THE
CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD.
BY JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "HARRY OGILVIE," "OLIVER ELLIS,"
ETC. ETC.
LONDON:
ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, & ROUTLEDGE,
FARRINGDON STREET,
NEW YORK: 56, WALKER STREET.
1862.
PREFACE.
Many of the scenes and episodes which are delineated in the following
story are taken from the annals of Scotland.
Those which belong to romance I leave the reader to discover.
My wish has been to portray the state of the nation and its people
during the reign of the second James, without afflicting the reader
by obsolete words and obscure dialects, which few now care about, and
still fewer would comprehend, but following history as closely as the
network of my own narrative would permit.
In some of the proceedings of the Douglas family, and minor details, it
has suited my purpose to adhere to other sources of information, rather
than the "Peerage," or the folio of Master David Hume, of Godscroft,
the quaint old historian of the House of Douglas.
_March, 1862._
THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD.
CHAPTER I.
THE FOUR COFFINS.
God save the king, and bless the land
In plenty, joy, and peace;
And grant henceforth that foul debate
'Twixt noblemen may cease.--CHEVY CHASE.
On the evening of the 22nd November, 1440, the report of a brass
carthoun, or cannon-royale, as it pealed from the castle of Edinburgh,
made all who were in the thoroughfares below raise their eyes to the
grey ramparts, where the white smoke was seen floating away from the
summit of King David's Tower, and then people were seen hastening
towards the southern side of the city, where the quaint old streets and
narrow alleys opened into the fields, or the oakwoods of Bristo and
Drumsheugh.
Crowds from all quarters pressed towards the Pleasance, the route
by which the great earl of Douglas (duke of Touraine and lord of
Longoville), who had been invited to visit the young king, was expected
to enter the city. Curiosity was excited, as it was anticipated that
his train would be a brilliant one. All in the secluded metropolis of
the north were on tiptoe to behold a sight such as they had not been
gratified with since the ambassadors of Amadeus VIII., duke of Savoy,
had come to ask the hand of the king's little sister, Annabella, for
his son, the valiant Louis Count de Maurienne, to whom, however, she
preferred a Scottish earl, with a Scottish home, on the bonnie banks of
the Clyde.
The boom of the same cannon brought to the bartizan of the great tower
whereon it stood four armed men, who immediately turned their eyes
towards the south.
Two of these were men well up in years. They wore furred caps of
maintenance, denoting their high rank or position, and had long crimson
robes, with capes of ermine that fell to their elbows. Beneath these
flowing garments there glittered at times their steel habergeons, and
the embroidered belts which sustained their swords.
One was a man of a tall figure and noble presence, with a long, grave,
and pleasing face.
The other was equally noble in bearing, but his face was less pleasing
in expression, for his temples were hollow, his eyes keen, his brows
knit, and there played about his thin, cruel lips a crafty but courtly
smile.
"Summon Romanno, the constable; bid him display the king's
standard--call the garrison to their arms--shut gates and barriers,"
were the orders given rapidly by both at the same moment.
The first was Sir Alexander Livingstone, of Callendar, Regent of
Scotland, and governor of the young king, James II., then in his
eleventh year.
The second was Sir William Crichton of that ilk, the Lord Chancellor,
appointed by the Parliament, after the murder of the late King James
I., in the Black Friary, at Perth.
"Red-haired Achanna, with his Judas-coloured red beard, has played his
cards well for us and for the king," said the Chancellor, with a crafty
smile.
"Achanna," replied the Regent, grimly; "yes, a wretch born with
the stamp of hell on his forehead--a hireling clerk, as well as
swashbuckler."
"But a useful man withal, and said to be a go-between of Douglas and
Duke Robert of Albany."
James Achanna, the person to whom they referred, was a red-haired
and red-bearded gentleman, of Galloway, outwardly a stanch adherent
of Douglas, but in the secret pay of his enemies, the Regent and
Chancellor. Thus he had conveyed the artful message by which the
hostile earl, and the chief members of his family, were _lured_ to
visit the court of the young king.
"So he is in sight at last," said the Regent through his clenched
teeth; "do you see his train, my lord?"
"Aye; on the road by Kirk-liberton. He is coming down the brae in his
bravery, with banner and spear, but that pride shall have a fall, for
he comes to his doom."
"But, Chancellor, his countess and her sister," whispered the Regent;
"they--they----"
"Well; what of them?"
