Part 23

David, however, having heard of the approach of Edward, at the head of an army more numerous than his own, and his nobles representing to him that the rich and weighty booty which they had taken in their inroad into England, together with the oxen and the horses, would be awkward encumbrances in a battle, he reluctantly abandoned the siege of the castle, and commenced his march towards Jed Forest, about six hours before the arrival of Edward and Sir William Montague.

Madeline took the hand of her lover as he entered, and tears of silent joy fell down her cheeks; but the countess forgot to thank him, in her eagerness to display her beauty and her gratitude in the eyes of her sovereign and kinsman. The young monarch gazed, enraptured, on the fair face of his lovely cousin; and it was evident, while he gazed in her eyes, he thought not of gentle Philippa, the wife of his boyhood; nor was it less evident that she, flattered by the gallantry of her princely relative, forgot her absent husband, though in the presence of his brother. Edward, finding that it would be imprudent to follow the Scottish army into the forest, addressing the countess, said, "Our knights expected, fair coz, to have tried the fair temper of their lances on the Scottish shields, but, as it may not be, in honour of your deliverance, to-morrow we proclaim a tournament to be held in the castle-yard, when each true knight shall prove on the morion of his antagonist whose ladye-love is the fairest."

The eyes of the countess flashed joy; and she smiled, well pleased at the proposal of the sovereign; but Madeline trembled as she heard it.

Early on the following morning the castle-yard was fitted up for the tournament. The monarch and the countess were seated on a dais covered with a purple canopy, and the latter held in her hand a ring which gleamed as a morning star, and which the monarch had taken from his finger, that she might bestow it upon the victor. Near their feet sat Madeline, an unwilling spectator of the conflict. The names of the combatants were known to the pursuivants only, and each entered the lists armed with lance and spear, with their visors down, and having, for defence, a shield, a sort of cuirass, the helmet, gauntlet, and gorget. Several knights had been wounded, and many dismounted; but the interest of the day turned upon the combat of two who already had each discomfited three. They contended long and keenly; their strength, their skill, their activity seemed equal. Victory hung suspended between them.

"Our ladye!" exclaimed the monarch, rising with delight; "but they fight bravely! Who may they be? Were it not that he cannot yet be in England, I should say the knight in dark armour is Sir John Aubrey."

Madeline uttered a suppressed scream, and cast round a look of mingled agony and surprise at the monarch; but the half-stifled cry was drowned by the spectators, who, at that moment, burst into a shout; the knight in dark armour was unhorsed--his conqueror suddenly placed his lance to his breast, but as suddenly withdrew it; and, stretching out his mailed hand to the other, said, "Rise, mine equal! 'twas thy horse's fault, and none of thine, that chance gave me the victory, though I wished it much." The conqueror of the day approached the canopy beneath which the monarch and the countess sat, and, kneeling before the dais, received the ring from her hands. While she had held the splendid bauble in her hands during the contest, conscious of her own beauty, of which Border minstrel and foreign troubadour had sung, she expected, on placing it in those of the victor, to behold it in homage laid again at her feet. But it was not so. The knight, on receiving it, bowed his head, and, stepping back again, knelt before the more lowly seat of Madeline.

"Accept this, dear Madeline," whispered he; and she blushed and startled at the voice which she knew and loved. The countess cast a glance of envy on her companion as she beheld the victor at her feet; yet it was but one, which passed away as the young monarch poured his practised flatteries in her ear.

The king commanded that the two last combatants should raise their visors. The victor, still standing by the side of Madeline, obeyed. It was Sir William Montague.

"Ha! Montague!" said the monarch, "it is you! Well, for your gallant bearing to-day, you shall accompany us to France--we shall need such hands as thine to secure the sceptre of our lawful kingdom. But what modest flower is this that ye deck with your hard-won diamond?" added he, glancing towards Madeline; and, without waiting a reply, he turned to the countess, saying, "Is she of thy suite, dear coz? She hath a fair face, worthy the hand-maiden of beauty's queen."

The countess liked not his inquiries, but, nevertheless, was flattered by the compliment with which he concluded; and she replied that she was the orphan daughter of her father's friend, and the worshipful divinity of Sir William. The other combatant now approached also; and, kneeling in front of the dais, raised his visor.

"Aubrey!" exclaimed the monarch.

"My brother!" cried Madeline, starting to his side.

