The Riven Realm

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Cultural Heritage; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1513; King James IV lies dead on Flodden's field, his young heir entrusted to two low-born lairds. There are many who seek to supplant or control the boy-king, and only his loyal protectors stand in their way . . . Two hundred years earlier, Robert the Bruce had driven out the English and restored his nation's pride. But now the King of Scotland lay dead amongst the bloody slaughter of Flodden. Now as fate decreed, the new king, James V, was a child, just seventeen months old. And that same fate had in store intriguing roles for two young men. David Lindsay and David Beaton - neither high-born, each the son of a lowland laird - were caught up in the very centre of the storm of hatred, fear, treachery and ambition that followed the young king's coming to the throne. Buffeted by events that would involve England, France, the Empire and even the Vatican, each was to win his own very special place in history... 'Through his imaginative dialogue, he provides a voice for Scotland's heroes' Scotland on Sunday

Release date: December 20, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 352

Sample

The square-faced young man with the darkly humorous eyes nudged with his elbow his companion standing beside him, and jerked his head half-right, grinning, towards where Mirren Livingstone, the King’s newest young lady, was intently inspecting herself inside her notably low-necked gown and scratching comprehensively at the same time—activity calculated to engender interesting speculation in any male worthy of the name. His friend began to smile, then changed to a head-shaking frown. After all, John Inglis was a cleric, Abbot of Culross no less, despite comparative youth, and they were in church, St Michael’s by the Palace, at Linlithgow, no place for levity, especially on this solemn occasion. He lowered his head again, presumably in prayer, while the choir of singing boys continued to render sweet background music suitable for a monarch at his devotions.

His younger companion, David Lindsay, maintained his not-too-obvious vigil on Mirren Livingstone, whom he rather admired—at a distance, naturally—whilst dutifully keeping his eye on his beloved King James. The monarch, fourth of his name, knelt at a reading-desk, the only kneeling figure in the crowded south transept of St Michael’s, before the altar of St Katherine, where Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen was conducting Vespers, a special service. All others must stand. James was a notably pious prince—in a practical way, of course, which would not restrict his other interests. He was here to pray for the success of his forth-coming great venture against his wretched brother-in-law, Henry Tudor, eighth of that name on the English throne. It was St Christopher’s Day, 25th July, 1513.

The Queen was noticeably not present.

David Lindsay was not in a particularly worshipful frame of mind, apart altogether from Mirren Livingstone, mainly because he was being expressly excluded from the King’s notable adventure. He had pleaded to be taken, along with all the flower of Scotland’s chivalry. But James had been adamant. Davie’s place was with the little Prince, he had insisted. He was his appointed Gentleman and Procurator, and his place was at the child’s side, the heir to the throne. There would be opportunities in plenty for armed prowess and glory, later, never fear. So attendance at this special service was scarcely relevant for him.

Wondering what Mirren would be up to whilst the King was away—since he could hardly take her with him—movement caught David’s roving eye. From an archway of the transept, to the right of St Katherine’s altar, a figure emerged, a strange, an extraordinary figure. It was that of a tall old man, upright, dignified, with long white hair, parted at the forehead, falling down below the shoulders, dressed in a blue robe tied with a linen girdle, walking with a long white stick like a shepherd’s crook. Ignoring the bishop, priests and acolytes at the altar, this apparition came slowly across the chancel, in majestic fashion, seeming almost to glide, towards the head-bowed King. David stared, and not only David. The choir’s singing faltered momentarily.

The eye-catching figure moved directly over to the monarch at his faldstool and there stood. James looked up, eyes widening.

Strongly, sternly, the old man spoke, loudly enough to be heard above the singing and chanting.

“Sire—I am sent to warn you. Not to proceed with your present undertaking. You hear? Not to proceed. For if you do, it shall not fare well with either yourself or those who go with you.”

He paused, as the King eyed him, astonished.

“Further,” he went on, “it has been enjoined on me to bid you shun the familiar society and counsels of women, lest they occasion your disgrace and destruction. Hear you, I say.”

“Save us—who a’ God’s name are you? What . . .?” It is safe to say that James Stewart had never before been addressed thus.

The other dismissed the question with a wave of the hand. “Heed!” was all he said, but dramatically, and with another jab of his pointing finger, passed on.

