Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume I Part 5

After wandering many miles, and having lain upon what appeared the cold earth for a lodging, he was aroused from a comfortless and troubled sleep, by a person tearing the bandage from his eyes, and ordering him to prepare for his trial. He started to his feet. He looked around, and beheld that he stood in the midst of a gipsy encampment. He was not a man given to fear, but a sickness came over his heart when he thought of his wife and daughter, and that, knowing the character of the people in whose power he was, he should never behold them again.

The males of the Faa tribe began to a.s.semble in a sort of half circle in the area of the encampment, and in the midst of them, towering over the heads of all, he immediately distinguished the tall figure of Willie Faa, in whom he also discovered the grey-haired Parliamentary soldier of the previous night. But the youth with whom he had twice contended and once wounded, and by whom he had been made prisoner, he was unable to single out amongst them.

He was rudely dragged before them, and Willie Faa cried--"Ken ye the culprit?"

"Clennel o' Northumberland!--our enemy!" exclaimed twenty voices.

"Yes," continued Willie, "Clennel our enemy--the burner o' our humble habitations--that left the auld, the sick, the infirm, and the helpless, and the infants o' our kindred, to perish in the flaming ruins. Had we burned his house, the punishment would have been death; and shall we do less to him than he would do to us?"

"No! no!" they exclaimed with one voice.

"But," added Willie, "though he would have disgraced us wi' a gallows, as he has been a soldier, I propose that he hae the honour o' a soldier's death, and that Harry Faa be appointed to shoot him."

"All! all! all!" was the cry.

"He shall die with the setting sun," said Willie, and again they cried, "Agreed!"

Such was the form of trial which Clennel underwent, when he was again rudely dragged away, and placed in a tent round which four strong Faas kept guard. He had not been alone an hour, when his judge, the Faa king, entered, and addressed him--

"Now, Laird Clennel, say ye that I haena lived to see day about wi' ye?

When ye turned me frae beneath your roof, when the drift was fierce and the wind howled in the moors, was it not tauld to ye that _ye would rue it_!--but ye mocked the admonition and the threat, and, after that, cruelly burned us out o' house and ha'. When I came hame, I saw my auld mother, that was within three years o' a hunder, couring ower the reeking ruins, without a wa' to shelter her, and crooning curses on the doer o' the black deed. There were my youngest bairns, too, crouching by their granny's side, starving wi' hunger as weel as wi' cauld, for ye had burned a', and haudin' their bits o' hands before the burnin' ruins o' the house that they were born in, to warm them! That night I vowed vengeance on you; and even on that night I would have executed it, but I was prevented; and glad am I now that I was prevented, for my vengeance has been complete--or a' but complete. Wi' my ain hand I s.n.a.t.c.hed your son and heir from his mother's side, and a terrible chase I had for it; but revenge lent me baith strength and speed. And when ye had anither bairn that was like to live, I forced a la.s.sie, that some o' our folk had stolen when an infant, to bring it to us. Ye have got your daughter back again, but no before she has cost ye mony a sad heart and mony a saut tear; and that was some revenge. But the substance o' my satisfaction and revenge lies in what I hae to tell ye. Ye die this night as the sun gaes down; and, hearken to me now--the young soldier whom ye wounded on the streets o' Worcester, and who last night made you prisoner, was your son--your heir--your lost son! Ha! ha!--Clennel, am I revenged?"

"My son!" screamed the prisoner--"monster, what is it that ye say?

Strike me dead, now I am in your power--but torment me not!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" again laughed the grey-haired savage--"man, ye are about to die, and ye know not ye are born. Ye have not heard half I have to tell. I heard that ye had joined the standard o' King Charles. I, a king in my ain right, care for neither your king nor parliament; but I resolved to wear, for a time, the cloth o' old Noll, and to make your son do the same, that I might hae an opportunity o' meeting you as an enemy, and seeing _him_ strike you to the heart. That satisfaction I had not; but I had its equivalent. Yesterday, I saw you shed his blood on the streets o' Worcester, and in the evening he gave you a prisoner into my hands that desired you."

"Grey-haired monster!" exclaimed Clennel. "Have ye no feeling--no heart?

Speak ye to torment me, or tell me truly, have I seen my son?"

