The little stout Provost of Edinburgh began to stammer his doubts, but Melville cut him short. 'How many men are required?'
'Every man that we can muster. Bothwell has only six hundred, I am told – but they are seasoned moss-troopers, cattle-thieves who live by the sword.'
'Very well. And you, sir?'
'I go to the castle. His Grace agreeing. There is the garrison. And cannon. The Royal Guard is at the palace – such as is not here. Vicky – my lord Duke – ride you to Craigmillar, where Bargany and his Kennedys lie. They had to be kept out of the town. Bring them to Holyroodhouse. Provost – riders out hot-foot to all nearby lairds, Protestant lairds. In the name of King and Kirk.'
Melville nodded. 'The Kirk will be there,' he said levelly. 'What of the King?'
'His Grace has sworn his royal oath before all men,' Patrick said, with entire confidence. 'To lead in person. It is unthinkable that any should doubt the King's word.'
All looked at the unhappy James. Not meeting any glance, he stared down at the cobblestones of the High Street, fiddling widi the buttons of his doublet. 'M'mmm. Eh, eh. I'ph'mm,' he mumbled. 'Ooh, ay. Och, well…'
'Exacdy, Sire. No other course is consistent with your royal honour. I shall not leave your side…'
Melville smiled thinly. 'Just so, Your Grace. Thou hast said! Master of Gray – I will await the King at Holyroodhouse. In two hours.'
Patrick inclined his head – but his eyes held those of the other. Here was a man with whom he could work; or do battle.
Chapter Six
'A great host, Sire,' the Master of Gray said, striving to sound enthusiastic. He had been seeking to edge the King further away from the solid phalanx of Bargany's contingent of three hundred tough Kennedy horsemen, who insisted on making loud and ribald comments on the appearance and fighting qualities of the rest of the assembly spread over the green meadows at the foot of towering Arthur's Seat. 'They have mustered well. Many men.'
'Iph'mm,' James acceded doubtfully. 'Many men, aye. But… will they fight? Eh? Can they fight, man? Against Bothwell's limmers!'
'It is for that they have assembled. To fight they must intend, at least! And… I sense much holy zeal!'
'D'you no' reckon the zeal's more for the Kirk than for me, Patrick? I dinna like the looks o' some o' them.'
'Let us hope that Bothwell will think the same, Sire! What matters it who the zeal is for, so long as they fight Your Grace's battle?'
Andrew Melville and his clerical colleagues had certainly proved persuasive recruiters. A vast, if far from disciplined mob milled and seethed between the grey palace and the abrupt slopes of the hill, armed with almost as much variety as was the range of age and appearance – with pikes, swords, daggers, billhooks, sickles, axes, staves and knives bound to poles. Half the city appeared to be present – though which were volunteers and which mere spectators was difficult to ascertain. There was much brandishing of these weapons and much shouting, it being doubtful how much of it was Godly exhortation and acclaim and how much native quarrelsomeness, high spirits and horseplay. There was, and could be, no real order of formation maintained – although the many black-gowned ministers who pushed everywhere amongst the crowd, seemed to be trying to impose their own ideas of military, or at least militant, comportment.
Women and children permeated the assembly, and looked as though they were by no means going to be left behind when the time came to march.
The Duke of Lennox had been urging for some time that such order should be given forthwith. A certain amount of internecine strife had already broken out between the warlike townsmen and their traditional oppressors, the Town-Guard, and Ludovick had been seeking to aid the Provost and magistrates to restrict this within modest limits; the apprentices, who were out in force, clearly had other ideas, and, grievously outnumbered, the Town Guard had now formed a tight square around the civic dignitaries, and the Duke had been sent to beseech the King either to send his own Royal Guard and the Kennedys to their aid, or to order an immediate march on Leith as distraction.
Patrick Gray had demurred. Let the Town Guard solve its own problems, he argued; the last thing that they wanted was for the King's Guard to make itself unpopular with the populace. Moreover, they must await the arrival of the cannon from the castle, which should make for a great access of enthusiasm and aggressive spirit. Also, so far, very few parties of retainers and men-at-arms had appeared from lords and lairds near the city and they, being horsed, were badly required.
