CHAPTER LXVII.

THE MAUCHLINE TOWER.

"Strange tidings these, my cousin! By St. Jude! They'll urge us all to battle ere the time."--_Old Play_.

What followed this happy interview with the leal and true-hearted James IV. may be gathered from the following conversation, which took place next day, in the Mauchline Tower, between three Scottish worthies who have already occupied a prominent place in the annals of their country, as well as in this more humble narrative. The Mauchline Tower, which had the honour of being the residence of Sir Patrick Gray of Kyneff, when that personage afflicted Dundee with his presence, stood at the south-west corner of the Murray gate, and obtained its name from the Campbells of Loudon and Mauchline, to whom it once belonged. It was of such strength as to become in after years a bastelhouse of the town wall, but is now removed, and no trace of it remains save its name, which is still retained by a court or alley that opens off the Murray-gate.

In the roughly-arched and stone-paved hall of this ancient mansion, the windows of which had stone seats and iron gratings, the furniture was of an old and barbarous aspect, and consisted only of a great standing-table, forms and cupboards all of black old Scottish oak, with five or six enormous arm-chairs. In stone recesses were the wooden bowls, the tren-plates and luggies used at meals; for the half-bankrupt baron's silver tankard and pewter dishes were all carefully put away in lockfast almries.

The wide fireplace was without a grate, and over it was carved the escutcheon of the Grays--a lion rampant, within a border engrailed; the emblem of hope upon a wreath, and the motto, "Anchor, fast anchor," being the cognizance of the first of the race in Scotland,--Sir Hugh de Gray, Lord of Broxmouth, in the days of Alexander II.

On the day after the interview between James IV. and the two officers of the _Yellow Caravel_, Sir James Shaw of Sauchie and Sir Patrick Gray had a meeting with Hew Borthwick, in the upper hall of this ancient structure.

Gray and the regicide had been in close consultation, when Sir James Shaw, a little intoxicated, though the hour was early--hastened in, with his face inflamed, and expressive of high excitement.

"Here are tidings, with a vengeance!" said he, dashing his blue velvet bonnet on the paved floor.

"What's astir now?" asked Gray, knitting his dark eyebrows. "If it be the reading of the papal dispensation in the cathedral kirk of Dunblane to-morrow, I know of it already, for our friend Hew Borthwick has just informed me thereanent."

"The king, with Margaret Drummond, Sir David Falconer--the same runnion who is captain of Wood's arquebussiers--and Robert Barton, with the Lord Drummond, and the ladies Euphemia and Sybilla--all smiles and merriment, and riding side by side, with hawks upon their dexter wrists, each lover by his lemane, and guarded by the lances of the Royal Guard--have left Dundee within this hour."

"Which way--east or west?" asked Gray, starting to his feet.

"By the western gate, and past Blackness."

"For Dunblane?"

"Yes; and the constable of Dundee carried the royal pennon on a Lance."

"Damnation!"

"So say I--doubly," stammered Shaw.

"On what errand have they gone?"

"Men say variously," replied the Laird of Sauchie, opening and shutting his bloodshot eyes; "but I overheard that venerable foutre whom the courtiers call Duke of Montrose, tell his son--that fop the Lord Lindesay--that the king was gone to hear the sentence of excommunication fulminated against those who slew his father."

"That concerns thee, Master Hew."

"_Sir_ Hew," sneered Shaw.

Borthwick winced, and smiled bitterly.

"He said, moreover, that James was to receive from the bishop's hand, an iron belt, to be worn for ever under his shirt, in memory of the day he drew his sword against his father."

"Few who were at Sauchie, on either side of the burn, will be likely to forget the day, Sir James. Well--and is there anything more?" asked Gray, biting his glove and rasping his steel spurs on the pavement.

"Yes--chief of all--that Margaret Drummond will there be crowned as Queen of Scotland, at the same time as her husband, and that the Lord Lyon, with all his heralds and pursuivants, the chancellor and all the great officers of state, are appointed to keep tryst at Dunblane."

"What--the reading of the papal letter, the crowning of a king and queen, and a sentence of excommunication, all to be performed in one day--not omitting this freak of the iron belt--pshaw! thou ravest man; and I will not believe it."

"And why not?"

"Because, since Scone became old fashioned, every coronation must take place at Holyrood. A rare bundle of news thou'st brought us, gossip."

"I have not yet told thee all--for the best of the pudding is still in the pot."

"Well, say on," said Gray, shrugging his shoulders with something between a smile and a frown on his face.

