The Thistle and the Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

watching, as he had in those days in Stirling Castle, for a man of noble bearing who might be his father.
    And when they had come to him and told him that the enemy was routed and the victory was his he had felt the childish tears well into his eyes and he wanted to cry out: How can I rejoice when my victory is my father's defeat?
    “Where is my father?” he demanded.
    But no one knew.
    “It would seem, my lord, that he left the battlefield before the end. He may well have escaped to the Forth and left Scotland in one of Sir Andrew Wood's ships which were waiting there to help him in such an emergency.”
    “I must know what has happened to my father,” James insisted.
    He asked that he might be alone. Then he knelt in the privacy of his tent and prayed that his father might be safe, that they might meet and all differences between them be dissolved.
    He was in Stirling Castle when Lord Drummond and others of the rebel lords brought a stranger to him. This was one of the most handsome men James had ever seen—tall, with an air of fearlessness.
    James went forward eagerly holding out his hands.
    “Sir,” he cried, “are you my father?”
    When the man put his hands over his eyes to hide his emotion,
    Drummond said sourly: “Nay, my lord, this is Sir Andrew Wood. He has come ashore because his friends have hostages of ours for his safekeeping. He has been sheltering our enemies on his ships in the Forth.”
    Sir Andrew removed his hand and said firmly: “I am not Your Highness's father, but I am his true servant, and I shall continue to be the enemy, until I die, of those who are disloyal to him.”
    Drummond said: “If you know where the King is, it would be well for you to say.”
    “I know not,” was the answer. “But some of my father's men have found refuge in your ships?” James put in eagerly.
    “That is so, my lord.”
    “Are you sure my father is not among them?” asked the boy pleadingly.
    “Yes, my lord. Would to God I could tell you that he is safe with us, but he is not and I know not where he is. If I knew I would tell you; but I fear the worst, and I trust that one day will see the hanging of the traitors who have cruelly murdered him.”
    “Murdered!” cried James, his face turning pale with horror.
    But the lords had seized Andrew Wood and hustled him from the apartment.
    Murder! pondered James, and then the remorse began.
    Some days passed before he learned what had really happened to his father at Sauchieburn, and he felt sick with horror when the tale was recounted. His father had left the battlefield before the end, being advised by his generals that he should escape to the Forth where, while there was yet time, he could find shelter with Wood's fleet. To stay would be to die in the field; to escape would be to live to fight another day.
    A few miles from the battlefield, near a millstream, he met a woman with a pitcher which she had come to fill. Seeing the horse and rider making straight for her, and fearing they would trample her under foot she dropped the pitcher and ran. The pitcher rolling under the horse's hoofs so startled the terrified animal that it shied and stumbled, its weary rider was thrown and lay unconscious in the dust while the horse went galloping on.
    The story had been slowly pieced together by the people who had witnessed it. James heard how workers had come from the mill and carried the King inside, how he recovered consciousness and when the miller's wife—a forceful woman—had asked his name, answered: “James Stuart is my name, and this morning I was your King.”
    “Saints above us!” the miller's wife had cried. “We have the King under our roof. And dying maybe. A priest! Fetch a priest for the King.”
    She dashed out of the mill and began to run to the priest's house, but before she reached it she saw a rider coming from the direction of Sauchieburn. “Stop!” she cried. “The King is in our mill. He is sorely hurt and needing a priest.”
    The