"Must they too perish?"
"Let the whole brood perish at one fell swoop," was the fierce
response, in a husky whisper. "Had they but one neck, I tell thee,
Livingstone, it should be laid on the block that awaits the Douglas in
the hall below us."
"Hush!"
"And wherefore hush?" continued the elder statesman, fiercely.
"Know ye not that Sir Patrick Gray loves the earl's cousin?" said the
Regent, glancing hastily at their two companions, who stood a little
way from them.
"Murielle Douglas," replied Crichton, grinding his sharp teeth; "well,
be it so; but I shall give her a colder gudeman than the king's liege
subject, and the Captain of his Guard--will God I shall!"
The Regent waved his gloved hand to impress the caution he wished
his colleague to observe, and, as if afraid to trust his discretion
further, withdrew to a corner of the rampart enclosing the summit of
the great tower, which then formed the donjon or keep of the castle
of Edinburgh; but ever and anon, as the gleam of arms flashed in the
sunlight, on the green pastoral slopes of Liberton, they exchanged a
deep and bitter smile.
Two handsome young men, who had not yet spoken, but who attended
them and stood apart, were sheathed in complete armour, and wore the
beautiful bascinets of that reign; these had a tube for the plume, and
were encircled by a camaile like the old caps of the Templars. They
had gorgeous military girdles and long swords, globular corslets, and
wide hanging sleeves of scarlet cloth lined with yellow silk (the royal
colours), depending from their shoulders; this was a very anomalous
fashion with armour, but formed a portion of the military foppery of
that day.
He with the short beard and black moustache, in the prime of strength
and manhood, is Sir Patrick Gray, a younger son of the lord of Foulis,
and _Captain of the King's Guard_; and he, the less in stature, the
junior in years, with fair hair and merry eyes, is Sir Thomas MacLellan
of Bombie, his cousin and friend, and lieutenant of the same guard,
which the Regent had embodied to protect the person of the young king
from the perils amid which his father had perished--perils which the
house of Douglas seemed about to revive.
"Do you see, gentlemen, how the lances in his train glitter, as they
come rank on rank over yonder long green brae?" said the Regent,
turning round; "by my soul, Lord Chancellor, he has an escort that
might befit a king!"
"A train of cut-throats, swashbucklers, and scrape-trenchers;
MacDouals, MacGhies, Achannas, and MacCombies----"
"Chancellor, do not add MacLellans, I pray you," interrupted the
lieutenant of the guard.
"The broken men of Galloway," continued the Chancellor, wrathfully;
"the bullyrooks of Thrave--outlaws, whose unchristian acts would put
to shame the pagans of Argier or Cathay--of the Soldan or Prester
John! and I say so, under favour, Sir Thomas," he added, turning with
a sudden smile to the lieutenant, who was chief of the MacLellans of
Bombie, a powerful family, whose lands were surrounded by those of the
Douglases and their adherents.
"Do you include the Lord Abbot of Tongland among those rare fellows?"
asked Sir Thomas, who was piqued for the honour of his native province.
"An abbot who acts as the earl's beadsman can be little better," was
the sour reply.
The young man bit his moustache impatiently, but the more politic
Regent, to soothe the irritation which his colleague's words were
inspiring, said hastily to one who had hitherto been silent, "Sir
Patrick Gray, how many followers think you, by your soldier's eye, the
earl hath under his banner yonder?"
"At least two thousand men, with horse and spear, if I may judge by the
breadth of the road, and the cloud of dust they raise," replied the
captain of the guard, with soldier-like brevity and confidence.
"Two thousand!" muttered the Regent; "passing strong for a mere
subject."
"Douglas never leaves his castle gates with less," said MacLellan; "and
wherefore marvel? They are not so many after all for such an earl as
Douglas, when the laird of Roslin's daughter never enters Edinburgh
with less than seventy mounted gentlemen in her train, each clad in a
velvet jupon, with a chain of gold at his neck."
"Two thousand lances," muttered the Chancellor also, stroking his
shaven chin, for beards were only worn by soldiers at that time, and
not always by them.
"And you have but three hundred men-at-arms in garrison here--billmen
and cannoneers?" whispered the Regent.
