THE DEATH FEUD.
Then pale, pale grew her tearfu' cheek,
"Let ane o' my sons three
Alane guide this emprise, your eild
May ill sic travel dree!
O where were I, were my dear lord,
And a' my sons to bleed;
Better to brook the wrong, than sae
To wreck the high misdeed."
_Hardyknute._
Several days passed; and though the ship had certainly come from
France, and lay near the Beacon Rock, with all her sails furled,
there came no tidings of the widow's son. Horsemen rode east, and
horsemen rode west; the burly Roger of Westmains wore himself almost
to a shadow, and every steed in the stables was completely knocked
up; but no trace of Florence Fawside had been discovered, from the
time he left the barge of M. de Villegaignon, at the old wooden pier
of Leith. And now, with the reader's permission, we will go back a
little in our story.
The Fawsides of that ilk were neither powerful nor wealthy, and their
purses bore no proportion to their pride or their pedigree; but they
were landed barons of good repute, who took (or gave, which matters
not) their name from their own property, bringing thence in time of
war or tumult forty armed men to the king's host. Faithful and true
in times of treason and invasion, this fine old race had never failed
the Scottish crown; but a deadly, bitter, and inextinguishable feud,
one of those hereditary and transmitted hatreds peculiar to some
Scottish families, existed between them and the Hamiltons of Preston,
whose lofty baronial tower stands about three miles distant from
Fawside Hill.
William of Fawside served under David I., in his war against Stephen
of England, and saved his life at the Battle of Northallerton. For
this service he received, that night, a charter written on the head
of a kettle-drum, the only piece of parchment which the Chancellor,
Bishop Engelram, had at hand, and it is remarkable for a laconic
simplicity peculiar alike to the age and country:--
"_David Dei Gratiæ Rex Scottorum_, to all his people greeting. Know
ye that I have granted unto William, son of Adam, son of John of
Fawside, the right of pasturage on Gladsmuir, in perpetual gift,
until the Day of Doom."
Now, in future years, long after the saintly David and the mailed
knight who fought by his stirrup at Northallerton had been gathered
to their fathers, there sprang up the Hamiltons, whose tower of
Preston was adjacent to this muir or waste land; and the charter of
the Fawsides was deemed sufficiently vague to make them claim the
right of having the pasturage in common. Scotsmen required little
excuse for unsheathing the sword in those sturdy old times; and
hence, about this miserable tract of ground, which was covered with
broom, whin, heather, and huge black boulder-stones, the rival barons
quarrelled and fought from generation to generation, carrying their
cause of feud even to the foot of the throne. More than once, in the
time of James IV., Fawside and Preston, with their armed followers,
had fought a desperate combat at the Market-cross of Edinburgh, and
been forcibly expelled by the citizens, led by their provost, Sir
Richard Lawson, of Boghall and Highrigs, who perished at Flodden.
Again and again, they had been forfeited by the Parliament, outlawed
by the King, and excommunicated by the Abbot of Holyrood; but each
maintained himself in his strong old tower, and seemed never a whit
the worse.
When the Court of Session was established by James V., their dispute
"anent meithes and marches" was brought forward, and their case was
the first on the roll; but during its discussion (which sorely
puzzled lawyers who were unable to sign their names) they so beset
the lords with fire and sword on the highway and in their own
residences, each threatening to cut off all who were friendly to the
other, that the plea was indignantly thrust aside, and they were left
to settle it by the old Scottish arbiter of justice, the broadsword.
They were the terror of East Lothian; they fought whenever they met,
and each houghed, killed, or captured the sheep and cattle of the
other, whenever they were found straying upon the disputed territory.
About twenty years before the period of our story, Sir John Fawside
and Claude Hamilton of Preston (both of whom had fought valiantly at
Flodden, and rendered each other good service in that disastrous
field), accompanied by several gentlemen, their friends, at the
particular request of the good King James V.--the King of the Commons
and Father of the Poor, as he loved to style himself,--met on
Gladsmuir, with the solemn intention of peacefully adjusting the
long-vexed question of their boundaries, and setting march-stones
upon the common. They were attended by certain learned notaries, who
had been duly examined and certified by the bishop of their diocese,
"as being men of faith, gude fame, science, and law;" but the tedium
and technicalities of these legal pundits proved too dreary for such
"stoute and prettie men," as an old diarist terms our two
feudatories; and, in short, Sir John and Hamilton soon came to high
words. In the dispute, Roger of Westmains closed up beside his
leader, and on drawing his sword, received a stroke from the
truncheon of an adversary. Roger ran him through the body, and on
the instant all came to blows in wild _melée_. Every sword was out
of its scabbard, every hand uplifted, and every tongue shouting
taunts and the adverse cries of--
"A Hamilton! a Hamilton!"
