It fell about the Martimas time,When winds blow snell and cauld.That Adam o' Gordon said to his men,Where will we get a hauld?See ye not yon fair castleStands on yon lily lea?The laird and I hae a deadly feud,And the lady I fain would see.Adam o' Gordon.
For ages, a feud had existed between the MacNabs and MacNeishes, two tribes of considerable strength and influence, who, without having any marked limits to their territories, possessed that wild and mountainous district which lies around Lochearn.
The former of these clans was a bravich of the Siol Alpin, and took its name (i.e., the sons of the abbot) from the ancient head of the Kuldee Abbey of Glendochart; and, during the reign of James IV., they had successfully carried fire and sword into the land of their enemies, who possessed the district then known as the Neishes' Country, lying between Comrie and Lochearn, comprising the Pass of Strathearn, Dundurn, the Hill of St. Fillan, Glentiarkin, and part of Glenartney. Embittered by old traditionary wrongs, transmitted orally by sire to son, from age to age, the rancour of these two tribes was without a parallel, even in the annals of ancient Celtic ferocity and lust of vengeance; and fired by the memory of a thousand real or imaginary acts of aggression the boys of each generation, while sitting on their fathers' knees, longed to be men, that they might bend the bow or bear the tuagh and claymore against their hereditary enemies.
On one occasion, the MacNeishes had carried off the holy bell of St. Fillan, a relic of remote antiquity, which in those days stood on a tombstone in the burial-ground of the saint's church, and was venerated by all; but it was miraculously restored; for this bell, like the old bells of Soissons, in Burgundy, and of St. Fillan's, in Meath, had the strange power of extricating itself from the hands of the spoilers, and came back through the air to Strathfillan, ringing merrily all the way; but the circumstance of its abstraction greatly increased the hostility between the rival tribes.
In this petty war, the chief of the MacNabs fell, being slain by an arrow from the bow of Finlay MacNeish, his enemy; but he left twelve sons and his widow, Aileen, a daughter of the clan Donald (the race of the Sea) to carry on the feud; and animated by hate and fury, this woman, stern by nature and savage in purpose, seemed to have no thought, no hope for, or idea of, the future, but as they might serve "tofeedher revenge," which aimed at the destruction of the Neishes, root and branch, and the ultimate capture of their territory.
By her instigation, gathering all their fighting-men for one decisive effort for the supremacy of the district, her sons marched from Kennil House, and the two clans met in battle with nearly a thousand swordsmen on each side, in a wild and pastoral vale, named Glenboultachan, between two high and solitary mountains on the northern shore of Lochearn. Each was led by its chief, and they rushed at once down the green slope to mingle in close and mortal strife, with wild yells, bitter epithets and invectives, while the war-cries rang and the pipers blew, as additional incentives to slaughter and enthusiasm. Plying their sharp broadswords or long poleaxes with both hands, for greater freedom in the work of death, they tossed targets and plaids, breastplates and lurichs of steel, aside; and so that work, ever so rapid and terrible in a Highland battle, went fearfully on.
This battle took place on St. Fillan's Day, 1522, and the MacNabs bore with them the crook of the saint to ensure victory. It was borne by the MacIndoirs, who were the hereditary standard-bearers of MacNab, and had been custodiers of the crook ever since the death of St. Fillan, in 649, an office in which they were confirmed by a royal charter of King James II., in 1437. It is of solid silver, twelve inches long, elaborately carved, and having on one side a precious stone; on the other, the effigy of our Saviour, and was the same relic which, with the saint's arm-bone, Robert the Bruce had with him at the field of Bannockburn.[*]
[*] In 1818 the last of the MacIndoirs, a Highland emigrant, took this valuable relic with him to America, and it is now preserved, with the letters and charters of James II., in the township of MacNab, in Canada.
The morning sun, when pouring his light between the parted clouds athwart that gloomy mountain gorge, lighted up a terrible and bewildering scene, which Aileen MacNab, from the summit of a rocky peak, surveyed in gloomy joy, with her grey, dishevelled hair hanging over her shoulders, as she knelt on ashes strewn crosswise on the heather; and there, with a crucifix before her, and a rosary on her wrist, she implored God and St. Fillan to grant her children and her tribe a victory; and then she left her orisons, to shoot a shaft from her dead husband's bow, among the press of combatants that fought like a herd of tigers in the glen beneath her. Then she would again prostrate herself upon the ashes and before her cross, which was made of the aspen—for ofthat wood, saith old tradition, the true cross was made; hence the tree is accursed, and its leaves shall never rest.
Wedged together in a dense and yelling mass, the two clans were all mingled pellmell in wildmêlée, fighting man to man, scorning to seek quarter, and scorning to yield it. Heads were cloven through helmets of steel, bosoms pierced through lurichs of tempered rings, while hands and limbs were swept off as the sharp wind may sweep the withered reeds from a frozen brook in winter; and the long sword-blades, that flashed in the sun, seemed to whirl without ceasing, like a hugechevaux de frize, grinding all to death beneath them.
Conspicuous above all this fiery throng, like the Destroying Angel or the Spirit of Carnage, wearing three eagle's feathers in the cone of his helmet, and clad in a lurich of shining rings, which covered his whole bulky form from his neck to the edge of his kilt, towered the eldest son of Aileen, namedIan Mion, Mac an Abba(i.e., smoothJohn, the son of the abbot), an ironical sobriquet bestowed upon him in consequence of the roughness of his aspect and the coarse, grim, unyielding nature of his character. He bent all his energies to capture the Neishes' banner, which bore their crest, viz., a cupid with his bow in the dexter, and an arrow in the sinister hand, with the motto,Amicitiam trahit amor. The tall and bearded bearer was soon cloven down by Ian Mion, and the embroidered banner became the trophy of his prowess and daring.
On the other side, Finlay MacNeish, a chief of great age, but of wondrous strength and activity, fought with unparalleled bravery; but John MacNab and his eleven brothers bore all before them, and repeatedly hewed a bloody lane through the ranks of their foemen. At last their followers began to prevail; and in wild desperation and despair at the slaughter of his people, on beholding three of his sons perish by his side, and on finding the disgrace of defeat impending, the aged chief of the Neishes placed his back to a large rude granite block, which still marks the scene of this conflict, and, poising overhead his two-handed sword, stood like a lion at bay. His vast stature, his known strength and bravery, as he towered above the fray, with his white hair streaming in the wind (the clasps of his helmet having given way, he had lost it); the wild glare of his grey and haggard eyes; the blood streaming from his forehead, which had been wounded by an arrow, and from his long, uplifted sword, which (like the claymore of Alaster MacColl) had a remarkable accessory, in the shape of an iron ball, that slid along the back of the blade to give an additional weight to every cut,—all this combined, made the bravest of the MacNabs pause for a moment ere they encountered him; but after a dreadful struggle, in which he slew many of his assailants, the brave old man sank at last under a score of wounds inflicted by swords and daggers; and as his grey hairs mingled with the bloody heather, and were savagely trampled down, the triumphant yell of the MacNabs made the blue welkin ring and the mountains echo; while his people were swept from the field, and perished in scores as they fled, being hewed down on all sides by the swords and axes of the MacNabs, or pierced by their arrows; and the red lichens which spot the old grey stone in Glenboultachan are still believed by the peasantry to be the encrusted blood of the chief of the Neishes.