Andrew Melville came striding up to the royal party, beard, white Geneva bands and black gown all streaming in the breeze. 'We must up and move, Your Grace,' he declared strongly. 'The good folk get restive. Let us wait no longer.'
'Aye. But… the cannon…?' James, nibbling his nails, looked at the Master.
'A little longer, Master Melville,' Patrick said. 'We would be foolish not to await the cannon. The sight of them, I swear, will greatly encourage these people of yours. Also, the garrison from the castle who brings them are to bring with them all the armoury of pikes and halberds. Hundreds of them. These we much need. They should have been here by this but the oxen that draw the cannon are slow…'
There was a diversion, as the thunder of hooves drew all eyes eastwards. Round the foot of the hill, from the higher ground at that side, came at the gallop a gallant cavalcade, about one hundred strong, banners flying, steel glinting, armour clanking. The great leading banner showed the famed Red Heart of Douglas.
At sight of that dread emblem there was next to panic amongst much of the crowd, for the Douglas reputation was as savage as it was ancient and the Earl of Angus, one of the chief rebels, was head of the clan. But the knowledgeable sighed with relief, recognising the ensign of the Earl of Morton, from Dalkeith five miles away, of the Protestant branch of the house.
Morton himself, elderly, portly and purple, clad in magnificent and old-fashioned gold-inlaid armour, led his superbly equipped and mounted cohort up to the King's position, scattering lesser folk, volunteers, guild-members and ministers alike, right and left, his men roaring 'A Douglas! A Douglas!' in traditional fashion. James shrank back before the flailing hooves of Morton's charger, as the Earl pulled the beast back, in an abrupt, earth-scoring halt, on to its very haunches.
'You need Douglas, I hear, my lord King?' the old man bellowed. 'I came hot-foot with these. Twice so many follow. What's to do, eh? What's to do?'
'Aye. Thank you, my lord. Aye, my thanks,' James acknowledged from behind Patrick. 'It's Bothwell…'
'Bothwell! That bastard's get by a Hepburn whore!' Morton cried, caring nothing that the bastard involved was one of the King's own uncles. He dismounted heavily, throwing his reins to an attendant, and clanked forward, roughly pushing aside the two divines, Melville and Galloway. 'Out o' the way o' Douglas, clerks!'he barked.
'Sir!' Master Galloway protested. 'Have a care how you go…'
'Quiet, fool!' the Douglas standard-bearer ordered, coming behind his lord.
'But… I am minister of the High Kirk of St. Giles…!'
'I carena' whether you're the Archangel Gabriel, man! No daws squawk where Douglas is!'
Andrew Melville stroked his beard, but said nothing.
Patrick hastened to close the breach. He had helped substantially in bringing low the previous Morton, the terrible onetime Regent of Scotland, and had no love for the nephew. But this unexpected adherence now was a major access of strength. 'My lord,' he cried. 'You are welcome, I vow! A notable augury – Douglas joins the King and the Kirk! Master Melville here has nobly rallied the faithful. Brought out this great host of the people, to assail Bothwell…'
The Earl snorted. 'That rabble!' He spat. 'Clear them out of the way, I say! Before Bothwell does. They encumber the decent earth!'
'My lord of Morton,' Melville said, quietly but sternly. 'I mislike your words and your manners. You speak of the people of God! Fellow-heirs, with yourself, of Christ's mercy. By the looks of you, you will need that mercy mor
e than most. And sooner than some!'
'Devil burn you!' Morton swung round, to stare at the other. 'You… you dare speak me so! God's Passion – I'll teach you and your low-born like to raise your croaking voice in Douglas's presence! By the powers…'
Patrick was tugging at the King's sleeve. 'Quickly!' he whispered. 'Stop him. Sire.'
