there is more in man's heart than he himself dreams of. I once thought
that the highest of human enjoyments was a victory lost and won, with a
hundred head of cattle driven before the returning host, in triumph, to
Henderland; but, in yon withdrawing-room in the west wing, in which your
cunning hands have placed the seductive couch, where one may lie and see
roses blooming so near that he may smell their odours, and hear witching
strains stealing from these musical things of wood and wire, the charm
of the foray is broken, and the riever's spirit overcome. I wish I saw
old Mangerton twisting his leathern cheeks under these arts of domestic
peace. Every tear would have its avenging oath. He would trow old
Henderland turret bewitched."
"But you have cunningly led me away from my subject, Parys. Is it not
true that you are to cut through my silken bands with the restless
sword? Are you not again to turn the fearless eye of the eagle on the
cliff where Tushielaw hangs like a beetling crag? Is Helen's song to be
changed for the raven war-cry; and the blessings of our peaceful
household, for the curses of revengeful war?"
"How high mounteth Hector on my grandfather's elm!" responded Cockburn,
playfully, evading her question. "The fearless rogue will hang himself,
and realize the prophecy of Merlin the wild, regarding our house--
'On Cockburn's elm, on Henderland lee,
A Cockburn laird shall hangit be.'"
"God forfend!" ejaculated Marjory. "Hector, undo that cord, and descend.
My ears ring with old Lailoken's prophetic rhyme, when I look on that
swing. I shall have it removed."
"Ha ha!" cried Cockburn, laughing, and glad to get rid of the original
topic. "Don't you know, Maudge, that my grandsire was a dabbler in
prophetic visions; and, think ye, he would have been fool enough to
plant and water, as he is said to have done, his descendant's wuddy? But
I have a good mind to cut down the tree, and make Lailoken's prophecy a
physical impossibility."
As Cockburn spoke, he cast his eye wistfully to the sky, as if he felt
an anxiety as to the state of the weather, an act which did not escape
the observation of his wife, on whom the allusion to Merlin's prophecy,
generally current at that time, had produced an effect not remarkable at
a period when this species of soothsaying still retained the credit it
had acquired by the success of the poet of Ercildoun. At another time,
her strong mind would not have acknowledged the power of the rhythmic
ravings of a wandering maniac; but she had got some obscure hints of the
wrath of the young King James V. against the Border chiefs; and the
tender solicitude of a doting wife traced, by a process perhaps unknown
to herself, some connection between Merlin's saying and the proof she
now had of a concealed intention, on the part of Cockburn, to disregard
all her efforts to reclaim him, by imbuing his mind with a perception of
the pleasures of domestic happiness, from his old habits of rieving and
fighting with his neighbours.
"It is--it is, Parys," she exclaimed, with a trembling voice--"It is too
true that you are bent on the execution of your old threat against
Tushielaw. I have an accumulation of proofs against you, and can read it
even in your countenance. Do you love me, Parys?--say if you have any
love for your Marjory--say if your affection is changed towards those
dear pledges of our happiness, who, enjoying the sports of their age,
are unconscious that their father is meditating that which may, ere the
morn's sun gild those woods, render them fatherless, and bring sorrow
o'er the house of Henderland? There are two dangers awaiting you:
Tushielaw's arm, that has incarnadined the waters of Ettrick with the
blood of many a proud foe; and the vengeance of King James, whose
youthful fire his nobles, they say, cannot quell."
"This is not the cry of 'houghs in the pot,' Marjory," replied he,
still laughing--"the hint of the Border chieftains' wives, when they
want more beef for the larder. But calm ye, love. Young James will not
travel hither to fulfil old Lailoken's rhyme, and Tushielaw's arm hath
no power over Cockburn. Truly, I do intend to weed thy pretty arbours,
Maudge; and, peradventure, I may even essay to sing a bass to thy sweet
ballad of "Lustye May, with Flora Queen;" and such a domesticated
creature shall I be that, like Hercules, you may see me, ere long, ply
the distaff--a pretty sight for Adam Scott's warlike eye."
Cockburn's merriment fell with a lurid glare over the heart of his
wife, who, seeing him determined to cover his designs by light raillery,
replied nothing; but, calling to her her three children, kissed them,
and bade them set aside their sports, and return with her to the Castle.
