Huntly was summoned before the council, and sent his wife. The Queen would not see her. The royal forces moved out of Aberdeen; John Gordon cut to pieces an outlying party; then the Earl joined hands with his son, and the pair marched on Aberdeen. The fight was on the rolling hills of Corrichie, down in the swampy valley between, over and up a burn. Their cry of ‘Aboyne! Aboyne!’ bore the Gordons into battle; their pride made them heroic; their pride caused them to fall. It was a case, one of the first, of the ordnance against the pipes. No gallantry—and they were gallant; no screaming of music, no slogan nor sword-work, nor locking of arms, could hold out against Kirkcaldy’s cannon or Lord James’s horse. They huddled about their standard and so died; some few fled into the lonely hills; but Huntly was taken, and two of his tall sons, and all three brought to the Queen. John of Findlater and Adam were in chains; the old man needed none, for he was dead. They say that when he was taken he was frantic, struggled with his captors to the last, induced so an apoplexy, stiffened and died in their arms. They guessed by the weight of him that he was dead. All this they told her. She neither looked at the body nor chose to see the two prisoners; received the news in dull silence. ‘Where is the Lord Gordon?’ She did ask that; and was told that he had not been engaged.
‘Coward as well as traitor,’ she gloomed; ‘what else is left him to adorn?’
‘Madam, tumbril and gallows,’ croaked Ruthven, like a hoody crow.
Next morning she awoke utterly disenchanted of the whole affair. Nothing would content her but to be quit of it. ‘I seem to smell of blood and filthy reek,’ she said to her brother James. ‘Take what measures you choose. Ruin the ruins to your heart’s content. The house was Catholic, and I suppose the stones and mortar are abominable in your eyes. Pull them down; do as you choose—but let me go.’
He asked her desire concerning the prisoners. This caught villain Findlater, for instance.
‘You seek more blood?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Take his, then. He has had his fill of it in his day; now let him afford you a share.’
Adam Gordon? She took fire at his name. ‘You shall not touch a hair of his head. I do not choose—I will not suffer it. He is for me to deal with.’
He swore that she should be obeyed; but she called in Lethington, and put the lad in his personal charge, to be brought after her to Stirling. At this time Lethington was the only man she could trust.
Lastly, her brother hinted at the reward of his humble services to her realm.