The Captain of the Guard

"From my hands," she reiterated, in an unearthly voice; "alas – "

"What can she mean?" thought Gray, as a dreadful idea flashed upon his mind; "is this sad, this wild and stern bearing the result of remorse? can she have attempted – "

He thrust aside the thought, and listened attentively.

"From my right hand – never!" added Margaret, with bitter emphasis.

"From the hands of whom, then?"

"My youngest bower-maiden; she deserves the honour, for her father, Sir Alan, has made a valiant and vigorous defence."

"The king would prefer them from the hands of the Lady Murielle," said Gray, with more anxiety than caution.

"Speak not to me of Murielle!" exclaimed the countess, with a shriek, as her head drooped; and she fainted in the arms of Lauder.

"What has happened – speak for mercy, sirs! what horror do you conceal from us?" exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray and the abbot together.

"Look here," said the old knight, in whose keen grey eyes there mingled a curious expression of commiseration and ferocity. He drew aside the countess's dule-weed, and then the Captain of the Guard and the abbot perceived that her white neck was stained with blood, her shoulder covered with hideous ligatures, and that her right hand and arm were gone —gone from the elbow!

"Who – what has done this?" asked Gray, as his sun-burned cheek grew pale.

"See you, sirs, what the first shot from yonder hellish engine hath achieved?" replied Lauder, reproachfully.

"The first," reiterated Gray.

"And I would give the last blood in my heart to have the seven makers of it hanging in a bunch from yonder gallows knob!"

Local history records that this terrible mutilation occurred when the countess was seated at table in the hall, through one of the windows of which the great bullet passed; and some years before the battle of Waterloo, when Thrave, like several other Scottish castles, was undergoing repair, as a barrack for French prisoners, a favourite gold ring which the countess wore upon the forefinger of her right hand, inscribed Margaret de Douglas, was found among the ruins, with one of Meg's granite balls beside it; and the old peasantry in Galloway yet aver, that in this terrible mutilation "the vengeance of Heaven was evidently manifested, in destroying the hand which had been given in wedlock unto two near kinsmen."[5]

By a strange coincidence, or an irresistible fatality, at the same moment that the countess was borne away, it came to pass that the man-at-arms who held the white flag let it drop from the summit of the keep into the barbican below. Then Sir John Romanno and his impatient cannoniers, perceiving that the flag was gone, and that some commotion had ensued about the gate of Thrave, supposed (in those days there were no telescopes), that the parley was broken, and that violence was offered to the envoys, so a shot was fired from the great brass bombarde named the Lion of Flanders.

With a mighty sound, between a whiz and a boom, it passed betwixt Sir Patrick Gray and the abbot, entered the archway, and, by a singular combination of retributive justice and fatality, struck James Achanna just at the girdle, and doubling him up like a crape scarf, literally plastered his body, armour and all, a quivering mass of blood, bones, steel plates and splints, upon the wall of the keep, into which it was imbedded.

The white pennon was again hoisted; but this terrible episode and appalling spectacle hastened the conclusion of the truce and the siege.

"Bid King James ride to the gate of Thrave, and a woman's hand shall give him the keys – withered be mine in its socket ere it shall do so!" said the sturdy old laird of the Bass, as he broke his sword across his right knee, and cast the glittering fragments into the moat, just as he had done after the seizure of Earl William, in the castle of Edinburgh.

"What terms seek you?" asked the abbot.

"The lives, the liberties, and fortunes of all."

"The king is merciful, and in his name we promise these shall be given to you," replied the two envoys, as they returned with all haste to Knockcannon, where the king was still on horseback, attended by Crichton, Glammis, and the principal lords of his council and army.

"You have promised over much, my good friends," said he, on hearing the terms and the relation of what had passed at the castle gate; "yet it would ill become me to bruise the bruised. I cannot restore this gallant dame's dainty right arm; but by the Black Rood of Scotland, I can wed her to a more loyal husband, with the hand she still possesses!"

And King James kept his word.

CHAPTER LVII

THE FALL OF THRAVE

Song sinks into silence,

The story is told;

The windows are darken'd,

The hearthstone is cold.

Darker and darker

The black shadows fall;

Sleep and oblivion reign over all.

Longfellow.

"When your majesty's ancestor, Malcolm III., of valiant memory, received the keys of the castle of Alnwick, remember what occurred," said the wary and suspicious old chancellor.

"Malcolm was slain," replied the king.

"By foul treachery. The Saxon garrison yielded, and the keys were to be presented on the point of a knight's lance; but at the moment of doing so, the knight, like a mansworn traitor, pierced King Malcolm's eye and brain with his weapon and slew him on the spot. He escaped, but from the deed assumed a name – hence comes the Pierce-eye of Northumberland."

"But what of all this? I do not think I have much cause to fear our poor countess now."

