Now like a maiden-queen she will behold
To her high turrets hourly suitors come;
The East with incense and the West with gold,
Shall stand like suppliants to receive her doom.
The silver Forth her own majestic flood
Shall bear her vessels like a sweeping train;
And often wish, as of their mistress proud,
With longing eyes to see her face again.
In sunny beauty, the 23rd of November, 1440, dawned on the green hills, the old grey city of the Stuarts, and on the distant sea; and, as the morning advanced, a man, who by his pale and anxious face seemed to have passed a sleepless night, walked slowly to and fro on the paved bartizan of King David's Tower.
He was Sir William Crichton of that ilk—the lord chancellor of Scotland—no sinecure office, under James II.
The first object on which his keen eyes rested, was the slated roof of the abbot of Tongland's lofty mansion. There pretty Murielle was doubtless still asleep, and dreaming perhaps of her lover.
As the time drew slowly, but surely on—the time when Crichton's terrible project, the destruction of the leading members of the house of Douglas by a formal yet mock trial, after luring them from their distant stronghold into a royal fortress—his soul, though it felt neither remorse nor wavering, could not fail to be appalled, on a full contemplation of what might be the sequel to the banquet of blood, which he and the regent would that day hold in the great hall of the king's principal castle. To him it seemed as if the live long night, the wild shriek of
"The owle eke that dethe and bode bringeth,"
(as old Chaucer has it) had rung about the castle rocks, filling the minds of those who heard it with unpleasant forebodings—and of this emotion Crichton was especially sensible.
A civil war might rage around the throne, and by weakening the nation would lay it open to the aggressive spirit and ambitious designs of the English, who were ever wakeful to take advantage of their neighbour's troubles. Crichton's own power, his old baronial family and numerous kinsmen, might perish in the contest; but still the king's authority and the dignity of the crown, which the overweening power of the earl of Douglas, and the evil advice of his friends, endangered, would be secured, and a final blow might be struck at the terrible Red Heart for ever.
As the chancellor thought of these things, his hands trembled under his furred robe, and crystal-like beads of perspiration gathered on his pale and prematurely-furrowed brow; but the grim preparations had been made, even to the most minute particulars. Douglas, with his formidable train, was already in the capital, and all parties had gone too far in the desperate game to recede now; so Crichton prayed in his heart that the great end he had in view might sanctify the awful measures he was about to take; and, seating himself on a stone bench, he seemed to sink into reverie—almost prayer—while, turning to the east, where the sun, through alternate bars of saffron and dun yet shining clouds, was ascending in all his morning glory from the sea.
From time to time the pale chancellor glanced at a piece of green sward called the Butts, where the archers and the king's guard were wont to shoot, and which was inclosed by the cordon of towers and walls which girt the summit of the castle rock.