"Installed on hills, her head near starry bowers,
Edina shines amid protecting powers;
Religious temples guard her on the east.
And Mar's strong towers defend her on the west;
For sceptres nowhere stands a town more fit,
Nor where a queen of all the world might sit;
Be this thy praise, above all be most brave,
No man did e'er defame thee but a slave."
ARTHUR JOHNSTONE, 1680.
The Countess Margaret was attired in her great capuchon of James the Fourth's days; it was turned back above the apex of her stupendous coif, and flowed over her shoulders. Her lofty figure and towering head-dress completely dwarfed Jane and her companions, whose triangular velvet hoods were of a less imposing form. The whole family and household were about to set forth for St. Giles's, and Ronald met the procession in the archway. The old lady was looking unusually grave, for that morning she had put on her stockings with the wrong side outwards--an infallible omen of misfortune. We have said the whole household, for in addition to several female attendants and the black page, there were Gilzean Seton, the countess's esquire, or seneschal, and six or eight tall fellows in steel bonnets or corslets, armed with Jedwood axes and wheel-lock pistols--a new weapon, which had just been introduced from Italy, and was esteemed one of the wonders of mechanism. These were all of iron, butted like the pommel of a poniard, and were fired by the rapid revolution of a wheel against a piece of sulphuret of iron, which was secured like the flint of a modern musket, but had the cock on that side where of late we have seen the pan.
Gilzean and his companions were all clad in the countess's livery (rather worn-looking certainly), but all having on their sleeves the coronet and the green dragon of the Setons, spouting fire.
The earl, still disguised, and bearing his long sword, marched among them; but by their whispers and subdued manner in his presence, it was evident to Roland that the secret identity of his new valet was known to them all.
"Rash lord!" thought he; "if one of these should prove a traitor."
"I see reproach in your eye," said the earl, in a low tone, and with an acuteness that somewhat startled Roland. "But think you that my father's roof ever sheltered a slipper-helmet so pitiful that he would betray his son? I trow not. Nay, nay, Sir Roland, the vassals of our house are all good men and true."
"And such my husband ever found them," said the countess, looking with a proud smile from her tall son to his stately followers; "for the fathers of mair than one of these my buirdly lads died by his bridle-rein under King James the Fourth, of gude and gallant memorie."
"Now, Sir Roland," said Lady Jane, as she took his proffered arm, with a smile on her coral lip; "you come not by stealth to visit us to-day. The king and his displeasure----"
"May go to the----"
"Fie! I hope thy debarcation of cannon is over, and that thou art free to bask in my smiles for the rest of the day?"
"It is over," replied Roland, avoiding the eye of the earl, who perceived a sword-thrust in his doublet, and a rent in his velvet mantle, where none had been visible the day before; "and to-morrow I am to show them all to the queen, and must, with my own hands, fire off the great gun Meg for her behoof. By Jove! I will carry off the cock from St. Anthony's spire at Leith!"
"And what of this dainty dame," said the Countess, as they proceeded up the street; "hast heard how her health is this morning?"
"I have not; but if I am to judge from the unwonted reserve of the king, I should deem her poorly enough."
"His reserve?" said the earl, scornfully; "and thus he vents his petulance on a gallant knight, as he would upon his pimps of the house of Arran--those rascally Hamiltons," he added, with eyes flashing fire, "who, gorged to their full with the plunder of our kinsmen, and building unto themselves strengths from which even our valour can never drive them--castles and towers, to which the palaces of Lochmaben and Linlithgow are but huts and sheilings."
"Oh! hush, ye unwise bairn," said the countess; "hush, and take your place among the serving-men, lest we be seen conversing, and so excite suspicion. Let us not talk harshly of this puir French stranger, whom, father St. Bernard tells me, hath a deadly disease, which preyeth upon her vitals, and will, ere long, bear her to the grave."
"Disease!" exclaimed Jane and her companions, with surprise; "and what is this disease?"
"'Tis a catarrh, which descendeth daily into her stomach, and must, sooner or later, cause death, for it hath defied the most skilful physicians and apothegars of France and Italy. Yet, were she mine ain bairn, or had I the place o' that fashionless body, Madame de Montreuil, I would soon make her whole and well."
"How, how, Lady Ashkirk?" asked Sybil and the others, who put great faith in the countess's skill as a leech; and really, at salving a slash from a sword, or staunching a thrust from a poniard, few in Edinburgh equalled her; and it was a time when she found plenty of patients.
