Part 13

Even then had he shown moderation and patience, he might still have won a diplomatic victory, when the proposed scheme had so much to recommend it; but the haughty monarch had never learned the meaning of that word, and in his ripening years was losing the self-control which in his younger days he had sometimes exercised over himself. Upon hearing the news of the negotiations with France, he had declared instant war, and had sent two bold knights to start a Border raid, whilst his ships should convey an army to their aid by way of the Frith of Forth.

All the Border country was in a tumult of alarm. Help was promised them from the Scottish army; but meantime this terrible raid had been made, in which above a thousand men had been either slain or made prisoners, nearly two hundred houses and towers destroyed, and such quantities of sheep and cattle slaughtered or driven away as to render the area of country completely desolate.

It was therefore perhaps no great wonder that those of the Border folk who did not feel very keenly with regard to this war, should gladly avail themselves of the offer made by the English commanders, and promise to befriend them and to fight on their side if their persons and goods might be saved from hurt. Those who made this concession were decorated with a Red Cross, which they undertook to wear in battle, to distinguish them, and which they were glad enough to have on at other times, as it was impossible to know at what moment a band of raiders might not appear, and how soon it might not be needful to display the badge of friendship.

But to the high spirit of Lillyard this kind of compromise was odious. As is sometimes the case in families, she seemed to have inherited everything that was distinctively and vehemently Scotch. The admixture of English blood seemed not to have touched her. To think of making such a compromise with the English was to her mind an act of black treachery.

Perhaps her feelings on this point had been unconsciously strengthened by her attachment to a young Highlander, whose mother had somewhat recently come to live in this Border country, where a little property had unexpectedly come to her.

Young Gordon was a Scotchman to the very marrow of his bones, and his mother was full of the legends and traditions of the Highland home they had quitted, to which Lillyard would sit and listen by the hour together. And so close a bond of sympathy had sprung up between the two, that when Gordon spoke openly of his love, and begged Lillyard to look upon herself as his promised bride, his mother was almost as eager as the son for her consent.

It was natural that Lillyard, in her trouble and dismay, should bend her steps towards that humble homestead, where the widow, Madge Gordon, had been settled by her son, ere he went forth to join one of those bands of soldiers that fought sometimes here, sometimes there, as occasion demanded, and helped to keep in seething life and activity those terrors and those enthusiasms of patriotism which were the life and soul of the struggle.

The old woman looked up with a smile as Lillyard entered her cottage; but she spoke no word, for something in the girl's face restrained her.

"Duncan and Gregory have ta'en the Red Cross," said Lillyard, in a low, hard tone.

"The deil fly away with all cowards who would sell their country to the usurper!" breathed the fierce old woman.

"So I have come to thee, mother," added Lillyard simply.

Madge rose and folded her in her arms.

"Thou hast come to thine own home, lassie," she said. "Alan will be braw and glad when he comes and finds thee here."

A quick flush mantled Lillyard's cheek. Her troth plight to Alan Gordon was a very recent thing. She could not think of it without a thrill. Would he come to the Border country in aid of the struggling Scotch, writhing beneath the savage raids of the English? Surely the leaders of the many bands of soldiers, regular and irregular, would fly to the aid of their brethren when they heard what things were being done! Ah, yes, she would see her Alan before long! And he would not chide her for seeking a home with his mother!

"I could not stay," said Lillyard, as the two women sat at their frugal supper together; "it was like a knife in my heart to see that traitor badge. I could not stay with those who had taken it. And to be told that were I a man I should do the same!--that it was easy for women who sat safe at home to talk of courage and devotion!--that were women called upon to face the foe like men, in battle array, they would be glad to save their skins by any chance that offered!" And Lillyard threw back her head and drew a deep breath of anger and scorn, whilst the eyes of the old woman flashed in the firelight.