"Your brother?" responded Sir William.

"What! my little Madeline a woman?" replied the stranger. "Bless thee, my own sister!"

"What!" exclaimed the monarch, "the paragon of our tournament the sister of bold Aubrey? And you, too, the combatant against her chosen champion! Had ye spilled blood on either side, this day's sport might have spoiled a bridal. But whence come ye, Aubrey, and when?"

"My liege," replied the other, "having arrived at Knaresborough on the day after the departure of your majesty, I hastened hither to inform your grace that France lies open to our arms, and our troops are eager to embark."

In a few days Edward left Wark, leaving behind him a powerful garrison for the defence of the castle; but he had left it desolate to poor Madeline, for he had taken to accompany him, on his invasion of France, her betrothed husband and her brother. That brother whom she had met but three days before, she had not seen from childhood--nor was she certain that he lived--for he had been a soldier from his boyhood, and his life had been spent in the camp and in foreign wars; while she had been nurtured under the protection of the Countess of Salisbury.

It was about seven years after the events we have alluded to had occurred, that Edward, covered with all the fame of a conqueror, if not the advantages of conquest, returned to England. During his victories and the din of war, however, he had not forgotten the beauty of his fair cousin, whose glances had bewildered him at Wark Castle; and now, when he returned, his admiration was renewed, and she appeared as the first favourite of his court. He had provided a royal banquet for the nobles and the knights who had distinguished themselves during the French wars. A thousand lights blazed in the noble hall--martial music pealed around--and hundreds of the brightest eyes in England looked love and delight. The fairest and the noblest in the land thronged the assembly. Jewels sparkled and studded the gorgeous apparel of the crowd. In the midst of the hall walked the gay and courtly monarch, with the fair Joan of Salisbury resting on his arm. They spoke of their first meeting at Wark, of the siege and the tournament, and again they whispered, and hands were pressed, and looks exchanged; and, while they walked together, a blue garter, decked with gold, pearls, and precious stones, and which, with a golden buckle, had fastened the sandal of the fair Joan round the best-turned ankle in the hall, became loose and entangled among her feet. The countess blushed; and the monarch, with the easy unembarrassment and politeness of a practised gallant, stooped to fasten the unfortunate riband. As the nobles beheld the sovereign kneel with the foot of the fair countess on his knee, a hardly suppressed smile ran through the assembly. But, observing the smile upon the face of his nobles, the monarch rose proudly, and, with the garter in his hand, exclaimed, "_Honi soit qui mal y pense_!"--"Shame be to him who thinks ill of it!" and buckling the garter round his left knee, he added, "Be this the Order of St George!--and the proudest monarchs and most valiant knights in Christendom shall be proud to be honoured with the emblem of thy garter, fair coz."

Scarce, however, was the royal banquet closed, when the voice of lamentation was heard in every house, though the mourners went not about the streets; for the living feared to follow their dead to the sepulchre. The angel of death breathed upon the land; he stretched out his wings and covered it--at his breath the land sickened--beneath the shadow of his wings the people perished. The green fields became as a wilderness, and death and desolation reigned in the market-places. Along the streets moved cavalcades of the dead--the hearse of the noble and the car of the citizen; and the dead bodies of the poor were picked up upon the streets! The churchyards rose as hills, and fields were turned up for the dead! The husband fled from his dying wife; the mother feared to kiss her own child; and the bridegroom turned in terror from her who was to have been his bride upon the morn. There was no cry heard but "The dead!--the dead!" The plague walked in silence, sweeping its millions from the earth, laughing at the noisy slaughter of the sword, making kings to tremble, and trampling upon conquerors as dust.

Such was the state of London, when Sir William Montague and Sir John Aubrey arrived from France. In every street they met the long trains of the dead being borne to their grave; but the living had deserted them; and, if they met an occasional passenger, fear and paleness were upon his face. They hurried along the streets in silence--for each would have concealed his thoughts from the other--but the thoughts of both were of Madeline; and the one trembled lest he should find his betrothed, the other his sister, with the dead! They proceeded to the house of the Duchess of Salisbury; but they were told that she had fled, to seek a place of refuge from the destroying glance of the pestilence. From the domestics, however, they learned that Madeline had ceased to be the companion of the duchess; but they were also directed where they would find her, with a friend in the city--if she yet lived! But, added their informants, they had heard that, in the street which they named, the inhabitants died faster than the living could bury them. When the haughty Joan became the acknowledged favourite of the king, she was no longer a meet friend or protector to the gentle Madeline; and the latter had taken up her residence in the house of a merchant, who, in his youth, had fought by her father's side; and where, if she enjoyed not the splendour and the luxuries of wealth, neither was she clothed with the trappings of shame.

