'Tear the murderer in pieces—kill him, kill him!' So that Cassillis had to summon men-at-arms to keep back that throng of furious folk, for the death of my master seemed to them but a little thing and venial, compared to the killing of a lad like William Dalrymple. And this was because the people of Carrick had been used all their days to family feuds and the expiation of blood by blood.
The Earl was about to call me up to give an account of my part in the affair, and I was preparing myself to make a good and creditable appearance—a thing which I have all my life studied to do—when there was heard a mighty crying in the rear of the Bailzie Court. Men cried 'He comes! He comes!' as though it had been some great one. And everybody turned their heads, to the no small annoyance of Earl John, who when on his Hill of Justice loved not that men should look in any other direction than his own.
The ranks of the men-at-arms opened, and there strode into the square of trial, which was guarded by the pennons of blue and gold at the four corners—who but John Mure of Auchendrayne himself, wearing the same cloak of grey and broad plumed hat which had been his wont when he went abroad upon dangerous quests! With him was another shorter man, whose face was for the time being almost hidden, for he had pulled the cloak he was wearing close about his mouth. He walked with an odd jolt or roll in his gait, and his breeches were exceedingly broad in the basement.
It was small wonder that we stood aghast at this sudden compearing of the arch criminal, whose misdeeds throughout all the countryside had filled the cup of his wickedness to the brim.
'Seize him!' cried the Earl, pointing directly at John Mure.
And his Bailzie's men took him roughly by the shoulders and set him beside his son. Then it was to be noticed, as the two stood together, that there was a great likeness between father and son. The elder man possessed the same features without any evident differences in outline. But so informed was his face with intelligence and power, that what was simply dull cruelty and loutishness in the one became the guile of statecraft in the other.
'Wherefore, my Lord Earl,' cried John Mure of Auchendrayne, 'is this violence done to me and to the heir of my house? I demand to know concerning what we are called in question and by whom?'
Then the Earl of Cassillis answered him,—
'John Mure of Auchendrayne, know then that you are charged, along with this your son, with the bloody murder of Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean, Tutor of Cassillis; and also with the cruel death of William Dalrymple, the young lad who brought you the message to your own house of Auchendrayne, telling at what hour the Tutor should pass the trysting place, where he was by you and yours foully assaulted and slain.'
'And who declares these things?' cried Mure, boldly, with a bearing more like that of an innocent man than that of any criminal that ever I saw.
The Earl bade us who had accused them so justly to stand forth. Then John Mure eyed us with a grave and amused contempt.
'My son's false wife, whom sorrow has caused to dote concerning her father's death—her night-raking rantipole sister, and her paramour, a loutish, land-louping squire—the Dominie of Maybole, a crippledick and piping merry-Andrew that travelled with them—these are the accusers of John Mure of Auchendrayne. They have seen, heard, noted what others have been ignorant of! Nay, rather, is it not clear that they have collogued together, conspiring to bear false witness against me and mine—for the sake of the frantic splenetic madness of her who is my son's fugitive wife, whose wrongs exist only in her own imaginings.'
'You have forgotten me!' said Robert Harburgh, quietly, stepping forward.
'I know you well,' said John Mure, 'and I would have remembered you had you been worth remembering. You are my Lord of Cassillis's squire and erstwhile a gay cock-sparrow ruffler, now married to the Grieve's daughter at Culzean.'
'Well,' said Harburgh, 'and what of that? Can a man not be all that and yet tell the truth?'
'That I leave to one who is greater, to judge,' said John Mure.
'And I do judge, John Mure,' cried the Earl, rising in his chair of state. 'I judge you to be a man rebel and mansworn, a traitor and a man-slayer. For a score of years ye have keeped all this realm of Carrick in a turmoil, you and they that have partaken with you in your evil deeds.'
'Loud, swelling words are but wind, my lord Earl of Cassillis,' answered Mure of Auchendrayne, a dry smile of contempt coming over his features.