With MacCallum Glas, their bard, about twenty of the tribe escaped, and took refuge on a wooded islet at the eastern end of Lochearn, where, in wrath and sorrow, they could lurk and plan schemes of revenge, which the all-but total extinction of their name and number rendered futile; while the victorious MacNabs, after sweeping their whole country of cattle, and destroying all their farms, cottages, and dwellings, returned to hold high jubilee in Kennil House, the fortified residence of their chief, which stands upon a rocky isthmus, near the head of Loch Tay, and to inter their dead in the old burial-place of the abbot's children, Innis Bui—a greenswarded islet in the Dochart, where their graves are still shaded by a grove of those dark and solemn pines which were always planted by the Celts of old to mark where the tombs of their people lay; and there the impetuous Dochart, after rushing in foam over a long series of cascades, under the shadow of the giant Benlawers, ends its wild career in the Tay.
The slain of the enemy were stripped by the victors, and, by order of the remorseless Lady Aileen, were left as food for the wolf and raven. A few were interred by Alpin Maol (i.e.the Bald), an old monk of Inchaffray, who officiated as priest of the church of St. Fillan. He came to survey that terrible field at the close of eve; and of all the stately men who lay there on the blood-stained heather, gashed by wounds, and with their glazing eyes upturned to heaven, or lying half immersed in a tributary of Lochearn, towards which, many had crawled in their thirst and suffering, he found onlyonewho survived. The rest, to the number of hundreds around, were dead. They lay in piles, amid vast gouts of blood and broken weapons, and tufts of heather uptorn by the clutches of the dead in their death-agony.
The wounded man proved to be the aged chief of the Neishes, whom the priest, Father Alpin, with the assistance of his sacristan, bore to a place of concealment, and, when his wounds were healed, conducted him in secret to the islet in the loch, where the remnant of his people were lurking, and where he found his daughter Muriel—a child of two years of age—the sole survivor of all his once numerous household; for in their mad fury the fierce MacNabs had spared no living thing, but swept all the land from Comrie to the beautiful banks of Lochearn, killing even the house and hunting-dogs of the vanquished. In every dwelling theclach-an-eorna, or rude mortar, then used for shelling barley by means of a wooden pestle, was broken and destroyed. The creel-houses, or wicker-work edifices, used as hunting-lodges, and even everybaile mhuilainn, or mill-town, was burned and ruined, that never more might the Neishes find shelter or food. All the land was veritably burned up, as when ferns were burned in autumn—a Celtic superstition long since forgotten.
The feeble old chief was received with tears by the relics of his tribe; and these tears spoke more than a thousand languages of all they had suffered, and were ready yet to endure, for him and the now tarnished honour of their fallen race.
In a roughly-constructed hut, or creel-house, so named from being formed of stakes driven into the earth, with turf and wattled twigs between, the remnant of the MacNeishes lived the lives of outlaws; and having secured the only boat that lay in Lochearn, they were wont to make sudden and hostile descents on all sides of the lake, and suddenly at night, when least expected, the cries of those they were slaughtering without mercy arose with the flames of blazing cottages amid the wooded wilderness, and marked where they were dealing out vengeance on the spoilers. Then by a sudden retreat to their boat, they would gain the shelter of their isle, and there, defying all pursuit, would subsist for days on the precarious plunder won in these midnight creaghs or forays.
Penury, privation, and the despair of retrieving what they had lost, or of ever being able to make any resolute stand against the conquerors, made them wilder, more desperate, and savage, than any other landless and broken tribe,—even than the MacGregors in the days of James VI. They subsisted entirely by plunder, winning their daily food by the sword and the bow; and, ere a year was passed, their garments consisted of little else than the skins of deer and other wild animals. Thinly peopled as that mountain district was at all times, the operations of Finlay MacNeish and his twenty desperate men rendered it more desolate than ever; for the MacNabs and their adherents, finding the vicinity of Lochearn so troubled and dangerous, removed their families, with their flocks and herds, to a distance from its shores; but still, while the outlaws on the isle kept possession of their boat, and destroyed every other that was set afloat in the loch, they were enabled to lead their lawless life in security; while the government of the regent, John Duke of Albany, who had never much power at any time beyond the Highland border, gave itself no concern whatever in the matter, for the duke resided principally in France.
From the residence of these outlaws, the green islet which is in the middle of the lower part of Lochearn is still named the Isle of the Neishes.
The future fate of the few stout men who adhered to him, their chief, cost him but little thought. He knew that they would, too probably, all die in detail, falling, as their forefathers fell, by the edge of the sword; but the future of his little daughter, the last of all his race, pressed heavy on the old man's soul, for he would rather have seen her in her grave than the prisoner, it might be the bondswoman, of the abhorred MacNabs. He would gladly have committed her to the care of Alpin Maol, the priest of St. Fillan, that she might be sent to the abbot of Inchaffray, and by him be placed in the charge of some noble lady or holy woman; but the priest abode where his church stood, far from the isle of bondage, in the very heart of the enemy's country, and the aged Finlay had no means of communicating with him by message or letter.
Muriel was now three years old, and her beauty was expanding as her days increased. She was pale and colourless, but her hair was jetty black, and her quiet dark eyes expressed only sadness and melancholy thoughts, for, child though she was, thesauvageriewhich surrounded her, and the sombre gloom of her white-haired sire, a man whose whole heart and soul, whose every thought and plan and prayer were dedicated to retributive vengeance, impressed her with awe; and she shrank from all his grim followers save MacCallum Glas, or the grey son of Columba the citharist, the bard of the tribe, to whose care her mother had committed her on that night of horror in which she perished in their burning mansion, the night succeeding the defeat in Glenboultachan.
The darkness of Muriel's eyes contrasted powerfully with the dazzling purity of her skin, which the tribe believed to be the result of a charm given to her mother by a certain wise-woman, who advised her to dip violets in goat's milk and morning dew, and to bathe the child therewith; for, according to an old Celtic recipe, "Anoint thy face with the milk of goats in which violets have been dipped, and there is not a chief in the glens but will be charmed with thy beauty."
So said the citharist in his song; but MacNeish, as he made the sign of the cross on her pure and innocent brow, exclaimed,—
"Thou art but a fool, grey Callum, for, by the great stone of Glentiarkin! her beauty cometh from no other charm than the breath of her Maker."
And in every foray he sought to bring some gaud or trinket of silver or of gold to deck his daughter, the child of his old age, the last of his doomed race; the little idol who shed a ray of light upon his melancholy and desperate household in that wild and desolate isle.
So passed a year.
Thus to her children Luisa speaks—she cries,With you, my sons, my fate, my vengeance lies!Live for that cause alone, with it to fall,A bleeding mother's is a holy call.Portugal: a Poem.
It was a year of danger, wounds, and rapine; still the MacNeishes, in their wave-surrounded fortress, defied all, and escaped every attempt to capture or destroy them; for still their boat was the only one whose keel ploughed the waters of Lochearn. And now approached St. Fillan's Day, 1523, the first anniversary of their disastrous defeat in Glenboultachan. In honour of this returning day of victory, Lady Aileen MacNab invited all the principal duine-wassals of her tribe to a great feast or festival; and to procure various accessories for the banquet and carousal MacIndoir, the standard-bearer, with other adherents of trust, were sent to the town of Grieff, which is situated on the slope of the Grampians. Having made all their purchases of provisions, wine and fruit, &c., they were returning with four laden sumpter-horses; but when crossing the Ruchil; at a place where it flowed through a thicket of pines, a shrill whistle was heard. Then followed shouts of wild fury and exultation, and MacIndoir found himself surrounded by Finlay MacNeish and his desperate followers, who by some means had obtained intelligence of his journey to Crieff. They were armed with rusty swords and battered targets, and were clad in little else than skins of the wolf and deer. Gaunt men they were; hollow-eyed, fierce and savage in aspect. Their long unshaven beards flowed over their breasts, and their matted hair, without covering or other dressing than a thong or fillet of deerskin, waved in the breeze or streamed over their naked shoulders like the manes of wild horses.