As they passed along, Cockburn still cast a wistful eye to the skies,
which wore a threatening aspect--the sun having been surrounded in his
setting with large folds of clouds, whose bellying forms came dipping
near the mountains; while the pale form of the moon, scarcely
distinguishable in the falling gloaming, seemed to be sailing through
broken masses of vapour, like a labouring bark in a stormy sea; and, now
and then, a deep hollow moan among the woods came on the ear, like the
far echo of dying thunder. About the Castle, the followers of Cockburn
were observed, by the anxious eye of Marjory, to be all secretly
employed in repairing their arms or habiliments--an occupation they
threw aside, stealthily, when they saw their mistress; but not until she
had observed what they had thus endeavoured to conceal. Their
countenances exhibited that mixture of repressed joy and affected
seriousness which the expectation of being gratified by a luxury from
which the heart has long been debarred by some external power, produces
in the presence of one hostile to the gratification. So strong was the
desire of marauding and spoliation in that distracted part of the
country, that an expedition was then looked upon in nearly the light in
which a fair, or maiden-feast, or penny-wedding, would be contemplated
by more civilized revellers. These indications Marjory noticed; and,
turning up her eyes in the face of her husband, she sighed heavily, and
sought her apartment. Soon afterwards she proceeded to put her children
to rest, making them offer up to heaven a prayer to avert from the head
of their father a danger they did not understand, but enough to them, if
they saw it in the face of their mother, whose looks were their laws,
and whose smiles were the sunlight of their young hearts.
"This is a prettier sight," muttered she, in soft accents, as she looked
upon the faces of the beautiful and innocent supplicants--"this is
surely a fairer sight, and better calculated to fill and delight the
heart of mortal, than what my Parys is now, I fear, preparing to behold.
How different is the expression of the faces of these innocents,
upturned to heaven in supplication and thankfulness, from the
torch-flared countenances of blood and revenge which these retainers
will turn on the heights of Tushielaw, in the presence of their master!
Nor is my Parys insensible to this difference; but, wo for the force of
education and habit over good hearts! Ask, my little Hector, of your
Father in heaven that, if you live to be a Border chief, you may be
loyal to your king, and a promoter of peace in the castle, and
contentedness and happiness in the cottage."
The little embryo chieftain obeyed the words of his mother; and all
looked up in her face anxiously, as they saw the tears stealing down her
cheeks. Each asked the cause of her grief, and volunteered an
assuagement, as if their little swelling hearts contained the power of
the instant amelioration of her sorrow. She looked upon them in silence;
and in a little time they were consigned to rest and sleep, and utter
oblivion of all the cares of this world.
After these maternal cares, Marjory sat and listened to the proceedings
in the ballium of the Castle. Cockburn did not come up, being either
occupied in preparations for his expedition against Adam Scott, or
unwilling to expose his designs again to the danger of defeat, by the
expostulations or entreaties of his anxious wife. Meanwhile, as she
listened, every whisper or accidental sound of sword or spear went to
her heart, and stirred up, in confused array, the fears of love. One
hope remained to her, that the moon would hide her head, and leave the
world to the empire of darkness--so unfavourable to the designs of the
riever, that the moon's minions would not fight under another power.
There were clear indications in the heavens of a coming storm; for the
moon still toiled on through the clouds, and the booming of the low,
sullen wind in the woods was getting higher and higher. These sounds she
hailed with hope; but, the next moment, the clang of a falling spear
consigned her to her fears. At a late hour, Cockburn came up to his
sleeping-room, and silently retired to pretended rest; while she, with
her solicitude increased, retired also to her couch, but with no
disposition to become oblivious of the fatal operations of her husband,
though her tender nature forbade further efforts in a cause that seemed
hopeless. Resigning herself to the powers of fear, and the other
disquieting influences of the solemn hour of midnight, she lay quiet,
and submitted to the current of inauspicious thoughts that flowed
through her mind. A disturbed slumber fell over her, sufficient only to
make a slight division between the world of dreams and that of reality,
and to allow her waking thoughts to pass in new and changing forms
before the eye of the dreaming fancy, which again, in its turn, invested
them with attributes suitable to the complexion of her waking sorrows.
