Death long disputed with life and youth for the victim; but men did not die easily in these old times of brawl and battle; yet he had upon his person, as the abbot of Tongland records, "three and twentye woundis," and recovered them all.
"Men," says some one, "are unaware what toil, pain, or suffering they are capable of until they have been put to the test."
The wound inflicted by the ghisarma of Earl James was not his least annoyance, as it had laid open both cheeks; thus a cicatrized slash traversed his face, which so completely altered its expression, that after a little difference in the trimming of his hair and beard, few would have recognized him; but the lady of the chancellor, like all the thrifty dames of those turbulent and homely days, was a famous leech, and by the lotions and cosmetics she prepared for him, and applied daily with her own hands, was not without hope that within "a year and a day, or perhaps within a few months more," it would be obliterated; and all the young ladies about the young king's court, even the charming princesses his sisters, had an interest in this process, and the progress of his recovery, for the Captain of the Guard was one of the handsomest men of the time, and a favourite with them all.
He had been conveyed to the chancellor's apartments in St. Margaret's Tower, within the castle of Edinburgh, and there for many months he had been tended with every care, till the period at which we now return to him.
The wily chancellor was not unjust. He felt that Sir Patrick Gray had suffered much in the king's service; loss of health, almost of life, and the loss perhaps of a beautiful mistress, were hard things to encounter, for he knew that the bloody events of the 23rd and 24th of November had opened up an impassable chasm between Gray and the family of Douglas.
Crichton loved all who loved the king, and this was the great tie between him and Gray, whose friendship he strove sedulously to cultivate and preserve, though the more open soldier detested the mode by which the regent and chancellor had striven, so futilely, to crush the mighty house of Douglas.
Gray's weak state after his many wounds, combined with his grief, at what he deemed the loss for ever of Murielle, affected him so much, that during the severe winter of 1440 he nearly sank under his sufferings. He rallied, however, by youth and inborn strength, though good St. Giles, of Edinburgh, to whose altar, in the spirit of the times, he devoted several pounds of wax and silver, got the whole credit of the change.
Lady Agnes of Crichton and the courtiers said he was "dying of love." The chancellor could believe in a stout man-at-arms dying of a slash from Earl James's battle-axe, but not of love for Murielle, his kinswoman, however beautiful and gentle she might be; so he only smiled at their surmises, and when Gray was able to ride a little every day on a quiet horse led by his page, Crichton resolved to find him some active employment so soon as he was stronger.
So Gray, as we have said, writhed in inactivity when his friends and kinsmen, MacLellan and Andrew Gray, of Balgarno, had marched from Stirling to Athole to capture the great freebooter, John Gorm Stewart. He had heard from Andrew Gray of the conflict on the north Inch of Perth, where the sheriff had been cloven down by the two-handed sword of Stewart, who, in turn, had been slain by MacLellan, but not until he had so severely wounded the latter, that he had been compelled to return for a time to his castle of Raeberry, on the shore of the Solway Firth.
And during this long period of seclusion and inactivity Gray had longed with all a lover's restless longing for some tidings of Murielle; but those about the chancellor were either unwilling or unable to afford him any.