'Now I will show thee, bold ill-doer,' said the Earl, fiercely, 'whether I speak the words of a dotard or no. Forward, men, take him up and bind him. Methinks we have yet engines within the castle of Dunure that can make him declare the rights of this murderous treason!'
Then I rejoiced, not for the torture of our enemy, but because at last the Earl saw fully with our eyes, and would right us against the cruel oppressor of Marjorie Kennedy, and for the murder of my gentle and courteous master.
But ere the men could carry out the orders of the Earl, the broad-breeched man who had accompanied Auchendrayne, and who had all the while stood still and watchful, dropped his plaid, which like a mask he had held beneath his eyes. He was a middle-sized, fleshy man, with no great dignity of face, and with a weak mouth that dribbled perpetually at the side as if the tongue were too large for it. He wore a slashed doublet very full at the sleeves, baggy trunks, and a sword in a plain scabbard hanging at his side. I saw nothing further very particular about the man save the shambling inward bend of his knees. But it was with dumb amaze that the Earl looked at him, standing there arrested in the act of pointing with his hand at John Mure. He stood with his jaw fallen, and his eyes starting from his head.
'The King! the King!' he muttered in astonishment, looking about him like one distracted.
'Ay, Baron Bailzie of Carrick, even your King,' said the man in the wide trunk hosen, 'come to see how his sometime High Treasurer of Scotland executes just judgment in his own regality!'
The Earl came quickly to himself, and he and all the people took off their hats. He stepped down and made his obeisance to the King, bending humbly upon his knee. Then he ushered the King to the throne whereon he himself had been sitting, and took a lower seat beside Adam Boyd of Penkill, his assessor in ordinary.
The King rose to speak.
'My Lord Earl and gentlemen of Carrick,' he said, with dignity enough, but with a thick and rolling accent as if his tongue had been indeed too big, 'I know this case to the bottom. I am fully persuaded of the innocence of our trusty councillor, John Mure of Auchendrayne—who is besides of the fraternity of learned men, and one that hath a history of this realm in script ready for the printers, wherein he does full justice both to myself and to my noble predecessors. He hath, as I should nominate it, an exactness of expression and a perspicuity of argument that have never been matched in the land. I propose shortly to make him my historiographer royal. Also I, the King, do know him to be a man well affected to the right ecclesiastical ruling of this kingdom, and minded to help me with the due ordering of it.'
The King puffed and blew after his speech, and we and all that were there stood silent, for to most of us he might as well have spoken in the Hebrew of which he boasted himself so great a master. Then he went on:—
'I have left my Lord Mar and my retinue some way in the rear. For we go to hunt the deer in whatever forest the goodwill of our loyal subjects may put at our disposal.'
'You are right welcome, my liege,' said the Earl John, starting up and standing bareheaded, 'to my hunting lodges and retinue, both in the Forest of Buchan and also at my house of Cassillis.'
The King bent towards him royally, for James the Sixth had manners when he liked to show them—which, in truth, was not always.
'I thank you, trusty councillor,' said he; 'it is nobly and generously done—qualities which also marked your all-too-brief tenure of the office of High Treasurer of Scotland. But for the judging of this our worthy subject, I propose to take that upon myself, being wholly persuaded of his innocence. And as for those that have falsely accused him, let the men underlie my will in the prison most convenient, and the women be warded meantime in their own house and castle, till I cause to be known my whole pleasure in the matter.'
We stood aghast, and knew not what to say, so completely had Auchendrayne turned our flank with the King. Not a word had we found to allege when the officers of the court, to whom the charge was given, came to put the iron rings on our wrists and march us off, even as we had hoped and expected to see Auchendrayne and his son taken.
And as the Dominie and I were haled away we could see Auchendrayne bending suavely over the King's high seat, and His Majesty inclining to him and talking privately back and forth, with many becks and uncouth graces such as he had used in his address to the Earl and his people.
'He is the very devil himself,' said the Dominie, meaning Auchendrayne and not the King; 'he hath not halted to cozen the greatest man in this realm with his lying tongue!'
But I said nothing, for what had I to say? I had seen lands, honours, love, and consideration vanish at a stroke.