Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
thy debt three hundred Scottish crowns. And now let me have
breakfast; for no vexation was ever so great that it deprived me of
my appetite."
Cold beef, bread, cheese, eggs, fish, and spiced ale formed a repast
which greatly comforted the earl, who saw with regret, however, how
scrupulously the single knife that was allowed him was watched and
removed by the careful Trotter. But the moment this meal was over,
and his attendant had withdrawn, he recommenced a most minute
examination of his prison, and was gradually forced to acknowledge,
with a sigh of bitterness, that though neither so strong as Norham,
nor so loftily situated as Stirling, its capabilities for escape were
very limited indeed.
Several days passed monotonously away.
The earl became horribly impatient; he had shaken every window-bar
for the hundredth time; and for the hundredth time also, with the
heel of his boot, had sounded every slab of the pavement, and every
stone of the walls, but all were solid as a mass of rock.
"Friend Thomas," said he, half banteringly and half savagely, on the
thirteenth day of his confinement, "how long does that prince of
villains, thy master, mean to keep me here?"
"As long as he pleases, I suppose."
"A vague term, that--most unpleasantly so. I should like much to
have been a little consulted in the matter; but as he omitted this
politeness, I mean to escape on the first opportunity, and without
formality."
"Escape?" reiterated Trotter, with a grin.
"The walls----"
"Are six feet thick, and the window hath three bars, ilk ane like the
shaft of my Jethart staff."
"Yes; but some day I may pull out the stones of the wall, or saw
through the bars of the window. Have you never heard of such things?"
"Ay have I, when a man had saws or files, or hammers, but never when
he had only his bare hands and nails."
"I will steal a knife from you."
"Will you?" said Trotter, with his knowing wink.
"Thou shalt see; and once through the window, I will drop----"
"Into the draw-well! Ha! ha! my bauld buckie, the draw-well, forty
feet deep, is just below it."
"What? Just under my window?"
"Eight doon, as a plummet would sink."
"Ah, the devil! What a judicious villain thy master is!"
"You see, sir, that unless you could change yoursel' into a spider or
a bumbee, here you maun just bide," replied Tam, with a loud laugh,
which galled the earl to the soul; but seeing the futility of anger
or hauteur, he controlled his rising temper, and said, in his usual
manner--
"Well, let me have dinner; for assuredly I am weary of having nothing
to look forward to, but from breakfast to dinner, at mid-day; from
dinner to supper, at even; and from supper to bed--and so on. I
assure you, friend Trotter, it would tire even a Carthusian."
"And tiresome I find it, too! Cocksnails! I would gie my very lugs
to be again kicking my heels owre Currie Brig, or Kinleith Craig, for
I am wearied o' holding watch and ward here, like the javellour of a
tolbooth or the warder of a tower."
As Trotter returned with the dinner upon a broad wooden tray, which
usually held the platters, covers, and one small knife, the earl
contrived to place his chair in such a manner, that the attendant was
tripped by it, and stumbled forward, by which the manchet, or small
loaf (in those days the invariable substitute for potatoes), slipped
from the tray, and fell upon the floor. While Trotter, after
depositing the tray, stooped to pick up the manchet, the earl, like
lightning, possessed himself of the knife, and thrust it up his
sleeve.
"Look again, friend Trotter," said he, removing the first cover,
"thou hast dropped the knife, I think?"
"Have I?" said Trotter, searching all round the table. "Surely no!"
"You must have done so, for I vow 'tis not here."
"I could have sworn it was on the trencherboard when I brought it
in," said the fellow, gaping with alarm.
"If you think so, look again."
"By St. Giles! there is nae knife here!"
"Then quick, call for another, or these dainty pullets will be cold
as pebble stones."
Trotter turned to call for another knife; and the moment he did so,
the earl stepped back, and concealed that which he had secured in a
nook of the chimney, which had been discovered during a previous
inspection.
A second knife was brought by Dobbie, who had heard Trotter call for
it.
The earl made an unusually good repast, and as he picked the pullet's
bones, and drank his pint of Bordeaux, he jested merrily with his
attendant, who leant against the door, from whence he cast ever and
anon furtive and uneasy glances below the table, in search of the
missing article, for he had his own suspicions.
"Take care, my trusty Tam, take care; for now I have got that knife,
and I mean to make a good use of it on the first opportunity. Truly
thou art a simple fellow, and will be beetled by Redhall, in such
wise as thy mother never beetled thee! ha! ha! Zounds! dost thou
think this paltry house would hold me, who escaped from the Douglas
room at Stirling, where the cardinal confined me after the battle of
Linlithgow? I trow not! Be easy; compose thyself, friend Thomas,
for I assure thee I have got the knife, and will begone to-morrow."
"In your pockets?" said Tam, advancing.
"Pockets! Nay, dost thou think a gentleman has pockets in his
breeches and doublet to hold bread and cheese, like a rascally clown;
but come hither, thou mayst feel my garments."
Trotter passed his hands over the breeches and doublet of the
prisoner.
"The devil a knife is here," said he, perfectly reassured.
"Nevertheless, I have it."
"Where?"
"In my stomach. Bring me a sword, or lend me thy poniard, and I will
swallow them both also. It runs in the family. I had an uncle who
could digest cannon balls."
