"I count the man most worthless who would feedHis wavering soul with vain delusive hope;To live with glory, or with glory die,Befits the noble."—Sophocles.
The evening was growing into night.
The conversation at Loretto had been maintained in broken and unconnected sentences, or in low whispers; the hermit had retrimmed his lamp, removed the remains of the supper, and composed himself to finish that part of his "office" which yet remained unsaid; and then he told the maids and pages many a wonderful story of the miraculous cures effected at the shrine: how the blind had recovered their sight, the sick their health; how the lame had left their crutches and wooden legs behind them; and how, when an impious boy had cast a stone at the image of Our Lady, blood dropped from her nostrils, to the horror of the beholders, and how that wild little boy died the mitred Abbot of Dunfermline.
Then the gunner, who had wakened up, told many a story of a somewhat different character: of the achievements of Andrew Wood, and of brave old Andrew Barton; and how, in the old war waged by Scotland against the Dutch and Portuguese, he had swept all the ocean of their ships, from the Fortunate Isles to the swamps of the Zuiderzee; capturing, sinking, or burning their gilded argosies and noble carracques, to avenge the murder of some Scottish mariners on the high seas in time of peace; and how he had barrelled up their heads in brine, and sent some scores of them to Stirling (to the no small horror of the good King James) as the best proof of how he was discharging his duty,—and as the records of the Secret Council still remain to show.
The wind had gone down as the night darkened; the rain had ceased, and now little more was heard than the roar of the billows on the level shore; but the lovers were thoughtful and silent, for the time of separation was approaching, and no definite plan had been resolved on.
Amid this silence the tread of an armed man—if one might judge by the jangling rowels of heavy military spurs—was heard to cross the chapel floor above them; for the hermitage was in one of the numerous vaults below the edifice.
"Gate of Heaven—a visitor!" said the hermit, closing his book, and softly ascending the narrow stair to the chapel. Falconer followed with his sword half drawn, and prepared for any meeting or emergency.
The chapel was empty; there was no one there, and the door was still closed, lest the wind might extinguish the six tapers that were always burning before the little altar.
"This is most strange!" said the fat hermit, with an expression of perplexity on his sleek round face. "No man can have crossed the chapel, and closed the door too, before we could see him."
"Some one may be without," said Falconer.
"Sancta Maria! it may be a warning of approaching evil; keep back, Sir David, a little way, while I look without; for none dare meddle with me."
Setting down his lamp, the hermit softly opened the chapel door, slipped out, and looked round him; the wind had sunk into a low moaning sough; the stars were shining through the gaps in the flying clouds. These gaps revealed patches of blue, occasionally; their ragged edges were tinged by the moon; and a lurid light was visible at the horizon. The night was still wild-looking; but the storm was evidently past.
On the pathway which led to the chapel, he saw a group of mounted horsemen, one of whom was giving directions to the rest and in about half a minute after, they separated and formed themselves in a circle round the edifice, with the unmistakeable design of surrounding and entrapping its unwary inmates.
The friar softly and hastily closed the door, and drew across it the ponderous oak bar by which it was secured.
"How now, Father Hermit?" said Falconer, startled by the pale and excited aspect of his usually rubicund visage; "what is the matter?"
"Matter! Sancta Maria ora pro nobis—the chapel is beset!" he cried, rushing down stairs to alarm still more the startled inmates "we are surrounded, hemmed in on all sides!"
"By whom?" asked Falconer, furiously.
"Men——"
"The devil, friar! I scarcely expected it would be by wild beasts."
"You may find them little better, perhaps. They are a band of armed horsemen, who must be in pursuit of you, and who have heard our voices or seen the light through this small loop of glass."
"Horsemen!" said Euphemia; "they must be the mosstroopers of Lord Home, or of Hailes. Alas! Robert Barton, we—wehave lured you to this destruction!"
"Ora pro nobis," mumbled the bewildered hermit, looking upward imploringly; "alack—is this a time for wretched men to wage a strife amongst themselves, when the elements are at war with us all?"
"Away, away, dearest David," said Sybilla, throwing herself into the arms of Falconer; "reach your boat, and trust to the waves rather than to them. They dare not harmus—but you and Robert Barton—oh, Mother above, have mercy on us!"
At that moment, the two female attendants unwisely began to utter noisy cries of terror, while the startled pages, though but boys, grasped their poniards; then a knocking, like thunder, shook the chapel door, and a fierce laugh was heard without the little painted window of the cell, at which Sybilla saw a grim and bearded face appear, with its eyes glittering under the peak of an iron morion; for there stood Borthwick, with his brazen visage, and heart as hard as steel.
"Be calm," said Barton—"be silent all," he added, with a voice of authority; "take courage, and remember that this is a sanctuary—a holy place."
"You should have remembered that before making it the scene of amorous assignations and unholy dalliance," said the hermit, with something of anger.
"Pardon us," said Barton; "yet it is not the less a sanctuary."
"But, I fear me, these masterful limmers would violate the blessed sepulchre itself," replied the friar, bitterly, as he hastened to conceal the barrel, the two baskets, and the six flasks, in the niche beyond the crucifix and skull.
"Violate it! dost thou think so?" asked Barton, drawing his sword.
At that instant, again the thundering knocks rang on the chapel door, and shouts were heard.
"A Home! a Home!"
"Dost think they will commit sacrilege?"
"What dare they not do? Hear ye not they are Homes?"
"True—true," said Falconer, biting his nether lip; "hark to the slogan of the Border-men."
"Ay," quoth Master Wad; "but mony a gay galley saileth under fause colours; mony a muffled man, and mony a lord baron when his helmet is closed, if bound on a deed of ill, crieth the slogan of another house than his own, to mislead the people."
"A shrewd suggestion, Willie; but no other men have such an interest in the shortening of our lives as Hepburn of Hailes and——"
"Kepe tryste!" cried a voice without.
"That is the cry of Hailes—so both are there!" said Falconer, with fiery joy.
"'Sdeath," said Home; "open, false priest! Is the chapel of Our Blessed Lady a place for these cushat doves to coo and bill in? By Saint Ringan, Father Hermit, the Lord Abbot of Dunfermline and the Archbishop of St. Andrew's shall know of this, and dearly shall it cost thee!"
"Now we know our enemies," said Falconer, as he and Barton exchanged a dark glance of intelligence; "off with these vile disguises, Robert," he added, throwing aside his grey gaberdine and short trews, below which appeared a handsome coat of mail; "If we must die, let us do so like the men we are, not garbed like guisards on the night of Hogmenai."
"Oh, Father Hermit—oh! is there, is there no avenue—no mode of escape for them?" said Euphemia, while pale and trembling she clung with her white hands to the friar's coarse grey cassock.
"None—none; there is a passage through the burial vault, towards the links—"
"And that—and that—"
"Is guarded;—hark how they hammer at it now."
"Saint Mary and Saint John! then the place is surrounded,"
"On every side."
