There

will be a change ere they see me again," he thought to himself; "I

shall wear the coat of plate, instead of the green jerkin, and the

steel morion for the bonnet and feather. They will be bold that may

venture to break a gibe on the man-at-arms for the follies of the

page; and I trust, that ere we return I shall have done something more

worthy of note than hallooing a hound after a deer, or scrambling a

crag for a kite's nest." He could not, indeed, help marvelling that

his grandmother, with all her religious prejudices, leaning, it would

seem, to the other side, had consented so readily to his re-entering

the service of the House of Avenel; and yet more, at the mysterious

joy with which she took leave of him at the Abbey.

"Heaven," said the dame, as she kissed her young relation, and bade

him farewell, "works its own work, even by the hands of those of our

enemies who think themselves the strongest and the wisest. Thou, my

child, be ready to act upon the call of thy religion and country; and

remember, each earthly bond which thou canst form is, compared to the

ties which bind thee to them, like the loose flax to the twisted

cable. Thou hast not forgot the face or form of the damsel Catherine

Seyton?"

Roland would have replied in the negative, but the word seemed to

stick in his throat and Magdalen continued her exhortations.

"Thou must not forget her, my son; and here I intrust thee with a

token, which I trust thou wilt speedily find an opportunity of

delivering with care and secrecy into her own hand."

She put here into Roland's hand a very small packet, of which she

again enjoined him to take the strictest care, and to suffer it to be

seen by no one save Catherine Seyton, who, she again (very

unnecessarily) reminded him, was the young lady he had met on the

preceding day. She then bestowed on him her solemn benediction, and

bade God speed him.

There was something in her manner and her conduct which implied

mystery; but Roland Graeme was not of an age or temper to waste much

time in endeavoring to decipher her meaning. All that was obvious to

his perception in the present journey, promised pleasure and novelty.

He rejoiced that he was travelling towards Edinburgh, in order to

assume the character of a man, and lay aside that of a boy. He was

delighted to think that he would have an opportunity of rejoining

Catherine Seyton, whose bright eyes and lively manners had made so

favourable an impression on his imagination; and, as an experienced,

yet high-spirited youth, entering for the first time upon active life,

his heart bounded at the thought, that he was about to see all those

scenes of courtly splendour and warlike adventures, of which the

followers of Sir Halbert used to boast on their occasional visits to

Avenel, to the wonderment and envy of those who, like Roland, knew

courts and camps only by hearsay, and were condemned to the solitary

sports and almost monastic seclusion of Avenel, surrounded by its

lonely lake, and embossed among its pathless mountains. "They shall

mention my name," he said to himself, "if the risk of my life can

purchase me opportunities of distinction, and Catherine Seyton's saucy

eye shall rest with more respect on the distinguished soldier, than

that with which she laughed to scorn the raw and inexperienced

page."--There was wanting but one accessary to complete the sense of

rapturous excitation, and he possessed it by being once more mounted

on the back of a fiery and active horse, instead of plodding along on

foot, as had been the case during the preceding days.

Impelled by the liveliness of his own spirits, which so many

circumstances tended naturally to exalt, Roland Graeme's voice and his

laughter were soon distinguished amid the trampling of the horses of

the retinue, and more than once attracted the attention of the leader,

who remarked with satisfaction, that the youth replied with

good-humoured raillery to such of the train as jested with him on his

dismissal and return to the service of the House of Avenel.

"I thought the holly-branch in your bonnet had been blighted, Master

Roland?" said one of the men-at-arms.

"Only pinched with half an hour's frost; you see it flourishes as

green as ever."

"It is too grave a plant to flourish on so hot a soil as that

headpiece of thine, Master Roland Graeme," retorted the other, who was

an old equerry of Sir Halbert Glendinning.

"If it will not flourish alone," said Roland, "I will mix it with the

laurel and the myrtle--and I will carry them so near the sky, that it

shall make amends for their stinted growth."

Thus speaking, he dashed his spurs into his horse's sides, and,

checking him at the same time, compelled him to execute a lofty

caracole. Sir Halbert Glendinning looked at the demeanour of his new

attendant with that sort of melancholy pleasure with which those who

have long followed the pursuits of life, and are sensible of their

vanity, regard the gay, young, and buoyant spirits to whom existence,

as yet, is only hope and promise.

In the meanwhile, Adam Woodcock, the falconer, stripped of his

masquing habit, and attired, according to his rank and calling, in a

green jerkin, with a hawking-bag on the one side, and a short hanger

on the other, a glove on his left hand which reached half way up his

arm, and a bonnet and feather upon his head, came after the party as

fast as his active little galloway-nag could trot, and immediately

entered into parley with Roland Graeme.

