O bide at hame, my lord, she said;
O bide at hame my marrow,
For my three brethren will thee slay,
On the dowie dens o' Yarrow.
Old Ballad.
On this gloomy evening, the 2nd of September, the tower of Preston, like every other tower and fortalice in Scotland, presented a scene of bustle and warlike preparation. Clumps of tall Scottish lances, newly shafted and freshly pointed, stood in rows against the barbican wall: the clink of the smith's hammer, as he welded horse-shoes or riveted armour that had been cut or broken in recent frays, was heard in various quarters; the hands of Symon Brodie, of Mungo-Tennant, and other sturdy vassals, were all busy, scouring breastplates, burganets, and gauntlets; and here, as in Fawside, the red sparks flew from the whirling grindstone, as the hard edge of the Jethart axe or the long fluted blade of the broadsword were applied thereto by those bronzed and bearded ploughmen whom the coming week was to see transformed into helmeted men-at-arms following the laird to the field for Scotland and her queen.
Amid this somewhat unwonted bustle the young Countess of Yarrow easily and unseen reached the castle garden, and from thence, by a private door, proceeded on foot to the place of rendezvous, attended only by a little footboy, who bore her missal in a velvet bag, on which her coat-of-arms was embroidered in the Scottish fashion for ladies, i.e., without supporters, but surrounded by a cord of her colours, all fairly emblazoned by Sir David Lindesay of the Mount, and named in the courtly language of heraldry a cordeliere, or lace of love.
On reaching the church, which was little more than one Scottish mile from the gate of Preston, she sent her attendant on a message to the thatched village, with some bodily comforts for certain of her poor pensioners; and, without perceiving that Roger of Westmains, with three armed men in helmets, jacks, and plate sleeves, with four saddled horses, were half concealed in a thicket of thorns close by, she entered the gloomy fane just as the sun set enveloped in clouds, as already described, thus making more sombre the shadows of an edifice, the aspect and memories of which made her shudder, and blanched the beautiful smile which the hope of meeting her lover spread over her face.
"Florence!" she exclaimed timidly, pausing at the entrance of the church, which seemed so empty and desolate; and as she gazed anxiously up the nave, the figures of none met her eyes but those of armed men carved in stone, and stretched in death-like rigidity on their Gothic biers, surrounded by little figures called weepers, in niches—effigies all swept away by the mad fury of the Reformers, twelve years after.
"Florence!" she repeated, in a lower and more agitated voice; still there was no response; and she was about to withdraw with a mingled emotion of pique and alarm, when suddenly, from between the tombs of William Fawside and his father Sir John, there started up the tall and weird-like figure of a woman clad in a long black dooleweed, on the left shoulder of which was the usual mark of mourning, a white velvet cross. Her face was pale as that of a corpse, but her features were convulsed with all the energy of fierce and concentrated passion and venom. Her mouth was open, but her close rows of firm white teeth were clenched, and her hollow eyes shone with a baleful light. Towering above the shrinking Madeline, she put forth a long arm, and, with a wild exclamation of triumph, grasped her hand, and retained it with all the unyielding tenacity of an iron vice, and shook her wrathfully the while.
"Madam, madam!" exclaimed the poor countess, who believed herself in the power of an insane person, "what mean you by this?"
"That ye shall soon learn," hissed Lady Alison, shaking her more violently than ever.
"Help—help!" cried Madeline! "I will not be so abused! Woman, who are you, that dare to use me thus!"
"Dare?" she said; "dare?—ha! ha!"
"Yes, I repeat, dare! I am a lady of honour—Madeline Countess of Yarrow."
"And I am Alison of Fawside; and now, between these cold tombs, in each of which there lieth a murdered man—the corpse of the husband in whose kind bosom I slept for thirty years, and the corpse of the son I bore unto him and suckled at these breasts—murdered by Claude Hamilton of Preston, your nearest and only kinsman! Need I tell more to thee, Madeline Home?"
On this announcement Madeline remembered her recent dream; then a deadly terror possessed all her faculties and for a time froze her very utterance; while, as if feasting upon the fear her presence excited, the fierce old woman like an enraged Pythoness, surveyed her with gleaming eyes.
"Lady—Lady Alison, hear me; of all these horrors, I at least am innocent," faltered Madeline. "Release me, and on my knees I will unite with you in prayer for the dead."
