They met with a furious concussion; but as Shelly's horse swerved, his lance was broken in two athwart the breast-plate of Florence, whose impromptu weapon was splintered into twenty fragments on the right shoulder of the sturdy Englishman, who kept his saddle, but with difficulty. Each in a moment tossed aside the truncheon or fragment which remained in his hand, reined up his horse, and drew his sword; then, in full view of the Scottish right and of the English left wing, began a sharp hand-to-hand conflict, in which the utmost skill in the use of the bridle and sword was displayed by both combatants.
Florence, being reckless alike of life and danger, had evidently the best of it, as he drove his adversary, at every thrust and stroke, further up the hill towards the right, until they were within a bowshot of the tower of Fawside, the barbican of which was crowded by women and by the old men of the barony, who were all armed, in case of the place being attacked. It soon became evident that they recognized their young master, for shouts of
"Forth—forth, and feir nocht!" faintly reached his ear, mingled with shrill cries of alarm.
Suddenly his horse stumbled and came heavily down on its knees, throwing him prone to the earth. Ere he could rise, while a shriek burst from the women in the tower, Shelly had sprung from his horse, and throwing the bridle over his arm, placed his sword at the throat of the fallen.
"Here might I slay or capture you, Scot," said he; "but I have not forgotten your generosity on the night we met in that lonely castle of the Torwood. Here ends our quarrel; and in this field let us meet no more, unless it be that the fair one, whose name I jestingly mentioned on that night——"
"Nay, speak not of her," said Florence mournfully. "I seek not life, Master Shelly, but rather death; and from so honoured a sword as thine it were indeed more welcome!"
"Wherefore so sad?" said the Englishman. "Up, man, and be doing; for, by St. George! you Scots will have your hands full to-day. Here come our demi-lances again; away to your own band—you have not a moment to lose!"
Shelly remounted; Florence saluted him, and leaped lightly on his own horse.
"Farewell, Edward Shelly," exclaimed Florence with an emotion of enthusiasm; "thou art a soldier as generous as brave. I would rather be thy friend than thine enemy."
"To-day you have been both, fair sir," replied Shelly, as he wheeled his horse round. At that moment there came a loud whiz through the air, and struck by the ball of an arquebuse, which had been fired from the tower of Fawside, the brave Shelly fell dead from his terrified horse, which dragged him by the stirrup into the ditch where so many English were already lying killed and wounded.
Florence cast his eyes upward to the tower-head, from whence the pale light smoke was still curling. He saw the tall dark figure of a woman brandishing an arquebuse, and he knew in a moment that the hand of his stern mother had fired the fatal shot.
"She again!—oh, ruthless hand!" he muttered with a half-smothered groan; and turning his horse, galloped again to the Regent Arran.
On beholding Shelly's fall a shout of rage arose from his comrades the Boulogners, and from the long array of demi-lances, whom the Duke of Somerset once more ordered to attack the Scottish right.
"By my faith, duke, you might as well bid me charge a castle wall?" was the angry reply of the Lord Grey, from whose face and neck the blood was still streaming; but now, by the advice of the skilful Earl of Warwick, the Spanish and German arquebusiers, with a body of English archers, were ordered to assail the Scottish columns in front, while several pieces of cannon played upon one flank from Fawside Hill, and the shipping still swept the other with terrible results. The foreign auxiliaries, in ranks eight deep, poured in their heavy shot, firing over forks or rests, full into the faces of the Scottish infantry, who, by the destruction of their light cavalry on the preceding day, were without means of attacking either the cannoniers or the continental troops. Thus the battle soon became general along the whole plain, and the cry of the Scots,—
"Come on, ye dogs! ye heretics!" rose incessantly above the din of the strife; for now there was the rancorous rivalry of creed to inflame the rivalry of race, and the transmitted hatred of a thousand years. Moreover, in this engagement the English were burning to avenge the defeat of their troops at Ancrumford and Paniershaugh, where Sir Ralf Evers and many men had been cut to pieces by the Earl of Angus; and now, filled with fury on beholding the destruction of his castle and the pitiless devastation of his lands, no man in all the army of Arran on this day of blood hewed a passage further into the English host than old Claude Hamilton of Preston, who forgot all about his proffered titles, and with his two-handed sword sent many a younger man to his long home.
The combined movement of the Spaniards, under Gamboa, with the Germans, under Sir Pietre Mewtas, seconded by a body of English archers showering flight and sheaf arrows point-blank into the teeth of the Scottish line, on which (as already related) the cannon were playing from both flanks, drove it into confusion; and, after suffering dreadful losses, the great column of Angus first began insensibly to retire.
At this crisis the whole air seemed laden with sound; The booming of cannon; the rattling explosion of arquebuses, hand-guns, and calivers; the smoke of which rolled like carded wool before the wind; the twang of bows; the whiz of passing arrows, which planted all the turf as they stuck with feathers upward; the clang of swords on swords or helmets; the galloping of horses; the voices of many thousands of men uttering triumphant hurrahs, fierce and bitter imprecations or cries of agony, as they were struck down wounded and bleeding to the earth;—all were there to make a mighty medley of uproar. The air of the sunny morning became dusky with the dust raised by the feet of men rushing in tens of thousands to the mortal shock; and sulphureous with the smoke of gunpowder, which was then almost a new element in Scottish war; and to this new ally in the hands of their foreign auxiliaries on one side, and to the treason and incapacity of the Scottish leaders on the other, England eventually owed the victory.
The recoil of Lord Angus's division caused a panic to run along the whole Scottish line.
It began to waver, to pause, and fall back!
"Treason! treason! to your ranks—to your standards! forward and follow me!" cried Arran, whose magnificent armour, covered with gold embossings made him the aim of many an archer, as he galloped along the line to restore order. He had already had three horses killed under him; the golden oak and pearl-studded coronet had been hewn from his helmet; the diamond cross of St. Andrew and the golden shells of St. Michael had been torn from his breast; he had broken his sword and lance, and now wielded a steel truncheon; his eyes were wild and bloodshot, and his voice had become hoarse by the reiterated orders he had issued. His efforts were vain; and vain also were those of Florence, and a few who attempted to second them; for the rapid advance of the Earl of Warwick's column, and another well-directed volley from the foreign auxiliaries, completed the discomfiture of the ill-led, ill-posted, and ill-disciplined Scots. A total and most disastrous rout ensued! The great army, which one historian likens to "a steely sea agitated by the wind," after a few moments was seen breaking into a thousand fragments, and dispersed in all directions.
"They fly! they fly!" burst from the victors.
All became flight, chaos, confusion; and the fugitives, in their haste to escape the English cavalry, threw aside all that might encumber their movements. More than twenty thousand spears and partisans strewed the ground, with helmets, cuirasses, back-plates, bucklers, gauntlets, swords, daggers, mauls, Jedwood axes, bows, belts, sheafs of arrows, drums, banners, trumpets, cannon, pistols, hand-guns, and all thedébrisof a mighty host; and the pursuit of the unarmed fugitives continued from one in the day until six in the evening—nor eventhenwere the English sated with slaughter.
Exasperated by their first defeat, the demi-lances and the men-at-arms of Boulogne, were especially severe in their actions.
"Remember Paniershaugh!" was their cry; and others shouted,—
"Shelly, Shelly! remember Ned Shelly!" for, says Master Patten, "On the field we found that worthy gentleman and gallant officer, pitifully disfigured, mangled, and discernible only by his beard."
