But we found King James in aught but a yielding mood. The ministers of Edinburgh, and in especial one, Mr Robert Bruce, a man of very great note, and once a prime favourite with the king, had been setting themselves against his will. So at first we got little satisfaction, and it did not help matters that, on the second day of our visit, the Bargany Kennedies and Mures rode into the town in force – all sturdy men from the landward parts of Carrick, while we were mostly slighter and limberer lads, from the side of it that looks towards the sea.
The next day, as I went down the Canongate with the gold lilies of Cassillis on my cocked bonnet, I declare that nearly every third man I met was a Bargany lout, swaggering with his silly favour of red and white in his cap. But, for all that, I ruffled it right bravely in despite of them all, letting no man cock his feather at me. For I had a way, which I found exceedingly irritating to them, of turning the skirt or my blue French cloak over my shoulder when I met one of the other faction, as if I feared defilement from the contact of their very garments. This I did with all of the underlings – aye, even with Mure of Cloncaird. Indeed, I had already had my long sword three times out of its sheath by the time I got to the guard-house at Holyrood.
It was just there that I met young Bargany himself, coming direct, from the King's presence. But I practised my pleasantry not with him. For a more kingly-looking man did I never see – far beyond our Earl (shame be to me for saying such a thing!), and, indeed, before any man that ever I saw. But Gilbert Kennedy of Bargany was the bravest man that was to be gotten in any land, as all men that saw him in his flower do to this day admit. And hearts were like water before him.
He was of his stature tall and well-made, with a complexion black but comely, noble on horseback, and a master both of arms and at all pastimes. And when I beheld him, it came upon me to salute him – which, though I had small intention thereof till I saw him, I did. It was with some surprise, perceiving, no doubt, the Earl's colours, that he returned my greeting, and that very graciously. The moment after I looked about me, and right glad I was to observe that none of our folk had been in the place before the palace to observe my salutation.
After this we of Cassillis went in parties of three or four, and our swords were in our hands all the day, in spite of the watch – ay, in spite even of the King's Guard, which His Majesty had sent to keep the peace, when he himself had gone off to Linlithgow in the sulks, as at this time was oft his silly wont.
For me, I went chiefly with Sir Thomas, my master, as was my duty; but being allowed to choose my companion, I chose Muckle Hugh from Kirriemore, which marches with mine own home of Kirrieoch on Minnochside. Hugh was the strongest man in all Carrick, and had joined the command chiefly for the love of me – because he had once herded sheep for us, and my mother had been kind to him and given him new milk instead of skim for his porridge.
And I warrant you when the two of us took the crown of the causeway, we stepped aside for no man, not even for Bargany and his brother Drummurchie had we seen them (which by good luck we never did). But others we saw in plenty. It was 'Bargany thieves!' 'Cassillis cairds!' as we cried one to the other across the street. And the next moment there we were, ruffling and strutting like gamecocks, foot-to-foot in the midst of the causeway, neither willing to give way. Then 'Give them iron!' would be the cry; and in a clapping of hands there would be as pretty a fight as one might wish to see – till, behold, in a gliff, there on the cobble stones was a man stretched, and all workmanly completed from beginning to end, while the clock of St Giles' was jangling the hour of noon.
For the matter of the killing of Black Peter, and the way that lassie his daughter held his head as she washed him, abode with us, and made our hearts hot against the Barganies. That is, the hearts of the younger of us. For I wot well that the elders thought more of the lost box of treasure, than of many men's lives far more famous and necessary than that of poor Black Peter, who died in his duty at the house door of the Red Moss – and that is not at all an ill death to die.
But there came a day when the ill blood drew to a head. It was bound to come, because for weeks the two factions of us Kennedies had been itching to fly at each other's throats. The Barganies mostly lodged together in the lower parts of the town beneath the Nether Bow, in order to keep us away from the King when he was at Holyrood House, and also to be near the haunts of those loose characters of the baser sort with whom, as was natural, they chiefly consorted.
We, on our part, dwelled in the upper portion of the town, in the well-aired Lawnmarket and in the fashionable closes about the Bow-head. For none of us, so far as I knew, desired to mix or to mell with loose company – save, an' it might be, the Earl himself. That being 'the custom and privilege of the nobility,' as Morton said to his leman, when he wished to change her for another.
Now, we had among us of our company one Patrick Wishart, an indweller in Irvine and a good fighter. He was an Edinburgh man born, and knew all the town – every lane and street, every bend and bow, every close and pend and turning in it. He also knew that which was even more valuable, where the King's Guard were, and how to shut them up till we had done our needs upon our foes. He was well advised besides where each of the leaders among the Barganies dwelt.
On the day appointed the Earl gave us all a meeting-place by the back of Saint Giles' High Kirk, beneath the wall of the Tolbooth. And there we mustered at ten of the clock one gay morning. It was a windy day, and, spite of the sun, the airs blew shrewdly from the eastern sea, as is their use and wont all the year in the High Street of Edinburgh.
Now our young Earl had ever plenty of siller though afterward he parted with it but seldom. Yet for the furtherance of his cause he had spent it lavishly during these days in Edinburgh, so that all the common orders in our upper part of the town held him to be the greatest man and the best that ever lived. And as for the vices he showed, they were easy, popular ones, such as common folk readily excuse and even approve in the great – as women, wine, and such-like.
So as we swung down the street all the windows of the armourers' shops in the booths about the Kirk of Saint Giles' were opened, and as many as desired it were supplied with spears and pikes and long-handled Highland axes, each with a grappling hook at the back, such-like as had brought many a good knight down at the Red Harlaw.
And these were afterwards a great advantage to us, for though we were much fewer in numbers, yet we had longer weapons of assault and also the upper side of the street to fight from.
Then we sallied forth crying, 'A Kennedy!' And the streets were lined to see us go by, many a douce burgher's wife, knowing our good intentions and our not companying with the riotous troublers of the town, but rather, when we could compass it, with honest, sonsy women, giving us her blessing from an upper window.
Patrick Wishart advised that we should stop up all the alleys and closes as far down as the Blackfriar's Wynd with barracadoes of carts, barrels, and puncheons, to prevent the enemy sallying forth upon us from behind. It was a good thought, and but for a foe without, whom we knew not how to reckon with, it had been completely successful. Down by the Nether Bow, where the street narrows, was the place where we first saw the misleared Bargany faction drawn across the street to resist us and contemn the King's authority.
When we observed them we gave a mighty shout and heaved our weapons into the air, that they might see the excellence of our arming. They sent a shout back again, and I saw in front of their array Bargany himself with a casque on his head, the sun glinting the while on a steel cuirass which covered him back and front. Then I gave the word to blow up the matches; for by this time I was well kenned for a good soldier and proper marksman, and had by my lord himself been put over the hackbuttmen, which was a great honour for one so young. Thus we advanced to the onset. But first my Lord of Cassillis, going to the front, cried to Kennedy of Bargany to know why he withstood him in the highway of the King's principal town.
'Because ye have lied concerning me to the King. Because ye have slain my men, hated my race, and sought to bring me to my death!' answered back young Bargany in a clear, high voice.
'Ye lie, man! Have at you with the sword!' cried our Earl, who was never a great man with his tongue, though sometimes masterful enough with his hands.
So