Chapter II: Westmains

Oh, when will ye come hame again?
Dear Willie, tell to me;
"When sun and moon loup o'er yon hill--
And that will never be!"
She turned hersel right round about,
Her heart burst into three;
"My ae best son is dead and gane,
The other I ne'er shall see."
_Old Ballad._

"A light," exclaimed Lady Alison; "a light, that I may see by this loiterer's face whether he be tipsy or sober!"

Candles were soon flaming in the numerous sconces of polished tin and brass that hung on knobs around the hall, and shed a cheerful light through every part of it; yet it was not without what we in these days would deem a quaint and weird aspect. Many centuries had darkened this old mansion, and twelve generations had hung their swords in that baronial hall. It is lofty, arched with stone, and its walls are still massive, deep, and strong. Father Seton, the vicar of the adjacent village, who was locally known as Mass John of Tranent, and to whose writings we are indebted for much that concerns this old family, has left a minute description of all the "gear and inside plenishing of the castle."

Large oak chests, girnels and almries, the receptacles of linen, vessels for the table, food, corn, and beer, occupied the recesses. Trophies of arms and racks of spears stood between the windows. In this apartment there were but two chairs of carved oak. These, as usual then in Scottish halls stood on each side of the fireplace: one, being for the father of the family, had never been used since the slaughter of Sir John Fawside by the Laird of Preston; the other was for Dame Alison. Round the hall were ranged various forms, creepies, and buffet stools; these, like the long table, were all of black old oak from the Burghmuir, and allotted to the use of the family or visitors. The stone seats in the windows were laid over with cushions of Flemish damask, and had footmats of plaited rushes from the Howemire. The stone walls, which, as the season was warm, were divested of tapestry, had been recently decorated by Andro Watson, the late king's favourite painter, and bore numerous gaudy and quaint designs, representing family traditions, such as passages of arms and daring feats performed in war or in the chase.

Over the arched fireplace stood the portrait of umquhile Sir John of that ilk, the work of the same hand. Quaint, stark and stiff, he was on foot, in an old suit of mail of the fifteenth century, jagged with iron beaks; a snowy beard flowed below his girdle, and his right hand grasped the bridle of a white horse, on the back of which this grim figure had frequently been found _mounted_ at midnight, as nurse Maud, and other old servants, had more than once affirmed!--for Fawside Tower was haunted even then, as a matter of course. Too much blood had been shed in and about it, and too many of its mailed proprietors had perished by bloody and violent deaths, for the mansion to be without its due proportion of spectral appearances and mysterious sounds.

Thus, an antique copper bell which swung at the gable of the tower tolled of its own accord, and all untouched by mortal hand, when a Fawside died; and on the Eve of St. John, a bearded visage, averred by some to be that of the late laird, peeped in the twilight through the hall windows, though these were more than twenty feet from the ground. The gleaming eyes would gaze sadly for a moment on the shrinking beholder, and then the visage melted slowly away into air.

Above the mantelpiece, as above the barbican gate, were the arms of this old family--gules, a fess between three besants, the heraldic badge assigned to a predecessor who had been in Palestine--Sir Robert of that ilk, having served St. Louis IX. in the last crusade, and taken the motto _Forth and feir nocht_: but enough of this dull archæology, and now to resume our narrative.

Followed by several of the household, male and female, all anxious to learn what the town news was, and chiefly whether there were any tidings of their young master's return from France, where he had been resident nearly seven years, the ground bailie, Roger Fawside, of the Westmains, a vassal and remote kinsman, entered the hall. He was a stout and thickset man, about fifty years of age; his beard was grizzled and grey, like his Lombard coat, which had long hanging sleeves, with rows of horn buttons from the shoulder to the wrist. He wore grey breeches and white ribbed stockings gartered at the knee, a blue bonnet, a sword and dagger, slung at a calf-skin girdle. Doffing his bonnet, he made a reverence to Lady Alison, and walking straight to where, upon a binn, near the hall door, there stood a barrel of ale furnished with a wooden cup, for all who chose to drink thereat; he drew forth the spiggot, and proceeded to fill the aforesaid vessel with a foaming draught. With her brows knit, and her dark eyes flashing, the tall old dame came hastily forward, and by one blow of her jewelled hand, dashed from his the wooden tankard, while she exclaimed--

"Satisfy my impatience, carle, ere you satisfy your thirst! Well, what tidings of my son, Westmains, or of his ship? speak , and quickly too, for you have tarried long enough!"

"A ship supposed to be his, my Lady Alison, was seen on the water of Forth this morning, but she hath not come to land."

"This morning----"

"Yes."

"Art sure of this!"

"Sure as I live, madam."

"And he not here yet!" pondered the lady.

"The skippers at Musselburgh kent her well--a French galley, high pooped and low waisted, with King Henry's banner displayed; men called her the _Salamandre_, or some such name."

"Likely enough; 'tis the crest of the late king's mistress, Diana, the Duchess of Valentinois; and this----"

"Was about the dawning of the day, madam."

"And since then," continued the lady impatiently, "she has not passed the Inch."

