aside the arras, and she rushed into the apartment with all the
aspect of an enraged Pythoness, while at the same moment the figure
of a man vanished from the open window, and his steps were heard
crashing through the bushes and trees without, as he retired hastily
and in the dusk; but Gwendoleyne saw--or thought she saw--enough, to
be convinced that the fugitive was no other than her husband!
"Alas! madam," cried Yolande, sinking on her knees in an agony of
terror, "you have discovered us."
"At last--yes, at last!" exclaimed the fierce, exulting woman, in
hoarse accents, as she savagely wreathed her slender fingers, which
rage had endued with triple strength, in the golden hair of Yolande,
and proceeded to drag her several times across the oak floor;
"beggar! viper! outcast!--ha, ha, ha! thou shalt die now!" and she
laughed as she tore out those beautiful tresses in handfuls, till the
poor girl's shrieks died away, and she sank senseless at her feet.
Then Gwendoleyne locked her up, and after tying the key of the
chamber to her silver girdle, retired to her own apartment to still
the fierce tumult that swelled her fiery heart, and to lay her plans
of deeper and surer vengeance. Alas! they were but too soon formed
and matured for pity or remorse to arrest them.
The night passed away, and though she had alternate fits of
tenderness and tears, with gusts of jealous rage and passion, the
morning found her cold, calm, inexorable, and resolved to have a
terrible retribution on the Red Comyn for this attempt to deceive
her; and the arrival of a hasty message from him, stating that he was
compelled to depart with a slender train on public business to the
town of Dumfries, only made her smile the more bitterly, as she
thought she saw the game her truant husband meant to play; but she
resolved to checkmate him.
"Dumfries, my Lord Chamberlain!" she said, with a scornful smile upon
her lovely lip; "now what fool's errand takes him there?"
"To hold a conference with Sir Robert Bruce, the young Earl of
Annandale," replied the other, in a low voice; "the Bruces have some
bold project now in hand."
"A project."
"Ay, to root the English faction and all Baliol's people out of
Scotland. Comyn hath known of this project long, and duly gives King
John and King Edward notice of its progress; thus Bruce ere long must
perish amid his own plots and follies."
"And without waiting for our boy's arrival from Perth, without even
bidding me adieu, Comyn has gone to confer with him? 'Tis well--I
wish him speed on his journey. But there is _a prophecy concerning
him_; so let him beware lest he perish by a violent death like his
kinsman who died at Craigie, and who had no other grave than his own
girdle."
"Now, grace me guide, lady, talk not thus," replied Sir Alexander,
growing pale at her words, which referred to a terrible tale; for it
came to pass in the days of King Alexander III., that it was foretold
by Thomas the Rhymer, that Comyn Earl of Buchan, who was ranger of
the royal hunting forests of Plater, would die by a violent death; so
he mocked the seer, saying--
"Thou art Sir Thomas the Liar, rather than the Rhymer."
But the aged chief replied solemnly in verse, as was his wont when
inspired by his mysterious power--
"Though _Thomas the Liar_ thou callest me,
The sooth, Lord Earl, I tell to thee!
By Aikeyside,
Thy horse shall ride;
He shall stumble and thou shalt fa',
Thy neckbane shall be broken in twa,
And the hunting dogs thy bones shall gnaw!
There, maugre all thy kin and thee,
Thine own belt thy bier shall be!"
And so it came to pass soon after, for when the earl was hunting in
the gloomy Den of Howie, as he galloped over the green hill of
Arkeybrae, his horse became dazzled by the setting sun, and threw him
with such violence that his brains were dashed out by some blocks of
grey stone, which to this day are named Comyn's Craigie, and there
his bones were found after his hounds had gnawed and torn them
asunder.
"So, for God's love, dear lady," resumed the Lord of Cavers with a
shudder, "refer no more to these dark and terrible predictions."
The white lips of the haughty lady smiled, but a wild expression of
rage and sorrow filled her eyes, and the glance she gave her kinsman
was to him inexplicable, as she had not a doubt that this sudden
journey was all a device of her husband to meet, or perhaps to elope,
with Yolande. Dark and terrible were the silent thoughts of
Gwendoleyne as the evening drew on. The old prophecy that like the
Black Comyn, the Red one would _die by a violent death_, seemed ever
before her in letters of fire; and she thought that now the time had
come.