"Prayer! thou sorceress, thou hell-doomed witch, who would rob me of my only living son!"
"Madam——"
"Nay, speak not, and crave no pity, for only such pity shall ye have as my winsome Willie had when bleeding he lay under Preston's curtal axe at the barriers of Edinburgh! And so my bonnie Florence loves thee? Aha! aha!"
"Oh God! is there no succour near?" sighed the shrinking girl; for there shone in the old woman's colourless face a pale and almost infernal light.
"He loves thee—ha! and yet thy beauty is no such wondrous matter, after all. A poor and pale-faced moppet like thee would never bear men to succeed the two stately knights who lie beside us! So, so! it is thou, witch, who wouldst rob me of the only son thy murderous race have left me—rob me of him by necromancy? Hah! Wretch! whence got ye that magic ring, that accursed opal, which I have thrown into the flames, but which hath cast a glamour in his eyes and made him love his enemies? Or got ye a love-philter from that quack apothegar, above whose door there swingeth a stuffed devil in the light of open day, Master Posset? Speak! 'Tis like the courtly ways of that woman of the house of Guise and those who serve her. Speak! thou pale-faced Jezebel—speak! lest I strangle thee!"
"Oh!" murmured Madeline, sinking lower on her knees, overcome by the horror of being an actor in such a scene as this. And now, endued by supernatural strength, this terrible dame dragged her between the tombs of the Fawsides. Then Madeline's spirit revolted against these insults, and she strove to rise and free herself, but Dame Alison by main strength held her down and retained her, kneeling at her feet. "Lady," exclaimed the countess, "you are alike unjust and cruel, insolent and wicked. I am a lady, an earl's daughter——"
"And what am I? A daughter of the house of Colean, whose sires were knights and barons in Carrick since the days of Malcolm IV. and William the Lion. Listen, thou trembling minx! My son came over the salt sea from France, hating, with a hatred deep as its waters, all who bore the name of Hamilton, and intent on slaying the man who slew his father and brother under trust and tryst, foully, as Judas betrayed his holy Master. How is it now? He is James of Arran's soothfast man and tool, and thy plaything and toy—a puling moonstruck fool! And how came this to pass? By the agency of Satan and of such as thee; for, by St. Paul, I believe the holy water in yonder font would hiss upon thy pallid face if I cast it there, as it would do upon iron in a white heat? Love thee, indeed! Perchance he would have wedded thee, too! Ha! ha!"
"Madam," said Madeline, who was too patient and gentle not to be brave and resolute in a good cause, and who blushed amid her terror, "in that case he might, by the queen's grace, have shared the fair coronet my father bequeathed to me from the field of Solway."
"Foul shame and fell dishonour blight the new-fangled toy!" exclaimed Lady Alison with growing rage; "there were no earls in Yarrow when a laird of Fawside saved King David's life amid the Saxon host at Northallerton! But 'tis thy face that hath bewitched my son; and if a hot iron can mar and destroy the beauty he sees in it, by God's wrath it shall soon perish and shrivel up like parchment in the fire! Ho! Roger—Westmains, come hither!"
At these terrible words the fear of Madeline could no longer be controlled, and the recesses of the solitary church echoed with her cries for succour—cries which there were none to hear; and now, in the excitement of this struggle, a new idea seized the mind of Dame Alison. Wreathing her hands in the dishevelled hair of Madeline, she madly dashed her repeatedly against the tombs on each side. To save herself, the poor girl caught the carved projections, and, clinging, held them more than once; but such was the strength of Dame Alison, that her victim's grasp was repeatedly torn away.
"Here," exclaimed the stern widow—"here, between the bones of my dead husband and son, as on a shrine of vengeance, do I offer up your blood, even as the pagans of old offered up their sacrifices to the spirits of hatred and revenge! Die—die! and by the hand of her whose son ye sought by your damnable arts to ensnare and to destroy!"
With these words she drew the long steel bodkin from her busk, and thrusting it twice into the bosom of Madeline, rushed from the church, and left her stretched on the pavement gasping for breath, and choking in warm and weltering blood.
Some accounts say this terrible deed was perpetrated with a poniard; but the vicar of Tranent distinctly records that she used her "buske bodkyne."