THE MAUCHLINE TOWER.
"Strange tidings these, my cousin! By St. Jude!
They'll urge us all to battle ere the time."--_Old Play_.
What followed this happy interview with the leal and true-hearted
James IV. may be gathered from the following conversation, which took
place next day, in the Mauchline Tower, between three Scottish
worthies who have already occupied a prominent place in the annals of
their country, as well as in this more humble narrative. The
Mauchline Tower, which had the honour of being the residence of Sir
Patrick Gray of Kyneff, when that personage afflicted Dundee with his
presence, stood at the south-west corner of the Murray gate, and
obtained its name from the Campbells of Loudon and Mauchline, to whom
it once belonged. It was of such strength as to become in after
years a bastelhouse of the town wall, but is now removed, and no
trace of it remains save its name, which is still retained by a court
or alley that opens off the Murray-gate.
In the roughly-arched and stone-paved hall of this ancient mansion,
the windows of which had stone seats and iron gratings, the furniture
was of an old and barbarous aspect, and consisted only of a great
standing-table, forms and cupboards all of black old Scottish oak,
with five or six enormous arm-chairs. In stone recesses were the
wooden bowls, the tren-plates and luggies used at meals; for the
half-bankrupt baron's silver tankard and pewter dishes were all
carefully put away in lockfast almries.
The wide fireplace was without a grate, and over it was carved the
escutcheon of the Grays--a lion rampant, within a border engrailed;
the emblem of hope upon a wreath, and the motto, "Anchor, fast
anchor," being the cognizance of the first of the race in
Scotland,--Sir Hugh de Gray, Lord of Broxmouth, in the days of
Alexander II.
On the day after the interview between James IV. and the two officers
of the _Yellow Caravel_, Sir James Shaw of Sauchie and Sir Patrick
Gray had a meeting with Hew Borthwick, in the upper hall of this
ancient structure.
Gray and the regicide had been in close consultation, when Sir James
Shaw, a little intoxicated, though the hour was early--hastened in,
with his face inflamed, and expressive of high excitement.
"Here are tidings, with a vengeance!" said he, dashing his blue
velvet bonnet on the paved floor.
"What's astir now?" asked Gray, knitting his dark eyebrows. "If it
be the reading of the papal dispensation in the cathedral kirk of
Dunblane to-morrow, I know of it already, for our friend Hew
Borthwick has just informed me thereanent."
"The king, with Margaret Drummond, Sir David Falconer--the same
runnion who is captain of Wood's arquebussiers--and Robert Barton,
with the Lord Drummond, and the ladies Euphemia and Sybilla--all
smiles and merriment, and riding side by side, with hawks upon their
dexter wrists, each lover by his lemane, and guarded by the lances of
the Royal Guard--have left Dundee within this hour."
"Which way--east or west?" asked Gray, starting to his feet.
"By the western gate, and past Blackness."
"For Dunblane?"
"Yes; and the constable of Dundee carried the royal pennon on a
Lance."
"Damnation!"
"So say I--doubly," stammered Shaw.
"On what errand have they gone?"
"Men say variously," replied the Laird of Sauchie, opening and
shutting his bloodshot eyes; "but I overheard that venerable foutre
whom the courtiers call Duke of Montrose, tell his son--that fop the
Lord Lindesay--that the king was gone to hear the sentence of
excommunication fulminated against those who slew his father."
"That concerns thee, Master Hew."
"_Sir_ Hew," sneered Shaw.
Borthwick winced, and smiled bitterly.
"He said, moreover, that James was to receive from the bishop's hand,
an iron belt, to be worn for ever under his shirt, in memory of the
day he drew his sword against his father."
"Few who were at Sauchie, on either side of the burn, will be likely
to forget the day, Sir James. Well--and is there anything more?"
asked Gray, biting his glove and rasping his steel spurs on the
pavement.
"Yes--chief of all--that Margaret Drummond will there be crowned as
Queen of Scotland, at the same time as her husband, and that the Lord
Lyon, with all his heralds and pursuivants, the chancellor and all
the great officers of state, are appointed to keep tryst at Dunblane."
"What--the reading of the papal letter, the crowning of a king and
queen, and a sentence of excommunication, all to be performed in one
day--not omitting this freak of the iron belt--pshaw! thou ravest
man; and I will not believe it."
"And why not?"
"Because, since Scone became old fashioned, every coronation must
take place at Holyrood. A rare bundle of news thou'st brought us,
gossip."
"I have not yet told thee all--for the best of the pudding is still
in the pot."
"Well, say on," said Gray, shrugging his shoulders with something
between a smile and a frown on his face.