"Said he so--the coward callant! Much does he know of the lot of the woman, left alone and unprotected in her cabin, whilst lawless hordes of brutal soldiers harry the land, and slay and outrage! Do we not say, 'Would Heaven I had been born a man, that I might go forth to the battle? Better a thousand times to die sword in hand upon the battle-field, than to be butchered in cold blood like the dumb brute beasts!'"

"Ah, yes, ah, yes!" cried Lillyard, "that is what my heart is always saying! Would that I might go and strike one blow for my country, though I laid down my life in the doing of it!"

"Other maids have felt like that, and have done the deed!" cried the old woman, firing up, as she was wont to do when that subject came to the front. And almost without prompting on the girl's part, she plunged into the legends and stories of which she had an endless supply on hand, telling how women and maidens, and even tender children, had done deeds of heroism and devotion, had fought beside their fathers, their brothers, their husbands, and had shamed into courage those who were growing faint-hearted.

Lillyard's eyes glowed brighter and ever more bright as she listened. She sprang to her feet at last, and paced the darkening cabin to and fro with hurried steps.

"What one has done, another may do. Oh, mother, mother, why may not I fight even as those of whom thou hast sung to-night?"

"Daughter, what wouldst thou?" asked Madge, with glistening eyes. She was excited, and uplifted by the cadence of her own words.

"Let me go forth and fight. They say that a battle must soon be fought, and that Ancram Moor is like enough to be the place where the hostile forces will meet. Alan will be there! I feel in all my being that he is coming--that he is near! He will fight, and why not I beside him? Let me but don the kilt and trappings of that young Norman whom thou didst lose, and I will show to those who scoff at woman's courage, what one girl can achieve! Let Gregory and Duncan fight against their brethren if they will; I will strike my blow for the honour of our name! Their treachery and cowardice shall be atoned by the valour of the sister. Maid Lillyard will uphold the honour of her father's name, which they have forgotten and smirched!"

The old woman kindled into enthusiasm as the words were spoken. She had been born and bred amid the clash of arms, the struggles of petty chieftains one with another, the perils of war from brother or from foeman. The blood of a wild race was in her veins, and neither time nor age had cooled it. She understood the mood which had come upon Lillyard, as few of her own kin or neighbours would have understood it. She rose to her feet, laid her hands upon the girl's shoulders, and, after gazing steadfastly into her eyes for several long seconds, led her into the inner room, and opened a great chest.

Next day Alan came; he rode in the three hundred horse under dauntless young Norman Leslie. Gallant and brave, did this band appear in the eyes of all beholders; and cheering was the news they brought, that Lord Buccleuch was on his way with all speed to join them; that other reinforcements had started from various points, and would all converge here; and that the astute Earl of Angus was narrowly watching the English, and was advising the Scotch leaders as to their best course of action in repelling this threatened attack; whilst that he himself would be with them before the day of battle.

It was splendid news for the loyal Borderers, and some who had taken the Red Cross in their hour of fear, were ready to tear it off now that they believed help was at hand. But others, like Duncan and Gregory, were too cautious to be easily persuaded. They feared to lose their comfortable homestead, and to suffer at the hands of the English. Moreover, it was known that the renegades who had taken the Cross and then flung it away, were the especial mark of English vengeance and cruelty.

Great was the joy of Alan Gordon to find Lillyard beneath his mother's roof; and eager was the interest with which he heard her tale. No love had ever been lost between him and the brothers of the maid he loved; and little recked he that, since they knew whither she had betaken herself, they had cast her off utterly.

"'Tis all in a piece with their coward treachery!" he cried. "But what matter, since thou art mine? and when the battle has been fought and won, we two will wed, sweet Lillyard, and thou shalt never lack a home."

She looked up into her lover's eyes, and smiled; but there was something in that smile which he did not fully understand.

Busy and stirring were the days that followed, and full of seething hopes and fears. The forces on both sides were mustering apace, and it was known that the threatened battle could not be long delayed. Both sides were eagerly anxious to come to blows.