In their haste to escape, many of the Scots cast aside their shoes and doublets, and fled in their shirts and breeches. Many concealed themselves in the furrows of the fields, and were passed unseen by the English cavalry, who swept on after others. In short, it was one of those routs or panics to which undisciplined troops are at all times liable.
To Edinburgh the din of the distant battle had come by fits upon the autumnal breeze; and when the English infantry reached Edmondstone Edge, and found themselves among the plunder of the Scottish tents and camp-equipage, the shout they raised was distinctly heard in the streets of the capital, where that day's slaughter made three hundred and sixty widows. Among those who fell was the merchant John Hamilton, mentioned in the thirty-first chapter of our story.
Thousands of the Scots threw themselves into the Esk, and perished miserably under the cannon from the ships, the shot of the Spaniards, or the swords of the English horsemen, when they scrambled ashore. On the narrow Roman bridge, the press of fugitives was frightful, as the Lord Clinton's great ship was pouring her broadsides upon it, and on the defiling masses. Here were slain the good Lord Fleming of Cumbernauld; the Masters of Livingstone, Buchan, Ogilvy, and Erskine, all sons of earls; the Lairds of Lochinvar, Merchiston, Craigcrook, Priestfield, Lee, and many others, with their friends and followers, till the barricade of mail-clad dead impeded the passage of the living; and so little did their consecrated banner avail the band of armed monks, that they nearly perished to a man, and the symbol of "the afflicted Church" was found on the field, soaked in their blood, torn and trampled under foot. The Esk was literally crimsoned with blood, for nearly half the Scottish army perished along its banks, the English having made a vow before the battle, "that if victorious, they would killmanyand sparefew."
The aspect of the field, says Master Patten, was frightful; the bodies lay so thick and close.
"Some without legs, some houghed and half-dead, others the arms cut off, divers their necks half asunder, many their heads cloven, the brains of sundry dashed out, others their heads quite off, with a thousand kinds of killing. In the chase," continues this minute reporter, who writes of the affair with great gusto, "all, for the most part, were killed either in the head or in the neck; for our horsemen could not well reach them lower with their swords. And thus, with blood and slaughter, the chase continued five miles westward from the place of their standing, which was in the fallow-fields of Inveresk, unto Edinburgh Park (about the base of Arthur's Seat), and well-nigh to the gates of the town itself, and unto Leith; and in breadth, from the shore of the Firth up to Dalkeith southward; in all of which spacethe dead bodies lay as thick as cattle grazing in a full-replenished pasture. The river Esk was red with blood, so that in the same chase were counted, as well by some of our men who diligently observed it, as by several of the prisoners, who greatly lamented the result, upwards of fourteen thousand slain. It was a wonder to see how soon the dead bodies of the slain were stripped quite naked, whereby the persons of the enemy might be easily viewed. For tallness of stature, cleanness of skin, largeness of bone, and due proportion, I could not have believed there were so many in all their country."
The Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Huntly, with fifteen hundred men, were captured, and, with thirty thousand suits of mail found in the camp and on the field, sent on board the fleet.
Previous to all this, Florence collected a few horsemen by the force of example, and made three desperate charges, which kept Gamboa's fiery Spaniards and the Lord Fitzwalter's demi-lances in check until the regent and his train had passed the Esk. On achieving this, Arran, whose helmet was now completely cloven, and the housings of whose horse were covered with blood, exclaimed,—
"Fawside, the day is totally lost, and I am living: and without a single wound!"
"And I too, though seeking death everywhere."
"So much the better; I have for you a task of honour and peril to perform."
"Name it—quick, my lord; we have not a moment to lose," cried Florence breathlessly.
"Ride for Edinburgh—get forth the queen and queen-mother, and, with whatever men you can collect, take the road for the north—there await my orders—away!"
"Farewell; but I must have one other dash at these English demi-lances," he exclaimed, wheeling round his horse.
Cold in the cause of Scotland, and heedless whether the field was lost or won, too many of the peers showed but an indifferent example to their soldiers; others, with an eye to the promised pensions, gold, titles, and rewards, wished well to Somerset, and openly fled, like traitors, as Arran called them. Hence the rhyme, with which the poor Scots consoled themselves,—
'Twas English gold and Scots traitors wanThe field of Pinkey, but no Englishman.
According to Buchanan, the Highlanders escaped without loss, as they formed themselves into a dense circle, and in this strange order retreated over the most difficult and rocky ground, where no men-at-arms could follow them. Their retreat was covered by the MacNabs, among whom the twelve tall sons of Aileen were conspicuous by their vigour and bravery.
Arran retired with a body of fugitives to Stirling, and on the day after the battle fresh scenes of disaster and devastation occurred in Edinburgh. In every street rapine and outrage were triumphant. Holyrood was sacked, the churches were despoiled, and Leith was set in flames.
There was one citizen of Edinburgh, who, after bearing himself gallantly throughout that bloody day, on finding that he was unable to bear away, like the pious Eneis, his blind and aged father, while having a young wife and her babes to protect, stood for nearly an hour amid the flames of rapine and a hundred weapons that gleamed around him, defending with his two-handed sword the archway that led to his house. A horde of assailants, flushed with ale, wine, triumph, and ferocity, opposed him; but valiantly he faced them all, until a ball from the arquebuse of a Spaniard pierced his heart and he fell dead. This citizen was Dick Hackerston; but to this hour his name is borne by the street or wynd which he so valiantly defended.
While the English were stripping the dead and slaying the wounded on the field, the little garrison in Fawside tower fired on them briskly, from bartizan and loophole, until they were environed by a body of men-at-arms under Sir Ralf Vane, who on finding the defender was a lady, tied a handkerchief to his sword and riding forward called upon her to yield.
"Yield thou!—false kite, what make ye here?" was the scoffing reply of the fierce Dame Alison, in whom the events of the day had kindled the keenest excitement. "I hold my house of the queen of Scotland, and will yield it to no Englishman,—least of all to a popinjay squire like thee."
"I am Sir Ralf Vane, madam, a captain of demi-lances, and ere now have had a château yielded to me by a marshal of France."
"The more fool he," she replied; while Roger of Westmains, sent a bullet close to Vane's right ear.
"Surrender to thee, indeed!" he exclaimed; "thou loon and heretic tyke, I would as soon think of ploughing up the devil's croft."
A cannon was now brought up; a single shot blew the gate open; then the tower was given to the flames; and as none were allowed to come forth by the doors, and the windows were (as we may still see them) grated with iron, all within perished miserably.
"The house was set on fire," saith Master Patten complaisantly in his seventy-fourth page; "and for their good-will all were burnt or smothered within." So Lady Alison died by the same dreadful death, which, but a few days before, she had devised for the Hamiltons of Preston.
Roger of Westmains, many other old men, and the wives of all her tenants perished with her: but, as already mentioned, the spirit of this stern woman is still said to haunt the ruined tower on each anniversary of that day of cattle and disaster, the Black Saturday of 1547.
The deeds of our sires if our bards should rehearse,Let a blush or a blow be the meed of their verse;Be mute every string, and be hush'd every tone,That shall bid us remember the fame that has flown.Scott.
Such was this disastrous defeat on the 10th September; a defeat which though less fatal than Flodden to a class whom Scotland well could spare—her noble families—was severely felt by the commons; for among the fourteen thousand dead, who lay on the field of Pinkey, were no less than two thousand lesser barons and landed gentlemen.