"There have been no storms to delay the ship?"

"None, save that made by Girzy Gowdie, of Salt Preston, by baptising a cat in the devil's name last week, as we a' ken."

"But that storm came and went to drown a skipper of Dunbar, who had slighted her daughter."

"And yesterday," added Nurse Maude, "she did her penance under a pile o' tarred barrels on Gulane Links."

"Rightly was she served, the accursed witch!" responded Roger of Westmains, recovering the wooden cup and applying it hastily to the spiggot of the barrel, from whence he achieved a draught of ale; "for 'tis now kenned that when she rode forth on a broom stick, in the auld fashion, thrice a year, to keep the devil's sabbath at Clootie's Croft, on the Lammermuir, she left in bed beside her gudeman, a three-legged stool in the likeness of herself; and the said stool (which was burned wi' her) only assumed its own form when Father John of Tranent, chanced to pass that way, telling his beads, about the matin time."

"Cease this gossip, bailie," said the lady, starting again to the north window; "a horseman!--see, see!--a horseman at last is ascending the brae side."

"But he wheels off to Carberry," added the nurse, in a voice like a moan.

"Alas!" exclaimed this stern woman, as her eyes began to fill with tears--"my son; why comes he not?"

"The dogs howled the lee lang night," said the wrinkled nurse, applying her apron to her eyes; "and 'twas not for nocht that yonder howlet screamed on the cape-house head yestreen."

"What mean ye, Maud?" asked the lady sharply.

"They are kenned omens of evil."

"Of evil say ye!"

"Yes--weel awat it is!"

"Havers, Kimmer!" said the ground bailie, taking another jug of ale; "just an auld wife's havers!"

"Thou art right, Westmains," added Lady Alison; "for I have believed but little in omens since Flodden Field was stricken."

"Why since then, lady?"

"On the morn my husband marched from here to join the king's host on the Burghmuir of Edinburgh, as he combed his beard--and a braw lang beard it was, Westmains"----

"I mind it weel, for it spread from ilk shoulder to the other, covering corslet and pauldrons."

"Well, as he combed it out with a steel comb twelve inches long, and buckled on his armour, lo! there appeared before him, in the mirror--what think ye all?"

"I know not," replied the bailie, in his abstraction contriving to fill a third jug of ale; "but many strange sights were seen in those days. We a' ken o' the spectres that King James saw at Lithgow Kirk and Jeddart Ha', and of the weird spirit-herald who summoned the souls of the slain--the doomed men of the battle at Edinburgh Cross."

"But what think you my poor husband saw!"

"As I live, I know not," replied the bailie; while the hushed crowd of dependents drew near to listen.

"A mort head where his own comely face should have been!"

"Preserve us a'!"

"Our lady o' Whitehorn!"

"Say ye so, my lady?" were the varied exclamations of the servants.

"Yes!--there stood the shining reflection of his cuirass, pauldrons, and sleeves of Milan plate, just as we see them limned in yonder portrait; but the gorget was surmounted by a grinning skull. And yet he fell not with the king on that fatal ninth of September."

"God rest him now, in his grave in Tranent Kirk! He was a leal brave man, our laird!"

"True, Westmains," replied the lady, while her large black eyes kindled. "But none of his race have died a natural death--it would seem to be their doom. All, all have perished in feud or in the cause of Scotland; and though my heart would break were a hair of my Florence's head to be touched, never shall son of this house die in his bed like a fat monk of St. Mary or a lurdane burgess of Haddington."

"Thou art true to thy race, Lady Alison."

"Tell me what other news you heard, Westmains, in yonder borough town?"

"A band of abominable witches have been dancing about the market cross, as they did last Hallowe'en, with the deil, in the likeness of a hairy Hielandman, playing the pipes to them."

"Pshaw! And yet, 'tis strange--this witchcraft, like the spirit of Lollardy, seems to grow apace in the land."

"They have been caught, and are to thole an assize. One is accused of giving devilish drugs and philtres to the Earl of Bothwell, wherewith to win the love of the queen mother"----

"Mary of Lorraine?"

"Another, of cutting off a dead man's thumbs to make hell-broth, wherein she dipped nine elf-arrows, and shot nine o' auld Preston's kye."

"A murrain on him! Would to Heaven the hag had shot himself! But he is reserved for a better end."

"How?"

"Can _you_ ask?" said the lady fiercely. "To die by a Fawside's sword--by the sword of my only son!"

"And there was taken," resumed the garrulous bailie, "a grisly warlock, to whose house in Lugton, last Lammastide, there came the deil"----

"Save us and sain us!" muttered the servants, crossing themselves--for Scotland was Catholic still, in outward form, at least, and the credulity of the people seems almost incredible now.

"The devil! say you, Roger?" asked the lady, becoming suddenly interested.

