Story for Alternate Persona, Katryne Blak |
It fell about the Lammas tide,
When muir-men win their hay,
The doughty Earl of Douglas rode
To England for a prey:
He chose the Gordons and the Graemes,
The Lindsays licht and gay;
But the Jardines wad not with him ride,
And they rue it to this day.
The Battle of Otterburn (1388)
Maver's Collection of Genuine Scottish Melodies
Edited by George Alexander, Esq.
Robert Maver, Glasgow (circa 1900)
My first persona was Katryne Blak, a Lowland Scottish woman born in the burgh of Lanark in 1488. I've become more interested in Iberia and Japan, but here was her story...
In the same year of my birth, 1488, did the Scottish King James III die to a stabbing after tumbling from his horse at the Battle of Sauchieburn.
In that year, also, did James, the 9th Earl of Douglas, die in banishment at Lindores Abbey. Sweet James was the last of the infamous Black Douglases as we know them. (Well, I can't vouch for his sweetness -- but Sir James "the Good", the original Black Douglas, was a hotty. Perhaps not in face, but in deed. H'damn! Anyways...)
After the murder of James III, James IV succeeded to the throne of Scotland. As he was 15, Archibald Douglas (a "Red Douglas", a branch strong in Angus on the eastern coast) hung around for a while and told him what to do. In King James IV's time, the Scottish economy would grow, her arts would flourish, and mainstream Catholism would have the grip while religious reform brewed elsewhere in Europe. James IV's time is my time, and I like Jameses.
My mother was Marioun Douglas, of the Red Douglases of Angus. Quickly married and widowed, she afterward kept with James IV's Royal Appointees at Threave Castle until gaining her modest inheritance. (Threave Castle in Kirkcudbright was long a stronghold of the Black Douglases. At the 1455 Battle of Arkinholm, James, the 9th Earl of Douglas, had been defeated by George Douglas, the 4th Earl of Angus and a Red Douglas. This same Sweet James fled to England with his brother Balveny... which did nothing to prevent him from being imprisoned later, alas. Black Douglas holdings were forfeited or attacked -- including a 2-month siege of Threave Castle by James II, who punched nasty holes in the wall with the unwieldy cannon Mons Meg, but still lost the siege. Margaret, Countess of Douglas, controlled Threave during the siege. I tell of my mother, a Red Douglas, living at Threave for a while because... well, it's funny.)
My mother eventually married James Blak, a horse merchant and erstwhile fighter, born 1450. He took my mother to Lanark in 1487, but was away again fighting at Sauchieburn at my birth. Isn't that how it usually goes?
As was custom in my time and place, my mother kept her surname, but I took my father's. In 1502, when I was 14, she took me to Threave Castle when King James IV went there on a hunting trip. Her intent was to fix my marriage to some worthy guy in attendance -- but whether through my sass or her judgment, it was not to be. Still, I got a mad crush on King James IV. "Endure fort!"
In 1508, I am twenty, and living in Lanark with some comfortable inheritance probable on my parents' deaths, as I have no brothers. My marriage to James Forrest, a shipping merchant of Edinburgh, born to a family at Lanark, has lately been arranged. (He's just dashing, for a 62-year-old man... )
In just a few years, James IV and many Scottish nobles would be killed at Flodden Edge, in England, fighting against the English. In the same year of our Lord, 1513, my husband James Forrest would die of the fever, leaving me in title of his business. This I would sell, and by 1515, have left naught in Edinburgh but a rumor that I sailed from port in a strange gown from southern Europe...
But that was a story of fancy. In truth I would die in 1515 to English Border Reivers, after a life of small consequence but, I hope, much spirit.
A.S. XXXVIII (June 2003) |
