CHAPTER XIX.

HOW BORTHWICK FULFILLED HIS PROMISE.

"My path was waylaid by a band Of ruffians hired to kill; They seized and tied me hand and foot Though me they owed no ill.

"A dreary night and day I passed; All hope was far removed; I thought each hour would prove my last; Yet Anna still I loved."--_The Druid_.

In fulfilment of his boast made in the Tower of Bronghty Borthwick had fully examined "all the avenues" to the chamber of Lady Margaret Drummond, preparatory and previous to her abduction. By inquiries cunningly pursued among the domestics within, and by observations made from without, he had discovered the exact locale of her bed-chamber, and her hour for retiring, and now, being aware that the prince was hunting in the Howe of Angus, he resolved to make the attempt at once.

As yet there was no appearance of the Laird of Largo's dreaded ships returning; but the evening of the appointed day closed darkly and hazily in, and the three vessels of Captain Howard had been descried by Sir Patrick Gray from the Craig of Bronghty, as they crept slowly and stealthily in shore.

It was one of those evenings when the chill east wind brings a thick _haar_, as the Scots name it, from the German Sea, when the moon veils her head in the clouds, and a murky gloom envelopes everything.

It was one hour past Margaret's usual time for retiring, yet she was not in bed. During the whole of that day and the day preceding, the new joy which had replaced her usually sad and quiet demeanour, the light that sparkled in her calm soft eyes, and the buoyancy of her spirits, were remarked by her sisters; but they knew not that Margaret was happy because her important secret was shared and approved of by her father, who had ridden away to Dunblane, accompanied by Carnock and Balloch, to examine the cathedral registers, and assure himself that nothing was wanting but the Papal dispensation to make all clear, on announcing to Parliament, when it met in the metropolis, that his daughter was Duchess of Rothesay, and the mother of a little princess who yet might wear that crown of thorns which was the inheritance of the Stuarts.

The fact of a priest and bishop being cognizant of a marriage within the degrees forbidden by the church, affords a strong proof that the corruption and neglect by which that church was crumbling down in Scotland were beginning a hundred years before the Reformation was achieved by Knox and his followers.

Margaret was happy, too, because she would soon be able to impart to her dear sisters, whom she loved so tenderly, the perilous secret, which she was ever upbraiding herself for having withheld from them so long; and she imagined how great would be the astonishment of Euphemia and Sybilla when her baby would be shown to them, and the joy of little Lizzie and Beatie finding themselves aunts to a real live princess.

Wearied with long surmises and thoughtful reveries, and with fondling her pretty little Margaret--for it had been named after herself and the queen-mother--and with hushing those feeble cries which as yet had never gone beyond the thick stone walls of the tapestried room, nor been heard by any one save her faithful old nurse and constant attendant, the beautiful young duchess had fallen asleep on her bed, partly undressed, and with the babe nestling in her bosom. On the inside her door was secured by those complicated bolts of wood and iron with which all internal doors were then fastened in old Scottish houses, but her window, which was in the round-tower at the street-corner _still_ appears never to have possessed a grating.

Twelve tolled in the tower of the "Blessed Virgin-in-the-fields." The mist was thicker, and the night darker than ever.

Margaret did not hear the sound of feet in the narrow street below, for the lurkers there trod softly; neither did she hear their voices, for they spoke in whispers; but there, masked, muffled, and disguised as peasants, in broad round bonnets, frieze gaberdines, and deerskin boots, were the governors of Stirling and Broughty, with _Sir_ Hew Borthwick; other followers they had none, for this expedition was so desperate and daring that they could trust none, even from among the many well-chosen ruffians with whom the two chief traitors had garrisoned the royal castles committed to their care.

Margaret did not hear the jarring of two long lances, tied together, against the panes of glass, as by this means they affixed the iron hooks of a rope ladder to the stone mouldings of the tower window-sole, and then held it firm and steadily at the foot, while Borthwick clambered to the casement, which (although it was twenty-five feet from the ground) he reached with ease, and raising the sash entered softly. He then stood within the apartment, with two naked poniards in his belt, for defence, in case of surprise or attack.

