Peace, lady; pause, or be more temperate:It ill beseems this presence to cry aimTo these ill-timed repetitions.Some trumpet summon hither to the wallsThese men of Angiers; let us hear them speak,Whose title they admit, Arthur's or John's.Shakespeare.
Of this interview, during which there occurred one or two painful episodes, the old abbot has left a minute account in the MS. records of Tongland Abbey.
As he and Sir Patrick approached the castle-gate, they could perceive a great circular breach yawning in the face of the keep, where Meg's shot had beaten in the masonry. In many places the corbelled battlements were demolished or mutilated. The barbican wall had suffered considerably, and many dead bodies, with their armour buried or crushed by the cannon shot, were making the place horrible by their ghastly aspect, while great purple pools and gouts of blood indicated where others who had been removed had fallen, or where the wounded had crawled away.
For the first time the terrible gallows-knob was without a victim, the cord which had sustained the last having parted during the concussion of the ordnance.
Through the open gate of the fortress the abbot and captain of the guard were able to see all these details. The grating of the portcullis was raised, and in the archway beneath it stood Sir Alan Lauder, the lairds of Pompherston, Cairnglas, Glendoning, James Achanna, and others, all as usual in their armour, which was dimmed and dinted now by daily and nightly wear. The soldiers of the garrison, who crowded about them with their pikes, axes, crossbows, and arquebuses, seemed hollow-eyed, wan, and pale. Hunger appeared to have become familiar to them as danger and death; thus it was evident to the captain and abbot that the famous larder of Thrave, with its twenty-eight cattle, contributed by the twenty-eight parishes of the surrounding stewardry, was becoming exhausted; for the garrison and other inmates had far exceeded a thousand persons at the commencement of this protracted and destructive siege.
"We have come in the name of mercy and humanity," said the abbot, pausing at the gate.
"It is well," replied Douglas of Pompherston, in the hollow of his helmet; "we feared you had come simply in the name of the king, and we consider him a poor representative of either."
"In whosesoever name you have come," said Sir Alan Lauder, "I can treat but with my lord abbot alone."
"And why not with me who am captain of the king's guard?" demanded Gray haughtily, while throwing up his barred visor.
"Because the blood of Douglas is on your hands, as on those of your master."
"To save whom that blood was shed, else your earl of Douglas had died a regicide, as well as an outlawed traitor. But, whatever terms are given or accepted, I, Patrick Gray, of Foulis, here, in my own name, demand, that the ruffian named James Achanna be excepted therefrom, for I have resolved to slay him without mercy, and, I hope, without remorse, at kirk, at court, at market, or wherever I come within sword's point of him, so help me the holy Evangels, and Him who ever defends the right!"
Achanna grew pale at these threatening words, and on seeing the fierce and resolute aspect with which Gray spoke them; but recovering, he resumed his malignant smile, and uttered a scornful laugh.
"Thrave has not yet surrendered," said Sir Alan Lauder; "and while that white flag waves on its wall, even Achanna's life must be respected. He has been loudly recommending a surrender for some days past, if the young earl, our new chief, came not to our succour," added the white-bearded knight with an angry glance. "Perhaps he may be less eager now, when he learns that the avenging sword of Sir Patrick Gray awaits him."
"Sir Patrick Gray's hostility is nothing new to me, neither are his injustice and falsity," replied Achanna through his clenched teeth, while darting one of his covert glances full of hate at Lauder; "so be assured that I value his wrath as little as you may do, Sir Alan——"
"Then, as old Earl Archibald of Douglas said of Crichton and the Regent, 'twere fair sport to see a couple of such fencers yoked together," interrupted the old knight bluntly, "so please you to step forth six paces from this gate, and meet him hand to hand, on foot or horseback, and I shall be your umpire."
"Thanks from my soul, Sir Alan!" exclaimed Gray with stern joy; "for these words I pledge my honour that your life, fortune, and family shall be saved and protected, tide what may with Thrave."
Achanna bit his nether lip, and without advancing a pace towards Gray, who had reined back his horse and drawn his sword as if inviting him, replied doggedly:
"I have not forgotten the last orders of the earl, ere he rode to Stirling; amongotherswe were to defend this stronghold to the last, should it ever be attacked, and to be wary how we risked our lives; but I can now see that if yonder devil of a great gun continues to pound and punch us thus we shall be forced to surrender, lest the roof of stone descend upon us."
