The Galliard

by Margaret Irwin

  For so fair a creature, d’Oysel complained, she was singularly deficient as a Delilah.

  She had next day to admit to her Council that she had been able to get nothing from her husband about his plans: it was agreed that he should be questioned publicly. The Frenchman Du Croc and d’Oysel were there; Du Croc asked in flowery terms how he could wish ‘to relinquish so beautiful a Queen and so royal a realm’; Mary took his hand before them all and asked him to say outright what grievance he had that made him act against her, seek to blacken her name with the Catholic Powers, and now secretly to leave the kingdom.

  It was the moment he had rehearsed inside his head for weeks; he would tell her in front of everybody how shamefully she had treated him, ignored him, got all she wanted from him, even a son and heir, and then denied him any real power, turned everybody against him. And here was the moment, and Mary standing before him, grave, beautiful, her cold fingers just touching his, her eyes meeting his so cool and calm – for the first time he thought what strange eyes they were, always changing colour, but now they seemed to have no colour, they were the eyes of a mermaid.

  And as he turned his head he saw James’ long contemptuous nose, Bothwell’s fiery glance of disgust, and Lethington’s fingertips gently tapping each other.

  His courage ebbed out of him; if he began to speak of his injuries he would burst into tears and they would all laugh at him. He mumbled that he ‘never intended any voyage or had any discontent’. He thought he saw a smile pass round. He must show that he was to be reckoned with, yes and feared.

  He took away his hand with a gesture of tremendous dignity, and in a tone of sinister importance he said, ‘Adieu, Madam, you shall not see my face for a long time.’ Then he rammed his hat over his eyes and strode out of the room.

  From Corstorphine that very same day he wrote to her complaining of the scornful looks and treatment given him by her ‘great lords’.

  But he had at last succeeded in one of his aims, for the ‘great lords’ decided they could no longer ignore him. No sooner had he ridden off than a conference was held by the Lord James, Lethington and Argyll, with the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly, pledging to support each other in disobeying the King when his orders conflicted with the Queen’s. This curious combination of old enemies showed their sense of the urgent need for unity against a common danger.

  Bothwell’s uneasiness was not merely because of Darnley. It was in Mary’s very success that the danger lay. Her toleration was winning more and more of the milder Protestants to her side, and even to her religion; as the ministers were still very much a minority (there were not nearly enough of them for all the parishes), this was driving them to desperation. And a Scotland strengthened by unity, as she was strengthening it, was the last thing England wanted. There were English attempts to stir up trouble, Morton and Lindsay being very helpful as agents. Was the Lord James engineering the trouble for his own purpose? The old Abbot of Kelso, William Kerr, was murdered by two of his own relatives, who struck off his head ‘because’, it was rumoured, ‘the Lord Bastard wanted to shut his mouth’. The Abbot had known too much about the Rizzio murder plot and who was in it. Bothwell’s office as Lieutenant made it his duty to ride against the Kerrs and punish their murder of their kinsman, but his scouts warned him of opposition being organized against him all along the Border; also, on the English side, of a widespread plot working against him personally, either to kill or capture him for England.

  To counter this he called a Royal Progress with a Court of Justice at Jedburgh, which, of course, James would also attend. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief’; he grinned as he thought of James sitting in judgement on the very crimes he had instigated.

  He did not explain his motives to Mary, but she gladly agreed to this; her Progresses had always had effect, she told her Lieutenant.

  ‘On the partridges anyway,’ he answered her. ‘I hear their price goes up to half a crown apiece as soon as you appear.’

  ‘It’s the purveyors’ fault. They take all the profit and poke their noses into everything, and those are so long they stretch from here to France over even a bottle of Bordeaux.’

  So she appointed a tariff to ‘put the purveyors’ noses out of joint’ and keep down the prices of board and lodging at Jedburgh during her visit: bed and bedding at a shilling a night; a man’s ‘ordinary’, with braised beef, mutton and roast, at one and four; good ale at fivepence a pint; finest bread at fourpence the pound; and stabling for a horse at twopence the twenty-four hours.