"I heard Sir Andrew Wood say to the Constable of Dundee, that Falconer and Barton were to be wedded by the bishop to old John Drummond's daughters--and by the king's express command; but thou wilt not believe _that_ either, perhaps?"

"Wedded--is he as mad as his father was before him? Will he wed one sister himself, and in the person of others raise those traders' sons--loons whose ancestors are buried in obscurity, and whose fathers brought salted hides and tallow, tar and hemp from Memmel, cartwheels and saddles, iron pots and pewter pans, from Flanders--to a close alliance with the Scottish crown? God's death, it's monstrous--pshaw! and cannot be! Our peers and barons are not so low in pride or poor in spirit as to brook such an outrage----"

"Unless King Henry paid them for it--which he is not likely to do."

"But what will the Lords Home and Hailes--Bothwell, I mean--say to this?"

"The constable put the same question to yonder gorbellied admiral, who replied that the king had undertaken to pacify them; but it was no business of his--a mariner's--to study such ware; then he added something about a gunner and his lintstock, a steersman and his helm, which I did not understand, but conceived to mean something insolent to the nobility."

"And doubtless it was so--the tarry varlet!" said Gray, stamping his armed heel on the paved floor; "Sir James, thou amazest by all this! but where tarries now the Lord Angus?"

"He is hunting the red-deer on the wild Rinns of Galloway," replied Shaw, with a reckless laugh.

"I might have shrewdly guessed he was not on this side of the Howe of Fife."

"Are there any fresh tidings from Henry of England?"

"Henry expects them from us," said Gray with one of his hissing whispers and deep satanic smiles.

"True--I am forgetting our fair stipulation, penned by Master Quentin Kraft, and of which there are duplicates in London, to the effect that he--that is, King Henry--shall use all interest with our king to have my barony of Sauchie erected into an earldom--"

"And _my_ barony of Kyneff and estate of Caterline erected into a lordship; I do not see why I should not have put in for an earldom too--but I shall content me if made as good as my chief, Kinfauns; though I would make as noble a Scottish peer as most of them."

For once in his life, Sir Patrick Gray spoke truth.

"But instead of gaining these things, sirs," said Borthwick, who had listened in attentive silence to all the foregoing, "ye have lost your governorships of Stirling and of Broughty, with all their attendant customs, kains, and powers, and now--"

"The marriage on which these airy coronets depend will never happen, I fear me," said Shaw, seating himself with a groan.

"It shall happen," said Gray, furiously, as he took a huge tankard of wine and three flagons from a side press; "we have made but one or two false moves, Sir James; next time we'll have better luck; and the tables will turn when we have Margaret Tudor for queen. She is said to be not over-handsome; but 'twill be all the same to King James when the candles are out in Linlithgow Bower. So Margaret Drummond must be removed," he added, filling up the silver-rimmed horns with Rochelle.

"We have each said so a thousand times, sirs," said Borthwick, "and yet she still remains."

"This removal must then be thy task, Master Hew," said Shaw, setting down the pot, in the purple contents of which he had dipped his wiry mustachios; "get thee a nag at the Stone Bicker, or anywhere else; hie thee away after these galliards to Dunblane, and learn what can be done; for nothing but desperate measures can save us now, as we are desperate men; one may see that by these bare walls and these half mutchkin stoups of sour Rochelle."

"Thou hast still the powder of Kraft, the London apothecary?" asked Gray, in a whisper.

"Yea," answered Borthwick; "and it is said to be so potent, that I have borne it about me in great fear, though it is carefully sealed and waxed all over."

"Draw closer," hissed the voice of Gray, as he sunk it into an almost inaudible whisper.

The reader is already aware that Borthwick had been originally a priest of Dunblane, and, consequently, he knew well the whole cathedral and its locality. It was therefore agreed that he should disguise himself in any manner he deemed most fitted for the occasion; that he should depart for that secluded little city, and endeavour to put to some deadly use the poison with which he was entrusted.

It was, moreover, arranged that at midnight, on the second day from this one, they should both meet him at the Bridge of Dunblane, and hear what his success had been. Gray supplied this trusty ruffian with a horse, and Shaw gave him gold, for he had about seventy miles of a rough and devious road to travel, and so they separated; the two barons to prepare and mount, for any emergency, all the armed retainers they could collect; and the regicide to execute his terrible mission.

"This object once achieved," said Gray, "_we must rid ourselves of Borthwick_--for he knoweth over many secrets to make our heads secure on our shoulders!"