"So, my youngster, you are once more under shadow of the

holly-branch?"

"And in case to repay you, my good friend," answered Roland, "your

ten groats of silver."

"Which, but an hour since," said the falconer, "you had nearly paid me

with ten inches of steel. On my faith, it is written in the book of

our destiny, that I must brook your dagger after all."

"Nay, speak not of that, my good friend," said the youth, "I would

rather have broached my own bosom than yours; but who could have

known you in the mumming dress you wore?"

"Yes," the falconer resumed,--for both as a poet and actor he had his

own professional share of self-conceit,--"I think I was as good a

Howleglas as ever played part at a Shrovetide revelry, and not a much

worse Abbot of Unreason. I defy the Old Enemy to unmask me when I

choose to keep my vizard on. What the devil brought the Knight on us

before we had the game out? You would have heard me hollo my own new

ballad with a voice should have reached to Berwick. But I pray you,

Master Roland, be less free of cold steel on slight occasions; since,

but for the stuffing of my reverend doublet, I had only left the kirk

to take my place in the kirkyard."

"Nay, spare me that feud," said Roland Graeme, "we shall have no time

to fight it out; for, by our lord's command, I am bound for

Edinburgh."

"I know it," said Adam Woodcock, "and even therefore we shall have

time to solder up this rent by the way, for Sir Halbert has appointed

me your companion and guide."

"Ay? and with what purpose?" said the page.

"That," said the falconer, "is a question I cannot answer; but I know,

that be the food of the eyases washed or unwashed, and, indeed,

whatever becomes of perch and mew, I am to go with you to Edinburgh,

and see you safely delivered to the Regent at Holyrood."

"How, to the Regent?" said Roland, in surprise.

"Ay, by my faith, to the Regent," replied Woodcock; "I promise you,

that if you are not to enter his service, at least you are to wait

upon him in the character of a retainer of our Knight of Avenel."

"I know no right," said the youth, "which the Knight of Avenel hath to

transfer my service, supposing that I owe it to himself."

"Hush, hush!" said the falconer; "that is a question I advise no one

to stir in until he has the mountain or the lake, or the march of

another kingdom, which is better than either, betwixt him and his

feudal superior."

"But Sir Halbert Glendinning," said the youth, "is not my feudal

superior; nor has he aught of authority--"

"I pray you, my son, to rein your tongue," answered Adam Woodcock; "my

lord's displeasure, if you provoke it, will be worse to appease than

my lady's. The touch of his least finger were heavier than her hardest

blow. And, by my faith, he is a man of steel, as true and as pure,

but as hard and as pitiless. You remember the c**k of Capperlaw, whom

he hanged over his gate for a mere mistake--a poor yoke of oxen taken

in Scotland, when he thought he was taking them in English land? I

loved the c**k of Capperlaw; the Kerrs had not an honester man in

their clan, and they have had men that might have been a pattern to

the Border--men that would not have lifted under twenty cows at once,

and would have held themselves dishonoured if they had taken a drift

of sheep, or the like, but always managed their raids in full credit

and honour.--But see, his worship halts, and we are close by the

bridge. Ride up--ride up--we must have his last instructions."

It was as Adam Woodcock said. In the hollow way descending towards the

bridge, which was still in the guardianship of Peter Bridgeward, as he

was called, though he was now very old, Sir Halbert Glendinning halted

his retinue, and beckoned to Woodcock and Graeme to advance to the

head of the train.

"Woodcock," said he, "thou knowest to whom thou art to conduct this

youth. And thou, young man, obey discreetly and with diligence the

orders that shall be given thee. Curb thy vain and peevish temper. Be

just, true, and faithful; and there is in thee that which may raise

thee many a degree above thy present station. Neither shalt

thou--always supposing thine efforts to be fair and honest--want the

protection and countenance of Avenel."

Leaving them in front of the bridge, the centre tower of which now

began to cast a prolonged shade upon the river, the Knight of Avenel

turned to the left, without crossing the river, and pursued his way

towards the chain of hills within whose recesses are situated the Lake

and Castle of Avenel. There remained behind, the falconer, Roland

Graeme, and a domestic of the Knight, of inferior rank, who was left

with them to look after their horses while on the road, to carry their

baggage, and to attend to their convenience.

So soon as the more numerous body of riders had turned off to pursue

their journey westward, those whose route lay across the river, and

was directed towards the north, summoned the Bridgeward, and demanded

a free passage.

