ST. ANTHONY'S BELL.
"The gruntil of St. Anthony's sow,
Quhilk bore his holy bell."--SIR D. LINDESAY.
Next day it became known among all the ports on both sides of the
Forth, that Admiral Wood had won another victory--that his three
favourite followers, Mathieson, Barton of Leith, and Falconer of
Bo'ness, had escaped without scaith, and the bells in more than a
hundred steeples rang joyously, while the ships hoisted all their
colours and streamers in the roadstead, at the Hope, and in the
harbours.
In the house of Barton, the insurgent nobles held a deep carouse, and
drank the Rhenish and Malvoisie of the umquhile Sir Andrew with a
relish all the greater that it cost them nothing. Among the company
were four persons, at least, who would rather have hailed a
disastrous defeat than this unexpected victory.
These were the Lords Home and Hailes--who had great hopes that their
troublesome rivals might have been sent to a better world; but
chiefly Sir Patrick Gray and Sir James Shaw, with others of their
servile and infamous faction, who were thunderstruck by the
intelligence; for they had never doubted, when the Admiral dropped
down the river with two vessels only, that he was running into the
jaws of destruction. But it is strange that Wood, in all his naval
battles, had to contend against great odds, yet never _once_ was
beaten. And now the cosmopolitans of the English faction trembled,
as they remembered their bond with Henry, and feared that unless the
lips of Margaret Drummond were sealed for ever, their projects would
all be revealed to Rothesay, of whom, boy as he was, they knew enough
to be assured of a terrible retribution.
Lord Drummond--that irascible old patrician--had peremptorily warned
his daughters Euphemia and Sybilla to prepare for being espoused by
Home and Hailes, whose new patents of nobility, he believed, would be
issued as soon as the king's _flight_--his murder was yet
unknown--was ascertained, and as soon as Rothesay was proclaimed
king. Their uncle, the Dean of Dunblane--a facile priest, in all
things subservient to his brother as chief of the clan Drummond, and,
like most Scottish churchmen of that age, bent solely on the
aggrandizement of his family,--was to perform the ceremony, which was
fixed to take place on an early day. And as the venerable dean had
long since been abstracted from all human sympathies, and become a
mere mummy in a cassock and scapular, the poor girls had now no hope
in anything, and no resource but their tears, which were likely to
avail them little; for in Scotland, in those days, the rights of
women were as little known, or nearly as ill defined, as among the
Asiatics in the present; for cruel coercion and abduction at the
sword's point were of daily occurrence, as the criminal records show,
until the middle of the last century.
The presence of the prince's court and insurgent army was a harvest
to the keeper of the tavern or hostel, already referred to, as being
situated in the Kirkgate--_the Bell_,--so named in honour of the
hospitallers of the ancient and wealthy preceptory of St. Anthony,
whose establishment stood on the east side of that venerable
thoroughfare, and who wore a _bell_, sewn in blue cloth on the breast
of their gowns. This signboard gave the said tavern respectability,
while the keeper was ensured protection by paying an exorbitant
yearly fee to the Laird of Restalrig for the privilege of keeping it
open; for that turbulent and avaricious little potentate was lord
superior of Leith; and though King Robert I. had granted the harbour
to the citizens of Edinburgh, they had still to purchase from the
family of Logan the right of erecting wharves and houses upon the
sandy banks of the river, which for ages had flowed into the Forth
between heaps of sand and knolls of whin and broom.
On the second day after the naval battle, about six o'clock, when the
great bell of St. Anthony had rung the hospitallers to prayer, in an
upper chamber of the hostel (the east windows of which overlooked the
drear expanse of the sandy links and the Figgate-muir, on the verge
of which the waves were rippling) sat Sir James Shaw of Sauchie, Sir
Patrick Gray, and their brother assassin, Sir William Stirling of
Keir, all armed as we saw them last at Beaton's mill, save their
helmets, which, with their scarfs, swords, and wheel-locks, lay on a
bench, which stood on one side of the wainscoted room. On the
mantelpiece were shells, stuffed fishes, and sea eggs. There was no
fire on the hearth, of course, for the month of June; and the recess
was destitute of a grate, for such things were expensive. The
furniture consisted of a large table, and fauld-stools seated with
leather. Comfort was considered unnecessary in an hostel,
consequently the room looked bare and dreary, and the governor of his
majesty's Castle of Stirling was, as usual, a little tipsy; for after
their early supper of fried flounders, buttered crabs, and eggs in
gravy, each had imbibed more than a Scotch pint (equal to an English
quart) of Rochelle wine, then sold at eight-pence; and a fresh supply
was ordered, for they had thirst and doubt, spleen and, it might be,
some small remorse to drown. And the pewter stoups of the last
supply had just been placed upon the black oak table, when Hew
Borthwick, in his rich attire, stood before them, and carefully
locked the door on the inside.
"By my soul, sir, but you are bravely apparelled!" said the grim
Baron of Sauchie, with a drunken leer. "What sayeth the Act of
'71:--that none wear silk except knights, minstrels, and heralds--"
"King James and his acts--"
"Are lying together in a slough ditch," said the Laird of Keir
interrupting the pale and sneering Borthwick. "But we have other
matter in hand; you have just come from the east country?"
"I left Dunbar this day, at morn."