'Eh, eh! Hech, me! My lord! My lord o' Morton – ha' done. We… we command it. Aye, command it. You also, Master Melville. Ha' done, I say. This'll no' do, at all.' James's thick voice shook, but he went on. 'It's no' suitable. In our royal presence. Eh…?' Patrick was prompting at his side. 'Aye. We need you both – greatly need you. Our cause is one. We canna have bickering and brabbling…'
A commotion to the north drowned his words. Shouting arose, there and was taken up by the huge concourse, as with a great groaning and squealing of wooden axle-trees, three massive iron cannon, bound and hooped, each drawn by a train of a dozen plodding oxen, lumbered from the cobblestones of the Canongate on to the grassland of the park. Such a thing had not been seen since Flodden. Everywhere men surged forward, to admire and exclaim. Even Morton forgot his spleen, to stride off to inspect the monsters. Folk were shouting that here was Mons, good buxom Mons, the most famous piece of ordnance ever forged.
Gratefully Patrick seized the opportunity. He slipped over to Melville's side, spoke a few sympathetic words, and urged immediate superintendence of the issue of the garrison's hundreds of pikes and halberds to the people. Then he besought the King to mount his horse and have the Royal Standard unfurled above his head, to a fanfare of trumpets. No speeches this time – for not one in a hundred would hear him. Then, the move to Leith at last.
So, presently, that strange, discordant, sprawling horde set off on its two-mile march, surely the most unlikely army ever to issue from the Capital behind the proud Rampant Lion of Scotland. First rode an advance-party of fifty Kennedys, to clear the way and act as scouts. Patrick had been anxious about the Kennedys and the Douglases coming to blows, and conceived this useful and honourable duty as in some way countering Morton's arrogant assumption that he and his must remain closest to the King. Then came the hundred of the Royal Guard, preceding the King's Standard-bearer and the Lord Lyon King of Arras. James himself followed, with Morton only half a head behind on the right and die Duke of Lennox on the left, flanked by Douglas horsemen, four deep. Next a motley group marched on foot – including, strangely enough, the Master of Gray, despite tall riding-boots and clanking spurs; when he had discovered that Andrew Melville and the other Kirk leaders intended to walk all the way to Leith, refusing to be mounted where there followers were not, he promptly handed over his horse to a servant and inarched with them. The little fat Provost also puffed and panted with this party, as did certain deacons of guilds, magistrates and other prominent townsfolk. Then came Bargany and his remaining two-hundred-and-fifty horse, followed by a mixed assortment of mounted men to the number of another hundred or so. Thereafter the castle garrison, with the ox-drawn cannon, followed by the great mass of the people, starting with companies and groups which kept some sort of order, armed with pikes and bills, but quickly degenerating into a noisy and undisciplined mob, to tail off eventually in a vast following of onlookers, women, children and barking dogs. How many the entire strung-out host might add up up to it was impossible to guess – but it could be computed that there were over five hundred horse and perhaps a thousand footmen who might generously be called pikemen, with three or four times that of miscellaneous approximately armed men, apart from the hangers-on who far outnumbered all.
This straggling multitude progressed – since it could hardly be said to march – in a general northerly direction, by way of the Abbey Hill, the flanks of Calton Hill, the village of Moutrie, the Gallow's hill where the bodies of offenders hung in chains, and on down the long straight track of Leith Loan past the hamlet of Pilrig and the outskirts of Logan's property of Restal-rig. The bare two miles took the best part of two hours to cover, largely because of the desperately slow pace of the plodding oxen drawing the heavy cannon over the churned-up mud of the uneven route. Indeed, the impatient apprentices, who started by helping to push the lumbering artillery at bad patches, presently took over from the oxen altogether, and the last part of the journey was completed at a slightly better pace. By which time the entire incoherent column had spread and strung itself out sufficiently to make it barely recognisable as a unified force.
The Kennedy outriders kept the leadership posted as to the situation ahead. Quite early on scouts came back with the word that Bothwell, after taking Leith with little or no resistance – for the town walls, once stronger than those of Edinburgh itself, had been broken down during the religious wars of Queen Mary's reign and never rebuilt – had now moved out of the port itself to the east, to take up a defensive position amongst the fortifications in the open area outside the town known as Leith Links. Later information confirmed that he was still there.
The news could be both good and bad. He was evidently not sallying forth to challenge the King's force; on die other hand, he was not retreating – and these fortifications, earthworks thrown up to protect Leith and the Capital from an expected English landing by sea fifty years before, were defensively very powerful.
