The Captain of the Guard

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 terrible massy-more or 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 which then clothed 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 terrible Red 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 of thee!"

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.

CHAPTER XLII

KING JAMES II

Oh, men of Scotland, though you cannot raise

Your 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 its first walls, 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 permanent tonsure), 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, and not a 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, I have evil 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 are we; 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.

"But not untameable," 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.

CHAPTER XLIII

A LADLEFUL OF GOLD

Thou shalt not yield to lord nor loon,

Nor shalt thou yield to me;

But yield thee to the braken bush

That 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 at last– 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. The first was, 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. The second cause 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. The third, 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."