"A Home! a Home! By Saint Anne, fellow," cried he, "thou hadst better been tending the sheep on yon brae side than here in knight's armour."
"Better for you, perhaps, my Lord of Home," said Falconer, as by one skilful thrust, full upon the tempered gorget, he shot him out of his saddle on the heap of men below.
"Gang warily!" thundered a voice in his ear, and now the vengeful sword of one whom he trembled to encounter—old Lord Drummond—was flourished above him.
Covering himself, parrying thrusts and warding blows, poor Falconer sought only to escape from an antagonist whom he dared not assail, and for whose safety he would have laid down his life—for he was the father of Sybilla. But the fiery blood of the old noble was at boiling heat; he had seen "this skipper's son" defeat two chiefs of name, to whom he had promised his daughters, and a storm of feudal pride and aristocratic hatred of the king's humble favourite was swelling up within him, and the arquebussier would undoubtedly have been slain, had not Drummond of Mewie, who was hewing away on foot, with a Lochaber axe, hamstrung his horse; and as the snorting animal sank under him, Falconer fell heavily to the earth. His armour protected him from serious injury, but the horses of Borthwick, Shaw, Gray, and Keir, as these worthies spurred on, trampled him down; thus he was stunned, and became unconscious of all that passed over and around him.
A deadly conflict, hand to hand and horse to horse, ensued around the unhappy king, as these four infernal spirits, followed by a thousand others, all superbly mounted and accoutred, left the Duke of Rothesay far in the rear; and though archers and pikemen, troopers and knights, nobles and burgesses, pressed on with straining eyes and noisy tongues, with swords flashing and uplifted, to kill, to capture, or to overbear the most hapless monarch, save one, that ever sat upon the Scottish throne, the four ruffians were ever the nearest to him, but failed to reach him; for old Montrose, Lindesay, and all the loyalists fought nobly in a circle round the yellow plume; and there fell by James's side the Lord Erskine, who was slain by a Drummond; Sir Thomas Semple of Eliotstoun, who was pierced through the neart by a Border spear; William Lord Ruthven, the heritable sheriff of Perth; the Laird of Innes; Alexander Scott, director of the chancery, whose head was carried off by a cannon-ball, and many more gentlemen, with their friends and followers. The royal standard was beaten down and its bearer unhorsed; the cannon—the Great Lion—and all the ensigns were taken, and when the sun of that long summer flay was sinking behind the Grampians, and the shadows of the Torwood were deepening on the plain, the king's troops, overborne by numbers, after a long and gallant conflict, gave way, and a total and irreparable rout ensued.
"God help your majesty," said the young Lord Lindesay, as, pale, excited, without a helmet, and with his face streaked by blood, he took the king's horse by the bridle; "the day is lost, yet all is not lost with it while your sacred life is safe. No horse in the field can overtake this grey I gave you. Ride—ride north, and swiftly—the admiral's boats await you at the Craigward—farewell!"
"Ay, farewell, Lindesay—a long farewell to Scotland and to thee—for France or Holland now must be my home."
Thus urged, and knowing that alone and unattended he might escape more easily and unnoticed, than if followed by a train, James turned his grey horse's head towards the north, and gladly left behind that bloody and corpse-encumbered plain.
Thousands of arrows, with their feathers uppermost, planted all the turf around him; here the earth was torn by hoofs, and there it was furrowed up by cannon-shot. Men and horses, dead or wounded, or writhing and dying, lay singly or in piles and heaps together, among a vast débris of broken helmets, torn standards, and bloody pennons, splintered spears, swords, scarfs, and bucklers, near the Sauchieburn, which yet gurgled placidly along under its pale green willows, as the King leaped his fiery and unwearied horse over it, and with a breaking heart rode towards the banks of the Forth, while night and sorrow descended together on that disastrous field. On, on he rode with a breaking heart, as he hoped, unnoticed and unknown—but hoped in vain; for close behind, and tracking him like blood-hounds, as history tells us, were Sir Patrick of Kyneff, Sir James of Sauchie, Stirling of Keir, and Borthwick, the apostate monk of Dunblane.