The monarch lifted to his feet in a single movement, for he was a very fit man for his forty years although beginning to thicken at the waist. “Wait! Stop! Stop, you!” he commanded.

The oddity paid no heed.

David Lindsay moved sideways and thrust out a hand to detain the old man, but he eluded his grasp and pressed on into the crowd behind, which swallowed him up.

Gazing after him, the King shook his head. “A madman! Or a spectre—which?” he demanded, of no one in particular.

And no one answered, even though it was a royal demand.

“Davie—fetch him for me.”

Young Lindsay turned and pushed his way into the throng which filled the side-chapel—lords, lairds, courtiers, soldiers and their women. But they were so close-packed that his progress was slow and, despite the remarkable impact of the strange figure, no sign of it was now evident in the crush.

Urgently David worked through and out of the transept into the main nave of the great church, much less crowded here, although worship was proceeding in some fashion before some others of the two dozen altars therein. Still there was no stranger to be seen. He went to the tall west doorway, to stare out. Nothing. The curiosity seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Back at the King’s side, David had to confess his failure. James, who had exchanged worship for discussion and debate, was surrounded now by a group of his lords, all very vocal although the service was still proceeding up at the altar. At the young man’s announcement that there was no trace of the interloper, Andrew, Lord Gray, Justiciary, declared that it was, as he had said, a spectre, a bogle, sent by the Prince of Darkness himself, others agreeing. How else had he won into the church unchallenged and out again? He was from the Other World, clearly, a messenger, a wraith . . .

James frowned, hitching at his waist, a habitual gesture when in doubt or unease, adjusting the lie of the chain which he had worn next to his skin since the day twenty-five years ago when he had looked down on the dead body of his father, the hapless James the Third, and recognised how he, the fifteen-year-old son, had been used by unscrupulous nobles to bring his sire to this grievous pass, and took the chain, a mere harness chain, as reminder of his vow of remorse. That it was the same Lord Gray, old now, who had finished off his injured father with a dirk, on that occasion after the Battle of Sauchieburn, might have added some significance to this present, possibly fateful, interlude.

“You, Davie Lindsay—you were close to this, this creature,” the King charged. “And you, Abbot. How say you? Was he honest man, however insolent? Or spirit, phantom, good or ill?”

David shook his head. “I know not, Sire. How can I tell? I have never seen a phantom. He seemed but man to me, although strange. And yet . . .”

“Yet, what, man—what?”

“I thought to grasp him, Highness, as he passed. As you bade. But . . . touched nothing! And then I went after him. But he disappeared. Gone. I, I do not know . . .”

“And you, Abbot John?”

“I would not venture an opinion, Your Grace. I saw nothing to have me think that he was other than an old man, probably deranged in his wits. But—who knows?”

“Aye. Mirren—how say you? You were nearby, also.”

The young woman, red-haired, full-lipped, full-bosomed and lively—James had a weakness for redheads—came forward. “I say that he was wraith, Sire. None other would dare to speak you so. Sent to warn you against this invasion. I pray Your Grace to take heed . . .”

“Aye—we all know your wishes in the matter, lass!” the King said, with a half-smile. “Some others wish it, too, if for different reasons! But whether Heaven or Hell are so concerned is less certain.”

“But you will pay heed, Sire?”

“We shall see . . .” James turned to face the altar, where the venerable Bishop Elphinstone made belated recognition of the fact that his congregation was scarcely with him in worship any longer by winding up the service quickly and signing for the choristers to do likewise. He came hobbling down to the royal group.

“Your Grace is pleased to dispense with further seeking of God’s blessing?” he reproved.

“Scarce pleased, old friend. Say provoked. You saw this, this visitant?”

“I saw another old man pass me, who might be more lacking his wits than even your servant, Sire! Was that sufficient to interrupt this holy office?”

“He miscalled the King. Spoke against this great endeavour. Threatened ill,” the Earl of Atholl asserted. “Would you have such go unheeded, Sir Priest?”

“I think to heed Almighty God the more, in this house of His,” Elphinstone said simply. His was a fine face, although lined and worn, with the noble features of a saintly yet practical philosopher, who had held the highest offices in the land, including that of Chancellor or chief minister; James’s early mentor, who should have been Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate—only the King’s own illegitimate seventeen-year-old son, Alexander Stewart, had been given that position.

