THE FATE OF MACLELLAN.
Lift not the shroud! a speaking stain
Of blood upon its sable seen,
Tells how the spirit fled from plain,
For there the headsman's axe hath been.
BALLAD.
"The king's demand shall be granted, but rather for _your_ sake--come
hither," said the earl.
There was a cruel banter in his manner, a bitter smile on his face,
and Gray grew pale, and felt the blood rush back upon his heart with a
terrible foreboding as they crossed the court-yard.
Then his eye at once detected something like a human form stretched at
full length upon the ground, and covered by a sheet. About it there
could be no doubt--it was so cold, white, angular, and fearfully rigid.
Upon the breast was placed a platter filled with salt--a Scottish
superstition as old as the days of Turpin--and close by lay an axe and
bloodstained billet, about which the brown sparrows were hopping and
twittering in the warm morning sunshine. With a choking sensation in
his throat, Gray stepped resolutely forward.
"Remove this cloth," said the earl to some of his people who were near;
and on their doing so, there was seen the body of a headless man--a
body which Gray knew too well to be that of his friend and kinsman, for
on the breast of the soiled and faded pourpoint was embroidered a gold
scutcheon, with the three black chevrons of MacLellan.
"Sir Patrick, you have come a little too late," said the sneering
earl; "here lies your father's sister's son; but, unfortunately, he
wants the head, and a head is an awkward loss. The body, however, is
completely at your service."
Grief and indignation almost choked Gray's utterance. He knelt down and
kissed the cold right hand, which yet bore the mark of an iron fetter,
and then turning to the earl, said, "My lord, you may now dispose of
the body as you please; but the head----"
"Behold it on the battlement above you!"[4]
Gray mounted his horse, which was at that moment led to the outer gate
by the earl's grooms; and mistrusting them, though feeling as one in
a terrible dream, before putting his foot in the stirrup he carefully
examined his bridle, girths, and crupper. Then, says Sir Walter Scott
in his history, "his resentment broke forth in spite of the dangerous
situation in which he was placed":--
"My lord," said he, shaking his gauntleted hand close to the earl's
beard, "if I live you shall bitterly pay for this day's work; and
I--Patrick Gray of Foulis--tell thee, that thou art a bloodthirsty
coward--a disgrace to knighthood and nobility!"
He then wheeled round his horse, pressed the sharp Rippon spurs into
its flanks, and galloped off.
"To horse and chase him!" cried the earl, furiously. "I will ride to
Stirling, false minion, with _your_ head at my saddle-bow! To horse and
follow him--this venturesome knight must sleep beside his kinsman!"
"But he came on the king's service," urged Sir Alan Lauder, as he
put his foot in the stirrup of his horse, when some twenty or thirty
mounted moss-troopers came hurriedly from the stable court.
"Bah! love-lured and destiny dragged him hither. Let slip Souyllard the
sleuth-bratch. Horse and spear, I say, Lauder and Achanna--a hundred
crowns for the head of yonder minion! I swear by St. Bryde of Douglas
and Kildara, by the Blessed Virgin and her son, never to eat at a
table, sleep in a bed, to rest under a Christian roof, or to lay aside
sword and armour, till I have passed my dagger through the heart of
Patrick Gray, dead or alive!"----"If you break this terrible vow," said
Sir Alan, aghast at the earl's fury, and the form it took in words.
"Then I pray Heaven, at the judgment day, to show such mercy to me as I
shall show my enemies," was the fierce response.
It was fortunate for the earl that he soon found a friar to release him
from a vow, the fulfilment of which must have entailed a vast deal of
trouble, fuss, and discomfort upon him and his followers.
"A hundred crowns and St. Bryde for Douglas!" was the shout of the
moss-troopers, as they dashed through the outer gate, and with their
light active horses, their steel caps, jacks, and spears, they
clattered over the drawbridge; but Gray, after escaping six or eight
crossbow bolts, was already three miles before them, and spurring in
hot haste along the road towards Dumfries.
It was a fortunate circumstance for him that he was well mounted on
a fleet, strong, and active horse; for he was a muscular man, and
heavily mailed, while his pursuers, being Border Prickers, wore but
little armour, and their wiry nags were used to scamper on forays in
all weathers and seasons by day and night, over moor, and moss, and
mountain sides.
Gray knew well that if taken his death was certain; for Douglas,
reckless, ruthless, and bloodthirsty, by nature, was certain now to
give full scope to his long-treasured hatred.
He no longer heard the whooping of his pursuers; he had either
distanced them, or they were husbanding their energies for a long
chase; but there came after him at times, upon the hollow wind, the
grunting bark of the sleuth-bratch, by which he was surely and savagely
tracked, Souyllard, the earl's favourite white bloodhound, and the
heart of the fugitive swelled anew, with grief and rage, and hatred of
his unrelenting tormentor.
