"Ralph spoke truth. The king's party will be at the castle in less time
than an eagle may flee frae Dunyon to Ruberslaw. I hae seen them. They
carry torches to shew them the hill-paths, and keep them oot o' the saft
bogs. The light shone fearfully on the hill-sides, and the clatter o'
their horses' hoofs rang in my ears. I had seen enough, and made the
greatest speed to bring the ill news."
"Cockburn, Cockburn," ejaculated the disconsolate wife, "what power may
now save ye from thy fate? His proud spirit will disdain flight--ay, and
prompt a meeting with his executioner. What has become of Ralph?
Everything conspires toward the ruin of my hopes. You must to Tushielaw,
Thomas, and give a second warning to your master. Tell him of this
torch-light progress of the royal executioner, and warn him again to fly
for his life, and the life of one who lives through him. Yet,
stay--shall I not go myself? One messenger hath failed already--shall a
wife fail in the cause of her husband's life?"
"The mountain torrents are swelled, my Leddie," replied Thomas of the
Woodburn, "an' will be noo sweepin owre the Riever's Road, carryin baith
man an' horse to the howes; an' nane but an auld hill-roadster may ken
the richt tract frae that to ruin in the midst o' the darkness. Ye micht
as weel try to pass the Brig o' Dread, my Leddie. Yer bonnie body wad be
fund a corpse wi' the mornin's licht, an' Cockburn, pardoned by the king
maybe, micht greet owre't. Besides, ye should be here. A woman's voice
turns awa meikle wrath."
"Away, then, yourself, good Thomas!--I believe your counsel is good.
Heaven speed the message! Cockburn's delay gives me a glimmer of hope,
that Ralph hath already turned his head to England. If so be it, you
will report to me privately, and away from the ear of the king's
followers. If not, and if he cometh to meet the king, heaven look down
in mercy on these poor children, who still cry for their mother, and
will not rest!"
Thomas obeyed; and, as she turned to comfort her children, before she
again betook herself to her weary station, she heard the clatter of the
horse's heels over the gateway. The restlessness of her little ones
pained her: she imagined she saw, in their instinctive anxiety and fear,
some presage of coming evil, whereby, before another night, they might
be orphans; and all her efforts to remove the impression only tended to
confirm it--thus strangely and fantastically prophetic, is the
apprehensive heart. After again assuring them that their father was
coming, she sought her seat at the casement; and saw, now, the grey
dawn, throwing a stronger light over the bleak hills, and exhibiting the
white, foaming cataracts, dashing from brae to brae! Any hope of seeing
Cockburn, now, before the coming of the king, had gradually dwindled
away, and was extinct; and she as much feared to hear a sound from the
direction of Tushielaw, as she, an hour before, was anxious for that
indication of her husband's approach. Every instant she might expect to
hear the tramp of the king's horses; nothing could avert that sound from
her ear, or prevent it beating upon her heart. It came at last; she
heard it audibly, mixed with the discordant jingle of armour, and
striking her ear at the same time that a horrid glare of torch-light
pierced the deep wood, and arrested her eye. In a few minutes more, a
trumpet sounded a shrill blast; the feet of many restless horses raised
a confused noise, that was mixed with broken, under-toned ejaculations,
and clanking of swords and bucklers, and, after a minute or two of
comparative silence, came the high tones of a herald's voice, demanding
admittance in the name of King James. The warder repaired to his
mistress, and got his answer. The gate was opened, and Marjory saw the
cavalcade enter the base court surrounding the castle; while two large
bodies of soldiers, coming up about the same time, took their stations
on each side of the entrance. A circle was now formed by those who were
within the court; and the grim faces of the nobles, as they reflected
the glare of the torches, were revealed clearly to her gaze. In the
middle stood the young king, in close and secret counsel with his
confidential advisers, and, at last, the warder was called before his
Majesty, to account for the absence of his master, tell where he had
gone, and record his proceedings. The man reluctantly obeyed the call.
"Where is thy master, sirrah?" inquired the king.
