CHAPTER XLV.

ST. ANTHONY'S BELL.

"The gruntil of St. Anthony's sow, Quhilk bore his holy bell."--SIR D. LINDESAY.

Next day it became known among all the ports on both sides of the Forth, that Admiral Wood had won another victory--that his three favourite followers, Mathieson, Barton of Leith, and Falconer of Bo'ness, had escaped without scaith, and the bells in more than a hundred steeples rang joyously, while the ships hoisted all their colours and streamers in the roadstead, at the Hope, and in the harbours.

In the house of Barton, the insurgent nobles held a deep carouse, and drank the Rhenish and Malvoisie of the umquhile Sir Andrew with a relish all the greater that it cost them nothing. Among the company were four persons, at least, who would rather have hailed a disastrous defeat than this unexpected victory.

These were the Lords Home and Hailes--who had great hopes that their troublesome rivals might have been sent to a better world; but chiefly Sir Patrick Gray and Sir James Shaw, with others of their servile and infamous faction, who were thunderstruck by the intelligence; for they had never doubted, when the Admiral dropped down the river with two vessels only, that he was running into the jaws of destruction. But it is strange that Wood, in all his naval battles, had to contend against great odds, yet never _once_ was beaten. And now the cosmopolitans of the English faction trembled, as they remembered their bond with Henry, and feared that unless the lips of Margaret Drummond were sealed for ever, their projects would all be revealed to Rothesay, of whom, boy as he was, they knew enough to be assured of a terrible retribution.

Lord Drummond--that irascible old patrician--had peremptorily warned his daughters Euphemia and Sybilla to prepare for being espoused by Home and Hailes, whose new patents of nobility, he believed, would be issued as soon as the king's _flight_--his murder was yet unknown--was ascertained, and as soon as Rothesay was proclaimed king. Their uncle, the Dean of Dunblane--a facile priest, in all things subservient to his brother as chief of the clan Drummond, and, like most Scottish churchmen of that age, bent solely on the aggrandizement of his family,--was to perform the ceremony, which was fixed to take place on an early day. And as the venerable dean had long since been abstracted from all human sympathies, and become a mere mummy in a cassock and scapular, the poor girls had now no hope in anything, and no resource but their tears, which were likely to avail them little; for in Scotland, in those days, the rights of women were as little known, or nearly as ill defined, as among the Asiatics in the present; for cruel coercion and abduction at the sword's point were of daily occurrence, as the criminal records show, until the middle of the last century.

The presence of the prince's court and insurgent army was a harvest to the keeper of the tavern or hostel, already referred to, as being situated in the Kirkgate--_the Bell_,--so named in honour of the hospitallers of the ancient and wealthy preceptory of St. Anthony, whose establishment stood on the east side of that venerable thoroughfare, and who wore a _bell_, sewn in blue cloth on the breast of their gowns. This signboard gave the said tavern respectability, while the keeper was ensured protection by paying an exorbitant yearly fee to the Laird of Restalrig for the privilege of keeping it open; for that turbulent and avaricious little potentate was lord superior of Leith; and though King Robert I. had granted the harbour to the citizens of Edinburgh, they had still to purchase from the family of Logan the right of erecting wharves and houses upon the sandy banks of the river, which for ages had flowed into the Forth between heaps of sand and knolls of whin and broom.

On the second day after the naval battle, about six o'clock, when the great bell of St. Anthony had rung the hospitallers to prayer, in an upper chamber of the hostel (the east windows of which overlooked the drear expanse of the sandy links and the Figgate-muir, on the verge of which the waves were rippling) sat Sir James Shaw of Sauchie, Sir Patrick Gray, and their brother assassin, Sir William Stirling of Keir, all armed as we saw them last at Beaton's mill, save their helmets, which, with their scarfs, swords, and wheel-locks, lay on a bench, which stood on one side of the wainscoted room. On the mantelpiece were shells, stuffed fishes, and sea eggs. There was no fire on the hearth, of course, for the month of June; and the recess was destitute of a grate, for such things were expensive. The furniture consisted of a large table, and fauld-stools seated with leather. Comfort was considered unnecessary in an hostel, consequently the room looked bare and dreary, and the governor of his majesty's Castle of Stirling was, as usual, a little tipsy; for after their early supper of fried flounders, buttered crabs, and eggs in gravy, each had imbibed more than a Scotch pint (equal to an English quart) of Rochelle wine, then sold at eight-pence; and a fresh supply was ordered, for they had thirst and doubt, spleen and, it might be, some small remorse to drown. And the pewter stoups of the last supply had just been placed upon the black oak table, when Hew Borthwick, in his rich attire, stood before them, and carefully locked the door on the inside.

"By my soul, sir, but you are bravely apparelled!" said the grim Baron of Sauchie, with a drunken leer. "What sayeth the Act of '71:--that none wear silk except knights, minstrels, and heralds--"

"King James and his acts--"

"Are lying together in a slough ditch," said the Laird of Keir interrupting the pale and sneering Borthwick. "But we have other matter in hand; you have just come from the east country?"

"I left Dunbar this day, at morn."