"Well, and what then?" asked Lauder bitterly.
"To surrender is to hang."
"Well?"
"By my soul thou takest it very coolly, Sir Alan Lauder," said Achanna, glad to change the subject, and elude Gray's unanswered challenge.
"I do so, Master Achanna, because I foresaw that when King James entered Galloway, with the royal banner displayed, it would end in hanging for some, and beheading for others—hanging especially for thee."
"And beheading forthee, so I care not whether we surrender to-night or a week hence."
"You play but ill the jovial desperado," said the Castellan with contempt, as he turned from him.
"Yet he fights for his own hand and commoditie, as Hal o' the Wynd fought," said the abbot of Tongland.
"I am weary of this," exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray; "coward, will you not advance to meet me?"
"And fight with a flag of truce flying; I am not so ignorant of the rules of war," replied Achanna, who felt that the crowd of brave and reckless men about the castle-gate viewed him with derision; "My courage has never failed me, sirs, though I knew the fate in store for me, as—as——"
"As what, fellow?" demanded Lauder.
"A follower of the conquered Douglas and his outlawed adherents."
"Conquered—outlawed!" muttered those who heard him.
"Well, sir, doth not that breach in the castle wall look as if we shall soon be the first, as surely as we are the second."
"Jibing villain," exclaimed Lauder, "beware lest I spare the doomster all trouble, by passing my sword through thee!"
The Scots of those days had but vague ideas on the subject of homicide, so Achanna became alarmed, and said:
"Sir Alan Lauder, remember my years of faithful service."
"And what have those years done for you?"
"Converted me from a boy to a man."
"From a rascal of one age to a rascal of one more mature; but thou shalt hang, if Sir Patrick wills it," said the castellan, with growing wrath; for in fact Achanna, perceiving that matters were going against his friends, had found Thrave less comfortable for some time past, and was anxious to escape or make his peace with the king.
"Enough of this, sir," said Sir Patrick, sheathing his sword; "let us resume the subject of a capitulation."
"The countess—here comes the countess!" exclaimed several voices, as the crowd of armed men divided and drew back; and Margaret, leaning on the arm of Maud Douglas of Pompherston, approached. Eagerly and anxiously Gray looked beyond them, but in vain.
"Oh," thought he in his heart, "where is Murielle?"
The hateful Achanna seemed to divine the thought; for a cold smile curled his thin white lips, and a colder still as he surveyed the countess, and remembered the proud derision with which she had long ago repelled his boyish affection. The lovely face of Margaret was deadly pale—white as the ruff or tippet of swansdown, which guarded her delicate throat and bosom. She was muffled in a long black dule-weed, or mourning habit, the folds of which fell to her feet, and on the left shoulder of which was sewn a white velvet cross. In many places this sombre garment was spotted by blood!
Her beautiful black eyes were bloodshot, and an unnatural glare shone in them. She seemed scarcely able to stand; thus old Sir Alan Lauder hurried to her side, and tenderly placed a mailed arm around her for support.
"Well, Monk, thou who forsook, in his sore extremity, thy chief and master," she sternly said to the abbot, "what seek you here?"
"Douglas was my chief, butnotmy master. He is in Heaven," replied the abbot calmly, pointing upward.
"Well, shaven juggler, who hast added his precious prayers to the cause of the strongest," continued the imperious beauty, "say what you would, and quickly. What errand brings you here?"
"Peace and good will. Oh, madam—madam," exclaimed the meek old abbot, stretching his withered and tremulous hands towards her, "in the name of Heaven and of mercy end these horrors—an aged man, a priest of God implores it of you! James and his soldiers have sworn to take the keys of Thrave at the point of the sword; but our young king is a knight, alike gentle and generous, and from your hands I am assured he will take those keys in peace, if peacefully bestowed."
"Frommyhands," she reiterated, in an unearthly voice; "alas——"
"Whatcanshe mean?" thought Gray, as a dreadful idea flashed upon his mind; "is this sad, this wild and stern bearing the result of remorse? can she have attempted——"
He thrust aside the thought, and listened attentively.
"From my right hand—never!" added Margaret, with bitter emphasis.
"From the hands of whom, then?"
"My youngest bower-maiden; she deserves the honour, for her father, Sir Alan, has made a valiant and vigorous defence."
"The king would prefer them from the hands of the Lady Murielle," said Gray, with more anxiety than caution.
