The Captain of the Guard

CHAPTER XL

THE PRISONER

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 of his death, 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 final coup with 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 shall now be 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 an amende for 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 lion or, crowned for Gueldreland, and azure a lion gules for Zutphen, impaled, with the lion of Scotland, within its double tressure of fleur-de-lis.

Herré de Meriadet, hereditary Burg Graf of the castle of Sluys, bore the banner of the count of Nassau, azure sprinkled with crosses argent. 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.

CHAPTER XLI

CRICHTON

The towers in different ages rose,

Their various architecture shows

The builders' various hands;

A mighty mass, that could oppose

When 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 the mêlée if 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 the mêlée with 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.