"How was I ever weak enough to expect that a fair-haired man could be
true to me?" she muttered; "in all old Scripture tapestries are not
Cain and Judas represented with large yellow beards, or red ones,
like that of my husband Comyn! Oh, woe is me! and cursed be the hour
I forsook Sir John the Grahame to become the wife of his home and the
mother of his children!"
All that day she kept Yolande carefully under lock and key, and
without food or drink, while the black dwarf watched the window and
the corridor. The sunset faded on the green ridges of the Campsie
Fells, evening darkened into sombre night, and the pale light of the
moon, long before her rising, was spread across the blue and starry
sky behind the hills of Lanarkshire. The woolly-leaved birches that
fringed the banks of the Logie and Kelvin, diffused a rich fragrance
as the dew of eve fell on them; and the lonely heron sent up its
mournful cry at times, as it waded in the pools that gleamed below
the castle walls.
Attired as Yolande, in a dress of _dark velvet starred with silver_,
with her black locks gathered in a golden crespinette, a veil spread
over her head and shoulders, and with her little white hand grasping
the hilt of a jewelled dagger that was concealed in her bosom, the
wife of the Red Comyn left the Castle of Kirkintulloch unseen by all,
and by a little postern on the south, and, skirting the houses of the
town, reached the trysting-place, the Caer-pen-tulloch, or old Roman
fort at the west end of the hill. The fallen ramparts of the tower
were eighty feet square, and the yellow broom, the green whin, the
purple foxglove, and the sweet wallflower, all flourished together on
the masses of fallen masonry which were covered by long grass that
waved mournfully to and fro between the pale Gwendoleyne and the
white starlight. The place seemed very silent, lonely, and desolate.
All was intensely still, save the fierce beating of her heart, which
teemed with passion, as her eyes did with tears she scorned to weep.
Time stole away. The moments seemed like hours.
No one came! Could she have mistaken the place--the time?
Now the yellow moon began to peep above the distant hills, and its
lustre glinted on the green mounds and shattered masonry of the
ancient peel.
Up, up it came, and now its whole disc was gleaming above the dark
mountain-ridge, and tipping each rock and peak with fire.
Gwendoleyne prayed in her heart that no one might come--that she
might have been deceived--that Comyn, the father of her four
children--but, hark! the hoofs of a horse rang hollowly on the green
turf, and through the archway of the ruined enclosure rode an armed
man, who sang merrily the same march to which, eight years after,
Bruce marched his victorious host to Bannockburn.
"Hark to the tramp, from yonder camp,
Whence the Scottish spearmen come!
When they hear the bagpipe sounding,
_Tuttie taittie_ to the drum!"
"'Tis the Red Comyn's favourite song!" said she, shrinking aside;
"now mayest thou be accursed from the bearing cloth in which thou
wert baptized to that shroud of blood in which thou shalt lie! Now
by the soul of him who loved me well, the Grahame who fell at
Falkirk, and by the life of my son--my dearest hope--I shall have a
terrible vengeance!"
The knight, on whose head was a plumed chapel-de-fer, with a mail
coif that concealed the lower part of his face, wore over his armour
an embroidered cointise, with the cognisance of the Comyns, two
ostriches, with the motto "Courage." He dismounted, and after
looking about him for a moment, discovered Gwendoleyne, to whom he
hastened with an exclamation of joy, and she recognised on the breast
of the surcoat some embroidery, on which she had but too surely and
too lately seen the white hands of Yolande Gifford plying the needle!
What other proof of perfidy was necessary?
An arm was thrown around her, and passionately and joyously she was
pressed to the breast of the new comer. But while trembling with
ungovernable fury to find herself exposed to embraces intended for
Yolande, she drove her poniard in the heart of the lover twice,
exclaiming,
"Die, villain and deceiver--die in your adultery--die!"
"_Mother--oh, mother!_" cried a voice, which froze the marrow in her
bones; and the frantic and wretched Gwendoleyne discovered that she
had slain--not the Red Comyn--but their beloved and only son.
The plumed _chapel-de-fer_ rang as the wearer sank to the earth.
A gurgling sound was all that followed; the ruined tower swam round
that miserable woman, and, multiplied by a thousand times, the horse
of the murdered knight seemed to career around her; till borne down
by misery, by a revulsion of feeling, by over-tension of the heart,
and by horror of what she had done, Gwendoleyne sank senseless on the
body of her son.
The young Sir John Comyn had loved the orphan Yolande, and on his
return had secretly wished to meet--perhaps, for all that we can
learn now--to espouse her; but this terrible catastrophe ended his
life and intentions together.
