Somerset now became aware that a Scottish army was concentrated in the neighbourhood, as bands of their prickers, or light-armed horse, were seen galloping along all the eminences, hallooing and brandishing their long and slender spears in defiance. Despite these hostile appearances, the Lord Clinton was brave enough to come on shore and attend a council of war, at which it was arranged that he should anchor the fleet near the mouth of the Esk, to co-operate with the land forces, which Somerset proposed to halt finally eastward of Musselburgh, on the green links of that town, and in the parks of Wallyford and Drumore, where, on the evening of Friday, the 8th, he came in view of the camp of the Scots, thirty-six thousand strong, covering all the long green hill named Edmondstone Edge, at the base of which flowed the Esk.
Around the camp of Somerset, who pitched his own tent near the village of Saltpreston, the whole country was laid desolate by fire; and all who failed to escape perished by the sword. The tall square tower of Preston was soon stormed from a few old men and boys, who were headed by Mungo Tennant, and made a desperate resistance; but they were all slain; then the house was sacked by the English band of pensioners, and committed to the flames. The village of Tranent was burned, and its pretty little vicarage was gutted and destroyed; while in the church the altars and the tombs of the Fawsides were defaced and overthrown. Father John had fled no one knew whither; and for three days the whole landscape was shrouded in the smoke of burning hamlets, granges, mills, and stackyards. Amid this wicked devastation the old tower of Fawside, perched on the summit of its hill, escaped unscathed; but its time was coming.
All this destruction was visible from the Scottish camp, which consisted of four long rows or streets of white tents, that lay from east to west along the green slope of Edmondstone, surmounted by the many-coloured banners of chiefs, nobles, and burghs; and from amid these tents the weapons and armour of so many thousands of men caused a glittering that seemed incessant to the eyes of the English, as they surveyed the vast extent of ground occupied by the army of Arran. As at the battle of Falkirk in 1296, at that of Dunbar in 1650, and other fields, which the Scots have lost by the treason of their nobles or the imbecility of their preachers, the first position of the regent was strong and skilfully chosen.
In front flowed the beautiful Esk, between its steep rocky and wooded banks, from which the feathery ash, the green alder, and the wild rose-tree drooped to kiss the gurgling waters, which were deeper, broader, and more rapid than now. The old Roman bridge, so worn by war and time, which still spans the stream, and which formed the only avenue to their position, Arran had manned by archers and mounted with cannon. The left flank, towards the sea, was defended by an intrenchment of turf, also mounted with cannon and lined by arquebusiers; while a deep and pathless morass, through which nor horse nor man might march, covered the right.
Such was the position of the Scots before the disastrous field of Pinkey, or Inveresk—a battle, the issue of which was awaited breathlessly by Mary of Lorraine, at Edinburgh. By its strength, Somerset found himself completely baffled. To have assailed it would have been a hopeless task, which he saw would only end in a retreat that would cover his army with disgrace, if not with ruin and slaughter.
Arran surveyed the approach of the foe with a confidence in which our hero did not share; for he knew that the Scottish camp was filled by titled traitors, and that the auxiliaries under D'Essé had not yet left the coast of France. He had but one thought—to join Madeline, whom he believed to be in heaven, and to perish in the coming defeat—for what hope was there of victory for an army led by peers who in secret were the tools of Somerset!
From the slope of Edmondstone the Scots could see the high-pooped, low-waisted, and gaily-painted caravels of England coming in succession to anchor, by stem, and stern, off the mouth of the Esk, with their red ports open, and their brass cannon pointed to the shore. All bore the red cross of St. George, together with the banner of Thomas Lord Seymour of Sudley, K.G., high-admiral of England, Ireland, Calais, Boulogne, and the marches thereof; Normandy, Gascony, and Acquitaine; captain-general of the navy and seas—all of which high-sounding titles, did not save him from having his head ignominiously chopped off on the 20th January, 1549.
Amid the clamour, hurry, and bustle of the camp, Florence found but little relief from the agony that preyed upon his spirit. In the prospect of the coming battle, lay all his hope of relief—by plunging into the strife as into a raging sea, to drown his care, his sorrows past and present.
On the evening before the English halted in sight of the Scottish camp, he had left the hospitable mansion of bluff Dick Hackerston, for the last time; and the earnest and tender farewell which that good citizen took of his buxom wife, who laced on his mail with her own trembling hands and placed as an amulet round his neck a holy medal which an old grey friar had brought from Bethlehem; and the kisses which he bestowed again and again on his laughing and chubby-cheeked little ones, with the blessing which he knelt down to receive from his blind father—a frail old man, who for the last few years had vegetated in a huge leathern chair in the ingle-nook of the dining-chamber,—all formed a strong contrast in the mind of Florence to his desolate and friendless condition.
On this evening the old blind man was telling his beads,—for though he had heard Knox preach, and seen Friar Forest burned, he was still a devout Catholic; and by turns his withered fingers would quit the cedar-wood rosary, to play with the iron hilt of a large sword, which hung upon a knob of his chair. When his son knelt before him, he placed a hand upon his head, and a stern smile passed over the old man's face, when he felt the cold steel of Dick's helmet.