CHAPTER I.

THE PLACE OF BRUNTISFIELD.

There is nae Covenant noo, Lassie, There is nae covenant, noo; The solemn league and covenant, Are a' broken through. OLD SONG.

One evening in the month of March, 1688, a party of thirty soldiers mustered rapidly and silently under the arches of the White Horse Hostel, an old and well-known inn on the north side of the Canongate of Edinburgh. The night was dark and cold, and a high wind swept in gusts down the narrow way between the picturesque houses of that venerable street and the steep side of the bare and rocky Calton-hill.

Gathering in cautious silence, the soldiers scarcely permitted the butts of their heavy matchlocks to touch the pavement: in a loud whisper the officer gave the order to march, and they moved off with the same air of quietness and rapidity which characterized their muster, and showed that a very secret or important duty was about to be executed.

In those days the ranks were drawn up three deep, and such was the mode until a later period; so, by simply facing a body of men to the right or left, they found themselves three abreast without confusion or delay.

"Fenton," said the officer to a young man who carried a pike beside him, "keep rearward. You are wont to have the eye of a hawk; and if any impertinent citizen appears to watch us, lay thy truncheon across his pate."

This injunction was unnecessary; for those belated citizens who saw them, hurried past, glad to escape unquestioned. In those days, when every corporal of horse or foot, was vested with more judicial powers than the Lord Justice General, the night march of a band of soldiers was studiously to be avoided. Aware that some "deed of persecution" was about to be acted, the occasional wayfarers hurried on, or turned altogether aside, when forewarned that soldiers appeared, by the measured tread of feet, by the gleam of a gun-barrel, or cone of a helmet glinting in the rays of light that shot from half-closed windows into the palpable darkness.

These soldiers belonged to the regiment of George Earl of Dunbarton, the oldest in the Scottish army, and a body of such antiquity, that they were jocularly known in France as Pontius Pilate's Guards. With red coats, they wore morions of black unpolished iron; breast-plates of the same metal, crossed by buff belts which sustained their swords, fixing-daggers and collars of bandoleers, as the twelve little wooden cases, each containing a charge of powder, were named. Their breeches and stockings were of bright scarlet, and each had a long musket sloped on his shoulder, with its lighted match gleaming like a glowworm in the dark. The officer was distinguished by a plume that waved from a tube on his gilded helmet, which, like his gorget, was of polished steel, while to denote his rank he carried a half-pike, in addition to his rapier and dagger, and wore a black corslet richly engraved and studded with nails of gold, conform to the Royal Order of 1686. He was a handsome fellow, tall, and well set up, with a heavy dark mustache, and a face like each of his soldiers, well bronzed by the sun of France and Tangiers.

In that age, the closes and wynds of the Scottish capital were like those of ancient Paris or modern Lisbon, narrow, smoky, and crowded, unpaved, unlighted, and encumbered with heaps of rubbish and mud, which obstructed the gutters and lay in fœtid piles, until heavy rains swept all the debris of the city down from its lofty ridge into the Loch on the north, or the ancient _communis ma_, on the south. At night the careful citizen carried a lantern--the bold one his sword; for men generally walked abroad well armed, and none ever rode without a pair of long iron pistols at his saddle-bow.

The late king had made every kind of dissipation fashionable; and after night-fall the gallants of the city swaggered about the Craimes or the Abbey-Close, muffled in their cloaks like conspirators; and despite the axes of the city guard, and the halberds of the provost, excesses were committed hourly; and seldom a night passed without the clash of rapiers and the shouts of cavalier brawlers being heard ringing in the dark thoroughfares of the city. Thieves were hanged, coiners were quartered, covenanters beheaded, and witches burned, until executions failed to excite either interest or horror; but with the plumed and buff-booted Ruffler of the day, who brawled and fought from a sheer love of mischief and wine, what plebeian baillie or pumpkin-headed city-guard would have dared to find fault? Of this more anon.

Stumbling through the dark streets, the party of soldiers marched past the Pleasance Porte, above the arch of which grinned a white row of five bare skulls, which had been bleaching there since 1681. Every barrier of Edinburgh was garnished with these terrible trophies of maladministration.

Leaving behind them the ancient suburb, they diverged upon the road near the old ruined convent of St. Mary of Placentia, which, from the hill of St. Leonard, reared up its ivied walls in shattered outline. Beyond, and towering up abruptly from the lonely glen below, frowned the tremendous front of Salisbury craigs. The rising moon showed its broad and shining disc, red and fiery above their black rocks, and fitfully between the hurrying clouds, its rays streamed down the Hauze, a deep and ghastly defile, formed by some mighty convulsion of nature, when these vast craigs had been rent from that ridgy mountain, where King Arthur sat of old, and watched his distant gallies on the waters of the Roman Bodoria.

