"That had been a rare good apology in the mouth of thy sister, fair nephew," said Le Balafré; "you must fear the wine-pot less, if you would wear beard on your face, and write yourself soldier. But come – come – unbuckle your Scottish mail-bag – give us the news of Glen-houlakin – How doth my sister?"
"Dead, fair uncle," answered Quentin, sorrowfully.
"Dead!" echoed his uncle with a tone rather marked by wonder than sympathy – "why, she was five years younger than I, and I was never better in my life. Dead! the thing is impossible. I have never had so much as a headach, unless after revelling out my two or three days' furlough with the brethren of the joyous science – and my poor sister is dead! – And your father, fair nephew, hath he married again?"
And ere the youth could reply, he read the answer in his surprise at the question, and said, "What! no? – I would have sworn that Allan Durward was no man to live without a wife. He loved to have his house in order – loved to look on a pretty woman too; and was somewhat strict in life withal – matrimony did all this for him. Now, I care little about these comforts; and I can look on a pretty woman without thinking on the sacrament of wedlock – I am scarce holy enough for that."
"Alas! dear uncle, my mother was left a widow a year since, when Glen-houlakin was harried by the Ogilvies. My father, and my two uncles, and my two elder brothers, and seven of my kinsmen, and the harper, and the tasker, and some six more of our people, were killed in defending the castle; and there is not a burning hearth or a standing stone in all Glen-houlakin."
"Cross of Saint Andrew!" said Le Balafré; "that is what I call an onslaught! Ay, these Ogilvies were ever but sorry neighbours to Glen-houlakin – an evil chance it was; but fate of war – fate of war. – When did this mishap befall, fair nephew?" With that he took a deep draught of wine, and shook his head with much solemnity, when his kinsman replied, that his family had been destroyed upon the festival of Saint Jude last bypast.
"Look ye there," said the soldier; "I said it was all chance – on that very day I and twenty of my comrades carried the Castle of Roche-noir by storm, from Amaury Bras-de-fer, a captain of free lances, whom you must have heard of. I killed him on his own threshold, and gained as much gold as made this fair chain, which was once twice as long as it now is – and that minds me to send part of it on an holy errand. – Here, Andrew – Andrew!"
Andrew, his yeoman, entered, dressed like the Archer himself in the general equipment, but without the armour for the limbs, – that of the body more coarsely manufactured – his cap without a plume, and his cassock made of serge, or ordinary cloth, instead of rich velvet. Untwining his gold chain from his neck, Balafré twisted off, with his firm and strong-set teeth, about four inches from the one end of it, and said to his attendant, "Here, Andrew, carry this to my gossip, jolly Father Boniface, the monk of Saint Martin's – greet him well from me, by the same token that he could not say God save ye when we last parted at midnight – Tell my gossip that my brother and sister, and some others of my house, are all dead and gone, and I pray him to say masses for their souls as far as the value of these links will carry him, and to do on trust what else may be necessary to free them from Purgatory. And hark ye, as they were just-living people, and free from all heresy, it may be that they are wellnigh out of limbo already, so that a little matter may have them free of the fetlocks; and in that case, look ye, ye will say I desire to take out the balance of the gold in curses upon a generation called the Ogilvies of Angus-shire, in what way soever the church may best come at them. You understand all this, Andrew?"
The coutelier nodded.
"Then look that none of the links find their way to the wine-house ere the Monk touches them; for if it so chance, thou shalt taste of saddle-girth and stirrup-leather, till thou art as raw as Saint Bartholomew. – Yet hold, I see thy eye has fixed on the wine measure, and thou shalt not go without tasting."
So saying, he filled him a brimful cup, which the coutelier drank off, and retired to do his patron's commission.
"And now, fair nephew, let us hear what was your own fortune in this unhappy matter."
"I fought it out among those who were older and stouter than I was, till we were all brought down," said Durward, "and I received a cruel wound."
"Not a worse slash than I received ten years since myself," said Le Balafré. – "Look at this now, my fair nephew," tracing the dark crimson gash which was imprinted on his face – "An Ogilvie's sword never ploughed so deep a furrow."