"'Tis a great secret, and yet withal a simple one; for with it my mother, the Lady Jane Gordon of Glenbucket (quhom God assoilzie), made a whole man of her sister's son, the abbot of Pluscardine, who hath now departed to the company of the saints. 'Tis the first egg that a pullet hath laid (and mark, ye damsels, it must be laid upon a Friday), beat up widdershins with the first dew of the morning, and with thirteen drops of holy water, for ye ken there is a charm in that number; and this simple, if taken as the first food for nine successive mornings, would cure her. Gif it failed, there is one other mode--by applying a stone called a magnet, of potent and miraculous power, to the pit of the stomach, and repeating the word Abrodœtia three times; whilk failing, we must trust to God, for then it can be no other than the demon Archeus, who, at times, takes possession of the stomach, as the learned Paracelsus told father St. Bernard, when he dwelt with him at the Scottish cloister of Wurtzburg, in the year 1528."
"Mother of God!" exclaimed all the girls, looking at each other with fear, for the countess's manner was so serious, and she quoted such imposing names, that even Roland put his hand to his waist-belt, as if to assure himself that there was no such tenant as the said Archeus under it.
"I shall die with fear if ever I feel ill after this," said Sybil; "I shall be sure to think I am possessed of a demon. Wouldst thou not, cousin Archibald?"
"Mass!" replied the earl, "I would drown the demon in good wine, and if that failed, should exorcise him in warm usquebaugh."
Roland could not restrain a sensation of uneasiness during this conversation; for though deeply imbued with superstition, like every man at that time, and as a soldier believing a little in suits of charmed mail, that rendered the wearer invulnerable, he knew that the vulgar regarded the countess (like the lady of Buccleugh in the next age) with some terror for her abstruse knowledge; and at the present crisis he had no wish, certainly, that this suspicion should be increased.
The High-street, which had just been paved for the first time, was gay and crowded, for all the élite of the court and city, with their attendants, were thronging towards the church of St. Giles. All the balconies erected for the queen's entrance had been taken down, the banners were long since removed, but the garlands yet displayed their faded flowers around the various crosses which then encumbered the central street--though less so, certainly, than the innumerable out-shots and projections, outside stairs, turnpike towers, round, square, and octagon; wooden balconies and stone arcades, which imparted an aspect so picturesque to the High-street and Canongate. The total absence of all manner of vehicles, or other obstruction (save watermen with their barrels, or a few equestrians), made the middle of the street--or, as it was popularly named, "the crown of the causeway," the most convenient place for walking, as well as the most honourable. Thus the possession of it was frequently disputed at point of sword, for in these good old times no man of equal rank would yield to another the breadth of a hair unless he was of the same name--for clanship was the great bond of brotherhood--the second religion of the Scottish people, by which the humblest in the land can yet count kindred with their nobles.
As a lady, there was little chance of the countess being obstructed, unless some noble dame of the opposite faction was descending with her train towards the palace; and now, as she had reached the more crowded thoroughfare, she took the arm of Sir Roland Vipont; her daughter, with the ladies Alison, Logan, and Sybil, followed; while the armed servants marched before and behind, with axes shouldered.
Crowds attired in velvet cloaks and plumed bonnets, satin hoods and silk mantles; Dominicans in black robes, and Carmelites in white; Hospitallers of St. Anthony, and Franciscans in grey, were seen pouring like a living flood into the various doors of St. Giles; and, though it was then apparently destitute of shops, the vast High-street seemed to glitter with gaudy dresses in the gay sunshine. The places where the merchants sold their wares were mere dens, to which stairs descended abruptly from the pavement; the goods were thus exposed for sale in those stone vaults which formed the superstructure of every Scottish edifice. All the principal markets were kept in other parts of the town, for, in the year of grace 1477, when the potent and valiant knight Sir James Crichton of Ruthven was lord provost of our good city, it had been ordained that hay and corn should be sold in the Cowgate, and salt in Niddry's Wynd; that the craimes, or booths, for the retail of goods, should be ranged from the Bellhouse to the Tron; that wood and timber should be sold westward of the Grey Friary. The shoemakers' stalls stood between Forrester's Wynd and the dyke of Dalrymple's yard; and the nolt-market, where also "partrickes, pluvars, capones, and conyngs" were sold, occupied Blackfriars Wynd; the cloth-merchants and bonnet-makers dwelt in the Upper Bow; while the dealers in all manner of irongraith, dagger, and bow-makers, dalmascars of swords, armourers, lorimers, and lock-makers, were domiciled under the shadow of that strong and stately barrier, the Netherbow.