"Fawside--'Forth and fear nocht!'"
The notaries tucked up the skirts of their long black gowns, and
fled, while the clash of swords continued on the grassy common, where
many a horse and man went down; but the Hamiltons proved the most
powerful, being assisted by the vassals of their kinsman, the Earl of
Yarrow. Fawside was slain, and all his followers were routed, and
pursued by the exulting victors up the grassy brae to the gates of
the tower, on the iron bars of which the Hamiltons struck with their
sword-blades, in token of triumph and contempt.
When the brave Sir John fell, his neighbours were uncharitable enough
to regret that he had not (before his departure) given Preston a
mortal wound; as all deemed it a pity that two such fiery and
restless spirits should be separated for a time, even by the barriers
of the other world. Denuded of his knightly belt and sword, Sir
John's body was found among the green whins upon the moor, and was
buried in the church of Tranent, where a tablet in the north wall
_still_ bears his arms, surmounted by a helmet, and inscribed
simply,--
"John Fawside of that Ilk."
Three bullets fired from calivers were found in his body. His widow
had these carefully extracted, with the intention of returning them
to Claude Hamilton with terrible interest; and thrice she dipped the
dead man's dagger in the blood that oozed from his wounds, with the
hope that, in a future time, her oldest boy might cleanse the blade
in the blood of the slayer.
Dame Alison was a fierce and stern woman, "animated by such terrible
passions as the heroines of the middle ages alone possessed." The
partner and partaker of all her husband's ideas, his rights and
wrongs--real or imaginary,--she now became inspired by one prevailing
thought, and one only--_revenge_;--and so absorbed was she by this
devouring passion, that nothing in this world seemed to possess the
least interest or value, unless it might feed this demon, or further
the terrible object she had in view. Secluded in her gloomy tower,
with her two sons, William and Florence at her knee, she told them a
thousand times the dark, bloody story of the old hereditary feud and
hate--of their father's fall, and how, when tall men and strong
soldiers, they must avenge it, by slaying him who proved his
destroyer in time of truce and tryst--slaying him as they would a
wolf in his den, or a serpent in his lair. And as she poured these
wild incentives to future bloodshed into their boyish ears, she would
point to where the tower of Preston reared its tall grim outline
between them and the sea, and say such things as such a mother,
living in that wild age and warlike land, alone could say, till the
little impulsive hearts of the boys panted like her own, in
anticipation of the hour that would lay Hamilton at their feet, and
avenge that day's slaughter on Gladsmuir and Fawside brae.
She gave each one of the bullets found in her husband's corpse; the
third she reserved and wore at her neck, with the intention that if
her sons' hands failed her when they grew to manhood, she had still
one left for vengeance in her own.
She would have appealed to the king; but the house of Hamilton was
then in the zenith of its power, and complaints against one of a sept
so numerous could find no echo at Falkland or at Holyrood; and so the
years passed on.
Because Sir John had died unconfessed, and had been suspected of
Lollardy, the Vicar of Tranent had at first refused him Church rites.
For this affront, the stern dame denied him the corse-presents
exacted then by the priests, and until the Reformation, in 1559--to
wit, the best cow of the deceased; the _umest-claith_, or uppermost
covering on the bed whereon he lay, together with the silver commonly
called _Kirk-richts_; and farther, she threatened to send Westmains
with a troop of horse, to burn both kirk and vicarage about the ears
of his reverence.
Yearly, on the anniversary of her husband's fall, she went, with hair
dishevelled, feet bare, and a taper in her hand, to hear mass said
for his soul, in the church of Tranent; and after the service, with
an irreverence which even the old vicar failed to restrain, she
invoked the curses of Heaven on the Hamiltons of Preston. Her sons
heard these things; they sank deep into their little hearts, and
absorbed all their thoughts.
Often when she prayed at her husband's tomb (it had now become her
altar) she imagined that strange sounds came from it; that she heard
him chiding her delay in avenging him in this world and joining him
in the next; and these morbid fancies fostered yet more her spirit of
revenge.
By her injunctions, the gudeman of Westmains left nothing undone to
render the boys hardy, stout, and athletic, and expert in the use of
weapons of every kind; thus, ere William, the eldest, who possessed
great comeliness of face and beauty of person, had reached his
twelfth year, he was master of the sword and dagger, the bow and
arquebuse; and he could toss a pike, pitch a bar, or handle a
quarterstaff with the best man in the barony. His brother Florence
had gone to France, as page in the suite of Anne de la Tour de
Vendome (the widowed duchess of the regent, John of Albany), who had
promised Lady Alison he would return the most accomplished cavalier
in Scotland; and, as related, he had now been seven years absent.
