THE CASTLE OF THRAVE.
Sad airs like those she heard in infancy,
Fell on her soul and filled her eyes with tears;
And recollections came of happier years,
Thronging from all the cells of memory.
BARRY CORNWALL.
More than a year had elapsed since the terrible scene with which the
preceding chapter has closed.
It was the sweet season of summer. A soft wind was passing over the
pastoral uplands of Galloway, and rippling the black water of the Dee
where it swept round the green islet on which stands the great feudal
fortress of Thrave. It rippled, in some places, the growing cornfields,
in others, the greener wild grass, bearing with it the freshness of
the dew that loaded the leaves of the wayside flowers (for a shower
had just fallen), with the perfume of the honeycomb, of the mountain
bee that hummed over the yellow broom or purple heather-bells, on the
rugged braes of Balmaghie; or over the crimson cups of the wild roses
overhanging the brawling burn that rushed through bank and scaur to
Woodhall Loch.
It was a summer noon; the sunny shower had passed away, and the
rose-linnet, the wild mavis, and the gold-spink sang merrily on every
bush and bank; and the bright sun cast the great shadow of the castle
of Thrave upon the Dee, which moats it round.
There now dwelt Murielle, and others who have borne a part in our
story, though a change had come over their position in life.
The Lord Chancellor Crichton had scarcely foreseen the immediate
consequences of that "black dinour" in the castle of Edinburgh--a
deed of detestable cruelty, though deemed politic in the spirit of
the time. It naturally excited the deep-rooted hatred and fierce
indignation of the numerous vassalage and powerful friends of the
house of Douglas; while the youth of the noble victims on one hand,
with the age and valour of Sir Malcolm Fleming on the other, together
with the cold-blooded treachery which lured them all to a doom so
disastrous--a mock trial and execution in the young king's presence,
despite his tears and entreaties--all conduced to excite a strong
sympathy among the people, who only remembered the worth and loyalty of
their ancestors, and forgot those excesses, or were ignorant of that
mad ambition, which had filled with jealousy the ministers of James the
Second.
But while treasuring this deed of blood in their resentful hearts, and
scheming for the downfall of the regent and chancellor, the Douglases
were too wary now to trust themselves out of their own fastnesses, or
to take immediate revenge.
The dukedom of Touraine and the county of Longueville had reverted
to the crown of France; but James the Gross, earl of Abercorn and
Avondale, through whose connivance the trial and execution of his
kinsmen took place, succeeded quietly to all their Scottish estates.
Then, to prevent the dismemberment of a territory so princely, and to
preserve to the house of Douglas the Countess Margaret's portion, which
comprehended Galloway, Wigton, Balvenie, Ormond, and Annandale, on the
promise of obtaining a papal dispensation, through the good offices of
the abbot of Tongland, she consented to espouse Earl James, that they
might the better plot their vengeance and unite their power against
the regent and chancellor, who, by this unexpected consolidation, saw
their views baffled, and the family of Douglas, within six months,
restored to its former strength and splendour.
Thus, twice before her twentieth year, had the Fair Maid of Galloway
worn a wreath of roses and lucky four-leaved clover, which formed then
the bridal chaplet. The young lord of her great fortress by the Dee had
passed away; yet it seemed strange he had left no vacancy of heart or
hearth behind him: for his place had been rapidly filled by another;
and none knew Margaret's secret thoughts.
In the vast but solitary castle of Thrave, Murielle had long wept for
her lover, and mourned him as one who was dead. Whether he had been
slain outright, or been simply but barbarously mutilated, she had no
means of ascertaining, as the countess and her armed train had taken
their departure from Edinburgh within an hour after the fatal conflict;
and since then she had resided in Thrave, the most remote and strong of
all her many fortresses.
