THE JOURNEY.
Right hand they leave thy cliffs, Craigforth!
And soon that bulwark of the north,
Grey Stirling, with its tower and town,
Upon their fleet career look'd down.
_Scott._
On the way from Cadzow to Stirling, though frequently honoured by the
society of the regent, who requested him to ride near his person,
Florence was sad, sombre, and abstracted; for his heart was full of
fiery and bitter thoughts. In Arran's train there rode a hundred
horse, mostly gentlemen, all well mounted, richly apparelled, and
splendidly armed. As many of these were Hamiltons, they viewed with
some jealousy and mistrust the sudden familiarity which seemed to
exist between the stranger and their chief. The events which had
taken place since the night of his landing at Leith had almost soured
his heart against his own countrymen; at least these events had
filled it with a thirst for vengeance on all who were in league
against the regent Arran; for with those, and such as those, he
correctly classed the men who had laid such deadly snares for his
destruction, and had pursued with such rancour one who had done them
no wrong.
Champfleurie he had resolved to slay, without much preface or
ceremony, on the first available opportunity. He had similar
benevolent views regarding the laird of Millheugh, the Lord Kilmaurs,
and so many others, that, had he possessed the hands of Briareus, and
had in every hand a sword, he would not have found them too many to
fulfil his mental and hostile engagements. His old inborn and
hereditary hatred of Preston was still unwavering, though tinged with
compunction; for he could not but remember and acknowledge the
generosity of the old man on whose grey hairs he had hurled his
scorn, his obliquy, and defiance.
And then came to memory his love--his unknown love--so beautiful and
so playfully mysterious--a countess, yet one whose name he had failed
to discover among the many countesses who, by the policy or loyalty
of their husbands, clustered about the person of Mary of Lorraine;
for it was becoming evident to all, that if a false move in the great
games of war and politics were made by Arran, she, when supported by
the Guises, a French army under D'Essé d'Epainvilliers, and those
Scottish lords who adhered to her, would not fail to obtain for
herself that which she prized more than life--the regency of Scotland.
The train of Arran rode rapidly, to reach Stirling in time, lest the
train of the queen-mother, who was coming from Edinburgh, might enter
the town before them; and on this journey Florence could perceive,
from incidents that occurred, how the people and the times were
changing.
The wild white bulls were seen in great numbers about the woods of
Cumbernauld, and the gentlemen of the regent's troop pursued and shot
one of great size and beauty for mere sport, while it was grazing on
the wild furzy heath of Fannyside-muir. They assigned the carcass to
three of the Queen's bedesmen, or blue-gown beggars, who were
passing, and then rode heedlessly on their way; though on an oak by
the wayside there hung the festering and hideous remains of two poor
Egyptians, who had been put to death by Malcolm Lord Fleming of
Cumbernauld for having slain one of these useless white oxen for food.
At Templar-denny, they crossed the Carron by an ancient bridge of
four pointed Gothic arches, built by the Knights of the Temple in the
reign of David I.; and there, as the glittering train of Arran rode
through the village, the whole population were assembled on the bank
of the river, in wild commotion, to duck a woman accused of
witchcraft, while the air was rent by shouts of--
"A witch! a witch!--banes to the bleeze, and soul to the deil!"
The victim was a hag, old enough, and ugly enough, to support the
character. She had dwelt apart from all in a wretched hut upon the
haunted Hill of Oaks, and was accused of working much evil to a man
who once mocked her years. By one spell she had stopped his mill for
nine days and as many nights; thus, though the Carron swept through
the mill-race with the fury of a summer flood, the old moss-encrusted
and wooden wheel stood still and immovable; but when it _did _turn,
it was with a vengeance indeed! It whirled with such velocity that
the mill took fire and was soon reduced to ashes; and all this she
had achieved by the simple agency of burying a black cat alive, and
casting above it three handfuls of salt.
She shrieked piteously for aid and for mercy, as Arran's glittering
train swept past; but the age of chivalry was gone--vile superstition
had taken its place; and all these hundred lords, knights, and
gentlemen, rode on their way, abandoning this unhappy being to the
fury of a mob, who soon ended her sufferings in the waters of the
Carron, which swept her body to the Firth.
The Reformation, with the superstition of witchcraft, grew and
flourished side by side in Scotland.
As the regent's train traversed the district famed still as the
Scottish Marathon, a proof was seen of the progress the whole kingdom
was making towards a universal apostasy from Rome. Though a body of
Cistercian nuns, on a pilgrimage from the priory of Emanuel, on the
Avon, were heard singing the _sexte_, or noonday service of their
order, in the chapel of St. Mary at Skoek, and the harmony of their
sweet voices came delightfully on the soft wind that swayed the
masses of wavy grain, and rustled the foliage of the Torwood at
Bannockburn, one of those crosses which piety of old had placed in
almost every Scottish village, had been overthrown in the night; the
arms of this symbol of redemption had been shattered, and the effigy
of the Great Martyr was dashed to fragments, which were strewed over
the roadway.
Florence was neither devout nor bigoted, yet, like many of the
regent's train, he felt that there was something in this new
spectacle and sacrilege which deeply wounded his heart, and all the
old traditions--if we may so name the solemn faith in which his
mother reared him, and in which so many of his ancestors had
died--rushed like a flood upon his soul. Several gentlemen checked
their horses, and frowned or muttered; others smiled heedlessly and
covertly, for the day was coming when all reverence for the cross and
triple crown of Rome would be lost amid the stern opposition of one
portion of the Scottish nation and the apathetic indifference of the
other.