Fired by the story which his mother never ceased repeating and
enforcing, by touching references to the empty chair which stood
unused by the hall fire, to the unused plate that was placed daily on
the hall table, to keep alive the memory of the slain man whose rusty
arms and mouldering garments were hung in conspicuous places, and to
all of which Dame Alison hourly drew the attention of her
boys,--fired by the reiteration of all this, one evening, in the
autumn of 1541, when Hamilton of Preston had just returned from the
battle of Haldenrig, where the army of Henry VIII. had been defeated
with considerable slaughter, William Fawside, then in his fourteenth
year, without consulting his mother, Father John of Tranent, or his
warlike preceptor, old Roger of the Westmains, presented himself at
the iron gate of Preston tower, and, while his swelling heart beat
high and his smooth cheek flushed crimson with the consciousness of
his own audacity, he demanded of the surly and bearded warder
admittance to the laird. The servants of the latter narrowly and
insolently scrutinized the boy, who bore the arms of his house,
_gules_, a fess between three besants, worked in crimson and gold on
the breast of his velvet doublet.
"See that he has nae weapon--nae sting aboot him, the young wasp!"
said Symon Brodie, the butler, whose name and convivial habits have
come down to us in a famous old drinking song.
"They are kittle cattle, the Fawsides," whispered Mungo Tennant, the
warder, as they ushered the boy into the high-arched hall, where the
grim old laird was reclining asleep in a huge black leather chair,
covered by a wolf's-skin, and seated near a fire that blazed on the
tiled hearth.
"Bairn!" he exclaimed, with more astonishment than anger, on being
wakened, "what want ye of me?"
"My father's sword!" replied young William boldly.
"Your father!--And who was he, my callant?"
"Sir John of Fawside and that ilk----"
"Aha!"
"He whom ye foully slew under tryst, as all in the Lothians know."
The high, stern brow of old Preston grew black as night. He grasped
the carved arms of his high-backed chair, and for a moment surveyed
the boy with a terrible frown; then, perceiving that he neither
quailed nor shrank under this glance, but stoutly paid it back,
though his little heart trembled at his temerity, Preston relaxed his
ferocity a little, and grimly replied, under his shaggy moustache,
"Ye lie, ye d--d little limmer!--and they who told ye so, foully lie!
I slew him, true; but it was in fair fight, and at open feud, as God
and all braid Scotland be my judge!"
"Be that as you will, I want his sword; and, betide me weal, betide
me woe, I shall have it!"
"His sword?"
"Yes!"
"For what purpose?"
"That ye shall ken anon," replied the boy with flashing eyes and
clenched hands.
"Ye have the dour devilish look o' that termagant Kennedy, your
mother, in ye, lad. You are the widow's son Willie, I suppose?"
"I am. Your insolent grooms here ken me weel; and better shall they
ken me ere this death feud be stanched! But the sword, Claude
Hamilton of Preston!--I say, my father's sword!"
"But what want ye with it, loon?"
"To stab you to the heart, when the time comes," responded the
fearless boy.
"By my faith! this little devil takes fire like the match of an
arquebuse!" growled the tall, grim laird.
"My father's sword, foul riever!" continued Willie, stamping his foot.
Old Preston now laughed outright, for the boy's daring charmed his
warlike spirit.
"Though lawful spulzie, taken in combat and under harness, receive
the sword, and welcome, bairn," replied Preston, unhooking from the
wall one of those long cross-guarded and taper-bladed swords used in
the early part of the fifteenth century, and handing it the boy, who
trembled with stern exultation as he there kissed the hilt of
polished steel. "It was good King James's gift to your father on
that bloody morning when first we forgot our quarrel and fought side
by side, like brither Scots, on the green slope of Flodden Hill,
where our best and bravest were lying on the brae-side thick as the
leaves in Carberry Wood. Take the weapon, bairn. Your father was a
leal and gallant man--rest him, God! for Scotland had no better,--and
I, the man he hated most on earth, avow it; and ill would it become
Claude Hamilton to keep the sword of such a father from such a son.
Take it, bairn, and welcome; and I pray Heaven that we may meet no
more!"
"False carle, we _shall_ meet, and that thou shalt see!" responded
the boy, pressing the sword to his breast, while his eyes filled with
tears.
Symon Brodie, the butler, here raised his huge hand to smite the boy
down, but the laird interposed.
"Beware, fellow!" said he, "and let the bairn alone; yea, and let him
speak, too. What have I to fear from a fushionless auld carline and
twa halfling laddies?"
"I have been told that you fear not God, although you are a Hamilton;
but I will teach you, carle, to fear me!"
"A brave lad!" exclaimed the old laird, with an admiration which he
could not repress. "I love to see a lad stand up thus for his
father's feud and his family honour. But let this matter end; in twa
hunder years and mair we have surely had enough of it! Give me thy
hand, Willie o' Fawside, and I will ask pardon for slaying thy
father. 'Twas done in hot blood and under harness; and I will even
pay unto Mass John of Tranent a hundred French crowns to say funeral
services for his soul's repose."