Since that fatal day, Murielle had felt as if her little heart had been
crushed by a hand of steel; while the society of the stern, malevolent,
and gloomy Earl James, who was now lord of all their heritage, and as
such assumed to be the master of _her_ hand and destiny--a mastery
in which he was joined by her proud, fiery, and, at times, cruel
sister--made her long for a refuge among the Benedictine nuns of
Lincluden; and she as often wished, in the sorrow and bitterness of
her soul, that she were at rest among the graves of her forefathers,
in Melrose or Dundrennan. She never saw the earl without experiencing
a shudder of horror and aversion, for the memory of that terrible day
in Edinburgh was ever before her; her lover's upturned face, with its
despairing eyes, imploring pity from the fierce noble who smote him
down with his bloody ghisarma, as he would have done a reptile.
In that age there were no newspapers; no posts or telegraphs; no books
or printing, for it was twenty years before Caxton set his _first_
types for Raoul le Fevre; thus the library of the great countess was
limited to her missal, and a little whity-brown volume in which she
engrossed recipes and so forth. Save a few games of hazard, there were
no in-door amusements, or food for the mind. How wearily and drearily
must the days have been passed by the dwellers in those old Scottish
castles, secluded in roadless and mountain districts, when there was
peace (which was seldom), and no fighting, burning, or hanging going on!
No tidings came from the court or capital to Thrave, save the strange
and floating rumours brought by a passing harper on his way towards
Ireland or the south; or by a cunning pardoner, travelling with his
holy wares and relics to Tongland, Dundrennan, or St. Mary Isle; or by
an armed mosstrooper, in his steel cap and vambraces; or a bein-bonnet
laird, or gudeman (_i.e._ one who holds his land from a baron), on
his Galloway cob, passing to or from the next burgh town, who, after
bartering his beef, butter, and eggs, for a bilbo or suit of harness,
tarried at lordly Thrave, belated or storm-stayed.
Men travelled little then by night in Scotland. Vast districts were
almost roadless; and deep rivers, the fabled abode of the mischievous
kelpie and dreadful water-horse, were bridgeless, and the fords were
few and precarious. Lawless moss-troopers, broken men, and wandering
gipsies rendered the paths insecure; nor were supernatural terrors
wanting, in the shapes of bogles, spunkies, wraiths, and fairies, to
render the ingle-lum of the nearest farm, the refectory of a monastery,
or the hall of a baron or landholder an acceptable refuge after dark.
Of the old abbot of Tongland the inhabitants of Thrave had seen little.
He had secluded himself in his abbey, which lay in a deep and woody
hollow formed by the Dee, and adjoining the _clachan_ which slopes down
to the verge of the stream--for so they named their villages in Celtic
Galloway. There he spent day after day entrenched among illuminated
manuscripts and yellow parchments, searching, writing, quoting,
collating, and preparing anew his application to Pope Eugene, that the
Prince of Darkness might be forgiven, so that evil and discord in the
world might cease for ever.
On the eccentric, but kind old abbot, Murielle rested all her hope for
succour, information, advice, and assistance; but he failed to obtain
authentic tidings of her lover's fate. Thus, in that great castle,
which was crowded by armed men, she pined and sorrowed in secret,
without a friend.
Meanwhile quantities of armour, helmets, corslets, spurs, and bridles,
that came in hampers by ships from Holland, bundles of arrows and
spears brought on horseback from Dumfries to the arsenal in the
barbican, indicated the events that were on the tapis. Many couriers,
such as Pompherston, Glendoning, Achanna, and Sir Alan Lauder, were
dispatched in all directions under cloud of night, while others were
arriving with secret parchments, and slips of paper concealed in the
lining of their doublets, the sheaths of their daggers, and the tops of
their gambadoes; missives from the turbulent John, earl of Ross, lord
of the isles; from Sir Magnus Redmain, the English governor of Berwick;
from Robert, the exiled and intriguing duke of Albany; from John Garm
Stewart, of Athole; from Christian I., count of Oldenburg and king of
Norway: and all these signs filled Murielle with anxiety and alarm, as
they indicated the magnitude of the schemes and intrigues in which the
fierce and subtle Earl James and her bold and ambitious sister were
engaged, and the designs they were forming against the regent, the
chancellor, the unfortunate people, and the young and innocent king.