“Aye, well—enough of this meantime,” the monarch said. “Back to the palace. My belly rumbles, spectre or none! Come, Mirren . . .”

Leaving the Bishop to unrobe, they all moved from the church and crossed the mound above Linlithgow Loch, which it shared with the handsome brownstone palace.

At the meal which followed, in the great first-floor banqueting-hall, the talk, needless to say, was all of the apparition and what it might signify—the story, naturally, growing with the telling. Only a few who had been nearby had actually heard the words spoken, of course, so that there was considerable scope for the imagination. David and Abbot John—who was the young Prince’s appointed tutor, although at only seventeen months not much tutoring was yet being attempted—discussed the matter back and forth, and although they came to no definite conclusions, certain indications were established for further debate.

It is to be doubted whether any similar progress was being achieved up at the dais-table, or at least at its centre, where the King and Queen scarcely exchanged a word; the French ambassador, on James’s other side, had not been present in church and was besides a military man and unlikely to concern himself with metaphysics.

James Stewart and his wife were hardly the best of friends. Married for ten years now, they both bored and were bored with each other. On his part this was little to be wondered at, for he liked vivacious and attractive women, and Henry the Eighth’s sister was neither. Margaret Tudor was plump, dumpy and somewhat moon-faced, without personal grace, and although still only twenty-two years old already looked almost middle-aged. Yet she was notoriously highly sexed and her little pig-like eyes, so like her brother’s, were shrewd enough and missed little. She was probably the least popular queen-consort Scotland had ever had, and knew it—no pleasant situation for any woman. Their marriage, when she was only twelve, at Henry’s urging, had done little to interrupt James’s long succession of mistresses. Her own amorous adventures had to be less explicit.

When the Queen and her ladies retired and the men were getting down to serious drinking, a page came down from the dais-table to inform David and John Inglis that the King would speak with them, and to await him at Queen Joanna’s Bower in the park, presently. James was abstemious about liquor, whatever else, and frequently left his hard-drinking lords to get on with it whilst he sought a different kind of solace.

The two younger men wandered out into the fine July evening. Of all the palaces of Scotland, Linlithgow was the most picturesquely sited, embosomed in low green hills, with the long, narrow curving town on the south side and the fine broad loch on the north, palace and church sharing the ridge between. With the last of the sunset staining sky and water crimson, black and palest green to the north-west, and drawing long purple shadows out of every fold and hollow of the hills, it was pleasant there amidst the last of the darting swallows and the dusk-flighting duck as the friends walked down to the summer-house known as Queen Joanna’s Bower, after Joan Beaufort, wife of James the First.

They were not there long before they saw the vigorous figure of James Stewart come striding downhill, alone.

“Here comes the finest king Scotland has had since my noble namesake, David the First,” Lindsay observed, “the Bruce excepted.”

“You still say that?” his companion charged, smiling. “After his refusal to take you on this great venture of his? Wise as I would say he is, in that!”

“Yes. He has his reasons, no doubt—although I wish that he had not.”

The King beckoned them out. “Come—we shall walk around the loch. No long ears there! And I can do with stretching my legs. Too much sitting and talk in the rule of a nation!” Ever straightforward, James came at once to the point. “This at Vespers. What do you make of it all? You were both close by me. And you both have sound wits, or I would not have chosen you to watch over my young son. You have had time to consider it. How think you?”

The others glanced at each other. Inglis spoke. “We do not think that it was any spectre, Sire.”

“No? Nor do I. But—why?”

“Would a spectre lean upon a stick, Your Grace?” David asked.

“Ha! A fair point. Anything else?”

“Would a spectre have entered the chapel from the main church and crossed the aisle thereafter, to you? Would one not rather have materialised directly before Your Grace?”

“Perhaps. I am not wise in the ways of phantoms.”

“Nor are we, Sire,” Inglis hastened to declare. “If such there be.”

“You think that doubtful?”

“With respect, Sire—yes.”

“Yet Holy Church speaks much of the spirits of the departed and the like.”

“But not as coming to haunt men on earth, Highness. Only as existing in the hereafter.”

“Indeed. I bow to your superior knowledge, Abbot John. So—if this was no spectre, what was it?”

“Possibly a seer, Your Grace. Some eremite or holy man believing that he has the sight and can foretell the future. There are some who so conceive, I understand.”

“Possibly, yes. I had so considered. Crazed or otherwise.”