"My hand!"
"Yes, bairn; an auld man asks it of thee."
"Never!" replied William Fawside, shrinking back. "If I gave a hand
to thee, my mother would slay me like a cur; and I would well deserve
the death. So fare ye well! with a thousand thanks for this fair
gift, until--we meet again."
And they did meet, most fatally, five years afterwards.
William Fawside, then in his nineteenth year, was a tall and handsome
cavalier, than whom there was none more gay or gallant in costume,
manner, or bearing at the court of the Regent Arran, to whom he
officiated as Master of the Horse. He was the most graceful dancer
on Falkland Green, and there, also, the victor of the ring and butts,
with spear and bow; but when he and Claude of Preston, then a man
well up in years, confronted each other in the lists under the
southern brow of the Castle Rock of Edinburgh, to fight a solemn
duel, to which the taunts and open accusations of murder (for so the
widow styled her husband's fall on Fawside Brae) had brought him, the
young Sir William saw, without pity, that his grey-haired adversary
was animated by a reluctance which he was at no pains to conceal, for
on many a day of battle his courage had been put to the sternest
proof.
Cartels of defiance had been duly exchanged; mass had been said in
the chapel of Our Lady in the Portsburgh; and there, in presence of
the assembled citizens of Edinburgh, whose provost, William Craik,
appeared on horseback in complete armour, and before a chair, in
which sat George Earl of Errol, hereditary lord high constable of
Scotland, as vicar-general to the infant queen, wearing on his
surcoat the three shields of his house, in a field _argent_, and
within a listed space, sixty paces long and forty broad, stood the
young and resolute challenger, on foot, at the eastern end, and
Preston at the western, all according to the custom of judicial
combats. Each was in full armour of unpolished but highly-tempered
steel, with open helmets; each bore a Scottish target, a sword, and
dagger.
They were sworn solemnly by the constable, "That they had not brought
into the lists other armour or weapons than such as were allowed by
Scottish law, or any firework engine, witch's spell or enchantment,
and that they trusted alone to their own valour, as God and His holy
Evangelists should help them!"
It was then proclaimed that no man should speak or utter a cry, under
penalty of a fine equal in value to twenty cattle; or put forth hand
or weapon, under pain of forfeiting limb and life to the queen--the
poor little unconscious queen, who was then in her cradle, in
time-hallowed Holyrood.
The constable rose from his seat, and waved his white truncheon
thrice, exclaiming,
"Let them go! Let them go! Let them go, and do their worst!"
This was the usual formula; and then they rushed on each other.
Preston fought warily; but the fury of his adversary and the wounds
he inflicted soon raised the old man's blood, and, by one tremendous
stroke of his two-handed sword, he clove the widow's son--her
boasted, her fair and comely Willie--through helmet and bone, to the
chin, slaying him in a moment; as the quaint records of the lord high
constable's court have it, "cleaving him through harnpan and harns to
ye bearde with ane straik of his quhinger."
His body was sent home for burial, but denuded of his armour,--every
buckle of which had been that morn adjusted by his mother's
hands,--of his jewels and rings, which, according to the form of
judicial combats in Scotland, became, together with the posts and
rails of the lists, the fees of the constable's servants.
Lady Alison was on her knees at her husband's altar-tomb in Tranent
Church, imploring God to aid and to protect her son, when old Roger
of Westmains arrived, with his eyes swollen by weeping, and his heart
swollen by rage and sorrow, to detail the death of her eldest boy by
the same relentless sword that slew his father! The fierce, stern
woman heard him to an end, and then fell prostrate on the tomb, in a
paroxysm of grief, and perhaps of remorse.
If the latter found way in her breast, it did not linger long. Three
days she remained in a darkened chamber, without speaking to any one;
on the morning of the fourth she came out, graver, more gloomy, and,
if possible, paler than before, and said briefly to Westmains--
"Write to France--to the chateau of Anne of Vendome, and desire
Florence to come home without delay. I have yet the bullets that
were found in the body of his father; and if the widow of John of
Albany hath kept her royal word, I may yet have sure vengeance on
yonder murderer and his brood!"
"The tenants have brought their herezelds," said Westmains in a low
voice.
"Remit them; but say, to put their swords to the grindstone, for the
day cometh when I, Alison Kennedy, shall need them all."
The bailie referred to the gift given in case of death to the heir of
an over-lord, generally the best cow, yielded by those who held of
the said lord an oxgang of land.
There were now TWO places vacant at the hearth, two platters unused
on the table, and two scutcheons hung in the kirk of Tranent; but the
mangled images of those who were gone remained enthroned more darkly
than ever in the heart of the widow and mother!