"Patience, man!" said the Faa, with a smile of sardonic triumph--"my story is but half finished. It was the blood o' your son ye shed yesterday at Worcester--it was your son who disarmed ye, and gave ye into my power; and, best o' a'!--now, hear me! hear me! lose not a word!--it is the hand o' your son that this night, at sunset, shall send you to eternity! Now, tell me, Clennel, am I no revenged? Do ye no rue it?"

"Wretch! wretch!" cried the miserable parent, "in mercy strike me dead.

If I have raised my sword against my son, let that suffice ye!--but spare, oh, spare my child from being an involuntary parricide!"

"Hush, fool!" said the Faa; "I have waited for this consummation o' my revenge for twenty years, and think ye that I will be deprived o' it now by a few whining words? Remember, sunset!" he added, and left the tent.

Evening came, and the disk of the sun began to disappear behind the western hills. Men and women, the old and the young, amongst the Faas, came out from their encampment to behold the death of their enemy.

Clennel was brought forth between two, his hands fastened to his sides, and a bandage round his mouth, to prevent him making himself known to his executioner. A rope was also brought round his body, and he was tied to the trunk of an old ash tree. The women of the tribe began a sort of yell or coronach; and their king, stepping forward, and smiling savagely in the face of his victim, cried aloud--

"Harry Faa! stand forth and perform the duty your tribe have imposed on you."

A young man, reluctantly, and with a slow and trembling step, issued from one of the tents. He carried a musket in his hand, and placed himself in front of the prisoner, at about twenty yards from him.

"Make ready!" cried Willie Faa, in a voice like thunder. And the youth, though his hands shook, levelled the musket at his victim.

But, at that moment, one who, to appearance, seemed a maniac, sprang from a clump of whins behind the ash tree where the prisoner was bound, and, throwing herself before him, she cried--"Hold!--would you murder your own father? Harry Clennel!--would you murder your father? Mind ye not when ye was stolen frae your mother's side, as ye gathered wild flowers in the wood?"

It was Elspeth Faa.

The musket dropped from the hands of the intended executioner--a thousand recollections, that he had often fancied dreams, rushed across his memory. He again seized the musket, he rushed forward to his father, but, ere he reached, Elspeth had cut the cords that bound the laird, and placed a dagger in his hand for his defence, and, with extended arms, he flew to meet the youth, crying--"My son!--my son!"

The old Faa king shook with rage and disappointment, and his first impulse was to poniard his wife--but he feared to do so; for although he had injured her, and had not seen her for years, her influence was greater with the tribe than his.

"Now, Willie," cried she, addressing him, "wha rues it now? Fareweel for ance and a'--and the bairn I brought up will find a shelter for my auld head."

It were vain to tell how Clennel and his son wept on each other's neck, and how they exchanged forgiveness. But such was the influence of Elspeth, that they departed from the midst of the Faas unmolested, and she accompanied them.

Imagination must picture the scene when the long-lost son flung himself upon the bosom of his mother, and pressed his sister's hand in his.

Clennel Hall rang with the sounds of joy for many days; and, ere they were ended, Andrew Smith placed a ring upon the finger of Susan, and they became one flesh--she a respectable woman. And old Elspeth lived to the age of ninety and seven years beneath its roof.

KATE KENNEDY;

OR, THE MAID OF INNERKEPPLE.

Innerkepple was, some three hundred years ago, as complete a fortification as could be seen along the Borders--presenting its bastions, its turrets and donjon, and all the appurtenances of a military strength, in the face of a Border riever, with that solemn air of defiance that belongs to the style of the old castles. Many a blow of a mangonel it had received; and Scotch and English engines of war had, with equal force and address, poured into its old grey ribs their destructive bolts; every wound was an acquisition of glory; and, unless where a breach demanded a repair for the sake of security, the scars on the old warrior were allowed to remain as a proof of his prowess.