“I do not think that he was crazed, Sire,” David said.

“No? Why?”

“Because of what he said in the second place. The first, about doom and scaith, could have been the babblings of a crazed man. But the second was different, quite. About, about . . .” David looked embarrassed. “. . . this of women, Sire. I misremember the words. But it was to do with shunning familiar women. Something of that.”

“I heard,” James said grimly. “What of it?”

“That is not, I think, what a seer or a crazed religious would have said. That was a different matter, no prediction but a rebuke, a challenge. That was . . . different.”

“So-o-o! There, now, we have shrewd thinking! I had not perceived the difference. Yes, you are right. That was no message from the Other World, nor yet the dreams of a crazed seer. Those were the words of a man with a purpose. But, why? Who was he?”

“Does it matter who he was, Sire? That old man. A mummer, perhaps, a play-actor. Rather, who sent him?”

James nodded. “No doubt you are right again, Davie. Where did you win the head on those young shoulders?”

“It is none so remarkable, Highness. Who mislikes both your venture into England, and your, your interest in other women, sufficiently to have contrived this?” David’s slight catch of breath at his emphasis on the word “other” betrayed his fear that he might have gone too far.

The King paused in his walking to eye him searchingly. “You mean the Queen, man?”

“Your pardon, Sire—but who else has such good reason? Leastways such strong reasons.”

James hitched at that chain of his. “True. But . . . would she do this? So fell a device?”

Neither of his companions ventured to answer that.

“It could be,” he went on slowly. “In truth she has done all that she can do to halt this project. No doubt at her brother’s behest. This could be a last attempt. And she much dislikes the Queen of France’s fair words in sending me her glove, and to venture three steps into England for love of her.”

This great expedition was being undertaken at the urgent request of King Louis of France under the mutual-aid provisions of the Auld Alliance, whereby Scotland and France had long sought to contain English aggression against either by agreeing each to stage an invasion, south or north, if the other was menaced. Henry was at present engaged in the attempted conquest of Guienne; and James, who had suffered much at his brother-in-law’s hands, was only too pleased to accede.

David had a notion that the Queen’s objection to familiar women would be apt to be centred nearer home than Versailles, but he did not say so.

“The English were ever great on play-acting, mummery and masques,” he mentioned.

“Aye. This could be West’s device.” Dr West was the English ambassador. “Although Her Grace has the wits to have thought it up for herself!”

“Will you heed it, Sire?” Inglis wondered.

“I will not. All is prepared. Arran, the admiral, has already sailed from the Clyde with my fleet. Home, with his Borderers, is probing into Northumberland. It is too late to turn back now—even if I could. I go to Edinburgh in two days. And we march some days later.”

There was silence for a while as they walked on.

“You will cherish my son for me, while I am gone,” the King went on presently, in a different tone of voice. “There are ever ill-intentioned folk in this kingdom, as in any other, who would grasp the heir to the throne if they could, to use him to advance themselves. And I do not trust Henry’s ambassador, West. So keep ever close to the lad. I chose you two carefully. You can call on any of my royal guard left behind, at need.”

“The Prince is safe with us, Sire,” David assured.

They were almost back at the palace when James added his second injunction—and it was clearly to David that he gave it. “Look after Mirren when I am gone,” he said briefly, and waved them away.

It was two weeks later, in fact, when David Lindsay and John Inglis stood on the vantage point of the Borestane Knowe and gazed out over the Burgh-muir of Edinburgh, spellbound by the sight. It is safe to say that never had that lofty and extensive moor above the city, traditional mustering place for Scotland’s armies as it was, seen such a sight as this. Near and far, from the town walls right to the very slopes of the Braid Hills two miles away, the concourse stretched, not in any wide-scattered dispersal but in close-marshalled, serried and orderly ranks, as far as eye could see, the sunlight gleaming on steel and blazoning the colours of a thousand banners and standards which fluttered in the breeze, the steam of scores of thousands of horses raising a sort of mist above all, the encampment of baggage-wagons, ox-carts and weapon-sleds itself larger than the city below. Men said that there were one hundred thousand gathered there—and although that was probably an exaggeration, even half that number would be a greater army than ever Scotland had gathered before in her long story of warfare and strife. None other than James the Fourth, the most popular monarch ever the land had had, could have assembled this enormous host from every corner of his kingdom, from the distant Hebrides to the Mull of Galloway, from Sutherland and Ross to the Borders, the manpower of a score of earldoms, a hundred baronies, thirteen bishoprics and two score Highland clans, townsfolk of every burgh in the land. Great armies had marched from here a many, down the centuries, but never anything like this.