The warder was silent, and the question was repeated in sterner tones.
"I keep only this castle, your Highness," replied the warder; "my master
is his ain keeper--an' a better there's no between the twa Tynes."
"Thou art a good keeper of thine own tongue, at least," said James,
angrily; "but we come not from court unprepared with remedies for
opening the mouths of close-hearted seneschals. Let Lithcraig attend."
An opening was now made in the circle of nobles, and a man, dressed in a
long black doublet, came forward, holding in his hands a rope, ready to
be suspended, and to suspend, in its turn, the disobedient warder.
"Throw thy cord over the buttress, there," cried one of the nobles;
"give the noose mouth enough to tell its own tale, and I will answer for
it bringing out his."
The man proceeded forward to a buttress of the castle completely
exposed to the eyes of Marjory, by the gleams that flared from the
torches; and she saw him deliberately go through the operation of making
the projection available for the purpose of a gallows, by binding the
cord to it, and suspending a running noose, which seemed to gape in grim
gesture for its victim. The moment the rope was suspended, James pointed
to it, and asked the warder to proceed and answer his questions. The
terrified man cast a wild eye on the relentless crowd around him, and
then on the engine of death that dangled before him, and, with faltering
tongue, told the king that Cockburn had gone on a midnight raid against
Adam Scott of Tushielaw, who, some time before, had made an assault on
Henderland, and carried off twenty head of cattle, besides wounding
several of Cockburn's men; he stated, farther, that there had been many
raids of late in Liddesdale; but that his master had had, until
Tushielaw roused him, scarcely any share in these struggles, preferring
the society of his lady, the fairest and the kindest woman of the
Borders, to the pleasures of rieving. This statement was received as
evidence against Cockburn.
All these transactions had been narrowly watched by Marjory, who was
now more and more satisfied that the doom of her husband was sealed, if
he made his appearance before the king in the humour he now exhibited.
She saw them bind the warder with ropes until their trial was over, that
he might remain in pledge for the truth of his statements; and the heads
again held counsel on the next step they should take in the unexpected
event of the "traitor," as they called him, not being found at home,
notwithstanding of their attempted surprise by a night visit. These
doings had occupied as much time as allowed the glimmer of early dawn to
pass into a grey light, that, while it did not render the torches
unnecessary, exhibited in strange and grotesque shades the group of dark
figures, their changing faces, moving heads, and inauspicious gestures,
on which the gleams of the torches flickered faintly, in struggles with
the rising morn. Above them, the dangling noose claimed her averted eye,
and sent through her nerves shivers that seemed to make the blood run
back in the veins, and stagnate about the heart. In any other position
but that in which she was placed, she would have made the castle ring
with involuntary screams; and it was only the intense anxiety with which
she watched every sound in the distance, in the struggling hope that
Cockburn would not make his appearance, that bound her down in the
silent, breathless mood which she now exhibited. Neither could she have
borne the extraordinary spectacle below her casement, had it not been
that her wish to watch every indication in the direction of Tushielaw,
overcame the feelings inspired by the moving tumult of fierce men that
waited there for the blood of her husband. Sometimes the thought found
its way through her anxiety--why did they not call for or visit her? But
the solution was not difficult; for she knew that men bent on purposes
of cruelty, do not court the mediation of women. And then again she
meditated, for a moment, a descent to them, and an attempt, by throwing
herself at the feet of the king, to secure, by anticipation, mercy to
her husband, when he might, if ever he should, be found. This last
thought was passing through her mind, and she had intuitively drawn her
clothes around her bosom, as a preparation for her rising resolution,
when her husband's horn, in all its well-known windings, struck her ear.