"They ploughed deep enough," answered Quentin, sadly; "but they were tired at last, and my mother's entreaties procured mercy for me, when I was found to retain some spark of life; but although a learned monk of Aberbrothick, who chanced to be our guest at the fatal time, and narrowly escaped being killed in the fray, was permitted to bind my wounds, and finally to remove me to a place of safety, it was only on promise, given both by my mother and him, that I should become a monk."
"A monk!" exclaimed the uncle – "Holy Saint Andrew! that is what never befell me. No one, from my childhood upwards, ever so much as dreamed of making me a monk – And yet I wonder when I think of it; for you will allow that, bating the reading and writing, which I could never learn, and the psalmody, which I could never endure, and the dress, which is that of a mad beggar – Our Lady forgive me! – (here he crossed himself) – and their fasts, which do not suit my appetite, I would have made every whit as good a monk as my little gossip at Saint Martin's yonder. But I know not why, none ever proposed the station to me. – O so, fair nephew, you were to be a monk, then – and wherefore, I pray you?"
"That my father's house might be ended, either in the cloister or in the tomb," answered Quentin, with deep feeling.
"I see," answered his uncle – "I comprehend. Cunning rogues – very cunning! – They might have been cheated, though; for, look ye, fair nephew, I myself remember the canon Robersart who had taken the vows, and afterwards broke out of cloister, and became a captain of Free Companions. He had a mistress, the prettiest wench I ever saw, and three as beautiful children – There is no trusting monks, fair nephew, – no trusting them – they may become soldiers and fathers when you least expect it – but on with your tale."
"I have little more to tell," said Durward, "except that, considering my poor mother to be in some degree a pledge for me, I was induced to take upon me the dress of a novice, and conformed to the cloister rules, and even learned to read and write."
"To read and write!" exclaimed Le Balafré, who was one of that sort of people who think all knowledge is miraculous which chances to exceed their own – "To write, say'st thou, and to read! I cannot believe it – never Durward could write his name that ever I heard of, nor Lesly either. I can answer for one of them – I can no more write than I can fly. Now, in Saint Louis's name, how did they teach it you?"
"It was troublesome at first," said Durward, "but became more easy by use; and I was weak with my wounds and loss of blood, and desirous to gratify my preserver, Father Peter, and so I was the more easily kept to my task. But after several months' languishing, my good kind mother died, and as my health was now fully restored, I communicated to my benefactor, who was also Sub-Prior of the Convent, my reluctance to take the vows; and it was agreed between us, since my vocation lay not to the cloister, that I should be sent out into the world to seek my fortune, and that, to save the Sub-Prior from the anger of the Ogilvies, my departure should have the appearance of flight; and to colour it, I brought off the Abbot's hawk with me. But I was regularly dismissed, as will appear from the hand and seal of the Abbot himself."
"That is right – that is well," said his uncle. "Our King cares little what other theft thou mayst have made, but hath a horror at any thing like a breach of the cloister. And, I warrant thee, thou hadst no great treasure to bear thy charges?"
"Only a few pieces of silver," said the youth; "for to you, fair uncle, I must make a free confession."
"Alas!" replied Le Balafré, "that is hard. Now, though I am never a hoarder of my pay, because it doth ill to bear a charge about one in these perilous times, yet I always have (and I would advise you to follow my example) some odd gold chain, or bracelet, or carcanet, that serves for the ornament of my person, and can at need spare a superfluous link or two, or it may be a superfluous stone for sale, that can answer any immediate purpose. – But you may ask, fair kinsman, how you are to come by such toys as this?" – (he shook his chain with complacent triumph) – "They hang not on every bush – they grown not in the fields like the daffodils, with whose stalks children make kinghts' collars. What then? – you may get such where I got this, in the service of the good King of France, where there is always wealth to be found, if a man has but the heart to seek it, at the risk of a little life or so."
"I understood," said Quentin, evading a decision to which he felt himself as yet scarcely competent, "that the Duke of Burgundy keeps a more noble state than the King of France, and that there is more honour to be won under his banners – that good blows are struck there, and deeds of arms done; while the Most Christian King, they say, gains his victories by his ambassadors' tongues."