The wretched sisters wrung their hands in an ecstasy of grief; while Wad began to tighten his waistbelt, draw his bonnet over his brow, and spit with terrible deliberation into the palms of his brown hands, as the preliminaries of attempting something desperate.
"We have but one way," said Falconer.
"And that?" asked Barton.
"Is to sally out and die boldly," said he, as he pressed his lip to Sybilla's cold white cheek.
"To climb the wall of the precincts is impossible," said the priest: "it is ten feet high, and its gate is guarded by eight spearmen at least, I could reckon their lance-heads when glittering in the starlight."
"Right, and we are but three men on foot," said Barton.
"If we could but slip out and reach one of these trees," said the gunner, "there we might sit perched up and undiscovered till the burgesses of Musselburgh were roused with their axes and staves."
"St. Mary forgive me for engaging in this matter; but it is most just to defend the innocent, to punish the sacrilegious, and prevent the effusion of Christian blood," said the poor hermit, with a sigh of anger, as he brought up from his cell the cask of brandy, and staved in the head thereof by one blow of his sturdy hand. "Now, friend gunner, lend me a match from that pistolette of thine, and while I souse the leading varlets in burning liquor, do you three take shelter in the weirdwoman's tree, for the gate beyond is guarded. Among its branches you will be safe from molestation, and perhaps from discovery."
"Good—thou counsellest bravely," said Barton; and all the while the incessant din continued at the door without.
The three shipmates stood ready, with their swords and daggers drawn; the hermit dipped the flaming match into the brandy, from which the fire arose in red and bluish lambent light. The ladies shrunk back towards the altar-rail, while Wad flung open the chapel door. Then, as four or five armed men rushed forward to enter,—
"Malediction!" cried the hermit, and dashed the flaming spirit full into their faces; while Barton, Falconer, and Wad charged them sword in hand, and broke through at the same moment. Some of the assailants had the aventayles of their helmets shut, thus the hot spirit passed through the eyelet-holes, and half or wholly blinded them for the time. There was a momentary shock—a clashing of blades, and emission of sparks, as two men were hurled to the earth, and one run through the body by our fugitives, who, being well aware that the outer gate of the precincts was securely guarded, hastened to the weirdwoman's tree, and with no other footing on its rough and gnarled bark than such as desperation and the fierce energy of the moment supplied, they clambered up, all heavily accoutred as they were. Wad was first secure among the branches, and Barton next. Less accustomed to climbing and wholly unused to "going aloft," poor Falconer, but for the assistance lent by their proffered hands, would have failed to attain the same secure elevation, and must infallibly have been sacrificed; but soon they all three clambered up together among the damp leaves, and in the heart of the thick dark foliage attained a perch where even spearmen on horseback would fail to reach them.
"Art thou secure and firmly anchored, friend David?" asked Barton, in a whisper.
"Yes, I am astride a great branch here, like a French juggler on acheval-de-bois," said he, laughing.
"Hush!—here come those runions now, so let us take to our hand-guns, and make service against them. My flask—I have left it in the chapel! Falconer, I trust thine is at thy belt?"
"Nay, I unstrapped it at supper; but perhaps Willie Wad——"
An imprecation from the gunner now increased their alarm.
"God's mercy!" said Barton; "is thine missing too?"
"No, sir; but I have only three charges of powder in it."
"Well, these are three men's lives. Charge home, Willie, and fire surely, for here they come."
In the fitful moonlight, Falconer being the last, had been seen to scramble up the oak; and now, with drawn sword and brandished lance, Home, Hailes, Borthwick, and even honest Blackcastle, whom the infectious spirit of mischief had seized, and who was still smarting from the burning brandy, some of which had been dashed in his face, with all the rest of their party, surrounded the stem of the threat tree, with threats, jibes, and cries of anger and defiance.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Hailes; "so the cock-pigeons, whose cooing we spoiled, are all roosted in this tree."
"Unwind me your hand-guns, some of ye, sirs," said Home; "try a shot ere they take wing."
"Blithely, though I wad rather hae ane gude straik wi' a Jethart staff than sax shots wi' thaewar-cracks," said a grim mosstrooper, who gave his weapon the local name by which these primitive firearms were then known.
This simple gun, which first made its appearance in Scotland about 1450, in the time of James II., who received it from the Italians, was at first a mere iron tube, with little trunnions at its sides. By these it was secured to a wooden stock. The touch-hole was first on the top; but as the priming was liable to fall off, or be blown away, the vent was transferred to the right side, where a pan held the powder, and over it was a cover which opened on a pivot: such was the first germ of our modern musket.
Two or three horsemen who were furnished with these then formidable weapons, opened their pans, and levelling at the heart of the tree above their heads, applied the matches. There was a triple blaze—a simultaneous report, and three bullets whistled harmlessly through the foliage of the oak, cutting its leaves, and whitening the branches, but far apart from the three fugitives; for the troopers fired unsteadily, and at random.
The night was still dark; the moon glinted uncertainly at times, and the foliage was dense and thick.
"Again, and again," said Home; "fire while there is a charge in your flasks or a ball in your bags; and I will give ten crowns to the first who brings down his bird like a capercailzie."
At that moment there was a flash in the heart of the black foliage; a ball grazed Lord Home's shoulder and killed a mosstrooper beside him. The man's morion and iron jack rang heavily as he fell to the ground, and almost without a cry; for Wad's aim was a sure one.
"Fire at the spot that flash came from," cried Lord Hailes; "and I swear by St. Serf's ram, and St. Anthony's pig, to add twenty crowns to thine, Home, as the guerdon of our best gunner."
"'Tis said that some have gone up this tree and never more come town," said Blackcastle.
"Well, it would matter little if it happens again in the present instance," said Borthwick, on seeing how the superstitious mosstroopers shrunk back at this remark; "but we shall soon bring them down, I warrant. Let the chapel door, however, be well guarded, lest the hermit or his ladies rouse on us the burgesses of Musselburgh, which their tongues will assuredly do, if this unwonted firing doth not."
Again three bullets were fired into the tree, and as the flashes broke from the iron muzzles of the hand-guns, the murderers—for such they were by intention—could see each other's brown visages, wiry beards, and rusty morions, and the green leaves and rough bark of the enchanted oak,—but for an instant only.
These three balls were as harmless as their predecessors; and while the slow process of loading from a flask, putting in wadding, bullets, and priming, was resumed, a shot came from the tree, and with a cry of agony another borderer fell at the side of Lord Home.
"On my soul, thou'st the cry of a screech-owl! Where the devil art thou hurt, fellow?" asked the lord, with considerably less of sympathy than anger in his tone.
"In the left cuit. Oh, my lord, I shall never, never ride again, and wha will gie me meat and fee?"
"Ha, ha!" laughed Wad from his perch; "I have pinked this one on the larboard side."
"He'll have a heel to port for the remainder of his days," said Barton; "fire again, Willie."