The aspect of the plain next day, as the sun arose, was terrible, when Master Posset and a few other good Samaritans, undeterred by the dread of English plunderers and camp-followers, attempted the herculean task of attending to the wants of the wounded and dying.
Great numbers of the English wounded had been borne to Pinkey House, a fine old mansion of the Abbots of Dunfermline, which stands near the field, embosomed among aged chestnuts and sycamores, above which its round turrets and steep roofs still attract the eye of the passer; and in one of its chambers, a place well suited to gloom and spectral horrors, the blood of the wounded English could be traced until effaced by some recent repairs.
Flowing from amid its coppiced banks towards the sea, the Esk lay gleaming in the golden sunrise, but crimsoned still with the gashed corpse of many an armed man, lying in its current, among the rocks, the weeds, and sedges—the bread-winner of many a little brood,—the pride and care of many a tender mother: for in its flood the fugitive Scots perished by whole companies. The shock and din of the battle, with the confused murmur of the flight that whilom sounded like a sea chafing, or a multitude cheering at a vast distance, had now died away, and under the rising sun the dewy landscape, from which the morning mists were rising, lay placid, still, and calm. The green clench of Pinkey in which the carnage had deepened most, the far extent of stubble fields upon the upland slope over which the iron squadrons of Gamboa's Spaniards and the demi-lancers of Vane and Fitzwalter had swept yesterday, were silent and voiceless as the roofless, windowless, black, and gaping ruins of the old tower of Fawside on the hill; and where yesterday more than fifty thousand gallant Britons had closed in the shock of battle, all was mournfully still and deserted now.
On the pale upturned faces and glazed eyes of the dead, and the distorted features of the dying, shone the level glory of the autumn sun as he came up in his morning splendour from the German Sea. On that field, planted thick with arrows, furrowed by iron shot, and trodden by charging squadrons, strewed by so many dead bodies, and covered still with broken arms, crushed helmets, pikes, and torn banners, so thickly that it seemed as if the clouds had rained them down, the merry mavis and the laverock were twittering and singing, as before they had sung and twittered among the yellow summer corn; but now the black gled and obscene raven were wheeling in low circles, or alighting where so many troopers and their steeds were lying dead in the muddy ditch, or in the scroggy cleuch, where more than one abandoned Scottish cannon lay with wheels broken, and the corpses of the gunners piled around it.
From under the dewy grass myriads of insects came forth to batten in those horrid purple pools, that lay where human hands and human bravery had formed the greatest heaps of slain; and all this carnage, which shed a horror over that lovely autumn landscape, was to gratify, as we have said elsewhere, the mad ambition, and to fulfil the dying bequest, of one who had already gone to his terrible account—Henry VIII. of England.
In the distance rose the smoke and flames of Leith and its shipping; and at various parts of the horizon there towered into the blue sky tall columns of dusky vapour, that indicated where the work of rapine was still proceeding; while a cloud of the same sombre nature, like a funeral pall, shrouded all the ancient capital—a pall, however, streaked with sudden and incessant fire, as the castle of Edinburgh was vigorously defended by Sir James Hamilton of Stainhouse, whose cannon completely repulsed the enemy.
When the latter retreated, a week after the battle, they found most of the dead lying still unburied. A few had been hastily covered up by sods in the churchyards of Tranent and St. Michael at Inveresk; and beside these uncouth graves the poor people "had set up," says Master Patten, "a stick with a clout, a rag, an old shoe, or some other mark thereon," by which the body within might be known, when more leisure came for the rites of sepulture on the retirement of the English from Scotland.
But to return to our hero.
On beholding the total rout of the army, he became heedless of all that might ensue; and having now nothing that he cared to live for, his first thought had been to seek death amid the masses of the pursuing host; and hence the vigour and fury of the three desperate charges, by which he was enabled for a time to repel the soldiers of Don Pedro, of the Lord Fitzwalter, and of Sir Ralf Vane, and to cover the retreat of Arran; nor was it until this was fully accomplished that he perceived that, in this fortunate movement, he had put himself at the head of the vassals of his enemy, Hamilton of Preston. As the latter was nowhere visible, he was supposed to have perished on the field or in the river. The order of Arran to attend to the safety of Mary of Lorraine and her daughter, gave a new turn to the desperate thoughts of Florence, and made him remember that, in the fulfilment of his duty to the queen and country, he still had something which made existence valuable; though the loss of Madeline, of whom for days before the battle he could discover no trace,—the miserable fate of his mother, who, with all her stern peculiarities and bitter prejudices, had loved him well,—the destruction of his ancestral home and all his household, together with the shame and slaughter of that disastrous day, filled him with mingled horror, rage, and despair.
Swept away by a tide of fugitives, horse and foot, pikemen, archers, and men-at-arms, he crossed the Esk near the Red Craigs, leaping his horse in at a place where the stream was deepest, and then forcing it up the opposite bank, he escaped, though the Earl of Glencairn, Findlay Mhor Farquharson of Invercauld, who bore the royal standard, and several others who accompanied him, perished under the shot of a few German arquebusiers and Kendal archers who lined the river's eastern bank, and nestled in security among the thick furze, beech, and hazel trees, that covered it. After this he found himself almost alone, and rode slowly to breathe his horse, which, like himself, had fortunately escaped without a wound. Occasionally there crossed his path or fled before him a fugitive foot-soldier, making off by the nearest way towards his own home or locality, but denuded of helmet, corslet, arms, and all that might impede his flight; for in their mad panic the Scots cast aside everything, and fell the readier victims in the pursuit.
To conduct the queen-mother and little queen from Edinburgh, he required an escort; and among these fugitives an efficient one could scarcely be formed. The royal guard were all with the army; their captain had been slain; and, like the army itself, his force had doubtless been dissipated and disorganized.
Florence conceived he might obtain a few good men-at-arms from the castles of Craigmillar, Dalkeith, or any other baronial fortress, for the queen's service, and ride with them at once to Edinburgh, as there was no time to lose now, and the sun was verging towards the western horizon. Keeping in the wooded hollow through which the Esk winds to the Forth, he was riding towards the Douglas's castle of Dalkeith, when a loud outcry and the report of firearms warned him that some of Gamboa's mounted arquebusiers were on his track, and forced him to spur on at the fullest speed. Their ironical cheers, taunting cries, and occasionally a shot, followed him; but still, while rage filled his heart and made it beat with lightning speed, Florence rode furiously on, intent on obeying the orders of Arran. Closely the pursuers followed him; for after perceiving that his armour and trappings were rich, they became intent on plunder, and, being fleetly mounted on good Spanish horses, they easily kept pace with the utmost speed of the animal he rode. Down through the deep wooded dell, where the south and north Esks unite below the old castle of Dalkeith, and insulate the quaint old town of the same name—through swamp and bog—through copse and den, and up the river's bank by the Thorny-cruick—they followed him close; while others joined in the pursuit from various points—through the leafy oak woods and beautiful haugh of Newbattle Abbey they swept on the spur; still with a boiling heart the Scot rode on, and still the pursuing Spaniards followed; till in a dark, woody, and secluded hollow, through which the Esk flows, after he had totally failed to gain a shelter in the castle of Dalhousie, they shot his horse, and it sank beneath him in the middle of the stream. Fortunately it was shallow there; he scrambled ashore, and sought a refuge in the copsewood; but the Spaniards and the Kendal archers followed him closely; and as the weight and joints of his armour impeded every action, they gained upon him rapidly. He dreaded the clothyard shafts of the Kendal men more than the large leaden bullets of the Spaniards, who levelled their ponderous arquebuses over their horses' heads, and almost invariably shot wide of the mark they aimed at. Still the balls which whistled past him every minute, stripping the bark from the trees, and flattening out like stars as they crashed upon the rocks, added spurs to his speed; while ever and anon, with a whizzing or a humming sound, a feathered English arrow would quiver in the trunk of a tree close by.
