Chapter X

IN WHICH THE PATIENT PROGRESSES FAVOURABLY.

His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, he was such a storm
As oft twixt May and April we may see.
_A Lover's Complaint._

Aided by his youth and strength, and doubtless by his native air, which blew upon his pale face through the northern windows of his chamber, when the breeze waved the ripening corn and wafted the perfume of the heather and the yellow broom-bells across the North Loch, Florence recovered rapidly. His wounds soon healed, under the soothing influence of the medicinal balsams applied to them, and of the subtle opiates which he received from the hands of his two fair attendants, and from those of the white-bearded physician, who, with a pardonable vanity, cared not to conceal _his_ name, but soon announced himself to be Master Peter Posset, chirurgeon to the late King James V. of blessed memory (whose deathbed he had soothed at Falkland Palace), and deacon of the chirurgeon-barbers of Edinburgh--a body who, in virtue of their office, were exempted by their charter from serving on juries, and from the duties of keeping watch and ward within the city.

Master Posset was a man of venerable aspect, with a voluminous white beard. He was measured in tone, pedantic in manner, and bled and blistered, according to the rule of the age, only when certain stars and signs which were believed to influence the human body, were in certain mansions of the firmament,--for he was a deep dabbler alike in alchemy and astrology. Yet in 1533 he had studied and practised at Lyons as hospital physician under Rabellais, and been the medical attendant of Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, when that distinguished prelate travelled to Rome concerning the divorce of Henry VIII. of England in 1534. The residence of Master Posset was at the head of a forestair in the Lawn-market, where his uncouth sign,--a dried alligator, swung from an iron bracket, exciting fear and awe in the heart of country folks who came to buy or sell, and where the armorial cognizance of his craft,--_argent_, a naked corpse fessways _proper_, between a hand with an eye in its palm, the thistle and crown,--informed all that it was the domicile of the Deacon of the Chirurgeon-Barbers.

By his pedantry and prosy recollections of MM. Rabellais and Jean du Bellay, this worthy leech proved an intolerable bore to his patient; but he had evidently received due instructions to be reserved; for by no effort of cunning, of tact, and by no power of entreaty, could Fawside draw from him the secret of whose house they were in, and who were these two women so highly bred, so courtly, and so beautiful who attended him like sisters, and to whom he owed his life and rapid recovery. From a French valet who also attended him he was likewise unable to extract a syllable; for M. Antoine, though an excellent musician on the viol, made signs that he was dumb.

"Master Posset, good, kind Master Posset," said Florence one day, "I have exhausted all offers of bribes such as a gentleman in my present circumstances might make, and you have nobly rejected them all. Now I cast myself upon your pity, your humanity, to tell me who and what those two kind fairies are!"

"Who they are I dare not tell; _what_ they are I may," replied the cautious leech.

"Say on, then. What are they?"

"A widow and a maid."

"The widow?" asked Florence impetuously.

"Is she with the hazel eyes and chestnut hair."

"The maid?"

"Of course the other, she with the darker hair and violet-blue eyes, and who, violet-like, secludes herself from all."

"The loveliest, thank Heaven!"

"Why thank you Heaven so fervently?" asked Master Posset with surprise.

"Ask me not!--ask me not!" exclaimed Fawside, in whose heart every glance, every action, and every trivial question or remark of the younger lady had made a deep impression.

"Their rank?"

"I may not, must not tell you," interrupted the physician hastily.

"It is high?"

"Few are nobler in the land."

"Ah! Master Posset, each looks like a queen."

"Perhaps they are so,--queens of Elfen," replied Master Posset, with a smile which his heavy white moustache concealed.

"You are most discreet, Master Apothecary," sighed Florence with impatience.

"To be discreet was one of my chief orders, and I am in the mansion of those who brook no trifling; and, as the great Rabellais was wont to say, discretion to a physician was as necessary as a needle to a compass."

"All this mystery seems rather peculiar and unnecessary; but thus much I can discern, that the younger gentlewoman treats the other with such deference and respect, that her rank must be inferior, though her beauty is second to none that I have seen even at the court of France."