"The Neishes, by the arm of St. Fillan!" exclaimed MacIndoir, drawing his sword in anger and dismay.
"Yes, the Neishes, by the mass, the pope, and St. Fillan to boot!" replied the aged chief, with gloomy ferocity expressed in every lineament of his face, as he turned up the sleeves of his tattered doublet and grasped his two-handed sword; "we have long been supping the poorest of bruith,[*] but now we shall have the good cheer of those sons of the devil who oppress us. Come on, my children—come on!"
[*] Gaelic—hence the wordbroth.
A brief struggle ensued; and while defending himself bravely, MacIndoir vainly threatened the caterans with the "kindly gallows of Crieff," the power of William Earl of Monteith, who was then steward of Strathearn; and, more more than all, with the dreadful retribution which Lady MacNab and her sons would assuredly demand if their goods were plundered or spoiled.
Shouts of derisive laughter were his sole reply, and they mingled strangely with the cries of the wounded, the imprecations of the victors, and the clash of blades, which at every stroke scattered sparks of fire and blood-drops through the sunny air. In a few minutes MacIndoir was compelled to seek safety in flight; while his followers were all cut down, and the four sumpter-horses, with their burdens, captured. Using their swords and dirks as goads, the MacNeishes drove them at a furious pace down the hills towards Lochearn, in a solitary creek of which, under a shroud of ivy, willow, and waterdocks, they had concealed their boat, on board of which they rapidly stowed their plunder. The four horses were then denuded of their trappings, hamstrung, and left to limp away or die in the pine forest; while the MacNeishes, with a shout of defiance, shipped their oars, and as their long fleet birlinn cleft the clear waters of the lake and shot towards the little wooded isle, on the summit of which pale Muriel, with a beating heart, awaited them, the song of exultation raised by MacCallum Glas, as he sat harp in hand in the prow, and the chorus of twenty voices that joined his at intervals, reached the ears of the panting MacIndoir, when he paused on the brow of a neighbouring rock, and pressing the blade of his dirk to his trembling lips, swore to have a terrible revenge for the affront they had put upon him and the stern wife of his late chief, an affront which, to a Celt, seemed an outrage upon all laws divine as well as human.
On reaching Kennil House he related to Lady MacNab the events of his journey from Crieff, stating that the sumpter-horses with their burdens were gone, and that his whole party, consisting of six men, had been cut to pieces by caterans.
"By the Neishes?" she exclaimed in accents of rage.
"By the old wolf in the isle of Lochearn; and the blood of six of our people has soaked the heather."
"Yetthoureturnest alive to tell the shameful story!" was her fierce exclamation, as she smote him on the beard with her clenched hand, and her twelve tall sons gathered round her, muttering threats and growls of anger, all the deeper that they knew them to be futile, as the deep lake rendered the isle impregnable. They formed a hundred fierce schemes of wholesale slaughter, and for the total destruction of the wasps' nest—for so they termed the retreat of the Neishes; but as the waters of the lake were too broad for armed men to swim them, and no boat could be procured, their projects ended in nothing but a settled wrath, all the deeper that it was without resource or vent; so night closed in, and they sat in moody silence in their mother's hall. Its windows overlooked Loch Tay, the waters of which were flushed in one place by the light that lingered in the ruddy west; and in others its deep blue was studded by the tremulous reflection of the stars. From the margin of the loch the beautiful and evergreen pines spread their solemn cones darkly over mountain and valley, as far as the eye could reach. Virgil praises their beauty in gardens; but the Mantuan bard never saw the wiry-foliaged and red-stemmed pine, that twists its knotty and tenacious roots round the basaltic rocks of the Scottish mountains, or he had found a fitter subject for his muse.
Aileen MacNab surveyed the darkening landscape with a gleam in her stern grey eyes, and turned from time to time to observe her surly and athletic sons, who were grouped near the large fire that blazed on the hearth, and which cast from its deep archway, a lurid glow on their bare muscular limbs, and floating red tartans; and then the idea that an insult had been offered to her on the first anniversary of their great victory,—that she had been obliged to despatch messengers to her friends announcing that the banquet had been put off,—and that at that very time too, probably, the wild caterans on the islet were feasting on the good cheer which MacIndoir had procured in Crieff, and were pouring her rare French and Flemish wines down their brawny throats, made her tremble with wrath.
Repeatedly she addressed Ian Mion, her eldest son; but on this night, John the Smooth, was unusually gloomy and abstracted, and made no response.
It was averred that once, when hunting near the well of St. Fillan, he had met and loved a beautiful fairy woman, who presented him with a ruby ring, the rich colour of which would always remain deep and bright while his love lasted, but would fade as his love faded, and death come nigh the donor. The well where he received this strange gift, is still considered alike weird and holy in Strathfillan; and there, even at this late age of the world, rags and ribbands are tied to the twigs near it, and small propitiatory oblations in the form of coin, are dropped into its limpid waters by the superstitious Celts of the district. Ian Mion had long ceased to visit the well, for the love he had vowed was a passing one, and the ring had been growing paler and more pale. On this night, as he surveyed it by the red glow of the bog-wood fire, the ruby had become white as snow,—a token that the fairy was dead, and that danger was nearhimself. He shuddered, and then the sharp, stern, voice of his mother roused him, as she clenched her trembling and uplifted hands above her grey head, and exclaimed bitterly,—
"A Dhia! oh that my husband was here, instead of lying in the place of sleep at Innis Bui, for this night is the night for vengeance, if his lads were butthe lads!"
This significant mode of communicating a sentiment,—a mode strongly characteristic of the genuine Celt, was immediately understood by the twelve sturdy warriors at the fire.
"Taunt us not, mother," said Ian Mion, starting as if stung by a serpent, "the night isthenight for a terrible deed, and your sons arethelads to achieve it, or may their bones never lie by their father's side under the dark pines of Innis Bui."
He took his long claymore from the wall, and placed it in his broad leather belt; he slung his target on his left shoulder, and grimly felt the point of his sharp biodag, or Highland dagger; and his eleven brothers followed his example, arming themselves with gloomy alacrity, while Ian, with a smile of fierce exultation, surveyed their stature and equipment.
"Now mother," said he, "we go to Lochearn."
"Achial! achial, am bata!" muttered his brother Gillespie. (Alas—alas, a boat!)
"Why not take our birlinn from Loch Tay?" exclaimed Lady Aileen.
"And sail it over the hills to Lochearn!" added her son Malcolm, who was somewhat of a jester.
"No—but carry it on your shoulders, my sons. There are twelve of you; and for what did I bear—for what did I suckle you, but to rear you to act as your father expected, like men!"
"Our mother speaks wisely," said Gillespie.
"'Tis well and bravely thought of," added Ian Mion; "so, now for vengeance on the Neishes, the accursedceathearne coille!" (i.e., woodmen, or outlaws.)
"Then go," exclaimed Lady Aileen, with uplifted hands; "and remember,the Neish's head, or let me never see ye more, and may the curse of your dead father dog ye to your graves!"
