The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

It was Lammas day, and the strange wager of battle was about to be fought. Maister Robert Bruce, who had composed so many quarrels (and made so many more in the doing of it), had altogether and utterly failed to make up this one. So he had passed south to his friend and favourer the Laird of Bargany, who for all his soldiership was ever great for the honour of the Kirk. I hope that the Minister of Edinburgh made more of him than he made of Earl John, of whom he gat nothing but fair speeches and most indifferent drink, which were indeed in my time the staples of Cassillis hospitality.

Now, it so happened that Sir Thomas Kennedy, my master, could not move from his chair, much less sit a horse, because of that old income in the knee, which ever in the hot season of the year caused him so much pain and trouble. Thus it fell to me to lead our small levy from the lands of Culzean, for we were near to the country of the Barganies, and it would not do, in the absence of an armistice, to denude our head castle of all the fighting men that were thereabout.

The morn of Lammas was one that promised to open out into a day of fervent heat, for the mists rose lazily, but did not dissolve as the sun climbed the skies. Yet it was a morning that pleasured me beyond telling, as I buckled on my new sword of price, and rode out to fight. I am not averse from fighting, but I own it is the riding out in array that I chiefly love.

What a heartsome sight it was when we turned our faces towards Cassillis Yett, and saw the companies of Kennedies come riding and running over every green knoll—long, upright men of the South who had started the night before from far Minnochside and Auchneil, shoulder-bent shoremen who came over the edge of Brown Carrick, pikemen, spearmen, and hackbuttmen, together with a multitude of limber, pranksome lads with only a leathern jacket and a whinger.

When we came to Cassillis Yett, there by the road-end was Sir Thomas Tode, who was charged to tell us that my lord had gone on before us with many soldiers and horsemen. They had taken also with them a trail-cart, being a box with shafts like a carriage, but without wheels, mounted on a great brush of branches and twigs, which stuck out behind and scored the ground with a thousand ruts and scratches. This was for the conveyance of the sow, which from sundawn to sunset was to be tethered, in despite and contempt, upon the lands of the Craufords of Kerse. For that was the wager of battle between the Kennedies and the Craufords.

The place where we found the Earl and his tethered sow was well chosen. It was a three-cornered piece of land, of which two sides were defended by the Doon Water sharply bending back upon itself, while across the broad base of the triangle there ran a moss. The beating of the drums and the playing of pipes were on all the hills; and so gay and cheerful was the scene that it might have been a fair or a weapon-shawing, for the sound of merrymaking and deray that there was all about.

The Doon, that should run so red or sunset, now sparkled pure and clear in the light of morning, and the speckled piets and pigeons scudded here and there among the coppices. We had not been long established on this tongue of land with our tethered sow when there arose a crying among the outposts, and word was brought that from all the Craigs of Kyle, and out of all the country of the east, the Craufords and their allies were gathering to the trysted fray.

Presently we saw them top the brae in ordered companies. It was bonny to see them come stringing down the sides of the hills, now going singly like cattle along a path in the steep places, and now forming into squadrons and companies on the plain ground. The sunshine sifted through the thin clouds as through a sieve, and made a strange pale glittering on their war gear, so that all the country round was lit up with little sparkling flashes of fire, like the wave tops when the sun rises out of the eastern sea.

They had their drums also, though it was the latest of many affronts that the Kennedys had put holes in all the Crauford drums which were in the town of Ayr upon the last market day. And this quarrel also had to be settled. Presently we could see all twelve of the stalwart sons leading on their vassals from the brown hills. They were a sunburnt company, because it was about the Lammastide, when the muirmen are wont to be out all day at the watersides at the winning of the meadow hay—the crop which is hard to grow, ill to mow, but worst of all to gather into barn, as the saying goes in the parts of the outland hills.

It was nine of the morning when the Craufords moved to the attack. All this while the loathly sow, that was at once provocation and offence, lay upon a little mound in the midst of our camp, grunting and grumphing most filthily. The Earl had set a little snipe of a raggetty loon to stir her up with a pointed stick, so that she should not go to sleep, but should grunt and disport herself as she ought. Being thus encouraged, the boy did his work to admiration, and the old grouting wretch kept up such a snorking and yellyhooing that she could be heard almost from Dalrymple Kirk to the Mains of Kerse.