"What if yonder white figure by the stream was the weirdwoman, andnotthe ghost of the warder's wife?" suggested Blackcastle.
"Gomeral!" cried Home, furiously; "I care not if she were the devil, and——"
Wad's last shot, for (as the reader is aware) he had unhappily butthree, grazed the cheek-plate of the noble's helmet, and so discomposed him that he forgot what he meant to say; but now doubly alarmed by their superstitious fears, and by finding themselves exposed, under an increasing moonlight, to the deadly aim of those they could not see, the two lords and their followers withdrew a little to consult on their future measures.
Meanwhile those who had been left within the chapel heard the uproar without, and the reports of the hand-guns, which filled their hearts with terror; for these weapons were little known in Scotland, and were deemed more deadly in effect than they really were.
"Let us kindle a fire round the tree," said Borthwick, whose wits were sharpened by the prospect of gaining thirty crowns; "this will soon bring them all down among fire and smoke."
"Good!"
"Admirable!" said the lords; "but where is the fuel?"
"Here; this shed, wherein this rogue of a hermit stables his visitors' horses, will provide us; alight, my Annandale thieves—off with your steel gloves, and unroof the stable," said Borthwick, setting the example; "pile sticks and straw, roof and rafters, round the stem, and throw in your lighted matches—quick!"
The little edifice to which he referred adjoined the chapel, and meant to receive the horses of pilgrims and visitors. It was heavily roofed with warm thatch, which was quite dry below the coating of emerald-green moss which covered it. Well used to such work, the strong mosstroopers in two minutes tore down the rafters, broke up the hack, manger, and one or two old corn casks that lay in the stalls, and piled them with all the straw round the stem of the oak tree; and then sprinkling powder over all, threw in their lighted matches.
The flame smouldered a little, and then shot up and licked the thick-seamed bark of the ancient tree.
"Bring more fuel," cried Hailes, "even though we tear down the provost's house for it; quick, my bold mosstroopers, so ready of wit and stout of heart."
Two little stacks, one of heather, from which the poor hermit made up his bed, and another of peats, which supplied him with fuel, and both of which, like everything else he had, were the gift of visitors, were torn down and added to the pile, with all the fallen branches and green saplings that could be collected; and now the wavering fire began to ascend and blaze in a fiery circle, twisting itself into a column around the stem of the strong oak tree.
The forky flames shot high and higher among the foliage, hissing against the wet branches, and scorching off those that were crisped and dry; the old knots and gnarls began to crack and burn; and as the sheet of fire deepened and gathered strength, it became evident that the three lurkers, even if they failed to be suffocated, would soon be compelled by the heat to fall on the spears of those who watched and waited below, while others were constantly employed in seeking the means necessary to maintain and augment the fire!
"It burns well," said Borthwick, with grim complacency, while poking it up with his swordblade.
"These varlets have given us more trouble than their miserable lives can ever atone for," said Hailes, in an undertone.
"Lives! on my soul, they seem to have as many each as a cat," replied Home.
"With the power of making the most of each of them."
"On my faith, were not my pride and obstinacy enlisted in this cause, I would counsel that we should wear the willow in our bonnets, Hailes, and bequeath these Drummond dames to their salt-water lovers, with the devil's benison on their bridal."
"Let us first see each gay lemane with his head under his arm. Halloa, fellows, are not yet coming down? By my soul, ye must be birselled in your iron coats like winter apples or roasted crabs by this time!"
The flames had now reached the middle of the tree, and in their blaze the whole band could see each others' flushed faces and fiery eyes; their rusty accoutrements and glittering weapons; and their two comrades stretched on the ground, one with upturned eye and jaw relaxed, but placid and still, like all who die by gunshot wounds; the other still bleeding and writhing in pain. On one side rose the façade of the ancient chapel with its low-browed Roman doorway and deep-sunk windows, on the other were the sturdy stems and freakish branches of the patriarchal tree which shaded its time-worn walls.
Up and farther upward shot the flames, and in half-an-hour every leaf, save those upon the extremity of the branches, was gone; the whole foliage had been scorched off; the large knotty limbs were blackened and burned, or the smaller entirely consumed; the whole of that magnificent oak was divested of bark, cracked, calcined, and half consumed by fire.
Still the three prisoners had neither cried once for mercy, nor fallen down by being overcome by heat or exhaustion; andnow, those who thirsted for their blood below, began to look rather blankly in each others' faces, while fear and wonder grew together in their hearts.
The flames around its mighty stem sunk low, and died away as morning brightened in the east; and there stood the giant tree, with its trunk, nearly nine feet in diameter, the bare and blackened ruin of its former self—a smoking and sable skeleton; but there was no trace, not even a vestige of the fugitives!
It was impossible that the fire could have consumed them and their apparel too.
It was equally impossible that they could have descended and escaped through the flames, for their intended destroyers stood around them in a circle.
"By St. Mary, there hath been magic or a miracle at work here!" said Hailes, on being convinced that, beyond a doubt, thethreehad vanished from their lofty perch.
"'Tis said that some who have ascended this tree did never more come down," said Home.
"May the Blessed Virgin not have borne them away to punish us for violating the sanctity of Loretto," said the superstitious Laird of Blackcastle, in a low voice.
"May not the devil or the weird woman have done the same thing?" asked Borthwick, scoffingly, with a scowl in his eye.
"Peace," said Hailes, with an irrepressible shudder, caused either by fear or the chill morning air; "I have heard of strange things for good or evil happening here," he added, putting a foot in his stirrup to remount; "andnowI am not ashamed to say that I repent me sorely of following those rascals into consecrated ground; so let us to horse and begone, lest the burgesses of the honest town betake them to axe and stave to punish this raid of ours before we cross the Esk again; fortheywill not thole the sin, though our gentler Lady of Loretto may."
"Oh shut, O bar the castle-gate!Oh shut the chamber-door!No faithful turtle quits her mate,I'll quit my love no more."—ELLIOT OF MINTO.
In no way satisfied by the result of their expedition, the two nobles and their followers galloped from Loretto, and re-passed the Bridge of Musselburgh just in time to avoid the wrath of the burghers, who had displayed their standard with itsthree musselsand the proud motto, "Honesto," and were preparing to punish severely the sacrilege of the night; but Borthwick, as his companions retreated across the bridge of the Esk, locked the iron gate on the western side, and tauntingly, in sight of all their pursuers, flung the key "to the Kelpie's keeping" in the swollen river, the deep and rapid torrent of which barred all passage; and thus in safety, the whole band—two excepted, who were afterwards hanged at Musselburgh Cross—"the quick and the dead"—reached the King's Wark at Leith, the headquarters of the insurgent lords.
"Mater purissima!" exclaimed Father Fairlie, as well he might, on leaving his chapel door next morning, and seeing thedébrisof the operations we have just described; the roofless stable; the rifled stacks; the torn shrubbery; the scorched sward; the black skeleton of the burned oak, and the two men who lay upon the ground in their armour, one dead and the other nearly so.
