LADY ALISON.
Oh, get thee gone! thou mak'st me wrong the dead,
By wasting moments consecrate to tears,
In idle railing at a wretch like thee!
A mother rarely will with patience hear
A true reproach against a living son,
Far less a taunt directed at the dead.
_Firmillian._
Preparations for war between Scotland and England progressed rapidly.
Though the religious, and, in some degree, the political principles
of the Regent Arran were unsettled, he evinced the utmost activity in
his military arrangements; and in the south the Duke of Somerset was
scarcely less energetic. Too well aware, by the history of the past,
that the designs of England were other than merely matrimonial, that
her inborn spirit of grasping ambition and aggression was abroad, and
that her kings and governors had never respected truce or treaty,
peace or promise, the Earl of Arran left nothing undone to attach the
malcontent nobles to his own person. He ordered all the border
castles to be repaired, strengthened, and garrisoned; he ordained the
sheriffs of counties, the stewards of stewartries, the provosts of
cities, and all the great barons, to train the people to arms, to the
use of the bow and arquebuse, by frequent weapon-shows and musters.
Old seamen who had served under Sir Andrew Wood, the valiant Bartons,
and others, he encouraged to equip armed caravels and gallant
privateers, with orders to sink, burn, and destroy; while on land he
strove, by threats or entreaties, to crush the bitter feuds that
existed between clan and clan or lord and laird, that all might
reserve their united strength and sharpest steel for the common enemy.
Like the loyal lords, tue malcontents mustered and trained their
vassels, but were secretly watching the current of events; while
among the people, Catholic and Protestant, reformed and unreformed
(_i.e._, heretic and idolater, as they pleasantly stigmatized each
other), all for a time merged their disputes in the common cause, and
armed them side by side, for the defence of their mother country.
The reformers were undoubtedly in the interest of Reformed England,
and averse to Catholic France; hence "a miraculous shower of
puddocks" (_Anglicè_, frogs) which fell about this time somewhere in
Fife, tended greatly to perturb the souls of the pious and godly, as
being forerunners of a French army, headed by the Cardinal of
Lorraine, or "the popish and bloodie Duke of Guise."
Time passed, and the end of August drew nigh; but there came no
tidings from Scotland's faithless ally, of that armed force so
solemnly promised, by those letters which Florence had brought from
the Louvre, and at last the Regent Arran began to find that he must
trust to himself alone to crush traitors within, and face his foes
beyond the realm.
So energetic were the measures of Florence, that within three weeks
from the time of his leaving Stirling, a long line of such beacons as
the regent desired was established upon all the hills near the coast
of the German Sea, and from the high rocky bluff of St. Abb to the
summit of the palace of Linlithgow. Another line of beacons was also
placed along the borders from sea to sea, on the highest eminences,
and on many of the castles and peels, which had been strengthened by
the engineers who came to Scotland two years before, with the five
thousand men-at-arms, sent over by Francis I., under George
Montgomerie, laird of Larges, in Ayrshire--famous in history as that
Comte de Larges who slew Henry II. of France in a tournament. As in
the older time of James II., and by the ordinance of his twelfth
parliament, Florence posted armed watchmen between Roxburgh and
Berwick and on all the fords of Tweed, and built on Home Castle, the
greatest balefire. One beacon was to be the warning that the enemy
were in motion; two, that they had begun to cross the river; and
four, "all at anis as foure candellis" (to quote Glendook) that they
were in great strength, and on their march for the Lothians.
He left mounted guards composed of the vassals of the loyal border
lords, whose sentinels were to convey instant intelligence of the
foe's advance by day; then by the regent it was ordained that none
should leave their residences, or remove their goods or cattle, as it
was his resolution to defend every hearth and foot of ground to the
last; and the cross of fire was to be the signal to arms! After
completing these arrangements to the entire satisfaction of Arran, to
whom he made his report at Edinburgh, Florence, on one of the last
days of August, returned, with old Roger of Westmains, to his
secluded little fortlet, to muster his retinue, and await the summons
to the field.
Meanwhile, Glencairn, Cassilis, Kilmaurs, and other ignoble lords of
their party, were absent at their own estates, superintending the
fortification of their castles and array of their contingents, for
the queen or against her, as the tide of events might make it
suitable for them to act. Bothwell was brooding over his captivity
in the castle of Edinburgh, and planning schemes of vengeance on
Arran, on Mary of Lorraine, and on our hero, whom he conceived to be
in some way implicated in his affairs. Shelly and Patten had reached
London, from whence they joined the army of Somerset.
