He conversed gaily with the knights and gentlemen of the chancellor's train, as they rode down the steep winding street, named the Bow, and passed to the eastward along a narrow way between hedgerows, which bordered the city on the south in the long deep hollow, on the opposite bank of which then stood only one edifice—the solitary church of St. Mary-in-the-Field, surrounded by its burying-ground. It was a lonely bridle-road this path through the hollow—a place where the birds carolled by day, the glow-worms glittered by night, and the brown rabbits started from side to side at all times.
Three crow-stepped and gable-ended edifices, then standing far apart, were there. One belonged to Richard Lundy, then a monk, and afterwards abbot of Melrose; another was a little chapel of Holyrood which stood at the foot of St. Giles's churchyard; the third was an old farmhouse.
This narrow and solitary hedgerow was then the southgate and the future Cowgate of Edinburgh.
As the chancellor and his train issued from it into the more open country, they took no heed of two armed horsemen—for all men in Scotland went armed—who left the city before them, and who, after frequently looking back, as if reckoning their number and watching their route, disappeared at full speed to the southward.
At a rapid pace our friends crossed the ridge of Kirk-Liberton, passing between the fortlet of the Winrams and the holy well of St. Catherine. They crossed both the wooded Esks, and ascended the long line of cultivated hill, then an open waste, known as the Roman camp of Agricola, where the mounds and trenches which his warriors dug in the year 80 may still be distinctly traced; and then southward in the distance, the chancellor's retinue could see his castle of Crichton on the western slope of a green eminence, where its walls and towers, a glorious relic of Scotland's stormy days, all built of red coloured freestone, glowed ruddily in the light of the evening sun. And this feudal fortress appeared to rise higher on its steep as the proprietor's train descended into the deep and marshy valley which it overhangs.
Crichton is a vast quadrangular fortress, exhibiting in its stone staircases and arcaded court, wonderful architectural beauty and great strength, as it adjoined that part of the wild and lawless border-land which lay nearest to the Scottish capital. Toned down by time, its corroded carvings, so rich and so florid in their details, impress with astonishment the wanderer who comes suddenly in view of its mouldering remains, as they stand in a lonely glen, remote and secluded alike from road and railway, from tourist and traveller. A fallen tower has now choked up the terrible massy-more or secret dungeon, and the chambers where Mary Stuart and Bothwell held high revelry—where the lady of Hailes wept for the slaughter of her lord and all his kindred at Flodden, and where the wily old chancellor wove his plans for the downfall of the Douglases, are now roofless and windowless—the abode of the fox and the fuimart—the ravenous gled and the hoodie-crow.
As the chancellor's train, all of whom being men of rank were in bright armour, rode by the narrow bridle-path, between the green pastoral hills, and entered Crichtondean, through which flows a sluggish streamlet, known as the Scottish Tyne, but which becomes a rushing river when it reaches the ocean at Dunbar, they were soon visible to the inmates of the castle, several of whom waved their handkerchiefs from the keep, where the great bell was rung and a banner displayed, while the Milan plate and steel of the visitors were seen to glitter in the sunlight, between the masses of alder tree which then clothed the now bare and desolate sides of the narrow valley.
Those white handkerchiefs were waved by the chancellor's lady, who had so kindly nursed Sir Patrick Gray, his daughters, Agnes, wife of Alexander, master of Glammis, and Elizabeth, afterwards Countess of Huntly, two of the most beautiful women of the time, who were on the bartizan with several of their friends and attendants. But as their father, with his retinue, banner, and horsemen, disappeared where the alder-woods grew thickest, they heard a tumultuous shout, the sound of a trumpet, and the clamour of many voices, ascending to their ears on the breeze of the valley.
Conversing merrily with Sir Patrick Gray, the old chancellor rode his ambling nag at an easy pace, with a favourite hawk, the gift of his neighbour, the Knight of Locharwart, perched on his bridle hand. Trusting in the strength and character of his retinue, in his diplomatic rank, to his many ripe years, and the supposed absence of his enemies, he was without armour, and wore a long black velvet cassock-coat, which was sufficiently open to show an undershirt of white satin slashed with red, and secured at the waist by an embroidered baldrick, at which hung a heavy sword and Parmese dagger, the hilt of which was composed of a single crystal. His long white hair escaped from under his Scottish bonnet of black velvet, and floated on the tippet of miniver which covered his shoulders and was clasped at the throat by a jewel.
He pointed to the great column of smoke which ascended from the chimney of the kitchen-tower, and laughed while reminding his friends of the good cheer which awaited after their ride over the hills on a clear March day; but something less easy of digestion in the shape of cold iron awaited them; for at the narrow part of the road, where it took an abrupt turn, and where, as already stated, the alderwood grew thickest, there arose a sudden shout, in front and on both flanks, while a band of men-at-arms, lanced, horsed, and with closed helmets, rushed upon them from an ambush.