It might be months, or years, or days,I kept no count—I took no note;I had no hope my eyes to raise,And clear them of their dreary mote.—Byron.
Meanwhile, during the occurrence of all these stirring events where was Sir Patrick Gray?
A prisoner of state in the castle of Bommel, detained there, to all appearance, hopelessly, by order of Jacques de Lalain, the Dyck Graf.
This official knew not whether to believe the information and reiterated statements of Sir Patrick, or those of the vindictive earl of Douglas. The secret manner in which Gray had resided in Bommel, and the disguise he had assumed, were denounced by the burgomaster, as unworthy the character of an envoy and the captain of a royal guard; they were declared suspicious, though no one could exactly say of what bad errand or object. Then, in that unexplained midnight brawl, concerning the origin of which Sir Patrick maintained an obstinate silence, he had wounded almost to death two citizens of good repute; and he was totally without papers or property to verify the account he gave of himself, as all he possessed had fallen into the hands of the Douglases, who had destroyed the former and appropriated the latter.
The hatred displayed by a noble so powerful as the earl and by his brilliant train of followers towards him, and their urgent demands for his execution, with or without a trial, convinced Jacques de Lalain that some great mystery was involved; that his prisoner was a man of considerable importance; and that it would be alike impolitic to hang or to release him. Hence he ordered, that he should be well attended, and comfortably lodged in the fortress of Bommel, but closely guarded and confined to the tower of Otho III.
Arnold d'Egmont, duke of Gueldres, had already begun to be embroiled by his unnatural son, Prince Adolphus, and was absent at the ducal court of Burgundy; thus to numerous letters on the subject of his unfortunate prisoner, the Dyck Graf received no explicit answer, so time rolled wearily and drearily on.
And what of Murielle? was the constant thought of Gray.
She was now his, irrevocably his, and while aware of his existence could not, either by force or fraud, become the wife of another. Amid all the misery of a protracted captivity, there was comfort in his conviction, till after-thoughts suggested how heartless was the existence to which their precipitate marriage had perhaps condemned her!
But might not their enemies, by forgeries and false statements, delude her into an idea ofhisdeath, as they had attempted to do before? Douglas dared not trifle with the power and terror of the Church; so Gray drew consolation from his memory of the earl's superstition, if not of his religion.
Yet there were times when his mental agony became great; for no news from Scotland or of the external world ever reached his prison.
Was Murielle still living? Had the wild schemes of Douglas and Albany prospered? Was the latter on the throne as Robert IV., with the terrible earl for his lieutenant-general, his ally in council and his right arm in war—crowned like Baliol of old, by domestic treason and foreign treachery? Was the young king dead, a prisoner, or an exile in France or England? Was Albany's betrothal to Mademoiselle Radegonde, the eldest daughter of Charles VII., annulled? What changes were taking place in his secluded mountain home? Who were dead—who living, and who wedded? Was he quite forgotten there?
Such were the questions ever in his heart and on his tongue.
Slowly passed the weary days till they became months, and then season succeeded to season. Five times had Gray, from his barred window in that old tower of Otho count of Gueldres, seen the golden grain gathered on the flat and distant fields; five times had he seen the land ploughed, and sown, and reaped; and five times covered with the white mantle of winter, when frost locked the waters of the Waal, and moored, harder than ever hempen cable and iron anchor did, the great brown-varnished barges in the sedge-bordered canals, when the storks forsook their nests on the snow-covered gables, when the holy water froze in the stone fonts of the churches, and when the bulbous-shaped Flemings put on at least six pairs of additional breeches. At such a season as this, the poor prisoner pictured in fancy the crackling yule-log that blazed in his father's hall at home—the old kirk of Foulis all bedecked with green bays and greener holly—his mother mourning by the winter hearth for the loss of her absent son; and then his heart grew sick as he thought of his blighted love, his wasted life, and all the thousand memories of his native land.
He thought, too, of what he had seen in more than one Flemish market-place, in Antwerp, at Gueldres, Endhoven, Bommel, and elsewhere; the cruel and periodical exhibition of a long-secluded prisoner, in whose heart hope, and even the memory of the outer world, were long since dead; "for there on particular days," says a certain writer, "these victims are presented to the public eye, upon a stage erected in the open market, apparently to prevent their guilt and punishment from being forgotten. It is scarcely possible to witness a sight more degrading to humanity than this exhibition:—with matted hair, wild looks, and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted glare of the sun, and ears deafened and astounded by the sudden exchange of the silence of a dungeon for the busy hum of men, the wretches sit like rude images fashioned to a fantastic imitation of humanity rather than like living and reflecting beings. In the course of time we are assured they generally become either madmen or idiots, as mind or matter happens to predominate, when the mysterious balance between them is destroyed."
Gray remembered to have seen these miserable captives thus exhibited, and his heart died within him with terror, lest such might be the fate reserved for himself.
So the year 1448 was in its spring when he reckoned that Murielle was no longer a girl—that in fact she would be about her four-and-twentieth year. He strove to picture what the girl would be now, when expanded into a woman! Would he ever see her more, or be free to tread his native soil again? Alas! there were times when he feared his brain would turn.
Count Ludwig had long since been taken in the adjacent forest, after a hard conflict between the soldiers of De Lalain and his Brabanciones, many of whom, including Gustaf Vlierbeke, and the industrious Carl Langfanger, were slain, and gibbeted on the trees. The wretched count was broken alive on the wheel, before the Church of St. Genevieve. He survived the torture for three days, before the public executioner gave him the finalcoupwith an iron bar, and his head on a spike now rendered the market-place of Bommel horrible to its frequenters.
