The Galliard

by Margaret Irwin

  Gavin Hamilton, the warlike Abbot of Kilwinning, was reported to be in command of his kinsmen at the market-place, and the whole city was buzzing with the news that the Hepburns and Hamiltons were out for a Christmas Eve row; the shopkeepers and their prentices left their mince pies and plum porridge and were busy sharpening their spears and axes in the little lighted booths throughout the town, for every merchant was bound by law to keep a stout weapon handy so as to be ready to rush to any fray in the streets, should the Common Bell summon them to keep the peace. So the tinsmiths and braziers in the West Bow were clanging noisier metal than their wares; the linen merchants in the Lawnmarket and the goldsmiths of Elphinstone Court near the Mint were handling weightier weapons than scissors and trinkets; the butchers just below the Netherbow and just under John Knox’s window were preparing for bigger game than calves and sheep.

  The preacher was writing his sermon against the superstitious observance, of Christmas when the ‘dreadful noise of armour pierced his heart’. Brave as he was in words to any man’s face, he could not bear the actual sight and sound of an armed clash. It did not help to steady his nerves when the door flung open and Mrs Bowes, the mother of his young wife who had died last year, threw herself on her knees beside him.

  ‘Oh Master,’ she sobbed, ‘Maigret says they’re fighting up by the Tron, hundreds and hundreds of them, and we’ll all be murdered and raped and burnt in our beds. Stop them, Master!’

  ‘Maigret’s a fool. It’s only some fash of the Hepburns and Hamiltons. The citizens will deal with it.’

  But the mistress was a worse fool than the maid. She seemed to think he had only to put his head out of the window and preach to them, for them all to disperse quietly. She went on nagging at him:

  ‘Oh Master, save me, save us all! I came here for your sake – do this for mine.’

  She was sobbing hysterically, and he pushed her away as she clutched at his knees. ‘I asked for you to come and take the burden of housekeeping from me, not add to my burden by weeping and howling’ – and as this produced a still louder howl – ‘There, there, woman, I’m only telling you to have sense.’

  But the women that John Knox preferred to have about him were singularly lacking in sense. Mrs Bowes continued to plead for ‘one trumpet note’ of that voice which in his own ears sounded weaker and hoarser every time he spoke.

  For the uproar was thickening in the street below – ‘Hoo! Hoo! Hoo for a Hepburn!’ came the cry; ‘Fye Tyndale, to it!’; and ‘Bide me fair!’ Farther up the hill it was answered by, ‘A Hamilton! A Hamilton!’

  Knox found to his intense annoyance that his knee, still clutched by Mrs Bowes, was shaking.

  ‘For my life,’ he said severely, ‘I count it not a rush. It is my Maker’s, to be called back by Him when He so pleases. I say this of my deliberate mind to my God. But for this infirmity of the flesh I cannot answer; it comes, I think, from the time when I suffered the continual fear of the lash in the galleys.’

  That was a time he seldom spoke of, and would not have done so now, but to excuse his trembling. But Mrs Bowes mistook his meaning, as she usually did, and thought he referred to his complaint of the stone, the galley’s painful inheritance; she was at once busy with hot possets and logs for the fire, forgetting her own fears and drowning those of her son-in-law in his helpless irritation at her fussing. But even as she rushed at him with a fleecy plaid in one hand and a steaming bowl in the other she dropped them both, for into the little warm room so closely shuttered against the wintry night outside, there came the muffled clanging of the Common Bell.

  Men below were running, shouting, dogs barking, women shrieking, and rushing to and fro went the bells above them higgledy-piggledy in a hideous clamour. Down went Mrs Bowes on her knees again, instinctively mopping up the mess of the posset with the plaid, while she screamed and prayed in alternate gusts of breath, and her son-in-law silently asked God what devil-sent impulse had ever betrayed him to get her to leave England to look after his household.

  He stormed at her to stop mopping up the slops with his best plaid, then checked as other noises came swinging uphill from the Canongate into the Netherbow, sweeping on up towards the market-place, the steady run of disciplined armed forces and shouts of ‘In the name of the Queen!’ Law and order were on the march against the riot. In a spasm of irritation, relief, and determined courage, John Knox sprang up, away from that tousled sprawling bundle of dishevelled hair and clothes, and flung open his shuttered window.

