Crichton was long absent, as he went by the way of Tours, to renew the ancient league with France, which was again ratified by him and other Scottish ambassadors for James II.; and by Thibaud, bishop of Maillerais, the Sieur de Pretigni and Messire Guillaume Cousinat, on the part of Charles VII.
After this the lord chancellor rode towards Gueldres.
CHAPTER XL
THE PRISONER
It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count – I took no note;
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote. —
Meanwhile, during the occurrence of all these stirring events where was Sir Patrick Gray?
A prisoner of state in the castle of Bommel, detained there, to all appearance, hopelessly, by order of Jacques de Lalain, the Dyck Graf.
This official knew not whether to believe the information and reiterated statements of Sir Patrick, or those of the vindictive earl of Douglas. The secret manner in which Gray had resided in Bommel, and the disguise he had assumed, were denounced by the burgomaster, as unworthy the character of an envoy and the captain of a royal guard; they were declared suspicious, though no one could exactly say of what bad errand or object. Then, in that unexplained midnight brawl, concerning the origin of which Sir Patrick maintained an obstinate silence, he had wounded almost to death two citizens of good repute; and he was totally without papers or property to verify the account he gave of himself, as all he possessed had fallen into the hands of the Douglases, who had destroyed the former and appropriated the latter.
The hatred displayed by a noble so powerful as the earl and by his brilliant train of followers towards him, and their urgent demands for his execution, with or without a trial, convinced Jacques de Lalain that some great mystery was involved; that his prisoner was a man of considerable importance; and that it would be alike impolitic to hang or to release him. Hence he ordered, that he should be well attended, and comfortably lodged in the fortress of Bommel, but closely guarded and confined to the tower of Otho III.
Arnold d'Egmont, duke of Gueldres, had already begun to be embroiled by his unnatural son, Prince Adolphus, and was absent at the ducal court of Burgundy; thus to numerous letters on the subject of his unfortunate prisoner, the Dyck Graf received no explicit answer, so time rolled wearily and drearily on.
And what of Murielle? was the constant thought of Gray.
She was now his, irrevocably his, and while aware of his existence could not, either by force or fraud, become the wife of another. Amid all the misery of a protracted captivity, there was comfort in his conviction, till after-thoughts suggested how heartless was the existence to which their precipitate marriage had perhaps condemned her!
But might not their enemies, by forgeries and false statements, delude her into an idea of his death, as they had attempted to do before? Douglas dared not trifle with the power and terror of the Church; so Gray drew consolation from his memory of the earl's superstition, if not of his religion.
Yet there were times when his mental agony became great; for no news from Scotland or of the external world ever reached his prison.
Was Murielle still living? Had the wild schemes of Douglas and Albany prospered? Was the latter on the throne as Robert IV., with the terrible earl for his lieutenant-general, his ally in council and his right arm in war – crowned like Baliol of old, by domestic treason and foreign treachery? Was the young king dead, a prisoner, or an exile in France or England? Was Albany's betrothal to Mademoiselle Radegonde, the eldest daughter of Charles VII., annulled? What changes were taking place in his secluded mountain home? Who were dead – who living, and who wedded? Was he quite forgotten there?
Such were the questions ever in his heart and on his tongue.
Slowly passed the weary days till they became months, and then season succeeded to season. Five times had Gray, from his barred window in that old tower of Otho count of Gueldres, seen the golden grain gathered on the flat and distant fields; five times had he seen the land ploughed, and sown, and reaped; and five times covered with the white mantle of winter, when frost locked the waters of the Waal, and moored, harder than ever hempen cable and iron anchor did, the great brown-varnished barges in the sedge-bordered canals, when the storks forsook their nests on the snow-covered gables, when the holy water froze in the stone fonts of the churches, and when the bulbous-shaped Flemings put on at least six pairs of additional breeches. At such a season as this, the poor prisoner pictured in fancy the crackling yule-log that blazed in his father's hall at home – the old kirk of Foulis all bedecked with green bays and greener holly – his mother mourning by the winter hearth for the loss of her absent son; and then his heart grew sick as he thought of his blighted love, his wasted life, and all the thousand memories of his native land.
He thought, too, of what he had seen in more than one Flemish market-place, in Antwerp, at Gueldres, Endhoven, Bommel, and elsewhere; the cruel and periodical exhibition of a long-secluded prisoner, in whose heart hope, and even the memory of the outer world, were long since dead; "for there on particular days," says a certain writer, "these victims are presented to the public eye, upon a stage erected in the open market, apparently to prevent their guilt and punishment from being forgotten. It is scarcely possible to witness a sight more degrading to humanity than this exhibition: – with matted hair, wild looks, and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted glare of the sun, and ears deafened and astounded by the sudden exchange of the silence of a dungeon for the busy hum of men, the wretches sit like rude images fashioned to a fantastic imitation of humanity rather than like living and reflecting beings. In the course of time we are assured they generally become either madmen or idiots, as mind or matter happens to predominate, when the mysterious balance between them is destroyed."
Gray remembered to have seen these miserable captives thus exhibited, and his heart died within him with terror, lest such might be the fate reserved for himself.
So the year 1448 was in its spring when he reckoned that Murielle was no longer a girl – that in fact she would be about her four-and-twentieth year. He strove to picture what the girl would be now, when expanded into a woman! Would he ever see her more, or be free to tread his native soil again? Alas! there were times when he feared his brain would turn.
Count Ludwig had long since been taken in the adjacent forest, after a hard conflict between the soldiers of De Lalain and his Brabanciones, many of whom, including Gustaf Vlierbeke, and the industrious Carl Langfanger, were slain, and gibbeted on the trees. The wretched count was broken alive on the wheel, before the Church of St. Genevieve. He survived the torture for three days, before the public executioner gave him the final coup with an iron bar, and his head on a spike now rendered the market-place of Bommel horrible to its frequenters.
Gray heard of this barbarous execution in his prison, and he almost envied the reckless robber, for death seemed a triumphant release from tyranny, misery, and mental suffering.
In February, 1448, on a dull morning, when the yellow winter fog hung like a pall over the level scenery of the Bommelerwaard, Gray was roused from sleep by the roar of twenty great bombards, the concussion of which shook the old castle of Count Otho to its foundations as they exploded in a salvo.
Had an enemy, the French or Burgundians, attacked it suddenly? His heart leaped with joy at the desperate hope. He rushed to the grated window of his room, and saw in the court-yard beneath, the Dyck Graf, with his sword and mantle, his knightly girdle and collar, mustering and arraying his garrison in their armour, pikemen, crossbowmen, arquebusiers, all steady Walloons and German lanzknechts. Then came the clangour of the church bells, and cheers of a multitude without, who seemed to be rushing through the streets towards the gate of the fortress, while still the great brazen bombards continued to belch forth flame and thunder from the battlements.