Gray heard of this barbarous execution in his prison, and he almost envied the reckless robber, for death seemed a triumphant release from tyranny, misery, and mental suffering.
In February, 1448, on a dull morning, when the yellow winter fog hung like a pall over the level scenery of the Bommelerwaard, Gray was roused from sleep by the roar of twenty great bombards, the concussion of which shook the old castle of Count Otho to its foundations as they exploded in a salvo.
Had an enemy, the French or Burgundians, attacked it suddenly? His heart leaped with joy at the desperate hope. He rushed to the grated window of his room, and saw in the court-yard beneath, the Dyck Graf, with his sword and mantle, his knightly girdle and collar, mustering and arraying his garrison in their armour, pikemen, crossbowmen, arquebusiers, all steady Walloons and German lanzknechts. Then came the clangour of the church bells, and cheers of a multitude without, who seemed to be rushing through the streets towards the gate of the fortress, while still the great brazen bombards continued to belch forth flame and thunder from the battlements.
"What has happened?" asked Gray, as he rushed half dressed from his room to the court-yard. "Oh, Messire," he added to the Dyck Graf, "in pity tell me?"
"Only a salute, messire," replied the governor curtly, in French; but as Gray observed, with more politeness than usually was accorded to him.
"To whom?"
"A demoiselle of the highest-rank."
"But her name, Messire?" urged Gray.
"The young queen of Scotland, who comes this way with her train," replied the Dyck Graf.
Gray almost gasped with joy.
"The daughter of duke Arnold?" he inquired.
"Yes; of Monseigneur the duke of Gueldres; she has been married to your king at Brussels, and is now on her way to Scotland."
"I am saved—saved at last!" exclaimed Gray, in a burst of happiness, so genuine that even the grim De Lalain was impressed by it. "Oh, my God, I thank thee! (oh, my Murielle!)—and—and, messire, is the king here?
"Tonnere de ciel! how inquisitive you have become."
"Messire, after all I have endured you may excuse me, for many a sun has risen and set—many a tide has ebbed and flowed since I became a prisoner here, spending years, whose agony is known to Heaven and to myself only!"
"Well—the king is not here; the princess was married to him by proxy—the chancellor of Scotland being his representative, before the altar of St. Gudule."
"Sir William Crichton?"
"I think that is his name, messire; and by St. Genevieve!" he added as the clanking iron gates were rolled back by the warders, "she hath a brave retinue of lords and knights, and, as many of them are your countrymen, we shallnowbe able to verify the truth of your statements."
Within an hour after this, Sir Patrick Gray found himself a free man, and surrounded by his countrymen and friends, all loyal gentlemen of the court, who knew him well. He was cordially embraced by the old chancellor, who presented him to the young Queen Mary, and placed him by her side, as the captain of her husband's Royal Guard.
Messire Jacques de Lalain, on perceiving the turn matters took with his prisoner, began to fear that in the zealous execution of his office he had made a mistake. He offered innumerable apologies to Gray, and as he was not ungenerous, he presented him with a rich suit of Flemish armour, a fine Toledo, a Spanish gennet, and a catella or chain, having fifty links of fine gold, as anamendefor all he had endured.
Of all who accompanied the chancellor, he inquired about the Douglases; but could only learn that they were at Rome, and probably would not return until after the great jubilee, which took place then every fiftieth year, in honour of the foundation of Christianity.
The young queen's train embarked at Sluys, in Scottish ships, and crossed the German sea in safety.
On the 1st of April, 1448, she landed at Leith, and as an illustration of "how dull and common-place fiction is when compared with truth," the Dyck Graf of Bommel, and Sir Patrick Gray, who had been so long and so hopelessly his prisoner, rode side by side, as she proceeded towards Edinburgh, and they bore over her head a canopy of cloth of gold upon the points of their lances.
Gray's noble horse and gorgeous armour were now as conspicuous as his soldierly bearing and manly beauty; for both had now returned, and in his five years of captivity the scars inflicted by the ghisarma of Douglas had disappeared, or nearly so.
Patrick Cockburn, of Newbigging, now provost of Edinburgh and governor of the castle, received the queen at the head of the magistrates and all the men of the city, in armour—"boden in effeir of weir," as it was then termed.
Mary was accompanied by the lord chancellor Crichton, John Raulston, bishop of Dunkeld, who was lord privy seal, and Nicholas Otterburn, a canon of Glasgow. The prince of Ravenstein, the marquis of Berg, and Englebert, count of Nassau, hereditary Burg Graf of Antwerp, who were each followed by a brilliant train of attendants, wore the collars and mantles of the Golden Fleece. The prince bore the banner of the bride's uncle, Philip III., surnamed the Good, duke of Burgundy.
Then came the bishops of Liege and Cambrai, riding upon white mules, with long footcloths.
The king's two brothers-in-law came next, Francis, duke of Brittany (a prince who slew his brother Giles), and the Archduke Sigismund of Austria, each attended by knights, banners, squires, and pages, in glittering costumes. With them came Louis II., duke of Savoy, prince of Piedmont, and husband of the princess royal of Cyprus, with his banner borne by the duke of Montferrat, who wore a scarlet tabard, with the silver cross of Savoy.
The lord of Campvere, a handsome and black-bearded man, the husband of Mary of Scotland (fifth sister of James), came next in a suit of armour glittering with gold carvings and precious stones. He bore a great banner—azure, with the lionor, crowned for Gueldreland, andazurea liongulesfor Zutphen, impaled, with the lion of Scotland, within its double tressure offleur-de-lis.