"But they are all my own vassals, men bred under my roof-tree since
they were boys of the belt; these, with a hundred pikes of the king's
guard, are more than enough for our purpose, within a castle so strong
as this," replied the Chancellor, whose pale lips quivered with the
nervous fury he strove in vain to conceal from the two gentlemen who
stood at the other corner of the bartizan; for a plot had been laid to
destroy the mighty earl of Douglas, one of those dark, terrible, and
sudden plots, which, under the name of _raids_, so frequently convulsed
the kingdom of Scotland, and marked its martial annals with blood and
crime, the only shadows that tinge a great and glorious past.
The soldiers, pages, and idlers of the castle who had been playing at
troy, chess, or shovel-board, for the bonnet pieces and silver pennies
of King James, relinquished their sport, and crowded to the ramparts to
observe the approach of the now obnoxious and turbulent Douglas.
And now, for a time, these four persons described continued to observe
in silence the approaching train of the great feudal peer, the lances
of whose vassalage (among them were many knights, barons, and gentlemen
of his surname) glinted brightly in the evening sun, as they moved
down the northern slope of Liberton, past the old tower built by David
Liberton, sergeant of the overward of the constabulary of Edinburgh,
in the time of David II., and past the older church, the foundation
of which fond tradition unvaryingly ascribed to Macbeth, though,
mysteriously enough, on its demolition in 1815, there was found in
its base an iron medal of the 13th century, inscribed in Russian
characters, "_The Grand Prince St. Alexander Yaroslavitch Neffvskoy_."
On the earl's train disappearing among the wooded hollows which lay
between the city and the furzy slope of Braid and Liberton, the captain
of the guard and his kinsman the lieutenant, with their esquires,
pages, and lacqueys passed forth from the castle, to swell the retinue
of the chief magistrate of the city, Sir Thomas Cranston of that ilk,
baron of Denholm and Stobs, warden of the marches, and one of the
conservators of peace upon the borders, for the steel-gloved provosts
of those stirring times were men of a different metal from the men
of words, who "twaddle" in the same place in this age of steam and
electricity.
As they passed out, the king's master butcher entered the gateway of
the fortress, accompanied by a peddie or foot-boy, bearing a covered
bundle upon a trencher.
This covered bundle contained a _black bull's head_.
"See you _that_, Sir Alexander?" said the Chancellor, twitching the
furred sleeve of his compatriot.
"The black bull's head!" said the other, with an irrepressible shudder.
"Yes; for the banquet to-morrow."
"Holy Dame!"
"It is the fatal signal, to be placed on the table the moment the king
rises."
"The king! Oh, Chancellor," said the Regent, in a voice that turned
almost to a groan, "after all I have urged, mean you that he, poor boy,
shall share the odium of our act--a deed at which one half of Scotland,
and perhaps all France, may cry aloud?"
"Let them cry; the _end_ shall sanctify the means. With Douglas in his
grave, the great seal will be firmer in my hands, the sceptre lighter
in yours, and the crown shall shine the brighter on the head of him
whose father was wronged and slain by such as Douglas in the Black
Friary at Perth."
"I pray God all may end as you predict," said the Regent, doubtfully;
"but yet I shudder when contemplating this lure--this snare; the mock
banquet, the mock tribunal, and the bloody lykewake of the morrow."
That night, after dusk, four coffins were secretly conveyed up the
rock, and through the west postern of the castle, by James Achanna
and other "muffled" or masked men, and these were concealed in the
chancellor's private closet, the door of which opened off the great
hall of David's tower.
These coffins were covered with crimson velvet and had nails, handles,
and plates of gold, or at least of richly gilt work.
The first had the name of the most potent prince William, sixth earl
of Douglas, third duke of Touraine, lord of Longoville, Galloway,
Annandale, and Liddesdale, _qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440_, in his
seventeenth year.
The second coffin bore the name of his younger brother, Lord David,
_qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440_.
The third bore the name of his countess, Margaret Douglas, so famed for
her beauty as the Fair Maid of Galloway, _qui obit 23rd Nov., 1440_, in
her eighteenth year.
The fourth bore the name of his sister, Lady Murielle Douglas, two
years younger, with the same fatal inscription, _qui obit 23rd Nov.,
1440_.
Beyond these four coffins, in the gloom of that vaulted closet, were a
grindstone, an axe, and a block.
We have opened our story on the evening of the TWENTY-SECOND
November; thus we shall soon see with what intent these terrible
objects were provided.