"Well, and what then?" asked Lauder bitterly.
"To surrender is to hang."
"Well?"
"By my soul thou takest it very coolly, Sir Alan Lauder," said Achanna, glad to change the subject, and elude Gray's unanswered challenge.
"I do so, Master Achanna, because I foresaw that when King James entered Galloway, with the royal banner displayed, it would end in hanging for some, and beheading for others – hanging especially for thee."
"And beheading for thee, so I care not whether we surrender to-night or a week hence."
"You play but ill the jovial desperado," said the Castellan with contempt, as he turned from him.
"Yet he fights for his own hand and commoditie, as Hal o' the Wynd fought," said the abbot of Tongland.
"I am weary of this," exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray; "coward, will you not advance to meet me?"
"And fight with a flag of truce flying; I am not so ignorant of the rules of war," replied Achanna, who felt that the crowd of brave and reckless men about the castle-gate viewed him with derision; "My courage has never failed me, sirs, though I knew the fate in store for me, as – as – "
"As what, fellow?" demanded Lauder.
"A follower of the conquered Douglas and his outlawed adherents."
"Conquered – outlawed!" muttered those who heard him.
"Well, sir, doth not that breach in the castle wall look as if we shall soon be the first, as surely as we are the second."
"Jibing villain," exclaimed Lauder, "beware lest I spare the doomster all trouble, by passing my sword through thee!"
The Scots of those days had but vague ideas on the subject of homicide, so Achanna became alarmed, and said:
"Sir Alan Lauder, remember my years of faithful service."
"And what have those years done for you?"
"Converted me from a boy to a man."
"From a rascal of one age to a rascal of one more mature; but thou shalt hang, if Sir Patrick wills it," said the castellan, with growing wrath; for in fact Achanna, perceiving that matters were going against his friends, had found Thrave less comfortable for some time past, and was anxious to escape or make his peace with the king.
"Enough of this, sir," said Sir Patrick, sheathing his sword; "let us resume the subject of a capitulation."
"The countess – here comes the countess!" exclaimed several voices, as the crowd of armed men divided and drew back; and Margaret, leaning on the arm of Maud Douglas of Pompherston, approached. Eagerly and anxiously Gray looked beyond them, but in vain.
"Oh," thought he in his heart, "where is Murielle?"
The hateful Achanna seemed to divine the thought; for a cold smile curled his thin white lips, and a colder still as he surveyed the countess, and remembered the proud derision with which she had long ago repelled his boyish affection. The lovely face of Margaret was deadly pale – white as the ruff or tippet of swansdown, which guarded her delicate throat and bosom. She was muffled in a long black dule-weed, or mourning habit, the folds of which fell to her feet, and on the left shoulder of which was sewn a white velvet cross. In many places this sombre garment was spotted by blood!
Her beautiful black eyes were bloodshot, and an unnatural glare shone in them. She seemed scarcely able to stand; thus old Sir Alan Lauder hurried to her side, and tenderly placed a mailed arm around her for support.
"Well, Monk, thou who forsook, in his sore extremity, thy chief and master," she sternly said to the abbot, "what seek you here?"
"Douglas was my chief, but not my master. He is in Heaven," replied the abbot calmly, pointing upward.
"Well, shaven juggler, who hast added his precious prayers to the cause of the strongest," continued the imperious beauty, "say what you would, and quickly. What errand brings you here?"
"Peace and good will. Oh, madam – madam," exclaimed the meek old abbot, stretching his withered and tremulous hands towards her, "in the name of Heaven and of mercy end these horrors – an aged man, a priest of God implores it of you! James and his soldiers have sworn to take the keys of Thrave at the point of the sword; but our young king is a knight, alike gentle and generous, and from your hands I am assured he will take those keys in peace, if peacefully bestowed."
"From my hands," she reiterated, in an unearthly voice; "alas – "
"What can she mean?" thought Gray, as a dreadful idea flashed upon his mind; "is this sad, this wild and stern bearing the result of remorse? can she have attempted – "
He thrust aside the thought, and listened attentively.
"From my right hand – never!" added Margaret, with bitter emphasis.
"From the hands of whom, then?"
"My youngest bower-maiden; she deserves the honour, for her father, Sir Alan, has made a valiant and vigorous defence."
"The king would prefer them from the hands of the Lady Murielle," said Gray, with more anxiety than caution.
"Speak not to me of Murielle!" exclaimed the countess, with a shriek, as her head drooped; and she fainted in the arms of Lauder.
"What has happened – speak for mercy, sirs! what horror do you conceal from us?" exclaimed Sir Patrick Gray and the abbot together.
"Look here," said the old knight, in whose keen grey eyes there mingled a curious expression of commiseration and ferocity. He drew aside the countess's dule-weed, and then the Captain of the Guard and the abbot perceived that her white neck was stained with blood, her shoulder covered with hideous ligatures, and that her right hand and arm were gone —gone from the elbow!
"Who – what has done this?" asked Gray, as his sun-burned cheek grew pale.
"See you, sirs, what the first shot from yonder hellish engine hath achieved?" replied Lauder, reproachfully.
"The first," reiterated Gray.
"And I would give the last blood in my heart to have the seven makers of it hanging in a bunch from yonder gallows knob!"
Local history records that this terrible mutilation occurred when the countess was seated at table in the hall, through one of the windows of which the great bullet passed; and some years before the battle of Waterloo, when Thrave, like several other Scottish castles, was undergoing repair, as a barrack for French prisoners, a favourite gold ring which the countess wore upon the forefinger of her right hand, inscribed Margaret de Douglas, was found among the ruins, with one of Meg's granite balls beside it; and the old peasantry in Galloway yet aver, that in this terrible mutilation "the vengeance of Heaven was evidently manifested, in destroying the hand which had been given in wedlock unto two near kinsmen."[5]
By a strange coincidence, or an irresistible fatality, at the same moment that the countess was borne away, it came to pass that the man-at-arms who held the white flag let it drop from the summit of the keep into the barbican below. Then Sir John Romanno and his impatient cannoniers, perceiving that the flag was gone, and that some commotion had ensued about the gate of Thrave, supposed (in those days there were no telescopes), that the parley was broken, and that violence was offered to the envoys, so a shot was fired from the great brass bombarde named the Lion of Flanders.
With a mighty sound, between a whiz and a boom, it passed betwixt Sir Patrick Gray and the abbot, entered the archway, and, by a singular combination of retributive justice and fatality, struck James Achanna just at the girdle, and doubling him up like a crape scarf, literally plastered his body, armour and all, a quivering mass of blood, bones, steel plates and splints, upon the wall of the keep, into which it was imbedded.
The white pennon was again hoisted; but this terrible episode and appalling spectacle hastened the conclusion of the truce and the siege.
5
This ball is still preserved by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, and corresponds exactly in size and quality with those shown in the castle of Edinburgh, as appertaining to the celebrated Meg, which are of Galloway granite (from Binnan Hill), the component parts of which, as geologists are aware, differ in several particulars.