"Heaven will assuredly punish this sacrilege," said Euphemia to Sybilla, as a smile of triumph struggled with the fear and sorrow impressed upon her pale face by the events of the past night. "Bring forth our horses," she added to the pages, "and let us also begone, for I fear me, holy friar, you will deem your cell but little favoured by the presence of those who have been the innocent, though certainly the primary cause of this atrocious outrage and bloodshed. In our purses, which we have left upon the altar, you will, I hope, find more than enough to repay you for all you have suffered or lost; and be assured we will never forget you."
The friar did not reply.
Poor man—he was astounded by the whole affair; and crossing his hands upon his paunch, rolled his round eyes, and continued to mutter involuntarily, "Benedictus Dominus deus!" and other scraps from the canticle of Zachary, while the pages prepared the horses in haste; and with all speed the ladies departed, expressing the most lively and heartfelt gratitude to the hermit, who retired to begin his daily "office," and once more investigate the contents of the two baskets and six flasks.
"But the barrel, alas!" said he, with a sigh of anger, though its contents had been spent or spilt in furthering the escape of Barton, Falconer, and their faithful follower from the barbarous fate to which this luckless tryst had lured them; "the brandy—the barrel—miserere nostri—'tis lost!"
Their disappearance was brought about in the following manner:—
When our three fugitives found that their ammunition was expended—that day was breaking, and yet there came no signs of rescue—that the tree remained environed by armed men on every side—and that the fire which begirt it was mounting up the stem, despair and horror began to seize their hearts, and, creeping close together in the dark among the rising smoke and withering foliage, they were about to adopt the proposal of Robert Barton—that the whole three of them should leap down, sword in hand, on three different sides, and die under the steel of these vindictive enemies, if they could not baffle or surmount them, when, lo! to their astonishment, they heard a fourth voice beside them, and the bald head of the hermit appeared close by, projecting from a hole in the enormous trunk of the tree, which by age was quite hollow, and by decay had become a mere wooden tube.
"Mater purissima," said he; "quick, my bairns, quick! descend this way, while there is yet time."
"Descend—but to where? The smoke hath made me blind as a bat," said Barton; "but how, in the name of Saint or Satan, came you here, most reverend Father?"
"Up the hollow trunk of this old oak, with which a stair below communicates," replied the priest, whose voice was almost lost amid the crackling of the flames; "this has proved a hiding-place to more than one in time of broil and trouble; but descend, and, in the name of Our Lady, quickly? Give me thy hand—thy foot, I mean—place ithere, so—this is the first step hollowed in the trunk—now thy hand, so—this is the next, and thus we descend; one of my predecessors constructed this stair, that he might say his prayers on the tree-top, in imitation of St. Simon Stock, who lived in a tree in Kent;—down—down—yet, carefully now."
The friar disappeared and Barton and Falconer followed; but the latter, missing a footstep, fell heavily to the bottom, and found himself underground, on the soft, damp mould of the burial vault.
Dumbfoundered by the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his companions, poor Willie Wad paused for a moment in great irresolution.
"Avast, Sir David—belay there," cried he; "hallo, gude Father Fairlie, in the name o' Our Leddy, dinna leave me here in stays! O-ho—I see how it is!" he added. Ignorant of the mode of descent, and not wishing exactly to drop into the dark hole below, he resolved to "go down by the run." After reflecting for a moment, Willie pulled out of the pouch which has been so often already referred to, a few fathoms of what a seaman is seldom without—stout cord, and looping it round a branch, lowered himself into the hole, from the bottom of which he heard Captain Barton anxiously shouting, and describing the mode of descent.
While the fat, pursy friar was clambering slowly and laboriously up to his assistance, he was unexpectedly met by the broad end of the short, squat gunner, who, as the cord slid through his hands, descended upon his shaven crown with all the force of a steam-hammer or a battering ram, and shot him at once to the bottom; nearly ending there his orisons and feasts of every kind, spiritual and temporal.
"O Mater castissima, you have slain me!" he cried, as he rose with difficulty from the floor of the vault; "Miserere nostri Domine!"
"Mercy on us!" said the startled gunner; "look ye, shipmate—holy Father, I mean—"
"Heaven send that no more pilgrims such as you come here," said the hermit, peevishly; "and now, for your own sakes at least, begone; I shall be blessed by the sight of your backs."
"May we not see the ladies?"
"Impossible, Sir David; they are above in the chapel, at some distance, for this is but an old burial-vault, where the lairds of Fawsyde lie. Ye have suffered enough for cooing and billing here, instead of confessing and praying; so get ye gone, sirs, in the Holy Virgin's name,—away, by yonder outlet, which will take you to the beach; away, ere worse come upon you."
"Friar, may we not take them with us?" asked Sir David Falconer.
"Four women in an open boat—and in this weather?" exclaimed the priest, polishing his bald crown with his wide sleeve, and giving the penitent gunner a glance of very mingled cast.
"True—true," said Barton; "it is impossible."
"With a fresh breeze perhaps coming on," said the gunner, rubbing the nether end of his galligaskins.
"Heaven knoweth I would be the last man to keep fond hearts asunder; but, once again, I implore—nay, I command you to begone, before your blood desecrates these holy walls for ever!"
After this, farther parley was useless, and through a suite of vaults—only one of which now remains—they were led by the friar for about forty yards, till he reached a little door, which on the outside was half buried by drifted sand. He opened it, and they soon found themselves beyond the precincts, and free.
"Gude be thankit, we are fairly under way," said Willie Wad; "may I drink bilge, if such a hellicate job was ever mine before! Noo, sirs, let us haul off on the larboard tack and reach our boat."
They hurried across the sandy knolls and broomy hollows of the links and reached their boat by wading to her through the full tide. Taking the kedge on board, they stepped the mast, half hoisted the lugsail, and betaking them to their oars, bore away into the river just as the dawn began to streak the eastern sea with light. But still the wind was blowing hard.
"I have but one sorrow," said Barton, as he relaxed the braces of his armour and bent to the oar; "we have left our ladies in their hands—but by Tantony's bell, they have had a hard fight for them!"
"If I thought Sybilla's chances of happiness were greater with the powerful Lord of Hailes, than with the king's poor arquebussier, by my word, Barton, I would yield her to him, though my heart should break in doing so."
"Wherefore and why so benevolent?"
"Because it would best prove the strength and purity of my love for her to yield her up, rather than by prosecuting my humbler suit to the injury of her worldly interest and commoditie—thus throwing my own happiness overboard to secure hers."
"Hailes could neither secure her happiness nor value your sacrifice. You heard his sentiments under that flaming oak?" said Barton.
"Alas! I cannot blame Lord Drummond for his hostility to me. Unlike Hailes, I cannot offer poor Sybilla the rank, the power, the splendid gifts of feudal fortune possessed by the House of the Hepburns."
"Thou canst give her far more—a brave and honest heart, and a name unstained by crime andtreason. Of that few Scottish noble names are free! Ouf—there was a mouthful of salt water! Willie, mind ye the tiller, my lad."