All appeared just as we have described it before--the rich little couch, the carved _prie-Dieu_, the Venetian mirror, with its bottles of rose-water, pots of essence and other appurtenances, and the thick dark tapestry. The wax tapers in the silver girandoles on the dressing-table were dimly burning and flickering, for the wicks were long, and snuffers were not invented until the epoch of James IV.

Margaret lay on her couch, fast asleep, with one white arm extended on her pillow, and the other round her infant, whose little head reposed on a luxuriant mass of her thick brown hair, which had escaped from that golden net or caul, then worn by the ladies of the court, and was streaming over her pillow. The ribbon points of her long boddice were partly untied, and on the dressing-table lay a multitude of those skewers of gold and silver tags and clasps which noble dames then used, before the simple invention of the _pin_, which was first adopted by Catharine Howard, an English queen. The rosy and dimpled hands of the infant, like its round and sleeping face, were nestling in the bosom of its young and delicate mother.

It was a touching picture of perfect innocence and love reposing together; but it affected not the sensual and cowardly heart of the ignoble Borthwick, or of Sir Patrick Gray, whose black head, through the mask of which his fierce and sinister eyes, that gleamed like two evil stars, might have been seen peering over the window-sole into the chamber of the sleeping girl. Something that glittered in the mouth of this baronial bravo, a nearer inspection would have shown to be a dagger, which he held between his teeth.

"Well, 'pon my soul, the prince's taste is not bad!" grumbled the other ruffian (who was flushed with wine), as he contemplated the beautiful girl, whose soft and regular breathing was the only sound that broke the silence of the sanctuary on which he was intruding his unhallowed presence. "A baby, too! Oho! now, whose brat may this be?"

Margaret turned her noble head, parted her fine lips, and smiled tenderly in her sleep.

Borthwick thought she was about to waken, and shrunk irresolutely back; but the dreams of such innocence as hers are ever pleasing and gentle, so the young girl still slept on.

"Donnart fool! why dost thou tarry?" asked Gray, in a hoarse whisper. "Be quick!"

His voice half wakened Margaret, and she moved her head again, and a sigh escaped her lips.

Borthwick drew from his breast one of those large and gaudy Dutch cotton handkerchiefs which were then common in Scotland, and with brutal energy tied it completely over the head of Margaret, and, tightening it across her mouth, muffled and stifled any cry she might have uttered; but the slightest sound was impossible, for sudden terror deprived her of all power of thought or action. He then raised her in his powerful arms, even as he would have done the wakened infant, which now began to raise its plaintive little voice, and which he shook roughly off, as it grasped its mother's thick soft hair. He bore her to the window, and thrust her through it, upon the right arm of Sir Patrick Gray, who grasped with his left hand the rope ladder (which was firmly secured below by Sir James Shaw), and which he descended in safety to the ground.

Borthwick sprang after them, but as Shaw lent his assistance to bear off Margaret, the light ladder swayed about in the wind, which dashed the growling and enraged conspirator against the rough wall like a plummet; by this means it snapped, and he fell heavily to the ground, but he hurried after the two barons, who were bearing Margaret down to the beach, which was then within less than a pistol-shot of the house.

As she had now freed her head from the muffler, she uttered a succession of shrill and piercing cries; but none heard or attended to them, for the stillness and darkness of midnight rested on the mist-shrouded town and river. In that "good old time," when the country-houses of the Scottish gentry were manned and moated garrisons, or towers that were entered at an upper story by ladders, which the careful inmates drew up after them; when their towns had walls with barrier-portes, and their streets had neither lights nor pavements, but when every window was grated, and every close and wynd secured by a massive gate; when people carried lanterns at night, and every one went armed to the teeth, as a security against every one else--the clash of swords or the cries of fear and danger excited but little interest. Thus, without suffering the least interruption, the knightly ruffians and their accomplice reached the beach, where, within a bowshot of the chapel of St. Nicholas, Captain Edmund Howard, with a well-armed boat's-crew of picked English seamen, awaited them in the yawl of the _Royal Harry_.

"Do not be alarmed, fair lady," said he, as Margaret was borne over the chafing surf, and placed in the stern-sheets of the boat by a man who grasped her with the tenacity of a vice, and who whispered huskily and impiously in her ear.

"Be not afraid of me, lady, for I am innocent as the Paschal Lamb, and as gentle to boot."