M. Antoine was composing a new piece of music, in honour of the
intended nuptial alliance with France, and had resolved that it
should rival the marriage ode or epithalamium of the servile
Buchanan. Mary of Lorraine and her ladies were busy with a new
tapestry, as a present for the dauphine. Champfleurie was salving
his sores at Stirling, and taking new lessons in the science of
defence ind destruction. Old Claude Hamilton was also preparing for
war, by deepening the fosse of his tall, grim tower, and like other
barons, was storing up the grain, fuel, and provender of his tenants,
in its spacious vaults, and in the barns and granaries which stood
within its strong barbican while ten brass drakes, imported for him
from Flanders, by Dick Hackerston, peeped their round muzzles over
the parapet of the keep.
On the first evening of his return from the borders, Florence was
seated in the hall with his mother, who occupied her usual window
bench, where she guided her spindle, which whirled on the floor;
while he, dreading a recurrence to her everlasting topic, the
Hamiltons of. Preston, and with his mind now, after an absence of
three weeks, more than ever full of the image of Madeline, affected
to be deeply immersed in the old black-lettered pages of "the
Knightly tale of Gologras and Gawaine," from the quaint press of
Chepman and Millar, printers to his late Majesty James IV., but his
mother soon began to open the trenches, for he heard her muttering,--
"Yes, yes, 'tis a basilisk I must get. Let me see, Master Posset
said that basilisks are hatched from dwarf eggs laid by old cocks;
and that they grow to little winged dragons, whose eyes, as all the
world knoweth, can slay by a single glance. I must get me one, if
all things fail, and let it loose in Preston tower--that one reptile
may destroy the others--yet Gude keep me from evil and witchcraft!"
While muttering thus, slowly and in a manner peculiar to all who live
much alone, or are in the habit of communing with themselves, she
glanced twice or thrice impatiently towards her son but he still read
on. Finding her audible remarks produced no response, she addressed
him.
"Wit ye now, my son, that Preston's niece, the daughter of that foul
Earl of Yarrow, who drew his sword in the fray in which your father
fell, is even now in Preston tower."
"Madeline!" faltered Florence, closing his book.
"Yea, Madeline Home; ye know her name it seems. So, when will there
be a better time than now to form a plan for destroying the whole
brood, root and branch?"
"A worse you mean, mother," said Florence, as the dark story of
Aileen MacNab occurred to him.
"A _better_--I mean what I say; for in the war and tumult of an
invasion, what matter a few lives more or less?"
"Mother, I dare not urge the feud at present," sighed poor Florence.
"Dare not--did I hear you aright? have two acts of common charity--it
may be of merest courtesy that passed between ye in the Torwood, so
blunted the keen resentment which hath lived for so many generations?"
"The regent----"
"Prate not to me of regents--nay, nor of kings," she persisted,
whirling her spindle like lightning.
"And Madel--this countess, she came to Preston----"
"Last night, and this morning she rode forth over Gladsmuir, with a
tasselled hawk on her dainty glove, and Mungo Tennant (oh that I had
him within range of an arquebuse!) in attendance upon her, with a
stand of birds, where a lash should be, on his knave's shoulders.
And they hawked over the whole muir, though 'tis ours if the sword
can fence what the king's charter hath failed to define. So I tell
thee, son, that ere we lose men or harness in fighting the English,
let us have one brave onslaught at Preston tower, and end this matter
for ever."
"Its walls are high, its gate is yetlan iron."
"Pshaw! Hear me: Hamilton expects no attack; what, then, so easy as
at midnight to surround the tower with forty resolute mounted men,
each with a windlan of straw trussed to his saddle-bow; force the
outer gate--John Cargill, the smith at Carberry, says he can ding it
to shivers wi' his forehammer, so e'en take the loon at his word;
kill the keeper; pile the straw at the tower doors, and fire it; set
bakehouse, and brewhouse, and mautkiln in a flame; then kill, by push
of spear and shot of arquebuse, all who seek to escape; smoke them to
death, even as wight Wallace smoked the English at the barns of Ayr.
You pause----"
"By an act of the secret council it was ordained that this matter
should end, mother; for such is the law."
