Mary of Lorraine

by James Grant

But to return to our hero.

On beholding the total rout of the army, he became heedless of all that might ensue; and having now nothing that he cared to live for, his first thought had been to seek death amid the masses of the pursuing host; and hence the vigour and fury of the three desperate charges, by which he was enabled for a time to repel the soldiers of Don Pedro, of the Lord Fitzwalter, and of Sir Ralf Vane, and to cover the retreat of Arran; nor was it until this was fully accomplished that he perceived that, in this fortunate movement, he had put himself at the head of the vassals of his enemy, Hamilton of Preston. As the latter was nowhere visible, he was supposed to have perished on the field or in the river. The order of Arran to attend to the safety of Mary of Lorraine and her daughter, gave a new turn to the desperate thoughts of Florence, and made him remember that, in the fulfilment of his duty to the queen and country, he still had something which made existence valuable; though the loss of Madeline, of whom for days before the battle he could discover no trace,—the miserable fate of his mother, who, with all her stern peculiarities and bitter prejudices, had loved him well,—the destruction of his ancestral home and all his household, together with the shame and slaughter of that disastrous day, filled him with mingled horror, rage, and despair.

Swept away by a tide of fugitives, horse and foot, pikemen, archers, and men-at-arms, he crossed the Esk near the Red Craigs, leaping his horse in at a place where the stream was deepest, and then forcing it up the opposite bank, he escaped, though the Earl of Glencairn, Findlay Mhor Farquharson of Invercauld, who bore the royal standard, and several others who accompanied him, perished under the shot of a few German arquebusiers and Kendal archers who lined the river's eastern bank, and nestled in security among the thick furze, beech, and hazel trees, that covered it. After this he found himself almost alone, and rode slowly to breathe his horse, which, like himself, had fortunately escaped without a wound. Occasionally there crossed his path or fled before him a fugitive foot-soldier, making off by the nearest way towards his own home or locality, but denuded of helmet, corslet, arms, and all that might impede his flight; for in their mad panic the Scots cast aside everything, and fell the readier victims in the pursuit.

To conduct the queen-mother and little queen from Edinburgh, he required an escort; and among these fugitives an efficient one could scarcely be formed. The royal guard were all with the army; their captain had been slain; and, like the army itself, his force had doubtless been dissipated and disorganized.

Florence conceived he might obtain a few good men-at-arms from the castles of Craigmillar, Dalkeith, or any other baronial fortress, for the queen's service, and ride with them at once to Edinburgh, as there was no time to lose now, and the sun was verging towards the western horizon. Keeping in the wooded hollow through which the Esk winds to the Forth, he was riding towards the Douglas's castle of Dalkeith, when a loud outcry and the report of firearms warned him that some of Gamboa's mounted arquebusiers were on his track, and forced him to spur on at the fullest speed. Their ironical cheers, taunting cries, and occasionally a shot, followed him; but still, while rage filled his heart and made it beat with lightning speed, Florence rode furiously on, intent on obeying the orders of Arran. Closely the pursuers followed him; for after perceiving that his armour and trappings were rich, they became intent on plunder, and, being fleetly mounted on good Spanish horses, they easily kept pace with the utmost speed of the animal he rode. Down through the deep wooded dell, where the south and north Esks unite below the old castle of Dalkeith, and insulate the quaint old town of the same name—through swamp and bog—through copse and den, and up the river's bank by the Thorny-cruick—they followed him close; while others joined in the pursuit from various points—through the leafy oak woods and beautiful haugh of Newbattle Abbey they swept on the spur; still with a boiling heart the Scot rode on, and still the pursuing Spaniards followed; till in a dark, woody, and secluded hollow, through which the Esk flows, after he had totally failed to gain a shelter in the castle of Dalhousie, they shot his horse, and it sank beneath him in the middle of the stream. Fortunately it was shallow there; he scrambled ashore, and sought a refuge in the copsewood; but the Spaniards and the Kendal archers followed him closely; and as the weight and joints of his armour impeded every action, they gained upon him rapidly. He dreaded the clothyard shafts of the Kendal men more than the large leaden bullets of the Spaniards, who levelled their ponderous arquebuses over their horses' heads, and almost invariably shot wide of the mark they aimed at. Still the balls which whistled past him every minute, stripping the bark from the trees, and flattening out like stars as they crashed upon the rocks, added spurs to his speed; while ever and anon, with a whizzing or a humming sound, a feathered English arrow would quiver in the trunk of a tree close by.

Thus his flight and their pursuit was continued through the oak woods of Dryden till he entered the deeper and more sequestered glen, where, between walls of rock, and shrouded in the densest foliage of every kind, the Esk chafes and gurgles over its stony bed beneath that abrupt and precipitous cliff which is crowned by the ancient castle of Hawthornden, then in ruins, as it had been left by the English during Somerset's previous invasion in 1544, but in after years the poetical home of the loyal and gentle Drummond, one of Scotland's sweetest bards.

Perched on the brow of a grey, detached, and stormbeaten mass of limestone, nothing remained then of the old castle but two square towers and the high arched windows of the hall which faced the south. The cliff starts to a vast height above the bed of the stream, and in every cleft of it and of the adjacent rocks where rooting could be found were those hawthorns from which the den receives its name growing in wild luxuriance; and there, too, were the pink foxglove and the blue harebells tossing their cups upon the wind. The silver hazel, the feathery ash, and the branching oak fringed all the cliffs around the gorge—a gorge of rock that is undermined, or literally honey-combed, by deep and tortuous caverns, which formed hiding-places for the Scots of Lothian in the wars of other times; and of their shelter, at this desperate crisis, Florence did not hesitate to avail himself, as he knew the locality well. Having eluded his pursuers, whose shouts had now died away, he sought the entrance of one of these subterranean retreats, and having found it immediately under one of the square towers of the old ruin, he dashed through the natural screen of wild briars, hazel, and hawthorn which concealed it, and entering the cavern, threw himself upon its stony floor, breathless, weary, and prostrated in energy and strength.

The time was evening now; and without a horse, without men, money, or adherents, with the whole surrounding country in possession of an army flushed by a sudden and bloody victory, what hope had he of obeying Arran's order, and achieving the safety of the two queens, who might fall into the hands of the conqueror?

He took off his hot helmet, and pressing his hands upon his throbbing temples, closed his eyes and strove to shut out thought, memory, and even the dim twilight that struggled into the damp cavern where he lay, prostrate and weary in body and in spirit.