Indeed, these very wounds appearing on the walls had their names--being christened after the leaders of the sieges that had been in vain directed against it; and, among the number, the kings of England might have been seen indicated by the futile instruments of vengeance they had flung into the rough ribs of old Innerkepple. But let us proceed. The proprietor, good Walter Kennedy, better known by the appellative of Innerkepple, was not unlike the old strength which he inhabited; being an old, rough, burly baron, on whose face Time had succeeded in making many impressions, notwithstanding of all the opposing energies of a soul that gloried, in all manner of ways, of cheating the old greybeard of his rights and clearing off _his scores_. As a good spirit is said to be like good old wine, getting softer and more balmy as it increases in age, old Innerkepple proved, by his good humour and jovial manners, the sterling qualities of his heart, which seemed, as he progressed in years, to swell in proportion as that organ in others shrivelled and decreased. He saw nothing in age but the necessity it imposes of having more frequent recourse to its great enemy, the grape; and that power he delighted to bow to, as he bent his head to empty the flagon which his forebear, Kenneth, got from the first King James, as a reward for his services against the house of Albany. Yet the good humour of the old baron was not that of the toper, which, produced by the bowl, would not exist but for its inspiring draught; the feeling of happiness and universal good-will lay at the bottom of the heart itself, and was only swelled into a state of glorious ebullition by the charm of the magic of the vine branch--the true Mercurial _caduceus_, the only true magic wand upon earth.

Though the spirit of antiquarianism is seldom a.s.sociated with the swelling affections of the heart that is dedicated to Momus, old Innerkepple had, notwithstanding, been able to combine the two qualities or powers. Sitting in his old wainscotted hall, over a goblet of spiced Tokay, there were three old subjects he loved to speculate upon; and these were--his old castle, with its chronicled wounds, where the Genius of War sat alongside of the "auld carle" Time, in grim companions.h.i.+p; secondly, the family tree of the Innerkepples--with himself, a good old branch, kept green by good humour and Tokay, at the further verge; and a small green twig, as slender as a lily stalk, issuing from the old branch--no other than the daughter of Innerkepple, the fair Kate Kennedy, a buxom damsel, of goodly proportions, and as merry, with the aid of health and young sparkling blood, as the old baron was with the spiced wine of Tokay; and, in the third place, there was the true legitimate study of the antiquary, the ancient wine itself, the mortal years of which he counted with an eye as bright as c.o.c.ker's over a triumphant solution. As this last subject grew upon him, he became inspired, like the old poet of Teos, and the rafters of Innerkepple rang to the sound of his voice, tuned to the air of "The Guidwife o'

Tullybody," and fraught with the deeds, active and pa.s.sive, of the barons of Innerkepple and their castle.

The fair Katherine Kennedy inherited her father's good humour, and, maugre all the polis.h.i.+ng and freezing influences of high birth, retained her inborn freedom of thought and action, heedless whether the contortion of the _buccae_ in a broad laugh were consistent with the placidity of beauty, or the scream of the heart-excited risibility were in accordance with the formula of high breeding. Buxom in her person, and gay in her manners, she formed the most enchanting baggage of all the care-killing damsels of her day--the most exquisite ronion that ever chased Melancholy from her yellow throne on the face of Hypochondria, or threw the cracker of her persiflage into the midst of the crew of blue devils that bind down care-worn mortals by the bonds of _ennui_. She was no antiquary, even in the limited sense of her father's study of the science of cobwebs; being rather given to _neoterics_, or the science which teaches the qualities of things of to-day or yesterday. Age in all things she hated with a very good feminine spirit of detestation; and, following up her principles, she arrived at the conclusion that youth and beauty were two of the very best qualities that could be possessed by a lover. Her father's impa.s.sioned praises of the old branches of the tree of the Innerkepples--comprehending the brave Ludovick, who fell at Homildon, and the memorable Walter, who sold his life at the price of a score of fat Englishmen at the red Flodden--produced only her best and loudest laugh, as she figured to herself the folly of preferring the rugged trunk to the green branches that suspend at their points the red-cheeked apple full of sweetness and juice. Neither cared the hilarious damsel much for the reverend turrets of Innerkepple. Her father's description, full of good humour as it was, of the various perils they had pa.s.sed, and the service they had done their country, seemed to her, as she stood on the old walls, listening to the narrative, like the croak of the old corbies that sat on the pinnacles; and her laugh came again full of glee through the loopholes, or echoed from the battered curtain or recesses of the ballium.

