Volume Iii Part 8 (1/2)
”That smile is so sweet. Will such an--hem!--such an angelic creature,--really con--descend to converse familiarly with a plain, homely warrior.”
”Your notice does me far too much honour, worthy knight.” And so saying she put the tip of her palm gently on the warrior's rough hand.
Intoxicated as Will was with wine, he was petrified with astonishment and delight, and could not find terms to express his grat.i.tude and adoration. Many others were likewise by the same time testifying, by their bright and exulting looks, the joy and delight they were experiencing in the conversation of those most beautiful and refined of all earthly objects. Tam Craik beheld, or thought he beheld, his lovely Kell among them, blooming in tenfold loveliness. He was so drunk that he could not articulate one syllable; but he fixed his long coulter-nose and grey eyes steadily in the direction of her face, and put his hand below the table and scratched.
Still the cup and the cates circulated without any respite. The Master and the abbot both called them round and round; and though the lovely and high-born dames tasted sparingly, nevertheless the circ.u.mstance of their having touched the cup with their lips was sufficient to induce the enamoured warriors to drink to them in healths deep and dangerous.
Reason had long been tottering on her throne with the best of them, but these amorous draughts of homage overthrew her completely, and laid her grovelling in the dust. The heroes fell from their seats first by ones, but ere the last in threes and fours. Still the courteous and sympathetic beauties tried to administer comfort and a.s.sistance to their _natural protectors_, by holding up their heads, and chafing their temples; but, in spite of all they could do, total oblivion of pa.s.sing events ensued to the whole of our incautious troopers.
The next morning presented a scene in the great hall of Aikwood, which, if it cannot be described, neither can it ever be conceived.
There lay our troop of gallant yeomen, as good as ever heaved buckler, scattered over the floor; some in corners, some below benches, every one of their eyes sealed in profound slumber though the day was well advanced, and every one having an inamorata in his arms, or clinging close to him of her own accord. At a given signal, the great bell of the castle was rung with a knell that might have wakened the dead. The sleepers raised their drowsy and aching heads all at the same time; and, as was natural, every one turned his eyes first toward the partner of his slumbers. Their sensations may be in some measure conceived, when, instead of the youthful, blooming, angelic beings, whom they had seen over-night, there lay a group of the most horrible hags that ever opened eyes on the light of day. Instead of the light, flowing, and curled hair, there hung portions of grey dishevelled locks. Instead of the virgin bloom of the cheek, and the brilliant enamel of the eye, all was rheum, haggardness, and deformity. Some had two or three long pitted teeth, of the colour of amber; some had none. Their lovely mouths were adorned with curled and silvery mustachios; and their fair necks were shrivelled and seriated like the bark of a pine-tree. Instead of the rustling silks and dazzling jewels, they were all clothed in noisome rags; and, to crown the horror of our benumbed and degraded Baccha.n.a.lians, every one of the witches had her eyes fixed on her partner, gleaming with h.e.l.lish delight at the state to which they had reduced themselves, and the horrors of their feelings. The poet, and two or three others, fell into convulsions; and all of them turned away groaning, and hid their faces from these objects of abhorrence.
The Master came with his enchanted liquor once more, and sprinkled it over the prostrate and humbled group, who were now in that state of mental agony that rendered them indifferent to aught that could occur; and, as he sprinkled them, he said to himself, ”I now have the power over you, though you had been seven times anointed in holy church.”
”Aye, seven times seven,” said a tremendous voice; and the words were followed by a laugh that shook the vault of the hall, which laugh was echoed by three or four accordant voices, and afterwards by all the witches in the apartment. The astounded warriors again raised their heads, and beheld their friend, the abbot, stalking along and along the hall in the midst of them in majesty sublime. He wore the same sable and flowing robes, and the same mitre, that he did on the preceding day; but he was now striding openly in his own character, with his legs s.h.a.gged and hairy, shaped like those of a goat, and his feet cloven into two distinct and h.o.r.n.y hoofs. The three attendants were there also, but they were no more three monks, but the identical, Prig, Prim, and p.r.i.c.ker, the infernal pages of Master Michael Scott.