In a minute more the twelve brethren had left the castle, and rushed to a little jetty in Loch Tay, where their birlinn or painted and gilded pleasure-boat was moored.
It was soon beached, or drawn ashore, and raising it on their shoulders they proceeded (six brothers relieving the other six at every mile of the way) to ascend the steep, rocky, shelves of a mountain, and descended from thence into a narrow and gloomy gorge, that forms the avenue of Glentarkin. Unwearied and resolute, the twelve brothers bore thus the birlinn on their shoulders, over this rough and rugged tract of mountain, and down the stony bed of a steep and brawling torrent, which tore its way through a rift of marl and clay, and serving as a guide for miles, poured its waters into Lochearn.
"Quick, lads—quick," urged Ian Mion, pausing in a song by which he had sought to cheer the way.
"Hurry no man's cattle, Ian," said Gillespie, as he panted under his share of the burden.
"But hurry your lazy legs, for a storm is coming."
"How know you that?"
"This morning I came over Bendoran——"
"Aire Dhia!" exclaimed Malcolm; "an enchanted place, where storms are foretold."
"So was I foretold it," replied Ian; "for I heard the hollow voice of the wind sighing through the valley; the shepherds also heard it, and were collecting all their flocks in bught and pen. So, on, lads, on! And now by St. Fillan, I can see Lochearn gleaming in the starlight far down below us."
The moon, which had lighted them for some portion of the way, imparting by her pale radiance a ghastly aspect to everything, now waned behind the summit of Benvoirlich, and all became sombre, dark, and solemn, amid the pine-woods, and on the water of Lochearn, when, about one hour after midnight, the twelve MacNabs launched their birlinn, stepped on board, and without waiting a moment to rest or refresh, so resolute were they, and so determined to elude their mother's malison and to fulfil their vows of vengeance, they slipped their oars, and in silence shot their sharp-prowed vessel across the calm and lonely lake, and soon reached the Neishes' islet, which resembled a dense thicket or copsewood, as the stems of the trees seemed to start sheer from the water.
With muffled oars they pulled around it, and all seemed still in its woody recesses. No sound was heard—not even the barking of a dog, and so intense was the silence, that Ian Mion began to doubt whether the foes he had taken so much trouble to reach, were now in the isle or on the mainland, until he found their boat moored in a little creek. Driving his biodag again and again through its planks, he soon scuttled it, and shoved it into the loch, where it filled and sank, thus cutting off, for ever, all chance of flight for the foe, if defeated, and of communication with the mainland, if victorious. All this was performed in nervous haste, for, from this secluded islet, the diabolical water-horse had been frequently seen to dash into the lake; and it was long the abode of auirisk, a being half demon, half mortal, whose piercing shriek before a storm could make all Lochearn echo. Mooring their birlinn under the lower branches of a large pine, the twelve brothers landed, braced on their arms their targets, which were formed of coiled straw-rope, covered by thrice-barkened bull-hide, and studded with round brass nails. Then, unsheathing their long and sharp claymores, they began warily to approach a red light, which they now detected in the centre of the isle, where it glimmered with wavering radiance between the stems of the trees. Advancing cautiously, they discovered it to proceed from the window—if an open unglazed aperture can be so termed—of the long and low-roofed creel-house or cottage built by the MacNeishes on the isle, and the turf walls of which they had carefully loop-holed for defence by arrows; but now, overcome by fatigue, very probably by the unusual quantity of good food and rich foreign wines they had imbibed, lulled too by the sense of perfect security, they kept no watch or ward; and thus, on peeping in, Ian Mion and his brethren beheld their enemies all asleep (save one) on the clay floor of the wattled wigwam (the hovel was little better), rolled in skins of deer, or coarse smoke-blackened plaids, the dull checks of which were the simple dyes of wild herbs and of the mountain heather.
Ian Mion ground his teeth, and his fingers tightened on the hilt of his claymore, when finding his hated enemies within arm's length at last, and, to all appearance, a prey so easy.
The fire from which the light proceeded, was formed of guisse-monaye, or bog oak from the morasses. It burned cheerily in the centre of the clay floor, from whence, in the old Highland fashion, the smoke was permitted—after curling among the bronze-like cabers—to find its way through an aperture in the roof. Seated by this fire, upon a block of wood, was the venerable Finlay MacNeish, of all that wearied band the only one awake. He was enveloped in a tattered plaid of bright colours. His white hair fell in curly masses around his bronzed visage, and mingled with his noble beard; his chin rested on his left hand, and his elbow was placed on his bare left knee. He was buried in thought; but a stern smile from time to time lit up his hollow eye; for, warmed by the generous wine of France and of the Flemings of the Dam, which his good sword had that day won from the followers of his mortal enemy and oppressor, he was full of brilliant waking dreams; though his thoughts chiefly wandered to the little couch of furs and heath, whereon slept the pale child, Muriel, the last of all his race, the flower of that wild islet, and the hope and joy of all his desperate band. For her, he planned out future triumphs, and the memory of all he had lost in that one fatal battle, the wild pass of Strathearn, the green Dundurn, the lone hill of St. Fillan, and beautiful Glenartney; his ruined home; his plundered flocks and herds; his wasted fields and ravaged farms,—all now, even to the time-honoured burial-place of his fathers, the prey of the MacNabs,—filled his soul with rage; and he saw before him the things such stern dreamers only see, in the red, glowing and changing embers of the fire, on which his gaze was fixed.
His thoughts were suddenly and roughly arrested by a shout of triumph at the opening which served for a window. He turned sharply, and on beholding the face of a stranger, threw aside his plaid, and drew the sword which was never for a moment from his side.
"Who are you?" he demanded, in astonishment and alarm; "speak, and speak quickly!"
"Ian Mion Mac an Abba," replied the eldest son of Aileen, with a smile of scorn and triumph.
"Smooth John of the accursed race, in the island of the Neishes! What seek you, caitiff?"
"A just vengeance; so come on thou false cateran, or yield."
"MacNeish yields to the hand of the blessed God only; but never to a MacNab of woman born!" replied the aged Finlay, with that air of supreme grandeur which the old Celtic warriors could at times assume. "Up, up to arms!" he added to his people; but wine, weariness, and slumber heavily sealed their eyes, and he found neither response nor succour, while he and Ian met hand to hand.
Their swords crossed, and by the light of the bog-wood fire, their wild eyes glared into each other's faces; and while blade pressed and rasped against blade, ere they struck or thrust, MacNeish said,—
"I am old, and thou, John MacNab, art lithe and young. If I fall, for the sake of our blessed Lady of Pity have mercy on my child—my little Muriel; other boon than this have I none to ask."
"She shall have such mercy as brave men ever accord to women and children," replied MacNab.
"I thank you, Ian Mion——"
"But forthee, there is——"
"Only death. I know it—so come on! It may be that I shall die, yet I care not, if I can redeem my old life by having the best life among ye—ye sons of a misbegotten cur!"
A thrust which he made full at the broad breast of Ian Mion, was parried with such force, that his arm tingled to the shoulder; and now the poor old man felt the weakness of his many years, and the hopelessness of resistance.
"MacNeish, you fight without hope—a man foredoomed to evil," said Ian mockingly.
"True; to evil and vengeance!" exclaimed the other gloomily, for his mother had borne him on Childermas Day, 1467 (the 28th December) the anniversary of Herod's slaughter of the innocents; a day of especial ill omen in Scotland, for which it was deemed unlucky for a man to put on a new doublet, to clip his beard, or attempt anything in this world—then how much less to have the effrontery to come into it!