Thus his flight and their pursuit was continued through the oak woods of Dryden till he entered the deeper and more sequestered glen, where, between walls of rock, and shrouded in the densest foliage of every kind, the Esk chafes and gurgles over its stony bed beneath that abrupt and precipitous cliff which is crowned by the ancient castle of Hawthornden, then in ruins, as it had been left by the English during Somerset's previous invasion in 1544, but in after years the poetical home of the loyal and gentle Drummond, one of Scotland's sweetest bards.
Perched on the brow of a grey, detached, and stormbeaten mass of limestone, nothing remained then of the old castle but two square towers and the high arched windows of the hall which faced the south. The cliff starts to a vast height above the bed of the stream, and in every cleft of it and of the adjacent rocks where rooting could be found were those hawthorns from which thedenreceives its name growing in wild luxuriance; and there, too, were the pink foxglove and the blue harebells tossing their cups upon the wind. The silver hazel, the feathery ash, and the branching oak fringed all the cliffs around the gorge—a gorge of rock that is undermined, or literally honey-combed, by deep and tortuous caverns, which formed hiding-places for the Scots of Lothian in the wars of other times; and of their shelter, at this desperate crisis, Florence did not hesitate to avail himself, as he knew the locality well. Having eluded his pursuers, whose shouts had now died away, he sought the entrance of one of these subterranean retreats, and having found it immediately under one of the square towers of the old ruin, he dashed through the natural screen of wild briars, hazel, and hawthorn which concealed it, and entering the cavern, threw himself upon its stony floor, breathless, weary, and prostrated in energy and strength.
The time was evening now; and without a horse, without men, money, or adherents, with the whole surrounding country in possession of an army flushed by a sudden and bloody victory, what hope had he of obeying Arran's order, and achieving the safety of the two queens, who might fall into the hands of the conqueror?
He took off his hot helmet, and pressing his hands upon his throbbing temples, closed his eyes and strove to shut out thought, memory, and even the dim twilight that struggled into the damp cavern where he lay, prostrate and weary in body and in spirit.
The hazel throws his silvery branches down.There, starting into view, a castled cliff,Whose roof is lichen'd o'er, purple and green,O'erhangs thy wandering stream, romantic Esk,And rears its head among the ancient trees.
These caverns are spacious and circuitous, and occupy the entire rock under the ancient castle; and Scottish antiquaries (a hard and dry, yet credulous race at all times) have been lost in a maze of conjectures concerning their origin and use, as they are in a great part artificial. Tradition avers them to have been a stronghold and place of retreat for the Pictish princes who once held the Lowlands; and they still bear the names of "the gallery," "the guard-room," and "the king's bedchamber;" for in these vaults, according to the Vicar of Tranent, Lothus, who gave his name to Lothian, resided with his queen, Anna, daughter of Aurelius Ambrosius, King of the Britons when Hengist and his Saxons sorely troubled all the isle by their invasion. In one of the caverns is a deep draw-well, beautifully hewn like a vast cylinder through the living rock, where, in the pure cold depth of its water, the reflected stars are sometimes seen at noonday.
The sun was setting now beyond the purple Pentland Hills, and Florence, with the roar of the recent battle yet buzzing in his ears, with sorrow, gloom, and bitterness in his aching heart, crushed in soul and vague in purpose, lay watching the sinking beams through a fissure in the rocks, around which the dark-green ivy, the fragrant wild briar, and the dog-rose grew together.
Far westward spread the lovely landscape, tinted with the ruddy light of eve and with autumnal brown; murmuring over its rocky bed, which occupies the entire space between the wood-crowned cliffs or walls of rock that border in the narrow vale, the Esk flowed ceaselessly on. The dense foliage that covered its banks exhibited all the varying tints of the season; while on the rent and fissured fronts of the opposing bluffs, that start abruptly up like ruined towers or fantastic feudal castles, the western sun poured a warm glow, that faded slowly as his wavering rays shot upward and sank beyond the summits of the Pentlands. Grey lichens, green velvet moss, the purple foxglove, the pink rose of Gueldres, and every species of wild flower peculiar to the lowlands, covered the rugged banks and freestone rocks, through the fissures of which many a tiny rill poured down into the deep and lonely dell to join the Esk upon its passage through a thousand windings, till it joined the sea near Pinkey's corpse-strewn field.
Rock, wood, and water, silence and solitude, broken only by the voices of the birds above and the brawl of the stream below, with the deepening tints of the autumn evening—all that can make a sylvan landscape charm, were there; but these accessories rendered the thoughts of the wanderer more sad and bitter as he surveyed them, for Florence loved his country well, and he had that day seen her banner trodden in the dust. Then he remembered how, two hundred and fifty years before, it was in these same caverns that the valiant Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie and the Black Knight of Liddesdale, during the memorable and disastrous wars of the earlier Edwards, lurked with a band of young and desperate patriots, and thus were enabled to elude the pursuit of the temporary victors; that from thence they had sallied forth to destroy the Flemings under Guy of Namur, Count of Gueldres, in battle on the Burghmuir; that from thence they issued to storm the castles of Edinburgh and Dunbar, and to perform a hundred other brilliant feats of chivalry.
As these old memories occurred to him, he arose, and thought that, as the darkness was at hand, he might make his way to the capital unseen and on foot; but now, hearing a sound near the cavern mouth, he drew his sword, to be prepared for any emergency.
Steps were heard; the screen of ivy and hawthorn was hastily torn aside; the gleam of the western sky glittered on the polished helmet and cuirass of an armed man, who with difficulty, as if wounded or weary, made several ineffectual efforts to reach the cavern. None but a native of the locality—one at least belonging to Lothian—could know of this place, thought Florence, as he put forth a hand to assist the stranger to clamber in, and found himself confronted by the pale face and snow-white beard of Claude Hamilton of Preston!
They surveyed each other in painful silence for nearly a minute.
The old baron was weary, wan, and by the blood-spots and dints which his armour exhibited, his torn plume, and red sword-handle, had evidently borne his full share in the dangers of that terrible field. He, too, had been pursued by the stragglers of the foe, who were now all mustering among the Scottish tents on Edmondstone Edge, previous to an advance upon the capital, and its seaport. His horse, which had borne him from the conflict, pierced by many arrows, and half disembowelled by a sword-thrust, had sunk under him at the ford near Lasswade; and now he was fain to seek the sheltering caves of Hawthornden, for age and toll had rendered him almost incapable of further exertion. But on recognizing Florence, his cheek crimsoned, and his eyes sparkled with a sudden fury.
"We meet at last," said he, in a voice querulous with age, anger, and weariness;—"meet after I have sought you everywhere, for these ten days past; and now fortunately meet where there are none to see, and none to separate us."
"Alas, sir!" replied Florence, "too well I know what you would say to me."
"Thou whining loon, is it so with thee?" exclaimed the other scornfully; "yes, I would speak of my kinswoman—of Madeline Home, the Countess of Yarrow. What hast thou done with her? Where secluded her if alive—where buried her if dead? How hast thou spirited her away from me? Speak, lest I have thee riven at a horse's tail!"
