As he came among the fields, he saw that the peasants, and lay brethren who had been working among them, were returning, some from sowing, others from herding the cattle, which they drove before them to the byre within the protecting wall of the monastery.
A monk--with a weather-beaten face and athletic figure, much like a farmer's of the present day--overtook him, and hailed him with 'Benedicite, you there and welcome to your clerkship! Are you coming for supper and bed in the convent?'
Malcolm knew good-natured Brother Nicolas, and kept his hood well over his face after the first salutation; though he felt confident that Lord Malcolm could hardly be recognized in the begging scholar, as he made reply, 'Salve, reverende frater. Venio de Lutetia Parisiorum.' {1}
'Whisht with your Latin, laddie,' said the brother. 'Speak out, if you've a Scots tongue in your head, and have not left it in foreign parts.'
'For bed and board, holy father, I shall be most thankful,' replied Malcolm.
'That's more like it,' said the brother, who acted as a kind of farming steward, and was a hearty, good-natured gossip. 'An' what's the name of ye?'
He gave his real Christian name; and added that he came from Glenuskie, where the good Tutor of Glenuskie had been kind enough to notice him.
'Ay,' said Brother Nicolas, 'he was a guid man to all towardly youths. He died in this house, more's the pity.'
'Yea, Sir--so I heard say,' returned Malcolm. 'He was a good friend to me!' he added, to cover his heavy sigh. 'And, Sir, how went it with the young laird and leddy?'
'For the young laird--a feckless, ugsome, sickly wean he was, puir laddie--a knight cam by, an' behoved to take him to the King. Nay, but if you've been at Parish--if that's what ye mean with your Lutetia--ye'll have seen him an' the King.'
'I saw the King,' answered Malcolm; 'but among the Englishry.'
'A sorry sight enow!' said the monk; 'but he'll soon find his Scots heart again; and here we've got rid of the English leaven from the house, and be all sound and leal Scots here.'
'And the lady?' Malcolm ventured to ask. 'She had a winsome face.'
'Ho! ho! what have young clerks to do wi' winsome faces?' laughed the Benedictine.
'She was good to me,' Malcolm could truly say.
'They had her in St. Abbs yonder,' said the monk.
'Is she there?' asked Malcolm. 'I would pay my duty and thanks to her.'
'Now--there I cannot say,' replied Brother Nicolas. 'My good Mother Abbess and our Prior are not the friends they were in Prior Akefield's time; and there's less coming and going between the houses. There was a noise that Lord Malcolm had been slain, and I did hear that, thereupon, she had been claimed as a ward of the Crown. But I cannot say. If ye gang to St. Abbs the morn, ye may hear if she be there--and at any rate get the dole.'
It was clear that the good brother knew no more, and Malcolm could only thank him for his condescension, and follow among the herdsmen into the well-known monastery court.
Here he availed himself of his avowed connection with Glenuskie, to beg to be shown good old Sir David Drummond's grave. A flat gray stone in the porch was pointed out to him; and beside this he knelt, until the monks flocked in for prayers--which were but carelessly and hurriedly sung; and then followed supper. It was all so natural to him, that it was with an effort that he recalled that his place was not at the high table, as Lord Malcolm Stewart, but that Malcolm, the nameless begging scholar, must be trencher-fellow with the servants and lay brethren. He was the less concerned, that here there was less danger of recognition, and more freedom of conversation.
Things were evidently much altered. A novice was indeed, as usual, placed aloft in the refectory pulpit, to read aloud to the brethren during their repast, but no one seemed to think it needful to preserve the decorous silence that had been rigidly exacted during Prior Akefield's time, and there was a continual buzz of conversation. Lent though it was, the fish was of the most esteemed kinds, and it was evident that, like the monks of Melrose, they 'made gude kale.' Few of the kindly old faces that Malcolm remembered were to be seen under their cowls. Prior Drax himself had much more the countenance of a moss-trooper than of a monk--mayhap he was then meditating that which he afterwards carried out successfully, i.e. the capture and appropriation of a whole instalment of King James's ransom, on its way across the Border; and there was a rude recklessness and self-indulgence about the looks, voices, and manners of the brethren he had brought with him, such as made Malcolm feel that if he had had his wish, and remained at Coldingham, he should soon have found it no haven of peace.
The lay-brothers and old servants were fixtures, but the old faithful and devout ones looked forlorn and unhappy and there had been a great importation of the ruffianly men-at-arms, whom the more pugnacious ecclesiastics, as well as nobles, of Scotland, were apt to maintain. Guards there had been in old times, but kept under strict discipline; whereas, in the rude conduct of these men, there was no sign that they knew themselves to be in a religious house. Malcolm, keeping aloof from these as much as might be, gave such an account of himself as was most consistent with truth, since it was necessary to account for his returning so young from his studies. He had, he said, been told that there was an inheritance fallen due to him, and that the kinsman, in whose charge his sister had been left, was dead; and he had come home to seek her out, and inquire into the matter of his heirship.
Rude jokes, from some of the new denizens of the monastery, were spent on the improbability of his finding sister or lands; if it were in the Barony of Glenuskie, the House of Albany had taken the administration of that into their own hands.
'Nay--but,' said Malcolm, 'could I but see my young Lady Lilias, she might make suit for me.'
The gray-headed lay-brother, to whom he addressed himself, replied that it was little the Lady Lilias could do, but directed him to St. Abbs to find her; whereat one of the men-at-arms burst out laughing, and crying, 'That's a' that ye ken, auld Davie! As though the Master of Albany would let a bonnie lassie ware hersel' and her tocher on stone walls and dour old nuns.'
'Has she wedded the Master of Albany, then?' asked Malcolm, concealing his anxiety as best he might.
'That's as he pleases; and by my troth he took pains enow to get her!'
'What pains?'
'Why, once she slipped out of his very fingers; that time that he had laid hands on her, and the hirpling doited brother of hers cam down with a strange knight, put her into St. Abbs, and made off for England--so they said. Some of the rogues would have it 'twas St. Andrew in bodily shape, and that he tirled the young laird, as was only fit for a saint, aff to heaven wi' him; for he was no more seen in these parts.'
'Nay, that couldna be,' put in another soldier. 'Sandy M'Kay took his aith that he was in the English camp--more shame till him--an' was stickit dead for meddling between King Harry's brother and his luve. It sorted him weel, I say.'
'Aweel!' continued the first; 'gane is he, and sma' loss wi' him! An' yon old beldame over at St. Abbs, she kens weel how to keep a lass wi' a tocher--so what does the Master but sends a letter ower to our Prior, bidding him send two trusty brethren, as though from the King, to conduct her to Whitby?'
'Ha!' said Malcolm; 'but that's ower the Border.'
'Even so; but the Glenuskies are all English at heart, and it sicker trained away the silly lassie.'
'And then?'--the other man-at-arms laughed.
'Why, at the first hostelry, ye can guess what sort of nuns were ready to meet her! I promise ye she skirled, and ca'ed Heaven and earth to help; but Brother Simon and Brother Ringan gave their word they'd see nae ill dune to her, and she rade with them on each side of her, and us tall fellows behind and before, till we cam to Doune.'
'And what became of her, the poor lassie, then?' inquired Malcolm, steadying his voice with much effort.