Your love ne'er learn'd to flee,
Bonnie dame—winsome dame!
Your love ne'er learn'd to flee,
My winsome dame!
Old Song.
The sombre reflections mentioned at the close of the last chapter but one, again recurred to Florence, as he rode from the fortress and sought the winding path which led to the place of his hostile meeting. Then for the first time he remembered that he was without a second, and there was no man in Stirling whom he knew sufficiently to implicate in such an affair; indeed, he was totally without acquaintances. Checking his horse and looking around, he perceived, at the head of the Broad Wynd, a man about to mount a stout nag. This person wore a brown doublet of Flemish broadcloth, with long red sarcenet hose; he had on an open helmet, cuirass, and a grey border plaid. At his belt hung a long dagger, and at his saddlebow a Jedwood axe, locally known as a Jethart staff. His burly figure, rough beard, and open, honest expression of face, aroused the interest and won the favour of Florence, who for some time past had been forced to study the physiognomies of men; and by his equipment believing him to be a respectable burgess or yeoman, he at once addressed him,—
"May I ask, gudeman, if you are a burgher of Stirling?"
"Nay, sir; I come frae the gude town——"
"Edinburgh?"
"At your service, fair sir."
"'Tis well—I am from that quarter, or a matter of ten miles east of it, myself."
"In what can I serve you, sir? I am Dick Hackerston, a free burgess and guild brother, at the sign o' the 'Crossed Axes' in the Landmarket, where my booth is as weel kenned as St. Giles's steeple."
"Hackerston," reiterated Fawside, to whom his voice seemed familiar; "is such thy name, good fellow?"
"Sooth is it, sir; and my father's before me. Sae, wherefore sic marvel?"
"To you I owe my life, brave man!"
"To owe me siller is nae uncommon thing; but that a man—a braw gallant like you—owes life to me, is something new," replied the merchant, with surprise.
"Have you forgotten that night when on the Castle Hill a single swordsman was so sorely beset by the weapons of at least a score of swashbuckler knaves; and when, but for your Jeddart staff——"
"By my faith, weel do I remember that bluidy night," said he, warmly shaking the hand of Florence; "and how I was beset in turn by these foul limmers, ilk ane o' whom deserved a St. Johnston tippet, for they would have slain me on the open causeway, and burned my booth to boot, but for the timeous arrival o' the town guard and some burgess friends who heard the shouts under their windows, and came forth wi pyne doublet and axe to redd the fray. Wi some landward merchants I ride eastward in an hour, ilk escorting the other, as there are many uncanny loons in the Torwood at times; so, in what can I serve you, sir?"
"I am the laird of Fawside, and shall be right glad to ride eastward in your company."
The merchant touched the peak of his morion.
"I ken the auld tower on the braehead, above the Howemire o' Inveresk."
"I have to fight a false villain who hath wronged me; but am without a single friend to see fair play ensured. Gudeman, may I reckon on thee?"
"Command me, sir, if a gentleman will take the aid o' a plain burgess body."
"I thank you, gudeman, and may have some right to ask it of you; for my father, old Sir John of that ilk, led the burgesses of Edinburgh, when King James marched his host to Falamuir."
"And your enemy——"
"Is Livingstone of Champfleurie."
"Captain of the queen's guard?"
"The same."
"An impudent varlet—a scurvy arquebussier, who poked his nose under my gudewife's hood nae further gane than three days ago, as she was coming frae the Mass, by the north door o' St. Giles; and he wi' the Lord Kilmaurs were coming, drunk as pipers, frae an ale-browster's booth in the Crames. I am your man; and you meet him——"
"At the Roman Rock."
"When?"
"Within five minutes by the dial."
"Come on, laird—I am ready."
"I ask you but to see fair play, and if I am slain to bear this ring to the Countess of Yarrow, and my last message to—my mother."
"Yes," said Hackerston, grasping the hand of Florence, and giving his axe a flourish; "but ere I left the ground on sic a deevilish and dolorous errand, by the arm of St. Giles, the patron o' cripples, I'll hae smitten the head frae the shoulders o' Champfleurie as I would the neb frae a syboe; so, on, and without fear!"
"Forth, and feir nocht! 'Tis the motto of my house, gudeman; and your words are ominous of good fortune."
Hackerston mounted his horse, and rode by the side of Florence to the rendezvous, where they found the captain of the guard, accompanied by Lord Kilmaurs, awaiting them. Both wore the half-suits of light armour usually worn at that time by all Scottish gentlemen when walking abroad.
The scene of this encounter, of which we find a minute relation in the pages of a venerable diarist of the day, was the vicinity of the Roman Rock, which took its name from an inscription thereon. It was visible in that age, but has since been effaced by time and the action of the weather. The basalt had been smoothly chiselled, and bore on its face a Latin legend, cut by the soldiers of Julius Agricola, intimating that on the Rock of Stirling—the Mons Dolorum, or Hill of Strife—the second legion of the Roman army "held their daily and nightly watch," while on the Grampians the still victorious Scots barred the deep passes that led to the land of the Gael.
"So, sir," said the captain of arquebuses, loftily, "you have come at last!"
"I crave pardon if I have detained you one minute over the appointed time," replied Fawside, with gloomy politeness; "but I had to procure a friend."
"You have more to crave pardon for, sirrah," said Lord Kilmaurs roughly; "as it is said that, by the agency of letters——"
"Letters again! That word bids fair to be the bane of my existence."