"What shall I say—whatcanI say?" was the bewildered response of Florence.
"Some say thy mother slew her, Florence Fawside," continued the old man hoarsely, as he grasped the young man's arm, and shook him vehemently in his grief and rage; "others say 'twasthou——"
"I—oh horror!"
"I care not which; but vengeance I will have, for the sake of my sister who bore her, and of her father, that true and valiant earl, who, on many a day since Flodden Field, has fought by my side, and who loved me so well. Vengeance, I say, thou accursed son of a wicked beldame—dost hear me?"
"Slay me, Claude Hamilton, if you will—I resist not," replied Florence mournfully. "Weary of life, I sought death in every part of yonder bloody field; but like that fated Jew who mocked his blessed Lord upon the slope of Calvary in the days of old, he fled me everywhere. The arrows rained upon me, harmless as snowflakes; and swords, and spears, and cannon-shot have alike failed to maim me; and I live yet—live without a wounds; but without joy—without desire or hope!"
"What is all this to me—I would speak of my dear kinswoman—my dead sister's only child——"
"Alas! I know nothing, and can say nothing of her."
"Nothing?" continued Hamilton, furiously drawing his dagger; "know ye that stabbed—foully stabbed by the hand of the sacrilegious hag who bore thee, her pure blood has stained the floor of the church of God!"
"The cause of your injurious words procures their pardon. Stabbed! oh, too well know I that, for her blood dyed my hands as I knelt by her side; a dagger was there—a bodkin—my mother—Madeline...." muttered Florence incoherently. "God knows I am every way innocent, sakeless, and free of Madeline's blood—my Madeline, whom I loved with a love akin to worship! You have your dagger, Claude Hamilton—you and I are each the last of our races—strike! add one more item to the gory catalogue of this day's slaughter. Strike!" he added, sinking on one knee; "I care not to leave the last and final blow, with the triumph, if a triumph it is—and the fatal inheritance of our houses—the hatred and the feud, to thee!"
Mad with a fury which rendered him pitiless as a hungry tiger, Hamilton raised the dagger, and it flashed in the twilight which straggled through the ivy screen that closed the cavern-mouth, when his uplifted arm was arrested by the hand of some one behind, and theCountess of Yarrow, with the vicar of Tranent, appeared before them, as suddenly as if they had sprung from the floor of rock below.
"Guide me God, and every saint in heaven!" cried the old man, as he dashed his poniard down; "am I going mad? or do I see before me things that are not in existence!"
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,And threw gules on Madeline's fair breast,As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;Rose-blossoms on her hands together prest.—Keats.
It was, indeed, Madeline, and no illusion or shadowy mockery, that stood before them, smiling, and smiling sweetly; looking her own fair self again, but paler, and, it might be, somewhat sickly in aspect; for the skilful nun of Haddington, by her simples and leechcraft, had really cured her; and barely was she able to be moved in a litter, when the sudden advance of the English, and the destruction of the village, the church, and vicarage of Tranent, compelled the vicar with his charge to seek safety in flight. Failing to reach the capital, which was already crowded by thousands of fugitives from all the southern and eastern towns and villages, on that very evening, after wandering from place to place, by a strange coincidence they had taken shelter in the same cavern to which Florence and her uncle had been driven by the force of events, or by the tide of war. Thus rage on one hand, and grief on the other, gave place to mutual explanations, and the details of dangers escaped and toils endured.
"But tell me, Father John," said Florence, "whence came the sound of that passing bell, which on the fatal evening struck such a horror on my heart?"
"It was a mistake of my sacristan."
"Blessed be Heaven that spared her——"
"To life andyou," interrupted the good old priest, pressing his hand.
Claude Hamilton was about to speak, when the vicar resumed hurriedly, while lifting up his withered hands,—
"Alas, sirs! of a verity this hath been a black Saturday for Scotland!"
"And our monks, with their grey frocks and white banner," added Claude Hamilton bitterly; "what availed its solemn consecration, amid incense and Latin, in the abbey of Dunfermline? By the Black Rood of Scotland! I saw them lying round it as thick as leaves in autumn, in their shaven crowns and black armour; and small mercy those heretics of England gave them!"
"Our church, which my friend in youth, Dunbar the poet likens to a ship—the holy bark of St. Peter—tossing on a tempestuous sea of Lollardy, will yet ride out the storm; and on the next field where we meet these heretical English, foot to foot and hand to hand, God will make Himself manifest, and defend the right."
"I hope so. Heaven taking all the monks to itself, however, seems a sorry commencement. But I begin to put more faith in stout men-at-arms than in miracles, and more faith in a hackbut than a homily."
"Yet thy kinswoman hath been restored to thee hale and sound," said the vicar reproachfully.
"True, Father John; and for that good deed will I hang in your church a lamp of silver, that shall light its altar till the day of doom, in memory of my gratitude and devotion."
"But tell me of the field—this fatal, gory field,—and how it went," said the politic priest; "and meanwhile let us leave the young laird to make some reparation to the young countess for the sore evil his mother wrought her; so come this way with me, and I will show you how the fires of these destroyers redden all the sky to the westward."
At first Claude Hamilton was unwilling to leave his niece, even for a moment, as she hung affectionately on his breast; but the priest gently separated them, and led him within the caverns to a point from whence, through an orifice or fissure in the limestone rocks, they could see all the valley to the westward lighted by a broad and lurid blaze of light, that wavered, reddened, waned, and sank to rise and glare again, upon the impending cliffs which overhung the river; on its waters, which bore a hundred varying hues; and on all the copsewood and thickets that fringed the sylvan glen. This unwonted blaze came from the princely castle of the Sinclairs of Roslin, which some of Somerset's devastators had sacked and set in flames; and now the conflagration shone far over all the valley of the Esk, like the fated light of the legend, that bodes when death or evil menace the "lordly line of high St. Clair." Many wild animals fled before this startling light. The wolf sent up its wild baying cry from the caverns in the glen; the red-deer and the timid hart fled down the stream, as if the hunter's arrow and the shaggy, brown-eyed dogs were on their trail; and the gled and the mountain-eagle were screaming as they whirled and wheeled in mid air, as if in fury at being scared from their eyry.
Claude Hamilton remembered that but lately he had seen the fire rending and the smoke blackening the walls of his own baronial home: he muttered a fierce malediction; and grasping the dagger which had so recently menaced the life of Florence, he continued to gaze upon the flames, and to listen to the shouts of armed stragglers, who, by the frequent sound of horns, cries, and explosion of arquebuses, seemed to be wandering in the valley of the Esk, exchanging signals or slaying those who fell into their hands. These alarming noises became more frequent, and ultimately seemed to approach the place of his concealment.
Meantime, though left thus together, though their tongues and hearts were laden with inquiries, Florence and the young countess were silent, and full of thoughts which could find but little utterance or coherence; for the course of recent events had been so startling and rapid that both were bewildered.
"You are well—restored—recovered, Madeline!" said the lover in a low and earnest whisper, as he pressed her to his breast, closely and convulsively.
"Restored and recovered by God's grace and the skill of sister Christina of Haddington."
"Heaven bless her, Madeline! My mother—what shall I say of my mother!"
"Speak not of her now," said the countess in a low and agitated voice; "I would not pain your heart for worlds."
"She wronged you deeply—cruelly, dearest! But this day—God rest her soul!—she died a horrible death."