The day arrived. No cloud dimmed the brightness of the sky. The two armies were drawn up in battle array; and Alan had but a moment in which to dash in and kiss his mother and his betrothed.

"A glorious victory will be ours!" he cried, "something in my heart tells me so! Thou wilt see somewhat of the fight, even from here, mother. Lillyard, beloved, one more kiss. We shall meet again with hearts full of gladness!"

She smiled a strange smile as she kissed him farewell, and watched the tall figure swinging away over the broken ground. The air seemed full of the blare of trumpets, the stamping of horses, the clangour of steel trappings. The girl's eyes kindled. She drew her breath in sharp, excited gasps.

"Now, mother," she said, wheeling round to where the old woman stood, her gaze resting so earnestly upon her that it might almost have scorched her by its fiery intensity.

"Thou hast no fear, daughter?"

"I know not the meaning of the word!" cried Lillyard. "My heart is yonder. Where my heart is, there would my arm be!"

"Then come, child, come. Thou art of the right stuff; and I will never hold thee back. Go, and may the God of battles be with thee, and give thee part in the glory of victory!"

A short time later there emerged from that cottage a goodly youth in the Gordon kilt, and with all the weapons that a Highland lad carries with him into the battle. The bonnet was set upon a mass of tawny floating curls, and the great grey eyes were full of fire and light.

Lillyard's great beauty was well known throughout the district. "Fair Maid Lillyard" had been the sobriquet ever since she had been a child. There was something almost dazzling in her aspect to-day, as she stood for a moment in the glory of the golden sunshine, and gazed across towards where the sounds of clashing swords and the booming of guns told her that the battle was raging; and then, with her light broadsword in her hand, she made a forward dash, and was soon in full sight of the fiercely fought fight.

The apparition of this fair girl, who was instantly recognised for her beauty and peculiarly lofty bearing, dressed as a soldier, and with a sword in her hand, evoked a yell of enthusiasm and joy from the whole of the Scotch ranks. It seemed to the men almost as though some angelic being had come down to their aid.

"Maid Lillyard! Maid Lillyard!" was the shout that went up; and when she set herself in their ranks, and went charging down the hill to meet the advance of the enemy, the fury of that charge was something so tremendous, that the ranks of the English were split into a score of scattered bodies, each flying back to the main body for safety, whilst the victorious Scotch pursued them with shouts almost to their own camp.

Who can remember or describe the fierce joy, the fearful peril, the wild exaltation of hand-to-hand fighting? Lillyard was in the thick of the most furious onslaughts, on whatever part of the field they took place. Attached to no company, under no authority, she seemed like a spirit of the battle, free, and with a charmed life, as she hurried hither and thither. All men saw her. A hundred voices testified to the prodigies of valour she performed; but it was only after she had seen the dead body of Alan Gordon lifted from beneath a pile of English corpses--men that he had slain--that that Berserker fury fell upon Lillyard, which has given her name to posterity, and caused the very name of the battle of Ancram Moor to be more generally known as the battle of Lillyard's Edge.

Was it her hand which slew the English leader, Evers, who perished on that field? Many declared it was so; but whether or no this was the case, there is no manner of doubt that Lillyard's strong right arm and dauntless heart carried her through the fierce fight, and that she inflicted her full share of death and wounds upon her country's foes.

As the tide of battle set in favour of the Scotch arms, numbers of those who had borne the Red Cross, and had fought in the English ranks, tore off their badges and went boldly over to the other side, seeing now greater safety there than in the ranks of the alien conqueror.

Of these time-servers were Duncan and Gregory. The latter had little of the soldier-nature in him, and had kept, as far as possible, out of the thick of the fight; but when he saw the Scotch arms victorious all over the field, he eagerly snatched off his badge, and made a dash for his countrymen. He was hotly pursued by half a dozen enraged English soldiers, but being fleet of foot, he might have escaped them had he not caught his foot in what was nothing more nor less than a heap of slain and wounded, and come heavily to the ground, yelling aloud in his terror.