Herré de Meriadet, hereditary Burg Graf of the castle of Sluys, bore the banner of the count of Nassau,azuresprinkled with crossesargent. Meriadet, a tall and stately man, was then famous as one of the best knights in Europe, and the people received him with acclamation. He wore a silver helmet of great beauty and remarkable form, which he had struck in battle from the head of an emir of Granada, when he served the king of Castile in his wars against the Moors, and its snow-white plumes drooped upon his shoulders, and were reflected on the dazzling surface of his armour, which literally blazed in the noonday sunshine.
Bombards were fired, and bells were loudly rung in many a sacred edifice now numbered with the things that were; and so "with a grate traine of knights and ladeys" (as Balfour has it), the queen was conducted to the church of Holyrood, and there solemnly married to the young king, then in about the nineteenth year of his age, and in the bloom of youthful strength and comeliness; and Mary his bride charmed the people by her girlish loveliness. They were never tired of extolling her fair hair, which fell in golden masses on her snowy neck and shoulders; her violet-coloured eyes, and her full yet curved lip, which expressed the softness of love, with that firmness of character so needed in a queen of the turbulent Scots.
This was the second time that the houses of Scotland and the then powerful and independent dukedom of Gueldres had been connected by marriage.
Alexander, son of Alexander III., espoused Margaret, daughter of Guy de Dampierre, earl of Flanders; and had he lived, and she been queen of Scotland, the disastrous wars of the Edwards and the victories of Wallace and Bruce had never been heard of; but he died at Roxburgh, in 1283, when in his twentieth year. Margaret interred him at Lindores, in the old abbey church of St. Mary, and soon after became the wife of Reinald, the warlike duke and count of Gueldres.
The towers in different ages rose,Their various architecture showsThe builders' various hands;A mighty mass, that could opposeWhen deadliest hatred fired its foes,The vengeful Douglas bands.—Marmion.
Amid all the rejoicings on the occasion of this royal marriage the heart of Gray was sad.
Time had not lessened his love for Murielle Douglas, and he grew sick at heart when contemplating the apparent hopelessness of his separation from her: yet she was his wife, whom no man could take from him, while life remained; but so broken did he become in spirit, that notwithstanding all the barbarity and wrong he had endured from the Douglases and their chief, there were times when he resolved to seek the presence of the latter, and, divested of sword, dagger, and armour, make the desperate attempt of offering his ungloved hand, "which," as the chancellor told him with a grimace, "he might as safely thrust into the mouth of a hungry tiger."
The young monarch, who loved Gray and pitied him for his story, heaped favours upon him, such as fine horses, rich armour, purses, and swords, enabling him to appear to the best advantage among the brilliant foreign chivalry by whom the Scottish court was then crowded—knights who were the flower of France, Bretagne, Gueldres, and Burgundy—men whose sons were to win the great battles of Charles the Bold, and to die by his side on the field of Campo Basso.
To all whom he trusted the manner of James II. was most winning; it was the old hereditary charm of his family, who seemed never to forget the maxim,—the higher the head the humbler the heart.
For his diplomatic services in this marriage and other matters, Crichton, as already mentioned, had been created a peer of the realm; and when the beauty of the young queen and the dowry she brought are considered, he had some reason to congratulate himself on a result so successful.
Philip of Burgundy bound himself to pay his niece, the bride, sixty thousand pounds in gold, as a portion merely of her dower, while James settled upon her ten thousand crowns, secured on land in Atholl, Methven, Stratharn, and Linlithgow; and he relinquished all claim to the duchy of Gueldres, after which a league offensive and defensive was concluded between that province, the kingdoms of Scotland, France, and the dukedom of Burgundy.
A series of brilliant tournaments were held in honour of these events; and the Dyck Graf of Bommel, with his brother, Messire Simon de Lalain, with Messire Herré de Meriadet, Burg Graf of Sluys, three Burgundian lords of high descent and esteemed valour, challenged "an equal number of Scottish chivalry to joust with lance and sword, battle-axe and dagger."
This defiance was promptly responded to by a knight named Sir James Douglas, James Douglas, Lord of Lochlevin, and Sir John Ross of Halkhead, constable of Renfrew. The latter was attended by Sir Patrick Gray, while Sir Thomas MacLellan and Romanno of that Ilk attended the other two, ready to take part in themêléeif the strife became a bloody one. A space near the castle rock of Stirling was selected for the lists, and gaily-decorated galleries were erected for the king, the queen, and court, the lords and barons of parliament.
On the appointed day, the six champions, after hearing mass, presented themselves, clad in velvet and cloth of gold, before the king, and after each had made a low reverence, they retired to six painted pavilions to arm; after which, lanced, horsed, and in full and splendid armour, with closed helmets, they entered the lists at opposite extremities; and when twelve brass trumpets made the summer sky and castle rock re-echo to their united blast, the knights rushed on each other, three against three.
"For Scotland!" shouted Ross and the Douglases.
"Vivat Burgundie!" replied Meriadet and the De Lalains.
Such were the war-cries on each side.
Their tough ash spears were splintered in an instant, the fragments springing high in air from the ringing coats of tempered steel. Panting and quivering, with flashing eyes and snorting nostrils, the gaily-trapped horses recoiled upon their straining haunches, till wheeled round, and urged forward again, by spur and knee, by voice and bridle, and fiercely the combat was renewed, as the six knights closed up, hand to hand, with flashing swords and swaying battle-axes.