"You speak like a foolish boy, fair nephew," answered he with the Scar; "and yet, I bethink me, when I came hither I was nearly as simple: I could never think of a King but what I supposed him either sitting under the high deas, and feasting amid his high vassals and Paladins, eating blancmanger, with a great gold crown upon his head, or else charging at the head of his troops like Charlemagne in the romaunts, or like Robert Bruce or William Wallace in our own true histories, such as Barbour and the Minstrel. Hark in thine ear, man – it is all moonshine in the water. Policy – policy does it all. But what is policy, you will say? It is an art this French King of ours has found out, to fight with other men's swords, and to wage his soldiers out of other men's purses. Ah! it is the wisest Prince that ever put purple on his back – and yet he weareth not much of that neither – I see him often go plainer than I would think befitted me to do."
"But you meet not my exception, fair uncle," answered young Durward; "I would serve, since serve I must in a foreign land, somewhere where a brave deed, were it my hap to do one, might work me a name."
"I understand you, my fair nephew," said the royal man-at-arms, "I understand you passing well; but you are unripe in these matters. The Duke of Burgundy is a hot-brained, impetuous, pudding-headed, iron-ribbed dare-all. He charges at the head of his nobles and native knights, his liegemen of Artois and Hainault; think you, if you were there, or if I were there myself, that we could be much farther forward than the Duke and all his brave nobles of his own land? If we were not up with them, we had a chance to be turned on the Provost-Marshal's hands, for being slow in making to; if we were abreast of them, all would be called well, and we might be thought to have deserved our pay; and grant that I was a spear's-length or so in the front, which is both difficult and dangerous in such a mêlée where all do their best, why, my lord duke says, in his Flemish tongue, when he sees a good blow struck, 'Ha! gut getroffen! a good lance – a brave Scot – give him a florin to drink our health;' but neither rank, nor lands, nor treasures, come to the stranger in such a service – all goes to the children of the soil."
"And where should it go, in Heaven's name, fair uncle?" demanded young Durward.
"To him that protects the children of the soil," said Balafré, drawing up his gigantic height. "Thus says King Louis: – 'My good French peasant – mine honest Jacques Bonhomme – get you to your tools, your plough and your harrow, your pruning-knife and your hoe – here is my gallant Scot that will fight for you, and you shall only have the trouble to pay him – And you, my most serene duke, my illustrious count, and my most mighty marquis, e'en rein up your fiery courage till it is wanted, for it is apt to start out of the course, and to hurt its master; here are my companies of ordonance – here are my French Guards – here are, above all, my Scottish Archers, and mine honest Ludovic with the Scar, who will fight, as well or better than you, with all that undisciplined valour, which, in your father's time, lost Cressy and Azincour.' Now, see you not in which of these states a cavalier of fortune holds the highest rank, and must come to the highest honour?"
"I think I understand you, fair uncle," answered the nephew; "but, in my mind, honour cannot be won where there is no risk. Sure, this is – I pray you pardon me – an easy and almost slothful life, to mount guard round and elderly man whom no one thinks of harming, to spend summer-day and winter-night up in yonder battlements, and shut up all the while in iron cages, for fear you should desert your posts – uncle, uncle, it is but the hawk upon his perch, who is never carried out to the fields!"
"Now, by Saint Martin of Tours, the boy has some spirit! a right touch of the Lesly in him; much like myself, though always with a little more folly in it. Hark ye, youth – Long live the King of France! – scarce a day but there is some commission in hand, by which some of his followers may win both coin and credit. Think not that the bravest and most dangerous deeds are done by daylight. I could tell you of some, as scaling castles, making prisoners, and the like, where one who shall be nameless hath run higher risk, and gained greater favour, than any desperado in the train of desperate Charles of Burgundy. And if it please his Majesty to remain behind, and in the background, while such things are doing, he hath the more leisure of spirit to admire, and the more liberality of hand to reward the adventurers, whose dangers, perhaps, and whose feats of arms, he can better judge of than if he had personally shared them. O, 'tis a sagacious and most politic monarch!"
His nephew paused, and then said, in a low but impressive tone of voice, "The good Father Peter used often to teach me there might be much danger in deeds by which little glory was acquired. I need not say to you, fair uncle, that I do in course suppose that these secret commissions must needs be honourable."
"For whom or for what take you me, fair nephew?" said Balafré, somewhat sternly; "I have not been trained, indeed, in the cloister, neither can I write nor read. But I am your mother's brother; I am a loyal Lesly. Think you that I am like to recommend to you any thing unworthy? The best kinght in France, Du Guesclin himself, if he were alive again, might be proud to number my deeds among his achievements."