  Old Sir Richard Maitland quoted to her from his own verses how

  Of Liddesdale the common thieves

  None dare sleep for their mischieves.

  He warned her in especial to beware of the three Jocks – the Laird’s Jock (‘Takes hen and cock’), Jock o’ the Side (‘A greater thief ne’er did ride’) and the famous or infamous Little Jock o’ the Park (‘rips chest and ark’), for

  They leave not spindle, spoon nor spit,

  Bed, bolster, blanket, shirt nor sheet.

  He watched her ride off in her spirits, the hoofs of her mare Black Agnes clattering merrily on the cobblestones of Edinburgh High Street, and all her Court in attendance. She turned to wave her quirt at the old man with a flourish: she never looked so well as on horseback: it was a graceful fashion, this new-fangled side-saddle that she had introduced into Scotland.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mary had put off the Assizes till October so as to give time for the harvest to be gathered in first. Bothwell had ridden ahead two days before with three hundred horse to round up ‘the common thieves’. Hermitage Castle was his headquarters, and on the first day he filled it with prisoners from the Armstrong clan who were conducting a happy little war on the Johnstones of Nithsdale. These he would take on with him to be tried at Jedburgh when he had added to the bag. Next day it was the turn of the Elliots, now his determined enemies.

  One got up early to catch an Elliot; as the Night Hawk clattered across the drawbridge over the moat the ground was still dark, and a white cow moved through the dim shapes of some fruit trees as slowly as the moon through clouds. A brown owl rose heavy and blundering from almost under his horse’s hoofs and flapped away into the shadow of the Castle. His ‘lambs’ came jingling after him, the hoofs of their mounts beating a merry rattle like that of kettledrums on the hollow planks of the bridge.

  They rode over the open moor, the dawn breaking in streaks of pale light behind the hills that lay like sleeping giants all round them. The wind was from the west, driving and tossing the clouds before it in dark flying banners now flushed with red. The sun climbed over the edge of the still dark hills, and the foam of Witterhope Burn was turned to blood – then silver. Water ran everywhere, brawling in the burn, whispering hidden in the squelching bogs where the treacherous moss gleamed brilliant as emerald; the sun struck the autumn bracken and turned it to a flare of gold on the hillside, and the heather a fiery purple; the wind rippled and tore the bent like a running sea.

  For all the brightness of the morning there was the smell of rain on the wind together with the sharp earthy freshness of wet moss and bog water and the brave smell of horses and leather. By the faith of his body, but it was good to be on this work again, with the wind in his face as he rode west, and the creak of the saddle beneath him, and the Night Hawk’s throbbing muscles springing forward under the press of his knees! Round him rode his lambs as on their old forays together: Wee Willie Wallocky now grown to a stalwart stocky young man, who’d been in at many a death since he’d squeaked with excitement to see John Cockburn drop from his saddle that All Hallows’ dawn seven years ago; Long Fargy longer than ever, but filled out from the lean lanky youth he was then to a fine broad-shouldered fellow; older men who’d ridden in many a Martinmas raid of a less legal nature than this, and new lads eager to try their spurs for the first time.

  They rode up to Gibby Elliot of the Shaws, whose peel stood on the banks of the Witterhope Burn, and would have ridden p
ast, for old Gibby never rode a raid, which gave him small credit with these ministers of the law! There was no ‘riding’ at the Shaws, they jeered; old Gibby had lain in so long at peace with his neighbours that his horses had grown too fat to stir out of their stall.

  But Gibby was out at his gates waiting for them with a big jug of ale and two or three horn mugs to offer stirrup-cups to the leaders.

  ‘This is paying blackmail to the Lord Lieutenant,’ he said with a wink as he handed them up, ‘so mind you never take the fray to me.’

  ‘Not I!’ laughed his overlord; ‘it’s ill work taking the breeks off a Highlander. I know peace is your over-word, my douce quiet man. But there are others a wee thought of your own kin who sing a different tune; with them it’s aye, “Who brings the fray to me?”’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll not answer for ’em. I’d rather pay blackmail to be left unraided than rescue-money for my neighbours’ succour when raided. But it’s a lie to say I ever took blackmail from any, man and then refused him succour. No, my lord, I can say to all, as I said to Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead,

  Go seek your succour where ye paid blackmail,

  For, man, ye ne’er paid money to me.’

