THE REGICIDES.
"Upon desolate Aros there is wailing and weeping,
For the chief of her lords in the dark chamber sleeping;
In the dark chamber sleepeth our curly-tressed warrior,
In the day of the battle our bulwark and barrier."
_Lament for Maclean of Aros._
The poor miller was inexpressibly alarmed on perceiving the four
armed knights enter; the richness of their armour and accoutrements
impressed him still more, and he hastened to say, in an explanatory
manner--
"His horse threw him at our door--a wicked horse, sirs;--we have done
a' we could--on my life, sirs, I assure you--my gude wife and I--that
the horse----"
"Enough, enough, fellow," said Sir Patrick Gray, gruffly. "Stir up
that fire, for this den of thine is as dark as a dungeon. Let us see
where _this_ king of ours is lying."
Though shocked and startled by the bearing of his visitors, Gawain
hastened to throw a quantity of fir-apples on the fire, where they
blazed and crackled and diffused a brilliant light throughout the
humble apartment, and the highly polished-suit of the ruffians shone
like silver as they stooped over the bed of the hapless and helpless
king, who was "covered by a coarse checked rug," and on whom they
gazed with eyes as pitiless in expression as their hearts were in
feeling.
"Does your majesty fear death?" asked Gray.
"Nay, it never was my fear, and _now_ it is my only hope," replied
James, in a low voice, "but I asked for a priest, sirs----"
"Well--here I am--a priest, though cased in iron," said Borthwick.
"And for whom fought you to-day, false priest?"
"By the cross of Macgriddy! I fought for my own hand--as Hal o' the
Wynd fought, in old King Robert's time; but I am, nevertheless, a
priest--behold my tonsure--or what remains of it."
"It is enough--even the unworthy is better than none. And you will
hear my confession?"
"Yea," answered the bantering ruffian, "wert thou as great a clown as
ever played at Hogshouther."
"And who are ye, sirs?" asked the king, turning uneasily from this
disrespectful person.
"I am William Stirling of the Keir," hissed one through his teeth.
"And thou art the Lord Gray?" said James to a second, his brow
darkening, as he saw the scarlet tabard-coat, which had a lion within
its engrailed border, and was worn above the armour of the wearer.
"Nay, I am only the Lord Gray's near kinsman, and captain of your
majesty's castle at Broughty."
"Leave me," said James, bitterly; "I will confess myself--and oh,
bless me, father, for I have sorely sinned."
A terrible smile spread over Borthwick's face, as he grasped his
dagger, and saw the poor king, after three futile attempts to rise,
sink powerlessly down on the miller's humble pallet. Gawain and his
wife drew aside, awestruck and silent; Mysie held her apron to her
mouth with one hand, while the other clasped her husband's arm; but
the Lairds of Keir, Kyneff, and Sauchie stood a little in the
background, and conferred together in whispers on what should now be
done, for their minds were agitated by a slender doubt, though the
viler slave of English Henry's gold felt none.
"Dost thou expect to recover?" he sneered.
"I trow I might," sighed the poor king, "if I had a physician."
"How long dost thou expect to live?" he asked again, playing with his
victim as a cat does with a mouse.
"Alas! priest; He who numbereth the leaves in the Torwood, and every
blade of grass in the Carse of Stirling, alone can tell."
"I never numbered either; yet I think thou'lt be a dead man in ten
minutes."
A flush passed over James's pallid brow.
"Be it so, father; the world and all its vanities are nothing now to
me;--wifeless, childless,--or worse, for my own son is in arms
against me; my soul hovers, as it were, between this world and the
next. Oh would, father, that I might cure my soul at the expense of
my body!"
"Pythagoras----"
"He was a pagan."
"Well, what matters it," said Borthwick, becoming deadly pale, while
his eyes gleamed with fire, and he felt himself endued with a demon's
strength of mind and body, by the very magnitude of the crime he was
about to commit; "what matters it," he continued, drawing one of
those long Scottish dirks, such as are still worn with the Highland
garb; "Pythagoras said that the eyes could not be cured without the
head, nor the head without the body, nor the body without the soul!
I am not now a priest, and cannot shrive thee; so by this stroke--and
this--_and this_--I destroy both body and soul together!"
And with these terrible words the merciless ruffian buried his dagger
"many times," says Lindesay of Pitscottie, in the breast of the
unfortunate king, who expired without a sigh.
Thus perished James III., in his thirty-fifth year.
Terrified on beholding the committal of a deed so awful, the poor
miller and his wife abandoned their mill and cottage, and fled into
the recesses of the Torwood, where they lurked many days.
When they ventured to return with some of their neighbours, the body
of the king was gone, and no trace of it remained, save the blood
encrusted on the bedding where it had lain.
* * * * * * *
"Thou hast done it at last, ruffian!" said the grim Sir Patrick Gray;
"such a deed hath not been seen in Scotland since that night in the
Black Friary at Perth, when James I. was stabbed in Jane of
Beaufort's arms. And now, sirs, what shall we do with this royal
piece of carrion?"
"Let us fire the house, and leave _it_ here to be consumed," said
Shaw.
"Not a bad idea; but then consider the alarm it would raise."
"Let us fling it into the dam, then."
"Nay--toss him into the adjacent fields; there it will be found and
buried as the corpse of some one slain in the battle of to-day," said
the barbarous Laird of Keir.
"Then so be it; help me, sirs," said Borthwick, panting fiercely as
he spoke; "for, o' my soul, dead flesh is heavy to bear. I am sorry
we allowed yonder hagridden fools, the miller and his wife, to escape
us, though."
The assassin and his companions dragged the gashed and bloody corpse
irreverently cut upon the clay floor, and carried it in the moonlight
across a neighbouring field, and there flung it info a ditch beside a
thorn-hedge.
Ere he left it, Borthwick tore off the third finger of the right hand
a large signet-ring, on the native amethyst of which was engraved a
vine tree, fading and withered, because the current that flowed
around was supposed to be wine instead of water. This strange
device, which was adopted by the king (says Abercrombie) "when he saw
his son in arms against him," bore the legend,--
"_Mea sic mihi prosunt,_"
and the wretch placed it on his own finger. They again thought of
firing the cottage; but the sudden appearance of Sir Andrew Wood's
party made them think of providing for their own safety.
Their interview is already related.
Keir, Kyneff, and Sauchie took the road for Linlithgow, but Borthwick
rode on direct to Berwick--as the king's private signet, when
transmitted to Henry VII., would be the best assurance that the King
of Scotland was slain.
Had the admiral arrived fifteen minutes sooner, he might have saved
James's life, and spared Scotland the disgrace of one more historical
atrocity.
The house in which this cruel regicide occurred is still in
existence, and is yet named _Beaton's Milne_, and the traditionary
account of the murder preserved by the inhabitants of the _town_ or
hamlet, closely resembles that given in history, and reverently the
good people still lower their voices, when pointing to the corner
where their king was murdered. In 1667, as a date shows, the house
of Gawain Beaton had been somewhat modernized; but it yet bears the
aspect of antiquity and strength.
It stands about one hundred and fifty feet eastward of the road from
Stirling to Glasgow; and though thatched, is yet as snug a little
dwelling as when Gawain attended the _happer_ and Mysie's
spinning-wheel birred by its ingle in the days of the unhappy king,
James III.