"I heard Sir Andrew Wood say to the Constable of Dundee, that
Falconer and Barton were to be wedded by the bishop to old John
Drummond's daughters--and by the king's express command; but thou
wilt not believe _that_ either, perhaps?"
"Wedded--is he as mad as his father was before him? Will he wed one
sister himself, and in the person of others raise those traders'
sons--loons whose ancestors are buried in obscurity, and whose
fathers brought salted hides and tallow, tar and hemp from Memmel,
cartwheels and saddles, iron pots and pewter pans, from Flanders--to
a close alliance with the Scottish crown? God's death, it's
monstrous--pshaw! and cannot be! Our peers and barons are not so low
in pride or poor in spirit as to brook such an outrage----"
"Unless King Henry paid them for it--which he is not likely to do."
"But what will the Lords Home and Hailes--Bothwell, I mean--say to
this?"
"The constable put the same question to yonder gorbellied admiral,
who replied that the king had undertaken to pacify them; but it was
no business of his--a mariner's--to study such ware; then he added
something about a gunner and his lintstock, a steersman and his helm,
which I did not understand, but conceived to mean something insolent
to the nobility."
"And doubtless it was so--the tarry varlet!" said Gray, stamping his
armed heel on the paved floor; "Sir James, thou amazest by all this!
but where tarries now the Lord Angus?"
"He is hunting the red-deer on the wild Rinns of Galloway," replied
Shaw, with a reckless laugh.
"I might have shrewdly guessed he was not on this side of the Howe of
Fife."
"Are there any fresh tidings from Henry of England?"
"Henry expects them from us," said Gray with one of his hissing
whispers and deep satanic smiles.
"True--I am forgetting our fair stipulation, penned by Master Quentin
Kraft, and of which there are duplicates in London, to the effect
that he--that is, King Henry--shall use all interest with our king to
have my barony of Sauchie erected into an earldom--"
"And _my_ barony of Kyneff and estate of Caterline erected into a
lordship; I do not see why I should not have put in for an earldom
too--but I shall content me if made as good as my chief, Kinfauns;
though I would make as noble a Scottish peer as most of them."
For once in his life, Sir Patrick Gray spoke truth.
"But instead of gaining these things, sirs," said Borthwick, who had
listened in attentive silence to all the foregoing, "ye have lost
your governorships of Stirling and of Broughty, with all their
attendant customs, kains, and powers, and now--"
"The marriage on which these airy coronets depend will never happen,
I fear me," said Shaw, seating himself with a groan.
"It shall happen," said Gray, furiously, as he took a huge tankard of
wine and three flagons from a side press; "we have made but one or
two false moves, Sir James; next time we'll have better luck; and the
tables will turn when we have Margaret Tudor for queen. She is said
to be not over-handsome; but 'twill be all the same to King James
when the candles are out in Linlithgow Bower. So Margaret Drummond
must be removed," he added, filling up the silver-rimmed horns with
Rochelle.
"We have each said so a thousand times, sirs," said Borthwick, "and
yet she still remains."
"This removal must then be thy task, Master Hew," said Shaw, setting
down the pot, in the purple contents of which he had dipped his wiry
mustachios; "get thee a nag at the Stone Bicker, or anywhere else;
hie thee away after these galliards to Dunblane, and learn what can
be done; for nothing but desperate measures can save us now, as we
are desperate men; one may see that by these bare walls and these
half mutchkin stoups of sour Rochelle."
"Thou hast still the powder of Kraft, the London apothecary?" asked
Gray, in a whisper.
"Yea," answered Borthwick; "and it is said to be so potent, that I
have borne it about me in great fear, though it is carefully sealed
and waxed all over."
"Draw closer," hissed the voice of Gray, as he sunk it into an almost
inaudible whisper.
The reader is already aware that Borthwick had been originally a
priest of Dunblane, and, consequently, he knew well the whole
cathedral and its locality. It was therefore agreed that he should
disguise himself in any manner he deemed most fitted for the
occasion; that he should depart for that secluded little city, and
endeavour to put to some deadly use the poison with which he was
entrusted.
It was, moreover, arranged that at midnight, on the second day from
this one, they should both meet him at the Bridge of Dunblane, and
hear what his success had been. Gray supplied this trusty ruffian
with a horse, and Shaw gave him gold, for he had about seventy miles
of a rough and devious road to travel, and so they separated; the two
barons to prepare and mount, for any emergency, all the armed
retainers they could collect; and the regicide to execute his
terrible mission.
"This object once achieved," said Gray, "_we must rid ourselves of
Borthwick_--for he knoweth over many secrets to make our heads secure
on our shoulders!"