"She has one hand left, and it can hold a dagger, I doubt not."

"Oh, good my lord, I shall not be unprepared for any emergency," said James laughing, as, accompanied by Sir Patrick Gray and fifty selected men-at-arms of his guard, he rode forward to Thrave, the earl of Errol following closely with at least a thousand knights and gentlemen, mounted and armed in full panoply.

The armour of the young king was beautifully engrained with gold. He wore a casquetel, which in lieu of visor had two oriellets, or oval plates, to protect the ears. It was encircled by a gold coronet, and had a crenel, or spike, in which a plume of scarlet and yellow feathers waved, and to which the queen's glove was tied. The hanging sleeves of his surcoat were richly embroidered by Mary's hands; and his whole arms, costume, and horse-trappings glittered with singular brilliance in the sunshine of the evening, as he caracoled over the green sward towards the embattled gate of Thrave.

On his breast sparkled the collar and jewel of the Golden Fleece of Burgundy, which Duke Philip the Good had just sent to him, in charge of Messire Jacques de Lalain, Dyck Graf of Bommel, who with his train had reached the camp only on the preceding evening. This order had been instituted by Philip himself in 1429.

When the king was within twenty paces of the gate of Thrave, it was unclosed, and a lady, attended by a group of the countess's bower-maidens, the tall and dark-eyed Maud of Pompherston, the Caillean Rua, and the fair-haired daughters of Sir Alan Lauder, the castellan, all clad in dule-weeds of black cloth with white crosses on their breasts in memory of the late earl, and all wearing hoods and veils, came slowly and timidly forward, like a procession of nuns.

On seeing them, James at once sprung from his horse, the reins of which he gave to the Master of Crichton, his page. Gray, and other attendants, immediately dismounted, and leading their horses by the bridle, kept near the king, before whom the principal lady, after advancing a pace or two in front of her companions, knelt, saying in a low and broken voice, "In the name of mercy and St. Bryde of Douglas, receive these keys."

She bowed her graceful head, at the same time upholding, with hands of charming form and whiteness, the three great iron keys of the castle of Thrave.

"And in the name of good St. Bryde, and of gentle mercy, sweet lady, we accept of them," said the king, handing them to his master of the ordnance; "and once again we pledge our royal word for the promised terms – life, liberty, and fortune – to all who have withstood our cannon here in Thrave. But rise, madam," added the king, "it ill becomes a gentleman to receive a lady thus."

With one hand he raised her, and with the other lifted up her long black veil, – for James II. was not devoid of that admiration of beauty, which was one of the chief characteristics of his chivalrous family.

"Murielle!" exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray, starting forward on beholding her face.

"Your long-lost wife?" said James, with surprise.

"My wedded wife – Oh, Murielle – "

"Then to your wardship, Sir Patrick, I must consign this rebel Douglas, but on one condition – "

"Oh name it, your majesty!" said Gray, who was almost speechless with emotion.

"That you keep her for life, either at court or in your tower of Foulis," replied the king, laughing, as he placed Murielle's hand in that of Gray, amid murmurs of applause and satisfaction, in which all the knights, nobles, and even the grim old chancellor joined.

Murielle Douglas was beautiful as ever; but the pure breeze of early autumn that came down the vale of the Dee, the exciting scene, and the great presence in which she stood, alike failed to impart a red tinge to her pale cheek, and even her rosebud lip had lost its usual carnation hue.

In short, poor Murielle had evidently suffered much in mind and body; for the years of blight and anxiety she had spent in gloomy Thrave had not been without a natural influence upon a spirit so timid and gentle; and now, as she wept upon her husband's breast, she neither heard nor heeded the acclamations which rose from the king's camp, with the roar of culverins from Knockcannon and the Carlinwark, as they greeted the appearance of the royal standard which Sir John Romanno hoisted on the great keep of Thrave, the now humbled stronghold of her forefathers, the mighty lords of Galloway.

EPILOGUE

Not long after these events the new earl of Douglas was reconciled to James II., and though both parties were insincere – their mutual injuries being too deep and too recent – there was peace in the kingdom for a time.

Inspired by a sentiment of revenge for the death of their chief in Thrave, the MacLellans long refused to lay aside their swords, and for years continued to commit such dreadful outrages upon the Douglases and their adherents that James outlawed the new laird of Bombie and all his followers; but during his reign they re-won their possessions in the following remarkable manner.

A band of outlaws or wild rovers, said by some authorities to have been Saracens or Moors, but who were more probably Irishmen, as their leader was named Black Murrough, landed in Galloway and committed such devastations that the king, by a royal proclamation, offered the forfeited lands of Bombie to any knight or man, however humble, who could kill or capture this terrible stranger, of whose stature, strength, and ferocity the most startling stories were told, for the marvellous was a great element in those days.