During this interval, Cockburn rose; and, dressing himself, went quietly
out of the chamber--his movements having only tended to give some new
impulse to her half-dreamy sensations, ineffectual as they were to
recall her to the cares of a night vigil. A loud crash was the first
sound that awoke her; and opening her eyes, and becoming collected, she
recognised, in the sharp sound, the grating fall of the portcullis. A
shrill horn now winded among the woods, though its sound was scarcely
distinguishable among the repressed bellowings of the night winds that
seemed to have risen considerably since she had been overcome by her
slumber. She was satisfied that the whole retinue, with her husband at
their head, were off to the beetling Castle of Tushielaw, from whose
heights so many a riever had been precipitated into the Ettrick.
This conviction, coming, as it did, on the back of a disturbed slumber,
in which her dreams had partaken of the dire nature of a nightmare,
increased her fears. She could rest no longer, and rising and dressing
herself, she sat down at the casement, and listened to ascertain if any
of the sounds of the cavalcade could be distinguished. She could satisfy
herself of enough to indicate the route they had taken--away over the
hills that separate the vales of Ettrick and Yarrow, and by the path
that has since got the name of the King's Road, leading directly to the
Tower of Tushielaw. But a quick and threatening change in the weather
soon attracted her attention. The booming of the wind seemed to cease,
and, shortly after, the clouds, through the openings of which the moon
had been seen labouring during the previous part of the night, appeared
to run rapidly together, so as to conceal the face of the night queen,
and to present a homogenous mass of dark vapour over all the heavens. A
flash of vivid lightning now flared in her eyes, and left her for a
moment in suspense whether she had not been blinded by the bright fluid;
then on came the peal of thunder, which reverberating among the
mountains like discharges of artillery, filled her with that peculiar
awe which the speaking clouds throw over the hearts of mortals. The rain
came down in torrents, and had scarcely begun to pour, when the
speat-rills of the high lands were heard dashing down like angry spirits
to swell the Henderland Burn and the Megget, and raise the fury of these
mountain streams. The sound of the thunder had awoke the children, who,
leaving in terror their beds, came running to their mother, to seek that
protection which could alone allay their fears. Circling round her
knees, they hid their heads among the folds of her clothes, or clambered
to her bosom, and twined their arms round her neck. It was in vain she
asked them to return to bed; they conceived themselves safer on the
breast of their mother, though she still sat at the casement, and the
lightning glanced in their eyes, than they could be in their beds,
muffled up in the bedclothes, and listening to the successive peals of
thunder. As she sat in this attitude, with the children cowering into
her bosom, like little chickens under the wing of their mother, she
observed that the thunder approached nearer and nearer, as the period
between the flash and the peal diminished gradually to a second; and a
sudden flash among the trees, accompanied with a crackling noise,
connected with some destructive operation of the bolt, indicated that
mischief had been done in that quarter of the wood. It was where the elm
stood, the subject of Merlin's rhyme; and this circumstance sent the
current of her thoughts in that direction, where there was so much
aliment for her excited fancy. She silently prayed that the tree might
be destroyed; and its towering top, above all others of the wood, held
out some hope that her strange wish might be realized.
The sound of a man's voice--that of Dick of the Muir, as he was
styled--the individual who kept the gate of the Tower--was heard
shouting to some one without, in reply to some request made by the
latter. It was now about two in the morning, and Marjory could not
conceive what could be the purpose of the stranger's visit at that
dreary hour.
"What want ye wi' my Leddie at this time, man?" said Dick. "My master's
frae hame, and my commission doesna extend to opening the gate to
strangers on night visits."
"But I'm nae stranger, Dick," replied the other. "I served the Cockburns
before ye was born, and hae wandered many a weary step, in the midst o'
this storm, to speak a word to the ear o' my Leddie. The time o' my
visit is a good sign o' the importance o' my counsel. For God's sake,
open, man! or ye may rue this hour to that o' your deein struggle, when
Laird and Leddie may be in the moil there, ahint the auld chapel, and a'
through the laziness o' their warder."
"Raff i' the mire!" cried the warder--saluting him after the custom of
the times, when every man had a distinctive appellation, in the absence
of sirnames. "I took ye, man, for ane o' Tushielaw's scouts."
