"Good, my lord – and the total?" said the king.
"Maketh 1480lb.," replied the treasurer after a pause.
"By St. Andrew! we shall have but little left to keep those Douglases in check on the one hand, and those pestilent English on the other, if our household accounts go thus," said James, with a dubious smile.
"'To your highness's chamberlain in Mar, for driving all your brood mares from Strathavon to Strathdon, 5sh.'" resumed the treasurer, reading very fast to avoid interruption; and then followed innumerable other items, all written in obsolete Scottish (which, like our dialogues, we translate), such as twenty-nine weeks' pay to the king's falconer; to the master gunner of Lochmaben, for stone and iron cannon balls, and for repairs; to Sir John Romanno for a thousand bowstaves; to Henry, the smith, for dies for the new coinage; to the keepers of the balefires along the borders; for garrisons there, and for the hanging of those who supplied the English with horses or cattle; to the driver of the oxen when the ten bombardes of the wine of Gascony came from Perth for the court's summer drink —
"And were intercepted by the earl of Douglas, or some of his reivers, and drunk in Thrave," commented the king.
"To the hunter of wolves in Stirling Park, for three wolves' heads laid at the outer gate, 18 pennies, according to the act of parliament. This closes the record; but the monks of Holyrood have sent your majesty a thousand silver crowns."
"That is well," said the king, who had long since relinquished his romance in despair; "but the lord abbot hath twenty-seven parish churches, and might, at this emergency, have lent me a trifle more."
"Perhaps; but even with all the altar-offerings, lesser tithes, pasque presents, and dues for baptism, marriage, and funerals, there is but little left to give after the yearly expenses of so great a monastery are paid."
"There spoke a brother abbot, and not a treasurer," said the king laughing, while the churchman coloured as he tied up his rolls with a ribbon. "Laus Deo! I am thankful we have come to an end; but we shall need all the money we can collect, my lord."
"True; for evil tidings are on the wind," said Lord Glammis, approaching a single pace and pausing.
"Of what – or whom?" asked James, with a louring eye.
"The Douglases again."
Sir Patrick Gray started from his reverie to listen.
"What of them now?" asked the king impatiently.
"Sir Alan Lauder and a man named James Achanna, both followers of the earl, have slain a king's vassal within the Holy Gyrth of Lesmahago."
"Treason! But that is a mere nothing now," said James bitterly.
"And worse than treason, for it is sacrilege!" added the abbot of Melrose, with gathering wrath. "When your highness's sainted ancestor, King David I., in the pious times of old, granted that cell unto the monks of Kelso, he wrote, that 'whoso escaping peril of life and limb flies to the said cell, or cometh within the four crosses around it, in reverence to God and St. Machute, I grant him my firm peace.'"
"And so they violated this holy sanctuary?" said James.
"Yes; and hewed the poor man to pieces with their Jethart axes."
"His offence?"
"Was wearing the royal livery, – being the gudeman of your majesty's mills at Carluke."
The king started up, and was about to utter some hasty speech, when a smart little page, clad in a violet-coloured doublet, with long hose of white silk, drew back the tapestry which overhung the arched door, and announced that the lord chancellor craved an audience in haste.
"Admit him," said James, advancing a step, as the old statesman, pale and thin from the effect of his recent wounds and by the advance of years, entered, propped upon a long silver-headed staff. "You look grave, my lord," added the king; "but I pray you to be seated."
"I have evil tidings," began the chancellor, hobbling forward and coughing violently.
"The very words of my Lord Glammis," said the king; "can aught else come to the ear of him who wears a Scottish crown?" he added, biting his nether lip.
"Say not so, after our late glorious victory at Sark!" exclaimed the chancellor; "but, nevertheless, I have evil news," he added, taking from the velvet pouch which hung at his embroidered girdle several letters, folded square, and tied with ribbons, in the fashion of the time. "I have two grave matters to lay before your majesty. We are more than ever humbled and insulted by this overweening earl of Douglas, and, through you, the entire nation! The king of Scotland," continued the chancellor, warming and striking the floor with his cane, "is the fountain of Scottish honour, and thus I maintain, that if the king is insulted so are we; for if a stream be polluted at its source, every rill that flows from it becomes so too; but we must end these matters by the sword – we must wipe out our wrongs in blood, and regild our tarnished blazons in the reddest that flows in the veins of our enemies, the men of Douglas-dale and Galloway!"
"These wild men are yet untamed," said the tall thin treasurer, shaking his bald head.
"But not untameable," responded the fiery old chancellor, with a spark of rage in his hollow eyes.
"To the point, my lords, under favour of the king," said Sir Patrick Gray, gnawing his moustache in his impatience.
CHAPTER XLIII
A LADLEFUL OF GOLD
Thou shalt not yield to lord nor loon,
Nor shalt thou yield to me;
But yield thee to the braken bush
That grows on yon lilye lee. —
"What more have I to hear of this false noble and his followers?" said the king, after briefly, and to Gray's great annoyance, rehearsing the whole story of the murder of his vassal, the miller of Carluke, in the sanctuary of Lesmahago.
"The earl has lawlessly seized, and ignominiously imprisoned, in his hold of Thrave, a good and loyal servant of your majesty."
"That is nothing new; but what is his name?" asked James, grasping the arms of the chair, and thrusting aside the tabourette with his foot, while his hazel eyes flashed fire with anger, and his dark brows were knit.
"Sir Thomas MacLellan, of Bombie," replied the chancellor, with grave energy.
"My friend – the Lieutenant of my Guard!"
"My brave kinsman!"
Such were the exclamations of the king and of Sir Patrick Gray, who had come from the sunny recess of the window, and in deep anxiety stood near the chancellor's chair to listen. In his anger, James snatched from the table his amber rosary and dagger of mercy, as if about to utter some vague threat or malediction, and then cast them from him, though the latter was the gift of his brother-in-law, Sigismund of Austria, and was hilted by a single agate.
"Sir Thomas MacLellan, of Bombie," resumed the chancellor, gravely and earnestly, "your majesty's steward of Kirkcudbright, is now a prisoner in the castle of Thrave manacled with the heaviest chains MacKim, the earl's smith, can forge, and hourly is menaced with death."
"And wherefore has this been done?"
"The whole of this new outrage is detailed to me in a letter from the abbot of Tongland, who has at last– the pedantic fool! the very dunce! – (excuse me, my lord abbot of Melrose) – abandoned the earl, his chief, and has secluded himself in his abbey, despairing, I presume, of the reformation of Douglas, as of that of the devil himself, concerning whom he so lately visited Rome."
From the letters of the abbot, the lord chancellor then proceeded to relate that there were three reasons for this capture and imprisonment of the Steward of Kirkcudbright. The first was, that Sir Thomas, who was chief of a powerful Celtic tribe, possessing all the peninsula between the Dee and the Solway, had taken part with the late Sir Herbert Herries, of Terregles, his kinsman, against the Douglases, and had thereby excited the ready wrath of the earl. The second cause of hatred was, that he had borne a letter from the Captain of the King's Guard to the Lady Murielle Douglas, and had shot it to her feet by an arrow, as she was walking near the castle wall of Thrave. The third, that he had refused to join a league, and sign a bond for levying war against the king. For these three causes the earl, taking advantage of MacLellan being at his own castle of Raeberry, whither he had retired in consequence of a sword-wound received from Lord Piercy at the battle of Sark, despatched three hundred men-at-arms under James Achanna to bring him dead or alive to Thrave, after sacking and demolishing his residence.