In short, our yeomen discovered, to their utter despair, that they had been riding, eating, and drinking, hand to fist, with the devil in _propria persona_.
Before giving any of them time to recover their senses, he strode up to Dan Chisholm, and stooping over him with exultation, he said, ”Did not I tell you, Christian droich, when I bayed you at the mill, that I would be before hand with you at Melrose, and have not I kept my word?” As he said these words, Dan once more saw down his throat, and beheld the burning flame within. Half-dead with fright, he threw himself back on the floor, and held up one foot and one hand, as his last inefficient defence, on which his infernal Majesty vomited such a torrent of sparkling flame out upon him and his forlorn partners, that they lost all hope of ever again moving from the place where they were.
”Take heart, my brave fellows,” said the Master. ”This great primate, you see, is no other than the prince of the power of the air, the great controller of the mighty elements, who has honoured us with his company. You are now in his power, and lie at his mercy; but he is more of a gentleman than he is generally represented to be, and will scorn to take advantage of a few poor insignificant creatures, who call themselves Christians, of whose company he is sure before he wants it. He knows you will fume, and bully, and fight for a few short years, sending one another home to his ample mansions in myriads before your time. Both he and I would scorn to take farther advantage of beings so blind ignorant, and inconsistent, than suits our own amus.e.m.e.nt. We only love to mock you, show you your own littleness, and how easy a prey you would be, were there a being in the universe that watched for ever over your destruction. Cheer up, gallant soldiers!
and now for the long-waited developement of mighty moment. I will show you the manner, and very mode, by which your captain must only hope to succeed in his great enterprise.”
He then touched every one of them with the divining-rod that was in his hand, p.r.o.nouncing at the same time some mystic words, which none of them comprehended. While he was thus occupied, the witches rushed from the hall, and as soon as he had touched the hindmost, he himself also made his escape, and looked from a crevice of an inner wall. The enchantment began immediately to take effect; the warriors rolled about on the floor in strong convulsions, bellowing and flouncing, trying always to run on all-four, and then tumbling over again. At length their noses and chins began to grow forward in hideous disproportion, till their heads began to a.s.sume something of the forms of the heads of beasts, and liker to those of calves than any things else. The laughter that pealed from loop-hole, crevice, and barbican, was, at this eventual period, excessive. The devil, the three wicked spirits, the great enchanter, and his conventicle of witches, seemed all to be in convulsions at witnessing how the metamorphosed champions shook their long heads, looked at one another, and tried to speak. How their language changed from long-drawn words, half p.r.o.nounced, to downright confused bellowings; and how their forms, in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes, gradually a.s.sumed those of as many mighty and ferocious bulls.
”I have now given you your own proper shapes, and showed you in frames suited to your natures,” cried the Master, from a crevice.
”Pa.s.s forth, and be gone; and carry my respects to your captain.”
Then there was a combined bellow of rage arose in the hall that would have rent any castle to the top but that of Aikwood; and benches, boards, and couches, flew about in flinders on the horns of the furious monsters. Forthwith they rushed out into the great court, and from that to the side of the hill, bellowing, and tearing up the ground with hoof and horn, till the country was alarmed for many miles round; and, believing that all h.e.l.l was broke loose from the castle of Aikwood that day, they betook them to their heels, and fled away out of sight and out of hearing.