That sound had hitherto inspired the pulses of a living heart, and sent
through her veins the delightful tumult of a gratified hope; it had been
the prelude to the close embrace of affection; the flourish of joy on
the meeting again of separated hearts. It was now the death-knell of
both. She would have sunk to the ground as the sound fell on her ear,
but that the recess of the casement sustained her powerless frame. After
a few moments of insensibility, she again opened her eyes; and the first
vision that presented itself to her, was her husband marching into the
castle between two rows of the king's troops. He came nobly forward,
with a free, erect carriage, and a look undaunted by the scowls that
fell on him from every side. On coming up to the king, who stood in a
haughty, indignant attitude, he was prepared to throw himself at his
feet, when his eye caught the rope, with the noose at the end of it,
hanging from the buttress. He started, and threw a hurried look up to
the casement, where Marjory sat watching his every movement; but his
fortitude returned again, and making a step forward, he threw himself at
the feet of the king.
"Here doth an humble subject," he said, "deposit the loyalty he oweth to
his lawful king."
"On the eve, or in the midst of rebellion," cried James, in ironical
anger. "Seize the rebel! One caught in the act, maketh a good beginning.
Four reigns of Jameses have been merely borne or suffered, by beggarly
tolerance, by these Border sovereigns, and the best part of a kingdom
made an arena for the strife of the contention of petty kings, who rob,
and steal, and kill on all hands, heedless whether the victim be king or
knave. This shall be ended--by the faith of Scotland's king it shall!
'Habit and repute,' is good evidence by our old law against common
thieves; and I ask my nobles, too good a jury for such caitiffs, what a
common thief deserves?"
"To be strung up to the buttress," replied several voices, in deep
hollow sounds, that rung fearfully round the recesses of the ballium,
and reached the ear of Marjory.
"Parys Cockburn of Henderland," cried James, "hath, by a jury of our
nobles, been deemed worthy to die the death of a thief, and a rebel
against our authority. Let him be forthwith hanged till he be dead, on
the buttress of his own tower, as an example to evil doers in time to
come."
A quick movement of simultaneous, and, in many cases, intuitive
agitation, followed this order. Two men seized the unfortunate
gentleman, and proceeded to bind his hands behind his back, while the
executioner proceeded to let go the end of the rope, so as to bring
within his reach the noose, which had previously been purposely
elevated, so as to be more exposed to the eyes of the beholders. Every
step of these proceedings was observed by Marjory from her seat at the
window; and it was not till she saw the men lay hold of her husband, and
the executioner proceed to adjust the rope, that she ceased to be able
to watch the details of this extraordinary mock trial and real
condemnation. At that moment she uttered a loud scream, and fell on the
floor in a state of insensibility, from which she was roused by her
little daughter, Helen, who had come from her bed to ascertain her
mother's illness. Rising in a state of frenzy, she sought the door of
the apartment, with a view to throw herself between the king and her
husband; but the door was locked in the outside--a precaution,
doubtless, taken by the king's orders, to prevent a scene of a woman's
unavailing grief. The prospect, now, of being forced to remain in a
chamber a few feet above the gallows on which her husband, and the
object of her strongest and softest affections, was to be suspended, and
hanged like a common malefactor, rose on her bewildered view. Though she
might place her hands over her eyes, the _sound_ of his death would
reach her ear--the jerk of the fatal cord, the struggle of the choking
breath, the last sigh of her beloved Parys, would come to her, and
reason might remain to bear it. If she could close up both eyes and
ears, her fancy would exaggerate the acts performing around her, and
fill her mind with shapes and forms, if possible more hideous than the
dread spectres of the waking sense. Breaking loose from Helen, and also
from Hector--who had joined his sister, and had from the window got some
glimpse of the dire operations in progress in the court, and thus
ascertained the cause of his mother's scream--she ran round the
apartment, in the way of unfortunate maniacs, till her brain became
dizzy with the quick circumgyrations, and then stood ready to fall,
staring wildly at her children, who had followed her in her progress
with loud screams. Meanwhile, the buzz of the preparations for the
execution fell on her ear, and, running to the window, she held forth
her extended arms, and implored the king, in wildly pathetic words and
moans, to spare her husband. The king never moved his head; but many of
the men turned up their grim, embrowned faces, fixed their eyes on her
beautiful countenance, and saw her white arms wildly sawing the air,
without showing any indications of being moved. Cockburn himself, who
stood with his arms bound behind his back, his armour off, and the neck
of his doublet rolled down on his shoulders, could not trust his eye in
the direction of his wife and children, but stood with a look fixed on
the grey walls of his tower. The voice of the king was now heard,
crying, "Is everything prepared?" and, "Yes, my liege," rolled forth
from the mouth of the rough-toned executioner. The unfortunate Marjory,
in this extremity, turned from the window, and rushed into a
neighbouring room, from which a few steps of descent led to a window not
so far removed from a broken part of the wall as to prevent her getting
to the ground. In this, by a mighty effort, she succeeded, hearing, as
she hastened away, the shrill cries of her children following her, and
imploring her to return. Her brain was fired beyond the capability of
sane thought. The soldiers, who saw her fall on the ground, lifted her
up, and then pushed her rudely away from the ground they were ordered to
guard, confronting her otherwise impossible efforts to get forward by
their swords, and threatening to do her bodily injury if she dared to
resist their authority.