The chapel wherein the events of this chapter occurred was demolished at the Reformation, and no vestige of it now remains save the name—Loretto,—and a little cell, which measures about twelve feet by ten. Herein were found a number of skulls lately.
From the materials of the edifice, the present Tolbooth of Musselburgh was built in 1590, during the reign of James VI.; and for this signal act of sacrilege, the burgesses of the "Honest Town" were regularly excommunicated annually, by bell, book, and candle, at Rome, until within the last few years, when his holiness perhaps grew tired of it.
Macduff. "Stands Scotland where it did?Rosse. Alas, poor country;Almost afraid to know itself! It cannotBe call'd our mother, but our grave."—Macbeth,
The Lords still remained at Leith, where they took all measures and precautions necessary to strengthen their power and increase their forces, in case the missing king should appear at the head of the Highland clans, or perhaps a foreign army, to vindicate his rights and those of Scotland; for they still remembered the threats uttered by the Mareschal de Concressault in the Castle of Callender; but an end was put to all their arrangements and surmises by the discovery of James's body, which was found by the sleuth bratches of the old Steward of Menteith when tracking some robbers through the Torwood, all gashed and bloody, blanched and soiled by a week's exposure in a field-ditch near Beaton's mill on the Bannock; and now a thrill of sorrow went over all the land, for even the most barbarous of that nobility who have ever been so false, so treacherous, and so base to Scotland—who have usually been the first to abandon her on the field, and assuredly not the last to betray her in the cabinet—had not contemplated an issue so terrible!
The young prince was filled with horror and remorse, which even the tidings of Lady Margaret's safety with the Admiral could not alleviate: for now he recalled with the keenest sorrow, how bitterly he had accused his poor father of abducting her, and how, led away by passion and despair, he had permitted himself to be the tool, the dupe, and the plaything of the turbulent and ambitious noblesse.
From that hour he began to shun them, and to seek for his father's oldest and most faithful friends. The first he thought of was the trusty Laird of Largo, to whom he despatched the Snowdon Herald and Unicorn Pursuivant, announcing the awful intelligence of his royal father's murder (the news of which was already pretty well known at the court of England), and requiring his presence at Leith. Then full of rage and sorrow the Admiral put out of Largo Bay, and with all his ships and prisoners, stood with all sail set up the river, and anchored off the seaport of the capital, where all the vessels in the harbour and roadstead, showed their ensigns half hoisted—the blue Scottish flag with its white saltier, which is the groundwork of the modern Union Jack; and which is still retained unchanged by the Old Shipping Company of Leith.
The same flag was hoisted on the English prizes, one of which, say the Admiralty records, as she came abreast of the town, had her keel knocked away upon the Gunnel. The latter is a dangerous sunken rock, which is yet unmarked by a buoy, though it has only eight feet of water over it at ebb tide.
In the large hall of Barton's house at Leith, on a bright and sunny morning, the prince was again seated at the table, where a grave and melancholy council had just been held on what shouldnowbe done to heal the dissensions which were likely to break out anew, as a cry "for vengeance on the king's murderers" was going throughout the land. The council had been broken up without a decision being found. The prince was pale, sad-eyed, and downcast, and left almost alone: for in the deep recesses of the hall windows, Angus, Home, Hailes, the Heritable Forester of Drum, and others, with many lords of the noble faction, were conversing, or gazing dreamily at sunlit river, and the ships which caine to anchor near the shore.
Sir Patrick Gray of Kyneff had retired to the Castle of Broughty; Sir James Shaw of Sauchie had repaired to his fortress of Stirling, and Sir William Stirling of the Keir, animated by the same wisdom and prudence, had retreated to some fastness in the Highlands of Perthshire; while their worthy compatriot, Hew Borthwick—though as yet unsuspected and unknown—had concealed himself in Berwick, which was then garrisoned by English troops, and had been so since its betrayal by Alexander Duke of Albany, who was then an exile in France.
Above the prince's chair was a coat of the royal arms, in which the chains of the unicorns were representedloose, as we may still see them.
Lately by the voice of Heralds, by the sound of trumpets and by the boom of brass artillery, he had been proclaimed at the crosses of all the adjacent burghs, King of Scotland and the Isles, by the title of James IV.; but he felt as if a curse had come with it upon him, for the crown had been drenched in the blood of his father.
"Betouch us, too!" said old Lord Drummond, to whom Home and Hailes related the mysterious disappearance of the three fugitives from the tree. "Well, it matters not whether the spirits of the air, the earth, the gude wichts, or the weirdwoman herself hath made away with them; they are gone, and St. Mary be praised, there is an end of them now. But please you, my good lords, bruit not abroad this scandalous tryst of my runagate daughters."
"I shall speak with the Abbot of Dunfermline anent this runion of a hermit, however," said Home, angrily; "by Heaven I will!"
"The friar; yes, we shall have him unfrocked for abetting assignations under the colour of pilgrimages, and bringing scandal upon holy places," added Hailes, as he joined Lord Lyle and turned to another window to watch the ships of Wood.
Observing his daughter Sybilla similarly engaged, with her pale cheek resting on her hand, Lord Drummond approached her, with his brows knit, and said in a low voice,—
"Art prepared now, Sybie, to seek my blessing, and to win forgiveness for this most shameful visit to Loretto, by wedding at once this gay young Lord, whose Earl's patent hath all but passed the seals?"
"Oh father, I never could love him."
"Why not? hath he not as many legs and arms, eyes and ears as other men—and what more dost thou want—eh?"
"Oh, Mother Mary!" sighed Lady Sybilla, "teach me what to say."
"A truce to prayers," said the old Lord, spitefully, while his eyes kindled; "prayers, indeed! had we not enough of that ware at Loretto?"
"I have ever striven to please you, dear father,—to be dutiful and kind—but—but——"
"But me nobuts—thou silly giglet."
"Father, I am your child——"
"I hope so, though of late I've had my doubts of it. Well, then, as my child thou art bound to obey me."
"But surely not in all things?" said Sybilla, whoso tears fell fast.
"In all things!" reiterated this despotic old baron, who had the power of life and death, pit and gallows, over all in Strathearn, and yearly took by force the best horse and fattest cow from every tenant there as a herezeld: "if the greatest of my vassals is bound to obey me to the death—yea, to obey or swing on the nearest branch,—how much more ought thou and Euphemia, who are my own daughters? A curse on the hour such brittle ware as daughters came into the house of Drummond!"
"I have no desire to wed," said Sybilla, making a violent effort to control her tears, for many eyes were upon her, "none! let me abide with you, dearest father, and little Elizabeth and Beatrix, in bonnie Strathearn; for I have no wish to leave your hearth and home; I have no wish for wealth, and no desire for rank."
"Rank—what do you mean by rank?Mydaughters require notthat," said the old chief, clanking his enormous spurs on the floor.