  He tipped up the jug and filled the mugs again with gnarled old hands knotted with rheumatism, a complaint he had suffered from early youth, which may have accounted for his strangely peaceable behaviour. His small screwed-up eyes twinkled wisely under his grizzled brows.

  ‘I hear you took a big haul of Armstrongs from the Tarras Moss yesterday. You’ll need stout locks for Jock o’ the Side. It’s no’ so long since Mangerton’s lads carried him away from an English prison, fetters and all. And now he’ll rue the day that made the Galliard Lord Lieutenant.’

  ‘Reivers shouldn’t be ruers. He’s never lacked good beef nor ale as long as his neighbours’ lasted. He’ll still feed free of expense in prison!’

  ‘Have you warned the water, my lord?’

  ‘Everywhere south of Lousy Lauder – from Borthwick Water to Priesthaughswire and the Currors o’ the Lee, and as we came down the Hermitage Slack two days syne I left word on Willie of Gorrinberry. He’ll obey a royal summons, so will the Coultart Cleugh and Gaudilands and Commonside and Allanhaugh. But what of your own kin, Gibby? Will they ride with me to Jedburgh, or must I take them in shackles?’

  ‘Well now, I doubt Little Jock Elliot o’ the Park will come whinnying up to eat out of your hand.’ He rested a confidential hand on the Night Hawk’s bridle. ‘All the years I’ve lived I’ve never known a worse summer for trouble, except in the invasions – and there’s been more than one sign that those might start again at any moment. You’ve got all the fords of Liddel set?’

  ‘Not a salmon leaps in the moonlight but it’s known and named and a message sent to its mother. Every ford is watched, the Dunkin and Door-Loup, the Willie-ford, Water-slack and Black-rock and Muckle Trout-tub o’ Liddel.’

  He said the names for the sheer pleasure of hearing them ring out again like the clang of bells. Three years he’d missed out of his life on these moors – he was making up for them now!

  Old Elliot of the Shaws looked up into those hot reddish-brown eyes, of the very colour of the trout waters he’d been naming, and saw the blazing gaiety that was racing through his veins, making him more alive than any mere mortal had the right to be.

  Was it true, then, that he was the Devil’s man? True or no, to one creaking old man it gave new life to see the reckless arrogance of that head and hear that dangerous laughter.

  Gibby’s stiff-jointed fingers stroked the Night Hawk’s neck while, forgetful of the New Religion’s ban on saints and charms, he murmured the invocation to safety for those who would ride the autumn bogs:

  ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

  Hold the horse that you ride on,

  Hold him fast and hold him sure

  Till you win o’er the misty moor.’

  He dipped a mug into the ale-jug for himself and held it up, pledging his visitor. ‘Here’s to more friends like yourself, and less need of ’em!’

  ‘And may the mouse never leave your meal-poke with the tear in its eye!’ responded the Lord Lieutenant, clinking his mug against his host’s and tossing it off.

  He wheeled the Night Hawk round, waved his thanks for Gibby’s hospitality and hallooed his men on to the hunt. They answered him with a shout and cantered after him, following the Witterhope Burn to where it joined the Liddel Water, with the Tower of Redheugh across the burn to their right. The land here between the two streams was known as the Park, the terrain of the redoubtable Little Jock Elliot.

  But when they came to his peel tower ‘away was himself’. The doors were locked, and they smashed them in with a hewn tree that was lying handy, but ‘not a thing about the place but an old rusty sword without a sheath that wouldn’t fell a mouse,’ Willie Wallocky reported as he came out, a grin splitting his freckled face from ear to ear.

  ‘Better an empty house than an ill tenant,’ muttered Soft Wat, who’d no wish to meet Jock o’ the Park face to face. But he’d no luck, for the Lord’s voice was ringing out, ‘So he’s taken the hill – and the better hunting for us! After him, lads, and hell for leather!’