The creaking of the hinges of the gate was now heard.
"What brings ye frae Peebles, man?" continued the warder, "in sic a
night as this, when a witch wouldna venture on the Skelf Hill, far less
owre North Berwick Law."
"It's no to tell ye that Merlin's elm has fa'en," rejoined Ralph; "but
three oaks on three sides o't are lying on the earth, and that stately
tree may be a gallows still. You say, Henderland's frae hame. I'm glad
o' the news. It's his leddie I want to see: an' she maun be roused frae
her couch to speak to her auld servitor. Time bides nae man; neither
does King James."
Another peal of thunder drowned the conversation of the man: and
Marjory, rousing her little refugees, urged them to return to their
beds, that she might be left to hear the intelligence of this midnight
messenger, whose words already, so far as she had heard them, carried
tokens of evil. His reference to the king struck a chord that prior
solitude had made sensitive; and even the remark as to the tree that had
escaped the bolt, had in it a peculiar power over her shattered nerves.
Her fears operated upon the children, who, even to the youngest, put
strange questions to her.
"Why are you here, mother, in the lightning?" cried Hector.--"And where
is my father?" inquired Helen.--"See that flash again!" said Margaret,
as she buried her head in her mother's bosom.
"Poor, helpless, little ones!" ejaculated she. "How little know ye that
that which fears ye most, is to me the smallest of my terrors! If man's
wrath were quenched, heaven's would be easily averted. This messenger's
intelligence may seal your fates, and be felt in its consequences to the
last term of your lives. Come, loves, to bed. Hear ye that foot in the
stair?"
The allusion to a mysterious visitor accomplished what the lightning of
heaven could not effect--such is the secret power of mystery over the
young heart. Rising from her lap, they hurried away to their beds, and
left the not less terrified mother to hear the intelligence of the night
messenger. The door opened, and Ralph stood before her.
"God be thanked, my Leddie Cockburn," said he, in a repressed voice,
and with fearful looks--"God be thanked, for Henderland's absence! The
king, wi' his nobles, are at Peebles, on their way to Liddesdale, to tak
vengeance on the chiefs o' the Borders, wha hae been foremost in the
foray and the rieving raid. They whisper yonder that there's a hangman
in the train, wi' ropes, to hang the ring-leaders on their castle
buttresses; and Henderland is to be their first victim. O my Leddie!
dispatch, quick as thae flashes o' levin, a messenger to the master, and
tell him to flee to England, till the king's wrath has blawn owre. I hae
braved this awful storm, auld as I am, to save my master; and, if I but
saw him safe frae the king's ire, I could lay my banes at the foot o'
the grave o' the Cockburns."
"I have been looking for this Ralph," answered Marjory, as she lifted
her hands to seize her hair, in her distress. "Even now, God be
merciful! my husband is in the very act of rieving and rebellion. But
what said ye of Merlin's Elm, man? Is it not skaithed? Speak, no secrets
now; are the trees beside it blasted, and does it stand?"
"I hae heard yer Leddieship laugh at that auld rhyme," replied the
servitor. "Fear naething for a madman's freak. But it's true that three
oaks by its side are blasted, riven and laid on the earth, and yet it
stands."
"Strange, strange are the ways of heaven," cried she, wringing her
hands. "Ralph, you must be the messenger to my husband. Haste and saddle
my grey jennet, and flee by the Riever's Road, to Tushielaw. Tell
Henderland and Adam Scott, that King James comes, with a halter, to
avenge the rights of royalty and peace. Cry it forth in the midst of
their battle. If he will not flee, take his horse's head, and lead him
to England. Away, away, for mercy and Henderland's sake, good Ralph, and
whisper in his ear--hark ye, man, 'tis no woman's dream--whisper the
fate of Lailoken's tree. The thunder may drown his laugh."