It was vain for the old man to contend with an antagonist so formidable as Ian Mion, who soon beat him to the earth by a mortal wound, trod upon his sword and broke it. Then, twisting his fingers through the silver locks of Mac Neish's ample beard, he dragged him to the block of wood on which he had been so recently seated, and there ruthlessly severed his head from his body by one slash of the claymore.
Ere the combat had ended, by a catastrophe so sudden and terrible, his eleven brothers had pierced and cut to pieces the whole band as they lay in their drunken slumber, and incapable of resistance. Of all the tribe of MacNeish none escaped, but Muriel, his child, and a little boy (the son of Grey Callum, the bard) who concealed himself under a creel, and lay there in deadly fear, and drenched by the warm blood which flowed more than an inch deep over the clay floor of this frightful hut.
The summits of Benvoirlich, and of the wooded hills that look down on lovely Lochearn, were tinged with gold and purple by the rising sun, as, with panting hearts and bloody hands, the twelve brothers rowed their birlinn from that isle of death towards the wooded shore, bearing with them the white head of MacNeish; nor did they rest for a moment until they reached the hall of Kennil House, where their pale, grim mother, who had never once closed her blood-shot eyes in sleep, awaited them.
"Mo mather—na biodh fromgh, oirbh!" ("My mother, fear nothing now!") exclaimed Ian Mion, as he held aloft the ghastly head by its silver locks; and from that hour the MacNabs took as their crest, "the Neish's head,"affrontée, with the mottoDreid Nocht. Aileen embraced her twelve savage sons, with stern exultation, and ordered the head to be spiked on the summit of her mansion; while a banquet was spread, and the piper marched before the door, making every chamber ring to the notes of the clan salute,Failte Mhic an Abba.
Lady Aileen would not permit the slaughtered caterans to receive the rights of sepulture.
"There, on the Neish's isle, let them lie unburied," she exclaimed, "without aid from priest or prayer, torch or taper, mass-bell or mourner,—that their bones may whiten as a terrible memorial to all that would dare to withstand us!"
So said this fierce woman; but gentle Father Alpin Maol, the good old monk of Inchaffray, had them interred in one grave, over which he placed a cairn of stones, and one of those Celtic crosses of a fashion which is only to be found in Scotland and Ireland. On the island the ruins of the Neishes' dwelling may still be traced, and on Innis Bui there still stands a monument erected by the MacNabs in commemoration of their savage triumph.
The son of Grey Callum, the bard, when he grew to manhood, settled in Strathallan; and from him are descended all who at the present day bear the names of Neish or MacIldiu.
Little Muriel, who was almost inanimate with grief and terror, Father Alpin bore with him to Inchaffray, in Strathearn, where she chanced to meet the eye of James V., when on a hunting expedition; so she became theprotégéeof that good king, and when she grew to woman's estate, he bestowed her, with a portion in marriage, upon one of his esquires—the laird of the Torwood—and she was the pale, sad widow who, with her three children nestling about her skirts, related to Florence, to Shelly, and their companions, this barbarous tale of a Highland feud.
Florence listened to it with deep interest, and the narrative filled his mind with melancholy reflections; for in the character of Lady Aileen MacNab he too easily recognized a resemblance to his own mother,—stern, implacable, and revengeful.
Shelly looked at Master Patten as Lady Muriel concluded, and shrugged his shoulders, with an expression in his eye which seemed so much as to say that he cared not how soon the waters of the Tweed, and the Tyne and the Tees to boot, were between him and the land were such events were matters of not uncommon occurrence.
Cast off these vile suspicions, and the fearThat makes it danger!Southey.
The limited accommodation of this small tower could only afford two chambers for the unexpected visitors. To Florence, as a gentleman of known degree, was assigned the best; to Shelly and his companion Master Patten, as strangers and travellers, was assigned the other; while worthy Dick Hackerston and his friends, as mere "burgess bodies," or landward merchants, were left to wrap themselves in their cloaks and plaids, and to sleep on benches in the hall, after the fire had been heaped with fresh fuel, bog-wood, peat, and coal; and after the pale chatelaine and her children had withdrawn to rest.
The chamber of Florence was sombre in aspect. On one side the arras tapestry bore a representation of the Crucifixion, and before it stood a prie-dieu and kneeling-stool of black oak; on the latter lay a missal, richly gilded. The bed had four twisted spiral columns; which supported a gloomy entablature and canopy, adorned by funeral-like plumes of black feathers.
Before retiring to rest, Florence for a time found a pleasure and employment with the opal ring of Madeline, and a flame from the lamp seemed to play amid its changing hues.
In the superstition of that and preceding ages, and according to the ideas of those who practised the occult sciences, a mysterious and malignant power was believed to exist in the opal.
"Malignant!" thought he, as the dark story of the Highland feud and the memory of his mother's revengeful character occurred to him; "if it really be, that this strange stone, in which the flames seem to glow and waver, possesses any power over me, it can only be that of irresistible fatality."
When he thus spoke, or rather reflected, he seemed to hear the name and title of Madeline uttered by some one near him; or could it be the imagined echo of his own unuttered thoughts?
He paused and listened. Voices were speaking in an adjoining room; and as it was only separated by an old wainscot partition, the joints and panels of which were frail and gaping from age, he raised the arras and placed his ear close to an opening. The voices came from the chamber of the two Englishmen, whom he could perceive through the fracture in the boarding. They had not undressed, but had merely thrown off their doublets, and seemed resolved to sleep half ready for any emergency with their drawn swords beside them.
"And so the prospect alarms you, my brave bully boy?" continued Shelly, who was twisting his moustache before a mirror, and seemed to be bantering his companion.
"It doth, of a verity," replied Master Patten; "so let us pray the glorious Virgin Mary, that she keep us from witches, the Scots, and the devil!"
"Thou hast no fear of the fires in Smithfield?" said Shelly; "cogsbones! in old King Harry's time I have seen two fat citizens, and a lean apothecary from Aldgate, all burning in one blaze for saying little more. But, worthy Master Patten, when I am the husband of yonder sweet lady of Yarrow, what shall I make thee—seneschal, comptroller, or steward of the household? or would you prefer a snug place at court, where clerkly skill would avail thee? But, by St. George, thou wouldst need to sleep in a suit of mail, well tempered and graven with saintly miracles; for the avenues of a Scottish palace are well beset by swords and daggers."
"Marry come up! Master Shelly, don't talk of such things," replied Patten gravely. "By my soul, if I ever set foot in this cursed country of rough-footed and blue-capped heathens again, but under harness, may I never more see London stone or hear the bell of St. Paul's!"
"We found it more pleasant when mounting guard at Boulogne, making love to the market wenches at Calais, and playing the devil in the wine cabarets, eh? Bluff King Harry's service had more pleasantries and fewer perils than his son's—the little King Edward."
"Ugh! think of that devilish story of the Red-shanks who live but a few miles off—those Nabs or Neishes, or whatever the barbarians style themselves. Why, 'twas like the tales that old mariners tell us, at Puddle Wharf and London Bridge, of black devils and savages who dwell beyond Cape Flyaway, in the kingdom of Prester John, or in the Island of the Seven Cities, which can only be found, once in every hundred years. Nay, I shall settle me down somewhere within the sound of Bow bells, and doubt not that, for what I have done in the young king's service here in Scotland, our Lord Chancellor, Sir William Paulet, now Lord St. John of Basing (and who is to be Marquis of Winchester), or Sir William Petre, our most worthy Secretary of State, will make me some honourable provision."