At this moment she heard a voice commanding some one to seize and
confine the wife of the culprit; and, getting more confused by the
occurrence of new and more harrowing incidents--the cries of her
children sounding from the window--the noise of those forwarding the
execution, if not at that very time, binding her husband to the gallows,
filling all the air with a confused buzz--and the coming of the men to
seize and secure her--she sprang forward out of a postern, and, with the
rapid step of flying despair, endeavoured to get beyond the dreadful
sounds which haunted her ear. In her flight--the consequence of the spur
of frenzy, as much as of a wish to lessen pain which was
insufferable--she came to the Henderland Linn, a mountain stream, that
falls rolling down the heights with a loud noise. It was much swelled,
and the waters were gushing and roaring over a ledge of rock that
crosses its course, and forms in that quarter a cascade--beautiful in
certain states of the river, but frightful when the spirit of the storms
has sent down the red stream to dash over the height. The noise was
welcome to her; and, exhausted, she threw herself down on a seat by the
side of the linn;[4] yet, so quick is the ear to catch, through other
sounds, that of the cause of a pregnant grief, that she heard the
increased noise of the crowd at the Castle, consequent on the execution
of the sentence of condemnation of her husband--a swelling shout, as of
a completed triumph, came on the wind; and, unable to bear this
consummation of all her woes, she ran forward, and threw herself down
with her head in the line of the cascade, that the roar of the waters
might drown the dreadful sound.
How long she lay in that extraordinary predicament, she was never able
to tell; but the sound of the roaring waters rang in her ear for many an
after day. When she ventured to raise her head, everything seemed quiet
at Henderland Tower; and the silence now appeared to her more dreadful
than the former excitement. The storm, which had been gradually ceasing,
was lulled, and the morn had now attained to a grey daylight. She knew
not what step to pursue. She would remain, and she would not remain; she
would return to the Tower, and she trembled at the thought. Starting up,
she began to retrace her steps slowly back through the wood, stopping at
every interval of a few moments, to listen if she could hear any sound.
Looking around, she saw, disappearing from an old road that led away to
Tushielaw, the last of the king's troops; and she omened sadly that they
had completed their work. She hesitated again, whether she should
proceed to a place where she would inevitably behold a sight that might
unsettle her reason. But whether could she fly? What could she do? Her
little children were there; it was still her home, and the dead body of
her beloved husband was also there. But judgment might vacillate
according to its laws; her feet had an impulse forward, which philosophy
might not explain. She was hastening towards the Castle, and she
scarcely knew that she was occupied in that act, in the absence of
distinct volition. Looking up, she saw an old domestic running towards
her; who, on coming up, wished her to relinquish her determination to go
towards the Castle, and requested her to sojourn for a time in the
woods, or wait till she sent for a jennet, to carry her to some house.