"Be seated. Here, take a stoup of the Rochelle. Well, is not this
accursed intelligence?" said Gray, grinding his teeth. "What!
Howard, with five great ships, to be beaten by this old seahorse of
Largo, this presumptuous Leither, with only two!--and Kraft, that
damnable secretary, he may ruin us all!"
"Think of three Scottish barons being at the mercy of an English
notary!" said Borthwick, scanning them maliciously over his wine-pot,
as it rose to the angle of forty-five degrees above his mouth.
"And his book--and the bond in cypher," added Gray.
"God confound this evil fortune!" growled Sir James Shaw. "To be at
the beck of a smockfaced driveller! The thing is not to be borne,
sirs; we must stop his mouth, by fair means or by foul."
"Art certain, Hew, these rumours of victory are not exaggerated?"
"There remains not the shadow of a doubt. With hundreds more--yea
thousands--in East Lothian, I saw at dawn yesterday but two flags
flying, as the six ships stood under sail for Fife, And these were
the blue ensigns, with the white cross of Saint Andrew."
"We must sleep in our harness, and keep fleet horses saddled day and
night," said Gray; "and let spies be set to watch what messages come
hither from the admiral."
"Angus may see us clear of it," suggested Keir.
"Angus knows nothing of our deeper plots," said the more politic and
subtle Gray: "moreover, he abhors an English match as much as we
pretend to hate a continental one--"
"Among ourselves."
"Of course. He cares not for rank--he is an earl; he cares not for
pay--he is Lord of Galloway, and owns more land and lances than any
four earls in Scotland."
"He is well off! I'faith, I have been spending four thousand pounds
yearly, out of a barony that yields birt one thousand Scottish crowns
per year," said Shaw.
"Henry of England will deem us fools for having our plots marred, and
in revenge may tell the whole to Rothesay, and then we shall all be
lost men."
"Well, well," said Shaw, draining his huge tankard; "after all his
gold spent and ships lost, it must be rather provoking to find that
James III. is only removed to make little Maggie Drummond Queen of
Scotland."
"I urged Howard to throw her overboard," said Borthwick, lowering his
voice, while that snaky gleam which his eyes often wore passed over
them.
"And what said Howard then?" asked Gray, impatiently.
"The Saxon pockpudding! he smote me on the mouth with his steel
glove, and styled your knighthoods a pack of 'Scottish hounds,'"
replied Borthwick, whose sinister brow grew dark with ferocity; "and
he threatened to make a martyr of me, like St. Clement."
"Would to thy master the devil that he had done so," grumbled the
drunken Shaw; thinking of his share in that dark deed in Beaton's
mill.
Gray muttered an impatient and unmeaning malediction.
"What said ye then?" asked Keir, with a cold smile, as he played with
his dagger.
"I said little, but I thought much."
"What thought ye?" asked Gray, fiercely.
"Merely that this Englishman was not yet on his own side of the
border," said Borthwick with a deep smile, as he took the last drain
of his wine-pot.
"Angus still acts the bearward to this beardless princeling
Rothesay," said Gray; "and so is occupied by matters of his own; but
the tide of events on which we have ridden so bravely, seems setting
in against us now; all we can do is to watch, and watch well; let us
be assured in the first place, of what messengers come from the
fleet, and whether they say aught of Margaret Drummond; for if she
once gain Rothesay's ear, our cause is ruined and for ever lost!"
Borthwick bit his tongue with anger, for he trembled for himself
alone.
"Get thee spies," said Keir; "and let Barton's house, where Rothesay
lodges, be watched both day and night. Watch all who come from
thence, and from the Laird of Largo."
"But spies must be paid, Sir William, and I am short of money."
"Already!" cried Gray; "curse thee, fellow; dost think we keep a coin
house? Short again, after all received from Howard, from Henry VII.,
and from us?"
"All gone, sirs," he added, doggedly; "patriotism is expensive work."
"Here are eight fleurs-de-lys, and not another coin shalt thou have,
were it for thy mass when _in articulo mortis_. So away to thy task,
while we will watch and deliberate."
The worthy functionary of the English faction swept the Laird of
Keir's money into the velvet pouch which hung on his right hip beside
his poniard, and then quitted the presence of his employers. As he
descended the stair of the hostel, a gentleman in black armour
touched him roughly on the shoulder. Borthwick grew pale, and
clutched the dagger at his girdle; and then perceiving that the iron
plates of this personage were somewhat rusty, he said with haughty
insolence,--
"Who may you be?"
"Your better man, sirrah--therefore attend."
"What want ye, sir?" he asked, rather abashed by the other's air and
determined manner.
"Nothing," was the blunt reply; "that is, personally I seek nothing
of such fellows as thee; but the right honourable my very good lord
and chief requires your presence in his chamber, here, without delay."
Borthwick still kept a hand upon his poniard, as he scanned the
speaker's sunburned face.
"And who are you?" he asked, after a pause.
"One of the Hepburns--Adam of the Black Castle."
"Then your chief is the Lord Hailes?"
"I have just had the honour of hinting as much," replied the other,
with an irony which Borthwick dared not resent.
"Lead on, then, laird; I follow you," he said; and then they ascended
another of the turnpike stairs with which this hostel was furnished.