Tam uttered another of his hoarse laughs, and, bearing away the
wooden tray, retired, and secured the double doors as usual. * * * *
*
Next morning, at the early but accustomed hour, he undid the
accumulated bolts and locks of the inner doorway (while Dobbie
secured the outer), and entered, with breakfast on the trencher.
A cry burst from him, and he started back aghast on finding the place
void, for one glance sufficed to show that it was empty.
The earl was indeed gone!
"Ah, the _knife_!" thought Trotter, as he rushed to the window.
Every bar was in its place, and the undisturbed cobwebs of years were
still woven between them. Not a flag of the floor, not a stone of
the wall, appeared to have been displaced; and, terrified by such a
phenomenon, Tam Trotter uttered a stentorian howl of dismay, and fled
from the empty chamber.
CHAPTER XXV.
DOUGLASDALE.
"But you, dear scenes! that far away
Expand beneath these mountains blue,
Where fancy sheds a purer ray,
And robes the fields in richer hue,--
A softer voice in every gale,
I 'mid your woodlands wild should hear;
And Death's unbreathing shades would fail
To sigh their murmurs in mine ear." LEYDEN.
The sun of a morning in June shone brightly upon Douglasdale, as a
valley of the middle ward of Lanarkshire is named--the country of the
puissant Douglases. The pure air, the bright sunshine, the fresh
meadows, the fragrant wind that stole along the uplands, were all
indicative of that delightful season when the trees are heavy with
their richest foliage, and the voices of the mavis, the merle, and
the wood-pigeon are heard within their deep recesses. Under golden
masses of the dark green broom, the white hawthorn, and the wild
rose, the Douglas water stole, over its pebbled bed, towards the west.
Hot and cloudless, the rays of the glorious summer sun poured over
the giant summit of the Cairntable, and played along the pastoral
glens below, to be reflected by the gleam of arms and the glitter of
armour descending from those heights which overlook the towers of the
Douglases--the "Castle Dangerous" of chivalry and romance.
The lairds and warders of the various towers which overhung the
valley, were all on the alert, and had barred their gates, drawn up
their bridges, and prepared their armour, with not the less care,
because they could perceive the royal standard with the red lion
waving above the copsewood below.
With their swords sheathed and visors up, Roland Vipont and Louis
Leslie rode together at the head of their little column, which had
passed a peaceful campaign of nearly three weeks in Lanarkshire,
without being molested by any one; and, of course without hearing
tidings of the Earl of Ashkirk, for whom, as in duty bound, they made
the most minute inquiries--Roland being the more rigid in his search,
because he believed him to be in safe concealment at Edinburgh. The
horses of the artillery looked sleek and well fed; and the
cannoniers, with Leslie's hundred men of the guard, had all their
harness and arquebuses as bright as on that day when they marched
from Holyrood.
"'S life! but we spend our time wearily! Will nobody fight with us?"
said Roland, with a yawn, as they wound down the valley, by the banks
of the Douglas. "St. Mary! I feel a violent inclination to maul
some of those towers, that from every rock and hill-top look down so
saucily on our line of march."
"What?--the houses of thy Douglas friends?"
"Assuredly."
"And why?"
"Just to keep us in practice and because they are held by Hamiltons."
"Lucky it is, for us, that they are so. Long before this, had the
Douglases possessed the same power in Lanarkshire that they did ten
years ago, we had been eaten up."
"True, in 1527, a hundred men, with two pieces of cannon, if they had
once ventured into the middle ward on such an errand as ours, had
never come out of it again."
"Yet 'tis very hard that no one will just fire one little shot at us,
just to afford an excuse----"
"For blowing the house about their ears. A most amiable wish!"
"Thy nag looks weary, Leslie."
"Ah, 'tis a bay I picked up during our raid against the Annandale
thieves last year. My blockhead of a groom lost me a beautiful roan
horse at Leith, last Lammastide, where I sent it to be bathed, at
sunset, in the sea."*
* A superstitious custom, suppressed, by order of St. Cuthbert's kirk
session, in 1647.
"Where dost think we will dine, for my stomach crieth cupboard
already?"
"At the Barmkyn of Cairntable. I have heard that the gudeman there
keepeth open house and free; besides, he is a kinsman of Redhall, and
if we empty his girnels and broach his casks, what matter? Is it not
for the king's service? and all Scotland knows," added Roland, with a
smile, "how zealous the advocate is for the public weal."
"Let us halt here for one moment," said Leslie, reining up his horse
beside a little rustic well, which flowed near a cottage wall; "this
water looks fresh and pure; 'tis south-running, too, and I am thirsty
as a sack of flour."
"Lintstock, bring hither the flask of French brandy."
From a gun-carriage, Lintstock unslung a large leathern bottle, and
brought it to his master, ogling it by the way with all the ardour of
which his solitary eye was capable; and thereafter, from his
havresack, he produced a beechwood luggie.
"Gudewife," said Leslie, to a woman, who was grinding corn in a
wooden quern at the cottage door, and who wore one of those pointed
Flemish caps which had been introduced into Scotland by Mary of
Gueldres, "how name you this well?"
"Sanct Bryde's of Dowglass," replied the woman, briefly and sulkily,
for she was one of that hostile race.
"A consecrated well! I thought so--'tis fortunate you asked," said
Roland; and, after first dipping their fingers in the fountain, they
crossed themselves, and then mixing the blessed water with the