She would give no explanation of her reasons for this advice; but looked
terrified and confused when Marjory put to her some broken words of
interrogation. Marjory could abide no parley, and, gently pushing the
old attendant aside, hurried forward to the Castle, and entered the
postern. The ballium was empty; the retainers of her husband had been
marched off before the forces of the king; and any domestics that were
left had fled to the woods in terror. She lifted her eye to the
buttress, and saw suspended there the dead body of her husband. At the
window of her apartment were her children, looking on the dreadful
spectacle. The two elder had cried till their throats were dried and
paralysed; and the youngest, who understood nothing of these
proceedings, laughed when it saw its mother, and clapped its little
hands for joy.
A knife, that lay alongside the place of execution, was seized by the
unhappy wife; and, through a loophole that was opposite to the rope, she
stretched her hand, and severed the fatal cord. The body fell with a
crash upon the ground. Life was extinct; but who would convince the
frantic wife that her beloved Parys was gone for ever? She hung upon the
dead body till, as the day advanced, the terrified domestics came in,
and took her away from the harrowing spectacle. Force had to be applied
to effect the humane purpose; and, for many a night, the screams that
came from the west wing of Henderland spoke eloquently the misery of
this child of misfortune. Cockburn was buried in the chapel ground near
the Tower. Some time afterwards, when her grief could bear the recital,
she wished to know what took place between her husband and the two
messengers on that dreadful night--and she was gratified by the
intelligence. Scott of Tushielaw had got intelligence of Cockburn's
intentions, and was upon the watch to defend his property. A severe
conflict ensued, in which several men on both sides were severely
wounded. In the very midst of the fray, Ralph rode up to Cockburn, and
delivered his message; but the proud chief replied, that he would face
King James if he were the Prince of Evil himself; but that he could not
pay his respects to his king till he first humbled the proud Tushielaw.
A like effort was made by Thomas, and with a similar result. In fact, it
appeared that Cockburn entertained no fear of danger from the visit of
the king, and treated the story of the gallows' rope as a mere vision of
some terrified mind; at least, if he had any doubts on that subject--and
reports of the fiery temper of the king might have roused his
suspicions--he conceived that a bold bearing would do him more good than
a pusillanimous demeanour; and, as for flight, he despised it, as well
as disapproved of it, on grounds of fancied prudence, seeing that he
would thereby admit his guilt, and prove his pusillanimity, while it
might ultimately turn out that the king's intentions were not hostile,
whereby he would be exposed to the ridicule and scorn of both king and
subjects. Having beat off Scott's retainers, and secured in this way, as
he thought, a fancied victory, he marched direct on to his own Tower;
and, as he approached, sounded his horn in his usual way, to tell his
wife that he entertained no fear, and to impress upon the mind of the
king the boldness of the innocence of a man who had only been performing
an act of self defence, in teaching an old enemy that he would not
commit an assault upon him again with impunity.
In the course of time, Marjory Cockburn recovered slightly from the
effects of these terrible visitations, and often she expressed her
surprise that Lailoken's prophecy about the elm tree had not been proved
by the events of that night; but some people thought that King James,
who knew the prophecy well, wished to reduce the credit of soothsaying,
and therefore hanged Cockburn on the buttress of the Tower, instead of
the tree. Her little children played, as usual, round her; and, if a
relenting fate had had in reserve any means for alleviating her grief,
surely they might have been found in the prattle of innocence, and the
hopes of a mother; but it was not ordained that she should be thus
relieved. Every day saw a change on her; she gradually declined, till
she took on the appearance of a skeleton. About three years after the
death of Cockburn, Marjory died, doubtless, of that disease which
(though discredited by many altogether) kills more mortals than typhus
itself--a broken heart. The property had previously been escheated to
the king, and the name of the Cockburns of Henderland never flourished
again. She was buried in the grave of her beloved Parys; and some
relation, who knew the loves and misfortunes of the pair, caused the
foresaid stone to be erected, with the inscription we have copied, and
shall copy again--"Here lie Parys of Cockburn and his wife Marjory."
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The old story of Scott of Harden and the hay sow, is well
known.
[4] Few travellers on the Borders have passed unnoticed the
"lady's seat."--ED.
THE EXPERIMENTER.