Meanwhile, like a true Scottish baron bent on selfish schemes of
family ambition and degrading aggrandizement, Red Comyn had ridden
fast to meet Robert Bruce, the younger, at Dumfries, and to concert
with him a pretended plan to free Scotland from the English and from
John Baliol; but of this scheme the red-headed traitor had duly
informed King Edward from time to time. On Comyn's arrival in
Nithsdale, the gallant Robert, afterwards King of Scotland, had fled
in safety northward, by reversing his horse's hoofs, as the ground
was covered with snow; and being furnished with clear proofs of his
compatriot's villainy, he pursued him to the church of the Minorites
at Dumfries, whither he had fled for sanctuary, being full of
conscious guilt; but neither the house of God nor its high altar
could protect this perfidious wretch, who was false to Scotland and
her people; and the prophecy that "Red Comyn should die by a violent
death" was terribly fulfilled; for there Bruce, Lindsay, and
Kirkpatrick buried their daggers in his heart upon St. William's day,
the 10th of February, 1306.
So perish all who are false to their country!
He was the last Comyn of the house of Badenoch, and was, moreover,
the last of his race--a race which Scotland well could spare.
Lady Gwendoleyne never spoke after she was borne into the castle with
the dead body of her son. She lived for five years a close captive
in that yellow chamber, and during those terrible five years a word,
even of prayer, never passed her lips; but a period was put to her
sufferings, for this proud and resentful beauty died on the 10th day
of February, 1310, at the hour of three in the afternoon, the
anniversary of the very moment in which her husband died under the
three daggers in the Minorite Church of Dumfries.
She was buried before the Shrine of St. Ninian, with all the grandeur
of a princess and all the splendour of the Roman ritual; her son
slept by her side, and Sir Alexander of Cavers reared a stately
monument above them; but that fierce woman's restless spirit is still
said to haunt the Castle of Kirkintulloch and the Roman ruins at the
west end of the town; for it is supposed that she will never find
repose or peace until the day of doom.
----------
Such was the story told to the captain by the castellan of the old
fortress of Kirkintulloch, scarcely one stone of which now stands
upon another, as it was removed about the beginning of the present
century.
"And Yolande Gifford--what of her?" asked the captain.
"She did not die of love or grief either, but lived to be a very old
woman, and passed away in about her eightieth year, when Robert III.
was King, a prioress of the Bernardine nuns of St. Mary--a convent of
which you may still see the ruins on the north bank of the Avon,
about a mile above Linlithgow Bridge."
"A melancholy story!" said the captain; "what a devil of a wife that
Gwendoleyne must have been--but no better than such an infamous
traitor as Comyn deserved!"
"Beware ye, sir," said the castle bailie, lowering his voice, and
looking furtively round him; "she is said to walk about--ay, at this
very hour, and may pay you a visit that you may never get the better
of."
"I'll be hanged, bailie, if I go up-stairs to-night--or this morning,
rather," said my grandfather, laughing; "I would rather face the Dons
at the Moro again, than meet that dame in black velvet with her devil
of a dwarf--so make a fresh browst and stir up the fire."
The clock struck four.
"Four!" said the soldier; "four already; and we march in an hour!"
The bailie, who was a jolly old fellow, brewed a fresh jorum of hot
toddy--by this time they had under their girdles ten jugs each; and
my grandfather now began to spin _his_ yarns, and detailed the
slaughter of Ticonderoga, the scalping and flaying at Fort Pitt, the
storming of the Moro, where British musket-butts and the pates of the
Dons tested the hardness of each other; he proceeded on the
expedition up the Lakes, and had just opened the trenches before
Montreal, when he found himself at the bottom of his tenth jug, the
fire out, the bailie asleep in his easy-chair, and heard the warning
drum beaten in the streets of Kirkintulloch--the warning for the
march, while the grey dawn stole through the ancient windows.
It was daylight now, and fearless alike of Dame Gwendoleyne and her
dwarf, my grandfather sallied down-stairs, and propping himself
between his claymore and the walls of the houses, or an occasional
pump-well as he passed it, reached the muster-place, and holding
himself very erect, gave, with great emphasis, the command to
"march." His detachment marched accordingly, and--here ends our
story for the present.
VI.
STORY OF THE GREY MOUSQUETAIRE.
A FRAGMENT OF THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.
