In the year 1574, when our story opens, the family at the Tower consisted of the Lady Marjorie and her son, a boy of five or six years of age. His father had been seized by one of those fits of wandering, which so frequently possessed the Scottish noblesse of that and after times; and, with two hundred stout pikemen, he had joined the Border legion of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh, and died in his armour fighting—not for religion, as the laird, honest man! cared very little about that—but for honour and glory, on the walls of Namur. Some domestic quarrel—a sudden fit of spleen at his lady—was urged in the parish as the reason of his departing from his quiet little tower among the moors of Cromar, to fight the ferocious Spaniards under Ferdinand of Toledo; for though Dame Marjorie was a stanch Catholic (being a daughter of Halbert Cunninghame of the Boortree-haugh in Glencairn), the laird had heard Knox preach in his youth, and thought he was a Calvinist. Thus it was a dreich and doleful day, when a startled servitor of the Tower announced in the morning that a branch had been found at the foot of the dule-tree which overshadowed the gate.
Whenever a Gordon of Colstaine died, this old tree, like the oak of Dalhousie, dropped one of its loftiest branches.
There was sore mourning in the solitary tower, for by that mysterious warning the lady knew she was a widow, and that the father of her little boy had fallen, fighting against her faith and the creed of his ancestors; but for many a month no certain tidings came from that land, which has been so often the grave of the Scottish soldier, until Jock of the Cleugh, a pikeman who had followed the laird, came limping up to the barbican gate, with a light purse and heavy heart, and a tattered doublet, to tell Lady Marjorie how he had been one of that brave Border band, who had laid her husband in his narrow bed before the gate of Sainte Alban.
Old Jock of the Cleugh went no further than the Moat of Colstaine; for he deposited his crutches by the hall fire, and from thenceforward became one of the principal personages in the household, though he spent his whole time in drinking usquebaugh, flourishing his staff, and rehearsing tales of the laird's prowess and his own, and the valiant deeds of the Scottish Borderers, the bulwark of Flanders, and terror of the Spaniards. He taught the stable-boys many a point of farriery they had never known before, and the trenchermen many a trick with the dice, by which, however, they always lost, and he always won; but he shewed them how to pick the lock of the butler's pantry, to broach wine-casks without drawing the spigot; to train hawks, and to tell fortunes on cards; but his principal pupil was young Halbert Gordon, the son and heir of his umquhile leader. Partaking less of his mother's gentle nature, than his father's lofty spirit, the boy was froward, passionate, and bold; and thus, by the time he was ten years of age, Jock of the Cleugh, who found him an apt scholar, had quite unfitted the little fellow for living a quiet life, or adopting a peaceable avocation.
He had taught him to ride the wildest horses in the barony without bridle or saddle, and at full speed; he had taught him to handle a sword twice the length of himself, and to discharge a deadly shot, with arblast or arquebuse—to scour armour, sharpen blades, cast bullets, and make up bandoliers of powder. But there were many other features in the education acquired from this wooden-legged preceptor, which were more exceptionable; for he learned to drink "to a bluidy war," in a tass of raw usquebaugh, without once winking; to make faces at Mr. Jowlar during sermon, to steal his apples, and shoot his hens; to "cock his eye" at the dairymaid, and swear a few round oaths in High Dutch or Low Country Spanish, which had the double advantage of being more expressive than our plain Scottish, and less expensive, being evasions of the act by which swearers and banners come under the claws of the kirk-session; in short, under the tutelage of this old, one-legged and one-eyed, red-visaged, hard-drinking, swearing and storming veteran of the Flemish wars, young Halbert Gordon grew up a little desperado; and, as he increased in years, his ferocious disposition, and dangerous skill in using his hands, made him the aversion of all the young lairds, his companions, and a source of secret fear to all the little ladies in the neighbourhood.
The family of Donaldson at the Forest, consisted also of a widow, whose husband had left her with one daughter, the heiress of the old manor and all its pertinents. With her there also dwelt the son of a deceased sister, little Kenneth Logie, a poor and penniless orphan, who had no home save that which his kind aunt offered him; for his father, a ruined laird of Cromar, had fallen in a raid between the Earl of Mar and the Forbeses.
Isolated as those widows were in that sequestered district, there was no intercourse between them, and no community of feeling. The lady of the Moat was a strict Catholic, though her husband had fought against the gory banner of the Castiyador of Flanders. In her girlhood, she had heard Abbot Quentin Kennedy preach; and her father had seen the body of the great cardinal, hung naked and bleeding from the battlements of St. Andrews.
The lady of the Forest, the widow of umquhile John Donaldson, was a rigid Calvinist, and looking upon all Catholics with due aversion, gave the lady of the moated tower the utmost possible space when they met at the weaponshows, the burrow-town market, or on the horse way, lest their fardingales should touch; for each thought there was more than mortal contamination in the person of the other. The Calvinist was "a heretic;" the Catholic "an idolater;" and yet the poor for thirty miles round were wont to aver, that two women more beneficent, gentle-hearted, and amiable, within their own domestic circles, than the ladies of the Tower and Forest, could not be found in the kingdom of Scotland. The mischievous fulminations of the Reverend Maister Jowlar, the parish pastor, on one hand, and those of Father Ogilvie (a wandering priest of the Scottish mission), on the other, had left nothing undone to foster this unhappy state of local politics, and their adverse advices fanned the flames of discord, till the aversion and jealousy of the two brocaded and high-heeled dames extended downward through all their dependants. Thus we can compare the two estates of Colstaine and Culbleine only to two countries—a Catholic and a Protestant—in a state of watchfulness, and prepared for instant war. Very little would have brought the "heretics and idolaters" to blows; for if old Jock of the Cleugh with his wooden-leg, was ready to advance at the head of the Catholics, from the mosses and moorlands, on one side; the aged butler of Culbleine, who had shouldered a pike in 1559, and lost an eye at the memorable siege of Leith (fighting against M. d'Essé Epainvilliers, colonel-general of the French infantry in the service of the Scottish queen), was ready, on the other, to march at the head of the Calvinists; thus it required all the terror of the sheriff and his deputies to keep peace in the parish between the rival powers. But there were three little personages in this community, who, for a time at least, had no share in those religious heartburnings.
These were the little heiress of the Forest, her cousin, Kenneth Logie, and Halbert Gordon of the Tower. When Lily Donaldson was ten, and the boys two years older, they had frequently met in their rambles, and by meeting became playmates. Little Lily had bright blue eyes, and fair hair; she was light, happy, smiling, and seemed like a beautiful fairy—though there never was a fairy, so round, so noisy, and so full of fun and laughter; but Kenneth was a grave and quiet boy, with a mild eye and gentle voice, a pale and thoughtful brow.
Old people were wont to tap him on the head, and say he was like his mother.