True Stories of Girl Heroines

by Evelyn Everett-Green

The sun was setting over Ancram Moor as the girl stepped forth with her modest possessions in a bundle. She had no wish to encounter the half-brother, with whom she and Gregory had made a home ever since their father's death. He had been a more autocratic ruler at home than ever the father was. Lillyard did not greatly love him; but she had never before doubted his personal courage or his loyalty to Scotland's cause.

Those were evil days for the dwellers upon the Border; and it cannot be wondered at, if many in that region sought to trim their sails to the favouring breeze of the moment. There had been sufficient admixture of the two races here to lessen somewhat the passionate loyalty to country that ruled in more distant parts. When the Scotch ravaged the English borders, the inhabitants sometimes preferred to make terms with them than to fight, and to bribe them to retire; and when the English forces invaded Scotland, burning, plundering, and butchering through the devastated land, it was scarcely to be wondered at that some willingly temporised. If it were true that the little Queen was to marry the King of England's son, and unite the two countries in one, what need to cherish such strong hatred and angry feeling?

But the war was felt to be unjust and unprovoked, and much irritation was aroused. Henry VIII. of England had shown his intolerant and impatient temper in a fashion which brought about the defeat of his cherished plan. He angered the Scots by his demand to have the little Queen in his own keeping; and, by his persistence and autocratic conduct, he drove the adverse party into the arms of France, and caused a rupture in those very negotiations by which he had set such store.

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.