"I will not lower the bridge," answered Peter, in a voice querulous

with age and ill-humour.--"Come Papist, come Protestant, ye are all

the same. The Papist threatened us with Purgatory, and fleeched us

with pardons--the Protestant mints at us with his sword, and cuttles

us with the liberty of conscience; but never a one of either says,

'Peter, there is your penny.' I am well tired of all this, and for no

man shall the bridge fall that pays me not ready money; and I would

have you know I care as little for Geneva as for Rome--as little for

homilies as for pardons; and the silver pennies are the only passports

I will hear of."

"Here is a proper old chuff!" said Woodcock to his companion; then

raising his voice, he exclaimed, "Hark thee, dog--Bridgeward, villain,

dost thou think we have refused thy namesake Peter's pence to Rome, to

pay thine at the bridge of Kennaquhair? Let thy bridge down instantly

to the followers of the house of Avenel, or by the hand of my father,

and that handled many a bridle rein, for he was a bluff

Yorkshireman--I say, by my father's hand, our Knight will blow thee

out of thy solan-goose's nest there in the middle of the water, with

the light falconet which we are bringing southward from Edinburgh

to-morrow."

The Bridgeward heard, and muttered, "A plague on falcon and falconet,

on cannon and demicannon, and all the barking bull-dogs whom they

halloo against stone and lime in these our days! It was a merry time

when there was little besides handy blows, and it may be a flight of

arrows that harmed an ashler wall as little as so many hailstones. But

we must jouk and let the jaw gang by." Comforting himself in his state

of diminished consequence with this pithy old proverb, Peter

Bridgeward lowered the drawbridge, and permitted them to pass over. At

the sight of his white hair, albeit it discovered a visage equally

peevish through age and misfortune, Roland was inclined to give him an

alms, but Adam Woodcock prevented him. "E'en let him pay the penalty

of his former churlishness and greed," he said; "the wolf, when he has

lost his teeth, should be treated no better than a cur."

Leaving the Bridgeward to lament the alteration of times, which sent

domineering soldiers and feudal retainers to his place of passage,

instead of peaceful pilgrims, and reduced him to become the oppressed,

instead of playing the extortioner, the travellers turned them

northward; and Adam Woodcock, well acquainted with that part of the

country, proposed to cut short a considerable portion of the road, by

traversing the little vale of Glendearg, so famous for the adventures

which befell therein during the earlier part of the Benedictine's

manuscript. With these, and with the thousand commentaries,

representations, and misrepresentations, to which they had given rise,

Roland Graeme was, of course, well acquainted; for in the Castle of

Avenel, as well as in other great establishments, the inmates talked

of nothing so often, or with such pleasure, as of the private affairs

of their lord and lady. But while Roland was viewing with interest

these haunted scenes, in which things were said to have passed beyond

the ordinary laws of nature, Adam Woodcock was still regretting in his

secret soul the unfinished revel and the unsung ballad, and kept every

now and then, breaking out with some such verses as these:--

"A straw for your wandering spirits!" said Adam Woodcock; "I mind them

no more than an earn cares for a string of wild-geese--they have all

fled since the pulpits were filled with honest men, and the people's

ears with sound doctrine. Nay, I have a touch at them in my ballad, an

I had but had the good luck to have it sung to end;" and again he set

off in the same key:

"If it be all true that men tell of his early life," said Roland, "he

has less right to laugh at goblins than most men."

"Ay, _if_ it be all true," answered Adam Woodcock; "but who can

ensure us of that? Moreover, these were but tales the monks used to

gull us simple laymen withal; they knew that fairies and hobgoblins

brought aves and paternosters into repute; but, now we have given up

worship of images in wood and stone, methinks it were no time to be

afraid of bubbles in the water, or shadows in the air."

"However," said Roland Graeme, "as the Catholics say they do not

worship wood or stone, but only as emblems of the holy saints, and not

as things holy in themselves----"

"Pshaw! pshaw!" answered the falconer; "a rush for their prating.

They told us another story when these baptized idols of theirs brought

pike-staves and sandalled shoon from all the four winds, and whillied

the old women out of their corn and their candle ends, and their

butter, bacon, wool, and cheese, and when not so much as a gray groat

escaped tithing."

Roland Graeme had been long taught, by necessity, to consider his form

of religion as a profound secret, and to say nothing whatever in its

defence when assailed, lest he should draw on himself the suspicion of

belonging to the unpopular and exploded church. He therefore suffered

Adam Woodcock to triumph without farther opposition, marvelling in his

own mind whether any of the goblins, formerly such active agents,

would avenge his rude raillery before they left the valley of

Glendearg. But no such consequences followed. They passed the night

quietly in a cottage in the glen, and the next day resumed their route

to Edinburgh.