The Fair Maid of Perth; Or, St. Valentine's Day by Walter Scott (electronic reader .TXT) 📕

bear the sword as well as the sceptre, and this present evil is of a kind which the sword must cure.”

“Hark ye, my lords,” said the Prince, looking up as if a gay thought had suddenly struck him. “Suppose we teach these savage mountaineers a strain of chivalry? It were no hard matter to bring these two great commanders, the captain of the Clan Chattan and the chief of the no less doughty race of the Clan Quhele, to defy each other to mortal combat. They might fight here in Perth—we would lend them horse and armour; thus their feud would be stanched by the death of one, or probably both, of the villains, for I think both would break their necks in the first charge; my father’s godly desire of saving blood would be attained; and we should have the pleasure of seeing such a combat between two savage knights, for the first time in their lives wearing breeches and mounted on horses, as has not been heard of since the days of King Arthur.”

“Shame upon you, David!” said the King. “Do you make the distress of your native country, and the perplexity of our councils, a subject for buffoonery?”

“If you will pardon me, royal brother,” said Albany, “I think that, though my princely nephew hath started this thought in a jocular manner, there may be something wrought out of it, which might greatly remedy this pressing evil.”

“Good brother,” replied the King, “it is unkind to expose Rothsay’s folly by pressing further his ill timed jest. We know the Highland clans have not our customs of chivalry, nor the habit or mode of doing battle which these require.”

“True, your Grace,” answered Albany; “yet I speak not in scorn, but in serious earnest. True, the mountaineers have not our forms and mode of doing battle in the lists, but they have those which are as effectual to the destruction of human life, and so that the mortal game is played, and the stake won and lost, what signifies it whether these Gael fight with sword and lance, as becomes belted knights, or with sandbags, like the crestless churls of England, or butcher each other with knives and skenes, in their own barbarous fashion? Their habits, like our own, refer all disputed rights and claims to the decision of battle. They are as vain, too, as they are fierce; and the idea that these two clans would be admitted to combat in presence of your Grace and of your court will readily induce them to refer their difference to the fate of battle, even were such rough arbitrement less familiar to their customs, and that in any such numbers as shall be thought most convenient. We must take care that they approach not the court, save in such a fashion and number that they shall not be able to surprise us; and that point being provided against, the more that shall be admitted to combat upon either side, the greater will be the slaughter among their bravest and most stirring men, and the more the chance of the Highlands being quiet for some time to come.”

“This were a bloody policy, brother,” said the King; “and again I say, that I cannot bring my conscience to countenance the slaughter of these rude men, that are so little better than so many benighted heathens.”

“And are their lives more precious,” asked Albany, “than those of nobles and gentlemen who by your Grace’s license are so frequently admitted to fight in barrace, either for the satisfying of disputes at law or simply to acquire honour?”

The King, thus hard pressed, had little to say against a custom so engrafted upon the laws of the realm and the usages of chivalry as the trial by combat; and he only replied: “God knows, I have never granted such license as you urge me with unless with the greatest repugnance; and that I never saw men have strife together to the effusion of blood, but I could have wished to appease it with the shedding of my own.”

“But, my gracious lord,” said the prior, “it seems that, if we follow not some such policy as this of my Lord of Albany, we must have recourse to that of the Douglas; and, at the risk of the dubious event of battle, and with the certainty of losing many excellent subjects, do, by means of the Lowland swords, that which these wild mountaineers will otherwise perform with their own hand. What says my Lord of Douglas to the policy of his Grace of Albany?”

“Douglas,” said the haughty lord, “never counselled that to be done by policy which might be attained by open force. He remains by his opinion, and is willing to march at the head of his own followers, with those of the barons of Perth shire and the Carse, and either bring these Highlanders to reason or subjection, or leave the body of a Douglas among their savage wildernesses.”

“It is nobly spoken, my Lord of Douglas,” said Albany; “and well might the King rely upon thy undaunted heart and the courage of thy resolute followers. But see you not how soon you may be called elsewhere, where your presence and services are altogether indispensable to Scotland and her monarch? Marked you not the gloomy tone in which the fiery March limited his allegiance and faith to our sovereign here present to that space for which he was to remain King Robert’s vassal? And did not you yourself suspect that he was plotting a transference of his allegiance to England? Other chiefs, of subordinate power and inferior fame, may do battle with the Highlanders; but if Dunbar admit the Percies and their Englishmen into our frontiers, who will drive them back if the Douglas be elsewhere?”

“My sword,” answered Douglas, “is equally at the service of his Majesty on the frontier or in the deepest recesses of the Highlands. I have seen the backs of the proud Percy and George of Dunbar ere now, and I may see them again. And, if it is the King’s pleasure I should take measures against this probable conjunction of stranger and traitor, I admit that, rather than trust to an inferior or feebler hand the important task of settling the Highlands, I would be disposed to give my opinion in favour of the policy of my Lord of Albany, and suffer those savages to carve each other’s limbs, without giving barons and knights the trouble of hunting them down.”

“My Lord of Douglas,” said the Prince, who seemed determined to omit no opportunity to gall his haughty father in law, “does not choose to leave to us Lowlanders even the poor crumbs of honour which might be gathered at the expense of the Highland kerne, while he, with his Border chivalry, reaps the full harvest of victory over the English. But Percy hath seen men’s backs as well as Douglas; and I have known as great wonders as that he who goes forth to seek such wool should come back shorn.”

“A phrase,” said Douglas, “well becoming a prince who speaks of honour with a wandering harlot’s scrip in his bonnet, by way of favor.”

“Excuse it, my lord,” said Rothsay: “men who have matched unfittingly become careless in the choice of those whom they love par amours. The chained dog must snatch at the nearest bone.”

“Rothsay, my unhappy son!” exclaimed the King, “art thou mad? or wouldst thou draw down on thee the full storm of a king and father’s displeasure?”

“I am dumb,” returned the Prince, “at your Grace’s command.”

“Well, then, my Lord of Albany,” said the King, “since such is your