THE THING THAT FELL FROM TRAITOR'S GATE.
The Lady Lochinvar stood a moment still by the fire, listening, her hand
raised as if to command silence. Then she ran to the door like a young
lass, with a light foot and her hand on her heart. The steps came
fainter up the stair, and in another moment we heard the clang of the
outer door.
My lady turned to me.
"Have you your pistols by you?" she whispered in a hoarse and angry
voice, clutching me by the lapels of my coat. "Go, man! Go, follow him!
He rushes to his death. And he is all that I have. Go and save him!"
She that had fleeched with her son, like a dove succouring its young,
laid harshly her commands upon me.
"I am no fighter, aunt," I said. "What protection can I be to Walter
Gordon, the best sworder in Edinburgh town this night from Holyrood to
the Castle?"
My lady looked about her as one that sees a stealthy enemy approach. Her
hand trembled as she laid it on my arm.
"What avails good swordsmanship, when one comes behind and one before,
as in my dream I saw them do upon my Walter, out of the house of my Lord
Wellwood. They came upon him and left him lying on the snow.--Ah, go,
dear cousin William!" she said, breaking into a sharp cry of entreaty
lest I should fail her. "It is you that can save him. But let him not
see you follow, or it will make him more bitter against me. For if you
cannot play with the sword, you can shoot with the pistol; so I have
heard, and they tell me that no one can shoot so truly as thou. They
would not let thee shoot at Kirkcudbright for the Siller Gun though thou
art a burgess, because it were no fair game. Is it not true?"
And so she stroked and cuitled me with flattery till I declare I purred
like our Gib cat. I had begun there and then to tell her of my prowess,
but that she interrupted me.
"He goes toward the High Street. Hasten up the South Wynd, and you will
overtake him yet ere he comes out upon the open road."
She thrust two pistols into my belt, which I laid aside again, having
mine own more carefully primed with me, to the firing of which my hand
was more accustomed--and that to a marksman is more than half the
battle.
When I reached the street the wildness of the night justified my
prophecy. The snow was falling athwart the town in broad wet flakes,
driving flat against the face with a splash, before a gusty westerly
wind that roared among the tall lums of the steep-gabled houses--a most
uncomfortable night to run the risk of getting a dirk in one's ribs.
I saw my cousin before me, linking on carelessly through the snow with
his cloak about his ears and his black-scabbard rapier swinging at his
heels.
But I had to slink behind backs like a Holyrood _dyvour_--a bankrupt
going to the Sanctuary, jooking and cowering craftily in the lee-side
shadow of the houses. For though so wild a night, it was not very dark.
There was a moon up there somewhere among the smother, though she could
not get so much as her nose through the wrack of banked snow-cloud which
was driving up from the west. Yet Wat could have seen me very black on
the narrow strip of snow, had he ever once thought of looking over his
shoulder.
But Wat the Wullcat of Lochinvar was not the one to look behind him when
he strode on to keep tryst. I minded his bitter reckless words to his
mother, "Heaven and hell shall not make me break my tryst to-night!" Now
Heaven was shut out by the storm and the tall close-built houses, and
Walter Gordon had an excellent chance of standing a bout with the other
place.
No doubt my Lady Wellwood bided at the window and looked out for him to
come to her through the snow. And I that had for common no thought of
lass or lady, cannot say that I was without my own envying that the love
of woman was not for me. Or so at least I thought at that time, even as
I shielded my eyes under my bonnet and drave through the snow with the
pistols loose in my belt. But Wat of Lochinvar walked defiantly through
the black storm with a saucy swing in his carriage, light and careless,
which I vouch drew my heart to him as if I had been a young girl. I had
given ten years of my life if just so I could have taken the eyes of
women.
As clear as if I had listened to the words, I could hear him saying over
within himself the last sentence he had used in the controversy with his
mother--"Heaven and hell shall not cause me to break my tryst to-night!"
Alack! poor lad, little understood he the resources of either. For he
had yet to pass beneath Traitor's' Gate.