That such a person as merry old Innerkepple should have a bitter and relentless foe in the proprietor of the old strength called Otterstone, in the neighbourhood, is one of the most instructive facts connected with the system of war and pillage that prevailed on the Borders, princ.i.p.ally during the reign of Henry VIII. of England and James V. of Scotland, when the spirit of religion furnished a cause of aggression that could not have been afforded by the pugnacious temperaments of the victims of attack. Magnus Fotheringham of Otterstone had had a deadly feud with Kenneth Kennedy, the father of the good old Innerkepple, and ever since had nourished against his neighbour a deadly spite, which he had taken many means of gratifying. His opponent had acted merely on the defensive; but his plea had been so well vindicated by his retainers, who loved him with the affection of children, that the splenetic aggressor had been twice repulsed with great slaughter. Most readily would the jovial baron, who had never given any cause of offence, have seized upon the demon of Enmity, and, _obtorto collo_, forced the fiend into the smoking flagon of spiced wine, while he held out the hand of friends.h.i.+p to his hereditary foe; but such was Otterstone's inveteracy, that he would not meet him but with arms in his hands, so that all the endeavours of the warm-hearted and jolly Innerkepple to overcome the hostility of his neighbour, were looked upon as secret modes of wis.h.i.+ng to entrap him, and take vengeance on him for his repeated attacks upon the old castle.

Some short time previous to the period about which we shall become more interested, Innerkepple, with twenty rangers, was riding the marches of his property, when he was set upon by his enemy, who had nearly twice that number of retainers. Taking up with great spirit the plea of their lord, the men who were attacked rallied round the old chief, and fought for him like lions, drowning (perhaps purposely) in the noise of the battle the cries of Innerkepple, who roared, at the top of his voice--

"Otterstone, man--hear me!--A pint o' my auld Canary will do baith you and me mair guid than a' that bluid o' your men and mine. Stop the fecht, man. I hae nae feud against you, an' I'm no answerable for the wrangs o' thy father Kenneth."

These peaceful words were lost amidst the sounds of the battle, and Otterstone construed the contortions of the peacemaker into indications of revenge, and his bawling was set down as his mode of inspiriting his followers. The fight accordingly progressed, old Innerkepple at intervals holding up a white handkerchief as a sign of peace; but which, having been used by him in stopping the wounds of one of his men, was received with its blood-marks as a signal of revenge, both by his men and those of the aggressor. The strife accordingly increased, and all was soon mixed up in the confusion of the melee.

"Has feud ran awa wi' yer senses, Otterstone?" again roared the good old baron. "I'll gie yer son, wha's at St. Omers, the hand o' my dochter Kate. Do you hear me, man? If you will mix the bluids o' oor twa houses, let it be dune by Haly Kirk."

His words never reached Otterstone; but his own men who adored and idolized their beautiful young mistress, whose unvaried cheerfulness and kindness had won their hearts, heard the proposition of their master with astonishment and dissatisfaction. They were still sorely pressed by their enemy, who, seeing the stained handkerchief in the hands of Innerkepple, were roused to stronger efforts. At this moment an extraordinary vision met their eyes. A detachment of retainers from the castle came forward in the most regular warlike array, having at their head their young mistress, armed with a helmet and a light jerkin, and bearing in her hand a sword of suitable proportions. A loud shout from the worsted combatants expressed their satisfaction and surprise, and in a moment the a.s.sistant corps joined their friends, and commenced to fight. The unusual vision relaxed for a moment the energies of Otterstone's men; but a cry from their chief, that they would that day be ten times vanquished if they were defeated by a female leader, again inspired them, and instigated them to the fight.

"Press forward, brave va.s.sals of Innerkepple!" cried Katherine. "Your foes have no fair damsel to inspire them; and who shall resist those whose arms are nerved in defence of an old chief and a young mistress?

He who kills the greatest number of Otterstone's men shall have the privilege of demanding a woman's guerdon from Katherine Kennedy. If this be not enough to make ye fight like lions, ye deserve to be hung in chains on the towers of Otterstone."

Smiling as she uttered her strange speech, she hurried to her father, who was still making all the efforts in his power to bring about a parley. He had got within a few yards of Otterstone, and it required all the energies of Katherine to keep him back and defend him from insidious blows--an office she executed with great agility, by keeping her light sword whirling round her head, and inflicting wounds--not perhaps of great depth--on those who were ungallant and temerarious enough to approach her parent.

"See, Otterstone, man," cried the laird, still intent on peace, and sorry for the deadly work that was going on around him. "Is she no fit to mak heirs to Otterstone? Up wi' yer helm, Kate, and show him yer fair face. Ha! man, stop this bluidy work, and let us mend a' by a carousal.

Deil's in the heart and stamack o' the man that prefers warring to wa.s.sailing!"

"He does not hear you, father," cried Kate. "We must defend ourselves.