Sir James Douglas and Sir John Ross, and the Dyck Graf and Simon de Lalain, were so equally matched that not one of them could obtain the least advantage over the other, though they fought till all their armour was defaced, and, save Douglas's dagger, all their weapons were broken; but Herré de Meriadet, by one blow of his battle-axe, unhorsed the lord of Lochlevin, as he had formerly done the emir of Granada, and hurled him to the ground.
On seeing this, and fearing the conflict might have a disastrous termination, the king, at Crichton's request, threw down his truncheon, and the jousts were ended, just as Gray, MacLellan, and Romanno were about to join in themêléewith the three Burgundian squires.
So passed this year, and then came the next, in which rumour reached the Scottish court of how the turbulent earl of Douglas and his warlike followers comported themselves in the Eternal City, during the festivities which opened with the year of the Jubilee, 1450; for there the Scottish knights, who wore the red heart on their helmets and surcoats, became involved in a brawl with the Roman populace on the crowded bridge of St. Angelo, and betook them to their lances, swords, and mauls as freely as if they had been in the High Street of Edinburgh, or the Broad Wynd of Stirling, and played the devil in the capital of his holiness, spearing and trampling the people under foot; and they it was who caused that tremendous pressure by which, as history records, ninety-seven persons were killed at the end of the bridge, by being simply crushed to death.
Pope Nicholas V., who had lately succeeded the unfortunate Eugene, was so inspired by indignation, that all hope of a fuller dispensation for the earl and his countess was at an end. There too were dissipated all the poor abbot of Tongland's expectations of having the prince of darkness restored to favour, for, as he records in his papers, the very name of "Douglace gart ye paip to scunner;" so, in despair, he committed to the flames the memorial he had prepared on behalf of his ubiquitous protégé, and abandoned his pet project for the time.
Then, to the infinite satisfaction of Murielle, the earl, separated from the duke of Albany, and hearing how high his rival Crichton stood in favour at the Scottish court, and that, under Romanno, troops had been sent into Galloway to ravage the Douglas lands, and punish their disorderly occupants, he returned secretly and with all speed homeward, for the express purpose of cutting off the chancellor by the strong hand, and more than ever determined on carrying out his old schemes of vengeance.
Passing through England in the spring of the year, after some treasonable correspondence with Henry VI., he arrived in Scotland, and, unknown to Crichton, secretly ensconced himself at Dalkeith, the castle of his kinsman, James, third lord of Dalkeith, while Achanna and another follower, bribed by the proffer of a gauntlet filled with silver crowns, watched the movements of the chancellor, who was then suffering from ill health, his advanced years, and the cares of the state, and who resided in the castle of Edinburgh. An opportunity for mischief soon presented itself.
It chanced that on Lady Day, in March, the chancellor left his residence to visit his own house of Crichton, which stands about twelve miles south from the city. He was accompanied by Sir Patrick Gray, Sir Thomas MacLellan, Romanno, constable of Edinburgh Castle and master of the king's ordnance, Patrick Lord Glammis, and about twenty gentlemen, all well mounted and armed.
The day was fine and clear, the sharp March winds blustered through the hollows and swept the last year's leaves before it over the uplands, where the fresh soil glittered in the sunshine, and where the hoodie-crow searched in the furrows for worms; the birds were singing in the hedgerows, where the buds were springing into greenness; the air was mild and cool, the fields were assuming a verdant hue, though the brown spoil of the departed year lay damp and rotting in the mountain runnels, and along the sedgy banks of loch and stream. The rich aroma of the land came on the passing breeze, that shook the old woods of Drumshelch and Dalrigh.
Over miles of land now covered by the "modern Athens," for ages into times unknown and far beyond the knowledge or record of man, the oaks of these old woods shook down their autumn leaves upon the lair of the elk, the snow-white mountain bull, and of those ferocious Scottish bears, which in after-days, as Martial tells us, were used by the pagan Romans to increase the torture of those Christians who perished on the cross. Drumshelch was one of those old primeval forests, from which the first dwellers in the land named themselves Coille-dhoinean—Caledonians, or the men of the woods.
Though the month was March, the season having been moist, the peasantry were consigning the whins to the flames, though such was contrary to the law of James I., and the white smoke of the muir-burn, as it was named, rolled along the hills of Braid and the more distant slopes of the Pentlands like a mimic conflagration.
It was spring, and one of the most delightful days of the season, when men's hearts grow buoyant, they scarcely know why. Even Gray felt its influence, for it gave him new emotions of pleasure and of hope. It was little more than the commencement of a new year; but it was one the end of which none could foresee. He had heard that the Douglases were returning. How little could he imagine that Murielle was then only six miles distant from him, where the strong old castle of Dalkeith, from its wooded slope, overlooked the lovely Esks.
He conversed gaily with the knights and gentlemen of the chancellor's train, as they rode down the steep winding street, named the Bow, and passed to the eastward along a narrow way between hedgerows, which bordered the city on the south in the long deep hollow, on the opposite bank of which then stood only one edifice—the solitary church of St. Mary-in-the-Field, surrounded by its burying-ground. It was a lonely bridle-road this path through the hollow—a place where the birds carolled by day, the glow-worms glittered by night, and the brown rabbits started from side to side at all times.
Three crow-stepped and gable-ended edifices, then standing far apart, were there. One belonged to Richard Lundy, then a monk, and afterwards abbot of Melrose; another was a little chapel of Holyrood which stood at the foot of St. Giles's churchyard; the third was an old farmhouse.
This narrow and solitary hedgerow was then the southgate and the future Cowgate of Edinburgh.