"By that blessed name," she implored, "I conjure you to tell me the meaning of this? and who you are----"

"I am Sir Hew Borthwick, knight of an unfortunate ilk, but your most devoted servitor, lady."

"O, heavenly mercy!" she murmured, on hearing that terrible name, and believing that all her old forebodings were about to be realized, immediately fainted, or became powerless, and had no longer any capability of coherence in speech or thought.

"Devil be thanked--now we shall have no more trouble with her," said Borthwick, as Captain Howard kindly spread his own velvet mantle over her.

"Poor little thing," said he; "she has fallen among evil hands; but, thank heaven, this dog's duty will soon be over. To-night she will swing in her hammock, aboard the _Royal Harry_."

"And to-morrow may mingle her tears with the waters that bear her to English Harry's prison," added Sir James Shaw, laughing.

"Hold water a moment, my lads," said the English captain, as he flung a purse to Borthwick, who caught it as a hungry dog does a bone. "Master Hew, this is the last largess of King Henry's I hope you will ever receive from my hand."

"Thank you, Captain Howard--life is a race, and money the prize. In this world we always scorn honest poverty and worship gilded crime."

"Philosophy in a cur's throat," muttered Howard. "Adieu, gentlemen; when next I unfurl St. George's cross in these waters, I hope to do it in fair daylight, when bringing to your shores a bright-eyed English queen. And now give way, my hearties," he added, as the oars were dipped into the water, and the boat was slewed round--"give way for life!"

"Or death," said Borthwick, with a chuckling laugh, as he concealed the heavy purse in his broad leathern girdle. "Farewell, sirs."

"Farewell," cried Howard, with one hand grasping the tiller and the other placed at the side of his mouth to convey the sound--"and may the great devil go with you for a rascally Scots pirate and ground shark."

Margaret lay in a death-like faint, and this gallant English gentleman, while commiserating her fate and cursing the secret duty on which his subtle king had sent him, still urged his men to _give way_, and at every stroke their fourteen oars almost lifted the light boat out of the water. Howard raised the mantle repeatedly from the pale face of his prisoner, and the soft beauty of her features served every moment to increase the disgust he felt for himself and his Scottish colleagues.

The tide was ebbing fast, and as the river was running like a millrace, they soon reached the _Royal Harry_, which, with her consorts, was abreast of Broughty Castle, laying to, with her fore and mizen yards aback; but it was not until she was placed on one of the cushioned lockers of the great cabin, where proper restoratives were kindly and judiciously applied by two pretty young female attendants whom Howard had brought for her from London, that poor Margaret began to recover from her first shock of terror, and to become aware of where she was.

With the wind right ahead, the _Harry_ began to beat out of the narrow channel, on each side of which are broad and dangerous sandbanks, which then were alike destitute of lights and buoys; but a quartermaster was in the fore-chains, constantly heaving the lead. The night was misty, for a thick eastern haar yet floated on the bosom of the sea. The moon, now full-orbed and brilliant, was shining, like a lamp-globe of obscured glass, shorn of its beams, which lent a palpable whiteness to the mist they could not pierce. As the wind freshened a little and made gaps through the fogbank, the moonlight played along the waves, which followed each other in long white lines of glittering foam.

The English ships heeled over as the breeze freshened, for they were now always close-hauled. The stately _Harry_ rode gracefully over each long rolling swell that curled under her prow; but Howard thanked his good angel when he was clear of that dangerous estuary, and when his next larboard tack enabled him to run far beyond the shoals of the Buddon-ness.

At times the mist was so dense that the two consorts of the _Harry_ could not discern her top-light; the watch rang the ship's bell every ten minutes, and they responded. This monotonous ringing continued for nearly two hours, when suddenly the watch of the leading English ship was startled by the report of a heavy culverin, apparently only a few fathoms distant from their weatherbow, or so close that the red flash was seen through the white and moonlit haze.

All hands were piped, and with alacrity the seamen stood to their quarters, but in considerable excitement, for _Andrew Wood_ was murmured along the decks as the ports were opened and the loaded guns run out, while Howard hurried Margaret Drummond to a place of safety below the water-line. But in accordance with King Henry's express orders, he was resolved to avoid hostilities if possible, and if the stranger should prove to be the famous Scottish admiral, to deceive him by answering his hail in _French_.