Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 08

by Unknown

While sunk in these gloomy reflections, a shrill blast of a horn reverberated among the hills. "That is our father's horn!" cried the sons, who awoke with the sound; and Mary herself knew the signal of the approach of her husband. She rose from the side of the corpse, and, looking forth from the window, saw, by the moon's light, Harden himself hastening towards the tower. In a moment he bounded from his horse, and in another he appeared before his wife.

"To horse! to horse! my sons!" he shouted, as he came forward. "Now for Gilmanscleugh, with the fire and the sword of Harden's revenge!"

A loud shout from the chamber where the sons lay announced the relief which this statement brought to their frenzied minds. The door was opened, and the prisoners were set at liberty. Without waiting for refreshment, the old chief, having cast a look on the dead body, hurried with his liberated sons to the court, where every retainer was summoned to attend his master. A large party was assembled in a very short time, and, with the moon as their guide, the cavalcade, making the castle ring with Harden's war-cry, issued with rapid steps out of the ballium, and took the road to Gilmanscleugh. They arrived at the place of their destination while the moon shone still clear in the heavens; and Harden's sons observed that their father now took no precautions, as was usual in his night attacks, to prevent the assailed party from knowing his approach. He marched them silently, deliberately, and boldly up in front of the tower of Gilmanscleugh, where Scott, who had fondly imagined that his act had not been traced to him, was residing in a security that had been daily increasing, but was now so soon to be ended. The whole party were ranged in front of the devoted tower, and Harden's horn was sounded for entrance. Scott appeared at the window, and asked the pleasure of Harden, and the purpose of his call at that unusual hour, though he well knew to what he owed the fearful visit.

"I have a paper, under the king's hand, to read to thee, Gilmanscleugh," replied Harden.

"We had better read it in the mornin," replied Scott. "Our lights are out in the tower. I will wait ye at yer ain time; but let it be in the licht o' day."

"The moon is Harden's time," rejoined the chief. "If thou wilt not let us in to read it, here, in the light of this torch, brought for the occasion, thou shalt hear the words of majesty. I am only the royal commissioner, and must do my duty."

The torch was held up, and Harden calling forth one of his retainers, who had been a clerk in a convent, ordered him to read a royal charter which he put into his hands. The man obeyed, and read the document which purported, in the few words of these old land rights, that the king, for the love and favour he bore to Walter Scott of Harden, had conveyed and settled upon him and his heirs the lands, tower, and appurtenances of Gilmanscleugh, which formerly belonged to William Scott, but had fallen to the crown by escheat, in consequence of the constructive rebellion of the said William Scott, in killing the son of Harden, known by the name of the Forester, when engaged in hunting on his father's lands. The charter gave, in addition, full power to the said Walter Scott to take immediate possession of the property, and to adopt all necessary steps for ejecting the former proprietor and his family from the same.

"Thou hast heard read the king's writ," cried the chief. "What sayest thou to the royal authority? I come here peaceably to demand the possession of Gilmanscleugh. If you will consent to depart, and give me up the key of the tower, I will pass my honour for the safety of thee and thine. If not, I will enforce the king's authority. Take a quarter-of-an-hour to decide. I will wait the decision."

This announcement produced surprise on all hands, as well to the unhappy proprietor, who was to be deprived of his lands that had come to him from his ancestors, as to the sons of Harden, who were to be deprived of that species of revenge they had burned for, and considered to be the only one suited to the occasion which called for it—the life of the slayer. While Gilmanscleugh retired to consider of the proposal, the sons of Harden crowded round him, and implored him to retract his condition of extending safety to the person of the murderer of their brother. The old chief—who had already counted all the advantages and disadvantages of the bargain, and saw how much better were the broad acres of Gilmanscleugh, which the king had given him for the loss of his son, than the life of its master, which, although he took, he could make nothing of, seeing that it would vanish in the act of capture—replied calmly, to their warm entreaties, that the lands were his revenge, and a very good revenge, too; but he promised them that, if Scott did not immediately comply with his request, they would have their pleasure of him and his whole household, to kill, or wound, or burn, or hang, as they chose. This addition roused the spirits and restored the hopes of the sons, who could not suppose that a man would give up his property in the easy manner anticipated by their father. Yet so it turned out; for in a short time Scott appeared again, and stated that, upon condition of him and his household being permitted to go forth safe and free, he would instantly deliver to him the key of the tower. The bargain was struck; and in a short time the extraordinary scene was witnessed of a whole family leaving the home of their fathers on a quarter-of-an-hour's notice, and wandering away to beg a habitation and a meal from those who were their dependants. Scott's wife had in her arms a sucking child, and three other children held by her garments, and cried bitterly as they passed on through the fierce troop, who looked the daggers of a disappointed revenge. A sister of his wife's tended a sickly son of Scott's, who was borne forth on a board carried by two of his retainers; and there was seen, hobbling along, with a long piked staff in her hand, the laird's mother, who had gone to Gilmanscleugh sixty years before, and born in it seven sons and three daughters. Then came Scott himself, with the keys in his hand, at the sight of whom Harden's sons moved involuntarily forward, as the instinctive desire of revenge for a moment overcame the command of their father. The keys were handed forth in dead silence; and the servants of the ejected laird wiped their eyes as they beheld the melancholy scene. They wandered slowly and reluctantly away. Harden looked back as the last of them were disappearing in the wood. "Revenge enough," he muttered—"revenge enough, and to spare." He then entered and took possession of the tower, in which he left as many of his men as were sufficient to guard it. He then returned with his sons and a part of his troop to Harden, where he found Mary Scott still sitting by the side of her dead son, in conformity with a custom among the Borderers, derived from the land of Odin, that the corpse of a murdered relative should not be committed to the earth till his death was avenged. She looked up in the face of Harden as he entered, and the blue eye of the Flower of Yarrow searched wistfully for tokens of a deed of stern retribution. Such is the power of custom and education, that one of the fairest of women, who, if she had lived in the nineteenth century, might have been a Lady Fanny, and shrunk, according to fashion, from the sight of a murdered worm, deemed it necessary, from duty, and felt it as consonant to the feelings of her sex, to look her disappointment at not observing, on the clothes or arms of her husband and sons, the signs of a wrong righted by blood.

"Is it thus that Harden comes, with bright steel and unsullied clothes, from the house of the murderer of his fairest son?" cried she. "Look at that corpse, and blush deep as the crimson that dyes the lily-lire of our boy. Is there no vengeance, Walter? Is there no satisfaction, my sons?"