The faithful servant obeyed the command of his former mistress; and,
hastening as fast as his old limbs would enable him, mounted Marjory's
grey jennet, and was soon out in the midst of the storm. The only
remaining servant left in the tower, besides the warder, was, at the
same time, despatched, by his half-frantic mistress, to proceed on the
road to Peebles, and reconnoitre the king's company, and convey to her
what intelligence he could learn in regard to its movements. By this
time it was now about three o'clock; but the morning was still dark, the
storm had not abated, the rain still poured, the lightning flashed, and
the neighbouring streams rolled over their rugged channels with a noise
that equalled the thunder which yet shook the heavens. Marjory again
took her seat on the casement; and her fancy, stimulated by her fears,
became again busy in the conjuration of images which, however fearful,
unhappily stood too great a chance of being realized. The substratum of
indisputable facts was itself a good foundation of fear:--The king,
angry, and breathing revenge against his rebellious subjects of the
Border, was at hand--even within a few miles of her husband's residence;
and the ensign of his authority and punishment was borne by the common
executioner; then he would detect her husband in the very commission of
that rebellious act against which the royal vengeance was to be
directed; and, above all, she feared--nay, she was certain, from her
knowledge of Henderland's free, bold spirit, that he would disdain to
fly, and would at once commit himself into the hands of a young incensed
monarch, who had travelled forty miles for his blood. These were
fearful, incontrovertible facts, and they were contemplated by a
solitary female in the dark hour of night, in the midst of one of the
fiercest storms that had ever visited that part of the country, and
under the blue lights of a fancy that, in spite of the appeals of
judgment, reverted to an old prophecy of a wonderful being, which seemed
to have been respected even by the lightning of heaven: the elm still
stood; its brethren of the forest had fallen; and the rope to be
attached to it was on its way to Henderland. Fearful forebodings took
possession of her mind; and, as her fears rose higher and higher, she
looked out in the dark, while the gleams of lightning played round her
couch, and every sound that differed from the roaring of the storm
arrested her ear, and kept her on the rack of painful anxiety. Her
little children, meanwhile, who had caught sympathetically her fears,
and could not divine the cause of their mother's vigil by the window in
a thunder storm, had renounced sleep; and, disregarding her efforts to
restrain them, must see her at intervals, and question her again and
again; and even from their sleeping apartment they sent their
exclamations of fear, and aggravated, by their sorrows and terror, the
misery of their mother.
In this condition Marjory remained for another hour. There was no stir
in the tower, where a female domestic or two lay, or slipped about,
under the weight of a fear, the cause of which had not been explained to
them. The silence internally, broken at times by the cries of the
restless children, formed a strange and awe-inspiring contrast to the
turmoil without, where darkness and the storm still held sway over the
earth. Oppressed by the sight of the black heavens, she yet trembled to
look for the first glimpse of dawn, which might be soon expected to be
seen struggling through the vapours of the storm. Light would bring the
king and the executioner; and she prayed that she might have an
opportunity of seeing her husband before the arrival of the royal
cavalcade, that she might fall on her knees, and implore his instant
flight into England; but her ears caught no sounds in the direction of
Tushielaw, save the thunder and the rain, and, at intervals, the scream
of the drenched owl or frightened hawk, or the wheep of the restless
lapwing, driven from the morass by the overwhelming torrent. Then came
the cry again, of "Mother, mother!" from her sleepless children,
responded to by her own, "Hush, hush, my darlings! your father cometh!"
when her pained ear sought again the direction of Peebles, and she
trembled as her fancy suggested the sound of hoof or horn.
Thus another hour passed, and her racked feelings were still uncheered
by a glimpse of hope. The strength of her soul seemed to have passed
into the physical organs of the eye and ear; and every change, from
darkness or silence, produced exacerbations of her fear, and painful
apprehension. The faint shade of light in the eastern heavens, which
gave tokens of the approaching dawn, might be a precursor of the king
and his retinue; and as her eye fell upon it, she listened again for the
coming tread. A very faint sound was now heard, and it was too evident
that it came not from Tushielaw; it was from the direction of Peebles,
and it sounded as if it were the tread of a horse. It must be, she
instantly thought, the scout of the king's cavalcade; for, in her
painful anxiety, she had forgotten her own messenger. The step
approached nearer and nearer; and more intense, in the same degree, grew
her apprehension, till the sound of her messenger's voice, calling the
warder, struck her ear--and she imagined she never heard a voice so
hollow and ominous of death. The man was admitted, and his heavy step up
the spiral stair, flustering in the toil of a vain precipitude in the
dark entrance, declared the impatience of his intelligence.