He was far from shelter or succour, for until he reached the Lothians,
all the land belonged to his enemies, or to those who dared not protect
him. For miles and miles before him stretched flattened hills and open
plains covered with waving heather, the purple tints of which were
glowing in the noonday sun, and these tints deepened into blue or black
on the shaded sides of the glens. The whirr of the blackcock was heard
at times, as it rose from the pale green or withered yellow leaves of
the ferns that grew among the rushes, where the trouting burn brawled,
or by the lonely ravine, the red-scaured bank, or stony gulley, which
Gray made his foam-covered horse clear by a flying leap.
Louder and nearer came the savage bay of the sleuth-bratch, and Gray,
as he looked back, could see it tracking him closely and surely; while
about three miles distant the border spears of his pursuers glittered
on the summit of a hill.
He had swam his horse through the Urr and spurred on for miles, and now
before him lay Lochrutton, with its old peel-house, named, from its
loneliness, the castle-of-the-hills; then, as he was about to cross a
foaming tributary of the loch--a stream that tore, all red and muddy,
through a stony ravine--the bounding sleuth-bratch came upon him, and
sprang at his horse's flanks, just as the terrified animal rose into
the air to cross by a flying leap.
Clenching his gauntleted hand, Gray struck the fierce brute on the
head, and it fell into the rushing torrent; but gained the other side
as soon as he, and sent its deep, hoarse bay into the air, as if to
summon the pursuers. Now, the terrible sleuth-bratch was running
parallel with his horse's flanks, and vainly he strove to strike at it
with his sword. His temples throbbed as if with fever, and now, for
air, for coolness, and relief, he drew off his barred helmet; then he
tossed it into a bush, for the double purpose of staying the hound and
concealing it as a trace of his flight. Spurring on--he redoubled his
efforts to escape; he called to his horse--he cheered and caressed it,
while the perspiration of toil oozed through the joints of his armour,
from his gorget to his spurs.
The terrible white hound was preparing for a final, and, doubtless, a
fatal spring, when a man, whose head and shoulders were enveloped in a
scarlet hood, suddenly rose from the whin bushes amid which Gray was
galloping, and, by a single blow from his ponderous mace, dashed out
the brains of the dog, killing it on the spot.
Gray had just time to perceive that his preserver was Malise MacKim,
the smith of Thrave, when he passed on like a whirlwind; and now he saw
before him, in the distance, the lovely and far-stretching valley of
the Nith, the long bridge, the red-walled town, the spires, and the old
castle of Dumfries. He dashed through the portal of the bridge, and
pushed on by the way for Edinburgh; but, owing to the rough and devious
nature of the roads, night overtook him among the wilds of Tweedmuir.
If he drew bridle for a moment, he still heard the tramp of hoofs in
his rear, for now fresh horsemen had joined in the pursuit; and, but
for the relays he had so wisely provided, and of which he only once
availed himself, he had assuredly been taken and slain.
At Moffat, he obtained his own favourite horse from the priest of the
village church.
"Will you not, for safety, have your charger's shoes reversed?" said
the churchman, as Gray mounted.
"Like King Robert of old; but there is no snow to reveal the track."
"But there is mud, and the ways are deep and soft."
"True; but who is here to do it for me?"
"The smith at the forge."
"Nay, nay, good father," said Gray, shortening his reins; "hear you
that!" a whoop and a bugle blast, came together on the night breeze;
"I must even trust me to my good Brechin blade and Clydesdale nag; for
both are our good king's gift," and he set forth with renewed speed.
He had good reason for declining to loiter, for just as he rode off,
the mountain pass, which opens into the valley, rang with shouts and
the rush of many iron hoofs, as the laird of Hawkshaw and the Hunters
of Palmood, with Sir Alan Lauder and a band of Douglas moss-troopers,
came galloping down.
On, on, rushed the fleet horse, with its small head outstretched, and
cutting the night air, as the prow of a ship cleaves the water. The
taper ears lay flat on its neck, the mane streamed behind like smoke
from a funnel, and the quivering nostrils shot forth white puffs of
steamy breath at every bound; while foam and blood mingled together on
its flanks, as the sharp Rippon spurs of the daring rider urged it fast
and furiously on.
This flight of Sir Patrick Gray from Thrave suggested to Scott the
escape of Marmion from the future chief of the Douglases--the earl of
Angus, at Tantallan.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: One account states that the body of MacLellan was interred
in the church of Kirkconnel, and some old inscription is quoted in
proof; another, that he was conveyed to the abbey church of Dundrennan,
where a monument was erected to his memory; but it is much more
probable that he would be interred in the church of Kirkcudbright.]