"Died—did you say she died?"
"Amid the flames of our tower, which the English attacked and burned, while I was disputing the passage of the Esk at the head of a few horsemen; but she defended her house, by bow, pike, and arquebuse, to the last, and died as she had lived, unflinching, resolute, and unyielding,—died, as roof and rafter, cope and turret, went surging down into the sea of fire below. Oh, it was an awful end! All her animosities, her hate, her mistakes, and her faults, have passed away; so let us think of them no more. But the slaughter of to day, the treason of our peers, and dispersion of the army, have plunged the land in danger and dishonour, the end of which I cannot foresee! A thousand times to-night I have said—would that I were dead!"
"Florence," said the countess softly, taking his hand in hers, "at this miserable time, do not let us exaggerate our sorrows. Let us rather bear up together against our misfortunes. All hope is not dead for us. Something yet remains, for Mary of Lorraine is my friend, and hope whispers to me that we shall both be happy yet."
"Together, Madeline?"
"Together."
"And you my wife?"
She did not reply, but returned gently the pressure of his hand, and then tenderly passed hers over his tearful and bloodshot eyes.
"Bless you, Madeline, for that assurance and the hope it gives me: but your kinsman, Claude——"
"Remember only that I love you, Florence—for I do love you, dearly."
"These words should lighten everything. When you are near me I no longer seem to suffer aught from recollection of the past, or dread of the future. Even this dark, dank cavern becomes bright and beautiful!"
Madeline smiled, for he could see her eyes sparkle, and her teeth glitter like two rows of pearl in the twilight.
"You smile now, dear and merry one, even in this place, and after such a day of woe."
"The joy of being restored to you counterbalances every evil," she whispered in his ear.
"Mine own sweetheart! Then think of the time when I shall be always with you, and when we shall never be parted again."
There was a tender and mute embrace, which was suddenly interrupted by a sound of alarm.
"Hark—what is that?" exclaimed Madeline starting back.
"The explosion of an arquebuse——"
"And voices——"
"Quite near us, too—be still—we are beset!"
"To your sword, Fawside," cried Claude Hamilton, coming hastily forward; "some of these pestilent English stragglers are close by. Remove the countess—Father John, lead her within, and leave the young laird and me to make what service we may, and to keep the mouth of this dark hole while life and blood and steel remain to us."
Madeline was led away, while Florence and the old knight of Preston, with their swords drawn, crept close to the mouth of the cavern, from whence, as the moon was now up, a clear, broad, and yellow one, for the season was harvest, they could distinctly sec the coming danger. Several of the enemy's pillagers had been passing near, and had too evidently heard the sound of voices in these caverns, the echoes of which repeat each other with many reverberations.
The rascal who would not give cut and thrust for his country, as long as he had a breath to draw or a leg to stand on, should be tied neck and heels, without benefit of clergy, and thrown over Leith pier, to swim for his life like a mangy dog.—Mansie Wauch.
On looking through the screen of leaves which partially shrouded the mouth or entrance of their remarkable hiding-place, they saw the moonlight reflected from, the conical helmets, the globular cuirasses, and long polished gun-barrels of some ten or twelve arquebusiers, whom, by their black beards, swarthy countenances, and strange language, they knew to belong to Gamboa's Spanish band; and, indeed, that formidable Don himself, in a suit of black armour, profusely engraved with gold, spurred his horse rapidly after them from the river-side, and ascended the steep path that led to the ruined castle on the limestone cliff. With this party were a few green-doubleted English archers and billmen, who had with them several horses, linked together by halters; and these were laden with all kinds of trappings and household goods, too evidently the plunder of the village and castle of Roslin, the flames of which were now beginning to waver and sink. In short, this was evidently a party of foragers or devastators, who were returning to Edmondstone Edge, where the main body of Somerset's army were now encamped, and where his soldiers were making merry among the Scottish tents; but having, as I have said, heard voices in the echoing cave, or having discovered by means of a hound which accompanied them, that some unfortunate fugitives were concealed thereabout, the yet unsated lust of blood, or hope of plunder, made the Spaniards resolve to have them discovered, and killed or taken.
As they warily drew near, with the matches of their arquebuses burning, and in every half-drawn bow an arrow-pointed, Florence remembered the future safety of Madeline, the unobeyed orders of Arran; and the hopelessness of achieving either filled his heart again with sickness.
Perceiving nothing but the ivied face of the rock, and hearing no sound, the Spaniards uttered a shout, and came more hastily up the narrow path; then, most unhappily, Madeline, being unable to repress her alarm, uttered an exclamation, which, however low, reached the ears of Gamboa.
"Voto á tal!" he exclaimed; "there are women here—one, at least, and I shall watch her as Argus did Io, that is, if she proves as handsome."
"It may be a spirit guarding buried treasure," suggested one of his soldiers, shrinking back.
"And which dost thou shrink from, Gil Alvarez, the spirit or the treasure?" asked his leader. "I have heard of such things in Germany, and, by my beard and beads! this old place looketh like many a castle we have seen upon the Rhine and in the Schwarzwald. Push on,hombres! Diavolo! here are men-at-arms afraid of a few ivy-leaves!"
There was another shout from the Spaniards, and he who was named Gil Alvarez made a rush into the gloom that lay beyond the screen of ivy and wild roses; but he found himself encountered by unseen enemies, for at the same moment that Claude Hamilton wrenched away his arquebuse, Florence tore off his collar of bandoleers, and bestowed a sword-thrust into his open mouth, hurling him back, bleeding and senseless, upon his comrades below.
This was an immediate signal for a general assault.
Whiz came the long arrows, to shiver and splinter on the walls of rock; and with the flash of the arquebuses came their leaden bullets, to crash and flatten on the same place; and then both the English and Spaniards withdrew behind some masses of the fallen walls and the trunks of trees, to consider the best means of assailing those hidden defenders, of whose number and power they were ignorant.
"There are twenty charges of powder in the bandoleer," said Claude Hamilton, counting them in the dark, "and there are not above twenty of those cut-throats opposed to us. Your eye is keener, Fawside, and your hand more sure, than mine; take the arquebuse, and pick me off these fellows as fast as they show themselves. Two men to man this cavern-mouth are as good as a hundred; let us fight bravely, lad, for we know not but aid may come anon."
By the glitter of its beams on the polished armour of Gamboa's men, the bright moon showed with fatal distinctness where they nestled among the green hawthorns or behind the heaps of stones which had fallen from the old castle above; thus Florence, when he loaded and levelled by the silvery light without, felt that Madeline's safety, honour, her life perhaps, depended upon the precision of his aim.
He almost trembled as he selected an object; and Claude Hamilton could perceive that his face was pale, even in the usually ruddy light of the match, in which his polished mail seemed to glitter with a lambent glow, as his eye glared along the barrel. He fired; and the explosion, which made the cavern echo with seeming thunder, was followed by a cry of agony, and then an armed man was seen rolling down the slope towards the Esk.
"To thine arquebuse again, lad!" said Hamilton, sternly but cheerily, and with grim satisfaction; "thou hast given one of these tawny loons a shot in his stomach, and a weighty one, too; I warrant they go four, at least, to the Lanark pound. Couldst notch the helmet of that pernicious heretic Pedro Gamboa, think you? By St. Andrew! were he within reach ofmyhand I could spelder him by one stroke of my axe, yea, spelder him as I would a haddock!" he added, as another volley of shot and arrows whizzed and rattled on the rocks around them.