"If not, mine honest Bill Patten, thou hast still thy sword and the scarlet-and-blue livery of a Boulogner; but, as I was saying, when I am fairly wedded—ha! ha! droll, is it not?—to my sweet Lady Yarrow, as the reward of my service here in Scotland——"
Florence did not wait to hear what the heedless Englishman proposed to do after this happy event; but, dropping the arras, he took his sword, and leaving the chamber, knocked roughly at the door of the two strangers, who started to their weapons before they opened it.
"Sirs," said Florence sternly, "I have discovered you to be two spies of the Protector Somerset."
"Discovered! Then you have been listening?" said Shelly with admirable coolness, though his nut-brown cheek grew pale with anger.
"How I have come to know it, matters not; but the plain fact stands manifest—you are spies!"
"Spies?" reiterated Shelly, trembling with suppressed passion.
"I have said so."
"Be wary, sir—be wary; I wear a sword."
"Edward Shelly, captain of King Henry's Boulogners, need not remind any one that he wears a sword, and can use it too. His name has found an echo even in the chambers of the Tournelles and the Louvre, where I have heard him praised as a true and valiant soldier."
"I thank you, squire—I mean, laird of Fawside—for this compliment; but——"
"To be a spy!"
"Tudieu!as we used to say at Boulogne," exclaimed Shelly furiously; "do not repeat that hateful word!—well?"
"Is to deserve the gallows."
"You are deceived, sir,—I tell you, deceived. I am no spy, by all that is sacred on earth!" replied Shelly hoarsely; for he was striving to master his pride and passion. "Remember," he added, involuntarily placing his left hand upon the secret pocket which contained his perilous despatches—"remember thatyouwere accused of being a spy of the dukes of Guise and Mayenne."
"But falsely so."
"As I may be of being an emissary of Edward Duke of Somerset."
"Then what meaneth all I overheard about your services in Scotland—of Sir William Petre and the Lord St. John of Basing, both of whom are well-known intriguers and favourers of the mad schemes of the late King Henry?"
"'Tis exceedingly probable that they are so," replied Shelly evasively; "for you must know that one is Lord High Chancellor of England, and the other is Secretary of State."
He spoke slowly, to gain time for thought, as he felt all the perils of their position, and glanced down the dark corridor without, surmising, if he suddenly slew Fawside, how he and Patten could get out of the tower, and escape into the forest. The project seemed too desperate; for it scarcely occurred to him, when he relinquished it.
"Now, hark you, sir," said he. "To make this matter short, is it your purpose to make us prisoners?"
"No; for I would not wittingly bring two unfortunate men to a public and infamous death, more especially he of whom I heard so much in France, the brave leader of the English Boulogners."
"'Tis well, sir," replied Shelly, in a voice that seemed to falter with honest emotion. "You act generously; though, had you resolved otherwise, you had got but two dead bodies for your pains."
"Dead bodies?" queried Master Patten anxiously.
"Yes," added Shelly firmly; "for I would have runyouthrough the heart, my friend, to seal your lips for ever; and then I would have fought to the last—yea, to the very death-gasp; for never shall a pestilent Scot fix an iron fetter on this hand, which planted the red cross of England on the Tour de l'Ordre!"
"In this chamber you have more than once to-night mentioned the name of a lady," said Florence gravely.
"Exactly; the Countess of Yarrow—bonny Madeline Home," replied Shelly gaily, and with a most provoking smile. "But what then?"
"You actually aspire to her hand,—you, a stranger, a foreigner?"
"Cogsbones! yea, to more; and who shall dare to gainsay me?"
"I do," replied Florence, who felt himself growing alternately pale and red with the anger that gathered in his heart.
"You! On what pretence or principle?"
"As her accepted lover."
"Whew!" whistled Shelly. "The deuce and the devil! Dost thou say so? Then I suppose we shall come to blows, after all."
"Not here, at least," said Florence, with the calmness of concentrated rage in his tone, though his brow was crimson and his eyes were sparkling with light; "to fight here were to destroy you and your companion. I know not on what your presumptuous aspirations are based; but if we meet not in battle ere thirty days from this be passed, I shall send my cartel to the Marshal of Berwick, and challenge you to a solemn single combat."
"Good! I am easily found when wanted for such work; and so, until that pleasant meeting be arranged——"
"Adieu, sirs."
"A good repose to you," said Shelly, closing the door of his room and carefully securing it.
"What think you of all this?" asked Patten, with some alarm and excitement in his face and manner.
"By St. John the Silent! I was beginning to think we were to prate at the door all night," yawned Shelly, with a tone of irritation, as he threw himself upon his couch, spread his mantle over him, and went to sleep with the readiness of a soldier—a readiness provoking to Master Patten, who, after their late visitor's departure, felt doubly anxious and wakeful.
In the morning, when Florence, with Hackerston, and the three burgesses, bade their farewell to Lady Muriel, and left the tower of the Torwood, they found that their two English friends (concerning whose names and purpose Florence observed a steady silence) had arisen by daylight, obtained a guide, betaken them to horse, and three hours before had disappeared by the eastern road through the forest.
What is the worst of woes that wait an age?What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?To view each loved one blotted from life's page,And be on earth, alone, as I am now.Byron.
As Florence and his companions took the same road that led towards Lothian, he reflected on all that he had heard pass between Shelly and Patten on the preceding evening; and though he humanely felt some satisfaction that they were gone, and consequently, he hoped, in safety, the circumstance of the English gentleman canvassing to his comrade so openly and confidently the prospect of his marriage with the Countess of Yarrow, occasioned ample food for reflection, and for those perplexing and annoying thoughts which suggest themselves so readily to the restless imagination of a lover.
"He has seen her, and knows she is beautiful, rich, and beloved by Mary of Lorraine," thought he; "and a mere spirit of empty bravado has made him speak thus. Madeline may be able to solve the mystery; if not, I have still my sword, and dearly shall Master Shelly pay for his empty boasting."
As they passed through Falkirk, they found the whole population of that place (then a little thatched burgh of barony) in the streets and thronging the porch of the ancient church of St. Modan, where the bell was being solemnly tolled in the old square steeple. The faces of all they met, were expressive of dismay and excitement. A dead body (of a recanted heretic, of course), which had been possessed by an evil spirit, was on that day cast thrice out of its grave, in the dark depth of which it could only be retained in peace at last by Father Andrew Haig (thelastCatholic vicar of the church) placing the consecrated Host upon the coffin, and having the earth heaped over it.
This ghastly marvel furnished ample matter for conversation until the travellers passed the Almond by a boat at Temple-Liston. There the river, which is now spanned by a bridge of very ordinary dimensions, was then so broad that for centuries it was crossed by a regular ferry-boat; and as the current was swollen and rolling rapidly, some time elapsed before the little party of men and horses were safely transported to its eastern bank.
Near this ferry, upon the soft yellow moss of a long lea-rig, sat a party of ploughmen and shepherds, making a rustic banquet of rye and soft scones, with milk, curds, and clouted cream, or sourkitts, as it was named from the staved kitts in which it was held. Some of these peasants wore hoods of blue or brown cloth, buttoned under the chin, and all had the grey plaid, or one of dull striped tartan, thrown over the left shoulder. Each had a knife at his girdle, and, in the old Scotch fashion, a horn spoon, which dangled at his hood or bonnet lug. The peasant girls had their hair snooded, and were bare-legged, though their feet were encased in cuarans of untanned hide, tied with thongs above the ankle.
