Oh, get thee gone! thou mak'st me wrong the dead,
By wasting moments consecrate to tears,
In idle railing at a wretch like thee!
A mother rarely will with patience hear
A true reproach against a living son,
Far less a taunt directed at the dead.
Firmillian.
Preparations for war between Scotland and England progressed rapidly. Though the religious, and, in some degree, the political principles of the Regent Arran were unsettled, he evinced the utmost activity in his military arrangements; and in the south the Duke of Somerset was scarcely less energetic. Too well aware, by the history of the past, that the designs of England were other than merely matrimonial, that her inborn spirit of grasping ambition and aggression was abroad, and that her kings and governors had never respected truce or treaty, peace or promise, the Earl of Arran left nothing undone to attach the malcontent nobles to his own person. He ordered all the border castles to be repaired, strengthened, and garrisoned; he ordained the sheriffs of counties, the stewards of stewartries, the provosts of cities, and all the great barons, to train the people to arms, to the use of the bow and arquebuse, by frequent weapon-shows and musters. Old seamen who had served under Sir Andrew Wood, the valiant Bartons, and others, he encouraged to equip armed caravels and gallant privateers, with orders to sink, burn, and destroy; while on land he strove, by threats or entreaties, to crush the bitter feuds that existed between clan and clan or lord and laird, that all might reserve their united strength and sharpest steel for the common enemy.
Like the loyal lords, tue malcontents mustered and trained their vassels, but were secretly watching the current of events; while among the people, Catholic and Protestant, reformed and unreformed (i.e., heretic and idolater, as they pleasantly stigmatized each other), all for a time merged their disputes in the common cause, and armed them side by side, for the defence of their mother country. The reformers were undoubtedly in the interest of Reformed England, and averse to Catholic France; hence "a miraculous shower of puddocks" (Anglicè, frogs) which fell about this time somewhere in Fife, tended greatly to perturb the souls of the pious and godly, as being forerunners of a French army, headed by the Cardinal of Lorraine, or "the popish and bloodie Duke of Guise."
Time passed, and the end of August drew nigh; but there came no tidings from Scotland's faithless ally, of that armed force so solemnly promised, by those letters which Florence had brought from the Louvre, and at last the Regent Arran began to find that he must trust to himself alone to crush traitors within, and face his foes beyond the realm.
So energetic were the measures of Florence, that within three weeks from the time of his leaving Stirling, a long line of such beacons as the regent desired was established upon all the hills near the coast of the German Sea, and from the high rocky bluff of St. Abb to the summit of the palace of Linlithgow. Another line of beacons was also placed along the borders from sea to sea, on the highest eminences, and on many of the castles and peels, which had been strengthened by the engineers who came to Scotland two years before, with the five thousand men-at-arms, sent over by Francis I., under George Montgomerie, laird of Larges, in Ayrshire—famous in history as that Comte de Larges who slew Henry II. of France in a tournament. As in the older time of James II., and by the ordinance of his twelfth parliament, Florence posted armed watchmen between Roxburgh and Berwick and on all the fords of Tweed, and built on Home Castle, the greatest balefire. One beacon was to be the warning that the enemy were in motion; two, that they had begun to cross the river; and four, "all at anis as foure candellis" (to quote Glendook) that they were in great strength, and on their march for the Lothians.
He left mounted guards composed of the vassals of the loyal border lords, whose sentinels were to convey instant intelligence of the foe's advance by day; then by the regent it was ordained that none should leave their residences, or remove their goods or cattle, as it was his resolution to defend every hearth and foot of ground to the last; and the cross of fire was to be the signal to arms! After completing these arrangements to the entire satisfaction of Arran, to whom he made his report at Edinburgh, Florence, on one of the last days of August, returned, with old Roger of Westmains, to his secluded little fortlet, to muster his retinue, and await the summons to the field.
Meanwhile, Glencairn, Cassilis, Kilmaurs, and other ignoble lords of their party, were absent at their own estates, superintending the fortification of their castles and array of their contingents, for the queen or against her, as the tide of events might make it suitable for them to act. Bothwell was brooding over his captivity in the castle of Edinburgh, and planning schemes of vengeance on Arran, on Mary of Lorraine, and on our hero, whom he conceived to be in some way implicated in his affairs. Shelly and Patten had reached London, from whence they joined the army of Somerset.
M. Antoine was composing a new piece of music, in honour of the intended nuptial alliance with France, and had resolved that it should rival the marriage ode or epithalamium of the servile Buchanan. Mary of Lorraine and her ladies were busy with a new tapestry, as a present for the dauphine. Champfleurie was salving his sores at Stirling, and taking new lessons in the science of defence ind destruction. Old Claude Hamilton was also preparing for war, by deepening the fosse of his tall, grim tower, and like other barons, was storing up the grain, fuel, and provender of his tenants, in its spacious vaults, and in the barns and granaries which stood within its strong barbican while ten brass drakes, imported for him from Flanders, by Dick Hackerston, peeped their round muzzles over the parapet of the keep.
On the first evening of his return from the borders, Florence was seated in the hall with his mother, who occupied her usual window bench, where she guided her spindle, which whirled on the floor; while he, dreading a recurrence to her everlasting topic, the Hamiltons of. Preston, and with his mind now, after an absence of three weeks, more than ever full of the image of Madeline, affected to be deeply immersed in the old black-lettered pages of "the Knightly tale of Gologras and Gawaine," from the quaint press of Chepman and Millar, printers to his late Majesty James IV., but his mother soon began to open the trenches, for he heard her muttering,—
"Yes, yes, 'tis a basilisk I must get. Let me see, Master Posset said that basilisks are hatched from dwarf eggs laid by old cocks; and that they grow to little winged dragons, whose eyes, as all the world knoweth, can slay by a single glance. I must get me one, if all things fail, and let it loose in Preston tower—that one reptile may destroy the others—yet Gude keep me from evil and witchcraft!"