Among the captains of "Ours" who had the honour of serving in the
Seven Years' War was one named Allan Robertson, a gentleman of the
clan Donnoquhy, and a cadet of the loyal house of Struan, who bore
the singular soubriquet of the _Mousquetaire Gris_, and whose
adventures during the early part of his military career were very
remarkable.
In his latter years, when leading a quiet "half-pay life" in the
Scottish capital, Allan was known to all the military loungers about
"Poole's Coffee-house," at the east end of Prince's Street, then the
great rendezvous of the military idler, as a warlike octogenarian--a
silver-haired remnant of other days--and as a brave and warm-hearted
old Highlander, who was so devoted to the memory of the 42nd, that he
never saw those two numerical figures, even on a street door, without
lifting his hat, and saying, "God bless the old number!" for his
heart swelled at everything that reminded him of the venerable Black
Watch.
The manner in which Allan joined the regiment was in itself romantic
and singular.
Among the French army at the famous battle of Minden, in the year
1759, when the Household troops were led by Prince Xavier of Saxony,
brother of the French Queen, no cavalry distinguished themselves more
by the fury and valour of their reiterated charges than the
_Compagnie Franche_, or "Free Company" of the Chevalier Jules de
Coeurdefer, and two other bands entirely composed of gentlemen of the
highest rank and of irreproachable character, who were named from the
colour of their uniforms _Les Mousquetaires Gris et Rouges_, led by
the Vicomte de Chateaunoir.
In the fury of their last attack, the gallant Prince Xavier was slain
by the 51st Regiment, and the leader of the grey troop (for all these
noblesse served on horseback) was left behind bleeding on the ground,
though a desperate rally was thrice made by the energy of one Grey
Mousquetaire to rescue and carry off the colonel. These noble
rallies were made in vain; for, after a third attempt, the
Mousquetaires were swept from the plain of Minden by the terrible
charge of the Scots Grey Dragoons, led by old Colonel Preston, the
_last_ soldier who wore a buff coat in the British service, and who
had risen to command from being a kettle-drummer in the old Flanders
War.
The faithful Mousquetaire fell in this flight, being pierced by a
musket-shot from one of Lord George Sackville's Dragoons, and he lay
all night on that sanguinary field, near the leader he had striven so
valiantly and in vain to rescue.
A distinguished Highland officer, whose memoirs have been published,
mentions that on the 2nd of August, the day after the battle, he rode
over the plain, accompanied by Major Pringle of Edgefield.
"On one part of the field we saw a French officer, who had been
wounded in the knee, sitting on the ground, with his back supported
by a dead horse. We accosted him, and offered any assistance in our
power. He proved to be the commanding officer of _Les Mousquetaires
Gris_, and was distinguished by several orders, which, with a
handsome snuff-box, had probably excited the cupidity of some of the
wretches who are never found wanting in the train of an army. We
left him in high spirits, having undertaken to bring a cart or
tumbril to carry him from the field; but with the hasty imprudence of
young officers, we rode off together on this duty, instead of one of
us remaining with the wounded man. It could not be more than ten or
twelve minutes when we returned with the cart, and found--to our
unspeakable concern--the murdered body of the poor French colonel
(the Vicomte de Chateaunoir) lying naked on the ground."
Another officer adds, that near the corpse of the unfortunate
colonel, which had been so ruthlessly stripped by the German
marauders and death-hunters, lay, pistol in hand, the Mousquetaire,
who had made such vigorous efforts to save him in the last charge of
yesterday. He was still breathing, and after having his wound
hurriedly dressed by a surgeon of the 51st, he was conveyed to the
rear, in care of Major Pringle, who was a son of Lord Edgefield, a
distinguished senator of the Scottish College of Justice. At the
place where they found him, the adverse artillery had furrowed up the
plain like a ploughed field by their shot, which lay so thick and
half sunk in the turf, that they resembled on iron pavement, strewn
with all the destruction and debris of battle.
The Grey Mousquetaire was a tall and handsome man, bronzed by the
weather and scarred by battle. On the breast of his grey uniform
glittered those decorations which few of the corps were without--the
golden crosses of St. Louis and St. Lazare.
Pringle conveyed him to his own tent, for he knew well that the
Mousquetaires were all men of no ordinary rank, and there he supplied
him with wine and other comforts. As yet, he had not spoken; but as
he gathered strength, he began to mutter and talk to himself in a
strange language.
"Assuredly this man is not a Frenchman!" said Pringle, kneeling down
to listen.
The Mousquetaire Gris was praying in the Erse tongue!
"What--are you a Scotchman?" exclaimed the astonished major.