For a moment the moonlight streamed down the defile, on the hill of St. Leonard, with its thatched cottages and ruined convent, on the glancing armour of the soldiers, and the bare trees bordering the highway; again the passing clouds enveloped it in opaque masses, and all was darkness.

"Sergeant Wemyss," cried the cavalier officer, breaking the silence which had till then been observed.

"Here, an't please your honour," responded the halberdier.

"Where tarries that loitering abbeylubber, who was to have joined us on the march?"

"The Macer?"

"Ay, he with the council's warrant for this dirty work."

"Yonder he stands, I believe, your honour, by the ruins of the mass-monging days," replied the sergeant, pointing to a figure which a passing gleam of the moon revealed emerging from the ruins.

"Mean you that tall spunger in the red Rocquelaure? To judge by his rapier and feather, he is a gentleman, but one that seems to watch us. So, ho, sir! a good even; you are late abroad to-night."

"At your service, Sir," responded the other gruffly behind the cape of his cloak, which, in the fashion of an intriguing gallant of the day, he wore so high up as completely to conceal his face.

"For King or for Covenant, Sir?" asked the lieutenant, who was Richard Douglas, of Finland.

"Tush!" laughed the stranger; "this is an old-fashioned test; you should have asked," he added, in a lower voice, "For James VII., or William of Orange! ha, hah!"

"Hush, my Lord Clermistonlee, by this light."

"Right, by Jove!" exclaimed the other, who was considerably intoxicated.

"Body o' me! it ill beseems one of His Majesty's Privy Councillors to be roving abroad thus like a night hawk."

"I am the best judge of my own actions, Mr. Douglas," replied the lord haughtily; but added in a whisper, "you are bound for the Wrytes-house?"

"To the point, my Lord?" rejoined Douglas, drily.

"You will take particular care that the young lady--tush, I mean the old one--they must not escape, as you shall answer to the Council. Dost comprehend me--the young lady of Bruntisfield, eh?"

"Too well, my Lord," replied the cavalier, drawing himself up, and shaking his lofty plume with undisguised hauteur. "Curse on the libertine fool!" he exclaimed to the young pikeman, as he hurried after his party; "would he make me his pimp? By Heaven! he well deserves a slash in the doublet for casting his eyes upon noble ladies, as he would on the bona-robas of Merlin's Wynd."

The young man's hand gradually sought the hilt of his poniard.

"What said he, Finland?" he asked, with a kindling eye and a reddening cheek. "He spoke of the Napiers, did he not?"

"Only to this purpose, that on peril of our beards the ladies do not escape, especially the younger one. Hah! they say this ruffling libertine hath long looked unutterable things at Lilian Napier. He is a deep intriguer, and the devil only knows what plots he may be hatching now against her."

"S'death! Finland, assure me of this, and by Heaven I will brain him with my partisan!"

"Hush, lad! these words are dangerous. You are but a young soldier yet, Walter," continued the officer, laughing; "had you trailed a pike under Henry de la Tour of Auvergne, and the old Mareschal Crecqy, like me, you would ere this have learned to value a girl's tears and a grandam's groans at the same ransom, perhaps. But, egad, I had rather than my burganet full of broad pieces, that this night's duty had fallen on any other than myself; and I think, Major, the Chevalier Drumquhazel (as we call him) might have selected some of those old fellows whose iron faces and iron hearts will bear them through anything."

"Why, Finland," rejoined the pikeman, "you are not wont to be backward!"

"Never when bullets or blades are to be encountered; but to worry an old preacher, and harry the house and barony of an ancient and noble matron, by all the devils! 'tis not work for men of honour. The Napiers of Bruntisfield are soothfast friends of the Lauries of Maxwelton--and my dear little Annie--thou knowest, Walter, that her wicked waggery will never let me hear the end of it, if we march the Napiers to the Tolbooth to-night."

"You see the advantage of being alone in this bad and hollow-hearted world," said Fenton, in a tone of bitterness, "of being uncaring and utterly uncared for."

"Again in one of thy moody humours!"

