CHAPTER LXVIII.

DUNBLANE.

"For human bliss and woe in the frail thread Of human life are all so closely twined, That till the shears of Fate the texture shred, The close succession cannot be disjoined, Nor dare we from one hour judge that which comes behind." _Harold the Dauntless_.

The information of Sauchie was all correct, save in that part which referred to the coronation of Margaret, which James intended should take place at the same time as his own, not in the little episcopal city of Dunblane, but in the capital city of Edinburgh, amid all the splendour with which he could invest it; and already the Lord High Treasurer, Sir William Knollis, better known as Lord St. John of Jerusalem, being Preceptor of the Scottish Knights of Rhodes, the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State, and the Lords of the Privy Council, were making the necessary arrangements for the great ceremonial at Holyrood.

The king's influence, united to Barton's acknowledged worth and landed possessions, operated so far on Lord Drummond, as to make him sullenly acquiesce in the marriage of Euphemia to one whose betrothal could not, in a Catholic age, be broken without incurring the penalty of sin; and, in the same spirit, he permitted arrangements to be made for Sir David Falconer, whom James called "the gentlest and the bravest knight at court," wedding Sybilla; meanwhile the old lord consoled himself for thus stooping to the royal will by reflecting that he still had two other daughters growing up--Beatrice and Elizabeth--who should be forced bongré malgré to marry the first eligible earls upon whom he could lay the hands of a father-in-law.

The king's train was received with all honour by the Baron Bailie of Dunblane, and Sir Edmund Hay of Melginch, the chamberlain of the diocese, who marshalled them to the palace of the good old bishop, James Chisholm, whose name must not be confounded with that of his successor, William Chisholm, a base and irreverend prelate, who robbed the see of its revenues to maintain his children, and desecrated the episcopal palace by scenes of licentiousness.

This palace stood to the southward of the magnificent cathedral, on the edge of the declivity which slopes down towards the river Allan. It was surrounded by thick old copsewood and by striking and picturesque scenery; but it has long since fallen into shapeless ruin, and now only a few vestiges of its lower apartments can be traced.

The four lovers were so happy that we shall not presume to intrude upon them, or attempt to transfer to paper any description of their joy, but will leave them to their quiet and dreamy rambles, arm in arm, or hand in hand, in that deep and finely wooded glen below Dunblane, where the precipices overhang the Allan, and the windings of the dell give so many lovely glimpses of foliaged scenery; and to their sport of shooting at the butts with feathered arrows, in the smooth park without the old cathedral walls, where many hundred years of careful pasturage and mowing had made the green grass as smooth as velvet; for now it was never brushed by other feet than those of the gliding deer or the lighter-footed hares and rabbits; and there the young king, and even the kind bishop, with some of the prebends, drew the bow to please the three beautiful Drummonds; and Margaret, with her blonde hair and sweet blue eyes, was voted the best shot of them all--for James and his two favourite subjects were too gallant to beat her shooting, and the most reverend father, by Divine permission Bishop of Dunblane, was somewhat too stout and pursy to draw a shaft like her.

They were all happy, and pure joy beamed in their eyes; it glowed in their young hearts and mantled in their cheeks.

Two alone were grave; viz., old Lord Drummond, because he was somewhat perplexed, or felt that he cut rather a foolish figure, and was about to have for sons-in-law two men on whom James dared not yet bestow nobility for fear of raising the anger of older patentees; and on the young king's brow a cloud was resting, for on the morrow he was to receive from the Bishop's hand "the sackcloth shirt and iron belt," which he was to wear as the self-imposed penance of filial disobedience;

"While for his royal father's soul, The chanters sung, the bells did toll;"

and kindly and consolingly the white-haired bishop sought to soothe the sorrow and disperse the gloom which the young monarch strove in vain to overcome.

Could it be that a mysterious presentiment of approaching evil was hovering in his heart? In Scotland, we often hear of such forebodings still.

On the day following the intended sentence of excommunication, Margaret was to behold one sister wedded to Robert Barton and another to David Falconer; and on that day the _Yellow Frigate_ and her consorts would startle the broad blue Firth that rolls before Dundee by a loud and merry salvo from their brass culverins and iron arquebusses à croc.

Already had each beautiful bride playfully tried the espousal ring--the emblem of eternity--upon her pretty finger--that third finger of the left hand from which, according to an old superstition, there ran one mysterious fibre directly to the heart; and now we may inform our fair readers, whom such items may interest, that the said rings were not the plain hoops used in our own day, but each was massive and chased, inscribed by a holy legend, and having on it two ruby hearts, surmounted by a little crown of diamonds, for such was the fashion in the olden time.

And now, as the day on which the sisters were to receive communion at mass in the cathedral, dawned in sunny glory and splendour, lighting up the painted lattices, the grey walls, and green woods of the old episcopal palace, and tinting with its brightest hues the rapid waters of the Allan, the old bishop patted their silken tresses, and called them his "good children," as they knelt to receive his morning blessing in the dining-hall, reminding them with a smile, that "happy was the bride whom the sun shone on, and that he hoped the god of day would not rise less brightly on the morrow."

And they all smiled to each other timidly and fondly, for, alas! they little knew that for some of them to-morrow was--eternity.

Margaret, the Queen of Scotland--for such indeed was she now--was to receive the communion with her sisters; but Barton and Falconer having, we may suppose, obtained it but recently, or for some other reason now unknown, _did not_ share it with them, which will account for their escaping the perilous web which English guile and Scottish treason were weaving around them all.