"Speak not to me of Murielle!" exclaimed the countess, with a shriek, as her head drooped; and she fainted in the arms of Lauder.
"What has happened—speak for mercy, sirs! what horror do you conceal from us?" exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray and the abbot together.
"Look here," said the old knight, in whose keen grey eyes there mingled a curious expression of commiseration and ferocity. He drew aside the countess's dule-weed, and then the Captain of the Guard and the abbot perceived that her white neck was stained with blood, her shoulder covered with hideous ligatures, and that her right hand and arm were gone—gonefrom the elbow!
"Who—what has done this?" asked Gray, as his sun-burned cheek grew pale.
"See you, sirs, what the first shot from yonder hellish engine hath achieved?" replied Lauder, reproachfully.
"The first," reiterated Gray.
"And I would give the last blood in my heart to have the seven makers of it hanging in a bunch from yonder gallows knob!"
Local history records that this terrible mutilation occurred when the countess was seated at table in the hall, through one of the windows of which the great bullet passed; and some years before the battle of Waterloo, when Thrave, like several other Scottish castles, was undergoing repair, as a barrack for French prisoners, a favourite gold ring which the countess wore upon the forefinger of her right hand, inscribedMargaret de Douglas, was found among the ruins, with one of Meg's granite balls beside it; and the old peasantry in Galloway yet aver, that in this terrible mutilation "the vengeance of Heaven was evidently manifested, in destroying the hand which had been given in wedlock untotwo near kinsmen."[5]
By a strange coincidence, or an irresistible fatality, at the same moment that the countess was borne away, it came to pass that the man-at-arms who held the white flag let it drop from the summit of the keep into the barbican below. Then Sir John Romanno and his impatient cannoniers, perceiving that the flag was gone, and that some commotion had ensued about the gate of Thrave, supposed (in those days there were no telescopes), that the parley was broken, and that violence was offered to the envoys, so a shot was fired from the great brass bombarde named the Lion of Flanders.
With a mighty sound, between a whiz and a boom, it passed betwixt Sir Patrick Gray and the abbot, entered the archway, and, by a singular combination of retributive justice and fatality, struck James Achanna just at the girdle, and doubling him up like a crape scarf, literally plastered his body, armour and all, a quivering mass of blood, bones, steel plates and splints, upon the wall of the keep, into which it was imbedded.
The white pennon was again hoisted; but this terrible episode and appalling spectacle hastened the conclusion of the truce and the siege.
"Bid King James ride to the gate of Thrave, and a woman's hand shall give him the keys—withered be mine in its socket ere it shall do so!" said the sturdy old laird of the Bass, as he broke his sword across his right knee, and cast the glittering fragments into the moat, just as he had done after the seizure of Earl William, in the castle of Edinburgh.
"What terms seek you?" asked the abbot.
"The lives, the liberties, and fortunes of all."
"The king is merciful, and in his name we promise these shall be given to you," replied the two envoys, as they returned with all haste to Knockcannon, where the king was still on horseback, attended by Crichton, Glammis, and the principal lords of his council and army.
"You have promised over much, my good friends," said he, on hearing the terms and the relation of what had passed at the castle gate; "yet it would ill become me to bruise the bruised. I cannot restore this gallant dame's dainty right arm; but by the Black Rood of Scotland, I can wed her to a more loyal husband, with the hand she still possesses!"
And King James kept his word.
FOOTNOTES:
[5]This ball is still preserved by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, and corresponds exactly in size and quality with those shown in the castle of Edinburgh, as appertaining to the celebrated Meg, which are of Galloway granite (from Binnan Hill), the component parts of which, as geologists are aware, differ in several particulars.
[5]This ball is still preserved by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, and corresponds exactly in size and quality with those shown in the castle of Edinburgh, as appertaining to the celebrated Meg, which are of Galloway granite (from Binnan Hill), the component parts of which, as geologists are aware, differ in several particulars.
Song sinks into silence,The story is told;The windows are darken'd,The hearthstone is cold.Darker and darkerThe black shadows fall;Sleep and oblivion reign over all.Longfellow.
"When your majesty's ancestor, Malcolm III., of valiant memory, received the keys of the castle of Alnwick, remember what occurred," said the wary and suspicious old chancellor.
"Malcolm was slain," replied the king.