The outrageous drove looked back as they ascended the brae to the eastward of the castle, and saw the devil and the great warlock, standing on the topmost tower, laughing at them; the former appearing of a size and dimensions equal to those of another castle. The grand mitre that he wore on his head, shaped like a crescent to conceal his horns, now moved like a cornuted black cloud amid the firmament; his eyes glimmered like two of the reddest of the stars of heaven; and the sceptre that he waved in his right hand was like a tremendous pine all in flame, or rather like a burning aerial meteor. Our transformed warriors gallopped away in terror as fast as cloven hoofs could carry them, with one mighty bison, that had once been Charlie Scott, far a-head of all the rest; for, notwithstanding of all that Charlie had seen and heard in favours of the devil, he felt as much affrighted for him as ever, degraded as he was in form. No wonder was it that our tumultuous group was terrified and galloped off; for at the same time that they saw Satan stretching out his sceptre in his right hand, he held out Tam Craik by the nape of the neck in his left, while the poor fellow was seen sprawling and spurning the air over an unfathomed void. When the arch-fiend made his retreat from among the warriors that morning, in the midst of the confusion he carried Tam off with him, according to compact--fed him for some time on animal food of the richest quality, which, never once satisfying him, the devil grew weary of such a voracious cur, and twisted his neck about.
The drove was no sooner out of sight, than the Master said to one of his pages, ”p.r.i.c.ker, a.s.sume thou the habit that thou hadst yester-eve; mount, and ride after these wild cattle, and deliver them over to the charge of their dolt of a confessor. He will try to rescue them from their present degraded and brutal forms, but he will not be able.
Spirit, thou sawest a part of the charms performed. Give him the proper directions how to find it out before leaving him. It boots nothing offending my kinsman, the Warden.”
p.r.i.c.ker mounted his horse, and rode straight for the fords of Howden-burn, where he knew the friar was awaiting his companions, and meant to have driven them all up before him to the cottage door, where the friar and his fair ward sojourned, and there delivered them over to the care of these two, as a present of fine beeves from the great Master to Sir Ringan Redhough. But before the infernal page overtook them they were all at the door of the cottage, bellowing and kneeling, and trying in vain to make their hard case known to the friar.
p.r.i.c.ker came up, and saluted the friar, who, observing his clerical habit, returned the compliment in a hurried and careless manner--for he was confounded by the arrival of so many mad bulls.
”Reverend brother mine,” said the page, ”I deliver over into thy charge this herd of beautiful cattle, the best breed that ever roamed the forests of Caledon. They are a present from Master Michael Scott to his cousin the Warden of the middle marches. See that you deliver them safe and sound.”
”Lo, thou seest with thine eyes, and thou also hearest with the hearing of the ear,” said the friar, ”that the creatures are outrageous, and not to be governed by the hand of a single man. And thinkest thou a brother of the holy order of Benedict would take a goad in his hand, and ride forth after these bulls of Bashan? Lo, would they not even run headlong upon my mule, and thrust their horns into his side? Thy servant also, and this maiden, would they tread under their feet? Go to! Thou speakest as one lacking understanding.”
”I give them in charge to thee, as desired by one with whom it is dangerous to contend,” said the page; ”and alongst with them this request, that your captain will make away with them as quickly as possible for food to his army.”
At these words of the apparent sacristan there was such a roaring and bellowing commenced among the herd, that, for the first time, the friar began to suspect some horrid enchantment, but wist not what to dread. The drove turned round their heads to the speaker,--shook them in disapproval of what he had said, and joined in such a ferocious roar against him, that it was not like ought the friar had ever witnessed among the brute creation before. The metamorphosed troopers, however, knew too well now who p.r.i.c.ker was to attack him, but, turning again round, they came in a row, and kneeled around the friar, looking at him with the most supplicating expressions of countenance that ever cattle put on.”
”Lo, methinks I have looked upon these wild beasts of the forest in some of the days that are past,” said the friar, ”and that their countenances are not entirely unknown to me; though when, or in what place, in that thing my memory upholdeth me not. I pray thee, brother, to declare unto thy servant where thou camest by these beasts of mine acquaintance. If thou art a follower of the worthy Father Lawrence, thou must speak the truth.--Tell me, art thou a Christian?”
The bulls gave not the infernal page time to reply. They turned about, shook their heads, and tossed the earth at him with their horns, raising at the same time such an outcry of rage against him that the friar himself was afraid, and retreated within the door of the cottage; and he thought that, amid their confused bellowings, he could distinguish as it were these words p.r.o.nounced, ”He a Christian!