"I have trailed this pike----"

"True--since Sedgemoor-field was fought and lost by Monmouth; but cheer up, my gallant. If this rascal, William of Orange, unfurls his banner among us, we will have battles and leaguers enough; ay, faith! to which the Race of Dunbar, and the Sack of Dundee, will be deemed but child's-play. And hark! for thy further contentment, I trailed a partisan for four long years under Turenne ere I obtained a pair of colours; and _then_ I thought my fortune made; but thou see'st, Walter, I am only a poor lieutenant still. Uncaring and uncared for! Bravo! 'tis the frame of mind to make an unscrupulous lad do his _devoire_ as becomes a soldier. And yet I assure thee, friend Walter, if aught in Scotland will make a man swerve from his duty--ay, even old Thomas Dalzel, that heart of steel--'tis the blue eyes of Lilian Napier, of Bruntisfield. The beauty of her person is equalled only by the winning grace of her manner; and I swear to thee, that not even Mary of Charteris, or my own merry Annie, have brighter charms--a redder lip, or a whiter hand. Hast seen her, lad?"

"Oh, yes," replied the young man with vivacity, "a thousand times."

"And spoken to her?"

"Alas, no!" was the response, "not for these past three years at least."

There was a sadness in his voice, which, with the sigh accompanying his words, conveyed a great deal--but only to the wind--for the gayer cavalier marked it not.

"If we start the game--I mean these Dutch renegades on the Napiers' barony--it will go hard with them in these times, when every day brings to light some new plot against the Government. Napier of the Wrytes--'tis an old and honourable line, and loth will I be to see it humbled."

"What can prompt ladies of honour to meddle in matters of kirk or state?"

"The great father of confusion who usually presides at the head of our Scottish affairs. True, Walter, the rock, the cod, and the bobbins become them better; but I shall be sorry to exact marching-money and free quarters from old Lady Grizel. Clermistonlee is the source of this accusation, which alleges that her ladyship knows of an intended invasion from Holland, and that she hath reset two emissaries of the House of Orange. But a word in thine ear, Fenton; there are villains at our Council-board who more richly merit the cord of the Provost Marshal; and Randal Clermont, of Clermistonlee, is not the least undeserving of such exaltation."

"If the soldiers overhear, you are a lost man."

"God save King James and sain King Charles, say I! but to old Mahoud with the Council, which is driving the realm to ruin at full gallop. Hah! here comes, at last, this loitering villain, the macer," added Finland, as the moonlight revealed a man running after them. "Fellow! why the deuce did you not meet us at the White Horse Cellar?"

"Troth, Sir, just to tell ye the truth," replied the panting functionary, drawing his gilt baton from the pocket of his voluminous skirt, "it is a kittle job this, and likely to get a puir man like me unco ill will in such uncanny times--but I stayed a wee while owre late may be, biding the ale cogue, at Lucky Dreep's change-house in the Kirk-o'-field Wynd. However, Sir, follow me, and we'll catch these traitors where the reiver fand the tangs--at Madam's fire-side."

"Follow thee!" reiterated the cavalier officer, contemptuously; "malediction on the hour when a Douglas of Finland and a band of the old Scottish Musqueteers are bent on the same errand with a knave like thee! Step out, my lads, and, Walter Fenton, do thou fall rearward again, and see that we are neither followed nor watched; for, egad! these are times to sharpen one's wits."

Thus ordered, our hero (for such is the handsome pikeman) fell gradually to the rear, and stopped at times to bend his ear to the ground and his eyes on the changing shadows of the moonlit scenery; but he heard nothing save the blustering wind of March, which swept through the hollow dells, and saw only the shadows of the flying clouds cast by the bright moon on the fields through which the soldiers marched.

They had now passed all the houses of the city, and were moving westward, by the banks of the Burghloch, a broad and beautiful sheet of water, upwards of a mile in length, shaded on one side by the broken woods of Warrender and the old orchards of the convent of Sienna; on the other, open fields extended from its margin to the embattled walls of the city. One moment it shone like a sheet of polished silver; the next it lay like a lake of ink, as the passing clouds revealed or obscured the full-orbed moon.

"What lights are those twinkling in the woods yonder?" asked Finland, pointing northward with his pike, on his party reaching the rhinns, or flat at the end of the lake.

"The house of Coates, Sir--the old patrimony of the Byres o' that Ilk."

"Harkee, macer, and the dark pile rising on the height, further to the westward."

"The Place of Drumsheugh, Sir, pertaining of auld to my Lord Clermistonlee. He was just the gudeman thereof before these kittle times. A dark and eerie place it is, where neither light has burned nor fire bleezed--a joke been cracked nor a runlet broached these mony lang years. He is a dour cheild that Clermistonlee, and one that would--"

"Twist thy hause, fellow," said the pikeman, sternly, "for speaking of your betters otherwise than with the reverence that becomes your station."

"Ye craw brawly for the spawn o' an auld covenanter," muttered the macer between his teeth, as they entered the dark avenue that led to the place of their destination; "brawly indeed! but may-be I'll hae ye under my hands yet, for a' your iron bravery and gay gauds."