"Hear him, Westmains!" said she with scornful pity, as the
ground-bailie entered, made a low bow, and, according to his wont,
marched straight to the ale-barrel. "I talk of the feud in which his
father and his brother Willie fell; and he quotes law to me like one
of the ten sworn advocates, or a villanous notary of the new college
of justice. I tell thee, malapert bairn, that all the secret
councils in the world cannot alter the ancient law of Scotland, as
written by David II., anent feuds. What says it, Roger?"
"That 'gif the king grants peace to the slayer without the consent of
the nearest friends of him who is slain, these friends may seek
revenge----'"
"Mark ye that, Florence--_may seek revenge_!"
"'Lawfully of him or of them who slew their friend.' Thus 'tis
lawful to prosecute our feud to the death," added the ground-bailie.
"And in this faith I reared thee since thou wert but a wee bairnie,
supping thy first porridge with Father John's apostle-spoon."
"Does not our Scottish law ordain that he who slays another shall be
dragged to trial?" asked Florence.
"Law again! Oh, I shall go mad!" exclaimed Lady Alison, dashing her
spindle from her, and pressing her hands over her grey temples, while
her eyes flashed with fire. "When your father had a doubt in law, he
consulted neither statute nor scrivener, but put his sword to the
grindstone in the yard. Would you call it murder if we slew every
man in yonder tower upon the lea to-night? I trow not. 'Twould be a
righteous act in the eyes of Heaven; and it would be styled by
men--even by those loons whose laws ye quote--a misfortune--a
slaughter committed in _chaud-melle_--even as thy father was slain by
the Hamiltons; and Willie--my brave, my true, my winsome Willie--how
died he?"
"In upholding that which the lord regent justly terms a curse to
Scotland--an hereditary feud."
"Oh, can it be God's desire that I should be driven mad!" exclaimed
Lady Alison, lifting up her voice, her eyes, and hands, with mingled
rage and pity.
"Mother, hear me," urged Florence, as the gentleness and beauty of
Madeline, with the open, honest advances of Claude Hamilton, and
those proffers of peace which were repulsed in an evil moment, and
under the influence of her who now spoke, all came vividly before him.
"Never did one of this house or race talk thus, like a lurdane monk,
like a mouthing abbot, or a craven wretch, but thee! He who slays by
the sword, as Preston slew thy father, shall by the sword be slain;
for so in Holy Writ the blessed hand of God inscribed it. Even Mass
John of Tranent admitteth that!"
Florence felt the truth of what she urged, and something of the old
traditionary hate made his cheek glow with red shame for a moment,
while his heart was heavy with sadness.
"Then, if I slay this man with my sword, mother," said he gently, "am
I in turn to perish by the steel of some one else?"
"Slave!" cried Lady Alison in a voice like a shriek; "did the brave
father to whom, for our shame, I bore thee--did thy brother, who died
in the feud like a true Scottish gentleman--reckon thus--how they
lived or when they died? whom they slew or by whom they were slain?
I trow not! Thou hast become white-livered in France. Anne of
Albany hath deceived me, and made thee a maudlin fool! Out upon
thee--fie! fie! Begone, lest I stain my old hands in blood by
dinging my bodkin into thee!"
With these fierce words, and seeming to concentrate the whole
energies of her wild spirit in a glance of combined scorn and fury,
she struck her right hand upon her busk, swept up the long black
skirt of her dooleweed with the left, and retired from the hall with
the bearing of a tragedy queen.
Roger of Westmains, who had never before witnessed such scenes
between Lady Alison and her son, or any of her family, gazed after
her wistfully, and then surveying the young laird with a perplexed
glance, he shook his white head in a way that might mean anything or
nothing, just as one might choose to construe it, and withdrew after
his fiery mistress.
Then, with the manner of one who had been thoroughly worried,
Florence laid aside his book, took his mantle, sword, and
coursing-hat; and ordering out his favourite grey, galloped from the
tower at a furious pace, he knew not and cared not whither--anywhere
to be rid of his mother's fierce taunts--of his own bitter thoughts
and perplexities.
He had but one fixed wish as he cast his eyes to the green ridge of
Soltra and the greener brow of Dunprender Law, that ere midnight the
red blaze of those beacons he had so recently erected thereon might
warn all Scotland of the coming foe! War itself would be a relief
from the excitement or irritation he endured now.