CHAPTER L.
HAWTHORNDEN.
The hazel throws his silvery branches down.
There, starting into view, a castled cliff,
Whose roof is lichen'd o'er, purple and green,
O'erhangs thy wandering stream, romantic Esk,
And rears its head among the ancient trees.
These caverns are spacious and circuitous, and occupy the entire rock under the ancient castle; and Scottish antiquaries (a hard and dry, yet credulous race at all times) have been lost in a maze of conjectures concerning their origin and use, as they are in a great part artificial. Tradition avers them to have been a stronghold and place of retreat for the Pictish princes who once held the Lowlands; and they still bear the names of "the gallery," "the guard-room," and "the king's bedchamber;" for in these vaults, according to the Vicar of Tranent, Lothus, who gave his name to Lothian, resided with his queen, Anna, daughter of Aurelius Ambrosius, King of the Britons when Hengist and his Saxons sorely troubled all the isle by their invasion. In one of the caverns is a deep draw-well, beautifully hewn like a vast cylinder through the living rock, where, in the pure cold depth of its water, the reflected stars are sometimes seen at noonday.
The sun was setting now beyond the purple Pentland Hills, and Florence, with the roar of the recent battle yet buzzing in his ears, with sorrow, gloom, and bitterness in his aching heart, crushed in soul and vague in purpose, lay watching the sinking beams through a fissure in the rocks, around which the dark-green ivy, the fragrant wild briar, and the dog-rose grew together.
Far westward spread the lovely landscape, tinted with the ruddy light of eve and with autumnal brown; murmuring over its rocky bed, which occupies the entire space between the wood-crowned cliffs or walls of rock that border in the narrow vale, the Esk flowed ceaselessly on. The dense foliage that covered its banks exhibited all the varying tints of the season; while on the rent and fissured fronts of the opposing bluffs, that start abruptly up like ruined towers or fantastic feudal castles, the western sun poured a warm glow, that faded slowly as his wavering rays shot upward and sank beyond the summits of the Pentlands. Grey lichens, green velvet moss, the purple foxglove, the pink rose of Gueldres, and every species of wild flower peculiar to the lowlands, covered the rugged banks and freestone rocks, through the fissures of which many a tiny rill poured down into the deep and lonely dell to join the Esk upon its passage through a thousand windings, till it joined the sea near Pinkey's corpse-strewn field.
Rock, wood, and water, silence and solitude, broken only by the voices of the birds above and the brawl of the stream below, with the deepening tints of the autumn evening—all that can make a sylvan landscape charm, were there; but these accessories rendered the thoughts of the wanderer more sad and bitter as he surveyed them, for Florence loved his country well, and he had that day seen her banner trodden in the dust. Then he remembered how, two hundred and fifty years before, it was in these same caverns that the valiant Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie and the Black Knight of Liddesdale, during the memorable and disastrous wars of the earlier Edwards, lurked with a band of young and desperate patriots, and thus were enabled to elude the pursuit of the temporary victors; that from thence they had sallied forth to destroy the Flemings under Guy of Namur, Count of Gueldres, in battle on the Burghmuir; that from thence they issued to storm the castles of Edinburgh and Dunbar, and to perform a hundred other brilliant feats of chivalry.
As these old memories occurred to him, he arose, and thought that, as the darkness was at hand, he might make his way to the capital unseen and on foot; but now, hearing a sound near the cavern mouth, he drew his sword, to be prepared for any emergency.
Steps were heard; the screen of ivy and hawthorn was hastily torn aside; the gleam of the western sky glittered on the polished helmet and cuirass of an armed man, who with difficulty, as if wounded or weary, made several ineffectual efforts to reach the cavern. None but a native of the locality—one at least belonging to Lothian—could know of this place, thought Florence, as he put forth a hand to assist the stranger to clamber in, and found himself confronted by the pale face and snow-white beard of Claude Hamilton of Preston!
They surveyed each other in painful silence for nearly a minute.
The old baron was weary, wan, and by the blood-spots and dints which his armour exhibited, his torn plume, and red sword-handle, had evidently borne his full share in the dangers of that terrible field. He, too, had been pursued by the stragglers of the foe, who were now all mustering among the Scottish tents on Edmondstone Edge, previous to an advance upon the capital, and its seaport. His horse, which had borne him from the conflict, pierced by many arrows, and half disembowelled by a sword-thrust, had sunk under him at the ford near Lasswade; and now he was fain to seek the sheltering caves of Hawthornden, for age and toll had rendered him almost incapable of further exertion. But on recognizing Florence, his cheek crimsoned, and his eyes sparkled with a sudden fury.