  The Lord James and the Earl of Huntly were in command of the guards from Holyrood, and shouting to their respective religious sects that any man who stayed in the streets would be put to death. Mr Knox shut his window hurriedly. In twenty minutes neither Protestant nor Papist could be found out of doors.

  The religious question was certainly obscure in this controversy, for when the leaders had to answer for their action before the Queen next day, Bothwell appeared at the head of as many Papists as Protestants, while large numbers of the godly, even of Knox’s own congregation, were following the Papist Abbot of Kilwinning, Gavin Hamilton, in their anxiety to avenge the insult to his kinsman, Arran.

  Arran himself declared that the proposed attack on Bothwell had been organized by his kinsmen, but that he knew nothing about it, nor did his father.

  ‘Maybe you don’t know your own hat either?’ demanded Bothwell, flourishing that now disreputable piece of headgear.

  Mary, betrayed into an incautious giggle, instantly turned it to a severe frown.

  ‘If it amuses you, my lord, to make a mock of our justice, you will find it harsher than you seem to expect.’

  The Lord James made a brief aside to her against the superstitious Christmas revels which had helped lead to this disturbance; the Queen replied rather tartly that she did not see that it would have made it any better if the disturbance had been helped instead by the non-superstitious New Year revels.

  But it gave her her cue, for she made a charming little speech to the delinquents, reminding them that it was Christmas Day, and whatever ‘some in our kingdom’ might think of the superstition of observing that day with reverence, yet surely both Protestant and Catholic might give thanks for the birthday of the Prince of Peace, and even if they gave each other no other gifts on that day, should agree to give peace and brotherly love. And she turned to the Duke of Châtelherault as the most important of the protagonists, and asked him to accept her arbitration.

  The head of the Haughty Hamiltons refused, standing very stiffly and looking like a handsome sheep. Only one political idea had ever penetrated behind that classic profile with the pink and white skin under the silver hair – that but for this skittering lass before him, now making her schoolgirl appeals for his good behaviour, he himself should be King of Scotland. He would show her he was not going to be coaxed into making up the quarrel; he declared that he could listen to no overtures of peace until Bothwell had withdrawn his charge against him and his son – ‘publicly at the Market Cross.’ As an afterthought, during the startled pause that followed this announcement, he added triumphantly, ‘With sound of trumpet.’

  This imbecility made any reconciliation impossible. If the armed forces of the Hasty Hepburns and the Haughty Hamiltons continued to stay in the town, a pitched battle would be inevitable. The Queen looked in desperate appeal at Bothwell. He was leaving in any case in a day or two, to go and arrange for his sister’s wedding at Crichton, and Mary would be attending it and staying the night. He must see how absurd was her pretence of ‘banishment’ and that she only made it for the sake of peace. So she commanded my lord of Bothwell to leave Edinburgh with all his men for the present, and as he bowed his submission and laid her hand on his to raise it to his lips, she gave his fingers a little secret nip as if to say, ‘you do understand I have to play this solemn farce?’

  His answer was so hard a pressure with his lips upon her hand that it left a mark. She felt it was done more in anger than in friendliness; it was certai
nly not the least like a caress.

  Chapter Six

  That was a wedding. Generations of Hepburns of every ilk talked of it afterwards; four hundred years later, people about the place could still point out the haugh where the sports were held that sparkling January day when at last the mist cleared and the frosted grass crackled like tiny flames as it melted in the sun. The hills in the distance were transparent-looking; the pearl-coloured morning hung breathless in suspense for its first bright hour; then the scene became crowded with noisy, hurrying figures, dark and bright coloured, running, jumping, blowing on their fingers, calling to each other, shouting commands; riding up on horseback to clear a space for the sports; and now, louder, more piercing than all the loud human voices, came the skin and drone of the pipes tingling through the thin air.

  There rang out a shout that drowned even the pipes, a blood-curdling yell of loyalty as the Queen came out of the Castle with the bride and bridegroom, led by her host, Lord Bothwell, and leaning on the arm of her half-brother, Lord James.