The knoll where the young men stood with their charges was like a small island in the sea of glitter and colour, and itself a crowded island, tight-packed and even more colourful than the rest under its forest of waving lordly pennons and escutcheons and tossing plumes, for here waited the principal nobility of the realm who were not for the moment heading up their armed strength, the officers of state and the leaders of Holy Church. In this galaxy of earls and bishops and lords, Lindsay and the Abbot would have merited no least place—save that they escorted two charges, or three, the seventeen-months James, Prince of Scotland and Duke of Rothesay and his nurse the Lady Erskine, and Mirren Livingstone. The Queen was not present, having remained at Linlithgow.

Young James was a chubby and cheerful infant, well-made and restless—which, considering his present seat on David’s broad shoulder, where he could view all, brought its problems. He chortled and pointed, laughed and dribbled and beat on his Procurator’s bare head, to emphasise his satisfaction with all the prospect. Mirren, perhaps unsuitably, clutched an arm each of the young men, also exclaiming at all she saw. Lady Erskine was more discreet.

A curious, creaking, groaning, rumbling noise turned all heads northwards, city-wards, but the crowds and the falling level of the land hid the cause, and speculation was superseded by the return to the Borestane Knowe of the tight little group of horsemen under the great Lion Standard of Scotland, spurring from the other direction. Reining up before them, the King raised his hand high.

“All is well,” he cried. “The South Galloway folk have arrived. And the Arran Hamiltons. We now but await the cannon.”

“We hear it now, I think, Sire,” George Douglas, Master of Angus, called. “Listen!”

“Aye. They are slow, cannot be other. We shall see them come, then march.” James made a splendid figure, in black gold-inlaid half-armour over scarlet and cloth-of-gold doublet and doeskin breeches, with thigh-length riding boots, a purple fur-trimmed cloak flung back from his shoulder. But, as usual, his head was bare, only a simple gold circlet at his brow restraining the long thick auburn hair which fell to his shoulders.

He dismounted, throwing his reins to an esquire and striding up to take his son from David, to toss the gurgling child into the air and catch him, laughing.

“Hey, Jamie Stewart! Ho, Jamie Stewart!” he shouted. “Here’s to you, and here’s to your sire and here’s to this fine realm of ours! Yours, one day! See you yon Lion ramping there?” And he pointed up to the great red and gold tressured banner, held aloft and flapping above the royal charger by his standard-bearer, Scrymgeour of Dudhope. “True Thomas said: ‘When Alba’s Lion throats a roar; wise men run to bolt their door!’ That Lion is throating a big roar this day—and you are hearing it, Jamie. Pray others will also—but scarce in time to bolt their doors! Eh, my lords?”

There was a roar of approval from the ranked nobles. But not from them all. A harsh, rasping voice spoke.

“I say, see that your Lion doesna choke on this meal you seek to give it! Or it will no’ roar again for long enough!”

There was a shocked hush at that, and then a storm of protest which drowned out even the rumbling, clanking noise.

James raised one eyebrow towards the old man. “You belled the cat one time, Archie Douglas,” he said, mildly enough. “But you’ll not bell the Lion so easy!”

A shout of mirth greeted this sally. Archibald Douglas, fifth Earl of Angus, had been known as Bell-the-Cat ever since, thirty years before, he had disposed of the man Cochrane and others of the late James the Third’s odd minions, by the simple expedient of hanging them from Lauder Brig.

The Earl, head of the great Red Douglas house, irascible always, scowled and, since even he could scarcely challenge his sovereign-lord, rounded on the others instead. “Laugh, dizzards!” he cried. “Laugh whilst you may! For, by the powers, you may not have much longer for laughing if you proceed with this folly. Have you considered what you do? You challenge England’s might, in war. How many of you ken what war is? You are bairns in the business—baims! But Henry’s lords are old in war—his father saw to that, in his French campaigns. How many of you have ever drawn sword in battle? You are but tourney fighters! I tell you, this will be no tourney!”