With anxious steps the betrothed husband and the brother hastened to the dwelling of the merchant. They reached it.

"Doth Madeline Aubrey reside here?" inquired they in the same breath. "Does she live?--does she live?"

"She doth reside here," answered the citizen, "and--the saints be praised!--good Madeline hath escaped, with my whole house; and I believe it is for her sake, though she feareth no more the breath of the pestilence, than though it were healthsome as the summer breeze bearing the fragrance of the May-thorn. But, belike, ye would speak with her, gentlemen--ye may step in, good sirs, and wait till her return."

Her brother started back.

"Gracious Heaven! can my Madeline be abroad at a time like this!" exclaimed Sir William, "when men tremble to meet each other, and the hands of friends convey contagion! Can ye inform us, good man, where we shall find her?"

"Nay, that I cannot," answered he; "for, as I have told ye, sweet Madeline feareth not the plague, but walketh abroad as though it existed not; and now, doubtless, she is soothing the afflicted, or handing a cup of water to the dying stranger, whom his own kindred have fled from and forsaken, when the evil came upon him. But, as ye seem acquainted with her, will not ye tarry till she come?"

They gazed towards each other with horror and with fear; yet, in the midst of their apprehensions and dismay, each admired the more than courage of her of whom Joan Plantagenet had said that she had more wisdom of head than boldness of heart. They entered the house, and they sat down together in silence. Slowly, wearily the moments passed on, each strengthening anxiety, each pregnant with agony.

"She may never return!" groaned Sir William; "for the healthy have been smitten down upon the streets; and the wretched hirelings, who make a harvest of death, have borne to the same grave the dying with the dead!"

At length a light footstep was heard upon the stairs. They started to their feet. The door opened, and Madeline, more beautiful than ever they had beheld her, stood before them.

"My own!--my Madeline!" cried Sir William, hastening to meet her.

"My sister!" exclaimed her brother.

Her head rested on the bosom of those she loved; and, in the rapture of the moment, the pestilence and the desolation that reigned around were forgotten. At length, the danger to which she had exposed herself recurring to his mind--

"Let us flee from this horrid charnel-house, dearest," said Sir William, "to where our bridal may not be mingled with sights of wo, and where the pestilence pursueth not its victims. Come, my own--my betrothed--my Madeline, let us haste away."

"Wherefore would my William fly?" said she--and a smile of joy and of confidence played upon her lips; "have ye not defied death from the sword and the spear, and braved it as it sped with the swift-flying arrow, and would ye turn and flee from the pestilence which worketh only what the sword performs, and what chivalry requires as a sacrifice to the madness of woman's folly? But whither would you flee to escape it? Be it south or north, it is there; and east or west, it is there also. If ye flee from the pestilence, would ye flee also from the eye of Him who sends it?"

Again they urged her to leave the city; and again she endeavoured to smile; but it died languidly on her lip--the rose on her cheek vanished, and her mild eyes in a moment became dim. She sank her head upon the bosom of her lover, and her hand rested on the shoulder of her brother. The contagion had entered her heart. A darkening spot gathered upon her fair cheek--it was the shadow of the finger of death--the seal of eternity!

"My Madeline!" cried Sir William. "Merciful Heaven!--spare her! spare her!"

"Oh, my sister!" exclaimed her brother, "have I hastened to my native land, but to behold thee die?"

She feebly pressed their hands in hers--"Leave me--leave me, loved ones!--my William!--my brother!--flee from me!--there is death in the touch of your Madeline!--We shall meet again!"

The disease which at that time desolated England was in some respects peculiar, even as a plague. The dark spots which so clearly indicated the presence of the spoiler began in a mere darkening of some part of the body; but so virulent was the disease, and so rapid its onset and course, that even a visitor might perceive the beginning, and mark the progress towards death, during the short period of a call.

The plague-spot darkened on the cheek of Madeline Aubrey, and, in a few hours, she was numbered with its victims.

END OF VOL. XIV