Night-jars and ravens, with wide-stretch'd throats,
From yews and hollies send their baleful notes;
The ominous raven, with a dismal cheer,
Through his hoarse beak, of following horror tells,
Begetting strange imaginary fear,
With heavy echoes like to Passing Bells.
With his heart filled by emotions of horror which the pen cannot describe, Florence raised Madeline, whom, though stretched upon her face, he knew instantly. Ah, there was no mistaking the beautiful contour of her head, from which the little triangular hood had been torn so roughly; or those tresses of rich and silky hair, in which Lady Alison had so ruthlessly twisted her fingers, that trembled alike with wrath and rage. Madeline was deathly pale; her eyes were almost closed, and a crimson current flowed in a slender streak from, her mouth; while her bosom, like the pavement on which she had lain for some minutes, was covered with blood. Her dress, which was of pale yellow silk slashed with black, at the breast and shoulders was covered with gouts of the same sanguine tint as the tiled floor of the church.
Mechanically, as one in a dream, Florence raised her, and as he did so, he recalled her strange and boding words of yesterday. Then something rolled under his foot. He looked down; it was a long, slender, and sharp-pointed bodkin—his mother's busk-bodkin! Tinged with blood, it told the whole terrible tale. He uttered a moan of mental agony, and, reeling against his father's tomb, remained for some moments stupefied, and incapable of action or coherent thought.
Madeline was insensible, yet he pressed her to his heart; and while his tears fell on her cheek, he kissed away the blood that flowed from her lips. Steps were now heard, and the old vicar, Father John, with eyes dilated in horror of the inhuman deed, and at the sacrilege committed in his secluded church, approached hastily; for the little page had heard the cries of his mistress, and for succour had rushed to the vicarage, which adjoined the burial-ground—but the succour came too late.
"'Tis all over with us now, Father John?" exclaimed Florence in broken accents; "by this cruel act my mother has broken my heart, and cast eternal infamy upon our name; and in destroying Madeline she has slain her son more surely and more wickedly than even the sword of Preston could have done."
The priest knelt down and chafed the hands of Madeline; but they were cold and passive.
"The blow—a double blow, good father—has been struck! She is dying! Madeline!—Madeline! The stab that slays you slays me too! Oh, madness!—oh, agony! Oh, fiendish mother, to work a sorrow so deep as this! Madeline, do you hear me? For God's pity, grace, and love, good vicar, say something—do something—for I cannot lose her thus! Speak, or I shall go mad, and dash my head against my father's tomb!"
For a moment Madeline, roused by his voice and energy, opened her eyes; and, on recognizing Florence, a sweet, sad smile passed over her soft features.
"My mother did this, Madeline; say it was or it was not she; am I mistaken—speak—speak!"
Loath to give pain where she loved so well and tenderly, and believing herself to be dying, she did not answer, save with sad smiles, to his earnest inquiries respecting her wounds, and his unavailing protestations of love and sorrow.
At last, when he implored her to speak, she attempted to say something; but her lips and tongue had lost their power; her eye grew dull, and she became insensible; her hands and her head drooped, and her long hair swept over the floor of the church as she was borne away.
The alarm had now spread to the village; so, while this scene was passing in the dusky and half-lighted church, and Florence in his grief was uttering a succession of incoherences, a crowd, principally of women, who viewed him with louring and hostile eyes, had gathered round; and by them Madeline, amid many expressions of woe (for the influence of her family was great in the neighbourhood), was borne carefully and tenderly into the vicar's house; and while she was undressed, and her wounds—two small but deep orifices—were stanched, horsemen were sent at full speed to Preston-tower, to that quaint compatriot of Rabelais, Master Posset, at Edinburgh, and to a certain nun of Haddington, Christina Hepburn, prioress of the Cistercians, a kinswoman of the Earl of Bothwell—a lady who had great skill as a leech, and enjoyed a high reputation as a woman of holiness.