As the chancellor and his train issued from it into the more open country, they took no heed of two armed horsemen—for all men in Scotland went armed—who left the city before them, and who, after frequently looking back, as if reckoning their number and watching their route, disappeared at full speed to the southward.
At a rapid pace our friends crossed the ridge of Kirk-Liberton, passing between the fortlet of the Winrams and the holy well of St. Catherine. They crossed both the wooded Esks, and ascended the long line of cultivated hill, then an open waste, known as the Roman camp of Agricola, where the mounds and trenches which his warriors dug in the year 80 may still be distinctly traced; and then southward in the distance, the chancellor's retinue could see his castle of Crichton on the western slope of a green eminence, where its walls and towers, a glorious relic of Scotland's stormy days, all built of red coloured freestone, glowed ruddily in the light of the evening sun. And this feudal fortress appeared to rise higher on its steep as the proprietor's train descended into the deep and marshy valley which it overhangs.
Crichton is a vast quadrangular fortress, exhibiting in its stone staircases and arcaded court, wonderful architectural beauty and great strength, as it adjoined that part of the wild and lawless border-land which lay nearest to the Scottish capital. Toned down by time, its corroded carvings, so rich and so florid in their details, impress with astonishment the wanderer who comes suddenly in view of its mouldering remains, as they stand in a lonely glen, remote and secluded alike from road and railway, from tourist and traveller. A fallen tower has now choked up the terriblemassy-moreor secret dungeon, and the chambers where Mary Stuart and Bothwell held high revelry—where the lady of Hailes wept for the slaughter of her lord and all his kindred at Flodden, and where the wily old chancellor wove his plans for the downfall of the Douglases, are now roofless and windowless—the abode of the fox and the fuimart—the ravenous gled and the hoodie-crow.
As the chancellor's train, all of whom being men of rank were in bright armour, rode by the narrow bridle-path, between the green pastoral hills, and entered Crichtondean, through which flows a sluggish streamlet, known as the Scottish Tyne, but which becomes a rushing river when it reaches the ocean at Dunbar, they were soon visible to the inmates of the castle, several of whom waved their handkerchiefs from the keep, where the great bell was rung and a banner displayed, while the Milan plate and steel of the visitors were seen to glitter in the sunlight, between the masses of alder tree whichthenclothed the now bare and desolate sides of the narrow valley.
Those white handkerchiefs were waved by the chancellor's lady, who had so kindly nursed Sir Patrick Gray, his daughters, Agnes, wife of Alexander, master of Glammis, and Elizabeth, afterwards Countess of Huntly, two of the most beautiful women of the time, who were on the bartizan with several of their friends and attendants. But as their father, with his retinue, banner, and horsemen, disappeared where the alder-woods grew thickest, they heard a tumultuous shout, the sound of a trumpet, and the clamour of many voices, ascending to their ears on the breeze of the valley.
Conversing merrily with Sir Patrick Gray, the old chancellor rode his ambling nag at an easy pace, with a favourite hawk, the gift of his neighbour, the Knight of Locharwart, perched on his bridle hand. Trusting in the strength and character of his retinue, in his diplomatic rank, to his many ripe years, and the supposed absence of his enemies, he was without armour, and wore a long black velvet cassock-coat, which was sufficiently open to show an undershirt of white satin slashed with red, and secured at the waist by an embroidered baldrick, at which hung a heavy sword and Parmese dagger, the hilt of which was composed of a single crystal. His long white hair escaped from under his Scottish bonnet of black velvet, and floated on the tippet of miniver which covered his shoulders and was clasped at the throat by a jewel.
He pointed to the great column of smoke which ascended from the chimney of the kitchen-tower, and laughed while reminding his friends of the good cheer which awaited after their ride over the hills on a clear March day; but something less easy of digestion in the shape of cold iron awaited them; for at the narrow part of the road, where it took an abrupt turn, and where, as already stated, the alderwood grew thickest, there arose a sudden shout, in front and on both flanks, while a band of men-at-arms, lanced, horsed, and with closed helmets, rushed upon them from an ambush.
"Jamais arrière! a Douglas! a Douglas! Revenge for the Black Dinner!"
These shouts made all acquainted with whom they had to deal. Gray, MacLellan, Romanno, and others, shut down their helmets, and betook them to sword, axe, and "morning star," as those ponderous maces borne by knights at their saddle-bows were named.
Two of their unexpected assailants had coronets of jewels upon their helmets, and all had their coats-of-arms, but chiefly the terribleRed Heart and three stars, painted on their breastplates. All knew their foes in an instant, as heraldry was a science in which every gentleman was then well versed.
"To your swords, gentlemen; forward, and break through this pack of knaves!" exclaimed the old chancellor, tossing his hawk into the air, as he knew it would wing its way straight home. Then drawing his sword, he added, "Help yourselves, sirs, and Heaven will help you!"
There was a tremendous shock in the rough and narrow pathway, a clashing of swords, and the dull, dinting crash of iron maces and mauls on steel casques and shoulder-plates; several men fell to rise no more, and many were severely wounded. The chancellor was the aim of all the Douglases. Gray and MacLellan stood nobly by his side, yet he received many severe wounds, till he became almost maddened by pain and the prospect of a cruel death at the hands of his bitterest enemies.