"You are an acute observer, sir," replied the leech, reddening, and with some alarm; "but may not such deference and respect arise from her junior years?"

"Scarcely; for I can perceive that the elder is barely thirty years of age."

"Yet she has buried a second husband and at least two children."

"I shall soon discover _her_ if you give me but one or two more such other details," said Florence laughing.

"You will not attempt it, I hope," said Master Posset, with growing alarm, and preparing to withdraw.

"Most worthy doctor, what is that which succeeds best in this world?"

"I know not."

"Shall I tell you?"

"Yes."

"_Success_. I have great faith in it."

"The very words of the great Rabelais!"

"The devil take Rabelais!" said Florence with annoyance.

"Shame on you, young sir!" said Master Posset, who considered this rank blasphemy.

"Pardon me; but by this faith in success I shall never fail," replied Fawside laughing. "I shall soon be gone from here, where I have played the owl too long, and when well enough I shall soar like the lark. Ah! good Master Posset, most worthy deacon, dost think I have spent seven years of my life between Paris and Vendome without being able to discover a pretty demoiselle's name when I had the wish to do so. She cannot conceal herself long from me, be assured of that."

"Is it gallant to talk thus of those gentlewomen whose roof shelters you, and from whom you also conceal your own name?" asked Posset angrily.

"It is not; and yet, by my faith, _three_ sword wounds have given me more reason for caution than I ever thought would fall to my lot. But I will take patience, for time unravelleth all things."

"As I have heard the divine Jean de Bellay preach in Notre Dame at Paris many a time--yea, sir, verily time unravelleth all things."

"Yea, and _avengeth_ all things," said a soft voice on the other side of his couch; and on turning, Fawside met the bright eyes of the lady and her friend fixed upon him.

The young man was very handsome. His features were regular, but striking and marked; his hair was cut short, but was black and curly; his nose was straight, with a well-curved nostril; his chin was well defined, and fringed by a short-clipped French beard. His shirt-collar being open, displayed a muscular chest, white as the marble of Paros, but crossed by the ligatures and bandages which retained the healing balsams on his wounds. His features had all the freshness and charm of youth, but over them was spread the languor of recent suffering and loss of blood; thus his fine eyes were unnaturally bright and restless. Finding that the noble lady had overheard his heedless remarks, Fawside made efforts to rise to bow, and, reddening deeply, said,--

"Pardon me, madam, I knew not that you were so near; nor _you_, sweet mistress," he added in a tremulous voice, as he addressed the younger and more beautiful of those striking women, in whose charming society he had been thrown, and to whose care he had found himself confided for more than a week.

Long conscious of the power of her beauty, it was impossible for this young lady not to perceive and feel pleased with the interest she was exciting in the breast of Florence, the expression of whose dark eyes and the tone of whose voice too surely revealed it.

This morning her sweetly feminine face was more than usually lovely in an ermined triangular hood, trimmed with Isla pearls from Angus, and these were not whiter than her delicate neck and ring-laden fingers; she seldom spoke, save when addressed by her friend, and her replies were always brief.

"I heard you mention Paris and the Vendomois," said the latter to the patient, as she bent her clear hazel eyes upon him, and as Master Posset respectfully withdrew from the chamber by retiring backwards through the arras. "I know the latter well, and every bend of the beautiful Loire, with the old castle of the Comtes de la Marche and the ducal mansion of Charles of Bourbon----"

"And the great old abbey of the Holy Trinity, with its huge towers, its pointed windows, and the reliquary----"

"Where the Benedictines keep in a crystal case the Holy Tear----"

"Wept by our Blessed Saviour over the grave of Lazarus."

"Ah, I see we shall have some recollections in common," said the proud lady, smiling; "and fair Paris--how looketh it?"

"Gay and great as ever, forming, to my eyes,--in its life, bustle, and magnitude,--a wondrous contrast to our grim Scottish burghs, with their barred houses, their walls and gates, and steep streets encumbered by stacks of peat and fuel and heather."