The morose gloom subsequent to the Reformation had not yet fallen upon the people, and this peasant group, while their herds and horses grazed near, before resuming labour in the fields, proceeded to amuse themselves with the buck-horn and corn-pipe, and danced to the music of these and the lilting of their own voices, for such were the simple manners and enjoyments of the peasantry in the olden time.
The quiet aspect of the landscape, which possessed all the tints of summer ripened and mellowed into autumn; the merry peasants dancing on the greensward; the blue river flowing in front, and the herds that dotted its banks basking in the sunshine; while on the steep beyond rose the grey turreted preceptory and Norman church of the Knights of St. John,—made Florence think with sorrow of the change a month of war and havock might work here; and full of such reflections and of his own affairs, his secret love, his hostile mother, and his unfinished feud, he listened with some impatience to the prosing of honest Dick Hackerston, who rehearsed the magnitude of his own commercial transactions, to wit, how for my lord the Abbot Ballantyne of Holyrood he sold the wool of all the sheep which ranged upon the abbey lands at Liberton and Coldbrandspath, and the skins and hides of all the animals slaughtered for the plentiful table of that great monastery; and how he bought, bartered, or procured in return, from the French, the Flemings, and the English, raisins, almonds, rice, loaf-sugar, love-apples, oranges, olives, ginger, mace, and pepper; for Master Peter Posset great boxes of dried herbs and apothecaries' stuffs; for the court ladies bales of French romances; for Ralph Riddle, of the "Golden Rose," cases of Rhenish, Malvoisie, and Gascon wines, and so forth; till our young gentleman of 1547, who felt just about as much interest in such matters as one of the present age might feel in scrip and railway shares, bank-stock and bonds, yawned with sheer weariness, when, at the west port of Edinburgh, he bade adieu to his mercantile companions, and, without halting to refresh his horse, took the road which, after passing the castles of Craigmillar and Brunstane, led direct to his own secluded home.
The shades of evening were deepening on the level but fertile landscape, on the distant hills, and on the darkening sea, when he drew up in the court of Fawside tower, and on dismounting hastened to meet his mother. With a stern lip and tearful eye she received him, and with a settled gloom, on her pale white brow; for, clad in her deepest dooleweeds, she had spent the day in prayer and meditation between the tombs Of her husband and her eldest son in the church of Tranent; and now, with a sigh of bitter impatience, she beheld poor Florence, who was oppressed by the sombre aspect of a home such as she made it, toss aside his sword and steel coursing-hat, and sink wearily and in silence into a chair near the hall fire.
"So, so, you are weary?" said she, supporting herself on her long cane with one hand, while with grim kindness she patted his head with the other. "While ye have been wandering like a fule-bairn between Edinburgh and Stirling, or Gude alane kens where, our tenants have neglected, for the first time in their lives, to bring their Lammas wheat into the barbican, whilk, as you ken, they are bound to send duly tied in a sack to you as their overlord."
"Oh, mother, heed not the Lammas wheat; anon we shall have other things to think of than the collecting of rent or kain."
"Hah!—say you so? Then the news at Edinburgh Cross——"
"Is war?"
"'Tis well! Our men have been turning to women since the fields of Ancrum and Solway. And this war is, of course, anent the marriage of a boy king and a baby queen; a brave matter, truly, for bearded men to fight about!"
"It would seem so; and now I almost begin to agree with the Lord Huntly's view of this coming strife."
"Indeed!" said his mother, with more of scorn than curiosity in her manner; "and what mayhisview be?"
"That he dislikes not the match."
"The false Highland limmer!" she hissed through her set teeth; "so he dislikes not the match——"
"But hates the manner of wooing."
"Now, by the souls of my ancestors who are in Heaven!" exclaimed Dame Alison, striking her long cane fiercely on the paved floor of the hall, "I love the manner of wooing, and thus may Scotland and England ever woo each other, with hands gloved and helmets barred; for I hate the accursed match, and would rather see the child Mary Stuart strangled in the cradle, and her sceptre become the heritage of Arran, than live to be the bride of the apostate Henry's son and the crowned queen of our hereditary enemies! And now, since we are talking of foemen, saw ye aught in your gowk-like rambling of the hell-brood who bide in the barred tower on yonder lea?"
"I did, mother," sighed Florence.
"Preston himself, perhaps."
"Yea, mother; thrice."
"Hath manhood gone out of the land! And ye parted, as ye met, sakeless and bloodless?"
"As you see me, mother," replied Florence, overwhelmed by the bitterness of thoughts he dared not utter.
"Saints of God!" she exclaimed, and raised her clenched hand as if she would have smote him on his sad but handsome face; then suddenly repressing the fierce impulse, she turned abruptly and left the hall.
Florence thought of the sweet merry eyes of Madeline Home; and all their memory was requisite to render life endurable with such a welcome to his mother's hearth.
Oh, get thee gone! thou mak'st me wrong the dead,By wasting moments consecrate to tears,In idle railing at a wretch like thee!A mother rarely will with patience hearA true reproach against a living son,Far less a taunt directed at the dead.Firmillian.
Preparations for war between Scotland and England progressed rapidly. Though the religious, and, in some degree, the political principles of the Regent Arran were unsettled, he evinced the utmost activity in his military arrangements; and in the south the Duke of Somerset was scarcely less energetic. Too well aware, by the history of the past, that the designs of England were other than merely matrimonial, that her inborn spirit of grasping ambition and aggression was abroad, and that her kings and governors had never respected truce or treaty, peace or promise, the Earl of Arran left nothing undone to attach the malcontent nobles to his own person. He ordered all the border castles to be repaired, strengthened, and garrisoned; he ordained the sheriffs of counties, the stewards of stewartries, the provosts of cities, and all the great barons, to train the people to arms, to the use of the bow and arquebuse, by frequent weapon-shows and musters. Old seamen who had served under Sir Andrew Wood, the valiant Bartons, and others, he encouraged to equip armed caravels and gallant privateers, with orders to sink, burn, and destroy; while on land he strove, by threats or entreaties, to crush the bitter feuds that existed between clan and clan or lord and laird, that all might reserve their united strength and sharpest steel for the common enemy.
Like the loyal lords, tue malcontents mustered and trained their vassels, but were secretly watching the current of events; while among the people, Catholic and Protestant, reformed and unreformed (i.e., heretic and idolater, as they pleasantly stigmatized each other), all for a time merged their disputes in the common cause, and armed them side by side, for the defence of their mother country. The reformers were undoubtedly in the interest of Reformed England, and averse to Catholic France; hence "a miraculous shower of puddocks" (Anglicè, frogs) which fell about this time somewhere in Fife, tended greatly to perturb the souls of the pious and godly, as being forerunners of a French army, headed by the Cardinal of Lorraine, or "the popish and bloodie Duke of Guise."
Time passed, and the end of August drew nigh; but there came no tidings from Scotland's faithless ally, of that armed force so solemnly promised, by those letters which Florence had brought from the Louvre, and at last the Regent Arran began to find that he must trust to himself alone to crush traitors within, and face his foes beyond the realm.