  Mary had already attended the service in the Castle, showing no such scruples over her presence at a Protestant ceremony as Bothwell had shown over his at her Catholic service; and so she hinted to him with a mocking flicker of those long white eyelids that made her look as though she were pretending to be solemn even when she was laughing.

  He did not take up her challenge except to laugh back, ‘Well, what’s the use of a Protestant if he doesn’t protest? Or a Catholic if she doesn’t show a Catholic taste?’

  Jan had been awed at first by her wedding robes and the presence of the Queen. Johnnie, proud of his advantage, had assured her beforehand, ‘Oh, you needn’t be afraid of the Queen. Mary’s a darling and sure to like you. Besides, she adores me. Just wait till you see her.’

  When Jan had seen her, she pulled her brother aside and gasped out:

  ‘She’s like a pearl or a flame – and I’m so ashamed of my hands so brown and rough, but she doesn’t seem to mind. I’ve seen her bath – an oval silver basin curved like a shell. Is it true she bathes in wine?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. I’m not her Companion of the Bath.’

  ‘She has nightgowns sewn with jewels, and fairy slippers over little coloured feathers. Look at this ring she’s given me. If I were a man I’d fight for her to the end of the world. Aren’t you mad for love of her?’

  ‘Lord, no,’ he replied, much amused. ‘She’s well enough for a Queen. A pretty piece, but not much to her yet. She’s a baby like yourself.’

  ‘Lord, what a dolt, a block you are!’ And his young sister thumped him in the chest and darted away.

  But for all his teasing, grudging, brotherly answers to Jan, Bothwell was showing Mary a new and unexpected charm as her host. He had always been rather on the defensive with her, but now he was wholeheartedly anxious to please.

  Mary too was in the happiest mood. The burgesses of Edinburgh had just sent her ‘a right jolly New Year’s gift’ of three tuns of wine, one of which she had brought with her to contribute to the wedding feast, among many other wedding presents, and this early tribute to her popularity with the city had made her very proud. In spite of all Knox’s efforts to undermine it, she was gaining steadily in the affections of her people, and she told Bothwell that her pleasure was ‘not so much in their present as in the spirit it represents’.

  ‘Is the wine as strong as all that?’ he asked in reply.

  They seemed to be joking together all the time. And they had more congenial guests to help them than the Lord James. René, Marquis d’Elboeuf, was there, so handsome and gorgeously dressed, so charming and courtly and complimentary, that Jan, who had been only momentarily awed by the Queen, was paralysed by her uncle. The two liveliest Maries were there, Beton and Bothwell’s favourite, Fleming; his friend Lord Gordon, Huntly’s eldest son, with a large company of his Highlanders; Geordie Seton, the Lords Home and Borthwick, and Hepburns of every branch. Also a dark forcible looking woman who said little, the Lady of Morham, Bothwell’s mother, of the Highland Sinclair family.

  So that there were many hundreds crowded together on that white hillside, their breath going up in little blue clouds in the rare and shining air. Below them the Tyne wound its sluggish course through the valley, and following its intricate mazes went a host of alders and drooping willows, the elaborate traceries of their bare branches now all frosted white as if in honour to the bridal occasion.

  ‘Your Grace should see Crichton in early summer,’ Jan eagerly told the Queen; ‘we have glow-worms sparkling all over this haugh on nights in June; and the Tyne – you are only seeing it now as a sulky oozy old snake, but you should see it in May and June when the spreat and deer-hair are all out in flower.’

  ‘Spreat? Deer-hair? What pretty names! and for what?’

  ‘Water-rushes and a pointed grass with a wee yellow flower not half the size of a buttercup,’ Bothwell told her; ‘these are the rare glories my sister promises you as if from the Sultan’s garden!’

  But he too was eager to show off Crichton to her. He was delighted that she noticed the scutcheons carved on its walls and the anchors on the graceful portico in honour to his hereditary title of Lord High Admiral; that she praised the stone cordage with twisted knots interlaced with roses that decorated the stairway, and compared it with Anne de Bretagne’s motif of the knotted cord in the châteaux of the Breton Queen.