Pressing his lips to the brow of Madeline, whose features were cold and passive as her clammy hands, Florence left her in charge of the vicar and her new attendants, and mounting his horse, which he knew to be swift and strong, he prepared to follow, and if possible to outride, the messenger for Edinburgh, as he had the greatest faith in Master Posset's skill; and with something like a prayer to Heaven, mingling on his lips with an imprecation on his mother, he leaped into the saddle, urged his horse across the rugged ravine which the old church and vicarage overlooked, and then galloped westward, blind with grief and confusion of thought, for his brain was yet giddy with the potent drug by which he had been so wickedly deluded, and a half-stupor hung over his senses.
Darkness, dense and gloomy, had now set in. The sky was without stars, and the country was enveloped in obscurity. As he rode on, urging his horse from time to time, to get it well up in hand, a light at the horizon caught his eye. He turned, and felt a shock like that of electricity: but they knew nought of electricity in those days.
On the brow of Soltra the red beacon was in flame; and now another, that rose on the summit of Dunprender, expanded from a star to a sheet of fire; another and another, on many a tower and hill, were lit up in rapid succession; and soon a chain of fires garlanded with flame the far horizon of the night, from the southern borders, sending to the distant Highland glens the tidings that the foe was advancing and the day of battle was at hand.
A fierce sensation, almost of joy, glowed through the throbbing and agonized heart of Florence. He considered those certain signals of the coming war—the war that in another week was to lay all Lothian desolate, like the shores of the Dead Sea—as so many flaming lights that would guide him to Madeline in the other world; for by her changed aspect and dreadful pallor, he dared not hope that she would survive the night. As he paused a moment, to watch the beacons kindling and blazing in succession on the murky sky, there came over the open plain from Tranent, a sound which made him shudder, and caused the pulses of his heart to stand still.
It was, indeed, a dreadful sound—the solemn tolling of the passing bell, which informed him that Madeline Home was dying, or was already no more!
By this old custom, which of course was abolished in Scotland at the Reformation, all the faithful were invited to pray for the departing soul; and its sound was also supposed to scare away the fiends who were in waiting to wrest it from its guardian angels, as they winged their way towards the stars.
He stood upon the bleak, open heath as if transformed to stone, every knell of the solemn soul-bell seeming to echo in his heart and in his brain; yet his thoughts were without coherence and his lips without prayer. His mother—his dreadful, blood-imbrued mother, with her tall sombre figure, seemed to tower before his vision, like a shadowed angel of destruction! He dared not think of her.
The reins fell from his hands, and covering his hot, tearless eyes, he groaned aloud in his agony, and felt as if under a horrible spell.
Still the solemn bell continued its monotonous tolling, and it came to his ear by fits upon the hollow wind. Had Florence not been too certain that he was awake, he would have deemed that he was involved in some hideous dream or vision of the night.
"Oh, to shut out that dreadful sound, and to forget it for ever!" thought he. "A thousand times I have heard it ring before, but never with a cadence so dreadful as to-night."
At that moment he heard the galloping of a horse; its steps faltered as it came along, for it seemed worn and faint by the speed to which it was urged by whip and spur, and by the toil of the long journey it had undergone. On arriving near Florence, the rider reined suddenly up, and then, as if the endurance of life could be no longer taxed, the panting and foam-covered horse, sank lifeless, or nearly so, upon the roadway.
"Who are you that sit idly on your horse, in an hour like this, when every beacon in the land is in a flame?" asked the dismounted man breathlessly, as he disengaged himself from his stirrups, and rushed to the side of Florence; "speak, sir—who are you?"
"I am Florence of Fawside," replied the other; "and what then?"
"I am Livingstone of Champfleurie," said the other, stepping back with his hand on his sword.
"Hah!—go, go; in an hour like this, I am at peace even with you," said Florence mournfully.