"I cannot doubt your warranty, fair uncle," said the youth; "you are the only adviser my mishap has left me. But is it true, as fame says, that this King keeps a meagre Court here at his Castle of Plessis? No repiar of nobles or courtiers, none of his grand feudatories in attendance, none of the high officers of the crown; half solitary sports, shared only with the menials of his household; secret councils, to which only low and obscure men are invited; rank and nobility depressed, and men raised from the lowest origin to the kingly favour – all this seems unregulated, resembles not the manners of his father, the noble Charles, who tore from the fangs of the English lion this more than half conquered kingdom of France."
"You speak like a giddy child," said Le Balafré; "and even as a child, you harp over the same notes on a new string. Look you: if the King employs Oliver Dain, his barber, to do what Oliver can do better than any peer of them all, is not the kingdom the gainer? If he bids his stout Provost-Marshal, Tristan, arrest such or such a seditious burgher, take off such or such a turbulent noble, the deed is done and no more of it; when were the commission given to a duke or peer of France, he might perchance send the King back a defiance in exchange. If, again, the King pleases to give to plain Ludovic le Balafré a commission which he will execute, instead of employing the High Constable, who would perhaps betray it, doth it not show wisdom? Above all, doth it not monarch of such conditions best suit cavaliers of fortune, who must go where their services are most highly prized, and most frequently in demand? – No, no, child, I tell thee Louis knows how to choose his confidants, and what to charge them with; suiting, as they say, the burden to each man's back. He is not like the King of Castile, who choked of thirst, because the great butler was not beside to hand his cup. – But hark to the bell of Saint Martin's! I must hasten back to the Castle. – Farewell – make much of yourself, and at eight to-morrow morning present yourself before the drawbridge, and ask the sentinel for me. Take heed you step not off the straight and beaten path in approaching the portal! There are such traps and snap-haunches as may cost you a limb, which you will sorely miss. You shall see the King, and learn to judge him for yourself – farewell."
So saying, Balafré hastily departed, forgetting, in his hurry, to pay for the wine he had called for, a shortness of memory incidental to persons of his description, and which his host, overawed, perhaps, by the nodding bonnet and ponderous two-handed sword, did not presume to use any efforts for correcting.
It might have been expected that, when left alone, Durward would have again betaken himself to his turret, in order to watch for the repetition of those delicious sounds which had soothed his morning reverie. But that was a chapter of romance, and his uncle's coversation had opened to him a page of the real history of life. It was no pleasing one, and for the present the recollections and reflections which it excited, were qualified to overpower other thoughts, and especially all of a light and soothing nature.
Quentin resorted to a solitary walk along the banks of the rapid Cher, having previously enquired of his landlord for one which he might traverse without fear of disagreeable interruption from snares and pitfalls, and there endeavoured to compose his turmoiled and scattered thoughts, and consider his future motions, upon which his meeting with his uncle had thrown some dubiety.
Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he,
He play'd a spring and danced a round
Beneath the gallows-tree!
The manner in which Quentin Durward had been educated, was not of a kind to soften the heart, or perhaps to improve the moral feeling. He, with the rest of his family, had been trained to the chase as an amusement, and taught to consider war as their only serious occupation, and that it was the great duty of their lives stubbornly to endure, and fiercely to retaliate, the attacks of their feudal enemies, by whom their race had been at last almost annihilated. And yet there mixed with these feuds a spirit of rude chivalry, and even courtesy, which softened their rigour; so that revenge, their only justice, was still prosecuted with some regard to humanity and generosity. The lessons of the worthy old monk, better attended to, perhaps, during a long illness and adversity, than they might have been in health and success, had given young Durward still farther insight into the duties of humanity towards others; and, considering the ignorance of the period, the general prejudices entertained in favour of a military life, and the manner in which he himself had been bred, the youth was disposed to feel more accurately the moral duties incumbent on his station than was usual at the time.
