However, on the present occasion, the wheel-locks of Florence's pursuers did their duty fatally for the poor horse he rode, and, boiling with a fury which he could no longer restrain, panting and breathless with his rapid ride, his recent immersion and present danger, he unsheathed his sword, determined to kill the first who came ashore, ere he turned once more to fly.
The first who came within his reach proved to be a follower of the Lord Glencairn, Hobbie Cunninghame, or Hobbie of the Kuychtsrig, who, in the preceding year, had been nearly hanged for abstracting "the provost's ox"—a fat bullock presented annually by the town-council to their chief magistrate,—and whom he cut down by a single backhanded stroke. The second he slew at the third pass, and he felt, as he ran him through the body, something of a shudder when the man's hot blood poured through the cut-steel network of his swordhilt, and mingled with the cold water of the loch which dripped from his doublet sleeves. But he thought, perhaps, little more about it, as he turned and rushed up the nearest close or alley, pursued by a dozen of his untiring enemies, who abandoned their horses, and, with an ardour which their recent swim in the water failed to cool, followed him on foot up the steep slope, with swords and daggers drawn.
To quote a French writer when describing a similar incident—
"Let not our readers have the least bad opinion of our hero, who, after having killed a man, feared the police, but not God; for in 1547 all men were alike in this. They thought so little in that age of dying, that they also thought little of killing. We are brave now; but they were rash. People then lost, sold, or gave away their lives with profound carelessness."
Remorse or regret has nothing to do with this kind of killing; and any man who enjoyed a day or two shooting during the siege of Lucknow, or in the rifle-pits at Sebastopol, will tell you the same thing.
Fawside's blood was now fairly up, and he felt that with fierce joy he could make mince-meat of them all. The struggle was not merely a life for a life, but twelve lives for his—twelve swords against one! He reached the High Street, which traverses the crest of the lofty ridge occupied by the ancient city: it was involved in almost total darkness; for though in the reign of the late king the citizens had been ordained to hang out oil lanterns at certain hours, under the weaker rule of the Regent Arran they preferred alike to save their oil and the trouble. A vast breadth of opaque shadow enveloped this great thoroughfare, which was then encumbered by piles of timber and peat-stacks for fuel, as each citizen had one before his door; and there also—as in the streets of London and Paris at the same free-and-easy period—were huge mounds of every kind of household débris, amid which the pigs occupying the sties under fore-stairs and out-shots, revelled by day, as the kites and gleds did in the early morning before the booths were unclosed and the business of the day began; for these sable tenants of the adjacent woods swarmed then in the streets of Edinburgh, just as we may see them still about sunrise.
Between these piles of obstruction the skirmish continued, and Florence Fawside, finding that nearly all the arches of the various closes and wynds were closed and secured by massive iron-studded doors, which had been hung upon them as a security since the late invasion of '44, was compelled to continue his retreat through the Landmarket towards the Castle Hill; and then, having distanced several of his pursuers, he turned in wild desperation to face three who were close upon him, and whose swords there was no avoiding.
"They seek my letters or my life," thought he; "but my letters are more precious than my life—ay, more precious to Scotland and her little queen than the lives of fifty brave men. My mother—oh, my mother! what will be her thoughts if these assassins succeed in destroying me—hunting me thus to death like a mad dog. Oh, what a welcome home to my country!—the first night I tread again on Scottish ground. Hold your hands, sirs!" he exclaimed aloud. "I am on the queen's service, and the Lord Regent's too. Hold!—this is stoutrief, open felony and treason!"
"Fellow, thou makest a devil of a noise!" said the young Lord Kilmaurs, making a deadly thrust, which Florence parried, and almost by the same movement cut one of his companions across both legs, and for a moment brought the ruffian down upon his knees; but he started up and thrust madly at Fawside, whose back was now close to the wall of a house on the northern verge of the street, which there became narrow, as it approached the spur-gate of the Castle.
"Fie! armour—armour fie!" he exclaimed, using the cry of alarm then common in Edinburgh.