As the leaders of the royal force neared the broken walls of Leith, James became ever more agitated. He was a good horseman, strangely enough, although his slouching seat was deceptive, but, though twice die man mounted that he was on his shambling feet, he was still no warrior-king. Without Patrick Gray at his side to sustain him, and unappreciative of Morton's bellicose confidence, he kept looking back wistfully, most clearly desiring to be elsewhere. Ludovick Lennox presently fell behind to speak to the Master, to declare that if he did not come forward to take the King in hand again, there was likely to be a crisis.
So, his usually immaculate appearance notably soiled and mud-spattered, Patrick took to horse once more and resumed his nursing of the monarch's slender militancy.
In sight of the town's belatedly closed gates and gapped walls, they swung away right-handed, eastwards. They could see the green mounds of the earthworks on the Links, now, about half-a-mile away, between them and the sea. A few figures could be distinguished on the summits of the ramparts, but there was no sign of an army. Bothwell's troops could be hidden behind the grassy banks easily enough.
The King's relief at not being able to see his enemy was comic. Patrick was more concerned at not being able to see the sea, which the banks and the town between them hid.
'We must send a party to keep watch from the Signal Tower, Sire,' he declared. The environs of Leigh were flat, with no hills to offer vantage-points, and a tall watch-tower was a prominent feature of the harbour works, for observing the approach of shipping. 'If Bothwell is waiting here, it may well be to help in the landing of a force coming by sea. We must be warned of any such.'
'Aye, Patrick – Aye.' James obviously had an idea. 'I could do that, man. / could watch in the auld Signal Tower. Fine I could. And keep you informed here…'
'No doubt, Sire. But your royal presence with this host is entirely necessary. All would be at each others' throats without you, I fear – or away home to Edinburgh! Others we can spare -not the King!'
Silent, James rode on.
They were about four hundred yards from the first of the ramparts when the scene was suddenly and most dramatically transformed. All along the summit of that lengthy line of earthworks horsemen appeared, in a well-concerted movement, to stand there, side by side, upright lances glistening in the sun, pennons fluttering. The line was only one man deep but it was almost half-a-mile long, and the effect was impressive in the extreme – and daunting to more than King James. The advance of the royal horde came to a ragged halt.
Seeking to soothe the sovereign's near panic, Patrick pointed out that there was no immediate danger. The ground between the forces was cut and scored by trenches and holes, out of which the soil for the ramparts had b
een dug – now mostly filled with water. No cavalry charge across this was a practical proposition, from either side. Bothwell could not come at them, in his present formation, any more than they could get at him -save with footmen, who were certainly not likely to be anxious to throw away their lives in any head-on assault. And the range was too great for musketry. They had one advantage, however, denied to Bothwell. They had artillery. When the cannon came up, the situation would be changed.
Only slightly reassured, James was in a fret for the arrival of the guns. Confusion prevailed along the royal line – if line it could be termed. Some bold spirits pressed forward, to shake weapons and fists at the long still array of horsemen quarter-of-a-mile away – but more pressed back. There was a deal of shouting, some unauthorised and wild musket-fire, and considerable prayer, both offensive and defensive. Morton, without consulting anyone else, ordered his Douglas horsemen into a spectacular earth-shaking, lance-shaking, gallop, up and down the front, back and forward, shouting slogans, banners flying -but not coming within three hundred yards of die enemy. The main mass of townsmen, still coming up, kept pushing in amongst those in front, and then, discovering the situation, pushing back again.
In contrast to these highly mobile and fluid tactics, the enemy remained rather alarmingly motionless, grimly sure of themselves. Only in the centre of the long front was diere any movement at all, where, under the red and white banner of Hepburn a small group of dismounted men were clustered.
Kennedy of Bargany, a stocky, bull-necked middle-aged man, and veteran of innumerable feuding affrays in his own lawless Carrick, rode up to Patrick, and after hooting his contempt of the King's force in general, and disparaging Morton's antics with his Douglases in particular, suggested that he should seek to outflank Bothwell with as much of the cavalry as could be spared. The fortifications ended at the very walls of Leith on the west, and nothing could be done there; but they must peter out somewhere to the east, amongst the open sand-dunes, and the enemy line could be turned from that side.
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