"Yea—letters brought out of France by thee from those accursed Guises, the Lord Bothwell, my assured friend, hath been degraded—deprived of his green ribbon—and committed to the custody of a Hamilton—a parasite of the Lord Arran."
"I brought no letters out of France, but such as well became the queen's liege man to bear," replied Florence haughtily.
"Well, and how about your friend: is a burrowtown merchant—a mere booth-holder, as I take him to be,—a beseeming squire for a landed baron—a gentleman of that ilk?" asked Kilmaurs, with a lightning glance in his sinister eye.
"Some flesher of Falkirk or souter of Linlithgow, I warrant," added the equally insolent Champfleurie, laughing.
"I am a brother o' the merchant guild, my masters," replied Hackerston, unabashed by their overweening manner; "and ken ye, sirs, that nae souter, litster, or flesher, can be one of us, unless he swear that he use not his office wi' his ain hand, but deputeth it to servitors under him?"
"What the devil does all this mean?" asked Kilmaurs, shrugging his shoulders. "Do you know, Champfleurie?"
"It means, gentlemen," replied Florence, sternly, "that I—being too well aware there were assassins and bravoes here in Stirling, who, under the guise of nobility assault and murder in the night—thought that the aid of an honest man, stout of heart and ready of hand, as this brave burgess has before approved himself to be, might not be unnecessary; and so, in lack of other friend, I sought his good offices here."
"And I commend you to keep a civil tongue in your head, my Lord o' Kilmaurs; for my Jethart staff has ere this notched a thicker one than yours. I have gien mony an uncanny cloure in my time."
"Enough of this!" exclaimed Champfleurie, drawing his sword and dagger.
"Yea, enough and to spare," added Florence, unsheathing his rapier and the exquisite little poniard given to him by Mary of Lorraine, and closing in close and mortal combat. They fought with such impetuosity that at the third pass he ran Champfleurie through the left forearm, piercing his plate sleeve like a gossamer web, and inflicting a wound so severe that the blood dripped over his fingers. This wound, by almost paralyzing his left hand, rendered his dagger useless, either for stabbing or parrying, for which latter purpose this little weapon was more especially used by the sword-playing gallants of those days.
The bearing of Champfleurie, which previous to this had been cool, contemptuous, and defiant, now became furious and wrathful.
He lunged and thrust almost at random; and twice Fawside contrived to secure his blade by arresting it in the ironwork of his own hilt; he was thus enabled to retain it, and, locking in, to menace the throat of Champfleurie with his dagger; but twice he generously released the blade, which he might easily have snapped from its hilt; and thus the combat was twice renewed, after they had breathed a little, and glared into each other's pale and excited faces.
The skill and generosity of Florence excited even the admiration of Kilmaurs, who exclaimed,—
"Well and nobly done, Fawside! But that I am sworn to be thine enemy I could wish thee for a friend. Another such mischance, Champfleurie, and by Heaven thou art a lost man!"
On each of these occasions Hackerston uttered a stentorian shout of applause, which in some measure served to dissipate the little self-possession retained by Champfleurie, who soon became almost blind with passion and hatred. In this state he soon proved an easy conquest to his antagonist, who by one tremendous blow broke his weapon to shivers, scattering the shining steel as if it had been a blade of glass, and, closing in, with the large hilt of his own rapier, struck him to the earth, and pinned him there by placing a foot on his breast. The blood flowed copiously from the mouth of the fallen man, who lay completely at the mercy of the victor.
"Champfleurie, thou mansworn loon, ask life at my hands, lest I slay thee like a venomous reptile."
"Nay, I need not ask that which is beyond your power to grant me," groaned the other.
"How, sir—what mean you?"
"That—that I am mortally wounded."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Florence with astonishment; "I did but give you a buffet with the shell of my sword—a mere buffet, sirrah."
"Draw near—draw near," said Champfleurie, half closing his eyes; and Florence knelt beside him.
"Nearer still I have somewhat to say—something to give thee."
Florence, with no emotion now in his heart but the purest commiseration, stooped over the supposed sufferer, who, transferring his dagger from one hand to the other, suddenly grasped him by the throat, dragged him down, and strove to stab him in the heart; but the point glanced aside upon the polished face of Fawside's finely-tempered cuirass, and the attempt was futile, as the blade went under his left arm.
Sudden though the action, Florence, by pressing his arm against his side, retained the weapon there, and, with his sword shortened in his hand, again menaced the throat of Champfleurie; but changing his purpose, instead of killing him on the instant, as he deserved, he merely compressed his steel gorget until he was almost suffocated, and then wrenching away the poniard, snapped the blade in pieces and threw them in his face in token of contempt.
At that moment the Lord Kilmaurs came forward, with his sword sheathed and his right hand ungloved.
"Laird of Fawside," said he, "you are a gentleman brave and accomplished as Champfleurie is false and unworthy. Accept my hand, in token that never again will I draw sword on you in any feud or faction, save for her majesty the queen. You have converted me from a foe to a friend."
"Then," says the old diarist already referred to, "the laird of Fawside, a soothfast youth and gallant, took the young lord's hand in his for a brief space, saying, with a laugh,—
"'He has rent me a velvet doublet, that cost fifty shillings in the Rue l'Arbre Sec, and ruined my garsay hosen by two sword-thrusts; but I am without a scratch.'"
Then straightway mounting his horse, without casting another glance at his prostrate enemy, who was covered with shame, he left the burgh of Stirling, in company with three landward merchants on their way to Edinburgh. And so, for the present, ended his quarrel with the laird of Champfleurie.