The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

He was of his stature tall and well-made, with a complexion black but comely, noble on horseback, and a master both of arms and at all pastimes. And when I beheld him, it came upon me to salute him—which, though I had small intention thereof till I saw him, I did. It was with some surprise, perceiving, no doubt, the Earl's colours, that he returned my greeting, and that very graciously. The moment after I looked about me, and right glad I was to observe that none of our folk had been in the place before the palace to observe my salutation.

After this we of Cassillis went in parties of three or four, and our swords were in our hands all the day, in spite of the watch—ay, in spite even of the King's Guard, which His Majesty had sent to keep the peace, when he himself had gone off to Linlithgow in the sulks, as at this time was oft his silly wont.

For me, I went chiefly with Sir Thomas, my master, as was my duty; but being allowed to choose my companion, I chose Muckle Hugh from Kirriemore, which marches with mine own home of Kirrieoch on Minnochside. Hugh was the strongest man in all Carrick, and had joined the command chiefly for the love of me—because he had once herded sheep for us, and my mother had been kind to him and given him new milk instead of skim for his porridge.

And I warrant you when the two of us took the crown of the causeway, we stepped aside for no man, not even for Bargany and his brother Drummurchie had we seen them (which by good luck we never did). But others we saw in plenty. It was 'Bargany thieves!' 'Cassillis cairds!' as we cried one to the other across the street. And the next moment there we were, ruffling and strutting like gamecocks, foot-to-foot in the midst of the causeway, neither willing to give way. Then 'Give them iron!' would be the cry; and in a clapping of hands there would be as pretty a fight as one might wish to see—till, behold, in a gliff, there on the cobble stones was a man stretched, and all workmanly completed from beginning to end, while the clock of St Giles' was jangling the hour of noon.

For the matter of the killing of Black Peter, and the way that lassie his daughter held his head as she washed him, abode with us, and made our hearts hot against the Barganies. That is, the hearts of the younger of us. For I wot well that the elders thought more of the lost box of treasure, than of many men's lives far more famous and necessary than that of poor Black Peter, who died in his duty at the house door of the Red Moss—and that is not at all an ill death to die.

But there came a day when the ill blood drew to a head. It was bound to come, because for weeks the two factions of us Kennedies had been itching to fly at each other's throats. The Barganies mostly lodged together in the lower parts of the town beneath the Nether Bow, in order to keep us away from the King when he was at Holyrood House, and also to be near the haunts of those loose characters of the baser sort with whom, as was natural, they chiefly consorted.

We, on our part, dwelled in the upper portion of the town, in the well-aired Lawnmarket and in the fashionable closes about the Bow-head. For none of us, so far as I knew, desired to mix or to mell with loose company—save, an' it might be, the Earl himself. That being 'the custom and privilege of the nobility,' as Morton said to his leman, when he wished to change her for another.

Now, we had among us of our company one Patrick Wishart, an indweller in Irvine and a good fighter. He was an Edinburgh man born, and knew all the town—every lane and street, every bend and bow, every close and pend and turning in it. He also knew that which was even more valuable, where the King's Guard were, and how to shut them up till we had done our needs upon our foes. He was well advised besides where each of the leaders among the Barganies dwelt.

On the day appointed the Earl gave us all a meeting-place by the back of Saint Giles' High Kirk, beneath the wall of the Tolbooth. And there we mustered at ten of the clock one gay morning. It was a windy day, and, spite of the sun, the airs blew shrewdly from the eastern sea, as is their use and wont all the year in the High Street of Edinburgh.

Now our young Earl had ever plenty of siller though afterward he parted with it but seldom. Yet for the furtherance of his cause he had spent it lavishly during these days in Edinburgh, so that all the common orders in our upper part of the town held him to be the greatest man and the best that ever lived. And as for the vices he showed, they were easy, popular ones, such as common folk readily excuse and even approve in the great—as women, wine, and such-like.