"Then," says Buchanan, "the Lord Crichton, though an aged peer, slew the first man who assaulted him, passed his sword through a second, and leading a charge of his retinue, broke right through the Douglases;" but just as he was sinking with fatigue and loss of blood, Sir Patrick Gray, by his battle-axe, broke the arm of one assailant, clove the helmet of another, and drew the chancellor across the saddle of his own charger, a powerful Clydesdale war-horse, presented to him by the king, and calling to MacLellan, Lord Glammis, and Romanno, to "cover his retreat, and keep the foe in check," he galloped up the steep and winding path which led to the castle, and deposited his now senseless friend in the arms of his terrified daughters. Pell-mell up the grassy slope, fighting every foot of the way, but in full flight, their friends were now driven by the victorious Douglases, who were more than a hundred strong, till they reached the chancellor's fortress, when its gates received them, and then a shot or two skilfully discharged from a culverin by Gray and Romanno drove them off, brandishing their weapons and shaking their mailed hands in token of future vengeance. Ere they went one opened his helmet and displaying the dark and swarthy face of the great earl, exclaimed hoarsely, "Hark ye, my lord chancellor: I have drawn once more my father's sword, and by St. Mary, and St. Bryde of Douglas, I will not leave James Stuart one foot of Scottish ground—nay, not even the moat-hill of Scone. By our blessed Lord, before whom this relic of St. Bryde is holy, I swear it! so judge what shall become ofthee!"
And with these terrible words, after kissing an amulet which hung at his neck, he galloped away, and with his followers disappeared down Crichtondean.
In this rough mode did Gray, for the first time, learn that the Douglases were again in Scotland, and that Murielle must now have returned.
He had now ample scope for thought, reflection, and for daring schemes, which he knew not how to put in operation.
After this rash escapade, the Earl of Douglas retired to Thrave, in Galloway, and for some time the chancellor remained in his stronghold, until his wounds were healed and he could return to court.
By this epoch the reader must have begun to perceive what a pleasant time a Scottish statesman must have had of it in those old feudal days.
Oh, men of Scotland, though you cannot raiseYour long past monarchs from the silent bier;Their deeds are worthy of your highest praise,And simple gratitude demands a tear.Let no base slander on their memory fall,Nor malice of their little faults complain;They were such men as, take them all and all,We ne'er shall look upon their like again!Written in 1771.
James II. was one of that old race of kings whom the now forgotten bard, above quoted, called upon posterity to remember. At this period of our story he had reached his twenty-first year, but experience had already made him older. The sole blemish to his very handsome countenance was that small red spot which won him the sobriquet of James with the fiery face. He was considerably above the middle height, and was firmly knit in form; his eyebrows were strongly marked, and a dark glossy moustache, curling round his finely cut mouth, mingled with a short peaked beard. His rich brown hair hung, in the profusion of the time, over his ears, in thick masses called "side locks." He was rapid in thought, bold in speech, and prompt in action, fiery and impetuous in temper; resolute and even desperate in avenging a wrong; and of his wild impulsive nature, his most unruly subject, the Earl of Douglas, was, ere long, to have a terrible proof; but yet, like the Moorish knight of Granada, James was said to be,
Like steel amid the din of arms,Like wax when with the fair.
Some weeks after the outrage which closes the last chapter, on a day when the sun of June, by its golden light and genial heat, was ripening the young corn in many a fertile haugh, and on many a swelling eminence where now the modern city spreads its streets and squares, James was seated in one of the upper chambers of David's Tower, in the Castle of Edinburgh. It was the same in which King David died on the 7th May, eighty years before, and in memory of him there still hung above the fireplace the mail shirt and barrel-shaped helmet which he had worn at the battle of Durham.
The vaulted apartment was gloomy, and through the basket-shaped gratings of the windows which faced the east the rays of the summer sun came slanting in, filling one portion with strong light, and leaving the other involved in dusky shadow.
Clad in a long scarlet dressing-gown, trimmed with miniver, the king was reclining in an armed chair, with his feet on a velvet tabourette. In his hand, bound in painted vellum, and elaborately clasped with silver, was one of those old French metrical romances which had been translated into Scottish for him by Sir Gilbert the Haye, who was chamberlain to Charles VII. of France; but his thoughts ran not upon its lines, nor the fighting giants, cunning dwarfs, wandering knights, and castles of burnished steel which filled its pages; neither was he attending to the mass of yellow parchments and papers which the high treasurer, and Lord Glammis, the master of the household, were arranging for his inspection; nor was he heeding the occasional remarks of his favourite, the Captain of the Guard, who, clad in half armour, lounged in the recess of a window; but the king's face confessed, by the sadness of its expression, that his thoughts were at Stirling, where his beautiful young queen—his golden-haired Mary d'Egmont, of Gueldres—was confined to her chamber, sick and ill and weary, after the premature birth of her first baby, which died two hours after it came into the world, to the great disappointment of the king and nation.
The great battle of Sark had been recently fought on the borders, and there fifty thousand English, led by "the stoute Earl of Northumberland," had been routed by less than thirty thousand Scots, with the loss of Sir John Pennington and Sir Magnus Red Main, two of the most celebrated soldiers of Henry VI.; and now, from the window at which Gray stood in David's Tower, he could see far down below, where several thousand labourers were daily and nightly at work, enclosing the capital by itsfirstwalls, with embattled gates upon the south, east, and west; and, for defence on the north, others were converting the old royal gardens in the valley into a sheet of water—the Nor'loch of future times; these protections for the city being among the earliest measures of the young and politic monarch, "in dread of the evil and skaith of oure ennemies of England," as he states in his charter to the citizens, who loved him for his valiant conduct and fatherly care of them.
"I am well nigh sick of hearing so many petty items," said the king, wearily, interrupting Andrew, abbot of Melrose, the lord high treasurer, a tall, pale-visaged, and sharp-eyed man (on whose white head time had long since marked a permanenttonsure), who had been reading over several papers for his information; "yet I suppose I must hear them: say, lord abbot, how stands our privy purse?"