Suddenly he was aware of a great tumult close about him. He raised his head and looked up. What strange vision was it that his eyes rested upon?

A young lad, as it seemed to him for a moment, had raised himself partially from the heap of dead and dying on which he lay. He seemed to be too terribly wounded to stand; and yet, with his swinging sword, he was keeping at bay the English soldiers who were in pursuit of Gregory; and there was something so strange and unearthly in his aspect that the men cried one to another:

"It is no human thing! It is some demon of the battle! I have heard that a spirit is abroad in the Scotch camp to-day. Let us leave it and be gone!"

They turned and fled, and the strange fighter, parting the mass of hair, partly clotted with blood, that hid its face, looked full into Gregory's eyes, whilst he shrank away, crying out in fear:

"It is Lillyard!--it is Lillyard!--or her wraith!"

She bent her clear, strange gaze upon him steadfastly.

"Not her wraith--yet, Gregory. Lillyard herself." The voice, though quite steady, was very weak. "It is not always the woman who fears the stress of the battle. Where wert thou when the fight was raging so fiercely?"

She looked him over from head to foot, and half-unconsciously glanced downwards at herself. The contrast was so marked that a glow of shame flamed in Gregory's face. He cried eagerly:

"I have pulled off my Red Cross, Lillyard. I will fight now beside thee. Thou shalt show me how to be brave!"

She gave him a long glance; a faint smile flickered over her face; then her eyes grew dim, and a ghastly pallor overspread her face.

"I shall fight no more," she said, in labouring gasps. "Lay me beside Alan. The battle-field was our marriage feast. Let our bridal bed be the quiet graveyard."

With that she fell prone upon the heap of corpses where he had found her, whence she had risen, though so mortally wounded, to beat off the pursuing foes who else would have slain her brother.

She and Alan Gordon were laid side by side, and every honour of war was paid to them.

MARGARET WILSON

It was ill work living in "the killing time"--as it was significantly called--for those whose consciences would not let them conform to the laws laid down by Charles II. and his advisers for the regulation of public worship in Scotland.

Religious toleration was no longer to be permitted. The Episcopal form of worship was to be made compulsory, and that amongst persons who hated and abhorred it, looked upon it as something emanating more or less directly from the Evil One, and who clung all the more closely to their own barer forms of worship and narrow purity of doctrine for the very opposition they had to encounter.

The Solemn League and Covenant had been formed for the protection of the Presbyterian form of worship, and Covenanters was the name given to those who continued to meet in the forbidden assemblies; and these were often held in the open air, in some wild and lonely spot, the men carrying weapons which were piled conveniently for instant use should an alarm be issued by the scouts set to watch, the women seated nearest to the preacher, and their horses picketed only a short distance off, so that flight should be quick and easy if there were danger of interruption from soldiers in the King's pay.

In those days it was no uncommon thing for houses and families to be strangely and pitifully split up and divided into hostile camps; but perhaps there were few instances so strange as that presented by the Wilson family, of Wigton.

Wilson was a prosperous farmer, a Presbyterian by tradition, though no theologian; but when the edicts went forth against the existing forms of worship, and attendance at the parish church was enjoined, both he and his wife made no trouble about conforming to the new regulations, though whether this conformity came from liberality of mind or from fear of consequences cannot now be determined.

But, to their great astonishment and dismay, their two little girls, Margaret and Agnes, at that time quite children, could not be induced to accompany their parents to the church. What they had heard against Episcopal forms in old days seemed to have sunk so deeply into their hearts and consciences that there was no way of eradicating it; and great fear fell upon the parents, for the thing became known somewhat far and wide, and began to excite comment and question.

"Where are the bairns?" asked the farmer, coming in one day, with a look of anxiety upon his face.

"Nay, I know not," answered his wife. "They did their tasks, and then they both slipped away. I have not seen them this two hours. Like enough they have gone across to see Margaret M'Lauchlan. They are for ever running in and out of her house, say and do what I will!"