"But if you think over-many of us are growing up to woman's estate, let me retire into a convent, where, by teaching others to embroider, to illuminate, and to write, I may maintain myself with utility; hear me, dearest father!"
"A convent, Sybie?"
"Yes—yes; there are the Grey Sisters at Dundee, all of whom are pious, good, and kind, and know me well."
"Enough, thou cunning minx, enough! the superior of those Claresses is aunt to Robert Barton, the skipper's son; nay, I see how the wind sets, ashewould say. 'Tis a conspiracy against me," added the old lord, furiously; "but let all plottersgang warily, for by the arm of St. Fillan I'll have a deep revenge and a sure one! But hush now, lassie, for here cometh the Admiral Wood and his English prisoners, with Margaret—my daughter Margaret, as I am a living man!"
"And two spruce English damsels," said Hailes, who like Home was astonished on beholding Falconer and Barton, both of whom accompanied the admiral.
"On my soul, this Laird of Largo hath no small assurance, to bring all this rabble of fellows into the prince's presence," said the Earl of Angus, knitting his brows as he surveyed the numerous group surrounding Sir Andrew Wood, whose friends were all in armour, and who had brought with him Willie Wad and Cuddie Clewline, his coxswain; while Edmund Howard, conspicuous by his noble bearing and rich costume, was followed by John o'Lynne, Dick Selby, his tall gunner, and the principal officers of the captured ships; all of whom were without swords or armour, and were graciously received by the sad and thoughtful prince—now James IV.,—after he had sprung forward, and heedless of the assembled crowd, knelt down with that enthusiastic gallantry for which he was so celebrated, and kissed both the hands of Lady Margaret Drummond. He then placed her by his side, where her sisters hung around her neck.
James then asked Howard with something of sternness, "how she came to be found on board of theHarry, and why, in time of truce, such war was levied on the Scottish people?"
Howard, who had beheld this meeting with a keen emotion that amounted almost to agony, replied with grave but respectful firmness:
"I can assure your majesty, that in the matter of having this noble dame on board my ship I shall answer no questions, and though you should tear me limb from limb, I would rather die than betray the secrets of my royal master!"
"Hah—is it so? then here, as usual, have been at work dark England's cursed gold and Scotland's ready treason," said the young king, striking his spurred heel on the floor; "but a time shall come for unravelling all this! Welcome, brave Andrew Wood, my dear dead father's firmest friend; his first and last, his noblest and most true!"
A tear came zigzag down the furrows of the old mariner's face as the young monarch spoke, and he answered in a broken voice,—
"I have ever striven to do my duty to Scotland and her king, like a sailor and a man, and so God has blessed and prospered me. Weel, weel, it's a' owre noo; our gude king is, I doubt not, safely moored in a blessed anchorage, and lest he may not lie in the smoothest riding, I will lay out a thousand crowns in masses for his soul in Largo Kirk and at Mary's Altar in Leith, just to make his anchor hold. Let us hope that the evil currents, the rocks and shoals he came through in life will all be taken into account aloft, when he comes to reckon up his variation and leeway, and shall secure him everlasting peace in the blessed latitudes above; for a braver or a better man never faced wind or water, shot or steel! Well fare thy soul, King James; in thee puir auld Andrew Wood has lost a kind and faithful master, such as he never more may see!"
"This may savour more of truth than politeness to his successor," said the haughty Angus, who disliked this outburst of feeling, which quite unmanned James IV.; "but I say welcome to thee from battle, stout Largo, and there is my hand to thee in all amity and friendship."
The giant earl drew off his glove, and they shook hands; the noble with an air of courtly condescension, and the seaman with blunt cordiality.
Many now expressed the pleasure it gave them to see the admiral once more in safety, but he received their advances with coolness and evident distrust.
"I am safe and sound and well, thank Heaven, my lords and gentles," said he, "and have neither had a hole punched in my ribs, nor a butt nor bolt started; but here I bring your majesty four gallant ships and much warlike gear, all marked with the broad arrow of England;" (the badge of the Edwards was then, as now, a government mark.) "Would that I could have laid their white colours at the feet of that brave monarch over whose devoted head the stormy sea of this world has closed for ever!"
After a few words with Barton, Falconer, John o'Lynne, and others, the young monarch, for whom "woman's face was never formed in vain," suddenly perceived Rose and Cicely, and desired them to approach. As the old admiral led them both forward trembling and blushing, to a close observer it would have been evident how nervously Cuddie Clewline and Willie Wad fumbled each with his ruff and waistbelt, twirled his bonnet, and hitched up his short wide trews, or chewed the ropeyarn lanyard of his jockteleg,i.e., clasp-knife.
"And so, my pretty damsels," said James IV., "you also were found on board this great ship, theHarry?"
"They were my attendants," said Margaret, "and most kind and faithful have they been to me."
"What is thy father in his own country, maiden?" James asked of Rose,—a shade coming over his face as he thought of his own sire. But poor Rose blushed and hesitated, for she had never stood in such a presence before; and a simple English girl of those days had about as much conception of what like a Scottish king might be as of the Khan of Tartary;—indeed, the unlettered English are not very clear in their ideas of Scotland yet, for two acts of the British parliament have recently described it as anisland.
"Speak, my pretty one; and be not alarmed," said the handsome young king.
"My father is Abel Eyre, a fishmonger in the Knight-Rider-street," said she, gathering courage at the gentle voice of James; "my mother is the sister of Peter Puddle, who keepeth a wharf westward of Baynard Castle, upon Thames; so please you. Alas!" she continued, still keeping her eyes and their long dark lashes downcast; "I know not how to see them all again; I never was so far, far away from the sound of London bells before!"
"Andthou, maiden, with the dark brown braids, eh?"
"I am an orphan," said Cicely, as she was about to weep; "my father was a poor cottager of Liverpool."
"Liverpool—where may that place be; dost know, Admiral?"
The admiral expressed ignorance, as well he might, for it was then, as Leland terms it, a small "paved towne with a chapel," in the parish of Walton.
James gave each of the girls a gold chain and a purse of money and perceiving that Howard was without a sword, presented him with his own, which, with an expression of sadness and gratitude, this brave English gentleman received, on his knees. He felt his heart beating keenly all the time, for the eyes of Margaret were fixed upon him, with kindness and regret.
At her intercession and request, James gave him liberty to return to England whenever he pleased; but added, that so severe had been the ravages committed along the coast between Berwick and Dunbar, by the ships under his command, that their crews must be considered as ordinary prisoners of war, and be committed to some royal castle, until John, Prior of St. Andrew's, the new secretary of state, arranged for their exchange or transmission home.
Howard gave a silent bow of acquiescence.
Barton now whispered to Sir Andrew Wood, who, with a half smile, in his own fashion of phraseology, informed the young king, that his "gunner and coxswain had conceived certain matrimonial designs against the two English prizes, and that if these fair damsels would bring-to under their lee, he would give each of them a cottage, a cow, and a cow's mailing, at least, for their dower, by the shore of Largo Bay."