"_Mon Dieu_, yes; one may caracole a horse along the Rue St. Jacques or the Rue St. Honore without meeting such uncouth obstructions as these. Is the Hotel de Ville finished yet?"

"Nearly so."

"Are those four delightful monsters of M--M--oh, I forget his name--completed on the tower of St. Jacques de la Boucharie?"

"Yes, madam, and grin over Paris all day long."

"You see, I know Paris, sir."

"Madame is doubtless only Scottish by adoption."

The lady smiled sadly, while her friend laughed aloud.

"I can see it before me now, in fancy," said she while her fine eyes dilated and sparkled, "smiling amid the plain that is covered with golden corn, and bounded by the vine-clad hills that spread from Mont l'Hery to Poissy; Paris with its busy streets of brick-fronts and stone-angles, of slated roofs and many-coloured houses--the huge masses of the _cité_, the _ville_, the great Bastile, and the double towers of mighty Notre Dame! I see them all glittering in the cloudless sun of noon, as one day my little daughter shall see them too!"

"A daughter--you have a daughter, madam," said Fawside with growing interest, "and are a widow; in pity tell me who you are?"

"We two have our little secrets, fair sir," she replied, holding up a slender finger with a waggish expression.

"By the cross on my dagger, I swear to you, madam----"

"But your dagger is lost."

"I regret that deeply, for it was the present of a noble dame."

"Since we are so bent on fruitlessly questioning each other, may I ask _her_ name?" said the younger lady.

"Diana de Poictiers, the Duchess of Valentinois; it bears her three crescents engraved upon the hilt; but I left it in some knave's body on the night of the brawl. If he lives, the diamonds in the pommel may perhaps prove a salve for his sores; if he dies, a fund for his funeral--but a pest on't! my brave dagger is gone."

"Accept this from me," said the taller lady, taking from an ebony buffet that stood near, a jewelled poniard, and presenting it to Florence.

"A thousand thanks, madam--a lady's gift can never be declined; but what do I see? The cipher of James V.--of his late majesty."

"'Twas his dagger," said the lady gloomily, "and with it he threatened to stab Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, the inquisitor-general of Scotland; but I arrested his hand and took away the weapon; for the gentle King James would never refuse aught to a woman, a priest, or a child."

"And so you were known to the fair mistress of Francis I.?" asked the young lady with a slightly disdainful pout on her pretty lip.

"Nay, madam, I cannot say that she knew me; but once when she and her royal lover quarrelled, I bore a letter from her to Francis, and at a time when no other person would venture to approach him, his majesty being furious on the arrival of tidings that his fleet before Nice had been destroyed by the galleys of Andrew Doria."

"This was three years ago."

"I was loitering one day in the gallery of the Louvre, when she approached me, 'M. le Page,' said she, placing a little pink note in my hand, 'will you do a service for me?'

"'I belong to Madame la Duchesse d'Albany,' said I; 'yet I shall gladly obey you, madam.'

"'Then you shall have ten golden crowns.'

"'Ten crowns! Ah, madam,' said I, gallantly, 'I would rather have ten gifts less tangible.'

"'You shall have both, boy,' said she, laughing merrily; 'the crowns now and the kisses hereafter.'

"Her note to Francis proved successful: in less than ten minutes that princely monarch was at her feet. But with her kiss, she gave me a Parmese dagger, which she wore at her girdle, the gift of her present lover, Henry of Valois, and which you, madam, have so nobly replaced by this."

As he spoke, Florence, with the true loyal devotion of the olden time, kissed the cipher which was engraved on its hilt.

At that moment Master Posset reappeared, and whispered in the ear of the lady of the mansion.

"Excuse me, sir," said she; "there are those without who would speak with me."

And on her retiring suddenly with the physician, Florence, somewhat to his confusion, found himself for a time left alone with the younger and, as we have more than once said, more attractive of his two attendants, and in whom, though as yet nameless, we have little doubt the sagacious reader has already recognized the heroine of our story.