For once the narrow High Street of Edinburgh was clean and
white--sheeted down in the clinging snow that would neither melt nor
freeze, but only clung to every joint, jut, stoop, and step of the
house-fronts, and clogged in lumps on the crockets of the roof. The wind
wrestled and roared in great gusts overhead in the black, uncertain,
tumultuous night. Then a calm would come, sudden as a curtain-drop in
the play-house, and in the hush you could hear the snow sliddering down
off the high-pitched roofs of tile. The light of the moon also came in
varying wafts and flickers, as the wind blew the clouds alternately
thicker and thinner across her face.
Now I felt both traitor and spy as I tracked my cousin down the brae.
Hardly a soul was to be seen, for none loves comfort more than an
Edinburgh burgher. And none understands his own weather better. The snow
had swept ill-doer and well-doer off the street, cleaner than ever did
the city guard--who, by the way, were no doubt warming their frozen toes
by the cheerful fireside in some convenient house-of-call.
So meditating, for a moment I had almost forgotten whither we were
going.
Before us, ere I was aware, loomed up the battlements and turrets of the
Netherbow. 'Twas with a sudden stound of the heart, that I remembered
what it was that ten months and more ago had been set up there. But I am
sure that, sharp-set on his love matter, like a beast that hunts
nose-down on a hot trail, Wat Gordon had no memory for the decorations
of the Netherbow. For he whistled as he went, and stuck his hand deeper
into the breast of his coat. The moon came out as I looked, and for a
moment, dark and grisly against the upper brightness, I saw that row of
traitors' heads which the city folk regarded no more in their coming and
going, than the stone gargoyles set in the roof-niches of St. Giles.
But as soon as Wat went under the blackness of the arch, there came so
fierce a gust that it fairly lifted me off my feet and dashed me against
the wall. Overhead yelled all the mocking fiends of hell, riding
slack-rein to a new perdition. The snow swirled tormented, and wrapped
us both in its grey smother. Hands seemed to pull at me out of the
darkness, lifted me up, and flung me down again on my face in the smoor
of the snow. A great access of fear fell on me. As the gust overpassed,
I rose, choked and gasping. Overhead I could hear the mighty blast go
roaring and howling away among the crags and rocks of Arthur's Seat.
Then I arose, shook the snow from my dress, glanced at the barrels and
cocks of my pistols to see that they were not stopped with snow, and
stepped out of the angle of the Bow to look after my cousin. To my utter
astonishment, he was standing within four feet of me. He held some dark
thing in his hand, and stared open-mouthed at it, as one demented.
Without remembering that I had come out at my lady's bidding to follow
Wat Gordon secretly, I stepped up to him till I could look over his
shoulder.
"Walter!" I said, putting my hand on his arm.
But he never minded me in the least, nor yet appeared surprised to find
me there. Only a black and bitter horror sat brooding on his soul.
He continued to gaze, fascinated, at the dark thing in his hand.
"GOD--GOD--GOD!" he sobbed, the horror taking him short in the throat.
"Will, do you see THIS?"
Such abject terror never have I heard before nor since in the utterance
of any living man.
"Do you see This?" he said. "See what fell at my feet as I came through
the arch of the Bow upon mine errand! The wind brought it down."
Above the moon pushed her way upwards, fighting hard, breasting the
cloud wrack like a labouring ship.
Her beams fell on the dark Thing in Wat Gordon's hand.
"GREAT GOD!" he shouted again, his eyes starting from their sockets, "IT
IS MINE OWN FATHER'S HEAD!"
And above us the fitful, flying winds nichered and laughed like mocking
fiends.
It was true. I that write, saw it plain. I held it in this very hand. It
was the head of Sir John of Lochinvar, against whom, in the last fray,
his own son had donned the war-gear. Grizzled, black, the snow cleaving
ghastly about the empty eye-holes, the thin beard still straggling
snow-clogged upon the chin--it was his own father's head that had fallen
at Walter Gordon's feet, and which he now held in his hand.
Then I remembered, with a shudder of apprehension, his own words so
lately spoken--"Heaven and hell shall not cause me to break my tryst
to-night."
Walter Gordon stood rooted there, dazed and dumb-foundered, with the
Thing in his hand. His fine lace ruffles touched it as the wind blew
them.
I plucked at him.
"Come," I said, "haste you! Let us bury it in the Holyrood ere the moon
goes down."
Thus he who boasted himself free of heaven and hell, had his tryst
broken by the Thing that fell from the ghastly gate on which the
traitors' heads are set in a row. And that Thing was the head of the
father that begat him.