At this speech, Cuddie and the gunner gave their foretops a tug, and scraped with their right feet; while the two girls cast down their eyes and again blushed furiously, for there was a numerous circle around them; but none of these four had a word of thanks to offer, so completely were they abashed by the presence in which they stood; for there was many a dark and hostile eye bent on one portion of the group, because they were English; and on the other portion, because they were the late king's faithful subjects.
"Come, Cuddie Clewline, stand forward," said the Admiral; "lay alongside thine own prize, man; show thyself a sailor. And thou, gunner o' mine, heave ahead, sirrah; let not the king's presence abash one who hath so often looked grim death in the face and never blanched. I assure thee, Willie," he continued, as the king put Cicely's hand into the gunner's, "there is not such another bride on this side of Cape Non. Rogue, sawest thou ever such swelling bows and a run so clean under the counter? I trow not. Hold up thy head, man, for thou and that lumping varlet, Cuthbert Clewline, are the only two among us who may recal with joy that night's hard battle in the Firth."
"God bless your majesty," said Wad, "and may my drink be bilge in this world, and waur in that to come, if I keep not a clear conscience and a fair reckoning, having sic a consort to sail through the voyage o' life wi'."
"And friend coxswain," said James, with a smile, "hast thou no thanks?"
"Tickle my timmers, but I say wi' the gunner," said Cuddie, as they backed through the gay crowd not very ceremoniously, and at that moment the eyes of poor Falconer and Sybilla met, with a glance that seemed to inquire, "Were there no other hearts here—whom the king's influence might render happy?"
"Now, thanks be to Heaven, all this is over, Robbie Barton," said the Admiral; "for when among lords I always lose my temper, and yaw in my speech. Gadzooks, courts are not for me; the gunner to his lintstock, the steersman to his helm."
"Saw you how sternly the Lord Drummond regarded us?" said Barton, gravely.
"Let him glower his een out, Robbie—an obstinate old snatchblock!"
So ended this interview, and the whole issue of it tended somewhat to soothe the excited minds of those who were present.
That stringent act of the Scottish parliament, which ordained that "none of his majestie's subjectes marrie with any Englishwoman," was not passed for a hundred yearsafterthe time of our history; thus the espousals of the gunner and coxswain were duly celebrated by Father Zuill at the capstan-head of theYellow Frigate; the Admiral gave them each a piece of land at the mouth of the Keil Burn; and it is a curious fact, that most of the inhabitants of the thriving village of Lower Largo have descended from these two marriages.
Barton, in the religious spirit peculiar to the time, founded and dedicated an altar to St. Clement, according to his vow, and there solemn masses were said till the times of Knox and Wishart.
Two days after the marriages the Admiral parted with Edmund Howard, who returned to England sorrowfully, for he had left both fame and happiness behind him. The chivalric Barton escorted him to the borders.
"Adieu, captain," said Howard, "until wemeet again; and believe me, that when in merrie England I reckon up the days of my captivity among you, I will omit the happy ones I spent in Largo House in Fife."
The wardens of the marches soon achieved the exchange of Miles Furnival, John o'Lynne, Dick Selby, and other prisoners, who, strange to say, are all designated as "Englishpirates" in the royal charters of land given to the Admiral, who received the island of Inchkeith, the estate of Dron, and the lordship of Newbyrne for his bravery.
Still poor David Falconer was forgotten; and he and Robert Barton, by the determination, vigilance, and assiduity of Lord Drummond, found themselves as far as ever from all prospect of successfully winning their brides.
"Oh, wide is the sorrow in landwart and borough,And dark is the symbol on proud Falkland's wall!For James the true-hearted, our prince hath departed,The king of broad Scotland lies dead in his hall!"Ballads and Lays.
Preparations for the young king's coronation were suspended until after the interment of his father, whose body had been conveyed to Cambuskenneth Abbey; and also until after the general pacification of the kingdom. All the realm south of the Tay acknowledged him as king; the Castles of Edinburgh and Stirling were surrendered to him; and now he began the task of rewarding his father's friends, and punishing his own pretended adherents, by appointing Sir John Lundie of that Ilk, governor of Stirling, and the Laird of Balgillo, captain of Broughty. On this Sir Patrick Gray, and Sir James Shaw, and others of their party, retired to their own houses, and brooding on revenge, entered into a closer correspondence with the agents of Henry VII.
Thus did James punish Shaw for shutting his father out of his own castle.
Dissension for a time seemed to be suspended around the coffin of the murdered king, whose remains were borne with all the pomp of regality, and all the solemnity of the Romish faith, from the Abbey to the great Church of St. Mary of Cambuskenneth; and there those grasping lords and loyal chiefs, who had so lately crossed their swords in mortal strife at Sauchieburn, met side by side, in secret prayer and sorrow—or making an outward show of both: the tall and dark-browed Angus; the good and pious Montrose; the brave hero of Rhodez, the Preceptor Knollis, in the robes of his order; the veteran Lord of Concressault; the ambitious Drummond; the turbulent chiefs of the Homes and Hepburns; the half-savage Steward of Menteith; the rough Forester of Drum; and all the great officers of the state and household, gorgeously apparelled and carefullyarmed.
The heralds and pursuivants, the guards and beads-men, with the prelates of the then powerful but withal crumbling hierarchy; the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, primate of the kingdom, with thetenother bishops, (the Right Reverend Lord of Dunblane was still a prisoner in England), with their mitres, crosiers, and crossbearers, attended by many a relique, censer, banner, and taper, were also there.
These prelates really sorrowed for the king, unless where family influence and rank curbed or warped their natural feelings; but the majority of the temporal lords, while wearing armour, a strong evidence of their mutual distrust of each other, contrived to veil all emotions under a calm exterior; and with their heads bent low, and bearing lighted tapers in their gauntletted hands, they followed through that long and lofty aisle the purple-velvet coffin in which their slaughtered monarch lay, with the crown of "Fergus, father of a hundred kings," the sword and sceptre above him; and there, to the sound of trumpet, bell, and organ, amid the half-hushed murmur of a thousand tongues that prayed, they lowered him into his narrow home, beside his wife, the queen, Margaret of Oldenburg.
As the vault closed over him, faint and distant came the boom of the minute-guns, as they rang from the dusky towers of Stirling, where the royal standard hung, half hoisted, in the sunny air.
Sir Andrew Wood, Barton, Falconer, and their barge's crew, stood by the closing grave, and there was not an eye unmoistened among them when Rothesay dropped the velvet cord that lowered down his father's head; but the Admiral could not repress his inclination to compliment Lord Drummond and other nobles "on the greatfortitudethey displayed on this sorrowful occasion," a jibe which made them knit their brows.
But now none may say where James III. of Scotland and the Isles, or his queen, Margaret of Oldenburg, are lying; for the noble Abbey of St. Mary has been swept from its foundations; one remnant alone survives—a lofty tower; and though the peasants still pretend to remember the royal grave, and point it out to visitors, not a stone remains to mark the tomb of the murdered monarch, for the place is now a bare greensward.