So energetic were the measures of Florence, that within three weeks from the time of his leaving Stirling, a long line of such beacons as the regent desired was established upon all the hills near the coast of the German Sea, and from the high rocky bluff of St. Abb to the summit of the palace of Linlithgow. Another line of beacons was also placed along the borders from sea to sea, on the highest eminences, and on many of the castles and peels, which had been strengthened by the engineers who came to Scotland two years before, with the five thousand men-at-arms, sent over by Francis I., under George Montgomerie, laird of Larges, in Ayrshire—famous in history as that Comte de Larges who slew Henry II. of France in a tournament. As in the older time of James II., and by the ordinance of his twelfth parliament, Florence posted armed watchmen between Roxburgh and Berwick and on all the fords of Tweed, and built on Home Castle, the greatest balefire. One beacon was to be the warning that the enemy were in motion; two, that they had begun to cross the river; and four, "all at anis as foure candellis" (to quote Glendook) that they were in great strength, and on their march for the Lothians.
He left mounted guards composed of the vassals of the loyal border lords, whose sentinels were to convey instant intelligence of the foe's advance by day; then by the regent it was ordained that none should leave their residences, or remove their goods or cattle, as it was his resolution to defend every hearth and foot of ground to the last; and the cross of fire was to be the signal to arms! After completing these arrangements to the entire satisfaction of Arran, to whom he made his report at Edinburgh, Florence, on one of the last days of August, returned, with old Roger of Westmains, to his secluded little fortlet, to muster his retinue, and await the summons to the field.
Meanwhile, Glencairn, Cassilis, Kilmaurs, and other ignoble lords of their party, were absent at their own estates, superintending the fortification of their castles and array of their contingents, for the queen or against her, as the tide of events might make it suitable for them to act. Bothwell was brooding over his captivity in the castle of Edinburgh, and planning schemes of vengeance on Arran, on Mary of Lorraine, and on our hero, whom he conceived to be in some way implicated in his affairs. Shelly and Patten had reached London, from whence they joined the army of Somerset.
M. Antoine was composing a new piece of music, in honour of the intended nuptial alliance with France, and had resolved that it should rival the marriage ode or epithalamium of the servile Buchanan. Mary of Lorraine and her ladies were busy with a new tapestry, as a present for the dauphine. Champfleurie was salving his sores at Stirling, and taking new lessons in the science of defence ind destruction. Old Claude Hamilton was also preparing for war, by deepening the fosse of his tall, grim tower, and like other barons, was storing up the grain, fuel, and provender of his tenants, in its spacious vaults, and in the barns and granaries which stood within its strong barbican while ten brass drakes, imported for him from Flanders, by Dick Hackerston, peeped their round muzzles over the parapet of the keep.
On the first evening of his return from the borders, Florence was seated in the hall with his mother, who occupied her usual window bench, where she guided her spindle, which whirled on the floor; while he, dreading a recurrence to her everlasting topic, the Hamiltons of. Preston, and with his mind now, after an absence of three weeks, more than ever full of the image of Madeline, affected to be deeply immersed in the old black-lettered pages of "the Knightly tale of Gologras and Gawaine," from the quaint press of Chepman and Millar, printers to his late Majesty James IV., but his mother soon began to open the trenches, for he heard her muttering,—
"Yes, yes, 'tis a basilisk I must get. Let me see, Master Posset said that basilisks are hatched from dwarf eggs laid by old cocks; and that they grow to little winged dragons, whose eyes, as all the world knoweth, can slay by a single glance. I must get me one, if all things fail, and let it loose in Preston tower—that one reptile may destroy the others—yet Gude keep me from evil and witchcraft!"
While muttering thus, slowly and in a manner peculiar to all who live much alone, or are in the habit of communing with themselves, she glanced twice or thrice impatiently towards her son but he still read on. Finding her audible remarks produced no response, she addressed him.
"Wit ye now, my son, that Preston's niece, the daughter of that foul Earl of Yarrow, who drew his sword in the fray in which your father fell, is even now in Preston tower."
"Madeline!" faltered Florence, closing his book.
"Yea, Madeline Home; ye know her name it seems. So, when will there be a better time than now to form a plan for destroying the whole brood, root and branch?"
"A worse you mean, mother," said Florence, as the dark story of Aileen MacNab occurred to him.
"Abetter—I mean what I say; for in the war and tumult of an invasion, what matter a few lives more or less?"
"Mother, I dare not urge the feud at present," sighed poor Florence.
"Dare not—did I hear you aright? have two acts of common charity—it may be of merest courtesy that passed between ye in the Torwood, so blunted the keen resentment which hath lived for so many generations?"
"The regent——"
"Prate not to me of regents—nay, nor of kings," she persisted, whirling her spindle like lightning.
"And Madel—this countess, she came to Preston——"
"Last night, and this morning she rode forth over Gladsmuir, with a tasselled hawk on her dainty glove, and Mungo Tennant (oh that I had him within range of an arquebuse!) in attendance upon her, with a stand of birds, where a lash should be, on his knave's shoulders. And they hawked over the whole muir, though 'tis ours if the sword can fence what the king's charter hath failed to define. So I tell thee, son, that ere we lose men or harness in fighting the English, let us have one brave onslaught at Preston tower, and end this matter for ever."
"Its walls are high, its gate is yetlan iron."
"Pshaw! Hear me: Hamilton expects no attack; what, then, so easy as at midnight to surround the tower with forty resolute mounted men, each with a windlan of straw trussed to his saddle-bow; force the outer gate—John Cargill, the smith at Carberry, says he can ding it to shivers wi' his forehammer, so e'en take the loon at his word; kill the keeper; pile the straw at the tower doors, and fire it; set bakehouse, and brewhouse, and mautkiln in a flame; then kill, by push of spear and shot of arquebuse, all who seek to escape; smoke them to death, even as wight Wallace smoked the English at the barns of Ayr. You pause——"
"By an act of the secret council it was ordained that this matter should end, mother; for such is the law."
"Hear him, Westmains!" said she with scornful pity, as the ground-bailie entered, made a low bow, and, according to his wont, marched straight to the ale-barrel. "I talk of the feud in which his father and his brother Willie fell; and he quotes law to me like one of the ten sworn advocates, or a villanous notary of the new college of justice. I tell thee, malapert bairn, that all the secret councils in the world cannot alter the ancient law of Scotland, as written by David II., anent feuds. What says it, Roger?"
"That 'gif the king grants peace to the slayer without the consent of the nearest friends of him who is slain, these friends may seek revenge——'"
"Mark ye that, Florence—may seek revenge!"
"'Lawfully of him or of them who slew their friend.' Thus 'tis lawful to prosecute our feud to the death," added the ground-bailie.
"And in this faith I reared thee since thou wert but a wee bairnie, supping thy first porridge with Father John's apostle-spoon."
"Does not our Scottish law ordain that he who slays another shall be dragged to trial?" asked Florence.
"Law again! Oh, I shall go mad!" exclaimed Lady Alison, dashing her spindle from her, and pressing her hands over her grey temples, while her eyes flashed with fire. "When your father had a doubt in law, he consulted neither statute nor scrivener, but put his sword to the grindstone in the yard. Would you call it murder if we slew every man in yonder tower upon the lea to-night? I trow not. 'Twould be a righteous act in the eyes of Heaven; and it would be styled by men—even by those loons whose laws ye quote—a misfortune—a slaughter committed inchaud-melle—even as thy father was slain by the Hamiltons; and Willie—my brave, my true, my winsome Willie—how died he?"
"In upholding that which the lord regent justly terms a curse to Scotland—an hereditary feud."