Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents
The armourers accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give note of dreadful preparation.
The wiry music of the harp might also be heard at times amid the camp, for many minstrels accompanied the king's army. The last time its notes were heard in a Scottish host was when Argyll marched to the battle of Benrinnes, in 1594.
After hearing solemn mass said in the old rectory kirk of Pentland, where whilom was a settlement of the Gillian Chriosd (followers of the Lord)—whence comes the name of Gilchrist—the order was issued by James to strike the tents, and then the whole army marched against the Douglases. The king wore at his helmet the glove of his beautiful Mary d'Egmont, and a knot of her neck-ribbons decorated his lance. The task his troops had undertaken was somewhat arduous, as they had to penetrate into wild districts destitute of roads, where every laird and peasant, every yeoman and hind, felt it his duty to defend his chief against all mankind, even the king, if he came in a hostile guise.
With the ghastly smile of the dead earl yet before him, and the terrible words he had uttered yet lingering in his ear, Sir Patrick Gray longed to be at Thrave; and his heart sickened with impatience during the tardy passage of the king's army through Ettrick Forest and Annandale, the home of powerful and predatory Border clans, into Galloway; for malcontents and marauders were to be punished on every hand; the growing cornfields were swept by fire; towers were stormed and castles dismantled, by having their gates unhinged and their battlements thrown down.
Many of the Douglas adherents, on seeing the determination of James and the number of his host, implored forgiveness; and he, being by nature too fiery and impetuous to be vindictive, pardoned them; but the young earl had fled, no one knew whither save his own friends.
At last the king approached the banks of the Dee, and saw before him the famous stronghold of Thrave. The vanguard of his army, the vassals of Lord Glammis, gave a shout when they first came in sight of it, and that shout found an echo in the heart of Gray, as it did in the hearts of the Douglas garrison; for in Thrave, at least a thousand men, under Sir Alan Lauder, prepared to defend themselves to the last, and literally to fight with ropes around their necks.
When the vanguard halted, and the army began to encamp, the king, accompanied by Sir Patrick Gray, Lord Crichton, and others, rode forward to examine this strong and spacious castle, on which the Douglas banner was waving, and all the ramparts of which, from the outer barbican wall to the summit of the keep, seemed full of armed men, glittering, moving, and instinct with animation, all save one who hung from the gallows knob, and he was still enough.
The mighty fabric, with its moat and bridge, its grated windows and battlements bristling with steel pikes, brass sakers, and long arquebuses, was as grim, as gloomy, as dark and stern as ever, and its shadow was cast by the evening sun far along the surface of the Dee. A white puff of smoke floated suddenly from the keep in the sunshine, and with the sharp report of a culverin, souse came an iron ball, which struck the earth beneath the forefeet of Sir Patrick's horse, causing it to rear wildly.
"A narrow chance of death," said he, with a dark smile.
"There are some chances that do not happen twice in a man's lifetime," said the king laughing; "so we had better change our ground."