The sorrow and remorse of the young prince, his successor, were long and deep; and it was by the advice of the good abbot, Henry of Cambuskenneth, he resolved to atone for the part he had taken against his father by wearing next his skin a belt of iron, to which every year he should add a weight, while he shortened it by a link.
While this remarkable belt was preparing,—while Gray and Shaw were plotting with England,—while Borthwick lurked in Berwick, and rewards were offered in vain for the murderers of the king,—while Sir Andrew Wood busied himself in preparing a fleet to meet one which Henry VII. was said to be secretly preparing against Scotland, while openly he avowed his intentions of pressing by diplomacy the long projected marriage of the Duke of Rothesay, now James IV., with his daughter, Margaret Tudor, of dubious reputation,—while the Bishop of Dunblane was still detained in England, in defiance of international law,—while all these events were passing, or in progress, measures were taken by Lord Drummond to have his daughter Margaret—now restored to her family—acknowledged as queen-consort by the king, who spent much of his time in the charm of her society at Dundee and Dunblane. But fresh delays occurred, for the late king's loyal adherents had risen in arms, inspired by that wild inborn love of justice so natural to the Celt—for every Scottish Lowlander has, more or less, Celtic blood in his veins.
Beaton, the miller of Bannock, now related the barbarous manner in which James III. had been butchered. Lord Forbess, in armour, rode through the clans on the northern slopes of the Grampians, displaying upon his lance a bloody shirt, said to have been taken off the king's body; the venerable Earl of Lennox joined him at the head of five thousand Highlanders; but the Lords Drummond, Home, and Hailes, marched against them with all their vassals. Favoured by information received from a deserter named Alexander Mac Alpine, Lord Drummond surprised these loyal insurrectionists in their camp at the Moss of Sassentilly, near Stirling, and routed them, after a brisk engagement, with great loss of life.
Pushing on from thence, he took the Castle of Dunbarton, which the Earl of Lennox and the Lord Lyle endeavoured in vain to defend.
For these services Drummond received a grant of Lennox's forfeited lands in the lordship of Menteith; Home was appointed Lord Warden of the Eastern Marches and High Chamberlain of Scotland. In the same month, Hailes obtained the Earldom of Bothwell, with all the forfeited estates of John Ramsay, the loyal Laird of Balmain, who had fallen at Sauchieburn when charging at the head of the royal guard; he was moreover made Lord Warden of the Western Marches, High Admiral of Scotland, and master of the young king's household; so old Lord Drummond returned to court in excellent humour with himself, and highly delighted to find that a shower of favours had descended upon his two intended sons-in-law.
James IV. had painful doubts regarding the fight at Sassentilly; for the men who were defeated there had been his father's dearest friends, and the banner they fought under was no feudal flag or royal standard, but the gory garment borne on the lance of the Lord Forbess.
He asked his father-in-law if there was anything he could bestow upon him.
"I seek naught," said he; "I am a lord of that ilk, and the Drummonds have no need of titles; terror and antiquity had caused their name to be venerated enough in the land."
This was but a species of the pride that aped humility; but it was so peculiar that the young king laughed. Without much pressing, the old lord accepted the office of Justice-general of Scotland—and a deal office it proved to most of his enemies; but "the contumacy of those gipsies," his daughters, proved a source of continual annoyance to him.
As corruption and bribery were (and not unfrequently are still) the highway to public offices in Scotland, it is wonderful that we do not find Shaw or Gray installed as lord advocate; but that official was merely a lawyer then, without any pretence of being a statesman, and so the post was not held in great repute.
The reader may marvel whether Master—we beg pardon—Sir Hew Borthwick was troubled by his conscience; but it must be borne in mind, that those facile Scots, who from time to time (since the days of Sir John Menteith down to a very recent period) have sold themselves to English ministers, never had a conscience to trouble. Besides, a few acts of slaughter, more or less, in a lifetime, were of little consequence in those days; thus any twinges experienced by our Scottish cosmopolite were principally those of fear.
One fact iscertain; there is no record of Stirling, Shaw, or Gray ever having been punished for abetting him in the barbarous assassination of the king; and though evenheescaped all judicial penalties, his ultimate fate was not a happy one, as shall be seen in the sequel to the events we have narrated.
As time progresses and the world turns round, even the most serious events are fated to be faintly remembered or soon forgotten: thus, the grave of the unhappy James III. was barely closed, when his young successor in the assembled parliament was forced to give his royal sanction to an act which was brought forward and carried by an overwhelming majority of the powerful lords and their adherents, the commissioners of shires and burghs—an act which declared that the slaughter of the late king and of his followers was the just reward of their own crimes and deceit; and that James IV. "and thetrewLordis and Barronis that were with him in the same field were innocent, free and quyte of the slauchters;" and that copies of this deed, with their seals attached thereto, should be sent to the Vatican, to the courts of "France, Hispanzie, Denmark, and other realmes as shall be expedient for the tyme."
The old Mareschal de Concressault, who, as a Scottish baron, had a seat in the house, now demanded from the prior of St. Andrew's his passport, with a safe escort back to France; and in addressing the three estates upon the late events, he adverted severely on the spirit of treason, conspiracy, and rebellion, which seemed to be spreading over Europe, every kingdom and state of which had been convulsed, as well as Scotland.
"To wit, my lords," he continued, "France under Louis XI., Flanders and Holland under Charles the Warlike, Gueldres under Duke Arnold, who is now imprisoned by his own son, and England under Henry VI. and Edward IV. But rest assured, my lords, that in each and all of these countries, a just Heaven will punish those who have advanced, with swords drawn and banners displayed, against the Lord's anointed!"
"Laird of Pitmilly, this is but pyots talk," was the insolent reply of Angus; "for we remember, my lords, that Louis of France, Charles of Burgundy, John II. of Portugal, and Richard III. of England, have all endeavoured to play the tyrant in their own countries, as well as King James in Scotland; and if they have not been duly punished for it in this world, they will assuredly smart for it in the next!"
And then, as the veteran Concressault left the assembly for ever, the grim Scottish nobles only smiled as they played with their long swords, and remembered that they had forced James III., when seated on the same throne now occupied by his sad-eyed son, tostitchthe patent of James Douglas, Lord of Dalkeith and Earl of Morton, the parchment of which he had torn in a fit of just indignation at the "inordinate royalties and privileges it contained."
Though no declaration of war had been made—for Henry had yet hopes of achieving an alliance by marriage—political relations between Scotland and England were somewhat dubious. Thus, to prevent any hostile interference with the French ambassador, Sir Andrew Wood, with theYellow Frigateand a ship named theFlower, was ordered by the Lord High Admiral Hailes, now Earl of Bothwell, to convey the Sieur de Monipennie to Brest; and thus he prepared for sea with all speed.