"I have disbursed to-day to foreign heralds one hundred and fifty pounds," replied the treasurer.
"Heralds! On what errand?"
"They came on the part of Henry of England, to ransom Lord Northumberland's son, who was wounded and taken prisoner at Sark by Sir Thomas MacLellan; who had already ransomed him for the value of his horse and armour," replied the abbot. "Shall I read on?" The king nodded, and the abbot proceeded in this manner, jumbling all kinds of items strangely together. "'Item: for your highness's new suit of Milan harness 20lb.' 'For eight score and eighteen runlets of wine from a Fleming of the Dam, to wit, Master Baudoin of Antwerp, 500lb.' For silken stuffs, furs, minivers, spices, and sweetmeats, for the queen's household, paid to John Vanderberg of Bruges at the fair of Dundee, 800lb.'"
"Good, my lord—and the total?" said the king.
"Maketh 1480lb.," replied the treasurer after a pause.
"By St. Andrew! we shall have but little left to keep those Douglases in check on the one hand, and those pestilent English on the other, if our household accounts go thus," said James, with a dubious smile.
"'To your highness's chamberlain in Mar, for driving all your brood mares from Strathavon to Strathdon, 5sh.'" resumed the treasurer, reading very fast to avoid interruption; and then followed innumerable other items, all written in obsolete Scottish (which, like our dialogues, we translate), such as twenty-nine weeks' pay to the king's falconer; to the master gunner of Lochmaben, for stone and iron cannon balls, and for repairs; to Sir John Romanno for a thousand bowstaves; to Henry, the smith, for dies for the new coinage; to the keepers of the balefires along the borders; for garrisons there, and for the hanging of those who supplied the English with horses or cattle; to the driver of the oxen when the ten bombardes of the wine of Gascony came from Perth for the court's summer drink——
"And were intercepted by the earl of Douglas, or some of his reivers, and drunk in Thrave," commented the king.
"To the hunter of wolves in Stirling Park, for three wolves' heads laid at the outer gate, 18 pennies, according to the act of parliament. This closes the record; but the monks of Holyrood have sent your majesty a thousand silver crowns."
"That is well," said the king, who had long since relinquished his romance in despair; "but the lord abbot hath twenty-seven parish churches, and might, at this emergency, have lent me a trifle more."
"Perhaps; but even with all the altar-offerings, lesser tithes, pasque presents, and dues for baptism, marriage, and funerals, there is but little left to give after the yearly expenses of so great a monastery are paid."
"There spoke a brother abbot, andnota treasurer," said the king laughing, while the churchman coloured as he tied up his rolls with a ribbon. "Laus Deo! I am thankful we have come to an end; but we shall need all the money we can collect, my lord."
"True; for evil tidings are on the wind," said Lord Glammis, approaching a single pace and pausing.
"Of what—or whom?" asked James, with a louring eye.
"The Douglases again."
Sir Patrick Gray started from his reverie to listen.
"What of them now?" asked the king impatiently.
"Sir Alan Lauder and a man named James Achanna, both followers of the earl, have slain a king's vassal within the Holy Gyrth of Lesmahago."
"Treason! But that is a mere nothing now," said James bitterly.
"And worse than treason, for it is sacrilege!" added the abbot of Melrose, with gathering wrath. "When your highness's sainted ancestor, King David I., in the pious times of old, granted that cell unto the monks of Kelso, he wrote, that 'whoso escaping peril of life and limb flies to the said cell, or cometh within the four crosses around it, in reverence to God and St. Machute,I grant him my firm peace.'"
"And so they violated this holy sanctuary?" said James.
"Yes; and hewed the poor man to pieces with their Jethart axes."
"His offence?"
"Was wearing the royal livery,—being the gudeman of your majesty's mills at Carluke."
The king started up, and was about to utter some hasty speech, when a smart little page, clad in a violet-coloured doublet, with long hose of white silk, drew back the tapestry which overhung the arched door, and announced that the lord chancellor craved an audience in haste.
"Admit him," said James, advancing a step, as the old statesman, pale and thin from the effect of his recent wounds and by the advance of years, entered, propped upon a long silver-headed staff. "You look grave, my lord," added the king; "but I pray you to be seated."
"I have evil tidings," began the chancellor, hobbling forward and coughing violently.
"The very words of my Lord Glammis," said the king; "can aught else come to the ear of him who wears a Scottish crown?" he added, biting his nether lip.
"Say not so, after our late glorious victory at Sark!" exclaimed the chancellor; "but, nevertheless, Ihaveevil news," he added, taking from the velvet pouch which hung at his embroidered girdle several letters, folded square, and tied with ribbons, in the fashion of the time. "I have two grave matters to lay before your majesty. We are more than ever humbled and insulted by this overweening earl of Douglas, and, through you, the entire nation! The king of Scotland," continued the chancellor, warming and striking the floor with his cane, "is the fountain of Scottish honour, and thus I maintain, that if the king is insulted so arewe; for if a stream be polluted at its source, every rill that flows from it becomes so too; but we must end these matters by the sword—we must wipe out our wrongs in blood, and regild our tarnished blazons in the reddest that flows in the veins of our enemies, the men of Douglas-dale and Galloway!"
"These wild men are yet untamed," said the tall thin treasurer, shaking his bald head.
"Butnotuntameable," responded the fiery old chancellor, with a spark of rage in his hollow eyes.
"To the point, my lords, under favour of the king," said Sir Patrick Gray, gnawing his moustache in his impatience.
