And then, as the veteran Concressault left the assembly for ever, the grim Scottish nobles only smiled as they played with their long swords, and remembered that they had forced James III., when seated on the same throne now occupied by his sad-eyed son, to stitch the patent of James Douglas, Lord of Dalkeith and Earl of Morton, the parchment of which he had torn in a fit of just indignation at the "inordinate royalties and privileges it contained."
Though no declaration of war had been made—for Henry had yet hopes of achieving an alliance by marriage—political relations between Scotland and England were somewhat dubious. Thus, to prevent any hostile interference with the French ambassador, Sir Andrew Wood, with the Yellow Frigate and a ship named the Flower, was ordered by the Lord High Admiral Hailes, now Earl of Bothwell, to convey the Sieur de Monipennie to Brest; and thus he prepared for sea with all speed.
CHAPTER LVIII.
DOUBT, FEAR, AND SECRECY
"Oh, sweet Margaret! oh, rare pale Margaret!
What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight on a falling shower?"—TENNYSON.
Since the day when the English prisoners were presented to James IV. at Leith, Euphemia and her sister Sybilla had no opportunity of meeting, or even seeing Barton, or Falconer. They were kept in strict seclusion at their father's mansion in Dundee, while their lovers were compelled to remain as much as possible on board their ships, owing to the dangers that menaced them ashore; for the unscrupulous emissaries of Drummond, Home, and the new-made Earl of Bothwell, were ever on the watch for them; moreover, their presence was constantly required during the refitting consequent to the late engagement and the projected voyage to Brest.
These repairs were conducted at the New Haven above Leith, where the king's dockyards were then established.
James IV., about 1512, had no less than forty-six ships of war built here and elsewhere; one of these, the Great Michael, was the largest vessel in the known world; she carried a thousand men, was two hundred and forty feet long, and cost £40,000—an enormous sum in those days. For the accommodation of the workmen, at Sir Andrew Wood's suggestion, he built a chapel dedicated to Our Lady and St. James, the eastern window and gable of which are yet remaining in the Vennel of New Haven. If Scotland, in 1512, could equip such a fleet, before the value of her vast iron mines, her forests of fir and oak, and the convenience of her deep bays and salt lakes were known, what a noble armament could she now launch upon the waters of the Tay and Clyde!
Margaret Drummond, though happy in her restoration to her royal husband (who was making every requisite preparation for espousing her publicly on his coronation day, after the arrival of the papal dispensation), never mentioned that her sisters had lovers of more humble pretensions, who were known only to their own family circle. Her father had laid her and them under the most stern injunctions of secrecy, and thus the young king believed that his two beautiful sisters-in-law were the affianced brides of Home and Bothwell; and though he had no great admiration for the characters of those turbulent and unlettered lords, he had no desire to excite dissension anew by seeking other spouses for Euphemia and Sybilla.
Thus overawed by their parent, the sisters locked the secret in their own breasts, and were miserable; for this old, habitual terror of their father was mingled with the love and respect which were due to him, and united to a long foreknowledge of his unbounded pride, his imperious spirit, his calculating ambition, and his haughty will, which had never, since the hour of his birth, been thwarted, and which made him follow to the death any man who dared to mar, in the most trifling manner, the plots he wove and the plans he laid for the aggrandizement of himself and his family.