There, immediately below the arcades of a tenement bearing the arms of the Lord Abbot of Kinloss, stood a shop, the small deep windows of which were secured by gratings, that were each like an iron harrow, built into the ponderous masonry. In the good town, we still build our walls three feet thick; but in the days of James V., they built them six, and even seven feet thick. A board over the door announced it to be the shop of _John Mossman, Jeweller, and Makkar of Silverwork to ye King's Majestie_; and here the countess and her party tarried a moment to see the new crown of Queen Magdalene, whose coronation was to take place in a month or so.
Master Mossman, a short and pursy, but well-fed burgess, clad in a cassocke-coat of Galloway cloth, was just in the act of giving the finishing touches to a silver maizer, or drinking-cup. He rose up with all his workmen and apprentices on the entrance of the countess, and welcomed her to his shop with studious politeness, though his chief patrons were the Hamiltons. His premises were vaulted with stone, and painted with various ornamental designs between the glazed cupboards of oak, which contained chased and elaborate vessels of silver, sword and dagger-hilts, buckles, and falcon-bells of every pattern and device. A small statue of St. Eloi, the patron of his craft, occupied a gothic niche above the fireplace, so that the silversmith might warm himself when saying his prayers in winter, which was a saving of time; and on each side thereof hung the steel bonnets, swords, and axes with which he and his men armed them for weekly duty, as municipal guards within the eight Fortes of the city.
"Good Master Mossman," said Roland, on seeing that the wealthy artificer looked somewhat uneasily at the jackmen, whose swords and axes made such a terrible clatter on his stone floor, "our lady the Countess of Ashkirk would be favoured with a view of the queen's new crown, that she may judge of thy handiwork, anent which we hear so much daily."
The jeweller, who had feared that the countess (whose circumstances he knew were the reverse of flourishing) had come to order a quantity of plate, breathed more freely, and bowed almost to his red garters; whereupon the countess curtseyed, for he was known to be one of the richest burgesses and freeholders in Edinburgh, and his voice bore all before it at the council-board. From a round box, strongly bound with brass and lined with purple velvet, he drew forth the glittering diadem for the queen consort--the same crown which James VI. took to London in 1603, and which the government ought in honour to restore to the Castle of Edinburgh. It is composed of pure gold from Crawfordmuir, and is enriched with many precious stones and curious embossings.
"It is a fair gaud," said the countess, sighing; "but my mind misgives me sorely that the puir bairn for whom it is intended may never live to wear it."
"Poor little queen!" said Jane, with moistened eyes, "if all be as thou sayest, her days are indeed numbered."
The silversmith seemed surprised, and his men raised their heads to listen; but the delight expressed by the ladies at the jewels and workmanship of this new addition to the regalia gratified the artificer, a smile spread over his jovial visage, and he gallantly held it over the head of Lady Jane, saying--
"My fair lady, it would become thee as well as her for whom it is intended."
"By my soul, Master Mossman, thou hast more the air of a gallant than a mere worker of metals," said Vipont, pleased with the compliments of the silversmith, but, like every soldier, unable to conceal how lightly he valued the mere mechanic; "and I marvel much that thou didst not in thy youth renounce the hammer and pincers for the helmet and partisan, as being better suited to one who could so compliment a fair demoiselle."
"You wrong me, noble sir," said the silversmith, calmly; "I have borne arms in my youth----"
"Under our gude King James IV.?" interposed the countess.
"Yea, madame," replied the burgess, with a kindling eye; "three hundred of us marched to Flodden under the banner of Provost Lauder; but few, unco few, ever again heard the ding o' the Tron-bell. But, as deacon of the honourable corporation of hammermen, I deem myself nowise inferior, Sir Roland, to what I was in my youth."
"Assuredly not, good Master Mossman," said the countess, "for I have ever esteemed thee an honest and worthy citizen; and we may remember how, at the last feast of St. Eloi, our good father St. Bernard illustrated the great honour which God hath bestowed on artisans in all ages."
"True, madame; Tubal Cain was a cunning artificer in all manner of brass and iron work; Porus, king of the Indies, was the son of a shaver, and worked himself as a puir tinkler-body and mender of kail-pots; Agathocles, king of Sicily, was a potter and maker of crocks, cans, and milk-luggies; Zeno of Constantia was a puir wabster, that clothed the naked from his ain loom; and Artagorus, lord of Cyconia, was the son of a cook; nor must we forget Joseph the carpenter, the spouse of the blessed Virgin, whilk, as my neighbour Deacon Plane sayeth, will ever redound to the immortal honour of his craft, the wrichts."
Sir Roland, who did not expect such a volley of hard names to be opened upon him, had nothing more to urge, but bowed with a pleasant smile as they retired, leaving the king's jeweller master of the field.
At the same moment Nichol Birrel, who had been inquisitively peering through the grated window, hastened away and mingled with the crowd.
