CHAPTER XXV.

HOWARD AND MARGARET.

"Lady, those hours for aye are gone. Our days of youth and joy are past; And each new year but rolls along To that which soon must be our last. Our early friendship--early joy, Moments affectionate and dear, The rules of life too soon destroy, And leave a barren desert here."

Margaret had now been three days on board of the _Harry_, which, with her consorts, the _White Rose_ and _Cressi_, had been vainly endeavouring to weather the dangerous Ness of Buchan, and gain the open German Sea; but as Howard's evil fortune would have it, the stiff breeze blew right ahead, and they were forced to tack and tack again, running eastward and westward on the same line, like that fated ship which, in the nautical legend, is ever striving in vain to weather Table Bay.

Howard, on leaving England, had provided two attendants for Margaret--pretty young English girls, whose names are recorded as Rose and Cicely. They were gentle and attentive, and did all that their kind natures dictated to soothe the prisoner's grief, which, after the first wild paroxysm had subsided, became a calm and settled bitterness, sadness, and dejection; and her tears fell incessantly for her child, which had been left in the secret alcove, where, perhaps, none might discover it, and where its feeble cries might be unheard till it perished; but then she remembered that Rothesay would know and reveal the place, and save its little life at all hazards.

She was now aware of being in the power of Henry's agents, and that she would be removed in secret, to make way for an English princess.

Howard, a gallant and polished gentleman, had visited her twice; the first time she repulsed him with flashing eyes and wild upbraidings of inhumanity and cruelty; the second time she heard all he had to say in silence, remaining pale and immovable, with eyes downcast, weeping and inflamed, for her powers of utterance were almost gone, and despair was coming fast upon her. Her great beauty of face and grace of form, when united to her grief, touched the manly heart of Howard; deep and sincere emotions of pity were stirred within him; and soon a deeper and a softer influence began to steal into his breast, and he muttered to himself again and again, as he walked on the weather-side of his poop--

"By St. George, I would rather stand old Largo's heaviest broadside than the witching glance of this fair woman's eyes! If I could but teach her to love me, a double end would be gained: it would win me Henry's favour on one hand, and such a charming wife on the other, as never a Howard had in his bosom before."

Then he longed to visit her again, and try his powers of consolation. He descended to the door of her cabin.

"How is the Scottish dame?" he inquired of little Will Selby, one of his pages, who remained below in attendance.

"Ill enough at heart, but pretty well in body, sir," replied the lad, with an impudent smile.

"Pretty well, sir," added his brother, tall Dick Selby the gunner, a strong and athletic son of old Father Thames; "especially after parting with her loose ballast in the last night's breeze."

Howard knit his brow at this coarse speech.

"Poor little thing," he muttered; "may the great devil take this pitiful errand, say I! By my soul, John o'Lynne," said he to his sailing master, or second in command, "I would rather walk over the standing part of the fore-sheet, with a shot at each heel, than do all this dirty work over again!"

He knocked softly at the cabin door, which was opened by Rose, one of the attendants. Exhausted and overcome, Lady Margaret had fallen asleep on one of the cushioned lockers; a velvet cloak was spread over her; one white hand, and her pretty feet in their red velvet slippers richly embroidered with gold, were only visible. Her face was deathly pale; her eyelids unusually swollen and inflamed, while their long lashes were matted by the bitter tears she had shed. Her rich soft hair was in disorder. It hung half in and half out of its gold caul, and Cicely was kindly and gently endeavouring to plait it into braids, while its owner, her new mistress, slept.

"Thou art a good girl, Cicely," said the captain, "and shalt have a ring of gold for this."

Though he spoke in low voice, Margaret was roused from her uneasy slumber, and started into a sitting position. Cicely and Rose withdrew into the inner cabin, and their lady began, as usual, to weep in silence, for the tears, which she had not the power to repress, rolled in large drops slowly over her face.

"Still so sad, so sorrowful!" said Howard, as he knelt on one knee, and taking her cold white hand in his, gazed kindly into her fine blue eyes; "still weeping, dear madam; still those tears, which, like your reproaches, cut me to the soul!"

"Alas! sir, what other solace have the wretched, but their tears?"

"I am but a plain English seaman, lady; I have been somewhat of a courtier in my time, but the salt water, as it washed the perfume out of my doublet, obliterated also the fine speeches that were then at my tongue's end, and I may not now fashion soft nothings to suit a lady's ear; but I speak from my heart, and with all the sincerity of an honest purpose. Oh! would, lady, that I could find some means of serving you and drying those tears! I beseech you to be pacified, and to hope--for while life remains to us, there is always _hope_ to bear us onward like a fair good breeze."

"If once I see your English shore, what hope shall I have then?"

"Heaven only knows what may happen before we have old England on our lee, lady. This head-wind freshens every minute, and you may see that the rocks of Buchan are still upon our starboard quarter, while the sea looks black to port."

Margaret gazed anxiously from the cabin windows, and saw the bold coast of Invercruden half shrouded in the haze of evening, as the sun sank behind it; she saw, also, the waves rolling in white mountains on the Bowness, the most eastern point of Scotland, where the rocks are so steep and the water so deep, that, in one of the rooms of the High Constable's castle, a glass of wine has been drunk from the top-gallant yard-arm of a vessel, as an old tradition tells us.

"If you would but land me, even on yonder stormy point, I know one who would lay an earldom at your feet--a Howard, an Englishman though you be."

