Part 16 (1/2)

An old man's face peeped through a little wicket in the door, and at sight of the two youths, evidently of high rank, said in a trembling voice, 'Alas! alas! Sir, bid these cruel men go away. I have nothing here-no one-only my sick daughter.'

'You hear,' said Malcolm, turning round; 'only his sick daughter.'

'Sick daughter!-old liar! Here's an honest tinker makes oath he has h.o.a.rds of gold laid up for Vaurus, and ten Armagnacs hidden in his house. Have at him! Bring fire!'

Blows hailed thick on the door; a flaming torch was handed over the heads of the throng; horrible growls and roars pervaded them. Malcolm and Ralf, furious at the cheat, stood among the foremost, making so much noise themselves between thundering and reviling, and calling out, 'Where are the Armagnacs? Down with the traitors!' that they were not aware of a sudden hush behind them, till a buffet from a heavy hand fell on Malcolm's shoulder, and a mighty voice cried 'Shame! shame! What, you too!'

'There are traitors hid here, Sir,' said Percy, in angry self-justification.

'And what an if there are? Back, every one of you! rogues that you be!-Here, Fitzhugh, see those villains back to the camp. Let their arms be given up to the Provost-marshal.-Kites and crows as you are! Away, out with you!'

Henry pointed to the broken door, and the cowed and abashed soldiers slunk away from the terrible light of his eyes. No man could stand before the face of the King.

There was a stillness. He stood leaning on his sword, his chest heaving with his panting breaths. He was naturally as fleet as the swift-footed Achilles, but the winter had told upon him, and the haste with which he had rushed to the rescue left him breathless and speechless, while he seemed as it were to nail the two lads to the spot by his steady gaze of mingled distress and displeasure.

Neither could brook his eye: Percy hung his head like a boy in a sc.r.a.pe; Malcolm quailed with terror, but at the same time felt a keen sense of injury in being thus treated as a plunderer, and the blow under which his shoulder ached seemed an indignity to his royal blood.

'Boys,' said Henry, still low and breathlesly, but all the more impressively, 'what is to become of honour and mercy if such as you must needs become ravening wolves at scent of booty?'

'It was not booty, Sir; they said traitors were hid here,' said Percy, sulkily.

'Tus.h.!.+ the old story! Ever the plea for rapine and bloodthirstiness. After the warnings of last night you should have known better; but you are all alike in frenzy for a sack. You have both put off your knighthood till you have learnt not to become a shame thereto.'

'I take not knighthood at your hands, Sir,' burst out Malcolm, goaded with hot resentment, but startled the next moment at the sound of his own words.

'I cry you mercy,' said King Henry, in a cold, short tone.

Malcolm turned on his heel and walked away, without waiting to see how the poor old man in the house threw himself at the King's feet with a piteous history of his sick daughter and her starving children, nor how Ralf hurried off headlong to the lower town to send them immediate relief in bread, wine, and doctors. The gay, good-natured, thoughtless lad no mere harboured malice for the chastis.e.m.e.nt than if his tutor had caught him idling; but things went deeper with Malcolm. True, he had undergone many a brutal jest and cruel practical joke from his cousins; but that was all in the family, not like a blow from an alien king, and one not apologized for, but followed up by a rebuke that seemed to him unjust, lowering him in his own eyes and those of Esclairmonde, and making him ready to gnaw himself with moody vexation.

'You here, Malcolm!' said King James, entering his quarters; 'did you miss me in the throng? I have not seen you all day.'

'I have been insulted, Sir,' said Malcolm. 'I pray your license to depart and carry my sword to my kinsmen in the French camp.'

'How now! Is it the way to treat an insult to run away from it?'

'Not when the world judges men to be on equal terms, my lord.'

'What! Who has done you wrong, you silly loon?'

'King Henry, Sir; he struck me with his fist, and rated me like his hound; and I will not eat another morsel of his bread unless he would answer it to me in single combat.'

'Little enough bread you'd eat after that same answer!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed James. 'Oh! I understand now. You were with young Hotspur and the rest that set on the poor townsmen, and Harry made small distinction of persons! Nay, Malcolm, it was ill in you, that talked of so loathing spulzie!'

'I wanted no spulzie. There were Armagnacs hid in the house, and the King would not hear us.'

'He knew that story too well. Were you asleep or idling last night, when he warned all, on no plea whatever, to break into a house, but, if the old tale of treachery came up, to set a guard, and call one of the captains? Did you hear him-eh?'

'I can take chiding from you, Sir, but neither words nor blows from any other king in Christendom, still less when he threatens me that I have deferred my knighthood! As if I would have it from him!'

'From me you will not have it until he have pardoned Ralf Percy,' said James, dryly. 'Malcolm, I had not thought you such a fule body! Under a captain's banner, what can be done but submit to his rule? I should do so myself, were Salisbury or March in command.'