"By foul treachery. The Saxon garrison yielded, and the keys were to be presented on the point of a knight's lance; but at the moment of doing so, the knight, like a mansworn traitor, pierced King Malcolm's eye and brain with his weapon and slew him on the spot. He escaped, but from the deed assumed a name—hence comes the Pierce-eye of Northumberland."
"But what of all this? I do not think I have much cause to fear our poor countess now."
"She has one hand left, and it can hold a dagger, I doubt not."
"Oh, good my lord, I shall not be unprepared for any emergency," said James laughing, as, accompanied by Sir Patrick Gray and fifty selected men-at-arms of his guard, he rode forward to Thrave, the earl of Errol following closely with at least a thousand knights and gentlemen, mounted and armed in full panoply.
The armour of the young king was beautifully engrained with gold. He wore a casquetel, which in lieu of visor had two oriellets, or oval plates, to protect the ears. It was encircled by a gold coronet, and had a crenel, or spike, in which a plume of scarlet and yellow feathers waved, and to which the queen's glove was tied. The hanging sleeves of his surcoat were richly embroidered by Mary's hands; and his whole arms, costume, and horse-trappings glittered with singular brilliance in the sunshine of the evening, as he caracoled over the green sward towards the embattled gate of Thrave.
On his breast sparkled the collar and jewel of the Golden Fleece of Burgundy, which Duke Philip the Good had just sent to him, in charge of Messire Jacques de Lalain, Dyck Graf of Bommel, who with his train had reached the camp only on the preceding evening. This order had been instituted by Philip himself in 1429.
When the king was within twenty paces of the gate of Thrave, it was unclosed, and a lady, attended by a group of the countess's bower-maidens, the tall and dark-eyed Maud of Pompherston, the Caillean Rua, and the fair-haired daughters of Sir Alan Lauder, the castellan, all clad in dule-weeds of black cloth with white crosses on their breasts in memory of the late earl, and all wearing hoods and veils, came slowly and timidly forward, like a procession of nuns.
On seeing them, James at once sprung from his horse, the reins of which he gave to the Master of Crichton, his page. Gray, and other attendants, immediately dismounted, and leading their horses by the bridle, kept near the king, before whom the principal lady, after advancing a pace or two in front of her companions, knelt, saying in a low and broken voice, "In the name of mercy and St. Bryde of Douglas, receive these keys."
She bowed her graceful head, at the same time upholding, with hands of charming form and whiteness, the three great iron keys of the castle of Thrave.
"And in the name of good St. Bryde, and of gentle mercy, sweet lady, we accept of them," said the king, handing them to his master of the ordnance; "and once again we pledge our royal word for the promised terms—life, liberty, and fortune—to all who have withstood our cannon here in Thrave. But rise, madam," added the king, "it ill becomes a gentleman to receive a lady thus."
With one hand he raised her, and with the other lifted up her long black veil,—for James II. was not devoid of that admiration of beauty, which was one of the chief characteristics of his chivalrous family.
"Murielle!" exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray, starting forward on beholding her face.
"Your long-lost wife?" said James, with surprise.
"My wedded wife—Oh, Murielle——"
"Then to your wardship, Sir Patrick, I must consign this rebel Douglas, but on one condition——"
"Oh name it, your majesty!" said Gray, who was almost speechless with emotion.
"That you keep her for life, either at court or in your tower of Foulis," replied the king, laughing, as he placed Murielle's hand in that of Gray, amid murmurs of applause and satisfaction, in which all the knights, nobles, and even the grim old chancellor joined.
Murielle Douglas was beautiful as ever; but the pure breeze of early autumn that came down the vale of the Dee, the exciting scene, and the great presence in which she stood, alike failed to impart a red tinge to her pale cheek, and even her rosebud lip had lost its usual carnation hue.
In short, poor Murielle had evidently suffered much in mind and body; for the years of blight and anxiety she had spent in gloomy Thrave had not been without a natural influence upon a spirit so timid and gentle; and now, as she wept upon her husband's breast, she neither heard nor heeded the acclamations which rose from the king's camp, with the roar of culverins from Knockcannon and the Carlinwark, as they greeted the appearance of the royal standard which Sir John Romanno hoisted on the great keep of Thrave, the now humbled stronghold of her forefathers, the mighty lords of Galloway.
Not long after these events the new earl of Douglas was reconciled to James II., and though both parties were insincere—their mutual injuries being too deep and too recent—there was peace in the kingdom for a time.
