‘How shall God help us, my lord,’ said she, ‘who have helped not Him?’
‘Why, then, my dear,’ cries he with a laugh, ‘why, then, we will help ourselves.’
CHAPTER XI
APPASSIONATA
Grange, that fine commander, got his back to the sun and gave the lords the morning advantage. ‘We shall want no more than that,’ he told Morton; ‘by ten o’clock they will be here, and by noon we shall be through with it.’
‘Shall we out banner, think you?’ says Morton.
‘Nay, my lord, nay. Keep her back the now.’ Grange was fighting with his head, disposing his host according to the lie of the ground, and his reserves also. He took the field before dawn, and had every man at his post by seven o’clock. There was a ground mist, and the sea all blotted out: everything promised great heat.
They were to be seen, a waiting host, when the Queen crested Carbery Hill and watched her men creep round about; with Erskine beside her she could make them out—arquebusiers, pikemen, and Murrays from Atholl on the lowest ground (Tillibardine leading them), on either wing horsemen with spears. They had a couple of brass field-pieces in front. One could see the chiefs walking their horses up and down the lines, or pricking forward to confer, or clustering together, looking to where one pointed with his staff. There was Morton on his white horse, himself, portly man, in black with a steel breastplate—white sash across it—in his steel bonnet a favour of white. White was their badge, then; for, looking at them in the mass, the host was seen to be spattered with it, as if in a neglected field of poppies and corncockles there grew white daisies interspersed. The stout square man in leather jerkin and buff boots was Grange—on a chestnut horse; with him to their right rode Atholl on a black—Atholl in a red surtout, and the end of his fine beard lost in the white sash which he too had. Who is the slim rider in black—haunting Atholl like a shadow? Who but careful Mr. Secretary Lethington could have those obsequious shoulders, that attentive cock of the head? Lethington was there, then! Ah! and there, by one’s soul, was Archie Douglas’s grey young head, and his white minister’s ruff, where a red thread of blood ought to be. Glencairn was there, Lindsay, Sempill, Rothes—all those strong tradesmen, who had lied for their profit, and were now come to claim wages: all of them but the trader of traders, the white-handed prayerful man, the good Earl of Moray, safe in France, waiting his turn.
So prompt as they stood down there in the grey haze, all rippling in the heat; without sound of trumpet or any noise but the whinnying of a horse; without any motion save now and then, when some trooper plunged out of line and must pull back—that thing of all significant things about them was marked by the Queen, who stood shading her eyes from the sun atop of Carbery Hill. ‘Oh, Erskine!’ she said, ‘oh, Bothwell! they have no standard. Against whom, then, do we fight?’