He reflected on his interview with his uncle with a sense of embarrassment and disappointment. His hopes had been high; for although intercourse by letters was out of the question, yet a pilgrim, or an adventurous trafficker, or a crippled soldier, sometimes brought Lesly's name to Glen-houlakin, and all united in praising his undaunted courage, and his success in many petty enterprises which his master had intrusted to him. Quentin's imagination had filled up the sketch in his own way, and assimilated his successful and adventurous uncle (whose exploits probably lost nothing in the telling) to some of the champions and knights-errant of whom minstrels sang, and who won crowns and kings' daughters by dint of sword and lance. He was now compelled to rank his kinsman greatly lower in the scale of chivalry; but blinded by the high respect paid to parents, and those who approach that character – moved by every early prejudice in his favour – inexperienced besides, and passionately attached to his mother's memory, he saw not, in the only brother of that dear relation, the character he truly held, which was that of an ordinary mercenary soldier, neither much worse nor greatly better than many of the same profession whose presence added to the distracted state of France.
Without being wantonly cruel, Le Balafré was, from habit, indifferent to human life and human suffering; he was profoundly ignorant, greedy of booty, unscrupulous how he acquired it, and profuse in expending it on the gratification of his passions. The habit of attending exclusively to his own wants and interests, had converted him into one of the most selfish animals in the world; so that he was seldom able, as the reader may have remarked, to proceed far in any subject without considering how it applied to himself, or, as it is called, making the case his own, though not upon feelings connected with the golden rule, but such as were very different. To this must be added, that the narrow round of his duties and his pleasures had gradually circumscribed his thoughts, hopes, and wishes, and quenched in a great measure the wild spirit of honour, and desire of distinction in arms, by which his youth had been once animated. Balafré was, in short, a keen soldier, hardened, selfish, and narrow-minded; active and bold in the discharge of his duty, but acknowledging few objects beyond it, except the formal observance of a careless devotion, relieved by an occasional debauch with brother Boniface, his comrade and confessor. Had his genius been of a more extended character he would probably have been promoted to some important command, for the King, who knew every soldier of his body-guard personally, reposed much confidence in Balafré's courage and fidelity; and, besides, the Scot had either wisdom or cunning enough perfectly to understand, and ably to humour, the peculiarities of that sovereign. Still, however, his capacity was too much limited to admit of his rising to higher rank, and though smiled on and favoured by Louis on many occasions, Balafré continued a mere Life-guards-man, or Scottish Archer.
Without seeing the full scope of his uncle's character, Quentin felt shocked at his indifference to the disastrous extirpation of his brother-in-law's whole family, and could not help being surprised, moreover, that so near a relative had not offered him the assistance of his purse, which, but for the generosity of Maitre Pierre, he would have been under the necessity of directly craving from him. He wronged his uncle, however, in supposing that this want of attention to his probable necessities was owing to avarice. Not precisely needing money himself at that moment, it had not occurred to Balafré that his nephew might be in exigencies; otherwise, he held a near kinsman so much a part of himself, that he would have provided for the weal of the living nephew, as he endeavoured to do for that of his deceased sister and her husband. But whatever was the motive, the neglect was very unsatisfactory to young Durward, and he wished more than once he had taken service with the Duke of Burgundy before he quarrelled with his forester. "Whatever had then become of me," he thought to himself, "I should always have been able to keep up my spirits with the reflection, that I had, in case of the worst, a stout back-friend in this uncle of mine. But now I have seen him, and, woe worth him, there has been more help in a mere mechanical stranger, than I have found in my own mother's brother, my countryman and a cavalier! One would think the slash, that has carved all comeliness out of his face, had let at the same time every drop of gentle blood out of his body."
Durward now regretted he had not had an opportunity to mention Maitre Pierre to Le Balafré, in the hope of obtaining some farther account of that personage; but his uncle's questions had followed fast on each other, and the summons of the great bell of Saint Martin of Tours had broken off their conference rather suddenly. That old man, he thought to himself, was crabbed and dogged in appearance, sharp and scornful in language, but generous and liberal in his actions; and such a stranger is worth a cold kinsman – "What says our old Scottish proverb? – 'Better kind fremit, than fremit kindred[9].' I will find out that man, which, methinks, should be no difficult task, since he is so wealthy as mine host bespeaks him. He will give me good advice for my governance, at least; and if he goes to strange countries, as many such do, I know not but his may be as adventurous a service as that of those Guards of Louis."
As Quentin framed this thought, a whisper from those recesses of the heart in which lies much that the owner does not know of, or will not acknowledge willingly, suggested that, perchance, the lady of the turret, she of the veil and lute, might share that adventurous journey.