"A pestilent woman! Covenanter to the backbone! She will bring herself and our bairns to ruin if something be not done! Why do you not keep them at home with you?"

"Why, husband, how can I be in three or four places at once? I give them their tasks, but they do them with a will, and are gone ere I have time to turn round."

"Ay, and are off to some Conventicle, I'll be bound. That woman M'Lauchlan is in the thick of all the Covenanters' secrets; and it's from her the bairns learn all those notions that will be their ruin one of these days. The Bible bids children obey their parents, but not a word will they hear from us! Or, rather, they listen, but will not heed."

"Alack!--and so said I to them but the other day! and Margaret turned upon me and answered: ''Ay, mither, children are bidden to obey their parents in the Lord; but the Lord bids us not to sully our conscience by doing what is wrong, or bowing the knee to Baal.' They get taught by those who are good folks enough, but terrible stubborn, and wae's me, but I can say nought, and so they get the last word every time;" and the mother shook her head, for in her secret heart she was in far more sympathy with her bairns than was the father, who was seriously disturbed and anxious.

"They shall either learn to obey, or they must be sent away out of reach of that pestilent woman!" he cried, storming up and down. "If they stay here they will bring themselves to prison and death, and us into, I know not what trouble! I'll be bound they are off to some preaching now! I hear there is to be one somewhere hard by. But this shall be the last. If they will not promise to attend church with us they must be sent elsewhere. All the town begins to talk of it. Soon it will come to the magistrate's ears, and then----"

The mother clasped her hands, and the tears started to her eyes.

"They are but bairns; they are not near sixteen yet--not even Margaret. What could they do to them?"

"They will make them feel the hand of the law; ay, and us too, as thou wilt plainly see! They talk about sixteen; but have not babes and sucklings been slaughtered ere this by the ruthless soldiers?"

The mother wept, and the father stormed; but the hours passed on, and the girls did not return. It was almost dark ere they entered the house; and upon the fair face of the elder was a strange wrapt expression, that her mother had noted there many times of late, and which always filled her with a sense of awe.

She stood quietly beneath the storm of her father's anger; her deep blue eyes seeming to see away beyond him. Agnes, a slighter dark-eyed child, shrank away towards her mother, who could not repulse her; but Margaret was calm and serene.

"Dear father, thou dost not understand," she said very softly at last, when the storm had well-nigh spent itself; "perchance some day thine eyes will be opened to see even as we do. But----"

The sentence was not destined to be finished; a breathless messenger burst into the house, white-faced and wild-eyed. It was a tall lad, well known to the Wilsons, and his name was Archie Scott.

"The magistrate is coming--fly!--fly!" he cried. "He is coming to seize Margaret and Agnes. It has been told him how that they never come to church; and to-day one brought word that they and others have been seen at a forbidden gathering. The soldiers and officers are already started forth to make a raid on all suspected houses. The girls must fly!--must fly at once! I have come to take them to a place where others are hiding for the moment. They have been preparing for this. They will not be taken altogether unawares. But there is not a moment to lose!"

The mother had clasped Agnes in her arms, and her tears were streaming down. The farmer was storming up and down in a tempest of fear and anger--anger at the girls, at the law, at the barbarity of punishing mere children--at everything and everybody. Margaret alone was calm; her countenance had not changed.

"Let them come," she answered quietly, "men can only hurt our bodies. None can touch our true selves. Why should we be afraid? Why should we fly?"

But the mother rose and thrust the trembling Agnes into her sister's arms.

"Save her! save her!" she sobbed. "It is thine example that hath led her to this. To thee do I look to save her from the peril which now besets her. If thou hast no thought or care for thine own life, save that of thy sister!"

Margaret looked down at the little white tearful, and yet courageous, face of her sister and companion, and the dreamy look passed from her eyes, whilst her mouth grew resolute.