The laughter changed to growling. Even the speaker’s eldest son and heir, George, the Master, joined in the hostility. “Too late for doubts now, my lord,” he called, embarrassed. “When has Douglas ever been afraid to hazard a toss? Is not this the greatest might our land has ever mounted? And our cause just?”

“Cause! Whose cause, fool? Louis of France’s cause, not ours. All this, to save Louis! What has Louis of France ever done for Scotland?”

“The Auld Alliance . . .”

“The Alliance is all one-sided. What do we gain?”

“Honour, at least!” somebody shouted.

“Honour! I would choose to die for more than honour! Are all summoned here, my lord King, to die for honour? Whose honour? Last night there was another summons, I am told. Not to flourish empty honour, but to compear before the Throne of Darkness within forty days! On the commands of the Prince of Darkness himself. If you do not turn back. And he named many by name—you, Atholl! And you, Argyll. And you, Glencairn. And Bothwell. Aye, and you Cassillis. And Lyle . . .!” Angus’s pointing finger jabbed at the owner of each proud title, under their heraldic banners.

There was a shocked silence as he continued with his grim roll-call. All there had heard how, at midnight a bare twelve hours before, a disembodied voice had sounded at the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh announcing that Pluto hereby required all the earls, lords, barons, gentlemen and sundry burgesses of the city to appear before his master, King of the Underworld, within forty days, under pain of disobedience, designating many of the foremost names in the land, as a consequence of this present expedition.

James frowned. “I say whoever contrived yonder mummery at Linlithgow, with its mouthings, contrived last night’s play-acting also,” he said, shortly. “Speak no more of King Henry’s friends’ inventions, my lord!”

“Such calling up of the powers of darkness is evil and should be cast from our minds,” another old voice asserted, that of Bishop Elphinstone. “But I much urge Your Grace nevertheless to consider well your intentions, in this venture. Already you have despatched your fleet to France’s aid and to threaten the English coasts. And sent my lord of Home and his mosstroopers into England. I pray you to be content, Sire, to take this great array only as far as Tweed and there rest, on your own side of the Border. Posing sufficient threat to King Henry, without leaving your own territory. The English will well perceive the danger, never fear, and will be as greatly concerned as if you had crossed into their land. But you will have remained on your own soil, as you have all right to do, and no men’s lives endangered. Wait this side of Tweed, my lord King—in the name of Holy Church, I beseech you.”

As murmurs arose for and against this course, there was a diversion, from behind the King this time, where a gallant youth leapt down from one of the fine horses beneath the standard and strode over to take the infant prince from his father’s arms in familiar fashion.

“Come, rascal—to your gossip, Alex,” he exclaimed. “And let us tell these greybeards that Holy Church can speak with other voice than trembling caution when the cause is just! I say, enough of gloomy doubts and fears. Let us be doing and on our way! And Saint Andrew of Scotland himself will loud out-voice all these quavering ancients!” This was Alexander Stewart, James’s seventeen-year-old son by Marion Boyd, his first mistress, Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of the Church—even though the only hint of episcopacy about him today was the mitre painted on his gleaming half armour. He bounced his small half-brother about vigorously, apparently to the satisfaction of both.

The cheers which greeted this spirited intervention indicated general support.

The King waved a hand for quiet. “I have heard all, and shall consider all,” he said. “But meantime we have this host to set in motion. Here come the cannon, at last. We shall see them past and then be on our way.”

He had to shout that, for the rumbling, squealing and growling noise was now so loud as to drown all else. The cause of it all was becoming evident, a vast ponderous cavalcade of horsemen, oxen, artillery, wagons and marchers, half a mile long, before which all the serried ranks of the assembled host had to draw aside, however difficult this was. First came a splendidly mounted figure in emblazoned full armour and nodding plumes, under the three black cinquefoils on white, the banner of Lord Borthwick, Hereditary Master Gunner of the realm; and behind came his sons, vassals and followers. Then trundled his famous Seven Sisters, Scotland’s greatest cannon, normally kept at Edinburgh Castle, massive monsters each drawn by a score of plodding oxen, their protesting wheels and axles setting up most of the screeching din, added to by the shouts of the drivers and the cracking of their long whips. Behind were ten lesser pieces, similarly ox-drawn. Then innumerable wagons, carts and sleds carrying the cannonballs, powder-casks and other necessary stores. Finally came a succession of hay-wains, laden with the thousands of ei