  ‘Here is yet another lovely reminder of our “auld alliance”,’ she said as she pointed out this unusual elegance to her French uncle. Both he and her Scottish host wondered if that alliance with France, that had brought Scotland all that she had known of the beauty made by man and a gracious way of living, were indeed ending in favour of this new idea of a religious alliance with England. They instinctively glanced across at the austere figure of the Lord James, who plumed himself on being the man of the future. The future wore rather a bleak air. It was cold work watching sports.

  But there were few who only watched. There was wrestling and jumping on horseback and on foot and with a pole. Bare arms like knotted whipcord were busy tossing the caber or putting the weight or pushing at a large stone boulder to see who could drive it farthest. A game of football with a blown swine’s bladder seemed to engage about a hundred a side. Mary thought the game looked as murderous as a pitched battle, and was not surprised to hear that attempts were always being made to suppress it by law. But that was because it often formed a pretext for different clans to meet together and ride on a foray – so much so that the Wardens of the Marches had only to hear of a great football match at Kelso for them to clap on their buff coats and steel caps and call their men together. In spite of the law, it was the favourite sport on the Scottish Border.

  The nobles were jousting on the haugh and tilting against each other, and soon there was a farce that brought yells of delighted laughter from the crowd. D’Elboeuf in a kail-wife’s bunched petticoats, and a flapping kerchief on his head, had ridden into the ring. From the other side Johnnie Stewart rode to meet him, dressed in the long black gown and Genevan bands of the minister who had married them. He wore a beard provided by one of Gordon’s Highlanders, to wit a shaggy goatskin sporran tied round his chin. He had painted his lips as full and red as a scarlet button, and his bands were sewn with curtain-rings; when he wagged an admonishing forefinger at the shouting crowd and thumped the saddle in front of him as though it were a pulpit, there was no possible doubt as to whom he represented.

  The roars of merriment all round them, and the unfamiliar flapping skirts of their riders, startled the horses so much that it was difficult to keep them from bolting. Johnnie’s mare did indeed charge a little way into the crowd, who scattered with cries of ‘Go easy with us, Mr Knox!’ ‘You’ll find no Cardinals here!’

  The kail-wife proved herself the more experienced jouster, and the minister was unhorsed. He quickly scrambled to his feet while the pages caught his madly careering mare; flinging his arm aloft in the prophetic gesture of the pre
acher, he called out, ‘Be warned by me, ye ungodly swine! No man, but a woman, has downed my knocks!’

  The applause was deafening, to Mary’s relief, for she had looked anxiously at Bothwell and asked if all his clan were Protestant, and might take this absurdity as an insult. But he only laughed.

  ‘They’re Protestant enough not to mind robbing a church. The Border hasn’t as much peace and quiet for religious controversy as the safe inland counties. It’s little enough they’ve ever cared about prayers except their neck-verse to patter on the gallows, should the English swing ’em at Carlisle or the Lord Lieutenant at Jedburgh.’

  The applause was, in fact, largely a tribute to Knox. To this company he was not so much the prophet and inspiring national leader as that more popular thing, a great public figure who could also be a common butt. Here he was private as well as public property; he had been Johnnie Knox, a lad from Haddington whom nobody had thought of much account, who had indeed been called a jail-and-gallowsbird since he had been among the men who took pay from Henry VIII to murder Cardinal Beton, and had served in the French galleys for his share in the crime. Yet he had risen to be cock o’ the walk, crowing it over the whole country and the Queen herself; he could carry off anything he had a mind to, even his mother-in-law from her husband and family, giving out that it was all for her soul’s good; and now that his young wife was dead, he was said to be wooing the daughter of the Duke of Châtelherault, the proudest noble in the land – he, rising sixty, from the back streets of Haddington! There was nothing that one couldn’t get over; he’d a voice like a rusty saw, but he banged the pulpit about until you thought it would fly to pieces under the wrath of God – and whatever he threatened against anyone of that wrath, it was sure to come true; it had done so again and again, as he himself was always pointing out. He was a nuisance and a tyrant, but there was no denying that he was a great little man, this Haddington lad who’d become cock o’ the walk and ruled the roost.