"Be seated. Here, take a stoup of the Rochelle. Well, is not this accursed intelligence?" said Gray, grinding his teeth. "What! Howard, with five great ships, to be beaten by this old seahorse of Largo, this presumptuous Leither, with only two!--and Kraft, that damnable secretary, he may ruin us all!"

"Think of three Scottish barons being at the mercy of an English notary!" said Borthwick, scanning them maliciously over his wine-pot, as it rose to the angle of forty-five degrees above his mouth.

"And his book--and the bond in cypher," added Gray.

"God confound this evil fortune!" growled Sir James Shaw. "To be at the beck of a smockfaced driveller! The thing is not to be borne, sirs; we must stop his mouth, by fair means or by foul."

"Art certain, Hew, these rumours of victory are not exaggerated?"

"There remains not the shadow of a doubt. With hundreds more--yea thousands--in East Lothian, I saw at dawn yesterday but two flags flying, as the six ships stood under sail for Fife, And these were the blue ensigns, with the white cross of Saint Andrew."

"We must sleep in our harness, and keep fleet horses saddled day and night," said Gray; "and let spies be set to watch what messages come hither from the admiral."

"Angus may see us clear of it," suggested Keir.

"Angus knows nothing of our deeper plots," said the more politic and subtle Gray: "moreover, he abhors an English match as much as we pretend to hate a continental one--"

"Among ourselves."

"Of course. He cares not for rank--he is an earl; he cares not for pay--he is Lord of Galloway, and owns more land and lances than any four earls in Scotland."

"He is well off! I'faith, I have been spending four thousand pounds yearly, out of a barony that yields birt one thousand Scottish crowns per year," said Shaw.

"Henry of England will deem us fools for having our plots marred, and in revenge may tell the whole to Rothesay, and then we shall all be lost men."

"Well, well," said Shaw, draining his huge tankard; "after all his gold spent and ships lost, it must be rather provoking to find that James III. is only removed to make little Maggie Drummond Queen of Scotland."

"I urged Howard to throw her overboard," said Borthwick, lowering his voice, while that snaky gleam which his eyes often wore passed over them.

"And what said Howard then?" asked Gray, impatiently.

"The Saxon pockpudding! he smote me on the mouth with his steel glove, and styled your knighthoods a pack of 'Scottish hounds,'" replied Borthwick, whose sinister brow grew dark with ferocity; "and he threatened to make a martyr of me, like St. Clement."

"Would to thy master the devil that he had done so," grumbled the drunken Shaw; thinking of his share in that dark deed in Beaton's mill.

Gray muttered an impatient and unmeaning malediction.

"What said ye then?" asked Keir, with a cold smile, as he played with his dagger.

"I said little, but I thought much."

"What thought ye?" asked Gray, fiercely.

"Merely that this Englishman was not yet on his own side of the border," said Borthwick with a deep smile, as he took the last drain of his wine-pot.

"Angus still acts the bearward to this beardless princeling Rothesay," said Gray; "and so is occupied by matters of his own; but the tide of events on which we have ridden so bravely, seems setting in against us now; all we can do is to watch, and watch well; let us be assured in the first place, of what messengers come from the fleet, and whether they say aught of Margaret Drummond; for if she once gain Rothesay's ear, our cause is ruined and for ever lost!"

Borthwick bit his tongue with anger, for he trembled for himself alone.

"Get thee spies," said Keir; "and let Barton's house, where Rothesay lodges, be watched both day and night. Watch all who come from thence, and from the Laird of Largo."

"But spies must be paid, Sir William, and I am short of money."

"Already!" cried Gray; "curse thee, fellow; dost think we keep a coin house? Short again, after all received from Howard, from Henry VII., and from us?"

"All gone, sirs," he added, doggedly; "patriotism is expensive work."

"Here are eight fleurs-de-lys, and not another coin shalt thou have, were it for thy mass when _in articulo mortis_. So away to thy task, while we will watch and deliberate."

The worthy functionary of the English faction swept the Laird of Keir's money into the velvet pouch which hung on his right hip beside his poniard, and then quitted the presence of his employers. As he descended the stair of the hostel, a gentleman in black armour touched him roughly on the shoulder. Borthwick grew pale, and clutched the dagger at his girdle; and then perceiving that the iron plates of this personage were somewhat rusty, he said with haughty insolence,--

"Who may you be?"

"Your better man, sirrah--therefore attend."

"What want ye, sir?" he asked, rather abashed by the other's air and determined manner.

"Nothing," was the blunt reply; "that is, personally I seek nothing of such fellows as thee; but the right honourable my very good lord and chief requires your presence in his chamber, here, without delay."

Borthwick still kept a hand upon his poniard, as he scanned the speaker's sunburned face.

"And who are you?" he asked, after a pause.

"One of the Hepburns--Adam of the Black Castle."

"Then your chief is the Lord Hailes?"

"I have just had the honour of hinting as much," replied the other, with an irony which Borthwick dared not resent.

"Lead on, then, laird; I follow you," he said; and then they ascended another of the turnpike stairs with which this hostel was furnished.