"This is no time to speak of peace," replied Livingstone, still panting with his recent exertion; "I have ridden from Berwick on the spur—more than fifty miles to-day, after seeing the English vanguard close upon the Tweed, and when I last saw Home Castle, four lights were all ablaze upon its summit, as a token that they were in great strength, and bound this way. Through all the Merse and Lauderdale I have borne this—the cross of fire! Thou seest my horse, man—it can no further go, nor well can I. Take this, and ride to the Lord Regent—rouse the country as you go, and say the foe are bound direct for Lothian—you hear me, direct for Lothian! On, on—I say, and ride with this for Edinburgh. Luckily thou art mounted—ride, ride, for Scotland and the queen!"
With these words, which he poured forth all in a breath, Champfleurie thrust into the hand of Florence the fiery cross—the old Scottish symbol of war, the summons to arms, and then incapable of further action, he sank beside his dying horse, panting and breathless on the heath. Florence, as a loyal subject, knew at once what his duty required him to do; and anxious to find relief from the agony of his soul in any species of excitement, he turned his horse and rode off madly towards the west; but the solemn sound of the passing bell seemed to follow him, even when he drew up within the gates of Edinburgh, amid the wild clamour and hurrahs of the mustering craftsmen, the clanging of the alarm-bells, and the rattle of drums, as, in the glare of torch and cresset, the provost, the deacons, and magistrates, arrayed the bands of burgesses, under their various banners, in that long and magnificent street which still forms the main artery of life in the ancient city of the Stuarts; and there the murmur of the gathering thousands rose into the midnight air like the solemn chafing of a distant sea, or the wind passing through the leaves of a mighty forest.
Ten minutes after his entrance into the city by the Kirk-o'-field Porte, saw him in the presence of Arran, in the old Tower of Holyrood, along the shadowy corridors and past the tall windows of which lights were seen to flicker, and the glitter of armed figures, with helmets and partisans, flitting to and fro, like spectres, half seen and half lost in gloom, as gentlemen and men-at-arms betook them to their harness with soldier-like alacrity. Florence was introduced to the regent in that old tapestried room where, in the nights of after times, poor Mary Stuart wet many a pillow with her bitter tears, and from where Rizzio was dragged forth to die. He found the regent just roused from bed by the clamour in the city. He was clad in a loose robe of scarlet trimmed with miniver; his sheathed sword was in his hand, and around him were his brother, the lord chancellor, and the Abbot of Paisley, with many nobles and officers of state, who, on their first alarm, had hurried to the palace in arms.
Pale as ashes, and feeling as if death was in his heart, Florence entered the room, with his hands begrimed by the fire-scathed cross, which he had long since consigned to another messenger to bear elsewhere. He approached the regent, but, overcome by his emotions, tottered to a chair, and found himself incapable of speech or action.
"Wine—wine! 'tis Fawside, ever faithful and true; but faint and worn now," exclaimed Arran.
Dalserfe, the page, promptly brought a flask of wine; but Florence waved his hand, and again sank back; then fortunately there entered at that moment another messenger, the loyal old Earl of Mar.
"The English are in motion, my Lord of Arran," he exclaimed.
"A thousand beacons are telling all Scotland quite as much, lord earl," said Arran, with a quiet smile; "so they are advancing?"
"Their avant-garde, three thousand strong, under their lieutenant-general, the brave Earl of Warwick, is already on the march to Greenlaw; and their rear-guard, also three thousand strong, under the Lord Dacres, hath reached Berwick. I have ridden from the Merse, old as I am, to bear these sure tidings, for I saw them cross the Tweed to-day at noon!"
"Who hath them, under baton?"
"The duke—Edward of Somerset."
"Sit ye down, lord earl," said the Archbishop of St. Andrews; "for in sooth you seem weary."
"Nay, my lord, pardon me," replied this peer, like all his race a faithful adherent of the crown; "but in this room where last I knelt to James V.——"
"James V. was too good a Scotsman to have kept an old soldier, a true and valiant peer like thee, standing in thy seventieth year, like a very foot-page."
"And after a fifty miles ride from the Merse."
"But we have no time for idle compliments," said Arran impatiently; "summon the lords of council, and despatch couriers to every sheriffdom, stewartry, and constabulary; the muster-place is Edmondstone Edge. Dalserfe, my pages and armour!"
With these words Arran abruptly closed the interview.