A second bullet from the arquebuse of Florence, followed by the cry of—
"Holy Virgin, I am a dead man!" announced that this time an English billman had fallen; and with a yell of rage his comrades rushed forward to storm the retreat of these hidden enemies. While Florence reloaded and blew the match of his arquebuse, Claude Hamilton with his two-handed sword manned the cavern mouth, and being on firm vantage ground (while the assailants required all their hands. feet, and energy, to clamber upward), he cut down three of them in succession with ease, and by a single thrust tossed a fourth nearly ten yards into the woody hollow below. In a minute more two others hac fallen, killed or wounded, under the deadly aim of Florence.
"How stands your bandoleer?" asked the laird of Preston, resting on his long sword.
"I have shots enough for them all at this rate."
"Good—by the black rood of Scotland, good! We'll beat them yet; level low and true—we fight for our lives!"
"Oh, laird of Preston," exclaimed Florence, in a voice to which emotion lent a chord that was soft and musical; "even in this hour of terror hear me. I fight only for Madeline, and for the love I bear her—a love beyond the grave—see that she is in safety."
"Thanks, my ancient enemy—may Heaven nerve your eye and hand!"
Florence fired again, and while the deep vaults and the rocky glen rang with a thousand echoes, a Spaniard fell, and was seen tossing his arms in the moonlight, as he shrieked on "the Holy of Holies" (el Santo de los Santos) to have pity upon him. On beholding the slaughter of his men, Gamboa uttered a dreadful oath in Spanish.
"Let us smoke forth these Scots!" he exclaimed.
"How,smokethem say you?" asked an Englishman, who proved to be no other than Master Patten, the future historian of the expedition, who rode up at that moment.
"Exactly," rejoined the Spaniard, who spoke the English language with great fluency: "many a brood of yellow Indians I have smoked out of their holes in Hispaniola and Tortuga. You know nothing of life in Cuba—but I do. There I have often roasted thirteen Indian devils alive on a Good Friday, in honour of our blessed Lord and the twelve Apostles. God smite ye, fellows! cut brushwood—bring fire—fill the cavern-mouth, and burn them as we would castanos in their shells."
This proposition, which made the blood of Florence run cold, was received with a loud hurrah, and relinquishing their arquebuses, the Spaniards drew their short swords, and together with the English billmen, proceeded to form piles and bundles of wood, by uprooting shrubs and bushes—cutting down small trees, and tearing branches from firs and beeches; and now, from the ruins of the old castle above (a place where they were secure from the arquebuse of Florence), they began to throw down vast heaps of this hastily-gathered fuel, together with an entire stack of straw, which they found near; and as these combustibles accumulated about the cavern-mouth, and gradually covered it up, excluding the moonlight and the external air, the imminence of their danger could no longer be concealed from the countess and the vicar; and to save them at least from so horrible a death, Florence proposed that a capitulation should be asked for.
"To capitulate is to be destroyed!" exclaimed Hamilton fiercely; "what hope of quarter have we from mercenaries like these?"
"To remain here is also to be destroyed, and by a death too dreadful for contemplation—suffocation in a dark pit," replied Florence, pressing Madeline to his breast closely and tenderly.
"Bring hither a lighted match; but, by the Holy of Holies," they heard the superstitious Don Pedro exclaiming; "I am loath to smother a woman at the close of a day of victory—a woman whose name may beMary, too!"
"What matters it, whether her name be Mary or Maud—Giles or Joan?" asked Master Patten, staring in wonder through the bars of his helmet, and laughing the while.
"It matters much to me, Señor Inglese, for I was reared in Old Castile, and on the banks of the Ebro, where my mother taught me it was a sin to make love on a Friday, or to kiss a woman whose name was Mary on a day of fasting; for though I serve King Edward's banner, and fight against the Scots, I am nevertheless, thank Heaven! a good Catholic and a true Castilian, without the taint of Jew, infidel, or Morisco in my blood."
On hearing this, just as fire from a gunmatch was about to be put into the vast pile of fuel, over which the arquebusiers had sprinkled powder from their priming-flasks, the Vicar of Tranent rushed to the entrance of the grotto, and tearing aside the screen of ivy with one hand, waved a white handkerchief with the other, exclaiming,—
"Gloria tibi, Domine!we shall be saved! I am a priest, sir Spaniard, and in the name of our holy Church and of Him I serve, command you to spare me, and those who are with me!" A shout of derision from Patten's men was the sole reply to this.
"Command, quotha—what manner of ware have we here?" said one mockingly.
"A priest and a woman in that dark hole! holy father how farest thou?" said a second.
"By St. George, 'tis a rare one to eschew the world, the flesh, and the devil!" added a third.
"Shoot, shoot! Cogsbones—'twas no priest's hand that slew the best lad in Kendal," exclaimed Patten, "or handled his arquebuse like one of our men at Finsbury!" Two archers drew each an arrow to their heads; but Pedro de Gamboa interposed his drawn sword before them, exclaiming:
"Hold—hold, sirs. I will have naught to do with priests. I have seen enough in my time to prove that Heaven always avenges a sacrilege."
"What!" asked Patten; "hast any qualms about killing a scurvy shaveling—a Scot, too? Don Spaniard, you should have smelled the fires o' Smithfield in old King Harry's time. Go to! we are not now either in Old Castile or on the banks of the Ebro."
"Silence, Englishman!" replied the Spaniard gravely; "for though your land hath become as a land of heathens, and, to my sorrow, I serve it, I am a good Catholic, yet one, it may be, who is in the habit of swearing more by the saints than of praying to them. I am a soldier of fortune, yet I war not on priests or women, but simply on such as come armed against me; and 'tis the memory ofwhat I wasin Old Castile and on the banks of the Ebro that in an hour like this prevents me from slaying a priest of that Church in the faith of which my mother reared me. For one act of sacrilege and blasphemy I have seen nearly the whole population of a city perish in an hour."
"Fore George, thismusthave been in Old Castile!" said Patten, in a jibing tone.
"It wasnot," replied the Spaniard angrily, while his dark eyes flashed under the peak of his helmet. "But darest thou gibe me, Englishman—I, who have fought by the side of Cortes in Mexico, and by the order of Pizzaro slew Diego Almagro—I, who served with Velasquez in distant climes that are far away, in the lands of gold and silver, snow and fire, where the boasted red cross of your country has never yet been seen by sea or shore; but there I have seen that which this night forbids me to commit a sacrilege!"
In Spanish, he now commanded his soldiers to remove the pile of brushwood and straw that lay before the cavern-mouth; and while they obeyed with alacrity, he again turned sternly to Master Patten, and said,—
"Listen! In 1534 I was at San Iago de Guatemala, in old Mexico, and resided with a noble Spanish gentlewoman of the city, named Doña Maria de Castilia, or of Castile, for she came, like myself, from the sunny banks of the Ebro. In one week her husband was slain in battle and her children were destroyed by the Mexican savages from Petapa. Driven to frenzy by the loss of all she loved, she smote a priest who attempted to console her, and in his presence blasphemed Heaven, exclaiming, while she rent her garments,—
"'El Espiritu Santo, what more can it do to me now than has been done, save take away a miserable life which I regard not!'