"A Highlander," sighed the other.
"I recognised your Gaëlic at once."
"Likely enough," responded the other, in a low voice; "the Gaelic was
the first language I heard, and, please God, it shall be my _last_!
I spoke but the tongue I learned at my mother's breast!"
"And you are a Mousquetaire Gris?"
"Yes--that grey uniform is all the inheritance which the dark day of
Culloden has left me."
"Poor fellow!" said Major Pringle, with commiseration; "and you are--"
"Allan Robertson, of the house of Struan, who, thirteen years ago,
was a captain in the Athole Regiment under his Royal Highness Prince
Charles, whom God long preserve!"
"Hush--hush!" said Pringle, hurriedly; "remember that you are in the
British camp."
"I care not," replied the other, with flashing eyes; "I have shouted
his name at Preston, Falkirk and Culloden, and why should I shrink
from naming him here?"
Major Pringle kept the Jacobite officer in his quarters, and in a few
days he was able to sit up in a camp bed, and converse with ease and
coherence; and many Scottish gentlemen of the army whose political
sympathies were with the exiled race, frequented the tent, and
supplied him with whatever he required and their own necessities
could spare. He asked particularly about the wounds on the breast of
his dead colonel, the Vicomte de Chateaunoir, and on being informed
that they must have been done with a dagger, he became dreadfully
excited, and exclaimed,
"Jules de Coeurdefer has murdered him!"
"Who?" exclaimed Major Pringle and several officers who were present.
"A wretch most justly named Coeurdefer, who serves in the French
army, to its disgrace; a noble and an outlaw--a soldier and a robber!
a ribaud, with whom the Mousquetaires Gris et Rouges have had more
than one sword-in-hand encounter."
Among the mass of papers and regimental memoranda, from which these
legends are gleaned and prepared, I find this Chevalier Jules de
Coeurdefer frequently mentioned us a prominent character during the
early part of the Seven Years' War; and some of Robertson's
adventures with him during his service in the Grey Mousquetaires were
very remarkable. His narrative was as follows.
----------
"We, the Red and Grey Mousquetaires, by forced marches from Paris,
quitted the gay Court of Louis XV., and joined the army of M. de
Contades about the end of May, crossed the Rhine with him at Cologne,
and on the same day the Free Band of the Chevalier de Coeurdefer
joined us, to the great annoyance of the whole army; for our hitherto
quiet and well-ordered camp became a scene of incessant disquiet, by
drunken brawls, duels, and severe military punishments; for as this
_Franche Compagnie_, like the wild Pandoors of Baron Trenck, subsist
only by gambling and secret robbery in camp, and by open plunder and
ruthless bloodshed in the field, you may imagine our repugnance to
co-operate with them; and our astonishment that leaders so strict as
M. de Contades or Prince Xavier of Saxony would tolerate their
presence among us for a moment. Their ranks were filled by men of
all nations--runaway students, spendthrifts, cashiered officers,
deserters, fugitive malefactors--in short, by men ready for any
desperate work, and being deemed the cheapest food for gunpowder,
they had enough of it.
"Their captain, the Chevalier Coeurdefer, is the representative of an
ancient but decayed family in Lorraine, who spent his patrimony among
the gambling-houses, the cabarets and bordels of Paris. Dismissed
summarily from the French line when a captain in the Regiment du Roi
for barbarously slaying a brother officer, after severely wounding
him in a duel about a courtesan, he has now joined our army against
the Prussians, in the hope of winning himself a new name by reckless
bravery, cruelty, and outrage. He is handsome and young, but without
fear of God or man; without religion, and without honour. Even their
chaplain--"
"What! they have a chaplain?" exclaimed Pringle, laughing.
"Yes, a canon of Notre Dame, who was unfrocked by the Archbishop of
Paris for having an affair with a citizen's wife in the Faubourg St.
Antoine. He is a burlesque on the clerical character, and fights--as
I was about to say--more duels than even the chevalier his leader.
One of this choice band plundered a church at Cologne, and as
sacrilege could not be tolerated, Prince Xavier made a great hubbub
about it. The thief had been seen; he wore the tattered uniform of
the _Franche Compagnie_, and had huge red whiskers. The chevalier
paraded his men next day for inspection. Bearing a piece of the true
cross, the holy fathers came along the line in solemn procession to
discover the culprit; but lo! every man was shaven to the eyes, and
not a vestige of whisker was to be seen in the whole band of the
Chevalier Jules.