  They galloped on down Liddel Water. The towers of Mangerton and Whithaugh rose stark and grey on the hillside against a torn strip of blue among the racing clouds. Those towers too were empty, for their Armstrong owners had been taken yesterday to the Hermitage prisons, and Little Jock Elliot should join them ‘afore the gloaming’s grey’. So the hunters swore, and suddenly their leader turned in his saddle and shouted a view-halloo.

  Bothwell had sighted their quarry among the heather. Now, clamped on his saddle, with the Night Hawk stretching out at a hand-gallop under him, and the Elliots flying before him and his men sweeping up behind him and the ground thudding like thunder under their horses’ hoofs, and the dark moor and the wind and the wide sky all round him, there was nothing in the world he could not do!

  But the Elliots had had a good start and their horses were fresh: they scattered, and some were soon clean lost to view. One short stocky figure on a dappled gelding was galloping hard towards the Kershope Burn.

  ‘After him, Hawk!’ He dug his spurs into the Night Hawk’s flanks and the horse’s quivering muscles responded nobly, sharing his joy in the pursuit, plunging forward over the wet heavy ground, forgetful of the travelling he had already made that day, straining every nerve and sinew in answer to the grip of his master’s knees, the caress of his hand.

  Jock o’ the Park looked back and saw one horseman close on his heels. Only one. The rest were now outdistanced. But that was the Lord Lieutenant himself, whom Jock feared as he would the devil. He flogged on his mount, but his pursuer came thundering down the slope, gaining ground steadily, and they were neck to neck as they came down to Kershope o’ the Lily Lea.

  Here the ground was a shaking morass and both riders had to check their pace.

  ‘Yield to the Queen’s justice!’ shouted Bothwell.

  ‘If I do, will you give me my life?’ came Little Jock’s shout in answer.

  ‘I’d be content. But you’ll have to abide by the law.’

  That last word was too much for Jock. He sprang from his gelding, which was already floundering among the livid green and burnt-red mosses. On foot there was still a chance he might escape the Lord Lieutenant on this marshy ground. Bothwell brought up his pistol and fired, and Jock stumbled as a bullet hit his thigh. The Night Hawk plunged after him, squelching fountains of water up from the drenched ground. In another minute the horse’s weight would bog both himself and rider.

  Bothwell dropped his smoking pistol and leaped from the saddle – on to a loose log hidden in the marsh, which turned under his foot and brought him down headlong. As he scrambled for a footing, Little Jock sprang back on to a firm tussock of bent, swung his two-handed sword back over his shoulder and hacked at the man below him. Three blows he struck, wounding him in the head, in t
he body, in the left hand as it shot up to defend the right, that was dragging out his whinger from his belt. But Bothwell struck upwards twice, at Elliot’s chest. Two wounds he gave him; at the first, Jock dropped his sword; but as he dealt the second, Bothwell fell forward on his face and lay still, the blood pouring from his three wounds. Jock dragged himself through the reeds and long grasses some little distance before he fainted dead away.

  Gibby Elliot of the Shaws stood at his gate yet again that day, when the clouds had covered the evening sky, and rain and battering hail swept past on the wind, striking down in long silver spears. But Gibby stood there at his gates and paid no heed to his bare head nor his aching bones, and saw a company of men coming riding very slowly up the Witterhope Burn, and among them some on foot, carrying a hurdle between them, and on it the body of the Lord Lieutenant.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Word travels fast in wild country. ‘The Queen has lost a man she could trust, of whom she has but few,’ so the report was written; and by word of mouth went faster: ‘Lord Bothwell lies dead in Liddesdale.’ Queen Mary heard it low down by Borthwick Water as she travelled by way of Melrose to Jedburgh:

  My lord lies dead in Liddesdale,

  And his hunting it is done.

  His horse had bogged in his headlong pursuit, and Jock o’ the Park had killed him and left him lying in his blood upon the moor and moss.

  There was nothing she could do. She could not speak. She rode on towards Melrose.

  The triple head of the Eildon Hill rose in sudden purple from the green plain, and the sky was blue as midsummer. Once he had told her she would make all Scotland a fief of Elfland, like the Eildon Hill where True Thomas had followed the Queen of Faery.