Thou shalt not yield to lord nor loon,Nor shalt thou yield to me;But yield thee to the braken bushThat grows on yon lilye lee.—Old Ballad.
"What more have I to hear of this false noble and his followers?" said the king, after briefly, and to Gray's great annoyance, rehearsing the whole story of the murder of his vassal, the miller of Carluke, in the sanctuary of Lesmahago.
"The earl has lawlessly seized, and ignominiously imprisoned, in his hold of Thrave, a good and loyal servant of your majesty."
"That is nothing new; but what is his name?" asked James, grasping the arms of the chair, and thrusting aside the tabourette with his foot, while his hazel eyes flashed fire with anger, and his dark brows were knit.
"Sir Thomas MacLellan, of Bombie," replied the chancellor, with grave energy.
"My friend—the Lieutenant of my Guard!"
"My brave kinsman!"
Such were the exclamations of the king and of Sir Patrick Gray, who had come from the sunny recess of the window, and in deep anxiety stood near the chancellor's chair to listen. In his anger, James snatched from the table his amber rosary and dagger of mercy, as if about to utter some vague threat or malediction, and then cast them from him, though the latter was the gift of his brother-in-law, Sigismund of Austria, and was hilted by a single agate.
"Sir Thomas MacLellan, of Bombie," resumed the chancellor, gravely and earnestly, "your majesty's steward of Kirkcudbright, is now a prisoner in the castle of Thrave manacled with the heaviest chains MacKim, the earl's smith, can forge, and hourly is menaced with death."
"And wherefore has this been done?"
"The whole of this new outrage is detailed to me in a letter from the abbot of Tongland, who has atlast—the pedantic fool! the very dunce!—(excuse me, my lord abbot of Melrose)—abandoned the earl, his chief, and has secluded himself in his abbey, despairing, I presume, of the reformation of Douglas, as of that of the devil himself, concerning whom he so lately visited Rome."
From the letters of the abbot, the lord chancellor then proceeded to relate that there were three reasons for this capture and imprisonment of the Steward of Kirkcudbright. Thefirstwas, that Sir Thomas, who was chief of a powerful Celtic tribe, possessing all the peninsula between the Dee and the Solway, had taken part with the late Sir Herbert Herries, of Terregles, his kinsman, against the Douglases, and had thereby excited the ready wrath of the earl. Thesecondcause of hatred was, that he had borne a letter from the Captain of the King's Guard to the Lady Murielle Douglas, and had shot it to her feet by an arrow, as she was walking near the castle wall of Thrave. Thethird, that he had refused to join a league, and sign a bond for levying war against the king. For these three causes the earl, taking advantage of MacLellan being at his own castle of Raeberry, whither he had retired in consequence of a sword-wound received from Lord Piercy at the battle of Sark, despatched three hundred men-at-arms under James Achanna to bring him dead or alive to Thrave, after sacking and demolishing his residence.
Achanna marched on this lawless mission; but true to his infamous nature, he preferred fraud to force. Raeberry, of which there now remains but a deep fosse, overhung a dreadful precipice, on the bluffs of which the united waves of the Solway Frith and the Atlantic pour their fury. It was deemed impregnable, and was protected on the north by a strong rampart, a drawbridge, and a deep trench. Achanna, aware of these difficulties on one side, and perils on all the rest, seduced one of the warders—a man in whom MacLellan trusted most—by promising, that if he would leave the secret postern open, "for a single hour, upon a certain night, he should have a ladleful of gold."
The wretch agreed. The wicket was left unbarred, Achanna and his band rushed in, overpowered the inmates of Raeberry, and dragged Sir Thomas from bed, severely wounding his nephew, William MacLellan, a brave boy, who fought to save him. On finding that he had been betrayed by his most trusted servant, and to the Douglases, Sir Thomas exclaimed in the bitterness of his heart,—
"Wretch—oh, wretch! mayest thou live to feel the despair that wrung the heart of Judas when he flung to the accursed Jews their thirty pieces of silver."
At these words, the abashed warder shrunk back, but the hireling Achanna laughed loudly, and ordering his prisoner to be bound with cords, conveyed him on horseback to Thrave, where the imperious Douglas, after loading him with fetters, insults, and opprobrium, thrust him into the dungeon.
"All these outrages, to a steward of our stewardry—a loyal knight and baron—the Lieutenant of our Guard!" exclaimed the king, in mingled tones of regret and rage; "verily the time has come for me to exchange my crown either for a helmet, or for the tonsure of a shaven friar. And this dog of a warder——"
"Met with the stipulated reward of his treachery, and in a manner little to his liking, on presenting himself next evening at Thrave to receive the promised bribe."
"'Thou shalt have it, false limmer,—every farthing,—yea, godspenny and principal,' said Douglas, sternly; 'though in a way, I trow, but little to your advantage.'"
"'How, my lord?'" asked the trembling wretch.
"'Molten hot, and poured down your dog's-throat, to warn my warders of Thrave what they may expect if they so betrayedme, and not to sleep with their doors unlatched. Away with him to the kitchen, and let this be his doom!'"
"In vain did the wretch shriek for mercy on his bended knees; he was dragged to the kitchen of the castle, and there the commands of the earl were literally and awfully obeyed. The skimming-ladle of the great pot was filled with new goldlions(each of which had the image of St. Andrew on one side, and a lion rampant on the other); after being molten to a seething mass, they were poured down the throat of the warder, and in ten minutes after, his mutilated corpse was flung into the gallows slot."[3]
FOOTNOTES: