CHAPTER XLIX.
THE FLIGHT.
The deeds of our sires if our bards should rehearse,
Let a blush or a blow be the meed of their verse;
Be mute every string, and be hush'd every tone,
That shall bid us remember the fame that has flown.
Scott.
Such was this disastrous defeat on the 10th September; a defeat which though less fatal than Flodden to a class whom Scotland well could spare—her noble families—was severely felt by the commons; for among the fourteen thousand dead, who lay on the field of Pinkey, were no less than two thousand lesser barons and landed gentlemen.
The aspect of the plain next day, as the sun arose, was terrible, when Master Posset and a few other good Samaritans, undeterred by the dread of English plunderers and camp-followers, attempted the herculean task of attending to the wants of the wounded and dying.
Great numbers of the English wounded had been borne to Pinkey House, a fine old mansion of the Abbots of Dunfermline, which stands near the field, embosomed among aged chestnuts and sycamores, above which its round turrets and steep roofs still attract the eye of the passer; and in one of its chambers, a place well suited to gloom and spectral horrors, the blood of the wounded English could be traced until effaced by some recent repairs.
Flowing from amid its coppiced banks towards the sea, the Esk lay gleaming in the golden sunrise, but crimsoned still with the gashed corpse of many an armed man, lying in its current, among the rocks, the weeds, and sedges—the bread-winner of many a little brood,—the pride and care of many a tender mother: for in its flood the fugitive Scots perished by whole companies. The shock and din of the battle, with the confused murmur of the flight that whilom sounded like a sea chafing, or a multitude cheering at a vast distance, had now died away, and under the rising sun the dewy landscape, from which the morning mists were rising, lay placid, still, and calm. The green clench of Pinkey in which the carnage had deepened most, the far extent of stubble fields upon the upland slope over which the iron squadrons of Gamboa's Spaniards and the demi-lancers of Vane and Fitzwalter had swept yesterday, were silent and voiceless as the roofless, windowless, black, and gaping ruins of the old tower of Fawside on the hill; and where yesterday more than fifty thousand gallant Britons had closed in the shock of battle, all was mournfully still and deserted now.
On the pale upturned faces and glazed eyes of the dead, and the distorted features of the dying, shone the level glory of the autumn sun as he came up in his morning splendour from the German Sea. On that field, planted thick with arrows, furrowed by iron shot, and trodden by charging squadrons, strewed by so many dead bodies, and covered still with broken arms, crushed helmets, pikes, and torn banners, so thickly that it seemed as if the clouds had rained them down, the merry mavis and the laverock were twittering and singing, as before they had sung and twittered among the yellow summer corn; but now the black gled and obscene raven were wheeling in low circles, or alighting where so many troopers and their steeds were lying dead in the muddy ditch, or in the scroggy cleuch, where more than one abandoned Scottish cannon lay with wheels broken, and the corpses of the gunners piled around it.
From under the dewy grass myriads of insects came forth to batten in those horrid purple pools, that lay where human hands and human bravery had formed the greatest heaps of slain; and all this carnage, which shed a horror over that lovely autumn landscape, was to gratify, as we have said elsewhere, the mad ambition, and to fulfil the dying bequest, of one who had already gone to his terrible account—Henry VIII. of England.
In the distance rose the smoke and flames of Leith and its shipping; and at various parts of the horizon there towered into the blue sky tall columns of dusky vapour, that indicated where the work of rapine was still proceeding; while a cloud of the same sombre nature, like a funeral pall, shrouded all the ancient capital—a pall, however, streaked with sudden and incessant fire, as the castle of Edinburgh was vigorously defended by Sir James Hamilton of Stainhouse, whose cannon completely repulsed the enemy.
When the latter retreated, a week after the battle, they found most of the dead lying still unburied. A few had been hastily covered up by sods in the churchyards of Tranent and St. Michael at Inveresk; and beside these uncouth graves the poor people "had set up," says Master Patten, "a stick with a clout, a rag, an old shoe, or some other mark thereon," by which the body within might be known, when more leisure came for the rites of sepulture on the retirement of the English from Scotland.