In a wild place, near where the old castle of Bombie stood, there is a spring which flows now, as perhaps it flowed a thousand years before the epoch of our story. The bare-kneed and bare-armed Celts of Galwegia, and the helmeted and kilted warriors of Rome, have drunk of it. With its limpid waters, St. Cuthbert, whose church was built close by, baptized the first Christians of the district in the name of Him who died on Calvary; and in later and less-peaceful times, the fierce Lag and Claverhouse have drunk of it, with their gauntleted hands, when in pursuit of the persecuted Covenanters, by hill and loch and the shores of the Solway.

It chanced that Sir William, the outlawed nephew of Sir Thomas MacLellan, was wandering near this well, on a day when the banks of the Dee were changing in tint and aspect under the genial sunshine and warm showers of spring, when the trees were putting forth their young and fragrant blossoms, and when the blackbird and the rose-linnet sang among the thickets that overhung the river.

Full of those sad and bitter thoughts which were naturally induced by the outlawry and proscription of his family, the young heir of Bombie approached the spring to drink, and lo! near it there lay, fast asleep, a rough and gigantic man, whose form exhibited wondrous strength and muscle, and by his side lay an Irish war-club, the knotty head of which was studded with sharp iron spikes. He was the leader of the strange devastators, – he, for whose life King James had offered the castle and heritage of Bombie.

MacLellan drew near, and by a single stroke of his double-handed sword, shred off the great head of the terrible sleeper, and grasping it by its thick black locks of matted hair, he conveyed it without delay to the king, who, in terms of his proclamation, immediately restored to him the forfeited lands of Bombie, and from that day the MacLellans assumed as a crest, the head of a savage on the point of a sword, with the motto – "Think on." The scene of this episode bears to this day the double name of Bombie's Well, and the Wood of Black Murrough.

Broken in spirit, the proud Countess Margaret, whilom the Fair Maid of Galloway, condescended at last to seek the forgiveness and protection of King James II., after which, as she was still the loveliest woman of her time, he bestowed her in marriage upon his half brother, John, earl of Athole, son of the late Queen Jane and of the Black Knight of Lorn, who perished so miserably in Flanders.

Robert, duke of Albany, died in exile, and no man in Scotland ever knew where he found a grave; but Sir Patrick Gray and Murielle lived long and happily. We know not which survived the other. He was created a peer of the realm by the title of Lord Balronald, and received the captaincy of the royal castle of Lochmaben, which he defended valiantly against the English in the year 1460, during that war in which James II. perished by the bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh, when standing by the side of Sir John Romanno, near the old Thorn Tree, at Fleurs.

William Lord Crichton, the wily and somewhat unscrupulous old chancellor, died in peace in 1455, at his own stately castle in Lothian, and lies interred in the old church near it.

His aged compatriot, Sir Alexander Livingstone, died about the same time, after securing a peerage for his son, the captain of Stirling, who was created Lord Livingstone of Callendar, and Great Chamberlain of Scotland.

We need scarcely inform the reader that the worthy abbot of Tongland never succeeded in his great project concerning the Master of Evil, whom he wished to destroy as an enemy by making him a friend; though in after-years a poor Capuchin of Venice revived the idea, by petitioning the states of that republic, and also the pope, on the same subject, and had the reward of being viewed by both as a – madman.

The beautiful young queen, Mary d'Egmont of Gueldres, only survived her husband three years.

It was our strange fortune to behold her remains, previous to their re-interment at Holyrood, in May, 1848, when nothing remained of those charms which she inherited from the houses of Cleves, Burgundy, and Gueldres, save her teeth, which, after having been three hundred and eighty-five years in the grave, were singularly white and regular.

THE END

1

Now Inchgarvie. Athelstan's grave was opened in 1832. His coffin was composed of five large pieces of freestone, and his bones measured six feet in length. The coffin was thirty inches in breadth, but only four in depth. The farm of Miracle, corrupted into markle, indicates where the vision is said to have appeared; and, with the adjacent lands, it was assigned to the culdees of St. Andrew's in gratitude for the victory.

2

Craigmillar.

3

The metal was molten by the command of Douglas, and poured down his throat; and thus he received both his reward and punishment at the same time. – "History of Galloway," 1841, vol. i.

4

One account states that the body of MacLellan was interred in the church of Kirkconnel, and some old inscription is quoted in proof; another, that he was conveyed to the abbey church of Dundrennan, where a monument was erected to his memory; but it is much more probable that he would be interred in the church of Kirkcudbright.

5

This ball is still preserved by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, and corresponds exactly in size and quality with those shown in the castle of Edinburgh, as appertaining to the celebrated Meg, which are of Galloway granite (from Binnan Hill), the component parts of which, as geologists are aware, differ in several particulars.