Inspired by a sentiment of revenge for the death of their chief in Thrave, the MacLellans long refused to lay aside their swords, and for years continued to commit such dreadful outrages upon the Douglases and their adherents that James outlawed the new laird of Bombie and all his followers; but during his reign they re-won their possessions in the following remarkable manner.
A band of outlaws or wild rovers, said by some authorities to have been Saracens or Moors, but who were more probably Irishmen, as their leader was named Black Murrough, landed in Galloway and committed such devastations that the king, by a royal proclamation, offered the forfeited lands of Bombie to any knight or man, however humble, who could kill or capture this terrible stranger, of whose stature, strength, and ferocity the most startling stories were told, for the marvellous was a great element in those days.
In a wild place, near where the old castle of Bombie stood, there is a spring which flows now, as perhaps it flowed a thousand years before the epoch of our story. The bare-kneed and bare-armed Celts of Galwegia, and the helmeted and kilted warriors of Rome, have drunk of it. With its limpid waters, St. Cuthbert, whose church was built close by, baptized the first Christians of the district in the name of Him who died on Calvary; and in later and less-peaceful times, the fierce Lag and Claverhouse have drunk of it, with their gauntleted hands, when in pursuit of the persecuted Covenanters, by hill and loch and the shores of the Solway.
It chanced that Sir William, the outlawed nephew of Sir Thomas MacLellan, was wandering near this well, on a day when the banks of the Dee were changing in tint and aspect under the genial sunshine and warm showers of spring, when the trees were putting forth their young and fragrant blossoms, and when the blackbird and the rose-linnet sang among the thickets that overhung the river.
Full of those sad and bitter thoughts which were naturally induced by the outlawry and proscription of his family, the young heir of Bombie approached the spring to drink, and lo! near it there lay, fast asleep, a rough and gigantic man, whose form exhibited wondrous strength and muscle, and by his side lay an Irish war-club, the knotty head of which was studded with sharp iron spikes. He was the leader of the strange devastators,—he, for whose life King James had offered the castle and heritage of Bombie.
MacLellan drew near, and by a single stroke of his double-handed sword, shred off the great head of the terrible sleeper, and grasping it by its thick black locks of matted hair, he conveyed it without delay to the king, who, in terms of his proclamation, immediately restored to him the forfeited lands of Bombie, and from that day the MacLellans assumed as a crest, the head of a savage on the point of a sword, with the motto—"Think on." The scene of this episode bears to this day the double name of Bombie's Well, and the Wood of Black Murrough.
Broken in spirit, the proud Countess Margaret, whilom the Fair Maid of Galloway, condescended at last to seek the forgiveness and protection of King James II., after which, as she was still the loveliest woman of her time, he bestowed her in marriage upon his half brother, John, earl of Athole, son of the late Queen Jane and of the Black Knight of Lorn, who perished so miserably in Flanders.
Robert, duke of Albany, died in exile, and no man in Scotland ever knew where he found a grave; but Sir Patrick Gray and Murielle lived long and happily. We know not which survived the other. He was created a peer of the realm by the title of Lord Balronald, and received the captaincy of the royal castle of Lochmaben, which he defended valiantly against the English in the year 1460, during that war in which James II. perished by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh, when standing by the side of Sir John Romanno, near the old Thorn Tree, at Fleurs.
William Lord Crichton, the wily and somewhat unscrupulous old chancellor, died in peace in 1455, at his own stately castle in Lothian, and lies interred in the old church near it.
His aged compatriot, Sir Alexander Livingstone, died about the same time, after securing a peerage for his son, the captain of Stirling, who was created Lord Livingstone of Callendar, and Great Chamberlain of Scotland.
We need scarcely inform the reader that the worthy abbot of Tongland never succeeded in his great project concerning the Master of Evil, whom he wished to destroy as an enemy by making him a friend; though in after-years a poor Capuchin of Venice revived the idea, by petitioning the states of that republic, and also the pope, on the same subject, and had the reward of being viewed by both as a—madman.
The beautiful young queen, Mary d'Egmont of Gueldres, only survived her husband three years.
It was our strange fortune to behold her remains, previous to their re-interment at Holyrood, in May, 1848, when nothing remained of those charms which she inherited from the houses of Cleves, Burgundy, and Gueldres, save her teeth, which, after having been three hundred and eighty-five years in the grave, were singularly white and regular.
THE END.