"The grim black deil himsel, but in the likeness of a fair woman--the Queen of Elfen,--and was there delivered of a female bairn, who in the space of three weeks grew large enough to become his wife, and through whom he knew as much as ever True Thomas did of old; for he confessed that by taking a dog under his left arm, and whispering in his ear the queer word _macpeblis_, he could raise the King of Evil, his master, at will; and by sprinkling a blanket with Esk water, as a spell, he drew all the clew and verdure of Wolmet-mains to his ain farm land, leaving the other bare and withered. Then, worse than a', when Wolmet's wife was lying in her childbed-lair, by devilish cantrips, he cast the whole of her pain, dolor, and sickness upon John Guidlat, the baron bailie of Dalkeith, who, during the entire time of her travail, was marvellously troubled, with such agonies, fury, and madness, that it took the town drummer, the bellman and piper to boot, to hold him; but the moment the gentlewoman was delivered, John felt himself a whole man, and well; and so, for all these, things, the grey warlock o' Lugton is to be brankit wi iron, and worried by fire at the Gallows-haugh."

"Enough of such tidings as these; heard ye nought else at Edinburgh-Cross, Westmains?"

"Else?"

"Yes, 'tis of my son and the state I would speak,--not the wretched gossip of an ale-brewster's spence. What is the queen-mother,--what are the Regent Arran and his pestilent Hamiltons about?"

"The regent bydes him at Holyrood, the queen-mother at her house on the Castle-hill; and there seems but little love and muckle jealousy between them yet, as I learned from a proclamation anent false coining, for which I saw three Frenchmen hanged and beheaded this morning."

"Anything more?"

"Odslife! I think that was enough to see before breaking one's fast; and then their heads were spiked, where six others girn, on the Bristo Porte."

"Goose! I would thine was with them; for the news I seek oozes out of thee like blood-drops."

"And there was an Irish leper woman branded by a hot iron on both cheeks, for returning uncleansed to her own house in St. Ninian's Row."

"Oh, Westmains, my heart is heavy!" said the lady, seating herself after a pause, during which the ground bailie had filled and drained a fourth cup, to which a fifth would have succeeded had not Nurse Maud, as a hint that he had imbibed enough already, angrily driven home the spiggot: "This day is the first of August; and at noon we heard Father John of Tranerit say mass for St. Peter's benediction, that the shorn lambs might escape the danger of cold."

"Mass according to the ancient wont."

"Mass according to the Church and faith of our fathers," continued the lady, with some asperity; and then she added plaintively, "I was in hopes that my son--_my_ absent lamb--would be with us ere sunset, and yet he comes not."

"A braw lamb," said Westmains merrily; "a tall and proper youth, six feet high, in full steel harness, with sword, dagger, and spurs."

"A lamb he is to me, Roger; though I trust he may yet prove worse than a wolf to that old fox, Hamilton of Preston. Oh, why doth he tarry?" continued the mother, beginning to soften; "can danger have beset him?"

"Consult Mass John anent this," whispered the nurse; "his prayers are as spells of power----"

"For those that pay him weel," added the bailie under his beard, while he scratched his chin.

"Will his prayers bring home my bairn, if a fair wind fails him, think ye?"

"I dinna ken. Like Our Lady's image in the Nunraw of Haddington, they bring rain when the Tranent folk need it to gar their kail grow; or make the weather fair and clear, as the case may be; then why may they not bring hame the young laird?"

"Ay, why, indeed!" muttered the nurse.

"Oh, peace, you silly carlin!"

"As you please, madam," retorted Maud. "But there is a wise woman in Preston-grange----"

"And what of her?"

"She can forsee things to come, and the return o' folk that are far awa, by turning a riddle wi' shears."

"Nay, nay; I would rather see my son no more than see him by necromancy and acts against God's holy word, Nurse. But Preston's men have been abroad to-day, and they seldom ride on a good errand," said Lady Alison, starting from her seat with a new glow of anger and terror in her breast; "but woe to them if aught happens to my son, for bearded men shall weep for it, and I will kill Preston on his own hearthstone, as I would a serpent in its lair! If that foul riever, who slew my husband under tryst, and my brave and winsome Willie---- but he dare not!" she added, checking the bitter surmise by a husky and intense whisper; "no, he dare not!"

And, sinking into her chair, with nervous fingers she grasped the arms of it, and fixed her wild dark eyes upon the wall, as if she saw there in imagination the hereditary foeman of her husband's house.

"Yes, yes, he will be here in the morning," she said suddenly, "for the ship has been seen. Nurse Maud, look out the best dornick napery, and have a fire of turf and coal lighted in his room; hang the crimson curtains on the carved stand-bed, and the green arras on its tenter-hooks. See that the kitchen wenches set a posset of spiced alicant to simmer by the ingle--for the mornings are chill now; let them look well to what is in the spence and almerie against his hame-coming. We must make a feast, Nurse; for after seven years in France our auld Scottish fare will be alike welcome and new to him."

"Seven years," said Maud, thoughtfully.

"Yes, Nurse; seven years come yule-tide hath our beloved bairn been absent from our hearth and hame."

Westmains went away to his grange, or farm, which lay westward of the tower. The strong gates of yetlan iron were now closed for the night, and the lady of Fawside retired, to pray for her absent son, who at that moment was only ten miles distant, but lying on his back, bleeding and gashed by three wounds: but I anticipate my story.