"As she spoke, there was heard a dreadful rushing sound. For a time we knew not whether it came from heaven above or the earth beneath us; but anon there came also shouts of terror from a thousand tongues, and lo! from the old volcano, a mountain nine miles in height, which overhangs the city, there burst a mighty flood of water, which drowned this impious woman and many hundreds of the people, while streets and churches were alike overturned and swept away. A few persons escaped: among them I, by the speed of my horse: but the ruins of La Cividad Vieja still remain to attest how sacrilege may be punished. And now, as I vowed to perform at least one deed of charity to-day, if I escaped the battle scathless, I release this priest and those who are with him. Come forth, good father, and fear not; I pledge my word for your safety—I, Don Pedro de Gamboa."
The lofty air and determined manner of the Spaniard, together with the knowledge that his veterans were the more numerous and better-armed party, awed Master Patten and his petulant archers into silent acquiescence; and the old vicar, leading the countess by the hand, stepped forth into the moonlight, followed by Florence and Claude Hamilton.
"Is this your whole party, señor padre?" asked the Spanish captain, with a courteous salute.
"All; and in the name of Him I serve and the Church you still venerate, I crave their liberty with me."
"It is granted."
"Deo gratias, sir Spaniard."
"I am too good a Castilian,padre mio, to refuse aught to a priest or to a lady; and as neither you nor she can travel hence afoot, I give you here two of our captured nags. Go, reverend sir, and God speed you! If, between the night and morning, you can find time to say an Ave or Credo for one who has long since forgotten how to pray for himself, insert in your prayer the name of Pedro de Gamboa, the poor soldier of fortune. Adieu!"
In five minutes after this fortunate and sudden release our friends found themselves alone, and pursuing, by the most sequestered paths, as rapidly as possible, and lighted by the clear and brilliant moon, the way to Edinburgh; while the cavalier, with his party of arquebusiers and bowmen, with their train of horses and plunder, proceeded to Somerset's new halting-place on Edmondstone Edge.
The vicar and the countess were mounted; and on each side of the horse ridden by the latter, Florence and Claude Hamilton walked on foot as hastily as their iron trappings would permit them.
Oh, these bright days are past,And their joys are buried deep;Sweet flowers that couldna last,They've gane with those we weep.The world is now grown cold,And the mirth and love and glee,That wont to cheer of old,We never mair can see.—Anon.
In the pure splendour of that brilliant moon, when every herb and leaf were gemmed with glittering dew—when the heaven above was all one azure vault of stars, and the distant landscape mellowed far away in silence and placidity—when a silver haze rose from every hollow—and when, save their own voices, no sound came to the ears of the countess and her three companions, it was difficult for them to realize—the actual amount of danger through which they had passed—that they were now free; and none who surveyed that quiet moonlight scene, or the blue and star-studded sky over head, could have imagined that more than fourteen thousand men, who when the sun rose had been in all the prime of life and vigour, were now lying, within a few miles' compass, as cold and pale as death could make them.
Seeking the most secluded paths, the little party proceeded with all speed towards Edinburgh, passing the ancient grange of Gilmerton, through the deep and sylvan dell of the Staine-house, over the hills of Braid, and past the cell of St. Martin, which had been sacked, ruined, and stained by the blood of its poor hermit, who was slain by the English. From thence, after traversing the Burghmuir undisturbed and unquestioned, they entered the city by the porte at the Kirk-of-field Wynd. There the gate was open; no guard or warder was there now. The town-house of the Regent Arran, which stood in this steep, ancient, and narrow street (now known as the College Wynd), was deserted and dark; but as they proceeded further into the city, the effects of that day's defeat became everywhere painfully apparent. The bells in the numerous churches, oratories, and monasteries, were being tolled mournfully; and at every altar were people praying for the dead. The streets were thronged by crowds, principally of women, who wept and wailed as they bore forth their children and most valuable goods and chattels by the light of cressets, links, and torches, that sputtered in the night-wind and flared on the reddened eyes and pale affrighted faces of the multitude, as from the archways of the quaint narrow alleys and wynds of that old "romantic town" they took their way towards the west, to the Pentland hills, to the sea-shore, or anywhere to escape the victorious foe, as all despaired of defending a city the flower of whose men had fallen in that day's disastrous battle.
In answer to the anxious inquiries of Florence, as to whether the queen-mother had quitted the city, and if so for where, none could inform them; but on reaching the Guise Palace, as the citizens named the little mansion and oratory of Mary of Lorraine on the north side of the Castle Hill, they found a number of well-armed horsemen arrayed in the street, with swords drawn, and bearing lighted torches; while a train of horses, some of which were saddled, others laden with trunks, mails, and bales of such valuables as the queen-mother and the ladies of her suite wished to preserve, were held by grooms and lackeys in the royal livery. Among them was a powerful Clydesdale nag, which was led by a groom, and had securely strapped to its back a curtained horse-litter, which, as it was surmounted by a royal crown, was evidently destined for the little queen of Scotland.
The present was no time for ceremony, and as Mary of Lorraine stood under the royal canopy in her presence-chamber, hooded, cloaked, and ready for her journey to the north or west, according to the recommendation of those about her, the Countess of Yarrow and those who accompanied her were at once introduced. Mary of Lorraine folded Madeline in her arms and kissed her on both cheeks with great emotion, receiving her as one restored from the dead; for she had heard of the terrible episode in the church of Tranent—of her mysterious disappearance; and she loved the young countess as a sister.
The beautiful widow of James V. was pale, but calm, firm, and collected. In the chamber were many of her ladies—Helen Countess of Argyle, Elizabeth Countess of Athole, and others, all prepared for the road in their riding-dresses; and there, also, were several of the noblesse, whose dinted and blood-stained harness or bandaged visages afforded an index how they had maintained themselves in the lost battle of the past day. Some had lost their scabbards, and still had their notched and discoloured swords in their hands; the blade of one, that of the Lord Aboyne, was so bent that the sheath would not receive it.
"Florence Fawside!" exclaimed the queen with emotion presenting her hand, "M. Fawside and M. Hamilton of Preston! I do rejoice to see you together, and safe, at this most dreadful crisis?"
"You see us together, madam, because the present pressure of evil makes all Scotsmen brothers, or at least comrades," replied Preston coldly and sternly, while he coloured with shame and vexation on being seen thus on quiet terms with one who was well known to be his hereditary foe.
"Have you any tidings of your chief, the lord regent?" she asked.
"Tidings?" reiterated Hamilton with surprise.
"Yes, of this Earl of Arran, of whose utter incapacity to govern a realm or lead an army we have had such fatal proofs to day; through whom, by leaving his strong position, we have lost a battle by defeat which else had been a glorious victory," said the Earl of Mar, with stern vehemence.
"Yea—a fool—a very fool!" added the Lord Aboyne, whose son and heir had perished on the field, and whose sentiments were consequently the more bitter.
"Naught know I of him, but that he was to retreat with the main body of the army towards Stirling," said Hamilton.
"Retreat for thirty miles through a country full of strong military positions!" exclaimed the Earl of Mar with growing indignation.
"And leaving alike the queen and queen-mother behind. Truly well and wisely planned, most sapient regent!" said Mary of Lorraine bitterly.
"On seeing the field was lost," said Florence, "his last orders tome, madam, were to get you forth the city and conduct you and your royal daughter to a place of greater safety."
"I know not in whom to believe, M. Fawside," said the queen mournfully; "or to whom to turn."
"Ah, turn to me, madam," said the young man, with a glance of honest confidence and enthusiasm, as some of the ever-watchful courtiers withdrew a little space to confer among themselves; "my counsel may be feeble, it may even be unwise; but my sword is ever ready, my heart steadfast and true."