Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 03

by Unknown

After these maternal cares, Marjory sat and listened to the proceedings in the ballium of the Castle. Cockburn did not come up, being either occupied in preparations for his expedition against Adam Scott, or unwilling to expose his designs again to the danger of defeat, by the expostulations or entreaties of his anxious wife. Meanwhile, as she listened, every whisper or accidental sound of sword or spear went to her heart, and stirred up, in confused array, the fears of love. One hope remained to her, that the moon would hide her head, and leave the world to the empire of darkness—so unfavourable to the designs of the riever, that the moon's minions would not fight under another power. There were clear indications in the heavens of a coming storm; for the moon still toiled on through the clouds, and the booming of the low, sullen wind in the woods was getting higher and higher. These sounds she hailed with hope; but, the next moment, the clang of a falling spear consigned her to her fears. At a late hour, Cockburn came up to his sleeping-room, and silently retired to pretended rest; while she, with her solicitude increased, retired also to her couch, but with no disposition to become oblivious of the fatal operations of her husband, though her tender nature forbade further efforts in a cause that seemed hopeless. Resigning herself to the powers of fear, and the other disquieting influences of the solemn hour of midnight, she lay quiet, and submitted to the current of inauspicious thoughts that flowed through her mind. A disturbed slumber fell over her, sufficient only to make a slight division between the world of dreams and that of reality, and to allow her waking thoughts to pass in new and changing forms before the eye of the dreaming fancy, which again, in its turn, invested them with attributes suitable to the complexion of her waking sorrows. During this interval, Cockburn rose; and, dressing himself, went quietly out of the chamber—his movements having only tended to give some new impulse to her half-dreamy sensations, ineffectual as they were to recall her to the cares of a night vigil. A loud crash was the first sound that awoke her; and opening her eyes, and becoming collected, she recognised, in the sharp sound, the grating fall of the portcullis. A shrill horn now winded among the woods, though its sound was scarcely distinguishable among the repressed bellowings of the night winds that seemed to have risen considerably since she had been overcome by her slumber. She was satisfied that the whole retinue, with her husband at their head, were off to the beetling Castle of Tushielaw, from whose heights so many a riever had been precipitated into the Ettrick.

This conviction, coming, as it did, on the back of a disturbed slumber, in which her dreams had partaken of the dire nature of a nightmare, increased her fears. She could rest no longer, and rising and dressing herself, she sat down at the casement, and listened to ascertain if any of the sounds of the cavalcade could be distinguished. She could satisfy herself of enough to indicate the route they had taken—away over the hills that separate the vales of Ettrick and Yarrow, and by the path that has since got the name of the King's Road, leading directly to the Tower of Tushielaw. But a quick and threatening change in the weather soon attracted her attention. The booming of the wind seemed to cease, and, shortly after, the clouds, through the openings of which the moon had been seen labouring during the previous part of the night, appeared to run rapidly together, so as to conceal the face of the night queen, and to present a homogenous mass of dark vapour over all the heavens. A flash of vivid lightning now flared in her eyes, and left her for a moment in suspense whether she had not been blinded by the bright fluid; then on came the peal of thunder, which reverberating among the mountains like discharges of artillery, filled her with that peculiar awe which the speaking clouds throw over the hearts of mortals. The rain came down in torrents, and had scarcely begun to pour, when the speat-rills of the high lands were heard dashing down like angry spirits to swell the Henderland Burn and the Megget, and raise the fury of these mountain streams. The sound of the thunder had awoke the children, who, leaving in terror their beds, came running to their mother, to seek that protection which could alone allay their fears. Circling round her knees, they hid their heads among the folds of her clothes, or clambered to her bosom, and twined their arms round her neck. It was in vain she asked them to return to bed; they conceived themselves safer on the breast of their mother, though she still sat at the casement, and the lightning glanced in their eyes, than they could be in their beds, muffled up in the bedclothes, and listening to the successive peals of thunder. As she sat in this attitude, with the children cowering into her bosom, like little chickens under the wing of their mother, she observed that the thunder approached nearer and nearer, as the period between the flash and the peal diminished gradually to a second; and a sudden flash among the trees, accompanied with a crackling noise, connected with some destructive operation of the bolt, indicated that mischief had been done in that quarter of the wood. It was where the elm stood, the subject of Merlin's rhyme; and this circumstance sent the current of her thoughts in that direction, where there was so much aliment for her excited fancy. She silently prayed that the tree might be destroyed; and its towering top, above all others of the wood, held out some hope that her strange wish might be realized.

The sound of a man's voice—that of Dick of the Muir, as he was styled—the individual who kept the gate of the Tower—was heard shouting to some one without, in reply to some request made by the latter. It was now about two in the morning, and Marjory could not conceive what could be the purpose of the stranger's visit at that dreary hour.

"What want ye wi' my Leddie at this time, man?" said Dick. "My master's frae hame, and my commission doesna extend to opening the gate to strangers on night visits."

"But I'm nae stranger, Dick," replied the other. "I served the Cockburns before ye was born, and hae wandered many a weary step, in the midst o' this storm, to speak a word to the ear o' my Leddie. The time o' my visit is a good sign o' the importance o' my counsel. For God's sake, open, man! or ye may rue this hour to that o' your deein struggle, when Laird and Leddie may be in the moil there, ahint the auld chapel, and a' through the laziness o' their warder."

"Raff i' the mire!" cried the warder—saluting him after the custom of the times, when every man had a distinctive appellation, in the absence of sirnames. "I took ye, man, for ane o' Tushielaw's scouts."

The creaking of the hinges of the gate was now heard.

"What brings ye frae Peebles, man?" continued the warder, "in sic a night as this, when a witch wouldna venture on the Skelf Hill, far less owre North Berwick Law."

"It's no to tell ye that Merlin's elm has fa'en," rejoined Ralph; "but three oaks on three sides o't are lying on the earth, and that stately tree may be a gallows still. You say, Henderland's frae hame. I'm glad o' the news. It's his leddie I want to see: an' she maun be roused frae her couch to speak to her auld servitor. Time bides nae man; neither does King James."

Another peal of thunder drowned the conversation of the man: and Marjory, rousing her little refugees, urged them to return to their beds, that she might be left to hear the intelligence of this midnight messenger, whose words already, so far as she had heard them, carried tokens of evil. His reference to the king struck a chord that prior solitude had made sensitive; and even the remark as to the tree that had escaped the bolt, had in it a peculiar power over her shattered nerves. Her fears operated upon the children, who, even to the youngest, put strange questions to her.