"I would not disobey my king or betray his orders for all the earldoms in Scotland, lady. My father was an English lord, true; but the English nobles are not a race of sordid slaves like the Scottish peers, lady, ever ready to barter their country and their service for foreign gold and gain."

"Too true--too true!" said Margaret, wringing her hands; "I feel myself the victim of this cupidity."

"But I pray you to pardon my harshness of speech," said the handsome Howard, with great gentleness.

Amid all her grief, Margaret had sufficient perception to observe Howard's modulated tones, and the full, earnest, and anxious expression of his eye, which indicated the emotion then stealing into his heart. At first, the idea flashed upon her mind that she would make the poor Englishman's dawning passion subservient to her purpose and the achievement of her liberty; but Margaret Drummond was too artless and too honourable for such a course, and at once repressed the thought; for there was so much of open candour on his manly brow, and so much of kindness in his fine eyes and well-formed mouth, that she could perceive, although _he_ was the instrument of her wrong and misery, that he was at heart her friend, and might yet prove her most powerful protector. To such a man, she knew at once all bribes would be offered in vain; and she knew that she had nothing to hope for but from his generosity, his pity, or his love.

She gazed fixedly and with agony at the lessening shore, as the _Harry_ stood off with its head towards the German Sea, and a pause, filled up by sighs, ensued.

"You still refuse to restore me to liberty?" she said, while her tears fell fast again.

"Absolutely--once and for all."

"For the first time in my life, I have received a refusal from a gentleman," said Margaret, proudly and bitterly.

"Alas! that this unfortunate should be me!"

"But it matters not; we are still in the Scottish seas, and a time may come when you will be forced to listen to me."

"Listen! oh, Lady Margaret! if you know the secret which is hushed in my heart!" replied Howard, who felt her reproaches deeply. "I do beseech you to pardon me," he continued, in a sad and earnest manner, "for I obey the dictates of a cold and politic king, not those of my conscience or my heart."

"A brave English gentleman should be above being the tool even of a king."

"Madam, I would deem myself the most ungallant of Englishmen if I refused you anything that lay within my power to grant, but liberty must lie with Henry himself."

"Liberty! but I am not an English subject. Oh, Rothesay, Rothesay!" continued Margaret, giving way to a fresh burst of grief; "what will be your thoughts on finding that I am gone?"

"Believe me, Lady Margaret," said Howard, in his saddest tone, and yet with somewhat of pique in his manner, "you will recover your love for this boy prince, and King Harry may mate you to some gallant English courtier."

"Thou thinkest me very facile," said Margaret, coldly, and with a pout on her pretty mouth.

"Nay, lady, I only think you beautiful, gentle, good, and, indeed, most loveable; so I crave pardon if I viewed you like a court lady too. They easily forget an affection; for women, alas! are very facile--yea, variable as wind and weather."

"Many women never loved at all, sir."

"No woman ever had only one love, gentle lady," replied the seaman, laughing.

Again Margaret renewed her entreaties to be set ashore; but she no longer resorted to bribery, for she saw how the noble Howard was stung when she formerly did so. Now she appealed only to his generosity, his courtesy, and his chivalry, and she plied her cause with all the power and eloquence that grief inspired, but plied in vain, though Howard became fearful that he would not be long able to withstand her pleading tongue, when aided by two such speaking eyes; he therefore begged permission to retire on deck, where his presence had long been required, for the south-east wind was increasing to a squall, and sail after sail had to be taken off the three English ships, which were now separated and far apart.

The dangerous coast of Buchan, of Cruden, and Peterhead, with all their bluffs, and reefs, and boiling caves, were on their lee; half-veiled in watery clouds, the sun had sunk behind the hill of Bennochie--that landmark of the ocean--and an angry sea was rolling in huge billows on the stern and terrible shore. To increase Margaret's mental and bodily miseries, a severe storm came on, and she had only one thought in the intervals of her sickness, as she lay weeping and supremely wretched on a couch--one desire--that this hated English ship might be dashed upon her native coast, and that she might have one desperate chance of ending her sorrows--of being saved or drowned. She would freely have risked one for the other; but then she remembered the poor mariners, who in that event might perish; and she prayed God and St. Olaus the patron of that rocky shore, to forgive her evil wishes; and, after reckoning on her white fingers the hours she had been absent from her poor babe, and after becoming totally exhausted, she fell into a deep, deep sleep, and was long unconscious of all that passed around her.

The English ships floated on the chaos of waters. With evening a pale ashy hue stole over them, and the whole sea darkened as the clouds lowered above it; then the wind swept past with its mighty breath, rolling the waves like vast ridges of mountains crested with foam, and having long dark vales of water between.

Meanwhile, Howard, an able seaman, was using incredible exertions to weather the storm and that deadly lee shore, behind the bluffs and peaks of which the sheets of lightning were reddening the cloudy sky. He reduced the sails to a few strips of canvas, and lowered the top-gallant yards on deck. Being ignorant of the strong currents, as the night-cloud deepened and the hoarse thunder died away, he feared much that some of his consorts might be stranded; he could see nothing of them, for, on hoisting a lantern at the main-mast head, no answering signals were returned. Every wave that swept over the _Harry_ bore something from her deck; and John of Lynne was ordered to cut away her two large anchors, after which she rode more lightly over the black tumbling billows, and lay a point nearer the wind.

But the increasing storm compelled Howard at last to put his ship about, and away she flew like the wind itself, round Rattray Head, a promontory of Aberdeenshire; and so he bore away towards the Moray Firth, in search of shelter and of safety.