"On Rood-day in harvest, a year past, as I sat here alone by my spinning-wheel, my husband's armour clattered where it hangs on yonder wall,—and wot ye why? Preston was riding over the hill, and near our gate. Preston! and alone! Could I have got the old falcon ready on the bartizan, he had been shot like a hoodiecrow, as surely as the breath of heaven was in his nostrils!"
"Fie! madam—fie! I cannot listen to language such as this!" said the vicar, erecting his tall figure and preparing to retire.
"The wrongs I have endured in this world, yea, and the sorrows, too——"
"Should teach you to look for comfort in that which is to come," said the priest, with asperity.
"Not till I have had vengeance swift, sure, and deep on the house of Preston. No, friar! preach as you may, Alison Kennedy will never rest in the grave where her murdered husband lies, but with the assurance that Claude Hamilton lies mangled in his shroud—mangled by the sword of her son Florence! And he may slay him in open war; for so surely as the souls and bodies of men are governed by stars and climates, we shall have war with the English ere the autumn leaves are off the trees, and so surely shall that traitor Hamilton join them, for he was one of those whom Henry took at Solway, and feasted in London, to suit his own nefarious ends—like Cassilis, Lennox, and Glencairn."
Roger of the Westmains heard with grim satisfaction all this outpouring of bitterness of spirit; for he shared to the full her animosity to the unlucky laird of Preston. To Roger, old Lady Alison was the greatest potentate on earth. Had the Regent Arran, or Mary of Lorraine, commanded him to ride with his single spear against a brigade of English, he might have hesitated; but had Lady Alison desired him to leap off Salisbury Craigs, he would probably have done so, without the consideration of a moment, and had his old body dashed to pieces at the foot thereof.
In joy for her son's return, the lady of the tower ordered the bailie to distribute drink-silver (as it was then termed) to all her servants and followers; largesses to the town piper and drummer of Musselburgh, and to the poor gaberlunzies who sat on the kirk styles of Tranent and St. Michael. She then directed all the harness and warlike weapons to be thoroughly examined, preparatory to commencing hostilities against the grand enemy, who, as we shall shortly see, was in his tower of Preston, thinking of other things than the mischief she was brewing against him.
A few days slipped monotonously away.
After Paris—the Paris of Francis I. and Henry II.,—and after the busy chateau of the Duchess of Albany at Vendôme, the quiet and gloom of the little tower of Fawside soon became insupportable to its young proprietor. Thus, instead of remaining at home, attending to the collection of his rents in coin and kain, conferring with old Roger anent green and white crops on the mains of the Grange, listening to the stories of his nurse, holding bloodthirsty councils of war with his mother, concerning the best mode of invading with fire and sword the territories of a neighbour, only separated from his own by a turf dyke, or weaving deadly snares for cutting him off by the strong hand, he spent his whole days in Edinburgh, caracoling his beautiful grey horse up and down the High-street, through the courts of the palace, before the house of M. d'Oysell, the French ambassador, in the Cowgate, in the Greyfriars' Gardens, in the royal park, and in every place of public resort, with a plume in his velvet bonnet and a hawk on his left wrist, as became a gallant of the time, in the hope of discovering, even for a moment, his lost love, the donor of the opal ring. Daily he visited the dwelling of Master Posset, at the sign of the Stuffed Alligator, in the Lawnmarket, to prosecute his inquiries there; but either from accident or design, that most discreet of apothecaries was never at home. Thus daily the young Laird of Fawside was doomed to return disappointed, weary, and dispirited to his gloomy antique hall, or to his gloomier old bed-chamber in the northern portion of the tower—a portion concerning which the following tradition is related by Father John:—
Sir Thomas de Fawsyde, who, in 1330, married Muriella, daughter of Duncan, Earl of Fife, when quarrelling with her one day about a favourite falcon, which she had permitted to escape in the wood of Drumsheugh, in the heat of passion, drew off his steel glove and struck her white shoulder with his clenched hand. Muriella, though tender and gentle, was proud and high-spirited. She felt this unkindness and affront so keenly and bitterly, that, without a tear or reproach, she retired from his presence and secluding herself in the northern chamber, never spoke again, and refusing all food and sustenance, literally starved herself to death. Upon this Earl Duncan, before King David II., accused the rude knight of having slain his daughter.